by Sean Platt
Neven pushed aside his annoyance at Mercer’s use of ‘our.’ This was his father’s first, Neven’s second, Mercer’s not at all. But he smiled a little and said, “There are too many secrets in the world as it is.”
“What does that mean?”
“Did you see Ephraim or not?”
“And then some. I was hanging out with Ephraim, and then Ephraim showed up. Ephraim grabbed Sophie Norris from Ephraim and drove off with her, leaving Ephraim behind. The cops showed up to bust Ephraim. I’m sorry; not Ephraim. It was Ephraim they showed up to bust. But instead—”
“Wait. Eden’s Ephraim was there?”
“Yes. And the cops and Fiona’s people thought that was awesome, having so much Ephraim on hand. There was a shootout. I only got away because both Ephraims were more exciting than me. So, I won’t be hunting Wood down for you after all. My reason is fuck that.”
“I just talked to Wood. It’s handled.”
“Oh, okay. My coming here to be tied up and beaten wasn’t even necessary. Awesome.”
Neven’s heart pounded hard enough to hurt.
The original Ephraim’s presence at Jubilee was troubling for a reason he couldn’t identify. They’d spoken to each other, and Fiona had been there, and Mercer, and the police, and probably some GEM agents. He didn’t care about technology being released — that was, in a way, the point. But he did care about loose ends. And unknowns. He cared that Sophie (the clone, he assumed) had been taken hostage — but not for reasons that made any obvious sense.
Some deep instinct was making his spine itch, and that intuition had something to do with Clone Ephraim, Sophie, and the fact that they’d apparently found each other and been pulled apart. Neven’s fake threat to harm Sophie had caused an artificial murder, and the Ephraim clone’s evolving mind had months of evolution to fuel it. What might he do? And why did the question bother Neven so much, deep down?
Love is what broke him. And you can’t break what’s already broken.
But that was a lie, and Neven damn well knew it.
He had to learn more, to pick at this issue’s sticky edges. Once the cubes were empty, this would be what mattered most. For some reason, the fact that the Ephraim clone was at large — and desperate, he’d guess, with Sophie abducted by his double — felt more like a dangerous uncertainty than ever.
“Look, Neven,” Mercer said. “We’re in for trouble. Fiona saw the boat. I won’t take it back because she’ll probably track it. But she knows how big it is. She knows I can’t have come from far. And when she sees the clones, she’ll know they were made using her tech and didn’t come from far away, either. I don’t think she knows you’re alive, or about the Domain. But there are only so many places you could stick a massive cloning facility near New York, and—”
“It doesn’t matter, Mercer. Tell me about Ephraim. The clone. Where is he? Was he arrested again?”
“You’re not listening to me. This is my investment, too. I dropped everything I was doing to work with you. I know you’ve got this grand plan to test organics against their clones, to create this whole biological hacking movement, and I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe there was a ton of money in the tech licensing. But you’re not doing the math. Even if you think your social media AI can use Quarry tech to assemble personalities as fast or as well as Precipitous Rise can assemble bodies of subjects pulled from the database—”
“Which it can, and we’ll be able to sample some minds directly.”
“—then we’re still talking about a full week per cycle to create a Tomorrow Clone from nothing. There are 243 spawn cubes in the Domain, so that makes 500 or so clones we’ll have in the wild a week from now if you count the Eden dupes you’re releasing in the first wave. And that’s assuming everything goes perfectly. How long do you think the Domain can stay hidden with Fiona snooping around, given what she knows? 500 isn’t enough, Neven. Even if Fiona is dumb enough that she can’t find the facility for a full month, which she’s not, that’s just, what? A little under 1250 total. It’s proof of concept, sure, and scary as shit for fuckers who worry that they might’ve been cloned, but it’s far from critical levels. They’ll storm the Domain, lock us up, and then where will we be? They can root out the clones if there’s only a few hundred or a thousand. This operation called for critical, Neven. It had to be thousands of clones pulled from the Crypt, if not tens of thousands. People had to be shitting their shorts that we might pull their sequence and ID next, and make another them. But how the hell are we supposed to keep producing undercover if Fiona shuts us down?”
