Chapter Sixteen

 

Hendra snatched the access code for the carpool from Janus's desk. She rode down in the lift to the basement, hoping to find a car with an operating system that could link her up to anyone via vidchat. It was so much better than the older model she'd stolen at the harbour. Slipping into the back seat of her new car and coolly delivering the command to drive gave her the feeling of being obeyed that she treasured. There would be plenty more moments like this to sooth her ruffled nerves. She was already moving back up in the world to where she belonged and putting the discomfort of the past few days behind her.

 

As she pulled up outside Sinistra's facility two hours later, Hendra smoothed her silver tunic and checked her belt for her handgun before getting out of the car. It was quiet here. The lovely afternoon's beauty struck her, and the silence of the woods belied the difficulties that had engulfed the authorities when the resistance struck.

 

She wasn't surprised by her sister’s willingness to stay hunkered down in this odd little place. It was like Sinistra to rot here, conducting her cruel experiments and wondering about why love and happiness never came her way.

 

She pressed the buzzer and spoke into the crackling line, “Hendra Tungsten. Is my sister there?”

 

The lock clicked, and Hendra pushed the gate open and strolled along the woodland path to the main entrance. Hidden inside an unassuming shed was the lift to the facility below. She fiddled with the rusty padlock and forced open the creaky door. The inside was filthy, and spiders’ webs hung from its ceiling.

 

As she stepped onto the square in the middle and pressed the button on the right hand side of the door, the lift mechanism whirred and the ground shook slightly. The square of floor she was standing on sank down. The concrete barrier rose up in front of her, and she waited patiently while she descended. At the bottom, she stepped off onto the shiny floor and dusted the fragments of old leaves from the filthy lift off her suit until it was spotless again.

 

Sinistra came running along the corridor, her heels clacking. As she rushed to embrace her older sister, Hendra pushed her away. “Where is he?”

 

“Gerald’s safe. He’s resting. You can see him later."

 

Sinistra was red-faced and evasive. Hendra recognised that look as the same expression her little sister would get as a child when she tried to hide her cherished toy horse, refusing to share it. The black-felt animal got torn apart in their struggle, and Sinistra cried for days over its loss. Hendra forgot about its existence in less than ten minutes, throwing it away as soon as she obtained ownership of it. The same wide-eyed innocence Sinistra displayed now concealed a gritty determination to have her own way this time.

 

Hendra lunged forward and put her right hand on Sinistra’s shoulder, squeezing the muscles ruthlessly until her sister drooped and clutched her upper arm. As Sinistra fell to her knees, Hendra folded her arms. She stood over her sister and sneered, “You never got your way then. You aren't going to do so now. I’m going to see Gerald Flint right now.”

 

“He’s a mess. Let him recuperate."

 

“Been playing your little fertility games again, have you?”

 

Hendra slapped Sinistra across the face without waiting for an answer. She kicked Sinistra viciously, over and over, in the stomach. Eventually, her sister clutched her gut and wept, begging for mercy. She cowered as she gestured along the corridor to where Gerald was being held. Hendra dragged her to her feet and shoved her in that direction.

 

“Show me! I'm in a hurry! And I don’t have enough sympathy for Gerald Flint to care about what state he's in.” Hendra paused to control her emotion before she trusted herself to continue. “His father’s dead, you know.”

 

“We found out yesterday. I'm sorry." Sinistra stopped outside a white door and pressed her index finger against the biometric reader. The lock sprang open and she pushed the door ajar. "I wiped his memory to keep him pliable. He was pretty determined to escape, and I wanted an easy ride. I've broken it to him as easily as I can about his father, but he's devastated."

 

"Idiot! Gerald was working with the resistance. He's been playing you, and of course you fell for it."

 

Hendra pushed past Sinistra. Gerald was curled up on the bed. His pale face was streaked with tears, and he stared blankly at the wall opposite. Hendra dragged him round to face her and punched him in the face. She elbowed Sinistra away when her sibling tried to intervene.

 

“That’s for siding with the resistance fighters who killed your father,” she told Gerald, rubbing her knuckles.

 

*

 

Ivy wriggled free of the loosened restraints and sat up. Her head throbbed, but she scrambled to her feet, clutching at the bedpost to stay upright as the shock of seeing Honigbaum's corpse lying on the carpet sank in.

 

She staggered into the bathroom, vomiting when she saw that he had dumped Eva's body in the bath. Eva's eyes stared reproachfully. Her clothes lay in a crumpled pile at the foot of the bed, her high heels jumbled in among them. She flung on her scarlet evening dress and shoes and stumbled over to the door.

