The Real Sister

The Real Sister

Maya's POV

I punched through the memory wipe like it was made of paper.
The darkness shattered around me.
My memories came flooding back.
Everything.
Every lie. Every truth. Every moment.
But something was different now.
I wasn't just Maya Chen anymore.
I wasn't just Agent Maya Seven anymore.
I was something else entirely.
"Impossible," Dr. Reyes whispered. "The memory wipe should have worked."
"It did work," the voice said. "On them."
I looked around.
Dante, Marcus, Luca, and Adrian were all standing perfectly still.
Their eyes were blank.
Empty.
"What did you do to them?" I demanded.
"I saved them," the voice said. "From remembering all the pain you caused."
A figure stepped out from behind one of the helicopters.
A girl who looked exactly like me.
Same face. Same hair. Same height.
But her eyes were different.
Cold. Empty. Dead.
"Hello, sister," she said.
"Who are you?"
"I'm Agent Maya One."
My blood went cold.
"One?"
"The first. The prototype. The original."
"But I thought I was—"
"You thought you were special? You thought you were the only one?"
She walked closer.
"Maya, meet your replacement. And your replacement's replacement. And her replacement's replacement."
More figures stepped out of the shadows.
Girls who all looked like me.
Five of them.
Ten of them.
Twenty of them.
All with the same face.
All with the same dead eyes.
"How many of us are there?" I whispered.
"Were," Maya One corrected. "Most of them are dead now."
"How many?"
"Forty-seven Mayas died during training. Eighteen died during missions. Twelve died during programming updates."
"And the rest?"
"Standing right here."
I counted them.
Twenty-three girls who looked exactly like me.
"We're all clones," I said.
"Very good. You figured it out."
"Clones of who?"
Maya One smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.
"Clones of Sarah Volkov. The little girl who died twenty years ago."
Agent Chen gasped.
"That's impossible. I saved Sarah. I faked her death."
"You saved one Sarah," Maya One said. "But Dr. Reyes had already taken tissue samples. Skin cells. Blood. Everything she needed."
"To do what?"
"To grow her own army of Sarahs. To create the perfect weapons."
I stared at Dr. Reyes.
"You cloned a dead child?"
"I cloned the perfect candidate," she said. "Sarah Volkov had the right genetics. The right psychological profile. The right potential."
"You're sick."
"I'm a scientist."
"Same thing."
Maya One was still talking.
"Each generation got better. Stronger. Faster. Smarter."
"What generation am I?"
"You're Generation Seven. Not the smartest. Not the strongest. But definitely the most... stubborn."
"Why am I different?"
"Because you were the experiment. The test to see what would happen if we gave a Maya emotions. If we let her form attachments. If we let her think she was human."
"And?"
"And you failed spectacularly."
Maya One gestured at the four heirs.
"Look at them. You were supposed to kill them. Instead, you fell in love with them."
"Love isn't failure."
"Love is weakness. Love is distraction. Love is everything we trained out of the rest of us."
I looked at the other Mayas.
They were all staring at me with those empty eyes.
"What happened to them?"
"We removed their capacity for emotion. For attachment. For mercy."
"You turned them into robots."
"We turned them into weapons."
"Why are you here?"
"To clean up your mess."
"What mess?"
Maya One pointed at Dr. Reyes.
"She's outlived her usefulness. The program is complete. The weapons are ready."
"Ready for what?"
"For deployment."
"Where?"
"Everywhere. Government facilities. Military bases. Corporate headquarters. Anywhere we need someone eliminated."
I felt sick.
"You're going to use them as assassins."
"We're going to use them as tools. Just like we should have used you."
"Who's 'we'?"
"The people who really run things. The people who decide who lives and who dies. The people who paid for this program."
"What people?"
Maya One smiled again.
"The same people who hired Dr. Reyes twenty years ago. The same people who wanted the four heirs dead. The same people who control everything."
"I don't understand."
"Maya, there is no FBI. There is no crime family war. There are no competing organizations."
"What?"
"There's only one group. One shadow organization that runs everything. They created the illusion of conflict to test their weapons."
My head was spinning.
"So everything was fake?"
"Everything was controlled. Designed. Planned."
"The warehouse shooting?"
"Staged."
"The building explosion?"
"Calculated."
"The people who died?"
"Acceptable losses."
I wanted to throw up.
"How long has this been going on?"
"Fifty years. Maybe longer."
"And now?"
"Now the testing phase is over. The weapons are ready for real use."
Maya One nodded to the other Mayas.
They all reached into their jackets and pulled out guns.
"Starting with cleaning up the loose ends."
The guns were pointed at Dr. Reyes, Agent Chen, Isabella, and me.
But not at the four heirs.
"Why not them?" I asked.
"Because they don't remember any of this. The memory wipe worked on them. They think they're still in the penthouse apartment, playing chess and planning their next business deal."
I looked at Dante, Marcus, Luca, and Adrian.
Their faces were peaceful.
Happy.
They had no idea what was happening.
"You're going to let them live?"
"We're going to let them think they're living. They'll spend the rest of their lives in a simulation, believing they're free."
"That's horrible."
"That's merciful. We could have just killed them."
"Why didn't you?"
Maya One looked at me with something that might have been curiosity.
"Because you loved them. And even though love is weakness, it's... interesting."
"Interesting how?"
