by JT Lawrence
“What?” says Kate.
“…dead…”
Keke’s voice crackles like foil packaging.
“What?”
“It’s why I called…found out…Lundy’s nanny…”
“I’m losing you.” Kate strains to hear.
The line is so bad Kate can only hear snatches.
“…It’s the…tribe that is…toddlers. The nannies…” and the line cuts out.
“Keke?”
Kate tries to call her back, but it won’t go through. The doorbell rings.
Kate opens the door, and Solonne sashays in. The guard gives her a curt nod and closes the door again, and she locks all three bolts.
Solonnne’s robe is white, lustrous. A hard pearl in Kate’s mouth. “I wanted to thank you, for the warning.”
“And what is the point?” says Solonne, tight-faced, “of being warned, when you are doing nothing about it?”
“We’ve got security. We’re – ”
Solonne looks around. “Where is the boy?”
Kate frowns at her. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”
“I thought I had made that very clear.”
“Why are you back? What are you doing here?”
Solonne starts looking for Mally. She checks his room, then the bathroom.
“He’s in the panic room with Seth,” says Kate, following her. “He’s fine.”
She beelines to the white room and swings open the door. Mally looks up, mid-car-crash, and smiles.
“Hello Solonne,” he says.
Chapter 49
A Terrible Mistake
What? thinks Kate. How does he know her name?
“Mally,” Solonne says, warmly.
Seth looks as confused as Kate feels.
“How do you know Solonne?” Kate tries to keep her voice light despite the lead in her stomach.
“Solonne’s my special friend.” He zooms a car up Seth’s denim leg. Seth grabs him and hoists him up, on to his lap, puts protective arms around him.
“What’s going on here?”
Solonne uncaps her lip balm and runs it over her lips. “My only vice,” she says, holding it up to them, eyes crinkled with a smile. “I’m addicted to the stuff.” It looks like she is gearing up for something. Kate smells artificial fruit (Cheap Cherries).
What had Keke said? Something about nannies, and the SurroTribe.
“I think you should leave,” says Kate.
“I will,” says Solonne. “But I need to take the boy.”
“Fuck that,” says Seth, tightening his grip. Mally pretends to be alarmed by the swear word and makes a gaping fish-face at them.
“The boy has a name,” says Kate, “and we’ve been over this. You’re not taking him anywhere.”
“I wanted to give you one last chance to do what’s right,” says Solonne. “To save your son.”
Mally squirms out of Seth’s grip. “It’s okay, Mom,” he says. “I want to go.”
“What?”
He screws up his eyes and parrots a line: “There will come a day when the last boy goes to the sun and that’s how he saves the world.”
“What? What is that? Where did you hear that?”
“It’s the prophecy,” he says. His eyes pierce Kate’s. For a second Kate sees him as an Other, as a Something Else, not quite human, and it’s like someone is holding an ice cube against her spine. Then the moment passes and she sees her son again, her flesh-and-blood boy.
“Come along, then,” Solonne says to Mally, and puts her hand out. Mally takes it without hesitation.
“Leave him alone,” growls Seth, standing up, and grabbing Mally’s hand from out of the matriarx’s.
It looks like Solonne wants to snatch him back, but she knows she won’t win the fight. Not here. Not today.
Two minutes after Solonne leaves, shaking her frown, Keke shows up.
“Solonne was just here,” says Kate, and Keke freezes.
“Please tell me – ”
“I didn’t let him go with her.”
She clutches her chest. “I was worried I’d be too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“It’s the nannies,” Keke says, panting. “But I don’t know why.”
“What?”
“The nanny killed the Lundy kid. The Nash kid. The printed kids. All dead.”
Kate’s head spins. “What?”
“It’s the Surro-nannies,” says Keke. “They’re the ones killing the Genesis kids.”
Kate’s Patch rings. She checks her Helix, sees that it’s her mother, and taps to take it.
