Blood Ties

by Sophie McKenzie

  ‘You don’t know that,’ I said. ‘You don’t know anything about me.’

  The wind whistled through the small copse of trees at the far end of the field. It pierced through the jumper and jeans I was wearing – new stuff that Lewis had bought me.

  ‘I know how you do at school.’ Elijah folded his arms. ‘That you are particularly good at math and science. Like I was. It is interesting to see how far the genetics take root. How far environment makes a difference.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Jesus. I clenched my fists harder. He was talking about me like I was some kind of science experiment.

  ‘When I knew I could not keep you with me, that I had to hide both of us from the murderers who would hunt us down and kill us like animals, I decided to give you an upbringing as close to my own as possible until you were old enough to join me. That meant a single mother. A good education, but being poorer than the other boys.’ Elijah smiled. ‘My parents – who, in a genetic sense, are your parents too – were victims of the war. The Second World War. I assume you know about this from your history lessons?’

  I nodded, curtly, but inside my head was spinning almost out of control. How the hell could I have parents who’d been alive during the Second World War?

  ‘They escaped from Germany in 1944,’ Elijah said. ‘I was born soon after. But my father killed himself when I was very young. We were extremely poor for a while. But we survived. And I was hungry to better myself. To be rich. To be successful.’

  My mind somehow twisted away from the impossibility of such parents, to what Elijah had just said.

  ‘I don’t care about being rich and successful,’ I said.

  Elijah narrowed his eyes. He took a step towards me.

  ‘Maybe not,’ he said. ‘But I recognise things in you that were in me when I was your age. Like your temper. Your recklessness. Your lack of fear. The way you don’t let people in too close.’

  ‘What?’ My hands were freezing now. I shoved them in my pockets. ‘I’m not like that.’

  ‘No?’ Elijah ran his fingers through his hair. ‘You bullied your mother to tell you I was alive. You ran away from school to find Rachel. You took risks to find me. You didn’t think how any of it would worry or hurt your mother.’

  ‘I did . . . I . . .’

  Elijah held up his hands in surrender. ‘Very well. Maybe you do care about your mother. But you can’t deny you behaved selfishly when you ran away, can you?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Then you pick friends who make you look good – who show you the image of yourself that you like – like Jake and Max. Yes, I know about these friends. Jake with his hopeless girl-obsession. Max with her computers. You, Theodore, would never let yourself become so out-of-control as to let a girl or a hobby take over your life. No. Like I say, you let no one in too close. You stay in control. Looking down on the rest. No one is allowed in. Not even your mother. Not even that girl inside the cottage who clearly likes you so much. You make sure you feel superior to everyone.’

  I stared at him. Well, that wasn’t true. Jake might be a bit of a loser with girls and Max was a total nerd, but I liked them. They were my friends. I certainly didn’t look down on them. Or Rachel. And I loved my mum. If anyone looked down on people it was Elijah.

  ‘You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.’

  Elijah smiled, which really pissed me off. I opened my mouth to point out one thing he was definitely wrong about. Rachel. No way did she ‘like’ me in the way he meant. Anyway, he’d met her about five minutes ago. How could he know?

  Then another thought struck me. Part of what he said – the earlier bit – was true. I had to admit it.

  I didn’t let anyone get too close. Not really.

  I felt sick. Numb. All the anger was draining out of me.

  ‘Come inside.’ Elijah put his hand on my shoulder. It felt warm through the jumper. ‘We will talk more while my beautiful Mel is preparing our meal.’

  I didn’t have the heart to resist any longer.

  Without speaking, I let him guide me back to the house.

  40

  Rachel

  When I came downstairs they were all sitting round the kitchen table. Elijah was telling some story, his arm round Mel’s shoulders.

  Were they an item? Ew. He was old enough to be her grandfather. And what about how she’d been with Lewis last night?

  Lewis himself sat opposite. He was smiling with his mouth, but his eyes kept flickering to where Elijah’s hand was stroking Mel’s arm.

  Theo was slumped in a chair at the end of the table, slightly turned away from the others. He was the only one who didn’t look up when I walked in.

  ‘Wow, Rachel. You look real nice,’ Mel beamed.

