Replica

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Paxco headquarters was located in what most people still called the Empire State Building, despite its official renaming. Nate hadn’t set foot in the place since he’d awakened as a Replica, even though as Chairman Heir he was expected to spend most of his waking hours there.

The day after he’d had the crap beaten out of him didn’t seem like the best time to change that, but Nate wasn’t up to taking evasive action, so he was sitting around at home when his father finally reached the end of his fuse and sent one of Nate’s own bodyguards to fetch him—by force if necessary.

Nate fixed the bodyguard, Fischer, with a fierce glare. His whole body ached from the beating and his head was throbbing from too little sleep, too much stress, and too much to drink last night. All of which made him so not in the mood to have Fischer manhandle him. Fischer was unmoved by the glare, and Nate knew he had no choice but to go along.

He tried not to wince or gasp too much as he made his way downstairs to the limo with Fischer close at his heels. Getting into the limo was no fun, and Nate hoped he wouldn’t be expected to move around for the commercial he would no longer be able to avoid doing. His head ached even more as he thought about how many takes he would need to get it all right in his current condition.

The Empire State Building had once been a major tourist attraction, but now that it was Paxco Headquarters, tourists had to jump through enough security hoops to get in that they often didn’t bother, especially when so many parts of the historic building were off limits. The Chairman and his staff, including Nate, had their own private entrance on the far side of the building from where the tourists and office workers entered.

Nate had seen in the news that some protesters had set up shop around Headquarters, but since there was always somebody protesting something, he hadn’t paid much attention. Which meant that he was totally unprepared for the welcoming committee that awaited him outside the Chairman’s entrance, waving placards and chanting. There were more of them here than there had been when Nate had left the Fortress, and they seemed angrier.

Security was keeping the crowd well back. They’d set up sawhorses to make a generous perimeter, and they also formed a human wall, ready to beat back any overly enthusiastic demonstrators. Nate wasn’t surprised when a couple of the building’s security officers hurried over to the car to give him extra protection.

One of the security officers opened the door for him, letting in a wall of sound the glass and steel of the car had been muffling. The demonstrators were shouting, and they waved their placards more wildly when they caught sight of him. Those who didn’t have placards settled for shaking their fists in the air. Nate wasn’t sure how many people were out there, but they numbered in the hundreds, and they were stunningly loud.

“Sorry for the inconvenience, sir,” the security officer said, holding the door while his eyes continued to scan the crowd for threats.

Inconvenience. That was one word for it.

Nate stepped out of the limo, and the crowd went wild. Shouts turned into howls as people began to push and shove to get closer to the barriers. Then the howls turned into a chant: “Replicas aren’t people!”

The security officers and his bodyguard tried to hurry Nate along, but he couldn’t help stopping a moment, frozen in shock at the ferocity of the crowd, at their snarling anger, at their dismissal of him as a human being. “I am a person,” he wanted to shout at the crowd. Not that he could shout loudly enough to be heard over this roar, or that anyone would listen to him if he did.

The snippets he’d seen on the news had clued him in to the fact that the general public was wary and suspicious of Replicas, as had the protest outside the Fortress, but he’d never expected this level of hostility.

“Get down!” Fischer, suddenly yelled, pouncing on Nate’s back and knocking him to the ground.

Something zipped past his head and splatted on the open door of the limo. It was just an egg, not a deadly weapon, but the throwing of that single egg seemed to flip a switch. Until then, the security officers had been calmly controlling the crowd, holding them back but not ordering them to disperse. Now, they reached for their pepper spray. The egg thrower was hauled over the barricade as the others at the front of the line tried to retreat out of reach of the spray. One of the security officers started whaling on the egg thrower with his baton.

“No!” Nate yelled as he was hauled bodily to his feet.

The crowd was screaming now, placards dropping as those closest to the front saw the threat and tried to run. But those in the back didn’t know what was happening and kept trying to press forward, making retreat impossible as the security officers blasted pepper spray indiscriminately, not caring that the crowd was now trying to disperse. Those trapped between the officers and the wall of people behind them started fighting back because there was nothing else they could do. The egg thrower was curled up in fetal position, trying desperately to protect his head, but the security officer kept hitting him.

“Stop them!” Nate yelled again, but no one was listening to him. When he tried to move toward the melee, security officers grabbed each of his arms and hauled him forward, while Fischer grabbed hold of his collar and shoved on the small of his back for good measure.

