by Sean Platt
Ephraim was an honest man.
A kind man.
A man who always thought of others, and did the right thing.
But he remembered the feel of the Jonathan clone’s brain matter on his hand. He remembered the blood, and how the MyLife’s tendrils had threaded so far back into his cortex that Ephraim, to free it, had to stand on the corpse’s neck and yank with both hands.
Ephraim Todd wasn’t the kind of man who killed.
Or at least, he didn’t used to be.
“Put the gun down before you hurt yourself,” said the man holding Sophie.
“Who else is on the plane?”
“Just the pilots.”
“No flight attendants? Nobody?”
“What, you want a bag of peanuts?”
Ephraim advanced the rest of the way, pressing the muzzle against the man’s forehead. He watched the bodyguard’s free hand, wondering if he’d try to snatch the weapon from Ephraim. It might not matter if he did. He had at least half-pressure on the trigger, so if the man flinched, Ephraim could likely blow a hole in him first.
“Answer the question.”
Finally, his hands went halfway up. He released Sophie’s arm. She staggered away as if drunk, striking the opposite wall. Her hands went to the back of her gag, working to free it, as she moved closer to Ephraim.
“Fine. No. Nobody’s going to grab you from behind, so just take it easy, okay? The pilots aren’t heroes, and there’s nobody else on board. You want to try and walk out of here, be my guest. But I keep telling you, nobody’s going to—”
“Open the door. Now.”
Slowly, the guard shifted toward the door. Ephraim moved to match him, now standing beside Sophie. Once the door opened, the bodyguard would be between them and the people outside. A human shield, unwitting protection.
The hatch disengaged. The door began to lower, descending with the press of a button. Evening sky appeared behind the bodyguard’s shoulders, then his waist. Ephraim could see Freddy beside his car and the GEM agents beside theirs. Nobody had weapons drawn, though they all must have them.
Let them get away, then ram their car into a wall. No muss, no fuss.
The pilots poked their heads from the cockpit, looking between Ephraim and his weapon. Their faces held no guile. Like the man had said, they were here to do a job.
“I guess I’m I supposed to walk out ahead of you?” the bodyguard said.
“No. We’re staying here.”
He turned halfway back, eyes again rolling. “Then why did you want the fucking door open?”
“Because everyone knows you can’t shoot a gun through a plane and expect it to fly.”
The smug expression vanished. Belated fear replaced it.
“Wait. Just hang on. You—”
The sentence died in thunder.
The pistol’s slug tore half the man’s face off before exploding out the back of his head and through the open door, propelling the body down the stairs like a Slinky made of meat.
An endless second. Apparently, no one had seen a gunshot coming. The mild-mannered Mr. Todd, it turned out, wasn’t as predictable as everyone thought.
But the second ended as Freddy and the two GEM agents leaped toward their car doors, yanking them open, diving inside. GEM agents weren’t cops; they didn’t carry firearms in holsters. But maybe they had some close at hand. Or Freddy did.
Lightning-fast, Ephraim swung the gun into the pilot’s face. With his other hand, he stabbed the stair hoist, and the door slowly rose.
“Get us off the ground,” Ephraim told the pilot. “And do it fast.”
“If they shoot—”
“I’ll put it this way,” Ephraim interrupted. “If we can’t fly, I’ll kill us all anyway.”
The pilot didn’t reply. Ephraim didn’t say more.
The engines were as hot as Freddy had promised — and five seconds after the pilot slammed the throttle forward, even the best-aimed bullets would’ve been hard-pressed to catch them.
CHAPTER 46
NO ASHES
Paris.
Madagascar.
Agaléga, then a puddle-jumper to the Eden Reception island.
All threat of pursuit died a few feet off the ground. Either Riverbed didn’t have a second jet, couldn’t scramble into one fast enough, or didn’t have sufficient pull with the FAA, foreign airports, or whoever else would need to be informed of a change in flight plan.
