“He’s all yours, Mr. Goldsmith,” came Camilla’s crisp voice behind him. He didn’t even hear her approach. He whirled around and saw her standing with Pete. She gave Goldsmith a blatant roll of the eyes and walked off, disappearing into the crowd. Pete watched her go and jabbed Goldsmith in the ribs.
“Man,” he said, checking her out as she walked off. “You’ve gotta tell me girls around this place are legal. But then again, if there’s grass on the field, play ball, right?”
Goldsmith walked off wordlessly (not quite feeling as unburdened by his early retirement as he had hoped he would) and wondered if it were possible to find some friends—best, childhood, lifelong, any shape or size would do, really—in fewer than four days. He glanced around at the specimens. What do you think, guys? Their response was silent: grave, focused face upon grave, focused face; hundreds of pairs of cold, unflinching eyes set on some ideal and invisible point off in a bright, glorious future—their own.
9
“Come on, Riley. It’s me. Open up.” Cooley banged on the dented iron door marked 5C one more time. A shadow passed the light behind the peephole and disappeared downward. His guess: Riley was squatting, leaning his ear against the door and listening for something. Cooley was hoping he’d be able to make it back to the tower by lunch hour if everything went smoothly. Unfortunately for his schedule, “smoothly” did not include Riley treating a routine visit from a familiar face like a bad cop show rerun on late-night television. Cooley had never actually seen late-night television since he left the orphanage for Stansbury at the age of six, but in any case, he had not heard good things about those cop shows.
Come on, Riley. He was an unbalanced specimen Cooley met when Cooley was just a freshman. Riley dug Stansbury’s injections a bit too much, traded them in for heroin shortly after graduation. He tried to kick the habit and ended up with a nasty methadone interlude, before stopping off at alcoholism on his way back to sobriety.
“You alone?” Riley shouted through the door.
“Of course.”
“Take five steps back until you hit the wall. Reach your arms out, flatten your palms, and don’t move until I say so. Got it?”
Jesus Christ, Cooley thought. Does this cops-and-robbers shit mean that he’s off the wagon? If so, I’m dealing with a guy who’s not only psycho but worthless. What good is his piss if it’s tainted? Cooley considered saving himself the trouble and possible bodily harm and wondered why he just didn’t cut his losses and leave right then, before remembering his twelve buddies who’d all go down in flames if they didn’t have the stuff to pass that test tomorrow. And what about him? What if he was not as invincible as everyone thought? Guernica wasn’t yesterday. Chances were, kicking the asses of a few outsiders four years ago and rescuing Shannon Evans wouldn’t cancel out drug use on the scales of Stansbury justice. And as much as Cooley hated to admit it, without the school he had nowhere to go, except for some hovel, probably in this part of town, probably located next door to Riley. Not getting this job done meant that he skated the vicious circle back to exactly where he was standing right now. But it always returned to the bottom line: Sadie. Sadie and the look on her face as he’d be packing his bags with the rest of the guys. See you when I see you, okay babe? Cooley thought about the two inches of iron that separated him from Mr. Jonathan High-on-God-Knows-What Riley. Really, there wasn’t any decision to make in the first place.
He took five steps back, felt the wall, and spread his arms out. “All right,” he called out. “I did it. Just get this over with, man.”
The door swung open. Riley was standing just inside the apartment and his eyes scanned the areas to Cooley’s left and right. He was aiming a gun. “Come in,” he said, as he gestured for Cooley to enter with the weapon, as if he were conducting a symphony. Cooley walked inside and felt like he was entering some alternate reality.
“Riley, what—” Riley grabbed the scruff of his neck and slammed him against the wall next to the front door. Cooley felt a hand tracing the line of his leg, another grabbed his crotch and he stifled the urge to snap his foot up into Riley’s ribcage. “You think I’m fucking armed?” he asked, incredulous.
“She said don’t trust anyone, don’t trust—”
“It’s me,” Cooley said. “Relax.” The teakettle on the stove rattled and sent up a long whistle, as if in warning. Cooley watched sweat roll down Riley’s neck.
