by M A Gelsey
“How dare you even suggest that?” he hissed. “Omar isn’t even dead yet and you’re already —” with effort, he cut himself short, aware of how close he was to losing control entirely and screaming. Dr. Midas looked up at him, bemused and disappointed. There was disappointment on Dr. Yang’s face too, but it was directed at Dr. Midas.
“Fuck you,” Edgar Prime said, in the most deadly calm voice he could manage. “Fuck both of you.” He stormed out of the restaurant before either of them could stop him.
Once outside, he started to run, irrationally wanting to put as much distance between himself and Dr. Midas as possible. By the time he reached campus, he was winded, but he did not stop until he stepped into the elevator of his building. He punched the roof button and leaned against the wall as the elevator ascended, breathing heavily. As soon as the doors opened he tumbled out, striding all the way to the edge. Alone, he leaned on the railing, watching the moon rise in the starless sky until hot tears spilled down his cheeks and his shoulders began shaking.
He heard the door open behind him and glanced around without bothering to hide his face. His heart stopped and stuttered when he saw Hugo standing fifteen feet away staring at him. Expecting that Hugo would leave without speaking, Edgar Prime turned back around and resumed gazing out across the city. He didn’t move, even when he heard the footsteps. When the arms encircled him, the gentle pressure made him first tense, then relax. Edgar Prime returned the embrace, squeezing Hugo like a lifeline. They stood there together not speaking for what felt like forever, and yet at the same time it was not long enough.
53: MIRA
It had been hard for Mira not to pummel Harlow with her bare hands when she came into work the morning following Omar’s attack. He was entirely too chipper for a man who’d recently put a kid into a coma, and Mira longed to beat the smug smile off his face. She hated him for what he’d done, and she hated him even more for making her a part of it. Inside her head, the assailant’s muttered threat repeated over and over in a mocking litany: You tell Harlow he’d better make good on the other half...make good on the other half...other half...other half...other half... She couldn’t stop wondering whether they’d seen the worst, or if they were still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
By lunchtime, Mira felt strung out and on edge, and she was not at all happy to see Solomon O’Brien making his way to Harlow’s office looking much happier than he had on his last visit. His smile makes him look like Emperor Palpatine, she reflected sourly. Mira tried to listen in on their conversation but there was something going on with the microphones; the only thing she heard was silence. Mira had a pounding headache by the end of the day, and wanted nothing more than to go back home and curl up in bed. Instead, she made her way to the Chinatown base of operations, to find an atmosphere of muted excitement.
They finally had some good news. The information Jack stole from Deirdre Kirke’s hard drive had paid off; Liesel had done the impossible and managed to gain access to one of the clone auctions. The scope was even more limited than they’d originally thought; as an additional security measure it seemed that they ran separate auctions for each individual clone. Even if law enforcement somehow stumbled onto one auction, they’d be unable to get any sense of the scale of the operation. Still, it was a solid lead. The only lead they had.
The auction Liesel accessed was for a single clone living in a shelter upstate, a four year old. The winner was scheduled to pick up his prize in three days time.
An argument broke out around the table: should they hold back and continue observing in the hopes that they’d be able to move further up the hierarchy, or order a raid, arrest the people directly involved in the transaction and close down the single facility they could prove was involved in clone trafficking?
“It’s not enough,” John said. “Harlow’s people will change up their system and we’ll be back to square one with trying to keep ahead of it. We’ll have accomplished nothing.”
“We’ll have rescued the little boy who just got sold,” Mira said sharply. “And all the other clones living in this shelter, waiting to be sold. That’s not nothing.”
“Mira’s right,” Jack said, and she gave him a fleeting, grateful smile. “We can’t just sit on this information. We’re not giving up on Harlow. Sooner or later he’ll make a mistake, then we’ll nail the bastard.”
“But it’ll take that much longer —” insisted John.
“— we can’t know —” Liesel started.
