Exodus

by Farrell, Lisa

  “What’s that for? What kind of doctor are you?”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that,” he said, dropping the syringe into the black bag. “That was merely a precaution.”

  “You’re human, right?” she asked him, and the doctor laughed.

  “Of course! But what is human, anyway, these days? I certainly don’t think any less of you, my dear. Many of my clients are clones.”

  “I’m not a clone,” she protested, but she could hear the uncertainty in her own voice. The Tenma might have given her more than painkillers, something to make her more suggestible. They were trying to ruin her life, trying to steal it.

  “Are you feeling better now, my dear? You’re still pale.”

  The doctor put the back of his hand against her forehead. His skin was dry and rough.

  “You just need a stiff drink,” he said. “Express?”

  “On it,” the Tenma said, and left them alone.

  “Now,” the doctor said, taking off his glasses. The skin around his eyes was unnaturally taut, and his eyes oddly large, beautiful big blue eyes that didn’t seem quite to fit in his face. “What are we going to do with you?”

  “I need to get out of here. That clone is defective: he’s keeping me prisoner.”

  “He’s trying to save your life, you know.”

  Her life…but her work was her life. She couldn’t be Miranda Rhapsody if she was a clone. Clones were androids: they weren’t celebrities—they weren’t even regular people. She thought of the bioroid in that show Friendship Upgraded. He was a novelty, a joke, a prop. She would have known if she was a clone; she would have been different. She had more personality than anyone she knew, and of course, she had a soul. Didn’t she?

  “Help me,” she pleaded as she took the doctor’s arm, but he just laughed again. She let go.

  “Perhaps I should give you something stronger for the shock.”

  “No, please don’t.” She paused, took a deep breath. “What are you here for?”

  “We need to disguise you,” the Tenma said, returning with a shot of whiskey in a crystal glass. She took it from him dumbly, with no intention of drinking it. “So I can get you out of New Angeles and away from Jinteki.”

  “You want to take me out of NA in disguise?” If no one saw her leave, how would anyone ever find her? “But I don’t want to leave.”

  “Trust me,” the Tenma said. “This is the best way to get you safely started on your new life. With a new face, you can be whoever you want to be.”

  “You want to change my face?” They were trying to convince her she wasn’t herself at all: that was the conspiracy. Someone was stealing her life, trying to make her a nobody. This wasn’t the first time someone had tried impersonating her.

  She managed to stand, pretending to sip at the whiskey, moving away from the doctor.

  “It won’t hurt,” the clone said. “Tell her, Doctor.”

  “Young lady, I am an artist. I promise you, you will only be more glorious than you are now.”

  “And it won’t hurt,” the Tenma repeated.

  “Hardly at all.”

  “But it’s my face,” she said, edging away. “This is me.”

  “You can’t keep that face,” the Tenma said. “You can’t hide when you’re so easily recognized. Why cling to the face Jinteki gave you? Re-create yourself.” He paused. “I thought Miranda Rhapsody was known for re-creating herself for a new role.”

  “Why do you keep the face Jinteki gave you?” she retorted. “You still look like any other Tenma. Why haven’t you re-created yourself? Think about that.”

  “They’re not after me,” he said. “As a Tenma, people don’t give me a second look. I’m invisible; I can do what I want.”

  She took another small step. Her back was to the door. Maybe the Tenma had unlocked it for the doctor; maybe she could get out.

  “Please,” she pleaded, her tone softer. “Just give me some makeup. I’ll re-create myself, without help. It doesn’t need to be permanent, right? I can do that: it’s paparazzi evasion 101. I’m an expert—trust me.”

  “It’ll take more than that to fool the NAPD’s facial recognition database,” the clone said, shaking his head.

  “What about a mask?”

  “If you’re scanned at the border, or if we’re stopped by the cops, they’ll detect the synthskin,” he said. “Besides, I’m not sure I trust you not to slip it off the moment you spot a seccam.”

  The doctor was smiling as though he was amused by the whole situation.

  “Damn you,” she said, tightening her grip on the glass. “This is my face and I’m not changing it. Stick a bag over my head if you have to; you’re not getting near me with those.” She nodded toward the doctor’s bag, now open. She recognized some of the instruments from her beauty treatments. Others looked more like a mechanic’s tools, and there were old-fashioned needles, the kind usually reserved for animals or clones, not for humans: not for her.

  “Let me assure you, my dear, I will take great care with your face. When you reach your destination, you can easily have your visage restored if you wish.”

  “Right,” the clone said. “You think those teenagers you see with animal mods, snouts or whatever, wear them into old age? Of course not. It’s just to get you out of Jinteki’s reach.” He took a step toward her. “And we only need to change you a little so you can pass without notice. This is important, Randi. The NAPD has facial recognition software monitoring people all over New Angeles. There is no way of moving through this city without getting caught on a seccam—every back alley and public space is visible if you know how to look. If Jinteki finds you, I won’t be able to protect you.”

