"Adele! Adele!" Light slammed into my sleepy eyes as I sat up to the
sound of my sister yelling for me. I squinted out around my room at the
cluttered dressers and the open closet, the obnoxious posters on my side
of the room and the pretty art on her side. I enjoyed waking up to my
favorite rock artists, my black and white photos, and cynical sayings, but
not at 7:00am on a Saturday.

"What do you need! It’s only 7:00! I refuse to get out of this bed
until 10:30 at the very earliest," I said stubbornly. I rolled over
and pulled my blankets over my head to shut out the light. I wiggled down
into my pillows and relaxed. Then my blankets began to leap off me. There
was a sudden chill cold as all my blankets landed in a heap on the floor.
I shot up. "Adoncia!" I yelled. Then I calmed my voice a few levels, while
still angry, "What exactly do you think you’re doing?"

"Adele! There are people here to see mom and us. They have some
important news. They look like officials. I don’t know what’s going on,
but I think you need to hear it. And I don’t think they’d like to sit
around until 10:30 waiting on you!" She left in a huff.

I relaxed and slouched over, rubbing at my eyes. I flumped out of my
bed and went over to my dresser, pulling on my favorite shirts, black long
sleeves and brown short sleeves, and a big pair of baggy black jeans. I
looked happily at my curly hair that I had finally decided to wash last
night, and so it looked good this morning. Because people were downstairs
I quickly rubbed on a few touches of make-up and then ran down the
stairs.

The living room was full of modern looking furniture and tables, plants
and paint. The two men seated on the couch across from the sectional
didn’t fit at all. They were wearing black suits with white shirts and
black ties. I recognized the look immediately. My heart skipped a
beat.

Clone Police.

They couldn’t yet see me on the stairs. I took a step back and leaned
against the wall. With one hand on my chest I tried to slow my quick
breathing and racing heart. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath in my
through nose and let it out slowly through my mouth. I told myself
resolutely, "I can do this." I went on down the stairs like nothing was
happening that should scare me.

"Hello," I said in an annoyed voice. I tried not to sound casual,
casual usually fails and you end up looking suspicious. However, if you
just look completely annoyed by someone’s presence, they don’t usually pay
as much attention to you, and the attention they do pay is mainly just
complete annoyance at your presence.

"Ah," the CP on the left spoke, "Miss Adele Lysandra Calle, I
presume?"

"You should never ‘presume’ because that’s pretty much a fancy way of
saying ‘assume’ and we all know what that does. I could be a maid for all
you know," I said flippantly.

The man wasn’t shaken, "Ah, that is true. But I happen to know that for
all you know Adoncia doesn’t have a clone and it would be very
coincidental for you to look exactly like her were you not either her
identical twin or her clone." He smiled a slight, ‘I win’ type smile at me
and motioned for me to sit down.

Instead of walking all the way around the sectional I decided to be
rude and jumped over the back and flop down on the front. I leaned at a
cocky angle and looked uninterested.

For the first time I had seen, the man on the right spoke, "Mrs. Calle,
we are, as you might have presumed, part of the CP. This man," he motioned
to the ‘I win’ guy, "is Mr. Smith. And I," he motioned to himself, "am Mr.
Williams. We are not your typical Clone Police. We deal with special cases
that require people other than your average CP." Mr. Smith leaned
forward.

"Mrs. Calle, you were part of a scientific study without your
knowledge. Please know that we did not know this, or, because this was
illegal, would have stopped it," Mr. Williams stressed.

"One of your daughters is a clone," Mr. Smith said casually.

Mom flinched and blinked a few times. "That- that is impossible. They
were both born at the same time! They’re just twins. That’s what all the
doctors said… What are you talking about?"

"It was an experiment in the area of pre-natal cloning. Before one
daughter was born she was cloned, and put inside you. All the other
doctors believed your daughters to just be identical twins, but they
weren’t. One was a clone."

Mom went limp. I could see from across mom that Adoncia was rigid in
fear. She hated clones; she was completely anti-clone rights and believed
totally in clone slavery. I didn’t know what was going through her mind,
but just the thought that she had been cloned was making her sick I’m
sure- because the thought that she was the clone would never
cross her mind. I reached across mom and touched her hand, trying to
reassure her. She ripped her hand away and gave me a glare of such hate
that it would have vaporized steel.

I looked back to Mr. Smith and Mr. Williams, I was the only person not
completely shaken to the point of speechlessness by the whole ordeal, so I
supposed it was my job to take over.

"Are you sure there is no mistake?" I asked carefully.

They both nodded in unison. They were in time so much that I had to
wonder if that had practiced. "We are sure. We checked over and over. We
regret telling you this, but I’m sure you all know that human/clone
segregation is a large issue right now, and having a clone lead a human
life without anyone’s knowledge is not only illegal, but simply morally
wrong."

My heart almost exploded at those words. Morally wrong. Clones
were so mistreated. It’s like no one noticed that they were complete
genetic copies and thus deserved as much respect as the original. Everyone
believed that clones, because they weren’t completely ‘natural,’ took on a
different personality than the original, that they stuck together with
other clones, that they weren’t as civilized, weren’t as human.

"Well, we all want to know. Which one of us is it? Which life have you
chosen to ruin?" I asked between clenched teeth. I tried to control my
breathing as my entire body went through the shock of clone rights coming
this close to home. Not only was my boyfriend- my love- a clone, which was
hard enough; now either my sister or I was a clone. Policy was ripping me
apart.

Mr. Smith spoke up, "The clone has a small chip placed in it’s make-up,
at this point in it’s life-"

I broke in, "Her. We’re both females here, it would be
her life."

"Ah, well, in her it would now be in her left wrist."

I stuck out my left wrist. "Go ahead."

He took out a strange device, about the shape of a flattened ballpoint
pen and made of a black, matte metal with a light on the end and a button
halfway down on the back. He ran it over my wrist, and the light blinked
silently, singing doom into eternity.

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