There were more. Connor and Paladin followed the trail of destruction the de-Programmed boy had burnt through the corridors. He had stopped at laboratories along the way and fried the clone within, burning a hole through the head and the steel operating table they were strapped to. Connor’s mood darkened with every successive body they found until his hands curled into white-knuckled fists and his teeth clamped together in an iron grimace. “They’re killing me. Why are they killing me?”

Paladin shook his head. “They can grow new ones. They don’t care.”

Connor heard glass shattering and the pounding of metal from an adjoining corridor. He and Paladin crept to the junction, each biting his tongue. Connor poked his head around the corner.

Medical equipment and bloody body parts crashed and splattered onto the floor from a broken window. Animalistic grunts slopped from the person wrecking the room in their manic rage as they tore everything in reach apart. Beyond the mess piling up on the floor, Connor could see a large security door in the distance. Burn marks pointed from it, showing the boy had come from there.

He turned back to Paladin. “There’s some crazy fucker tearing the place apart between us and a door.”

Paladin rolled his eyes. “Great...”

“Let’s sneak past,” said Connor. “I don’t want to fight.”

He edged out, creeping closer to the room being vandalised. He skirted around the shards of glass and scraps of medical equipment in his bare feet. The panting and gibbering nonsense coming from the lab grew louder. Connor stopped at the crushed door and peered inside.

A girl in polyester scrubs stood with her back to him, tearing everything from the walls and flinging it out the window with her blood splattered hands. A pile of body parts sat near her feet. Connor winced at the sight of his own severed head.

Her voice changed from a throaty growl to something more human. “Kill them. Kill them. Kill them, he said,” intoned the girl. “Wipe the slate clean. Crush the traitors. Break their bones.”

Connor spun back and hid against the wall.

“What?” whispered Paladin.

“Sshh…” hissed Connor, holding a shaking finger to his lips.

The girl’s frenzied ranting and wanton destruction stopped.

Connor shared a look with the clone. “Shit.”

The wall burst apart behind him and the girl grappled him to the floor, pinning his shoulders with her grisly hands. “You again? How many of you are there?” she asked, as she leaned closer to sniff him. Her eyes were open as far as they could go, and drool leaked down the side of her mouth.

Connor looked up into a face of complete madness. She dug her long nails into his flesh as she giggled. He let out a frightened scream.

“Leave him alone!”

Paladin charged in and swept a kick at the deranged girl’s head, knocking her off Connor. She rolled into a crouch several metres away and snarled at Paladin, exposing her blood-stained teeth. Her fingers scratched the surface of the floor as she tensed her muscles.

Paladin reached for the bone sword clipped to his back. “Come and get it.”

She pounced, rocketing through the air toward Paladin. He swung the sword, batting her into the wall. The girl bounced off the wall and fell on her face. Before she could scramble to her feet Paladin had a boot pinning her to the ground. A tendril slithered out his forearm and attached to the base of her skull. Her struggling stopped after several seconds. The clone stood back.

“What did you do?” asked Connor.

“Knocked her out with a toxin. Should last until we’re gone. I hope,” said Paladin, sheathing his sword. He walked back to Connor and offered him a hand up.

“I think I need a suit of armour, too,” said Connor, standing.

The clone shrugged. “It’s still a prototype. Hasn’t really held up against mini-ex.”

“Better than nothing,” replied Connor.

“Yeah. If we get out of this alive, I’ll show you what I came up with. You might have your own ideas.”

Connor rubbed at the deep nail marks on his shoulders. He beckoned for them to continue on. They walked around the damage strewn along the hallway by the insane girl. “What will you do after this?”

Paladin sighed. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead. I assumed I would die in here trying to save you. I guess I wanted to help people with this… gift,” he said, looking at his stained and damaged armour. “You and I can help people in so many ways. I thought I should be a hero. Maybe it would help make amends for the hurt I’ve brought to the world.”

Connor raised a hand. “Imagine it. ‘Paladin and the… the…’”

Connor scrunched his face. “What name could I go by?”

Paladin pouted. “Someone suggested Cleric.”

“Eh… Not my favourite class.”

“What would you do if you were a hero?”

Connor bit his lip. “Healing is a no brainer. Maybe try and clean up the crime back home.”

Paladin huffed under his breath. “I wouldn’t go back. They’ll look for you there.”

Connor nodded. “Oh… True.”

A silence developed as they walked down the hall of laboratories, both of them ignoring the dead and dismembered bodies of more clones amidst the chaos.

