Blood Ransom

by Sophie McKenzie

  ‘But—’ Before I could say any more, Lewis sped off.

  Theo and I looked at each other.

  ‘Is Lewis going to kill Elijah?’ I whispered, shocked.

  Theo nodded. ‘It’s because of Mel. Lewis is obsessed with getting revenge on Elijah for killing her. It’s all he talks about.’

  I nodded, letting this latest bit of information settle as Theo took my hand and led me on, through the trees towards the jetty. My feet were numb with cold now, but my hand was warm under Theo’s touch. After a minute we reached the edge of the wooded area. An expanse of beach lay ahead. Above the beach, the jetty stretched into the sea. I could make out the vague outline of Elijah’s boat bobbing in the water at the end.

  ‘Our boat is hidden behind that one,’ Theo explained.

  I glanced up at the camera, which was still scanning the beach.

  ‘Should we make a run for it?’ I said.

  Theo shook his head. ‘Lewis said to wait by the trees. There’s more cover.’

  ‘Okay.’ I shivered.

  Theo tugged off his jacket. ‘Put this on.’

  I took the jacket gratefully. It was too big, but I wrapped it round me, instantly feeling the protection it gave against the wind.

  There was no sight or sound of either Elijah or Lewis.

  Theo looked at me. He took my hand again. ‘Are you okay?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Did Elijah hurt you?’ Theo’s eyes were dark and intense.

  ‘No.’ The word came out as a whisper. Immediately I thought of Daniel. How did I tell Theo about him?

  We stared at each other.

  You risked everything to find me. The thought was overwhelming. Impossible to put into words.

  ‘You’re here,’ I stammered.

  ‘For you,’ Theo said.

  I gazed into his deep brown eyes. He moved closer. The silence between us grew as we looked at each other. In the background the trees rustled and the wind whistled and the sea lapped against the shore. And then those sounds faded away and all I could hear was Theo’s breathing, as rapid and shallow as my own.

  ‘They made out you were dead,’Theo said. ‘But I knew it wasn’t true.’

  I looked into his eyes, my heart racing again.

  ‘Elijah wants me for some tests he’s doing . . .’ I stammered.

  ‘Are they anything to do with those weird pods in that lab of his?’

  I frowned. ‘Was that what you saw?’ I said, wondering what he meant. ‘Pods?’

  Theo nodded.

  ‘I don’t know anything about Elijah’s research,’ I admitted. ‘He doesn’t let anyone into his lab, but I think his tests on me have got something to do with the Hermes Project . . .’

  ‘I remember that from Elijah’s compound in America.’ Theo’s eyes rounded. ‘It’s connected to Daniel . . . Wait . . . is he here?’

  I stared at him, a hundred thoughts fizzing round my head. Theo had felt terrible last year in Washington that he hadn’t saved Daniel. How was he going to feel now, knowing that the little boy had paid for that with his life?

  ‘No, Daniel’s not here.’ I took a breath, unsure how to tell him that Daniel was dead.

  Theo didn’t wait for me to say any more. He dropped my hand and cupped my face in his palms. ‘It’s good to see you,’ he said softly. ‘I missed you.’

  ‘Me too,’ I whispered.

  Theo stroked his thumb down my face. My cheek burned where he’d touched it. He drew closer still, until our lips were almost touching.

  ‘Rachel,’ he whispered.

  I closed my eyes as his kiss ricocheted through my body.

  And then a series of shouts ripped through the air.

  We broke away from each other, turning towards the shore.

  More shouts. Elijah. Getting nearer.

  ‘Theo!’ That was Lewis. A warning yell.

  ‘Come on, we should get to the boat now.’ Theo grabbed my hand and we raced off across the beach. In a few strides we were at the jetty. It was just above our heads. Theo reached up, gripped hold of the edge and hauled himself up. More yells. They were definitely getting closer. I turned to see if I could catch sight of either Lewis or Elijah and stepped on a jagged stone. It sliced into my foot.

  ‘Ow!’

  Theo was half on the jetty, scrabbling to get a purchase with his legs. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I lifted my foot off the ground. I could feel blood seeping out of it.

  Theo was on the jetty now. He reached down for me.

