Cloneward Bound (18 page)

Fisher padded quietly down the hotel hallway, locked in the hazy realm between total exhaustion and racing anxiety. He reached his door just as the footsteps of the chaperone on late patrol echoed in the stairwell. He jabbed his card key into its slot, opening the door as quickly and quietly as he could and letting it shut behind him gently.

Fisher didn’t want to turn the lights on, so he stood in place for a minute until his eyes adjusted. Warren was asleep, tucked entirely under the covers. Fisher tiptoed to his bed, pulled the covers back and, without bothering to change, crawled beneath them, letting out a long breath as his head dropped to the pillow.

He felt something crunch slightly under his head. Warren had probably been eating chips in Fisher’s bed. He sat up, annoyed, feeling for the offending object.

It wasn’t a chip. It was a piece of paper, and it was taped in place on the pillow.

Fisher’s sleepiness quickly melted away. With a trembling hand, he flicked on the bedside lamp.

The note was written on plain white paper in thick, black pen and neat, angular block letters:
Come to Studio Lot 44 at midnight if you ever want to see Two or the pig alive again
.

Fisher’s breathing stopped. Then it seemed to race forward, until it sputtered triple time. He brought the note closer, as though that might somehow change what was written there. But the same evil words glared up at him.

Fisher sprang from his bed, note in hand. No longer remembering to be quiet, he raced into the hall and down to Amanda’s door. He rapped on the door with his knuckles. When there was no reply, he rapped a little harder.

The door opened slowly. As Fisher had feared, Amanda had obviously been sleeping. Her face was crinkly, and she squinted in response to the bright hallway light. Surprisingly, her pajamas were pink. Fisher had assumed Amanda would sleep in body armor or something.

“Fisher?” she said tiredly. “What do you want?”

He handed her the note. “I found this on my pillow just now.” He watched as she read it, and her puzzlement turned to genuine fear. Fisher’s heart galloped up to panic velocity.

“FP and Two are clearly in danger.”
Again
, he added silently. “Look, I
have
to go to Studio Lot 44. Will you help me?”

For a second, Amanda looked like she was going to say no. She turned away from Fisher, so he could only see her profile. Then she sucked in a deep breath and said, with a toss of her hair, “Two may be a loudmouthed, stuck-up, wannabe movie star, but he at least deserves to live to see his first birthday. And I won’t let anything happen to FP. I’ll get a few things together. Meet me in the hallway stairwell in five minutes.” She vanished back into her room and closed the door too fast for Fisher to respond. He raced back to his own room. All of his exhaustion had burned away.

Exactly five minutes later, he was standing in the hallway again, his prototype Shrub-in-a-Backpack slung over his left shoulder, packed with every useful and semi-useful device he could find in his suitcase.

Amanda was already waiting. She was wearing gray jeans, a black turtleneck, and well-worn athletic shoes. In place of her glasses was a sleek pair of prescription athletic goggles. She cracked her knuckles and nodded at Fisher.

“Ready to go?” she asked.

“Let’s do it,” Fisher answered.

Amanda went first, gliding down the hallway without a sound and scouting for any snooping chaperones before slowly pushing open the stairwell door. Fisher followed, trying to keep his sneakers from squeaking.

They reached the lobby. A late-night crowd had gathered, milling around the hotel bar. The stairway was on one side of the large main hall between the front doors and the elevators. Across the hall was the carpeted lounge that led to the restaurant entrance.

“Hang on,” Amanda said, raising a hand. She took two hesitating steps out of the stairwell door and glanced around the lobby quickly before returning to Fisher. “Mr. Dubel’s sitting in one of the armchairs in the lounge section. We’ll need to be careful.”

“Maybe there’s another way out?” Fisher said. Amanda shook her head.

“I see my ride,” she said. “Keep up if you can.” She pushed open the door and stepped out into the hall. Fisher followed her hastily, just as a full luggage trolley rolled from the elevators toward the doors. Amanda scooted beside it, matching her pace to its motion. The towers of suitcases and duffel bags concealed her entirely from view of the lounge. Fisher leapt behind her, and they made it out the front doors without being spotted.

“It’s ten thirty. If we walk briskly we’ll just make it to the studio lots,” Amanda said, checking her watch.

Fisher was trying to remember the layout of the studio lots. “
Strange Science
is on Studio Lot 43.
Keel Me Now
was next door on 42. So what’s on Studio Lot 44?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” Amanda said grimly.

Fisher’s bag strap jostled up and down on his shoulder with every quick step. Amanda was two paces in front of him, moving briskly and in silence. The blare of horns and the screech of car traffic sounded distant, like alarms heard from underwater.

They passed rows of stores that seemed miles long. Patrons at a sidewalk café gave them curious but brief looks as they passed. Fisher’s eyes constantly scanned the road for any sign of the black car.

Two had been alive for less than a month. In that time he had been kidnapped, threatened with torture and death, had narrowly escaped vaporization in the
explosion of TechX, and had been saved only by some ingenuity and a massive lucky break. Now, it seemed, he’d been abducted all over again, and could be in equal or even greater danger.

All in the space of a few weeks.

When Fisher had been making Two, he had thought of the clone entirely as a tool. A machine, like any of the gadgets in his lab, intended to serve a specific purpose. It had never really crossed his mind before Two came to life that the clone would truly
have
a life.

