The Adjusters (6 page)

“Do you forgive me?” Blake asked.

“Forget it,” Henry said, trying to make light of it. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

Mallory reached over and placed a large hand on the back of Blake’s neck. “Well, that’s all settled then. I know you and my grandson are going to be the best of friends, Henry.
And you’ll be a good influence on him too.”

Henry looked at Blake, who had raised his head for the first time since setting foot in the kitchen.
Grandson.
That figured.

“Run along and get your homework done,” Mallory ordered and Blake trotted towards the door.

“See you in class on Monday, Henry!” Blake said as he passed Henry’s mom, who watched him go like he was from a different planet. Henry had to smile at that.

“Now, first thing tomorrow,” Mallory said, laying his hands lightly on Henry’s shoulders, “I want you to get along to the medical centre to be checked out by my head
physician.”

Henry shook his head. “Really, I’m fine…”

Mallory’s hands suddenly became very heavy on his shoulders. “But I insist. You put yourself through a traumatic experience. Just a standard medical to make sure everything’s
okay.” Mallory glanced round at Jennifer. “And it’s company policy following an incident.”

“He’ll be there,” Jennifer said pointedly.

“Excellent,” Mallory exclaimed, moving towards the kitchen door. “Dr. Chancellor will expect you at 9 a.m. Now I’ll leave you both to your unpacking.”

Henry could have left it there, but found himself calling out across the room, “Mr. Mallory!”

The big man stopped in his tracks and looked round. A slow smile spread across his face. “You’re going to ask me about Gabrielle Henson.”

Henry nodded. His mother looked daggers at him.

“You’re a very astute young man,” Mallory said with a chuckle. “I can see there’ll be no keeping things from you.”

“Everyone said they hadn’t heard of her.”

Mallory sighed and reached into his pocket. He produced a fat cigar, placed it in his mouth and began to chew on it without lighting up.

“Gabrielle and her family are from Newton,” he said. “And Gabrielle, as you might have gathered, is a rather disturbed young lady. Her mental problems are exacerbated by her
addiction to several illegal drugs. Very difficult for her family, who are old-fashioned types, to say the least. When we came here, Malcorp tried to help her fit in to our school system –
without much success, I might add. I even had our psychiatrists offer counselling, but the girl wouldn’t take it.” Mallory removed the cigar from his mouth and looked thoughtfully at
the chewed end. “Then the bad behaviour around town began. Theft. Vandalism. Accusations.”

“Accusations?” Jennifer asked.

“Against some of the boys living here in the facility,” he said. “I’m sure I don’t have to paint you a picture. There was nothing to it, of course. Gabrielle was
just looking for a bit of attention, I guess. And for a while she got it. Not an easy time for the boys.”

“Probably not an easy time for her, either,” Henry said, trying to reconcile Mallory’s version of events with the terrified girl he’d met just that afternoon.

“So you understand why Steve and Blake were a little thrown by your question,” Mallory continued, as if he hadn’t heard the last comment. “We all thought we’d heard
the last of her. A couple of weeks ago, she took an overdose and got herself hospitalized. Then she promptly ran out of the facility. Stole a car from town, but didn’t get very far – we
found it crashed in a ditch a few kilometres down the main road. After that I guess she just ran into the woods and lived rough until Trooper Dan picked her up this afternoon.”

“Where is she now?” Jennifer asked.

“Being cared for by our doctors tonight,” Mallory replied. “I paid her a visit just before I came here. She says she wants to make a fresh start. That she’s going to
accept some counselling support this time. We live in hope.” He held up the cigar and laughed unexpectedly. “I used to smoke five of these a day, but I gave up before they killed me.
Still like to keep one in my pocket, though.” He put it back in his mouth and clamped his jaw down on the end.

Jennifer looked at Henry and smiled. “Mystery solved?”

He shrugged.

“Goodnight,” Mallory said. “And thank you again, Henry. Malcorp owes you a huge favour.”

He turned and left through the lounge. Jennifer walked over and put her arms around Henry. “My hero son.”

An hour later, having helped his mom unpack their bedding and just a few other essentials, an exhausted Henry walked up the stairs to his new room. He’d left Jennifer
sitting on the couch watching the late news, but he knew she’d be asleep within ten minutes herself.

His bedroom was as lavishly equipped as the rest of the lodge, with a large bed, a brand-new PC workstation and mini home-theatre system. There was even an electric guitar and amp in one corner.
Henry didn’t play, but on picking up the sleek, red and white Stratocaster, had decided that if he did nothing else while at Malcorp, he was going to learn.

It was only as he undressed and reached for the light that he noticed the envelope – it was stuck to the outside of the bedroom window with a piece of tape. Frowning, Henry opened the
window and looked out. Someone had climbed the sloped roof of the lodge – a lot of effort to place an envelope on his window. He reached round and pulled it off the glass, opening it as he
returned to his bed.

Inside the envelope was a handwritten note:

Heard about what you did at the pool. Sorry for being weird before – didn’t know if you were one of us or not. Meet at “Full of Beans” in Newton, 7 p.m. tomorrow
– Christian.

We need to talk about Gabrielle Henson.

Henry sat back in bed and was about to crumple the note, when he noticed something else scrawled on the other side, as if an afterthought.

PS – If you go to the medical centre, don’t let them scan your brain.

He shook his head and thought about tossing the note in the bin. Christian was crazy, even by the standards of everyone else he’d met that day. But right now he was one of the few people
Henry knew in Newton, and that had to count for something. He folded the note and laid it on his bedside table.

