by Jason Austin
Glenda came stumbling out of the lab, nauseated to no end. Gabriel’s face full of bloody ruptures would be burned into her brain for all time. She immediately heard the whine of the transport racing in her direction.
“Glenda!” Kelmer screamed. He sped up and the transport soon skidded along the floor before braking at her side.
“Are you hurt badly?” he asked her.
“Richard? What the...” She saw Kelmer's double and nearly fell over. “What? How?”
“I'll explain later,” Kelmer said. “Get in!”
Glenda took a seat in the transport and Kelmer accelerated to the closest ramp.
“Do you know what happened?” Kelmer asked. “What triggered the alarm?”
“We needed a distraction,” she answered. “We thought it was a fire alarm.”
“Where's your friend?”
“He...” Glenda couldn't get the words out. “He’s...”
“Look,” Richard said, his finger pointing out from the front of the transport. The handle of the stairwell door at the end of the corridor had turned downward, being manipulated from the other side.
The transport sped up and then screeched to a halt just short of the door. Glenda decided she couldn't reach it fast enough. It started to open just as she jumped out of the transport. She rammed a shoulder into the door's heavy metal.
An inch closer and the damn door would have knocked Xavier cold. How poetic for him to have made it this far with a thumb-sized hole in his thigh only to be undone by such a thing. The near-miss put him off balance and he practically fell on top of Glenda.
“Xavier,” she shouted in his ear. “You’re alive!”
“Despite my best efforts,” he said sardonically.
Glenda pelted his face with kisses.
“Thank God,” Kelmer exhaled. “A...a...all right, everybody on...on...”
The clone took over. “Everybody on the transport!”
Xavier gawked openly at the two Kelmers. “Good god! What? How?”
“Later,” Glenda said. “Come on!”
“She's right,” Richard said. “We have to get you people to a hospital!”
“A hospital won’t help if that bomb goes off with us in here,” Xavier said.
Kelmer’s eyes bulged. “B...b...b...b...”
“Never mind. Let’s go!”
Glenda and Xavier crammed themselves into the back seats and the transport sped off down the corridor.
Kelmer negotiated every transport ramp to ground level like a champion drag racer. Once there, he visually targeted the open double doors leading to the outside. He then leaned against the wheel as if it would make a difference in speed. The transport rocketed down the lobby and straight out of the building.
The explosion happened exactly as Ross had planned. Planting the bomb directly over the natural gas inlet—thanks to Gabriel's partial blueprint—birthed a series of explosions that took out level after level of the UFO. Deafening waves of destruction split the air. Tons of burning debris and concrete sailed through the sky in a bright orange display. One of the waves caught the tail end of the transport, sending it airborne. Its passengers scattered like billiard balls across the acres of grassy knoll.
Xavier came to lay flat on his back and barely moving. As he hedged in and out of consciousness, he could just make out Glenda pulling herself to her knees. Several feet away, was what looked like Richard Kelmer draped over a fence line like a wet rug, no doubt impaled on its arrowhead shafts. Xavier felt sick inside. He tried desperately to stay conscious, but it was a no-go. His head listed onto the soft, cool grass and he gazed skyward at the big bird with massive wings that hovered above him—a big heavenly bird.
Chapter 58
Xavier's eyes began to flutter after the third shout of his name. On the fourth shout he snapped awake. His leg was on fire and his head was drumming. “Oof.”
“Don’t move,” an unfamiliar voice said. “We’re pretty sure there are no broken bones or internal injuries, but we won’t know until we get you to a hospital.”
Xavier’s fog cleared a little and he could see the voice belonged to a youthful-looking man in a jacket and tie. He also recognized where they were; he’d flown in them serving overseas—a Blackwing helicopter. Xavier was on a stretcher in the copter's cabin. But where is...He breathed a sigh of relief as Glenda's face floated into view. It was like seeing the sun after a thousand years of darkness.
“Hi,” she said tenderly.
“Hey there,” Xavier answered.
