Chapter 99 The Girl in the Uniform

Chapter 99 The Girl in the Uniform
The knife was cold against my neck. It was a sharp, biting feeling that promised nothing but pain. The girl holding it looked exactly like me, same eyes, same nose, same scar on the thumb. But she didn't look like a copy. She looked like a soldier.

"Don't move," she whispered. Her voice was steady, like a heartbeat that never skipped. "If you try to use that virus thing, I’ll slice your throat before you can even think."

I stayed perfectly still. My heart was thumping against my ribs. "Who are you? Are you another clone?"

She laughed, a short, dry sound. "A clone? No. I’m the one who survived when they threw the first version of us away."

She pulled the knife back just an inch. "I’m Eara Zero. The original. While you were playing house in those fancy simulations, I’ve been living in the dirt, fighting the real war."

My mind raced. The CEO had told me I was a copy of a memory. Now, here was a girl claiming to be the real me. "The war?" I asked. "What war? Those ships in the sky, they just showed up!"

"They’ve been here for years," Zero said, her eyes shifting to the sky where the ships hovered like hungry vultures. "The Board didn't just build simulations to keep people busy. They built them to hide us from the ones up there. The ones who don't want any humans left on this planet."

"The Board is protecting us?" I asked, my voice rising in anger. "They tortured me! They killed me over and over again!"

"They weren't torturing you," Zero said, her face hardening. "They were hardening you. They needed a weapon that could think, feel, and fight like a human, but survive like a machine. They needed a pilot for the ships that could actually stand a chance against them."

She gestured toward the glowing structures rising from the glass desert. "And you, little copy, are the only one who can interface with the core. That’s why the CEO wanted you back. That’s why he played those games with your heart."

"Where is Kael?" I shouted, my eyes darting around the rocks. "What did they do to him?"

"He’s being dealt with," she said.

A loud, booming sound echoed across the desert. One of the ships in the sky fired a beam of blue light, hitting a massive rock formation. The stone didn't just break; it turned to dust instantly.

"If you want to save your precious friend," Zero said, "you’re going to have to stop asking questions and start following orders. The ships are landing. We have three minutes to reach the bunker, or we’re all going to be vaporized."

She grabbed my arm, her grip like iron. We started running toward the shifting ground.

"Why help me?" I asked, stumbling over the broken glass ground. "If you’re the original, why not just kill me?"

"Because you have the key," she said, nodding toward my hand.

I looked down. I was still clutching the rusted key Kael had given me. I hadn't even realized I was holding it.

"That key doesn't open a door," Zero said, her breath coming in quick, sharp puffs. "It opens the command deck of the last human ship. If we get there, we can fly it. If we don't, we’re just meat for the grinder."

We reached a hatch hidden under a pile of rubble. Zero punched a code into a keypad, and the heavy metal door hissed open, revealing a dark tunnel that smelled of old oil and damp earth. We dove inside just as a second beam of light hit the ground behind us, shaking the entire earth.

I scrambled to my feet inside the tunnel, my eyes adjusting to the dim red emergency lights. I turned to Zero. "Kael is still out there! We have to go back!"

Zero blocked the hatch, her face unmoving. "Kael is a ghost, Eara. He’s been dead for a long time. Everything you saw? Every conversation you had with him? It was just another layer of the simulation."

"No," I said, my heart dropping. "No, he was real. He held my hand!"

"He was a program designed to keep you from giving up," she said, her voice dropping. "The Board knew if you were alone, you’d just let yourself be deleted. They gave you a reason to live, and you were dumb enough to fall in love with it."

I leaned against the wall, my legs giving out. It was all a lie. The garden, the key, the way he looked at me, it was all just another part of the cage.

"You’re lying," I whispered, but I knew she wasn't. The rusted key in my hand felt heavy and cold. It wasn't a real key. It was just a piece of plastic.

"Get up," Zero ordered, pointing to the end of the tunnel. "We’re almost there. The ship is waiting."

We ran until the tunnel opened into a massive, cavernous room. In the center, suspended by giant magnetic chains, was a ship. It wasn't sleek like the ones I had seen before. It was old, scarred, and looked like it had been through a thousand wars.

But as we walked toward the ramp, I stopped.

Standing on the ramp was Kael.

He wasn't old and gray. He was young, strong, and he was holding a gun. He looked at Zero, then at me, and his face was twisted in a look of pure hate.

"I told you not to bring her, Zero," he said.

Zero pulled her knife, her eyes glowing with a sudden, sharp light. "She’s the only way to activate the drive, Kael. If we have to kill you to get her on that ship, so be it."

Kael laughed, a dark, hollow sound. "You think she’s the pilot? You’re both wrong."

He pointed the gun at the ceiling. "The ships aren't coming to destroy us. They’re coming to reclaim their property."

Before I could move, the roof of the cavern ripped away, and a giant claw of light grabbed me by the waist, yanking me up into the night sky.