MARTYR SAT ON THE LONG CHAIR, bouncing his leg. He looked at the clock: 3:44. Only one minute later than the last time he had checked. He turned his attention back to the TV, watching the dolphins swim in very deep water. They were fascinating creatures, but his thoughts were fixed on Daughter Abby. Where was she? He hoped nothing had happened to her.
Something touched his leg, causing him to lean forward. It was the dog, rubbing its body against him. Martyr lifted the creature onto his lap and stroked its thick fur. It closed its eyes and hummed, low and content. Martyr smiled. The dog made him feel like—
The front door rattled. Finally! Martyr pushed the dog off his lap and stood up.
Martyr scrambled up the stairs. He had just reached the top when the front door slammed shut. Martyr paused at the railing and looked down on the room, where the strange sounds of the dolphins still came from the TV. He’d forgotten to turn it off.
“Abby? Where are you going?”
Martyr ran to Daughter Abby’s cell and darted into the closet, pulling the door closed behind him. He plowed past the hanging clothes, burrowing his way to the back wall. His heart thudded. It was dark in the clothing, and Martyr hoped Dr. Goyer would not see him even if he opened the door.
“Abby?”
The doctor was in his daughter’s cell now. Martyr curled into a ball and held his breath. Something slipped underneath his leg and clunked onto the floor. He winced.
The closet door swung open. Martyr hugged his head and begged the Creator of Everything for Dr. Goyer to go away.
The light turned on.
Martyr could hear the doctor’s breathing, the creaking floor. Martyr waited, hoping, pleading.
“Come on out, son, or I’ll have to call the police.”
Martyr did not know what the police were, but it sounded like a threat. Someone grabbed Martyr’s arm. He screamed.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” Dr. Goyer pushed the clothing aside. “I just want you to come out of there.”
Martyr relaxed some. Dr. Goyer had been nice during marks; if he said he wouldn’t hurt him, then Martyr believed he wouldn’t.
Martyr crawled backward out of the closet until he was in the main room, then sat back on his heels and looked up at the doctor. Guilt pressed down like a heavy blanket.
Dr. Goyer’s eyes widened, looking huge behind his thick glasses. “Martyr?”
Martyr shrank back until he bumped into the leg of Daughter Abby’s desk.
Dr. Goyer hissed a string of words that Martyr had only ever heard the guards use when they were very angry. Martyr scooted under the desk, watching Dr. Goyer carefully to see what he might do next. He didn’t appear to have a stick. Would the taser work in Dr. Goyer’s facility? He braced himself for the pain just in case.
“Dad?” The muted sound of Daughter Abby’s voice drifted up from level one.
Dr. Goyer spun in a circle. Then he motioned to Martyr and said, “Stay right there.”
Martyr was more than happy to comply. The floor under the desk was small enough that no one else could fit there.
Dr. Goyer bounded out of the room and closed the door behind him.
Abby almost cried when she saw Dad’s truck in the driveway. What on earth was he doing home so early? She should have driven straight home from school or skipped it all together. What if she were too late?
What if Dad had found Marty?
The house was fairly messy. Marty had eaten the sandwich at the counter but left his plate. A documentary on dolphins blared from the television. A box containing Dad’s office décor sat on the kitchen counter. Hope swelled in her chest. Had Dad been fired? Did he quit?
“Dad?” she called again.
“Abby, honey?” Her dad’s slightly strained voice came from upstairs.
He knows.
She raced to the stairs and met her dad halfway up. “Hi, Dad. How was work?”
His eyes darted away from hers. “Good. Good. Did you know …? How was school?”
“Great. I made some real progress on my big science project.” Sort of. Not really. Dad stood sentry on the stairs, not moving. Guarding what, exactly? “Uh, Dad? You okay? I’d like to change out of this sweater. It’s fine for school, but it’s always too hot to wear at home.”
Dad didn’t speak. He just looked over the railing into the empty space above the living room.
“Dad?”
He jumped and looked back to Abby. “Huh?”
“Can I get by?”
“No!”
“No?” He definitely knew. “Why not?”
“Your homework. You should finish it first. Downstairs.”
“Before I can change my sweater?”
“Yes.”
“Have you gone insane?” Not a real nice thing to ask under the circumstances, but on the plus side, Marty must still be here. In Abby’s room, to be precise. No sense in beating around the bush. “You found Marty?”
Dad’s eyes bulged out in a Halloween freak-show kind of way, then he turned a pale, pale yellow. She hoped he wouldn’t puke.
“Dad, it’s okay. He’s safe here, right? You didn’t tell Dr. Kane anything, did you? Do they have surveillance footage of him getting into your truck?”
Dad’s eyes bulged further. Abby was afraid they might pop over the top of his glasses and roll down the stairs. When his mouth dropped open, she shrank back a hair and put a firm grip on the banister, just in case he lost it completely.
