“Do you think he’s telling us the truth?”
“He says he wants to die, and destroying the source will give him that. I can’t see why he’d lie.”
“Except that he’s crazy.”
Clair could feel the dupe’s hot gaze burning into the back of her head.
“Except that.”
Nelly wrenched the wheel one final time and jerked them to a halt outside a concrete building with high, barred windows and a single, heavy-looking steel door at the front. Everything about it said prison.
Nelly banged a fist on the front door and it opened of its own accord. The interior of the cellblock was just as stark and forbidding as its exterior, with scuffed security doors and locks, and bars everywhere. There was no desk or barricade, just a secure double gate leading to rows of cells deeper in the building. Several of the cells were occupied, mostly by men. A background hubbub of muttering and catcalls echoed around the hard-walled chamber.
Clair caught sight of Devin’s red hair through the forest of bars.
“Over here.” He waved.
Nelly opened the double gates with a key and walked them along the cells. Devin waited anxiously, both hands gripping the bars. Beside him, Sargent lay on her side on the cold stone floor, eyes shut and unmoving, a huge figure even when felled. Clair felt a flicker of concern. Sargent looked so limp and still. The plan had been to knock her out temporarily, not put her in a coma.
“Is she all right?”
“Wait.”
Instead of taking them straight to the cell, Nelly had stopped one down and opened the door.
“You, in here,” she said to Nobody.
“Why?” he asked.
“I don’t trust you, either.”
He shrugged Maria Gaudio’s shoulders and did as he was told.
“It won’t make any difference, but if it makes you feel better . . .”
“It does.” The door clanged shut on him. “Now, you,” Nelly said to Devin, still not opening his cell door. “Tell me why Agnessa shouldn’t leave you in here.”
“Because that’s not the deal,” he said. “We’re allies.”
“Clair and Agnessa were allies. She left, and then you came back. I don’t like it when plans change.”
“If Forest hadn’t escaped, we wouldn’t have needed to come back. He’s out there somewhere—”
Nelly dismissed his objection with a sharp wave of one hand. “Now we have armies of dupes and PKs massing outside our gates. Perhaps you should’ve kept going.”
“Perhaps,” said Clair.
Nelly regarded her with resentful eyes. “Don’t think I’m not considering locking you up too.”
Clair understood, and didn’t protest, although the thought of being imprisoned made her hands ball up in a fight-or-flight reflex. Neither was an option at that moment. It was up to Nelly to decide.
“At least put me in a different cell,” said Devin. “When Sarge wakes up, she’s going to be pissed.”
“That I can do.” Nelly swung open the door and Devin hastily slipped through it. The door clanged shut behind him.
“Shouldn’t someone check on her?” said Clair.
Before Nelly could answer, the front door of the prison boomed open, admitting Sandler Jones and his earless thug. Between them they dragged a small figure in a PK undersuit.
“Guess who we found creeping round the back,” the redhead crowed. “Looking for a way to rescue his friend, no doubt.”
It was Forest. He hung limp between them, dripping blood from his nose and water from his undersuit. He must have slipped out of his secondhand clothes and armor in the water before being dragged to the bottom of the Strait.
“Good work, boys,” said Nelly, unlocking the double doors with her key and waving them through. “Now we’re all here. Let’s get him inside before he does any more damage.”
Sandler and friend turned sideways to bring Forest past her. When the trio was all bunched together, a tight concentration of four people with the prisoner in the middle, Forest suddenly moved. Clair didn’t see exactly what happened, but first Sandler’s friend fell away, then he went down too. Then Nelly staggered into the bars with her head lolling back and slid heavily to the floor with a sigh.
Forest flexed his right hand. His left held the keys. He wiped a fleck of blood from his nose with the back of that hand and then looked over at Clair and Devin.
Devin backed away, tugging at Clair’s elbow to bring her with him.
“If you have killed her,” Forest said in a stern voice, “you will regret it.”
[64]
* * *
“WHO, THE BIG lug?” said Devin, voice betraying a slight quaver. “She’s only out cold.”
“Good. Where?”
“In the cell back there.”
Forest took a step toward them, and Clair pointed behind her, to where Sargent lay. The lack of expression on Forest’s face was somehow much more threatening than if he had been glaring.
“Tell us who you really are,” she said as he walked past.
“I am exactly who I say I am,” he said.
“Who you work for, then.”
“I have never lied to you, Clair.” He stared in at Sargent, but made no move to open the door.
“So why did you call the dupes?”
“I did not. I have called no one.”
“It must have been you. No one else knows we’re still here.”
“That cannot be the case.” He turned to look at her. “Who did you tell?”
She didn’t know that she had backed away again until her right elbow caught on one of the metal bars, reminding her of that old injury. What was Agnessa doing about Forest? Surely she had seen and was calling for backup.
“Hey, man?” called one of the other prisoners. “You, with the keys. Let us out!”
The call was taken up by the others. Within seconds, the prison was a riot of banging and cries, impossible to talk over.
Forest looked around him, considering. Then he turned and opened the nearest empty cell.
