Regeneration

by Stephanie Saulter

  She had no comeback for that, and the quiet gravity of his manner made her uncertain, almost afraid. Without their usual banter, she felt adrift. As he was closing the door behind them, she said, “Look, I should’ve messaged you back; I just didn’t know what to say, or what to think . . .”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  “I know Sharon and Mikal are okay with Misha and Sural showing up in clips, because I’d checked with them when I’d done it before, but it never occurred to me I’d have to check with you—and I know I shouldn’t have assumed, and I’m really sorry about that, but it’s not like I did anything bad to Eve.” She dropped into a chair. “I just don’t understand why you would react like that. I felt like I didn’t even know who you were all of a sudden.”

  He sat down heavily, his face twisting in distress, and it struck her that if they’d both been just a little bit younger they’d probably have been in tears by now.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly, appalled at herself. “That’s really harsh. I didn’t mean . . .”

  “No,” he interrupted. He had his tablet in his hands and was flipping it end to end, looking at it and not at her, “that’s probably about right. I know you don’t understand; how could you?” He met her eyes, finally. “I need to explain, but before I can, I need to ask you to do something that’s going to make you even more pissed off with me. I’m sorry, Ag, I am so, so sorry, but this part isn’t up to me.”

  He swiped his tablet awake and turned it so she could read the screen. There was a message there, from his mother.

  Papa & I have decided OK, but only if you’re SURE. Check first. After that, we trust your judgment.

  “Sure of what?” she said, deeply puzzled. A chill ran down her spine, a sense of foreboding. “‘Check first’? What does that mean?”

  “It means I have to turn this off.” He touched his band. “And I have to ask you to turn yours off.” He pointed at her head.

  “You . . . what?” Agwé stared at him, aghast. “You want to read me before you explain yourself?”

  “If I’m going to tell you the whole truth then I have to, Ag. I’m sorry. I could make up an excuse that would be sort-of true, but I don’t want to do that. I don’t want you to be someone I have to hide things from. My parents like you a lot, otherwise it wouldn’t even be an option, and I already know I can trust you with anything, but this is—” He gestured helplessly at the tablet. “It’s this important.”

  “It’d better be.” She reached up, found the power stud on the band and tapped it off. Across from her Gabriel did the same. His eyes went a little unfocused, as though the Agwé he was now looking at occupied some other, more liminal space.

  After a few seconds she snapped, “Well? What are you waiting for?”

  “For you to be less angry—that’s all I’m getting right now.”

  She dropped her head into her hands, took several deep breaths and thought, This is Gabriel, and Bal and Gaela are good people, and they wouldn’t be doing this just to make me feel like shit.

  Across from her he chuckled softly and with relief. “No, we definitely wouldn’t.”

  She looked back up at him.

  “My sister Eve,” he said, “is adopted.”

  “I know that. You both are.”

  “Yes, and everyone knows my back story. But hers is secret. The cover story is mostly a lie, and very, very few people know the whole truth. Lapsa doesn’t, Pilan doesn’t. Eve doesn’t, for her own safety. We have to keep her from being widely seen, from being . . . publicized. When you meet her, you think she’s just a regular kid living a regular life, and my parents are doing everything they can to make sure it feels like that for her too, just like they did with me. But what you don’t see—and this is very different from what happened with me—is that she is being prevented from having any kind of profile, any visibility outside her immediate circle of school, friends, family. That’s why her image can’t appear on any streams, because someone might recognize her, and if they did—”

  He broke off, rubbing his hands over his drawn face and through his hair, pulling the band off and chucking it onto the table. “Well, maybe nothing would happen, but it’s not a risk we can ever take, not while she’s little.”

  “What do you mean, ‘recognize her’? Recognize her from where?”

  “From her original: the person who made her, who she’s made from.” He took a deep breath and looked her straight in the eye. “Eve,” he said, “my sister Eve is Zavcka Klist’s clone.”

