Blaze

  Blaze

  Alex Mara

  Copyright © 2018 by Alex Mara

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Design: Mayhem Cover Designs

  Editor: Edits by Shavonne

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Available in November: Firestorm

  Afterword

  One

  Friday, May 1, 2053

  7:01 a.m.

  Darcy

  8024.

  He was the eight-thousandth and twenty-fourth iteration of the model I’d spent two years producing, and he was perfect.

  Like the others, he was physically flawless: olive skin, evergreen eyes, blue-black hair that hung straight as a pin. His shoulders were swollen with muscle, abdominals ribbed tighter than a washing board. And below that, he was—as we scientists blushingly put it—anatomically ideal.

  I had been tasked with designing an “attractive” model, but there was no easy way to orchestrate unique human beauty. It was a miracle of the mixture, and somehow, after five years of cloning and prototypes, the infiltration model had come out ready to break hearts. And skulls.

  The ones before him had imprinted onto me when their eyes came open like they’d seen a goddess. Often they lifted a cloying hand to touch mine, wrapped their cold fingers around my own. They were trusting. Loving. They wanted to please.

  All of it was vaguely unpleasant: their pasty, wet touch; their eagerness; the childlike inability to think for themselves. They were clones I had created, yes, but I didn’t have to like them.

  Like the others, I’d seen 8024 into the world, unsealed him from his vacuum zip, helped him take his first breath.

  But when 8024 opened his eyes, they met mine, and then they moved past me. His gaze traveled the room, memorizing its sanitized white walls, the metal grate of the circulation system in the ceiling, the white coat I wore.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I said. It was what I always said.

  His eyes flicked, landed on me again. They appeared cool, thoughtful. “I’m not."

  Those words branded me like an iron, set my hairs on edge. He had the same voice as the others, but he played the instrument at a lower key, his words a velvet sweep, rasping at the edges. But that wasn't why I reacted so strongly.

  I stared at him. "You're not?"

  He only looked back, blinked once. That look said: Haven't I just told you so?

  Well, that was a first. Of eight thousand iterations, four thousand had said nothing when I instructed them not to be afraid. Another two thousand had said "Okay," and the remaining two thousand and change had said various monosyllabic words.

  The common thread: they'd all been compliant. And while "I'm not," wasn't compliant, it also wasn't noncompliant. It was just...mindful. This one appeared to be mindful.

  I reached out for his hand, but he didn’t take mine. Instead, he sat up, the muscles in his arms flexing under his own power for the first time.

  Where the zip ended, his erection was massive. Like the others, 8024 had been asleep for days after leaving cryostasis, so they always came out with full bladders and morning wood.

  I took a glance, which was part of my job, after all: I had to make sure they had all their fingers and toes and everything else. And this one, I saw, appeared no different.

  I turned my eyes away, reached for his wrappings. “Put these on,” I said—the same command I had given to every one of the 8,024 male infiltration clones.

  He regarded me with unblinking eyes, seemed to see me for the first time. I felt myself shrinking under his penetrating gaze, wondered if he saw only my blonde hair, my blue eyes, the round frames of the glasses on my face—or if he sensed the intangibles.

  When his eyes traveled down my body, did his honed programming recognize that parts of me were still untouched? Did he sense my physiological response to being surveyed from head to toe?

  Not that my elevated heart rate around men—even clones—was uncommon. Five years in an isolated, underground facility presented many challenges. I’d been whisked straight from my studies to research under Dr. Ides, and the last time I’d seen the sun was over a year ago, on a trip to see my sister.

  Between my work and the offerings among the staff at the facility, I hadn’t even thought about romance—or sleeping around, for that matter.

  After a beat, he accepted the wrappings, the underside of his wrist and the facility's brand—"8024" in exact, tiny lettering—presented to the light. His fingers weren’t wet or pasty; somehow they felt smooth, warm. He draped the cloth over his waist, cinched it at his hips.

  I picked up my stenopad, set two fingers to his neck. Heart rate: 55 on the nose. I thumbed open his full lower lip, inspecting his tongue, the white teeth. My flashlight illuminated the insides of his ears and green eyes. All of these things I marked with checks on my stenopad.

  No flaws; this one was ideal.

  “8024, welcome to Ides,” I said, gesturing to the waking room around me. The walls were bare metal, the lights harsh on the low ceiling. It wasn’t much as a first impression. Soon he would come to see more of the Ides facility—would understand how extensive it was, much more than the single room he was born into. “I’m Darcy West.”

  In answer, he swung his muscular legs from the slab, silent feet touching the tile. His eyes met mine, intense with feeling: pride, anger, vulnerability. Already his programming was influencing his actions, leveraging everything at his disposal.

  Which, right now, were those emerald eyes that shrunk me right into the ground. I had always been psychologically immune to their wiles, seeing as how I’d designed them, knew every movement, every word that would come from their mouths.

