THE WARNING
MICHELLE LOWE
Copyright © 2011 by Michelle Lowe
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-1463517724
ISBN-10: 1463517726.
Smashwords Edition
PROLOGUE
In his dream, he had a new life. In his dream, he became human.
Alpha Replica model 3007 woke to the piercing sound of an alarm. The dream-world around him dissolved by the time he opened his pale gray eyes and came fully awake. He was designed to wake from the deepest slumber at a snap of the fingers. Nineteen other Replicas rose from their beds and straightened the thin sheets. They slept in one large room with nothing more than a bed and a dresser apiece.
Once he tucked in his paper-thin sheet, Seven went to his dresser next to the bed. He pulled out a light gray shirt, white socks, undershirt, boxers, and gray pants. Several other identical and neatly folded outfits filled his dresser.
He pulled the shirt over his hairless chest and slipped his feet into a pair of black slippers. Like the others—all without any hair on their bodies, regardless of gender—Seven was as hairless as a beach ball.
Tall, muscular, and with kind eyes framed by a hard, chiseled face, he mimicked the exact features of the soldier he’d been copied from. He looked at his fellow Replicas and a warm but frightening feeling came over him. Since their return from the Iraqi War, they have never been parted. That would change by day’s end.
Once dressed, he joined the other Replicas standing beside their beds, hands clasped behind his back until the double doors slid open.
Each of them marched down the narrow hall, passing a room enclosed by glass. Inside, technicians studied different parts cloned from a human body. One of them had a pair of eyeballs on his desk with wires connecting the optic nerves to a computer. The eyes moved, looking at everything. Another had a severed arm clamped in an aluminum vise propped in an upright position. She shot tennis balls at it, testing its reflexes as it caught each ball.
In an adjacent room people studied bone density. One man bashed a skull against a rock, proving the bone was stronger when it left deep scratches on the stone. Seven was envious of that level of bone strength.
The hall opened into a large room where the Alphas walked over a catwalk. The Programming Room was where Replicas endured two stages of reconstruction applied to the four sections of their brain. Stripping the brain bare was the first stage; the second was infusing thought processes into it. After their so-called “birth”, they were injected with barbiturates to induce a coma before being put into storage for a year. After that year they’d reached adolescence, and were ready for the first stage of their programming. Once they grew into their physical prime—one year later—the second stage of programming began. The program included training on how to fight, track and use any type of machines and weaponry. Seven secretly referred to the programming as “mind rape”.
As they walked across the catwalk, he looked at the three fully developed clones lying on steel recliners thirty feet below with plugs penetrating their temples. They were the Betas, the next generation of Replicas.
Beside each Beta was a computer programming data into their heads. Seven remembered his day on that steel recliner, although he shouldn’t have. It would have been the equivalent of an infant remembering its emergence from the womb.
But he remembered it; he remembered being born. Seven knew he wasn’t alone in his independent thought. He’d learned over the years that nearly every Alpha had questions and dreams, yet they knew how dangerous it was to share them.
He’d once asked his creator, Doctor Linden, about it and it had almost caused his execution. He’d quickly turned the story around, saying he’d only wondered if it was possible to remember the programming process.
From that point on Seven kept his questions to himself, aware that if he asked anything again, he’d be lead down to the Pit where defective models were shot and shoved into industrial-sized furnaces to be incinerated.
He learned something else that day: how to lie. It wasn’t something Replicas were supposed to do.
In 2009, the President ordered that Replicas had to be kept on a tight leash. So on the first of each month, the Replicas were injected with a silver tracking chemical. The method was more effective than placing a tracking device somewhere under the skin where it could be excised.
Seven sat on a cold steel chair, waiting for the needle. With him sat Nine and Twenty. A technician approached from the side, holding the 25ml hypodermic. The needle itself was four inches long, and when it penetrated Seven’s arm, he screamed inside. The needle prick, though, felt the least painful; the burning serum that traveled through his veins like liquid fire tore into his nerves.
On the outside, he showed no emotion. Inside, though, he owned a treehouse with a sign reading No scientists allowed. In his mind, he lived and dreamt of a world other than this one.
The automatic doors slid apart and the founder of the Artificial Life Development walked in. “Good morning, Seven, Nine, Twenty.”
“Good morning, Doctor Linden,” they replied simultaneously.
Linden stood, stroking his neatly trimmed beard. “You three are part of my first triumph. You’ve served your country during wartime, but now your time has passed. We have newer models to take your place.” His voice was as cold as the steel in the room. “We’ve come a long way since the day you were created and we no longer have room for you now.”
Seven’s toes curled inside his slippers. None of them said anything. They only listened indifferently as if Linden were speaking to inanimate objects.
Linden went on. “This will be your last month. In November, each of you will be taken to the Pit for execution.”
Without another word, he left.
“I can’t believe he broke the news to them like that,” one of the technicians said. “He acted like he was talking to a toaster.”
“So? These things aren’t like us. They don’t have feelings. Don’t think because they look like a person that they share our emotions.”
Seven blinked.
The Alphas gathered in the yard where they could speak to one another freely, although discreetly.
“What are we going to do?” Ten asked. “They’ll kill us all.”
“Be quiet,” snapped Fourteen. “Don’t draw attention.”
Although safe in the yard, cameras still rolled and they could pick up any emotion not usually expressed by the Replicas. That would cause suspicion, which would lead to questioning, and not all Replicas possessed the ability to lie like Seven.
“I think we should overpower them,” suggested Fifteen. “They’re nothing against our strength.”
“That wouldn’t be wise,” Seven warned. “They have the Betas to protect them now, and we don’t have their strength.”
“What do you suggest?” asked Six. “That we do nothing? That we allow them to take us to the Pit?”
“Certainly not. There’s a way to escape.”
“How?” Nine asked.
Seven had waited a lifetime for this moment.
“There is a matter that concerns us.” He told them about the secret he’d learned not long ago and what would be required to prevent it from happening.
“Why should we care?” Ten challenged. “Humans aren’t our responsibility.”
