The Industry (20 page)

‘Of course you must be very proud, but I
am
interested in Milo,' he persevered. ‘When did you last see him?'

‘Oh, Milo's been gone for a while now,' Carla told them.

Kirra shook her head slightly, unable to believe what she was hearing. The Franklyns sounded as though they had no idea that their son was lost at all. When she thought of all Milo had been through, Kirra was outraged on his behalf. His parents were so blasé about his disappearance, as though it was a spare set of keys that was missing and not their son. Why weren't they searching for him? Why weren't they worried sick about where he was and if he was alright?

‘He's been gone a while now?' Desmond repeated slowly.

Kirra glanced at him. He was nodding, but she could tell he too was furiously trying to make sense of things.

‘Yes. We weren't surprised at all when he left us a note saying he'd taken a job abroad,' Carla carried on.

‘A job?'

She looked at Kirra sharply, surprised that she'd finally spoken.

‘Yes,' she said, before turning to her husband. ‘Something to do with chemistry, wasn't it?'

Neil nodded. ‘Science was about the only thing he put any effort into,' he said disdainfully. ‘He sends a letter occasionally; very brief ones. I suppose he travels with the job.'

Kirra just stared. Absolutely nothing they'd said so far made sense. But then, quite suddenly, she realised she understood it all. They didn't know. The Franklyns didn't know their son was missing. Latham must have organised the note to avoid another police inquiry, and had maintained the ruse by sending letters every so often updating Carla and Neil with false information.

But it wasn't just Latham's cunning plan that chilled Kirra to the core. It was the apparent ease with which it had worked. Milo's parents had taken it at face value; they'd clearly never questioned the circumstances, hadn't wondered why their son never actually called. Maybe they'd never even read the letters properly and cottoned on to the fact that they weren't written in his own words.

The Franklyns made Kirra feel suddenly ill. She wondered if she could hurdle the coffee table, throttle the two people sitting opposite her, and then somehow make it to the bathroom before throwing up everywhere.

Desmond looked startled by this new piece of information. He took a sip of his tea to buy himself time to gather his thoughts.

‘To be honest, I think his brothers were quite relieved when we found the note,' Neil said just before draining his cup. ‘Milo's always been so … so difficult.'

There was an awkward silence.

‘Difficult?' Kirra finally managed.

‘Oh yes,' Carla said softly, ‘since he was very small. He's always been so jealous of Josh and Eli, you see,
so
jealous of all their achievements. He seemed to repel other children as well. I mean, I'm sure at least some of them at school wanted to be friends, but he would have none of them. He insisted upon being alone. I can't count the number of times his teachers called us in to discuss him, sick to death of his behaviour. The more it happened, the more humiliating it became. I'm quite sure it was all a cry for attention — being so dreadfully difficult — I can't think why else he did it.'

‘And we knew all about him, of course,' Neil added. ‘We hardly needed his teachers to keep telling us. We lived with his antics day in and day out. It only got worse as he grew. His teachers at high school told us he picked fights for no reason at all. He always said the other kids insulted him, but it happened so often we came to realise that he was the instigator, the root of the problem. And then he finally went too far and put another boy in hospital …'

‘He had become absolutely unpredictable and far too much of a strain on the family,' Carla said regretfully. ‘And it became so upsetting for us, and quite embarrassing. So, yes, I think our boys were thankful when he finally left.'

‘Eli can really focus on his football now,' Neil agreed. ‘And Josh on his job.'

Desmond nodded. He seemed to be absorbing the information very calmly.

Kirra, on the other hand, felt like taking every photo frame in the room, every photo of Milo's brothers in their school uniforms, every one of them grinning or playing soccer, and smashing them, one by one, over Neil's and Carla's heads. After all that had happened and all he had been through, Milo had no one looking for him. No one at all. His parents, who obviously hadn't taken the time to really get to know their son, were actually rejoicing in his absence.