Fisher felt a sharp stab of guilt. He remembered what the evil Dr. X had said to him just before the explosion at TechX:
we’re not so different, you and me
.

Could Dr. X have been right?

Fisher pushed the thought out of his mind as they passed into the massive complex of studio lots, their footsteps faint on the asphalt. Only a few security lights illuminated the area. There were no guards in sight. Fisher wondered if someone had deliberately arranged for the lot to be emptied, and shivered.

Then: a new light clicked on in the distance. Fisher and Amanda both jumped a foot in the air. A small lamp protruded from of the side of the main studio structure, directly above a red side door.

“I guess that’s our invitation,” Amanda said. Fisher thought she sounded nervous, but she kept walking.
Even though Fisher’s legs felt leaden, it seemed that all too soon, he and Amanda had crossed the distance to the building. Above them were the blinking lights of a low-flying plane, and Fisher found himself wishing he were on it. He would rather be anywhere else but here—in this vacant lot, approaching a mysterious door.

Amanda took a deep breath and eased the door open.

The inside of the building was very dark, and they were just able to make out a narrow hallway. Amanda gestured for Fisher to follow her, and they began making their way down the dim corridor. Gradually, the environment grew more claustrophobic; Fisher sensed that the walls were pressing him from either side.

Then the hallways dumped them suddenly into an enormous open space. A few low lights burned high in the vast ceiling above their heads and, in the half light, Fisher could just see an immense soundstage cluttered and stacked with what looked like heaps and mounds of scrap metal and junk, many of them nearly the size of a house.

Amanda came to an abrupt halt, and Fisher almost crashed into her. She drew him into a crouch.

“What?” he whispered into her ear.

“Movement to our left,” she whispered, and then held her breath for a moment. “
And
right.”

Barely visible figures—no more than looming
shadows—emerged from the darkness: two from the left, one from the right. Henchmen?

Midget henchmen? The figure on the right was very small.

“Hello?” a man’s voice called out. It sounded familiar.

“Who … who are you?” called the small person on the right, and Fisher found himself even more bewildered than he had been. This voice he definitely recognized. It was Kevin Keels.

Keels stepped into a pool of light. Amanda let out a yelp of surprise.

“Kevin?” said the third person, stepping forward. It was GG McGee. The man with her was Dr. Devilish.

“
What
is going on??” said Amanda, losing her patience and climbing to her feet. Kevin Keels nearly fell over backward in surprise, and Dr. Devilish jumped behind GG McGee, who froze, eyes wide. She had what looked like a bucketful of mascara running down her face.

“You!” Dr. Devilish said. “You’re the kid that tackled the vacuum.”

“Basley?” chorused GG and Keels together as Fisher stepped forward.

“What are you doing here?” Fisher demanded to no one in particular.

“I received a threatening note,” said Dr. Devilish, looking around the room and squinting confusedly. “I was told
that if I didn’t show up here, now, I’d be exposed.”

“Exposed as what?” said Amanda, furrowing her brow.

Even in the darkness, Dr. Devilish’s blush was visible. “What I meant to say is … my latest top secret
research
would be exposed,” Dr. Devilish said quickly, and coughed. “I’ve been working on a revolutionary new … protein, uh, sympathizer.”

“You mean synthesizer?” Fisher raised an eyebrow.

“Right, of course,” Dr. Devilish said quickly. “A nervous slip of the tongue.”

GG McGee cut in. “My note said that they’d taken my little Molly!” she wailed, clenching her teeth as new tears began to form in the corners of her eyes. “And that I’d never see her again unless I showed up! She’s so young! She has a career of stardom and glory ahead of her! I can’t imagine going on without her!” As she began to sob, Dr. Devilish offered her a few weak pats on the back. “I bumped into Dr. Devilish as we were walking in,” she said, regaining control. “I almost knocked his teeth out with my handbag.”

“Messing around in the
Strange Science
lab has made me very good at ducking,” he replied with a shallow smile, trying to lighten the mood.

“What about you?” Fisher said, looking hard at Keels.

“Oh, uh,” he started, reaching up and scratching the
back of his head, “the note threatened blackmail.…” A whine crept into his voice, and he looked nervously at GG McGee. Fisher saw her give him a minute shake of the head.

“That’s ridiculous,” GG said forcedly. “You have nothing to hide.”

“No, no, of course not,” Kevin stammered eagerly. “I … really don’t have any idea what the note meant. I came here to find out.”

Fisher’s eyes burned into Keels’s. He knew
exactly
what Kevin’s secret was. The only thing that kept him from pressing the pop singer to reveal the truth was the fact that he had an even bigger secret of his own.

“How about you, Basley?” Keels asked as if on cue.

He felt Amanda suck in a breath next to him.

“I … like to conduct scientific experiments in my off time,” Fisher said. “One of them produced some … embarrassing results. I’d rather not have those results be public.” Fisher was getting very good at the not technically lying game.

“Who could have brought us here?” said McGee, looking around at the cluttered soundstage. “Who would be so heartless as to kidnap poor Molly?”

“And what in the world
is
this place?” Dr. Devilish demanded.

Before anyone could answer, a heavy series of clanks
gave them a half second’s warning before the lights blazed into full force. Fisher’s vision went temporarily white.

Then, as his eyes adjusted, he found himself surrounded by reasons to wish the lights had just stayed off.

CHAPTER 17