Grace’s heart threshed against her ribs as she entered Siberia ward and its permanent twilight. She saw him immediately, recognisable by his long dark hair – there obviously hadn’t been time to shave him.
She observed his stats, his heart beating firm and strong, his body chemistry that of a man in his prime. He looked pale, his muscles well defined beneath the cotton. That wouldn’t last long. Soon, he would be eaten away, no more than a living corpse.
Grace flung herself across him, sobbing heavily.
He didn’t flinch. He had no idea she was there, and no idea where he was.
She removed the metal eye screen and clasped his face in her hands.
‘Remy! Remy!’ she wept, trying to wake him.
She could see his eyeballs moving from side to side beneath the lids.
The display above his bed burst into colour, and she could see, in all its horrific detail, what Remy would see for the rest of his life – over and over again.
It was from his perspective. He was in an alleyway at night, rain beating down, splashing the puddles that gathered in the troughs of the uneven pavements.
A stranger approached – Grace couldn’t see his face clearly, but the knife he held was in sharp focus.
A sudden movement, the man slashing out with the blade again and again.
Grace could see hands covered in blood, so much blood, a man’s wailing, crying for help, and then everything went dark.
A moment later… an alleyway, the rain beating down…
‘No, no…’ She gave a broken, weary cry. She leaned over him and whispered, ‘It wasn’t meant to be like this. I was trying to help…’ even though she knew he wouldn’t hear. A single tear fell onto his closed eyes.
A pair of guards approached and stood either side of her. One of them replaced the eye screen. The other took her by the arm.
There was no way she could help Remy now.
Conrad appeared by the door. ‘Time to go.’
‘No, please, Conrad, no…’
But he ignored her and nodded to the guards.
The second guard took her other arm now and the two of them began to guide her away from the bed but she resisted.
‘Remy!’
They pulled her harder now, grabbing her upper arms forcefully as she tried to squirm away from them, twisting her body as they dragged her towards the door. She dragged her feet along the floor, and then began kicking out and screaming.
Remy’s words from the prison block rang in her mind: I’ll never let anyone hurt you and you’ll never be on your own.
‘Remy!’ she screamed over and over again.
She was leaving him on his own and in the worst place imaginable.
The next thing she knew, she had been dumped on the pavement outside Janus. She crumpled to the ground, exhausted and hollowed-out, knowing that part of her would always lie with Remy in his death-sleep.
When Grace arrived home, she was met by the rich aroma of garlic and herbs. Dan was playing music in the kitchen and humming as he cooked.
He plated up. There was only enough food for one.
He poured himself a glass of AltCon and sat down at the table with his bowl of stir-fry, added a dash of soy sauce and began to eat. Grace suddenly realised how hungry she was, how much food symbolised the comfort of their home.
‘I thought you’d be outside Janus whipping the protestors up to a frenzy,’ she said bitterly.
‘I came home for a quick bite to eat. They’ll still be there when I go back in a bit.’ He didn’t look at her.
‘Your articles, your news reports,’ Grace said, her voice controlled. ‘You just lost me my job…’ And so much more than that. Tears built behind her eyes and she clenched her jaw. She’d learned as a child to hide her feelings, especially from those who could hurt her most.
He ignored her and took a sip from his glass.
‘Did you sabotage my career on purpose?’
Dan didn’t reply but took another mouthful.
‘Was this your way of forcing my hand?’ she persisted. ‘You’d get me sacked and I’d what… settle down and give you a child?’ He wouldn’t look at her. ‘Like some bloody baby machine?’
As the fork rose to his mouth again, she swiped his plate from the table and flung it at the wall. Dan sat mouth open in shock as the food, still steaming, slid down the white wall in a viscous mess.
‘What the hell?’
She leaned over and gripped the sides of the table, her face close to his.
‘You threw me under the bus! Conrad thinks I’m a spy for NewsFlex and now my career is fucked.’
He stood up, knocking his chair backwards and jabbed a finger towards her. ‘We’d agreed the plan!’
‘No, you decided. And you changed the plan! You want to punish me over Remy Wilson.’
‘I wondered when you’d finally mention him,’ Dan said quietly.
‘You did this on purpose because you assumed I was having an affair with Remy. You’re jealous and you wanted to lash out – is that what all this is about?’
‘Stop right there! The other night when you told me you were at work to help with some emergency… it was a lie. I rang your clinic and I rang Shannon – she didn’t know what I was talking about.’
‘It’s not like that!’ she shrieked.
‘You expect me to believe you?’
‘I was working! You work long hours, Dan. I’ve never accused you of having an affair.’
‘Yes, but I never lie about where I am.’
‘I was in charge of a major project, revolutionary, but none of that matters now because you, selfish bastard that you are, decided to report on something sensitive and confidential, and my boss thinks I gave you all the information to write it, and now all that hard work has just gone down the drain because of your ego!’ She had to know. ‘Where did you get the information from?’
‘You,’ he said smugly.
‘I’ve told you nothing!’
He went to her bag, pulled out her work shell and held it up to her face. ‘You really should use a password.’
She grabbed it from his hand. Her fears had been confirmed.
‘You’ve looked at my confidential files!’
