The men dodge for cover, hiding behind trees. And then they return fire.
BANG BANG BANG BANG . . .
The forest fills with the sound of gunshots flying back and forth, hitting no one but emptying the forest of squawks and hoppers and bushtails.
Until suddenly the gunshots stop and the forest is eerily quiet.
‘They’re reloading,’ The Voice says. ‘Quick, let’s make a move.’ He aims his gun one more time – CRACK – and then we’re running again. As we run, I squizz over my shoulder and see the men are running again too, fiddling with their guns as they go. And as I watch, I see Markus stop, see him lift his hands, pointing his gun, aiming.
BANG.
It happens slowly and silently like in a clip on The Screen. The bullet fizzes through the air and thwacks high up into The Voice’s leg. And I’m powerless to do anything, except gawp as his leg gives way and he collapses to the ground.
Carina
In no time at all there’s blood everywhere, soaking into the leaves. Jesper leans over The Voice, looking like he’s in shock.
Bullets continue to fly past us.
‘Go. Save yourselves,’ The Voice says. ‘Don’t wait for me.’
I turn to see the four men all holding guns in front of them as they run towards us, firing off shots. The Voice is right. The only way is for me and Jesper to run, to try to save ourselves.
‘Come on, Jesper. We have to go.’
Jesper looks back at the men, then down at The Voice. He bends low, picks The Voice up and hoists him on to his shoulders. I stare, because it shouldn’t be possible for Jesper to lift him at all, let alone make it seem that easy.
‘Grab his bag,’ Jesper says to me.
I do as he says and then we run. And somehow Jesper runs just as smoothly as before, as though he’s carrying nothing heavier than a rucksack on his back. I have to sprint to keep up with him, and we run deeper and deeper into the forest.
Behind us, the men call out in English:
‘Stop, Jesper, it’s useless; there’s no way you can outrun us.’
And: ‘Stop. I’ll shoot.’
Another flurry of bullets flies through the forest, missing us. But it can only be a matter of time until one hits me or Jesper. We have to get away from them.
So I just concentrate on running, ignoring the sick feeling that’s building in my stomach.
Jesper
We run on and on, not stopping, not looking around. It isn’t until the sound of gunshots has stopped that I chance a squizz over my shoulder and I see they’re not even in sight.
We’ve lost them completely.
I can feel from the way The Voice is bleeding on me that he’s not healing. His wound needs attention. So when Carina spots a cluster of buildings, we hurry to the closest and take him inside. I bend to my knees, carefully lowering him to the floor. He groans and grimaces as I lie him down.
All the time, I feel Carina’s eyes on me. ‘How did you do that?’ she says, putting The Voice’s bag down next to him. ‘How did you run like that with a man on your back?’
Only right now there are more important things than how fast I can run, aren’t there?
The Voice tries to sit up.
‘What do we do? His leg’s not mending itself.’
Carina kneels beside me, gawping at the wound. ‘We have to stop the bleeding. We can use clothing to make a tourniquet.’
And I remember the way she tried to heal my wounds, ripping clothes into strips and tying them tight. I unbutton my shirt, which already has The Voice’s blood soaked into it at the shoulders anyway, and hand it to her. She gets to work, wrapping strips of material around The Voice’s thigh, above where the bullet hit him, where there’s a big gaping fleshy hole and the blood’s leaking out. And when she’s wrapped it around, she pulls it so tight that it looks like it’s gotta hurt. The Voice grits his teeth, breathing through the pain.
And then there’s a moment of stillness in the room, even if there isn’t one in my head. The Voice struggles to sit up, wincing in pain as he puts pressure on his leg. I search through my bag, find my bottle and offer him the last of my water. He nods as he takes the bottle and then he drinks deep.
‘Thank you, Jesper,’ he says. ‘You saved me. They’d have killed me if it wasn’t for you.’
I say nothing. But I’m thinking that maybe they’ve already done the killing, he just hasn’t died yet.
