Replica

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Nadia was brushing her teeth the next morning when she heard a commotion outside. The sound of raised voices reached her even through her closed bedroom and bathroom doors. She spit out her toothpaste and hurriedly pulled on the slacks and blouse she’d picked out for the day, her nerves buzzing with foreboding. It could be just Mrs. Reeves yelling at one of the maids, but even Mrs. Reeves’s tantrums weren’t usually quite so loud.

As she stepped out of the bathroom, Nadia realized it couldn’t be Mrs. Reeves, because there was at least one male voice yelling, too. It sounded like her father. But Gerald Lake never yelled—he left such theatrics to his wife. Nadia’s palms started to sweat, and her heart fluttered in her chest as she heard the heavy tread of many feet tromping down the hallway, coming closer and closer. Her stomach bottomed out when she heard crying and recognized her mother’s tearful voice calling her name. She had a brief thought of diving under her bed to hide, or trying to lock herself in her closet, but that would be as undignified as it would be futile.

There wasn’t time to prepare the little transmitter to plant on Mosely, nor was there time to dispose of it, since it was still stuck in the pocket of the catsuit, which she’d hidden at the back of her closet. Probably just having that little transmitter in her possession was enough to help fuel any accusations of treason or espionage Mosely wanted to throw her way.

Panic bubbled and boiled in her stomach, but Nadia kept it at bay as she moved over to her bedside and casually picked up the earrings she had laid there last night when she’d taken them off before her trip to the Basement. Her hands shook only a little as she slid one through the hole in her ear and her bedroom door burst open. She used her fingernail to flip the switch on the earring to transmit and wished the signal were going to an actual person who might be able to help her now, rather than avenge her later.

“I’ll be with you in one moment,” she said, her voice sounding much calmer than she felt as she inserted the other earring. She picked up a black velvet headband she had discarded on the nightstand, just to make sure her calm donning of the earrings didn’t bring any special attention to them.

“Nadia Lake,” a deep voice intoned, “you are under arrest for conspiracy and suspicion of treason.”

Settling the headband on her head, Nadia raised her chin and turned around.

In her doorway stood two armed security officers, glowering at her. Both had their hands on their firearms, though at least they weren’t pointing them at her. Behind them stood Dirk Mosely, and behind him stood two more security officers who spread their arms to keep Nadia’s mother and father from entering the room. Nadia’s throat closed up to see her mother’s face awash with tears, her eyes red and her nose running. Esmeralda Lake never cried.

“Turn around and put your hands behind your head,” one of the security officers barked as he approached her, brandishing a pair of handcuffs.

Nadia didn’t see any point in resisting, so she did as she was ordered. The officer shoved her facedown onto her bed anyway, putting his knee in her back as he wrenched her arms behind her to slap the handcuffs on. Nadia clenched her teeth to keep from crying out. The officer yanked her to her feet, and his partners forced her parents back so he could drag her, stumbling, out of the room. Mosely watched dispassionately, turning a deaf ear to her parents’ repeated attempts to plead with him.

“Mom, Dad, I’ll be all right,” she choked out, though she didn’t believe it any more than they did.

The servants had gathered in the hallway outside, watching in varying degrees of dismay as the officers marched Nadia between them, each holding one of her arms. She was not being quietly spirited away for questioning, and news of her arrest was no doubt spreading even now. Even if Mosely was using this as nothing more than a scare tactic and immediately released her, her reputation would never survive. No matter what the outcome, today marked the end of the life she’d been bred and raised for, and the future was a horrifying unknown.

The public humiliation continued as Nadia was perp-walked through the lobby of the Lake Towers while people stood and stared. A couple of them openly took photographs of the procession. Nadia saw Mosely notice one of the photographers and then pointedly look away. He obviously wanted this spectacle to be as public as possible. Nadia wanted to kill him for it, for putting her family through all the added horror of the publicity. As if her being arrested weren’t bad enough.

