Revenge (16 page)

Jimmy’s stomach lurched. He felt like he was going to choke on his own breath.

“Aren’t you…” gasped Felix. He couldn’t finish his sentence.

Before them stood a tall man, whose frail body was wrapped in a thick tweed overcoat. It smelled like it was rotting. Round his neck was a long striped scarf, and a heavy cloth cap was pulled down nearly over his eyes. But it was unmistakably him – Dr Kasimit Higgins.

This was the scientist who had led the NJ7 team that designed the assassins all those years ago. Jimmy gathered his composure.

“Where’s your white coat, doctor?” he asked bitterly.

“Don’t blame me, Jimmy,” Dr Higgins croaked in reply. “I thought I was creating something truly great. And I’m still not convinced I wasn’t right.”

His eyes twinkled, but the neon light cast up at his
face brought out the deep holes that had once been his cheeks, and the black bags under the caves of his eyes. Every wrinkle looked like an abyss.

“So NJ7 hasn’t caught you yet then,” said Jimmy, full of scorn.

“And they never will,” Higgins replied. “They trained me. I’m uncatchable – a ghost.”

His lips were almost white, but they creased into a narrow smile, revealing the black and yellow stones of his teeth. He took a step forwards.

“Stay where you are,” Jimmy ordered.

Dr Higgins froze. “I’m not afraid,” he whispered. “You can’t harm me, Jimmy. You know that.”

Jimmy kept his face rigid. It took so much effort. Inside him, his programming was spreading a weird warmth, dulling his anger. It was as if it was trying to make him feel happy – against his own judgement.

“But,” the doctor continued, “you should know as well that I would never do anything to harm you. You’re my proudest achievement.”

“Get out,” Jimmy insisted.
I’m not anybody’s
achievement but my own
, he thought. “Go and build more misery. I never want to see you again.”

“I’m here to help. Don’t you want to know what’s happening to you?”

Jimmy didn’t have anything to say. His heart leapt at the possibility of at last getting some answers, but he refused to show it.

“You’re having visions,” Dr Higgins went on. “Images. In your head. Am I right?”

Jimmy held himself absolutely still.

“And attacks,” blurted Felix.

“I knew it!” Dr Higgins lit up. “And headaches, yes? They come like lightning bolts straight into your brain.” He tapped his temple with the contorted bone that passed for a finger. His other hand stayed in his pocket.

“What’s happening to me?” Jimmy rasped, his curiosity at last breaking through his anger. He fought back the tears.

Dr Higgins’ eyes darted around the room. “Not here,” he said under his breath. “They might be listening.”

A chill juddered up Jimmy’s spine. “You’re paranoid,” he insisted. “This is a safehouse.”

Dr Higgins raised an eyebrow. “You won’t think it’s so safe when you hear what I’ve got to say,” he announced. “What sort of safehouse can an old man break into with failing eyes and only one hand?” He took both hands out of his pockets. In his left hand he proudly displayed a length of wire, bent into a spike that he’d obviously used to pick the locks. But his other hand wasn’t even visible beneath a huge ball of stained, yellow bandaging.

Jimmy looked away. He didn’t need reminding of the time he’d witnessed Dr Higgins experimenting on Mitchell’s brother. The old man’s hand had been badly burned by his own laser.

“And what sort of safehouse is it,” the doctor when on, “when two untrained boys can follow you here and attack you – not once, but twice?”

Jimmy gulped.

“Yes, I saw them,” said Dr Higgins. “I’ve been watching.”

“So if you can find us, and Eva’s brothers can find us,” Felix began slowly, “how come NJ7 can’t find us?”

“Oh, they could,” whispered Higgins. “If they were looking.”

Felix and Jimmy looked at each other, growing more confused by the second.

“Now do you want to hear what I have to say?” the doctor asked.

Jimmy felt his head nodding even before he’d thought about the question.

“Good,” said the doctor. “There’s a taxi waiting downstairs.”

“Felix,” Jimmy said in a rush, pulling on some jeans and a sweater, “stay here. Look after your dad.”

“What?” his friend protested. “You can’t go!”

“I’ll be back soon.”

“That’s what your mum said.”

