Cloneward Bound (8 page)

“But—” Fisher started to protest.

“No exceptions,” she said sternly. “Now get that thing out of here, before I bring him to the fryer myself.”

Fisher stalked out of the hotel with FP in his arms, fuming. Amanda and Veronica followed him out.

“What are we supposed to do now?” Amanda whispered fiercely. “Your stupid pig is going to mess up our whole plan to find …” She trailed off when she realized Veronica was right behind her. She settled for crossing her arms and frowning.

“I’m really sorry, Fisher,” Veronica said. “Maybe we can rig up a bed for FP on the bus. He’ll be happy there, won’t he?”

“Maybe.” He didn’t add:
when FP really
does
fly
. He headed dejectedly toward the tour bus, trying to calculate the odds that FP would be content to sleep on the bus without chewing through all of the seat cushions—and possibly the engine cables—in protest.

Trevor Weiss was tugging his oversized suitcase with all of his strength, still trying to wrestle it out of the luggage compartment. A final yank sent Trevor rolling
backward onto the ground. The suitcase sprang open, and its contents tumbled onto the pavement: some clothes, a small blanket, and a metal contraption that looked like a miniature instrument of torture.

“What’s this?” Fisher said, picking up the little blanket.

“My feet get cold, so I always carry an extra blanket,” Trevor explained, pulling himself to his feet unsteadily.

“And the other thing?” Fisher said. “What
is
that?”

“Orthodontic stuff,” Trevor said. “I’m supposed to hook it to my braces when I sleep.”

Fisher looked back and forth between the blanket and the headgear and the pig. And he had an idea.

“May I borrow those?” Fisher asked Trevor, indicating the two items. Trevor shrugged and nodded, curious, and Fisher deftly wrapped FP up in the blanket so that only a small part of his head was visible. Then he wrestled the headgear onto FP’s head, pinning down the pig’s ears. FP squirmed and honked a little in protest, but ultimately relented.

“Voilà!” Fisher said triumphantly. Amanda recoiled. Veronica giggled.

Fisher had succeeded in making FP resemble a very, very unattractive baby.

He tucked FP into his arms and strolled back through
the lobby, whistling loudly and trying to look casual.

A young couple strolled up to Fisher and looked down at FP.

“Oh, hello there!” said the tall young woman, waving at the sleeping pig. “Is that your little brother?”

“Er, yeah, that’s right,” Fisher said. “His name is FP. That’s, um, short for … Frederick Percival.”

“Sounds very noble,” said the man, adjusting his glasses. They both bent down to take a closer look.

“Gee, he’s got such a … distinctive face. Don’t you agree, sweetie?” the woman said with a forced smile.

“Oh, yes,” the man choked out. “Very distinctive.” He cleared his throat. “Well, have a good day.”

“You too,” Fisher said as they walked away, before letting out a sigh of relief.

Fisher found the rest of the class already seated in the restaurant’s massive dining room, sat down, and set FP in his lap. The blanket seemed to have a tranquilizing effect on him, and Fisher listened for FP’s light snoring, to make sure the little pig didn’t suffocate under all the headgear.

Veronica plopped down next to him.

“Sheesh. This trip has hardly begun and it’s already crazy,” she said.

“Y-yes, crazy it has, uh, been,” Fisher said. Veronica’s elbow was touching his, and a feeling of numbness crept
into his mouth, as though he’d just been shot with Novocain. He gestured to the sleeping pig in his arms. “He definitely … superbly … he’s trouble.”

“At least he’s cute,” Veronica said, smiling down at the odd bundle in Fisher’s lap. “So … did you
really
submit a taped audition to a studio?”

“I … did, yes,” Fisher said. The pang hit him like a club right to the middle of his chest. More lies. Always more lies. Two had done something great, something that excited Veronica. Something that
he
could never do.

He had made Two so that the clone would pretend to be him. Now the only thing that would hold anyone’s attention was pretending to be Two.

Veronica’s eyes were shining; he had to
keep
them shining, even if it did mean using Two for his own personal gain. “It was … kind of unplanned. I’m not sure whether I’ll really be pursuing the Hollywood thing, but I’m keeping my options open.”

“That’s great,” Veronica said. “I’ll have to … ooh, hang on a second.”

She whipped around toward one of the restaurant’s many TVs, which had just started playing the music video for the latest Kevin Keels hit, “Gift-Wrapped Heart (Please Don’t Tear the Paper).” Fisher sank a little farther into his seat.

