“Doesn’t look like anyone followed us,” he/she said, then turned to Lyle. “You got anything to eat?”
“We’re good,” said the large man, returning from the front room and sliding his pistol back into a holster on his belt. “Nobody else in the house, but a hundred-year-old lady, and she’s not waking up anytime soon. It’s possible they’ve got him bugged more subtly, but I doubt it—if they’d heard us come in, they’d have done something by now.”
“All right, stop,” said Lyle, “everybody stop right now and tell me exactly what’s going on. Susan I know, and if that’s actually Tony, then I … still don’t have any idea what’s going on.” He looked at the large man. “Who are you? And then who are you really?”
“His name is Larry,” said Susan, pulling out one of the kitchen chairs and sitting down. Tony/Cynthia was still rooting through the fridge, one hand keeping the light switch off and the other holding a small flashlight. “Larry was one of our guards at the NewYew prison estate in the Hamptons. Well, I suppose technically he was most of our guards, but this one is the original.”
Larry tipped an imaginary hat. “Nice to meet you.”
“You’re talking about the house from your thing on the news?” Lyle asked. “The police checked that out—there was nothing there.”
“We scattered right after Susan escaped,” said Larry, leaning against the wall.
Lyle’s eyes went wide. “So that was real? I knew NewYew had probably done something to you, but I thought you were in São Tomé with the others—”
“No one was in São Tomé,” said Tony/Cynthia, giving up on the fridge and starting in on the cupboards. “Except maybe Carl; we never saw him with us. They took everyone who’d been compromised by the lotion—all the test subjects, all the factory workers, everyone—and kept us in Cynthia Mummer’s house in the Hamptons. Or my house, I guess, technically, if I wanted to share it with six other Cynthias. Don’t you have any food?”
“There’s probably some cans of something in the side pantry,” said Lyle, pointing at a tall cupboard in the corner, “but … how are you Cynthia? It doesn’t make any sense—you should be me.”
Tony/Cynthia turned on him suddenly, blinding him with the penlight. “What do you mean ‘should be’? You made me into you on purpose?”
“No!” said Lyle, squeezing his eyes shut and holding up his hands defensively. “No, of course it wasn’t on purpose—we didn’t even know what the lotion did until it did it to you. But everything we’ve learned about it since says you should have turned into me, not Cynthia.”
“Back off, Tony,” said Susan, then turned to Lyle. “It did turn him into you, but when NewYew caught up with him they turned him into Cynthia, and they turned some of the others into Jeffrey Montgomery and … the Asian guy, the lawyer.”
“Sunny?”
“Yeah. They had about four or five of each, plus me, and they offered us a million dollars each to help keep them out of jail.”
“How?”
Susan shrugged. “We still don’t know, but that car bomb was probably part of it. Whatever it is, it’s probably still happening—I think Tony here’s the only other one who ran.”
Lyle looked at the woman prowling restlessly through his kitchen, holding a can of SpaghettiOs and slamming drawer after drawer.
“Where’s your damn can opener?”
“Why’d you leave?” asked Lyle.
Tony/Cynthia frowned. “What do you mean?”
“She offered you a million dollars; anyone would have taken that. Why’d you leave?”
“I was going to take it,” he/she said, “but then I went into menopause.” He opened another drawer and peered in. “I figured that hag deserves whatever I can do to her.”
Susan nodded, all business. “When the house evacuated, Larry and Tony ended up in a car together, driving to the new safe house, and started talking.”
“Turned out neither of us was real happy with NewYew,” said Larry, “so we took a wrong turn and disappeared. We did a few drive-bys of the corporate office, kind of staking the place out, making some plans, and we ran into Susan doing the same thing. We started talking, and she insisted that you were the key to bringing them down.”
“We’ve tried every address where I thought you might be hiding,” said Susan. “I’m glad we found you.”
Lyle was still staring at Larry. “So you worked for them?”
“I was part of what we’ll call a ‘private security company,’” said Larry. “We did odd jobs for Cynthia Mummer all the time—anything she couldn’t do above the table. They cloned me because, well, look at me.” He spread his arms and stood up straight; he was well over six feet tall and built like a bear. “I was always the guy nobody wanted to mess with; now nobody wants to mess with any of them.”
Lyle nodded, admitting the point, then waved toward the counter. “Can opener’s in the drawer under the microwave.”
Tony/Cynthia wiggled the can and smiled. “Thanks, man.”
Susan leaned forward. “Larry’s been invaluable, and Tony’s got a pretty wide range of skills. I didn’t think anyone could find a way through the web of security out there, but he’s got chops.”
“So they’re really watching me?” asked Lyle. “I wasn’t sure.”
“They’re everywhere,” said Larry.
“Your block’s got an old irrigation canal running between the backyards,” said Tony, demonstrating the narrow width with his hands. “It’s a foot and a half, maybe two feet wide, full of weeds and junk. A lot of these old neighborhoods have them, from like a hundred years ago, but those geniuses staking out the house didn’t seem to have any idea.”
Susan put her hand on the table, pulling Lyle’s attention back to herself. “We make a good team,” she said, “but you, Lyle; you’re the key. You’ve got to help us bring them down.”
“Bring NewYew down?” asked Lyle. “Like, the whole company?”
“The executives are already in hiding,” said Susan. “But the company, and ReBirth itself, is still active. Everyone else in that car was a duplicate, but they never made a duplicate of you. They thought they were killing the real Lyle, because they know that you’re the only one who can bring them down. You have all the knowledge, all the personal testimony, all the keys to the closets full of skeletons. You can destroy NewYew, you can destroy ReBirth, you can—”
“No,” said Lyle, “I don’t want to destroy ReBirth.”
“What?” asked Susan. Her mouth hung open in disbelief. “Are you serious? After everything they’ve done to us? To you?”
“The company, sure,” said Lyle, “the company’s evil incarnate, but the lotion itself is good. I mean, in theory. It can be used for good things.”
