"She'll be here in a minute, Javier." Cold crept up Amy's spine. "And she'll be staying. Forever." She rested her hands on his arms. Their grip hardened and Javier stared at them, his face a mixture of terror and something else that she'd never seen cross his features. Dread, maybe. Desperation. "I won't be here, any more. Do you understand me?"
He won't kill us, Amy. Haven't you learned yet how the failsafe works?
"Do you understand me, Javier?" Her throat began to close. "I want you to–"
His mouth closed over hers. His hands found her face and his fingers sank into her hair. It was a good kiss, as far as Amy could tell; it contained within it all the other kisses that should have come before and after it, and he moved like he was looking for something inside her and trying to draw it out. Her lips were the last parts to go cold.
When he pulled away, Portia licked those lips. "I guess that's why they pay you the big bucks, isn't it?"
His jaw set. "Hang in there, Amy. I'll figure something out."
"Aww." Portia reached up to pat his face. He swerved away, but her fingertips grazed him. "You don't have to be brave, baby. She loves you even when you're weak." She smiled. "Oh, and thanks for the legs!"
She flew.
Portia crushed her daughter's face underfoot. Blood streamed through her toes as she bounded forward, and it leaked from her scalp when another iteration grabbed her hair and ripped it from her head. It was the garbage dump all over again. This time she broke one daughter's shoulders with a single jump, and smashed another's pelvis against the juncture of a container, crushing her from behind while she crouched in wait. As she descended back into the swelling riot of her clade, Portia reached into their chests and their mouths and their eyes and started pulling. She grabbed arms and kicked stomachs. Then she found a fire axe bolted to the ceiling of a container.
That made short work of things, but it did nothing to steady the ship or keep the containers from sliding out beneath her feet. With each jump, she glanced down to watch some of her daughters or granddaughters die, crushed between containers. Their limbs twitched against the steel and their blood dripped along the rivets. They smeared like mosquitoes. The remainder of their number cowered under the curling shadows of the dark and glistening arms that rose from the water. It made them easy targets.
Killing them was unnecessary. The ocean, or the thing inside it, would do that. But breaking them – watching their faces glimmer with recognition just before her feet flattened their throats, hearing them say "Mother–" in the moment just after their arms opened and just before their breastplates left their chests – that was special. They looked so confused. They tried to ask why.
Total selection, she almost told them. But these pale copies, their skin thin as paper, their bones airy as ice, would not understand. They deserved no explanation. After all, she would have done all this anyway, had her quest to find Charlotte's first not gone so strangely awry.
"Found him!" Javier stood atop an overturned green container wedged between half-crumbled walls of green ones. He waved his arms, and almost fell over when the ship rocked. "Over here!"
Portia joined him in one jump. She crouched atop the container. Javier yanked the axe from her hand. He hacked open the door, ditched the axe, and poked his head inside. "?Junior! ?Vaste conmigo, ahora!"
From all around them, the other iterations crawled slowly toward the container, undeterred by the pitch and yaw of the wet and slippery terrain.
"No te preocupes, mijo, está bien…"
Javier crawled out of the container backward. He carried his son on his back. When the boy's eyes met Portia's, he wailed. He hid against his father's neck and pointed at Portia.
She smiled. "He remembers me. How sweet."
She stood, searching for the lifeboats. Javier's eyes widened just before a pair of teeth sank into her side. Portia dodged away, but the ship shuddered and rolled, and they all stumbled across the container's roof. She watched two more iterations haul themselves up to the surrounding containers. They stared enviously at the blood dripping from their sister's mouth.
"Why isn't it working?" the iteration asked. She was wounded, but she looked more irritated than anything else. She licked Portia's fluids off the back of her hand. "Why don't I feel any different?"
"Because you aren't any different." Portia walked back slowly to the edge of the container's roof. Javier jumped up high to another wall of containers. "Eating me won't change anything. Your code won't be rewritten. You will never have what I have."