‘I’m afraid so,’ Markov chirped. ‘Fan was the AS man-marker on the study of Zaye. It was him who okayed the procedure and helped keep you at bay. He even monitored your phone and files – he was responsible for your presentation corrupting; he couldn’t even get that right.’
Jun’s stomach bucked; what an idiot she had been.
‘He observed some of the studies with Zaye. Saw our progress. In fact, Fan was there when Zaye died. He was more responsible than he likes to give himself credit for, weren’t you Fan?’
Jun walked closer to Fan, rage stoking her body, adrenaline fizzing in her veins. ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ her voice broke. ‘You lied all this time. You made me-’
‘I made sure you were safe,’ Fan said quietly, finally. ‘You were never in danger till you started going your own way.’
It made sense now, keeping her at a distance. She thought that it was because Fan had wanted to protect her, but no, he had been protecting himself. Everything had been a lie. She thought of Pav and Delun, whom she’d delivered into his lap. How many deaths had he been responsible for, how many had she unknowingly helped? ‘Is Kodi’s family dead because of you?’ she said, her voice low and strained.
Fan sidestepped away from the cupboards. ‘Don’t, Jun,’ he said backing towards the door. ‘I’m not… a murderer.’
‘No?’ Markov said. ‘Are you sure about that? I suppose you’d never have the guts to do anything quite like that. You’re gutless. An informant. The only thing you’re good for is feeding information, poking your nose in other people’s business. The only two times in your career you’ve been of any real use is as a conduit of information from your wife. The rest, Anton’s been covering for you.’
‘Jun,’ Solo shouted. ‘Let’s get my mother, the files, and go… now! This is what they want. Keep us here while they bring in reinforcements.’
Markov paced towards Fan. ‘Why don’t you tell her how you used and manipulated her. Tell her how the AS team knew Kodi was in the Ghetto,’ Markov crowed, his lanky body arched over Fan. ‘How does it feel to know you’re irrelevant without your wife?’
Fan launched at Markov, pushing him across the room, rutting him into the Cryopreserve wall.
Kau threw himself on them both, with Lucas and Batz not far behind, and they pulled Fan from Markov in a second. Kau dragged Fan back, his hands clawing at Markov, and pushed him against the cupboards on the other side of the room. His body clanged.
‘Were you double crossing her the whole time?’ Kau shouted, ramming his forearm underneath Fan’s neck. Fan’s legs slipped underneath him, trying to plant themselves on the floor, as he gasped for air.
Lucas and Batz pulled Kau back. ‘He’s not worth it,’ Jun shouted.
Fan bowed over choking, his lungs grasping for air. His face pulsed red and spittle formed in the cracks of his mouth.
Markov, panting, sauntered over to Fan. ‘Anton should have got rid of you years ago,’ he spat. ‘But then you involved your son on Project Epomenzoic. Another family member helping you out again…’ He walked over to cupboard number 8 and pulled out a long, yellow mobile-cryo carrier. He held it up beside him and brushed the dust from his trousers; his lips thinned.
Fan had fallen to the floor on his knees, still bowed over, unable to look up. Jun stood over him holding on to Kodi, her face blotched and puffy from tears.
‘This puts you in a rather awkward position, Kau. Two parents, two paths…’ Markov stood over by the cryopreserve units. The one he had been working at earlier, now displayed a green light above the door. He pushed the button, the seal broke, and a domed casket projected into the room, its icy vapour dispersing like smoke from a cauldron.
‘Question is, where do your loyalties lie?’
CHAPTER 21
23rd September 2037
Slices of the late-afternoon sun peeped beneath the light-out blinds in Jun and Fan’s bedroom, spotlighting dust particles which corkscrewed the air like mini-tornadoes.
Jun lay on the bed as if she had fallen from a great height, her neck twisted, arms and legs splayed everywhere. The Monday morning and afternoon’s PSAs had been and gone, Jun had slept through them both. She gasped urgently for air, as though she’d been saved from certain drowning; her eyes slowly peeled apart, tacky and reluctant. Her tongue and mouth clicked together as she tried to muster enough saliva to swallow. Water, she needed water.
