“I know you must have many questions, but your leg is a more pressing issue. Come inside so Lucia can help you.” Hector gave James another warm smile. “You may stay or come in. Whatever you wish.”
James’s expression seemed imploring. Nick waved James off, motioning for him to stay and spend time with the other clones. “I’ll be fine.”
Back in the kitchen, he sat on a wooden chair, his foot resting on a stool. Hector gave him a couple of pills to relieve his pain as Lucia bent over his wound and handed him a towel. When he examined it, she gestured for him to put it in his mouth. He bit down on the towel. Lucia dug into the wounds with a pair of tweezers. He yelled, the sound muffled by the towel and his gritting teeth. He clenched the seat of the chair as tight as he could while Lucia extracted metal fragments from his leg and deposited the bloody pieces onto the kitchen table. He tensed as she tore away the dead tissue.
When she finished, she sprayed an antiseptic over the open wound and sutured it shut. She lathered on another antibiotic cream, clapped her hands together, and washed them at the sink before going back to her cooking. Nick lay panting and sweating on the seat as Hector pulled up a chair.
“Much better than walking around with an infected leg. Trust me, the pain now will be worth it later.” He patted Nick on the shoulder. “I know that you want to know who I am, why I’m doing this, and where you’re going...so many questions. I’ll give you the short version. I used to run tours in Costa Rica. You know the zip lines?”
“I do.” He and Kelsey had donned harnesses and clipped themselves to the metal zip lines in an excursion through their eco-lodge in the cloud forest. The whine of the rollers as he skimmed above the treetops rang out in his memory.
“I used to own one. I thought I was clever, buying the business from a man who lost loads of money. Soon, the tide would turn, I thought. But only two or three, maybe four people visited on my busiest days. I may have lost my business, but I kept my English.” He pointed to his lips.
“One day, I saw a white man in gray clothes running through my little section of the park. I yelled at him, but he didn’t stop. He just ran. I don’t know where he went. The next day, there was another. This time, I ran after him, calling to see if he needed help. Then, when I saw the numbers on the side of his shirt, I got scared. I thought he was a prisoner, a bad man. He fell to my feet, begging and pleading with me in what I thought was American English. I told him I would help him.
“I fed him and promised him I would take him to San José to the American embassy. They could help him better than a poor tour guide without any tourists.”
Hector’s eyes dropped and he rubbed the stubble on his chin. “The man told me his story and of course I didn’t believe it. He said there are these great big tents in the rainforest where they are making people. So many people! It sounded like he was just crazy, you know?”
Nick nodded, understanding just how preposterous his entire adventure would sound. “What happened to the guy?”
“I took him to the embassy, and the people there took him inside. Since I figured business would be just as depressing as it had been every day, I got a drink across the street behind the embassy. No big deal. Then, I saw a truck drive up. Couple of soldiers got out and people came out the back of the embassy with a prisoner, hood over his head. Now, I didn’t see his face, but I’m certain that it was the same guy I’d brought there.”
Seeing Nick’s frown, Hector lifted his shoulders and held his hands out, palms up. “I know. Sounds strange, but the next time I saw another one of those runners coming through the forest, I didn’t send him to any embassy. No way.” Hector smiled as Nick’s eyes widened. “Oh, yes. He told me the horrors he was running from. And I didn’t want to take him to the Americans down here, so I hid him for a while. I went to the Costa Rican police about it. They just told me I was crazy.”
Hector wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “The day after I told the police, they raided my little shop, destroyed everything and took away the runner I was hiding. I believe the reason I wasn’t taken was because Lucia and I—she was pregnant with Ernesto then—were in Liberia to meet a couple friends.”
Nick recalled his prior trip with Kelsey around the same area.
His brow scrunched, Hector continued, “You know the city? It’s here in Costa Rica. Not the country, Liberia, in Africa.”
“Oh, I know,” Nick said. “I’m familiar.”
“Very good,” Hector said. “Anyway, these friends I knew were in the business of moving undocumented cargo across borders, if you understand my meaning. I didn’t want to bring the clone since I’d seen what happened to the other one when I took him to San José. I couldn’t risk a run in with the police or governmental officials.” He sighed. “But that turned out to be a mistake.”
“So you fled to Nicaragua after that, I take it?”
“Yes, and I’ve kept my eye out for people like you. Since we can’t trust the government to help us, I have to trust my friends.”
“Thank you.”
Hector stood and clapped his hand over Nick’s shoulder. “I would like to think you would help if you could. When you are in America, out of the hands of these cartels or whatever they are, you make the Americans listen. That’s what they need. I’ve never seen two of you—two of the same person—traveling together. With that kind of proof, they have to believe us.” His voice rose as though Nick and James’s arrival meant a windfall lottery win for Hector and his family.
“For now, you and your brother will rest here. We will get you up to Mexico. Then, America. I think all the connections are finally in place so we can get everyone to safety.”
Nick could not restrain the smile that tore across his face as he dreamed of returning back home to Washington. He would be out of the forests and camps, free from his pursuers and back to his comfortable life. He would see Kelsey, whether or not she knew he was alive. Maybe she had kept the wedding dress that she never wore for him. Just seeing her would be enough. It would make his struggles worth it.
