The Edge

by Nick Hale

  ‘All right, everybody, get together,’ called his dad. ‘My name is Steve.’ He caught Jake’s eye and gave him a friendly nod – at least he hadn’t mentioned his surname. ‘We’re going to mix things up a bit today: fast and slow, strength and agility, stamina and power. I expect we’ll see some interesting contrasts between your respective disciplines. We’ll get things started the old-fashioned way, though, with a few light laps. I need a pacemaker.’ He pointed to Oz. ‘Ellman, you’ll do. Keep it gentle, yes?’

  As they set off round the track at a light jog, Jake wondered what the point was. A lot of the others were chatting to each other, but he kept quiet. He really wanted to speak with Dr Chow – she’d been tasked with measuring the effects of Olympic Edge, and she’d lost someone close to her. Maybe the doctors at the hospital would listen to her?

  Jake felt a shove in his back, but ignored it. They were running bunched up, so it was inevitable.

  ‘Get out of the way!’

  Jake twisted, expecting to see one of Oz’s pals, but it was a gymnast, a Canadian guy called Adam Lee whom Jake had spoken to a couple of times with Tan. His eyes were wild, and despite the slow pace he was dripping with sweat.

  ‘We’re supposed to be taking it slow,’ said another runner.

  Lee launched forwards, practically clambering over the people in front. People started to grumble:

  ‘Watch where you’re going!’

  ‘Slow down, man!’

  But Lee wasn’t listening. He broke through the front of the pack, shouldering Oz aside, and sending him sprawling. Normally Jake wouldn’t have minded seeing the Australian take a spill, but something was wrong. Lee continued to charge ahead.

  ‘Stop him!’ Jake yelled.

  Dom broke away after Lee. If anyone could catch him, it would be the Jamaican sprinter. But just as he was getting close, the Canadian jerked sideways, veering off the track and across the central field. It looked like he was sprinting for a gold medal. The rest of the pack had come to a halt.

  Jake saw his dad from the other side of the track, running as fast as his false limp would allow to intercept Lee. With his head down, arms and legs pumping, the gymnast didn’t see Steve Bastin until Jake’s dad rugby tackled him in the middle, bringing him to the ground in a blur of tangled limbs.

  Jake ran across. At first, he thought they were fighting on the ground as Lee thrashed and his dad tried to hold the gymnast down, but as Jake drew closer he could see Lee’s eyes were shut and he was frothing at the mouth.

  ‘Give me a hand!’ shouted his dad.

  Jake knelt on the grass and managed to control the gymnast’s bucking legs. One of Lee’s arms came free and he slammed his fist into the ground so hard Jake thought he’d break every bone in his hand. Jake managed to grab the flailing arm, but he tore it loose again, and Jake was left holding a beaded bracelet on a leather thong from his wrist.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Oz, his voice full of uncertainty.

  ‘Phone an ambulance,’ said Jake. ‘And get Dr Chow!’

  Lee was gurgling, and blood was coming out of his nose. Jake wasn’t sure if it was internal bleeding, or if he’d managed to hit himself. With a final, shuddering convulsion, Lee flopped, suddenly still. His head flopped back, and his eyes were closed.

  ‘Let’s take him inside,’ said his dad, lifting him by the shoulders. Jake took Lee’s feet, and together they hoisted him up. They hurried across the field as quickly as they could, with a loose group following them.

  Jake could already feel Lee’s skin going cold beneath his touch.

  Ten minutes later, with only Jake and his dad looking on, Dr Chow was breathing heavily from her attempts at resuscitation. She hunched over Lee’s body, which they’d laid across a table-tennis table, pumping his chest. ‘Come on!’ she said. ‘Breathe!’

  Jake’s dad had made the others wait outside, for fear of crowding the doctor, but Jake thought she was fighting a losing battle.

  ‘Let me try,’ said his dad.

  Dr Chow looked over. ‘I’m a doctor,’ she said accusingly.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said his dad. ‘I’m trained. And, to put it bluntly, you need to be strong to carry out a prolonged resuscitation like this.’

