by Lee Murray
The argument of who would stay with Torua in the underground parking lot, and who would go, was short lived. Torua could look after herself; everyone else felt safer together.
‘I guess they’ve gone home for the day.’ Lionel doesn’t sound disappointed. They’d taken the elevator to the ground floor, expecting to have to sign in at reception, only to discover the lobby deserted.
‘It’s not that late. Someone’s bound to be here. Let’s try the top floor,’ Mika suggests, tapping the top listing on the directory.
B-Cell Industries. CEO Selwyn Bruce.
‘Eighteenth floor it is.’ Stan presses the button and they watch the numbers count down. The doors open with a ping. Stan opens his arms to usher them inside. ‘Everyone in.’
With mirrors on all sides, the elevator is crammed with echoes of themselves, all diminishing in size as they repeat into infinity.
‘I don’t like this,’ Lisa mutters.
Mika doesn’t blame her. The angles are creepy, even Paddy is unhappy, squirming in Bree’s grasp.
Mika tries to inject some cheer into the group. ‘Come on everyone. There’s nothing to be scared about. Remember, I was invited.’ She smiles broadly. Stan turns his head, his cybernetic eye twitching, the strain on his face repeated endlessly in the glass. Lisa and Lionel shift uneasily. Clearly, no one has forgotten the attempt on Mika’s life. At last, the elevator stops, the doors reopening with a ping. No one moves to step out.
‘Now, come on, you’re all just being silly. Nothing is going to happen – it’s a public place.’
‘WHO DARES TO ENTER?’ a hollow voice booms over the building’s loudspeakers.
Startled, Mika jumps back, while Stan grabs Bree, pushing the child deeper into the safety of the elevator.
‘My name is Mika Tāura. I’m here to see Mr Bruce,’ Mika replies, poking her head out of the elevator. ‘He’s expecting me,’ she adds hastily.
‘GO AWAY. THERE IS NO MR BRUCE HERE.’
‘Paddy, no!’ Bree slips out of Stan’s grip, pushing past Mika after the puppy, who is racing down the corridor, snarling and barking.
Mika leaps after her.
‘GET OUT OF HERE. No. Ahh – stop it!’
At the end of the corridor, Mika tumbles through a half-open door into must be the boardroom. With a large hollow feel, it smells of dust and decay, as if untouched for decades.
‘Bree, where are you?’ Mika hisses.
The voice, no longer on the loudspeaker, emerges from the gloom.
‘That headset is an antique! Stupid mutt. Your owners are going to have to pay for it, and it won’t be cheap.’ Paddy must be in here somewhere. But where is Bree?
‘I’m sorry, but you frightened him,’ Mika calls into the darkness.
‘Well, you people frightened me first!’ the voice snaps. ‘How did you get in here, anyway?’ A creak to Mika’s left is followed by sudden brilliance, the lighting blinding her for a moment.
‘Oops, forgot how bright they were. Here, wait a second, I think the dimmer still works.’ The speaker fumbles about a bit, after which the lights lower to a clear soft glow. There’s Bree, under the boardroom table. No longer struggling to see, Bree scrabbles after her wayward pet, who thinks it’s a game and scampers off.
Mika sizes up the speaker. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Their host, obviously a big man once, looks lost in his oversized clothes. They hang off him, his pants only held up by the belt at his waist.
‘We came up in the elevator. Mika here has an appointment with Mr Bruce,’ says Stan, who’s just arrived with Lisa and Lionel.
‘What? Oh yes. I asked you how you got here, didn’t I?’
‘Mr Bruce?’
‘No. There’s no Selwyn Bruce here.’ The man thumbs the collar of his suit jacket with both hands, thrusting out his sunken chest with long-lost authority.
‘What kind of dirty trick are you up to?’ Lionel shouts. ‘Mika never even mentioned the name Selwyn. It doesn’t matter. I’d know you anywhere, even if a hundred years were to pass.’ He leaps forward, his fists up ready for battle. Luckily, he’s prevented from delivering a blow by Stan, who grabs him from behind.
‘Just stop it, Lionel. He’s not a threat. He’s an old man.’ Lisa smacks her husband’s fists open. ‘You’re an old man. Stop being ridiculous.’
‘Lionel? Lisa?’ Selwyn stumbles backwards and lands heavily in an office chair, sending out puffs of dust.
