‘Wha-wait… the face? Seriously? You can’t take blood from my arm or somewhere?’
‘You didn’t tell him, Mark?’
‘Your show, not mine.’
Ewan took a deep breath. Less than a foot in front of him, the whole of Alex’s restrained body twitched in fear.
‘There could be thousands of your clones running around. The only way we’ll feel safe is if we make you look different to the rest of them.’
‘You’re scarring my face…’
‘We’re protecting you. From us. Because we’re scared too.’
‘Scared?’ Alex gasped. ‘You have all your memories. No blank spaces where unknown bad stuff might have happened. You don’t even know what scared means…’
Ewan grimaced, and lay the hunting knife against Alex’s right cheek.
Chapter 12
Oliver Roth lumbered down the Floor A corridor, exhausted from his all-night journey back to the Citadel. It was rare that he saw grass or sunlight these days, but he realised how little he had missed them. New London held everything he was truly interested in, and he had no idea how the rebels could live such unluxurious lives in the countryside.
Well, the ones that are left anyway, he thought, as his prize rolled and thumped around in his backpack.
Despite Roth’s tiredness, his enthusiasm remained. He had walked from Harpenden to Floor A without even sitting down along the fifteen-mile journey, kept on his feet by the thought of later boasting about the achievement, and his allies awaited him behind the next door for a meeting that apparently couldn’t be delayed any longer. Rather than being demotivated, Roth was consumed with excitement.
Through the glass wall of the office, he could see Marshall and Pearce sitting at opposite sides of the long table, predictably distant from each other. At the front of the room, a large screen displayed the same countdown as every other spare screen on Floor A at that moment.
34:01 :21
3 4 :0 1 :20
34:01 :19
The numbers were digital-shaped and bright red, like the countdowns on those bombs from the movies. It seemed a childish choice, but nobody was going to offer that feedback to Nicholas Grant. Certainly not the dull-mannered duo sitting at the elongated table.
At one end, Iain Marshall sat hunched in his seat with a face like a smacked arse. At the opposite end, Nathaniel Pearce was tucking in to his brunch, his little-too-happy smile visible even with his mouth full. The sight of cheese and jalapeños forced an involuntary rolling of Roth’s eyes: there could have been a whole food laboratory growing those jalapeño peppers for Pearce, and Roth didn’t trust the common sense of a man who guzzled spicy food before midday.
Then again, of all the reasons we have to distrust Nat, his jalape ñ os are pretty bloody far down the list.
Marshall had told him everything. Back in Roth’s training days, when Marshall hadn’t seen his twelve-year-old apprentice as a possible future threat, the man had spent a lot of time ranting about his colleague and former best friend.
After a dozen years in the armed forces and eight as an international arms dealer, Marshall had thought it better to quit the latter profession while he was still alive. He had told Roth that it was a sensible, calculated decision, like every decision that needed to be made during combat. But Roth had seen through him, and he knew that weak arms dealers didn’t merely lose money when their influence started to wane. Marshall had left his exciting war zones and fled back to regular boring Britain, got himself married to a regular boring woman, and started a regular boring job at a private defence contractor with a regular boring name: ‘Marshall Contractors’.
Roth couldn’t remember the technical details and didn’t care about them either, but he remembered that ‘Marshall Contractors’ became ‘Marshall–Pearce Solutions’ when his boss’ old university roommate failed at his own business. Pearce’s pharmaceutical company had been a casualty of Britain’s worst economic downturn in thirty years (although his terrible business sense hadn’t helped either, according to a ranting Marshall). Marshall had created a senior staff position for his old friend, allowing the near-bankrupted Pearce to desert his sinking ship two months before the rest of his company collapsed into dust.
It had gone well for a while, until a man called Nicholas Grant wandered in and bought their company in a day. It was—
‘Well, here’s Oliver,’ came Marshall’s voice from the other side of the thin glass. Roth brought himself back to reality and scanned his keycard against the door. He scurried through as it opened, making his remaining energy as visible to his superiors as he could.
