by Sean Platt
“Yes. I did ask that before.” Wood kept shifting papers. Ephraim’s gaze wandered, and he noticed a portable MyLife jammer in the corner. Whether that was the standard procedure or whether it was for the wild card Ephraim Todd, he had no idea. But there’d be no personal record of this later, and it would end up being one more thing Ephraim wasn’t sure ever happened.
“But then things have changed,” Wood continued. “Now it appears you’re a kidnapper. Possibly a rapist? We’re not sure. The woman locked in your bedroom has yet to calm down enough to tell us.”
“I didn’t kidnap anyone!”
“Then why was there a woman locked in your bedroom, screaming to be let out?”
“I don’t know! I don’t even know who she is!”
“Are you trying to tell me she wandered into your apartment while you weren’t looking?”
Ephraim’s barely held control was beginning to shatter. “Maybe! I don’t fucking know!”
“Perhaps you should calm down,” Wood said, browsing paperwork. Was there even anything relevant on those pages? The type was too tiny to read from where Ephraim was sitting.
“Look,” Ephraim said. “You believed what I told you. I know you did. So, I’m telling you again: I found one. I found a clone of Sophie Norris, manufactured by Eden.”
“A clone that’s conveniently missing.”
“I don’t understand. She was in the bedroom, and that other woman wasn’t.”
No comment. The absurdity of one woman vanishing and another appearing spoke for itself.
“And how did you find this clone of yours?” Wood asked instead.
“I told you already. I—”
“That’s right. You did an internet search.”
“There’s a restaurant. It’s called Chez Luis. The address is …” Ephraim strained, but nothing came.
“I know the place. I’ve eaten there. I even know the owner.”
“Mercer Fox.”
“The owner’s name is Thomas Gelby.”
“It’s …” Again, words failed him.
“The rest, then,” Wood said. “Tell me again how it happened.”
Ephraim gave Wood all the same details: the old phone booth, the underground club, the man with the loud wardrobe running it all. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that in the three hours he’d been here, a GEM agent or a cop might have already gone to the restaurant to check on his story. They wouldn’t have warrants, but they could check Chez Luis for an old-fashioned phone booth. And based on Wood’s behavior, they’d found nothing.
“Let’s talk about the woman,” Wood said.
“Sophie.”
“Victoria,” Wood corrected. “Let’s start with the real woman and address your ‘clone’ later. If there’s time.”
“What about the woman?”
“She says you locked her in.”
“It was locked from the inside!”
Wood shrugged. “She said she couldn’t get out.”
“It’s a trick lock. She …”
Ephraim stopped. When he’d said it was a trick lock, Wood made a note.
“Look. Director Wood. I don’t know what happened. I did get the clone I told you about. I don’t know what happened to her, but I swear to God I had her right there with me, and—”
“And you’re claiming it was her that you locked in the room. This other woman. This clone.” He made another note.
“No. I didn’t lock her anywhere. Wouldn’t have to even if I’d wanted to. Which I didn’t. ‘Sophie’ was friendly. A little too friendly. She was conditioned to like me, I think. On the way back, in the truck—”
“In the truck when you ran a dangerous intersection to get away from my enforcers and me,” Wood clarified.
“In the truck,” Ephraim went on, dodging, “the clone kept saying she liked my favorite books. My favorite movies. American Beauty. She said she thinks it’s a masterpiece, just like I do. And she said she liked my hands. She likes honesty. Someone made her to suit me perfectly.”
Wood raised his eyebrows. He made another note. “Honesty? That’s the trait these ‘people’ used to attract her to you?” He smirked. “Okay.”
“I didn’t know what to do with her when we got to my place. She was all over me.”
“Of course she was.”
“It was like she’d been brainwashed. I had no clue what to do next, but I didn’t want to take advantage of her. I suggested we take a nap.”
“At noon?”
