The ominous quiet of the lab at night made Mel feel like an intruder in her own workspace. Lights triggered to spotlight her and Raj as they entered, making their surreptitious presence more conspicuous. The rows of empty benches would not be occupied for many hours, but it was still a finite amount of time which meant they had to act quickly.
Mel tried accessing the lab’s systems on the off chance, but as she suspected, she was locked out. She had to rely on Raj to do everything for her.
Raj sat at his usual spot on the central bench and placed his undrunk and unspilled cup of coffee beside him. Mel pulled up a stool.
“When do you think someone got into the cold store?” he asked.
“Six months ago,” she said. “Possibly a bit more than that.”
“I should be able to access those logs. If I can remember how. I don’t usually do this sort of thing, you know.”
“I know. Thanks, Raj.”
Raj tried several approaches before he was able to bring up a list of times and dates when people had entered the cold store. The data filled the screen and kept filling it as Raj scrolled down. A lot of people used that cold store.
“What about this?” said Raj, peering closer at the screen. “Twenty-fifth of June, 02:34.”
“2:34 am?”
“Yeah.” He pointed at the data.
Mel suppressed her excitement at the rogue time, 02:34, hidden within the rows of ordinary workday times. It wasn’t yet proof that someone had stolen her experiment, only that someone had accessed the cold store in the middle of the night. But next to the time was an employee number, 301224G.
“Can we find out who that is?” she said, tapping the screen.
“It’s definitely not me,” said Raj. “My number’s 402189G.”
Mel glanced at him sideways. “You remember your own employee number?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
She raised her eyebrows at the concept. “No.”
Raj brought up the internal personnel record for employee 301224G and Mel felt the blood drain from her face. It was her own personnel file. She stared at the same image of herself that the MSS had used in its wanted alert – the expressionless, unsmiling picture which made her look like a criminal.
“It can’t be,” she whispered.
“Are you sure you weren’t working late and accessed the store?” said Raj. “Or came back in the middle of the night for some reason?”
“No. And definitely not six months ago.”
It had been a long time since she had stayed up all night working. Six months ago, Daniel had been going through a phase of not sleeping, so if he wasn’t keeping her up, she would have been asleep herself.
Mel ran her fingers through her hair, trying to think of an explanation. “Someone else must have used my code,” she said.
“Why would they?” said Raj.
“To make people think it was me,” she said, irritated that he wasn’t seeing what she thought was obvious. “There’s a security camera on the cold store – can you access it?”
Raj shrugged. “From here?”
“Try.”
Mel leaned forward on her stool, willing Raj to find a way, but after several minutes of trying, he sat back in defeat. “The lab systems aren’t connected to the security systems. Even if we could get in, we don’t know if they’ve kept footage from six months ago.”
Mel tapped her fingers on the bench. “There must be a way of finding out.”
“The security personnel will know.”
“How are we supposed to get them to help us?” said Mel. “Throw more coffee until they give in?”
Raj frowned at her defeatist attitude. “We could try asking.”
“I doubt they’ll be very receptive after we made them clean up all that mess in the atrium.”
“When I say asking,” Raj began. “I was thinking more of bribing. They might do it in return for a ration token.”
“I thought the tokens were non-transferable.”
“Officially, but you can’t set up a system as quickly as they did and make it hack-proof. I’m told there’s an increasing black market in the things.”
“I can’t ask you to give up your own food for this, Raj.”
“If what you’ve told me is true, you could be giving up your own future. Missing one meal is nothing compared to that.”
Touched by his offer, she agreed.
He left and, after the swish of the closing door faded away, she was left in the silence of the lab. The smell of stale coffee drifted up from where she had spilled it on her blouse.
Mel tried to access her files from Raj’s screen, but they – like her access to the systems – had been locked. There was nothing to do but sit with her own thoughts and remember how life had been in the time when she could relax in the lab without having to worry about someone finding her. When frustration was an emotion triggered by the unpredictability of plants and when her only fear was that her experiment would not be a success.
To calm her nerves, she reached for Raj’s abandoned coffee cup. She removed the lid and drank directly from the side, taking mouthfuls of cold, black liquid. She shivered at its bitterness, but kept drinking until she had drained the cup to the dregs. She waited for the caffeine hit to help her find the strength to keep going.
Raj had to have been gone for around half an hour before he rushed back in with a smile on his face and an eagerness in his eye.
“Well?” said Mel, standing as if that would help her get the information sooner.
“Got it,” said Raj.
He rushed over to the screen. “The guard sent everything from this part of the building over the past year to my account. We should be able to see who entered the cold store on the twenty-fifth of June at 2:34 am.”
“You haven’t looked already?”
“I thought you’d want to see for yourself.”
Perhaps it was the effects of the coffee, but after half an hour of patient waiting, the few moments it took Raj to pull the video footage from his account and figure out how to play it felt frustratingly long.
“OK,” said Raj and sat back.
Mel, too energized to sit back down again, leaned into the screen.
The image was almost entirely black apart from the glow of green lights from the refrigeration units along the far wall. Even in that macabre glow, it was possible to tell the camera was positioned high up above the door.
A shaft of light spilled from the adjoining corridor with the opening of the door. Then the sudden flash of lights turning on with movement in the room. The camera quickly adjusted to the new light source and it was possible to see a figure enter.
