He relaxed, as much as he ever did, and kept going up.
*
As soon as he went past the second basement level, housing the less-than-executive car park and bowels of building services, every light on the panel went dead. For a moment Callan thought it had all gone wrong, and waited for the lift to shudder to a halt between floors, and demands for identity and explanation to crackle through its inbuilt comlink. But it kept going, smooth and swift, and he barely noticed that the ride had ended before the doors slid silently back.
He stepped cautiously out of the lift, and into a dimly lit space. It brightened in response to his movement and he saw a small lobby, undecorated and desolate. Corridors branched away from him, all empty as far as he could see, all silent as far as he could hear. He dared not call out.
Herran had had no idea where else Rhys might have gone down here, but he had known roughly where the tablet was located. Callan spotted a door that looked about right, only a few steps away. He edged towards it, had his hand on the touchpanel ready to slide it back, when another right hand came down on top of his. Immensely strong fingers wrapped around his mouth from the left, clamping it shut.
Rhys’ voice hissed in his ear. ‘Cal, what are you doing here?’
He could neither answer, nor even move. The slim body that had him pinned against the wall, that had been pliant and warm in his arms the night before, might have been made out of steel. Rhys whispered, ‘Shh, no noise.’ The fingers on his hand and mouth relaxed and that unyielding body stepped back, releasing him.
Callan turned around. ‘I’m looking for you.’ He could barely speak for the hammering of his heart. ‘Shit, Rhys!’
‘Sorry. Did I scare you? Oh honey, I’m sorry.’ He looked mortified, but the tension was still in him, his eyes flickering from side to side, along the corridors, across to the lifts, back to Callan’s face. ‘I didn’t want to risk you shouting, I wasn’t certain yet if you were on your own … but you are, aren’t you? How did you get here? Why are you looking for me?’
‘Because you need to get out of here. This genestock business is blowing up, Rhys. Herran’s got what you need, he’s got the datastream and he got me down here, but we need to go. Grab your tablet, come on.’ He stabbed at the call button. It lit up, and stayed lit, and his heart sank. The doors did not open. The lift was gone.
Rhys had not moved. ‘We can’t.’
‘What do you mean we can’t? You got what you came for. These people are killers, Rhys. If they find us—’
‘How do you even know all this? I didn’t want you involved! Herran promised he wouldn’t tell you I was here, and I didn’t even tell him everything …’
‘He didn’t. It’s complicated. I’ll explain on the way.’
‘There’s someone here. We can’t leave her.’
Callan spun round and stared at him. ‘What?’
Rhys held out a hand. ‘There’s only us and her down here, and I don’t think she can hear us. But we can’t leave her. Come on. I’ll show you.’
The fingers that wrapped around his and tugged him along were gentle again, though he could feel the suppressed power in them now, like a river in spate, dammed but barely held back. And more: there was a tremor in the hand he was holding, faint but constant, a distant earthquake deep inside the muscle. Callan swallowed.
‘Rhys – Rhys, sweetheart. You’re not very well, are you?’
‘I’m fine.’ Callan could hear the lie in his voice. ‘I’m a hell of a lot better than she is.’
*
It was a bit late in the day, Zavcka Klist thought with annoyance, for Dunmore to get the fidgets.
The stolid security chief had actually looked surprised when Khan showed him into the office, and as she gave him a brusque synopsis of her conversation with Mikal Varsi, his unease appeared only to grow.
‘I take it, ma’am,’ he said when she paused for breath, ‘that you’re not in any doubt about this proposal?’
‘Are you joking, Dunmore? I have huge doubts about it. Norms wanting to have gem babies – the whole notion is farcical.’
‘But – I’m sorry, I got the impression you believed him.’
‘The fact that the idea is idiotic doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe it. He’s looking for a way in.’
‘Or pretending to.’
‘Or pretending to. But why would he? Why tip us off to how much they know if he and the wife aren’t trying to work an angle for themselves?’
Dunmore shot another glance at the door, as though he had somewhere better to be, before he looked back at her.
‘I’ve met a lot of cops in my time, ma’am. You can usually tell the ones that are inclined to bend.’
‘That wasn’t your impression of Sharon Varsi?’
‘No, it wasn’t.’
‘Maybe he talked her into it. The problem’s got to be with him, after all … if they really have a problem … or maybe …’ She trailed off, frowning.
‘Maybe he just wanted you to think you can trust them.’
‘What would that get him?’
‘It might get you to make a mistake. To feel more secure than the situation warrants.’
‘You’re the one who said there was no immediate danger … what is the matter with you, Dunmore?’ as he appeared almost to edge towards the door.
To her amazement, he responded with a question of his own. ‘Ma’am, have you instructed any of the below-stairs staff to return? In light of your conversation with Mikal Varsi, maybe?’
‘No, of course not. I did think you were right and we needn’t have moved quite so quickly, but no point slowing things down now. Why?’
He explained about the lift. ‘I thought perhaps you’d gone down yourself, to check on the surrogate. It’s probably nothing … an override from maintenance, bringing it down for servicing …’
‘Isn’t that one of your people?’