“How do feel?”
“I’d tell you, but I know how empathetic you are. I wouldn’t want to bring you down.”
Glenda caressed his aching head.
Xavier didn’t have the heart to tell her that even his hair hurt. He sat up a notch and regarded the young man.
“Special Agent Nathan Brisby,” the young man said. “You’ve got a lot of people waiting to talk to you, Mr. Hawkins.”
“Yeah, I...” Xavier gasped. “My brother; they know who I am! You have to get to my brother!”
“It’s all right,” said an older man in the same conservative dress as the young one. He moved in from the other end of the cabin. “We’ve had your brother and his wife under protective watch for the past two days. They had a bit of a scare, but they’re fine.”
“Who are you?” Xavier asked.
“Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Marcel McCutcheon, FBI.”
Xavier looked worried again. “Look, Glenda Jameson is innocent! She didn’t murder anyone! I was there! I’ll testify! In fact, I was the one who...”
“Whoa, whoa, no need to fall on your sword there, Lancelot! We know she’s innocent. We know all about the cloning operation.”
Xavier took assessment of the faces in the cabin. Nobody seemed villainous or primed to shoot him. And Glenda looked more relieved than he’d ever thought he’d see.
“Gabriel,” Xavier said. “He was the one who set it all up. He...”
“We know. Ms. Jameson has been filling us in. Plus, we got a little help from CPD. By the way, there’s a certain Cleveland police detective who’d love to talk to you two.”
“Roberts,” Glenda stated.
“We got in touch with him after we suspected our cases might be linked. He’s a good man. You’re lucky he was on your side. We’d planned to pick you two up from the trailer after you returned from Seattle, but you never showed up. Then we received a call about thirty minutes ago from Richard Kelmer. He told us where you were and what was going on. We couldn’t stop him from rushing in ahead of us.” McCutcheon held up a series of loaded lightdrives between his fingers. “It looks like he got what he came for though.”
“Kelmer?” Xavier said. “Is he...”
“I’m sorry. There was nothing we could do.”
Glenda wiped her hand over her fresh tears.
“That's why he gave us the implant,” Xavier said. “He wanted to follow us. He used us as bait.”
“No,” Glenda said. “He wanted to come with us, remember? He felt guilty for everything we'd been through even though it wasn't really his fault. He was going to make a deal with Wallace to let us go. But we told him to stay put, so he had to come up with something else.”
Richard sat silent in the darkest part of the cabin, caught helplessly in the path of unwieldy stares. He assumed either no one was aware of their rudeness, or they just weren’t concerned for the alleged feelings of a clone.
Chapter 59
Cleveland, Ohio, September 4, 2:18 p.m.
The steaks melted like butter as they hit the tongue. Xavier couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten so good. On top of all her other talents, Cassandra was an excellent cook. Potato salad, grilled corn on the cob, turnip greens and two kinds of macaroni & cheese made for a palate’s nirvana that she seemed to conjure up like so much magic. Benny, of course, would have preferred Cassandra sit this one out and let him do the cooking, but the arguing would exhaust them more than the scant hours she
'd be in the kitchen whipping up dishes she could prepare in her sleep. Cassandra did, however, do her best to cut her husband some slack, God bless her. He was understandably protective. It chilled him to the bone to think how close they came to real tragedy, and it took every bit of Cassandra’s feminine persuasions to keep him from wringing Xavier's neck. She had made it clear that everyone had acted with nothing but the best of intentions, and there was no room for a new chapter of hatred within the family.
Nathan Brisby had been a godsend, swooping down on Wallace's hit man before he could lay a glove on Cassandra. Brisby and his partner had commandeered the on-the-market house next door to the Hawkins’s the previous day. The agents were on top of the scum from the second he showed his face. Brisby regretted not taking Kimbrough alive, but when he went for his gun, while Brisby was trying to make the arrest, all bets were off.
Xavier laughed when he found out Brisby was the cousin “Nate” that Max Porter had mentioned years ago in passing.
