The Mortal Coil: Chapter 10

“I can still feel it.” Bob looked down at the stump that used to hold his hand, then back at Mr. Kane. “It’s gone, but I can still feel it.”

“A phantom limb,” Mr. Kane replied. “There’s therapy for that. You’ll get used to it.” He filled two glasses with a dark liquor as he spoke, the soft sound of the pouring liquid blending with his words in a stream of smoothness.

“I’m sorry, Robert. I had no choice. It was the only way.” He looked up at Bob, meeting his eyes and holding them for a brief second as he pushed one of the glasses across the teakwood table, then looked down and sighed.

“Old Fashioned. You like that, don’t you.” It wasn’t a question; more a statement.

Bob reached across with his good hand and lifted the glass, gently swirling its contents, watching as the red splash of the cherry liqueur began to fade into the drink. I don’t know. How could I? I haven’t been able to taste anything in years. Wondering, he took a sip, long and slow. He could feel the ice against his lips, could feel the cold of the beverage in his mouth, could feel its smoothness washing over his tongue and gliding down his throat. And then it was gone. Just like that. No taste. No aroma. No enjoyment.

Like life, he thought to himself, and set the drink down abruptly.

*   *   *

He had been sitting in this room for close to an hour now. Where it was, he did not know. He could see dark paneled walls, the thick carpet, some bookshelves, and the two dim lamps that cast a yellowish light. The twin high-backed wing chairs where he and Kane sat were apparently the focal point, set in a triangle with the low wooden table. Bob’s eyes wandered over the shadows, and came to rest once again on Mr. Kane.

The man was an enigma. Out of nowhere he had invaded Bob’s home, a home secured by layer after layer of security, and seemingly impenetrable. Not only that, but he had known what he would find. He had taken Bob, somehow removed his wrist device—and, Bob thought ruefully, his wrist as well—and had left as easily as he’d entered. It was almost too much to believe.

And that wasn’t all. He had told Bob who he was. You can call me Dad. I’m your father, Robert. The words echoed in Bob’s mind, over and over again, and Bob had instinctively latched on to them. In the last few hours, his world had been shaken. His family had been endangered. The organization he was working for was corrupted. Yet the words of the man in the other chair offered a security and a hope that Bob held on to like a lifeline. You can call me Dad.

Acceptance. That’s what Mr. Kane was giving him. To the team he worked with, he was something of a freak, a living contradiction that was better ignored than examined, a man who showed up, time after time, to investigate his own murder. To his wife, Brooke, whom he loved with an unreasoning tenacity, he was an imposter, a clone of the man she had married and loved. To his son Benjamin, he was almost as much of a mystery as his own father had been to him. From all of them, he had wanted to be accepted, to be respected as a man in his own right, as someone every bit as human as they were. And now, the man who had been forever absent in his life—who had, in a very real way, started his life—was sitting here with him, drinking Old Fashioned, and accepting him as a son.

“Robert.”

The voice shook him out of his reverie. Bob looked over at Mr. Kane. Even in the dim light, he thought the older man’s face looked concerned.

“Robert. They care nothing for you. You’re a commodity to them. This very moment, the people you have been working for are equipping a blank to take your place.” Kane leaned forward, his eyes on Bob’s. “Robert. Your wife and son. This isn’t fair to them.”

“Darn right it isn’t,” Bob thought aloud, then caught himself. How could I have let Brooke go through this? How could I have expected her to endure this, to have her husband murdered every morning, and still show up for dinner every night? It’s insane!

“I wish I had never accepted the offer,” he told Kane. “I wish I could have just lived a normal life, and died a normal death, and left it at that. Why didn’t I?”

Kane leaned back into his chair and took a sip. Looking into his glass, he allowed himself a slight smile.

“Robert, we have to shut it down. We have to stop them from doing this to people.” He set the glass down again, and leaned forward once more. “Rob, we must destroy the project!”

Something in the back of Bob’s brain nudged him. “Yes,” he answered. “Yes, they must be stopped.” He thought of a world full of Brookes, married to eternal men who resurrected in endless succession, a world without finality, where even death did not provide closure. “Yes, this has got to end.” He looked at Kane, his face flushing as the excitement of the idea hit home. Still, something deep down in his mind rebelled, a loyalty toward the organization that had taken away death from him. “Yes...” he repeated. The organization that had given him life. He stared at Kane. The organization that had created him over again.

“No!” Bob stood up violently, his face twisted and grimacing, alcohol and stress and pent-up emotions pulling on his features like a marionette’s strings. “No! I will not do it!”

Then the pain in his arm joined with the rush of blood to his head, Mr. Kane’s face faded into the dimness of the room, and the lamps winked and went out.

