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Chapter 141 - 11

Katariki is not without resources of his own. An hour later you and he are sitting in the back of a chauffeur-driven limousine, driving through Moroccan suburbs, and you are suitably dressed once more. Lacking a cell phone, you have no means of contacting MetaHuman—or anybody else—to tell them where you are. You are confident they will find you soon, however: Electra once mentioned that back when you traveled into the future in June, she employed a number of clairvoyants around the world to try to discover your location. That said, Katariki has so far managed to elude detection.

Katariki has barely spoken since you left the caves and Masfiwi.

"So, at the beginning of April, you killed your own clone," you say. "That was you who pulled the trigger, I suppose?"

Katariki glances your way, and nods.

"Why?"

"I hadn't yet been cured," he says. "I was concerned that if you learned about my work with the Surgeons, you'd find a way to block it."

"Murdering your own clone still counts as murder," you say.

"Perhaps," he answers. "But you saw the other clones. They were imperfect. Their life spans would be measured in months rather than decades, and they would die in prolonged pain. That was true of all three of them, even the one I shot in April. My worst crime was not murder, but rather the creation of these three abominations. It's true that my need was great. Still, I wonder if I would do the same again, if I had the choice."

You have no immediate answer to that. You say nothing.

Katariki changes the subject. "A museum in Rabat holds an antique flask that is capable of capturing and containing a jinni. Thereafter, we need to find a means of sending the jinni against the Surgeons. The first question is, how should we acquire that flask?"