“You stay with me,” Clair said, “or we’re not going at all.”
Mallory hesitated.
“You said it earlier,” Clair insisted. “Ant Wallace is looking for Clair Two and her army, not two people visiting a face sculptor.”
“All right. It’s your funeral. On three, remember?” Mallory squeezed her fingers so tightly that bone ground against bone. “One.”
They lined up on the door. Clair put Billie Lane firmly in her head and tried not to think about what it would look like if she jumped out into the hallway holding hands with Mallory Wei.
“Two.”
Beside her, Mallory tensed like a panther, and Clair noticed for the first time how muscular she was. Agewise she had to be late forties, but she had the body of an athlete in her twenties. Improvement at work?
“Three.”
Purple hair, moles on each ear, PK Sargent’s girl.
“Hey, Clair . . . huh?”
Zep had appeared in the doorway in casual fatigues, his mouth a perfect O of surprise, halting Clair in midleap.
Nobody didn’t hesitate. He pulled Zep inside and despite the massive difference in their sizes twisted him around, forcing his face forward.
“Take his hand,” he growled at Clair.
That was easy. Zep was already reaching for her, saying something confused and shocked that she paid no attention to at all.
Then Zep and Clair were gripping each other, and Mallory tugged her forward too powerfully to resist. They were going anyway. Clair stumbled but managed an awkward leap through the door, dragging Zep after her, pushed by Nobody from behind. The beginnings of Zep’s cry of alarm were lost in the airless chaos of ripping space. The Yard twisted around her with the never-normal-but-now-familiar lurch of every possible sense. Clair struggled to keep her thoughts on Billie, and on Mallory’s and Zep’s hands too, because if she lost touch with either of them there was no way to tell where they’d all end up.
The disorientation peaked with another glimpse of the floating head, and then, oddly, Sargent’s face, but she assumed that was because of where they were going.
She hoped Billie wouldn’t freak out if they arrived right on top of her.
The Yard wrenched her violently from side to side, depositing her momentarily in an icy forest in the middle of the night. “Clair!” gasped Zep. “Clair, what’s going on?” Billie, she thought, not letting her mind stray. Billie.
They ripped again, at Mallory’s wordless insistence. “Out of sorts and out of the blue,” said a voice. It was Sargent again, sounding as though she was riding along with them, but that was impossible because she was still asleep in the prison.
Solid ground hit the soles of Clair’s feet, as though she had gone from running to standing in a split instant. Her hand pulled free of Mallory’s. Zep crashed headlong into her, throwing her forward into a table, which squeaked dramatically across a tiled floor and banged into a cream-colored wall. As she lay draped across it with him pressed against her, catching her breath and feeling him do the same, Clair realized that she knew that wall and everything around it. She had seen it in the images Q had given her. To her right was a painting of a mime, and to her left fresh flowers in a wall sconce, a spray of pink, green, and purple. She could smell them.
“Where are we?” asked Zep, pushing himself off her. “What’s going on?”
“Billie’s face-sculpting practice,” she gasped. “PK Sargent’s girlfriend.”
“What are we doing here?”
“She’s not around,” said Mallory, pulling herself upright. The room was indeed empty.
“Did someone get here before us?” Clair asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Isn’t that . . . you know?” hissed Zep, pointing at Mallory. “Clair—”
“Sorry, sorry!” called a voice from the other side of a bead curtain separating the antechamber from the exam room. “I’ll be just a second.”
The voice was light and accented—predominantly British, but there was a hint of the local Irish. It had to be Billie. In case it wasn’t, Clair removed her pistol and held it behind her back. Zep’s eyes widened on seeing it.
“Be quiet, and don’t bump anyone,” she hissed at him. “I’ll explain, I promise. You just have to trust me.”
He looked ashen and afraid. “How do I know you’re really you?”
“No dupes in here, remember?” she said. “Besides, a dupe would’ve shot you rather than brought you along for the ride.”
“Take your time!” Mallory called back to Billie, casting Clair and Zep a warning look. “We’re happy to wait.”
She opened the room’s only solid door and checked the street outside. Bright daylight poured in, accompanied by a sharp, cold breeze. Mallory pulled her head back and turned the lock so they wouldn’t be disturbed. Her gaze swept across the room’s fixtures and decor as though expecting something to leap out at her at any moment.
The beads rattled. Mallory turned to face the doorway, and so did Clair and Zep.
Billie was pushing through backward, turning as she came and wiping her hands on a robin’s-egg-blue towel. She looked exactly as Clair had imagined: short, rounded, with delicate features. Her hands were small but strong, and she wore a ring that was a match for Kari Sargent’s.
“Sorry,” she said, “I had to go to the—”
On seeing the pair waiting for her, she stopped dead. Her eyes widened.
“Holy freaking hell,” she said to Clair. “It’s you.”
[33]
* * *
“SHE’S NO ONE,” said Mallory. “We’re just here for a face job.”
“Do I look stupid?” Billie glanced at Mallory, then turned back to Clair. “You’re Clair Hill, the girl everyone’s looking for. What rock have you been hiding under?”
