Excerpt: Twin States

This is an exerpt from my novel in progress – Bennice and Sarah are identical twins, clones. Bennice was raised on Earth – barren and devastated, controlled by powerful corporations including the one that owns her cells, and hopes to exploit her to help them find and mine Armorite – a mineral that fuels instantaneous travel and colonization. Sarah was raised as part of the resistance to that same company on Althea, a planet teeming with life. Both share a powerful psychokinetic talent.

Decision to abandon – Terra

Bennice sat cross legged on the floor in the main room of her apartment, her adult hand against the window, listening. The apartment was far enough off the ground that she couldn’t feel the complex geology of the soil and rock beneath the CrallTek corporation’s main headquarters, but she could feel the fragile bones of the building itself, concrete and glass. She could bring down this building by stroking its concrete skeleton out of balance until it crumbled. Luckily, they’d never figured out she could do that.

On the floor below her, the men’s voices vibrated against the window, which vibrated against the metal frame of the building, which vibrated against the window she touched. Listening. Listening to the men decide whether she would live or die.

Redundant. The men on the floor beneath her had decided to ‘discontinue’ her, kill her. The minerals she finds are rare, but not useful for weapons systems. Metals for medical applications like the gold she found last year helps pay the bills to keep her but she’s still not finding us anything useful. There has been no armonite found in any of the places we’ve used her to search, not by her.

“Not by anyone else either, at least not in those locations. There was that one small find in Brazil last year.”

“That small find was not even enough for a single conquest mission.”

“Gentlemen, I think we need to accept the fact that either there is no armorite left on Earth, or that Altheans aren’t any good at finding armorite outside of Althea. It’s time to end this project.”

And that was it. She is not a Terran. She is property. She’s not even going to be recycled into the carbon stream like a Terran would be, just incinerated. Her mother was long since reassigned to another job.

Bennice dropped her hand from the window. Should she do it now? Should she bring this whole building down on top of them? Kill these managers of death, who spread their armorite-fueled army across a hundred colonized planets? If they were going to kill her, could her own death mean something? Could it belong to her?

Bennice put her hand back on the window. “…and if he can re-establish trade routes, it would be worth the expense.” the man said, likely Anthony, the vice president.

“But would she even get through the bio filters if all of her matter is from here?”

“If she doesn’t, they’ll take care of our problem for us.”

“Tell her handler to prepare her. She can go on the next run to Orthney. I have someone there who can take care of the rest.”

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