Tabula Rasa Kristen Lippert Martin (27 page)

They say that your whole life flashes before your eyes
 when you’re dying, but that’s not happening for me. Maybe
 it’s because I don’t have much to remember, or maybe it’s
 because I won’t let myself remember anything. Remem-
 bering won’t do me any good right now. Thinking about
 the here and now will.  
I’ve slowed my heart rate down, and though I know
I could speed it back up again, bleed out, and leave this
 world behind, I won’t.
I am way, way too angry to die.
The soldiers drag me across the debris field of the lobby,
 and I open my eyes just enough to figure out where they’re
 taking me—the director’s office.
They lay me on the floor at Hodges’s feet like a prize,
 right next to the desk chair where 8-Bit is tied up. I keep
 my eyes slightly open, with just a sliver of iris showing. I
figure that makes me look a little more dead.
8-Bit’s lower lip looks like a cooked sausage that’s burst
 out of its casing. There is dried blood caked in his nos-
 trils. He’s tall like his son, mostly legs. His hair is gray
 at the temples, and his eyes are the same black-brown as
Thomas’s.
“Is she dead?” Hodges asks.
“Yes,” a mechanical voice responds.
“Are you sure? She faked it before. Check her carefully.”
The soldier puts his hand over my mouth and pinches
 my nose shut, closing off my air for almost a minute. I do
 not react. This seems to satisfy her.
“How did it happen?”
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“She was climbing up the side of the building when we
 shot her. She fell about forty feet.”
Hodges bursts out laughing. “The angel has fallen. I
 love it!” She abruptly stops celebrating. “Can you survive
 a forty-foot fall?”
“How would I know?” 8-Bit says. “Ask someone from
 the medical staff. Oh wait, you can’t. Because you shot them
 all.”  
Hodges won’t come near me. She has one of the sol-
 diers unzip the coat I’m wearing, Thomas’s coat. He rolls
 me back and forth as he rifles through all my pockets. As I
 rock to one side, I see Thomas lying on the couch next to
 me. His skin and hair are damp with sweat, and he’s taking
 rapid, shallow breaths, but he’s still alive.
I feel the soldier’s hand probe the inner coat pocket. He
 removes the flash drive. “Found it.”  
Hodges is still wearing her coat, but she’s shivering. Her
 hair is looking a little greasy and disheveled. Obviously, she
 hadn’t planned on staying this long. She sits down heav-
 ily on the chaise next to Dr. Buckley’s desk. She’s holding
 something in her lap. Something heavy and sparkly. It’s a
 crystal candy dish just like the one I saw in the South Wing
 reception area, with an E. C. etched into it.
She plunks it down so hard on the desk, I think she
 must have cracked it.
“Aw, what’s the matter, Ev?” 8-Bit says.
“To be honest, I’m a little disappointed.”
“But I thought this was the girl you’ve been after all
 this time. And now she’s been killed in cold blood, at your
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direction. She’s the reason you had a whole bunch of inno-
 cent people slaughtered. I’d think this would be such a
 proud moment for you.”
“Oh, shut up, David. I’m disappointed because I was
 going to put this bowl with the pill on the floor and make
 her crawl like a dog to reach it, right before I asked these
 kind gentlemen to shoot her.”
“Kind of tacky, don’t you think? Maybe even a bit of
 overkill.”
“You just don’t appreciate the panache of this whole
 operation.”
He tries to laugh, but gives a wheezy cough
 instead.“You’ve changed, Ev.”
“Yes, I have. That’s why I’m at the top of my game and
 you are tied to a chair.” She spins 8-Bit around like she’s
 dancing with him. “And don’t get all judgey, darling. This
 girl deserves what she got.”
8-Bit looks down at me and sighs. “I doubt it.”
Hodges waves the flash drive in his face. “At least I’ll
 be able to tell Mr. Claymore that despite the unfortu-
 nate events here today, we were able to recover Wilson’s
 research—all the data indicating that the new procedure
 was showing promise.”
“Wonderful. Bang-up job, Ev.”
“There’s just one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ll need your password, of course.”
“Thomas set the password, and as you can see, he’s in no
 condition to tell us what it is right now.”
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Hodges walks toward the couch and looks at Thomas
 lying there. She crosses her arms over her chest, huffs in
 annoyance, and then spins around suddenly.
“So hack it. That’s what I hired you to do.”
“No.”
She gets right into 8-Bit’s face. “Hack. It.”
“I guess you should have hired someone better at fol-
 lowing orders.”
“Believe me, had I known I was hiring you, I would
 have saved myself some trouble and shot you instead.”
8-Bit gives a tired, bitter laugh and hangs his head.
“I don’t remember you being so determined, David. As
I recall, you were sloppy and lazy. And yet you’ve man-
 aged to engineer quite the opportunity to settle a grudge.