With some discomfort, she forced her arms beneath her body, and willed her rusty joints to work so she could get out of bed. Her head felt as though a pressure washer had blasted it clean but had left debris rattling around. What happened, and why did she feel so awful?
There was the faint murmur of voices. Who was Fan talking to? What time was it? The lava-slither of sun suggested it was later in the afternoon. She swung her legs and forced her body up. It was then she felt an unfamiliar weight and tightness in her hand; it felt different. She looked at it and saw a platinum – or was it white gold? – ring, and a square band of diamonds. It seemed old and expensive, but what was it doing on her finger? Her wedding finger. Her mind raced, had Fan proposed? What had they done last night? Her mind was blank. She looked again and saw her index finger on the same hand had a red bracelet wrapped around it – had Odgerel given it her? The endless knot. It’s binding made her feel uneasy, like there was something she’d forgotten.
She quietly opened the door and heard Fan’s voice but struggled to hear the other. It sounded familiar.
‘…there’s no reason to think…’
Jun couldn’t make out the rest. She padded from the bedroom to the kitchen, the sour taste in her mouth said she should brush her teeth, but her head pulsed, and she needed water.
‘I’ll keep you updated,’ she heard Fan say, as she pushed the kitchen door open, and the Telestream powered down.
‘Did I wake you? Sorry,’ Fan said and pulled her towards him, but she felt stiff and tender. She let him hold her but couldn’t summon the strength to put her arms around him, so buried her head in his neck. She felt awful, and how could she possibly ask him about the ring?
‘Oh Jun,’ he said and held her tightly, rocking her back and forth, gentler than waves lapping on a beach.
‘Who were you speaking to?’ she said into the curve of his neck.
Perhaps she could mention needing to the polish the ring or something, see his response. No, that was no good; it might force her into a conversation with questions she couldn’t answer.
His body braced and pulled away from her. ‘Dr. Wei.’
Jun didn’t like the look on his face. He was awkward and flustered.
‘I spoke with him earlier to let him know you wouldn’t be in today, and I called him just now to tell him, under the circumstances, it’s likely you wouldn’t be in for the rest of the week. I didn’t think you’d want him to see you, so I signed off quickly.’
And then it hit her, and the gentle wave grew and broke, dragging her back with it. Odgerel. Jun hadn’t the energy to cry, so the sorrow sat with her, like rocks on the seabed. Her voice croaked when she asked Fan what day it was.
‘It’s Monday, nearly 6 pm. You’ve been asleep for most of the day. You needed it.’
Perhaps it was the shock of Odgerel, that was why she felt so spaced out. What had happened to Odgerel again?
Jun poured herself a glass of water, conscious that Fan was watching her. Did she look as fragile as she felt?
Suicide. Odgerel had taken her own life, Jun remembered after finishing the last drop. Though shock could demonstrate itself in many ways, this was an exaggerated response. How she felt, and the way Fan was looking at her, made her anxious. She tried to remember what happened yesterday, but everything was hazy.
‘Fan,’ she said quietly and shuffled towards him. ‘I feel terrible.’ Tears began to fall as she clutched his neck. ‘I can’t remember what happened, yesterday…’
As her mind betrayed her, his cooling body and hands soothed. She was taken
back to when she was a girl when they lived in Shanghai and were forced to hide in the basement as typhoon Haikui fulminated outside. Her mother had gripped her tightly, and though the storm raged outside, Jun had felt centred and calm.
‘Sweetheart,’ he said, smoother than warm honey. ‘You’ve had a shock and interrupted sleep. You can’t remember at all?’
She reluctantly shook her head. There were abstract concepts of memories, but it didn’t feel real. Like she was dreaming.
He stroked her back and talked slowly, gently. ‘After you spoke with the Police about the Subject’s suicide, you slept. Afterwards, we talked about the future,’ he said, peeling himself away and looking at her. He looked calmer and more cohesive than before. She started to feel reassured again.
‘Is that…’ she said and stretched out her hand with the ring and red thread, ‘why I have this ring? Oh, Fan, I can’t remember, I’m sorry!’
He brushed the tears from her cheeks. ‘You don’t you remember, darling? You had a shower, and I brushed your hair. We talked.
‘You said you didn’t know how you felt going back to the lab. We discussed that you didn’t have to…that maybe we could…’ and he put his hand on her stomach. Her muscles spasmed, like wires of electricity jolting in her belly.
