by JT Lawrence
She wants to run and tell the children, but her body doesn’t move from the chair. She doesn’t think she’ll ever move from the chair. That dog has more lives than a cat.
A mug of tea is placed in front of her. With shaking hands she takes a sip, but looks longingly at the booze cabinet. The same man who made her tea fetches a blanket from the lounge and places it over the beagle, tells the nanny and kids that the dog will be okay. She wants to hug him. He’s the Comforter. She’ll never complain about the high cost of this security company ever again.
“I think it would be prudent, if you agree, to station two of my men outside your apartment 24/7 until the threat has passed.”
“Yes.” Kate nods. “Yes, please.”
“I would also like to stay until things are settled. Are you okay with this?”
She knows what he’s doing. After any kind of breach in security, the victim feels out of control. By asking her at every turn if she agrees, it gives her some sense of restored power.
“Yes,” she says. “That will be fine. Thank you.”
The kids are fighting in the bath. Bongi scolds them gently and they seem to simmer down. The Assessor takes her through the intrusion, point by point. Their first assumption is that it was most likely two professional thieves, the way the system was disarmed.
“It’s quite a thing,” he says, shaking his head, “six years since we’ve had this particular technology and I’ve never seen it circumvented.” He tells her that a few drawers had been turned out, some furniture up-ended. The company had tidied what they could to lessen the trauma and sent their report to the insurance company. Indeed, looking around the place, you’d never say that it has just been burgled. The police force has been notified, although they don’t expect anyone to turn up; they hardly ever do. It’s why security companies like SafeGuard are such a profitable business. They are there for every facet of house invasion, he says. Their job is to make it as hassle-free as possible.
She finishes the tea (Chamomile Dream) and excuses herself to take a shower. God, she needs a shower. She’s covered in dust and dry fear-sweat.
“We thought it was a burglary, but then – ”
Kate stares at him.
He clears his throat. “Then someone showed up and briefed us on – ”
“What?” says Kate.
“She said that there is another element at play. She needs to meet with you, urgently, regarding the safety of your children.”
Kate looks around. She’s already refused his offer of complimentary counselling. Has she missed someone sitting here? But the couches and chairs are empty. She’s confused.
“Who? A colleague of yours?”
He shakes his head. “We’ve never met.”
“But you let her into my house?” Perhaps SafeGuard isn’t as professional as she had previously believed.
“It’s a mandate,” he says. “She’s on the PreApp security list. She’s allowed anywhere, any time.”
“Bullshit. This is a private residence and we don’t have anyone on our pre-approved list.”
“Not your personal list. It’s the national PreApp list.”
The national list? Only uber-VIPs are on there. Venerated, squeaky clean, public figures. Why would someone like that be in her flat?
“I’m sure she’ll explain everything.”
He stands up, and she follows suit. She puts her head around the door of the bathroom and sees Bongi vigorously towelling off the twins, as if they’ve been swimming in the ocean instead of sitting in ten centimetres of bathwater. The kids notice her and look up, grinning, and she has never seen them looking so clean. The nanny reaches for Mally’s pyjamas – RoboPup, of course – and just seeing the animated dog again fills her with dread. She can’t believe how close she came to losing him today. The Assessor leads her to the panic room, as if it is his house, instead of hers. The door is only just ajar. She opens it wider, and steps inside.
A mature woman with long, straight, light grey hair is sitting in the lazy chair. She’s wearing a simple white shift robe, and would blend into the white interior if she didn’t have a distinct glow about her. Kate guesses she doesn’t blend in anywhere she goes. The picture of her sitting there, surrounded by white, gives the impression of a pale-petalled lotus, her glowing face the centre of the flower. The image reminds her of when she visited the seed bank – the Doomsday Vault – and she had learnt that lotus seeds can keep their promise for hundreds of years.
“Solonne,” says Kate.
The woman seems pleased. “You know who I am,” she says. “That makes things easier.”
Kate can smell the sandalwood beads around the woman’s neck. Treebark. Cinnamon.
“Of course I know who you are.”
Solonne is the closest South Africa has to a holy matriarx. She’s the head of the SurroTribe. Outwardly chilled and bohemian looking, she has a fierce moral imperative and a titanium spine. The discarded SurroSisters, who live together in a gated community, have to be beyond reproach in every way or they are stripped of their pins. She doesn’t allow them idle hands, either. If they’re between jobs they have a strict schedule of extra-murals to stick to, including, among others, horseback riding, coding, language acquisition, and archery.
Solonne looks like a new-age hippie but she’s marketing savvy enough to know how important brands are, and she won’t stand for anyone tarnishing hers.
“I’m here to help you,” she says.
“Help me? Why?”
The woman sighs through her nose, then steeples her fingers.
“Kate, you must know. Your son is in much danger.”
Chapter 34
Asylum
“She’s right,” comes a voice from behind Kate, and she jumps. Kekeletso. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Kate holds a fist to her heart. “Come in. Join us. Have you met Solonne?”
They say hello and exchange tight smiles. Keke grabs a chair. “I’d kill for a beer. Does this pad come with room service?”
