Alexander's Army

by Chris D'Lacey

  The only search I had any success with was on the word artifact. I remembered Freya saying she’d heard Klimt or Preeve use the term several times. The search engine came back with two possible dictionary definitions:

  1. An object made by a human being, typically one of cultural or historical interest

  2. Something observed in a scientific investigation or experiment that is not naturally present but occurs as a result of the preparative or investigative procedure

  Both definitions got me thinking, particularly the second one, which sounded very “UNICORNE.” But by four p.m., when Mom’s car turned into the drive, I hadn’t worked anything out. So I shut the laptop and took it downstairs, putting it on the table where it usually sat. One of the first things Josie did when she was home from school was to log in to a chat room she shared with her friends. Like they didn’t have enough to blab about all day? Sure enough, she hit the computer as soon as she was in (sparing a moment to stick out a pimple of tongue at me).

  “Hello, love. Good day?” Mom came in, unraveling a scarf.

  “Umm,” I grunted. I could hardly tell her I’d almost died in a fire and now had a very slight taste for worms. A grunt was just about the safest response.

  She spotted the bandage right away. “What’s happened to your neck?” A slight squeak of alarm/annoyance/do we need to jab you for tetanus? creeped into the end of the sentence.

  Josie glanced my way and sniffed. “It would be so much cooler if he left the bolts showing. Ha, ha.”

  I told Mom the scratching lie; she bought it whole.

  “Honestly, I should put you in mittens,” she muttered.

  “Pink ones,” said Josie.

  “And why have you changed your sweater?”

  Oops. I’d forgotten about the clothes. It was always the simple things Mom noticed, the things I tended to forget. The clothes I’d gone out in were probably still being hosed by the fire brigade. The jeans, thankfully, were pretty standard; I had several pairs of look-alike denim. But the sweater … “I got cold,” I said.

  Feeble, but again she went for it.

  “It’s about time that old one went anyway. I’m forever mending holes in the sleeves. Leave it out; I’ll drop it into a charity thrift shop.”

  “I can do that!”

  Bad move. I’d piped up far too quickly. Now she was nursing a suspicious frown. I shrugged it off. “I’m going into Holton tomorrow.”

  She canceled the frown and did a double take. “Good grief. Did you hear that, Josie? Aliens have abducted my darling son and replaced him with an improved errand-running replica.”

  “In your dreams,” Josie said.

  I smiled cheesily and changed the subject. “What’s for dinner?”

  “See?” Josie said. “Hasn’t changed a bit. Same old boring, predictable Mi … chael.”

  I spotted it, and so did Mom — the change in Josie’s voice as she spoke my name. “You all right?” Mom asked.

  Josie clicked her tongue, her quick eyes darting over the screen. “Just one of those stupid browser updates. I can deal with it.”

  “I’m sure you can,” Mom said. “Lasagna, to answer your question, Michael. Forty minutes,” she added as I headed for the stairs. “Josie, when you’re done, go and get changed, please.”

  “Umm,” she grunted.

  Mom shook her head in despair. “Honestly, I could swap you pair for a couple of chimps and not notice the difference.”

  “Umm,” we went.

  “Give me strength,” Mom sighed, and went into the kitchen.

  It must have been less than two minutes later that Josie walked into my room. She closed the door and sat down rigidly on my bed. She had that seriously pale look on her face, feet crossed at the ankles, hands in her lap. She tucked her hair behind her ears.

  Something wasn’t right.

  I tried a mild caution. “Hel-lo? There’s a sign on the door. You’re supposed to knock before you —”

  “Why were you looking up New Mexico on the computer?”

  I’d forgotten to clear my search history. Shoot.

  I turned my back so she couldn’t see my face and pretended to sort some homework on my desk. “It’s boring being suspended for two days. You start to think about all sorts of stuff. Dad was in my head, that’s all.”

  “What does DNA program mean?”

  My gut tightened. This was going to be worse than I’d thought. Josie had a bigger bite on her than Freya. Once she got her teeth into something, the Sherlock in her didn’t let go. “Nothing. I was just messing with a search engine and —”

  “In New Mexico: Dragons abound. That’s not messing. That’s very specific. What’s going on, Michael? Why would you search on something like that? Tell me the truth or I’m going to show Mom.”

  A spy, I realized, would probably have to tie her up and gag her now. But however appealing that might have seemed, she was my sister and I loved her — and we both loved Dad.

  Crisis point.

  No escape.

  She had to know the truth.

  I turned to face her. “I found it scribbled on a slip of paper — in Dad’s room.”

  Her pretty face shook. She didn’t speak, or blink, for a whole five seconds. “Where?”

  “Behind the picture of the tree.”

  “Behind it?”

  “In an envelope taped to the frame.”

  “Why were you looking?”

  “The picture was … tilted. I was trying to straighten it when the envelope dropped on the desk.”

  “And the message was in it?”

  “Yes.”

  “In dad’s handwriting?”

  Interesting point. I hadn’t thought about that. It would be easy to check, though. Mom had tons of letters and postcards from him. “Um, I guess.”

  “Let me see it.”