Jimmy paused. Was it crazy to go out alone into the night with Dr Higgins? Maybe. But Jimmy needed answers. What’s more, he felt secure knowing that Dr Higgins was the one man in the world too proud of his own creation to ever cause Jimmy harm. Jimmy tried to
smile at Felix and gripped his shoulder to reassure him. Felix shook his head, worry all over his features.

“Be careful,” he whispered. “Come back alive.”

“They’re not trying to find you any more because they think they can control you.” Dr Higgins announced.

“What?” Jimmy gasped, but even as the word left his lips, he knew that the doctor must be right. That’s exactly what it felt like – somebody getting inside his head to convince him of something, forcing him to act in a way he didn’t want to.

The taxi had brought them a few streets north, to Grand Central Station. After that, Jimmy had had to stay sharp to keep up. The old man might have been withered and hunched over, but he moved well. They’d come straight to the underbelly of the whole station complex – Grand Central Oyster Bar. It was two floors down, beneath the main hall, well out of sight of satellite surveillance, and the tiled walls would make it almost impossible for anybody trying to eavesdrop on their conversation.

“And as soon as they think they’ve got you controlled,” Dr Higgins went on, “they’ll go to Chinatown and pick up your friends. That safehouse is no hiding place. Too many people coming in and out all day. After we’re done here, go back to your friends and get everybody out of there.”

Jimmy didn’t know how to react. Dr Higgins was speaking so casually, but his words stabbed like daggers at Jimmy’s heart. He started frantically thinking about where they could all go. He cursed the CIA for being so slow at organising their protection, but at the same time he realised it was a big task to create new lives for all of them from scratch.

“Are you going to eat those?” Dr Higgins asked, pointing at the plate of a dozen raw Rockaway oysters in front of Jimmy. Jimmy wasn’t even hungry – especially not for food that looked like it had been sneezed out of a giant’s nose.

The Oyster Bar resembled an ancient cavern, with tiled domes low over their heads, as if any minute there might be bats flapping about them. It was dark, with rows of white tables bouncing what light there was straight up into people’s faces. There were only a few customers.
Who comes for oysters in the middle of the
night?
Jimmy wondered to himself.

The doctor reached across and plucked one oyster at a time off Jimmy’s plate.

“I love these. I have to – it’s the easiest food to eat with one hand.” He waved his bandages in Jimmy’s face.

“Yeah, well, it’s a bit early for my breakfast,” Jimmy muttered. A knot was forming in his stomach. He didn’t want to waste time before he could get his friends to safety.

Dr Higgins eagerly wolfed down another oyster, tearing at the sachets of ketchup with his teeth, then slathering Tabasco sauce and lemon juice all over his plate.

“When I noticed the power cuts across parts of the UK and America,” he explained, keeping his voice so low it was barely audible, “I thought something was up. Then there was the interference with vital radio networks, grounding so many commercial flights. I realised something must be disrupting the grid. And usually that something is the Secret Service.” He wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve, then guzzled another oyster. Drips of lemon juice oozed down his chin, but he didn’t care. He was too excited about what he was telling Jimmy.

“Then when I heard about what happened this afternoon, I realised you must be in town and connected the two. But why try to kill the Prime Minister? That’s the only thing that confused me. I thought, surely NJ7 wants the
President
killed to try and get a new administration more sympathetic to supporting them against France. Why would they kill the Prime Minister? But then I realised something must have gone wrong. You weren’t there for the Prime Minister, were you?”

Jimmy just blinked, dazzled by the overload of information.

“I knew it!” exclaimed the doctor. “You were there for the President! Once that fell into place I was almost
certain – I thought to myself, what if NJ7 has been sending out a signal to try and influence Jimmy’s actions? It’s very clever really.”

“A signal?” Jimmy was trying to keep track of Dr Higgins’ thoughts, but they came so fast and so quietly, it was like being lost in a snowstorm.

“I just haven’t worked out how they would transmit a strong enough signal across an area large enough to make sure you were in its net. You’d need a subsystem of transmitters.”

“The cellphone mast…” Jimmy gasped. At last he was catching up. He remembered the mast on the roof of MoMA and what it had done to him.

“Yes, yes,” Dr Higgins hissed, “that’s so obvious. That’s how they did it.”

