Q was the person she really needed to hear from, but when she bumped again all she received was a single phrase in a loop.
“The one and only. The one and only. The one and only. The one and only.”
“Q, are you all right?”
The loop continued unchecked, which just made Clair more anxious. She didn’t know what that meant. There was no way to know until Q said something else.
Jumping at the slightest shadow, Clair and Tash searched the empty level, then returned to the booth as it was opening.
Kari Sargent stepped out with her best peacekeeper face on.
“This is stopping now,” she said firmly. “I want you back where we can keep a proper eye on you.”
Clair didn’t argue. She was relieved to be leaving the cells behind. It was hard not to think, Home sweet future home, and wonder if that was what Dylan Linwood had in mind.
“What about the rest of the levels?”
“I’ll finish up down here,” Kari said. “Whatever’s going on, I’m not taking any chances with you. It seems to be getting worse the more jumps you take.”
“The loop is supposed to be a closed circuit,” said Clair. “I thought that meant unhackable.”
“But the Yard knows. We should definitely lay off even this kind of d-mat once we’ve finished searching.”
“Fine with me,” said Tash. “I’m beginning to wonder if the Stainers were onto something.”
“Puh-lease,” bumped Ronnie from the level below. “Don’t you start.”
Tash shot Clair a quick smile and then went into the booth, heading back to the administration center.
“What did Devin tell you?” Kari asked as they waited for the booth to cycle.
“Something I didn’t understand. It sounded Latin, or maybe Spanish.” She didn’t want to say that it had sounded like a spell from a kids’ fantasy book.
She played the sound bite containing the phrase.
“Cunctando regitur mundus,” said Dylan Linwood. “It means, ‘Be patient and you’ll conquer the world.’”
“Why would his data ghost tell me that?” Clair asked. “He never did in real life, so I shouldn’t be hearing it now. That’s not the way the glitches work.”
“It might have been a distraction,” Kari said, “something intended to confuse us.”
“Do you think Mallory was a fake too?”
“I don’t know,” said Kari, “but we’re not taking any chances. These data ghosts are embedded in the Yard. They’re not artifacts of our lenses. Someone or something is interacting with the simulation—maybe deliberately.”
The booth opened. Inside the reflections moved as though the mirrors were warping back and forth, too subtly for the eye to follow.
“Go on,” said Kari when she hesitated. “You’ll be fine up top, and I’ll be back before you know it.”
Clair was happy to abandon the search, but she dreaded facing Jesse and anyone else Clair One had managed to convert to her way of thinking. There wasn’t time for petty squabbling. They had an entire world to scour in search of the exit, and an unknown number of hollowmen would be resisting them at every step. That was before they even started thinking about finding a booth on the outside. It was going to be hard enough to undo the damage Wallace had done without fighting herself at the same time.
[25]
* * *
ON THE OTHER end of the short jump, Clair used the interface to look for Libby and found her in the admin hub. Clair One was on the far side of the level, alone. Clair decided to stay well away.
When she arrived in the hub, she was greeted by a host of new faces. Members of WHOLE, she presumed, freshly arrived in the prison. She didn’t know any of them, although some of them did look faintly familiar. They were about her age too.
When she caught sight of a willowy blond teenager, a shock of recognition went through her.
The last time she had seen Xia Somerset, the old woman who had taken over Tilly Kozlova’s body had been full of remorse and a desperate hope that she could undo the damage done by stealing a new life from an innocent person. Then PK Drader had led her off and killed her. Seeing her now reawakened the guilt Clair had felt at the time—and a new anxiety. Depending on when Xia’s copy had been taken, she might not yet have had her change of heart and could be a potential traitor in their midst.
Clair forced her way through the crowd to find out what she knew.
“So they found you, too, Xia. How much do you remember?”
“Nothing at all,” she said brightly. “You must be Clair Two. I’m Tilly Kozlova—the real Tilly Kozlova, warts and all, pre-Improvement—so don’t ask me to play a piano concerto for you. I’m more of a ukulele girl.”
Clair performed an awkward double take. Of course. It wasn’t just Libby and the dupes who had been returned to their original selves. Every person who had ever used Improvement was now back the way they were supposed to be.
It was disorienting to stare at her former idol and know that the young woman looking back at her was someone she had never met before.
“I’m really glad you’re here,” Clair said, feeling unexpectedly moved by this victory. She hadn’t seen it coming, and it caught her at a vulnerable moment. Not everything she had done had been a disaster.
“Who did this?” she asked. “Who brought you here?”
“Me, of course!” said Libby, coming up beside them and beaming proudly. “Surprised? That’s why I wanted to stay behind. Much more fun chasing down people like me than looking for murderers—with the combined skills of Ray and Sarge, of course, king and queen of the rippers and peekers. Credit where credit’s due.”
“This is amazing.” Clair found herself at the center of a growing cluster of people, all staring at her and whispering.
“That’s Madison Chu over there—you know, the math guy?” Libby said. A tall, skinny young man with glasses grinned at her. “And Elisha Neimke, the Go player.” Another guy, part Indian, with crooked eyes. “That’s who they were, anyway,” Libby explained. “Now they’re themselves, and finding it all a bit confusing too.”
