Eighteen

Jack's hand trembled as he picked up the gray telephone resting on the desk in his living quarters. Lisa would be worried--no, terrified was more like it. And Kristina and Carrie . . . Jesus. He was supposed to watch a movie with them last night. D.A.R.Y.L., about the man-built boy with the programmed memories. Irony has a way of kicking you when you're down, doesn't it?

Jack pulled his leather wallet out of his pants pocket and unfolded it. There they were. His girls. Lisa, Kristina, and Carrie, smiling from a photograph. Taken a year ago, at a picnic in Linnell Park.

What could they be thinking right now? That he'd run away? That he'd been abducted? That he didn't love them? Jack shook his head. The call would just spawn more questions for Lisa . . . more worries. This thing--this experience, this adventure, mission, whatever it was--was going to hurt the family, Jack could feel it. More pieces to mend when he came home.

He lifted the receiver, held it to his ear. Jack scratched at his beard, that nervous tic of his. What will you tell her? The truth? Lies? Something in between?

He dialed their home number in Tucson. The phone on the other end rang once; just once.

"Hello?" It was Olivia, his wife's sister. Lisa must have called in the family for support. Jack couldn't blame her.

"Olivia, it's Jack."

"My God," she nearly shrieked. "Where are you, Jack? Lisa has been out of her mind!"

Jack could her his wife in the background--Is that Jack? Give me the phone--and then she was on with him, talking to him, saying his name over and over. Her voice was raw, like shattered glass.

"Lisa, honey. It's me." Jack looked down. There she was, in the photograph, smiling. Here she was crying. "I'm okay."

"Jack? Thank God, oh, thank God. Where are you, Jack? Where have you been?"

"I can't tell you." He stared at her smiling face in the photo. "I'm sorry. I can't. But it's . . . it's important, Lisa. More important than you'll ever know. Sweetie, understand me: I'm safe, I'm okay. I'll be home as soon as I can."

"What does that mean?" Lisa said, her voice sharpening. "You can't tell me where you are? Why not?"

Jack cringed. "I just can't. It's complicated."

"Does this have something to do with your research at the university, with the rats? Is it that protester kid, Kalajian?"

Oh, if only the stakes were so pedestrian, Jack thought. I'd take a paint-bucket-wielding activist zealot any day over this. I'd rather be red than dead.

"No, baby. That's ancient history. This has nothing to do with that." Oh, but it does . . . it has everything to do with clones and rats. See, I'm a cloned rat, and me and my newfound brothers are trying to navigate the labyrinth. We're looking for Patient Zero. "It's something else. Something important. Listen to me: I can't tell you. I want to, but I can't."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I love you, Lisa. I love you and the girls more than anything. And it means that, no matter what happens, I'll always love you. I just have to take care of some business with these people, and then I'll be home."

Lisa was silent for a long time.

"And when will that be?" she asked finally. Her voice was flattening, dissolving. She was shutting down, the way she did when they fought. Lisa didn't yell or scream when she was pissed . . . she went antarctic, the impassive observer, a scientist peering through a microscope.

"Please, Lisa. Please understand. This is out of my control. I want to tell you. I didn't volunteer for--"

A click came over the phone line, and for a heartbeat Jack thought they (whoever they were) had disconnected the call. But there Lisa was again, on the line, crying quietly. That was a warning, Jack thought. Message received.

"Baby, I love you," he said. "Just remember that. No matter how long I'm gone . . . no matter if I can't call you again for a while . . . know that I love you and the girls more than anything else in this world."

"You're in trouble."

Jack gazed down at the photo and rubbed his finger across Lisa's face. The photo blurred before him. He fought back the tears.

"Yeah, in a way," Jack said. "Are the girls there?"

She called for Kristina and Carrie. There was Olivia's frantic voice--Where is he? He won't tell you?--then Kristina was on the line, soft and little and just about as real as it could get.

"Hi, Daddy."

"Hey, sugar puddin'. How you doin'?"

"I'm okay." God, that voice. She was the one who watched and listened and asked the right questions. Twenty years from now, Kristina would be a scientist, a journalist, a problem solver. Jack would bet on it.

"When are you coming home?"

Jack smiled. See? So soon with the questions. "Soon, baby. Soon. Daddy just needs work with some new friends for a little while. I have a very important job to do."

"What kind of job?"

Jack thought for a moment. "A special job. So special I can't even tell Mommy about it."

"It's a secret." Pause. "You have a secret science experiment."

"Kinda." Try dead-on, kiddo.

"Can you tell me anything about it?"

Jack looked at Kristina and Carrie in the photograph. "Only that you and your sister would get a big kick out of it. But I'm okay, sweetie. I'm just fine. And I'll be home as soon as I can, okay?"

"I believe you." Another pause. "Hurry, Daddy. We miss you."

God, that voice. His own voice was shaking now. "I miss you, too. And I love you. Is your sister there?"

A second later, Carrie was with him.

"Hey, Daddy!"

"Hey, you. How's my princess?"

"Fine. How're you?"

Miserable. Afraid. Questioning my place in the universe and busy missing the hell out of you, little one.

"I'm doing fine, just fine."

"Daddy? When are we going to watch the D.A.R.Y.L. movie?"

"Oh, honey."

That's when Jack began to cry.

* * *

As he listened to the phone on the other end ring and ring, Dr. Mike stared at the walls of his quarters and considered the thoughts he'd had in this room last night (or was it this morning? It's blurring together . . . goddamn sleep deprivation): screw this place; he would be no help to these people. No help at all.

That anger had come before Dr. Mike had seen his father--his dead father--this morning. Before he'd seen the man pulled out of Ops by armed men. Before he'd seen the room with the metallic, multi-armed monstrosity that had birthed him and the others. Before he'd seen the awesome field of ten-foot-tall Q-Cray hard drives whirring away two thousand feet beneath the earth.

Somewhere between last night and this afternoon, Dr. Mike had begun to believe that this was all real, all true. Talk about making a one-eighty. And now he was actually helping his captors. Dr. J. "Mike" Smith, criminal profiler, was assisting the men who'd put a gun to his head and walked him out of the most significant moment of his life. His appearance on Larry King Live would have made him, legitimized the book and started the word-of-mouth publicity blitz.

And yet, sitting in this cramped dorm room, Dr. Mike realized he didn't really care. If a third of what he'd learned in the past half day was true, then he hadn't just stumbled upon the best-kept secret of his life--he'd stumbled upon the best-kept secret in the history of the world. And more significant: the secret of perfecting human cloning (and, God help us, memory duplication) was apparently in the hands of John Alpha. And he had a chance to stop the sicko. What a book that would make.

The phone on the other end of the line rang again. And again.

I know you're there, Rochelle. Pick up.

Dr. Mike knew that she was going to be disappointed and angry--after all, at this stage in his career, you don't strut onto Larry fucking King without cashing in plenty of favors. And that's what Rochelle Romero had done to get Mike, her darling new author, on Live. He had told her she wasn't going to regret this . . . that his book, Hunting the Hunters: Inside the Minds of a City's Most Notorious Killers, was going to bottle-rocket up the sales charts . . . and that he owed her big-time. Rochelle had smiled in her office and said just three words in that slippery Colombian accent of hers: That's right, kiddo.

And then Dr. Mike had gone MIA last night, right there in the studio bathroom. Put his photo on a milk carton. Call David Copperfield. He had vanished, and he'd blown it. It'd been out of his hands, but he'd blown it. Rochelle had every reason to be angry and disappointed.

But when Rochelle picked up on the other end and heard his voice, Dr. Mike realized Rochelle wasn't angry. She was thermonuclear.

"Just who in the flame-ing fuck do you think you are?" she screamed. Mike recoiled from the receiver as if he'd been burned. He imagined Rochelle in her smoke-filled office, cordless phone pinched between shoulder and chin, scrambling to find her cigs.

