Hallways. Indistinguishable from the ones beneath them. Walls and floors and lights and ducts.

  Do I remember how to backtrack out of here?

  “You know where we’re going, right?” asked SoJo the Mind Reader. “That counting steps trick?”

  It wasn’t a trick. It was a skill. But arguing with SoJo would wrest Weejy’s concentration from the task at hand.

  “Follow me.”

  I just need to work backwards.

  Fifteen straight steps. There’s the door. Another sixteen. A left turn. Four doors in this hallway, but the one they have to enter is only nine steps away.

  “This it?” SoJo looked around. “This place is like a damn maze.”

  “I think this is right.”

  “How do you know where we are?” Charles asked.

  “My girl got skills.” SoJo clapped Weejy on the shoulder.

  Weejy took a breath and began to open the door, but Charles held her back.

  “You guys seem to know a lot.” Charles appeared desperate. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

  “We’ll explain when we’re out of here,” SoJo told him.

  Weejy shot warning-eyes at her friend. “SoJo…”

  “He’s one of us, Weejy. Bert told us. Charles needs to know.”

  “Bert? Who’s Bert?”

  “Can we discuss this later, SoJo?”

  SoJo put her hands on her hips and glared. “Where’s the trust?”

  “You mean in this secret underground compound where persons unknown abducted us?”

  “I mean between us, Weejy. What’s Charles gonna do? Alert the media? Kill us with Natural Selection?”

  Charles made a sound like a snicker.

  Weejy sighed. “We’ll tell him when we all get out of here. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  Weejy opened the door, feeling the breadth of the space before her eyes could adjust to the lack of light. The stale air. The slight echo.

  It feels like a parking garage.

  Which, essentially, it was, as confirmed when Charles found the light switch on the wall.

  Concrete walls, asphalt surface, harsh fluorescent lights mounted between the steel ceiling beams. Nine vehicles, five of them black SUVs with tinted windows, a Mercedes E550, a Chevy Silverado, a Honda Civic, and the totaled remains of Bert’s Land Rover.

  Weejy’s heart pinged at the sight of it.

  Bert… I hope you’re okay.

  “That’s my rental.” Charles pointed to the Honda and brushed past Weejy. “Let’s see if it has the keys in it.”

  “SoJo, check the SUVs.”

  “Right. Guns. Let’s bear some arms.”

  “Also check for keys. I’d rather be in a four wheel drive vehicle than a Civic. No offense, Charles.”

  “It’s not mine, it’s a rental. But what’s wrong with Honda Civics? It’s one of the most popular cars in the world.”

  “A Civic ain’t sexy, Charles,” SoJo told him. “It’s the opposite of sexy. Like kissing your brother.”

  “You have a brother?”

  “No. But if I did, I’d rather kiss him than buy a Civic.”

  Weejy, who once owned a Civic and liked it well enough, chose to stay out of the discussion.

  “The rental place didn’t have many options.”

  “But they had options?”

  Charles spread his hands. “They were… pricey.”

  “Women love that, too. Guys who are careful with their money.”

  “Really?”

  SoJo snorted. “Tell me, Charles. You the kinda man who will take a lady out to eat and make her order off the kiddie menu?”

  “Sometimes the kiddie menu is the only way to get chicken nuggets.”

  “Have you ever seen a vagina, Charles? In person, not surfing some freaky BBBW plus RACK on Pornhub?”

  “BB… what?”

  “Big Black Beautiful Woman with a Risk Aware Consensual Kink. Do you like to be tied up and pegged by lil thotties?”

  “I… uh… think women of all races and sizes are attractive.”

  “Good answer.”

  “What is getting pegged by a lil thottie?”

  “Don’t eff it up, and I’ll show you.”

  “I like your hair. It’s exotic.”

  “You’re effing it up, Charles.”

  “Sorry.” His face pinched and turned red, and he walked toward the Honda.

  Weejy checked the Mercedes. Locked. So was the pickup truck. She glanced at SoJo, who tugged ineffectually on a door to one of the SUVs.

