I count four men and one woman. Dr. Chen, Dr. Gold, Martinez, a grad student working on his PhD, and a guy named Sullivan, who works in accounting. Dr. Anapura is the only woman.
The missing person, the sixth, is standing behind me.
“Solo Plissken,” Tattooed Tommy says, a regretful tone in his voice.
I size up the people facing me. Chen and Anapura are the tough ones. The rest are scared and unsure of themselves.
“Plissken?” Martinez echoes. “As in…?”
“You didn’t know that?” Tommy said. “You are missing out on the good gossip, dude.” He moves around to a spot where I can see him. “Yes, Plissken, ‘as in.’ Dr. Jeffrey Plissken and his lovely wife, Isabel. As in what, three major, groundbreaking, Nobel-bait papers?”
I glare at Tommy. He rips the tape from my mouth.
“Leave my parents out of this,” I say with my first breath.
“He’s a gofer,” Martinez protests. “He runs things through the autoclave.”
Tommy looks at me, as if it’s my job to explain.
“He’s actually quite bright, it turns out,” Tommy says. “His parents had, what, an average IQ in the 170 range? There’s been some reversion to the mean, of course, so I don’t believe bagel boy is quite in that league, but oh, he’s smart. Aren’t you, Solo?”
He leans close, cocky. He’s enjoying performing for his crew. I jerk my head forward hard, a head butt.
I miss. But I make him jump back.
It’s not enough to ruin his triumphant mood.
“How did you find me?” I demand.
“Well, Solo, you come with a few interesting modifications. I assume you know that you were given the same potential to heal as your little girlfriend.”
Of course I know.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I say. Which is a stupid and dorky thing to insist on.
“You haven’t tapped that little piece yet? She’s no great beauty, but she’s cute enough, and she’s got a nice little body.”
“I’d do her,” Dr. Chen says.
Dr. Anapura says, “There’s no need to be sexist, Doctor.”
Tommy is irritated, but he continues. “My guys weren’t that far behind you. Clever, losing them in the fog, but they found where you’d docked. They caught a glimpse of you heading east on the Embarcadero. I know the location of Austin Spiker’s studio. Two plus two. Give me some credit.”
“But you don’t have Eve,” I say.
“Mmm. Not yet. She’d been there but she’s gone. For her own safety we need to find her. So tell me. Where?”
“Will it bother you very much if I say, ‘screw you’?”
He grins. “Kind of expected it. It’s okay. We have your flash drive. And in a few hours we’ll have you doing whatever we like, including getting the girl.”
“You going to beat me?”
“No. We’re going to clone you. Going to make ourselves a whole new Solo. Thanks to the Plissken process, we can transfer—and edit—your memories for implantation in the clone. He’ll tell us.”
“The Plissken process. I’m honored.”
“Oh, it’s not named for you, bagel boy. It’s named for the geniuses who invented it, along with the accelerated cloning process itself.”
He lets it sink in. His eyes are bright with anticipation.
I blink and look away. I don’t mean to.
“Yes, young Plissken, that’s right. That’s the truth of it. Terra Spiker? She’s an A-plus businesswoman, but only a B-minus scientist. Your parents were the brains behind Spiker-Plissken Bio. As it was supposed to be known.” He clucks his tongue. “Your parents would be so disappointed in you. They knew to put science ahead of anything. They knew society’s restrictions are meaningless.”
The others nod heartily. True believers. Acolytes.
Acolytes, not of Terra Spiker, but of my own parents.
“They also knew the profit potential of that kind of power,” Tommy says. “My God, you can’t even begin to imagine it. With their work—and of course the interface designed by their former grad student—we can create humans to order. Do you know what people will pay for that? I mean: O … M … G, Solo! We can create humans from scratch. We can make exact replicas. Or we can let you design your own and make it any age you want, program it any way you want. For a price, you can be God.”
“And we could banish all hatred and evil and genetic disease,” Dr. Chen adds.
Tommy waves a hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, save the world and all that. And make billions of dollars.”
“Make the world a better place,” Dr. Anapura chimes in.
“Right, whatever, let it go, would you?” Tommy says with a sigh.
I hear Tommy. I know what he’s saying. But I can’t move past what he’s said about my own parents.
“My parents,” I say, having no completion for that sentence.
“They were brilliant! They were young gods,” Tommy says. “Terra found out what they were doing, that they were moving beyond mere theory, and she shut them down. She destroyed their work! She wiped their hard drives, burned their papers.”
“Terra destroyed their work,” I repeat.
Tommy throws his hands in the air. “It was a crime! And then of course, she sent Austin after them. And we know how that ended.”
I shake my head. No. I don’t know how that ended.