Replicant Night by K. W. Jeter

entity needed her-they possibly meant they wanted her head on a pike. Her self-destructive moods hadn't included relinquishing that much control to anyone else. "Well, if you have plans already, then maybe you should just . . . go and do them. Don't let me stop you. Drop me a line now and then, let me know how things are coming along." Right now, she mainly wanted the two odd men, with their Eldon Tyrell stylings, to just disappear. So that she would have time to think, to figure out what she herself would do next. There's not much sense , mused Sarah, in blowing away these two guys. That wouldn't stop anything . The thought of these two-and how many others? How big was this shadow outfit?-working away to put back together all that she had so carefully disassembled filled her with both nausea and a tightly concealed rage. "Thanks for stopping by."
    The two men exchanged a glance with each other, then swiveled their conjunct gaze back onto her.
    "Miss Tyrell-you really don't seem to understand." The more talkative one's voice filled with sorrow. "We need you . We can't resurrect the Tyrell Corporation without you."
    "We're loyalists. Diehards," added the other man. "Everyone in the shadow corporation-we were sworn to loyalty to Eldon Tyrell . . . and now to you. You didn't inherit just the Tyrell Corporation. You inherited us ."
    "You're joking. You must be." The notion appalled her. The two men suddenly appeared to her as children to whom she bore some crushing maternal obligation. As if her ancient uncle had been reborn as twins, fresh-faced and naively innocent behind the stigmata of the square glasses. The resurrection of all that she had thought was safely dead- Now what? thought Sarah. A horrible vision came to her of these two camping out in the hovel, taking turns sleeping on the broken-backed sofa.
    "It's no joke, Miss Tyrell. We never joke." The talkative one's expression was somber, as though even the skull beneath the tight flesh had been rendered grinless. "It is our great mission-our destiny-to bring the Tyrell Corporation, from the shadows where it now exists, out to the light once more. Where it belongs. At the center of all, with everything orbiting around it-"
    "But that would make it the light itself." The other man frowned. "Like it was the sun. You're mixing up-"
    "Whatever," snapped the first irritably. "You know what I mean. As does Miss Tyrell." He looked back at her again. "You do know, don't you? Why we've come here?"
    "I know," she said. There was no use denying it any longer. She didn't need the gun-not against these two. Or any of their brethren, the true believers. "You want me to be the head of the Tyrell Corporation. As I was before. After my uncle . . . died."
    "Exactly." The man nodded. "You must do this. If the Tyrell Corporation is to defeat its enemies. Those who were so misguided as to try to diminish Eldon Tyrell's vision."
    He doesn't know , thought Sarah. They don't have a clue . That she had been the one who pushed the little red button, or arranged to have it pushed by those others she had cheated and lied to. The ashes of the Tyrell Corporation headquarters, those once-proud towers and the eternal-seeming pyramid in the center of Los Angeles, were on her hands. These two men, and all the other die-hard loyalists behind them, didn't know that she herself had destroyed the Tyrell Corporation.
    "Without you..." The man's voice came to her as though from the edge of a barely glimpsed dream. "Without you ... we'll die. The shadows will claim us. The vision that still unites us will be lost, our faith gone, and we will drift off into the darkness. Then the Tyrell Corporation truly will be no more."
    I don't have to do a single thing . The realization moved inside Sarah. She could just stand where she was in the hovel and refuse to go with the two men-she knew they were too much in awe of her, of the Tyrell blood in her veins, to try to force her to go anywhere. Or she could go ahead and