Improvement campaign.
If she took the deal, however, Wallace would win. Libby would disappear, possibly forever, Q would never get her body back . . . and what would happen to WHOLE and the others? What would happen to Jesse? She couldn’t just rewind the last few days and forget they had ever happened.
She clenched her fists. Clair Larhonda Hill wasn’t so easily bought.
“It’s not going to work,” she shouted at the walls and ceiling. “Do you hear me? You can’t buy my silence so easily!”
The doors opened.
“Libby!” Zep cried. “Thank God. We’ve been so—”
“Worried? Why? I’m beautiful, remember?”
The pistol was still in her hand. She raised it, this time pointing at Zep.
“Libby, wait . . . if this is about Clair—”
“Clair, Clair, Clair,” she said. “It’s always about Clair.”
The gun cracked, and Zep fell to the floor, shot through the heart.
72
“NO!”
Clair was at Zep’s side in an instant. Before the life entirely left his eyes, he seemed to see her through a veil of hurt and puzzlement. His lips moved, but no sound emerged from them. Then he was gone. Again.
Clair knelt in the expanding pool of his blood, buried her head into his ruined chest, and would have wept but for Mallory’s hand in her hair, pulling her up and away from the body.
“It’s not your silence we want.”
Mallory pushed her back to the ground, away from Zep’s body.
“Leave me alone.” Clair scrabbled backward until her spine was pressed hard against a wall. Revulsion threatened to subsume her. Zep had died twice, and both times it had been because of her.
“Shall I bring him back again? One time if you do as we ask. Many times if you don’t.”
“You have Turner. What do you need me for?”
“Ant wants something else from you—and what Ant Wallace wants, Ant Wallace gets.”
“Now, now, there’s no need to be
“Here’s the story,” he said. “I’m on my way to see you, as per your request, when an attack on the building triggers an emergency lockdown. You are isolated for your own protection, as am I, until security and peacekeepers foil the attack, at which point you and I are released. In response to the inevitable media uproar provoked by your followers, we hold a video conference. Gemma Mallapur confesses that you were used by WHOLE as a cover for an attack on the very heart of VIA. Once WHOLE’s terroristic aspirations are revealed, you renounce all your accusations of me and my organization. You are taken away for questioning but are not expected to be charged. The end. Any questions?”
Clair shook her head.
“I’m not saying that.”
“You misunderstand me. You already have.”
He stared down at her as the horrible truth sank in.
“We duped you, Clair,” he said. “My version of you is already out there, recanting all the things you said.”
“You couldn’t have,” she said, feeling a wave of existential panic. How could there be a copy of her out there when she was still alive here, wherever
“Irrelevant in a private network.” He waved to indicate the booth-disguised-as-an-office. “No one will ever find you in here.”
“So why
“You can tell me all about your friend.”
“Libby?”
Mallory barked a short, hard laugh. “Hardly.”
Clair went to get up, but Mallory put a foot on her chest and pushed her back down.
“I’m talking about Q,” said Wallace. “That’s what you call her, right?”
Clair stared at him in complete confusion.
“You must know more about her than I do,” Clair said. “She’s one of Improvement’s victims, after all.”
“Don’t try to pin this on us,” said Mallory. “We had nothing to do with her.”
“I don’t believe you. How can she be in the hangover if you didn’t put her there?”
“The what?”
“The safety net, the memory dump, whatever you call it.” Clair tried to remember how Arcady had explained it to her. “The place you pulled Zep from.”
Mallory tilted Libby’s head and studied her with distant blue eyes, like she was a bug in a jar, slowly running out of air.
“Someone’s lying,” said Wallace, “and it can’t be both of you.”
His eyes moved, selecting menus from his lenses.
Gemma was standing next to Zep’s body, looking first at the room around her, then at her injured arm, which was still in a bandage.
“What?” she said, startled and confused. “This isn’t what you told me would—”
“I know what I told you,” said Wallace, “but you haven’t delivered. We’ve kept you on ice in case we needed you.”
“Ice . . . ?” Gemma’s expression became one of horror. “Sam—you promised me Sam—”
“And you’ll get him if you tell us the truth, this time.”
Clair lunged for Gemma, but Mallory’s boot held her down with crushing strength.
“You!” Clair spat. “You betrayed us!”
Gemma glanced at her, but only for a moment. Her gaze dropped to the floor, danced away from the blood, and ended up looking nowhere.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I had no choice.”
“Yes, you did,” said Wallace, “and you chose correctly. You chose your son over a band of misfits and meddlers. Who in their right mind wouldn’t do that?”
“This isn’t right,” Gemma said, still avoiding looking at the body. “You said you wouldn’t hurt them.”
“And you believed him?” said Clair, aghast.
“It’s not how it looks! They wanted me to be a sleeper agent, but I never actually spied on anyone, never gave anything away—until I saw proof in the Farmhouse that they could do everything they claimed they could do—changing people, bringing them back from the dead . . .”
“Yes, yes,” said Wallace in an impatient tone. “You activated the bug at the Farmhouse. We exchanged messages. We promised you the one thing in the world you really want.”
He had walked half a circle around Gemma and come to a halt next to Mallory, drawing attention to the body, Clair realized, and to the gun in Mallory’s hand.
“I don’t reward lies,” he said. “Tell me everything you know about Q.”
Gemma blinked at him. “What about her?”
“You told us she was a kid,” Mallory said. “Some kind of prodigy.”
“That’s what she sounds like. A kid living in the Air.”
“But you’re not sure?”
“I’ve never met her. Why would she fake something like that?”
“I don’t know. That’s why we brought you back.”
Gemma stared at Wallace and Mallory with despair and hatred in her eyes, then suddenly ripped the cross
