Crashland (41 page)

From the body of Maria Gaudio, he said, “Nothing has changed. I still want the same thing.”

“That makes you our enemy.”

“I know.”

“Let me make it absolutely clear that
I
haven't taken sides,” Clair said, which was true. “I want all of you gone.”

“You shouldn't be anywhere near him,” dupe-Jesse said. “He's dangerous.”

“And you aren't?”

“Only to those who stand in our way.”

“What about—?”

She stopped herself in time.
What about the innocent people you've been slaughtering just to scare the survivors into giving up their rights?
Accusing the dupes of working for the lawmakers would be dangerous. If the lawmakers knew what she had figured out, their reaction would be swift and deadly. She had to wait until the source of the dupes was destroyed before she could go public.

“What about WHOLE?” she asked instead. “They're just sitting here, doing no one any harm.”

“They're dangerous in their own fashion. They belong to the past, not the future. The future is ours.”

It was so weird to see Jesse's mouth move and hear dupe-Jesse's words, the opposite of anything the real Jesse would actually say.

She hid her dismay and responded, “The future belongs to everyone.” That was the closest she dared go. “People, I mean. WHOLE are people. You're not.”

“Harsh,” said a dupe-Tash nearby. “Are you trying to hurt our feelings?”

“More than your feelings are going to be hurt if you stick around here,” Agnessa said, her voice booming loudly over a public address system Clair couldn't see.

Headlights flashed in the streets behind the growing crowd of dupes. Clair could hear engines growling, coming closer. The cavalry, she hoped, summoned by PK Drader. She imagined him riding at the head with a gun as big as a cannon, cocked and ready on his hip—he would enjoy that, no doubt. It wasn't an entirely unwelcome thought.

“I know you believe that right makes might, Clair,” said a dupe of Clair's mother. Clair hated that it was speaking in a parody of one of her mother's favorite quotes. “Do your duty as you understand it and we'll do ours.”

“Just remember,” said dupe-Jesse. “Nobody's dangerous. Don't trust him.”

The dupes turned to face the oncoming vehicles, squat things with many wheels and turrets that Clair hoped were water cannons protruding from the top.

“Come back down,” said Nelly. “You're too exposed up here, and I have a feeling it's going to get nasty quite soon.”

Clair let herself be led down, followed by Nobody. The lookout and the young sniper stayed behind. Neither had said a word through the entire exchange, to Clair or to anyone. Only as Clair descended the ladder did she detect a resemblance between them, in the precise line of their noses. Father and daughter, out shooting dupes together on a dark fall night. Was this the future she had to look forward to if Jesse didn't destroy that satellite soon?

NELLY DROVE THE
utility with wild haste through New Petersburg to the cellblock where Sargent and Devin had been imprisoned. Along the way something flickered in Clair's inactive infield—another patch, this time in the steel gray of RADICAL. She accepted it and a window opened, showing her the view through Jesse's lenses. The interior of an empty freighter booth, much like the other one but slightly smaller. In her ears, his breathing.

“Hello?” she said. “Can you hear me?”

“Oh, it's working.” He sounded fantastically close, practically inside her head. “It wasn't a minute ago. You must be in range of Devin now.”

“What's happening at your end?”

“Trevin's here.” Trevin appeared in Jesse's field of view, waving nonchalantly as he went by—the gesture faintly forced, as though a cover for nervousness. “We're going in a moment. Just wanted to check in first. Is everything okay there?”

“Tense,” she said, not wanting to lie, except by omission. “I'll let you know if anything too sketchy goes down.”

“Thanks. Not that I can do anything about it if it does.” She couldn't see him, which irked her. She could only access Jesse's lenses, not Trevin's. “We're getting outfitted and checking our air supplies and stuff. Space suits, Clair. I'm trying to put on a
space suit
. Can you believe this is happening?”

“I'm glad for you,” she said, holding on tightly to that thought—and to the door handle as the utility skidded around a corner in a shower of mud and gravel. She had forgotten to put on her seat belt. “Just do what you have to do, and do it quickly, all right?”

