Terra Nova (The Variant Conspiracy Book 3) (10 page)

They went into an empty office and turned down a hall. They entered a room with cabinets and containers. I had come to know a specimen library when I saw one. Tatiana extracted a tray of vials from a countertop fridge while Ivan rolled up his sleeve

Tatiana wasted no time in injecting a full vial into Ivan. He unrolled his shirtsleeve and buttoned the cuff before unlocking a cabinet above them.

Dozens of mirror-finish steel canisters glinted in the fluorescent light. They were exact copies of what I’d seen Tatiana remove from the basement of Chatham Park.

Ivan lovingly ran his finger across the canisters with satisfaction beyond just confirming the unchanged inventory. He caressed them. The vision ended when he relocked the cabinet door.

Chapter 12

“They’re going to Kenya.” I released my sister from our embrace and stepped back.

I scanned the pub and breathed a sigh of relief. The bartender busily polished the bar while the two pairs of aged patrons played an electronic lottery game.

“They’re going where?” said Ilya.

I closed my eyes and recalled the images for my brother’s benefit. The faceted tower, the metal hut, the trees, the plaque.

“She’s not kidding. They’re going somewhere called the Kenyatta International Conference Center.”

“And they’ve got a huge supply of Terra Nova stashed there,” I said quietly.

“How are we going to get to Kenya?” Cole put his hands on his hips accentuating the definition in his arms.

In unison, we all turned our heads toward Melissa.

“I’ve never been to Kenya. I’ve never been to Africa at all.” Melissa’s furrowed brow and sorrowful eyes filled my heart with pity. It wasn’t her fault we had a long road ahead.

“Does anyone have a valid passport with them?” Jonah plunged his hand into his black hair.

“We’re not going to Kenya, are we?” said Gemma excitedly.

Faith regarded Gemma with an angry frown. Gemma stared down at the table.

“The Evonatura office will likely have a collection of stolen or fake passports in their safe. Innoviro did,” said Melissa.

“Shit, are you serious?” Cole frowned with disbelief.

“Why should anything surprise us now?” Jonah dropped into a rickety wood pub chair.

“But stuff like that would have been lost in the fire. Or seized by the police,” I said quietly, leaning into our group.

“Not necessarily. If Claude used anything like the fireproof wall safe that Ivan did, it could have survived the fire and remained hidden.” Melissa fished her lip balm out of her purse and reapplied it nervously.

“We never did see how bad the damage was.” Cole took a seat with Jonah at the table.

“How will Ivan travel to Kenya?” Jonah asked Melissa.

“He’ll probably fly, as direct a route as he can, as soon as he can. But he’s still doing everything on the level, and with an unlimited budget,” said Josh.

Melissa nodded agreement.

“He’s like, crazy sick now, right?” Faith gestured as though serving up a platter.

“He was better when I saw him in Kenya. Tatiana’s injecting him with something that keeps his illness in check.”

“If he did it for me, of course he’d do it for himself,” said Jonah.

“Maybe that’s what he wants with us. He needs to study us or harvest something to cure himself.” Ilya rubbed his eyes and my heart broke for him. Ivan was my father too, but I’d never known him. Ilya had been peeling back layers of the man who raised him, finding more and more rot.

“I can’t tell what’s wrong with him,” I said. “From what I saw, it’s bad. Being invaded or possessed or whatever happened, it can’t be good for a person.”

“Back to these passports though, can you pull effective illusions from the photos?” Josh said to Ilya.

“It’ll be good enough for a customs officer. I’m more concerned about how many passports are there. If I created an illusory passport, it wouldn’t stand up to an airport security scan. Passports have digital crap in them nowadays. I can’t fake that. However many passports we can get, that’s how many go to Kenya.”

“We should get back to London before we worry about how many go and who.” Jonah’s blue eyes lit up with a flicker of anticipation.

“Yeah, there’s no point in arguing until we know what’s in that safe,” said Faith.

“Should we take the train?” I asked.

Faith tapped on her phone for a few moments. She glanced over at a grandfather clock. “We’ve already missed the last train to London for today.”

