“No,” said Lyle. “What are … who are you? And Cynthia, why are you dressed like a burglar?”
“Because he is a burglar,” said another woman. Susan stepped into the doorway with a wry smile. “This is Tony Hicks, he was in our product test. Sorry about the break-in, we didn’t know if you were awake. Or alive.”
“I…,” Lyle stammered. “What?”
Susan came in, patted him on the shoulder with a smile, and pushed past him. Cynthia—or Tony, thought Lyle—came in behind her, glancing back outside suspiciously before closing the door.
“Doesn’t look like anyone followed us,” he/she said, then turned to Lyle. “You got anything to eat?”
“We’re good,” said the large man, returning from the front room and sliding his pistol back into a holster on his belt. “Nobody else in the house, but a hundred-year-old lady, and she’s not waking up anytime soon. It’s possible they’ve got him bugged more subtly, but I doubt it—if they’d heard us come in, they’d have done something by now.”
“All right, stop,” said Lyle, “everybody stop right now and tell me exactly what’s going on. Susan I know, and if that’s actually Tony, then I … still don’t have any idea what’s going on.” He looked at the large man. “Who are you? And then who are you really?”
“His name is Larry,” said Susan, pulling out one of the kitchen chairs and sitting down. Tony/Cynthia was still rooting through the fridge, one hand keeping the light switch off and the other holding a small flashlight. “Larry was one of our guards at the NewYew prison estate in the Hamptons. Well, I suppose technically he was most of our guards, but this one is the original.”
Larry tipped an imaginary hat. “Nice to meet you.”
“You’re talking about the house from your thing on the news?” Lyle asked. “The police checked that out—there was nothing there.”
“We scattered right after Susan escaped,” said Larry, leaning against the wall.
Lyle’s eyes went wide. “So that was real? I knew NewYew had probably done something to you, but I thought you were in São Tomé with the others—”
“No one was in São Tomé,” said Tony/Cynthia, giving up on the fridge and starting in on the cupboards. “Except maybe Carl; we never saw him with us. They took everyone who’d been compromised by the lotion—all the test subjects, all the factory workers, everyone—and kept us in Cynthia Mummer’s house in the Hamptons. Or my house, I guess, technically, if I wanted to share it with six other Cynthias. Don’t you have any food?”
“There’s probably some cans of something in the side pantry,” said Lyle, pointing at a tall cupboard in the corner, “but … how are you Cynthia? It doesn’t make any sense—you should be me.”
Tony/Cynthia turned on him suddenly, blinding him with the penlight. “What do you mean ‘should be’? You made me into you on purpose?”
“No!” said Lyle, squeezing his eyes shut and holding up his hands defensively. “No, of course it wasn’t on purpose—we didn’t even know what the lotion did until it did it to you. But everything we’ve learned about it since says you should have turned into me, not Cynthia.”
“Back off, Tony,” said Susan, then turned to Lyle. “It did turn him into you, but when NewYew caught up with him they turned him into Cynthia, and they turned some of the others into Jeffrey Montgomery and … the Asian guy, the lawyer.”
“Sunny?”
“Yeah. They had about four or five of each, plus me, and they offered us a million dollars each to help keep them out of jail.”
“How?”
Susan shrugged. “We still don’t know, but that car bomb was probably part of it. Whatever it is, it’s probably still happening—I think Tony here’s the only other one who ran.”
Lyle looked at the woman prowling restlessly through his kitchen, holding a can of SpaghettiOs and slamming drawer after drawer.
“Where’s your damn can opener?”
“Why’d you leave?” asked Lyle.
Tony/Cynthia frowned. “What do you mean?”
“She offered you a million dollars; anyone would have taken that. Why’d you leave?”
“I was going to take it,” he/she said, “but then I went into menopause.” He opened another drawer and peered in. “I figured that hag deserves whatever I can do to her.”
Susan nodded, all business. “When the house evacuated, Larry and Tony ended up in a car together, driving to the new safe house, and started talking.”