  I gave an embarrassed shrug. After she’d gone, I’d got my little arrow-shaped, diamante hairgrip and experimented with ways of pinning back my hair. Right now a long strand was holding back most of the rest of my hair on the left side of my head.

  Elijah pointed to the hairgrip. ‘Artemis the hunter.’ He smiled. ‘You know I see a lot of your father in you.’

  I wanted to ask him more, like how well he knew Dad. But there were too many people in the room.

  ‘Would you like to speak to your parents?’ Elijah said.

  ‘Yes.’ I nodded eagerly.

  Elijah glanced at Lewis, who sprang to his feet and herded me back out to the living room. He bent over a bulky cordless receiver.

  ‘It’s a safe line.’ He handed me the phone. ‘Go on. It’s your dad.’

  Lewis went back into the kitchen. I held the phone to my ear. My palms were sweaty against the plastic.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, Dad.’

  ‘Rachel?’ I could almost feel the relief in his voice. ‘Oh, Rachel, are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ I hesitated.

  ‘Oh, Ro.’ Dad’s voice broke. ‘I thought . . . we were so afraid . . . let me get Mum. She’ll—’

  ‘Wait.’ I stared at the empty fireplace. ‘I know, Dad. About . . . about everything.’

  I let the words hang in the air.

  ‘I know you do,’ Dad said finally. ‘Elijah told me he was going to have to tell you.’ He took in a shuddering breath. ‘I’m so sorry, Ro. I’m so sorry if it feels like we were lying to you. So sorry that you’ve been through all this. It wasn’t how I wanted you to find out. But once we’re together again I promise we’ll make it up to you . . .’

  There was another long pause. I sat down and leaned back against the armchair.

  ‘Ro?’

  ‘Why?’ I said. This lump lodged itself in my throat. ‘Why did you do it?’ I knew the answer. I just needed to hear him say it.

  Dad’s breath quickened.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if you can understand this, Rachel, but when Rebecca died it nearly killed us, your mother and me. And, maybe it sounds crazy, but we both thought that if we could just have another baby, it would help. It wasn’t that we wanted to replace her . . .’

  Yeah, right.

  ‘. . . but your mother was too old to conceive naturally, so I talked to Elijah. I mean, I knew about his work on the methylation of DNA in adult cells – not that I understood the half of it – so I knew how far he’d come to getting over the problem of genetic disabilities. And I knew about his . . . about Apollo. Not details. Just that he existed. Anyway, Elijah persuaded us he was ready to clone again – and what more perfect scenario than ours? I think he thought the public would be sympathetic to our situation. We were planning on making an announcement once you were born, but . . .’

  ‘RAGE,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. When they firebombed the clinic everything changed. Elijah went into hiding. We knew RAGE knew about Apollo. We had to keep you a secret. We were scared if RAGE knew you existed they would . . . they wouldn’t let you live.’

  ‘But now they do know about me . . .’ I remembered what Elijah had said in the kitchen.

 
; Artemis the hunter.

  Artemis the hunted.

  ‘Yes. Thanks to that stupid boy who started sticking his nose—’

  ‘He’s my friend, Dad.’ I glanced back at the closed kitchen door. ‘He was just trying to find out the truth.’

  ‘I know.’ Dad sounded more subdued than I’d ever heard him. ‘I’m sorry, Ro, you have every right to be angry.’

  Another long pause. Then Dad spoke again.

  ‘You know there were several reasons why we didn’t tell you how you were born. At first because we couldn’t risk you telling someone else. But also because we didn’t want you to feel you were growing up under Rebecca’s shadow, always being compared to her.’

  I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Could he really not see how he and Mum had made comparisons every day of my life?

  ‘I know everything must seem terrifying right now, Ro,’ Dad went on. ‘But please don’t worry. We’ll keep you safe. Elijah’s making all the arrangements for our relocation. We’re in a safe house too. We thought it would be better this way. RAGE will be looking for a family, not a couple. And soon they won’t be able to find us at all. We’ll have new names. A new home. A new school for you . . .’

