Page 68 of Scion

I shake my head dazedly, then rip off a clean bit of Smug Exec’s suit and start wiping down. A lot of things are suddenly clearer. Damn. “So you’re trying to find out what really happened at Oceanus, too.”

“Trying to confirm a suspicion, actually. A strong one.” Her humour fades to something grim, an aspect I never saw in her Dupe. “I hadn’t spoken to Landry in more than ten years—no contact, no tokens—he didn’t know I was alive, and I didn’t think anyone knew he had any connection to me. But I was still keeping an eye on his life. And when I realised someone was trying to kill him, I panicked. I set up a series of proxies, and through them, hired the best protection money could offer.”

“Wait. What?” I’m still reeling from the idea that she and Landry were even tangentially related, and this nearly breaks my brain. “Ugh. So… have I ever done any jobs where you didn’t secretly hire me?”

She chuckles, though it’s clearly tempered by the memory she’s dredging up. “For the couple of years before that, the Keres had been pushing to get me to adapt my research to cloning. But I’d been coming up with excuses. I’d already given them revs, and then flagged your original’s unique compatibility. Didn’t feel like a good idea to hand them anything more.”

She exhales. Suddenly, improbably, looking even older than usual. “After… after the bomb, the Keres weren’t sure you’d survive, so they begged me to accelerate things. Said they’d get me anything I needed. And then I found out, coincidentally, that Oceanus’s DeGov had recently taken DNA and brain scans of everyone in your building.” She falls silent.

“You thought you could bring Landry back.” A heartbeat where I feel a surging hope, and then crushing disappointment the next when I see her expression.

“I told the Keres that if they got the DeGov data for me, I could make it happen.” She hangs her head. “And when they said they’d only risk it if I could prove it would work first, I didn’t think there was much of a choice.”

I finish cleaning myself of the worst of the blood, and start up the stairs toward the terminal. Ah, hell. “So now you think the Keres… what? Knew about Landry being your son all along? Set the whole thing up? Blew up a hundred thousand people to motivate you?”

“No idea if they set it up or found out about the link after I hired you, but I think they blew up a hundred thousand people to keep their shareholders happy. And that you and Landry just helped choose which hundred thousand it was going to happen to.”

I pause, just short of the terminal. Frown up at the screen questioningly.

“Do you remember how there was a swing in public opinion in Oceanus, a few months after that controversial Ten-O-Ten expansion? A lot of concern, momentum to try and rescind the commercial aspects?” She sighs as I nod slowly. “All of that went away after the bombing. The amendment allowed pop vote to reclassify Talios agents into the same category as lifers. The Keres suddenly were not only popular, they had more crowdfunded contracts than they could handle for almost the entire year after. The whole thing meant that they were able to push through a broader Ten-O-Ten in most of the other megacities, too. It took them from being financially stagnant, maybe even a little precariously placed, to one of the biggest corps on the planet.”

She’s right; some of my first contracts back were Talios agents. Still. “You’re guessing.”

“They found out the questions I was asking, Azure, and then tried pretty hard to kill me. Bit of an overreaction to a bad guess. I think four years ago they finally realised I was deliberately holding back the cloning research, and so getting you and Landry in the same operation was a… convenience. A bonus.” A flash of heat and bitterness finally breaks through, at that last part. She takes a breath. Gives me a wry smile, and composes herself. “But if you want actual proof, it’ll be in that room, so… oh!” She disappears from the screen for a moment as she bends down. “Huh. What do you know.”

“What?”

She holds up a small box to the cam. “There was a modulator in here after all.”

I glower at her, then sigh and move over to the terminal. Tap on. It’s not even locked. “What am I looking for?” I flick to the terminal file system. It seems… sparse.

“Nothing in there, dear.” I look up at the screen with impatient expectancy. “I need that man’s head.”

“Sorry?”

“The one you killed. The data storage in there is biological. Part DNA-encoded and part memory based. The Keres couldn’t risk anything this sensitive being accessible by DeGov, even airgapped.” She’s vaguely apologetic. “Just cut it off. You should be able to find a portable cooler in the cafeteria downstairs. You get it to me, I’ll decode it, and we go from there.”

I stare at her for a moment longer, then sigh again. “Could’ve mentioned this before I got cleaned up,” I mutter, traipsing petulantly back down the stairs. “What if I’d crushed his head in by accident?”

“Important stuff is in the DNA. Brain’s just a bonus.”

“Great.” The snapped-off Argos claw is long and sharp, and the only viable head-severing implement in the room. I retrieve it, and get to work.

“What happened to the original version of me?” I ask while I saw.

“I don’t know; I only got access to your DNA and brain scan after the bombing. The answer’s probably in that head somewhere too,” she adds.

“So are there more of… me, I suppose… out there?”

“Other scions? Yes,” she admits, as I pause and look up. “But no more of you. I chose you for all this because you’re not like them. Why do you think we only assigned the AI to you, and gave the others i-neurals? You’re the one who needed the interaction, the sounding board, the spontaneity. Your memories were the same as the others’, and we experimented with emotional balances for each of you, but you… you always reacted like a person, Azure, not an advanced biomachine. The other scions talked as though Oceanus mattered to them, but you showed physical reactions to remembering it. And you were creative, too! You weren’t meant to feel guilt, or anxiety, or fear, or regret—none of you were—but the way you used humour to deflect suggested that they were all still in there, in some form. You have potential, Azure. Depth. I always felt like there was real humanity hiding in there somewhere.”

I give a final yank, and pull Smug Exec’s head from his body. “Wow. That’s flattering.” I stand, for the second time in two days holding a rather sad-looking severed head by its hair. “So how many others?”

“I don’t actually know how many scions were made active; they began shutting me out not long after the project finished. But there could be… a dozen of you?”

“A dozen,” I repeat flatly. “Of me.”

“Well, not of you. Like I said. More like Crimson.”