“Stop it!” I snap. “Can’t you see the guy’s upset?” I pound on the door behind us. “Guard! Guard! We’re done here!”
“So soon?” Glen queries. “This is just starting to get interesting. For example, since there’s you, I deduce that there are others like you. And not all of them were spliced off a tech billionaire. I’m guessing there were other candidates to donate DNA, and at least some lacked the willpower to say no. Who can imagine what Little League of super-villains might be loose upon the world?”
“You’re wrong,” I shoot back. “The experiment was evil, but we’re not villains.”
The door opens and the guard hustles us out. The last words I hear from the Crossword Killer chill me to the bone.
“So far . . .”
We’re still kids. It’s early yet. Who knows better than this man how it feels to be a criminal mastermind? He wasn’t murdering yet when he was our age. Plenty of time to fulfill the horrible promise of our DNA.
Except me. My DNA is pure tech wizard. The only criminal part is the part that collaborated with Felix Hammerstrom to dream up Project Osiris. Which might be just as twisted, when you think about it.
We pass through the various layers of security and eventually make our way out to the car.
“So,” asks the chauffeur, “how did it go?”
“Take us back to the studio,” is the only answer he gets from Blake.
We get in the limo only to get out again so the gate sentries can search it. And it’s not just the trunk. They pull off the seats and examine the undercarriage with mirrors. I’m not even impatient. If this is what it takes to keep Bartholomew Glen where he belongs, I’m all for it.
The shock is fading, and in its place, pure relief is pouring in. Twenty minutes ago, I believed I was an exact replica of the worst person on earth, and now I know I’m not.
I’m not, I’m not, I’m not!
At last, we’re on the freeway, heading south toward LA. Blake looks so agitated that I figure I owe him an explanation, especially since I lured him here without ever once mentioning the word clone.
I close the partition so the driver can’t overhear us, and face him across the backseat. “We’re not monsters, you know. We’re a hundred percent human, even though we didn’t start out the same way as everybody else. I’m sorry to drag you into it. But something really awful was done to us, and we have to try to get to the bottom of it.”
It does nothing to settle him down. “So are we, like, cousins or something?”
“Actually, I think I’m your great aunt,” I tell him ruefully. “But since I’m a guy, maybe it counts as uncle. I’m still fuzzy on that one. I just found out about it myself.”
I can tell he’s working hard to keep his anger under control. “You asked me to go with you, and I went. Now I want you out of my life. Take your girlfriend and get away from my studio. And if I ever hear about you posing as me again, I’m calling the cops.”
I suppose I should be insulted, but I can’t really blame him. I yanked him out of his comfortable life and dropped him into the insanity that’s Project Osiris. And it’s all so weird that he can’t even tell anybody about me—not without looking crazy himself.
“That’s good for me too,” I assure him. “We’ll be out of your hair as soon as I pick up Tori. You’ll never see me again.” I’m guessing we won’t ever end up sitting across from each other at Tamara Dunleavy’s Thanksgiving dinner table.
Tamara Dunleavy! I’m still having trouble wrapping my mind around it. Sure, it’s better than being cloned from a bank robber or a terrorist or mob boss—and a huge boost from Bartholomew Glen. But the Osiris experiment was all about cloning master criminals. Why would she use her own DNA?
Soon, the freeways widen, and I can tell we’re in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Then the car is tooling along the palm tree–lined boulevard that leads to Atomic Studios.
“I’ll make sure you get in the gate and back to your girl,” Blake says to me. “After that, I want you gone.”
“Promise.” The least I can do is leave him alone.
Soon, we’re on studio property, pulling to the curb at Bungalow 149.
I start up the walkway. He calls after me, “I’m glad you didn’t turn out to be that Glen guy.”
“Me too,” I reply with a little smile.
The window whispers shut and the car moves off.
I give the secret knock and get no answer. When I try the knob, the door swings wide. I frown. It’s not like Tori to be so careless. But I’m practically bursting to tell her. It’s not every day a guy learns he’s not cloned from a serial killer.
