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".

The Mortal Coil: Chapter 6

Rob woke up in a sticky pool of vomit, and he hoped it was his own. All he could smell was the “Old Fashioned” so he was sure it was. For a brief moment, he wished he could go back to sleep and not wake up. In some ways, death would be a welcome relief. On the other hand, he had died many deaths already. Countless times he had died, killed by members of The Club. Was it dozens? Hundreds? Usually, you would think a person would hold great animosity to an organization that had killed you time and time again. While members of The Club would not be on his Christmas card list anytime soon, he had a greater hatred for the people that had put him in this position.

It would have been so much preferable to him (and probably his family) that he would have left this Earth the first time he had been gunned down. What happened to his soul the first time he was killed? He could not shake the feeling that God hadn’t intended for there to be a reset button. After you died, you were supposed to be on your way. Heaven or Hell, depending on what kind of life you had led. He had always figured he would go to Heaven. He had led a life of good, and was overall a decent person. But how would he explain his multitudes of deaths to his Creator?

These thoughts clouded his mind, and how he longed for death. He felt like a dying man in the desert: except that he didn’t want water, he wanted death. As his head cleared, the desire for a final death cleared. No, no, not yet. He had a plan. Now that he remembered this plan, he was wide awake and clear-headed. It lit up his mind, like turning on a neon sign. And it was time to start putting the wheels in motion.

Sitting up, he saw the he was in his seedy hotel room. It wasn’t exactly clean, but it was remarkably free of vermin, so he was fine with it. Besides, not staying in the Hilton helped keep him off the radar. Both members of The Club and his former organization were looking for him. He took a quick shower, not because he cared much about his personal hygiene, but not smelling like vomit and liquor would help to not draw attention to himself.

He would meet Mr. Kane at the Jim’s Burgers fast-food joint on the corner at 9:30AM. They would begin their plan that night, striking at the heart of the cloning organization. Before the night was over, Toby Williams would be dying the death that Rob sometimes longed for. It was a temporary fix, but waxing the brain in charge of cloning would certainly slow them down a little. That extra time would allow Rob and Mr. Kane to execute the rest of their plan, if they were lucky.

Rob sat waiting in a corner booth in the mostly empty restaurant, waiting for Kane to show up. He was late, as usual. Rob sat and contemplated his sorry excuse for a breakfast sandwich. Rob had absolutely no appetite, and couldn’t remember the last time he had tasted anything. Cardboard had as much taste to him as any food; if it had any nutritional value, he could have just found some cardboard and eaten that. Certainly, it would have saved him some of his meager dollars; being an outlaw and living in a hovel doesn’t pay well. After a few extremely half-hearted bites, Mr. Kane came barging in. Rob knew he was trying to be inconspicuous, but was failing miserably. There wasn’t much Rob could do about that. Kane was the one person he had any trust or faith in, however tentative it might be. He knew he probably shouldn’t trust Kane, but he felt he had no choice: he could never go back to crime-fighting, even if they would let him.

For the better part of the morning, they whispered, talked and discussed their plans. Rob would be the shooter, Mr. Kane the getaway driver. They went over and over the plan because they wanted it to go right, and maybe if they discussed it once more, they would think of a fatal flaw they hadn’t thought of before. After countless times rehashing the plan from what they would do after leaving Jim’s to what they would do after the shooting, they were both satisfied that it was (fairly) foolproof. Rob knew from the numerous times he had been whacked by The Club’s gangsters that nothing was foolproof. But they were fairly confident that they had the upper hand because nobody was expecting them to counterattack.

Upon leaving the restaurant, the grungy bed in his hotel room never sounded so good. He would go there, take a nap, and by the time he woke up, it would be time to put the plan in action. Falling into bed, Rob fell into an immediate, yet restless sleep. In his dream, he died a thousand different deaths, but couldn’t quite make it to the other side.

