A Scripta

Duncan Idaho tucked the paper under his arm and walked through the metal detector. The guards watched him, and one opened his eyes wide at the read out.

“Mr. Idaho, you have the same DNA match as a dead hero – “

“Masonry. I know; I’m his clone.”

The guards looked him over. One said, “I knew him when he was in here.”

“I’m not him,” Idaho said.

“You look just like him.”

“I’m not him,” he reiterated firmly.

“Let him go, Tim,” said another guard.

One other guard beckoned, and Idaho followed him out into the prison. They went down a long, empty hallway that echoed their footsteps. The guard opened the door and escorted him into a small room with cubicles. He was directed to sit in one and wait. He pulled out the newspaper and read the article again that brought him here:

Scholarship Administrator Indicted for Murder

Michael Darcy, administrator for the Nathan Greene Foundation, was indicted yesterday on fifteen counts of murder, after admitting that he had created fifteen “constructs” of the friend the Foundation was named after.

“They were not human, even though they had flesh and blood,” stated Darcy’s attorney, Robert Block. “Most of them were incapable of supporting life, and only a few could be considered unable to function in society.”

However, Assistant District Attorney William Walker added, “He created sixteen illegal clones, and one of them has turned out to be the hero known as Duncan Idaho. What could have happened to the other fifteen, if allowed to live? Not to mention cloning is—“

Someone sat down across from him. Darcy nodded, picked up the phone on his side. Idaho found his phone and copied him.

“Darce.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be out tomorrow.”

“What happened?”

“Fuckin’ StarWyng.”

Idaho twitched.

“She goes and makes a promise to Lodestar, and now she thinks she can go around applying it to everyone.”

“What promise?”

“She made some stupid promise – something about killing and putting it on you – and now she put the damn thing on me. What the hell – Lodestar’s dead.”

Idaho had to think of who Lodestar was, and then remembered that it was Nate’s Peacebringer, the second one, the “good” one. “But it was a promise,” Idaho reiterated.

“So what? I had to take out those constructs, Nate; they were my responsibility to do so. I made them, they were wrong, I needed to destroy them.”

“But weren’t they live? And conscious? And sentient?”

“Yes, yes, and yes. One tried to tear my throat out. Imagine if I just let him loose. He’d be sitting here, not me.”

"What about me?"

"What do you mean?"

Idaho gazed at Darcy. "What if something was wrong with me? Would you kill me?"

"If I knew something was wrong with you, I would have to."

“Killing’s wrong, though.”

“I didn’t like it, you know - Jesus Fucking Christ!” With that, he slammed the phone on the hook and mouthed, pointing, “You don’t understand,” and shoved himself away from the counter.

Idaho watched him leave, as he sat with the phone in his hand. Darcy looked back at him, his eyes blazing in fury, then he walked back out with the guard. “C’mon, Idaho,” said the guard on his side of the glass.

Idaho replaced the phone on the hook, glanced at the guard. “That’s not the Darcy I know.”

“Prison changes a man,” he said. “Some take less time than others.”

He wasn't sure it was that.