‘Made it with… fifty-five seconds to go,’ said Pearce.
‘Adults always start their meetings late,’ Roth said, dumping his rucksack on the floor next to his chair. ‘Besides, you may be three minutes from your bedroom but I had to walk here from Harpenden. Made it without sitting down along the way, you know.’
Before Roth could check their faces for reactions, the countdown on the television flickered off. The screen turned pure white, and a monotone buzz of blank noise suggested Grant’s microphone was on.
He’s not showing his face. For all we know he could be s itting at his desk in his underwear, playing chess against himself or something. Or maybe he thinks a blank screen is more imposing.
Roth understood. Reputation was far scarier than a visible face. Marshall had once taught him that.
‘Let us begin,’ came the voice of Nicholas Grant.
‘Great timing,’ said Roth, ‘I’ve just arrived! But of course you knew that, didn’t you?’
‘Perceptive boy. Yes, I was watching.’
Roth tried to look around for wherever the camera was, without it being obvious he was searching. He felt more comfortable knowing which part of his head was being watched by the world’s most controlling dictator.
‘Hungry, Nathaniel?’ asked Grant. Roth’s glance landed on Pearce as he swallowed his mouthful of cheese and jalapeños.
‘I’ve got to eat here,’ he said, ‘hope you don’t mind. Struggling to find time for nourishment with the AME project where it is.’
‘Lose the sandwich, Nathaniel,’ Grant boomed. ‘What you’re doing is a transparent attempt to impress me with how busy you are, and I’m not gullible enough to fall for it. Unless you think I am?’
‘No sir,’ Pearce answered, ‘I don’t.’
Pearce’s trademark smile collapsed at the edges, and he placed the cheese and jalapeño sandwich on the table.
‘Bin, Nathaniel.’
There was a moment of beautifully awkward silence, as Pearce’s smile dropped even further. At the other end of the table, Marshall wore his poker face to conceal how amusing he must have found the telling-off. Roth didn’t bother, and openly snorted with laughter. Nathaniel Pearce, pharmaceuticals genius and creator of the clone soldier, picked up his sandwich and walked over to the corner bin like a naughty primary school child. With his brunch thrown away he sauntered back to the table and sat down, trying not to look too embarrassed.
‘Now,’ said Roth in his most jovial voice, ‘where were we?’
‘First things first,’ said Grant’s voice, ‘talk to me about the results from the AME test centre.’
Otherwise known as Oakenfold Retard School.
‘Things are looking rather positive,’ said Pearce.
‘You’ve had a day and a half to sift through your results,’ said Grant. ‘I want more than “rather positive”.’
‘Based on the performance of Atmospheric Metallurgic Excitation at the test location, I can confirm a near one hundred per cent likelihood of success when we apply the same technology on a larger scale – to an area the size of New London Citadel, for example.’
Pearce continued with scientific terms that Roth did not understand. And the longer the Chief Scientist’s monologue, the more sour the expression on Marshall’s face. Roth thought back once again to those rants of old, about how Iain Marshall’s best mate from univ
ersity had stopped existing under the leadership of Nicholas Grant, replaced by a creepy smiler who used big words to impress important people. A man who had vanished into the lab for days on end, stopped heading to the Red Lion for a pint at the weekends, and even ignored Marshall’s social calls.
Roth wondered whether they could have been reconciled when Grant finally sat them down and told them about his plans for Great Britain. But Marshall had screwed it up catastrophically, and Roth was glad—
‘Iain,’ said Grant. ‘Anything to add?’
Roth looked to the ceiling, and found the camera. At his side, Marshall was still searching, as subtly as he could.
‘No,’ Marshall replied, ‘I think Nat covered it neatly. If I may talk for a moment about the rebels—’
‘I don’t care about them. They’re thirty-five hours from being irrelevant.’
You do care about them, thought Roth. Otherwise you wouldn’t have hosted the AME testsat Oakenfold.