“She was incredibly suggestible. Something they did to her mind for imprinting, I guess. I could lead her. Make her do whatever I wanted her to do, or believe whatever I wanted her to believe.”
Wood made a satisfied little noise and wrote something down.
“She agreed to the nap. But we were in different rooms. I locked us both in from the inside, then slept in the guest room. She was in my room.”
“Convenient.”
“I fell asleep. Maybe she didn’t. She must have gotten up and walked out.”
“I don’t think so,” Wood said. “Victoria said the lock was jammed. And I was watching your place for a while before the police arrived to get me inside. Nobody came out the entire time I was watching. Did she fly away? Does Eden enhance its clones with the power of flight?”
Ephraim clenched his teeth, looked down at the table for help.
“I don’t know! I don’t know what happened to her!” He looked up. “My MyLife. There are records of her on my MyLife. Check it. You’ll see.”
Until now, Wood had appeared to be playing a part, but this genuinely seemed to surprise him. He looked to the door, where no one was standing. Finally, he shook his head at Ephraim.
“Do you not remember?” he asked.
“What?”
“We looked through your MyLife as soon as you came in here. You insisted. We hooked you up to project video on the wall and everything. It was blank.”
“Blank?”
“Blank,” Wood repeated. “You don’t remember any of that?”
Ephraim thought. He did remember.
Sort of.
But the world was confusing.
“Maybe the clones have built in jammers. Like the clubs. They don’t want anyone recording evidence against Eden.”
“Clones are people. You said that yourself, a few times. They’re not robots you can install things into.”
“I don’t fucking know why this is happening! All I know is I’m telling the truth!”
“Calm down. Look at me.”
Ephraim did. There was a long second. Then Wood reached for the portable recorder and clicked it off. Ephraim watched him, confused.
“Let me tell you how this is supposed to work,” Wood said. “I’m supposed to come in here and ask you all sorts of questions. I’m not supposed to tell you all the things we’ve figured out like they do in the movies. We want to keep you talking, spewing facts until you contradict yourself enough to sling a rope around your neck. This agency doesn’t do a ton of interrogations, but I was a detective before I came to GEM, and you wouldn’t believe how useful my old skill set has turned out to be, given the way today’s Precipitous Rise society turns.”
Ephraim waited. Wood closed the folder.
“That’s how it’s supposed to work if I want you to implicate yourself. But that’s not what I’m going to do. Do you have any idea why?”
Ephraim swallowed.
“I don’t want you to implicate yourself because, despite all the evidence against you, I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong. Call me crazy, but I believe your bullshit story now more than ever. If there is a Mercer Fox, we’ll never find or get past him. If there is a secret sex club under Chez Luis or a clone-exchange gala that pops up sometimes at some warehouse, my people will never find probable cause — let alone get a warrant — to bust in and find out. I don’t have a Sophie Norris clone to look at and who knows if we’ll ever find one, but somehow I believe that you did find one, even if you’re f
ucked-up crazy and kidnapped someone else in the middle.”
“I didn’t—!”
Wood raised a hand to cut him off.
“Here’s what I’m not supposed to do, but am about to do anyway. I’m going to tell you just how deep your shit is. I’m not going to worry about you hanging yourself, because strange as it seems, I believe that the facts and evidence have it wrong. This little conversation we’re having? It’s completely, one hundred percent off the record.”
Wood’s eyes went to the recorder, now off, and then to the jammers.
“Tell anyone what we discussed here today and I’ll deny it. This might feel like a police interrogation room, but this is GEM, not the law. I’m an elected official, not a cop. I’m supposed to be a bureaucrat. I have a reputation, but officially I’m harmless. We don’t have to follow the same procedures here as you would with the police or FBI, and the fact that you’re not teeeeechnically under arrest—” He held his fingers very close together. “—means you don’t need to be read your rights. Which, practically speaking, means you have none. Do we understand each other?”