The Indian guy reminded Clair of Gemma, the woman who had betrayed WHOLE in exchange for her son’s return. Could this be the missing Sameer?
Before she could ask, a girl with long brown hair pressed in close to Clair.
“Libby says you used Improvement, just like us.”
“Yes,” Clair said, “but . . . for different reasons.”
“So you didn’t ask for anything to be changed?”
“I had to.”
“Which bit?” asked another girl.
“My nose.”
“Mine was my hair—so boring and greasy! Everyone else likes it but me, which is what makes it so annoying.”
Clair was both charmed and comforted. A support group for the Improved! It had an almost festive feel, perhaps fueled by Libby’s easy sense of accomplishment. Clair had always known that Libby would be better at saving the world than she was.
“We call ourselves the Unimprovables,” said Libby. “Like it?”
“Like it?” Clair laughed and turned in a circle, taking in the crowd around her and finishing by sweeping Libby up in a sudden, impulsive hug. It was good to have the focus on rescuing people rather than fighting people, for a change. It wasn’t all about Wallace or Kingdon or Nobody. Or even her other self. The goal was to rebuild and restore as well, not just to retaliate.
“I love it,” she said, understanding now why Clair One wasn’t there. This wasn’t for Clair One. It was for her.
“Cunctando!” shouted Devin in her ear, and Clair jerked away from Libby, startled.
The haunted sensation from the lower levels returned stronger than ever. Shadows were swirling in the corners of her eyes, thickening by the second, and there seemed to be more faces than there were people, as though the hub was filling up with ghosts. . . .
A deafening siren sounded, causing a commotion in the room. People began moving, either f
or exits or into a huddle in the center, buffeting Clair from side to side.
“What’s going on?” asked Libby, looking irritated that something was stealing her thunder.
“That’s the intrusion alarm,” said Jesse, appearing at her left shoulder. “Someone’s trying to get in.”
Clair thought of her glimpse of Mallory in the lower levels. “Where? We have to cut them off—”
“Dad says you’re to stay right here,” he said. “It’s my job to make sure you do that.”
“Seriously?” said Tilly. “She looks like she could snap you in half.”
He looked put-upon but ignored the remark. “It makes sense. If they’re homing in on you, Clair, then we need you where we can see you.”
She remembered Clair One whispering doubts into his ear.
“Did your father really say that?” she said bitterly. “I’d make a pretty good decoy if he kicked me out.”
“That’ll never happen.” He gripped her elbow. “And not just because you’re more use to us here. The way the glitches seem to follow you around, they’re like early warnings.”
“Early warnings of what? The hollowmen trying to get through?”
“I am Nobody,” said a voice in Clair’s ear.
She jumped.
“Exactly,” he said.
They all jumped as gunfire clattered outside the hub. Clair took out her pistol and squeezed the grip tightly. It was hard to tell from the prison interface what was going on. People were running everywhere, shouting and screaming at once. There was no clear focus, no single point of attack, which made her feel exposed. Were people firing at shadows, or was an attack coming from all sides? Either way, she had to find somewhere safer to stand than the middle of the room. If the hollowmen were in the prison, it was only a matter of time before they found her.
Taking Libby by the arm with her spare hand and nudging Jesse ahead of her, she guided them to a point along a wall midway between two doors. They could upend some tables, create a token barrier . . .
Three figures entered the room, closely followed by another: Ronnie, Zep, and Clair One, and then Kari Sargent, once more the sole peacekeeper in a room full of teenagers. Her tour of the prison’s lower levels hadn’t lasted long.
“Three hollowmen,” said Clair One. “I was right there. One of them tried to shoot me.”
Her eyes were wide and her cheeks flushed. Clair wondered if this was how she had looked the first time a dupe had attacked her at close range.
“Get in here,” said Libby, pulling her close to Jesse, Clair, and the Unimprovables. There were fifteen of them, a gaggle that would be difficult to control if things got messy.
“The hub is cordoned off,” Jesse said.
“Yetis everywhere,” said Kari approvingly. “They almost shot me.”
“And that’s a good thing?” said Libby.
“It means no one can get in here,” said Jesse.
“We live in a cruel world, Clair Hill, full of victims.”
“But the hollowmen got into the prison somehow,” said Clair, not particularly reassured, with Nobody and now Mallory whispering in her ear again. “How did they do that?”
“The same way we did, I guess,” said Clair One. “They ripped.”
“That means they know what it’s like in here,” Clair said. “How—?”
The world rippled. Two dark figures appeared in the corner of Clair’s eye, leaping into the room through space that had suddenly warped and twisted.
“Down!” Clair cried, throwing herself forward with her arms outstretched, taking as many people with her as she could.
Gunfire cracked, filling the room with noise. The lights went out. People screamed and dropped all around her. Clair disentangled herself from flailing limbs and assumed a crouching position, firing at the spots where she hoped the hollowmen still were, but knowing they surely must have moved by then. Beside her, Kari was doing the same, and then a third pistol boomed once, twice—Clair One, finally unlocking that skill.