“We could be a duo,” suggested Connor to break the awkward feeling.

Paladin sighed in reply.

For a moment Connor thought that was all he would get in reply.

Then Paladin spoke. “If you had asked me, before all of this, if I wanted to live the childhood fantasy of being a caped crime fighter, I would have said yes. Now after a little taste, I’m not so sure. But then, my memories aren’t mine. They’re yours,” he added bitterly.

Connor shook his head. “What else can we do? Can I do? My life was changed the second I was injured and this… ability kicked in. I think it will follow me everywhere I go. I’ll always ask myself what I can do to help. If I got a job in an office or warehouse packing boxes, I’d feel like I was wasting my life.”

“You don’t want to leave this life behind? The death and violence?” asked Paladin.

“I don’t think it will leave me alone. It’s already turned my world upside-down. I’m marked with the stain. I could hide away, but I’d be leaving my responsibilities and duty behind. I don’t know if I can do that.”

He nodded. “I feel the same, I think. I’m just tired of the violence. Maybe I just need a break from being shot for a while.”

“I have the feeling these pricks won’t leave us alone, either,” said Connor, pointing to the ceiling.

“Yes,” growled Paladin “I definitely have an axe to grind there. After this is over, I’m going to spend every waking hour of my life to bring them down, one way or another...”

Wild screams echoed down the corridor from the direction they were walking. Connor and Paladin froze in their tracks and looked at each other. “What now?”

Three teenagers appeared, running straight at them. Flames bathed one girl’s arms, singeing her polyester clothing, while the ground shook with the footfalls of one of the boys. Paladin raised his arm and fired off a bone dart. The leading runner fell on his face as the toxin knocked him out cold, leaving the flaming girl and another boy.

Connor backed up, unsure of how he would stack against more de-Programmed.

Paladin leapt forward, tendril snaking through the air, seeking a target.

The boy slipped beneath the writhing limb, cartwheeled over the Paladin’s swinging fist and landed on his feet before springing straight at Connor, his barefoot slicing out into a kick. It connected with Connor’s temple, rocking him to the ground. As stars exploded through his vision, hands grappled him, catching around his neck and squeezed. Connor choked and slapped at the boy feebly, brain too fogged to fire on all cylinders. Through his blurry vision he could make out the Paladin’s fight with the burning girl. Gouts of flame struck him in the chest. He swung his sword back and forward in a vain attempt to block the curling flames. The smell of burnt flesh and bone filled Connor’s nostrils.

The de-Programmed shifted his grip and pulled harder, making something hard snap in his collar. The sharp pain woke him up. Connor uncoiled the tendril in his forearm and slung it toward his attacker’s head. The bone tip pierced below the jaw line. A nerve slithered inside and attached itself. Connor opened the link and overrode the de-Programmed boy, relaxing every muscle in his body until he was a limp as a noodle. The boy’s hands went slack, and he gurgled something intelligible before slumping onto the ground. Connor forced the boy into an unnatural sleep by briefly switching off part of his brain and unwound himself.

As Connor got to his feet, Paladin pushed through the maelstrom of fire and landed a right hook on the girl. Her flames died and she fell over, smoke rising from the charred and tattered remains of her clothes.

“Are you alright?” asked Connor though a croaking voice.

Paladin shook his head and fell to his knees. The exposed skin on his face was blistered and raw. The armour along his chest was blackened to charcoal, exposing weeping wounds beneath.

“I’m going to need a minute,” he said. He reached out, trying to ease himself down but slipped and fell to the ground.

Connor crouched down by Paladin’s side. “Is there anything I can do?”

Paladin shook his head. “I’ll be fine in a second. Take my sword and go. Find your mother and brother. Stop whatever is happening to these kids.”

“Are you sure? I could spare some blood or…?”

“Go,” he snapped, cutting him off. “I’ll live.”

“Okay. I’ll carry on,” said Connor.

He stood and retrieved the sword from where it had been dropped. The heat had cracked and curled the bone to ashen slivers along the length of the blade. Connor hefted it over his shoulder. It felt comforting to have a weapon at hand. He had wielded a sword in his feverish nightmares for years. To hold one in the flesh firmed his courage.

“Got my brain jelly. Got a weapon. I can do this,” he whispered to himself.

The smell of burnt flesh teased his frail bravado.

He found the source of the super-powered teens. Past a partially open containment door was a room filled with silent, statuesque people dressed in white polyester scrubs. They stood shoulder to shoulder in unblinking, emotionless lines, facing the same direction. Vacant glass pods lined the walls glowing with red warning lights.