There were several cars with flashing lights waiting for her at the front door, as well as a van with no windows in the back. A pair of hard wooden benches were bolted against the wall, and the sides of the van were peppered with O-rings at varying heights. Nadia was unceremoniously tossed into the van, then dragged to a bench. Her handcuffs were then attached to an O-ring behind her, high enough to strain her shoulders and force her to bend forward as shackles were put on her ankles and then attached to another O-ring. All of this was done while the doors were still open and a crowd gathered outside. Nadia was sure even more photographs were being taken. At least she wasn’t crying, though she didn’t think the lack of tears had anything to do with bravery on her part. Everything seemed too unreal to be true. Too unreal to cry about or panic over. But that numb sense of unreality wouldn’t last for long, and the worst was yet to come.

The four security officers who had escorted her all joined her in the van—they must have thought she was a dangerous criminal indeed to need four hulking guards to contain her—and the doors slammed shut.

Nadia wasn’t sure where she was being taken, except that it was somewhere she didn’t want to go. Maybe to the security station, where she could maintain at least a faint hope that Mosely would release her after scaring her half to death, but she suspected Riker’s Island was more likely. She tried to keep herself alert for any clues, like the distinctive sound of tires on a bridge, but it was hard to concentrate when panic kept swelling in her chest.

“Where are you taking me?” she tried asking the security officers, but none even acknowledged that she had spoken.

The drive seemed to last forever. Nadia’s back ached from the unnatural position she was forced to sit in, and every sharp turn or deep pothole the van hit was torture on her strained arms and shoulders. Fear was her constant companion, and her mind kept frantically searching for a way out. But there was no way out, not from here. She was trapped and helpless. She would be questioned, probably even tortured. She wished she believed she could bravely endure whatever was to come without breaking, without betraying Nate and Bishop and Dante, but she doubted her own courage.

Eventually, the van came to a stop, and Nadia was dragged out of the van and hustled through a door. Her one brief glimpse of the outside before she was shoved through the door showed that she was in a room that resembled an airplane hangar and that the van had entered through a tunnel. She guessed that tunnel was a secret entrance to Riker’s Island, a way the security forces could bring in prisoners of special importance, like her.

Once inside, she was led through several sets of key-coded security doors. The officers forced her to turn around whenever they entered their passcodes, and Nadia felt a bubble of hysterical laughter wanting to rise from her chest. Who did they think she was? Some kind of superspy who could free herself from her chains, disable her four escorts, and make a run for freedom after having memorized their passcodes? She was just a kid, caught up in something way over her head.

The room the guards eventually propelled Nadia into did not look promising.

One half was laid out like the standard security interrogation room: a metal table, bolted to the floor, with a rail to which the unfortunate detainee could be chained; a couple of flimsy, uncomfortable plastic chairs; and a one-way mirror along one wall. It was the other half of the room that caused a new wave of terror to crash over Nadia’s head.

The other half of the room featured a table of gleaming surgical steel, bristling with restraints. The table sat at a slight angle just past horizontal, and there were grooves along its edges. Nadia didn’t want to, but she couldn’t help following those grooves and that angle with her eyes and seeing how they led to a drain in the tile floor. In her mind’s eyes, she saw a river of blood being pulled by gravity, channeled by those grooves, flowing to the edge of the table and forming a waterfall straight into that drain.

Above the table lurked something that looked a bit like a dentist’s instrument panel, only about ten times as big, with ten times as many attachments. Needles and saws and drills and blades of varying shapes and sizes. All of them coiled and waiting. Nestled among those attachments were a variety of instrument panels and darkened monitors.

Nadia felt so dizzy that for a moment she thought she might faint. She wanted to be brave, or at least to put on a brave face, but terror was like a living beast inside her. It clamped down on her chest, making it hard to breathe. It sucked the moisture from her mouth and the warmth from her limbs. It blotted out all rational thoughts, left her with nothing to cling to except the desperate need to run, to escape.

“Don’t worry,” Mosely’s voice said from behind her. She hadn’t even heard him enter the room, so transfixed was she by the monstrosity that loomed over the table. “We have a lot of talking to do before we graduate to more extreme measures.” Mosely wandered over to the table and gave it an affectionate pat, like it was a favorite pet.