  “Keys are in the ignition!” Charles declared, leaning into the Civic. “You guys coming?”

  Weejy glanced around, seeking the exit; driving underground without a destination seemed pointless. She didn’t spot one, but reminded herself the floor was slanted.

  We went down a slight grade coming in. Makes sense to follow it back up.

  SoJo had already taken the passenger seat in the Honda, and Weejy went to the driver’s side to unseat Charles.

  “I didn’t put other drivers on the rental agreement,” he muttered.

  “I’m driving. You can come along or stay here.”

  Charles got in the back seat.

  “Seatbelts.” Weejy turned the ignition, half-expecting it not to start because this escape had been too easy so far. But the engine cranked, and she threw it into gear and followed the grade, going through a few turns before seeing the car elevator, the doors already open.

  Weejy drove inside, and Charles hopped out and beelined for the controls hanging from a cable, pressing things until the doors closed and the lift began to rise.

  “If we get out of here, you know which direction to go?” SoJo asked.

  “I can figure out the time and direction by the sun.”

  “What if it’s night?”

  “By the stars.”

  “What if it’s overcast and CSS?”

  “CSS?” Weejy said.

  “Can’t see shit.”

  “Then I can taste the colors of the wind and find true north.”

  SoJo snorted, catching the Disney reference.

  “You can really do that?” Charles asked.

  “She ain’t Pocahontas.” SoJo smiled. “But we got number tattoos, same as you.”

  “SoJo…” Weejy warned.

  “We’re almost outta here. Might as well spill the tea.”

  I guess at this point it doesn’t matter.

  Weejy sighed. “Fine.”

  SoJo couldn’t unburden herself fast enough. “Okay she’s a clone of Sacagawea and I’m Sojourner Truth and you’re Charles Darwin. And now we’re all caught up.”

  Charles remained silent. Weejy checked the rearview and found him looking oddly calm.

  The elevator doors opened, leading to a metal ramp, leading up into darkness. Weejy found the headlights and noticed the dash panel.

  “We’re almost out of gas.”

  SoJo leaned over to check. “How much left?”

  “Hovering on E. Maybe forty or fifty miles left.”

  “Shit. Charles, you know you’re supposed to fill up before returning a rental car.”

  “I was kidnapped, remember?”

  “Can we get back to town?” SoJo asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  They came to another garage-type door, and Weejy opened the window and reached for the hanging control box.

  When I open this, are we going to be staring at fifty armed guards?

  Is that why escape has been so simple? Ziggy allowed us to get this far to toy with us?

  “Weejy? What are we waiting for, girl?”

  “So you guys are clones?” Charles asked.

  “Some government experiment done in the seventies,” SoJo told him. “They got bones from twenty famous dead folks, used some special camera and got pictures of their DNA, somehow added amino acids to the negatives, or some science shit like that. Bert made a dodo.”

  “Bert?”

  “Albert Einstein. Weejy is crushing on him. Weej—can we haul ass, girl?”

  Weejy chewed her lower lip and hit the button on the control box, and the door slowly opened to reveal—

  —desert. Far as she could see.

  No guards. No guns.

  Maybe we really have a chance to get away.

  Weejy waited a moment for her eyes to adjust to the night sky. She looked up, spotted Draco, then Ursa Minor, and checked the clock on the car dashboard. Properly oriented, Weejy hit the gas and headed east.

  “You know where you’re goin’?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We can make it?”

  “I think so.”

  Weejy felt for the window button and let in some hot, desert air. After their captivity, it had the smell of freedom. Probably a melodramatic and goofy thought, but Weejy shivered anyway.

  “So, to be clear on this, you’re clones of Sacagawea and Sojourner Truth, and you’re friends with a clone of Albert Einstein.”

  “Yeah. And you’re Charles Darwin. That number on your foot isn’t a 61. It’s a 19.”

  “You guys have tattoos?”

  “We do.” Weejy checked the rearview.

  Charles laughed. “I never would have guessed it. I didn’t even think it could be possible.”

  “Which part is funny, Charles?”

  “Well, I mean, I understand Darwin. And Einstein. And Freud and Tesla. These are brilliant men. But—” Charles cut himself off.

