The Big Sheep (31 page)

“I question your legal interpretation,” said Keane. “But whether or not what you're doing is illegal, it's distasteful. If word got out, Flagship would take a PR beating.”

Selah laughed. “Your cards are showing, Mr. Keane,” she said. “Is that your plan? Let me guess: if anything happens to you and Mr. Fowler, a message goes out to a hundred media outlets telling them all about the great Priya Mistry conspiracy?”

“Something like that,” said Keane.

“Oh, Mr. Keane,” said Selah. “You are brilliant, but I'm afraid you've miscalculated. I own most of the media outlets in this town. Not all of them, but enough to determine the narrative. All the other news outlets will follow my lead. So if I say the story is how a famed detective's obsession with Priya Misty drove him mad, causing him to devise a bizarre story about a secret underground cloning laboratory, that will be the story. By the time anyone thinks to check any of the details of your crazy allegations, I'll have moved this entire operation somewhere else. We'll have to cut down on Priya's appearances for a few months, but I was planning on doing that anyway. I track public perception of Priya Mistry very closely, and my research tells me we're reaching a point of diminishing returns. Priya needs to make fewer public appearances for a while, or we risk overexposure.”

“That would be a shame,” I said. “God forbid your brand be damaged.”

Selah shrugged. “Cherish your moral outrage as long as you can, Mr. Fowler. An hour from now you and Mr. Keane are going to wake up in your beds at home, with no memory of this place. Dr. Allebach is going to erase everything that happened over the past three days. You'll never have met me or Priya Mistry, and you won't know anything about a missing sheep. They'll also remove any hard evidence they find in your building. And before Dr. Allebach wipes your memories, he's going to extract all your passwords so that my operatives can also delete any notes you've made about this case. He'll insert memories of a thoroughly unremarkable week, so you won't suspect anything. Maybe someday you'll realize something doesn't fit, but you'll never put the whole puzzle together. And even if you do, there will be nothing you can do about it. This whole operation will be gone, and I'll never let either of you get close to Priya again. Sorry, gentlemen. This is where the story ends for you.” She nodded at Dr. Allebach.

“This way,” said Allebach, indicating the two hospital beds. I hesitated for a moment, and then Brian pointed his rifle at my head.

“Amnesia or death,” said Allebach without emotion. “Your choice.”

Keane and I walked to the beds. I glanced at Keane, wondering if he was thinking what I was thinking: Selah could wipe our memories of what had happened and erase all the physical evidence, but we weren't the only ones who knew about Priya. I could only hope Selah wasn't as meticulous as she seemed.

My hopes were dashed a moment later as the door to the room opened. April stumbled in, followed by Roy. Behind them were the other two gunmen.

 

TWENTY-SEVEN

“April!” I shouted. “Are you okay?” I got up from the bed and made to go to her, but Brian struck me in the temple with the butt of his rifle. I fell to the floor, dazed.

“Blake!” April cried.

I rubbed my head and got a grip on the bed. “I'm all right,” I muttered after a moment, glaring at Brian. He smirked at me. I pulled myself to my feet. “Did they hurt you?”

“No,” April said. “I'm okay.” She appeared harried and tired but uninjured.

“Sorry, guys,” said Roy. “They came out of nowhere. I didn't—” His voice faltered as he caught sight of the series of Priyas along the far wall. “What in the hell…?”

“We had a deal,” I snarled at Selah. “We gave you the sheep, and you let April go!”

“And then you broke into my top-secret facility,” said Selah. “In any case, you can have her back shortly, once her memories of the past three days have been erased. Dr. Allebach, please conduct the procedure on Mr. Fowler and the lawyer first. I want Mr. Keane to witness the results of his failure.”

One of the gunmen prodded April toward the beds. As they did, a large robotic arm with four articulated metallic sections slid silently along a rail running the length of the ceiling toward April. I noticed Dr. Allebach was holding a control pad; the arm was responding to the movements of his fingers. As the arm approached, it unfolded, revealing a basketball-sized metal globe at the end of the arm. From the globe, a dozen or so robotic tentacles protruded. The arm paused in front of April, and she screamed as several of the tentacles wrapped themselves around her arms and legs. Her screaming stopped when one of the tentacles coiled around her head, blocking her mouth.

