The PK’s expression was earnest. Clair wondered if she was thinking about reactivation, too.
“Maybe it is,” Clair said, fighting an urge to weep. “I don’t know. But the dupes just won’t stop. And now it looks like Wallace is still alive. What can we do about any of that?”
Forest and PK Drader had been silent until then, perhaps communicating via their suits’ private networks. Her question interrupted the PKs’ private conversation.
“We are doing everything in our power,” Forest said, “to find the source of the dupes.”
“That’s just dandy,” said Devin, “but is it enough? You’re stretched too thin. Without ready access to d-mat, and faced with an enemy who uses your own technology to its full potential, you’re practically helpless. What’s your plan if your best effort fails? Who’s going to save the day if you can’t?”
“Are you going to suggest RADICAL?” said Sargent.
“Well, we’ve already saved you once,” he said.
“If you’d all just listened to us,” said Jesse, “we wouldn’t be in this mess at all.”
“I suppose that’s true,” said Devin. “And I really would rather be starving to death in a sewer, if we had never used d-mat to stop the Water Wars.”
“Easy, you two,” said Forest. “What did you have in mind, Devin?”
He shrugged. “Nothing, really. I have no idea where the dupes are coming from or where Wallace might be hiding, assuming he actually is still alive. But I know who would.”
Clair groaned. “I keep telling you. I don’t know where Q is!”
“You can help us draw her out.”
“So you can use her and then erase her? I don’t think so.”
“Who said anything about erasing her? We just want to make sure she’s safe.”
“On your terms,” she said. “Does she get a say in what those are?”
“You’re looking at this situation all wrong, Clair. It’s not about making new friends. It’s survival of the fittest. She’s an entirely new kind of being, as alien to us as bird flu virus or a god. If it comes down to her against us, who are you really going to choose?”
“Q isn’t like that.”
“I’ll never know unless you show me.”
“Let’s just get out of here,” said Jesse. “We can argue later.”
“Agreed,” said the tech. “If the dupes are tracing our jumps, they could be here soon.”
“We should look outside before deciding anything,” said Sargent. “I don’t want to walk out into anything dangerous.”
“If we open the Faraday shield, they’ll definitely know where we are,” said Clair.
“So will we, in a strategic sense,” said Forest. “I too think it would be wise.”
There was a moment’s silence as everyone looked at everyone else. The only person who hadn’t offered an opinion was Xia, who had wandered away to sit listlessly in one of the chairs. She had nothing to gain either way, Clair supposed, with another guilty twinge of sympathy. If she stayed with the PKs, she would go to jail. If the dupes got her, there was no guarantee they would let her live. They had killed the other Improved in Crystal City, after all.
Clair had bigger problems, she told herself. And no one was making a decision, which made her blood boil. She didn’t want to be cooped up in Wallace’s cage any longer than she had to be.
“Just open it,” she told Devin. “At the first sign of trouble, we close up again and jump out of here, if we can.”
“We can. And you won’t have to tell me twice.”
Something clunked in the walls. The shutters began to slide up the windows, letting in the golden light of sunset. From above, the devastation wrought by Q on the streets below was even more impressive. There were craters in the plaza and smoke still billowing from a nearby office building. Swathes of the lower, broader section of the VIA building had been stripped of its windows, exposing the metal beams and framework within. It looked like a giant dog had picked the building up and shaken it before dropping it back down again.
The only movement came from drones circling the VIA building, monitoring every approach. Presumably the route up from the flooded subway was also being watched, and Clair took some comfort from the thought that the building wasn’t under attack. Yet.
Her lenses reconnected, flooding her infield with a rush of news grabs and bumps. There were images of the devastation in Washington, with estimates of fatalities in the thousands. Speculation on who was to blame was running wild. Some thought it was an accident exacerbated by the absence of structural engineers, thanks to the crash. Others thought it was terrorists, perhaps WHOLE, taking advantage of the situation. No one mentioned the dupes—but they were mentioning Clair Hill.
Her name appeared in a series of short pieces being forwarded widely through the Air. The main source was a gallery called “Clairwatch” that had sprung up in the last few hours. Its mission was simple. “She lied to you and now she’s trying to hide from you,” said the information page. “We’re not going to let her.”
Every page contained data relating to Clair’s recent movements, activities, and communications, including blurry pictures captured from drones and PK feeds. From the climactic conclusion of her race to New York to the present, everything was covered. There was her removal from the plaza and parts of her interrogation by the PKs, lifted from the public record. There were details of Forest’s and Sargent’s careers, plus histories of Devin and RADICAL. There was her sudden appearance in Washington and the terrible flooding that had happened there. There was even a page on her current location, appearing within moments of the Faraday shield lifting. She’s back in the Big Apple! was the caption. What does she know that we don’t?
“What do you know?” Ronnie asked Clair in a terse bump. She must have been watching Clair surf the Air, thanks to her close-friend privileges.
“Nothing,” Clair bumped back. “I’m as lost as everyone else is, I swear.”
