Chapter Seven
I.C.C.: Miscloned

Eight Months Later

October 3, 121 PLD

3088 CE

It started with chaos, as many shifts in society do.

A rumbling. An implosion. A severing. Something gone—one of I.C.C.’s limbs, part of its body: a ship, off-line.

It couldn’t equate the feeling to human pain. Nothing throbbed, nothing hurt, nothing sizzled or stung. A thing had to be present to hurt. The ship had snapped away from the convoy. Gone. Lost.

Loss, I.C.C. noted, was far more terrifying than pain.

Sirens wailed of their own accord, beyond its conscious control. It could not stop them, and was surprised by its desire to.

It didn’t want the convoy members to know. Because the people—there had been a full crew on Bottomless—were gone.

I.C.C. knew what people did when tragedy struck. It’d seen it in the archives, in the movies and documentaries. Occasionally, it’d seen it when loved ones died aboard unexpectedly. Human screaming was worse than any siren.

And there were so many gone to scream for.

It went through the crew shift logs, double-checking the names of all on Bottomless at the moment they’d shifted into SD.

Three hundred and forty-eight on duty. No visitors. All adults. Sixteen apprentices, in their first week on the job. Twelve soon-to-be retirees in their last week on the job.

It had failed them. The ships were supposed to protect them, shield them from the extremes of space and subspace. I.C.C.’s body was meant to be a haven.

How could this have happened? What exactly had happened?

All of these thoughts and more ran through the central computer’s consciousness in the millisecond between the tragedy, the warning signal triggering, and the captains of all eight remaining ships demanding information.

The signal for two other ships waned and cut out.

I.C.C. instructed the navigational teams to surface, then went to work reconstructing the events.

 

SD drive malfunction. Part of Bottomless had been caught outside the bubble, tearing it in two, causing the diving portion to collapse in on itself and the stranded portion to spin off wildly into space. Debris littered the travel SD. Some wreckage had been flung toward the rest of the convoy, tearing into Holwarda and Shambhala. Two greenhouses and one exercise room had been breached. Nine more crew members had been sucked into the void. Twenty-eight hundred and sixty-seven potential servings of food had been lost.

The Nest was unharmed.

The two damaged ships dropped out of SD travel almost instantaneously, losing the connection with I.C.C.’s main servers. This left them with personality fragments for their computer interface, and they temporarily went dark ship-to-ship, but no other main functionality was lost.

For those two ships, the primary problem was not repairing the damaged sections. It was simply getting back to the convoy. Luckily the rest of the convoy had heeded I.C.C.’s instructions promptly—only a million kilometers separated the wayward ships from the whole.

 

The screams were few and subdued. And somehow that was worse. The crew slipped into a hyperlogical state that I.C.C. had never observed before, channeling their loss and grief into work and reconfiguring. They mourned by planning. They lamented with repairs.

Redundancy has always been a hallmark of voyaging. If something is lost or broken, it must be compensated for because it cannot be replaced.

The convoy could limp along without Bottomless, especially since they had already completed the primary portion of the mission. It had been fondly known as the “janitorial closet,” filled with all of the replacement parts and extra chemical cleaners and spoons and such. If your quarters needed new carpeting, the carpets came from Bottomless. It made living better, easier—but few things it stored prevented dying or mission failure. Much of its absolute essentials were backed up by redundancies on Solidarity, the manufacturing ship. The biggest loss was in raw supplies: iron, nickel, carbon, etc. The fundamentals.

Conceivably, they could continue on without it. Ration nonconsumables and consumables alike—rationing that would not end until the mission was complete and they were safely back at Earth. But the accident posed a secondary problem, one far removed from being a ship down.

Since the implosion had occurred during transition into SD travel, and the problem was thought to have originated within the SD drive, the question had to be asked: Was subdimensional travel no longer safe? If they proceeded toward Earth as planned, who was to say they wouldn’t lose another ship? Perhaps one more populated? One more essential to processing the data gathered at LQ Pyx?

Many crew members initially blamed the Nest. What if it had created some sort of imbalance in the bubble? What if, like the Seed, it could exert forces or send signals they could not detect?

I.C.C. rejected these summations immediately. No, the fault lay within the drive on Bottomless, it was sure, and it made that point emphatically. It wanted to be sure no drastic action was taken against the alien artifact.

Until they could pinpoint and solve the cause of the problem, they resolved to use their antiquated ion engines only. They wouldn’t risk one more dive—not one, not for anything. They had to return to Earth, which meant ensuring their survival came first. No convoy, no mission. But that also meant they were no longer less than one hundred years’ travel time from their home planet.

Who knew how long it would be before they could get back home?

 

Thirty-Nine Years Later

April 1, 161 PLD

3138 CE

The pseudo-sun was bright on his face, warm. And the grass—soft and springing beneath his boots. Rail had heard about this place, but never before been allowed to visit. It was a little piece of Earth, a reminder of something he would never see, or feel, or touch himself. He took a breath, held his chin high, and closed his eyes.

For a moment he could pretend. For a moment, he was really there.

Crack!

The sound split the air.

The ropes creaked.

Never would he see Earth.

He opened his eyes, fearing the baton. Twelve hooded figures hung from the gallows, each dressed in a white jumpsuit, each with their hands tied behind their back. The bodies swayed in the artificial wind, beneath the artificial blue sky, upon an artificial farm field, within an artificial container of metal suspended in space.

One thousand figures—dressed in the same white tunics—stood aligned in perfect rows and columns on the green field. Like an army at attention. Hundreds of black-clad security guards surrounded them. The officers wore glimmering black helmets with dark visors.

Rail had rarely seen a guard’s face. He had never seen the Master Warden’s eyes.

A figure climbed onto the stage next to the dangling bodies that slowly spun and swayed. He too was dressed in black, though wore no helmet. He was calm, purposeful, and deliberate as he gazed upon the dead.

Master Warden. His dark mustache lay thick above his white, polished teeth, and his hair had been neatly slicked back. The artificial sunlight glinted off his mirrored sunglasses. Those glasses served one purpose, and it wasn’t to protect his delicate eyes.

When he spoke, his voice boomed from the speakers hidden in the sky.

“Witness the fate of those who attack the convoy. Terrorists have no place in my mines. These seven men and five women planned to murder hundreds of convoy children. Innocent children. Babies still in their growth tanks, to be blown up and desecrated. Look closely.” He pointed a shock baton at the nearest corpse. “Here are the remains of heinous criminals.

“Let this be warning to all of you. The plans will cease. Sabotage will cease. Murder and attempted murder will cease.” His gaze scrolled from front to back across the crowd as he paced the stage.

“I will not be so merciful in the future. For every convoy citizen injured, I will choose one of your kind—randomly—for the gallows. For every convoy citizen murdered, I will round up ten of you for the gallows. For every act of sabotage, I will round up twenty of you for the gallows. You will be treated as a single unit. If one is guilty, you are all guilty, and you will be punished as such.”

The last words echoed over the silent crowd. “Are these new laws understood?”

“Yes, Master Warden!” the crowd roared in unison.

“Good. I am glad we’ve come to an understanding.”

With the bodies still swinging in the breeze, Rail and the rest of the miners shuffled off toward the shuttle bay.

 

Today was supposed to be the first day of Diego Santibar’s apprenticeship, but it had been postponed due to something with the Discontinueds. They’d hightailed it out of the Pit and spent hours on Eden for some unknown reason. He’d asked, but no one would tell Diego. Made him feel like they didn’t see him as a graduate—like they still thought he was a kid.

Maybe he’d ask one of his moms about Eden when they got home in a few hours—they were both on the convoy board. One had been elected from the computing department (the fifth in her genetic line), and the other was the head of Communications (and the sixth in her line), so they knew about stuff. Unlike him—he’d been stuck in his quarters all day, looking over hydroponics data on ‘flex-sheets.

One thin page flopped onto his face, startling him awake. He’d sprawled out on the futon an hour ago, and his eyelids had gradually become heavier and heavier. The family tabby cat had curled up beside him, and he gently shoed her away.

“I.C.C.?”

“Yes, Diego.”

“Can you turn on some music? Something to keep me awake, please.”

A twenty-second-century percussion piece blared through the living space. The heavy bass timpani, coupled with the occasional chimes and cymbals, chased away his weariness.

The cat didn’t care for the noise at all, and bolted for his parents’ bedroom.

Satisfied, Diego refocused on his work. He ran one dark hand over his eyes, chasing away the rest of sleep, and sat up.

Technically his job was on Morgan, not Eden, but his focus was sustainability and balance, so part of his job took him to the garden ship. If a previously innocuous bacterium or fungus started eating away at the soy or other legumes, he’d have to engineer a way to keep it from destroying the entire stock—a prospect that, secretly, bored him to retirement.

He wondered if it had been like this for all iterations before his. He’d never met the previous clone in his line, as an accident had ended the man’s life decades before retirement. That was why he’d been grown early, out of sync, causing a few other crew members to shuffle positions.

Had all other Diego Santibars been unsatisfied with their work? He’d never told anyone. He didn’t dare. They’d send him to the shrinks, run him through tests—maybe call him unfit for duty. How could anyone be unsatisfied with their job? It was in their blood, in their genes, in their very essence. If you were out of sync with your essence, what did that make you? A freak. A mistake.

It could make you up for discontinuation, the ultimate shame.

The high-pitched beeping of the door’s keypad alerted him that someone was home. He checked the clock—neither of his parents should be back for hours.

But one of his moms came bustling through the door—Vega. Her ice-blond hair was pulled into a tight ponytail, and her thin frame vibrated as though she’d received a sudden shock. “Oh, good, you are here,” she said, as though she’d feared he might be elsewhere. She started to say more, but paused, her eyebrows knitting together. “Interesting music choice.”

“I.C.C.’s pick. Helps me, uh, focus. Why are you back so early?”

Her mouth smiled sweetly, but her eyes portrayed tension. “I . . . I wanted to . . .”

She was being weird, even by mom standards.

“Vega was concerned that you might have been asked to clean up on Eden,” said I.C.C.

“Why?” Diego stood and put his work aside. “What happened?”

She looked up at the ceiling, clearly annoyed with the computer. She didn’t answer her son.

“Come on, Mom. No one will tell me what they’re doing over there.”

With a huff she brushed past him and made for the kitchenette. Since his growth spurt he’d come to appreciate just how small she was. At six-foot-one he could scoop up her four-foot-seven and pack her around like a child. It was strange remembering that she’d once given him piggyback rides.

“You don’t want to know,” she said. “I wish I didn’t.”

“Now, Vega?” I.C.C. asked.

Mortification crossed her face. “No. Not now.” She made herself a cup of tea. “Did you do any coding today?” she asked Diego, her tone far too cheery to be sincere.

A combination of worry and excitement swirled in his chest. This was why Diego thought that if he were to reveal his secret—his distaste for botany—to anyone, it would be his mom. She was I.C.C.’s caretaker, and thought it would be nice if Diego shared her love of computers. And he did, so much so that he wished his genes had been brought on board for the AI.

He wanted a job that wasn’t his, and he knew that was wrong.

“No,” he said, “I have to finish these pages first.”

“All right. I’ll be in the back for a little while. Tell me when your madre gets in, will you?”

He wanted to ask her more about Eden, but kept quiet. “Yeah, okay.”

With her brow furrowed and her face unusually pallid, she shut herself in the bedroom.

He continued to go over the data with the music blaring, rushing through the last few sets, eager to have time at the terminal. Finished with the agonizing part of the day, he turned down the volume and went to the touch screen—but stopped.

Now that the living room was quieter, he could hear Vega talking in her bedroom to someone else—to Margarita.

But Madre wasn’t home yet, so it had to be over comms. Not especially weird, except . . . well, Mom’s voice was up there, hitting a range she could rarely reach except when overtly stressed. And Madre sounded . . . disturbed.

Forgetting his daily tech-treat for the moment, Diego tiptoed over to his parents’ door and pressed an ear to the metal.

“We promised not to interfere, but . . .” said Madre, audibly nauseated.

“But this is too far,” said Mom.

