Runaway

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

I suppose if it was anything that drew me to her, it was the scars on her face. Four parallel lines on one cheek. Too precise to be accidental, I assumed, but too faint to be for show. Too far apart to be a bar code, and just near enough to each other to look like four years on a prison wall without the fifth crossing them yet. Like she’s fallen asleep on a bread cutting machine for a second and let it heal naturally.

I probably wouldn’t have noticed them if it wasn’t for the lighting in the club. The black light near the bar lit up the lines of scar tissue.

Yeah, she had beautiful eyes. Yeah, she had great skin. Yeah, her body was amazing. We were all hot back then. Every single one of us. It was that kind of place and most of us had fake ID.

That made her scars stand out all the more to me. They could easily be covered with a little make up. They were light enough to be removed with plastic surgery.

It wasn’t until I saw the other three of her that I realized just how rich she must have been. She was obviously slumming it here.

The one with no scars must’ve been The Prime, I thought. I was sure that another one of her had two scars and one of her had three.

I liked the four-scar one. Maybe it was just that I saw her first but I like to think it was because there was something reckless in her eyes.

The other three of her were dancing in a circle around their purses. They were wearing identical dresses. Her muscle-slab bodyguards were hovering in the crowd. Everyone was watching and everyone was jealous.

The show of wealth was obscene. She was here to rub our noses in the copies of her she could afford.

The wealthy could only afford one clone with a memory dump and that clone would only be awoken in case of an emergency.

Two was whispered for the richest.

I’d never heard of more two.

There was no way that they were quadruplets with today’s fertility laws.

To this day, I’m not sure how I got the courage but maybe it was something in her eyes.

I walked up to four-scar and said hello. Her name was Angela.

——-

That was two days ago in LA. She had a routine prepped to fool her guards that worked when we left the club. I’m in a tin-shack barter motel with her in Uganda now. She knows her Prime’s secret accounts. We drained them. We are off the grid. We use cash. We’re in a part of the world that doesn’t need IDs. She cut out the tracking device. They’re still hunting for us.

I know it won’t be long until they get to us but looking at her, sheets pulled up around her as the dawn sun comes pouring in the through the window and across the most expensive runaway in the history of planet Earth, I feel like my probable death will be worth it.