Riley stood up and frisked Cooley’s torso, patting down his blazer. “How’s our alma mater?” he asked.
“I’m graduating in four days,” said Cooley, grateful for the small talk.
“Mom and Dad proud?”
“Never knew Dad. And Mom’s probably dead.”
“Christmas must be a blast.”
“Specimens are nondenominational, remember?”
“You’re one of the full-ride orphans, now I remember. Lucky guy.”
“Anything I can look forward to after Stansbury? You miss it at all?”
“No and no. But seeing the sun on a regular basis is nice. When was your last glimpse?”
“Just about six weeks ago.”
“All right,” said Riley, stepping back. Cooley turned around and saw him gaze at the television as if in a trance: pretty anchor lady, Panacetix, Stansbury miracle-workers, blah, blah, blah. Cooley sat down on the old couch and propped his feet up on the cluttered coffee table. “Hear the good news?” Riley said, pointing to the muted TV with his gun.
“How could I have missed it?”
“Cancer was a tough one … but good old Stansbury licked it.” Riley walked over and sat down next to Cooley. His spine stayed straight and his shoulders were tensed like he was shell-shocked, waiting for someone to smack him upside the head. “Just the latest in a long line of conquests, right? Guys like us, Mr. Cooley? We’re not what was intended.”
“I take that as a compliment.”
“Me too, kid.”
Cooley’s eyes darted around the room. They came to a stop on the coffee table. Weird: ripped-out yearbook pages with red X’s all over the place behind a fort of other yearbooks. “What’s with the yearbooks?” he asked. “You feeling nostalgic?”
“It’s nothing, man,” said Riley, suddenly grabbing them from the table. “I was just messing around.” He kneeled down and pulled up a rug, removing what appeared to be a fake wooden plank from the flooring. He slipped the sheaf of yearbook pages inside and replaced the elements of his hiding spot.
What’s wrong with this freak? Cooley wondered. His heart started to pound and he felt something odd—call it bad vibes, mojo, juju, whatever. He glanced at a digital clock on the wall and started to get antsy. “Just get me the stuff,” he said. “I’m behind schedule and I can’t get caught off campus again.”
“How many samples?”
“Are you still clean?”
Riley nodded his head at Cooley and smiled eerily. “Of course,” he said. “These days, I only wish my problems were the kind that came in a syringe.”
“Fourteen samples. Thanks.” Cooley watched as Riley stood up, stuck the gun into his waistband and walked into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. Minutes sludged past. There was something stale in the air that made him want to take a shower and disinfect himself immediately. He glanced curiously at the rug covering Riley’s hiding spot in the floor. What was with the top-secret routine and those stupid yearbook pages? God only knows what else the dude has stashed down in there. Is there any way this guy is still on the wagon? And why doesn’t he do something about that goddamned rattling kettle over there? It’s enough to drive a guy … “Riley! You fall in?” Silence.
Cooley got up and looked at the bathroom door. The white paint was dusty and cracked, baring slivers of a previous incarnation in pink from years before. He looked at the line of yellow light at the foot of the door and waited for movement, noise, anything. He tiptoed up and played the Riley game: he crouched down, pressed his ear against the door’s surface, and listened for clues bef
ore he decided that he didn’t have the time and banged his fist against it. “Hey … What’s up?” Silence. He grabbed the small brass knob and felt it twist in his grip, unlocked. Cooley gingerly pulled the door open a few inches before it flew straight back at him and pushed him two steps backward into the hall.
Riley collapsed on top of him. They tumbled to the floor together, Cooley’s hands on Riley’s torso: it was vibrating, muscles humming and jerking like he swallowed a beehive. Cooley felt something wet on his face and realized what it was when he pulled back and got a look at Riley, the guy’s eyes rolled back into his head, white foam bubbled from his mouth, blood poured from his nostrils and lips, his teeth grinded against a meaty, gashed stub that could only be the remnants of his tongue before it was bitten off. Cooley saw maroon drops stain his white shirt, felt the blood and drool on his face, on his neck, and started to gag. He stifled back a scream, grabbed Riley, and got his footing before he dragged him into the bathroom and laid him prone.