The Mortal Coil- Chapter 5

A lone figure sat in a darkened booth in the back of the local speakeasy. Like most establishments of this kind, it sat in a quiet corner of the sprawling metropolis. The sanctuary of quiet provided him with a kind of repose that was reminiscent of a day at the beach. A brief memory of a recent trip to the Mediterranean subtly invaded his brain. He was suddenly peaceful, imaging in his mind’s eye that he was once again sitting on a cliff overlooking the rolling waves. The memory of the sudden crashing of the waves against the rocks startled his reverie and brought his mind back into focus, much like the bracing coolness of a wave as it overtakes your once presumed safe place.

It was exactly this safe place that he desired to infiltrate; to maneuver into; to take by surprise and leave nothing standing. Like the darkness that comes with an approaching storm, his mind recessed back into a malaise as he mulled over the chain of events which led him to this quiet contemplation; the veritable calm before the storm. His contact within headquarters had promised him great wealth, a place of power, and most important of all, a unique identity within this new kingdom which would be set up in place of the current hierarchy if he were to follow their plan precisely.

He knew his contact only by his code word: Mr. Kane. Mr. Kane had been his constant mentor. Whenever situations arose in which he questioned his involvement with this new organization, Mr. Kane was always there gently reminding him of the reward when all pieces fell into place. When he thought of the “plan”, he could not help by smile and dwell on its simplicity and brilliance. The Club knew that with a long history of success and triumph, their enemy would grow complacent and unfocused. They figured that with each victory, human nature would cause them to grow overconfident and allow them to become more important than their actual worth. Pride it seemed is bred by success, and it was exactly this emotion which The Club sought to use to lull its enemy into a cocoon of security in their own abilities.

He took a long, anticipated sip of the “Old Fashioned”, the kind of drink that one consumes to remind himself of the days when things were better. The drink had its origins in the prohibition era when alcohol was often times made in the bathtub with subpar ingredients. To mask the often times fowl taste, imbibers would add sugar and syrup to take a bit of the edge off of the bitter taste. Over countless hours that he had sat at this bar, he’d poured out his heart to the curmudeonly bartender who had recommended the drink. He drank not to forget the past, but to remind himself of the bitterness that grew in his heart toward those who he once considered allies.

As he tasted the subtle nuances of the bourbon and cherry, he bitterly contemplated the implications of cloning and how it now affected his life. Even in the underworld of organized crime, there was a reluctance to even consider human cloning. There was a certain justice when a man met his end. There was no thought that he would reappear. Dead is dead. But what happens when dead begets another. Is that person doomed to live out a dead existence? It certainly seemed the case now, and this is exactly what Mr. Kane had used to goad him on.

With all things in life, he was given a choice. There was no “one choice”, but a choice that he made on a daily basis. This choice was presented to him one day as he was chasing the man who he know knew as Mr. Kane through the back streets, right outside the door of the very abode that he now sought sanctuary in. Mr. Kane had fallen to the ground with a thud as he tripped over an unseen object. Instead of crying out or begging for his life, Mr. Kane had instead turned to meet his attacker with a glint in his eye. Instead of waiting for the inquisition to begin, Mr. Kane began to barrage his would be interrogator with personal information, information that someone only personally acquainted with him would know. Mr. Kane began talking about the sweet wife of the man who now downed bitter alcohol to remember. Mr. Kane spoke of his child, the child who ran to and fro through his mind like the droplets of liquid forming on the glass. The two most important people in his life, Mr. Kane knew all about, and not only did he know everything about them, he knew of the death that now surrounded them. Instead of fighting against Mr. Kane, Kane offered a pact. “Join me, and I will restore that which was lost.” This hope reverberated in the ears of the listener so much, that they got up, went inside this establishment, and shared a drink. Listening to Mr. Kane was like listening to a wiser version of himself; he couldn’t stop agreeing with the plan that was now being laid out in front of him.

In the words of Mr. Kane, he had lived a life of meaning and purpose, well, at least he thought so, until a familiar stranger had snatched it from him. This familiar stranger happened to be Bob. And not just any Bob, but the very man who now gazed at his reflection in the swirling concoction of bitter alcohol, and sweet syrup.

