Sims

“I’m grateful too,” Zero said, “for how well you and Romy are working together.”

“So far, so good. She’s a piece of work.”

“That she is. One very intense young woman. Tell me, Patrick, do you hope for a closer relationship between the two of you?”

Patrick blinked in surprise. Odd question. “Do you mean working or personal?”

“Personal.”

“Is there something I don’t know?” he said, turning to look at Zero. He wished he’d take off that mask. “Is there something going on between you and Romy? Because if there is—”

Zero gave a dismissive wave. “Nothing, I assure you. I am…unavailable.”

That was a relief.

“Well, okay, but all I can say is, whether or not we go the next step is up to her. If you’re worried about a romance between us interfering with our job performance, rest easy. The lady has thus far found the strength of character to resist my charms.”

“Which I’m sure are considerable.”

“As me grandma used to say,” he said in a pretty fair Irish accent, “from yer lips to Gawd’s ear.”

“Speaking of God, I’ve been looking at this church. Are you Catholic?”

“With a name like Patrick Michael Sullivan, could I be anything else?”

“Practicing?”

“No. Pretty much the fallen-away variety. Haven’t seen the inside of a church for some time.”

“But you do believe in God.”

“Yeah, sure.” Where was this going?

“Did you know that some sims believe in God, even pray to Him?”

“No. I didn’t.” For some reason the idea made him uncomfortable. “Any particular faith?”

“They tend toward Catholicism. They like all the statues, although they find the crucifix disturbing. They’re most comfortable with the Virgin Mary. Pick through any sim barrack and you’ll usually find a few statues of her.”

“I can see that. A mother figure is comforting.”

“Sims pray to God, Patrick. But does God hear them?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do sims have souls?”

“This is heavy stuff.”

“Most enlightened believers accept evolution. Genetics makes it impossible for an intelligent person to deny a common ancestor between chimps and humans. Some theologians posit a ‘transcendental intervention’ along the evolutionary tree, the moment when God imbued an early human with a soul. So I ask you, Patrick: When human genes were spliced into chimps to make sims, did a soul come along with them?”

“To tell the truth,” Patrick said, “I’ve never given it an instant’s thought until you just mentioned it.”

Who had time to ponder such imponderables? Zero, obviously. And it seemed important to him.

“Think about it,” Zero said. “Sims praying to a God who won’t listen because they have no souls. Imagine believing in a God who doesn’t believe in you. Tragic, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely. But I wonder—”

The wail of a siren cut him off. He watched as an ambulance screamed into the parking lot across the street.

“You think that’s for Romy?”

“I imagine so.” Zero’s voice now was close behind him. “I told her to give it her best performance.”

They watched a pair of EMTs, a wiry male and a rather hefty woman, hurry inside. A few moments later they reemerged, pulled a stretcher from their rig, and hauled it inside.

“Wow,” Patrick muttered. “She must be bucking for an Oscar.”

He kept his tone light but felt a twinge of anxiety at the way those EMTs were hustling. A long ten minutes later they exited, wheeling the stretcher between them. But it wasn’t empty this trip. Patrick could make out a slim figure in the blanket. Had to be Romy. He noticed that her head was swathed in gauze…with a crimson stain seeping through.

“Shit!” he cried, fear stabbing him as he reached for the door handle. “She’s bleeding!”

“Wait!” he heard Zero say, but he was already out and moving toward the street.

No way he could sit in a van and watch Romy be wheeled into an ambulance by strangers when she was hurt and bleeding. Her gaze flicked his way as he dashed into the parking lot. When he saw her hand snake out from under the blanket and surreptitiously wave him off, he slowed his approach. And when she gave him a quick thumbs-up sign, he veered off and headed for the office building. He waited inside until the ambulance wailed off, then crossed back to the van.

“She seems okay,” he said as he climbed back into the driver seat.

“Wonderful,” replied the voice from the dim rear.

“But what the hell happened in there?” He threw the shift into forward and took off after the receding ambulance. “She was supposed to stand clear and fake being hurt. How the hell did she cut her head open?”

“I should have foreseen this,” Zero said. “This is so Romy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you understand? She had to make it real. She had to send a message to Manassas and SimGen and whoever else is involved that she’s ready to bleed for her beliefs.”

“Sheesh,” Patrick muttered.

“Isn’t she wonderful.”

It wasn’t a question. In that moment Patrick realized that the mysterious Zero, although “unavailable,” was as smitten with Romy Cadman as he was.

“What is it about her?” Patrick said. The ambulance was still in sight, though blocks ahead. Tailing it was easy in the light traffic. “I mean, you’re obviously taken by her, and I confess I’m drawn to her—”

“Drawn?”

“Like a moth to a searchlight. And then that guy Portero—”

“The SimGen security chief?”

“He’s got it bad for her. Might as well have written it on his forehead in DayGlo orange. What is it about Romy Cadman?”

“Simple: her purity.”

Patrick didn’t have to ask. He knew Zero wasn’t talking about virginity. He was talking about heart, about purpose.

“I hear you. But Portero didn’t strike me as the kind who’d go for that.”

“Some men approach purity like Romy’s simply to protect it from harm; and some wish to draw closer in the hope that it will rub off on them or somehow cleanse them; and others want to possess it merely to defile it and extinguish it because it reminds them of what they have become, as opposed to what they could have been.”

Patrick glanced Zero’s way in the rearview. He’d obviously given a lot of thought to this.

“Well, I guess we know where Portero fits in that scheme.”

“I think we do.”

“But how about you?”

A long pause, then Zero said, “If my circumstances were different, I’d be content merely to warm myself in her glow. And if I couldn’t do that I’d settle for curling up outside her door every night to keep her safe from trespassers.”

Patrick swallowed, unexpectedly moved.

“You know, Zero,” he said, his voice a tad hoarse, “I’ve got to admit I’ve had my doubts about you. Major, heavy-duty doubts. But now…”

“Now?”

Patrick didn’t know quite what to say. Any man who could pinpoint Romy as Zero had, and who could not only feel about her the way he’d described, but come out and say it…

“You’re all right.”

Lame, but the best Patrick could do at the moment. At least it was sincere. Romy would appreciate that.

8

Patrick parted the curtains that separated Romy’s treatment area from the rest of the bustling emergency room. She sat on the edge of a gurney, her head swathed in fresh gauze—but no seepage this time. She looked pale and tired, but even so, to Patrick she was a vision.

“How are you feeling?”

A wan smile. “I’ve got a killer headache but I’ll survive.”

He leaned close. “How’d you get hurt?”

“You’ve heard the expression, ‘Shit happens’? Well—”

Patrick clapped his hands over his ears. “The ‘S’ word! Saints preserve us!” He wanted to throw his arms around her but made do with seating himself next to her on the gurney. “Seriously. What happened?”

“This lighting fixture fell from the ceiling and clocked me on the noggin; things get a little fuzzy after that. Took the ER doc hours to get to me, then after she stitched up my scalp there were x-rays and—”

“How many stitches?”

“The doctor said seventeen.”

“Seventeen!” The number horrified him.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds. She said she placed them close together to keep the scar thin.”

Scar?“Jesus, Romy—”

She smiled. “Not like I’m going to look like the bride of Frankenstein, or anything. It cut my scalp, way up above the hairline. Once the hair grows back where they shaved it, no one will know, not even me.”

Relief seeped through Patrick. The lighting fixture had been his idea. If it had left Romy disfigured…

“Why, Romy?”

“Relax, will you. I got a tetanus shot out of it, and a free ride in a stoplight-running ambulance. It’s no biggie, Patrick. Really.”

“Is to me. Zero too.” Patrick had driven him to the garage, then rushed back here. “He wants me to call him as soon as—”

“I’ll call him.”

“How many days are they going to keep you?”

“Days? More like minutes. They’re finishing up my paperwork now.”

“You’re kidding!” Patrick realized his knowledge of medicine was just this side of nothing, but wasn’t it standard procedure to admit a head-trauma patient for observation, at least overnight? “They’re letting you go?”

“Be real, will you. It’s just a cut on my head. I can—”

“Excuse me,” said a male voice.

Patrick looked up and saw a dark-haired man in a gray suit standing between the parted curtains.

“Are you her doctor?” Patrick said. If so he was going to warn him about the malpractice risks of releasing Romy too early.

The man flashed a collector’s edition set of pearlies. “Not a chance. I’m an attorney and I’m looking for the woman who was injured in the Manassas Ventures offices this morning.”

Patrick stared at him. He’d met his share of ambulance chasers, but this guy really lived up to the name.

“That would be me.” Romy shook her head. “But I don’t need a lawyer. I’ve—”

“You’re absolutely right. And that’s precisely why I’m here.” He handed Romy a card. “Harold Rudner. I represent Manassas Ventures.” He set his briefcase on the gurney and popped its latches. “The company called me the instant its landlord informed it of this unfortunate incident. I was instructed to find you and compensate you immediately for the pain and inconvenience you have suffered.”

“Compensate me?”

He lifted the briefcase lid, removed a slip of paper, and extended it toward Romy.

“Exactly. Although your injury resulted from shoddy work by remodeling contractors, Manassas is taking full responsibility and offering you this to ease your distress.”

Romy took the slip and stared at it. “A check? For a hundred thousand dollars?”

“Yes.” He pulled a sheaf of papers from the briefcase. “And all you need do to have your name written on the pay-to-the-order-of line is sign this release absolving Manassas Ventures of all liability and refrain from any future—”

“Wow!” Patrick said, impressed. “Hit her while she’s still dazed from the terrible concussive impact of her life-threatening head injury, then shove a check under her nose and tell her all those zeroes can be hers if she’ll just sign away her legal rights to just compensation for an injury that might affect her quality of life for years, maybe decades, perhaps permanently. Youare a smoothy.”

Romy and Rudner were staring at him.

Finally Rudner spoke. “Are you her lawyer?”

“I am a very close personal friend who just happens to be an attorney.”

Rudner turned to Romy. “I am offering you far more than you could hope to receive from any jury.”

“We’ll see about that,” Patrick said. “One hundred thousand dollars barely scratches the surface of the amount this unfortunate woman deserves for her pain and suffering.”

Romy smiled and handed back the check. Rudner took it with a sad shake of his head.

“You’re making a big mistake,” he told her. “One you’ll regret when a jury offers you only a fraction of this—one third of which will go to your attorney. This could be all yours, every cent of it.”

Romy’s hands flew to her mouth as she gave Patrick a wide-eyed stare. “Oh, Patrick! Am I making a terrible mistake? You know how I depend on your wisdom. Tell me. I don’t know what to do!”

Patrick had to look away. It took all his will to keep a straight face. When he had control, he turned back, took both her hands in his, and lowered his voice an octave. “Trust me, my dear. I am well versed in these matters. You deserve much, much more.”

“All…all right,” she said, her voice faltering. “If you say so.”

Rudner shook his head again and closed his briefcase. As he lifted it off the gurney he turned to Patrick.

“And you calledme a smoothy?”

As soon as he was gone they both doubled over in silent laughter.

“Life-threatening head injury?” Romy gasped, red-faced.

Patrick countered with, “‘You know how I depend on your wisdom’? I thought I was going to get a hernia!”

She pressed her hands against her temples. “Oh, I shouldn’t laugh! It makes my headache worse!”

Patrick looked at her. “I know this is serious business, but I couldn’t resist. That was fun.”

She frowned. “Do you think he knew who we were?”

“Not a clue. He’s a hired gun.” Patrick shook his head, still amazed at how quickly the company had responded. “A hundred grand for a cut head offered to someone they might just as easily have charged with trespassing. If this is any indication of how badly Manassas wants to avoid the legal system, I think we’re onto something.”

9

SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ

DECEMBER 7

“So,” Mercer Sinclair said, “the missing globulin farmers have surfaced.” He’d chosen that word deliberately but his little pun went unappreciated by his audience. So he added, “Literally.”

That at least elicited a smile from Abel Voss.

Mercer had invited the usual crew—Voss, Portero, and Ellis—to his office to discuss the matter. He had his agenda for the meeting posted in a corner of the computer monitor embedded in the ebony expanse of his desk while his custom news service scrolled items tailored to his topics of interest.

“Postmortem ain’t back yet,” Voss said, “but the M-E’s on notice to copy us immediately with any and all results.”

“I’m told the bodies appear to have been in the river about a week.”

Voss nodded. “All three of them shackled together and weighted down. But the Hudson’s gotta way of returning some of the gifts it gets. Looks like these SLA boys took ’em for a ride that very night, shot them in the head, then dumped them before sunup.”

“But not before torturing them,” Ellis said.

Mercer glanced at his brother. Ellis hadn’t missed a meeting in months now. Maybe his latest anti-depressant cocktail was working. Mercer knew he should be glad about that but he wasn’t. The closer Ellis was to catatonia, the easier he was to deal with.

“Yep, I heard that too,” Voss said. “Cigarette burns, fingernails tore off.” He grimaced. “Ugly stuff.”

“They were globulin farmers, Abel,” Mercer said, unable to keep the scorn from his tone. “Somebody improved the gene pool by removing them.”

“Don’t get me wrong, son. I ain’t no fan of their sort. Riddin the world of their kind is all fine and good. But torture? Ain’t no call to torture no one, son. No one. I think we’re dealin with some real sick puppies here.”

“Which segues very neatly into the reason for our meeting: the ‘sick puppies’ who call themselves the Sim Liberation Army. It’s been a week since they raided that globulin farm and no one knows any more about them today than they did then. And where are the sims they supposedly wanted to free?” He turned to his chief of security who had yet to say a word. “Mr. Portero, if the NYPD is at a loss, surely your people have the resources to pick up the slack, don’t you think?”

Portero shrugged. “We’re looking into it.”

“This needs more than mere looking into, Mr. Portero. We need to track them down. It’s vitally important that SimGen be recognized as the true guardians and protectors of sims, not some group of murderous radicals.”

Portero said, “The longer they go undetected, the lower the odds of finding them. And so far they seem to have pulled off a perfect disappearing act.”

“Which means what?”

“That they’re probably professionals—well-funded professionals. Which makes me wonder if they might not be connected to that lawyer Patrick Sullivan.”

“Why on earth would you think that?” Ellis said.

“It’s not a stretch. A quarter of a million dollars appeared out of the blue to keep his unionization case going just when it was ready to fall apart. And I saw him and the Cadman woman outside the globulin farm the morning after this SLA demolished it.”

Cadman? Mercer thought. Didn’t I just see that name? He’d been about to switch the topic to the annual stockholders’ meeting less than two weeks away, but instead he reversed the scroll on his newsclips.

“On the contrary, Portero,” Ellis said. “It’squite a stretch. People who try to use the legal system to seek a solution don’t suddenly leap to murder and arson.”

Portero’s face remained impassive as he replied. “Perhaps Sullivan became a bit testy after his clients were put down.”

Ellis stared at him. “You lousy piece of—”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Voss said, shifting his considerable bulk in his seat and raising his hands. “We’re not the enemy here. The enemy is outthere .”

“Really?” Ellis said. “Sometimes I wonder.”

Cadman…Mercer kept searching his screen. There. Found it. A suit against Manassas. He smiled. He’d long ago embraced his anal-completist nature because it so often paid unexpected dividends. Like now: Years ago, when he’d begun using the service, he’d entered ‘Manassas Ventures’ as a search string; this was the first hit he’d ever seen. He clicked on the abstract to bring up the full article; he felt a sweat break as he skimmed it.

“Listen to this,” Mercer said. “Someone is suing Manassas Ventures.”

He noticed a slight stiffening of Portero’s parade-rest stance. “Is that so?”

“Manassas is in your people’s bailiwick. Why don’t you know about this?”

“We have lawyers for legal problems. What’s the suit about?”

“Let’s see…no dollar amount given, just ‘unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.’”

“No, I mean the reason for the suit.”

“Lots of things. Here’s just a sample: ‘physical injury, pain, suffering, mental anguish and trauma, unpleasant mental reactions including fright, horror, worry, disgrace, embarrassment, indignity, ridicule, grief, shame, humiliation, anger, and outrage.’”

Portero snorted. “Probably a stubbed toe. They’ll put a check in front of him and he’ll go away.”

“I doubt it. It’s not a him. It’s a her named Cadman. Romilda Cadman.”

Portero’s smug reptile mask dropped and, just for a second, Mercer caught a flash of uncertainty. Portero…unsettled? The possibility turned his stomach sour, like curdled milk.

“The OPRR inspector lady?” Voss said. “The one who funded Sullivan’s sim case? What thehell ?”

“Care to guess what attorney is representing her?”

“I don’t have to,” Voss said. “Gotta be Sullivan.”

Mercer noted that Portero’s dumbfounded look had surrendered to tightlipped anger. He glanced at Ellis, expecting some sort of comment, but his brother remained silent, his expression unreadable.

“Right,” Mercer said. “Patrick Sullivan again. I don’t like this.”

“This makes no sense.” Portero’s voice was even softer than usual. “What can they possibly hope to gain? Are they that desperate for cash?”

“Oh, I doubt money’s got a thing to do with this,” Voss said. “It will take them years to get a decision, and even if they win, more years before they ever see a dime. No, instead of thinking about money, we should be asking why the man who harassed SimGen about unionizing sims is now harassing the venture capital company that helped put SimGen in business. I find that real disturbin.”

The question disturbed Mercer as well. “You’re the lawyer,” he told Voss. “Have you got an answer?”

“I’m bettin he wants to use the discovery procedures of a civil action to dissect Manassas Ventures’ workings—its board of directors, its assets and liabilities, the whole tamale.”

Mercer’s gnawing sense of malignant forces converging on him had receded after the withdrawal of the sim unionization suit, but now it returned with a gut-roiling vengeance.

“Why Manassas? Beyond owning a bundle of SimGen stock, it has no direct link to us.”

“Not anymore, but it used to. Obviously he’s sniffed out something and he’s going after it.”

“Maybe it’s just a fishing expedition,” Mercer said, but he didn’t believe it.

“Could be, but why in that particular pond? And let’s face it, Manassas is such a well-stocked pond, he just might hook something.”

No one spoke then. The idea that anyone would want to lift the Manassas Ventures rock and inspect what was crawling around beneath it had never occurred to Mercer. He’d been assured that Manassas was a dead end. But what if wasn’t? What if someone found a trail that led from Manassas to SIRG?

This had to be stopped. Now. Before it went any further.

He looked at Portero. “Your people can handle this, can’t they?”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Voss said, holding up a hand before Portero could reply. “Before we start talking about stuff I don’t want to hear, why don’t you just buy her off?”

Portero stared at him. “Buy her off? You don’t know this woman. I spent days with her during the OPRR inspection and let me tell you, she is not for sale.”

Voss grinned. “Sure she is, son. I’ve waded through truckloads of bullshit in my day, but I’ve learned one thing always holds true: Everybody’s got a price tag. Some hide it better’n others, but you look hard enough, you’ll find it. Your folks’ve got pockets deep as a well to China. You have them tell her to name a price, and then you meet it. And that’ll be it. You’ll see.”

But Portero was shaking his head. “I don’t think there’s enough money in the world.”

Mercer was surprised by something in his tone. It sounded like admiration.

10

MANHATTAN

DECEMBER 8

Zero had called and asked Patrick to come over to the West Side garage. Romy was already there when Patrick arrived. With oversized sunglasses hiding her fading shiners, and a baseball cap covering her stitched-up scalp, she looked none the worse for wear.

Patrick asked her how she was doing, and of course she told him fine. She was always “fine.” She said she’d be even better when the stitches came out tomorrow.

Patrick rubbed his hands together. The old radiator running along the cinderblock wall only partially countered the afternoon chill. Neither Romy nor Zero seemed to feel it. Of course Zero, swathed head to toe as usual, would be the last to chill.