  A new school. I sat there, the possibilities of my new life trickling through my mind – energising, awakening me. I could reinvent myself. I could become the Rachel I wanted to be. It was a second chance. A chance of a new life.

  Dad and I talked a bit longer. Then he put Mum on. She was all brittle and edgy, calling me sweetie but sounding angry underneath. At first that upset me, then it occurred to me that it wasn’t actually me she was angry with – more that, if we relocated, she would have to give up her whole life, all the tennis club dinner-dances and the little lunches with her friends.

  None of that was my fault.

  After I hung up I sat in the armchair for a while. Then Mel called me in for the meal she’d cooked. It was some kind of vegetarian curry. Not too spicy, but full of delicious flavours. I ate hungrily. So did Elijah.

  The others hardly touched theirs.

  Theo still sat, hunched, at the end of the table. He looked miserable and completely lost in his own thoughts. I tried to catch his eye a few times, but he barely looked up from his plate.

  Mel was trying hard to be cheerful, laughing at Elijah’s stories and gazing up at him with this fixed smile on her face. But, to me, it was clearly put on. Lewis was even more obviously miserable. He listened and laughed too. But he prodded his food with a fork, eating very little. And his eyes were full of resentment.

  ‘So Mel, querida,’ Elijah said. ‘I must leave after this meal. Will you come with me? Back home?’

  Mel bit her lip. Lewis stiffened in his chair.

  It struck me that if I could see they were behaving oddly, then maybe so could Elijah. It was pretty gross thinking that he and Mel were together. But still. A girlfriend was a girlfriend. I couldn’t imagine Elijah would be very happy if he realised how much Lewis was into her.

  ‘I think I should stay with Rachel,’ Mel said awkwardly. ‘It would be better for her with a woman around.’

  For a second Elijah’s eyes grew cold and hard. Then they softened again. He glanced at me, his eyebrows raised.

  I nodded, blushing. ‘I’d like Mel to stay,’ I said.

  Elijah looked from me, back to Mel. ‘Fine,’ he said neutrally. He stood up. ‘Now I must speak to the men.’

  He strode out of the room. Seconds later we heard the front door slam shut. The atmosphere round the table suddenly relaxed.

  ‘He’s leaving.’ Lewis let out a long sigh and smiled tenderly at Mel. She blushed and smiled back.

  Could they make it any more obvious?

  Embarrassed, I looked at Theo. He was still staring at his plate, apparently oblivious to everything around him.

  Elijah came back after a few minutes. ‘RAGE are heading north,’ he said. ‘They know about our airstrip.’ He looked at Lewis. ‘It’s deeply unfortunate your orders to save Theo prevented you from killing Simpson.’

  Simpson. The man from RAGE Lewis could have shot. But hadn’t.

  ‘You know your next assignment?’ Elijah said.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Lewis stood up.

  But Elijah turned to Mel. ‘Come with me,’ he commanded.

  She bent her head and followed him out of the room. Lewis slumped back down in his chair. A minute later the floor above us creaked. I made a quick assessment of which room that was. Mel’s bedroom. I suddenly realised what Mel and Elijah were probably doing. Lewis kicked at the chair opposite him, where Elijah had been sitting a few minutes before.

  I walked over to Theo and put my hand on his arm. ‘You okay?’

  ‘I guess.’ He shot me this beautiful, sad smile.

  My stomach flipped over. I wanted to talk to him about everything. Later, I wished I had. But at the time, with Lewis brooding away at the table beside us, it seemed impossible.

  Elijah and Mel came back down after twenty minutes or so. Elijah’s eyes were cold as he commanded us to go into the living room. I stood between Theo and Lewis, staring at Mel. She seemed to have shrunk into herself, and was standing close to Elijah with her head bowed.

  One of the security guards appeared at the front door.

  ‘We’re ready, sir.’

  Elijah nodded towards two large bags on the ground beside him. I stared at them uneasily. What was in them? As far as I’d noticed, Elijah hadn’t brought anything into the house with him.

  ‘Mel?’ Lewis stared at the bags. His voice was uncertain.

  They were her bags. Mel didn’t look up.

  Lewis took a step towards her.

  ‘Stop,’ Elijah barked.