‘And I realise you’re owed an explanation,’ he says. ‘You need to know who you are.’
I gawp at him. I know who I am. I’m Jesper. My guts twist themselves around in knots inside my stomach.
‘We don’t have time,’ Carina says. ‘They’ll be coming after us . . .’
‘He deserves the truth,’ The Voice says.
I nod. ‘I want to hear this. They’re miles behind us.’
And while Carina raises her eyebrows, The Voice takes a deep breath which sounds like an effort and then speaks. ‘Until two weeks ago, you’d spent your whole life locked away in the Huber Corporation facility – a medical research base. Your official name was Boy 23. But the name by which I knew you and you knew yourself was Jesper Hausmann.’
I feel Carina’s impatient gawp, but I just concentrate on what The Voice is saying.
‘As far as you knew, you didn’t have parents,’ he goes on.
I nod.
‘Jesper, you need to know, you have a mother and a father.’
Something like a jolt of electricity zaps through my body. I don’t know what to say. I don’t believe it. Cos I don’t have a mum or dad, do I? I gawp at The Voice, trying to understand what he just said.
‘Your biological mother is called Hanne.’
Why is he saying this? It’s impossible. ‘I really have a mother?’
He nods slowly.
And The Voice doesn’t tell lies, does he? He looks after me, helps me, guides me. Only now he’s telling me that I have a mum and a dad. ‘Where is she then? Show me her.’
And that’s when his face changes, when he grimaces, and I’m not sure if it’s because of the pain or something else. ‘It isn’t as straightforward as that,’ he says, not meeting my eye. ‘Your mother was in Huber, just like you. She was a research subject too.’
‘Research subject?’ Carina says.
The Voice sighs again, and this time I’m sure it isn’t cos of the pain. At least not in his leg. He nods. ‘There’s no easy way to say this. Your mother isn’t the same as everyone else.’
‘What does that mean?’ Carina asks.
‘Twenty years ago something fell to Earth out in the forest, close to Fredelburg.’
Carina nods. ‘Yeah, everyone knows that. The meteorite which wiped out whole villages and towns and brought Marsh Flu.’
‘Yes and no, Carina,’ The Voice says. ‘What you say is what was reported, but the reality was somewhat different. There is a truth which has been kept secret.’
Carina raises a disbelieving eyebrow. ‘What?’
‘What landed in the forest was a craft. A star voyager from another planet. Carrying life forms. It caused the damage which you can still see in the forest, which was attributed to a meteorite.’
Carina shakes her head. ‘I’ve heard that story before,’ she says. ‘But it’s just a conspiracy theory.’
Blake shakes his head. ‘No, Carina, it’s true. Jesper’s mother and others like her were aboard. We named them the Sumchen.’
Carina says nothing.
‘Fourteen Sumchen survived the impact. Six male. Eight female,’ The Voice goes on. ‘Physically there was almost no difference between Sumchen and humans, certainly not at a glance.’
Carina’s expression becomes a knot of lines as she screws her face up. ‘Prove it.’
‘You have the proof in front of you, Carina,’ he says, pointing at me.
And Carina doesn’t answer that, does she?
‘The specimens were kept secret from the world. The story about the meteorite was put out to explain the
crash.’
Carina makes another noise like she doesn’t believe it.
‘The specimens were taken away for examination. And we didn’t realise it at the time, but one of the Sumchen women carried Marsh Flu – the original strain of it – to Earth. It didn’t affect her or the other Sumchen because their bodies had developed resistance to it over millions of years. But to the people of Earth, who’d never come into contact with the disease, it was contagious and deadly. People began to die and Bohemia, and then all of Europe, became unstable. Governments toppled. Others seized power.’
‘New Dawn,’ Carina says.
Blake nods. ‘Exactly. Neither New Dawn nor the Huber Corporation wished the world to know that they’d harboured the hosts of a deadly new disease. So the outbreak of Marsh Flu was put down to the meteorite people believed had landed in Fredelburg.’