“Kind of,” says Kate, and presses on a shiny cabinet door near her head. A tidy liquor cabinet is revealed.
“Magical,” says Keke. “Why have I never been in here before?”
Kate tries to slow her breathing. The whiteness of the panic room is balm to her ragged nerves. No shapes to jump out at her, no clouds of colour to billow over her brain. She opens a bottle of red without looking at the label and, with trembling hands, pours them each a glass. She expects Solonne to refuse it, ask for water, but instead she sticks her nose right into the glass, (Berry Bouquet), and takes a sip.
Kate checks the dashboard, inspects the footage of the interior of the house. The Assessor is sitting at the kitchen table, filling out what she guesses is a case report on his Tile. The Comforter has picked Betty/Barbara off the floor and is sitting with her on his lap, in the lounge, stroking her shivering head, and Bongi is tucking the twins into their cocoons, storybooks at the ready. Seth’s room is dark and empty. He’ll be home soon, then things will be back to normal. Solonne casts a glance at her. Well, not normal normal.
They sit in a triangle. Keke’s dusty cowboy boots, Kate’s old sneakers, Solonne’s gladiator sandals.
“Tell me everything. I want to know everything.”
The two women start talking at the same time, then Solonne gestures that Keke should go on.
“The court case I’ve been grinding. I didn’t want to tell you the details because I knew you’d find them upsetting – hell, I find them upsetting – but now I have to. Marko found something that you need to know.”
“I’m not some tragic fragile female figure, you know,” says Kate, flushing. “I don’t need to be protected.”
“You’re nothing close to fragile,” says Keke, “I know. But the last few years – since the thing, since Genesis – have been tough on you. Of course they have. It was a terrible thing you had to do.”
Kate closes her eyes, rubs her face.
“No o
ne blames you for not, I don’t know, for not keeping it together all the time.”
“Well, that’s nice to know.” She smells bitterness, like tar.
“A lesser person would be in straightjacket; would be in an asylum somewhere.”
“Right now that sounds very appealing,” says Kate. The Net knows she’s tempted by the idea of constant white walls and TranX and a view of a meadow. But then she thinks of the field of flowers, the farm to which the Ed Miller impersonator took her and Seth, tricked them into digging their own graves, and her anxiety shoots right up again. The inside of her mouth is powder dry. Her glass of wine remains untouched.
“I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want you to worry unnecessarily. The case had nothing to do with you, until – ”
“Until?”
“Well, until it did.”
“You should have told me immediately.”
“I am telling you immediately. When I couldn’t get hold of you, I got here as soon as I could.”
“And?”
“And, I didn’t want you to be on your own when you heard it.”
“You do think I’m weak. That I’ve become weak.”
“No,” says Keke, shaking her head. “But it’s about the kids. The twins. And they’re like your Kryptonite.”
Kate’s stomach simmers.
“Tell her about Lundy,” says Solonne. “Tell her about Nash.”
Keke gives Solonne a strange look. She puts down her wine glass and looks Kate in the eyes.
“The trial will be over in the next few days. The accused is a man named Mack Lundy, who’s going to be found guilty of killing his son – his toddler – in the bath.”
In the bath? The case reminds Kate of Blanco, the assassinated pianist, and she shudders. The Bride in the Bath. No wonder she’s hankering after an asylum with all these memories beating her up inside her head.
“Did he do it?” asks Kate.
“No,” say Keke and Solonne, at the same time.
“It was an accident?”
“Well – ” says Keke.
“No,” says Solonne, with decided finality. “It was certainly not an accident.”
“Maybe you should be telling the story,” says Keke.
Solonne shakes her head. “It’s better if Kate hears it from you.”
“So we did some research,” she says. “Well, by that I mean that I asked Marko to do some research. And it turns out that there’s a kind of phenomenon happening, this terrible thing – ”
“Yes?” says Kate.
“I’m sorry, Kitty. There’s this thing happening, under the Blanket, and we don’t know yet what’s causing it – ”
Solonne cuts in. “Toddlers are being targeted.”
Kate swallows hard. “What?”
“A wave of small children,” says Keke. “Kids the twins’ ages. Countrywide.”
“What?” says Kate. “That doesn’t make any sense. What do you mean?”
“Lundy swears it was an accident. Thinks his son must have slipped and hit his head.”
“Ha!” says Solonne, but she’s not laughing.
“The other one? Nash?”
“Helena Nash is serving time for the murder of her daughter, who she says fell down the stairs.”
“Not an accident?”
“Not an accident.”
“Am I missing something?”
“That’s exactly how I feel,” says Keke. “It doesn’t make sense. Yet.”
“So…this feeling I have, that they’re in danger. It’s true.”
“It’s never been more true,” says Solonne. “At least, for one of them.”
“Mally,” says Kate, because she just knows. She can feel it. Has always felt it.
“Yes,” says Solonne. “Mally.”
Kate stands up again, checks the dash, sees that the twins are safely ensconced in their HappyHammox while Sebongile reads to them. Checks the front door, which is armed by the two strapping men who escorted them from the restaurant. She can’t see their fingers, but imagines them resting gently on their respective triggers.
