“And what did Phil say?”
“He didn’t say anything. He just listened.” She looks the doctor in the eye again. “I hope he listened.”
Before the doctor can respond, his pager goes off.
“Time to go?” She sounds disappointed.
“I have to step out for a moment,” the doctor says. “But I would like to talk some more. If you don’t mind waiting…?”
“No, I don’t mind.” She shows him her bracelets again. “It’s not like I’ve got anywhere to be.”
He stands up and reaches for the tape recorder, then hesitates. “Did she say anything else?”
“Who?”
“The bad Jane. Before you dropped her—did she say anything else about Phil, or the Troop?”
“No. I mean, it’s not like she was super-articulate with my fist in her chest. It was all she could do to scream out a few words…Why?”
“Just curious,” the doctor says. He presses the STOP button on the recorder. “I’ll be back shortly…”
He goes to the door and tries to open it, but it’s been locked from the outside. “Guard?” he calls. “I’m ready to come out now…Guard?” He raises a fist, knocks. “Guard!”
Behind him, there is a thunk of handcuffs hitting the table. He looks over his shoulder. She is leaning forward, aiming a bright orange pistol at him. “What on earth…?” he says. “Where did you…?” Then he sees it: the black tile in the floor has been flipped up to reveal a compartment underneath.
“Phil,” she says.
He blinks. “Is this some kind of joke? Did…Did Dr. Chiang put you up to this?”
“It’s no joke, Phil. I wish it was.”
He stares at her for a moment, glances at the tape recorder, and then he is hammering on the door. “Guard!..GUARD!”
“There’s no one out there to help you, Phil. This isn’t the county jail. You’re in an ant farm in the desert.”
He stops pounding. He turns around slowly, a new expression on his face.
“Yeah,” she says. “Sorry. I lied to you about Dixon: I probably would have killed him, but he was smart enough not to give me a reason. By the time he showed himself on the catwalk, the strike team was already on its way, and he sent them in with strict orders to take you alive—not because he’s a nice guy, you understand, but because even he didn’t dare break the deal Love made with me…Love said the Clowns had a way to trick your memory, make you think you’d come to me on your own, to pump me for intel, which would give me a chance to try to reach you. Dixon said it would never work, that you had no conscience left for me to reach, but I told Love I was sure I could pull it off…” She sighs. “But I was wrong about that, wasn’t I, Phil?”
She picks up the tape recorder and slams it down hard. The case splinters, revealing the flat disc of the Mandrill bomb inside. There’s a nervous pause as they both wait for the timer to finish counting down, but when it reaches zero, there’s no explosion, just a short buzz. A word appears in the digital readout:
SHIBBOLETH
Then the lead h flickers and goes out:
SHIBBOLETH
“Jane,” he says. “I can explain…”
“Yeah, I’ll bet you can,” she says. “But there’s not much to explain, is there? It was a simple test. You didn’t have to confess, or break down crying, or anything dramatic like that. All you had to do was walk out of this room without trying to kill me.”
“Jane…Jane, please.”
“I’m sorry, little brother. I tried. I gave you every chance I could. But this is my half of the deal…”
“Jane!”
“Bad monkey,” she says.
She pulls the trigger.
The NC gun makes no sound.
He convulses. One hand grabs the knob of the door behind him; the other flies up to his chest. A strangling noise issues from his throat; his face reddens and his eyes bulge. Her eyes widen, as she leans farther forward, taking it all in. His knees start to buckle.
And then, right at the point where he should fall dead of a heart attack, he catches himself. He stops gasping for breath. His legs straighten and his arms return to his sides.
She pulls the trigger again. Once again the NC gun is silent, but it’s a different kind of silence—the kind that signifies impotence. This time he doesn’t react to the shot. He stands tall, his face returning to its normal color. She switches the gun’s dial from MI to CI, aims straight at his head, and tries once more.
Nothing. He doesn’t even blink.
She is not pleased with this outcome.
“Phil,” she says.
“Jane,” he replies.
“You’re not the ant in this ant farm, are you?”
“No.”
“I am.”
“Yes.”
“Well, fuck,” she says, and tosses the useless gun on the table.
There’s a knock at the door. Phil steps aside, and Dixon enters the room. She greets him with a sour look.
“How long have you known?” she asks.
“That you are a deep-cover agent, working for the Troop? From the beginning,” Dixon says. He gestures to Phil. “We were warned about you.”
“Then why recruit me?”
“As an experiment. We’d been aware for some time that the Troop was attempting to infiltrate the organization. We’d enacted countermeasures, but were uncertain how effective they were. Recruiting you offered us an opportunity to test them.”
“So the idea was to see how long it would take to catch me if you didn’t already know?”
“Yes.”
“It was a lot harder than you thought, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Dixon says. “Of course I expected you to be a good actress, well practiced in passing yourself off as a charming misfit rather than the monster that you really are, but your ability to fool shibboleth devices came as a shock. Your emotional control was remarkable, especially in someone who seemed so impulsive. For a while I almost despaired of catching you out.”
“So what finally tipped it?” She glances at Phil. “Him?”
Dixon nods. “Even the most self-controlled person is subject to temptation. You were able to conceal your enthusiasm for more mundane acts of evil, but I thought your composure might crack if you were presented with a chance to commit a truly extraordinary sin.”
“So you sent me to hunt down my own brother.”
“To kill him, on the pretense of saving him.”
“How’d you know I’d go for it, though? I mean, if he’s really Troop, then we’re technically on the same side.”
“Technically,” Dixon says. “But it is true, isn’t it, that your brother’s abduction by the Troop was no coincidence?”
“Of course it wasn’t a coincidence,” she says. “He was my ticket in. They wanted a sacrifice to prove that I was serious. But they didn’t tell me they were going to adopt him.”
“I assumed as much. I thought the discovery that your brother was not only alive, but occupying a position of importance in an organization to which you were little more than a peon, would undermine whatever loyalty you had.”
“So this whole thing…” She waves a hand at the room. “This…play…It was all so you could read my heart the moment I pulled the trigger?”
“Yes,” Dixon says. “And the results, I’m happy to report, are conclusive. You’re evil.”
“Yes I am,” she says, unable to resist a smile. “But you know, you didn’t have to go to so much trouble. You could have just asked my mother.”
“Perhaps I would have, if she were still alive.”
“Yeah, it’s a shame about that. You know they never found the truck that hit her?” She sees Phil bristle and her smile broadens. “So what happens now? You turn me? Make me a double agent?”
Dixon shakes his head. “You’re a bad monkey. Now that that’s out in the open, the organization has no further use for you.”
“Right.” She nods, then shrugs, accepting the inevitable. “Oh well, I had a nice run. Did some good damage along the way.”