The time code at the bottom right-hand corner read 02:34.
“That’s it!” Mel’s cry of vindication was out of her mouth before she could stop herself.
Right in front of her, on the screen, was the person who had destroyed her life. And was in the process of destroying everyone else’s life on the face of Mars.
By the body shape, it was a man both taller and wider than her, suggesting he was muscular and Mars-born. He carried a black cloth bag across his shoulder and wore a flat cap-style hat which obscured his face from the camera’s angle above him.
“That’s definitely not you,” said Raj.
So relieved to see the footage proved it wasn’t her, Mel hadn’t had time to think who else it was. “Do you recognize him?”
“No,” said Raj, after a moment’s consideration. “I’m fairly sure it’s not someone from the lab.”
Mel studied the figure a second time and mentally ticked off everyone in their small team. None of them walked like the man on the footage or were as muscular as him.
Mel continued to watch as the man opened the first fridge and pulled out a rack of sealed jars. Mel felt a sting of dread as she realized he was tampering with her microplants, even though the events she was witnessing happened six months ago and she was powerless to stop them.
“What’s he doing?” said Raj.
The man put the rack on the floor and leaned over the specimens so his body shielded his actions from the camera. He reached into the bag and pulled out a silver-colored vacuum flask.
He pulled a specimen jar out of the flask. As far as it was possible to tell from the angle of the camera, it was almost identical to the ones Mel used. Then he picked up a jar from the rack containing Mel’s microplants.
For a moment, she thought he was going to switch the two jars. But, instead, he opened them both. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a small metal tool which briefly flashed at the camera as it caught the light. He leaned forward and the next few vital moments were concealed by his body.
“What’s he doing?” Raj asked again.
Mel didn’t need to see. She already knew. “He’s taking a sample.”
It sickened her to think how easily she had been fooled. She watched the image of the man’s back as she imagined him using a scalpel or a pair of tweezers to snip off part of one of her valuable plants and take it away in his own vacuum-sealed container.
It was as clever as it was simple. Take a piece from one or two jars in the middle of the collection and leave behind apparently intact specimens. That way, the thief could take away enough of the plants to be useful, while the legitimate owner would never suspect anything had been stolen.
“You couldn’t grow enough from one small sample to plant half the farms on Mars with enhanced potatoes so quickly,” said Raj.
“No,” said Mel, wondering the same.
The man stood, put the flask in his bag and turned to the back wall. The static camera remained focused on the rack laying abandoned in the center of the room while only the man’s back was visible at the edge of frame.
Mel’s defeat was complete.
She didn’t need to see him to know that he was taking seed potatoes from the bins. If he had scooped up a little from each bin, it would have been enough to fill his bag, but not enough to noticeably deplete the three storage units.
The timing was horribly perfect. Six months ago gave the thief roughly three months to propagate enough seed potatoes from the original tubers to populate the farms, using the cutting from the nuclear stock as backup. Another three months allowed time to distribute and grow them on the farms, only for them to fail a little more than sixty days later.
Something must have spooked the man, because he started moving quickly. He grabbed the rack from the floor, shoved it back in the refrigerator and pushed the door closed with not quite enough force to seal it shut.
He turned to exit with the heavy bag bulging on his shoulder. His face was hidden under his hat to the last moment.
Anger and humiliation had burned all of Mel’s energy to leave her empty.
“You were right,” said Raj.
“Yes,” she said. Suddenly being right wasn’t enough. “I need to know who he is.”
“He was clever, he hid his face. But the camera’s at a bad angle in the storeroom. If we’re lucky, we might get a better angle on one of the other cameras.”
“You’ve got footage from other cameras?” Mel asked.
“I told you, I’ve been sent everything from this part of the building from the past year.”
It took a while, and a certain amount of swearing, but Raj eventually pulled up footage from a camera facing the elevator on the fifth floor.
They watched an empty corridor and the closed elevator doors while the time code in the corner ticked from 02:32 to 02:33.
Before it reached 02:34, the doors opened and the figure emerged wearing exactly the same hat placed at exactly the right angle to conceal his face.
“I don’t believe it!” said Mel. “Is he doing it on purpose or something?”
It was a rhetorical question, but Raj answered it in any case. “If he used your code to get into the cold store, it’s possible he had inside information about where the cameras were.”
The unpleasant thought lingered as Mel watched the man leave the view of the camera without once giving away his identity.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky when he leaves,” said Raj.
Raj skipped through the footage to 02:35. At 02:28, the figure returned. This time facing the other way so they saw only the back of his head.
“You’re right,” said Mel. “He knows exactly where the cameras are.”
“Wait,” said Raj.
The elevator doors opened and the man stepped inside.
Then he did what all people do when they get into the elevator. He turned around to wait for the doors to close.
The camera caught a brief, but clear, image of the man’s face.
“I told you!” said Raj.
A shiver of recognition passed through her.
“Let me see it again,” said Mel. She had to be sure.
Raj re-played the moment and she watched the man turn to reveal his identity a second time.
The man in his early twenties had the same face she had seen inside the helmet of one of the people throwing food boxes out of the train. It was the same face she had glimpsed as she hid behind the boxes in the back of the thieves’ truck and heard them discussing their plans.
“I know who that is,” said Mel with cold certainty. “He’s the leader of a gang of criminals.”