They shut the door, leaving her alone in the kitchen.
It took Chloe only a moment to locate the street in the photograph, it wasn’t too far. There was a notepad with a pen beside the terminal and she sketched the route. Then she looked for Miss Kepple’s number in the call history and rang it.
‘What can I do for you Mrs Vo—Chloe!’
‘Sapphire.’
‘Thank god, did your aunt get you to ring?’
‘She would have told me not to and I don’t want to give her any reason to trust you.’ Chloe frowned as she spotted the bruises on her ex-teacher’s neck.
‘But you can trust me.’
Chloe shook her head. ‘I doubt it but we’ll see.’
‘I’ll do anything for you, Chloe, and never ask anything in return.’
‘Find out where Utopia Genetics is hiding Melinda Vogler and the other girls.’
‘How am I supposed to do that?’
‘Not my problem, Sapphire.’ Chloe did not fail to notice that Miss Kepple did not even blink at the idea it was Utopia. She must already know.
‘If I do?’
‘Send a message here.’
‘I’ll try. Thank you.’
Chloe reached for the switch.
‘Wait.’
‘What?’
‘I—I really do love you.’
‘I’m sorry, Sapphire, that will always be a one-way street.’
She disconnected.
She was ready to leave but when her aunt suggested she stay the night—and she couldn’t think of any good reason not—she allowed herself to be put into Melinda’s bed. Where she had often ended up when she slept over. The smell of her friend gave her comfort as she drifted off.
Chapter 16
Mercedes
‘Until the new Purity representative is appointed to the board the information I can get is limited,’ said Xec.
‘There must be other sources.’
‘I have not developed any new ones since Paul Banner came on board.’
‘What about your old ones?’
‘They’re old; it will take some time to re-establish them, even assuming they still exist and are able to come up with information.’
‘I need to know what’s happening!’
‘Then perhaps you shouldn’t have had Banner killed.’
‘Are you criticising me?’
‘And if I am?’
Mercedes stopped. She hated arguing with Xec, especially when there was no specific target. Nothing she could look at or shout at that was specifically him. The fact that he was a disembodied voice allowed her to tolerate him in her private quarters rather than feel she was being spied on.
‘Have you got anything at all?’
‘Something and nothing.’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘What have you got?’
She went back into the kitchen and refilled her drink.
‘A freak that is assumed to have been Chloe Dark was in Chorlton yesterday evening, heading in the direction of Didsbury.’
Mercedes shrugged. ‘A sighting like that is of no significance.’
‘Not on its own, but then we come to the nothing.’
‘Stop talking in riddles,’ she said and took another mouthful of her gin.
‘The Purity team staking out the Darks’ house was disturbed twice. The first time they headed towards Chorlton in their vehicle—’
‘I thought you couldn’t track Purity.’
‘I can’t, but their vehicles still have to interact with the traffic system. I can get information on those interactions.’
Mercedes nodded. ‘And the second time?’
‘This one’s trickier. Someone with a police-coded riffy entered the Dark household while the Purity team were gone, but they returned before he or she had vacated the building. A short time later there were reports of weapon fire in the vicinity of the Darks’ house and the police riffy left at a normal pace while that was happening.’
Mercedes stared at the glass-fronted cooker. She could see her feet in the reflection.
‘What are you thinking then? Chloe Dark went home?’
‘Perhaps.’
Mercedes slipped off the chair and wandered into the main room.
‘I feel like I’ve been blinded,’ she said. ‘Show me the parents.’
‘Mercedes?’
‘The parents. Chloe’s parents, all the other girls, display their parents.’
Moments later every screen in the room lit up. The images of Amanda and Michael Dark, Mary and Geoffrey Vogler and four others faded one into the other.
She remembered them all. They were older but it was less than twenty years, they had not changed that much, just more lines of worry and some grey in the hair of some. Just like her.
She went to the main screen and touched it as the massive images moved one to the next. These people had trusted her and she had betrayed them. But Dr Newman had betrayed them first. Why would Chloe Dark go home? Why does anyone want to go home?
Sometimes there was no home to go to.
‘Get my car.’
‘You’re going out?’
‘I’m feeling trapped, need to get my bearings.’
‘Where?’
‘I’ll tell you on the way.’
Chapter 17
Yates
Ria’s message had been terse but insistent, so he waited in the canteen. Every time he heard the sound of the lift doors opening he glanced up. Finally it was her and he smiled. She looked good. She always looked good.
She waved and headed to get her food. He sat down impatiently. They had to go through with this pretence to protect Ria if nothing else, because she was taking all the risks.
When she finally came to sit down he went through the motions of being a loving boyfriend again. They hadn’t been together for a few days and he really missed her in bed. She insisted she had to do the cloak and dagger work at night when most of the other staff were not in the office.
‘Hello, darling,’ she said and grinned.
‘What have you got?’
‘I chose the lamb stew with roast potatoes. Do you think the apple tart would be good for dessert?’
‘That wasn’t what I meant, you cow.’
