“I forgot. The service down here is terrible. Let me connect you to the compound Wi-Fi.”

  Ziggy held out his palm, and Weejy reluctantly handed him her phone. He pressed a few keys and then gave it back.

  Weejy hit redial.

  Bert’s phone rang once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  Then voice mail picked up.

  She took a deep breath and began.

  “Bert, it’s Weejy. SoJo and I are fine. There was a misunderstanding. We’re here with friends. Clones, like us. Sigmund Freud, Nikola Tesla, Charles Darwin, and Tomás de Torquemada. They’re searching for clones like we are. They have a proposal for you. A lucrative one, potentially worth millions of dollars. SoJo and I already said yes. You need to come back here. And you need to do it on friendly terms, without any hostility. In fact, bring beer. A keg. Maybe two. Then we can all get drunk and celebrate. We’re all going to be rich. Anyway, call me back when you can. I…”

  Weejy almost said love you. Instead she went with, “I miss you.”

  She hung up and held her breath, waiting for the reaction.

  “Nicely done.”

  Weejy went to give the phone back, but Ziggy held up his hand. “Keep it. Trust, remember?”

  “How about mine?”

  Ziggy produced SoJo’s cell phone, handing it over. “And perfect timing. Here’s Tork with lunch.”

  Tork waddled in, wearing his leather apron, carrying a pizza. He didn’t seem happy to be playing server, and he scowled at Weejy when he set it down in the center of the table.

  “We’re a big happy family now, Tork,” Ziggy told him. “Let bygones be bygones, and apologize to Weejy.”

  “Mistakes were made,” Tork mumbled. “If I frightened you, I’m sorry.”

  That was an even bigger non-apology than Ziggy’s.

  “Unfortunately, we don’t have a chef at the compound. But I have deep dish pizzas delivered from Chicago. I hope you ladies are okay with sausage.”

  Freud and sausages. Go fig.

  Tork lifted his apron and unclipped something from his belt. A weapon, glinting silver and razor sharp. It looked like a curved axe blade, with a spear on the opposite side.

  Weejy voiced her concern. “What in the freaky hell is that?”

  “A halberd. Tork collects medieval weapons.”

  Of course he does.

  Tork used the curved part to cut the pizza, and the spear part to place slices on plates. It was so sharp, it left gashes in the metal pie tray. Weejy’s stomach rumbled at the aroma, but the food tasted bland to her.

  I have too many other things on my mind.

  I hope SoJo is still on Team Escape, not Team Fake Millionaire.

  I hope Bert is okay.

  I hope he got the veiled meaning in my message, and shared it with a well-prepared rescue team.

  I hope we can get out of here.

  And I hope, when I see Bert again, I have the guts to tell him I love him rather than chicken out at the last second.

  Lunch radiated uncomfortable silence, other than the gross smacking and grunting sounds Tork made. Ziggy ate his pizza with a knife and fork—who does that?—and then pushed his plate away when he finished.

  “Who wants dessert?”

  Weejy did not want dessert.

  She wanted to get the hell out of there.

  But Tork went and got a cheesecake, delivered from Manhattan, and she dutifully ate a slice without any pleasure.

  SoJo also stayed uncharacteristically quiet.

  “So… what next?” Weejy eventually asked Ziggy.

  “Next, we wait for your friend to show up. Feel free to explore the compound. But there is a caveat. Area 57 is deceptively large, and it’s easy to get lost. If you do, just look for one of the security cameras. They are spread out, every few corridors, and look like burnt-out light bulbs. Just wave at one, and we’ll have a guard come get you.”

  “Will you let us know when Bert arrives?”

  “Of course, Sacagawea.” Ziggy smiled his dead-eyed smile. “I’ll even let you know when he’s on his way.”

  FABLER

  The Tumbleweed Motel – New Mexico

  Planning proved impossible in the humid, echoey, eye-burning pool area, so Fabler took the principals into his room. His team, Grim and Presley, the ex-cops, Tom, Roy, and Jack, and the witnesses, Frank and Bert.

  Bert’s story was ugly.

  Frank’s, even uglier.

  “You’ve witnessed two vehicles at once?” Grim took notes on a pad of paper.

  Frank nodded. “Two guards each. No patrols, but I’ve seen them come out at all hours.”

  “And you’re sure they had M249s?”

  “Light machine guns. Yes yes yes. I have one myself.”

  Fabler frowned. “They’d leave one man or more at base. That’s at least fifteen guards, if we assume an eight hour rotation. You think they sleep on premises?”

  “A supply truck comes once a week.”

  “How often do they go to town?”

  “The Beige Boys go to town daily, in in in pairs. Sometimes more than one vehicle per day. But they don’t seem to stay overnight there. They’re sleeping in the compound.”

  Outnumbered. Outgunned. Open terrain, so no way to surprise them. No inside man. Very little intel.

  And I still haven’t taken my Psytox.

  This whole operation is a bad idea. Be easier to rob a gun shop with a switch blade.

  “You don’t know what’s underground?” Grim asked.

