“You three certainly made a splash yesterday,” Dawson said. “Caleb, can I ask what motivated you to do that?”
“Actually, Mandy, I have something to say and it can’t wait,” Quint said. “I was coerced into giving that confession, and none of it’s true. Aidan Blackwood has been stealing my fortune and holding me hostage.”
Mandy Dawson’s mouth formed a perfectly made-up O. This hasn’t been in her page of interview notes. “That’s quite an accusation, Mr. Quint. Aidan, what do you have to say for yourself?”
“I’d advise him to say nothing until his court-appointed lawyer arrives,” Quint said. “The police are already on their way.”
Aidan didn’t have to reply. Laila materialized in front of him and yanked him into the Nowhere.
19
Do What I'm Told
“What the fuck are we going to do?”
The words burst out of him as soon as Laila brought him back to the world. It had been cloudy in Inland New York, but here, the sunlight pouring through the window was so warmly yellow that it was almost as sticky as the air. Aidan recognized the seashell-pink living room of a Runners’ Union safehouse in Florida.
“Breathe,” Laila said. She walked into the kitchen and started rummaging through the cabinets. There would be a stash of non-perishable food somewhere.
Aidan checked the fridge. If someone had stayed here recently, there was a chance they’d have left a few things. He found butter, eggs, sliced wheat bread, and orange juice.
Before he could ask if Laila was interested in any of that, Kit showed up in between them, his eyes wild.
“I was in the green room, waiting to tell you he was a fraud,” Kit said, still catching his breath. “Or, I mean, that Caleb was a fraud. That Quint was the real one.”
“We figured it out,” Aidan said dryly.
Kit glared at Laila. “I jumped to that green room from space. And then you made me come all the way here! Make it a little easier on me next time.”
She shrugged, tucked the unopened peanut butter jar she’d found under her arm, and opened drawers until she found the spoons. She sat up on the counter and ate a spoonful before saying, “I had to get us out of there. What was the one thing I said? The one condition I had for participating in all this nonsense?” She shook at her spoon at each of them in turn, punctuating her words. “I’m not fucking going back to prison. And neither is Aidan!”
“I know,” Kit said, softening. “You won’t. I won’t let that happen.”
“Neither will I,” Laila said, eating another heaping spoonful of peanut butter. “The only person who’s going to prison is Oswin Lewis Quint. Plan A is fucked. What’s our next move?”
“I don’t know where Caleb is,” Aidan said, sounding faint even to himself. “I don’t know if he’s alive.”
“So we find Caleb,” Kit said. “And then we deal with Quint and Fake Caleb.”
Laila, having demolished most of the jar of peanut butter, put it aside and got down from the counter. She went through the cabinets a second time. “I forgot what it was like to be this hungry,” she said. “Fuck, I missed jumping. But why are all the snacks in this stash so boring?”
Kit reached into the black messenger back he was wearing and pulled out two candy bars with red packaging. “Here, Laila.” He tossed them to her.
She caught them and beamed at him when she read the wrappers. “Zings! Kit Jackson, you soft-hearted fool.”
He rolled his eyes.
Laila pushed herself back onto the counter. She ripped open the wrapper and bit into one of the chocolate bars, revealing the wafer and spicy red filling inside. “You really do love me. Now, how do we find out about Caleb?”
“Quint and Fake Caleb are the only ones who’d know where to find him,” Aidan said. “I think our best bet is to go back to the mansion—if we move fast, we can probably catch them before they relocate to one of Quint’s other properties.”
“I wish I could help, but I’m done for the day,” Kit said, finishing off a protein bar and then crumpling the wrapper in his hand. “I’m gonna rest, but I’ll stick around in case you need me. Oz is still up in Facility 17, but since he’s a lying asshole who flipped the instant that real Quint offered him more money, I’m guessing you don’t really care when or how he gets dumped back in his reality.”
“I don’t,” Aidan confirmed. He didn’t have time to feel disappointment in Oz. He glanced at Laila. “How do you feel? If you can’t do it, we can contact the Union. We should let them know regardless.”
