Deucalion (11 page)

11

INSIDE HELP

Central Administration, Edison

23/7/101 Standard

‘People don't just “disappear”. Not without inside help.' Councillor Dimitri Gaston sat with his back to the window, so that the strong light blinded the young man standing in front of the desk. The fat man's face was in shadow, but by a trick of the light his tiny pig eyes flashed like chips of onyx as he spoke.

The young man cleared his throat nervously. ‘She hasn't turned up at the lab for the past three days, or at her room. We had a man go in this morning. It's just the same as we left it after the break-in. If she took anything with her, it was only a few clothes. She—'

‘That does it. She must have got help. No one can disappear in Edison without contacts. She doesn't know her way around well enough. Did you run the card checks?'

The young man masked a look of contempt, and when he spoke there was no trace of it in his tone. ‘Of course. She hasn't used any cred facilities, or any public services in the past thirty hours. She hasn't even had a meal.'

‘Then I don't care about the observation schedule. It's time to terminate her. We don't know how much she's discovered, and with her intelligence we can't be sure what kind of deductions she might make. It's not worth the risk.'

The young man nodded and turned to go. Gaston's rasping voice brought him up short. ‘And Kennedy . . .' The young man turned back to face him. ‘This time, not another flyer accident. Air traffic is starting to ask questions. She's disappeared. Make sure she stays that way. Permanently.'

Kennedy gave no reply. It wasn't necessary. He felt his leader's eyes on him as he left the room.

Residential (North Wing)

Genetic Research Facility, Edison

24/7/101 Standard

JANE

Denny was sitting beside the window, staring out, when I woke up. I stretched and pushed back the cover. He turned and smiled.

‘How'd you sleep?'

‘Like a rock.' Swinging my legs around, I sat on the side of the bed and shook sleep from my hair. ‘I still feel guilty, though. After three nights on that couch, you must be aching all over.'

‘Not really. I gave up on the couch on the first night. The floor isn't all that bad. You're not inviting me to share the bed, are you?'

I looked at him for a moment, then smiled. It wasn't a come-on. Not really. ‘I'm not feeling
that
guilty.' Then I paused again, and just looked at him.

It made him nervous.

‘What?'

But I just smiled. Then I put him out of his misery. ‘Why did you take me in?'

‘You know, I don't have a clue. I guess I don't like mysteries, and if I'd handed you over to Security for safekeeping, I'd most likely never have found out what was going on. Besides, you didn't look too keen on trusting them when I brought it up. And you didn't have anywhere else to go. Remember?'

I remembered.

Over dinner on that first night he'd suggested that maybe, if I couldn't tell him what was going on, I should go to Security and tell someone there. But some instinct told me that wasn't such a good idea. I didn't have any notion of who had doctored the research files, or what had happened to Hendriks, but it stood to reason that any organisation with the resources it required to hack into the mainframe would certainly have its ways of knowing what was going on inside Security.

I didn't know where I was going. But I knew where I
wasn't
going. That was when Denny offered, and I accepted.

But for how long? I couldn't stay holed-up in his room indefinitely. In the end, I had to do something positive. The problem was, I didn't have a clue what.

I realised that I was staring into space when Denny cleared his throat theatrically, and moved across to sit on the bed next to me. ‘Thinking?'

‘Worrying. I can't stay here, Denny. In the end it'll put you in danger, I'm sure of it. I don't know what I discov . . .' I bit down on what I was about to say. In a moment of weakness, I'd nearly spilt the beans. I looked at him.

I don't like mysteries
. . . That was what he'd just said. And I did trust him. Still, the last person I'd shared it with had disappeared. I didn't want to put Denny in that sort of danger.

But wasn't it too late for that? I'd been with him in his room for three days and nights. If they knew I was here, they'd have come for me already, and they would assume I'd told him, anyway. It was clear they didn't know. That meant he was safe for now.