At some point, and one not entirely known to this version of Bob, he had been killed and the current reincarnation of Bob was put into service. Six months previously, and armed with the memories of his predecessor, Bob tracked down Mr. Kane, which led to the dark alley way, and which now led now to the dark hope of reclaiming that which was lost. Bob’s memories told him enough of what he needed to know about his wife and son, and his fears were confirmed the day after when he brought his wife some flowers. The flowers were not meant as a reminder of his recent death, but of the life that he sought to live with her, and in service to his country. Instead, it was as if he had driven a funeral dirge through the living room and had slammed that hearse into his wife and son. Instead of dying, they remained alive, but alive only to the extent that they walked around, without identity, and without attachment to the real corpse: Bob.

It was after this that the Bob that sat at the bar took on the identity of “Rob”. Rob would hunt those responsible down, and Rob would redeem himself in the eyes of his family. What had happened instead was that Rob was now equipped with a plan to save his loved ones by taking down the organization that had coerced his involvement in something that was so damaging. If he was going through the aftershocks of dying, how many more currently involved in the cloning program were going through the same daily death? It would be interesting to have to battle his own clones, but Rob was prepared to do exactly that. Take the battle to where it hurt the most, to save those he loved the most. If only his former organization knew of how close these counter-agents were to Rob’s family and to freeing them from their constant reminder of death. If only the organization knew how much Rob knew about the security measures of the facility where they cloned people. If, if, if. It was only a matter of time before Rob took back what was his.

Administrative Update

Hey guys - just a few notes here. As most of you know, I have invited two new authors to join us in writing The Mortal Coil. Russell Brown and Rich Miller both expressed interest in co-authoring the story, so I invited them and we now need to work them into our rotation. Also, Jeremy has advised me that he's too busy right now to contribute, so we're removing him from the rotation but not from the author list. When he's ready, he'll let us know and we'll add him to the list.

Additionally, we kind of got out of our original order, so we need to reset the rotation. This is the new rotation, starting with the next in line author:

Brandon Stallings
Russell Brown
Rich Miller
Luke Jones
Clayton Campbell
Sam Van Eerden

If, for some reason, you are busy and can't take your turn, please communicate with the next guy in line so he can start on his.