“You should see the equipment they have in that lab. Absolutely cutting-edge stuff, not like the last place I worked. They must have spent millions…”

Henry was barely listening to his mom’s words as she drove them to the medical centre in the buggy they’d been assigned the following morning. Despite his exhaustion, he hadn’t
slept well last night. His head had been spinning with thoughts of Gabrielle, the story that Mallory had told him and Christian’s strange note.

“Hello!” Jennifer said, leaning into his ear. “Is anybody in there?”

Henry gave her an embarrassed smile. “Sorry. I’m still half asleep.”

“Don’t tell me you’re worried about the medical exam?”

“No!” Henry paused. “They’re not going to need a blood sample, are they?”

Jennifer laughed. “Just like your father. Scared of a little needle…” Her voice trailed away, as it often did when she started thinking about her husband. Henry reached over
and touched her arm.

“It’s okay, Mom.”

“Yeah,” she said, brightening. “And I can’t see why they’d need blood. You’re clearly as fit as a fiddle.”

“I don’t see why they need to do this test at all. Can’t I just—”

“No,” Jennifer said firmly. When he gave a groan of frustration, she added, “Come on, kiddo. Do it for your old lady, huh? Mallory insists and I need to keep on his good
side.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Who knows, you might get a pretty young nurse.”

Henry shot her a look. His mother smiled back at him innocently.

“And afterwards, you can walk back to the lodge and unpack the rest of those boxes.”

“You’re not hanging around?”

“Have to head over to the lab. Start getting things organized.”

Henry nodded, the beginnings of a plan starting to form in his mind. Once he was dropped off at the medical centre, he’d walk into reception, wait around until his mom drove off and then
slip out. It wasn’t that he minded going to the doctor, it just seemed so unnecessary – especially on his last free day before starting at a new school.

The buggy rounded another set of anonymous glass and metal buildings and the medical centre appeared before them. It was located on the highest point within the Malcorp complex, on a hill
covered around the base with thick trees. Beyond the trees it was possible to see a high fence encircling a windowless, concrete building – a stark contrast to all the others in the complex.
A gravel driveway ascended through the trees to an open gate in the wall.

“That’s different,” Henry said as the buggy ascended the driveway. “You’re going to work in that place, Mom?”

“No!” Jennifer replied, sounding relieved at the fact. The featureless façade of the medical centre was decidedly uninviting – like a vault or mausoleum of some kind.
“The IVF lab is on the other side of the complex. And it has windows.”

They reached the end of the driveway and pulled up in front of the main entrance: a set of wooden double doors over three metres high. Closed-circuit TV cameras on either side of these doors
scanned the buggy as they stopped. One of the doors opened a crack and a tall, thin man with slicked-back hair and a spotless white coat emerged from the building.

“Henry Ward?” he asked, approaching the buggy. In one hand he cradled a device that looked like an iPad, only smaller and thinner. “I’m Nurse Levin. I’m here to
take you directly to your medical exam.”

The look of disappointment must have been evident on Henry’s face, because his mom slapped him on the shoulder. “No getting out of it, kiddo.”

Henry climbed out of the buggy and she turned it round fast, kicking up gravel on the driveway. “Don’t forget the unpacking!” she yelled over her shoulder as she sped away.

“Great,” Henry said. So much for his last day of freedom before Malcorp High…

“Let’s get inside,” Nurse Levin said, leading the way back to the door. “Dr. Chancellor doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

Passing through the giant entrance doors, Henry found himself in a high-ceilinged reception area where every surface appeared to be made of marble. As Levin briskly led the way to a door on the
other side of the area, Henry realized that the place was missing something that had been present in every other doctor’s surgery he’d been to. A reception desk. Clearly visits to the
medical centre were by appointment only. It also felt distinctly chilly inside the building after the heat of the morning. Maybe it was all the marble. The interior was bright, despite the lack of
windows. Henry looked up at the ceiling and made out large globe lights throwing out the ridiculous amount of illumination necessary in a building with no natural sunlight.

Levin reached a glass door and swiped a key card through a reader, ushering Henry through as it slid open. They walked into a corridor lined with steel doors marked only with numbers. He turned
right, into another corridor. And then another. Levin didn’t drop his pace for a second and offered no conversation as they made their way through the building. Soon Henry was completely
disoriented and couldn’t have found his way back to reception if he’d wanted to. The doors and corridors looked identical to him and he was beginning to wonder how Levin found his way
around, when the nurse stopped in front of a door marked 603.

“Here we are,” Levin said, throwing the door open. Henry walked through into a small examination room. Like everywhere else in the building it was windowless, lit by a globe in the
ceiling.

“Why don’t you strip down to your underwear and I’ll go through the preliminaries,” the nurse said, tapping the tablet screen with his finger.

Feeling more than a little self-conscious, Henry took off his T-shirt, folded it and laid it across the back of a chair in the corner.

“Just a few background questions,” Levin said, an apologetic tone in his voice, as Henry sat in another chair and began to remove his sneakers. “Any previous injuries or
medical conditions?”

Henry pulled off his socks and placed them in his shoes. “No.”

“Not taking prescription drugs at the moment?”

“No.”

“Non-prescription drugs?”

“Uh…no.”

“Smoke?”

“No.”

They went through a list of about twenty other questions, at the end of which Henry was sitting in his boxer shorts, arms folded across his chest, shivering from the chill in the room.

“Last question,” Levin said. “Have you ever been in trouble with the law?”

Henry frowned. “What has that got to do with the medical exam?”

“It’s just a standard question,” Levin said with a smile. “If you don’t want to answer…”

“No,” Henry said before he even knew he was going to lie. “I’ve never been in trouble with the police.”

“Great,” Levin said, tucking the tablet under his arm. To Henry’s surprise, the nurse stepped forward and slapped him on the upper arm. “You’re going to do fine.
Dr. Chancellor will be along in a moment.”