by Sean Platt
“It’s on the screen there. Old Westbury.”
“Why?”
“It’s nicer there than where you were.”
“What are you, vacation planners? I meant—”
“And there are discussions in Old Westbury that need having.”
“About what?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“You.”
“Why do you have a gun?” Ephraim asked after a few long moments of silence.
“For protection.”
“Against what?”
A beat passed. “Just make yourself comfortable, Mr. Todd. It will all be over soon.”
For some reason, that particular combination of words prickled his flesh.
“Do you work for Fiona Roberson?”
“We’ll be there in no time, sir.”
Then the click.
Ephraim pressed the intercom, but this time there was no response.
Chapter 5
Only Pretending
They were about twenty minutes from their destination, according to the GPS.
Fiona didn’t live in Old Westbury, did she?
No, because Ephraim would remember a name that sounded like an Ivy League deodorant. But if Fiona had finally decided enough was enough with this particular loose end, she could eliminate him anywhere.
It wouldn’t happen at her house.
Ephraim pressed the intercom. When nothing happened, he rapped his fist on the divider. It lowered slightly, just enough to get a few fingers through.
“Yes, sir.”
“Why aren’t you answering the intercom?”
“I’m sorry. It must be broken.”
“Who are we going to see? You have to tell me.”
“Answers are coming, Mr. Todd.”
“Then give them to me now. At least tell me where you’re taking me.”
“Old Westbury.”
“Specifically, I mean.”
“The address is on your GPS screen, sir.”
“Yes, but …”
“Sir?”
“I don’t know that address.”
“It’s a house, sir.”
“And who’s in the house?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“Will I like the surprise?”
“Honestly?” He seemed to consider the question. “Probably not at first. But this is all for the best. Trust me.”
“You haven’t given me any reason to trust you.”
“We took you away from prison. And you won’t be going back. It’s handled.”
“How was it ‘handled’?”
“With paperwork, sir. It’s complicated.”
“Is this about Eden? Do you work for Neven Connolly?”
Neven is dead.
“Just try to relax, sir.”
“Why are you being mysterious? Surely it won’t hurt to—”
“Orders, sir. But please. Make yourself comfortable. Have a drink. There are some snacks in the fridge.”
“Fridge?”
“Right there, sir.” He pointed.
Ephraim turned his head, saw nothing obvious, then turned back. The divider had been raised again.
He knocked. Harder. His heart was a tympani. His thoughts were cycling, gnarled in a downward spiral.
“Yes?”
“I need to take a leak.”
“We’ll be there shortly.”
“This says twelve minutes.”
“Yes, sir. Twelve minutes.”
“I can’t wait twelve minutes.”
“You’ll have to.”
“I can’t. I need a rest stop. Otherwise, I’ll piss all over the Paramount.”
Lucas’s eyes flicked to the left, toward the chauffeur.
“How much time have you spent in prison? They don’t exactly let you piss whenever you want. I’m not making this up. By the time you showed up, I hadn’t pissed in four hours.”
It was crap. Ephraim had a toilet in his cell. He’d gone right before counseling. But Lucas was considering.
“Your choice. Either you let me out to piss, or I piss in here. It’s all the same to me.”
The men in front traded whispers that Ephraim couldn’t hear.
Then the Paramount slowed and pulled on the berm. The divider rose. Lucas left the car and came around to open Ephraim’s door, unbuttoning his jacket to give Ephraim a good glimpse of his semiautomatic.
His hand moved toward it, hesitated, then relaxed. He shifted before raising the latch, moving his body to block the exit.
He’d hold onto Ephraim the entire time.
And that meant there was only one thing to do.
The next events happened with almost no time between them.
Ephraim laid back on the seat, and when the escort lifted the door handle, he kicked the padded surface like a bucking mule.
The timing was perfect; the door’s hard edge slammed into Lucas and knocked him off balance. Then Ephraim was out the door, mercifully unimpeded by the seats or doorframe.
He sprinted. And for a few seconds, Ephraim thought he was free, bolting for the tree line.
Ephraim looked to his right, toward a sound that was like a stiff-bristled brush across a carpet, and saw the chauffeur, closing in, faster and fitter than he had any right to be.
That’s because they’re killers pretending to be servants.
Ephraim focused. Eyes forward. Arms pumping, adrenaline flooding his system
I can outrun him. I have a head start. I just need to—
Something struck Ephraim hard from the other side and knocked him into the tall grass.
Lucas was on him, panting, knees moving to pin his back. Then the other man arrived, also panting.
Craning his head to look back Ephraim saw their hair dangling in their faces — they surely weren’t composed now.
“What the fuck are you doing with me? Where are we going?” Ephraim shouted.
Lucas drew his gun. Then he flipped it in his hand, turning it butt first. “I’ve only seen this in movies, so my apologies if it kills you.”
“If what k—?”
The gun’s black butt rushed toward his head. There was a sharp, jolting pain. And then there was nothing.
Chapter 6
Riley Jacoby
Ephraim woke.
