Chapter 44

But as they turned to go, Joe thought he heard something.

"What is that?" he asked.

"What's what?" Jun replied, struggling to lift one of the Eagles.

"That groaning sound." Joe said.

"I hear it too." Jun said, stopping for a moment.

At the same moment, Joe and Jun both looked up, seeing the gaping hole in the ceiling that had been created when the wagon wheel fixture had been torn down.

There was something hanging out of the hole.

It was an arm encased in a red glove.

"Katse!" hissed Joe, under his breath. "We got him!"

Before Jun could react, Joe leapt into the air, jumping up to the high ceiling in a zig zag pattern, until he was just underneath the part of the ceiling where the red glove hung down.

"Gotcha!" the Condor shouted, yanking hard on the glove and sending the body it was attached to plummeting to the floor below.

When Jun saw what Joe had done, she screamed. For the red glove didn't belong to Berg Katse.

"Jinpei!" the Swan rushed across the room, catching an unconscious Swallow in her arms.

"What the hell?" Joe vaulted up to the next floor through the ceiling hole.

"Ryu's up here." he called down a moment later. "And this looks like some kind of laboratory to me."

"Can you bring Ryu down?" Jun asked.

"Roger."

A few moments later, an unconscious Owl and Swallow lay on the floor next to two unconscious Eagles. Another Swallow/Owl pair spat and swore at the Condor and the Swan.

"Don't tell me that Jinpei and Ryu have evil twins as well." Joe groaned.

"That's a little much to believe." Jun agreed. "Let me go take a look at this laboratory."

"If anyone can find any useful information in that mess, you can." Joe agreed, waving her on. Jun flew up to the ceiling, disappearing through the hole. She turned her bracelet on so that Joe could monitor what she was doing.

"The computer systems seem reasonably intact up here." Jun reported. "I guess not blowing up the entire base had its advantages."

"Can you access them?" Joe asked.

"Working on it." Jun replied, and she began humming in a low tone that Joe recognized as something the Swan did when she was concentrating. After a few moments, she spoke again.

"There's something missing from the system." she said. "It's like there's a missing link, and it's impossible to access the data without it. But I'm not sure what it could..."

Jun's report broke off with a squeal.

"What's wrong, Jun?" Joe asked frantically, standing up and preparing to leap up to help her.

"I got it!" the Swan's voice crowed over the bracelet. "The microchip!"

A few clicks and hums were heard from the communication link, and then Jun spoke quickly. It was clear that she was excited by her find.

"Joe, this is incredible! It seems that Galactor has developed some fantastic cloning technology! From what I can tell, all they need is a blood sample and they can take any organic body and re-form it as another one! This is the prototype laboratory..."

"Clones?" Joe asked, thinking fast.

"Yes. But there's one problem: it is only the physical form that is cloned. The mind of the original person still remains. It looks to me like they cloned Ken's, Jinpei's and Ryu's bodies onto three Galactor soldiers."

"Three Galactor soldiers..." Joe muttered. "A fake Eagle, a fake Swallow, a fake Owl. No wonder Hakase couldn't find anything wrong with them! They were perfectly fine... they were just Galactor spies, that's all!" The last was said with a disgusted snort.

"That whole story about Ken's 'brother' must have been a ploy by Katse to get Ken to protect his clone. In fact, he's a Galactor goon named..."

There was silence for a moment, as Jun looked up the records.

"What is it, Jun?" Joe asked, concerned when she took more than a few seconds to continue.

"His name..." Jun gasped. "The Ken clone's real name is..."

"Hy Ssop..."

"What? Wasn't that the name of the guy he was supposed to play in your Murder Mystery?"

"Yes." Jun confirmed. "And the real name of the person who now looks like Jinpei is Dee Jonnaise. She's a Devilstar trainee. The one who looks like Ryu is Cal Zone. And Joe..."

The Swan gulped before continuing.

"There really is a Juli Enne... and a Vin Aigrette, too. They are apparently in another base, waiting to be called up to be cloned as the two of us."

"Damn, Galactor!" Joe swore. "Katse had all of this planned! He wanted to replace the Science Ninja Team with his own goons!"

"I resent that!" the tied up Ryu shouted. "Not all of us are dumb, you know! 'Goon' is a pretty offensive term to apply to all of us, as a group."

"You just blew our cover, idiot!" the tied-up Jinpei screamed at him. "Talk about being a goon!"

"It's not like they hadn't already figured it out!" the false Owl shot back.

