SIXTEEN

Rex wanted to drive me all the way home, but I insisted he drop me off at the Levline station. When I got home, I found a note from my mom on the fridge. She and Trudy had gone to a lecture, but there were leftovers if I wanted them. I opened the fridge and found a container of lentil stew. Not my favorite. Peeling up the lid, I spotted a dozen pieces of cooked celery, and that was just on the surface. Who knows how many were hiding underneath?

No thank you.

I grabbed a box of mac and cheese from the cupboard and was reading the directions—as if I didn’t know them by heart—when the phone rang.

I picked it up and said, “Hello?”

“Jimi!” Claudia’s voice said brightly on the other end. I smiled at the sound of it.

“Hey!” I said.

“I’m so glad you’re okay!”

“I’m fine, totally. It’s been a crazy couple of days, though. How are you doing? I feel like we haven’t talked in weeks.”

“I’m fine.” Something about her voice seemed strange.

“You sure?” I asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“I don’t know. You sound a little off.”

She took a breath, then sighed. “Hold on a second.”

I could hear the muffled, hollow plastic doink of the phone being jostled or juggled, banging on something, then footsteps followed by a door opening and then clicking shut.

“Sorry,” she said. “Such a big house, you wouldn’t think it was so hard to get a little privacy.”

“What’s going on?”

“I’m fine. Really. But…I’m not so sure about my dad.”

I thought back to how weird he’d sounded on the phone when I called. “What’s wrong?”

“Remember a few months ago, I told you he was thinking of getting spiked?”

“Tell me he didn’t!”

“He did. Last week.”

“What the hell was he thinking?” Apart from Wellplants being intrinsically tied to Howard Wells, getting spiked was a big deal, and it wasn’t something you could easily change your mind about. Wellplant Corporation didn’t like to talk about it, but the fine-print warnings clearly stated that removing a Wellplant could be much riskier and more dangerous than putting one in. And the longer it was implanted, the more time the brain had to integrate it, and the more problematic removal could be.

“He was thinking he needed access to the most powerful tech out there, that he didn’t want to get left behind. More and more of his competitors are getting them, and he wanted to literally be connected to the data he needs to run his business, to global intel and secure communications and advanced medical diagnostics and all the rest of it.” She paused and took a deep breath. When she resumed, her voice was thick with tears. “But apparently he wasn’t thinking about how he was buying into a company that profits off murder and oppression, that hopes to define his own daughter as a nonperson.”

She paused again, but I sensed she wasn’t done, so I stayed quiet. When she spoke again, her voice was back under control. “And he wasn’t thinking about how much it might change him.”

“So…he seems different, huh?”

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “He does. It was a big production, you know? Not just the implantation, but they do all this immune-system prep beforehand, suppressing it, then boosting it. The whole process was intense. But he’s over that part now, and still he’s…different. A lot more different than I even feared he’d be.”

“I spoke to him yesterday, when I called. He did sound…not himself.”

“He insists he’s fine. Just getting used to it. But I wonder if there’s something wrong with it. Or with him.”

“What does your mom think?”

“She keeps telling me it’s fine. ‘If Dad says he’s okay, then he’s okay.’ But I know she’s freaked out, too.”

“Eesh.” I didn’t know what else to say. I wanted to reassure her, but I also didn’t want to dismiss her concerns. And it creeped me out big-time that her dad had gotten spiked. “Well, maybe he does just need to get used to it. I mean, it’s got to be incredibly distracting having all that…stuff, whatever,…all going on inside your head.”

“I know. But what if that’s just how it is? I mean, he’s very distractible. What if he’s just always distracted like that from now on?”

“Then that would suck.”

“Yeah.” Claudia sighed. “Anyway, I need to get out of the house. Have you eaten?”

“No, I just got home.”

“How about I take you out to dinner?”

“Sure, that would be great. Actually, I need to ask you about something. Are you busy tomorrow night?”

“Tomorrow? No, I don’t think so. Why?”

“I’ll tell you in person.”

“Okay, cool. I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.”

Claudia was loaded. And I was not. I usually paid my own way when we went out together, but sometimes she insisted on paying—especially if she insisted on going somewhere expensive—and sometimes I let her.

I put the mac and cheese back in the cupboard and ran upstairs to get ready, then left a note on the fridge: WENT OUT WITH CLAUDIA. I drew a heart for good measure.

Twenty minutes later, Claudia’s Jaguar pulled up in front of my house. As I ran down the front steps and got in, I couldn’t help wondering if my mom, wherever she was, had at that moment paused and looked off into space, knowing that her daughter was in some way disappointing her and failing to meet her expectations.

“Hey!” Claudia said as I got into the car.

“Hey,” I said, hurrying to get my seatbelt on before the car reached its cruising speed.