  She thought of the embarrassing footage some runner had sold to the press just a few weeks before, a shot from a hotel seccam Miles hadn’t spotted. She’d been drunk, stumbling in the hallway, her guard down. It wasn’t like her, it didn’t fit the image, and it cost a lot of credits to make it go away. There was more than privacy to consider now, if the Tenma was telling the truth, but if they took her name and face, what did she have left?

  “Just let me go,” she said. “I’ll take my chances.”

  The doctor rummaged for something in his bag. Another needle.

  “What’s that?” she asked, but no one answered her. “You’re not even a real doctor, are you? Who are you people?”

  “Is that really necessary?” the Tenma asked the doctor, ignoring her.

  “Don’t you think we’ve wasted enough time?” the doctor said, approaching her. “Jinteki made her. Do you think they’d leave her open to the possibility of the truth? You don’t have time to break her conditioning, and I certainly don’t have time to pander to a self-absorbed celeb, however fetching.”

  She threw the glass of whiskey at the doctor’s head but missed, the glass shattering against the far wall. She banged her fists on the door, swiped her hand vainly over the panel, shouted for help. A rough hand grabbed her right wrist, and the doctor pushed her into the door. She kicked out but barely connected, and he pressed her harder. She reached her free hand back and tried to scratch him, but she could hardly move.

  “Oh come on, give me a hand here,” the doctor groaned, straining against her.

  The Tenma gripped her other wrist and held her still as the needle bit into her skin above her collarbone, a piercing pain. This time the blackness came quickly, and she couldn’t fight it.

  Chapter 4

  Back at HQ, Caprice crossed the bullpen to her desk. She kept her eyes cast down, but remained aware of everyone in the room. Officers watched over the partitions of their own desks and unconsciously sent thoughts her way.

  […said she’s been back to Jinteki…]

  […like a spy…]

  […so creepy, just not right…]

  She missed her office, but the commissioner wanted to see how she worked alongside the others, the human officers, or so she had said. Her thoughts had revealed there had been complaints about pre
ferential treatment of a clone. It took all of Caprice’s control to shut the other officers out, to focus on what she was doing—the cases she had to solve. If Toshiyuki was right, she should be able to solve both at once.

  She searched the NAPD databases for renegade Tenmas. Toshiyuki might assume the Tenma was nothing but a courier, but Caprice was open to the possibility that he had orchestrated the kidnapping himself. Given the resonance he left on that package, it felt like he had been rogue for some time. She knew she was looking for someone with enough hacking skills to create a false order for Jinteki, a Tenma who’d been living off radar for at least a year. There was only one match with any record, a “disappeared” clone called Ken Tenma, also known as “Express.” Now she just had to track him down, but Toshiyuki did not want the NAPD involved. That might limit her resources.

  “What you doing, Nisei?”

  She jumped at the sound of Bruce’s voice. She had been so busy keeping thoughts out that she had missed his presence entirely.

  “I have a lead,” she recovered. “One I need to follow.”

  “Well, let’s hear it then.” He was standing too close.

  “My source wants to keep his anonymity intact; I cannot reveal more.” She could feel his suspicion radiating from him, which made her feel as though she were hiding more than she was.

  “I’m your partner, Nisei; we’re supposed to work together. Do you work for the NAPD or not?”

  Caprice glanced around the office. No one met her eyes, but she knew they were listening. Every officer here had pressing cases to be working on, but they seemed more interested in her conversation with Bruce Tomson.

  “Come with me,” she said, “and I will explain on the way.”

  Denied peace at her desk, Caprice accessed her PAD and worked silently as they walked. She went over the notes in the slim file on “Express,” the data displayed in threedee before her eyes. Bruce watched with begrudging interest as they walked to the hopper pad. She took the stairs to give herself time to work out the destination.

  She could not take Toshiyuki’s word at face value. She had not felt the presence of a clone at the murder scene so she did not believe he was a witness, but the Tenma had known the murder victim, at the very least. She looked for a connection between Ken Tenma and Elizabeth Webb. For a clone who had been rogue for so long, there was little information on him. He had been suspect in a crime once before, but never apprehended. The writer of the report, Detective Louis Blaine, did mention one thing: he had a compulsion to employ clones of his own genotype. Blaine had visited several addresses that matched the profile but had reported no success. The NAPD had arrested someone else for the crime, and with that case closed, the file on the Tenma had gone to archives.

  This had to be the Tenma she was looking for, even if she could not find any evidence to connect him to Webb. She would know if she met him; if she could find him, she would recognize his thoughts. But she needed to find an address frequented by Tenma-handled deliveries.

  At first she felt Bruce’s eyes scrutinizing her, but as she searched through possible locations, she lost herself in the task. She could read information faster than any human could, and there was no way her partner could keep up. Of all the possibilities, one stood out. The deliveries were infrequent, but the address was unregistered, and when the delivery service flagged the anomaly, the query immediately routed to an unmonitored account. No one ever looked into the matter further, payment was processed, and the deliveries were made. The source of the payments varied, and the address appeared irregularly but consistently for a number of months.

  “We are heading south,” she announced as they reached the hopper. If the clone had been involved in the murder, her partner had a right to be there too. And she was not informing him about the Jinteki connection, was not defying Toshiyuki directly. “An address in Rutherford District. Possible accessory to murder.”