“It’s my mother,” she mouths to Keke. “Mom, how are you? Everything okay?”
“Darling, have I got the wrong day?”
Kate’s mouth dries up instantly. Lemon Pith.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m at the speedtrain station. I thought you said they’d be on the DBN930? Did they miss it?”
Kate checks the time. It’s 10:15.
“They were on the 9:30. I personally put them on the 9:30. They should have arrived in Durban at half past nine.”
“They’re not here, dear. I checked the cabin myself. Completely empty.”
“Please check again. They must be there.”
“It’s gone. It left fifteen minutes ago. Back to Joburg.”
Curses explode in Kate’s head, like paintball guns of night-glo colour.
“Oh no,” she says. “Oh no no no no.”
There is a smashing sound. She looks down and sees a mug she doesn’t even remember holding, shattered on the floor. Seth comes running with Mally in his arms, greeting Keke with raised eyebrows.
“Hello?” says Kate’s mother. “Kate?” but Kate can’t talk. Anne’s disembodied voice keeps on: “Shall I wait here? I’m not sure what to do. Have you tried calling that bodyguard, or the nanny?”
Kate ends the call. Seth looks worried. “Who was that? What’s wrong?”
“You’re as white as a sheet.”
Kate looks at Seth. She chokes on the words. “We made a terrible mistake.” She feels the ground falling away from her and puts hand on the table to steady herself.
Seth puts Mally down. “Fuck’s sake, Kate, what’s happened?”
His Patch rings, and without looking who it is, he mutes the call.
“Take it.” Kate can see he doesn’t want to. “Take it!”
He taps his Patch, barks out a terse “Hello.” He must have double-tapped by accident, because a small hologram of the SafeGuard Assessor appears.
“Mister Denicker,” he says. “We have some upsetting news.”
“Go to your room,” says Kate to Mally.
“I don’t want to!”
“Go to your room and put your earbuttons in.”
It looks like he’ll resist, but he appears to think better of it and walks towards his bedroom.
“What is it?” Seth asks the SafeGuard man, who clears his throat.
“Perhaps you should sit down.”
“You’ve lost Silver,” he says.
“Our man accompanying your daughter was found dead at the next station. His chip stopped travelling at Rivonia. His body was just discovered in the public restroom. Garrotted. Our on-site coroner says it happened a couple of hours ago.”
Seth puts his hands up to his face. Kicks a kitchen chair over. It bangs hard on the tiles.
“What about Silver?”
“Missing.”
Kate shouts at the hologram. “What?!”
“We’re doing what we can to find them.”
“No,” says Kate. “This can’t be happening. I don’t understand. They’re supposed to be after Mally. Mally is the one in danger.”
The SafeGuard man’s face flickers with anxiety.
Kate gulps down rising bile. “There’s something you’re not telling us.”
“Well,” he begins, then stops.
“Tell us.”
“We found Silver’s luggage
too. A plush rabbit, and a pink backpack with her name on it, abandoned in the toilet stall.”
The extrapolation of this doubles Kate over. She puts her hands on her knees and tries to breathe.
“You’re sure?” says Seth. “That there are no other…bodies there?”
“We did an extensive sweep. To be frank, we were expecting the nanny’s body to show up, but nothing so far.”
“You won’t find it,” says Kate, horror rising like smoke inside her. “You won’t find the nanny’s body. Because she’s the one who took Silver.”
Kate feels like she’s on one of those old school fun fair rides, where you get spun around so hard that the g-force keeps you pinned to the wall while the floor drops away. Candy cane stripes and stale popcorn and teeth sticky with toffee apple, and children, shrieking children, until she retches, hard, right there on the kitchen floor.
“Let’s sit down,” Seth tries to lever her on to a chair.
“No,” says Kate, pushing them both away. “I’m not sitting anywhere. We need to go. We need to find Silver.”
