‘What do you know about the ecovillage, Sam?’ Doctor Nygard speaks slowly.
Sam pauses, wondering if the doctor is going to admit he was there.
‘Nothing. I just wanted to find out where those girls went.’
Doctor Nygard draws a deep breath.
‘I remember seeing you, Sam. And I owe you an apology. The camp was private, our work there was sensitive – and I was in shock when we first met, from the fire. You see I was working with a colleague there, and the people living there were also part of my – our – study. But she wanted less and less contact from the outside world. She’s moved to a new location without telling me, and took essential research with her. I am concerned about the people who lived there, my colleague’s behaviour had become . . . erratic.’
Sam bites his lip as he remembers the photos. At least the guy doesn’t seem to be lying now. So those girls and all the other young people at the camp were part of a medical study? They seemed pretty young and healthy-looking to be ill. The doctor doesn’t know he’s seen those photos and Sam decides to keep that information to himself for now, see if whatever else the doctor says adds up.
‘So what sort of study were the people at this ecovillage involved in? Were they also on the trial for Marisogen, like Granda?’
Nygard darts a sideways glance at Sam and he remembers Granda told him a disclaimer meant he wasn’t allowed to talk about the trial.
‘Not exactly, my colleague was never involved in the Marisogen trial as such, that was my project. It stemmed from our joint research but I was in charge of the laboratory, near the camp. When she left, she took that research and emptied my lab. She even burnt down the camp. Her disappearance meant I couldn’t continue my work.’
Sam remembers the bunker-like building he’d found near the fire site. That must have been the lab.
The doctor slows to a stop and Sam turns to face him. Creases of concern ripple the guy’s forehead and his eyes are sincere.
‘Trust me, Sam,’ says Doctor Nygard, ‘the well-being of the camp residents is of critical importance to me. I have spent considerable time searching for them.’
Doctor Nygard’s eyes remain on his and Sam holds the eye contact. The doctor’s expression is soft, friendly, but there is something fixed about it. Sam opens his mouth to tell him about the phone; it being left at the cove could be linked to the disappearance of everyone in the ecovillage. But something stops him speaking. Disappearing isn’t easy, and this colleague of his must have had her reasons to do something so drastic.
‘Well if you ever hear anything, please do contact me, Sam. Any detail you find out, any clue, even the most insignificant thing the girls might have said, could be important. It could mean the continuation of the Marisogen trial, and helping a lot of people,’ he says. ‘Email me, any time.’
‘So if you found them, could you pick up Granda’s treatment where you left off, or would you need to start your research all over again?’
‘With his consent, I’d put your grandfather back on Marisogen without delay. All I need is the information Iona Wright took with her.’
Sam blinks. Of course, his colleague is Iona. Aunt Iona. He remembers the girls talking about her. He and Nygard break eye contact and fall into step again for a few paces.
‘You know how to contact me, Sam,’ says the doctor, and with a brush of his hand on Sam’s shoulder, he takes the next turning off the path.
Sam jumps on his bike and rides home a lot faster than normal.
Later that evening, Sam paces around his bedroom. He can’t decide whether to contact Naygard again, tell him about the phone. The guy told him about the camp, admitted to his initial lie, but the whole situation is just pretty – strange.
He types in a search for Jonathan Nygard and Iona Wright, clicks on the images tab, and scrolls. There. A smiling young man and woman with white lab coats hanging open to reveal jeans underneath.
Geneticist teams up with oncologist to make leap forward in isolating genetic markers for cancer.
Sam peers at the date. Seventeen years ago. He blinks as he pauses on the young woman. She looks similar to the older girl from the bus, Aster.
There are no other hits that link Doctor Nygard and the girls’ aunt, nothing about the camp in the bush, or a treatment trial, or Marisogen. A search for Iona Wright comes up with various articles related to her work as an oncologist in war zones, refugee camps and slums. Poppy said this is what she did.
There are also some journal articles. Iona also seemed to have an interest in – animals.
Animals?
