by Sean Platt
Maybe Jonathan was actually his enemy.
Maybe, he thought, sending Ephraim into the city to get caught as scapegoat had been Jonathan’s plan all along.
No, Mr. Policeman, I had nothing to do with the break-in at Riverbed, Ephraim imagined Jonathan saying. My brother did that all on his own.
But the hole was even deeper than that, wasn’t it? The world didn’t know there were two Ephraims. That meant that if Jonathan decided to double-cross him, all of Clone Ephraim’s deeds would be held against the real one.
It was all Ephraim, Imaginary Jonathan continued. He made a deal with Fiona Roberson a few months ago, then double-crossed Hershel Wood. I guess Neven wasn’t the only person on Eden involved in something shady. First Neven conducts illegal research, and then my brother steals a bunch of his old supplies to sell behind my back! I shouldn’t have trusted either of them. Now just let me get back to my work of innocently running the world’s richest company.
Yes. That might be the reason he was surrounded right now: because Jonathan tipped the authorities off. Once all the blame was heaped onto Ephraim, Jonathan and Eden would probably end up seeming innocent.
Convenient for Jonathan, wasn’t it?
But with a shake, Ephraim forced the thought from his head. Of course Jonathan hadn’t set him up; Ephraim had come to the city to track down the clone because they’d agreed it was in their mutual interest. Jonathan and Ephraim were brothers ‘till the end. They’d stick together, and nobody — not Fiona, GEM, or some dumbass clone — would tear them apart.
The timing had just failed him. Circumstances had failed him. The subconscious control box had been a bust; he’d known it wouldn’t work because the Ephraim clone no longer had a MyLife to whisper through. And after he’d told Jonathan, his brother had called on some of his spies in the NYPD and discovered that everyone now expected the clone to come here, to Riverbed.
Better get to Riverbed first so you can grab the clone before the cops do, Jonathan had said.
Except that Jonathan hadn’t considered how Ephraim would make his exit after nabbing his doppelgänger. If Clone Ephraim came here and so did the cops, then how was Real Ephraim supposed to get away after his job was done? The cops wouldn’t know they had the wrong man. They thought Clone Ephraim (the terrorist they sought) was the same as Real Ephraim (who was trying to catch the terrorist, too).
Strange that Jonathan hadn’t considered that before sending his brother to Riverbed. He was usually smarter than that.
Smart enough to know that Real Ephraim would end up surrounded just as he was right now, with a big target painted right on his back.
That thought made Ephraim consider things he wouldn’t normally consider. Like making Jonathan answer some hard questions, if or when he got out of this. Things like using the heavy firearm, given to him by Jonathan and now tucked into the back of his pants.
Ephraim stayed low. His right hand considered the weapon, then moved back away. He evaluated his situation, determined to channel his inner Jonathan. The man was a genius. Ephraim could be one, too.
He didn’t think the officers and agents outside had seen him yet. And even if they had, he wasn’t in a place that would be easy to pinpoint without being a lot closer than they were, in the numbers they seemed to have.
They hadn’t entered the lobby. Cops were in plain clothes, recognizable only from their serious demeanor and the way they kept whispering into their lapels. The entire thing covert, as if they were hoping they wouldn’t have to commit to a full assault.
The Riverbed lobby sprawled. Ephraim was crouched in a semi-central reception desk. He’d come in from the alley; Jonathan had sent some software to his Doodad that had let him hack the computerized lock. They might have the alley covered by now. A thousand movies had told Ephraim they’d be dumb not to.
But it was Jubilee.
And they were all in plainclothes, low in numbers, clearly trying to keep a low profile so as not to cause a scene. They didn’t know what they were facing, or even if Ephraim was in here alone.
Two men and one woman in a suit, off to the left, came close to a door at the far end of the mini-atrium. Even less subtle than the cops. GEM? FBI? Ephraim wasn’t sure.
They were a few feet from the door.
