Now he wanted to destroy them both, whatever the cost.
Maybe, he thought, he'd been programmed to be some sort of saboteur, a dangerous and involuntary rebel. Maybe the imprint had been meant to create moles, people who would attack their own countries from within.
That was just the sort of lousy trick that the government would pull.
Or was the imprint making him think that?
“So what are you going to do?” Cecelia asked, breaking his train of thought. “Could you turn yourself in, tell them you want to be recruited?”
“No,” Casper said immediately. “They must know what's in my head better than I do-they'd assume it was a trick, that I was going to turn on them.” He smiled wolfishly. “They'd be right, too.”
“Imprints aren't supposed to control your actions!” Mirim protested.
“This is no ordinary imprint,” Casper said. “I'm sure of that.”
“What the hell is it, then?”
“I wish I knew!”
“Okay,” Cecelia said, “You don't turn yourself in-though as an officer of the court I am required to advise you to surrender. But speaking hypothetically, let's say you don't-what do you do?”
“Well, I can't just ignore it,” Casper said, “though that's exactly what half of me would like to do-probably the half that's not imprint. I can't ignore it, because they'll kill me if I do.”
“They haven't managed it so far,” Cecelia pointed out.
Casper snorted. “If they're serious about it, they will eventually.” He glanced at the coffee shop windows, suddenly uncomfortably aware that he'd been in this same place rather longer than was entirely wise, and that he was visible from the street.
“So what's left?” Mirim asked.
“Run,” Cecelia said. “That's obvious.”
“Run?” Casper said. “Maybe.”
“Well, what else?”
“Fight back,” Casper said, and he felt a warm surge of satisfaction at the idea.
“Fight against the entire United States government?” Mirim asked.
“Why not?” Casper asked. “They're just people.”
“They're thousands of people, with guns and tanks and bombs and organization, Casper,” Cecelia pointed out. “Effectively, you'd be up against the whole damn country.”
“So I'd recruit my own people, get my own guns.”
“How?”
Casper shrugged.
A second before it had seemed natural and obvious, and he still thought it could be done, but right now he didn't know how. The imprint was playing its tricks again.
“That might be fine in the long term,” Mirim said, “but for right now, the idea is just to stay alive-how do you plan to do that?”
“You'll need to run,” Cecelia said. “I can try for a court order to stop the attacks-even with the emergency decrees in effect, I think I can plead that you're entitled to due process as long as you aren't actually taking part in subversive or terrorist activities.”
Casper shook his head. “No, Celia,” he said, “you're missing something here.”
“What?”
“You're coming with me.”
Cecelia blinked at him.
“Don't you see?” he said, the words coming in a rush. “If you go home they'll know you were with me, they'll take you in for questioning, they'll keep you locked up while they pry out every word I've said to you, they might just decide to lose you completely. If they do let you out, it'll just be as bait for me-you'll never have another moment's privacy, they'll be spying on you every second of the day. And you, Mirim, they'll do the same to you-you know they will, when you think about it you'll know it's true! Listen to me, think about it-even if you could go back, become good little drones again, do you want to? Is that any life to live? Is that a government that deserves your allegiance? What right does the government have to kill anyone who causes trouble? What right do they have to order everyone around? Who gave the Party and the Consortium and the whole stinking power structure the right to run our lives this way, to grind us down? Who said they could suspend someone's civil rights indefinitely just by labeling him a security risk? Who said they could exempt the Consortium from anti-trust and environmental laws and all the rest, and leave them in place for everyone else? Think about it- they sent me to have my brain, my very identity, tampered with, so that I could serve the Consortium better, so it could keep the Party strong. They screwed up and put in the wrong instructions, so now they're going to kill me for it. No apologies, not even an offer of a quick, painless injection-they do that much for serial killers, for God's sake, but for me, it's a spray of bullets through my apartment door, it's hunting me down on the city streets…”
He had risen to his feet while speaking; now he threw his arms out theatrically.
“ How can you continue to serve them? ” he shouted.
For a moment the two women stared up at him, and Casper stared back, meeting Cecelia's gaze. From the corner of his eye he saw the counterman watching him suspiciously, but the man wasn't taking action to quell the disturbance.
Not yet, anyway.
“He's right,” Mirim said.
“He's right about them locking us up, anyway,” Cecelia agreed. She looked up at Casper.
“All right,” she said, “so all three of us run, and we might as well do it together. Where do we run to? ”
Casper looked at both women. He dropped his arms to his sides and seemed to shrink.
“I wish I knew,” he said.
Chapter Eleven
The first step was obvious-and for that matter, so was the second. If they were going to run, the first thing they needed was transportation, and the second was money.
Where to go after they had transportation and money wasn't so simple, but as Casper led the two women into the parking garage he'd chosen he made a suggestion. Neither of them had any comment on it, at least at first.
“Maybe we should take a train,” Mirim said nervously, as Casper looked over the silent rows of vehicles on the second level of the parking structure.
Casper shook his head. “Too easy to search,” he said. “And a train goes in a straight line, you can't turn off and get lost on the side roads. If they decide to search the trains for me, and I'm on one, I'm dead.” He looked over a brown Toyota, then moved on.
“They can stop cars and search those, too.”
“Some of them, yeah, but do you have any idea how many roads there are out of Philadelphia?” He zeroed in on an old blue Honda four-door and looked it over for any sign of a security system. There was no thumbprint scanner on the car's computer, no warning lights or labels beyond the usual required safety notices. He noticed the clutter of old maps and empty fast-food wrappers on the back seat-exactly what he was looking for, signs of a disorganized owner.
“I don't like this,” Mirim said, her arms folded across her chest. She looked about nervously as Casper ducked down, got on his back, and peered under the Honda.
Cecelia watched Casper with interest. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“I'm checking to see if there are any wires that don't look like they belong,” Casper said. “I figure that if there's an added security system, there'll be wires.”
“Some of them are subtler than that,” Cecelia said. “I had a few clients who tried this sort of thing when I did my year as a public defender.”
“It's a Honda, Celia, not a Ferrari or something,” Casper said as he got to his feet.
“You'd be surprised.”
“So be ready to run,” he said, as he made a sudden whirling movement and kicked out the driver's side window. The safety glass buckled, and dropped inside in a single large sheet-the glass was shattered into bits about the size of teeth, but the fragments were still held together by the layer of plastic.
“Jesus, Casper!” Mirim said. She looked about, waiting for an alarm to sound, for cops to jump out of nowhere with guns drawn.
No sirens wailed, no horns beeped; the only sound was the normal buzz of traffic outside. Casper ignored her as he reached in, tossed the ruined window away, and opened the door. He slid into the driver's seat, leaned across and fished through the glove compartment, checked the storage compartments and sun visors-and found the spare key in the ashtray. The clutter in the back seat had made him optimistic that such a stash existed.