ABBY FELT HERSELF FALL into an icy blanket that cushioned her body. She wanted to get up, but everything hurt, her shoulder especially. Even more alarming, she heard voices.
“Is she dead?”
“Naw, she’s still breathin’.”
“Let’s get her in the van before someone calls 911.”
Abby needed to open her eyes, but they weren’t cooperating. Why was she on the ground? How had she gotten out of the car? Who was talking?
That vehicle … Was I really run off the road?
She felt pressure under her arms. Though the searing cold of the ground vanished as she was lifted up, pain tore at her shoulder. Where am I? Her feet dragged over crunchy snow, then suddenly slid faster over a smooth, hard surface.
“Hold her while I open the van.”
She suddenly crashed against icy pavement. The fresh pain coursing through her shoulder brought a wave of nausea. She gasped and wheezed on the blacktop, her eyes blinking wildly, trying to focus.
“Oh, come on, Johnson! Why’d you drop her?”
“Thought you said to open the van.”
“I said hold her while I open the van, you numbskull.”
Abby squinted, trying to see her surroundings. As thoughts cleared her foggy mind—or maybe it was simply the cold—she realized she lay on pavement. As there were no flashing lights of an ambulance or a cop car, these men must be her pursuers, not rescuers. She had to get away.
As the two men fought, she rolled onto her front, steering clear of her left shoulder, and struggled to her knees. She stilled and groaned as the dizzy fog swept over her again and willed it to subside, but her traitorous body slumped back to the ground.
“Hurry up with the door. She’s comin’ to.”
A vehicle door creaked open. A pair of boots stepped into Abby’s vision. She focused in on the lettering on the heel. Timberland. Whoever it was had huge feet. His boots scraped over the icy pavement, her own labored breathing the only competing sound.
Just like before, someone grabbed under her arms from behind and sent her shoulder screaming. She moaned a protest and kicked in a feeble attempt at escape. Her feet barely left the ground.
God, help me, please.
The men were quick. Another one grabbed her floundering legs, and together they tossed her into the back of a van and slammed the door. She blinked in the pitch blackness, struggling to sit, and softly squeezed her shoulder with her right hand, feeling for damage. Probably dislocated. The men had likely pulled her out of the wreckage by her arm. Abby groaned. Her car. She hadn’t seen the condition of the BMW. Was it totaled?
A bitter laugh escaped her lips, echoing softly in the metal darkness. Here she was worrying about her car when she’d been kidnapped.
Two doors slammed shut. The engine rumbled to life, vibrating the darkness around her. She prayed as the van moved, probably taking her to her death. Perhaps they’d throw her into Lake Praydor. It was frozen over, but if they cut a hole and shoved her through … She stopped herself, angry that her irrational fear—and too many episodes of crime dramas—had distracted her prayer. She focused on God again and prayed for safety, and that his ultimate plan would prevail. Because she definitely had no idea what to do.
A short drive later, the van stopped. Abby tensed as the cab doors opened and closed. She listened closely as two sets of boots crunched their way to the back of the van. With effort, she got to her feet in a squat position, ready for a fight. Why didn’t I make more of an effort to find Sarah Palin’s kickboxing class? That skill would be handy right now.
The back doors opened but all Abby could see was a single beam of light piercing the darkness. Abby shrank back and shielded her eyes, blinking until she could see two dark silhouettes. One of them hoisted himself into the back, rocking the van with his movement. Abby could just make out his bearded face and the now familiar boots.
“Don’t give us no trouble now, pretty lady,” the man said as he closed in.
Drawing on her fear, Abby sprang past him and leaped out of the van, tumbling headfirst into the snow. An unbidden cry accompanied the impact to her left side, and the pain only intensified as she scrambled to her feet. Regardless, she ran, taking in her surroundings as she went. She was in the middle of a forest.
“Get her!”
Abby veered around the van, intending to find the road and follow it out. Instead, she plowed right into a man’s open arms. His body odor overwhelmed her as he wrapped his arms tightly around her torso, squeezing the tender area around her rotator cuff. Abby fought back a gag but not the sharp moan.