“We heard from the Manassas attorneys,” he told them. “They want a meeting. Soon. I set it up for next Thursday, my office.” He glanced at Romy. “Can you make it?”

“I’ll be there.”

“My only regret is that I couldn’t add my own charges to the suit.”

“On what grounds?”

“Loss of services and consortium.”

“You,” she said, pointing a finger at him, “are incorrigible.” She tried to look stern but he could see she was fighting a smile. She turned to Zero. “Did you have any luck with my photo?”

“Quite an interesting picture,” Zero said, handing Romy an eight-by-ten color print.

The dim light made it hard to see details. Patrick craned his head over Romy’s shoulder for a better look, but found himself gazing at the nape of her neck instead, focusing on the gentle wisps of fine dark hair trailing along the curve. He leaned closer, drinking her scent, barely resisting the urge to press his lips against the soft white skin…

“That’s him, all right,” Romy said. “Does he have a name?”

“Yes. It took me a while to trace him but—”

“Christ!” Patrick said. He pointed to a spot at the rear end of the ceiling. “Who’s that?”

He’d glanced up and caught a flicker of movement above and beyond Zero, at the point where a ladder embedded in the rear wall of the garage ran up to a square opening in the ceiling. He could swear he’d seen a pair of eyes peering out at them from within that darkness.

Zero didn’t turn to look. “Where?”

“There! In that opening! I saw someone!”

The opening was empty now, but he knew what he’d seen.

“I’m sure you did,” Zero told him. “But it was no one you need concern yourself with at the moment. Now—”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Patrick said, walking over to the ladder. “If someone’s up there listening, I want to know who it is.”

“Someone’s up thereguarding ,” Romy said. “Please, Patrick. Let it go for now.”

He didn’t like letting it go, but short of climbing up there and entering that patch of night—something he had no inclination to do—Patrick didn’t see that he had much choice. He’d come to trust Zero, and if he said someone was guarding them, then Patrick would buy it.

“All right,” he said, turning back. “Where were we?”

Zero said, “The man in the photo looked Japanese so I scanned him into a computer and had it comb the databases of the Japanese government and major Japanese corporations.” He held up a printout of a full-face photo of someone who bore a passing resemblance to the man in Romy’s shot. “This came back with a sixty-three percent confidence match.”

“That’s him,” Romy said without hesitation.

“You’re sure? The computer wasn’t.”

“Don’t care. I saw him live and that’s him.”

“Fine,” Patrick said. “Now…who him?”

“Yoshi Hirai, Ph.D.,” Zero said. “Top recombinant man for Arata-jinruien Corporation.”

“Which is…?” Patrick had never heard of them.

“A division of Kaze Group and one of SimGen’s potential competitors. They want to raise their own sims but so far haven’t met with any success. They even started a dummy corporation to pirate the sim genome but were caught. They’ll do anything to cut into the sim market.”

“What was a creep like that doing at the fire?” Romy asked.

“Exactly what I’d like to know.”

Patrick said, “Could the SLA be Japanese? But why hijack sims when they can lease as many as they want? And why these globulin farm sims?”

“Never mind why,” Romy said. “How about where? Where are those sims? That’s my concern. I hope they don’t end up like their farmers, or get spirited off to Japan. We’ll never find them.”

11

RIVERSIDE PARK

Meerm so very sad. Live all alone in bush. Walk night, hide day. Find clothes, dirty, smelly, but warm. Wear three shirt and two pant. Steal blanket. Carry all night while search food.

Pain wake Meerm in bush home. Dark come now. Many people walk. Meerm know must stay hid till late. Meerm so hungry. Peek out bush. Ver near big round building made stone. See lady point, say, “Granztoom.”

Meerm not know what granztoom.

Meerm move along wall, stay dark spot. Climb to street. Put blanket over head and walk. Keep face down, look sidewalk. So fraid people hurt if see Meerm, but people walk fast, not look Meerm.

Meerm look for light-front place people eat. Can find food in dark behind. But see no place yet. Street dark. Hear noise behind. Meerm so scare, push against wall, turn. Building door open. Sim come out. Two sim, three sim, many sim. Meerm watch as more sim than count line up straight at curb.

Meerm see bus come and all sim go in. Meerm so cold, so hurt, so lone. Meerm drop blanket and go behind last sim. Climb step, sit empty seat. Bus dark and warm. Meerm curl up, close eye.

12

WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NY

Patrick’s breath steamed in the night air as he strolled across the rear lawn of Beacon Ridge toward the sim barrack. He’d been back only once since the night of the poisoning. He wasn’t sure exactly why he’d come tonight. Talking about sims with Romy and Zero this afternoon had made him think of Tome. He’d returned to Katonah to sign some papers dealing with his property—someone had made an offer on what was left of his home and he’d accepted—and gave in to an urge to see how the old sim was doing.

As he reached for the knob on the barrack door it opened and out stepped Holmes Carter. He jerked his portly frame to a halt, obviously startled.

“Sullivan?”

“Carter. Fancy meeting you here.”

Carter didn’t offer to shake hands, neither did Patrick. They’d reached a détente but that didn’t make them friends.

“I was just about to say that myself,” Carter replied. “You’re trespassing, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. But ease up. I’m not looking for new clients. Just visiting an old one. Promise.”

“Tome?”

“Yeah.” Patrick noticed Carter staring at him from under his protruding forehead, saying nothing. “Something wrong?”

“I guess you could say I’m amazed. I figured since the sims dropped the union idea and were no further use to you, we’d never see you again.”

“That’s usually the way it goes with client-attorney relationships, but these were special clients.”

Another long stare from Carter. He was making Patrick uncomfortable.

“You’re full of surprises, aren’t you, Sullivan.” Then he sighed. “Maybe it’s a good thing you’re here. Tome isn’t doing too well.”

Aw, no. “Is he sick?”

“I had a vet check him and she says no. He does his washroom duties, but just barely. He’s listless, eating just enough to stay alive, and spending all of his free time in his bunk.”

It occurred to Patrick that Holmes Carter seemed to know an awful lot about this aging sim.

“What brings you down to the barracks? Never knew you to be one to mix with the help.”

He looked away. “Just checking up on him. So sue me, I’m worried.”

Now it was Patrick’s turn to stare. He remembered how Carter had pitched in to help the poisoned sims, and now this.

“You’re no slouch in the surprise department yourself, Holmes.” This had to be one of a handful of times he’d addressed the man by his first name.

“The board wants him declared D and replaced. I was giving him a pep talk but I’m not getting through. Want to take a crack at him?”

Patrick knew that if Tome were human he’d have been offered grief counseling after the killings. The poor old guy must be really hurting.

He stepped past Carter into the barrack.

“I’ll give it a shot.”

With Carter following, Patrick wandered through the familiar front room, past the long dining tables and battered old easy chairs clustered around the TVs in two of the corners. The gathered sims glanced at him, then returned to what they were doing. He thought of the joyous welcomes that used to greet him, but most of those sims were dead or still at work, finishing up in the club kitchen. These replacement sims didn’t know him.

But wait…he remembered one sim, a caddie…

“Where’s Deek?” he said.

Carter glanced around. “I don’t see him. Might be sitting outside. The other survivors seemed to have bounced back, but not Tome.”

That’s because he was the patriarch, Patrick thought.

He proceeded into the rear area and looked around. The dorm area was dimly lit; his gaze wandered up and down the rows of bunk beds, searching for one that was occupied.

“Left rear corner,” Carter said. “Lower bunk.”

Patrick started forward, puzzled. He’d already looked at that bunk and had thought it was empty. But now he could see a shape under the covers, barely raising them, curled and facing the wall.

“Tome?” he said.

The shape turned and Patrick recognized Tome’s face as it broke into a wide smile.

“Mist Sulliman?” The old sim slipped from under the covers and rose to his feet beside his bed. “So good to see.”

Patrick’s throat constricted at the sight of Tome’s stooped, emaciated form. Wasn’t he eating at all?

“Good to see you too, Tome.”

He held out his hand and, after a second’s hesitation, Tome reached his own forward.

“You come see Mist Carter?” Tome said as they shook hands.

“No, Tome. I came by to see you.” Patrick saw something in Tome’s eyes when he said that, something beyond gratitude. “But Mister Carter tells me you’re not doing well. He says you spend all your free time in bed. Are you sick, Tome? Is there anything I can do?”

“Not sick, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Tome sad. See dead sim ever time walk through eat room. Can’t stay. Tired all time.”

Patrick nodded, understanding. Tome had to go on living in the building where the sims he’d considered his family were murdered, had to eat in the room where they died. No wonder he was wasting away.

Then Patrick had an idea, one he knew would cause complications in his life. But the sense of having failed Tome and his makeshift family had been dogging Patrick since that terrible and ugly night, and helping him now wasn’t something he merely wanted to do, it was something he needed to do.

“You know what you need?” Patrick said. “You need a change of scenery. Wait here.”

He went back to Carter, pulled him into a corner and, after a ten-minute negotiation, the deal was set.

“All right, Tome,” he said, returning to the bunk. “Pack up your stuff. You’re going on a vacation.”

Tome’s brow furrowed. “Vay-kaysh…”

Poor old guy didn’t even know what the word meant. Patrick decided not to try to explain because this wasn’t going to be a real vacation anyway. Simply removing Tome from the barracks might be enough, but Patrick thought the old sim would want to feel useful.

“You’re going to stay with me for a while. I’ve got a brand new office and I need a helper.”

Tome straightened, his eyes brighter already. “Tome work for Mist Sulliman? But club own—”

“That’s all taken care of.”

Patrick had convinced Carter to allow him to take over Tome’s lease payments for a month or so. As club president, Carter had the authority, and the board couldn’t squawk too much because it wasn’t costing the club a penny. The lease payments wouldn’t be cheap but Patrick had all that money left in the Sim Defense Fund and figured it wouldn’t be a misappropriation to use some of it to help a sim.

As for keeping Tome busy, the old sim had taught himself to read so it shouldn’t be a big stretch for him to learn to file.

“Unless of course,” Patrick said, “you’d rather stay here.”

“No, no,” Tome said, waddling over to a locker. “Tome come.”

As Patrick watched him stuff his worldly belongings into a black plastic trash bag, he wondered at his own impulsiveness. He’d been planning to convert the second of the two bedrooms in his newfound apartment into a study, but he guessed that could wait. Let Tome have it for a month or so. Who knew how much of his abbreviated lifespan the old sim had left?

Not as if it’s going to interfere with my love life, Patrick thought, thinking of the persistently elusive Romy.

“Tome ready, Mist Sulliman,” the sim said, standing before him with straightened spine and thin shoulders thrown back.

“Let’s go then,” Patrick said, smiling at himself as much as at Tome. He felt like Cary Grant teaching Gunga Din to drill. Not a bad feeling; not bad at all. “Time to see the world, Mr. Tome.”

13

NEWARK, NJ

“Hey, you sim.”

Finger poke Meerm. Open eyes and see sim look in face.

“You new sim? You no work. Why you ride?”

“Cold. Hurt. Sick.”

“Beece tell drive man.”

“No!” Meerm sit up. Look out window. Bus on bridge cross water. Whisper, “No tell mans! Mans hurt Meerm!”

“Mans not hurt.”

“Yes-yes! Mans hurt Meerm. Make Meerm sick. Please-please-please no tell mans!”

Other sim look round, say, “Okay. No tell mans.” Sit next Meerm. “I Beece.”

“I Meerm.” Look window. “Where go?”

“Call Newark. Sim home there.”

Ride and ride, then bus stop by big building. Meerm follow Beece and other sim out. Up stair to room of many bed, like room of many bed in burned home.

Meerm say, “Mans hurt here?”

“Mans no hurt. Mans feed. Sim sleep. Sim work morning.”

Beece show Meerm empty bed. All other sim go eat. Meerm hide. Beece and other sim bring food. Meerm eat. Not yum-yum food like old burned home but not garbage food.

Meerm sleep on empty bed. Warm. Fed. If only sick pain stop, Meerm be happy sim.

14

MANHATTAN

DECEMBER 13

Patrick paced his new office space, waiting for Romy. He’d asked her to show up early for their meeting with the Manassas Ventures attorneys. The prime reason was to offer her some coaching on how to respond to them. The second was to spring a little surprise.

He stopped next to an oblong table in the space that did double duty as his personal office and conference room, and looked around. The offices of Patrick Sullivan, Esq., occupied the fourth floor of an ancient, five-story Lower East Side building; gray carpet, just this side of industrial grade, white walls and ceiling—the latter still sporting its original hammered tin which he’d decided he liked. His degrees and sundry official documents peppered the walls between indifferent prints he’d picked up from the Metropolitan Museum store. And of course he had his books and journals scattered on shelves and in bookcases wherever there was room.

He heard the hall door open. Romy. He called out, “Back here!” but the woman who came through the door was not Romy.

“Mr. Sullivan?”

An older woman in an ancient tan raincoat, frayed at the sleeves and at least three sizes too big for her.

He recognized her: the space-alien-abducted-and-impregnated lady whose sim child had been stolen and given to Mercer Sinclair. He remembered everything about her except her name.

“Alice Fredericks,” she said. “Remember?”

“Yes, of course. How are you, Miss Fredericks?”

“I could be better. I still haven’t found a lawyer yet.”

“To sue SimGen about the space aliens?”

“Yes. And for taking my sim child. I looked you up and learned you’d opened a new office, so I came straight here. Will you take my case now, Mister Sullivan?”

How to let this poor lady down easy?

He gave her an apologetic shrug. “I’m afraid my schedule’s rather full now.” He glanced at his watch. “And I’m expecting a client for an important conference in just a few minutes and—”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I should have made an appointment.”

“That’s okay.” He pushed a legal pad and a pen across the table to her. “But I’ll tell you what. Leave me your number and I’ll call you when my schedule opens up.”

“Then you’re not afraid?” she said, scribbling on the sheet.

“Of SimGen? Never.”

“I meant the space aliens. You’re not afraid of the space aliens?”

“Never met one I couldn’t take with one hand.”

“Thank you,” she said, puddling up again. “You don’t know what this means to me.”

“I’m sure I don’t.”

“That’s the number of the phone in the hall outside my room. Just ask for me and someone will get me.”

Patrick nodded. He felt a little bad, giving her the brush like this, but it was the gentlest way he knew to get her out of his office.

Romy entered as Alice was leaving.

“Who was that?”

“A poor soul with a crazy story about SimGen.” Patrick shook his head. “If she’s representative of my future clientele, I’m in big trouble. But never mind her.” He spread his arms. “What do you think of my new office?”

“Not bad,” she said, looking around as she seated herself at the mini conference table.

She was being generous, he knew. “I know what you’re thinking, and I agree: I need a decorator.”

“Not really.” She smiled faintly as she gazed up at the patterned ceiling. “I kind of like the anti-establishment air of the place.”

“So do I. Gives me a feeling of kinship with the likes of Darrow and Kuntsler.”

She smiled. “Darrow, Kuntsler and Sullivan. What a firm.”

“Better than my old firm, Nasty, Brutish and Short.”

He studied her across the table as she smiled. She looked good. The wicked shiners she’d developed after the Great Injury had faded from deep plum to sickly custard yellow. The sutures were gone from her scalp; she’d been able to hide the angry red seam by combing her short dark hair over it, but today she’d left it exposed for all the world to see.

“Want some coffee?” he said.

She shook her head. “I’m tense enough, thank you.”

“How about decaf? I can have my legal assistant perk up a pot in no time.”

“Assistant? I didn’t know you’d hired anyone.”

“You don’t expect a high-powered attorney like me to stoop to filing my own papers, do you?” Patrick turned toward the file room and called out, “Assistant! Oh, assistant! Can you come here a minute?”

Tome, who’d been waiting quietly and patiently behind the door as instructed, said, “Yes, Mist Sulliman.”

Romy’s eyes fairly bulged. “That sounds like—”

And then Tome, ever so dapper in his new white shirt, clip-on tie, and baggy blue suit, stepped into the room.

“It is!” she cried. She leaped to her feet and crossed the room in three long-legged strides. She threw her arms around Tome and hugged him as she looked at Patrick with wonder-filled eyes. “But how? You couldn’t…you didn’t…”

“Kidnap him? Not quite.”

She kept her arms around the old sim as Patrick explained Tome’s post-traumatic depression and the arrangement with Beacon Ridge. Because she was taller than Tome, Romy’s bear hug pressed his head between her breasts.

Hey, that’s where I should be, Patrick thought as Tome grinned at him.

Nothing salacious or suggestive in that smile, just pure happiness. Being away from the barracks had worked wonders on the old sim. Within two days he was up and about, eating with gusto. And once Patrick had taught him the rudiments of filing, Tome took to the task with religious zeal.

Romy barraged Tome with questions about how he was feeling and what he’d been doing since the tragedy. Patrick had things he needed to discuss with Romy so he gave them a little time to catch up, then interrupted.

“Tome, would you mind doing some more filing before our guests arrive?”

“Yes, Mist Sulliman.”

After Tome disappeared into the file room, Romy turned to him. “Does he bunk here?”

“No. We’re roomies.”

“Roomies?” She gave her head a slow shake. “Am I hearing and seeing things? I’ve heard hallucinations can be an aftereffect of head trauma.”

“It’s not so bad.” The apartment he rented in an upgraded tenement not far from here was plenty of room for the two of them. “He keeps pretty much to himself. I got him one of those compact TV-DVD combinations for his bedroom and he spends most of his time there.”

Her eyes were bright as she stared at him. “What a wonderful, wonderful thing to do.”

“He’s a riot,” Patrick said, grinning. “I bought him that suit and he’s absolutely in love with it. I had to go out and buy an iron and a board because he insists on ironing it every night.” She was still staring at him. “Hey, no biggie. I figure it’s only for a month or so, till he gets back on his feet.”

“Still, I never would have imagined…”

“I’m told I’m full of surprises.” He pulled a packet of folded sheets from an inside pocket of his jacket and slid them across the table to Romy. “But I’m not the only one.”

“What’s this?”

“A report from the Medical Examiner’s office on the three floaters from the Hudson.”

“The globulin farmers? How’d you get it?”

“It arrived by messenger this morning, no return address, but I can guess.”

Romy nodded. “So can I.” They’d decided not to mention Zero if there was any chance of a bug nearby. “He has contacts everywhere.”

“I can save you the trouble of reading it,” Patrick said as she unfolded the pages. “Remember how the bodies showed signs of torture? Well, toxin analysis revealed traces of a synthetic alkaloid in the tissues of all three. I won’t try to tell you the chemical name—it’s in there and it’s a mile long—but the report says it’s known in the intelligence community asTotuus ; developed in Finland as a sort of ‘truth’ drug, and supposedly very effective.”

“Totuus,” Romy said, her face a shade paler. “I wonder if that’s what they planned to use on me.”

“When?”

“When they drove us off the road. Remember I said one of them had a syringe and said something about ‘dosing’ me up and getting a recorder ready?”

“Right.” The memory twisted his insides. “You think there’s a connection between the SLA and—?”

“I guess not. But listen to this: The report says the Totuus was administeredbefore they were tortured.”

“I don’t get it,” Romy said. “Why use torture when you’ve got a truth drug?”

Patrick wandered to the window overlooking Henry Street and watched the traffic. The same question had been bothering him.

“Maybe for fun. I don’t know what’s driving these SLA characters, but it’s pretty clear now they’re a vicious bunch.”

“And if they want to ‘free the sims’ as they say, where are the ones they ‘liberated’?”

“I was wondering the same thing. If they—”

A black Mercedes limo stopped and double parked on the street below. In this neighborhood that could mean only one thing.

“They’re here,” he said. “Fashionably early.”

