Critical Path (The Critical Series Book2) (22 page)

There were the three M’s of course: Maria, Mike and Mai, but he knew they would be fine without him. He liked them, thought of them as a kind of extended family, but they weren’t close to him like his dad—or Layla, but even then, he wondered if he was just imagining things with her…

Not really the time to think about all that, he chided himself, sliding back into the gloom so the guards outside by the door didn’t notice him.

The figure had climbed the fifteen steps up to this current level. Its brown hood appeared above the edge of the step. Crude stairs were carved into the rock, allowing farmers and dwellers alike to easily ascend and descend between levels. A few seconds later the figure approached the guards. From the movement and silhouette he guessed it was a young woman. She held each hand in the opposite sleeve, reminding him of pictures of monks he’d once seen in a magazine.

The guards, two human men with severe buzz cuts and tatty army uniforms patched with a seemingly random collection of fabrics, approached her but without pulling their truncheons from their belt loops.

They must be expecting her.

Their bodies obscured the woman’s face and their voices were too low to hear, but after a few moments, they stood aside and let her approach the door. Denver couldn’t see her from this position, as the window was a couple of meters to the door’s left. Before the robed woman could try the handle, Denver dashed low under the window and across to the right wall beside the door.

A squeak of metal followed a rattle. The handle turned, hinges protested, and then the door opened, flooding the cell-like living quarters with the warm glow of morning. The silhouette of the visitor stretched out to fill the angular shaft of light on the bare wooden floor.

She waited, perhaps sensing Denver was there, behind the door, crouching, waiting, his breath held in his lungs with anticipation. The voices of the guards blew in on the breeze, words that were unimportant, jocular. A laugh or two followed, preceding a pair of footsteps creating barely audible thuds on the floor.

When the figure closed the door behind her, Denver launched forward. He grabbed her by the arms, pinning them to her body, and pushed her back across the living room until her back hit the wall separating the sleeping quarters.

She gapsed with the impact. Denver continued to press with his arms outstretched. “Who are you?” he said with a low growl, not wanting to alert the guards and hoping she wouldn’t scream.

“Let go,” she whimpered.

Denver released her right arm but only to push her hood back and reveal her identity. He staggered back, confused. Words tripped on his lips before he finally got a grip of himself.

“Maria? What the hell are you doing? How did you get past…” He trailed off as a blank expression stared at him, clearly not understanding something. “What? What is it? Maria, talk to me.”

She turned away from him as a shadow moved out from the sleeping quarters.

“Leave her, son; that’s not Maria,” Charlie said.

“What? I don’t understand.”

“Come,” she said, tugging at his arm. “We need to talk in there. I’ll explain everything.”

“Do as she says,” Charlie said. “It’s a wild story, but it’ll make sense.” Charlie gripped his son by the shoulder and urged him away from the woman. She slipped out, smiling nervously at Charlie, and headed into the sleeping quarters. His dad led him in after her.

Once inside, they closed the door and the woman explained who she was.

“I don’t believe it,” Denver said. Clones! How could he even know if ‘his’ Maria was even the same one he initially met? “This is fucked up. Are you even still called Maria?”

She nodded, her cheeks blushing. The poor woman looked scared out of her wits. He realized he was looming over her, his body tense. He relaxed his shoulders and stood back, trying to be less intimidating. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I get it,” she said, reaching out for him and patting him on the arm in an awkward means of friendship. “I’ve known I’m a clone from the day I was activated. They told me everything. It must be confusing for you, but please, let me assure you I’m here to help—and very much my own person.”

Denver shook his head, letting out a small laugh. “This world gets more bizarre by the day, but hey, it’s not as weird as aliens coming to use the planet as a giant drug farm, so sure, I’ll go with it. But why are you here? Is it to do with the plan?”

Charlie remained quiet as Clone-Maria brought Denver up to speed on Charlie’s interaction with Hagellan and the general plan.

“What does he want with us now?” Charlie said.

Stepping closer to both men and lowering her voice, she said in hushed tones, “He’s happy you two have agreed to help. He said he understood how difficult a decision it was for you considering what your people have gone through.”

