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  Jacob led Emma and Brian out of JFK, all the while keeping an eye on the gaunt man. The bright morning sun made Jacob squint. He stifled a yawn.

  By the time they’d landed, Jacob’s nerves were stretched to the breaking point. He’d fought the urge to constantly look over his shoulder the whole way, hardly getting a wink of sleep. It was a huge relief when they finally landed and the gaunt man walked off in front of him.

  Jacob felt much safer watching him from a distance. The gaunt man fumed about his treatment at every security officer he could find before eventually taking a cab.

  Jacob and the others took the AirTrain to Howard Beach station, changing once before they arrived in the Lower East Side.

  While they were walking to Phillip’s place, Brian leading the way as he referred to a map, Emma turned to Jacob. “He was just a guy after all, then.”

  “I guess so, but I was so sure! The way he was watching us.”

  “You’re just tired. We all need a rest. It’s been a crazy day.”

  Jacob noted that as the obvious phrase of the week.

  He felt he was losing his grip on things. Not just his mission to expose Gray, but also his decision-making, his rational thinking. He was becoming too strung out on farfetched theories.

  Sure, Gray’s tech was off-the-chart crazy, but Jacob had always known that. Ever since Steve went missing and Jacob had recovered a number of files from his apartment, he’d known the depravity of Gray’s ideas. There were the memos that Steve had passed to him, written in Gray’s doublespeak about his unapproved studies. The allusions to doing things ‘off the grid’ in order to circumvent ‘certain restrictions.’

  As usual, when presented with the memos and files for Gray’s illicit behaviors, no one believed him. Not admissible they said. Too vague.

  But Jacob knew they were just covering for Gray. Eventually, though, with enough evidence, no one could deny him the truth.

  He supposed that seeing one of Gray’s creations in the flesh had bridged some part of his brain that was now affecting his thought process. He had to consider situations and consequences that were never part of any human’s worldview before.

  The responsibility felt crushing. But his tiredness overwhelmed him, and during the drive through New York he dozed off, daydreaming about thousands of Miss Clipboard and Gaunt Man clones chasing him through the city.

  ***

  They turned into a high-end street. Brian pointed to a high-rise apartment building. “Must be the place,” he said, double-checking his map.

  “Look at this place,” Emma said. “It’s amazing.”

  Dark glass on the exterior reflected the morning lights. A doorman wearing a regal purple suit lined with gold trim stood beside two chrome, reflective doors. The doorman smiled and tipped his hat as they approached.

  He opened the door for them. “Good morning, lady and gentlemen.”

  “Thanks,” Brian said.

  They received a warm smile as they entered the building.

  Jacob scouted out the place as they entered, watching for anyone watching them. He couldn’t rule out the chance that they might have been followed.

  Dozens of people in all kinds of smart dress mingled to and from the elevators and the main doors. A group of five women wearing perfect black business dresses sauntered by. One of the women, a tall, model-thin blonde, gave Emma a disapproving look as she scanned Emma’s outfit: skinny black jeans, Converse shoes, and a metal band T-shirt.

  “Snooty bitch,” Emma said.

  “Just city folk,” Jacob replied. “Pay no attention. I prefer your look to theirs anyway.”

  Jacob dragged Emma forward, joining Brian in the elevator.

  No one else followed inside. “You sure we can trust Phillip?” Jacob asked as the elevator rose. Jacob tried not to think about the cramped space as Brian’s bulk made the small area seem even smaller.

  “Absolutely. He’s one of the good guys,” Brian said.

  The elevator stopped and the doors opened. The carpeted hallway was empty. Jacob let the others out first, and they moved quietly down the corridor looking for 213. Brian pulled up at a door. “Here it is.”

  He knocked twice and waited.

  The door opened, the chain still attached. A young man looked out through the gap, his eye wide, scanning. “Yeah?”

  “Hey, Phil, it’s us,” Brian said. “We just got here. Hope you have some strong coffee. We’ve got quite the story for you.”

