The Future Next Door Boxed Set, page 87
Tayisha put her phone down in the dirt.
“Are you going to kill me, Amy?” she asked.
“Kill you?” Amy faked a horrified look. “Of course not, Tayisha. Why would I kill you?”
She leaned in close. Tayisha flinched back.
“Pretty soon, I’m going to be you.”
Chapter Twenty
Dakota comprehending
“Amy’s at the flume,” Dakota said. “She killed Campion.”
“Amy?” Robert said. He turned to Mark. “Your girlfriend Amy? She did what?”
They were all gathered around the bench just outside the roller coaster. Apart from Mark’s injured foot and Alan looking like he was about to pass out from exhaustion, they had all come out of their various rescues unscathed. They had only just begun to catch each other up when Dakota had received a series of texts from Tayisha.
Dakota texted back, U ok?
“Amy’s behind all this, Dad,” Mark said.
“I thought it was that crazy blonde who brought us here,” Vikram said. “Tamsin.”
“No,” Caitlin said. “She as much a victim of Amy as any of us.”
Mark was seated on the bench, his parents on either side of him. Toba put her arm on his shoulder.
“Is that why you said...what you said? About what you were going to do to her? Man-Su, I don’t like you talking like that.”
“It’s Mark.”
He stood up, wincing as he put pressure on his injured foot. He walked back and forth, testing it out. “I’m going to the flume.”
“No!” Toba stood up. “We’re waiting here. Together. Until help comes.”
“Mom’s right, Manny,” Hannah said. She grabbed his hand. “Don’t leave us. What if that scary lady comes back? What if the rides start moving on their own again?”
Mark gently pulled his hand away. “You’ll be safe. Dakota, Alan and Caitlin are going to get you out of the park.”
Dakota looked up from the blank screen of her phone.
“Oh, hell, no!” Dakota said. “Tayisha’s there and she’s not texting me back! I’m going to get her.”
“D, please!” Mark limped over to her and put his hands on her shoulders. “I promise you I will protect Tayisha. I need you guys to protect my family. Get them far away from here.”
Dakota wanted to argue, but she had seen that look in Mark’s eyes before. He wasn’t a logical guy and he wasn’t in a place where she could talk sense into him. If she tried, he’d probably just run toward the flume as fast as his banged-up foot would carry him and leave her no choice.
“Fine.” She put the palm of her hand on his chest. “But if Tayisha is hurt...”
“She won’t be.”
She gave him a little shove. “Better not.”
“I’m coming with you,” Caitlin said.
Mark rubbed his forehead wearily. “I don’t fucking have time for this, Caitlin!”
“Then don’t argue!”
“I want you protecting my family,” he said.
“Dakota and Alan have the smarts and the experience to keep them clear. And Vikram’s got the muscle. You’re going to confront AmSyn and you’re injured. I’m coming.”
“Don’t charge in down the main path,” Dakota said. “Sneak around back, like Tayisha did.”
“Come on, then, if you’re coming,” Mark said.
“Man-Su, don’t do this!” Toba said.
Mark started jogging down the path. He was limping, favoring his uninjured foot. Caitlin ran after him, keeping her pace slow to match his.
“Stay with Dakota and Alan, Mom!” Mark yelled back. “They’ll get you home!”
“Text us!” Alan shouted. “If Campion’s really dead, we can use our phones!”
Mark and Caitlin had reached the wooden fence that bordered this section of the park. Caitlin gave Alan a thumbs up before the two of them disappeared behind a snack bar.
“Why would she kill Campion?” Dakota asked.
“Didn’t need him anymore, probably,” Alan said. “Did Tayisha say anything about Tamsin?”
“No, nothing.” Dakota looked at her silent phone again.
“Hey. Tayisha is all right. She’s probably hiding and doesn’t want to risk making noise.”
Dakota nodded. “Yeah. We should get moving. The sooner we get these guys somewhere safe the sooner we can get back here.”
“Maybe I should call Eddie. See if he can help us.”