Ephraim had no idea and didn’t care. Once he told the pilots to kill the radio and fly without a headset, it was easy to forget he’d hijacked a plane. The journey from here on out would either be easy or hard. Interference might be waiting in Paris, where the original plan called for a refueling stop. Or, it might not.
It didn’t matter. He had his gun and nothing to lose. He cared about two things. One was the Sophie clone, which he increasingly thought of as “Sophie.” The other was causing as much damage as he could, out of spite, before dying. He didn’t care if the plane crashed or if he ended up dead on an international runway. He didn’t care if French authorities stormed the plane when they landed, or if Riverbed sent big French men to do what Freddy and the nameless dead man couldn’t. Ephraim wouldn’t go without a fight. If he couldn’t win that fight, he’d lose in the most final way possible. Nobody would be taking Ephraim alive.
Eden or bust, as it were.
But the right people must have been bribed, and the proper strings must have been pulled because they landed in Paris, refueled without incident, and flew to Madagascar. There they refueled again for the hell of it, the stop more a courtesy to the government than anything else. Nobody seemed to think the lone plane, met by a single local car on a remote airstrip, was worthy of mention.
Fiona is letting you go to Eden; that’s why you’re not having trouble. So is Wood; the two of them are probably working together. You’re not getting away with anything. You’re playing right into their hands and doing exactly what they want you to do.
But even in Ephraim’s increasingly disjointed mind, there was no limit to the layers of potential conspiracy. He couldn’t keep track of the endless loop.
If I do X, my doing it was their plan all along. But if I deny X and do Y instead, that was their plan all along, too, because they KNEW I’d balk at X.
There was no end to that way of thinking, no way to move without paralysis. In the end, he had to embrace an odd breed of madman’s faith. He could only choose to believe that nobody had that much forethought and that his life wasn’t being decided move by move.
The trip wore on, through long hours.
Sophie stayed near him at all times. Even when Ephraim searched the pilots and cockpit for weapons and then shot a hole in the radio (abandoning the Riverbed jet in favor of an Agaléga-Eden puddle-jumper), she stayed right by his side. He didn’t consider sending her away to safety because for Sophie right now, the safest of all the world’s dangerous places was by his side, even if his destination was her womb.
As they approached the islands from the sky, Ephraim’s breath caught in his chest. Front and center, clearly visible, was an enormous sculpture of chrome and light rising from the main building like a flame made of metal. It was Eden’s foremost symbol — second-foremost if you counted the late Wallace Connolly himself.
That symbol — and the rest of Eden, as far as Ephraim could see — had not burned to the ground.
It wasn’t ashes at all.
A pair of Eden representatives greeted the plane. Ephraim nearly pulled his gun and shot them dead when they came onto the runway in their golf cart — but instead of rushing forward with weapons, the reps brought leis to welcome their apparently not-unexpected visitors.
The woman said, Welcome to Eden!
And the man with her said, Welcome, Mr. Todd! It’s so nice to see you again.
The man was tall with an athletic build, very attractive, with short dirty blond hair.
The woman was also tall, thin but supple in body like a
steady yogi, with straight blonde hair.
I’m Nolon. I’ll be your guide on the island.
And I’m Elle. Anything you need — anything at all — please don’t hesitate to ask.
Ephraim looked to Sophie for help, but she’d gone Stepford. Her mascara was caked at the corners of her eyes and her lipstick was smudged, but she otherwise showed no signs of trauma, physical or mental. She looked like a woman on vacation. Not kidnapped. Not held for death at all.
If it were the real Sophie by his side, he would have had questions.
Didn’t it all burn? Didn’t we watch it go up, then see the charred aftermath on satellite? Did they rebuild it exactly as it was in just a few months while the world wasn’t watching, or were we just dreaming?
And to Nolon, Ephraim wanted to ask: Didn’t I kill you?
