Replica

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Mosely didn’t leave Nadia alone for long. Dread weighed down her shoulders as she heard his footsteps approaching the room. She glanced at the ominous table waiting for her. She was running out of time, and Mosely hadn’t said anything incriminating yet. Not anything she could use to blackmail him into letting her go, not even anything that would help her get her posthumous revenge. She had to get him talking, and fast.

But when Mosely returned, it was clear that he was through talking.

The moment he stepped through the door, he marched toward Nadia with a purpose. Whatever purpose that was, Nadia knew she wouldn’t like it. Instinct screamed at her to flee, but of course, she couldn’t go anywhere. That didn’t stop her from trying.

Nadia leapt to her feet, but fear made her clumsy, and her feet tangled with the legs of the chair. She almost fell, but managed to right herself and kick the chair in Mosely’s direction. Like the flimsy plastic had any chance of stopping Mosely’s advance.

Mosely batted it out of his way with annoyance as Nadia moved as far away from him as the handcuffs would allow. She made a feeble effort to slip her hand through the circle of the cuff, but it was firmly secured, and even scraping a few layers of skin off wouldn’t help.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said as Mosely withdrew something from his pocket. Something that gave off a little blue spark. “I’ll tell you everything. I’ll tell you the truth, I swear it.” Surely there was some way she could salvage the situation. Some way she could make her lies more convincing. After all, the ratio of lies to truth wasn’t all that high. If she could just get Mosely to focus his questioning on the parts of her story where she could afford to tell the truth …

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that, Miss Lake,” Mosely said with what sounded almost like regret. Then he lunged forward, covering the distance between them in two quick strides, and jabbed the stunner into her belly.

A shrill scream escaped Nadia’s lips as pain ripped through her whole body and she lost control of her limbs. Her knees buckled, and she crashed to the floor. She was still cuffed to the table, so the fall wrenched her shoulder and she landed awkwardly. She tried to move, tried to at least turn so her arm was in a more natural position, but her brain’s commands to her body went unheeded.

“Nathaniel is coming to your rescue,” Mosely said as he unlocked the cuff around her wrist, letting her arm flop to the floor. He used his foot to turn her over onto her stomach, and there was nothing she could do to stop him.

Mosely squatted beside her. “There is no earthly way he could know you were here in the Fortress.”

The Fortress? But she was at Riker’s Island, not the Fortress. At least, that was what she’d thought. But of course she’d been in a van with no windows, and while Mosely had dragged her through multiple security checkpoints, she’d never seen any sign of other prisoners, or even of any cells.

“But he seems to have found you against all odds,” Mosely continued. “Which suggests that someone planted a tracker on you.” He moved her hair aside, brushing it away from the back of her neck. “Well, what do you know?” Nadia felt the scrape of a fingernail against the skin at the back of her neck. “Right where I train my people to put it.”

Nadia remembered how Dante had helped her with the wig last night. She’d had no idea how to put it on or how to keep her hair out of the way. She’d let Dante take care of everything, and he’d even helped her take the damn thing off. Apparently, he’d had an ulterior motive.

“You’ve been withholding information from me, haven’t you, Miss Lake?”

Nadia’s lips and tongue felt thick and numb, and she didn’t think Mosely was expecting an answer. He flipped her over onto her back. Nadia tried again to move, with no greater success. Mosely stood, then leaned down and hauled her limp body up over his shoulder, carrying her toward the dreaded table. And Nadia was helpless to resist, couldn’t even force herself to struggle.

Mosely dumped her on the table. He wasn’t being careful about it, so the back of her head thumped against the edge. The blow made her see stars, and she thought she was going to pass out. Not that passing out sounded like a bad idea. She’d rather not be awake for whatever was going to happen next.

“And here I thought I was going to have to arrange a convenient accident for him,” Mosely continued, somewhat out of breath from the strain of carrying her. He didn’t have that potbelly because of his physical fitness. He straightened Nadia out on the table, dragging her into its center and positioning her where the restraints could hold her.

Nadia stared up at the saws and drills and blades and vowed to herself that no matter what Mosely did to her, she would not betray Dante and the resistance. It took a massive effort, but Nadia was able to turn her head to the side so she could stare at Mosely instead of the implements that loomed over her. The motion meant that she was starting to regain control of her body, but it was too little, too late. Mosely had already fastened restraints on both her wrists and was now moving down to her ankles. She breathed as deeply as she could and mined her psyche for every drop of anger she could find. She had never before hated anyone like she hated Dirk Mosely, and she tapped into that hatred to help her chase away the fear even as Mosely fastened the restraints around her ankles.

The rush of hatred was indeed helping Nadia control her terror, and she finally absorbed what Mosely was saying: Nate was coming for her. And Mosely wanted him to come.

Mosely tugged on the ankle restraints to make sure they were secure, then came back up to the head of the table. His left hand came down on her throat, fingers digging into her jaw as he used the pressure from his palm to hold her down.