“Turned out neither of us was real happy with NewYew,” said Larry, “so we took a wrong turn and disappeared. We did a few drive-bys of the corporate office, kind of staking the place out, making some plans, and we ran into Susan doing the same thing. We started talking, and she insisted that you were the key to bringing them down.”
“We’ve tried every address where I thought you might be hiding,” said Susan. “I’m glad we found you.”
Lyle was still staring at Larry. “So you worked for them?”
“I was part of what we’ll call a ‘private security company,’” said Larry. “We did odd jobs for Cynthia Mummer all the time—anything she couldn’t do above the table. They cloned me because, well, look at me.” He spread his arms and stood up straight; he was well over six feet tall and built like a bear. “I was always the guy nobody wanted to mess with; now nobody wants to mess with any of them.”
Lyle nodded, admitting the point, then waved toward the counter. “Can opener’s in the drawer under the microwave.”
Tony/Cynthia wiggled the can and smiled. “Thanks, man.”
Susan leaned forward. “Larry’s been invaluable, and Tony’s got a pretty wide range of skills. I didn’t think anyone could find a way through the web of security out there, but he’s got chops.”
“So they’re really watching me?” asked Lyle. “I wasn’t sure.”
“They’re everywhere,” said Larry.
“Your block’s got an old irrigation canal running between the backyards,” said Tony, demonstrating the narrow width with his hands. “It’s a foot and a half, maybe two feet wide, full of weeds and junk. A lot of these old neighborhoods have them, from like a hundred years ago, but those geniuses staking out the house didn’t seem to have any idea.”
Susan put her hand on the table, pulling Lyle’s attention back to herself. “We make a good team,” she said, “but you, Lyle; you’re the key. You’ve got to help us bring them down.”
“Bring NewYew down?” asked Lyle. “Like, the whole company?”
“The executives are already in hiding,” said Susan. “But the company, and ReBirth itself, is still active. Everyone else in that car was a duplicate, but they never made a duplicate of you. They thought they were killing the real Lyle, because they know that you’re the only one who can bring them down. You have all the knowledge, all the personal testimony, all the keys to the closets full of skeletons. You can destroy NewYew, you can destroy ReBirth, you can—”
“No,” said Lyle, “I don’t want to destroy ReBirth.”
“What?” asked Susan. Her mouth hung open in disbelief. “Are you serious? After everything they’ve done to us? To you?”
“The company, sure,” said Lyle, “the company’s evil incarnate, but the lotion itself is good. I mean, in theory. It can be used for good things.”
“I’m a woman,” said Tony/Cynthia. “I don’t even know how to wipe myself when I pee. What the hell kind of ‘good’ are you talking about?”
“Not you, obviously,” said Lyle, “but other people—the twin girls, or the cancer patient, or that boy in Hoboken with cystic fibrosis—we made him a twin of his brother. Three more weeks and his body will be totally healthy.”
“That was Guru Kuvam’s project,” said Susan, frowning. “Were you mixed up with him?”
“I’m the one who gave him the lotion.”
Susan threw up her hands. “Come on, Lyle, how many different ways are you trying to end the world, here? Have you done anything worthwhile at any step of th
is process?”
“We’re giving people life, Susan, we can’t just stop.”
“We can,” said Susan firmly. “This stuff is evil—you don’t know what’s it like to have it used on you.”
“Yes I do,” said Lyle. “Didn’t you know? It’s gotten me, too.”
Susan narrowed her eyes. “You?”
“I’m a clone of myself.” He stared at her a moment, then stood up suddenly and pulled up his T-shirt. “See my stomach? I had my appendix and gallbladder removed a few years ago—I had five little scars from the endoscopic surgery: here, here, here, here, and here. Do you see anything?”
“I see some belly button lint,” said Tony/Cynthia.
Susan scowled. “The scars are gone.” She looked Lyle hard in the eyes. “My elbow scar is gone, too, from when I had my tennis injury. What does it mean?”
“It means that ReBirth is rebuilding us,” said Lyle, “not just once but constantly. You’re probably thirsty all the time, right? And starving?”