“But you’re part of it somehow. You’re moving around like no one else can. What’s going on? Are the PKs lying to us about d-mat?”
Clair didn’t know how much she should say. She could see Ronnie sprawled on her bed, surrounded by empty chocolate bar wrappers she hadn’t bothered to recycle. Both her parents had been on the other side of the world when d-mat failed. They were in constant contact with one another through the Air, and there were no fires or other disasters in the area. But still, Ronnie was trapped and alone. She didn’t know her neighbors, her best friends were either missing, potential criminals, or currently stuck in a jungle valley picking off giant leeches. The photos Tash was posting to her infield were terrifying.
“Look up something called the shadow road,” Clair said. “That’ll explain part of it.”
“What about Washington?” Ronnie reached for another chocolate bar. Anxiety eating had always been her greatest weakness. “And that space station? Are you a terrorist now?”
“No. If anyone tells you I am, they’re lying through their teeth.”
“How can I believe you?”
“I don’t know,” said Clair. She wanted to say that she was exactly the same person she ever was—even though she was a duplicate of the Clair who had killed herself in this very room—but how to explain that without sounding even crazier than people already claimed she was? If she could only go to Ronnie, she was sure she could convince her in person, but she doubted the PKs would let her do something so frivolous, in their eyes. In Clair’s, it was of utmost importance. If her friends didn’t trust her, why would Q?
“D-mat will start working again soon, you’ll see,” Clair said, because it had to be true. “Everything will be fine.”
“Why should I listen to you? I don’t know who you are anymore, Clair.”
Clair’s eyes filled with unwanted tears.
“I’m doing my best,” she said, even though all she seemed to be doing at the moment was struggling to stay alive.
Right on cue Sargent s
aid, “Movement.” Clair came out of her lens interfaces to join the others at the window. There didn’t seem to be anything else she could do.
[13]
* * *
“WHAT?” JESSE ASKED, looking around as though coming out of a daze. “Where?”
Sargent pointed down West Thirty-Third Street. A metal canister skittered along the road and exploded in a puff of thick brown smoke. Through the smoke Clair could make out indistinct figures in flickering urban-camouflage suits, moving fast from cover to cover, but she couldn’t see their faces or tell exactly how many of them there were.
“Dupes?” Clair asked, wiping her eyes.
“One assumes so,” said Devin, keeping well back from the glass, even though it was undoubtedly bulletproof. Wallace had spared no expense in his inner sanctum.
“Definitely dupes,” said Jesse, still looking slightly dumbfounded. “I got a message, too.”
“Share it with us,” said Forest.
“No,” he said with a quick shake of his head. “Just Clair.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked him. “Show me.”
Jesse didn’t look at her as his fingertips danced against his leg, tapping out commands via his ancient augs. A moment later, a new window opened in Clair’s lenses. It contained a video.
“What you see in the street below is one of two things,” said Dylan Linwood’s dupe in the video, his left eye filled with bright-red blood from the original pattern. He was shown against a yellow desert backdrop that could have been anywhere. “An escort or a death squad, depending on how long it takes for you to hand her over.”
The image cut to another recording, this one taken in low light. Clair recognized Zep’s room on the Isle of Shanghai. The camera was pointing at the bed. Audio hadn’t been included. The images conveyed everything.
Clair closed the window as quickly as she could and deleted the message from her infield.
“That wasn’t me,” she said to Jesse, cheeks burning. “I never . . . Honestly, we never. . . . I swear.”
He nodded, but still didn’t look at her. “It’s dupes. I figured. They’re just messing with me now, so I’ve deleted it.” To the others he said, “They want us to hand over Clair or they’re going to kill us all.”
“We’re not doing that,” said Devin.
“Of course we’re not,” said Sargent. “But at least they’re talking to us before they bring the building down around our ears.”
“We should get out of here,” said Clair, feeling a flicker of panic. The dupes just wouldn’t let up.
“Wait,” said Forest. “Reinforcements.”
He indicated the window. A squad of peacekeepers was deploying at the base of the building. As a pair of canisters rolled across the plaza, gunfire broke out between the two parties, faintly audible from the ground below.
Clair hoped the PKs showed no mercy. How long until that video of her and Zep turned up on Clairwatch for the entire world to see?
“That’s all well and good,” said Devin, “but the dupes are theoretically unlimited in number, while you guys are not.”
“More are on their way from New York HQ,” said Forest.
“The fact remains. Unless you start duping your officers—”
“That is illegal,” said Forest with an irritated frown.
“You could change the law—”
“If we were allowed to do it, they would be too,” said PK Drader. “I can’t see the lawmakers agreeing to that. LM Kingdon made it very clear in a ruling this morning—”
“Look,” said Jesse, pointing at something above street level. “There’s another show in town.”
On the building opposite the old post office, a trio of masked figures had appeared. They weren’t wearing uniforms or armor. They had backpacks, which, when they reached the edge of the roof garden, they took off and opened. Carrying what looked like glass bottles in each hand, the masked figures leaned over the edge, directly above the thick brown cloud created by the dupes.