The way she said it made Denver want to correct her to include her within that statement but realized she was as much croatoan as she was human in mind if not body. Charlie snorted with derision, but Denver remained quiet. He nodded to urge her to continue.

“He’s liaised with a number of our engineers.”

‘Our’ wasn’t lost on Denver—it was clear who this clone’s loyalties were with.

She continued, “Lord Hagellan wants to speak with you, go over the plan. He has new information for you and wants to meet you.” She pointedly looked at Denver. “In the spirit of peace and cooperation.”

Both Charlie and Denver laughed at that.

Bad enough she referred to the turtle-looking bastard as a lord, but hilarious to think he could get away with the bullshit of peace and cooperation.

“Where was that when he and his generals nearly wiped out our race?” Denver asked.

“I… erm…” Clone-Maria looked away.

“Son, leave it,” Charlie said. “She doesn’t know all about that.”

“When were you activated?” Denver asked.

It appeared that was a sore subject. Clone-Maria sat down on the bed and scowled. “That’s not really important right now. I’m here as an emissary to—”

“Lord Hagellan,” Charlie filled in. “We get it, girl. We’ll go. But I hope he doesn’t expect us to do cartwheels and sing ‘Kumbaya’ around the campfire. Let me make this clear—we are not his kind’s friends. Never were, never will be.”

“We’re closer than you think,” she said.

“And how would you know?” Denver said, keeping his tone respectful. He admired her for coming here and didn’t see any point in escalating an argument.

She tapped the side of her head. “We all have it in here—parcels of croatoan knowledge. We weren’t cloned just for working in the harvesters.”

“Oh?” Charlie said, raising an eyebrow. “What else?”

“My group are, as I said, emissaries, but we hold within us the church edicts. We observe the rituals of the Elder Gods—the first croatoans to establish a home world and the revered Mother and Father.”

“Their idea of creation, eh?” Charlie said.

It appeared to Denver that this was at least something he could recognize as something they had in common: religion and belief in a supernatural origin story. From what Denver had read, it made absolutely no sense at all. All throughout the ice age he saw people of varied faiths praying, ritualizing, and praising God.

They all perished.

If there was a god, an Elder or not, it seemed his or her line was busy.

“No,” Clone-Maria said, standing up, “not their idea—the truth. Within every one of us we carry the DNA of those original mothers and fathers.”

“Us?” Denver shook his head. “You’re human, genetically and fundamentally. Your DNA is no different to ours. You’re not one of them. They use you like a tool to do their bidding—just like they used humans in their farm facilities. Just how much free will do you clones actually have?”

He thought about his Maria—did she also have this so-called knowledge in her mind just waiting to be ‘activated’? How much of Maria was the Maria he had come to know, and how much was some preprogrammed meat-puppet?

Clone-Maria ignored his questions. “Are you coming with me or not?” she said as she pushed her way between the two men. “I wouldn’t say no if I were you. Lord Hagellan is a fair leader but not one to cross.”

“A little too late for that,” Charlie said. “I kind of messed up his plans a bit.”

“I heard,” she said. “You’re quite the hero.”

Denver couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or sincere. Either way he didn’t like this clone one bit. Didn’t trust her. But then that wasn’t surprising since she considered herself one of them.

His curiosity won out over any resistance. “We going, then, Dad?” he asked.

“Yeah, son. Let’s go see what the old bastard is planning.”

From within her robes, Clone-Maria produced two carbon-copy outfits. She handed one to each of them. “We go out the back. Stay close and keep your hoods up. I’ll take you through the tunnel system so as not to be seen, but don’t remove your hoods until we’re in Lord Hagellan’s room—we can’t be too careful these days.”

“What do you mean?” Denver asked.

“Nothing major. Just a few… integration problems. We can talk on the way. Come on.”

With that, Clone-Maria opened a closet door and depressed a hidden button. A panel came loose to reveal a carved opening that led to a tunnel within the actual rock of the lake walls. A series of unlit candles in carved nooks led the way down the dark aperture. The clone stepped inside and encouraged them to follow.