And the cops he’d noticed — one by a lamppost, another beside a little girl holding a balloon, two wearing T-shirts that almost matched, paying no attention to the passing parade — were all focused inward.
Something was about to happen.
And that something, if Ephraim didn’t move, was his imminent arrest.
He reached back for the gun, pulled it from his belt, and flicked off the safety. He didn’t want to hurt anyone, but if his clone could kill to survive, maybe Ephraim could, too.
He couldn’t go to the alley exit. The building would probably be surrounded.
And he clearly couldn’t go out the front.
Or could he?
He looked at the agents, officers, whoever had come to get him. There were seven he was relatively sure of: four in casual gear and the trio of stiffs on the left. Ephraim had been watching his own (or the clone’s) press; fear was on his side. Everyone in the city was afraid of Big Bad Ephraim Todd.
Enough that the cops who’d come to get him weren’t even willing to show their presence. Because they didn’t want to scare anyone.
Ephraim hefted the gun.
He looked to the right, toward a second entrance at the atrium’s other end. The big windows showed him that only the two cops with matching tees would be in a position to chase him. Ephraim could be fast. They’d be handicapped by discretion, not wanting to alarm the public before it was necessary.
Ephraim reached into his pocket and retrieved the metal cylinder. He looked at the thing for a moment before screwing it into the barrel. He’d laughed when Jonathan gave him a silencer.
Who do you think I am, James Bond?
But now that he was putting things together — now that he realized the police were more afraid of panic than he was — the quiet worked to his advantage.
Creep toward the right-side door. Two shots, bang-bang.
Ephraim had gone target shooting before; he could control the weapon. As long as he was willing to pretend his pursuers were Hogan’s Alley silhouettes.
And the crowd; look to the crowd. You only have a foot’s worth of sidewalk to cover in the open.
He got down on the floor. Worm-crawled to the door. He reached up with one arm to flick the lock, hoping like hell there wasn’t a second catch, like something that bolted the door into the ceiling.
Get their attention. Cause a distraction.
He’d handled that on the crawl. There was an award of some sort on one of the lobby tables, shaped like a ball with legs on it to keep it from rolling away. Like a heavy shuttlecock.
Do it quickly.
Getting to his knees, hopefully low enough to be concealed, Ephraim threw the thing hard at the left-side windows. They were either artificial or reinforced; nothing broke, but the impact made a loud noise, low like a muted gong. The award stuck the floor and rolled like a wounded spider.
The agents and cops looked at the window, at the hurled object. Several touched their ears as if they wore earpieces.
Now. GO!
Ephraim rose and wrenched the door in one quick motion.
He spilled into the street, fumbling and almost falling as adrenaline tried to drown him. The sensations were too much, intense and everywhere.
Ephraim remembered his weapon, and what he’d convinced himself he had to do, steeling himself seconds earlier, knowing this would be where he hesitated.
But he couldn’t. Lives depended on it.
No pause. His sneakers grated on the concrete, the racket of Jubilee like a madman’s calliope. Revelers were turned away, their eyes on the parade, a wall of backs before him.
Only the cops were watching, and only they turned.
Gun up. Pfft, pfft.
> The sound was almost polite. Ephraim struck one of the cops in the hip. The other shot went wide, boring a neat hole in a street side parking sign. The first cop went down. The other pressed his ear with his left hand, his right going behind his back, presumably to return fire.
But Ephraim got him first, squeezing off a third shot. This one in the arm. His aim was shit. But nobody noticed; this was Jubilee and people had too much fun; they drank and fell over and laughed and maybe bled. Once Ephraim was into the crowd, the gun already slipping into his pants, the chase was in his favor. He hadn’t even seen the other five cops, or agents, or whoever they were.
And with all this cover, they’d never find him.
Thirty seconds.
Then a deafening whistle, like a hundred traffic cops blowing whistles at once.
Nobody seemed hear it or care. Jubilee continued. Music played. The crowd, even this low in the city, partied and drank and laughed.