Rochelle was still screaming. "Pendejo! And just what in the fuck do you think I am?" She must've popped a smoke in her mouth; her words were slurring now. "A doormat? A dish towel? A fucking flushable tampon? Do you realize what you've done?"

"Rochelle, listen, I'm sorry," Dr. Mike said, wincing. Are those my balls I feel, kissing the base of my throat? Oh, yes, indeed. "But something--"

"Something? Oh, merciful Lord!"

"That's ri--"

"Something made you screw over your publicist, screw over your book, and screw over CNN!" she bellowed. "Something? Something? What could this 'something' have possibly been?"

Click-click went her Bic. Click-click went Dr. Mike's mind.

"Someone, ah, escorted me out of the building. Just before I was supposed to go to makeup."

"Someone?" But it sounded more like sumwum; one side of her mouth was still clamped down on that cigarette. "Who?"

"I'm not allowed to tell you. And if I could, you wouldn't believe me."

"I already don't believe you. Who?"

"Some of my biggest fans, apparently. I can't say any more about it."

"The fuck you can't!" Rochelle roared, her rage hissing down the line. Mike elected to change tactics, go suave.

"Listen, Rochelle, you know me. Dependable. Ambitious. Manic, sure, but smart. Smart enough to know that you don't walk out of CNN's L.A. studios without a damned good reason. I know how important this was to you. But I think you know just how important this was to me. I wouldn't leave that building unless I had to. That's all I can say."

She was silent for a moment. Mike could hear the mmmp of Rochelle taking a drag.

"Shit. You're up to your eyeballs in it, aren't you?"

"Of course not," Mike said, faking a laugh. "Oh, nothing that preposterous. I'm in the hands of capable people. Very good at what they do. Very interested in me, and my work."

Silence.

"I was calling to tell you that I'm okay. That I'm okay, and that I'm sorry something came up last night. You're the bee's knees, Rochelle. I can't tell you how much I wanted to do the show. Are you getting an idea of why I couldn't make it?"

"A vague one."

"Listen, just get on the phone and tell my buddies at the department that I'm just fine. A lot of them knew I was going to be on last night, you know . . . they'll probably want to know why I was a no-show."

"Yes." You'd have thought she had swallowed a handful of Valium, by the sound of her voice. "Is there anyone in particular you want me to call?"

Oh, that's the question, isn't it? Now's the time to drop a hint about where you are, Mike . . . and that you're going to be cruising into town tonight. Or now's the time to do what you've been told and keep your mouth shut.

He heard Rochelle exhale a lungful of smoke. She was waiting.

What's it going to be?

"Mike? You still there?"

Ride the wave. Stop trying to steer and ride the wave. See where it takes you.

"Forget it," Dr. Mike said.

"You sure?"

Dr. Mike closed his eyes and shook his head. "Listen, Rochelle. I have to go now. I know what you did to get that interview. I'm really sorry, old girl."

"I believe you."

"Good. I'll see you soon."

"I'll say a prayer, Mike."

"I'm an atheist, Rochelle."

"All the more reason," she said, and hung up.

* * *

Kilroy2.0 sat at his desk, the telephone cord curled around his index finger. He looked up at the walls . . . into the walls . . . and waited for them to speak. The day had gone well, so far. The Conspiracy was deepening, as was his messianic role in it. The clones--the cogs, the Pedestrians--could do nothing without his assistance, it seemed. The vortex of digital information was something only Kilroy2.0 could tame.

All according to plan.

The walls had spoken the truth last night. He was the beginning and the end. The prophet. Kilroy2.0 closed his eyes and silently called to the ghosts in the walls.

The walls had many things to say, many instructions to deliver. To Kilroy, the conversation lasted hours. According to the glowing numerals on the desk clock, the conversation lasted three minutes.

Kilroy2.0 unraveled the cord from his finger and picked up the telephone receiver. He dialed the pager number from memory, pressed #, then four numbers: 4-3-5-7.

H-E-L-P.

He hung up and began to smile.

* * *

Patricia was calmer than Jay had thought she'd be--but then again, she had always been the stronger one in the marriage. He was the restless one, the worried one, the spouse who gloomed-and-doomed his way through tax forms, credit-card payments, and insurance policies. Jay had never considered just why he was the way he was--why he had such little faith in the juggernaut he called the system. The thing most everyone else called life. Often, he perceived the world in terms of equity and fairness; mostly, in how unequal and unfair the whole damned thing seemed to be. Jay suspected this cynicism had something to do with his human rights work: Go to enough developing nations and you'll see what inequity is all about. You'll breathe it in the air. You'll taste it in the water.

However--in light of the revelations over the past day--Jay had found himself wondering more and more about his worldview. His newfound brothers had attitudes completely different from his own. These were the people he could've been, perhaps: warrior, artist, scientist, priest. These were the people he was not, for reasons that seemed to be beyond him.

It's like those comic books I used to read in high school, he had thought earlier today, while watching the group solve John Alpha's riddle. Those heroes were always traveling to parallel worlds, where life on Earth had evolved differently from our own . . . where history took a left instead of a right, and everything was different there. That's what staring at my Bizarro brothers is like. Staring into the eyes of a Mirror Universe me, seeing the person I could've been. Or could be.

Maybe. If I weren't so weak.

That's why Patricia was the stronger one in the marriage. That's why she was much calmer than he'd thought she'd be. And that's why it was so good--so goddamned good--to hear her voice.

"I saw the chicken in the freezer," she was saying. "I thought you'd been called in. You didn't leave a message on the fridge."

Jay could clearly visualize the dry-erase board on the refrigerator, the white field filled with hazy ghosts of messages they had written and erased over the years: Call Filipe--urgent . . . Don't forget the chicken . . . Deposit freelance check . . . Order more b/w film . . . Meeting with Prada on Tues. Suddenly, Jay wanted to cry.

"I'm sorry about that," he said. "I didn't have the time."

No, I had a piece of duct tape over my mouth and a gun to my head. And when the mugger asks you for your wallet, you give it to him, and in the end isn't that my problem?

"So, was it work?" Her voice was as soft and certain as the day they had met, all those years ago.

"Work? Yeah--but not the kind I'm used to. Government work, not UN-related. Listen to me, Patty. Listen to me well. You know I like to kid, but not this time. I'm in trouble. I think you may be, too."

"What do you mean?" Still calm. A little hesitant, but calm.

Well, honey, I'm locked in a gulag with six men who all remember their first kiss at the freshman homecoming game with "Peppermint" Patty Ross of the pixie haircut and the purple scarf and I want to scream, baby, just scream, because that's you that they remember kissing, that's you in their memories. And I want to scream because it was never me who kissed you; another boy who called himself Johnny did that, a boy who's grown up to be a very, very dangerous man. And the only thing that's keeping me from unhinging is the fact that I was the only one of us lucky enough to find you again. By chance in Rockefeller Center, after all those years.

"I got a little information from the folks who I'm working with, baby," Jay said. "Uh, they said my life was in danger. I can't say more . . . but if I knew that if I was in danger, I figured you would be, too."

Patricia was quiet. Then: "You're kidding."

"I'm not, Peppermint. I said I wasn't."

The pause must've lasted only a second, maybe two. To Jay, it was much longer. He wanted to say--to scream--so many things into the phone. But they were listening. They were waiting. They were everywhere . . . and had been everywhere, all these years. The UN analyst had been analyzed, for a decade and a half. And if they'd been watching all those years, who's to say that Alpha hadn't been watching, too?

"So what do you want me to do?" she asked.

"Catch a flight to your dad's in Indy. Tonight."

"I have a project that's due, Jay," she said, impatient. "I can't just pick up and leave."

"Pack the laptop." Desperation was starting to seep into his voice, just as it was seeping into the sweat trickling down the bridge of his nose. Alpha could know where they lived. And if he knew she was alone . . .

"You're freelance, baby. Edit the photos from the road. File from your pop's house. Harper's won't know the difference."