Tony/Cynthia looked down at his can of pasta, and tucked it quietly behind him on the counter.
“Your body is being aggressively rewritten,” said Lyle, “over and over and over again, getting rid of everything that doesn’t match the template.”
“Is it supposed to do that?” asked Larry.
“It’s not supposed to do anything!” Lyle said. “It’s a moisturizer, for goodness sake, it’s a hand lotion. Nothing it does makes sense. Do you know why nobody’s knocked it off yet?”
“There’s a black market,” said Susan.
“That’s just somebody repackaging NewYew’s lotion,” said Lyle. “I’m talking about actual knockoffs, where someone else has found the formula or reverse-engineered it or whatever, and started making their own. That’s the first thing everyone does when any new product hits the market, but no has done it with ReBirth because it’s impossible: it won’t work when anyone else makes it. It doesn’t work for anyone but us.”
“This guy’s crazy,” said Tony/Cynthia softly.
“There hasn’t been time for knockoffs yet,” said Susan, staring angrily at Lyle. “It’s only been out a few days.”
“It was stolen months ago,” said Lyle. “Ibis even kidnapped me, and I spent weeks trying to do it, and I still couldn’t. I told them the same thing I’m telling you: it doesn’t follow any rules that make any kind of sense. And it’s far, far more aggressive than we thought.”
Susan stood, walking to the wall. “It doesn’t matter how it works—all we need to do is destroy it.”
“And what?” asked Lyle. “Destroy every bottle in existence? Kill everyone who’s already been infected?”
“We’re not going to kill anybody,” said Susan fiercely. “All you have to do is testify, bring down the company, and—”
“Now you’re the crazy one,” said Lyle. “You can never get rid of this. It’s out there, and it’s everywhere, and it will never go away.”
“So what do you want us to do? Hide in a hole and pretend it isn’t happening?”
Lyle gestured around at his darkened house. “Yeah, I think that’s pretty obviously exactly what I decided to do.”
Tony/Cynthia planted herself in front of him, hands on her hips, and shot Lyle a look that was almost, but not quite, the same fearsome look Cynthia made when she was mad. “Listen, buddy. We came here because NewYew is doing something wrong, and we want to stop them. Your testimony can do that, and we’re not going to let you just sit here doing nothing.”
“You might be able to cut a deal,” said Larry. “Give them the other executives and you walk free.”
“The point is this,” said Susan. “Are you going to turn yourself in willingly, or are we doing it for you?”
Lyle narrowed his eyes, feeling suddenly cold. “What do you mean,” he asked, “‘willingly’?”
Larry’s bulk filled his left-side peripheral vision. “I think you know exactly what we mean.”
Lyle swallowed. “Fine. Let me get dressed, then.” Susan nodded, and Lyle padded down the hall to his room. Is this it? Turn myself in to the police or they’ll do it for me? I don’t want to go to jail—if I even end up in jail. ReBirth is too powerful, and the government’s just going to do the same thing Ibis did: put me in a room somewhere, and force me to make more. But who knows what they’ll use it for?
He turned on the shower, and looked through his grandpa’s old clothes. The only things he had to wear.
But.…
But Susan came to me. She had a problem, she needed help, and she came to me. Even though … He knew that there was no chance between them, there never had been, and yet … She came to me. And she had a very impersonal reason, but … Was she changing?
Did people ever really change?
Lyle looked out the back window, trying to see the little irrigation path Tony/Cynthia had mentioned. He’d never known it was back there, but now that he was looking for it there was an obvious space between his grandma’s fence and the neighbor’s. What else had he been looking at for years, and never really seen?
Jail, he thought. Federal custody. What good would it even do, striking back at NewYew now that ReBirth was already out? If the damage was already done, what good would it do to punish them, and who was he to do it?
He looked at the shower, listened to the water hiss down, a curtain of white noise drowning everything out. He couldn’t even hear the three intruders anymore, and for a moment he closed his eyes and imagined they were gone, and everyone was gone, and everything, and he was free. He didn’t have to turn himself in or go to jail or anything. He couldn’t hear a sound.
