‘We tested Kodi’s blood ourselves,’ Jun said, as measured and restrained as her nerves allowed. The vacutainer filled. ‘We didn’t detect any latent virions or capsids. But we could only analyse her blood against known criteria.’
Larisa smiled. ‘I can be much more expansive because I’m coming at it from another way round, using principles that are as fundamental to code, as DNA is to life. It’s like you’re in a room looking for a woman that’s 5’ 4”, has brown eyes and hair, a tattoo on her arm and walks with a limp… and I’m checking first if there’s anyone with blood and a pulse.’ She gave a steady smile as she took the vacutainer with Kodi’s blood from Jun, and pipetted it into the analyser.
Jun wanted to ask her about Kau, how he’d seemed, but she settled on the most important thing.
‘I wanted to say thank you, I can’t say it enough, for what you did for my son,’ Jun said, and couldn’t stop the tears from falling. ‘It was incredibly brave what you did, what you’re doing for Kodi…’ Larisa had risked a lot to keep Kau alive and now, thanks to his plan, he was intent on throwing it all away.
When Chandra explained what Kau had told him, all Jun heard was a death sentence. Though Chandra was the messenger, she could imagine Kau’s enthusiastic voice as he spoke, still jumping in feet first. But what could she say? It wasn’t so far removed from some of her own plans. The UA, they knew, was full of secrets. From the top down, the Heads of the UA, Provinces, and Departments all had dark secrets; no different to the skeletons in Anton’s closet, but were probably worse. Like pulling up a rock, and seeing insects scuttle and spread, all Kau figured he had to do was pull a big enough rock and watch what happened. The rock, for better or worse, he’d decided was Fan.
Now that Fan was chewed up and spat out, Kau reasoned his father was more likely to tell him the truth about the UA. About all their crimes and punishments, from the murdered to the suicides, and then Kau would tell the world what the UA was really like. Jun couldn’t see Fan telling Kau this detail, even if the UA had forsaken him – the idea of Kau telling the world, well… it would be alien to him. But Chandra said Kau had been adamant. Perhaps she’d sold him short. Maybe Fan was capable of change too.
Kau would relay it through his own Public Service Announcement, recording himself talking about all of the atrocities, and Chandra would broadcast it into homes, offices and billboards, interrupting the scheduled PSA. He’d decided on the Monday morning broadcast, if possible, to give the announcement maximum exposure and impact.
I’m already an enemy of the state, he’d said. Why not upgrade myself to public enemy number one?
And rather than hide away, ghettoising himself in warrens and living in fear, Kau planned to be visible. Ultra-visible, with nowhere to hide even if he wanted to. He would live in a transparent BioDome that his girlfriend had designed – as she had suspected, Kau had been seeing someone after all – that was utterly fit for purpose. Self-sufficient and self-contained, he would position it outside the Province Governance Alliance offices, so everyone could see him – anytime, all the time – for as long as it took. He would lay himself and the truth on the line, so the world could see he had nothing to hide, and more importantly, if anything happened to him, see who had been at the hands of it.
He’d wear cameras on his body and record his day-to-day. Larisa would inject him with a chip that would automatically notify the world if anything happened to him. He planned to be a human advertisement for either a ticking time bomb, or the man who told the truth about the UA. The public would be his bodyguards, and the real-time updates, his security. If the UA wanted to take him down, the whole world would know about it, and why.
The UA will try and paint me as a rogue lunatic – a once loyal UA member turned paranoiac and madman. I wouldn’t be the first, but if one by one people stand up, agree, and say ‘no’, I might be the last.
Her heart had jumped to her throat when Chandra had finished. A part of her was proud of Kau, that he could be so brave, that he had come up with a plan that could work, but it was too risky. Too extreme. Her MO was to survive the UA, keep those around her that she loved, alive. She even would feel happier with him staying on side of the UA and going to Mars. The plan Kau had devised was full-out war. Words in place of weaponry, but the UA wouldn’t respond with words. They would react with death; even if the world were his witness, she wouldn’t let him martyr himself. She couldn’t.
