Clair balled her fists and crushed them into her eyes.
“Shut up!”
“Why, Clair? I’m the one offering you a way out of this mess.”
“Just leave me alone! I need space. I have to think.”
“About what? Surely there’s only one possible response.”
She raised her head and glared at him, hatred tracing fiery lines through her veins, giving her a strength she’d never suspected she had.
“If you destroy me, Q will destroy you,” she said, and the coldness in her voice was frightening even to her own ears. “That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? She knows my dupe isn’t me, and she’s looking for me right now. And she’s scared you. You don’t know what she’s capable of, and you’re worried that you’ll find out big-time if you don’t give me up soon. So you don’t get to order me around. Not now and not ever. Back off and let me figure out what I want before I agree to anything you want.”
“All right, all right,” he said, raising his hands in a mixture of placation and frustration. “I’ll give you ten minutes—in which time you’d better hope your little lapdog doesn’t do anything you’ll regret. You only get one second chance.”
74
HE STALKED OFF, all geniality gone. But at least the act was over. The doors opened ahead of him, and stayed open behind him. Clair took two steps toward them, then retreated as Mallory walked into the room.
Behind her, the doors shut with a definitive click. They were alone together.
“What are you doing here?” Clair asked.
“Don’t worry. I’m not here to talk.” The woman in Libby’s body leaned against the desk. “Consider me an incentive to make the right decision.”
“What happens if I don’t?”
Mallory hefted the pistol. “Remember Zep. I can bring him back and shoot him as many times as you like. It’s up to you.”
Clair folded her arms. She felt cold, but that had nothing to do with the temperature in the room. The strength she had had a moment ago evaporated in the face of Mallory, whose mind might even then be starting to overtake her own.
“How does it feel?” Clair asked. “How does it feel to destroy someone’s life?”
Mallory tipped back her head and laughed. The sound was shocking, coming from Libby’s mouth.
“You talk as though it’s never happened before,” the woman said. “We live in a cruel world, Clair Hill, full of victims. Our only choice is between standing in line or taking matters into your own hands. Which do you choose?”
Clair didn’t want to believe that there was nothing of Libby left in this woman who looked exactly like her. Improvement happened slowly, Wallace had said. It wasn’t like duping, where someone was shoved into place and left to founder. Mallory had crept through Libby like a cancer. There had to be some small part of Libby left, some fragment that might be able to help her escape.
“I remember the crashlander ball,” she said. “Do you? We made it happen together, you and I. We were the perfect team.”
“Sure I remember,” Mallory said, confirming Clair’s guess about duping and memories, “but I also remember my own life—the death camps, and my father being shot, and stealing food from other children just to stay alive. And worse, so don’t think you’re going to turn me by appealing to some fading echo of your shallow friend. She wanted this, remember? And now she’s got it. Do you think she’s glad? I can’t tell you, Clair, because she’s not in here anymore.”
“Stop it.”
“Just like your dupe isn’t you anymore either.”
“Stop it!”
Clair put her hands over her ears and ran into the privacy alcove, chased by Mallory’s mocking laughter.
Clair crouched in a corner and wept, thinking of Zep telling her about dead grandmothers and rape. They had been Mallory’s memories coming from Libby’s lips, but at least there had been some of Libby left then. It was gone now. Libby was gone, and soon Clair would be too, either erased completely or taken over by Mallory, if that was who she was infected with. It was inconceivable that there could be two versions of that terrible old soul at the same time, both in different bodies, but anything was possible in a world where people could be reduced to data—data that could be edited, copied, and erased as easily any other electronic file . . . in the hands of a madman.
Clair tried to bring back the anger that had enabled her to stand up to Wallace before. She forced herself to think through the fear and grief, to find something she could do. There had to be a way out of her situation. There had to be.
She didn’t pin much hope on Wallace keeping his promises. He could erase her with a gesture and leave her dupe to cover up her disappearance . . . until the dupe herself died. Or the dupe himself. Clair put her hands over face, not wanting to think about that.
She became aware of a faint sound, a whirring that tickled the edge of her hearing. She raised her head, frowning. It wasn’t coming from the office. It was coming from much closer, inside the alcove. She knew that sound, although she didn’t recognize it immediately. Until recently she had heard it every day of her life. It prompted a sense memory of Jesse frowning into a steaming mug of coffee.
The fabber.
She stood up and stared at the small, boxy machine. She didn’t dare do anything more than that in case Mallory heard her. Neither of them had entered anything into its menu, which left only one possibility.
One crack is all it takes. One line of code to widen the crack.
Q had found her.
75
HOPE RETURNED IN a flood, tempered with a fear that someone would notice before the fabber fully processed its data. Clair didn’t know what it was making, but she could guess.
One custom chip built from scratch in a booth. One transmitter to widen the bandwidth.
The fabber opened with a chirpy ping. Inside was something small and angular, about the size her little finger. She reached in and picked it up.
“Clair?” Mallory asked. Clair could hear the woman’s light footsteps approaching.
A simple menu appeared in her lenses. It gave her two options: connect or disconnect. She chose the former. A status update appeared that said locating, with a pulsing dot indicating some kind of activity. Locating her, Clair presumed. Wallace’s private network could have taken her anywhere. Until the transmitter connected with Q, Clair remained on her own.
Clair tucked the transmitter behind her back as Mallory stepped into the cubicle.
“I still have a couple of minutes,” Clair told her.
“Show me what you just fabbed.” Mallory punctuated the order with a twitch of her pistol’s barrel.
“I can’t,” said Clair. “I drank it.”
She gestured at the empty coffee mug Jesse had left in the alcove, thankful for once that he didn’t have the habits of a normal person. Anyone else would have recycled it in the fabber without a thought.
Mallory gestured with the pistol again. She didn’t look convinced.
Locating, said the status update.
Clair stepped through the entranceway, back into the office.
“Stop there.” Mallory backed into the alcove, keeping the pistol aimed at her, and touched the mug with her free hand.