And they couldn’t hear him.
He looked at the shower again, then the window. What do I want? Not jail, and not to help the government make ReBirth for who knows what new power scheme. He knew what he didn’t want, but what did he want? He wanted to people to listen—to finally stop thinking about themselves and listen to him, to all the ways he knew ReBirth could be good and helpful. All the ways it could save the world. Maybe he’d get a chance to do that in prison, but he’d have better luck out here. Kuvam was dead—why couldn’t Lyle step up and start helping people in the same way Kuvam had?
Lyle made up his mind in a flash, and dressed quickly in his grandfather’s old clothes. He pulled on his grandpa’s shoes and eased the window open, jumping out and catching on the roses as he tumbled past them. He ran to the back fence, glancing back at the dark house, searching in the dark until he found the irrigation channel—a narrow, bricked ditch behind the bushes that hadn’t seen real irrigation water in years. He glanced again at the house, then pushed his way into the ditch and disappeared into the darkness.
34
Thursday, July 12
9:22 A.M.
Pressroom, the Capitol, Washington, D.C.
155 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
“Thank you for coming,” said the speaker. “I’m Senator Eric Moore, special liaison to the Department of Homeland Security. It is with a heavy heart that I approach you today with a very grave announcement. This is not something we do lightly, but under the circumstances we have no choice. Please allow me to set the stage with a couple of news stories.”
He opened a slim leather binder and began reading. “On Thursday, July eleventh, reformed rapist Clay Burgener returned home from work, reached for his doorknob, and found it smeared with something white and viscous. Forensic tests show that the substance was an imprinted sample of ReBirth hand lotion. One of Burgener’s victims was found by police just two blocks away, and confessed to planting the lotion in the hope that Burgener, transformed into an attractive woman, would be raped, as well, and thus experience the same hell he’d forced so many women to endure. The woman is awaiting trial; Burgener is under close hospital supervision, and has already shown signs of increased estrogen production.”
The crowd said nothing, tense and nervous. They’d heard this before—they were waiting for the announcement at the end. Moore
surveyed them carefully, then turned the page.
“On July seventh, at approximately eight thirty in the morning, Brian Yancy arrived at his high school in Casper, Wyoming, dressed in a black trench coat and heavily armed: not with guns, but with ReBirth. Over the course of the next half hour he sprayed and infected nearly thirty-seven students with lotion that had been imprinted with his own DNA. When police, wearing hazmat suits, finally subdued the teen, he told them he was sick of not fitting in at school, and wanted to let the rest of the students know what it was like to be him.”
The crowd sat in uncomfortable silence. Moore turned the page. “One more. That same night, late in the evening, the Codwell family of Bamberg, South Carolina, was attacked by men in traditional Ku Klux Klan attire; Tyler Codwell, his wife, Marylou, and their two children were all dragged out on the lawn, tied down with baling twine, and sprayed liberally with ReBirth. An anonymous letter to the local newspaper stated, and I quote, ‘God has given us the means to cleanse His earth.’ Similar incidents were recorded on July ninth and tenth throughout the country, targeting Mexicans, Arabs, and in one case, whites.”
Moore closed the binder, stared at it a moment, then looked up. “ReBirth was introduced with a lofty potential, but day by day, story by story, the dregs of our society are proving its true use. As of this morning, the FDA has reclassified ReBirth from an herbal lotion to a biological weapon.” A buzz of urgent whispers rose up from the crowd, and Moore raised his voice. “Effective immediately, anyone possessing or using ReBirth, in any capacity, will be considered a terrorist and a threat to national security. All stock owned by stores or suppliers will be confiscated; all manufacturing facilities will be shut down and their assets held indefinitely. The originators of the product, the cosmetic company NewYew, will be closed down immediately, its remaining executives arrested, and its records seized for federal trial. The U.S. government will not see its citizens sprayed, tortured, and remade by this or any other harmful biological agent. That is all.”
The pressroom exploded in noise, journalists leaping to their feet, hands raised, shouting for attention. Moore held up his hand for silence, but a man in the back stepped into the aisle.