One of the security officers dragged Nadia over to the interview area, slamming her into a chair, then uncuffing her hands and chaining her to the table. Then he and the other three officers exited the room, leaving her alone with the man who had with his own hands killed the Chairman Heir and framed another for the murder. She couldn’t hope for mercy or compassion from him.

Mosely continued to caress his monstrous torture apparatus, smiling faintly to himself. Nadia closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to tame the fear, trying to think. But try as she might, she couldn’t think of a way out. If she refused to talk, Mosely would torture her. But if she did talk, she would reveal that she knew far too much. He might not think the accusations of a sixteen-year-old girl being held for treason could do him much damage, but he wasn’t the sort to take the risk. Someone might believe her, even if it was just her own family, and they might make a stink about it. Nothing he couldn’t handle, but why would he bother when he could just avoid the issue by disposing of her?

She was going to die, Nadia realized, and paradoxically that thought steadied her. Whatever terrible things were going to happen, there was an end in sight. She might not be able to save herself, but she would do her level best to take Mosely down with her. As soon as Gerri heard the news of Nadia’s death, she—or her unknown cohort—would retrieve the recordings Nadia had made. Nadia just had to make sure she caught Mosely saying something so incriminating he couldn’t wriggle out from the consequences.

As if he hadn’t a care in the world, Mosely strolled toward her. Nadia’s pulse still fluttered, and she knew that if she unclenched her hands from her lap, they would shake, but she held her head high, thoughts of her posthumous revenge warming and strengthening her.

Mosely tossed a manila folder on the table. He sat down across from her, then flipped the folder open and began laying out a series of photos in front of her. And now she understood why she had been arrested.

The photos were a little grainy, no doubt taken from a considerable distance. They showed Nadia exiting her building and climbing into an unmarked white van. Her heart sank, and she cursed herself for not considering that Mosely might have someone other than Dante keeping an eye on her. Especially after yesterday’s interview, where she had aroused his suspicions.

Had someone followed the van once Nadia had gotten in it? And had there been someone watching Nate’s apartment? Surely if Mosely had been watching her, he’d been watching Nate. And that meant he knew that she and Nate had both been in that van last night. If they’d been followed into the Basement, then it didn’t matter what Nadia said or didn’t say—Mosely knew exactly what had happened, knew exactly who all the players were and who he needed to eliminate.

“It seems you have not been completely honest with me, Miss Lake,” Mosely said. “I’m disappointed in you. I had thought a girl of your impeccable pedigree would understand the importance of protecting the interests of her state.”

She couldn’t tell if he was mocking her, or if he was sincerely disapproving. And she didn’t care.

“In my opinion,” she said, “the interests of my state are not served by pinning a crime on an innocent man.”

Mosely gave a condescending chuckle. “Believe me, my dear, Kurt Bishop is a lot of things, but an innocent man isn’t one of them. Did you know he was working as a whore when our Chairman Heir hired him?”

If Nadia was supposed to feel disgusted by the revelation, Mosely had missed his mark. She might not have known the specifics of Bishop’s past, but she’d certainly known there was ugliness in it. “Prostitution isn’t a crime punishable by death. If you think that’s an adequate excuse to—”

“You are such a child. Everything is black and white to you, isn’t it? You would never consider that sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the greater good.”

Nadia clamped her jaws shut to keep from responding. She had a feeling he was probing at her, trying to get her to reveal what she knew without directly asking questions. Her mind raced with possibilities as she tried to figure out how to get Mosely to admit his crimes aloud without giving away too much herself. In the periphery of her vision, the torture apparatus loomed.

Mosely tucked the photos back into their folder and pushed the folder aside. Then he leaned forward with his elbows on the table. Nadia felt like he was intruding upon her personal space even though there was a table between them.

“Where did you go last night, Miss Lake?” he asked.

“You’re the spymaster. Why don’t you tell me?”

Mosely raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I’d recommend you be more circumspect in your responses, Miss Lake. Need I remind you that you’re under arrest on suspicion of treason?”