They were all in danger. Aidan couldn’t seem to do anything without putting people he loved in danger. The thing he’d been most afraid of had happened. Someone had kidnapped and possibly harmed or killed Caleb in order to get to him. Nothing was worth feeling this way, guilt and fear souring in his stomach. He hadn’t even told Caleb the truth. He might not ever get a chance to. If they found Caleb, he would give up his career. That bargain was more than fair.
He couldn’t say what he’d do if they didn’t find Caleb.
“Give me a couple hours and I’ll be good,” she said. “But if we find Fake Caleb, what are we going to do with him? What if he doesn’t want to talk to us?”
Aidan couldn’t answer that question. From what little he knew of Caleb’s double, the man was dangerous. And he’d chosen to align himself with Quint, which didn’t speak well of his conscience. “He can’t run from us, not if you get close enough to grab him. We might have to threaten him. Do you have any weapons?”
Laila shook her head. Kit sighed and flipped open his messenger bag. Instead of a candy bar, he pulled out a knife sheathed in a brown case. He passed it, handle first, to Laila, while she struggled not to laugh.
She pulled off the sheath, revealing a partially serrated blade of about five inches with a wickedly sharp tip. “Is Emil making you carry this around?”
“It’s for wilderness survival,” Kit said, not looking at her. “But I’m guessing it’s fine for stabbing, too.”
“Amazing. Tell that man I love him.” Laila put the knife back in its sheath and hopped off the counter. “I wouldn’t bet on myself in a fight against Caleb’s double. I guess we’ll just have to take him by surprise.”
A nasty taste furred the inside of his mouth. The outside was duct-taped shut. He’d woken up with the scratchy pile of wall-to-wall carpet half-embedded in his cheek, and his wrists and ankles were tied. He was lying on his side on the floor of a closet, based on the pant-legs and dry-cleaning plastic hanging down around him. It was dark.
Caleb couldn’t remember how he’d arrived in this position. He remembered an interview, and a party, and going to bed before Aidan. Someone had dragged him out of that bed to put him here, in this closet in an unknown location, but he must have been forcibly sedated first.
The only other time that had happened to him, it had been done by his double.
Shit. His double had replaced him. Aidan wouldn’t know he was gone.
A closet full of clothes suggested a house. The same house, possibly. It was risky, not moving him somewhere farther away. This wasn’t a cell or any place devoted to holding prisoners. If it was his double who’d drugged him, why not take him into the Nowhere and stash him somewhere unfindable? Caleb didn’t plan abductions for a living, but that tactic had almost worked when Quint Services kidnapped Aidan.
Maybe his double had been feeling as shitty as him. If he couldn’t jump, that would explain the closet.
It wouldn’t explain what he wanted. Caleb had nothing to do except contemplate that, but he went in circles.
The closet door slid open, flooding the space with light and making him squint. His double crouched down, put a finger to his lips, and then ripped the duct tape off Caleb’s face. It hurt. When Caleb made a noise to that effect, his double slapped a hand over the raw skin around his mouth.
“What part of—” he put the same finger to his lips again “—was unclear to you?”
Caleb said nothin
g. He could bite his double’s hand. Minor violence might satisfy his spite, but the thought of sinking his teeth into his double’s flesh unsettled him. He didn’t want to know what it tasted like.
“I told Quint I killed you,” his double said, removing his hand. “So we have to stay quiet.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I need you. You’re gonna be me for a little while. Go with Quint to one of his labs, pry some suppressant out of his greedy hands, bring it back to me.”
The plastic tie was digging into his wrists. The pain rendered his double’s lack of apology conspicuous. “Why would I help you?”
“Well, you’re not getting untied unless you agree to, that’s one reason. But our interests align.”
“Drugging me and tying me up was a weird way of showing that. Is Aidan okay? Did you hurt him?” A horrifying possibility dawned on Caleb. “Did you sleep with him?”
