Blade Runner 2039 #8

Book excerpt: Replicants are bioengineered humans, once designed by the Tyrell Corporation for use Off-world. After a series of violent rebellions, their manufacture was prohibited, and Tyrell Corp went bankrupt. Niander Wallace acquired the remains of Tyrell Corp and created a new line of Replicants who obey. A Replicant underground survives, led by the former combat model Freysa and her human partner Aahna Ashina, known as Ash, formerly a Blade Runner. Twenty years ago, in 2019, Ash spared the Replicant Isobel Selwyn, a replica of industrialist Alexander Selwyn’s wife. Together with Alexander’s human daughter Cleo, Isobel escaped to the Off-world colonies. Searching for the late Alexander Selwyn’s research into Replicant physiology, Niander Wallace sent his creation Luv, the first Replicant Blade Runner, to hunt down both Cleo and Isobel, believing that Isobel holds the secret to Replicant fertility. To aid Luv in her mission, Wallace manufactured a new Replicant created from Ash’s DNA. Ash and Cleo managed to escape the city and set out to find Freysa, hoping she could help them locate Isobel. Together with the runaway Replicant, Lexi, they set off for San Francisco, but were attacked en route by a biker gang who shot and gravely injured Cleo. Only the timely intervention of an old farmer saved her life. Ash discovered that the farmer, Mack, was a Replicant whom she thought she had ‘retired’ 20 years earlier who had somehow survived the encounter and escaped from the city to live out his days on the farm. While Cleo recuperated, Ash and the farmer set off to search Alexander Selwyn’s old family estate for Isobel, but found Luv and the Replicant Ash waiting for them…