The Fall (25 page)
‘I’ve spoken to your tutors,’ his father continued. ‘Knowing your difficulties right now, they’re prepared to let you retake your second year, with a special schedule this summer to help you recap the first year material.’
‘What about Ana?’
‘Ana’s in a lot of trouble,’ David said, unsympathetically. ‘Unfortunately, she hasn’t managed to bounce back from her ordeal like you have. She’s more vulnerable. It’s become apparent she never recovered from the Enlightenment Project’s brainwashing. You mustn’t blame yourself. It’s time to move on.’
‘Move on,’ Jasper echoed. His feelings for his father had always been mixed. David hadn’t been around much in their childhood, and when he had been there, it had been clear that Tom was his golden-boy. But now Jasper felt a distinct animosity for the man. ‘Ana and I were joined less than a month ago.’
David shot a look at his wife. ‘Well, I think time has shown that the joining was a mistake.’
Jasper straightened his shoulders. ‘I wasn’t abducted by the Enlightenment Project,’ he said. His mother’s head flicked up.
‘Jasper!’ she hissed fearfully.
‘Ashby kidnapped me and put me in Three Mills to “keep me safe”.’
His father stared at him, with a look that was both distant and full of disdain.
‘Did you know?’ Jasper asked.
‘Did I know what?’ David said.
‘That Ashby abducted me because I had a research disc showing an anomaly with the Pure test? That Tom was doing research in your lab connected to the original Pure test DNA findings?’
David picked up his leather briefcase. The only emotion Jasper detected was a hint of scorn. ‘I knew your brother had got mixed up with the Enlightenment sect. They were manipulating him. Using him. Twisting his mind. Tom became very disturbed. He was behaving strangely. Before I could help him he’d run off to the countryside and got himself killed.’
Lucy crawled across the bed. She fell onto the cream carpet and pulled herself up by the bedside drawer. ‘What’s going on?’ she wheezed.
‘I hope,’ David continued, ‘you have a better instinct for survival than he did.’
Jasper’s father took his gold watch from the bedside table and, fastening it on his wrist, left the room.
*
Ashby had taken enough painkillers during the night to leave him fuzzy. The reporter Dombrant had found outside the hospital was pretty and smiling so he smiled back, momentarily forgetting the severity of what he was about to do.
The cameraman set up his tripod in front of Ashby’s bed. It was a private hospital and he had a private room. The surgery team would be coming to pick him up in an hour. His empty stomach rumbled. No breakfast allowed before the general anaesthetic and operation to pin his broken bone.
The reporter pulled up a chair beside him, brushed back her light blonde hair. She was almost as blonde as Ana.
‘Dr Barber,’ she said, shaking his hand enthusiastically. ‘Thanks so much for agreeing to an interview.’
‘My pleasure. Will this be going out live?’
‘We don’t do any live streaming,’ she said, apologetically. ‘But my boss says it’ll be edited and fed through in the next half-hour.’
Ashby nodded. Despite the opiate feeling of well-being, he wanted to get this over with. ‘Ready when you are.’
‘But um . . .’ the girl reached out, perhaps about to brush back his hair. Instead, she pinned a tiny wireless microphone to his hospital robe. He must look a mess but he was beyond caring.
‘I suppose this captures the zeitgeist of the moment,’ she murmured. The red light on the top of the camera began blinking.
‘We’re rolling,’ the cameraman said.
‘I’m here in St John’s Wood hospital at Dr Ashby Barber’s bedside,’ the reporter began. ‘Dr Barber, the last forty-eight hours have been fraught for the government and the Board, in regards to your Pure test. The Community checkpoints are full of protestors, the Wardens have surrounded the Enlightenment Project and an ex-patient broke into a mental rehab home. Are these events linked? Can you tell us what’s going on?’
Ashby cleared his throat. ‘For the last eleven years,’ he said, ‘since the introduction of the first Pure genome tests, several minority groups have been determined to undermine the validity of the DNA research behind them.’
‘So you support the Chairman of the Board and the government’s claims that the recording which came to light three days ago is a hoax?’