Oh, and there’s also the Ginelli P roject.
And your daughter.
Looking at Marshall’s face, he had clearly had the same thought.
‘Shannon’s still with them, sir,’ Marshall said. ‘The destruction of the clone factory proves it. They used Lambourne’s technology, which they could only have got from her—’
‘And how many of them are left, exactly? It was your idea to lure them to the test centre. Did it work?’
‘Hargreaves and Simmonds died as expected,’ Marshall finished, ‘but I’m led to believe we got one of them. The clone teams further afield reported no further kills. Oliver?’
Roth grinned. Time to shine. He reached into the rucksack next to his chair as he spoke.
‘Yep,’ he started, ‘another one down. I arrived at the test centre last night and confirmed it myself. If you want to see how effective the AME shield is, take a look at this.’
Roth brought his hand out from his rucksack and dumped a thick, red-stained forensic evidence bag onto the table. Marshall’s eyebrows rose to the top of his head. Even Pearce, no stranger to gore in the laboratory, opened his mouth so wide that Roth could smell the jalapeños.
The head inside the evidence bag was of Indian descent. It had young skin, and eyes that were squeezed shut. Roth was looking forward to researching the dead kid’s name once the meeting ended.
‘Bloody hell, Oliver…’ came Marshall’s voice.
‘As you can see,’ Roth said, ‘the shield works. This lad had metal implants in his spine… or I’m guessing he did, given the state of his remains.’
‘You realise,’ said Grant’s voice with a low chuckle, ‘that mutilating the deceased is against the Geneva Convention? And that includes decapitation.’
‘Decapitation? There was only a flap of skin holding it on when I found it. Now the best part is, the rest of his crew might have been watching when this happened. This guy’s body will be one hell of a deterrent for them. Raising the AME shield won’t just stop them from getting in. It’ll stop them from even thinking about it.’
Roth inspected the head on the table next to him. The jaw was broken, suggesting that it may have had metal teeth fillings too. A forensic analyst could have had so much fun looking at his remains.
‘Bringing a severed head to a meeting,’ said Marshall. ‘This is a new one, Oliver.’
‘You’re not grossed out, are you?’
‘No, just worried about your well-being.’
‘I’m doing better than him, don’t worry.’
Roth’s grin was not returned. Not even by Pearce.
‘Oliver,’ replied Marshall, ‘there’s no point in having unbridled enthusiasm if it’s counteracted by an enormous lack of judgement. A soldier must be objective and rational, and not waste time delighting in personal pleasures. And could you please stop drumming your fingers on Raj’s head while I’m talking to you?!’
Raj! So that was his name.
Roth stared at Marshall in the eyes, his expression an unwavering vision of confidence. As predicted, Marshall pushed the conversation no further.
It was a wonderful skill, his ability to shut up his boss whenever he wanted. The beautiful part was that the reason behind this ability was never spoken aloud, but always on both their minds.
Marshall and Pearce must have been in that very same meeting room the day Grant had shared his ultimate plan. Marshall, thinking of his young family in the Derbyshire Dales (or so the story went), had been horrified. Inspired by the risk to Hannah and his twin daughters (apparently), who would be doomed to grow up and grow old on New London’s upper floors (as if that would be a bad thing), Marshall had reached into the company’s private army training programme and pulled out a red-haired teenager.
Oliver Gabriel Roth, then aged twelve, was set to burst out of comprehensive school four years later with a fine assortment of high grades. He had planned to enter the military, but a place in the British Armed Forces didn’t offer half as much money as a private defence contractor. And to a young man with unsupportive parents, money mattered.
Roth remembered Marshall’s reasons for choosing him. Apparently he had seen ‘a battling attitude, raw unbridled enthusiasm, and a total reliance on victory for his sense of self-worth’, according to an email on his computer that Roth hadn’t been meant to look at.
Despite Roth’s young age and lack of experience, Marshall was convinced there was nobody on his payroll more suitable for the assassination of Nicholas Grant.
