Started with Errors (Relative Industries Series Book 2)

by Joanna Beaumont

  She didn’t understand why her question was a problem. It was a reasonable one. They would be bringing human embryos to full term. Parents would have provided consent. Where would the babies go when they were born if not?

  Callum’s nervous laugh filled the awkward silence. “We don’t need to bother Alex with that. Consent will be on the system somewhere.”

  Alex said, “Yes, of course I can show you the legal documentation allowing us to use the embryos. However, parental consent is not necessary. In light of the current fertility crisis, the government declared the pre-thirty-five embryos government assets, so we can do with them as we please.”

  Lana frowned at Alex. Then, assuming he was joking, she laughed.

  Alex’s expression never changed.

  He was serious.

  “Government assets. What?” She turned to Callum. “Did you know?”

  Callum’s eyes had taken on a vacant glaze. In his stupefied state he could only shake his head slightly.

  The awkward silence stretched on.

  She should have asked Alex more questions. It made no sense. But he wasn’t looking for more questions. His word was final, and his demeanour had returned to yesterday’s nonchalance.

  “I don’t want to cause you any delay. I’m sure you’re both eager to get up and running. And I am making my way around the other programs. It was good to meet you both.”

  Alex smiled, and they watched him leave.

  Lana was perplexed. “How can human embryos become government assets?”

  “I don’t know. It’s the first time I’ve heard about it. We could ask the team.”

  The team? Something told her not to trust them. “No, don’t ask them. I’ll have a look later and see if I can find anything on the network.”

  Surely, Paige would have told her if she knew. Transferred here without parental consent? Government assets?

  “If the embryos are government assets, what will the babies be when they’re born? Will they be government assets too?” Lana asked.

  “I don’t know. This is new territory for everybody.”

  Callum was short with her. Did he really not know? She couldn’t believe the government would remove human embryos from fertility clinics in the UK and transfer them here without parental consent. But Paige did say Alex had cut a deal with the government so RI Ascension Island was the sole research centre.

  How did they collect the embryos? At gun point, or did the clinics give them up without resistance?

  Who would be the baby’s mother and father? It hadn’t been thought out.

  A child should not have to grow up without their parents like she had to.

  Chapter Twelve

  At the North Bar, Callum stretched his hand out towards Howard.

  Lana had to persuade Callum to come tonight, and from the look on Howard’s face he wasn’t bothered about coming either. Howard was sitting down, but Lana could see he was tall and slim, clean shaven too. He wore a polo shirt, but she imagined him in a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows much like a posh school headmaster.

  The men sized each other up for a moment. Lana wondered if they might be working out who was top dog. Finally, Callum sat on the bench opposite Howard.

  For the last nine days, Lana and Callum had worked to set up the new lab so they could use the human embryos. She had tried to ignore the lack of parental consent but couldn’t. She was sick about it. It wasn’t ethical even if it was legal. The fact Callum was unconcerned about it bothered her too. She’d deliberately wasted time hiding things, sabotaging printers and scrambling the code on the door to the embryo safe. Maintenance would reset the lock again tomorrow, and Callum would be too paranoid to give the safe code to anyone this time. She needed a different plan.

  “Shall we go to the bar?” Beth asked Lana.

  They both rose, and Lana glanced back at Callum.

  “Don’t be long.” He spoke as if they didn’t spend every moment of the day together.

  Lana and Beth sat at the bar stools. Lana noticed Beth was fidgety and offering her only side glances. Beth started drumming her fingers rhythmically on the counter, and Lana knew she had something on her mind. She hoped it wasn’t what she was thinking.

  “How’s everything going?” Beth asked.

  “Okay, we have four pods assembled and ready for growing embryos. The last one will be finished tomorrow. You should come to the lab and take a look.”

  “I don’t mean that. Have you seen anybody else you know in here?”

  “No, I’m permanently in the lab.”

  Beth faked a smile, and dread descended on Lana.

