The Eden Experiment

by Sean Platt

  “Right. To the plane. So you can fly away. Fine. But you’re an idiot. Someone’s hacked your MyLife. Someone else probably has your phone’s signal and GPS. You think they aren’t following us? You think we’ll get to the plane and they’ll all just let you get on?”

  Ephraim gave the odds of interference at 50/50. The world didn’t believe him, but official channels knew there was more to the underground story than anyone was letting on. GEM seemed to feel Riverbed and Eden were both dirty, and the cops, judging by what Wood had said, seemed to feel that GEM was up to something.

  Ephraim had told a few people about the clone trade, about the Hole and the Den, and about Mercer and his operation. Wasn’t that the kind of thing the FBI or other acronym organizations might be investigating already? And if so, what was the harm in letting Ephraim go? Eden was a closed box and Ephraim, rogue or not, was the closest thing anyone had to an undercover agent.

  “We’ll see.”

  “I don’t particularly want to let you get on. Professional pride, see.” This time the driver grinned.

  “Touch me and I’ll break something I have of Fiona’s. Something she doesn’t want to be broken.”

  The man eyed Ephraim again, then seemed to take in the space between them.

  His hand touched the Quarry in his pocket, testing its feel.

  “Maybe what you’re threatening to break is tougher than you think.”

  Ephraim’s hand had already reached that conclusion. The Quarry was smooth metal with tiny protrusions. Could he snap it? And if he did, would it render its contents inert?

  “What’s your name?” Ephraim asked.

  “Freddy.”

  “Do you like to gamble, Freddy?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “How about gambling against Fiona? How about gambling on whether or not you’re right to threaten me?”

  “Hey, hey,” Freddy said. “I’m just making conversation.”

  Behind his turned upper body, through the windshield, the light turned green again. The delay lasted long enough that someone behind them honked.

  Lights changed all around Freddy’s big head. His eyes lifted until they were looking out the back window. His expression changed. He suddenly looked nothing like a man taunting his prey.

  “Oh, fuck,” Freddy said, looking back past Ephraim’s head.

  Ephraim half-turned. “What?”

  “Buckle up, Buddy. Shit’s about to get bumpy.”

  The car jerked forward, to the right, up onto the curb. A trio of pedestrians dove out of the way as the car rode half-up and half-down, clipping signs.

  Ephraim watched, seeing the strange glow-lights that appeared from behind.

  Then he turned and saw a pair of GEM cruisers approaching from ahead, their green flashers strobing, sirens screaming.

  CHAPTER 44

  FLASHES AND SCREAMS

  Ephraim bounced in the back seat, strapping down with a second seat belt as the big car racked curbs, staying low and trying to take rebounds against the soft leather seats rather than the harder doors.

  Ephraim couldn’t tell if the chase was high-speed (this was the city and things normally moved at a crawl), but it was high-profile. They were running lights, knocking over posts, forcing pedestrians to jump out of the way. All the while, sirens screamed behind them.

  “Where are you taking me?” Ephraim demanded.

  “Where the fuck do you think?”

  The driver was laser-focused, gripping the wheel with iron hands. The same two GEM vehicles remained behind them — no police, no other authorities, no reinforcements. For all Ephraim knew, it might be Wood and a car full of flunkies. Maybe he’d woken up early and figured things out, seeking revenge for the theft of his mind.

  Ephraim was smashed against the seat’s upholstery. The Quarry, in one coat pocket, was taking a beating bad enough that he hoped Freddy was right, that it could stand the abuse. His parcel from Black Wednesday was in the other pocket, its bulk hard and firm, smashing into his side with the vehicle’s every jolt. It was his Ace of Spades, and there were a few ways to play it. But not while the car was slamming concrete.

  Once past traffic, Freddy opened up the throttle. The shambling chase became a high-speed pursuit, but true to reputation Fiona hadn’t skimped on her fleet’s performance. Something big lived under the hood — half petroleum, perhaps, to supercharge the torque of the native electric engine. Ephraim could hear a new, deeper pitch enter the car’s otherwise subdued purr as it came alive, widening the distance between them and the GEM cruisers.

