Clan Corporate (27 page)

. . Darling’s been falsifying IVF donor records for Angbard by way of this nonprofit trust. I’ve just dropped the hammer on him. What could go wrong at this stage?

Well, in the worst case scenario Darling could just pick up the phone and call Angbard, tell him someone from the FDA was sniffing around the operation. But that wasn’t very likely, and in any case it would take time for Angbard to send Clan

security round to deal with her, time in which she could simply vanish from the scene. (She resisted the urge to push back her left sleeve and glance at the temporary tattoo: if she bugged out now she’d probably end up somewhere in the wild woods, over on the other side, with a splitting headache.) Next worst

scenario: Darling was going to phone the FDA, and would discover pretty quickly that there was no field inspector called Anderson. At which point she could either run away or pull the full black-helicopters tinfoil-hat spook thing. This being a deeply paranoid decade, the odds were that he’d believe her-and if not, she could still bug out. But the third worst case-Miriam stood up as the door opened. It was Darling, and there was a security guard with him. “That’s her,” he said. The guard took a step forward and Miriam flicked her sleeve back to stare at the knotwork design in brown henna that writhed on the back of her wrist like a snake endlessly swallowing its own tail, inducing feelings of nausea. “Arrest her.”

The guard reached out to grab Miriam as she brought the knot into focus, putting her mind into the state in which she could world-walk with the ease of long practice. Hands closed around her right arm as lightning stabbed at the base of her skull. “Ow!” She winced, vision flickering, and tried again.

Nothing. Her stomach twisted and she began to double over, head a throbbing wall of pain. What the hell-

“On the ground!” said the guard. “Lie down!” Something hard shoved into the base of her skull. “Okay, I don’t think she’s armed, sir. If you can help me with these-”

Handcuffs. Miriam tried to move her wrists but they didn’t want to respond, flopping around behind her as the guard pinioned them. The building must be doppelgangered, she realized through the crippling headache. Which means the whole clinic is a Clan front-that’s impossible!

Her stomach flip-flopped. Hands were lifting her: something sharp pressed against the side of her neck. “Okay, that’s ten mills of valium. Wait two minutes, then get the cuffs off her and take her down to recovery ward B, there’s a spare room off the main bay. I’ll meet you down there.”

“Going … be sick …” She’d spoken aloud, she thought. But there was a great empty hollow space inside her, and everything felt warm and wet, as if she were dissolving in a vast salty ocean of comfort and sleep. Valium? she thought. What went wrong? It was the last thing she thought for a long time.

It was dark, and her head hurt. Miriam tried to stretch and found she couldn’t move. That’s odd, she thought fuzzily, I don’t remember going to bed. She tried to stretch again, but her head was spinning and her knees ached and she felt a sudden urge to urinate. She was lying on her back. Why am I on my back?

The urge was irresistible and for some reason she couldn’t fight it. But that was okay. If it wasn’t for the headache and the knee thing she could fall asleep again; she felt warm and comfortable, as if a hot pillow was pressing down on her. Drugs, she thought vaguely, I’m sedated. It was so funny she felt like giggling, but laughter was too much like hard work.

“-sample bottle please, and get her a new catheter bag-” The words made no sense.

Miriam tried to ask, “What’s going on?” but nothing came out. There was an unpleasant pressure between her legs and a sensation of cold, uncomfortable and intimate. Not due for a smear test, she thought irrelevantly, and managed to make an indignant grunt.

“She’s too light, give me another five mikes,” said the same voice. Then there was a prickling at her wrist and the world went away for a while.

The next time she woke up was both better and worse. She had a pounding headache and her mouth felt as if a family of small rodents had set up home on her tongue-but she was in a bed, and fully conscious, the soft valium blanket no longer pressing down on her. Instead, she was alert-and completely aware of just how stunningly stupid she’d been.

In her careful list of what might have gone wrong, she’d overlooked option three: the entire clinic was a front for Angbard’s organization, in which case it was no surprise at all that it was doppelgangered. And Darling had known she was a hoaxer as soon as she opened her mouth, because none of the IVF

scheme details had been registered with the relevant FDA supervisory committees. Nobody outside the clan had ever heard of W* heterozygotes. So . .

