The Unseen (38 page)

“You see? You remember, because I planted those memories, those lessons, in your mind. Try this: the four DNA nucleotides in genetic sequencing?”

“Adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine.” Lucas swallowed, felt his dry throat click.

“How did you learn to drive at the orphanage?” Swarm asked.

“I . . . I . . .” Lucas stammered. He filtered through his memory banks, looking for driving lessons but finding nothing.

“You didn't learn to drive at the orphanage, because it never existed.

You learned to drive in my program—not just cars, but many different vehicles. You could even pilot an M-1 tank, if needed.”

Lucas let the hand holding the gun drop to the seat, feeling his body go numb all over.

“In many ways,” Swarm said, “you were nothing more than an organic computer. We cleared your hard drive and loaded it with all new information.”

He went silent, and Lucas closed his eyes, hoping the silence would last.

It didn't.

“I don't know who I am, and it haunts me every day,” Swarm said quietly, almost wistfully. “More than these wasps, more than the hundreds of people I've killed, more than Raven, who conditioned me from a very young age. More than all of it put together. I will never know who I am.”

Lucas opened his eyes again and stared at Swarm.

“So as part of his conditioning,” Swarm said softly, “I taught this boy a phrase that would keep some semblance of his former life alive. Something of himself.”

Lucas stared. “Humpty Dumpty had some great falls,” he whispered.

“That will be your starting point,” Swarm said. “Your key to unlocking your past.” He held up the cube. “Your past in here.” Swarm turned his attention to the front seat. “This is far enough; pull over when you have a chance.”

Lucas looked out the window; they were at a large landfill. Seagulls wheeled in the brilliant blue sky above.

Lucas turned his attention back to the cube. “But this,” he said. “This is from Saul. He gave it to me.”

“Did he?” Swarm asked. The wasps around his head seemed to be a bit more agitated now, perhaps stirred to more activity by the stench of the garbage surrounding them.

Lucas thought for a moment. “You planted the cube in his case,” he said.

“Yes.” Swarm opened the door on his side of the car, got out. He leaned back in the door, motioned for Lucas to follow him. Neither of the two in the front seat made any move to exit the car. Good.

Swarm shut the car door behind him and walked to the front of the car. He turned, waited. “I promise you, I'm not going to do a thing to you,” Swarm said. “I don't think you've totally figured this out yet.”

Lucas approached Swarm carefully, pointing the gun toward him.

When he got close, Swarm abruptly took a few steps and grabbed the gun's barrel. He sank to his knees, put the barrel of the gun to his forehead.

“And now, you have to finish your job,” he whispered. “You are my emergency exit. My End Game.”

He looked up into Lucas's eyes, and Lucas noticed tears forming there.

“I conditioned you. I shaped you into something inhuman. I killed hundreds of people—hundreds. For that I deserve to die. But before that, I was also conditioned. My identity was erased. All memory of who I once was. And for that”—he lowered his gaze, staring at the muck on the ground at his knees—“I
want
to die.”

Lucas paused, letting his eyes wander over the giant cloud of wasps that surrounded both of them now. The wasps settled on the gun, on Lucas's own hands, but they made no move to sting him.

Lucas thought a moment. “You're still playing me,” he said. “My DNA is all over that church. My prints are on this gun. I shoot you, this whole thing—along with everything else these past few days—gets tied to me.”

Swarm smiled. “The two Dark Fear agents in the car have been instructed to take you anywhere you want. Inside the box, the cube, is your new identity.”

Swarm closed his eyes expectantly, waiting.

“One question first,” Lucas said, his finger on the trigger. “How do I open the cube?”

“You will know when the time is right.”

It would be easy—so easy—to blow off Swarm's head. He had tortured innocent kids to create the Creep Club, invaded the lives and homes of countless people, probably killed many of them. Surely he deserved it, and it would feel so good to send Swarm out as his own last act on Earth.

But he couldn't.

He lowered the gun. “I got news for you, Swarm.” He bent to pick up his cube. “I'm gonna be dead in another few minutes, no matter what happens.”

He threw the gun as far as he could, watching it land in the heap of crushed refuse; immediately, seagulls flocked to inspect it.

