by Terry Bisson
They hit the floor together, rolling. The snowboarder was fast as well as strong. Adam had the gun—and then he didn’t—
Then he did—and then …
Foosh!
Adam felt the heat from the blast, scorching the floor underneath him. Tripp rolled toward the door, blood gushing from his side.
Adam rolled under the table.
Tripp staggered to his feet, holding his wounded side with one hand and the gun with the other.
Foosh!
Foosh!
Tripp backed out the door, still firing, then ran stumbling down the stairs.
Adam stayed low until he heard the front door slam. Then he ran back to Hank’s side and checked his pulse.
Nothing. Nothing at all.
The virtual girl appeared by the chair.
“Hey Adam! Is Hank sleeping on the floor again? That’s so cute.”
Adam reached into Hank’s back pocket and found the foosh gun he had given him in the bushes earlier.
He headed out the door and down the stairs, after Tripp.
Twenty-two
All was quiet in the parking garage. The utter silence was unnerving.
Adam looked up the up ramp and down the down ramp. There was nobody in sight. Could the killer have come on foot?
Then he heard a squeal of tires. He stepped back just in time as a beat up VW Neo-Beetle careened down the ramp, heading for the exit.
A man was slumped behind the wheel. Tripp!
Adam stepped out and raised his gun to track the speeding car—then held his fire, as the Beetle crashed through a guardrail and disappeared.
Craassh!
Adam ran to the broken rail and looked down.
The VW was upside down on top of a crushed Lexus. Tripp, bleeding from head wounds as well as the foosh shot in his side, was crawling out. Then he was falling back, too weak to pull himself free.
Adam ran down the ramp and pulled the killer out of the wrecked Neo-Beetle, none too gently.
“On the sixth day God created man,” Tripp mumbled. “God created man.”
“I’ll call an ambulance,” Adam said, pulling his phone out of his pocket.
“It’s too late.” Tripp touched his side and then stared at his fingers, dark with blood. “Too late.”
“Why did you kill him?” Adam demanded. “Who are you working for?”
Tripp spat blood. “Hank Morgan was an abomination to God. He was a clone.”
“Hank wasn’t a clone! I’ve known him for years.”
Tripp shook his bloody dreadlocks. “The real Hank Morgan died this afternoon. I know. I killed him. I didn’t want to but I had to kill him so I could kill Drucker.”
Adam still didn’t, couldn’t, believe. “Drucker’s not dead!” he insisted. “It would’ve been on the news.”
Tripp looked at Adam with what might have been pity. “Open your eyes!” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Drucker’s a clone. Dr. Weir cloned Drucker. Dr. Weir cloned your friend. Dr. Weir cloned you, too. I was going to kill your clone next.”
Adam stood up, holding onto the bumper of the wrecked VW. He was no longer inclined to argue. There is a timbre in a man’s voice, particularly when he is dying, that means he is telling the truth. Adam knew it from the war.
It was true, all true. He felt dizzy; he felt sick. It was as if a door had opened, letting light into a foul, dark basement. Lighting a room that had previously, mercifully, been dark.
A light. Then Adam realized, it was headlights that he saw. Shining across the concrete walls. Getting brighter.
Adam turned and recognized the SUV that had chased him the night before. It was pulling into the garage.
Tripp saw the headlights too. And without even seeing the vehicle, he knew exactly what they meant.
“They found us,” he said. “Shoot me! In the head…”
“What are you talking about?”
“We’ve got people at Replacement Technologies,” said Tripp. “People at Weir’s lab. I know who they are. If they scan my brain, they’ll be killed. Shoot me!”
Been there, tried that, thought Adam. Once today already.
“I can’t,” he said.
Tripp raised up on one elbow. “God forgive me—”
He lunged and grabbed Adam’s wrist. Before Adam could react, he stuck the barrel of the foosh gun into his mouth, turned his eyes upward toward some unseen Heaven, and …
Foosh!
