As expected, the campus was all but deserted. Only a few security personnel about. Perfect.
He’d just sat down before his computer and was preparing to open the box and tear out the memory chip, when he heard his office door open behind him. His fingers closed around the grip of his .45.
“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Portero,” said a voice he couldn’t place. “I didn’t expect you in today.”
He turned and recognized one of the newer men on the security force—knew the face but not the name. He’d been hired last summer; low on the ladder, which was no doubt how he’d pulled Christmas duty.
“Yeah,” Luca said. “Just checking on something before I go home.”
“Lots of brass in today.”
Luca’s ears were singing and the last thing he needed was chitchat with this kid, but his curiosity got the better of him.
“Really? Who?”
“Both Sinclairs. First the big guy copters in. Then Ellis Sinclair arrives in this beat-up van, driving it himself.”
“Is that a fact?”
Luca wasn’t surprised. If there was any time for a crisis meeting it was now.
“And you’ll never believe who was with him: that fox from OPRR—you know, the one who led the inspection a few—”
“Romy Cadman,” Luca said, and felt his blood jump a few degrees.
The bitch was back. And with Sinclair-2. So they were no longer hiding their connection. Lister had put the blame on Luca, but that was wrong. This wastheir fault. Especially hers. Things had started downhill the moment she arrived. If not for Romy Cadman he’d still be sitting pretty here, building his retirement account, planning ways to move up the SIRG ladder. Instead he was on the run and would have to keep on running the rest of his life.
Maybe it was fate that had brought him back at this moment. He had scores to settle, scales to balance.
What was the expression—in for a dime, in for a dollar? He’d left a pile of bodies back at his house; no reason why he couldn’t leave a few more in Sinclair-1’s office.
35
This was a different Mercer Sinclair than the one Romy had seen at the shareholders’ meeting. The suave good looks, the debonair poise were gone. This man looked haggard, years older. But he hadn’t lost any of his fight.
“As usual, Ellis, you want to give up. You always were a quitter. But I’mnot giving up. Not by a long shot. We can win, and I can tell you how. But I’m not discussing it before outsiders—certainly not with someone here from OPRR.”
“I’m not representing OPRR today,” Romy told him, “but I’ll leave if—”
“No,” Ellis said. “We all stay. We all have a stake in this.”
Romy looked around, realizing how true that was. Ellis had led them all to the CEO’s office—Romy, Patrick, Zero, and Tome and Kek as well. The last three had the most at stake.
“Then this meeting is over,” said Mercer Sinclair. “When you come to your—”
Abruptly the door opened and Luca Portero swaggered in. The pistol in his hand startled Romy, and the wild look in his eyes terrified her.
“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” he said, breaking into a sharklike grin. “And a motley crew if I ever saw one,” he said. “Four humans, a sim, a—holy shit! Sothat’s how you took down four of my men! Where’d you get the mandrilla? I never would’ve—” His cold gaze settled on Zero. “And who or what the fuck are you?”
“They were just leaving, Portero,” Mercer Sinclair said quickly. “And so are you.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. You’re fired. As of this minute you are no longer employed at SimGen.”
“You talk to me like that?” Portero said. “Where do you get the balls to use that tone of voice with me after what you did?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You stood there time after time and looked down your nose at me and pretended to be horrified at what you called my ‘methods,’ when all the while you built this company by turning humans into monkeys and telling the world it was the other way around. You can’t fire me, you piece of shit. I’m firingyou !”
And before Romy knew it, Portero’s pistol was leveled at Mercer Sinclair’s chest. He fired twice, two rapid, booming reports, hitting him in the chest.
Images strobe-flashed through Romy’s shocked brain—Sinclair’s eyes bulging—his mouth forming an astonished O—his backward tumble with outflung arms—the window behind him cracking as it was splattered with red.
And then Portero was swinging his pistol in her direction. Patrick and Zero stood frozen to her right, Ellis was lunging toward his fallen brother. Portero shifted his pistol toward him, then seemed to change his mind.
“Later,” he said softly, then focused on Romy.
Kek growled and started forward.
“Kree-gah!” Portero said and Kek froze.
Portero smiled as he eyed Kek. “Before being assigned here I worked with some of these mandrillas in our Idaho facility. They’re conditioned from birth to stop whatever they’re doing when they hear that word, then wait for another command—from the person who said it. I’m told the word is ape talk from the Tarzan books.” His gaze returned to Romy. “Pretty cool, huh?” He heaved a theatrical sigh. “And now it’s your turn, Ms. Romy Cadman. You’ve messed up my future, so now it’s only fair I mess up yours.”
Out of the corner of her right eye she saw Zero take a step closer to her, saying, “Leave her alone!”
“Hey, listen!” Portero snarled. “I don’t know what kind of a freak you are, but another step and you’re a dead freak. Got that?”
Kek growled again and Portero yelled, “Kree-gah” a second time. “Don’t make me shoot you, boy,” he told Kek. “I’ve got plans for you.”
“What plans can you possibly have for Kek?” Romy said, hoping she could get him talking, maybe long enough for help to arrive, if any was coming.
“I may need a diversion at the airport. I’ll just set him to tearing things up in another part of the terminal after I get there.” He raised the pistol, centering it on Romy’s chest. “But enough idle chatter. Good-bye Romy Cadman.”
Romy felt a stunning impact against her right shoulder as, once again, two booming reports split the air. She saw the muzzle flashes as she fell to her left and realized that Zero had hurled himself against her.
No!
She heard Kek’s enraged howl as he launched himself through the air, saw Portero try to bring his pistol to bear on the hurtling creature but he wasn’t fast enough, heard him shout “Kree-gah! Kree-gah!” but no amount of conditioning was going to keep Kek from anyone who hurt Zero. Portero went down with screams of pain and terror.
Zero!
Romy rolled and was on her feet in a heartbeat, but Zero was down, slumped on his side, his life running out of him front and back into two red puddles.
Romy swims into Zero’s vision. Joy bursts within his ruined chest at the sight of her alive and unharmed. Her pale, strained face is framed in scintillating fog as she leans over him and wails for someone to call for help.
Too late. Even though he feels no pain, or perhaps because he feels no pain, Zero knows he’s dying. The impact of the bullets tearing though his chest was agonizing, but now…now he feels feather light and completely at peace.
He stares at Romy’s tear-stained face as she calls his name again and again, begging him to hang on. But he has no strength to hang on. He tries to move his lips but they won’t respond. They must! He has to tell her that it’s better this way.
If this morning had gone differently…if Betsy hadn’t confided to him her suspicions about Meerm’s baby, and if Ellis hadn’t confirmed them, his outlook would have been so different. He could have lived with the belief that he was an intellectual improvement on a nonhuman creature, could have held his head high as the best of his breed that aspired to the next evolutionary step. But the truth changed all that. He is not a step up from anything. He’s an adulterated…thing…a freak of science. He doesn’t know how long he could have survived knowing that he was cheated of his humanity.