“How do you know …? Where I work is my … How do you, you, you …?”
“Dad? Chill, okay and I’ll explain. Deep breaths. I found Marty last night. He rode here in the back of your truck and got into the house somehow. I let him sleep in my room.”
The color came back to Dad’s face real quick.
“In my sleeping bag, Dad. You watch too much TV. I told him to stay here today because I need to come up with a way to help him. I was thinking about—”
“Help him? He’s not a stray dog, Abigail. He belongs to Dr. Kane. He must go back!”
This time Abby’s face flushed. “No, Dad. He doesn’t belong to Dr. Kane. People don’t belong to anyone, not like that. He’s not a car or a boat that has a title of ownership.”
She tried to push past her dad, but he wouldn’t let her. “Hold on, honey—”
“You hold on, Dad. I can’t believe you’d take another job like this. Didn’t you learn anything from the last time?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but she did quit trying to shove him out of her way. “Did Dr. Kane really clone his own son over and over and keep them imprisoned in an underground lab? Who does stuff like that?” When her dad still didn’t answer she dropped her gaze. “Marty says he’s going to die in two weeks. He thinks the air is poison and his purpose in life is to die to save humanity.”
Sighing deeply, her father sat down on the steps, putting their faces at the same level. “They need to tell the boys something so they won’t run away. If you thought about—”
“I should have known you’d take the scientists’ side!” She wanted to rush past, to go to Martyr, but this might be her only chance to reason with her dad. She sat down on the step his feet rested on and leaned against the wall. “Please, Dad. This isn’t your pet project. They did all this long before you went on the payroll. You have to admit it’s abuse. Psychological abuse. Physical abuse. Please don’t condone that!”
Her dad put his hand on her knee. “I don’t condone abuse, Abby, honey, ever, but you have to accept that these clones are not people. They are copies of people.”
Abby jerked her leg away from him. “Have you talked to him? He’s as real as you or me, and he’s scared!”
Her dad stood up. “Not everything in this world fits your black and white beliefs, Abby. I will not allow you to meddle in things that—”
Abby stood up too. “Me, meddle? You’re the one playing God! You’re just no good at it.” She paused just long enough to see the question in his eyes. “What about the brokens? The boy without legs?”
Something must have snapped in her dad’s brain, because he suddenly buried his face in his hands. Abby seized his moment of sagging posture and barged past. He turned and grabbed for her waist, but she wriggled free and burst into her room. She went to the closet and peeked behind armfuls of clothing but couldn’t find Marty. Her foot snagged on something and she looked down. Clothes were strewn about the closet floor. She turned back to her room and saw her bras, underwear, and socks poking out of open drawers.
Awkward.
Dad stepped into the doorway, rubbing a hand over his forehead. “He’s under the desk.”
Abby sank to her knees and pulled back the desk chair. Marty lay curled in a ball, arms cradling his head. He was wearing her dad’s clothes.
She smiled. “Looks like Marty likes those Christmas socks I bought you, even if you don’t.”
“He likes red.”
Abby glanced at her dad and saw he was smiling a bit. “Look at him,” she said, hoping her dad was no longer on the dark side. “Why would a guy his size cower like this? What do they do to them at that place?”
Dad sank onto the foot of her bed. “He’s just not confrontational. Some of the other clones are very aggressive.”
“But not Marty?”
“He’ll fight to protect someone, which is how he got his nickname, I guess. If I attacked you, I bet he’d come out in a hurry.”
“What if I attacked you?” Abby grinned.
“I’m not sure he likes me. I’m a doctor. The enemy.”
Abby set a hand on Marty’s thigh. “Come on out, Marty. Dad’s not going to hurt you.”
Marty didn’t come out, but he relaxed a bit and let go of his head. He peeked out at Abby, his dark eyebrows wrinkled. “Will he take me back?”
“No,” Abby said firmly over her father’s whispered, “Yes.”
Marty crawled out from under the desk. Dad’s orange silk tie hung around his neck like a scarf. Abby pursed her lips to keep from laughing. He looked good in Dad’s shirt. It was buttoned off kilter, but the maroon color brought life to his pale skin. The jeans were a little baggy around the waist, short in the legs. He sat against the wall and hugged his knees to his chest.
“Nice socks,” Abby said.
Marty grinned that wide, unguarded smile and Abby melted.
Marty looked at her dad, eyebrows scrunched together. “I’m sorry I took your keycard, Dr. Goyer. I wanted to see the sky and no one would help me.”
“I know, son. I know.”
Heat flared up inside Abby again. “He says he’s going to expire. Why would that be?”
Dad shrugged one shoulder. “I’m not sure yet. They don’t tell me everything. But I don’t think they die on their own.”
