A coldness washed over Lena even before her mind fully grasped what Mel had just told her. It took many moments more for Lena to really assimilate the information.
She was living a nightmare! How could it be that she’d spent her entire life doing everything she was supposed to, never doing anything she wasn’t supposed to, and then wake up one day to find out that everybody wanted to kill her?
“I guess that explains why nobody wanted to get to know me,” she murmured through lips that felt strangely stiff.
Mel’s face creased in distress. “I shouldn’t have told you. I could go to the brig for it, but I believe you, and you need to know your life’s on the line here. This is a deadly serious game we’re playing, and we play for keeps. If you can think of a way to prove your identity beyond the shadow of a doubt, you need to do it before it’s too late.
“Captain Morris must have seen something that gave him pause, because if he’d been certain you were the clone he would have taken you out.”
Lena just stared at the woman, trying to master the wobble in her chin. “How? I saw the way you looked at me when I told you what happened. You say you’re on my side, but you didn’t believe it. I told Dax about something I remembered from when I was little, and he didn’t believe that--because you all have that all figured out. If she was my clone, then we were identical. How the hell am I supposed to prove I’m Lena?
“What could I say? What could I do? What could possibly be different between me and a duplicate that would prove it, and who would believe it anyway? It seems to me that everyone here has already decided.”
When Mel said nothing more, just stared at her sympathetically, Lena whirled and fled the med lab. She was halfway down the corridor to the tube before she realized she had no idea where she was going, no destination in mind, nowhere to go even to be alone and think. She couldn’t escape. She was on a ship, in space, and she had no place on board that was her space. She found herself in the deserted gym with no memory of even heading for it and simply stared at the huge room for several moments before she skittered into a dim corner and curled into a tight ball, tucking her chin against her knees and covering her ears with her hands.
She hadn’t done it since she was a child, but when she’d been very young making herself ‘invisible’ had made her feel safer. She didn’t give much thought to the fact that her fear had driven her to such a mindless, useless attempt to protect herself by reverting to her childhood habit of finding a dark corner to hide in. She couldn’t think at all for many moments.
The act itself seemed to bring back a flood of memories she’d tucked away long ago and refused to think of since, but then it had been years since she’d felt so completely vulnerable, so lost, so alone. The last time she’d felt even close to the way she felt now she had been barely four.
She couldn’t remember her mother. She had spent years trying really hard to dredge up even a tiny little flicker of an image of her mother and found she couldn’t. All she knew about her mother was what Nigel had told her. She’d gotten sick when Lena was two or maybe three and died because there was no medicine to help her get better.
Even Nigel wasn’t certain of when or anything beyond the fact that she’d been sick because he’d been so young himself.
She’d been four when their father was killed. She remembered that--not how old she’d been--his death. She had tried just as hard not to remember that day as she’d worked to remember something about her mother. But she’d never been able to successfully erase that horror from her mind.
Her father had brought them to the city, hoping to find her mother’s sister so that there would be somebody to look after them while he went off to try to find work. They hadn’t found her, but they had found a place to stay, briefly, until the people that claimed it was theirs came. They claimed the food their father had found was theirs, too, and they’d killed him because he’d taken it to feed himself and her and Nigel.
He’d tried to reason with them at first, offered to find food to replace what he’d taken, and then tried to fight them when they’d ignored every attempt to placate them and attacked. She’d been paralyzed by the sight, unable to do anything but watch, wanting to run to her father to try to help. She had tried. She’d finally managed to shake off the paralyzing fear and run toward them, beating at them with her fists until she’d been struck by a flying arm, or leg, or body and knocked flat, trampled by the heaving mass of bodies rather than intentionally struck. Her father had seen, though, and he’d yelled at Nigel to take her and run, to hide.
He’d said he would find them. It was the last thing he’d said to them, that he’d find them.
They had run. She could still remember how hard she’d run, how scared she was. Even when Nigel had found a place for them to hide that was too small for a grown person to get into, she’d been terrified, too scared even to cry. Her and Nigel had curled up tightly together and stayed thatway all night and the next day because their father hadn’t come for them like he’d promised, they had gone back to look for their father. They’d found him lying in a pool of blood, battered almost beyond recognition, and naked because they’d taken everything he had, right down to his shoes.
For a while, they’d tried to make him get up again. When he wouldn’t, they hadn’t known what to do. They’d stayed for a while, waiting, hoping, but after a time they’d been driven by hunger and thirst to try to find something to eat, something to quench their thirst.
Morris had found them after that. It had always seemed to her that it was a very long time after that. That there had only been her and Nigel for weeks, maybe months, but she knew that had to have been only because they were both scared to death, hungry, and lost, and too young to have any real concept of time. It seemed doubtful, now, that it could have been much more than a few days or they’d have starved because Nigel had been barely six and had no more idea of how to find food than she did.
She could remember, almost as if it had only been yesterday, looking up to find the big man squatted down in front of the pipe where she and Nigel had hidden. At first, she’d been afraid of him, too. There’d been something about his eyes, though, the way he looked at her and Nigel, that had made her feel safer than she could remember feeling since their daddy had died.
Abruptly, she knew why. She’d seen the same pain, the same empathy in eyes just like his--in her mother’s eyes.
Her chin wobbled at the realization. Tears stung her eyes.
All this time, and she’d never really known why she had trusted Morris enough to go to him when he’d called to her.
She wondered if Nigel had ever realized that, or maybe it hadn’t been that at all for him. Maybe he’d gone simply because he was cold, hungry, and tired, and Morris was the only adult who had even seemed to notice them, certainly the only one who’d told them he was going to take them home and take care of them.
Those thoughts dried Lena’s tears. Nigel would know her! Even if they tried to convince him that she was only a clone, she remembered things that only she and Nigel could possibly know! Morris had never even known the full story because they hadn’t wanted to talk about it, and he hadn’t pushed once he’d asked about their parents and they had told him that both of them were sleeping.
The spark of hope died almost as quickly as it had ignited. She might not live long enough to see Nigel. What if they decided it would be better if Nigel just thought she’d died in prison?
That thought resurrected the memory of the prison but also another memory. Dax had told them to put her in the brig when they’d first boarded the ship. She didn’t know why she hadn’t been locked up, but it suddenly seemed like a better place to be than roaming a ship full of people who wanted her dead.
It couldn’t possibly be any worse than where she’d been and she’d endured that for weeks. Surely, where ever they were going, it wouldn’t be a very long trip? And she would be safer if everyone was locked away from her.
Surging to her feet, she wiped the lingering moisture from her eyes and hurried from the gym.
The brig would be in the bowels of the ship, she knew.
