Criminal Destiny

by Gordon Korman

  We can’t ask, because I think we’re supposed to know. The outside world is different from Serenity, but this is really different.

  Eli takes a paper out of his pocket and carefully unfolds it. It’s a photograph of Tamara Dunleavy that he’s printed from her Wikipedia page. “This is what she looks like.”

  The waitress’s painted eyebrows go up. “You know what? I think I have seen her.” She turns and holds the picture out to the short-order cook. “Karl, do you recognize this lady?”

  The counterman glances over. “Oh, yeah, sure—everybody knows her.”

  “She comes in here?” I ask eagerly.

  “Nah, not here. Strictly high-class, this one, money out the wazoo. A real do-gooder, up to her neck in every charity. Always saving something—the whales, the children, the rainforest, whatever’s popular that week. Who wants to know?”

  “My grandma grew up with her,” Tori replies glibly. “Any idea where she lives? Grandma asked me to drop by and say hi.”

  The man gestures helplessly with his spatula. “Who knows? Pick a mountain, pick a mansion. Those fancy types love the nosebleeds.”

  As we leave the luncheonette, I sidle up to the others. “What’s a wazoo?”

  “It must be some kind of bank account,” Malik guesses.

  So we go to the bank, repeating all that stuff about Tori’s grandmother to the manager. “I think she’s one of your Wazoo clients,” Tori adds helpfully.

  “I’m sorry, but we’re not permitted to give out information on our depositors.” He looks like he’s having a hard time keeping a straight face. Okay, so maybe wazoo isn’t a bank account. By the time I learn everything I need to know about the world outside Serenity, I’ll be a very old clone.

  We try the post office and several more stores without much success. A few of the people we talk to recognize the picture, especially the ones in the more expensive stores. We pick up a smattering of information, but nothing really helpful: she rides around in a steel-gray chauffeur-driven Bentley; she’s a good tipper, although not as good as the Hollywood types; no matter how dressed up she is, she always wears sneakers.

  “Great,” grumbles Malik, dropping himself to a bench on the main drag. “A rich lady in sneakers. That really narrows it down.”

  I feel a kind of helpless frustration that we’re floundering like fish out of water. There should be a more systematic way of going about this. In Serenity, I was busier than the other kids, and I got everything accomplished by being organized. Jackson may be bigger than our hometown, but it’s not a huge city like Denver. It can’t be that hard to find a famous billionaire in a chauffeur-driven car.

  And then I’m staring right at it. The largest building on the strip is the Jackson Convention Center. The sign that stands at the curb reads:

  WELCOME

  TETON COUNTY CHARITABLE SOCIETY

  “Look!” I exclaim, pointing.

  “Big deal,” snorts Malik. “We’re here to find Tamara Dunleavy, not paint the orphanage.”

  “Malik, you can be so dumb sometimes. Don’t you remember what the cook said? She’s a do-gooder! If this is a meeting of the local charities, she must be a part of it somehow. I bet she’s in that convention center right now.”

  “It’s worth a try,” Eli decides. “The worst we can be is wrong.”

  As we approach the three-story building, four sets of eyes see it at the same time—a steel-gray Bentley sedan in the parking lot. The Wyoming license plate reads VISTA.

  “The company she founded is called VistaNet,” Eli whispers.

  Behind the tinted glass, a liveried chauffeur sits at the wheel, reading a book.

  The pieces are clicking into place—a charitable society, a chauffeur-driven Bentley, VistaNet. I feel better, more in control. We’re thinking methodically, not just grasping at straws.

  We step into the ultra-modern chrome and glass lobby. A floor-to-ceiling board lists the day’s events. The Charitable Society is meeting in the Gillette Ballroom, which is right on the main level.

  We get there to the sound of applause from within. A moment later, the doors open and people begin to emerge, chatting among themselves as they head for the exit. Eli takes out his picture of Tamara Dunleavy and we all compare the passing faces with the photograph from Wikipedia. No matches.

