Twinmaker

31

THE FRONT DOORS opened, and the ATAC trundled inside, looking like a low-backed, eyeless lizard with eight lumpy wheels for legs. Its chameleon skin shifted and changed as it entered its new environment, taking on the appearance of straight lines and flat surfaces with remarkable effectiveness. When it stopped moving, it very nearly vanished.

“Ammo over there,” said Ray, pointing Clair in the direction of a chest near the ATAC.

Then he mounted his electrobike and throttled it into motion. Without a word, he steered it to the front doors and disappeared into the night. Motor noise rose and fell at his command, and then all was silent again.

Clair opened the ammo chest and stared blankly at a sea of casings and magazines. How would she know what fit her empty pistol? Did she even want to reload it? Hadn’t enough people died that night?

A strong tap on her shoulder alerted her to the presence of the dreadlocked woman at her side. Cashile’s mom wrote her name with a fingertip in the dust on the top of the chest: THEO. Theo held out her palm for the pistol. Clair gave it to her and watched as she expertly handled it. Sections opened, closed, came off, and went back on like some kind of magic show. Then Theo turned back to the chest. She produced a box of bullets and loaded the magazine. It held fourteen tapered copper-sided shells that seemed enormous to Clair’s eyes.

Theo also filled a second magazine, which she handed over, along with another box of bullets and the gun itself. Clair juggled them all, wondering when she might possibly need so much firepower. Was this her life now?

“Uh, thanks,” she said, feeling like a child.

Theo just nodded.

Clair carried her lethal armfuls to where Jesse was waiting next to one of the electrobikes with a bottle of water in each hand. Wordlessly, without meeting her eyes, he gave her one of the bottles. She put the ammo in her backpack and worked out on her own where to stow it in a baggage compartment. Clair put the loaded pistol back in her pocket, hoping against hope that she would never have to use it again. Part of her still resisted the idea that she was about to go riding anywhere.

“Are you armed, Jesse?” asked Gemma.

“No,” he said.

“You should be.”

“Dad didn’t hold with guns, so I won’t either.”

“Maybe if he had, he’d still be with us.”

Jesse glanced at Clair, and she could see naked confusion in his eyes. What was he telling himself had happened back at the safe house? That Clair had shot his father for breaking a lifetime of not using guns and shooting at her, or that she’d shot an impostor in his father’s body? Either possibility seemed ghastly and unlikely.

She looked away. Half an inch lower, she wanted to say, and I’d be the one lying in a garden with my brains hanging out. But she couldn’t even think that thought without grief hitting her full force again, blinding her to anything other than the single, terrible certainty of Zep’s death.

The only person who could hold Jesse’s liquid stare was Arabelle. She was on the back of a bike, sitting sidesaddle, her useless legs hanging alarmingly close to the rear wheel. Both she and her driver, who had also been the driver of the ATAC, were wearing black helmets like Ray’s.

“Godspeed, all of us,” Arabelle said, ending the conversation with gentle finality.

She put her arms around her driver’s waist. Together, they followed Ray out of the theater and rode off into the night.

Gemma gave Clair a helmet and brusquely explained how it worked. There was a microphone on the jaw guard and tinny speakers inside, both activated by clicking forward with her chin. Gemma tested one radio channel with her, then another with Jesse. Clair couldn’t hear the second conversation, but they seemed satisfied.

“Need to ask you a question,” she bumped “q” while they were busy.

“Of course, Clair. Ask away.”

“What’s your name?”

“Why?”

“Can’t keep calling you ‘q’ in my head.”

“Why not? It works for me, Clair.”

“Okay.” Clair was too tired for this coy evasiveness. Wannabe spy-kid or not, having a name other than Q wouldn’t change anything, she supposed, since it would almost certainly be false.

“Gotta go.”

Cashile and Theo were just heading off, riding two identical bikes. The kid looked even smaller than usual stretched out across the back of his. He waved at her as he disappeared through the doorway, and Clair waved back.

