Chapter Six
Kill her? Who the hell was she involved with? Carter motioned for the escorts to leave.
Tears streaming down her face, Beth hugged herself and rocked.
Self-loathing battered his conscience, but he had to get at the truth. “Who are you? Who’s threatening you? What are they forcing you to do? Tell me. I can help you.”
Her shoulders shook with her misery.
He would always remember how he’d browbeaten an already-frightened woman into a confession. In his line of work, he dealt with the lowest of the low—traffickers, slavers, despots, terrorists. He did what needed to be done, and if that required terminating a sentient life form, he carried it out without remorse or recrimination.
This was the first time he’d felt like the scum of the galaxy, but he couldn’t ignore the hunch that while Beth may not be a criminal, she was being used by someone who was—somebody who’d threatened to kill her to secure her compliance.
He pressed forward. “Tell me who you are, who sent you. I can protect you. I promise they’ll never touch you.”
“Y-you can’t p-protect me. They’ll find me, wherever I go.”
“Who will?”
She didn’t answer.
He moved closer. “Listen to me. I can keep you safe. Protecting people is what Aym-Sec does. It’s what I do. Nobody can reach you.” Cyber Operations ventured into war zones, onto dangerous planets, and into enemy territory to rescue people. To keep a woman safe and sound at headquarters was no challenge at all.
Head bowed, she said, “If you have enough money, you can reach anybody.”
He went still. “You mean the O’Sheas?” It wasn’t hard to guess.
Her head shot up, her eyes wide with fear. “I didn’t say that.”
“The O’Sheas threatened you.” He stated it as fact. Most people might have trouble imagining upstanding citizens in the highest social class acting that way, but covert ops dispelled any illusions. Nothing surprised him anymore.
Trust me. Tell me. I can help you. She stirred something in him, and he realized he did want to help her. “What do they have on you? What are you not supposed to tell?”
She shook her head. “Don’t…please.”
He touched her shoulder and met her gaze. “I promise I will keep you safe. Look where you are.”
“I don’t even know where I am.”
“You see?” His mouth quirked in a small smile. “Aym-Sec is one of the most secure facilities in the galaxy, but besides that, I personally will ensure your safety. I pledge my life on it, but I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”
She took a deep breath. “I’m…I’m”—she twisted her hands—“a…a…clone.”
A clone. “Liza’s clone.” The DNA puzzle pieces fit together.
“Yes, I’m…Liza’s clone.”
“Tell me the whole story,” he coaxed.
“Liza was an only child. She was killed on a star safari fourteen and half years ago. Reuben and Georgetta were so grief-stricken, they refused to accept her death. They put her body in a cryo unit, but they weren’t willing to hope for science to provide a way to reanimate her. So, they extracted her DNA.”
The death process occurred slower than most people realized. Not all cells died at the same rate. Some, like stem cells, could live for weeks after an organism expired. “So they took DNA samples…and they cloned you.”
She nodded. “I was supposed to become Liza. I was cloned in a tank at Clo-Ventures. When my body had matured to Liza’s age—twenty-one—I was birthed. Clo-Ventures put me through months of indoctrination to teach me about Liza’s life and then delivered me to the O’Sheas.”
The whole business reminded him of pet owners who replaced one animal with another, except people weren’t interchangeable. “They tried to pass you off as Liza?”
She nodded.
“How could they get away with that? People had to know she had died.”
“They never went public, never reported the death. And with their money…”
“They bought their silence,” he concluded. No wonder he couldn’t find a death record. “Do you have any idea how she died?”
“On the safari...they visited a planet that wasn’t well charted. Liza fell into a gorge that went nearly to the planet’s core. They almost weren’t able to retrieve the body.”
Horrific. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “The O’Sheas told you?”
Beth shook her head. “Oh no, and I didn’t dare ask.” She rubbed her hands together. “Liza’s android valet told me. It traveled with her, had gone with her on the safari. The robo told me, and when the O’Sheas found out, they decommissioned it.”
“So, what happened between you and them?”
