by Eliza Green
She left Bill and went to the kitchen where she opened cupboards and pulled whatever she could find out onto the counter. In her haste, an open box of cereal fell to the floor. She ignored the sound of her bare feet crunching the cereal into the floor as she replicated more food. Armed with enough food to feed an army, she returned to the living room with her spoils.
Bill had dressed and sat hunched over his DPad at the table. Deep in concentration he hadn’t noticed her return. She put the food down and picked up an apple. Her loud crunching attracted Bill’s attention but then he looked back at the file he read. Laura moved closer and saw one name she’d hoped never to see again: Harvey Buchanan.
‘Why are you looking him up?’ she said.
‘I’m taking you to see him.’
Laura backed away. ‘No, Bill. Don’t you remember what happened last time?... And he betrayed us to the World Government... And what about those replica identity chips you gave him, the ones that wouldn’t work? I’m sure he’s figured out you kept something from him.’
‘Laura, there’s something wrong with you and I can’t think of anyone else who can help. Harvey has experience with nanoid technology. If he’s working for the World Government, then he’s most likely working on genetics.’
‘We can’t be sure that he can—or will—help. Besides, I feel fine.’
‘You’re far from fine, Laura.’ Bill’s voice was stern. ‘We have to do something—and he has access to medical equipment. Don’t argue with me.’
Laura turned away as Bill continued to read the file. She touched her skin that felt ice cold. She turned back again to see Bill had abandoned his file in favour of a 3D map he’d pulled out from his DPad. A tiny red light flashed. ‘Is that his chip?’
‘I’m using ITF software to track his movements. He’s leaving Warsaw and is on the move.’
‘So, where’s he going?’ She glanced down at her hand which no longer held an apple, but a carton of tomato soup.
‘Judging by how fast this dot is moving, I’d say he’s on a Maglev train. There’s only one place that train is heading at that hour.’
‘Where?’ She drank some soup straight from the carton. It dripped down her mouth.
‘London.’
Laura blinked and the carton of soup was gone. Instead, she stood next to Bill while he opened the front door.
‘I don’t have time for this today—I have a shift.’
‘I’ve already called in sick for you.’
She didn’t remember him calling. ‘When?’
‘Twenty minutes ago.’
Laura shook her head. It couldn’t have taken her longer than five minutes to get the food from the kitchen.
‘I can’t Bill. I’m not even dressed.’
‘You are dressed, Laura.’
She looked down at her clothes: black trousers, a cotton shirt and a pair of black flats. Her hair was tied up. How could she not remember getting dressed?
‘You’ve been zoning in and out like this since you got out of bed. This isn’t normal, Laura.’ Bill ushered her out the door.
But her stomach rumbled again and she darted past him to grab a sandwich from the almost depleted pile of food.
22
Bill brought Laura to London and hailed a self-drive taxi to King’s Cross station, where the Maglev train from Warsaw was due to arrive. He couldn’t settle his thoughts as he waited with Laura on the platform. The nose of the train came into view and it made a loud whoosh sound as giant magnets positioned on the station wall brought the beast to an almost-instant stop.
Passengers alighted from the train and Bill checked his DPad for Harvey’s location. According to his identity chip location he should be heading towards them. But there were too many people for him to see clearly. Then he saw him, surrounded by his bodyguards and a man who looked very similar to Vladimir, the driver who had picked them up in Magadan. Harvey slowed when he saw Bill.
‘Well, well, what a surprise.’ Harvey’s eyes narrowed at Laura who fidgeted with her gel mask. ‘I see you’ve brought your pit bull with you. Lovely to see you again, pet.’ Clearly he hadn’t forgotten that Laura had threatened him with a laser scalpel.
They stood on the platform facing each other while throngs of people pushed past them. They said nothing until the platform was almost empty.
‘There are no witnesses now, Bill,’ said Harvey. ‘Just let my men break your jaw, a few bones in your body and put you in hospital for the rest of your life.’
Bill ignored Harvey’s threats. ‘We need your help.’