That didn’t sound right. Maybe Wood was splitting hairs. Ephraim was in cuffs and not allowed to leave — that sure felt like “under arrest” to him. He knew someone at the top had the power to toss Ephraim in a cell. Maybe it was the “teeeeechnically” that made the difference; maybe GEM couldn’t bust him but could hand him over to another entity to do the dirty work.
Details were irrelevant. He was screwed either way.
Ephraim nodded. Wood continued.
“So, here’s the deal. The police are preparing to arrest you as a sex offender. I don’t remember the details, but this woman, Victoria, plans to press charges. She says you picked her up last night at a bar. Nothing happened, but then she saw you on the street, something that she says now, looking back, seemed contrived. You invited her up to your place. You got friendly. Then you turned not so friendly, and locked her in the room.”
“I never even saw her before—!”
Again, Wood raised a hand. “I understand. Regardless, it’s your word against hers. And her story is far more plausible. Yours may as well involve aliens and ghosts.”
Ephraim exhaled. This had to get better. It had to.
“But that’s just the latest. The cherry on top. My department has quite the case built against you as well. That case goes back farther and is far more extensive.”
“A case for what?”
“I’ve seen most of what’s in play on this whole ‘Eden’ issue, not just what GEM will attempt to prosecute. It’s ugly. One of the law enforcement entities — I forget which — has been tracking former Eden guests who were present at the same time as you and has systematically gone about getting them out of their NDAs. They’ve managed to get quite a few guests talking, and have a lot of corroborating MyLife records. Taken as a whole, they don’t paint a flattering picture.”
“What do you mean? What kind of a picture?”
“A picture of you, Ephraim Todd, as an erratic, unpredictable guest who frightened the people you interacted with. Everyone we spoke to other than Sophie Norris and a guy named Gus … Gus …” He snapped his fingers.
“I know who you mean.”
“Every one of the witnesses other than those two says there was something ‘off’ about you from the start. You struck them as always on edge, ready to snap. Some people said they took it for stress and tried to write it off, but your ‘edge’ never left. They didn’t want to be in spa groups with you. They said you were always giving people wild eyes, making excuses and running off.”
“It’s not against the law to act strangely.”
“We also have testimony stating that you sneaked off behind the scenes. Went into Eden control rooms, stuff like that. You’d do that, then run to one of the communication zones and cable a scrambler to your Doodad before—”
“How did anyone see that?” Ephraim blurted.
“It’s true?”
Fuck. Okay, time to play the least of evils. “I was working for Fiona Roberson. That much is true. She gave me the scrambling equipment. That’s why I was sneaking around. I was spying on Eden for her.”
Wood nodded. “I figured. But it looks bad. They won’t tell me everything, but I’m sure they have witnesses claiming you set the fires. That you pressed the wrong button or pulled the wrong switch.”
“That’s bullshit!”
Wood shrugged. “You also left from a restricted island — coincidentally the same island where the fires began. You were picked up by a helicopter rather than being rescued with the others as if it was part of a planned escape. You were alone with Sophie Norris, and you left Altruance Brown dead behind you.”
“Supposedly dead,” Ephraim said.
“Not supposedly. They found his body. At his proper age — so no, it wasn’t a clone. There’s no conclusive proof of you having anything to do with his death, but some of the people that GEM spoke to feel certain that you killed him. And the stories between you and Altruance paint an even more damning picture of—”
This time, Ephraim held up a hand. He was feeling ill.
“Stop. Just … stop.”
“It doesn’t look good, Ephraim.” Hershel shoved the folder aside. “Now, as I said, I don’t believe it. I should, and maybe I’m stupid not to, but I don’t. Something in my gut says that Eden cracked a code and that at least some of what you’ve been saying is true. That’s why I’m telling you everything. But it’s just guesswork. Your word and my instinct.”
“Maybe Sophie will—”
“No, Miss Norris won’t testify. We keep trying, but she always refuses. And Fiona won’t help you even if you think she will. Not without a price.” He squinted. “Has she talked to you about this? About her helping you if you help her?”