He watched as two dark-suited, briefcase-toting figures emerged, one male, one female; he noticed the woman lean back into the car and speak to someone still in the back seat.

Three arrive but only two come up. Odd…

“All right,” he said, clapping his hands. “Places, everyone. Tome, you know what to do; Romy, you know your part. We’ve got only one shot at this so let’s get it right.”

The two Manassas attorneys soon arrived, trying unsuccessfully to hide their astonishment at being welcomed by a sim. Introductions were made, cards exchanged. The woman, a redhead, thin and pale as a saltine, was Margaret Russo; the heavy, dark-haired man, who looked like he scarfed up all his associate’s leftovers, was David Redstone.

Russo glanced around. “Well, I must say, your office is…unique.”

“And that elevator,” Redstone said. “What an antique.”

“It’s steam powered,” Patrick told them. “Can’t be replaced because this is an historic building.” He had no idea if any of that were true but it sounded good. “Shall we get started?”

He led them the short distance to the conference table where Romy waited. He made the introductions, then indicated chairs across the table from Romy for the Manassas people. He sat next to Romy.

“What’s he doing?” Russo said, pointing to Tome who had situated himself on a chair behind and to Patrick’s left with a steno pad propped on his lap.

“Taking notes,” Patrick tossed off. “Now, before we—”

Russo was still staring. “But he’s a sim. Sims can’t write.”

“It’s shorthand. He’ll type it up later.”

He watched Russo and Redstone exchange glances. Good. Get them off balance and keep them there. They didn’t need to know that Tome would be making meaningless scribbles or that Patrick was recording the meeting. He was sure they had their own recorders running.

“We’d like to get right down to business,” Redstone said, pulling a legal pad from his briefcase. “The nitty gritty, as it were. To expedite matters I propose that we drop all pretense and skip the verbal jousting.”

“No trenchant legal repartee?” Patrick said. “Where’s the fun?”

“Look, Mr. Sullivan,” Russo said, “we all know what this is about. We know Ms. Cadman was injured, but we also know the incident was set up.”

Patrick glowered at her. “You’d better be able to back that up with proof, Ms. Russo.”

“No jousting, remember?” she said. “Whatever it is you want, other than money, you’re not going to get. So let’s just end this charade here and now. We are authorized to make the following offer: Name a figure. Tell us the magic number that will make you walk away from this, and we will pay it.”

Patrick had been expecting an attempt to buy them off, but nothing this blatant. But if that was the way they wanted to play…

“A magic number,” he said, tapping his chin and pretending to ponder the possibilities. “How does an even billion sound?”

Russo and Redstone blinked in unison.

Russo recovered first. She cleared her throat. “Are we going to have a serious discussion or not? Did you call us here to waste our time or—”

“Whoa,” Patrick said. “First off, you called us. Secondly—let me check with my assistant here.” He turned to Tome. “Didn’t they say, ‘Name a figure, any figure’?”

The sim consulted his steno pad and said, “Yes, Mist Sulliman.”

Tome had been instructed to say that, no matter what Patrick asked him.

“There, you see? ‘Name a figure.’ And I believe a billion is a figure.”

“You can’t possibly expect a small company like Manassas Ventures to come up with a sum like that,” Russo said.

“Why not? It owns billions worth of SimGen stock. But maybe it doesn’t have the stock anymore. I’ve learned that it’s a wholly owned subsidiary of MetaVentures, based in Atlanta, so maybe the stock went there. Or perhaps it traveled further up the ladder to MacroVentures, a Bahamian corporation. But MacroVentures is owned by MetroVentures in the Caymans. Maybe that’s where the stock ended up. Wherever it is, we know one of these companies has the financial wherewithal to pay Ms. Cadman’s ‘magic number’ in a heartbeat. So don’t cry poverty to me.”

“This is preposterous!” Redstone sputtered.

“Not as preposterous as you two trying to keep me from having my day in court,” Romy said.

Patrick had instructed her to play it sincere, and she was doing fine, because she was genuinely outraged.

“Oh, please—” Russo began but Romy cut her off.

Here it comes, Patrick thought.

“All I wanted was a little information,” Romy said. “Nothing complicated. I simply wanted someone to explain why a truck leased by Manassas Ventures in Idaho was driving around the SimGen campus in New Jersey.”

He scrutinized the two attorneys, watching their reactions as Romy dropped her bomb.

Patrick had gone half crazy trying to ferret out the principals in all the subsidiaries behind Manassas. Only the discovery proceedings of a lawsuit would give him a chance to pierce their multiple walls of secrecy. But it still might take him years to reach the end of their corporate shell game, and even then he might well come up empty. So he’d decided to shake things up by tossing a live snake into Manassas’s corporate lap.

But neither Russo nor Redstone showed even a hint of surprise or concern. They either were clueless or had nervous systems of stone.

Damn.

“Write that down,” Patrick said irritably, pointing to Redstone’s legal pad. “It’s important.”

“What?”

“Your clients will want to know about those trucks. Trust me.”

As Redstone made a note with a gold mechanical pencil, Russo said, “Can we stop playing games? A billion is out of the question.”

“Out of the question?” Patrick said. “Gee. And we haven’t even discussed punitive damages yet. I was thinking at least another billion—”

Russo slammed her hand on the table and shot to her feet. “That’s it. I see no point in prolonging this farce. You two have an opportunity to be set for life. You’ve been offered the moon, but you want the stars.”

“Very poetic.”

She glared at him. “When you and your client come to your senses, Mr. Sullivan, call us.”

“It won’t be a call, it will be a subpoena. Many subpoenas. A blizzard of them. The first are already on their way.”

“Send as many as you wish,” Redstone said, snapping his briefcase closed. “You won’t see a dime.”

Patrick smiled. “Perhaps not, but we’ll get what we want.”

They stormed out.

After the door slammed, Romy said, “Wow. They’re taking this personally.”

“I’ve got a feeling they were offered a big bonus if they got the job done.” He headed for the door. “Excuse me.”

“Where are you going?” Romy said.

“Down to the street. I’ll only be a minute.”

He took the stairs and beat the Manassas attorneys to the lobby. He waited until they were outside, then trailed them to the limo. When they opened the door he caught up and leaned between them.

“You folks forgot to take my card, so I brought one down for each of you.” He peered into the dim backseat and looked into the startled blue eyes of a balding man, easily in his seventies, sporting a dapper pencil-line mustache. “Hello,” Patrick said. “Have we met? I’m—”

“Get in!” the man said to the two attorneys. He turned his head away from Patrick and spoke to the driver. “Go! We’re through here!”

The doors slammed and the limo moved off.

Who’s the old guy? Patrick wondered as he took the stairs back up. He’d half-expected to see Mercer Sinclair or perhaps that Portero fellow, but he’d never seen this guy before. Whoever he was he hadn’t seemed at all happy that Patrick had got a look at him.

When he reached the office Romy was just finishing a call. She snapped the PCA closed and turned to him.

“That was our mutual friend. I told him about the meeting and he’s a little upset that we didn’t clear your idea with him first.”

“I’m not used to having a nanny,” Patrick replied. “Besides, we’re just stirring up the bottom of the pond to see what floats to the surface.”

“He’s worried that mentioning the Manassas-Idaho truck connection at this point might give them time to cover their tracks. Or worse, precipitate a rash response.”

“You mean like running my car off the road again? I don’t think so.”

Patrick didn’t think whoever was behind Manassas would risk hurting him or Romy. That would raise too many questions; might even prompt a Grand Jury investigation.

“Still, he suggested that you invest in a remote starter for your car. Just in case.”

Patrick stared at her, his mouth dry.

Romy smiled. “Joking.”

Patrick was about to tell her where Zero could store his remote starter when her PCA chirped again. He watched her face, expecting the usual lightup he’d noticed whenever she spoke to Zero, but instead her brow furrowed as she frowned.

“Have you got a car available?” she asked as she ended the call.

“I can get to it in about five minutes. Why?”

“Road trip.” Her expression remained troubled.

“Something wrong?”

“One of my NYPD contacts. He gave me the address of a house in Brooklyn. Said they’d found something there that would interest me.”

“He didn’t say what?”

“No. He said I had to see it to believe it.”

15

NEWARK, NJ

Meerm here some day now. Little happy here.

Still tired-sick and hurt-belly-sick, sometime cold-sick and hot-sick. No more cold-hungry. Have place live, have food. Lonely in day when all sim go work. Meerm try help by clean and make bed. Must be quiet. Not let man downstair, man call Benny, know Meerm here.

Shhh! Benny come now. Benny come upstair ever day.

Meerm rush closet. Hide. Peek through door crack. See Benny walk round and open window. Come once ever morning. Always talk self.

“Damn monkeys!” Benny say. “Bad enough I gotta play nursemaid to ’em all night, but why they have to stink so bad?”

Benny open all window, then close all. Ver cold while window open, even in closet. Meerm shiver.

Benny leave and warm start come again. Meerm stay closet and wait. Better when sim come. Sim laugh, talk, bring Meerm food, not tell Benny. Meerm lonely till then. Wait Beece.

Beece friend. Try make better when Meerm hurt. Beece say Meerm need doctor. No doctor! Not for Meerm! Doctor hurt Meerm. No doctor! Beece say okay but not like. Meerm can tell.

Meerm little happy here. Meerm stay.

16

EAST NEW YORK, NY

“One thing I’ve got to say about hanging with you,” Patrick said as he drove them past peeling houses behind yards littered with old tires and charred mattresses. “I get to see all the city’s ritziest neighborhoods. Say, you live in Brooklyn, don’t you?”

Yes, Romy thought as she stared straight ahead through the windshield. She thought of the neat little shops and bistros along Court Street, just around the corner from her apartment in Cobble Hill. That was Brooklyn too, but a world away from this place. East New York was the far frontier of the borough. The economic boom of the nineties had run out of gas before it reached here, and the boom of the oughts had kept its distance as well. The faces were black, the cars along the trash-choked curbs old and battered, the mood grim.

“Hello?” Patrick said. “Are you still with me?”

She nodded and looked down at the map unfolded on her lap. She knew she hadn’t been good company on the slow, frustrating drive across the Manhattan Bridge and through the myriad neighborhoods of the borough, but the nearer they moved to their destination, the tighter the icy clamp around her stomach.

Lieutenant Milancewich’s call nagged at her. Her sim-abuse tips had helped him make a few busts over the years and in return he occasionally gave her a heads-up on investigations he thought might interest her. But he wasn’t a friend, merely a contact, and she knew he considered her a little wacko. Maybe a lot wacko. He had no use for sims and thought her overzealous in her one-woman war, but a bust was a bust and he was glad to have them credited to his record.

Today, though, she’d heard something strange in his voice; she couldn’t identify it, but knew she’d never heard it before. She’d pressed him about what it was he wanted her to see but he wouldn’t say anything beyond,Iain’t been there myself, so I don’t want to pass on any secondhand reports, but if what I hear is true, you should be there.

Is it bad? she’d asked.

It wasn’t good.

And that was what bothered her. The strange note in his voice when he’d said,It ain’t good.

“I hope we’re almost there,” Patrick said. “I don’t think I want to get lost out here, especially with sundown on the way.”

She focused on the map. “Make a left up here onto—there!” She pointed to a pair of blue-and-white units just around the corner. “See the lights?”

“Got ’em.”

Patrick pulled into the curb and they both stepped out. She let him lead the way as they headed toward the yellow crime scene tape. Once they were past that, Romy took the lead. Three of the four cops at the scene were either in their units or leaning against them as they talked on two-ways. Romy approached the fourth, a patrolman sipping a cup of coffee outside the front door of a shabby, sagging Cape Cod. He looked to be in his late twenties, fair-skinned, with a reddish-blond mustache.

After showing him her ID and going through the what-is-OPRR? and what’s-OPRR-got-to-do-with-this? explanations, and making sure to smile a lot, she got him to open up.

“Got a call about a bad smell coming from the place.” He cocked his head toward the house as he spoke in an accent that left no doubt he was a native. “So we investigated. Had to kick in the front door and that’s when it really hit us. Ain’t the first time I smelled that.”

“Somebody dead?”

“That’s what we figured, only we had it wrong. Notsome body—manybodies. And they ain’t human.”

Romy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She was afraid to ask. “How many?”

“Looks like a dozen.”

She heard Patrick’s sharp intake of breath close behind her.

“How many sims were taken from the globulin farm?” he asked.

“Thirteen,” she said without turning. “At least they think it housed thirteen.” That was the count the police had painstakingly gleaned from one of the computer chips plucked from the ashes.

“Hey, you think these might be the missing sims from that Bronx fire a couple weeks back?” The cop shook his head. “Don’t that beat all. I thought that job was pulled by a bunch of sim lovers.”

“These may have no relation.”

How could they? It didn’t make sense that people who spray-painted “Death to sim oppressors” would kill the very sims they’d liberated.

The cop said, “Well, if they’re the same, I’d guess from the stink and the condition of the bodies that they were done the same night as the fire.” He shook his head in disgust. “Pisses me off.”

Surprised, Romy looked at him. “Killing sims?”

“You kidding? No way. I mean, I’m not in favor of someone going around killing dumb animals, but what pisses me is that even though they ain’t human I gotta hang around with my thumb up my ass—’scuse the French, okay?—while everybody figures out what to do and who should do it.”

“How’d they die?” Romy asked.

“Don’t need no forensics team for that.” He poked his index finger against his temple and cocked his thumb. “Bam! One to the head for each of them. Must’ve used jacketed slugs because—”

“Thank you,” Romy said, holding up a hand.

“Yeah, well, it was messy, all right. But not near as messy as what was done to them after they was shot.”

Romy stiffened. “What do you mean?”

“Sliced them open from here”—his gun barrel finger became a scalpel and he dragged it from the base of his throat to his groin—“to here.”

“Christ!” Patrick said.

Romy swallowed. “Why on earth…?”

“Beats me. Dragged all their guts out and piled them in the middle of the cellar floor. Freaking mess down there, and if they think I’m gonna clean it up because it’s ‘evidence,’ they can—”

“I want to see,” Romy said.

“No, you don’t, lady. If there’s one thing I know in this life, lady, it’s you do not want to go down in that cellar.”

She looked around at the hollow-eyed buildings and the hollow-eyed stragglers with nothing better to do than stand at the police tape and stare.

He’s so right, Romy thought. I don’t.

But she had to see this for herself. Nothing made sense. If these were the sims from the globulin farm, what were they doing here? Had they been “liberated” just to be executed and mutilated?

Setting her jaw to keep her composure, Romy pulled a stick of gum—Nuclear Cinnamon—from her purse and began to chew.

The cop nodded knowingly. “I see you’ve been down this street before.”

“What’s going on?” Patrick said.

She turned and offered him a stick, saying, “Because sometimes the smell’s so thick you can taste it.”

“You’re going in?” he said. He looked genuinely concerned. “That’s way above and beyond, Romy. Leave it for the forensics people. You don’t have to do this.”

“Yeah, I do,” she said. “Because they’re sims the M-E will give them a cursory once-over, if that. Most likely the remains will be shipped back to SimGen and we’ll never hear a thing. I don’t expect you to come with me, Patrick. In fact, I’d prefer you didn’t. But I need to see what’s been done, so I can get a feel for the kind of monsters we’re dealing with here.”

She turned to the patrolman. “Let’s go.”

“Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “Might smell a little better in there now with the doors open, but I’m not going back in until I have to.” He pointed toward the open front door. “Once you’re inside, head straight back to the kitchen; hang a U and you’ll be facing the cellar stairs.” He handed her his flashlight. “There’s no electricity so you’ll need this. Just don’t drop it. Or blow lunch on it.”

“Thanks. I won’t.”

Knowing that if she hesitated she might lose her nerve, Romy immediately put herself in motion. She’d examined dead sims before, some of them in a ripe state of decomposition, and had learned some tricks along the way.

She’d gained the top of the two crumbling front steps and was pulling a tissue from her purse when she sensed someone behind her.

Patrick. His face looked pale, and despite the cold she thought she detected a faint sheen of sweat across his forehead.

“Wait for me out here,” she told him.

“Sorry, no. I could have stayed in the yard if the cop had gone with you, but I can’t let you go down there alone.”

“Patrick—”

“Let’s not argue about it, okay. I’m going in. Give me a stick of that gum and we’ll get this over with.”

She stared at him a moment. Patrick Sullivan was turning out to be a gutsy guy. She handed him a tissue along with the gum.

“When we head down to the cellar, hold this over your mouth and nose, pinching the nostrils and breathing into the tissue. That way you’ll rebreathe some of your own air.”

He nodded, his expression grim as he unwrapped the gum and stuck it into his mouth. “Let’s go.”

Romy led the way. Despite the open doors front and rear, the odor was still strong on the main floor; but when she rounded the turn and stood before the doorless opening leading down from the kitchen, it all but overpowered her. She heard Patrick groan behind her.

“Tissue time,” she said. “And it could be worse. At least it’s cold; that slows down decomposition. Imagine if this were August.”

Patrick made no reply. Romy stared at the dark opening of the cellar doorway. She wished there were someone else she could dump this on, but couldn’t think of a soul.

Steeling herself, she flicked on the flashlight and started down into the blackness. She kept the beam on the steps, moving carefully because there was no railing. The odor was indescribable. It made her eyes water. Even with her nostrils pinched, it wormed its way around the cinnamon gum in her mouth and made a rear entry to her nasal passages by seeping up past her palate.

When she reached the bottom Romy angled the beam ahead, moving it across the concrete. At first she thought someone had started painting the floor black and run out of paint three-quarters of the way through; then she realized it was blood. Old, dried blood. The cellar must have been awash in it.

She flicked the beam left and right to get her bearings and stopped when it lit up what looked like a pile of dirty rope. She remembered what the cop had said—dragged all their guts out and piled them in the middle of the cellar floor—and knew she wasn’t looking at rope.

She swallowed back a surge of bile and forced herself forward, trying not to step in the dried blood—might be evidence there—as she moved. She stopped again when her beam reflected off staring eyes and bared teeth. She’d found the dead sims. Clad only in caked blood, their bodies ripped from stem to stern, they’d been stacked like cordwood against one of the walls. Their dead eyes and slack mouths seemed to be asking,Why? Why? And she wanted to scream that she didn’t know.

Behind her she heard Patrick retch. She turned and saw him leaning against one of the support columns.

“You okay?” she said through her tissue.

“No.” His voice was hoarse. He held up a thumb and forefinger; they appeared to be touching. “I’m just this far away from losing my lunch.”

“I skipped lunch, thank God.” She paused, then, “Look, I need to get closer.”

“I don’t. I’ll stay back here and guard the steps, if you don’t mind.”

“I appreciate it,” she told him. He’d already proved himself as far as she was concerned.

Turning, she spotted fresh, dusty prints ahead in the dried blood, leading to the cadavers; one of the cops, no doubt. To avoid further contamination of the scene she used them as stepping stones to move forward, knowing all along that it was wasted effort—no one was going to spend much time sifting this abattoir for clues. But there was a right way to do something, and then there was every other way.

Closer now she flashed her beam into the gaping incision running the length of the nearest cadaver’s naked torso. A female. Her ribs had been ripped back, revealing lungs but no heart. Romy leaned forward and checked the abdominal cavity. Liver and kidneys gone. She craned her neck to see into the pelvis—uterus and ovaries missing too.

She moved onto another, a male this time, and the results were similar except that his testicles had been removed.

Romy straightened. They’d been gutted, all of them, and the males castrated. She took a quick turn around the rest of the basement but found no sign of the excised organs. The intestines had been removed and discarded in a pile because they were valueless and only got in the way. But all the rest were missing.

