Blood Ransom (31 page)

With a grunt, I wrenched the nut off. It released more easily than I expected, as if someone had loosened it recently. I shoved my fingers up the tube above.
There.
A small package was
taped to the inside of the pipe.

I yanked it out and held it up. It was a memory stick in a plastic bag.

‘
Whoa!
’ Rachel’s eyes widened.

Quickly, I ripped the bag open and pulled the top of the stick. I found the usb port on the side of the laptop and slid the memory stick in.

A long list of files opened up. Rachel and I scanned these together. Very few of the file names made much sense to me – most of them had long, complicated chemical-sounding names.

‘There.’ Rachel jabbed at the screen. She was reading a little further on than I’d got to, pointing to a file labelled Eos.

I clicked it open. It was a log, written like a blog with each entry dated. I scanned the top few reports – an incomprehensible mix of apparently random letters and numbers.

‘Oh my God, look at that entry.’ Rachel gasped. I followed her gaze to the bottom of the screen. It was dated the day after Rachel went missing – the day she arrived on
Calla.

‘What on earth does that mean?’ I said.

‘I’m not sure exactly,’ Rachel said. ‘But I think it’s something to do with helping people stay young and healthy. Milo said something about Eos “saving
lives”.’ She frowned. ‘I still don’t understand what Amanda Lennox was talking about when she said he was doing terrible things in here . . . I mean, what’s so
terrible about copying a protein that can help people be healthier?’

I looked round the room. ‘This can’t be all there is,’ I said. ‘There
must
be another room where he’s carrying on other experiments.’

‘Where?’ Rachel was gazing round too. ‘There aren’t any other doors.’

I glanced back at Elijah’s log. ‘When did you arrive here?’

‘Three days ago.’

I looked at the corresponding date. That was where the strange initials and numbers began. The first line of the first entry read:
I am the word
.

‘Why does he have to be so bloody mysterious?’ I read the sentence out loud. ‘
I am the word
. I mean, does that make any sense to you?’

‘I think it’s from the Bible,’ Rachel said. ‘Maybe it’s a password. We’ve had a scanner and a key pad . . . Milo said there were three sorts of security in
here.’

I looked round. ‘But like you said, there isn’t another door, or anything that you could type a word into.’ I sighed. ‘And even if there was, we wouldn’t know which
word to use.’

Rachel stared at the log again. ‘
I
am
the word
. . . It’s got to be a word Elijah uses about himself.’

‘There are quite a few I’d use about him,’ I said. ‘Murderer . . . egomaniac . . . arsehole . . .’

‘No, something personal,’ Rachel said.

‘What like a name?’ I said, feeling doubtful. ‘His surname is Lazio, but I don’t think . . .’

‘Maybe it’s a name from the Bible.’ Rachel checked her watch. Her face paled.

I gritted my teeth, we didn’t have time for this.

I shook my head. ‘But Elijah could have any number of names. We don’t even know his
real
name. He told me once that he changed it when he was young—’

‘That’s it!’ Rachel’s eyes brightened. ‘You’ve got it. It’s a name he took for himself.’

‘What d’you mean?’ I said, bewildered. ‘What name?’

‘It’s got to be his Greek God code name,’ she said.

I stared at her. ‘You mean
Zeus
?’

As I said the name, a creaking noise filled the room.

‘What’s hap—?’ Rachel’s hand flew to her mouth. She pointed behind me.

I turned. The bookcase was shifting . . . groaning as the shelves rumbled apart, sliding away from each other.

‘It
was
a password,’ I breathed. ‘A voice-activated password to . . .’

‘Oh my God.’

We stared as the bookcase slid along its tracks, opening wide to reveal another room.

91

It was dark in the secret room beyond the lab. Impossible to see properly what was inside, though there was no sign of movement. I crept towards the door, the pain in my ankle
barely registering. Theo hesitated. He looked round, his eyes falling on the chair on the other side of the table.