And as much as he desired to go back to a normal life, he vowed to himself and Hector that he wouldn’t let this illegal cloning go unnoticed. He would come back, he promised. He would return for the clones’ freedom.
Thirty-One
Swarthy even with the bluish hue imbued by his holoprojection, McCuller appeared in front of Sara’s desk. He spoke about a potential high-value target holing up in Lusaka, Zambia and about probability analysis results that determined (with 97 percent confidence) the bioweapons manufacturer would be found within a run-down block in the southeastern quadrant of the war-torn city. His voice droned on as he addressed her and fifteen other intelligence specialists dialed in to the holomeeting.
She thought back to the disconnected former servicemen and women and their employers. The names of the companies flickered through her mind: Formative Connections, Advantum Technologies, Keystone Architectural Consultants and Construction, and more bland, jargon-laden titles that blended in with all the other international conglomerates that peddled niche services with powerful-sounding, ambiguous words and phrases like “impactful,” “strategic delivery,” and “exponential growth.”
Palmer had promised they would get together that night to develop a more robust set of data on the companies to see if they could identify any potential patterns or connections.
“Monahan, did you hear my question?”
She straightened in her seat. “I’m sorry. Could you repeat that?”
“I asked why you’re spending so much time with Palmer Stoudt lately.”
Her eyes narrowed, she frowned. A note scrolled across her AR lenses showing that only she and McCuller remained in the holomeeting. “He’s a friend. Why does that matter to you?”
“I just find it interesting,” McCuller said, his holo pacing in front of her desk. “You don’t spend any time with the guy and then, all of a sudden, it seems like the two of you are inseparable.”
“I�
�m not sure what you’re implying.” She raised an eyebrow. “And how the hell do you know how much time I’m spending with Stoudt? Are you stalking me?”
He laughed. “I don’t need to stalk anyone.” He patted the spot on his arm, slightly raised, where his Chip was implanted.
“That’s illegal.” Sara stood up at her desk. “You can’t just track an American citizen without a warrant.”
Raising a thick black eyebrow, McCuller folded his arms. “Come on. You know that’s not exactly how we operate in here and besides, when you’re working in this department, you give up certain rights so that you can better serve the American people.”
She scowled at his facetious tone. “You can’t be serious. Regardless, why is it important to you who I’m spending my free time with?”
“It’s usually not.” He lifted his broad shoulders and pursed his lips. “I just find it strange that you’ve been sifting through personnel records unrelated to your current bio-analysis cases at the same time that you start hanging out with a fellow who’s talented at scrounging up data he shouldn’t have his hands on. Judging by those cases, it seems like you’re still interested in these disconnected Chip files. What do you think about that, Monahan?”
“I think you’re being ridiculous.” She tried to appear nonplussed and offended. “If you’ve been following my whereabouts via my Chip, you’ll see that I’ve spent a lot of time devoted to work and haven’t spent much time with friends. I’m trying to balance my life out here.”
“I hope that’s all you’re trying to do, Monahan. Once more, we’ve got people taking care of those issues and we don’t need extra hands muddling up their efforts.”
She slumped. “I understand. You don’t need to worry about me.”
McCuller lifted an eyebrow.
“Please, I’ll stick to my directives.”
“Damn right, you will. I don’t want Corello to ream my ass because you missed another report from Angola or Zambia.”
***
Despite McCuller’s insinuated threats, Sara headed to Palmer’s apartment as they had planned after work. She stopped by Wok ’n’ Roll to pick up an order of General Tso’s chicken for him and a large order of chicken lo mein for herself. She knocked on the door to Palmer’s apartment and he greeted her with a smile.
“Ah, so here’s the payment for my services,” he said, taking a long whiff of the greasy Chinese takeout. “I suppose it’ll suffice for now.”
She put out the plastic containers as he booted up the holodisplay. “I’ve got a hypothetical question for you.”
“I like hypotheticals.” Palmer cracked apart a pair of disposable wooden chopsticks. He stuffed a piece of chicken bathed in red sauce into his mouth. “Shoot.”
“Let’s say a supervisor is tracking my whereabouts and warned me that I might be spending too much time with a certain Net intelligence operative. Says he might know what I’m doing with that operative. What would you do?”
In the middle of chewing a second bite, Palmer pointed his chopsticks at her. “I’d say screw him. What he’s doing is illegal. It’ll never hold up in court.”
“I suppose that could be true.” She bit her bottom lip, her food lying on the coffee table untouched.
“Besides, we’re just talking hypotheticals, right?”
She smiled. “Sure.”
With a flick of his wrist, Palmer called up the databases of personnel and companies that they had compiled. “I came up with a quick script that should parse out the natural language associations—”
“English, please. I’m bio, not computational, remember?”
Palmer let out an exasperated sigh. “Fine, fine. I put together a piece of code that will recognize any commonalities that exist between the companies that we’ve compiled. That means it will scour all their Net presence, any news streams related to the companies, information available from quarterly SEC reports or wiki sites. Is that better?”