Harvey lifted a brow. ‘You mean this is an official visit? I’m touched.’ His gaze lingered on Laura a little too long. ‘I seem to remember your girlfriend looked little better the last time we met. What’s wrong with her?’
‘That’s why we’re here. We don’t know. I need you to run a scan on her genetic code.’
‘Where—here?’ Harvey smiled at his bodyguards. ‘Even I’m not that good to work magic on a platform.’
‘You must have a safe house in the city where they allow you to “practise” your medicine?’
Harvey wagged a finger. ‘Not for you to know, Bill.’
Movement to his left caught Bill’s attention as a confused looking Laura walked away. He grabbed her arm and led her back to stand beside him. ‘Look, Harvey, can you help us or not?’
‘You know... I’ve been looking for you, Bill Taggart. What did you expect me to do with dud replica chips?’
‘I’m sorry. I was under strict instructions.’
‘And now it seems you need more from me than I need from you.’
Bill had only one card to play. ‘I’ll show you how to get the replica chips to work.’
‘That will do for a start.’ Harvey walked on. When Bill didn’t follow, Harvey turned around. ‘Are you coming, or not? I have a car waiting and you’re welcome to a lift, but there are conditions.’
The minute they stepped outside the station, the bodyguards slipped blindfolds on them and bundled them into the back of a car.
‘This is too dangerous, Bill,’ whispered Laura.
‘I know, but I need him to check you out. He’s an expert on nanoid technology. Besides, there’s no one else to ask.’
The blindfold was too tight. When Bill reached up to adjust it, someone slapped his hand away. ‘No peeking.’
Bill leaned back in his seat and concentrated on their route and the number of turns the car had taken since they’d left King’s Cross. Presuming they’d taken no false turns, then they should be in Finsbury Park. But he could hear water, which meant they could be close to the former reservoir, now a sewage and water processing plant, near Seven Sister’s Road.
The car stopped and the door opened. Someone pulled Bill out too fast and he fell to his knees. Behind him, he heard Laura struggle with one associate, then a man yell, ‘The bitch bit me.’
Bill smiled and got to his feet. An overpowering stench of sewage seeped inside his gel mask and confirmed their location. With the blindfold still in place, someone pulled him down a flight of stairs and pushed into a lift. When the lift door opened again the smell of medical-grade antiseptic hit him. Screams filled his ears and Bill felt Laura grope for his hand. After walking a few hundred yards, a door closed behind them and someone removed his blindfold. He blinked under the harsh overhead light. Laura blinked too but she appeared to be more sensitive to the light than him.
‘Now, tell me what I can do for you?’ Harvey’s tone sent a chill through Bill.
‘I told you—I need you to analyse Laura’s genetic code,’ said Bill. Laura’s skin looked too grey and ghoulish in the light to be normal.
Harvey narrowed his eyes at her. ‘She’s got some mutations happening inside her. I suppose that’s the risk you take when the genetic manipulation treatments at the clinics don’t work.’
‘I need specifics,’ said Bill. ‘I want to know exactly what’s going on.’
‘One thing at a time.’ Harve
y removed a small square box from his pocket. He opened it to reveal the three chips Bill had parted with to secure new identities for him, Laura and Jenny Waterson. ‘First, I need you to tell me how to get these to work.’
‘Fine. But after you check Laura over,’ said Bill.
Harvey smiled and combed his fingers through his sandy hair. ‘I don’t think you understand how this works.’ He removed a knife hidden in the waistband of his trousers and turned it in his hand. Bill froze when he recognised it. ‘Considering this one’—he pointed the blade at Laura—‘tried to kill me last time, think of it as an added security measure.’
The blade of the antique knife glinted in the overhead light, similar to the one Larry Hunt’s henchmen had used on him years ago. He had been profiling Larry Hunt, a major player in the food replication business, and had linked Hunt to the crime of producing and selling fake replication machines. Hunt’s henchmen had tailed Bill through the streets of London where they trapped him and sent him a ‘friendly’ warning. Bill touched the spot where the knife had entered his shoulder.
Harvey smiled. ‘Ah, so you remember.’
‘Remember what?’
