The Blood In the Beginning (2 page)

‘Sir, you're going to need to step back, unless you want to give me a name.' I didn't keep a clipboard. All the names on the door list were in my head, compliments of a nearly perfect photographic memory.

He didn't say anything, just pulled a card out of his jeans pocket and handed it over.

I glanced at it before handing it back. ‘Poseidon?'

‘It's a new club.'

Like I didn't know. Ever since the Big One changed the topography of LA, clubs were popping up everywhere. Who knew certain business owners were going to become billionaires when California cracked? Even a crap-ass housing project becomes prime real estate if it suddenly sports an ocean view. But Poseidon was something else entirely. Everyone on campus talked about it. Cate, who claimed me as her BFF, had landed a job there, as a ‘siren.' Not my gig, what with the coconut-covered breasts and glittery fish-like tail, but if they were looking for a bouncer, that was another thing.

He tilted his head. ‘Come by tomorrow, late afternoon, and talk to the boss.' When I didn't respond, he leaned closer. ‘The pay's impressive.'

Cate had mentioned that. ‘Thanks.' Money was money, and my job could dry up if the lounge closed.
This might just be my lucky night.

He must have sensed the interest. ‘I'm Billy,' he said and offered the card again.

‘Ava Sykes.' I took it, and he left me to my job. Three hours later, I was on the bus, heading down South Broadway for the fifteen minute ride home.

* * *

It was 3.45 a.m. when I swiped the keypad and punched in the code. The door to the apartment building clicked open, and I smiled up at the hidden camera. Force of habit. It wasn't manned any more. With dwindling relief funds, the outer city's security systems had suffered. South Gate's twenty-four hour watch was one of the first to go, but I didn't mind. Call it affordable rent.

I padded down the ground floor hallway and opened the first door on the left. 3.46 a.m. I wouldn't get more than a few hours' sleep and sleeping meant no time to prep my slides and run through the presentation. I locked my gun in the safe and thought through the options. Yeah, I had a photographic memory. Images were easy to memorise, but I couldn't just regurgitate this stuff. It had to make sense, become a part of me. ‘Screw it. I'm staying up.'

It's never a good sign, talking to walls, and worse when you swear at them, but it seemed important to declare my intentions aloud. After a hot shower, I rough-dried my hair, slipped on satin basketball shorts and a tattered UCLA tee, brewed a pot of organic coffee and got to work. It wasn't long before the phone played my least favourite morning ringtone, making my stomach growl, right on cue.

Smog-brown sunlight splashed across the kitchen table, which doubled as a desk. Time to copy my work to a flash drive and send the as-good-as-it-would-get assignment to my CloudBox — a chunk of cyber-storage real estate dearly paid for. I yawned deep and stretched my legs. There wasn't far to walk to the living area, which was mostly cushions, a bookshelf, and a low coffee table. Tucked in the corner was the gun safe. That was it. In the tiny adjoining bedroom sat my queen-size futon, taking up most of the floor space. ‘Tonight, for sure. It's you and me, baby.' Now I was talking to my bed. I reached the far wall, touched my toes and straightened to twist and crack my back.

The apartment was on the ground floor of one of the few buildings around to survive the Big One. People also called it the ‘last quake', but there had been plenty since, just not strong enough to split apart any more of the State. The initial repair efforts, in New LA County at least, deserved a medal, although having relief funding in the trillions helped. Who couldn't make things as good as new, with that kind of backing? Fifteen years later the funding wasn't so generous. It had dried up completely in Anaheim, for example. There was nothing there any more except capped fracking wells and an abandoned amusement park. Kinda sad. I'd heard Disneyland was amazing, once. Earthquakes will do that to a city, if that's what really caused it.

There were all kinds of conspiracy theories.

One claimed a mob boss had nuked West LA, but that was ridiculous.
As if they could've gotten their hands on a warhead back then.
Besides, the fallout would have triggered major issues for half a millennium. I closed my eyes, running the equation.
If there are
N
radioactive nuclei at some time
t
, then the number
∆N
which would decay in any given time interval
∆t
would be proportional to
N
. Not good odds, even for kingpins like Freeman or Rodriguez. Yeah, I knew who the underground bosses were. In my line of work, punters tossed their names around like volleyballs, usually attached to ugly-ass threats. I'd gotten a few of those in the last three years at Lucky's. Show me a bouncer this side of town who hadn't!