As soon as we had pulled away from the curb and were in our lane of traffic, she flipped the switch to activate Smartdrive and wrapped me in a big hug. “It’s really good to see you, Jimi,” she said. “I was so worried when I heard about the bombing.”

“I’m fine,” I said, as we pulled apart. “But it was really messed up.”

She put her hand on the wheel but didn’t take the car out of Smartdrive. “Okay,” she said. “Tell me all of it.”

I did not. But I told her a lot. I told her about being abducted by CLAD, and then arriving at the museum just before the bombing. I told her about spending the night at Rex’s—and about telling my mom that I was spending the night at Rex’s.

That earned a look that made me simultaneously proud and ashamed.

“What?” I demanded in response. “She knows. She’s known for months. It wasn’t that big a deal.”

Claudia was struggling so hard not to laugh, I was worried we were going to crash, even with the car in Smartdrive. “And if I asked your mom if it was a big deal, she’d say the same thing?”

She lost her struggle after that, and so did I, the two of us laughing like hyenas as the car took us unerringly to our destination. I love Claudia.

The conversation got pretty serious after the laughter at my mom’s expense. We talked about things with Rex, which were all good, then we talked more about her dad, which was not good at all.

The conversation trailed off after that, a somber quiet that lingered until we got to our destination.

“The Mayfair Diner!” I laughed, as we pulled into the parking lot. “Oh, man, I remember coming here when I was a little kid.” The Mayfair Diner was this amazing classic diner a few miles away in Northeast Philly.

“Right?” Claudia said, laughing, as well. “My dad used to take me here all the time.” Her eyes fell a bit when she mentioned him again, the worry in them obvious.

“He’ll be okay,” I said, hopefully with just enough conviction that she’d take some comfort from it, but not so much that she’d never again take seriously anything else I said.

She nodded as we got out of the car. “I hope so.”

“So, when you first told me he was thinking of getting spiked, you said he wanted you to get a Wellplant, too—if he did it.”

She nodded. “Yeah, and my mom, too. So we could stay connected.” The car locked with a beep behind us. “I’ll admit, I thought about it for a minute. I mean, it would be cool to be connected all the time, to have access to all that information and resources and stuff, but I couldn’t get used to the idea of having a spike in my head, especially not one manufactured by Howard Wells, not after seeing what they’re willing to do to get what they need to make them. I tried to talk him out of it, too, you know? But…I guess I couldn’t convince him. Maybe everything’ll be great in a few days, but from what I’ve seen so far, I doubt it.”

The diner was mostly empty. We took a booth in the front and Claudia grabbed the menus from behind the napkin dispenser and tossed one to me.

“It’s good to be out of the house,” she said.

She glanced at her menu, then nodded and tossed it aside, staring at me over the table. “You said you had something you needed to talk about. What’s up?”

The menu was stupid long—like a good diner menu should be—and I’d barely had time to look at the front page. “You already know what you’re getting?”

“Psh.” She snapped her fingers. “Tuna melt. That’s actually why we’re here.”

The server arrived and Claudia said, “Tuna melt and an iced tea, please,” then looked at me expectantly with innocent eyes and a smirk that was just this side of evil.

“I…” I started to say I needed more time. Then I saw BREAKFAST ALL DAY plastered across the top of the menu. “Two eggs over, rye toast, veggie scrapple, and home fries.” I started to hand over my menu, then I added, “And orange juice, please.”

Claudia grinned. “You’ve always been good under pressure, Jimi.” As the server took our menus and disappeared, her face turned serious. “Okay. What did you want to ask?”

First, I resumed the chronology of recent events, picking up with the brawl after Wells announced his presidential campaign, then the second visit from the FBI and their questions about me and CLAD. Claudia was duly creeped out that the FBI had found a photo of me at the CLAD house they raided. I told her how Rex and I had decided I needed to find out what that connection was before the FBI did.

“So, here’s where it gets really weird,” I told her softly, looking around to make sure no one was close enough to listen in.

I quietly told her about Rex recognizing Ogden’s picture, and about us meeting with him.

She gasped. “You went there? How did that go? What did you find out?”

“Not much, actually. He didn’t know why CLAD might be interested in me, but he told us about this Wells Life Sciences facility, where he thinks something bad is going on. He wanted us to help him break in and check the place out.”

“Are you serious?” she said, her voice getting louder before she quieted it down again. “He wants you to join CLAD?” she whispered.

“No, not exactly. I think he wants to sway me to their point of view.”

“I hope you told him no with great certainty.”

“Well, yeah, I did.…At first.”

“At first!? Jimi—”

I held up a hand to stop her. “There’s more,” I told her.

She folded her arms and closed her mouth, waiting impatiently for me to finish so she could continue getting on my case.