Maybe cops swarmed. Ephraim didn’t know. He was suddenly at the front of the crowd, along the street, his side ramming a braided steel cable strung between lampposts to keep drunks from falling under the wheels of parade floats.
He needed somewhere to go where he wouldn’t be seen.
Hide among the crowd. Hide in plain sight.
He ducked beneath the cable and snatched a discarded Jubilee hat, like a jester’s, from the gutter. The crowd saw him. They hooted and cheered for the rebel, refusing to be held to the sidewalks like a lemming. They didn’t know he had a gun. Or that he was Ephraim Todd. This man, now weaving between floats and balloons, had a beard and a hat, and everyone had already drunk and celebrated their fears into nothing.
Then the van. Breaking out from an alley, ramming several pedestrians aside, breaking a barricade and poking its fat nose onto the street.
Shouts from it. Shouts of Ephraim’s name.
And with all of this, the crowd finally began to realize that something was amiss.
But the men emerging from the dark-windowed van weren’t shouting at Ephraim.
Or rather, they were shouting for Ephraim.
An entirely different Ephraim.
Chapter 44
A Strange Game of Chicken
The van came out of nowhere, parting the crowd like Toyota Moses parting the Red Jubilee sea. Clone Ephraim gripped Sophie’s hand tighter when he heard its engine.
For a scant second, he was pleased; the van’s drunken intrusion had opened the sidewalk for a few dozen yards when it broke the barrier to scatter the revelers. A few people might be hurt, but Ephraim was too distracted to consider that now.
Reaching Riverbed was all that mattered. Reaching Real Ephraim, so they might get to Neven, who was planning to unleash an army.
But then the van’s side door opened and someone was shouting his name. And Ephraim wasn’t the only one who heard it. A family in full regalia heard Ephraim Todd! and looked right at him, his disguise suddenly a ghost.
They screamed, and passed their cry like a virus.
Somewhere to Ephraim’s right, the crowd broke its restraints and bulged into the street like an amoeba’s pseudopod. A parade float promoting unity swerved to avoid it, struck a lamppost, and snapped another of the street-side cable restraints.
“Come over here, beautiful,” said a big man, coming right for him, reaching inside his jacket as if for sunglasses.
But what came out wasn’t sunglasses. It was a handgun. He centered it on Ephraim’s chest, its barrel steady.
“I’m so happy to see you again, Mr. Todd. And it is Mr. Todd. You remember my name, right?”
“Um …” With all the adrenaline in his system, Ephraim doubted he could remember how to urinate right now. Or at least not how to do it on purpose.
“I’m hurt,” the goon said. Then he half rolled his eyes. “It’s Freddy, by the way.”
That barely helped. Ephraim remembered the Fiona’s tough guy just fine, but it was a whirlwind memory. Freddy had chauffeured Ephraim to a plane; Ephraim had shot Freddy’s partner. It wasn’t the best of connections, all things considered.
“Come for a ride with me in my van. I have candy.”
Ephraim and Sophie froze. They’d entered a strange game of chicken. Ephraim had been headed toward the sidewalk, but now the van was blocking his way. Now he was shifting as if to detour around it, as if Freddy might let him go. Instead Freddy moved to intercept, his pace unhurried.
Ephraim moved. His opponent moved to match.
They were veering at angles, in a big V, intruding on the parade route — floats stalling, news of the criminal Ephraim Todd’s arrival spreading through the crowd like a brush fire. Groups drifted; friends shouted after friends; singletons dashed across the pavement. There was no rhyme nor reason, except the rhythm of everything falling apart.
Ephraim was struck twice by people who were running in fear – intending to run, probably, away from him. But the fleeing had become mindless; they didn’t know who was inches away.
They’re panicking, Ephraim thought. You remember panic, right?
And yes, he did, because Sophie had his arm and he could see panic all over her face. Her eyes were wild, her feet trying to pull them both away. Ephraim could only think about keeping himself between the gun and Sophie. It was the only intention he could muster.
The crowd surged. And when it did, Ephraim spotted a black man with a beard standing perhaps twenty feet away.