  I hesitated slightly and opened my desk drawer. I pulled the slip of paper out of the envelope, careful not to show her the initials.

  She read it as though it had come from the president. “Why would he write this?”

  “I don’t know. I was trying to find out.”

  Her gaze drifted into the middle distance.

  “Jose, this has to be our secret. You can’t tell Mom. She’ll get upset.”

  Josie chewed her lip. She looked pretty close to tears herself. “But what does it mean? Dragons?”

  I raised my shoulders. In that respect, I was no wiser than she was.

  She shuffled to the edge of the bed. “Have you looked in his room for any more clues?”

  “No.” I took the message back.

  She gave a determined nod. “Okay. If I find anything, I’ll let you know.”

  “Josie, you —”

  No good. She was gone. I sighed and buried my face in my hands. Now I’d done it. The search for my father was about to enter a whole new chapter. The best brain in Holton was on the case. Josie Malone versus Amadeus Klimt.

  And only a fool would bet against my sister.

  Early next morning, Mom took Josie to her drama lesson. As soon as they were gone, I wheeled my bike out of the garage and set off for the coast. I had one real chance of finding Liam Nolan, one that didn’t involve knocking on his house door or giving him a permanent fear of crows. I knew from my previous encounters with the family that on Saturday mornings, he walked their dog, Trace, along the Berry Head cliffs. It seemed a hopeless venture, but I had to try. I had to know his real connection to Dad.

  I was lucky. Within minutes of reaching the cliff path, I saw him. He was tall, what Mom would call a sturdy man, with short reddish hair and a stylish gray beard that shaded the lower half of his face. He was strolling along looking out to sea as if he was seeking inspiration for a poem. He was wearing a waterproof coat, the kind with the waxy finish that Josie couldn’t bear to touch. Trace’s leash was spilling out of one pocket.

  It was the dog who saw me first. She was sweeping the headland, sniffing at rabbit holes. As I drew near to
them, she caught my scent. She stared, ears pricked, the way dogs do. I crouched lower in the saddle and cycled to her.

  “Hey, Trace.”

  She jumped up, beating her paws against my thigh. She was the most fantastic dog, a gray-white husky with stunning blue eyes. I let her nuzzle my hand as Liam approached.

  “Michael,” he acknowledged me dourly, still preferring to aim his gaze at the water. He had a brown scarf bunched around his throat. His oval-shaped head looked exactly like an egg balanced upright on a nest.

  “Hello, Dr. Nolan. I was just cycling up here and —”

  “No, you weren’t. I’ve walked this cliff path hundreds of times and never seen you here at this hour of the morning. What do you want?”

  Brusque and to the point. But I could also be like that.

  “To talk about my dad. He was your patient, wasn’t he?”

  “Get down,” he said to Trace. He found the leash and clipped it to her collar, his coat panels crackling as he stretched his body over her. “Everything between a doctor and their patient is confidential. You’re wasting your time.”

  “What about a doctor and his friend — or fellow agent?”

  He sighed and crouched beside the dog, running his hand down each of her legs as if he were frisking her for hidden weapons. As he stood up, he took a smartphone from his pocket. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You work for UNICORNE. That makes us equals.”

  He glanced at the phone, tapped the screen a few times, and put it away. “You’re deluded, Michael. Go home. I can’t help you.” He shook the chain to make Trace walk.

  No way was I giving up that easily. I hauled the bike around and freewheeled after him. Above us, a seagull scythed across the sky. “I’ve seen you there. Klimt told me you work for them.”

  “I work privately for several clients. What of it?”

  I swerved the bike to a stop in front of him, nearly running over his toes.

  “What the Dickens do you think you’re doing, boy?!” He was furious now.

  “Not clients like them. I called your office and left you a message. Why didn’t you respond?” I had checked my phone repeatedly before Alexander took it. Definitely no voice mails from Liam or his secretary.

  “It may have escaped your attention,” he snapped, his face reddening around the fringes of his beard, “but I’m a doctor. I have sick people to deal with. They take greater priority than children with overactive imaginations.”

  Oh, yeah? I ripped the envelope from my jacket and made him look at it. “LN. That’s you, isn’t it? Liam Nolan. My dad wrote this. It was in his room.”

  “Yes, and every year Rafferty wrote a letter to Santa. What’s your point, Michael?”

  “ ‘In New Mexico: Dragons abound.’ That’s the message he left for you. What does it mean?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I beg your pardon!”

  “I can read your eyes, like Dad could. Gold for truth. Green for lies. You’re full of green flecks, Dr. Nolan.”

  That rattled him. Really rattled him. He leaned away as if I were some kind of monster. A fury of confusion was building in his face, when the phone beeped suddenly in his pocket. He fumbled his hand inside and retrieved it. He read the message slowly and put the phone back.

  “Klimt?” I suggested. I was expecting his car to turn up at any moment, and was ready to fly away if I had to. It wouldn’t have surprised me if Liam had tipped them off.

  He looked along the headland. It was pretty much deserted. “Aileen hasn’t been well,” he said quietly, “ever since the business with the girl.”

  Aileen. His wife. Rafferty’s mother. She’d been traumatized by everything that had happened with Freya. I caught a glimpse of his eyes again. Gold.