At first, his mind couldn’t make sense of what his eyes were seeing. He was in a bed, but it wasn’t his bed. He was in a room, but it wasn’t his room. He was on his back, and when he first opened his eyelids, a searing pain at the top of his neck made him keep his head neutral. He took in the white plaster ceiling, smooth, with elaborate crown molding around the edges.
The bed was soft and large with an extra cushion beneath him. He lay on top of the bedclothes, fully clothed, his shoes off. Why had he gone to bed with his pants on?
Ephraim blinked, feeling the sore spot at the base of his skull where Lucas had hit him with the gun. But was that right? He’d seen the butt coming, so had he turned away if the pain was now on the back of his head?
Yeah. That’s what you should be trying to figure out right now. Good thinking, genius.
Ephraim sat up, motivated by the thought but curiously heartened. It was his thought, and he still wasn’t used to sharing headspace with only himself. For months — maybe forever, depending on where his real memories met those that Eden had implanted or conditioned — he’d heard whispers in his MyLife. Neven, telling Ephraim who he was and what to believe.
Well, the MyLife was gone. Neven, too. Ephraim was his finally own man. Maybe.
Ephraim tentatively turned his head to look around. The place where Lucas had struck him smarted, but it wasn’t as bad as it had seemed on waking — or, for that matter, as his mind said a knock-out should. Lucas said he’d only seen cold cocking in movies. Successfully beating Ephraim unconscious seemed lucky.
He could have killed him.
And the fact that he’d tried maybe meant that it would have been okay if he had.
But who were “they”?
Ephraim stood, testing his neck. A lot of what he’d taken for pain seemed to be stiffness and was already loosening. He could see everything around him, strange as it was.
An aristocrat’s bedroom.
The bed was larger than king-sized with elaborately carved posts at the corner. The headboard was hand carved, and looked like it took an army of monks a lifetime to do it. Linens were all white and rumpled into a cloud. An end table with a cut-glass lamp and a pair of ornate boxes, too small to store anything, except maybe bits of jewelry, sat proudly to the side.
Across from the bed was a giant vanity. Ephraim inspected himself in the mirror, surprised to see that he didn’t look anywhere near as terrible as he felt. His head was ringing and full of cobwebs, but his face was clean — strange considering that he’d planted his face in the filthy ground.
He didn’t worry about his face for long because something else in his reflection was very wrong.
He’d been in prison orange, but now Ephraim was wearing light beige linen pants, like a barefoot yogi. His shirt was the same color and looked like a tunic, a V under his throat crossed two or three times with long, loose laces.
Ephraim squinted. He walked forward, wondering at something in his reflection that hadn’t quite clicked. He’d seen clothes like this before. This uniform. Bland, anonymous, unisex, able to fit just about any body type.
But where had he seen it? And why, as he considered, was he getting this odd sense of creeping dread?
Ephraim turned to the window then the long green lawn beyond the glass. Terraces lined the left side, immaculately landscaped, with rock stairs cut through the middle, ascending to a row of flowering hedges at the low hilltop.
To the other side of a fountain, Ephraim could see long rows of trees, each covered with a billion tiny buds. Beyond them was a gravel-lined area — either a meticulous garden or a Zen path.
Was he back on Eden?
But no, he wasn’t. Because when Ephraim looked toward a pile of belongings on the room’s dresser, he saw that someone had returned his personal effects, including his Doodad.
If Ephraim remembered the GPS map correctly, he was in Old Westbury.
In a mansion.
Alone.
He went to the door, which was unnecessarily ornate. It was locked.
“Shit.”
There was a note taped to the wall. It was as extravagant as the room, written on thick, creamy paper in what almost had to be ink from a quill.
Mr. Todd,
Welcome to The Vineyard. We hope your stay here will be pleasant. Please forgive the circumstances of your arrival, and the locked door. Until we have a chance to speak, these things seemed like a necessary precaution.
I will return to check on you shortly and look forward to meeting you once you’re awake. Until then, please feel free to make yourself at home. There is water in the refrigerator, and I’ve left you some snacks to curb your hunger. The television remote is in the nightstand drawer.
Yours,
Riley Jacoby
Ephraim set the note down.
Curious.
He hadn’t realized how thirsty he was before the note. But his throat was dry and dusty. He looked around for the refrigerator, saw nothing. There should be a little hotel setup somewhere …
Then he spied the food. A small silver tray with handles, with plates atop it, filled with fresh fruit and cheeses of all types. Salamis, prosciutto, and other meats and cheeses that Ephraim didn’t recognize — the sort that would be served in a fancy wine bar and might cost forty credits or more.
He picked up the fruit and meat and cheeses, sniffing them as if they might be laced with poison. But they smelled delicious. He ate a slice of pineapple, a few olives, slapped some meat and cheese on small oval slices of toasted sourdough.
He spotted the fridge just beside the counter. It was full-size and disguised like the wall panels. But before he could open it, Ephraim caught sight of his reflection in the vanity. He eyed his curious garb.
Beige linen pants. A beige top, loose, laces at the throat.
Where had he seen this before?
Ask Riley when she comes back. She’ll tell you.
But that rang a bell, too.