“So they kill them when they turn eighteen?”
Dad gripped the edge of Abby’s bed and leaned forward. “I’m the newest scientist at the Farm, honey. Privileges and knowledge come with time.”
“But you know JD stands for Jason something, right?”
Dad motioned to Martyr. “Why do you think I flipped out when I saw JD Junior in our living room?”
“Because you don’t want me dating any—wait. Junior? JD is named after his … dad?”
“Yes.”
Abby fell back on her rear. “Dad, I think Dr. Kane is sick.”
“I know you don’t agree with cloning, but he’s actually quite brilliant. They’re doing some fascinating research—”
“No, I mean sick as in has a disease. At first I thought it was JD, because I saw the name Jason Kane on a co-payment receipt for immune suppressants in Dr. Kane’s house. I assumed it was JD, because it was his idea to do our project on lupus and he brought me the pamphlet—”
“Whoa.” Dad’s face flushed. “When were you at his … why were you at his house?”
“—on genetic disease. So after I left his house—where I went strictly for research—I figured JD must have lupus but … Dad? I think it’s Dr. Kane.”
Dad pushed his glasses up his nose and groaned. “Abby, I cannot reveal confidential information about my work.”
“Oh, Dad. We’re way past that now.”
“Dr. Kane is sick,” Marty said. “I think he wants my kidneys. I heard him talking to Dr. Elliot. He said I was the healthiest of the J:3s.” He looked at Dad. “But transplants come from donors, right? So why wouldn’t Dr. Kane find a donor?”
Abby froze. Kidneys could fail in some extreme cases of lupus. She’d read it in the pamphlet JD gave her.
“Because not all donors are a match,” Dad said.
Abby gasped, the truth clicking in her mind like the combination on a lock. “Dad?” Her eyes were wide, and she wondered if they were bulging as much as Dad’s had back on the stairs. “Dad, they’re all Dr. Kane’s—” She took a long, deep breath. “Dr. Kane cloned himself?”
Dad hung his head.
Marty looked slightly bewildered. Abby reached out and took his hand. It was bigger than hers and warmer too. She wrapped her fingers with his and squeezed. He squeezed back.
She turned her anger back to her dad. “How could he do that? Clone himself when he’s sick?”
“He’s trying to find a cure.”
“That’s a strange way to go about it. No wonder so many are broken. If they already have lupus, what chance do they have?” Abby brought her thumbnail to her lips and said, “We can’t let him go back there.”
“He might not be safe on his own,” Dad said. “He doesn’t know our world.”
“He can learn. He’s super smart. In fact, I’d been meaning to ask why they educate the clones.”
“It keeps them occupied and healthy.”
Abby paused, prayed for patience, and put on her most pleading only-child face. “Even if you and I don’t agree that cloning humans is wrong, you’ve got to admit that keeping over four dozen boys in an underground lab their whole life is false imprisonment. Kidnapping, even. And then killing them for their kidneys, Dad? Murder. Surely these are laws you can’t argue with.”
“But if clones aren’t human, they don’t have the same rights as …” Dad took off his glasses and rubbed his face.
Abby sucked in a sharp breath, ready to spout out that no judge in America could look at Martyr’s sweet face and say he wasn’t human.
Be still.
Abby blinked. Everything in her wanted to fight, but the soft voice prodded again.
Be still.
When Dad looked up, his eyes were moist. “One of the last things your mother ever said to me was, ‘Please don’t kill to avenge my death.’” Dad put his glasses back on. “I told myself she was very sick, that she didn’t really know what she was saying. That the disease had …” Dad squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed. “I don’t understand a lot at Jason Farms, but I’ve run enough tests this week to know that most of the boys are perfectly healthy. I can see no reason for them to … expire.”
A chill ran over Abby. Dad would help. Jason Farms had gone too far, even for him. It was a start, one she would accept for now.
Thank you, Lord, for helping him see that much.
Dad stood. “They’ll come looking for him. We need to get the tracker out of his ear, or it will lead them straight here.”
“Tracker?” Abby swatted her dad’s leg. “When were you going to mention this?”
Marty looked from Abby to Dad and back to Abby. “What’s a tracker?”
Dad walked to the door. “Come on into the bathroom, son.”
Abby stood, took Marty’s hand, and helped him up. Marty didn’t let go of her hand, so they trailed after Dad together.
“Wait here,” Dad said. “I need a razor blade.”
Once Dad left, Abby stared at the reflection in the mirror above the sink. Was it bad that she liked how they looked holding hands?
She bumped her shoulder against his arm. “Red looks good on you.”
Marty’s face tinged pink and his throat bobbed as he swallowed. His presence made her heart start up like a generator. He turned his head to look down on her. She made eye contact. Big mistake. His hot chocolate eyes heated her to the core. Like JD, he was so intense, but about different things. Marty was just plain curious about life.
