“By cloning her?”
“First we abducted her and issued orders on her behalf. But yes, eventually.”
“Why didn’t you clone me? Wait, am I a clone?” I worried existentially.
“We needed your expertise in handling the city’s more unruly inhabitants.”
“And you turned out to be a truly excellent official. We mean that sincerely. Your Confederation is a colossal achievement because it removes decision making from the people.”
“People are what doomed the Colmarian Confederation,” one said, “we are pleased you saw the futility in giving them any real power.
I was aghast.
“That’s not what the Confederation is! I’m not trying to take away their voices at all. I didn’t expect to run it. I expected to set it up and die, and then they would run it.”
“You destroyed the Totki and Olmarr Republic and Sublime Order of Transcendence. You had to have fathomed the instability they engendered.”
“We had tried to infiltrate those organizations in our own ways, but yours were so much more direct. And permanent.”
“Belvaille will be the center of the galaxy. The other Ank Reserves have agreed. We will institute a new economy which will make war not only obsolete, but impossible. Every life will have a value. A definable, numerical value.”
“Currency. Finances. And the Market. Those are the only truths.”
“We would like you to remain with us, Supreme Kommilaire, Secretary of City. You will hardly have to change your behaviors and we can make your remaining years tremendously comfortable and rewarding.”
“Your legacy will be safe with us.”
I didn’t know what to say. It’s like I was having a heart attack except it was my brain.
All the while the clone Garm kept her fake eyes on me, her fake smile.
“I can’t let you do this. You have to have known that.”
I took a step.
“Hank,” one said.
I stopped. I don’t think I’d ever heard an Ank call me by my name. It was sinister even though it sounded as pleasant as ever.
“Garm knew she couldn’t harm you physically.”
“You were growing larger and more resilient with each passing year.”
“Garm trained as a Quadrad, an elite assassin. She was supremely cautious.”
“She never quite trusted anyone. Including you.”
At that, the floor suddenly opened underneath me and I fell into a pool of water.
I sank like a boulder coated in metal and shot straight down out of a cannon. I saw some rugs. A few small tables.
And Garm.
Clone Garm was in the water next to me. She apparently hadn’t been trained to swim. She wore the same smile and stared at me as she fell to the bottom, bubbles streaming up.
I looked around, trying to overcome my panic.
The pool was only about ten feet deep, but it might as well have been a thousand. I couldn’t swim even if I had a jet pack.
The pool had no stairs. No railings. No inclines of any sort. It was too narrow for laps. It was too deep for relaxing. This was designed as a trap.
A trap for me.
Garm had built this at the top of City Hall without me ever knowing. It must have cost a fortune. Not the engineering, but to keep its creation secret.
I wasn’t sad about dying. But I was sad Garm had felt the need for this back when we were on good terms.
I looked at Garm’s clone one last time. She really had been a fantastically gorgeous woman.
The thing was, though, I never really trusted her completely either.
I reached back and pulled out my colostomy bag. I held it as high above my head as I could reach.
CHAPTER 68
There was nothing for it except to jump.
Ten stories.
I dented the metal road around City Hall when I landed. Debris was raining down on me from above.
My ears were ringing. My sight was blurred. I couldn’t breathe well. I may have been having a heart attack.
The usual.
I saw Garm’s guards. My Kommilaire. MTB. Valia. They all stood some ways back, not sure what was going on, but smart enough to avoid a building that partially exploded.
I screamed out in pain.
Slowly.
Slowly.
I stood up under my own power. Maybe the first time I had gotten to my feet without assistance in fifty years. I’d be paying for that in the morning. I’d be paying for a lot of things.
My arm that held the bomb was ripped and blackened. Even my blood was thick. It oozed like red mud. It looked like it didn’t want to leave my body and came off in hesitant glops.
My team hesitantly approached.
“Boss,” MTB asked, his eyes wide. “What happened?”
“Take the Kommilaire and head to the Ank Reserve. Put all the Ank in custody for Crimes Against the City.”
“The Ank?” he asked, shocked.
“Yes.”
“Boss,” Valia said. “You’re on fire!”
I looked around, and sure enough, the back of my vest was on fire. Whatever. I was too tired to deal with it.
“What was that explosion?” she asked.
“Delfiblinium. They once used it to push around comets and such. I knew a mutant named Jyonal who could make the stuff with his mind.”
No one had a follow-up question to that.
I took a few tentative steps that didn’t feel too good. I was pretty beat up.
“By the way, tell Rendrae that I am declaring myself the new Governor. Until we can have a proper election.”
“New Governor? Who was the old one?” MTB asked, confused.
“Just tell him! And say all debts will be settled. The Belvaille Confederation is alive and well. And the city is open for business.”
“Where are you going?” Valia asked.
“To lie down.”
CHAPTER 69
“What are they?” I asked Delovoa.
“Some clone thing,” he responded sagely.
“I know that.”
“Then why did you ask?”
We were in one of the upper floors of the Ank Reserve and nearly every room was filled with advanced technological equipment.
What was most disconcerting, however, were the tubes. There were tubes that were roughly Colmarian-sized. We figured they were used to grow the clones, store the clones, or hold the original people who were cloned. We weren’t exactly sure which.
The question was: what do we do with them?
“Can you open them?” I asked.
“Sure. Give me a hammer.”
“Can you open them without killing what’s inside, smartass?”
“I don’t even know what’s inside,” he said.
“Can’t you scan them or something?” Delovoa could be so frustrating.
“I guess,” he sighed, as if it was soul-crushing that he had to work. No wonder machines were falling off the latticework. “I’ll have to go back to my lab.”
I had my Kommilaire escort him, not just for his protection, but to make sure he came back promptly and didn’t get distracted.
The Boards continued operation despite there being no Ank. I was still deciding what to do with the Ank themselves. The values on the markets dropped steeply but they would recover in a few weeks. People wanted to make money. They weren’t going to stop trying to make money just because there were no Ank around.
You can get used to anything, really. You don’t have a choice.
One of my Kommilaire made me a big gold sticker and wrote “Governor” on it because they felt I should have something official. And because it was funny. I wore it on my chest.