“Thank you for confirming my suspicion that Nathaniel was with you last night. And that you did indeed encounter Mr. Bishop.”

The pressure of Mosely’s fingers forced her jaws open, and Mosely crammed a foul-tasting rubber mouthpiece in. The ends of the mouthpiece went far enough back that Nadia gagged, but Mosely didn’t relent. He lifted her head and wrapped some kind of strap around the back, securing the mouthpiece in place. Tears of misery trickled down the sides of her face and into her ears as she realized she’d lost her last chance of talking her way out of this. Though she was puzzled as to how Mosely was going to get the information he wanted out of her if she couldn’t talk.

Mosely stepped back from the table and admired his handiwork. Then he shook his head. “Who knew a little girl and her playboy boyfriend would be so much damn trouble?”

The door to the interrogation room slammed open. Nadia craned to see what was happening, but Mosely was blocking her view of the door.

“Please do come in, Nathaniel,” Mosely said without turning around. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

Nadia tried to shout a warning around the mouthpiece, but of course all that came out was an unintelligible grunt. Not that she thought Nate would run even if he knew he was walking into a trap. Her heart ached at the knowledge that she was at least partially responsible for the sequence of events that was leading up to Nate’s second murder.

“Let her go!” Nate said in a voice rich with authority. As if he expected Mosely to obey.

Mosely smiled, finally turning around to face Nate. As he did so, he moved to the side just enough that Nadia could see Nate, standing a few feet inside the room. She could also see that a pair of security officers were flanking the door behind him. And that both had drawn their weapons. Nadia couldn’t shout a warning, but when she caught Nate’s eye, she jerked her chin and rolled her eyes toward the guards. He glanced over his shoulder and saw them.

He looked surprisingly unalarmed when he turned back. “Let Nadia go,” he said again. “You’ve already ruined her life. You can let her go, and no one will believe her—or even care—if she starts spreading stories about you. Like that you killed me with your own hand.”

Mosely chuckled, sounding genuinely amused. “It’s amazing to me that you can make such a big show of being worldly and dissolute, and yet you remain so charmingly naive. Why should I take that chance?”

“Because I know where Bishop is. I don’t suppose you’d have Nadia strapped to that table if you’d gotten the answers to all your questions. Let her go, and I’ll tell you everything.”

Nadia made a choking sound of protest, though in truth she didn’t believe Nate was going to follow through on his promise. He would do everything he could to save her, but he wouldn’t give up Bishop. His emotions about Bishop might be pretty jumbled right now, but Nate was loyal to a fault. He just didn’t have it in him to betray anyone.

Mosely shook his head. “You’re operating on the assumption that I won’t be able to extract those answers from Miss Lake anyway.”

“Maybe you would, but she’s a lot tougher than you’ve given her credit for. Getting answers from her would take time. And you have to know that answers given under duress aren’t reliable. By the time you get what you need out of her, Bishop will have moved on.”

“You might as well save your breath, Nathaniel,” Mosely said, glancing at his watch for some reason. “You think you know so much, but you have no idea what’s going on.”

“Are you late for a meeting? Because I wouldn’t want to keep you or anything.”

Mosely smiled. “Just trying to calculate how much longer we have before your father arrives.”

“My father’s coming?”

“Yes. He insists on being here in person for … what comes next.”

Nate’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and he couldn’t hide his horror. “When you kill me, you mean. Like you did on the night of the reception.”

“Your father is a great man. He’s willing to make whatever sacrifices are necessary for the greater good of his state. If it makes you feel any better, ordering your death tore him up inside, even knowing he would have you back. And he wouldn’t have insisted I wait for him if he didn’t regret what we’ll be forced to do.”

Nadia’s heart leapt as she realized that Mosely had finally said something that could get him in trouble. He had as much as admitted to killing Nate. And he’d incriminated the Chairman, too! It was a little tenuous, the admission not as clear as she’d like. But it might give her some leverage—if only she could speak to let him know his words had been captured for posterity. She pushed on the mouthpiece with her tongue, moving her head around in an attempt to loosen the strap that held it in place. But the damned thing wasn’t budging.

“Perhaps when you’re older and more mature,” Mosely went on, “your father will trust you with Thea’s secrets. But everything you’ve done since your Replica was animated proves that you can’t be trusted with them yet. You will tilt at windmills without once considering the cost.”

“And what about the cost we pay for Thea?” Nate asked. “Have you ever considered that?”

Nadia lay still. She wasn’t having any success ridding herself of the mouthpiece, and she didn’t want to risk drawing Mosely’s attention. Nate was fishing, trying to get Mosely to explain whatever the big secret about Thea was. And since Mosely thought Bishop had overheard everything and by now shared it with Nate, he didn’t know he had anything to hide.

“Only a starry-eyed idealist like you would consider a handful of hardened criminals and Basement-dwellers here and there a significant cost. Not for what Thea gives us in return.”