  He breathed in deeply and composed himself, finding a moment to pat Trace’s head. I thought this was it, that I’d broken him at last. Instead, he swallowed hard and stared at my bandage. “What’s going on with your neck?”

  “You know what happened. You were there when I recovered after Freya’s attack.”

  “Freya?” he queried. Again, his flecks were gold. Either he was good at disguising a lie or he really didn’t know what had happened to Freya.

  “You treated me.”

  “For an infection, yes. The cause of the wound was never revealed to me. Perhaps you want to shed some light on that? You mentioned … Miss Zielinski? How could she possibly be involved?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said.

  “I think it does. The infection has progressed. I can see lesions developing and there is significant swelling in the surrounding tissues. You could die if that’s not attended to. Take the bandage off. Here, I’ll do it.”

  I batted him away. “First you tell me about my father.” I grabbed the bike by its handlebars and thumped the front wheel down on the path.

  Trace grizzled, not sure if she should growl or not. Liam shook the leash again and made her sit. “Don’t make a scene,” he said. “You know I can’t give up UNICORNE secrets. They tell me nothing, anyway.” He looked along the headland again. The nearest people to us were miles away, attempting, unsuccessfully, to fly a kite.

  “But you know something, don’t you? About the DNA program. What is it? And why do they keep on telling me this lie about Dad going off looking for dragons?”

  “I don’t know!” he snapped. “As far as I’m aware, dragons only appear in children’s books or the minds of new age fantasists. I am a doctor. I deal in rational truths. My job is to attend to the sick. They recruited me to help your father and have paid me a retainer ever since.”

  “UNICORNE?”

  “No, Buckingham Palace! Of course I mean UNICORNE. That’s what this silly interrogation is about, isn’t it?”

  “Help Dad? How?”

  He muttered something under his breath. “They were experimenting with a breathable fluid, water supersaturated with a previously unstable isotope of oxygen. Once immersed, a human subject could experience enhanced powers of thought, well beyond modern computational levels.”

  “And Dad … tried this?”

  “Your father was their primary study. Through him they achieved the neurological breakthrough that eventually led to the development of Klimt.”

  “So he did build Klimt,” I gasped.

  Liam looked across the water. “I’m led to understand that your father’s input was greater than anyone’s. That’s all I know.”

  “What about you? What was your role?”

  “Purely medical. It was my job to stabilize your father’s body when …”

  “When what?”

  He took a long breath. The phone beeped again. This time he ignored it, but it seemed to make him anxious. “When his mind was elsewhere. Now will you let me look at that wound?”

  I didn’t know what to say. Dad’s mind could leave his body? Was this the same thing I could do? What if Dad had been captured by a force like Alexander’s Army — and somehow not gotten back?

  “Lay your bike on the grass,” Dr. Nolan said. “Brace yourself, this is going to hurt.”

  And he’d ripped away the bandage before I knew it.

  The pain bent me double. By the time I could stand fully upright again, he was tilting a small bottle against a cotton pad. In the bottle was a clear, fruity-smelling liquid that made my nose twitch.

  “What’s that?”

  “Alcohol to clean the wound. This place is prone to ticks. I carry it in case I have to remove one from the dog’s legs. Precautionary health measures go hand in hand with being a doctor, Michael. Look away. This is going to hurt.”

  I stretched my neck so he could see the wound properly. “I still don’t understand Dad’s message. Why would he leave you a note about dragons?”

  “Don’t talk.” His breathing was a little unsteady.

  But I needed to talk. This was the closest I’d been to the truth. “Could it be some kind o
f secret code?”

  He pressed the cloth on and held it in place.

  “Ow, that stings,” I muttered.

  “Not for long,” he said, with a hint of regret. “Forgive me, Michael. I have to do this. There are greater forces at work here than me.”

  Even before he’d finished the sentence, the sea and the sky were changing places. Whatever he’d dispensed on that piece of cotton, it wasn’t alcohol. I rocked sideways and sank into his arms. No time to fight, shift reality, or fly. All I could think of was that dumb idea that counting sheep helped you get to sleep. I had a new take on it. Counting huskies. I managed two from the dozens that had appeared like ghosts behind Trace.

  And then I passed out.

  I woke in the cube, in Preeve’s laboratory, breathing the same mauve gas I’d seen Freya immersed in. My clothes had been replaced with a one-piece robe. The wound on my neck had been sealed without stitches. It was bare, but not painful. I seemed to have lost the instinct to fly. It would have been pointless, anyway. There was no deflection in the walls of the cube and no means of rocking it in any direction. I was still searching for a way out when Klimt walked into the lab with Preeve.

  “Hello, Michael,” said the android my father helped to build. “It appears we have a lot of catching up to do.”

  “Go to hell,” I said.

  “I very much doubt it exists. Not in the way most people imagine it.”

  “I know about you, Klimt. Liam told me things, about the experiments. What you did to Dad.”

  “What we did?” Preeve snorted, dropping his glasses to read a monitor. “Your father devised the whole DNA program. He was its most willing participant.”

  “What is it? What does DNA mean?”