“Let’s go,” Romy said, taking Patrick’s arm and pointing up the steps toward daylight and fresher air. “I’ve seen enough.”

More than enough.

They hurried to the first floor and back out to the front yard. Romy didn’t understand the missing ovaries and testicles—she knew of no use for them—but she understood the rest all too well.

Furious, she went straight to the cop and slapped the flashlight back into his palm.

“Didn’t you notice anything missing down there?” she said.

He looked uncomfortable. “Like what?”

“Like their organs! They weren’t just killed, they were harvested! Andthat ”—she jabbed a finger at his chest—“is a felony!”

17

HARLEM

DECEMBER 14

Beece work ver hard today. Many cloth to cut. Boss say, Faster, faster! Beece cut fast as can. Still boss yell.

Beece ver hot. Thirsty. Go sink for drink. Drink quick ’cause sink next boss office. Too long drink boss yell.

Boss door open. New man walk through. Red-hair man. Show boss papers. Beece hear talk.

“I’m from the city Animal Control Center, Mr. Lachter.”

“Hey, I treat my sims good.”

“No, Mr. Lachter, that would fall under the auspices of the ASPCA. We have a different mandate, and at the moment we’re looking for a lost sim.”

Beece almost leave sink, now stay. Lost sim? Could be Meerm? Listen more.

“I got all mine. I count ’em every morning. None missing, no extras.”

“Good. But from past experience we know that lost sims tend to seek out other sims, so we’d greatly appreciate it if you’d keep your eye out for any sim that might wander in.”

Boss laugh. “He does, I’ll put him to work!”

“It’s a female and if she shows up you should isolate her immediately.”

“Why’s that?”

“She may be sick. Nothing contagious to humans, but she might infect other sims.”

Infect? Beece think. What mean infect?

“I don’t need none of that. I can barely make production quotas now.”

“If she shows she may look a little different than the average sim and—”

“Different? What is she, a new breed?”

“No. Same as the rest, but she might look a little heavier…perhaps ‘bloated’ is a better term. She’s sick and we can take care of her, but we have to find her first.”

Meerm! Man talk about Meerm! Meerm sick but fraid doctor. Beece feel sorry Meerm. City Man want help Meerm. No hurt Meerm.

Beece fraid talk Boss. Boss yell all time. But Meerm Beece friend. Must help Meerm.

Beece step in office. “’Scuse, please, boss.”

Boss face go mad. “What the hell you doing here! Get back to work, you lazy—”

“No, wait,” red-hair city man say. He look Beece. “Do you know something?”

“Sick sim come home.”

“Home? Where’s home?”

“I crib them in Newark overnight,” Boss say.

“Newark? Why so far?”

“Because it’s tons cheaper to bus them back and forth than rent space for them around here. Sorry if that’s out of your jurisdiction, pal, but—”

“Oh, don’t you worry about that. Just give me the address of this place. I’ll take it from there.”

Beece happy. Red-hair city man nice. Help Meerm. Make Meerm better.

18

SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ

“This is good,” Mercer Sinclair said as he skimmed the reports. “This is very good.”

Just SimGen’s security chief in the office with him today. Portero had personally delivered the police reports on the sim massacre in Brooklyn, an unusual courtesy. Perhaps the man was coming around, learning to be a team player.

Who am I kidding? Someone like Harry Carstairs is a team player, but not Portero. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word “team.” Mercer smiled to himself. Come to think of it, neither do I.

This visit meant one thing: Portero wanted something.

He’d never come right out and ask, Mercer knew. He’d use an oblique approach, try to sneak it in when no one was looking. Mercer was sure he’d find out what it was before the meeting ended.

“I thought you’d be upset,” Portero said.

Is that why he came? To watch me blow my top? Sorry, Little Luca. Not today.

“I am. I hate the idea of losing a dozen of our sims. That’s something people seem to forget—they’reour sims. No matter what country they’re shipped to, even if it’s the other side of the world, they still belong to SimGen. We can barely keep up with demand as it is, so of course I hate to lose even one.”

“But you seem almost…happy.”

“I’m happy that these SLA creeps have been exposed for what they are. Yesterday’s discovery shows they’re not pro-sim activists, they’re murderous organleggers.” He glanced at the police report again. “They’re sure these are the same sims that were hijacked from the globulin farm?”

Portero nodded. “Absolutely. Lucky thing NYPD was able to resuscitate that memory chip from the Bronx. And lucky too these globulin farmers were excellent record keepers: They scanned the neck bar codes of all their ‘cows’ into their computers.”

“Then that nails the SLA. When they’re caught they’ll go down for murder and illegal organ trafficking. Any chance of tracing those organs?”

Portero shrugged. “Unlikely. They were probably shipped overseas while still warm. I’ve heard the Third World black market in transplant organs is booming, but…” He looked troubled.

“But what?”

“I know there’s a big demand for human organs, but sim organs?”

“They’re called xenografts—nonhuman organs. Human bodies used to reject them almost immediately, but with the new treatments that remove his to compatibility antigens, the rejection rate is about equal to human allografts. Those hearts, livers, and kidneys are worth a fortune on the black market.”

Portero nodded and Mercer thought, You haven’t a clue as to anything I just said.

“Hearts, livers, kidneys,” Portero said. “What about uteruses and ovaries? Are they transplantable?”

“No value at all. Nor are the testicles they cut off—unless someone’s developed a taste for a new kind of Rocky Mountain oyster.”

Just the thought made Mercer ill.

“Then why go to the trouble to harvest them?”

“Maybe they were stupid organleggers.”

“One other thing concerns me,” Portero said. “The chip from the globulin farm shows records of thirteen sims housed there right up until the night of the fire. But only twelve were found in that Brooklyn basement.”

“You’re sure?”

“We know from the records that a female sim is unaccounted for. The only reason I can imagine why she wasn’t butchered along with the rest is that she wasn’t with them.”

“You think she escaped?”

“I suspect she was never captured. I think she fled the raid and the fire, and is hiding somewhere in the city.”

“Why on earth would she hide?”

“Maybe she saw the security man murdered and she’s frightened. She could be anywhere, too terrified to show herself.”

A witness, Mercer thought. A sim could never testify in court, but this one might be able to provide the police with a lead or two.

Mercer glanced down at the embedded monitor in his desktop. Damn near every headline scrolling up the screen this morning seemed to be about the sim slaughter in Brooklyn. The good part was that the phony “SLA” had shown its true colors; the bad part was the depiction of sims as helpless victims, easy prey for human scum. Too high a sympathy factor there. He needed to counter that, and this missing sim offered a unique opportunity.

“I want that sim found,” he told Portero. “To make sure she is, SimGen is going to offer a million-dollar reward to whoever finds her.”

Portero looked dubious. “Do you think that’s necessary? I’m sure my people—”

“Forget your people. This is strictly a SimGen matter. We’ll handle it.”

Yes. The more he thought about this, the more he liked it. Here was a way to take back the headlines and reassert SimGen as the true champion and defender of sims.

“Very well,” Portero said, rising. “Since there’s nothing for me to do in that regard, I’ll get back to my office.”

After Portero was gone it occurred to Mercer that he hadn’t discovered the reason for the security chief’s personal visit. He’d been sure he’d wanted something. But what?

Well, whatever it was, he hadn’t got it.

19

Luca Portero went directly from the CEO’s office to the parking lot where he picked up one of the SimGen Jeeps. He grinned as he drove out the gate.

A million-dollar reward—and Sinclair thinks it was his idea. Doesn’t have a clue that I steered him into the whole thing.

The meeting had been a thing of beauty, he had to admit. Knowing Sinclair-1’s obsession with SimGen’s public image, Luca had simply parceled out the information—first playing dumb about the xenografts, then mentioning an unaccounted-for sim, then hinting that she might be a witness—letting Sinclair pounce from one to the next like a mouse following a trail of cheese bits, until he’d ended up right where Luca wanted him.

A reward! Put SimGen in the news: The corporation with a heart as big as its market cap value!

Putty in my hands, Luca thought.

His grin faded as he thought about what lay ahead. Another meeting. This one with Darryl Lister. He and his old CO hadn’t had a face-to-face in almost a year, which could only mean that the subject was as delicate as it was important.

That made him uneasy. Worse yet, they were meeting at Luca’s house.

He pulled up the long drive to the rented two-bedroom cabin in the center of five acres of dense woods. He liked the isolation. This was his retreat from SimGen and lost sims.

Lister wasn’t due for another half hour. Still plenty of time to get Maria out of the way and—

He hit the brakes when he saw the black Mercedes SUV parked in front of the house.

Lister? Shit!

He still had time to salvage this. Was Lister alone? With the late morning sun glinting off the SUV’s windshield, Luca couldn’t tell how many were in the car.

When he pulled up next to it he was startled to see that it was empty. He hurried through his front door and found Darryl Lister sitting on the couch, sipping a beer. Maria stood behind him, rubbing her hands together, her dark eyes wide with anxiety.

Luca stared at Lister. This plump country squire type was miles away from the hardbodied CO who’d parachuted with him onto the Shahi Kot mountains. He was a pogue now, in his late forties, and the brown corduroys and bulky white Irish wool sweater he wore couldn’t hide the inches he’d been adding to his waist. And judging from the new gelled-up style of his light brown hair, it looked like he’d started going to a fag barber. The man was becoming a stranger.

“Luca.” He rose and smiled as he extended his hand. “I was going to wait in the car, but then this sweet young thing surprised the hell out of me by opening the front door. I invited myself in.” As they shook hands, his smile faded. “Who is she, Portero? I know you don’t have any kids. A niece?”

“No one you have to worry about.”

“You know the rules.”

Luca held up the car keys.“Maria, esperame en el auto.”

She scurried around the couch. Her jeans and bulky flannel shirt couldn’t hide her ripe young figure as she grabbed the keys and ran out the door. Luca noticed Lister’s eyes following her all the way.

“Nice,” he said. “What is she? Sixteen?”

Luca felt invaded. He wanted to tell Lister it was none of his fucking business, but bit it back. To a very real extent, itwas Lister’s business.

“She’s old enough,” Luca said.

Maria had told him she was eighteen, but she might be even younger. He’d seen her begging on an East Village sidewalk last summer. Maybe it was her flat peasant face, or the desperation in her black eyes…something about her spurred an impulse from a nameless place to shove a couple of singles into her hand. He heard her soft, “Gracias, señor,” saw the sudden faraway look in her eyes as she clutched the bills between her breasts like a family heirloom, and he had to speak to her. Good thing he knew Spanish because she didn’t know anything else.

He bought her lunch, took her to a Spanish film at the Angelika, bought her dinner, then brought her home. She’d been living here ever since. She cleaned his house, cooked his food, kept his bed warm at night, and thought she’d found heaven.

“She’s an illegal who’s young enough to be your daughter, right?”

True on both counts, but so what? “Don’t worry. She doesn’t know anything. Can’t speak a word of English.”

“But Iam worried. It’s against the rules. You’re supposed to be a model citizen. A clean nose, no legal hassles. That’s the deal when you come in. You agreed, now look at you: shacking up with a barely legal illegal.”

“No one’s going to know. Not way out here.”

“Butour people will know. Sooner or later you know they’ll find out. And they won’t like it. And since I sponsored you, that will reflect on me.”

“Look—”

“They’ve already got questions about you. Like why you don’t seem to own anything. You rent this place and…” He looked around with distaste. “And it looks like you furnish it from secondhand stores.”

“It came with the territory. It’s a furnished rental.”

“I know we pay you enough to afford to buy.”

Of course they did. But Luca saw no point in tying up money in real estate. He wanted no anchors. When the time came to move on, as it inevitably would, he wanted to be able to pick up and go without a second’s hesitation, without a single look back.

“It’s the way I’ve always lived.”

“I know. I’ve tried to explain that to them. They don’t care. They want you settled in. I went out on a limb to get you this cushy assignment, but if you don’t put down some roots, they’ll transfer you out to Idaho. And I’ll have egg on my face.”

Luca had spent a few months at the Idaho facility and had no desire to go back.

He held up his hands in surrender. “Message received. I’ll see what I can do about buying this place.”

“Luca,” Lister said, smiling as he put a hand on his shoulder. He rarely called him by his first name. “You’re making good money. And you’ll be making better and better money. Enjoy it, for Christ’s sake. That’s what it’s for. You can’t take it with you.”

Luca nodded. “I guess you’re right.”

But he was thinking, Youcan take it with you—if you’ve got it squirreled away in a secret offshore account.

Luca believed in being prepared. He’d learned that from his mother. She might have been a whore, but she was no dummy. She always kept a roll of cash hidden away for what she called “the rainy days,” when the cops periodically would raid her place and roust her out. The cash had always kept her out of jail.

The same held true here. Who knew when the weather would change? He could handle the proverbial rainy day, but SIRG played rough, and if a shitstorm struck, he believed in having a safe harbor to hole up in. His was in Hamilton, Bermuda.

He repressed a shudder. If SIRG ever found out about that account…

“But that’s only half the reason for this face-to-face,” Lister said.

“If it’s about the missing sim,” Lucas blurted, relieved to be moving away from his personal life, “I just enlisted Mercer Sinclair’s help—a million-dollar reward.”

Lister was looking at him. “So you told him?”

“Not yet. Not till I find the sim. I’ve got people combing the city, visiting any place that uses sim labor. This reward will flush out anyone who’s seen her. Once I have her, the Sinclairs can take over.”

Lister frowned. “You might have had this sewn up by now if they’d been on board from the start.”

“They’d have added nothing but panic.” Bad enough to have Lister calling twice a day, he didn’t need the Sinclairs yammering in his ear every free minute too. “And don’t forget, it took days for the fire department to sift through all the rubble. Until they reported no sim remains, we didn’t know for sure she was missing.”

“Still, if this million-dollar reward had been announced days ago…”

“You know my problem with telling SimGen too much.”

“This ‘leak’ you suspect?”

Luca nodded.

Lister shoved his hands in his pockets and looked around. “I thought you were way off base with that at first. Now I’m not so sure.”

“Why? What’s happened?”

“The Manassas attorneys met with the Cadman woman and Sullivan. What a farce. She could have walked away with millions but she’s asking forbillions in damages.”

Luca wanted to laugh. He’d known they couldn’t buy off Romy Cadman.

Just hearing her name set off reactions within him, part anger, part lust. Sometimes when he was with Maria, moving inside her, he thought of Romy Cadman. Young stuff like Maria pushed his buttons,all his buttons, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have anything left over for a prime piece of mature tail like Cadman.

“Did you agree to pay it?”

Lister stared at him. “You’re not serious.”

“You should have called their bluff, just to see what they’d do. Because we all know they’re not after money. But what does this have to do with a leak?”

“The Cadman woman said she’d come to the Manassas office because she wanted to know why a truck leased in Idaho by Manassas was driving around the SimGen campus.”

“But…” Luca’s heart stalled, then picked up again. “But there’s no connection. Those leases are paid through Golden’s credit card.”

Hal Golden was dead, but no one knew that. His body lay six feet deep in a field in Thailand, but his credit record, active and pristine, lived on in the computers of the finance world. Golden had never even heard of Manassas Ventures while he lived, so how had Cadman and Sullivan linked him to the company?

“I know that. But at one time Manassas leased them directly. Somehow she made the connection. And I’m beginning to wonder if she might have been tipped.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. If someone’s leaking her information about Manassas Ventures, wouldn’t they tell her everything?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you. But whatever her source, somehow this woman has identified Manassas as the tie between SimGen and our Idaho facility.”

“So then, why not just abandon Manassas? It served its purpose.”

“It’s not like some dinghy you can cut loose at sea and forget. It’s part of a chain of subsidiary corporate entities that this Sullivan fuck has already traced back four or five levels. This haseveryone upset.”

The way Lister emphasized “everyone” made it clear to Luca that this went far up the SIRG ladder.

“They want the woman and the lawyer stopped,” Lister added, staring at him. “And since you were in charge of the Cadman woman when she saw the truck with the Idaho plates, that puts this square in your lap. They want you to take care of it.”

“What? Take her out? If anything happens to her, anythingfinal , Manassas Ventures will be a prime suspect.”

“I’m talking aboutinformation , not termination. She’s obviously not alone in this. They want to know who’s behind her. They want her source. And if there’s a leak in SimGen, they want to know who it is. Word has come down: This has equal priority with the missing sim. Understand me, Luca? This isn’t me talking to you.” Lister suddenly looked uncomfortable. “This comes from the Old Man himself.”

The Old Man? Luca swallowed. That meant this wentall the way up the ladder, and all eyes would be on him. Damn Romy Cadman for mentioning that truck. It almost seemed like she was doing everything in her power to screw him.

“Word is he’s raising hell how if you’d done the job right the first time, when you rolled Sullivan’s car off the Saw Mill, we wouldn’t be facing this now.”

Luca felt sick. “Jesus…”

“I went to bat for you, sent the Old Man your record in Operation Anaconda and the Baghdad sorties, and apparently that carried some weight. You know, soldier to soldier. He’s giving you a chance to redeem yourself. That doesn’t happen too often.”

“I’m grateful,” he said, forcing the words past stiff lips.

Luca felt a growing pressure in his head. Was someone out to get him…dump more on him than any one man could handle, then wait for him to buckle under the weight?

“I’ll help you with the logistics and anything else I can,” Lister told him. He looked fidgety now. Maybe Luca wasn’t the only one being given a second chance. “We’vegot to know who she’s fronting for.” He glanced at his watch. “Got to run.”

Luca followed him outside to the cars. He waved to Maria and jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the open front door. She jumped out of the Jeep and ran back into the house.

Again, Lister’s eyes followed her. “Remember what I said about putting down roots.”

“Roger that,” Luca said.

But not till he saw how all this settled out. Until then he wanted that Bermuda account as fat as possible.

“And ditch the kid. Put her back where you found her.”

“Will do.”

Lister smiled. “Or marry her.”

“I don’t think so.”

He’d miss Maria, miss her a lot. She loved sex, cooked up a storm, and was crazy about him, would doanything for him. Maybe he’d keep her around till he found a replacement. Someone who could—

Luca’s PCA chirped. He flipped it open and turned away from Lister as he spoke. “Yes.”

“This is Grimes. We found her. She’s been hiding out in a sim crib.”

Relief flooded through him. “You have her?”

“Not yet. But we’ve got an address and we’re on our way.”

“Where’s the crib?” Luca listened as Grimes read off a Newark address. “I’ll meet you there.”

He ended the call and turned back to Lister. “One of my men. We’ve located the missing sim. We’re on our way to pick her up.” He grinned at Lister. “One problem down, one more to go.”

“Let’s hope so,” Lister said.

Luca jumped into the Jeep. Newark. Not a long drive. And the timing could not be better. Tying this up would free him up to devote all his energies to Romy Cadman, and settling with her once and for all.

20

NEWARK, NJ

Meerm lonely. Not hungry. Nibble food save from last night. Watch out window. See peoples walk sidewalk. Not far down. One floor. Meerm listen. Sometime hear what passing peoples say. Sometime happy. Sometime mad. Meerm like happy better.

Meerm watch street. Many car but no sim bus. Wait sim bus. Hope come soon. Then friend Beece come. Belly pain hurt less when Beece near. Beece talk Meerm, help Meerm.

Meerm see car come fast. Stop outside. Four sunglass mans come. Look round, look sim building. Meerm quick step back. Who mans? Why here? Why look at sim building?

Meerm fraid mans come in. Peek so mans not see. No mans come in. All stand by car. One talk little phone. Why here?

Then Meerm see new car. Also fast. Stop next first car. One man come. New man talk loud. Point this way and that way. Other mans go. New man voice…Meerm hear before. But where?

Now Meerm see new man and other man come sim building. Meerm fraid. Mans come take Meerm away? Back to new needle place?

