Payback

by Gordon Korman

  I feel kind of bad because Ms. Dunleavy’s been so good to us—and even worse because I’m using one of her own computers to hack into her security system. But then all I have to do is think of the other clones to firm up my belief that what I’m doing is necessary.

  And, as Malik puts it, “Big deal, you feel bad. I feel bad about being some kind of freak, and being raised by scientists instead of parents, and running for my life, and watching the only guy I’m really related to die right in front of me. Believe me, there’s enough bad in all this to fill the Grand Canyon. Tamara Dunleavy can line up and take her lumps with everybody else.”

  Tori has mapped out the house and determined that we’ll pass four security cameras between our rooms and the garage. Once I get past the firewall, my job is to replace those four feeds by replaying ten minutes from earlier in the night in an endless loop. That way, the security guard will never see us in the halls, on the stairs, at the side entrance, or in the garage.

  Ms. Dunleavy goes to bed around eleven. I wait until midnight before starting the process. She’s taught me a lot about her programming technique, which turns out to be helpful as I’m stabbing her in the back. Even so, it takes me two hours to gain control of the system and make the changes.

  We tiptoe through the big house, peering fearfully around us for cameras Tori’s scrutiny might have missed. Even as we let ourselves into the garage, we’re half expecting the lights to blaze on and Ms. Dunleavy’s armed guards to tackle us from behind.

  Tori reads my mind. “It’s fine. There’s only one security guy at night, and he’s in the control room, watching nothing on the monitors.” She hesitates. “You know, this is the first real home we’ve had since we left Serenity.”

  Malik is impatient. “So we’ll send her a postcard from Poseidon—‘Having a wonderful time. Glad you’re not here.’”

  Actually, he’s pretty antsy, and so am I. We hope we’ve thought of everything, but we can’t know for sure until we’ve passed through the gate with no alarms, no searchlights, and no running feet behind us.

  As we scamper across the compound, the stars are as vivid and spectacular at night as the mountain scenery is by day. I tighten my grip on the strap of my backpack, which holds a single change of clothes and a laptop computer. I don’t feel great about taking the laptop—Ms. Dunleavy’s are all custom-built for extended battery life and the ability to pull internet from satellites. Just one more theft on my already guilty conscience. But if we’re going to have any chance of succeeding in this crazy mission, we’re going to need all the special talents we’ve inherited from the people we’re cloned from. For better or for worse, mine are useless without a computer.

  The garage is only two hundred yards away, but it seems a lot farther when you’re expecting a tap on the shoulder any second. Yet as soon as we’re inside, we’re happy for every inch of distance from the house. The last thing we need is Ms. Dunleavy waking to the sound of a car engine.

  When I head for the driver’s-side door of the Bentley, Malik elbows me out of the way. “Nice try, Frieden. This car is my baby. I’m driving.”

  Amber sighs. “I wish we didn’t have to steal it again.”

  Malik shoots her a dazzling smile. “If you’re going to jack the same car twice, it might as well be awesome. Now buckle up.”

  The sound of the garage door opening is far too loud to suit me, but the Bentley purrs like a kitten. For all his bluster, Malik is very careful backing out and turning the car around. And then we’re heading down the mountain toward town.

  The girls and I are peering out the back window, and Malik’s eyes are on the rearview mirror. All is quiet behind us. The car’s clock gives the time as 2:42 a.m.

  While Malik steers, I key our destination into the navigation system. It’s not complicated. We’re headed for Jackson Hole airport, more specifically, the 6:05 a.m. flight to Salt Lake City. From there, we’ll catch a connection to West Cay and Poseidon. So at least the Bentley isn’t going very far from home this time.

  We already have our tickets, charged to Ms. Dunleavy’s credit card. That has nothing to do with my hacking; it’s the result of Tori’s pickpocketing skills. I figure if Ms. Dunleavy’s earning potential comes with her DNA, I should be able to pay her back someday. It won’t make up for betraying her. But then again, if regrets were nickels, we’d all be richer than Ms. Dunleavy.

  At least we’re flying coach. Malik wanted to book us in first class.

