I made it to the door without incident and grasped the knob, honestly expecting it to be locked. Instead, it turned easily, and I stepped out of my small recovery room into what looked like the central lab. Dr. Kimberley was there, reviewing test results with two of her technicians. All three of them turned toward the sound of my door opening.
For a moment, the four of us remained where we were, blinking at one another. Dr. Kimberley was the first to recover. “James?”
“On it, Doctor,” said the technician, and stood, hurrying over to a small specimen refrigerator. He opened the door and produced a familiar red and white can, which he carried over and offered to me. “It’s good to see you awake.”
I took the Coke without a word, popping the tab and taking a long drink. The soda burned the soreness in my throat. All of them watched me. No one spoke.
I lowered the can.
“The first thing I will do—the first thing—is have myself checked for tracking devices,” I said, directing my words at Dr. Kimberley. “If we find anything, I don’t work with you people. I don’t give you anything. You’ll need to shoot me and start with another clone, and hope you can get away with it twice. Clear?”
“As crystal,” she said, nodding. “We’re playing fairly. Not because we’re innately fair, but because at this point, it’s in our best interests to do so… and it’s the only thing left that distinguishes us from the other side.”
“All right, then. How much time do we have?”
“Still three days. You were only out for a few hours this last time—long enough to let us do the last of the post-op cleanup work.”
“Yeah, don’t ever do that again. If you’re going to knock me out, I need to know before it happens.” I took another drink of Coke. “I need an Internet connection, shoes, and another soda.”
Dr. Kimberley smiled. “I think all those things can be arranged.”
“Good.” My can was almost empty. I finished it before returning Dr. Kimberley’s smile. “Let’s have ourselves a revolution.”
We’ve reached Seattle in one piece. It was a little touch-and-go for a while there, but now here we are, and Maggie has somehow managed to hide us by going the opposite of underground. Money. Is there anything it can’t do?
We’re about to leave to see the Monkey, the man who can supposedly make identities that fool anyone and everyone in the world. That makes this Maggie’s last hurrah; when we’re done here, she’s heading back to Weed, back to her bulldogs and her grindhouse movies. I’m going to miss the shit out of her, but I’m also glad, in a way.
At least one of us is going to make it out of this shitstorm alive.
—From Adaptive Immunities, the blog of Shaun Mason, August 1, 2041. Unpublished.
There are days when I wake up and realize I no longer know the man in my mirror. Who are you, with your graying temples and your two-hundred-dollar haircut? Who are you, in your fancy suit, with your vast political power that does you no good when it really matters? Who are you, with all those ghosts in your eyes?
Seriously, you asshole. Who the fuck are you, and why are you looking back at me whenever I look into my own eyes? What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his own soul? It’s on days like this that I really want to know.
I wish I could explain to them why I let this happen. I wish I could tell them what it was for. And I wish I thought, even for a second, that they were going to forgive me…
—From the private journal of Vice President Richard Cousins, August 1, 2041. Unpublished.
Eighteen
The polite voice of the hotel roused me from my bed shortly before sunrise. I sat up, blinking in disorientation at the opulent room around me—it would have been a suite in any other hotel—before I remembered where I was, swore softly, and got moving.
My clothes were scattered near the bathroom door, under the panel with the light controls. I’d spent almost ten minutes the night before just playing with them, cranking them up to mimic natural sunlight for the seasonally depressed, shifting them into the UV spectrum for the sake of people with retinal Kellis-Amberlee. In the end, I’d gone to sleep with the black lights on and the white-noise generator turned to full. It was almost like being back in Berkeley, before everything changed.
I hadn’t slept that well in a year. Being woken, even gently, felt like a betrayal.
There’d been no discussion of how we’d be getting to the Monkey’s: We just assembled at the van, like all of us being together again was the way things were supposed to be. Mahir got into the front passenger seat, balancing his tablet on his knee. Maggie and Becks took the back, and in the rearview mirror I could see Becks sitting sentry, watching out the rear window for signs of pursuit.
“Where to?” I asked, as I buckled my seat belt.
“I’ve got the directions,” said Mahir, and held up the tablet, showing me a black window with a blinking green cursor in the upper right corner.
I blinked. “What the fuck is that?”