  The stream of attendees slows to a trickle. We exchange agonized glances. Could we have been mistaken about this? After the car and the chauffeur and everything?

  Mustering my courage, I peer in the open door. There are still a few stragglers gathered around the podium. My heart sinks. No internet billionaire.

  Finally, a large woman in an enormous orange muumuu steps out of the way, and I see her. The hair is white, swept back from a face that seems surprisingly youthful, with piercing eyes that are a brilliant shade of blue. She wears a charcoal-gray business suit, and on her feet, bright white sneakers fresh out of the box. The only indication that this person is enormously wealthy is her earrings, which feature diamond studs the size of dimes.

  “Nice zombies,” Malik whispers.

  Tamara Dunleavy.

  11

  ELI FRIEDEN

  It’s her!

  My hand is shaking so badly that I can’t see the picture to make the positive identification. But we all recognize her.

  Tamara Dunleavy, who collaborated with Felix Hammerstrom to create Project Osiris and then backed out at the last minute for reasons nobody knows. The only person outside Serenity who will understand who we are and how we came to be.

  The rush of exhilaration I feel is so overwhelming that my step wobbles a little because I’m weak in the knees. We started out utterly clueless in the real world. Yet we’ve succeeded in taking a single name from the internet and locating this person hundreds of miles from where we were. I’m proud of us, but mostly, I’m filled with hope that the dream of some kind of future for us isn’t completely impossible. If we can find this human needle in a haystack the size of America, then we’re capable of opening any door.

  I probably would have stood out there forever, frozen in the moment. But Malik gives me a gentle shove, and the four of us half walk, half stumble into the Gillette Ballroom.

  Ms. Dunleavy hasn’t noticed us yet. She’s still bidding farewell to the last few members of her audience. One by one, they file out and we begin our approach.

  I’m too tongue-tied to speak. It’s Tori who finds her voice first. “Tamara Dunleavy?”

  The founder of VistaNet turns in our direction. “Yes?”

  A lot of adults outside Serenity have a kind of impatient attitude toward kids—like we’re unimportant and they’re afraid we’ll waste their valuable time. She isn’t like that at all. She gives us her full attention as we approach. In fact, we’re about ten feet away when her eyes widen and fix on me.

  “Do you know me?” I ask timidly.

  “No,” she replies. “It’s just that, for a moment there, I thought you were someone else. Now, what can I do for you ladies and gentlemen?”

  “Well—” Where to begin? We’ve been working toward this moment, anticipating it. Yet we’ve never really talked about what we’ll say when it happens. “We know you were one of the creators of Project Osiris.”

  She looks shocked, but recovers quickly. “I think you must have me confused with someone else.”

  Tori steps forward. “Please. We saw the piece on the internet. It said Tamara Dunleavy, founder of VistaNet. That’s you.”

  Her nervous laugh is in sharp contrast to the confident ease she was showing moments before. “You can’t believe everything you read on the internet. When you’re in my position, you’d be amazed where your name turns up sometimes.”

  “Like next to Felix Hammerstrom?” puts in Malik.

  She shrugs. “I knew Felix. Brilliant social scientist. Maybe a little ahead of his time.”

  “He’s my father,” I interrupt. “At least, the closest thing to a father you get when you’re—like me.”


  All the color drains from her face. It’s clear that she’s putting two and two together. We’re the right age; we know about the project; we know about Hammerstrom. This must be her first inkling that the Osiris experiment went ahead even after she dropped out.

  I say it outright to eliminate any possible misunderstanding. “It’s us. We’re Project Osiris, just like you and my dad planned it out—clones of criminal masterminds, not quite human. Freaks.”

  Ms. Dunleavy is deathly quiet. “How can you say such an insane thing about yourselves?”

  Amber speaks up. “In Serenity, they told us honesty was the most important quality while they were lying to us about everything else. Please don’t do that too.”

  “We need your help,” I add. “We tried the police, but they didn’t believe us. You’re the only person who can back up our story.”