‘Now, hear this, Mister. I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing: sending someone to kill Mika. But she’s here now. She’s brought the blueprint you asked for – risked her skin to carry it across the world to you – so give her what she needs, and we’ll leave.’ Stan looms over the old man, cowering him further into his seat.
Selwyn Bruce shakes his head emphatically. ‘But I never promised her anything. I don’t want anything from her, and there’s nothing to give. Look around.’
‘It’s true,’ Lisa says. ‘We searched in the offices, looking for you and Bree. The building’s empty, the rooms disused and dusty. No one’s been here for years.’
‘Then why did he reply to our message? Why did he say to come? That he could help?’ Dazed, Mika throws the questions out, hoping one of them will catch an answer.
‘I never received any message,’ Selwyn says, drawing himself up. But then realisation creases his face. ‘It must have been the Brotherhood. They keep the lights on here for me in exchange for pieces of old research. But it’s been a while since I’ve had anything worth trading. They must have intercepted your message, figured you had something.’
‘Vultures,’ Lionel growls.
‘They can use my father’s research to create a cure?’ Mika doesn’t understand. The Brotherhood don’t seem like scientists, or even the type of people scientists would work with.
‘Is that what they promised you? It’s a lie. Everyone’s dead ... the scientists ... all their work ... gone.’ A sad old man, Selwyn looks as confused as the rest of them.
‘So that’s what you did with your secret keepers,’ Lisa says softly.
‘But what am I going to do?’ Mika says, stricken. ‘He can’t help me. He can’t help anyone.’
‘Mika, that light over there is flashing.’ Unnoticed, Bree has returned, Paddy in her arms, the shredded remains of a headpiece dangling from his jaw. She nods at the building opposite, which is made almost entirely of glass. Reflected in its panes, the static emerald lights of B-Cell’s headquarters are flashing. ‘It’s a pattern: three long, three short, three long,’ Bree says.
‘A signal? What the hell have you done, old man?’ Lionel reforms his fist, ready to deliver the pounding he promised earlier.
Selwyn steps back hastily, patting his pockets, and removes a small black device. He pokes frantically at the buttons until the lights stop flashing.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know who you were. Go now. Before they get here.’
‘Let’s go,’ Stan says.
On the run again, and still no help for Huia.
‘We have to take him with us,’ Lionel says. ‘We can’t trust this weasel not to tell the Brotherhood about Mika’s tattoos.’
‘I won’t. I swear. It’s too late for me, anyway.’ It’s only then that Mika notices the sallowness of his skin. So, Selwyn has the disease too. She should rejoice at the karma, that the man who championed the epidemic is a sufferer himself, but she simply feels flat.
‘You’re sick. You need a kidney,’ she states. She draws Bree close to her side. ‘You really are a wicked man.’
‘I wasn’t always.’ Selwyn Bruce holds his hands open, imploring her to believe that what he says is true. ‘Our intent at B-Cell was always altruistic. We wanted to save lives...’
Lionel and Lisa glare at him.
‘Save your marketing campaign for the dust mites,’ Stan says, placing a hand on Mika’s back. ‘Let’s go.’
‘No, wait.’ She steps closer to Selwyn, her nose crinkling at the stench o
f sickness that saturates his skin. ‘You’re still here. The Brotherhood haven’t kicked you out yet. So, what exactly were you planning on trading next?’
Selwyn flushes red. ‘Nothing.’
‘What have you got?!’ roars Lionel, stepping forward, enraged. ‘Tell her now!’
Selwyn cringes. ‘You’re right, I kept something,’ he blurts. ‘Just in case. It’s not much.’
‘Give it to her,’ Lionel says, his expression full of menace.
Selwyn’s eyes dart about. ‘It’s just a scrap. Something Atticus said when he was pleading for us to allow him to continue his research.’
‘What was it?’ Mika asks, softly now, desperate to hear her father’s words, even from this man’s mouth.
‘He said the answer was in the healthy gene.’
‘That can’t be all,’ says Lisa.
‘The rest never made sense, something about family protecting family. It was a long time ago.’
‘Come on, he’s got nothing.’ Disgusted, Stan guides them away. They depart the way they came in, leaving Selwyn alone in his tower.