  “I’ve never been down there. I’ve checked for architectural records, permits, the Internet; never never never found anything. It’s called Area 57 by online conspiracy theorists. I know it as Project Esbat, which is the latest iteration of Monstrum and Samhain.”

  “And how do you know this?”

  “I worked at Samhain with two friends, Andy and Sun Dennison. They were also at Monstrum, and we’ve been trying to keep track of what escaped. Esbat is one possible lead.”

  “What escaped?” Presley asked.

  “It was a a a demon.”

  That’s not good. Not good at all.

  “As in a real demon?” Jack didn’t seem to buy it. “Horns and wings and a tail?”

  Frank nodded.

  Skepticism washed across Jack’s face. “No offense, but I prefer my thrillers a bit more reality-based.”

  “You say that while petting my dodo bird,” Bert told her. “Extinct for centuries.”

  Stosh cooed, “Dooooo!”

  “A dodo bird once existed. Like Thomas Jefferson,” Jack gestured, palms upturned. “We can dig up the bones of both. You can’t go to a museum and see a demon.”

  “I know it strains credulity, but I worked at Project Samhain for for for years. Demons are real. They’ve been around for millennia.”

  “Was its name Bub?” Grim asked.

  Frank’s eyes went wide. “How did you know?”

  “Fabler and I have run into him.”

  “I think Catherine has, too. She she she talked about a serum that changes DNA. That’s what we were working on at Samhain.”

  From bad to worse.

  I don’t like the fact that Frank and Bert are both friends with Tom, and then they coincidentally ran into each other in the middle of New Mexico. I don’t like that Frank helped clone Leonidas. Or that a clone of Leonidas actually exists. Or that Frank knows Bub. Or that I know Bub, for that matter…

  All of these disparate strangers coming together, interlocking like puzzle pieces, makes me damn uncomfortable. It defies logic.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Fabler. That this all seems planned, rather than random.” Grim, the mind reader. “I don’t follow any particular faith, but I do believe things happen for a reason. There is a prime mover, manipulating all of us. I’ve seen too much to think otherwise. So have you. But we can’t figure this out if we’re stuck dwelling on how weird all of this is. We can reflect on the probabilities later. Right now we need a plan to save Bert’s friends.”

  Grim is right. It’s like hot dogs. You don’t want to look too closely at how they’re made.

  “Sorry,” Jack shrugged. “I’m having a hard time buying this demon stuff.”

  Tom turned to her. “Jack, we’ve worked together for a long time. Have you ever interrogated a witness you didn’t believe, who turned out to be telling the truth?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “So you can be skeptical but still keep an open mind. Let’s focus on what we know, and what we’re good at. This is new to me, too. But I know Frank, and I trust him. Let’s start there.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Presley, what’s the comms situation?” Fabler asked.

  “Radios and cell phones won’t work underground. But obviously they can communicate with one another. Frank, you’ve seen them with walkies?”

  “I I I have.”

  “I’m guessing they have a local area network with Wi-Fi. Communication devices can run off it, but there will be a password.”

  Fabler considered the news. “Can you blunt force it?”

  “If they have WPS on, I can try a Reaver crack.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Could be ten minutes. Could be ten hours.”

  “And if they don’t have WPS enabled?”

  “Aircrack, maybe. Or try a dual boot with Kali Linux. I would need to get in the facility, get on a terminal. Could try a Trojan.”

  “Like a computer virus?” Roy asked.

  “She means an actual Trojan,” Fabler explained. “Come in on the supply truck, hide in a shipment of something.”

  “Or I could just wander into the area and let myself to be captured.”

  Fabler waved his hand, dismissive. “Both are too risky.”

  “We need someone inside, Fabler. We don’t have any idea of the size of the complex, the number of enemies, their security or defenses. If I get in, I can get a message out to you.”

  “We know they are armed, trained, and hostile. I’m not letting anyone go in there until we know more.”

  Jack leaned in. “Bert, how did you find this place?”

  “I traced one of the clones to New Mexico. The clone of Tesla. I have a list of all the adoptive families. I found his arrest record online, traced him in a town only a few hours away from where I live. But I couldn’t find him. I asked around, and wound up bribing the County Clerk to get the coordinates for Area 57.”

  Tom followed up. “Has this clerk been inside?”

  “He didn’t say. But he seemed to know a lot about the place.”

  “What did you pay him?” Roy chiming in.

  Once a cop, always a cop. They’ve done this dance before.

  “I offered a hundred. He talked me up to a grand. The dude was… sketchy.”

  “We’ll talk to him,” Jack again. “He may have more than he gave you. Have you checked your phone for calls lately?”

  “Not since before the pool.”

  “Check.”

  Everyone waited while Bert powered on his cell. Fabler didn’t expect anything that would help their plan. It would be too convenient.

  And of course I’m wrong. Yet again.

  “I got a voice mail!” Bert played it on speakerphone.

