Daniel had been taken as an urgent organ donor.

The weight of history had fallen on our family unity. Again. The blood drained from my face.

My father's voice over the phone felt alien to me when he told me the bad news. His words felt heavier than a lead beam, sharper and colder than a razor blade, and more tangible than my own life experience. Rost Peneus was a wartime survivor, while I was just his naïve, nineteen-year-old daughter and an aspiring mechanic.

He knew the real meaning of pain and loss first-hand.

My arms and hands began to shake. I put a hand on my boss' secretary's glass desk for support, a gesture that triggered revulsion in her facial features. She was a clone and hated traditional humans like me, of course. But her feelings were the least of my concerns.

Part of me still wanted to deny it. My dear brother, taken as a donor? My worst nightmare would always come second after that.

Daniel was the sunshine of my life. He was supposed to be at home, doing homework. He was just a regular fifteen-year-old kid. Why had clones picked precisely him for a forced organ donation?!

"But... I don't understand." My voice was creaking. Tears were staining my cheeks and my pristine white cleaning-maid coat with the company logo, Replica Ltd. "How could this happen? Why?"

"This afternoon, the police forces fetched Daniel when he was alone at home," he explained in a shaky whisper. "They needed to perform an urgent transplant on a clone with special DNA that only matched Daniel's. I'm not sure whether they had enough time to clone his DNA in the BioBank before the bomb was set off. But now he's gone. They didn't even find any trace of blood or tissue, not even a piece of his clothing. Nothing. That's why they suspect he had something to do with the bombing."

"Nobody disappears like that. Are you sure they searched thoroughly?"

"Daphne, my sugar cube." He sighed. "The police told me Daniel's nanochip stopped emitting any signal after the explosion."

Nanochips were treacherous devices. All humans had got them implanted at the back of our brains, under the skin close to our napes, which the government used to check on our every move, our every thought. They could geolocalise every human being on Earth.

"That only leaves two options." He fell silent.

I swallowed hard.

"One. Either Daniel's chip is malfunctioning on purpose because he tried to defy the government. Or two," he went on with a low, throaty voice that made the hair on my nape stand on end.

"Dad, don't say it, plea-" I whispered feebly. I knew where he was getting at.

"... or he's dead."

"He's not dead!" I exclaimed, unable to face that fact. I wiped the tears from my eyes with fury.

"If he isn't and comes back home for help, I'll... I-I'll have to call the p-police. Daphne, if you see him, you'll have to c-call them, too." His hopelessness was evident in his stuttering.

"Never!" Fire didn't burn as vividly as my anger and defiance at that moment.

"I don't want you involved in this!" he yelled back at me, matching my fury. "If he isn't dead, he will be soon! I don't want to lose you too. I'm serious!" His breathing became ragged. He went on with hopelessness, "Don't let me be the last one alive. I wouldn't be able to stand it!"

He paused. His uneven breathing while being silent pierced my ears.

"Look, if he died during the bombing and his body got torn into bits, it means he's resting in peace already. But if he didn't die, he's dead anyway. We've already lost him, darling." His voice broke by the end. "I don't know what I'd do without you, my sugar cube. Promise me you'll cooperate with the clone police. Don't die out of loyalty to your brother. Please," he begged me.

He had never done such a thing. It broke my heart.

"He would understand," he whispered and then he sobbed.

I sighed hopelessly. My teeth were clenched so badly that my gums hurt. It felt like losing my mother all over again.

I loved my brother more than my own life. I couldn't lose him. Not like that. Not so soon. We still needed to make our dream come true: become mechanics and open our garage, together. I was waiting for him to finish high school. We were self-taught and passionate about our dream.

"That's the reason why the cops wanted to question me thoroughly," he went on with a darker tone of voice. "They didn't seem to trust the current state of the GSNS network. They were scanning me with a mobile chip detector all the time. They've been asking me things they should already know."

Chip detectors were mobile, GPS-oriented devices that enabled the police forces to get alerted of undesirable conduct and track down people. GPS was one of the few technologies from the old world that had been spared after the war.

But if a chip signal went dead, there was no way to track it down. I felt my legs going weak.

"You need to get ready for the worst," he reasoned further. "They were here, at home, a few minutes ago. They left right before I called you. They're probably coming over to you at work to ask you more questions.

"It's impossible he's involved in the attack. I know Daniel would never do such a thing. He's never held a grudge against anyone. But they think he's suspicious given his profile... and yours. Because both of you love technology."