“No,” Ephraim lied. He wasn’t going to tell Wood about Fiona’s Quarry device — and her explicit instructions to use it on him. Wood was against Fiona and Fiona was against Wood, neither helping Ephraim in exchange for his assistance. He had to decide which enemy to shake hands with.
Wood considered, shifting his jaw, something apparently unsettling his perfect puzzle. Wood knew Fiona; he should know she’d have covered her bases. But only Ephraim had the information that would fill in the gaps for Wood, and he was holding it close until the time was right.
Wood continued.
“So that’s where things stand. You’re public enemy number one as far as this case is concerned — not just with GEM and a half-dozen law enforcement agencies both domestic and international, but also with the general public. The internet has already convicted you. Even if you slip past us, you’ll have to live the rest of your life in the court of public opinion — a court that’s declared you guilty. Everyone loved Eden. They loved Wallace Connolly. As far as they’re concerned, you killed them both.”
“Your point?”
“I want Fiona Roberson. And I want Wallace Connolly.”
“Connolly is dead.”
“We’ll see.” Wood spoke as if he knew something Ephraim didn’t. “I’m limited in what I’m officially allowed to do — but sometimes ‘official protocols’ don’t get the job done.” He eyed the silenced recorder and the jammer again. “I’m going to make you an unofficial deal. To clear your name, and help me.”
“What’s the deal?”
“Get me access to Riverbed’s network. The MyLife data you captured will be there, but so will evidence of any other wrongdoing on Fiona’s part. Call it a hunch, but I’m convinced there’s plenty.”
Ephraim didn’t like it. Why would GEM need all of Riverbed’s data to right a few wrongs? The Director couldn’t even use what he had without admitting where it came from. What was going on? Was this professional? Or was it somehow personal?
“What’s my alternative?” Ephraim finally asked.
“Prison. Maximum security, because if you’re convicted, you’d be a mass murderer; hundreds of people supposedly died in th
e flames. And nobody wants to give you any breaks. I’ll bet the feds send you down to one of the big cell blocks with the gangs. Where they tell you when to piss, when to walk, when to shower, and when to bend over.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“I’m stating probable outcomes.”
They measured each other’s eyes. But watching Wood gave Ephraim a thought. Fiona didn’t know that Wood wanted to turn Ephraim against her, and Wood didn’t know Fiona had already equipped Ephraim to turn against him. Was there a way to use that — to play one’s plan against the other? A way to bend two negatives into a positive, however slim his chance might be?
Tell him you’ll do it. Tell him yes, even if all it does is buy you time to think. And maybe sharpen your knife.
But there were so many loose ends. So many unpredictables.
Where would the real Sophie Norris stand on this, all things considered? She’d tried to reach Ephraim but he’d declined the call, mid-espionage. And speaking of Sophie, what happened to the clone? Was she out there somewhere? Had she been kidnapped? Or had he slipped into another fugue and done just as Victoria accused — snatching a woman from the street and only thinking he’d been with a clone?
“What do you think, Ephraim?” Wood asked.
“I need time to think.”
“Time is up. If we’re going to do this, we need to move now. If you had a clone, she’s a missing person now. The first hours are crucial in any missing person case, and we’ve already lost three of them.”
“I just need a few minutes to—”
A knock rattled Ephraim’s crumbling focus. He looked back as Wood turned his head. The door opened, and the white-haired agent entered. Wood’s visage, as he turned, was flushed, looking caught. He gathered himself and waited.
“Sorry to interrupt,” said the newcomer.
“What do you want?” Wood said.
“It’s just that Mr. Todd has visitors.”
“No visitors,” Wood said, with the snapping of a command barked countless times before.
The man didn’t move. “I’m sorry, sir. But it’s…” He glanced at Ephraim.
“It’s what?” Wood demanded.
“It’s Fiona Roberson’s lawyers.”