Twinmaker

65

CLAIR COUNTED THE time as it passed. Sixty seconds per minute. Sixty minutes per hour. It was like meditation. Motion was hard to track underwater, but deep in a primal part of her, the part that had evolved with an innate sense of movement and momentum, she knew that she was being propelled ever nearer to her destination.

When she wasn’t counting, she was thinking. And what she was thinking about were the two heavy bags Gemma had carried with her into the submarine. It was clear they contained supplies of some kind, but it wasn’t food, or else they would have been opened on the train. They clanked. She didn’t think it was bottles of cider to bribe Ant Wallace with.

Fight, Turner had said.

The more she thought about the bags, the more certain she was that she had made a grave tactical error.

“Where’s Turner?” she asked Jesse in a whisper.

“Forward, I think. Why?”

“‘Direct action,’” she said, quoting the phrase that Jesse had asked Turner to clarify, back at the Farmhouse. “He never said what that meant. What if he’s using me as cover in order to get close to VIA and do something stupid?”

“Like what?”

She didn’t know, but those bags could hold a lot of guns, grenades, or god only knew what.

“If he does do anything,” Jesse said, “VIA will never help us.”

“I know, but perhaps that’s a small price to pay from Turner’s point of view.”

Clair could see it all too easily. Turner, fighting a decades-long war against d-mat, had come out of hiding . . . for what? To help save a few lost girls? Was it more likely he was intending a suicide run that would strike right at the heart of his enemy—and destroy his mutated genes in the bargain?

“Do you think Gemma knows?” asked Jesse.

“If she does, she’s not talking.” Gemma seemed tense, but she always seemed tense. “She wouldn’t want to sabotage the plan, though. Improvement killed her son, remember?”

Jesse nodded.

Clair leaned out into the narrow corridor and saw Ray nearby.

“Tell Turner to come back here,” she said. “I need to talk to him. It’s urgent.”

Ray nodded, and a minute later the leader of WHOLE joined them.

“What is it?”

“Change of plan,” she said. “I want you to drop me and Jesse off early.”

Both Turner and Jesse looked at her in surprise.

“Why?” Turner asked.

She kept her voice steady, even though inside her doubts were stirring. This was the right thing, wasn’t it? This wasn’t some other mind in hers, trying to sabotage the mission?

She could only let the facts speak for themselves.

“One,” she said, “we’re being too predictable. That makes it easier for the dupes if they decide to spring anything on us that might look like an accident. Also, it’s bad for ratings, me being down here instead of up there. Shaking things up will only keep people more interested.

“Two, if we stay together like this, and we are intercepted, there goes our only shot. By splitting up, we double the odds in our favor. I’ll have the ratings, and you’ll have the body. Someone wants to stop us, they’ll have to take us both out.”

Turner was nodding slowly.

“Where?” he asked.

“Brooklyn Heights is closest,” she said, “and the most photogenic. It’s also less obvious than the Thirty-fourth Street docks. I know it’s farther, but it’s not as if we have to walk or anything. We can fab something that will probably get us there quicker than you will through all those old tunnels.”

“The two of you?” Turner asked. When both of them nodded, he said, “I’d feel happier if Ray went with you. Just in case.”

“And you can keep the drone,” Clair conceded.

He nodded again. They understood each other. Ray would keep an eye on Clair and Jesse, while Q kept an eye on Turner when the submarine surfaced under VIA. They might be temporarily on the same side, but that didn’t mean they trusted each other.

“It’s a good plan,” he said. “I’ll go tell the pilot we’re changing course.”

Jesse waited until he had gone before whispering, “Are you sure about this?”

“Positive,” she said. “Ask yourself who’s going to look like more of a threat: a bunch of walk-ins from the sticks or a sub full of well-armed terrorists?”

“You really think someone’s going to try something, even with everyone watching?”

“I think there’s a chance, and I don’t want to be sitting in here waiting for the torpedoes to arrive.”

Jesse looked around them and nodded grimly as though only now feeling the water pressing in on them.

“Our job is to get there before Turner does,” she said. “We’ll never get a second chance.”

The sub shifted underfoot.

“We’re changing course,” Jesse said, fingers tapping rhythmically against his leg. “Surface in half an hour.”

Clair closed her eyes and resumed counting.