Evil Genius (36 page)

"Abraham, I don't know where you live," Cadel said nervously. He wondered if he should summon a nurse. The sight of all that blood was making him queasy. Alarmed. "Abraham?
Where do you live?
"

But Abraham wouldn't listen. He was muttering about his work; Cadel had to save his work from being destroyed by the evil and envious Terry. His files, all his notes—they had to be rescued.

Cadel slipped out of the room. He went over to the nurses' station, where Abraham's nurse was labeling something.

"Excuse me," he said, "but Abraham's bleeding."

The nurse looked up.

"What?" she said.

"He's bleeding. From his nose."

She bolted. One second she was there, the next she was gone. When Cadel turned, Abraham's door was swinging; the nurse was already inside.

Cadel left her to it. While equipment beeped and voices were raised, he quietly scanned the area for a familiar face. (There weren't any, that he could see.) Then he made his way out of the hospital.

From the taxi stand beside the main entrance, he caught a cab to his local mall. There he once again made use of the restrooms near his second-favorite computer shop. Having locked himself in a stall, he donned his old school tie and his old school blazer, which looked quite convincing over a new white shirt and pair of gray pants. He also slicked his hair down with gluey soap from the soap dispenser, then jammed the school hat firmly over it. Finally, he went to a pharmacy and bought himself a pair of off-the-rack reading glasses. By pushing them way down his nose, he found that he could see over the tops of these glasses well enough to avoid bumping into poles, or giving himself a headache. And they were a very effective disguise. From a distance, with his slicked-back hair, he didn't look too much like himself.

Not that he was trying to dodge any experts. All he had to do was fool a few schoolteachers. Nothing very challenging.

All the same, he was nervous.

Time constraints meant that he was forced to catch another cab, to Crampton. He arrived with five minutes to spare, and had to lurk behind a bus shelter while a distant siren blared, announcing the start of the second-to-last period. Cadel waited. He gave the students another five minutes to swap classrooms. Then he emerged from behind the bus shelter and sauntered over to a side gate, reminding himself that it wouldn't do to look furtive.

He had to convince any onlookers that he had a clear conscience—that he was arriving back at school after a dentist's appointment, perhaps. With a note in his pocket. With a bag full of textbooks and a class to go to.

Cadel wasn't familiar with the latest Crampton timetable. He did know, however, that the next-to-last period on the third Tuesday of the month was traditionally reserved, at Crampton, for a meeting between English staff and library staff. (Something to do with Book Week activities and literacy programs.) Since this meeting always took place in the library, the English department's staff room would almost certainly be deserted.

And the computers within it would almost certainly be free.

Cadel moved briskly along the familiar paths and beneath the familiar brick archways. As he passed a high bank of windows, he heard a teacher's raised voice cutting through the babble of a noisy class. "
We'll have a bit of quiet, please!
" (Mr. Ricci, by the sound of it.) Nothing seemed to have changed except the notices pinned up around the place. As he neared the staff room, he ticked off various landmarks along the way: the twelfth-grade lockers, the broken fountain, the dirt track trodden into the grass between the drinking fountain and the assembly hall.

When he reached the staff room, he stopped to tie his shoe. A quick glance around convinced him that no one was in sight. The door to the staff room was locked, of course, but that didn't matter. He had brought with him the keys that he had so painstakingly copied while still a student at the school. They were labeled in code.

The English staff-room key still fit the English staff-room lock.

Once he was inside, he was careful to lock the door behind him. Then he headed straight for Ms. Barry's computer. He had chosen it partly because it had an Internet hookup, and partly because, owing to the L-shaped layout of the room, it was invisible from the door. If someone
did
pop in unexpectedly, he would have more time to hide.

Time. Time was the problem. He had half an hour at the most, and half an hour wasn't long. Not if you were trying to infiltrate a credit-card database.

Cadel set the alarm on his watch before booting up.

The credit-card receipt that he had retrieved from the Piggotts' wardrobe had given him a card type and a card number. With these, and with his precious collection of bank passwords, access keys, and code-breaking modules, he was able to track down the accompanying name and transaction record. The name was unfamiliar to him: James Herbert Guisnel. The transaction record, however, contained one valuable nugget of information among a load of dross.