“A little.” As he initiated the analysis, Sara held out a hand. “Hold on one second. Can we go back to my hypothetical situation?”
“I’m all ears.”
“Can you conceal the geographic location of my Chip? Say for instance, can you make me disappear temporarily from the grid so that McCuller doesn’t know what I’m up to?”
Palmer grinned. “I could. But that might be too obvious. How about I make it appear like you’re leaving my place to go back to your apartment? McCuller can use his twisted little imagination to guess what we might’ve done in the twenty minutes you dropped by to see me.”
“All right. Work your magic.”
In a couple of minutes, Palmer assured Sara that her Chip indicated a trajectory back to her apartment in Columbia Heights. It reported she was taking the metro on the way. Together, they parsed through the results of Palmer’s analyses.
“It looks like all the companies have a few things in common. First off, it seems each is ranked highly in terms of hiring and benefits for veterans. Coincidence?”
Her heart pounded and she felt a burgeoning swell of pride. A wry smile formed across her lips. “No coincidence. That would be purposeful if your aim was to attract veterans so you could send them overseas, wouldn’t it?”
Palmer shrugged. “Second, these results show that all the countries have an immature Chip infrastructure. Nothing new there.”
“What about this?” She used her thumbs to expand a floating image that appeared like a spider web floating above the coffee table. Once expanded, the web displayed a network of companies, including all of the agencies and firms that the disappearing soldiers belonged to. At the center of the web sat a single company: Isis.
She combed her fingers through her hair and left her hand on the back of her neck. With her other hand, she traced the lines of the web. She skimmed back and forth between companies.
“What do you make of that?”
“To be honest, I’m not sure. I didn’t realize that Isis was so involved in endeavors outside of medical research and therapies. That doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“They’re Danish, aren’t they?”
She nodded. “Yep. The Danes have been pretty forward-thinking when it comes to medical research, for better or worse. They’ve imposed almost no bioethical considerations when it comes to research topics, stopping short of harming humans or causing physical pain. Isis has pretty much led the biotech industry in everything from genetic enhancements, to stem cell therapeutics, synthetic blood, neurorepair, and nanotech.”
“Gotcha.”
As they scanned through the data for other clues, Palmer’s eyes widened. He stepped back from his holodisplay.
She froze. “Palmer? What’s wrong?”
“You know how I may or may not be tapped into several security agencies’ AR feeds and internal communications?”
“I do now.”
“Yeah, well, the FBI just got an approved warrant for my arrest, set to execute immediately. Looks like they were tipped off by the CIA.”
They stared at each other for a moment, her pulse throbbing in her ears and her stomach knotting.
“You need to leave, Sara.”
“But—”
“I’ll give you the untethered data. They can’t link that back to me, but that’s all. I don’t know what the hell is about to happen, but you don’t want to be a part of this.”
She opened her mouth in protest and stepped toward him.
“No, Sara. Not now.” He tugged her close, gave her a peck on the cheek and then ushered her out the front door. “Go. Remember, you’re already back at your apartment. Go!”
She stopped, her heart pounding and mind racing. She reached out to Palmer, but he shook his head and closed the door on her. An encrypted message ran across her AR lens: “Go!”
As she speed-walked down the street, her head hung low, a couple of black cars raced by. The sedans may have been unmarked, but they sped past with none of the driving habits enforced by autodrive cars. No, actual peo
ple drove those cars, not computers. The squeal of tires skidding on asphalt sounded down the street as she rounded the corner. She wanted to call Palmer and tell him he should run too. He could escape. He was intelligent enough to thwart the FBI.
But she knew he wouldn’t run; it was already too late. She had dragged him into this silly chase to uncover a conspiracy well beyond her pay grade and he had been the one arrested. She slapped an open palm against the brick wall of the Wok ’n’ Roll.
If the FBI took down Palmer, what happened next? He had told her they thought she was at her apartment. When he had first said that, she’d thought he was telling her to go home. She realized that wasn’t it at all. He had said they thought she was at her apartment. If they took Palmer in, they’d want her as well. They had discovered something that McCuller desperately did not want to be found out.
McCuller never learned, she thought. Every time the man tried to squelch the spark of her curiosity, he fanned the flames. Now, the man had started a full-on forest fire. She wouldn’t let it go. She vowed to take him down and whoever else was in on this systematic wooing, exploitation, and disappearance of military veterans.
Before she could do that, though, she needed to do what she did best. She would need to run. And to do that, she needed to get rid of any baggage that might weigh her down—or allow the Feds to track her down. She glanced at the tiny, almost imperceptible bump on her forearm where her Chip was implanted. Time to go off-grid.
Thirty-Two
Hector made good on his promise to help Nick and James escape north through Guatemala and into Mexico. In lieu of forged Chips, the Costa Rican had provided them falsified Nicaraguan comm cards loaded with enough universal credits to afford a little food and water should the need arise.
Among a group of other clones, they rested under the shelter of a warehouse outside of Samalayuca, just miles south of Juarez City.
“How can we be sure we’ll be safe in America?” A woman with an angular face spoke. “When I made it to Guatemala, those men found the other two I was traveling with and killed them.”
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