  Jake caught a flash of annoyance in Dr Chow’s face, but she stepped aside as his dad took up the position, and began the rhythmic compressions. After a minute he stopped and placed two fingers to Lee’s throat. ‘I’ve got a pulse!’

  Jake realised he’d been holding his breath and let it out.

  ‘Thank God!’ said Dr Chow.

  Jake’s dad held his hand over Lee’s slightly open mouth. ‘He’s breathing too,’ he said. He rolled Lee into the recovery position as the sound of sirens came from outside.

  ‘I’ll show them the way,’ he said to Dr Chow, leading Jake outside.

  She stood over Lee, one hand protectively on his shoulder. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much.’

  A crowd of the other runners had gathered outside the sports studio, and his dad ran over to the ambulance and the paramedics who were gathering their things. Then Jake realised he was still gripping Lee’s snapped bracelet. Some of the crowd were shaking their heads in disbelief; others were crying quietly. Jake went back inside the studio to drop it off. He knew it was sentimental, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

  At the door to the table-tennis courts, Jake paused for a moment to peer through the wire-mesh viewing panel.

  The doctor was leaning over Lee’s body, still gripping his upper arm. In her other hand was a syringe.

  ‘Out of the way, please,’ said a voice behind him. ‘Coming through.’

  Jake moved as the paramedics entered the studio hall.

  ‘Everything OK?’ asked his dad, drawing up behind him.

  ‘I’m not sure . . .’ said Jake.

  ‘He’s going into shock!’ said the paramedic.

  Jake turned back to the room. Lee was spasming on the table, his legs thrashing, and his back arching. One of the paramedics tried to support his head while the other lay over his body. Dr Chow had stepped away, her hand over her mouth.

  Jake tried to push into the room, but his dad pulled him back. ‘Let them work, son.’

  ‘But, Dad –’

  ‘No buts. He’s in the best hands now.’

  Jake didn’t bother to protest. He’d heard the same steel in his dad’s voice before and he knew there was no point arguing.

  A short while later, the paramedics wheeled out a covered gurney. Jake placed the beads on one side beside Lee’s body. He remembered watching the gymnast on his first day in the camp. He’d been completing a routine on the parallel bars with amazing fluidity and strength. He’d seemed like a nice guy too. All that potential, just snuffed out. He doubted whether the camp could possibly continue now, even if Krantz wanted it to.

  Most of the other athletes were peeling off in small groups. They must be getting used to death by now, Jake thought.

  His dad’s face was grim. ‘We need to talk,’ he said to Jake. ‘In private.’

  Together they walked quickly back towards the admin buildings, and his dad led him up into the office which had been Coach Garcia’s.

  ‘Just wait here,’ he said.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Jake asked.

  ‘Get in touch with my superiors,’ his dad said. ‘They’ve picked up increased phone activity from Igor Popov. We need more manpower. More surveillance.’

  ‘Dad, I don’t think Popov’s involved this time. I think Dr Chow might be up to something.’

  ‘Stay out of it, Jake.’

  ‘But I saw her injecting something before the paramedics arrived. In Lee’s arm!’

  ‘Enough, Jake. It was probably adrenalin. Standard procedure. I’m taking you away from here. It’s not safe.’ He was pacing the room. ‘I’m going to make sure personally that Krantz stops people drinking any more of that stuff. Stay here while I make some calls.’

  As soo
n as his dad had left the room, Jake wandered over to the window. He knew he’d seen something strange.

  A cold sensation crept over Jake’s skin.

  Why did Dr Chow even have a syringe on her in the first place? She must have known she’d need it. Jake gazed across from his dad’s office on the first floor towards the table-tennis studio. The ambulance was pulling away.

  A second later, Dr Chow herself came out and stood for a moment, watching it drive off. Her hand went into her pocket, feeling something there. The syringe. She walked briskly to one of the golf buggies. She climbed in and drove off.

  How had he missed it before? Of course it was her! She’d been pushing the Olympic Edge almost as much as Phillips. She’d argued with Garcia in the bar the day before he died in the swamp. Jake’s mind was working fast, flicking from image to image. And who’d been the last person to see BeBe before she climbed the board for her final dive? It was Dr Chow, Jake recalled. She’d taken the girl from Brazil into one of the changing rooms. She’d been angry about BeBe’s energy drink. Just what had happened behind that door?