‘What happens when you screw with my people? Larry Hunt was a client before you sent him to jail, and I lost half of my business overnight.’
So it had been Harvey’s men who’d chased him that night. Bill shook his head at the bizarre, yet unsurprising connection. ‘Fine. You need to “mark” the chips to get them to work. To do that, they must sit in a sample of the host’s blood to make a connection. Without the “mark”, they won’t work.’
Harvey took the knife and sliced it across his thumb. He grabbed a Petri dish and squeezed out enough blood to cover the base of the dish. Then he sat one chip in the blood. ‘How long?’
‘It depends,’ said Bill.
‘Well, in that case you’ll remain here for as long as it takes.’
‘I’ve done as you asked, Harvey. Please, I need you to analyse Laura.’
Harvey stared at Bill who stood his ground, refusing to be intimidated by him. Harvey gave up and motioned for Laura to sit in the chair. When she didn’t move, he yelled, ‘Sit, now!’
A wide-eyed Laura obeyed. Harvey produced a swab, told Laura to open her mouth and took a sample from the inside of her cheek.
‘You’re not checking her blood?’ said Bill.
‘Cheek swabs, blood—it all contains her genetic code.’ Harvey snipped the end of the swab and dropped it into a solution. He put a cap over the container and placed it in a small machine.
‘What does the machine do?’ said Bill.
‘It splits open the nucleus contained in the cells.’
‘I’m sorry, I left my genetics profiling handbook at home. In English please.’
Harvey sighed as if the answer was obvious. ‘Well, without boring you, the DNA analyser first pellets the cells, then breaks them open to get at the nucleus, which is where the DNA is. Then the machine gets rid of any junk in the surrounding membrane that might break down her DNA when we release it. It then extracts it by breaking open the cell membrane using a mixture of heat and alkaline. We give it one final spin, and voila—we have our genomic DNA.’
‘The what DNA?’
‘Genomic—the set of DNA that holds her entire genetic data.’
‘How long will it take?’
‘About five minutes.’ Harvey opened a file on his monitor. ‘We should have her normal genetic code on file at the ESC.’ A picture of her original code appeared on screen. When the machine finished, it fed the new results to his monitor. The two images displayed side by side.
‘There’s definite mutation in her code all right, and it continues as we speak.’ Harvey looked fascinated by the results. ‘Whatever this is, it didn’t happen at one of the genetic manipulation clinics. They have controls in place so only certain genetic code can be altered. But inside her, it’s like a free-for-all. What happened?’
Laura found her voice. ‘I received a cure for my seasonal depression. It contained Indigene genetic code.’
Harvey turned to look at her. ‘Where—on Exilon 5 or here?’
‘Exilon 5.’
Harvey laughed. ‘So the rumours are true. You’re more than just passing acquaintances with those freaks.’
Bill bristled at his description of the Indigenes. He noticed Laura did the same as she got out of the chair.
Harvey pushed his hair back and looked at the monitor. ‘There’s a mini war happening inside you. The nanoids and genetic copies are trying to replace your original code. Your body is attacking the nanoids by kicking your immune system into overdrive. It’s a bloody mess in there.’
‘Just tell me if you can reverse it.’ Laura stood over his shoulder and looked at her code. Bill noticed Harvey stiffen at her proximity.
Harvey shook his head. ‘Not here. You should talk to your Indigene friends. Your body doesn’t recognise the new code. We only use a mix of human and Indigene code so the body accepts the changes slowly and naturally. I have nothing to counteract what this stuff is doing to you.’
‘Come on, Harvey. You’ve dealt with this kind of change before, and you know how to transform a human into an Indigene,’ said Bill.
‘I told you, we use a very specific DNA sequence to encourage the body to accept the changes,’ said Harvey. ‘But this is a full, no-holds-barred dose of real Indigene in her system. Why would they mutate her genetic code so fast without safeguards in place?’
‘They only wanted to cure her Seasonal Affective Disorder. I don’t think they fully understood how their altered code would affect her,’ said Bill.
