The woman who looked like Tasha moved toward me, and I kept
my suddenly heavy blaster leveled on her chest. She hesitated, smile slipping
from her face. I wondered if Antov made it to his gun first and I was dead.
“Laka, are you going to shoot me?”
It sounded like her. It had to be her, but I knew it
couldn’t be. Neurons fired at a frantic pace, trying to make what I was seeing
match the reality I knew. But I couldn’t quite put the pieces together.
“Laka?”
I managed a weak, “who are you?”
“It’s me, Tasha. What is wrong with you? Did he hit you on
the head?”
“Tasha is dead.” Saying it out loud helped solidify realty.
She was dead. The memory of holding her
cool body and closing her eyes sprang vividly to the front of my mind.
“Laka we don’t have time for this. The sensors will see him
and the police will come,” she said, an edge of tension slipping into her
voice.
She stepped toward me and I found the strength to point the
gun with some conviction. She hesitated again; a flash of irritation was quickly
replaced with a smile.
“Of course I’m not dead Lakasha, I explained everything to you, “she said, now not
holding back her frustration. “I went to
my clone. Isn’t that why you are here? To save me? It took you long enough.”
My confidence was fading. She sounded like Tasha, and moved
like her. A locked away part of myself
start to wake from its month long sleep.
It wanted it to be true.
“Tasha was shot and killed on a station. There is no coming
back from that,” I said, confidence slipping from my voice.
“Lakasha I told you when you came to null sec about my
research. The implant, it worked! It was fast enough to scan my brain and send
the information to the clone receivers.” Excitement filled her voice as she
talked about the implant. If it wasn’t Tasha, someone had figured out how to
mimic her exactly.
She had told me about her research on the station. She spent
hours dragging me from one lab to the next showing me everything. I understood
that she had done something to make implants faster. She never mentioned
anything about an implant to make cloning possible outside of a pod. I would
have remembered that. That was Tasha though, always speaking in big scientific
terms in and expecting me to follow along.
I let my gun, suddenly very heavy, drop to my side. She quickly stepped around me to check on
Antov. After she bent over to check his pulse she stood and kicked him a couple
of times. Then she grabbed a bag and frantically started running around the room
packing.
I walked to the couch and let gravity pull me down. If it
had been a black hole I would’ve let it consume me instead of facing the storm
of thoughts and emotions that were overtaking me. My mind and soul had been void for over a
month. Every emotion I ever felt came flooding back in and it seemed like my
capacity to hold them had shrunk.
It felt like the room was collapsing on me as I set there
watching her buzz frantically around the room.
I tried to calm my breath before I hyperventilated or passed out. My life since Aikantoh was a flurry of rage
and blood. I had become a monster. I was
pushed beyond the edge of my humanity all for woman that was supposed to be
dead and was standing in front of me now.
“Okay, I have everything. We need to get out of here and get
to Reche III before anyone figures out what happened. Antov wasn’t working
alone and…”
It took a second to understand what she was saying, “Why
would we go to Reche station?”
She gave me that silly Lakasha smile, and for some reason it
pissed me off for the first time in my life. I felt anger shoot to my core. I used its energy to shake off the confusion and
focus on her. She seemed to recognize I was pissed but continued anyway.
“Peter Crane is there. He’s my research partner. He made the
thing you thought was a blue neon light in my room. It’s the signal booster for
the implants. One or two in a city is enough to grab the data from the implant
at the exact moment of death and sling it to the clone repeaters.”
My instincts told me she wasn’t telling the whole story. Either it was because she was naive enough to
think it didn’t matter, or because she was manipulating me. I realized it
wouldn’t be the first time for either.
“I contacted Peter as soon as I woke up in my clone. Geklov
must have told Antov about the implant. He
wanted it for himself. I’m not sure how Antov knew where my clone would wake
up, but as soon as I made the call to Peter a couple of Antovs’ friends grabbed
me. I am worried that Peter is in trouble.”
The story was plausible, but her stories always were. I felt a dull ache inside me. It was a miracle Tasha was standing in front
of me. I wanted to believe her. A part of me wanted to have her back in my life
and for everything to be ok. But warning
signals were going off in my head like a target lock. For the first time that I
could remember her words did not hold the weight they used to hold. I needed
time to sort through everything.
She sighed and said, “Laka I knew you would be okay, that is
why I called you in the first place. You are always okay. But Peter is just a scientist like me. He won't have a
chance against anyone.”
That I believed. If this man had been pulled into the vortex
that was Tasha Amira then I truly felt for him. More than once my life had
changed drastically thanks to her. My mind franticly flashed through all the
true pivot points in my life and she was always there.
I didn’t have the brain cells left to process the flood of
emotions and thoughts that were raging in my mind. Part of my mind raged
against the thick locks I had placed on my humanity. It wanted nothing more than to hug her and
hide in the lies of the past. The part
with its hope and love no longer held control, and I knew couldn’t let myself
trust Tasha, yet. All I knew was for my
sanity I had to keep moving.
I set my blaster on the couch. Without the scram chip I
wouldn’t be able to carry it with me. The power on the chip, now sitting on top
of Antov, should hold out long enough for us to get off the planet. As long as
no one found his body and set off the alarms we would be fine. We had to get
back to the station. From there, we would see if I was willing to help her
anymore.
The sun had set and most of the commuter traffic had already
left the planet for the day by the time we made it to the transport station. We
bought tickets and found seats on the next shuttle. I picked a seat away from
her, and spent the short ride trying to untangle the web of thoughts in my
head. There was something in the back of my mind that I needed to clear a path
to. Something important, but I couldn’t quite make it spring to the front of my
thoughts.
Once we were on the station we quickly bought Tasha a
shuttle and I jumped into a pod. It wasn’t until I plugged in that I knew I was
going to follow her to Reche to help Peter. I wasn’t sure if I was going to
help another poor soul who had found himself in trouble because of her, or if I
was going to keep an eye on her.
I waited for her shuttle to launch then I followed. I
initiated the launch and relaxed my control letting the pods data stream fill
my mind. It was a welcome break, deadening the storm of emotions and thoughts
flooding me. My mind was completely clear by the time the pod shot from the
launch bay.
Only one thought rang though my mind; had Tasha been in
the room behind me, or did she come in from outside?
