The Woman Who Died a Lot

14. Tuesday: I’m Back

My eyes flickered open, and Stig’s and Landen’s familiar faces swam into view. My leg had a dull throb of pain from the hip to the knee, and I was cold—but then I was lying on concrete in only my underwear. It felt uncomfortable and pleasant all at once. I was broken, but I was me.

“It smells of cat’s piss down here,” I said. “And, Landen: Nothing should disturb that condor moment.”

I saw Landen let out a gasp of relief and brush away some tears.

“Thank the GSD,” he said. “I thought you were gone for good.”

“Not at all—the worst that would have happened to me was cramp, thirst and hunger—and probably the release of waste products, given time. I was simply waiting for the return of my id. My clothes? I’m freezing.”

“You won’t want your own back,” said Landen, “but she must have arrived dressed in something—here.”

He pulled out some quality-looking threads from a carrier bag pushed beneath some Daphne Farquitt boxed sets.

“Chimera,” said Stig to the retail staff, who had popped their heads into the stockroom to see what the gunshot had been about. “Nothing to see.”

“She was different from the rest,” said Landen as he helped me on with the clothes. “She was actually convinced that she was you—and had tapped into your memories.”

“Landen, she was me. I was there. I was inside her. I was becoming her, or she was becoming me—or we were becoming each other.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Did she seem like me? More than the others, I mean?”

“By a factor of ten. But I don’t buy into this whole ‘transfer of consciousness’ shit. It’s impossible for a whole bunch of reasons.”

I grasped his forearm. “The note I scribbled down for you, just before I told you I loved you and you killed me. It says, ‘Two minds with a single thought, two hearts that beat as one.’ ”

Landen pulled the piece of paper from his pocket and stared at it.

“Okay,” he said, “I totally buy into this whole ‘transfer of consciousness’ shit. But what does it mean? That Goliath is out to replace people with copies of themselves, just better and faster and stronger, with an increased libido, a good head for figures and origami skills to die for?”

“It looks that way. As to why, I’ve no idea. But she probably did.”

I nodded toward where the body of the new and improved and now very dead Thursday was lying on the floor of the loading bay. A long trail of dark blood was pooling near a stack of remaindered Lola Vavoom conspiracy books.

“We need get her back to lab,” said Stig as he pulled out his cell phone, “find out more.”

“No one move,” came a voice.

It was the police. A sergeant I recognized named Kitchen and two constables.

“ SO-13,” said Stig, holding up his ID. “This chimera. Our jurisdiction.”

They stared at one another for a moment. The friction in the air was tangible. SpecOps and the police didn’t really get along— mostly because SpecOps had seniority, and the police had a better canteen and a final salary pension.

“ SO-13 was disbanded thirteen years ago, Stiggins.”

“From midday today back in business.”

“ Ooo-kay, but I’ll need confirmation from Commander Hicks.”

“No problem, friend-O. You take charge? Not double-tapped yet. Maybe you take honor.”

Stig drew his twelve-gauge revolver out of his shoulder holster and offered it to the policeman.

The officers looked at one another.

“It’s still alive?” asked the sergeant.

“Always best make sure.”

“ SO-13 reinstated, you say?”

“From midday.”

“We’ll leave it in your capable hands,” remarked Kitchen, and he beckoned to the officers to back away.

“You have acted . . . wisely,” said Stig as he parked the massive weapon back in his jacket. “Hold perimeter and call when our transport arrive.”

“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant as he saluted smartly, glad to be spared the responsibility of command.

While Stig called his brother-in-law to bring a van to take away the body, I stared at the latest Synthetic. She was the seventh we knew of and the third since my accident. The pre-accident ones had all been killed by Stiltonistas thinking they were me, and of the post-accident batch one we’d found in the house going through my stuff presumably in order to better emulate me and the other was arrested when it tried to cash a check on my behalf. Both of them had been questioned but could explain little and were helped into long eternity pleading that they were me— but without being able to answer anything except rudimentary Thursday trivia. Landen and Spike had disposed of them. I think they’re in the Savernake Forest, where the Stiltonistas disposed of the earlier ones. None of them had seemed that smart, and none of them—until now—would have fooled anyone. But maybe that wasn’t the point. Maybe the early ones were simply testing the waters.