.

She groaned and tried to roll over, away from the too-bright sunlight that was hurting her eyelids, only to be brought up short by a metal bracelet locked around her left wrist. Shit. She opened her eyes to see a whitewashed concrete wall inches away from her nose. I’m a prisoner.

The realization was crushing, and with it came a sense of total despair at her own stupidity. I told Paulie to take care and not go barging in, why couldn’t I listen to my own advice? She pushed herself upright and looked around, taking stock of her situation.

She was lying on a narrow cot in a room about five feet wide and maybe eight feet long. Next to the end of the bed, a stainless-steel sink was bolted to the wall. At the foot of the bed she could see a similarly grim-looking commode next to the door. The bed had a foam pillow and a sheet, and that was it. They’d dressed her in a hospital gown, taken her clothes, and handcuffed her to a ring in the wall by a length of chain. There was a window set high up in one wall, through which the morning-or afternoon-sunlight slid, and a naked bulb recessed in the ceiling, but she couldn’t see a light switch. There was no mirror over the washbasin, no handle on the inside of the door, and absolutely no sign to betray where she was. But she already knew roughly what this place had to be, and where. It was a doppelganger cell in one of the Clan’s surviving safe houses. An oubliette. People could vanish in here, never be seen again. For all she knew, maybe that was the idea-there’d be a sealed room on the other side, air full of carbon monoxide or some other silent killer so that if she somehow unchained herself and tried to world-walk …

Miriam shook her head, desperately trying to dispel the bubbling panic. I do not need this now, she told herself faintly. I mustn’t go to pieces. But telling herself didn’t help much. In fact, it seemed to make things worse.

She’d stuck her nose into Angbard’s business, and she’d have to be a blind fool to imagine that Angbard would just slap her lightly across the wrist and say “Don’t do it again.” Angbard’s authority was based on the simple, drastic fact that everybody knew that you didn’t cross the duke. Roland had been terrified of him, Baron Oliver and her grandmother the dowager had given Angbard a wide berth, focusing instead on weaklings among his associates-the only person she’d known to openly cross Angbard was Matthias, and he’d just vanished. Quite possibly she was going to find out where he’d gone. If not-she cringed. It wasn’t as if she could try to bluff that it was just a stupid, sophomoric prank, an attempt to get his attention. Angbard wasn’t an idiot, and more important, he didn’t think she was. Which meant that he was bound to take her seriously. And the last thing she wanted was for Angbard to get it into his head that she was looking for-not to use any euphemisms-blackmail material. She glanced at her wrist, halfway desperate enough to try and world-walk anyway, risking the doppelganger room. Then she gave an involuntary moan of despair. Her temporary tattoo was gone.

There must have been a hidden camera or spy hole somewhere in the walls, because she didn’t have to wait long. Maybe half an hour after she awakened, the door rattled and slammed open. Miriam flinched away but was brought up short by the chain. Two guys in business suits stared at her from the doorway like leashed hounds watching a rabbit. Behind them stood an older man with a dry, sallow face and an expression like a hungry ferret: “We can do this two ways, easy or hard. Easy is, you sit in this wheelchair and don’t say nothing.

You don’t want hard.”

“Do you know who I am?” asked Miriam.

One of the hounds glanced at the ferret for approval: receiving it, he stepped forward and punched her in the solar plexus. She writhed on the bed, trying to suck in enough air to scream, while the ferret watched her. “We know just who you are,” he said after a minute, so quietly that she nearly missed his words beneath the noise of her own racking gasps. “Boys, get her into the chair.

She’ll be easy now-won’t you?”

There was a wheelchair waiting in the corridor and they got her into it in short order, transferring the handcuff and discreetly tucking it under her robe. Miriam didn’t pay much attention to the ride. Her chest was on fire, she’d lost bladder control when the guard punched her, and she felt too frightened and humiliated to risk meeting anyone’s eyes.

They wheeled her to an elevator, then along another hallway, and she caught a brief glimpse of daylight before they pushed her up a ramp into the back of an ambulance, all stainless-steel fittings and emergency kits strapped to the walls. Ferret clambered in with her, and after they secured the chair to the floor both hounds climbed out. They shut the doors, and a short time later the ambulance moved off. Miriam stared at the ferret and licked her lips. “Can I talk now?”