I put on a fresh pot of coffee, and set a pot of water to boil. There were just enough steel-cut oats left in the box for a decent feed. ‘Tomorrow, shop!' While the oats boiled, I got dressed. Easy job. There was only one pair of clean jeans in the drawer. The rest of my clothes were in the laundry basket, or piled on the floor. I dropped my shorts, pulled on the jeans, found my lucky sky-blue bra with dark satin stitching, a navy tank top and a pair of lapis earrings. Back in the kitchen I poured the last of the rice milk on my oats, drizzled a bit of honey from the spoon and ate it straight out of the pot.

Merging with the hot oats aroma, I caught a whiff of my laundry. Bad. That had to be dealt with.
Sleep, shop, laundry,
I ticked off in my head. The things I hadn't done, but must … soon. In the bathroom, I brushed my hair back into a ponytail, checked my phone for messages and swore. Time to go! It was a forty-five minute bus ride across town to the UCLA campus in Beverly Hills. I probably should have soaked the pot in the sink with the other dirty dishes, but …
later.

* * *

Ten a.m. came with the expected physical signs: burning eyes, stiff neck, headache.
Oh, boy.
My palms were sweating as I walked to the podium, footsteps echoing through the virtually empty UCLA lecture hall. That was a plus. It lessened the potential for public humiliation. The only seats occupied were the front two rows. I squeezed my eyes shut a few times, trying to alleviate the sting … eye drops might have helped, along with fresh contacts. They were prescription, for my mixed astigmatism, a near–far sighted combo, and tinted to keep down the glare. I had partial colour blindness too, but that's another story. Bottom line, sleep deprivation wasn't a good look. Hopefully, the examiners would be glued to the screen, and my riveting presentation, not my tired face.

It took a minute to password my way through security, log into my CloudBox — and bring up the visuals. I synched with the screen behind me and cleared my throat. ‘Good morning, faculty.' My voice broke and I tried to
humph
without sounding like a cat coughing up a fur ball. This was not my favourite part of being fourth year: standing in front of a critical audience, my knowledge and abilities in question. Who in their right mind would want to try and explain auto-immune disorders to a group of scientists who knew hundreds of times more about the subject than anyone alive?

The mic gave an ear-piercing screech as I adjusted it, which didn't help to calm me down. The lights dimmed and the large screen illuminated. The glare was so strong, I couldn't read the notes on my tablet.
Perfect
. I sucked in a deep breath, and ploughed on.

‘Since the first wave of the Aftermath, auto-immune disorders have escalated, not just here in LA, but globally. These diseases cross all borders, cultures and peoples, targeting young and old alike. The epidemiology is hard to trace, but at its core is a potentially fatal flaw …' I choked on that. This topic got under my skin because I had one of those pesky flaws myself. At times like these, I could almost hear the clock ticking. I cleared my throat. ‘… a potentially fatal flaw in the evolution of the human genome. Constant bombardment from microwaves, radiation and carcinogenic substances has caused an abnormal gene expression, including the conditional deletion of the Bcl-x gene from red blood cells, which becomes apparent when the body loses its ability to tell the difference between self and non-self.'

I swiped the small screen on the podium, bringing up the next visual behind me. It showed a clip of a blood clot forming at 500x magnification, courtesy of APS — antiphospholipid antibody syndrome — in action. As I talked about causes and potential cures, moving on to my personal favourite, hemolytic anemia and its variants under the umbrella of AADD — Aftermath associated degenerative diseases — my eyes came back to one of the examiners. I'd never seen him before, which wasn't uncommon. UCLA hosted the largest science campus in the western US, and specialists in the field were invited in to evaluate fourth year students, especially ones like me who hoped to land an internship with the LA branch of the CDC, the Centre for Disease Control. This guy looked too young though. Maybe an intern auditing my talk?
Who are you?