Sam frowns, wondering if this is a different Iona Wright, but he recognizes her from a photo at the top of one of the articles. He skims through. She’s written a few articles about the African lungfish, which is able to slow its body metabolism into a state of suspended animation and live outside water for up to five years. The fish is basically dead, then comes alive again. Well, who knew? Sam doesn’t see what it has to do with curing cancer. Other articles are about the naked mole-rat, an ugly looking critter that can also survive without oxygen and— Sam sits up straighter.
The naked mole-rat is famous in the scientific world as one of the only animals that does not seem to suffer from cancer.
He drums his fingers on the desk, and then checks the date on the articles.
So Nygard and Iona worked on the genetic markers thing, then came together again after she’d been studying hibernating, cancer-resisting animals.
What were they really doing together at a secret ecovillage and a hidden lab in the middle of nowhere? Something freaky with animals?
Sam’s knee jiggles. He takes a gulp of his Coke, grimacing; it is flat and warm. The only sound is the faint whirr of his laptop fan and the creaks and sighs of the house settling down for the night. Mum and Dad are in bed and he should be too.
He frowns, then searches for Nygard alone. There’s less about him than there is about Iona. He appears on a few staff lists at hospitals. A blog post on a conspiracy website catches Sam’s eye.
PREHISTORIC MERMAID HOAX
Jonathan Nygard, a twenty-year-old Norwegian medical student, took a summer job as a scientific research assistant in Svalbard, studying frozen fossils. He reported he had found a rare example of a prehistoric hominid – one of our ancient ancestors – which had been buried in ice for six million years. This would be amazing enough, but Nygard described the fossil’s bones as fused at the knee and foot – a tail! He went on to identify fish-like gills between the ribs.
Nygard’s doctored slides and scans were so convincing that a group of professors from top palaeontology institutes worldwide planned a trip to the Arctic outpost, but luckily for Nygard, they were put off by severe weather, giving the young hoaxer the chance to admit his trickery.
Sam looks up from the screen. When this hoax took place, Nygard was twenty, a medical student. Way before he became a geneticist or met Iona.
Prehistoric mermaids? Sam winds his fingers into his hair, feeling even more confused.
Then he gets lost in a black hole of research about pre-human ancestors. Most theories agree that humans evolved from apes as they adapted to living on the grassy plains of Africa, but that there is no definitive evolutionary reason for modern humans to be nearly hairless, have so much fat beneath their skin, or walk upright. There’s something called the aquatic ape theory, but in all the research Sam skims through, he sees nothing about tails. Or gills.
Sam’s mind spins.
Nygard and Iona, working together on cancer. Something genetic, maybe.
And then . . .
Two orphans stayed at their burnt-out ecovillage, but disappeared.
And the Marisogen therapy that worked so well on Granda disappeared with them.
My skin is on fire. I sense sand shifting beneath me, hear the rush of the sea. I’m on the beach. The world rocks crazily and when I roll on my side, my stomach heaves. I vomit until I have nothing left. Pain has control of my body
, shaking me, and when I try to open my eyes, a different type of darkness closes in. No. I hear my voice groan and my breath hisses through clenched teeth. I curl inwards, my hands clawing at my thighs. I want to tear off my skin, anything to make it stop.
Slivers of memory pierce through the pain. The jellyfish. I was stung, badly. But I’ve survived. Deep breath in, and out. I force myself to stop writhing, lie still. Sea Boy. Impossible. He was holding me down.
The burning dulls to a smoulder; either I’m getting used to it, or lying still makes it a tiny bit better. I try opening my eyes again. A figure lies on the sand a little way away. Grey suit.
I’m taken back to the first day, waking on the beach. It’s like I’ve been cursed to have a repeating nightmare.
Who is that? Poppy.
I rise on to my hands and knees, yelping and gasping at the pain through my grinding teeth, then crawl towards the figure.
Not Poppy, too big, it’s a guy. A curl of reddish hair. Callum. As I crawl faster, the pain gets worse and I’m racked with shivers so bad I can barely hold my weight on my arms.