  But then he said something else that wasn’t in his programming.

  “Darcy West, what am I?”

  * * *

  I set 8024 on one of the treadmills for endurance testing, his powerful legs pumping at eight miles an hour. In the viewing room, his vitals blinked on the screen, but my eyes had gone unfocused.

  I hadn’t known how to answer his question. What was he?

  Well, to start, he was an egg and a spermatozoa in a petri dish, both of them designed according to a specific genetic concoction I had brewed and perfected over the years like a family recipe. Then he'd floated in a hydro-growth tube, his body filling to shape over the course of weeks. And then he had been cryo-frozen for months, waiting his turn for the waking room.

  But none of those got at his question, not really.

  Now that he was conscious, 8024 was something else entirely. He was a programmed and perfectly designed being. But he was also much more than that: a conscious and feeling human.

  Not that anyone else here seemed to recognize the infiltrators as anything more than tools.

  When 8024 asked what he was, I’d dropped my stenopad and bent in front of him, pushing my glasses up my nose as I scrabbled for it. He dropped down with me, his powerful thighs flexing as he knelt. Before I could lay a finger, he’d swiped it up from the ground and extended it to me in a single arc.

&
nbsp; “Thank you,” I said. And as though I had forgotten his question, I instructed him out of the waking room and into the cardio testing station.

  In the viewing room, a machine beeped with his pulse, the only sound in the small space around me. His heart was like a metronome, an exact song.

  I closed my eyes, my thoughts drifting. I would have to tell Dr. Ides—whom the facility had been named after—about 8024’s anomalous behavior, and the outcome wouldn’t be good.

  Actually, it would be lethal for 8024.

  Clones weren’t supposed to act outside their programming—especially not the infiltration model. If I knew Luther Ides at all—and after five years, I was pretty sure I did know the bastard—he would have this one recycled before I’d finished my report to him. He took a certain glee in “cleaning up the facility.”

  As though he’d heard, 8024 raised the speed on the treadmill’s dash to 9. Another unprecedented act of autonomy. I looked at the monitor: his heart rate was only just cresting 180. Remarkable.

  Through the glass, I could see a line of sweat carving a glistening path down the hollow of his spine. He ran like a dervish, like this was his life’s purpose, and my gut twined at the thought of telling Ides.

  No. I shook my head, setting one hand to my forehead. Don’t be stupid, Darcy.

  Who knew what Ides would do to me if I kept this secret? The man’s paranoia kept us so tight-lipped, I’d seen lab assistants disappear like they’d never existed. Probably sent back to the surface, which was arguably a much worse fate than remaining down here. One morning Joe would be setting test tubes to spin in the centrifuge, and the next, just the lone tubes, untouched under the fluorescents.

  So far as I knew, Ides had never made an actual doctor vanish. But this might merit it.

  Through my fingers, I peeked again at 8024’s sprinting backside. I wanted more time to study him, to understand why he was acting anomalously. This could be a good thing, his behavior. This one might be what we'd been looking for without even knowing it.

  Agency. Curiosity. Drive.

  But Ides wasn't likely to be interested in any of that. Why did I have to end up with an actual psychopath for a boss?

  I let a long breath through my nose, manually stopping the treadmill. I grabbed a towel, exiting the viewing room into the cardio station where 8024 was slowing to a walk, the muscles in his back iridescent with sweat. The man could run. “You were blazing on that thing,” I said. “Wipe off.”

  He stepped off the treadmill, and I was struck again by the model’s sheer size. The crown of my head was only as tall as his chest, and his wrists were as large as my calves.

  “Blazing,” he repeated, accepting the towel. “What does that mean?”

  How to explain? “It means you’re damn fast,” I said. “Like spreading fire. You’re a blaze.”

  He rubbed the towel over the back of his neck, and I caught a nose-full of his scent: a mixture of intoxicating man spice and earthiness. That was the natural body odor I'd engineered him with and had smelled thousands of times, and still it caught me off guard.

  Something about his unusual behavior, maybe, made me feel as though I wasn't quite sure what to expect from 8024.

  I focused my eyes on the stenopad at my chest, marking off his stats on the treadmill. Before him, the scent had been the same, but it had no effect. Back then, it had been easy to promise myself I would never get involved with a clone like Ides did.

  Or, in Ides's case, multiple clones. Dozens. I shuddered, stoppered the thought.

  “Fire,” 8024 said, thoughtful. "How does it spread?"

  Of course—he’d never seen fire. And it wasn’t in his primary knowledge base. “It’s…” I started—but fire was as impossible to explain as air, as love. “It’s a chemical reaction caused by the combustion of oxygen and fuel. It consumes most things, turns them to ash.”

  I could see in my periphery that he watched me closely throughout this explanation, the muscle in his square jaw twitching with comprehension. All of this made it difficult to make my thoughts cohere, and I ended up examining the same handwritten line over and over on the page. Perfect specimen. Uncannily self-aware.