The thought floated through my head. Not a welcome distraction. Every time I looked, he was staring at me, his expression a cross between curious and accusatory. It raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
Oh, hell!
I had the freaking wrong slide up. I pulled my focus back to the presentation and kept my gaze well away from handsome mystery man in seat A15. Sure, it registered. Handsome.
Not helping.

Twenty minutes later, the lights went up and there was a brief, but slightly more than perfunctory, applause. On a scale of one to ten, for senior lecturers that was at least a nine, nearly a standing ovation. It made me smile, and in a momentary lapse, my eyes drifted back to seat A15. Big mistake. The floor was open to questions, and he took it as a personal invitation.

‘You mention the fatigue associated with auto-immune hepatitis. What test would differentiate auto-immune liver disease from other hepatic disorders?'

I swallowed hard, not because I didn't have a damn good answer, but because his eyes were boring into me. Almond-shaped dark eyes. They had a wild look, or was that the unruly hair? It was like being on a witness stand, which I guess was the point of the exercise. He wasn't coming across as an intern. His voice was too confident. I reviewed the role of typical histological findings in both AILD and other chronic liver diseases, finishing with a discussion of immunoglobulins and various triggers for immune response. He questioned again, and for a while, we had our own private ping-pong match going on. Then others had comments and questions for me and, while I engaged, out of the corner of my eye I saw him check his phone. He nodded vaguely in my direction and left. As he walked out of the hall, a lingering thought again floated through my head.

Who are you?

CHAPTER TWO

Afternoon light slanted between the tall buildings of North Grand Avenue, one of the plusher parts of the city. The bus pulled away as I walked past Grand Park, catching a bit of breeze from the open spaces. It still smelled predominantly of car exhaust and blistering hot pavement, but there was a hint of fresh-cut grass, newly watered. No shortage of funds in this district. The busy street turned to South Grand, leading toward my destination: Poseidon. I was still riding high on the general thumbs-up I got for my presentation, so I'd decided to roll the dice again, while feeling lucky. A job at this end of town could be just what my bank account needed.

I walked beside shiny new skyscrapers sandwiched between the pre-Big One relics, and checked out people dressed in the trending threads. Some were rushing in and out of stores, others were hanging out on street-side espresso joints, tapping away on their cells and tablets. A rare few were engaged in some existential chit-chat, face to face. Not much litter clogged the gutters, and I saw no evidence of the growing homeless population. The LAPD kept things clean, in this part of town. I passed a few office buildings, an appliance store, a dress shop, and then paused at the bulletin board in front of the cinema. There weren't many public boards like these around. Most information was spammed out by the gigabyte, delivered direct to your device, whether you wanted it or not.

I liked this bulletin board. The handwritten messages were a kaleidoscope of flash-diaries, mini-entries, saying, ‘I want this,' and ‘Do you want that?' A gust of wind surged as a delivery truck roared by, ruffling the messages, making them strain against their pins. I hooded my eyes and closed my mouth until the grit stopped flying. The papers settled on the board and I read about cars for sale, rooms for rent, yoga, dating. ‘Hey, MMA! My martial arts academy,' I said aloud. No one noticed. There was also a slew of missing persons. I winced when I saw a picture of Daina. She was a friend of a friend who'd vanished three weeks ago. Rumor had it someone was murdering coeds. This alone was enough argument for every man, woman and child to learn how to defend themselves.

I looked away, searching until I found the recessed doors of Poseidon, the next building down. I went into security mode. The cinema entrance sat back from the sidewalk by a good twenty feet, but close to where Poseidon's line-up would be, making containment a potential issue. Too much glass, and a nightmare between show times, especially on weekends. The parking meters and palm trees lining the street could create hazards for a crowd as well. This club needed a double loading zone. I'd be mentioning that first thing, if I landed the job. A few more steps and I stood in front of tall black doors. The only thing marking the club was an engraved trident overhead. Cute.

The first knock went unanswered. I pounded harder and it swung open. ‘I'm Ava Sykes. I have an appointment.' It wasn't exactly true, but my experience in this kind of situation was to play it confident and doors opened, literally.