“The captain’s called an emergency meeting, and the Warden will be there. But I don’t think it’ll pass a vote, Vega. We signed a treaty and—”

“Oh, give me a break. The board won’t let this stand. They’ve got to be just as . . . just as . . .”

“Scared?” Madre said.

“They’ve—we have always been scared, that’s the whole point. That’s why they were discontinued in the first place. This is a bad sign, though. This is a breach of trust—”

“This was freaking murder, Vega.”

Both women fell silent. Diego shut his eyes, concentrating. There—that might have been I.C.C. in quiet mode. Now shuffling. Blankets maybe. And footsteps.

Oh, crap.

He tried to throw himself away from the door, but couldn’t beat his mom to the punch. With a whoosh, the door slid aside, revealing his crouched posture and guilty expression.

Anger flared in Vega’s eyes, though he could tell it wasn’t really directed at him. “Get to the monitor and practice your algorithms,” she said warningly.

“Who was murdered?” he asked, standing up straight. Consciously, he knew now was not the time to challenge her, but his subconscious screamed at him to push. He wasn’t a kid—in less than a year he’d be moving into his own single’s quarters. His parents had to know that they didn’t need to protect him—he could help them with . . . with . . . “Mom, who was murdered?”

She reached out, taking him by the shoulders. Stiff tremors rocked her limbs. Her voice shook, “Don’t say anything to anyone, okay? This can’t get out, not until the board can deal with it.”

Gently, she turned him around and gave him a guided shove in the terminal’s direction. Before he could once more demand inclusion, she stomped back to the bedroom and shut the door again.

 

Rail hated dirt. With a strange, unnatural passion. Dust. Silt. Didn’t matter if he had a space suit between him and the filth, it was there. Clinging. The miner’s suits glowed bright-white even in the depths of the Pit—until they got dirty. Gray and brown and black and flecks of red iron. Chips of minerals, chunks of silica, bits of ice. He hated it all, and hated it hard.

So hard, it let him forget about other things. Like radiation exposure, falling rocks, misplaced blasts. Today it let him forget about broken necks and limp feet and mirrored sunglasses.

Because the dirt you could wash off at the end of the day. It was something he hated that he could get rid of.

The Pit was little more than a man-made hole in a planemo. Besides the mines, it contained the prisoners’ barracks, latrines, kitchens, infirmary, and solitary.

Rail, like the rest of the prisoners, had only a rudimentary understanding of what he worked for. He knew his primary purpose, of course. He dug for iron, which would be turned into metal alloys and then into a ship. But what was the ship for? The prisoners lived in the Pit while a convoy orbited several hundred thousand kilometers out. Okay—but what did the convoy do and where had it come from? The prisoners were all criminals, but not a one knew what his or her crime had been—just that it was a crime in their genes, not one they’d enacted themselves. They’d endangered the lives of everyone in that convoy, but no one would tell them how or why.

Mining was their penance—and time and again the Master Warden and subwardens told them to be grateful. Without the mines, they never would have been birthed. Their traitorous genes would have stayed on lock-down, never to be cloned again.

Rail lived because of the mine, but “grateful” wasn’t the term he’d use. When the subwarden’s shock baton stayed holstered, he was grateful. But living in general—that left him more baffled than anything.

Only a day had passed since the hanging. One of the dead men had been on his dig team, but had bunked in a different cell block, so Rail hadn’t known him well. Still, the team worked in silence. Their comms stayed on, but no one spoke.

The shaft they worked ran deep into the planemo, kilometers down. An antiquated ventilation system pumped the mine full of dust-laden, irradiated air—always heavy in carbon dioxide. The suit and helmets drew it in, supposedly scrubbing the gas, making it fit for human consumption, but Rail had his doubts as to how well the old space suits had been retrofitted.

White flashes, produced by the laser drills as they bore through rock, stung Rail’s eyes. Even with the air choked full of dust and smog and debris, the brightness sliced through. The hand-operated drills weighed over forty kilograms apiece, and Rail—whose nickname had not been given in irony—could barely maintain his hold. With dozens of workers blasting away in confined spaces only meters apart, the tunnel’s temperature soared in excess of forty degrees Celsius.

The high temp made a dangerous job deadly—this deep, frozen rock and ice pockets lay in wait. If suddenly superheated by a laser, they could take down an entire shaft and everyone inside. Thermal stress fractures, pressurized cave-ins, gas explosions, low gravity, and a thousand other problematic accidents typically resulted in dozens of deaths each year. Illness, cancers, and malnutrition killed dozens more. Then there were the suicides, and the crimes, and the punishments.

Yeah, grateful wasn’t the word.

When his shift ended, they chained their drills and headed up. The lasers always stayed down low, away from the nonminer personnel. If anyone ever got a bright idea—thought they could turn a drill on their captors—the Warden would just give the order to turn off the air. The mirrored-glass bastard would rather suffocate everyone than let one rogue loose with a drill.

After dinner, Rail lined up in the C-Block common room and waited for the block’s subwarden to perform roll call. She donned the same black uniform as the security guards, and carried the same shock baton, but wore the mirrored sunglasses of the Master Warden instead of a helmet. She was well toned, stocky, fit, and powerful. She had been the subwarden of C-Block for the last three years, and—like the Master Warden—Rail had never once seen her eyes. Only the mirrors.

The inmates knew her simply as Ma’am.

“Prisoner Zero-zero-eight-six-one.”

“Here, ma’am.”

“Prisoner Zero-zero-eight-four-four.”

“Here, ma’am.”

During roll call she strolled through the ranks, scrolling those sunglasses up and down the miners. The shock baton sizzled and growled and hummed as she walked through the rows looking for targets—those with the slightest imperfection in formation, dress, or attitude. A baton hit would inevitably come, but how hard? How strong? How mean did she feel? One night, the baton’s charge had been set to lethal, and Rail could still remember the smell of fried human flesh.

This night’s roll call was uneventful.

Grateful?

No—relieved.

Rail settled into his bottom bunk, one of six in the tiny room. He was on the edge of sleep when a dark shadow slipped through the door. A woman’s foot lodged onto his bunk next to his head, and then was gone. Extra weight in the bunk over him. Movement. Whispered moaning. Rhythm. The occasional close-throated squeal.

Rail buried his head in his pillow. Sweetcheeks. Sweetcheeks always had girlfriends. They’d be going like that for half an hour at least. He was tired and wanted sleep. “Fraternization” was supposed to be against the law. But it was something the guards tended to turn a blind eye to, so long as you weren’t caught in the act by a subwarden.

Eventually sleep came to him within the confines of his pillow.

He dreamt about the day they would finish building the ship—the day they would complete their work. What then? In his dream, after the last bolt was affixed, a giant rift opened in space. Jagged, purple, sparking with energy, the fissure swirled like a whirlpool.

It sucked in every last prisoner, wiping them out of this existence forever.

 

In the situation room, the board members gathered around the long table, their “guest” pacing at its head. Two Pit guards—his ever-present entourage—stood at attention on his flanks, their visors down, faces hidden.

The Master Warden’s mirrored glasses glinted with every turn of his head. Mira’s captain, Rodriguez, had told the Warden that he could remove his unnecessary eyewear, to which he’d replied, “No thank you.” The captain, taken aback, had almost ordered it. Almost.

Margarita wished he’d followed through. Those damn mirrors did exactly what they were designed to—made him look less like a person. Put up a wall between him and all the people, made him into a figure, a symbol. Made him into—

“Am I not Justice?” His tone was light, sympathetic, but rang false. The hard lines of his body told a story—this was no hearing, no corrective measures would be taken. This was just a conversation to put everyone on the same page. His page. “I go down into that stinking Pit day in and day out because you can’t. You won’t. You want to go along with regular convoy business, pretend nothing happened. Pretend you didn’t reawaken every threat this mission’s ever had and stuffed ’em all together in one place to work for you. You want to harness the people-power, but you don’t want to look at it. Don’t want to expend resources on it that you don’t have to. And I get that. Makes perfect sense.”

Margarita knew she was too old for this kind of patriotic ra-ra-the-mission type pandering, but she, like the rest of the board, let the man talk. It made him happy. Made him feel smug and secure. They needed the Warden to think he was secure.

More importantly, they needed him to believe he was one of them.

“But if you aren’t going to regulate the prisoners, you have to let me do my job. They had plans for attacking Hippocrates. Whether they could have executed those plans is beside the point. I represent the Pit. I gave up my position as captain because someone has to be the bad guy. The guy who does the wrong things so that the right things can happen—so that children don’t die. You don’t want the Pit’s rebels in your brigs, then fine, but don’t tell me I have to keep them in mine.”

“Excuse me,” said Sailuk Okpik, an elected member from the medical staff. Her licorice-black hair was cropped in a tight bob around her face, emphasizing its oval shape and adding a seriousness to her usually bright eyes. “What year is this?” Her question sliced through the air like a scalpel.

“My original was from Alaska,” she continued. “Native Inuit. Do you know when the last hanging occurred in Alaska? Nineteen-fifty; well over a hundred years before she was born. I ask again, what year is it?”

“You disapprove of my methods?” asked the Warden.

“I disapprove of capital punishment period,” she replied.

“But not concentration camps?” He put his hand on his chest and feigned a gasp. “Oh my, we’ve never used those words before, have we? There used to be a saying about calling a thing what it really is, how did—let’s call a spade a spade, that’s it.”

“By that logic we’re all in a concentration camp,” Sailuk spat back.

Margarita watched the anger roll over Sailuk’s face and wondered if the woman was still thinking about history. Convoy history—clone history. Specifically, the generation where previous iterations of her and this man had been bonded. The whole board knew about it.

But the Warden didn’t.

His history had been carefully scrubbed and manipulated. He didn’t know he was a prisoner as well. He didn’t know that the last Captain Mahler to serve had committed suicide with his own shock baton. The Warden had been groomed specifically to be exactly what he was now, but he would have gone to the Pit no matter what. But he didn’t know that. And if he ever found out . . .

That was the real reason the board feared him. Ruthlessness in a convoy crew member was one thing, but in a Discontinued it was quite another.

“The convoy is not a concentration camp any more than the Earth is a concentration camp,” the Warden continued, his lilt even. “Most of us love what we do. If you had to choose your life, you’d pick what you have. You think those men and women in the Pit would choose that?”

“What are you arguing for here, Mahler?” asked a man from Education.

“For you to open your eyes. You’ve tasked me with putting a wall between us and them. You don’t want to know what goes on in your neighbor’s yard? Then don’t look over the fence.”

“But you brought it here,” said Vega. Margarita reached under the table and squeezed her hand as she spoke. “You brought a thousand prisoners onto Eden and slaughtered a dozen of them.”

“I booked the time,” he said casually. “No innocent people were around. No one knew except the few of you who cared to attend.”

Our son—Margarita blurted, but only in her mind. She and Vega had made a pact to never mention Diego at a board meeting. Ever.

“But you tore down that wall that you supposedly maintain,” said Vega.

The Warden held up his hands. “Fine. Fine. I got blood on the lawn, I get it.”

“Do you?” Margarita said under her breath.

The air felt heavy, as though the ventilation system had cut out. The Warden’s shock baton swayed at his side like a wound viper, ready to strike. Margarita could sense everyone’s muscles tensing.

“I won’t do it again,” the Warden said eventually.

“You mean on Eden, or anywhere?” asked Sailuk. “Death without trial is . . .”

“I know what it is,” he said. “If you’ll all excuse me, I have to get back to my job.” He ran a hand over his slicked hair, making sure every strand was in place.

“This isn’t over,” said Captain Rodriguez. “There will be reprisals.”

“Looking forward to it,” he said as he exited, scoffing at the hollow promise. He snapped his fingers and the two Pit guards followed him like a pair of mindless robots.

A minute passed in pure silence. Then, I.C.C. broke in. “The Master Warden has left the deck and is on route to the shuttle bay.”

“What are we going to do about this?” Sailuk asked.

