Unity by Elly Bangs (free e reader txt) 📕

his freedom. I took note of his thoughtful nature, his hardened self-control under dire circumstances.

“Your name?” my alpha copy asked him.

“Scuttle.” It was probably a lie, but it would do.

“Do you have a family?” I asked.

This question unsettled him. He shook his head. “No.”

“Any permanent place of residence? Do you have friends there? A social fabric?”

His nonverbal cues answered for him. I felt relieved. Setting his physical defects aside, he was the perfect flesh for emergency use. No one would come looking for him. I could wear his face anywhere without worrying too much about being flagged down by some old acquaintance of his; naturally, I have always lived in fear of such things.

“Who are you guys?” the vessel asked.

My alpha copy snickered at the question.

“We’re following someone,” I said. “We have to catch up with her. We must find her at any cost.”

“You’re mercs too,” Scuttle guessed, with squinting uncertainty. He looked us up and down. Alpha’s vessel still wore the suit and tie from its former life, hardly a fit with our current surroundings; in my frayed desert coat, I supposed I could nearly pass for a mercenary myself.

“We are,” I answered.

“Don’t tell me you’re after the woman too,” Scuttle groaned. “Danae. Duke’s target.”

Damn it all. This was the very last thing I needed: competition over Sybil. Alpha and I cringed and made fists in unison. Fresh blood spurted from my hand.

“Uh, listen,” Scuttle said, queasily. “We can split the payoff. Work together. No need for this.” He held up his bound wrists. “No honor in this. This isn’t how it’s done. We’re supposed to work together. Duke’s orders.”

I calmed myself. We needed this information.

“What do you know about her?” the alpha copy asked.

“Age thirty-one, height 1.7 meters, dark skin. Wanted by Medusa Clan along with her two accomplices. Wanted strictly alive. What, nobody sent you the file?”

“Perhaps not. What else was in the file?”

“Photos, vids. I don’t get it. What do you—?”

“Tell me more about Duke,” I said.

But Scuttle was now too suspicious to answer any more questions. I kicked myself inwardly: we had been too impatient, but what was done was done. I hefted the briefcase onto the crate next to me, snapped it open, and lovingly beheld its contents.

“You’re not mercs,” Scuttle said, wincing as I fastened the first patterner crown to his skull and flipped each of the four switches to pneumatically inject the probes into his cerebrum. I fastened the other crown to my own head and felt the pins slide back through the same tiny holes in the bone, through which they had first conveyed me into this vessel only three weeks ago. The old punctures hadn’t even had time to heal.

Fear was finally creeping into Scuttle’s voice as I finished the preparations.

“Who are you?”

The alpha copy and I grinned symmetrically in reply—at each other, then at him.

Scuttle jerked his head suddenly, loosening one of the cables strung between us. I reached instinctively to check it. He moved very quickly then, his bound hands snapping out, sweeping across my abdomen a few times. I pulled back just in time to dodge a slash across my neck.

“Hurry,” the alpha copy told me calmly. He had ripped the knife from Scuttle’s grasp, but it was taking all his strength and weight to press the man back against the wall, pinning an elbow against his neck to hold his head still.

When I reached out to refasten the loose plug, I heard an unexpected noise, like rain dripping on the metal floor. My abdomen was open, I saw. The gash revealed tissues of various hues and colors: the milky sheen of subcutaneous fat, the bright ruby of muscle, deeper still the pale glistening of small intestine. I felt blood’s wet heat soak into my shirt. I could see the entrails loosening as I stood, trying to push through. I frowned briefly. I reached my bandaged hand down to hold the wound shut as best I could, reaching out with the other to fit the cables back into their jacks.

Scuttle watched all of this, finally showing an appropriate level of horror. He could see that I responded to no pain, yet I was not drugged or anesthetized. I watched the outward signs of his mind working as he realized that he did not know exactly what he was looking at when he looked at me or at the alpha copy.

“Who are you?” he croaked.

“Proceed with the transfer,” the alpha copy said. I could hear the shiver of desire in his voice: even now, envying me.

The patterner finished its startup sequence. The lights turned green. My mouth was watering. I felt my lips curve into a widening smile. My finger hesitated just above the switch. Scuttle wriggled ever more desperately under the alpha copy’s weight, and it was strange how even through the creeping haze of blood loss, even recognizing the urgency, I could not resist stopping to savor this last, ecstatic moment before rebirth.

I pushed. The patterner’s microcurrents rolled through my cranium like thunder and its electric euphoria washed through my sensorium, canceling me out.

It was the white noise of the road that returned first. I opened my eyes.

No. Oh no.

“Success,” I heard my copy say, in a voice that had been Scuttle’s.

The alpha and new gamma copies turned to regard me disgustedly when they realized my consciousness still resided in Rutger’s ruined vessel.

“It was still set to clone,” the gamma and I said in unison.

“You should have set it to transfer,” said my alpha copy.

“I know,” my gamma responded irritably.

“Nothing can be done about it now,” I said. I sat back and lay both my hands across my belly as the alpha copy helped free the new gamma’s wrists from the rope. Now they would have to watch me die. I would have to experience death. Permanent death.

“Find Sybil,” I commanded them. “Get to her before the Medusas, at all costs. Make my death worth it.”

“We will,” my copies responded in unison.

“This is all proving to