"They'll call."

"And they'll call your cell." He could imagine Alpha's face now, a grinning parody of his own, opening the door to their East Village apartment, shrieking, Honey, I'm home, and grabbing Patricia in the kitchen, mashing her face against the dry-erase board on the refrigerator, its blue ink rubbing into her bruised face--

Jesus Christ. Keep it together. Oh, Jesus Christ.

"Patricia, please. Just do this."

"Jay, what's going on? Just where are you?"

He wiped the sweat from his forehead. He knew where my mother lived. Kidnapped her.

"Can't tell you that." The fear was becoming harder to contain. It was a school of piranha eating at his guts. "I want to, but I can't. It's a . . . it's a security thing."

"A security thing? You want me to leave, and you can't tell me where you're calling from?"

Another voice, a voice that sounded like his own, but not, not at all: I'm going to take her back, Jay. Take her back and break her face and break her pretty little green eyes and fuck her and HONEY I'M HOME

"Just do it!" Jay screamed. "Don't trust anyone! Just get out! Get out before he finds you! Before Alpha--"

He heard Patricia start to ask a question . . .

. . . and the line went dead.

Jay screamed again, pounded his fist against the desk.

Goddamnit, Patty. Just go. Please go.

He had to stop that bastard. Even if it killed him.

* * *

Michael dialed his home number in Denver. Unless Gabe was at church--and since it was pushing noon mountain standard time, that was a possibility--he should be home to take the call. Michael hoped he was. He owed Gabe an explanation . . . after all, Michael was supposed to be en route to Denver right now. He had earned the break. He deserved it. They deserved it.

"Hello?" It was Gabriel's voice, deep and dusty.

"Hey, you," Michael said, smiling faintly. "It's me."

"Mike." Michael could hear the smile through the phone. "Are you here already? You were supposed to call before the flight."

Michael winced. If anyone had been watching him and Jack two rooms down as he spoke to his wife, they would have sworn their expressions were identical. Which, of course, they were.

"I'm sorry, Gabe. Something's come up."

Here it comes.

"What's come up?" Gabriel's voice was already cooling.

"Got nailed for TAD yesterday. It was the same old, same old. Pack your shit, head for the plane, report for duty, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars."

"Damn it, Mike." Michael could feel the hurt in Gabe's voice. "I thought we had two weeks. Now how much do we have? One?"

"Probably none. This one's big, Gabe. You know the rule; can't tell you about it. But it's big."

Michael heard a sigh. "How many times has this happened? How many times have you've gotten orders like this? I couldn't tell you because I've lost count."

I've lost count, too. Too many. Far too many.

"I'm sorry, Gabe. I really am. It's the job. I'm not a supermarket clerk who can pitch a fit when he gets called in--"

"Yeah, I know: 'The world doesn't revolve around my schedule, hoss, my schedule revolves around the world.' " Gabe's impression of Michael's voice was cruel, but uncanny. "I've lost count of how many times I've heard that, too. You know, Michael, someday you're going to come home from one of your little adventures, and I'm not going to be here."

"I said I was sorry." Gabe was right. They knew this conversation by rote. "I don't know what else to say."

"Say you'll come home today. I'm tired of living on the back burner, Michael. I'm tired of feeling like we're dancing on thin ice. No. I know exactly what you should say. Say you and me can live like normal people, and not like fair-weather lovers who hook up whenever it's convenient."

"You know that's not how I feel."

Gabe, bitterly: "Then prove it."

Michael paused, searching for the words. "I'll prove it when I come home. It'll be soon, I hope. It's just this thing I'm doing right now, it's more important than I can ever say. Think big picture, Gabriel. Think as big as it gets. My country needs me for something that's as big as it gets. I can't say no. And even if could"--Michael's mind flashed to the rest of the clones, who'd been brought here at gunpoint--"I don't think it would matter. I'm locked in, Gabe. I'm sorry, but I can't say anything else about it. And I'm sorry I can't be there with you."

He heard Gabriel sigh. "I'm tired of losing count, Mike."

"You don't understand, Gabe."

"I'll never understand."

"I love you."

Another sigh. "I love you, too," Gabe said. "So when, then?"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you. It might not happen. Like I said, this is as big as it gets."

Silence. Then: "Don't you bullshit me."

Michael shook his head. "I never bullshit, Gabe. You know that."

Another silence. Finally: "It doesn't seem real."

Michael lowered his eyes to the floor. He envisioned the rooms more than quarter mile down, the rooms with the metal beasts that had birthed him. The scientists here had made the unreal real.

"Tell me about it," Michael said. "But it's as real as it gets."

"So what do we do?"

Michael shrugged. "We say we love each other more than the world. We say it like it's the last time we'll say it. We pray that we'll say it again, next time face-to-face."

"Amen to that."

"And a fuckin' A to boot."

Somehow, that cracked them up. Their laughter took the edge off, and Michael was grateful for it.

"My boyfriend, the poet," Gabriel said.

"My boyfriend, the critic."

They smiled together in silence.

"I have to go," Michael said. "So give me a message, Gabriel."

"Go cast the dragon into the abyss like you always do. And be sure to find your way home."

They laughed again and said they loved each other more than the world.

Which, of course, they did.

* * *

Father Thomas didn't know what he'd say when the people on the other end picked up.

This particular fact didn't seem to surprise him; Father Thomas had been, for the most part, at an utter loss for words since yesterday. The rules had changed. Heck, the rules had been tossed into the Cuisinart and frappéed. Hit escape velocity hours ago. Ground control to Major Tom and all that other happy horseshit.

Father Thomas whispered a prayer of forgiveness (he rarely swore, even to himself) . . . then clenched his teeth. Prayers were moot now, weren't they? A praying clone. Wasn't that like dialing 911 on a broken telephone?

Father Thomas chuckled grimly and jabbed the buttons.

Want to talk about the mystery of faith? Talk to a priest. About the existence of God? Ditto. That's what we're there for. Arbiters of dogma, Catechism, and goodwill. Your priest's the shepherd. The guru in a Roman collar. The man who's got a line to the Big Guy, Forever and Ever, Amen.

Adultery, addiction, cheating on your tax forms: now those are dilemmas, very human dilemmas, and there are moral and spiritual compasses for such matters. But to learn that you're a walking abomination . . . that you weren't born, but built . . . whom do you talk to about that?

Abomination. That's how Thomas had been seeing himself for the past day. No more human than the plastic he was now pressing. Manufactured. Spawn of cellular wizardry. A thing whose past was a mirage. A thing who, as the dream Christ had uttered last night, had no Providence. No soul.

It wasn't that Thomas had stopped believing in God. No. He had realized that God had stopped believing in him--and worse, had never believed in him. How could God believe in a thing He did not create? Thomas had not been conceived and born through holy Providence. Thomas had been spliced and grown in a bubble filled with growth accelerant. The life he lived afterward had been steered by liars.

Most damning: the life he remembered up to year fourteen was someone else's. Even his soul had been manufactured. How could a thing God did not create have a soul?

The phone on the other end began to ring. Thomas closed his eyes. He was no shepherd. He wasn't even a sheep. He was a breathing blasphemy, a bona fide nowhere man. A man with no soul doesn't go to heaven when he dies, but he doesn't go to hell, either. A man with no soul would not even be welcome in Limbo. No such place would accept a man who cannot fulfill the basic requirement for admission.

Such a man is . . . untethered, he thought.

The phone continued to ring. Thomas barely heard it.

An atheist's death, is that what awaits me? Where is the justice in that? I know who would have the answers. A priest.

Thomas chuckled again. He was losing his mind, probably.

The phone on the line rang again and again. Finally, a recording took the call. Thomas wasn't surprised by that, either.

"Hello. You've reached the home of Karl and Jaclyn Smith," the machine said. "We're not home right now, so leave a message and the time you called, and we'll get back with you as soon as we can. Thanks, and God bless."

That's rich.