“Then we’ll take the van and ditch it in London.” Josh held out his hand to Ilya, silently requesting the keys.

“Your rental, your call.” Cole’s muscles flexed involuntarily as he shifted his stance. I caught Gemma staring at him. I wondered how many variants she’d seen since Ivan snapped her up in Vancouver.

Melissa went to the bar and paid the bill for a handful of beers we’d barely touched. Josh retrieved our van from its parking spot and we piled in quickly.

Faith directed Josh back to a major highway and he drove as fast as he could without attracting law enforcement attention.

I sat on the backbench seat of the van, wedged between Jonah and Gemma.

“So is this your boyfriend?” Gemma stretched her hand across my lap toward Jonah. He shook it with a polite smile.

“I wish I could say I’d heard so much about you, but my sister hasn’t exactly kept in touch,” said Gemma.

“You had your memory wiped! How could I just call you up?” I said indignantly.

“Well, I didn’t know I’d lost my memory. I didn’t even know I was a healer, but if you’d taken a moment to reach out, maybe I would have got my memory back sooner.” Gemma’s familiar singsong tone of reproach went directly under my skin.

“How could I possibly have known you were a variant, let alone capable of correcting your own amnesia? As far as I knew, my variation came from my father—and we don’t have the same one. Remember?”

“Oh, your variations did come from him, but he also gave Mom some kind of ‘booster’ to make you guys more powerful. Didn’t you know that? How is it I know that and you don’t?”

“Because Ivan filled your head with a bunch of crap!”

A second later it clicked that Gemma said ‘variations’ plural. She really was up-to-date. But that meant Ivan and Tatiana were too.

“Actually, it does make sense. If your mother didn’t have any natural genetic variation, and Ivan introduced some kind of gene-altering agent during her pregnancy, it could have remained in her system and affected subsequent children,” said Jonah.

I glared at him and he closed his mouth. “I’m glad we got that figured out.”

“Ivan said you had two variations. I wonder if I can do more than healing. Is there some kind of test you guys can do?”

“Let’s worry about that some time down the road.” Jonah put his hand on my knee to keep me from barking at Gemma again.

Twilight turned to a dark night sky as we sped southeast on the highway. My eyes felt heavier and heavier as I watched the streetlights blip past the window next to Jonah. I put my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes. Sleep came quickly.

I woke again as Josh parked on the street a block from Evonatura.

“I can switch us back to our Soho alter egos,” said Ilya.

“There’s really no point in disguising ourselves this time. No one will be there. If the police have the place under surveillance and they’re ready to pounce, it won’t matter what we look like when we go in,” said Josh.

“Is there any way to know if they’ve got someone watching the place?” said Cole.

“Give me a minute.” Ilya listened to something none of us could see or hear. “Nah, there’s nobody out there, variant or cop. The street’s asleep.”

“Gemma, you stay in the van. Jonah, guard her,” I said flatly.

“I don’t need a babysitter. I’m only sixteen months younger than you. And Ilya.” Gemma’s mouth formed the petulant pout she always used to get her way.

“You’re still a kid, barely eighteen.”

“I’m old enough.” Gemma eyed Cole again. “Okay, if you’re so worried about bringing me in or leaving me alone, leave the strong guy here with me.”

Cole opened his mouth to answer, but I raised my hand. “We need him to bust open the safe, if we find one. Jonah is plenty strong enough to take on anyone who comes near this van.” I smiled at him, as I realized I meant every word.

Jonah grinned back at me. His eyes glowed a little.

“Don’t leave the van. Either of you.” I squeezed past Gemma out the door. Cole considered Gemma sympathetically, but I shoved him forward.

Melissa gave the street a quick scan and opened a portal. We walked through quickly. I went through last taking one last survey of the street.

In a blink, I was inside the Evonatura sitting room. In the dark, I couldn’t properly ascertain just how badly the fire had damaged the structure. But the smells of charcoal and melted plastic were strong.

“Start checking picture frames. And look for locked cabinet drawers or doors,” said Melissa, already peeking behind an abstract splash of color.

I left the sitting room paintings to the taller guys. I wanted to seize my chance to see what was down the hall of offices on the other side of Evonatura’s lunchroom.