“Relax. We have time.”
“Are you listening to me? We don’t have time to make enough to—”
“Mercer.”
“You can’t do it all yourself, man! 243 cubes! That’s all we’ve got! So why don’t you tell me how the fuck we’re supposed to push critical and clone enough people if—”
“I said it’s handled!”
Mercer stopped speaking.
“Let me worry about producing enough clones,” Neven spoke slowly, as if to a child. “Trust me; Fiona isn’t the wildcard. I’ve planned for Fiona. What I need—”
“How exactly did you plan for Fiona?”
Neven closed his eyes, paused, then tried again, ignoring the question. “What I need from you is simple. Help me find Ephraim’s clone. We get the clone, and I promise you that everything else will be fine.”
“How?”
“Trust me, Mercer.”
Mercer seemed to consider. Finally, he said, “Okay.”
“Was he arrested?”
“No. The clone chased the real Ephraim’s truck until he looked about ready to collapse. The cops ran after him, but then they stopped, touching their heads like they were getting a MyLife message. Then they walked away like no big deal and vanished into the crowd. I was in shock, waiting for them to come back and grab me. After a second I jogged ahead, toward the clone, figuring I could use him, like you said. But I only got about halfway there before the car about knocked my ass into the gutter.”
“What car?”
“The car I mentioned.”
“You didn’t mention any car. You mentioned the truck that the other Ephraim left in.”
“I told you about the car. It pulled up, and someone opened the door. Ephraim got in. Willingly. Like, he wasn’t dragged or anything.”
Fucking Mercer. Neven rubbed his head. “You didn’t tell me about the car.”
“Yes, I did.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I said that—”
“I don’t suppose you got the plate?”
“Well, no, but it didn’t seem like a car that’d be hard to track. Rich guy car. Like a …” Mercer snapped his fingers. “Not a normal sedan; more the kind of thing your name has to be Nigel Winthorpe or Lord Ottombottom to own. It had a logo on the side. In gold. A tree. What are those big cars? A Bentley or a …”
Neven’s head drooped. He pressed his thumb and forefinger against his closed eyes, a horrible realization dawning.
“Was it a Rolls Royce? An old one, like a Wraith, converted to electric?”
“Rolls. That’s it.”
“And the tree on the side. Was it a palm?”
“I think so, yeah.”
Neven exhaled. He was getting a headache.
“So, Neven,” Mercer said, “how do you want me to get back to—”
Neven ended the call. Then he threw the Doodad so hard against the wall that it practically disintegrated.
It was hard to see. Neven hadn’t been this angry in years. Decades, maybe. The room swam in an ocean of red. Fury consumed him, held only at bay by purpose. This was no ordinary anger. This rage came with a realization that should have been a long, long time coming. The wrath of being played the fool.
All this time. All this time, he’d failed to recognize the invisible hand moving all the pieces beneath him. How hadn’t he seen it?
Neven’s mind assemb
led the puzzle. With this one last piece of information, years of confusion were suddenly clearer.
He looked at his tablet. The sync timer was down to its final three minutes.
He clutched the tablet so hard he feared it might break.
His rage made rationality impossible. But least now he knew the eyes that had always been watching him. At least now, in he could see the order in what had been chaos. At least now, with just over a hundred seconds before his triumph, he could blend the distant machinations of a maniac with the manipulations of the man who’d tried to be his second father.
The tablet counted down. One minute remaining. And then none.
He tapped to end the sync. To open 243 chambers. They’d know what to do. They’d shower; they’d get dressed; they’d head to the lower dock in an orderly fashion and board their ride to shore. They weren’t children, after all, and they had old homes to visit.
Once they left the Domain, Neven would have new preparations to make.
A new countdown to set.
Between clenched teeth, Neven whispered, “Friesh.”
He had a rendezvous to arrange, once and for all.
