by Sean Platt
It buzzed again, and he turned it off. He looked up at Sophie, then forced himself to smile when he saw her puzzled expression.
“Prank call,” he explained.
In the truck’s tall rearview, another car lit with green and yellow flashers. Then another, and another.
Four of them. If Wood only wanted to talk, why had he sent four cars?
Ephraim pressed the truck’s pedal to the floor.
But trying to flee was a joke; the U-Haul’s electric engine was as good as any but geared for torque rather than speed. The automatic transmission downshifted and attempted to peel away, but in ten seconds he’d only gained nine miles per hour. Meanwhile, the GEM cars flanked it like escorts.
“What are those cars?” Sophie asked, looking out her window.
Ephraim felt a bolt of panic, then reached out to slam Sophie back against the seat. The truck was higher than the sedans, but if she put her face to the window, they’d easily see her.
“Nobody,” he said.
“I think they want you to pull over. Cops?”
“Cops flash red and blue.” He was trying to look casual. His forehead was sweating. He could feel blood throb past the strained tendons in his neck.
“Ephraim?”
“No big deal, Sophie. We’ll be home soon.”
Ephraim could see Hershel staring up at him through his window on the truck’s left side. In the passenger seat, wearing sunglasses, his black hair parted and slicked. He stared through the lenses, then pointed. Pull over.
“Ephraim,” Sophie repeated.
“It’s just some jerks. Ignore them.”
“Ephraim!”
But she wasn’t just trying to get a response; she’d been trying to alert him. Sophie shouted as the GEM cars dropped back. Ephraim had a few honeymoon seconds between watching the side window and turning to the windshield, and then he saw the intersection ahead.
The light was red with cross-traffic in flow. Worst of all, there were four cars stopped not thirty feet ahead of them, two in Ephraim’s center lane and another in each of the lanes to the sides.
No time to scream. He didn’t shout profanity or pray to a deity. Ephraim obeyed instinct, leaned right, jerked the wheel, and dragged the truck across both lanes.
He was on the thin shoulder, one wheel skimming the edge of the curb. A bicyclist waiting at the light startled and leaped clear before the truck bumped and crushed over the abandoned bike, which was crushed by the cross traffic.
Horns blared from all sides. The truck barreled through the stream going sixty, but the oncoming traffic was thin enough to give the other motorists time to dodge and swerve.
Ephraim couldn’t evade at all; he was correcting his skid from bouncing out two lanes. A sedan swerved and jerked to a stop at the berm. Another honked, careened to the left through the turn lane, then clipped a road sign and kept right on going.
It was over before Ephraim knew what to think. His breathing came shallow and fast, eyes blurry and blinking. The horns and melee were behind them — but so were the GEM cars and all their flashing lights.
Ephraim eased up on the accelerator, willing his breath to slow.
Beside him Sophie was ramrod straight, staring at him, petrified.
“That didn’t happen,” he said, alternating his gaze between Sophie and the road. “We’ve had an easy, relaxing, uneventful ride home.”
Sophie blinked. Then she smiled as the memory evaporated.
“I just love spending time with you,” she said.
CHAPTER 32
NO THANK YOU
Ephraim pulled the truck into his building’s subterranean garage and killed the engine, wondering just what the hell he thought he was doing.
“Home?”
Sophie said it like a question, but there was enough fake recognition in her words for Ephraim to half-wonder if Eden had somehow conditioned her to his place the way they’d conditioned her to him. But if so, how had they secured all the detail they needed? And how were they producing such excellent clones, if the island had been destroyed?
“Home,” he repeated.
But Sophie didn’t open the door. She was waiting for Ephraim, who must have been the very picture of ambivalent.
His traffic maneuvers had been stupid, and Ephraim was an idiot to think he was outrunning GEM. First of all, they weren’t the cops. Second, Ephraim had nowhere to hide — not here, nor Riverbed, since he wasn’t sure he trusted Fiona. And third, Ephraim wasn’t made for life on the run. He sure as hell wasn’t a spy. He’d fumbled his way through Eden undercover, but it increasingly seemed like life was lived on rails.
