Klimt sat on a stool directly in front of me while Preeve continued to browse around the lab, pecking at various pieces of equipment like a fish nipping weeds off the wall of its tank. “It is an acronym, Michael. Direct Neural Acceleration. It has a good ring to it, don’t you think?”
I glanced at Preeve. He was shaking his head and tapping something into a tablet computer. He seemed to think this was all a big joke. “It makes your mind leave your body, doesn’t it? Like what you do with the pulse down the phone.”
Klimt straightened a crease in his trousers. “An elementary description, but to some degree accurate. Accelerating the power of thought has a profound effect on the individual’s … perception of the universe, not unlike one of your reality shifts — which brings me to the primary reason I am here.”
“I want to know about DAD!” I shouted.
“Doctor?” Klimt sighed.
Preeve came over and moved a knob on a freestanding control panel. Puffs of pale green gas squirted out of a line of pinprick vents in the floor of the cube, turning the mauve a slight shade of brown. The gas pressed into my lungs, making my head feel light. I sank to my knees, coughing. “Steady,” said Klimt. “I want him to talk.”
“He’s already at a hyperbaric level,” said Preeve. “We could just —”
“No.” Klimt leveled a hand. “Nothing artificial. Not while his body is undergoing healing.”
“It doesn’t work,” I panted.
“On Freya, no,” he admitted. “I have to give the girl credit; she is far more cunning than I ever imagined. I hope you parted on agreeable terms. It may be a while before you see her again.” He steepled his fingers and stared at the tips. “The treatment will nullify the virus in you. Unlike Freya, you are still human. I am afraid you have taken your last flight, however. It would have been interesting to monitor your newfound talent, but we could hardly send you home and let your mother face the trauma of watching the virus slowly take over. It would have happened at some point, trust me.”
“How long are you keeping me here?”
“Till tomorrow at least,” Preeve muttered.
“Are you crazy? Mom will call the police if —”
“Michael,” Klimt cut in. He put his fingers through a little push-up routine. “You should know by now we have means of controlling your … domestic situation. You have been here for two days already.”
“You’re a monster.”
He tilted his head. “Really? In comparison to whom? Preeve? Chantelle? You, perhaps?”
“Me? What have I done?”
“That is what I am here to find out. Chantelle tells me you were locked in an office during your conflict with Alexander. Did you attempt to control him with a reality shift?”
“No.”
“Are you certain? Please think carefully. You were under great emotional stress. This is the time your shifts usually happen.”
I threw up my hands. “Why are you asking me this? Has something changed?” One of the side effects of my shifts was that whenever I “reshuffled the multiverse” (one of Klimt’s favorite descriptions of it) any trailing thoughts in my mind somehow got sucked into the altered reality. Josie, for instance, had gone from being completely nonmusical to a star flute player during one of my shifts, simply because I’d heard her make up a lie about taking flute lessons.
“Tell me precisely what happened,” said Klimt.
I sighed and dragged my hands down my face. “He was climbing a ladder up to the roof. I was yelling at him to stop because he said he knew stuff about Dad. I was thinking about a shift, but then Chantelle came in and used that … laser thing on him. Where is he? I want to speak to him.”
“Unfortunately, that will not be possible.”
I looked into Klimt’s motionless purple eyes.
“Alexander died in the ambulance,” he said.
“He died?” I repeated, dry-mouthed with shock. “How?”
“I was hoping you might tell me. Did you kill him, Michael? Did you imagine a universe where Alexander died of his injuries?”
“No! Why would I do that? I told you, he knew about Dad — and UNICORNE. He said he was the Bulldog’s son.”
“Yes. A black day for the director, just one of the reasons I need to be clear about your … role in this.”
“My role? You knew, didn’t you? You and the Bulldog. I saw the way he looked at the Boffin cards. He sent me against his own son to see what would happen. Why?”
“Because no other Talen could have mastered Alexander. We needed you to bring him under control. If what you’re telling me is true, you almost succeeded.”
“I didn’t harm him. Why would I lie?”
