Kaishin Drabble 44

Prompts: Clone AU, First Person PoV, Not Really Kaishin

They tell me that my DNA was replicated incorrectly.

The scientists who constantly poke and prod me have no idea how it happened. The clone should be perfect, they tell the ones in charge, uncaring that the clone in question could hear them. I still remember being born, being pulled from my development pod confused, naked, and shaking. The first thing I recognized was the shocked faces of the scientists. They were expecting a 40-year-old man, not a teenaged boy.

If they'd had another blood sample, then I would have been killed. But they didn't and they were uneasy at wasting so much time and effort, so I wasn't, even though they make it very clear that I am defective.

The first things I was taught were physical. Walking, fighting, gymnastic, firing a gun, disarming alarms…all programed into my brain and beaten into me through training. I wasn't taught mental things, like talking, right away. Tools weren't supposed to talk.

She changed that.

The scientists are afraid of her. They call her Vermouth; I call her Mother. She taught me to speak, to think for myself, to analyze and deduce. To be alive. Whenever she was around, the scientists would scatter like… I don't know. Scientists? Were there other things that scattered?

Once he slipped and actually called her "Mother." He had flinched, expecting a beating, but she just smiled sadly and continued teaching me German.

Mother gave me a nickname. My real name is Experiment-S421, but she calls me "Shinichi." It feels like mine.

It's the only thing that's mine here.

I'm going to be assigned a mission soon. Mother speaks of it with excitement, but I'm more apprehensive. I know what my mission entails; I know how impossible it is. I know how many have already failed. I know the exact price of this failure.

I am Ex-S421, the clone of International Thief 1412, and I was created to kill and replace him.

And I find that I do not wish to do so.