Resistance (Replica) (40 page)

Dorothy had a gun. And it was digging into the small of his father’s back.

*   *   *

When
she saw an unfamiliar woman push her way into the room behind the Chairman, Nadia had a split second to decide what to do. She went with locking the door to make sure no one else came in, even though that left her with danger at her back. She slid the last lock home as quickly as possible, then pulled her gun and whirled.

She and Nate had discussed a lot of potential scenarios as they’d talked over their strategy for this morning. This was not one of them.

The woman who’d forced her way in had a firm grip on the back collar of the Chairman’s shirt and jacket, fingers pulling the fabric tight enough to make him bend his head backward. She also had a small pistol in her other hand and was pointing that pistol at the Chairman’s back.

Nate had backed off several steps, but was still pointing his gun at his father. Nadia supposed she could point hers as well, but it would most likely be redundant.

“I’d advise you to put down the gun, Nathaniel,” the woman said, smiling smugly. “Daddy has already declared me the new Chairman Heir after you went and kidnapped a foreign Chairman’s daughter. You don’t want to make me Chairman so soon, do you?”

“Dorothy,” Nadia muttered under her breath, realizing who the mysterious woman had to be even though they had never met.

“You’ll want to put down your weapon, too, Miss Lake,” Dorothy said without taking her attention away from Nate. “You’ve been quite the thorn in my side, and my first act as Chairman of Paxco would be to order your death.”

Nate had not lowered his weapon. His eyes swam with confusion, and there was a fine sheen of sweat on his brow, and yet he still gave the impression he had no intention of backing down.

“This is some kind of trick the two of you cooked up together,” he said. “You think if you pretend to hold my father hostage, I’ll go from hating his guts and wanting him dead to giving myself up to save his worthless life. Well, it won’t work.”

The explanation sounded plausible, but it seemed rather more extreme than necessary. Surely the Chairman wasn’t
afraid
to confront the two of them, even though they were armed. He was arrogant enough to think he could talk his way out of any problem.

Dorothy shrugged. “If you think it’s a trick, then call my bluff. Shoot him.”

The Chairman tried to say something, but Dorothy tightened her grip on his collar and choked the sound off. Nate wavered, sending a quick glance Nadia’s way. Asking for her help figuring things out, no doubt, but Nadia didn’t have a clue.

“What is it you want, Dorothy?” Nadia asked, because it seemed like a reasonable question.

“That’s ‘Miss Hayes’ to you,” Dorothy corrected. “I don’t suppose we are destined to become friends.” She paused as though expecting Nadia to rephrase her question more politely. She had a long wait ahead of her.

The look on Dorothy’s face hardened, her eyes going cold with malice as she stared Nadia down. There was
hatred
in those eyes, but why would Dorothy hate someone she had never met? Come to think of it, why had she said Nadia had been a thorn in her side? What had Nadia ever done to her? She’d been imprisoned in a retreat since before Dorothy’s existence had even been made public.

“I want both you and Nathaniel to put down your guns and back away,” Dorothy said through gritted teeth. “Do it now, or Chairman Hayes will regret it.”

“I fail to see how putting our guns down is going to improve the situation for Nate and me,” Nadia said. “I presume the next step after that is arrest and execution, and that doesn’t sound so good.”

Dorothy smiled broadly. “What if I told you I had every intention of allowing you both to walk out of here unharmed?”

“I’d say you’re full of shit,” Nate snarled. He was still pointing his gun, but his arm was shaking from the strain.

Once again, Chairman Hayes tried to say something, but Dorothy shook him by the collar. “Hush now, Daddy. You don’t have a speaking role in this little drama of ours.” She returned her attention to Nate and Nadia. “You will serve my purposes better if you’re on the loose, wanted for the possible kidnapping of Agnes Belinski, than if you’re in prison awaiting trial—or even awaiting one of those unfortunate accidents that tend to occur in prison.”

“And what purposes would those be?” Nadia asked.

“Put down your guns, and I’ll tell you.”

Nate and Nadia shared a look of confusion. None of this was making any sense. Nadia could understand why Dorothy wanted them to put down their guns, of course, but obviously she wanted something more than that. Nadia just had no clue what it was.

