Criminal Destiny (17 page)

I remember it like it just happened five minutes ago. Serenity Day. The escape. The speeding cone transport. And then darkness.

I woke up to a splitting headache. Not the sickness and pain of the invisible barrier. My head was just killing me. I put my hand up to my temple, and it came away bloody. What did I expect after jumping off a runaway truck?

I struggled to my feet—and very nearly keeled over and rolled down a steep embankment. At the last second, I flailed my arms and grabbed onto a tree trunk—probably the same one that did a number on my skull. In a wild moment of vertigo, I pieced together what must have happened. I got off the truck at the last second, tumbled over the side, and whacked my head on this tree. It hurt like
crazy, but it was a blessing. It was the only thing that kept me from rolling all the way to the bottom. With my luck, the truck would have landed right on top of me. It was down in the valley, shooting flames thirty feet in the air—thus explaining why the barrier was gone.

Where were the others? Dead in the fire? For a moment I panicked. Then it came back to me. They all got off the truck. I was the last one.

“Malik!” I called. “Eli! Tori! Amber!”

I got no answer.

It was too steep to walk, so I got down on all fours and crawled back up to the road.
“Malik!”

They couldn't all be dead! If I made it, they made it. I shouted at the top of my lungs, which sent me into coughing fits. I must have swallowed a lot of dirt before the tree coldcocked me.

“Come on, you guys! Don't do this to me!”

My pleas echoed in the night.

I recall my exact logic that night:
If they survived the crash, there can be only one possible explanation for what's happening. They've abandoned me.

It was the loneliest, emptiest, most awful feeling I've ever known.

And then:
Why are you so shocked? You've always sort of
known that the only person who cares about you is you. Even among the Serenity “parents,” yours were the only ones who couldn't manage to work up any affection for the baby clone they were given to raise!

I was absolutely convinced that my one miscalculation was allowing myself to believe that the others were my real friends.

Yet here they are with me now, sitting on hard chairs in the visiting room inside Kefauver prison. They say they were sad when they thought I was dead. According to Tori, Malik even cried. I want to believe that so much.

I'm grateful to them for this, though: I would never have the guts to face C. J. Rackoff alone. They're the only people in the world with a hope of understanding. They have their own C. J. Rackoffs out there somewhere—criminals just as sleazy, and scary, and horrible. Maybe more. They told me about Bartholomew Glen. Poor Eli.

A key jiggles in a lock at the back of the room. That's one thing there's no shortage of in jail—locks. It's easy to get on the visitors list at Kefauver. You just tell them how to spell your name. But that's the last easy thing about it. We must have passed through ten layers of security to get this far. That plus a metal detector and a personal search that was not pleasant. I'm ticklish. And this is only medium
security, where they put the swindlers and embezzlers. What have they got at maximum? A moat with hungry piranhas?

The door swings open, hinges squeaking. Tori grabs my shoulder and gives me a comforting squeeze.

I see the guard first, and then
he
walks in. He's old and bald and not very tall, with glasses and a fringe of salt-and-pepper hair around stick-out ears. My first thought is:
There must be some mistake.
This guy looks nothing like me. There's no way I'm cloned from him. We couldn't even be distant cousins, much less identical people.

He pans the room, his eyes magnified behind Coke-bottle glasses. His expression remains bland until the supersize eyes land on me. All at once, he breaks into a big grin and laughs out loud.

“Would you look at that? They did it. Those crazy fools went ahead and did it!”

“What do you mean?” I quaver, even though I know exactly what he means. He recognizes me, all right. He's
been
me.

So this is it—the source of what I'm made of, my “parent” more fully than any biological mother or father. It could be a warm, completing moment, but I just feel like a freak, and even more alone than before.

Rackoff turns to the guard. “Haven't you got a date?”

The guard seems uncertain.

“These kids are my spiritual advisors. You're interfering with my freedom of religion.”

“I'll be right outside,” the man tells us with a meaningful look. “All you have to do is holler.”

“What do you mean, Mr. Rackoff?” Eli asks as soon as the door shuts behind the guard.