‘What does that make you?’
‘A horny bull.’
She grinned and picked up her knife and fork. She jabbed the blade toward his untouched meal. ‘Thanks for waiting for me, sweetheart, but you can start now I’m here.’
‘Just tell me what you’ve got.’
‘Saucy boy. You know everything I’ve got. You’ve studied it in great detail.’ She speared a roast potato with her fork.
‘For fuck’s sake, Ria.’
‘I’d love to darling, but not in public,’ she said. ‘Though I’m up for that when the weather gets warmer, if you are.’
He sat back defeated.
She glanced up at him. ‘We’re waiting for your boss.’
‘He’s coming?’
‘I thought it’d be easier to tell you both at the same time.’
‘Fine.’
He picked up his own utensils and dug into the unappetising food. Once again Ria was eating it as if it was a gourmet meal. They had almost finished when Mitchell made an appearance. He fetched his own tray of food and came over. Nobody would be surprised if Mitchell interrupted the love-birds’ tête-à-tête.
‘Sir,’ said Yates by way of acknowledgement as he sat down.
‘Yates, Miss MacDonald,’ he said and immediately started in on his food.
Yates looked from one to the other. ‘Is that it? Are we just going to eat at each other? Not actually talk?’
‘Oh wait,’ said Mitchell. ‘I forgot something.’ He reached into his coat and pulled out a paper bag. He placed it on the table between them and Yates caught sight of a small tablet computer inside.
‘Where the hell did you get that?’
‘Requisitioned it.’
‘And they let you have on
e?’
‘I may have implied that Special Agent Graham insisted.’ He pressed the button to switch the tablet on. ‘I thought I’d let the fourth member of our little conspiracy join the conversation.’
‘Are we all assembled, DI Mitchell?’
‘The wirehead?’ said Yates trying to control his outburst.
‘I have been party to, and have expedited, several aspects of this case,’ said Lament in a small tinny voice from inside the bag. ‘Hello, Miss MacDonald. I hope you are well; unfortunately I am stuck in here.’
‘Your wirehead?’ said Ria.
‘I am referred to by the name Lament.’
‘That’s a strange name.’
‘I believe the person who arranged my position in the police force had a sense of humour, though it’s difficult to follow why this would be funny. However, I have come to like its poetic connotations.’
‘Can we get on with this?’ said Yates.
‘Perhaps we should,’ said Mitchell. ‘But don’t forget to keep eating. At the moment your upset could be seen as being at me for sitting at your table. Don’t attract any more attention than that.’ He glanced at Ria. ‘Perhaps you would like to start?’
She grinned. ‘Did you know every genetic machine supplied by Utopia has a link back to their headquarters? Ostensibly for software updates, but they transfer every scan we do.’
‘Shit,’ said Yates. ‘We’re screwed.’
‘You’re such a worrier, Harry,’ she said and put her hand on his. ‘Obviously, since I know this, I have circumvented it. To be honest none of us in Forensics like having Utopia leaning over our shoulders. We don’t like the way they portray their science.’
‘Great.’
‘The point being, they don’t know the results of my scans.’
‘Which are?’
‘Let me tell it in my own way, Harry. Which are that apart from what you would expect to be the same between humans, the three samples you brought me were all different.’
‘So you found nothing?’
‘Oh no, that’s the point. They were all totally different.’
Yates glanced over her head as someone walked past. She went quiet and only started again when the woman had passed by—though she gave Harry a look and stared at the back of Ria’s head as she approached. This pretence of a permanent relationship could play havoc with his chances with other women, he thought.
‘They have DNA signatures that just don’t belong at all, but none of them are the same.’
Mitchell looked up from his food. ‘In the three samples you were looking at.’
‘Six. I took it upon myself to acquire items from Vanessa Cooper and Lucy Grainger. They also have the extra DNA, though there is nothing common between each of them.’
‘But not S.I.D?’ said Yates.
‘No, definitely not. None of the markers are there.’
Mitchell sighed. ‘Could it be a new strain?’
‘I don’t think it is.’
‘But you don’t know.’
Ria’s enthusiasm diminished. ‘No.’
‘One of those samples,’ said Mitchell, ‘comes from a perp who I initially thought was an infectee because he seemed different. I eventually came to the conclusion he wasn’t because it was three years ago I first ran into him.’
‘Dog?’ said Yates.
Mitchell nodded. ‘If he’d been S.I.D he’d be dead by now, but he’s just the same. Fast, clever, almost seems to have a sixth sense for trouble. Always slips through our fingers.’
‘He’s a little shit,’ said Yates.
‘That too.’
‘The shoe was from a house where it looks like the person in question—’
‘He’s male and still fairly young,’ said Ria.
‘How young?’
She shrugged. ‘Somewhere between fifteen and eighteen I’d say.’
‘Same age range as the girls,’ said Lament from the bag. ‘And the reported age estimate for Dog.’
‘Which means what?’ said Mitchell.
‘Someone’s manufacturing them?’ said Yates. ‘If they’re all different it’s not going to be a breeding program, and we know it’s not S.I.D, so it’s not accidental.’
‘Nobody’s doing that kind of work,’ said Ria, but even as she said it her voice lost its certainty.
‘But that somebody isn’t Utopia,’ said Yates. ‘They want these freaks but they don’t know where they’re going to pop up and they don’t know anything about Dog and the Lomax one.’
‘Purity?’ said Ria.
Yates shook his head. ‘Same problem, and they wouldn’t be doing it out in the open. They don’t need to.’
‘Not that I wouldn’t put it past them,’ said Mitchell. ‘Chloe Dark developed much faster than S.I.D would normally, which is another indicator. So we have someone creating these new freaks out in the world at random. I saw Dog with Chloe Dark, so we can assume they are getting together, perhaps with the one who created them. It’s not Utopia because they probably want the genetic technology that did this, and it’s not the Purity because that doesn’t make any sense.’
‘Whoever it is,’ said Yates, ‘will be trying to find the kidnapped girls as well. What a fucking mess.’
Ria squeezed his hand again. He looked up and she smiled. ‘Don’t worry, honey, I have complete confidence in you.’ She winked.
‘Anything to report, Lament?’
‘Nothing as solid as Miss MacDonald’s information, however, I have been trying to investigate the Utopia wirehead, Xec.’
‘Have you found anything?’
‘There have been some interesting transactions between him and some of my subsidiary systems.’
‘You’ve been compromised?’
‘No, these seem to have delayed the passage of information.’
‘What information?’
‘I can’t find out directly, the encryption is solid, but it is time-coincident with the original attempt on acquiring Chloe Dark.’
‘How do we know you’re not feeding information directly back to this other wirehead?’ said Yates.
‘Because that’s not how it works,’ said Lament. The words indicated irritation, but his tone remained flat.
‘How does it work then?’
‘Do you know anything about blockchains and encryption?’
‘No.’
‘I do,’ said Ria.
‘Then I would be happy to explain it to you, Miss MacDonald, but for DS Yates I’m afraid it will remain a closed book forever. Suffice to say that it all depends on trusted third parties, and Xec was able to engineer some changes that meant his commands were more trusted than mine at that low level. I have reorganised things a little.’
‘Will he notice the changes?’ asked Mitchell.
‘To him it will seem as if he can achieve the same effects,’ said Lament. ‘But I have added supplementary data routes that will bypass his control. I have also investigated other potentially vulnerable systems and put protections in place there as well.’
‘Fucking wireheads,’ said Yates.
‘Society depends on us.’
‘Really.’
‘Yes.’
‘All right, Yates, that’s enough,’ said Mitchell. ‘This doesn’t change anything. We’re policemen, our job is to locate and rescue the kidnapped girls. Everything else is just politics. Not our department.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Chapter 18
Chloe
The trip across to Stockport had been relatively incident free. She had learnt her lesson; rather than barrelling through populated areas she went round, and tried to stay out of sight the rest of the time.
Every now and then she would notice the riffy pylons, pull her hat tighter on her head and give them a wide berth. She assumed the hat must still be working since she wasn’t being pursued. It crossed her mind they might be tracking her. But to what end? No. The hat was working, but since it had no power she needed to keep her distance.
She was following the route of the railway line that headed south from Manchester and a train thundered across the massive brick-built viaduct. Down at this level was a tram terminus but that was a few streets over. Here, as in much of the rest of the city, the buildings dated back to when it was the industrial centre of the country. Huge empty warehouses still dominated and the place she was looking for was along an alley between two of them.
With a layer of snow covering everything and absorbing sound, the place was intensely quiet. It unnerved her. She had become so used to being able to use her enhanced acoustic sense. It worked directly around her, but no further.
Not that there was any sound inside the warehouses, so nothing was revealing its interior to her.
She could see the building at the end, but it was when she reached the corner of the left-hand warehouse that she realised that this was the place. She pulled out the photograph and held it up, comparing the image with reality.
It was almost as if she could see them—the Voglers and her parents—with the babies, Melinda and her. Every brick in the wall was identical, and the street sign; dirtier and with a frosting of snow, but it was the same sign. It made her feel strange to think she had been here just as the plague had started, before anyone thought there was a problem.
She shifted her wings under the coat. It was very awkward and if they grew any more she was going to have to cut holes in everything she wore. But not yet, she didn’t want to let them rule her.
The door of the clinic was not locked. There was no signage on the outside—though holes in the wall where it might have been screwed—but inside, in the foyer, there were posters about fertility treatments. The sound of her footsteps echoed and lit up the shapes of the rooms around her. All the windows were covered in a metal grid. They needed security then just as much as today.
This wasn’t a big place. She wandered through into an examination room where there was a padded chair with stirrups set apart. She wrinkled her nose in disgust as she imagined women sitting in that chair being examined. So embarrassing, but they wanted children enough to put up with it. If her mother hadn’t done it she wouldn’t have been here now to see the room.
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