“Step in here,” he told Clair and Devin. “I will release you afterward. You have my word.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because you have no choice.”
Clair considered trying to run past him, but she had seen how fast he could move when he wanted to, and she didn’t want him to hit her.
She went in first, brows knotted in frustration, and Devin followed, looking resigned to being locked up again. Nobody watched from his cell with something that might have been amusement.
“This cage is as good as any other,” he said.
Once Clair and Devin were secure, Forest walked to the cage of the first prisoner who had called out to him. They exchanged hurried, low words, and then Forest unlocked the cell. Together, they dragged the unconscious Nelly and the two thugs into another cell, disarmed them, then set about releasing the rest of the prisoners.
“Remember the deal!” Forest yelled after them as the escapees ran through the double gates and out the main doors. When they were gone, he locked the gates again, lightly holding the pistol he had taken from Nelly in one hand.
“What was the deal?” asked Clair, unable to keep an edge of bitterness from her voice. How come a prison full of criminals got to go free but she stayed locked up?
“They will keep Agnessa busy,” Forest said. “I estimate that we have approximately five minutes before a spare key arrives.”
Agnessa’s voice boomed out of a speaker in the ceiling. “Already on its way. You’re only delaying the inevitable.”
Forest nodded. “I just need long enough to fix the mistakes we have made.”
“What mistakes?” asked Devin.
“You told someone,” said Forest. “They sent the dupes. Who was it?”
“It really wasn’t you?” asked Clair.
Forest shook his head.
Devin frowned. “But it couldn’t have been PK Sargent, unless she did it befor
e we knocked her out . . . ?”
A dreadful certainty settled into Clair as she weeded out all the possible sources of the leak.
“Oh my god. It was me,” she said. “I called PK Drader.”
“So? But . . .” Devin trailed off.
Clair felt like she might weep. “He was on the seastead, and in the New York booth too. He poisoned Tilly Kozlova and the other Improved so they couldn’t reveal anything else about Wallace’s operation. He was the one who told the dupes where we were, every step of the way.”
Forest came to their cell and unlocked it.
“Yes,” he said, not unsympathetically. “It must be so.”
She remembered Drader’s rough bluster and eagerness to fight. All an act—but the act of a dupe or a traitor? She wondered if she would ever know.
“So these two have been themselves all along?” said Devin, nodding toward Forest and Sargent.
“Maybe they have,” said Clair, not making any immediate move to signal her acceptance of Forest’s innocence, such as leaving the cell, “but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still working for the people trying to take over the world. PK Forest is a peacekeeper, after all.”
“And some peacekeepers knowingly or unknowingly undermine the peace,” Forest said, nodding. The pistol was still in his hand. “The irony is not lost on me. Some might say that the definition of peace has ever been a movable one, but that excuses nothing. OneEarth is a perfect system of governance that people have tried and failed to subvert since its inception. For each faction trying to take over the world, there is another trying to stop them. I am in one of the latter factions.”
“So you say,” said Clair.
In reply, Forest offered her the pistol. She stared at it for a moment, then shook her head.
“You keep it. I’m sick of guns.”
“What about the big lug?” Devin looked from Forest to Clair and back again. “Is she one of the bad guys too, like Drader?”
“No,” said Forest. “She is her own agent.”
Jesse’s voice rang out in Clair’s ear.
“Clair? Can you hear me? We’re going now.”
Clair’s attention shifted to the interface linking her to Jesse, via Devin’s twin-link.
“Bit busy here right now,” she bumped back.
“Is that Forest with you? Is everything okay?”
“Yes. Don’t worry about me. Just go. Let me know when you get there.”
“Uh . . . all right. That was the deal, I guess. Don’t forget what I said earlier: he likes you.”
Trevin loomed in-frame and raised a stagey thumbs-up. Light flashed and the signal died. The d-mat booth was working. In a moment, Jesse and Trevin would be in transit. A couple of minutes later, they would be in space.
“Was that Jesse you were talking to?” asked Forest. She hadn’t realized she was speaking aloud. “Where is he? What is he doing?”
“Finishing what we started,” she said, not wanting to go into any specifics in case someone else was listening. She might already have said too much. “If you hadn’t escaped, it would’ve been done already.”
“I escaped because that was the only way I could think of to force you to return to the muster,” he said. “It is too dangerous for you out there without our protection. Sending Jesse was a wise strategy. Does this mean a target has been confirmed?”
“Yes,” said Devin. “No thanks to you.”
“Excuse me, I have a question,” said Nobody unexpectedly. He pressed against the bars with one hand upraised. “What did PK Forest mean when he said that PK Sargent was her own agent?”
Forest glanced at the only remaining person in the cellblock, apart from Clair, Devin, Sargent, and himself, as though surprised to see anyone there at all.
“You did not escape with the others,” Forest said, “but I do not know you. Unless you are not the person you appear to be . . . ?”
“At your service,” said Nobody.
“Real name Cameron Lee,” said Devin. “Our very own domesticated dupe.”
“He’s helping us, on behalf of all of him,” said Clair. “Or at least not getting in our way anymore.”
