Falling (10 page)

Her reflection stared back at her from the glass: and behind it, something else was staring too.

Shivering, transfixed, Jude moved closer.

It was exactly the way she'd always imagined it. Jars and bottles and tanks lined up on the shelves, a Frankenstienian museum of the unwanted. She leant closer to read the labels. Mrs this. Mr that. Dated last year, this year, years back. Same red stamp on the corner of every label. UNWANTED MATERIAL. Removed to be replaced by something new, stranger, better.

Inside the cabinet, rows of carefully paired eyes stared disfocusedly back at her.

She stepped back and hit the door, knocking it closed. Revealing a whole new dog-leg of the room, flat and depthless in the unsettling light. Square coffin-like tanks on steel benches bubbled with thick, gelatinous liquids, lapping the limbs of hunched and humanoid shapes.

Suddenly, horribly sure she'd found what her past had summoned her back to witness, Jude edged towards the nearest tank.

The bubbles rose in unbroken columns, blurring the details of the olive skinned huddle behind the glass. Dark hair floated horizontally on the surface, penetrated by tubes and pipes and long steel needles.

As she pressed her cheek to the glass, finding it strangely warm, the creature on the other side shifted in her sleep and turned to face her near relative.

Emma DiFlorian.

Pale and cold and drawing hard on the oxygen mask buckled to her face, while the thick sea-green rose and fell, waves breaking over her shoulders in torture or in healing. Her lips parted – to offer some strange wisdom, perhaps, or to plead – but Jude was already stumbling backwards through the shelves, flailing arms knocking jars of once-precious body parts to shatter on the floor.

Definitely time for back-up.

Crashing back into the corridor, wide-eyed with panic and disbelief, she found that the salesman was trying to get past her.

That was the only explanation for the suicidal headlong rush, the smudge of movement hurtling up the corridor towards her. She froze.

For an instant, his face stabilised, still among a blur of racing limbs, and his dark eyes fixed on hers. Startled and somehow hurt, as if he'd expected something better from her.

Jude raised the antibacterial spray bottle she'd lifted from the cleaning supplies and pumped the trigger.

His head snapped back. Something too fast to resolve hit her in the ankles, the knees. The dark blur slowed and fell. Becoming a body, then limbs. A body she was falling onto as it slid along the corridor, face-up, knuckles ground into eyes, sweeping her feet from under her.

Something hard and flat connected with her back, fell away; an opening door, spilling them into a darkened room. A table leg connected with her ribs, triggering a landslide of papers and coffee mugs and, finally, they were still.

She was lying on his chest, staring into his face as he squirmed and struggled to cough up disinfectant.

That was the other problem with heroics. They hurt.

Swaying to her feet, Jude was astonished to discover that she hadn't broken anything. Not even the stupid pointy heels on these ridiculous shoes. Last time she went anywhere in disguise.

Last time, actually, she went anywhere on Schrader's say-so.

Superboy didn't look like he was going anywhere for a while. In fact he looked sweaty and incoherent, which made sense, if he was suffering from exhaustion.

She went and stood over him, doing her best to exude power and control over the situation. Which seemed to work. He looked dazed, and actually rather happy that she'd taken command. The relief of surrender.

Either that, or she'd misjudged the angle, and he could see up her skirt.

‘So. Tell me about DiFlorian.'

‘I don't know any more than you do,' the young man wheezed.

‘I know she's in a tank down the corridor, breathing jelly, five or six days after you said she'd checked out.'

He rolled his eyes heavenward, as if she'd completely missed the point. ‘We told you it – might take longer than usual. Several attempts. She's fine. You have nothing to worry about.'

You.

GenoBond?

My dear employers – DiFlorian's dear employers – dispatched her here and then denied all knowledge, even sent me here to perform some entirely cosmetic ‘investigation'.

Time to use a few brain cells.

‘So how is the process going?'

‘We told you. Difficult. The other two we tested… natural ability. Hers is barely half developed, and tweaking a ReTracer's abilities is always a hit and miss process.'

An impossible process, that's what she'd been told; but then a lot of what she been told recently hadn't exactly been the whole truth and nothing but.

Taking a risk, she accused, ‘You said you could do it.'

‘And we will. You've got to be patient.' He levered himself into a sitting position, shaking his head to clear it. ‘You should have said you were here to check on progress. Scared the hell out of me.'

‘Trust me, you returned the favour.' Remembering she was supposed to be throwing her weight around, she added, ‘Call it a little test of your integrity.'

‘Why do I get the feeling I didn't pass?'

‘You could have been less conspicuous, put it like that.' And then the words came tumbling out of her, before she'd time to check their plausibility. ‘Maybe I should get any paper evidence out of here before anyone puts you to the test again.'

He frowned. ‘We said there'd be no paper trail.'

‘We said that – but did we stick to it?'

The salesman's doe eyes clouded. ‘There's technical paperwork. The lab techs are going to need it if we have to make another attempt.'

‘Then we'll hand it back.' She made an attempt to look apologetic. ‘Cut me some slack here. If I come back with a couple of sheets of paper to wave at my boss, I've saved the whole project from a dangerous potential leak, right? You know how this corporate shit works. In return, I'll keep your name out of it, and we'll forget you tried to run the twenty-second mile the instant I mentioned Emma's name.'

He looked at her for a moment, taking in the bargain. Appreciating the trouble he was actually in.

‘Okay.'

She offered him a hand up.

‘By the way,' she said, ‘you should consider suing whoever sold you that modification. It's obviously about as much use as eight legs and a tail.'