One by one, they threw the bottles at the points from where gunfire appeared to be issuing. Each bottle exploded on impact, sending tendrils of fiery liquid in all directions.
“Your friends, I assume,” said Devin to Jesse.
“No one I know personally,” said Jesse. He bumped Clair a statement from WHOLE listing all the people killed by dupes in recent days, followed by a call to arms. These three had responded. “They’re local Abstainers.”
“How did they get up there so quickly?” she asked.
“They know their way around because they don’t use d-mat.”
Clair remembered the people who had flocked to see her on her train journey to New York. At the time she had felt sorry for them, but now she saw that their lifestyle actually gave them an advantage during the crash. As Turner Goldsmith had said, they were in every town, everywhere, and they didn’t treat their homes like temporary rest stops, with their real lives happening somewhere else entirely.
A bottle bomb exploded in the middle of a clump of dupes, sending bodies flying.
“If a terrorist helps you, PK Forest,” said Devin, “are they still terrorists?”
“They’re not helping us,” said Sargent. “They’re helping Jesse.”
“And Clair,” Jesse said. “She’s the girl who killed d-mat.”
“I wish people would stop saying that,” Clair said.
“I’ll go down and tell them now, if you like,” said Devin. “Then they can go back to whatever hole they crawled out of and leave us to die in peace.”
Clair shot him a sharp look that had no effect whatsoever.
“We can’t stay here,” she said, just as horrified by what was going on outside the room as what lay within. How long until someone innocent was killed by one of those bombs? “I can’t stay here.”
“We don’t have to leave just yet,” said Sargent. “We’re in no immediate danger.”
“Can you watch this? I can’t,” she said, balling her fists and rubbing them into her eyes. It didn’t help: she saw the images just as clearly in her mind. “I don’t want anyone else to die because of me.”
“It’s about more than you,” said Devin. “There’s an ideological war taking place down there, one that’s been brewing for a while . . . but I take your point. You’re the flashpoint, the trigger. If you go away, most likely the dupes will too. But go where? That’s the question.”
“Let’s join the guys fighting out there,” said Jesse eagerly. “Go underground, travel quiet. They’ll know where to hide. They can keep us safe.”
“It could work,” said PK Drader, scratching his ear.
“We’ll be spotted the moment we set foot outside the building,” said Sargent, her expression betraying her alarm at the scheme, alarm Clair shared. “If we’re cornered, there’ll be no way to escape.”
“You don’t have to come with us,” said Jesse. “In fact, the fewer there are, the easier it will be to stay out of sight.”
“We cannot allow that,” said PK Forest.
“Why not?” Jesse asked. “Are we your prisoners?”
“No, but you are critical to our investigation.” Flick. “Not to mention vulnerable. It would be irresponsible of me to allow you to leave our care at this time.”
“You can’t make us stay.” Jesse glanced at PK Sargent, the biggest person in the room. “Can you?”
“They’re the ones with the guns,” said Devin. “That gives them a certain bargaining power.”
“Yes, but—”
“He’s right, Jesse.” Clair put a hand on his arm. Sargent was right too: it was a crazy idea. Besides, she was exhausted. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept. On the train, perhaps, near Chicago. It felt like a lifetime ago—and was, in a sense, exactly that.
“We can’t go back out into the real world,” she said. “It’s not safe for us or for anyone near us. We have to go somewhere else, somewhere the dupes won’t find us, somewhere preferably without any people at all.
That’s the only way we can be sure we’ve shaken them. . . .”
“How about Antarctica?” asked Devin. “RADICAL conducts some pretty extreme research, and we don’t like prying eyes. Valkyrie Station is on Dome Fuji, thousands of miles from anyone. You can’t get any farther from people without actually leaving the planet . . . which I assume you don’t want to do?”
Clair shook her head. She wasn’t going back into space for anything. The one and only time she had done so, Wallace had threatened to blow her out an airlock.
“I don’t like it,” said Jesse. “We’ll be completely isolated down there.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it?” said Devin.
Clair waved him silent. “Give us a moment.”
She pulled Jesse by the arm into the privacy cubicle, trying with every step to ignore the memories that short walk prompted. Her heart danced a shuffle, uncertain of the tempo.
Jesse pulled away the moment they were alone.
“What are you doing, Clair?” he asked in a tense whisper. “Are you signing up with those guys?”
“No,” she said, “but I’m not signing up with WHOLE, either. I’m somewhere in the middle. You understand that, right? We need to get the dupes off our back, and if RADICAL can do that, great. If not, we try our own thing.”
Jesse hesitated, then nodded.
“What if I said I was going to stay behind this time?” he asked.
Her heart shuffled again. Would he really leave her over some small difference of opinion? Did she mean that little to him?
“I’d talk you out of it,” she bluffed. “Can we just take that for granted?”
He bit his lip and didn’t say anything.
“I understand,” she said, and she did understand, or at least was trying to. “The first few times you had no say in when you had to use d-mat, and that last one wasn’t really your decision either. It was either do it or drown. No contest, from where I was standing.”
Clair took his right hand in both of hers.
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