“Let me tell you kids a story. Years ago, the powers that be tell me I've got a visitor. Felix Somebody. I don't know any Felix, but I've got no plans that day, or any day, as you can see.” He indicates the prison setting around us. “Very interesting man. He's got some billionaire backing him, and he says he can cut off a little piece of skin and make a whole new me for an experiment he's got going on. He offers me money. Like there's anything to spend it on in here. Besides, I've got enough stashed away in secret bank accounts to buy and sell his billionaire. So he tries another approach, tells me I'll be passing on my genes to future generations. So I point out, in case he hasn't noticed, that I'm a sawed-off little wing nut, and people hate me on sight.” He turns to me. “Sorry, kid.”

“I'm used to it,” I tell him in resignation.

Malik opens his mouth to protest, but shuts it again.

Amber speaks up. “What made you decide to go along with Project Osiris?”

Rackoff brightens. “That's right. He said something about Osiris. Anyway, I did it for the brownies.”

We all stare at him.

“You can't put a million bucks in the soda machine. But brownies—from a real New York bakery—
that's
something to look forward to in a place where there's nothing to look forward to. Twice a week, someone ships me a care package from Sarabeth's in Chelsea Market. Pure heaven. They make these double chocolate brownies to die for.”

Malik goes into a coughing spasm, and I know he's thinking of his mom's chocolate brownies, which I used to love. As mean as he could sometimes be, he always invited me over when Mrs. Bruder was baking.

“They're my favorite too,” I volunteer timidly.

“No kidding.” It's not exactly a chip-off-the-old-block moment, but he seems pleased we have this tiny random thing in common. “So, as I was saying, those shipments came like clockwork, until about a week ago. Felix reneged on our deal.”

Eli clears his throat. “I don't think you're going to get any more brownies from Project Osiris. What they did was very illegal. When we escaped, they had to go into hiding.”

The eyes—
my
eyes—narrow. Do I really look like that?

He says, “I always figured I couldn't be the only one. So you're all—like him?” Meaning me.

“The word is
clones
,” Amber tells him. “No point trying to sugarcoat it.”

Rackoff takes it all in. “So after this Felix was done with me, he had some other stops to make. All convicts like me?”

“They wanted criminal masterminds,” Eli supplies.

“Masterminds,” he repeats. “Never thought of myself as a mastermind. I'm just someone with a knack for reading the wind, and positioning myself so money blows in my direction.”

I've been pretty quiet in the presence of the person I was cloned from, but something about his casual attitude bugs me. “It's not funny, you know. How'd you like to discover your whole life is a lie, the people you thought were your parents are mad scientists, and you only exist to be part of some experiment?”

He looks at me with a little more respect. “I guess that would be a downer. Then again, I'm in a cage, so I'm living proof that bad things happen to people. Is there a purpose to this visit, or is it just supposed to be a family reunion?”

He's a jerk, I think to myself. Which might actually mean that I'm a jerk. That wouldn't surprise me.

“Mr. Rackoff,” Eli begins, “cloning criminals is more than just a crime. It's cruel. There are eleven of us; we have no parents, and maybe we're not a hundred percent human. We don't want to be part of their experiment anymore, but there's nothing else for us. We need your help.”

“
My
help?” he echoes, looking interested.

“No one's ever going to believe our story without proof,” Eli goes on. “We tried once, and ended up having to escape from the police. And without protection from the authorities, it's only a matter of time before Project Osiris tracks us down. But you can prove our case. You and Hector have the same DNA—that can be confirmed in a lab. Add to that what you know about Felix and the beginning of Osiris, and they'd have to listen to us then.”

Rackoff takes all this in. “They would at that,” he says, impressed.

“So you'll help us?” Tori prompts.

“No.”

“Why not?” I wail, so loudly that I see the guard peeking in to make sure we're okay.

“I'm just asking myself: How does this make my life better? Does it shorten my sentence? Does it move me to a better cell? Does it keep me off the work detail here, making mailbags, stitching canvas till my fingers bleed? It doesn't
even bring back my brownies. I'll bet none of you kids has so much as a credit card.”

“What about justice?” Amber demands.

He shrugs. “That's what makes
your
life better. Me, I'm not too thrilled with justice.”

I have one last trump card, and I play it. “Can't you do it for me? I know you're not my dad, but you're the nearest thing I've got. In a way, it's even closer, because we're identical.”