She’s sitting behind the desk, and the look on her face tells me, without a word, that something is very wrong. I take a step toward her, and she shakes her head no. That’s when I notice the duct tape wrapped around her arms, imprisoning her in the chair.
Two tall men in dark suits burst out of the other room.
“Run, Eli!” Tori cries.
Yet running never even occurs to me. In my mind, being separated is worse than being captured. Whatever happens to her has to happen to me too.
Knowing it’s hopeless, I prepare to fight for both of us. I turn on our attackers, assuming they must be Purple People Eaters. But instead, I recognize them as the two who tried to kidnap Tori from that parking lot in Amarillo.
I pick up the nearest object—a floor lamp—and swing it at them. It turns out to be a mistake. The bigger one grabs it and hauls me in like a fish on a line. Desperately, I bury my elbow in his stomach. The guy doesn’t even flinch. Powerful arms imprison me, and soon I find myself duct-taped too, my arms locked behind my back.
I say the first thing that comes to mind. “If anything happens to us, you’ll never see your car again!”
They laugh like I’ve just told the funniest joke in the world. The next piece of duct tape goes over my mouth. Tori is silenced too, so at least she can’t accuse me of putting up a lousy fight.
They toss us in the back of a closed panel truck marked FLARE STUNT SERVICES AND PYROTECHNICS and throw a tarp over us. I’m on the verge of losing it. If we’re going back to Project Osiris, then everything we’ve been through was for nothing. And with Malik and Amber already captured—or worse—we represent the last hope that the Osiris clones will get any kind of justice. All that’s gone now.
The drive is endless—or maybe it just feels that way because of our fear of what lies at the end of it. Our brief time away from Serenity was far from fun, but it was freedom, and that means everything. Conversation is impossible, but I can read the desolation in Tori’s eyes. Is this where our quest comes to an end? Taped up in the back of a stunt truck?
At long last, we seem to go down a ramp, and after a few quick turns, come to a stop. Our captors get out of the cab. A moment later, the payload doors swing wide and the tarp is pulled off us.
I sit up, expecting to see Felix Hammerstrom and some of the other Osiris parents.
Our two captors haul us out of the truck and stand us up on the concrete of a dimly lit parking garage.
Out of the gloom, a figure comes walking toward us—a tall older woman dressed in an elegant business suit and immaculate white sneakers.
Tamara Dunleavy.
13
MALIK BRUDER
Laska!
Why did I have to get paired up with her? I’m amazed that prison in Florida where they’ve got Mickey Seven hasn’t melted down into the earth’s core just because there’s someone like Laska locked up there.
You’re going to get us arrested! She must have told me that fifty times. Sure enough, here we are, arrested. And who got us that way? Laska.
I should have hung her out to dry when that cop showed up at Gus’s place. He wasn’t there to bust me. I didn’t dump mashed potatoes on anybody. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to blend in with Lenny and the guys while Laska got marched away in handcuffs. What, her? Never seen her before in my life.
That’s my problem—I
’m too nice. And that means Gus was probably nice too. Everybody says he was this ruthless, psycho mob boss, but deep down, I think he was just like me. Too bad I didn’t get to know him better.
His last words keep haunting me. Not because they were so scary or anything like that, but because they made zero sense. Maybe that’s because he was already starting to die, so his mind was shutting down. I was hoping his message would turn out to be that he regretted his life of crime, because, in his heart, he was a pretty good guy. That might have helped me feel a little better about the whole death part. Or not. Who knows? Watching the person you’re cloned from croak right in front of you is a weird experience. And it’s not like there’s somebody I can talk to about it, since I’m the only one it’s ever happened to.
Whatever. There’s no point in rehashing all that. When that cop put the cuffs on Laska, I went with them, stupid me. I was so shaken up by Gus biting the big one that it never occurred to me that the real problem wasn’t who threw mashed potatoes on who. It was the fact that we’re two kids with no ID, no parents, no home. They aren’t going to cut us loose until they have an adult to take charge of us. That’s never going to happen. Or maybe it is, which would be even worse. If Chicago PD has us all over the internet as these poor lost kids, eventually Project Osiris is going to send somebody to reel us in.