Beeeeeep.

"It's me," he found himself saying. His hand slid across the table and grasped his rosary. These were his worry beads now. "I've come to back to my birthplace. I know everything. I know that the people who I remember calling mother and father are still alive. And I know that you two guided my life, under orders from this place. And only now do I suspect that I'm calling a special number, the exclusive 'Aunt and Uncle' line--a phone line created and answered only to maintain a ruse. You're probably already tucked away in a bunker, safe from the hell spawn this project created."

The tape rolled on, listening. Thomas held up the rosary and watched the crucifix sway back and forth in his hand.

"I don't know what's going to drive me mad first: the fact that I am what I am . . . or that my life had been all but plotted before I was even 'born.' Just how many of the decisions I've made over the years are mine? How many times did you slip a philosophy or religious book into my hands, to show your 'support' of the interest I had fleetingly taken? And was that interest sparked by my will or by yours? It was so long ago. Those things you don't really remember, do you? 'When you're too young to count, it's tough to keep score.' Isn't that what you once said, Karl? Huh. I wonder what your real name is."

Thomas let the rosary slip through his fingers. It bothered him to hold it. It bothered him to not hold it.

Through the window, Thomas spotted the marine, who was stepping into the Common Room from his quarters. His face was flushed; perhaps Michael had been crying.

"I'm staying here, you know," Thomas said into the phone. "I must. Must search for the truth, for understanding and answers--just as I always have. And maybe I can find something that'll bring some spiritual peace to these six, these brothers of mine. That's ironic and hypocritical, I know that. Don't you think I know that? But this is what I know, it's what I've lived. I can't let it go completely. Not yet."

No, not yet, he thought. There's plenty to look into. Why did they pull Dad out of the Ops room this morning? What was he saying? What are these people hiding from us? Where did they get the money for this place? And what about--

He picked up the rosary again.

"I don't know if you'll ever get this message. And I don't know if you'll ever see me again. But I wanted you to know that I forgive you, Jaclyn. I forgive you, Karl. And I wanted you to know that I'll pray that God has mercy on you. I don't know how much weight a soulless man's prayers have in the eyes of the Lord. Probably none. But I've been thinking about you two, and what role you've played in all this. I imagine you'll need all the forgiveness and prayers you can get.

"Besides," Father Thomas added, smiling bitterly, "I'm a priest. I'm doing what I was bred to do."

He placed the receiver back on the cradle and gazed at Christ's face glimmering from the rosary.

Isn't It Obvious, Fleshling? You Have No Soul.

It was cold in here. So cold.

* * *

One Day. One day is all it takes. One day to take a man's life and toss it upside down, back and forth, bash it against the rocks like a suitcase in those Samsonite commercials. Today was that One Day, John was the suitcase. General Hill, Dr. Kleinman, and their merry band of gun-toters and gene-splicers were the eight-hundred-pound gorillas.

John felt banged up and broken, both physically and mentally. He'd talked with the marine and Jack throughout last night and was suffering from a serious case of the nods because of it. There was good news, John supposed: yesterday's cuts and bruises on his hand and face were mending well, and the muscles in his left arm, which had been twisted with playground-bully perfection by one of the government spooks, only throbbed from far away. The body was putting itself back together.

But the mind. Ah. That was a different matter altogether.

Suddenly a record deal and tour seem like lame-ass life goals, John thought. Now it's piecing together a puzzle that was my mystery life . . . and finding Mom again, if she's still alive. God, could she still be alive?

John shook his head. Enough. He pulled the rubber band from his ponytail and let the hair hang down over his shoulders and face. He rubbed his temples and scratched his fingernails through his hair, feeling its weight between his fingers.

Keep the questions at bay, bub. File them away for later, for when you get there. Focus on the call to Sarah. Sarah of the amazing Saturday sex. Sarah, fair woman whom I left waiting for menthol cigarettes and staring down a grumpy, hungry cat. Lucy, I got some 'splaining to do.

John knew she wouldn't be at the gallery; last summer, Sarah had somehow finagled her way out of working Sundays. She wouldn't be at his place--at least, John didn't think she would. The only creature who could take full-time living in that grimy breadbox was Cat . . . and he was one surly fucker. Ring her cell phone. And remember that someone else is listening to your conversation.

He dialed. Sarah picked up on the third ring.

"Don't be mad."

"Holy shit," Sarah said. "Where in the hell did you go yesterday? And you'd better not go all 'I needed a walkabout' on me, or I'm hanging up right now."

John laughed. He couldn't help it. Sarah, God bless you. I think I'm in love with you, girl. Not that I can tell you that just yet.

"Nothing like that," he replied. "I promise."

"Do you know how many people I've called, John? Do you know how many of our friends have been looking for you?"

My, my. She rounded up a posse. You might be in love with me, too. And you're probably just as scared to say it as I am.

"Call off the search, darlin'. I'm okay. I'm rattled, but okay. It's been an interesting day and a half."

"People don't just vanish."

John's eyes flitted as he searched for the right words--and through his room's window, he spotted Father Thomas slipping out of his quarters and into the Common Room. Most of the others were out there now.

"I ran into some old friends." He noticed Jack and then Dr. Mike, standing on opposite sides of the circular room. They weren't aware of it, but both were scratching their heads with the same hand (the right) on the same place ( just above the right ear). Mimes have nothing on these guys. "We go way back, me and these dudes," John said, staring. "These are serious Old Guard folk. From before the fall of the Berlin Wall and all that."

"Very funny," Sarah snapped--which snapped John out of his stare. "So you're on your way to get cat food, you bump into old buddies on the way, and you don't even call to say 'Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out' much less 'Buy your own goddamn cigarettes'? And what's this old-buddy business? You didn't grow up in Miami. You're from Indiana."

Crap. You never were a good liar, Johnny-boy.

He hesitated.

Go on. Dig that hole a little deeper.

"Well, that's the part that'll blow your mind."

"I'll bet. Save it. I thought we had something really good going on here, John. Open and communicative, if you get my hint. So, you want to tell me what's really happening? You know, you're lucky I picked up in the first place. The caller ID on my phone's displaying some funky number."

They're scrambling the line, probably. Making it untraceable.

"What's really happening," John said, mystified. "I'm not in town, Sarah. Nowhere close. And I don't know when I'll be back."

"Jesus Christ."

"This has nothing to do with you, with us. We're good, Sarah. We're better than good--or at least we were. It's just that something from my past kind of popped out of nowhere yesterday, and I've been playing catch-up ever since. This is the first chance I've had to call you, swear to God."

"Right. So this is when you tell me you're married."

"God, no!"

"You're wanted."

"I don't think so."

"You're two-timing me."

"Sarah! No, no. It's nothing like that! It's something, uh"--Someone's listening in, Johnny-boy. Remember that--"something I never knew about my past made itself, ah, manifest. No one could've seen this coming, least of all me."

"Fuck me running. You're gay."

"Sarah, enough!" John cried. "It has something to do with my parents, okay? Something important."

There was a click on the line. Then silence.

She's hung up on me.

But she hadn't. She'd just been taken aback, apparently. "Your parents? But they're dead."

"Right."

Another click. That's not her phone. That's something else.

"What's going on, John?"

"I can't tell you right now," he said hastily. "In fact, I think I should get off the phone."

"But why? Why?"

"I can't tell you why. And I can't tell you when I can call you again. But I'm all right, Sarah. I just got to do this thing and then I'll come home with a whole goddamn carton of Newports, I promise."

"I'm scared, John. Why can't you tell me what's going on?"

"It's the rules," he replied simply. "I've got it bad for you, Sarah. I don't want this to hurt us any more than it has. I'm yours, Sarah. Remember that. I'm yours . . . and I'll be yours when I come home, if you'll have me."

She was silent for a moment, then said, "I'll keep you for now. But don't be too long."

"Thank you."

John closed his eyes. There wasn't anything else to say--and there was a whole new world's worth to say. Sometimes One Day does that to people.