‘Yes, ma’am, he is. And he hasn’t messaged me the way he should if he was taking it out of service.’ He tapped at his earset for emphasis. ‘It’s probably just a glitch in the building control systems, nothing to do with any of this. There was another one half an hour or so ago, it partially activated the fire safety lockdown on the service floor for a few minutes. Maybe it’s related, but …’
‘But you had better go and check, Dunmore. Now.’
*
A couple of miles away Aryel Morningstar once again climbed the stairs that led to the roof of Maryam House, speaking low and fast into her earset as she went. Events were moving swiftly now, with more in play than even she had anticipated, and though much remained uncertain the risks to Rhys were clear. By now they might be clear even to him, and she quickened her step as she issued final instructions.
Once again the stakes were higher than she had imagined, but at least this time she had learned that early. At least this time there was something she could do about it.
And this time, my weapons are not so crude.
She slowed for a heartbeat as she passed beneath the apple trees. There, the stool where she had waited for Eli; waited to confess, be judged and found wanting. Here, the spot he had stood and then sat to listen, to witness but not to blame; and in that gentle absolution, opened up a world.
The past was indeed another country, full of peril and doubt; and she had been moving so fast for so long she had failed to notice how far she had left it behind.
Now she strode for the lip of the roof, fingers reaching down automatically to check that her tablet was secure in its squeeze-pocket on her thigh. The memory came to her of Zavcka Klist, high in her tower, boasting about how such physical interactions could become obsolete. Think it on, think it off. Work on the fly.
Maybe that too. But that’s not all, is it, Zavcka? I know what you want now. I know almost all of it.
I wonder what I would have done, had I been you. Would I have been tempted?
The thought made her pause for a moment, just a moment, one foot up on the coping, wings
rising to catch the wind. Such a prize, a thing sought and yearned for, a thing killed and conquered for. A gift beyond price. She looked down the long drop between buildings to the ground below, a narrowing, darkening tunnel with death at the end, and considered the question.
Her story is not mine. I know what I am. My gift is enough.
And leapt.
EPIPHANY
She stands on the lip of the gorge that bars her way and finally knows despair. The torrent of water that carved it plunges down, down, down, pulling her gaze with it and her body off-balance. She totters, exhausted and awkward, and almost loses her footing on the mist-slicked turf. Instinct flings her arms and her other limbs wide, a frantic flapping to haul herself upright, and the torn, soot-blackened blanket is flung free to twist and billow lazily into the white churn. She is exposed now as well as trapped, but there is little logic any more in concealment. The pursuit is too close for another path or another plan. In her mind’s eye she sees what is behind her, and with eyes the colour of sky she looks at what is before, and the choice seems less an outcome than a method.
It comes to her then, whispering on a wind through the trees: a sigh softer than the grass beneath her trembling feet, louder than the roar of the water. It is seductive and majestic and insistent, and it catches her and holds her fast. There are shouts in the forest now, and the distant scream of a helicopter wheeling to the hunt, but she no longer hears them. She is listening too hard to something else, something below and above and beyond these distractions.
It is barely a pattern but almost a melody, and it murmurs a truth that she feels in the roots of her soul. She is not instructed so much as reminded, revealed to herself. The song that is not a song pounds through her veins now, like fire and ice and the wind between stars, and in this newest of creatures under the sun there blooms a knowledge older than time. There is chaos in it, and order, purpose and madness and a pulsing certainty. The song that is not a song sings to her the language of flight.
‘I understand,’ she whispers, and leans forward, and falls free.
29
Callan stood at the foot of the bed, his shock at the sight of the pregnant, unconscious girl overcome for the moment by a greater worry as he watched Rhys fussing around her, checking monitors and intravenous supplies, mumbling almost inaudibly to himself about foetal heart rates and blood oxygen levels. It seemed the barely discernible tremor of just a few minutes before was becoming rapidly worse, fuelling his restless, nervous, constant movement.
‘We need to get back to the others,’ he tried again. ‘Eli and Herran are upstairs waiting for news, Aryel’s desperate to know that you’re all right … once we get out of here we can send paramedics and police to take care of her …’
‘Can’t leave,’ Rhys muttered. ‘Look at her, look at her, look what they did to her, and then they just left her here. She’s all alone, Cal, look. Look at what they did.’
‘I see, sweetheart, I see her. I see what they did. We need to send people who can take care of her properly, who can make sure she’s safe.’
‘I’ll keep her safe. She’s all alone, look, they left her, they left her all alone. We can’t leave her alone.’
‘We’re not going to abandon her, of course we’re not. But she’s stable, Rhys, you said so yourself. Whatever’s wrong with her, she’s not getting any worse lying there. But you are, sweetie, you’re falling ill. You know you are. We need to get you out of here.’
‘What if they come back? They might come back. They might hurt her. Or – or take her away.’
‘Rhys, please, I know your head isn’t feeling too clear right now, but try and think. Think it through with me.’ Callan drew a deep breath, thinking it through himself, trying to express it in a way that Rhys’ fracturing intellect could grasp. ‘Whoever left her here went to a lot of trouble to set up the life support so her condition wouldn’t deteriorate while they were gone. They wouldn’t have done all that if they were going to come back and do her harm.’