“I concur,” Thirteen spoke up. “If there is a way out, I think we should get as far away from this place as we can.”
Seven glared at her. “If you want to run, I can’t stop you.”
“How did you find this out?” Five asked.
“It’s not safe to discuss it now. When we regroup, I’ll tell you.”
“What’s your plan?” Eleven inquired.
“There’s a sewer drain just outside the north wall, large enough for us to fit through.”
“The north wall? That surrounds the yard where the fitness center is,” Twelve offered unhelpfully.
“Indeed.”
“How are we supposed to sneak over the wall without being noticed?”
“We can’t; it’s impossible,” Seven said grimly. “We’ll run.”
“Run?”
“Yes, we’ll run out of the gymnasium and not stop until we’ve jumped the wall. Once we’re on the other side, we’ll go into the sewer drain and disappear.”
“What about the tracking?” someone in the back posed. “We can’t wait until the end of the month for it to wear out.”
“We don’t wait,” Seven said. “We’ll burn it up with exertion and bleed what we can out.”
“We could die.”
True. In fact, he expected some of them would die. But the risk of injury didn’t concern him. He scanned each of their faces. This would be their first mission without human direction, and he wondered if they could handle it. “I’ll need those of you who survive to be there when I need you. Are you willing to stand by me?”
“When should we do this?” Eighteen asked. “Most of us are scheduled for execution before November.”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight?” Nine asked.
Seven nodded. “Yes.”
“I’m with you,” Nine said.
* * * * *
Dozens of closed-circuit television screens walled the inside of a circular room. Linden and a tall, slender African-American woman watched the Replicas.
“What do you think they’re talking about?” Doctor Waver asked nasally.
“About their execution, I imagine,” he replied.
“Do you think they’ll try to escape? Or maybe rebel?”
Linden shook his head. “No. They have no fear of death. They don’t even know what it is. Without that, there’s no need for them to panic. They’re programmed puppets, nothing more.”
David Linden was sixty-six and a scientist of stem-cell research. As a young man he wanted to create humans with ten times the amount of strength and speed of any natural born person. He built his own laboratory in the basement of his late father’s estate to work in private. If word had leaked about his project, he would have been the target of pro-life fanatics and arrested for federal crimes.
Linden left the monitoring room and went to his office. On his way, he thought about what he’d said to Loren Waver. He didn’t really believe it himself. He recalled what Seven had told him about remembering the day of his programming. It made Linden wonder if there was more to Seven and the other Alpha series than he first believed. If humanity was stored within the clones it would make them the perfect subjects for his experiment.
He entered his office, where he planned to spend the rest of the day with his work. He approached a small wall safe and punched a code into the keypad. The thick titanium door opened and he retrieved the only item inside. In its mirror-like surface, his reflection appeared through a spectrum of colors. This new programming disc would change everything.
Oh, Hagley, if only you were here to witness this.
Doctor Greg Hagley II had been his partner and friend. He’d been a reproductive cloning researcher, and together they’d worked on his project; a pair of geniuses with a God complex. When they’d first attempted cloning, Hagley had used a low-tech version called artificial embryo twining. The results had been disastrous.
Eight out of ten fetuses had been stillborn, the rest were disfigured and died shortly after birth. On their eleventh try, they’d brought their first healthy Replica into the world. Six years later, the FBI caught wind of their work. When the Feds discovered the extent of the cloning progress, they’d taken Hagley and him into custody.
Charged with Reckless Endangerment and fearing a long prison sentence, Hagley lied and said it had all been Linden’s idea. Since the experiments had been done in Linden’s home and he’d made notes of the progress, the majority of the blame fell on him. Hagley even testified against him in court.
The key evidence against them, however, was their only successful clone. After the trial, the government seized the clone and sent him to a lab for study.
Hagley had been sentenced to four years in prison but served only half of that, getting released early for good behavior. Linden wasn’t as fortunate. He was handed a ten-year sentence without parole. In his first year a visitor from Washington arrived, bringing a proposal from the President. Help them fight the war on terrorism by cloning soldiers. Do it and the government would restore his assets and issue a full pardon.
Linden accepted the offer without delay. He’d built a laboratory on the island of Mill Rock, a small piece of land on the East River, between Manhattan and Queens. There he could work with better equipment and a team of skilled researchers.
Soldiers were selected as cloning subjects. The clones that resulted were sent to war immediately after their programming.
Sending clone soldiers into the field was supposed to remain top secret, but somehow word leaked. The newly elected President had ordered the Replicas to return to the laboratory and never leave the island. Linden was prohibited from producing any more and had kept his word until years later.
Hagley remained in Linden’s thoughts. The sting of his betrayal still pinched his heart, but the two would never make amends. Hagley had committed suicide recently. His body had been found in his West Nyack home, suffering a self-inflected gunshot wound to the head.
“Did you tell them, Father?” came the voice of a young boy. “Like we talked about?”
Linden yelped. The boy had opened the door and entered the room like a wraith. Letting out a frustrated sigh, he placed the disc back into the vault and closed the door. “You need to knock before you enter a room. I’ve told you that.”
Tremors rocked his body when the boy—he’d cloned thirty-one years ago—came near him. Although he remained in the form of a child, Christos could twist his limbs like licorice if he wanted.
He’d donated his own stem cells for their eleventh attempt. On that time, Hagley had tried a higher level of artificial embryo twining. The results were a success. Christos was born as a healthy baby boy.
More than healthy, he possessed rapid healing abilities, thanks to a breakthrough stem-cell process that cured paralyzed rats. Christos was also given anabolic steroids to enhance muscle development. This resulted in increased strength, speed, and reflexes.
The child developed into everything Linden and Hagley had strove for, except for two problems. Their perfect child was still a child. Linden never intended to be a father; however, he’d raised the boy as his own.
The other problem was that Christos hadn’t been programmed to obey like the other Replicas. He possessed something dangerous—free will. Unable to tap into the child’s mind, Linden had taken the chance and injected him with a serum that slowed his growth after the government returned the boy to him. He’d hoped limiting the boy’s aging would lower the threat if he ever chose to rebel. A sharp-tempered teenager with super strength, experiencing hormonal imbalances, could be extremely dangerous.