‘No.’ Ashby looked across to Jack in the doorway. Jack’s face was grave. This interview would be the end of Ashby’s career; the end of everything he’d fought for. But all he cared about now was hurting Evelyn and protecting his daughter. ‘I was hired by Evelyn Knight nineteen years ago to research the genetic mutations linked to schizophrenia and depression. They provided me with the DNA sample of a group of diagnosed schizophrenics from which we isolated twelve sets of mutated gene patterns linked to the illness.
However, later broader tests, which I have here,’ he held up the thick file of printed documentation Jack had collected for him, ‘show that these tests, while able to identify seventy-eight per cent of people already diagnosed as schizophrenic, also tested positive in eighteen per cent of the general healthy population. In simpler terms, this means the test could correctly identify seven out of ten schizophrenics, while incorrectly labelling one in every five people as possessing the mutations responsible for this condition.’
‘So the initial DNA test was inaccurate?’ the reporter asked.
‘It was rushed. The results were inconclusive. A very broad guideline at best.’
The reporter smoothed a hand across her skirt, trying to collect herself. She looked at the cameraman, swallowed, then said, ‘I believe after this initial finding, you weren’t involved in the subsequent research that identified the next six most prolific mental health problems?’
‘That’s correct. I expressed my concern to Evelyn Knight about the way the research was being portrayed to the public.’
‘But you accepted the Nobel Prize in Medicine.’
‘Yes,’ Ashby admitted. ‘And I have been protecting my dubious research, and that of those that came after me, ever since.’
There was an awkward silence.
‘I’m sorry,’ the reporter said, turning red in the face. ‘But I’m not sure I fully understand. Could you clarify your position for us in regards to the Pure test please Dr Barber?’
‘Sixteen years ago, my own research was inconclusive and I was discouraged from taking it further. I believe the research that came afterwards was also based on a small field of testing with a great deal of pressure to obtain results. I believe the Advisory Committee and Novastra Pharmaceutics planned to use these tests to push preventative health care on the vast majority of the public.’
The young woman stared at him for a moment like he’d lost his mind. Well, she was right about that. Since he’d learned the truth of what Evelyn had done to his wife, how far she’d been prepared to go to get what she wanted, the pain he himself had caused his wife had become a living entity inside him. All these years he’d been convincing himself that he had done all he could to protect Isabelle from herself, when it was him she’d needed protecting from.
‘Why now?’ the reporter asked in disbelief. ‘Why are you admitting this to the public now?’
‘Because I always thought the best way to save people from what they were capable of doing to themselves was through preventative measures and vigilance. Now I realise people do not need protecting from themselves, as much as they need protecting from those in power.’
The woman blinked, amazed and shocked. ‘This is Melissa White,’ she said, ‘of Channel 8, reporting inside St John’s Wood hospital.’
*
Naked in front of the bathroom sink, Ana washed using a bar of soap Lila had given her. The sink was plugged up with freezing marshwater. It made her think of snow-tipped mountains, Tengeri, the boy.
She pulled back her hair, which had grown long enough to tie in an elastic band. Once she’d finished washing, she patted herself dry, then emptied the soapy water and filled the sink again from the saucepan. She splashed her face, avoiding her inky-dyed eyes; almost as dark as the Arashans.
As she was putting on her T-shirt there was a knock on the door.
‘Ana?’ She unlocked the door and Cole opened it from the other side. ‘So?’ he said.
She nodded. She wasn’t ready yet to talk to him about what had happened while she was sleeping. It felt strangely precious and personal. It had flipped her inside out; as though she’d suddenly discovered after all this time she’d been the wrong way round – the dream plane somehow more real and important than reality. She felt a little dazed and stupid too. As though she’d been taken in by some incredibly brilliant and elaborate trick.
But the shaman had seemed confused, not manipulative. Lost. Barely holding on.
Cole studied her.
He sees more than you think
, a voice inside her murmured. Something strange once happened to him, too. After a pause, he rapped the side of the door with his knuckles. ‘OK, I’ll be downstairs.’
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I’ll come with you.’ She pulled on Lila’s jeans, fastened the belt, and gathered up the soap and the T-shirt she’d slept in.
Outside, behind the observatory tower, Clemence and Lila boiled water on a small fire. A cotton holder with dozens of pockets lay beside Clemence. The Minister extracted little tin boxes from the pockets, took pinches of the herbs and sprinkled them into the pan.
