“You have kids,” Bryn said. “Two kids.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I won’t,” she said. “Ever. I always wanted kids—two, maybe three. I always wanted a daughter, especially. And you know what I have now? Nothing. A future of survival. Of being twisted into some shape that isn’t human anymore, because you wanted to play God. You want that for them? Don’t you want them to have a life, not a . . . a living death?”
“I want them to be safe,” he said. “That’s what any parent wants for their children. They should become adults first, of course; they have to reach full maturity or the nanites will simply repair them to a permanent childhood. But yes, that’s what I want for them. A future without disease and decay and death. And you know what? Ask any parent who’s watched a child suffer, and they will agree with me.”
How in the hell could a man look so reasonable, so compassionate, and be so wrong? He was endorsing torture and murder, and he didn’t seem to get it.
She wanted to force him to face it, in all the wrong, bloody ways that the nanites seemed to foster. It was all she could do not to pull the trigger and shatter his skull all over the nice, clean kitchen.
And then eat his brain, some part of her whispered, and she gagged on that image.
“You’re going to help us stop it,” Patrick said.
“I won’t.”
“You don’t have a fucking choice, Doctor.” He took the gun from Bryn’s hand and stood up. “Thanks for the tea. Now you’re going to show us to your office, where you’ll give us all the information you have on the Fountain Group, who’s involved, where they are, and anything else you can think of mentioning.”
“Or what?” Reynolds actually crossed his legs and settled back in his chair, and sipped his tea. As if he didn’t have a care in the world. “Or you’ll kill me?”
“Yes,” he said, very calmly. “I’ll kill you quietly, and bury you somewhere your kids won’t see. You’ll just . . . vanish. Maybe the cops will find your rotting corpse, maybe not, but either way, your big, fancy dream ends here, today. You can end with it, or live to see your kids grow up. Your choice.”
“You wouldn’t.”
Patrick gave him a long, still very calm look, and Reynolds flinched and set down his tea. No longer looking all that confident. “Let’s go to your office,” he said. “I really don’t want your kids to be involved, and neither do you. Right?”
When Reynolds didn’t get up immediately, Bryn helped him with a hand under his arm. His muscles tensed, and for half a second he must have thought about trying to yank free, but then good sense prevailed. She walked him—with his tea—out to the wide living room that had a breathtaking view through the windows of a tree-filled valley and river.
“It’s upstairs,” he said. The three of them went up as a tight group, and just before they made the turn Bryn saw the kids’ door open up, and a small face peer out in worry.
“Everything’s okay,” she told the boy, and smiled. “Your dad’s just helping us for a minute. You just stay in there, okay?”
He nodded and shut the door. She hoped he wasn’t—as she would have been at that age—curious enough to try to sneak up and observe what was going on. Better keep an eye out, she thought.
Reynolds kept his study locked up, which was probably wise, and it required a key code to get in. No way to know if what he punched in was the real number, or a secret alert code that would sound alarms yet stay silent in the house . . . probably the latter. She knew Patrick would think of it, too, so she didn’t bother to say it.
“You go with him,” she told Patrick. “I’ll stay out here and keep watch.”
He nodded, probably also understanding that Reynolds’ smug, brazen attitude made her want to rip his throat out—and that was something she was more than capable of doing, even at the best of times now. Reynolds wasn’t inspiring her better angels, not at all. Better if she worked off her tension by watching for unwelcome visitors, and keeping the kids from snooping.
At least we’re remote out here, Bryn thought. She took a moment to look around the house, and something struck her as odd. It was . . . perfect. Movie-set perfect. In fact, even the books seemed artificial, like the sort of things bought by the yard by a set designer, not things people chose for their own reasons. Normally, looking at someone’s bookshelf could give you a sense of who they were, what they believed in . . . even if the person was widely read, there was still some sort of a core to it.
But this . . . It was random books, shelved for appearance and not content.
Bryn left the hallway and went into the first upstairs bedroom. It held a bed, all the normal furniture one would expect, and even a bathrobe draped over the bedpost . . . but when she checked the closet, the clothes were the same as the books—mismatched and not even the same sizes.
The drawers in the bathroom were all empty.
It was a movie set. There were only things set out in plain view.
And these people . . . these people were actors.
Bryn caught her breath on a gasp, whirled, and ran to the kids’ room. She tried the knob. It was locked. She shattered that with a kick.