Kate can’t believe she’s saying the words out loud. It’s like she’s always known something like this would happen. She put it down to her past trauma – the gold-edged paranoia that flaps around her like a death’s head butterfly – but deep down she always knew that this would happen.
“There’s something else,” says Keke, biting her lip.
Kate and Seth zero in on her.
“I wasn’t sure it was relevant, but now I…I don’t know. I think it might be.”
“About the trial?” asks Seth.
“About Marko.”
Kate’s finding it difficult to concentrate on the conversation. She wants to know what Keke has to say but it’s like her mind is split into two windows: one showing what is happening here, in the kitchen, and one picturing her little girl being afraid, or alone, or…worse. The idea of Silver being hurt…she can’t stand it. Acid green betrayal corrodes her insides. She thinks of all the times Sebongile fed the kids, played games with them, laughed with them, hugged them. She thinks of her own affection for the woman who had, millimetre by millimetre, insinuated herself into the nucleus of her family. In her mind she pictures Bongi’s black tentacles coiling around her heart, poised for a slow strangle.
Chapter 50
Testimony from the Grave
The nursing intern puts down her cold tea and greets Keke like an old friend.
“You brought reinforcements,” Themba says, looking at the untidy troupe of Keke, Kate, Seth and a monkey-like Mally, clinging to Seth’s leg. The bodyguard fades into the background. The boy has never been to a hospital before but something about it scares him immediately.
“I don’t like it here,” he keeps saying.
“No one likes hospitals.” Seth’s jaw is tight. It must be the visual of Marko lying in bed, as pale as a dead body. Kate knew he was gravely ill, toppling on the verge of nothingness, but seeing him looking like a corpse is difficult to bear.
“What’s the 411?” Keke asks the nurse. She walks up to the bed, holds Marko’s hand. He has new wires and tubes trespassing all over his body. Sticker sensors beep reassuringly.
“You should probably wait to ask the doctor that.”
Seth sits in the corner, away from everyone, concentrating on his SnapTile.
“I want your opinion,” says Keke. “You’re the one who’s watching him.”
Themba smoothes down her nurse uniform. “He’s not doing as well as we’d hoped.”
Kate is irritated by a tear spilling down her cheek. She wipes it away and blows air upwards to evaporate the rest. It’s a tic that is not in the least effective.
“We expected some kind of increase in independent activity by now.”
“Waking up?” asks Keke.
The nurse nods. “Or, at least signs of beginning to wake up. But, if anything, he seems – ”
“He seems deeper,” says Keke. “More deeply unconscious.”
“Yes.”
To mask her emotion, Keke keeps her hands busy. She gets a blanket out of the cupboard and lays it over Marko, cracks open the window and raids his bar fridge for drinks. Seth is tapping away at his screen. Everyone is acting oddly, as if there is a strange new filter on their reality. Kate is stuck in a strange limbo: desperate to search for Silver but stuck in this slow-motion in-between of Not Knowing. She keeps checking her Helix for a message from the kidnappers, but the tab remains empty.
A man appears at the door. He has long black hair that rests on his shoulder in a thick braid. It’s held together with decorative steel clips that match his other piercings: brow, nose, lip. His clothes match his hair, and he doesn’t look anything like a doctor but has the medical professional visitor security tag clipped to his shirt.
“My, my,” he says, surveying the room. His voice is deep and resonant. A purring black sports car.
“Doc,” says Kekeletso. “Thank you so much for coming.” She introduces the others, but Seth hardly looks up from what he’s doing. Mally peers out from his hiding place, underneath the blood pressure monitor.
“This is the man who’s going to help us find Silver.”
Seth looks up, frowning.
“I’m sorry that we’re meeting again under such sad circumstances.” Dark Doc approaches Marko’s still body and looks him over. “What can I do?”
“We need to access the footage from Marko’s cyberlens.”
The doctor is calm, measured. “You know that we don’t allow for that. We discussed it prior to the lens surgery.”
