Page 39 of Invasive Species (Outcasts of Oloria #2)

TWENTY-EIGHT

GARA

“Whose is this?”

I jolt awake under the silver heat-retaining tarpaulin I found yesterday. Glancing at the snatches of sky visible at the edges of the Milagrove tree, I guess it’s heading toward evening.

“Whose creature is this?” an artificially enhanced voice booms. Judging from their intonation, it’s a Parthiastock.

I have to hope it's a Base rather than the Apex. Shaking my head free of sleep, I look around for Mae. “Please don't let it be her causing this commotion,” I mutter to myself.

Putting my head around the corner, I spot Mae strutting in front of a red-faced Parthiastock, her feathers flicking as she gouges the street with her fearsome rear claws.

Drok na.

“I’ll try cooking it,” a Magirustock next to the law keeper says, thrusting his spoon at a pot with a rattling lid. Water boils inside. “It’s been stealing scraps for cycles now.”

“Hm, a pest,” the Parthiastock grumbles, reaching his huge hands down for Mae .

I can’t leave her to her fate, but I’ll be found out if I interfere.

Sucking in a breath, I grab the sliver of ceramic. My skills hone into the infinite sharp edge of the shard, hovering it over my wrist. I’ve considered cutting out my chip before, but having no chip is nearly as bad as one marked for euthanization. Now, I have no choice but to take that gamble.

Letting out a stream of air and muttered curses, I forcibly relax my scales and dig into my own flesh.

Fire rips up my arm, quickly dampened by my nanites.

I subconsciously direct them to wait, dipping my fingers into the fresh wound to find my chip.

Once my fingertips brush a hard edge, I grip and pull, tugging it out despite my slick blood making it slippery.

Tossing the chip to the side, I clamp my other hand around my wrist and allow my nanites to heal my flesh, although they’ll take time to knit together a slash through my scales.

Time Mae doesn’t have.

I leap to my feet and race toward the Parthiastock. Mae runs round his feet, and his face and scales are even redder with anger.

“Wait, that’s my mistress’ pet,” I call, only half a lie. I pull up into the shadow of the Parthiastock. “I’m sorry for the commotion she has caused?—”

“What is it?” the purple clone demands.

“It's a rare off world… bird.”

His gimlet gaze slides down my body, and I quickly put my damaged arm behind my back.

A grimace mars his lips. “Who’s your mistress? I'll catch this… thing, and bring it to her.”

“No, no, I'm here, looking for it.” Ducking down I snatch at Mae, who lets out her rattling hiss and darts away from me. Drok na , not now !

The Parthiastock clamps his huge hand around my right wrist and I press my lips shut at the swell of agony from my new wound. I school myself to face the other male with a blank face, hiding the fire licking up my arm.

He turns my hand over with ease, his strength leagues beyond my own. “What’s this?”

Damn the Parthiastock’s natural nose for mystery and their overpowering desire to hunt out any they find.

“The creature scratched me when I cornered her earlier,” I say, trying not to gasp from the pain as his grip tightens. He is the Base, but can he sense the lie when I'm this close to him?

Mae shoots me a glare, like she can understand me and despises the defamation of her character, even though her new wickedly curved claws have nearly carved me several times.

Holding my gaze, the Parthiastock unhooks his scanner from his belt, and cold fear douses my spine.

He sweeps it along my right forearm, grunting when it fails to beep. Now his eyebrows beetle with anger. “Where’s your chip?”

“She must have damaged it. I’ll get another installed immediately.” I can’t move from his unyielding grip, and I know from our trio that the slow way his scales strobe is a bad sign. He’s signaling his wave brothers, and one of them will be the Apex who will instantly know I’m lying.

Double drok.

“Oh, there you are,” a warm voice says. The older E27AH maneuvers between me and the suspicious Parthiastock. “Thank you, good worker, for finding him. He’s not well and is easily confused.”

“Who are you?” the Parthiastock barks.

“E27AH, and I’m so glad you found my batch brother before he hurts himself.” He holds up his wrist for scanning, smiling evenly as though he lies every day .

What is he doing? If he’s caught giving a falsification they’ll euthanize him alongside me, choking us both to death.

The Parthiastock murmurs in satisfaction at the reassuring buzz from his device reading E27AH’s chip. “What’s wrong with him?” he asks, eyes sliding toward me.

“It’s complicated, but he won’t be any harm to me, and I can handle him from here.”

“So you vouch for him?”

I suck in a breath. This will seal E27AH’s fate, making it so if I’m picked up by the Parthiastocks in future, they’ll come for him, too.