He dug into the middle of a mountain of Monarch-sized
star fries, and something brushed his finger. He thought maybe a napkin had mistakenly been put on the plate, but when he moved a few fries aside, he realized it was a note. He fought back his instinctive reaction with an enormous effort and went on eating, on autopilot, the brief message burned into his mind.

CHAPTER 8

Wham. Wham. Wham. WHAM. WHAM
.

Amanda opened her hotel room door to Fisher’s frantic knocking.

“Fisher? What’s going on?”

“Someone is on to me,” Fisher whispered. “I got a note. Someone knows about Two.”

“Who do you think it could be?” she said, looking over her shoulder to make sure her roommate was still in the shower.

“I’m not sure, but …” He gulped, and leaned even closer to Amanda. “I’m pretty sure we’re being followed.”

“Followed?” Amanda parroted, her familiar steely frown returning. “Is there something you haven’t told me?”

Fisher put his forehead in his hand, sighing through clenched teeth. “The government agency my mother was
working for shut down the AGH project and confiscated all samples. They know some AGH is missing, and I think they suspect I took it.”

“And it didn’t occur to you to tell me this
particular
part of the story?” she said.

“I didn’t find out until we’d already made our plan. And I didn’t think I was even a suspect until today. Besides, I didn’t want to get
you
into trouble, on top of everything else.”

Amanda exhaled. “Well,” she said, “the only thing for us to do is stick to the plan. Go to the meeting with GG McGee, try and find Two from there, and get to him as fast as we can. I trust you’ll figure out a way to deal with the spies by the time we do. You escaped from TechX. How hard can dealing with a couple of government agents be?”

“Right,” Fisher said, picturing himself handcuffed to a steel chair in a windowless room.

When he returned to his room, the TV was on, and Warren, his roommate, was sitting on his bed, bouncing slightly.

“What’s on?” Fisher said. He wanted desperately to distract himself from his growing sense of peril.

“It’s a preview of
Sci-Fi: Survivor
!” Warren said cheerfully. “They’re talking about the maze, and the challenges contestants will have to face.”

The camera was sweeping dramatically over a somewhat cartoonish landscape. There were prehistoric-looking jungles of plastic and gauzy foam, with narrow walkways stretched across bubbling water that was probably about the temperature of a comfortable hot tub. Animatronic dinosaurs plodded clumsily around, swinging rubbery claws and tails. Other parts of the maze were more futuristic and were populated by shining robots that shot foam darts from rotating barrels in their chests.

“Looks fun,” said Fisher, smiling weakly. He would almost rather be chased by
real
dinosaurs than be in the position he was in now.

“Sure does!” said Warren. “I can’t wait for it to premiere next week! Well, time for bed.” He clicked the TV off with the remote and literally passed out sitting up, his unconscious body slowly falling back against the pillows.

Fisher sighed and climbed into bed next to the already-sleeping FP, wishing sleep would come to him as quickly as it did for Warren. It was going to be a long night of staring at the clock.

On Saturday morning, during the tour of Hollywood Boulevard, Fisher’s heart jumped every time he spotted someone in a suit and sunglasses. Unfortunately, in downtown LA, that description covered a lot of people. The city was bathed in bright sunlight, keeping the air at an exact 73
degrees, and the Hollywood sign loomed on a hill in the distance, gleaming in the sun, but Fisher couldn’t enjoy any of it.

Spies seemed to be lurking everywhere, as they had once again in his nightmares. The massive sandstoneblock courtyard of the Egyptian Theatre offered plenty of hiding places with its thick hieroglyph-painted columns and pharaoh-head statues. The El Capitan Theatre’s marquee, made of shimmering gold trim and flickering lightbulbs, made him think of a thousand watchful eyes. Happy tourists babbled in dozens of languages, and almost all of them had cameras. He felt like every lens was trained on him.

Fisher pulled a tiny spray can from his pocket that was marked with a generic antimosquito label. Its actual properties made light reflect off him in such a way that a camera trying to capture his image would record only a bright yellow blur. He had originally developed the technology—as he did most of his inventions—as a defense against the Vikings’ harassment. Every year on school picture day, the Vikings found some new way to humiliate Fisher. Once they’d stolen a vial of squid ink from the bio lab and flung it all over his shirt. Once they’d stolen the cafeteria’s vat of homemade hoisin sauce, which had been known to permanently stain bricks, and upended it over Fisher’s head. It hadn’t taken long for Fisher to
decide that he’d rather have no picture at all than one the Vikings insisted on destroying.

He sprayed it all around himself until he nearly choked on it. One of his classmates gave him a strange look.