It doesn’t matter how detailed someone gets with a copy. Nothing in the known universe is the same. A fragment of difference makes something real.
The baby floating in her hands, her children—are they real?
She is doomed to a life of pain and punishment. The whole planet is sick, and she will be the one to destroy it.
Was this worth living for? Worth finding love? Was it worth having three children she never mothered?
Yes. No question. She wouldn’t have done anything different, except maybe fight harder for them. Because of their bond, she still has a purpose. She believes she can override extinction gene.
There has to be a way.
With the glowing tank baby in her hands, she climbs the ladder into a dark city below the network of caves. Below the home of the fragile devil.
There are tubes everywhere, wires so big they resemble resting snakes. Crude homes made from flimsy metal sheets line the road. Nearby, a pile of bodies, stacked. She can’t be sure anyone is still alive.
Someone did this. Someone is here and watching her.
There’s nowhere to run, so she walks forward.
She hears a noise; feet, running across a flat pavement. Rae stops in alarm. The sound circles around her. A girl’s laughter follows until both disappear.
Rae’s chest rises with a fearful breath. Deathly alarm chills her blood. Forced to continue, she narrows her vision and counts each step, occupying her mind as she taught herself to do years ago.
She walks under a tall ceiling made of stone. Excess drainage spills from small hollow reservoirs above, creating a damp atmosphere where strange mold grows and bugs collect to gather and stew for morsels of excess.
Rainwater collects inside large barrels. They’re filled to the brim.
Suddenly, one next to her tips. Dodging the barrel, Rae falls onto the ground as insects and small winged creatures of all kinds scatter over her body, toward safety in the cracks and crevices of the small city.
Trying to get away from them, Rae flings the last stragglers and rolls out of the water. “Ugh!”
Her voice echoes across the empty city.
“Great. I’m soaked,” she whispers.
She sees a set of eyes staring from one building. A body comes from the shadows. An omega, young. She exhibits no markings or characteristics of a clone.
She holds a blade.
“You—why are you following me?” Rae asks.
“I didn’t kill them,” she says, dropping the blade. “When I came in, they were already dead. I found this on the ground.”
Rae takes a step back, keeping the baby out of harm’s way. Though the omega is young, her stare is dead cold.
“You’re an omega. How are you alive?” Rae asks. “We’re supposed to be extinct.”
“I could ask you the same question,” the young omega says.
Rae fights the temptation to run as the omega walks toward her. “What is this place?” Rae asks.
The omega laughs. “You mean you don’t know? You’re beneath the Iron Eye,” she says.
“The Iron-what?”
“An abandoned particle accelerator,” she says. “Left over design from the first Republic. This is what caused the first detonation. Now, it kinda has a mind of its own. No one can get in or out.”
“But you did,” Rae says.