  Phillip seemed to wait for it to sink in for a few moments before stepping back, unchaining the door and opening it for them, welcoming them inside with a nervous smile. He looked Emma up and down, not recognizing her from their one and only meeting at a comic convention a few years ago. “Hey,” he said. “You must be Emma. Brian’s said a lot about you. Come on in.”

  “That’s me,” Emma said, turning away from Phillip as though dismissing his flirtatious welcome. Phillip patted Brian on the back and held his hand out to Emma, completely ignoring Jacob, who sidestepped around them and entered the apartment.

  Emma briefly shook his hand and gave him an insincere smile—one Jacob recognized as the one she used with annoying patrons at the bar.

  The place was better than anywhere he’d ever been before. It was like a high-class hotel with its tall ceilings, lush carpet, and dark wood furniture. The walls were tastefully covered in various large art pieces and weaponry ranging from kendo sticks, a katana, and a set of nunchaku, all of which were displayed on carved wooden plaques.

  Three leather sofas surrounded a glass coffee table holding a range of thick, hardback graphic novels. The kitchen area to the left of this seated zone was a stark contrast to Jacob’s. There were no plate-structures-of-doom in the sink; each brushed-steel surface was spotlessly clean. A set of Japanese cooking knives stuck out from a solid block of what looked like ebony.

  Phillip led Emma in and closed the door behind them. He offered her coffee before turning to the others as if they were an afterthought. “Oh, you guys want something to wake you up from the red-eye?”

  “Yes, that’d be great, thanks,” Jacob said, needing something to jolt him awake.

  “What’s your poison? Decaf, espresso, latte, Americano? I’ve got cinnamon and steamed milk, mint or chocolate sprinkles.”

  Oh, good for you, Jacob thought. It’d be just awful if he were out of chocolate sprinkles.

  “I’ll just have a cup of instant, if you have it, thanks,” Jacob replied.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t do instant.” Phillip looked at Jacob as though he were a peasant.

  “Sorry to interrupt the coffee meeting, guys,” Emma said. “But shouldn’t we just get on with this and show Phillip what we brought?”

  “Sure,” Jacob said. “Whatever Phillip wants. We’re his guests, after all.”

  “Okay,” Phillip said as he led the others back to the sofas. “What is the new tech you want me to look at?” They all sat down and a nervous energy developed among the group. Jacob felt like he was at a tipping point. If he involved Phillip in this, he’d either make him a target for Gray or compromise his own safety. If this guy went to the police about what they’d done, would they get charged for murder as well as breaking and entering and theft?

  “Jacob, you can trust me,” Phillip said, an eager expression on his face, a faux friendliness that spoke more about what he wanted from them than genuine sincerity.

  “It’s what we came here for,” Brian said. “Show the good man the chip, Jake.”

  He had no damned choice now that Brian had let the cat out of the bag. He fumed internally at Brian’s eagerness. But, having seemingly no choice, Jacob opened his case and pulled out the box, placing it on the coffee table after shifting the books out of the way.

  He noticed that one of them had Phillip’s name on it.

  Brian noticed too and picked it up. He started to scan the pages while Jacob told Phillip about the chip.

  “Here it is. It’s a biochip, but not like
anything I’d expect you to have seen before,” Jacob said, gaining a degree of satisfaction from that fact. Phillip might have a fancy apartment with every type of coffee known to man, but he didn’t have any wetware.

  Jacob unzipped the plastic, peeled away the paper wrapping and nearly gagged.

  “Jesus Christ,” Phillip said, jerking away. “That thing stinks like hell.”

  Upon closer inspection, the chip appeared to have already started decomposing. The flesh-like material around the bulbous end was bruised and shriveled, exposing more of its insides. It looked more like an electrical device now. Within the flesh were a series of veins resembling wires attached to what appeared to be organic, flesh-colored circuit boards. The wire-veins came from the boards and through the narrow tubes at each end.

  Emma had pulled her shirt over her nose.

  “Where did you get this from?” Phillip asked.

  Jacob looked at him and laid it all on the line. “We killed and buried something today. This came from it.”