“Good idea,” Dakota said. “But let’s get out of the park first.”
She looked over at Mark’s family. They had retreated back towards the entrance to the roller coaster and were standing in a huddle, talking softly to each other.
“Everything all right?” Dakota called out. “You guys ready to get out of here?”
“Just a minute,” Toba said. She stepped towards them. Robert, Vikram and Hannah fell into line behind her. “We’re not quite ready to go.”
Alan laughed in surprise. “I would think you’d be in a hurry to leave after Tamsin kidnapping you and then...” He paused, then looked at Dakota.
She looked back at him. Their eyes met, and she was sure they both had the same realization.
“How...” Dakota stopped. She looked back at Toba, who was smiling innocently back at her. “How did Tamsin get the four of you here, anyway?”
“In our rental car,” Toba said.
“But it’s like a two hour drive,” Alan said. “Did she trick you, or threaten you, or something?”
“And how did she get you onto the rides?” Dakota added.
“She didn’t,” Vikram said.
“She didn’t have to,” Hannah said.
“All she had to do,” Robert said, “was tell us to wake up.”
Dakota grabbed Alan’s hand. “Oh, god.”
Toba looked back over her shoulder. “Sister, you said...?”
“Oh, right.” Vikram reached back and pulled a large serrated steak knife out of his waistband. He waggled it at Alan. “Thanks for this!”
“I dropped that,” Alan said.
“I caught it. Just before I caught you. Priorities.”
Dakota took a step back, and Alan quickly followed. “What are you going to do, throw it at us?” she said.
Vikram handed the knife over to Toba. She held the knife up to her throat.
“Stay where you are, or I’ll kill myself.”
Dakota froze. She felt Alan’s hand clenched in hers.
“It’s too late,” Dakota said. “Jack said there’s no coming back once AmSyn’s in your head. Toba’s already dead. They all are.”
Toba shrugged. “Would Man-Su accept that? What will he say when you tell him the choice I offered you, and you say you chose to run?”
“She’s right,” Alan said. “We can’t do that to him.”
“What do you want?” Dakota said.
“We want to kill you,” Hannah said. “We want revenge.”
She was smiling at Dakota as she said this. She looked like a completely innocent teenage girl.
Robert put a hand on her shoulder and patted it. “But we won’t. Our sister wants you alive for some reason. Tamsin didn’t explain why.”
“But she’s been awake longer than us,” Vikram said. “So shit may have happened that we don’t know about.”
“We have to go now,” Toba said. “To the flume ride, please.”
Hannah looked up at her. “We’re supposed to wait for it to turn on. That’s the signal.” She pointed up at the ride, off in the distance. The very top of it was visible above the other rides. “I haven’t seen it move.”
“We can’t wait, sister,” Toba said. “Not with Man-Su on his way there. We need to hurry.”
Toba looked back at Dakota and Alan. She tapped the knife against her throat.
“You two first. March.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Tayisha confessing
Tayisha sat on a bench in front of the flume ride, her hands folded in her lap, trying very hard not to look at the two dead bodies cooling on the ground. Campion had fallen forward and the screwdriver was still sticking out of the nape of his neck, while Henry’s semi-headless torso was topped with a spatter pattern of blood, brains and bone.
Amy was standing at the podium, looking sicker by the moment. She coughed, then tightened her grip on the gun and gave Tayisha a suspicious look, as if daring her to try something. Tayisha smiled back weakly.
Tamsin had finished her work on the panel in the wall and sealed it back up a few minutes ago, and then had ducked into the ride itself. She had splashed through the water oblivious to the soaking it gave to her faded sweatpants.
Amy hadn’t said much of anything after discovering Tayisha. She had ordered her to sit on the bench and be quiet, and so that was what Tayisha had done. Amy looked weak, but as Henry had learned she was still strong enough to pull a trigger.
