Relegation

By Karri Thompson

The end is near—and eighteen-year-old Cassie is fated to save humanity.

In the thirty-first century, she’s feared, yet revered. The presidents want to control her, force her to give birth again and again. But she’s read the Van Winkle Files and knows the truth. She’s going to tell the clones their fate. They deserve

• Language: English
• Publisher: Krutz and Ink Publishing
• Release date: Jun 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781732373112

Book preview

Chapter One

VW2 slept soundly in my arms as Michael, Travel, and I flew toward Tasma. Michael sat next to me working the controls of the presidential flyer, and Travel was on the bench seat behind me. I kissed VW2’s forehead, and readjusted her limp little legs, so they were no longer crossed at the shins.

It’s no use, Michael said. We can’t try to contact anyone on Tasma before we arrive. The flyer’s communicator is inoperable.

The rays of the rising sun pierced the windshield, illuminating Michael’s face and casting shadows behind him. As he worked the controls, I watched the hard muscles of his arms flex before sliding my eyes up his bare, well-defined torso.

He’d saved my life on more than one occasion, and as I reflected on each, the fact he’d kept information from me in the past no longer triggered the anger I’d often felt when I reviewed the events immediately following my awakening at GenH1. Instead, my lips rose in a soft smile and my cheeks warmed with each sweet memory, even though Victoria wasn’t with us, and we’d been betrayed by Magnum.

Having ditched most of our clothing after our mover crashed into the ocean, we were forced to swim to shore. Our nakedness was covered by the thick blankets we’d found stowed in an upper compartment of the flyer.

Despite the damage it had sustained when Michael rammed it with our own mover, the flyer remained operational, though the constant pulse of air made it bob more than usual. Wind blew through a hole in the flyer’s side with enough noise to force us to raise our voices and enough of a chill to put goose bumps on my arms and legs. Somehow, VW2 continued to sleep peacefully against the harsh hum.

Michael kept his blanket over his lap, concealing his boxers, while in only a bra and panties, I had mine draped over my shoulders and snuggly tucked around my body. VW2’s salt-water-soaked nightgown lay over the back of a rear seat to dry, and I kept her body covered and close to mine to keep her warm.

Though there hadn’t been physical contact between Michael and me in the making of our twin daughters VW2 and VW3, I still felt closer to him than I ever had with anyone, except my mom and grandfather, but that was different—they were family. Blood relatives. I loved them unconditionally. I didn’t think it was possible to care for someone else so deeply, so unselfishly, but the more time I spent with Michael, the more I realized just how possible it was.

In a world without known blood relations, the clones perfected a different mindset. DNA links didn’t bind relationships or force love and acceptance because blood ran thicker than water like it had a thousand years ago. A clone’s connection with others was based solely upon social bonds—not genetics.

When the cloning process began six-hundred years ago, the developers of the program could have established some genetically related families by grouping the DNA harvested from family plots, but desperation with the threat of extinction trumped the idea of maintaining genetic ties.

The whole process was so foreign. I’d never agreed to the fertilization procedures in the first place, and I’d resented Michael. Like him, I hadn’t known VW2 and VW3 even existed until recently, but with each day, the sting of his past actions slowly washed away like the wind ripping at the sand. I knew I could love him unconditionally.

I looked at the sleeping doll of a child in my arms. She was beautiful. Her plump, pink lips were slightly opened, and the apple of her cheeks, which rose as she took a deep breath, were of the same precious color. I brushed the blond curls from her forehead, and her body relaxed with a soft exhale.

This tiny two-year-old was mine. I still couldn’t believe it. And through artificial insemination when I’d been in a coma, Michael was her father. He volunteered under the belief he’d help raise her from birth, not knowing whether or not I’d be successfully awakened in the year 3025.

But she and her sister were taken within hours of being born, just like Victoria was originally taken from me, and until last night, he hadn’t seen one of them since the day they were cut from my unsuspecting belly. Like me, he’d been deceived by the former president of Region One, William Gifford, and finding VW2 and her twin, VW3, became one of the most important things to Michael, especially after he and I became so close.

