"Here's your chance—wake them."
"…"
Dr. Merrick looked up at Hawk by reflex.
Hawk stood with his hands in his pockets, smiling as he repeated to the stunned Merrick, "Wake them, and I won't kill you."
At that, a flicker—called the will to live—returned to Merrick's glassy eyes.
Soon after,
he led Hawk back to the control room and began working the consoles alone, preparing to awaken the remaining five clones.
Hawk simply stood aside, watching the feeds of the cultivation pods on the main screen.
Right then, Natasha arrived with S.H.I.E.L.D. agents from outside.
The agents fanned out, combing the facility and collecting everything per plan.
Natasha stepped into the control room, glanced at the monitors—five curled, arms-hugging figures floating in their pods—and then at Merrick, too tense to even wipe his sweat. She put it together and looked to Hawk.
"You want to watch these five wake up?"
"Yeah."
Hawk turned to her. "Aren't you curious?"
Natasha thought, then shrugged. "Fine. I am."
Hawk smiled.
"Let's watch together, then."
"Okay."
Arms folded, Natasha stood with Hawk, both of them observing the feverish Merrick.
If the person most concerned was calm, why should she worry?
Besides—
she really did want to know whether a cloned Hawk could measure up to the real one.
Hearing the two of them settle in only made Merrick more rattled; their stares across his back nearly sent him fainting.
But he didn't dare. Hawk had promised: behave, and live.
So—
four hours later,
Merrick wiped his brow, sat at the primary console, opened the system he'd labeled "Soul Infusion," checked the parameters one last time, inhaled, and turned to Hawk.
Hawk got the cue and glanced at Natasha. "Keep an eye on him. If anything looks off, put it down."
He had once considered finding Merrick to clone a body for his sister and bring her back.
He still might, but the urgency had faded from that first impulse. With or without Merrick, reviving his sister was a matter of time.
And he could see her whenever he wished.
Anya was living comfortably in the Underworld's Pure Land, and Anna herself didn't care much about resurrection—so long as she could see her brother.
So—
he still wanted to bring her back, but he wasn't desperate. Naturally, Merrick's importance had plummeted.
Hawk finished with Natasha, vanished from the room, and reappeared by the pod bay on the surveillance feed.
Natasha looked to Merrick.
He took the hint, wiped his brow again, and pressed the Soul Infusion start.
At once,
the infusion system spun up. The pale-blue fluid in the five pods began to roil.
At the same time,
as fragments of images flickered across internal displays, the five clones' eyelids twitched rapidly—
like the REM of a sleeping person trapped in a dream.
Hawk watched the pods with genuine interest.
In the control room, Natasha couldn't help asking:
"What is this rig, exactly?"
"Soul infusion. I invented it to solve the problem of clones lacking consciousness."
Merrick couldn't hide the pride in his voice. "Other cloners fail because they can't solve the soul problem. I did."
Cloning animals isn't hard—that hurdle was cleared long ago.
Cloning humans was stalled not by ethics—
in a scientist's eyes, "ethics" is a rumor.
Everything is for science.
For truth.
So even if the Five Good Nations banned human cloning on paper, under the table plenty of biologists were trying anyway.
Many reached Merrick's level. They could grow human bodies.
And then stop.
What they produced wasn't truly a human being—more like a human-shaped cadaver.
Because they could not provide what matters most: a soul.
But Merrick insisted he'd solved it.
"My system converts curated memories into specific neuro-electrical signals and writes them into the clone's brain. With memory comes consciousness, and with consciousness comes a soul."
"So—"
"Yes."
"I can create souls."
As he rhapsodized over his "great invention," Merrick stared feverishly at the screens—at the boiling fluid, the flashing images, the figures trembling in their pods.
Natasha heard him and felt her skin crawl.
If souls could be created like that—
what would that make them?
Down in the pod bay, Hawk seemed to have heard the man crowing like a god. He looked up at a camera. "Don't listen to his nonsense. 'Create souls,' as if. If he'd truly done that, Mephisto—whose dominion is souls—would've hauled him off long ago."
Being contradicted riled Merrick, even if the man contradicting him could snap him in half.
"Mr. Phoenix, I can create souls. When the infusion ends, you'll see I'm right."
"Make him stop talking, Natasha."
"Aaah!"
A scream burst from the speakers.
Hawk shook his head and refocused on the five pods.
Soon,
the boiling subsided. Red indicator lights flipped to green.
With a hydraulic hiss, the fluid began draining at a visible pace.
Moments later,
one clone's features twisted in pain as the liquid fell. His hands tore the mask from his face by reflex; the pod door slid open, and he fell forward, gulping air.
"Whoa…"
Natasha sucked in a breath. "It worked?"
Hawk said nothing. He lifted one hand; telekinesis wrapped the clone—his own face staring back—and held him midair.
His Sixth Sense scanned the body, inside and out.
"Name?"
"E-E-Ellen!"
Suspended and newly awake, panic-eyed under Hawk's power, the clone blurted the first thing the program gave him.
The voice was dry and childish—like someone speaking for the first time.
Natasha blinked and glanced at Merrick.
"Ellen?"
"An agent's memory," Merrick answered. "We can't extract Phoenix's memories, so we pull a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent's instead, write it, then convert it to neuro-signals and transmit to the clone."
"This is your 'soul'?"
Natasha frowned. She didn't fully grasp it, but something felt wrong.
"This isn't a soul," Hawk said. "It's a program."
"Think of Zola. The only difference between these clones and 'Algorithm Zola' is that the clones have meat on their frame."
Hearing that, Natasha realized what had been needling her.
Hawk eyed the floating clone and smiled thinly.
"Merrick."
"Let me guess why your earlier five 'successes' failed."
"You tried to write a memory set for me. But you couldn't make it coherent, so when the clones woke, they crashed almost immediately. Right?"
"…"
Natasha looked at Merrick.
His face froze.
He swallowed. "Yes."
"See? Like software. Give it a complete program and it runs. Leave the program broken, and it crashes."
Hawk said it, then didn't hesitate. His eyes flashed red; he reached out. One gesture—incineration.
The remaining four who had tumbled from their pods met the same end.
Vaporized on the spot.
The next heartbeat,
Hawk was back in the control room. "All he's 'created' is a memory program," he said to Natasha. "And it's copy-pasted from someone else. 'Creation'? He's just doing Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V."
Exactly.
Merrick treated the clone like a server. He copied someone's complete memory image from a donor and stuffed it into the hardware, then hit power.
That's creation?
Creation, my ass.
(End of Chapter)
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