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“No!Find one of your medical cyborgs and fix this!”
“I don’t know if that can be done.”
“Try!”she screamed.SP29 flinched.“I know he doesn’t want to be cloned again.I know he wants to stay in this body.”Iteration, he’d called himself.“There must be something you can try!”When SP29 didn’t stand up, she did.“Tell me who the medics are.Now.”Through her tears, she hoped she injected enough authority into her voice to get her point across.
SP29 finally got to his feet.“You’re right.I know he didn’t want that.”His expression grew pensive, and she knew he was speaking to the others through their link.After what felt like hours, he announced, “They’re on their way.”
“What will happen if they can’t save him?”
SP29 hesitated, and she had her answer.They would clone him again, grow a new Rhys, but he wouldn’t be the man she loved.Would a new version of him even remember her?Rhys only recalled horrible memories, nothing good from his previous lives.
Boots thundered on the floor as their fellow cyborgs ran toward the comms room.The only sound was their footsteps as they shuffled around, picking up Rhys and carrying him away, his body stiff as a board.She guessed they were speaking through their shared broadcast link.“Where are you taking him?”She didn’t try to keep the panic out of her voice.
“The ship,” SP29 replied.“Everything we need to help him is there.”
They meant the cloning tech.She had to make sure they wouldn't try cloning him before exhausting all other options.“I’m going with you.”
He looked like he wanted to argue.There must have been something on Hannah’s face that brooked no argument, because he merely nodded.
She had to jog to keep up with him as they marched away from the landing pad.Heat blazed from the twin suns, their light nearly blinding her, but she didn’t care.All she could focus on was his body, carried by a pair of stony-faced cyborgs.
Their ship waited in the field, dark and hulking in the sunlight.At the cyborgs’ approach, its exterior door opened and the ramp extended.Her vision blurred as they carried Rhys up the ramp, and she realized she was crying.She raced after them, footsteps pounding along the black metallic ramp.SP29 grabbed her shoulder, stopping her.She hadn’t realized he was behind her.“Don’t,” he said.
“Fuck you!”
The cyborg’s eyes widened in shock, but he didn’t reply.
Any guilt Hannah might have felt at her response evaporated when she thought of Rhys aboard that ship.“I’m going after him,” she said.She impatiently brushed away tears with her hand.“I’ve lost almost everyone I’ve ever loved on this fucking planet.I’m not going to lose him too.”And if she had to, she wanted to be there in his final moments.
“We can bring him back,” SP29 said, but his protest was weak.He’d been on New Eden long enough to recognize that each clone was different.SP30 wouldn’t be a new version of his twenty-ninth self, and it was no different for Rhys.
Hannah shook her head.“You can’t.I’m here for Rhys, not for another clone.You aren’t interchangeable!”She felt like shaking him to get her point across, for all the good someone her size could do to a solid muscle and metal man.
Everyone else had already disappeared into the belly of the ship.The ramp remained extended, the darkness inside an invitation.“It’s going to be bad in there,” SP29 warned her.“Have you ever seen surgery?”
“I’ve seen livestock give birth.”
“This won’t be like that.”He looked at the doorway, expression desolate.“You’re right about all this.He wouldn’t be the same person if he was cloned again, and I think he would want you there.”His voice wavered.“Let’s go.”
ChapterThirteen
It tooka moment for Hannah’s vision to adjust to the ship’s darkness.She stumbled through the airlock, trying to remember the craft’s layout from her tour with Rhys.In retrospect, he hadn’t shown her that much, only the recharging pods and a storage closet.Where would a sickbay be?How fast had those cyborgs moved, anyway?
As though he could read her mind, SP29 took her elbow.“Follow me.”
She didn’t argue, just sniffled and did as he told her.“What will they do?”she asked as they strode through the corridors.A low grinding noise sounded, and an odd odor filled the air, probably due to the ship coming online.
“When a cyborg is in the catatonic state Rhys is in, our usual protocol is to extract his tech and DNA, then start the cloning process again.”
“They aren’t going to do that today, are they?”Hannah wailed.
“No.”SP29’s voice was firm.
“How do you know?”
He tapped the side of his head.“We’re changing our protocols about these events.”
That provided a small measure of relief.“What if they can’t fix him?”
