Twinmaker (13 page)

The street was transformed. Where Jesse’s home had been was now a shattered, skeletal frame issuing thick black gouts of smoke. There was almost nothing left. The apartments on either side were burning too, along with the gardens and trees lining the sidewalk. Broken glass crunched underfoot. There was debris everywhere. Bits of Jesse’s life. Bits of his dad, too, probably.

That made Clair feel sick again, but this time she kept her gorge down.

Clair blinked grit from her eyes and discovered that the hands tugging her away from the blast zone belonged to a solid woman with close-cut brown curls. She was wearing a dark-purple sweater and black jeans that, like everything around them, were now gray with ash. Her eyes were noticeably out of alignment, giving her face a lopsided cast.

Clair could see the woman’s mouth moving, but her words were indistinct. “Take your own weight. I can’t carry you.”

Clair felt light-headed, but she found the strength to stand on her own. The four of them—Clair, Zep, Jesse, and the woman who had pulled them from the blast site—staggered to the nearest corner. Clair felt bruised all over, as though she had been hit by a
giant fist. The woman urged them to go faster, but Zep was falling back, limping, his face contorted in pain. Blood flowed in a steady stream from his right thigh. Clair took Zep’s right arm and put it over her shoulder in order to bear as much of his weight as she could.

Jesse trailed them, looking stunned. The right sleeve of his orange T-shirt was burned black. His jeans were filthy. Multiple tear tracks carved lighter lines down the dust on his face, and he kept glancing behind him as though to check the veracity of what had happened. The columns of belching black smoke left little doubt of anything.

Through her shock, Clair noticed a couple of drones swooping in from the north, smoke swirling like translucent wings around them as the woman hurried Clair and the others down another side street. The effects of the blast were minimal there, just a light rain of ash settling on the roofs and grass. People were issuing from their houses in ones and twos, some of them heading to the blast scene, most standing about uneasily, uncertain of what they should do. Someone offered help. The mystery woman waved them away.

The fog Clair had been operating under began to lift, and it occurred to her to wonder what was going on.

“Wait,” she said. Her voice echoed in her ears as though it came from the bottom of a very deep well. “Who are you? Where are you taking us?”

“I’m a friend of Jesse’s,” the woman said. “We have to get off
the streets.”

“Why?” asked Zep through gritted teeth.

“You’re injured, for one.”

Jesse didn’t say anything. He didn’t seem to be hearing or seeing anything at all.

“What happened back there?” Clair pressed. “Who did this?”

“Later. Come on.”

She pulled Jesse up the path to a simple single-story house behind a stand of drooping palms. Clair, unsure of her options, followed. Blood continued to flow from the wound on Zep’s leg, and even through the ringing in her ears she could hear him gasp with every step. Whoever she was, the woman leading them seemed to know what she was doing.

The door opened before they reached it, and two men urged Clair and her bedraggled entourage inside.

“Get that door shut,” said the woman to the smaller of the two men, who was wiry, flat faced, bald, with ears like jug handles. “Go on in, you three.”

“Did anyone see you?” The second man followed them up the hallway. He was long and overstrung like a fencing wire, a head taller than Zep.

“Just drones, and they were focused on the house. We got past them okay.”

Clair wondered why that was necessary. Any disturbances the drones spotted drew PKs to the scene like red blood cells to a cut—and that was a good thing, right?

They entered a boxy sitting room, lit only by what natural light came through the loose-shuttered windows. The walls were uniformly cream-colored, the floors carpeted in flecked gray. The woman led Zep to a low couch, and he fell awkwardly onto it, crying out with pain.

“Easy,” she said, crouching down to inspect the source of the blood. A small cross swung from a silver chain around her neck, and she tucked it down into her sweater, out of the way. “You’ve taken some shrapnel, but it can’t be too serious or you wouldn’t be here to complain. Jesse?”

Jesse was still in shock, staring at nothing in the real world.

“Jesse, listen to me.”

The bark of command in the woman’s voice snapped him out of it. “Gemma?”

“What were you doing back there? You’re supposed to be at school.”

“We came . . . we came to talk to . . .” He stopped, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Dad stirred up something serious this time.”

“He did. I tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen.” Her uneven eyes were watching Clair. “You’re the girl from the video.”