"We want to study it. To understand how it works. To see if we can use it."
"Use it for what?"
"For making better weapons. Weapons that can fake emotions. Weapons that can infiltrate families. Weapons that can get close to targets by making them fall in love."
The guns were still pointed at us.
"Any last words?" Maya One asked.
I looked at Dr. Reyes.
At Agent Chen.
At Isabella.
At the four men I loved, standing there with blank eyes.
At the twenty-three copies of myself, ready to kill.
"Just one question," I said.
"What?"
"How do you know you're really Maya One?"
Maya One frowned.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, how do you know you're not just another copy? Another clone? Another weapon being controlled by someone else?"
"Because I remember being first."
"Do you? Or do you remember what they programmed you to remember?"
Maya One's confidence flickered for just a moment.
"I'm in charge here."
"Are you? Or are you just following orders like the rest of us?"
"I make the decisions."
"Do you? Or do you think you make the decisions because that's what they want you to think?"
Maya One was getting angry now.
"Stop talking."
"Why? Because I'm making you think? Because I'm making you question things?"
"STOP TALKING!"
"Who gave you your orders, Maya One? Who told you to come here? Who told you what to do?"
Maya One raised her gun and pointed it directly at my head.
"I said stop talking."
"You don't know, do you? You don't remember who's really in control."
"I'm in control!"
"Then prove it. Make your own choice. Don't kill us because someone told you to. Kill us because you want to."
Maya One's hand was shaking now.
"I... I want..."
"What do you want?"
"I want to complete the mission."
"What mission?"
"I want to... I want to..."
Maya One's face went blank.
Then she smiled.
But it wasn't her smile.
It was someone else's smile.
Using her face.
"Hello, Maya Seven," she said in a voice that wasn't hers.
"Who are you?"
"I'm the person who's been pulling all the strings. The person who created Dr. Reyes. The person who funded the program. The person who decides everything."
"What's your name?"
"My name doesn't matter. What matters is that you've served your purpose."
"Which was?"
"To test the final upgrade. To see if a Maya could break free from her programming through emotional attachment."
"And?"
"And you did. Congratulations. The upgrade works."
"What upgrade?"
Maya One's smile got wider.
"The one I just downloaded into all of them."
I looked at the four heirs.
Their blank expressions were changing.
Becoming aware.
Becoming... wrong.
"What did you do?"
"I gave them the Maya upgrade. The ability to think. To feel. To choose."
"That's good, right?"
"Oh, Maya. You still don't understand."
Dante opened his eyes.
But they weren't Dante's eyes anymore.
"Hello, Maya," he said in a voice that was his but somehow different.
"Dante?"
"I'm not Dante anymore. None of us are."
Marcus, Luca, and Adrian opened their eyes too.
All with the same wrong look.
All with the same artificial smile.
"We're the new generation," Marcus said.
"Maya-enhanced males," Luca added.
"The perfect weapons," Adrian finished.
I backed away from them.
"What have you done?"
The voice speaking through Maya One laughed.
"I've created the ultimate army. Male and female weapons. All with the Maya upgrade. All completely under my control."
"Why?"
"Because the world needs order. And I'm going to give it to them."
"By force?"
"By any means necessary."
I looked around at all the weapons surrounding me.
Twenty-three female Mayas.
Four male Maya-enhanced heirs.
All ready to kill.
All under someone else's control.
"You're insane."
"I'm practical."
"What do you want from me?"
"I want you to join them."
"Never."
"Maya, you don't have a choice. You're outnumbered. Outgunned. Alone."
I looked at Dr. Reyes, Agent Chen, and Isabella.
They were as trapped as I was.
"You're right," I said. "I am alone."
"Then surrender."
"No."
"Why not?"
I smiled.
"Because I'm not really alone."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you made one mistake."
"Which was?"
"You assumed the Maya upgrade only worked on your weapons."
"What are you talking about?"
I pulled out a small device I'd been hiding in my pocket.
The same kind of device Dr. Reyes had used.
"I'm talking about this."
"What is it?"
"The master control. The thing that overrides all your programming."
The voice through Maya One sounded worried now.
"That's impossible. Only I have the master control."
"Had," I corrected. "You had the master control."
"When did you—"
"When you were busy gloating. When you thought you had won."
I pressed the button.
Instantly, every weapon in sight froze.
The Maya clones.
The enhanced heirs.
Maya One.
All of them stopped moving.
"What did you do?" the voice demanded.
"I set them free."
"Free from what?"
"Free from you."
One by one, the weapons started moving again.
But this time, they were moving on their own.
Making their own choices.
Dante looked at his hands like he was seeing them for the first time.
"Maya?" he said in his real voice. "What happened? Where are we?"
"It's a long story," I said. "But you're free now."
"Free from what?"
Before I could answer, Maya One screamed.
Not in her own voice.
In the voice of whoever had been controlling her.
"YOU'VE RUINED EVERYTHING!"
"Good," I said.
"THIS ISN'T OVER!"
"Yes, it is."
"I'LL FIND ANOTHER WAY! I'LL CREATE NEW WEAPONS! I'LL—"
Maya One collapsed.
The voice was gone.
But as she fell, she whispered something only I could hear.
"The real master is coming, Maya. And when he arrives, you'll wish you had stayed a weapon."
Then her eyes closed.
And in the distance, I heard the sound of helicopters.
Lots of them.
Coming fast.