Adam looked down, horrified, at the mess that had once been a man. Then his reverie was rudely interrupted as the SUV skidded to a stop right beside the body.
Talia, gun in hand, was rolling down the window.
Adam leaped for the guardrail—and in one smooth athletic move, as if he had planned it all along, vaulted over. He fell three feet, four—then caught a pipe and swung in, his feet kicking for the next rail. He was aided by the lights of the SUV, roaring down the ramp, heading straight for him.
This time Talia had the window rolled down, ready to go. She was leaning out, firing wildly.
Foosh!
Foosh!
Adam fired back, but not at her. He aimed at the overhead pipes between him and the approaching SUV.
Foosh!
Foosh!
One pipe was water, the other gas. One exploded in a curtain of icy spray; the other in a wall of fire.
Ssshhhwwaaaarrooom!
Adam turned and ran, down, into the depths of the parking garage.
* * *
Damn!
Talia motioned with her foosh gun and Marshall hit the brakes. There was no way they could drive the SUV through the wall of flame.
She jumped out on her side, and Marshall jumped out on his.
Following Adam, they clung to the wall and ran through the flames, guns in hand.
Dead end.
Three cars were parked in the lowest level, huddled together as if to comfort one another in their dungeon.
Marshall signalled Talia, and they split up. Gibson had to be behind one of the cars. Taking front and back simultaneously, they tried the first one, a little blue Ford.
Nothing.
They tried the second, a Peugeot sedan.
Nothing.
Good, thought Marshall. He has to be behind the third car!
Talia took the front, Marshall the back. Holding their foosh guns in two-handed police stances, they approached the green Dodge minivan, each one covering the other.
One, two, three! Marshall nodded.
Swiftly and silently they both pivoted around the minivan at the same time, and saw …
Nothing.
Damn! thought Talia.
She checked underneath.
Nothing.
She turned to recheck the shadowy corners of the garage. Could they have missed him?
Wham! The rear door to the minivan flew open, and the removable third seat flew out like a guided missile, knocking Talia to the ground.
Her gun skittered across the floor.
Marshall wheeled and fired through the windshield—Foosh!—shattering it into a thousand pieces.
But Adam was already out the back and on his knees, firing under the van.
Foosh!
Marshall felt himself falling.
He looked down. His left foot was gone. It was as if it had been erased.
“Aaaaaah! My foot! He shot my foot!”
Adam rolled out from behind the van toward Talia, who was getting to her feet.
She reached for his gun just as he fired:
Foosh!
Fingers went flying and she pulled back her cauterized, digitless hand and looked at it numbly.
“Doesn’t anyone stay dead anymore?” Adam asked. Instead of waiting for an answer, he clipped Talia on the side of the head with the foosh gun.
She fell in a heap beside the unconscious Marshall.
Adam knelt down and went through Marshall’s pockets, then Talia’s. “Who are you people?”
He came up empty. There wa
s no ID in his pockets, or hers. They were officially nobody.
* * *
Adam belted himself into the SUV and pressed the start pad.
Nothing happened.
He pressed again.
“ID required,” said the car’s voice. “Please use biometric reader to verify identification or alarm will sound in ten seconds. Nine…”
Adam pressed his thumb on the pad, harder.
“Seven, six, five…”
Adam leaped out of the SUV. He ran past the dying flames from the overhead pipe, back to the minivan, and searched the ground until he found what he was looking for.
Talia’s thumb.
“Two, one…”
Jumping back into the SUV, he pressed it onto the pad. This time, the car’s nav system came to life and the engine started with a low whine. A display lit up on the windshield screen:
FAVORITE DESTINATIONS
First among them was:
THE REPLACEMENT RESEARCH CENTER
Adam pressed activate, and the SUV started moving. Just then the rear window exploded.
Adam looked in the rearview mirror. “Oh, shit!”
Marshall was on his feet, or rather his foot, hopping after the SUV, gun raised.
