Twinmaker (17 page)

“These two AIs, conductor and driver, are bound by a principle similar to the laws of physics: that in a d-mat booth, unlike a
fabber, matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Even though both happen at opposite ends during the jump, it has to
look
as though it didn’t.”

Clair was about as vague regarding physics as she was buses. It was a struggle to keep up with what “q” was telling her.

“What happens when it doesn’t?”

“That’s called a
parity violation
, Clair. Equilibrium hasn’t been maintained, and an alarm does sound. It’s the number one alarm in VIA. It can’t be ignored, and you can’t turn it off, because it means that at least one of the AIs is broken. The only way to fix things quickly is to crash the entire system, reboot it again, and hope the break isn’t permanent.”

“Which obviously hasn’t happened, or we’d have noticed,” Clair said. “How did you work this out?”

“It’s right there in the algorithms, if you know where to look.”

“Do you know who else might be doing it?”

“No, Clair. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. If anything, I should thank you for what you did back there. I was completely out of ideas. It was clever of you to figure it out.” She paused before adding, with all the parental firmness she could muster, just in case the owner of the voice
was
a child, “But please don’t spring something like that on me again. If you’re going to muck around with my pattern, you have to warn me in advance. You have to ask my
permission
.”

“I promise I will, Clair. I’m sorry.”

“No, really, don’t apologize. Just, well . . . I don’t know. Hope
fully there won’t ever be a next time.”

Her mind reeled at the implications of what “q” had told her, but there were greater issues calling for her attention. She looked around, still worried about people creeping up on her while she was distracted. She knew this station. It was four blocks away from school, putting her northwest of the WHOLE safe house.

“Why did you bring me here?” she asked. “You could have sent me anywhere you wanted. What’s so special about Manteca?”

“You have to go back for your friend Zeppelin Barker: that is what you said in South Africa. You can’t just leave him behind. And this is where he is.”

Clair almost laughed even as she was reminded of the predicament Zep was in. “You know who those people are, right? The ones who are holding him prisoner?”

“I do not. Their identities are obscured, even when they are connected to the Air.”

“That’s because they’re WHOLE, and they eat people like me and Zep for breakfast. At the very least, you could’ve given me a gun before sending me back in there.”

“I could if you wanted me to.”

Clair rubbed her brow with the knuckles of both hands. She had been joking about the gun, but not about Zep. Rescuing him was critical, if she could only find the energy to get moving again. She felt like every vein in her body was full of mud.

“What I’d like more than anything is a cup of coffee.”

“Go to the third booth on the right.”

She forced her weary legs into motion and jumped to the front of the queue.

“Sorry,” she said to the commuters whose journeys she was briefly interrupting. “I’m expecting something.”

The door opened, revealing a plastic box big enough to hold a large melon. It had an identity patch addressed to Carolyn Edge. Clair pressed her right palm against the patch until it flashed green and unsealed. Then she took the box back to the bench and eased the lid open.

The first thing that hit her was the scent of fresh coffee. It was like a shot of energy straight to the brain. The insulated mug it came in wasn’t drawn from her private pattern catalog, and the brew, she suspected, wasn’t her favorite, but that was okay. It was still caffeine—and if someone
was
looking for her, the less evidence she left of her presence, the better.

Next to the mug was a bundle of fresh clothes and a pair of sneakers. Again, not her favorites—lightweight travel gear in grays and blacks, anonymous and easy to layer—but at least they looked to be her size. The new clothes went with her new identity or mask or whatever it was, she assumed. There was a new backpack, too, the same nondescript color scheme as the clothes.

Inside the backpack was an automatic pistol.

She touched the cold metal with the tip of one finger.

No
, she told herself,
this is crazy.

Or was it?

In all her life, she’d never fired a gun. Her parents had never owned one. But when people started pointing them at her, didn’t it make a kind of sense to point one back? It wasn’t as if she had to actually
fire
it or anything.

Clair shoved the pistol under the clothes, well out of sight, and stuffed it all into the pack.