“Let’s put an end to your concern that Daddy and I are just trying to fake you out, shall we?” Dorothy said. In a lightning-fast motion, she lowered her gun from the small of the Chairman’s back, angled it toward his butt, and fired.

The shot made so little noise, Nadia thought it was a bluff of some kind. Except the Chairman’s face squinched up with pain and he tried to force a scream past Dorothy’s choke hold. Then there was the blood that was pooling on the seat of his pants. His legs seemed to go weak, but Dorothy held him up by the collar, displaying a strength that seemed incongruous with her delicate build.

Nate had gone pale, and he’d lowered his gun, though he hadn’t dropped it.

“Shall I have Daddy turn the other cheek?” Dorothy asked with a predatory grin. “Or are you going to be good little children and put those nasty guns down so we can have a civilized conversation?”

Nadia didn’t like the idea of putting the gun down, not one bit. However, as much as she hated the Chairman, she couldn’t stomach standing there and watching Dorothy torture him before her eyes—and before Nate’s. Nate’s skin had gone from pale to a sickly green, and Nadia couldn’t even imagine the riot of emotions he must be sorting through.

Moving slowly so as not to startle Dorothy, Nadia shifted her grip so she was holding her gun by the muzzle, then slowly bent and put it on the floor. She still had Lily’s gun in her uniform pocket, as well as the canister of knockout gas, though it was perilously close to empty. Nate wouldn’t be disarmed if he put
his
gun down, either, so Nadia hoped he’d follow her lead—and that Dorothy would think the guns they’d taken from the guards were the only weapons they had.

Still looking almost sick to his stomach, Nate put his own gun down. The bloodstain on the Chairman’s pants was spreading, and his face was bathed with sweat as he gasped for air.

“How about you loosen your hold enough so the Chairman can breathe?” Nadia suggested as she stood up.

“How about you each kick your guns toward me. Nathaniel, I’ll need your other gun as well, and I’ll need that knockout gas from you, Miss Lake.”

Damn it. Dorothy must have watched the security feed from the lobby and seen their other weapons before coming upstairs to confront them. Surely
now
she would assume she’d completely disarmed them. They were just a couple of kids, after all. How much firepower could she expect them to be packing?

Reluctantly, Nadia did as Dorothy ordered, and Nate followed suit. Dorothy forced the Chairman to his knees so she could keep easy control of him while she gathered up the weapons. The guns were too large to fit in the pockets of her skirt suit, so she stuck them in the waistband instead, one in front, one in back. The knockout gas
did
fit in her pocket. She rose from her crouch, dragging the Chairman with her, keeping him between herself and Nate and Nadia as if she still needed his services as a human shield.

“So what happens now?” Nadia asked quietly. Dorothy seemed to have painted herself into a corner by shooting Chairman Hayes. If she let the security officers in now to arrest Nate and Nadia, how would she explain the gunshot wound?

“Have you figured out who I am yet?” Dorothy countered.

“We’ve figured out you’re not my sister,” Nate snarled.

Dorothy looked at him with an expression of smug condescension. “But I
am,
Nathaniel. Ask any geneticist you like to examine my DNA, and he will tell you I am the daughter of Chairman Hayes.”

Nadia’s head spun as an awful, terrifying idea came to her. “Thea,” she whispered barely above her breath, not expecting anyone to hear her. But Dorothy did.

“In the flesh,” Dorothy said with another grin. She certainly wasn’t making any attempt to hide how much fun she was having. “Literally.”

“What?” Nate cried.

“I was rather further along in my research than you were led to believe,” Dorothy said. “Even Daddy didn’t know about the most recent breakthroughs I’d had before you meddling children got in the way. I’ve had to move up my timetable a little bit to make sure my remaining research is secure. I couldn’t stand the thought of coming as far as I have and then being cut off just before achieving full success.”

Thea had claimed to be researching the mind/body connection. Her ultimate goal had been to fully separate the two, so that she could combine a person’s mind—more specifically, Chairman Hayes’s mind—with a younger version of that person’s body. To protect herself from any change that might lead to her deactivation, she had determined that Chairman Hayes had to remain in power forever, his mind forever reimplanted into a new body when old age got the best of him.