“I got her, Johnson.”
The back doors slammed shut and the crunch of snow drew closer. Abby stomped down on her captor’s foot. He didn’t budge.
Johnson appeared beside them, flashlight clenched between his teeth. He bent down and grabbed Abby’s ankles, pulling them together and tucking them under his arm so she was carried between the two men. Abby jerked her legs, hoping to free one and get in a good kick. As she twisted, she caught a glimpse of the foul-smelling man and noticed he was heavyset and bald. If I ever escape, these men will rot in jail.
A car sped past on the distant highway, and she risked a piercing scream in a sliver of hope the driver might hear. Who knows? Someone could be driving the winter highway in the middle of the night with his windows rolled down. This was Alaska, after all.
The men carried Abby through a forest so dark she couldn’t see where they were headed. After an interminable amount of minutes, Johnson suddenly dropped her feet and crouched. Abby stood on her own legs and stopped struggling in an attempt to see what he was doing. A hinge squeaked as Johnson opened a door in the ground. A storm cellar or something.
She scanned the dark forest around her, unable to see anything to pinpoint her location. Johnson swept up her legs again, and the heavyset man stepped into the dark hole.
“No!” Abby’s head sank below the ground. “Why are you doing this?”
The men didn’t answer, only led her down a staircase into darkness.
At the bottom of the stairs, Johnson dropped her ankles and climbed back up to shut the door. Abby gave one last piercing scream, eliciting laughter from her beefy captor.
“Scream away, girlie. No one can hear you.”
Abby waited, watching the tiny beam of light from Johnson’s flashlight descend the stairs and pass her. The beam illuminated a silver surface, then a lockbox. A vault door. A second entrance into the Farm? She hoped the cops had taken her advice and were watching the place.
“Got your card, Rolo?”
Rolo grinned as he dragged Abby toward the lockbox. He released her long enough to shift his grip to Abby’s sore arm and pull a keycard from his pocket. His hand stayed poised near a slot in the box.
Johnson stepped away, taking the light with him. A second lockbox entered the beam.
“Hurry up,” Rolo said. “I’m sick of this kid. Glad we don’t do girls here.”
“One. Two. Three,” Johnson said, and the men swiped their cards.
The door clicked and Johnson pulled it open. Abby stood tall and walked through the door, despite the violent push from her captor.
Hopefully they were taking her to Marty or her dad.
A stone corridor stretched before her, lit with dim bulbs every twenty steps or so. Abby walked maybe two hundred yards before the tunnel veered right to another vault door. Johnson and Rolo swiped their keycards again.
This door opened to a white hallway floored with gray, industrial carpet. Halfway up the wall on her left, a dark window stretched the length of the hallway, looking in on an empty cafeteria. As the men led Abby into the building, she realized she was looking in on the Farm itself.
They stopped at an elevator and Abby looked over her shoulder. Straight across from the elevator, a set of double doors split the tinted windows, but the two-way mirrors continued on the other side of the doors, overlooking a black barred children’s playground with a bright orange slide that was just as Marty had described it.
At least they gave the boys that much.
The elevator dinged and Rolo maneuvered her inside while Johnson swiped his keycard and hit the button that said L1. The elevator rose, and the doors opened to a stark, white waiting room. Abby shut her eyes against the brightness, then blinked, not wanting to miss where they were taking her.
Straight through a reception area. She thought back to Marty’s drawings of the Farm. This level had a hallway that ran in a U shape from one side of reception area to the other, with Dr. Kane’s office and the computer lab in the center. The guards were headed for the office.
The men led Abby through a doorway into a vast and richly decorated office. For a place that had little color, this room was an exception. A wide mahogany conference table stretched across the front end of the office, the edge and legs intricately carved. Matching chairs upholstered in black leather surrounded it. An Oriental carpet probably worth fifty grand covered the floor. At the other end of the room, Dr. Kane sat behind a massive antique desk and motioned to one of two high-back chairs that sat before it.
The guards dragged her to the chairs.
“Please, sit down,” he said. “Can I take your coat and gloves?”