Chapter 48
Incredibly Broken
The Rolls purred into uptown. The way was clear for the first few blocks, then chaotic south of SoHo. It was as if the city was a living organ struck with intestinal blockage, normal patterns choked by abnormal activity, upset by stress from every end.
Ephraim had come willingly into the cab, then screamed and fought when Papa explained that they wouldn’t chase Original Ephraim and Sophie as he’d assumed.
To Ephraim, the latter made absolute sense. Not only was Sophie Sophie — as dear, he assumed, to Papa as she was to Ephraim — but she was also a lead. Not thirty seconds had passed between the truck’s departure and Papa’s arrival. The trail was blazing. Ephraim would never have gotten into the car if he’d known Papa planned to roll over.
But it was taking forever to leave the city, so for a while they’d parked to let things settle. Hours passed. It felt like three days already. Jubilee was reaching its apex, the north celebrations undaunted.
“It pains me, Ephraim,” Papa said, looking across the car’s luxurious interior to Ephraim sulking on the leather, “but Sophie isn’t what matters most right now. Stopping Neven is. And Sophie would agree if she were here.”
“But she’s not here. Because the other Ephraim has her. And he’s going to kill her.”
Papa didn’t contradict Ephraim’s deliberately inflammatory prediction. He looked at him solemnly with his paternal eyes, seeming to say: If that’s how it has to be, then that’s how it has to be. For the greater good.
“I don’t understand. We came here to find Ephraim. We should go after him.”
Papa shook his head. “My people inside Eden say that Jonathan seems happy about the news from New York. You’ve seen what Ava Bloom is saying.” He gestured toward the small screen embedded in the console. “Ephraim Todd has been captured.”
“Neither of us were captured.”
“But the fear of you has served its purpose, and now they want their control back. I don’t think Original Ephraim was in the city before the report, and I think that was a plant, designed to get you here.”
“Planted by who?”
“Neven.”
Ephraim scoffed. “You don’t know that.”
“I do know that Ava Bloom is a drome.”
That caught Ephraim’s attention. “What makes you say that?”
“It’s not important. I believe it. And it’s hard to trust what she says if Neven can whisper in her ear.”
“How do you know it’s not Jonathan, whispering from Eden?”
Papa didn’t answer. Apparently, he just knew that, too.
Through the southern part of the island, traffic had been nonexistent. The widest streets had been blockaded for parades or Jubilee festivities, and the Ephraim appearance (ahem … appearances) and their accompanying gunshots and body count had caused panic enough to clear out the revelers.
But either news traveled slowly, or the Midtown Jubilee celebration was hardy enough to endure, especially with Ava reporting a successful arrest if anyone did check the news. Hence the traffic. And the slowdowns that even Papa’s extensive network of Change connections couldn’t budge.
“I don’t see why Ephraim isn’t the best way to stop Neven, as planned.”
“If Jonathan is happy that Ephraim was ‘caught,’” Papa said, air quoting, “that points to a rift between the brothers. Tell me, Ephraim. If you were in the other Ephraim’s shoes right now, what would you think about Jonathan?”
Reluctantly, Ephraim said, “That he’d set me up.”
“Me too. I don’t know if it’s true, but Jonathan’s happiness suggests it might be. He’s been eager to deflect blame from the moment this whole thing started. After Neven ‘died’—” air quotes again, “—he blamed Neven for anything GEM or Mauritius forces found wrong with what Eden was doing. When the news and Hershel — the original I imagine — implied a conspiracy between you and Riverbed, Jonathan jumped in to feed those rumors. ‘Yes, Ephraim was working with Fiona Roberson all along, and that’s why Eden’s technology seems awry — maybe we were framed!’ And because he couldn’t admit that there was a clone, he had to say ‘Ephraim,’ as if there were one. Now with his real brother on the run, will Jonathan come to his rescue? No way. Everyone is at fault except for Eden, and he won’t want anything to threaten his crown. Original Ephraim, if he has a brain in his head, knows it.”