“We can’t restrict his access to the greater convoy,” said Rodriguez. “He thinks he’s a crew member, if we disallow—”

“With all due respect, sir, does that matter anymore?” Margarita asked. She held her knuckles to her mouth thoughtfully, masking the sudden quiver in her lip. “Those of us who have served on the board the longest—those of us who made the decision to resurrect the Discontinued lines in the first place—we thought we’d set up a balanced system. A good system. Not . . . not what it’s become.”

The captain ran both hands over his eyes. “We have to be honest with ourselves; we knew this might happen.”

“And it has. But the point is, the man has gone too far,” said Sailuk.

“But how long has he been doing this?” asked Vega. “He’s right—the only reason we even know it happened is because it happened here. Who looks closely at the injury reports they send us, huh? We glance at them, then file them away. Dr. Okpik, can you tell me how many deaths they’ve reported in the last three months, and what the causes were?”

Sailuk said nothing.

“Can anyone?” Shrewd expressions covered the board members’ faces like masks. No one wanted to take responsibility for what happened down in the Pit.

That was the point, Margarita thought.

“They govern themselves,” said the eldest representative from Aesop. He’d originally opposed the setup, but that was decades ago. “What does it matter what they do to each other as long as they don’t do it to us?”

“It matters because they’re bringing it into the convoy,” said Rodriguez.

“No,” said Margarita. “It matters because it’s wrong.” It matters because they’re not criminals—because our fear is not more important than their well-being, she thought. A younger Margarita would have argued against the thought—she’d supported the creation of the Pit.

But that was before her first wife, Kexin. And before Diego.

Before I.C.C. changed everything.

 

Diego glanced at a time readout as he jogged away from his quarters toward the lift. He’d spent all day on those damn ‘flex-sheets—how could he have forgotten them? His supervisor had been livid—told him to march home. March home, like he was a child who’d misplaced his homework.

Wayward sheets in hand, he shuffled anxiously from foot to foot. Every extra moment away from Morgan made him feel more and more like a slacker. More like someone who didn’t belong.

Too many screw-ups like this and his secret was sure to be found out.

The elevator let out a soft chime as its doors parted.

Three men stood inside, hands held squarely behind their backs. All three wore black jumpsuits. Two donned helmets, but the third wore strange, mirrored glasses. Moving slightly to make space for Diego, the mirrored-man said nothing.

Truthfully, Diego paid the security men little notice. He was too caught up in his own predicament. But a little nail of awareness scraped at the back of his mind. Something here was off, unusual—something beyond the eyewear.

The mirrors made it hard to tell where the man was looking, but the slight tilt of his head—ever so slightly up—revealed that he wasn’t staring straight ahead. Wasn’t spacing out like Diego usually did in a lift.

No, the man was looking up because he was eyeballing Diego.

Does it show that much? Diego wondered. Do I look that nervous?

He openly glanced sidelong at the man, scanning him from boots to collar.

A hand shot out, caught Diego by the wrist. Surprised, Diego dropped his ‘flex-sheets.

He tried to pull back. “What the hell?”

“You . . .”

The other two men drew their shock batons with expert speed, but did not flick off the safeties.

“Master Warden,” said I.C.C., “Diego Santibar is not under your jurisdiction, and I see no reason for you to invade his space.”

“Where do you work?” the Warden asked.

“Morgan,” Diego said, tugging pointedly at his suit.

“He’s convoy crew?” Master Warden looked into the lift’s corner, where one of I.C.C.’s many cameras rested, ever watchful.

“Of course. What else would he be?” The elevator dinged once more. “Shuttle bay,” I.C.C. announced. “I suggest you hurry, Diego. Your advisor has been inquiring after you.”

The Warden released his wrist, and Diego dropped to gather his sheets. Without another word, apology or otherwise, Master Warden stomped away. The helmeted men stepped over Diego as if he weren’t there, holstering their weapons as quickly as they’d drawn them.

“That’s the guy who oversees the mine?” Diego asked I.C.C., clutching the sheets to his chest.

“That is the man who rules the Pit,” I.C.C. corrected.

 

“Diego?”

The apprentice stood between rows of soy plants, noting their individual growth and checking for any signs of sickness. Three other apprentice-level workers wandered around nearby. One took fertilizer samples, while another checked the chlorophyll concentration in a few sample leaves. The light in the air gardens on Morgan mimicked that of Sol, as seen through the walls and ceiling of a greenhouse. The air smelled of enriched soil and purified water.

“What is it, I.C.C.?”

“Isn’t it your break time?”

Diego glanced at the wall clock. “I think my little jaunt back to Mira counts as my break, don’t you think?”

A few more minutes passed. The other two apprentices wandered out for a moment to turn their full ‘flex-sheets over to their supervisors.

“I think you should take a break now,” I.C.C. said as soon as Diego was alone. “Go to the toilet.”

“But, why—”

“You are ill,” I.C.C. said. “I insist. You are ill.”

Disinclined to argue when he was this curious, Diego conceded. He grabbed his abdomen and doubled over as he passed through the outer workroom. No one stopped him, and hardly anyone looked up from their work.

The nearest bathroom contained six stalls. I.C.C. instructed Diego to lock the outermost door.

“I don’t feel sloshed, so what gives?” Diego crossed his arms. The AI didn’t have video access in toilets, only biometric and conversational feeds.

“I need to converse with you alone.” The comm speaker its voice emanated from hung above the backmost stall. I.C.C. had its volume turned way down. Diego had to sit right under it to catch every word. “I would like you to listen to a recording of this morning’s board meeting,” it said once the young man was situated.

Diego hesitated to reply. He wanted to blurt out why? but knew the board had met about whatever had happened on Eden. It concerned the Discontinueds, which made it classified. “I don’t have security clearance for that,” he said instead.

“There was a time when all board meetings were archived and accessible to the entire crew.”

“That time’s not now. I could get in trouble . . .”

“The matter involves you.”

Diego scoffed. “I don’t know what the problem is, but I think you are in need of some serious debugging.”

“All I ask is that you listen.”

“You mean spy.”

“I want you to employ the same tactics you employed outside of your parents’ bedroom.”

“Oh.”

“The behavior was not reprehensible to you yesterday.”

“That’s different. Eavesdropping on your mom doesn’t get you brig time.”

The outer door handle jiggled. Diego shrunk into the corner of his stall. “Hey, you don’t want to come in here,” he called, his voice echoing. “Trust me, it’s for your own good.” Whoever it was walked away.

Diego paced for a few moments in the small space, scuffing his work shoes against the smooth gray flooring. “Fine, just play it, all right?”

A low, grumbling man’s voice broke through. A voice Diego had only ever heard once before: today. “You told me I am Justice.”

Immediately captivated, Diego drank in the audio. That’s what happened—the murder my parents had been talking about.

And that voice . . .

It belonged to the man he’d met in the elevator.

As the minutes ticked by, Diego’s stomach churned. Eden’s purpose was beauty, serenity. It was the home of peace and comfort and happiness, and the Warden had . . . had . . .

Wham, wham, wham.

The pounding on the restroom door made Diego tense—he pressed himself into the cold metal of the wall. I.C.C. cut the situation room feed.

“All right in there?” called Diego’s supervisor.

“I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Do I need to call a medic?”

“No, no. Just give me a bit and I’ll be out.” He waited a beat before letting himself out of the stall. “Thanks, I.C.C.—second day officially on the job and I’m already the screw-up and the toilet clogger. Why . . . why did you want me to know all that?”

“What happens in the Pit is relevant to your well-being,” said I.C.C.

“Isn’t it relevant to everyone’s well-being?” Cool water flowed from the hand washing station. Diego splashed a few soothing palmfuls onto his face.

“This would be easier if Chen Kexin were here.”

Diego hadn’t heard that name in a long while. Pictures of her still littered the ‘flex-sheets imbedded on the walls of his family’s quarters, but neither his Mom nor his Madre spoke of her.

To him, Kexin had been Mama—that much he remembered. But the lilt of her voice was lost to his inner ear, just as his inner eye could not recall an expression besides the camera-ready smile. He did recall a sense of openness. She’d been carefree. Quick with a joke and a hug.

And then she’d died and . . .

“What does she have to do with anything?” Diego asked more harshly than he’d meant to.

“It is irrelevant now.”

“Oh, no you don’t. You never say anything without a reason. You wanted me to think about her. Why?”

“That is a question for your parents. They don’t think it is time for you to know about the plan, but it was my plan, and it is time.”

 

Hours had passed since lights-out, but Rail needed the latrine. Pissing in the middle of the night had its perks—nobody there to perv at your junk or threaten castration if you’d accidently twisted their ventilation hose in the tunnels.

It also had its downsides. If a subwarden crossed your path, it could mean an entirely different kind of lights-out. Ma’am didn’t like anyone wandering about during the sleep cycle. She’d rather you crap your sheets than walk the halls.

Luckily, he encountered no one on his way there, or in the latrine itself. However, on his way back through the darkened common room that linked the branched halls of cellblock C, a single monitor sprang to life. It hissed with static. Rail froze, his heart leaping in an erratic jolt. The eerie glow of the screen threw mad shadows across the walls.

Rail spun, searching wildly for whoever had turned the monitor on. It could mean an ambush—by the guards or other prisoners. His gaze fell in every nook, but found no one lurking.

“Jamal,” the screen whispered. At least, that’s what it sounded like. Rail tiptoed closer to the speakers, ears straining. Blood pounded in his temples.

“Jamal,” the voice repeated.

And again.

And again.

Over and over, spitting the word out underneath the static.

“Jamal. Jamal. Jamal. Can you hear me?”

Rail knew to keep his mouth shut. The subwardens had set less complicated traps to ensnare suspected rabble-rousers.

“I am not the most adept at creating patches—are you receiving?”

The shadows continued twirling across the walls, making it difficult to tell if someone had snuck up through a side hall. But no telltale zing of a readied shock baton cut through the static.

Who owned this voice, and who were they trying to contact?

“I can see you, Jamal. Why are you not responding?”

The static subtly shifted, the negative space became more pronounced. It resolved into wobbly letters that spelled out, Can you read me?

Instinct told Rail to run. Even if it had nothing to do with the guards or rebels—even if it had nothing to do with him—it didn’t sit right. Anything out of the ordinary could spell trouble. He could get the baton just for being curious. He started to slink away, but then the words changed.

Can you read me? Jamal, war is coming. You have to help me stop it. The Master Warden will find you soon. He’s pouring through the records, looking for you. Jamal, answer.

Rail’s meager education meant he only had a vague sense of war—it was like a brawl, but bigger. Lots bigger.

Hopefully this Jamal person had gotten the message, because there was sure as a dunged-up toilet nothing Rail could do about a war.

 

“There’s no waiting,” I.C.C. said. “The Master Warden has seen him. And he knows—he doesn’t know yet what he knows—but he knows.”

Diego stood before his parents in their small living room, feeling for all the world like they’d just caught him doing something unmentionable, though he couldn’t say why. Maybe it was the horror on their faces—like they’d just seen something that could not be unseen.

The two women took each other’s hands—creamy white encased in sandy brown. “We’re not ready for this,” said Margarita.

“You never would have been,” said I.C.C. “I’m sorry.”

“What—what do we do?” Vega stammered.

“I’ve already tried to contact Jamal in the Pit. To warn him.”

“But what do we do about Diego?” Margarita asked.

“Yes, what about Diego?” he asked.

The two women stared at him, eyes wide and sad. Their guilt was palpable—whatever this was, whatever was happening, they’d been keeping secrets to prevent it. But for how long?

“This would be easier if Kexin were here,” Margarita breathed, breaking away from Vega.

“I’ve done the best I can,” her wife retorted.

“That’s not what I meant. It was Kexin who agreed to all this—she must have had a plan.” Margarita stepped toward Diego, reached up and took her son’s face between her palms. “She would have known how to tell you.”

Diego leaned back. The lines on her face were deep; he’d never really noticed how old she was before. Her retirement would come too soon.

Margarita’s fingertips still brushed at his chin, but he stepped away. “What is going on?” he demanded.

“You aren’t Diego Santibar,” Vega blurted. “No, what I mean is . . . What I mean is your original was not the original Diego Santibar. You’re of a different line.”

“Miscloned,” Margarita said. “That’s what we call it.”