  Onto Industrial Parkway. Warehouses blew by so fast, it was hard to tell which was which. Ephraim didn’t know his way around this part of town. There were no airstrips, but there was a razed section that according to Google Earth had been smoothed over. If Fiona played fair, that’s where his Riverbed jet would be waiting.

  Freddy yanked the wheel hard right, fishtailing in a long dragging streak of burning rubber.

  The two GEM cars did the same as the black car turned, but whereas Fiona’s goons must have taken evasive driving courses, the Department’s apparently did not.

  Their inferior engines and tires exacerbated their poor technique, and while Freddy held the skid and corrected into it without losing more than twenty miles per hour (flattening Ephraim into the door with the force of a centrifuge), the cruisers lost their footing and spun out.

  Ephraim tried to look back but couldn’t; their path was already evening out as Freddy goosed both wheel and accelerator.

  He couldn’t see them after a sharp turn, but Ephraim didn’t hear the GEM cars crash, roll over, or explode like in the movies. He only knew that they weren’t right behind anymore and that sometime later, their engines finally did fire with a petroleum growl like the Riverbed cars.

  “What exactly do you think is supposed to happen here?” Ephraim half-screamed, plastered against the door. “Do you think you can just outrun them?”

  “Yes,” Freddy said, not looking back.

  The car zagged through the vacant warehouse lots, then sped back up on a long and narrow straightaway between broken buildings.

  “We’re out of room,” Ephraim said. “We’re—!”

  A wall loomed. No way out.

  But there was an alley to the left after all. Freddy yanked the wheel, hard.

  Another fast turn, slamming Ephraim’s leg against the door handle. Then they were on a smaller intra-lot throughway, the car shooting beneath a long overhead belt and between two more long-forgotten structures.

  They’d barely corrected the fishtail, missing a rusted tank, then a piece of machinery with an exposed cog at the height of the vehicle’s roof. Ephraim slammed into his seatbelt, breath constricted.

  The buildings cleared. An expanse loomed.

  Now with the belt pressure released (though he was going to have a motherfucker of a bruise by tomorrow), Ephraim could crane his head to look back. Freddy had gained a lot of ground but hadn’t lost his pursuers.

  The Riverbed car was flying on open tarmac, gaining more and more speed. The cruisers, becoming smaller, struggled again to correct after another tight turn. Freddy was good; Ephraim had to give him that. He’d put a lot of distance between them.

  Ahead they saw a small white plane, lit in the dim evening.

  “Hope you packed light,” Freddy said.

  Ephraim’s head snapped toward the driver. In his peripheral vision, the plane grew closer at lightning speed.

  “We thought the drop off might be tight,” Freddy went on. “The plane’s engines are already running. There’s no time to kiss goodbye. The second this car stops moving, find your head and haul ass onboard. You see the steps?”

  The jet’s door seemed to fold downward, its other side made of stairs. But what Freddy had asked struck Ephraim as impossible. They had to be hurtling forward at a hundred miles per hour.

  “Wait. What do you mean, ‘find my head’?”

  Freddy slammed the brakes hard, simu
ltaneously jockeying the wheel around. The brake’s force was distributed sideways as the car swung in yet another circle.

  The effect was brutal. Dizzying.

  The wheels caught. Friction won, stopping their skid.

  The car shook, and Ephraim grew more disoriented by the sudden stillness than the jarring motion.

  “GO! NOW!”

  Ephraim snapped at Freddy’s bark but was too lightheaded to make sense of it. His insides were a martini, shaken and stirred. The car had spun one-eighty, its windshield now facing the opposite direction. The GEM cruisers were screaming toward them, gaining fast.

  “GET ON THE FUCKING PLANE!”

  Freddy reached back and wrenched the back door open, eyes furious and frustrated. Was he trying to help Ephraim, or about to beat him to death?

  But then the paralysis broke, and Ephraim stumbled out, slamming his lower leg into its rebounding edge before finding his feet. By the time he was upright, Freddy was out too, beside him, preparing to drag him like dead weight.

  But before Freddy could touch him, Ephraim’s frazzled brain made sense of the situation: the purr of the waiting jet engines, the rumble of automobiles, the flash of GEM lights and the screech of GEM sirens.