  Wham. A shape lunged at me out of nowhere. Strong arms pushed me. Caught off balance, I toppled over. The sand rushed up to meet me. Thud. Sharp grains flew into my eyes and nose and mouth.

  ‘Stay down.’ Elijah was pressing hard on the back of my neck.

  I gasped for breath, spluttering mouthfuls of sand, the panic rising . . . choking me . . .

  Above me, Theo was yelling, ‘Let her go!’

  And then a shot fired.

  40

  Theo

  The bullet whistled past my head. It only missed me by a few centimetres or so, but at that range Elijah could easily have killed me.

  I froze, staring down at him. It was all flooding back – the events of the year before . . . Elijah and the way he had manipulated me, imprisoned me, been prepared to murder me . . .

  My hands started shaking. Elijah gave me an icy smile.

  ‘Hello, Theo,’ he said.

  ‘What have you done with Lewis?’

  ‘Get down from the jetty,’ Elijah said, ignoring my question. ‘No sudden moves, please, or I shoot you for real.’

  ‘I thought you needed me?’ I glanced at Rachel. She was lying quite still in the sand, her head turned sideways. Elijah’s foot was still on her neck, but her eyes showed no pain. Only fear. ‘Don’t you need my heart, Elijah?’

  ‘I have a perfectly healthy heart now, Theo,’ Elijah said briskly. ‘My experiments have moved on. It’s Rachel I need. Not you.’

  I stared at him. Was that true?

  ‘Now, get down onto the beach,’ Elijah went on. ‘Slowly. Sit before you jump, please.’

  I looked round, trying to work out what to do. Our boat was only a metre away, just past Elijah’s. From up here on the jetty I could make out the outline of the hull.

  With a jolt I realised Lewis was inside, carefully unwinding the rope that bound our boat to Elijah’s. He must have swum there from the beach and got on board without me or Elijah hearing him.

  As I stared at him he looked up. Our eyes met. Seawater was dripping silently down his face. He put his finger to his lips. Sssh.

  ‘Now, Theo.’ Elijah cocked his gun.

  I turned back to him and slowly lowered myself so that I was squatting on the jetty.

  ‘Where is your boat moored?’ Elijah said. Man, if he walked a few more metres down the beach he’d be able to see it – and Lewis inside.

  ‘What are you going to do with Rachel?’ I said, trying to keep his focus on me. ‘What are those creepy things in your lab?’

  ‘I suggest you stop asking questions and start answering mine, Theo. Now get down here!’

  I couldn’t stop myself glancing over at Lewis again. Except he wasn’t there. Neither was the boat.

  Had he taken it somewhere? How, without using the motor?

  ‘Theo?’ Elijah had followed my gaze. He bent down, keeping his gun tightly gripped in his hand, and pulled Rachel to her feet.

  Damn, he’d realised I was looking for the boat.

  Holding the gun pressed against Rachel’s side, Elijah walked along the beach. He was frowning, peering into the darkness, trying to see past his own, bigger boat.

  I raised myself up a little, my muscles tensing. There must be some way I could jump him . . . get that gun off him . . .

  A faint creak sounded behind me. As Elijah looked out to sea, I glanced over my shoulder. Lewis was easing our boat round the jetty. I could just see the tips of his fingers, and the
boat, a dark shadow moving through the water. I turned to face Elijah again. He was still staring out at the ocean, frowning.

  ‘How far off shore are you moored, Theo?’

  ‘Miles,’ I lied.

  And then several things happened at once. The boat bumped against the jetty behind me. Lewis – who had manoeuvred it into position – reached out and grabbed my legs, pulling me backwards off the jetty. I fell on my side, into the boat, all the wind knocked out of me.

  Across the jetty, Elijah’s gun fired.

  I froze in the bottom of the boat, then yelled out, ‘Rachel!’

  Lewis was swearing, tugging at something. The motor roared into life. And, with a huge surge that brought a deluge of spray in on top of me, the boat stormed away out to sea.

  41

  Rachel

  Theo’s cry rang in my ears as Elijah dragged me, cursing, up the beach and onto the path. He held my arms behind my back. I struggled to free myself, desperate to get back to Lewis and Theo, but his grip on my arms just tightened.