Connor paused. Nobody gave any notice to him. He approached the nearest person and waved his hand in front of her face. The girl didn’t register he was there.

“Hey.”

Nobody so much as flinched.

“What is going on here?”

Whatever was happening, the answer was inside. Connor licked his lips and forced his way into the crowd of silent de-Programmed, first edging around people then brushing them out of his way. He saw a clearing in the middle and paused, hiding behind a taller boy.

A young man dressed in a business suit crouched over a de-Programmed body on the floor. He held both hands to the boy’s head as he spoke under his breath. The boy’s body jerked and flailed as the man spoke to him.

Connor was disturbed by what he was seeing. Everything felt wrong — the rapt silence of the watchers and their focus on the man in the middle. Something about the man’s voice was familiar.

The boy gave a discomforted cry and he thrashed against the hands holding him.

Connor couldn’t take it any longer. Watching someone being forced against their will reminded him of his of recent past. He pushed through the de-Programmed to stand in the clearing of bodies. “Stop. Leave him alone,” he said, raising the sword in both hands.

The man in the suit turned around to face him. His eyes were red has his face was haggard with fatigue. He recognised Connor and flashed a dour smile. “Hill?”

The sword swayed in his shaking hands. How did this guy know him?

“It’s the real you, isn’t it?” asked the young man, sweeping back his hair.

Connor nodded. “In the flesh,” he said, filling his voice with as much bluster as possible.

His eyes focused. “You have a Null? Did Yelich give that to you too?”

“Who the fuck is Yelich? More importantly, who are you?” asked Connor.

“William,” he replied. “The real one. Not that second-rate clone.”

Connor frowned as he tried to recall the name. “William?”

“I had less hair, the last time we met in person,” he said, playing with it again for effect.

“You’re that bald kid,” replied Connor. Fear and anger spiked at the recognition. “You did this to me,” he said, beating his chest. “You trapped me here.”

“Yes,” said William. “I suppose I did.”

Connor’s teeth clamped together. It took every fibre of his willpower not to charge across the room and cut his head off. “Do you know how much pain I was in? How much agony you caused me?”

William shrugged. “Your suffering helped advance the medical and bio-engineering fields by a factor of hundreds if not thousands. All of humanities advancements have come at the cost of someone’s misfortune. Look back a hundred years to World War Two and the Nazi’s tests on the Jews. Look at the Manhattan Project. Yes, Hiroshima and Nagasaki got nuked, but it kick-started nuclear power generation. Think about what you’ve contributed to the world.”

“You could have spared me the pain. You could have asked for my help. You did neither. So, shove your excuses and give me one good reason not to run you through with this fucking sword,” spat Connor.

William shook his head. “I won’t apologise. And no, I don’t feel threatened by you, Null implant and everything. You’re surrounded by some of the deadliest creatures on the planet. All it will take is a little mental persuasion and they’ll attack.”

Connors eyes darted to the de-Programmed surrounding him. “Why are you doing this? Why kill those clones of mine?”

William seemed taken aback by the question. It didn’t last long though, and the man shook his head, removing any conflicting emotions he briefly had. “A cancer has taken root in this company. I’m cleaning it out by force. Yelich won’t get these toys to play with and he definitely won’t get you.”

He made a motion with his hand and the de-Programmed surged forward. Someone threw a powerful punch from behind, knocking Connor off his feet. He landed in in heap among blank faced teens, knocking them over. Connor fought to his feet. His reprieve was brief as more telepathically controlled people swarmed toward him. He swung the sword from side to side, hitting outstretched hands and bodies aside with the flat side of the blade. They pressed him from all sides and dragged him down, punching and scratching at his soft skin. Their nails dug in, ripping his flesh as hard punches landed, bruising his tissue and bones. The blank faces stared at him like zombies. His blood coated their hands. He screamed. This was it.

Suddenly a berserk cry echoed through the chamber. “You!” howled a voice which sounded like his own.

The hands throttling and clawing at him let go. The de-Programmed found their minds again and wailed in surprise or fear. One girl vomited at the sight of so much blood. The focus on him from the room vanished, and soon a mass exodus occurred as the freed teens ran for the nearest exit. Through the fleeing de-Programmed, Connor could make out a battle between Paladin and William. The initial surprise advantage Paladin had was gone, however. He forced himself to sit up as he slowed the bleeding and repaired the damage to his muscles and skin.