  The atmosphere in the room tightened. Lewis stepped back.

  Elijah flicked his little finger and the security guard strode over from the door and picked up the bags, then turned and went outside.

  Gripping Mel’s hand, Elijah walked towards us.

  ‘Say goodbye to everyone,’ he said.

  Mel looked up. I gasped. There was a dark red bruise under her right eye. Lewis let out his breath in a hiss.

  I stared at Elijah. Had he hit her? Had he realised about her and Lewis? Fear spiralled up into my throat. I took a step backwards. Into Theo. We stood, our arms touching, watching Elijah.

  It happened too quickly for me to take in. Elijah raised his hand. Something glinted in his fist. He pointed whatever it was at Lewis. Electric sparks. The same ratchety, thudding noise that I’d heard when Lewis had knocked out that man at my school. It took seconds. Lewis swayed slightly. Toppled forwards across the arm of one of the chairs.

  I stared, unable to breath.

  ‘No.’ Mel. Half a gasp. Half a groan.

  Elijah ignored her. He pulled a real gun from inside his jacket. Pointed it at Lewis’s unconscious body. Then he glanced at the guard who had reappeared in the doorway.

  ‘Take them outside. All of them.’

  The guard grabbed my arm and marched me to the door. He shoved me through. The wind sliced across my face. The guard vanished. Seconds later, Theo stumbled out beside me. Then Mel, her eyes wide with horror.

  My mouth fell open in disbelief. Elijah wouldn’t. He couldn’t be going to . . .

  A shot echoed out from the cottage.

  For a second everything froze. Then I turned towards Theo, just as he turned to me. Our arms reached out. Clutching at each other, holding each other. No. No. No. I buried my face in his chest. His face was down too, pressed against my hair.

  I could hear Mel whimpering.

  I held Theo tighter, my eyes squeezed shut. He was clinging to me like he was drowning.

  Footsteps. The front door opening. Elijah’s voice – a low growl. The beep of the car unlocking. Mel falling silent. More footsteps. No. Someone wrenching Theo away from me. No. No. No.

  Inside my head I was screaming. But I knew I was making no sound. Theo was yelling though, gripping my arms, his fingers being
prised off one by one. I opened my eyes and watched him kicking out at two security guards – one on either side of him. They were dragging him to the car.

  Another guard spun me round and shoved me backwards into the house. The front door slammed shut in my face.

  I stared at the closed door. Heard the car engine starting up. The scrunch of tyres on gravel.

  Silence.

  They were gone. They had all gone. It didn’t make sense.

  Elijah had gone and left me here alone with . . .

  I turned round, my heart bumping furiously in my chest, and stared at Lewis’s body slumped over the armchair.

  41

  Theo

  I yelled until I was hoarse. My head felt like it was exploding. Like I was going mad.

  Elijah had shot Lewis. Why? It made no sense. And now I’d been bundled away from Rachel, my arms twisted behind my back by the guards – across the gravel, into the warm seven-seater Toyota. Mel was already in there, sitting behind me, her bruised face in her hands. Elijah had done that too. Why?

  And what was he doing with me?

  I understood none of it. All I wanted was to get back to Rachel. She was the one fixed point in the chaos. The one person I was sure I could trust.

  One of the guards sat beside me, holding my arms. I kicked out at the seat in front. At Elijah.

  ‘Why did you shoot him?’ I yelled. ‘Where’s Rachel? Where are you taking me?’

  ‘Quiet,’ Elijah ordered.

  ‘No.’ I swore at him, kicking the seat again. Fury blasted, red hot, into my head. ‘What are you going to do with me? Kill me too?’

  ‘Mierda.’ Elijah twisted round, his face contorted with rage. ‘Stop, Theodore. Stop. I have a phone here, for you to call your mother. Now, stop.’

  ‘No.’ I pummelled the seat with my heels, swearing in long, loud strings of words – the worst words I could think of. The guard was twisting my arm up high above my back, trying to stop me. But I was off my face with rage – so furious I could barely feel the pain.

  Elijah barked out some orders in Spanish. A few seconds later one of the other guards appeared over my shoulder, a syringe in his hand.