She wanted nothing more than to shower and drink her coffee in peace. A headache was throbbing behind her right eye.

Reprisals
, she thought, remembering something Gemma had said in the safe house.
The man WHOLE is trying to kill . . .
That was what “q” had called the person holding her parents hostage. That person had turned out to be Dylan Linwood.

Distant pieces of the puzzle were slowly starting to come together, but what good did that do her? She couldn’t call Libby. She couldn’t call her parents. She couldn’t call her friends. She couldn’t call the peacekeepers without giving her location away. Clair had escaped from one cage only to find herself caught securely in another.

“One piece at a time,” she reminded herself. If she could get Zep out of the safe house, that would be a start. At least she wouldn’t be alone in the cage then.

“Can I call up a map?” she asked “q.”

“Yes, Clair. I will advise you if you are about to do anything dangerous.”

There was a public bathroom one block to the north, worth going out of her way for. She didn’t want to arrive anywhere look
ing like a refugee.

She slung the pack over her shoulder, threw the empty mug and box into a bin, took one last look around her to make sure Dylan Linwood really wasn’t still following her, and set off.

ONE HOUR LATER, after a lonely walk under stars as crisp and cool as a cosmic chandelier, Clair strode up to the safe house door and waited. She didn’t need to knock. She knew Ray or someone else would be watching.

The door opened after thirty seconds. Gemma stepped out. The door closed behind her and clicked shut.

“We didn’t expect to see you again,” Gemma said. Her face was unreadable in the darkness. There was no porch light.

“I didn’t expect to see you, either.” Clair held the pistol at her side, not hidden but not aimed at anyone either. A bluff like Gemma’s had been. This time, Gemma appeared to be unarmed.

“You should have told me,” Clair said.

“About what?”

“About Dylan Linwood.”

Gemma looked surprised but unrepentant. “You’ve seen him, then?”

“He tried to kill me.”

Gemma nodded and said, “We couldn’t tell you about that. You
wouldn’t have believed us.”

“How long have you known he was a traitor? And how on earth did he survive that explosion?”

That earned her a long, measuring stare.

“You’d better come inside. Your boyfriend is making my life a living hell.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” she said again.

Gemma knocked on the door, a quick rat-a-tat, and it opened. Clair’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness. Ray looked pissed off. Clair didn’t care.

“I’ll be out of touch for a bit,” Clair told “q.” She squeezed the pistol grip tightly, feeling as though she were leaping off a high dive. Gemma followed her into the house, too close for comfort, but no one tried to search or disarm her. No one said anything. All the menus in her night-darkened lenses were dead.

She found Zep in the living room, sitting on the couch, with wrists and ankles secured by plastic ties. Jesse sat next to him, not tied but not exactly one with his captors, either. Big-Ears stood over them both with his arms folded. Arabelle, in her wheelchair, blocked the door to the back of the house, long-fingered hands resting loosely in her lap.

“Clair!” Zep tried to get up, but his bindings prevented him. Seeping blood had stained the bandage around his thigh bright red. “What are you doing here? You shouldn’t have come back.”

“I didn’t have to,” she said. “I’m here of my own free will, and I’m not making any demands, either. That counts for something, doesn’t it?” She said that to the woman in the wheelchair.

“Perhaps it does,” said Arabelle.

“Why
are
you here?” asked Jesse, looking up at her with eyes wide through his thick hair.

“I haven’t worked everything out, but I know one thing,” she said, figuring there was nothing to be gained by prevaricating. “Neither VIA nor the peacekeepers blew up your house. It was these guys. That’s why Gemma appeared so soon after the explosion. That’s why she was surprised to see you. Your father was the target, and we were almost collateral damage.”

Jesse looked at Gemma and Arabelle in turn, then back at Clair. His expression was furious.

“It’s not true,” he said to her. “Why are you lying to me? Haven’t you done enough damage?”

“What Clair says is true, Jesse,” Arabelle said. “I’m sorry.”

“When your father didn’t call in on schedule,” Gemma said, “we knew he’d been compromised, and we acted immediately to neutralize the threat.”