The Mortal Coil: Chapter 9

There were pellets of flesh on the wall and remnants of blood pooling on the floorboards. Clearly, this had been a close-range shot. And, according to the report, he had not survived it. But strangely, Bob thought, as he again surveyed the mess in the hallway before him, the body was gone. He had never seen that before. And even though his team had suggested to him that Nugent was just trying to find another way to mess with his psyche, Bob wasn’t convinced. There’s simply no reason he would take my body. What purpose for it would the Club have now that they didn’t have before? It just didn’t make sense.

“Are you alright, sir?” A voice penetrated Ludwick’s thoughts. The speaker was Nathan, one of the ops assigned to his team. Young and new to the program, Nathan was inexperienced, but he took the initiative whenever possible and was eager to please.

“Dandy,” Ludwick replied, the sarcasm clearly evident in his voice as he took another long look at the scene. It had been thoroughly photographed, 3D-imaged, and by now had probably even been holographically rendered back at the base for the virtual CSI analysts to review. Although all records of his home’s security feeds had been destroyed, the scene painted a clear picture. Glass on the ground and a broken sky-scraper above. The intruder got in through there, let himself down, and then shot me. Bob analyzed. Somehow . . . The guts on the wall had been positively matched to his DNA. The blood on the floor was also his alone. A stun gun had been found at the scene, with prints matching his own. And yet, that gun had never been utilized. I was blindsided, Ludwick realized. And yet, how could I have been? Certainly he would have been alerted to the sounds of breaking glass and concluded that an intruder was in house.

Clearly, he had been distracted when he had come into the hallway. That was the only explanation for how he had been shot down and murdered without even pulling the trigger of his own weapon.

Bob looked at Brooke, who stood in the doorway of her bedroom, watching them, but not saying anything. She had given her testimony and stuck to it: she had been awakened by a loud explosion – the gunshot – and had immediately rushed out of the bedroom, and into Benjamin’s room. The hallway was then, she said, as it was now – empty, with entrails on the wall and floorboards.

“I think we’re done here,” said Arnold Steinberg, the detective assigned to this case.

Steinberg threw a look at Bob as if to say we’re exhausting a dead end here, and Bob nodded. “Pack it up,” he said. “We’ll see what the word is back at base. Maybe they’ve got an idea about why the body would have been removed.”

“Beats me,” said Steinberg, waving at the team to clean up the scene. “But the Club’s a sick operation,” he continued, “and I wouldn’t put anything past them.”

Bob nodded thoughtfully, still thinking about the implications of the evidence. Something didn’t feel right. “I’m going to get some air,” he announced to no-one in particular, and headed downstairs and out the back door. He seated himself in a chair near the door, and reclined, looking out over his stately backyard, which was just now starting to get touched by the early morning rays of sunshine peeking up over the distant hills. He slipped into silent reverie. No matter how many times he did this, it didn’t get easier. But this time was different. He had awoken in the lab, at the base, approximately two hours before, and was immediately sent to investigate a murder. As was always the case, it had been his murder.

That hadn’t been strange; it was the way in which the investigation had been handled, and the oddness of the scene. His dead body was gone, killed by some sort of firearm, judging from the way in which his entrails had splattered, and he, himself, had not taken a single shot with his own weapon. Totally blindsided. Have I lost my edge? Or…was I distracted by something else?

Maybe a bit of both, but somehow it just didn’t add up.

The back door opened behind Ludwick, and Steinberg poked his head out. “We’re heading back to base, Bob,” he said. “You coming?”

“In a bit,” Ludwick said, without looking at Arnold. The investigation went too fast; not enough thought put into it, Bob thought. He needed some minutes to privately look over the scene without interruptions.

“Will you be alright?” Steinberg pressed, showing a rare sign of concern.

Bob stiffened visibly in response to the assumption of the question. “I am alright,” he corrected. But something was nagging at Bob’s mind. The murder was more or less identical to the two-dozen or so that had preceded it, but why would they have taken my body? Why . . .?

The door closed behind him as Steinberg retreated back into the house, and, in a few moments, Bob heard the engines of the law enforcement vehicles start up. A whir of hydrogen-powered turbines and low-frequency whines ushered them down the driveway, and past the gatehouse; beyond his property limits.

Bob usually had a pretty good idea what he’d see, and the evidence he’d find at his murder scenes. And it all typically pointed at the club. But this time . . .

“Bob?”

Bob jerked around in his seat, shocked at the sound of his name being uttered. It wasn’t the fact that he wasn’t used to hearing his own name being pronounced, or even the fact that he hadn’t heard the door open, that surprised him. No, it was the voice that spoke his name. How long had it been since he had heard that voice speak his name . . . and in a non-threatening tone?!

Brooke.

She stood just outside the door – facing him, her features thinly accentuated by the slivers of early-morning sunlight.