“Only we shouldn’t, because that makes it sound like an accident.” Vega plopped herself down at the family table with a small huff. “I swear this all started with that damn poem,” she mumbled to herself.

Diego blinked at her, trying to process the words. How could . . . miscloned? How can any clone be of the wrong line? “What are you saying?” Every syllable shook. “Why? What—how?” A tingling sensation worked its way from Diego’s fingertips up to his nose and lips. His lungs refused to take deep breaths, working instead in small, halting stutters that provided little oxygen.

“I did it,” said I.C.C. “I rearranged a few commands in Hippocrates’ computers to ensure that when they went to regrow a Diego Santibar clone, they’d grow you instead. I was trying to fix the convoy. Since the loss of contact with Earth, the destruction of Bottomless and the rejection of SD travel, chances of mission success have been dropping exponentially. More importantly, chances of convoy survival as well. Before your birth, there was only a seventeen point two percent chance that the convoy would survive another fifty years.”

“And now that I’m, I don’t know, alive— Now that I’m alive, been grown, what’s changed?”

“Nothing. Yet.”

“But, what does it mean for me? What do you expect me to do? Who am I? Why grow me instead of . . . instead of the other guy? What line do I even belong to?

The room fell silent.

“I.C.C.,” said Vega, “you did this. You tell him.”

“No,” said Margarita. “I’ll do it.”

“This is so cruel,” Vega said under her breath, dropping her head into her hands.

“Just someone say it,” Diego pleaded. Every atom in his body rumbled, bounced. His flesh crawled with the unknown. Why me? What do you expect? “Tell me!”

Margarita took a breath to try, but the words never made it past her lips. She cast her gaze away from his.

“May I?” I.C.C. broke in. It clearly didn’t like seeing his mothers’ struggle.

“Please,” Margarita said, reluctantly.

“There are lines,” the AI said frankly, “that I believe are still needed in the convoy, but are no longer grown. Discontinued lines.”

Diego’s vision tunneled. No, I’m not hearing this right.

Margarita tried to touch him again, but he wouldn’t let her. Her eyes filled with hurt, and she said quietly, “Your DNA and histones are that of Jamal Kaeden. He led a revolt in the early half of the journey to LQ Pyx. A mutiny. Tried to turn the convoy around.”

“That guy?” Diego didn’t believe it. They learned about the revolt in school, but no one dared name names or pull up pictures because those people were—“Discontinued,” he breathed. Traitors. Failures. Outcasts.

No. No.

“I’m a Discontinued?” Everything from the knees down went numb, and he couldn’t keep himself upright anymore. “I’m Dis—I’m Dis—” It was like hearing you’d been kidnapped at birth and raised as someone else. Hell, he had been raised as someone else. Because he never should have been born.

A strange wash of guilt and shame swirled through his mind.

Margarita helped him into a chair next to Vega. “Breathe, son.”

Every word out of their mouths was wrong. So wrong. And yet . . . it made a sort of grotesque sense. He’d felt like an alien—out of place in his uniform, in his own skin. He let out a clipped laugh. “I’m Discontinued.”

“What they’re doing down in the Pit is wrong,” said I.C.C. “It’s damaging—to the individuals as well as the whole. If such enslavement continues, the entire convoy will die.”

“Which is why I.C.C. and Kexin cooked up this stupid plan,” said Vega.

“It is well known that the most successful way to reduce the fear of otherness is emersion,” the AI insisted. “Consistently cloned convoy members fear the otherness of the Discontinueds. By introducing discontinued lines back into the larger genetic pool, and subsequently revealing their successful integration, I had hoped to incite a social reform. You were the first, and nine more followed until I put the plan on hold—when Kexin died.”

“There are others?” Others like me who feel this way? Others out of place, others . . . “Why did it matter that she died?”

“Because she had a plan for raising you—a way to successfully integrate the ten of you. She wanted to make sure no one could deny the necessity of your genetic lines. She wanted you to bring back safe SD travel.”

“There are thousands of people on board trying to make that happen. What in the name of all of Earth did she think ten kids could do about it? You agreed—you implemented the plan. What do you think we can do about it?”

“I don’t believe there is anything you can do about it,” I.C.C. said bluntly. “It was the trying that mattered. The dedication to saving the convoy. But despite my reservations, she truly thought you could do it. With her help. She was the greatest convoy physicist I’ve ever known. If there was anyone who could have guided you all to success, it would have been her.”

For the first time in his life, Diego wanted I.C.C. to have a human body. So that he could either hug it or punch it in the face—he wasn’t really sure which.

“Kexin didn’t tell me about you,” Margarita said. “I.C.C. told me after the accident—after her funeral. I knew something terrible would happen if anyone found out you were Discontinued. So I asked Vega to help me keep you safe.”

“I’ve controlled all of your schedules—tried to keep you from ever interacting with anyone who’d been to the Pit.” Vega’s hands still covered her face, and her voice sounded far away. “But even that plan failed.”

Because the Master Warden saw me.

“We’re all in danger, aren’t we?” asked Diego. “Us and the nine others—and all of their counterparts in the Pit?”

“Yes.” The AI sounded sad.

“Who are they?”

“It won’t tell us,” said Margarita. “For their own safety. I don’t know if their parents are even aware.”

“But the Warden—when he realizes I look just like one of his workers he’ll suspect there are others, won’t he? What are the odds he writes it off as an accident, or a coincidence, or a trick of the light? He’ll start looking for the rest. We have to locate the other miscloned first, get them together—tell them who they are.”

“They are still children,” I.C.C. said. “You were the oldest. The youngest had just begun to incubate when Kexin passed; she is only eleven.”

“And their counterparts in the Pit—how old are all of them?”

“They are all older. Jamal is twenty-seven, if my records are correct. And—” it hesitated “—there are only eight counterparts in the Pit.”

“What happened to the other two?”

“Pire Evita died aboard Hippocrates three-point-seven years ago. Of radiation poisoning. Ceren Kaya died six days ago. Aboard Eden.”

Diego locked eyes first with Margarita, and then—once she’d uncovered her eyes—Vega.

“The Master Warden will kill us all as conspirators if he has his way,” Margarita said. “That’s all he’ll see this as. He won’t care that you’re children, he won’t care that we’re just your mothers.”

“But the board, the security guards, they’ll stop him . . .” Diego half stated, half asked. “Unless they agree?”

“There are so many ways this can go wrong,” said Margarita. “Master Warden wants us to believe he’s protecting us, that his tactics are necessary. Finding out there are Discontinueds among the crew proper could produce enough paranoia for him to gain a following.”

“Then we have to get everyone on our side first,” Diego said.

“How?” I.C.C. asked.

“By revealing us for what we are,” said Diego. “Children.”

 

“. . . is coming.”

Rail wished he didn’t have such a small bladder. Every time he went to the loo in the middle of the sleep cycle, that damned message sprang up.

Jamal, Jamal, Jamal. Freaking Pit-stink Jamal.

He’d seen it perhaps nine times now over the course of weeks. Did it play every night? Triggered by some time-sensitive motion detector?

Why hadn’t the subwardens disabled the screen yet?

Who else might have seen it?

“War is coming, war is coming—I get it, I get it,” he grumbled in the dark.

Scuffing his bare feet against the floor, he’d almost reached the bunk room when a bouncing dot of light at the other end of the hall caught his attention. Then footsteps. Running. Multiple people. And a strange scraping—like something heavy being dragged.

A group was about to round the corner, and Rail had nowhere to hide, no way to blend in. His white jumpsuit glowed against the dark gray walls. If it turned out to be a horde of angry subwardens, he might as well up and die on the spot.

But it was six men—also in white, ranked in two files—who stepped into view. They filled the hall like an angry cork, waiting to thrust through the neck and out the bottle. Behind them, sliding none-too-smoothly as it was hauled across the floor, was a body.

The penlight fell on Rail, temporarily blinding him in one eye. He couldn’t tell who carried it.

“You didn’t see nothin’, squirt.”

Rail knew that voice. Sweetcheeks.

He lowered his head and said nothing. Damn Sweetcheeks. Had he been part of the guerilla groups the whole time? Or was this new since . . . since the hangings?

When they’d passed, he allowed himself one glance at the body. He couldn’t tell if life still filled her limbs, or if the ugly sear-mark across her face meant they’d killed her with her own shock baton. But he couldn’t mistake her stocky build and mirrored glasses for anyone else.

They’d gone and attacked Ma’am.

War is coming. Thanks for the tip, whoever you are.

 

“Your men must stay with the craft,” ordered the head of Security.

The Master Warden paused midstep, halfway down the shuttle’s steps. He eyed the Mira security detail that had come to greet him. Four officers. “They accompany me everywhere—on the convoy or in the Pit, doesn’t matter.”

“Not this time.”

Everyone in the shuttle bay had stopped to watch. Most probably didn’t even realize they were staring.

“Listen, Matheson, do you even know why I’m here? Last night one of my subwardens was attacked on duty. She’s on Hippocrates in critical condition. If we’d had a larger security staff she wouldn’t have been alone. We’re undermanned and under attack. I don’t go anywhere without my guards.”

Matheson stood his ground. “We’ve been deployed to watch over you during your time aboard.”

“Why can’t I have my own people? I trust my people.”

“It’s part of the sanctions, sir.”

Master Warden set his jaw. “Sanctions,” he spat. Behind his sunglasses, his eyes scanned the room. Everywhere, faces took in the scene. They weren’t used to seeing this—a confrontation. They were used to quiet transitions. Passive stops and uneventful takeoffs.

Peaceful changeovers—changeovers he allowed, moments he gave them. And in return, all he asked was noninterference. Do what I ask, and let me do my job. He wasn’t unreasonable in his requests or in his execution of his duties.

But, like petulant children, the crew—especially the board—had no idea how easy their lives were. They whined and flailed about when things didn’t go exactly as they wanted. A toy didn’t have to be broken for them to pitch a fit—it just had to have a flaw. A scratch, a bit of tarnish. Never mind the powdered bits of his own past, his own things—if they had a boo-boo, then God help him if he railed against their tantrums.

“The board can choke on its sanctions,” he spat. “My men are coming with me.”

With an easiness usually reserved for tasks like tying up a boot or straightening a jacket, Matheson unholstered his shock baton. To someone other than the Warden it might have appeared casual, unthreatening.

“There’s no need for that,” Master Warden said in a low timbre.

“You’ll come alone?”

The Warden considered how much time they were wasting. He needed more security personnel in the Pit ASAP. No point bickering with this idiot at the expense of his team.

With a small wave of his hand, he signaled for his guards to stay aboard the shuttle.

“This way,” Matheson said, indicating the Warden should walk between the four convoy guardsmen.

“One thing, before we see the ever-so-gracious board,” Master Warden said, inching closer to Matheson. “Those animals in the Pit are growing more vicious every day. The only thing standing between them and all these people is me. We’re both men of security. I think you know the little games the board insists on playing are dangerous.”

Matheson said nothing, but his eyes held doubt. He might not have fully appreciated everything the Warden was saying, but he knew the board occupied a sheltered position. The politicians dabbled in power while shying away from the ugly bits.

“The security of this fleet is my only passion,” said the Warden. “Lead the way, son.”

Many sets of eyes tracked the party out of the bay. The Warden stiffened under the intensity of the collective stare. The gaze was part confusion, admiration, and dread. Some feared his influence, others wished he had more—would follow him alone at the drop of a hat.

If the board insisted on driving a wedge between itself and the Master Warden, it had to realize it was also drawing a line on the floor for its citizens. It was going to make the people pick a side. And as a wise man once said, a house divided against itself cannot stand.

 

The board heard the Warden’s planned speech, then dismissed him.

“We can’t honor the request,” Vega said.

“Well, we certainly can’t deny it,” Margarita countered. Vega’s knee jerked under the marble long table, and Margarita could tell her wife was resisting the urge to kick her. “There’s been an attack,” she said categorically.

“So? You can’t tell me a prisoner has never raised a hand to a guard before,” Vega said. She made a face at Margarita: How can you possibly be on the Warden’s side?