  ‘They’re gone. Calm down,’ he spat, then broke into an angry torrent of swear words.

  ‘You shot at them!’ I shouted. Fear and fury swirled in my head.

  ‘Of course I shot at them,’ Elijah roared. ‘They were trying to steal you.’

  ‘I’m not a ‘thing’ you can steal.’

  ‘Quiet!’ Elijah shoved me forwards again. I stumbled on the unlit path. We were heading for the barn and Elijah’s sinister laboratory.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ I said, suddenly terrified. ‘What’re you going to do?’

  Elijah said nothing. A minute later, we reached the barn. John was leaning against the door, his head in his hands.

  As we approached, Paul staggered out through the door.

  Both guards straightened up when they saw Elijah.

  ‘Go to the jetty,’ he ordered Paul, still keeping tight hold of my wrist. ‘See what they’ve done to the boat. Lewis will have disabled it. Assess the damage, then report back.’ Elijah turned to John. ‘You. Get Jamieson on the radio. Immediately.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The guards set off.

  Muttering angrily to himself, Elijah shoved me inside the barn, then through another, metal door. The door slammed shut and Elijah let go of my arm at last. I rubbed my sore eyes, trying to work out where the door handle was.

  There wasn’t one. Just a small, infra-red screen on the wall beside the door. I’d seen one like it in Elijah’s Washington compound. It was a scanner, programmed to respond only to Elijah’s eyes.

  I was trapped.

  Slowly I turned, taking in the rest of the room.

  It was lit with a soft pink glow – and appeared as high-tech on the inside as it was old and crumbling on the outside. A bank of computers ran down one side of the room. A massive metal tank stood in the middle. Clear tubes came out from the tank and then narrowed as they passed into each one of a row of clear oval pods.

  Inside these were the weird beings that Theo had talked about.

  I peered into the nearest pod. It contained something vaguely oval, and alien-looking, with a rounded head and tiny flippers budding out of its sides. It was semi-transparent and definitely alive, moving slowly from side to side and vibrating internally with a fluttering motion. It was suspended in a thick, syrupy liquid that was obviously being pumped into the pod via the clear tubes that led from the central tank.

  The pods themselves were made of some sort of thick plastic – solid, but not entirely rigid. I’d never seen anything remotely like any of this . . . and the overall effect made me shiver.

  Elijah charged around the room, checking on various cases. He seemed to have forgotten I was there. I hugged Theo’s jacket tighter around me. Whatever Elijah was working on here must be directly connected to why he’d gone to such lengths to kidnap me. I shivered again. Theo and Lewis had gone – at least for now – but maybe in here I could find some answers.

  ‘What are these things?’ I said.

  Elijah’s head shot up. He was bending over a pod in the far corner of the room, partly hidden by the huge tank. He had taken off his jacket. The small black gun Milo had brought him earlier was strapped to his belt.

  ‘Ah, Rachel.’ His voice was icy. ‘Come here. We don’t have much time.’

  He beckoned me over.

  I stood my ground. ‘Tell me what these things in the pods are first,’ I said.

  Elijah rubbed his hand through his hair. ‘Can’t you tell, Rachel?’ His tone was lightly mocking . . . challenging. ‘Come on, we have to move fast. I can’t give you long to work it out.’

  I looked round the room. Each pod contained an identical, alien-looking creature. Except . . . I stared more closely. Some of the creatures were slightly bigger than the rest. Maybe two to three centimetres longer.

  One of the creatures kicked out its flipper and I realised, with a jolt, that the flipper was actually a tiny foot . . . attached to a leg.

  I met Elijah’s gaze. Oh. My. God.

  ‘Babies,’ I gasped. ‘You’re growing babies.’

  42

  Theo

  The boat roared off into the darkness. Spray splashed on my face with every wave we bounced over.

  ‘No!’ I yelled.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Lewis shouted over the noise of the motor, leaning down to where I was still lying in the bottom of the boat. ‘You’re safe, I damaged the engine on their boat, remember? They can’t follow us.’

  ‘It’s not me!’ I reared up, full of indignation. ‘It’s Rachel. We left her behind!’ Furious tears streaked through the spray on my face.

