Sims

Zero stared at the bookshelves, saying nothing.

Ellis stepped closer to him. “I already have a son, Zero, but for a long time now I haven’t had someone I’ve cared to call brother. There’s still a lot to be done; years of struggle ahead before this abominable, tragic mess is straightened out. I helped cause it with one brother; I need another brother to help me rectify it. Can you forgive me enough to be that brother, Zero? Please?”

“I’ll help you,” Zero said, rising and looking him in the eye. “Because I need to finish what I began. But don’t call me brother. And don’t ask me to forgive you.”

The words struck like hammer blows. Ellis briefly had harbored a hope, a vision of Zero and him tearfully embracing and letting the past be past. But he could see now that wasn’t going to be. He ached for absolution, but it wouldn’t be coming from Zero or the two people with him. Not yet, at least.

“Fair enough,” Ellis said. He resisted an impulse to offer his hand. Even that might be asking too much right now. “As a first step I propose arranging a meeting immediately with my brother. We’ll lay out the facts for him and make it perfectly clear that SimGen is dead.”

34

SUSSEX COUNTY, NJ

Luca Portero waved as he cruised past the guard in the gate kiosk and pointed his Jeep toward the SimGen main campus. He’d wanted to avoid any small talk because he could barely hear his own thoughts, but he’d take ringing in his ear over a hole in his head any day.

When he’d buried an AK-47 and an extra pistol in a waterproof gun case, he’d doubted he’d ever have to use them. It was simply a precautionary measure. But when Lister had told him it was time to “do the right thing,” he’d known exactly where he wanted to do it.

Do the right thing…was Lister crazy? Like there was some sort of honor in executing yourself instead of making somebody else do it? What century was he living in?

Correction:used to live in.

Luca had raised the pistol to his head but pointed at the very rear of his skull. At the last second he’d angled it even further rearward to send the slug past the back of his head. But the report had damn near deafened him. He might never hear out of his right ear again.

He’d dropped right onto the spot where he’d buried the gun case. The two inches of covering dirt scraped off quickly. The pistols Lister’s butt boys were carrying were nothing against the Kalashnikov. After they were down, Portero ran back and caught Lister trying to get away in his car. The bastard had squealed for mercy, screaming about friendship—friendship!After handing me a pistol so I could off myself!

Luca blew his head off.

Now he had to sky out of the country. No need for panic. No one here knew about Lister. He figured he had hours yet, and wanted to use some of that to deal with his office computer. He’d been scrupulous about avoiding any links to his numbered account in Bermuda, but you couldn’t be too careful where SIRG was involved. They had people who could drag all sorts of information from a supposedly destroyed memory chip. So the chip was going with him. The ocean floor dropped to a couple of miles deep off Bermuda; he’d bury the chip at sea.

As expected, the campus was all but deserted. Only a few security perso

He’d just sat down before his computer and was preparing to open the box and tear out the memory chip, when he heard his office door open behind him. His fingers closed around the grip of his .45.

“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Portero,” said a voice he couldn’t place. “I didn’t expect you in today.”

He turned and recognized one of the newer men on the security force—knew the face but not the name. He’d been hired last summer; low on the ladder, which was no doubt how he’d pulled Christmas duty.

“Yeah,” Luca said. “Just checking on something before I go home.”

“Lots of brass in today.”

Luca’s ears were singing and the last thing he needed was chitchat with this kid, but his curiosity got the better of him.

“Really? Who?”

“Both Sinclairs. First the big guy copters in. Then Ellis Sinclair arrives in this beat-up van, driving it himself.”

“Is that a fact?”

Luca wasn’t surprised. If there was any time for a crisis meeting it was now.

“And you’ll never believe who was with him: that fox from OPRR—you know, the one who led the inspection a few—”

“Romy Cadman,” Luca said, and felt his blood jump a few degrees.

The bitch was back. And with Sinclair-2. So they were no longer hiding their co

Maybe it was fate that had brought him back at this moment. He had scores to settle, scales to balance.

What was the expression—in for a dime, in for a dollar? He’d left a pile of bodies back at his house; no reason why he couldn’t leave a few more in Sinclair-1’s office.

35

This was a different Mercer Sinclair than the one Romy had seen at the shareholders’ meeting. The suave good looks, the debonair poise were gone. This man looked haggard, years older. But he hadn’t lost any of his fight.

“As usual, Ellis, you want to give up. You always were a quitter. But I’mnot giving up. Not by a long shot. We can win, and I can tell you how. But I’m not discussing it before outsiders—certainly not with someone here from OPRR.”

“I’m not representing OPRR today,” Romy told him, “but I’ll leave if—”

“No,” Ellis said. “We all stay. We all have a stake in this.”

Romy looked around, realizing how true that was. Ellis had led them all to the CEO’s office—Romy, Patrick, Zero, and Tome and Kek as well. The last three had the most at stake.

“Then this meeting is over,” said Mercer Sinclair. “When you come to your—”

Abruptly the door opened and Luca Portero swaggered in. The pistol in his hand startled Romy, and the wild look in his eyes terrified her.

“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” he said, breaking into a sharklike grin. “And a motley crew if I ever saw one,” he said. “Four humans, a sim, a—holy shit! Sothat’s how you took down four of my men! Where’d you get the mandrilla? I never would’ve—” His cold gaze settled on Zero. “And who or what the fuck are you?”

“They were just leaving, Portero,” Mercer Sinclair said quickly. “And so are you.”

“Am I?”

“Yes. You’re fired. As of this minute you are no longer employed at SimGen.”

“You talk to me like that?” Portero said. “Where do you get the balls to use that tone of voice with me after what you did?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You stood there time after time and looked down your nose at me and pretended to be horrified at what you called my ‘methods,’ when all the while you built this company by turning humans into monkeys and telling the world it was the other way around. You can’t fire me, you piece of shit. I’m firingyou !”

And before Romy knew it, Portero’s pistol was leveled at Mercer Sinclair’s chest. He fired twice, two rapid, booming reports, hitting him in the chest.

Images strobe-flashed through Romy’s shocked brain—Sinclair’s eyes bulging—his mouth forming an astonished O—his backward tumble with outflung arms—the window behind him cracking as it was splattered with red.

And then Portero was swinging his pistol in her direction. Patrick and Zero stood frozen to her right, Ellis was lunging toward his fallen brother. Portero shifted his pistol toward him, then seemed to change his mind.

“Later,” he said softly, then focused on Romy.

Kek growled and started forward.