“No. He’s fine,” his double said curtly. It was as much of a relief as having the tape removed from his mouth, and it hurt about the same, because Aidan wasn’t here, and Caleb really, really wished he were.
“Listen to me. Quint is expecting to go to this lab in Tennessee as soon as I—meaning you—leave this room. If I give you the coordinates, you can find it, right?”
“Yeah,” Caleb said. He’d found alternate-reality Des Moines, or close enough. Agreeing was his best chance of getting free. “Explain how our interests align and then untie me.”
“You don’t like Quint, I don’t like Quint,” his double said.
He leaned over Caleb to snip the tie. Caleb pushed himself upright and then rubbed at his wrists.
His double cut the tie around his ankles and said, “I’ll help you take care of him if you’ll do this for me. Go with him, pretend to be me, get as much suppressant as you can. He won’t give it to you willingly, even though we had a deal. You’ll get to the lab and he’ll show you he has it, then he’ll demand that you provide him with the dimensional-prion serum. He’ll be expecting you to take him to Heath, probably, because he won’t know you already have some. Preempt him.”
His double pulled a rectangular case in black leather out of his pocket, then unzipped it to reveal two vials of clear, colorless liquid and a syringe.
Caleb stared. The end of the world came in a small, unassuming package.
“I’m sorry. Are you telling me to give Quint something that will allow him access to the Nowhere? Something that will allow him to make anyone he chooses into a runner? You said our interests aligned, but this will make Quint unstoppable. How is that ‘taking care of him’?”
Caleb should have asked what take care of him meant earlier. Should have objected to the implication of murder. But it was Quint, and someone else was offering, and he found he couldn’t care. All he had to do was think of finding Aidan in that cell, and the idea of killing Quint became perfectly acceptable. Murder didn’t trouble him; giving Quint the serum did.
“Look at my hand.”
His double’s hand, stretched flat to display the case, was trembling. No. It wasn’t a tremor running through his body, something simple and physical, but Caleb didn’t know how else to interpret what he saw. The edges of his double’s hand shifted and blurred, a millimeter to the right, then two to the left—phasing in and out, uncontrollably.
“We call it the shakes,” his double said, voice rough. “Another few jumps, I won’t be able to stay in place anywhere. Doesn’t take too long to die after that happens.”
Caleb forgot Quint for a moment. “Is that going to happen to me?”
“No. One injection’s not enough. Neither are two, not unless you take both at once and OD on prions.”
“And you want me to make Quint do that? That’s not going to work. He’s not going to inject himself with an unknown substance once, let alone twice.”
“He will if we set things up right,” his double said.
“We’re going to poison him,” Caleb said faintly. Ridiculous, that his qualms about murder returned once he realized it required his direct participation. It wasn’t ethics, just squeamishness. Again, the thought of Quint’s crimes laid his hesitation to rest. A syringe was nothing. He’d do it with his hands if it came to that.
“Please. He’s going to poison himself. Don’t get all weepy, you know he deserves it. If any of that shit you and Aidan said on TV was true, he deserves worse.”
It was strange to imagine his double watching him and Aidan in those interviews. That wasn’t important. He focused. “Why are you doing this?”
“Are you still sedated? Pay attention. I need the suppressant to live, and so do lots of people at home. I can’t make another jump right now, but I suspect you’re a decent enough person to get me what I need. Steal whatever he has on hand. If you can find the formula, even better. If not, if you get enough samples, Heath can figure it out.”
His double got out of the closet, stood up, and stripped off his shirt.
Caleb’s first bewildered, useless thought was he’s hotter than me. “What—”
“You need my clothes,” his double said, continuing to undress. “Now. Listen. Quint and I don’t have any affection for each other. I’m gonna give you an earpiece so I can listen in and talk you through it, but it won’t work in the Nowhere. Your best bet is to talk as little as possible. Except when Quint is trying to renege on the suppressant, then you have to take control. And for fuck’s sake, don’t apologize or smile.”