“What?” Bob said, and then inwardly cursed his thick-headedness. What?! Is that all you can muster, man? It occurred to Bob that though he had thoroughly planned out what he would say to Brooke if she ever seemed willing to have a civil conversation with him, now that the opportunity suddenly seemed to afford itself, no words were coming to his mind. Perhaps it’s the fuzziness that always accompanies the first few hours, he thought. But he moved nearer to Brooke hoping that his brain would find the words. All thoughts of the murder, the blood on the floor, the guts on the walls, and the missing body, were gone. Bob had only one thought preeminent in his mind.

Brooke had just said his name.

If that had taken Bob by surprise, what came out of Brooke’s mouth next threw him completely off-balance.

“You didn’t die.”

He stopped in front of her, staring into her eyes, trying to comprehend what she had just said, and not finding himself quite able to do so.

“I don’t understand,” he fumbled, shocked at the unexpected turn. “But . . . they told me that exactly thirty-seven seconds after the skylight security system registered a breach, my vitals flatlined.”

“You didn’t die,” Brooke repeated, her brown eyes now visible in the growing light. Many cumulative years of investigative work, field operations, and interaction with criminals had sharpened Bob’s awareness of human thoughts and emotions, and several were evident in those orbs. Fear, pain, sadness . . .

But she’s not lying. He could see that clearly.

Hit with the sudden revelation and unable to withstand the rush of thoughts which accompanied it, Bob scrambled for absolutes in his life. The people he loved. Protect them. They were all he had. “Where’s Benjamin?” he said abruptly.

“Sleeping in the guest room,” Brooke answered quickly.

The guest room was just inside the back door and a few steps down the hall.

“Let’s go inside,” he said, trying to gather his thoughts. Brooke turned without a word, and walked straight to the guest-bedroom door. She opened it softly, and peeked inside.

“He’s asleep,” she said as she turned back to face him.

Briefly caught up in the moment, Bob stared at Brooke without saying anything. Benjamin is safe, and my wife is speaking to me again. He didn’t know exactly what to feel, but it was all . . . just . . . too much.

“Bob,” Brooke said, forcefully this time, “I saw it happen; I saw the intruder who shot you. I saw it all.”

“What . . . ?”

“We don’t have much time,” she interrupted him, her face creasing with evident urgency. “How much time before your next memory upload?”

Bob checked his watch.

“Eight minutes. But Brooke, what do you mean I didn’t die? If you saw him shoot me then . . .”

She pulled something small and black out of her pocket and held it up.

The object was vaguely familiar to him. Benjamin’s tape?

“Come on,” she said, grabbing his hand and leading him down the hallway and into the kitchen where a cassette player was already plugged into a wall-socket.

“Brooke, what are you doing? What about Benjamin?”

“I think we’re all safe for the time being, Bob,” Brooke said, her eyes boring into his with great intensity. “As long as they don’t suspect anything, we should be okay. But,” she cast a fleeting glance at his watch, “we don’t have much time.”

“What do you mean?” Bob interjected, feeling weak and slightly panicked. “What are you saying?”

Brooke popped the cassette tape into the player, pressed play, and said, “Just listen.”

Bob started to protest, and then stopped. And listened to the voice that was emanating from the tiny speaker.

My voice.

__________________

When the voice trailed off, Brooke stopped the tape.

“How much time until your next upload?”

“Three minutes,” Bob said, still trying to process what the voice had just said. What my voice said. He understood it all, but how could it be true?

“Three minutes,” Brooke repeated. She paused for two significant seconds, seconds she used to stare directly into Bob’s eyes. “Do you trust me?”

Bob paused. Do I trust you? He felt sweat trickle past his hairline and slide over his wrinkled brow. Wrinkled with concentration. Wrinkled with experience. Wrinkled with distrust, with pain, with anger, with fear. Riveted by the despair of felt rejection, inflicted upon him by the one who now stared him full in the face and asked: “do you trust me?” Trust you? Do you know what you have done to me, Brooke?

Time’s ticking.

Do you know what you’ve done?! He felt like screaming into her quiet, firm, and resolute face all the things that had been bottled up inside of him for so long, thoughts and emotions that had been seething, roiling, aching to be released; to be vocalized.

Tick-tock, Ludwick. What’s it going to be?

Bob understood the severity of the situation. In approximately one hundred and fifty seconds this entire conversation will be uploaded to the servers at HQ for the instant review of the Monitors. And then they will know everything that has been said. Everything I’ve thought. Can I trust them? Can I trust you, Brooke?

“If you can’t trust me, will you trust yourself?” Brooke nodded significantly at the tape player.

