Twinmaker (41 page)

The d-mat booth came to life around them again. Clair put her arms around herself and held on tight, afraid of what might be changed this time.

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Zeppelin Barker was in the room, not three yards from her.

Her heart jolted.

Solid, blond, and tanned, dressed in track pants, sneakers, and a vest sporting the school colors. No bullet wound. Living, breathing, real. She could
smell
him.

He was already reacting in puzzlement to an environment he hadn’t expected, adopting a wary crouch and looking around until he saw her.

“Clair? What’s going on?”

Clair didn’t know what to tell him. There were just the two of them in the room now. Wallace and Mallory—it seemed simplest to call her that—were gone. The faint sense of giddiness remained, so Clair guessed that she and the room had been d-matted nowhere this time—a
null jump
, Arabelle had called it. The pattern had been edited again en route.

But . . .
Zep?

“What are you doing here?” she asked him. “Where did you come from?”

“The dorm. Remember? That Abstainer freak sending the feed from Gordon the Gorgon’s office? Don’t tell me I missed the end of it. . . .”

He looked around again as though trying to match his last memory with this new moment. Clair was struggling to do the same thing. If the last thing he remembered was leaving the dorm to come join her at school, that meant he was a copy taken from the last time he had used d-mat. The original Zep had gone on to get shot, while an echo of him—
this version of him
—had survived in storage somewhere. And now he was alive again, missing the last hours of his life and the last few days of Clair’s, but otherwise exactly as he had been.

“Clair? What’s going on?”

He went to approach her, but she instinctively pulled away. There was always a chance it wasn’t
really
him. . . .

“What did we talk about the last time we saw each other?”

“Libby, of course. Why?”

She shook her head. That was a stupid question. Mallory was in Libby’s head now; she could have known and could have briefed him.

“What’s my least favorite city?”

“Omsk.”

He came closer, as though to touch her, and she shied away again, even though she knew now that he was really him.

“Clair, what’s wrong with you? You’re starting to freak me out.”

He wasn’t the only one feeling that way. Wallace and Mallory obviously knew about her and Zep and what had happened to him in Manteca. They were offering to undo the harm that had been done—and they could deliver, too, with access to his archived pattern, wherever it had been saved. Since Zep wasn’t legally dead, he could walk back into his life as though nothing had happened. Maybe Wallace thought the two of them could even pick up where they had left off, if they wanted to. Without Libby.

That was the deal. All she had to do to accept it, presumably, was to back down from her Counter-Improvement campaign.

If she took the deal, however, Wallace would win. Libby would disappear, possibly forever, Q would never get her body back . . . and what would happen to WHOLE and the others? What would happen to Jesse? She couldn’t just rewind the last few days and forget they had ever happened.

She clenched her fists. Clair Larhonda Hill wasn’t so easily bought.

“It’s not going to work,” she shouted at the walls and ceiling. “Do you hear me? You can’t buy my silence so easily!”

The doors opened.

“Libby!” Zep cried. “Thank God. We’ve been so—”

“Worried? Why? I’m beautiful, remember?”

The pistol was still in her hand. She raised it, this time pointing at Zep.

“Libby, wait . . . if this is about Clair—”

“Clair, Clair, Clair,” she said. “It’s always about Clair.”

The gun cracked, and Zep fell to the floor, shot through the heart.

“NO!”

Clair was at Zep’s side in an instant. Before the life entirely left his eyes, he seemed to see her through a veil of hurt and puzzlement. His lips moved, but no sound emerged from them. Then he was gone. Again.

Clair knelt in the expanding pool of his blood, buried her head into his ruined chest, and would have wept but for Mallory’s hand in her hair, pulling her up and away from the body.

“It’s not your silence we want.”

Mallory pushed her back to the ground, away from Zep’s body.

“Leave me alone.” Clair scrabbled backward until her spine was pressed hard against a wall. Revulsion threatened to subsume her. Zep had died twice, and both times it had been because of her.

“Shall I bring him back again? One time if you do as we ask. Many times if you don’t.”

“You have Turner. What do you need me for?”

“Ant wants something else from you—and what Ant Wallace wants, Ant Wallace gets.”