“Did you tell them?” Christos asked again. “Did you tell them about the execution?”
Linden slid his hand off the smooth vault door and turned to the boy. With a deep sigh, he said, “Yes, Christos, they know. The plan is set.”
“The Alphas know they’re scheduled for execution? They all know?”
Christos possessed the sweet face Linden had had when he’d been a boy. Sometimes looking at him reminded Linden how easy it was to forget the child he’d outgrown. Disregarding such carefree memories could take away part of someone’s heart, allowing the harshness of adulthood to fill that void.
“Each and every one,” he assured, walking to his desk. “Now, I have work to do.”
Without another word, Christos left, shutting the door behind him. When he was gone, Linden released his pent-up breath.
In the evening, the Alphas went into the fitness center where custom-made exercise equipment filled the gymnasium. Tonight, they stood by a sliding glass door, which lead out to a running track. Beyond it was the north wall.
Glass shattered when Seven smashed a fist through the door. Shards dropped and Seven caught one. He jabbed it into his wrist and slashed halfway up his forearm. The sudden hot pain jolted all the way up to his skull. Others followed, cutting into arteries in their legs and arms. A mix of red and silver sprayed about the room.
A worker, monitoring the security screens, caught sight of them.
“Holy shit! What the hell are they doing?”
She pressed the alert button, triggering an alarm throughout the building. In no time, her phone rang.
“What’s going on?” Linden demanded.
“It’s the Alphas, sir! They’re cutting themselves!” She waited for a response and got none. “Should we call the guards?”
“No,” Linden retorted sharply. “Send in the Betas. I’ll be there soon.”
* * * * * * *
Seven reached the twenty-foot wall and leapt to the top, leaving behind a thick trail of blood. The adrenaline made his heart pound harder than the run itself.
He dashed across the lawn, heading for the caged sewer drain. He grew weak from blood loss and became lightheaded. Colors exploded like fireworks in his vision. The more he ran, the faster his heart pumped out silver and red. Seven slid to a halt and grabbed the mesh. With a mighty heave, he ripped it from the ground and tossed it away. He turned his chin up. To his despair, less than half of the Alphas were coming. He jumped feet-first into the drain and was swept away by the rushing current.
As the last eight Replicas scrambled for broken glass, the doors to the gymnasium burst open. The Betas rushed in ready to destroy. With no more time to escape, the Alphas attacked.
Violence erupted between them. The Alphas’ necks were broken, their heads torn off, and their limbs ripped from their bodies. A handful of Betas were already outside, chasing the last of the Alphas beyond the wall.
Waver’s stomach turned inside out as she watched from the monitoring room.
“Where are they?” she demanded.
A worker scanned the area by satellite, but he wasn’t able to get a view of anyone other than the Betas. “I can’t pinpoint them.”
“Doctor Waver,” called another worker. “It’s Beta model 4020. He says the Alphas have gone into a sewer and wants to know if he and the others should follow.”
Before Waver replied, Linden entered the room. “Absolutely not! Tell him to return immediately.”
“If they go after them now, they might catch them,” Waver argued, as the worker relayed the message. “That drain leads to—”
“I know where it leads,” Linden interrupted. “We can’t send newly awakened Replicas out on a mission. The Betas are like small children. They’re reckless and unorganized. Have you seen the mess in the gymnasium? Imagine what would happen if they’re set loose in the city.”
She slumped in defeat. The Betas were too wild for a mission. Their brains needed time to absorb their programming before they could fully understand what was expected of them. “You’re right.”
The old man smiled. “I’m always right.” He turned to leave. “Don’t worry; in two weeks, they’ll be ready to go out and do the work for us.”
“Replicas are supposed to be obedient,” she returned. “Now they’ve escaped.”
Linden turned to her from the doorway. He wore a stony expression. “I never told the Replicas they couldn’t try to escape. They just never have until now.”
His composed attitude amazed her. Her dark eyes narrowed, her mouth puckering with suspicion.
She imagined herself to be an intelligent woman. She had a PhD from Harvard and her intelligence compensated for her lack of beauty. She’d been excited to produce the Alphas’ replacements when Linden had announced his project. He’d told the group that once the new models were complete, the execution of the Alphas would begin. She didn’t like the idea of destroying what she’d helped create, but the objective was to improve on the ALD project. In order to do that, they had to abide by the rules of the Replica’s permitted population limit and eliminate the first twenty in the Alpha series.
But her suspicions rose over what else might be taking place in the lab. Linden had closed off the East Wing, restricting anyone—even her—entry. She often speculated about that forbidden section, but kept her mouth shut after one of the researchers had been fired for simply inquiring.
Seven couldn’t breathe as dirty water rushed into his mouth, nor could he control where the current took him. He gasped for air whenever the water broke above him. He faded in and out of consciousness.
The cool autumn breeze swept over his body. The bitter water of the East River slid over his bare feet as he lay on the rocky riverbank of Hell Gate. He opened his eyes; the dim glow of the night sky shone above him.
Am I alive? I must be.
Steadily, he rose. He felt woozy and his skin was pallid from blood loss. He checked his arm to discover the self-inflicted wound had already scabbed over. Human flesh would have taken weeks to reach that stage of healing; but for Seven it only took a matter of hours. His chest felt tight from his overworked heart, desperately trying to circulate blood back into his body. Dizziness caused him to fall backwards, and he threw his arms out to catch himself. His hands sank in the wet ground. Balancing, he raised one and allowed the thick, moist soil to drip between his fingers. He hadn’t touched mud since the war. He clutched it and laughed.
As his laughter echoed into the night, he moved his leg out of the river. His foot slid against something. Someone was bobbing in the water. When he removed his leg, the person drifted downriver and he jerked forward to catch it. Grabbing hold, he pulled Six’s body toward him. Her lifeless eyes stared into nothing. He assumed she’d died during the escape, either from blood loss or from drowning.