“And you’re Abstainers,” Clair said, beginning to piece it together. “Like Jesse.”

“Congratulations.” Jesse had called the woman Gemma. “You win a prize. How about you tell me what you’re doing here?”

“She wanted to ask Dad about the data,” Jesse said. “Where he
got it from . . . what it means . . . if it’s real.”

“Of course it’s real,” Gemma said. “You really know someone who’s had a problem with Improvement?”

“Maybe,” said Clair. “My best friend.”

Zep groaned again. Gemma had found a rip in Zep’s track pants and torn it wider. His leg was slick with red. Something was sticking out of his thigh. Something metal, like a shuriken. Gemma wiped the blood away, revealing one of the metal cogs from Dylan Linwood’s workshop.

Jesse turned even paler under the ash and grime.

“All right,” Gemma said. “Jesse, take her to see Dancer, in back. I need to deal with this. Ray.” The tall man looked up. “Get me the med kit. Watch the door. Tell me if anyone comes.”

THE TWO MEN jumped at Gemma’s command. Clair did too, because it was only beginning to sink in that they had just seen someone die. Dylan Linwood had been standing in front of her one second, gone the next. How was that possible?

Jesse took her arm and guided her through the house. After the sitting room was a flight of stairs leading down to a cellar shrouded in gloom. There was an old-fashioned wall telephone anchored to one wall, then a dining room and a Stainer kitchen, complete
with stovetop and sink and cupboards for preparing the ingredients that would become actual food. The air smelled stale, though.

“In here,” called a voice from the kitchen. “Come clean yourself up and let me take a look at you.”

Silhouetted against the rear window was a figure in an electric wheelchair. A woman in her seventies with a halo of gray hair, spine straight not slumped, wearing a comfortable pantsuit in peach. Her hands were long boned and thickly veined, and her nails neatly trimmed. She was watching them with keen attention.

“Aunt Arabelle?” said Jesse in a cracked voice.

She nodded. “Wash your hands in the sink. There’s a towel for your faces. Then come and sit with me.”

Jesse nodded and used the tap first. While she waited, Clair felt the bright gaze of the old woman studying her closely.

“Are you Dancer?” Clair asked.

“That’s what they call me,” the woman said. “My real name is Arabelle. Are you a friend of Jesse’s?”

“Uh . . . kind of. I’m Clair, Clair Hill. I don’t think Zep and I are supposed to be here.”

“None of us are, Clair. Wash up and I’ll explain.”

It was Clair’s turn to use the tap, and she felt relief that the woman’s gaze was temporarily off her. Her hands shook as she splashed cold water onto her face. In her mind she saw the fireball over and over again, Dylan Linwood’s compact figure vanishing into it, lifted momentarily off his feet as though about to take
flight.

He hadn’t even had time to look surprised.

She leaned her elbows on the sink and let the trembling spread from her hands, up her arms, and into the rest of her body. It was okay to feel shock, she told herself. No one was hurrying her anymore. She could take all the time in the world if it made her feel better.

It did.

When the shakes passed and she was done with the towel, she found Jesse kneeling and weeping into the old woman’s shoulder. Arabelle—Aunt Arabelle—Dancer . . . Clair hadn’t decided yet how to think of her . . .
Arabelle
put an arm around him and patted his back.

“Shhh,” she said softly, as though to a child. “I know what happened, and I’m very sorry. We all are, Jesse. You have to be brave. Those psychopaths in VIA have been up to no good again.”

“VIA blew up Dylan Linwood?” asked Clair in disbelief. “Who says it wasn’t an accident?”

“I do.” Gently but firmly, Arabelle pushed Jesse from her. “Take off my shoes, dear boy. She needs to understand what she’s gotten herself into.”

I haven’t gotten myself into anything
, Clair wanted to say. Then she wondered if that was entirely true. It had all started with Zep and Libby and led via Improvement to Dylan Linwood’s door. Maybe she could have walked away, but she hadn’t. And here she
was, watching Jesse crouch down, tug the old woman’s traditional paraplegic blanket aside, and expose a pair of brown slip-ons.

Jesse pulled the left one off first, revealing a thin but perfectly ordinary foot. The right shoe was next.

When he had finished, he sat back and stared resentfully at Clair, as though daring her to argue with what she saw.