“Now, now, there’s no need to be
unpleasant
about it. . . .” Wallace had entered the room without Clair noticing. He stood over Zep’s body and adjusted the cuffs of his shirt.

“Here’s the story,” he said. “I’m on my way to see you, as per your request, when an attack on the building triggers an emergency lockdown. You are isolated for your own protection, as am I, until security and peacekeepers foil the attack, at which point you and I are released. In response to the inevitable media uproar provoked by your followers, we hold a video conference. Gemma Mallapur confesses that you were used by WHOLE as a cover for an attack on the very heart of VIA. Once WHOLE’s terroristic aspirations are revealed, you renounce all your accusations of me and my organization. You are taken away for questioning but are not expected to be charged. The end. Any questions?”

Clair shook her head.

“I’m not saying that.”

“You misunderstand me. You already have.”

He stared down at her as the horrible truth sank in.

“We duped you, Clair,” he said. “My version of you is already out there, recanting all the things you said.”

“You couldn’t have,” she said, feeling a wave of existential panic. How could there be a copy of her out there when she was still alive here, wherever
here
was? “What about breaking parity?”

“Irrelevant in a private network.” He waved to indicate the booth-disguised-as-an-office. “No one will ever find you in here.”

“So why
am
I here? What can I do that my dupe can’t?”

“You can tell me all about your friend.”

“Libby?”

Mallory barked a short, hard laugh. “Hardly.”

Clair went to get up, but Mallory put a foot on her chest and pushed her back down.

“I’m talking about Q,” said Wallace. “That’s what you call her, right?”

Clair stared at him in complete confusion.

“You must know more about her than I do,” Clair said. “She’s one of Improvement’s victims, after all.”

“Don’t try to pin this on us,” said Mallory. “We had nothing to do with her.”

“I don’t believe you. How can she be in the hangover if you didn’t put her there?”

“The what?”

“The safety net, the memory dump, whatever you call it.” Clair tried to remember how Arcady had explained it to her. “The place you pulled Zep from.”

Mallory tilted Libby’s head and studied her with distant blue eyes, like she was a bug in a jar, slowly running out of air.

“Someone’s lying,” said Wallace, “and it can’t be both of you.”

His eyes moved, selecting menus from his lenses.

sssssss-pop

Gemma was standing next to Zep’s body, looking first at the room around her, then at her injured arm, which was still in a bandage.

“What?” she said, startled and confused. “This isn’t what you told me would—”

“I know what I told you,” said Wallace, “but you haven’t delivered. We’ve kept you on ice in case we needed you.”

“Ice . . . ?” Gemma’s expression became one of horror. “Sam—you promised me Sam—”

“And you’ll get him if you tell us the truth, this time.”

Clair lunged for Gemma, but Mallory’s boot held her down with crushing strength.

“You!” Clair spat. “You betrayed us!”

Gemma glanced at her, but only for a moment. Her gaze dropped to the floor, danced away from the blood, and ended up looking nowhere.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I had no choice.”

“Yes, you did,” said Wallace, “and you chose correctly. You chose your son over a band of misfits and meddlers. Who in their right mind wouldn’t do that?”

“This isn’t right,” Gemma said, still avoiding looking at the body. “You said you wouldn’t hurt them.”

“And you believed him?” said Clair, aghast.

“It’s not how it looks! They wanted me to be a sleeper agent, but I never actually spied on anyone, never gave anything away—until I saw proof in the Farmhouse that they could do everything they claimed they could do—changing people, bringing them back from the dead . . .”

“Yes, yes,” said Wallace in an impatient tone. “You activated the bug at the Farmhouse. We exchanged messages. We promised you the one thing in the world you really want.”

He had walked half a circle around Gemma and come to a halt next to Mallory, drawing attention to the body, Clair realized, and to the gun in Mallory’s hand.

“I don’t reward lies,” he said. “Tell me everything you know about Q.”

Gemma blinked at him. “What about her?”

“You told us she was a kid,” Mallory said. “Some kind of prodigy.”

“That’s what she sounds like. A kid living in the Air.”

“But you’re not sure?”

“I’ve never met her. Why would she fake something like that?”

