Romy cried, “When he comes to the window—which will be in about two seconds—act pissed. We’re having a private argument here and he’s butting in. Can you get into that?”
“Yeah!” Patrick gritted his teeth and leaned closer. “I can get into that! I can get into it better’n you, you worthless mito—” He jumped at the tap on the driver window, turned, and rolled it down an inch. “Who the hell are you?”
The man’s lips turned up at the corners in a poor imitation of a friendly smile. “Hi, we’re a neighborhood patrol, just keeping an eye out for trouble and—”
“Yeah, well so what?” Romy said, leaning over Patrick’s shoulder and projecting Raging Romy-scale belligerence. “Who needs you? Go patrol some other neighborhood. This one’s fine!”
She noticed how the man’s eyes were fixed on Patrick, barely flicking her way during her outburst.
“Yeah!” Patrick said. “This one’s fine!”
Suddenly the guy’s hand darted into his coat and came out with a big pistol, a cousin to the HK in Romy’s bag, which she didn’t dare reach for now.
“Hold it!” he said, grinning at Patrick. His Adam’s apple was bobbing wildly. “I know you. You’re that sim lawyer. We’ve been looking for you. Turn off the engine.”
His expression tight, grave, Patrick glanced at Romy and obeyed.
“Hold real still now.” Without turning his head the man called to the Impala. “Yo, Snyder! Come see what we hooked!”
The Chevy’s driver door opened and a taller, beefier man stepped out. He had a small white bandage taped across his swollen nose.
“Well, well,” he said as he reached the van and looked inside. “If it isn’t Sullivan and Cadman.”
Romy knew she shouldn’t be surprised that he knew her name, but the way he said it, the sound of it on his lips, jolted her.
“What’s in the back there, folks?” Snyder said, grinning. “A ski mask, maybe? And a supply of paint balloons? Mind if we take a—”
What happened next was a blur: Two furry hands appeared, one to the left of Snyder’s head, one to the right of the redhead’s, and then those heads slammed together with a sickening crunch! Both men’s mouths dropped into shocked ovals as their eyes rolled up under their lids.
“Jesus!” Patrick said.
Then the furry hands smashed the heads together again, and this time the sound was wetter, softer. Blood spurted from the redhead’s nose, splattering Patrick’s window.
“Christ, Romy! Make him stop! He’s going to kill them!”
“Too late for that,” she said, feeling the cold touch of Raging Romy’s secret delight. “Kek! Put them back in the car. Quick!”
“I know that sound,” Patrick said dully. “I heard it the night we were run off the Saw Mill. I—”
She grabbed Patrick’s arm. “We’ve got to move! They may have a call-in schedule, and if they miss it—”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, looking dazed and maybe a little sick. “Got to move, but…Jesus.”
She noticed Kek dragging the two bodies back to the car and tossing them through the open driver door like sacks of wheat. She rolled down her window and leaned out.
“Kek! No, sit them up! Sit themup !”
The mandrilla looked at her, then nodded and followed her instructions.
She turned back to Patrick. “We’ve got to find Zero and get out of here!”
“Don’t forget Tome.” Patrick seemed to be recovering from his shock. “And what about Meerm?”
“I don’t know about Meerm. She might not even be in Newark any longer. But I know what these people will do to Zero if they find him.”
Patrick nodded. “Right.”
Romy heard the van’s rear door slam, looked around and saw Kek returning to his standby squat. She glanced at the Chevy and saw two upright silhouettes in its front seat.
“Stay here, Kek,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
The mandrilla made no sign that he’d heard, but she knew he had.
“We’ll be right back,” Patrick said. He cut her off as she opened her mouth to tell him she’d go alone. “We do this together.”
Romy sensed arguing wasn’t going to work so she nodded and motioned him to follow her. She moved off at a trot, heard his sloshing footsteps close behind.
