Come on, Lyle, he told himself, you’ve got a backbone now. Use it!
Lilly looked back at him, and he saw something else under the fear in her eyes. Determination. She held his gaze for a moment, Lyle trying desperately to hatch a plan, but they both looked up in shock when Cynthia spoke:
“Send Lyle.”
The general scowled. “What?”
“He’s already a clone,” said Cynthia. “He won’t use the sample on himself, and he’s the one who’s most insistent on saving the Libyan. We can send him for the lotion because we know he’ll bring it back safely.”
Lyle frowned, more scared by Cynthia’s unexpected help than by the other people’s suspicion. Why is she supporting me? What does she want?
“He could betray us for other reasons,” said China.
“I say we send Lilly,” said the general. “She has a deadly disease—she’s not going to clone herself, either.”
“She has a disease she’s determined to live with,” said China. “She might very well clone herself so she can at least stay young forever.”
“Cynthia, then,” said Samoa. “She’s not young or healthy, so she’s even less likely to clone herself, and she supported somebody else instead of trying to go herself. That’s selfless.”
There’s nothing selfless about it, Lyle almost said, she only supported me because she knew it would make you suggest exactly that, but he realized that anything he said to cast suspicion on her would also cast it on him, as the person she’d supported. He looked at her with a subtle shake of his head, and she rewarded him with an even subtler smile of triumph. She outsmarted us again.
“Send them both,” said Mexico. “Lyle and Cynthia.”
“So they can work together?” asked China. “They’re the ones who created it—they’ve known each other for years.”
“And they hate each other,” said Mexico. “Anyone who’s spent any time observing them can see it—look at the look he’s giving her now. They won’t collude against us, and if either of them tries to do anything on their own, the other one will stop it.”
The room was silent a moment while the group pondered. Lyle shot Lilly another glance, wondering what was going to happen—wondering what Cynthia was planning, and who was going to survive it. Lilly looked back, her eyes steady. Whatever it was, she was ready to face it.
I need to be ready, too.
“I agree,” said Samoa. “Send them both.”
“I agree, as well,” said the general. He looked at Lyle and Cynthia. “You go with Dr. Shorey, you get the sample, and you bring it back—and make sure that it comes back. We’ll cure the dying man and keep the rest here, where we can all watch it together, while we decide what to do with it.”
Lyle nodded gravely, watching as Shorey walked to the door and Cynthia followed, purse in hand. She obviously had a plan. He needed a plan of his own, and he had only a short car ride to put it together. They jogged through the afternoon light—still bright, but night was coming soon—and piled into Shorey’s truck. He rubbed his hands together in the cold, and thought through the situation as they drove to the lab in silence.
Both of the women looked as concerned and pensive as he did. Dr. Shorey looked extremely nervous.
What does Cynthia want? Lyle asked himself. She wants power. How will this sample of ReBirth help her to get it? Immortality could be a major trump card, but not for years—if we end up trapped on the island for generations, the deathless matriarch would eventually, inevitably, be the ruler. But she doesn’t want to be herself forever, unless that was another layer of misdirection. Will she try to steal Shorey’s DNA? Will she wait until we get back to the living quarters, and try to steal DNA from one of the other women?
Will she try to steal mine?
Lyle looked at Cynthia’s purse, gripped tightly in her hand and still, he assumed, containing her handgun. Had she been able to reload it since the UN building? Would she try to use it? Immortality wouldn’t help her much if she forced the issue and stole the lotion brazenly—as soon as they rejoined the others they’d know, and they’d throw her in the sturdiest makeshift prison they could create. Or they might just kill her outright—it wasn’t hard to cause enough trauma that ReBirth’s accelerated healing couldn’t keep up with it. She couldn’t regenerate a head. No, whatever Cynthia tried would be subtle and insidious.
The lab loomed before them through the trees, a two-story building with a curving, red-brick front. Several wings and courtyards sprawled out behind it; three tall towers stood in the distance, the local gas tanks, and near them was the recirculated water system that made the island an unlikely Eden. A single army jeep was parked out front. One of the guards? Lyle wondered. Or are the vehicles communal, and that’s what Dr. Broadus drove today?
“I told the soldiers to keep an extra eye on the lab,” said Shorey, parking by the jeep and opening her door. “Looks like that was a good idea.”
“We’re not going to do anything,” said Cynthia, climbing out behind her. “We’re here to get the lotion and take it back, just like they said.”
“You’re the one who told us not to trust you,” said Shorey.
“I’m here because I’m the only one you can trust,” said Cynthia. “Of course I want the lotion, but I want it under specific circumstances that can’t be filled at the moment. It’s in my best interest—more in my interest than in anyone else’s—to preserve the lotion in pristine condition for as long as possible.”
“You really want to steal somebody’s body?” asked Shorey.
“Just the blueprints for it,” said Cynthia. “I don’t know where the real one’s been.”
Shorey grunted and turned to the front door. She doesn’t like her, thought Lyle, but now she trusts her, at least a little. Is that phase one of Cynthia’s plan? To give her word and keep it until the rest of the refugees let their guard down? But let their guard down for what?
One of the island’s four soldiers was waiting in a small, sealed reception area, but Lyle didn’t risk the assumption that he was the only soldier in the building. Shorey showed her ID and filled out the various visitor check-in forms, but did not, Lyle noticed, explain to the soldier why they were there and what they were retrieving. That might be because she trusts us more now, Lyle thought. She’s not immediately telling the guard to arrest us, which is a good sign.
It might also be that she doesn’t trust the guard, Lyle thought, which is a very bad sign. If she’s worried that the man with the gun might do something rash, maybe she doesn’t have the sway over them that I thought she did. That would make one more faction on this already precarious island.
Lyle grimaced and shook his head. I’m just being paranoid. She’s not being tight-lipped as part of a big crazy plot, she’s being tight-lipped because we’re here to remove a contagious substance from the facility, which is probably against every rule they have. There’s no sense volunteering that kind of information.
The guard let them through, and Dr. Shorey brought them to a staging room where they suited up in translucent yellow plastic, including elastic-rimmed bags for their hair and small masks for their mouth and nose. Lyle was pleased that he put it all on more quickly than Cynthia—he’d been in clean labs before—but Shorey stopped him before they proceeded and pulled the hatband down over his ears.
“You don’t want anything getting in your ear canals.”
Lyle frowned. “Is anything likely to?”
“At this level of ‘what’s the worst that could happen,’” said Shorey, “your threshold of overzealous protection should be set to ‘remotely possible.’ If we get all the way to ‘likely,’ you’re already dead.”
Lyle paled. “In that case I want eye protection, too.”
Shorey pulled out three pairs of plastic glasses and handed them around. Last of all they pulled on plastic gloves and booties, and Shorey opened the door to a long hallway. “This is a polarized floor,” said Shorey, leading them forward. “It’s going to pull any lingering particles off your feet and legs, and the walls will be doing the same to your upper body. We’ll pass through a similar one on the way out, plus a chemical trough and a shower that I suggest you treat very seriously.”
