Deathstalker Rebellion (21 page)

“No need to put yourself out, Daddy. I’ll tell her.” Evangeline drew herself up and threw Adrienne a look that was part defiance and part plea. “I’m a clone. Daddy had me made to replace the daughter he murdered. That’s how he’s controlled me all this time. Or so he thinks. You never knew I was part of the clone underground, did you, Daddy dear? No, I can see from your face that you didn’t. You threaten me, and the underground will have you killed. You tell anyone about me, and I’ll disappear into the underground. I only stayed because Finlay made me promise I’d protect his Fam
ily. You don’t have a hold over me anymore. You never did, really, apart from my own fear. You told me you owned me, and I believed you. I don’t believe that anymore.”

“Good for you, girl,” said Adrienne. She looked triumphantly at the Shreck. “Get out of our sight, you nasty little toad.”

Gregor Shreck looked from one woman to the other, struggling for words, then turned abruptly and left, slamming the door behind him. Adrienne let out her breath in an explosive sigh and collapsed back into her chair. Evangeline remained where she was.

“Well?” she said quietly. “How do you feel about me now, now that you know I’m just a clone?”

“My dear, after everything you and I have been through, your being a clone is the least of it. I’m actually rather fascinated. I’ve never known anyone in the underground before. Apart from Finlay, of course, but I think we’ve established I never really knew him.”

“How do you feel about me being a rebel, then?”

“Damned if I know. This is all happening a little fast, even for me. I suppose I should be shocked and outraged, but I haven’t been shocked since I was fourteen, and I’m too emotionally exhausted to be outraged. You’re a clone and I’m a bitch, and the Empire doesn’t have much use for either of us. So to hell with them, and long live the underground. Do you have a battle hymn? I feel like singing something loud and defiant.”

The viewscreen on the dressing table chimed suddenly, and they both jumped. They smiled at each other, and Evangeline moved over to answer it. Adrienne got up and moved quickly out of sight. “Better if no one knows I’m here for the moment, Evie.”

Evangeline nodded, sat down before the dressing table, and accepted the call. The mirror cleared, and she nodded as she recognized a familiar face. It was Klaus Griffin, her immediate contact in the underground. As far as the outside world was concerned, he was her costumier. For once he wasn’t smiling, and Evangeline sat up a little straighter.

“Are you alone, Evangeline?”

“Of course. Is there a problem?”

“This call is being shielded. We can talk freely. We need you to come below, to talk to Finlay. It’s urgent. Can you get away?”

“If I have to. What’s wrong with Finlay? Is he hurt?”

“No. But it’s imperative he undertake a particular mission and we need you down here to convince him to go.”

“Why wouldn’t he want to?”

“Because this one will almost certainly get him killed.”

“And you expect me to talk him into it? Are you crazy?”

“We need you, Evangeline. We need him. The safety of the entire underground is at risk. He’s our only hope. Will you come?”

“I’ll come, but I’m not promising anything. Finlay’s gone on enough missions for you. You’ve no right to expect this of him. And don’t you dare try and talk him into this before I get there. He’s not going anywhere until I’ve talked to him, and maybe not even then. Damn it, Klaus, we’ve done so much for the underground already. Find somebody else.”

“It has to be him. How long before you can get here?”

“Give me an hour.” She broke contact and glared into the mirror. “Bastards. Do they really think I’d betray Finlay, even for the Cause?”

“This gets more fascinating by the minute,” said Adrienne, coming over to join her. “Dear Finlay, the last best hope of the underground? I’m beginning to think you’re right, and I never did really know him. Since you apparently know him better than I, what do you think? Would he go on a suicide mission if it was important enough?”

“Oh, yes. That’s what worries me. Most of his recent missions would have been suicide runs for anyone else. He never was very strong in the commonsense department, and since he lost his Family, he’s become increasingly reckless. He feels guilty for having survived, when so many died. If this mission is so dangerous that even Finlay would hesitate, it must be really bad. I’ve got to go, Adrienne. Thank you for all your help; I wish there was something I could do for you.”