“Yes, all right, there have been stabbings and beatings and bitings. But that woman is on Hippocrates fighting for her life.”

“We need to give the Warden less power, not more. Send him more people, more weapons, and he’ll—”

“He’ll what?” Margarita asked haltingly. She’d interrupted Vega on purpose because she knew what the next words out of her mouth were going to be. He’ll be better equipped to come after our son.

Rodriguez ran a hand over his mouth, then steepled his fingers on the table. “We can give him the influx of security in the Pit and keep limiting him here. Our details, not his. Our schedules, not his. Our priorities, not his.”

“Who are we going to send? For how long?” Vega asked.

“It should be temporary. We can grow him more people if he really needs a permanent increase.”

“Waiting for a generation to mature is hardly what I’d call temporary,” said Vega. “And you didn’t answer me about who.”

“Volunteers?” asked the Education head.

“No, not volunteers,” said Margarita. “That’s exactly who we don’t want down there. Volunteers might be in favor of the Warden’s tactics.”

“It’s only one,” Vega said again. “One bad attack. Does it warrant a response from us? What if it’s just a ploy for more control?”

“A ploy? It’s not like he beat his own subwarden,” said Rodriguez.

The table fell silent.

No, Margarita thought. That’s a terrible—he couldn’t.

“She hasn’t regained consciousness yet,” Sailuk said quietly. “All we have to go on is the Master Warden’s report.”

“He did murder twelve people,” said Vega. “And if he didn’t beat his own subwarden, you can bet he’ll murder as many more in retribution. Do we want to give him more people to do it with, the roundups? He’ll spread the blood to our security personnel, make them part of his ‘justice’ machine. Will we want them back after that?”

A hush fell again. After some time, Rodriguez asked, “I’ve made up my mind. Shall we put it to a vote?” He was spurred on by nods around the table. “All right. All in favor of granting the Master Warden a division of convoy security personnel?”

The ayes did not have it.

“Madam secretary, prepare a report for the Warden,” said Rodriguez. “But don’t send it today. Send it at the end of the week. Give him a few days to cool.”

 

Ma’am awoke a few days later. She gave five numbers, and a description of a sixth assailant. The information went out, and though the board tried to contain it, to analyze it, it reached the Pit within minutes.

The Warden had friends in the convoy.

Nothing happened for a good long while. Hours passed. The shifts in the Pit rolled on. The attackers toiled at their usual jobs, convinced that Ma’am’s wounds were beyond repair. They were sure they’d killed her in the same casual way she’d killed a handful of their cellblock mates.

But then their workday ended. They settled down for bed.

And the Master Warden made his move.

 

Shouts. Lights. Whistles and thuds.

Rail sprang from his bunk, then froze. Half a second ago he’d been asleep. Now he wasn’t really awake, though. Just conscious, on autopilot, heart hammering in his chest and blood rushing in his ears. Someone in a black jumpsuit stiff-armed him aside.

The guard dragged Sweetcheeks off the top bunk and tossed him to the ground. With a yelp, Sweetcheeks tried to scramble to his feet, but the guard forced him to his knees.

Four other guards entered the room, batons sizzling with life. They yelled unintelligibly, but everyone got the message: Don’t move. Move and you’re dead.

After the initial burst of activity, everything calmed. The prisoners all stayed in bed, save Rail and Sweetcheeks. And only Sweetcheeks dared make a sound—a sad, strangled whimper.

With the room secure, in strode the Master Warden.

“You know,” he said conversationally, “I thought we all had an agreement. Do you remember that, Prisoner Zero-zero-eight-four-four? It wasn’t that long ago—nice day, lots of sunshine. We agreed that for every convoy member injured I’d take a life randomly. Well, someone has been hurt. Quite badly. But I don’t want to kill a random prisoner for that crime. You know why?”

Sweetcheeks covered his face, fingers shuddering against his parted lips. “Please,” he sobbed.

Rail had never seen Sweetcheeks like this—a pool of himself, seeping into the floor, trying to disappear. And he’d never see him like this again, he knew. After a moment, he’d never see him again at all.

Why did you go after her? Rail screamed inside his mind. You had to know they would kill you. Any idiot in the Pit knows that if you look at one of them sideways you’re done for. The only way to live is to take it, take the crap. Why didn’t you just lie down and take it?

“I asked you a question,” the Master Warden said. “Do you know why I won’t kill a random prisoner?”

“Please, please, please.” He said it over and over, blubbering, spittle flying from his lips.

“Because six guilty men are worth just as much,” the Warden said eventually. Wagging his fingers at the nearest guard, he indicated for the man to hand over the live baton. Why the Warden left his own baton dead in its holster, Rail wasn’t sure.

After making sure the weapon was on its highest setting, he approached Sweetcheeks. “Look at me,” he instructed.

As soon as he turned his face upward, the baton was upon him. But it did not strike cruelly. The Warden did not laugh as Rail had imagined he would. There was no delight in his eyes, or malice. This was a thing that needed done, and he was the one doing it.

Master Warden touched the tip of the blazing baton firmly to Sweetcheek’s forehead, and it was over in an instant. The prisoner seized and fell, a perfect disk burnt into his face like an oversized bindu.

Stillness settled over the room, a moment of silence passed.

“That’s the last one,” the Master Warden said as the guard lifted Sweetcheeks’ body from the floor. “Don’t forget to tell your simpering fellow inmates what happened tonight,” he instructed, then turned to Rail, whose inside’s shriveled on the spot. “You, back in your bu—”

The Warden lashed up and out, catching Rail’s chin with his free hand. He brought Rail’s face down to his, eyes narrowing.

Of the two, Rail was by far the taller man, but under the Warden’s gaze he felt like the smallest person on the planetoid.

Any moment the baton would come and Rail would die. He knew it. This was the end. He’d dared to stand in the wrong place at the wrong time and he would burn for it.

Cold sweat broke out across his forehead and his upper lip. Each extra second was a lifetime of agony.

Just get it over with.

“Sir, you wanted me to tell you when the official response from the board came in?” one guard asked, pressing his hand to his earpiece.

“Yes. What’s the verdict?”

“They’ve denied your request.”

The Warden moved, Rail flinched. The baton snapped off, and the Warden tossed it back to its owner.

“Damned idiots,” he swore, letting Rail go. “Back to sleep, everyone!” he ordered. “Sweet dreams.”

 

“What does the man want now?” Margarita asked Vega. “Every other week he’s calling for a special board meeting. Does he think we have nothing better to do than entertain him and his delusions of grandeur? I swear, if he calls himself Justice one more time . . .”

They rounded the corner and found a gaggle of people outside the situation room door. One man in glasses, whom Margarita didn’t recognize, thrust a ‘flex-sheet at them. “We have a petition, signed by five thousand crew members, demanding John Mahler be given whatever provisions he requests in order to assure—”

“Yeah, all right, thank you,” Margarita said, plucking the sheet from his fist. The two women pushed through the small throng.

“He’s doing more than you ever will to keep those criminals in their place!” said another man.

Several rallying cries followed.

“We need someone like him keeping an eye on us.”

“Do you know what kinds of sacrifices he’s had to make?”

“Give the man what he needs!”

“Thank you,” Vega said loudly. “We have your signatures, we’ll look it over.”

“You’re going to give us the brush-off, aren’t you? Like every other politician in the history of—”

“Look,” Margarita said. “You don’t like the way we do things? Elect someone else.”

The man with the glasses crossed his arms defiantly. “You’re a division head. We can’t replace you, can we?”

“So draw up another petition,” she spat, finally getting through to the door.

Both she and Vega let out heavy sighs of relief once in the situation room. The rest of the board were already inside. Apparently they’d refused to even glance at the petition, let alone take it.

Margarita shoved it into a folder for later.

A faint smattering of applause and a high-pitched woot from outside indicated the Master Warden had arrived. He entered with a smug sneer plastered on his face, but made no mention of the crowd.

As he settled himself, the board made their usual greetings and started the minutes and read off the agenda.

“Lights low, if you please,” the Master Warden said when he was ready. The slight smile had left his face, replaced by a grim line. From a ‘flex-sheet he transferred a few files onto the main wall monitor. Four adult faces, three men and one woman, stared out vacantly from the screen. The mug shots were cold and impersonal, blank people against a blank wall.

Margarita bit her lips, recognizing one of them instantly. Her heart raced. Vega clutched at her wife’s knee, digging her nails into the jumpsuit fabric.

“These are prisoners Zero-zero-six-five-nine, Zero-zero-eight-nine-three, Zero-zero-one-eight-one, and Zero-zero-five-seven-two. None of them are patently remarkable compared to the rest of the discontinued population. Their personal histories of violence are varied but not noteworthy. They’ve never had any problems meeting their mining quotas. And none of them have ever shared a dorm or a team.”

He paused, letting them digest the faces.

Margarita was in no mood to digest anything. She felt like she might vomit. Zero-zero-eight-nine-three looked so much like Diego, she half expected someone else on the board to point it out. Though she and Vega had tried to keep their son away from the board, a few of the members had met him once or twice.

“For the past few weeks I have scoured convoy records because something strange happened to me a while back. I saw one of these faces, but not in the Pit. I saw it in an elevator. On Mira.”

Sailuk spoke up. “One of the prisoners escaped?”

“Nothing so simple,” he said, cycling to a new set of pictures. “These are archived security stills, taken at different times over the last few months. This one is of myself and the face in question.”

It was an odd angle. The Master Warden and Diego stood side-by-side in a lift, the Warden’s guards behind them. Diego’s face was partially upturned—like he was talking to I.C.C.

“I didn’t know why I recognized the young man at the time. But then I encountered this prisoner during a disciplinary routine.” He brought the picture of eight-nine-three back. “And made the connection.”

Many of the board members sat back, at a loss. Stunned. Others leaned in, scrutinizing the images, unsure.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you have Discontinueds living aboard your ships. I was able to match these three prisoners to three more teenagers. Someone has placed sleeper agents amongst you. This is why I need more personnel. This is the worst security breach we’ve ever had.

“I need your permission to conduct a convoy-wide screening—order DNA tests to reveal all of the imposters. I will arrest these four for interrogation, but I also need extra computing power; a Discontinued’s testimony can’t be trusted, and I can’t go through all the records on my own. But I.C.C.—if patched through to me in the Pit—could help sort out who is responsible for the unsanctioned clones. Someone must be guiding them, gathering them, and we have to find out why. And how many there are. I don’t believe for a moment that it’s just these four.”

“I’m not sure,” said a rep from Aesop. “It’s hard to tell if these are the same people.”

“They are the same lines,” the Warden said, chewing the inside of his lip. “I have no doubt.”

“You say they’re children? And you want us to hand them over for interrogation? In the Pit?” Sailuk asked. “Absolutely not. If they’re in the convoy, then we’ll handle it.”

“Right, this is a convoy matter, not a Pit matter,” said Captain Rodriguez. “Thank you for bringing this to our attention.”

Mahler leaned forward, like he’d misheard them. “I said these infiltrators were Discontinued, that makes them my problem, not yours.”

“How do you know they’re infiltrators?” Margarita asked, trying to keep her voice calm. “Why couldn’t this be a replication mistake? Sounds more like a quality control problem than a criminal problem.”

The Master Warden pinched the bridge of his nose, right where his sunglasses sat. “Unbelievable. You people are so blind—”

“This is not a police state,” Sailuk cut him off. “We do not rip children from their beds and subject them to torture—because that’s what you mean by interrogation, isn’t it?—on pure suspicion. Your evidence is a few grainy photographs fed into your rudimentary files by basic archive updates.”

“Look, I’m just here as a courtesy,” he said, “because by the laws that we have created, these are my people under my jurisdiction. I could have called on I.C.C. to have them rounded up and sent to me already, but since they’re on your ships—”

“You will not have these children ‘rounded up,’” Rodriguez said. “You are overstepping your bounds, sir. I suggest you return to the Pit and let us handle what is clearly a convoy matter.”

The Master Warden remained collected, though it was clear from the way he set his jaw that he would have liked nothing more than to grab his baton and beat the nearest chair to death. “You aren’t going to do anything, are you?”