“Right,” Rackoff approves. “We
are
identical. So you should already know what I'd need to cooperate with you on this deal.”

“Come off it!” Malik protests on my behalf. “Hector can't read minds.”

C. J. Rackoff is right, though. I'm not sure if it's mind reading, or having the same genes, but I know what he wants. He wants out of this place.

“It's not possible,” I barely whisper.

He shrugs. “Suit yourselves. If you can break me out of jail, you can have my DNA, and my testimony, and my undying gratitude. If you can't, we've got nothing left to talk about.”

“You're crazy!” Malik exclaims. “How are we going to get you out of here? We're just kids!”

“You're not just kids,” he amends in a pleasant tone. “You're masterminds. I know what I'm capable of. The rest of you must be spliced off some heavy hitters too. You need my help? First I need yours.”

It's shocking but, on second thought, it's pretty much exactly what I would have said.

They all look at me when it's time to come up with a plan. I have no idea why. I'm an artist. I'm observant, and I have a good memory for detail. That's it. I don't know anything about prison breaks (and I'm proud of that).

“First of all, why are we even considering doing this?” I ask them. “If anybody ever belonged behind bars, it's C. J. Rackoff. We already know he's a criminal. But even worse, he's a terrible person!”

“He's the only one who can help us,” Eli reasons.

“Not true,” I point out. “What about Yvonne-Marie Delacroix? Or Mickey Seven? Or Gus Alabaster?” I stop short at mentioning Bartholomew Glen, because I can't imagine him helping us to anything other than an early death.

“All those guys are hundreds of miles away—maybe
thousands,” Eli points out. “We could cross the whole country only to be told they refuse to see us, or they're not allowed visitors. And they're all in maximum security as dangerous offenders. It's Rackoff or nobody.”

“I know he's a bad guy,” Hector tells me. “But if he's me—well, I can't explain it, but there's nothing inside me that anyone would have to be afraid of.”

“He's a saint,” agrees Malik. “Unless you've got twenty-five cents in your pocket, and then he won't rest until he's got it.”

As usual, Amber is the one who boils our choice down to the simplest possible terms. “Rackoff deserves to stay in jail. But if we've got any chance at a future, we have to get him out. It's that simple.”

“Can
we get him out?” asks Hector nervously. “That's a real prison, with high walls and armed guards. It's impossible.”

But when I run my mind over the information Rackoff gave us about Kefauver, I don't see impossibilities; I see challenges. And the tougher the challenges, the more I want to find a way to beat them. I know it comes from Yvonne-Marie Delacroix, but I don't care. It's more than simple determination; it's almost an itch I have to scratch.

“
Almost
impossible,” I amend. “Everything seems too
hard when you look at the whole operation. The trick is to break it down into individual parts. The big picture can't be impossible if none of the little parts are. You just have to do everything exactly right, in exactly the right order.”

In other words,
almost impossible
is a synonym for
ever-so-slightly possible
.

That's how I end up in charge of a prison break.

Our tiny motel room feels even smaller now that there are five of us. Gathered around the small desk, Amber makes notes on what we know about Kefauver:

           
1.)
  
Prison workshop produces mailbags for US Postal Service.

           
2.)
  
Prison laundry is directly next to workshop.

           
3.)
  
Prison hospital is directly above laundry.

           
4.)
  
Prisoners can get special permission for supervised picnics with visitors.

The workshop is obviously the key. The mailbags they make for the post office are the only things that leave Kefauver without passing through all those security checkpoints.

“Maybe we could smuggle him out with one of the shipments when he's on work detail,” Malik suggests.

Eli shakes his head. “No good. Rackoff was really specific on that. They're nuts about counting heads every time a truck leaves the loading dock.”

That gives me an idea “We'll have to get him into a shipment when he's
not
on work detail.”

Hector's brow furrows, making him look more like Rackoff than ever. “But you're not allowed to wander around anywhere you please. The guards know where you're supposed to be every minute of every day. That's what Rackoff hates the most. You can't burp without somebody knowing what you had for lunch.”

“That's what we'll use against them,” I say triumphantly.