“— these are actual children we can help today, not years from now —” Mira cut in.
“— but how many are we condemning because we couldn’t follow through —” John said angrily.
“Quiet, all of you!” Warren barked, and they fell silent.
Warren glared at them for a moment before speaking. “We’re doing the raid,” he told them. Mira allowed herself to feel a moment of triumph, even as John scowled in disapproval. The rest of the meeting was planning and logistics.
Mira was at work while the raid took place; they wanted to attempt to maintain her cover if at all possible. It took all of her willpower not to check her phone every ten seconds, and she couldn’t stop herself from drumming her fingers incessantly on the desk. At one point she noticed Harlow hurry out of the office with a grim look on her face. Mira took this to be a sign of good news, but she was still on edge, and knew she would be until she heard. Her phone buzzed, and she snatched it up immediately to find a text from Jack. It was only one word: Victory.
54: BOB
Bob walked up a familiar path through a familiar garden towards a familiar brick building. Each step increased his sense of dread. He didn’t want to be back here again. He didn’t want to pick up another little girl to bring to another depraved man who had paid for her on a secret darknet auction.
I could just turn around and leave, Bob thought. I could leave and get on a plane, and they’ll never find me. Even in his head, the words rang hollow. Deep down, he knew he’d never escape. He reached the front entrance and knocked. Angelica was there, smiling coquettishly and batting her eyes at him. Bob was in no mood to indulge her, and gave her a curt nod of recognition, nothing more.
“Well?” he said.
“I may need your help with this one,” Angelica told him. She beckoned him towards the stairs with a sullen look on her face, clearly disappointed that he’d rebuffed her attempts at flirtation.
He followed her, annoyed at the delay. Usually, Angelica had the children ready for him when he arrived. As they reached the top of the stairs, Bob opened his mouth to ask Angelica what was different about this one when — BANG! The door downstairs slammed open and two armed FBI agents burst in guns drawn. Bob heard the back door break open too. Angelica screamed, and flapped her hands hysterically, but Bob didn’t waste any time. He ran into the nearest room where several scared-looking children were sitting on the floor playing Monopoly. He slid open the window and swung one leg over the sill. So far as he could tell, they hadn’t left anyone outside watching the perimeter, presumably because they thought they had both exits covered. Using the tiny fingerholds between the bricks, Bob was able to descend partway before having to jump. He landed hard and rolled to dissipate the impact. He sprang up and started running, hoping to circle around behind a neighbor’s hedge to come out down the road and make his way towards the tiny downtown area nearby.
Bob barely made it fifteen yards before his body seized up and he fell to the ground, twitching in agony. A taser, he thought dimly through grunts of pain, of course they have a taser. Fuck.
The clicking noise from the taser stopped, but shudders of pain still rattled through his body. The world was blurry, and Bob had never felt so weak. He tried to roll over, but his muscles refused to obey. There were boots walking towards him, but Bob couldn’t lift his head to find out who they belonged to. Hands reached down and roughly handcuffed him, then yanked him to his feet. Bob felt clumsy and leaned heavily on his captor. When they made eye contact
, Bob started laughing, an out-of-control, wheezy laugh. It was the scowling man who had served as Mira’s backup at the bar.
“Shut the fuck up,” the man growled, but now that Bob had started to laugh, he couldn’t stop. He wondered if this was how his father and mother had felt at their first arrests. Like it was all a big joke. To him, nothing had ever seemed so funny.
55: ANNABEL
“I should never have taken part,” said Ms. Durant for the fiftieth time. “Rex will never forgive me.” Annabel sighed, and took another bite of her buckwheat banana muffin. They were sitting at their usual table at Seashell Cafe, sharing a pot of jasmine tea.
“It’s not you he’s angry at,” Annabel reassured her, although she wasn’t at all sure that was true. Rex had been giving her the silent treatment all week, and had taken to sleeping in the guest room. In truth, she doubted he’d be any more forgiving of Ms. Durant, who didn’t even have the benefit of reminding him of the one he’d loved for so long.