“Yeah, she made it possible for my dad to murder me without losing his heir. I can see how that’s a big benefit to society.”

“Do you know how much of our gross national product comes from the technology that Thea makes possible? We might not have produced many actual Replicas, but the revenue from providing backup services alone provides power and food and shelter to keep our state thriving. If we stopped feeding her, she’d refuse to make the backups and we’d be bankrupt in a matter of weeks. But of course you don’t care about that as long as we do what you think is the ‘right thing.’”

Feed Thea? Nadia remembered Mosely’s offhand comment about criminals and Basement-dwellers, and when she put the two together, she came up with a pretty revolting image. Her stomach turned over, and Nate looked a little pale. He’d come in here brimming with confidence—or at least doing a very good job of pretending—and he’d bluffed his way through the conversation so far with aplomb.

Mosely must have noticed the pallor of Nate’s face and made the correct assumption as to what it meant. He muttered something under his breath that Nadia felt sure was a curse of some kind.

“You didn’t know, did you?” he said aloud, shaking his head at Nate.

“No,” Nate admitted, his face still pale even as he tried to look triumphant. “Bishop didn’t hear anything you and the Chairman were talking about, except the name Thea.” He composed himself a little more, shaking off the horror. “So you’re actually feeding criminals and Basement-dwellers to Thea. How does that work, exactly? Thea’s just a machine.”

Mosely looked at his watch again with impatience.

“Your plan is to kill me and Nadia both, isn’t it?” Nate asked, then continued without waiting for an answer. “If that’s the case, then what’s the harm of explaining while you wait for my dad to come give you the official order?”

Mosely eyed him. “Fine. Yes, Thea is a machine, and we aren’t literally feeding her. She was developed as a research tool.” Mosely turned his back on Nate and walked over to the table on which Nadia lay. He reached above his head and flipped a switch. A low mechanical hum sounded, and Nadia’s body was suddenly bathed in spotlights. One of the spotlights shone directly in her eyes, and she had to close them.

Nate yelled, and there was the sound of scuffling. Nadia turned her head and cracked her eyes open to see Nate lying facedown on the floor while one of the security officers held him down and slapped handcuffs on him. Even with her head turned, the lights were unbearably bright and she had to close her eyes again.

“More specifically,” Mosely continued, “she was developed to research the human body.”

Nadia heard Mosely move to the head of the table and heard him flipping more switches. She tried to open her eyes to see what was happening, to see if one of those evil attachments was moving toward her, but the blinding lights wouldn’t let her.

“Don’t you dare hurt her!” Nate bellowed, but Mosely ignored him.

“Obviously, she far exceeded our expectations when she succeeded in creating exact Replicas of human beings. She can re-create a body down to the tiniest mole and scar, as you already know. But because she was developed for research, continuing to learn more has always been a driving need for her.”

“It is my raison d’être,” a female voice said from somewhere above Nadia’s head. She couldn’t open her eyes to see, but instinct told her the voice had come from the apparatus that she was currently strapped to. Thea herself.

“Indeed,” Mosely said.

“That’s Thea?” Nate asked.

“It’s connected to her. The servers that house her are a few rooms down, but we’ve given her the connectivity she needs to operate.”

“To further my research,” Thea clarified.

“What kind of research?” Nate asked.

Nadia tried again to find a way to spit out the mouthpiece that kept her from talking. She now had more than enough damning, sensitive information captured to put some serious leverage on her side. But that leverage did no good if no one knew she had it. The idea that she might get her revenge after she and Nate both died at Mosely’s hands was not as much of a comfort as she’d hoped.

“I am trying to understand the human brain,” Thea answered. “I can copy it in its entirety, but I have yet to understand fully how it functions in connection to the rest of the body. I cannot separate mind from body.”

Thea was just a glorified computer program, with a computer-generated voice, but Nadia could have sworn she heard a hint of frustration in that voice.

“Why would you want to do that?” Nate asked.

“Because if she can separate mind from body, then she can create the Replica of a human mind in any body she wants,” said Chairman Hayes.

Nadia risked another quick blink and saw that the Chairman had arrived and was facing off with Nate, who had been dragged back to his feet by the security officers.

“For instance,” Thea continued, “I still have in storage the very first backup scan I ever made of our beloved Chairman. When his body fails, I could theoretically create a Replica from the old backup, despite your silly human laws.” Human laws that prohibited the use of Replicas in the case of death by natural causes. “But it would be missing all the years of growth and learning and memory that had happened since that scan. When I am able to isolate the mind from the body, I will be able to create a Replica of the Chairman with his current mind and his forty-year-old body.”

“It’s the key to immortality, Nate,” the Chairman said to his son, as if there were no one else in the room. “Thanks to Thea and the important research she’s doing, I will be able to live forever, with Thea creating a new, younger body for me whenever my current one wears out. And you and everyone you love throughout your lifetime can live forever, too.”