Rift (31 page)

“I want to talk to Batista.”

“No way. Not gonna happen.”

And then I realize who I'm talking to. It's Ivan. The man who chased me through the desert and left me to die at the river. I thought he was dead. But I guess in the NeuroStor world, death is not necessarily the end of the line.

“Fuck you!” I scream. “It's going to happen right now, or I'll blow this building apart! I don't have anything to lose!”

The guy in front of me, on the landing directly ahead, looks as if he just stumbled into the wrong life. His eyes are wide. I can tell he wants to let me by and then get the hell out. I'm willing to let him.

“Cameron—”

“Look,” I yell. “I'm coming up now, and you can shoot me if you want. All I want to do is talk to Batista. You can let me talk to him, or you can die right here with me. Your choice.”

And everything I just said is true. Now that I'm here, now that I'm hot and tired and seeing double, it's all true. I want to videotape King and Batista, want them to admit their crimes on camera, but at the very least they must die. Particularly Batista. Of course he is going to die. Like I am going to die.

My God. I'm going to die.

It's really going to happen. My body is going to be blown apart, incinerated, atomized, reduced to plasma among the ruins of this building in Plano, a suburb known to many in Texas but scarcely elsewhere, a place that will soon be on the front page of every newspaper in America, a headline on every evening news show, on every Internet news portal.
Terrorism in America! Tragedy in Texas! Science world shocked to learn of major new discovery!
It will all be so sensational, so scandalous. Incomparable watercooler discussion for weeks and months.

I won't be around for any of it. Because there is no story if I don't succeed today.

I begin to ascend the stairs with the MP-5 held out before me. The man on the steps above is not going to shoot, that much I know. In fact, he almost shrinks away as I pass him. Onward I continue, toward the ninth floor. Where the board of directors sit. Where Batista sits. Where Batista is going to be fucked. If he's still there at all.

Bullets. I'm waiting for bullets. Somehow I think Ivan's going to shoot me from above, having decided that my plastic explosive was only a bluff. That I, the weak, lowly accountant, couldn't possibly possess the nerve to commit suicide so violently. Each step forward is further ascension into terror, cringing as I do in anticipation of the agonizing blow to my head, my neck, my torso. The immediate, stinging pain as the bullets rip through me, and the final cathartic terror as my body loses control of itself and releases the detonator, the C4 evaporating me into limbo, into oblivion, into—

“Can't let you go any farther.”

I look up, just now having reached the middle landing, and see Ivan standing at the door to the ninth floor. His military-style machine gun is pointed directly at me. My gun is more or less pointing in his direction as well.

“Get out of the way, Ivan.”

“Cameron,” he says, “we both know that—”

The MP-5 doesn't kick as much as I expect. Bullets tear through the air in short bursts as I finger the trigger. They clatter and bang and echo in the stairwell, detonating chunks of concrete block all around us. The sound is excruciatingly loud. Petals of blood form on Ivan's chest and arms and legs. He is hit everywhere, riddled with bullets, and topples down the stairs, forcing me to step aside as he somersaults toward the landing where I stand. He never even attempted to fire his own weapon.

“Fuck you,” I say to Ivan as he lands in a heap beside me. “Fuck you and your boss. Fuck Rodrigo Batista.”

Up I go. Toward the ninth. I can see the door from here. Step, step, step. The landing. The door. Throw it open.

Hallway. Empty.

What if he's running away? Leaving the building as I stand here, so that when my thumb grows tired and I decide to die, I will only be killing myself?

I begin to run, and that's when my legs fail me.

One step, I'm moving fine, but for the next one my left leg won't move. My body is positioned to run, angling forward, and without that next push off from my left foot, I careen toward the floor.

The detonator! My God! If my thumb is jarred loose—

I toss aside the MP-5 and hit the ground cringing. Wait for the explosion.

Still alive.

