As they got moving, Romy turned in the passenger seat and looked back. Kek was in the far rear; Tome sat next to Zero who was staring at the floor in silence.
“What’s wrong, Zero?”
“What?” he said, blinking and looking up at her. “What’s wrong? Everything’s wrong.”
“Meaning?”
“Please don’t ask me about it.” The lost look in his yellow eyes constricted Romy’s throat. “Not yet.”
“Where are we going?” Patrick said as they shot out of the parking lot.
“To pay a visit to someone who has answers I need.”
“Who?”
“Ellis Sinclair.”
29
“Fan out!” Luca shouted. “They could still be in the building!”
He doubted it, but that might be just what they wanted him to do: figure they’d taken off and go on a wild search through the streets, leaving them safe right here, laughing at him. That was what they’d expect him to do, only this time he wouldn’t.
“Everyone take a floor, take a hall, go from room to room. Look for a baby, a newborn baby girl.”
Luca kicked back through the operating room doors and grabbed the old guard by his collar. “The nursery! Where’s the nursery?”
“Th-third floor,” the old man cried, cringing.
“Take me there!”
A few minutes later he was standing before a plate-glass window, staring at the rows of bassinets, only half a dozen of them occupied. To his right a frightened new mother cried out and asked him what was wrong. He ignored her.
These babies, all so human looking. But that didn’t mean the sim baby couldn’t be among them. No way to tell. The safest thing would be to kill all the girls, but he didn’t know if he could do such a thing.
Movement on the screen of the monitor over the nurse’s station at the rear of the nursery caught his eye. The sim operation film…the one Lowery had supposedly shot up…it was still playing. Suddenly the film cut off and a man appeared. Luca knew that face…the Reverend Eckert! Somehow he’d got hold of the film. Eckert was broadcasting it all over the world!
Luca turned and began a stumbling trot back toward the elevators. Only one thing to do now.
Run.
30
MANHATTAN
It’s over, Mercer Sinclair thought as he turned away from his plasma screen TV and staggered to his living room window. He stared out over the oddly silent Fifth Avenue at the pale, dawn-lit shadows of Central Park. We’re done.
He hadn’t been able to sleep so he’d turned on the TV and begun channel surfing. He’d paused when he recognized Reverend Eckert’s face—that damn fool seemed to be on some channel somewhere every hour of the day and night—and stayed when he heard him rant about a sim giving birth to a half-human baby. And then he’d shown the birth.
Portero and SIRG had failed. Miserably. And worse, the sim baby was a girl, an all too human-looking girl.
What do I do now? he wondered, his gaze wandering to the squatting granite mass of the Metropolitan Museum a few blocks uptown. The markets were closed today in the US and most of Europe, and the trading day had already ended in Asia. But when the Pacific Rim markets reopened later tonight, SimGen stock would go into freefall.
Money wasn’t the issue; even without SimGen he was worth more than he could spend in a dozen lifetimes. No, it was the company itself that mattered. He’d devoted his life to building SimGen. It was his child, his only family, and now the wild dogs he’d kept at bay for so long would leap upon her and tear her to pieces.
Mercer thought of the .38 caliber revolver he kept in the drawer by the bed. Maybe that would be the best way, the easiest way. Better that than—
He stopped.
What am I thinking? It’s not over! I’ll fight this! Stonewall any questions, deny any and all allegations. Sims are my property, and it will take years—decades!—before someone can say otherwise. And that someone will be the Supreme Court of the United States, because that’s how far I’ll take it. And I’ll win that fight.
Oh, no. This is not over.
31
FAR HILLS, NJ
Ellis stared at the screen, fascinated, shouting, “They’ve done it! They’ve done it!”
He didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. He didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, or even what the rest of today would hold, but everything in his life was going to be different from now on. If nothing else, today promised a brighter future for the sims of the world.
His phone rang. “Ellis,” said a deep voice he immediately recognized.
“Zero! Congratulations! I just saw the film of the birth. Tragic about poor Meerm, but uploading the film to Eckert was a brilliant move. Where are you?”
“At the front gate.”
That startled Ellis. And something about Zero’s voice wasn’t right. “I’ll open it right away. Have you got the baby with you?”
“No. But I have questions. A lot of questions.”
Ellis’s stomach plunged: He’d been dreading this moment, dreading it for decades. “Yes, I suppose you do. I’ll open the gate.”
He pressed a button on a wall unit that operated the gate mechanism, then went to a front window to watch a black van climb the long winding driveway to the house. The cook and the maid had the day off; he’d planned to visit Robbie and Julie later, but he might have to delay that.
Ellis stepped outside as the van pulled to a stop before the front door. Zero alighted immediately and Ellis was surprised to see that he’d removed his mask, his simian features naked to the world. He walked past Ellis without a word, without a handshake, without even eye contact, and stepped into the foyer. A man and a woman emerged—Romy Cadman and Patrick Sullivan, looking perplexed. Ellis introduced himself and welcomed them. The last to debark were Kek and an aging sim, but they did not approach.
“You two are welcome inside,” he said.
“No, sir,” said the sim. “We stay. Good air.”