“Chantelle says you were wearing a laboratory coat. Why?”
“That was … I …”
“Why, Michael?”
“I … wanted to confuse him! To get my own back. He was losing them. The men. They wanted to desert. I saw them when I went out of my body.”
“Saw them?” Preeve looked up from his tablet. “That’s not possible, is it?”
Klimt said, “Please continue, Michael.”
“I was trying to make them come over to me, but …”
“But what?”
“Maybe I did cause a shift? I remember being really angry and thinking, where were the men when I needed them?”
“Where indeed,” said Klimt. He slowly got off the stool. “Keep him stable. I need to see the director.”
“Klimt, wait!” I cried. “I didn’t do anything. I swear, I wanted Alexander alive.”
“Yes,” he said, “I believe you, Michael. But if you did perform a reality shift around your thoughts of Alexander’s Army, we have to accept the very real possibility that his men still exist as a functioning force.”
“Outside his mind?” I glanced at Preeve again. His face was drawn into an anxious frown.
“You forget, this is UNICORNE. The extraordinary is merely ordinary to us.”
“So … where are they — the men?”
I saw Klimt glance at a monitor that seemed to be displaying my brainwave patterns. “That, I do not know,” he said. And he exited the lab, leaving me in the less than welcome company of Preeve.
“Right,” said the scientist, nervously smoothing his hair off his brow. “We can do this one of two ways. I can make you sleep while the gas does its work or you can sit and study your fingernails. Either way, we’re not going to talk. I certainly won’t be pestered with ridiculous questions about the DNA program or your father’s disappear —”
He stopped speaking as the door opened and two men I vaguely recognized walked in. One might have been the man who’d tried to help me in the factory. The other was carrying a medical bag. Both of them were wearing the pale-orange uniform.
“Yes, what is it?” Preeve said irritably. “Do you two even have access rights here?”
“Mr. Klimt sent us,” the medic one said. He had a weird, clipped voice. He reminded me of someone.
Preeve grunted and went back to his tablet. “Well … be quick, whatever it is.”
“We won’t bovver you fer long,” the first man said.
And the medic pulled a cotton pad out of his bag and held it across Preeve’s nose and mouth. The scientist squeaked and dropped the tablet. He kicked three times, each kick fainter than the previous one, before sliding into a heap on the floor.
“What are you doing?” I gasped. “Wh-who are you?”
They stood at attention and clicked their heels.
“Private Clegg. Sir!”
“Private Hodges. Sir!”
They both saluted. And the faces I’d thought vague and forgettable briefly became terrifyingly plain. Two lines for eyes, one each for nose and mouth.
My question was answered. They were here, in the room.
Alexander’s Army.
Made human.
Made men.
Clegg, the nonmedic, bent down and picked up the tablet computer. It seemed to puzzle him
for a second, in the same way a caveman might wonder about a lightbulb he’d found in his cave. Then the eye slits burned with a faint mauve light, and the light scanned the screen from top to bottom. The keyboard came up. Clegg’s fingers moved across it. With a hiss of compressed air, the gas around me disappeared and the cube lowered itself to the floor. All six walls dissolved in a shimmer, leaving a slightly raised platform marked along its edges by a faint yellow light.
Hodges held out my clothes. His face was human, yet strangely featureless. The sort of face that could have drifted into any situation and not be noticed or easily recalled.
“What do you want?” I said in a low-pitched tremor.
“Come to get you out, sir. You’ll be needin’ yer duds.” He offered up the clothes again.
“No,” I said weakly, gripping my arms as if I’d stepped out of a cold shower.
“Sir, you’ll need yer duds up top,” repeated Hodges.
“Operation Mother. It’s a go,” said Clegg. “Grimper ’n’ Dobbs are waitin’, sir. All we need is our orders to proceed.”
“Mother?” I said, terrified that they meant mine. Their faces flickered between human and soldier. “The gas,” I said quickly. “It fuddles your brain. Makes you forget things — mission details.”
