The Complete John Wayne Cleaver Series: I Am Not a Serial Killer, Mr. Monster, I Don't Want to Kill You, Devil's Only Friend, Over Your Dead Body, Nothing Left to Lose

by Dan Wells

  I smiled, and she looked at the calendar on her desk.

  “Has been a while since the last pressure valve, though,” she said. “Think it’s time?”

  “Mine or yours?” I asked. Our “pressure valves” were activities that helped us stay in control of the important stuff by letting loose a little on the small stuff. For her it usually meant volunteering for something—she got to boss people around without the use of mind control, and she got to form relationships. For me, we usually just went out in the desert and lit something on fire.

  Very big somethings. It was awesome.

  “Yours,” said Margo. “I think I can go another week or so.”

  “Same,” I said, and smiled. “You still haven’t said it with me.”

  “Said what?”

  “You know what.”

  She gave an exasperated sigh. “Dammit, John, I have important things to do!”

  “Not as important as this.”

  “Fine,” she said, and we recited it together: “Today I will think good thoughts, and smile at everyone I see.”

  “Are you happy now?” she said.

  “As a sociopath I’m technically never happy—”

  “You are the snottiest little—”

  “I’m happy,” I said, “I’m happy. You still got your rules on your mirror at home?”

  “And I read them every day,” she said, and laughed. “Someone’s going to have some awfully difficult questions if they ever use my bathroom and wonder why I have a sign taped up that says ‘I will ask for what I want instead of controlling people’s minds.’”

  “Just tell them the truth,” I said. “With lives like ours, no one believes it anyway.”

  She chuckled softly, tapping her finger on the desk, but then she sighed, and the corners of her mouth turned down.

  “This can’t last forever,” she whispered.

  “Nothing does.”

  “You’re going to leave.”

  “Never.”

  “Then you’re going to die,” she said. “Even if it’s not for a hundred more years—do you think I haven’t had friendships before? Do you think I haven’t built relationships with people, just to watch them grow old and die while I just continued on? Even if you think you know how long ten thousand years is, I guarantee that you do not.”

  “I haven’t lost as many people as you have,” I said, “but the ones I’ve lost were … significant. And it hurts, and I’m sorry.”

  “You think you’re ever going to see them again?”

  “Brooke, maybe,” I said. “Someday. Probably better for her if I don’t.”

  “She loves you.”

  “All the more reason to stay away.”

  Margo smiled slyly. “When are you going to ask Jasmyn out?”

  “Why does everyone keep asking that?”

  “Because you’d be stupid not to.”

  “She’s not my type,” I said.

  “Alive?”

  “That was low,” I said, pointing at her. “You don’t see me in here … pushing all your psychological buttons—”

  My backpack sang out: ding-dong, ding-dong.

  Margo raised her eyebrow. “You turned those things back on again?”

  “It’s been almost six months,” I said, standing up. “Agent Harris is going to check in on us any day now.”

  “Did he give you a schedule?”

  “No,” I said, peeking out of the curtain. “I just know him. And there’s your car, you little FBI twerp. I know you as well as you know m—”

  And then I heard a dog bark, and I froze in place.

  “John?” asked Margo.

  “Can you…” I peered out the window, but I couldn’t see anyone. “Can you tell a dog by its bark?”

  “I guess so,” she said. “Depends on how well you know the dog.”

  “I could swear I know this one,” I said, and moved out into the hall. Margo stood up and followed.

  Agent Harris opened the front door, and Boy Dog waddled in. He sniffed the air and barked again, and I stopped. Boy Dog looked around, snuffling his nose against the floor, checking out the entryway to make sure it wasn’t filled with bacon, and then trundled over to me and sat down, his warm, fat bulk resting just on the edge of my toes.

  “Hey John,” said Harris. “Brought you something.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I stared at Boy Dog, half convinced he wasn’t even real. But he was.

  “Is this that dog you keep talking about?” asked Jasmyn, stepping out of the chapel. “Lean down and pet him, for goodness sake, what kind of joyful reunion is this?”

  “Trust me,” said Harris, watching my face. “This is about as joyful as I’ve ever seen him.” He winked. “At least so far.”

  I raised my eyebrow. “Do I get a pony, too?”

  “The United States government does not trust you with a pony at this time,” said Harris. “But yeah, I’ve got someone else here to see you.”

  “Not Brooke,” I said, and took a step backward. Boy Dog whined at the shift in his bulk. “I can’t see her. I’m not ready to see her.”

  Margo gripped my shoulders tightly. “It’s okay,” she said. “Whatever it is, we’re going to be okay.”

  Harris looked to the door and nodded, and then beckoned again with his hand. Someone outside reached for the handle and pushed it open and stepped inside, and I thought for just one brief, tiny moment that it was my mother.

  “Aunt Margaret,” I whispered, and then another woman came in behind her. “Lauren.”

  “Oh my gosh,” said Lauren when she saw me, and her eyes filled with tears. “You’re so tall!”

  “Hey,” I said, and then because I couldn’t think of anything else: “Do you…” I swallowed. “… know?”