Chapter Nine
‘HERE, LET ME HELP YOU.’
Lisa eases Mika’s grip from the steering wheel and pulls her out of her seat while Stan slides over and powers down Torua. The transport is tucked under a rocky outcrop in a deserted byway so, for the moment, they’re safe from view.
‘Take her downstairs, Lisa,’ Stan says, his voice full of compassion. ‘We’ll be safe here for the night.’ Lisa helps Mika put one foot in front of the other until they reach Mika’s berth. She pulls off Mika’s shoes and tucks her into her bed. Mika lets her do it. She’s numb. Stunned. All this way and B-Cell has nothing to offer. Nothing! No answer to Huia’s illness, no chance for her baby. How can Mika go home empty-handed after her whānau placed their trust in her?
Wracked with grief and disappointment, she trembles.
‘You’re cold,’ Lisa concludes. She starts rummaging around the berth, opening and closing cupboards, looking for another blanket. ‘Hang on, honey. I’ll get you another cover.’ Mika is too heartsore to object.
‘Here’s one,’ says Bree, who’s been hovering at the door. She holds out the tribal blanket, the gift offered to Mika that first night on the reservation. ‘Mika likes this one. She says it reminds her of one that belonged to her father.’
‘Thanks.’ Lisa drapes the blanket over Mika, pulling it up to her neck when she exclaims: ‘Wait!’ She takes a step back, her eyes wide with shock. ‘That sneaky bastard,’ she breathes. ‘Lionel. Come quick.’
‘What is it?’ Mika notices that Lionel doesn’t come in. He’s too much of a gentleman to enter a girl’s room.
‘We didn’t copy it wrong. Don’t you see? Look at the blanket.’
Wide awake now, something in Lisa’s tone tells Mika that she mustn’t move.
Lisa’s eyes twinkle. She runs the back of her hand from Mika’s shoulder to her neck, tracing the blue-black patterns tattooed on Mika’s skin, then she picks up the edge of the blanket and shakes it gently at Lionel. ‘Two codes, Lionel! Two. The proof is here: the first on Mika’s body, in the coils and scrolls of her ancestry, and the second one hidden in the lines and angles of our tribal patterns.’
Slowly Lionel’s grin spreads as Lisa’s revelations hit home. ‘You think Atticus meant for us to see this?’
‘Perhaps. Maybe he just hoped it would be us, or someone like us.’
She shakes Mika’s arm, but there’s no need to wake her up to tell her the news. Already, Mika is sitting up and listening, her arms curled around her pillow, her anguish dropping away in a new surge of hope.
‘You really think it’ll work?’ Lionel says, still not fully convinced.
‘I’m sure it will. I think it’s what Atticus meant about families protecting families. Like a mother confers immunity to her newborn while the infant develops its own defences, in the same way, Mika’s own modified beta-cells implanted in just a few of her sister’s islet cells, will teach Huia’s other defective islets how to function correctly.’
‘It’s too simple. Islet cell transplants have been available for over sixty years. Why didn’t Atticus carry it out the transplant on the girls himself?’
‘Maybe it took him a while to test the theory. Or maybe he felt Mika was too young for the transplant – she was just a baby when the family fled the United States, and Mika says he died unexpectedly.’
‘Perhaps Atticus was afraid of what B-Cell might do to his family if they knew he possessed the cure. Look at us, Lisa, we were afraid too, hiding out at the reservation for years.’
Mika nods. Lionel’s suggestion sounds more like it. Her father would have weighed the risks and decided that in the short term, B-Cell was the greater risk. It was safer for one of his girls to suffer the disease than to risk losing them both. She hugs the pillow to her knees, hardly daring to believe it. With Lionel and Lisa’s help she might be able to bring Huia the answers she needs.
Suddenly, Torua vibrates abruptly as Stan stomps on the floor, opening the mid-deck hatch.
‘Stan, we’ve found Atticus’ cure!’ Lionel calls up through the gap.
‘Yeah, that’s great guys, but right now we’ve got a bit of a problem,’ Stan replies. ‘The Brotherhood are here.’
A dozen men wearing shinobi shozoko surround the transport when the group surrender. Miles from anywhere, there’s no point running: these men are trained killers. As she jumps down onto the sand beside Stan, Mika wonders who the Brotherhood are. Had they been with B-Cell from the outset, driving the company strategy from the inside? Had the company’s pit bulls turned on their masters? She’ll probably never know.