Ignoring his repeated protests—and the screams of the crowd behind them—the officers forced Nate through the doorway and into Paxco Headquarters.

The interior of the Empire State Building had been almost entirely gutted when it had become Paxco Headquarters, but the architects had done their best to preserve the art deco lobby with its stunning ceiling mural and intricate glasswork. None of which was visible from the Chairman’s entrance, which sported a functional and ultramodern lobby with enough security measures to withstand the Apocalypse. The glass doors of the entrance were bulletproof, so thick that when they closed, the screaming and shouting from the riot was muted to almost nothing. No one inside seemed particularly alarmed at what was occurring on their doorstep, although a few people did look at Nate with open curiosity as Fischer and the security officers frog-marched him to the elevators. Adrenaline and horror had fueled him when he’d seen the start of the riot, but now that the immediate crisis had passed—at least for him if not the poor bastards outside—the adrenaline faded and his bruised and aching body shouted its own protests. The security officers seemed to sense his capitulation, and their hands dropped from his arms, but Fischer still had a hand on his back, right on one of his worst bruises.

“Let go of me,” he said in what he hoped was a level, rational-sounding tone. “I’m not going to try to go back out there.”

Fischer’s hand dropped away, but Nate was sure all three of his escorts were on high alert for any sign he was about to make a break for it.

If he thought running back out there and screaming for the security officers to stop would help the situation, he might have tried it. But somehow when that single egg was tossed, both the crowd and the security officers holding them back had lost their powers of reason and self-control. Nate had never seen anything like that before, and he hoped he never saw it again.

His security escorts waited until Nate and Fischer were safely in the elevator before walking away. Nate supposed they were going to join the fray, assuming it wasn’t all over by now. He hoped no one had been seriously hurt.

To his surprise, Nate found that there was a slight tremor in his hands as he straightened his jacket and tugged on his cuffs. All that hatred, all that violence, was because of him. Because he wasn’t really Nate Hayes, no matter how much he felt like it. He was a Replica, an artificial human being. How could he blame the people of Paxco for being horrified at what he was?

Nadia accepted him because she knew him, because she could talk to him and see that he was still the same person. She could be lulled into almost believing he was the original Nate Hayes because the illusion of the Replica was so powerful. The same could not be said of the faceless mob. Maybe his father wasn’t just being an opportunistic bastard when he wanted Nate to do this commercial. Maybe it was damned important that the public be more exposed to him so they could come to accept him.

“Seems hypocritical to me,” said Fischer, staring up at the numbers above the door instead of looking at Nate, “that people who depend on Paxco for their livelihoods are out there demonstrating against Replicas. Ungrateful bastards have to know Replica technology is our number one source of revenue. Do away with Replicas, most of them would be out of a job, maybe even out on the street.”

Nate rarely paid much attention to his bodyguards unless they did something to annoy him. Hell, he didn’t even know what Fischer’s first name was, had never bothered to ask. It humbled him that the usually taciturn man was trying to take some of the sting out of what had just happened.

“Yeah,” Nate said, though he wasn’t sure he agreed with Fischer’s point. Yes, the Replica technology was an enormous revenue stream and provided thousands upon thousands of people with jobs and salaries and homes. But it was a very unsettling technology, and the morality of its use was far from clear even in his own mind. But if Fischer was going to be nice to him …

Nate cleared his throat. “Look, I should have just let you get me out of there without throwing a tantrum like I did. Sorry I was a dick.”

Fischer kept looking at the lighted numbers. “It’s all right. I’m used to it.”

He said it completely deadpan, not a hint of amusement in his eyes or voice, but since Nate was 99 percent sure he was kidding, he laughed. Which his body instantly told him was a bad idea.

Fischer finally tore his eyes away from the floor numbers. “Are you hurt, sir?” he asked in concern.

“I’m fine,” Nate assured him, forcing a tight smile as he waited for the pain to fade.

Fischer looked skeptical, but the elevator had arrived at their floor, and the doors slid open.

Nadia drifted slowly back to her chair, staring at Dante—or perhaps she needed to mentally start calling him Sandoval—reshuffling the puzzle pieces in her head and trying to put them together. She wasn’t having a whole lot of success.