  SoJo’s eyes narrowed to slits. “But we’re women of color, so why would anyone want to clone us?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Only people worth cloning are white males? Why would anyone clone slaves and injuns?”

  Weejy hit the brakes. Not because of SoJo’s casual ignorance of the slurs for indigenous people, but because Charles mentioned Freud and Tesla.

  How did he know?

  SoJo, jerking forward in her seat, turned to Weejy with a harsh, “WTF?”

  “He knows, SoJo.”

  “Knows what?”

  “When you made that joke about Natural Selection. He snickered. He knows who he is, and knows who the others are. We’re getting played.”

  Charles’s eyes went wide. “Played? What? I—”

  SoJo had her belt off and slid into the back seat like liquid, her hands wrapping around the man’s shirt. “If you been lying to me, you gonna be shitting out your own teeth for a week.”

  “I don’t know what you mean. I was kidnapped, like you.”

  “Search him,” Weejy told her friend.

  “Pockets. Empty them.”

  Charles tried on a weak smile. “SoJo, I—”

  SoJo gave Charles a rough smack on the side of his head. “Turn out your damn pockets.”

  Charles cringed, then reached into his pants and pulled out a small baggie.

  “Red pills.” SoJo handed them to Weejy. “What’s the deal, Charles? You high? This some Matrix bullshit?”

  “No, it’s—”

  “Blood capsules,” Weejy confirmed, snapping open a capsule and fingering the red powder. “So it looked like he’d been beaten.”

  SoJo smacked him again. “You piece of shit! They were trying to torture my girl, and I let you feel my titties.”

  “They didn’t know! Ziggy didn’t know! They just needed to find out who you were. Now that they know, they wouldn’t hurt you. We’re, like, a team.”

  “You’ve got Torquemada on your team.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s a bit… uh… intense. But Ziggy and Nick, they’re working on something big. Free energy for the entire world. That’s worth, like, trillions of dollars. They want to make sure no one is going to steal the plans. We can turn around, talk about it.”

  “Ziggy wanted to tie me up and play Spanish Inquisition.”

  “He didn’t suspect you were clones.”

  “Because women of color aren’t important.”

  Charles appeared pained. “Ziggy doesn’t know who all the clones are. He’s only found a few. I’m sure we can just talk through this.”

  “Weejy, you want to talk through this?”

  “Hell no.”

  “How about we beat the white off of him and leave him in the desert?”

  Kind of a racist comment, but worth considering.

  “Look, guys, you can’t get away. Even if we get to town, Ziggy controls the cops. And if you run, he’ll get mad. But if we turn around, he’ll make you rich.”

  “How rich?” SoJo asked.

  “SoJo!”

  “A girl can ask a simple question. We talking Kardashian rich? Dre selling Beats to Apple rich? Bezos building his own moon rockets rich?”

  “He’s paying me a million dollars to join him, and help with documenting the experiments. I’m kinda good at taking notes and organizing data.”

  “You’re also good at lying your ass off to get to second base. How can we trust you?”

  “Uh, Ziggy?” Charles said to nobody in the car. “Can you help me out here?”

  “I just want to talk.” Ziggy’s voice came out of the rearview mirror. “We didn’t know you were one of us. I apologize wholeheartedly for our behavior.”

  Weejy checked behind the mirror, followed the cord running up the windshield and over to a microphone on the dashboard near the driver’s side.

  “So you’ve been listening in.”

  “I’m a clone of Sigmund Freud, Sacagawea. Listening is my thing.”

  “Listening? Not strapping women to autopsy tables?”

  “We only meant to scare you. Obviously, because of the importance of our secret project, we were a tad bit overzealous. But we would love for you and Sojourner to join our happy little family.”

  “And you’d pay us?” SoJo asked.

  Weejy shot her a look.

  “There is enough money for everyone. Come back. We’ll talk. I’ll introduce you to the others. And we have more coming. Clones of Thomas Jefferson. Joan of Arc. Catherine the Great. Abraham Lincoln.”