Down the alley…nothing. Into the courtyard…nothing. Down a second alley…noth—
Wait. Voices to her left. Where? From that opening. Tome’s voice. Without hesitation she ducked and entered in a crouch. She heard Patrick puffing behind her. Ahead she could see that the tunnel opened into a vacant lot. And there, across the lot, Zero and Tome crouched before an open metal door, talking to no one, or at least no one she could see.
“Wait,” Patrick whispered. “Don’t go out there. Looks like they found her. Two more humans will only spook her.”
“She’ll be spooked a lot worse if more of Portero’s goons show up. They’d better talk her out of there soon or all this will be for nothing. We’ll give them a couple more minutes, then we’ve got to get out of here.”
“Might take more than a couple of minutes,” Patrick sighed. “I mean, would you trust a stranger in a ski mask?”
“Damn,” Romy said, feeling as if the tunnel walls were closing in on her. “She doesn’t come out in two minutes, I’ll go in there myself and drag her out.”
“Shhh!” Patrick hissed. “I’ll be damned! I think Zero’s going to take off his mask!”
Romy looked and—dear God, Patrick was right. Remaining statue-still, she held her breath and watched.
This is going nowhere, Zero thought. And it’s because of me. Or because of this ski mask.
No question about it: Meerm was in that elevator shaft, hiding in the dark, but she wasn’t budging. Tome was doing his best, but he wasn’t cut out for persuasion. Zero could try going in after her, and that would work if the space beyond the door was limited to just the shaft. But what if it opened into the rest of the warehouse? They’d never find her.
All right. He couldn’t blow this chance. It might never come again. Time to put it all on the line.
Zero pulled off his dark glasses, slipped his thumbs under the edge of his ski mask, and ripped it off.
“Look, Meerm,” he said, leaning through the open door. “Look at me. I’m not a man. I’m a sim. Not a sim exactly like you, but a sim just the same. And I promise you, Meerm, I swear to you that I am not here to harm you. Just the opposite. I am here to help you and protect you from being harmed by the bad men.”
Zero waited, hoping he’d said enough, praying he hadn’t said too much. He glanced at Tome who was staring at him with wide eyes. He nodded to the old sim, to let him know, yes, this is true. Maybe…maybe if only Tome and Meerm knew, he could still keep his secret. The two sims would talk, of course, but Zero could tell Romy and Patrick that he’d used makeup to look like a sim so he could coax Meerm out. They’d buy it. It was much more plausible than the truth.
Zero refocused on the black hole of the elevator shaft. He heard a rustle within, and then a hoarse, fragile voice…
“Is true? You not man?”
“No, Meerm.” Zero fought back a sob. It had worked. He could feel Meerm tipping his way. “I’m a sim too. But if I am to help you, we must hurry from here. Now.”
“Meerm want go.” And now a face, a swollen, care-ravaged sim face, floated into the light. “Meerm not like here. But…”
“We must go now, Meerm. The bad men are looking for you. If they come before—”
Meerm stepped out into the light. Zero gasped at the sight of her—her belly so big and her ankles so swollen she could barely move. She took a step forward, but caught her foot and started to fall. Zero grabbed her, then lifted her into his arms. She was heavy for a sim, but nothing he couldn’t handle.
“Don’t be afraid, Meerm,” he said in a soothing voice as she started to struggle. “You’re okay, now. I’ll make you safe and keep you that way. No one will hurt you eve
r again.”
As he turned toward the tunnel he saw two figures emerging from its entrance. Romy and Patrick, faces ashen, mouths agape, eyes fixed on his nonhuman face. They couldn’t miss its yellow eyes and simian cast—his brow ridge was not so pronounced as Meerm and Tome’s, he knew, his nose not quite as flat, but he was unmistakably sim like.
Oh, no, he thought as dismay softened his knees and he almost stumbled. Oh, God, what have I done?
Just when they were so close to success, he’d ruined everything. Now the whole organization would fall apart because…because who’d want to follow a sim?