“There is,” Adrienne said briskly. “Take me with you. There’s no place safe here for me anymore now that I’ve made an enemy of your father. If I’m to find protection for my children, the only people left to turn to are the underground. Though, God knows what I’ve got to buy their protection with. Gossip, maybe. I know more secrets about more people than half the Court put together. Some of it has got to be prime blackmail material. Besides, whatever you eventually decide, you’re going to need my help to convince
Finlay. I always could talk him into anything. I think I’m going to enjoy being part of the underground.”

“What makes you so sure they’ll accept you?”

“What makes you think they’ll have any choice? I can be very determined when I put my mind to something. Besides, I really can’t wait to see this whole new Finlay I’ve never known. I have a feeling I might like him a lot more than the old one. Shall we go?”

Julian Skye, rogue esper and agent of the underworld, had been handsome once, but that was before the Empire interrogators got their hands on him. They’d started with a vicious beating, not because they expected him to talk, but just to soften him up. They didn’t even ask any questions. Two of them took it in turns holding him up, while the third worked him over in brutal, efficient ways, until every part of him moaned with pain. Then they hurt him some more. They paid special attention to his face. Damage there was psychologically damaging as well. Eventually they left, and he sat naked and alone in the interrogation cell, held upright by the thick straps holding him to the bare metal chair, waiting for them to come back and start again. One eye was swollen shut, his nose had been broken, and dried blood crusted his face. They’d left his mouth pretty much untouched. He was expected to be able to answer questions when they finally got around to asking him any.

He’d been left alone to consider his position and worry about what was to come. And Julian Skye, who’d always thought he was a hero, was ashamed to find he couldn’t stop crying. He was a young man, with a young man’s courage and ideals, but he’d had the courage systematically beaten out of him. All he had left now were his ideals, and they didn’t seem as strong and convincing as they once had. He finally managed to sniff back his tears, though the occasional harsh sob still took him by surprise, and looked around him as best he could. He was in a bare, featureless room, deep below the surface, in the dark metal bowels beneath the Imperial Palace. The walls were bright shining steel, without windows or details, showing vague distortions of himself in the painfully bright light from the single unit directly above him. He could feel the heat from the unit beating on the top of his head, as though his brains were on fire. The door was a dull black metal, right in front of him,
sealed electronically. It could be opened only by someone from the outside with the correct access codes.

Julian Skye sat naked in his metal chair, stripped of everything that might give him physical or psychological comfort. They’d even taken away his suicide option; a hollow tooth with poison in it. They ripped it right out of his jaw with a pair of pliers. He probed the gaping hole with his tongue now and again, as though hoping it might be there this time. It had been a small hurt compared to what came afterward, but he still cried when he thought of it. The tooth had been his last hope. He’d pissed on himself, and he couldn’t clean it off his legs. Just more of the softening-up process.

He knew he had no one but himself to blame for his capture. Julian Skye had always been too wild for the slow and steady underground, too bold and impetuous even for the esper terrorists of the Esper Libereration Front, the elves. So he’d been left alone to run his own operations with his own people—attached to the underground, but not a part of it. Which was how he’d come to be in the middle of everything when the raid on Silo Nine went to hell in a hurry, and the underground had to scatter. He’d been the only one at a safe enough distance to take charge. He ran things for as long as he could, setting up safe houses and new names and passwords, until he, too, was compromised by the treachery of the man called Hood, and he had to run for his life. He’d got away, as he always did, leaving the security guards nothing but the echo of his mocking laughter. Julian Skye was an old hand at the great game of intrigue, after all, despite his young years. He thought he was unbeatable, untouchable. He was wrong. Truth was, he’d just been lucky. And his luck finally ran out when he made the mistake of trusting the wrong person.

At least he wasn’t in Silo Nine, with one of Wormboy’s engineered worms burrowing in his brain, controlling his thoughts. If nothing else, the underground had made a thorough job of trashing the detention center and destroying Wormboy, before the raiding force was betrayed and routed. It would be years before the Empire could get it up and running again, even if they could create another artificial esper like Wormboy to be their perfect gaoler again. And the worms wouldn’t work without him. Which was why Skye was being held in a detention cell, mentally neutered by an esp-blocker. He smiled slightly for the first time. He might
be prevented from using his esper abilities, but at least his thoughts were still his own. His smile quickly disappeared. The mind techs would get his thoughts out of him, along with anything else they wanted.

