Twinmaker

21

CLAIR AND JESSE walked back through the dining room, past the stairs and the old telephone, into the living room. Zep was sprawled uncomfortably on the couch with his legs stretched out before him. His right thigh was bandaged tightly. There was blood all over what remained of his pants. He was staring at the man with the big ears, who stood in a corner of the room, watching him back. There was no sign of the taller man. They both looked up as Jesse and Clair entered.

“I was beginning to wonder if you were ever coming back,” Zep said. He looked wan and weak.

“Whoever Gemma is, she says you’ll be okay,” said Clair, coming to sit at his side. Not my boyfriend. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ll be a lot better when the painkillers kick in.” He sketched a rough smile. “Now I’m wishing Libby’s drugs hadn’t worn off so fast.”

Clair didn’t laugh. Neither did Jesse. He collapsed into a chair and retreated into himself, as though he hoped everything would disappear if he ignored it hard enough.

Clair turned to the man with the big ears. Her hands were shaking again, and her mouth was desperately dry.

“I could really use a drink,” she said. “We all could. Is that possible?”

“Sure,” Big-Ears said, but not before glancing up the hallway to the front of the house. Clair knew then that his tall companion was watching the front door. Was he a sentry or a jailer?

Big-Ears headed into the back of the house. His feet beat a tattoo down the stairs to the lower floor.

“Have you tried your lenses?” Zep whispered when they were alone. “Mine are dead, and every time I access the Air, I get an error message.”

Clair discovered that she had the same problem. Every field of view was clear of patches, even from the creepy “q.” She’d lost access to her family and friends, her blogs and grabs, her media and shows, her wardrobe and meals. Every pattern she had ever saved was cut off from her. Her whole life. God, her books! Her Tilly Kozlova recordings! She had never once been deliberately disconnected from them.

Jesse spoke from deep in his funk. “The house is a big Faraday shield.”

“Which means what?” Zep prompted.

“Nothing electromagnetic can get in or out. No one can spy on what goes on in here. I think we’re in some kind of safe house.”

“Safe from who?” asked Clair. “Have these guys done something we should be concerned about?”

“If you’re in WHOLE, you’re automatically on the PKs’ watch list,” said Jesse.

“Yes, but we’re not in WHOLE. Why are we hiding?”

“They’re WHOLE?” Zep asked, eyes wide.

Big-Ears came back with bottles of water for the four of them, and a fifth for Ray, who appeared from the front of the house to give a status report.

“Drones still flying,” Ray said. “The fire’s out, though. So that’s something.”

“My father is dead,” said Jesse. “That’s something.”

There was a moment’s awkward silence.

An image struck Clair out of nowhere, perhaps inspired by Arabelle’s crippled feet. It was from a cheap-scare story Clair had been told when she was younger, about a girl who’d gone into a booth but not arrived at her destination. Her pattern had gotten hung up in the back end of a file system and wasn’t discovered until someone stumbled across it during a routine cleanup twenty-five years later. VIA brought her back perfectly well and whole, but by then her parents had died and all her friends had young families of their own. The girl found herself in an entirely new world, cut off from her life like a time traveler. So the story went.

Clair was beginning to feel that way. This shadow world of broken families, sabotage, and conspiracy wasn’t the world she wanted to live in. It wasn’t even supposed to exist. The world she knew had regulations and AIs to make sure of that. Billions of people traveled by d-mat every day without evidence of harm. Arabelle’s feet were horrible to look at, and it made Clair shudder now to think of them, but they weren’t evidence of anything, really. Maybe she had been conceived near one of the old radioactive waste dumps before they were cleaned out. Maybe the feet were fakes.

WHOLE was the one with the track record of social disruption and violence, not VIA. And now we’ve seen their faces, added the part of Clair that enjoyed too many bad horror movies.

But it didn’t make sense. Why would WHOLE blow up Dylan Linwood when he had gone to such efforts to expose Improvement? If anything he had said was true, it actually made more sense, crazy though it seemed, that VIA might have been behind his death.

Clair wasn’t willing to go that far. She had enough to trouble her as it was. If improvement was hurting people, and someone was trying to cover it up . . . and if Dylan had been targeted by this someone because of his stunt . . . why hadn’t Clair been too?

The question rocked her. Dylan Linwood might have masterminded the stunt in the principal’s office, but she had been part of it as well. She had been asking questions. Was there a bomb waiting at her house too?

Not since childhood had she felt such an intense yearning to see her parents. It was like an adrenaline hit times ten.

She drank heavily from the bottle and swished the water around her mouth to get rid of the taste of vomit and ash. Ray resumed his watch at the front door. No one seemed in a hurry to go anywhere, except Clair.

She wanted to find out more about Improvement, but that wasn’t worth anyone else getting killed or hurt. Looking after herself and Zep had to be her first priority now. She would decide what happened to them, not Gemma and Arabelle.

“How are you feeling, Zep?” she asked. “Up for a walk?”

“I can’t feel my leg at all now, so I guess that’s a yes.”

“Good.” She stood up and held out her hand.

“About time,” he said.