Tuesday, July 3
1:09 P.M.
Midtown Manhattan
164 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
It’s okay, Lyle thought. Nobody knows what I look like.
At least not yet.
He clutched the box tightly to his chest, glancing nervously at the other people on the street. The burning building was blocks behind him now, distant sirens screaming at the crowd to stand back. The people he passed on the street were talking either about the fire or ReBirth—it seemed the entire city knew about it, both because of the miraculous stories they told of its effects, and because some kind of mob riot that had started outside. Lyle ignored them; he’d get the details later, now he had more pressing business. He had an armload of the most valuable, most dangerous substance in the world, and he was alone in the bustling heart of New York City.
New York is nicer than people think, he told himself. No one’s going to steal it. I did this once before, even later than this, and I was fine; nobody killed me or mugged me or even looked at me sideways. I’m fine. He moved gingerly through the crowd, trying not to touch anybody. Nice or not, they could bump me or knock me or even brush past me, and who knows what could happen. This is nearly twelve ounces of the stuff, sixteen half-ounce vials and one large four-ounce bottle. One accidental spill and Manhattan would get a lot less diverse.
All around him he heard whispers of ReBirth: Did you hear? Have you seen it? Did you know what it can do?
Just four more blocks. Lyle paused at the corner, waiting for the light. In the limited access he’d had to the Internet—read-only, with no chance to send a message—he’d researched other potential cases he thought ReBirth could help. A school crossing guard in the Bronx who’d lost his leg in a car accident—could ReBirth regrow a leg? It regrew a woman’s breasts, so it could probably do a leg. It turned your body into an ideal template of itself, no matter what it was like before. How did it do that? The more he studied it, the more he realized just how aggressive it really was. It was terrifying, in a way, to think of what would happen if—
Somebody bumped his elbow, and the box fell. Lyle’s heart stopped.
The cardboard burst when it hit the ground, flapping open and scattering vials of lotion across the sidewalk: a dozen or so half-ounce vials, and one four-ounce bottle. Lyle watched, frozen in horror, then fell to his knees and began quickly gathering them up. It’s okay, he thought anxiously, no one’s going to steal them. New York is nicer than people think—
“Let me help you with those,” said a friendly voice, and Lyle turned to see a woman crouching down to reach for a vial. He lunged toward her, grabbing it first, nearly stepping on the four-ounce bottle in the process. It skittered into the road and Lyle suppressed a curse.
“No,” he said, “it’s nothing, I can get them all, please don’t help.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble,” the woman said, reaching for another, “if I dropped something I know I’d be grateful for someone to stop and help me.”
“No, really,” said Lyle, and then another person crouched down to help. The man picked up a vial of lotion, dropped it in the cardboard box, and smiled at Lyle.
“You okay, sir?”
“Yes,” Lyle hissed through his teeth, scrambling now on his knees to collect the lotion before anyone noticed what it was. “I’m fine, thank you, please just go on”—he waved them off—“do whatever you were doing, I can manage it.”
“Wait a minute,” said the woman, staring at the vial in her hand. “Is this the … is this the stuff from TV? The stuff from the riot?”
“The cloning lotion?” asked the man. He stood up, holding a vial up to the glow of the sun. “It is. ReBirth.” He looked at Lyle, frowning. “Where did you get this? You’ve got,” he looked down, “sixty, maybe eighty thousand dollars’ worth of the stuff here.”
Lyle closed his eyes. Now I’m screwed. Almost immediately the crowd around them stopped.
“Eighty thousand dollars?”
“Is that the stuff from the news?”
“How much money did you say?”
Eighty thousand dollars retail, thought Lyle, bracing himself for the rush, who knows how much on the black market. He eyed the group tensely, his hand opening to reach for another vial—
In a flash the crowd descended like an avalanche of hands and feet, reaching and grasping and stepping on each other’s fingers and wrestling for control of the tiny vials. Lyle abandoned the last few loose ones and dove for the cardboard box, ready to cut his losses and run, but another man reached it just as he did. Lyle pulled on it vainly, trying to curl himself around it, all the while shouting “Everybody get back! You don’t understand!” but no one seemed to listen. The man yanked the box from Lyle’s hands and stepped back triumphantly, only to be mauled by a pair of women—one of them, Lyle noted, the same woman who’d first stopped to help him. Another man rushed into the fray and Lyle backed up, stunned by the frenzy, and then the traffic light changed again.
The flow of traffic shifted, cars surged forward past the melee, and too late Lyle remembered the four-ounce bottle of lotion lying in the street—not labeled for sale, and thus ignored by the crowd who hadn’t recognized it for what it was. He took a step toward it, saw a truck come barreling down the street, and dove behind a signboard just in time. The truck hit the bottle with all its weight, Lyle heard a pop, and suddenly the whole crowd was hit with an explosion of white lotion—it landed on hands, faces, and hair; it misted into the center of the crowd; it smeared from one to another as they fought. By the time the first person screamed it was too late.
“It’s all over me!”
“Where did it come from?”
“I don’t want to turn into you!”
As fast as it gathered the crowd dispersed in a thunderstorm of terrified screams. Lyle saw a lotion-smeared woman racing toward him and jumped into the street to avoid her, barely missing another oncoming car. The fear swept through the streets in a widening circle, lotioned victims shouting and sobbing as they ran or stumbled or pleaded with others for help. Some ran from them, others stopped to help, not knowing what had happened, and touched the lotion themselves. Still others dashed back into the center to grab the unbroken vials still littering the ground, and the fight started over. Nobody knew what was going on, or how the lotion worked, or what they could possibly do to stop it.
Lyle knew exactly what to do. He ran.