FIFTY-NINE

 

 

THE ASSASSINS HAD all arrived through the Port of Armstrong two weeks ago. They arrived in a group—twenty of them—and they didn’t even try to hide the fact that they were clones, or that they were traveling together. They did dress differently, but they carried similar bags, and their clothing seemed to have the same manufacture.

They ate lunch when they got off the transport, in the same restaurant, talking and laughing like members of the same family. Then they peeled off as they headed to different destinations on the Moon.

Watching them through old security footage, tracking them, made Flint uneasy. They had been so visible. With the benefit of hindsight, they looked sinister. But he had seen clumps like that before, humans who looked alike. Some were clones, some were siblings—twins or triplets or quadruplets—and he had never thought anything of it.

He glanced at Talia. She was sitting sideways in her chair, knees hung over one arm of the chair, her back against the other. The pad she was working on was braced against her thighs. Her eyebrows curved down toward her nose in a slight frown, and her lips were pursed in concentration.

She was tracking the transport. She already had its origin, which was some starbase just outside the solar system. It was clear the assassins didn’t begin their journey at that base. So she was tracking the passenger manifest and comparing it to the security identification provided through the vids.

As soon as she had the names of the twenty assassins, she would give it to Flint. He would see if he could find them, and see if they were using their real names.

He suspected they were: they weren’t about hiding. They wanted to be seen, noticed, and eventually caught. They wanted everyone to know what they had done.

Which chilled him.

He had just switched his screen to a list of long-term cloning companies—companies that had existed for more than twenty years and had no trouble with human cloning—when DeRicci contacted him on his link.

Miles, can you come to my office? I need to pick your brain.

He glanced at Talia. She was biting her lower lip. Then he sighed.

“Bring your pad, kiddo,” he said. “We have to talk with Noelle.”

“What’s wrong now?” Talia asked, her body instantly tense.

What isn’t wrong? Flint wanted to say, but didn’t. “I think she just needs to toss some ideas around.”

He hoped. Because he didn’t want to believe that things had gotten worse.