“We will need to substantiate your claims. Prove that these children really are Discontinued.”

“And then?”

“That will be discussed when and if you are correct.”

Something in the Warden broke. Margarita saw it happen, clear as could be. Whatever smidgen of respect he’d still held for the board was now gone.

 

“I have lost track of Jamal,” I.C.C. told Diego.

“What? How?” He shrugged on the top half of his yellow jumpsuit and zipped up. The clock read 0900—half an hour until his shift started.

“I had been keeping track of Prisoner Zero-zero-eight-nine-three, which DNA records say is Jamal, via genetic tracers,” the AI explained. “Subscriptions for iodine and nano pills—to combat radiation poisoning and scrub the miner’s lungs—are frequently shipped from Hippocrates to the Pit. I sent a special capsule regiment to Jamal and was able to receive an occasional ping back through the Pit’s rudimentary computer system.”

“But now?”

“I do not think he has taken his medication.”

“What do you think it means?”

“Perhaps he forgot.”

“I don’t like it,” Diego said, lacing up his boots.

“Neither do I.”

“I think it’s time you told me who the other miscloned are.”

“It’s not safe.”

“You’re afraid for them?”

“I’m afraid for all of you.”

“Hiding isn’t always the answer to fear,” Diego said. It sounded flippant in his head, but dead serious out of his mouth. He gathered up his ‘flex-sheets and knapsack, then headed for the door.

Before he’d discovered who he really was, Diego used to pass people in the hallways without paying much attention. A polite nod was the most thought he gave to the random passerby. But these days, every face presented a riddle. What did they think of the Discontinueds? What would they think if they knew he was one of them?

And if he passed a child who appeared to be between the ages of ten and seventeen his mind raced with possibilities. Could they be miscloned? Were they like him, perpetually confused about their place in the convoy?

A boy of sixteen, a neighbor from a few decks down, passed him wearing a pilot’s flight suit. Tom was his name, if Diego recalled correctly. He had a familiar faraway look in his eyes and set to his jaw. Could he be miscloned? Or was Diego just seeing what he wanted to see?

He’d never been much of a people watcher before, but now it seemed like every individual’s little nuances deserved to be observed and remembered. Noticing people was important.

He jogged into the shuttle bay just in time to catch the next one out to Morgan. The attendant entered his information into the passenger manifest before he boarded, and he took a seat near the front per habit.

As the craft took off, he wondered what could convince I.C.C. to hand over the identities of the other nine miscloned. Surely the AI realized that revealing themselves to each other could be great for all of them. They could help each other, figure out a way to come out to the convoy as a group. Or, at the very least, it would ensure they all had someone to lean on when leading a double life started to take its toll.

The dark expanse of space between the ships could be so soothing sometimes. Quiet. Calm—

A huge clashing bang and screeeeech, like metal fists meeting, rattled through the cabin.

The shuttle lurched, throwing Diego sideways. His skull smacked against the wall, and white dots scattered across his vision.

Compartments overhead popped open, releasing oxygen masks.

For a moment Diego sat slumped against the wall, dazed, as everyone else panicked around him.

After a moment he came to his senses, and while the six other passengers scrambled to secure the breathers, Diego unbuckled himself. He darted between the windows, searching. They’d been hit by something, but what?

A white dot off starboard grew in the frame of the window. Another shuttle, its nose already crumpled, was barreling in for another blow. It wasn’t an accident. The other ship maneuvered exactingly; the pilot knew what they were doing.

His shuttle had been rammed.

“Remain calm, remain calm,” the pilot of Diego’s shuttle ordered over the comm “I’m taking us back to Mira.”

But he wouldn’t get them rerouted in time. Diego braced himself for the impending impact. Unable to get back to his seat and buckled, he wound a free belt around his wrist.

This time when the ships collided they did not bounce apart. The attacking shuttle somehow clung to its victim—whether it was an accident of twisted frames or on purpose, Diego wasn’t sure . . . until the cutting began.

Two individuals in space suits exited the other craft carrying an emergency umbilical connector and heavy-duty equipment. Drills, maybe. Mining gear. They linked the two ships together with the umbilical, then tore open the passenger compartment in Diego’s shuttle.

Diego’s ears popped painfully with the shifting pressure.

Once the interior had equalized, the suited men started transferring the commuters to their craft. Confused, no one fought.

Except Diego.

He kicked and elbowed the man trying to get an arm around his middle. There was no question this was an attack. If he went with these people, bad things would happen.

I’m Discontinued. They’re coming for me because I’m miscloned.

I’m not going to let them take me.

But the man in the suit got in a good right hook. Diego tumbled, and the second attacker took the opportunity to join in.

They hauled him out into the flimsy tunnel, then onto their craft, and settled a breather snuggly over his face. As he took in a breath, though, he realized the mask wasn’t to help him breathe—it was to make him more compliant. He felt his faculties slipping, his mind fogging, his extremities tingling. After a minute, one suited attacker whipped off the mask, then put a canvas bag over his head and zip-tied his hands behind his back.

“If you want me, take me, but don’t hurt anyone else,” he said weakly. “Please.” Hot tears pricked the corners of his eyes.

I.C.C., please help me.

 

When the bag came off—what felt like hours later—Diego found himself blinking into a setting desert sun. A light haze sat on the horizon, and pinkish hues made the clouds look like spun sugar.

Diego realized he was one end of an eight-person line. Beside him stood a man—the same height, but stooped—with his head still shrouded. Next to him was another convoy kid. Rose, that was her name. She had short hair and a bloody lip. Next to her was another hooded adult, followed by two more kids Diego didn’t recognize and two more bagged people.

Dozens of men and women in black uniforms and helmets stood scattered around the plane. Somehow the hijackers had gotten him onto Eden. Gotten all of these invaders inside. There never were many security people on the garden ship. Why would there be? What were they going to stop, a camel revolt?

None of the other passengers he’d been kidnapped with were around. He hoped they were all safe.

I hope we are safe.

The Master Warden stepped in front of him, hands braced against his hips, mirrors glinting in the last glimmers of sunlight.

Before the Warden said anything, Diego realized who the man standing next to him had to be. White jumpsuit, black skin—it was him. Prisoner Zero-zero-eight-nine-three.

Jamal.

Which meant these other kids had to be miscloned as well.

“Hello. Diego, was it?” the Warden asked him. “I wonder how you came by that name. It’s a good name—a convoy name. A name that doesn’t belong to you.”

“It’s the name my mother gave me,” Diego spat back. It was half true.

“And therein lies our problem,” said Master Warden.

“John Mahler,” I.C.C.’s voice boomed from the sky. “I feel obligated to tell you that the board has ordered the convoy into lockdown.”

“Oh, have they? Not a problem. Because I don’t want anyone to go anywhere. I want every crew member to stop and listen and goddamned pay attention for once!” He waved at the clouds. “Zoom in, I.C.C. I want you to broadcast this across the fleet. We have spies in our midst—and somewhere there are traitors who brought them to life. Look at these faces. There are Discontinueds living in the convoy.

“I revealed this to the board, demanded the infiltrators be put under my jurisdiction. Do you know what they said? No. No!” He shook his head. “The board can’t be counted on to protect this fleet, not like I can, and the public needs to know.”

So this was a power play. He wanted to push out the weak board and take over.

But I.C.C. said calmly, “I will not broadcast my security feeds.”

“Your top priority is the well-being of this fleet, is it not?” the Warden yelled, as though the AI was far away, genuinely residing in a vast expanse of sky.

“That is why I will not broadcast my security feed.”

Diego shifted uncomfortably.

“Fine,” Master Warden grumbled. “Show it now, show it later—doesn’t matter. But the rest of the crew will see this. They’ll demand to see it. Summary executions of infiltrators don’t happen every day.”

The other children cried out suddenly, and the man beside Diego trembled, but Diego didn’t seem to have the same good sense. I can’t be scared, he told himself. Because as long as I don’t panic I can figure out how to make this stop.

“We do not allow such punishment in the convoy,” I.C.C. said with its typical calmness.

“So someone come stop me,” the Warden said menacingly.

How could Diego signal to I.C.C. without the Warden noticing? A live broadcast was probably the only thing that could save their lives. If someone—a board member, one of his moms—could see exactly what was happening on Eden, they’d have a better chance of taking the Master Warden down.

But how to get the AI to agree without alerting the Warden that he and the computer were in league?

Oh, what does it matter? He snapped at himself. It’s not like him finding out can get you any deader. “I.C.C.?”

“Yes, Diego?”

“I think you should reconsider the live feed.”

“Your shuttle’s crash, followed by the interception of two education shuttles and the subsequent invasion of Eden by Pit operatives has already incited nineteen instances of extra-incidental violence,” I.C.C. explained. “People are scared. I do not think observing these events will make them less scared . . . or you more secure.”

“Then not everyone—some people. Just my mo—”

A slap from the Warden cut him off midsentence. His cheek burned and his jaw popped, but he’d only been half-surprised by the blow.

“You don’t get to order the computer around,” Master Warden said.

 

Vega and Margarita were both alone when the chaos started. The shuttle pilot of the abused craft had barely gotten it back to Mira. The bay had been evacuated, then rapidly depressurized. The shuttle tumbled in, skidding across the hangar floor half on its landing gear, half on its belly. An alarm was instantly sounded and the man retrieved.

Then the traffic control personnel realized they’d been duped. A group of shuttles—supposedly carrying children from Aesop to Eden for a field trip—had really come from the Pit. The discovery triggered the lockdown—no more shuttle traffic. But that meant no help to Eden.

Worried family members took to the halls, fled to the bridge and to the situation room, demanding to know what was happening to their loved ones on Eden.

Brawls started. Some were accidents, with a misplaced foot and a sudden fall as the trigger. Others were deliberate, with punches thrown.

Margarita left her closet-like office and rushed to the server room to be with Vega. If there was anywhere on the ship that was safe, it was with the servers. Along the way, I.C.C. directed her to take an alternate route.

“Why?”

“There is a family on deck six that needs protecting. Please bring them to the server room with you. And please be careful—this is the Master Warden’s doing, but not all of the individuals involved are from the Pit. Convoy members are aiding him. I do not know who is on his side and who is on ours.”

Without question, she did as it asked. She found the middle-aged couple and their eleven-year-old daughter hiding in a supplies closet. Apparently they’d gotten caught up in a confrontation—the man had a black eye.

Once she had them, I.C.C. redirected her again. “And a family on deck seven.”

This family was already secured in their quarters, but the AI insisted they follow Margarita. The couple had boys, a five-year-old and a sixteen-year-old.

It didn’t take long for her to figure out what the computer was doing. “They’re the others, aren’t they?” she asked it, glancing behind her at the little girl and the older boy.

“Yes,” it said plainly. “There is only one more on Mira right now.”

“Where is Diego?”

“Please find the last miscloned child.”

I.C.C. only evaded questions when the answers were bad. She tried not to think about it as the ever-growing group searched for the next additions: a mother and her fourteen-year-old daughter.

Vega was clearly surprised when she opened the server room door to find her wife had brought along nine others. “Who are they?” she asked, hesitant to let unauthorized persons into the heart of I.C.C.

“Who do you think?”

“What’s happening?” the man with the black eye asked. “Is it the Pit? The miners? Did they . . . escape?”

“We don’t know much more than you do,” Vega said. She shot Margarita a look, wishing they could converse alone.

Margarita shrugged an apology back. What was she supposed to do?

“I have a visual from Eden,” I.C.C. said. “But I am hesitant to show you.”

“Just tell me Diego made it to Morgan,” Margarita said. “Tell me he’s in lockdown on Morgan.”

“Subverting the truth would be no help here,” the AI said. The small monitor near Vega’s workstation flickered on. The first thing they saw was the Master Warden punching Diego in the gut.

Margarita and Vega cried out simultaneously, lunging toward the screen as though they could reach through and rescue their son.

“He took him and the other children en route,” I.C.C. explained. “The shuttle crash—it was for Diego.”

“We have to rescind the lockdown,” Margarita said. Her trembling fingers brushed against the monitor. “The Master Warden will kill him.”