  “But I can’t—”

  “The Purples—the Surety are after us,” I forge on, hoping to break through her resistance. “They nearly caught us in Colorado. If they drag us back to Serenity, we’ll never get another chance to have real lives. If that happens, they win!” I take a deep breath and play my trump card. “You quit Osiris because you saw how wrong it was. You couldn’t stop them then. Maybe you can stop them now.”

  Her face, still pale, turns stern, her expression closed. “I repeat: I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Malik glowers. “Listen, lady, it’s not just us. There are six more back in Happy Valley who don’t even know the mess they’re in.” His voice cracks. “Not to mention the good kid who got killed trying to escape with us!”

  Ms. Dunleavy is visibly shaken, but she sticks to her story. “I’m so sorry. I can see that you’ve been through a terrible experience and you really believe what you’re saying. But it just doesn’t have anything to do with me. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  She speaks with the authority and finality of someone who’s used to being the boss. It’s a weird moment. We know she’s lying and she knows we’re telling the truth, but there’s nothing else to be said on the subject. I wait for Malik to argue, or Tori to plead, or Amber to lay a guilt trip. I wait for myself to say something, anything—even “Liar, liar, pants on fire!” But none of us offers a word. We just watch her walk away, taking with her all our hopes.

  “She’s some piece of work,” Malik growls as soon as she’s out of sight. “No way she’s never heard of Project Osiris. She practically lost her lunch when you said the name!”

  “I don’t think she realized until now that Osiris really happened,” I suggest. “She must have thought the whole thing was scrubbed when she quit. I guess she doesn’t know my dad as well as she thinks she does. Everything has to be his way or no way.”

  “I don’t care!” Amber exclaims bitterly. “If she helped dream up Osiris, she’s a terrible person. Maybe a notch better than our parents, because she at least had the decency to bail out. But she’s still in it up to her neck!”

  Tori nods. “Did you see her staring at Eli? She knows who he’s cloned from. I’ll bet she thought she was looking at the guy.”

  I feel a deep dread that I must be a dead ringer for Bartholomew Glen. That was the expression on her face—that she’d just found herself eye to eye with the Crossword Killer.

  “She was staring at all of us,” Amber puts in, “although she never looked at me straight on. It’s almost like she was peering over my shoulder at something behind me.”

  Malik is surprised. “You know, I thought that too. She’s such a bad liar that she can’t even face you while she’s doing it.”

  “Actually,” Tori muses, “she’s a pretty good liar. If I didn’t already know she was guilty, she would have convinced me.”

  “Fine,” sighs Malik. “She’s a fantastic liar who happens to have an eye tick which makes her look at people right here.” He raises his index finger to a spot on his muscular neck just below his left ear.

  “You know,” Tori observes, “you do have a little bump there.”

  “Yeah, and you’re a supermodel,” Malik shoots back.

  “Seriously—feel it.”

  So he does, and finds something just far enough back to be out of sight in a mirror. “Is that a pimple?”

  “It’s just a birthmark,” I assure him. “You’ve always had it.”

  “Only”—Tori frowns—the expression she wears when she’s noticing something no one else can see.

  Malik is worried now. “What is it?”

  “My dad had knee surgery when he was in college,” she explains. “The scar’s totally gone. All that’s left is a faint little line, barely even visible. You’ve got a line like that through the middle of your birthmark.”

  “You’re saying I had—neck surgery?” Malik sputters.

  “Maybe. A long time ago.” Tori’s attention shifts to Amber. “And you have it too.”

  I gawk, squinting for focus. Tori’s right! There’s no bump, but Amber has a tiny, faded scar, barely visible, in the exact same spot as Malik’s!

  Well, that does it. We must seem pretty strange, because we’re standing in a circle, staring at one another’s necks. We all have it—an ancient scar, long healed, about an inch below the ear.

  Amber has the strongest reaction. “Take it out! Take it out now!”

  I’m mystified. “Take what out?”