Basically, I was an eighteen-year-old girl with the life-experiences of someone much older though I’d been unconscious for some of it.

Tasma? Travel asked again, this time in a whisper. It exists? With our next turn, air rushed through the large hole in the flyer’s side at an angle, rippling the edges of Travel’s blanket as he held it tightly in his fist.

Yes, that’s the only place where we might be safe, I said, twisting in my seat to face him. And it’s been renamed. You know it as Tasma. I knew it as Tasmania, but the people there call it Autonomy, I said.

Might be safe? And where’s Victoria? Travel said. Victoria had been taken from the labor room minutes after her birth, supposedly so she could be bathed and examined, only to be replaced with a substitute—that was Travel’s only memory of our daughter.

The first time I met Travel Carson III, it was like David Casper had come back from the dead, but finding Travel alive in Area Four wasn’t like witnessing the resurrection of my high school crush. Though Travel shared David’s DNA, making him an exact carbon copy, this Travel was Victoria’s father through the second artificial insemination performed on me before I was awakened. And this Travel had also become my good friend.

I’m not sure where she is, but she’s safe, I said. I couldn’t take her with me. It was too dangerous." So much had happened—so much that I wasn’t eager to explain.

Then, where is she? Travel pressed.

She’s with Magnum.

My head ached, a pain that throbbed behind my eyes. My muscles shook from overexertion, and a dull throb radiated from my ribs where Mia had kicked me, but other than my mental reluctance, there was no reason to wait. I told Travel everything that had happened from the minute we realized Victoria had been replaced with an imposter baby and he was dragged from my labor room and incarcerated at GenH1, up until now. Michael joined me by giving him a condensed version on the entire Van Winkle Project.

Travel listened intently, periodically shaking his head in disgust, disbelief, or maybe both. And when I told him his brother Trail was probably being held somewhere for helping Michael and me escape from Region Three, Travel blinked away a tear.

And there’s something else, I said, setting my arm gently on his. He thinks you’re dead, just like we had until last night.

Damn, he said.

But he’ll find out the truth, I told him. When we get the project started again and expose Harrington’s lies.

I have a copy of the project right here, Michael added, tapping the hem of his waistband where he’d kept the memory pin with the files hidden.

And you have no idea where VW3 and Victoria are now? Travel asked.

Nope, I said.

And I was recloned at GenH1. Travel crossed his arms and exhaled through his nose. I didn’t know my DNA had been taken in the regions.

You were recloned at GenH1 using the old technology, Michael said. That’s how Cassie and I were fooled into believing you were dead. Dr. Little showed us your reclones. Cassie saw one doctored with injuries indicative of a hover flight, and I was shown another with suicide wounds at its wrists.

Those bastards. I’m sorry you had to go through that. Travel swallowed hard.

And I’m sorry you were recloned, I said, shivering with the memory of viewing Travel’s double, its body stiff like a chunk of carved wax.

I wouldn’t want to know if there were duplicates of me somewhere in the regions, especially ones who were physically inept, twins spawned for no reason other than to mislead and hurt people under the selfish plan of Dr. Little, the geneticist at GenH1 who worked alongside Gifford to deceive Michael and me.

Both reclones were brain dead, Michael said, and like the other reclones I’d been exposed to in Region One, I’m sure that their heart, kidney, and liver functions were also compromised. They wouldn’t have survived for more than a few months, even if they had been connected to a life sustainer.

But the reclones I lived with in Area Four were different, Travel said. His eyes were dull, the soft skin beneath purple from worry and lack of sleep. He fell against his seat with a long, deflated exhale, his body cushioned by the lush upholstery of the presidential flyer.

Yes, they were. Those reclones appeared to be high functioning, their major organs healthy, unlike the reclones I’d seen and studied at GenH1. Area Four was obviously a research facility, and the geneticists there figured out how to clone a clone without any harmful effects.

A chill crawled through my chest. Area Four—the secret research facility that brought suffering, torture, and imprisonment to its patients while its geneticists worked at solving DNA shortages and limited successes with artificial uteruses. With the Van Winkle Project, a facility like Area Four was no longer needed. It was obviously commissioned before I was discovered and awakened. It must have been kept operational just in case the project failed and perfecting the process of recloning was the only option for the survival of humanity. I shuddered again and held VW2 a little tighter.

