“We’ll be completely safe at my home base. I have enough supplies to feed us and our plasma needs will be met. It means I don’t have to raid any shuttles for a long time. I was stockpiling supplies for the future. I can hold off on doing that for a while, now that you’re with me. Raids are the only time I face any real danger, but I won’t take you with me. You’ll stay at the base, where it’s safe.”
“On a moon base? Even that is suspect. There was a television show from when I was a kid about that very subject. It just sounds crazy, Big.”
“We have three generators, and I have all of them working smoothly. We could survive on one, if need be. There are six air recyclers. The base runs on two, but there are four more replacements in storage. We have power and oxygen.” He paused. “Food. Plasma. That’s all we need. I even hid the original entrance to the base. Anyone who knew of its existence will believe it has been destroyed. The authorities can’t find us.”
“You hid it?” That seemed unrealistic to her.
“The mining company stationed the base deep inside a crater of the moon. I covered it. It looks as if an asteroid slammed into it and destroyed the base.”
“How do you cover a crater with an asteroid? Is that what you’re saying?”
He frowned. “This is your concern right now?”
She shook her head. “I guess not.” Her gaze focused on her hand. She was young again, if he was telling the truth. She had a new and improved body. One that wouldn’t age.
She was trying really hard not to flip out by taking some calming breaths and thinking rationally.
“I still can’t understand how they could suck out my memories and feelings to put them into another body.”
“Few people know how they do it. It’s classified.”
She bit her lip. “Maybe the brain is like on old vinyl record.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It was a flat disk that had scratches in it. You put a needle on it and it played the music imprinted on the surface. Do you think they found a way to do that to a brain?”
“I couldn’t begin to guess.”
“Me either. And I could never figure out CDs. They’re super smooth. Scratch one, though, and it never plays right again.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She held Big’s gaze. “That’s how I feel right now. Confused. I’m just trying to focus on the little things to avoid the big picture, you know? I’m trying to avoid freaking the fuck out.”
“You’re alive and with me. That’s all that is important, Gemma. You’re safe.”
She thought of her boys. “I never got to say goodbye to my sons.” It broke her heart, and more tears fell. “I’d remember that if I had, right?”
“I don’t know, Gemma.”
Then it suddenly seemed to sink in. If everything Big said was true, if she’d really died a hundred and twenty-one years before…
Sharp grief stabbed her in chest as she realized what that meant.
Her boys would have grown into old men and died.
It was rare for people to live for a hundred years. Her boys had been in their twenties when she’d been burned. That meant they’d been born over a hundred and forty years ago, if it was actually the year 2141. Her sons were dead.
Big held her tighter as her distress increased. “I’m here, Gemma. Just breathe. You can’t change the past. It’s gone. Focus on the now.”
Her boys had been her entire world. She attempted to gain control of her grief. It wasn’t easy to do, but she’d always been a strong woman. She’d had to be. Losing her shit wasn’t something she ever allowed to happen unless she was alone.
Her emotions were all over the place as she fought to calm them. She was torn between sobbing, screaming, or diving right back into denial. It would hurt less. The stabbing pain to her chest was pure grief.
Her boys were long dead…and she was a clone.
I’m alive, she frantically reasoned. Not dying in a hospital. It’s a second chance at life…but without my boys. God. My boys! More tears filled her eyes that she tried to blink back. It took effort but deep breaths helped. If all this is true, I’m still alive. I’m a survivor, damn it! I don’t really have a choice, do I? Think. Get your shit together, Gemma. Falling apart isn’t going