“And you're gonna have to live, knowing your grand experiment—your End Game—failed. You're looking for deliverance in the wrong place.”

He turned and walked back to the car. As he walked away, he was sure he could hear sobbing.

Lucas was surprised to discover he had a soul after all. And it wasn't for sale.

00:05:21 REMAINING

Once he was back inside the car, the driver turned the vehicle around and drove them away; Lucas turned and watched the figure of Swarm, still hunched, still on his knees in the garbage, recede behind them.

A few minutes later, on a suburban street, the driver finally spoke, jolting a new wave of terror in him. “We're taking you to a new car.

Nothing quite like this, but it should be good enough to get you out of town.”

Lucas smiled. “Well, if the two of you want to live, I suggest you get rid of me. Like now.”

The one sitting in the passenger seat turned, looked at him with Lucas's own eyes. “No need to fight us, Lucas. We're helping you.”

“Oh, I'm done fighting,” he said. “It's just, I have a bomb strapped to my leg, and it's going to go off any time.”

00:00:32 REMAINING

The driver slammed on the brakes, bringing the car to a sudden halt along the curb; he climbed out his door and flung open Lucas's in mere seconds. “Let's see it,” he said.

Casually, Lucas turned and held out his left leg. He closed his eyes, feeling like he was ready to explode. Ha ha. Ready to explode. Viktor had actually done him a favor, because he didn't want to live. Not like this. Not knowing what he now knew about his life. It had all been one big lie.

(Humpty Dumpty had some great falls.)

Bring it on, he thought. Time to let Humpty shatter into a million pieces.

00:00:00 REMAINING

He realized the driver was still looking at his leg and hadn't said anything for several seconds.

Lucas opened his eyes. “Well?” he asked. “What's the verdict, doc?”

“It's a bomb, all right,” the driver said. “Only problem is, it hasn't been armed.”

Lucas snapped his head off the seat, looked down at his leg. “What do you mean?” he started to say. “It's—”

But something
was
different. The regular display of lights, marching around the exterior of the manacle, was dark. No activity of any kind.

The passenger doppelgänger had come around the car now; meanwhile, the driver disappeared to the back, and Lucas heard the trunk pop open.

“I've seen these before,” the passenger said. “He's right. When they're armed, they have lights that count down the time.”

“I know,” Lucas said. “The lights were on when Viktor's guy clamped it on me.”

“So what did you do to deactivate it?” the passenger asked. “These things are kind of primitive, so if you mess with them too much . . .”

Lucas shook his head. “I didn't do anything,” he said. “That's what I'm trying to tell you. Last time I checked, the thing was lit up like a Christmas tree.”

The driver was back now, holding what looked like a large pair of bolt cutters. “Well then,” he said, putting the cutters on the manacle, “looks like you got yourself a Christmas miracle a little bit early.”

THIRTY-SIX

THEY DROPPED HIM OFF OUT NEAR FALLS CHURCH, HANDED HIM THE KEYS to an older four-door car, and suggested it was probably a good idea for him to keep heading west.

He agreed that was a good plan, but wasn't sure what to do. Where to go. They'd still be looking for him; eyes would be everywhere.

They started to roll up the window and drive away, but then Lucas stopped the driver. “Just a question,” he said. “Out of curiosity. Your faces—you look like something terrifying to anyone who sees you.”

“Yes,” answered the passenger.

“So what do
you
see when you look into a mirror?”

The driver smiled. “I see a reflection,” he said. He rolled up the window and wheeled away from the curb.

Lucas sat on the curb for a few seconds, massaging the area where the manacle had been bolted to his ankle for the last two days. What had happened? Why had it quit working? He didn't know.

He held the cube in front of him, looking at all its surfaces in the bright sunlight. Same as ever: he could see no hidden hinges, secret doors, seams of any kind. He hit it against the concrete curb as hard as he could a few times. A few flakes of concrete chipped away, but the box remained unscathed.

Maybe the gun, or some explosives. He stood, put the cube in his backpack. This wasn't the place for guns or explosives.

He sat again, stared at the sky for a few minutes, noticing the deep azure above him, the whispering wind in the trees, the far-off cries of children playing.