Riley.
Riley Jacoby.
He squinted at the outfit. Then he pulled the loose collar around to where he could see the tag. It read Large, but below that word was a printed palm tree, small and swaying in the breeze.
Riley Jacoby.
The Vineyard.
Ephraim knew those names, same as he knew this beige uniform. And the palm tree logo, which he’d last seen on the hand of …
Fuck.
Ephraim’s eyes closed. He sighed, feeling a new kind of dread.
At least now he knew whose custody he was in.
Chapter 7
According to Reports
The TV remote was in the nightstand drawer as promised, along with a correspondence kit that consisted of a stack of the same luxurious stationary as the note, a few fine pens (but no quills), a long silver letter opener, matching envelopes, and a small pad of universal stamps.
Weird fucking detention cell.
He’d have to wait for Riley, so Ephraim took the remote, closed the drawer, and touched the power button to wake the TV. Then he reopened the drawer and held up the letter opener. Its point wasn’t especially sharp, but enough to skewer meat for a kabob.
He pulled the elastic waistband of the beige pants, then slipped the opener beneath the band of his underwear.
Since the TV was just now pulling up its main menu, he took a minute to look around the room. They’d locked him in, but hadn’t tried to secure the place. A dozen things within easy sight could be used as weapons. Plenty of other objects looked heavy enough to hurl through windows if they were ordinary glass. His Doodad didn’t have service, but that was probably because he hadn’t paid a bill since his arrest. All in all, except for the locked door and a bash on the head, it might be easy to think this was a luxury experience. Like on Eden.
Bullshit. You know where you are; you’re at the fucking Vineyard. And you’re smart enough to know that lulling you into complacency and euphoria is how they get you.
But he wouldn’t try to break the windows. The incident in the car proved they weren’t to be trifled with, and supposedly The Vineyard’s grounds were sprawling. He wouldn’t get away just because he got out of the room. There were surely cameras everywhere.
Ephraim would wait. He’d see who came in, gauge the situation, then decide on his course of action with extreme prejudice.
The cool metal of the letter opener kissed Ephraim’s skin. Just let them try something. He might not escape, but he’d drop some bodies trying.
Ephraim clicked the news app. A list of stories, complete with thumbnails, filled the screen.
There’d been massacres in the world during his incarceration.
War was erupting overseas.
Politicians (and here was a shocker) were buried in scandal.
But his eye went right to one story in particular: GEM PROBE REVEALS TODD AS CONSPIRATOR.
Ephraim was afraid to click, but it was easier than turning away.
Video filled the screen. His old buddy Hershel before a forest of microphones, apparently at a press event. Slightly behind him, like Secret Service guarding the president, was the agent Ephraim had seen before during his stay at GEM: the white-haired man with the dark tan.
Wood was speaking without any sound. This continued until a voice-over interrupted the stillness.
A woman spoke over the footage. “Hershel Wood, Director of the Committee for the Oversight of Genetics and Evolvable Machines, met with the press today and was unapologetic about the agency’s failure to deliver answers to the public’s numerous questions about Evermore, Eden, and company founder Wallace Connolly. According to Wood …”
Ephraim recognized the voice of Ava Bloom. Ephraim didn’t much care for the news, but on those times when he tuned into the outside world, he usually listened to Ava. Maybe he was an idiot, but her reports were the only ones he found honest or reliable. She’d lost several jobs in the past for being “too objective,” leaning certain stories contrary to the wishes of her station’s sponsors. Ephraim had a soft spot for the tough, incorruptible rogue.
It seemed from the speech and Ava’s coverage that Wood was no longer on Team Ephraim. No surprise. Ephraim had ripped the contents of the Director’s mind using the Riverbed Quarry device, then lost it somewhere.
Wood looked self-assured in front of the mics, resolute more than a grudge bearer. When Ava’s voice-over ended and relevant pieces of his press conference played, Wood sounded determined as well.
“It’s true that GEM hasn’t been to Eden. As I’ve stated, this is due to a maritime claim on Eden by Mauritius — a temporary situation, because Eden lies in international waters, but a situation nonetheless. A portion of the island is technically within Mauritius’s Exclusive Economic Zone, and for now Mauritius is laying claim to that portion because of the uncertainty surrounding Eden and its leadership. But that does not change the fact that our friends in Agaléga are cooperating fully with all interested international parties, including GEM. We remain confident that we will have our answers soon.”
Ava spoke, as Wood’s volume was muted through the video. “Mr. Wood insisted that due to checks and balances in place to govern Eden’s unique situation, there is, quote, ‘No concern on our part that Mauritius is holding anything back.’ And although Director Wood indicated there has been no official contact with the reclusive Wallace Connolly, footage released by Eden points to a new twist in the larger case.”
Footage from Neven Connolly’s MyLife filled the screen with a superimposed banner at the bottom. Wood: “This all centers on Ephraim Todd.”
Wood’s voice resumed over the grisly MyLife footage. “The more we learn from our colleagues overseas, the more we come to believe that Neven Connolly’s killer, Ephraim Todd, wasn’t alone in his actions.”