“If only ‘everyone’ knew,” Mallory said. As she said the words, her hand slid into a pocket of her jumpsuit and Clair understood—understood beyond all shadow of a doubt—that there was a weapon in there, something small and deadly, and if she didn’t speak soon Sargent was going to lose her girlfriend a second time.
“I’ve been a bit out of it,” Clair said, stepping forward to put herself between Mallory and Billie. Her own pistol slipped harmlessly out of sight. “Kari can tell you later. You’re probably wondering what’s happened to her, and I can tell you that, too. But first, what are they saying about me? Who do they say I’ve murdered or betrayed now?”
“No one, as it happens. They just want to give you some kind of medal for saving the world.” At Clair’s look of astonishment she added, “Yeah, totally not fooling anyone. Come on through. I have a Faraday shield. Half my clients are even more skittish than you.”
Billie turned and passed through the bead curtain. Clair went to follow, but Zep caught her by the elbow.
“Tell me now!”
“Zep, calm down.”
“No, not until you explain why we’re here, with her.”
Clair didn’t look to see if Mallory was offended by the poison in his voice. She had eyes only for him. He looked so frightened and confused, so completely out of his depth, that her heart broke a little.
She reached her left hand up around his neck and pulled him down, kissed him briefly but firmly on the lips. Take that, Clair Two, she thought, with only a twinge of guilt for Libby’s feelings. She needed Zep to be calm, and part of her still needed him, period. Surprising him out of his shock was worth the risk.
“I’m still me,” she said, letting him go. “And I know what I’m doing.”
He nodded quickly. Two bright spots burned in his cheeks. She took him by the hand and led him through the curtain.
On the other side was a space barely large enough for the four of them, containing a fabber and the memory of fresh tea on the air. An actual door took them into a state-of-the-art operating room, the only human touch a picture of Sargent with a small, expressionless man who had to be PK Forest, Clair guessed. There were three chairs a
nd one surgical table, currently standing in an almost-upright position. Clair looked nervously for gleaming knives and laser saws but thankfully saw nothing of the sort.
Billie leaned against a narrow bench and indicated that they should sit. Clair and Zep did, but Mallory stayed by the door as it shut tight, sealing them in. The Air disappeared—Clair disliked being so disconnected, even from a copy of the real Air. Yet she also felt profound relief. There was no chance that anyone in either camp would find them now.
“Okay,” said Billie, folding her arms. “You know Kari, so that’s working in your favor, but you’d better tell me how you know her before moving on to specifics. I’m clumsy when I’m nervous.”
Clair glanced at Mallory, who indicated that she was to do the talking. Not knowing quite where to start, Clair decided to leave out all the backstory about Improvement and the dupes and the hollowmen and the Yard, and focus solely on how Sargent was protecting them from corrupt PKs and lawmakers, and how Clair needed to get close to them in order to bring them down.
“Hence the face job,” Billie said, nodding. “Well, I’m available. None of my bookings have turned up today. Did you have something to do with that?”
Clair shook her head. “It’s hard to explain—”
“They’re dead,” said Mallory. “That’s why we’re here: to stop anyone else from dying. Are you going to help us or not?”
Billie looked at her and smiled, not at all intimidated by Mallory’s aggressive tone.
“I would like to talk to Kari first,” she said.
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because she would try to stop you.”
“Why would she do that, pray tell?”
“Because she would rather kill me on sight than entrust me with Clair.”
“And you?” Billie asked Zep, who looked up from his hands in surprise. “What do you think, handsome?”
“I don’t know,” he said, looking from Billie to Clair and back again. “I’m not even supposed to be here.”
“I guessed. That’s why I’m asking you.”
He sat straighter, out of the slump he had fallen into. “Clair thinks it could work. That’s enough for me.”
“What about this one?” Billie nodded at Mallory. “How do you know she’s not luring Clair into a trap?”
“I don’t know that.” Zep’s voice rose in challenge. “That’s why I’m going to go with them.”
“You’re not,” said Mallory.
“You can’t stop me. If you try, I’ll tell the others and they’ll stop you.”
Clair felt a moment of panic. She didn’t want Zep coming with her into danger, but she remembered the threat of violence in Mallory when it seemed that Billie was about to give them away. He was in trouble whichever way he went.
And it was all Clair’s fault. If she could send him back in time and have him choose another corridor to walk down, she would.
But she couldn’t. She had to find a way to make it work.
“He has to come with us,” she said, suddenly seeing a solution to the standoff. “Wallace will want someone on the inside of the prison to get past the Yetis. If we bring Zep, Wallace will let us right into the center. He won’t be able to resist. And it’ll distract him, stop him from noticing me if I’m doing anything wrong.”
Mallory looked trapped for a second, but then she nodded. “All right. But if he tries anything—”
“I’ll only try anything if you try anything,” Zep said.
They glared at each other, and Clair felt another momentary qualm. Zep was loyal but impulsive. What if he said the wrong thing at the wrong time and gave them away? What if instead of being an asset, he became a liability?
They would have to cross that hurdle when they came to it. There was a lot to do before then.
“Will you help us?” Clair asked Billie.