“The CIA, NSA, or some shit?” Xavier had repeated.
Brisby heckled his cousin when he heard that. “No, it was the FBI, dummy,” he said to Max. “For a guy with such big ears, you never did listen very well.”
But Max Porter had listened when it counted. He’d listened to Xavier’s story, and just like any soldier worth his salt, paralleled some of the details. Nate Brisby had been coming into the Blacklight Tavern—the only bar in Cleveland where he could get free drinks—a bit more frequently to assuage some extra job stress. He'd been bemoaning places like BioCore and Millenitech to his cousin.
“I hate those biotech bullies,” Nate had said. “They’re so goddamn irresponsible! They have no concern for the threat they bring to the community. Who gives a shit if they make my job harder?”
With the same rant being on the tip of his tongue nearly every time Max poured him a Whiskey Sour, it hadn’t been too hard to get a line on the cause of his cousin’s recent headaches. So when Xavier came in stinking of a runner’s sweat and pointing out a connection to Millenitech, Max went to his cousin and relayed the story. He tried to leave out names, but Nate convinced him otherwise, sighting the couple's need for protection should worst come to worst. It was even Max who was asked to provide a meeting with Andrew Roberts—an action which bolstered Max’s confidence that he’d done the right thing. FBI agents weren’t known for sharing their candy with the other kids, but Marcel McCutcheon was more about “us against them” than he was about “us against us.” He and Roberts had made a fast connection when they met in the Blacklight, like two soldiers in the field. They weren’t sure if their cases were related, but being the experienced lawmen that they were, knew instinctively that criminal activity had a tendency to spread outward from a central source like ripples in the water. The two compared notes on their cases, drawing parallels—of which there were admittedly few—and agreed to keep each other abreast of their progress. If one of their paths led to the other’s at least they would know who had their back.
Xavier stood next to Max Porter, sipping on ginger ale—what he supposed was the drink of choice for most recovering alcoholics—and watched the ends of the checkered table cloth flutter under the afternoon breeze. Max had shown up at the barbecue with a crate of baby back ribs and his son, Patrick Porter, in tow. There wasn't a single guest who didn't nearly laugh out loud at the toddlers ears which were already threatening to outgrow his head.
“Daddy, I hit it out of the park, see?” the toddler said as he danced around the Hawkins's huge backyard with a chicken leg in his greasy fist. A plastic Wiffle ball covered in barbeque sauce was ensconced in the thick green grass, ants already descending.
“You thought I turned you in, didn’t you?” Max asked Xavier with a “cat who ate the canary” face.
Xavier nearly dropped his pop. The sneaky little jerk just busted out with a question that was best left unasked, knowing damn well Xavier wasn’t prepared to answer. Where did he get that shit? “Max...I uh...I never...”
“Never what?” Max interrupted, his voice becoming pensive, and almost hostile. “Never meant to get my knee cap blasted off?” He punched the knee in question with the side of his fist. “Never meant for me to end up with a piece of space age fiber that doesn’t quite work as well as the original? Never meant to ruin my military career, which was all I knew I was good for? Well guess what, asshole?”
Xavier fixated on the lush lawn like it was about to open up and swallow him whole.
“You didn’t,” Max pronounced.
Xavier looked up at him, shocked.
“Damn, you really are kind of an idiot,” Max stated with genuine wonder. “Only a dumb sack like you would allow himself to believe that he could single-handedly ruin someone else’s life like that. Did you really think that after all this time I’d be stupid enough to blame you for what happened?”
Xavier was terrified, but plowed ahead anyway. He suddenly couldn't stand it anymore and wanted it all out in the open. “I was the one who froze up. It was my fault he got a hold of my gun. It was my fault that you got shot.”
“No. It was his fault I got shot.” Max paused. “And mine.”
“Yours?”