The Mortal Coil - Chapter 4

Slightly dazed from the uploads he’d just received at HQ, Bob decided to take the long walk back to 1537 Forest Home Drive instead of using the public transport. He didn’t want to be near people at that moment, and his head was aching from the mass amounts of information that had been dumped into his brain during the last several hours. The data wouldn’t hardwire itself into his brain until approximately 24 hours had passed, but in the meantime, the searing headache reminded him that even this fast-track had its drawbacks.
Speaking of drawbacks... Bob wondered how Brooke would react when she’d found out what he’d just done. I should just pray for apathy and be happy with that, he thought as he slowed to a fast-walk. These days no reaction was the best reaction. It wasn’t that the general disinterest didn’t hurt; it did. It was just that compared to the sobbing, crying and general pallor of constant grief and anger that hung over Brooke, Bob actually felt fortunate when she looked away from him with little more than a sad sigh or merely ignored whatever he said to her instead of responding with a violent emotional outburst.
He didn’t really blame her, though. Gah! How could I? Any wife that had been through what she had been through, time and time again, couldn’t really be expected to emerge emotionally unscathed. Funny, Bob thought, without a hint of humor on his mind, when they tested this program, they only studied the side-effects that dying would have on the person that actually died and came back . . . not on the psychological effects it might have on the ones that survived to see a brother, a father, a . . . husband return to life as a clone.
For Brooke this had proved to be especially difficult.
The two of them had met in college and had quickly found themselves falling in love. Theirs had been a very natural relationship, with a connection so instant and intense that it could only ever be fully expressed and enjoyed through marriage. They both recognized this almost immediately, and had been married shortly thereafter.
For eight wonderful years they continued in a happily-wedded rut, fully satisfied with each other individually, and completely fulfilled as a couple. Bob felt pain in his chest as he recalled how often he had mused that if any marriage had ever been “meant to be”, it was theirs.
And then had come the offer. In his line of work, Bob had proved to be a very successful detective with a keen eye and a sharp mind. Cases that crossed his desk were always resolved. It was as simple as that. His skill did not escape the attention of the brass, who had quickly assigned him to a high profile case so secretive that even Brooke was ignorant of the details. For her own safety, of course.
The case revolved around “the Club”, an organization that was practically invisible but for the fingerprints it left on society. Few members of the Club were actually known, and these kept their dubious associations on the down-low, using power and prestige to cloak their nefarious engagements. No one really knew how deeply the Club was rooted in politics, law enforcement, society, and the universe as a whole, let alone what their ultimate intentions were, but Bob, with a few details, a handful of names, and one or two leads, had been put on the case. Together with an elite team of detectives and law enforcement that worked in connection with some government affiliations that were almost as underground as the organization they sought to expose, Bob had begun to unravel the mystery that was “the Club”. The success of their work had been validated by the efforts the Club had made to take out members of Bob’s team. This validation, however, had come at the cost of a couple dozen lives when a would-be-sting operation had turned into a massacre. It was in the wake of this debacle that Bob had first received the offer. The offer of eternal life, lived out vicariously through a host clone body of himself.
Initially, Bob stoutly refused to take part in the procedure even though several of his colleagues had signed up. Several gunfights later, he had changed his mind. He knew that he had been lucky to escape these with several non-life-threatening bullet holes in his leg and shoulder, but he realized that he might not be so lucky in the future. So he signed up.
And had regretted his decision ever since.
Bob paused in his reverie and checked his location. He was still a couple blocks from home. He renewed his pace as his mind drifted back to a thought pattern that had lately become his default.
He didn’t remember the first time he’d been killed, but Brooke did. The memory back-up system only uploaded memories to the server every quarter hour, and all Bob remembered was walking out of Victorino’s restaurant after a dinner date with Brooke.
Bob felt a new pain – but this time it wasn’t in his head – when he remembered hailing the cab outside Victorino’s. He could see it now in his mind’s eye as clearly as if it had just happened.
