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“How’d you find us, though?” Rondeau said. “When we didn’t even know where we
were going?”
The henchmen smirked. “We have our ways,” one said.
Marla snorted. “Sure you do. There’s a pair of you on every train, and probably on
every street in the city, right? They’re homunculi, Rondeau, or heavy astral projections,
or some shit like that. Just duplicates. Dupe One and Dupe Two here happened to be the
ones who bumped into us.”
They weren’t smirking anymore. They were scowling instead.
“Ah,” Rondeau said. “I thought they were twins with that whole psychic-linkage thing
going on.”
“That would explain the way they move in tandem, maybe, but it doesn’t explain the
identical oozing pimple they’ve each got just to the left of their noses.” Marla tapped the
side of her nose, and the henchmen reached up simultaneously and touched the spots on
their own faces.
“This is the weirdest day of my life,” B said. “And that’s saying something.”
The henchmen squinted at B. “Hey,” one said. And the other continued, “Aren’t you
Bradley Bowman?”
“Um,” he said. “Yeah.”
“I read a rumor online that you might get cast as the lead in an American movie version
of Dr. Who. Any truth to that?”
“It’s news to me,” B said.
“I knew it was bullshit,” one said, taking out his laptop and opening it on his knees,
presumably to spread the truth among the infidels online.
“Tell me about your boss,” Marla said, to the henchman who wasn’t tapping away at a
keyboard.
He shrugged. “You’ll find out all you need to know soon enough. I’ll tell you, though—
you should be more scared than you look. You’re in deep shit, from what I hear. Mr.
Dalton isn’t the only one looking for you.”
“I’ve always had a gift for making friends easily,” Marla said. She had an idea of the
accusations she was going to face soon, and tried to decide whether she should bother
going through the tedium of explaining things, or just break Mr. Dalton’s kneecaps and
extract the information she needed. Ah, well. No need to decide now. She could play it
by ear when they arrived.