“They’re still doing it,” Jimmy announced.

“I’m sorry, Jimmy, I’m a little deaf. Did you say they’re still transmitting a signal?”

Jimmy pulled out one of his pens from his pocket. He grabbed a napkin and in red felt tip he drew the four long columns, with their distinctive colouring: red at the base, white in the middle, red again at the top.

“These images are new,” Jimmy explained, “and I can’t get them out of my head. What does it mean this time?”

Next to the turrets he sketched the ruin, then wrote SILVERCUP in that old-fashioned lettering – he had never been able to draw lettering so carefully before.
His grip on the pen was tense enough to rip through the napkin in a few places.

“I don’t know what this means, Jimmy,” the doctor sighed. “And this is a fresh signal?”

“Look,” Jimmy replied, nodding. Full of frustration, he pulled his notebook out of his back pocket and slammed it down on the table. “I saw nothing but these for days.” He flicked through the early pages. “And I realised almost too late that they were telling me to…” he dropped his voice right down, “you know – kill President Grogan. So, like, what do all these mean?” He flipped to the newest drawings in the book. “I have to find out before I…” He tailed off, not wanting to even contemplate what the images might force him to do this time.

“Relax,” Dr Higgins urged. “You’ve managed to overcome your programming several times now. You can do it again.” He looked at Jimmy for a long time. His eyes were grey discs, flashing with mystery. “You won’t be able to do it as you get older, but do you realise how amazing it is that you’ve done it at all? You’re a remarkable boy, Jimmy. The hardware in you is a thousand times more complex than a super-computer. It’s controlling organic materials and growing them according to a specific formula. It isn’t manipulating an easy, clean material like metal. There’s no metal in you.”

Jimmy thought for a second. That didn’t fit in with something he remembered.

“What about the chip?” he asked.

“The chip?” said Dr Higgins. “You mean the chip that programmed the laser when it adjusted your DNA? Sure, there were metal components in that, but that’s not you, is it?”

“But my mum told me the chip was implanted in me as an embryo to oversee my development and then it was absorbed into my body.”

“Ah, your mum.” The doctor sighed again and leaned back, looking far off into nowhere. “Well Jimmy, I’m afraid that was a small lie I told her nearly twelve yeas ago. It’s important for every mother to feel like her child is unique.”

Another lie
, thought Jimmy.
Why am I not surprised?
A bitter taste rose in his mouth.
38 per cent human
and 99 per cent lies
.

“Your body wouldn’t assimilate a metal chip,” Dr Higgins went on. “It would have ejected it. And what would be the point? It’s your DNA that controls how you grow and that was already pre-programmed.”

“So the chip isn’t in me?”

“No.”

“So where is it?”

The response was only silence.

For a second, Dr Higgins had the expression of a lost toddler. Was his massive intellect slipping away, Jimmy wondered. This was a man who could remember so much, and yet now he had no idea about the location of this vital piece of military hardware. The old man shrugged off the question and picked up Jimmy’s notebook again, diverting attention from his failings.

“I can’t work these images out, Jimmy,” he muttered, then finished off his last oyster. “But it’s almost definitely a trap. They’ll lure you somewhere to finish you off. You’re better off not knowing what all this means.”

“You’re useless!” Jimmy yelled. “This is in my head!” He rose from his stool and it clattered to the floor behind him. His words echoed round the bar. The two lone customers at the other end of the room raised their eyes for a second and both shook their heads. The
waitress lumbered over, wiping her hands on her apron. She was a short, middle-aged woman, with a pencil sticking out of the bun at the back of her head and an attitude hanging round her neck like a medal.

“Everything OK over here?” she croaked in a New York accent so thick it could have insulated a bomb shelter. Jimmy smiled, trying to look innocent. He set his stool up again and took a seat.

The waitress gathered their plates, pausing when she picked up Jimmy’s napkin. “You draw this?” she snapped.

Jimmy nodded.

“So you like Big Allis, huh?” asked the waitress.

“Alice who?” Jimmy shrugged.

“You know,” the waitress replied. “This place with the funnels.” She held up the napkin and pointed to the red and white columns in Jimmy’s picture. “It’s the big power station over in Brooklyn. But it looks like you drew this from the tramway heading to Roosevelt Island. Am I right? Is that where you drew this?”