The hallway smelled far less pungent than the rest of the office space. I took a deep breath as I walked.

Three doors were ajar and I peered into the first office, an administrator’s room. A plain wood desk with a hutch took up the corner. A single guest chair sat on the other side. There were no pictures on the wall and no personal effects on the table.

I moved on to the next office. It was almost exactly the same as the first, with a few variations. The hutch rested flat along the wall, not backed into a corner. There were two guest chairs.

The last office was clearly Claude’s. A window displayed a courtyard hidden from the street. His chair was a tall leather number, padded for comfort. He did not have a hutch, but a long glass-on-wood executive desk with a simple blotter at the center.

Two pictures hung on Claude’s wall, a panorama of London and a painted portrait of Claude in a suit, sitting in an armchair, hands clasped in a gesture of satisfied achievement. The painting was just the sort of thing a self-involved CEO would commission. I lifted it off the wall and punched through the stiff canvas. I dropped it when I my eyes registered a wall safe where the portrait had been.

“Cole, get in here!” I called.

Heavy footsteps plodded toward me down the hall.

“You found it?” Cole gave a rare smile of delight.

“What do you think?” I pointed at the metal door with a numbered knob.

“Awesome.” Cole shoved his fingers in between the drywall and the edges of the safe. He pulled the huge heavy metal box out of the wall with a loud scrape. It moved as easily as if he picked up a box of crackers off a shelf.

He placed the container on the carpeted floor, door side up, and punched the front of the safe with a calculated blow. The blow allowed Cole to peel off the damaged door like a sticker from a page. “Let’s see what Evonatura thinks is worth hiding.”

The others came into Claude’s office. Someone flicked on the light. Cole upended the safe dumping its contents on the opulent executive desk.

Several wads of currency rolled away and onto the ground. British Pounds. American Dollars. The largest roll was Euros. I hastily gathered up the money and stuffed it into my backpack.

“Hey, now someone other than me can pick up the tab,” said Melissa, hand on her hip.

Ilya sifted through the papers and envelopes on the desk. “We’ve got passports!”

“How many? From where?” Faith closed the distance to the desk.

“Hang on, let me gather them.” Ilya brushed a few envelopes to the ground and cast more papers aside. “Two American, two Canadian, four British, one German, and I think three Russian.”

“Check the stamps. If we’re getting on a plane or a boat or anywhere they check passports, we’ll need to talk about where we were last, when, and why.” Josh picked up an American passport and opened it.

Ilya picked up a Canadian passport and started flipping through it. “Denmark, April eighth, O-two. Back to Britain, April fourteenth. Korea, September twenty-second, O-seven. Back again on that one. The most recent stamp is for Athens, Greece on March tenth of this year. No stamp back in though.”

“I’ve got the same thing except there’s an older set of stamps for the Ukraine in nineteen-ninety-eight.” Faith held up another American passport.

Josh flipped through each of the Russian passports. He threw them down on the table and kicked the leg. “Each of these only has a single stamp from Athens.”

“What’s the problem? We’ve got passports,” I said.

“According to the stamps, these passports never left Greece back in March,” said Cole.

“So how the hell are they here now?” Faith asked.

Josh swept his hand above the scattered booklets. “It doesn’t matter! We can’t use them in London!”

“I can get us to the Greek island of Santorini.” Melissa picked up a passport and turned it over in her hand.

Josh gawked her. “How can you do that?”

“I went on vacation there with my parents as a child. It was a long time ago, but I can probably get us there.”

“I could kiss you!” blurted Josh.

“Buy me dinner first,” said Melissa with a wry smile.

“Grab the passports and let’s go,” said Cole.

Back in the van, Jonah and Gemma had waited patiently. Josh got behind the wheel and we tore out of the lot.

“Can we risk staying the night in London?” I asked.

“If Rose and Sage are on the loose, they would have gotten as far from here as they could,” said Jonah.

“If they were smart,” said Cole.

“Take us back to Soho. If you feel like being a Chinese tour group again, at least we know of a crappy hostel with plenty of vacancy.”