“Yes. I was just as much a soldier as you were, Zave. I knew what the job was about. Just because we weren’t in the middle of a war zone when it happened, didn’t mean there were no risks involved. I could've remembered to do a pat down once we were outside.” Max paused again, placing a hand on Xavier's shoulder. “Nothing happens by accident, man—the universe doesn’t work that way. I was supposed to leave for Fort Bragg a week after that night. If I hadn’t taken that shot in the knee, I’d probably be on a suicide mission somewhere right now treating my life as if it wasn’t important. I know damn well I wouldn’t be with my son. Man, I joined the army because I thought it was what I was supposed to do. It was what I was expected to do. Just because I was good at it didn’t mean shit.
“Now, look at me. For the first time, I’m actually enjoying life, without throwing it on the crap table in order to feel useful.”
Xavier shrugged. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I always thought that...”
“I know what you thought. I would’ve said all of this to you then, but you weren’t talking to anybody. You think I didn’t know what you must’ve have been feeling? Not just about me, but about Elana Hatten, too?”
Xavier averted his eyes.
“I always understood why you ran away,” Max said. “Doesn’t mean I approved of it.”
Xavier sighed and hung his head. “Yeah, well, running was what I was good at. Old habits, I guess. I still can’t believe I let myself ask for your help.”
Max shook his head. “You just don’t get it, do you?” He slapped his knee and grinned. “I owed you one.”
Xavier looked up, finally smiling. All this time he'd been dragging his guilt about Max around like a rickshaw full of sumo wrestlers. And now it was suddenly gone. He felt lighter, stronger, wanted to put Max on his shoulders and parade him through downtown. The two friends locked palms and drew their corresponding shoulders to the link—a grand gesture of affection between guys, but as subtle as a falling leaf.
“Thank you,” Xavier said.
Glenda wandered over just as the two men parted. “Hey, hey, I thought you guys had a rule about male bonding in broad daylight.”
“That’s only on Sundays,” Max joked.
Glenda smiled then unfolded a freshly printed copy of a news stream printed out from Benny’s webscreen. She handed it to Xavier. “Check this out,” she said.
Xavier's eyes cast down over an article detailing that Michigan Senator Shane Beaumont was to be formally indicted on a whole host of federal charges. They included murder, arson and a number of conspiracy charges—not the least of which was domestic terrorism. It went on to say that the government’s case got a well-needed boost when Isaac Williams, the senator’s press secretary, came forward with evidence of suspicious e-mails and communiq
ués from the senator’s office. Despite Beaumont's disgrace, it still wasn’t known how the senate would vote on the biotech regulations bill, but the president bit at the carrot and was taking the opportunity to change his tune in favor of “economic concerns”.
“I find it all very disturbing that Senator Beaumont has been charged in this matter,” the president had said. “In my opinion, it may require, at the very least, a reevaluation of his supporters' motives.” Political double-talk for being able to veto the bill and regain campaign contributors for his reelection.
“Well, Wallace wanted the bill defeated,” Xavier reminded them.
“But he still got what he deserved,” Glenda noted.
Sharing the page of the copy was a related story headlined: THE ONLY GOOD CLONE IS A DEAD ONE. This article explained how a group of wealthy potentates and celebrities had recently used cloned bodies to successfully fake their deaths. It was the tail-end result of the follow-up investigation into the names on Jerome Wallace's personal client list. At least two of the names immediately jumped out at Xavier.
Prince Ahmad Kassim was found alive and well when security officials from his native country tracked him to and raided a whorehouse in Bangkok. It seemed princely duties and appearances had long since outlived their appeal for Kassim and he thought he could better exercise his tawdry interest in twelve-and thirteen-year-old children outside the confines of the royal palace.
Singer Deanna Robinson was found living a life of spiritual solitude near a monastery outside Budapest. She claimed that she was losing her soul in the voracious, dispassionate recording industry, and faking her death was a spiritual imperative. Sales of her posthumously released album were expected to plummet. Another article mentioned the name Tamashii Kurosawa, but no details were given on his involvement with the cloning operation, only that he was a Japanese crimelord with disturbing ties to American industry.