James Herbert Guisnel was paying off his credit card with transfers from another account: a savings account. And when Cadel pried his way through the firewalls protecting
that
account (rather clumsily, because he didn't have much time), one decoded entry jumped out at him.

James Guisnel was receiving large and regular credits from an account that Cadel recognized. During his rare forays into Thaddeus Roth's database, Cadel had spotted the same company account being used by Thaddeus for business-related expenses. It was a disbursement account.

Cadel would have followed this trail still further if his alarm hadn't gone off. As it was, he was obliged to shut down the computer as quickly as possible. Even as he made for the door, he heard the warning blast of a siren heralding the end of another period. Kids immediately came bursting out of every classroom like water out of a breached tank. They poured into the corridors, slapping against walls and swirling around lockers. Cadel, who was caught up in the flood, forced himself not to hurry. He kept his head down, trying not to catch anybody's eye.

For the most part, he was successful. But just as he emerged onto the front lawn, someone's head suddenly snapped around.

"Cadel?" said a boy's voice. "Cadel
Piggott
?"

At that point, Cadel stopped walking and started running.

He ran all the way home.

So now he knew Thaddeus was paying big money to a certain James Guisnel, whose credit-card receipt had been lying on the floor of the Piggotts' wardrobe. It couldn't be a coincidence: Stuart Piggott must be James Guisnel. And Stuart almost certainly worked for Dr. Darkkon.

When Cadel arrived home, Mrs. Ang was there, mopping the kitchen floor. If she was surprised to see him in his old school uniform, with his hair slicked back, she didn't show it. She simply stared at him with her black, impenetrable gaze.

No doubt she, too, was employed by Dr. Darkkon. To spy on Cadel.

Just like everyone else in that house.

Cadel went straight to his bathroom. Automatically, he stripped off his clothes and hopped into the shower. But as he started to lather his sticky head with shampoo, he began to shake. He felt sick again. Sick to his stomach. He had to prop himself up against the tiled wall.

He didn't know if he was genuinely ill or in a state of shock. The shock of knowing that his whole life was a lie. That his own father had handed him over to a couple of people who didn't give a damn about him. Who were only looking after him because it was part of their job description. Who were probably away so much because they had
real
lives to live—not this pathetic, empty, feeble excuse for a life. To his fury, Cadel found himself crying. Angry tears mingled with streaming hot water as he fought to contain his hiccuping sobs. He dropped his head, trying to smother the noise in case there were hidden cameras installed in the room. In case Dr. Darkkon wasn't allowing him any privacy at all—not even in the shower.

They had played him for a fool. They had planned it out, from the very beginning. He doubted now that the authorities had even heard of his existence. Or maybe they had, but not to the point where they were keeping an eye on him. No—the whole story of his being stolen away and hidden, like a smuggled prince, was probably Dr. Darkkon's. His goal for Cadel must have included some kind of siege mentality, to go with a carefully cultivated distrust of everyone in the world except Dr. Darkkon himself. Oh, and Thaddeus Roth. It wouldn't do to forget Thaddeus.

Even as he sniffed and gulped, Cadel was reviewing his situation. At last he could see it clearly, from every angle. Dr. Darkkon had made good and sure that the Piggotts were bad parents. After all, he couldn't have wanted Cadel to bond with them. For the same reason, he had arranged it that not a single pleasant person had ever been invited to the Piggotts' house. He had encouraged Cadel's efforts to divide and conquer his classmates at school, condemning the stupidity of some while scoffing at the pastimes of others. Cadel's isolating intelligence, his obscure interests and awkward manner, had further cut him off from the rest of the world—until Sonja arrived on the scene.
That
must have been a nasty surprise. How frightened of Sonja Dr. Darkkon must have been! No doubt he had been monitoring every e-mail exchange with great concern, comforted only by the fact that the whole friendship, being founded on a lie, was as fragile as a spider's web.