‘Yes.’ He leaned against the worktop, folded his arms, his arrogance driving her fury. ‘I found out all sorts of things…’
Grace rapidly ran through her emails in her mind, and then realised that her work shell had been linked to her phone. Information would have gone both ways. Dan would have seen messages that Remy had sent to her phone…
You know where to find me.
I really need you.
She paused for a moment, wondering to what degree she could explain some of this away. Then she wavered. What was easier to hear? That she was having an affair, or that she’d lied to him all along about some of the most fundamental things – who she was, where she came from, not wanting a child.
Which seemed worse, lying or cheating?
‘Is that why you don’t want a baby, Grace?’
‘What? No…’
‘Yes it is! You don’t want a child with me because you want to be with someone else.’ How could there be contempt and sorrow in his eyes at the same time? ‘I loved you…’ His voice trailed off.
Loved? The ice shifted again beneath her, about to crack, open up and swallow up the beautiful life she’d fought so hard to build.
‘I blamed myself for not being able to give you a child, and instead I find that you’ve been lying to me…’ He tucked his fingers into his pocket and threw a small, empty pill packet at her. ‘Scared of getting caught with your lover’s baby?’
She should tell him the truth, how difficult her start in life was, her worries about having a baby, the nature of her relationship with Remy.
But instead she just stood there, mute.
‘Nothing to say?’ Dan demanded.
But then Gracie emerged, pushing to the front of her mind, angry, defensive.
‘Well, you got your story, Dan! You hit the big time and I’ve lost my job. You’ve beaten me. You’re better than me. Do you feel like a real man now?’
He looked up and let out a lungful of air.
‘I’ve tried, I really have, Grace,’ he said walking towards the door, ‘but I can’t go on like this. It’s over. I’m going out. When I get back, I want you gone.’
‘Tell me everything again. From the start.’
Sarge sat with his feet up on the desk, eyes closed.
Bizzy cleared his throat and began. ‘So, as you know, we got the call and we knew it was the moment we had to strike…’ Mal hated it when Biz over-embellished, talking like he was in a spy movie. ‘Mal put on the Janus uniform…’
‘And that came from the same source as the phone call?’ Sarge interrupted, opening his eyes.
Bizzy nodded in corroboration.
Mal sighed. Sarge already knew this.
Bizzy went on. ‘My work on cracking their cyber-security paid off because…’
Sarge waved his hand to dismiss Bizzy, pointed at Mal and said, ‘Continue.’
Mal ignored Bizzy’s glare. ‘There was a demo going on outside. I grabbed three young lads. Once I’d shown them the cash and the fake uniform, they were up for it. I told them to create as much havoc as possible and away we went.’
Sarge nodded slowly. ‘Good work, boys.’
Biz scowled at Mal.
‘Wouldn’t have been possible without Bizzy’s tech work,’ Mal added. ‘There was no way we could have got through the maze of corridors or all those bloody security doors without him.’
‘That and a bit of inside info goes a long way,’ Sarge agreed. ‘And Grace didn’t recognise you, Biz?’
He shook his head. ‘I was totally covered and there was too much going on.’
‘And he’s safely in Tier Four?’ asked Sarge.
‘There’s no way that fucker is going to talk again,’ said Bizzy.
‘Good work, boys,’ Sarge repeated, sounding satisfied.
A feeling of relief washed over Mal. Maybe this had made up for his fuck-up in the big house and Sarge was going to let him off. But then he remembered his weakness in the library when he’d been disloyal and a coward. It seemed to him that the more Grace appealed to him, the more he realised what Sarge was becoming.
You’re not the sharpest tool in the shed his father had often said, but Mal knew that he had good intuition and he could feel something bad coming, a point of no return, a crossroads where he would have to prove his loyalty.
‘I’m just sorry that we couldn’t have killed him,’ said Bizzy.
‘Then they would have guessed we weren’t protestors!’ snapped Mal. ‘Protestors don’t kill people.’
‘They’ve committed arson and violence. It’s only one step after that…’ Bizzy said.
‘We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves,’ insisted Mal. ‘This way is much better. Everyone thinks it was just a protest and Remy’s been silenced. Job done.’
‘You’re such a coward, Mal.’
‘Boys, boys,’ said Sarge, ‘this is done. It’s over. We did it our way and we stuck to our rules. Remy’s never getting out of biostasis. It wouldn’t have been our style just to go up and take him out. And let’s face facts, there was no way we could have got away with killing him and getting out of there. If we’d done anything different then someone would’ve suspected there was something amiss.’
Bizzy hung his head for a moment.
‘I know you’re disappointed, lads. I want Remy dead too. But as it stands, it’s as good as. He’s where we need him to be. You did good.’
‘At least we can keep an eye on him,’ agreed Bizzy.
‘Worse than death from what I hear.’ Sarge stood up and stretched to his full height. ‘Got to deal with that Gunnarsson bitch now.’
Mal felt himself hurtling towards the terrible crossroads, where decisions would have to be made.
‘You managed to get a stash of drugs from the clinic?’
Bizzy nodded. ‘Paid one of the kids extra to get them. I picked the smart one who didn’t get caught.’
‘Good, so now we can think about the other half of our knotty problem. We’re going to make it look like Grace died taking an overdose of drugs that she’d been stealing from the clinic.’ Sarge turned to Mal. ‘Biz killed the last one. This time you have to do it.’
Mal stood at the centre of the crossroads. Whichever direction he took, it was going to lead to hell.