“Riley! Can you hear me?” Riley started choking and sounded like he was losing air. Veins bulged in his neck. Cooley saw a laser syringe hanging out of Riley’s arm. He yanked it out and tossed it to the side. He finally stopped convulsing and everything got quiet. Cooley leaned against the bathtub and tried to catch his breath as he wondered what to do next.
Through the half-closed bathroom door, he heard something thump against the floor out in the living room. His eyes went to the mirror on the wall, checking for moving shadows against the reflection of the light. He looked at Riley’s waistband: Where was the gun? Cooley glanced around but did not find it. Still sitting on the floor, he slowly nudged the door open with his foot, half-inch by half-inch, until his impatience got the best of him and he kicked it open. He found himself looking down the barrel of six guns, all of which were much bigger than the one Riley pointed at him just a few minutes before. Cooley counted six Stansbury security detail jarheads on the other side of the doorway.
“Stay right there, Mr. Cooley,” said Officer Jamison. He lowered his gun to waist level and stepped inside the room.
“Show your hands,” ordered another officer in his regulation black jackboots, black pants, and black utility vest. Cooley looked up at them from the floor and raised his hands. From the doorway, another one—a young guy Cooley didn’t recognize—saw Riley and didn’t bother hiding the look on his face.
“Jesus…”
“I don’t know what happened,” said Cooley.
“Why are you off campus?” asked Jamison, his gun still aimed.
“Take a guess,” said the young guy, suddenly a hard-boiled prick.
“I know him…,” murmured another detail goon as he looked down at the body. “That’s Mr. Riley, Class of 2033.”
“That was Mr. Riley,” said another.
“You’re in a lot of trouble, Mr. Cooley,” said Jamison. He was slowly inching closer. Cooley drew an imaginary line across the white tile floor stained red from spilled blood. Riley’s body spasmed and convulsed one more time. Everyone flinched. Jamison looked over and then stepped across that line. Cooley sprung up to a crouch and grabbed Jamison, pulling him close to block the detail’s line of fire, and shoved him through the big glass window above the toilet. Jamison crashed through and landed on the rusted fire escape outside. The rain poured down on him while he blinked his eyes and tried to pick glass shards from his face.
Cooley leaped through the window frame, landed on top of Jamison, and rolled. He hit an iron hook and watched the fire escape ladder shoot down to the pavement five floors below. He grabbed the rails—nice and slick from the rain—braced his smooth leather soles against them and slid down, feeling the chipped paint on the ladder scrape his hands along the way.
Jamison stood up, his face wet from blood, rain and sweat. “Jackson! He’s moving!” he barked into his wrist microphone. “You locked?”
Jackson stood in the living room, one eye closed, the other looking through a large metallic scope mounted on his ThermaGun. He saw the computer’s reproduction of the entire apartment: the sofa, the television, and the hallway toward the bathroom all white lines on a black screen. The image zoomed in past the bathroom door where he saw five digitally rendered bodies in red and one on the floor in blue—R.I.P. Mr. Jonathan Clark Riley, he thought—and another red one that stood on the fire escape outside who looked like he was trying to pull tiny glass pieces from his cheek with fingers too meaty for the task. Jackson hit the zoom button on the ThermaGun one more time and it brought him down the outline of the fire escape, where he saw yet another red body as it flew down the ladder, fast. There. Jackson’s thumb hit a button on the gun’s grip. It beeped.
“We’re locked,” he said into his microphone. “Coolant vests.” The six red bodies in the bathroom and the one on the fire escape turned blue. Past them and below, that last red body was just about to hit the sidewalk. The beeping got faster. The ThermaGun started humming. “Good night, Mr. Cooley,” said Jackson. He pulled the trigger. A white ceramic bullet flew from the barrel before curving around through the bathroom door faster than the speed of sound. It weaved around the detail officers’ legs and torsos with engineered precision and sailed through the broken window frame into the rain, missing Jamison’s ear lobe by less than half an inch before it traced an arc downward.
