Chapter #36The View from the Penthouse by: Seuzz   The colors of unconsciousness deepen around you, from blue to violet to black to beyond, into the spectrum on the other side of reality. You are weightless and adrift, feeling that you should be somewhere and doing something, or at least thinking about something other than the fact that you should be thinking about something else. But you can't quite decide on anything, or whether there is anything to decide.
The colors continue to deepen, until even in this other world you can't see them anymore. But your vision refuses to fade completely, and your eyes fill the emptiness with spinning vortices and pinwheels. They drift together and rotate about each other slowly, forming a rough circle. Like the gears of a clock, you vaguely decide.
The circles are very dark, as far from ebony on this side of the spectrum as white is from ebony on the other. But the spaces around them--which are darker still--gradually lighten, passing back into the range of normal color until they are white. Now you are presented with a white disc, and instead of whirling gears it is pocked with craters and seas. It looks very familiar. The Moon? But there's a face in it. The Man in the Moon? But it's your face. The face of Will Prescott?
You'd say yes, but something has been silting up around you while you've been occupied with all the nothingness, and it's obscured that mirror, altering and distorting the face in it. It's still your face, but it's not the face of Will Prescott. You smile as the name and everything that goes with it finally comes to you.
It's the face of Julian Dey.
The mirror turns silvery, then blue, and fades away, returning you in the real world. You're looking into one of the many private apartments of Julian Dey. Meaning that you're looking into one your many private apartments.
Well ...
Not really, and you know it's not really yours, even as you step from Dey's private cloning cylinder and give a quick stretch of your muscles. You know that you're really Will Prescott and that Julian Dey is just a face that you're wearing, same as you'd worn Lucy Vredenburg's and Lydia Rachels' earlier in this crazy adventure. But it's easiest just to ride the swell of Dey's self-satisfaction.
Because you know more than he does about what's going on.
So you smile privately as you go into the main quarters and pull that dressing gown around yourself-- Ungh, the original Dey needs to start exercising more, and he knows it, because it's one of his thoughts that you're having. You dig inside the chest of drawers to pull out a cigarette and lighter, and send a soothing stream of smoke toward the ceiling.
Yes, you know everything that the head of Fane's Project Vulcan knows, plus everything that Will Prescott knows. The quantity of the latter is pitifully small compared to the quantity of the former, but it's enough, you deem, to give you the advantage. And it's a comfort to finally understand everything that's been going on.
Another long pull from the cigarette, this time exhaled through your nose as you smile around the burning weed.
No more questions, only answers. And if you understand now just what a small and trivial cog you were in schemes vast and cool and Alexandrine in their ambitions, well, at least you no longer have to wonder.
One more deep pull from the cigarette, and you drop it in the toilet. You take out silk underwear and socks; comfortable slacks; a t-shirt and a soft white dress shirt; a tan business jacket; and new loafers. Unhurried, you dress. Unhurried, you take another cigarette while tugging your sleeves and settling the creases, peering and smiling through the cloud of smoke at your pale but handsome reflection in the wardrobe mirror. Never mind the jokes about fucking Frank and Joe; Julian Dey likes the ladies; and with the Rolexes (one of which you snap on) and the louche manner and the panther-like power that comes from knowing you could buy and sell a hundred patrons at a time even in the tonier London clubs, Julian Dey can get them. Well, the original, number one Julian Dey can get them. Number twos--which you are pretending to be, the fourth in a line of them, after you shot the second and third--mostly have to content themselves with memories. But they're nice memories, and sometimes number one will generously let his understudies add some for themselves.
Speaking of number twos--
You glance around, but the blood and brains and bone of the last clone have already evaporated. That's the nice thing about magical clones: they clean up so nicely after themselves. But the old clone itself is still sagging next to the duplication cylinder. You sigh at your naiveté in not knowing how to handle it, and dirty your nice new clothes a little more as you drag it back around to the incinerator next to the control board. That's the metal door you'd noticed earlier, and you tap on the keys that open it, to push the corpse into the chute that will carry it to a special fire capable of burning away all the physical and occult traces of it.
You straighten up with a sigh once that is done. It really was lucky that you backed into the duplication chamber. Of course, it's to guard against accidents like that Dey has set it--the one, miniaturized facility containing the only copy of his "PM1" schematics--in this private apartment accessible only to himself and his "number two." So there was double luck in your being able to sneak in behind him.
Which reminds you--
Frank will be trying to trace your movements, and "number two" has been too long about putting in an appearance. You will need to come up with an excuse for shutting down his search.
You button your jacket and march to the door, pressing your fingertips against the pad that is programmed only to admit or allow to exit beings possessing Dey's PM1. The door opens--
And Joe charges through. "What the fuck have you been doing? I've only been banging on that door for ten minutes!"
You stagger back, too startled to remind him that the door and walls are soundproofed.
* * * * *
Joe's eyes dart all about the apartment, and you recognize the signs. He is using one of his simpler techniques--that "shadow piercing" you'd been hearing about--to reveal any and all hidden items or intruders. It seems safest to allow the search, even though it goes against all of Dey's carefully nurtured protocols. But--
"I don't see how he could be in here," you say again.
"I don't either, but it's the only thing that makes sense. I wish we had cameras in here."
"You know why we don't."
"And this is the one time I wish we did." He glances into the duplication chamber.
"Is there a reason you can't explain things to me, Joseph?" you ask. "I'm breaking about five different rules at the moment--"
"Yeah, alright. Let's do it outside, though." He strides to the door, and glowers a little as you have to open it for him. Even then he insists on taking the elevator back up to beta level. Only when you are back under a security camera does he relax a little, though his expression is still very watchful as he takes out his phone. "You see us, Frank? Are we alone? Alright, ring me if you see Prescott." He turns burning eyes on you.
Of course you've a good idea what he's going to say, but you have to play along.
"Prescott's got some kind of unexpected trick. He can turn himself invisible."
You think you do a pretty good impression of Dey showing skeptical surprise.
"Yeah, I know," Joe continues. "But he can, and he's been using it to skulk around in plain sight. The guards let him out when they went to get him, because they looked right through him--"
"How did you figure this out?"
"He's only invisible to eyes, not to security cameras. Frank followed him on the monitors--"
"If he's visible on cameras, why didn't you use the camera in your phone to look for him?"
Joe stares at you, then mutters under his breath as he whips out his phone and scans the corridor through the camera lens. "Well, it might not work anyway. We don't know what we're dealing with, but that's how come number two-- The old number two, why he wanted me to use shadow piercing. He saw Prescott registering on the monitors."
"And when he shot my predecessor?"
"He was in the room, hiding in plain sight."
You let a flintiness come into your eye. "How could you overlook this possibility, Joseph?"
"What possibility?"
"That Prescott is another Stellae."
He turns very red. "The chances of running into one by accident are a billion to one against. To run into two, almost simultaneously--"
"The fact that we ran into one, I now see, should have put us on our guard that there could be more, since running into one is such a rarity. I have the terrible fear, Joseph, that we are being played." You're improvising, letting Deys' instincts run to form. "Frank mentioned that Swann has breached our security. Possibly the Stellae already knew about Prescott and the girl, trained them, have been using them as Trojan horses to get into Vulcan?"
"That's paranoia," Joe says, but he has whitened.
"Paranoia pays, Joseph. Don't you find it odd that the more dangerous of them suddenly came to life once he got here?"
"Patterson would have discovered something like that when he copied Prescott onto one of his agents."
"There are ways of hiding dangerous knowledge from copies." A sudden shock runs through you as soon as the words are out. Why is that thought connected to a live wire in your skull? you wonder.  You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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