So here I am, sitting next to Laska in the interrogation room. I can’t begin to guess how long we’ve been here. Long enough to be fed stale sandwiches three times, and watch the shift change at least twice. At first, they questioned us separately, so they could check to see if our stories matched. We didn’t give them any stories. Even Laska has the brains to keep her big mouth shut for a change.
The craziest part is this: Amber doesn’t regret anything. In her mind, that cop was violating the rules of the soup kitchen, and she had the obligation to stop him any way she could. In this case, with mashed potatoes.
“It’s not about the potatoes!” I hiss at her, pretty sure the room is bugged. “Don’t you understand? We’re kids! They’re not going to let us go till they can turn us over to a parent or guardian. Best-case scenario, we both wind up in orphanages. Worst case, it’s the Purples.”
She’s been defiant all day, but the hours and hours of interrogation have finally worn her down. Her face falls. “I’m sorry, Malik. This is completely my fault.”
And then two big tears roll down her cheeks. Laska—who wouldn’t cry if you poured molten lava over her head. So instead of letting her have it, I tell her, “It’s my fault too. Maybe we can still get out of this.” Like I said, too nice.
The snap of the lock makes both of us jump. The door opens and in walks the mashed potatoes cop. He must have started a new shift, since he has a fresh uniform on. He’s accompanied by a partner, a younger woman who looks huge in her bulletproof vest.
“How long do we have to stay here?” I ask.
Wordlessly, they handcuff us both behind our backs and march us out of the interrogation room. I see a third officer feeding our file into a large paper shredder.
“Why are you destroying our file?” Amber demands. “What are you going to do to us?”
“It was only mashed potatoes!” I add.
We get no answer. They guide us through the police station, out to the parking lot, and stuff us into a squad car. Danny and Torque talked about this once—how “going for a ride” doesn’t mean sightseeing. The guy in the backseat is only traveling one way. It’s something that happens in Gus’s world, but I never would have believed the police do it too.
“Listen,” I whisper as we pull out into traffic. “The minute they let us out of the car, we run.”
“No talking,” Mashed Potatoes calls over his shoulder.
We drive for maybe ten or fifteen minutes—it’s hard to estimate time when you’re scared out of your mind. It’s a clear day. The sun is high in the sky. I’m guessing it’s early afternoon. Danny and Torque never gave details about where these “rides” end up, but I’m picturing woods, where no one can see what you’re doing. This is definitely not that—we’re still in the city. The tall buildings of downtown are no more than a couple of miles away.
We drive in through a very high gate to a small private airport. The car moves straight up to a gleaming Gulfstream jet and stops. Okay, so we’re not about to be murdered, but this could be even worse. A private plane, police cooperation—it has Project Osiris written all over it.
The two cops haul us out of the backseat and remove our handcuffs. I look at Laska and mumble a single word. “Now.”
We take off like a couple of gazelles, sprinting flat out. She’s faster than me, so I get tackled first. I leave a lot of my chin and at least one elbow on the tarmac. Lying there bleeding, Mashed Potatoes’ knee in the small of my back, I watch as Laska almost makes it to the gate.
She must see what happened to me, because she hesitates.
I shout, “Keep running!” but it’s too late. The lady cop brings her down.
Amber struggles against her all the way back. Mickey Seven to the end. I’m almost proud of her, which is stupid, considering she’s to blame for the trouble we’re in. We’re frog-marched to the jet, up the fold-down stairs, and forced into the cabin.
Amber freezes and I smack into her from behind. I can sense her whole body recoiling in shock.
“Tori!” she breathes.
It’s Tori, who we haven’t seen since we took off down that river in Texas. Eli’s there too. He’s actually wearing a smile, instead of his usual computer-screen coma.
“We thought you were dead!” the four of us blurt, practically in unison.
The girls leap into each other’s arms. I clap Frieden on the shoulder. But in the middle of this happy reunion, it hits me. Eli and Tori were either dead or captured. Since they’re not dead, that leaves caught. And if they’re caught, so are we.