"Just one more thing," John said.

"Anything."

"Could you, ah, adopt Cat for the time being? You know, feed him, pet him, and call him George? Just for a little while."

Sarah laughed. "You've become quite the high-maintenance beau in the past twenty-four hours. It doesn't become you."

"Sorry. I just don't want the critter going hungry."

"You'll be back to take him?"

"I promise."

"Then it's a deal."

John smiled. He loved her. He sure did.

"You take care," he said.

"Take some of that advice yourself."

John thought of the group that was coming together outside in the Common Room. Things were going to get a lot more complicated in a few hours. People were going to get hurt. He could feel it.

"I will," he said, and hung up.

"I will."

Nineteen

The Bucky Lastard shuddered as it tore through sky and cloud, lurching in the turbulence, jostling and unnerving the fifteen inhabitants of its steel belly. The V-22-X Osprey pilot was under orders to redline it the whole trip from Virginia to California, and to forget the flight--and its passengers--as soon as it was completed.

Pilot Les Orchard had voiced no objections when he'd received this proclamation an hour ago, standing before Brigadier General Orlando Hill on the off-the-map airstrip twelve miles west of the 7th Son complex. On the tarmac, Hill had invoked Code Phantom secrecy, and the pilot had flown enough off-the-books flights to know the rules. Ask no questions, and fly hard.

The men inside the highly modified V-22-X's passenger/cargo bay did not know Les Orchard, but they knew he was redlining it. The aircraft--equipped with experimental VTOL jet engines--heaved and trembled under these conditions, rattling unsecured equipment crates off their pallets and across the payload floor. The men would get up, stagger and sway their way to the boxes to secure them. They gripped the walls as they scrambled back to their seats.

Few of them spoke; it was difficult to hear over the roar of the Bucky Lastard's triple-timing-it engines. There wasn't much to say, actually. Before they'd left an hour ago, Michael had briefed the eleven 7th Son guards recruited for the mission--more than half of the facility's security staff. They appeared to be competent men, trustworthy. Word of this little soirée could never leave the fold. The men understood that. The men also understood quadruple combat pay, which General Hill had promised them.

The mission was dangerous, more cavalier than any official mission would be, and bordered on suicide. Armed with only scraps of information about the building--and absolutely no recon data or human intelligence--they were to invade Folie á Deux after nightfall. The recruits had asked questions, of course. Was the target inside the building? Michael told them that they didn't know. What resistance could they expect inside? They didn't know. The unanswered (and unasked) questions hung in the air during that briefing. Why were they conducting the mission at all, considering the catalog of risks?

Because this target must be eliminated, Hill had told them. He's rabid. Lost his mind. Has access to technology that'll tear this planet apart, if people find out about it. You're going to make sure they don't.

But you don't go into the doghouse when the dog's got rabies, one of the soldiers had said.

Tonight you do, Hill had replied. That comment had frightened them the most.

So, other than the roar of the V-22-X's engines and the constant unnerving rattle of metal on metal, the personnel bay of the Bucky Lastard was quiet. Michael, John, Dr. Mike, and Robert Durbin sat among the 7th Son soldiers, strapped into their stiff-backed seats.

John, who'd never enjoyed flying, clutched his knees. Dr. Mike clenched his eyes shut. Only Durbin and Michael seemed unaffected by the conditions. John had glanced at the marine's face during the worst of the turbulence and saw that Michael's chiseled jaw never moved, the expression in his eyes never wavered. The man was a silent storm of focus and discipline.

The soldier sitting across from John screamed a "Hey!" John barely heard it over the rattling metal around him. He looked up and saw one of the men who'd thrown him into that that grinning white cargo van yesterday morning. John wanted to ignore the man . . . then he remembered what Hill had said in the Ops room: Don't hold a grudge.

"Yeah?" John cried over the din.

"You're the one from Miami, aren't you?" the soldier hollered. The tag on his BDUs read jelen.

A few of the other soldiers looked over in interest.

"That's right."

"You really drop out of college to become a musician?" Jelen asked. Above the din, the kid's voice was high and loud, a squeaky door hinge. "We read your file before we picked you up. Said you were a dropout."

"You didn't 'pick me up,' " John yelled back. "You kidnapped me."

"So are you that guy or not?"

Now Dr. Mike and Michael were looking at John. The plane cleaved its way through another cloud, heaving them in their seats. John wanted to puke.

"I am," he said finally.

"Kind of a waste if you ask me," the soldier said. "You got a big thing like 7th Son under your skin, and you spend your time with, what, open-mic nights? I bet you even got a demo tape."

A few of the soldiers whooped. John wasn't sure why. Jelen seemed proud to have brought up the subject.

"This may not make sense to you," John said, "but I didn't want to take orders for the rest of my life. Didn't want to salute to anyone, didn't want to work in a cube farm, or whatever. I just wanted to be, well, me. I hit the road, didn't look back."

"Makes sense to me," Michael the marine said. A few of the soldiers sitting near him glanced over. "Gotta find yourself if you want to fight the good fight."

"Oh, honestly," Dr. Mike piped up. "Dollars to doughnuts, you're living paycheck to paycheck, John. Probably not even. What's marching to the beat of your own drum got you, other than calluses?"

John looked up from the floor into Dr. Mike's smiling eyes. "I'd rather drink my crappy light beer and strum my chords and live my very 'live and let live' life than be a cynical cocksucker like you. My checks might bounce, but at least I can sleep at night."

Even more of the men "hoo-ahhed" at that.

"Touché," Dr. Mike said, and saluted.

The Bucky Lastard flew westward, ever onward.

* * *

Dr. Mike, Michael, and John had left the 7th Son compound an hour ago, and despite having known them for just over a day, Father Thomas missed them. Their absence ate at his mind, as did the silence they had left behind.

Not until they were gone did Thomas realize just what a guiding force Michael and Dr. Mike had been, here in their little clique. Michael drew plans, cut through the group's stammering confusion, and pushed people from being talkers to doers. Dr. Mike was selfish and standoffish, but blessed with an ability to glean meaning from the puzzle John Alpha had created. Those two were the closest thing to leaders this motley crew had. And now they were heading off into the literal sunset to be the cavalry.

And John? Honestly, Thomas didn't know what to make of him. A sliver of the priest was suspicious of the ponytailed musician. John was charismatic in an unapologetically unpolished way; Thomas's parish at St. Barnabas back in Stanton had more than its share of such folk. The man was sincere enough. But heading to West Hollywood like some righteous knight . . .

No, that wasn't it. Like a rogue.

If there were rules in this world--and despite Father Thomas's personal crisis, he still believed that--John didn't seem to be the kind of man who liked following them. There were leaders of others, such as Thomas. There were followers. Then there were the few who led themselves, others (and followers) be damned. Masterless, that was John.

Thomas smirked. It wasn't suspicion he was feeling. It was envy. Here Thomas was, in his room, hungry to hide from the past twenty-four hours. There John was, soaring off to his destiny.

And this was the closest thing Thomas could get to hiding, lying here on the bed of his living quarters. The remaining four clones--Jay, Jack, Kilroy2.0, and himself--had agreed to rest before embarking on their own little adventure: trying to piece together what conspiracy, if any, John Alpha was concocting. If the L.A. shebang ended with the rescue of Dania Sheridan and the capture (or death) of John Alpha, so be it. But Thomas didn't think it would be that easy. Spills rarely clean up quickly in real life. You always need more paper towels than they use in the commercial.

He stared up at the ceiling, then at the red LED numbers on the clock. Five o'clock. He was exhausted, but he couldn't sleep. Yes, the absence of--what would you call them? Friends? Newfound family?--was to blame. But only partly. Thomas's stomach churned. He wanted to pray, relentlessly so. His soul wanted to process the past day's events. His mind craved being out there, in the Common Room, watching Kilroy2.0 hunt-and-peck his way across those keyboards and into answers.