“You work for Dirk Mosely,” she said, speaking slowly as she eased into her chair. “You carried a message to me from Kurt Bishop. And Bishop isn’t rotting at Riker’s Island as we speak?”

Dante shook his head. “Not unless something drastic has happened that I haven’t heard about.” He crossed his arms over his chest in a gesture that looked almost defensive. Nadia hadn’t unraveled the riddle yet, but one thing she felt certain of: Dante was not supposed to be telling her any of this.

Unfortunately, now that he’d dropped his bombshell, he seemed reluctant to volunteer any more information. However, Nadia had no qualms about dragging it out of him. She wanted to spit out questions in rapid fire and shake the answers out of him, but she forced herself to take it slow. The last thing she wanted was to make him clam up again.

“Okay, fine,” she said as she settled on question number one. “If you’ve been in contact with Bishop, then why haven’t you told your boss?”

Dante reached up and rubbed at his eyes. “I can’t believe I opened my mouth.”

“Well, you did.” Nadia couldn’t make sense of the emotions roiling through her any more than she could make sense of the puzzle Dante presented. She was excited at the prospect of finally getting some answers, and yet there was also a good deal of dread about what those answers might be. And then there was the frightened, cautious, maybe even paranoid part of her that whispered this all had to be some kind of an elaborate trap, set by Mosely to trick her into revealing every scrap of information she’d kept secret.

Dante huffed out a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. “Right. But I need you to promise me something first.”

She understood his caution, but it was far too late for it. “We both know I’d promise you my firstborn child if that’s what it took to get you talking right now. We also both know I’d never make good on it. You’ve opened the barn door, and you look pretty silly chasing after the galloping horse.”

Even in the midst of his obvious turmoil, Dante managed a half smile. “You have a way with words.”

“I’m glad I amuse you. Now, tell me what’s going on!”

The hint of humor vanished from Dante’s face. “You’re right and I can’t hold you to any promises, but I’m begging you not to repeat anything I’m about to tell you. Lives are at stake, my own and other people’s.”

Lives had been at stake from the moment someone had stabbed the Chairman Heir to death, and Nadia had been shouldering the responsibility to protect them so long it felt almost natural now. “I understand. Now, who are you, really?”

With the grim resolve of a soldier marching into battle, Dante sat up straight in his chair and met her eyes. “My real name is Dante Sandoval. My parents are both sanitation workers.” He made a face of disgust. “One step removed from Basement-dwellers. We’re technically Employees, but we’re so low Mosely didn’t want anyone to be able to look into my background. I’m not respectable enough to be a servant, you see, so he insisted I make up a new name for this assignment.”

Nadia had no trouble hearing the bitterness in his voice, and now she understood a little better why he’d seemed so touchy about her status as an Executive.

“I’m sorry if I’m being insensitive,” she said, “but I’m not that interested in your background right now. I want to know—”

“I know what you want to know,” he interrupted, and she saw a renewed flash of anger in his eyes. Anger that he visibly tamed, reeling himself back in as she suspected he’d done a thousand times in his life. Kind of like how she’d held in all her anger with Nate for so long. The problem with holding it in so fiercely was that it tended to get out at the most inconvenient times.

“I guess my background isn’t that important,” he conceded. “I was just trying to explain that people like me, people like my family, have shitty, miserable lives working shitty, miserable jobs without ever being able to hope for better, and people like you have everything handed to you on a silver platter just because you happened to be born an Executive.”

No doubt about it, Dante was harboring one hell of a lot of class anger. Nadia would have liked to point out to him that her life wasn’t as much of a picnic as he might think, but entering into a debate about the class system wouldn’t get her the information she wanted, so she bit her tongue.

“Eventually,” Dante continued, “it gets to a point where the downtrodden have had enough, and they band together. It’s happened a million times over the course of history, and it’s happening now.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means there’s a resistance movement forming in Paxco.”

Nadia frowned at him. “Am I supposed to be shocked? Someone’s protesting something practically every day.” Nadia had the uneasy suspicion that if it weren’t for Mosely and his security goons, there would be a lot more protests, and they’d be a lot bigger and louder. The government wouldn’t be so gauche as to publicly quash protests, but they would make sure such protests were a controlled burn, not something that could catch on and spread.