  Jake could have thumped himself as he bolted down the stairs and dashed past the receptionist. She shouted something about his father but he didn’t bother to stop. He’d let everything distract him up till now: Oz Ellman, his dad, Phillips, the argument with Tan.

  Dr Chow had even been at the scene when Phillips had taken the quickest way down from the twenty-third floor of the LGE building. The truth had been right before Jake’s eyes all along.

  19

  Jake ran across the grass. The medical centre was on the other side of the complex, and it would take a good ten minutes to get there. He tried to control the thumping in his chest. By the velodrome, something beeped in his kitbag. It took a second to realise it was the phone Popov had given him. Jake fished it out and hit the answer button.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mr Popov hears another athlete has died,’ said a Russian voice.

  ‘How’s Veronika?’ Jake asked.

  ‘Mr Popov wants you to know his daughter’s condition is deteriorating. What have you found out?’

  ‘I think that Dr Chow is responsible,’ said Jake. ‘I don’t know why yet.’

  Some muffled conversation echoed down the line, then Popov’s voice came on.

  ‘Jake, what is happening?’ he asked in a panicked voice.

  ‘Someone else has died,’ said Jake.

  ‘I don’t care about that,’ he said. ‘You need to find the antidote. Veronika’s getting worse.’

  ‘I’m doing everything I can!’ Jake insisted.

  ‘Well, do it quickly,’ Popov said. ‘If she dies, I’ll hold you personally responsible.’

  The line went dead.

  Jake saw a couple of bikes leaning up against the gate to the cycling track. Their riders were doing stretches a few metres away. Jake ran up, and seized one of the bikes by the handlebars.

  ‘Hey, you can’t do that!’ shouted a cyclist.

  ‘Sorry, man, it’s an emergency,’ said Jake, throwing his leg over the seat, and pushing off.

  The bike’s owner tried to grab him, but Jake darted out of the way.

  ‘Come back!’ called the other.

  Jake juddered down a set of concrete steps, and narrowly missed a reversing golf buggy. Jumping up on to a kerb, he steered between the dorm blocks and across the grass.

  He skidded up outside the medical centre and ditched the bike. Dr Chow’s golf cart was already parked up. Jake pushed the door open on to a quiet corridor with treatment rooms off either side. He went straight to the room at the end: Dr Chow’s laboratory. Without knocking, he burst through the double swing doors.

  The doctor was by the sink, emptying sample tubes full of colourless liquid down the drain. She frowned when she saw him, but carried on with what she was doing.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

  ‘Perhaps I can help you?’ said Jake. ‘Destroy some more of the evidence, maybe?’

  The doors stopped swinging behind him.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said, crossing the lab with the empty tubes in a rack. ‘I’m just making some space in here. The police are sure to want me to act as consultant for Adam’s post-mortem.’

  Jake wasn’t fooled. She was too cool.

  ‘I guess you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ he said. ‘To cover your tracks. What did you put into Adam? Some sort of masking agent?’

  ‘You’ve got a vivid imagination,’ she replied.

  Jake kept his back to the door. Somehow this woman – all five foot three of her – had killed Garcia and Phillips. They’d underestimated her, and Jake wasn’t about to make the same mistake. He could smell the sickly tang of Olympic Edge in the air.

  ‘There’s no doubt it works,’ said Jake, trying to stay calm. ‘Whatever you’ve been putting into that drink does something special.’

  Dr Chow leant back against the counter and smiled in a way Jake hadn’t seen before. Arrogant. ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  ‘Shame it kills people too,’ said Jake.

  Her smile vanished. ‘You can’t prove that,’ she said. ‘The police could test almost every bottle in this place, and they’d find nothing. That’s the beauty of my experiments.’

  ‘Almost every bottle?’ Jake said.

  Dr Chow’s eyes shifted for a second to the fridge across the room. A single, unmarked bottle, filled with clear liquid, stood on top.

  ‘And you killed Coach Garcia and Phillips because they found out?’ said Jake.