But time is wasting. I struggle to get up—keeping my thumb planted firmly on the detonator button—but something is drastically wrong with my left leg. It doesn't want to move. Somehow I manage to manipulate it with my free hand and use my right leg to push up. This gets me to my feet, and I lurch toward the wall. I inch down the hallway, using the wall for support, until finally enough feeling returns to my leg so that I can limp at a reasonable pace. But I have no idea how long I will be able to go on like this.

Glass walls reveal conference tables, desks, and chairs. Then I reach a set of heavy double doors on my left. The doorknobs are nickel and the plate on the door says
BOARDROOM
.

I reach for the MP-5 and realize I left it behind when I fell down. Now I have no gun. But I suppose it doesn't matter. Rodrigo Batista is in that room. I can feel him. He will pay and my life will be complete.

The surveillance camera is just where Clay said it would be, mounted to the ceiling and pointed at the doors here. I nod my head in appreciation and reach for the doorknob. An audible click as the bolt is electronically released.

The door opens.

I am ready to die. I am ready to face Rodrigo Batista.

         

Only he's not who I face.

Standing before me, as the door swings open and bangs off a rubber bumper mounted to the wall, is, of all people, Crystal.

Her hair is darker, more brown than blond, and cut several inches shorter, but there is no mistaking the delicate nose, the perfectly contoured cheekbones, the beautiful planes of her face.

She isn't alone. Propped up against a long, oval meeting table is Batista, as much sitting as standing. The superficial grin on his face is nearly enough to make me let go of the detonator right now. Only my constant fear—and now, confusion—keeps my thumb pressed against the button.

I am stunned. My eyes search the room for more versions of Crystal, more clones, as if they might begin to crawl from beneath the meeting table, from behind the two desks at the far end of the room, or even smash through the plate windows nine stories above the Plano suburbs.

I step into the room and close the door behind me. Distantly I wonder if the camera's auto exposure mode will have a difficult time resolving the contrast between the bright sun and the ambient room lighting, but there is nothing to be done about that now.

I also realize that Crystal and Cameron are sitting in the car, staring at the laptop's LCD screen, watching and listening to this stunning turn of events from my point of view. What the hell are they thinking right now? What am I thinking?

What the hell is going on?

“Cameron,” Batista says from the table. He shows no apparent interest in rising to greet me. “I have to admit you've impressed me. Very much so, as a matter of fact.”

I want to ask questions, to understand what and why and how, but I reflexively answer him.

“I haven't been trying to impress anyone. I just wanted to stay alive.”

“And that's why I'm so impressed,” he says. “You eluded me for five days. I wouldn't have given you one.”

My breath comes in desperate gasps. “I'm glad you underestimated me.”

“Cameron,” Crystal says, “don't flatter yourself. You didn't do it on your own. If it wasn't for that uncontrollable little
bitch
—”

Batista stands up.

“Honey,” he says, moving toward her. “Don't get flustered. It really doesn't—”

Batista puts his hand on her shoulder, and she brushes it away.

“I'm
not,
” she says. “I'm not getting flustered. I was simply pointing out—”

“What the hell is going on here?” I ask this loud enough for them to understand just how confused I am. Loud enough so even Crystal, my Crystal, who is watching everything from the car nine stories below, will understand. She must have known about this.
Had
to have known about it, and yet didn't tell me. Why?

Why?

“Well,” Batista says. “Surely you must know the situation. She must have told you. Or her little brother. Don't just stand there and play dumb.”

“Don't you tell me what the fuck to do, you prick!”

“Jesus,” Batista says. “I think you should calm down.”

Fuck him. Fuck Rodrigo Batista. I want to let go of this fucking button
right now
and kill him
right now,
but I don't understand what the
fuck
is going on here!

“Why the hell do you have a copy of Crystal? She isn't a soldier, for Christ's sake!”

But even as I ask the question, my answer emerges, clear and dark and hideous.