"They still might have been wondering if you'd kept your fat mouth shut!" yelled the false Swallow. "To think, I let myself be changed into a boy, of all things. And for what? Nothing! Thanks to you and your incompetence!"

"My incompetence?" screeched the false Owl. "Why, if I weren't tied up..."

"Cut it out, you two." Joe smacked them both. "No one wants to listen to you bicker."

"I'm copying all of this information for Dr. Nambu, then I'm going to destroy these records." Jun reported on the bracelet. "We can take everyone back to the ISO headquarters and have Hakase sort it out from there."

"I won't be held as an ISO prisoner!" cried the false Swallow. "And you won't get any information from the others, either!"

"What are you talking about, Dee?" the false Owl asked, a nervous look on his face.

"Katse-sama gave me orders, and I intend to see them through." Dee grinned viciously. "And I might even take down the Science Ninja Team with me."

"Dee, no!" screamed the false Owl, even as Joe launched himself into the air and away from the pair, throwing himself over the unconscious Swallow and Owl, and covering them with his wings.

A huge explosion shook the room, sending flames and smoke almost to the ceiling.

88888

Jun nearly dropped the microchip and data disk she was holding when the explosion below shook the laboratory. Frantically she peered out of the hole, but all she could see was a haze of smoke.

Everyone else was down there. She had to save them.

Taking a deep breath, she attached her yo-yo to some of the laboratory equipment, then carefully lowered herself down to the floor below.

As she reached the bottom, the smoke began to clear. A grisly sight met her eyes. Two bodies... if you could call them that, since they didn't have torsos or heads, lay on the floor, their feet still wrapped in the mangled remains of Joe's cablegun. A sob flew out of Jun's mouth when she saw half of a body dressed in white lying on the floor, badly burned, while the other half lay across the room.

"Joe!" she sobbed, not wanting to believe that everyone who had been in the room was dead. "Where are you?"

A choking voice came out of the remaining haze.

"Here..."

Jun ran toward the sound of the voice, relieved to see that the Condor was intact, holding an equally intact Jinpei and Ryu.

"Where's Ken?" she asked, her lower lip trembling.

"There." Joe groaned, pointing a few feet away. On the floor was a bloody and charred, but apparently whole, Eagle.

"Thank God Hakase knew what he was doing when he designed our Birdstyles." the Condor moaned. "That hurt like hell, but I think we're all okay."

"The Birdstyles Katse had on his people didn't fare so well." Jun gulped, remembering the gory remains she had just seen.

"This has to be the real Ken, if his Birdstyle protected him." Joe said, crawling over to the body of the Eagle. He lifted his head, feeling for a pulse.

"Well, Jun," he said, smiling, "it looks like you were right."

"About what?" Jun asked, as she cradled the Swallow's head in her lap.

"The helmet." Joe answered. "Ken's helmet doesn't have a crack in it."

Jun looked up at Joe, smiling in relief that at last, it was all over.

88888

Somehow the Condor and the Swan managed to get everyone back onboard the God Phoenix, and back to the Crescent Coral Base. Dr. Nambu examined the three injured ninjas, as well as the data Jun had recovered, declaring that they were, indeed, the true Eagle, Swallow and Owl. With hindsight, he now confirmed that the brainwave scans that had been done before were from different people, although ones with similar overall patterns. The minor discrepancies would not have been noticed if he hadn't been looking for them.

Jun sat in the hospital room at Ken's side, holding his hand. There was so much she wanted to say to him, and she hoped that he would wake up.

"Please wake up, Ken..." she begged, brushing her lips across his cheek. "I need you..."

Even as she did so, the Eagle's eyes fluttered open.

"Jun!" he said, his eyes widening. "The other Eagle, he's my brother... his name is Kyle..."

"No, Ken." Jun sighed, squeezing his hand. "He's not. It turns out that was a trick of Katse's, just like when he tried to impersonate your father. He was actually just a Galactor goon, whose body was altered to look like yours."

"Not… my brother..." Ken sighed, an involuntary tear slipping down his face. "I..." It was clear that the Eagle was upset.

"Oh, Ken..." Jun said comfortingly, laying her head on his chest and embracing him. "I know how hard this must be for you... how long you've wanted a family..."

"I already have a family." Ken said quietly. "All of you."

Jun lifted her head to look Ken in the eye, their faces only inches apart.

"I feel that way too, Ken."

"There's something else I want you to know, Jun." Ken said. "When I was held captive by Katse, and being tortured, I wasn't certain I'd ever see you again. And I swore to myself that if I did, I would tell you this."

"What is it, Ken?" Jun asked, her eyes shining.