I stop a metre from Callum.
The front of his grey suit is soaked with something. A dark, wet stain covers the top of his chest. My breaths are loud, catching, filling my head.
My eyes track up to his neck, as the dark closes in. I don’t want to see, but can’t stop looking.
Smears of red.
Everything turns to black.
Darkness. A whisper. ‘Aster? Can you hear me?’
Then much louder, hurting my ears, ‘Iona! Iona, she’s waking up!’
I blink my eyes open and groan. Iona? I sink back down, half smiling half sobbing in relief. A dream. A nightmare. Iona’s here so I’m back at the Wildhaven camp . . .
Callum. It didn’t happen.
But my skin, it’s prickly, as if stretched too tight over my bones.
I push myself up on my elbows. The walls are green bamboo poles and the air is warm. The sound of the sea fills my head and Beti is at the door in bright sunlight, her hair pushed back from her face with a band of woven leaves.
Everything floods back. Sea Boy. The jellyfish. I was stung.
Callum. Not that, that part can’t be real.
Beti was calling for Iona. Are the others here?
‘Poppy?’ I say, my voice cracking.
I swing my legs over the edge of the hammock, but remain sitting in it, shaking. A figure runs straight past Beti and something in the way she moves makes me think for a split second she’s Mum. But it’s Iona.
‘Where’s Poppy?’ I say, my tongue thick.
‘Shhh, it’s OK. It’s most likely they are on the other island, on the west side of the atoll. How are you feeling?’ she says, her hand on my wrist.
‘Where’s Callum? Where’s Poppy?’ I push her away.
‘The other island. It’s OK. Let’s get you some—’
‘Tell me!’
Iona kneels on the sand in front of my hammock.
‘I’m sorry, Aster. Callum is dead.’
‘And Poppy?’
‘On the other island.’
I close my eyes. What I saw was real. I hate myself because through my horror I feel a hit of relief. Callum not Poppy.
But Callum.
‘I saw him, I saw . . .’ I whisper.
Beti is standing at the door of the hut, sobs shaking her whole body. Iona stands and folds Beti under her arm, and brings her forward, tears filling her own eyes.
‘Callum washed up around the same time you did. He’d suffered – severe chest injuries.’
An image of the dark stain on his suit and the red against his skin swims into my mind and I pitch forward, retching.
I thought I saw something in the sea from the small island, and later by the jellyfish – it could have been him.
‘How?’
Beti draws a ragged breath. ‘He swam off, after you. I couldn’t . . . stop him.’
Was he hurt by the jellyfish? By Sea Boy? I can’t take this in. I can’t think. I cover my mouth, swept with nausea.
Iona hands me a drilled coconut and I take a sip. It settles my stomach a little.
‘I’m so sorry. We’ll get to Poppy and the others soon, I swear to you, they’ll be on West Island. Our equipment was programmed to get us to the nearest land, but the sea was rough. We four were the last and I think that’s why we were separated from the others. I was washed up on the opposite side of this island, it took some time to make my way over here.’
I hold my head between my hands and the hammock rocks as I try to process this. West Island? The one beyond the mangrove island?
Callum’s dead, but Iona’s here, and she says Poppy’s safe. I start shaking and my teeth chatter. Poppy’s safe.
Then Iona’s arms wrap around me and I press my forehead against her warm neck as tears squash from the corners of my eyes. I allow Iona to hold me for a moment and when I push her away she wipes tears from her own cheeks too. She helps me stand.
‘So you were on the other side of this island? How do you know the others aren’t there too?’ I say.
‘I was expecting us all to be on the West Island to start with. I prepared both islands, but left extra supplies on West. How are you feeling now?’ Iona’s eyes never leave my face. I lean on her heavily as I stagger to the door of the hut.
‘There was a shark, a boy,’ I say. ‘I was . . . stung.’
Beti is now outside the hut, sweeping leaves off the sand with a homemade broom. She blinks, her eyes swollen and puffy.