“No.” She flinched in anticipation but he didn’t hit her. The ambulance turned a corner and accelerated, then the driver goosed the siren.

Ferret caught her looking at him. “Always talking,” he said tiredly. “Do you want anything?”

Miriam stared. “Do I want anything?” She shook her head. “Got a towel?”

He reached out and grabbed a handful of tissues from a box, dumping them in her lap with an expression of mild distaste. “When we get where we’re going I’m going to wheel you out in that chair and take you to a transfer station.

You will use the sigil there to follow me across. You won’t speak to anyone, under any circumstances. You will be given clothes, then you will follow me to a room where somebody important will give you orders. You will do exactly what they tell you to do. If you do not obey their orders I will hurt you or kill you, because that’s my job. Do you understand?”

The siren cut in again. Miriam stared at him some more: then she nodded, frightened beyond words. This quiet, middle-aged man terrified her. Something about him suggested that if he thought he should kill her he wouldn’t hesitate for a second-and he’d sleep soundly in his bed afterward.

The ferret looked satisfied. He shook his head, then leaned back. His suit coat fell open far enough that Miriam could see his handgun. She licked her lips: if she’d been a comic-book heroine, she supposed she would lean forward and make a grab for it. But she wasn’t a superhero. Comic-book Miriam lived in the land of make-believe, and it was real-world Miriam who’d somehow have to get out of this mess intact. Comic-book Miriam wouldn’t let herself get trapped, beaten, and cowed in the back of an ambulance with a fifty-something goodfella, on her way to an appointment with someone who had the power to have her killed. She wouldn’t have pissed herself the first time one of the hounds punched her, or ignored Paulie and Erasmus, or gone in to see Dr. Darling without backup, or tried to get to see Baron Henryk without preparation …

I’m a fuckup, she thought miserably. I’m not safe to be allowed out on my own.

The ambulance braked hard, turned, and slowed to a stop. “Remember what I said. And no yakking.” The doors opened, revealing an underground car park and both hounds-this time one of them cradled a short-barreled Steyr AUG.

Definitely Clan Security, Miriam registered, her knees going weak with dread.

They’ve got me dead to rights, except that as far as Security were concerned, nobody had any rights: the Clan had been in a state of perpetual warfare since long before she was born, and even before that they’d taken a very medieval approach to dealing with dissent.

The garage was pretty clearly part of a Clan transshipment station, just like the others she’d seen: carefully designed to look like corporate offices from the outside, but equipped as a transdimensional fortress / post office once you got past the discreetly armored doors. The Clan had an almost Roman approach to standardizing the design of their bases. As the ferret directed her toward the stairs at the back of the vehicle park Miriam looked around, sickly certain that she wouldn’t be seeing its like again-not for a long, long time. They’d taken her locket, emphasizing the point by scrubbing her temporary tattoo. Escape was not an option they had in mind for her.

As it turned out, they weren’t going to leave her any options at all. The ferret and his helpers rolled her out of the ambulance, still in the chair, and wheeled her over to an elevator at the back of the garage. She glanced over her shoulder: from the inside, the garage doors looked huge and intimidating, reinforced against the risk of a police raid. They rode in silence down to a sub-basement level, then the guards wheeled her down a short dusty passage to a room walled in pigeonholes. The room was dominated by an open area marked out with yellow tape on the floor, in front of what looked like a window bay covered by a green baize curtain. “When the curtain opens, use the sigil,” said the ferret, wheeling her into position. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“But I’m in a chair-” Miriam began to rise, but a hand pushed down on her shoulder.

“You’re electrically insulated. Rubber tires.”

Miriam sat down again. Electrically insulated? she wondered. Her office chair, the one she’d first world-walked in while sitting at home, had plastic castors for feet-The curtain opened on stomach-churning disorder. Miriam glanced round. The hound was waiting. She looked back and let her mind go blank. A moment later she was facing a closed red curtain, her head pounding as if someone were hammering a railroad spike through it. Her already-sore guts knotted in pain.