“No loose ends, huh?” I said. “You're going to wipe all our memories and pretend like none of this ever happened?”

“Not exactly,” said Selah. “I'm going to have Dr. Allebach wipe your memories and those of Mr. Keane and your girlfriend. Roy, I'm afraid, is a bit more problematic.”

“He knows too much,” said Keane. Roy regarded him stoically.

“His memories go back too far. I fear he began to suspect something months ago. I can't let him near Priya, but erasing his memories of the past two years will raise too many questions. I'm not going to be able to let Roy leave this facility.”

“You're going to kill him, you mean,” I said, eyeing Roy.

“I'm afraid I have no choice,” replied Selah.

The robotic arm lifted April and carried her to one of the beds. It gently deposited her onto the bed and then began securing her with nylon restraints. When the tentacle left her mouth, she didn't scream, but her eyes were fixed on me, pleading with me to do something. Anything.

I wasn't really paying attention, though, because I was watching Roy, who was quietly seething with fury. It was one thing for Selah to threaten to kill him; it was quite another for him to be exposed to the horrors of what Selah was doing to his beloved Priya. If Selah expected Roy to just give up, she was mistaken. If he was going to die, he was going to do his damnedest to take Selah with him. The only question was whether he would get the rest of us killed in the process.

One thing was certain: whatever Roy did, he'd have a better chance of success if the guards' attention were focused somewhere else for a few seconds. I took a deep breath and made my move.

“Get your hands off her, you sons of bitches!” I yelled, launching myself toward April. I shoved the technician nearest me—a petite brunette woman—out of the way and landed on the bed on top of April. Throwing my arms around her, I continued my sideways roll. The bed slammed into the gunman who had been guarding April, knocking him down. His rifle flew from his hands, skittering across the floor. April's right wrist was secured to the bed frame, so the bed capsized as my momentum carried us to the floor. My right elbow struck first, and I felt something crack. April yelped in my ear, and pain shot through my arm.

“Stay here!” I said to April, gasping, and then scrabbled away from her on the floor. It didn't occur to me in my pain-addled state that she didn't have much of a choice. Letting my right arm hang limply at my side, I looked up to see a rifle barrel a foot from my face. Behind it was Brian, looking downright gleeful at the prospect of shooting me in the head. A split second later, though, Brian disappeared from view, swept aside by the crushing bulk of the juggernaut that was Roy. The guard who had been watching Roy lay unconscious against the wall near the door, blood gushing from his nose. With that one down and Roy taking out Brian, that left only the guy I had knocked to the floor.

Trying to ignore the mind-numbing pain in my arm, I pulled myself to my knees and turned to look for the third man. He was on his knees too, about ten feet away, reaching for the butt of his rifle. I launched myself toward him, wrapping my left arm around his ankles, but there was no way I could hold him with one arm. Fighting against the instincts that were screaming at me to protect my injury, I threw my right arm around his legs as well. The guy kicked back, hitting me square in the crook of my elbow. For a moment all I knew was pain. I blacked out.

I was only out for maybe a second, but it was long enough: the guy was getting to his feet, the gun barrel aimed at my head. Behind me, I heard someone roar in anger, and I turned to see Roy barreling toward the man, his face red with rage. The man shifted his aim to Roy.

Ordinarily, this would have been all the opening I needed: I could have tackled the guy while he was distracted and disarmed him. He'd probably have gotten off a few rounds at Roy, but I could have stopped him before he killed anybody else. In my current state, though, I couldn't even get up off the floor. My limbs felt like rubber, and the pain and dizziness were so bad, it was all I could do not to puke.

“Roy, no!” I gasped, knowing he was sacrificing himself in vain. But there was no stopping the juggernaut.

That was what I was thinking, anyway, when the robotic arm shot across its rail and swung down from the ceiling, knocking Roy across the room. The gunman opened fire a split second too late, riddling the opposite wall with bullets. Meanwhile, Roy flew a good twenty feet and landed with a crash against a bank of expensive-looking equipment. He lay, moaning, on the floor.