  “Yeah,” said Lauren.

  “Everything?”

  “Yeah,” said Lauren, nodding, and she glanced at Margo. “Everything.”

  “And you’re … okay?”

  She laughed, wiping the tears from her eyes. “John, we love you. No matter what.”

  “Hey John,” said Margaret. “You look … Do you mind if…” Her eyes were wet, and she put her hand over her mouth. She tried again. “John, can I give you a hug?”

  “Sure,” I said, and she opened her arms, and I walked up and hugged her, and Lauren hugged us both, and we were all crying and swaying and holding each other more tightly than I’d ever held anybody ever before.

  And I was happy.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE

  Copyright © 2017 by Dan Wells

  All rights reserved.

  Cover photographs by Karen Grigoryan and koka 55/Shutterstock.com

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

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  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-8070-8 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-0-7653-8071-5 (trade paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-4668-7499-2 (ebook)

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  First Edition: June 2017

  EXTREME MAKEOVER

  APOCALYPSE EDITION

  DAN WELLS

  A Tom Doherty Associates Book

  New York

  PREFACE

  In the early nineteenth century a powerful bacterial neurotoxin was identified in spoiled meat, earning it the name botulinum toxin, or “sausage poison.” The resulting condition, known as botulism, destroys the nervous syst
em’s ability to communicate with muscles, rendering all soft tissues—including the heart and lungs—completely immobile. A mere ninety nanograms can kill a two hundred pound adult in a matter of minutes. It is the most acutely toxic substance known to man. And in 2014, nearly five million beauty-conscious customers voluntarily injected it into their faces.

  People don’t like the way they look. More than two-thirds of women in the United States are trying to lose weight; more than half of American teenage girls have quantifiable eating disorders, with symptoms occurring as early as kindergarten. Beauty products and cosmetic surgeries account for more than $426 billion in annual global sales, rising at a rate of nearly 100 percent per year: men implant hair in some places and laser it off in others; some women have their breasts enlarged, others have their breasts reduced; fat is vacuumed out of abdomens; collagen is injected into lips and eyelids; wrinkles are masked and puttied and stretched and poisoned.

  In a culture where we can be anything we want, only one thing is certain:

  Nobody wants to be themselves.

  PART ONE

  NEWYEW

  1

  Thursday, March 22

  9:01 A.M.

  NewYew headquarters, Manhattan

  267 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD

  “The yew,” said Carl Montgomery, “is a majestic tree.” He wheezed with the effort of speaking, and paused to take a slow, deep breath from his oxygen tank. “Yggdrasil was a yew,” he said, “the tree that holds up the world.”

  They were gathered in an opulent conference room: Carl, the CEO of NewYew, Inc., and all of his executive staff. Lyle Fontanelle, the chief scientist, was always surprised at the sheer ostentatious luxury in this part of the building. The offices had been constructed and furnished in the early days of the company when business was booming, orders were rolling in, and Carl used to say that “people are dying to give us their money!” This was technically true: their sole product at the time had been paclitaxel, a chemotherapy drug, and their customers were all cancer patients. That had been before Lyle was hired, but Carl had often confided to him that the secret to his success had been the ability to treat cancer without curing it: “Sell a cure for something,” he would say, “and you’ve destroyed your own market; sell a treatment, and you’ve gained a customer for life.” Given that his customers’ lives depended quite literally on the treatment he sold them, Carl’s philosophy had been remarkably accurate.

  Lyle liked to tell himself that he would not have worked for NewYew during those days—that he would not, when confronted with fabulous wealth, compromise his principles. He was not a mercenary. He was a scientist.

  NewYew’s fortunes had changed in the 1990s, when scientists developed a way to synthesize paclitaxel without the need to harvest its namesake tree, the Pacific yew. A simple, unrestricted process meant that more companies could manufacture it; more manufacturers meant wider availability and lower prices; good access and low prices meant that more patients could use it. The patients were happy, the doctors were happy, even the environmentalists were happy because the Pacific yew was no longer in danger.

  Carl Montgomery had not been happy.

  Without a monopoly to sustain it, NewYew suffered a huge financial hit and was forced to rebuild itself; they had the equipment and the infrastructure to manufacture consumer chemicals, so they simply repurposed them from chemotherapy to cosmetics. They recruited Lyle, an up-and-coming chemist from Avon, and got to work. The only real difference, as far as Carl was concerned, was that now his lobby portraits were supermodels instead of little bald children—so, if anything, the offices looked even nicer than before.

  As with most evolutions, this one had produced a number of vestigial appendages—holdovers from the old company that didn’t really apply anymore, such as the name of the company and the tagline “The Healing Power of Yew™.” Carl even went so far as to insist that the Pacific yew be included in their cosmetics formulas, though his executives fought him on it every time. On the morning of March 22, Lyle Fontanelle rolled his eyes and prepared to have the argument again.

  “Yggdrasil was an ash,” said Lyle. “I looked it up.”

