Replica

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

When this day was finally, finally over, Nadia was going to collapse into a heap and have a fit of screaming hysteria. But for right now, at least, her body seemed to have run out of adrenaline, and as she gently extricated herself from Nate’s arms and rose unsteadily to her feet, she hardly seemed to feel anything at all. Just a drifty, floaty feeling of unreality, heightened by the ringing in her ears that made all other sounds seem distant. She looked down at Dirk Mosely, dead because of her, and she felt neither triumph nor guilt.

Nadia suspected she was hovering on the verge of shock, which was probably not a good thing in the long run. But for now, she was grateful for whatever it was that kept her functioning. Beside her, Nate looked a little green, and he was breathing like he’d just run a marathon. Nadia took his clammy hand in hers, giving it a squeeze. She would not soon forget how he’d shielded her with his body when he thought the Chairman was going to shoot her.

“Come on,” she said, tugging his hand so he’d follow as she picked her way around the blood that spattered the floor. “We can freak out later. Right now, it’s time to finish this thing.”

The Chairman might be giving in to her demands, but she didn’t trust him for a moment. If all he did to shut Thea down was flip a few switches, she was certain it wouldn’t be long before he’d flip them back. Somehow, she was going to have to make sure whatever he did was permanent.

Down the hall, the Chairman was standing in front of a heavy metal door with a series of electronic keypads and scanners running along its side. He put his eye to the retinal scanner, then placed his whole hand on a fingerprint scanner, and even that wasn’t enough to open the door, because even after the lights on both scanners turned green, the door was still locked. He punched in a long code on one of the keypads, but the indicator light above it remained red. The Chairman frowned and entered the code again, with the same result. He pounded on the door with his left hand in frustration.

“Don’t be childish, Thea,” he said. “You know I can manually override this door.”

There was no response, although Nadia supposed it was unlikely there were speakers in the door.

“Can she actually hear you?” Nadia asked, curious despite herself. The equipment surrounding Thea’s “examining table” obviously included both speaker and microphone, but what was in the electronic equipment of the door?

“I see no reason why not,” the Chairman said, scowling at the door. “She’s obviously made unauthorized modifications to the door mechanism, and she has shown a tendency to enjoy eavesdropping. She has created ears where none existed before.”

“So she’s conveniently locking you out when you intend to shut her down?” Nadia asked with undisguised skepticism. If she were an unscrupulous bastard like the Chairman, she supposed she’d try to stall, too.

The Chairman ignored her and pounded on the door again. “Thea, open this door immediately!”

If he was stalling, then he was doing a pretty good acting job. He looked like he was about to take out his gun and start shooting again.

The Chairman hit the door one more time. “Fine!” He stalked down the hallway toward the room they had just vacated. “I’ll be right back.”

Nate and Nadia shared puzzled glances, wondering what the Chairman was up to. Nadia half expected him to shut the door and lock himself in the interrogation room, but after only a few moments, he emerged again holding a metal key on a chain. Nadia shuddered when she saw the blood on his hands and realized he must have taken the key from Mosely’s body.

If the Chairman was bothered by the blood that both literally and figuratively stained his hands, he didn’t show it. He flipped open an unmarked panel set in the door itself, rather than in the wall beside the door. Under the panel were a pair of keyholes. The Chairman plugged the bloody key into one of the holes, then loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar to get to a chain he wore around his neck. He slid the chain over his head and inserted the key into the second hole. Then he turned both keys simultaneously and Nadia could hear something heavy moving inside the door.

“Thea can meddle with electronics,” the Chairman said, “but she can’t physically alter the door itself. I originally had the manual override put in in case of loss of power, but I suppose it has other advantages.”

The door made a final clicking sound, and the Chairman pushed it open and stepped inside. Nate and Nadia followed.

Nadia had been expecting a room full of whirring electronic equipment, kept uncomfortably chilly to counteract the heat that equipment generated. Instead, she walked into a wall of damp heat that reminded her of the tropics.

The room was relatively small, only about ten by ten, and three walls were covered with shelves on which sat the expected whirring electronics. But scattered amongst the electronics were a variety of vats and jars, filled with a red fluid that bore a disturbing resemblance to blood. Fleshy red tendrils seemed to grow out of the jars like ivy, reaching out to the electronics and burrowing into ports and vents. A sound like the steady beating of a heart filled the room, and when Nadia looked closely, she could see the faint pulse traveling through the tendrils. She shivered, despite the heat.

“Thea isn’t just a machine,” the Chairman said. “It is her biological components that make her what she is. She is a living, intelligent creature.” He pulled the gun out of his pocket, but didn’t raise it. “I can’t just turn her off like a computer. To shut her down, I’ll have to kill her. Is that what you want me to do, Nadia Lake? Will you sit astride your high horse and order the death of a living being? Or did you get your fill of death when I executed Dirk Mosely on your command?”

“I didn’t command you to shoot him!” Nadia protested automatically. But if she was perfectly honest with herself, she knew there was no way her demands could have led to anything but death for Mosely. Even if he’d been arrested, he would have had to go to trial for his crimes, and a conviction would have led to execution. No matter how bad a man he had been, she knew she was going to bear that scar on her conscience for the rest of her life.

She looked around at the combination of flesh and electronics that surrounded her. Thea was indeed alive, and her abilities were awe-inspiring. If she’d been created and nurtured by someone who had a steady moral compass, she could have been an instrument for good in the world. But she’d been shaped by a power-hungry dictator with only the barest regard for human life. She had a personality of her own, and it was one that mirrored the Chairman’s, treating people like expendable game pieces. She could never be trusted to have humanity’s best interests at heart.

“Do it,” Nadia said.

The Chairman gave her a look of pure loathing, then raised his gun hand and pointed at one of the jars. He was sweating, though that might have been just the tropical heat of the room. He hesitated a long time, darting quick glances in her direction as if expecting her to change her mind any second. The lights dimmed briefly, and Nadia wondered if that was Thea’s version of a flinch. She raised her hands to cover her ears and was peripherally aware of Nate doing the same beside her.

The Chairman pulled the trigger, and the jar exploded, sending shards of glass and thick, coppery-smelling fluid into the air. A shrill alarm sounded, and a fleshy lump spilled out of the shattered jar and onto the floor. The lump had grooves and wrinkles reminiscent of a brain, though the shape was all wrong. The Chairman’s hands were covered with bloody fluid, but he barely seemed to notice. He turned to another jar, pulling the trigger once more. Then he repeated the process over and over, and with every biological component he shot, more of the electronic equipment went dark. The veins that connected the jars to the electronics stopped pulsing, and blood, or something very like it, formed a lake on the floor and coated everything.

Nate and Nadia retreated from the room, but not before they, too, were stained with Thea’s lifeblood, their shoes soaked in it. The Chairman didn’t stop shooting until every jar and vat was shattered, changing clips calmly when necessary. Then he stood there in the still, darkened room, covered in blood from head to foot, and wept.