“Still. It was terrible what that despicable reporter wrote, just terrible. I’m surprised Rex hasn’t responded to the provocation. Or sued him.” Ms. Durant poured herself more tea from the steaming pot. Overhead, two seagulls were circling, no doubt hoping to snatch up the half-croissant a young child across the courtyard had flung onto the ground in a fit of temper.
“He thought about it, believe me.” Annabel muttered.
“I should hope so!” Ms. Durant said, slapping her hand on the table emphatically. Annabel sipped her tea, wondering whether she should tell Ms. Durant that she was thinking of leaving, that the temptation to do so grew stronger every day.
“He may never forgive me,” Annabel said.
Ms. Durant’s face softened into an expression of sympathy. “Oh, of course he will. There are ups and downs in every relationship, you’ll see. Soon enough things will go back to how they always were.”
What if I don’t want them to go back to how they always were? Annabel almost said, but she stopped herself, knowing there was no point. She felt a dull sense of bereavement that Ms. Durant, who was the only family Annabel had ever known, had more loyalty to her employer than to her former charge. The fact that Ms. Durant regretted accompanying Annabel to New York was obvious, the reason less so. Annabel supposed she had known Rex longer, if less intimately. Whatever her reason, Ms. Durant was unable to offer anything but further aspersions on Arthur Blair, and as soon as they finished the tea Annabel took her leave.
After she said goodbye to Ms. Durant she strolled along Main Street with no clear destination, walking just to walk. All of a sudden a man stepped out of a storefront directly into her path. She had to swerve to avoid running headlong into him, and he her; he made a startled noise and nearly dropped the paper bag he cradled in his arms. It clinked slightly and Annabel realized it must contain several bottles since he had just come out of a liquor store. She glanced up at the man’s face to apologize and felt her stomach drop out; before her stood Leon Floros, the handsome gardener who had become her favorite fantasy whenever her husband crawled on top of her. Annabel flushed at the thought.
“I’m so sorry,” he was saying. She blinked, and wrenched her mind back to the present, not wanting to seem like any more of a dolt than she did already. “I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going. Are you all right?”
“Me? Oh, I’m fine, just fine. Are you? Sorry, it was my fault. At least you didn’t drop those bottles.” Annabel hated how frantic her voice sounded, and she let out a nervous laugh that caused her to cringe internally. She had only ever seen him in his work clothes before, covered in sweat and dirt, but he looked like a different person now: freshly showered, wearing faded jeans and a wrinkled light blue button-down shirt that brought out the color of his eyes.
“Yeah, lucky.” He lifted the bag slightly as if to demonstrate its intactness.
“So you live around here too, then?” Annabel blurted out. “I wasn’t sure.”
“Yeah, I do,” he said with an easy smile. She saw his eyes flicker down her body and back up to her face, and her heart beat faster. “I’m just over on Caster Street, at the corner of Elm. Not far at all.”
“Not at all,” Annabel echoed. They stood in awkward silence for another second just gazing at each other, then he said, “Well. I’ve gotta get going. See you around.”
Annabel nodded as he turned to continue on his way. He glanced back at her with a smile and a wink, then strode off down the street. Part of her wanted to pretend she had some reason to go the same way he was going, but she dismissed the impulse. She had already made a fool of herself once that day.
As Annabel slowly made her way back home, she thought about what he’d said: ‘over on Caster Street, at the corner of Elm’. That’s where he lived. Annabel had walked by that corner many times, but had never seen him. That’s because he works during the day, stupid. Now, she had to fight the temptation to wander past, knowing she’d look ridiculous if he caught her. Then again, he had told her where he lived in much more detail than strictly necessary. He could have just said he lived nearby and moved on, no need to volunteer the extra information. Could it be that he was hinting at something?