 

As the door slowly opened, she peered out along the corridor. It was empty, and she tiptoed to the end safely and snuck round the corner. She stayed snug to the wall and listened out for voices and footsteps. Two men approached, chattering away. As they came round the corner, she stepped out into the middle of the hallway, kept her chin up and strode towards them.

 

“Ah, there you are!" she said, feigning a confidence she didn't feel to brazen her way past. Any hint of nervousness was bound to attract unwelcome attention. "If you’re thinking of knocking at Dr Honigbaum's door, he’s asked not to be disturbed until teatime. He’s tired after last night and wants to rest.”

 

One of the men sniggered. The other looked her up and down, and nudged his companion. "Late one, was it?"

 

“Leave him to rest, please,” she snapped, "or I'll make sure he knows exactly who's responsible for disturbing his nap. You can both stand guard outside for the rest of the afternoon to prevent anyone else bothering him."

 

She swept into the main lift and smacked the button. Downstairs, she marched through the hotel foyer and out into Ubersneller’s main square. The evening dress from last night was the ultimate walk of shame, and people were staring.

 

They're going to have no difficulty remembering me, she thought, and that's not good.

 

The bus for Gigaschein was just pulling out of the parking bay. She ran over to it and waved for the driver to stop. He pulled on the brake, the doors whooshed open with a rush of pneumatic warmth and she clambered aboard.

 

“Heavy night was it?” he joked.

 

She plastered a disarming smile across her face. “Party went on 'til dawn. They’re still finishing up inside.”

 

She tottered along to the back of the bus and sat down. It was virtually empty. Just two walkers who looked at her clothes oddly, and an old woman staring out of the window oblivious to her presence.

 

As the bus pulled away, she closed her eyes. Henry was imprisoned in the asylum up in Gigaschein. Honigbaum claimed to have given the order for Henry’s release, but she didn't believe him for one moment. The sooner she got up to the hamlet and found a way to infiltrate the asylum, the sooner she could free Henry.

 

That was all she could think about for now. Her training kicked in automatically, enabling her to focus on making her escape at the expense of everything else. After the horror of Honigbaum's behaviour, it centred her within herself to focus on the getaway. She felt calm again. Her tutors in the resistance drummed that into her over and over. Get out fast once the mark is dead, they hammered home almost every lesson, but never leave a man behind. The job isn't over until every one of you is safely away. Henry might be merely an innocent bystander, but he was trapped because of her. Leaving him behind in Austria was unthinkable.

 

She felt numb to everything but rescuing Henry and getting back to Blackacre. For now, the truth of whatever Honigbaum had done to her when she was unconscious, and what it would mean for her life going forward, must wait.

 

*

 

All the scientists were busy when Don recovered enough to wake again. Complete rest was essential, enabling him to recover from the strain of probing others' thoughts and prepare for the attack he would launch against the facility. Without it, his shield would weaken and he would become exposed.

 

None of them had any idea he was in the room. His protective layer was working, but it was taking all his mental powers to retain that, head off the Seven and investigate what was happening to Ivy. When he tried to move, his limbs were stiff and unresponsive.

 

He tried to search for Ivy, but there was only a misty blur. She would have to find a way back to Blackacre without his guidance and support.

 

As he lay still, he listened to the people around him talking. One was louder and more hectoring than the others. The other women deferred to her, but they didn’t like it. He focused hard on trying to work out who she was, but his powers weren’t working properly. The pain felt like it was almost splitting his head in two.

 

His heightened senses could smell the tanks situated beneath the main building. The facility's grid was powered by diesel generators. If all their systems ran off this fuel supply, cutting it off would make everything here spiral out of control. That would generate enough confusion and unrest to free the imprisoned men.

 

*

 

Gerald fought Sinistra off until he realised she was trying to help him sit up. She shot a look of mute rebellion at her sister as he clutched his jaw. The whole of the right side of his face throbbed.

 

Hendra and Gerald glared at each other. She elbowed Sinistra aside, perched on the side of his bed and stared at her sister until she left the room. After the door clicked shut, she took out a handheld device and played a short vidclip. It ended with a young man standing with a gun to his father's head. “Tell me where this man is now,” she said.

 

"How would I know? Your sister wiped the last three months of my memory."

 

"You helped this man kill your father."

 

Nausea rose inside him, and he bent over and vomited all over the floor. He sat up and drank the glass of water sitting on the table next to the bed. “No! I would never do that! Why are you doing this to me?”

 

She switched to a picture of a young woman with long black hair, mesmerisingly beautiful. He felt her gauging his reaction to the image. “What about her? Know where she is?”

