Chapter 6: The Clone Vats
Consciousness returned not as a thought, but as a sensation. A thick, warm fluid pressed in on her from all sides, weightless and suffocating. Eva’s eyes snapped open to a blurry, blue-tinted world. She tried to gasp, but the fluid filled her mouth, her lungs, with a strange, practiced ease. It was oxygenated, a fact her panicked brain registered a moment later as her body didn’t convulse for air. It breathed the stuff, a slow, unnatural rhythm.
She was floating, naked, suspended in a translucent vat.
Her hands, pale and distorted by the fluid and curved glass, pressed against the barrier. Beyond was a cavernous space, illuminated by the same eerie blue light. Row upon row of identical vats stretched into the impossible distance, each one glowing, each one containing…
Her.
A perfect copy. The same long, dark hair floating like kelp. The same muscular build, the same scars—even the fucking tattoo on the arm. Dozens. Hundreds. An army of Eva Rostovas, sleeping in silent, sterile wombs.
A low, guttural sound of pure denial tried to escape her throat, emerging as a stream of bubbles that wobbled towards the top of the vat. She was a specimen. A product. The final, logical conclusion of being declared surplus. Her uniqueness, the very essence of her hard-won identity, had been scanned, sequenced, and mass-produced.
A figure moved outside her tank. Aerona Volkov, dressed in a stark white lab coat over her elegant clothes, approached with a slow, predatory grace. She stopped before Eva’s vat, her blonde hair a brilliant shock against the blue gloom, a clinical smile playing on her lips. She tapped the glass with a manicured fingernail. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Hello, G-237,” Aerona’s voice came through a hidden speaker, clear and intimate inside the fluid. “Or should I say… G-237s. Impressive, isn’t it? The replication fidelity is within 0.0001 percent. Every memory engram, every synaptic pathway. Perfect military property, ready for deployment. Or disposal.”
Eva slammed her fists against the glass. It was futile, the blows absorbed by the viscous fluid, her strength rendered laughable.
Aerona watched her struggle, her head tilted. “All that fire. That magnificent, unbreakable will. It’s just a pattern. And patterns can be copied.” She walked along the vat, her eyes appraising Eva’s floating body with the detached interest of a biologist. “The question now is what to do with the original. The prototype that started it all.”
With a soft hiss, the fluid began to drain. Eva coughed as the level dropped past her face, her body slumping against the now-slippery glass as gravity reasserted its claim. She was weak, disoriented, the amniotic fluid dripping from her hair and skin in thick rivulets. The front of the vat slid open, and cold air hit her, raising goosebumps all over her body.
Aerona stepped forward, unchaining a hose with a nozzle. Without a word, she turned it on. A jet of cold water struck Eva in the chest, knocking her back against the glass. It was a brutal, efficient cleansing, sluicing the remaining gel from her skin. Eva sputtered, turning her face away, but Aerona directed the stream relentlessly, over her shoulders, down her back, between her legs, washing away the last physical remnants of the vat.
The hose clattered to the floor. Aerona grabbed a rough, absorbent cloth from a nearby trolley and began to dry her, the friction harsh against Eva’s sensitive skin. The act was not tender. It was proprietary, like wiping down a tool.
“You see, your anger is pointless here,” Aerona said, her voice low as she worked the cloth over Eva’s thighs. “Your training is irrelevant. There is nothing you can do that a hundred others couldn’t do just as well. Your only remaining value is in this.” Her hand slid between Eva’s legs, the rough cloth replaced by the startling softness of her palm. “In the raw, animal response you can’t control.”
Eva jerked, but Aerona’s other hand clamped on her hip, pinning her against the wet glass. “Don’t,” Eva snarled, the first word she’d spoken, her voice hoarse.
Aerona ignored her, her fingers parting Eva’s folds with a practiced, cruel precision. “The council saw it. I see it now. This wet, hot little truth your body tells while your mind screams.” She pushed two fingers inside, deep and sudden.
Eva cried out, a sharp, choked sound. Her head fell back against the glass with a dull thud. Shame warred with a shocking, immediate bolt of pleasure. Her body, starved for any sensation that wasn’t pain or humiliation, betrayed her utterly. She was slick and hot around Aerona’s invading fingers.
“That’s it,” Aerona whispered, her mouth close to Eva’s ear. Her fingers curled, finding a spot that made Eva’s legs tremble. “Let the prototype show the copies how it’s done. Show me how a decorated sergeant major comes apart on her enemy’s fingers.”
She began to move her hand, a ruthless, steady rhythm. Her thumb circled Eva’s clit, applying a pressure that was just shy of painful. It was a violation, an assault, and yet Eva’s hips gave a tiny, involuntary jerk, meeting the thrust of Aerona’s hand. Bile rose in her throat. She was aiding this. Her own traitorous body was grinding against the politician’s hand, seeking more of the degrading pleasure.
“You’re a fucking monster,” Eva gasped, the words barely audible.
“And you’re a slut for the monster,” Aerona breathed, her voice thick with power. She drove her fingers harder, faster. “Look at them. All of them. They’re empty. But you… you feel this. This degradation. You crave it. It’s the only thing left that’s truly yours.”
Eva’s eyes, blurred with unshed tears, focused on the vat directly across from her. On her own face, serene in its artificial sleep. The sight of her own perfect, ignorant copy was the final push. The coil of tension in her gut snapped.
A raw, guttural moan was torn from her throat as she came, her body convulsing against the glass, her cunt clenching rhythmically around Aerona’s relentless fingers. The pleasure was a wave of fire, burning through the shame, the anger, the very last fragments of her resistance. It was the most intense, devastating orgasm of her life.
Aerona held her there, pinned by her own climax, until the last shudder passed. Then she slowly, almost delicately, withdrew her glistening fingers. She held them up to the blue light, examining them.
“A perfect physiological response,” she noted, her voice returning to its clinical tone. “The data will be useful for calibrating the others.” She wiped her fingers on the damp cloth.
Eva slid down the glass, collapsing onto the cold, wet floor. She drew her knees to her chest, trembling uncontrollably. The echoes of her pleasure felt like open wounds.
Aerona looked down at her, a genuine, chilling smile finally reaching her eyes. “Now you understand your place, G-237. You’re not a person. You’re a template. And your purpose is to be used.”
She turned and walked away, her footsteps echoing in the vast chamber, leaving Eva shivering on the floor, surrounded by a thousand silent copies of her own broken body.
The cold seeped up from the floor, a dull ache that grounded her in the humiliation. Eva curled tighter, her wet skin sticking to the polished steel, each shiver a violent rebellion against the stillness of the replicas. Their silent, sleeping forms accused her; she was the original sin, the flawed blueprint from which perfection was copied.
A soft, chime-like tone echoed through the chamber, devoid of emotion. From the ceiling, a holographic display flickered to life above her vat, casting a red glow over her huddled form. Crisp, white text scrolled across the screen, summarizing her degradation in clinical terms: Subject G-237. Physiological and psychological stress thresholds exceeded. Neurological arousal patterns recorded and synchronized. Replication matrix stability confirmed.
Then, the final, damning line appeared, branding itself into the air and her soul: EVA TESTED.