by Sean Platt
A third ring.
Yes, if someone came in, they’d see what I’m doing and start to wonder.
That wondering might make them connect some other dots that Kilik had pointed out didn’t quite make sense: the director’s sullenness, his short fuse, his sudden allegiance to the manhunt whereas until a few days ago, he’d mostly turned away from it at Martinez’s urging.
The Doodad rang a fourth time. Hershel leaned far enough to see its screen: Fiona Roberson. He remembered Original Hershel’s memories, extending far back from the point where New Hershel’s consciousness had been born in the Quarry. It was far enough, especially when coupled with things that Neven had told him, to know that Fiona probably wasn’t Wood’s best friend right now.
A fifth ring. Hershel considered answering. Then he looked at the door. He picked it up. “Yes?”
“Hershel. It’s Fiona Roberson.”
“I know.”
“It’s been too long.”
“How long?” Wood honestly didn’t know. It was possible that Old Hershel and Fiona had spoken in the intervening months.
“I may have a lead for you on the Ephraim Todd case.”
Did Fiona know the ‘Ephraim Todd’ everyone was looking for — the one she’d worked with, and conspired with to infiltrate Eden — was a clone?
“Okay.”
“I have a friend of yours here.”
“Who?”
“Mercer Fox.”
Hershel knew Mercer well, and in some universe, might even have considered him a friend. But seeing as that relationship had happened at the Domain and wasn’t part of Fiona’s knowledge, he responded the way Old Hershel would have. “Mercer isn’t a friend. He’s a dirtbag.”
“Remember how thick he was with Eden? When we talked after the clone killed my man and ran out on both of us, do you remember what I told you about Mercer’s role in Neven’s plan?”
No. “Yes.”
“He’s back.”
“Okay.”
A pause from Fiona’s end. Then she continued, with more emphasis. “He’s here. In New York.”
He’d made a mistake. Hershel should be more surprised at Mercer’s appearance. He adopted an interested tone. “He is? How can you be sure?”
“I have him, Hershel. He’s here with me now.”
More surprise seemed warranted, though Hershel didn’t actually care. “You have him?”
Fiona must have been buying it, because her tone was almost smug. “He came in on a boat, at slip 41 on the east shore. We saw an Eden car registry and followed it.”
The logical question, though Hershel knew the answer already. “Where was he coming from?”
“He won’t tell me. Can’t be far, though. Maybe up- or down shore, maybe one of the uncharted islands. The boat wasn’t ocean worthy.”
“Why don’t you beat him until he tells you?”
Silence. Then, “He has information I think we can use.”
“Good for you.”
“By ‘we,’ I mean you and me.”
Hershel couldn’t have given fewer shits. He knew more than Mercer. “Oh? Like what?”
“He’s working for someone.”
“Yes. Eden.”
“Obviously. But you know Mercer. I think he might have a side hustle, too. Working with someone else. Where has he been these past months, Hershel?”
“Eden, I assumed. Laying low. The Mauritius people wouldn’t know him from Adam.” Then, for veracity. “We were planning to look for him, soon as we’re granted access to the island.”
“How far off is that?”
“Impossible to say. It seems close, but it could be next year as easily as tomorrow.”
More silence. In it, Hershel realized that Fiona’s question about GEM’s access hadn’t been merely curious. It was a leading question.
“Interesting,” Fiona said. “I’ll bet I could offer you a shortcut.”
That one small sentence was all it took. Hershel saw every piece on the board as she said it because he already knew the answers to mysteries that Fiona hadn’t even recognized yet.
GEM’s records showed that she’d called the agency again and again, but those calls were short. She’d probably been trying to determine if the copy of Old Wood’s mind had gone anywhere — if somehow, Eden had been able to manufacture a spooky-accurate clone — but she’d obviously have come up empty.
Even if she had suspicions, they’d be superstitious. She thought he was Old Hershel, all right. And he wouldn’t have known nearly enough to put Fiona’s gambit together.
