Sixty

 

Mayor Dominic Hanrahan stood in the center of his office, his hands clenched into fists. He could barely breathe. That bitch DeRicci had been right. The news was paralyzing, and he had to take action.

For himself and for his city.

And because one of the last things DeRicci had said to him when she had visited here yesterday haunted him: If you don’t want to make the hard decisions for your city, we’ll find someone who can. And we’ll instate him as mayor of this city. I’m sure everyone in Tycho Crater will be relieved.

Right now, he wanted someone else to be mayor. He needed someone else to be mayor. He didn’t want this responsibility.

But he had gotten in trouble for freezing when the Top of the Dome collapsed six months ago. He couldn’t freeze now.

He had to take action.

Even though all he could think about was his favorite lawyer, who happened to be Peyti, who for some reason hadn’t come into work today. Or that Peyti lawyer who’d sat in this very room yesterday, talking about lawsuits against Tycho Crater for all the deaths that happened on Anniversary Day.

Lawsuits. Deaths. And he had only his memory of those lawyers to check against the database. At least for the moment, at least until DeRicci’s people sent him the information about where Peyti lawyers would be.

He wished he could call in his assistants, but he couldn’t. He needed to talk directly to law enforcement here and he had to set it up. Fortunately, at least three of them had been involved in that conference call. If he were acting on his own, he would wait for them to contact him.

But he didn’t have time to wait.

If he waited, Tycho Crater could be obliterated.

The information packet that DeRicci had promised hit his links accompanied by actual alarm bells. Like he needed alarm bells. Like he wasn’t alarmed enough already.

He combed through the information, found five of the clones here in Tycho Crater, all of them with their locations known. As he examined them, his emergency links opened.

Law enforcement contacting him. Of course. They had only a few minutes to coordinate everything, too.

Five. Known. None of them his lawyer.

He hoped to hell DeRicci’s people were good. He would tell his own officials to make sure they didn’t find more clones on their own security feeds. He had no idea if they would.

But he didn’t want to fail at this. If someone was going to fail, it couldn’t be him.

He couldn’t lose Tycho Crater—again.