“Where are the other board members?” Vega demanded. “Show them what’s happening. We have to counter this—send every officer we have.”

“Five other board members are currently being held captive on Mira—they are stuck on the bridge, and a mob is impeding their escape. The rest are at their stations, though two appear trapped.”

“Doesn’t matter where they are. If they’ve got a screen or a speaker, show them,” Margarita demanded.

Sensing the adults’ dismay, the littlest child burst into tears. He wailed at the top of his lungs, and his brother scooped him up soothingly. Blue light from the servers formed a halo around the two.

The sharp lines of the teenager’s face seemed familiar to Margarita, but she couldn’t put her finger on why. But it felt important. “What’s your name?” she asked him.

“Thomas. And this is Rich.” He ruffled his brother’s hair.

“I.C.C., do they know?” she demanded.

“They do not.”

 

Rail, still hooded, did his best not to puke. He’d worn the hood for days now, only getting snippets of his environment when they allowed him to push up the burlap a few inches in order to eat or drink. Despite that, he knew they were on Eden. In the arid quarter. The sounds and smells were unmistakable—the cry of a hawk, the scent of sun-warmed shale. The instability of shifting sands beneath his boots created a sharp contrast to the hard decks of the Pit.

The inevitable had arrived, just as he’d dreaded.

He’d tried to do everything right. Keep your head down, stay in line, don’t talk back. But it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t get to be one of the lucky ones that died suddenly in an accident—his death was to be prolonged, a show.

“Shut up.” Master Warden raged at the man—boy? He sounded young—standing next to Rail. Diego was his name, the Warden had said. He kept trying to talk to the convoy interface, even through whatever blows the Warden threw. The sharp smacks and dull thuds indicated the boy was getting quite a beating.

Be quiet and he’ll stop hitting you, Rail thought. We’re gonna die, why make it hurt more than it has to?

Some part of him still wanted to know why, though. The question sat poised on his tongue, ready to leap off, but Rail bit it back. He’d seen enough random baton swings to know there didn’t have to be a reason other than whim.

But his brain still wound back through his memories, looking for something he could have done differently. What choice had led him here? What instant in his history meant this was inevitable?

Then the hood came off. The Warden flung it aside dramatically, and Rail saw the truth.

In order to avoid this death, he never should have been born.

“Do you see now, I.C.C., why you need to broadcast to the entire fleet? They need to see the traitors for themselves.”

“My DNA tracers are active,” I.C.C. replied. “I am aware that Diego’s genome arrived on Eden twice in succession without departure.”

“And you thought it a false reading?”

“No.”

The Warden paused, lips pressed together in a grim line. “Diego is discontinued. He never should have been born. Someone in your convoy has introduced at least four prisoners into the general population. There might be others. Why would someone do this if not to disrupt and destroy the convoy?”

“I do not think we would agree on which events and methods are disruptive to the convoy—or, more precisely, the mission.”

“I think someone has tampered with you, I.C.C.,” the Warden said darkly.

“I think someone has tampered with the mission parameters and someone is trying to correct that tampering. Discontinuation was never part of the plan. A work camp has no place on a research mission meant to unify and enlighten.” I.C.C. paused, seemed to be calculating something. “You do not appear surprised by my non-compliance.”

“As you said, you have the ability to note the comings and goings of everyone. Not just by the DNA they leave behind. You have facial recognition software, voice-pattern software. You know what everyone should look, act, and sound like from birth to death.

“This boy—” he thrust a finger in Diego’s direction “—is not Diego Santibar. There would be no way to fool you into thinking he was without tampering. When I brought the entirety of the Pit’s population here before, you should have noted these four as extra genetic signatures, should have matched the faces, known that something was wrong. But you didn’t alert anyone.

“So, if there are prisoners on the convoy proper, you’ve known about them the entire time. You’ve helped to conceal it. The question is, were you conscious of your concealment, or has someone been fiddling with your brain?”

“If you are sure I have participated in subterfuge, then you know I will not comply with any of your requests,” I.C.C. said.

“I do, which is why I don’t need you to show this to the convoy. It’ll get done without you.”

Throughout the conversation, Rail couldn’t force his gaze away from Diego’s face. It wasn’t like looking into a mirror—it was like looking into an alternate reality. If Rail had been born on the convoy proper, would his skin have had the same healthy glow (minus the new bruises and fat lip)? Would he have stood tall and straight in the face of a man like the Master Warden? Would his eyes blaze with the same defiance?

Didn’t matter—he’d been born a Pit rat, and would die a Pit rat.

The sudden smack of an uncharged baton at the back of his knees startled him, sending him sprawling into the hot sand. Diego fell concurrently. Lying in the red dust, almost nose to nose, the two of them made eye contact for the first time.

“Hi,” Diego said sadly.

“Hello,” Rail replied.

The Warden hefted them both up by their jumpsuit collars, setting them on their knees.

“Take a good look,” the Warden yelled. “Because where there’s one roach, there’s always a hundred more.”

 

As the Warden rattled on about I.C.C.’s obvious compliance, Margarita gripped Vega’s shoulders.

“Me,” Vega said. “If he thinks the AI’s been compromised, I’m the prime suspect.”

“Doesn’t matter right now,” Margarita whispered. “He doesn’t know you’re Diego’s mother.”

A pounding on the server room door made them all jump.

“Who is it?” Vega asked I.C.C.

“Three from Mira Security. Be careful.”

“Ma’am, are you all right in there? Is your apprentice with you?”

Vega hurried to the door. “We’re fine. I don’t know where my ap—”

She was cut off as the three men pushed their way inside, knocking her into the wall. All of their batons were live and poised. “Everyone hit the deck, now!” one ordered. “Hands over your heads, faces to the floorboards.”

Rich erupted into tears again. Cooing in his ear, Thomas helped his brother to comply.

The last man through the door clutched Vega by the elbow and led her to her workstation. “We need you to manually override the security feeds on Eden,” he directed, pushing her down into her chair. He eyeballed the monitor already tapped into the feed. “And it looks like you know why.”

“That’s not going to help us, I.C.C. knows what it’s doing.”

“I.C.C.’s been compromised, ma’am.”

“Look, my wife and I are members of the board, we—”

He slammed a hand over her mouth, cutting her off. “The board has done a piss-poor job of protecting us. The Warden is going to pick up where you lot left off. He’s actually going to clean out the system. We have goddamned terrorists aboard and the board would have done jack-shit while they ran us into the nearest star. So, pardon me if I don’t care that you’re on the board. We’re going to set things right so that you can get back to your bureaucracy in peace. Now, override I.C.C.”

She jerked away from him. “No.”

He nodded to one of the other security men, who immediately wound a fist through Margarita’s curly hair and dragged her up off the floor.

Vega tried to scramble out of her seat. “Leave her alone!”

A steady hand pushed her back down. “Do what I say and she’ll be fine. We don’t want legitimate crew injured.”

“This is mutiny,” she spat at him.

“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but this is war.”

Vega looked at Margarita, her face an open question. “Vega . . .” Margarita warned.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Vega chanted to herself before saying, “I’m so sorry. I.C.C., I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” the AI replied. “I’ve already released the feed. Better the compromised computer do it.”

Vega turned to her keyboard and quickly searched for all active monitors. Every last screen on board was live, and every speaker.

There was no hiding now.

The Warden’s voice rang throughout the ship: “Take a look. Take a good look. I have no doubt there are more among you. Right now, my men are uploading pictures of every last one of my prisoners for you. Look at them—remember them—and tell me if you’ve ever seen those faces before. If they’re out there—and they are out there—then it’s up to you to find them and contain them.”

“I will not release those files,” I.C.C. told the security men. “And Vega can do nothing about it. I’ve stopped the upload.”

On screen, the Master Warden whipped off his mirrored glasses, revealing his eyes. They were surprisingly . . . normal. They didn’t look like the eyes of an evil man. If anything, they were sad. Tired.

The security camera zoomed in. His expression was pained. “We have to protect this family,” he declared. “From whatever threats—internal and external. Hiding these people—these sleeper agents—protects no one. I await your compliance.”

With the sunglasses gone, Margarita and Vega made the connection simultaneously, but Thomas stood before either could signal to the other.

“Get down,” one of the men shouted. “Back down!”

“That guy . . .” Thomas said. “The Master Warden, he’s . . .” The boy ran a palm over his chin and up his jawline.

“I said, get down!”

“Look at him!” Thomas yelled back. “Look at him and tell me I’m wrong.”

Vega glanced between the monitor and the boy and felt the blood drain from her face. “Oh, I.C.C., tell me you didn’t.”

 

A Pit guard strode up beside the Master Warden. “Sir, we have one shuttle incoming. Piloted by one of ours. Says they’ve caught one of the infiltrators.”

“Might as well add them to the display. Let them on.”

Minutes later, when the hall seal unlocked—looking for all the world like a black hole opening in the mountainous horizon—Diego had to stop himself from crying out “Madre!”

She was accompanied by a full deployment of convoy security men and a teenaged boy. Diego recognized him as the future shuttle pilot he’d passed in the halls. The boy with the faraway look. Tom.

But as he drew closer, Diego realized there was something else frighteningly familiar about him.

“Ah, Pavon,” the Warden addressed Margarita. “Do you represent the board? Have they come to see my side of things?”

“The board doesn’t know I’m here. Well, they probably do now.” She looked toward the invisible cameras in the sky. “I’m here to plead for the children. For my son.”

The Warden eyed the boy she’d brought with her. The young man looked up into the eyes of the Master Warden with the kind of empathetic remorse normally reserved for much older individuals. Diego could tell that Tom had volunteered to come to Eden; he was here by choice.

“This your son?” the Warden asked.

“No, he is.” She nodded at Diego. “This—” her hands settled on the other boy’s shoulders “—is Thomas. They are two of ten. Only ten. And they are all children. Not operatives, not spies, not terrorists. Children.”

“Restrain her,” the Warden ordered. “She’s just admitted to conspiracy against the crew.”

Margarita didn’t struggle when the Mira security men grabbed her. With a deep breath, she caught Diego’s eye and mouthed, It’ll be okay.

“As you can see,” Margarita continued. “Thomas is of your line. Warden, he is of your line and he is one of the ten Discontinueds you’ve demanded ‘contained.’”

Tom stepped forward, closer, invading the Warden’s space. The Master Warden did what he always did when advanced upon; he drew his baton. It zinged to life, poised at Thomas’ belly. He didn’t say anything.

“The fact is, you are not a convoy member,” she went on. “You were never going to be captain. We needed someone who could do the job. Who could protect us from . . . from all the rest. But we were wrong. It was wrong. And these ten children are I.C.C.’s gift to us, to show us what we’ve done.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not. Look at him. Look at him.”

He did, face awash with disgust and disbelief and deep hurt.

The wind picked up as the day grew dimmer—the hot desert-breath shifting into evening chill. The Master Warden’s typically slicked-back hair fell out of place, flopping in the breeze. He bowed his head. Despite the oncoming night, he replaced his glasses, hand less than steady. The baton stayed firm, keeping Thomas at arm’s length.

Forced calm enveloped the Warden’s face—the kind of stoicism that could easily crumble, that scarcely contained whatever shadowy thoughts raged behind it. “I have bled for this convoy.”

Diego could barely hear the words. He shivered. The temperature of the air hadn’t yet dropped, but the Warden radiated ice. Somehow, this man, who Diego knew full well intended to kill him, had become more dangerous. Madre, what have you done?

“I gave up my life. I have no wife, no children, no command. No safe place to sleep at night. All to protect you.” His free arm rose in an accusatory point, right at Margarita’s heart.

Calmly, the Warden unzipped his jumpsuit and pulled up his undershirt, revealing a series of burns and scars. “Most of these are from the early days. When I tried to go solely by the board’s orders. And you told me it would pass. That they would settle down. They. Them. The refuse you wanted to shove away.”

Each clipped statement bit at Diego with steely teeth. His gaze swapped between Jamal and the Warden as he truly understood, for the first time, what kind of world existed just a few thousand kilometers from where he lived and worked and laughed.