Now he had said it, she remembered. But it was all so vague. Like it was something she had read about. That it had happened to someone else, not her.
‘I gave you my grandmother’s ring. You really don’t remember?’
There was a recollection, a familiarity, but she didn’t feel it. She couldn’t remember any details, as if her heartbeat had quickened, how Fan had said it, or what her first thought had been.
‘I can’t believe you don’t remember,’ he said and pulled his hand away from her stomach.
She smiled, attempting to hide her mind as it raced, trying to remember. She rubbed her finger with the string; its texture slid between the grooves of her skin. ‘It’s not that I don’t remember it’s just, so much has happened… and the shock and… I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m ready for a baby. I don’t think that’s what I, we need right now,’ she said and began to pick at her finger with the thread, pulling it a little tighter.
‘We don’t have to make a decision right this second, but you were keen on leaving work for a while and starting a family. At least you were last night. Neither of us is getting any younger…’ he said. ‘We agreed, it was for the best.’
‘It’s a lot to take in,’ she said and wound the thread – it had a knot on it – tighter around her finger.
He pulled at it, removing the thread and looked at the knot before putting it on the counter. ‘Look at me,’ he said, anchoring his eyes to hers. ‘I’m only saying what we both agreed was for the best. But if you need time to think… of course. A lot has happened, what that woman did, and you couldn’t help her. Let it go Jun, make a new start. You don’t need to worry about the lab. Not now, not ever again. Let me take care of you. This is for the best.’
He wrapped his arms around her, and she let him.
Fan seemed so sure and so must she have been, there was the ring on her finger to prove it.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘It is for the best. That’s all I needed to hear.’
CHAPTER 22
15th May 2062
Jun checked the bunker’s Interface for the fiftieth time that hour. Still no alert. A message had to come through soon; it should have arrived this morning. The Interface said that it was 18.00, but the concept of time had been displaced in the Ghetto. Its universe operated within different parameters. She needed to practise being patient and stop over-reacting. That was, of course, easier said than done. Their situation didn’t reduce anxieties; it only amplified them.
Over the past week, she, Kodi and Solo had gone underground and had stayed in the Ghetto’s tunnels. Going ‘below the clay’ had saved them once already. The UA raided immediately after they’d broken Kodi out from the lab. It was their best option until they could evacuate to the North Euro Province.
As they had been stuck below ground with nothing to do and nowhere to go, Jun had thought it a good idea to run some crude tests on Kodi’s P-EP, to try and understand the parameters and ways of managing going forward – they had the time, after all. The bunker wasn’t as well-equipped as the labs she was used to, but Chandra had been kind enough to share his workshop and Interface with her. There were no eye-wateringly white walls, or Wei and Markov to contend with, so all things being equal, it wasn’t the worst environment she had worked in.
As of five hours ago, the Ghettoites had deemed that the threat of a UA raid had stabilised. If the UA were going to counter-attack again, they would have by now, and so permitted Kodi, Solo and Jun to go above ground. In short bursts only, for the time being. While Kodi and Solo instantly made a run for the fresh air and Circle chatter, Jun had remained underground, with the enclosed walls and low ceilings that made even the conditioned air sweat. But then, she still hadn’t found the answer to the invisible question. Markov’s words dangled in the air, goading her like a red rag to a bull.
‘You involved your son in Project Epomenzoic.’
Jun thumbed the Interface again, trying to connect the dots from the past to present. She had spent the best part of the week reviewing Odgerel’s files, the ones they’d got from Markov when they broke Kodi out of the lab. She had poured over the old data and notes, but instead of finding the light, she only uncovered more shadow. Yesterday, as playing cards were thrown across the bunker – Solo lost to Kodi again in their hundredth game of Huzur – Jun stumbled across the reports from Wei, Markov, and as it turned out, Fan.
Her eyes drew to the executive summary of findings. In their tests, Wei’s and Markov’s objective had been the same as hers – to encourage Odgerel to use her P-EP to predict or relay information – but the subject matter was extremely targeted; the study environment, very specific. It was intentional to something, but for what agenda?
