“I need to interview someone you just brought in…”
Lawson is officious and solicitous. He sets up an interview room and waits outside. Aminat isn’t quite sure what she will do, but keeps still so that she looks like she has a plan. The door opens and Alyssa walks in, eyes narrow, fists clenched, skin white from tension. Yet she says nothing.
“Mrs. Sutcliffe, my name is Aminat. I work for the government. Would you like to sit down?”
Alyssa, apart from her fury, is unremarkable, although nobody can look their best in a hospital gown. Brown hair, brown eyes, freckles, wound dressings on forearm, posture like she has never seen the inside of a gym.
“I’d rather stand.”
“As you wish. Can you tell me why you’re here?”
“I thought you would have read my file.”
“I have. I want your point of view.”
“I’ve not been feeling myself. My memory has been playing up. Other than that, I’m fantastic. Dizzy with pleasure.”
“Your husband says you think you’re someone else.”
“No, that… not exactly. I am not Alyssa.”
“But you answer to it?”
“It’ll do for now, until I can figure out what’s going on.”
“Where is Alyssa, then?”
“I do not know, but she is not here.” She tilts her head. “You are not a doctor.”
“No.”
“Why are you here?”
“To take you in for questioning.”
“‘Questioning.’”
“Yes, something came up in your blood tests—”
An alarm, the red lights flashing on Aminat’s glasses.
“BOSS!”
“Calm down, Olalekan. What is it?” Aminat stands.
“Incoming hostile. You are not alone.”
Chapter Fifteen
Jacques
Jack is late for his appointment with Dahun. He is conscious of the library opening at Atewo, which has been moved to a later time. But they will wait, and Dahun is important if expensive. Dahun stands by the statue of Yemaja, just outside the door, holding an envelope. Jack ushers him in and takes the envelope in one motion. Lora, his assistant, leans against the south wall, and Dahun sits down while Jack reads the costing.
“This is steep,” says Jack.
Dahun shrugs. “You can find someone cheaper, your worship. Take your chances.”
“I’m the mayor, not a judge.”
“Price stays the same.”
Dahun is a slim guy, and short, maybe five-six. He does have a stillness to him, so there’s that. He carries no weapons—security stripped them. Lora found him and Jack trusts her judgement.
“What can you do? What will you do?”
“Everything. My team will keep your mayoral highness and missis highness safe along with your entourage. We will go on excursions for you, we’ll advise on security, and do all of this in complete confidentiality. We will guarantee our work. You will be untouched.”
“Don’t you mean ‘untouchable’?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Okay.” Jack steeples his fingers. They smell of aloe vera from the last time he washed them. “I’ll tell you what. I need to visit Atewo. Come with me. I need to think on the way and I’ll let you know after the event.”
“Why? You can simply phone or text your decision.”
“Because I want to watch you. I like to know the people I hire.” He nods to Lora. “We’re leaving.”
At the library opening there’s a platform and podium, but Jack has to work his way through a crowd to get there. Lora feeds him information before each encounter. He, in turn, tries to get Lora to smile, but it doesn’t work. She is focused.
“… Her son was mauled by wild dogs and had to have a new testicle grown in a lab somewhere. Do not mention it, but say everything with your handshake and warm eyes. Also, nod after thirty seconds. She will nod back. Behind her is Tolani, big donor, daft as a whole flock of dodos, but a football genius. The scores from last night’s game were 3–0 in his team’s favour. Mention that.”
And so on, and so on.
It is darker than anticipated since the event is much later than scheduled. Hastily set-up spotlights radiate heat, but Jack does not sweat. He slips into autopilot and his body becomes a political machine. He needs his mind free to focus on the president. Lora had looked at him after the disastrous meeting, calm, knowing, certain that Jack had a plan. He did not, but she didn’t know that or believe him when he told her. Still. Six months to the election. He’ll think of something. Nobody would dare run against him. Dahun is always at touching distance, no matter how thick the crowd. Good.
