Ewan felt anger – genuine, three-dimensional anger – as he stood in the same room where the dead bodies of his allies, friends and classmates must have been dropped onto that table and autopsied.
‘You alright, Ewan?’ asked McCormick.
Perhaps it was a question that wasn’t a question. Adults loved asking those. McCormick would have seen the expression on Ewan’s transparent face and detected his mood.
‘Yeah, fine,’ Ewan answered, giving the response that adults seemed to love too. ‘You know, if you and Kate are dead you’d better get on the table before Salter arrives.’
‘Ah yes, good point,’ said McCormick, heading to the edge of the makeshift operating table. He rested himself against it, leaned backwards with the slow, creaking precision of a construction crane, and swung his legs into position at a speed that made Ewan wonder how long the man would last if chased by roving clones. Kate followed suit, the concern in her face so visible that even Ewan could detect it.
Alex, however, seemed as unaffected by everything as usual.
‘I know we’re trying to make Salter talk,’ he said, ‘but let’s not encourage him too enthusiastically, OK?’
‘Our priority is to destroy the AME shield,’ McCormick answered from his morgue table, ‘and it’s likely to involve people getting hurt. I’m planning to be far more merciful to this man than most people would think he deserves. Remember who we’re dealing with, Alex: Arnold Salter would have had his minions kill all four of us if he’d had his chance. And when you command people to murder, you’re doing the equivalent of pulling the trigger yourself. No one in that position gets to claim the moral high ground.’
‘Oh, it wasn’t that,’ Alex answered with a grin. ‘Trust me, you don’t want to hear too much of his voice.’
‘Speaking of not hearing voices,’ said Ewan, ‘everyone be quiet. We’re clones, and you’re dead.’
Alex obeyed, and the identification chamber fell quiet. Five long minutes passed in dull, lifeless silence, Ewan’s fingers fidgeting in anticipation, before a beep sounded at the door. Ewan took a deep breath, and lowered his hands to his hips.
The door opened, and a short man with a face like a turtle ambled into Office 35. He was flanked on one side by the tall blonde clone model, and on the other by a clone of Japanese origin. Ewan did not recognise him. He must have been an import.
He and Alex, as agreed ten minutes earlier, waited until the precise moment the door closed and locked itself before they drew their pistols and shot both clones dead.
The clones fell lifeless to the floor. Between the two corpses, Arnold Salter wore an expression of clueless horror. His jaw hung open, but he was as wordless as the two dead clones. The whites of his eyes began to stand out more than the rest of his face.
‘You must be Arnold Salter,’ Ewan said. ‘Good to meet you face to face.’
Salter looked to his left, and let out an audible gasp as Kate and McCormick’s bodies rose from the examination table. To Salter, it must have been like watching zombies rising from their graves.
‘You may have gathered, but—’
Salter, seemingly fuelled by impulse (or perhaps fear of what Grant would do to him if he put up no resistance), reached for his holster to draw out a little pistol. Before he could do so, Alex fired a bullet, which popped through his right hand and tore through most of its tendons. Salter stumbled around in agony, producing a sound that Ewan almost didn’t recognise as human. It certainly wasn’t monotonous anymore.
‘Didn’t have to do that, did you?’ Alex said to him as he and Ewan grabbed his arms.
Salter’s body did the only thing it knew how to do under the circumstances, and a small pool of vomit spilled over his bottom row of teeth. Most of Ewan froze in disgust, except for his feet which shuffled away from the floor beneath Salter’s mouth. He looked at the man in disbelief as he choked on the thin trickle that hadn’t quite made it to the top.
‘Really?’ he asked, forcing Salter towards the centre of the room and bundling him onto the table with an Underdog at each corner.
Not all monsters look fearsome, Ewan thought to himself as he stared at Salter’s face. Some monsters hide away in their offices signing death warrants. Some monsters wear suits or sit at computer desks. Some vomit in fright when they’re caught.
Kate returned from seizing the automatic weapons from the dead guards, dumped them onto the desk and gripped Salter’s right wrist. Alex removed the man’s firearm from its holster and lay a forceful hand against his forehead, pressing the back of his skull against the table. Ewan inspected the man’s face, tracking where his eyes went in case they revealed his intentions. His gaze seemed to land on McCormick.
‘You’re him,’ Salter gasped with widening eyes. ‘You’re actually him… you’re Joseph McCormick!’
McCormick chuckled, and raised his hands in fake astonishment.
‘Wow, this identification chamber really does work!’ he said with a laugh. Ewan tried not to smile, but it was difficult to resist the ageing man’s wit. McCormick walked to the clones and picked up their radios, before leaning directly over Salter’s face. Ewan had never seen Dr Joseph McCormick as an imposing figure – authoritative, maybe, but not imposing. Perhaps he was seeing what the man had once been like with his university students when they needed a serious talking-to.
‘We don’t have much time,’ started McCormick. ‘It’s a quarter past eight, and we need to be done by midnight. You must be clever enough to know what we’re doing here.’
‘The AME shield,’ Salter gasped. ‘You want me to stop it going up, otherwise you’ll kill me… if killing is your modus operandi…’
‘Our what?’ asked Kate.
‘Our way of doing things,’ answered McCormick.
Ewan gave no reaction, glad that Kate had been the one to ask the question. He had spent enough of his life looking like the stupid one in large groups.
‘I know you’ve killed hundreds of clones between you,’ Salter said with a panicked squirm, ‘but clones are clones, here today and gone tomorrow. Could you really bring yourself to slaughter a human being? One who can look you in the eyes and speak in your own language?’
Ewan trembled at the memory of the real humans who had died by his hands. Salter was wrong in assuming he couldn’t kill humans, but the words affected him anyway.
But still, Ewan could use his history to his advantage.
‘Remember Steven Elcott?’ he asked. ‘Fat guy, worked in the officers’ sector on Floor S, died last month?’
Salter’s eyes widened as they met Ewan’s, which alone answered the question.
‘Yeah, that was me. He was my third human. Strictly speaking, I’ve been a human-killer since Takeover Day.’
‘Who the hell did you kill on Takeover Day?’ asked Alex with a curious laugh.
‘Shut up, that’s who,’ Ewan replied.
Ewan turned his eyes away from the inevitable hurt in McCormick’s face, and hoped he didn’t look so guilty that Salter picked it up. But either way, their captive must have had other things on his mind.
‘You still remember Steven’s name,’ Salter whispered. ‘He must still haunt you.’