And fourth, if Ephraim expected to flee GEM, he’d already failed by going home — to exactly where Wood would expect him to go.
I didn’t mean to run that light, Director Wood, Ephraim imagined himself saying. I was just trying to put some distance between us. I didn’t want to surrender so easily. I didn’t want you to think you held all the cards.
“Is anything wrong?” Sophie asked.
Yes. I’m wanted by everyone. I’ve committed dozens of crimes these past few days, and now I’m busted without a friend in the world … unless I flip and become a bitch for Wood or Fiona, turned against the other.
“Nothing wrong,” Ephraim said.
His Doodad buzzed, and the real Sophie’s info appeared on-screen. He declined the call. Explaining Sophie to Sophie — in either direction — was more than he could stomach.
The clone reached out. She touched Ephraim’s hand. He flinched as if she’d been holding a hot brand and yanked his hand back.
Her face registered a moment of hurt, so Ephraim softened it with a manufactured smile and opened his door.
“Come on. Home it is.”
On the walk from the truck to the elevator, Sophie reached out for his hand. Ephraim pretended not to notice, feigning interest in something on the garage wall. Inside the elevator, she tried to move closer but he stepped back. When she cornered him, he scooted away.
The box dinged, and the doors slid open. Ephraim led the way, leaving Sophie behind. She followed on fast feet, expertly managing her dress heels even at a clip.
She reached the door a beat behind him, then opened her mouth to say something, but Ephraim walked inside.
“Do you like …?”
He’d intended to ask Sophie what she thought of his place just to make conversation. But the question felt inappropriate the second she set her purse on the kitchen counter and grabbed a glass from the cabinet, then filled it as if she’d done so a thousand times before.
She saw him staring, noticing his unfinished sentence. “What?”
“Never mind.”
But what the hell came next? He had to keep reminding himself that this was a woman, not an automaton. She’d been programmed, but in the end, it was no different than the programming every human underwent through the course of living life.
Sophie didn’t know she hadn’t lived her memories and didn’t know that she and Ephraim had only just met. She was a twenty-something woman returning to a place she knew with a man she loved. Even her window of extreme suggestibility would end soon. After that, she’d be a person in a place, no different than Ephraim or anyone else.
What was he supposed to do with her? He couldn’t power her down and stick her in a recharging port. She had habits. Needs, preferences, and expectations. She was the real Sophie’s long-lost twin, trailing behind by twenty years.
“Do you want to watch TV?”
His manner was awkward, but hers wasn’t at all. She came to him from behind the kitchen bar, set her water glass on the counter, met his eyes, and knowingly said, “Not really.”
“We could watch the latest episode of Eat From Your Life. One of the contestants has to be hospitalized for open sores on her thighs. I saw it on the promo.”
Sophie slid closer, shook her head, made a small noise of negation.
“We could play a game,” he said.
“I’d like to play a game.”
“How about Bleed?”
“Not what I had in mind.” She pressed her side to his. Turned to face him, very close.
“I have some things I need to get done.”
She leaned in and kissed him. Ephraim didn’t kiss back; it was all warm lips against cold ones. “Me too,” she said.
Ephraim backed up. Sophie followed.
“I’m cold,” she said. “Maybe you can make me warm.”
“I’ll run you a bath.”
“Make it big enough for two.”
The thought infiltrated Ephraim’s mind before he could shove it away. The truth was, he’d always been attracted to Sophie Norris. The fact that this one had been made to order somehow made everything worse. He stirred at the thought of her wet, naked body.
“Not right now.”
She reached out, took his hand, then turned Ephraim around and met his eyes. “I guess I’m going to need to be direct with you.” She bit her lower lip, looked away, then looked back. “Take me to bed, Ephraim.”
“No thanks.” It just came out, tactless and blunt.
“No thanks?”
Sophie blinked, then fell back a few inches.