The front rows are packed with children, which Jack aims for. Children are easier, and they don’t smell sweaty. He catches the warning glance two seconds before Carter Adewunmi crashes into his space. One of his biggest donors.
“Jack,” says Carter.
“Carter,” says Jack.
“I heard there will be elections.”
So soon? How the hell did he hear? Is the story out?
“A formality,” says Jack. “The president wants assurances. We’ve had elections before.”
“Yes, Jack, but you stood unopposed.”
“If a viable candidate—”
“I heard there will be one this time.”
“What?” What?
“Ahh, your face. I believe this is the first time I have ever seen you surprised.” Carter laughs. It reminds Jack of the braying of a donkey. Lora is on an intercept course, parting the crowd to get to them. Dahun is impassive—difficult to know if he heard the exchange. There are uniformed schoolchildren converging at the podium with a bouquet of flowers.
Jack lowers his voice, tries to sound nonchalant. “Do you know who it is?”
“I do not. Look, Jack, you’ve been good to me over these years, and I’ve been good to you. I like you, you know that, so please don’t be offended when I say I’ll be holding off my support and goodwill until after the elections. Good luck, and I’m sure you’ll win. You have my vote.” He pats Jack on the shoulder as he walks away, a hint of peppermint on his breath. Lora arrives too late, her eyebrows raised: What do you need from me? All these years as his assistant, it’s like she and Jack have developed telepathy between them. Not like the government telepaths that died out or were executed or something. A human thing, this.
He is about to give instructions when he sees one of the schoolchildren seated by himself apart from the others. Jack likes talking to children. Their agendas are often simple, pure, refreshing. He walks over and sits next to the boy so that they are both on the front row, facing the array of other kids.
“Not joining in?” says Jack.
“You are Jack Jacques, the mayor.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to call me—”
“Stay still. Stay where you are.”
Something is off. The child has an adult voice, and raises his eyes to the darkening sky. The movement is fluid but mechanical. Before Jack can ponder this further Dahun is kicking the deckchairs out of the way and yelling for Jack to get out of the way. Dahun seizes the kid and plunges a combat knife into his neck. No blood, no pain responses from the boy. Dahun sticks his hands into the neck wound and searches, digs about, his face a rigid study of concentration. He pulls out a thing, a component. Now there is a whine, getting progressively louder, a sound Jack has heard before. He looks for the trail of a missile, but it is not visible yet. Dahun is crushing the component, trying to destroy it. He finds something critical and snaps it just as Jack spots the missile—too close.
People know the danger now, and they run and scream, push and hide. The missile explodes twenty feet above the library. The shockwave alone is devastating, and all the glass shatters. Nobody seems in charge, but one of Jack’s bodyguards is soon by his side. A few yards away the child-thing lies discarded like yesterday’s news. The podium is splintered, flower petals float about and
here and there, the broken bodies of children lie scattered within the debris. There are some adult bodies, but most are just wounded. Sirens already. That was quick. The ringing in Jack’s ears begins to subside and he sees a dust-covered Dahun approach.
“You’re welcome. I’m hired. I get a fifty-thousand-dollar bonus for saving your life. American dollars. Oh, and as someone just tried to kill you, I want you to know that I could have jacked up the prices, but I didn’t, no pun intended.”
Jack nods and waves vaguely in Dahun’s direction. “Yes, yes, do what you do, and what you have to.”
Dahun studies him. “You seem a little dizzy. Maybe you’re concussed. I will ask you again tomorrow.”
Jack does not see Carter among the wounded. Pity. Lora arrives, leaking clear fluid from the left ear.
Jack says, “I’m pretty sure you need to get yourself fixed up.”
“I’ll go later,” she says. “The president just tried to assassinate you.”
“Yes.”
“How do you want to respond?”
“I will not respond. Tonight he’ll do a ‘thoughts-and-prayers’ broadcast, condemning this in the strongest terms. He may offer federal aid. Either way, it’s a distraction. What I want you to do is find out who is running against me for this election.”
“I already know,” says Lora.