CHAPTER 47
THE PRESENT CLUSTERFUCK
Nolon and Elle didn’t board the tram from Reception to the Retreat island — which, Ephraim could already see across the soft blue lagoon between islands, was somehow pocked with mature trees, immaculate landscaping, and the same hillside mansions he’d seen months ago.
Instead, they smiled like idiots and bundled Ephraim and Sophie onto the tram alone. There was no large star-studded entourage this time — no Gus Harmon, no Altruance Brown, no Titus Washington, no unthinkably wealthy nameless businessmen and businesswomen. The only repeat visitor was Sophie Norris, now a quarter-century younger.
Ephraim looked around the tram. It was probably surveilled, and someone was likely listening to their every word. It couldn’t possibly matter. Eden had let them arrive, had checked Sophie Norris in without a thought. Sure, she had the original Sophie’s prints and DNA, but could that be all the registration folks used? Did they not look at the registrants, using logic and their eyes?
Eden knew. They had to know every detail of what was happening, right down to the gun in Ephraim’s pocket.
“Sophie,” Ephraim said.
She was sitting beside him in one of the speeding tram’s luxury loungers. She gave him a perfect smile.
“Does any of this strike you as familiar?”
She looked around. “Just from the commercials.”
“Do you remember how we got here?”
She laughed. “I didn’t have that much champagne.”
“How did we get here, then?”
Ephraim waited. Sophie stalled. Before she could fabricate an answer, he turned fully, taking her by both upper arms.
“Sophie.”
“Yes?”
“I know you believe what I say.”
“That’s because you’re so honest. It’s what I love about you.”
Ephraim considered his earlier yarns to test Sophie’s suggestibility and felt bad for each one. It was like lying to a wide-eyed child. Worse, since so far, she’d always believed it. And she’d always done as he said, no matter what he asked.
“I want you to do something for me. Something unusual.”
A vixen’s expression crossed her pretty features. “Here?” She whispered. “Now?”
“No, no,” he said, shaking her just a little, not meaning to. “I only want you to … to remember.”
“Remember what?”
“Anything. Everything. To truly remember.”
“I remember, honey.”
Ephraim drew a breath, looked at the tram’s ceiling, and tried again. “Don’t remember what I tell you to remember. Remember the truth. Remember what actually happened. I know it’s a weird thing to say, but do you think you can do it?”
She gave him a look that seemed to ask if he was messing with her.
“Don’t look to me to guess what happened. Don’t try to match my answer. Just think back, all the way. Do you remember how you got on the plane?”
“With you. We drove up and got on.”
“It was a private plane.”
“I know.” She laughed. “Don’t you remember?”
Ephraim tried to search for the best way to prompt Sophie without giving her ideas. If he asked if she remembered specific events — the gunshots, perhaps, or the fact that she’d been dragged aboard with a gag in her mouth — she might agree that she recalled them. But would she recall, or would she be following his lead?
“Think back. Describe it.”
“The plane?”
“When we got aboard. Tell me how you felt.”
“Happy. Excited.”
“Was that all?”
“Well, what was I supposed to feel?”
The things you felt at the moment. Fear. Worry. Unfounded faith in me to save you.
No one had told her to feel those things — certainly not Ephraim. She was capable of normal reaction, of living a life that didn’t turn her into a puppet. Right now, Ephraim was desperate for evidence that it was true. The need to see Sophie’s life as having a purpose beyond that of a programmed clone, now that they were on Eden together, was on him like an obsession.
She took his hand. The pressing need subsided, but only a little. Why did all of this bother him so much? Why did it matter if she was capable of being her own person, able to determine her future?
“What is it, Ephraim?”
“I just want you to be happy. I want you to do what you want to do, and feel what you want to feel.”
But why? he asked himself. Because somehow, this was all personal. Ephraim barely knew this woman, but he felt like he would die if she didn’t agree.
“I’m happy being with you,” she said.