“No, thanks,” Abby said, grossed out by the way his voice sounded like JD’s. “I’m not staying.”
The guards pulled back one of the chairs and negated her choice. She resituated herself on the soft, low seat, perching on the edge and sitting as tall as her spine would stretch. Apparently the doctor liked sitting above everyone else.
Abby glanced around the room. Fresh flowers brought a sweet smell to the underground office. Candy dishes filled with M&M’s sat on every wooden surface. A huge painting hung on the wall: a family portrait of Dr. Kane, his wife, and JD.
How bizarre to have a life-sized painting of you and your clone.
“A handsome family, don’t you think?” Dr. Kane asked. He watched her from behind his oversized desk with familiar, hungry brown eyes.
Abby shivered. “There is quite a resemblance. Do you have paintings with the other fifty-five?”
“The Jasons are not people, Miss Goyer, like you and me. These are duplications of me, photocopies if you will.”
“Then your son isn’t a person?”
“JD is different. An exception. A gift. My wife wanted a child more than anything, which is what started this all. I know you think it was my illness, but that came later. Creating life is a deep human need. When you can’t succeed, it creates a certain … frustration, almost a madness. I had to find a way for Helen to conceive. As a result, she became JD’s surrogate, which is what makes him so different from the others. He is the only one who got to stay with his birthmother.”
“So she knows her only son is not real?”
“Oh, JD is real. A real copy of the original. But, yes, she knows he’s my clone. Why do you think she won’t allow him to date?” Dr. Kane chuckled. “Of course children always want what they can’t have. I guess our rules and your rejection were too much challenge for JD to ignore.”
“Free will is also a deep human need, Dr. Kane.”
“Not in my clones. They know their purpose and that’s what they live for. JD is no exception, although his purpose is different from the others. To be a child to us.”
“JD knows he’s a clone?”
“Of course not. I define purpose for my clones, Miss Goyer. I do not want them confused. JD’s purpose is to live as my son. J:3:3’s purpose is to give his life as a sacrifice for a good cause. In fact all the boys at this facility share that purpose, for now. Come, see what I mean.”
Rolo grabbed Abby’s left arm and tugged her to her feet. She gritted her teeth, not wanting to call attention to her injury again. Together, they followed Dr. Kane out of the office, sliced across the reception area, through an archway, and into a white corridor. The only sound was everyone’s shoes squeaking against the white tile.
They passed one door, and Abby noticed how the doors were identical, about ten steps apart from each other, and stretched down the outer wall of the corridor. Johnson opened the third door, and Dr. Kane led them inside. The interior reminded Abby of an examination room, similar to any that one might see at a physician’s office. The only difference was the microscope on the counter. But the man dressed in a white lab coat definitely wasn’t a standard physician.
“Dad!” Abby wrenched away from Rolo and threw her good arm around her father.
“Abby, darling. I’m so glad to see you. Talk about working overtime.” Dad chuckled and stepped out of her embrace.
Something was weird. Dad never called her darling. That was his name for Mom—when they hadn’t been fighting, anyway. Abby let the questions queue in her mind, waiting for the right time to ask.
She glanced around the room and choked back a scream. Marty was strapped to an examination table, morosely staring at his feet. His head and face were freshly shaven, and he was dressed again in the gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt that had J:3:3 printed in black on the sleeve. The doctor who came to the police station with Dr. Kane stood on the other side of Marty’s exam table, clipboard in hand.
Abby lunged to Marty’s side and took his limp hand, wanting to rip off the cruel restraint at his wrist. The bruising on his eye was gone. It was him, wasn’t it? Yes, she could see the faint scratch on his cheek from the tree branch. “What did you do to him?” She unhooked the strap and glared at the doctor who stood on the other side. The tall, scarecrow-like man barely reacted. “Let him out of these bindings.”
“Very well, Miss Goyer,” said Dr. Kane. “Dr. Elliot, if you will?”
The tall man removed the strap on Marty’s other wrist. His arm slid lifelessly off the table.
Abby squeezed Marty’s hand and shook it. “You’ve … drugged him or something.”