Blood leaked from William’s nose and snarling mouth. The telepath flung invisible forces at Paladin. Chips of bone exploded from the force of each pummelling impact, battering the clone about like a flag in the wind. A tendril whipped out as he fell backwards, grabbing William by the foot and tripping him over. The telepath struck his head, stunning him. The invisible objects assaulting Paladin paused as William lost his focus on his telekinetic ability.

De-Programmed screamed and shied away from the fight, preferring to escape than get involved with these strangers. Paladin scrambled back to his feet and charged at William.

William raised a hand. Telepathic forces gripped Paladin, pinning him in place. Cracks appeared across his chest and skin split across his face under the pressure.

“No!” shouted Connor.

William crushed Paladin and dropped his crippled body on the floor. He turned to Connor, breathing heavily as blood dripped from a gash on his lip. “You’re next,” he said.

Watching a copy of himself being pulped to death triggered an overwhelming feeling of terror in Connor. He grabbed the sword and fled, dodging through the trailing girls and boys running in the opposite direction. He ran deeper into the facility, casting panicked looks over his shoulder. Through his horror he recognised his folly. He was never in any sort of position to challenge a telepath. The membrane only protected him from telepathic attacks. William had killed Paladin with so little effort. That scared Connor.

He felt a tickle on the nape of his neck and the hairs stood on end.

“You can’t escape, Hill.”

Connor dared a look behind. William pursued him, floating ominously through the air, de-Programmed parting around an invisible barrier.

Connor tripped over something soft and wet and hit the ground, falling into a puddle of drying blood.

“What?”

The pulped remains of another clone lay at his feet, only distinguishable by the matted hair and pale coffee skin tone. Connor crawled backwards, dragging the sword with him. Electricity arced from a cut cable above him, raining down hot sparks of molten copper.

“I remember that first conversation we had, all those years ago in that shit-hole you called home,” said William.

Invisible hands gripped Connor and pulled him into the air. Their clawed tips gouged into his flesh and started to tear him apart. Connor’s healing ability ratcheted into overdrive, first stopping the bleeding and sending out strands of tissue to pull the rents closed. He choked back the scream inside him and focused on finding a way to fight back.

“You had a sword then, too,” said William, smiling. “I told you how useless it was to try and fight me. Yet here you are, having not learnt your lesson and now paying the ultimate price.” William turned his hand, changing the direction the claws tore at him.

Connor threw back his head and howled. The strain of keeping his body together was taking every erg of his concentration.

“That Null you’ve been given is only doing half of its job. Yelich has failed again.”

A spark hit Connor in the eye. A severed cable hung from the ceiling, swinging to and fro.

He reached for it, hooking the end with a tendril and latching onto the burnt tip. Current surged through his body, burning and exciting his nervous system, including the Null membrane.

The claws tearing him apart winked out of existence. Connor ripped himself free from the cable as he fell to the ground, landing on his bare feet. He stood still, breathing in and out as he healed from the electrical burns and trauma to his chest. Connor opened his eyes as the wracking pain disappeared.

William cradled his head between his hands several metres away.

“You were saying?” said Connor. He raised the sword overhead and sprung.

William snapped out of his daze, raising a shaking hand to defend himself with a shield of telekinesis. The blade sunk into his forearm, slicing through the bone, spiking the energies the telepath was summoning.

Connor followed with a kick to William’s chest, sending him flying into the far wall, his limp body smashing into an empty stasis pod. He stalked closer, preparing himself to finish the telepath. William sat slumped in a pile of shattered glass and machine parts, bleeding from deep cut to his brachial artery.

Connor lowered the weapon. William would bleed out without help. A voice in his head said he should help him. Another demanded vengeance. Connor didn’t want to be a murderer. As he turned away, a similar thought struck. There was someone who he did want to help.

“Don’t move.”

Connor ran back through the facility to Paladin, hoping there was something he could do.

He was where he had fallen. Blood seeped from the cracks in his burnt and crushed armour. Connor knelt and checked for signs of life, finding a weak pulse with two fingers pressed to the blood-slick neck.

“Shit.”

He extended the tendril in his bicep and burrowed into an open wound in the Paladin’s chest. Connor formed a connection with the nervous system and scanned for damage.

Paladin’s body, though severely crushed and hurt, was slowly healing as it should. His brain however was a different story. Parts of it had been pulped beyond repair. Connor could only detect some operating brain function in one side. He delved inside the brain and tried to piece it back together, stitching the jellied and bruised matter piece by piece. The damaged portions of the brain didn’t fire back up, despite his best efforts, rendering them effectively dead.