Denver really wished he still had his rifle. All he had for a weapon was a shank he had made from an old spoon found in the kitchenette area. It wasn’t perfect, but at a push, it’d take out someone’s eye and buy him time.

“After you,” Charlie said, urging his son forward. “It’ll be all right.”

“I don’t believe that,” Denver said as he stepped in. “But there’s only one way to know for sure, right?”

***

The journey through the tunnels had taken at the very least half an hour. All the while Clone-Maria fielded his questions in the most vague ways. It seemed to him she was more of a robot in spirit than a free-minded clone.

At least his Maria had opinions and emotions.

Eventually they arrived at Hagellan’s room deep within the ground. Back to the beginning, Denver thought. The irony of fixing up one of their ships for them to rise up from out of the ground wasn’t lost on him.

Stepping through the doorway, Charlie stepped to the left while Denver stepped to the right—almost as though they were preparing to flank a target. Habits die hard, it seemed. But for all Denver knew, Hagellan would one day be a target.

The alien in question stepped out from a small antechamber and sat down on its grand throne. The damned thing looked even uglier than the regular reptilian bastards. Age wasn’t kind to this one. It seemed ingesting root compounds would only do so much.

“You came,” he said, clicking with the alien staccato sound Denver had got so used to hearing, usually from the shadows or camouflaged as he took one out with his rifle. He dipped his head and closed his eyes. Layla had told Denver this was a peaceful sign of respect.

Denver did not give one shit. Neither did Charlie. Both of them stood, their arms crossed, waiting for it to get on with it. When Hagellan brought his head back up, he spoke something in croatoan, and Clone-Maria bowed before leaving. She touched Denver on the elbow and whispered, “Thank you for trusting me.”

He didn’t have time to respond as she scuffled off into the tunnels.

“First question,” Charlie said. “How do you expect us to go to a planet when we haven’t got space suits?”

“The atmosphere is similar to here. It’s easier for us to use our apparatus on the ships because we can’t make you a suit. We have little more than two days, and I need to talk about the plan.”

“I get the urgency,” Charlie said, easing up a little. “The plan seemed pretty clear-cut to me. I get Mike over here to work with your engineers, fix up your ship, then go blow the shit out of one of your jump gates. What else is there to discuss?”

“The team,” Hagellan replied, rasping out the words. “This ship was designed for surveillance—it doesn’t have a large capacity.”

Denver was taken aback by its ability to speak perfect English. But given the damned thing was ancient, it wasn’t entirely surprising. And it showed just how much interest they took in human affairs while they waited. The thought gave Denver a cold shiver. To think that the human race had been spied upon by these entities for thousands of years… how much influence had they had on history?

The question blurted out before he knew what he was saying. “How much did you lot meddle with human affairs while you waited to slaughter us?”

The room fell quiet. Hagellan did the eye-close thing and then focused on Denver solely. “Almost zero interaction. Apart from taking a few opportunities to… acquire certain resources for the cause. I won’t even dare apologize for what we did. Firstly, it was the plan and the Elder Gods dictate our course of action, and secondly, it wouldn’t bring back those you lost.”

“And likewise, don’t ever expect us to apologize for those of yours we took,” Charlie said. “And what did you mean, acquire resources? Are you referring to that fool Augustus and Aimee?”

“Among others, yes,” Hagellan said.

“Wait, how many of these people did you take, and how the hell did you keep them alive until now—don’t say the root, because although it has some effects on us, I know for a fact no one could live that long on it,” Denver said.

Charlie gave him a quizzical look at the last sentence. Denver would have to get him up to speed about Layla’s research on the root, but he knew his father wouldn’t like it.

“It’s not important right now,” Hagellan said, addressing Denver’s question. “We’ll have time during the trip to discuss Earth matters. Right now, we need to address a more immediate question.”

“And that is?” Charlie asked.

“The ship holds six. Four of those positions are accounted for. We need to decide who makes up the final two.”

Denver assumed he, Charlie, and Hagellan made up three. “Who’s the fourth?”

“Baliska,” Hagellan responded. “In the spirit of peace and cooperation, I’d suggest we keep the team split evenly human and croatoan. Who is your third choice?”