'Funny,' he muttered, and she couldn't tell if he meant it or not. ‘We had someone in for one of those last week.'

The corridor was eerily quiet. Jude wondered idly if anyone else here knew about floor nineteen's dirty little secret. Maybe the whole company was a front for some GenoBond lunacy, and all the staff were downstairs right now shredding the evidence.

What were they doing to Emma DiFlorian?

Whatever it was, it had happened to two people naturally; GenoBond wanted more. She remembered the alley behind Club Andro, and Harchak, muttering darkly about GenoBond experiments. It looked like she was going to have to follow through on her promise, if she ever saw that part of her life again.

Secret genetic experiments. Passing information to Harchack's illegal gene clinics. Knowing about a missing ReTracer who was actually metamorphosing in a jar in Dr Frankenstein's lab. Now, doesn't that sound like the kind of thing that could get a girl thrown out of a ninety-storey building?

The dark-eyed man was still out of breath, trailing one hand along the wall as if he really wanted to cling to it for support. Jude wasn't feeling much better herself.

No time for a rest. Get the paperwork, get out. That's obviously what you're here for. To expose this. That's how you save yourself. So just hang on in there, you're almost –

Ahead, the lift doors opened, and Warner strode into the corridor as if he expected to find all hell waiting for him.

Superboy stopped in mid-step.

‘Marcus Arturo, I presume,' Warner said, with barely a glance down at the electronic prompter cupped in the palm of his left hand. ‘You're under arrest for failing to observe the proper waiting time before making alterations to the DNA of a registered ReTracer.'

The dark-eyed man spun round, poised to run. Jude stepped aside. One head-on collision a day was quite enough to satisfy the terms of her contract.

But he didn't get that far. His knees buckled and he crashed forward, slumping sideways against the wall. With his legs tucked under him, he looked like he'd started melting from the ankles up.

Jude raised one hand in a nervous salute. ‘Mr Warner.'

He just nodded uncertainly. Not sure what to say to her.

Or not sure how much to give away.

‘Schrader said he'd sent you in,' he announced. ‘Rest of the squad are downstairs, turfing out the customers. Find anything?'

‘Oh yes. And how. I think we may want to strike a deal here. This man is our only witness –'

The dark-eyed man shuddered and hung his head. Something about the ensuing silence stopped her mid-sentence. It was only when Warner reached her, frowning as he moved her aside, that she realised Superboy was no longer breathing.

‘Shoddy workmanship,' Warner murmured. His hand lingered on her shoulder as if he was trying to transmit something to her by touch. ‘Adrenaline activated modifications, practically suicide.'

Staring down at the young man's eyes, as blank now as the ones she'd seen in jars, Jude murmured, ‘I don't remember that.'

Breaking the Recommendation, damn it.

‘I haven't heard anything. About that.'

‘Really?' He cleared his throat, only managing to draw attention to his nervousness. ‘It's been quite –'

‘Did you know that Emma DiFlorian is down the corridor in a regening tank, being modified on the orders of GenoBond?'

Panic illuminated Warner's eyes.

‘So how about an explanation?'

He took a step back, tugging nervously at his hair. ‘We should, I mean, there may be more employees – Back-up, we need –'

‘Like Schrader? He's tied up in all this, isn't he? Best of buddies, you two – when it comes to pulling the wool over my eyes.'

‘Jude. You can't afford to get involved –'

‘Bad luck. I'm already in deeper than you can imagine. So how about you tell me what's going on, before I put you in a jar with your pet project – and maybe without any oxygen?'

Warner's hands fell to his sides. She saw him draw breath for a confession, a speech, an unburdening. She saw the way his eyes grew damp and his lips dry –

And then the shadows swept in and she was hurtling forward again, towards a future where she knew she would still be falling.

FIVE

The Pigsty, eight years ago

'I'm not saying we shouldn't do it.' Farah gripped the safety rail with both hands, leaning into it as if bracing herself against the emptiness. ‘I'm just saying that if we're going to risk getting thrown out of training for this, it had better, we'd better get this absolutely right. Right?'

Trembling with sudden vertigo, Jude took a step back from the railings.

Autumn sunlight, slanting and sad, gilded the damp roofs of a dozen abandoned office blocks. Pigeons huddled for warmth, keeping a wary eye out for the birds of prey that sneaked in from the North Downs in search of a quick snack.

The roof of the Stables. That was what the training officers – parade ground sergeants by any other name, putting them through their drills – called it. Claimed there was some reason, a mews or a royal stables used to stand here, but no one believed that.

They – the students, the ReTracers-in-waiting – called it the Pigsty. Full of fat little piglets squealing for the farmer's attention. I'm better than her, faster than him. I can go back further, closer to the crisis point. I can convince those I find there to listen to me. I'm the best little piggy on the farm. Pick me, pick me, pick me.

‘So.' Yona fixed her with a challenging stare she'd obviously spent years honing. ‘Now goody-girl Farah is all worried about being thrown out of the Pigsty.'

‘They won't thrown you out,' the dark haired girl across the roof from them said quietly, wriggling her bare toes deeper into the rooftop gravel. ‘They'll kill you.'

It was Emma DiFlorian. Of course. The pattern was coming together nicely, the recurring parade of people implicated in her present-time crisis. All she needed now was to know how to make it stop.

And that was always the hard part.

‘Can't kill us,' Yona muttered. ‘Too valuable.'

‘With another ReTracer born every three or four months, and the system picking them up within the first five years of their lives almost without exception?' Emma shook her head, like a professor forced to explain herself to a particularly stubborn infant. ‘One or two losses are all part of the process.'