I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Well, you were my wife. And you let me rot in a for-
 eign jail cell. And then, after letting me know that I had a
 son, you didn’t let me see him. Not to mention that whole
 giving him up for adoption after having me declared legally dead
 thing. I guess all I really needed was the proper motiva-
 tion.”
Hodges flicks her hand toward Thomas. “Was that the
 point of bringing him along? You thought I’d get one look
 at him and melt?”
“I just thought you should see him.”
Hodges slaps 8-Bit across the face. “It was a mean thing
 to do.”
“Well, then I guess we’re even.”
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“We’re far from even. I still haven’t decided what even
 is going to mean for you. Maybe something along the lines
 of what I’ve done with Angel here.” She pokes at me with
 the tip of her shoe. “This is how I handle people who give
 me trouble.”
Thomas moans and twitches. I see his fingers curl and
 uncurl, like he’s trying to grab for something. It’s all I can
 do to not reach up and touch his hand so he knows I’m still
 alive.
8-Bit says, “Look, do whatever you want with me, but
 let Thomas go. You did it once before, after all.”
Hodges paces back and forth, spinning her bracelets. A
 few times she glances at Thomas as if she can’t help herself.
She stops and points her finger in 8-Bit’s face.
“It wasn’t easy, you know! I did it because I had to. I
 wasn’t about to be a single mother after you abandoned
 me!”
“I got caught and was thrown in jail. Only you would
 think of that as abandonment.”
She puts her hands on her hips and sighs. “I don’t have
 time for dredging up the past like this, David. I really
 don’t.”
“You should make time. Fate brought us back together
 again for a reason.”
“No, fate hasn’t brought us together. You sought me
 out. You tricked me into hiring you for this job.”
“I didn’t trick you. You were looking for the best, and
I’m it. I took your money and put it in a safe place. And
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what a lot of money it was. You’ve come up in the world
 since I saw you last.”
“I have come up in the world. And that’s where I’m
 going to stay. I’ve done my job and I’ve done it perfectly and
I’m going to be rewarded for it. I just need to tie up the last
 loose end right here.”
Hodges stands over me and pushes my head back and
 forth with her high heel. I keep my neck loose to make
 my “death” more convincing. This is the chance I’ve been
 hoping for. I let my hand fall to the floor and keep my
 forefinger extended.
One.
On.
I’m alive.
I hope 8-Bit sees. I hope he understands. I just need
 more time to think of what to do.
A mercenary comes in and Hodges is momentarily
 distracted by something he’s saying, something about a
 helicopter being deiced and nearly ready to go. She dis-
 misses him, walks back across the room, and then sits down
 on Buckley’s desk.
8-Bit clears his throat. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing that concerns you.”
I feel him press his foot to my hand, and I push back
 slightly, hoping he’ll feel that I’m resisting. That I haven’t
 given up yet.
“Ev. Tell me. I have to know.”
“Tell you what?”
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He flicks his head toward me. “What’s your thing with
 the girl?”
“This girl is the daughter of my fiancé.”
8-Bit echoes my thoughts when he says, “Fiancé? You’re
 engaged to Erskine Claymore? He’s ancient.”
“Don’t think I wouldn’t have married him, because I
 would have. But no. It’s Virgil I’m engaged to.”
“Virgil? How could he be her father? I thought he had
Lou Gehrig’s disease, ALS or whatever. Hasn’t he been
 homebound for years?”
“Yes, and it’s very noble of me to overlook those facts
 because he has such a good heart. Incidentally, I will never
 understand why people bother trying to be nice. There’s
 not a single thing to recommend it.”
I feel 8-Bit flick his boot against my fingers again.
“Okay, so I still don’t understand why you needed to get
 her out of the way. You could have married her father
 without killing her. And let me just say, you would have
 made one heck of an evil stepmother.”
She glares at him and grinds her teeth. For a moment I
 think he’s gone too far.
“Why are you so interested?” she asks.
“I’m not.” He shrugs coolly and chuckles. “Whatever.
Don’t tell me.”
She’s quiet for a moment and then says, “Actually, David,
I will tell you. Because you of all people will understand
 and appreciate the strategy involved in all this.”
Hodges walks past and kicks my hand out of her way.
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“Virgil and the mother of this thing”—she turns and
 grinds her heel into my palm—“they had a relationship long
 ago. To her credit, Blanca realized that she was a pathetic,
 grasping piece of gutter trash, and when she learned of her
 pregnancy she withdrew from Virgil’s life, asking only for
 what? A bit of money for the girl’s education. How incred-
 ibly predictable.”
She walks up to one of the soldiers and pulls his voice
 translator mouthpiece away from his face.
“I was able to find all this out because of this.”
“The translator?”
