The duplicate in the truck didn’t blink. Its chest rose and fell in a slow, unnatural rhythm, synchronized perfectly with the quiet thrumming of the armored transport’s idling engine.
«Don’t look at it!» Vance’s scream tore through the air, raspy and choked with blood. She forced herself up from the shattered pallets, her left arm hanging uselessly at her side. In her right hand, she held a heavy flared remote, her knuckles stark white against the grip. «It’s a receiver, Arthur! It’s designed to pull your neural matrix straight out of your skull the second you establish a direct optical handshake!»
The clone with the silenced pistol didn’t panic. She didn’t even turn around. Instead, a chilling, pitying smile spread across her face. «She’s half-right,» the clone whispered, easing her finger against the trigger. «It is a receiver. But it isn’t pulling your mind out. It’s pushing the rest of it in. You were never the original, Arthur. You’re just the latest backup, running on a timer that just hit zero.»
Synchronization: 99%.
The static inside my brain expanded into an agonizing, high-pitched screech. My knees buckled, hard concrete slamming against my leg as the key card slipped from my fingers. The silver mercury in my blood was boiling now, rising through my veins like molten wire, spreading up my neck and into my jaw.
Click.
The sound came from the heavy armored transport behind the glass. The driver’s side door swung open with a heavy, pressurized hiss. The duplicate stepped out onto the pavement. It wore identical clothes—the same scuffed leather jacket, the same grease-stained jeans—but its movement was fluid, devoid of human hesitation.
«Arthur, the key!» Vance shrieked, firing her flare remote straight at the child atop the hovering cylinder.
A blinding arc of white phosphorus ignited in the dark warehouse, scorching the air and setting off a cascade of violent electrical arcs across the ceiling. The child’s unblinking gaze snapped toward the light, the kinetic field wavering for a fraction of a second.
I scrambled across the glass-strewn floor, my fingers tearing into the dust until my nails split. My hand closed around the cold metal edge of the key card just as a tactical boot slammed down on my wrist.
The clone leaned down, her shadow falling over me like a shroud. The barrel of her pistol pressed directly against the center of my forehead, the cold steel burning against my overheated skin.
«You were a good iteration,» she murmured softly. «A little too soft. A little too attached to the ghost of a mother who died thirty years ago. But the network requires absolute efficiency.»
Through the haze of pain and burning silver circuitry, I looked past her barrel, directly into the eyes of the duplicate standing five feet away. The blue light in its eyes wasn’t a mechanical display—it was a sequence of binary code scrolling at blinding speed.
And in that split second, I realized why the notebook’s warning had been so precise.
They are listening through your eyes.
It wasn’t just tracking me. It was waiting for a signal loop.
Instead of pulling my hand away from the clone’s boot, I slammed the metallic key card straight into the exposed wiring of the shattered spinning frame beside me.
A blinding surge of high-voltage current shot up through the metal, traveling instantly into the key card’s micro-circuits. The small metallic strip didn’t just overload; it detonated in a brilliant flash of blue plasma, sending a localized electromagnetic pulse tearing through the room.
The clone’s pistol clicked uselessly as her internal targeting systems fried. She stumbled back, clutching her head as a harsh, synthesized screech tore from her throat. Overhead, every light fixture shattered in a cascade of sparking glass, plunging the warehouse into pitch darkness.
The neural noise in my head went dead silent.
Synchronization: FAILED. NETWORK DISCONNECTED.
Synchronization: FAILED. NETWORK DISCONNECTED.
«Run!» Vance’s voice cut through the dark, followed by the heavy, mechanical roar of the armored transport’s engine revving to life.
I dragged myself up, my vision returning in ragged, black-and-white static. The duplicate was already moving, but not toward me. Driven by some fried, corrupted instruction from the EMP, it lunged straight toward the child atop the hovering chrome cylinder.
«No!» the clone screamed, her voice sounding raw, human, and terrifyingly desperate for the very first time. «Override protocol Alpha! Destroy the chassis!»
The child opened its mouth, but instead of a kinetic pulse, a beam of pure violet light spewed outward, striking the duplicate square in the chest. The duplicate didn’t stop. It plowed directly into the cylinder, the force of the impact tipping the massive anti-gravity drive sideways into the main structural pillar of the warehouse.
The floor beneath us groaned. Deep, thunderous cracks echoed through the foundation as tons of steel and concrete began to shear apart overhead.
I grabbed Vance by her good arm, dragging her toward the shattered rear exit as heavy iron girders began raining down from the ceiling. We burst through the rusted double doors into the pouring rain outside, collapsing against the cold brick wall of the alleyway just as the entire roof of the warehouse caved in with a deafening roar.
Plumes of black smoke and silver dust billowed out of the ruined structure.
Vance slumped against me, gasping for air, her face pale under the amber streetlight. «We… we stopped the upload,» she panted, coughing violently. «The network lost the anchor.»
«Is it over?» I asked, looking down at my palm. The silver mercury beneath my skin had settled, leaving only dark, jagged scars where the circuits had burned out.
Vance slowly shook her head, reaching into her jacket with trembling fingers. She pulled out a small, blood-splattered digital pocket watch. The screen was flickering red, counting down from three minutes.
«That transport didn’t come to take you to the network, Arthur,» she whispered, her voice trembling with absolute terror. «It was the payload. The child was just the receiver. The bomb was inside the clone.»
I froze. From beneath the smoking pile of rubble behind us, a low, rhythmical mechanical thud began to echo.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The concrete debris exploded outward. Rising slowly from the dust wasn’t the clone, nor the duplicate.
It was a towering, ten-foot-tall exoskeleton, painted in faded military black, its visor glowing with an unstable crimson light. And through the reinforced glass of the chest pilot assembly, I saw the face of the person operating it.
It wasn’t a clone of me.
It was my mother.