The yellow car slid in neatly beside them along the curb. Perfect timing.
The cab driver smiled amiably at Bob as Bob helped Brooke inside the car and then eased in next to her. Bob smiled back. He had no reason not to. He had never seen this man before. How could he have known that at some point between that moment and the next ten-and-a-half minutes, the taxi driver who in that initial moment of contact had greeted him so cordially, would have personally shot, beaten, and burned him, all before throwing his body in the Hudson Harbor, and all in Brooke’s presence?
She had never told him her side of the story; he had never known how the taxi driver had gotten the best of him, let alone how Brooke had somehow survived the attack. He speculated that it had been an intentional move on the part of the Club. They had probably figured that an hysterical Brooke wailing to the media about what had happened to her husband – the leading detective on the case – would help to scare the others who were on the case from zealously pursuing it.
Bob remembered coming to consciousness and being briefed on what had happened. He was shown a grainy video-camera feed of himself being savagely beaten, set on fire, shot several times in the head, and then pushed into the Hudson. It was worse than surreal; surreal didn’t begin to describe what it had felt like to see himself killed.
Of course, in the two years since that time he had gotten used to it. Dying was a natural part of life for him.
Brooke, however, had never gotten used to it. From the first moment that she had seen him alive again, and mentally himself, but residing inside a body that had not originally been his own, she had fallen apart.
In hindsight Bob couldn’t believe that he had ever thought that this might work. Then again, he hadn’t envisioned that he would go out the way he had. Dying naturally was one thing, but being horrifically murdered while your wife watched and then magically appearing in front of her only a few hours later…was traumatic in the extreme, and it turned out that Brooke couldn’t handle it.
Ten months of counseling and psycho-therapy later, she still couldn’t handle it.
And so he died, over and over again. Each time he came back, he hoped that Brooke would treat him differently, would see him for who he was: Bob Ludwick, her husband, with the brain of Bob Ludwick enclosed inside a host body that looked…exactly like Bob Ludwick. Aren’t I the same man? Why does she despise me? He had tortured himself with this question. And his tortured mind had yet to give him a solid answer.
“You aren’t him,” she had said. And that was usually all she said when she actually decided to talk to him. He tried not to pay attention to what she said when she was screaming at him. That hurt almost more than he could bear, and had driven him to the edge on more than one occasion. In fact, some of the last thoughts recovered from his brain shortly before he’d awakened in a new body had been suicidal. He wondered if he’d let his guard down on purpose…
Bob paused at the entrance to his driveway. There was a guardhouse beside the gate with an automated security guard swiveling at his post inside, keeping careful watch, guarding the people Bob loved most. Brooke. And Benjamin. Benjamin was the product of counseling more than anything; the son conceived four months after Bob had died the first time. The psychiatrist had used big words to theorize that physically unifying the bodies of two people who are otherwise not unified, in order to bring a child into existence who was the product of their shared efforts would help to unify their hearts once again and restore their broken relationship. Bob had doubted it from the first, but he was desperate and Brooke had been surprisingly willing to try.
It hadn’t worked. In fact, the plan had backfired as Brooke now poured her entire life into their 11 month old son. Benjamin somehow ratified her existence; legitimatized her presence on this cruel planet. Meanwhile, the one person that had given Bob’s life meaning was becoming more and more distant from him.
And so Bob died. Holding out hope that the next time he came back things would be different. Maybe she would be waiting for him on the front porch, bouncing Benjamin on her knee and saying “Look! Here comes Daddy!”
Bob looked into the retina scanner, spoke his name into the recorder, and passed his hand over a sensor situated on the gate, and the gate slid open. As his house came into view, Bob could see that the porch was empty. Why do I ever even hope?
The front door opened easily, and he walked inside. No one was in the living room, but he could hear sounds coming from the kitchen, and he walked in that direction.
“Hey guys,” he said, as Brooke came into view. She was feeding Benjamin, who was bouncing excitedly in his highchair. “Hi Brooke,” Bob said, taking a calculated and careful step towards her. She didn’t look at him.
As he walked towards the wine cabinet, the pain that he felt most prominently was not caused by his headache.

