The agent stared back, eyes cold as iron. “You just fought and died and murdered for four truckloads of Lyle Fontanelle.”
Susan frowned. “It’s all Lyle?”
“This is the accident batch. He imprinted it before they knew how it worked.”
“Hooray!” said Tony, running to the pool and thrusting in his hand. “I’m a llama again!”
“You want to be Lyle?” asked Larry. “He’s a wanted criminal.”
“I don’t care who I am,” said Tony, grabbing his crotch, “as long I get little Tony back.”
“If that lotion gets out…,” said Susan. He paused. “Tony might be the only person in the world who’s happy to be Lyle.” She paused, her mind racing. “The black market for ReBirth is already growing, government crackdown or not. But if that market were suddenly flooded with lotion that nobody wanted, and no one could tell the difference—”
“Then no one would trust the lotion anymore,” said Larry. “They’d stop using it completely, because the only alternative is to turn into Lyle.”
“Lesson learned,” said Susan. “Problem solved. We’ll have a few extra Lyles running around, but no one will ever use ReBirth again. People will destroy every bottle of it they can find.”
“You’re insane,” said the agent, “you can’t do—”
Boom.
Ke-chak.
PART THREE
THE COMMON MAN
37
Friday, August 17
11:22 P.M.
Somewhere in Atlantic City
119 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
“Looking for a date?”
Lyle walked on, keeping his head down. The girl called after him, but not eagerly, and moved on to the next guy after Lyle continued to ignore her. He passed an alley, heard vague scuffling and the thud of a muted punch. He pulled his hood down farther over his eyes and kept walking.
Every dollar he owned was shoved in his shoes and underwear, with just a small roll of bills in his pocket—something to give the muggers to avoid a beating. It was just a couple of bucks, and he looked poor enough. If they ever guessed he had nearly five thousand dollars hidden somewhere on his body he’d be dead.
Of course, if anyone figured out who he really was he’d be as good as dead anyway. NewYew had been tried, convicted, and dissolved, its component parts—those legitimate enough to continue in operation—spread to the four winds and gobbled up by eager cosmetic competition. Every employee the courts could find had been duly punished for their connection to ReBirth, the world’s most popular biological weapon, but the government was hungry for more. They wanted him to make more, but he refused to be a part of it. He wanted to help people who needed it. He’d already given away the last remnants of the lotion he’d taken from Ibis, curing a handful of cancer patients in back-alley deals, and now he needed more. That meant going to the places were ReBirth was still being sold: to parking lots and overpasses and back-alley beauty clinics, asking questions and trying to figure out where the dealers got their lotion from. If he could find more blank ReBirth, he could do more good in the world.…
A car drove by, slowly, and Lyle turned away, pretending to talk on a phone, keeping his back to the street until the car was gone. Hiding from the police had put him in some very dark places, with some very dangerous people.
“You want a date?”
Another girl, barely half a block from the first. Lyle glanced at her, mumbling his refusal, but stopped short when he saw her face. The girl laughed.
“That’s right,” she said, spreading her arms. “Victoria Carver. You ever do a movie star, baby?”
“Where’d you get that?”
“God and my mama.”
Lyle stepped closer. “This is ReBirth,” he whispered. “Where did you get this dose? Where’d you get the DNA?”
“You’re ruining my image, buddy,” the hooker hissed. “Guys like to pretend I’m the real thing, get it?”
“Fine,” said Lyle, “you’re Vicky Carver, just…” Lyle grunted in defeat. What good would it do to track down some random arm of the black market? “Never mind.” He fished in his jeans for his wad of bills and pressed it into her hand. “Sorry.”
She stared at the money in shock, but swore at his back a moment later as he walked away. “Five bucks, huh? What am I, homeless?” Lyle adjusted his hoodie and kept walking.
“Looking for some ReBirth?” The voice was deep, and when Lyle glanced to the side he saw that the speaker was tall and narrow, nearly seven feet, with shadowed features that looked hawklike in the streetlights. “Heard you talking to the lady.”
“Maybe,” said Lyle. He swallowed, wondering if this dealer might finally be the one to give him the info he needed. Belatedly he glanced up the street, as if expecting a cop car to leap out from behind a bush. He looked back at the man. “What do you have?”
“Not saying I have anything,” said the man. His bass voice rumbled. “ReBirth’s illegal, you know that as well as I do.”
“Then why’d you bring it up?”
“Because I might know a guy,” said the man. “Depending on what you’re looking for, anyway.”