  The two could not coexist.

  “Darcy West,” he said, tipping his head to one side. “You don’t like to meet eyes.”

  He learned fast. For 8024, the training regimen would probably take far less than the standard two weeks. Of course, all of that was moot if he ended up going to recycling. He would become the ash.

  I set my mouth, looked up at him, offering nothing. “Follow me.”

  * * *

  He walked close behind in the hall, but his eyes were on the viewing areas of the stations. Large picture windows allowed a one-way view from the hallway into the infiltration rooms, which was ideal for staff who wanted to stop and observe the models currently being trained, processed.

  We also passed a series of Gales—more infiltrators, but these ones had been promoted to guards. After all, who could defeat a rogue infiltrator except another infiltrator? From the corner of my eye I saw 8024's gaze pass over them, and I wondered if he knew that they were identical to him. Same appearance, same capabilities.

  Except the Gales had been alive much, much longer. Months, usually.

  At the manual combat viewing station, 8024 stopped: two of the trainee infiltrators were attempting to immobilize or disarm the other of his short blade, a type of weapon historically called a “tanto.”

  We were observing a daily training session in which the infiltrators paired off, choosing weapons and opponents for duels in the sparring rooms. Soon, 8024 would be on the other side of that glass.

  Before us, the opponents crouched, their identical green eyes analyzing the opponent’s movements. 8024’s face was reflected in the glass as, before him, 8017 swept forward, his blade making a clean, low arc beneath 8018’s airborne feet.

  In the air, 8018’s hand came out, struck such a swift slice across 8017’s shoulder that I hadn’t even seen it penetrate, only understood from the recoil, the dark spray that made a line across the white walls like someone had splashed red paint.

  “They aren’t trying to kill each other,” I said, stepping up behind 8024. Before us, the two of them had separated, and 8018 swicked the blood off onto his wrappings, decorating the ivory with red.

  8024 raised one finger to the glass, indicating the wounded one. “He held back.”

  I raised my eyebrow, turned my face up to him. I didn’t doubt that he was right—his model was attuned to physicality more than anything, could perceive even the tiniest movements with analytical precision. But infiltrators were not designed for feeling or emotion. Emotion led to attachment. Love. Mistakes. “Why?”

  His lips twitched, as though trying to articulate what lay beneath 8017’s actions was like pooling water in his splayed fingers. His brow knit, and when he turned to me, his face appeared pained. “It was not advantageous.”

  I turned back to the glass, looking hard at 8017. He had lowered himself to a deep squat, his eyes intent on his partner even though their sparring had ended.

  Friendship? They were allowed some socialization with each other during meals for the purpose of easy integration into society, but I hadn’t ever noticed true camaraderie between infiltrators.

  I made a note on my pad to study 8017 and 8018 at tonight's dinner.

  Beside me, 8024 set one hand to my shoulder. I jumped at the sudden warmth that seeped through my jacket—even though it had been pleasant, and in fact I had felt the instinct to lean into it. Instead, I stepped away. “You aren’t supposed to touch me,” I said.

  And—on his first day in the world—8024’s lips curled upward. He had learned to smirk. “I apologize,” he said, his hand falling to his side. “Please, let us continue.”

  Was he directing me? My instinct was to object, but my body turned as though operated with strings. Sometimes I forgot that the infiltrator’s power of suggestion was immense.

 
; But none had ever totally controlled me with three words. And the part that frightened me: I didn’t mind. I wanted to obey him. That was true danger.

  I also felt something I hadn't in years: a thread of hope. Maybe, finally, we could accomplish something for those who were still aboveground.

  “This way,” I said over my shoulder. "It's time to meet your Scarlet."

  Two

  Friday, May 1, 2053

  10:31 a.m.

  Blaze

  Scarlet. She might have been the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. And the ugliest.

  Darcy West had brought me into a narrow room with a single capsule, and she stepped aside to reveal—

  "8024, this is your Scarlet," she said, gesturing to a woman with rich red hair, pale green eyes and a full mouth adorned in red lipstick. She wore all black: shirt and pants and tall boots. "She'll be guiding you through the trainings during your time in the facility."

  Scarlet had been leaning against the capsule, and she pressed away to face me in full. We analyzed one another, and I processed the perfect symmetry, the optimal health in her skin and hair and proportions.

  I understood instantly that she was like me.

  Programmed. Engineered. Woken.

  "Welcome to Ides, 8024," said Scarlet. She stepped forward, nearly as tall as me, and one of her hands came out between us, waiting. "This is called a handshake. It's a gesture of goodwill. You'll learn all about those sorts of things in a moment."

  I extended my hand in the same way, and she clasped mine. Her grip was firm as she shook our hands up and down. Goodwill, she had said, but when I had entered the room and she looked at me for the first time, her micro-expression had revealed something else.