False Child

Tatiana Onegin, chief enforcer for the Syndicate and now an agent of the Created, is called to face one last ghost from her past.

The transmitter clipped to Tatiana’s collar buzzed. “Boss.” It was Nicola. “Stray escaped from the shuttle. He made it planetside.”

A tight fist closed on her gut. ''Of course the little roach survived. Should have just put a bullet in his head when I had the chance.'' The restaurant’s red-lined walls suddenly seemed much more confined, restricting. She touched the transmitter. “Put the word out,” she said through clenched teeth. “I want every gun on Talitsa after—“

“He’s here,” Nicola hissed urgently. “On the second floor and coming up.”

Tatiana’s hand gripped the silken tablecloth. “Then hold him off.”

“He took out third squad. First and second are trying to cut him off and I’m with fourth squad moving to—“

Tatiana silenced the transmitter with a terse click. Across the table, Helen looked up from her meal and raised an eyebrow. “You told me Stray was taken care of. Is there a problem?”

“Nothing I can’t handle,” Tatiana said, forcing a smile. She stood up, pulling her coat off the back of her chair and slipping it on over her body armor. “Enjoy the rest of your meal, Helen. Hopefully I’ll be back before they serve dessert.”

Beside her, Arthur—she couldn’t stop thinking of him as Arthur, no matter what the Created AI said—reached up and put a hand on her arm. “I can back you up,” he said, very real concern shining in those dutiful eyes of his. My eyes. Not Tobias’s.

“No. You stay here, with Helen. This could be a feint to get at her. I took on the Renegade when he was at the top of his game. I’ll deal with Stray.”

“His name is Simon.”

She could forgive Arthur his sentimentality—or the sentimentality the AI had imprinted this clone with. It was just like her son: compassion and concern even for an animal like Stray. It was yet another cruel joke that her son, her real son, had died and left her with only this shadow of himself while Tobias’s abomination remained alive. “He won’t have any name at all when I’m finished with him.”

“Just be safe.”

She nodded curtly and strode away from the table, irritated at herself for the very unprofessional fury building up inside her. It was irrational, her hatred of Stray. He was a beast, to be sure, Tobias’s violent thug and just as much of a viper as his father. Tobias was the one who had forced that creature into her womb. He was the one she should direct this burning hatred at. But Stray, the twisted product of Tobias’s ambitions, continued to haunt her at every step, mocking her pain with each breath he took.

For all her triumphs, all the steps she had taken to escape her miserable past, she still remembered the miserable, ugly child staring up at her from the dirt with Tobias’s awful eyes. She needed to blot those eyes out completely or she would never be free.

Behind her sat Helen and Arthur’s doppelganger clone. She had carried neither of them in her womb, yet they were more her children than Stray, who had been so brutally forced upon her. Arthur, the son whom she loved, had died while Stray lived on. There was no greater injustice in the universe than that.

It was time to correct that injustice.

“Mother…”

She stopped at the door leading to the kitchen, glancing back at Arthur. “The Created will make a galaxy where there’s no place for destroyers like him. They’ll make a world where that sort of monster can never exist again. We’ll help build that world. Together.”

She pushed her way through the kitchen door, marching on with a renewed sense of purpose. It was time to erase one more ghost from her past.