“No drugs, Miss Goyer,” Dr. Kane said. “Only instruction. J:3:3 experienced a glitch when he escaped. We’ve corrected that glitch.”
“With drugs?”
“With persuasion. J:3:3 knows better than to disobey. He has been told to forget what he saw outside of the Farm, including you.”
“That’s ridiculous. You can’t force people to forget.”
Dr. Kane chuckled, a darker version of JD’s cocky laugh. “I can be very persuasive. J:3:3 is due to expire on the twenty-eighth. He would like to spend much of that time with his close acquaintances, isn’t that right, Dr. Goyer?”
“Yes.”
Abby turned to glare at her dad and caught a tiny wink. Hope burned in her chest like a sip of scalding cocoa. She pulled off her gloves and tucked them in her jacket pocket, then turned back to Marty and squeezed his limp hand again.
“Marty, it’s Abby,” she whispered. “Look at me, Marty. You don’t have to expire. We can still get free. Have faith—God will help us.”
Marty continued to stare at his feet, but his fingers trembled and a tear welled in the corner of his eye. He was still in there, pretending not to be, for some reason. Was this Dr. Kane’s persuasion in effect? Had he threatened Marty in some way to be submissive?
Abby rounded on Dr. Kane. “Where is Baby? I want to see him.”
“I’m not sure who you mean.”
“You know exactly who I mean. Marty’s friend, Baby. Show him to me. Now.”
“Your daughter is tenacious, Dr. Goyer.”
“What harm could come from Abby seeing J:4:4 at this point?” Dad asked. “My daughter is extremely intelligent, and J:4:4 is a fascinating subject. I say what I said before. Abby would be an asset to your work here.”
Abby spun back to her dad and caught his stiff grin. He wanted her to play along.
Dr. Kane heaved a sigh. “Dr. Goyer, I’m sure you haven’t forgotten what I’ve told you. If I allow the Jasons to see a female, I cannot guarantee her safety.”
Abby tensed at his vague reference to Dr. Markley’s death.
“J:4:4 is in Dr. Elliot’s lab,” Dad said. “No one will see her but him, and he’s restrained.”
Marty, still feigning a comatose form, squeezed Abby’s hand.
She fought back tears and squeezed back. “Take me there. I want to see him.”
Reluctantly, she released Marty’s hand and stepped toward the door.
“Fine, fine. But first, Dr. Elliot?” Dr. Kane snapped his fingers.
Within seconds Rolo forced Abby into a chair by the door while Johnson unzipped Abby’s bomber jacket and yanked it off, jerking her sore shoulder in the process. Abby gritted her teeth. As soon as he tossed her coat on the floor, Johnson grabbed her forearm and pushed her left sleeve up over her elbow.
Dr. Elliot tied a rubber strap around Abby’s left upper arm, pinching her skin in his haste. She fought but could hardly budge against the strength of the two men now holding her down. She glanced at her dad. “Daddy?”
Dad’s wrinkled forehead gave away his worry. “Is this really necessary?”
“Only insurance.” Dr. Kane’s smile had an eerie resemblance to JD’s when he decided to get his way. “You’re the best of the best, Dr. Goyer, without a doubt. And while I do believe your daughter is as brilliant as you claim, word at the high school already pegs her as a crusader. I’m sure you can’t blame me for taking a small safeguard. I would hate to come into work tomorrow and find I no longer have a lab.”
“I’m not a terrorist.” Abby winced and shut her eyes as Dr. Elliot plunged a needle into her arm. She cracked one eye to get a peek. He wasn’t injecting her, but drawing blood. “What are you doing?”
“I’ve no intention of cloning females, Miss Goyer. They’re weak—physically and emotionally. They can be taken advantage of, and I want order on my farm. Women arouse disorder. But …” He reached his index finger toward her hair and hooked a curl, drawing it back so that it coiled around his finger, then bounced free. “If you attempt to thwart me in any way, I will not hesitate to experiment with your DNA. Many scientists would be interested in testing female subjects. I’m sure they’d pay top dollar for your clones.”