The face sculptor looked down at the floor. Her shoulders rose as she breathed in deeply, then fell as she exhaled.
“If I don’t, you’ll just find some corner hack who’ll make you look like Frankenstein’s leftovers,” she said. “So, yes, to spare you that. Who do you want to look like?”
Mallory sent her an image of Nobody. Clair expected Billie to react with surprise, perhaps even alarm. The height difference was small, but that was the least of their worries. Blond hair, pale skin, male . . . Could the differences between them have been any greater?
Instead Billie just nodded and spoke in a businesslike tone. “Armor, gloves, and lifts will cover the difference in build. We’ll treat the visible skin of the face and neck, and the hair, of course. Your features will require some tissue prosthetics to bring them into line. As for the rest . . . how much time do we have?”
“The longer it takes, the more likely our absence will be noticed,” said Mallory.
“Not long, then.” Unexpectedly, Billie grinned. “It’s a good thing we’re not involving Kari. There are aspects of my work that not even she knows about.”
Yet another qualm, but it was too late for second thoughts.
“What do I do?” Clair asked, standing.
“Come stand here next to the table, pretty girl, and we’ll get started.”
[34]
* * *
SCANNING CAME FIRST. Clair was afraid that she would have to take off all her clothes, but Billie asked her to peel her undersuit only down to her waist.
“Turn around,” she told Zep, and he did so with only a token protest.
“Now I know you’re really you,” he bumped her, lens to lens.
“And I know you’ll never change,” she bumped back, remembering the feel of his lips against hers. She had really earned Libby’s ire now—even though she was sure she wasn’t going to take this further . . . wasn’t she?
Once Billie had created a detailed map of Clair’s body, from her skin right down to her bones, the table tilted back and the work truly began. To keep her still, Billie gave her a tranquilizing patch that she promised wouldn’t knock her out for hours. Clair drifted in a hazy, not-quite-asleep state into which occasional words and phrases intruded. Her body felt pleasantly distant.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Zep bumped her.
She found it hard to make her lenses work. “No choice.”
“Much better than biology class, though,” he said. “Maybe you’ll get credit when school starts again.”
She was buoyed by his confidence, but also somewhat saddened by it. He really thought they would get out of the Yard and everything would go back to normal. But how would that work with so many people dead? They could re-create all the buildings and cities they wanted, but without people to occupy them, without the majority of teachers and students and parents and children, the world would feel very empty.
“If,” she corrected him, feeling like a killjoy but knowing someone had to say it.
“I dissected a frog once who was as cynical as you,” Zep said. “It didn’t end well for him.”
“Never expected,” Clair replied, pretty sure she wasn’t talking about the two of them, but her thoughts were sliding around the inside of her skull like eels on ice, “a happy ending.”
“That’s what your mom—”
“Don’t!”
“Yes, definitely still you.”
“Have you got video of the subject?” Billie asked Mallory at one point. “You’ll need to coach her on vocal and behavioral tics.”
“He’s got plenty of those.”
“You can definitely put her back afterward?” said Zep.
“The only thing I won’t restore is her hair,” said Billie. “Best if that grows out naturally.”
Clair went to touch her scalp, anxious at what was being done up there, but she couldn’t even lift a finger. The anxiety immediately faded, becoming a numb kind of curiosity. She wished there were a mirror above her so she could see. What would it look like as her face was flayed off and then laid back on a different way?
That was how she imagined it—like Zep’s dissected frog. But the reality, she was sure, was much less invasive. There would be hair-thin needles and implants for stimulating muscles and fat emplacements to make her look more masculine around the jaw and throat. Her skin would be repigmented by chemicals, or perhaps by adding some sort of overcoat? If the latter, she hoped it wouldn’t peel away in the middle of her mission and reveal her true identity. . . .
That triggered a half dream in which she imagined herself standing in front of Ant Wallace, a man she had never met, and her face fell off, only to reveal exactly the same face underneath—and then that face falling off to reveal exactly the same face again, and so on and so on.
That amused her, for reasons she couldn’t fathom.
“Well, Chuckles,” said Zep, leaning momentarily into view, “I’m glad someone’s having fun.”
“Perhaps I should dial back the patch a little,” said Billie.
No, Clair wanted to say through lips as immobile as two toothbrushes taped together. If I don’t laugh, I’ll cry.
After first being copied, and now losing her face, the question of who she was was getting increasingly hard to answer.
Whatever Billie did to the patch, it made time jump forward in hard-to-fathom increments. When Zep talked to her, his words faded from memory as quickly as he said them. If she replied, she later had no memory of what she said.
Clair had another strange dream in which a metallic cylinder descended over her, surrounding her with distorted reflections that couldn’t possibly be of her. There were flashes of light, but she couldn’t blink. Her eyes watered, then dried out, then the cylinder was gone and she was able to close her eyelids again.
Mere moments seemed to pass when the table was moving underneath her, bringing her to a position that wasn’t quite vertical, but was a long way from the horizontal she’d been enjoying. Her head spun. She raised a hand to steady herself, and was numbly surprised when her hand did actually move.
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