Before he can ask, his phone rings and his wife is on the line. She has been informed about the explosion and listens to his account, then she says: “Mimi l’epon agbo nmi; ko le ja.” The billy goat’s scrotum may sway, but it doesn’t fall off. In other words, yes, your world is shaken, but you’re strong enough to weather this.
“I love you,” says Jack.
“Come home. You’ve done enough for today.”
Jack is home.
“White noise.”
No.
“Whalesong.”
No.
“Surf.”
No.
Jack is home. The first moments of silence he has had all day, but it is not silent. The churning of his mind will not stop. He cannot recall ever being this exhausted. It is not the first time he has cheated death, but the adrenaline reaction comes each time, like now. He shakes, does not resist, allows it. It feels like fear, but Jack is not afraid. He tips the chair over and allows himself to fall back. The weightlessness is brief, but it is a loss of control until the back of the chair crashes into the floor, clapping his upper back and his head. His calves scrape against the front legs of the chair and his legs fold rapidly at the knees. His hands have not moved. He takes the pain, absorbs it. A voice from his past says, This is the greatest lesson of life, boy. You sit, you pitch the chair over, you give up all control, you take the hit when it comes, then you wait in silence. If life does not talk to you, do it again, and again till that bitch gives up its secrets to you.
Jack waits in silence, but life tells him nothing, so he stands, rights the chair and goes again. And again. Blood sings in his head, his elbows hurt, his legs are bruised. Life, the universe, whatever, whispers to him. He has control again. He goes to the window, commands it to become transparent, and stares at the dome.
Jack is home.
Chapter Sixteen
Anthony
The third blank spot in the xenosphere is in a residential area. Anthony has to stop the taxi a few yards off because he feels sick. His new eye has grown back colour-blind. He gets the sense that this body has become defective, but his control over the physiology is slipping, so he cannot heal it as he would wish. In the xenosphere, which Anthony slips in and out of, the area appears as a billowing black cloud, a darkness. He looks for Molara, but finds nothing. In Rosewater, he stops in the middle of the street, so ill that he wants to lie down. He contemplates throwing another eye, but if the new one is already colour-blind, what if that is not the only defect? He might end up blind with no light perception. He is still considering this when he hears the roar of an engine—an ambulance. It passes him, and… and in the wake of that vehicle, there is… there are tendrils of the like he has never felt before, but familiar. Entangled memories alert him—the Homian consciousness is there. He barely registers the other car that drives past him in pursuit. He does not care. Is the new host injured in some way? The Chief Revival Scientist said it malfunctioned. In what way? No time to fuck about—he needs to go where the ambulance went.
He forces his body to give him energy and he runs after the fading tentacles of otherness. He cancels out pain and fatigue. He neutralises the lactic acid build-up in his muscles and pushes the body. He leaves nodules of tangled xenoforms as breadcrumbs in the sphere for Molara to find at intervals, in case he dies before he can find the new host. Or maybe they are for him to be found. People stare at him, marvelling at his speed, and as he builds distance between him and the blank spot, his abilities increase and he runs faster still. At some point he becomes aware that the residue he tracks becomes stronger, and he realises that the ambulance has stopped. He runs faster, increasing the flexibility of his tendons, producing more synovial fluid between the joints, increasing his stride length. He bounds every few yards and it seems like he might take flight sometimes. He idly wonders how high he could jump if he sets his mind to it. When he arrives at the hospital, there is a beacon of dark energy emanating from it, seen only in the xenosphere. Unlike the blank spots, it has no effect on Anthony so he heads inside. At this point his vision, his senses are in a negotiated state. He flits between the xenosphere and hard reality constantly. The cloud of the host is nigh irresistible and when humans accost him, trying to stop him from reaching it, Anthony barely registers their presence. He stops them from frustrating his purpose or slowing him down. When he is on Earth, he breaks their bodies. When he is in the xenosphere, he splits their minds apart. He comes to a corridor and the host is in one of the rooms. The walls are reflective and he sees himself. He is emaciated, so skinny as to be skeletal. He burned too much energy getting here. No matter. Humans like slimness in their adults. He is probably attractive to them.
