Payback Read online

  “I’m not planning to paint a picture of it,” I tell her, a little crankily, due to lack of sleep. “What we need is a way to get past that gate.”

  We watch as cars arrive and pull up to the gatehouse. A guard emerges, peers into every vehicle, and checks photo IDs. Security is tight. Names are checked against a list of visitors on a clipboard. On top of that, a second guard inside the glass booth phones ahead to make sure the newcomer is expected.

  “You’re a good liar,” I praise Tori. “You think you could bluff our way through there?”

  She shakes her head sadly. “Even if I could come up with the right story, they’re checking IDs. Neither of us has that.”

  “Can we find a secluded spot and climb the wall?” I suggest.

  She points to the top of the tall fencing. “Cameras. At regular intervals all the way around. There might even be pressure sensors that go off if anyone tries to get over.”

  I’m mystified. “What is this place, Fort Knox? Why do they need so much security? All they do here is make TV shows.”

  Tori thinks it over. “In Serenity, no one was more famous than anybody else, because we all knew each other. But if you’re famous in the outside world—like a TV star, for instance—millions of people know you. And how are you supposed to live your life if you’ve got a big crowd mobbing you all the time?”

  “Well, that’s just great!” I snap. Tori’s only crime is being right, but all my frustration bubbles over at her. I’ve just driven over a thousand miles; I’ve been up nonstop for a day and a half, all so I can see one guy. “How am I supposed to meet Blake Upton if I can’t even get past the gate?”

  And then a voice from below calls, “Blake?”

  We look down. A golf cart with a flashing light on the roof and STUDIO SECURITY stenciled on the side has pulled onto the shoulder of the road. A uniformed guard is peering up at us.

  “Blake?” she repeats. “Is that you?”

  I manage a slight wave. “Uh—hi.”

  “What are you doing up there?” she demands. “You were supposed to be in makeup twenty minutes ago.”

  Blake. She called me Blake. She thinks I’m him.

  I noticed the close resemblance back in the cookie warehouse, but it never occurred to me that I could pass for the guy. This is my way in!

  I hesitate. Do I dare? Sooner or later, someone is going to realize I’m not Blake Upton. If no one else, Blake Upton himself is going to know. What if he has me thrown out before I get a chance to ask him some questions—like why are we nearly identical?

  I’m frozen on the boulder. I’d give anything for Tori’s advice, but I can’t start a big conversation about it right in front of the security lady.

  I shoot Tori a pleading glance, begging for an answer she can’t give me.

  She hisses, “You’re showing me where you work,” and shoves me off the rock.

  It’s so unexpected that I’m relaxed, and the fall doesn’t kill me. I land on both feet and manage to stay upright. “This is my friend Tori. I’m showing her the studio.”

  I’m right next to the golf cart. The security lady can see me just fine, and she doesn’t denounce me as an imposter.

  “Hop on,” she invites. “I’ll give you a ride.”

  That’s how we not only get in past the gate, but are chauffeured directly to the soundstage where Jupiter High is being filmed.

  We pause at the entrance. “I’ve always wanted to see how a real TV show gets made,” Tori confides.

  I’m so scared that I can hardly put one foot in front of the other, and she’s going all tourist on me.

  After the bright sunshine outdoors, the studio itself seems dark. A tall, skinny guy in a headset, carrying a clipboard, hurries toward us, gesturing to a light-up sign that reads QUIET. At the center of the gloom is a brilliantly lit stage made up to look like a classroom. A scene is underway, and we can hear the actors’ voices as well as laughter from a small studio audience.

  When the clipboard guy gets a good look at me, he does a double take. He leans right in to my ear and barely whispers, “Are you his brother?”

  There’s no answer for that. A clone can’t be anybody’s brother. So I just follow the QUIET instruction.

  Eventually, the Jupiter High scene ends and the lights come on all around us. Tori claps along with the studio audience. I look for Clipboard, but he’s nowhere to be found.