Jimmy nodded very slowly, bemused.

“Yeah, I knew I was right,” the waitress beamed. “Every New Yorker knows this view.” She was about to leave, but then she noticed the other side of the napkin. “Hey,” she exclaimed, a look of delight on her face, “you’ve drawn the ruin down the south end as well. I knew you’d been to Roosevelt Island.” She winked as she turned away. “Cute kid.”

Jimmy took in a sharp breath. Roosevelt Island. That’s where he was being led.

“You go there and you’ll die,” whispered Dr Higgins, reading Jimmy’s face. Jimmy stared across the room, not focusing on anything.

“Maybe that’s the only way this will end,” he croaked, his voice suddenly not working properly. Dr Higgins said something in response, but Jimmy blocked it out. In his head the word SILVERCUP flashed over and over, like the signs over those noodle bars in Chinatown. He saw the ruin. He saw the towers that he now knew were the funnels of Big Allis Power Station. The images danced behind his eyes, scorching the inside of his head.

“It will never end,” Jimmy said under his breath. “We’ll always be on the run. Every day – always in danger. Even in hiding with the CIA, we’d live the rest of our lives in fear. In pain. They could torture me with
this
for the rest of my life.” He put his head in his hands and rattled his skull.

“Jimmy…” Dr Higgins tried to interrupt, but there were too many thoughts shouting for attention in Jimmy’s ears.

“My friends,” he muttered, “my family. I have to put this right. It’s all my fault.” As soon as he heard the words, he flinched. “No, wait.” He pulled himself upright and turned to Dr Higgins. He stared at him. “It’s not
all
my fault, is it?”

“Jimmy,” the doctor began, a sudden grief oozing from his eyes. “If I’d known…”

“That’s no excuse,” Jimmy interrupted. “You
should
have known.”

“You’re cruel.”

“But I’m right.” Jimmy’s face was clenched in quiet anger.

“Yes,” Dr Higgins admitted. He hung his head, exposing the back of his neck, where his skin was sallow – almost grey. “They say that time avenges,” he whispered, “but sometimes it needs a helping hand.” He paused, staring into the table. “You should kill me. I deserve it.”

“Who’d be sorry?” Jimmy snapped.

“The women.” Dr Higgins raised his head slightly and peeked at Jimmy out of the corner of his eye with a glimmer of delight. It made Jimmy feel physically sick. How could he joke like this when there were lives at stake?

With renewed energy, Dr Higgins knocked his head back and downed the last drop of his apple juice.

“Ahh,” he sighed. “Nothing better with oysters than a cool apple juice.”

Jimmy was so furious he was ready to slam the man’s head on to the table. He could feel his rage feeding his muscles. But then Dr Higgins wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and Jimmy froze. He replayed the action in his imagination and studied the man’s face.

“Who’s my-my—” Jimmy couldn’t get the muscles in his throat to let the words out. “Who’s my father?”

Dread beat in Jimmy’s chest. Dr Higgins stared at him, taken aback by the question. It was a few seconds before he spoke. They were the longest seconds of Jimmy’s life.

“I see,” the doctor said, incredibly quietly. His eyes widened. “I didn’t think this time would come.”

“Is it… Is it…” Jimmy stammered.

“It’s not Ian Coates,” Dr Higgins said quickly. “I presume you know that and that’s why you’re asking.”

Jimmy nodded. He could feel his bottom lip trembling and he hated himself for it.

“Your biological father is dead,” the old man announced.

“Don’t lie to me!” Jimmy shouted and he snatched the doctor’s collar.

“It’s the truth, Jimmy. It is.”

The power drained out of Jimmy’s arm.

“What about my mother,” he murmured. “Is she…” He stopped. He could feel that heat rising in his chest. If he said any more he knew he would cry and he didn’t want to give Dr Higgins that power.

“She is your mother,” said the doctor quickly. “Yes, yes, don’t worry. Of course she’s your mother.”

Jimmy slumped forward on the table. He didn’t dare imagine what might have happened to her. He could only hope that when he made it back to Chinatown, she would be there waiting for him.

“So who is he?” he demanded, lifting his head from the table and trying to piece back together his tough outer layer. “Who is my father?”

