The crystal chandelier in the Sotheby's auction room illuminates the fake Van Gogh Starry Night in all its glory, and Lila's pearl bracelet suddenly snaps, sending tumbling beads spelling out the word "LIAR" on the teak floor. When the auctioneer removes the dust cover, the champagne glass in her hand explodes - the diagnosis of her miscarriage three years ago is embedded in the iris bush in the lower left corner of the frame.
"The starting bid is eighty million dollars." The moment the auction gavel hit, Lila's Dior high-fashion dress waistband began to ooze cold sweat. In the doctor's signature line on the diagnosis, Benson Sr.'s handwriting was emerging, the ink wriggling like a living thing into a new sentence, "Clear the way for my heirs."
Ethan's sapphire cufflinks suddenly burn, and as he dims the reflection of his phone screen, he sees a watermark emerge from the back of the canvas: a surveillance screen shot of Lila signing the embryo destruction agreement at the private clinic, dated the same week she claimed to have gone on a ski retreat to Switzerland. When the bidding reached one hundred and twenty million dollars, the frame suddenly cracked open of its own accord, spilling out dark red plasma instead of paint, and the characteristic fishy-sweet smell of amniotic fluid instantly filled the hall.
"Security!" The auctioneer screamed and backed away, her high heels crushing the tumbling pearls. A holographic projection rises up out of the pool of blood, and the image of Lila lying on an operating table wearing a breathing mask is magnified tenfold, and the rose tattoo on the small of her back is being laser-scorched into the Benson family crest. Pop-ups suddenly cover the entire wall of the auction room as the audience frantically swipes, "Murderer!"
Ethan's cloning serum test tube is glowing in the cold liquid nitrogen of the underground vault. As he drops the last drop of liquid into the petri dish, the real-time surveillance feed of the auction embryo suddenly flashes: the fetus inside the transparent chamber is carving words into the glass with its umbilical cord, the strokes identical to the security markings on Benson Sr.'s will.
"Welcome home, brother." Violet's synthesized voice came through the ventilation ducts.Ethan knocked over the cooler as he turned around, and the front page of the twenty-year-old Times slipped away-a surreptitious photo of his mother with Benson Sr. had been taken with the abdomen circled in red, and the calculations of the pregnancy cycle showed that the true heir would have turned twenty-one years old.
The fluid in the embryo chamber suddenly boils as the alarms roar. The fetus opened its eyes, its iris pattern an exact match to Ethan's cloned cells. As the first cries came through the infrasound, all the vault's safes popped open automatically, and in each compartment lay the corpse of a red-haired woman, the three scars on the side of her neck glowing phosphorescently in the emergency lights.
"These are the real sacrifices." Violet's projection appears in the frosted mirror, her finger tracing the number on each corpse's chest, "A bride for you every year from 2001 to 2023."
The sound of fingernails scratching comes from the underground pipes of the Manhattan Asylum. Old John, the security guard, takes his third swig of whiskey, and three hundred pairs of scarlet eyes snap open as a flashlight beam sweeps through the vents. As he dropped to the floor, the first redhead crawled out of the ducts in a spider-like position, Lila's pre-plastic surgery face under a silicone mask.
"Game on." The replicants murmured in unison, their vocal cords vibrating at the exact same frequency as Violet's post-surgery tones. They ripped open their straitjackets, revealing different dates tattooed on their collarbones-all the anniversary of the deaths of Benson family members.
The monitor screen in the Dean's office flickered with snowflakes as Lila watched a tidal wave of replicants roam the corridor, each humming the same vows she'd taken at her wedding. When the first replicant crashed through the bulletproof glass, she finally got a good look at the object in her hand: a wedding ring engraved with "Jared & Amber," the blue light from the radioactive coating on the inside ionizing the air into a toxic mist.
"You owe her this." The replicants pinned Lila to the shock bed, three hundred insulin pens simultaneously lodged in her carotid artery, "Three hundred deaths for one new life."
A violent tremor comes from underneath the ground of Central Park, and rose roots pierce the rock and grow wildly. As the top of the first mutant rose topples over the observation deck, a holographic projection in the stamens unfolds in the night sky: twenty years ago on a rainy night, Benson Sr. was handing over a baby to the underground clinic, and the barcode on the back of that baby's neck matched the number of Ethan's cloned cell exactly.
Violet stands at the top of the Throne of Roses, moonlight coloring her red hair silver-white. She lifted the storage jar of the auction embryos, the jar cracking fine lines in the radiation as the baby's cries awakened all the sleeping roses through infrasound. Petals shoot up into the sky like knife blades, carving out old Benson's death certificate in the clouds.
"Smell that?" She smiled softly into the drone's camera, her fingertips dabbing at the dew on the petals, "It's the smell of lies burning."
As the first petal cuts Ethan's cheek, the cloned cells on the back of his neck suddenly burst into flames, spelling out latitude and longitude coordinates on the surface of his skin.The GPS location shows the exact spot where the yacht sank three years ago-at the moment, three hundred redheaded corpses are floating at the bottom of the river, each holding an insulin pen inscribed with a different date.
[Act 5: Countdown to Death for the Final Bid]
The electronic clock in the auction room suddenly rewinds, zeroing in on the moment when all lighting goes out. When the emergency lights come on, guests are shocked to realize that their wrists are all wrapped in rose vines, with barbs lodged in their veins to form IV tubes. The big screen lights up with a blood-colored countdown: 30 minutes, and the bidding becomes "the right to live".
"Each drop of blood is worth ten million dollars." Violet's voice spills from the ceiling as she manipulates the hologram to show real-time blood bank data, "Mr. Jared's O-type blood is currently in the lead."
Lila suddenly breaks away from the vines and rips open her skirt to reveal barcodes on her inner thighs. After a laser scan, the wall cracks open and three hundred insulin pens rain down on Violet, and when the first one hits her shoulder, the cap pops off and a holographic projection of Benson Sr.'s will explodes into the air: the real heir is a clone of the auction's embryo.
Ethan raises his radiation-mutated right hand at this point, and the writhing clone cells under his skin suddenly erupt, spelling out DNA strands in the auction room dome. As the double-helix structure collapses into the Benson family crest, all the rose vines instantly wither, and Violet in the shower of petals rips off her mask - the face that turns out to be Amber, who was supposed to be dead three years ago.
"Surprise?" She licked the blood off the corner of her mouth, the scar on the side of her neck cracking open in the moonlight to reveal the miniature bomb countdown hidden inside, "This is the real final chapter."
(End of chapter)
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As groans from an encrypted hard drive resonate through Wall Street, three hundred redheaded replicants simultaneously raise their selfie sticks.Ethan's cloning serum has sparked a mutant plague among black market buyers, and bronze coffins engraved with Russian characters are crawling out of the ground in Central Park ...