Cursors danced across Clair’s vision, her view occasionally obscured as people moved in front of her, confusing the pistol’s infrared targeting system. She scuttled to her right, moving away from the main mass in order to get a clear shot even though she knew that would make her a better target. Because she knew that. If the hollowmen fired at her, they wouldn’t be firing at Jesse or the Unimprovables.
She watched for muzzle flashes, trying desperately to see who was shooting who in order to avoid targeting someone she cared about. Sometimes she glimpsed faces in the flashes, but the visions were brief and possibly confused. Was that Devin in the corner of the room? Was that really Mallory, looming up before her?
Something fiery snatched at her right shoulder. Wood or plastic shrapnel from the table, she assumed. A near miss. Clair ignored the pain. Dropping and slithering across the floor, she tipped over the nearest table so the top was standing vertically in front of her. Not that it would stop a bullet, but it might interfere with the infrared of anyone shooting at her. She inched forward until she could see past it, then lay with her back to the wall and fired one-handed. Someone fired back, and in the muzzle flash she thought she saw her own face glaring, hair wild and furious, eyes white all the way around her pupils.
Something punched her in the solar plexus and pushed her into the wall. She kept firing as the smell of blood flooded her nostrils. The muzzle flashes grew faint. The last thing she saw was Clair One looming over her, shouting, before darkness rose up and engulfed them both.
[26]
* * *
“I DON’T THINK the transmission is getting through. Are you sure it’s working?”
The voice was faint, as though rising up a very deep well, and it seemed to be her own. Or perhaps Clair One’s. Before she could pursue that mystery, the dream within a dream slipped out of her grasp and her eyelids flickered open. What had happened?
She saw only darkness. She smelled gunfire and blood. People were crying and moaning all around her. The floor was hard against her back. Something blazed bright and terrible in her shoulder and chest when she tried and failed to sit up. Her hands were empty. She had dropped the gun.
“Clair?” Jesse was calling her. “Clair, where are you?”
“Over here,” she gasped, distantly understanding that she had been shot, perhaps more than once. She must have blacked out for a moment. Not for long, though, because the lights were still out. The only thing that had changed was that the firing she could still hear was coming from far away, not right next to her.
Her voice was weak. She could hardly breathe. There was no fear yet, just a terrible irritation that she couldn’t do anything.
Movement nearby. She tensed, wishing she still had the gun but not able to do more than pat helplessly for it with her right hand. She found the floor around her slick with blood—more blood than seemed feasible—then the table’s edge and something soft.
A hand. Someone was lying next to her. She tugged on it. Its owner wasn’t moving. Did it belong to someone she knew?
Her lenses flickered. She heard fragments of a conversation she didn’t remember having, like Devin’s voice before the attack. Or did she? Either way, it was Wallace’s voice.
“. . . not too late, Clair, to undo the damage you’ve done.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You know what I mean. I’m offering you a second chance. You’d be a fool not to . . .”
“Clair, talk to me,” Kari cried out of the darkness. “Are you all right?”
“I’m here!” she tried to call back, but the words emerged as little more than a bubbling wheeze. That frightened her more than anything else. What if they didn’t find her in time? She could be bleeding out right now.
Light returned like a blow to her temple, momentarily blinding her.
“Over here,” Jesse shouted. “Fuck. Oh fuck.”
The first thing Clair saw when her sight returned was a woman’s face. She was lying in fr
ont of Clair, head draped over one outstretched arm, like she was resting. It was her hand that Clair had touched in the dark. Clair had never seen her before. The woman’s throat was a mess of blood.
Clair momentarily lost her breath. Had she killed her? Had this woman been trying to kill her?
Then Kari and Jesse were leaning over her, blocking the view.
“I’m all right,” she tried to tell them, but her lips and jaw wouldn’t obey her instructions. She felt heavy and full of hurt. Someone lifted her, and she grimaced, vision suddenly full of bright stars. Voices came from all sides, muffled and meaningless. She felt dizzy, and blacked out again.
[27]
* * *
“LET ME TRY. If I can refine the signal, we might just get in this time.”
That sounded liked Devin again. Another dream, or another mysterious glitch? Could she be hallucinating? How injured was she?
Hope has flown, she thought. A line from a poem she couldn’t quite place, although she knew she knew it well.
When she looked up, Kari and Jesse were exactly where they had been before, only now Kari’s hands were bloody and she was doing something to Clair’s upper body, something Clair was unable see and perhaps didn’t want to.
“Clair? Clair, answer me!”
That was Q’s voice.
Clair couldn’t move her lips to reply, but that didn’t mean her brain wasn’t working.
“Q,” she bumped. “You’re back.”
“Yes, I’m here, Clair,” came the familiar voice, sounding relieved in her ears. The old Q, not the new. Younger, more vibrant, more human, somehow. “You’re hurt.”
There was something Clair wanted to ask her, but it had slipped her mind. “Shot.”
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