  A moment later, he reappears with Blake Upton in tow.

  Tori squeezes my arm and mouths these words: He’s gorgeous!

  Gorgeous? What’s that supposed to mean? The guy looks like me.

  The young actor is saying, “But I don’t have a brother—”

  Then he sees me. Our eyes lock. His are getting wider by the minute.

  Okay, we’re not exactly alike. He’s older than me and a little taller. His shoulders are broader, and his cheeks are fuller. That’s probably because I’ve been on the run, living on Girl Scout Cookies and Mountain Dew. But we have the same face.

  “Who are you?” he asks in a disbelieving voice.

  Considering I’ve planned this entire conversation, I can barely stammer out the words. “My name is Eli Frieden. I come from a small town in New Mexico. And the minute I saw you on TV, I knew we had to be related.”

  “Related?” Clipboard echoes. “You’re practically twins!”

  Blake looks even more bewildered. “So you came to California to find me? Why didn’t you just ask your parents?”

  “My parents are dead,” I lie, laying out the story I crafted to avoid having to admit the clone thing. “I’m adopted. The only thing they told me about my biological parents is that they were related to a man named Bartholomew Glen.”

  “Glen?” Clipboard blurts. “You mean the murderer? The Crossword Killer?”

  “Wait a minute,” Blake exclaims. “If I’m related to you, and you’re related to him, that means—I’m related to Bartholomew Glen?”

  “I admit it sounds bad when you put it that way—” I begin.

  “You’re crazy! Don’t you think I’d know if there was someone like that in my family? Don’t you think my parents would?”

  The clipboard guy tries to calm him down. “Blake, take it easy. You don’t want to strain your voice in the middle of a shoot.”

  “But, Kenny, don’t you see what this kid’s trying to pull? He looks like me, so he cooks up some cockamamie story about the Crossword Killer so he can blackmail me!”

  Tori steps forward. “Eli doesn’t want your money; he wants your help. He’s just trying to find his roots.”

  “By saying I’m related to the worst person in history?” Blake shoots back.

  I try to reason with him. “Just because you have bad DNA doesn’t mean you’re bad. Trust me, I’ve thought about this a lot.”

  “I don’t have any bad DNA, and neither do you! You’re making all this up to get something out of me! Well, it won’t work—”

  A balding middle-aged man pushes his way into our group. “All right, Blake, you’re holding up the works. Why are you sweating?” He turns away. “Can I get some makeup over here?” Then he sees me.

  He looks from Blake to me and back to the young actor. “Somebody want to let the director in on what’s the story here?”

  “No story, Amos,” Blake says angrily. “This kid looks like me. But that’s all. He’s trying to say we’re cousins or something.”

  “You think we’re not?” I demand, showing more confidence than I feel.

  The director examines me like I’m a specimen on a microscope slide. “He’s the spitting image of you, Blake.”

  I make my appeal to the director. “I’m not trying to scam him. I’m just trying to find out if we’re both related to the same person.”

  “Bartholomew Glen,” Clipboard supplies.

  Amos stares at me. “Kid, you should seek professional help.”

  I play my last card. “I’m willing to take a DNA test.”

  “We don’t do
those here,” the director explains. “We make TV shows. You upset my actor, you upset me. Get off my set. Kenny, have security escort these two off the lot.”

  Kenny leads us outside. “The golf cart will pick you up here.” He smiles sympathetically. “For what it’s worth, I think you must be related. But the Crossword Killer—that part’s too weird.”

  The door closes behind us and we’re outside. I come to a stop. Tori keeps on walking.

  “Where are you going? They said wait here.”

  She wheels around, grabs my arm, and starts pulling me. “It was pure luck that we made it through that gate at all. If we let ourselves get kicked out, we’ll never get back in—not when every guard in this place has been told to be on the alert for a kid who looks exactly like Blake Upton.”

  “Yeah, but Blake’s not going to help us anyway, so what’s the point of us being here?”