“Yes. The Claymores have a sad family history. There
 were four children originally. Each succumbed to this or
 that. A boating accident. The older daughter strangled
 by her boyfriend. The younger one pulled into the fam-
 ily garage with the engine running and fell asleep at the
 wheel . . . That left Virgil as the sole surviving Claymore
 heir, and he tried to distance himself from the rest of his
 family. Can you believe he actually renounced his inheri-
 tance at one point? Who does that? He was too good to
 be true. Still is. Anyway, when Virgil was diagnosed with
ALS, Claymore Senior became utterly convinced that the
 family was cursed.”
“But what did the voice translator have to do with any
 of this?”
“It was an adaptation of this military technology that
 allowed Virgil to speak again. Claymore Senior invested
 a small fortune into developing a machine that could
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translate Virgil’s brain wave patterns into spoken words.
Just simple phrases at first, but over time, complex thoughts
 and expressions. After nearly ten years with no way to
 communicate, he was suddenly able to talk. And this is
 where I come in.
“I’d just been hired as Mr. Claymore’s loyal assistant,
 and even though Virgil could talk, he wouldn’t speak to his
 father. He hated the man. I figured it would help advance
 my position to broker a peace between father and son.
Claymore Senior would be grateful, and it would make me
 even more indispensable to him. So I set out to befriend
Virgil. I would sit with him, read to him occasionally. It
 took ages to win his trust, but eventually I did.”
“I’m sure you really turned on the southern charm.”
“You got that right, sugar,” she says, her accent turned
 up full blast.
“So Virgil trusts you. What good does that do?”
“None, as it turned out. Virgil refused to reconcile with
 his father. Meanwhile, Claymore Senior was convinced he
 would find a cure for his son and that Virgil would take
 over for him, even though every doctor in the world told
 him that it was never going to happen. He didn’t believe
 it, and if there was even the slightest chance some research
 could help his son, he invested in it, no matter how ethi-
 cally questionable it was.” Hodges opens her arms and
 looks around Dr. Buckley’s office. “Like this, for example.”
“But—”
“Let me finish. You see, one day Virgil, thinking me a
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reliable confidante, told me about Blanca and her—their—
 daughter and implored me to track them both down. He’d
 made a terrible mistake, he said. He should never have let
 her go. He thought of her every day, never able to say any-
 thing, and it was eating him up.  
“So I did as he asked. I found her, and pretended to
 be the kind emissary, interested only in reuniting this
 pair of star-crossed lovers. I told her that Virgil had never
 stopped thinking about her, that he loved her still. She was
 thrilled. Of course, I realized that I was in a potentially
 lucrative position. Here I was, a trusted assistant for a very
 rich man whose sole remaining heir was probably going to
 die young. Think of the possibilities. Well, I certainly did
 think of them. Often.
“I know where this is going,” 8-Bit says.
“Yes. Exactly. A newly discovered granddaughter
 would ruin everything for me, and I couldn’t let that hap-
 pen. So I told Blanca that there was a small problem. She
 knew that Virgil had never wanted the girl exposed to
 the Claymore family. I guess he believed wholeheartedly
 that the Claymores were cursed and that their money had
 brought nothing but unhappiness. I told her that Virgil’s
 father, Claymore Senior, also would not be pleased with
 her sudden appearance. He would naturally assume that she
 was just after Virgil’s money. And of course, though every
 king wants an heir, that doesn’t mean he wants it to be the
 maid’s daughter.”
And now—now I picture my mother’s beautiful face.
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The blank white emptiness is gone. I see her laughing
 brown eyes. I remember the way she looked at me. So
 proud. So proud that I was her Angel.
The anger boils up inside me. I can hardly hold it back,
 but somehow I do. I do it for my mother.
“So what happened?” 8-Bit asks her, his voice hushed
 in a combination of awe and disgust.
“What happened is that I asked Blanca a fateful ques-
 tion. I asked her if her daughter knew who her real father
 was, and do you know what she told me? No. The girl had
 no idea. Well, Blanca sealed her fate right then and there.”
8-Bit cocks his head to the side, his eyes narrowed.
“Would you believe that on the very eve of her reunion
 with her lost love—the father of her only child—she was
 struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver? So tragic, really.
It’s like something out of a  . . . I don’t know, tragedy. I
 had to go back to Virgil and tell him that Blanca was dead,
 and I couldn’t track down the child. He was heartbroken.
But you know, I should get some credit here, because I did
 nothing to the girl. Nothing. I could have, but I didn’t.
There was no need. With Blanca gone, the girl would
 disappear into the foster care system, and that would be
 that. She couldn’t make a claim on the Claymore fortune,
 because she had no idea that she was one of them.”
8-Bit says, “Yet here she is.”
“Yes. And what a lot of trouble she’s caused.”
“Because she found out.”
“Yes. I have no idea how. And the timing couldn’t have
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