  Phillip stood and walked to the kitchen, running a hand through his dark, gelled hair. “You did what?”

  Emma spoke up first. “Look, let’s all just calm down, talk about this rationally. Phillip, let me explain.”

  “Brian, man, you killed someone and then came here? Are you nuts?”

  “Not someone. Something,” Brian said.

  “He’s right,” Emma said. “It wasn’t a real person. I don’t know exactly what it was; it’s hard to explain. Look, we came here mainly to lay low for a while, right, but also Brian told us you’re some über tech guy. Well, we found that organ, chip, whatever, in this person-thing. We wanted to know if you could connect to it or identify it?”

  Jacob added, “I know it’s a lot to take in, and we’ve involved you with this now. I realize we’re stretching the boundaries of our relationship, hell, apart from you and Brian, we barely know each other, but we’re in trouble, man, and need your help. We need to find out more about what this thing is. We need to present evidence to… someone.”

  Phillip took a deep breath and seemed to switch off for a few seconds. He closed his eyes and stood still before nodding. “Okay, let me get this right, because right now I’m confused as hell and wanting you all out of my apartment.”

  “Phillip, please, listen to us,” Brian said. “We really need your help, man.” Brian walked over and grabbed Phillip by the shoulders. “This could be the find of the century. Look at it; it’s biological hardware—the stuff of science fiction, but here, now, in our lifetime.”

  Phillip turned and walked to his kitchen. He rummaged around in a cabinet and brought out a number of cloths and a can of air freshener. He sprayed it on the cloth and held it close to his face as he walked back to the coffee table and leaned in close to inspect the organ.

  He took a pen from the table and gently poked at it, lifting the tubular part that extended from the pear-shaped bulbous body. It had gained rigidity since Jacob first ripped it from the back of Miss Clipboard’s head. He could still remember that warm, wet squelch as he yanked it out.

  “This is seriously messed up, guys.”

  “What do you think?” Jacob said. “Is it possible to hook it up to something?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I majored in electrical engineering, but before that I took some biology classes. Basically, the human brain and nervous system work from electrical stimulation, and it seems like this thing is a synthetic form of that.”

  “So you’ll help us?” Jacob asked.

  Phillip looked up at the group and then back at the biochip. “You’ve got me curious, that’s for sure, but if I told you all to leave, I suspect you’ve already implicated me. You’ve not given me much choice here.” He broke away, rubbing his chin as he looked at the chip.

  An eternity later, he turned back to Jacob and the others. “Fine, I’ll look into it. But once I’ve checked it out, I want you all gone and to never come back. I’m also not going to lie to the police if they come knocking.”

  ***

  Jacob downed his third mug of espresso. He wasn’t a fan of fancy coffee, but it did the trick. He felt more alert, and the heavy fatigue that made him weigh an extra hundred pounds had lifted. His underlying anxiety had eased too.

  They surrounded Phillip, who sat on a stool at a workbench. The ‘lab,’ as he called it, was in one of the back rooms of the apartment. It was decked out with a range of oscilloscopes, computers, multi-meters, and various other pieces of electrical equipment Jacob didn’t recognize.

  Phillip had wired the biochip to one of his diagnostic devices: a larger version of a regular multi-meter.

  “I’ll start with passing some very low voltage currents through it,” Phillip said, adjusting the dial on the meter. Its square LED screen flickered with a series of numbers. Phillip continued to adjust the dial in small increments.

  “I don’t believe it,” Phillip said. “It’s still functional. Look.”

  He leaned back on his stool and with a wide grin pointed at the screen.

  Jacob leaned in to get a closer look. “What am I looking at?”

  Emma and Brian crowded around, also trying to make out the meaning of the numbers. None of them had much knowledge of electrical engineering.

  “This number here”—Phillip pointed a screwdriver to the screen where the number twelve showed—“represents the voltage. But the interesting thing is that it fluctuates. This biochip, as you call it, is altering the voltage on the other side.”

  “What does that mean?” Jacob asked.