He wondered what would happen to him in the end, when they’d got everything they wanted from him and he had nothing left to tell them. Wipe his mind clean, probably, and replace it with a new personality more suited to the Empire’s needs. They’d send it back to the underground with his face in front of it, and a convincing story to cover his escape; and what little he hadn’t already betrayed would be wiped out in quick order, long before the espers could crack his new persona. Or perhaps he’d do such a good job betraying the underground right here in this cell that they wouldn’t need him anymore. He’d heard they saved some of the monsters from Silo Nine. The espers and clones they’d experimented on, stirring their sticky fingers in their subjects’ DNA, shaping their flesh and their minds into new, monstrous shapes. Maybe that was his destiny. To be no longer human, except on the genetic level. To be a living weapon, unleashed as needed on the Empire’s many enemies.

He didn’t care. He just wanted it to be over. The pain and the fear and the horror. He wasn’t a hero anymore, if he ever had been. Just a man, waiting to be broken. A small gush of rebellion surged within him at the thought. He wasn’t broken yet. Don’t think about what they want. Keep it out of his mind. Bury it deep. Make the mind techs work for it. Buy time. Don’t think at all. Be a blank page. Give them nothing to work with or on.

But he couldn’t stop thinking. His body hurt too much to be ignored, and held helpless and naked in his chair by a dozen thick straps that cut painfully tight into his flesh, he had nothing else to do but think. He was safe for the time being. Underground espers had gone deep into his head long ago and constructed a series of mental blocks there, impervious shields that would keep out all but the most powerful Empire espers. He’d activated the safeguard with a conditioned code word the moment he realized he was trapped, and the shields had come slamming down in his brain. Now he no longer had the information his torturers wanted. It was locked away where he couldn’t get at it. Can’t tell what you don’t know. Push the blocks too hard and his mind would self-destruct, taking the information with it.

So for the moment they were being very careful what they said to him. When they chose to speak to him. Between the beatings. They couldn’t use an esper on him without first removing the esp-blocker from the cell, and the moment they did that he’d have access to his own esper abilities again. He’d rip this place apart with a psistorm like they’d never seen. The only way into his head now was through the mind techs. The Empire’s specialists in pain and truth and mental conditioning. They’d use drugs and technology and all the psychological tricks they’d spent centuries perfecting. Until finally the shields went down, and he had nothing to hide behind anymore. Then he’d break and tell them anything they wanted to know. He’d beg to do it.

He knew it had to happen. Everyone broke eventually. All he could hope to do was hold on for as long as possible, to buy the underground time to rescue or kill him. He wasn’t putting much hope in a rescue. He wasn’t afraid to die anymore, not after what his tormentors had done to him and what he knew they planned to do, but he was afraid of being made to betray the underground. Once he was safely dead, his secrets would die with him. He couldn’t do it himself. After pulling out his poison tooth, the interrogator had put a full spinal block on him. He could still feel everything, but all he had left were involuntary movements, and the straps took care of them. He could hear himself whimpering, but couldn’t stop it. He’d never been so scared. But then, he’d never thought he’d end up here. Getting caught was something that happened to other people. He was crying now. He could feel the tears trickling down his cheeks. He would have screamed if he could. It didn’t matter. He’d scream enough later.

There was the sudden sound of electronic locks disengaging, and the sealed door swung slowly open. Julian would have cringed away, but even that was denied to him. His chief interrogator strode in, a tall slender man dressed all in white, so the bloodstains would show up dramatically. So much of pain is in the mind. He nodded briskly to Julian and moved around the chair, taking his time, checking the straps were still tight and the spinal block on the back of his neck was still in place. He was always polite and never raised his voice. He didn’t need to. His movements were sharp and precise and very efficient. Julian didn’t know the man’s
name. He didn’t need to know, so nobody told him. The interrogator moved around to stand before Julian.