“As you wish.”
As Tome and the mandrilla wandered out onto the frosty lawn, Ellis stepped back inside and faced his guests.
“Can I offer anyone some—”
“You’ve seen the film,” Zero said, his voice thick. “Meerm’s baby is a girl, a very human-looking girl. Dr. Cannon told me she should look more like a sim and she told me why. She also gave me a possible explanation for why the baby looks so human. She didn’t want to believe it and neither do I. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“Yes, I believe I do.”
“Then tell me it’s not true!”
“I only wish I could.”
Zero lunged toward him, teeth bared, hands clawing forward. Ellis braced himself for the impact.
“Zero, no!” Romy cried.
Her voice seemed to pull him back. He turned away and leaned a hand against the wall.
“Monster!” The word came out half growl, half sob. “How could you?”
“I didn’t. At least not knowingly.”
“Can someone tell me what this is all about?” Romy said.
“Yes,” Ellis replied. “I suppose it’s time I told someone. Let’s all sit down and I’ll try to explain.”
He led them to the two-story cherrywood library that housed the book collection that had once been a pride, but had long ago stopped meaning anything. Romy and Patrick took a couch. Zero dropped into a wingback leather chair and stared at the floor; the pale morning light through the tall windows washed out what little color was left in his face. Ellis remained standing. This was going to be too painful to tell sitting down. He needed to be up, moving about to release the tension coiled like an over-wound spring in his chest.
He wished Zero were alone, but Zero might wind up telling Romy and Patrick anyway, so it was better they all heard it firsthand.
“I’ve lied to you, Zero. Lied to you from the day you were old enough to understand. You’re not a mutant sim. You’re the very first viable sim. We designated you ‘
Sim Zero.’ Your cells provided the source material that was modified and remodified into the creatures we now call sims. All sims are your descendants, Zero. You are the sim Adam.”
Ellis heard Romy gasp, heard Patrick mutter, “Oh, man!” But he was watching Zero.
Zero looked up, fixed him a moment with his yellow irises, then looked away again. “And who is my Adam?”
“That’s a longer, more complicated story. But I was lied to long before you were, Zero. To see the whole picture, we have to go back to the early days when my brother and I were plowing all our capital and everything we could borrow into germline engineering a commercially useful chimp-human hybrid. We weren’t looking to create a labor force then. We had other uses in mind—antibodies and xenografts were high on our list. We could see success down the road but we needed more funding. To get it, we made a deal with the Devil.
“Mercer approached the Pentagon with a plan to co-develop an aggressive warrior-type simian-human hybrid along with the more docile strain we wanted to market for commercial use. The World Trade Towers were still standing then, but everyone in the military accepted that sooner or later we’d be at war again in the Middle East. So the generals jumped at the plan. But they realized the outrage that would arise when the public learned that the army was creating gonzo animal warriors and training them to kill humans—what if they got loose?—so they cloaked their involvement under layers of security and bureaucracy.
“A wing of Army Intelligence was created to develop and train these hybrids as warriors; it was given the innocuous name of Social Impact Studies Group. SIRG in turn created Manassas Ventures as a conduit for the funds funneled to our new company, SimGen. To make this look like a real venture capital deal, the head of SIRG, a colonel named Conrad Landon, demanded that Manassas get a piece of SimGen in return for the investment. We agreed, not knowing at the time that we’d be mortgaging our souls.
“But even with all these millions in funding, the transgenic road to a sim-human hybrid was fraught with obstacles, and at times seemed impassable. Somatic cell nuclear transfer, embryo splitting, and germline modifications are routine procedures now, but not then. We found we were able to increase the intelligence of apes, mandrills, and baboons by only small degrees, which did not make the Pentagon happy. And we were also running into walls trying to ‘upgrade’ the chimp genome closer to human. We were swapping genes from our own cells into chimp germlines and making a hideous mess of it. With a string of failures and the Pentagon breathing down our necks, I was cracking under the pressure.”
Ellis sighed, remembering and regretting his decision to take a sabbatical at that time. Merce had been enraged, screaming that he was jeopardizing both their futures, but Ellis had made up his mind. He’d recently wed Judy and already their marriage was in trouble because he was never home. So for his own sanity and the sake of his marriage, he’d left his brother to work alone while they flew to France and rented a little house in Provence. It had temporarily saved his marriage, but it ruined the rest of his life.
“So I took a breather to rest and recoup. I intended to stay a month but that stretched into two, then three, then longer. I shouldn’t have gone at all. I’ve done many foolish things in my life, but the most foolish was trusting my brother to work alone.”
32
SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ
Darryl Lister had been waiting twenty minutes in Portero’s undersized backwoods shack. How did he stand this crummy, uncomfortable furniture? The guy lived like a refugee.
But not for too much longer.
He heard a car pull up outside and gestured to Venisi, one of the two men he’d brought with him, to check the window. He looked out and nodded.
Okay. Portero was here. Darryl took a deep breath. He’d been steeling himself for this moment since the word had come down a few hours ago. Now that it was here he wanted to get it over with. They’d been through a lot, Portero and he, but the time had come to put the past aside and deal with the present.
