‘So what’s he doing today then?’ I said.
Mel sighed. ‘When he left my room he said something about heading straight into a heavy day of experiments. That means he’ll probably be in the labs all day.’
My heart raced. If Elijah was in the labs all day, I’d be able to get into his room no problem.
Provided I could get out of mine.
I glanced at the clock above the door. 8:55. I knew Mel was due on security duty at nine a.m. I kept her talking as long as I could. When she finally looked at her watch she jumped up in shock.
‘Damn,’ she said. ‘I should have been in the cafeteria two minutes ago.’ She darted across the room, ‘I’ll call for you for combat, babe. Gotta go.’
As she flew through the door I raced after her. The door was so heavy it always took a few seconds to swing fully shut. I got there just as the nub of the lock brushed against the door frame. I pressed my toe against the door, preventing it from shutting fully – and locking me in.
I grinned as I counted to ten, slowly, under my breath.
Mel’s footsteps disappeared into the distance.
I slipped out into the corridor. Lots of people were striding up and down. No one gave me a second glance. I crept towards Elijah’s private door. Round the first corner. Round the second. I was a metre away. But the corridor was busy. Too busy. I waited impatiently beside the door. My mouth was dry.
Come on. Come on.
Suddenly the corridor emptied. I turned round, ready to stand on tiptoe to put my eye to the scanner.
‘Theodore.’ Elijah’s booming voice made me jump about three metres in the air. As I turned round he was there, looming over me, his face practically purple with rage. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘Going to combat class,’ I stammered.
Elijah glanced at his heavy gold watch. ‘It doesn’t start for nearly an hour,’ he shouted. ‘And how did you get out of your room?’
I stood there, silently, not wanting to reveal Mel’s carelessness in rushing away and not properly shutting the door.
‘No combat class today,’ he said sternly. ‘I’m taking you back to your room.’ He marched me down the corridor, his fingers like pincers round my shoulder.
I thought of the bruise on Mel’s cheek and gritted my teeth.
‘Why do you keep me shut up in there?’ I said. ‘If you want me to take over your operation one day, why do you keep me away from everything to do with it?’
Elijah tightened his grip and muttered in Spanish under his breath.
My temper rose. ‘You’re a bully!’ I shouted. ‘You hit Mel. You keep us both prisoners here.’
With a roar Elijah stopped and raised his free hand above my head, a look of absolute fury on his face.
I flinched.
But the blow didn’t come. Instead Elijah was moving again, pushing me along the corridor. Seconds later we were outside Begonia. Elijah unlocked the door and shoved me inside.
I stumbled across the floor, then turned to face him.
‘What makes you so special?’ I yelled. ‘What gives you the right to keep me locked up like this? Not even letting me talk to Mum.’
Elijah ran his hand through his hair. ‘I don’t have time for this,’ he said, clearly making an effort to speak calmly. ‘I will arrange another call to your mother, if you like. She knows you are here with me and safe and well. But right now there’s someone I have to speak to . . . some test results I’m waiting for.’ He smiled. ‘You know, no one has dared to shout at me for many years, Theodore. In spite of the fact that it goes against my most profound beliefs, I am forced to conclude that you are more like me than I would have predicted.’
‘What beliefs?’ I said. ‘And if you didn’t want me to be like you, why did you bring me up like you said – like you’d been brought up. A single mum and a good education, all that?’
Elijah stood looking at me for a moment, then he folded his arms. ‘That was part of the experiment,’ he said. ‘I knew I couldn’t give you the same upbringing I had. It would be a different country, a different generation. A very different mother. Plus you needed a bodyguard. But I wanted to see what would happen if there was some common ground. My belief was that a cloned child is no more or less connected to its clone original than an identical twin. My belief is still that, in fact. You and Rachel prove it. Though, with you and me, our similarities sometimes make me question the parameters of my original theorem.’
I shook my head in disbelief. ‘Is that all I am to you? An experiment? A theorem?’
