Plasticity Page 17

  “Back in July,” Truman started, without preface, “we were part of a plan to disrupt the status quo, of sorts. We were going to expose a vile truth about the prosthesis industry, basically painting the entire industry as a murder-for-profit enterprise. I was not privy to the finer details, but I gathered that it had something to do with exposing the organ trade surrounding the human transition market.” He watched to make sure she was still following along. She was nodding and smiling, sipping her coffee, with eyes that suggested that she had not listened to, or understood, anything he had said, to this point. Undaunted, he continued. “We had you lined up to be the catalyst. After the procedure, we were going to take your plastic version and parade it around, showing everyone how there was a plastic version of a living person. Expose that the body left behind by the procedure is not doomed to die.” She looked moderately interested, but she didn't seem to be reacting the way Truman would have expected. “Make sense, so far?”

  “Oh sure, yeah, I can see that. Assuming people believed that you weren't faking it with twins or something. Some people might be surprised, others it might just solidify their faith. Although, I'm pretty sure everyone knows that they get your organs as part of the deal. Not really a 'Soylent Green is People' kind of moment for you.” She didn't know why, but she kind of felt bad for Truman. It was obvious he had been put in a position that he wasn't wholly prepared for.

  Truman wasn't sure if he should be frustrated, or sympathetic. This girl was either the dumbest person he had ever met, save for maybe Dave, or she was doing a great job acting like it. “Soooo, after the transfer was completed, we stole the plastic version of you.” He paused, to let that sink in.

  “MmHmm, yeah, go on.”

  “The abduction did not go as planned, and you, plastic you, escaped, leaving us with nothing. We didn't even have a tracker installed. That's why they kidnapped you. They thought you were the other you.” He was starting to fall apart, and he couldn't keep his words from sounding like a poorly-told joke.

  “Okay,” Hayley had not believed a word of this. “So, there's a plastic version of me running around. On the loose! AWOL! Is she out there fighting crime, or toppling dictatorships, or just plain smashin' patriarchies?”

  Truman looked like he was on the verge of tears, and he was coming to the end of whatever he thought he may have been able to do to explain the situation to her.

  “Who paid for the plastic?” Hayley waited for a response, but Truman just looked ill. “How did they get a plastic version of me ready, when I wasn't even scheduled for transition?” She had too many good questions, and Truman felt completely lost at sea.

  “Let's contact my boss and see if they can help. I don't know what to do with you, and I can't answer your questions.” He had taken his phone out, and was furiously thumbing away at it.

  “That's fine, I s'pose. As long as there's coffee, I'll be pretty easy to keep subdued.” Hayley stood and stretched her arms out. “You run out of coffee, though, and I'll start claiming that I've got powerful friends who will be looking for me, and that your ass would be on the line, and so forth.”

  Truman put the phone down. “Do you have powerful friends? And will they be looking for you?” He sipped at his coffee, making a face to exaggerate the wince that he had over-acted when tasting the cooling coffee.

  “Well, I mean, sort of. The girl whose apartment you took me from is like an amateur detective, or something, and from what I gather from her best friend, she's violent for fun. And sometimes it crosses over into retribution, but it doesn't have to be for any real purpose. He may have been exaggerating, though. I haven't known either of them for very long.”

  Truman wasn't sure if she was being serious, or what was going on with her, but he figured he would be better off if he treated it as though it were, at least partially, true. No harm in being cautious, after all. “And, will they be looking for you?”

  “Oh yeah, absolutely. Someone broke into her apartment to kidnap me. They'll be looking, if for no other reason than to get revenge on whoever broke into her place. You guys are screwed.” Hayley quickly tried to back-pedal a bit. “Well, like I said, though, as long as there's coffee, I won't be saying any of that stuff.” She smiled weakly, as if to ask if that made it any better. Truman's face showed that it did, indeed, not make it any better.

  “So, if they come looking for you, how do you think they'll go about it? I mean, what kind of chance do you think they have of finding you here?”