Can I even trust myself? Bob felt so confused; so manipulated. He desperately yearned to trust, to believe the truth . . . but what was true?! He stared desperately at the tape player, and then at Brooke. If Brooke was lying and he resisted her and this conversation ultimately ended up at HQ, his loyalty for the organization would be confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt, and he would probably be given free reign to conduct the rest of the investigation of the Club without any excessive monitoring by the agency’s bureaucratic upper-echelons. But if Brooke was right, then everything else he had known was a lie, and she was his only hope at learning the truth.

You didn’t die.

She knew the truth.

He checked his watch again. Ninety seconds.

Tick.

Tock.

“What happened, Brooke?”

Brooke looked at him for another long moment.

“He didn’t kill you,” she said. “I saw it all, from the closet.”

Bob knew what she was referring to. The “closet” was a small room between the wall of Bob’s room and Brooke and Benjamin’s room, accessible from both of their closets. Outfitted with food rations and a video monitor that revealed all security feeds in and outside the house, the closet was an ideal place to hide in the event of danger, and provided the occupants with a view of what was going on outside.

“I heard footsteps on the roof . . . and then glass shattering,” she said. “So I grabbed Ben and ran into the closet.” She paused again. “I could see a tall, lanky man in the hallway. Before the camera feeds were destroyed, that is. I could see him. I couldn’t see his face, though, because he was wearing a mask, but he was also carrying some sort of firearm. He hid himself in the closet at the far end of the hall, and when you came upstairs . . . he came out . . . and, shot you.”

“But I thought you said I didn’t die . . .”

“You didn’t,” Brooke said, shaking her head fervently.

“But what about the blood?!” He shouted. “It’s mine, isn’t it?!”

Brooke looked at the hand that bore the watch, and nodded. “It’s yours.”

“But then . . .?”

“There isn’t enough time,” Brooke yelled suddenly, cutting him off. She grabbed the tape player off the counter, pushed the red “record” button, and held the player in front of his face.

“Do you trust me, Bob?” She asked again.

For a moment Bob said nothing. Then, resolutely, he squelched the objections that had instantly arisen in his mind and spoke three words firmly “I do, Brooke.”

Brooke pressed the “stop” button, ran to the sink, and picked up a tall drinking glass that was sitting there. As she carried it towards him, he could clearly see the strange, brownish-looking liquid sloshing around inside of it.

“What’s th—?” he started to ask, but Brooke put a finger up to his lips, silencing him.

“Just drink it,” she commanded, taking another look at the watch, now appearing to glow eerily as the tiny digital numerals blinked in the upper left-hand corner of the display.

18, 17, 16, 15, 14 . . .

“Drink it now,” she urged.

Bob gave Brooke a piercing look, and then, without a word, took the glass, and drank it down.

For a few agonizing seconds in which they both wondered what would happen, nothing did.

And then, as the digits winked 5, 4, 3 . . . the glass dropped out of Bob’s hands, and he slumped forward, unconscious.

The Mortal Coil: Chapter 8

Jeremiah Footbridge brought the lighter up to his face and ignited the deadly vice he held in his lips in the cold wind. The flickering light illumined his face eerily and cast a blinking, exaggerated, and sinister-looking shadow on the side of the shipping container over which he stood guard. Footbridge inhaled deeply, ingesting the nicotine smoke into his lungs while simultaneously flicking his wrist to close the folding lid on the Zippo. He tucked it into his jacket pocket with one hand and withdrew the cigarette from his mouth with the other. As he looked around the area, ensuring its security, he discharged the foul and noxious smoke in a slow and wispy exhale before putting the thing back into his mouth. He tried to ignore it, but he couldn’t help but hear the sounds of unpleasantness coming from within the container. Dull thumps, rattling chains, and cries of anguish echoed inside the metal walls and out the slightly ajar container door and into the night. This had gone on for more than two hours, and Jeremiah was almost out of smokes.

Three other men stood immediately near the container, and at least a dozen more patrolled the docks. All were heavily armed and serious about their jobs. Footbridge had taken part in the capture of the man enduring the beating within the container, but he forced from his mind any feelings of guilt. This man had made a pretty big mistake, and had annoyed people in high places. What a moron, Footbridge thought with a shake of his head. He flicked the ashes from his smoke and took another drag. The Club had its own agenda, and if one didn’t cooperate with it, one was as good as dead.

“Footbridge,” came a commanding voice from the container. “It’s time.”

“Comin’”, Footbridge replied. He took one last long drag, burning the tobacco down to the filter. He flicked the spent butt into the night and exhaled again, this time more rapidly. He was a little nervous, as this was his first actual kill. He pulled the .38 revolver from his hip holster under his jacket and ejected the cylinder to check again for cartridges.