He was here, despite the odds.

After a few minutes, he pulled out his TracFone and turned it on, started to dial Sarea's number from memory.

Wait. That wouldn't work. Hondo had Sarea's phone, and it was probably gone now—along with everything else in Leila's home. He had to find them, but how?

He looked at the neighborhood around him. A library, with free Internet access, was several blocks away. He could maybe try to track Sarea's geopatch, but he thought showing his face was a very bad idea.

Abruptly, his cell phone rang, and he answered it.

“Lucas?” Sarea's voice. Mad.

He smiled. Lucas. Who was Lucas? Just an invention of Swarm.

“Yeah,” he said. “It's me.”

“What kind of stunt are you trying to pull, ditching us like that?

I've been trying to call you every ten minutes.”

“Yeah, Sarea,” he said. “It's nice to hear your voice too.”

She paused on the other end of the line, and he could hear her breathing coming in short gasps. After a few seconds, she gave a deep sigh, and he could almost sense her coming down.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay as I can get. Leila still with you?”

“Yes. Said she wasn't going anywhere until we heard from you.”

“Where are you?” he asked.

“We're in that charming strip mall right next to the convenience store where you dumped us.”

He smiled. “Let's see,” he said. “I think you'd probably be about two blocks from a Metro stop,” he said.

“I don't know,” she said.

“I do. You know how you keep asking me when I'm gonna take you out for a cup of coffee?”

“Yeah. I remember something like that.”

“Can you and Leila meet me at the GMU stop? Take the Orange Line—it's the last station. The farthest west. I'll buy you a cup of coffee there.” He paused. “Actually, you'll have to buy it, because I can't really show my face anywhere. But I'll pay for it.”

“Yeah, because that worked out so well for me last time,” she said before she hung up.

He looked into the sky again. It was still blue.

“SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT,” SAREA SAID, PUTTING HER COFFEE IN the cup holder as they sat in a crowded parking lot. “You had a bomb attached to your leg that whole time, and you didn't say anything to me?”

He shrugged. “We had other things to worry about.”

Leila shifted in the backseat. “You know,” she said, “I've been thinking about that. Only thing I can come up with is, something shorted it out. Fried the wiring. An electrical surge of some kind.” She smiled.

“You didn't get struck by lightning, did you?”

He returned the smile. “About the only thing I haven't been hit by in the last few days. I've—” He stopped, a memory coming back to him suddenly.

“What is it?” Sarea asked.

“Well, I didn't get hit by lightning,” he said. “But I got hit by several thousand volts of electricity.”

“And you conveniently left this out of the story too?” said Sarea.

“It was . . . I dunno. This morning. Remember I said the cops were taking me in after they caught me at that restaurant? Well, I didn't think anything about it until just now, but they tased me.”

Leila smiled. “A taser. That's 50,000 volts.”

Lucas turned around. “How do you know?”

She smiled. “I helped design it.”

They fell into silence for several moments until Lucas spoke to Leila again. “So,” he said. “What now for you?”

She shrugged. “Got a court date for the little kneecapping thing,” she said. “But somehow, I don't think the charges will stick. My house blowing up, well, that might be another matter. Maybe I need to head back to Venezuela, lie low for a while. After that, who knows? Maybe I need to go back to work on some weapons designs. Been thinking about something that detects and blocks surveillance signals. Start drawing up some plans.”

“And what about you?” he said, turning to Sarea.

“What about me?”

“What do you have planned?”

“I don't plan, Lucas,” she said. “Life's more interesting that way.”

He smiled. “Well then,” he said. “What if I tell you my plan?”

THREE DAYS LATER, HE AND SAREA WERE SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDWEST. He had raided a few of his cash stashes before they left, but he knew it was more important to get out of town fast. They'd started with about five hundred, but they were starting to run low, and they'd have to stop soon. They had thought about hiding at Sarea's for a few days, but it seemed too dangerous, maybe for both of them. There might be other rogue members still following up loose ends, investigators following up on a tip that Sarea and Lucas had been friendly at the Blue Bell, dropping by to ask her a few questions unannounced.