The two Ephraims froze, staring at each other.
Fiona’s man saw his gaze and turned his head, now also seeing double.
“What the f—?”
A shout came from the crowd, cutting Freddy off: “Drop the weapon!”
The gunman turned. A man was rushing toward them with a weapon out – plainclothes, but clearly a cop. He’d stumbled out of an undulating line of people with purpose, as if he’d been chasing the other Ephraim.
Then the undercover cop stopped, too. Everyone stared at everyone else.
Freddy was the first to break the stalemate. He shot the cop in the chest. The blast woke the rest of the nearby crowd, raising a chorus of screams, turning the frenzy from celebration to terrified purpose.
Run, Ephraim thought. Now’s your chance to run.
He was turning to sprint when the goon shouted for him to halt.
Ephraim looked back. Freddy had turned his gun on Sophie.
“Maybe don’t run if you want her to keep breathing,” he said. “Instead, why don’t you come with me?”
Chapter 45
Away From Prying Eyes
Mercer’s eyes darted between the goon in the van and the one outside it. Maria was flanking Fiona, almost as if she thought Mercer might try to leap at her. Mercer, on the other hand, had no such intention. He couldn’t exactly seize Fiona for cover, then drag her around the city as a shield. People in wheelchairs made shitty hostages.
Fiona said, “So was any of it true? Any of what you told me before we began stalking the wrong Ephraim Todd?”
“Most of it.”
“Which parts?”
“Um …”
But he didn’t have to answer, because that’s when Fiona’s man on the street shot a guy in the chest. The crowd started to surge and spread like a spilled box of BBs. Mercer’s response suddenly seemed a lot less important.
Fiona’s man grabbed Mercer by the arm. He shoved a gun into Mercer’s ribs.
“Hey,” Mercer said, looking down. “That’s not cool.”
“Mrs. Roberson,” the man holding Mercer said, indicating his partner out on the street, “looks like Freddy has found us some extra passengers. I don’t like it. I don’t want to sit all the way in the back because the ride is too full. What do you think? Can I please do something to thin the van’s occupancy?”
He eyed Mercer. The gun jabbed, underscoring the question.
Fiona muttered something to Maria. Her assistant extended something on Fiona’s chair and Fiona turned away.
“I can ride back ther
e if you don’t want to,” Mercer said.
“Keep joking,” the man said, dragging him onto the street.
Around to the van’s other side, away from the street and standoff.
To shoot him and be done with it.
“Get back by the Dumpster.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want you spattering blood on me.”
“Blood? Woah, hey, take it easy. I’ve been cool to you. We barely know each other.”
“I’m Chris. I’m a Sagittarius and my favorite food is raw oysters.”
Mercer made a face. “Raw oysters? That’s like eating hooker pussy.”
Chris raised his weapon.
“I like you, Mr. Fox. You’re a real funny guy.”
“We should hang out.”
The gun pressed into Mercer’s temple. Mercer watched the first few ounces of pressure on the trigger whiten Chris’s finger, then closed his eyes.
He had a thought he assumed was his last. It was simple:
Fuck.
The world shook. Mercer assumed he’d just been shot, but then he realized that a trio of screaming revelers had struck the gunman hard enough to topple him. Mercer was still against the Dumpster. He opened his eyes in time to see Chris rack his skull on the pavement, coming up sluggish.
Screw it, Mercer thought.
He kicked Chris while he was down. Hard. And when he did, the gun spun away. An unexpected bonus.
Mercer glanced at the weapon for a split second. In that second, he considered grabbing it. But the gun was on the other side of Chris, away from the direction he’d need to run if he wanted to get away. And getting away mattered far more to Mercer in the moment than taking the gun and trying to be a hero.
He flexed to run and turned, rushing, right into the side of an enormous float like something from a homecoming parade. The float was amateur, made of chicken wire and tissue paper. It was also where it shouldn’t be, off the street and off the parade route. The driver inside must have panicked and gone off course.