  Hayley looked around the room. It was huge, like a warehouse, with a set of double doors on one side and a smaller, single door not far from it on the same wall. The opposing side had two large bay doors, like silver lobster-tails. She hadn't been paying much attention, but she realized she could hear enough going on outside that she could actually isolate the sounds. A truck was beeping as it backed up somewhere, nearby, and she could hear a train on tracks in the not-so-far-off distance. A police car or ambulance, she could never tell them apart, drove by with its sirens on, and she figured out that the susurrus in the background was not a river, like she had originally thought. It was traffic. Probably on the interstate.

  “Well, Mister Truman, sir, I guess that depends on where we are. They'll likely track the people I hang out with, check with the hospital, talk to my parents, et cetera.” She watched his face for a reaction, but he was trying to stay blank. “Standard stuff that wouldn't really help them one bit. Fortunately for you, they're not very likely to track me to the group of warehouses on the north-east side of the tracks by the interstate.” At this, he paled slightly, but did not try to argue with her deduction. Maybe she wasn't as stupid as he had thought she was. Or maybe she was an idiot savant. He really couldn't be sure at this point. It could go either way with this one.

  “So, Mister Truman, I am curious about why you think I transitioned. I mean, I'm sure we have some time to sit and talk, right? So, tell me, if you don't mind, how you've come to believe I could go through the transition procedure and come out not remembering anything, especially since I've heard it's a traumatic experience. I'm sure I'd remember the pain of it, if it's half as bad as it's been described to me.” She had grown pretty comfortable with this Truman guy, finding herself not the least bit concerned about pushing him around. She sat back in her chair that had, most recently, been her prison, and drank her own cold, terrible coffee.

  “Well, as I understand it, they put you out before they did the transfer.” It was Hayley's turn to be surprised.

  “I didn't think they could do that. Portland, that's the girl who is violent for fun, told me that you need to be awake for it, so they can map all your stuff for the transfer. She didn't say exactly what would happen if you were anesthetized, but she implied you wouldn't be you or something.” Hayley wished she had more specific details, now, but Portland's explanation had been good enough for her, at the time. It's not like she had planned to try to teach someone about the procedure, so she hadn't dug too deeply into that aspect. To be honest, she never really dug too deeply into anything, but that usually didn't cause problems for her.

  “I'm not a doctor. I don't really know how it works,” Truman didn't sound as if he had given any actual thought to what happened when people transitioned, which is probably because he had not. “Cynthia would know better, but she hasn't responded to my texts, yet.”

  Hayley hesitated for a moment. It couldn't be the same Cynthia from the hospital, could it? That would actually make sense, though. They would need an inside man to enact the plan in the manner that Truman had described it. “Cynthia, huh?” She chewed on the words, contemplating the likelihood. Well, she could certainly think of a way to find out. “Cynthia Park? From the Maebashi Clinic, a division of Rivers Medical Institute?” She watched Truman's face bleach and sag. His phone was in his hand in one swift motion, and he was at it again with the frantic thumbwork. She didn't wait for him to say anything more. She had her answer.

  Hayley stood up, again, stretched a long,
slow-motion mimic of an early morning stretch, and went to refill her coffee mug. She took Truman's as well. He was going to need it. After the mugs had been filled, she talked as she walked back to the table.

  “This Portland girl that I was talking about...” She set Truman's mug in front of him. “Well, her best friend is a counselor named Thomas Wensley. I believe your Cynthia knows him.” She set her coffee on the table and sunk deep into her seat, before bringing the hot, watered-down, bitter garbage to her lips, sipping gently. She smiled. “Oh, yeah. You guys are so screwed.”

  Chapter 18: Confrontational

  Cyrus heard the fight beginning, but couldn't see out of the passenger side mirror, and he couldn't turn his head, and he was getting frustrated. Hayley got out of the car, despite his and Alan's protestations. He shifted his mass to watch Hayley, but she didn't join the fray, she just stood near the car. When he finally got out of the car, it felt like removing a tie at the end of the day. Liberating, if only in a small, meaningless way. He took a step back to let Alan out of the car, as well, since they weren't listening to him, anyway. Maybe Alan could talk some sense into them.