He was unsure on how to feel about her death, for never had he experienced the loss of someone he knew. With what little strength he possessed, he pulled her from the water. He then stood to admire something across the river.
New York City. Millions of lights beckoned him. It was more then he could ever imagine. The island of nightmares lay behind him. In front of him was a new world. With the tracking serum washed from his system, he was free to go anywhere he pleased.
He stayed alongside the river until reaching the Wards Island Bridge, wandering right into his newfound freedom.
Chapter 1
The longest and most terrifying night Nikolai Crowe ever experienced started the moment he found her dead.
While on the subway train headed for home, he received an urgent text message from his ex-girlfriend. She wanted them to meet. He immediately switched trains for Central Park, where she’d told him to go.
He kept his mind occupied on the crowded train by watching the news on a small flat-screen television on the wall. Robbers were holding hostages at the First National Bank on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Reporter Sakura Yoko was on the scene, reporting live, with the flashing blue lights of police cars surrounding the building behind her.
The television was on mute. The subtitles at the bottom read that thirty-five hostages remained inside. The story began getting interesting when an automated voice announced Nikolai’s stop. The moment the train eased into the station, he forced his way through the swarm of tired nine-to-fivers.
Nikolai followed the steps up to the street where the cool autumn air brushed against his face. The shadow of the evening crept over the city like a skillful thief, making no sound. Thousands of lit windows in the skyscrapers pierced the dark like artificial stars. October’s chilly breath blew over the city.
For Nikolai it had been a long day, but he was ecstatic to be seeing her again. Why would she want to meet with me? Last week, she told me we couldn’t be together anymore.
Before switching trains he’d texted her, but her reply had only been to hurry. When he’d tried calling, he was sent to voice mail.
“You’ve reached Jade. I can’t answer right now. If you want to speak to me, you’ll have to leave a message.”
He left one message.
Reaching Central Park, he rushed to the Greywacke Arch Bridge, where she’d instructed him to meet her. The park street lamps came to life as night settled in. He jogged over the path, excited and anxious.
Maybe she’s changed her mind. Maybe she wants to get back together. She didn’t seem too sure about the break-up in the first place.
His heart beat harder. By the time he reached the bridge, his lungs burned from both the run and his nervousness. He peered over the iron railing to the path below and called her name. When no answer came, he began to worry. Central Park wasn’t a safe place when the sun went down.
He clambered down an overgrown embankment and entered the underpass. It was dark beneath the bridge, with limited help from a single street lamp on the other side.
“Jade?” he whispered. “Are you here?”
He neared the center of the bridge. The silhouette of a person lying face down on the ground appeared in the dim light. At first he thought a hobo might’ve fallen asleep or had passed out drunk. He made no sound as he approached.
The silhouette shaped itself into a woman’s figure, and she wasn’t asleep. “Jade?”
His bottom lip quivered and his palms moistened with perspiration. He didn’t want to believe it was her. It was a woman, but he could make out no distinct features. As he knelt beside her, he recognized the sweet lily fragrance of the woman’s perfume.
Please, don’t let it be her.
He reached for her, almost too afraid to touch her. The soft fabric of her sweater told him that she wore no coat.
He moved his hand across her back, toward the shoulder, to turn the body over. His hand slid over something wet and cold. His shock forced him to snatch his hand away. The darkness didn’t allow him to distinguish what it was, but he knew what it smelled like.
A sudden burst of light struck him.
“Hold it right there!” yelled a man standing west of the bridge.
Nikolai jumped and nearly fell over. The intense brightness of the flashlight prevented him from seeing the man.
“Put your hands where I can see them!”
If the man was a police officer, it would be best to cooperate. Nikolai raised his hands and shielded his eyes from the light. The blood painted his fingertips. He slid his eyes over the woman. The light gave only a partial view, but it provided more detail than the street lamp.
Her head lay to the side, her long brunette hair draped over her face. Thick smears of blood covered most of her sweater. Like the perfume, he recognized the sweater; he’d bought one just like it for Jade last month. He felt cold and hollow.
“Stand on your feet and put your hands behind your head!”
He stood on wobbly legs. He didn’t even try explaining himself. If he kept his cool and explained everything at the appropriate time, he’d be all right.
He interlocked his fingers behind his head. The blood seeped through his hair, touching his scalp, yet he was too shaken to notice. He remained motionless while the officer called in for backup.
The man aimed a gun at him as he closed in. Nikolai said nothing, even when he was thrown against the wall and handcuffed. “What are you doing here? What did you do to that girl?”
“I didn’t do anything to her,” he said. “I got a message from my girlfriend to meet her at the bridge, and I found this woman here.”
The officer searched him and found his wallet and cell phone. He placed them both into his own pocket, yanked Nikolai away from the wall, and led him out where two other officers appeared.
“We have a body,” the first officer said. “See if she has any identification on her.”
The police officers rushed under the bridge, while the other forced Nikolai to sit on a bench under the street lamp. That one planted a foot on the seat and loomed over him, exuding the stench of cigarette smoke.
“You need to be straight with me,” the officer said, keeping sharp eyes on him. “I need you to tell me what happened here.”
Nikolai took a deep breath. “I got a text message from Jade—my ex—to meet her here, just like I told you. And when I got here, I found …”
“You found your ex-girlfriend’s body?” the officer prompted.
Nikolai shuddered and turned away. “I don’t know if it’s her. I don’t know who that is.”
Although the evidence pointed to it being Jade—the sweater, the hair color, and the lily-scented perfume—he walled himself in denial. He held onto the thin thread of hope that it was someone else.
“Mason,” one of the officers said as he emerged from the underpass.
“What is it?”
“I need to speak to you.”
Mason went to him. Nikolai watched as he listened to what they said. In the younger officer’s hand was a red velvet wallet, which he had opened to show Mason the driver’s license. Nikolai couldn’t hear what they whispered, but knew it was bad.
Mason studied the driver’s license before turning back to him. “Watch him, Cooper,” he ordered before disappearing under the bridge.
To Cooper, Nikolai asked, “What’s going on?”