But New Hershel saw it all.
Fiona’s “shortcut” to insider info about Eden was, obviously, Mercer Fox. But she wouldn’t offer him (or his intel, if she could get it from him to pass on) to Hershel for free. She wanted something. In GEM’s records, there’d also been frequent and angry demands from Fiona about the Quarry — a device that GEM knew nothing about and thought of as her big delusion, or even her joke.
Hershel knew the Quarry intimately; his last borrowed memory was of Ephraim Todd using it to siphon Old Hershel’s mind. Fiona knew about Clone Ephraim, probably more, in this case, than Hershel did. What was left for Hershel to tell?
She had probably decided that GEM might have the Quarry. Mercer had somehow tipped her or made her think in new ways. She was speaking low, meaning that she didn’t want Mercer, if he was with her, to overhear. And that meant that whatever Mercer had told her, she only half believed.
Hershel needed to get ahead of what Fiona was about to say. To strike first, and recover the power in this conversation.
He tapped his fingers on the keyboard so it would sound to Fiona like typing. “Hang on. Has Mercer said anything about the Quarry?”
Fiona’s side of the line went dead silent. If she’d been physically able to hold a phone instead of using her headset, she’d surely have dropped it.
“About what?”
“A device called ‘the Quarry,’ Fiona.” Then, taking a risk, he continued. “Wait. Does that mean something to you?”
“It’s a Riverbed device, used to copy the electrical firing patterns of a human brain and …”
Fiona stopped. In her excitement over hearing news of the Quarry, she’d apparently forgotten that Old Hershel had known it, too, as the thing Clone Ephraim had used to steal his mind. But she must not have been sure whether Ephraim told Hershel who he’d gotten it from. And now she’d blown her cover.
“The Quarry is yours?” Hershel thought he was doing a decent job of sounding angry. The playacting was fun. Easy. You just told lies, then acted like that specific kind of liar would act.
“Well …”
“You gave it to Ephraim?”
“He stole it.”
“Do you know what Ephraim did with that thing, Fiona? When I was working with him?”
“No,” she said, clearly lying. “I don’t know. All I know is that he stole the Quarry from Riverbed and took it to Eden.”
“That’s all?”
“What else is there?”
“You didn’t give it to him? You didn’t tell him to use it on someone?”
“Of course not!”
A silent moment. It was clear neither person on this call trusted the other. Fine. Fiona’s slip had put her right where Hershel wanted her.
Slowly, as if reluctantly letting it go, Hershel said, “And I suppose you want it back.” Keeping his voice stern wasn’t easy. He was about to make her beg for the Quarry, which wasn’t even at GEM. Neven had it, and he was about to do things with its technology that would make Fiona’s head explode.
Hershel caught his reflection in the monitor. His wide smile looked almost maniacal.
“It’s my property,” Fiona said.
“Prove it.”
“I could show you the specs from my files.”
“I meant, prove I should give a shit.” Hershel made his voice icy; the voice of a man who’d had his mind stolen and would make his assailant pay.
>
“I … I’ll make you a deal.”
Hershel let her stumble. He’d figured out ‘Fiona’s deal’ ten minutes ago. She’d called to make it from a position of power and found herself floundering. She’d thought GEM might have the Quarry, but she hadn’t counted on it playing out like this.
And now Hershel held all of the cards.
Same basic deal. But now Wood was going to win, and without even having the thing she so desperately wanted.
“What kind of deal?”
“I’ll get you insider information about Eden. From Mercer, as I said. Things you’d have to wait months or years to find out directly. Or, considering how much access Mercer has on the island, maybe things you’d never have been able to find out officially.”
“In exchange for the Quarry?”
“I just want it back. I need it, Hershel.”
Hershel pretended to consider but was only burning seconds. The deal was a ghost — Hershel didn’t have the Quarry and Mercer’s insider information about Eden wasn’t anything he remotely cared about.