Even worse was the uncomprehending look of betrayal he saw in Romy’s eyes.
But he had to press on. She looked away as he approached, so he addressed Patrick.
“Help me get her through the tunnel. We haven’t got much time.”
Patrick blinked, hesitated a heartbeat, then nodded. “Less than you think.”
As they eased Meerm into the opening, Zero prayed Romy would follow.
10
Silence ruled the van. Zero leaned forward as Patrick piloted them toward the freeway.
“Follow the signs toward the Goethals Bridge,” he told him.
He glanced at Romy, huddled against the passenger door at the far end of the front seat, staring dead ahead without blinking, looking as if she were in a trance.
I’ve really done it now, Zero thought. I’ve lost her. She’ll never trust me again.
Meerm whimpered at his side. She was curled next to him on the rear seat. He laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Tome and Kek hunched behind them in the open rear section.
“Goethals,” Patrick said. “Got it. But I think…I think we…” He seemed to run out of words.
“You think you deserve an explanation,” Zero said. “Of course you do.”
“I mean,” Patrick said, “I feel as if the world just tipped ninety degrees.”
Zero glanced again at Romy who still hadn’t moved. She’d known him so much longer than Patrick. Her world must feel even further out of kilter.
“You’re not human?” Patrick said.
“No.”
“I heard you tell Meerm that you’re a sim.”
“I am.”
“But how come you don’t…?”
“…look like the average sim? I’m one of the earliest, so early that you’ll find no UPC tattoo on the nape of my neck. Plus I’m a mutant—bigger and paler than my brother sims—too big and too human-looking for the workforce. So they kept me separate. I was raised in SimGen’s basic research facility and after a while I became a mascot of sorts. My only contacts growing up were the Sinclair brothers and their most trusted techs. Later, when Harry Carstairs arrived to take over sim training, he took a special interest in me.”
Harry…how he’d loved Harry Carstairs. The man’s daily visits had been the high point of his adolescence.
“He was impressed by my linguistic skills so he tested my intelligence; when he found it to be not only far above sim average but above human average as well, he and—”
He cut himself off. Better not mention Ellis.
“He got permission to see how far they could take me. I learned to read, and built up my own library; I was never allowed out of basic research, but television gave me a window onto the rest of the world. Harry and I…I guess you might say we bonded. He taught me to play chess and we spent hours hovering over the board.”
He missed Harry, especially their chess games. Every so often Zero would give in to a compulsion to see the man. He’d sneak by Harry’s house at night and watch him as he sat and played chess against his computer; he’d longed to knock on the window and challenge him to a game. But Harry believed him dead, and had to go on believing that.
Patrick said, “But how did you graduate from SimGen mascot to Zero, SimGen nemesis?”
“I’ve always been called Zero. I imagine it’s derived from part of my serial number when I was an embryo. As for my ‘graduation’…I believe I became inconvenient. Here I was, this man-size sim who was an evolutionary and commercial dead end. Somewhere along the line, a corporate decision was made to terminate me.”
“Jesus,” Patrick whispered. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“What were they going to do—shoot you?”
“An injection. They drew blood from me at regular intervals. This time they were going to put something in instead of take something out.”
Zero saw Romy glance quickly over her shoulder, then return to her thousand mile stare.
“Scumbags,” Patrick muttered, shaking his head.
Only one, Zero thought. Mercer Sinclair had made the unilateral decision.
He looked down at Meerm who’d closed her eyes and seemed to be dozing. Termination would have been her fate if Portero had found her first.
Patrick asked, “How’d you manage to escape?”
“I found I had a highly placed ally in the company who arranged to fake my death.”
Ellis again. He’d told his brother that he didn’t want a stranger terminating Zero, that he’d do it himself. But he injected Zero with a sedative instead of poison, cremated another dead sim in his place, and spirited him out of SimGen. He told Zero everything, and set him up with a steady flow of cash and data aimed toward one purpose: to stop SimGen and free his brother sims.