  It appeared that the fight had been called off, but it could start up again at any moment. Alan tried to defuse the situation by telling Hayley that those were the people he had seen with the girl he thought was her. They probably thought she was the girl they were with at the restaurant. Hayley seemed to disregard this, for a moment, but as the pieces fell together, she had to agree, in resignation, that they were probably not the ones she was running from. Although, Thom was still suspicious.

  “Truce. For now.” She called out to the girl who seemed to be named Portland, of all things.

  Lydia didn't like it, having taken it upon herself to include Hayley and Cyrus in her protection detail, because they were, even if incidentally, attached to Alan. She would keep Alan safe at all costs, not just because his parents had 'bought' her, as Karen so inelegantly put it, but because she had respected Alan's parents, and she had given her word to them.

  “I'm game, if you are.” Portland sneered at Lydia, “Although, for the record, I totally won that fight.”

  Lydia glared at her, but did not retort. A truce had been called, and she considered verbal assaults to be covered under the terms of a truce, even if the other side didn't hold her high standards of conduct. Portland was of a mind that if you took the high road, it just exposed your ankles to the arrows. Hard to say which viewpoint was nobler.

  “We're kind of in the middle of something, here, so can we work this out quick and get on our way?” Hayley did not hide her impatience, and something about her was grating on Portland's nerves. She was similar to her Hayley, but just different enough to leave a bad taste in her mouth.

  Thom stood beside Portland, on their unofficial side of an imaginary line that separated the two groups. “I assure you that I am not responsible for whatever you're accusing me of, so please, if you would, explain...” He stumbled a bit. He wasn't sure what he wanted her to explain, or more to the point, there were so many things he didn't have answers for, and he was having a hard time choosing which question to ask first.

  “Yeah, explain it all, if you would be so kind.” Portland's non-specific request might get them, at least something. “Yesterday, you and Thom are, as far as I presume, rolling around on the ground crying your eyes out in front of your parents, and today you're like the emotionless leader of some weird paramilitary cult.”

  Hayley's face was softly placid, and to Thom, she did look like she was more aloof than real Hayley could ever be. Her words, however, contained fire and anger, and a hint of fear. “So, the impostor has been with my parents.” She was seething in spoken word, but dead in the face. “Was this their plan the whole time, I wonder? To steal my life?” She thought out loud, to which neither Thom, nor Portland were quite sure they had a response.

  “From our perspective,” Portland tried to tread carefully, knowing her words were only fuel on the fire, “You would be the impostor. The other Hayley is the only one we've ever known, and she's flesh.”

  Hayley glared. “She's the impostor. Working with whoever tried to steal me from the hospital.”

  “You're not being very reasonable, here. Do you think your parents would not notice an impostor pretending to be their daughter?” Portland was pretty sure that was going to nail that coffin shut, but delusion can be a powerful force.

  Hayley dropped her head in exasperation. “Look, I've spent months on this, and gotten no where. Right now, I have to secure my home, or find a new one, so this can wait a little longer, I'm sure.”

  “Yeah, we have to go out to the shack and kick somebody out.” Alan spoke up for the first time, surprising everyone, including himself.

  “Important business, but not so important you couldn't go spend a little time watching plastic whores masturbate for you, huh?” Portland's claws were out, and poor Alan cowered.

  Hayley turned her head to Alan, obviously displeased. “They don't need to know about the 'shack,' Alan Rice.”

  No one seemed to care about the revelation of where he had been, recently. And, although Cyrus did wrinkle his nose a bit, he didn't say anything. Portland looked around at their odd group, finally landing her eyes on Lydia, who just shrugged. Portland decided to focus on the shack part, then, if that was a point of more contention than The Junkyard had been.