Michael took his eyes off the horizon and looked at me with a smile. He set his hand on VW2’s shoulder, his smile widening as he lowered to kiss her on the top of her head. She stirred, turning against my chest and closing her tiny hands.

Are you okay? he asked above the whip of wind entering the flyer. Telling Travel our story brought back so many unpleasant memories for us both. His eyes were misty like mine, and although we’d found VW2, I knew his heart still ached for her missing sister, and all we’d gone through.

My heart ached, too, not just for VW3, but for Victoria.

Yeah, it’s just that so much has happened within the last week. I don’t quite know how to feel.

I don’t either. I’m kind of numb. I keep pushing the terrible things aside, trying not to think about them, so I can stay strong and focused. He put his hand on my bare knee.

Me, too.

There was plenty of bad stuff. Besides Magnum taking Victoria away, so she could be protected by a secret sect I hardly knew anything about, cruel experiments were being performed in Area Four. And now the prime minster of Tasma and his cabinet were dead. President Harrington turned out to be no better than his predecessor, and Michael and I had become murderers.

Yes, I considered myself a murderer, too. In Area Four, I led the guards to the awaiting jaws of a crocodile, and for all I knew, the GenH3 employee I attacked and left unconscious in a bot closet wouldn’t survive the blow to the head I had given him.

But we had VW2 and Travel, and after fleeing Area Four, Tasma was our only option. But what would we return to? I imagined the house reserved for me there: two stories, its top half clad in brick, its bottom sided in whitewashed wood, and a gray, slate-tiled roof flashing in the morning sun. Michael’s house was almost identical to mine and right next door.

Would we instead find complete chaos with the people in a state of panic as they learned about their beloved prime minster and his cabinet’s assassinations under the will of the Region One president, Donovan Harrington, and maybe even Tupolev of Region Two? And where was President Shen-Lung? He wasn’t in Area Four, so he was either dead or being held captive somewhere else.

For all we knew, once we reached Tasma, we’d find the prime minister’s dead body where I’d seen it last—lying on the cold marble floor of the governor’s mansion, while Tasma’s team of geneticists were being held against their will by Harrington’s selected assassins. Or we’d be taken into custody by Harrington’s men.

What do you think’s going to happen when we’re spotted? I asked Michael.

Hopefully, we won’t be. Tasma’s southern tip was a nature preserve before the plague, so it’s still uninhabited. We’ll go there, coming in from the west. We can hide out until we decide what to do, just like we did on Possession Island before we went to Area Four.

A gust of wind billowed through the hole in the flyer. Good idea, I said, tucking a fluttering piece of VW2’s hair securely behind her ear. Michael decreased our altitude, the exhaust of its engine ricocheting against the sea in our direction. The flyer vibrated erratically, waking VW2.

Nana? she asked drowsily, rubbing her eyes with her fists.

No, sweetie, I said.

Her face crumpled and grew red. I want Nana, she cried.

I know, but she’s not here. She went to see VW3, I lied. I couldn’t tell her that her nana was dead—that Michael had choked her to death after I broke her arm.

VW2 closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

Our sensors are damaged. We’ll fly low and try to stay out of sight. Tasma’s military has an object-detection system in place, it’s archaic, sub-standard at best, but if Harrington and his men have taken control of the island, there’s no telling what equipment they’ve brought with them.

We can only hope that hasn’t happened, and Tasma’s surviving government has managed to regroup. Then we’ll be met by friends, not enemies.

Michael brought the flyer in just above the water. The ocean swelled with the wind, sending sprays of salt water riddling against the hull and into the flyer’s cabin. My stomach turned with the dark memories of swimming through croc-infested water.

Marked by twenty-first century conservation areas, Tasma’s west coast was void of man-made structures and lined with trees that spread and knotted with the rich inland forest weaving an expanse of deep green.

Do you hear that? Travel asked. He straightened his back and leaned forward.

Hear what? Michael and I asked at the same time. With the hole in the cabin, it was hard to hear any noises from outside, but I held my breath and strained to listen.