  “You guys are such losers! Having a Bentley means you travel in style!”

  “We don’t have a Bentley,” Amber points out. “We just borrow one from time to time.”

  “And we’re not proud of that,” I add.

  Ms. Dunleavy’s compound is nestled amid rocky peaks, twenty miles outside Jackson. At three in the morning, the route is pitch-black and absolutely deserted. Only the car’s state-of-the-art halogen headlights show us where the pavement ends, giving way to precipitous slopes and outright cliffs. Malik seems to be rethinking his decision to drive as he peers out the front windshield, eyes saucer-wide, terrified of missing a turn in the road, plunging all of us—not to mention his precious Bentley—to our deaths.

  Eventually, though, the terrain flattens out, and we cross the rickety bridge over the Snake River. Even the town is dark and deserted as the car’s navigation directs us through the streets. The only sign of light or life is coming from a rough-looking bar across from the long airport driveway. Several large motorcycles are parked outside, and a flickering neon sign declares it to be Boss Hawg’s.

  “I guess now we know who stays up late in Jackson Hole,” Amber comments disapprovingly.

  “Think about who you’re cloned from before you look down on a few bikers,” Malik tosses over his shoulder.

  “I could say the same thing about you,” she retorts.

  The airport is tiny, but new and nice, all wood beams and glass. As we pull up in front of the terminal, we can see lights on and a couple of cleaning people inside. Otherwise the place is empty, which makes sense. We’re nearly three hours early for the first flight of the day.

  Malik turns off the car and gets out. “All right, let’s go.”

  Amber points to the sign at the curb. “This is a no-parking zone.”

  Malik stares at her. “We stole a quarter-million-dollar car and you’re worried about getting a ticket?”

  In the end, we make him pull around into the lot. The last thing we want to do is call attention to ourselves—as if four kids driving a Bentley and traveling with no suitcases and no adults can ever blend into the background.

  The one thing we do have now is ID. We have Ms. Dunleavy to thank for that. Part of the plan where we live with her is starting school in September. Her cover story is that she’s raising four orphans. So she got us fake birth certificates and passports to show the principal when we register. We’re hoping they’ll get us past the security checkpoint when it’s time to board our flight.

  Once inside the airport, we find a bench in an inconspicuous location and compare our cards. They have our real names and ages, and give different places of birth around Wyoming. The documents have even been artificially distressed so they don’t look too new. Tamara Dunleavy doesn’t do anything halfway. Being a clone may be no fun, but at least I’m cloned from quality.

  “Do you think these will be good enough to fool the TSA?” whispers Tori, casting a nervous glance in the direction of the checkpoint.

  “They’d better,” I reply grimly. “Remember, the flights are the easy part. It’s when we arrive at Poseidon that things start to get hairy.”

  Malik tries to stretch out on the hard metal bench. “I hate waiting. Why does travel always have to be so boring?”

  “I like boring,” I insist. “If our lives could stay nice and boring it would be fine with me.”

  Tori sighs. “You sure dream big.”

  The time drags. Shortly after four, a couple of the ticket counters turn their lights on, and a
t four thirty, the TSA officers open the checkpoint. But there’s no one for them to check—we’re the only passengers in the airport so far.

  “Where is everybody?” I mumble uneasily. Our whole plan is to pass through security in the middle of a crowd, when four kids traveling alone won’t arouse any suspicion. “I bought our tickets just yesterday and the plane was practically full.”

  “Maybe people come at the last minute?” Amber muses.

  I shrug helplessly. That’s one of the disadvantages of our sheltered upbringing in Serenity. Except for Ms. Dunleavy’s jet, none of us has ever been on a plane before. We just don’t know.

  The airport doors slide open to admit a stocky man striding urgently across the terminal. Amber emits a little gasp. It’s Gavin, Ms. Dunleavy’s nighttime security chief—the one who let us sneak out right under his nose because he was watching camera feeds of quiet halls, closed doors, and a garage that still had a Bentley in it.

  Shocked, I grab at the others, who seem to have the same idea as I do—dragging ourselves into the only nearby cover—the men’s bathroom. Somehow, we manage to scramble inside, tripping over each other’s feet, and close the door behind us.