‘Well, I can’t do anything here. But we still have some unfinished business.’ He stroked Laura’s hair. She jerked away from his touch and glared at him. ‘You, pretty lady, are in a whole heap of trouble.’ Harvey turned away and fiddled with something on the counter. He spun around and jammed a syringe in Laura’s arm, but didn’t push the contents.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Bill stared at him. ‘What’s in the syringe, Harvey?’
‘My insurance.’ Harvey walked backwards, gripping Laura with one hand and the syringe with the other. Laura tried to pull her arm away, but Harvey was too strong for her. ‘It’s filled with destructive nanoids, worse than the ones in her body. These ones kill anything they touch. Did you hear the screams on the way here?’ He gave Bill a cruel smile. ‘All of us will wait until that chip you gave me accepts this supposed “mark”. Otherwise, your girlfriend gets a dose of the Harvey Buchanan special. And if that happens, you’ll wish the genetic mutations were her only problem.’
Harvey glanced at the time projection on the wall.
‘Are we keeping you from something?’ said Bill.
‘I have to be somewhere in an hour. So while we wait, tell me everything else you know about the replica chip.’
‘The “mark” is everything.’
‘Well then, pull up a chair, Bill,’ he said. ‘Because none of us leave this room until I see it in action.’
23
Deighton swapped the moderate temperatures inside London’s docking station for the icy air outside. A town car waited for him, and he hurried towards it. He shivered as he opened the door and slipped into the seat. The driver issued a command to the car, courtesy of Harvey Buchanan.
‘Mr Buchanan is expecting you,’ said the driver as the car moved.
Deighton had no time for chit-chat. ‘Concentrate on your job, son and don’t speak to me again.’
Buchanan’s driver watched Deighton in the rear-view mirror.
Deighton hit a button and a black partition separated them. He pulled his mask off his tight, wet face. Tears were for those without hope. But if Harvey couldn’t fix him, what options remained?
Deighton searched for a handkerchief in his pocket. He found one, pulled it out and pressed it to his eyes. A mirror was set into the roof of the interior. He checked his face in the weak light that made him look ghoulish
—like an Indigene.
The car turned left and began to slow. Deighton looked through the tinted windows to see a crowd had lined the edge of the streets. Military, in toughened black suits, held shields tight to their bodies and weapons at the ready as they kept the crowd back.
Deighton released the partition between him and the driver. ‘How did they know I’d be here?’ he snapped. ‘Who told them?’
‘Mr Buchanan notified the ITF. He felt it necessary to clear the streets. Otherwise we could be delayed by an hour.’
Deighton leaned back and stared out at the crowds. So much for privacy. This wasn’t a trip he’d wanted announced to the world. ‘Are the roads like this the whole way in?’
‘No. Barricades will isolate our approach to the hospital.’
‘Good. I don’t need everyone knowing my business.’
He looked out at the Londoners gathered by the roadside, stamping their feet to gain a modicum of warm in the frigid temperatures. The car pushed through crowds that had leaked out onto the streets as though they didn’t exist. That’s how Deighton felt these days. Peter Cantwell had championed for his ideas, but Tanya Li clearly liked to do things her own way. The more pressing his health issues became, the more Deighton felt his influence and control over the board slip away. But until he had no breath left in his body, he would find a way to transcend his miserable life and become great again in the eyes of those that mattered.
Deighton had seen plenty of doctors about his condition, but had only seen Harvey Buchanan twice before. Harvey was the best in the business, but he was also a rogue operator whose talents were in great demand on the black market. His first tryst with the man had been about ten years before when his body had rejected the additional genes that would mutate his code. But at the time, the Indigene race still evolved and he was confident he could try again. The second visit was over a year ago, just after the military had captured a young member of the Indigene race. Deighton’s desires for a longer life surfaced once more after receiving a report on the young male’s genetic code. But even with a cleaner sample of genetic material from the young Indigene to mutate his code, the second time had been no more successful than the first. Harvey had explained that because of his age and extra work he’d had to alter his already damaged code, Deighton was no longer a viable candidate. But this time, he came to Harvey with two fresh samples and renewed hope.