  “Don’t you see?” she demands. “The invisible barrier around Serenity! This must be what made it work—a tiny receiver in our heads that made us sick every time we got close to leaving town. They did surgery on us, probably when we were babies! They cut us open and put some kind of chip inside!”

  It’s not a pleasant thought, but what other explanation could there possibly be? Identical scars in identical places—conveniently just out of view. And maybe Malik’s shows because his implant—or whatever it is—wasn’t stuck in deep enough.

  Malik covers his skeeved-out expression by glaring at Amber. “How can we take it out? You’ve got a zipper?”

  “I don’t care! It’s a clone thing and I want it gone!”

  “What if we—you know—need it?” Tori asks in a worried tone. “What if, whatever it is, it’s keeping us alive somehow?”

  “Impossible,” I counter. “We all did the research on clones. Except for how we started out, we’re totally human.”

  Malik has a different concern. “Do you think the Purples can use whatever it is to track us? Like a GPS?”

  “I doubt it,” I reply. “If that was true, we never could have made it this far. They would have scooped us up way back in Denver.”

  Tori nods. “So that’s what it isn’t. How do we find out what it is?”

  Malik shrugs. “We can’t. The thing’s inside us. We can’t get at it without a doctor.”

  Amber reaches over to a nearby table and picks up a small staple gun from atop a stack of posters. She brings the gun up to her neck and fires a staple into the skin near the bump.

  Tori stifles a scream. “Amber, what are you doing? You’re bleeding!”

  Amber dabs at her wound with the corner of the tablecloth. “Well, what do you know? I guess I’m going to have to see a doctor.”

  12

  AMBER LASKA

  Okay, I admit it. It hurts a lot more than I expected it to.

  Not only that, but the nurse in the ER looks at the others like they did it to me. The last thing we need is for someone to call the cops on us.

  “It’s my own fault,” I say sheepishly. “We were putting up posters and my neck got itchy. I guess I forgot I was holding the staple gun.”

  “It must have gone in pretty deep,” she observes, taking note of the blood trickling down to my collar.

  Tell me about it. It feels like two spears have been plunged into the side of my head. Worse, I’m beginning to feel a little dizzy, although I don’t mention that to the nurse. I want medical attention, but only to a certain degree. Passing out and being admitted to the hospital is definitely not on my t
o-do list for the day.

  Then she starts asking a lot of nosy questions about my parents, and their jobs, and what health insurance they have. And when I point out that I’m the one who’s injured, not my mom or dad, she confesses that all this is so the hospital can get paid for treating me.

  “You mean,” I challenge, “I’m sitting here, bleeding through staple holes in my neck, not seeing a doctor, because of money?”

  This seems to fluster her. “It’s just that, well, you have no insurance card, so we’ll need to speak to a parent or guardian in order to get an ID number.”

  Even with Project Osiris, there are still times when Serenity makes a whole lot more sense than the world around it.

  “I don’t know about any of that! I just want to get the staple out!”

  My frustration bubbles over but that might actually work in my favor, because she assumes I’m delirious with pain.

  “Well, I suppose your parents can take care of the paperwork when they come to pick you up.” She hesitates. “Your parents will be coming to pick you up, won’t they?”

  “What do you think?” I sigh.

  She says she’ll call me when it’s my turn to see the doctor.

  I get no relief in the waiting room. Tori and Eli resume their lecture on the subject of “Why would you do such a crazy thing?”

  “Don’t you think we should know what we’ve been carrying around in our bodies all these years?” I demand.

  Tori is angry at me. “Doctors make appointments, Amber. You didn’t have to maim yourself!”

  “It’s called the emergency room for a reason,” I counter. “This is an emergency. And while the doctor’s digging out the staple, he’ll be like, ‘Oh, hey, what’s this other thing under your skin?’”

  Only Malik seems to approve. “Good idea. It’ll seem less suspicious if the guy thinks he’s finding it on his own.”

  It’s the first compliment I’ve gotten from Malik since . . . well, it might be the only compliment I’ve gotten from Malik. Or maybe he just enjoys watching me suffer.