  “What’s he doing here?” Malik hisses, rounding on me. “You said the fake camera feeds would work!”

  “Somebody must have checked on us,” I reason. “Maybe Ms. Dunleavy’s a light sleeper.” I’m not, but everything doesn’t have to come from DNA.

  “How did she know to look for us here?” Malik demands.

  “There aren’t that many ways out of Jackson Hole,” Tori reasons. “If she guessed we’re going to Poseidon, the airport’s a no-brainer.”

  I risk opening the door a crack. Gavin stands with the TSA personnel at the checkpoint. To get to our flight, we’ll have to walk right past him.

  I shut the door and give them the bad news. “Brace yourselves, you guys. We’re not going to make that plane.”

  “But we can’t just go back to Ms. Dunleavy and pretend nothing happened,” Amber protests. “Now that she knows we’re trying to get to Poseidon, she’ll put security on us around the clock.”

  Tori has a suggestion. “Remember when Ms. Dunleavy first brought us up here? Her jet didn’t fly into Jackson Hole. We landed at some other airport—”

  “Driggs, Idaho,” Amber supplies.

  I’ve spent enough time on the run with Tori to predict where her methodical mind is going to take her next. “So if we can get ourselves there,” I conclude, “we might be able to catch a different flight.”

  “Back to the Bentley!” Malik urges. “But what about Gavin?”

  “Follow me,” Tori orders.

  Tori in the lead, we slip out of the bathroom, drop to the floor, and roll to a half wall that protects us from Gavin’s view. Doubled over low, we scamper across the terminal, coming to a halt just short of the glass entrance doors.

  “Uh-oh,” Amber murmurs.

  Outside in the parking lot, we can just make out the top of the Bentley’s elegant profile. Right next to it stands another security man.

  I swallow hard. So much has gone wrong already, and we haven’t even left the city limits of Jackson.

  “This way,” whispers Tori.

  We crawl on our hands and knees past the baggage claim and then get up and run between the closed car rental desks to a side entrance. From there, the woods are about forty yards away. It’s not a sure thing, since we’ll be in full view of the guy standing with the Bentley. But he’s watching the airport, not the property around it. And anyway, it’s not like we have much choice at this point.

  One by one, we make the dash into the cover of the trees. I go first, followed by Amber, Tori, and finally Malik. He’s taller than the rest of us, and almost knocks himself silly on a low-hanging branch.

  “You’re bleeding!” Amber breathes.

  “Really? How bad is it?” Malik reaches a hand to his brow and cowers at the sight of dark blood. “It’s bad, right?”

  All I can think of is the distance between us and Poseidon, which feels like it’s growing. “If it’s the worst thing that happens to you in the next couple of days, you’re lucky.”

  “Easy for you to say, Frieden,” Malik retorts. “It isn’t your face!”

  “How are we going to make it to that other airport?” I ask Tori.

  She has no answer. “I only know that we can’t stay here.”

  We jog through the woods, ducking under branches, sidestepping trees, and hurdling roots and underbrush. We’re paralleling the airport property, keeping the main drive in sight. No new cars have arrived, which means Ms. Dunleavy hasn’t called in any more security—or worse, the police. She doesn’t want anyone looking into who we are any more than we do.

  Ms. Dunleavy, who treated me like a son. And who I stabbed in the back.

  Up ahead, the road beckons. We keep moving, not thinking too much about where we’re going. Away from the airport is enough for now. There’s zero traffic—after all, it isn’t even five a.m. yet. So where’s that music coming from?

  Amber frowns. “Who plays heavy metal before dawn?”

  That’s when we see it: Boss Hawg’s, the biker bar, sitting all alone at the edge of the road, practically in a ditch. Regardless of the hour, the joint is jumping.

  And suddenly, Tori is smiling. She says one word:

  “Transportation.”

  18

  MALIK BRUDER

  I figure little Miss Torific has lost her mind—until I see the motorcycles.

  “Oh no you don’t! Not those! No way!”

  “You had no problem stealing a quarter-million-dollar Bentley,” Frieden challenges.

