FIFTY-SIX

 

 

KEPTRA RODE WITH the would-be assassin in the ambulance. She wasn’t going to let him out of her sight. The medical personnel had already searched him for more weapons—particularly the small kind, the kind he had planned to use to murder the mayor.

They had found that weapon and one other thing that might be something and it might not. But they were cautious. They took all of his clothing, then swabbed him down before putting him in the ambulance. They also checked all his body cavities, and they ran a scanner over him to see if he had swallowed bomb-making components.

The only thing they didn’t do—they couldn’t do, really—was see if he had ingested a fast-acting virus or if he had put some kind of compound on his skin, something that would interact with standard medical procedures.

Keptra wore a medical protection suit the ambulance attendees gave her. It felt bulky and awkward. She told them she didn’t need it—she had already been close to him—but they insisted.

They were right.

The ambulance was boxy, roomier than she expected. It had flown to the Top of the Dome along with two others, preparing for casualties from the hostage situation.

She hadn’t realized there were ambulances this size, the kind that could take half a dozen injured—and tend to them all—to the nearest hospital. The would-be assassin looked small in his bolted-down bed in the center of the ambulance.

The attendants had all focused on him, stabilizing his neck, splinting his broken arm, and immobilizing his shattered leg. He had a head injury, although they weren’t certain how bad it was, and they had stopped the internal bleeding temporarily.

He would live, just like anyone else who dove out of a window in the Top of the Dome. He would live, but he would remember the pain.

The ambulance was returning to the hospital without its lights or sirens per her instructions. None of his injuries were life-threatening, so haste wasn’t an issue. And she didn’t want anyone to know he was alive.

Some of that was so that the hospital could work on him without problems from angry citizens. But part of it was so that his accomplices—if he had any—would think he was dead.

Keptra had made certain that she spoke to the press first; she told them that he had dived out of the restaurant at the Top of the Dome, and from the looks of him—she wasn’t willing to touch him (that part was true)—it looked like he hadn’t survived.

Only a few members of her team knew he had survived, and she had forbidden the ambulance attendants to talk to anyone outside of the hospital. They were usually good about that; the hospital could get sued for revealing a patient’s condition. She watched them mentally file this into that same category of information.

But while they had cooperated on not releasing information, they weren’t cooperating on one thing: She wanted them to wake this bastard up. She needed to talk to him before he got to the hospital and got threaded into the procedural maze.

The attendants claimed they didn’t have the authority to wake him, so she made them contact someone in authority. She needed to talk to him, and she needed to talk to him now.

She was half tempted to wake the bastard herself. She was sitting on a bench near his bed, and she wanted nothing more than to slam her fist onto the visible bruising on his splinted arm.

She wondered what they could do to her for hitting him like that. Particularly since she wasn’t strapped into her seat as the law required for anyone in a flying vehicle. She could claim that she lost her balance and put her hand out to protect herself.

Of course, there were probably cameras everywhere that would contradict her story.

She sighed as one of the attendants came over with a small syringe.

“You got your wish,” he said. “Make it quick, though. They’re taking him into the medical team the moment he arrives.”

The attendant used his triple-gloved hands to swab an area on the bastard’s good arm, then injected him with whatever the hell that was.

The bastard groaned and opened his eyes. Keptra was startled by their beautiful shade of blue.

It took them a moment to focus, then they settled on her.

“Oh, God,” he said softly. He closed his eyes again, not in exhaustion, but in a realization that he hadn’t died.

“The people that you work for,” she said, guessing on the relationship, “don’t know that you failed. They think you’re dead. We can keep it that way, if you talk to us.”

He opened his eyes again, a frown creasing his forehead. “They know that I failed,” he said. “The mayor is still alive.”

“So far as I can tell, you’re not the only one who failed at that part of the mission. But you are the only one who survived your suicide attempt.” She almost added, which means that they will eventually kill you, then stopped herself. If he was willing to die for the cause, then he would welcome someone trying to kill him.