“I don’t mean the kind of resistance movement that involves marching around carrying signs. I mean the kind that’s actually going to do something about the injustice.”

“What does this have to do with anything?” Nadia asked. She wanted to know more, but she had to keep the conversation focused. She and Dante had had the schoolroom to themselves for quite some time now, but there was no guarantee someone wouldn’t come looking for one or both of them at any moment.

“I’m part of it. I’m here because I’m working a mission, trying to infiltrate Mosely’s spy network. It’ll probably take years before he’ll trust me with anything sensitive enough to be useful, but when he does, I’ll have the ammunition to help the resistance take down the entire Paxco security division.”

Nadia might have stood up and cheered the vision, if she didn’t think that Dante’s resistance meant to take down more than just Paxco’s security division. She didn’t for a moment think that the class system was fair, nor was she blind to the massive corruption within the government of Paxco. The Chairman himself was about as corrupt an individual as she could imagine. But it sounded like the resistance movement had ambitions to start a revolution, and that wasn’t a pleasant prospect, either.

“Bishop’s part of the resistance,” she said, the lightbulb suddenly going on above her head. “That’s why he didn’t flee Paxco when he had a chance. And that’s why you’re carrying messages for him.”

Dante nodded. “The resistance is mostly Employees, but there’s a fair number of Basement-dwellers. I’ve heard we even have a few low-level Executives, though I don’t know who they are.”

Now that she had more puzzle pieces, Nadia found it easier to put them together, though she didn’t much like the picture that was forming. Dante had been sent on a mission to infiltrate Mosely’s spy network. What were the odds that another member of the resistance would have found his way into the Chairman Heir’s household on the basis of pure chance?

She tried to drive the thought from her head. She would worry about the twists and turns of Bishop’s motivations later. Right now, she had to concentrate on the fact that she was sitting face-to-face with someone who was capable of contacting him.

Of course, Bishop had reached out to contact both her and Nate within the last twenty-four hours, and that contact had been far from friendly. He’d delivered the message that he didn’t want to be found with vicious conviction, and she wondered what she was doing, still trying to find him after all that he’d done. After all, he’d had Nate beaten last night, had hurt him body and soul.

But in the end, none of that mattered. What mattered was that neither she nor Nate would be able to rest until they found out what had happened on the night of his murder, and there was only one person who could tell them.

“I need you to take a message to Bishop,” she said.

Dante looked at her as if she were insane. “You’re joking, right?”

She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “He underestimated me, and he underestimated Nate. I told Nate the truth about the tracker this morning.” Her throat and chest tightened at the memory of the look in Nate’s eyes, but she tried to keep the pain from showing on her face. “I even showed him the note Bishop wrote me. He now knows for sure that Bishop is still in town, and he’s not going to stop looking for him.”

“He has to stop,” Dante hissed, leaning forward as if his very intensity could convince her. “He almost led Mosely’s men right to him last night.”

“I know,” Nadia said calmly. “That’s why Bishop would be much better off if he’d just bite the bullet and talk to Nate. The least he can do is tell Nate what happened on the night of the murder.”

Dante shook his head. “Have you ever considered that there’s a reason he’s not telling?”

“Maybe Bishop does have a good reason for everything he’s done,” Nadia said carefully. “But that doesn’t change anything. Nate isn’t going to stop looking for him. Not until he finds out what happened, at least.” Probably not even then, now that Nadia had helped convince him that Bishop still loved him. Perhaps that had been a mistake on her part, but it was too late to change it now. And Dante didn’t need to know just how personal Nate’s attachment to Bishop was. It was always possible that Dante knew the truth, but if he didn’t, she wasn’t going to be the one to reveal it.

“If he keeps looking, he’s going to get himself killed again,” Dante said. “And he might get a whole lot of other people killed along the way. People who won’t come back from it.”

“So tell Bishop to talk to him. Surely talking to him would be better than letting him keep stumbling around in the dark.”

Dante groaned and leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. “I am so sick of stubborn people!”

“Just tell Bishop what I told you.” She didn’t have any more convincing arguments she could trot out, but then she probably didn’t need any. Bishop knew Nate too well. Once he realized the beating last night still hadn’t convinced Nate to stop looking, he’d know his only choice was to contact Nate.

Dante let out a resigned sigh and sat up. “All right. I’ll tell him.”