Dr Higgins said nothing. Instead, he picked up Jimmy’s pen and pulled another napkin from the rusty dispenser. He wrote something down, shielding it from Jimmy’s eyes. Then he folded it over and pushed it across the table. But his fingers didn’t release it.

“Your father is dead, Jimmy,” he said again, more slowly. “I’ve written his name on this napkin. It’s up to you whether you look.”

Jimmy had no patience for this; he reached out for it. The doctor pulled it away.

“Wait,” Higgins insisted. “There will be a danger in reading this name, Jimmy.” He took a deep breath. Jimmy stared at him, uncertain whether to listen or to grab the napkin and run. “You’ve overcome your programming so many times,” the doctor continued, “and in such difficult circumstances, that you’ve shown me something I never thought could be true.”

“What’s that?” Jimmy’s voice came out meek and small.

“It’s that you have the potential to be your own man. You’re not like Mitchell. From what I’ve seen and heard, he’s succumbing to his programming more and more every day. You, though – you’ve torn up the rule book, Jimmy. But it’s going to get harder for you from now on. Your programming has already developed so far, so
quickly, and it will keep growing inside you, taking over. If you’re going to keep it at bay, the only way to do it is to fight every day to control your own destiny.”

His stare scorched Jimmy’s eyes.

“Take responsibility for your actions,” Dr Higgins urged. His whisper seemed to cancel out any other noise in the place. “Seize control. If you do, you’ve shown that you might have a chance to escape the destiny that I programmed into your genes.”

He paused and looked down at the napkin. The tips of his fingers had turned white, pressing harder and harder, nailing the identity of Jimmy’s father in its place.

“Will you be able to do that, Jimmy,” the doctor asked, “if you know the name of your genetic father? If you’re always looking over your shoulder, checking yourself to see whether you’re turning into him? If you’re chasing your father’s shadow?”

Very slowly, he lifted his fingers off the napkin. It sat there, folded in two. The lettering showed through as a red blur, ever so faintly – too faint to be legible. It looked like a bloodstained bandage. Jimmy couldn’t take his eyes off it.

“Take some time,” Dr Higgins told him, a sadness in his face. “Think about it. But take responsibility for your actions. Only read this if you need another man’s identity to define who you are.”

Jimmy picked up the napkin in the tips of his fingers and turned it around. The material was coarse and cold
to the touch. Jimmy couldn’t believe he was holding this in his hands and not reading the name inside. But he was still weighing up what Dr Higgins had told him. He could be his own man. And if he managed that, the identity of his father wouldn’t matter.
I shouldn’t need to
know
, he thought to himself.
So why do I feel like I do?

His hand trembling slightly, he slipped the napkin into the back pocket of his jeans. He could feel it, suddenly hot, burning through his pocket. Then he grabbed the pen from Dr Higgins and scribbled something quickly in his notebook.

“Dr Higgins,” he said in a business-like tone. “Do one favour for me.”

“So we’re doing each other favours now, are we?”

“Take this back to Chinatown,” Jimmy ordered. “Give it to Felix. It’s very important.”

Jimmy stood up suddenly and handed Dr Higgins his notebook, dropping his pen on the table. He was about to dash away, but checked back and stuffed his hand into the dish of ketchup sachets.

“What are you doing?” asked Dr Higgins.

Jimmy grabbed a fistful of the small plastic packets of ketchup and ran.

“Where are you going?” the doctor cried out after him.

Jimmy’s response echoed through the underground caverns long after he was out of sight:

“I’m taking responsibility for my actions.”

* * *

Dr Higgins tapped his bandaged hand on Jimmy’s notebook, listening to the boy’s steps fade. He was deep in thought.

“Wait,” he whispered, to nobody in particular. The waitress tutted and shook her head. To her, the grey man with his cloth cap was just another senile old coot.

“If they’re using phone masts,” Dr Higgins went on under his breath, “it would work in England, but here they’d need access to the US networks and…”

Suddenly, horror attacked his face. He jumped up, more lively than he had been for half a century.

“Jimmy, wait!” Dr Higgins’ words echoed around the room. It was too late. Jimmy was already gone. He never heard the old man’s final warning:

“It’s them!”