‘I’m going to shove this chair in the doorway,’ Theo said, ‘in case the door tries to close on us.’

I nodded. ‘Good idea.’Whatever was in the room, I didn’t fancy being shut in there with it.

As he picked up the chair, I crossed the threshold, then stopped. I stood still, trying to identify the shadowy shapes all around me. There were tables of varying sizes. The nearer ones were
cluttered with jars and bottles . . . Further away I could just make out the outline of another table with high sides. Whatever was on the table was concealed from view. My heart beat wildly.

This was it . . . what the Eos protein was really all about. Elijah had secured his work behind three doors and an electric fence. And now I was going to find out why. Another step forward and
the motion sensor registered me. Lights flickered on.

I gazed round the room, trying to work out what I was looking at.

The jars and bottles appeared to contain human body parts. I walked over to the nearest table.
Yes
, there was an ear . . . and there was a hand . . . I gagged. It was disgusting.

Feeling sick, I checked the label on a small jar that contained a slice of something flat and greyish.

Ap 9 – liver section

Okay, so this was part of a liver.
Ugh.

I glanced at the jar that contained the hand. The label said:
Ap 5.
I looked along a row of bottles, nausea swelling inside me. Each one contained a roll of something that looked like
dried-out pork meat.

Ap 2 – skin tissue

Ap 4 – skin tissue

Ap 8 – skin tissue

I limped to the next table. A similar assortment of jars and bottles. I tried not to look at the contents too closely while I checked each container. Everything on this table was labelled as
before, though several of the cases were far bigger . . . I couldn’t help but notice what was in them.

Ap 13
contained a whole arm,
Ap 19
what looked like the side of a face and a shoulder and
Ap 22
held a faceless torso . . .

Horrific.

What
was
all this? And why was Elijah keeping it here?

I glanced round. Theo was still busy trying to wedge the chair in the doorway. I really wanted to wait for him to look at what was behind the screen on the next table, but our time was running
out fast. Elijah would be back in less than ten minutes now.

I limped over. The screen that rose up from the edge of the table was labelled
Ap 24
. Holding my breath, I peered over it.

No.

My brain took a few seconds to register what I was seeing.

I retched.

Lying on the table was the top half of a male human, down to the stomach. The body was normal size but hideous . . . deformed and twisted, the skin tapering off at the guts. It was impossible to
say how old he was. The pallid, greying face was grotesque, with the nose missing and the closed eyes all slipped sideways down the face. There were no arms . . . just little skin buds where arms
should be. The only part of the body that looked remotely normal was the mouth.

I stared at that mouth. It was familiar somehow . . . something about the shape of the lips . . .

And then I realised.

92

I raced over to Rachel. She was trembling . . . staring at whatever was behind the screen.

I followed her gaze. At first I couldn’t work out exactly what I was looking at. I blinked, trying to make sense of it. A body . . . part of a body . . . distorted . . . deformed . . . I
stared at the face . . . at the mouth . . .

It was my face . . . my mouth.

My head spun. What on earth was I looking at?

The truth hit me like a punch.

This was a clone of me. My legs threatened to give way. I grabbed the side of the screen. At the sound of my touch, the clone moved, turning towards us.

Rachel gripped my arm.

I was open-mouthed, unable to breath, choking with the horror of what I was seeing.

And then the clone’s eyes opened.

For a long and terrible second we stared at each other.

There was no recognition of who I was in the clone’s eyes. Just terror . . . and pain.

‘Oh, God,’ Rachel moaned beside me. Her voice carried with it everything I felt. The disgust, the pity, the horror.

I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move.

I reached for Rachel’s hand and held it tight.

We stood there, numbly, staring at the clone.

How could he even be alive? What was Elijah
doing
torturing someone like this?

‘Who . . .?’ I said. ‘How . . .?’