Milo had mentioned that he hadn't been very happy at school, but if he had been ostracised and teased to the point of violence then things had been much more serious than he had let on to Kirra. He'd told her everything
else — indeed, Kirra suspected she knew more about Milo than the two people sitting opposite her — so why hadn't he told her this? Possibly the memories were too raw, too humiliating? Perhaps he was embarrassed by his past? But Kirra didn't care! Surely he'd known that. She didn't care one bit. After all, she too was wildly embarrassed about her own friendless situation. She understood what it was like! She understood so well.

With a sudden surge of urgency, Kirra realised she needed to be in Paris, to be with Milo, right now, that very instant. She had to tell him she was forever on his side, and that no matter what, he would never have to return to this cold house in Southampton and wonder if anyone at all cared about him.

‘Where did you say you were from again?' Neil asked Desmond.

‘Milo's university,' Desmond answered promptly. ‘Katherine here was a friend of his, and I was his teacher. We just wondered what had happened to him.'

Neil nodded, looking curiously at Kirra. ‘A friend?' he mused out loud, his forehead wrinkled. ‘From university, you say?'

‘Yes,' Kirra said as defiantly as she possibly could, though of course Neil had no idea why. ‘His best friend, actually.'

Milo's father looked puzzled, but didn't dispute it.

‘He sends photos occasionally,' he said after a beat of silence, getting up and opening a desk drawer beside the bookcase. He rummaged around for a moment before handing Desmond a thin wad of photographs and resuming his seat. ‘You can keep them, if you like.'

Kirra barely heard the exchange. She was staring ahead of her, loathing Mr and Mrs Franklyn, loathing their tidy living room, their photos of their sons, their hideous slate and white-pebbled garden, their whole lives. She distantly registered Desmond flicking through the pictures, but she was too disturbed to take any interest.

‘We'd best be off,' Desmond said, his voice no longer light and inquisitive.

Carla nodded and showed them to the door.

‘Enjoy the rest of your studies,' she said serenely to Kirra, ‘and do see it through. No price can be placed on a proper education.'

The door closed, the breeze helping it along, and Kirra trod back over the slate pavers, resisting the urge to flatten one of the ugly cacti beneath her feet — before realising there was no need to resist at all. She squashed one under her heel.

 

They didn't speak in the taxi on the way back to the apartment. Kirra was too deep in thought and Desmond seemed to be the same. Night was falling. Kirra wanted to ask Desmond what the significance of the meeting with the Franklyns was, but the words wouldn't form and so she stayed silent.

Desmond opened the door of their apartment and grabbed the phone on the stand by the door without bothering to turn on the lights. He tossed the photos onto the nearby couch and jabbed his thumb across the number pad.

‘What the hell!' He slammed the phone down. ‘It's not working.'

Kirra couldn't understand what he was so stressed about. It wasn't like he really knew Milo. If anyone should be upset for him it was her.

‘Listen, I need to make a phone call down at reception. Lock yourself in and stay here,' Desmond said, already marching back down the corridor. ‘And keep away from the windows!' he barked.

Kirra did as he asked, closing the door and snapping the lock in place. She flicked on the lamp by the faulty phone and dropped onto the couch, feeling exhausted and miserable and missing Milo terribly.

The photos strewn across the upholstery caught her eye — the photos some recruit had posted to the Franklyns. She scooped them up and looked through them. Every single one was a snap of a tourist attraction. There was the Eiffel Tower at sunset, an Italian piazza, a temple in Laos, even the Sydney Opera House. She sighed. It was all so depressing. And then she came to a photo that made her hands freeze.

Milo was standing in an aircraft hangar by a large private jet, giving a forced smile to the camera, though his eyes betrayed him. They positively glared. Kirra blinked. Her mind couldn't work fast enough to make sense of this. Then she noticed, in the distance, a woman's figure. She was so far away that she wasn't really even a part of the picture. Her back to the jet, she strode towards an open door with some long-forgotten purpose. She wore a blood-red jacket and had long dark hair.

Kirra stared, horrified, at the photo. Lena and Milo had never met. Lena had been killed before Milo had arrived at the hangar.