Michael slowed the flyer. The engine’s roar dropped to a rhythmic sputter, and the howl of the wind thinned to an eerie whistle.

That, he said, freezing in place, his eyes darting to the left in the direction of the sound.

And then I heard it, too, a whup-whup-whup, and I knew exactly what it was—the chop of spinning blades. My chest tightened, making it difficult to take my next breath.

A helicopter, I said, forcing myself to breathe. Teetering VW2 in my lap, I grabbed Michael’s leg, biting my fingers into the top of his thigh.

What’s a helicopter? Travel asked.

Basically, it’s an antique flyer. That’s how I died—helicopter crash. My words were hollow, marked with panic. There, I said, pointing to a gray dot in the distance. And there’s another, I added as a second spot of gray became visible from the window to my left. It’s military. I can tell by the color.

Then that answers one question, Michael said. Harrington and his men must have gone back to the regions. If not, one of their flyers would be meeting us instead.

But that might not be a good thing, Travel said. They don’t know who we are.

We’re in one of Harrington’s flyers. They think we’re the enemy, I said, tightening my grip. The whup-whup of the helicopters increased, doubling and then tripling.

Travel unclasped his restraint. Rising, he turned to the back window. And there’s one behind us.

Michael set his hand on top of mine. With the flyer’s communication system damaged, there’s no way to contact them. We’ll stay on course, fly slowly, and we won’t make any dramatic moves. If they attack, the only thing I can do is try to out-maneuver them and land somewhere before we’re taken down.

And we don’t have any weapons? Travel asked.

No. That’s the first thing I checked when we left Area Four. The arsenal control board connecters are broken.

Ting, ting, ting!

Get down! I covered VW2 with my body. My heart jerked in my chest.

What was that? Michael shouted.

They’re shooting at us, I screamed. VW2 woke and squirmed beneath my chest, kicking her legs to push upright. It’s all right, sweetie. You need to stay where you are. I can’t let you go.

The flyer and its windows are laser proof, but that didn’t sound like laser shots.

No, they’re bullets. Lead projectiles. The Tasmans didn’t have the technology to produce the familiar concentrated-light weapons of the regions. The flyer’s hull would easily protect us against such fire, but the six-foot hole on the right side made us vulnerable.

Get to the back of the flyer. Get away from the opening, Michael ordered.

What about you? The pilot’s chair was directly across from the hole. Can’t you put it on automatic pilot or something and come back here with us? I asked. I unfastened my seat harness. My hands shook as I fumbled with the clasp. Cradling VW2, I ducked into the back with Travel.

No. They think Harrington’s on board. Their goal is to kill him, take this flyer down. Auto-Control can’t maneuver like I can. I’ll try to outrun them and find us a place to land. And when we do, they’ll hopefully give us a chance to explain ourselves before—

Ping, ping, ping. There were too many shots to count. The flyer bobbled, and VW2 screamed.

Machine gun, I murmured.

Michael increased our speed, gaining altitude. The flyer lurched upward at a sharp angle, and a blast of air entered the cabin, rocking me backward as I held onto VW2.

As the flyer leveled, Travel rose to his knees to look out the window. There’s one behind us, coming up on our right side. And there are three boats following us.

Rising with one knee and bringing VW2 to my hip, I peeked out the window. We were above land now, a yellow strip of sand licked by the sea. Ahead were the tops of trees, an emerald lake of foliage. Can’t we go any faster? I shouted and dropped back into place.

I’m trying, Michael said as a run of bullets hit the metal against my side. My muscles tightened, bracing for each blow, and a painful vibration rattled through my bones.

The opening in the cabin creates drag. It’s slowing us down. For some reason, I can’t engage the acceleration adapter.

It’s getting closer, Travel yelled. He brought his arm around my tingling shoulder.

The whup of helicopter blades hurt my ears, each chop a blast of sound and air. I closed my eyes and pressed my hands against VW2’s ears. The pounding of wind and whups increased.

I opened my eyes. Through the hole in the cabin, I saw the blur of blades and the chopper’s airframe. Through its opened door, a man in army green was visible, aiming a machine gun. My arms buckled as I pushed up from the floor to warn Michael.

