At gunpoint, we follow Abraham with his hands raised, the entire time, my mind racing with questions about our past, present, and future, as well as trying to figure out a way to turn the tide on Cain and Jezebel. I have this sickening feeling once we reach the bridge, they'll kill us. Maybe it's the way he stabs the barrel into my neck as we walk, or the condescending way Jezebel leers down at us like she's so smug and so high above us in social status? I don't know what kind of lie Cain told her to make her hate us, but whatever it was, she bought into it without reservation.

Computers, consoles, and control stations cast a dim glow on the ark's bridge. The table with the black-glass surface occupies the center of the large room. Off to the side, I remember the room with the memory transfer chair. I don't want to look in that direction, but it beckons, the catalyst that started my journey to this moment in time.

The black mirror catches my gaze and holds it. Beneath it, a thick metallic base supports the table.

Cain says to Abraham, "Authorize the use of the hologram computer. Do it now, or I'll put a bullet in your boy's head." He shifts the barrel of the gun from my neck to my ear. The cold muzzle presses against my flesh, a squeeze of the trigger away from a bullet blowing my brains to bits.

Abraham stares at me, unwilling to obey, but relents under pressure. "Computer, power up the holo-screen and unlock use for Cain and Jezebel Stryker."

I glance at Abraham. "They're..."

"Lovers. Yes. To make a long story short, their plan has been to be the ones who began the first family on Earth, but they're barren. They can't have children. So they want to raise a brood of vipers from their genes through DNA splicing and artificial insemination."

"Abraham had us locked out of the habitats until Jezebel cracked his code," Cain says. "Now that we have access, I want to assume command of the ark to assure ultimate victory."

"They resent the fact you and Eve could get pregnant."

With that remark, Jezebel snarls and smacks Eve in the back of the head with the butt of the pistol.

Eve goes limp, her body swaying in microgravity, her boots locked to the floor.

I start toward her, but Cain tightens his arm around my throat, driving the muzzle deeper into my ear. The impact didn't seem hard enough to knock Eve unconscious, but she didn't move at all after the blow, and still doesn't.

Cain thrusts me toward the table. I crash into it as a hologram projection bursts to life, a blur of lights and images.

As I observe the hologram, behind me, a pistol booms, the discharge reverberating throughout the bridge. Deafening.

I whirl around to see Abraham clutching a growing circle of blood in the center of his stomach while smoke curls from Cain's gun. Drawn to the floor by his gravity suit, Abraham collapses, his eyes weak and glassy with shock. As his life fades, the tiniest smile that seems odd and out-of-place spreads across his face. Seconds pass, not minutes. He coughs up blood. It gargles in his throat. He quivers, and then he dies.

Just like that. He's gone. His eyes stare into space, vacant of life.

My heart jackhammers in my chest. I heave gasps of air, on the verge of hyperventilating.

"Lets look at the computer files and learn the truth about who you are." Cain turns to Eve's unconscious form. "Who she is. Let's get everything out in the open. I want you to understand it all before I kill the both of you. It'll be gratifying."

"Computer, open the files on stasis," Cain says.

The holo-screen remains the same, with a hovering image of a square window box with labeled tabs. Jezebel steps around the motionless Eve and walks up to the table. "The tabs respond to touch or voice commands."

Cain draws close to me, pressing the gun into the small of my back. "Computer. Open files on stasis."

This time, a voice says, "There are no files on stasis."

Jezebel smirks. "I wonder why?"

I glance back at Eve, hoping to see a sign of life, but she still doesn't move, only a slight tremor behind her eyelids.

"The ultimate truth," Cain begins, "is that stasis was never a viable option to carry humanity over a hundred years into the future on a space ark. Without stasis, food supplies would have never sustained us if we had remained awake the entire time. Stasis, or cryogenic hibernation, was a new and untested technology that didn't pan out. We tried it, but everyone who went into stasis died. So the designers scrapped the idea of putting us asleep, which, of course, included waking us up once the waters receded. But," Cain removes the gun from my back and waves it in the air beside me to make a point, "they had a more workable solution."

"And what's that?" I ask, something inside of me aching to check on Eve.

"Computer. Open files on cloning."

My eyes grow large.

Cain shrugs. "Is what it is. Computer, show the files on all the original members of the space ark who provided DNA samples in order to be cloned in the future once the global ocean receded."

On the holo-screen, images of hundreds, if not thousands, of faces, men and women, children, and even babies appeared. By this time, I wish Eve were seeing these bombshells as they drop from the sky.

"Computer," Cain says, "show the profiles of Noah and Eve Grey."

Our pictures appear, hovering in the air above the table's black glass.

"Computer," Jezebel says, "show the profiles of Cain and Jezebel Stryker."

Like ours, Cain's and Jezebel's images morph to life within square outlines, which contain tiny words detailing bios of each of us.

"Computer." Cain winks at me. "Show Abraham's clone."

As before, Abraham's picture appears, but the only difference is his profile doesn't have a last name. I don't know why, but what I see and what Cain told me sends my head to spinning. If I wasn't in a weightless environment with gravity boots holding me down, I might fall out on the floor.

"That's right, Noah," Cain says. "You and Eve are clones. We're all clones. That's why we had to have our memories downloaded to our brains, because we started out as blank slates."

Jezebel turns. "The designers, whoever they were, likely the original versions of ourselves, had to fabricate a lie about us being in hibernation for a hundred and seventeen years. Truth is, they have been dead for at least that long. Maybe longer."

"The ark's computers started our cloning processes once the waters receded," Cain says. "But we might have been in orbit for much longer. Maybe a thousand years before the creation of our clones, and our awakening. For the first time."