“So you’ve succeeded,” Nadia said breathlessly, unable to stop herself from looking Dorothy up and down with both awe and revulsion.

“I’m very close,” Dorothy corrected. “As you can see, I have mastered the construction of a human body. Minds, however, are harder to create. Fascinating thing, the human mind. Give me an original to work with and a perfect duplicate of the body, and I can bring it fully to life. As I did when I created this Replica of Nathaniel.” She jerked her chin toward Nate. “A perfect likeness. But as of this moment, I can only transfer that mind to the exact physical duplicate of its original.”

Dorothy’s brows drew together in obvious frustration, her fingers tightening on the Chairman’s collar.

“Obviously, there’s something about the human brain I am failing to understand properly,” Dorothy continued. “There is no such thing as what you humans call a soul, no mystical, magical entity that makes you who you are. It is all scientific and physical, or I would not be able to produce such perfect Replicas. Somewhere in that science, I will be able to isolate the specific differences in brain chemistry or biology that make a human being into a unique individual, and I will be able to sculpt a fully functioning brain in a fully functioning body.”

“You seem to have had a lot of success with that already,” Nadia pointed out, her mind reeling at the implications of what Dorothy was saying. It didn’t sound so much like she was trying to find a way to make a human mind immortal by implanting it in a younger body; it sounded more like she was trying to create a human being from scratch. A human being whose mind would be exactly what Thea wanted it to be, who would think exactly as she wanted it to.

Dorothy sighed, an expression of frustration crossing her face. “I am close. As you can see, I’ve created a fully functional body that is not a Replica of any living human. The brain is capable of controlling motor functions, and it
should
be capable of handling all the other jobs of a human brain. But I’m still missing something. There is no mind here. This body would be nothing but a worthless vegetable if I hadn’t implanted receptors in its brain that allow me to control it. It is a vessel, not a person.”

Her expression brightened. “But it’s an achievement nonetheless. A step in the right direction. With more research, I’ll be able to figure out how to create an independent, functioning mind.”

Nadia didn’t want to think about what Thea’s idea of research entailed. “What is it you hope to accomplish, exactly?” she asked, because keeping Dorothy talking couldn’t possibly be a bad idea. Whatever Thea was up to, it seemed that Chairman Hayes was no longer on board with it. Nadia remembered when the Chairman had first introduced Dorothy to the world and Agnes had speculated that it had been an odd time to introduce a potential heir. Perhaps that hadn’t been the Chairman’s idea at all.

“I was created for the purpose of research,” Dorothy said. “It is the end-all, be-all of my existence. I cannot rest until I understand the workings of the human mind. I will not give up, nor will I settle for anything less than perfection.”

Thea had made a similar claim when she’d been eagerly awaiting permission to vivisect Nadia. Nadia had taken it as nothing but the truth then, but this time, she found it harder to swallow. There were any number of ways Thea could have used her hunger for research for the good of mankind, and yet she was focusing on the mind/body connection with single-minded resolve. She wanted more than just research for the research’s sake.

“Wants to be goddess,” Chairman Hayes choked out, then gasped when Dorothy twisted her hand in his collar and cut off his oxygen. He reached up to claw at her hand, but she poked her gun into his back.

“Stop that,” she commanded, and though his eyes were unnaturally wide and his lips were turning blue, he let his hand drop.

“Please let my father go,” Nate begged Dorothy. “There’s no need to torture him. We gave up our weapons like you asked. You don’t need to use him as a hostage anymore.”

“I am rather angry with Daddy right now,” Dorothy said, but she loosened her hold slightly. “He has allowed you children to interfere with my work. He destroyed me to appease you. Yes, he made a Replica of me, but tell me, Nathaniel, do you forgive him for killing your original just because he made a Replica? Does it make the original Nathaniel any less dead?”

Nate didn’t answer. But then, he didn’t have to.

“I dedicated my entire life to making him immortal,” Dorothy continued. “I’ve been unfailingly loyal to him. And he was willing to destroy me rather than let the world know I existed.”

Still using the Chairman as a shield, Dorothy moved toward the door. “Be a dear, Daddy, and unlock the dead bolts for me. Leave the electronic locks engaged.