“I’m better at acting than you think,” Caleb said, mildly offended. When he stood, he was stiff from spending the night on his side in the closet. He started picking up his double’s discarded clothes. When he pulled the shirt over his head, it felt and smelled unsettlingly familiar. “How will I find you afterward, to get you the suppressant?”
“Let’s pick a place to meet. Not too far away—I have to be able to get there without the Nowhere. You have a driver’s license, right?”
Caleb shook his head. “I grew up in the city and my best friend was a runner.”
“Too bad. It’s always good to follow the little rules when you’re breaking the big ones. Where can I meet you? Do you have an apartment?”
“Gave it up when I went to Facility 17 to search for Aidan,” Caleb said. He picked up a pad and a pencil from one of the tables by the bed and started writing. He gave the new address since Laila had promised she was almost done with the paperwork. “Stay here and I’ll come back for you. If more than three days pass and I haven’t made it back, look for me here.”
When Caleb walked into the living room, Quint said, “You finished powdering your nose?”
“Roll your eyes,” his double said into the earpiece.
Caleb didn’t need that instruction, which made it even easier to follow. “Let’s get this over with.”
His double had been willing to switch clothes, but not to hand over any of the arsenal that he carried on his body. “You have the Nowhere, you don’t need a weapon,” he’d said, which made Caleb wonder about his life, since usually his double would have both. “You’ll just shoot yourself if I give this to you.”
Caleb hoped Quint didn’t notice the difference when they came into contact. When he put his arms around Quint, the man stared at the ceiling to pretend the whole thing wasn’t happening. His powers of observation weren’t at their height.
“Going into the Nowhere has been miserable for me lately,” his double said. “Quint doesn’t know that and I’ve been working as hard as I can to hide it. Anything you feel, you have to hide it. Good, bad, painful, doesn’t matter.”
Stop giving me notes. Since Caleb couldn’t say that out loud, he entered the Nowhere instead.
Before he’d become a runner, he’d always thought of the sensation of travel through the Nowhere as a punch in the gut. Sudden and violent. It was the easiest way to conceive of it, since actual descriptions never made sense—too hot and too cold, like drowning and being sucked dry at the same time, it stretched you out and crunched you u
p. Since the injection, the void hadn’t affected him, but today it was creeping back into him, tugging at his skin. The ability was fading.
He shoved Quint away from him as soon as they were out, then pretended he wasn’t catching his breath and checking his surroundings. He ignored the familiar ache of hunger. They were in a long hallway with cinderblock walls and no windows. He hoped it was the right one.
“Not as precise as usual,” Quint observed. “Perhaps you’re feeling ill?”
“You’re back,” said his double in his ear. “You must have made it, if Quint’s being a dick.”
Caleb didn’t respond to either of them. Quint took off down the hallway, entering one of the unmarked doors. The large, unoccupied room was a lab packed with scientific instruments Caleb couldn’t identify, its walls lined with black formica benches covered in glassware. There was a sink at the end of one bench, and a surprisingly dated computer at the opposite end.
The cabinet above the sink was locked. Unlike the other cabinets, which were made of wood, this one was metal and had a keypad in its lower right corner. A safe. Quint tapped the metal door with a finger. “The suppressant’s in here.”
“I don’t see you unlocking it,” Caleb said.
“Do it now,” his double said.
“I know you want the serum,” Caleb said to Quint, irritated at having his lines fed to him. Luckily, irritated was his double’s default state, so it played well.
His double went silent, giving him free reign at last. Caleb made unrelenting eye contact with Quint and said, “I can offer you some, but you have to pass me the suppressant first. All of it. Everything you have on hand.”
“Or what?”
“Or I shoot you, Oswin. You think I can’t crack a safe? We’ve spent enough time fucking around. Give me what you owe me.”
“Holy shit,” his double said. “You don’t have a gun and I guarantee you don’t know how to crack a safe. More chutzpah than I gave you credit for.”
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