“Roger,” he said. He held a clear plastic helmet up to his face, preparing to put it on. There, at last, reflected in the translucent bubble, was a glimpse of him, albeit a dark and distorted one. “Is Nobody behaving?”

She glanced behind her. The figure on the backseat was staring at her, unmoving.

“Talking about me?” Nobody said through his stolen body.

Clair faced forward again.

“He's creeping me out,” she bumped back to Jesse. “But that's all.”

“Do you think he's telling us the truth?”

“He says he wants to die, and destroying the source will give him that. I can't see why he'd lie.”

“Except that he's crazy.”

Clair could feel the dupe's hot gaze burning into the back of her head.

“Except that.”

Nelly wrenched the wheel one final time and jerked them to a halt outside a concrete building with high, barred windows and a single, heavy-looking steel door at the front. Everything about it said
prison
.

Nelly banged a fist on the front door and it opened of its own accord. The interior of the cellblock was just as stark and forbidding as its exterior, with scuffed security doors and locks, and bars everywhere. There was no desk or barricade, just a secure double gate leading to rows of cells deeper in the building. Several of the cells were occupied, mostly by men. A background hubbub of muttering and catcalls echoed around the hard-walled chamber.

Clair caught sight of Devin's red hair through the forest of bars.

“Over here.” He waved.

Nelly opened the double gates with a key and walked them along the cells. Devin waited anxiously, both hands gripping the bars. Beside him, Sargent lay on her side on the cold stone floor, eyes shut and unmoving, a huge figure even when felled. Clair felt a flicker of concern. Sargent looked so limp and still. The plan had been to knock her out temporarily, not put her in a coma.

“Is she all right?”

“Wait.”

Instead of taking them straight to the cell, Nelly had stopped one down and opened the door.

“You, in here,” she said to Nobody.

“Why?” he asked.

“I don't trust you, either.”

He shrugged Maria Gaudio's shoulders and did as he was told.

“It won't make any difference, but if it makes you feel better . . .”

“It does.” The door clanged shut on him. “Now, you,” Nelly said to Devin, still not opening his cell door. “Tell me why Agnessa shouldn't leave you in here.”

“Because that's not the deal,” he said. “We're allies.”

“Clair and Agnessa were allies. She left, and then you came back. I don't like it when plans change.”

“If Forest hadn't escaped, we wouldn't have needed to come back. He's out there somewhere—”

Nelly dismissed his objection with a sharp wave of one hand. “Now we have armies of dupes and PKs massing outside our gates. Perhaps you should've kept going.”

“Perhaps,” said Clair.

Nelly regarded her with resentful eyes. “Don't think I'm not considering locking you up too.”

Clair understood, and didn't protest, although the thought of being imprisoned made her hands ball up in a fight-or-flight reflex. Neither was an option at that moment. It was up to Nelly to decide.

“At least put me in a different cell,” said Devin. “When Sarge wakes up, she's going to be pissed.”

“That I can do.” Nelly swung open the door and Devin hastily slipped through it. The door clanged shut behind him.

“Shouldn't someone check on her?” said Clair.

Before Nelly could answer, the front door of the prison boomed open, admitting Sandler Jones and his earless thug. Between them they dragged a small figure in a PK undersuit.

“Guess who we found creeping round the back,” the redhead crowed. “Looking for a way to rescue his friend, no doubt.”

It was Forest. He hung limp between them, dripping blood from his nose and water from his undersuit. He must have slipped out of his secondhand clothes and armor in the water before being dragged to the bottom of the Strait.

“Good work, boys,” said Nelly, unlocking the double doors with her key and waving them through. “Now we're all here. Let's get him inside before he does any more damage.”

Sandler and friend turned sideways to bring Forest past her. When the trio was all bunched together, a tight concentration of four people with the prisoner in the middle, Forest suddenly moved. Clair didn't see exactly what happened, but first Sandler's friend fell away, then he went down too. Then Nelly staggered into the bars with her head lolling back and slid heavily to the floor with a sigh.