  And he ran.

  He made it to the steps, dizzy, gripping the railing with what felt like enough force to bend it. He climbed the stairs two at a time, barely remembering to duck as he went through the door. Then he was inside.

  He rushed down the aisle, thinking only after he was halfway through the plane that nobody knew he was aboard, that no one would close the door and tell the pilot. But the plane had windows, and it had been cross-checked and ready for throttle, knowing he was on the way.

  The door slammed and locked by Freddy’s partner from the other day, sealing them in.

  But with his job done, the man just stood. He looked at Ephraim, then took out his Doodad. He checked something, then turned toward the plane’s nose, into the cockpit. He said something to the pilot — it must not have been a takeoff command because there were no roaring engines yet. No movement, despite Freddy’s commands and all the rush.

  “GEM is out there!” Ephraim yelled. “We need to take off!”

  The man glanced toward the windows. He saw the flashing lights arrive but seemed barely interested. The GEM cruisers screeched to a halt as Ephraim’s heart pounded, but their doors didn’t open. No agents came out.

  Freddy’s partner was talking into his Doodad, and then into the cockpit.

  The GEM cars remained closed, their sirens and flashers dying.

  “Did you hear me?” Ephraim yelled. “Freddy said—!”

  “Freddy didn’t know that one of our contingencies just came through,” the big man interrupted.

  “What cont—?”

  Ephraim stopped mid-word. Through the plane’s window, he saw the GEM cars finally open. Agents emerged and approached Freddy, who’d remained where Ephraim had left him. They were all just standing around, talking.

  “We need to get out of here,” Ephraim said.

  The plane’s temperature seemed to have dropped fifty degrees. Urgency had drained from the world. There was no need, it seemed, to rush.

  The man shook his head. “You’re not going anywhere, Mr. Todd.”

  Ephraim’s heart rate tripled. He jammed his hand into his coat pocket, feeling a trap tightening around him. GEM and Riverbed must have reached a last-minute agreement. And why not? Ephraim had double-crossed them both.

  But the jet’s engines were lit. And there was a pilot at the helm. The plane could take off if those aboard were sufficiently motivated.

  Ephraim pulled the Quarry from his pocket and raised it for his abductor to see, taut between his hands, testing its strength. He decided that yes, he probably could break it. Smash it. Expose all Fiona had done and meant to do, ruining her chances of ever going further, or of repairing her body so she could walk again.

  “This is a piece of Riverbed technology that’s vital to Fiona,” Ephraim said. “It’s called a Quarry. Tell the pilot to take us to Eden, or I’ll break it.”

  Instead of answering, the man said something into the cockpit again, then reached through its door. His arm emerged holding a woman’s slim hand. Ephraim saw the Sophie clone, her eyes wet and makeup running. Gagged.

  The bodyguard raised a pistol to her temple.

  “I’ll bet I care less about you breaking the Quarry,” he said, “than you care about me breaking her.”

  CHAPTER 45

  VIOLENCE IS POWER

  Sophie’s eyes fixed on Ephraim, the bodyguard holding her upper arm. Her expression was heartbreaking. Ephraim saw fear, sadness, and a tragic spark of trust and hope. But he saw no betrayal — no realization that she was in this situation because of Ephraim, that she existed to be afraid because of him. He would have welcomed hatred, but in her eyes, he saw only fearful love. She was his, put on Earth for Ephraim alone.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked, lowering the Quarry. “Turn me over to GEM?”

  “That’s being negotiated,” the bodyguard said. “As the saying goes in Hollywood, your people just called our people. They’re reaching consensus right now. So, let’s just hang out and enjoy each other’s company.”

  He gave a wry smile, and Ephraim remembered what Freddy had said about wanting to hurt Ephraim out of professional pride. Only duty had stayed Freddy’s hand, but sometime between leaving the Riverbed car and entering the Riverbed plane, both men’s duty had changed.

  “For now,” the bodyguard went on, “We just need to understand each other.”

  Sophie met Ephraim’s eyes, pleading for rescue. And Ephraim thought: Is this all it takes for them to stop me? All my plans destroyed for one little clone?