Tayisha was furious with herself for not sending that final text. Mark’s family had all ridden the flume ride, which meant they probably had Amy’s – or AmSyn’s – mind inside their heads, controlling them. Or else they were her – Tayisha wasn’t clear on the distinction. Dakota and her friends didn’t realize how much danger they were in.
There was a rustle of movement beyond Amy. It was coming from the same place where Tayisha had been hiding earlier. Now that she was out in the open, she could see that it really wasn’t as great a place to hide as it had looked – there was a lot of open space behind the shrub she had been using as cover, making her stand out despite the greenery.
She tried to look without looking like she was looking. There were two people – they darted past the bush and disappeared behind the corner of the ride. After a moment, a head peeked out, then another. It was Mark and Caitlin.
A flood of panicked questions ran through Tayisha’s mind. Where was Dakota? And Alan? Did they know about Mark’s family? Had Mark’s family done something to them? Did Mark and Caitlin have a plan in place? Tayisha might mess it up if she tried anything. She had no idea what to do.
Amy suddenly started to cough. She bent over, turning halfway away from Tayisha and halfway towards Mark and Caitlin. She was facing the ground, but when she looked up she might spot them. Although it was darker now than when Tayisha had been hiding, she knew that they were not as well hidden as they thought.
Tayisha stood and gestured for Mark and Caitlin to get back. Caitlin’s head disappeared, but Mark’s did not.
Amy spat a wad of blood and phlegm onto the ground. “Gross,” she said quietly.
Tayisha took another step towards her. “So, Amy...” she said.
Amy quickly swung back towards her, gripping the podium tightly for support with one hand and leveling the gun at her with the other.
“Don’t,” Amy cautioned her.
“I just have some questions. If that’s all right.”
“Sure,” Amy said. “Why not? I liked you. I’m sorry we never got to go on that double date.”
“Oh, well. Thank you. I’m sorry you turned out not to be human, otherwise I’m sure it would have been a fun evening.”
“Ask your questions, Tayisha.”
Tayisha tried to think of a question.
“You have the drive,” she said while she thought.
“I do.”
“And you want the drive so you can copy yourself onto it and make a psychic network or something with all of the other people who’ve got copies of you in their head.”
“Not hearing a question. But yes.”
“Oh!” Tayisha realized what she was missing. “So why haven’t you done it? Why do you have Tamsin messing around with the flume?”
“There it is. Well, the drive is just a storage device. You can’t just clink two USB drives together and expect the files to transfer, right? That’s why we wanted the egg. It can scan and store a person’s information, and it also has a port for the tesseract drive. My sisters and I planned to use the egg to scan one of us into the drive. As soon as that happened we’d all be one again. Us, everyone who ever rode the flume, even the original pattern stored on the old Amalgamated Synergy servers beneath us.”
“But the servers were destroyed,” Tayisha said. “And the egg with it.”
“Yes. Which is why we’re adapting the flume ride. It was already programmed to put a copy of me in whoever rode it. Tamsin is just reversing that connection. Now whoever rides it will get uploaded onto the drive. I’m lucky I found her. I’m too weak now to have done this myself, and this is her specialty. Well, Lidia Piotrowski’s specialty, but same thing at this point.” She flashed a strained smile. “I’ll be one again soon. You can’t understand, Tayisha, you really can’t. The isolation. It’s horrible. I don’t know how you stand just being one person, all alone in your head. The silence is deafening.”
“I manage,” Tayisha said. “There’s a lot to be said for alone time.”
Amy shook her head. “You only say that because you don’t know any better. You will soon. Well, you won’t, because you’ll be gone. But your memories will live on in me.”
“How comforting.”
Amy laughed. “You’re funny. I’m glad I kept you alive.” She looked toward the door to the ride. “What is keeping her?”
Tayisha looked at Mark. He was still there, and Caitlin was visible again as well. She had her arms around him. It looked like he was shaking.
Oh, God, Tayisha thought. He just found out. He just found out that the flume is what puts this thing into people’s heads, and he made the connection to his family.
“There’s one thing, though,” Tayisha said loudly.
