How?

Why?

Of all places, of all people, out of the countless possibilities and probabilities that could lead to this kind of outcome...

How is the flesh and blood around me that of this bastard's?

Disbelief couldn't fully describe the absolute madness of what I witnessed before my-"his" eyes. Probably the very last place I expected [Clone Telepathy] to take me. Certainly not the first, I can say that with full confidence.

My first impulse was to cancel the connection altogether. His pulse revolted me, heart beat pounding on the fraying fibers of my patience. How confidently his muscles contracted, breath mildly coursing through the nose, throat, and lungs, diaphragm expanding to exert its full tortuous tyranny within the chest and belly. Is it strange for me to say, that the living of this man felt torturous for me?

Yet as I gazed through his eyes, seeing the altar come closer, I instinctively felt that I probably shouldn't. Or rather, that I couldn't.

A scene far too familiar to me, although I was more familiar the victim's perspective rather than the murderer's. A number of white-robed men and women idled around the altar, whispering amongst each other. Whether they were fifteen or twenty in number, the man's gaze flitted too quickly around the room to be certain. Once the old man entered the room, however, nearly all of them snapped to attention.

"Greetings, Lord Ninth!" They saluted in unison.

He didn't seem to notice. His eyes darted quickly around in search of someone.

"Where is Caxie?" His incredulous query ricocheted around the wispy walls.

Several of the crowd's number looked around at each other, but yielding no results, remained silent.

"Four months. F-o-u-r months, that's how long it's been. Hasn't it? Any longer and we won't have to worry about containing anything anymore, all and sundry will be wild and free roaming the world. Damned idiot!" He growled with increasing intensity, beating a throaty vibrato on my last nerve, "how much longer is he willing to leave containment in shambles? All this cavil over a little work... gods curse the fourth and third to the ground, this is tower security we're sacrificing for mere convenience!"

"Lord Ninth, with all due respect..." One among them, a rather bulky fellow sporting the tackiest bowl cut ever seen, dared to speak up. It was only after he noticed how fiercely the old man glared at him that he realized how much of a mistake that was.

"Yes, what is it Kirschel?"

"I... u-uh, I believe Lord Directo- I mean Lord Tenth requested Lord Fourth's expertise on the tenth..."

The eyelids around my vision widened and a discernible hint of red plumed from the edges, "And? Did I not request for him to send one of his lackeys to service the Ether conduits from sublevels one through three over four months ago? Where did his time go then?"

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"I don't know my lord... Though I've heard they were experiencing similar malfunctions on their lower sublevels."

An obnoxious snort erupted from the old man, "I'll tell you what it is. He has it out for me. Protégé of the director, bah! If not for that I would have called for his dismissal years ago."

Having said that, he reached to his side, hand slipping into one of several small pockets. He fumbled a bit, snarled, withdrew it, then directed his ire towards one of the younger women of the group, "Neya, fetch me two inhibitors from my lab, make it quick."

She nodded without a word and withdrew to the double doors just as silently. Of course, not leaving earshot without a parting jab.

"Impertinent child, never respects a word I say."

Once she had left, the old man's attention turned to the altar, "Caxie be damned, we'll proceed without him and his ilk. Prepare for the autopsy."

One by one, the men and women assumed their supposed positions around the stone fixture. On it laid four of my clones, just as I had seen them some time earlier, along with several curious instruments, some I don't rightly recall being there the last time: an austerely fashioned knife, crudely fashioned from some kind of metal; a transparent container not unlike the ones I'd seen before; and lastly, encompassing the entirety of the altar's surface and inset deeply into its coarse grain glimmered almond-sized jet-black stones.

"Begin with quarter weight, grading to half over thirty seconds. No more, no less."

Surprisingly, His irritable tone had shifted to an unrecognizably sharp sequence of orders.

"Immediately raise to three-quarters when a stable condensate forms. Hold for my signal."

With one fluid movement, the old man's hand snatched up the knife and circled the altar, gliding its edge along the stones. His eyes followed, dilating as the stones fluoresced with the blade's touch. When he finished, a blinding crimson filled the room, an impossibly thin thread trailed from the edge of the knife blade, midpoint sagging weightily to the table.

"Now! Do it now!" He cried.

When his line of sight finally lifted from the knife to the surrounding acolytes, I only had a brief moment to register that they were holding balls of white light in their hands. Only a moment, unfortunately. Much to my dismay, an abrupt ending to my spectation inevitably came.

[Notice: Clone Telepathy's duration has ended. Returning host to the main body...]

No, wait...!

But it was already over. A rapid traversal back through a myriad of torsed imagery later, I found myself in my body again, back inside my containment cell to brood over the disparate number of questions left unanswered from that experience.

And brood I did, for a long while. I attempted to find some trace of those clones on the altar like I had before, but they were nowhere to be found. Not for several days, nor the rest of the ten days I had to endure until [Clone Telepathy] finally came off cooldown... on the old man?

That struck me as rather odd. There wasn't a clone on him, but in him... It didn't feel like a clone. Those usually left a dullness on my senses after using them. Instead it felt almost... familiar. In fact, I recall a faint nostalgia.

It couldn't be... "miraculous recovery?"

Didn't the old man used to have a limp?

I think he did... It's too hard to remember.

Was that too far back?

This isn't making sense.

Naturally, it didn't. But I was for sure of one thing. I shouldn't say sure, it was more of a theory toeing the line between theories and facts. And the more I thought about it, the more the pieces I had left became a mortifying whole.

Three... they cut me into three. I remember that, somehow. I'm here, so the other two-

I had to be sure. There was just no way that one of them were so close by. I thought I would never see them again, let alone be one of them.

"Activate [Clone Telepathy]."