  “It’s not the stealing that bothers me,” I tell them. “It’s the riding. And the crashing. And the dying.”

  Laska laughs out loud. “Wouldn’t you know it? He’s afraid of motorcycles.”

  I bristle. “I’m not afraid of motorcycles. I’m afraid of falling off motorcycles. I’ve lost enough blood for one night.”

  “Yeah, half a thimbleful,” Amber shoots back. “You need a transfusion. Oh, wait—the only way to get to the hospital is by motorcycle.”

  “It’s just like riding a bike,” Tori reasons. “Only you don’t have to pedal.”

  “And anyway,” Frieden adds, “we can’t stand here arguing about it. The sooner we get to the airport in Driggs, the sooner we can find a flight.”

  So those three—who accuse me of being a bully—basically bully me into doing it. We creep over to the roadhouse, keeping one eye on the front door of the bar. Most of the bikes have the keys still in them. I remember that from Gus’s crew. The guys always left their keys in their cars, even when they were parked on the street overnight in front of the mansion. Nobody would be crazy enough to steal from Alabaster people. Payback would be a monster.

  But we’re crazy enough to steal from a motorcycle gang.

  We choose two of the bikes and open the tire valves on all the others, jamming tiny pebbles against the stems so the air hisses out. Whatever keys we find Tori throws in the ditch. At this point, I’m so terrified that an army of enraged bikers is coming through the door to pound us all into hamburger, that I don’t think twice about getting on the Harley behind Frieden.

  I have to show him how to jump the engine. Luckily, a couple of Gus’s guys had bikes, and I had a chance to watch them. We lurch forward for a second but lose momentum quickly, and the heavy machine starts to wobble. It’s all we can do to get our feet down to keep it from rolling on top of us.

  “Harder on the throttle!” I shout.

  He’s clueless. “Where’s that?”

  “The twisty doohickey on the handlebars!”

  Tori must hear me, because she tears off down the road on the other bike, Amber on the seat behind her.

  “Hang on!” Eli tosses over his shoulder. He revs the throttle as far as it will go.

  The burst of acceleration is so huge that we practically do a wheelie. We exit Boss Hawg�
�s at a thousand miles an hour and flash past Tori and Amber like they’re standing still. I clamp my arms around Eli’s midsection and hang on tight. The corner of the laptop in his backpack is poking into my stomach. I squeeze harder.

  “Easy, Malik, you’ll break my ribs!” he wheezes back at me.

  I don’t ease up. I can’t. If I do, I’ll go flying off the back of this thing and get run over by the girls, who are already fifty feet behind us.

  The music in the roadhouse is pretty loud, but not loud enough to cover the roar of two motorcycles. The size of the guys who come pouring out of there would scare Godzilla—or even Gus. I know this for sure, because they sure scare his clone.

  “Faster, Frieden! Faster!” I holler in Eli’s ear.

  He twists the throttle on the handlebars and we shoot ahead. At that, the girls pass us on the inside. I risk a backward glance and instantly wish I hadn’t. Three big bikes are coming up from the rear, gaining on us.

  “What’s going on? I thought their tires were flat!”

  “I thought so too!” Another twist of the throttle and we’re going even faster. Every bend in the road threatens to hurl me off the Harley. I sense last night’s dinner rising.

  Another curve, and I catch sight of our pursuers out of the corner of my eye. They’re barely fifty feet behind. We’re doing over eighty miles an hour, but there’s no way we can expect to outrace experienced bikers. I can feel the vibrating heat of their engines crawling up my spine.

  A meaty hand reaches for me—only a couple of feet away and closing. I think: What a tragedy to survive Project Osiris only to be murdered by drunken bikers somewhere in Wyoming.

  Still hanging on with one arm, I pivot on the seat in a vain attempt to defend myself. Suddenly, the pursuing motorcycle begins to wobble and fall away behind us, my attacker’s expression changing from fury to dismay.

  “What’s happening back there?” Eli bellows.

  “It worked!” I crow, weak with relief. “Their tires are flat! They can’t keep up with us anymore!”