Page 144 of Enemy of My Enemy

A single video file sat at the bottom of the file, time stamped from months ago. His fingers trembled, hovering over the mousepad, before he clicked.

He held his breath.

The camera hung over a tank, filled with what looked like gel. Stamped on the bottom of the frame were the words “SAMPLE THIRTEEN” and a time-elapsed series of hours and days. The video sped up, and slowly, shapes took form in the gel. What looked like a tadpole, and then a chimera. An alien, almost, with a gigantic skull and translucent bones and a long skeleton. Legs formed, and then arms, and the flutter in the chest turned into a heart. Frames jumped forward, and the shape turned into a human baby, unconscious in the ooze. Then a child. Then a teenager.

At fifty days from timestamp zero, the video stopped.

Ethan couldn’t breathe.

His mind was screaming, an endless wail, shrieking at him.Get out of there! Get out of there now! Get Jack! He’s not safe!

He was frozen, though, his feet fixed to the deck, his fingers numb, trembling over the laptop’s keyboard. Dread poured through him, filling his lungs, flooding his veins, dragging him down until his vision darkened, and all he could see was the image onscreen.

A perfect, genetic duplicate of Leslie Spiers, aged forty-five, lay in the gel.

Next to his ear, a rubber band snap shattered the air. The laptop screen exploded. Warm wetness oozed down the side of his face as his ear burned.

He dove to the side, huddling behind Leslie’s interrogation chair.

No. Not interrogation.Programming. That thing wasn’t Leslie Spiers.Wasn’tJack’s wife.

“I didn’t expect it to be you.” A voice, the same deep rumbling voice from the video, called out of the darkness above Ethan. “I thought it would be Lieutenant Cooper. He’s done a nice job of putting the pieces together.” Ethan could hear the slick smile in the man’s voice. “Lining up the colors on that Rubik’s cube.”

“Who are you?” Ethan bellowed. His hands clenched on his rifle, trying to hold it steady. He blinked fast. Tried to breathe through shuddering lungs.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised it is you, though. After all, you’re running Lieutenant Cooper’s little operation. And,” the deep voice laughed aloud, “you’re certainly not living in the White House anymore.”

Ethan’s blood chilled. “You’re brave in the dark, aren’t you?” he hollered. “Come out and face me!”

Another rubber band snap, a fizz through the air, and a bullet slammed into the armrest next to Ethan’s head. He spun away, scrambling beneath the table in front of a cluttered whiteboard.

“Have you figured it out yet?” Footsteps clanged above, the voice walking along the catwalk. “Or are you as dumb as the media makes you out to be?”

“You cloned her!” Ethan listened for the footfalls, closing his eyes after he shouted. The footsteps stopped. “You cloned her, and you dropped her in Jack’s lap like a fucking Christmas present!” He raised his rifle, aiming in the black for where he’d last heard the footfalls. “Did you clone the others too? Noah Williams?”

He squeezed his trigger.

Bullets pinged against the steel catwalk, the iron frame of the cargo hold. A grunt, and then a curse from the voice above, and Ethan scrambled behind the server rack just before bullets chewed through the table he’d been covering under.

“You’re not as dumb as they make you look. But you have no idea what’s really going on.”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“You and Jack, fighting the good fight against Black Fox. Determined to take General Madigan down.” The man laughed. “You haven’t got a clue.”

There was a whizzing sound, something he knew but couldn’t place, and then heavy boots slammed into the bottom of the cargo hold.

Ethan cursed. The man had just roped down from the catwalk. He was down there with him, in the shadows in the belly of the freighter. Footsteps echoed. “Black Fox was one of the hundreds of different incarnations of us, Ethan. Just one. We’ve been here for years, and there’s nothing you can do to stop us.”

“What the hell is it you people want?” Ethan pressed back against the chairs.

“A world of our own,” he snapped. “A place where we can be what we were always meant for. This isn’t how we’re supposed to be.” He sighed, and joints cracked. “But it’s all right. Our new world is almost here. A new dawn is coming. A new sky awaits us all.” He paused. “Youknow, Ethan. You know what I mean.”

“You’re fucking crazy.”

“How many times have you wanted to just get away from the world? Press pause on everyone’s stupidity? Bring an end to all of the bullshit,” the man groaned. “Do you know how disgusting it is to watch the world spin on? Endless piles of crap. Worthless people doing worthless things. The political garbage. Mindless politicians. Empty promises. It’s so monotonous. So trivial. So utterly boring. Do you remember when it was simpler? When there was black and white and the choices were clear? Remember how good that felt?”

“You want to bring the world back to war?”