Then it was just Jesse, Clair, and Gemma, and the clock slowly counting down the next minute.

Gemma was looking pale, but if she considered herself well enough to drive, she was well enough to answer questions.

“You said people affected by Improvement live just seven days,” Clair said. “How do you know?”

“Because that’s the way it works,” Gemma said, fiddling with something on her electrobike. “We’ve seen it before.”

“But how do you know Libby’s definitely affected? She’s been under stress, using drugs—”

“You know that’s not what this is. You saw the files I gave Dylan in the video feed. Libby’s brain has been damaged, altered, changed. Call it what you want, that’s what it boils down to. That’s what Improvement has done to her. She’s not herself. Not anymore.”

Zep had used exactly that phrase. Not herself.

“I don’t believe you.”

“She’ll commit suicide within a week. It’s inevitable.”

“Libby isn’t going to kill herself. I won’t let her.”

“How are you going to stop it?”

“If Improvement has changed her, I’ll find a way to change her back.”

“How?”

“There must be a way.”

“There doesn’t have to be anything.” Gemma shook her head firmly. “Better get used to the idea. The Libby you know is gone forever. “

“How can you say something like that?”

“Because this is what Improvement does. That’s what d-mat does. It reaches into you and guts you and you don’t even notice until it’s too late. Don’t you think that makes a difference? Don’t you think it adds up eventually?”

Gemma was still bent over the bike, not looking at either Clair or Jesse, keeping her face carefully averted from them. Something splashed onto the smooth skin of the bike, and Clair was shocked to realize that it was a tear. Gemma was crying. She didn’t blink or gulp or even seem to notice it herself, but Jesse was staring at her with his water bottle raised halfway to his mouth.

“Improvement killed my child,” Gemma said in a hoarse whisper. “Don’t you think I know what I’m talking about?”

Clair’s mind flew back to the first questions she had asked the Air about Improvement, and her shock redoubled. “You wrote that! I found your message, but it had been defaced. All the details were gone—”

“Erased, just like they tried to erase what happened to him. What happened to Sam, my beautiful Sameer. But they can’t erase me. Not if I don’t use d-mat. Not if I stay one step ahead of them.”

Gemma stood up and faced them. The tears trickled down her face into the grim lines around her mouth and dripped from her chin onto her chest.

Clair wanted to ask where she had found the files on the dead girls, but Jesse spoke before she could.

“How can dad have been a dupe? He never went through d-mat, not even once. There’s no way anyone could have changed his pattern because it never existed.”

Gemma flexed her injured shoulder, raising it like a defense against them.

“Time is up,” she said. “On your bikes, boys and girls.”

“Answer my question,” Jesse said.

“Later, I promise. It won’t help you now.”

“But I want to know.”

“I know you do. When we’re with Turner, I’ll tell you.”

He looked startled. “Turner Goldsmith? We’re meeting Turner Goldmsith?”

“Who’s that?” Clair asked.

“Not now,” Gemma insisted. “Get to the airship and then you’ll learn everything we know.”

Jesse let himself be shooed back toward the bike, and Clair followed, wondering what she’d just missed. There was so much disturbing new information in her head, she couldn’t begin to parse it all. Jesse somehow fitted his hair into the helmet and climbed on first, steadying the frame with both legs as Clair clambered awkwardly aboard behind him. The pillion seat was broader than it looked, but it molded comfortably to her thighs. The suspension hummed and settled.

Jesse took his feet off the ground. The bike somehow balanced itself and turned at his command. Clair swayed and put her hands awkwardly on his waist, nervous of falling off the seat. She leaned backward as they juddered down a step or two to street level. The night was just as still as it had been before. The same lonely lights shone a block or two away. The same light wind blew. She felt removed from it inside the padded cocoon of the helmet.

Then, without warning, the bike surged beneath her. She flung herself forward, wrapped her arms around Jesse’s middle, and held on for dear life.