“I want you to be happy without me.”
Her face registered hurt. It only lasted a moment.
Ephraim looked through the glass at the passing scenery. They were ascending the same gradual arch as Ephraim had ascended on his last arrival, back when he’d been so nervous that his true identity would be discovered.
But he was discovered now, wasn’t he? According to Eden’s new commercials and internet chatter, Eden’s grand opening was happening very soon. Maybe it was even in progress. And yet there was only the two of them. This was wrong in every possible way. He’d known he needed to return, but he was doing so with absolutely no element of surprise. He was on the tram with his intentions wide open. Everyone knew everything.
This was all a mistake, but he could never take it back. “Do you know what they say about this place? What they do here?” He asked her.
On the beloved Eden commercials, Connolly’s ghost claimed so many things. But Sophie only smiled, waiting for Ephraim to reveal his favorite.
“They say they can give you a whole new body.”
“So I hear.”
“How do you think that works?” Ephraim asked.
“It’s above my pay grade, honey. You’re the scientist’s brother.”
How did she know that? And if she knew about Jonathan, what else had they programmed her to know? What did she believe about Jonathan’s departure if not the unpleasant truth and the remaining brother’s obsession?
“I wonder,” he said, “if Eden can move all those little pieces of the body around to make it younger, could they make another you?”
Sophie smiled. “I don’t think the world could stand another me.”
Ephraim throttled a hideous feeling. She didn’t know what she was. Why was he picking at the scab, knowing what lay underneath? Pushing this issue further would be the greatest sort of injustice to Sophie. Because what would it be like to not know who you truly were? To not know what you truly were?
“I wonder, though,” Ephraim said, unable to resist, trying to sound casual. “Wallace Connolly built this place because he wanted to push the limits of a technology called ‘Precipitous Rise.’ It’s used on the mainland to clone plants. To engineer bigger and better ones. To feed the world.”
Sophie’s ears perked. “Clone? That’s like something out of the movies.”
“Cloning is just using the DNA from one life form to make a copy of the same thing, from an identical blueprint. Simple organis
ms are easy. Bigger organisms get harder.”
“You weren’t kidding. Real clones?”
“It’s just a rumor.”
Ephraim paused. He wanted to prod the issue, but it needed to seem casual rather than threatening.
“If that kind of thing could be done, and if they could do it with people …” He trailed off thoughtfully, pretending only to be musing. “Do you think the clones would know they’re clones?”
“Hypothetically? Because this is just a rumor?” She looked out the window, suddenly uncomfortable. “A crazy rumor,” she added.
“Of course. I’m just being philosophical.”
“Would the person and the clone have the same mind?”
“That’s the craziest version of the rumor,” Ephraim said, trying to chuckle. “But how could you copy a mind?”
The Quarry in Ephraim’s pocket shifted with the jostling tram.
“That’s freaky. Let’s just enjoy the view.” Sophie looked out the window, watching the blue ocean pass, her attention on the chrome Reception structure that had no business existing.
“If you were a clone,” Ephraim asked, hating himself, “would you want to know?”
She took his arm and leaned against it. He tried to feel the simple sensations, to fall into the naïve elation she so easily felt. Ephraim envied her in a way. Her innocence and ignorance. Her clear mind made his thoughts a burden.
Why am I here? Why did I come, if not to bring Wood with me to expose Eden?
Ephraim didn’t know; he’d hopped from one situation to the next, believing he had things handled at every stage. But new developments had surprised him, and he’d adapted without thinking. One thing after another had snowballed into the present clusterfuck.
There was no why anymore. Only inevitability.
Maybe he did know why he was here, back on Connolly’s island. And if so, maybe he didn’t like that reason. But maybe it was important and inevitable.
Maybe, in the end, that reason was all that mattered for Ephraim Todd.
Sophie shook her head against his arm, making sounds of negation before giving her answer. “I think learning something like that would drive a person crazy.”