Clegg’s features relaxed back to human. “We take the Bulldog, sir. Put you in ’is place. Run the joint our way. Payback — fer Mother.”
So despite the fact I had given them form, Alexander’s desire for revenge was still ingrained in their collective consciousness, driving them to complete his mission like a bomb counting down to detonation — a detonation only I might stop. “And then?”
“Then we learn the truth, sir. All about UNICORNE.”
Which would have to include everything about Dad.
And suddenly, the mission didn’t seem so crazy. A huge portion of my mind was screaming, This is reckless! Pull out now! I was a UNICORNE agent. I had a duty to raise the alarm. But when I thought about the lies that Klimt had told me and the danger he’d placed me in at the store, my quest for the truth began to tip me in favor of the army. Here was the chance I’d been waiting for.
I gave a minimal nod.
“Sir!” They both saluted again.
I took the clothes. While I changed, the men bound Preeve’s wrists and ankles and stuck a piece of duct tape over his mouth. They dragged him onto the cube platform. Clegg picked up the tablet and re-formed the walls. The cube rose with Preeve inside. “Do you want ’im done for, sir?” Clegg’s finger hovered over the keyboard.
“No,” I said. “He could be useful to us later.”
“Sir.” Clegg threw the tablet aside.
Hodges made his way to the laboratory door. He opened it a crack and beckoned us forward. “All clear,” he said.
And Operation Mother began.
We went through the levels, heading for the elevators that would take us straight to the Bulldog’s “kennel.” The men knew the way, which made me wonder how much of their knowledge was due to my minimal experience of this craft and how much might have come from Alexander’s memories. Had he been here like me? I wondered. A boy immersed in a world of alien technologies and undercover activity? How much had he known — did the men now know? And what had gone so wrong between him and his father?
We moved through unhindered. No one paid me any more attention than they had when I’d done this with Agent Mulrooney. On the final escalator, we were joined by Dobbs and Grimper. They said nothing to Hodges and Clegg but just dropped into place on the step behind me.
At the top, we quickly progressed to the elevators. While Hodges and Clegg stood guard, Dobbs stopped me and whispered, “Goin’ to need the override code now, sir.” He nodded at the scanners, implying that men of their rank had no retinal pass to the Bulldog’s level. I was in the system; the army wasn’t. But what was the override code?
Two women stepped out of a neighboring elevator. They threw us a curious glance, clearly wondering why four anonymous men and a boy were hovering around, not going anywhere.
“Sir,” Dobbs prompted. “Goin’ to need those numbers.”
And then I had an idea. In the factory, when I was pressing him for information, Alexander had given me his name and what sounded like his rank and serial number. But what if it was more than a serial number? What if he’d spoken a key? “41625 Dayton,” I said.
Dobbs nodded. “41625. T D N A O. Got that?”
“Sarge,” the others said. So he’d got the promotion he’d wanted after all.
“All right, lads, move it,” said Dobbs. And while the others stepped into the adjoining elevators, he drew me into the nearest one with him.
The scanner immediately objected, not just to him but to what he was carrying. Weapon detected, it said. Security breach in —
“Special override,” Dobbs cut in. “41625. T-D-N-A-O.”
Lights went off in a panel in the roof. I held my breath, thinking we’d tripped an alarm or I’d simply been wrong about the code. But with a beep, the elevator confirmed the code and the door closed. “Level five,” Dobbs said. We were on our way.
Safe inside the car, he produced the weapon from his uniform. Not the rifle he’d had on the Tommy cards but some kind of small, futuristic pistol — another gift of Alexander’s mind, I guessed. He checked it, set a dial, and put it away.
For the first time, I began to have second thoughts. Thanks to me and a bunch of face-morphing soldiers, people could lose their lives here. “I want him alive,” I said as strongly as I could.
Thankfully, Dobbs didn’t argue. “Yes, sir. Fer the trial, sir.”
Trial? What trial? What the heck had Alexander been planning?