No kids. There was a room that looked like a department-store illustration of a room a kid would like, with two twin beds.
The window was open. The kids were gone.
Jane stepped out from behind the closet door, smiling. She looked great, in her serial-killer-crazy kind of way. . . . Her smile was lovely, but her eyes were almost totally blank. “If you’re looking for the Stock Theater Kids, we’ve taken them offstage,” she said. “Welcome to the show, Bryn. You’re a natural. You played your part perfectly.”
She was holding a military-quality MP5, a Heckler & Koch machine pistol that Bryn knew would cut her in half at this distance. Wouldn’t kill her, most likely, but it would damn sure put her down for the fight. Jane wasn’t pointing it, but it was an easy swing up and left on the strap, and boom.
So she stayed very still. “Using kids,” she said. “That’s low, Jane. Even for you.”
Jane shrugged. “They’re Revived,” she said. “Not really much risk for them, even if you went Cannibal Queen on them.”
That shook Bryn, deep down, the idea that someone, somewhere, had decided to Revive children. But then, of all the situations where desperate, bereaved people would have paid to have their loved ones brought back, children were the most probable.
And the most awful, because those children would never progress beyond that age. Ten years old, forever. Their brains and bodies were developmentally stalled, and before too long, the child inside would stagnate, twist, become something else, like fruit left too long canned on a shelf. Her revulsion must have shown, because Jane laughed. A hollow kind of a sound, one without any real humor. “Weird that we agree,” she said. “I wouldn’t have done it, either. And we both know there’s not much I won’t do, right? But even for me, there are limits. I might kill a kid, but I wouldn’t be that cruel to one.” Bryn must have twitched, or looked as if she was thinking about killing Jane bare-handed, because Jane’s right hand moved and brought the machine pistol up to a dead aim. “Ah, ah, let’s not fight, sweetheart. I’m enjoying the moment.”
“Where’s Reynolds?”
“Oh, that’s really him upstairs,” Jane said. “He volunteered—of course, we told him it really was all about internal matters, hence his audit spiel. Didn’t see any reason to alarm him with the full details. He set up this place a long time ago, on the off chance Calvin Thorpe decided to turn on us . . . and it’s his only known address, these days, though of course he doesn’t live here. We caught you on facial recognition in California, and an alarm tripped when someone started looking for an address—not either of you. Nice subcontracting, by the way. But still, two and two equals four in this world.”
“Is Reynolds one of the Revived?” Bryn asked. Jane cocked her head a little and raised her eyebrows. “Just wondering.”
“Most of the Fountain Group have taken the treatment.”
“That what they’re calling having a plastic bag over your head and suffocating to death, then crawling out of hell?”
“Well, you know the medical profession. They never tell you the nasty stuff about the procedures ahead of time.” Jane leaned against the wall and gave the room a quick, unimpressed look. “Looks like catalogs had an orgy in here, don’t you think?”
She did. That was actually almost funny, and Bryn had to suppress the smile, but she knew Jane would see the impulse, the micro-twitch at the corners of her mouth. And that made her angry. She did not want Jane to make her laugh. That was more of a violation than Jane making her bleed. “So,” Bryn said. “What now?”
“Now, kiddo, I kill you—temporarily, of course—and go upstairs to get Patrick. If I can take him alive, I will. If not . . . hope you had Paris. Ah, ah, don’t do that. Just don’t.” Jane’s eyes sharpened focus, and the tremor of Bryn’s hand toward her pistol was the focus. “Go for that gun and all this goes south very fast.”
“You just said you were going to kill Patrick.”
“Of course I will, but I’m not cruel. I’d put him into the Revival program. And unlike you, he’d get the right dose of nanite programming, so he’d stay . . . compliant.”
“And me?” Bryn asked. “Because you damn sure know I won’t be compliant.”
“Yeah, I damn sure do,” Jane agreed. “Tell me, have you felt the hunger yet? Gotten your teeth into living skin? Felt the rush of the hunt?” Bryn was silent, and Jane gave her a slow, intimate, greasy smile. “I see you have. Impressive, isn’t it? That human beings could engineer that kind of savagery in, and call it progress. But then, we’ve always been capable of that kind of cognitive dissonance. Killing for God, for the master race, always some kind of bullshit to ease our consciences. Sit down, Bryn. Right there on that model-home bed. Then take your weapons out, two-finger touch—you know the drill. Kick them over to me.”