“If you know what’s best for you, you’ll keep quiet.”
Being in no position to argue and having the common sense to realize it, he did.
Moments later Mason reappeared with the third officer, his eyes targeting their suspect. “D’you know who that is?” he asked, referring to the body. “Do you?” His tone was caught between anger and shock. When Nikolai shook his head, he glared viciously. “Don’t lie to us!”
He stood up. “I’m not lying about anything!”
“He killed her,” Cooper said.
“I didn’t kill anyone!” he exclaimed, surprised by their quick accusation.
Mason took out his nightstick and approached him. The other officers held him back.
“Whoa, whoa! Calm down, Mason. Easy!”
Nikolai sidestepped from the officer, confused as to why he wanted to suddenly bash him in. The thought of running crossed his mind, but a couple reasons came to him why that would be a mistake. For starters, he was cuffed. And if he ran, he would blow his one chance to set things straight.
“All right! I’m all right,” Mason said, backing away. He turned to Cooper and said, “Call in more backup. I want this entire area sealed off.”
Cooper nodded and got on his radio.
“Geiger, call Homicide.”
“No problem.”
Mason faced Nikolai. “You’re coming with me.”
He grabbed Nikolai by the arm and yanked him forward. He didn’t say a word as he was led out of the park. He knew he was innocent. To keep his head from getting bashed in, he didn’t debate the issue any further.
In his apartment, Hiroshi Sho and his wife watched the evening news. The top story was the armed robbery of the First National Bank, where gunmen held thirty-five hostages inside.
“What do you think they’ll do?” Claudia asked. “The police, I mean.”
Sho took a sip of his scotch and soda. “They’ll likely raid the building.” He spoke with a thick accent. “I’ve already given the captain permission to use any force necessary if the perpetrators don’t surrender.”
“What about the hostages? Won’t they be in danger?”
He rubbed his forehead and let go a long breath. He’d had this conversation with her before. “There may be casualties, but we have to make examples of these people and show them we aren’t going to bow to their demands anymore.” Then he added. “Even if hostages are involved.”
His phone rang in his pocket.
“Are you going to answer it?” she asked.
“What?” he said, hearing the muffled trilling. “Oh, yes. It might be Charles. He’ll want to know about tomorrow’s speech.”
“Are you all right?” she asked as he reached into his pocket.
“You’ve seemed distracted lately.”
Instead of answering her, he studied his cell phone and scrunched his face. He didn’t know the number, but put the phone to his ear anyway. “Mayor Sho.”
Claudia continued to watch the news, but turned back to him when the leather of the armchair creaked as he stood.
“How?” he asked in a trembling tone.
“What is it?”
“When did it happen?” he asked the caller, louder and angrier. “Where is she now?”
“Who?” Claudia asked, standing.
Sho’s narrow eyes went wide. He stood motionless, and although he stared directly at her, she was invisible. Finally, he lowered the phone. He didn’t say anything else to the caller.
“For God’s sakes, Hiroshi, what happened?”
“She’s dead,” he said faintly. “My daughter is dead.”
Chapter 2
Six armed and masked gunmen rushed inside the First National Bank of Manhattan as employees assisted the last of the day’s customers. The automatic alarm at the doors had gone off when the first invader triggered it with his gun, alerting the police at the dispatch center. Two of the six gunmen carried a large storage container, while the others seized control of the bank.
One of the masked men, dressed in a black hooded jacket, gave the order for everyone to hit the floor as the last pair jumped behind the counter. The others set the container behind the courtesy desk in the center of the lobby. The hooded man checked his watch; they would have less than one minute before the police responded.
Captain Nelson Grant had been one of the first units to arrive outside the bank. The moment he got out of his car, he made a phone call.
“Thank ya for callin’ the First National Bank,” someone answered with a southern accent. “We’re sorry, but everyone’s busy with the robbery.”
“This is Captain Grant,” Grant said, disregarding the joke. “We have you completely surrounded with no way out, so why not make this easy on everyone and surrender peacefully.”
“We don’t wanna make this easy,” came the reply, in a more serious tone.
His response didn’t surprise Grant. “How many people are in there?”
“Hostages, or us bad guys?”
“Don’t get cute with me. How many hostages?”
There was a pause. Sweat formed on Grant’s brow in fear the robber would hang up. Then the voice said, “Thirty-five in all. I counted twice. Nine workers and twenty-six customers.”
“What can I do to convince you to let them go?”
“Well, since you asked mighty nicely, I’ll tell ya what; we’ll give ya’ll the workers and three customers in good faith. But you have to promise that you won’t send any of those nasty policemen in to raid us.”
“I can’t promise that.”
“Fine, then no hostages! Good-bye.”
“Wait, wait! Okay!”
There was another agonizing pause. Grant’s stomach muscles tightened with worry that he’d lost him.
“Okay, what?”
“If you send out the hostages, I promise there won’t be any raids. For the moment.” Adding the impromptu condition might jeopardize their negotiation, but he needed to maintain an honest rapport with the man.
The pressure lifted off him when the man said, “For the moment will work. We’ll send out the hostages… but if you sick your dogs on us, everyone else will be shot to pieces.”
The line went dead. Grant stood in front of his car and waited.
After ten minutes, the doors opened and fourteen people trailed out with their hands up or behind their heads. After they left the building, the gunmen slammed the doors and relocked them.
Nikolai arrived at the Twenty-third Precinct still caught in a whirlwind of confusion and fear. Once they arrived, Mason shoved him inside a small room.
“Sit down and shut up!” Mason ordered, pointing to a chair behind a metal table in the center of the room.
He didn’t argue. He had nothing to do with whatever had happened under the Greywacke Arch and felt confident he’d be a free man soon.
Mason left, slamming the door behind him. Nikolai rubbed his wrists and looked around the room. It was painted a dark greenish color and smelled like a high school gym. A large two-way mirror was in front of him, where people on the other side would be able to watch him. Upon the table sat a cigarette-scarred ashtray.