“Don’t worry. We’ll make ’im talk,” Dobbs said. He winked an eye slit and put a finger to his mouth. The elevator stopped and the doors swished open. Ahead of us was the corridor and the door to the Bulldog’s office. Dobbs stepped out, keeping me behind him. He approached the door quietly with the gun hard-held.
“Where are the others?” I whispered.
“Hodges ’n’ Clegg’re on level four, sir, makin’ sure we don’t get interference. Grimps’ll be at the other door now.” He checked a wristwatch and counted down with his fingers. 3 … 2 … 1.
And he burst into the office, crying, “Nobody move!” I heard a faint squeal of alarm. Then Grimper’s voice joined in the shouting. “You! ’Ands on the desk where I can see ’em!”
Then Dobbs again. “Sir! All secure, sir! But target not found!”
What? I went in, shaking like crazy.
The men were posed in front of the desk, training their weapons on someone in the chair. I moved between them, confidently expecting to see Klimt with his hands held up in surrender.
But it wasn’t the android. It was someone who should never have been there at all. A very small, very terrified little girl.
Josie.
“Michael?!” she squealed. “Who —?”
“I said don’t move!” snapped Dobbs. A blue light from his pistol lit a spot on the center of Josie’s forehead. A second spot from Grimper’s gun danced alongside it.
“No!” I yelled at them. “This is my sister! She’s not your enemy!”
“With respect, sir, could be a trap,” said Grimper. He rested his pistol on his raised forearm.
“I said NO! Lower your weapons!”
They glanced at one another, their faces phasing into the army look. Josie saw the change and used both hands to stifle a scream.
“Dobbs, that’s an order! Lower your gun!”
Backing down was not an option they were going to take lightly. I needed to show a stronger level of command or Josie and I were both in danger of being shot. “Guard the doors — while I interrogate the prisoner. Move!”
That did it. That was the tone they wanted. Dobbs gestured with a flick of his head and they both fell back to cover the entrances.
Josie was bristling like a startled rabbit. “Wh-what are th-thos
e … things?”
Stay calm, I mouthed. I’ll get you out. I promise. “Shut up, girl. I ask the questions. Where’s the Bulldog? Where’s the old man?”
“I-I don’t know who you mean,” she stammered.
“She’s lyin’, sir,” said Dobbs.
“Do your job, soldier! I’ll deal with this. Who brought you here, girl?”
“Dr. K,” she muttered. “Why are you being so horrible to me?” Her lower lip could not stop juddering.
“Klimt? The Bulldog’s right-hand man?” Dobbs, I noticed, was taking this in.
She nodded again, her eyes darting between me and the men.
“Why? Why have they brought you here?”
Come on-nnn, Jose. She was delaying too long. I thumped the table. “Answer me, girl!”
“I was trying to call you,” she squeaked, “but you weren’t answering your phone. So I texted instead. And the next thing I knew, Dr. K and that nurse who looked after you when you had your accident came to the house.”
“The French girl?”
“Yes. They had your phone.”
My phone. I’d forgotten all about my phone. Chantelle must have found it on the factory floor after the fight with Alexander. It was still working then, despite being hurled at a wall? But they couldn’t have been going to the house to return it, because they knew I was with Liam or in Preeve’s lab. So they must have gone home to glamour Josie and bring her into the facility.
But why?
“Sir,” Dobbs called. “Problem with the comms.” He touched his ear. “I’ve lost contact with Hodges. Don’t look good, sir. Smellin’ a rat. Suggest we abort. Take the girl wiv us.”
I winced and said, “I’m not done with her yet.”
“Sir, Hodges and Clegg might be —”
“I said I’m not done here, soldier.”
He dropped his shoulders. “Sir.”
I looked at Josie and once again gestured for calm. I needed to think. But there was just no time. The only reason I had let this raid happen was to give the Bulldog some of his own medicine. It should have been him squirming in the chair. But with Josie in the room, my priorities had changed. Her safety was all that mattered to me now. There was no way I could disarm the men, so the only option was to stall until Klimt or his agents appeared. “You said text. What text?”
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