Jun re-read the summary of test Bìnggù, where they introduced Odgerel to someone who had a fatal case of DHF, a type of Dengue Fever. The person’s health chips detected they would die in six days and eight hours. Odgerel herself predicted six days and two hours, give or take. In the end, Odgerel had been correct, though she had not lived long enough herself to see it through.
In test GongGong, according to the notes, they had shown Odgerel pictures of places that were set to be uninhabitable in less than a year’s time, due to flooding. Odgerel had given specific dates when the waters would consume the land. The dates were in line with meteorologist’s predictions.
Of course it made sense to use Odgerel’s P-EP to help the world mitigate more disasters, but the technology they had in place was sufficient, so what else did Odgerel offer?
And then two words in the notes had jumped out at her and made her blood run cold: Project Epomenzoic.
Subject Zaye is the best candidate by far to support on Project Epomenzoic.
It hit her that there was another chapter to this story that until now, she hadn’t known existed.
In test TuBeiTu, Wei and Markov had Odgerel pre-empt imagery relative to Project Epomenzoic. There was no further detail in the report about the imagery specifics, or their objective. It could have been imagery of anything, anyone, anywhere. But Odgerel hadn’t responded to it, not as she had with the other tests. She hadn’t been able to intuit or ‘see’ anything. Jun had cross-referenced the dates with her own notes of when Odgerel’s P-EP had begun to wane.
Subject Zaye declined to respond to stimulus A, B and C.
Subject Zaye refused to undergo any further testing.
This new riddle squeezed her mind tighter than a vice. Project Epomenzoic. In Markov’s files, and then from his mouth twenty-five years later. But this time, concerning Kau and his UA work. Kau, Odgerel and Kodi, part of the same project, but what was it? It had to be some sort of future-proofing plan. The UA had years of programs under its belt and
invested heavily in them. And what of Kau’s role, was it solely to reel Kodi in, their ‘replacement’ Odgerel? And if Kodi fulfilled the same role they had planned for Odgerel, what bearing did her story have in all of this?
That day Kodi had taken Jun to the Circle to meet Solo, Kodi had known they would meet again, and they would do something significant together. When they were all in the archive room, Kodi had known Fan had been working for the AS, and that Markov planned to reveal all. But, she hadn’t been able to predict what would happen to her, and she had no idea whether she would ever return to the Ghetto again.
Between the Interface and Chandra’s ‘workshop’, Jun had managed to devise some DIY cognitive tests – SRTs and visual P-EP responses – but it was all rudimentary. There was no doubt of Kodi’s Pre-Emptive Perception. It was more a case of finding out its parameters. From their few days of testing and Kodi’s anecdotes of her P-EP experiences, it was evident spatial proximity was one way to activate it, and receiving the right stimulus was another. Their visions sometimes made them tired or gave them a nauseous feeling. So far, so similar to Odgerel.
But Kodi was able to control her P-EP consciously. Jun had always assumed Odgerel couldn’t control hers. From what she had said about her powers dwindling, and frustration that she couldn’t intuit Markov and Wei’s plans, it had seemed it was something beyond Odgerel’s control. But now, Jun wasn’t so sure. Maybe just like Kodi, Odgerel had conscious control of her P-EP. But there was no Odgerel to ask.
An unpleasant feeling lurched from her stomach and crept to the back of her throat – they all had pushed for more. Pushed too far. Pushed her to haemorrhage on an operating table she should have never been on.
The light on the Interface flashed green, a long and unbroken signal, pulling her back to reality.
‘Jun, do you copy? The eagle has landed,’ Chandra said over the secure speaker.
Jun’s heart jumped. She copied. Though she was excited and nervous in equal measures, she was happy for a distraction. This would have been all but impossible without Chandra’s comm system. ‘So far, it had proved invaluable. It allowed them to connect with the other Ghettoes across the world, especially the North-East-Euro Ghetto, where Jun had been in touch with Mikhail. Hearing his calm and patient voice again, even warmer with age, had made her feel like everything was going to be okay. When it was safe enough for them to travel next week, they’d go to him. They were working out all the logistics, and doing some dummy runs of elements of the trip tomorrow – given the complexities; trying to escape the Ghetto under the UA’s watchful eye was no mean feat.
Adaptive Consequences Page 21