“Why?” asks Kate.
“Marko said… Marko worked out some algorithm. Found a pattern to the deaths. It’s the Genesis Generation they’re killing.”
“No,” says Kate. “Impossible.”
“Not killing,” says Solonne. “Killed. They’re all dead. Apart from – ”
“But no one knows who the printed babies are. Apart from the parents, I mean. All their identities were protected.”
“The Genesis Project knows.”
The mention of the GP kicks Kate in the stomach. “It’s not the Genesis Project,” she says. It can’t be. “They’re dead. They’re all dead, aren’t they?”
“Van der Heever is dead. Mouton. Marmalade. But they may have just been the tip of the iceberg. Who knows how many agents are still out there. All those people who evacuated the building before – ”
“No,” says Kate. “No. I can’t deal with this.” She tries to take a sip of wine but is surprised by the suddenly empty glass in her hand. She puts it on the table. There would be a list of the printed babies. Of course there would be a list.
“As far as I know, the Genesis Project has been dissolved. It became too dangerous for them to operate once the story of the clinic hit. They’ve gone underground. I don’t think we’ll be hearing from them any time soon.”
“Besides,” says Keke, “why would they kill the generation they fought so hard to create? The DNA-printed babies were their vision for the future.”
“A stalled vision,” says the matriarx.
“Then who?” says Kate. “Who would kill toddlers?”
“I have a theory,” says Solonne. “But you’re not going to like it.”
Chapter 35
The Last One
Solonne drains her glass, sets it on the table in front of her, and clasps her hands together. “I have reason to believe that the people behind the killings are the Resurrectors.”
Kate’s brain whirrs.
“I know it seems odd,” Solonne says, “especially as they’re always going on about the innocence of children – ”
“And gunning down doctors at family planning clinics,” interjects Keke.
“But we have … informers … that have intimated that it’s the Resurrectors that are behind the hits.”
“You have informers inside the Resurrectors?”
“It’s not something we discuss.”
“But you trust your source?”
Solonne shakes her head. “I don’t even know who the source is. This information comes trickling through what is a very shaky – and barbed – grapevine.”
“It does make sense though,” says Keke. “Remember how they reacted when the Genesis Generation story hit the news? They said that the printed babies were an abomination. An insult to God. And they seem to have no problem with killing children.”
Kate nods. “Look at what happened today. At the stadium. Half that audience were kids.”
“It was just a bomb threat. The Pavlov Locusts stayed green. No bomb. We don’t even know if the Resurrectors were behind it.”
“Of course they were behind it. It was all engineered to distract you.”
Kate stares at her. “A bomb threat that cleared an entire stadium…to distract me?”
“Well, it worked, didn’t it? You lost Mally.”
“What?” says Keke.
Kate, having started to relax in the company of the women, feels her terror rise again and wrap around her throat. “Surely not,” she says. “Surely they wouldn’t.”
She pictures the woman with the scarf leading Mally away, her dazzling fake smile outlined in red.
“But why go to such lengths, for a little boy?”
“Because it has to look random. It has to look like bad luck. It’s too controversial, otherwise. They can’t risk their members or crowdfunders turning away from them.”
“Who are they?” say
s Keke. “Who are the Resurrectors?”
“That’s what we need to find out.”
Kate stares at the empty bottle of wine. She can’t help but to think of the biblical water-into-wine story. It would be nice if the religious fundamentalists took something like that up, for their cause. Be kind to your neighbour, make wine, be a good samaritan. If they took those to heart, and applied the same extreme energy, instead of mowing innocent people down at clinics and going after little children the world would be a better place, for sure. In the mean time, she’s going to do anything – everything – it takes to keep Mally safe.
“They’re getting desperate,” says Solonne. “Our canary broke protocol to contact me when she found out they need the Genesis Generation gone by midnight tomorrow. They have some kind of – I don’t know – some prophecy, some deadline, or the world falls apart.”
Kate blinks at them, brain spinning. “Surely there are others. Other Genesis children, out there.”
Solonne’s lips turn into a small, hard line.
“No, dear,” she says quietly. “Not anymore. Mally is the last one.”
Kate storms out of the panic room. The Assessor jumps up, asks her what’s wrong. She ignores him and marches into the kids’ room, claps on the light.
“Wake up!” she shouts at them. “Wake up!”
Silver continues to snore. Mally frowns in his sleep.
“Wake up!” she yells again.
Sebongile jumps up. “What is it?” she asks, eyes wedged wide in alarm. “Ma?”
Kate goes to the hammox and shakes the twins by their shoulders. Slaps Mally softly on the cheek.
“Please,” says the nanny, hovering over her shoulder, “leave them. They’re sleeping. It’s been a long day. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Mally sits up, blinking blindly. Silver, cradling her cuddle-bunny, starts crying in her sleep.
“Wake up, guys. I need to speak to you. Get up.”
“Let it wait till the morning, Ma,” says Sebongile. “They’re exhausted.”
Kate ignores the nanny and hauls the children out of their cocoons. Parks their warm, sleepy bodies on top of one of their toy trunks.