Meerm hide. Go closet. Push self into dark corner. Make ver small.

Hear yell downstair. Benny mad. Shout loud. New man yell back.

Meerm shake. Know new man voice! Same voice in old home night loud noise and fire. Hear on roof too. New man come get Meerm!

Hear loud feets on stairs. Must not find! Must not find! Meerm climb up in closet. Get on shelf. Curl up. Make small-small. Tiny-tiny-tiny. Push back into high corner and—

Corner move. Meerm turn, feel loose board. Meerm push board, move more. Black space open. Cold in hole. Meerm not care. Too fraid be cold.

Hear new man voice yell, “Damn it, where is she?” Voice close now. In sim sleep room.

Meerm squeeze into black hole. Ooh-ooh-ooh. Too tight. Meerm so fat now. Meerm fraid get stuck, but more fraid new man. Push-push-push, get fat self into hole.

“I tell you,” Benny say, “we ain’t got no sims here inna day!” Benny sound fraid. “Not till tonight when they all bussed back from the city.”

“She’s here!” new man say. “And we’re going to find her! Look under every bunk! Check every closet!”

Meerm in cold place inside wall. Ver tight. Ver dark. Meerm push on board, push back where belong. More dark now. All dark.

Meerm hear closet door squeak. Some man open. Meerm can’t see man but hear thing move. Meerm stay ver, ver still. Not breathe.

“Nothing in here.” New man voice ver close. Meerm so fraid. Want go pee. Bite lip stop cry. “Where the fuckis she?”

“Maybe she goes out,” say other man voice. “You know, walks around.”

“Since when did you become a sim expert?”

Other man say, “Hey, I’m just thinking out loud, okay? That sim at the sweatshop described her to a T: she’s lost, she’s sick, she’s blown up. So we know she’s staying here. She’s just not here now. Probably going stir crazy here alone all day.”

“All right. Here’s what we’ll do. Bring in the others and we’ll do a sweep of the building. If we don’t find her we’ll back off and put the place under twenty-four-hour watch. When she returns, we nab her.”

Meerm hear mans go way but still not move. Still fraid. Meerm must stay in sim building. Mans will get Meerm. Hurt Meerm if try leave. Meerm so sad she cry.

21

SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ

Luca wanted to skip this—he had far more pressing things to do than listen to Sinclair-1 yammer. But the man had said he was calling this late meeting specifically to address a security issue. In addition to everything else going on, SimGen security was still his responsibility.

But he didn’t have to arrive on time. He was punctual by nature, and his years in Special Forces had reinforced that, so it took considerable effort to force himself to walk slowly down the hall, pacing himself to arrive at least three minutes late.

Luca balled his fists. Coming up empty in the sim crib this afternoon still rankled him. Fury and disappointment had mixed into a combustible compound in his bloodstream. His head felt like a ticking bomb. He’d left four men to watch the building—all sides, all day, all night—but he had a gnawing premonition that the missing sim wouldn’t be back.

Then, just fifteen minutes ago, Lister calls, supposedly concerned about the well-being of the sim because he hadn’t heard any word on her. Luca had had to eat some bitter crow.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Lister then proceeded to twist the knife: “Someone handed you the address where she was staying and she ducked you? If a monkey can outwit you, how can we expect you to find out who’s behind the woman and her lawyer?”

Don’t worry, Luca thought as he approached the door to Sinclair-1’s office. She’s next on my list. And I know just how I’m going to handle her. As soon as I finish with these assholes…

When he stepped into the office he found only two of the usual crew in attendance: Both Sinclairs were present, but Abel Voss was missing.

“Mr. Portero,” Sinclair-1 said as soon as the door closed. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

“The wait is over,” Luca replied. He wanted out of here as quickly as possible, so he pushed right to the subject, “You mentioned a security matter?”

“Yes, Mr. Portero. Were you aware that we had an attempted break-in this afternoon?”

“Of course.” A group of sim huggers had tried to run the front gate. His men had detained them until the State Police arrived. “They’re in jail.”

“How gratifying that you know. But my question is, Where were you?”

“Busy with other matters.”

“Matters more important than the security of this campus? Security here is your number-one priority. There are murderous bioterrorists running around out there, slaughtering humans and sims, and yet when this group tried to attack us, you were nowhere to be found.”

“Harmless nobodies,” Luca said, allowing a sneer to work its way onto his face. What an old woman he was.

“Lucky for us. But with you hiding out somewhere, there’s no telling what damage we might have suffered if they’d been the SLA.”

A flash of anger added heat to the pressure pushing against his eardrums. Hiding? Had this empty suit just accused him of hiding?

“Easy, Mercer,” said Sinclair-2, turning his head to look at Luca. This was the first sign of life he’d shown.

With difficulty Luca kept his voice level. “But they weren’t the SLA.”

“But they could have been!” Sinclair-1 said. He pointed over his shoulder at the darkening hills visible through the oversized picture window behind him. “The SLA could be out there now, in the trees, readying an assault.”

“They’re not, and they never will be.” Luca had had just about enough of playing games with these two. “I guarantee it.”

Sinclair-1’s eyebrows rose halfway to his forehead. “You guarantee it? How interesting. You’re clairvoyant?”

“No,” he gritted. “I’m the SLA.”

Immediately he wished he hadn’t said it.

“This is no time for sick humor,” Sinclair-1 said.

Luca knew from the dubious expression on the CEO’s face that he still had a chance to take it back, but decided against it. Fuck ’em. He stepped up to Sinclair-1’s desk, rested his hands on its cool onyx surface, and leaned forward, literally getting in the other man’s face.

“That was not any kind of humor.”

“What?” The voice from his right, Sinclair-2, on his feet, his face pale. “You?”

“Ellis, he’s joking.”

Luca fixed Sinclair-1 with his gaze. “Have youever known me to joke?”

The CEO wavered, then took a step back, his eyes wide.

Movement to Luca’s right. “Monster!” Sinclair-2 charging, face distorted with fury. Luca pivoted, drove a fist into his gut, and that was all it took. The man doubled over, then dropped to his knees, gasping.

“Dear, God! Ellis! Are you all right?”

The kneeling man, still clutching his belly with one hand while the other clutched the arm of the sofa for support, shook his head. His voice was a half-strangled whisper. “I’ll never be all right.”

Sinclair-1 stared at Luca. “Why? In God’s name,why ?”

“To find your million-dollar sim.”

“For what?” Sinclair-2 said as he hauled himself back into the couch. He sat hunched over, rubbing his belly. “To harvest her organs along with the rest?”

“No. To give her to you two.”

“Why would we be interested?”

“Because she’s pregnant.”

A pause as the two brothers glanced at each other, then stared at Luca.

Sinclair-1 snorted. “Impossible!”

“So I’ve been told.” Luca shrugged. “And maybe that’s true in theory. But I deal in facts, and everything I’ve discovered about this particular sim confirms that she is pregnant.”

“How on earth did you find out about her?”

Might as well tell them the whole story, Luca thought. Well, most of it.

“It started with a phone call last month. A woman said she had to speak to Mercer Sinclair right away, said she had information that would affect the entire future of SimGen. That sounded like a security matter to me so I took the call and—”

“And pretended to be me?”

“Of course. The woman, whose name I later learned was Eleanor Bryce, a Ph.D. in microbiology, told me she was in possession of a pregnant sim.”

“You accepted that?” Sinclair-2 said. His color was returning along with his voice, but pure hatred gleamed in his eyes. “Just like that?”

Portero returned his stare. You want another try for a piece of me, fancy man? Next time I spread your nose across your face.

“Of course not. In an involved back-and-forth that took almost two weeks she sent enough information to convince our people that she could be telling the truth.”

“Yourpeople!” Sinclair-1 now. “The ones in our Basic Research facility, I suppose. Why not ours?”

“We were going to bring in your people later, but first we had to secure this sim. The Bryce woman made enough slips during our communications to allow me to pinpoint her location. When she presented her ultimatum I decided it was time to move.”

“Ultimatum?” Sinclair-1 said.

That’s not what you should be asking me, Luca thought. Why aren’t either of you asking the right question?

Because he was dying to lay the answer on them…and watch both the Sinclair brothers’ hair turn white before his eyes.

Luca said, “She wanted to sell us the sim.”

“Sellus? Sell us something that already belonged to us? What did you tell her?”

“Since I was pretending to be you, I said exactly that, then I asked her how much she wanted. She told me to bid. And she warned me not to be ‘chintzy’—her word—because there’d be another bidder: the Arata-jinruien Corporation.”

Sinclair-1 pounded a fist on his desktop. “Thosebandits? Outrageous!”

“Wait just a minute,” Sinclair-2 said, holding up a hand. “Let’s take a step back here.”

Here it comes, Luca thought. His gut tingled with anticipation.

“Let’s just say,” Sinclair-2 continued, but he spoke to his brother, as if Luca weren’t there, “that this Bryce woman, through hormone treatments or a recombinant patch, did somehow manage to induce a female sim to produce a fertilizable ovum. That will cause SimGen problems because it means people will be able to breed their own sims—and no one on this planet wants that less than I do—but it doesn’t invalidate our patent on the sim genome. So—”

Not the question!

“She didn’t do anything to the sim,” Luca snapped. “She’s a microbiologist. Knows nothing about reproductive medicine.”

“How can you be sure?” Sinclair-1 said.

“She told me.”

Sinclair-1 barked a laugh.

Luca glared at him. “At the time I questioned her she was loaded up with a drug that made her incapable of lying.”

“The compound mentioned in the autopsy report,” Sinclair-2 said, his tone dripping contempt. “Did you torture them before or after you had your information?”

“That was just window dressing, to muddy the waters while I eliminated everyone with firsthand knowledge about the pregnancy. I didn’t know what the sims knew, but I didn’t want any loose ends, so they were removed too.”

“Dear God, why?” Sinclair-2 said. “A pregnant sim, even if it were possible, opens up a can of worms, but it’s not worth the lives of three people and a dozen sims!”

Here’s the moment, Luca thought. Time to rock your world.

“It does if the father of the sim’s baby is human.”

Silence, a moment of glorious, absolute silence in the office as the Sinclair brothers froze. Luca could have been looking at a photograph, or an elaborate sculpture. Then the thump of Sinclair-1 dropping heavily into his chair as if the bones in his legs had suddenly dissolved.

Luca inhaled the mixture of shock and terror filling the air. Moments like this made life worth living.

He’s wrong! Mercer Sinclair thought, fighting a vertiginous sense of unreality. Portero’s wrong! He has to be!

…the father of the sim’s baby is human…

Those words hung in the air before him, almost visible. He sensed that if he reached out his hand he might touch them.

He looked at his security chief’s smug expression and knew that Portero believed it, but that didn’t mean it was true. Being a tough guy didn’t mean you couldn’t be scammed.

Mercer worked his lips, forcing out the words. “A hoax!” he cried, but it sounded more like a bleat.

Portero shook his head. “I have it from all three farmers: They all believed they were in possession of a pregnant sim that was going to make them rich beyond their wildest dreams.”

“Then they believed wrong!”

“Wait a second,” Ellis said. “They believed. That’s important. They may have been morally bankrupt, but they weren’t ignorant. A globulin farm requires a fair amount of scientific sophistication. And if they were convinced that one of their sims was pregnant…”

Mercer stared at his brother. Ellis seemed to have shaken off the pain and humiliation of Portero’s gut punch. But instead of feeling, as Mercer did, that his lips were encased in lead, Ellis seemed almost…energized.

And he was thinking the unthinkable.

“Ellis…it can’t be. Read my lips: Sims. Are. Sterile. Want me to write it out on a piece of paper for you?”

“But a sim gene can mutate,” Ellis said. “Sims can’t evolve, but they’re as prone to mutations as any other organism. Murphy’s Law, Merce: Shit happens, especially when it comes to reproduction. Nature abhors a dead-end species nearly as much as a vacuum.”

“Don’t talk to me of ‘Nature’ and what it abhors,” Mercer said. “Iabhor teleological concepts. Life is chemicals, pure and simple.”

Ellis went on as if Mercer hadn’t spoken. “I remember reading years ago about a woman who’d lost her left ovary due to a ruptured cyst and her right fallopian tube due to a tubal pregnancy. She was told she’d never have to worry about birth control, but years later she showed up in her doctor’s office with a positive pregnancy test. An ultrasound showed that her left fallopian tube had migrated across her uterus to link up with her right ovary.”

“Apocryphal garbage.”

Ellis looked at Portero. “This Bryce woman who called, this microbiologist, did she tell you how she found out the sim—what was her name again?”

“Meerm,” Portero gritted. The name burned like acid on his tongue.

“Did she tell you how she discovered Meerm was pregnant?”

Portero made a face. “What difference does it make?”

“Humor me.”

A sigh, then, “When she first called she told me she’d been working up a sick sim—vomiting, pain. Couldn’t find out what was wrong so she sent blood out to a commercial lab and ordered a preset battery of tests for abdominal pain. The battery was designed for humans, and one of those tests was for pregnancy. It came back positive. She repeated it at three different labs, and all came back positive. She rented an ultrasound rig and that removed all doubt. She overnighted me copies of the blood work and the ultrasound. I had our people go over them. They said it could easily be a hoax, but there was enough there to be worried about.”

Mercer said, “So you made a preemptive strike before the Japanese could get involved.”

Portero inclined his head a few degrees. “Exactly.”

Had to hand it to the man: His methods might be loathsome, but he got things done.

“But why invent this SLA group?”

“For cover. I didn’t want anyone to guess the real reason for the raid, and a bunch of wacked-out sim huggers seemed perfect. The op would have gone down without a hitch if their security guy hadn’t decided to take his job seriously. Four of us went in and the jerk started shooting, so we had to take him out. The shots must’ve spooked the pregnant sim who was being kept separate from the other cows. When I couldn’t find her I figured she was hiding somewhere in the building; since I didn’t have time to look for her, I fired the place.”

“But no sim remains were found,” Ellis said. “Which meant she escaped.” He shook his head. “I can see the logic, sick as it is, of killing the humans. But why the sims? Even if they somehow knew about Meerm’s pregnancy, who’d believe them?”

Portero’s eyes narrowed and his tone skirted with a snarl. “First off, I wasn’t about to nursemaid a bunch of monkeys. Second, they could identify us. And third, our people over in Basic Research wanted to look at their gonads, just in case they’d undergone any changes like the pregnant one. I covered that by taking hearts and kidneys and livers too—made it look like a harvest.”

Mercer clenched his teeth and stared at Portero. You shit! he thought. Just yesterday you stood right there and played all innocent about organlegging and xenografts.

He wanted to throw something at him but feared Portero might return it with interest. Or worse, shove it down his throat.

“What ice-cold womb did you spring from?” Ellis said, still shaking his head.

Mercer feared Portero might react violently, but the insult seemed to roll off him. And Mercer realized that neither of them could insult Luca Portero, because Portero didn’t care what they thought.

We’re of a different species, and our opinions are irrelevant.

Mercer watched as his brother closed his eyes a moment, took a breath, then said, “How did the globulin farmers know the father was human?”

“They asked the sim and she fingered Craig Strickland, the farm’s security guard—”

“The corpse that was found in the fire?”

“Yeah, him. Seemed he’d been spending some of his guard time diddling the livestock. Before he ate a few bullets.”

Mercer slumped back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. This can’t be happening.

“You realize what this means, don’t you, Merce.” His brother’s voice.

It wasn’t a question. Mercer lowered his hands to find Ellis staring at him. Yes, he knew exactly what this meant: the end of SimGen.

But only if somebody else found the sim first.

“Five million dollars,” Mercer blurted. “I’m raising the reward to five million for information leading to the successful ‘rescue’—and I want that term emphasized—of the missing sim. We’ll say the reason we’re willing to pay so much is that she can lead us to the killers of the twelve dead sims, and that nobody slaughters and mutilates our sims and gets away with it.”

“What if she’s dead?” Portero said. “She can’t be ‘rescued’ then.”

Mercer thought about that a moment. “I want her to be worth more alive than dead, so we’ll offer to pay just one million for her remains. But I want her alive, get it? Alive, alive, alive!”

Yes. Get their hands on this sim before anyone else. And once she’s safely tucked away, find out how she became fertile. Then take steps to make sure it never happens again.

Somewhere, out there, walking around, was living, breathing proof that humans and sims could cross-fertilize…Mercer’s worst nightmares had never even come close to such an apocalyptic scenario. If news of this ever got out, sims would have to be reclassified closer to human, too close to be property, too close to be leased…

Imagine having to announce that at the stockholders’ meeting next week. SimGen shares would crash and burn…they’d be the Hindenberg of the NASDAQ. He’d lose everything.Everything!

And so would SIRG.

“Find her, Portero,” Mercer said. “This is as important to your people as it is to me. All that SimGen stock they hold will be toilet paper if someone beats us to her. If you do nothing else in your life, you must find that sim. That is your number one priority.”

“Not quite,” Portero said softly. “There’s another, equally pressing matter that requires my attention.”

Looking at the security chief’s dark expression, and knowing his ruthlessness, Mercer was glad he was not that other “equally pressing matter.” He wondered who might be involved, then decided he’d rather not know.

“But don’t worry about your pregnant sim,” Portero went on. “I’ve got a good idea where she is and I’ll have men watching the area twenty-four/ seven. You’ll have your sim.”

22

NEWARK, NJ

Mans go way. Meerm hide in wall. Too fraid come out. Meerm feel something move inside. Not first time. Meerm feel before but nev so much. Move-move-move inside. What do that? Is why Meerm belly so big?

When sim come back work, Meerm climb out wall. Not leave closet because hear other man come. Yell-yell-yell.

“You, you lousy monkey bastard! You made me look like a jerk!”

Meerm hear Beece say, “Please, sir, Beece not understand.”

Meerm peek through crack. See big red-hair man stand over Beece.

“Don’t give me that shit! You lied to me!”

“Beece tell truth!”

“You said there was a sick female sim here! Do you see her? Where is she? Show her to me, you lying monkey bastard! Show me!”

Meerm see red-hair man raise fist. Meerm close eye, turn away. Hear hit sounds, hear Beece make hurt sounds.

“Hey-hey-hey!” Benny say. “You kill him, you replace him!”

Meerm hear other hit sound, hear more hurt sound.

“I oughta drop-kick your sim ass right out the window! All right, I’m outta here. If I have to look at another monkey I’m gonna puke!”

Man and Benny leave. Meerm want hide more but must see Beece. Beece friend, Beece hurt. Meerm leave closet. Find all sim in circle round Beece bunk. Beece eye swoll, nose bleed. Hold side. Poor Beece. Hurt-hurt-hurt.

“Beece! Meerm sorry! Ver sorry.”

Beece say, “Not Meerm fault. Beece fault. Beece want help Meerm but Meerm right. Bad mans. Ver bad.”

“Poor Beece!”

“Beece not tell ever again.” Beece look at other sim. “No sim tell mans bout Meerm. If tell mans come hurt Meerm like hurt Beece.” Beece close good eye now. “Beece tired. Sleep now.”

Meerm stay by Beece. Stroke arm. Poor hurt Beece. Meerm so sad. Keep hand on Beece arm. Stay by Beece all night.

1

MANHATTAN

DECEMBER 15

“This is fabulous!” Patrick shouted, venting his glee. “Ab-so-lute-ly faaaaabulous!”

He shuffled in a circle around the cracked concrete floor, punching the air, wanting to laugh aloud but fearing if he ever let himself get started he might not be able to stop.