The small data plate under her eyelid had simply stated that she was a TN-v7.2. The last one had been a v6.6. There was a serial number, and I jotted it down. We stared at it for a while. It was kind of weird, seeing me lying dead on the floor with half a head. It was a waste of a good body, too. Boy, could she run. And although I’d not had a chance to put it to the test, she probably could have given Landen a seriously good run for his money in the sack.

“Do you have any of her memories?” he asked. “I mean, she didn’t pop into existence here at Booktastic. She must have walked in the door like the rest of us.”

I thought hard. I knew nothing of her being her before she was me being me. My memories were simply of me. “Nothing.”

“Shame. Stig?”

“Physically, specimen excellent,” he said, “good muscle tone, firm all over—almost no fat.”

“It was a great body,” I said, somewhat wistfully.

“But it made hastily,” he said. “Look at legs.”

He showed us an athletic yet hairless leg.

“Stretch marks on the knees and shin?” said Landen, leaning closer and putting on his reading glasses. “And why is the skin so smooth otherwise?”

“No sweat glands. On a hot day, she’d boil.”

“How quick did they grow her?”

“Our guess ten weeks,” said Stig as he showed us her hands. The fingernails looked long, but they were stuck on. He pulled one off to reveal a real nail below, and only a quarter way down the nail bed. He pointed to the side of the scalp still remaining, which at first glance seemed to have a goodly amount of long hair, which was in fact manmade fibers stuck into the scalp.

“Six brushings and no hair left,” Stig said. He prodded the stomach—which was flat, I noted. He then grunted with interest, looked in her throat, rolled the body over and pulled down her trousers and pants.

“No digestive tract. Not designed for longevity.”

A tract wasn’t the only thing she—or it—was missing.

“She was going to be seriously frustrated with that libido, too.”

“Not what she designed for,” said Stig. “See here?”

He pointed to what looked like a thin scar on her upper back. It wasn’t, though—it was a flap.

“Umbilical went here,” he said. He wiped his finger on the flap, then smelled it. “Activated two hours ago, give/take. Not seen this sort of Synthetic before. Cheap body.”

“But excellent brain,” added Landen.

“Indeed,” agreed Stig. “She sent here find out something, do something, see something—perhaps report back, then die.”

“The BookWorld,” I said. “Goliath has always wanted to get in there. I could easily have read my way in with this body. Do you think that’s what they were up to?”

No one answered because no one knew.

Stig peered into the skull cavity and poked a chubby finger into the the remains of the brain stem. “Dismantle it when back at lab. Shame you shot it through head, Landen. We could have learned more.”

“Note to self,” said Landen sarcastically. “Don’t shoot wife through head.”

Landen and I walked out of the bookshop after offering our apologies for the mess, and I told them to send a bill for any damaged books to Braxton Hicks.

“Are you okay?” asked Landen as we hobbled back toward the car.

“I’m fine,” I said. “I just miss running.”

“You will again,” he said, but I knew, despite the conviction with which he said it, that it was going to take a while.

“Sure,” I said, “and your leg is going to grow back.”

He said nothing but squeezed my hand.

“We’ve got to be home at three,” I said. “Finisterre is taking me up to the Sisterhood to view the contents of their scriptorium.”

Then something occurred to me.

“Wait a moment,” I said. “That Synthetic wouldn’t have been activated without help, and she was barely two hours old.”

“What are we looking for?” asked Landen. “A cobwebby basement with ancient electrical equipment and a mad scientist? Or just a really large jar?”

“She’d certainly have been sealed in something. Hang on.”

I delved through my pockets—I was wearing her clothes, after all—and found a key card from the Finis Hotel.