Rhys had stopped beside the bed, bending forward a little with his hands held in a painful pose up against his chest, fists spasmodically clenching and unclenching. Though he was staring fixedly at the girl, his head was tipped towards Callan. There was a frown of intense concentration on his face, and for the first time since he had heard his lover’s voice out by the lifts, Callan felt a tiny surge of relief.
He was listening, and Callan realised that he was trying, trying hard to focus and to think.
‘She can’t walk,’ he went on, keeping his voice low and even.
Stay with me, Rhys.
‘They’d need a medical transport to move her. That means transferring the life support to a mobile unit, and that takes time. There’s no way anyone could get her out of here in this condition faster than we can get out and get help.’ He had an idea, palmed his tablet, and aimed it at the still figure on the bed. ‘Sharon’s not going to need to wait for a warrant once she knows there’s a comatose gem surrogate locked away in the basement. She’ll be down here with an ambulance crew and half the Met in ten minutes flat. And the moment we get to where there’s a signal, I can send her proof.’ He waved the tablet at Rhys. ‘But we need a signal. I can’t get onstream from here.’
‘I can.’ He came towards Callan, his gait strange and shuffling, hands extended for the tablet. ‘I’ll get you onstream.’
‘What? How?’
‘Relays,’ Rhys said. He spoke quietly, and appeared to be trying to mimic Callan’s calm, methodical tone; but with a great deal more effort. ‘Same way mine is talking to Herran. Need to give yours access.’ With the clearer speech had come a sharp drop in coordination, and he practically clawed the tablet out of Callan’s grasp. ‘Call from here. Won’t have to leave her.’ He stabbed at it awkwardly.
‘Rhys.’
‘I can hold it together,’ he whispered, but Callan could hear the strain in his voice, and this close he could see the tics and tremors that chased themselves across his face and hands, like insects swarming just beneath the surface of the skin.
*
When the lift deposited Dunmore in the drab little lobby of subbasement four, his first thought was that nothing whatever seemed amiss. The lights were reassuringly dim until he stepped into their radius, and the place was silent as a tomb. He sighed, and relaxed his grip on the hard, comforting handle of the gun. Check the surrogate first, then the rest of the floor; report to Herself, and go lean on his plant in maintenance to find an explanation. These glitches, if that’s what they were, could not be allowed to happen again.
The cheeky sod had already had the nerve to suggest he might have imagined the ghost-passage of the lift. Dunmore had given him a right earful for that, but in truth he was beginning to wonder himself.
He was already half a stride past the server closet when he noticed something, a wrongness that tugged at the edge of his vision and brought him back around.
There was a gap between the edge of the door and the jamb, a line of darkness no wider than the thickness of his palm; as though the release had been pressed and then pressed again quickly, before the door could slide completely open. Or closed. Could it have been left like that earlier, in the rush to evacuate, to get to the new premises and prepare them for the night-time transfer of surrogate, supplies and equipment? But none of the staff on duty this morning were responsible for the lab’s datastream, they would have had no business in there. He pressed the release himself, and the door slid back.
The lights came on. What they illuminated this time brought him up short. A tablet sat next to the server, its bright yellow memtab connector flashing slowly; and the gun was tight in his hand again, as a cold, still alertness descended. No glitch, this. And was that a murmur of sound now, deeper in the bowels of the building? He listened, but if it had been there it was gone.
He moved over to the tablet, and swiped the blank screen awake. A complex, shifting design filled it, a morphing web of colours and shapes. Whoever had got i
n here was using a pattern password, and he was taken aback for a moment. Those were generally the province of data geeks, not cops or corporate rivals. He would have to scrawl a sigil across it, connecting points within the slip-sliding hues and geometries in just the right order and at just the right instant to gain access. Impossible. He scribbled a finger experimentally over the screen. It flared bright white for a microsecond, washing out the wriggling pattern; then it came back up again, now even more complicated, and moving faster than before.
Dunmore did not try again. Instead he hooked his fingers under the connector, and tugged. It came away, and he slid the tablet inside his jacket. It would take time to destroy it properly, and Herself might want to have someone take a look before he did so. No telling what else might be on there.
He stuck his head out of the door, listening. Now he was sure he heard something. Voices, so more than one; maybe many more, but waiting would not improve the odds. He held the gun in both hands like an old friend, and went to find them.
*
Two hundred feet above his head, Eli sat with Herran in the dead zone of the lounge, pretending to work on his own tablet while the little gem rocked and tapped and swiped. Sevi and the others had been perfectly accepting of his explanation that Herran was in fact a little stressed and in need of a longer break and some refreshment, which Callan had gone to fetch. But as the minutes ticked by without his return, Eli began to wonder how long it would take before one of them came out to ask if he had got lost on the way to the canteen; or worse yet, put a call in upstairs to report the absence. He was trying to work out a way to forestall this when a touch on the arm made him jump almost out of his skin. Herran, who never ever touched anyone except for the brief, ritualised handclasp at greeting, had reached out and poked him.
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