And while they were praying for a miracle for Kodi, he was prying the information from his father. Pending agreement from the Ghetto, he wanted to record his testimonial in the bunkers tonight, to go out on Monday morning. It seemed too soon, such a rush. Though they hadn’t formally discussed it with the Ghetto, their committee was supportive. The likes of Lucas, who’d questioned Kau’s motives before, had nothing but admiration for him.
Larisa studied the blood analyser and tapped its screen. ‘This is all clear. I see no code in her system,’ she said and turned to them all in disbelief.
Kodi’s grin widened, a joyful wonder illuminated her face. Lucas heaved a sigh of relief, and Chandra joined him in a laugh of reprieve.
‘So they bluffed after all?’ Solo said and looked to Batz in surprise; he was as shocked as they all were.
‘It looks that way.’ Larisa rechecked the Interface.
‘Are you sure?’ Jun said, her voice shaking, ‘because we can’t take any chances… I trust you, but where the UA is concerned….’ It wasn’t that she disbelieved Larisa, but time after time, they’d risen to be slammed back down by the UA. She couldn’t let that happen to Kodi. Not again, not when so much was at stake.
‘I am sure,’ Larisa said and pulled the Interface to her. ‘I don’t think Kodi has a virus, but there are two more things I can do….’
Chandra raised an eyebrow, but Jun batted it away. She wouldn’t settle for think, not this time, she would only settle for a stone-cold know.
* * *
It was like after one of Kau’s birthday parties, when she and Fan had been tidying up the house. Kau was asleep, the other parents and kids had finally left, and they would be left cleaning up the mess. But Fan wasn’t here, she wasn’t at home, and they weren’t packing everything away, they were assembling and getting prepped.
She and Chandra had stayed behind, as Larisa and the others had gone to the Circle to share the news. Larisa had hacked into the UA’s files on Kodi. It had taken some time, but when she cracked it, there wasn’t any mention of them injecting a virus in her notes, but there was a schedule of their planned tests, which Larisa duly shared with Jun. To be safe, Larisa programmed a chip to alert them if anything was released into Kodi’s body, or her biochemistry changed suddenly. It was the best preventive measure in the short term and didn’t compromise Kodi in the long term.
While the others were celebrating, and talk would turn to the N.E.E Ghetto journey scheduled on Monday, she and Chandra had begun prep for Kau’s recording.
Chandra pinned some black lyocell fabric over one of the passageways into a tunnel, allowing them a bigger space to film, and helped disguise the environment. Jun had positioned a couple of light tripods, like silent witnesses watching them work. Now she strung lights like lanterns from the ceiling. While Chandra moved with quickness and finesse, she found herself doing a slow-moving dance, one-step, two-step, three-step, turn. Her mind was elsewhere. Now Kodi was safe, everyone’s attention would naturally turn to the escape, and their survival. They hadn’t discussed the reduced timelines in detail – Kodi had been the priority – but now, there was only a momentary celebration until they had to focus on the next life-or-death situation. To say it was stressful was an understatement, and Jun couldn’t deny that the constant battling tired her, but battle they must.
Kau had thought that in brandishing their crimes, the Ghettoites could start afresh. That the Global Governance Alliance would cancel the UA’s contract, and that without that UA pulling the strings of the world, they could re-establish themselves i
nto society. That the rules would change, that life for them and everyone could be different. She felt more reassured by having Plan b. One war didn’t win the battle.
‘I have some thoughts about Kau’s plan,’ she said to Chandra, adjusting one of the lights so it hung flush against the wall. She knew he wouldn’t like it, but there was no way that she could let Kau live in the BioDome, for the UA to pick at his bones like vultures. Now he was set on going against the UA, and there was no chance of him migrating to Mars, the only other option for his survival was to live in the Ghetto. A young man, in the prime of life, shouldn’t be martyring himself to humanity, and certainly not her son. As Larisa had hacked into the UA database, her thoughts had marinated like one of Qin’s dishes, and now she had her chance to talk it over with their General.