Nadia didn’t truly believe there was a way out of the mess she was in, but it seemed reasonable to at least put on a show of trying.

“I haven’t forgotten. Are you suggesting my situation would somehow improve if I were more forthcoming with you?”

“I am suggesting, foolish child, that if you are not forthcoming with me, I will make you regret it for every remaining day of your miserable life.” He glanced pointedly at the apparatus. “You can avoid a great deal of unpleasantness by simply answering my questions truthfully.”

So there was no carrot to be offered. Only the stick. Nadia shivered. She didn’t know what Mosely would do to her if he strapped her to that table, but she suspected that she would lose a lot of her higher reasoning powers to fear. If she wanted Mosely to incriminate himself, she was going to need her wits about her. Which meant she had to do it before Mosely resorted to torture.

“I ask you again: where did you go last night?”

Taking a deep breath, hoping she was making the right decision, Nadia began laying out the rope she hoped Mosely would hang himself with.

“I went to the Basement to rendezvous with Kurt Bishop.”

Nate was standing on the edge of the rooftop garden at Nadia’s apartment, looking out over the lights of the city. The air was completely still, and he was alone, unsure how he’d gotten there. He was supposed to meet someone, wasn’t he? But he was early. Or maybe late. He looked around, confused, unable to remember. The moon hung full in the sky, its light outshining the city. A giant wasp buzzed around Nate’s head. He batted at it, and it went away for a moment. But seconds later, it was back, flying in circles around his head, buzzing incessantly. He tried again to bat it away, but it had become invisible.

Nate’s eyes cracked open, then quickly closed again in response to the light. He wanted to go back to sleep, but the damn wasp was still buzzing around his head. He opened his eyes again, and realized there was no wasp. He blinked his crusty eyes a couple of times as one by one his brain cells woke up and dragged themselves out of his dream into reality. Reality that included his phone buzzing away on the nightstand.

The buzzing stopped briefly, and sleep tried to drag Nate back down into its clutches. He would have been happy to go, but the phone started up again. He considered grabbing it and throwing it across the room to shut it up so he could get back to sleep.

Cursing the damned piece of technology that was supposedly in “silent” mode, Nate pushed himself up to a sitting position and grabbed it. He pulled his hand back to throw it, but before he did, he noticed the flashing icon that told him he had more than a dozen missed calls. Groggy as he was, the realization still sent a burst of adrenaline through his system. According to the phone, it was just past eight in the morning, and a dozen missed calls at this hour was not a good sign.

Shaking his head in an attempt to clear the fog, Nate answered even though he didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello?” he croaked, using his free hand to rub the grit out of his eyes.

“Nate! Thank God I finally reached you.”

Nate shook his head again, having failed to clear the fog the first time. The voice was familiar, but whatever part of his brain matched voices to names was still asleep. “Who is this?”

“Dante.”

Dante? What the hell was Dante doing calling him? And how’d he even get Nate’s private number? Of course, he was a professional spy in training, so the latter probably wasn’t that much of a mystery.

“What’s going on?” Nate asked as more adrenaline worked its way into his system.

“Nadia’s been arrested.”

The trickle of adrenaline became a flood, and suddenly Nate was wide awake. “What?” He shoved the covers aside as he scrambled to his feet.

“She’s been arrested. It’s all over the news. They took her from her apartment this morning, about an hour ago.”

Nate was already rushing toward his closet, planning to throw on the first clothes he got his hands on. He had promised not to let Mosely hurt Nadia or her family, and he was going to keep that promise. Somehow.

“She’s supposedly been taken to Riker’s Island,” Dante continued. “That’s what the news says, at least. But that’s not where they took her.”

Nate pinched the phone between his face and his shoulder as he struggled his way into a pair of pants. The fingers of his right hand were stiff and swollen, and Nate fought to bend them enough to manage the button and zipper.

“Do you know where they have taken her?”

“Yeah. She’s at the Fortress somewhere.”