Allebach tapped the screen, and the robotic arm retracted into the ceiling. Keane, standing nearby, was watching with interest. He didn't appear to have moved during the entire fracas. There were times when a phenomenological inquisitor was downright useless.

“Well,” said Selah. “That certainly was exciting. Now, shall we proceed?”

I groaned, my arm throbbing. With me and Roy incapacitated, April tethered to the bed, and Keane content to stand in the middle of the room, doing absolutely fucking nothing, we didn't have much of a chance. The guard who had fired on Roy now had his gun on me again, and the one Roy had tackled was getting to his feet. Roy was a dead man. Keane, April, and I would have our memories wiped. And Selah would get away with everything.

The brunette technician pulled me to my feet, and I yelped as she put her hand on my smashed elbow.

“Arm”—I gasped—“broken.”

The woman nodded and looked to Allebach. There was something familiar about her, but I couldn't quite place it.

“We can fix that for you,” said Allebach. “You'll wake up with a fully mended arm and no memory of it ever breaking.” He smiled. “No extra charge.”

“Fuck you,” I muttered.

The technician helped me into one of the beds while two others righted April's bed and finished securing her. When they were done with her, they secured me as well, leaving my useless right arm free. Brian had gotten to his feet and was eyeing my broken arm as if he were considering giving it a good squeeze.

But then Allebach tapped a display console, and a machine hummed to life above me. A robotic arm descended toward me, and a sheath opened to reveal a clutch of tentaclelike appendages. The appendages writhed to life, and as the arm extended, their suckerlike ends attached themselves to various points on my skull. I couldn't turn my head, but to my left I heard what I knew was a similar machine descending toward April.

 

TWENTY-EIGHT

“It's almost too bad,” I heard Keane murmur.

I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, but I couldn't muster the energy. I had nearly been killed, and all he could say was “It's almost too bad”?

Apparently, I wasn't the only one thinking this, because a moment later Selah echoed my thoughts. “Hold on,” she said. “What do you mean, it's almost too bad? I'm about to foil your chances to solve this case and erase seventy-two hours of your memory, and all you have to say is ‘It's almost too bad'?”

I managed to turn my head enough to see Selah and Keane out of the corner of my eye. Next to me stood the technician who had helped me up earlier. I caught a glimpse of her name tag, which read
NIKKI
. Why did she seem so familiar? Had I met her somewhere before? The pain shooting through my right arm was making it hard to think.

“I mean, it's almost too bad I can't let you go through with this,” said Keane. “It's amazing technology, and it raises all sorts of interesting epistemic and ethical issues. I'd love to witness it in action. But of course I'd retain no memories of the process, so it's a bit of a moot point.”

Selah laughed. “You can't
let
me go through with it? How the hell do you think you're going to stop me?”

“I'm not,” said Keane. “You're going to stop on your own.”

“And why would I do that?”

“One word,” Keane said. “Maelstrom.”

Selah glared at him. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Let me refresh your memory, then,” said Keane. “After you were kind enough to demonstrate the Feinberg-Webb test for us the other day, I looked into the company that created the test, Empathix. It seems they started out nearly twenty years ago as a marketing research company, with a focus on quantifying the psychological and sociological factors that went into a successful marketing campaign. Part of this involved identifying the traits of effective spokespersons—charisma, essentially. This work eventually led to the creation of the Feinberg-Webb test, and gave rise to the careers of Priya Mistry and Giles Marbury, aka Mag-Lev. But Empathix's work went far beyond identifying personality traits. They also developed algorithms for identifying societal ‘tipping points'—for example, when consumers were on the verge of embracing a new product or technology. It was presumably Empathix's research that caused you to cancel lighthearted comedies like
Room for One More
and bet heavily on gritty urban-based shows set in the DZ: Empathix warned you about a shift in consumer taste. Of course, it's impossible to say for sure, because fourteen years ago, you bought a controlling interest in Empathix, and they've been rather secretive about their work ever since.”