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“Of course! Do you think for one moment I would pass up on an opportunity to cause trouble for you?”
“Protocol 451 really has been canceled, hasn’t it?”
“Most definitely. Call this partial payback for the trouble you’ve caused us over the years. I hate to kick an old dog when it’s down, but we knew you’d have blunted teeth one day. I’m just glad I lived long enough to see it.”
“I’m glad to see you’ve lost none of your charm, Jack. But these teeth aren’t as blunt as you think.”
“Look at you,” he sneered, “a shambling wreck, sent out to grass as a librarian. Believe me, my girl, you are well and truly blunted.”
I stared at him, my anger rising. Not because of his taunts but because he was probably right.
“Now,” he continued, “I want you to take me downstairs to see your friend Finisterre. I need to look at some St. Zvlkx books, and as chief librarian you have access to the vaults.”
I felt my heart sink. “You’re another Day Player, aren’t you?”
“I could have ducked the shoe,” he said with a smile, “but I purposefully chose not to in the quarter of a second it took to leave your hand and arrive at my head. I love being a better me. So strong, so smart, so perfect. Do you know the cube root of seventeen?”
“It must have slipped my mind.”
“I do. It’s 2.57128159. Do you want the next seventy-two decimal places?”
But I had more important things on my mind.
“Why did you have Judith Trask killed?” I asked. “She was innocent of everything.”
“To show your youthful protégée that lying to a Top One Hundred is not to be tolerated and that actions have consequences. Phoebe Smalls has trouble stamped all over her. Now, take me downstairs to the vaults.”
“I’ll not help you, Jack.”
“I think you will. If you don’t, I will pick you up and throw you through that window.”
He indicated the glass panel that led to a five-story drop onto the main lending floor.
“You’d land somewhere between the books of Helen Fielding and that author with the beard whose name I can never remember.”
“I have problems with his name, too. Think you can get out of the building without being seen?”
“Already taken care of, girl. Look there.”
He pointed at a figure dressed in identical clothes walking toward the exit. The figure stopped for a moment and looked up. It was Jack Schitt—or a copy, at any rate.
“The real you?”
“No, I’m in a coma at present. That was just a standard Mark Vb ‘Alibi’ Model. By the time anyone got up here following your fatal fall, I would have zipped myself up in a body bag and hidden in the roof space just behind the water tank. I’d probably not be discovered for years. The point is that with the ‘through the window’ plan, you’d be dead and I’d be in the clear to try another method to get to the vaults. From my position it’s win half-win, and from yours it’s lose-lose. So think again.”
I did. In fact, I desperately tried to think up a plan of action. I would probably be able to get to my pistol, since he was on the other side of the room, but then I realized with a falling heart that he probably already had it. He guessed my thoughts and showed me the revolver he had lifted from me earlier.
“I took it from you when you entered. And don’t even think about going for the Beretta on your ankle. I can have you through the window before you get even halfway there.”
He was doubtless right, and the situation was looking increasingly desperate. But just at that moment, I suddenly felt different. My leg was no longer hurting me—in fact, I felt no pain at all, and a warm feeling of euphoria suddenly swept over me. I felt better, stronger and fitter, and I even had some of those feelings for Landen, too. I must have been replaced during one of the two visits out of the boardroom—probably when on the phone to Friday. Knowing that changed the game plan. I would be as fast as Jack and get off at least three shots before he’d even touched me—and all the shots would make the same entry hole, even if he was moving. I was that good.
I made a swift lunge for the Beretta in my ankle holster.
It didn’t quite work out the way I’d planned. The limited mobility in my back and leg stopped my hand four inches from the pistol, and I misjudged the position of the table on the way down and hit my forehead. Now momentarily off balance, I grabbed the chair behind me, which had casters and slid away from me, causing me to completely lose my balance and collapse in an undignified heap on the floor.
“Shit,” I said, glancing at the mindworm tattoo on the back of my hand for confirmation. “I’m still me.”
Jack had watched the pathetic spectacle and simply walked up, took the Beretta from my ankle and then dragged me to my feet by the scruff of the neck and pressed my face hard against the glass.
