Rapacious (Darquepunk Nuit Book 1) by Elizabeth Watasin

Author:Elizabeth Watasin
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781936622375
Publisher: A-Girl Studio
Published: 2017-03-09T23:00:00+00:00

* * *

It was for no good reason.

Anja promptly left her duplicate’s presence, dragging a Kyn turned to stone. If Kyn was re-experiencing the hurt Aine-5 had caused her, Anja—despite the fall on her head—could recall it with her. Aine-4’s loss had halved Kyn, a hellhound without her shining huntress. Aine-5, marked for assassination and knowing she’d little time left to fulfill her duty, thought it best Kyn not know she existed.

A futile and foolish decision, considering that Aine the Fifth’s role as emissary made her known throughout the intragalaxy. Anja wondered if she would have made the same mistake, miscalculating a love’s need to speak to her dead.

I missed you, Kyn had lamented to Aine-5 on Nuit 6, a dirge weighing her grieving hands. Not long after their reunion, Aine-5’s life abruptly ended too.

Ben fussed in a workstation’s drawer, his dolls slowly filing into the office behind him. Beyond the office, the lab’s lower level lay with its materializer and piled containers of flesh-waste. He shut the drawer when Anja neared.

“There is a reason clone-tech is safeguarded.” She pointed at the stacked biohazard containers below. “The mistakes are costly. The only time you successfully regenerated a genetic sample was with my stolen blood and this—” Her palm’s interface summoned copied holo-data. “—The cloning procedure that was somehow given to you.”

“I don’t know who sent that,” Ben said, low.

Kyn grabbed the front of his shirt.

“I don’t,” he cried.

Anja’s firm grip on Kyn’s wrist made her drop Ben. He quickly backed away, bumping against his office’s window. Inside, the dolls stared through the glass.

Their focused gazes, Anja thought, somehow seemed aware.

“My duplicate is hardly like me,” she said. Aine-7’s own gaze bored into Anja’s back right then. “Did you attempt to alter her?”

“See that?” Ben waved at the gleaming genetic sequencer poised next to the materializer’s empty glass case and bed. It was a uniquely assembled machine, unlike any model Anja knew. “That amazing piece of flesh-tech? Of course I did. I wanted to fix Ann’s eyes and nose, and her mouth, and her skin color, but—”

And her personality? Kyn demanded. Anja touched Kyn’s chest, stilling her.

“But?” Anja asked Ben.

“But the genetic coding kept reverting. It was like Ann had to be Ann and resisted improvement.”

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