And the look on Carina’s face has changed. She listens, nods. She believes what The Voice is saying.
‘New Dawn instructed Huber to work on a vaccine. And so we did, successfully. But when the vaccine was finished, New Dawn used it like a weapon – they spread panic amongst the population and then withheld the vaccine from their political opponents, strengthening their own position of power. It made New Dawn and Huber incredibly rich.’
The Voice pauses and closes his eyes for a second. He’s in pain, isn’t he? He’s dying.
‘The Huber Corporation were instructed by New Dawn to destroy all evidence of Sumchen and Marsh Flu once the vaccine was discovered. But that didn’t happen. Huber had observed that the Sumchen enjoyed many physical advantages over humans – they healed almost instantaneously when injured, and they were faster and stronger. So a programme of experimentation and breeding was introduced.’
And this is too much to take in.
‘The aim was to breed a being with the best traits of both species. A new hybrid. You were one of the first successes, Jesper.’
I get a tight feeling in my temples. My heart races.
‘I have all the documents about Jesper and his family in my briefcase – look for yourself.’
Carina steps forward, scoops up The Voice’s bag and opens it. She starts looking through the documents. As she reads, she shakes her head like she can’t believe what she’s seeing.
‘See?’ The Voice says. ‘It’s all there. Every shameful detail.’
And I can tell from the way Carina keeps studying the documents, from the way she doesn’t argue back, that it’s true.
But all I can think is that I have a mother and a father.
‘Do you have a picture? Of my mother?’
The Voice turns back to me and nods. ‘There are pictures of you and Hanne and your siblings too.’
‘Siblings?’
‘Two sisters and a brother.’
And again my insides are turning over and my temples are tightening, struggling to take all this in. Carina steps towards me, holds out a photograph. ‘Is this her?’
But even before The Voice has said a word, I know it is. Cos with one look I can tell she’s the woman who was sometimes in my dreams. No question.
‘I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘Why didn’t I know any of this? Why didn’t I meet my family?’
The Voice doesn’t answer. He looks down at the ground and grimaces in pain.
‘So if this is my mum, who is my dad?’
And at first he says nothing. But slowly he looks up at me, and before he’s even opened his mouth I know the answer.
‘I am. But I . . . we didn’t . . . I was your donor, Jesper. I’m your dad.’
And the world seems to spin around me.
Carina
How can any of this be true? There’s no such thing as alien life forms. But the evidence is in my hands in black and white. There are even pictures of Jesper and his mum and brothers and sisters. The only person that’s missing is his dad. The Voice.
The Voice grimaces in pain as he shifts his weight. ‘I can’t justify it,’ he says. ‘All I can do is explain.’
But then he doesn’t explain; he winces in pain again and adjusts the way he’s sitting up.
‘How could you let your son – Jesper – grow up in that place? Why didn’t you tell him who you were? Why didn’t you tell him who he was?’
He sighs. ‘It wasn’t as straightforward as that. I’m sorry.’
‘So why let Jesper go now?’ I say. ‘Why not before?’
‘It suddenly became obvious that the experiment involving Jesper had run its course. He was due to be decommissioned.’
‘Decommissioned?’
‘Destroyed. Killed. Shot.’
Jesper listens, silent.
‘Why?’ I ask.
‘One of his generation developed flu-like symptoms. At first we thought it was simply Marsh Flu. But blood tests revealed it was an entirely new strain of the disease, which proved resistant to treatment.’
I watch the expression on Jesper’s face change. He looks worried. I say nothing. I think of Sabine and what Father Liebling said to me after she died: that there might be a new strain of Marsh Flu.
‘The girl died and Huber realised they had a new disease on their hands. Their reaction was to do four things. One, develop a new vaccine. Two, spread the new disease out in the world, in the hope of creating a new pandemic and a clamour for a cure. Three, destroy any evidence that could trace the outbreak and spread of the new strain to Huber. Four, supply their new vaccine to the world and become even richer and more powerful. We’re currently at the second stage.’