  “I’m sorry…I told Howard about you.”

  “Oh.” Lana stared down at her reflection in the shiny surface of the bar. She had expected it, but she still felt a little betrayed.

  Beth looked over at the men, chatting like they were best buddies. “Maybe you should tell him. He’ll feel like an idiot if he’s the last to know.”

  “I know.” Lana looked over at Callum. He glanced at her and smiled. “But if I tell him and he reacts badly, then what? He is my boss. He could send me home. I should’ve told him sooner. The longer it goes on, the harder it gets.”

  “It’s never too late to do the right thing.”

  Lana sighed. “Thanks for that nugget of wisdom.”

  The bartender clunked the drinks on the bar. They carried the bottles back to the booth and sat down. Lana gave Callum a quick smile then fiddled with the neck of her beer bottle. All three of them knowing about her former life, and Callum not, did feel awkward.

  Lana zoned in and out of the conversation. She nodded and smiled at appropriate moments and pretended Beth hadn’t just dropped her in it.

  “Damian,” Beth groaned.

  “Are you all having a good time? I can’t believe you have the audacity to still be in here after what happened. Amy isn’t returning any of my messages or answering my calls,” Damian said.

  “It’s only been a few days since she left.” Beth lowered her voice. “She’s probably avoiding you.”

  “She left on April 17th. It’s April 26th today. It’s nine days. And I’m not just talking about that. I thought you’d have the decency to quit after what happened in here.”

  Beth darted her eyes at Howard.

  Fascinated by their heated conversation Lana looked up at Damian. He was dressed in jeans and a tight T-shirt. His eyes met Lana’s and brightened, like a light bulb turned on inside him, but then just as quick his eyebrows narrowed as if he recognised her.

  Shit. Did he? That’s all she needed. Lana snapped away from his gaze and turned towards Callum, who was sat on her right-hand side.

  Callum stiffened and pushed his chest out.

  “She’s not up for end-of-the-species sex,” Beth said.

  “What do you want, Damian?” Howard asked.

  With her head still fixed in Callum’s direction, Lana shuffled along the bench towards Damian and rose. “Back in a minute,” she whispered. She scooted across the bar and headed to the restroom.

  Lana was staring hard into the sink when Beth came in a few minutes later. Through the mirror, she watched Beth push open each stall door before standing next to her.

  “It’s okay. He’s gone.”

  “Shit. He knows me, doesn’t he?”

  “He supports JTAC. He knows Paige. It’s possible he recognised your face, but he might not know from where yet.”

  She jolted her head towards Beth. “Yet! I can’t leave the lab ever. I can’t come to the bar anymore, Beth.” Lana paced the white tiled floor. “Shit, shit, shit…this is bad.”

  Beth leaned back against the sink and watched her prowl the bathroom.

  “When I talked to Howard about you, we both reckoned there’s no way security doesn’t know who you are. They probably did a risk assessment and decided you were a risk worth taking, so really you need not worry.”

  “Okay, yeah. So they know I’m Lucy Green, former terroris
t. I’ll sleep tonight.”

  “They must need that information in your head.”

  “See, that’s what I don’t understand. They could have done all this without us. They might have already.”

  “So what do they want with you and Callum?”

  Lana shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  They left the restroom. Damian was at the bar. He peered at Lana as if he needed to confirm or deny his suspicions. She was certain he’d recognised her.

  Beth whispered, “Ignore him.”

  They hurried back to the booth. Callum and Howard were laughing when they sat down next to them.

  “Lana told me she wants to give us a tour of her lab,” Beth said to Howard.

  “Only if I can give you a tour of mine.” Howard laughed.

  Beth groaned. “Howard’s a botanist now, but he wasn’t when I met him. We both found different things to do after—”

  Lana glanced in Damian’s direction. He was sitting at the bar with his back to them.

  “Why was your project cancelled?” Lana asked.

  Beth shuffled in her seat like she was sat in a wet patch.