I had already decided that if I was going to ask her to help us, I needed to tell her everything that was going on—and there was already some information that I’d kept from her. Technically, I was not a member of Chimerica, even though it was starting to feel like the family business. I hadn’t signed anything or been sworn in or had an induction ceremony or anything like that. And I hadn’t been sworn to secrecy, or even asked to keep secrets. It had been explained to me—often, if inadequately—how important secrecy was to Chimerica, but no one had asked me to keep secret what I had learned in the last few days.

“Okay,” I said, leaning forward and inducing her to do the same. “Remember a few months ago, how much it was bothering me that Rex was being cagey about where he was disappearing to and what he was doing?”

“I remember you mentioning it once or twice. Daily.”

“Yeah, well, eventually he shared a few things with me, secrets that I then had to keep, and that I did.”

“Go on.”

“Remember how I found out I had an aunt who was also named Dymphna?”

She nodded.

“Well, it turns out, she’s in charge of Chimerica.”

“What do you mean? Like, the executive director or something?”

“I don’t know about her job title, but yes. She started it. She’s the head honcho.”

She sat back and laughed. “Man, Jimi, whenever I get upset that my family is messed up, you do help me put it in perspective.”

“My family’s not messed up.”

She laughed even louder at that.

“Okay, whatever,” I went on, trying to keep my voice low and talk over her laughter at the same time. “So hold that thought about Dymphna. After we told the CLAD guy no, we left. As we’re leaving his neighborhood, who shows up to intercept us, but Sly.”

“Sly! Wow, haven’t seen him in a while. How’s he doing?”

“He’s fine. Anyway, he takes us to this, like, secret safe house or whatever, down the shore. He says it’s important but won’t tell us what’s going on. But we get there, and Dymphna’s there.”

“Your aunt?”

“Yes. The head of Chimerica.”

“Whoa. So how was that?”

“It was really, really weird. She’s amazing, but the whole situation was bizarre.”

“What did she say?”

“We talked for a while. We talked about family stuff. She told me some of what she’d been up to, back then and more recently. Get this: apparently, she used to go out with Howard Wells.”

Claudia clapped a hand over her mouth. “Are you serious?”

I nodded. “Years ago.”

“No, you’re family’s not messed up at all.”

“Shut up. Anyway, here’s the thing. She asked me to tell Ogden, the CLAD guy, that we’d help him break into the Wells facility. She’s concerned about what CLAD is up to, and she wants us to try to get closer to them, so we can find out.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Well, I told her that the FBI was already harassing me because they think I’m involved in CLAD and the last thing I wanted was to give them any evidence to support that idea or to do anything that would make it true, but…Well, she’s pretty persuasive.” I shrugged. “I said I’d do it.”

“That’s crazy.”

I steepled my fingers in front of my face, choosing my next words carefully. “So we went back and told Ogden we’d do it. But when he told me about some of the challenges involved in getting onto the property, past the security system or whatever, I realized that we could really use some technical support.”

“Technical support?”

I nodded, slowly folding all my fingers except my index fingers, which now pointed at Claudia.

She sat back. “Me?”

I nodded again. “We need to get through a fence, and I don’t know how hi-tech it is or whatever, but I was wondering who could possibly help us with that…”

She started shaking her head. “Jimi, I don’t think—”

“Who would be badass enough, game enough, to help out with something like that…”

“Jimi—”

“And who would be fun to have along? I mean, it would be just like old times, right?” By “old times” I was referring to the events in Gellersville a few months earlier.

She tilted her head to one side and rolled her eyes. “I don’t think so, Jimi. I’ve actually been trying to cut back on the ‘breaking-and-entering-and-risking-life-limb-and-jail-time’ stuff. Especially while all this stuff is going on with my dad.”

“Okay,” I said. “I get it. And besides, this guy Ogden says he can hack into the system if it’s a smart fence. I imagine if it’s just like, electrified or alarmed or video-monitored, or whatever, he can deal with that, too.”

“Jimi, those are totally different challenges. Totally different skill sets.”

“Right, I know, but hacking a computer system has got to be more involved than bypassing simple electronics.”

“It’s not a matter of simpler or more involved, they’re just different,” she said, getting herself oddly worked up about it. “It’s not just about snipping a wire or two, for Pete’s sake.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “Point taken. But whatever the case, I’m sure we’ll be fine without you. I just thought it would be good to have you there, that’s all. But I totally understand—”

“I know what you’re trying to do, and it’s not going to work.”

“What do you mean?”

“Reverse psychology or whatever it is you’re doing.”

“I’m not!” I said, laughing a little. “Look, I totally understand. You don’t want to go. I totally respect that.”

She looked over at the server, headed our way with our orders.

“When are you going?”

“Tomorrow night.”

She growled as she shook out her napkin and laid it across her lap. “Okay, well it sounds like I better come along so this Ogden guy doesn’t get you all fried to a crisp.”