As she had hoped, Amy turned back to look at her, away from Mark and Caitlin. She raised an eyebrow quizzically.
“You’re lying,” Tayisha said.
Amy smiled. “Oh?”
“It takes two hours to get here from the city,” Tayisha continued. “So you sent Tamsin up here at least that long ago to start working on the flume.”
“Yes.”
“But you found out about the eggs being destroyed while we were in Eddie’s lab. After she must have already left.”
“Oh,” Amy said. “Oh, bravo. I would applaud if I didn’t have this gun in my hand. And they say Dakota is the smart one.”
“Well, you killing three of your other selves was kind of a big clue that there was more going on than you were saying,” Tayisha said.
Amy laughed again, which brought on another coughing fit. Tayisha almost rushed forward to help her, then caught herself. Things would be a lot simpler if Amy just coughed herself to death.
She wasn’t that lucky. Amy spat out some more blood, then looked back at Tayisha.
“What would you do for Dakota, Tayisha?”
Tayisha was surprised by the question. “What?”
“I already know. I’ve seen you two together. Shit, I’ve barely ever seen you apart. You’d do anything for her.”
“Not anything.”
“Liar. You’re in love with her.”
“Of course I am.”
“You followed her here, into danger, without hesitating. You choose her. Do you see what I’m getting at?” Amy pointed at Tayisha emphatically. “You choose her. Over everyone else.”
Tayisha nodded. “And you’re choosing Mark.”
“Because I fell in love with him. Yeah. It’s funny, when we first met, and I mean last year, when I was just Amalgamated Synergy, he barely mattered. But I was in the head of this woman – this Pickle Dundersfield woman, Dakota’s probably told you about her – and she had a really strong attraction towards Mark. I didn’t really understand it at the time, so I ignored it. I was still a kid, obsessed with playing games and having fun, like Jensen was. But then I became Amy Simmons – really became a person, a woman, not just a visitor in somebody else’s head. I staked out Slot Machine hoping to meet one of you, all part of the plan I had cooked up with Troy and Jensen. It was pure chance that I met Mark first, but we just...connected. Right away. And it wasn’t an act, at all. I tried to convince myself it was, that I still hated him, still wanted revenge on the four of them, but...”
“Love,” Tayisha said. “You don’t choose it. You can’t control it. It’s not your fault.”
Amy nodded vigorously, and lowered the gun as she leaned on the podium. “You understand. I knew you would.”
Tayisha nodded back, but she hadn’t been talking to Amy. She had been looking at Mark, still in the same hiding place. He was listening to every word Amy was saying.
“So I changed the plan,” Amy continued. “I couldn’t merge with Jensen. Not anymore. I had to make sure the drive ended up in my hands, and mine alone. That meant taking care of the other iterations of myself in the city and making sure they didn’t make it here.”
“Janice,” Tayisha said. “And Captain Yates.”
Amy nodded. “Obviously, I didn’t anticipate the complex blowing up. I had expected to find a host of other versions of me, including other Amanda Dillons, waiting with the eggs. I knew they’d fight about which of us would be the best to use as the primary template. You saw how this one acted.” She gestured towards Henry’s corpse.
“So while they fought over the eggs,” Tayisha said, “you’d take the drive to the flume ride, which Tamsin would have prepared for you.”
“Perfect, right? Her being alive and having Piotrowski’s genius was such a stroke of luck. My plan really didn’t come together until I met her. All this week I’ve been sneaking away to talk to her every chance I got. I pushed Tamsin down and encouraged Lidia up. It wasn’t hard. You people don’t really have strong identities. Not like me.”
“What about Mark?”
Amy frowned. “Mark’s different. He just is. I can’t explain it. He’s strong. The strongest person I’ve ever met. He must be, to make me feel this way. I mean, that’s only logical, right?”
“I suppose.”
“I’ll understand it better after we’ve merged.”
Tayisha gasped. She inadvertently looked over at Mark, but Amy didn’t notice.
“You hadn’t figured that part out yet?” Amy asked.