Yep, he thought, still full he confirmed, noting that the same rounds he’d loaded earlier were still there. He’d checked several times since they’d told him he’d be the trigger man for this one, but still somehow felt the urge to check again. Even hit men get nervous, he thought in a vain effort to comfort himself.

Jeremiah strode as confidently and sturdily as he could toward the container. McGavin, the owner of the voice which had just called him, looked over with a grim expression only Dirk could make, and nodded. Jeremiah acknowledged the grim look with an attempt of his own, but he merely looked as afraid and nervous as he was.

“Footbridge,” Dirk said, stopping Jeremiah in his tracks. “You done good tonight.” McGavin wasn’t looking at Jeremiah as he said these words. He was busy unwrapping the blood-soaked tape from around his knuckles. Jeremiah didn’t notice that Dirk wasn’t looking at him, because he was also distracted by the bloody tape, which uncoiled like a twisted crimson serpent as it was removed from Dirk’s cruel hands.

Footbridge acknowledged the praise with a nervous nod and entered the container. It was much brighter than he’d expected inside, as there were a pair of fluorescent lanterns suspended by wires from the ceiling. The container was completely empty except for the lanterns and a single chair, to which was chained all that remained of a once proud man. The man was conscious, though he’d been beaten so badly it was hard to tell. He was slumped forward in the chair, upright only because he was chained tightly to its back. His face was what slumped, and a large drop of blood was forming on the tip of his swollen nose, the destination point of several small gravity-powered streams of blood and sweat which converged and accumulated on his nose and ultimately dripped onto his torso. His ears were battered and torn, his eyes swollen closed, his face and head adorned with cuts, gashes, bruises, and abrasions.

“Hey man,” Footbridge said, gazing during his moment of hesitation at his battered co-worker, “Nothin’ personal”. As he raised his revolver and aimed it at the victim’s face, the man slowly raised his bruised and bloodied head and, struggling, managed to crack open one of his eyes. Through two split, bleeding, and swollen lips, he drooled blood, saliva, and tooth fragments as he muttered “please…”

Footbridge squeezed the trigger, filling the container for a sudden instant with a deafening blast of noise which echoed unforgivingly all around him. The target’s head rocked backwards, suddenly improving his posture in the chair and immediately thereafter causing the chair to fall backwards with a second crash onto the container floor. Footbridge lowered his pistol and, in shame, his head.

TWELVE HOURS EARLIER

Rob emerged from his hotel room, excited and nervous for his revenge. It was 8:30 a.m., and he had an hour to get to Jim’s Burgers. As he made his way out onto the street, he reviewed again the plan he’d gone through with Kane, and went over in his head his responsibilities in the mission. It wasn’t that complicated, actually. His appearance would likely make it easier to get into the building. Kane had explained that he had intelligence on the security system, and that Rob would need only a thumbprint, retina scan, and a voiceprint ID. Kane even knew the passphrase he had to recite. Once in, they’d be among unarmed technicians, helpless clone blanks, and sensitive electronic equipment. A few well-placed rounds would take out the brains of the operation, and a few well-placed explosive charges would take care of the technology. It would take months for the government to recover, and the disaster might actually make them scrap the program altogether.

Rob was distracted by the plan, and out of practice. This particular clone of Bob Ludwick hadn’t been to a target range in quite some time, and hadn’t run an operation since he’d escaped from the program. He’d been on the run for a while, but somehow Kane had led the authorities to believe that Rob was dead, and they’d become comfortable enough with the idea that they’d proceeded in the line of clones. Rob’s disappearance, however, had caused them to change their procedures, and they had gone to a remote wristwatch memory backup system which doubled as a tracking device and simultaneously provided them with the ability to keep tabs on the Bob Ludwick clones.

Rob stepped out of the hotel lobby and onto the street. He would walk to the burger joint, scope it out, and then find a secluded spot to wait for Kane’s arrival. Public transportation wasn’t an option with the facial recognition software employed by the government security camera computers. Rob pulled his collar up and put on his sunglasses. But he wasn’t fooling everyone.

Across the street, waiting in a dark sedan, Brendan Stillwater watched the hotel. Stillwater was still trying to make his way up the ladder in The Club, but his present role was revenue generator. He was responsible for thefts and drug sales, but he excelled at debt collection. While extracting money from someone by way of brass knuckles, he’d received a tip that detective Ludwick, The Club’s sworn enemy, was staying at the Royal Palms hotel on Durilla Street. Ever since failing to appear for the mayoral hit, Brendan had been relegated to small-time work, and hadn’t been entrusted with anything of significance to The Club’s agenda. This piece of intelligence, Brendan thought, was his ticket to the big time. Killing Ludwick was something that, insofar as Stillwater was aware, The Club had tried and failed to do numerous times. Nugent was supposed to be the premier hit man, but he’d been unable to kill this target, as far as Brendan was aware, and now a lowlife debtor from whom Brendan was required to collect had given him a tip that could catapult Stillwater to a premier hit man post in The Club.