I motion toward the closed cockpit door and murmur, “Purples?”
“Not exactly—” Eli begins.
And then the last thing I expect happens. A hatch from a private cabin opens and out steps Tamara Dunleavy. Suddenly, everything makes sense—this must be her plane! I should have known. The stuff she told us about splitting from Osiris—pure baloney. She founded it and she’s been pulling the strings from day one! And Hammerstrom and the others work for her!
“Liar!” I accuse. “You said you never heard of Osiris! You are Osiris!”
Eli wraps his arms around me and plants his shoulder in the center of my chest to keep me from rushing at the founder of VistaNet. “Malik—it’s okay! She’s on our side!”
“Why would you believe anything she tells you?” I roar. “All those years we sat in Happy Valley, taking Contentment class and being studied by people who pretended to be our parents—she was behind that! Every time we pledged allegiance with unity and gladness for all! And you don’t think she deserves to be tossed out of this jet at thirty thousand feet?”
“Malik!” Tori exclaims. “Calm down!”
“Calm? I’m Gus Alabaster, remember? Nobody knows that better than her!” I turn furious eyes on the billionaire. “You’re the one who hit Gus up for my DNA! He told me himself, so don’t try to deny it!”
I’m just getting started, but when I stop to catch my breath for more yelling, Tamara Dunleavy surprises me again by saying quietly, “You’re absolutely right.”
“Huh?”
“I lied when I said I’d never heard of Project Osiris,” she confesses. “And it’s true that I cofounded the whole thing—Felix and I. But I dropped out when I realized what an unethical experiment it was. And I assumed that it had been canceled when I withdrew the financial backing. When you kids found me in Jackson Hole, I was so shocked that my first impulse was to deny everything.”
“They got the money anyway,” Amber supplies. “C. J. Rackoff had it in secret bank accounts.”
“Rackoff,” Ms. Dunleavy repeats. “One of our original DNA donor candidates. Not a murderer, but a
merciless swindler. It’s a good thing he’ll never see the light of day again.”
“Actually,” Frieden admits, “we broke him out of jail. He promised to help us tell our story to the world. He tricked us—him and Hector, his clone.”
Ms. Dunleavy takes this in. “So now there are two of him out there.”
Maybe, as the gangster guy, I’m a thug at heart, not a thinker. But there’s one question that’s been bugging me ever since I found out who and what I am. “Okay, so you dropped out of Osiris when you realized it was bad. But before that, you must have thought it was good. What made you want to do it in the first place?”
She’s silent for a long moment. “I had a younger brother—Jonas,” she replies finally. “A good boy; a sweet boy. But with a wild side. He got mixed up with the wrong crowd and wound up in prison for a petty theft.” Her face tightens. “He was killed by another inmate. The news shattered my family. Jonas wasn’t evil—just foolish. He needed guidance. That’s what the justice system should have provided. I thought Project Osiris could change things—prove to the corrections system that their focus should be on rehabilitation, not punishment.”
“How does cloning crooks do that?” asks Laska.
“By proving that no one has evil in their DNA. If exact genetic copies of criminals could be raised to be good people, then anyone could be reformed with positive nurturing instead of long prison sentences.” She sighs emotionally. “It was a brilliant hypothesis. No one could ever say that Felix Hammerstrom isn’t a gifted scientist.”
“Unless you’re one of the freaks they cooked up to make a point,” I put in bitterly. We Alabasters aren’t the forgiving type.
Ms. Dunleavy nods sadly. “I came to realize that. I should have seen it sooner, but I was obsessed with getting justice for my brother after the fact. And anyway, I was positive the whole thing had died out.” She turns to Eli. “And when you appeared—a virtual twin of my grandnephew, claiming to be an Osiris clone—I knew that Felix had done the unthinkable and cloned me.”
That gets my attention. “Cloned you? What’s up with that? Frieden’s cloned from that Glen guy—the Crossword Killer.”
Payback Page 10
