Chapter 4

Loss and grief are hard on a normal person. There is denial and anger. There is bargaining and depression. There is acceptance. For many, the timeline for this is long, and drawn out. It can take years to accept loss. For a normal person.

The amount of loss in our lives has been compounded to the point that the stages of grief can be gone-through in a week. The pain and sorrow stuffed deep down inside. We all had to become stronger.

Mrs. S was first, when I was ten. My mother never told me what happened. Only that she was gone. She never spoke of her again but my Uncle Felix wasn't short on stories of a powerful woman, and how I had a part of her inside me. I laughed at that, because I was pretty sure she was one of the few whom I didn't have a part of inside me.

I witnessed Uncle Donnie's sacrifice. He died protecting me when I was thirteen; he took a bullet for me. As he died in Aunt Alison's arms, I overheard her telling him how much she loved him. He held her and whispered, "I'm sorry I never made you smile like she did" and then he drifted off. I remember being happy she had someone, and devastated that she had to lose someone she loved again.

But the hardest came at sixteen.

They had a weakness.

After years of fighting the military, we had found a way to take out Project Castor. We were by no means military trained. It was my mother, father, Felix, Art, Helena, and Mark who had joined our cause after the Castor-clones killed his wife Gracie. Aunt Cosima and Aunt Delphine were forced into hiding in Europe, and we hadn't seen them for a year. Alison and her kids were in a cabin in north Nova Scotia until the plan finished.

I wasn't supposed to be there.

But I was, I could shoot a gun, and I was tired of being protected. Shooting a gun came just as naturally to me as swimming had. Aunt Cosima hypothesized that I was some kind of "container" for the souls of lost clones. Well she didn't call them souls, she said "cognitive identities," but my Aunt Helena lovingly calls me "little soul catcher." I don't mind. It gives me purpose. It connects me to them.

Art found the small, unmarked military outpost in eastern Saskatchewan. It guarded the final hard copies of the Castor research. My father had already hacked and wiped the digital ones. I was relegated to keeping the getaway vehicle running with Uncle Felix. It was a Jeep SUV with a cb radio installed to talk through the mission. We could hear what they were doing and went through blueprints to guide them.

"Fee, right or left?" My mother demanded over the radio.

"Left. No, no. Bollocks, I've got this upside down."

I pushed him to the side, "Take a right and then when it dead ends, turn to the left. Be careful though, you're coming up on the comm room."

Felix rolled his eyes playfully at me.

"Radio silence, Sarah" Art barked over the static, "at least until you take out the comm room."

Art was used to taking charge. I remembered years ago as he bullied me into shape. Well not me, but Beth. I had come to the conclusion that I shared memories with clones that had passed. It was the only way to explain why I knew things I shouldn't. They never spoke to me, but every once in a while an alien memory would pop into my head. I used to reject them, shake them off. But now I relied on them heavily.

The plan went well, at least the main aspects. My mom shut down the communications room and was supposed to get out. Helena sniped the watchtower guards with my father as her spotter, while Art and Mark breached the complex to set the bomb. Art took a bullet to the arm, but all seemed to go smoothly, until they all returned to bolt.

My mother wasn't there.

"Where is she?" I demanded.

"She should have been the first back." Art said through painful wheezes.

"You wrote the plan big boy," Felix retorted, "so looks like you get to go find her."

The radio shot static. "Ki...Kira."

I was silent.

"Kira, I don't... have much time."

We raced to the receiver.

"Where are you Sarah, I'm coming in!" my father yelled.

"Cal... stop. Art, is the bomb set?" She coughed.

My heart halted.

"It's done," he said soberly.

"We save you, Seestra?" Helena pleaded.

"No," my mother said softly, "This...ends here...let...let me speak to Kira."

"We need to move, it's going off soon," Mark noted.

"I won't leave her!" I said through tears, welling in the corner of my eyes.

"We have no choice" Mark replied.

Felix betrayed me. He pulled me into the Jeep and the rest piled in. Mark and Helena hopped in a pick-up behind us. Art, injured as he was, took the wheel anyway. He always was stubborn. The lurch of the SUV set me off.

"Turn around! Turn around!" I screamed.

"Kira..." My mom's hushed voice came over the radio.

I raced to the radio, "Stop it. I will not say goodbye."

"Kira, I'm bleeding out and we're kilometers away from anywhere to help. Bomb or not, it's too late."

"No. Mark knows some medicine!"

My dad placed his arm around me silently.

"You've become everything I've wished for you. You are stronger than all of us, you have parts of all of us, and you'll have a part of me."

I was silent. I couldn't respond. I just cried. I cried harder than I ever had before, cried long breathless tears.

"Monkey?" She pleaded, "I love-" she was silent.

I looked up at the radio as a bright light shot through the window. I turned my head to look outside and after a few seconds, heard the blast. I felt it deep within me.

"NO! I..." I trailed off. Felix turned away, clinching his fists. My father held me close. Art was silent. I could still feel the vibrations.

"I didn't even say goodbye." I forced through sobs.

All was silent.

"You never needed to say goodbye," my mother's voice rang in my head, "I'll be with you always."

I froze. I couldn't tell if I was delirious with grief. I had received flashes of memories, I had felt their emotions, I had learned skills but I had never had one of them talk to me. Never heard a voice directly.

"You will always be my Monkey," she said in my mind, "and I will always be here, watching you grow, and loving you more in death than I could have in life."

I hugged my father and whispered into his flannel shirt.

"I love you too mom. I love you too."