  “Have you been causing trouble in here?” Lana asked playfully.

  Beth darted a look at Howard. Lana was intrigued. There were more secrets in here than she knew.

  “You have, haven’t you? Did you run another online survey to ask if Alex Hamilton is a prick?” Lana turned to Callum and held his gaze with a stare.

  Now Callum looked uncomfortable too.

  “No, nothing like that,” Beth said. “But he is. You don’t need a survey to tell you that.”

  Lana watched Beth persistently.

  “Let’s not talk about it tonight,” Beth said.

  “So, how about that tour?” Callum asked.

  Howard grinned at Beth, and Beth rolled her eyes.

  “Yes, anytime,” Howard said.

  “There’s nothing to see,” Beth said. “It’s a bunch of fridges with the world’s seeds in it. It’s like the Arctic inside.”

  “Do you know we cultivate only six types of apple? In the seed bank there are seven thousand types of apple seed. Each seed is suitable for a different environment and has evolved over thousands of years.

  “We’re trying to grow seeds in Martian soil by removing any toxins and identifying the fertilisers we’d need to do it. Well, it’s more like rock dust than soil. We use different mineral compositions to simulate the soil we might find on different planets too,” Howard said.

  “Is that an Alex project?” Callum asked.

  “Yes, he came around yesterday. Did you see him?”

  Callum glanced at Lana. She raised her eyebrows. She knew he’d never drop the fact the human embryos were government assets into conversation. That’s not a topic he’d want to talk about with them. He wouldn’t talk about it with her. The veins in his neck had protruded at just the mention of it.

  “Yes, he introduced himself,” Callum said quietly while rubbing the back of his neck.

  Howard continued. “He was more excited than usual, said everything was coming together. He is a visionary leader.”

  “A visionary leader?” Beth laughed. “All Alex wants to do is leave Earth because the government have commandeered his new toy.”

  “What do you mean?” Lana asked.

  “Did he not give you the Terra Nova talk on the induction day and the travelling to other planets speech?” Beth asked.

  “No,” Lana said. “Just the pending black hole fate.”

  “It’s pretty obvious he thinks we’re doomed, and he wants to get off the planet,” Beth said.

  Howard took a swig from his bottle of beer. “You always need a Plan B, and man is programmed to sow his seed far and wide.”

  Beth shot Howard a look.

  “Not me, of course!” Howard glanced at Callum. They exchanged knowing smiles and laughed.

  “I prefer Plan A—Meda’s plan. Save the planet we have,” Beth said.

  Howard lifted his beer bottle. Something he had to say must have trumped the swig. He dropped it down on the mat. “Yes, good old Meda. Have you seen one of her broadcasts about saving Earth?”

  “Not yet,” Lana said.

  Howard prepared to mock recite Meda by smoothing down imaginary hair and pushing up imaginary boobs, then breathily, he said, “Years of uncontrolled economic growth have turned humans into a malignant growth on our planet Earth. Do you know how many tonnes of carbon should have been removed from the atmosphere for the last forty years—ten billion tonnes a year. I know what you’re thinking. They could’ve had the decency to take out the CO2 they put in and not leave it to future generations.”

  “I can’t believe you can recite that.” Beth laughed. “She is right though. That was a shit load of carbon to dump into the atmosphere every year. Even the climate deniers couldn’t have thought that was healthy. And blaming it on another country when you’re buying their cheap products—that’s the definition of hypocrisy.”

  “I know Meda is right, but she doesn’t have to preach to the converted. It’s just a shame she can’t save the planet from the humans on it,” Howard said. “How about you, Callum? What would you go with Plan A or Plan B?”

  “Me? I’d probably do both, hedge your bets.” Callum took a swig of his beer.

  “Sitting on the fence isn’t an option. The probability of success is a function of motivation, and Plan B diverts time and money away from Plan A,” Beth said.

  Callum looked a little scared. “Plan A then.”