  26

  Mikal was still waiting beneath the bridge when the message came through from Riveredge Primary. Sharon had told him to stay there until a forensics unit arrived, along with a police river patrol so they could get alongside the piers and take samples. He’d told her about the Environmental Management technicians now at work in Sinkat and suggested they be redirected to support the forensics team; they had a boat and they could examine the state of the sealant below the waterline as well. That had been half an hour ago.

  “Poor Fayole,” she was saying in his ear, her frustration at another shambolic response from EM barely hidden, “Lapsa’s just ripped into her at her as well. She’s at her wits’ end—they’re not showing it as a live job, but apparently it’s not unheard of for assignments to be informally escalated and then synced to the system later. She’s got everyone in that department running around trying to work out who sent them so they can work out who they are so they can be contacted. If I ran my division like that, I’d be sacked.”

  “Can’t you get Lapsa to—?” He heard the ping of her tablet over the earset just as his own went and felt a faint premonition as he swiped at his screen. “Oh fuck. Sharon—?” He heard her own sudden intake of breath.

  “You’ve got this—” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes.” He was already crossing the piazza at close to a run. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Do you have more?”

  He could hear her moving; she’d be gathering her things with one hand, tapping up more information with the other. “It’s not a drill,” she told him. “Emergency contact at the scene reports no sign of fire or smoke, but the building’s being evacuated and units are en route. Might be a false alarm.”

  “Might be.” He was on the riverwalk now, almost back at the channel that led into Sinkat Basin. A small launch was coming out, its engine a low roar, bow waves creaming away on either side as it curved into the river without slowing and headed off downstream at high speed. “Damn. So much for that idea.”

  “What?”

  “The EM techs just left Sinkat—I’m no boatman, but I’m pretty sure they’ve just violated all the marine safety regs, the way they tore out of there.”

  “I’ll add it to the list.”

  He heard a door slamming in his earset, followed by hurrying footsteps. He was across the channel himself now, off the footbridge and jogging along the quayside toward an alley that would take him away from the basin. Then he would be in the network of streets that led back toward the Squats and the school. His feet itched to move faster, but he knew that if he gave in to his fear and ran flat-out he would be winded before he was even halfway there.

  In his ear he could hear Sharon talking, not to him, her voice tightly controlled. “Danladi, I have to go, there’s a fire—a fire alert—at my children’s school. No, I don’t know if it’s serious. Tell Inspector Achebe he needs to get forensics to the bridge without delay. I’ll be available on ’set.”

  Zavcka Klist sat in the back of the private cab, watching the city slide by as she had done so many times before—many times, but not for a very long time; there had been no windows in the van that brought her home from prison just a few days ago. She knew there was a chance that this expedition would end with her returning there, so she savored the view and refused to allow herself any trepidation as she listened to the empty hum of the earset she had hastily slaved to her now unrestricted tablet. Flicking it to standby, she ran back through the conver
sation she had had and the instructions she had been given.

  For all his flaws, Patrick Crawford had not been wrong to assume that she had hiding places in the apartment about which the authorities knew nothing. From one she had retrieved a debit tab preloaded with enough cash to put the lie to her claim of having no ready spending money. Debit tabs might be a rarity in a stream economy where almost every transaction was linked to a credit account, but they were legal tender nonetheless. The cab driver’s surprise at the tall, regal blond woman in her elegant coat and rich silk scarf, strolling up to his stand instead of waiting to be collected from some luxurious hotel or stylish restaurant, was compounded when she snapped the tab to his meter and authorized it with a finger scan.

  “Don’t see these too much anymore,” he said.

  Zavcka smiled thinly and settled herself into the seat. “I imagine not.”

  “Where to?”

  “East. You know the area that used to be called the Squats? It has another name now, I believe.”

  The man snorted. “Yes, ma’am, I know the area. Riveredge Village,” he said, and pulled the vehicle out into traffic. “They rebranded it a few years ago. That’s where you’re going?” She could not see his face but he sounded doubtful. It was entirely possible, she thought, that he had never before taken a fare from this part of town to that one.