From the beginning, Roth had known the reasons for his promotion. He had even met his target face to face and shook him by the hand. The private education promised to the authorities was a lie, replaced by intensive military training. By his thirteenth birthday, he had been going to bed each night twirling the childproofed bottle of cyanide tablets between his fingers, waiting with growing impatience for the signal to slip them into Grant’s morning coffee.
The signal never came. Marshall had never admitted it, but Roth knew his boss had accepted that his own fate relied on the success of Nicholas Grant. But by calling off Grant’s assassination, Marshall had surrendered his fate to a teenage boy too.
Roth had never blackmailed him aloud, and he had never needed to. Even that day, with Britain subdued and the war nearly won, a cheeky smile on his face told Marshall everything he needed to know. To buy his silence, Oliver Roth had been swept into a life of luxury on Floor A, and total freedom from authority.
One year on from Takeover Day, the relationship between the Big Four was complicated. Each one of them was hated by each of the others, but their animosity was rarely committed to words. There was an unspoken wobbly tension between them, like a wooden raft tied with loose rope, but they depended on one another for survival.
Roth drummed his fingers on the top of the forensic bag one more time, and smiled at Marshall.
‘If Iain’s finished being offended,’ said Grant, ‘we need to discuss the tasks that need completing outside of New London. After that, I believe we’re done here. What needs doing, gentlemen?’
‘How about the external backups I’ve been requesting?’ asked Marshall. ‘The sooner this technology is sent to other Citadels, the safer we’ll be.’
‘You’ll have them,’ answered Grant, ‘but not tonight. And we’ve already been through why.’
‘Why?’ asked Roth, not content with being out of the loop.
‘Because you’re talking about whole chambers full of very large pieces of equipment, and data so complex it can’t simply be emailed. The sheer volume of it all can only be transported across two lanes of empty motorway, which we no longer have anywhere on this island, or via huge freight trains, which are no longer powered. We’ll be able to fit it all on the Sheila, but she won’t be ready for another few weeks.’
Roth smiled at the thought of the Sheila coming into use. It would be a long while after this day had ended, but it was sure to be beautiful once she embarked upon her maiden voyage.
‘In the meantime,’ said Pear
ce, ‘there are still resources from the test centre that need bringing here. Research papers, computers and the like.’
‘Sorry to break it to you,’ Roth said, his sympathy clearly limited, ‘but a quarter of the retard school was burnt to a crisp when I arrived. A bunch of that stuff will be gone. This guy must have started a fire before he killed himself,’ he finished, patting the top of Raj’s head and looking to Marshall for a reaction.
‘Then we’ll search through the other three quarters,’ answered Pearce.
‘The school’s safely trapped behind a shield,’ said Roth. ‘Why spend time and resources getting anything back?’
‘Because,’ Pearce said with an irritated sigh, ‘someone in their crew might only need to remove their metal earrings to have free access to any surviving research. Some of the paperwork may have been destroyed in the fire, but I want everything else brought back here.’
‘Fine,’ Marshall butted in, ‘I’ll send out some transport. I’ll need to bring the shield down though.’
‘You can do that remotely from the AME computer in your office,’ said Pearce. ‘I’ll tell you when.’
‘Sort it out between you,’ said Grant. ‘Anything else that needs doing outside these walls?’
Roth shrugged, and hoped his colleagues would do the same. There was a bed in his room not far away that awaited his attention.
‘There’s a weapons cache out towards Beaconsfield,’ said Marshall, ‘left over from the days of using quarries as drop-off points between Citadels. Better to bring those weapons inside so they don’t fall into rebel hands.’
‘Start right away.’
‘It’ll take until tomorrow evening, but I’ll start as soon as this meeting is over.’
‘Then it’s over. Keep in touch.’
The white screen reverted back to its countdown, and the background noise from Grant’s microphone fell silent. The meeting was over, and not a moment too soon. Pearce wasted no time in heading to the door, and Roth caught the man’s eyes gazing forlornly at the bin as he passed it.
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