‘I’ve decided I’m going to live in the BioDome instead of Kau.’
Chandra was hanging the final piece of fabric on the peaty-wall. His hand froze. He turned around to face her, with the exhaustion of a man twice their age. Chandra had always seemed ageless, sage, beyond frailty. But now he had a weariness about him that she could see in herself.
‘I can’t say I didn’t see this coming,’ he said, and his eyes gripped hers with a desperation she hadn’t felt before. His zen exterior was fraying at the edges. ‘But we need you for Kodi…’
‘But I need to do this for my son,’ she said, as solid as the Great Wall. He couldn’t argue with that. There was nothing to talk over, she had made up her mind, now it was just convincing Kau to take her place and go with the others to Mikhail. ‘I don’t think we can rest on the assumption that this will bring down the UA, that the Global Governance Alliance will break their contract. They’ll have counter strategies in place, and we’ll still be enemies of the State.’
Chandra nodded in agreement; he had come to the same realisation too.
The best way they could move forward was to find out their options on Earth and Antarctica, and whether they would be able to survive. ‘We need to find out who compiled the report about Antarctica’s apparent inhabitability. We need to track down those who reported the timeframes of the Earth’s sustainability. Kau is best placed for that. And he knows about the VIPs and the geoscientists-’
‘And Kodi?’ Chandra said, quietly. ‘Who’s best placed to help with her?’
Though she hadn’t thought about it before, the name came to her lips as soon as the question had left his. ‘Larisa. I can work on things remotely. Between my guidance and her expertise… that is, if she would go?’
‘Larisa wants, needs to keep her life as it is,’ Chandra said with a tenacity that signalled it wasn’t open to discussion.
Jun walked over to him and tried to find the words to say how she felt. He was such a good person, and he had done so much for them all. In this short space of time he had known her so well. From all that he knew of her, and with all that he was, surely, he understood that she needed to do this.
‘I have to,’ she said and tried to stop the fumble in her voice that reminded her how weak she sometimes felt. ‘I can’t send my son to his death,’ she shook her head, and tried to say, ‘I can’t,’ but the words petered out into a whisper.
‘It’s not me you have to convince,’ Chandra said, and gave a generous smile, but there was a sense that he wasn’t entirely at peace with it. She knew what he was going to say next, without the words even leaving his mouth.
‘How on Earth are you going to convince Kau?’
CHAPTER 35
Saturday 20th May 2062
7 hours to hand over Kodi
The deathly quiet of the CMCD followed Kau like a drumbeat to the gallows. He didn’t stumble walking up the pathway of his parents’ home, but he questioned if he’d made a misstep coming here. His chips would show where he’d been, and he’d have to have an excuse for Anton up his sleeve should he call, but after all, in a few hours’ time, none of this would matter. Kau opened the door into his old home, and wished he’d called in advance to check that his father was around, but he needn’t have worried. His father was sitting in the living room, staring into space, as though he had been expecting Kau at any moment.
An apparition was staring back at him, not the man he’d known and loved for 23 years. His father’s face was blank, the energy had gone from behind his eyes.
‘Papa, are you okay? What are you doing just sitting here?’ Kau kneeled beside him and put a hand on his father’s arm. It was flaccid and dry like one long wrinkle. ‘Are you eating?’
Fan looked at him and smiled, an ignition barely turning over.
‘Qin cooks, I eat. But I don’t have much of an appetite. Her food tastes different,’ Fan said. ‘Maybe your mother used to do something…’ he shrugged and looked away. ‘Or maybe it’s them.’
At the mention of his mother, Kau flinched. There was that stab of hate and struggle to feel sorry for the man, husband and father, who’d lied to them for most of his life. Who’d turned a blind eye to things that he would never have committed himself. He felt his father’s limp arm underneath his hand. But he was just a man, blood and bone. Celeste had said it was better ‘not to know,’ and Kau saw her logic. He had lied to himself, and those closest to him, all in the name of survival. He had done it himself, so why was it so hard to forgive his father?
Fan looked at his hands, as though they held the answer to his question. ‘What’s the matter, son?’
