His conversation with Harvey had raised more questions than it had answered, but Bill needed to wrap up their chat if he was to make the 8am meeting with Jameson. He hoped having the pair in the room might coordinate their efforts better. But leaving the solution to them unsettled him. He needed a third opinion.
Bill arrived at the ITF office an hour later. At 6am, he expected the building to be empty—the night shift clocked off about now. But as he climbed the stairs he heard someone working on the first floor. He opened the door and entered the dark space. There, he found Ben sat hunched over one of the monitors, his face illuminated by the only light in the room.
‘Work doesn’t start until 8am, you know.’
Officially anyway. His underground operatives worked around the clock.
Ben startled like a deer caught in headlights. His eyes sported two black rings from his obvious lack of sleep.
‘I just wanted to keep an eye on things.’ He looked from Bill back to the screen. ‘The halfway house is boring.’
Ben’s attitude to work was stellar, but Bill had noticed the boy had become quieter of late.
‘You still worried about Marcus?’ He walked over to the desk. ‘Because he’s well and truly locked up.’
Maybe he shouldn’t have told him.
Ben’s gaze intensified on the screen showing illegal chatter from the Wave. ‘I’m not worried.’
‘Then what?’
Bill glanced at his screen. There was one, maybe two chats occurring. And those were about Light Boxes and pets. Nothing illegal. Not surprising.
‘It’s...’ Ben sighed, keeping his eyes forward. ‘It’s nothing.’
Bill’s heart picked up. He had no experience with kids, let alone teenagers. That had always been Laura’s forte. Without her here, it was just him ambling his way through this minefield called life. But when it came to Ben Watson, none of that mattered. He owed the kid a good life here.
Bill pulled over a chair and sat down beside him. Leaning forward, he said, ‘What is it? You don’t like Mrs Hegarty?’
The teen’s eyes flicked from screen to him, back to screen. ‘She’s fine. She’s been very nice.’
‘What is it then?’ The irritation crept into his voice. He wouldn’t ask a third time.
The boy’s shoulders slumped a little. ‘Nothing I can’t handle.’
The early starts. The request to work longer hours. It started to make sense.
‘Are you having trouble at the house?’
Ben’s lips pinched. ‘I said I can handle it.’
‘Because if you need me to speak to Mrs Hegarty, I can do that.’
To Bill’s surprise, Ben laughed. ‘I’ve been dealing with their sort for years on Earth.’ He looked at him and touched a hand to his chest. ‘Orphan, remember?’ He looked away. ‘I know how to sort my own problems.’
Bill didn’t buy the bravado act. But he didn’t want to push, either. ‘Why the early start then?’
‘It’s quiet here. I can think better.’ He looked at Bill again. ‘How is Margaux?’
‘Better, according to my source.’ He didn’t mention Laura being that source. Mentioning her would only invite new, painful conversation about her. ‘Any significant chatter turn up before I did?’
‘Nah.’ Ben sighed and swivelled round in his chair to face Bill. ‘Being here, it’s useless. I thought that if I came in after the night shift there would be more activity. That the criminals would be brazen enough to go online while they thought we were asleep.’
‘It’s not useless work. It’s a lot of sitting around and monitoring things, but I assure you the work we do is important.’
Ben lifted his hands. ‘But there’s nothing happening, no rebellion. No rogue takeover.’ He paused. ‘I want to go to District Three. You promised I could.’
‘And you will, but things are a bit stressed there at the moment.’
‘Why?’ Ben frowned. ‘Is it because of Laura?’
Bill shifted in his chair. ‘No.’ One thing he’d say for the teen, he knew how to be direct. ‘They have elders visiting from other districts at the moment. It would be inappropriate for us to go while that’s happening. Things will quieten there soon.’
The teen narrowed his gaze.
‘What?’ asked Bill.
‘If things are good, why did you give Harvey his own lab? Why do you have Jameson monitoring the vitals of the Elite?’
‘How did you know about that?’
‘I like to keep up with things around here.’
A thought terrified Bill. His eyes flicked to the screen. ‘Please don’t tell me there’s chatter on the Wave about it?’
‘Nah.’ Ben shrugged as if it were no big deal. ‘I, er, might have followed you. I saw you give Harvey his warehouse. I watched the movers stock it with equipment I’ve only seen in two places: the hospitals here and the genetic clinics on Earth. I looked up Jameson and found some interesting details about him. He was the last person on record to consult with the board members, while they were still human. So I put two and two together and assumed he had something to do with their current state.’
Jenny had warned Bill about this teen’s sharp mind and ability to be places he shouldn’t. Now he was seeing it in action. He wondered if Ben might consider a future in underground operations. He could be a great asset to the team some day.
Ben continued, ‘Now I’m wondering if everything is okay. Why are you keeping the Elite and their hosts alive, and honouring an agreement with Harvey that I heard you say to Stephen weeks ago you would never honour?’
Bill sighed. ‘It’s a feeling. Call me paranoid, but I’m not willing to sit back and wait for the next big disaster to happen.’ Ben’s expression was neutral but his posture held tension. ‘It happened with the attack on District Three. Tanya and her cronies were planning transcendence for years, but it only took a week for her to ramp up her efforts after the Nexus became an option. An attack like that rarely skips past the consequences. Until I’m satisfied all dangers have passed, the Elite will remain alive.’
‘You think Margaux’s illness is the start of something new? You said she was fine.’