Forest flexed his right hand. His left held the keys. He wiped a fleck of blood from his nose with the back of that hand and then looked over at Clair and Devin.

Devin backed away, tugging at Clair's elbow to bring her with him.

“If you have killed her,” Forest said in a stern voice, “you will regret it.”

“WHO, THE BIG
lug?” said Devin, voice betraying a slight quaver. “She's only out cold.”

“Good. Where?”

“In the cell back there.”

Forest took a step toward them, and Clair pointed behind her, to where Sargent lay. The lack of expression on Forest's face was somehow much more threatening than if he had been glaring.

“Tell us who you really are,” she said as he walked past.

“I am exactly who I say I am,” he said.

“Who you work for, then.”

“I have never lied to you, Clair.” He stared in at Sargent, but made no move to open the door.

“So why did you call the dupes?”

“I did not. I have called no one.”

“It must have been you. No one else knows we're still here.”

“That cannot be the case.” He turned to look at her. “Who did you tell?”

She didn't know that she had backed away again until her right elbow caught on one of the metal bars, reminding her of that old injury. What was Agnessa doing about Forest? Surely she had seen and was calling for backup.

“Hey, man?” called one of the other prisoners. “You, with the keys. Let us out!”

The call was taken up by the others. Within seconds, the prison was a riot of banging and cries, impossible to talk over.

Forest looked around him, considering. Then he turned and opened the nearest empty cell.

“Step in here,” he told Clair and Devin. “I will release you afterward. You have my word.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Because you have no choice.”

Clair considered trying to run past him, but she had seen how fast he could move when he wanted to, and she didn't want him to hit her.

She went in first, brows knotted in frustration, and Devin followed, looking resigned to being locked up again. Nobody watched from his cell with something that might have been amusement.

“This cage is as good as any other,” he said.

Once Clair and Devin were secure, Forest walked to the cage of the first prisoner who had called out to him. They exchanged hurried, low words, and then Forest unlocked the cell. Together, they dragged the unconscious Nelly and the two thugs into another cell, disarmed them, then set about releasing the rest of the prisoners.

“Remember the deal!” Forest yelled after them as the escapees ran through the double gates and out the main doors. When they were gone, he locked the gates again, lightly holding the pistol he had taken from Nelly in one hand.

“What was the deal?” asked Clair, unable to keep an edge of bitterness from her voice. How come a prison full of criminals got to go free but she stayed locked up?

“They will keep Agnessa busy,” Forest said. “I estimate that we have approximately five minutes before a spare key arrives.”

Agnessa's voice boomed out of a speaker in the ceiling. “Already on its way. You're only delaying the inevitable.”

Forest nodded. “I just need long enough to fix the mistakes we have made.”

“What mistakes?” asked Devin.

“You told someone,” said Forest. “They sent the dupes. Who was it?”

“It really wasn't you?” asked Clair.

Forest shook his head.

Devin frowned. “But it couldn't have been PK Sargent, unless she did it before we knocked her out . . . ?”

A dreadful certainty settled into Clair as she weeded out all the possible sources of the leak.

“Oh my god. It was me,” she said. “I called PK Drader.”

“So? But . . .” Devin trailed off.

Clair felt like she might weep. “He was on the seastead, and in the New York booth too. He poisoned Tilly Kozlova and the other Improved so they couldn't reveal anything else about Wallace's operation. He was the one who told the dupes where we were, every step of the way.”

Forest came to their cell and unlocked it.

“Yes,” he said, not unsympathetically. “It must be so.”

She remembered Drader's rough bluster and eagerness to fight. All an act—but the act of a dupe or a traitor? She wondered if she would ever know.

“So these two have been themselves all along?” said Devin, nodding toward Forest and Sargent.

“Maybe they have,” said Clair, not making any immediate move to signal her acceptance of Forest's innocence, such as leaving the cell, “but that doesn't mean they aren't still working for the people trying to take over the world. PK Forest is a peacekeeper, after all.”