  “It means that what you have here is a kind of computer. It’s actually processing. It’s functional, alive.”

  Jacob shook his head and focused on what Phillip was saying. This would be quite a breakthrough. It seemed the artificial humans required additional processing other than the brain.

  “If it’s processing, could there be a way of hacking into it to see what it’s actually doing? I mean, is there data in it?”

  Phillip sucked on the end of the screwdriver as he thought, then, using it like a pointer, said, “It’s possible. If it’s processing binary like a regular silicon chip, I could probably build an interface and take a look at the code somehow, but that’s not a trivial job. I’d need to write the software, and that might take months depending on the complexity. Given how much this thing stinks, I’m not sure how long I’d have before it degrades beyond the point of usefulness.”

  “Damn. I was worried you’d say something like that,” Jacob said. “What if we freeze it? That’d slow the degradation, right? Until we could hook it up to something?” Jacob then thought of the cryogenic chambers he’d seen back at XNA Industries’ facility. Did those clones also have one of these in their heads too?

  “It could work,” Brian said. “The cold would definitely retard the breakdown of tissue.”

  They all turned to him. Emma gave him a blank stare. “And you know that for definite, how?”

  He shrugged. “There’s these amazing things made from trees. You can get them from various retailers and buildings called libraries. They call them books, and they contain knowledge.”

  “Yeah, thanks, smartass,” Emma replied. “But this still doesn’t get us any further. If we freeze it and present it to the police, the feds or whoever, it’d just look like we’ve stolen it from a tech corporation. I don’t think something like this would be considered illegal, so just having this doesn’t bolster Jake’s theory.”

  “She’s right,” Jacob said. “It’s information we need, not some new biotech. At least not a small part like this…” He broke off as a thought came to him, but it filled him with dread.

  “What is it?” Brian asked. “You got an idea?”

  “I do, but I don’t think any of you are going to like it.”

  “Well, it’s not as if today has been a Disney experience,” Emma said. “What are you thinking?”

  “If we can’t get the info on the flash drive decrypted, and it’s highly unlikel
y we’ll be able to get back into Gray’s facility, we only have one concrete thing to expose what he’s done.”

  “No, we can’t do that,” Emma said.

  “What? What is it?” Brian looked confused.

  “The body,” Jacob said. “We have to dig it up and hand it in. Let someone test it, see that it’s not real.”

  “How would anyone know that it came from this Julian Gray?” Phillip asked, spinning around on his stool with his back to the workbench. “If this woman was actually an artificial human with all this weird biotech inside, that’s no guarantee that Julian Gray made her. I doubt it’d have come with a manufacturing barcode or something. And who’s to say it’s very different at all?”

  “It had that in its head for one thing.” Jacob pointed to the biochip. “That’s not exactly normal, is it?”

  Emma slumped against the workbench and sighed. “This is all a mess.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jacob said, stepping closer to her, placing his hand on her arm. “I didn’t mean for any of you to get wrapped up in this.”

  “I need some coffee and fresh air,” Phillip said. He got up and left the room. Brian followed, leaving Jacob and Emma in the lab.

  Emma sat down on Phillip’s stool and inspected the readout on the small LED screen. Jacob stood behind her. “I didn’t expect it all to go down like this,” he said. “I feel like I’ve screwed everything up.”

  “Shh!” Emma said. “Listen.”

  Jacob stood upright and listened. He didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary. After a few seconds he broke the silence and whispered, “What is it?”

  Emma held up her hand to hush him. “There… you hear that?”

  Jacob did this time, but it was just the noise a speaker makes when it’s near a cell phone, a digital canary chirping its song. He checked his pocket; his cell was switched off. He hadn’t turned it back on since the flight. He looked on the bench, thinking Phillip had left his there, but he hadn’t.

  “It’s the biochip!” Emma said. “My phone’s off too.”

  Jacob stepped forward and moved the biochip closer to the speaker of a radio device. He turned up the volume and could hear the interference interrupted by the tonal blips coming from the organ. “This is bad news. Real bad news,” Jacob said.