‘She’s been fine for nearly sixty years. Now suddenly she gets sick? Something tells me we need to keep a better eye on things.’
Ben’s brow furrowed. ‘Harvey’s checking the first-gen code, right?’
‘Yeah, how did you know—?’
The teen waved his hand at him. ‘I looked up information on Harvey that first day you asked me about him. I also recognised his name, but not from where. The records from the World Government activities were unsealed after the regime abandoned Earth. It wasn’t hard to dig into the lives of their former geneticists.’
Bill stared at the teen with his shock of black hair. He looked less like the waif who had stepped off the passenger ship nearly a month ago. Mrs Hegarty must be feeding him well. But he didn’t like hearing the other boys at the halfway house were giving him a hard time.
Ben was frowning at him. ‘What?’
Bill blinked away his thoughts. ‘Nothing. You remind me of me sometimes.’
‘What, annoying and surly?’
His quick response prompted a laugh from Bill. ‘I’m not that bad.’ He stood up. ‘Come on.’
Ben got to his feet. ‘Where?’
‘We’re going to talk to an old friend.’ He took long strides to the door.
The teen jogged to keep up. ‘I thought we weren’t going to District Three.’
‘We’re not.’
Bill took the stairs leading up two at a time. When his breaths became laboured, he set a normal pace to the sixth floor. Bill entered the empty floor and headed straight for his office. The shuffle of feet followed him.
In his office, he pulled a second chair around to his side of the desk and sat down in his own chair. He called a number on Earth while Ben settled.
‘You calling Jenny?’
Bill didn’t reply. His screen filled with a password box. He entered the twenty-six-digit encryption code he’d created for the connection to Earth and authorised it with a scan of his security chip.
The connection rang and rang. A familiar face filled the screen—the one he had hoped for.
‘Greyson,’ said Bill.
Greyson’s brown eyes widened for a second. A smile crinkled the dark skin around his eyes. ‘Bill, good to see you.’ Caution peppered his tone. ‘What can we do for you?’ Ben moved into shot. Greyson’s sharp gaze flickered away from Bill. A new smile formed. ‘Ah, Ben! Good to see you. How are you settling in there?’
‘Hi, Greyson. Well. How’s Isobel?’
‘Doing good work. She’s working alongside Jenny to convince the Indigenes to obey the new rules. She’ll be delighted I saw you.’
‘Tell her I said hello and that I’m doing well here.’
‘Will do.’ His smile vanished as his attention returned to Bill. ‘I sense this isn’t a social call.’
‘It’s not. We have a potential issue arising here and I wanted to draw on your experience of working as a lab technician.’
Greyson had worked out of a lab in New York in a similar role to Serena, when she’d been human.
The frowning eighty-year-old leaned back in his chair. ‘That was a long time ago, Bill. What’s the issue you’re having?’
He told him about Margaux’s sickness; Greyson agreed it was a rare phenomenon to occur among the Indigenes. Then Bill mentioned the deteriorating code in the Elite, plus his handing over of property to Harvey, and what he had Harvey doing for him.
Greyson frowned. ‘And you trust that man?’
‘As far as I can throw him, but I think the work intrigues him enough that he’ll stay the course.’
‘And Marcus? Is he a problem?’ Greyson’s eyes flicked to Ben then away.
‘No. He’s locked up. My only concern would be if Harvey had any further interest in him. Now that Harvey has his first clinic, I can’t see what use he’d have for Marcus.’
‘That must be a relief for you Ben.’
Ben just nodded.
Greyson looked at Bill. ‘So what can I do from here? I’d come to you but we have no passenger ship.’
‘The help I need won’t require travel. I need someone to verify the information Harvey and Jameson are feeding to me. I want to know if they’re fudging the truth, or if they can do more. You understand genetics, so I thought of you.’
Greyson nodded. ‘My knowledge and experience are limited compared to that pair, but I’ll give it a shot. What about Robinson? Would he be of use to you?’
The doctor living in an underground facility on Earth had been part of the old World Government team.
‘Please ask him. I trust you, Greyson. I don’t trust Harvey or Jameson.’
‘Say no more. Send me what you have when you have it.’
‘I’m meeting with the pair in a couple of hours. I’ll get them to send the information to me and I’ll have Ben pass it on.’
Greyson nodded. ‘Anything else?’
‘Yeah, see what you can dig up about the experiments on Earth, right up to Jameson’s work on the board members. Anything to do with the DNA code and its mutations. I’m looking for any cause-and-effect issues that might occur if one species is exposed to another.’
‘Is that what you believe is happening here?’
‘Nothing’s happening per se. But I can’t assume Margaux’s condition was a random occurrence. Tanya’s access to the Nexus is a variable. None of us know what she did while she was in there, or how the Nexus reacted to her visit.’
Greyson pursed his lips. ‘I’ll help in whatever way I can.’
‘Thanks, friend.’
Bill clicked off and stared at the screen for a moment, thinking.
Ben’s voice cut through his quiet. ‘What now?’
‘In a couple of hours, we meet Jameson and Harvey.’
‘We?’ Ben looked surprised. ‘You want me there?’
‘You got something better to do?’
Ben shook his head and smiled.
‘From now on, you’ll be my shadow. You’ll tell me who’s a lying sack of shit and who’s telling me the truth. Got it?’
Ben nodded.
Bill made a bridge with his hands. ‘After this meeting, the grief those boys at the halfway house are giving you will all feel like child’s play.’