Zero had called Romy and him to a meeting here in the garage without hinting at what it might be about. Patrick wished he could have watched Zero’s face, especially his eyes, as he’d laid the news on them about a sim made pregnant by a human. He hadn’t been able to fathom the mystery man’s feelings through the ski mask and shades, but Patrick knew exactly howhe felt. Suddenly his whole world had burst wide open in a blinding blaze of glory. Lawyers dream about an opportunity like this. Dream, hell, most of them didn’t even have the capacity to imagine something like this.

It was a home run.

In the bottom of the ninth.

With the bases loaded.

On Christmas Day.

With a winning lotto ticket waiting in the dugout.

Life was good, life was sooooo good!

Finally he turned back to Romy and Zero. As usual, Zero hung back in the shadows; Romy stood by the panel truck; both were watching him as if he were mad. He glanced up at the square of darkness in the ceiling above the ladder fastened to the rear wall. No eyes peering at him this time. But even if there were, it wouldn’t have fazed him. Not today.

“I get a feeling I’ve made Mr. Sullivan’s day,” Zero said, ostensibly to Romy.

“I think you made his year,” she said, her expression troubled.

Patrick couldn’t figure that. She should be beaming.

“Year?”he cried. “This makes mylife! A baby with a sim mother and a human father! Don’t you see what this means?”

“Of course,” Zero said. “Undeniable proof that humans and sims can cross-fertilize.”

“Right! And that means they have to be upgraded into the same category as humans.”

“It’s called ‘genus,’” Zero said, “not category.”

“Oh, right.” He’d never found science very interesting. No juice. “Genus and species. We’reHomo sapiens , right? So what genus are sims?”

“Start with the root: the animal kingdom; from there you move to the Chordata phylum, then to the Mammalia class. The next divisions are known as ‘orders.’ Humans, apes, monkeys, even tree shrews are all members of the Primate order. But after that we branch into different families. Chimps, gorillas, and orangutans are classified as members of the Pongidae family, while humans are the only existing members of the Hominidae family.”

“Pongidae…Hominidae,” Patrick said, rolling the unfamiliar words over his tongue. He guessed scientists were like lawyers, using dead languages to confuse and confute.

“Even before sims were created,” Zero was saying, “there were movements in the scientific community to shift chimps to the Hominidae family, and they might have succeeded if not for SimGen. Once SimGen got into the act, the movement ran out of gas.”

Romy said, “I’ve never understood how one corporation could wield so much influence.”

“Money,” Zero said.

Her brow furrowed. “I can see that working where legislation is involved, but how can you buy a scientific classification?”

“With grants. The right amount of money to the right universities to see the right man as head of the right department, and suddenly there are more important concerns than to which familyPan troglodytes belong. And so chimps stayed Pongidae.”

“Pan troglodytes,” Patrick said. “That’s the chimp genus and species, right?”

Zero nodded. “And sims are known asPan sinclairis of the family Pongidae.”

“Pan sinclairis,” Patrick said, shaking his head. “Talk about ego.” Then he grinned. “But no amount of grants is going to keep them out of Hominidae once word gets out about this baby. We’ll move them up to theHomo genus and get them a brand new name:Homo simiens . How does that sound?”

“It sounds like the end of SimGen,” Zero said.

“Damn right. Move sims to genus Homo, they become humans. And since owning a human hasn’t been legal since the Emancipation Proclamation, SimGen loses everything. Tome and I are going to lead the biggest class action lawsuit this world has ever seen. The tobacco settlements will look like chump change. Every sim will have a Caddy and a condo, and the Sinclair brothers, when I’m through with them, will be living on the street.”

Patrick waited for a reaction—a laugh, a cheer, encouragement, anything—but Zero remained silent behind his shields, while Romy frowned and seemed to be miles away.

“I won’t even take the customary thirty or forty percent,” he added. “I’ll settle for one point.” Plus expenses, of course. He could handle one percent of a zillion—last him the rest of his life and then some.

Still no reaction from either of them. He felt like a singer with a dead mike.

Finally Zero stirred, lacing his gloved fingers and popping the knuckles. “All fine and good, Patrick, but your scenario is missing one crucial element: You need proof.”

“Oh. Yeah. Right.”

No arguing with that: no pregnant sim, no case.

“And we can’t offer five million for a tip.”

“No,” Patrick said, “but maybe you can intercept that tip.”

“How do you propose I do that?”

“Obviously you’ve got a line into the heart of SimGen.”

He noticed Zero stiffen into a wary pose. “Obviously?”

“Sure. How else could you come by all this inside information. I don’t know if it’s a person or a bug, and I don’t want to know. What I’m saying is, if we can intercept the crucial tip, or even get it at the same time SimGen does, maybe we can reach this sim—”

“She’s got a name: Meerm.”

“See? You even know her name. So if we can use the tip to reach her before SimGen does, we’re golden.”

Zero shook his head. “I doubt that’s possible. All tips will be directed to Luca Portero, and he’s not the type to share information, even with the Sinclairs.”

“Well…,” Patrick said slowly, discarding a new idea immediately, but voicing it just to get a rise out of Romy. “He does have the hots for Romy…”

“Don’t even think about it,” she snapped.

“Joke, Romy.” At least she’d been listening. “Are you okay?”

She shook her head. “Not really. Something about this bothers me. How can a sim and a human cross-fertilize? Sims have twenty-two chromosome pairs and humans have twenty-three. Somewhere along the line they’re not going to match up, and a pair of chromosomes is going to be left hanging.”

“Not necessarily,” Zero said. “Look at the mule. Its father is a donkey, which has thirty-one pairs and its mother is a horse, which has thirty-two, though both are members of the genusEquus . Mules have been around for ages with no problems from the dangling chromosomes, other than the fact that they’re usually sterile.”

Romy’s frown deepened. “Then this baby, if it’s ever born, will probably be sterile too.”

“We’ll have to see. We’re in uncharted territory here.”

“So a mule,” Patrick said, “is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. What if it’s the other way around?”

“That’s a less common combination, but then you get something called a hinny. They look like mules but tend to be smaller because most donkeys are smaller than horses.”

“Where do all these fascinating tidbits of animal husbandry leave us?” Patrick said.

“With the realization that, given a fertile sim, a human-sim hybrid is a very real possibility.”

“I keep thinking about that baby,” Romy said. “What’s going to happen to it? Who’ll take care of it? And being neither sim nor human, what place will it have in the world?”

Zero’s tone softened. “Until we find Meerm I suggest you put off worrying about the baby. Given your nature, I know that won’t be easy, but your own safety should be at the top of your list right now. You won’t be able to help that baby if anything happens to you.”

Patrick felt the muscles between his shoulder blades tighten. “What do you mean, ‘happens’?”

He sighed. “You haven’t heard the whole story yet.”

“What are you holding back?”

“Nothing. I never had a chance to finish. Your war dance got us off track.”

Romy eyed Zero. “There’s a poor, frightened sim whore out there pregnant by a human degenerate. Isn’t that enough?”

“I never mentioned a whore, sim or otherwise.”

“I just assumed…”

Zero looked at Romy. “You might want to sit down.”

“Oh, no.” She stood blinking for a few heartbeats, then retreated two steps and dropped into the chair by the wall. “Do I want to hear this?”

“Probably not, but you need to.”

Zero then went on to explain who was behind the SLA and the reasons for its atrocities. Patrick listened, but all the while his eyes were fixed on Romy. He watched her initial disbelief give way to unwilling acceptance of a horrifying truth. Her expression was slack by the time Zero finished. He wanted to step to her side and slip his arms around her, but thought better of it. Jostle her now and she might explode.

Patrick too was shocked. To think that just two weeks ago in front of the burned-out ruins of the Bronx globulin farm, Romy had introduced him to the engineer of all this death and destruction.

“There’s got to be some way we can nail Portero for this,” Patrick said.

“Don’t count on it. He’s a pro, a very careful one.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t manufacture some evidence.”

“No,” Zero said, shaking his head. “Too dangerous.”

Romy finally spoke, her voice barely above a whisper. “I…I’d always figured Portero for a snake. But…I never dreamed…I mean, executing three humans and twelve sims…just to cover his tracks.”

“And those are just the ones we know about. You two might have been added to list if we hadn’t intervened when Patrick’s car was knocked off the road.”

“That was him?” Patrick said, turning toward Romy. “You mean I was standing two feet away from the guy who tried to kill me and I didn’t know it?”

“Not him directly,” Zero said. “But he planned it.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

He shrugged. “No one said, ‘Let’s not tell Patrick.’ When it happened, we still weren’t sure of you. And after you came on board, it simply never came up.”

“Just as well, I guess,” he said. “If I’d known I might have opened my big yap and given something away.”

“Which brings me back to what I was saying before,” Zero said. “Watch your backs. You and Romy have put yourselves on the wrong side of Manassas Ventures. Manassas is connected to SimGen and therefore, by extension, to Luca Portero. We’ve known he was ruthless, we just didn’t know until nowhow ruthless. There’s nothing this man won’t do, so please be careful. I’ll do whatever I can to back you up, but the organization can do only so much.”

Patrick turned to Romy. “Maybe we should move in together.”

She rolled her eyes. “Not that again.”

“For mutual protection, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Not such a bad idea, actually,” Zero said. “I know I’d rest easier, but I’ll leave that up to you two.”

Zero, I think I love you, Patrick thought.

But Romy didn’t appear to be buying. “Let’s worry about Meerm,” she said. “How do we find her first?”

“Why don’t we try thinking like a sim?” Patrick said, hating to leave the subject of cohabitation. “If I were a lost and frightened sim, where would I hide?”

“With other sims,” Zero said. “The trouble is, if she’s hiding from humans she’s not exactly going to come out and announce herself.”

Patrick had a thought. “How about my roomie? Is there some way Tome can help sniff her out? You know, set a sim to find a sim?”

Zero pointed at him. “Now that’s an idea.”

“As long as it doesn’t put him in any danger,” Patrick added. He’d grown fond of that old sim, and the possibility of anything happening to him put a twist in his gut. “I don’t want him hurt.”

“None of us do,” Zero said. “Let’s sit down and see where we can take that. Meanwhile, I’ve appealed to a higher power for help.”

“You’ve been praying?” Romy said.

“No, I meant that in a more literal sense. I was speaking of the Reverend’s satellite.”

2

SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ

“Watch this,” Sinclair-1 said the moment Luca stepped into the darkened office. The sun was down but only a corner floor lamp was lit.

Luca glanced around. No one else present. “Watch what?”

“This, goddamn it. I just recorded it off the dish.”

Sinclair poked his desktop and the plasma TV screen on the wall flickered, then lit with the face of the Reverend Eckert.

“My dear brothers and sisters. I had an entirely different sermon prepared for this broadcast, but just moments ago I experienced an epiphany, a revelation of such staggering importance that I felt it my duty to you and to my ministry to discard my prepared sermon and immediately address this matter.

“Do you know what an ‘urban legend’ is? I’m sure you do, but in case some of you don’t, let me explain. Urban legends are stories that are told and retold so many times that they take on a patina—or should I say, the appearance—of truth. We never get the story firsthand; usually we’re told that somebody’s uncle or aunt, or that a friend’s grandmother knows someone who personally experienced the incident.

“You might have been warned against bringing home a large cactus because somebody knows someone whose cactus burst open to let out a torrent of deadly tarantulas.

“Or you heard about the burned corpse of a frogman found in the ashes of a forest fire, the story going that he was SCUBA diving when he was scooped up by a firefighting helicopter as it filled its bucket from the lake near the fire.

“Or the ‘documented facts’ that eelskin wallets erase magnetic cards and giant alligators infest New York City sewers, and on and on.

“Brothers and sisters, I could spend the whole program cataloguing these tales, but that’s not why I’m speaking to you today. I pray you’ve caught my meaning, because I want you to believe that what I am about to say is not an urban legend.

“As I told you earlier, I’ve had a revelation from On High. But some people, for their own selfish reasons, will want to deny its truth. My words, as they spread,will be written off by these professional doubters as just the latest in a long line of urban legends. But don’t listen to them, friends. I have it on excellent authority, not from a friend of a friend, but from the ultimate Unimpeachable Source that what I am about to tell you is God’s Truth.

“That Truth concerns a sim, a female sim, lost, alone, frightened, hiding somewhere in New York City. Yes, I’m talking about the same sim that Satan’s own corporation, SinGen, has offered five million dollars for. But have you asked yourselves why SinGen is offering so much for one lowly sim? They’ll tell you it’s to help bring murderers to justice, but is that really the case? The humans these murderers killed were criminals themselves. And sims are killed every day without SinGen offering so much as a dime to find the culprits.

“So there I was today, sitting alone in my home chapel, spending quiet time in communion with the Lord, wondering what was so special about this particular sim to make the devil’s company squander so much of its tainted lucre to find her.

“And then it came to me. In a blaze of inspiration that could only be the result of the touch of the Lord his own self, I knew!

“This lost sim is pregnant!

“Now, now, I know we’ve all been told that sims can’t procreate, but think about who’s been telling us that: the devil corporation run by Satan, the Father of Lies. Only God is perfect. Satan makes mistakes—that’s why he rules in Hell after all, instead of in Heaven. And Satan made a real whopper of a mistake this time.

“What’s that? Yes, I hear you. I hear what you’re saying. You’re saying, ‘A pregnant sim, Reverend Eckert? How can that be? Who is the father?’

“And that, brothers and sisters, is the worst part. This was no immaculate conception. No, this is an abomination. This sim pregnancy is the result of un-plumbed wickedness and moral decrepitude. For the father, I say to you, the father of this sim’s baby ishuman!

“Of course, I use the term loosely, for what sort of human would defile himself so by doing such a thing to a helpless animal? But yes, you heard correctly, the father is human!

“Now, I know what you’re saying in your hearts, if you’re not crying it out loud, ‘Why, Reverend Eckert? Why would God allow such an unspeakable thing to occur?’ And I must tell you, friends, that I asked myself the same question. I wondered if this could be a sign of the End Times: Could the child of this unholy union be the Antichrist?

“But the Lord his own self was guiding my thoughts because I suddenly realized that this unborn child is just the opposite of the Antichrist. For it will notbe born to establish Satan’s rule on earth, but to dislodge his foul foothold, destroy the satanic beachhead we know as SinGen!

“That is therealreason the company is offering so much to find this poor, mistreated, pregnant sim.

“So I say to you, my brothers and sisters, do not listen when you are told that this can’t be true, that it’s just another urban legend. It isnot!If you live in the Northeast, live anywhere in or around New York City, I beg you, as soon as I am finished here: Leave your homes and hie into the streets to look for this unfortunate creature.

“And if you find her, do not call SinGen, no matter how much money it is offering. Do not allow yourselves to be tempted by the devil’s offer. Sell this sim and you are selling your soul. Instead, call the number flashing at the bottom of your screen and I will personally see to it that this sim and its child are protected from Satan’s forces.

“And when the child is born, I shall bring it to the halls of Congress and display it to the leaders of our nation. And then the scales shall fall from their eyes and they will see that they have allowed an abomination to move into their house; and the shackles shall loosen from their limbs and they will act, casting SinGen into the outer darkness whence it came, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

“Go now, my brothers and sisters. Fill the streets. Waste not another moment. Find—”

The screen went blank. Another touch on the desktop and the lights came up.

Luca blinked, momentarily mute with shock. He opened his mouth to speak but Sinclair voiced his thoughts.

“He knows! How thehell did he find out?”

“A leak,” Luca said. “I’ve suspected one for some time now.”

“You think the room is bugged? By someone other than you, I mean.”

Luca was taken aback by the casualness of the remark.

“What?” Sinclair said, a tiny smile twisting his lips. “You think I don’t know your people have this office bugged? Probably the whole campus as well, am I right?”

He was. Offices, labs, even rest rooms—all bugged. Luca shrugged it off.

“We sweep this office regularly. No listening devices of any sort.” Other than ours.

“Ifound out yesterday,” Sinclair said, then pointed to the blank TV screen. “Heknows today. How else but a bug?”

“A person. I’ve long suspected your brother. This confirms it.”

“It confirms nothing of the sort. Ellis? Ridiculous!”

“Really? Until yesterday, only a select few of our people knew. Even the men I’ve had combing the city don’t know; they think we want this sim because she’s got a rare immune globulin in her blood. Weeks of searching without a hint of a leak. But yesterday afternoon I tell you and your brother, and today, just twenty-four hours later, the Reverend Eckert is telling the world. If it’s not your brother, then it’s you.”

Sinclair sat down and drummed his fingers on the desk. “Well, it’s not me. And I can’t believe it’s Ellis, not after the way your people threatened his children.”

“I’m not aware of any threat.”

“No? Well, I guess it was before your time.”

That part was true. But Luca knew perfectly well what the CEO was talking about. A brilliant little op, involving nothing overt, but it had kept Ellis Sinclair in line ever since.

Sinclair looked at him. “Maybe Eckert did have a revelation.”

“You don’t really expect—”

“I don’t mean from God.”

“Then—”

“Hear me out. Here’s this guy who’s got a hard-on for SimGen. He hears we’re offering five million to find this lost sim, so he figures out the worstcase scenario for us, and broadcasts it. It’s just a coincidence that he happens to hit on the truth.”

Luca snorted. “You don’t believe that any more than I do.”

Sinclair sighed. “No. No, I don’t.”

“However Eckert came to it, we can count on a lot of his people on the streets looking for that sim, trying to find her first.”

“Does that worry you, Mr. Portero? Don’t let it. The more the merrier. Eckert’s people merely increase our chances. They may believe in God, but when it comes down to five million dollars’ worth of cold hard cash, they’ll believe in that even more.”

“We’ll see.” Luca wasn’t so sure about that, but saw no point in arguing. He had another point to press. “In the meantime, my people will expect you to do something about your brother.”

“Very well. From now on, any meetings concerning matters of a sensitive nature will be conducted without him.” His eyes narrowed. “But you don’t have any hard evidence against Ellis, do you. Otherwise you wouldn’t have looked so shocked when I played you that tape. I’d be surprised if you weren’t monitoring his calls. Have you been following him as well?”

“No. But we will.”

Truth was, he’d set tails on Sinclair-2 a number of times but they always lost him. Looked like he’d have to tail him personally.

I can spread myself only so thin, damn it.

“Starting when? Tonight?”

“No, not tonight. But soon.”

He had a more pressing matter to attend to. He and Lister had spent much of the day setting up an op for tonight. The target, Romy Cadman, knew Luca’s face so he could not be directly involved, but he’d be on standby, eagerly awaiting the results. By the end of the night he’d have established a solid link of money and information between Cadman and Ellis Sinclair.

And then there’d be no need to follow anyone anywhere.

3

MANHATTAN

“Really,” Romy said as their cab climbed the on-ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge, “this is unnecessary. I’m more than capable of finding my own way home.”

“You heard what our friend said this afternoon,” Patrick replied. “‘Be careful.’ And that’s what we’re doing.”

Beside him, in the darkness of the rear seat, he saw her shake her head. “An awfully long trip.”

“Not if I’m with you.”

Light from a passing car reflected off her smile. “What a nice thing to say. But perhaps I should have phrased it a little differently: This is going to be an awfully longround trip.”

As the bejeweled towers of Lower Manhattan dwindled behind them, Patrick thought about the day. A good day. Any day with more ups than downs was a good day. After the shock of learning who was behind the SLA and the globulin farm murders had worn off, and Patrick had settled down from his initial elation over the news of the pregnant sim, they’d brainstormed ways to find Meerm. Reverend Eckert’s exhortation to his followers to track her down for him instead of for SimGen—a message he’d be hammering into his viewers day after day—would help, but they still hadn’t figured out a way to fit Tome into the equation.