“I asked you about Sargent,” Nobody prodded.
Forest looked uncertain. He glanced at Nelly and the two thugs, still out cold in their cell, then up at the ceiling. Checking who was listening, Clair thought. Coming to a decision whether to proceed or not.
“You suggested earlier, Devin, that PK Sargent and I have been who we say we are all along,” Forest said, letting the gun hang down at his side. “That is not true. My friend PK Sargent has not been herself for a long time. She was taken during our jump through Net One in New York. I have seen flashes of her at odd times, but never for long. I fear very little of her remains now.”
Clair thought of all the times she had seen Sargent watching or stalking her, and all the odd questions she had asked.
“If she is a dupe,” said Devin, “why on earth didn’t you do something about it?”
Flick. Forest glanced at Clair, and suddenly she understood. She put her hands over her mouth, hardly daring it to be true but knowing it was true, in her heart and in her mind. Only one explanation covered so many odd moments and discrepancies. It was the only possible explanation.
“Because she’s not a dupe,” Clair said. “She’s Q.”
[65]
* * *
“Q?”
“Yes,” said Forest.
Devin gaped at them both in amazement.
“How?” he asked.
“When she was in Wallace’s station,” Clair said, seeing it all so clearly now. “She had access to all that information.”
Forest nodded. “Maybe it was not her immediate intention to transfer to permanent human form, but the experimental data Wallace had collected was available to her when she did decide. The opportunity was hard to find, after the crash. When Net One presented her with both a means and a suitable subject, she took it.”
“This is why we couldn’t find her,” said Devin, clapping both palms to his forehead. “She had left the Air entirely. She was in Sargent all the time.”
“Yes. I believe she has an inert backup off the Air somewhere, but that is accessed only in direst need—such as when she was reactivated on Ons Island.”
Clair had guessed that too. Sargent’s apparent return from the dead wasn’t a matter of the PKs breaking the law, but of Q bringing herself back when her stolen body was inconveniently killed.
“That’s not the way duping works,” said Devin. “Sargent would have been wiped completely if it was. But it’s not Improvement, either, because that takes days to kick in. You think this is something new?”
“Yes,” said Forest. “She is smarter than us. She always has been. What keeps her at our level is her inexperience. I am unsurprised that she came up with something more suited to her needs in such a short time.”
“Why Sargent?” asked Clair, remembering with dismay the worried peacekeeper who had babbled about three meals and grilled her regarding Zep because she didn’t want her girlfriend to be dead. She didn’t deserve to be written over like Libby had been. “What did she have that Tilly Kozlova’s body didn’t?”
“She had access to you,” said Forest.
“Why? To spy on me?”
“Exactly. Q has been watching you closely ever since she broke parity and brought you back. Not just watching you: interacting with you, and placing you in situations that put you under extreme pressure.”
“Washington,” said Devin, his expression very grim as he turned to look at Clair. This time he was ahead of her. “The barrages. And Antarctica.”
Forest nodded. “No evidence was ever recovered to indicate that dupes were responsible for either crisis. The same still holds for the kidnapping of your mother. I believe that Q has been behind these incidents, and perhaps others, too.”
“Why?” asked Clair. Dismay blossomed into alarm. “No, wait. I know this, too. Friendship has to b
e earned. That was the last thing she said to me. She’s been testing me. She’s been trying to decide if I’m worthy.”
“If she’s been testing you,” said Devin, worrying at his right ear, “she’s been testing all of us. You’re a proxy for the human race, Clair—in which case knocking her out was a pretty bad idea.”
“But I didn’t know.” Clair rushed past Forest and out the open cell door. Sargent’s inert body was three cells along. Clair peered in at her, appalled by the thought that this hidden truth could have ramifications far beyond her relationship with Q. “She asked me about herself when we were cleaning up. I can’t remember what I said. I can’t remember.”
“How long have you known?” Devin asked Forest.
“My suspicions were raised on the seastead. She threatened to turn off the powersats, which is not something a peacekeeper would say. It is beyond our capabilities—but not beyond hers.”
“You kept it quiet.”
“It seemed prudent to do so. Encouraging Q to trust Clair again has always been one of our objectives.”
She whirled on him. “So you could use her to put everything back together?”
“It was my hope that she would volunteer.”
“And if she didn’t?” asked Devin. “A bullet in the back of the head before she broke out again?”
Forest looked horrified. “I am not a monster.”
“Maybe,” said Clair, “but your face is too good at lying.”
His expression relaxed into its usual blankness. “Why do you think that I could have killed her? You saw what happened when the dupes tried: she just came right back. I chose to keep her identity to myself in the hope that she would do the right thing, knowing that anything else I did might make the situation much worse.”
“Yeah, well, I guess we’ll never know.” Devin shrugged. “Told you they wanted the same thing as us, Clair.”
“Everyone knows,” said Nobody.
It took Clair a moment to realize what he meant. Nobody wasn’t talking about Forest’s intentions being revealed. He was talking about Q.
She raised her right index finger and poked Devin in the chest. “Who have you told? Who has Trevin told?”
Crashland Page 32