Stillwater stepped out of the car and followed Rob at a safe distance. Rob, out of practice, failed to notice his tail, and foolhardily traversed the distance between the Royal Palms and Jim’s Burgers in the most direct route. This route made it less obvious that Brendan was tailing him, as it involved a direct route in an easterly direction from the hotel to the corner of Durilla and Mangrove, at which intersection Jim’s Burgers was situated.

Brendan stopped, ostensibly to read something on his PDA, and watched as Rob scouted out the intersection. That must be his destination, Brendan observed as Rob looked conspicuously around. Rob retired to the alleyway behind the burger joint, just beyond Brendan’s view. Brendan slid his PDA back into his jacket pocket, removed his Sig Sauer P226 from its holster and sprinted to the corner of Durilla and the alley. He stopped and peeked subtly around the corner. Rob was walking South, his back to Durilla street, toward the cover of a dumpster behind which he could crouch until Kane arrived. Brendan stepped into the alleyway, his right hand clutching the grip of his instrument of destruction, concealed behind his right hip, muzzle down. Brendan’s trigger finger was pointed at the ground, ready to grasp the trigger on a moment’s impulse. Rob checked his watch, confirming that he was early. It was 9:15.

Rob turned towards the dumpster, and saw in his peripheral vision Stillwater’s hulking silhouette. His adrenaline suddenly spiked and he turned to face his assailant. For a split second the two faced each other, faces locked in serious and alarmed expressions, hands out of sight, minds rapidly processing the situation and assessing the danger.

Rob reached inside his coat for his weapon, but he was at a tactical disadvantage, as Brendan already had weapon in hand. Brendan presented his pistol, clutching it in two hands, legs spread apart so that his stance was just wider than his shoulders. Before Rob could withdraw his own firearm, Brendan fired twice, his hollow-point rounds finding their target. The first struck Rob in the throat, obliterating his trachea and severing his jugular vein. The second round shattered his sternum and penetrated his pericardial sack whereupon it tore through the right ventricle of his heart before lodging in his spine.

Brendan rushed forward, looking awkwardly around himself to see if anyone witnessed his crime. His pulse was quickened, his adrenaline pumping. He looked down at Rob and the grisly mess of blood that had been created by the first round.

“Stillwater!” came a voice behind him. He spun around only to see Mr. Kane standing at the entryway of the alley. “What’s going on here?” Kane demanded.

“I got him!” Brendan shouted giddily. “I got Ludwick!” Brendan grinned from ear to ear, excited that his crime was witnessed by someone of such high rank in The Club.

“Let me see,” Kane responded, concealing his true reaction to this news rather well. He approached.

“Nice shooting,” Kane said. “What weapon did you use?”

“This one, sir,” Brendan held up his pistol, pointing it safely into the air.

Kane was at least twenty years older than Brendan, and not nearly as big. Stillwater was an intimidating and large fellow, easily seventy pounds heavier than Kane. But what Kane lacked in size he more than made up for in quickness. Before Brendan knew what happened Kane had delivered a swift punch to his throat with his right hand and then, just as quickly, snatched the pistol from Brendan’s suddenly weakened grip with his left.

Brendan instinctively grabbed his throat with one hand and put his other out, palm forward as if in protest, but Kane spun and kicked him in the solar plexus. As Brendan doubled over from the sudden blow, Kane delivered another punch to his right temple. Brendan spun to his left, and as he did so Kane delivered a debilitating kick to Brendan’s right leg. As the kick was delivered, Brendan’s terror was multiplied by the crunching sound made by his tearing ligaments. His MCL having suffered a 75% tear, Brendan’s leg could no longer support his weight, and he collapsed to the ground.

As Stillwater lay writhing on the pavement, Kane withdrew his communication device and called for assistance from The Club. More thugs were on their way.

“Brendan,” Kane said as he stood over the grimacing thug. “You aren’t as smart as you think. You see, The Club has its own agenda, and morons like you are not on the committee setting the agenda. We have a plan, a strategy. We tell people like you what to do and when to do it, and we decide what you’re useful for. You are not! Paid! To! Make! Decisions!” Kane shouted the last sentence, punctuating each word with a swift kick to Brendan’s ribcage.

“Please!” Brendan sputtered, “please stop! I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” he cried, his battered body shuddering with each sob.

A black van came around the corner into the alleyway, its tires squealing as it backed up and stopped just shy of the dumpster.

“Load him in, and get rid of that body,” Kane ordered as he disappeared from Brendan’s sight around the front of the vehicle. “Take him to the docks, we need to talk to him.”