Papa gave Ephraim a direct but compassionate look, his eyes earnest.
“That is why Original Ephraim is no longer any use to us. He’s on his own and seeing it for the first time. Jonathan has turned his back; the only person Ephraim felt he could confide in, the only person who even knew he existed as an innocent person, independent from you. He’ll be lost. Hurt. Worthy of pity.”
“Then we should turn him. Tell him that Neven is alive and using him. As is Fiona and everyone else. Get him on our side.”
“He’s so used to being used that his walls will all be up. He’s in no position to hear reason now when we need him to.”
“We should at least try.”
“And we will,” Papa said, emphasizing ‘we’ for reasons Ephraim didn’t fully understand. “We have Sophie.”
“No, he has Sophie. And he’s going to kill her.”
Papa looked out the window. He turned back with the slightest smile to brighten his face. “Maybe you’re underestimating her.”
“We have to—”
“What we have to do, is find where Neven is hiding.”
“Which Ephraim—”
“—is in no state of mind to help us with at the moment,” Papa finished, his eyes adding … and that’s final.
“Hershel Wood, then. You said he’s a 2.0 clone.”
“Who has Neven’s ear. Even if he’d speak with us, which I doubt, he’d tell Neven. He’d see us coming.”
Ephraim, itching with a deep need to chase Sophie’s abductor and infuriated by the professorial way Papa was leading him through this rather than just speaking his damn mind, felt like screaming. “Then what the fuck do you suggest we do if you know it all?”
“We wait.”
“Wait?”
Firmly, chastising, reaching the limit of his patience, he replied. “Yes, wait! It’s a virtue Sophie could teach you a thing or two about. I understand more than anyone how much you’ve had to go through. The pressures on you have been impossible to bear. The clones that come to The Vineyard require extensive deprogramming to continue their lives, but we’re able to help them by building a foundation before telling them what you had to learn in a single, brutal blow of realization. We teach them how to be independent, free-thinking humans, then slowly let them learn the truth about who they are. You, Ephraim, had none of that. It’s surprising that you survived, that you’re as mentally sound as you are.”
; Ephraim had two rapid-fire thoughts. Papa was probably right; Ephraim remembered telling Hannah that he knew he was a clone but hadn’t been deprogrammed — she’d been surprised that he was alive. And he wasn’t as mentally sound as Papa thought. He seemed to be unspooling, his mind dipping in and out of coherence. Ephraim’s paranoia had never really left. He’d never truly stop being afraid.
“I understand why you want to rush,” Papa said. “I understand why Sophie means the world to you. She’s important to me, too. All lives are, and I’m particularly fond of her. But your relationship? It’s too new to be as deep as you imagine. I know you had instant chemistry. Sophie told me. She also said that your chemistry was apparently the same with the original when the two of you first met. And Sophie, who’s more spiritual than I am—” Papa laughed, probably because he fronted a religion. “—said the fact that you clicked with two different Sophies means you’re old souls who belong together. Even so, she’s not leaning into co-dependence as you seem to be. Your behavior right now is out of proportion. Not remotely logical. Are you behaving like a sane person? Or like a …”
“Like a what?”
“Well,” Papa said with the air of conveying an unfortunate truth, “like an addict.”
Ephraim wanted to leap at Papa and pummel him. He wanted to jump into the front seat, take the wheel from the driver, and turn the car toward Ephraim and Sophie. But he stopped himself, trying for a long, hard second to hear what Papa seemed to be delicately trying to tell him.
He was broken. Incredibly broken. He might not be capable of more than lust and dependence on Sophie. He might need her. And it might be the worst kind of disservice to ask her to need him back.
The other Ephraim couldn’t help them find Neven — not if Ephraim were honest about it.
And what Papa had said about believing in her now might be true. Maybe she was savvy enough to talk her way out of her bind. And Ephraim? Maybe he wouldn’t hurt her, though he’d taken her as a pawn to escape. Real Ephraim was essentially himself in many ways — the nature ways.
And the worst brutal-truth question of all: