by JT Lawrence
‘Alba did. A colleague—she had to suck fat out of housewives’ thighs for a year before she was allowed near their faces. It took her another year to uncover the black market stem cells. We also exposed the Ribber Ranch, XmonkeyD and Slimonade.’
Kirsten had heard about all of them over the last few years: their nasty secrets being revealed and those involved being strung out during the subsequent trials.
‘The thing about amazing runaway technology,’ says Seth, ‘is that it makes it easier to be evil. Government can’t legislate fast enough to keep up. Alba is the self-appointed, independent watch dog.’
They quicken their pace down the stairs.
‘So, there has always been talk about the Genesis Project. It’s seen as, like, the ultimate black clinic. Like a human version of Reptilians: a huge clandestine society that actually controls the world. They’re supposedly everywhere, especially in leadership positions.’
‘The Queen-is-a-lizard theory, but no, well, lizards.’
‘And local. It’s a South African group.’
‘So the Nancies are probably lizards. Or, whatever, non-lizards. You know what I mean.’
‘According to the rumours, there would be a few strategically placed Genesis Project members in key political positions.’
‘The president?’
‘I’ve always thought she looked a little reptilian.’
They get to the parking basement, and Keke’s motorbike is parked in its usual place. Kirsten opens the storage space at the back of the bike, takes out the inflatable helmet and key, and packs the insulin kit and Seth’s backpack. She offers Seth the helmet but he waves it away. She puts it on, wincing as it inflates, and fastens the strap underneath her chin.
‘But you don’t believe it? I thought you’d like the conspiracy element, given your predilection for paranoia.’
‘I don’t know. Before today, I thought that if it existed, we would have some kind of proof by now.’
‘Now we have the knife.’
In the corner of the parking basement, a car comes to life. Kirsten and Seth move quickly into the shadow of a pillar. It revs, its tyres squeal on the smooth concrete. It blasts warm air on them as it rushes past. Tinted windows. Kirsten releases her grip of Seth’s arm.
‘GP could mean anything,’ he says. ‘It could be from your dad’s local bar. GastroPub. Gin Party. Geriatric Pints.’
‘Getting Pissed.’
‘Gone Phishing.’
‘Green Phingers.’
‘Gay Pride?’
‘He wasn’t stylish enough.’
They get on Keke’s bike, and Kirsten starts the engine, revs. She accelerates gently, trying to get a feel for the machine thrumming between her thighs.
‘Except that I’ve seen that insignia before, that diamond.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think it’s the only lead we’ve got.’
Chapter 27
Cracked Cobalt
Johannesburg, 2021
There is a loud bang, as if someone had shunted a wheel, and the bike goes skidding, screeching off the road, and slams into a stationary 4X4. Spinning colours, heat and tar, tumbling, until they are still. Kirsten’s left arm sparks with pain. She touches it gingerly with her other hand. Blue gleam (Cracked Cobalt). Broken.
Seth isn’t wearing a helmet.
‘Oh my God,’ she says, trying to turn to see him, but he’s also pinned to the tar. ‘Oh my God. Seth? Seth?’ She doesn’t recognise the sound of her own voice. She tries to wriggle out from the bike, but only manages an inch. She looks around for help, but the street is dead. Seth groans, brings his hands up to his head.
‘Are you okay?’ she asks in the stranger’s high-pitched voice.
He doesn’t say anything for a while.
‘Depends on your definition of okay.’
Kirsten sighs loudly, lies down. ‘You can talk, which means you have a pulse. That’s something.’
He gets up, tries to find his balance, staggers on the spot for a while before realising Kirsten is trapped under the bike. He comes over to her side, releases her. Once she rolls clear, he lets the bike crash down again.
‘Something happened,’ he says, ‘to the bike. I heard it.’
He kneels to get a closer look, tries to spot any signs of sabotage, but he doesn’t know what he’s looking for. He always liked the idea of a bike, but liked the idea of being alive more.
‘Donorcycles,’ says Kirsten, wincing. ‘That’s what James says they call them in the ER.’
‘Cute,’ says Seth.
Using one hand, Kirsten deflates her helmet, opens the compartment at the back of the bike, retrieves their things. She checks Keke’s insulin pack. Three out of the five vials are broken.
‘Let’s try get a cab,’ she says, limping in the direction of the main road. The left leg of her jeans is hanging on at the knee by a thread, her calf is bloody and gravel-bejewelled. Her shorn head is bruised and dirty; she supports her injured arm as she walks.
‘You look like you’re straight off the set of Terminator 8,’ says Seth.
‘You don’t look too bad yourself,’ she says, gesturing at his newly bleeding forehead. There are sparks in her arm. She eases off her shirt, revealing a tank top, and ties it into a sling. Seth hands her his hoodie to wear.
‘Is your arm broken?’
‘I don’t know. Think so. Never broken an arm before.’
Seth can’t say the same.
‘The pain is blue. Different shades. Right now it’s Cyan Effervescence. I think that means broken.’
‘You’re one of those people,’ says Seth. ‘Those points-on-the-chicken people.’
She looks sideways at him.
‘Those people that taste shapes,’ he says.
‘Taste shapes, feel flavours, smell words, hear colours, see sound... yes. My wires are crossed. I have no walls between my senses.’
‘So that’s why they wanted you,’ he says.
‘Hey?’
‘All the kids that were abducted had some kind of talent, some aptitude, something that set them apart. Musical genius, edgy horticulturalist, uber-athlete, super-linguist...’
‘What’s yours?’ she asks. ‘What’s your super power?’
‘Maths.’
‘Yuck,’ Kirsten says. ‘Sorry for you. You must have drawn the short straw.’
‘Maths is the language of the universe.’
She looks at him with his fauxhawk, smudged eyes and eyebrow ring.
‘Seriously.’
There are no cabs, so they catch a communal taxi instead. The passengers inside move up quickly when they see the state of the new fares. Even the driver seems concerned. Kirsten pays him double to expedite the journey and he takes the cash with an upward nod. It’s a quiet trip. Kirsten can feel the glares cutting into her body, as if it isn’t lacerated enough. A few passengers are exchanged en route: they swap a sweating businessman for a woman with blond dreadlocks and a see-through blouse, a couple of floral aunties clutching an over-iced cake inch their way out and in jumps a metal-mouthed schoolgirl in a uniform (Dried Cornflower). Kirsten catches the girl staring at her, so she smiles, but the girl quickly looks away.
It takes them fifteen long minutes to reach Parkview and they jump out when they get to Tyrone Avenue. There seems to be some kind of afternoon street party going on: the road is strewn with streamers, and paper lanterns float above them on invisible wires. Small crowds are milling about, drinking craft beer and warm cider in dripping plastic tumblers. A food truck hands out hot crêpes and galettes. Warm air, acoustic tunes on the speakers, and the laughter of strangers. The cafés and restaurants spill their swaying customers out onto the pavements. Despite the sunshine, empty wine bottles act as candleholders, growing capes of white wax. As they pass the tables, someone says a toast and glasses are chinked.
‘This is it,’ says Seth, motioning to a florist with street art for signage that reads “Pollen&Pistils.” Inside a petite girl with
a beehive, her back turned, is wrapping a fresh arrangement of hybrid green arums (Neon Cream). They enter the shop, a bell jingles, and immediately her eyes shoot up to the back wall strip mirror, where she sees Seth’s reflection.
‘And in come the walking dead,’ she says, spinning around with a giant pair of scissors in her hands. She is wearing glam 1950s make-up: dramatic eyeliner, striking red lips, beauty spot on powder-pale skin.
‘Well,’ says Kirsten, ‘I know we’re not looking our very best.’
The different colours and fragrances in the small room swirl around and Kirsten has to blink through them and step slowly to make sure she doesn’t walk into anything. The back wall is a painted mural, graffiti-style, of an outdoor flower market, and this also affects her depth perception.
‘I didn’t mean that, honey,’ she says, ‘I’m talking about when You-Know-Who finds out you Called A Friend.’
‘I didn’t have a choice,’ says Seth.
The girl palm-weighs the scissors, purses her ruby lips.
‘Seriously,’ he says, ‘there’s a lot more going on than you know. The bugsweep you sent...’
Her wide eyes flicker.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, handing her the dead boy’s locket.
She looks down and wipes the blades of the scissors on her red-and-white damask apron, leaving sharp lines of bright green (Cut Grass) that cut across her torso.
‘Your current assignment?’ she asks.
‘We seem to have a bigger problem.’
She puts down the scissors, closes and locks the front door of the shop and turns the ‘closed’ sign to face the street. Automatic blinds shudder across the glass façade. Once the blinds are in place, she claps and they all disappear into darkness. She hits a button hidden from view under the counter, and a portion of the mural on the back wall starts rolling up.
They follow her down a tapering passage that leads to a security gate where she punches in a complicated code then has to stand on her toes to look into the small screen above the number pad. A red laser scans her retina and it clicks.
The door opens up into a large bleached-looking room with a few shoulder-height cubicles. Bright lights, chipboard ceiling boards and cheap wooden veneer desks: not what Kirsten expects a rebellious cult’s underground HQ to look like at all. A few people are dotted around, grinding quietly at their desks. They look up unseeingly as the three enter, then return to their screens. A few of them lift their chins at Seth.
They approach the back corner, where a typical office kitchen is attached: a basic sink, bar fridge, and coffee machine. A man springs up from a small Formica table tucked around the corner and Kirsten and Seth both jump.
‘Sorry!’ he says, ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’ He is a wiry man with a nervous demeanour and a pale moustache. ‘I shouldn’t have jumped up like that. I guess I’m a jumper. I think I’m just a little nervous. Very nervous. I wasn’t thinking. Sorry.’
The flower girl doesn’t make introductions and no one shakes hands.
‘I’m the Lab Man,’ he says, rubbing his palms on the back of his trousers. ‘I’m the one who will be looking at your samples.’ He speaks too quickly and finishes his sentences by putting his index finger to his lips, as if to stop himself from saying more. Seth takes the still-intact Fontus samples out of his bag and hands them over, along with Kirsten’s bottle of pills. The florist raises her eyebrows at the pills but doesn’t ask any questions.
‘There’s something else,’ says Seth. ‘I know it sounds insane, but I think I may have a chip, a microchip,’ he rubs the back of his head, ‘and I need it destroyed. We think it has some kind of tracker system...’
The man’s eyes grow wide; he holds the samples to his chest, as if to protect them.
The florist bangs shut a drawer and glares at Seth. ‘So not only do you bring a civilian in, but you send the target our fucking GPS co-ordinates?’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t have a choice. The chip is the only clue we have. They’ll find the shop, they won’t be able to get in here.’
She stalks out, head down, speed dialling.
‘So the chip,’ says the man, ‘the microchip, it’s still in your... actual head?’
As opposed to his non-actual head? His theoretical head?
‘Yes,’ says Seth. ‘You have a scalpel?’
The man gulps. ‘I can’t take it out. I don’t do blood. I faint when I see blood. I’m haemophobic. Once, in high school, I fainted on the stairs because there was this big poster with a cartoon vampire on it, a blood donation drive. It was this big friendly kind of looking vampire, kind of like a Nosferatu-looking vampire, not a contemporary kind of sparkly good-looking vampire, but friendly, with a big toothy smile, and fangs. He had a cartoon speech bubble and it said “I vant to suck your blood.” And I just fainted. There, on the stairs. Fainted, bam, just like that.’ Then he remembers his finger and puts it to his lips.
Seth rummages noisily through the drawers but finds nothing with which he’d be happy to cut open his head. He sighs, rubs his eyes. ‘Fine,’ he says to Kirsten. ‘Fine,’ he says again, more firmly, motioning to her bag.
She takes out the pocketknife.
‘Do you have any alcohol?’ she asks the Lab Man.
He shakes his head. As if on cue, the faux-florist comes back with a first aid kit, a half-empty bottle of whisky and some toasted sandwiches.
‘Thanks,’ says Seth, and she winks at him without smiling. Kirsten wolfs down half a sandwich, its gooey melted cheese golden lava on her tongue. It’s one of the best things she’s tasted in years. She feels a rolling brown spiral mow towards her, and just before it touches her it disappears. She gingerly washes her hands, uses hand sanitizer, and swabs the knife and the back of Seth’s head with the booze. Her injury slows her down. Seth sits at the table and the man turns away, busying himself with the lab kit he has brought with him.
With her good arm, Kirsten begins to touch Seth’s scalp. At first they both flinch at the feeling: it’s too intimate an act for strangers. But we’re not strangers, they both tell themselves. A slight sensation remains where they connect.
‘So, what made you get into biopunking?’ asks Kirsten. She’s trying to distract him and he feels like telling her to just get on with it; he’s not a child. He feels the cold blade against his skin.
‘In high school I saw a YouTube video of the LSD experiments they did on British soldiers in the early 60s. It’s hilarious. Ever see those?’
Kirsten is concentrating too much to answer but the Lab Man starts giggling.
‘I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it.’ He smiles, nodding at them, then immediately looks away. ‘LSD-25,’ he says. ‘Acid. Soldiers be trippin’.’
Seth smiles, despite himself. ‘They were considering using it as part of their chemical warfare, to incapacitate the enemy, so they tried it out on the men. They go from these upright marching men with machine guns to complete jokers. They can’t read the map and get lost even though the hill they need to find is right in front of them. They just walk around in circles and hose themselves. One guy climbs a tree to feed the birds.’
Kirsten finds the small thickening and quickly excises it, squeezing the chip out. Seth doesn’t flinch; his only movement is to spin his ring. It’s a much neater procedure than hers.
‘The troop commander eventually gives up, and falls on the floor laughing.’
After applying pressure to stem the bleeding, she sprays it and covers it with the extra plaster she brought with her. Kirsten rinses the chip under the tap then hands it to Seth, who stares at it.
I didn’t believe it until I saw mine, either.
‘It was so powerful. A simple drug changed men trained to kill into fools. Affectionate fools. Imagine the lives that could have been spared in our wars. It kind of hit me in the face. That’s what made me want to become a chemical engineer.’ He hands it over to the Lab Man, who hesitates before taking it.
He holds it up to the light, tap
s its glass capsule with his fingernail then holds it close to his eye, looking at it through a magnifying glass.
‘Very scientific methods,’ murmurs Seth in Kirsten’s ear, causing her to almost choke on the last bite of her sandwich. He takes a swig of whisky then offers it to her. She doesn’t wipe the mouth of the bottle: they are double-blood-siblings now.
The Lab Man puts the chip on the tiled floor and steps on it. It doesn’t break, so he steps on it again, this time putting more weight on it, and still it doesn’t break.
‘Very interesting,’ he says, causing Seth to snuffle. He turns around, unsure of why they are laughing, then turns back to the chip. ‘Superglass,’ he mumbles. ‘Super. Glass. Hmm.’
‘Why is that interesting?’ asks Kirsten.
‘Because superglass was only put on the market in 2019,’ says Seth.
‘Yet I’d guess that the chip itself,’ says the man, ‘was created in the early nineties. But tracking biochips were only invented in 2007, so this isn’t making sense. It’s not making sense at all.’
‘It must be, like, an early prototype,’ says Seth. ‘The guys who made it were obviously far ahead of the crowd, but didn’t share it. Technology wasn’t as open source back then.’
‘There is a code on here,’ the Lab Man says, ‘which could link back to the manufacturer.’ He scans in the miniature barcode on the chip and reads out the numbers. Kirsten knows the colours by heart now, recognises Seth’s numbers from the list.
‘GeniX, it says.’
The Lab Man hands the chip back to Seth.
‘Excuse me,’ Seth says, holding up the chip, ‘I need to go to the little boys’ room.’ Within a moment of him leaving, they hear the gush of water through pipes in the wall. Good riddance.
Seth comes back, and the flower girl sidles in.
‘I’ve evacuated the office, and we now have security outside. Hopefully they’ll be able to stop anyone from coming in.’
She gives Seth a hard look, and there’s something close to an apology in his eyes.
‘I’ll let you know the results as they come in,’ she says, stepping aside so that they can leave. They nod at the Lab Man and make their way outside, where there are still many noon-drunk creeps wandering around on the chunky pavements, enjoying the music and the open air. Seth and Kirsten survey the faces of the people around them. A man leaning against a broken algaetree streetlight acknowledges them with the slightest movement of his head. Kirsten hopes he is the security post.