Elijah sighed heavily. ‘There’s plenty of time for us to talk about your role here. I’m sorry I’ve been so busy the past few days.’ He turned towards the door. ‘Maybe you should come to the labs with me. Next week perhaps. Now if there isn’t anything else . . .’
‘There is,’ I said quickly. Annoying though the man was, I didn’t want him to leave. If anyone had asked me I wouldn’t have been able to say why. Maybe it came down to the fact that in spite of what I’d seen him do to Lewis, in spite of what he was still doing to Mel and me – part of me couldn’t help but feel connected to him. We shared the same DNA, for God’s sake. I wanted to know him. I struggled to find a neutral topic that would keep him inside the room.
‘Who pays for all this?’ I said. ‘The compound and everything?’
‘The government,’ Elijah said, turning back to me. ‘Or a branch of it.’
‘That’s who your powerful friends are?’ I frowned. ‘Why does the government care so much about keeping you protected here?’
‘Mierda, Theodore. Do you understand so little?’ Elijah rolled his eyes. ‘The US government is publicly against much of the work I do here. Stem cell research and other . . . other, more complicated experiments. So officially I do not exist. But there is a government department that funds most of my research and provides the security we have here. I—’
‘Do they know about me and Rachel?’ I said.
Elijah was silent for a minute. I studied his face. The lines on his forehead. The dark shadows under his intense brown eyes. The slope of his nose. Was that nose really the same as mine? Was that face, in front of me now, how mine would look in fifty years’ time?
‘No,’ he said finally. ‘I could not risk them putting me under pressure to do more clone experiments.’
I stared at him. He wasn’t telling the truth. At least, he wasn’t telling the whole truth. I was certain.
Elijah coughed and pressed his hand against his chest. ‘I have kept you alive, Theodore. Do you not see it? I gave you life. And I have sustained your life.’
I thought of the Hermes Project. ‘So there aren’t more like . . . like me and Rachel?’
A flicker of a smile crossed Elijah’s face. ‘No, sadly.’ He turned away again. ‘Just three gods. Zeus the all-powerful. Artemis the hunter. And Apollo – the shining son.’
My heart hammered. He was talking. He was opening up, really starting to tell me stuff. I had to keep him here. There was too much I needed to know.
‘Tell me about your parents,’ I said. ‘I mean, they’re my parents too. Technically.’
Elijah rested his hand on the door handle. He bowed his head slightly.
‘If you like,’ he said wearily. ‘There is not much to say. They were German, as you know. Hard on me,’ he said. ‘My mother was, anyway. Nothing I did was ever good enough. That is, she adored me, but she was deeply, deeply ambitious that I should become a doctor, like my father.’
‘He was a doctor?’ I said.
Elijah turned round. To my surprise there was a look of pain in his eyes.
‘He died before I had a chance to know him, when I was very young. He couldn’t live with his past. My mother told me he was a hero. That he had been a great scientist. But then when I was older, fifteen years old, I found out . . .’ He looked up and caught my eye. ‘I must go . . .’
‘No. Wait.’ I rushed over and grabbed his arm. ‘What happened then? What did you
find out? Was he tortured or something? Was he in one of those death camps? The concentration camps? Where the Nazis killed the Jews?’
Elijah frowned. ‘What?’
‘In the war?’ I pleaded. I had no idea why I was so desperate to know all this stuff. I only knew that when Elijah talked about his parents I felt less lost.
This is where I’m from. This is who I am.
‘Please tell me,’ I whispered.
‘I think,’ Elijah said slowly, ‘that my father was a weak man who did bad things without questioning what he was being told to do. My mother believed in it all, though. The day I found out, I knew I would never speak to her again. I left home. Changed my name. Everything. That discovery changed my life. It made me who I am today.’
I let go of his arm. My head was spinning, my heart drumming against my throat. What was he talking about?
‘I don’t understand,’ I stammered. ‘What did they do? You said they escaped from Germany. You told me they were victims of the war.’