 

He shook his head, choking back tears as her claim that he'd been involved in the resistance that killed his father sank in. She handed him a tissue and he blew his nose. She got to her feet and fixed him with a terrifyingly stern look from which he instinctively shrank.

 

"Who is she?"

 

“All in good time! During this crisis you haven’t shown the sort of loyalty your father would’ve expected, Gerald. I’m going to have my work cut out rehabilitating you into a correct way of thinking. Thankfully, your genetics mean you’re worth it. It’s going to be hard to get you to recognise your treachery, but we’ll work at it until you do. Then you’re mine. From this moment on and until it's all over, I own your soul, Gerald Flint.”

 

She helped him to his feet. He still felt very unsteady, and she put her arm around his waist. He loathed her proximity, but leaving the facility meant taking a step closer to being back in the Metropolis where he could appeal to family and friends for help. Anything beat staying here to be abused by Sinistra.

 

“Luckily, I have some data from when you were in the east," Hendra added. "It’ll help me to explain how you got sucked into all this. Nothing at all from the west, I’m afraid. It was a mistake not to watch the west at all, but the Master simply didn’t have the strength to keep an eye on everyone. He’s paying for it now. I bet in time he’ll regret letting the north go their own way, too.”

 

He stumbled and fell against her, but she braced herself and kept him on his feet somehow. They staggered along the corridor together.

 

“I want to go home.”

 

“Of course. We’ve got a forward command centre about fifty miles away. I’ll take you there. Come on!”

 

He nodded. You're getting out of this appalling facility and back into the real world, he thought. That moment couldn't come soon enough.

 

*

 

Ivy got off the bus in the tiny hamlet and waited by the roadside until it pulled away. It wound its way further up the mountain road until it disappeared over the peak. The asylum was a mile or so to the east, and the track leading to it peeled off from the road about five hundred yards away. There was a gap in the pine forests on the hillside where the asylum was located, and she glanced doubtfully at her high-heeled shoes and back up at the track.

 

There were only five houses in Gigaschein. One operated as a seasonal chalet restaurant. Two walkers sat on white plastic chairs relaxing. One sipped a hot chocolate while the other crammed an enormous slice of Apfel Strudel into his mouth. The men watched her closely, and she gave them as cheery a wave as she could muster when she passed by.

 

A tiny house lay on the right-hand side of the road slightly separate from the hamlet. A woman stood at the first-floor window staring at her but, even though Ivy kept her gaze fixed in front as she walked past, the woman still called out, “Fraulein!”

 

Hunching her shoulders, Ivy hurried onwards, glancing back over her shoulder as the woman kept calling after her. The men sitting outside the café began following her. She turned back towards the asylum and broke into a run, her heels clacking against the tarmac as she searched in blind panic for the track. The two men sprinted after her. Despairing of making swift progress in her shoes, she took them off and ran on in bare feet.

 

When the woman saw them, she shouted at the men. They tried to placate her, but her voice rose sharply in pitch and intensity. As other villagers left their homes to investigate to rumpus, Ivy ducked behind a bush and cowered there as the men passed by.

 

The men’s voices receded into the distance, and she crept out of her hiding place and back onto the road. Her dress had ripped on the thorns, and the silk was muddy and creased. She threw her shoes under the bush and tied her long dress up around her waist so that it hung at knee length, but it was still cumbersome, and eventually she gave up and let the silky material slide back down her legs to brush the ground.

 

“You’re going to need something more inconspicuous, Fraulein.”

 

Ivy spun round. The woman from the house stood in the middle of the road with her hands on her hips. She was tall and thin. Her grey hair hung almost all the way down her back, and the breeze just caught the ends, blowing them into her face until she tucked the locks behind her ears in a habitual gesture. Her eyes were piercing blue, and her face was slender. Her nose was narrow and jutting, and her thick-lensed glasses were heavy framed. She wore pointed gold slippers and a multi-coloured silk dressing gown.

 

“Yet I am still less eye-catching than you!”

 

The woman eyed Ivy with amusement. “People are used to me here. I dress as I please. I don’t need to be hiding myself away.”

 

She took Ivy's arm and tried to guide her back towards the hamlet. “Everyone here is suspicious of strangers, and those men will work out that you aren’t ahead of them on the track," she said. "Come inside! I’m trying to help you!”

 

Ivy yanked herself free. “I've escaped from Luther Honigbaum's control before by myself," she said.

 

“He can’t be trusted. I did, years ago. I've regretted it ever since.” The woman took Ivy's arm again more gently, and this time she allowed herself to be led towards the woman’s house. It couldn’t hurt to slip inside for a few moments to gather her thoughts.