‘Kirra.'

She let out a small shriek and leaped off the couch. ‘Milo?'

He was standing next to the bathroom door, a strange sort of calm emanating from him. Kirra blinked at him. How long had he been in the apartment? Why hadn't he said anything? Why had he been hiding? For a moment, she forgot the photo on the couch.

‘You visited my parents,' he said softly, his eyes flicking disapprovingly between her new cardigan and her neatened hair.

Kirra gazed at him. There was something wrong with his voice. There was something wrong with all of him, really. He was looking at her as though he'd never seen her before in his life, as though he was meeting her for the first time. He had changed his clothes and was dressed in a clean pair of jeans and a black T-shirt. His face was still bruised, but devoid of filth, and the stark bandage Anton
had bound his fingers with was gone, a plain black strip of injury tape in its place. In his other hand was a gun.

Kirra didn't gasp or stumble backwards. She simply stared. Milo was here with a gun. Nothing —
nothing
— was making sense.

And then she remembered the photo.

Before she could manage another word, Milo started to speak, but it didn't sound like him. The words were flat and lacked any trace of emotion. He stared at her as he spoke, as though transfixed.

‘It's quite astonishing how easy it is to get Wyles out of the picture,' he mused. ‘A destroyed phone? A severed landline? And he thinks himself your protector.'

‘Desmond,' Kirra said.

‘What?'

‘Desmond,' she said, louder this time. ‘His name isn't Wyles. It's Desmond.'

‘Irrelevant, wouldn't you say?'

Kirra's hands were trembling as she reclaimed the photo from the couch. Her thumb glided over Lena's image.

‘Who are you?' she whispered.

‘My name
is
Milo Franklyn. But I'm not a Spencer Translator. I work for Latham.'

Of course, she'd known it already. Denial had ripped through her at first. Perhaps there was some other explanation. Perhaps Latham had ordered him to stand there and endure having his photo taken so more evidence of his well-being could be sent to Southampton?

‘You've met Carla and Neil,' he said, ‘so I don't need to explain my life in Southampton to you. Needless
to say, it wasn't the place for me. I was at university precisely three days before I met Latham. He offered me a job and a way out of there, and I took it. It only helped that my new profession was something I already excelled at, enjoyed even. I had just turned eighteen. That was more than three years ago.'

‘You're really twenty-one?' Kirra asked.

He nodded slowly. ‘And Latham's longest-serving recruit so far. All the rest have been pathetic. They always are. Idiots who think they know how to handle themselves, tripping over each other to get their hands on the biggest pay cheques they've ever seen. The dumbest ones die within days, weeks if they're lucky; most quit soon after they've been sent on their first assignment. They tend to get emotional after that. They really have no idea what it takes.'

Kirra stole a glance at his gun. Part of her still didn't believe what she was hearing. It simply wasn't true. Perhaps it was a cruel joke or her mind playing tricks? Perhaps it was a nightmare? The worst one she'd ever had.

‘For the important assignments, Latham sends me or he goes himself,' Milo said. ‘He trusts no one else. That's why he assigned me to you. I suppose my age didn't hurt either.'

Kirra's throat was dry. Her hands were clammy. Her heart seemed to be going much slower than usual, a lazy staccato of beats struggling and spluttering like an old car engine failing in cold weather.

‘I have to give him credit,' Milo continued. ‘He really didn't leave anything to chance. He gave you time, more than enough time, to realise how terrible it is to be
alone, and then, when he felt you'd had almost enough, intelligence records of me were deleted, my hands were cuffed and I was placed in the cell. Latham and I agreed on certain things I had to do to ensure you believed I was like you. Talk about rescue, chat about our families, that sort of thing. Of course, you had to believe I could do the sequence as well. We had to bond over something, had to share a common curse. That was very important.'

Kirra nodded. She didn't want to, but it seemed she wasn't in control of herself anymore.

‘All those times when Balcescu injected you,' she murmured, ‘he gave you something else.'

Milo chuckled. It was a cold, slippery sound that seemed to twist and knot around her neck.