The door opens and the host is behind a human female. He disposes of the female with a swipe. No. His arm is broken, then his ribcage is crushed, then he loses consciousness. He is shocked to be defeated by a human. Ten seconds later the body is dead and Anthony travels back to Wormwood through the xenosphere, pained to be moving away from the host, but in a hurry to rebuild his body. This time he will rethink the nature of energy stores and compensate.
And he will stop underestimating humans.
Chapter Seventeen
Aminat
An ugly reanimate attacks Aminat right outside the room. The muscles wasted all down to the bone, skin peeling, falling off, intense febrile look in one eye, the other eye dangling by a nerve out of the socket, lower jaw hanging loose, and it smells of mildew. It is naked, clothes probably dropped off its frame. Aminat steps out of the attack and breaks the arm at the elbow, then she stamp-kicks it on its chest, sending it to the floor. She draws her gun and shoots it in the head. It still twitches, so she shoots it again in the heart. The corridor echoes with the gunshot and Aminat’s ears ring. It’s dead. The blood flow is sluggish and there is no arterial spurting. A few… spores float up into the air from the head wound. Aminat is puzzled, but too busy to contemplate.
“What is that?” asks Alyssa.
“I don’t know and I don’t care. Come on.”
The security guy is dead. The route to the car park is littered with dead bodies, some without a single mark on them, others split asunder like overripe fruit. Did one diseased reanimate do all this? Why are they after Sutcliffe?
“Would anyone have a reason to kill you?” Aminat asks.
“No. Not that I know of. I suppose Alyssa might have enemies.”
At the car she marvels at dead uniformed people, but also the absence of police or sirens. The car auto-unlocks and Alyssa gets in the passenger side.
“Self-drive. Office,” says Aminat.
“Cannot comply.”
“Reboot.”
The car reboots, but will not engage self-drive or tell her why.
“Olalekan, remote access my car and fix the self-drive software.” No response.
“What’s going on?” asks Alyssa, annoyingly calm.
“I don’t know. Nimbus is down.” She dials the cellular network.
“Boss! Thank God,” says Olalekan.
“You were supposed to keep watch.”
“Big terrorist thing at Atewo, and Jack Jacques was there, so the city is on alert.”
“Okay, okay. How do I…? I want to…”
“Do you have her? Alyssa Sutcliffe?”
“Yes. I’m bringing her to you.”
“You… er… need to hurry.”
“Why?”
“Mother’s here.”
Mother is what they call Femi. She must really be impatient to have come from Abuja. Fuck. Okay. Information first. Aminat turns on the news.
“Where are you taking me?” asks Alyssa.
“To a lab. You have a condition we need to study and it’s important. Do you want to call your family?”
“I don’t have a family.”
“Do you want to call anybody?”
“No.”
“Okay, then. Seat belt. I’ll take us manually.”
“What if I don’t want to go?”
“I can arrest you.”
“What charge?”
“I don’t know. Obstructing a federal officer. Crimes against fashion. Something like that.”
“I want—”
“Shut up, Alyssa. Shut up. I’ve just killed someone, and I need to wallow in self-loathing. Surely, even you can understand that?”
Close eyes.
All she can see is one of Hannah Jacques’s adverts about the reanimates being human. The words from that perfect mouth play on a loop in Aminat’s mind.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Too many changes in too short a time. Tally up: on the plus side Aminat has obtained her objective—she has Alyssa Sutcliffe in custody, if not at the laboratory. Two, both she and Alyssa are unharmed. Minus side: there is a body count that nobody can explain. There has been a bomb detonation, Nimbus blackout, patchy automated car functions, assignment not complete until Alyssa is in the lab undergoing tests. If she is to drive manually should she fetter Alyssa? She might try to jump out of the car or assault Aminat. God, she wishes she could phone Kaaro, but because of S45 security protocols, she can’t during active operations.
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