The Clone who Didn't Know (The Genehunter) by Simon Kewin

The Clone Who Didn't Know
    Simms plummeted from the top of the stacktower. The cracked, grey concrete of the deserted London street rushed up to greet him like an enthusiastic puppy. As he cartwheeled through the air, arms flailing, his brain plug-ins measured the precise distance to the approaching ground, performed a simple calculation and presented their conclusions to his conscious mind. He had 4.5 seconds to live.
    His main emotion was relief. He’d feel no real pain as he hit; his cranial hardware would see to that. And then all his troubles with Kelly and Ballard and Gideon Jones and the whole damn lot of them would be over. He felt weirdly calm, almost like he wanted it. Was that it? Had he suspected this was going to happen? He should have been suspicious when the client insisted on meeting at the top of a deserted building. Hell, he had been suspicious. Still he’d gone along. Told himself the client had seen too many old movies. He’d made sure the guy was alone, unarmed, yada yada, then like an amateur handed over the DNA he’d been employed to track down.
    And the client, instead of wiring across the money, had detonated the explosive charge he’d rigged, hurling Simms over the side of the building.
    He would have laughed at how ridiculous it all was if not for the rushing air sucking the breath from him. It hadn’t even been a big job. Two hundred K for the DNA of a little-known twentieth century soul diva. It was a doodle, a distraction, a filling in of time. He really was like some rookie no-name starting from scratch. He wondered how much Devi would laugh when she found out. He wondered whether Kelly would laugh or cry.
    His last thought was of a baby girl he’d never met. He guessed she’d never know anything about him now.
    1.5 seconds. His brain shut down as he flew at the ground.

     
    He was aware of painful white light even with his eyes shut. For the briefest moment he thought he’d made it to heaven after all. Hell, more likely. Or, more likely still, he’d managed once again not to die. A moment of regret washed through him, a sense of burdens being hefted back onto his shoulders.
    He squinted open his eyes, the bright light sharp on his retinas. He could make out the silhouettes of three figures standing around him. No wings or horns on any of them.
    ‘Where am I?’ he asked. ‘Who are you?’
    Hardly his most original opening. He wasn’t at his best. He tried to stand, only to realise he was standing, strapped to some sort of metal frame, arms outstretched, completely immobilised. Jesus, didn’t anyone just sit you down to talk to you any more?
    ‘Hello, Simms.’
    A woman’s voice, not one he recognized. His plug-ins hailed hers for IDs but got nothing. People were so damn paranoid these days.
    ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘So, you saved my life because you wanted the fun of killing me yourself?’
    ‘What makes you think we want to kill you?’
    Simms struggled uselessly against his tight bonds. ‘Seems people keep wanting to.’
    ‘Do you know who we are?’
    Simms squinted but the light was too sharp. GMA? Forty Days? MegaMeta? Could be any of them. ‘You’re trying to sell me life insurance and this is your sales technique. It’s not great, I have to say.’
    He got an ID from her plug-ins then as she opened up enough to let him see who she worked for. He’d been wrong again. It was the other bunch of trained killers out to get him.
    ‘Ah. You’re clONE, not travelling salesmen. Easy mistake to make.’
    His eyes were beginning to work now. The light was still too bright to look into but he could see the square, red tiles of the floor around his feet. They looked familiar for some reason.
    ‘So,’ he said. ‘You were walking past that stacktower and caught me? Sweet of you. I’m grateful.’
    ‘You hit the horizontal jump node we’d concealed.’
    ‘So the client, the guy on the roof …?’
    ‘One of ours, obviously. See, we knew all about you but we needed to be