Dead Ringer

Prologue: Depths

         It felt like he was drowning.

         The surrounding faces were unfamiliar as they circled around him and talked about him as if he wasn’t even there. They blocked out the light as if his eyes were closed.

         The voices around him felt like ringing in his ears, heavy and intense. There was no warmth in the room to be found, only the frigid stares of those he would never remember. The humans before him were deciding his life, where he would go and who he would become.

         He knew he was no-one special, a person who wasn’t really a person. He had a face, a name solely for him, and someone’s blood rushing through his veins, but he was a nobody. His kind could not dream or become someone important.

         That harsh reality wasn’t kind, not even to kids. From the moment he was old enough to understand, humans told him to be good and listen to his master. No matter who they were, what they did, or how they treated him, he was to listen without fail. His life would no longer be his own.

         Because of those pointless thoughts, his hands shook, body sweating. Feelings he had yet to place overwhelmed him. Fear? Anger? Nervousness? He was too young to grasp the situation completely, but he realized something wasn’t right.

         His throat was dry and not even his spit could give it some relief from the pain. If only he had the courage to yell at them and tell them to stop, leave him alone. To say that he didn’t want to go. However, it was unlikely they would listen to a tool, a being who was unable to want anything. It went against his existence, his purpose.

         In the distance, someone had called out his name, yet he refused to answer them. They didn’t care about what he had to say.

         He suddenly felt cold and his fingertips became numb.

         They continued to call him, yet all his ears picked up was white noise.

         Even though he didn’t have a family, or a mother to call his own, he was still a human. Right?

         At the facility that birthed him, there had been someone he was told to call his father. That man had said to him before he had passed, “one day, you will become important to someone.”

         It was ironic, considering he was useful for only one thing.

         Giving his life.

         His body.

         There was no meaning to his existence. The pain of that reality did nothing but cause his insides to churn.

         “Keon?” a man said.

         His stomach dropped at his name. He wasn’t ready yet. Whatever was coming for him—that bleak future that awaited him and his kind—he was not prepared.

         Shadowy figures confined the boy, as if sensing his fear. He did not know who called out to him. Their stares overwhelmed and crushed him. Pale blue eyes squinted in the darkness.

         Then, someone put a hand on his shoulder and ushered him forward with a slight push. His thin frame, weak from lack of food, felt like they would crush him by the force of their strength.

         Finally, it was time to go. Time to live a life he could never fully enjoy.

         He was just a puppet.

         His existence was fleeting.

         At the tender age of ten, he knew what the future held for him.

         A slow, meaningless life. One filled with regret.

         What set him apart from the humans? What made him different?

         One man knelt down and whispered into his ear, the words becoming ones he would carry with him into adulthood, “a clone has no voice.”