But if they ever did find out, they probably wouldn't stop to ask exactly what he knew or didn't know. They wouldn't take any chances. So in the end, it made no difference whether I told him or not. Except that it might stop me feeling so damned alone if I did.

‘Do you still want to know what's going on?'

He nodded.

‘Well, don't expect me to solve any mysteries for you. I think I'll probably raise a lot more questions than I'll answer . . .'

And then I told him.

Base Hospital

Genetic Research Facility, Edison

24/7/101 Standard

ELENA

She woke with a start. The man beside the door wanted to hurt her. He was wearing one of the hospital gowns, and he looked just like the doctors who came and went all day. But he wasn't a doctor. His mind was full of dark thoughts. As dark as the night outside the windows.

In his mind, she saw the needle. He was reaching into his pocket and taking it out. He was injecting it into the drip that hung above her head. He was watching her gasping for air, coughing. He was watching her go still. He was smiling.

She was watching him now with her eyes closed. Watching his mind. Slowly she turned over, pretending to move in her sleep. She mumbled a little to make it sound convincing.

It worked. He tensed for a moment, then she felt him relax, as she settled again with her back towards him. Now she opened her eyes. In front of her, the communicator panel glowed gently on night-light mode. Slowly she slid her hand across and pressed the call button.

Behind her the man began to move, making his way across to the bed.

Desperately Elena cast her mind along the corridor, but the nurse had not seen the call-light. He was talking to someone on the screen and his mind was distracted.

The man was right beside her now. He was reaching up to take hold of the tube that would feed his poison into her vein.

Part of her wanted to scream, but she had seen inside his mind. She knew what he would do if she screamed, and she was too small and too weak to stop him. She felt the thrill of dark pleasure run through him as he pressed the plunger of his syringe and watched the stream of death disappear into the thin tube.

And she knew what she must do.

Her hands were beneath the sheet, and swiftly, ignoring the sharp pain, she drew the needle out of her hand. Then she held it tightly, so that it would not fly free during what was about to happen. For a couple of seconds she lay still, preparing. Her mind probed his, and she found what she needed. He knew what should happen. He had seen it before, more than once. He must see it again.
Now.

When she began to react, he stepped back a pace, and then another. On the bed, the little girl arched her back as the first convulsion hit. Then she opened her eyes wide with shock and struggled to draw a breath, but her breathing was paralysed. The drug was working.

He smiled, and watched her choking. He watched her right hand clawing at the air, and her body begin to shake as the final convulsions took hold. It was beautiful. It was the moment he loved.

With a final shudder, she lay still. There was no need to check. The result was inevitable. And when they looked for a cause, they would find nothing. Delayed shock. The crash of the flyer had claimed another victim.

He turned and made his way out of the room, sliding the empty syringe back into his pocket.

Moments later, the nurse noticed the call-light, and made his way along the corridor to the little girl's room. When he arrived, the bed was empty. And there was a small, round bloodstain and a wet patch where the intravenous needle was leaking onto the sheet.

DARYL

How she found me I'll never know. Admittedly, the Base Hospital isn't all that big, but she was only eight years old, and she'd just been through an experience at least as terrifying as the flyer crash. It was just about midnight, and she woke me up by shaking my shoulder.

We'd both been admitted for observation. They had us on drips to replace the fluids we'd lost, and to make us feel like there was a reason for us being in there, but they weren't really too worried about us. Apart from a touch of sunburn and some mild stomach cramps from eating Yorum meat twice in three days, we were, according to the brief press release, ‘tired but well'.

At Cael and Saebi's own request, no mention was made of the help we'd received from them. That was the way they wanted it, and I couldn't convince them that they'd be heroes, that it would be good for the image of all Elokoi. As far as anyone knew, we'd made our own way over the Ranges and across the flatlands to Edison. I knew what the tube newshounds would make of that, as soon as they were allowed near us. Maybe Cael and Saebi had the right idea after all. Besides, it was no use arguing with them. It wasn't the Elokoi way to take unnecessary credit for what you should do anyway, and we owed it to them to honour their wishes. That was how Elena explained it to me, but I think she was just repeating what the Elders had told her.