Instead of going home, Annabel spent the rest of the day in the park, moving to the public library when dusk began to fall. She knew Rex would wonder where she was, but found herself indifferent to the thought. Hiding in an alcove, she whiled away the hours rereading the beginning of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, her favorite book of the series.
Annabel did not leave until the library closed its doors at 8pm. The streets were relatively quiet at this hour during the off-season, with only a few people out strolling after dinner. Reluctantly, she began the walk home, hoping that Rex would already be shuttered away in his office or even better, asleep in bed, when she arrived. When she reached the corner of Main Street and Elm, Annabel stopped. For a moment, she stared up at the street sign, and heard Leon Floros’s voice echo through her head, telling her that he lived at the corner of Elm and Caster. A wild recklessness seized Annabel, and she turned onto Elm, striding along purposefully and trying to ignore the hammering of her heartbeat in her chest. He had told her where he lived. That had to mean something.
She felt rather foolish when she reached the correct intersection, not having accounted for the fact that there were actually four possible corner houses. Two of them were dark, their inhabitants either out or sleeping. The house she stood directly in front of had a sign on the mailbox that read “Miller”, so she continued diagonally across the deserted intersection to the final house. She was in luck; the lights were on and the curtains remained open, giving her a clear view of the living room.
There he was; lounging in an armchair wearing striped blue pajama bottoms and nothing else. He held a tablet in one hand and a beer in the other, and whatever he was reading seemed to have his undivided attention. Annabel merely watched him for a moment, gathering her courage for what was she was sure would be a defining moment in her life. Just as she steeled herself and was about to make her way up the walk to the front door, she saw Leon turn his head and she watched dumbfounded as he was joined by a pretty, pajama-clad woman with dark skin and curly black hair. The real shock came when she approached him and Annabel saw the baby; Leon grinned up at them with such a look of devotion that Annabel felt numb all over, numb and stupid. The woman leaned over, and he kissed her on the lips, then kissed the giggling baby on the cheek. The woman vanished again, and after a moment Leon drained his beer, stood up and stretched, then followed her to the back of the house. The light in the living room went off, leaving Annabel alone outside in the dark.
Thirty minutes later she stumbled back home in a daze. Never before had she felt like such an utter fool. Of course he has a wife and baby, you nitwit. He never wanted you. You’re nothing but a stupid little girl. She closed the front door as quietly as she could, but it made no difference; Rex was awake and waiting for her.
“Where have you been, my love?�
�� he said softly from the living room chair in which he was seated. The lights were dim, and she was struck by the irony of him sitting in much the same position as Leon had been. So similar, and yet so different.
“The park, the library. Earlier I had tea with Ms. Durant,” Annabel said wearily. Answering his questions was easier than arguing. “I don’t know why you care, anyway.”
Rex’s expression turned incredulous. “Why, of course I care. How could you ever question my devotion?”
“Devotion isn’t the word I’d use for it.” Annabel didn’t know what had gotten into her, but at that moment she wanted nothing more than to smash everything in the house then run away, far away to a place where he’d never find her.
His mouth twisted, and the look on his face could be interpreted as rage or pain or both. “How can you be so hateful? My Annabel was many things, but she was never hateful.”
“I’m not your Annabel. Your Annabel is dead.”
“My love —” he began.
“Stop calling me that!” She took a deep breath and willed herself not to scream. A strange clarity had emerged from the haze her mind had been, and she did not want him to think what she had to say next was said in anger. Instead, she had to turn herself to ice. “I will never love you, Rex. It’s time you moved on with your life, and I with mine. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to leave, and never come back. This is over.”
For a moment he only stared at her, staggered. When he stood up his face was eerily still, masklike. It was only when he advanced on her that she felt a stab of fear, and by then it was too late. The backhand knocked her off her feet and made her ears ring; pain radiated out from where he’d struck her cheek and when she tried to press herself up she felt a wave of dizziness. Rex grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her back to her feet.