As darkness fell they’d called it a day, Zero taking off in the van, and Romy accepting Patrick’s invitation to dinner. They’d walked downtown and found a bistro in Chelsea that looked inviting. A pair of Rob Roys before and a shared bottle of pinot noir during a meal of various pastas and sauces had left Patrick in a genial mood. He figured Romy, who’d matched his Rob Roys with Cosmopolitans, had to be feeling mellow herself.

“Am I that bad?”

“No,” she said. “Not bad at all.” He felt her take his hand, interlace her fingers with his, and give it a little squeeze. “In fact, you’re good. Taking Tome in like you did is, well, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone doing that for a sim.”

She rested her head on his shoulder. The scent of her hair and the wave of warmth seeping up from where their hands coupled enveloped Patrick, making him feel as if he were riding a cloud.

What is it with this woman? he wondered. We’re only holding hands but it feels like we’re having sex.

He rode that cloud all the way to Brooklyn, and too soon they were stopped in front of a neat, four-story brick-faced building.

“I’ll walk you to your door,” he said.

Romy shook her head. “No, you won’t.”

“We’ve got to be careful, Romy…”

She leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lips. “You’re not walking me to my door. You’re coming up.”

“For a nightcap?”

“A drink, coffee, anything you want.”

Patrick couldn’t see Romy’s face in the dimness, couldn’t read her eyes. His first impulse was to ask her to repeat her last statement, but he feared she might take it as a wisecrack. Some sort of spell had been woven here tonight and he wasn’t about to risk breaking it.

“Let’s go,” he said, and fumbled his wallet out of his pocket to pay the cabby.

The stairway within was too narrow to ascend abreast so he had to follow Romy, which positioned her hips at eye level before him. Their rhythmic sway within her cleathre coat only exacerbated the electric ache in his groin.

They stopped climbing at the third floor. Romy keyed open a door marked 3A. She stepped through, turned, and pulled Patrick inside. Without turning on the lights she slammed the door and slipped her arms around his neck. Patrick responded instinctively, pulling her close. His lips found hers, he felt her left leg sliding up the outside of his thigh as he slipped his right hand along her ribs toward her left breast—

—and then the lights came on.

Romy spun, ending up beside him, hands out, ready to fight.

But the blond-haired guy with one hand on the lamp switch held a silenced automatic in the other. A second man, his dark hair tied back in a neat little ponytail, sat in an easy chair and held an identical silenced pistol. Both wore dark suits and white shirts buttoned to the top.

The seated man smiled as he spoke. “Well, well. Look at this, won’t you. A two-for-one special.” He had a faint Texas accent.

Amazing how fast lust can fade—Patrick’s insides had already turned to ice.

“What do you want?” Romy said.

“You, Ms. Cadman,” Ponytail said. “Not for anything carnal, I’m sorry to say, although I’m sure that would prove to be a mutual pleasure. We simply wish to ask you some questions. And as long as your lawyer friend is here, we have questions for him as well.”

“Forget about it,” she said, turning and reaching for the doorknob.

“Please don’t,” Ponytail said. “These silencers aren’t in place for show. Wewill shoot if necessary. Not a killshot—a knee, a thigh, just to get across the point that we have questions that we intend to have answered. We can do this friendly, where no one gets hurt and you both walk away wound-free, or we can do it messy. I prefer the friendly path, don’t you?”

“Friendly sounds good, Romy,” Patrick whispered, nudging her with his elbow. “Especially when we’re outgunned two to zip.”

She didn’t look at him. All he heard was a soft, “Shit!”

Patrick raised his hands, hearing the words to that old blues song about being a lover, not a fighter. “Let’s do friendly.”

“A practical man,” said Ponytail. He rose and moved toward two ladder-back chairs sitting side by side on the carpet. “We took the liberty of moving these in from the kitchen.” He did a mocking, maitre d’-type flourish. “Both of you remove your coats and be seated, s’il vous plait.” It sounded weird with that Texas accent.

Patrick tossed his herringbone overcoat onto the couch and guided Romy to one of the chairs.

“Portero sent you, didn’t he?” she said as he helped her out of her coat.

“Portero…Portero…,” Ponytail said slowly. “No, I don’t believe we’ve met. Is she as pretty as you?”

Blondy guffawed.

That laugh says it all, Patrick thought as he seated Romy, threw her coat on the couch, then dropped into the other chair. He tried to relax but quailed as he felt the muzzle of Ponytail’s silencer suddenly press against his temple.

“Ms. Cadman,” the man said, “my associate will put down his weapon while he affixes you to the chair. You will allow him to do so without resistance. If you resist you will end up with a very messy carpet and we will be faced with the unfortunate circumstance of having only one person to interrogate.”

Patrick’s bladder clenched. He wasn’t cut out for this. He’d been trained to pose logical arguments based on law and precedent in an arena overseen by a supposedly impartial magistrate. If he won, great; if he lost, at least he could walk away knowing—hopefully—that he’d acquitted himself well in the contest. But this…the loser here didn’t walk anywhere.

The blond guy laid his pistol on the carpet far from Romy. He produced a roll of aluminum duct tape and began taping her arms and legs to the chair. When he finished he bent over her and cupped one of her breasts in his hand.

“Nice,” he said, grinning.

Romy jerked her head forward, ramming it into his face. He staggered back, clutching his nose. When he recovered he bared his teeth, cocked his fist, and started toward her.

“Uh-uh-uh!” said Ponytail in a schoolmarm tone. “Mustn’t mar the merchandise. Tape up Mr. Sullivan, please.”

Scowling, Blondy taped Patrick to his chair, winding it blood-stoppingly tight. When he finished, he retrieved his weapon from the floor and holstered it inside his jacket.

But he wasn’t quite finished. He stepped over to Romy and grabbed the tip of her breast through her sweater. He gave the nipple a vicious twist and said, “Thatwon’t mar the merchandise.”

Romy winced but didn’t give him an iota more.

Patrick twisted against his bonds. “You shit!” He didn’t kid himself about being a tough guy but the way he felt at that moment left no doubt he could kill the bastard.

“All right now,” Ponytail said, holstering his own weapon under his left arm and pulling a leather case from under his right. “Enough fun and games. Let’s playWho Wants To Spill The Beans? ”

He snapped open the case, revealing an inoculator and two vials of amber fluid. He loaded one of the vials into the chamber of the inoculator, then pulled a recorder out of his pocket and set it on the coffee table.

“Now,” he said, smiling. “Who wants to be first? Let’s see…eenie, meenie—”

A softthump sounded from an adjoining room.

“What was that?” Ponytail said.

Blondy shook his head. “Don’t know. I checked it out when we got here. It was empty.”

“Probably just my cat,” Romy said.

Ponytail snarled, “You don’thave a cat!” He jerked his head toward the doorway and told Blondy, “That could have been the window. Check again.”

Blondy pulled his gun and edged into the dark doorway. He poked his head inside, looked around, then reached his free hand inside for the light switch.

And then—Patrick couldn’t be sure—it looked like he either tripped and fell into the room or something pulled him in. Whatever the cause, one second Blondy was there, leaning through the doorway, the next he wasn’t. A faint sound, something like a strangled grunt came from within, followed by a thump—it didn’t sound heavy enough for a falling-body thump; maybe just a dropped-gun thump.

“Duke?” Ponytail said. He placed the inoculator kit on the coffee table next to the recorder and retrieved the pistol from under his suit coat. “Duke, are you okay?”

No answer from the bedroom.

Ponytail edged toward the doorway, pointing his pistol at Romy’s head. “I don’t know what kind of shit’s going down here, but if anything untoward happens, you go first.”

The first thought that ran though Patrick’s mind was,Untoward ? Did he really sayuntoward ?

Ponytail reached the doorway. He peeked around the molding and suddenly cried out, reeling back as Duke’s limp body came flying out of the room to crash against him. He grunted as he tumbled to the floor, his pistol discharging and sending a bullet over Romy’s head to punch a fist-size chunk of plaster out of the wall above one of the windows.

He didn’t get a chance for a second shot because Duke’s body wasn’t the only thing flying through the doorway. Something else followed directly behind—a snarling, barrel-chested apparition in a sleeveless black coverall, its furry, black-eyed head split open to reveal yellow teeth and a pair of huge fangs in the upper jaw. But even more frightening was the scarlet coloring that blazed along its upper snout as it flew through the air, long arms outstretched, fingers curved into claws.

Ponytail let out a panicked bleat at the sight of it, and Patrick caught an odd light in the man’s eyes; shock and terror, yes, but something else: recognition.

He tried to bring his pistol around but it was knocked from his grasp and sent skittering across the floor.

He wailed, “Kree—!” but whatever he intended to say was choked off as long fingers wrapped around his throat and squeezed.

Patrick was just registering that they might be in worse trouble now than a moment ago, when Romy started talking to the thing.

“Kek! Don’t kill him, Kek! We need him alive!”

“Youknow this thing?”

She didn’t respond but stayed focused on the creature that continued to throttle Ponytail. The man’s mouth worked spasmodically as his eyes bulged and his face purpled.

“Kek! Let go! Let go now!”

Finally her words seemed to get through to the thing. It released its stranglehold and leaped up, but it didn’t stay still, didn’t seem able to. It wandered back and forth, growling, flailing at the air, as if working off a rage. On the floor, Ponytail coughed and retched, sucking in air, but it was purely reflexive. He was out cold.

As for Duke, he wasn’t breathing at all. And the unnatural angle of his head on his shoulders made it clear that he would never breathe again.

Nipple-twisting bastard, Patrick thought. Good riddance.

“Good, Kek,” Romy was saying in a soothing voice. “You did good, very good. Zero will be so proud of you.”

That seemed to calm the beast. It stopped its agitated pacing and cocked its head as its dark eyes peered at Romy from beneath a prominent brow. The crimson coloring atop its snout was fading. Still staring at Romy it made a chirping sound.

Patrick didn’t know what to think. It looked like some bizarre sort of gorilla, but nothing like Patrick had ever seen in any zoo he’d visited. More like a mutant sim who’d overdosed on steroids. The creature seemed to be on their side, but just barely. Patrick had never sensed so much aggression packed into a single being.

“Whatis that thing, Romy?” he whispered.

“Just be calm,” she said, nodding and smiling at the creature. “He’s been told you’re on our side but he doesn’t know you, so he’s not sure of you. Whatever you do, don’t make any sudden moves.”

He glanced down at his duct-taped legs and arms. “As if I have a choice.”

“I’m about to remedy that.” She looked at the creature. “Kek, you’ve got to cut me free,” she said softly, as if talking to a child. “So I can call Zero. Use your knife to cut me free.”

Kek unsnapped a safety strap from a scabbard attached to the belt around its waist—Patrick hadn’t noticed the belt till now—and whipped out one of those huge, saw-toothed Special Forces knives.

Patrick’s gut clenched. “Oh, Christ! Someone gave that thing a knife?”

“Quiet!” Romy hissed. “Kek’s a ‘he,’ and you owe him.”

“I know, but—”

“I’m not talking about tonight. Now be quiet and I’ll explain later.” She turned back to Kek and dipped her head toward the tape around her right arm. “Could you cut that, Kek? I can’t call Zero and tell him what a good job you did until you cut that tape.”

Kek loped over and Patrick gasped as the creature raised the knife and, in a move so casual in manner yet so blindingly fast in execution, slashed the duct tape with a single thrust. He expected blood to gush from Romy’s wrist, but only the tape parted, leaving her without a scratch.

“Good job!” she said as she wriggled that arm free and began the laborious task of unwinding the tape trapping her left wrist.

“Ask him if you can borrow his knife,” Patrick said. “To speed things up.” Being trapped in this chair was making him claustrophobic.

She gave him a rueful smile. “I wouldn’t advise you or anyone else to try to take Kek’s knife away from him. Even if you say, ‘Pretty please.’”

She freed her left and, then began to work on her legs. As she did, Kek retreated to a corner where he squatted and watched.

When she was finally free she rose and walked away.

“Hey!” Patrick said. “What about me?”

She stepped through an alcove and Patrick heard the rattle of cutlery from within. A moment later she emerged holding a wicked looking carving knife.

“Ginsu,” she said. “Cuts through tin cans.”

“But will it cut duct tape?”

“We’ll see.”

It did, of course, and seconds later Patrick was free. He started to rise, then sat back down. He looked at the two men on the floor, one dead, the other halfway there, then at the creature squatting against the wall, watching them, and felt weak, as if someone had pulled a drainage plug from his ankle and all his energy had run out.

“What’s going on, Romy? What have we got ourselves into?”

“Life!” she said, turning, bending at the waist, and leaning toward him. “Don’t you feel alive, more alive than you’ve ever felt in your life?” She held the Ginsu blade before her face. “This is it! This is the cutting edge! This is where your vote is counted! This is where you make a difference!”

She’s high, he thought. Stoked on adrenaline. And me? A total wreck.

“You’re very scary right now,” he told her.

“Am I?” She straightened. “Sorry. That was someone else talking.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” She pointed to the unconscious man. “Can you believe it? We’ve finally got one of them!”

“One of who?”

“They’re from Manassas, or whoever’s behind Manassas. And the people behind Manassas are behind SimGen. This blows the lid off, breaks everything wide open. We’re finally going to get some answers.”

“What if he doesn’t want to talk?”

“Oh, he’ll talk.” She turned and lifted the inoculator from the kit on the coffee table. “Do unto others what they were about to do to you, right?”

Patrick stared at the amber liquid in the vial. They’d been about to inject some of that into Romy and him.

“You think that’s the truth drug we heard about? The one they found in the dead globulin farmers?”

She nodded. “Totuus. I’d bet my soul.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know.” She gestured to the dead man. “Maybe we’d have ended up like him.”

“Speaking of him, how do we explain a dead body to the police?”

“We won’t.”

“We can’t very well say he broke his own neck.”

“I’m sure Zero will have a way to handle it.”

Romy picked up her coat from the floor. “Kek, you did good,” she said soothingly to the creature as she rummaged in a pocket.

Patrick noticed that the red coloration had faded completely from its snout, replaced now by a bright blue.

“Can I ask again: Whatis he?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said as she pulled a phone from the coat pocket. “I’ll introduce you.”

“That’s okay.”

She motioned to the creature. “Come over here, Kek. I want you to meet Mister Sullivan.”

“Really,” Patrick said out of the corner of his mouth as Kek rose and started toward them. Something about this creature stirred a primal fear in him. And the way its gaze veered to Patrick’s left and right, never making eye contact, didn’t help. “That’s okay.”

“Kek,” Romy said, “shake hands with our new friend, Patrick Sullivan. And Patrick, meet the fellow who saved your life back in October.”

“My life? You mean, when we were knocked off the Saw Mill?”

As Romy nodded Patrick relived the moment in the inky grove as the massive arms of the man named Ricker wrapped around his head and shoulders, felt them tense as he prepared to snap Patrick’s neck, and then the sudden release. Moments later, Ricker and his friend were dead.

He considered Kek’s muscular arms, sensed the power in the thick shoulders bulging through the sleeveless coverall. Yes, power to spare, more than enough to take out two hardened pros, especially if they didn’t see him coming.

“I guess I owe you big time, Kek,” Patrick said, thrusting out his hand. He still didn’t know what kind of mutant monkey thing stood before him, but he most definitely wanted Kek on his side. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for saving my life. Thank you very much.”

Kek pulled back his shoulders and puffed out his chest. Finally he made eye contact. His hand was warm and dry as his long fingers wrapped around Patrick’s. He bared his teeth, revealing those fangs. An attempt at a smile?

“Does he speak?” Patrick said.

“Not more than a few syllables—one of them being ‘Kek.’ But he understands speech and he signs.”

Kek released Patrick’s hand and turned to the two men on the floor. Ponytail groaned and stirred. Kek bent, grabbed the man’s hair, and slammed his head against the floor.

“Easy, Kek,” Romy said. “We don’t want to scramble his brains.”

“Whatdo we want to do?” Patrick said.

Romy said, “Zero,” to her PCA, then smiled. “That’s what I’m about to find out.”

4

Every muscle in Luca’s body wound tight as he let himself into the foyer of Romy Cadman’s apartment building. Something had gone wrong. He didn’t know what, couldn’t imagine what, but Palmer and Jackson weren’t answering his calls.

They’d been flown in from the Idaho facility especially for this op—both of them experienced men who’d return there immediately after they completed their work. The chance of Cadman or Sullivan ever seeing either of them again was nil. They’d called in when they’d set themselves up in the apartment; they’d responded when the surveillance team in the car outside let them know that both the woman and Sullivan were on their way up.

But that had been over an hour ago. No one had heard from them since. No one had entered or left the building since Cadman and Sullivan’s arrival.

He couldn’t help remembering the first time he’d run an op against these two: a humiliating failure and two of his men dead.

Not again, he thought, almost a prayer. Please, not again.

But the previous op had been a complicated outdoor job, with innumerable variables; this one was in a small apartment, a limited, controlled field of operation that Palmer and Jackson had secured beforehand. What was wrong? An hour was more than enough for a pair of armed pros to deal with two unarmed civilians, juice them up with Totuus, and record the answers to a few questions. Like, who do you take instructions from, where do you get your money, and so on.

Luca had wanted to be there, and would have been if termination had been in the plan; but since Cadman and Sullivan were going to be released, he couldn’t risk showing his face.

He hurried up the stairs. Key in hand, he pressed his ear against the door to 3A and knocked. No sound from within, not a whisper, not a rustle. He knocked again, same result.

Steeling himself for what might lie within—visions of Ricker’s and Green’s smashed skulls from the last time flashed through his brain—Luca unlocked the door and stepped inside.

Empty silence. Quick dodges in and out of the rooms, another circuit to check out the closets, and then back to the center of the front room, to wander in a slow, baffled circle. Where the hell was everybody? Could he be in the wrong apartment?

And then he spotted white fragments and powder on the carpet in the corner. He stepped closer and recognized it as plaster. A quick look up and he found a deep pock in the wall. Bullet hole. Fresh one. Looked for more but came up empty.

He felt his pulse kick up. Someone had got off a shot, but only one. That confirmed that he was in the right place. But where did everybody go? He stepped to the window and looked down at the small rear courtyard. No way out here—the fire escape was in front. They had to be hiding in another apartment—the only possible answer. He’d keep the building under surveillance. Sooner or later they had to show themselves.

But what if they weren’t here? What if they’d got away clean?

He pulled out his PCA and called down to the surveillance car across the street. “Anybody leave since I’ve been inside?”

“Negative.” Snyder’s voice. He and Lowery were on watch. “Saw a grayish van pull out of an alley half a block down right after you went in, but that’s about it.”

A van. Could that be…?

“Did you get the plate number?”

“Yep. You want a read back?”

Luca closed his eyes. Thank God for Snyder. At least someone was on the ball. “No. But don’t lose it. It might be important.”

And then again, it might not mean a goddamn thing.

Luca Portero dried his sweaty palms on his coat sleeves. Two more men gone, and he knew no more now about who was behind Cadman and Sullivan than he did before.

How the hell was he going to tell Lister?

5

“You know,” Patrick told Zero after they’d pulled into the West Side garage and the door had closed behind their van, “I could get used to this. And that worries me.”

The cascade of emotions from the threats and the violence had faded now, leaving him oddly exhilarated. But it had been harrowing.

When Romy had called Zero they’d learned that he had an escape route all worked out. Following his instructions, they’d taken the stairs to the roof—Romy in the lead, Patrick bringing up the rear, Kek in the middle carrying their two attackers, one over each shoulder. Romy’s was the second of four joined buildings. They’d walked across two neighboring roofs to a ledge where a fire escape led down to an alley. After a short but nerve-wracking wait, Zero’s battered Econoline pulled up and they’d all climbed aboard.