Lionel hands Bree down to Mika, who sets her on the ground. One arm tight around her puppy, Bree slips her hand in Stan’s.
‘I don’t suppose you have another one of those exploding hearts, do you?’ Stan mutters to Mika under his breath as a Brother – the leader of this group – steps forward.
‘You can’t have her,’ Lisa cries defiantly, jumping down from Torua and flinging her arms wide in front of Mika. ‘I may not have stood up to your kind when you exiled Mika’s father, but I won’t let you take her.’ She’s so petite, Mika would smile were her knees not trembling so much. These men aren’t like the jaded CEO in his tower: they’re warriors, fighters, sent by their order to apprehend her, to kill her so as to obliterate the secret etched on her skin. Mika smiles inside, knowing even if she’s lost, Huia has her own moko, and now that Lionel and Lisa have discovered the key...
‘Her? We’re not interested in her anymore,’ the Brother says, sneering. ‘We peeled off at the reservation and followed you to B-Cell. Just had a little chat with Selwyn, in fact. We already know you haven’t succeeded in reversing the defective insulin, even with the tatts on the girl’s skin.’
‘Well, that’s where you’re—’ Lionel starts, but Stan shakes his head, warning the professor to keep quiet.
‘It’s me you want, then, is it?’ Stan says quietly.
‘Well, it’s true the Order isn’t best pleased with you, Aspen. Skiving off with our money.’
Stan’s jaw twitches. ‘You have plenty.’
‘Yes, we have. Which is why we’re willing to forgive your little trespass, but in return you’re going to have to do something for us.’
‘Whatever it is, don’t do it, Stan,’ Lionel says, evenly, his eyes fixed on the ninja.
‘Be quiet!’ the Brother yells, his eyes flashing red. ‘You’ll do it all right. You’re coming to the reservation with us and when we get there, you’re going to tell us why our Brothers refuse to leave.’
‘They refuse to leave?’ Lionel says, parroting the words.
‘We’ve sent messengers. Only one came back. He says they’re happy, thanks, but they’d prefer to stay on the reservation. I don’t have a clue what’s going on up there, but whatever it is, you’re going to help us smoke it out.’
Mika has to hide her smile behind he
r hand.
Torua idles, waiting on Mika to start them on their journey. It’s time to go. Past time, really. Mika hadn’t thought it would be so hard. With a quick glance back at her modified beta-cells, stored safely behind her in a cooler compartment designed by Craig, Mika takes a final look over the reservation, over the mish-mash of lean-tos and adobe homes, to the drifting of wisps of smoke that keep the Order at bay, wisps that streak the morning sky.
A good day for a journey.
Mika’s friends have come to see her off: Lionel, Lisa, Craig – even Irina stands alongside the transport, her arm wrapped around Bree’s shoulders. It breaks Mika’s heart to leave Bree, but now Stan doesn’t have to save the entire world, he thinks he can find time for one little girl. He and Irina have agreed to start over, and give Bree the family she needs.
Stan lifts his hand in farewell. Bree gives her a brave smile.
Time to go.
Squaring her shoulders, Mika punches in the coordinates for home – for Aotearoa, her whānau, and Huia. And now, with Lisa and Lionel’s work unravelling her father’s legacy, there’s hope of a healthy niece or nephew. Perhaps in time they’ll be able to eradicate the disease entirely.
Mika waves a last goodbye as the warm tones of Kuia’s voice break the quiet.
‘Calculating...’
Glossary of Māori terms
AOTEAROA MĀORI NAME for New Zealand, the land of the long white cloud
Aroha love
Iwi tribe
Kaumātua Māori elders; the keepers of knowledge, genealogy and traditions, who act as guardians of tikanga (Māori customs), care for children, and provide leadership. Male elders are also known as koroua (or koro for short), and female elders as kuia
Kuia Grandmother, or old wise woman
Kūmara sweet potato
Mahuika Māori goddess of fire (plucked from her fingernails)
Maui Māori demi-god
Moko tattoos on the body and face
Piwakawaka fantail
Rimu New Zealand indigenous hardwood, sometimes referred to as red pine
Tangaroa Māori god of the sea