‘I’m glad you are OK,’ says Beti, her voice hitching on a sob. I step over to her and hold her tight, and my stings smart but I barely feel them. I remember the soft lilt of Callum’s voice. His relief when Beti woke up, his determination to prove himself, his gruff kindness when he brought me food that first night. Exploring the lagoon with me, the scars on his arms. He can’t just be gone.
When Beti and I break apart, Iona leads me to a low makeshift table made from bamboo poles bound together with twine. We sit on the sand. I scan around the camp, the sun is high above. They’ve added this table and the firepit is now rimmed with a double row of rocks. How long have I been out?
‘I think the poison must have all been metabolized. The swelling is down and your heart rate was back to normal a couple of hours ago. You aren’t in too much pain now?’
‘Not pain. Just tender, itchy,’ I say. I look down at my thighs. They look like a child has scribbled on my skin with a thick, purple marker pen. One arm is the same. I raise my hand to touch my cheek; smooth, but the other side has raised lines and my lip feels swollen.
‘None of the sting sites seem infected,’ says Iona, ‘I think they’ll heal fine.’
I remember Sea Boy’s face underwater, the purple scar across his forehead and cheek.
Iona asks about the jellyfish and I describe them to her.
Beti pushes half a large leaf towards me then starts sweeping the sand again. I tentatively eat the chunks of mango and peeled shrimps, and they taste so good; my mind is clearing with the energy from the food.
There’s a crease of concern between Iona’s eyes. ‘Can you remember what happened?’
When I look at her, I do remember: the boat, the gas in the cabin, the locked door.
‘What did you— You gassed us? Why?’
Iona crushes her fingers together so hard her knuckles pale.
‘Wildhaven was no longer safe. I had to get you out of there.’
The food is now tasteless and I swallow with difficulty, my eyes fastened to her face.
‘Wildhaven was a refuge – you know that much.’ She looks at Beti, who nods. ‘After many years as an oncologist I became fascinated by more experimental cancer research. I made a discovery, a way to transfer genes from animals who don’t suffer from cancer to humans. I contacted an old colleague of mine. Jonathan Nygard was a brilliant geneticist, and we developed a therapy. Years went by, we kept testing it, and in the lab, it work
ed. But there was no way a therapy of this kind would be licenced. It wouldn’t even make it to human trials for decades, maybe never. But I knew it worked!’
Iona’s eyes shine.
‘I could stop so many people dying like my mother and father had died, like my sister. So I cut my ties, and built the Wildhaven camp. Nygard set up a small private lab facility in the forest close by. I offered sanctuary to young people who – in the most basic terms – had genes that tested positive for cancer. I administered my preventative therapy.’
My eyes don’t leave her face. What she is saying matches up with what Beti and Callum told me, but it’s a whole different thing hearing it directly from Iona. She’s proud. Proud of what she’s done here.
‘Your mum agreed to the test for genetic markers years ago. The fever you experienced at Wildhaven was the therapy integrating into your body through a carrier virus.’
I notice the crease around her eyes seems deeper. My relief at seeing her is evaporating as she speaks. Because in any reality – even with the best intentions and their consent – she treated vulnerable teenagers with an untested drug. And that’s before we even get on to what happened on the boat, or sweeping us away to this island.
I press my lips together as she continues.
‘But Jonathan Nygard had his own agenda, and I still don’t know what it was. The next part of the therapy plan was to live a healthy, basic lifestyle until a few years had passed and we could test again. If we were mostly self sufficient there was no way for us to be discovered. But Nygard was determined to continue with unnecessary blood tests. The tests showed nothing new; we needed to give it time, before we even considered how to share our findings. But he was impatient, obsessed, and wouldn’t explain his insistence on the continued sampling. I’d promised to provide a true haven for these young people and we’d become a family. It was becoming impossible to work with him, but I realized it would be relatively easy for Nygard to sever all links with the project, as I recruited each and every one of you. If he exposed us you’d be split up and I would be imprisoned.’
Secret Deep Page 10