“Can you also tell him…” Nadia swallowed hard, past the sudden lump in her throat. “Tell him I had no choice. About the tracker, I mean.”

“I already told him that,” Dante said. “I know better than most what Mosely’s capable of.” He reached for her hand and gave it a firm squeeze.

That simple touch felt better than it had any right to. She barely knew him, and he obviously had an enormous chip on his shoulder about Executive girls, but right now it seemed as if he was the only person in her life who was being nice to her and wasn’t making demands.

“You told him, but he didn’t buy it,” she said. “If he weren’t so angry with me, he’d never have had you slip me the message. There was no point in it—except to let me know he knew about me. Not that I blame him.”

Dante squeezed her hand again, showing no sign that he was planning to let go anytime soon. “He’s never had to go head-to-head with Mosely, so he doesn’t understand.” But I do, said the look in Dante’s eyes.

Nadia nodded. It shouldn’t matter to her if Bishop thought badly of her. They had never liked each other anyway. But his was another name on the list of people she’d disappointed over the last week, and the weight of it all was getting to her.

Still holding her hand, Dante moved his chair closer to hers until their knees were touching. He took her other hand and met her eyes. She was drowning in misery, but Dante’s hands were like a lifeline.

“Don’t blame yourself for any of this sh— er, mess. Mosely strong-arms people for a living, and he has the weight of all of Paxco behind him. It wouldn’t have done anyone any good if you’d called his bluff, because we both know whatever he threatened you with, it wasn’t a bluff. Your choices sucked, and you took the lesser of two evils.”

The warmth and earnestness of his expression was almost enough to make her cry. Why couldn’t Nate have looked at her like that? Why could someone who was practically a complete stranger understand and sympathize when her best and oldest friend couldn’t?

“It’s not really Bishop’s hard feelings that are getting to you, is it?” Dante asked softly. “You said you told your boyfriend about the tracker. I don’t suppose he took it so well.”

Grateful as she was for Dante’s kindness, she had no desire to talk to him about Nate. “I just wish none of this had happened.”

He was still holding her hands, and one thumb brushed absently over her knuckles. She wasn’t sure if he even knew he’d done it, but the simple caress awakened a swarm of butterflies in her stomach.

Not that he had meant it as a caress, of course, she told herself. He was being nice to her because she was in distress and she needed the hint of kindness. It wasn’t anything personal. He’d already made it quite clear how he felt about Executive girls in general. And the butterflies didn’t mean anything except that she was feeling lonely and vulnerable after her fight with Nate.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside the schoolroom, and Dante hastily let go of her hands and rose from his chair. One moment, he was warm and friendly and … comfortable. The next, he was stiff and upright, playing the ill-fitting role of the dutiful servant.

“Would you like another cup of tea before I clear the rest of the service?” he asked, standing at attention.

The footsteps continued past the doorway and faded into the distance, but Dante didn’t relax his posture. It was no doubt best for both of them if he kept up his act at all times anyway. Mosely wouldn’t appreciate him giving comfort to the enemy.

Already missing the precious few minutes of camaraderie they’d just shared, she rose to her feet.

“Thank you, Dante,” she said, taking pleasure in knowing she was addressing him by first name like an equal and no one else would know it, “but I don’t need any more tea right now.”

With a formal half bow, he turned away.

Inside Paxco Headquarters, life went on as if nothing had happened.

Nate, still badly shaken, reported to the private studio where the commercial was to be shot, and it was every bit as awful as he’d anticipated. The script made him want to gag, and he could only imagine what kind of sappy “inspirational” music they’d be playing in the background. He couldn’t remember his lines to save his life. The crew kept moving him into position like he was a doll—heedless of his bruises, of course, because they didn’t know about them. The lights were hot enough to make him sweat and bright enough to fuel his headache indefinitely. Usually, he was good in front of the camera, but this time he flat-out sucked.

The crew and the director eyed him warily, his ineptness no doubt making him seem very different from the Nate Hayes they thought they knew. He tried not to be snappish with them—the last thing he needed was more people thinking the Replication process created aggressive or even violent tendencies—but he knew he wasn’t exactly being easy to work with.