Get down, I screamed, hoping he heard me. I could barely hear myself though the words burned my dry throat.

Michael turned toward the helicopter, snapped off his restraints, and slipped to the floor, taking cover under the control panel. A spray of bullets penetrated the cockpit. Sparks flew from the controls, and a canopy of thick black smoke obliterated my view of him.

It’s okay, baby, I said to VW2 between short breaths.

Travel slipped his arms around my waist, and I pulled VW2’s blanket over her face to shield her from the smoke. Her cheeks were warm and wet, and although I couldn’t hear her sobs, it was obvious she was crying.

Michael! I coughed against the foul air, nudging VW2 into Travel’s lap and lunging forward. But Travel’s hold was too tight.

No, he said against my ear and set VW2 back into my lap. Too dangerous.

I bent forward, clutching my gut with my free hand and blinking against the fumes of burning plastic. The flyer dipped, its engine popping, and just as its nose dropped, a pair of hands caught my legs and rode upward to my shoulders, each pull steadying my trembling body. A moment later, Michael was nuzzled at my other side, one hand holding my head against his chest and the other on VW2.

Are you all right? I called out, my voice wavering.

I am, but we’re going down, Michael said in my ear. I initiated the emergency landing gear before the panel blew. Brace yourself.

Hold on, sweetie, I said to VW2. We’re going to land. It’ll be a little rough, but we’ll be just fine, I promise.

It was a promise I hoped I could keep, and if I couldn’t, at least she had as much reassurance as I could give her.

I squeezed my eyes shut, and the whup of the chopper blades were replaced with the cold, hard rush of air as the flyer plunged downward, shaking and rocking side to side. I remembered that night in 2022. The flash of lightning and roar of rain. The scared faces of my Daniella, Ian, and my mother, every fiber of my being pulsing with fear and uncertainly. If I didn’t survive again, if history replayed itself, at least Michael could continue the program with VW2 and her sisters when he found them.

I didn’t remember our helicopter crashing to the ground in 2022. My memory of death was gone, but the thud that came next, as well as hitting my shoulder against the flyer’s roof, was painful, real, and memorable.

The flyer rolled to its left side, and we flopped with its momentum, knocking against each other as I managed to keep VW2 at my chest. As it came upright and threatened to tilt to the right, Michael wedged his body between the flyer’s frame and the seats, creating a barrier between us and the cabin’s hole.

With another sway to the left, the flyer settled horizontally, gave a final cushy bob, and with the snapping of tree limbs, settled into silence at last. A plume of dust entered the cabin. My clenched jaw relaxed.

Everyone okay? Michael asked, waving his hand in front of his nose as he sat up next to me.

Yeah, I said, echoed by Travel’s assurance he was, too.

What about you, sweetie? I said to VW2.

I’m okay, she whimpered.

The emergency landing equipment saved us. Wings extended to keep the flyer steady, and the bottom fanned to cushion our landing, Michael explained.

I kissed VW2’s forehead. Everything’s going to be all right now, I said. If only that was the truth. See, we’re all safe.

Michael stood, pulling me and VW2 up with him. I rewrapped my blanket, tucking in one end to hold it in place.

Hiding until we figure out what to do isn’t an option anymore, is it? Travel asked, rising from the floor.

No, they’ll be here any minute, Michael said. I’ll go outside and stand by the flyer to wait for them—

With your hands up, like this. I demonstrated. And I think we should go together so they see exactly who we are, two men, a woman, and a child—not Harrington and his security team.

Michael hesitated, sighed, and looked at the floor. Okay, the last thing we look is threatening in these blankets, but stay behind me, and if they— Michael shifted his eyes to VW2, and if they aren’t reasonable at first, slip back into the flyer until I can explain things.

I will, I said, securing VW2’s blanket around her. Hands up. You, too, VW2. Copy me. I lifted my arms. We don’t know the people who live here, so we need to let them know we want to be friends.

I want to go home. She pouted, her plump lower lip quivering.

"I know, but you need to be a big girl and do what I do. Be