Dad returned with a little pile of first aid supplies and a pair of wire clippers. He set his goods on the counter and shut the toilet lid.
“Put your right foot up here.”
Marty complied but wobbled. Abby let go of his hand and slid against his side, wrapping her arm around his waist. To keep him steady, of course.
He turned his intense eyes on her again, then settled his arm around her shoulders.
Dad took the wire clippers to the ring on Marty’s ankle. “I don’t think the taser will work this far from the lab, but better to be safe.” He squeezed the clippers and emitted a tiny grunt before a crack rang out. Dad set the clippers on the floor, wrenched the ring off Marty’s ankle, and tossed it on the counter.
Marty put his foot down, so Abby left his side and picked up the taser. A plastic shell coated the outside of the ring, but inside, pairs of electrodes were evenly spaced.
Barbaric.
“Go ahead and sit down,” Dad told Marty.
Marty obeyed. Dad placed his hand on the back of Marty’s head and tipped it forward. “Hold very still. I’m no surgeon.”
Dad folded Marty’s left ear forward and ran a finger over the top edge. Abby could see a black line through the skin. Eww.
“It’s going to hurt for a second,” Dad said, putting the razor into position. “One … two … three.”
Abby winced as Dad carved along the black line. Marty twitched. Then Dad tossed the razor into the sink and pushed at the black line with his thumbnail.
Marty’s breath hitched.
“Got it!” Dad held a bloody black chip in the palm of his hand. He snapped it in half with his fingers and set it on the counter. “I’ll take that into town and drop it somewhere just in case.”
Dad moved to the sink to wash his hands, and Abby took over. She swabbed Marty’s cut with an alcohol wipe and covered it with a bandage.
“All done,” she said.
“Thank you, Daughter Abby.”
“She’s not daughter to you,” Dad said. “She’s just Abby. Abby Goyer.”
Marty looked from Dad into Abby’s eyes. “Thank you, Abby Goyer.”
How sweet was that? Abby beamed. She liked the way he said her name, without the baiting intonation JD used.
Dad turned the water off. “They hadn’t known he’d left the building until just before I went home. All day they thought he was hiding somewhere. Martyr has a lot of little hiding spots, don’t you?”
“I help Baby hide, and sometimes Hummer.”
Dad patted Marty on the shoulder. “Dr. Kane was out of the office all morning and by the time he arrived, the guards had started to suspect you’d gotten outside somehow—mostly because of the missing keycards.”
Marty’s face flushed.
Dad went on. “When Dr. Kane demanded to see the surveillance tapes from last night, the lab went into an uproar. I guess he hadn’t asked for surveillance tapes in so long no one remembered how to do it. Then he wanted them to pull Martyr’s code up on the tracker system, which is something they’ve never had to use. They didn’t even have the computer software set up. Got spoiled with the video surveillance, I guess. Dr. Kane put a guy on it, but he’d barely started when I left. The lower levels were on lockdown. Dr. Kane sent everyone home who wasn’t necessary.
“Long story short, we’ve got to get him out of our house. If the parking lot has a surveillance tape, and I’m sure it does, we need to find someplace else for him before they see it, otherwise—”
“I can take him to see Kylee’s brother. He’ll be able to help us, I think.” Didn’t all pastors take vows to help the orphans and widows or something?
“We can’t drag more people into this,” Dad said.
“But we need someplace to keep him outside of our house, in case anyone from the lab comes looking. Kylee’s brother is a pastor. He’ll keep everything confidential.”
Dad groaned softly, so Abby kept going. “And I think you should call the police—after Marty is safe, of course. Tell them Marty came here in the back of your truck, but you didn’t know.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Exactly. But then we say I freaked out when he snuck inside my room, and you came running, then called the police. We make it seem like this just happened.”
Dad tipped back his head. “That way we won’t look involved.”
Marty’s eyebrows sank. “What are the police?”
“Police are people who enforce order and safety and laws,” Abby said.
“Like Rolo and Johnson?”
“Kind of,” Dad said. “But police aren’t … They don’t … They’re nicer. They’re on our side.”
Abby squeezed Marty’s hand. “It’ll be okay. Then Dad can call Jason Farms and report it, saying he didn’t realize it was you until after he called the police.” She turned to Dad. “You should ask them what you should do next. Make them think you’re still on their side.”
Dad shot Abby a withering glare. “I never said I wasn’t on their side.”
Marty looked terribly confused. “You want them to find me?”
“No.” Abby took Martyr’s hand. “But we don’t want to look suspicious. They won’t find you at Pastor Scott’s place. Trust me.”
“I trust you, Abby Goyer.”
She smiled. Cloned boys were way nicer than the regular ones. Cloned JDs, anyway.