“Engage!” said Adam. “Go! Go!”
The SUV roared up the ramp and into the night, with Marshall firing after it.
Foosh!
Foosh!
“Those were brand new boots, Gibson!” Marshall roared, raising one fist. “You’re going to pay!”
He turned to see Talia, cradling her fingerless hand. “Look what he did to my foot,” he whined.
Talia groped around on the concrete with her good hand until she found her foosh gun.
“Relax,” she said. “I’ll buy you a new one.” And she obligingly shot him in the chest.
Twenty-three
It’s always darkest right before the dawn. Which suited Adam just fine. He was making an unscheduled stop on the way to the Replacement Technologies Research Center.
He slipped through the shadows from building to building until he reached the Double X Charter office doublewide.
The little building was dark.
It seemed safe.
Adam was just about to open the door and slip inside when …
Grrrrrr!
He backed up against the wall.
He put up his hands and stood perfectly still.
Grrrrrr! The K-9 dog growled again, moving closer. It was just like the one Adam had seen at the RePet store—genetically engineered with cranium wires, hard collar, and all.
He almost expected to see the salesman with it.
Instead he saw an apologetic security guard with a flashlight in one hand and a remote in the other.
“Oh, Mr. Gibson. Sorry! He’s new—”
The guard punched in a code on the remote and the dog backed away.
“Okay, he’s programmed. He won’t bother you again.”
Whatever, Adam thought. He went inside and turned on the light, locking the door behind him.
Minutes later, he had shaved and changed clothes. As he was dressing he noticed, as if for the first time, the familiar photo taped to the inside of his locker door.
Natalie, Clara, and himself at the beach.
For a long moment Adam’s eyes lingered on all that he had lost. Anger and a deep sense of loss warred within him.
Bitterness rose like bile. He choked it down, filled with a powerful new resolve. He now knew what he wanted, what he needed: revenge.
* * *
Several miles away Dr. Weir’s wife Catherine lay in a hospital bed, amid a tangle of tubes and wires connecting her with the very latest high-tech life-saving equipment.
But one look at the faces of the two men standing over her showed that it was all to no avail.
Dr. Griffin Weir was trying his best to be clinical, professional. “Avitaminosis K caused the bleeding?”
“We think so,” said the attending physician. “Her blood GTT and serum enzyme levels indicate pancreatic insufficiency. We’ve ordered her a new pancreas—but unless the pseudomonas infection clears, I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do.”
“What about her DNA scan?”
“Came up with cystic fibrosis.”
Dr. Weir looked stunned.
“Of course,” said the physician, hastily, “that’s impossible, considering that it’s a childhood disease and she would have been dead thirty years ago. We’re running the scan again.”
“No. no,” said Dr. Weir. “I’ll have it done at the clinic. Can you give us a moment?”
The attending physician nodded and left Dr. Weir alone with his wife.
“Darling…” Weir bent down and looked at her tenderly. “We’re having you transferred to my clinic.”
His wife shook her head weakly. “I’d like to stay here.”
“I can help you at the clinic,” said Dr. Weir. “If you stay here…”
“I’ll die,” she said. She took his hand. “I know, dear. It’s all right.”
It was far from all right with Dr. Weir. “But I can…”
“I know you can,” she said. “We’ve had five extra years. And I treasure them. But that wouldn’t have been my choice.”
“Catherine, please!”
“Catherine died five years ago,” she said. “I don’t know who I am. The feelings I have, they’re not mine. They’re hers.”
Dr. Weir pulled his wife’s hand to his chest, tears in his eyes. “Don’t do this. I need you!”
“I’m not afraid, Griffin,” she said. “I want to die. My time has already passed.”
Dr. Weir considered all this—then hung his head, defeated.
“What am I to do?”
She smiled at last, a weak smile, “Water my flowers.” And as her husband watched, hopeless, helpless, defeated, she closed her eyes and began to drift away.