“Of course,” E27AH says as if answering an easy anatomy question.

Satisfied, the Parthiastock releases me, and I nearly gasp as feeling returns to my fingers in an unpleasant tingle radiating up my forearm.

Scooping up Mae, who finally deigns to let me touch her, I hurry in E27AH’s wake, leaving the Parthiastock staring thoughtfully after us, my blood all over his fingertips.

“You’ve tied your fate to mine,” I gasp as I catch up to E27AH.

“Yes.” He doesn’t seem fazed, just purposeful as he leads me to a gray dorm building.

“Why?”

“For my patient.”

That steals the rest of my breath. “How is she?”

“Dying.” E27AH’s don’t slow, but my legs feel as though the muscles have been cut, heavy and remote at the same time. I can’t move or I risk falling.

Arra-bellah, dying?

E27AH turns to face me. “Come, we have to get to work.”

My nature kicks in. I put one foot in front of the other despite the world-ending news. My arms tighten around Mae, making her squawk .

Arra-bellah, dying.

She won’t. I won't let her.

A shadow passes over E27AH’s face and he peers up at the billboard floating above our heads, making a slow circle of the Milagrove tree. His scales go a blue I associate with the sky on Earth, pale with wispy white patches like clouds.

“Look.” He points, and I crane my neck to see. Droplets from the waterfall tails splash my face as I stare, but the constant damp fades into the background as the latest ad-screen sails above the plaza.

It displays a stylized picture made of interlocking overlapping lines swooping and coalescing to make… me.

I know Arra-bellah’s art, and this is it.

I come to a halt at the intensity of my face, the tightness of my jaw, even the burning light of my eyes, and I know this is what Arra-bellah sees when I look at her.

She's made more art, pouring her heart into it, and she made me.

Clones in the plaza startle, pointing. They’re used to seeing actual photographs, but not something someone clearly labored over. A caption flashes up and I brace myself for it to read “Eliminated,” like Ilia’s, but it doesn’t.

Remember , it reads. You are one in a thousand .

My jaw aches. I’m probably grinding it just as Arra-bellah’s picture depicts, but I can’t help myself. “Yes, one of many copies, every single one the same,” I mutter.

She used to look at me as if I was unique. Now she knows the truth, and I’ll never see that look in her eyes again.

“No,” E27AH says, pointing insistently. “Read it properly.”

I reread it but the message doesn’t change, the words “one in a thousand” flashing so bright it’ll imprint on my retinas.

But the Selthiastocks are energized, the plaza buzzing with conversation.

I remember being shocked to silence by Arra-bellah’s portrait of me, but it seems they’ve gotten over it and are eager to discuss it with their fellow clones.

Some are frowning, others jubilant as they move under the shadow of the massive vid screen floating above them, but they’re all reacting in some way. Thousands of different reactions.

“One… in a thousand.” Each one unique, literally one in a thousand.

E27AH’s pointer finger hasn’t left the floating screen. “You see? Good. This is my patient’s, and I recognized you straight away somehow.”

“That’s her art.” Something she’d described as magic, but I saw as her unique ability.

The older clone walks on. “You know my patient, and now you’re going to help me help her.”

We hustle into E27AH’s gray apartment building. He scans his wrist for entry and I follow close behind, nursing my throbbing arm as well as corralling an increasingly irate Mae. Fortunately, I’ve scaled up considerably, feeling each of her firm pecks as little taps along my ribs.

The elevator in his dormitory is broken, so we walk up eight cramped flights of stairs. E27AH keeps silent, face devoid of emotion. Do I look like that when I’m lost in my own thoughts?

When he opens his door with another wave of his wrist and we spill in, the lights flash on.

They illuminate a single bedroll coiled in the corner and a long metal counter for him to prepare his own milapaste meals instead of going down to the restaurants below.

Three sets of pants hang along the wall alongside a singular door, which probably leads to the toilet.

The apartment is as gray as the building housing it.

The only source of personality in his living quarters are print outs of patient notes pinned on the wall, so he can review them in his off-time.

He’s the perfect Selthiastock clone, single-minded and focused, and evidently able to think and move under pressure judging from our encounter with the law keeper.

Except, a perfect clone wouldn't lie to a Parthiastock.

I let Mae go, and after flapping to the floor the ungrateful bird spins around and hisses at me.

“You’re welcome,” I tell her, tired. I stagger to the counter and lean on it. “Thank you, E27AH, but you've tied your fate to mine. I don't think you fully understand what that entails.”