The Voice grimaces as he adjusts his bandage. He needs a medic. He won’t survive without help.
‘So what are we going to do? How do we save ourselves?’ Jesper asks.
‘You have to get away from here,’ The Voice says. ‘I saved you, Jesper, and now you can save the world from the new strain before we have a pandemic. You must find the Spirit of Resistance in the Low Countries and hand the research I took from Huber to their scientists. In the back of the van there’s a freezer with a vaccine inside it. They’ll develop it and distribute the cure to everyone.’
‘How are we going to do that though?’ Jesper says. ‘New Dawn are looking for us. Carina’s picture was in the newspapers.’
The Voice breathes heavily for a second, and I think he must be letting a wave of pain wash over him. ‘There are new papers – identity cards, birth certificates. New passports. New names. Everything you could possibly need is in my briefcase.’
‘That won’t fool anyone though,’ I say. ‘They have my picture. Our faces are easily recognisable. Our papers won’t fool them if they can see who we are.’
The Voice adjusts how he’s sitting again. He closes his eyes for a second or two. ‘You need to change your appearances,’ he says. ‘In the van there are scissors. Cut your hair. There’s hair dye as well. There are lenses to change your eye colour. A change of clothes. Documents. Everything . . .’
But before he finishes his sentence, there’s a sound outside the building.
Jesper
There are voices and heavy footsteps. They’ve found us.
The three of us fall silent. I turn towards The Voice, hoping he’ll tell us what to do. Sure enough, he pushes himself up on his hands so he’s sitting up straighter. ‘You have to go,’ he says. ‘Take my case. All the papers and details of where to head when you reach the border are in there. Everything you need. Leave now. Take the van and get to safety.’
The voices outside grow louder, even though I can tell they’re trying to keep them hushed. But I’m frozen to the spot. Cos we can’t leave him, can we? He’s The Voice. He’s my dad. They’ll kill him for sure.
‘Take the case,’ he says. ‘Be quick. There isn’t time to delay.’
Carina and I look at each other.
‘But what about you?’ I say. ‘You’re coming too, aren’t you?’
He shakes his head. ‘Look at the state I’m in, Jesper. I’m dying. I’d slow you down.’
‘But
if you stay they’ll kill you.’
He shakes his head once more and picks his gun up from the floor. ‘I have this. The best chance we all have is if you leave me here. Now get going.’
And still I’m in two minds. I stay frozen to the spot.
‘Go,’ he urges. ‘Leave me here, Jesper. You have a job to do.’
‘He’s right, Jesper,’ Carina says. ‘It’s the only way. Come on.’
The footsteps get closer. I sense them at the front of the building. Carina gawps at me, and without saying a word we both know what we’re gonna do. We scoop up the case and the papers and my bag.
‘Good luck,’ The Voice says.
And then we race through the building to the back room, climb through an empty window and jump down, keeping low. We creep through bushes, in and out of the trees, getting away from the building, but turning and watching it with every step.
And all the time I’m thinking that we shouldn’t have just left The Voice there like that. I could have carried him on my shoulders, couldn’t I? We could’ve all been safe. I could’ve had a family.
But we can’t go back now. We creep through the forest, getting further away, escaping. And even when I feel the scroll vibrate in my pocket, I don’t stop, do I?
I hear shouting in the distance, coming from the building, and I know that they’ve found him.
Gunshots fill the air.
Carina
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
Four gunshots pierce the silence of the forest. We stop running, drop to our knees and scrabble around to face the building. I put my hand in my pocket. Two bullets. Not enough. My heart races.
‘I counted four gunshots,’ Jesper says. ‘There were four men. The Voice shot them.’
I say nothing. Those shots could have been fired by anyone. And I can see on Jesper’s face that he knows it too.
‘We should go back and get him out of there,’ Jesper says. ‘If he shot them all, we can take him with us. It doesn’t matter how slow we go if he’s shot them. There’ll be no one after us.’ He gets up as though he’s gonna run back there.
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