What do you want, John Alpha? Why are you doing what you're doing? I can understand why you escaped this place--to fake your death so the 7th Son surveillance squad would leave you in peace. But why this? Why kill the president? Why rape a child's mind to do it? And why kidnap Mom and then leave bread crumbs to find her? Just what are you up to?

Thomas shuddered. He didn't know. So far, none of them did. Dr. Mike had mentioned good old-fashioned revenge as motive, and Thomas could buy that. But revenge couldn't possibly be the only thing at work here. From what Thomas understood, Alpha was smarter than that.

Thomas rolled his body so he couldn't see the clock. He closed his eyes. He tried to shut out the questions. He wanted to sleep. Just a few minutes of sleep. Just a few minutes from all this. Rock of ages, cleft for me. Let me hide myself in thee.

He was actually grateful when the knock came. Jack was waiting for him at the door. He looked the way Thomas felt.

"Couldn't sleep, either?" Thomas asked.

"Riiiight," Jack said, skeptically peering over his spectacles. "Kilroy's got his computers fired up. Looks like the freakin' Batcave out here."

Thomas took a deep breath. "Let's get to it, then."

* * *

The four clones sat on the circular couch in the Common Room, waiting for someone to speak first. Kilroy2.0's eyes bounced from face to face, then to the notebook and pen lying on the round table before them. Jack sighed and leaned back against the cushions. Jay gazed up at the waning evening sunlight. His knee bounced up and down as if charged by an electric current.

It's still downright spooky to look at them, Thomas thought. My eyes, my ears, my nose, my hands. There are differences; enough to keep me (us?) from going crazy, I think.

It was true. Kilroy2.0 was bye-bye upstairs, slovenly, shaggy, and obese. Jack's beard obfuscated his round cheeks; he sported a potbelly from too many dates with the Dolly Madison machine at the genetics lab; his hair was straight from the School of the Conservative Comb-Over. Jay was truly a dead ringer for Thomas (the same comb-over, the same receding hairline), but thinner and downright sickly in appearance--his face was thin, with cheekbones that looked as if they were about to pop through his skin. Thomas reckoned Jay was one of those folks who always looked as if they needed more sleep.

And what did they think of him?

Best not to go there; priests received enough uninformed, malign grief out there in the "real world" as it was. No sense in bringing that here. Thomas had enough to worry about.

"So how are we going to do this?" he asked.

Jack sat up, grunting. "That depends on what we want to accomplish. If we're trying to find what John Alpha's up to, we'll have to think like him. To do that, we're going to have to know where to look."

"I'm not sure we can do that," Jay chimed in, his face drawn down in concern. For once, I'd like him to smile, Thomas mused. And then, fleetingly: Do I look that dour when I'm worried?

"Think about it for a minute," Jay said. "You're John Alpha. You're the crown jewel in a top-secret experiment. You learn the ins and outs of the most remarkable technology on earth. You fake your death, brew up a scheme to kill the president--and it works. Then you kidnap your mother for kicks. Is it even possible to go there? To get inside that?"

Thomas tugged his rosary from his khaki slacks pocket, holding it for comfort. He shrugged.

Jay shook his head. "He's too smart."

"Maybe," Father Thomas said. "Maybe not. We did just fine with the Morse code. I'd say we knocked that out of the ballpark."

" 'L.A. Woman,' " Kilroy2.0 whispered, then giggled. "Anal mow."

"Thank you, Beavis," Jack said.

Jay rolled his eyes. "That was a game and you know it. Alpha left that clue for us. He knew Kleinman would bring us together to solve it. The Morse code, the music, the DSM diagnosis . . . he wanted us to solve it, Thomas. He served it on a silver platter, and now the Mikes and John are on their way into the trap."

"So what's your point?"

"That Alpha probably will be very good at stringing us along when he wants to be seen," Jay replied. "But when a man like that doesn't want to be found, consider the tracks covered. As in by-an-avalanche covered."

Jay crossed his arms and leaned back into the couch, as if there were nothing else to say.

But Lord above, there was. "I validate that," Thomas said, nodding. "But there has to be something, right? A clue. A misstep. Something we can work with."

Jack spoke up. "Again, I say, we have to know where to look. But where? L.A. may be the answer."

"Which is a trap," Kilroy2.0 said.

"We don't know that, and we can't do anything about that," Thomas said. "Those three are doing their thing. Let's do ours. So come on, fellas, what do we know about John Alpha?"

"Two things," Jay said. "Jack--"

"--and shit," Jack said, scowling.

Kilroy2.0 was the first to say it: "Seventh grade. Sam Jeter told me that joke in seventh grade."

Father Thomas shivered. That's right. Sam Jeter. Sam Jeter knew two things: Jack and shit. And the weather was always colder than a witch's titty. What was the other thing he used to say? Right. It's either ass-whoopin's or lollipops . . .

". . . and I'm fresh out of lollipops," Jay muttered.

Thomas clamped a hand over his mouth to stifle a shriek. Kilroy2.0 saw this and began to titter. This is what it's like in his world. This. The voices in your head coming from someplace other than your head. The floor just fell out of my stomach. My skin's about to crawl right off the bones. This is no good. This is

"Too much," he heard Jack say. The color had drained from his face. "This is too damned much."

Thomas rubbed the gooseflesh on his arms. The rosary swung madly in his hand.

"Don't think about it," he said to Jack, to himself, to all of them. "Please, don't think about it. It's too soon."

"Wait." Jay picked up the pen and pad and jotted down a few words. "That is something we know about Alpha. We have his whole childhood at our disposal." To illustrate, he tapped the side of his head with the pen.

"Anyone here remember ever plotting to take over the world?" Jack asked.

They laughed, and like that, it had passed. Thank God.

"Good. What else do we know?" Thomas's voice was shaky, but he was eager to keep them moving away from the fear, and toward the truth--whatever it was. "His childhood is our childhood . . . and, as far as I can remember, it was on-the-surface normal as it gets. What about his time here at 7th Son? What did Hill say about that?"

"We know he's good with computers," Jack said. Kilroy2.0 harrumphed. "Like the man said, Alpha shut down the entire security system to go AWOL."

"And we know he had access to everything in this place," Jay said as he scribbled into the pad. "He learned all about the cloning chambers, the MemR/I hypercomputer array, the Memory Totality upload and download process--"

"Must have had access to archived files," Kilroy2.0 said. "Maybe not Code Phantom clearance, but something. Had to know about the first experiments."

Father Thomas stiffened in his seat. Wait a minute.

"NEPTH-charge," he whispered. "That's how he first learned about NEPTH-charge, maybe. From the archives. The Lock Box, I bet."

They looked at him expectantly. Jay nodded slowly. "And?"

"Kleinman told us that a person doesn't live long after the NEPTH-charge process. When you erase a brain and then dump a new, ah, soul in there, you've got three weeks to live, tops."

"Sure," Jack said. "He said it leaves some kind of special tissue damage on the brain. Something telltale, like a watermark. They found it in the Fowler kid's autopsy. So?"

Thomas was up on his feet now. "So if I'm John Alpha and I have a plot that's bigger than killing the president--which we're assuming--I'll probably use that technology. We know it's useful: have a killer's brain hijack a body to do the dirty work for you. One little kid isn't going to be enough for my dastardly plan, right?"

Kilroy2.0 clapped his hands and grinned. "Do not use after March fifteenth. Please keep your proof of purchase."

"Exactly!" Thomas cried, and gave the lunatic a high five.

"What are you two talking about?"

"I'm talking about expiration dates, Jay," Thomas said. "I'm talking about disposable toadies. And I'm talking about a way to see where John Alpha's been using them."

"The bodies," Jay said, nodding. "And the watermark."

"Give the man a cigar," Father Thomas said. "Maybe we can look for cases where people died of some unknown ailment--people who seemed perfectly healthy up until their deaths. It's the closest thing we have to a paper trail."