Then he had it: the perfect distraction, and a way to get himself into the Gene Crypt.
He woke his screen from sleep, then navigated to Felix’s case files. He read quickly, then found what he was looking for. Felix, like many at the police and GEM, thought that “Ephraim Todd’s attack on the city” was an attempt to infiltrate Riverbed. Ephraim might set off a bomb, as warned by Ava Bloom, but he’d only do it to draw attention away from his true target.
But Felix and the Riverbed theory had hit a snag. Riverbed’s main building had such intense security and surveillance that Ephraim would be a fool to try and pierce it, even during the chaos of Jubilee. If he was coming to infiltrate Riverbed — something Felix and the others were convinced of — he meant to do it somewhere other than the main building.
There had to be a Riverbed satellite office somewhere in the city, and if Hershel could send most of GEM’s agents to that satellite office to catch the fugitive, it would leave the Data Crate practically unwatched.
Hershel explained Felix’s theory to Fiona. He asked about the satellite office, knowing that someone like Fiona would be smart enough to have several. And when she gave him the location of one — in lower Manhattan, within view of One World Trade Center — he nodded and made a note to give Felix’s team later. She’d told him the truth. Because Hershel’s version of the deal went like this: Once we catch Ephraim Todd, you can have your Quarry back.
No Ephraim, no Quarry.
Fiona sounded shaken as they hung up. Hershel, by contrast, felt great.
Maybe they’d catch the clone. Maybe Felix was right, and they’d find Ephraim trying to break into Riverbed’s satellite office. If they did, yay.
He did care that tomorrow the public would be watching the Jubilee parade, fearing Ephraim’s terrorist attack.
GEM and the police and the FBI would all be south, near WTC1, waiting to catch a fugitive.
GEM headquarters, far north, would be the last thing on anyone’s mind. And there would only be two people in the Data Crypt — people who Hershel knew from experience tended to celebrate early and get distracted often.
The backdoor script was almost ready for installation.
Then Neven’s grand experiment would have its day.
Chapter 34
Down in the Tunnels
Despite his disguise, Ephraim felt exposed. And for what? Jubilee wasn’t until tomorrow; the city could only offer the poles of Procession (and lots of famous personalities from Ephraim’s favorite religious torture TV shows) and the counterculture parties that opposed the day’s self-righteous assholes. Procession was supposed to be a celebration of moderation and restraint. Both were difficult to celebrate since normal celebrations were neither restrained nor moderate.
It felt like a waste to Ephraim; or worse, a dangerous gamble that wasn’t worth the risk. But he’d stopped saying that out loud because Sophie was getting annoyed. She was more daring than him. More willing to take chances. More willing to lie, if that was required. Ephraim had been dragged through hell and had sent some residents there, but an inborn need to be honest dogged him like a stubborn cold.
“It’s what makes you you,” Sophie said when he pointed it out after he couldn’t bluff his way into the back room of a high-end shop selling eccentric tech —the kind of place someone looking for tech slaves might initiate his search.
“I can’t shake the feeling that it was baked into me somehow. Like it wasn’t my choice, even though it feels that way. You’re supposed to be made up of your life’s experiences. I’m honest because of a lifetime with liars, and I want to save people because I failed to save my sister. But I didn’t spend my life with liars. I didn’t even have a sister. All the things that ‘make me me’ never happened. So, what does that make me?”
“Papa teaches us—” And by us, it was clear to Ephraim that ‘us’ meant Eden’s deprogrammed refugees, “—to think of our pasts as if they were real, even though they technically weren’t, or at least never happened to us. I’m full of memories that the first Sophie experienced. She was in a play when she was just three; did you know that? It’s not anywhere on record; I’ve searched. But it’s on-record here.” Sophie touched her temple. “That memory is what made her want to be an actor. I remember that drive. I even remember acting in movies — movies that the first Sophie did when she was older than I am now! And those things make me part of who I am. I get what you’re saying, Ephraim, and in a way, it makes sense. But Papa’s way makes even more sense. I am me. Objectively, today, I am the person I am. I became what memories made me. Who’s to say that those memories are any less ‘real’ than ones gained from experience?”