Clair saw a thin but perfectly ordinary left foot. A second one. She clenched her fists to stop them shaking again.

“I wasn’t born with two left feet, believe me,” said Arabelle. “In fact, I used to be a very good dancer. But I can’t walk on it now, thanks to d-mat. The entire leg is out, and my hip, too. I tell myself I’m lucky a blood clot didn’t kill me the very moment it happened. But I don’t
feel
lucky. I feel trapped and ignored by a system that doesn’t like to acknowledge its failures. It prefers to sweep them under the rug like they never existed. Well, Clair, some of us won’t be swept away so easily. Jesse’s father wasn’t one of them, God take his precious soul. None of us will be.”

“WHOLE,” said Clair again, feeling as though she had fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole and landed in a nest of vipers. “That’s who you are. You’re terrorists.”

“Jesse, you can put my shoes back on. My toes are getting cold.”

Jesse wiped his nose on his sleeve, smudging his face with ash anew. Clair was relieved when the feet were hidden. They made her feel queasy—not in a getting-sick way, but as though the
world had just shifted underneath her in a subtle and utterly disconcerting way.

Gemma came into the kitchen to wash her hands. Her curly hair was full of scraps of plaster and plants, like urban camouflage. Tiny drops of blood matted the front of her shirt.

“Your boyfriend will be all right,” she said. “Just a scratch.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” said Clair emphatically. “Why are we here and not in a hospital?”

“We’re avoiding the peacekeepers.”

“Why?”

“They’re nothing but glorified security guards in the service of the OneEarth government. And what does OneEarth rely on to keep the peace? D-mat. If you think they’ll have our best interests at heart, you’re living in a dream.”

“You think VIA killed Jesse’s dad because he said bad things about d-mat?” Clair said. “That doesn’t make any sense. He was paranoid but he wasn’t dangerous.”

“You’re not the only one who thinks we’re terrorists,” said Arabelle. “That gives the PKs carte blanche to do whatever they like to us.”

Clair refused to let the matter go just because someone told her to.

“So what happens now? Do you expect me and Zep to hide in here with you?”

“It makes sense to sit tight until the cleanup’s over,” Gemma said in a businesslike fashion, as though people being blown up
was all in a day’s work. “When we can, we’ll move out in ones and twos. Hopefully, there’ll be no reprisals.”

Arabelle leaned forward and touched Clair lightly on the shoulder. “You go see to your friend. I need to talk with Gemma alone. Jesse, don’t worry. You’ll be looked after, I promise. We won’t abandon you.”

He nodded and walked like a robot out of the kitchen. Clair hesitated, then followed. The way the two women from WHOLE were looking at her, it was clear they wanted her gone so she wouldn’t overhear.
Zombie girl
, she thought. They obviously weren’t telling her the entire truth, but that look was hard to contend with.

CLAIR AND JESSE walked back through the dining room, past the stairs and the old telephone, into the living room. Zep was sprawled uncomfortably on the couch with his legs stretched out before him. His right thigh was bandaged tightly. There was blood all over what remained of his pants. He was staring at the man with the big ears, who stood in a corner of the room, watching him back. There was no sign of the taller man. They both looked up as Jesse and Clair entered.

“I was beginning to wonder if you were ever coming back,”
Zep said. He looked wan and weak.

“Whoever Gemma is, she says you’ll be okay,” said Clair, coming to sit at his side.
Not my boyfriend.
“How are you feeling?”

“I’ll be a lot better when the painkillers kick in.” He sketched a rough smile. “Now I’m wishing Libby’s drugs hadn’t worn off so fast.”

Clair didn’t laugh. Neither did Jesse. He collapsed into a chair and retreated into himself, as though he hoped everything would disappear if he ignored it hard enough.

Clair turned to the man with the big ears. Her hands were shaking again, and her mouth was desperately dry.

“I could really use a drink,” she said. “We all could. Is that possible?”

“Sure,” Big-Ears said, but not before glancing up the hallway to the front of the house. Clair knew then that his tall companion was watching the front door. Was he a sentry or a jailer?

Big-Ears headed into the back of the house. His feet beat a tattoo down the stairs to the lower floor.

“Have you tried your lenses?” Zep whispered when they were alone. “Mine are dead, and every time I access the Air, I get an error message.”