  “He’ll help us,” she promises.

  “Are you nuts? He’s why we got the boot!”

  “Because you’re in his head,” she reasons, picking up the pace as we turn a corner and start down a narrow street with small, neat bungalows on either side. “He knows you’re too much alike for it to be a coincidence. You’ll wear him down. Trust me.”

  “So you want to hide out here?” I counter. “How’s that even possible? They’ve got security golf carts patrolling the whole place. You think they won’t notice two kids sleeping in the cactus garden?”

  “Look at these little houses.” Her sweeping gesture takes in the neighborhood of bungalows. “See how they’ve got names on the doors? They must be for people who come here to work on movies and TV shows. But every so often you come to one that has no name. The blinds are drawn. The place is dark. This one, for instance. Check it out.”

  The small cottage is virtually identical to all the others, white stucco with a red-tile roof. This one’s at the end of a cul-de-sac, out of sight of the main road. You can detect the slightly darker spot on the door, where the nameplate would hang.

  I’m about to say “maybe the sign fell off” when Tori marches up the short walk and rings the bell. I rush up to stand beside her. Solidarity, I guess. It’s not like there’s much either of us can do if she’s wrong and somebody answers that door.

  Nobody does. There’s not a sound coming from inside the small structure.

  Tori flashes me a triumphant grin. “You see?”

  “This could be the place they’re going to give to the next new guy,” I warn.

  She seems exasperated. “And maybe the moon will fall out of the sky. We’ll deal with that when it happens. For now, we’re moving in.”

  We circle the bungalow, and Tori checks the windows. They’re all locked.

  “Now what?” I ask. “Try another house?”

  She shoots me a sweet smile, picks up a baseball-size rock from the cactus garden, and punches through the back window. It’s such a surgical strike that it leaves only a neat round hole in the corner of the glass. Then she carefully inserts her arm, reaches up to the sash, and flips the latch. We raise the window and climb inside.

  “What if someone notices the broken window?” I ask.

  “Who’s going to notice?” She points outside, where a palm grove begins not ten feet from the back. “The coconuts?” She sits down on the couch and leans back with a dreamy expression. “Blake Upton. Wow!”

  For some reason, that irritates me. “Before yesterday, you never even heard of the guy.”

  “Another thing I missed by growing up in Serenity.” She repeats that really annoying “Wow!”

  “He’s not there for your viewing pleasure,” I remind her. “We need serious information from the guy.”

  “Oh, we’ll get that,” she replies determinedly. “A pretty face isn’t going to stand in our way.”

  8

  AMBER LASKA

  When we first found out what Project Osiris was and the kind of people we were cloned from, the big question was this: Are we them or are we us? Yeah, we match them physically, but are we the same people? They’re so awful that even the idea of being a little bit like them is really disturbing.

  Now, finally, we have our answer, and it’s definitely not what I wanted to hear. We’re them, all right. Or at least Malik is. He’s turning into a gangster.

  Ever since Danny and Torque gave him a hundred bucks after he brought back their stupid dry cleaning, he’s turned into the errand boy for the entire Alabaster organization. Now every goon in Chicago who’s too lazy to put gas in his car, pick up the Chinese food, or buy his mom a birthday present is paying Malik to do it for him. The slogan around the house is “Leave it to Bryan”—Bryan being Malik.

  “They’re using you!” I plead. “They’re treating you like their personal slave!”

  In answer, Malik pulls a fat wad of bills out of his pocket and flips through it like it’s a deck of cards. Fifties and hundreds.

  “Money!” I exclaim. “Is that all that matters to you?”

  He gives that shrug that rubs me the wrong way and says, “I’ll let you know if I think of anything else I care about.”

  “We’re supposed to care about making a life for ourselves,” I remind him. “We’re the only ones free, you know. And how about the clones who are still in the hands of Osiris? Who’s going to get justice for them if not us?”

  He looks a little sheepish but still defiant. “That’s what we’re here for—to see what Gus knows about Project Osiris.”