“I’m just,” He searched for a suitable excuse. “I’m tired.”
“It’s the middle of the day.”
“I was up late.”
“No, you weren’t.”
New emotion in her manner; her first sign of pushing back. She’d been conditioned to want what she wanted, and apparently, Sophie wanted Ephraim.
“When you’re at the club at 10 AM, you’ve officially stayed up too late.”
Something processed behind her eyes. “I’m not tired.”
“Too much partying.” He forced a smile, failing. “I’m just so beat. How are you not?”
She blinked more, looking away. Actively avoiding his eyes.
“I can barely stand.” Ephraim tried to catch her eye again so he could feign fatigue — comically, to perhaps elicit a laugh.
But Sophie wouldn’t look over.
Ephraim felt inexplicably guilty. Part of him wanted to right what he’d already done wrong. But Sophie was putting distance between them. Moving confused toward the couch, returning for her glass of water. Whatever was supposed to happen, whatever Sophie seemed to need, it wasn’t happening. And she felt rejected.
Finally, she looked up, her eyes soft. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No, of course not.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“Why would I be mad at you?”
Instead of answering, she went into Ephraim’s bedroom and closed the door behind her. Ephraim waited a few minutes, shell-shocked.
You hurt her feelings.
Way to go, asshole.
But the situation was impossible. What was he supposed to do? He didn’t even know her. She was a high-tech version of drunk. Or worse, brainwashed. He’d be a bastard if he did what his body wanted him to. It didn’t matter that she was made for him. He wasn’t that kind of guy.
No. Ephraim was the kind of guy who took a woman who loved him, rejected her without explanation, then sent her off like a stranger.
A few minutes later, he knocked on the door.
“Sophie?”
She didn’t answer. He knocked again and finally eased the door open. She lay fast asleep in his bed, tired after all, now that she’d internalized the idea that they’d been partying at the club until 10 AM.
After pulling the covers up around Sophie, he went through the shared bathroom to the adjoining bedroom. He was exhausted, evidently as susceptible to social hypnosis as anyone else.
Once under the covers, he remembered GEM and felt a not-all-that-irrational fear that someone would come in and steal his clone while he slept.
Except that Ephraim refused to let that happen.
He locked her bedroom door from the inside, figuring any attempt to get in would at least make enough noise to wake him. The lock was a bitch to close; the bolt was stuck, and he always had to hang on the knob while pulling up to seat it. But once seated, he went into the other bedroom and locked that from the inside, too.
Now they were safe enough to rest. Locked in, away from the world, with only a shared bathroom between them.
Ephraim closed his eyes. The morning’s exhaustion had pummeled him. Maybe it was infiltrating the strange club or the adrenal descent from his near-death flight through traffic.
Despite his fatigue, he couldn’t rest. The idea of Sophie wanting him was too much. The way she’d been, if she woke before he did, she’d come to him. She’d slip into his bed. And he might wake up to find a part of that young woman’s body interfacing with his.
He got up and locked the bathroom door from the inside, too.
Then Ephraim slept like the dead.
CHAPTER 33
UNEXPECTED GUESTS
Ephraim dreamed of Hershel Wood, of Fiona, and of Neven.
The three of them were meeting with Ephraim in a room made of light, arguing over whose side each of them were on. It was all vague in the way dreams are, but out of all the room’s occupants, Neven struck Ephraim as his best bet.
Yes, your brother came to my father, and together we made and sold clones, then kept or killed the originals, Dream-Neven said. But would you rather be with Fiona? Or with Wood? I may be an evil bastard, but at least I’m telling the truth.
Ephraim woke to the Earth-shaking sounds of a pounding fist.
“OPEN UP!”
More fists. More shouting. Ephraim leaped out of bed as if from a sizzling pan.
It took long, painful seconds to find his bearings. Ephraim hated naps; they threw off his internal clock and broke his sense of balance. After even the best naps, he felt lost and uncertain, almost dreaming, for at least fifteen minutes. But this, with the shouting and pounding? It was so much worse.
