"Do you know what it is, to be fucked in the head? Do you know what that colorful little phrase actually means? It means a proliferation of certain receptor sites and stress hormones. It means triggers set at increased firing thresholds. It's chemistry, Doctor, and when you believe you've been abused—well, belief's just another set of chemicals in the mix, isn't it? You get a—a sort of cascade effect, your brain rewires itself, and suddenly you can survive things that would leave the rest of us pissing in our boots. Yes, we faked Lenie Clarke's childhood. Yes, she was never really abused—"
"By her parents," Desjardins interjected.
"— but the fact that she believes she was abused is what made her strong enough to survive the rift. Fucking her in the head probably saved her life a dozen times over."
"And now," Desjardins pointed out,"she's heading back to a home she never had, gunning for parents who don't exist, driven by abuses that never happened. Her whole definition of herself is a lie."
"And I thank God for that," Rowan said.
"What?"
"Have you forgotten the woman's a living brood sac for the end of the world? At least we know where she's going. Ken can head her off. That—that definition of herself makes her predictable, Doctor. It means we might still be able to save the earth."
Random intelligence from around the world scrolled on all sides. He didn't see it.
Ken can head her off.
Ken Lubin was Guilt-Tripped for tight security. Lubin kept slipping up, just so he could prove that again and again.
Someone got away, once, he'd said. And then: It's a shame. She really deserved a fighting chance…
Lenie Clarke had had more than a fighting chance: she had legions of followers watching her back. But they'd never really been following her. They'd been chasing some blue-shifted evolutionary distortion, racing past at lightspeed. Unless Anemone knew where she was and sounded the alarm—and whatever else it was, Anemone was no clairvoyant—how would anyone even know about the lone black figure crawling past them in the night?
Lenie Clarke was just one woman. And Ken Lubin was hunting her down.
There was no great need to kill her. She could be cleansed. She could be neutralized without being erased. But that wouldn't matter, not to Lubin.
She's the only security breach he ever left unsealed. That's what he said.
Achilles Desjardins had never met Lenie Clarke. By rights, she should be one of the far-off millions. And yet, somehow, he knew her: someone driven entirely by other people's motives. Everything she did, everything she felt, was the result of surgical and biochemical lies placed within her for the service of others.
Oh yes. I know her all right.
Suddenly, the fact that she was also a vector for global apocalypse barely even mattered any more. Lenie Clarke had a face. He could feel her in his gut, another human being, far more real than the distant abstraction of an eight-digit death toll.
I'm going to get to her first.
Sure, Lubin was a trained killer; but Desjardins had his own set of enhancements. All 'lawbreakers did. His system was awash in chemicals that could crank his reflexes into overdrive in an instant. And with luck—if he moved fast enough—he might just beat Lubin to the target. He might, just barely, have half a chance.
It wasn't his job. It wasn't the greater good.
Fuck both those things.
AWOL
"There's been a breach," the corpse said. "We were hoping you could fill in some relevant details."
Half of Alice Jovellanos's facial muscles tried to go into spasm right there. She clamped a tight lid on their aspirations and presented what she hoped was a look of oh please God let it be innocent and concerned curiosity.
Then again, what's the point? whispered some smart-ass inner voice. They must know already. Why else would they even call you in?
She clamped down on that one, too.
They're just toying with you. No one gets to be a corpse without developing a taste for sadism.
And that…just barely.
There were four of them, gender-balanced, ringed around the far side of the conference table up in the stratosphere of Admin-14. Slijper was the only one Jovellanos recognized—she'd just been brought in as Lertzman's replacement. The corpses all sat arrayed on the far side of the table, backlit by little halogen spots, their faces lost in the shadow of that glare. Except for the eyes. All four sets of eyes twinkled intermittently with corporate intel.
They'd be monitoring her vitals, of course. They'd know she was stressed. Of course, anyone would be stressed under these conditions. Hopefully subtleties like guilt and innocence were beyond the scope of the remotes.
"You're aware of the recent attack on Don Lertzman," Slijper said.
Jovellanos nodded.
"We think it may have been connected with a colleague of yours. Achilles Desjardins."
Okay, just the right amount of surprise here…"Achilles? Why?"
"We were hoping you could tell us," one of the other corpses replied.
"But I don't know any—I mean, why not ask him directly?" They already have, you idiot. That's what led them to you, he sold you out, after all this he sold—
"— disappeared," Slijper finished.
Jovellanos straightened in her chair. "Excuse me?"
"I said, Dr. Desjardins seems to have gone AWOL. When he didn't show up for his shift we were concerned that he might have run into the same complications as Don, but the evidence suggests he disappeared of his own volition."
"Evidence?"
"He wants you to feed his cat," Slijper said.
"He—what do—"
Slijper held up one hand: "I know, and I hope you'll forgive the intrusion. He left the message on your queue. He said he didn't know how long he was going to be gone, but he'd be grateful if you took care of — Mandelbot, is it? — and he'd keyed the door to let you in. At any rate" — the hand dropped back below table level—"this kind of behavior is frankly unprecedented from anyone on the Trip. He seems to have simply abandoned his post, with no apology, no explanation, no advance warning. It's—impulsive, to say the least."
Oh, man. Killjoy, you were covered. Why'd you have to blow it?
"I didn't know that was even possible," Jovellanos said. "He had his shots years ago."
"Nonetheless, here we are." Slijper leaned back in her chair. "We were wondering if you had noticed anything unusual in his behavior lately. Anything which, looking back, might have suggested—"
"No. Nothing. Although—" Jovellanos took a breath. "Actually, he has been kind of—I don't know, withdrawn lately." Well, it's true enough, and they probably know already; it'd look suspicious if I didn'tmention it…
"Any idea why?" asked another corpse.
"Not really." She shrugged. "I've seen it happen before—it's bound to wear on you, having to deal with high-level crises all the time. And Tripped people can't always talk about what's on their minds, you know? So I just let him be."
Please, please, please don't let them have high-level telemetry on me now…
"I see," Slijper said. "Well, thank you anyway, Dr. Jovellanos."
"Is that all?" She started to rise.
"Not quite," said one of the other corpses. "There's one other thing. Concerning—"