As soon as he escaped the shoot and holed up in his office, he couldn’t stop himself from looking for updated reports about the riot instead of wisely taking some aspirin and huddling in a dark corner until he felt better. As of five o’clock in the afternoon, there were no reported deaths, although one of the security officers had been severely trampled and was in critical condition. There was no definitive word on how many of the protesters had been injured or how badly, but a total of thirty-two people had been arrested and sent directly to Riker’s Island to await trial on a laundry list of charges that included treason.

The net had plenty of video coverage of the event, but what neither the videos nor the articles ever mentioned was exactly how the riot had started. The videos all showed the angry mob clashing with the security officers—failing to show the people who were desperately trying to flee the pepper spray—and the articles just said the protest “got out of hand.” Nowhere did Nate see it mentioned that the whole mess had started because someone had thrown a completely harmless egg.

The knowledge that the protesters were going to be charged with treason, among other things, made Nate sick to his stomach. Despite the ugly things they’d been shouting at him, Nate couldn’t stand the thought of people serving life sentences or even being executed because of a riot they didn’t start, and he arranged a meeting with his father to give the Chairman a clear picture of what really happened.

The meeting was at five o’clock, but of course the Chairman made Nate wait while he finished a phone call that went a half hour long. Nate would have been pissed off, except he was so used to it that he couldn’t muster the energy to be pissed anymore. When he was a kid, Nate had sometimes sensed real paternal affection from his father. He even had a picture of himself as a small child, maybe four years old, riding on his laughing father’s shoulders. But the older he’d gotten, the less his father seemed to like him, and once he hit adolescence, they’d become more like embattled strangers than father and son.

Now that Nate was officially an adult and no longer dependent on his father, he found the best way to keep their relationship civil was to keep it on a strictly business level. His father agreed, which was why he played the make-the-subordinate-wait mind games.

It was just after 5:30 when Nate was finally admitted to the Chairman’s corner office. Even then, his father made him wait just a little longer, scanning over a document he probably wasn’t even reading as Nate helped himself to a tumbler of scotch from the bar.

“Want one?” he asked, holding up the bottle. It was as good a greeting as any.

The Chairman finally looked up from his document, setting it aside. “Please.”

Nate poured a second drink, then laid it on his father’s desk before lowering himself rather gingerly into the plush leather chair. He’d found he could almost forget about his injuries when he was either upright or seated; it was the transition between the two that smarted.

“I heard about your … ordeal this morning,” the Chairman said. “I should have had security disperse the crowd before you arrived. It didn’t occur to me that they’d get so out of hand.”

Nate took a sip of his scotch, forcing himself to slow down and think a moment before he made a surly response. Anything the Chairman had heard about the riot had no doubt been reported to him by security personnel, who had a vested interest in portraying the incident as a crowd turning into a rioting mob.

“Actually,” he said, with what he felt was admirable calm, “that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’ve been looking at the news coverage. I saw that thirty-two people have been arrested and charged with treason.”

The Chairman’s eyes sharpened, and Nate figured his father sensed where he was going with this.

“Don’t you think that’s a little … extreme?”

His father leaned back in his chair, cradling the scotch in his lap. “They attacked the Chairman Heir. That’s the very definition of treason.”

Nate sipped his scotch again, but if he was going to use scotch as his pressure valve when his temper flared, he’d need the bottle. He gripped the tumbler rather more tightly than necessary, but tried to keep his voice level. The longer he could keep the tension from escalating into something resembling a fight, the better chance he had of convincing his father to be a little more lenient.

“I don’t know what you’ve been told exactly,” he said, “but no one actually attacked me. Some idiot in the crowd threw an egg. That’s all that happened. And security went berserk. The crowd didn’t get out of hand at all. It was the security officers. They started in with the pepper spray and batons just because someone threw an egg.”

“Your bodyguard interpreted it as an attack. I hear he wrestled you to the ground.”

Nate waved that off. “He saw someone throw something. For all he knew, it was a rock or a grenade. I’d have ducked myself if I’d seen it coming. But it wasn’t a rock or a grenade. It was an egg. I was not attacked, so there’s no reason to charge those people with treason.”

Nate remembered the sight of the security officer beating the guy who’d thrown the egg. As far as Nate was concerned, the poor bastard had more than paid for his offense already. Assuming he’d survived. Just because the news didn’t mention any fatalities among the demonstrators didn’t mean there weren’t any.