“Haven't you got that backward?” Eli asks. “Isn't that what they use against the inmates to make sure they're always accounted for?”

“The more confident the guards are that they've got Rackoff covered, the more we can move him around. They won't be looking for him because they'll always be sure he's somewhere else.”

The plan begins to come together. In some ways, it reminds me of our escape from Serenity—with some
important differences. Back then, we had the element of surprise on our side. But a real prison is always prepared for the possibility that one of the “guests” might try to make an early exit.

The main difference is this: When we left Serenity, we had weeks to prepare, time enough to ensure every detail had been accounted for. Here in Texas, the clock is running out on us as surely as we can hear its
tick-tock
speeding up. At the Tumbleweed Inn, we've stopped using the front door, sneaking in and out via the bathroom window. Even so, it's only a matter of time before someone notices that room 18 isn't as empty as it's supposed to be. And our truck is a time bomb just waiting to be spotted. We have to do this tomorrow, which means there's no way we'll be able to plan for everything.

We'll be flying by the seat of our pants.

Two things we'll need to make this work: split-second timing, and a picnic lunch. We can't get either of those at the motel. (All they sell in the vending machine here are mini-packets of Tylenol, stale shrink-wrapped muffins, and dental floss.) That presents the problem of taking out the truck without attracting attention.

The prison has an ear-splitting siren that can be heard
for miles around. It's probably the escape alarm, but yesterday at exactly noon, they ran it for about ten seconds. Close by (at the Tumbleweed Inn, for instance) it gets so loud that you feel your internal organs vibrating. We're guessing it's a daily test.

We're in the truck at 11:59. At the first onslaught of sound, Malik stomps on the gas, and we wheel out from behind the trees, our engine's roar completely covered by the blaring siren. We bump up onto the pavement and speed across the parking lot. By the time the test is over, we're already pulling onto the road.

“Every bank robber needs a good getaway driver,” Malik tosses over his shoulder at me.

“If I meet any bank robbers, I'll tell them that,” I remind him irritably. (I'm not a bank robber; I just happen to be cloned from one.)

Our destination is the variety store in Haddonfield. I'm the only one with a watch, which means we need four more. And there's a supermarket next door where we can get sandwich stuff and drinks for the picnic.

Amber goes crazy at the salad bar. It's the first veggies she's had access to in a long time. (I guess this means her goal weight is on again.)

We're on our way back to the motel, Malik at the wheel,
when we pass a small roadside diner just on the edge of town.

“Stop!”
I scream right in Malik's ear.

Shocked, he jams on the brakes, and we fishtail onto the soft shoulder. “What?”

“That diner over there—the Bearclaw!”

He's mad. “Thanks a lot, Miss Keep-a-Low-Profile! I left half our tire treads on the road, and squealed the town down! Way to go!”

“Look—in the parking lot!”

There sits a large windowless cargo van, white, with the logo of the United States Postal Service stamped on the side.

“Big deal,” says Malik. “A mail truck.”

“I don't think that's a mail truck,” I tell him excitedly. “We saw mail trucks in Denver. They're smaller, with an open door so the carrier can jump in and out and make deliveries. I think this is the one Rackoff told us about—the one that goes to Kefauver every weekday to pick up the mail bags from the workshop.”

They listen to me—or maybe it's Yvonne-Marie Delacroix they're listening to. Either way, they're willing to follow my lead. This could be the last piece of the puzzle.

We park a quarter mile away so we can enter the diner
on foot, waving and calling, “Bye, Mom” to an imaginary lift. It's a nice clean-looking diner, deserted except for one waitress and one customer, a young guy in a postal uniform. He's at the counter, having coffee and complaining about the cruller, which is “not up to your usual standards.”

“I know, George,” the waitress apologizes. “We're baking tonight, so everything should be nice and fresh for you tomorrow.”

“Make some bear claws,” the USPS guy requests. “That's what you're famous for.”

We settle ourselves at a booth, and order Cokes all around, except for Amber, who gets sparkling water. At the side of our table, built into the wall, there's a small console with a coin slot and a booklet of plastic-covered lists of what look like titles and names.

“What's that?” whispers Malik.

Eli turns the metal crank, scrolling through the different pages. “Snoop Dogg?” he reads, brow furrowing. “Imagine Dragons? Hootie and the Blowfish?”