Then, after Dr. Deal's assault on Cadel, Phineas must have decided that enough was enough. Cadel was becoming too independent, holding back information, arguing with Thaddeus. Sonja (or Kay-Lee, as she called herself) would have to go. It didn't matter that she was Cadel's only friend. It didn't matter that he needed her. What mattered was that Cadel had to remain his father's puppet so that Dr. Darkkon could take his revenge on society. Cadel Darkkon, after all, meant "Battle Lord."

Cadel was to be his father's heir in everything.

Fighting back the urge to scream, Cadel beat the wall with an open palm. He felt utterly used and shamefully stupid. How could he have been so blind? But then, the foundations had been laid when he was so very, very young. He had been taught to despise the Piggotts in order that he might come to love and trust his father. His father
and
Thaddeus Roth. They were the only support he'd had—until Sonja.

Once again, hysteria bubbled to the surface. Once again, he fought it off. He had to. He knew now that he could not afford to put a foot wrong. For every unusual activity he must have an excuse. There was a good chance that the entire house was under surveillance, inside and out, twenty-four hours a day. Perhaps it had always been so.

For twelve years he had lived in a cage. A trap. His whole life was a prison, carefully designed to stop him from even
wanting
to get out.

But Sonja had breached the prison walls, just a little. And at last he knew what he had been missing all these years. He realized that there were people out there—people living in the world that Dr. Darkkon hated—who were just as intelligent and interesting as Cadel was. Who deserved respect. Who had the sense to respect
him,
but demanded nothing in exchange for their admiration. Sonja didn't expect anything from Cadel. She didn't want him to change. Dr. Darkkon, on the other hand, wanted Cadel to be—well, to be a clone. A clone of Dr. Darkkon.

It occurred to Cadel that his father had been poisoning his mind for years. He and Thaddeus had been feeding Cadel tales of a hostile and narrow-minded society—tales that probably weren't true. Oh, there were idiots and bullies around, of course there were. But there were Sonjas as well. There had to be. Mathematically, it didn't make sense that she should be unique.

And if there was more than one Sonja in the world, Cadel thought, then why should the world go to hell if Dr. Darkkon failed to seize control of it? He realized, suddenly, that the human race might very well survive without Dr. Darkkon's guidance. And that the Axis Institute was therefore unnecessary.

Cadel turned off the shower and dried himself. He was no longer crying; his red eyes could be blamed on the shampoo. He tried not to display any emotion as he got dressed. With a blank expression he combed his hair, retreated into his bedroom, and shut the door. Even here he wasn't safe. There could be hidden cameras. Listening devices. He didn't want to be paranoid, but he couldn't afford to make a mistake.

So he curled up under his bedspread, shut his eyes, and firmly swallowed the lump in his throat.

He couldn't bear to think about the betrayal. The manipulation. It was too painful—it made him gasp. So he forced his mind down other paths, trying to ignore the waves of hurt and fury that kept welling up, disturbing the logical progression of his thoughts.

What did he want to do? He wanted to escape. Why did he want to escape? It was his only option, really. If he didn't, and he continued to communicate with Sonja, he would be putting her life at risk; there was no doubt about that. If, on the other hand, he
stopped
communicating with Sonja—well, he might just as well kill himself. He
would
be killing himself. He wouldn't survive. Little by little, he would fade away to nothing. A dry husk. An empty puppet.

A soulless clone.

His father was mad. Why hadn't he ever seen that before? Perhaps at the beginning, when he was very young—but then Thaddeus had convinced him that all was well. Even more than Dr. Darkkon, Thaddeus had guided Cadel's every step. Thaddeus was so clever, so cool, so—so
kind.
No one else had ever been as kind to Cadel. Certainly not the Piggotts.

Even now, Cadel's feelings for Thaddeus were complicated. He hated his father with a pure and simple hatred (god—oh god—he felt like smashing that froggy face in), but Thaddeus, Cadel realized, was neither mad nor obsessed. Just what did Thaddeus want from life? Cadel had never before asked himself that question. Nor could he provide an answer. Thaddeus's motives were a mystery. Thaddeus was ... unreadable. Secretive.