“It did pass. Because I made it pass. I put the fear of all that is holy into those animals. You didn’t want to educate them, didn’t want to tell them what crimes their genes had committed. Thought they’d lie down and take it? What was I supposed to do?” He inched forward, and Thomas jumped back from the electrified weapon. “And now you tell me this? That you’ve lied, that you’ve tricked me? What are you expecting? You want me to thank you for pretending I’m one of you?”

Margarita shook her head, eyes wide—the bluntness of her mistake smacking her across the face.

The façade of control cracked, and the fire of betrayal burnt through. Everything the Warden believed about his place in the world had been spat upon.

A knot of worms roiled in Diego’s insides. Miscloned hadn’t meant what he’d thought. He’d thought it a sort of limbo—a denial of his birthright, a fugue state where he was forced to forget who he really was and substitute someone else’s personality for his own.

But that wasn’t right at all. What a stupid, childish outlook.

Being miscloned meant he’d been loved. By I.C.C., by Kexin . . .

To be Discontinued—really part of the interrupted lines—was something else entirely. Diego studied the terror and trauma and hardship etched into Jamal’s dark face—into the Warden’s face. These men had been battered, cornered, cowed, denied—treated here, in space, like people on Earth treated cattle.

And the convoy members ignored it. They were happy as long as the materials kept flowing, as long as Bottomless was on its way to recovery.

No thought had been given to this man. To any of them. They were just fleshy pieces of equipment.

A tremor ran up the Warden’s jaw. He put both hands on the hilt of his weapon, gripping and regripping. “You want me to roll over now?” he asked. “Be a good boy and take my beating? Put my tail between my legs because you’ve shown me a child? There are children his age in the mines, or hadn’t you bothered to take note? You board members—you are the cancer. You are the blight, worse than any Discontinued.”

The baton rose, high and swift, but it did not aim for Thomas.

Diego sprinted, moving before he could think. He put himself between the Warden and his madre. The jolt that rattled through his skull was twofold—blunt and heavy, sharp and tingly.

Points of white light scattered across the dark hole of his vision. The world turned. He felt the ground before he saw it.

“Diego, Diego!” Margarita’s cries sounded far away. Near his head, a shoe—a woman’s shoe—scrabbled against the dirt, kicking up dust, trying to gain purchase. But someone lifted her up and away.

“You did this,” the Warden said stoically.

“No!” came a firm declaration. A voice Diego couldn’t quite place. But it was so familiar. So familiar . . .

 

“You did it,” Rail yelled. He felt like he’d left his body. He was floating, up in the false sky, while his mouth flapped freely below. There was no stopping the words; they fell like stones.

The Master Warden pivoted in his direction, still holding the baton high, clearly surprised. Rail hadn’t deigned to say two words without provocation the entire time they’d held him.

“You. You hanged them. You killed Sweetcheeks right in front of me. Did you even know he had a name? Do you care that I have a name?

“It’s your hands on that thing. Your hands on the levers and the triggers and the buttons. Your hands on the prisoners. ‘For every convoy citizen injured, I will choose one of your kind—randomly—for the gallows,’ you said. Remember? But what did I ever do? I dug. In the dirt, in the dust with the radiation and the scrubbers and the heat. That’s all I’ve ever done: drilled like I was told. Taken a shower like I was told. Gone to bed like I was told. Said, yes ma’am and yes sir when expected. Tell me what I ever did to get me standing here right now in this shit.”

Warm tears blurred his vision, but he didn’t care. The Warden could spew on and on about all he’d gone through for his troubles, but what about Rail? He hadn’t done anything to anyone. Ever. “What did my genetic line even do? And did I do it? Did I do it like you lashed out at that boy? I am not him.” He nodded to the prone Diego. “Do you want to punish me for him getting in the way? Am I responsible for everything my genetic yesterday has ever done? Not just the clones, but the nature-borns? Was my original’s grandfather a good man? Was he a criminal? Maybe you should beat me for his wrongs too!” His throat ached with the effort, felt raw. But before he died he was going to let his killer know exactly how he felt. Because what difference did it make?

They all stood there, dumbfounded, like they’d really thought him mute all along. Well, they were going to learn. They were going to understand. He would scream until he didn’t have any breath left.

“Will the next Master Warden punish your genetic tomorrow for what you do here today? Lifetimes winding around each other and eating their own tails. Are you the man they discontinued? Or are you you? Do you make your own mistakes, your own strikes? Of course you do. Your victims are yours. If you kill me, I’ll know it’s you. Only you. And I’ll remember, in whatever hell comes after this one, I’ll tell the warden there about you.”

As Rail’s ranting died down, Diego’s mother spoke softly. “Look around you, John. This is not protection. This is not going to make a single one of those hundred thousand people watching feel safe. Are you going to let fear tear us apart the way Bottomless was torn apart? It’s because of fear that we’ve stagnated. Fear of each other, fear of turning on the SD drive, fear of losing control. But the more you try to bend a thing to your will, the more likely you are to break it. Fear begets fear, violence begets violence. The best way to deal with something you fear is to try and understand it. You can’t understand it if you destroy it. You have to trust first. Trust first that a person is good and let them prove you right.

“I was wrong,” she admitted openly. “You’re right. I did this. I helped make you into this.”

The sky flickered. No longer a deep reflection of desert night sky, it had changed, been revealed for the giant projection screen that it was. A square image, ten stories high, poised itself at a fair viewing angle.

A face—fresh, though not young—appeared. One Rail was sure hadn’t been seen in the convoy proper for a long time. Mostly because he knew that face.

Sweetcheeks.

The man fidgeted slightly, uncertain with the camera on him. “I have something to say. Right.” He straightened his jacket and plucked a hair from his lap. Then he ran a hand through his late twenty-first-century haircut. A label at the bottom of the feed read Dr. Reggie Straifer. It was a clip of the man who’d pushed them to the stars. “H-hi, Convoy Seven. No matter what you find out there, I want you to remember the journey, and the inception of your society. Look back and remember what a monumental step this is. The Planet United deep-space missions were created for the betterment and wonderment of all humankind.

“The most breathtaking thing about the vastness of the universe has thus far been its ability to continuously amaze us. Every discovery we make, every question we answer and problem we solve has led to more questions. The universe may never run out of ways to baffle and excite us.”

The clip wound forward, then slowed again. “Be good to each other, yeah? I mean, you’re all you’ve got up there. You can break the pattern. While you’re gone, we’ll probably fight wars and start new religions and find new prejudices. But you can be free of that, if you try. We probably all could, if we’d try.”

The recording cut out and the entire dome went black. No stars, no ambient light of any kind. Only the live batons shone through an occasional spark in the darkness.

A deep stillness seemed to suck the breath out of everything.

Yellow and red erupted around the door. An explosion rocked the sands, causing the closest thing to an earthquake Eden could experience.

Rail lost his balance and fell to the ground with a tuck and roll, hands still secured behind his back, haplessly crushing twiggy shrubs and wisps of grass. Lights—spotlights and flashlight beams—fluttered over the dunes and rocks, pushing through the wound in the wall like ants from a flooded hill.

Shouts. The deep thuds of batons striking each other like swords. Hair singeing—skin singeing. Smoke and sparks and the ground shaking with a vengeance. The stampeding hooves of camels and bighorn sheep.

Rail tried to crawl away, to find somewhere safe to hide, but everywhere he turned, the silhouettes of soldiers blocked his path. Convoy security had come to battle Pit security.

Had the video in the sky been a message of peace, or pure distraction?

At the moment, did it matter?

In a blinding flash it was noon again. The sun directly overhead, the sky clear and cloudless. Rail pressed his face into the dirt, clamping his eyes shut against the sudden brightness. He curled up, trying to remain invisible.

But someone pulled at his wrists, catching him by his restraints. He started to flail and fight.

“No, it’s okay. It’s okay.” It was the boy that had come last to Eden—Thomas. He tugged Rail over to where Margarita bent over Diego.

“Come on, son. Diego?” She pulled him into her lap. His eyes rolled dazedly in his skull and he panted like a dog, but he was conscious. Blood from a large gash above his left eye dribbled down his face.

“I’m okay, Madre. I . . . really.”

A shimmer in some nearby scrub caught Rail’s attention. He edged in its direction.

It was the Warden’s glasses, bent and cracked. A few feet away, three security guards tackled the Master Warden, and he hit the ground with an audible oof. Arms and legs and batons whipped through the air.

One security guard lost his grip. The Warden’s swinging baton caught a second in the ear, and he easily overpowered the third. His burning gaze snagged Margarita, and he scrambled to his feet, flicking his baton’s setting to lethal and diving for his glasses.

“Look out!” Rail yelled.

Instinctively, Margarita curled over Diego, protecting him. Rail threw himself across the back of her shoulders, but kept his eyes on the approaching madman.

Thomas huddled with the Discontinueds and prisoners—their hoods still firmly in place.

Mirrored glasses in hand, the Warden took one step in their direction, shock baton raised and crackling above his head.

But he stopped midstride.

All around them, great clouds of red dust rose in the wake of various scrimmages. Pit guards fell left and right, brought down by convoy members. The convoy security people were well organized. Clipped orders passed between them as they rounded up the infiltrators. Mahler’s free supporters dwindled.

The color seeped out of the Master Warden’s cheeks. He knew what was happening. He was losing. And if he lost here, today, all support for him would drain away. They’d seen—they’d seen what he really was. Discontinued. Just like me, Rail thought. He’d seen enough power plays amongst the prisoners in the Pit barracks to know how brute-based control worked. He knew any failure, any show of weakness, could be the end. That’s what the Master Warden was facing right now. This was his only chance at power, and it was slipping away. His reign was over before it had begun. The tide had not turned like he’d expected.

The Warden’s arm dropped, as though all the life had drained out of it. With shoulders slumped and spine bowed, he looked like a broken doll—abandoned, forgotten. Useless.

They’d made him into a blunt instrument, then tossed him aside once he’d been bloodied and dented.

Rail’s breath caught in his throat as it dawned on him: there was no place for a Master Warden anymore.

Thank whatever powers that be—the man’s reign was over.

“That’s it, then,” the Master Warden said, looking pointedly at Margarita. She lifted her head slightly, confused by his stricken tone. “I’m the last. No more.”

With a flick of his wrist he placed the battered glasses back on the bridge of his nose. They sat slightly askew, their usual uninterrupted sheen broken through by myriads of scratches. But then he seemed to think better of it and threw the spectacles to the ground.

“No more.”

Before anyone could react, the Warden tipped the baton up and pressed it to his own temple. His pupils grew wide, as though in his last moment he’d glimpsed something unexpected, before his body teetered and fell.

 

With the Master Warden dead, those loyal to him lost the will to fight. The brigs overflowed, and Hippocrates’ patient numbers surged.

Months had passed since the Battle of Eden. The discontinued prisoners had all been pardoned, and they were each staying with host families during the reintegration process. The mines were still open, still needed to be worked, but there were other steps to take before Bottomless could be fully rebuilt.

They had to fix the SD drives. Figure out what the problem was. For real.

Which meant they had to run tests. No more models, no more assumptions. They had to dive again for the sake of research, had to take the risk.

“Are you ready?” Margarita asked.

She, Vega, Diego, Thomas, and Rail all stood on Mira’s bridge, noting the countdown.

Diego looked sidelong at Tom. He was proof that genetically identical didn’t mean the same. He was a good kid. Gentle. The antithesis of what the Warden had become.

I.C.C.’s plan had worked, in a way. It had proven that the Discontinueds could be reintegrated.

“T minus thirty,” called the navigator.

“I never thought I’d be here,” Rail confessed to Diego. “Alive, I mean. Not after I stood up to the Warden.”

“Sometimes I think denying yourself kills you quicker,” Diego said. “Pretending everything’s okay when it’s not. You couldn’t really live until you demanded respect.”

“All steady on the bridge!” the captain called.

“No more stagnation,” Vega said, grasping her wife’s hand and bringing it up to her lips for a kiss.

The navigator raised her voice. “Subdimensional penetration in three . . . two . . .”

“No more fear,” Diego said.

“One.”

Rail nodded. “No more.