Twinmaker

29

“NO,” SHE SAID. Her voice sounded like something ripped from the depths of her chest. She was moving without thinking, slithering out from under Zep’s body and brushing herself down, feeling his blood on her hands and hating herself for the instinctive revulsion she felt.

“That’s it. Come on.”

Gemma pulled at her, forced her to her feet for the second time that day. Clair fought her, not wanting to accept anything that was happening to her. She had seen Gemma fall to the ground, but now she was upright, bleeding from her shoulder, and very much alive. Why was she standing when Zep was not? Why was Clair?

“We can’t leave him,” she said, wrenching herself free.

“You really want to stay here and wait for the PKs? Two guns, two dead bodies, one murderer. That’ll wrap things up nicely for them. Couldn’t be simpler.”

Clair stood over Zep and told herself to do as the woman said. Her legs felt as unreliable as saplings in a storm, though. She could feel the world turning, rotating, uncaring. Her hands were still numb from firing at Dylan Linwood. The numbness was spreading in a wave to encompass her entire body.

Ray pushed past her, practically dragging Jesse to the lane. Two new people dressed in black came the other way, lifted Arabelle from her chair, and carried her after them.

The spotlight clicked off, leaving Zep’s and Dylan Linwood’s bodies in darkness.

As though the same switch were connected to a circuit in her head, Clair found herself moving, not consciously noting where or how, but moving all the same, tucking the pistol into her pocket and hurrying after the others. She didn’t want to be left behind.

The vehicle she had glimpsed before was still in the lane, a narrow, segmented, many-wheeled contraption the sides of which were slippery with illusions. Clair might have walked right into it but for the door open on its side. The space within was matte black and crammed full of people. Ray grabbed her under one arm and shoved her to the front. There was a space next to a young brown-haired boy who looked barely ten. He stared at the blood on her with wide eyes.

“Let’s go!” called Ray, slamming the door shut and falling into a space of his own.

The vehicle shifted beneath her and whined quietly through the darkness. The patches winked out. The vehicle was a Faraday cage like the safe house, safe from everyone outside. A trap for everyone inside.

“See any drones?” asked Ray, his voice carrying clearly over the electric engines.

“Clear,” said a small, thin-faced woman driving at the front of the cabin. She was dressed in black like the rest of them, with a close-shaved scalp visible under a full-vision helmet. Clair’s lenses synced automatically to a feed from the driver’s point of view, the only feed available. The vehicle was moving smoothly through suburbs covered by the eye-in-the-sky drones, weaving and curling around trees, benches, and water features. Dark colors and shapes swept down its sides like an urban waterfall, decreasing the likelihood that anyone outside would notice its passing.

“We’ll get away, don’t worry,” said the boy next to Clair. “The ATAC is camouflaged and the drones are dumb.”

Through the numbness of her senses she heard attack and must have looked confused.

“All-Terrain Active Camouflage vehicle,” he explained. Maybe he was talking out of nerves. He must have heard the gunshots. He could certainly see the blood. “Jesse’s dad designed it for us.”

“And now you’ve killed him,” said Jesse to everyone in the vehicle, breaking the silence of his emotional shutdown. “Really killed him. What happened—he got away the first time? One attempt wasn’t enough, so you had to have another crack at it?”

“He was firing at us,” said Ray. “Remember that?”

“Did you see him with your own eyes? It was dark.”

“He was the only one on the roof.”

“Well, wouldn’t you fire at someone who tried to kill you?”

Zep didn’t set any bombs, Clair wanted to say. Zep wasn’t part of this.

Her throat was so raw and tight, she struggled to breathe, let alone talk.

“We didn’t kill your father,” said Gemma to Jesse through teeth clenched against the pain. Her face was very pale, and with her good hand she pulled the silver cross from under her sweater and held it tightly. “It’s not what it looks like.”

“I was right there,” Jesse said. “Both times! I know exactly what it looks like.”

“But you’re still wrong.” Gemma leaned her head back against the ATAC’s interior bulkhead and closed her eyes. “He was a dupe.”

“Never. He would never have sold you guys out.”

“That’s not what I meant. Jesse, it wasn’t him. It was someone else inside his body. A duplicate. Dupe.”

Jesse stared at her as though she had gone completely mad.

Behind them, the safe house was a nest of converging peacekeepers. Someone had called in the gunshots. The bodies would soon be found.

Distantly, dismally, Clair wondered who would tell Zep’s parents.

And suddenly, all the emotions she had been keeping at bay came crashing in. Her parents had been attacked. She had been chased across the world. She had shot someone who might or might not have been Jesse’s dad. She was in the company of terrorists, and the only person she could rely on was a stranger whose name she didn’t even know.

Zep was gone. Because of Improvement, because of Libby, and because he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. With Clair.

The kid left her alone as she wept.