“Oh, Jesus,” I say. “You were fucking her and she wanted to leave, so you copied her.”

Batista's smile falters, and, for just the slightest moment, his eyes shift toward the ground. As if he might be guilty. As if he might realize—and this is the first time I have ever witnessed such a thing from him—that something he did is wrong.

“What the hell do you want? Your insurgent outfit figured out how to lock me in my own boardroom. Good for you. And I know that your suit is stuffed with explosive. So what is it that you want? What's it going to take for you to dismantle that detonator so no one has to die? Including you.”

Dis
mantle
it? I didn't know that was an option. I didn't—

“Well,” Batista asks again. “What's it going to be?”

I recognize this as an opportunity to fulfill one of my objectives, to make sure I get on record their admissions regarding the transmission machine.

“First, where are the other board members? Where is Stanley King? Wasn't there supposed to be a meeting today?”

“Don't bother with the charade, Cameron. I know how you got in here.”

“I came in here to confront you and King and whichever board members were present. Where is everyone?”

“You are either a very good actor,” he says, “or spectacularly naive.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“The bolts on these boardroom doors don't spontaneously lock themselves, Cameron. And they don't just miraculously unlock when Captain America appears.”

“You are ignoring my question. Where is King?”

“You'll have to ask your girlfriend's brother. The cowboy.”

Clay. He means Clay, who stood watching as I ran into the NeuroStor building. Standing there as if he had expected me all along.

“Isn't it amazing how quickly people will betray their own flesh and blood if you wave enough money under their nose?”

The military-grade weapons, the metric ton of plastic explosive—these items weren't free. And perhaps it was more than a little convenient to find a “mole” in the building's security team who could lock Batista in his own boardroom. Does that mean I am a pawn even now? Was I somehow manipulated by Clay—or King, even—into taking on the assault myself?

“It's hard to accept when you're out of your league, isn't it?”

He's trying to distract me. Because it doesn't matter, in the end, whether I made it here on my own or was directed by some unknown entity. I came for Batista, and he now stands before me.

“Forget that. Who are you going to sell the transmission machine to?”

“With this preposterous move by King, apparently no one.”

“I don't care about your internal power struggles. Tell me who you were going to sell the goddamn machine to.”

“Pakistan is the leading candidate at the moment. Stanley is supposed to be in Islamabad right now. But who the hell knows now what—”

“Why are you selling it to a foreign country?”

“We are seeking foreign buyers, Cameron, because our frightened, puritanical government thinks tampering with genetics is the Devil's work. They'd rather people die than clone certain types of cells to help save them. What do you think they'd do if they learned of a machine that can duplicate an adult human in forty-five minutes?”

“But won't Pakistan or whoever use it to clone their best soldiers? Is that what you want? To help strengthen the military might of other countries?”

“Pakistan needs the machine because they want to replicate three or four of their elite soldiers to help root out terrorist cells in their country. It is very difficult, after all, to produce such well-trained warriors, but with this machine they can produce hundreds. And Israel sees a world of possibilities with multiple clones of their very best Mossad members. The Mossad is considered the word's most select unit of covert agents.”

“But—”

“These tiny Middle Eastern countries can't destroy us because of the transmission machine, Cameron. But they are willing to pay a substantial amount of money for it. Billions, in fact.”

I pause, uncertain if his words will be enough to seal the fate of NeuroStor. And the notion that King may be behind Crystal's entire operation is really beginning to disturb me, because if that is true, what exactly am I accomplishing here today?

“Is that what you wanted to know?” Batista says. “Can Crystal and I get the fuck out of here and go find that bastard?”

I search for an answer, not really sure what to do. I fully intended to come at Batista with all guns firing, admonishing his arrogance, but somehow that seems out of place now. My initial objective is complete, I have what I need, and anything negative from me will only serve to alienate my eventual television audience.

But there is something else here, something decidedly wrong with this situation. With the clone. How did they get her into the machine when they—