________

It was night. Bob was laying on his bed and staring at the ceiling. White. Blank. Empty. Like me, Bob thought. But I remember what I once was and what I once had. Some said that it was better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Now Bob felt that his continued existence did little but prove the opposite. The torture of living without a love once known far outweighed that love he had once known. This was the reality. His.
He rolled out of the bed and stood to his feet. His head still hurt, but he was starting to feel the uploads having a more constructive effect on his senses. As he thought of the extensive combat training that was currently hardwiring itself to his mental faculties, he felt a grim sense of accomplishment and a renewed drive to finish the job he had given his life to complete.
I will kill you Nugent, Bob purposed for the thousandth time. Slowly. In your last moments I will teach you the meaning of the word ‘pain’. And then I will send you to hell so you can finish your education.
Driven to fully awakening by his hatred, Bob walked from his room, across the hall – briefly pausing at the door to the room where his wife and Benjamin slept – and down the stairs. He had much to do if Nugent was to be caught. That dastard’s trail had once again gone cold, but Bob knew that the assassin was never far off. I need to predict one move – just one move – and then I’ll have him. Ludwick’s original job description hadn’t included killing any members of the Club, but at this point his mission was well beyond merely vocational. To even say that it was “personal” hardly went to the heart of the matter. Bob Ludwick was going to destroy Michael Nugent, and then he was going to gut the Club from the inside out, no matter how many clones it took, no matter how many of his team members he outlived.
Bob’s bare feet touched something cold on a step about halfway down the stairway. He instinctively recoiled and then squinted at the object he had grazed. It was a tape. An object that was almost foreign in the middle of the of 21st century, if not completely obsolete. It took a moment for Bob’s mind to register why this one was sitting on a stair in his house. And then he remembered; he’d purchased tapes and an accompanying tape-player on a whim, at a pawn shop, and then given the antiques to his son. Benjamin loved pushing the buttons on the player and recording his grunts, coos, and incomplete words onto the blank tapes Bob had provided him with. He was going to be a smart kid, that Benjamin, and Bob was determined to play a role in raising him, despite Brooke’s attempts to monopolize.
Absently, Bob picked up the tape and carried it to his den where he seated himself in his chair, turning the tape over in his hands, and thinking. What are the facts? He always thought better in this place, surrounded by a bank of screens upon which were projected rotating icons. Screensavers that elicited brain flow. It was always a challenge to pick up where his previous self had left off, but Bob had learned several clones ago that it was worth it to take some time off to carefully analyze all of the facts before moving forward. Although he assumed that he often retraced two steps in order to move ahead three, he couldn’t let that discourage him or confuse his methodical approach to the case.
Where was I? He thought, glancing at the tape and thinking hard. In his mind he reviewed the last images he had seen before he’d woken up.
Movement. Intensity. I was on to something. He knew it. What? It always took a few days for the last memories before the “blackout” to come into clear focus in his brain. He’d been told that this had something to do with a lag in the process of uploading his backlog of memories to the current clone. You’d think they would have made the procedure seamless by now, he thought as he swiveled in his chair. At that moment, something sitting on the credenza next to him caught his eye, and he stopped his rotation. It was the tape-player, half-concealed by a sheaf of papers strewn across it.
Why is that there? Bob thought, allowing this new question to briefly pull him out of his brown study. It was an anomaly; this antique situated amongst some of the most advanced technology that money could provide. The presence of the tape player and the tape seemed to trigger something in his brain. A memory?
Bob leaned forward and picked up the tape player. What are you doing here, he wondered. He knew that Benjamin couldn’t reach the top of his desk even if he had been driven by a sudden desire to place the object on it, and Brooke would never put a tape player in his den unless he asked her too.
And even then… Bob let this thought trail off as the realization hit him. I put it there. Me? Why? With no other explanation forthcoming, Bob pressed the eject button on the player, and a slot opened up. In another motion, Bob inserted the tape, and punched the “play” button.
Static.
Bob listened to the white noise for a few seconds, wondering what else he had expected. Benjamin had obviously just been messing around with the “record” feature.
But what was the player doing on my desk? The static continued to percolate through his brain as his thoughts meandered without resolution. Adjusting to the new body and new memories was always like coming awake after a very long, very deep sleep. It always took the brain a while to get used to its new body, and sometimes things took a bit of time to ‘connect’. It was like being in an alcohol-induced stupor. Shapes sometimes preceded sounds, and sounds sometimes preceded shapes, or the two merged in broken patterns. Bob had grown accustomed to this; everything made sense after 72 hours; the grogginess was just a bug that still needed to be worked out of the system.
Abruptly, a voice cut through the static of the tape player, catching him off guard. He heard it immediately, but it took a few moments longer for him to register to whom the voice belonged. And then he knew. It was his own voice, speaking quickly and urgently in clipped sentences.
"I think the program has been infiltrated," he heard himself say, "I don't know if the Club has gotten in or if there is another player altogether, but a couple of the other clones went rogue today in the middle of their assignments and had to be terminated. The backup system was completely erased except for an archived copy. I don't know what the records show, but I'm sure that these weren't isolated or incidental accidents."
