How fucking many are there?
“That’s not your concern,” Ingrid says.
“Of course, Commander.” 6A5 smiles at me blandly.
I’ve recovered from the shock. Now I need to find out as much as I can about this mindfuck, and feigning interest is the way to do it.
“Why 6A5?” I ask Ingrid.
She nods at the clone. “That will be all, 6A5. You can return to whatever you were doing.”
The corners of his mouth dip down with disappointment as he turns and walks away, looking back at me over his shoulder.
Once he’s out of earshot, Ingrid says, “Each of the Original Twenty-Six was assigned a number. Yours is six. TheAis for accelerated. The five means he was our fifth accelerated clone with your DNA.”
An irrational urge to burn this whole fucking island down flares through me. But I grin, looking impressed.
“You answered my next question, which was how he is already my age when the DNA is only six years old.”
“Accelerated and decelerated aging is the primary focus. We’re close to refining it, and when we’ve done that, we’ll scale.”
Scale. She talks about it so clinically, but I know goddamn well what she’s planning. She’s going to mass-produce cloned versions of the Original Twenty-Six who can be adult soldiers when they should still be in diapers. The aromium experiments on my island pale in comparison to what this could become.
“How old is he?” I ask. “6A5?”
She considers. “6A5 is between three and four years old.”
“But he seems ... like me.”
She smiles, pleased. “We call them Reps, which is short for Replications. We immerse the Reps in learning fourteen hours a day and they get seventy-five minutes of physical conditioning a day. When they sleep, they’re connected to subliminal learning through headsets.”
Created in a lab or not, those are human beings. Ingrid talking about them like property makes me sick. But I’m here to learn everything I can. Retribution isn’t an option. Yet.
“So why decelerate aging?” I look at the children and young adults walking around the track and clustered into groups of friends through fresh eyes, realizing they’re all clones.
Which ones are Ellison? Dr. McClain? Dr. P?
“To create tomorrow’s leaders,” Ingrid says, her tone indicating she thinks she’s superior in thinking to me. “Humans who age seven times slower than us can be invested in with training and resources. They can lead our nation for many generations.”
“Of course.”
I’ve got the full picture now, and it’s a grim one. They plan to use decelerated aging to make military leaders who can live four hundred years, and accelerated aging to make expendable grunts.
I hate it here. Fuck their air-conditioned rooms and fancy food. I want to go back to my island, where there’s only one version of me.
Ingrid looks at the screen of her communication device. “I only have a little more time to spare. Before Tyrone takes you to our tattooist, would you like to meet 6D17? One of your decelerated clones?”
Seventeen. And I can’t punch the shit out of anyone right now.
“I’d love that. I’m curious, though, why seventeen? Are there more decelerated clones?”
She purses her lips. “Slowing aging has proven more challenging to our team.”
What the fuck does that mean? Are the first sixteen dead? I don’t want to ask too many questions, so I just nod.
“We went through a lot of that on my island, too. Keep at it. Persistence pays off.”
“Well said, Commander. Let’s head into the nursery.”