  “And we can’t use yew in a hand lotion,” said the lawyer, a man named Sunny Frye. His real name was Sun-He, and he was Korean; Lyle had been working in makeup for so long, he could pinpoint a face’s origin with uncanny accuracy. Sunny continued patiently: “The yew tree has no moisturizing or antiaging properties whatsoever. We’ve gone over this before. It adds nothing to the product.”

  “So don’t use very much,” said Carl, virtually motionless in his chair. It was an overstuffed office chair of soft black leather, blending deliciously with the rich brown mahogany of the conference table, and Carl rarely ever moved from it—or, truth be told, in it. He was seventy-nine years old, long past retirement age, and in Lyle’s opinion he had no business trying to run the company. On the other hand, Lyle had to admit that the alternative was probably worse: the next in line of succession for the position of CEO was the company president, Jeffrey Montgomery. He was Carl’s son, and almost willfully useless.

  Carl sat unmoving in his chair. “We don’t need to use very much yew, just enough to put it on the label.”

  The room full of executives sighed as politely as they could. There were four of them (not counting Jeffrey, who was playing games on his phone in the corner): the vice president of finance, the vice president of marketing, the chief legal counsel, and, of course, the chief scientist. Lyle had long harbored the secret dream of changing his business cards to say “chief science officer,” but for nearly ten years and counting he’d been too afraid to actually do it. He wasn’t sure which was scarier—being mocked for the Star Trek reference, or realizing that nobody cared what it said on his business cards.

  Carl plunged onward, feebly waving a wrinkled hand for emphasis. “The yew is a glorious tree, and our customers associate it with health! We treated cancer for thirty-five years with the yew tree, can’t we leverage that somehow?”

  “It would be a brilliant marketing move,” said Kerry White, leaning forward eagerly. He had been hired as vice president of marketing only a few months previously, so this conversation was relatively new to him. “Think of the commercials: ‘The company that saved your life is going to save your skin.’ “

  “We ran that campaign four years ago,” said the VP of finance, a skeletal woman named Cynthia Mummer. “It didn’t play.”

  “It didn’t play,” said Carl, “because we didn’t have yew in the products!”

  “Okay,” said Lyle, “can we …” He wanted to show off his newest idea, and struggled to find a good segue. “Can we make it a pun?”

  “A pun?” asked Kerry. “That’s your contribution?”

  “Our whole company name is already a pun,” said Cynthia.

  “But I mean a pun on what Carl just said,” said Lyle. “That we have yew in the products. ‘You’ in the products.”

  “We know what a pun is,” said Cynthia.

  “Just let him explain it,” said Sunny. Lyle was grateful and indignant at the same time: he needed Sunny’s support every time in these meetings, but he didn’t want to need it. Why couldn’t they let him stand up for himself?

  “I’ve been researching some biomimetic technologies,” said Lyle, “and I have something I want to—”

  “What’s biomimetics?” asked Kerry.

  “Bio-mimicry,” said Lyle. “It’s like a smart product, that can adapt itself to match your body.”

  Cynthia nodded. “We have biomimetic lipids in our teen skin care line. It’s one of our best sellers.”

  “Oh yeah,” said Kerry, “my wife loves that lotion.”

  “Your wife uses teen lotion?” asked Cynthia.

  “If you’ve been researching biomimetics,” Carl growled, “what have you got? We don’t pay you to sit on your butt all day—that’s why we have Jeffrey. You we pay for research and development. So: have you developed anything?�
��

  “Actually I do have something I’d like to show you,” said Lyle, lifting up his briefcase to set it on the table. “It’s the burn cream we’ve talked about before—it’s, ah, showing some interesting promise as an antiaging lotion. It’s not ready for the public yet, by any means, but the early results are promising and I want to dedicate a bigger piece of the budget to following it up.”

  “Why do we need a burn cream?” asked Cynthia icily. As CFO, she would have the strongest say in whether or not he got any more funding. Lyle swallowed nervously and opened his briefcase.

  “It’s not really a burn cream,” said Lyle, pulling out a folder and a stack of glossy photos. “The technology comes from a burn cream, from some medical research published a few years ago, but like I said, I think we have some pretty neat options for using it in cosmetics, in antiaging especially. The key component is plasmids.”

  “Oh,” shouted Jeffrey, “like in that game!”

  “No,” said Lyle, “like in the bacteria.”

  “You’re putting bacteria in a hand lotion?” asked Kerry. “I know there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but that’s pushing the limit.”

  “It’s not actual bacteria,” said Lyle, flipping through the folder. “Bacteria is where plasmids come from, but then they take them out and sell them separately.” He found a photocopied page in the folder and held it up, displaying two grainy, black-and-white images of what may or may not have been skin. “This is from a test at Boston University, using plasmids to rebuild burned skin—they go into the cells and accelerate collagen production, so the skin heals faster and more fully.”

  “Wait,” said Kerry, excited, “this is like a collagen injection in a lotion? That we can market the hell out of.”

  “Then why are you working on a lotion?” asked Carl, “and not a lipstick? Can we do it in a lipstick?”

  “Most lipsticks just make your lips look fuller,” said Kerry, “this one would actually make them be fuller. I can see it now—”