  “It’ll be somewhere around there, close to the river. I’ll have the exact location in a moment. And,” she added, “I’ll double your money if you get me there in twenty minutes.”

  “What—?”

  “You heard me,” she said, and felt the vehicle pick up speed as she pulled up Crawford’s comcode. He was stuttering and frightened, and reluctant to confirm anything until she told him she was less than half an hour away from the Riveredge quayside.

  “But . . . But how—? I never said—”

  “It was quite obvious,” she replied wearily. “Am I meeting you there, or somewhere nearby?”

  There was a sharp intake of breath, and then the rendezvous point was confirmed in awestruck tones. “Madam, I’ve spoken to my associate,” he added hesitantly. “She’s not at all comfortable with this turn of events.”

  So his traveling companion was a woman. Zavcka’s instinct for schemes and conspiracies told her that this would be the person in charge of the operation, the one running Fischer and Crawford and who knew how many others. And no, the unknown woman would not be at all pleased to discover that a wrench was being thrown into the works at this late and dangerous stage, no matter how she might feel about Zavcka herself.

  “But you are intelligent enough to rely on your own better judgment, Mr. Crawford,” she said soothingly. “And I’ll address her concerns personally when we meet. What did you say her name was?”

  “Oh,” he said, blindsided by the compliment, “Moira. Moira Charles.”

  “I’m sure Ms. Charles and I will quickly come to an understanding. Is my daughter with her?”

  “Not yet. Eve has been collected by her watcher, he’ll bring her to us.”

  “Eve,” she said, tasting the name. “Is she all right?”

  “She won’t have been harmed, madam—possibly just a mild sedative.”

  “Very good, Mr. Crawford. I’ll see you shortly.”

  Eve, she thought. Her name is Eve.

  I like it.

  The fire service had thrown up a cordon to keep the public from straying onto school grounds and the pupils from straying off them, and parents were piling up against the barrier, demanding to be allowed to get to their children. Fire officers tramped in and out through the front door, trailing equipment as they searched for any sign of what had triggered the alarms. Someone killed the screeching noise just as Gaela and Bal arrived, but the clamor of the kids corralled in the playground was almost as loud.

  Gaela leaned around the crowd of anxious adults, looked at the schoolhouse, and said to Bal, “Warm air coming out the front door, and it looks like another door is open at the side. Couple of leaks at the windows. No hot spots.”

  The patrol officer manning the barricade overheard and gestured the couple forward, looking suspicious. Terissa, standing beside him and checking parents off against children on the tablet she held, put out an elaborately tattooed hand to forestall any challenge. “They’re two more of ours, and believe me, she’d know: hyperspectral vision. So far they can’t work out what set off the alarms,” she said to Gaela, “so we’re sending the kids home so they can check the system as well as the building. Let me fetch Eve for you.”

  She was gone longer than Gaela and Bal had expected, long enough for a trickle of relieved parents to start departing with their children, and for Mikal to come panting up and be reassured that everything was okay.

  But the moment she saw Teri’s worried face hurrying back to them Gaela knew that it was not.

  “I can’t find her,” Teri said, her normally calm demeanor now distinctly ruffled. “I thought she might have snuck away from her class to go be with Misha, but she’s not there, though Sural is.” She looked at Mikal. “He was scared, but he’s fine now they’re together. But I can’t find Eve, so I thought maybe she’d slipped back here ahead of me, but she hasn’t.” She looked around despairingly, as though a small blond girl might suddenly materialize in front of them.

  Gaela felt unable to breathe. Beside her, Bal said, “Could she still be inside? You know what she’s like.”

  “She was in Mr. Yucel’s class and he says she left with everyone else; he’s certain she came outside with the others. And the firefighters have already checked the building . . .”

  Instructions were issued for it to be checked again, and they were all let in to help search through the crowd of children. Sural and Misha hung off Mikal, demanding to know where Eve was while he scanned the crowds from eight feet up. Bal and Gaela had quartered the playground calling her name, and by the time Sharon arrived a couple of minutes later, they knew for certain that the child had gone.