"You've got to be kidding!" I felt my heart about to burst at such a stupid notion. "That's absurd! We want to repair stuff, not destroy it! We're not criminals! The cops should check it! The nanochips... They must've been working until now, before the explosions, they might still be! They should know whether Daniel or I have had any thoughts or involvement with-!"

"I know, I know," he agreed with a sad and worried voice. "That's what I told them."

The doubt hanging on my brother's life and his honour was killing me. The only thing I knew for sure, though, was that I would not wait until the end of my shift to find out where Daniel was and what had happened to him.

"I'm going," I told my father in a daze. "I'll find him."

I didn't even say goodbye. I hung up the phone.

My blood pressure was over the roof. A rush of adrenaline was ravaging my brain, making me feel in override mode.

I had tunnel vision. My mouth was partly open. I was breathing hard in and out. I couldn't feel at ease in anything I did or thought. Every second of my existence was hurting me. My whole body didn't feel right, as if it was no longer mine, and yet I felt unstoppable and ready for anything.

My boss' secretary stood by her desk, apparently yelling at me but I couldn't hear a word. My ears buzzed.

I left Replica Ltd. in a hurry. Once on the street, I started running towards the BioBank.

I felt the floor far, far away from my feet. I had been geared up from zero to sixty in no time, propelled by a force of unknown origin. I felt like a typhoon, advancing ruthlessly towards my destination.

The BioBank was far from Replica Ltd., but I didn't care. No buses were available anyway. At least I could see none in the streets. Or cars, motorbikes, people. It felt as if life had stopped. Shops were closed. The city was deserted. My only companion was the orangey sunlight of that hot afternoon in May.

I would go to the BioBank.

I would stop at nothing, no one – not even the police officers.

I would enter ground zero.

I would find my little brother or any clue of his whereabouts.

I didn't believe in failure.

One thing was striking me as odd: my chip must have given a 'rebellion' warning to the GSNS. That company tipped the police if any punishable conduct took place.

I had run away from work without my boss' authorisation. That was punishable. Dissidence to clone laws wasn't allowed.

But nobody was coming for me.

Were all the police agents busy dealing with the current crisis? I guessed so.

I went on running as if my life depended on it. I loved Daniel and I would do anything to save him. Claiming that he had anything to do with the bombing of the BioBank, one of the most prominent strongholds of the clone authorities, was nonsense. If someone had managed to be out of the system and was ready to terrorise the city, that wasn't Daniel.

My brother and I were traditional humans, but we weren't criminals. I didn't believe in violence, murder, or war, and I would never endorse them. One look at the history book when I was in school and I had made up my mind about it.

Atrocious. Pre-war times, the war itself, and the post-war period. My ancestors didn't represent me.

Now, I might have suffered under clone rule, but that didn't automatically mean I was willing to cooperate with the clone authorities. I hated the lot of them. So, clones didn't represent me either.

As I was running through those empty streets, I was thinking of finding Daniel and giving him our dear Frankie as a gift, the motorbike we had brought to life together as a hobby, and letting him go forever. I would make him swear he would never come back to see us again. Then, the clones would come for me probably. But I didn't care.

Some twenty minutes later, I was standing at a corner north of the BioBank, staring at it from afar and standing next to a large rubbish bin. The most chaotic sight stood before me.

The façade had become a large pile of stinking and fuming rubble. I could see the guts of the BioBank, all its offices and storage rooms, partially destroyed and burnt. Bits and pieces of furniture and other objects had been reduced to ashes, broken, and scattered all over the place.

Victoria Square seemed a war zone: debris, burnt wood, plastic, and other materials, broken digital devices here and there, partly burnt or torn papers, dust clouding the air making it hard to breathe, broken pipes spilling water, used and discarded fire extinguishers, a devastating deadly silence, and police tape all over the place, marking several areas. The thickest clouds of dust had raised and were blocking the sunlight.

I put a hand over my mouth to block the polluted air from coming into my lungs, but it was no use. My eyes started to itch as well.

I realised that the Statue of Victoria, a marble statue commemorating the clone victory in the Prevalence War in 2109 which presided over the square right in front of the BioBank, had suffered some damage too. Her right arm and hand used to hold a circle-shaped, neon light. It used to be raised, too. Now, not anymore. The explosion had torn it off along with the right part of her chest.

She had also been crowned by a large, black leather armchair. Now, Victoria was blindfolded by the part of the armchair where a clone butt had been resting from Monday to Friday.

The premises were being guarded by hundreds of fully-armed police officers. It was an imposing sight.

I hid behind the corner so as not to be seen and swallowed hard. No one was there but them, so they must have expelled the news reporters and any onlookers from the area.

Those clone cops were checking left and right while crushing broken bits of glass and debris beneath their feet. They hadn't seen me yet.