Two thugs came up, both of whom Brendan recognized.

“Stan, please! Jeremiah! Nooooooo!”

“Shut up,” Van Wooten ordered, striking Brendan on the forehead with a collapsible baton before he slapped a pair of cuffs onto Brendan’s arms, pulling them behind his back. Footbridge cuffed his ankles, and then a third pair of cuffs was used to fasten his legs to his arms. The pain in Brendan’s crushed knee was excruciating as the cuffs were applied, and then made worse as Stan and Jeremiah struggled to lift his hulking body into the van. They clumsily bashed his already broken knee into the trailer hitch, and then pulled on his right ankle to roll his body in far enough to get the doors closed.

Brendan cried out in pain, his big mouth gaping open and his eyes wincing. Footbridge crammed a soiled handkerchief into Brendan’s mouth to muffle the noise, and slammed the door closed. Brendan spent the next forty-five minutes bouncing around in agony in the back of the van before he arrived at the shipping docks on the East side of town.

The doors swung open, revealing Dirk McGavin, Jeremiah Footbridge, Stan Van Wooten, and Mr. Kane standing outside the doors of a secluded shipping crate.

Oh no! Brendan thought, panicking at the sight. I’ve been here before! I guarded the container when they tortured someone here before! He knew what was coming, and suddenly lost control of his bladder.

“Oh, sick!” Shouted Stan as he and Jeremiah wrangled Brendan’s struggling body from the van. “He just wet himself!”

Jeremiah burst into laughter and, to avoid getting any on himself, released his grip on Brendan’s arm, allowing him to fall out of the van and onto the ground. Brendan was immobilized in pain, as he’d landed on his right knee. The two other thugs wrestled him into the storage container and chained him to a chair.

For the next several hours Brendan was beaten mercilessly. At first they let the energetic Stan Van Wooten beat him with the baton with no apparent purpose, and then, in the early afternoon, Nugent began working him over, asking questions as he went. The questions began fishing for information from Brendan on his source of information, how he’d found Rob, and what he knew about Detective Ludwick. Then in the early evening Nugent left and McGavin began in earnest, beating and torturing Brendan until he couldn’t speak anymore.

McGavin stepped toward the door to the container and began to unwrap the bloody tape from his knuckles. “Footbridge!” he called out.

Once outside, Dirk looked at Kane. “This is a mess,” he said. “Looks like the poor guy just stumbled onto information on who he thought was Detective Ludwick, and he took him down to gain status in The Club.”

Kane shook his head in anger and disgust. He heard the report of Jeremiah’s .38 echo forth from the container. “I’m working on Plan B, but he’s only got one hand. I’m not sure he’s gonna be as useful as Rob would have been.”

McGavin nodded, as he crumpled the bloody tape into a wad and tossed it irresponsibly into the harbor. “Well, as long as you’ve got him convinced you’re his dad, and that taking down the cloning agency is noble and just, he’ll have to do.”

“He believes me,” Kane replied as he pulled the bottle of Jack Daniels out of his jacket pocket and took a swig. “He lost his hand when the watch blew, but even one-armed he may be more capable than Rob. Rob was rusty, and one of the earlier clones. He didn’t have as much training as this one does.”

“Yeah,” said McGavin, “but getting in will be the hard part now. How’re they not gonna notice his stump when he tries the retina scan, thumbprint, and voice print ID? What if they want the thumbprint from his missing hand?”

“We still have the hand,” Kane replied as he passed the bottle to Dirk. “I’ll work out the details.”

The two paused to watch Jeremiah and Stan drag Brendan’s corpse out to the boat. They dumped it into the back, tossed a few cinder blocks in next to him, and motored out into the harbor to dispose of their handiwork.

“You’d better,” McGavin reminded Kane. “For your sake and mine. The Club won’t tolerate failure.”

“I’m getting good intelligence from inside. As far as I can tell, the new Bob Ludwick clone still doesn’t know that we have access to his thought recordings. We’ll remain a step ahead of him.”

McGavin nodded, took another drink from the bottle, and, after wiping his mouth on his sleeve, returned it to Kane.

The Mortal Coil: Chapter 7

As Bob slowly regained consciousness he wondered if he would ever again know a day when his head didn't throb for one reason or another. The pain is his head was quickly replaced by another sensation which went beyond pain, far beyond. It was his hand, and to say it hurt would be like describing a vat of molten steel as "hot". Trying to assess the damage visually Bob realized that everything was out of focus, most likely caused by the combination of being rendered unconscious by blunt force trauma to the head, and whatever it was that was tormenting his hand. Bob tried to bring his injured hand closer to his eyes, but only led to the revelation that his arms, legs, and upper torso had been securely taped to a chair. Trying to free himself only succeeded in sending more pain to his already tortured hand.