‘There are many victims in wartime,’ Elijah said. ‘The losing side are victims too, are they not? Forced to leave everything they have known and owned and held dear.’
No.
I shut my eyes. I could feel the cold metal of that gun against my forehead. Everything around me was spinning out of control.
‘But they were Jews,’ I said hoarsely. I opened my eyes and backed across the room. ‘They were per . . . persec . . .’ I couldn’t think of the rest of the word. My attention was focused on Elijah’s eyes.
‘No, Theodore.’ Elijah shook his head. ‘My parents believed in the supremacy of White over Black and Asian and Jew. They believed in using violence to achieve and maintain political power. They believed in their right to silence anyone who questioned their opinions.’ He stared into my eyes. ‘My parents . . . your parents . . . were Nazis.’
The floor seemed to slide away from my legs. I slumped down, into the chair behind me.
Elijah paced across the room. ‘My father did unspeakable things in the name of science. Experiments and . . .’ He shuddered. ‘He took away people’s lives and their dignity. That is why I became the scientist I did. To cancel out his evil.’
I stared at my lap. I was the child of Nazis. I was the clone of a man who beat his girlfriend and shot his staff. A man who was cruel and cold and utterly self-deluded.
These things were who I was.
‘It is the great irony of my life,’ Elijah went on, ‘that so many consider me a monster, when my whole working life has been about creating and sustaining life. Helping parents who are desperate for a child. Using stem cells to find cures for terrible diseases. These are not the acts of a monster. Are they?’
For a moment he looked as if he was really asking me.
I couldn’t speak.
He stood there for a few seconds, then he turned and left the room.
My mind seemed to shut down. I forgot about the Hermes Project and my desire to find out why Elijah wanted me here.
I had never felt so lost. The old reality of my life was gone forever. Nothing from the past was true. I was the child of Nazis.
Unwanted images rushed through my mind. I saw Mum, lying to me over and over about my dad. I saw Elijah’s face in the cottage when he saw me for the first time. I saw the bruises on Mel’s face. I saw Lewis lying, crumpled, over that chair.
It was all hate or lies or fear.
And then I remembered how Rachel and I had held each other. How I had pressed my face against her hair, terrified, but somehow stronger because I knew she was terrified too. How we had helped each other.
That was real. That was real.
I curled up in my chair, my head in my hands, clinging to the memory as if it was all that would save me from going mad.
54
Rachel
The RAGE ‘soldiers’ left me in a side room for hours. It was cold and bleak – but I was used to that from the squat. Two low campbeds laid out with grey blankets stood on either side of the room. I sat on one. After the lumpy mattress I’d been sleeping on for the past week it felt ridiculously soft and comfortable. But there was no way I could rest. Too much was happening outside. Lewis was with Simpson, going over the plans of Elijah’s compound. I caught snatches of their conversation. Simpson kept talking about ‘fire power’ and ‘body counts’.
It struck me that if RAGE raided Elijah’s compound, people were going to die. Innocent people – like the security guards and admin officers who worked there. People like my dad. Lewis had explained to me how big and self-sufficient the compound was. That meant there must be people living there whose only job was to provide food for the others, or keep the place clean.
From what I’d seen of RAGE I didn’t imagine they would care much if people like that got caught in the crossfire.
And it had all been my idea.
The door opened. Franks was in the doorway, staring down at me. I shrank back, self-consciously. There was something unnerving about the way his eyes bored into mine. And his skin was so pale. It looked clammy under the dim light.
‘Get some sleep, freak show,’ he sneered.
Perhaps if he hadn’t been so repulsive I might have been upset by this. As it was, it just made me angry.
‘Why do you call me that?’ I said. ‘I’m not a freak. I’m just a person, like you.’
Franks snorted. ‘Not like me,’ he said emphatically. He came over and sat at the end of my bed. I drew my feet up, away from him. ‘You’re an example of everything that’s wrong with the way people interfere with nature. Playing God. Desecrating the planet for commercial gain.’