“Why?” The Fortress was not a place for prisoners. Its entire purpose was to guard the Replica technology. It was where you went to get your backup scans, if you were privileged enough to warrant them, and where Replicas, like Nate, were made. It hardly seemed like an appropriate place to be taking Nadia after her arrest.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you’re the spy. Find out!”

“I told you, I don’t have that kind of access. I’m still in spy training wheels.”

Nate would have torn into Dante for the flippant words if he didn’t hear the concern behind them. And if he didn’t recognize the same kind of inappropriate wisecrack he was well known for making himself.

“Then how do you know they’ve taken her to the Fortress?”

Dante hesitated a moment. “Because I put a tracker on her last night.”

Nate paused in the act of sticking his arms into a shirt. His swollen fingers curled into a painful fist, and he wished Dante were here in front of him so he could punch the asshole again. Never mind that it would hurt him way more than it would hurt Dante.

“You what?” he growled.

Dante cleared his throat, and sounded unsure of himself for the first time since Nate had met him. “Um, I put a tracker on her. We weren’t sure she wasn’t going to panic and tell Mosely everything. We thought if we could keep track of her movements, we’d, uh, have an early warning if she did something stupid. An insurance policy.”

If Dante was going to be a professional spy, then he needed to learn how to lie better than that. Nate gritted his teeth against the pain as he buttoned his shirt, realizing he should have gone with a pullover to spare himself the effort.

Why would Dante have put a tracker on Nadia? And why would he try to feed Nate this lame explanation? The answer to the latter was obvious: because he didn’t think Nate would like the real one.

Why put a tracker on Nadia? It was an insurance policy, all right. Only not in the sense Dante had suggested.

“You put a tracker on her so that your resistance buddies could find her and kill her if she was captured.”

Dante sighed. “We couldn’t let her talk. We have … people at Riker’s. People who could arrange for something to happen to her before she was questioned. Kurt and I figured if worse came to worst, we’d fess up to our mistakes and our superiors could … make the appropriate arrangements.”

“You set her up to die.” Nate wanted to kill Dante, wanted to pummel his face until it was nothing but a bloody pulp. And then he’d start in on Kurt, for agreeing to this plan.

“I’ve seen what Mosely does to people, Nate. Trust me, she’d be better off dead.”

“One: that wasn’t your call. And two: my name is Nathaniel. Only my friends call me Nate, and you’re not my friend.”

“Fine, Nathaniel. But we have a rather urgent problem right now. Mosely didn’t take Nadia to Riker’s Island, remember? The resistance might have been able to get to her there, but they can’t get to her in the Fortress. I don’t know why Mosely took her there, but it’s not for anything good. If she talks, I’m going to have to swallow this cyanide tablet I’m staring at, because I absolutely can’t allow them to question me. And you’re going to meet with some kind of unfortunate end yourself, because Mosely can’t afford to let you live with what you know.”

Nate shoved his feet into a pair of shoes, not bothering with socks. He knew Dante’s reasoning made a sick sort of sense, but that didn’t make it any more acceptable. Nate cursed himself for ever getting Nadia involved in any of this. Ever since the night of his murder, she’d been stuck between a rock and hard place, and he’d done nothing to make her situation any easier. Hell, he’d done plenty to make it worse.

“I’m going to the Fortress,” Nate announced. “I’m getting Nadia out of there.”

“Oh yeah? How are you going to manage that?”

Nate’s hand tightened on the phone as another surge of anger flowed through him. Dante was so lucky Nate couldn’t reach him right now. Of course, if Dante was telling the truth, he was contemplating suicide, so perhaps he wasn’t really that lucky after all.

“That’s why you called me, isn’t it?” Nate asked instead of answering. “You’re hoping I can get her out of there.”

“Hoping, yeah. But I don’t know what you can do. Mosely isn’t going to let her go just because you tell him to. And if he realizes you know about him, he won’t let you go, either.”

“Well, if everything is so hopeless, you go ahead and take your little pill, and I’ll see you in hell.”

Nate ended the call. He didn’t have time to hold Dante’s hand, nor did he have the inclination. He had to get to the Fortress and find Nadia. He had to save her. He’d promised to protect her.