  He tried to see Sophie as Mercer did — as just a thing, not a person — but couldn’t. She didn’t know her memories hadn’t been lived by her body. She didn’t know that her life was a lie.

  It was strange, to feel such intense sympathy for a clone. Sophie’s gaze reached inside Ephraim’s chest and gripped him by the heart. He barely knew her. Hell, he barely knew the real Sophie, who he’d probably alienated forever. But right now, he felt this poor woman’s plight bones-deep. What must it be like, to discover your life was only a story you were conditioned to believe?

  Hmm, yes. What IS that like — to be a clone without a history, duped into believing you exist? But you wouldn’t know anything about that, now would you, Ephraim Todd?

  Ephraim swallowed the thought. It was barely his — just another percolation of fear inside his disintegrating mind. His grip on reality was slippery. Surrendering to that downward spiral meant losing the battle. He couldn’t submit to fear and panic. He couldn’t let this happen. Right now, the big man’s assertion that his fate was “being negotiated” meant that Wood’s people and Fiona’s people were arguing over whose slave Ephraim had become. But he was nobody’s slave. He wasn’t brainwashed like Sophie. He wasn’t lost, like Sophie.

  Panic wasn’t power.

  Fear wasn’t power.

  No.

  Anger was power.

  Violence was power.

  Ephraim returned the Quarry to his pocket, its importance apparently negligible. His other hand sneaked into his opposite pocket, where it felt the reassuring weight of his Black Wednesday purchase. Finally, his paranoia was about to pay off.

  Because it wasn’t paranoia when they really were out to get you.

  Black Wednesday: Everyone’s favorite one-stop-shop for porn, paraphernalia, and no-wait firearms.

  The man holding Sophie was looking into the cockpit, through the window beside the folded-up plane staircase. Riverbed and GEM were chatting; they probably hadn’t decided who would get the traitor. Fiona’s people were playing a bit of Finders-Keepers, but Ephraim’s current best-case scenario was being sent back to grovel at Fiona’s feet. I’m sorry for trying to double-cross you, Fiona. Here’s the copy of Wood’s mind that you wanted.
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  Ephraim fingered the pistol in his pocket. There’s been no TSA security check to enter this aircraft. Nobody had taken the time to so much as pat him down.

  Fiona was bound to have this up her sleeve once Ephraim twisted her arm. He’d seen this double-double-cross coming from a mile away. But thanks to his paranoid pit stop at Black Wednesday, he had ways to deal with it.

  Sometimes, it pays to be paranoid.

  Ephraim slipped the weapon from his pocket. He’d filled the clip in the store; Black Wednesday was a violence shop and practically begged him to do it. Now he gripped the slide with his opposite palm and racked it. Partially to chamber the first round. But mostly to get the big man’s attention.

  The bodyguard’s head swiveled, eyes drawn to the pistol’s barrel. Ephraim’s arm, straight and locked, was steady. There was no shaking now. No fear. That was the funny thing about terror. You could embrace and draw strength from it once you finally stopped running.

  The man laughed.

  “Drop your gun,” Ephraim said.

  “No thanks. I think I’ll keep it. And her. You drop your gun.”

  “Your safety’s on,” Ephraim said.

  The man’s hand flinched. His eyes had ticked down; he knew it was true. But there was no solution. To disengage the safety on his weapon, he’d have to let go of Sophie.

  “I can break her neck.”

  “Not before I shoot you.”

  “You’re not going to shoot me.”

  Ephraim stepped forward, the muzzle now two inches from the big man’s head.

  Jaw shifting and eyes hard, the man tossed his weapon to the floor.

  “Now open the door and lower the staircase.”

  “Where do you think you’re going to go? GEM agents are out there. So is my partner. Are you going to try and take me hostage to get past them? Because it ain’t gonna work. Believe me, I’m worth a lot less to any of them than you are.”

  The man’s lack of fright was maddening. Ephraim’s mind unspooled, red thoughts blending with black. The guard’s large hand gripped Sophie’s arm. He’d dropped the gun, but hadn’t flinched.