  Weejy knew three of those people were Bert’s friends.

  Weejy also knew that Ziggy was an evil sack of shit, and she didn’t trust him any further than she could punt him.

  “Will Bert be there too?”

  “Bert. Albert Einstein. He was with you in the SUV. Of course he’ll be there.”

  “Okay.” Weejy spoke without hesitation. “We’ll head back.”

  “Splendid. Looking forward to—”

  Weejy ripped the microphone off the dash and then snapped off the rearview mirror. Both got tossed out the window.

  “I’m never going to get my deposit back,” Charles moaned.

  “You think the rental place was cool with Ziggy wiring the mirror for sound?”

  “Ziggy was lying about Tom and Joan,” Weejy interrupted. “He doesn’t know them. He had no idea who we are, and no idea who Bert is.”

  “So how does he know about them?”

  “No idea. But I trust Bert.”

  Where are you, Bert?

  I hope you connected with your friends.

  I hope you warned them.

  “So, uh, if you’re not going back, can you ladies just drop me off here?”

  “We have more questions for you, Charles.”

  “And I’ll happily answer any questions you have. I’m not a bad guy, SoJo. Really. I lied because of the money. We didn’t know we could trust you. But we’re all clones. Working together, we can do something amazing. Something that will change the world.”

  He reached forward to pat SoJo’s knee, and she caught it and bent his fingers backward, prompting a yelp.

  “Touch me again, Charles, and I’ll smack you so hard your common ancestors feel it.”

  “I’m not really into getting hurt.”

  “I’m not really into making out with a guy who turned out to be a lying sack of horse shit.”

  “Wouldn’t you lie for a million bucks?”

  “You mean would I pretend to be kidnapped, and beaten, to terrify two people who were being held against their will? Sorry, Charles, that ain’t me.”

  SoJo turned away from him. Weejy put the car into gear and kept heading east.

  Maybe this is all just a misunderstanding.

  Maybe this will all turn out okay.

  Maybe Charles and his buddies are basically decent people, corrupted by the allure of big money.

  But probably not.

  Weejy shivered, remembering that metal table. That twisted look on Ziggy’s face. That hungry stare in Tork’s eyes.

  We need to get as far away from here as possible.

  We need to find Bert.

  I need to find Bert.

  The low gas indicator light came on. Weejy reflexively checked the rearview for followers, then remembered she threw it out the window. So she checked her side mirror.

  Headlights. At least four pair. Coming up fast.

  “SoJo, climb up here where the airbags are, and buckle up.”

  SoJo looked behind her, then slid into the front seat while Weejy jammed on the accelerator.

  ZIGGY

  Area 57 – New Mexico

  Einstein!

  Ziggy’s mind reeled at the possibilities. The potential.

  If anyone can help Nick figure out the problems he’s been having with the death ray, it’s a clone of Albert Einstein.

  I’ve been searching for Einstein. If only I’d known that was him sooner, a lot of this wasted time could have been avoided.

  I blame the management.

  It’s also partly my fault, of course. I had never even considered Weejy and SoJo could be clones. But it was right there in the names. Sacagawea. Sojourner Truth. I’m certainly smart enough to have sussed that out. So why didn’t I?

  Ziggy clasped his fingers behind his head, and let his brain work it out.

  I knew they’d come looking for Area 57. For Project Esbat. Weejy and SoJo and their male companion. But I’d assumed they were conspiracy theorists on vacation. Or private investigators looking for missing persons. Or maybe even spies from the corporate sector or some other section of government. Occam’s Razor? When you hear galloping, you think horses, not zebras.

  That answer was logical, but Ziggy was a smart enough shrink to dig deeper.

  Of course, it isn’t entirely my fault. I didn’t have a complete list of all twenty clone donors. I began this project with incomplete data. Imperfect information. And why would I ever suspect two women—especially black and indigenous people of color—could be clones? Cloning Tesla or Freud or Darwin or Einstein… that makes sense. Cloning a Native American and a Black slave? They may have had some historical significance, but not nearly the impact or importance of the Very Important White Male Scientists the world has given us.