  “Yeah, and how’s that going?” I challenge. “He still thinks you’re his son. You haven’t even told him who you really are yet!”

  “I’m just waiting for the right moment,” he insists. “He’s so happy he’s got a kid. He’s even proud of me. No one’s ever been proud of me before.”

  “What’s to be proud of? That you can pick up a few suits without dropping them down the sewer?”

  He’s insulted. “I’m not just a gofer. I do other things too. This morning, I picked up a package from this guy with three fingers, and Cyrus gave me two hundred bucks.”

  “It was probably a gun,” I growl. “Or worse, the missing fingers. Malik, we can’t stay here much longer—”

  “Shhh! I’m Bryan.”

  “Don’t you get it? This is wrong,” I insist. “You’re becoming exactly what Project Osiris was invented to see if we’d turn into!”

  “That’s not true!”

  “Isn’t it? We’re living with criminals, letting them feed us and buy us clothes. And now you’re working for them, earning big tips. Who knows what was in that package! For sure something that could get you arrested.”

  He reddens. “So maybe I am turning into Gus! So what? Would that be so terrible? He’s rich; he’s smart; he’s got dozens of guys who do whatever he tells them! And you know what? I like him! And he likes me too! You’re just jealous because you don’t have anybody like that!”

  It stings—and not because I’m yearning to find Mickey Seven in prison in Florida and pretend we’re family. Mickey Seven is a terrorist, and I hate her for that. In fact, the things she did fill me with so much hate that I can imagine myself turning into her or someone like her. And that scares the life out of me.

  I storm out of there to avoid a bigger argument. Back in my room, I find my latest to-do list, only half-finished. When I see it, I experience a wave of shame. It’s mainly about exercising and eating healthy. Gus’s chef is so happy to be making something besides Tater Tots that he keeps coming up with the most fantastic salads and steamed vegetable dishes for me. Suddenly, I feel really shallow.

  I cross it all out and pencil in a single item:

  THINGS TO DO TODAY

  • Something positive!

  If we’re stuck here, and Malik insists on living the gangster life, then I’m going to counteract that by being good.

  “Sure thing, Toots,” Danny tells me when I ask him for a lift. “Hop in the car.”

  I give him the address that I got off the internet.

&nb
sp; He frowns. “That’s not a very nice neighborhood. You sure you want to go there?”

  “I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.”

  We get in the car and he loops around the circular driveway. “What is this place, anyway?”

  “You let me worry about that.”

  As we drive, our surroundings get seedier and more run-down. I’ve seen a lot of tough neighborhoods since leaving Serenity, but Chicago takes the prize. The area is not just poor. It’s also old. Everything looks like it’s in the process of crumbling. I’d never admit it to Danny—and definitely not to Malik—but I’m feeling pretty nervous.

  We pull up in front of the one building in several blocks that has a reasonably fresh coat of paint on the woodwork. The sign in the flyspecked window reads:

  NEW HOPE SOUP KITCHEN

  Danny puts up the top of his convertible and turns to face me. “We got the wrong address,” he says.

  “No, this is the place,” I inform him cheerfully. “I work here.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I volunteer.” To be honest, I have no idea what my job will be. But the guy on the phone said they definitely need volunteers, so here I am.

  “Listen, Amber—” Danny’s really frazzled now. “I can’t leave you here. Bryan wouldn’t like it. And worse, he might tell Gus!”

  “Bryan’s not my boss. And neither is Gus.”

  He winces. “Don’t say that. Somebody might hear you.”

  I jump out of the car. “Thanks for the ride. I’ll take the bus home.”

  I go in and they put me right to work. And work means work. Even in Serenity, when I was the good girl, the teacher’s daughter, who tried three times harder than everybody else, I never understood the real meaning of the word. I start off filling huge industrial dishwashers in a room so full of steam that you can barely see your hand in front of your face. My hair is standing straight out around my head, my blond roots exposed to the world.