He imagined interrogation rooms would be equipped with a blinding light, and walls painted black to give a more formidable effect, as if to spell out end of the line. The lights around this two-way mirror flickered and the asparagus walls, although depressing, weren’t overbearing; they were more sickening than anything else.
Only a few minutes passed before the door opened. He was surprised that someone had come in so quickly. He’d thought most suspects were kept waiting for hours, giving them time to marinate in their own guilty thoughts before being grilled by a ruthless detective.
The man who entered was young, tall, and thin. He wore gray slacks, a white shirt with its sleeves rolled up, and a black tie. His dull appearance matched the room perfectly.
He took the seat across from Nikolai and pulled a small portable TV from a black satchel. He placed the satchel beside his chair when he sat down and pressed a button on the lower right hand of the TV.
“I’m Detective Shaw,” he introduced as the screen came on. “I’ve got something to show you, but first, I need to ask you some questions.”
The voice of a reporter came through the television’s tiny speakers, talking about a hostage situation at the bank. The detective reached into his shirt pocket and produced a shiny thin plastic card called a Motion Image Recorder.
“I want my lawyer,” Nikolai demanded.
“Why? You’re innocent, aren’t you? If you answer my questions, you could be out of here in minutes.”
He considered that.
“Ever been arrested before, Mr. Crowe?”
“Yeah,” he grudgingly replied.
“How many times?”
“Five.”
“For what?”
He sighed. “Shoplifting computer supplies, drug possession, underage drinking. Twice on that account.”
“And?”
“And,” he said softly, “hacking.”
“That’s right. You were caught hacking into your high school computer to change your grades.”
“Yeah,” he admitted.
“You got two years probation and paid four thousand dollars in damages. You ruined your chances of getting accepted into that private tech school in Australia and went to Kaplan instead. The mayor’s stepson teaches Art History there, did you know that?”
“Yeah, I had him for a few semesters.”
The detective smiled and went on. “Tell me what happened this evening, before your arrest.”
He recalled the moment on the subway train when he’d gotten Jade’s text. “My ex sent me an urgent message to meet her at the park.”
“You received this message at 5:21 p.m.?”
They must have gone through his cell phone’s inbox and read Jade’s message. He was relieved. It would be the proof they needed not to link him to the crime.
“It was about five or so, yeah.”
“What did you do then?”
“I switched trains and headed for the park. When I got to the bridge, I found someone on the ground. That’s when the cop showed up.”
Shaw slid the MIR card into a slot at the bottom of the television. The machine hummed as the card loaded. Nikolai didn’t particularly care for the new MIR’s. They might’ve held three times as many gigabytes as any thumb drive, but they were too delicate and always breaking, even prone to scattering data and images if shaken too hard. He never understood why so many defective products were sold.
“What do you do for a living, Mr. Crowe?”
“I decode viruses for personal and business computers.”
“How ironic,” Shaw laughed. “An ex-hacker who stops other hackers.”
“I guess it’s my forte,” he said mildly.
“Do you have anyone you contact when you go from one job to the next? A boss or supervisor?”
“No, I work on my own.”
He had a dream of starting his own decoding business called Virus Bounty Hunters. A good line of work to get into, especially since computer viruses were as common as the cold used to be, even with high-tech security protection. Lately, business has been overwhelmingly good.
“You’re a freelancer? No one can say you were in a certain place at a certain time?”
Nikolai suspected where he was going. “Just the cameras,” he said earnestly. “There’re cameras everywhere in the office buildings I worked in today and the subway trains I rode on.”
It seemed that people weren’t being videotaped only in their homes these days. Cameras were set up all over the city, catching every move a person made. It became impossible for anyone to sneeze without a camera catching it.
Shaw nodded. “We know you went to your last job in Chelsea at three o’clock. You had it scheduled in your phone. What you did during your workday doesn’t concern us; it’s what you did afterwards that does.” Still looking at the screen, he said, “You say she was your ex. Why did you two split up?”
He ran his hands through his hair. His mouth went dry when he began talking. “She told me she wasn’t happy with the relationship and that we needed some time apart.”
“So, she broke up with you?”
He slumped and smacked his dry lips while nodding pitifully.
“Why wasn’t she happy?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. She only told me she needed some space.”
“Ouch. Okay, what I don’t understand is why an ex-boyfriend would rush to meet his ex after a long day’s work. I would’ve told her to go to hell.”
“It wasn’t like that between us,” he said defensively. “I loved her. I … I still love her.”
A brief silence fell over the room before Shaw said, “That’s very Romeo of you, Mr. Crowe, but I still don’t see how you could’ve gotten a message at 5:21 from a woman who was most likely dead at that time.”
“I didn’t kill anyone!” he fired back. “I told you the truth. Check the footage on Route A. You’ll see me on the train at five this evening checking my fucking messages!”
“You know what I think?” Shaw said, keeping calm. “I think you sent those messages to yourself after killing her inside her apartment. Some pathetic attempt to cover up your tracks, perhaps. You say you loved her. Maybe when she broke up with you, you couldn’t handle it. Maybe you decided if you couldn’t have her, nobody else would. A good lookin’ kid like you must have a big ego.”
“I didn’t kill anyone,” he repeated in a lower voice.
The detective stood with the TV. “Y’know, it’s funny what you said earlier about the cameras.” He handed the TV to Nikolai. “You ought to see what a few cameras caught in the building where your ex lived.”
Nikolai hesitated taking it.
“Go on, take a look.”
He slowly reached over the table, grabbed the TV, and sat back down to view the video already in play. The footage showed nothing more than the lobby of Jade’s apartment building with the time and date in the left-hand corner. The date was current and the time was 4:43 p.m.
The detective lit a cigarette. At the flick of his lighter and the aroma of rich tobacco smoke, Nikolai felt tempted to ask for one. Instead, he stayed focused on the screen and saw something that made him drop the TV. An exact replica of himself walked through the lobby.
“Hey, watch it, asshole,” Shaw scolded. “That’s mine.”
He became short of breath. His hands shook like he had Parkinson’s as he lifted the TV.