Jack gave a low whistle. "The clue we've been waiting for." He looked admiringly at Thomas. "What do you do for a living?"

"I'm a priest. You know that."

"You should've been a scientist."

Thomas smiled. "There was already one in the family." He turned to Kilroy. "Fire up the Batcave, Mad Hacker. We've got some serious research ahead of us."

* * *

The first four hours were a bust.

Kilroy2.0 hacked, slashed, and giggled his way through Lexis, Associated Press, and other media-archive Web sites, unleashing some kind of home-brewed "spider" program that swept through the sites, searching for relevant obituaries. Thomas was alarmed to see that far more people in America had died of brain aneurysms over the past six months than he would've expected. And old folks passing on from strokes, they had plenty.

That, Thomas could believe. He'd prayed with many a dying elderly parishioner.

But who--if any of them--was a suspect? Take Lucas Qualls, a forty-four-year-old schoolteacher who'd had a grand mal seizure in his San Diego classroom last month. He'd bitten off half his tongue before a roomful of dazed fourth-graders and was dead before his head split open on the floor. Was he an agent of John Alpha's? What about Kimberly Fortuner, senior VP of finance at Glickman-Beecham, maker of many a fine pharmacological pick-me-up? A blood vessel in her brain had burst during her commute home from Seattle; her Saab rushed over the interstate median into oncoming traffic, causing a seven-car pileup that took four lives and four hours to clear.

Was it Oscar Flores of Brendanville, Kansas? Nora Reed of Little Rock? Jered Reynolds, lifelong Memphis resident? The Reverend Terry Bruce of Baton Rouge? Manhattan socialite Susan Zekanis?

Who knew? Who in the hell knew?

The second hour was spent red-flagging the more suspicious deaths, then skulking through password-protected autopsy reports locked away on law enforcement intranets. At first, Thomas, Jack, and Jay had a compelling lead: the aforementioned Reverend Terry Bruce, leader of the Redemptive Fire from Heaven Pentecostal Church (membership: twenty-eight). Tip-offs were in the newspaper obit--his behavior had become erratic during the last two weeks of his life, he was keeping odd hours and "acting like a different person," the widow Bruce had said. A meek allusion was made to an unexpected death that was "neurologically related."

They had cross-referenced the death with the coroner's report stored on the East Baton Rouge Sheriff Department's intranet server. The reality was very different from the newspaper story: Bruce had died in a local no-tell motel of a cocaine overdose while giving a reach-around to his gay lover. Thomas scratched the preacher's name off the list.

Every few minutes, one of Kilroy2.0's computers would ping! a compatible search result from his spider program, and the clones would dutifully peruse the story, see if it was worth cross-referencing on the Five-O's Web networks. Most times it wasn't. When it was, they found the occasional subterranean and secret tale--one Chicagoan had accidentally killed himself by overdosing on heroin that he had injected into his tear duct--but mostly the deaths were quiet and seemingly painless affairs. Death often came to people in their homes, Thomas learned. This quiet door-to-door salesman had an offer you simply couldn't refuse.

The files from which Thomas and the rest learned these things were cold, unflinching, and sterile: toxicology and autopsy reports recorded by men and women trained to keep things terse. But after two hours of this, Thomas felt filthy. Despite his love for people-watching, this was one strain of voyeurism he would never, ever revisit. Peeking in a stranger's medicine cabinet during a cocktail party is one thing. Knowing what food was in his stomach when he croaked was something else.

Kilroy2.0's computer pinged! again, and Thomas looked up from the empty cup he'd been staring into. He was sitting to Kilroy2.0's left; Jay sat to Kilroy's right. The obituary on the screen was about a Wichita bank owner who had popped his cogs at a cocktail party. He was a good man to the day he died, sobbed his sister. I can't believe he's gone, blah-dee-blah, yackety-shmackety--surely I've never been this indifferent to the deaths of strangers?

"I hate to admit it, but this is going nowhere," Thomas said, a little disgusted with himself.

From behind him, Jack said, "I agree. Another coffee?"

"Yeah."

Jack plucked the empty cup from the table and shuffled to the coffeemaker near the doorway of the Common Room.

"It made sense in my head in the beginning," Thomas said, accepting the cup a moment later. "Compare obits with autopsies, find a pattern, we're done: Professor Plum in the Study with the revolver. But this"--he waved a hand at the whirring bank of computer towers--"isn't getting the results I expected. Maybe there's a paper trail, maybe not. But it's going to take us forever to find out." He sipped the coffee and shrugged.

Jay leaned back in his seat and looked over at Thomas. "Believe me, this is how you find patterns. Waiting, wading. Lots of analysis. When you're finally certain, then you act."

"Is this a lot like your role at the UN?" Thomas asked.

"In some ways. I work in the Human Rights division. My team tracks human rights violations, civil rights issues, that sort of thing. We basically hold leaders responsible for the inequity that always seems to be brewing beneath the surface in most countries. We try to intervene before the pot boils over. We meet, we go over data, we travel to the country, speak to the leaders and the locals. Sometimes the OHCHR agrees with our analysis and advises the General Assembly to intervene. Sometimes it doesn't."

"Sounds interesting," Jack said.

"It can be," Jay said. "I remember my first internship out of college--a nonprofit in California that gave legal aid to migrant workers. Citizenship, fair wages, workers' rights, helping them not get gouged by the local farmers and landlords. That sort of thing. At first, the job was all stars and moonbows because it was all about the cause, you know? Doing the right thing, beating down the Man, a serious 'César Chávez is God' kind of vibe."

Thomas and Jack smiled.

"Three weeks later, I'm finally learning where all the proverbial light switches are . . . and I'm beginning to overhear the gossip and office politics. It was bullshit, it always is. Every organization has this stuff: the power plays, the control freaks. But in the end, it was okay because it was all about the cause. Idealism at its finest.

"These days, despite all the good that we do--all the good I do--I can't help but think the UN's cause has been mixed up with the bullshit office politics. The UN should be nimble, should react quickly to crises. It usually isn't. The cause is lost in subcommittee. At least that's how it feels sometimes."

Kilroy2.0's computer pinged! again. The lunatic's fingers began dancing across the keyboards. None of the others looked at the screen.

"So the UN is obsolete?" Thomas asked.

"Not at all," Jay replied. "I think the UN is the only thing keeping this planet from becoming unglued in a serious way. The United Nations is about making the world a better place. It's about making countries responsible and accountable for their actions. It sounds pat, but I truly believe that. And when it works, it works. The problem isn't the charter. The problem is nearly two hundred countries pushing their own agendas in committee--or worse, being parrots for other countries' agendas. Cause versus committee. Ideology versus reality."

"You should attend a university regents' meeting sometime," Jack said. "Same shit, different setting. Pardon my French."

"Je ne prenderai pas vos mots tellement littéralement," Jay said, his accent smooth, the words easy.

"Keen," Thomas said, impressed. "How many languages can you speak?"

"Fluently? Including pig latin, nine."

"Cool," Thomas and Jack said simultaneously.

Jay grinned, then waved it off. "So anyway. Wading and waiting. That's what analysis it. Patience."

Kilroy2.0 grunted and turned his face from the glowing screens. "Foo. This isn't working. Conspiracies don't play in the sun. Spider's catching flies, but the data's no good."

Jack nodded and rubbed his beard. "That's what I was afraid of. I think we're looking for the right things. I just don't think we're looking in the right places."

"What do you mean?" Thomas asked.

"Kilroy2.0's right: conspiracies thrive under stones. The places we're looking--newspaper clippings, autopsy reports--they're too mainstream. I think Thomas's idea is sound; I just think we need to search in places a little less--"

"Pedestrian," Kilroy2.0 said.

"Exactly. Let me give you an example," Jack said. "My university calls the media when it's itching to boast about something--but only when it's ready to boast. There are many studies being conducted in my department, for instance, that we wouldn't dream of making public until we've completed the research and finalized the results. And only then if it's something significant that proves alumni dollars are being well spent."