  ‘Pedro thought he could blackmail me,’ she said. ‘He wanted a slice of the pie. All it took was a little injection and the alligators did the rest.’

  ‘And Phillips?’ said Jake. ‘I saw you kissing. I guess you were just using him to get access to Olympic Edge.’

  ‘Poor Eddie.’ Dr Chow’s mock concern was nauseating. ‘Not as stupid as he seemed, and too damn nosy for his own good. I quite liked him. For a while.’

  ‘So much that you pushed him off the roof,’ Jake spat.

  Dr Chow laughed. ‘After I slipped some of my special mixture in his coffee, he didn’t take much persuasion. He wanted some fresh air, and that’s exactly what I gave him.’

  Jake moved a few steps sideways towards the fridge. If he was right, that bottle contained all the evidence he needed.

  ‘No one’s going to want an energy drink that kills them,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve made a few mistakes, sure,’ said Dr Chow, ‘but it’s just a question of balance. It seems to have given people a bit of a temper, even in small doses.’

  ‘It drives them crazy,’ said Jake, remembering all the fights and the violence on the pitch.

  ‘A minor side-effect,’ said Dr Chow. ‘Imagine a world where one drink can make an amateur athlete twice as good, and a good athlete Olympic standard.’

  ‘It sounds like cheating to me,’ said Jake. ‘A shortcut without the hard work.’

  Chow laughed. ‘You’re so naive it hurts. What do you think sport is, apart from hunting for an advantage? You don’t see tennis players with wooden rackets, do you? Or runners with old-fashioned pumps? Athletics is all about finding the edge, and soon I’ll have the right formula for a safe and legal route to victory. They’ll give me the Nobel Prize for chemistry.’

  ‘I’m not sure they award the Nobel Prize to people in jail,’ said Jake. He picked the bottle up off the counter. When he turned again, Dr Chow was pointing a gun at his chest.

  ‘You’re not going anywhere with that,’ she said. ‘That’s my extra-strength mixture for people who ask too many questions.’

  ‘I guess this is what you gave to BeBe and Veronika,’ he replied, staring at the gun.

  ‘BeBe threatened to call the authorities and Veronika was asking too many questions.’

  He tightened his grip on the bottle, the evidence. He knew it held Veronika’s only chance of survival. ‘And what about Otto and Adam?’

  ‘They w
ere just greedy,’ said Dr Chow. ‘Guzzled too much before I’d worked out how to perfect it.’

  ‘So they die because of your mistakes?’

  ‘All scientific breakthroughs come at a cost,’ said Chow. ‘Looks like you’ll be donating your body to medical science. It’s for the greater good.’ She took aim at Jake’s head.

  ‘If you fire that in here, someone will hear,’ Jake blurted, and took a step away from her.

  ‘I’ll say you attacked me. I’m not sure Detective Merski needs more evidence that you’re bad news.’

  Jake glanced at the door. If Dr Chow was a good shot, she’d take him down easily. And the cops would probably believe her story.

  Jake saw her arm tense a split second before she pulled the trigger. He jerked aside as the bullet ricocheted off the wall. He darted to the door. The doctor swung the gun around again. The crack of a bullet split the air as he dived through the double doors and into the corridor. Running towards the exit, he felt something wet on his arm, and wondered if he’d been shot. He heard Dr Chow’s footsteps behind, and the notice board to his left exploded in a shower of glass.

  ‘Come back here!’ she screamed. Jake pushed through the main door into the sunshine and realised he felt no pain. It wasn’t blood on his arm; it was liquid from the bottle, leaking fast from two holes in the base where the bullet must have passed. Jake watched helplessly as the vital evidence spilled away.

  Without thinking, he lifted it to his lips and swallowed great mouthfuls of the clear fluid. It didn’t taste like the Olympic Edge he’d drunk on the first day. This stuff was thicker, like watered-down syrup, and the taste was metallic. Almost at once, he felt a warmth spreading across his chest, and his blood seemed to pump harder through his veins, buzzing right to the tips of his fingers and toes. What the hell was this stuff?

  Dr Chow came through the main doors, and pointed the gun at Jake. He dodged behind the golf cart as the bullet crack sounded, and it whacked off the pavement.