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their grave, for herself in her confusion, but especially for the life growing
in her womb. It was dizzying. Her world had broken loose of its neat orbit. If
there was a lesson that was it, the oldest lesson: once in motion her
creations had a life of their own.
More of the clones arrived, soaked by the sprinklers, their arms and feet
bleeding from glass, eyes jacked wide with adrenaline, armed with kitchenware
and pieces of the building and industrial garbage.
One gripped a meat cleaver. Miranda recognized its beat-up wood handle and
leather loop. It came from the bone lab. Without knowing it, the clones had
found their own remains.
Eesho raised his axe. She wanted to plead for her child. Too late. She
signified everything that was evil to him. Even if she could have spoken his
language, there was no arguing with that. Her womb and fertility were simply
one more malignancy to be chopped down.
The moment slowed. He was bellowing at her, some curse or justification. His
words turned to slurry.
Every detail sharpened. She saw the veins on his forehead and raised one arm
to try ward away the axe.
She couldn t take her eyes away from it. The axe blade reached its apogee. And
stopped. Beneath the ugly honking alarm, there was a sudden, absurd,
merryping.
Eesho looked up. The doors slid open behind her. Miranda tumbled backward. The
elevator car was dry and dimly lighted. Miranda scuttled back from the
clones& and struck the legs of a man inside.
His face took her breath, a ripped, sewn rag of a face. He peered down with
reptilian detachment, then
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looked out at the other clones, their hair and beards slicked flat with the
synthetic rain. They had her.
He laid one hand on her head and cocked her face back to look more closely.
Miranda, he uttered, and patted her head. She belonged to him now.
She had never met Ben, had refused in fact. But she knew him. Like the rest of
Los Alamos, she had become familiar with his fright mask of scar tissue. Of
all their monsters, it was he who had best suited their dread and most excused
the pains they inflicted. His was the least human of faces. But he had been
Nathan Lee s favorite, and he knew her name somehow. What had Nathan Lee told
him?
Eesho burst into an angry tirade. Ben answered him sternly. She didn t
understand a word. The alarms throbbed like a giant heartbeat. The strobes
lashed them. They looked like creatures etched by lightning, lurid, then
shadowy, flickering in and out of existence. They craned to hear Ben. He
seemed to be countering Eesho s ultimatums with a choice of some kind.
At last a man stepped forward from the bunched crowd. Eesho tried to block him
from entering the elevator, and the man went around him. Another approached.
Eesho grabbed his arm, and the man shoved him to the ground. One by one, they
edged around him.
The smell of sweat and chemicals filled the car. They jostled to make room.
The sudden peace was almost ludicrous to her. They contradicted themselves,
full of rage one instant, sober and patient the next.
As the doors closed, only Eesho remained out there, still bellowing at them
from the shadows. The noise shut away.
For a moment, the elevator didn t move. Ben carefully, studiously pressed the
button for the first floor.
Nathan Lee had trained him well. The gesture wasn t lost on the others. He was
guiding them out of here.
The ride was short. She squeezed into the back corner. No one said a word. For
a minute, they were all just fellow passengers.
The car came to a halt.
Even as the doors opened, Miranda saw bodies lying in a row on the lobby
floor, and their pile of ugly, makeshift weapons. At a small distance, hidden
behind columns and scarred riot shields, soldiers were pointing their guns at
the mouth of the elevator. Cut the power, she heard a man shout. Lock it
open.
We got a full load this time.
The light inside the elevator went out.
Ben! the voice called. You in there? Is he in there? I can t see.
With a shout, the clones pressed to the sides of the elevator car, shoving
backward from the doors, trapping Miranda behind them. She was tall, and could
see over their shoulders and between their heads.
The lobby was so bright. It was blinding at first.
The entrance to Alpha Lab faced due east. The winter sun was just rising, its
rays glancing straight in.
Now she saw a throng of people in front of the building, out in the parking
lot. They looked like figures made of light, walking back and forth, keeping
vigil, waiting.
The world assembled in an instant. The convoy must have turned around. Her
city had returned!
Ben. A shout. What you got? Bring them out. One at a time. No running.
Don t need more blood. Tell
em.
He can t understand English, someone complained.
Some, he does.
The bodies on the floor were clones, she comprehended, hogtied, face down,
hands and feet cinched with plastic ties. One lay crumpled and still in a wide
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pool of blood. The lobby reeked of cordite and riot gas. It came to her. The
soldiers were putting down a prison break. One floor at a time, they were
flushing out the sub-basements, repossessing the building, and Ben was
helping. He was their worm on a hook, drawing their monsters up from the deep.
Out in the lobby, the mood grew tense. Shoot one, a soldier recommended.
They ll come.
Don t, called Miranda.
The lobby fell silent.
Miranda? This new voice was old. Worn out. Thrown too hard, too long. The
Captain must have been searching all night for her.
Captain. She kept her tone calm.
The Captain appeared from behind a column. Hold fire. Not one shot. He wore
a riot helmet with the visor up, his long hair hanging down his shoulders. His
hair looked white this morning. Can you run? he asked.
With one step, she could have left her captors behind. They would be returned
to their cells. The violent strays like Eesho would be rounded up. It could be
over.
Their escape was finished, and they knew it. She saw Ben s eyes on the far
side of the car, watching her.
There was no fear in his eyes, only hope, though not a desperate hope. He
looked reconciled to whatever came next. He spoke, and the others moved out of
her way.
It struck Miranda. He had been handpicked by Nathan Lee and coached to guide
his comrades away from Los Alamos. Instead, he d stayed. The fugitive had
chosen to collaborate with his captors& to go searching for her. He had put
himself at risk& to save her. But why? She chased the thought. Before
descending to his death, Nathan Lee must have sought Ben out. It made perfect
sense. Of all people, he would have chosen this wanderer, this sphinx-like
escapee, in whom to confide his decision. Whatever it was they had talked
about, Ben had shaped it into a promise. To her. And then she realized& to her
child.Nathan Lee s child. That was the heart of it.
She stepped from the elevator. Move to your left, the Captain told her.
You re in the line of fire.
She looked back at the elevator, and saw the fury of their battling. The wall
and metal frame were torn with bullet holes. Blood streaked the ceiling.
Further up the hallway, one of the clones had tried leaping through a
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