The look-alike wore a pair of old jeans and a green army jacket speckled with white paint. He recognized the jacket. He owned one just like it, which he’d worn when he painted houses as part of his community service.
The jacket could’ve come from any Salvation Army store; but the paint, it’s too distinctive to explain. Who the hell has been in my apartment?
As soon as the look-alike vanished off screen, the image switched to another camera view of him approaching an elevator. When the doors slid open, the image switched again, showing a couple leaving the elevator as the look-alike entered. The picture was clear enough to depict every detail of this duplicate; the dim elevator light shining on his dark auburn hair; even the pupils in his blue eyes stood out. The details of the look-alike’s face fit his own so precisely Nikolai almost believed it was him.
The look-alike pressed a button in the elevator. Number five. Jade’s floor.
Shocked, he looked up at Shaw as he leaned against the wall. Nikolai returned his eyes to the screen. His look-alike left the elevator before another shot of him appeared. He headed down a short hallway to door number 56 and knocked. The door was at the end of the hall and in direct view of the camera. When it opened, Jade stood in the doorway. Her expression was a pleasant one. She said something to the look-alike before moving aside to let him inside.
“No,” he quietly choked.
The door closed. The time on screen was 4:48 p.m.
“Now watch this part,” Shaw said, suddenly standing beside him.
The screen clicked off for a split-second before the picture reappeared. The view was the same; the only difference was the time, which now read 5:28 p.m., forty minutes after the look-alike had gone into the apartment and eight minutes after he’d gotten the text message on the subway train.
The door opened and the look-alike came out, wearing the army jacket inside out. He wasn’t alone. Slung over his shoulder was Jade’s red sleeping bag. She’d bought it after moving to California to go beach camping. It looked heavy, and the man struggled a bit carrying it. What he’d stuffed inside was no mystery—it was a body—and he hauled it down the hallway, into the elevator.
The portable TV now shook viciously in his hands. He continued to stare at it even after the screen went blank. His eyes stung with the hot tears welling in them.
“There’s more footage of you going down to the garage and shoving the body into the trunk of the victim’s car,” Shaw said, taking the TV from him. “There’s no doubt that person on camera is you.” He walked around the table and took a seat and dabbed the cigarette out in the ashtray. He coughed.
Nikolai could barely speak. “It’s … it’s not real,” he said while tears rolled down his face. “Jade isn’t dead.”
“Stop playing innocent!” Shaw shouted, slamming his fist on the table. “It’s all right there. The video came straight from the apartment building. It hasn’t been tampered with. There’re eyewitnesses who saw you in the building. You killed Jade Sho.”
He shook his head, still trying to absorb what he’d seen. “I was on the subway at that time.”
“Do you have any witnesses who can verify seeing you on the street or on the train?”
It was a stupid question. There’d been hundreds of people around him all day. Each face blurred into the next. But no one could vouch for someone they wouldn’t remember seeing. He lowered his head in defeat and shook it.
“Didn’t think so.”
He wiped the tears away and remembered. “My clothes.”
He wore a dark gray dress shirt, black cargo pants, a black jacket, and a pair of black boots. “That man had on different clothes.”
Shaw studied him with an unconvinced expression. “We suspect you changed in the victim’s car before dumping the body. We found the bloodstained jacket in the trunk. The DNA from the blood belonged to the victim.” He bent over to reach into his satchel and brought out a notebook and a pen. “Now,” he said, slapping the pen on the notebook and sliding both over the table, “you’re going to write your confession.”
Shaw stood and knocked on the door. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
A tiny green light flashed beside the handle. A guard opened the door for Shaw, then closed it behind him, leaving Nikolai alone with the notebook. He felt sick to his stomach.
What the hell is happening? Why is this happening?
All the evidence pointed to him.
He took the pen and flipped the notebook open. He pressed the tip between the two blue lines, hesitating. An ink spot formed on the paper before he began writing.
Mason stood behind the mirror, watching Crowe. The side door opened and Detective Shaw walked in.
“I can’t believe he’s confessing so easily,” Mason remarked. “I thought he’d fight a little more.”
The detective slung his satchel onto his shoulder as he joined Mason in front of the window. “I’m glad he didn’t put up much of a fight; I’m ready to wrap this thing up. Did you call the mayor?”
“Yep. There’s no going back now.”
The moment Crowe finished, they left for the interrogation room. The tiny green light flickered and the door opened. Shaw and Mason stepped in; Mason stood by the open door as Shaw picked up the notebook.
“It’ll go easier for you now that you’ve confessed.” Shaw perused the statement, then shot his head back to Crowe. “What the fuck is this?” he demanded, slamming the notebook onto the table. “This isn’t a confession!”
“Yes, it is,” Crowe returned. “It’s just as I told you. I got off work, got onto the subway, and received a message from Jade. I then went to the park, found a dead body, and got arrested. That’s what happened and that’s what I wrote.”
Shaw ripped the page from the coil binder and crumpled it in his hand. “This is toilet paper, not a confession. You need to write that you killed Jade Sho in her apartment and that Officer Mason caught you in the process of dumping her body in the park.”
“No!” Crowe fired back. He stood and looked Shaw in the eye. “I won’t confess to something I didn’t do. I didn’t kill anyone and I don’t give a damn if you have video of me doing it. That wasn’t me; I wasn’t there today. If you think my statement is toilet paper, then you can wipe your fucking ass with it.”
Mason ran at Crowe with his nightstick. Crowe backed away, but the stick still struck him hard in the stomach. Crowe doubled over, and Mason whacked the metal stick across the small of Crowe’s back, knocking him to his hands and knees. Mason yanked him up by the collar and threw him against the wall.
“You best start listening,” Mason growled through his teeth. “This isn’t going to get any easier if you keep denying what you did.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Crowe gasped, choking back the tears.
Mason raised his club again.
“Paul!”
He froze and turned as Shaw lowered his cell phone from his ear.
“That was the chief. He wants us to bring Crowe to him. Immediately.”