“POLICE! OPEN UP!”
Police? That didn’t make sense.
But obedience propelled Ephraim to the bedroom door, which he fumbled with before remembering he’d locked it.
How long would they bang before kicking the door in? Or would they?
Maybe they just had questions; maybe if he said he didn’t want to open up, they’d be required by law to leave. But they might also have a battering ram.
“OPEN THE …!”
Ephraim twisted the lock, wondering if he was lining himself up for a battering ram to the gut by standing in front of the door. Or maybe a bullet.
But nobody kicked, rammed, or shot, and one good yank later Ephraim stood eye-to-eye with a stern-faced cop in black body armor. His fist was clenched and raised. He looked at Ephraim as if, by removing the door, he’d spoiled his fun.
A pair of officers flanked the man, both in similar uniform and armor. Behind them, only now stepping into view, was Hershel Wood. He was wearing a black suit with his same white shirt and black tie, sunglasses on from what appeared to be bright sun outside.
Ephraim’s eyes darted from the first cop to Wood, waiting for either to speak. The cop said, “Mr. Ephraim Todd?”
Wood shook his head with apparent irritation, stepped forward and took Ephraim with an arm around the shoulders. He led Ephraim companionably into his own living room.
“Are you Ephraim Todd?” the cop repeated from behind them.
“Yes, he is,” Wood answered.
“Well …”
But the cop didn’t seem to know what to say. Ephraim almost felt sorry for him. He guessed the officers must have come as muscle, though why Wood hadn’t used his people, Ephraim didn’t know. And now that the door was open and Wood had pulled rank, the officers were lost.
“We’re going to look around,” said the big cop, whose nameplate said Harold — a last name, Ephraim assumed, rather than a first.
“You do that,” Wood said.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he added.
“We wouldn’t think of it.”
Wood moved Ephra
im toward the kitchen nook, immediately pulling something small from his pocket — a portable frequency jammer not unlike those in Mercer’s clubs. The jammer meant he wanted privacy and no record of what was coming.
Ephraim’s mind was racing, trying to decide how to play this. On the one hand, he’d just run from GEM, having decided they were enemy more than friend. But on the other hand, Wood had twin grudges against Wallace and Fiona.
Did that even matter?
Ephraim doubted anyone had a warrant, so he could probably lie and hope Sophie stayed quiet. But there were two problems with that plan. First, Sophie wouldn’t stay quiet, not with cops in the house banging on doors. And second, denying Wood left him at his same impasse; Ephraim didn’t want the Director to take Sophie into whatever GEM called custody, but wasn’t that why he’d tracked down a clone in the first place? To prove to GEM that Eden was doing what he’d claimed and that he wasn’t the guilty one?
He’d wanted to blow the whistle in public, but maybe this would do. The cops were here, and they weren’t GEM. Maybe Ephraim could come clean to everyone. Maybe that was his best option: letting Wood get what he wanted, with the officers as witnesses to keep everyone honest.
“What was that noise?” asked one of the cops.
The party stopped, ears perked.
“What?” asked the other cop — not Officer Harold.
“I heard something.”
Ephraim looked at Hershel. His eyes moved behind the shades — first to Ephraim, then to the cop.
There was a thumping on a door. Then a pounding.
Hershel turned to Ephraim. “Mr. Todd?”
The thumping continued, coming from the master bedroom. Ephraim braced himself; Sophie had heard the commotion and was coming out after all.
Ephraim had to act — confess — right now.
He couldn’t get caught; he had to offer what he had.
If Sophie emerged before Ephraim told Wood, it would seem like he’d been hiding her. But he wasn’t. He wanted Hershel to know, in the presence of witnesses.
“It’s Sophie,” Ephraim said. “I have a Sophie clone.”
“What?”
“I told you Eden was making clones. I have proof.”
Wood looked toward the cops, toward the unopened door. Why hadn’t Sophie come out? Perhaps she was frightened. And maybe she should be; Ephraim had rejected her, denied her, upended her world.