“In the beginning—the first few weeks after I’d arrived, they pretended I was Liza. Georgetta and Reuben had me call them Mom and Dad. They called me Lizzie and would talk about all the fun adventures ‘we’ had together in the past. Of course, I had no memory of those events, no emotional association to them. Although I had learned where Liza had gone to school, her interests and hobbies, the names and faces of the people in her life, memorizing historical facts can’t compare to being there when history was created. We had the same DNA, but we had different personalities, behaviors, emotions, reactions.
“Instead of soothing their grief, my presence reminded them of their loss, but they wouldn’t let me go because they feared public ridicule and censure if word got out.”
Probably they feared prosecutorial repercussions. Although they resided off world, the O’Sheas were Terran citizens. It was illegal on Terra to assume another’s identity and/or to employ the use of an AI unit or clone to deceive. The O’Sheas had broken the law.
“Why did you tell me you were Liza’s twin?”
“Terra is a big planet with a huge population. No one was supposed to connect me to Liza, except you recognized me right away. Twins are nature’s clones, right? How else could I explain why I looked so much like her? Why I had the same name? The O’Sheas had set up a problematic situation. They hated me using their daughter’s identity, but they’d covered up her death, and I looked like her and had her name.
“I got them to agree to allow me to leave if I promised to create a new identity and disappear.”
“You stayed with them for more than fourteen years,” he pointed out.
“You’re familiar with the saying, ‘wasn’t born yesterday’?”
He nodded.
“At twenty-two, I had been born yesterday. I wasn’t anywhere close to being ready to live on my own. My body and brain were mature, but I completely lacked any sophistication. I didn’t have the experience of a twenty-two-year-old. Though they detested me, they didn’t dare kick me out. They’re famous. What if I ended up as a pleasure worker or addicted to synthetic stardust? It would have reflected on them. They would be judged for turning their backs on their daughter—or they would be forced to admit they’d cloned her. So, they kept me hidden away on the satellite.”
“I started educating myself and began working on the O’Sheas to release me, by promising I could become somebody new. I applied for jobs—but with Liza’s lack of a degree and work experience, no one would hire me. I’d suggested that I go back to school and finish Liza’s degree, but that would have meant impersonating her, mingling with people who might have known her, and they were dead set against that. So they paid somebody to create credentials. In truth, they wanted me gone even more than I wanted to leave.”
“How did they threaten you?”
“They said if I told anyone they had cloned Liza, or that I was a clone, they would find out and make me very sorry.”
Carter narrowed his eyes. “Did they specifically say they would kill you?”
“Not in those words, but it was implied. There are many ways to get even. They have the money to do anything they want.”
He’d amassed a wealth greater than the O’Sheas, and they were not untouchable—not from a covert force like Cy-Ops. A simple order to his team, and the O’Sheas would vanish. They were lucky he operated on the side of right. He didn’t terminate people without due cause, but the O’Sheas were skating real close to the line.
He’d never met them, but he’d seen Liza’s vids of her parents. Haughty, aloof. Georgetta had had a silver spoon in her mouth and a stick up her ass. But, they hadn’t struck him as malicious. Not then. Grief did not excuse threatening an innocent woman.
“What are you going to do now?” She massaged her temple.
He should swoop in and impress upon the O’Sheas that their treatment of Beth violated human decency—but that would necessitate revealing she’d shared their secret. He could inform the authorities of the falsification of records and let the law deal with them, but that would ensnare Beth. Given their financial means, they’d get what amounted to a slap on the wrist anyway.
Though it pained him, the best way to handle it was do nothing. However, he’d keep a close watch on the O’Sheas. “Your secret is safe with me,” he said.
“Thank you.” She squinted, blinking rapidly.
“Headache?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Do you get them a lot?”
“Sometimes. They never last very long. It’s more like a series of jabs that go away.”
“Does massaging relieve the pain?”
“Not at all, but I feel like it should.”
“How long have you had them?”
“For as long as I can remember. I don’t recall a time when I didn’t have them.” Once she’d awakened in the maturation tank with a headache.
“Let’s do a more comprehensive scan. The medtech did one, but let’s have a specialist take a look at you.” He couldn’t exact justice on the O’Sheas, but he might be able to eliminate the headaches.