Chapter 3
Reporter Sakura Yoko faced the news camera. “We’re standing live on 179 East 94th Street, in front of the First National Bank of Manhattan, where a bank robbery has turned into a standoff between police and suspects. For those of you just tuning in, earlier this evening six masked marauders stormed the bank. Here with me now is one of the fourteen hostages released by the gunmen.” She drew the microphone to a man standing beside her. “Sir, tell us what happened in there.”
“Yeah, it was like this,” he said with a thick Jersey accent. “I was seein’ about a loan when these guys came in and demanded that we get on the floor. I just caught a flash of a piece before I was eatin’ tile.”
“How did they choose which hostages to let go?”
“Weird you’d ask that, ’cause they were choosy.”
Sakura pounced on the word. “Choosy? Can you elaborate?”
“Yeah, you see, while we were on the ground, two of them stepped over us, saying, ‘This one, not this one, this one, this one, not this one, and this one.’ Like that, y’know? Strange.”
“We’re just glad you’re safe,” Sakura said, turning back to the camera. “As of now, we don’t know how many are left inside, and … what’s that, Jen?” She stopped to listen to what the anchorwoman back at the news station said. “I’ve tried,” she defended while stomping her foot, “but no one seems to have any comment at this time.” She returned to her reporting. “Reporting live from Channel Eight News, I’m Sakura Yoko.”
“And we’re off,” Kenny Wright said, lowering the camera.
“I hate that bitch,” Sakura blurted. “She’s always trying to make me look bad.”
“What did she say this time?”
She slipped her pump off and raised her leg to rub her aching foot.
“Have you questioned any of the police yet?” she asked hastily. “She thinks she’s so damn wonderful being an anchor.”
Sakura had been a reporter for five years. It was her dream to become an anchor herself and stop running all over the place, covering stories. Every morning, she told herself she was paying her dues, but the debt seemed too high to pay off.
“I got a witness,” she justified. “The cops aren’t talking to any other reporter out here.”
“Relax. Don’t worry about it. I’m sure someone will talk soon.”
She slipped her foot back into her shoe and wedged it in. With a sigh, she scanned the chaotic scene. Every news van in the city had parked just outside the circle of police cars, which had set up a perimeter around the bank. Surrounding the news vans were onlookers, waiting to see what would happen next. The standoff had gone on for so long without anything to report that the stations were regurgitating the same information.
“This is pathetic,” she grumbled. “We have to get a better story than these guys.”
On the second floor of the building, three gunmen were inside the bank president’s office. One of them was an African-American man wearing a hooded jacket. He rummaged through the drawer of a metal cabinet, searching through hardcopy documents, trying to ignore the exploding booms from downstairs. The police had already cut the power, forcing them to utilize their flashlights. After a half hour of fruitless searching, one of his crew finally spoke.
“Are ya sure it’s in here? Maybe it’s stored on one of Lloyd’s discs.”
“Dammit, Kip, for the last time, it isn’t electronically recorded,” Marko said, frustrated with the search and noise. The thick straps of his bulletproof vest weighed heavily on his old aching shoulders. To lighten the load, he slipped his backpack off. “She said the information is in a hard file kept in this room. Now, stop bothering me and text Ari to find out how things look.”
Kip brought out his sidekick and typed in a question. The cops had tapped into their communication frequencies to listen in on their conversations, but the sidekick was guarded by a scrambling device.
BOOM!
The bank phone rang again.
“Kip,” Marko exclaimed, “answer that damn phone. I can’t take it anymore!”
“What do you want me to do? Text or phone?”
BOOM!
“Phone, and put it on speaker again.” He continued searching the files. “Give Mockingbird the sidekick.” Addressing the other person in the room, Marko said, “Tell them to hold off down there.”
A young woman holding a lightweight XMB assault rifle took the sidekick and texted Marko’s orders. When she received a reply, she gave Kip a thumbs up. Moments later, the explosions stopped. Kip pressed the button on the desk phone and said sarcastically, “Thank ya for calling la banque. How can I help you?”
“This is Captain Grant,” the voice on the other end said.
“Oh, yes, the captain. We spoke earlier. How are you?”
“It’s been two hours and there hasn’t been any word from anyone. I want to know if everyone is all right in there.”
Kip lay back on the desk, resting his assault rifle across his chest. He crossed his legs and said, “Yes, yes, everything is just fine, Cap.”
Marko waved Mockingbird over to him. She approached and kneeled down so he could whisper without the captain hearing. “Ask Ari how things are going in the custodian’s closet and if Quill is about done.”
“No, we ain’t gonna let any more hostages go.” Kip said.
“You have to work with me here,” Grant pleaded. “What is it that you want?”
When the chime of Mockingbird’s sidekick went off, he turned to read her body language. It wasn’t good. As she reviewed the incoming message, her eyes widened and her mouth dropped.
Damn it. What are those cops trying to pull out there?
Without a word, she held the sidekick over Kip’s face. He read the text and released a breath of frustration.
“What?” Grant asked.
“Say, Cap,” Kip said, lifting himself off the desk, “why don’t you call off your people at the garage door?”
There was a long pause. Marko had sweat dampening his skin. Kip casually placed his rifle across his lap.
“How do you know about that?” Grant asked.
“Well, I do declare,” Kip hiked his voice to impersonate Scarlett O’Hara, “have I forgotten to mention that we’ve hacked into the cameras?” Then he let his tone drop back to normal. “Yeah, we can see everything you’re doing out there, numb-nuts, so why don’t you call ’em off before someone gets hurt?”
“It’s out of my hands,” Grant said. “If you release the hostages, maybe we can work something out.”
Marko thought fast and turned to the corner of the room where a woman in her early twenties sat in a chair. When he motioned for her to go to Kip, she obeyed.
“Release the hostages, huh?” Kip said. “Would ya like to speak to one?”
The young woman approached the desk and leaned toward the speaker.
“Daddy?” she said. “Is that you?”
No answer came from the other end for a long moment. The captain’s silence unnerved Marko. He snapped his fingers at Kip to get him talking to the captain and bring him back into focus before it was too late.