A memory surfaces of the grave we found at the other habitat. I remember the broken cross that served as a tombstone. The only letter I could make out was a 'V'.

"The clones at the other six habitats," I say, "were they other clones of... Eve and I?"

"Yes."

"The original Eve couldn't get pregnant, but my Eve could."

"That's right."

From behind them, after the words leave Cain's mouth, Eve's arm latches around Jezebel's throat and cinches like a noose. My elbow flies into Cain's jaw, and in an instant, I shove him down and grab hold of his gun hand.

Behind me, a gunshot fires. Jezebel shooting blindly at Eve.

I don't know if the ark can withstand speeding projectiles like bullets, but there are no hisses of escaping air, so maybe the shots didn't breach the hull. Drifting up from Cain in microgravity, I twist his gun hand and hear the crunch of bone as his finger snaps, caught inside the trigger guard.

He wails.

I kick off the floor, releasing both boots, sending me toward the ceiling, the force ripping the gun from Cain's ruined finger.

He screams as the trigger guard straightens his crumpled digit and slides off the end of the fingertip.

I hover in the air, my boots flailing beneath me.

Cain clutches his hand against his chest, writhing on the floor. Below me, Abraham lies, sprawled out with blood seeping up through his jumpsuit and floating from his body in round, crimson droplets.

I twist and see Eve and Jezebel struggling over the gun.

"Stop," I say. "Or I'll shoot."

My back bumps against the ceiling, bringing my weightless ride to a halt.

My command catches Eve off guard, and she hesitates, looking my way.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Jezebel seizes control, wrestling the pistol free. In the following seconds, she coils an arm around Eve and holds her from behind at gunpoint.

"No," Jezebel says. "You give up the gun or your wife and unborn child die."

Without a gravity suit, I float next to the ceiling. I hold a weapon, but I can't bluff my way out of this. With Eve in my way, I can't risk a shot at Jezebel. Especially not with my future child's life hanging in the balance. I could kick off to the floor, but that would do little good. I can't reach Eve faster than a bullet.

Cain groans and rises with retribution in his eyes.

Jezebel jerks Eve around to hold her still, jamming the barrel deeper into her head.

"Toss the gun to Cain," Jezebel says.

I know the moment I let go of the weapon, I'll lose my only bargaining chip. I stare at Cain and see the victorious look on his face. The corners of his mouth curl into a vengeful grin.

I whip my gaze over to Jezebel and see Eve's wide eyes and grimacing jawline.

Cain stands, hand outstretched, gesturing for me to give him back his gun.

As Jezebel holds Eve from behind, my mouth flies open when Abraham appears behind both of them, clutching a gun of his own, or what looks like a gun.

I glance at Abraham's body on the floor. Blood seeps from the gunshot wound.

I peer back at the other Abraham as he draws near to the clueless Jezebel. Cain's eyes bulge at the sight, but then he seems to understand what's happening.

Abraham snatches Jezebel by the hair, aims the gun-like weapon at the back of her head, and pulls the trigger. There's no discharge of a firearm, only a thump of compressed air, and Cain's lover falls to the floor, her suit reacting with the artificial gravity.

Abraham strides across the room toward the backpedaling Cain. "There's so much at stake for all of humanity."

Just like that, Abraham grabs Cain's hand, the one with the broken finger, and twists it behind his back. A tortured wail fills the room as he presses the barrel of the weapon into the back of Cain's head and squeezes the trigger, like he's putting down diseased cattle. It's then I realize that's what the crude weapon was made for. As for me, in the silence that follows, all I can do is stare at the dead bodies in the room and gasp at the bloodshed. Finally, I lock eyes with Eve and realize it's all over. We survived.

"Time to get you two back to the habitat and back to establishing a presence for humanity on Earth." After Abraham pulls me to the floor where my boots take grip, he casts his gaze on Eve. "Both of you have learned far more than I intended, but there's no use hiding the truth now."

He hesitates and then continues, addressing Eve. "If you're wondering how you could get pregnant. With Abel's help, I corrected your fertility issue before the cloning process. That wasn't possible for the original Eve Grey, but as a clone, I corrected you at the genetic level before artificial insemination, before I grew you into a full adult in an artificial womb."

My limbs quake from what I've witnessed, but realizing the danger has passed has a calming effect.

"As with both of you, once a clone reaches adulthood, I download the essence of who you are into your bodies, and that's how we all came to be. It's why I'm dead, but still alive, and unfortunately, because of that, this won't be the last we see of Cain and Jezebel. They'll be back, and we'll be ready for them."

One last question looms in my mind. It seems odd, but I ask it anyway. "Why don't you have a last name?"

"Simple." Abraham smiles and his icy-blue eyes glint from sunlight bending around the curvature of Earth in the view port window. "My past, my personality, every fiber of my being is a fabrication. The designers created the essence of who I am on a computer and downloaded it into this body." He glances down at the other Abraham, dead on the floor. "That one too."

"So you never were my boss at NASA?"

"Did you ever work there yourself?"

I shake my head, unsure of how to reply, but understanding the answer.

"So many lies about who we are," Eve says.

"You have one thing going for you." Abraham points to her abdomen and smiles. "You have a future inside your womb. A new beginning for all humanity."

"One more thing," I say. "Did you kill Abel?"

Abraham's grin appears incredulous. "No. Cain did. He hated his brother because I favored Abel over him."

With that, Eve and I turn to each other, having most of our questions answered. Despite everything we've been through, I feel an overwhelming need to take Eve by the hand and draw her close to me. So I do. As we stand here, like we're the only two people in the room, the warmth from her embrace radiates between us, signaling a fresh start that begins the moment we return to Earth, a moment that won't come soon enough.