 

“I’m Ivy.”

 

“Call me Birgitte.” She leant down behind the logs neatly piled up around the walls of her tiny house and drew out a large ornate key. The eaves came almost down to floor level, and almost all the walls were obscured by rows of logs. She unlocked the door and ushered Ivy inside.

 

The gloom took some getting used to. The pungent wood smoke was almost overpowering, but Birgitte smacked the frame of the lead-paned window with her elbow until the damp wood yielded and the window opened. The room filled with the scent of the meadow flowers opening up on the hillsides.

 

A huge open fireplace occupied most of the north wall, and a lazy fire licked the grate. Two seats with plush but threadbare coverings stood on a sheepskin rug before the fire. The ash-covered flags were peppered with firelighter wrappers, and a burnished set of fire tongs and other implements, also covered in ash, sat on the right-hand side of the fire. Old newspapers and kindling were piled up on the other side.

 

At Birgitte's invitation, Ivy slipped onto the red armchair and held her hands out towards the fire to comfort herself. “How long have you lived here?” she asked.

 

“In this valley, twenty years. Been in this house for about five. Before that, I had less amenable accommodation when Honigbaum threw me into the asylum. Only got out when he no longer saw me as a threat. He's an excellent host provided you’re not fond of daylight or good food!”

 

Birgitte spat into the fire as she settled into the other armchair. “My daughter was there with me for a year or two. He likes to keep his eyes open for a pretty young woman wherever he is. That’s how he got hold of my sweet girl in the first place.”

 

“He's dead.”

 

It took Birgitte a moment to process Ivy's sudden declaration. Her face broke into a smile, and she clapped her hands in glee.

 

Long years growing up in the Metropolis slums, orphaned and with only a brother to protect her, had taught Ivy an unerring instinct about who to trust and who to remain wary of. She honed that skill to perfection the hard way until even a split second decision would fall along the right side of the line. Her survival depended upon it.

 

Reassured by the sincerity of Birgitte's hints about her past, Ivy curled up in the chair and slowly explained everything that had happened down in Ubersneller. If she was to infiltrate the asylum quickly and rescue Henry, she must accept help from someone who knew the ways of the place and who had every reason to hate Honigbaum as much as she did.

 

*

 

When Gerald and Hendra approached the exit, Sinistra blocked their way to the lift. “You’re not taking him,” she snapped.

 

His heart fell at the prospect of being locked back in that awful room again, but Hendra calmly pulled her gun from her belt and clicked off the safety catch. Sinistra didn’t flinch, she just edged forward, and Hendra curled her finger around the trigger, aiming right at her sister’s head. She chuckled, and she didn’t shift her gaze from her target. Gerald found it utterly depressing that Hendra was enjoying this moment so much.

 

“Why throw it all away?" she asked Sinistra. "You’ve got what you wanted. If the pregnancy test is negative, or you lose the baby like before, you can visit us and take another pass at him. Or I’ll courier some of his sperm, and you can impregnate yourself. Think of the child. Put their needs first.”

 

“My child needs a father.”

 

“Gerald's inherited first-class genetic material. He has a wider duty to pass it on. You can’t expect him to hang around here worrying about your defective ovaries.”

 

Sinistra lunged forward, and the sisters fought. Hendra gained the upper hand by punching her sister in the stomach. As Hendra struggled to push Sinistra away, the gun went off in a sharp blast of aggression. Sinistra slumped to the ground, her eyes wide with shock, clutching her abdomen. A scarlet stain was already spreading across her white blouse. As her eyes glazed over, Hendra stepped over her body, tugging Gerald along behind.

 

Yanking the door open, she shoved him into the lift. She pressed the button and holstered her weapon. As she sneered, shame at his physical weakness cut him. Her face relaxed into a smug smile.

 

I can't wait to be out of this hell and see the sky and feel the sun on my skin again, he thought.

 

“Your friends have certainly turned our world upside down," she said. "But don’t worry, we’re starting to fight back here and now. Getting hold of you is a part of that. You’re the poster boy for genetic superiority, so get ready to do your bit by fathering lots and lots of super-smart children.”

 

At the prospect of what lay ahead, he vomited onto the floor. Some of it splattered on her trousers and boots, and she scowled at him. The lift clattered up to the surface, and they stepped through the filthy shed and out into the early summer sunshine.

 

The woodland was beautiful. The trees were in full blossom, and the wild flowers lining the path were a glorious riot of colour. He sniffed the air, revelling in the aromas of the woods and fields. Cattle were lowing in one of the pastures to his left. A flock of starlings flew overhead. Dew lay on the flowers and bushes along the path. It was overcast, but the sun fought to break through the clouds.