‘You have such faith in my acting skills, Kirra. No. You had to believe, without doubt, that I was really suffering. The times I watched them torture you before writing a meaningless sequence on the page were to maintain my cover. To make you believe that I too was a Translator. And it was imperative that you did believe. Without you and your cooperation, without the sequences, we have no business. Without a business, I have no job. Without a job, I would still be in Southampton.'

His eyes clouded over for a moment with such hatred that Kirra couldn't stop herself from feeling sorry for him, the way she had at the Franklyns' house. But she had to remind herself that she was feeling sorry for the Milo she'd got to know during their time in the cell, and this … this wasn't the same Milo.

‘Of course, Latham was right in thinking he'd need to assign someone to you. He is an especially good judge
of character. He must have seen something in you that concerned him. Say you only responded to the torture while it was still shocking? After that, what if you resisted?

‘I'll be honest — even after meeting you, even after the little fight you put up in Barrie Avenue the day we came to take you, I thought Latham was wasting his time. I was sure you'd tolerate half a second of that drug before giving us what we wanted, and you did, but only after you'd held off as long as you could, just as Latham expected you might. Naturally, you'd resist again and again until it killed you, and we couldn't let that happen. Not when you're so priceless. Thankfully, though, people like you are predictable. You'll normally respond to the suffering of someone else. Latham knew that, and so did I. That's when I began my assignment with you.'

Was the room warm? Or was it chilled? Kirra couldn't tell. Was it daytime or night? She knew nothing, really. The idea that he was one of the masked men who had plucked her right out of her old life was eating away at her. She wondered if he'd been the man who'd hoisted her into the air? The one who'd dragged her into the van? Possibly the man who'd jabbed her with that syringe? She shuddered and took an unsteady breath before a terrible thought struck her.

‘Mai! Anton!' she gasped, remembering that Desmond had left Milo in their care. ‘Did you kill them?'

‘Your friends in Paris? I should have,' he replied. ‘But escaping them wasn't particularly challenging.'

Kirra moistened her bottom lip with her tongue, relief flooding her.

‘When they took you away for those three weeks …' she began.

‘Latham was pleased with the results I'd been getting with you,' Milo said. ‘He thought I deserved a break from the cell and gave me a couple of jobs, an excuse to stretch my legs.'

‘Those people who died. The men and that woman …'

‘Just jobs,' Milo said. ‘Latham never usually sends recruits on solo assignments. Only me.'

‘You killed them?' Kirra asked.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes.'

‘Y-you just shot them?'

‘Yes.'

Kirra swallowed nervously.

‘After you disappeared with Wyles,' Milo continued, ‘Latham was certain I'd had a hand in it. He was furious. He convinced himself that I knew where you were, that I'd orchestrated the escape. He tried to beat the truth out of me the night you left the factory. I told him over and over again about Wyles, but he wouldn't listen. Wyles was just a low-level recruit, after all. A nobody, really. Why would he of all people betray Latham?'

‘Desmond,' Kirra murmured.

Milo raised his strapped fingers to touch his blackened eye. It looked several days old. ‘Eventually, he gave me the benefit of the doubt, and a chance to prove myself. He sent me to collect you and I would have succeeded if not for your friends in that bar. I shouldn't have been surprised, though. It was almost foolish trusting those men I hired with such a simple task as snatching a teenage girl. It proved to be far too taxing for them.
That woman — Mai, is it? She fought very bravely, particularly for an Analyst.'

‘You put that warning out to the Reloaders about me?' Kirra asked. ‘You hired Tavio? That was all you?'

He nodded. ‘I, unlike most of my colleagues and competitors, never underestimate the value of a Decoy, nor do I assume the worst of a Reloader. Everyone is good for something.'

‘You're the young one they all talked about,' she said slowly, overwhelmed by how much sense it all made. ‘It's been you every time. Felicity Klein didn't pull up the file of you because Latham had it deleted.'