Knowing that Daniel had been there during the explosion made me dizzy. I needed to find him. I started to breathe heavily due to stress, with no regard for the foul perfume of chaos and destruction.

My heart was beating too fast. I wasn't feeling so cocky anymore because I honestly didn't think I could do any of the things I had promised I'd do.

Now that the adrenaline avalanche wasn't clouding my judgement, I wasn't so brave. Those heavily-armed clone cops with huge bulletproof vests were intimidating.

So, I remained standing there, stupefied, not knowing what to do next for a minute or two. My heart ached. My hands were sweaty. My lack of resolve became a scorching kind of guilt deep inside me.

Out of the blue, I saw a familiar pair of enticing green eyes looking at me from a small hole in the large rubbish bin beside me. I gasped.

"What the fuck are you doing here?!" His angry whisper startled me.

"It's you. The motorbike guy! What the fuck are you doing in here?!" I whisper-shouted back at him with incredulity and my eyes wide open.

"Fuck... Come in!" he exclaimed in an angry whisper.

He was faster than a bullet train: he opened the lid, emerged from within, shot his arms at either side of me, got hold of me, pulled me to him over the top, and made me enter, closing the lid in a second.

It had been incredibly easy for him, as if he had picked up a doll.

When the lid was back on, the darkness surrounded us – not completely, though. Some dim light entered through two small holes on different sides of the rubbish bin. We were squatting down in there. Thank God it was empty.

"Are you insane?!" he whispered to me in anger while I was waiting for my pupils to adjust to the darkness. "You're lucky no one's seen you!"

He could've spoken to me in a much more agreeable tone after repairing his bike out of goodwill.

Unexpectedly, he started to rummage in his backpack in a frenzy. It was too dark yet for me to see anything properly. I heard the sound of metal, though.

"What are you doing in a rubbish bin?" I asked with a shaky voice. "Thank God it's empty at least, but it still stinks in here. Why don't we-?"

"Shut up," he replied in a foul mood.

Eventually, he found what he was looking for: a small handheld device that looked like a stun gun for self-defence, but I wasn't completely sure due to the semidarkness.

I started to panic as soon as I saw it, but by the time I opened my mouth, it was too late. He had got me by my shoulders, pulled me to him, and aimed the device close to my nape right where my nanochip was.

I didn't even have time to scream.

I felt a soft electric current on my nape, but it was much lighter than the shock of a taser. It didn't hurt at all, actually.

Because that wasn't a stun gun.

"Shit. Your chip almost gave us away," he said with relief as he let me go, but he was still a bit angry. "Luckily you haven't seen or heard anything that might compromise us."

"What?" I whispered completely at a loss.

He turned to one of the holes and spied outside the rubbish bin. He took a glimpse of Victoria Square and the BioBank before he turned to me again.

"Are you spying on the police?" I asked with incredulity while I put a hand over my nape. My skin felt completely normal when my fingers touched it.

I could see in the darkness a lot better by then. That was when I spotted a detachable firearm, a regular-looking gun, and lots of ammunition inside his open backpack, right next to him.

"What the fuck?!" I exclaimed, whispering in panic. My back collided with the hard plastic of the inside walls of that large rubbish bin. I felt the blood draining from my face.

"Shut the fuck up and listen to me," he said in a hurry. "We haven't got much time and you need to know a few things before we get outta here. Can't get into much detail, so shut up, listen, and save your questions for later – if we get outta here alive."

"If we g-get out of h-here a-alive?!"

"Shut up and listen!" His frown became one of concern, then. He sighed while raising his open palms to me. "Don't worry. You're going to be okay."

I put my shaking hands over my mouth in a pathetic attempt to control my panic, but there was no use. I was stammering by then. "The g-guns, the b-bullets,... You're... Oh, Lord. The c-cops will f-find us and k-kill us! My n-nanochip will w-warn the c-clone authorit-"

"No, they won't find us," he replied with a naughty smile. He showed me his taser-like device. "Because I've just hacked your nanochip with this device. It doesn't work properly thanks to the malware I've just infected it with. Now it doesn't send your actual thoughts to the clones, just a pre-made routine that will cover all your tracks. And mine now that you've seen and talked to me, of course."

"Oh, dear!" I whispered in a high-pitched, panic-stricken voice.

With a smirk, he added, "My chip works in the exact same way."

Hello, my dear sugar cubes!

Daphne didn't find her brother, but the terrorist behind the bombing. How come he can hack or damage chips so that the clones can't know anything real about him?

Stay tuned to know more! 😊

XOXO

MS