Patrick had handled the driving on the way back, with Zero in the passenger seat, and Romy in the middle. That was when his mood had begun to change. They’d done it! They’d faced murderous opposition and—with no little help from Kek—overcome it. They were wheeling away with no one in pursuit, no one even aware that they’d turned the tables.

As soon as they’d reached Manhattan they found a deserted spot under the FDR Drive where they leaned Duke’s corpse against a steel support. Throughout the night anyone who saw him would think he was passed out drunk; in the morning light they’d think differently. Patrick then piloted the van across town with Duke’s unconscious partner.

Masked as usual, Zero stepped out of the passenger door and regarded Patrick through his dark glasses. “Yes. It’s the high of victory. Not a good thing to get too used to. You can’t expect to win all the time.”

“I know.” Patrick opened his door and hopped out. “But after all the bad news, after being pushed around and running into wall after wall, this feels very, very good. It’ll feel even better if it turns out that one of these two poisoned my clients.

“And maybe,” Romy said, taking the hand he offered to help her out of the van, “he’s one of the SLA creeps who butchered the globulin farm sims as well.”

“Wouldn’t that be sweet.”

Zero leaned back inside and spoke toward the darkened rear section. “Kek. Tape the man into the chair by the wall.”

They’d brought everything along—the tape, the inoculator kit, the silenced pistols. Neither man had carried any identification.

Poetic justice, Patrick thought as he watched Kek get to work. Bound with his own tape, injected with his own truth drug.

He looked around, noticing how his senses felt heightened. Despite the low light in the garage, he seemed to see everything with day-bright clarity. The tang of gasoline and the heavier odor of DW-40 were sharp in the air; the ticking of the van’s cooling engine was like a ball-peen hammer rapping an anvil.

Zero was away from the van now, moving to the darker shadows of a corner. Why wouldn’t he let anyone see his face? What was he afraid of?

Patrick followed him, but not too closely. “What is he and where did you find him?” he said, pointing to Kek.

“In Idaho. Last year.”

“Idaho?” Romy said. “You never told me that. I thought you’d found him around SimGen.”

Zero shrugged. “Sorry. It never came up. And it didn’t seem to matter until you saw that Idaho license plate on the SimGen campus.”

“I wondered why you were so psyched about that.”

“How do you just happen to ‘find’ something like him in Idaho?” Patrick asked.

“Don’t you remember hearing reports of people claiming they’d spotted Bigfoot in Idaho last winter?”

“Vaguely. I try not to devote too many memory cells to that sort of thing.”

“I do…if it sounds furry like a sim. I sent a couple of volunteers out there to track down the sightings, and they returned with Kek, suffering from starvation, frostbite, and half dead from exposure. Dr. Cannon and I nursed him back to health and—”

“Who’s Dr. Cannon?”

“You met her at Beacon Ridge,” Romy said. “She was the woman doctor who tried to save the poisoned sims.”

“Right,” Patrick said. “I remember her. But whatis Kek? Where did he come from?”

“I don’t know,” Zero replied, watching as the creature taped the still unconscious Ponytail into the chair. “But he’s obviously the product of a recombinant lab, an advanced one. He looks to be part mandrill and part gorilla, and I’d be very surprised if he didn’t have a fair amount of human DNA spliced into his genome as well.”

Patrick shook his head in wonder. “He’s scary looking.”

“I doubt that’s by accident. Nor his aggressiveness.”

“But why?” Kek had finished his task and now squatted by the prisoner, his eyes fixed on Zero as he awaited further instructions. “Who’d want to create something like that?”

Zero walked back to the cab of the van and reached through the window. “I’ll show you.” He withdrew one of the silenced pistols and held it up. “A .45 caliber HK SOCOM. Ever seen one before?”

“Never,” Patrick said. “What’s ‘HK’ mean? Hong Kong?”

Zero laughed. “Hardly.” He swiveled the pistol toward Romy. “Romy? Know it?”

“It’s Heckler and Koch, but beyond that…sorry, no.”

“Heckler and Koch Mk 23 Special Operations Command model. Its barrel comes threaded and suppresser ready.” Zero held it out to Kek. “Kek? Would you break this down for me please?”

“Are you nuts?” Patrick whispered as Kek loped forward. “That’s a loaded weapon!”

Zero didn’t respond. He placed the pistol in Kek’s outstretched hand and said, “You can use that workbench over there.”

Kek took the pistol and inspected it, turning it over in his hands a few times before he ejected the clip and then worked the slide to remove the chambered round.

“He knows guns!” Patrick said, his voice hushed in awe.

“You ain’t seen nuthin yet,” Romy told him.

Kek stepped over to the workbench and Patrick watched in amazement as his long, nimble fingers removed the silencer and disassembled the gun with practiced speed, then arranged its innards for inspection, all in less than thirty seconds. When finished he took one step back and stood with his hands behind his back, awaiting approval.

“He’s military!” Patrick said.

“Or paramilitary. Or perhaps intended as some sort of semi-human mercenary. Who can say? But he can break down just about any weapon you hand him, and he knows no fear.”

“A perfect soldier.”

“Maybe not perfect, but damn near.”

“What happened to his left hand?” Patrick said as he noticed that Kek’s ring and pinkie fingers were missing a joint or two.

“Frostbite,” Zero replied.

“So he owes his life to you?”

“And Kek knows it,” Romy said. “He’s totally devoted to Zero.”

“An overstatement, I assure you,” Zero said.

Patrick didn’t think so. He’d noticed that Kek’s eyes had stayed focused on Zero since his arrival. Even now, as he awaited approval of his breakdown of the pistol, his eyes never left Zero.

“I believe he’s waiting for your okay,” Patrick said.

“Oh, sorry,” Zero replied. He saluted Kek and said, “Excellent job, my friend. Please reassemble it.”

Patrick had no way to gauge this creature’s emotions, but he sensed a burst of pride and pleasure in response to Zero’s approval. Oh, yes, Kek might be hell on wheels when it came to confronting an enemy, but he was Zero’s kitty cat.

“Who made him?” Patrick said as Kek’s flying fingers clicked the pieces back into place. “SimGen?”

“The most likely suspect,” Zero said.

“But if so, how did he get from New Jersey to Idaho?”

“Our guess is he was put aboard a truck from the SimGen basic research facility; the truck was driven aboard a plane at the SimGen airstrip and flown to Idaho.”

“Why Idaho?”

“Because it’s largely empty. Because you can buy big parcels of land that allow you to operate in near absolute privacy.”

“But who?” Patrick said. “Who wants to operate in secrecy? Who wants to stockpile a bunch of Keks?”

“Kek might be just one of many new species quartered in the hinterlands.”

The possibilities made Patrick more than a little queasy. “There’s a thought to take to bed with you.”

Just then Ponytail stirred, groaned, and lifted his head.

Zero glanced his way and said, “A font of information on these very subjects is about to become available to us. I hope.”

“I don’t think you have to hope,” Patrick said. “I’d swear he recognized Kek when he jumped him. He even tried to say something. It sounded like, ‘Kree—’ but he never got to finish it.”

Ponytail’s eyes were glazed and it was obvious to Patrick he had no idea where he was or why he was tied up or what was going on. Tell him he’s at an S & M beerfest in Sydney and he’d buy it. After ten seconds or so his chin dropped back onto his chest.

“We’ll have to ask him about that,” Zero said. “He should be ready to talk soon.” He turned to Kek. “Take your position upstairs at the window now.”

Kek turned and scrambled up a metal ladder affixed to the rear wall.

“The garage comes with a loft,” Zero said. “The window up there affords an excellent view of the street. It also serves as Kek’s home.”

“So it was him I saw peeking down on us that day,” Patrick said.

Zero nodded. “Kek has a curious nature.” He turned to Romy. “Where did we put that inoculator kit?”

“Right here,” Romy said, and handed it to him.

“The moment of truth, as it were,” Zero said, opening the kit as he approached the captive. “Now we find out if Luca Portero is as involved as we think he is.”

“How safe is that stuff?” said Patrick, eyeing the amber fluid in the inoculator’s chamber.

“I’ve never used it,” Zero said. “But they were willing to dose you up with it. Any objections to returning the favor?”

“None at all,” Patrick said.

“I didn’t think so.” He handed the inoculator to Romy. “Would you do the honors?”

“My pleasure,” she said.

She tilted Ponytail’s head to the side, exposing his neck.

“You know what you’re doing?” Patrick said.

She nodded. “Used to work research. Injected a lot of animals before I decided I’d rather work the other side of the street.”

She placed the business end of the inoculator gun against the side of Ponytail’s neck. She look as if she were about to execute him.

“What about the dose?” Patrick said. “How do you know how much to give?”

“Haven’t the faintest. But this is the dose he was planning to put into us, so that’s what goes into him.”

“And if it’s too much?”

She shrugged. “That’ll be his problem, won’t it.”

Patrick realized he was seeing another side of Romy, a new persona, cold, efficient, almost ruthless in simmering fury. Was this the “someone else” she’d mentioned before? Not that he could blame her: This man had invaded her home, bound her, watched as his partner had mistreated her, and had been about to invade the very core of her privacy—her mind. Add to all that the possibility that he might have had a hand in the deaths of dozens of sims and the guy was lucky she wasn’t jabbing the inoculator into his eye.

Patrick felt his shoulders bunch as the Romy pressed the trigger and injected the liquid through the skin of Ponytail’s neck with a softpop .

The man flinched, his eyes fluttered open. He raised his head and looked around, dazed. Patrick saw the purpling welts on his throat, mementos of Kek’s fingers. He blinked. Patrick watched a look of utter horror flow through his features when he saw the inoculator in Romy’s hand.

“No!” he rasped, his voice barely audible through his bruised larynx. “You didn’t! Please tell me you didn’t!”

Romy bounced the inoculator in her hand. “Shoot you up with your own junk? You bet we did.”

“Not Totuus!”

“If that’s what’s in your vial, then, yes, Totuus.”

And then Ponytail did something that took Patrick completely by surprise: His face screwed up and he began to sob. Romy took a step back and regarded him with mute shock.

“You didn’t have to do that!” he squeaked in his laryngitis voice. “I would have told you! I would have told you anything you wanted to know!”

“Sure, you would have,” Romy said. “And we would have been able to take every word to the bank, right?”

“What’s wrong with him?” Patrick said, turning to Zero. The man’s genuine terror was getting to him. “What don’t we know about this drug?”

Zero’s expression was unreadable behind his ski mask, but his tone was puzzled. “I researched it after hearing that it had been found in the globulin farmers’ bodies. Its main side effect is a headache for about a day afterwards.”

Romy seemed unfazed by the man’s abject terror. She pressed the redRECORD button on his own recorder and held it before his face.

“What’s your name?” she said.

Ponytail squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth, fighting the drug and the question.

“Come on,” Romy cooed. “This is a simple one. Your name…what is your name?”

The man’s face reddened with effort, then the words broke free in a hoarse rush: “David Daniel Palmer!”

“Excellent. Now, Mr. David Daniel Palmer, who sent you?”

He began to blubber again. “Please don’t ask me that! Please!”

“And if I’d begged you not to shoot me up with this stuff an hour ago, you would have spared me, right?”

“Please!”

Romy’s voice hardened. “Stop stalling! Tell me now: Who do you work for?”

Parker screwed up his face, chewed on his lips, then blurted through a sob, “SIRG—”

But as soon as the word escaped him, his eyes rolled back in his head. He stiffened, bared his teeth, and began to shake, violently enough to start his chair walking across the floor.

“Ohmigod!” Romy cried. “What’s happening?”

Zero leaped forward. “He’s having some sort of seizure! If he swallows his tongue he’ll choke to death!”

Patrick watched in horror as Zero’s gloved hands worked past Palmer’s foam-flecked lips, trying to pry open his jaws.

And then as suddenly as the attack had started, it stopped. Palmer drooped in his chair, breathing raggedly, his eyes glazed.

“Daniel Palmer,” Zero said, leaning close, all but shouting. “Are you all right?”

Palmer mumbled something.

Zero shook his shoulder. “I said, are you all right?”

Palmer stared at him as if he were speaking a foreign language, then said, “Crash want rag lay hedge knock two.”

“What?” Zero said.

“Numb bag five sense peel drawer another stop see.”

“He’s lost his mind!” Romy said, her hand over her mouth. The cold bitch goddess with the inoculator and the tape recorder was gone, and she was back to the Romy Patrick knew…or thought he did. “Did I do this? Is this my fault?”

“I don’t know,” Zero said. “I’ve never seen or heard of anything like it.” He glanced at Romy and Patrick. “There’s also the possibility he’s faking.”

“He gets an Oscar if he is,” Patrick said.

Zero leaned close again: “What’s your name?”

“Realize game attached.”

“Oh, God!” Romy whispered.

Zero pulled out a phone. “I think we need help.”

“Who are you calling?” Patrick asked.

“A doctor.”

6

SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ

DECEMBER 16

“Duke Jackson is dead,” said Lister’s voice through the receiver.

Luca Portero tightened his grip on the encrypted phone and kept kicking at the leaves. He’d been out in the woods surrounding his cabin, taking some fresh morning air, taking precautions…the way things were going, precautions might come in handy. The news didn’t surprise him.

“How?”

“Broken neck. His body was found around 5:00A .M. A red flag went up at our end when NYPD tried to run his prints this morning. They’ve got him listed as a John Doe and he’ll remain that way.”

“What about Palmer?”

“Not a peep. And that worries me more. I’d almost prefer to have his corpse surface.”

Luca knew what Lister meant. An experienced operative caught in the act while carrying a supply of Totuus was a recipe for disaster. But Luca had taken precautions for just this eventuality.

“We’re protected,” Luca said. “I had him and Jackson down a dose of MTW before they went out.”

“Thank God for that. How did you ever convince them to take it?”

“I told them they had no choice, that it was a direct order from the Old Man himself.”

“Lucky they believed you. Still…MTW is still pretty new. Not much field experience with it. Better pray it worked. Because if it didn’t…”

Lister didn’t finish the sentence. Didn’t have to. If the MTW had failed, Palmer would have spilled everything by now.

The MTWdid work, Luca thought. Ithad to.

“But even if it works perfectly,” Lister went on, “you’re not off the hook for muffing another operation. And neither am I.”

“We didn’t muff athing !” Luca said as a cold lump formed in his belly. “The Idaho hotshots blew it.”

“The people upstairs don’t see it that way. They’re out four skilled operatives in two months with nothing to show for it. And they keep asking me, ‘Where’s the pregnant sim? All our resources at your disposal, a five-million-dollar reward for information leading to her, and what have you come up with?’ Do you hear what they’re saying, Luca? It used to be, ‘When’s Portero coming up with something?’ Now it’s, ‘When areyou coming up with something?’ Me. Like we’re Siamese twins.”

Luca thought he heard a tremor in Lister’s voice. He’d never known Darryl Lister to be scared. When they’d been pinned down by Taliban mortars outside Gardez, he’d been the picture of cool. But now…

“Shit. I’m sorry, man.”

“Hey, we’re not dead yet. We’ve gotten out of tighter places. But they want results by the end of the year.”

The end of the year—two weeks!

Luca said, “What about the plate number Snyder spotted on that van last night?”

“Nothing. He must have got it wrong. The number’s not in use. Tell Snyder he needs glasses.”

Luca didn’t think so. More likely the plates were phony, and Palmer and Jackson had been in that van along with Cadman, Sullivan, and who knew who else.

“All right then,” Luca said. “What’s the status of Cadman and Sullivan now? Do we keep after them?”

“The decision’s been made to back off for the time being. They’ll be on guard now and—”

“Obviously they werealready on guard.”

“Yes, well, be that as it may, they’ll be on full alert now, and we can’t risk losing any more men. The legal people can put the stall on any discovery motions Sullivan files; we’ll find out who’s behind them later. Right now concentrate on finding that sim.”

“It’s possible she’s dead,” Luca said, hoping it was true. “That cold snap after she escaped was pretty mean. She could have crawled into a pipe somewhere and froze to death.”

“Then find her body. Since that fool Eckert started blathering about her being pregnant and the baby’s father being human, SimGen stock price has slid six points. Most people think he’s crazy, but he’s making a lot of investors nervous. And that makes everyone upstairs nervous. You know what SimGen stock means.”

Luca nodded. It meant independence for SIRG. No strings, no brakes.

“We’ve got to find her, Luca. I don’t have to tell you what will happen if Eckert or Cadman and Sullivan get to her first.”

Luca closed his eyes. That would finish SimGen, finish SIRG, and leave him running for his life.

“They won’t.”

And to make sure they wouldn’t, he had to nail Ellis Sinclair as their informant and serve up his head on a silver platter.

7

MANHATTAN

Patrick checked the cars on Henry Street outside his office building before stepping out. All looked empty, no plumes of idling exhaust. After the other night, he was spooked, and not ashamed to admit it. You weren’t paranoid when they really were out to get you.

He stepped out onto the sidewalk and cried out as he collided with someone. He jumped back, ready to run back inside, when he noticed it was an older woman. He grabbed her arm to keep her from falling.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t looking.”

“Did I frighten you, Mr. Sullivan?” she said.

He looked at her face. Uh-oh. Alice Fredericks. The Mother of All Sims.

“Hello, Miss Fredericks. Nice to see you again. No, you didn’t frighten me. I just didn’t expect anyone there.” He made a show of glancing at his watch. “I’m just heading off to a meeting and—”

“You didn’t call me, Mr. Sullivan.” Her look was reproachful. “You said you would and I’ve been waiting every day but you haven’t called.”

“I told you,” he said, backing away, “I’ll call when my schedule lightens up. It’s just that there’s been so much going on.”

No lie there.

“You’re not afraid, are you?”

Maybe he should tell her he was very afraid, that he was terrified. Then she’d look for someone else. But he couldn’t make himself say it.

“Not of space aliens.” True enough. Too many other truly frightening things going on in his life right now to worry about space aliens. “Not a bit.”

“Very well,” she said. “I’ll be waiting.”

He turned and hurried toward Catherine Street to find a taxi.

After a ride during which Patrick spent more time looking out the rear window than the front, the cabby dropped him off at Penn Station. He wandered around Seventh Avenue, going in and out of stores to make sure he wasn’t being followed, then headed further west.

Finally he arrived at Zero’s garage just behind a middle-aged woman. Despite the parka-like hood cinched tight around her head against the cold, he recognized her.

“Dr. Cannon,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Patrick Sullivan. I don’t know if you remember me, but I was—”

“You were helping at the Beacon Ridge atrocity,” she said with a smile as she pushed back her hood. He noticed that her long graying mane had been shorn to an almost boyish length. “Yes, of course I remember. And call me Betsy, please.”

The door opened and Romy was there, smiling. “A two-fer! Come in, Betsy. So good of you to come.”

“No problem. It’s easier for me to come to Zero than him to come to me.”

“And you cut your hair. I love it!”

Patrick stepped inside and closed the door behind him, remembering Zero’s hurried phone conversation with Dr. Cannon last night. She was on staff at Nassau County Community Hospital and, following her instructions to Zero, Patrick and Romy had driven David Palmer out to the hospital and left him in the parking lot for her to “find.”

Now, as the three of them trooped toward the rear of the garage, Kek suddenly came bounding down the ladder from his domain in the loft and charged them. Patrick tensed, waiting for Zero or Romy to call him off, but they said nothing. Then Betsy Cannon opened her arms and embraced the beast.

“How is my friend Kek doing?” she said.

Kek signed something to her and Betsy laughed. They had a brief conversation—Betsy speaking, Kek signing, then Kek scrambled back up the ladder to his observation post.

“You nursed him back to health, I’m told,” Patrick said as Kek vanished into the ceiling.

“Not really. Zero did most of the nursing. I tried to save his frostbitten fingers but was only eighty-percent successful. As an OB-GYN I have surgical training, but—”