He was watching her, beads of sweat on his forehead. The attendant sat slightly to the back, monitoring the bastard’s vital signs.

“I don’t know what you thought you would gain from the suicide attempt, whether it was a reward in heaven or whether it was some gift to protect a living person you love. I can’t help you with your religious beliefs, but if what you receive is something tangible, a gift to the loved one or something, I can help with that. No one has to know you survived. Ever.”

“What would happen?” he asked. “Would I Disappear?”

Many Disappearance Services did not work with clones, claiming they weren’t human, and Disappearance Services only catered to humans.

“Yes,” she lied. She really didn’t care what happened to him after he talked.

He closed his eyes, but not before a tear formed in the corner of one and rolled down his cheek. It surprised her. She didn’t want to see any emotions from him. She wanted him to remain a bastard.

“I can help you,” she repeated.

He shook his head slightly, then opened his eyes. His lashes were wet.

“I don’t know anything,” he whispered, then glanced at the attendant.

“Give us some privacy,” Keptra said.

The attendant frowned. He clearly couldn’t leave the beds, but the ambulance was so big he moved far enough away that he wouldn’t be able to hear anything.

“All right,” Keptra said, leaning toward the bastard. “What do you know?”

He looked up at her. He was younger than she thought—in his early twenties, maybe even in his teens. “All I know are the rules.”

“What are they?” she asked.

He glanced to one side, as if he expected someone to hurt him if he spoke. Then he took a deep, shaky breath. “Find the facilitator. Get to your location. Do the job. Wait until help arrives. Send the message. Die. Do not die alone.”

She ran over those rules in her mind. He had tried to do everything except the last. He hadn’t had the strength to take out others while he committed suicide. Which meant that there was something in him, some spark, that didn’t completely believe in the job.

For all she knew, he had screwed up the assassination on purpose.

“Who follows these rules?” she asked, figuring she already knew the answer. He did. The clones did.

“Everyone,” he said. “The rules are for everyone.”

“Even the boss?” she asked, not knowing who the boss was.

He shrugged, then winced. His eyes lined with tears again, and she realized what she had taken for emotion might simply have been a reaction to pain.

“What about the facilitator?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “No one was to get caught. No one was to remain.”

She felt chilled. That meant there was still someone else out there. “This facilitator,” she said. “He looks like you?”

“No,” he said. “She joined us later.”

She. He knew her.

“What did your facilitator do?” Keptra asked, trying not to seem too eager. She didn’t want to scare him off.

“She got me into the Top of the Dome, into the speech,” he said.

“So she’s important,” Keptra said.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know anything about Tycho Crater.”

And he had tried to harm people inside of it. She felt that urge to slam her fist onto his broken arm again. But she didn’t.

Instead, she asked softly, “Who is your facilitator?”

“I don’t know her name,” he said. “We don’t do names.”

“How did you meet her?” Keptra heard an edge in her voice.

He didn’t answer that. He looked like he was starting to pass out.

She leaned closer. She would hit that damn arm if she had to. “How did you find her?”

“Oh,” he said, as if he hadn’t realized Keptra had been talking to him. “She has an office in the Top of the Dome. Eleventh floor, suite 8C.”

“You’re sure it’s hers?” Keptra asked.

“Pictures of her,” he said, his voice weaker. “And other people. Floating near the desk.”

“Was she there this afternoon?” Keptra asked.

“She let me in,” he said.

“Into the speech?” Keptra asked.

“The back of the restaurant,” he said. “She let me into the maitre d’s station.”

After he had already escaped the authorities. Before Keptra arrived.

She looked at him. He had passed out again.

“I’m not done,” she said to the attendant. “Wake him up again.”

“I can’t,” he said. “The law prevents me from doing anything that might harm him, and continually pumping him with drugs might do that.”

In other words, she had gotten all she could. A facilitator. An address at the Top of the Dome.

And rules.

The last chilled her:

Do not die alone.

If the facilitator had to follow that rule as well, then the crisis wasn’t over.

It had just begun.