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“Then we’ll begin the cloning procedure.Rhys has been cloned a number of times.He’ll always come back.”
The words were enough to momentarily halt Hannah in her tracks.“No, he won’t.He wouldn’t be Rhys, he would be RH104, and you know it!”
“He would have the same basic personality components.He would...”
“He would be an entirely different person!Isn’t this what we’ve been debating since you came here?You’re all different people with some matching DNA!”She scrubbed a hand over her face.“Look, I don’t want to fight with you about this right now.Take me to the sickbay.I need to see Rhys.”
In the corridor’s dim lighting, she saw a line worry itself between his eyebrows.She wondered what he was thinking, what their hive mind was telling him.“All right.”
They were silent, save for Hannah’s soft sobs, until they reached the sickbay, or what passed for a sickbay.It didn’t look like any medical facility she had dreamed of, or even New Eden’s single, dilapidated clinic, with its two hospital beds, the structure now in pieces.There were more recharging pods in the sickbay, but these were on the floor, like a traditional bed, and had more wires and tech lining them.A giant clear tank rested in the middle of the room, filled with water.Round metal balls floated in it.What was a pool doing in the sickbay?
She answered herself just as quickly.That had to be where clones were grown.A shudder rippled down her spine.
She dragged her vision away from the tank to the man held in place in one of the pods.His clothing had been stripped away, and a group of cyborgs had gathered around him, working in silence.One of them looked up at the ceiling as a panel in it opened.A wicked-looking blade dropped down with a barely audible hiss, directly over Rhys’s head.
“They’re going to cut him open,” Hannah whispered to herself.
Before he joined them, SP29 said, “Of course.How else did you think we’re going to perform brain surgery?”
She looked away as the blade started to whirr.A horrible, squelching noise sounded, and she guessed it was cutting into his skull.Keeping her eyes on the deck, she muttered, “I don’t know.”Tears blurred her vision and dropped to land on her nearly bare feet.
“Hannah.”SP29’s voice was soft.“Look at me.Don’t look at the pod.”
She did so, meeting his hazel gaze.Understanding was reflected there.“Yeah?”
“We’re doing this for you two,” he said quietly.“This isn’t our usual way.If he’d collapsed while we were cruising open space, we would have begun cloning procedures immediately and discarded...”Something in Hannah’s expression stopped him from finishing that sentence.“We would have simply cloned him and started anew,” he finished.
“Do you think you can save him?I don’t want him to not be Rhys anymore.”
“I don’t know.But if we can’t, we’re going to clone him.It’s what he would have wanted.”
“Is it?”The bitter words escaped her before she could talk herself out of them.
SP29 hesitated.“RH103 would have wanted that.I don’t know about Rhys.Look, Hannah, I have to help now.Stay here, and don’t look at us while we’re working.There’s going to be a lot of blood.”
Her stomach clenched at the thought of Rhys bleeding out.All she could do to keep from crying was nod and turn away.
Hannah wasunsure how much time passed as the other cyborgs worked on Rhys.The silence in the sickbay was overwhelming.Part of her wanted to scream—to let out her frustration at feeling so useless and just to see if her reaction would be noticed.It was a foolish notion, but persistent.She wasn’t sure she could handle losing another person she loved ever again.
She should have told him how she felt.She thought they had time, that they could have what passed for a normal relationship on New Eden.As soon as he woke up, she would tell him.
A wet splat from the direction of Rhys’s pod had her nerves even further on edge.“Fuck!”she yelped.A couple of cyborgs looked up in her direction, their expressions smooth and impassive as those of dolls.She still had the impression that she’d irritated them.
A hand on her arm drew another yelled epithet from her.She turned around to face Jasmine, her face drawn.“Come on,” she said.
Hannah pulled her arm away.“No.”
“You can’t do anything while they’re operating.”The wet squelch sounded again, making Hannah glad she couldn’t see as they drilled into his skull.“Come with me.They’ll tell us what’s going on when they’re done.”
“Fuck you.”The curse was weak-sounding and she immediately regretted it.Her friend’s face blurred through her tears.“I’m sorry.I didn’t mean that.”
“Yes, you did, and that’s okay.We still need to get out of here and let them do their work.”
This time, Hannah let Jasmine drag her out of the sickbay and through the bowels of the ship.She didn’t let go of Hannah’s hand, knowing she needed the support.They didn’t stop until they were in the ship’s bridge, its screens and controls dark.Weak light shone from panels in the ceiling.They sat down in a pair of seats next to each other in the center of the bridge.“Do you want to talk?”Jasmine asked.
Hannah hesitated.She did, but she was unsure how to voice her worries.Finally, she said, “I don’t want to lose him too.”
“Of course, you don’t.They’ll save him.”Despite her encouraging words, there was a waver in Jasmine’s voice.