  Lewis met my eyes. ‘There was no choice. We had to retreat. Elijah would have killed both of us before we reached her. This way we get a second chance.’

  ‘We still should have stayed . . . tried to help her.’ My guts twisted over and over. All I could see in my mind’s eye was Rachel . . . her frightened face.

  ‘Rachel will be okay,’ Lewis sat down beside me. ‘Elijah went to a lot of trouble to take her and to fake that suicide. He’s not going to hurt her now. Anyway, we’re not going far. We’re just going to anchor off shore for a bit, then go back later, give the rescue another go.’

  ‘If you hadn’t gone after Elijah then all three of us would have got away,’ I yelled at him.

  ‘It’s done now.’ Lewis’s mouth tightened into a thin line. ‘And we will go back. I promise you, Theo, you can’t want this any more than I do.’

  ‘Oh yeah? This? What I want is to save Rachel. What you want is to get even with Elijah.’

  ‘We can do both,’ Lewis said.

  ‘Not on our own. Those two guards will be coming round soon.’

  Lewis shook his head. I suddenly realised he was shivering, soaked to the skin from his swim to the boat. ‘We can take them,’ he said. ‘We can do it.’

  ‘There’s no way,’ I protested. ‘Come on, we know Rachel is on that island now. We can make her parents believe it. We can get the police out here. And we should.’

  ‘No. We can handle Elijah on our own,’ Lewis said stubbornly. ‘If we call the police then someone, somewhere, will protect Elijah. You saw that weird lab of his – he’s working again, which means he’s got funds and backing . . . which means the government’s behind him.’

  I shook my head. ‘You don’t know that for sure. And Elijah and both those guards have guns. All we have is a cheap knife.’

  Lewis opened his mouth to argue back, but the chugging engine of a distant boat made us turn our heads towards the sound.

  The outline of the boat appeared on the horizon, lit by moonlight.

  What was another boat doing out here?

  And then a bright light shone suddenly, right into our eyes.

  Lewis reached for the engine, but before he could touch it a shot fired. He slumped down. I stared at his shoulder. A dart was sticking out of it.

  No. I ducked down, shielding my eyes from the light now glaring closer and closer. And the
n I felt a sharp prick in my own shoulder. A second of sickness. And the light faded to black.

  43

  Rachel

  I stared at Elijah in horror.

  ‘Well done, Rachel,’ he said, running his hand through his hair. ‘These are indeed babies – or, to be exact, a foetus and several embryos.’

  ‘But . . . but . . .’ I gazed around the room. ‘But they’re growing . . . developing . . . in . . . in . . . pods! There’s no mother.’

  Elijah pointed to the huge metal tank and its tubular tentacles. ‘This contains a blend of proteins and amino acids that gives the babies all the nutrients they need.’

  I shook my head, unable to take it in.

  ‘The new embryos are doing well. It seems I’ve managed to overcome most of the previous problems that undermined the earlier experiments.’

  ‘Experiments?’ I echoed faintly.

  ‘Yes.’ He nodded, his eyes glittering with excitement. ‘Gestating the embryos in these artificial wombs has proved a huge challenge but once I got the right balance for the feeding tubes and the right matrix for the pods it became easier.’

  ‘What are the pods made of?’ I stared at the plastic cases.

  ‘A blend of materials, including collagen and chondroitin. Sort of like an artificial skin.’ Elijah said. ‘Even with that in place, most of the early experiments failed by the end of the first trimester, but now all the problems have been ironed out.’ He paused. ‘I’m explaining this, Rachel, so that you can see what’s at stake here.’

  I shook my head, gazing at the tiny creatures inside the pods. ‘But what’s this got to do with me?’ I said. ‘Are these embryos part of your Hermes Project?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Elijah frowned. ‘I told you already. The Hermes Project is my study of the differences between cloned and non-cloned humans. This is a much more ambitious programme which arose out of the Hermes Project.’

  My head spun. ‘Ambitious how?’

  Elijah looked pityingly at me. ‘Don’t you see it, Rachel?’ he said, a touch of acid in his voice. ‘Don’t you see what I’ve created here?’