“This ally is the source of all your inside information, I take it,” Patrick said.
“Yes.”
Patrick shook his head again. “A high-up inside SimGen working against it. Is he nuts or does he have a personal beef with the Sinclairs?”
“Both, I think. But it’s also a moral issue with him.”
All true. But Zero had always sensed something else driving Ellis Sinclair, almost as if he felt he had to atone for something. Something “unspeakable,” perhaps?
Patrick laughed. “Put a sim in charge of bringing down the makers of sims. I’ve got to say, it has a nice symmetry to it. And now that we’ve got Meerm, it looks like your job is just about over. Congratulations, Zero. They chose the right man. I mean sim. I mean—hell, I don’t know what I mean. All I can say is I never had an inkling you weren’t human.”
And now we come to the crucial junction, Zero thought.
“Does it bother you that I’m not?” He directed the question at Patrick but he was watching Romy. He thought he saw her flinch.
“I don’t know. You’re not like Tome or any other sim I’ve met. In fact, you’re more human than some humans I know. Smarter too. What a world! But you haven’t steered me wrong yet. So I guess the answer is no. To tell the truth, every day I’m getting less and less sure about what exactly ‘human’ means.”
Bless you, Patrick, he thought, then looked at Romy. He couldn’t bear her silence any longer. This had to be dragged out in the open now.
“And you, Romy?” he said. “You haven’t said a word.”
For a few seconds, she didn’t move, then she twisted swiftly in her seat and faced him. Angry tears streaked her cheeks.
“You lied to me!”
“I never told you I was human.”
“You pretended to be!”
“I never pretended to be anything other than who I am. I didn’t even change my name.”
“You hid yourself—that was a lie!”
“No, I had to. Would you have joined me if you’d known I was a sim? A mutant sim?”
Her angry expression faltered, then she turned away again.
“Think, Romy. When was I ever untrue to you? Were the goals of our activities against SimGen ever other than what I said they were? Have I ever misled you into doing something that you didn’t want to do, or worked you toward an end that wasn’t your own as well?”
She replied in a tiny voice. “No.”
“Then can I ask you why you’re so angry at me?”
“Who says I’m angry at you?” she said in that same small voice. “Maybe I’m angry at me.”
Baffled, he replied, “I don’t—”
She held up a hand. “Can we just leave it be? I’ve got some adjusting to do and I need some time. Okay?”
“I understand, but I need to know: Are you still with us?”
She nodded without speaking, without looking around.
Zero leaned back and closed his eyes to hold back the tears.
After a while Patrick said, “Goethals Bridge dead ahead. Why do we want that?”
“Because it’s the quickest route out of Jersey.”
“But where are we going?”
“Dr. Cannon’s.” He took one of Meerm’s hands in his. “We’re bringing her the most important patient of her career.”
11
Two more men dead!
“Shit-shit-SHIT!” Luca Portero screamed as he smashed a glass paperweight against his office wall. He didn’t have to worry about anyone hearing; security staff was minimal on Sundays.
Luca hadn’t seen the bodies yet, but Lowery, who’d found them, had told them that both their skulls had been cracked like eggs. That sounded eerily similar to the way Ricker and Green had bought it off the Saw Mill. But this was in broad daylight, damn it!
Could things get any fucking worse?
As if in answer to his question, the secure phone rang. He hesitated—because, yes, things could get a lot worse—then answered it. He repressed a sigh of relief when he heard Lowery’s hello.
“What?”
“I’ve been checking around the area and found some squatters in this broke down old apartment house on the same block.”
“Did they see anything?”
“Not what happened to Snyder and Grimes, but they did see this black van parked on the street—”
“They’re sure it was black?”
“Double-checked that. They swear it was black. But here’s the meat: the one looking out the window says she saw a very swollen looking female sim being led into the black van.”
Oh, no! No! They’ve found her! Snatched her right out from under our noses! How the fuck could this happen?