He gave another slight nod. ‘The next team of recruits I sent were killed on that highway. I was enraged by their incompetence, but I couldn't get you myself without ruining my cover. You see, we planned to keep using it. It doesn't matter now, not with the way things have turned out in the last few hours. Anyway, I returned to Dusseldorf empty-handed and my failure made Latham suspicious once again. He thought I let you go, thought I allowed you to slip by. He was furious with me. He thought I was hiding something from him, and tried to torture the truth from me. But when you turned up on your little rescue mission, I was vindicated. Desmond himself was there, which proved my story to be true.'

He gave a grim smile.

‘Using Simone was an interesting idea of yours. I've never seen Latham so shocked before. He's a quick thinker, though. He realised he could save his daughter and ensure your safe return in one move. So he let me go — first to dispose of your annoying new friends, and
then to bring you back to him. Which I would have done if you hadn't run off to Southampton with Desmond in such a hurry. I'm sure you can imagine what a nasty surprise that was for me to wake up to. Thankfully, it wasn't hard to find out where you'd gone. Viera Favero is exceedingly helpful if you approach her the right way.'

‘She told you I'd gone to Southampton?' Kirra said, her voice unfamiliar and quiet.

‘Yes. Intelligence agents aren't loyal to their clients. If you're willing to pay for it, they'll tell you anything.'

Kirra knew there was no point in feeling betrayed. She knew money was the only thing that mattered in the Industry.

‘I really wish you hadn't used Simone like that though, Kirra,' he said. ‘She's not dead, by the way.'

Kirra's head whipped up. ‘But … there was blood.'

‘She was struck in the shoulder, so I think she'll pull through. Balcescu's operating on her right now.'

Kirra wasn't sure she cared whether Simone lived or died, all she could focus on was Milo. She'd been locked up for six months, nearly five of them with Milo, and she was just realising now that their time together had been a carefully crafted ploy. Which meant Milo Franklyn didn't really exist and nothing they'd shared had been real.

Perhaps she should have listened to Latham all those months ago, just after he'd murdered Lena.
Connections are dangerous in this world you now live in. They will only serve to limit you and hurt you.
She wondered if he had been trying to tell her, in his own way, that she would make the same mistake again, and that he, Latham, could always —
would
always — outsmart her.

Lost in thought, Kirra suddenly realised Milo was still talking.

‘Latham's furious about Simone. You can imagine how much that's changed things. You see … it's personal now.'

‘No shit it's personal,' Kirra said furiously. ‘It was personal the moment he put a bullet in Lena's brain.'

Milo looked at her for a long time, as though she'd said something very interesting.

‘I wondered why you never wanted to discuss Lena,' he said after a while. ‘It struck me as very unusual. You rambled on about everything else, the most mundane little things from your Freemont life, things that nearly bored me to sleep, but never her. I wasn't there that night, but I heard she died for you. Surely that had some sort of impact —'

‘I wanted to keep her just for me,' Kirra cut in. ‘Just one thing I didn't have to share with you.'

Milo looked as though he didn't believe her reasoning one bit.

‘You brought me that article,' Kirra said suddenly.

‘Yes,' came the curt reply.

She blinked at him, waiting for more.

‘It was only printed because I rang in the sighting of you in Sydney. That was my primary intention in the country. The inquiry into your disappearance was getting out of hand, you see. The police had started poking around, forming lists of the places you'd been, the websites you'd viewed at home and at school. They weren't likely to track us down, but we can never be too careful. The false Sydney lead distracted them.

‘Your family's alright,' he added after a pause. ‘Mitchell even goes to school most days now. You don't really look like any of them, you know. Mitchell, a little, but that's all really.'

‘Stay away from them!' Kirra snapped suddenly. The mention of them had sent fear cutting through her like a knife.

Milo smiled, looking amused. ‘That's not up to me,' he told her. ‘I go where I'm told.'

‘Why did you try to escape with me?' Kirra asked suddenly. ‘It doesn't make any sense.'

Her numbness was trickling away; she knew she wouldn't be able to hold herself together for much longer, so she needed to ask her questions quickly.