The clone’s mouth twitched, his face contorting. It looked like he was trying to speak. I leaned closer. His lips formed a word . . . he mouthed it again.

Help.
I was sure that was what he was saying.
Hurts.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what to do.’ My voice was a tiny whisper. I’d never felt so helpless in my life.

The clone closed his eyes. Sick to my stomach, I turned to Rachel.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

White-faced, Rachel pointed at the label on the screen concealing the clone.
Ap 24.

‘If
Art
stands for Artemis, then
Ap
must stand for Apollo,’ she whispered.

I frowned. Apollo was the code name Elijah gave me, his first completely healthy, fully-functioning clone. I looked round at the jars and bottles on the other tables. They were all labelled with
the same letters:
Ap
, but different, earlier numbers.

‘All this . . . these are left over from Elijah’s attempts to reproduce himself.’ I gazed back at
Ap 24
. ‘And this one . . . this is the twenty-fourth
version.’

I swallowed down the nausea that swelled inside me. It had never occurred to me that when Elijah had worked to clone himself it would have taken so many attempts . . . caused such terrible
deformities. All of a sudden I thought of Milo . . . he was another link in the chain – another of Elijah’s attempts to clone himself before succeeding in creating a totally healthy
being with me.

I looked at
Ap 24
again. The clone’s eyelids flickered. He moaned softly, then appeared to sink slightly against the table.

Was he asleep or unconscious?

My thoughts were running on so hard and so fast, that for a few moments I didn’t notice that Rachel hadn’t responded to what I’d said a moment earlier. I turned round.

‘Rach?’

‘I can’t look any more,’ she said.

93

I limped across the room to a large, empty case that stood against the opposite wall. My breath was coming in short, shuddering gasps. I felt like crying, except I was beyond
even that. Tears were too small a reaction to the horror in this room.

Theo followed me and put his hand on my arm.

‘I . . . I can’t believe even Elijah would do this . . . keep that poor creature down here . . .’ I stammered. ‘I mean he’s
torturing
him . . .’

‘I know.’Theo stared at the empty case in front of us. ‘We have to help him,’

‘The woman from RAGE . . . earlier, she said we should “
kill it
”
.
I didn’t know what she meant then but I think she must have been referring to . . . to
that clone. And . . . and . . . maybe she was right . . . about killing it. I mean, like . . . killing as in putting him out of his misery . . .’

‘But how?’ Theo said. ‘How would we kill him? How would we
know
that we’d killed him without hurting him? That can’t be right either.’

‘And what would you two know about what is
right
?’ Elijah said from the doorway.

94

We spun round. My guts spasmed in fear. He had caught us. We had spent too long . . . become distracted . . . and now Elijah had us both.

His eyes flickered across our faces. Hard and mean. ‘Your tenacity and resourcefulness impress me, but you are
way
out of your depth here. The Eos protein is a miracle. Whatever it
takes to develop it successfully is the right thing to do.’

I stared at him. Hate coursed through me. This man had brought me nothing but misery all my life: from his decision to let me grow up without having – or knowing – a father; to his
attempt to keep Rachel and me apart; to this.

‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘We can
see
that the clone is suffering. How can that be
right
?’

‘Yes, he . . . he asked us for
help
—’ Rachel started.

‘You don’t understand.’ Elijah’s forehead creased in a frown. ‘I am taking Experiment Apollo 24
away
from suffering. In the end, it will be worth
it.’

‘How?’ I said.

‘Why is he even here?’ Rachel added.

Elijah crossed his arms and leaned against the doorway. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Experiment Apollo 24 was my last attempt to clone myself before Milo was born. I created
Experiment 24 in a clinic near here . . . where I lived and worked a long time ago. He was born disabled and disfigured but he had healthy internal organs. I kept him hidden away in the clinic
during my years working in London, and when I was in hiding in Germany and America and on Calla. When I arrived here a few days ago, I had the Experiment brought to the bunker in order
to—’