"Talk about cause versus committee," Thomas said.

"It's a cruel world," Jack replied. "What I'm getting at is this: Perhaps there are reports of the phenomenon John's describing, but they're so significant--or insignificant--that there's no reason for the information to be released into the mainstream. Maybe there are people out there who are examining parts of Alpha's trail, but don't have the necessary backstory to understand its importance. Or maybe they do have the backstory, but don't want the information to get out."

Jay leaned forward and looked at the computer screens. "Universities, like yours?"

"Perhaps, but that wasn't what I was thinking," Jack said. "I was thinking more up your alley: government agencies. I'm thinking we should start with the Centers for Disease Control, see if they've found any NEPTH-charge victims." He turned to Kilroy2.0. "We need to go federal. Can you get us where we need to go?"

Kilroy2.0 grinned. "Let me call some friends," he said, already typing.

The windows filled with obits and autopsies vanished from the screens. With a few deft mouse-clicks, several smaller windows began to pop up. Thomas recognized a few of them from TV ads--three AOL chat windows flickered on-screen; MSN Messenger winked to life on another. The contact lists on each went on forever. There were also programs he didn't recognize: down_low, Cloaque, secURL. One, called BlackHat, had a grinning skull and crossbones icon in its upper left-hand corner. Still another was merely an empty window with a blinking cursor in its center. These were programs found off the beaten path. Decidedly un-Pedestrian.

Kilroy2.0 had been holding back the big guns.

This was another peek into his mind, Thomas realized, Kilroy's connection to the myriad con-spir-a-cies in which he undoubtedly believed. Funny. Conspiracy theories didn't seem so ludicrous anymore.

"You really know how to work these things, don't you?" Thomas said, clapping Kilroy2.0 on the shoulder.

Kilroy turned toward him and winked. "Kilroy2.0 is everywhere. Evverry-where."

Thomas shuddered. Kilroy2.0 chuckled, then turned back to the computer screen.

And they entered his world.

* * *

The three clones quickly saw that Kilroy2.0 had hacked the online chat programs, so they worked together. Whatever he typed in the simple, featureless window in the center of the monitor appeared on all the other chat screens. They watched the letters simultaneously appear one by one on the baker's dozen of active software windows. Thomas felt gooseflesh ripple across his arms. Big Brother isn't watching, he thought. He's broadcasting.

On the thirteen chat programs, this message appeared:

> Kilroy2.0 is here

And every window suddenly sprang to life; each computer monitor swarmed by an armada of pop-up message windows, each from a unique name on Kilroy2.0's buddy lists. MSN Messenger and AOL IM chimed repeatedly, like a doorbell gone mad. BlackHat's skull icon burped robotic laughter. The prophet had come to preach to the faithful. They were all online, all flooding Kilroy2.0 with questions and riddles and praise-be-unto-hims.

cthulhu_call: Speak to us, Messiah

silent(e): i n33d ur h3lp

it's_a_wonderful_lie: Where have you been

Special(k): Tell us

wicked_lil_critta: Tell us, please

codeshaman: Where did you go?

three-five-zero-zero: Please . . .

Kilroy2.0 leaned back in his seat, a sly grin of satisfaction emerging on his lips. The computers continued to chime, the messages overran the monitors. Why. How. Is the time nigh. I have questions. I have information. Tell us where you were. Speak to us. Speak to us. Please speak to us.

The windows kept on and on--dozens now. That slippery smile never left Kilroy2.0's face.

Thomas turned to Jack and Jay and whispered, "Go tell it on the mountain." Or under it. A whole world of them out there, just under the surface, talking their special talk. A point-and-clique.

"Fascinating," Jack said. "How many are out there, do you think? Dozens? Hundreds?"

"Does it matter?" Jay asked. His eyes were wide; the color had drained from his face.

No, not really, Thomas's mind answered. They're out there and they think he's some kind of cybermessiah. He preaches from nowhere--from evvrery-where--and they listen. Part priest, part prophet, part diety, all blasphemy . . .

Kilroy2.0 gazed up at the clones. He waved a hand toward the monitors, toward the maelstrom of pop-up windows.

"My flock," he purred.

"You've got quite a fan club, Kilroy," Thomas said.

"Oh, yes."

"Are they all hackers, like you?" Jay's voice trembled, betraying the cool expression he was trying to maintain.

"Most," Kilroy2.0 said, turning back to the screens. His voice sounded disinterested. You bore me, norm.

"They read your sermons, don't they?"

Kilroy2.0 nodded at Jack's question. "They read the things you never read. My homilies about the shadows, my speeches about the squirming earthworms in our government, the transmissions from beyond, the plagues unleashed by the Adversary, the dark matter--and what it really is . . ."

Thomas's eyes met Jack's. The look said everything that need not be said. Let him speak. Let's learn.

". . . the chemtrails in the sky, the low-frequency Kokomo and Taos 'hums' in our ground, the cameras on our street corners, the radiation in the groundwater, stolen supercomputers, the eyes everywhere, watching us, always watching us, always watching us." Kilroy2.0 licked his lips, nodding. "Always. Watching. Us."

The chimes were a roomful of grandfather clocks now. The windows piled over each other, cascading like rows of solitaire cards. Kilroy squinted at the monitors.

blackjack: Please speak to us

J3nnyB3ntoBox: Are you there?

anthropohedron: speak speak speak speak speak

Kilroy2.0 began to type again.

> It is a night of insurrection. In? SecURL. Out? Logoff.

Almost a third of the instant message windows immediately blinked off the screen.

Kilroy2.0 tittered knowingly. "Some of them are afraid of the call to arms," he said to no one. "Most of them are not. You see the loyalty? These ones will create the force we need for storming the data beaches. Right now, they're activating their trackscramblers. They're shifting their CPUs into secURL shells. They will be our stealth fighters."

"They can't be tracked. That's what you're telling us."

"Indeed, Jay."

"What about us?" Jack asked. "Can anyone trace our signal?"

Kilroy2.0 sighed and ran his fingers through his greasy hair. "Newbie," he said, exasperated. "That was the first thing I activated when I sat here at the workstation hours ago. Been stealing 7th Son bandwidth from the beginning. No one knows we're doing this. Not even 7th Son. The 7th Son computers monitoring us are convinced I'm still googling every newspaper obituary published in the past year. But I've been in the slipstream of the facility's subnetwork, mooching off its muy muy high-speed satellite uplink the whole time."

"What does that mean?" Thomas asked.

"It means Kilroy is transmitting to his flock from outer space," Jack said.

Kilroy2.0 nodded furiously. As he typed his next message, he whispered, "Just like God."

They watched Kilroy2.0's message rak-a-tak to life on the monitor.

>I am in the hands of the Adversary. I am well, but have no time for explanations. Need information located on the CDC intranet. Need your help to access it. Unleash your worms. Your swarmers. Your warez, hacks, kraks, all the so-called "malware" the Adversary despises. Post no graffiti, take no credit. Tonight you rise from the shadows for your prophet.

> One goal. Deluge the network. Pummel the CDC servers. Let the lawkeepers gaze at your distraction. Let them wring their hands. Let them squirm. Let them talk. Let them scheme. Be the diversion I need.

> You are many, but act as one. For two hours, the Network will be yours. Be the ghosts in their machines. Be the poltergeists in their attics, the chaos they fear above all. And then disappear. I will do the rest.

> This, I ask of you. Comply?

Kilroy2.0 executed a key combination on his keyboard, and the message was zipped to the chat programs. A second passed.

Jay gasped. At least seventy new message windows flashed on the screen at the same time. The chimes and BlackHat's skull laughter sang through the computers' speakers.

"Is this really happening?" Thomas whispered.

Jack nodded at the screens. "There's your answer."

Oh, yes. Message received. Replies posted.

They all said the same thing:

I comply

I comply

I comply