  “How,” Gaela heard herself gasping over and over again. “How? How?” She held on to Bal, who was oblivious to the fact that her nails were digging into his arm.

  Sharon rounded on Teri and Mr. Yucel, who were both ashen-faced. “Good question. Could she have left with another child? Are all the teachers accounted for?”

  “We’re all here,” said Teri, “and no, she wouldn’t have been allowed to go with anyone else—and anyway it was me checking them.” She thought. “I guess there were a couple of minutes while the kids were being evacuated but before the fire units or the police showed up when she could have slipped away.”

  “Did you see her in the playground at all?” Sharon asked Mr. Yucel, then looked down and said softly, “No, Suri, not now. This is serious.”

  “I . . . I don’t think so. I don’t remember seeing her there,” the teacher said desperately. “But it was bedlam; the children were running around—I wouldn’t have thought that Eve was the kind of child who would do that, just wander off.”

  “Maybe she went home?” offered the patrol officer.

  “Then we would have met her on the way,” Bal told him.

  Gaela whispered, “No, that’s not what happened.” She spun away, flicking at her earset to activate it.

  Sharon disengaged her children’s hands and pushed them gently back to Mikal. She looked over at the chief fire officer, who had come up to stand, grim-faced, at the edge of the group. “Any chance this alarm was a hack?”

  “There’s every chance,” he replied. “There’s no heat source in the building.”

  Sharon swore under her breath and activated her earset. Gaela ended her own call as Sharon talked steadily for close to a minute: issuing the missing-child alert, calling in search patrols, ordering up override scans of security vidcams. She listened to Sharon as though in a dream, feeling herself moving slow and heavy through a nightmare space.

  “We need to search,” she said as Sharon finished. “We can’t stay here.” She started headin
g for the gate, but Bal grabbed her.

  “No one else leaves,” Sharon was telling Teri. “We need to question the children and the teachers; they may have seen something.” She took hold of the patrol officer, spun him around, and pointed him at the crowd beyond the barrier. “Start with them: anyone who was already here when you arrived. She’s blond, with very dark eyes, eight years old, tall for her age. Wearing?” She looked at Bal and Gaela.

  “Bluish sweater, reddish pants,” said Bal.

  “Blue sweater, red pants. Go.”

  As the officer trotted off Sharon’s tablet starting pinging acknowledgments. She pulled it out, saying to Gaela, “Yes, we have to search, but we need a plan and we need to stay in touch. We should each take a direction but stay on ’set so as soon as we get any leads—” She stopped dead, staring at her screen.

  Bal was still holding Gaela’s arm but his other hand went up to his own earset for an incoming call. “We need you,” he began urgently. “Eve’s been—” And then he said, “No, listen—” and went quiet for a moment. And then he said, “What? She what?” And then, “No, she couldn’t have. Oh no—”

  Agwé’s reaction was all that Gabriel could have hoped for. He felt the bewilderment and vexation give way to incredulity, then curiosity and now waves of understanding and a staunchness of purpose that left him weak with relief. He’d had to explain it all, of course, fill in the details of what had happened, because she’d been much too young to be following the story herself; but now that she knew, she had instantly, without a moment’s hesitation, become one of Eve’s guardians and a fierce keeper of her secret: a member of the select, burdened few on whom Gabriel and his family could always rely.

  “Crap,” she said. “If I had something this monumental to worry about every day, I’d be flipped out permanently.”

  “We’re used to it, you know? We knew it would be this way from before she was even born. Mama and Papa were in the delivery room and I was waiting outside with Aryel and Eli, and I remember everybody being really eager, but also anxious and a bit sad. So many terrible things had happened so that she could exist. Rhys had only just gotten out of hospital and there was a lot of speculation about what would happen at the trial. The whole Klist story was the biggest thing on the streams. We were all thinking that we had to do right by this baby, that she mustn’t ever suffer or be made to feel bad about things she had nothing to do with. She had to be safe, she had to be allowed to live a normal, happy, healthy life. It was part of the commitment from the beginning.”