“You don’t get it. Jonathan and Neven made me honest specifically so I’d—”
Sophie put her index finger to his lips. “It doesn’t matter. You are you.”
Around her finger, Ephraim said, “Even Papa showed me this demonstration with Coca-Cola that—”
“I said, Shh.”
She removed the finger, and he said, “You didn’t say ‘Shh.’”
“Shh.”
The day dragged on. The sun moved high in the sky, peeked between the skyscrapers for the two or three hours it spent overhead, then sighed slowly off to the west.
“Why are we here, then?” Ephraim asked outside of a swanky sex toy boutique on Fifth Avenue called Fuck Me Blue.
“We’re looking for leads.”
“This is pointless. We haven’t even looked at Riverbed, which is where it seems Ephraim would most likely be. Isn’t that what Papa said?”
“He won’t be there now. He’ll have to wait for Jubilee if he actually expects to get in.”
Her actually was subtle, but Ephraim heard the doubt. They’d mostly kept their distance from Riverbed’s building, but once, in a cab, they’d passed it. The additions to Fiona’s security were obvious. Real Ephraim would be an idiot to try and get in, even during Jubilee. So where would he go? Their trip would be equally pointless tomorrow. Maybe Real Ephraim or his accomplices would cause the big distraction, kill a few folks, and leave. Maybe this was a fool’s errand for them both.
“This is a needle in a haystack,” Ephraim said.
“This sure isn’t a needle,” Sophie said, picking up a phallus as long as her forearm.
“Sophie,” Ephraim repeated. “There’s just no point. There are millions and millions of people in New York, and more coming for Jubilee. The cops are looking for Ephraim. What makes you think we’ll find him first?”
“Our information is better.”
“Better than the police? Better than GEM?”
“It’s Papa’s information. So yes.”
“We should just let them find him if they can,” Ephraim muttered.
“If we don’t get to him first, we’ll never get into Eden’s AI. We’ll never find out where Neven is hiding.”
Ephraim didn’t want to say what he was thinking: Even
if they did catch Ephraim, and caught him before the police, and captured him without killing him, and got him to talk; there was no guarantee he’d have access to the Wallace Connolly AI. Jonathan might not even have it.
“Well, there’s certainly no point in being here.” He meant the store. There wasn’t even a back room, other than a small employee break room in the corner. If there was something to find, it wasn’t in this upscale boutique.
“Maybe I’m in the market for a lamp,” Sophie said, picking up a light fixture called Mister Fister.
Ephraim wanted to say, there’s just no point.
But he knew how Papa would reply: We have to try because it’s our only chance, and Neven must be stopped. But Ephraim rated the chance at nanometers above futile. They might as well go outside and start throwing rocks. They had a better chance of randomly hitting Neven with one of those rocks and killing him than finding Ephraim — especially given the conditions.
But a hunch had been dogging him all damn day, same as now, in Fuck Me Blue, while Sophie was browsing and not at all searching for leads.
Go to the tunnels.
Like a devil on his shoulder or a ghost standing behind him. The more Ephraim let himself tumble down the hole of futility, the more it felt like there was a solid hand on the top of his head, turning his gaze to face a solution he was stubbornly refusing to consider, or missing entirely.
“We need to call Papa,” Ephraim said.
Around dinner time, with the day bearing no fruit, they did. The couple went to a quiet space in the park’s Safe Area and placed a call. He looked across the city, thinking of their wasted day. Except that it hadn’t been wasted — he’d spent the day with Sophie. Flown under a different flag, the same day would’ve seemed extraordinary.
Ephraim added Sophie’s MyLife to the call so they could all talk together. He pressed the Doodad to his head, glad to be free of his old MyLife and the
(Go to the tunnels)
way it used to whisper in his ear.