“Compromised?”
Jesse’s head swung back and forth. Clair wanted to grab him and make him be still. “You blew up our
house!
”

“The charges were laid years ago,” said Ray. “I helped Dylan put them in place myself, but we never thought we’d need them.”

“He would never have done anything to hurt you,” said Jesse, face turning pink. “You murdered him.”

“If we were murderers,” said Arabelle, “you would already be dead.”

Zep was nodding grimly. “Yeah, right. We’re witnesses. So why are you sitting around talking to us?”

“They don’t know what to do with us,” said Clair.

“That’s true,” said Arabelle. “We can’t let you go without exposing you to grave danger.”

“She’s already run into him,” Gemma said.

The members of WHOLE shifted uneasily.

“Run into who?” asked Jesse.

“Let’s talk about that later,” said Arabelle firmly. She was probably thinking the same thing as Clair. Was it better for Jesse to know that his father wasn’t the man he believed in or to remember a lie?

“For now, why don’t you tell us what you want, Clair?” Arabelle said.

This was it. Everything she had pondered in the long walk to the safe house came down to this moment. They were seven people lumped together in a way none of them would have chosen. But that was the way it was, and she had to work with it.

“We need to leave,” Clair told them. “It’s not safe here.”

Gemma shook her head. “The Faraday cage—”

“Is part of the problem. When enough people disappear into a blank spot, you know something secret’s going on in there. Remember the phone call before? That was from someone who worked it out. Someone I know. If she can do it, so can the bad guys.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Ray. “You’re trying to flush us into the open.”

“Really?” she said. “Well, feel free to sit here and see what happens. I’m leaving now, and I’m taking Zep with me. Come along if you want. It’s your decision.”

“You want them to come with us now?” asked Zep in disbelief. His wounded leg was jiggling as though his muscular tension simply couldn’t be contained.

“Yes,” she said. “Improvement has to be more than just sucking in people like Libby, or else why would someone kill to keep it a secret? I want to know everything. These guys can help. No one else can.”

“Peacekeepers—”

“I tried calling them before.” She outlined what had happened to her in Maine, carefully avoiding naming Dylan Linwood to spare them getting mired down in Jesse’s protests again. “If it was just one crazy guy with a gun, maybe they could help, but we don’t really know what happened back there. He definitely talked to someone else. Maybe my call was intercepted; maybe the PKs set me up. Until we know exactly what we’re dealing with, we can’t risk talking to anyone.”

Clair tried to radiate self-assurance, but the pistol was heavy in her hand, and she was afraid everyone could tell it was only for show. Who was she to tell a bunch of adults what to do?

“She’s right,” said Arabelle, easing her wheelchair through the doorway. “You need us, and we need you. If you can bring your friend Libby around, Clair . . . if we can prove that she’s been altered illegally, particularly in the wake of that video stream . . . then that’s a big step forward.”

“But we don’t have forever to get her on board,” said Gemma. “The clock is ticking.”

“What do you mean?” asked Zep.

“People affected by Improvement rarely live longer than a week.”

Clair stared at her, struck to the pit of her stomach with a new fear.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Improvement doesn’t affect everyone, otherwise there’d be dead kids everywhere. Those who do show the symptoms last seven days, maybe eight. Never nine.”

“What are the symptoms?”

“Headache, erratic behavior . . . I’m guessing you already know, otherwise why would you be so worried about your friend?”

“Shit,” said Zep, looking as aghast as Clair felt.

Libby had used Improvement two days ago. How many days did that leave her? Five or six?

“Cut the boy’s feet free,” said Arabelle. “Raymond, call and give the code to move out. Clair and the others will come with us.”

Ray vanished into the hallway while Big-Ears sliced Zep’s ties with a pocket blade and helped him to his feet.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” said Jesse, red-faced and teary eyed. He was obviously struggling to take it all in. “You killed my father.”

“Do you really want to stay here and take your chances with the PKs?” asked Gemma. “You’ll be guilty by association.”

“I didn’t
do
anything!”

“That doesn’t matter. You’re one of us now.”