Darryl pointed to either side of the front door; Venisi and Markham nodded, drew their pistols, and moved into position.
He’s seen my car, he thought. He’ll be expecting me, but not them.
A few seconds later Portero stepped through, dressed in black BDU shirt and pants, his face tight, obviously ready for a confrontation. He immediately spotted his two extra guests and his hand darted toward his sidearm, but stopped halfway.
“Let’s not do anything precipitous, Portero,” Darryl said.
Portero glanced around the room. “Maria?”
“She’s in the bedroom. She didn’t feel a thing.”
Portero squeezed his eyes shut. “You didn’t have to—”
“Yes, I did.” Markham had held her down while Venisi put a bullet through her brain. She’d looked very peaceful when Darryl had looked in on her. “And it’s your fault. If you’d dumped her when I told you, she’d still be alive now, but you’re bigger than the rules, aren’t you, Portero. Now hold still while these two gentlemen search you.”
Darryl had warned his two men about Portero. He’d seen the guy in action—tough, fast, vicious—and didn’t want any slipups. Venisi covered him while Markham removed Portero’s pistol from his holster and did the pat down.
“What’s this all about?”
“Clean-up time. The time when you tie up the loose ends, mop up the floor, close the door, and walk away.”
When Markham was done, he nodded.
“You’re telling me I’m a loose end?”
“Eminently so.”
Portero looked at the ceiling. “I see.”
Darryl had to admire his composure. No breakdown, no begging. But he’d expected no less. If he kept this up, the next five minutes would be bearable.
“The Old Man found out about Snyder and Grimes,” Darryl told him. “I had to say you hid their deaths from me as well.”
That had been one hairy meeting. The Old Man had just received word that the DoD had reversed its approval for Operation Guillotine—soon as the Pentagon heard about the sim’s baby, it decided it wanted nothing to do with monkey commandos—and he was in a frothing rage. For a few bladder-clenching moments there Darryl had thought he might be scheduled for a one-way ride into the woods, but he’d managed to shift all the blame to Portero.
“Snyder and Grimes brought your loss total to six men—five KIA and one Section Eight. But that’s only part of the reason I’m here.” He gestured toward the door. “Let’s step outside.”
Portero led the way, followed by Venisi and Markham. Darryl brought up the rear.
“It’s all falling apart,” he said as he ejected the clip from the pistol that had been used on Maria. “The sweetest arrangement ever—ever—is tumbling down around us. All because you didn’t do your job. So now we have to fall back. Covering our tracks isn’t going to be enough. We have to erase them.”
One by one he began removing the .45 caliber rounds from the clip.
“For instance, as we speak, there’s an inferno raging in the middle of an Idaho nowhere, roasting a lot of monkey meat. When the arson squad, or whoever eventually gets the job, starts to sift through the ashes, they’re going to have a lot of questions, but no answers.”
When he got down to the last round, he left it in the clip and pocketed the others.
“Since no clean-up can be guaranteed perfect, another aspect of the process is to provide plausible deniability for the high-ups should the dogs come sniffing their way. That means removing the weak or the too-visible links in the chain. You, unfortunately, fall into both those categories.”
“I thought we were friends.”
“We were. But this goes beyond friendship. It’s not like I have a choice, so don’t make this harder than it already is. You botched a number of crucial ops and, worse, made a spectacle of yourself at that hospital this morning.”
Darryl watched him bristle at this, but Portero said nothing. Couldn’t blame him. Why talk? Nothing he said would
change anything.
“And because I brought you in, it falls to me to usher you out.”
Darryl checked the pistol to make sure the chamber was empty, then wiped it and the clip clean with a handkerchief. He handed both to Portero.
“So…it’s time. After all we’ve been through, I feel it’s only fair to offer you a chance to do the right thing.”
Portero took a deep breath, then nodded and accepted the weapon.
“I’d like to do it alone.”
“I think we’d all prefer that.” Darryl gestured to the trees. “Do it in the woods.” That was where Darryl had planned to leave the body anyway. It might be months before anyone found it, if ever. “But don’t try anything cute, Portero. Stay in sight. I’m giving you the option to go out like a man. Try to run and we’ll hunt you down like a dog.”
Another nod from Portero as he stared at the pistol and the clip in his hands, then he turned and walked into the trees.
“Spread out,” Darryl told Venisi and Markham in a low voice. “Triangulate on him. Keep him in sight. He starts to run, take him down.”
But Portero acted the good soldier. He walked about a hundred feet along a path into the trees, stopped beside a big oak. He faced them and raised the pistol to the side of his head.
Jesus, he’s looking right at us.
Darryl’s instinct was to turn away, but he forced himself to watch.
The shot cracked through the chill air, Portero’s head jerked to the left, and his body collapsed into the brush.
Darryl let out a breath. Done. Clean and neat.
He gestured to Venisi and Markham. “Check him out. If he’s still breathing, finish him.”
He’d heard of people surviving some outrageous head wounds. And with the way things had been going for Portero lately, who knew? He might have botched this too.
33
FAR HILLS, NJ