Twenty-four
Protesters were gathered, as always, in the plaza in front of Replacement Technologies. The employees went in without noticing them. Among the employees was Adam Gibson, carrying a large plastic cooler sealed with duct tape.
Inside the atrium, he walked past the holographic welcoming figures of Drucker and Dr. Weir, who were busily presenting Replacement Technologies’ best face to the world.
At the far end of the atrium, an ornamental bridge led across an ornamental moat. On the other side of the bridge, a Plexiglas barrier blocked access to the inner building.
Here was where security began.
Adam crossed the bridge with the stream of employees. They pressed their thumbs against an ID pad at the barrier and were allowed in, one by one.
Adam pressed Talia’s thumb, to the pad, a light turned green, and the barrier clicked open, But that was only half the battle. A security guard at a desk waved Adam over.
“I gotta check that.”
Adam placed the cooler on the guard’s desk.
“Sure. Help yourself.”
The security guard started to peel the tape off the cooler. Adam pulled a pair of disposable rubber gloves out of his pocket.
“You might want to use these.”
The guard looked up. “Why? What’s in here?”
“A lower intestine,” said Adam boredly. “It’s for Dr. Weir. He’s doing a study on the flesh eating virus.”
The guard had stopped peeling the tape.
“It’s all right to open it,” said Adam. “Just try not to breathe.”
The guard slid the cooler back across the desk toward Adam.
“That’s okay. Go ahead. You’re cleared.” As soon as he was out of sight of the security guard, Adam ducked into an alcove off a corridor and tore the tape off the cooler. He reached inside and pulled out Wiley’s foosh gun. After he slipped it into his belt, he stepped back into the corridor, leaving the cooler behind.
At the end of the corridor he approached a bank of elevators. Security was much tighter here.
Adam was very c
onscious of the watchful gaze of a guard upon him as he pressed Talia’s thumb against the elevator call pad.
Nervously, he fumbled, and dropped the cauterized digit.
He knelt to get it.
The security guard half-rose from his desk. “Help you?”
“Dropped my pen,” said Adam, as he recovered the thumb and pressed it into the pad. “I’m all thumbs today.”
The light turned green and the elevator door opened.
* * *
Down in the atrium, another group of employees was walking briskly toward the first security barrier.
Marshall, Talia, Wiley, and Vincent.
Wiley was rubbing his neck.
“Will you cut that out?” said Talia. “It’s driving me crazy.”
“Well, excuse me!” Wiley whined. “But I nearly had my head twisted off. It hurts like hell.”
“It’s only psychological,” Vince offered. “Your neck doesn’t really hurt.”
“Oh yeah? You’d know better about that?”
“Yes, he would,” said Talia, with the exaggerated patience of a nursery school teacher. “Wiley, it was your old neck that got broken. This is your new neck. Get it?”
“I can’t help it,” Wiley whined. “My neck got broken last night and it’s a little sore today.”
“Shut up, Wiley,” Talia snapped, her patience exhausted. “It wouldn’t have been broken if you’d killed him instead of me.”
“Hey, give me a break! I got killed twice in two hours!”
“All right, all right,” said Marshall, as they approached the security barrier. “We’ve all been killed before. Let’s stop whining about it and catch this asshole.”
He pressed his thumb to the pad: green for go.
“You know, what really bothers me,” said Wiley, “is that I’ve never seen a white light. Never seen any angels. Nothing. Have you guys ever seen anything?”
“I saw a white light,” said Marshall.
“Me, too,” said Vincent as he got his green for go.
“Sounds like you’re going to hell,” Talia said gleefully to Wiley, as she pressed her new thumb on the pad.
The group laughed. Underneath the laugh a buzzer sounded.
The light at the barrier was still red. She’d been Rejected.
The security guard looked up. “Ma’am, I already have you logged in.”
“What?” Marshall looked at Talia in alarm. “When?”