  “Bert, it’s Weejy. SoJo and I are fine. There was a misunderstanding. We’re here with friends. Clones, like us. Sigmund Freud, Nikola Tesla, Charles Darwin, and Tomás de Torquemada. They’re searching for clones like we are. They have a proposal for you. A lucrative one, potentially worth millions of dollars. SoJo and I already said yes. You need to come back here. And you need to do it on friendly terms, without any hostility. In fact, bring beer. A keg. Maybe two. Then we can all get drunk to celebrate. We’re all going to be rich. Anyway, call me back when you can. I… miss you.”

  Jack spoke first. “Your friend is sharp. She gave us a lot.”

  Yeah, she did. “Presley, can you do a voice stress analysis?”

  “Let me boot up the program on my laptop.” She dug into her backpack.

  “So now we know Freud, Tesla, Darwin, and Torquemada are in play,” Tom ticked off four fingers. “The first three could be neutral, but so far every clone of a bad person has lived up to their potential. Torquemada is almost definitely bad, and if they are in bed with him, this isn’t a good group of guys.”

  “Bring a keg or two,” Grim repeated. “There are eighty-three beers in a keg.”

  Presley shook her head. “Why am I not surprised you know that?”

  Grim had his phone out, tapping the screen calculator. “Figure four to six beers to get drunk, she’s telling us there are between twenty-seven and forty-one people there.”

  “More than we expected.” Fabler frowned. “Not good.”

  “But also good,” Tom countered. “Bert has an invite, and we know they’re searching for clones. I can go with him.”

  “And that’s how I can get in.” Presley set her laptop on the table. “There are no whereabouts of Mary Tudor. I can say I’m her.”

  Tom nodded. “We can give you a fake tattoo if they want to check.”

  Presley opened an app. “Bert, can you play it again?”

  As the message repeated, Presley’s computer recorded a sound wave, represented with jagged jiggles on her screen.

  “Weejy is under tremendous duress,” Presley said. “Hard to tell how much without a baseline, but she isn’t calm or comfortable. The biggest stress hit comes at the end, when she says she misses you. Bert, how close are you two?”

  “Um…”

  “My buddy is in love!” Roy wrapped his arm around Bert’s shoulder and squeezed. “All we been through, man, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “We… uh… haven’t known each other that long. But we have… um… feelings.”

  “Feelings complicate things.” Fabler rubbed his stubble.

  I should know, more than anyone.

  “What’s the play?” Grim asked him.

  Fabler’s hand twitched, and he clenched his fist to hide the tremor.

  The first play is for me to clear my system.

  And then…?

  “Four teams. Jack, you interrogate the County Clerk.”

  “Elected officials love me.”

  “Tom, you and Bert and Presley knock on Area 57’s front door. Presley needs a tattoo. Once you’re in, you need to recon and get comms up and report back.”

  “What if we can get Weejy and SoJo out clean?” Tom asked.

  “For us to back you up, we need intel. There are forty armed guards, and millions of dollars at stake. Even if you get out, where are you going to go without help? Wait for us.”

  Tom nodded.

  “We’ll have two teams with eyes on the entrance. I’ll take Team One. Grim, you lead Team Two.”

  “How about me and the others?” Roy asked.

  “It’s a free county. We ask them how they want to help.” Fabler checked his watch. “Let’s meet back at the pool after lunch, thirteen hundred. That’s one o’clock for you civvies. Tom and Bert, can you help Presley get her tattoo right?”

  They nodded.

  “Everyone else, share the plan with the others, and figure out your teams. Let’s move like we have a purpose, people.”

  Fabler stood, prompting everyone to leave the room.

  Everyone except Grim.

  “You going to take the Psytox?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Need me to keep an eye on you?”

  “You’re needed elsewhere. I got this.”

  Grim exited without drama, leaving Fabler to wonder.

  Do I really got this?

  What if this detox drug is worse than I expect?

  What if my problem isn’t N-Som at all, but some serious health issue?

  Only one way to find out…

  Fabler dry-swallowed the pills McGlade had given him.

  Then he sat, crossed-legged, on the floor.

  Minutes passed.

  Fabler calmed himself with thoughts of his wife and child.

  He slowed his breathing and heartbeat.

  He thought of journeys past, and journeys soon to take.

  He thought of those he loved, and those he lost.

  He searched his mind for meaning, but only found questions.

  Then the pills hit.

  First came sweating. A flu-like sweating, accompanied by full body shivers.

  Nausea swiftly followed. Churning and rolling in his stomach, as if he’d swallowed a live bullfrog.

  Fabler considered how coincidental it was that he had N-Som toxicity, and the guy who hired him happened to have the cure on hand.

  Almost as if it were written that way.

 

  You’re just a voice in my head. You aren’t real.

 

  Fabler’s gut clenched, and he crawled onto all fours, scrambling for the waste basket.

  The floor swirled, mushed like putty, seared like hot coals.

  He smelled roses, and salt, and a hundred billion exploding stars.

  His nerve endings danced with barbed wire.

  His brain folded in on itself and staunched his own wet screams.

 

  Fabler wretched, full body, puking his soul into the garbage.

  He saw god. God looked like a banana.

  He saw the devil. The devil grinned.

  His body dissolved, and he saw himself on the inside.

  So many tiny little pieces.