Five floors below, Cooley’s feet hit the pavement. At the end of the alley, he saw a monorail slide to a halt. The wranglers’ batons glowed like white fluorescent buoys in the rainy distance. Fifteen seconds before the doors closed … Cooley broke into a sprint. Three steps in and he hit the damp, slimy pavement face-first, the bullet lodged in the back of his neck, half of its shell sticking out from his skin as the rest of its white surface dissolved into an engineered chemical tranquilizer that filtered into his bloodstream.
* * *
The security detail crowded into Riley’s bathroom. Jamison opened up a small steel strongbox and flipped on the coroner. The green sensors on the silver crab lit up and gears inside its shell began to whir and hum. He set it on the floor and it climbed on top of Riley as six pincer legs felt their way around and gathered samples. The rain tapped a tinny pulse against the fire escape. Feet started to shuffle out into the hallway. More footsteps: dress shoes, not boots. Jamison looked up and saw Captain Gibson enter.
“Mr. Cooley is secured,” Gibson said. The coroner unit slid down Riley’s forehead and reentered its strongbox. Jamison closed it and waited for the LCD display.
“Preliminary results indicate an overdose of an unspecified chemical,” Jamison said as his eyes followed the readout. “Probably a street drug, Class A. Laser syringe is present. My bet’s heroin. Mr. Riley has a history of addiction. He was treated less than two years ago.” He pressed a button and watched the report print out from the side of the strongbox. “I’ll take the results to district police and—”
“Give me the results,” said Gibson.
“Sir, I’m more than happy to—”
Gibson stepped up and got in Jamison’s face. Jamison handed it to him. “Yes, sir.” The captain slipped it into his jacket pocket and turned to go. He grinded the heel of his leather brogan into Riley’s limp hand and pushed off. Jamison heard the bones inside Riley’s fingers snap. He watched the other detail officers part for Gibson as he disappeared through the doorway and into the living room.
Officer Jamison zipped up his Tac IX utility vest and snapped shut the holster of his gun. He checked his reflection in the mirror and wondered if the fresh slices caused by his Cooley-sponsored trip through the window would leave permanent scars. Probably. He started to get pissed, but then remembered the sight of Cooley lying on the street in the rain and realized the dark places that little punk had been were nothing compared to where he was headed now. Given his choice of scars, Jamison always preferred the ones on the outside.
10
President Judith Lang leaned back in the ergonomic chair behind the long Le Corbusier desk nestled inside the Level
119 executive suite and felt more than a little exultant. Professor Partridge had finally done it, and with such graceful timing! Dr. Lang had spent the better part of two years drumming up support for the Stansbury grant proposal and now it was finally a reality, coming to a vote in the Senate Select Committee on Education a mere twenty-four hours from now. Her close ally, committee chairwoman Senator Frieda Mark, had promised her she would end debate and hasten the parliamentary process of getting it to the Senate floor, where Lang knew she had a majority on her side. She had run herself ragged shuttling between the tower and the corridors of power in Washington, D.C., meeting with varied and influential special interest groups, promising favors (an exclusive computer network contract with Apple, a $134-million microchip pact with Intel, a gyrodevelopment contract with Ford Motors, nutrient ingredient contracts with farmer magnates across the Plains states, billion-dollar deals with Dupont and GE for pending Stansbury patents for the next hundred years, not to mention the eventual agreement with the Pentagon to equip soldiers with ThermaGun technology) so that they would in turn apply pressure to the recipients of their campaign dollars to cast a vote in Stansbury’s favor. And the brilliant financial minds who controlled Stansbury’s endowment fund—former specimens who retired early from Wall Street with nine-figure portfolios and wanted to give something back to their alma mater—had just completed their biggest coup yet: in anticipation of Partridge’s cancer cure, over the past eleven months they quietly bought up a huge chunk of publicly traded Stansbury stock, all of which the fund then discreetly spread out through dozens of dummy corporations, virtually undetectable. Now it was only a matter of time before the school (after a $56-billion IPO eight years prior) could position itself as a wholly autonomous, effectively private corporation once again.
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