by Sean Platt
“Why?”
“Because you are a person of interest in this matter and Ms. Norris isn’t. Lack of forthrightness will only make you seem guilty.”
Ephraim exploded from his chair, facing the seated agent and the tan one standing by his side, both more or less unfazed. “Guilty? I’m not the criminal here! That guy Neven is! Eden is!”
The room’s audience lowered their heads again, taking notes.
The enforcer put his tongue in his cheek, fixed Ephraim for another second, then set his tablet on a small end table. He crossed his arms, leaned back, and looked up.
“Tell me, Mr. Todd. When you were on the island, did you partake of an illegal drug called Lucky Scream?”
“Did I …?”
“Because that’s one thing we did hear from the others. One such witness was Gus Harmon, who seems to be no stranger to illicit substances. He said you mentioned trying Lucky Scream. Or Altruance did.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“Lucky Scream is more than a powerful hallucinogen. It’s extremely persistent within the body. It grabs hold of your brain and hangs on, like LSD. You can trip days after you’ve taken it. Weeks. Months. Sometimes, even years.”
“I only took it once.”
The enforcer nodded. “Right before you saw the ‘thing without a face,’ right? And the mower ran over it, but nobody cared, and the other blank-faced things stood around doing nothing while you and Altruance were screaming?”
Ephraim waited, assuming the question was rhetorical, and unsure what to say if it wasn’t.
“That’s what you said in your report, right? But when you came back to the same spot minutes later, everything was gone. All evidence. All record of it ever happening.”
“Eden was covering things up. They followed me around the entire time I was there. They broke into my house, for fuck’s sake, and stole my bloody clothes!”
“And shortly after, another of those ‘Nolon clones’ showed up at your door, right? And you killed it — also leaving no evidence.”
“They—”
“Who is Doctor Scully, Mr. Todd?”
Ephraim’s brow furrowed. “What? Why do you—?”
“He’s your psychiatrist, isn’t he?” The agent put a finger to his chin. “Now, I forget. What was his diagnosis on you, again?”
Ephraim bristled, his face suddenly hot. How did GEM have his medical records?
“That’s none of your goddamn business.”
“It was ‘extreme paranoia,’ wasn’t it? ‘Delusions of persecution.’ Seems you always think someone is following you. Seems that for you, it’s not exactly a new thing to doubt your sanity — and whether what you see and remember happened.”
Ephraim clenched his jaw, refusing to meet the enforcer’s eyes.
“I won’t lie to you, Mr. Todd. Things don’t look great for you right now. People died on that island while you were there, and one of them was arguably the best athlete the world has ever known.”
“Neven shot him! I tried to—”
“The whole of Eden coincidentally went up in flames right after you left its shores. The guests we’ve spoken to, who were there with you, won’t say anything disparaging about Eden, maybe because they’re honoring their nondisclosures and maybe because there’s nothing bad to say. But what they will say — and have said to us — is that Ephraim Todd struck them as one seriously erratic guy. That he was sort of scary. Your friends on the island? They all questioned your stability, Ephraim. You didn’t fool anyone. And more than one of those people, without us saying a peep, said they had the feeling that we were asking them questions because someone was building a case against you.”
“Against—”
“But that’s none of my business,” the enforcer said, waving a hand. “I’m here to deal with the allegations about clones. I’m here for your ‘celebrity sex slaves,’ if they exist. There are ways around ‘international waters’ if the right people see sufficient reason to investigate Eden. I’m not your enemy, Ephraim. But you do have enemies. Maybe even a whole world full of them. People loved Wallace Connolly before your little incident took him off the air. And they loved Eden before it burned. Even if they couldn’t ever go there, Eden’s mere existence gave them hope. Everyone wants to be young again. Live forever. Eden stoked that hope. But now?” He made a small explosion with his hand. “Poof!”
“Look,” Ephraim said, fighting for control that should have been there all along, “I feel like I’m not presenting myself right. When I talked to Fiona, we were both positive that—”
“I need you to meet with Hershel Wood, head of GEM,” the enforcer said. “Even though I’m not a cop, Mr. Wood is. We’re investigators, but he has pull — to help you or bury you, as the situation demands. Don’t waste your breath on me, Ephraim. You want a little tip? Circle your wagons — talk to Fiona Roberson if you want — and figure out what story you want to tell Wood.”
“I—”
The agent cut him off.
“Just don’t leave the country while you’re thinking, okay? As bad an idea as it would be to refuse GEM’s questions, it would be a much worse idea to run from us, like your brother did after his little scandal.”
It was a low blow. Ephraim wanted to strike back but was unable to. There was something there. Distant and elusive. He couldn’t put his finger on it.
“What is it?” the enforcer asked, noting Ephraim’s face.
“My brother, Jonathan …”
Regrouping. Thinking. Dammit, what was he forgetting?
But then he had it. He knew what was missing. He’d gotten lost in today’s manipulations, but there was a reason he’d come into this deposition feeling so confident. He had acres of reasons to know the world would believe he was telling the truth.
How had he forgotten? He didn’t merely have hearsay or his word to back up his story. He had proof. Concrete, irrefutable proof.
“What about Jonathan’s MyLife implant?” Ephraim shook his head, correcting himself. “The clone’s implant, I mean. Look at the footage recorded on the MyLife I removed from the clone’s eye back on Eden. That implant recorded everything I saw and everything he did before I even arrived. Everything’s there: Neven’s plans, what Eden was up to, and all the video of clones in cages you could ever want. Check it! Check the MyLife I gave you, and you’ll see I’m telling the truth.”
And they’d have to see. He hadn’t just delivered the incriminating device; he and Fiona had plugged it into her computer and watched the footage together. The recordings were crystal clear. A confession delivered by a dead man.
Ephraim smiled with victory, but the enforcer’s face didn’t drop. Instead, he turned to the tan man with the white hair beside him, then to a group of suited men and women behind them. All were shaking their heads as they murmured.
Something was wrong.
“Watch the footage,” Ephraim said again. “Look at what Fiona and I gave you, and you’ll see!”
The agent and the man beside him turned to a particularly well-dressed woman in the front row of the gallery behind him — apparently the superior who held GEM’s answers. The entire room followed the others’ gaze, waiting for whatever the agent in charge might say, vindicating Ephraim and his lunacy.
But instead she said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Todd, but our office has no record of a confiscated implant, or of any MyLife evidence at all.”
CHAPTER 2
TRADE SECRETS
Fiona didn’t seem bothered, worried, or even surprised by what happened to Ephraim during his GEM interview. Her indifference — made all the more obvious by her condition’s robbing her of body language — made ranting impossible to maintain. Ephraim sat, tired of the one-sided argument.
“Are you finished?” she asked.
“We were in this together,” Ephraim said, stung. “You and me.”
“First of all, it’s not that we’re ‘in this together’ so much as I hired you to do
a job. You had your motives, and I have mine. Now we’re aligned in that you don’t want to end up in trouble, and I don’t want you to end up in any because I still need you.”
“You need my help,” Ephraim clarified.
Fiona rolled her eyes. “Come on, Ephraim. Let’s not pretend you’re doing this out of loyalty to me or any desire to help.”
It felt like splitting hairs, but that was something Fiona did exceptionally well. A lifetime of depending on others for the simplest tasks had instilled her with a particular breed of pride. The things she was good at (like business and intellect), made her remarkable. They were playing a game of strategy, and it wasn’t surprising that Fiona wanted to make the stakes and lines exceptionally clear.
But as Ephraim met her deep brown eyes, he found her logic almost icy. His brother had died — maybe a long time ago, replaced by the clone Ephraim himself had dispatched — but to Fiona, Jonathan was another piece on the chess board.
He remembered Neven’s accusation: She took out insurance and sent someone to erase you.
But Fiona’s calculating nature didn’t make her automatically untrustworthy. She infuriated him often, but he’d thought about what Neven had said and eventually decided that Fiona was on his side. She hadn’t planted Altruance as his enemy. And for that matter, Altruance was dead, not alive and conspiring with her. Believing anything else (that Fiona was an enemy, that Altruance was alive and an enemy) were the delusions of a madman.
“It doesn’t matter, though,” Fiona continued. “We both want Eden exposed, same as when we started. I know you want revenge for Jonathan — assuming he isn’t alive.”
“He’s dead. I can feel it. I don’t know if Connolly or Neven—
(or you)
—killed him, but I feel his murder in my gut.”
Ephraim blinked at Fiona. He imagined her dead limbs throttling the real Jonathan’s throat. There was a flash of irrational anger. And then it was gone.
Fiona seemed to consider, disagree, then finally decide not to argue. If Ephraim wanted to feign omniscience, Fiona seemed willing to let him.
“GEM told me they didn’t have the MyLife. That’s why they didn’t believe me.”
Fiona met Ephraim’s eyes. After several seconds, she said, “I know.”
“What do you mean, you know?”
“MyLife doesn’t want memories copied, Ephraim. Pulling information from one of their devices is extremely difficult. Nobody would want implantable tech if they thought it made their lives any less private, so the encryption and copy protection is nearly unbreakable. Imagine the black market on memories. The boyfriends and husbands of hot starlets would carry their lives in their hands. Records of their sex lives with the world’s most desired people would be worth millions. You can’t just plug a MyLife in and copy it like a slip drive. I need what’s on Jonathan’s, and for it to not self-destruct during decryption. It’s painstaking work, and what’s there is confidential. I couldn’t hand it off.”
Ephraim blubbered. He couldn’t possibly be hearing this.
“Wait. You did this on purpose? You told me you gave the MyLife to GEM, but you never did?”
“I thought I’d be finished with it by now,” Fiona said, matter-of-factly. “I was wrong.”
Ephraim shot to his feet. He felt his face go red. “We had an agreement! The whole world already thinks I burned Eden down, and now GEM won’t clear my name because you won’t give them proof that I’m innocent? Because you wanted the fucking MyLife for … for …!”
“The agreement was for a trade!” Fiona snapped. “You were supposed to get me the information I needed, and in turn, I promised to get you onto Eden so you could find your brother. There was never any discussion of GEM, or of me surrendering my half of the bargain to make you look better.”
“Look better? They’re going to arrest me!”
“Nobody’s going to arrest you. GEM doesn’t have the authority.”
“But others do, and once they decide to—”
“Relax. It won’t go that far.”
Ephraim forced himself to take a big breath. He faced Fiona, finding her maddeningly calm and assured like always.
“They think it was all my fault, Fiona.”
“Who?”
“Everyone. You should see the looks I get, just walking down the streets. Everyone thinks Eden was paradise and Wallace Connolly was a saint.”
Fiona watched him with a mild expression on her face.
“Promise me you’ll give it to them, Fiona. Soon.”
She answered obliquely. “In time. But it doesn’t matter. They can’t crack it. Not without cooperation from the FBI and either the MyLife owner’s consent — which I don’t think they’re going to get — or a warrant. Red tape on seizing mental property is miles long, and you’d need a room full of NextGen processors to decrypt it without Jonathan’s key.”
“So what good is it to you?”
“I own Riverbed, Ephraim. I have a room full of NextGen processors, and I don’t require red tape.”
Fiona eyed him like the matter was settled, but Ephraim wasn’t ready to surrender. “Then invite them in. You crack it, then show them what’s on it.”
“Not until I can remove what I need. I won’t show it to GEM until certain sectors can be copied and erased. It’s full of trade secrets.”
“Eden’s trade secrets.”
“That I paid for,” Fiona countered. “Handsomely.”
There was another long moment, but Ephraim knew he was outmatched.
“You don’t need to convince anyone you’re telling the truth just yet; you just need to keep GEM off your back,” Fiona said. “Let the wider world hate you if they need to. Half the world hates me. It’s not so bad once you get used to it.”
“How am I supposed to keep GEM off my back without the proof on that MyLife?”
“The man they want you to meet with, Hershel Wood? He’s the head of GEM. It’s a cushy job that gives him far more discretionary power than any one person should have. He, by himself, is like the UN of genetic law. Win Hershel Wood over, and the rest is easy.”
“Again,” Ephraim said, “how?”
“Oversight Chair is an elected position. He had to campaign for it, and I was his biggest contributor by far. Frankly, he owes me. You’ll need to meet with Wood, but I’ll talk to him first. Consider it handled. Better?”
No, it wasn’t better. But Ephraim nodded anyway.
“Do you believe me?”
Nodding again took an extra second. The MyLife debacle had punched him in the face. Believing and trusting were difficult after such an overt betrayal.
Fiona put her lips to the steering wand and rotated her wheelchair to follow Ephraim as he reached the windows, looking out.
“I know how I can help myself, even if you won’t,” he said.
Fiona didn’t bite at the jab. Instead, she said, “How?”
“There must be clones out in the world. They couldn’t all have burned on Eden. I’ll find one that’s already been sold. Or I'll find whoever’s selling them.”
Fiona laughed. “And how are you going to do that? Type ‘celebrity sex clone’ into Google and see what comes up?”
“I know they exist. That’s a head start. I know about Neven and Islet 09. I know a bit about how the process works and how long it takes. I heard names mentioned on Eden.” He nodded, knowing he was only trying to convince himself. Then, forcing certainty, he said, “I can find them.”
“Ephraim …”
“I can’t just let it go and wait for you to decide to help me,” he said, sensing the usual argument. “Sophie is sure that all of her clones were destroyed when Eden burned, but I’m not. I told you; I saw a Young Sophie and Young Altruance, and their level of ‘programming’ or ‘brain transfer’ or whatever damn near fooled me. Sophie’s a hot property. I’ll bet they fast-tracked her clones. Sent a few off-island right away.”
“You don’t know that,” Fiona said.
“Sophie doesn’t need your help. She doesn’t want your help. I heard she’s refused GEM’s requests to come in and help you.”
That stung. Ephraim and Sophie had talked a lot at first, but as time passed they’d transitioned to talking not at all. Ephraim thought he knew what was happening. Sophie was trying to forget. She was trying to believe the lie. It was easier than the truth — especially since the whole world believed otherwise and there wasn’t any proof to contradict it.
If Sophie convinces herself that it never happened, then she’ll decide I’m the bad guy.
“Come over here,” Fiona said, her wheelchair whirring away behind him. “I have something to show you.”
CHAPTER 3
LEVERAGE AND INSURANCE
Fiona’s assistant Maria entered the office. She looked down at her boss, awaiting instructions.
Fiona said, “Show him the Quarry.”
Ephraim glanced at Fiona but looked back as Maria bent to open a low cabinet. Inside was a safe, a keypad, and a smaller box — apparently anchored to the bottom of the safe — that required a fingerprint to access.
Maria reached into the box and straightened. She turned and stood before Ephraim with her hands out flat, a small arc-shaped black device resting on her palms.
“This,” Fiona said as if she were holding the thing, “is a device deep in Riverbed’s R&D, fully functional but very much not ready for primetime. We call it Quarry, and it’s something Wallace Connolly — rest his soul, apparently — would very much like to have seen reach the light of day.”
Ephraim looked at the device. It was thin, about the size of a hair clip, like matte black metal in the shape of a flattened rainbow, thin in the middle, with larger flat areas on each end.
Maria held it out farther. Ephraim decided he was being asked to pick it up. The item was feather-light, easy to forget he was holding.
“What is it?”
“The reason Wallace and I parted ways.”