He relaxed his muscles and let out a defeated sigh and began looking around the room. Things were still quite foggy but he could see a single ball of light which appeared to be hanging not too far from where he was being held. It was a strange warm yellow color which was quite different from the bleach white of the government mandated compact florescent bulbs. This light reminded him of the incandescent light bulbs that were still in use when he was a child, in fact now that he thought about it, the smell of this room brought back memories as well. He remembered going down to the cellar and having to jump up to pull the chain on the light fixture which hang in the center of the room. This made the light dance around as the bulb would swing due to his yanking method. The memory felt good, it was the best pain reliever he had at the moment. He also remembered imagining monsters that lived in the cellar, some of his creations were so frightening that his heart would beat hard as he descended the stairs. Leaving the door at the top of the stairs provided some residual light but it also served to cast eerie shadows, and you still had to travel into the middle of the shadow filled room to pull the chain. He knew deep down that his monsters were fiction but being scared was thrilling and so deep down is where he liked that knowledge to stay.

The sound of footsteps and creaking wooden stairs brought Bob back to the present, and the pain in his hand seemed to rush back. "Who's there?" Bob's words didn't come out as demanding and forceful as he had hoped. There was no answer but the footsteps which were still drawing closer. Bob's vision had improved but the person was now in front of the one light source in the room so all that he could make out was a silhouette. "Where's my wife!?" Bob managed to strike the intended tone this time "What have you done with my son!?" Bob was breathing hard and his hand didn't seem to hurt as much when the mysterious figure finally spoke "Your family is fine. I had to assume that your home was wired so the gun shots were just for show." The man's voice was calm and sure, but it didn't put Bob's mind at ease "Where are they!?" he snapped back "I honestly don't know. Where would they go if someone broke into the house, fired off a few rounds, and you were missing?" the man paused a moment and then continued "Look, I didn't have a lot of time. You have that place locked down pretty tight, so I had to get you out quick. Brooke and Benjamin were scared, sure, but that might not be such a bad thing considering the situation."

Before Bob could ask him what exactly was the situation, another rush of pain moved through his hand and he let out a grunt of discomfort. "Oh yeah, your arm" the man (who's name was still a mystery) said, and as he knelt down Bob noticed that the he had a spool of gauze in his hand, My arm? Bob thought it's my hand that kills and for the first time since his eyesight had improved he looked to see what damage had been done to his hand, only to discover that it was far worse than he could have imagined but a very good explanation for the amount of pain he was feeling. "I am sorry about this Bob, but it was really my only option." said the man as he began to unravel the old blood soaked gauze "I've got it on ice, but I don't think you can risk going to the hospital." Bob's hand had been removed at the wrist, a very light tan line of his agency issue watch was visible among the spattering of dried blood on his arm. "You took my hand!? Why!? Why, would you do that!?" Bob knew the reason as soon as he asked it and the man could see that he had put it together as Bob stared at the outline on his arm, so he asked a new question, one that didn't have such an obvious answer "How did you remove the watch?" "Well..." the man began pridefully "...turns out that your high tech agency wrist mounted memory upload device can't tell a real pulse from a simulated one. So it was really just a matter of removing your hand, which was made easier by the fact that you were unconscious, and then sliding the watch onto a foney wrist with a simulated pulse. Unfortunately it can only simulate the pulse, so when they tried to upload a new set of memories it came back blank, and they will no doubt track down the watch, which is far, far away from our current location. The next question is whether they will put a new Bob into service without a confirmed kill on you, I happen to know the answer to this question as well, but I don't want to spoil the surprise"

"So you're from The Club?" Bob asked, it was more of a statement than a question. "Heck, no!" replied the mystery man as he unwound the last bit of old gauze and tossed it into a bin, Bob could now see the stump where his hand had been "If I was a Club man Brooke and Benjamin would be at the bottom of a lake, and you would be a lot worse off than a missing hand." The man got up and walked over to a cupboard, Bob was fixated on his wrist, he could swear that he still felt pain in his hand as he asked the man "So if your not from The Club then how do you know so much about me and my family?" the man grabbed a bottle of something from the cupboard and began walking back to Bob "Well, that hasn't been easy. Ever since you were adopted by the Ludwig's, wonderful couple by the way, I have kept my eye on you" This pulled Bob's attention away from his injury "Who are you?" Bob said "My name? My name is Peyton Gamble but nobody calls me that anymore, mostly people call me Mr. Kane. But you can call me Dad...I'm your father Robert." the man produced a bottle of Jack Daniels and twisted off the cap, he took a swig and said "a little for me..." he put a small stick in Bob mouth which was wide open from shock "...and a lot for you, bite down son, this is gonna sting".