Twinmaker

“I don’t know. You.” Q was silent, for which Clair was grateful. “I mean, first you have to copy someone’s pattern, and then you have to change it, and then put it back into the system. How is that possible?”

“Did you see how her hand was shaking?” Jesse asked her. “It was fine when she came out of the booth, but it got worse really fast. It looked like nerve damage. . . .”

“Seven days,” Jesse went on when she didn’t sat anything. “That’s how long Gemma said Libby had. Maybe duping isn’t permanent because the minds and bodies don’t match. Maybe it’s the same with Improvement.”

“People change themselves so much, their minds and bodies didn’t match anymore, it drives them insane, and they kill themselves? Jesus.”

Clair couldn’t believe Jesse was taking it so calmly. Wasn’t he, the Stainer, supposed to be more outraged about this kind of thing than she was?

The speakers came to life. “Clair, are you there? I’m back now, and I’m sorry if I made a mistake. I was just trying to—”

Clair found the OFF button. Instantly, a patch appeared in her lenses. She switched them off too and sat still and silent in the rushing darkness.

The road forked. She gave Jesse directions from memory, without needing her lenses. Around them, the landscape became hillier. They were right on the edge of the Central Valley now. If they went much farther east, they’d hit the mountains, and the going would become really rough.

“Look for a bridge,” she said. “Just past it, that’s where we’re leaving the road.”

“Right.” He twisted the controls to avoid the outstretched branches of a fallen tree. The road snaked a third of a mile, then straightened. They were in the homestretch.

Clair gulped as Jesse locked all four wheels and sent the buggy into a skid. She braced herself for impact, but there was no sign of anything on the road ahead. Nothing at all. The bridge had fallen in.

The buggy jerked to a halt two yards from the creek. She could see slabs of concrete where the bridge had once been anchored to the shore. Jesse switched off the buggy and left it sitting in the middle of the road while they climbed out and jogged to inspect the creek. It was shallow, but the sides were steep and slippery toward the bottom, where the buggy was certain to become stuck. Clair retreated to get her pack, and they leaned on each other for balance until they felt smooth stones underfoot and rushing water over their feet. Instantly, Clair’s shoes were soaked. The cold was as piercing and as bracing as her fear of being late.

The other side of the creek was lightly wooded, and they slipped gratefully under the cover of the trees, squelching as quietly as they could.

“No, this way,” she said, turning Jesse around and pointing northeast. They ran straight across the countryside without concern for anything other than what would be waiting for them when they arrived. They ran until they hit a ridge, and then they walked. From the top of the ridge they could barely make out a long gray oblong that might have been a landing strip and possibly a clutch of old buildings. In the misty predawn light, the airship wasn’t visible.

It’ll be there. She told herself to focus on what was waiting for them inside it. Turner Goldsmith, the leader of WHOLE, would have answers. He would whisk them away from the assassins in the dark and tell them what to do next. She wasn’t expecting a knight on a charger like something from a fairy tale—but he was a grown-up who presumably knew what he was doing. He would help them like he had helped others in the past.

They ran down the other side of the ridge and approached a steeper, stonier rise with more caution, wary of turning an ankle. In the hush before sunrise, every footstep sounded deafening.

At the top of the rise were two runways connected by taxiways at both ends. All but one of buildings was abandoned and weatherworn. To the right of those two were spaces that might have been for light planes or automobiles. Parked haphazardly across those wide, empty spaces were three electrobikes.

There was no sign at all of their riders or the airship.

Clair stopped dead on the asphalt and looked around. The light was brighter now. Everything was still and silent and empty. No engine noise. No voices. No giant airships hanging in the sky.

“They left without us,” said Jesse.

40

THE HOPELESSNESS IN his voice broke her heart. Clair took his hand and squeezed his cold fingers. It wasn’t his fault they had been slow. If they had been any less careful, they might have ended up like Arabelle, Cashile, and Theo. She and Jesse had done their best to keep the others in the loop, and what had WHOLE done in return? They had left without so much as a good-bye. Forget Turner Goldsmith and explanations. Forget help. At the very least, Gemma could have told them not to bother, sparing Jesse and Clair a futile end to their long and exhausting trek.

She blamed herself. If she hadn’t switched off her lenses in abhorrence at Q’s actions, she would have known. She would have seen the airship moving on the map and directed the buggy accordingly.

“It’s not over yet,” she said, trying to find some hope to cling to. Any would do. “They left the bikes. We can use them. They’ll be faster than the buggy thing.”

“You can’t drive,” said Jesse.

“I’ll learn. You can teach me.”

“Where would we go?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere a long way from here, for starters.”

Maine, she thought, tugging him toward the bikes and turning her lenses back on as she went.

The first thing she saw was a red dot right in front of her.

Then a dark figure rose up from behind the bikes and trained a pistol on the center of her chest.

“Stop right there.”

She obeyed, but not because of the order. She stopped because she had heard that voice giving her orders before. Not exactly the same voice. This time, there was a hint of another accent— British, perhaps. But even under starlight there was no mistaking the face.

It belonged to Dylan Linwood. Only he wasn’t wearing it anymore.

Jesse was two paces behind her. He stopped too, then came forward one hesitant step.

The pistol shifted left and down. A single shot cracked into the asphalt at Jesse’s feet. He jumped.

“No closer. Clair, I know you’re armed. Put the gun down where I can see it. Don’t try anything, or I’ll shoot you in the leg.”

“You’re going to kill us anyway,” she said.

“Not until you tell us where the others have gone. The gun, Clair, or I’ll call your parents. Would you like that? Would you like me to pay them another visit?”

“No.” She slipped off the backpack and dropped it to the ground. The gun she pulled from her pocket and skidded across the ground toward him. With it went her last hope.

She refused to think of the dupe as Dylan Linwood. She knew what he really was now. He was a duplicate, but not an exact duplicate. He was like Libby in Copperopolis—an exact copy of Dylan Linwood with another person inside his head. He was the puppet master hidden within the puppet.

“Who are you?” Jesse asked, and she could tell from his voice that he was experiencing every emotion she had on seeing Q in Copperopolis.

“Move over with your girlfriend.”

He didn’t move. “She’d never be my girlfriend. If you were my father, you’d know that.”

Clair joined Jesse before he could be shot for disobeying, and the dupe came out from behind the bike, picking up her gun on the way. Behind him, the sky was slowly lightening. In the pale predawn wash, Clair made out the bruise on his forehead and the reddened eye, exactly as they had been the previous day.

“We know what you are,” she said.