  “Well, this should be a laugh,” was Bruce’s flippant contribution as he climbed into the driver’s seat. There was something else underneath, however; the words were a decoy to prevent her from detecting his admiration. Her work impressed him, and he trusted her lead. She could not resist looking a little further.

  […some of us work best alone…]

  He saw them as kindred spirits, then. That came as a surprise. He had never been anything but hostile, but perhaps that too concealed something else. Humans were complicated.

  Caprice gave the autopilot the address and considered what she could tell her partner. He certainly cared about his work and responsibilities. He wore his badge with pride. She could trust him to be loyal to the NAPD, if not to her.

  “I have reason to believe a renegade clone may have been involved in the murder,” she said.

  Bruce twisted in his seat to look at her straight on, his eyes solemn and less aggressive than usual.

  “You’re not serious…” he hoped. “That’s big trouble if it’s true.”

  […betraying her own kind…]

  He did not understand her at all.

  “The victim was low-profile; I do not anticipate big trouble,” Caprice said. “More likely, the clone was not party to the crime itself, but he may be able to provide valuable information.”

  “So it could still be gang related.”

  “Possibly.”

  Bruce grunted, and sat back, gazing out of the window at the row of hoppers rising away from them.

  […not like the others…]

  “What kind of clone are we expecting?” he asked. “Do we need backup?”

  “A Tenma.”

  Bruce flexed his arms in an odd, apelike gesture, to demonstrate his muscular physique.

  “No backup required,” he said, grinning.

  He expected her to laugh, Caprice sensed, but she had no idea why. Perhaps he was trying to form an interpersonal bond. She had professional relationships, and then there was Daniel, who cared for her as an equal. The sort of relationships that came between the two were still something of a mystery to her, however.

  […or maybe she is…]

  Bruce returned his eyes to the view of the skylanes. She began to collate information to transfer to her partner’s PAD, being as selective as she could. If she was bringing him along, she had best ensure he was prepared. She had no choice but to do the work Toshiyuki gave her, but her loyalty was to the NAPD.

  Then she thought of her sisters in their vats and felt a swell of fierce, protective love. No loyalty could ever rival that.

  Randi lay strapped to the table, drowsy from the hypnotic agent the doctor had administered. It had taken mere seconds to subdue her, and the doctor had said it would give them at least an hour of peace. Express counted the minutes silently, in the back of his mind. Randi’s mouth hung open and her eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling.

  Express had never been such trouble to anyone, even freshly liberated, but then he had always known who—and what—he was. He had survived those first days alone before a chance encounter with Li11ith had given him his first job, cemented his purpose. He had been lucky, and determined to survive. Randi seemed to be neither. He needed her to want that new life, but he had no idea how to persuade her.

  He had renamed her, though, as Li11ith had renamed him. Names were important, the first step to creating an identity.

  The doctor took a syringe from his bag.

  “It doesn’t take much to change a face,” he said, sliding the needle into the soft skin by Randi’s right eye. A thin trickle of blood ran down her cheek. “Usually, the client isn’t in such a hurry, and the shot gets more time to work. In your case, I’m taking a few shortcuts.”

  “Such as?”

  Express’s PAD chirped again. He checked it absently, expecting a message from a contact or potential client. He did not expect the notification that two humanoids had entered the building from above and were descending—in the direction of his condo-hab.

  “Problem?” the doctor asked, glancing up from his work.

>   “We might have less time than we thought,” Express said, working with his PAD in virt to slow the cops down. He had rigged the elevator for such an occasion and stopped it now with them inside, still twenty-two floors up, but it wouldn’t be long before they figured out how to override him with the manual controls. “I need her awake in two minutes.”

  “Two minutes?” The doctor started throwing his equipment back into the bag. “If you’ve trouble coming, I’m not waiting for it. You can wake her yourself. Cold water and a slap to the face should do it.”

  “But her face—you haven’t finished!” Express complained, slipping his console into a bag and fetching his jacket. He’d made plenty of acquisitions, but a few he couldn’t leave behind.

  “Next time, get the place secure before you call me. And don’t forget to transfer the rest of my fee if you ever hope to use my services again. Good day.”

  The doctor left the door open as he fled. He also left his worktable behind in his hurry, and Express set to work releasing Randi from the straps. Her head lolled as he lifted her, and she murmured something but he didn’t have the time to work out what. The cops had already exited the elevator and were on the move again. Fifteen floors to go. Fourteen. He watched the feed from the security cameras out of the corner of his eye. He had to get to his Qianju, though it would be difficult to transport Randi while she was deadweight. He dumped her back on the couch and went to raid his stash of meds, stims, and narcotics. He threw some in his bag, and selected a stimpatch to keep Randi with him on the ride. She had to be able to hold on; that was all. The rest would be up to him.

  He slapped the patch on the side of her neck and half carried, half dragged her from the condo-hab. He locked it behind him, making sure his security would keep it closed as long as possible. Let the cops take their time breaking through that and give him a head start. He helped her down the stairs, but their footsteps echoed and he feared the cops would hear them. If they could leave unseen, they had a chance.