 

He was delighted to be outside again, stimulated by the natural world. Already, the numbing effect of the cruelty he'd witnessed in the facility was ebbing away, but he had no intention of forgetting those who were incarcerated.

 

Returning to the Metropolis meant being able to raise discreet questions with the authorities about whether the research was needed, pressing until they admitted that the programme had been a rogue endeavour without official sanction and devoid of scientific validity. He would keep campaigning until the women were set free.

 

At the same time, he would murmur in the ears of whoever was now in power that his father's mistress had murdered her own sister in cold blood and that Hendra's instability must be neutralised as quickly as possible.

 

He followed her down the path to where her car was parked next to a pasture with some cattle grazing. She unlocked the boot and handed him a tunic and matching trousers. He turned the light bundle over in his hands. His jeans and shirt stank of sweat and vomit, but nothing would induce him to accept a single item from her that he could manage without, and he handed the clothes back in silence.

 

She raised a sculpted eyebrow. “I brought you a formal tunic and trousers. You must present yourself impeccably in public. Image is everything in politics, Gerald, but you know that from your dad. How else do you think he got to be so powerful?”

 

The bull in the pasture squelched through the mud, sticking its face sideways through the slats of the gate and stretching its tongue out. Gerald smiled as he caressed its ears, smiling and totally at ease. Standing here with some livestock felt like being back at Blackacre with his cousins during the summer holidays. He felt like a portion of his identity was seeping back into his soul.

 

His father had been overbearingly powerful at work and at home, but Ian was only one among many in the Flint clan. Not even the eldest son: that had been Brett's father Patrus. Gerald was much more than the upbringing his father had pressed upon him, and standing by the gate he reminded himself of that fact.

 

When Hendra gawped at this sudden change in him, he said, "The Flints are from the north. Farmers, mostly."

 

Summers spent playing with Brett and Toby and Henry, sailing on Darkwater, riding on the moors, fishing in the river and running through Blackacre’s fields: the images gambolled through Gerald's mind. He felt human again, loved and valued.

 

“You’ve been distracted by all the upheaval, but I’m going to help you reconnect with what’s important. Your father was always very proud of your decision to become a doctor. Did you know that?” Hendra asked.

 

A stab of pain assailed his chest. I always assumed my career choice was a disappointment to him.

 

“But now you have a higher destiny. Ian’s dead, and you must take his place.”

 

He shook his head vehemently.

 

“Did I make it sound like you had a choice?” she added.

 

Hendra's spotless black car was just like the kind his father, and every other politician and public servant, had been driven around in. He got into the front passenger seat and strapped himself in. She slipped into the other seat next to him. “Drive to the forward command centre,” she ordered the car.

 

It turned around and accelerated down the country road.

 

“Be about an hour’s drive. Only fifty miles, but for security reasons we’ll take a circuitous route,” she added. The car’s dashboard processed her instruction. It would listen to every word they said and store the material.

 

“I don’t know why you think I would be prepared to help you. Why would I care about what you people believe in? You're monsters.”

 

She adjusted her seat backwards to enable her to relax a little, exhaling a long slow breath. “We’ve lost everything. But what the resistance doesn’t realise is that we will fight back. We already are. We have systems and resources they don’t know anything about. We will reclaim this country, and Ivy Spires and her friends will get hung out to dry.”

 

As Hendra smiled slowly and suggestively, Gerald’s heart sank. Just like her sister, he thought, though I don't want to think about what she'll demand of me.

 

“You’ve spent the last few days on the wrong side of history. I owe it to your late father to make sure I help you step back over the line and, when you’ve done so, to stay on the right side. Don’t worry, I won’t let you down.”

 

He didn’t answer. He considered very carefully what to say next. “What I’d really like to do is to go and see my mother. I ought to make sure she’s okay,” he murmured as casually as he could.

 

The fewer challenges he made to her authority now, the closer every hour that passed brought him to the Metropolis and to the possibility of being able to appeal to friends, family and colleagues for help. His father had been a very influential member of the political system, and his mother had stayed in the marriage despite everything Ian had done and worked the connections she had with the wives of other powerful men to help her husband's career. She could call in favours until Hendra was forced to relinquish control of him. Afterwards, he could ask people he trusted to start filling in the blanks of the last three months.

 

Hendra mulled it over. “As soon as it’s safe to leave the forward command centre we’ll head south," she said. "Might take a few days, but I think I can arrange a vidcon with your mother earlier if I pull a few strings.”

 

His heart flipped over. His mother would put his happiness first, and she would insist on his being released. His next step must be to make contact with her.