I shrug. We've gotten pretty good at decoding the outside world, but every now and then something comes along that we really don't have a clue about.

“Ask the waitress,” Amber suggests.

I shake my head. “If this is a common thing everybody
knows, it would draw attention. I just hope it isn't important, like you're supposed to use it to pay your bill.”

Luckily, the USPS guy (George) bails us out by putting a quarter in a similar console at the counter. He presses a few buttons and a song begins to play in the Bearclaw.

Light dawns. “It's a jukebox,” I tell the others in a low voice. “I've read about them in books. You pay money to hear the music you want.”

“Really? These are songs?” Amber peers through the plastic cover. “‘Da Bomb.' Who'd write a song about a bomb?”

“Maybe
you
would,” Malik offers sweetly. “Isn't Mickey Seven the mad bomber?”

“Big talk from the gangster DNA—”

“Shhh!” I cut her off and make eye contact with the postal worker. “I love this song. It must be nice to finish your route early and have a little time to relax.”

“Oh, I'm not a carrier,” he replies. “I'm picking up new product from the shop at Kefauver.”

I'm confused. “New product?”

“Mailbags,” he explains. “The prisoners churn them out by the hundreds. Don't know why we need so many of them, but every day they've got a new load for me.”

The waitress laughs. “You can set your watch by
George. Every day, one thirty, coffee and a bear claw, Taylor Swift on the jukebox. One fifty—out the door. And twenty minutes later, tooting the horn and waving at me as he moves on.”

“They're nuts about their timetable at the prison,” George explains. “If I'm sixty seconds early, they make me wait.”

“And if you're sixty seconds late?” the waitress asks with a smile.

He rolls his eyes. “The warden's a stickler. I don't like to cross that guy. I just make my pickup and get on my way, all nice and boring.”

I look meaningfully around the table at my four accomplices. I'm still not sure exactly how things are going to go tomorrow, but this much is certain: it won't be boring.

None of us get much sleep that night; I'm pretty sure I get the least of all. Just the enormity of what we're about to do has us totally cowed. We may have the right stuff to be criminal masterminds, but we're not there yet. (I hope we never are.) Maybe Yvonne-Marie Delacroix stayed up the night before a big robbery with prejob jitters. Anyway, she wasn't twelve.

Eventually, the others doze off, and I stay up, tossing
and turning beside Amber. When they made me the chief planner, they made me the chief stresser too. Is that even a real word? If not, it should be. I'm stressing like crazy over this.

I watch them for a few minutes—Amber next to me, Eli and Malik in the other bed, Hector wrapped up in a blanket on the floor despite the heat. In the distance, air conditioners roar on.

I'm proud of the way they rely on me, but nervous too. I don't want to let them down, because in our case, a letdown means total disaster. Any kind of arrest would be the end of the road for us. Even if, by some miracle, the prison authorities decided to let us go, they wouldn't cut five unsupervised kids completely loose in the world. And when they looked around for our families, there would be the Purple People Eaters, waiting to take us “home.”

Another reason it's so hard to sleep: because I put together most of the plan, I understand better than anybody what could go wrong. There are a million variables, and that's just with
us
. What about C. J. Rackoff? Any swindler successful enough to count as a mastermind can't be considered trustworthy. Besides, he doesn't know about any of this. And he won't until it's already in motion.

I must doze off out of sheer exhaustion, because the
next thing I know, I awake with a start, and the door is opening! I see a sliver of the night outside—
and the menacing silhouette of an intruder entering Room 18!

I consider waking the others. If this is the Purples moving in on us, we're all going to have to fight for our freedom. But that would just inform the enemy that I'm awake, and I see him. I need to strike now, while I've got the element of surprise.

I reach down and pick up the first thing my hand closes on—a metal wastebasket. In one motion, I'm out of bed, across the room, and swinging my weapon at the shadowy figure.

Whack!

“Ow!”

Wait a minute —

(I know that
ow
.)

“Eli?” I glance over at the other bed, and see the outline of only one person under the blanket.

“Jeez, Tori, you nearly took my head off!” he hisses.

I'm frantic now. “Are you all right?”