The Chairman swirled his scotch around in his glass, one corner of his mouth tipped up in a patronizing smile. “You’re a good kid, son,” he said in an equally patronizing voice. “You have a good heart and a generous spirit. But I don’t care if they threw marshmallows at you. I will not have my son and heir attacked by an unruly mob of idiots who want to throw away the goose that laid the golden egg because it makes them uncomfortable.”

Nate leaned forward in his chair and put the scotch down. It wasn’t helping his temper any, though he was fighting like hell to stay calm and in control of himself. An impassioned, emotional appeal to the Chairman’s better nature had no chance of working. A rational, reasoned one just might.

“You didn’t see what I saw,” he said, wishing he could scrub the sights and sounds out of his memory. “The moment the pepper spray came out, the people at the front of the crowd tried to run away, but they couldn’t because the people behind them didn’t know what was going on. They were trying to run, trying to protect their faces, and the security officers sprayed them anyway, then started whaling on them with their batons. The guy who threw the egg was lying there in fetal position as they beat him, and no one else had done anything worse than yell and wave signs around. They’ve already been beaten and tortured with pepper spray. They don’t deserve to be tried for treason just because they happened to be present when someone threw an egg.” Maybe if he repeated the part about the egg often enough, the Chairman would finally see the ridiculousness of the overreaction.

Nate was proud of himself for managing to stay so calm and reasonable. Nadia would be impressed with his restraint. And she thought he couldn’t contain his temper! If she could see him now, she’d realize how wrong she had been not to trust him.

The Chairman shook his head and sighed. “You’re missing the point, son. There were arrests made after that first demonstration at the Fortress, but most of those people were released without charges, and those who were charged were fined, not jailed. And because we didn’t take a hard enough stance against that kind of behavior, those animals showed up at Headquarters today. They will continue to show up in ever greater numbers unless we forcefully discourage such behavior. Filing treason charges against the rioters will be a powerful deterrent to anyone else who might think about setting up another such demonstration.”

A chill sank into him as Nate stared at his father and a suspicion wormed its way into his mind. His mouth went dry, and he licked his lips as every muscle in his body tensed.

“Why didn’t you have the demonstrators dispersed before I arrived?” he asked, his voice strained. He prayed for his father to look puzzled, to not understand what Nate was getting at. If he didn’t understand, that meant Nate’s sickening suspicion was wrong. But the Chairman merely folded his hands on the desk and returned his stare, his face bland as he dared Nate to put voice to what had happened.

“Were you hoping someone would do something stupid when I showed up at the scene?” Nate asked when it was clear his father wasn’t going to answer. “Did you order the security officers to attack the crowd at the slightest provocation?”

Still no answers. And no shifting of the bland expression on the Chairman’s face.

Nate shoved back his chair, barely even feeling the protest of his back and gut muscles as he leapt to his feet, the full horror of what had happened finally dawning on him.

“It was even worse than that, wasn’t it? You ordered the security officers to attack. And you ordered them to wait until I made an appearance, so you could use my presence as an excuse for a treason charge!”

It had all been one massive setup. Thirty-two innocent people were going to lose their liberty and maybe even their lives because Chairman Hayes wanted to discourage protests.

Nate had always known his father was a hard man, that he saw the world through a lens of cold logic. He was probably capable of compassion, but only when it was strategically expedient. But this was an atrocity worse than he’d imagined his father capable of.

The Chairman rose to his feet much more slowly, leaning forward and putting his fists on his desk. “Before you storm out in a cloud of righteous indignation, remember this: my concern is for the well-being of Paxco. The relentless insistence on individual liberties over the needs of society as a whole is what led to the dissolution of the United States. We have to learn from our predecessors’ mistakes. That will mean some individuals are treated unfairly, but that’s the price we have to pay.”

“The price they have to pay, you mean,” Nate said, shaking his head in disgust. “Justify yourself all you want. What you did was despicable.”

The Chairman rolled his eyes. “Get out and take your high horse with you. Someday, you’re going to have to grow up and see the world as it really is, but that day obviously hasn’t come yet.”

Nate reached down and grabbed the crystal tumbler he’d been drinking out of. Knowing that he was justifying his father’s view of him as a spoiled child throwing a temper tantrum, Nate couldn’t help hurling the tumbler at the wall with all his strength. The spray of shattered glass was not as satisfying as he’d hoped it would be.