  “Good choice. All we can do is pick a side and hope it’s the right one,” Beth said. “I like you, Callum.”

  Howard shook his head.

  Callum nudged Lana. “See, Beth likes me. I can’t be that bad, can I?”

  Lana was watching Damian. She had other things on her mind.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The next morning Lana was inside the growing room, midway up a stepladder, dressed in overalls and a hairnet. After connecting the ceiling feeding pipes to the top of the final growing pod, she turned to Callum at the 3D printer behind her.

  “Why don’t we take a couple of days off and go outside? We could go to the beach and see the turtles. It looked beautiful when we arrived.” Lana had to raise her voice over the chug of the printer, spitting out the final delicate womb-sac, and the high-pitched rzzz from the workman’s screwdriver, working at the embryo storage safe inside the control room.

  “Someone in here is sabotaging our work. The assembly has taken much longer than I expected. Maybe it’s Brad. I don’t think he likes me. If we take a couple of days off, he might start using the embryos. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  The printer paused and beeped. Each beep felt like a prod closer to doomsday.

  Callum lifted the powder drum at his feet and refilled the printer; it chugged again. “Almost finished.”

  From her elevated position, Lana had a good view of the control room and the bald workman wearing RI navy uniform.

  A voltmeter had replaced the workman’s screwdriver, and the safe’s pin-pad hung from the wall by a few electrical wires. He’d been in there for thirty minutes. He must have nearly finished.

  In the next half hour the pods would be ready to go, and they’d select embryos. She couldn’t cause any more delays to the process. The assembly had almost finished, and she’d run out of ideas.

  The workman pushed the panel back onto the wall and pulled the screwdriver from his belt.

  Lana descended the stepladder, approached the window partition and peered at the workman through it.

  “We could go to the artificial beach in here,” Callum said.

  The screwdriver hit metal, the screech as shrill as her grandparents’ screams in her nightmares.

  “I haven’t brought a swimming costume,” she said in the next silence.

  The workman stood and dropped his tools back inside his tool box.

  She turned to Callum. “I want to see evidence we’re wo
rking legally.”

  “So, that’s why you want to go in Zone 0. What are you concerned about? Don’t you believe Alex?”

  “It’s something Beth said.”

  “What did she say?”

  “About Alex wanting to get off-planet.”

  The workman banged on the window startling Lana. Callum let himself inside the control room and Lana followed. He handed Callum the sacred piece of paper with the code to the embryo storage safe on it. Callum pushed it deep inside his trouser pocket. He was suspicious, but maybe not of her.

  “Keep it safe this time,” he told Callum.

  Callum nodded at him then turned to Lana and rolled his eyes. There was no way he’d let that piece of paper out of his sight. The workman left with his toolbox.

  “Tosser,” Callum said.

  “I was thinking. The amniotic fluid and placenta are monitored and adjusted in real time, and we know the composition is hardly different from a pig’s. Why do they need us?” She sat down at the control panel and turned the embedded screen on.

  “I don’t follow. A woman’s hormones are not the same as a pig’s.”

  “The letter from the HFEA was dated April 20th. Today is April 26th.” Lana wondered how long they’d had the embryos inside Zone 12. She swiped through the files on the system.

  “They haven’t brought human embryos to full term yet,” Callum said with small annoyance.

  She didn’t need to look at him. She knew the veins in his neck would be bulging.

  “How do you know? There’s a nursery in here. Where did the babies come from?”

  “They’re children from the pre-thirty-five women working in here of course.”

  She found a folder labelled, ‘Human Embryo Transfers’.

  It contained a single file; she opened it and read it.

  “Embryos from the UK arrived at RI four days before we received the letter at our labs. In the last few weeks transfers took place from countries all over the world. There are millions inside the Deceleration Zone.”

  Lana leaned back in her seat. She remembered Paige’s words. ‘Without Alex’s input, I wouldn’t have been able to do it.’

  Something didn’t feel right. Six years was a long time. Why had they not tried with the human embryos already?