She seemed different after she'd spent that couple of hours ‘talking' with them while we were waiting for the flyer to arrive at the Reserve. Cael had told me about her ability to ‘thought-speak', and I'd watched her with Saebi in the evenings, staring and smiling. But after that time with the Elders, she said, her mind was ‘open'. She understood what the fuzzy ‘visions' were that she'd been troubled with all her life. She knew how to control them. Talk about the value of expert tutoring!

But all that didn't help me any at midnight, in a dark hospital ward, when she leaned over me, pulled the drip out of my arm, and whispered, ‘We have to get out of here. They're trying to kill us.'

Us
? As far as I knew, no one had done anything to
me
.
I thought for a moment that she'd been dreaming, and I told her so, but she just looked at me. I don't know exactly what it was about that look, but it just didn't fit on the face of an eight-year-old.

‘Tell me what happened,' I heard myself saying, but she just shook her head.

‘No time. I'll tell you later. When we get away.'

I managed to grab a change of clothes from the closet before she dragged me out into the corridor.

‘Down the staircase. There's no one down there as far as the ground floor.'

I was going to ask her how she knew, but something told me it was a really dumb question.

She looked up at me and smiled. ‘It is,' she said. ‘Really dumb.'

And then we were on our way downstairs.

I guess we'd both put too much faith in Elena's new-found powers. We hadn't made it down two flights before we were surrounded by a whole group of people she just hadn't sensed. I was ready to fight, but Elena stopped me with a movement of her hand.

She stood facing them in total silence for a full minute, then she shook her head and took my hand. ‘I won't go, then.' The outburst made no sense to me, but she squeezed my hand to emphasise her point.

For another few moments they faced each other, silently, then Elena nodded. ‘Okay.'

They started down the staircase and we followed, with a couple of their number bringing up the rear.

I'd given up trying to make sense of the whole situation. It wasn't at all surprising when a flyer swooped down out of the night sky, and came in to land on the forecourt of the hospital.

There was a young woman at the controls. She spoke to Elena. ‘Thank God you're safe. I thought we were going to be too late.'

Elena just smiled and looked at me. ‘You were,' she said, and climbed aboard.

What could I do? We'd come this far together, why break up a successful team?

I turned to the girl at the controls. She looked about eighteen Standard. ‘I'm Daryl . . .' I began, but she turned back towards her controls.

‘We're aware of who you are, Mr Newman. Will you please move to your seat. We have a long journey ahead of us.'

I groaned to myself. My idea of fun at that moment in time was most definitely not ‘a long journey'.

I sat down next to Elena and she smiled at me. ‘Don't mind Gwen. She has a lot of responsibility. It's hard for her to keep control of everything and be polite too.'

I looked at her, and then at the girl who was piloting the flyer. Gwen? ‘How did you know her name? How did you know anything about her?'

Elena gave me ‘that look' again. ‘She told me, silly. How do you think I knew?'

Central Administration, Edison

25/7/101 Standard

‘Look, it's not my fault. DeGroot is our best man. He's never failed before.' Nervously Kennedy shifted from foot to foot. ‘And he swears he saw the girl die. He injected her with enough DTX to kill a full-grown man. There was no way she could have survived. Besides, the Security report just says she's missing. How do we know she's not dead?'

Gaston's silence was more telling than the words that followed. When he finally spoke, his voice was too quiet. ‘We know she's not dead because there's no damned body! And because that damned Security officer – the one from the crash – what's his name?'

‘Newman . . .' Kennedy consulted the file on the desk in front of him. ‘Daryl Newman.'

‘Because this Daryl Newman is also “missing”. Doesn't that strike you as a little
too
coincidental?'