“I know what we discussed, but this is an emergency.”
“Marko’s vision is entirely private. There is no recording device outside of the body. It’s a strict policy we have for various legal reasons.”
“I know, but – ”
“But?”
“I was reading something. About a murder trial in the US, a landmark case. Testimony from the grave – ”
Dark Doc holds up a hand. It’s a canvas for ultra-delicate black ink tattoos.
“I know what you’re going to say. The Radford case. Melissa Radford, who was shot by her partner.”
Keke turns to Kate. “They used the film from the victim’s cybernetic lens – she had one like Marko’s – as evidence to convict the perpetrator.”
“So it’s not impossible,” says Kate. “To access the footage. You just don’t allow for it in your policy.”
“It’s fraught with legal repercussions,” says the doctor. “But that isn’t why we can’t do it.” He looks at Keke with affection. Says in a low tone: “You know I’d do anything for you.”
“We need the film to find out who did this to him. To protect him from further attack.”
“We think that it was the same people who kidnapped my daughter,” says Kate. “It’s life or death.”
“You see, that’s why I can’t do it,” he says. “The reason the team in the States could retrieve the Radford recording was because…well, the victim. She was dead. Her death terminated the privacy agreement she had with the surgical tech company that implanted her lens. The strings were cut, and it was no longer a morally ambiguous decision.”
“I don’t give a fuck about the privacy agreement,” says Kate. “My little girl is missing.”
“Look, I told you before…I’m less concerned with the legal standpoint, and more concerned with – ”
“With?”
“Well, with Marko. I’ve been briefed on his status. His condition is precarious.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“To get the recording, we’d need to – ”
“Operate?”
“Remember,” the doctor says. “The implant is permanent. It’s literally part of his eye. It’s not removable.”
“Oh,” says Kate, beginning to understand.
Keke freezes.
“To access the footage,” says Dark Doc, “we’ll need to remove his eye.”
Nuclear Ghost Town
“We’re wrong about the SurroTribe,” says Seth, standing up from his makeshift desk of the hospital bed food tray in the corner. “It’s not them that’s behind it.”
“How do you know?”
“I ran a photo of Sebongile through my FusiformG to get her facemap. Then I uploaded the map to the list of SurroSisters.”
“Where did you get the list?”
“On the official Surro site. It’s a matter of public record.”
“No match?” asks Keke.
“No match,” says Seth.
Kate is cold. An ice cube on her neck. How could she have been so careless?
“But we made sure she was legit, didn’t we?” says Kate. “When she was first recommended to us? We checked her out.”
“Of course we did,” says Seth. “I’m assuming whoever planted her in our lives created some kind of sophisticated mask over the Surro site. Temporarily superimposed a fake list for us to check.”
“And we fell for it? How can we be so fucking stupid?”
“We fell for it, as did every single other parent who is now mourning their child.”
“Don’t say that,” says Kate, her eyes burning. “Don’t talk about mourning.”
Marko lies motionless.
“We need to be sure,” says Keke. “Facemaps aren’t 100% accurate. Run her dynap code.”
“We don’t have it,” says Seth. “Do we?”
“I have it,” says Kate. “I have it. I needed it to register her for tax.”
Kate sends Seth the nanny’s DNA profile code, and again, there is no match on the Surro site.
Themba checks on Marko, then coaxes Mally out from under the equipment with a packet of Holee Molees.
“Wait,” says Keke. “What about the blacklisted Surros?”
Any SurroSister who breaks the code of Surro ethics gets stripped of her pin and placed on a blacklist. Some of the women, the ones who lived and breathed their purpose as surrogates, take the seemingly callous casting aside to heart. They’re the ones who ended up as spike addicts, or prostitutes, or victims of the suicide contagion. The blacklist is a slow-growing directory that floats in the tide of the darkweb. Seth runs Sebongile’s dynap, but again, there is no match, like she never existed.