Kau’s nerve bubbled, it had been a bad idea to come. His Interface burned in his pocket with Anton’s VIP list – they were at the top of the UA, but at the bottom of morality. His father’s years as a dedicated servant to them meant he would know their secrets and lies. The ones he protected himself, and the ones he shut his eyes or turned away from. He might not know the number of skeletons rattling around in their closet, but he’d know some of the corpses in there. Kau came to ask him to raise the ghosts of the dead, but was it a risk he could let him take?
It was Fan’s turn to put a reassuring hand on his arm, and pre-empted what Kau struggled to find the words for.
‘Do you want to go for a walk on the plantations?’
The sun speared mercilessly. Kau opened the parasol he’d brought with him to shade his father and pulled a cap on his own prickly-head. Fan’s walk was barely a shuffle; Kau slowed his step to match his father’s pace.
Luscious scents meandered from under the canopies – peppery-fresh mint and the sweet, liquorice twang of anise. It reminded Kau of the beauty of life; lately, all he’d been surrounded by was the threat of death.
As Kau grasped for the best way to broach it, he wondered if his father would be curious as to why the sudden interest, but Kau needn’t have worried. Fan willingly told him what the UA Heads had done over the years.
‘I needed to know all their dirty dealings too. It was like feeding a hunger I could never fulfil,’ Kau’s father said, and he looked out across the canopies and growing sheds as if looking at a timeline of his life. ‘I don’t know why, certainly not for peace of mind. It brought me many things, but never that. Just remember, son, that once you know, you can’t un-know. For your own sake, keep what I say to yourself.’
Of course, Kau didn’t plan on keeping it to himself; far from it. A lump wrenched in his throat; it tasted of guilt. When the Ghetto would release his PSA, the UA surely would know where, who, the information came from. Had it been some form of punishment, holding back the truth from his father? Perhaps, or maybe he didn’t want to gamble that despite everything, he would still stay loyal to them.
They stopped by their plantation allocation and sat on the two chairs that were tucked underneath their veranda. The chairs were so that his parents could sit and watch the world go by in retirement; at least, that’s what they had said. The ten-year-old version of himself couldn’t help but grieve. The times he’d played jianzi on their little shed’s veranda, as his mother and father watered the vegetables, and Qin turned over the soil. Something told Kau the two chairs would remain,
even though his parents would never sit in them together again.
‘I was also looking to find the author of the Antarctica report, find a bit more detail about its inhabitability, but I can’t see anything. Do you know who it was?’
Fan looked away to a withered patch of husky soil and underwatered vegetables on the Petrov’s allocation, their neighbours from number 22. ‘Does it matter?’
‘I need it for my report for Anton,’ Kau lied. He sensed the moment for asking questions had finished.
‘Then ask Anton.’
Grit began to surface from beneath his father’s malaise; it was time to go.
Fan gave a weary sigh. ‘I’m ashamed to say I don’t know who authored it,’ he looked back out to the plantations, and the occasional bunches of yellow-grass and canopies that popped-up like pimples.
‘Shall we head back?’ Kau said.
‘You go,’ Fan was still looking out at the plantations, ‘I’m going to stay here a little while.’ He waved Kau away.
As Kau walked back, he realised it would probably be the last time he saw his father. Could that be the final memory? Kau turned around; Fan was gravely staring into the plantations, as if watching a ship capsizing out on the ocean. He wanted to say something meaningful, maybe hug him one last time, but Fan didn’t look his way, and the opportunity passed. His father had never needed him anyway, not like that. Kau had only ever felt a connection, the kind that he’d always wanted, after he joined the UA. And after his PSA tomorrow, that connection would be severed forever.
* * *
Kau had never coloured outside the lines. When he was younger, there were no scrapes with the authorities; at school, he’d never got into trouble for bad behaviour or skiving. Rules were to be followed, and he followed them. But he had never broken so many in his life as he had in the past week. Following the rules had led him here; they had driven his father into isolation and despair. Following them never made a damn bit of difference.
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