“I don’t know. That’s why we brought you back.”

Gemma stared at Wallace and Mallory with despair and hatred in her eyes, then suddenly ripped the cross from her neck and threw it across the room.

“Keep your stupid bug,” she said, voice crackling with emotion. “You’re never going to give him back to me, are you? You played me for a fool.”

“The thing is,” said Wallace, “in all honesty, we don’t care much either way. You can have as many Sameers as you like, as long as you convince us that we can trust you.”

“But I’ve told you everything I know. I swear!”

“I don’t believe in the ghosts of dead girls haunting the Air,” said Wallace. “I do believe that Clair can tell us more. The boy from Manteca here”—he indicated Zep’s body—“didn’t have the effect we were hoping for. I’ll be grateful if you can provide us with the leverage we need.”

“How?”

The smile he offered her was as dangerous as Mallory’s pistol.

“You work it out.”

Clair stared at Gemma, seeing her desperation and her thwarted hope. She had been strung out and stressed ever since the attack on the Farmhouse, and now Clair knew why. She had started expressing her doubts at the train station in Mandan, but Clair hadn’t listened. Clair was listening now, wishing she could find some way to hate her.

This wasn’t the grand treachery of Wallace and Mallory, the depths of which she hadn’t yet begun to fathom. This was an everyday betrayal, human, galling, and desperately frustrating.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Gemma snarled at her. “Who are you to judge? You’ve had it easy all your life. You have a family, and you have friends, and you have a life full of riches. You can go anywhere, do anything,
be
anyone you want to be. And who am I? Some mad old fool whose child died—and now I have the chance to get him back, exactly as I remember him. You’d take it, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t even hesitate.”

Clair shook her head. She could see what Gemma was doing. She was talking herself into something, something she knew she shouldn’t do. And to make matters worse, Clair knew what it was.

“Don’t,” Clair said. “They’ll never give you what you want.”

“You can talk. I asked you to look after him, but you wouldn’t do it. And even if you had agreed, I wouldn’t have believed you. You could never have protected him. And neither can I. It’s done. It’s over. We’re through.”

The brief war waging behind Gemma’s eyes was over. Clair had lost.

Gemma told Wallace, “Try Jesse.”

Mallory smiled.

SSSSSSS-POP

Gemma and Wallace disappeared in another null jump, and there Jesse was, spattered with Ray’s blood and caught midsentence.

“—together . . . Wait, what?”

He saw Libby’s face and started in fright even before Mallory stepped away from Clair and pointed the pistol at him.

“Don’t!” Clair cried, placing herself directly in front of the muzzle. “Please don’t hurt him. I’ve told you everything I know. Q is one of the lost girls, like Libby. She woke in the hangover and latched onto me when I used Improvement. She’s been helping me, and I’ve tried to help her, too. She deserves to know who she is, who she
was
, before Improvement.”

“Clair, what’s happening?” asked Jesse, standing up behind her. “Are you all right? Where’s Ray, Gemma, Turner . . . everyone?”

“They’re gone forever,” Mallory said, “unless your girlfriend tells us the truth.”

“Why would I lie?” Clair said, determined to keep herself between Mallory and him. She couldn’t bear to think of Jesse dead, not now that she had him back.

“Q is some Little Orphan Annie who latched onto you at random?” Mallory shook Libby’s head. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m careful,” she said. “I don’t leave leftovers.”

In the face of Mallory’s ruthlessness, Clair believed her, but at the same time she couldn’t believe her. There had to be hope for Libby, just as there was hope for Q. There had to be hope for Clair as well.

“Well, this time you made a mistake,” Jesse insisted, coming forward to stand next to Clair.

“I don’t make mistakes either,” Mallory said, her lenses flickering, “but Ant does. I think he’s too generous. This is your last offer.”

The air thinned around them again. Clair took Jesse’s hand and held it so tightly, she hoped, that not even d-mat could tear them apart.

sssssss-pop

When the machines stopped, Mallory was gone, and Dylan Linwood had taken her place.

Jesse’s father staggered backward and clutched his temple. Bruised. Fresh from his kidnapping. He looked up at them, blinking, left eye filling with blood.