I stared at him. I could almost feel the hate radiating off him.
‘But I can’t help how I was born,’ I said. ‘I mean, I can understand you all being against animal testing or doing research on embryos or whatever, but none of it’s my fault.’
‘You’re missing the point. You don’t really exist. You’re just an imprint – an echo – of someone else. In your case, someone who died a long time ago.’
My heart skipped a beat. Did he really believe that? That I didn’t really exist?
Franks stood up. ‘It isn’t nuclear power’s fault that nuclear power exists,’ he said. ‘But that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘That doesn’t mean it should carry on existing.’
He walked out, shutting the door behind him.
I hugged my knees to my chest. If I hadn’t been sure before, I was now. RAGE would try to kill me as soon as they had used me to gain entry to Elijah’s compound.
How scary was it that people could hate you that much, not for anything you’d done, just for how you were born?
For the first time it occurred to me that if my plan to rescue Theo didn’t work, RAGE would certainly kill him too. The weight of what Lewis and I were doing pressed heavily on my chest. This was real. And there was no turning back.
I stood up and went through the combat moves Lewis had taught me.
Theo’s face was in my head as I turned and lunged and kicked and punched the air.
He was the only other person in the world who carried this same accident of birth. This blood tie to another person. The one person who could truly understand how it felt.
I wondered where he was right now. What he was doing.
I wanted to be with him so much that it hurt.
Lewis came in about an hour later. He looked exhausted. He barked something angry in my direction, then quickly strode over and whispered in my ear.
‘We’re on. We’re going to D.C. tomorrow morning. You remember what you have to do?’
I nodded.
Lewis’s blue eyes crinkled into a smile. ‘You’re amazing,’ he said. ‘Don’t ever forget it.’
55
Theo
I spent a whole day in my room without talking to a single person. Mel came in with my lunch, then, later, my dinner. She tried to talk to me, but I didn’t want to speak to her. I didn’t w
ant to speak to anyone. Not even Mum.
I just wanted to forget. Especially who I was and where I came from.
Mel turned up the next morning – Sunday – to collect me for her combat class.
I was still in bed. I hadn’t got to sleep until about four a.m. ‘I’m not going,’ I groaned, looking blearily up at her from my pillow.
‘Elijah says you have to.’ Mel walked towards me. Yesterday’s bruise had faded a little, but her face still looked swollen and sore.
I sat up crossly, the sheets tangled around my waist.
‘Who cares what he wants?’ Irritation itched at my skin like a rash.
Mel frowned. ‘You’ve got to take this opportunity to learn to fight. You may need it.’ She sat on the end of my bed. ‘Theo, I don’t know why Elijah wants you here, but I know him. He has a reason, believe me. He always has a reason.’
I stared at her face. ‘Does he have a reason for hitting you?’
Mel winced. She looked down at the sheets.
I was too angry to feel bad that I’d embarrassed her. I was fed up with caring about other people’s feelings.
‘He feels betrayed by me,’ Mel said quietly. ‘He thought I loved him. And now he knows I don’t. He hits me because he gets angry and he can’t stop himself. Then afterwards he feels guilty. Says he won’t do it again.’
‘That’s crap,’ I said.
‘I know.’ Mel gave a heavy sigh. ‘But I’m as trapped here as you are. We mustn’t give up, Theo. You have to keep fighting. Please. We’ll find a way out.’
I glared at her. ‘I’m still not going to your stupid combat class. And Elijah can’t make me. If he was going to hurt me he’d have done it by now.’
‘Right.’ Mel stood up. There was something deeply sad about the way she crossed the room, her head bowed and her hair just brushing the tips of the butterfly tattoo on her shoulder. As she reached my bedroom door it occurred to me that Elijah might hurt her if I didn’t show at the class.
Resentment tussled with guilt in my head.
‘Wait,’ I said. I threw back the sheets and got out of bed. I was in my sweatpants already. I reached out for a T-shirt. ‘I’m coming.’