‘Ana!’ Lila said, jumping up. ‘Come and sit with us. Clemence is making you a special herbal remedy.’ Ana wondered if Clemence knew what it was like to meet with the shaman like that.
Yes
, she thought. It’s why she moved like she was slipping through time, why she treated every moment as though it had been injected into her veins.
Sitting down with her legs crossed, she gazed into the flames of the fire, blue, white and yellow. Cole struggled down beside her. Lila began fussing with his wound. He stripped off his T-shirt and let her change the dressing.
‘The electronics in the Project,’ Ana said, poking the fire with a stick. ‘Do you forbid them because they affect a person’s energy?’
Clemence’s head shot up to her in surprise. ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘The electromagnetic fields made by devices like an interface or a mobile are damaging.’
Cole frowned. ‘Why have I never heard of that?’
‘Because you haven’t been listening,’ Lila teased.
‘Here, drink this.’ Clemence poured the herbal water into a cup and handed it to Ana.
Ana wrinkled her nose at the smell. ‘No thanks.’
‘It’s for your gel injections. It will help activate them and speed up the dissolving process. It’ll only take hours instead of a few weeks.’
‘I could dye your hair,’ Lila said.
Ana laughed dryly. ‘You’re giving me tea and a make-over?’
Clemence and Lila exchanged a look.
‘They’ve got your photo from the break-in at Three Mills,’ Lila said.
Ana froze. ‘How do you know?’
‘Because, along with your father, you’re dominating this morning’s headlines. Your current face now belongs to a disturbed woman who kidnapped a new-born baby from a south London hospital.’
‘What?’
‘They’re looking for you,’ Clemence said. ‘But if they announced you were responsible for the Three Mills break-in, people would be hiding rather than reporting you.’
‘When did this happen?’ Cole asked, powering up his interface and searching for the report.
‘Hang on!’ Lila was still in the middle of bandaging him up. She gently took back his arm to finish the job.
‘It was on the news twenty minutes ago,’ Clemence said. ‘Just after Ana’s father declared the Pure tests were poorly researched and an elaborate way of getting people who aren’t sick to medicate.’
The stiffness in Ana’s chest spread through her body. ‘He spoke out about the Pure test?’ she asked.
Clemence nodded.
Ana stopped poking the fire and dropped the stick. She swallowed hard but the rawness in her throat remained. For years her father had protected the test and his reputation. Now he was publicly embarrassing Evelyn Knight and pitting himself against her.
The Chairman wouldn’t let him get away with this.
Ana sat in a dank corner of the Wetlands tower while the others milled about outside. Clemence was brewing a new potion to help reduce the swelling in Cole’s knee. She had jokingly assured Ana it would taste even worse than the one Ana had drunk for the face gels. Cole, safer with the disfiguration, was keeping his altered face.
Legs pulled up to her chest, Ana used Dombrant’s interface – the one he’d thrown at Cole when the Board’s Special Ops found them – to watch her father’s interview. She tried to imagine how it must have been for him all those years ago, attempting to do something noble, realising he was a pawn. Ashby Barber had been heralded as the hero of a new age, while the weight of deceit hooked him up and dragged him under. Lies had always stood between Ana and her father. Now the barrier was crumbling. Perhaps there was some hope for them.
She left the news site and started searching the net for images that matched the pictures from her dream: the white corridors; the rainbow window of glass; the marble floor.
The boy.
He was in the back of all her thoughts, like she was looking through one of Dombrant’s contact lenses with the miniature circuits, and a second image had been superimposed on her vision.
Dombrant had been with her when she’d found the boy. But where? And even if she could prove the place existed, what happened next? The doctors had been experimenting on the child with the Arashan eyes. Ana had felt the horror, fear, sickness. And she had known with unshakable certainty that Evelyn lay behind it.
Lila and Cole traipsed into the tower followed by Clemence. Cole lay down on their bedding and Clemence began placing her hands over different areas of his body. Ana stopped to watch.
Lila wandered over and sat down beside her, stretching out her legs, bubbling with excitement. ‘It’s all happening!’ she said.