  “Kicking someone out of a shack, huh? Make you a deal,” She smiled. It's not like she always got her way, right away, but she would get her way come hell or high water. Which of the two this situation was, she had no idea, but neither option sounded like the easy way. “I am great at kicking people out of places. Used to do it for a living. Maybe I can help.”

  “No.”

  “Absolutely not.” Lydia and Hayley overlapped each other, but Alan didn't seem as against the idea.

  “Maybe they can help. If what you said is true, it couldn't hurt to have more help.” Alan was like a puppy, nudging at Hayley.

  “We could use the travel time to talk about why there are two of you, and maybe that might help us figure out where the other one has gone.” Thom was turning on his counseling voice, which he tried to keep hidden from Portland as much as he could. She had a weird response to this voice, even though she had been the one to help him cultivate it. Even now, she was looking at him with a strange expression. He couldn't tell what that expression meant, but it looked like a cross between lust and car sickness. It was not pleasant.

  “Yes, please, let's do that.” Alan was getting genuinely enthusiastic, much to Hayley's confusion, until she realized why Alan was so interested in bringing them along.

  “Seriously, Alan? Robot parts?” Hayley was scolding, which drove Alan back a bit, but he was still clearly giddy with excitement. “Fine, but how are we going to talk about anything in two cars?”

  “Easy. You ride with me, Thom can ride with your guys.”

  “No.”

  “Absolutely not.” Again with these two.

  “Okay, what about Thom rides with you and I get...” Portland looked at them, trying to make a decision. Alan was virtually bouncing, without taking his eyes off of Portland. “Uh, the big guy?”

  Cyrus grunted, but did not protest. Hayley trusted Cyrus approximately zero point one percent more than this Portland girl, but he still sort of counted as a member of their group. She looked to Lydia, who, again, simply shrugged. Resigned, Hayley agreed and they split the group, taking Thom into their fold. Thom didn't look entirely pleased about this arrangement, but he couldn't offer a better solution, so he had to accept it.

  Portland got in her car and the big guy got in the passenger seat, sliding it back as far as it would go. He still barely fit. His clothes must cost a fortune, Portland thought. Imagine paying that much to look so much like a comic book villain.

  “Cyrus.”

  “Portland.”

  “I gathered. Real name, or some silly street thing?” Cyrus sounded gruff, but Por
tland had a feeling he was a pretty decent guy. Quiet, but strong, physically and mentally, she'd guess. She was prone to snap judgments about people, and she believed herself to be right most of the time. This judgment: good guy, if a little off-style with his clothing choice.

  “Real name. What about you? Music producer or something?” Cyrus didn't understand how she could come to that conclusion, but he took it as flattering.

  “Nope. Hired goon.” He paused, thinking. “Well, until recently, at least. Now... Who knows.”

  “No shit? I've done some gooning myself. Who you goon for?” She knew she liked this guy.

  “The hospital, most recently.” He let that sit for a second, appreciating how ridiculous that sounded. “I was hired by Alexander White, the manager at the Maebashi Clinic, to find Hayley and bring her in.”

  Portland took her eyes off the road to place them, firmly, on the large, business clown, next to her. “You... You're the one hunting Hayley?” She, by shear luck, dodged an animal that ran across the road. “So, was it your guys that broke in to my place and took the other Hayley?” She was trying to remain calm, but if he had anything to do with it, they might as well pull over now. He wasn't going to make it to the shack.

  “No, nothing like that. I was hired for the plastic one. As far as the hospital is concerned, there is one Hayley. The one that went home to her family. The plastic that was stolen by someone, with all the records deleted, and no proof that either of them existed, the hospital considers a blank. That girl in the car up there,” he motioned his head forward, toward the windshield, and Portland turned her eyes back to the road, “is almost two hundred G's of hospital property. Unaccounted for, so to speak. And they don't know someone's in it.”

  “How would this happen without either of them knowing about the other one, or without the hospital knowing that there had been a transfer before the plastic was stolen?”