Bob heard himself pause on the tape player, as if he was taking a moment to let the full weight of what he was saying sink in. What? Is this true?! If the program is compromised, Bob thought in shock, then what am I doing? Am I just a pawn in a much larger scheme?
His voice continued, with renewed urgency. "I don't know the full extent of the infiltration, but I can't assume that every thought that goes through my head won't be reviewed and analyzed, despite the program's privacy assurances." So every 15 minutes, my brain gets uploaded to their server and they view it?! The implications were staggering. Ludwick wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't heard himself say it. But he had heard himself say it. "I have no idea what their intentions are or how they're able to manipulate the clones. But now that I know their gig, they're going to know that I know. I've made this recording and the supplemental recordings for you, my future self, in order that you might pick up the scent where I've left off, in the event of my death. I'm running low on the Ziadin memory-loss pills, as well. If none are left by the time you listen to this, you will need to restock. Use my contact at the Grunge Brew. He knows me by the name of "Leonard". Wear the disguise and ask for the "Half-Caf Peppermint Latte".
Bob scrambled to write the information down. Rogue clones. Manipulated. Infiltrated. Ziadin. Memory loss? None of this made any sense. Supplemental recordings? He had made himself other tapes? As the tape he was listening to went to static once again, and then stopped altogether when it reached the end of the reel, Bob began rifling through his desk, looking under papers, in drawers, behind books...and even in the wastebasket underneath his desk. There were no other tapes.
Then the question hit him: when is my memory set to upload to the system again? How much time do I have before they know what I know? Or...do they already know? Ludwick didn't have a clue what the memory loss, Ziadin pill, drug, whatever it was...was, but he knew he had to get it. The Grunge Brew was a couple miles from his house, and was open 24 hours... He might have time to get there before his memory's automatic upload to the main server at the governmental base. That's assuming I even knew what 'disguise' he...I was referring to...
Shocked, confused, and unsure of what to do, but knowing that inaction was worse than nothing, Bob jumped to his feet. Halfway across the room, he heard a rapid beeping noise emitting from his desk. Turning, he saw his cell phone light up and begin to blink. He was receiving a correspondence from HQ. In light of what he'd just heard, the last place he wanted to have any contact with was headquarters, but he picked up his phone and checked the intel. The news was bleak.
'MAYOR BIRCH HAS BEEN KILLED AND SEVERAL OTHER OFFICIALS HAVE BEEN TAKEN OUT. THIS APPEARS TO BE THE FIRST WAVE OF A REJUVENATED STRIKE ON OUR TEAM IN RESPONSE TO OUR EFFORTS TO EXPOSE THE CLUB. WE HAVE INTELLIGENCE INDICATING THAT YOU MIGHT BE THEIR NEXT TARGET.'
The news was going from bad to worse very quickly. The Club had begun another killing spree and Ludwick looked to be early on their menu. He had to get out, had to run.
Scooping up the phone and the tape player with the tape still inserted inside, he ran from his den. Not enough time to leave a note and no time to figure out what the 'disguise' is. I just have to make this work... He grabbed the car keys off a rack in the hallway and moved towards the door.
For one moment the thought crossed his mind that the program might not actually be comprised, the clones manipulated, or the mission misguided and himself strung along as a helpless pawn. But what if it is true? He couldn't risk the consequences of being wrong.
A crashing noise came from upstairs. Glass shattering, then showering across the floor. Glass on a hard surface. Bob knew that all the bedrooms upstairs were carpeted. Only the hall was outfitted with hardwood flooring. The glass that had broken must have been from the skylight above the hallway.
NO!
Bob stopped instantly and turned back towards the stairs. Feet pounded on the floor above him. A single pair of shoes. One intruder. Nugent? The Club's strike teams typically operated in teams, but Bob knew that Michael Nugent liked to work alone. And he was the best at what he did, so he had leeway.
A door slammed above him. Forced open by a powerful kick.
Brooke! Benjamin! Bob felt like his head would split apart from the panic. He'd been attacked before, of course, but never had the attacker been able to penetrate the defenses of his property, let alone gain entry into his very home. His was not the only life on the line this time.
The nearest weapon was a stun gun Brooke kept for protection behind the facade of a small painting that functioned as a little trap door which swung open when the frame was turned once to the left, and once to the right. Bob went through the motion and the door swung open. He grabbed the gun from the small compartment within and raced up the stairs.
BANG! BANG! The two shots momentarily froze Bob on the eleventh stair from the top. God, No! And then he swiftly completed the ascent in three consecutive bounds.
He immediately saw that both his and Brooke's bedroom doors were wide-open. No-one was visible in the hallway, and no sound came from either room. Not a woman's sob, not a baby's whimper. Nothing. Only the two separate and distinct bangs continued to ring out in Bob's brain as stared through that gaping bedroom door where his wife and baby slept. Had slept. Were sleeping? Gun raised, Bob moved to the door. He saw the foot of the bed first, with a sheet draped over one of the bedposts. It was still.
And then he saw movement out of the corner of his eye, in the hallway. He spun around, cursing himself for letting down his rear guard.
He saw something metallic glinting in the moonlight that shone down through the shattered skylight above. The gun was held by a single extended, gloved hand.
And then he saw nothing at all.