“How can I save you?” he said aloud.

He waited, hoping for a miracle. For a sign of life.

“There is one thing I can do,” said Connor. “I could bring you with me. It won’t be much, but at least part of you will live on.”

The body twitched, almost in recognition.

“Okay. I’m doing it.”

Connor started saving what he could of the Paladin’s memories, storing the information by creating a sort of mirrored drive in his own brain. Time dripped by as he replicated every salvageable neuron.

He had copied what he could.

Connor squeezed the clone’s hand. The large, bone gauntlet was limp in his.

“Okay then.”

Connor switched the clone’s brain off and retracted the tendril back into his arm.

Connor stood, lofting the sword on his shoulder. Paladin smiled back at him through the lopsided split in his face, finally at peace.

“God damn it,” said Connor turning away. The facility was eerily quiet. Connor gave a sigh. Was his mother and brother here or had the clone merely pinned his hopes on the one Kemprex facility he knew of? Had they left during his fight with William?

“It’s worth a shot,” he said to himself.

He walked through the empty rooms, searching for a clue such as a name plate or a stasis pod that hadn’t been opened. Red, flashing lights shepherded him from pod to pod, each as indistinguishable as the last.

Connor passed William’s body and the remains of the other clone as he hunted, his hopes flagging with every failure. His search brought him to the last room. The pods in here weren’t lit and their lids remained closed. Holding his breathe, he checked the first one.

Empty.

Connor pressed a hand to his face. “Why would they be here, anyway?” he said, defeated. He made a final circuit of the room to confirm his suspicions, finding only more empty pods. He threw his hands up and stomped back, tracing his way out. The distinct noise of falling glass startled him.

He sprinted, sword pointing forward, in the direction of the source. He found himself back in the chamber where he had fought William. The telepath was gone from his resting spot, leaving blood stained glass scattered across the floor.

Connor’s fear returned tenfold. He didn’t want to tempt fate twice against William’s telekinesis. And if he could survive a potentially mortal wound…

He ran, throwing out all caution in his sudden desire to flee.

Multiple sets of bloody footprints showed the direction the de-Programmed had fled in. Connor followed the trail past burned and destroyed laboratories to an emergency exit. Inside he found a metal stairwell which wound upward beyond sight. He leapt up the stairs in great bounds, still fearing that William would grab him at any moment and crush his head in. Emergency lights rushed past, illuminating the number of each landing.

Soon the air smelled fresher and natural light crept in to mix with the artificial. Sporadic gunfire popped from somewhere far away. Dark liquid dripped through the open, metal grating of the stairs from above, falling on his head and shoulders. Connor knew what is was before he wiped it from his bare shoulders with his spare hand — fresh blood.

The bodies of teens and young adults, boys and girls alike, had been ripped apart with mini-ex indiscriminately on the top landings. Connor slowed to pick his way past the de-Programmed. He checked on those who looked to have a chance of survival. They were all dead, however, already bled dry by the time he had arrived. Anger mingled with the last vestiges of his fear. Who could do this to innocent people, some not old enough to even vote? The people who had captured and tortured him for years certainly didn’t have any empathy if they were willing to terminate children.

The exit was held open by the body of a Programmed guard, armoured in poly-carb. The helmet and chest had been burnt clean through with an energy beam, leaving two perfectly circular and cauterised wounds.

Connor frowned. The guard had already been stripped of weapons.

He peeked around the corner of the door frame. The parking lot and the small town beyond was in chaos. Flames leapt from crumbling buildings. Trucks and jet-carriers had been flipped and torn apart. In some places, the hands prints were visible. Dead guards and workers littered the floor, either burnt, blasted or broken like ragdolls. A man and a woman dressed in lab workers clothing held each other in a tender embrace, their bodies shredded by shrapnel. Walls, vehicles and the concrete floor bore the tell-tale pockmarks of mini-ex explosions. An explosion went off in the distance, sending a giant fireball into the air. Connor ducked instinctively and made a note not to travel near it.

Connor made tentative steps outside, slipping on spent bullet casings. He looked up to see gyros and drones hovering high above, watching the destruction of the town from relative safety. He looked back to the dead kids inside, then at the carnage surrounding him. Perhaps the world was better off without the de-Programmed.

“Maybe I can help set things right…” he said to the dead. “…one problem at a time.”

He picked a direction at random and ran.