The Clone who Didn't Know (The Genehunter) (4 page)

If that happened, would he ever be found? Maybe not for a long time. He imagined someone opening the tomb in the far future, and instead of finding the remains of some medieval noble, discovering a dead man from the twenty-second century with high-tech hardware rattling around in his skull.

His last thought was amusement at what they might make of that.

When he came to, it felt like he
had
slept for centuries. His limbs were lifeless, frozen meat. He could see nothing and had no notion of where he was. For several minutes his world consisted of pain: something spiky digging into his back, a heavy throbbing in his head, ice in his veins. He had no choice but to wait; he knew that much at least. His brain hardware would bring him back to life and soothe his pain when he was strong enough. For now, all he could do was endure.

Finally, full consciousness and understanding returned. He was entombed in the crypt of a medieval church in Italy. OK. He’d had some pretty weird nights over the years, but this one might be the winner.

He accessed the video relay he’d left out there. He could see nothing other than the blinking red lights of the security systems on the subvault door. All well and good. The clock in his brain told him the explosion he’d set up would go off in two minutes. He had only to wait a short time before everything kicked off. He tried to breathe slowly, conserving his air.

He felt the explosion as a faint, muffled
crump
through the stone of his tomb. It was two in the morning; the streets of Sienna would be deserted. Still there would be security guards monitoring the church and its precious relics. Simms had checked over their protocols very carefully. Plenty of people out there hated the church – why, Simms didn’t know or care. But the church had systems in place in case of attack. Those measures would now be initiated.

Three minutes later, security guards began to bustle into the crypt, carrying the precious objects from above. Crosses, a vast leather bible, painted statues. They unlocked the steel subvault door and began to place the treasures on shelves inside. They looked like they’d practised the whole exercise many times. Two more guards appeared, carrying the holy relics of Saint Sofia between them. They, too, went into the subvault. Then they emerged, locking the subvault door behind them. That door, Simms knew, was fireproof, blastproof, every-damn-thing-proof. He just had to hope it wasn’t genehunter-proof, too.

When the security guards had left, Simms waited another ten minutes in case they’d forgotten something and came back. The air tasted more and more musty as he burned up all the oxygen. Finally he acted. Boosting his muscles once more he pressed upwards with locked arms and pushed at the stone lid of his tomb. It didn’t budge. Alarm hammered through him. If his strength had waned too much during his torpor he’d never escape. He tried again, slightly panicky now. Sharp pain shot through his arm muscles, but this time the lid moved, exposing a tiny triangle of grey. He sucked in fresh, wonderful air and, clamping his fingers around the edge of the stone, pulled again and again until he had a gap big enough to squirm through.

He stood for a moment, listening. Nothing; he was alone. His plan was working. Although it was almost a shame there wasn’t someone down there to see him. He must be quite a sight.

He crossed through the darkness to the subvault door and set his brain hardware working on the locks. He figured he had plenty of time. The explosion he’d rigged up was small, more noise and sound than anything, but the
Polizia
wouldn’t take chances. It should be hours before they gave the all-clear and allowed people back into the church.

While his brain worked on the electronic locks he tackled the physical ones. The key he’d crafted from the X-rays taken two days earlier made that straightforward. Within fifteen minutes he had everything open. Now the problem was the alarm system. If he couldn’t disable that, opening the door would bring security running, despite the police’s exclusion zone. He probed the electronics, looking for a way to deactivate or spoof them.

Thirty minutes later he gave up. He could see no way. The systems were good, no loopholes or backdoors. Which meant he’d have to go in, work fast and take a chance. He reckoned it would take three minutes at a minimum for someone to get down there.

He hauled open the subvault door and ran inside. He could hear no alarms but knew they’d be ringing somewhere. The reliquary holding the saint’s head stood on a stone plinth in the centre of the room. He began to look for a way to open it. He could smash it, but that might damage the sample. He needed to be more subtle. If he was lucky, he could make it look like he’d never been there.

The tiny brass lock holding the clasp in place was useless. Simms sprang it with ease and opened the case. The pungent smell of dilute formaldehyde hit him. So much for Holy Water. At least it suggested the head was real. He acted quickly, pushing a biopsy needle through the liquid and into the skull within. He punctured bone and pushed on for two centimetres, into the brain tissue. He took his sample and pulled the needle out. He had no time to check the sample was good. So long as he got
something
.

He heard banging and shouting from somewhere upstairs even as he closed and locked the reliquary. They were coming for him. Quicker than he’d expected. He dashed from the subvault and began to reengage all the locks. Lights flooded the cellar as he hurried away, fleeing back to the safety of his crypt like some fucking ghoul. He had only a few moments. He pushed himself inside, scraping his shins on the carved stone, and heaved at the lid of the tomb over him. They might hear, but if he left the sarcophagus open they’d be sure to notice. He had no choice.

Putting all his strength into one effort he lifted and pushed. The gap shrank to a tiny corner but he hadn’t closed it completely. He heard voices just outside. He didn’t dare try to move the lid any more. He had to hope they didn’t notice. At least he would have air to breathe.

He waited long moments, not daring to move, expecting the lid to be forced open at any moment. He accessed the video relay. Five guards stood by the subvault door, deep in conversation, gesticulating. One looked around, walked out towards the camera. Simms heard footsteps centimetres from where he lay. The guard stopped. When he spoke, it sounded like he was standing directly beside Simms.

‘I thought I heard something over here.’

‘Like what?’ called one of the guards by the subvault door.

‘I don’t know. A banging sound. A scraping sound.’

Simms prepared his weapon. All he could do was try to fight his way out.

‘Probably those vampires they keep down here. Make sure you’ve got your wooden stake ready.’ The other guards laughed.

‘I’m serious. I heard something.’

‘You’re always hearing something down here. You’re afraid of the dark, that’s your problem.’

The guard swore to himself and strode back towards the subvault. Simms lay perfectly still. He watched the guards continuing to debate, the one who had walked over still glancing suspiciously around, the others laughing at him when he did so. Eventually, they seemed to decide they hadn’t set the security systems properly and returned upstairs. Once again, Simms was left to the darkness of his crypt.

He instructed his plug-ins to begin suppressing his metabolism once again. Soon, icy torpor reclaimed him.

Twelve hours later, Simms strode from the church into the glorious warmth of the Sienna day. There was little sign of his diversion from the night before, no police anywhere and just a black singe on the ground where his device had exploded. He’d kept the bang as small as he could. There was always a chance Ballard knew about Forty Days’ interest in Saint Sofia. The less attention he drew to himself, the better.

He walked across the cobbled square towards the town. His clothes and ID were still those of Felippe Lombardi. His limp was entirely real. His body ached from his twenty-four hours in the tomb and the demands he’d made of his muscles. He needed food and drink and he needed to rest. Somewhere warm and comfortable.

But first, he had one task to complete. He had no real way of knowing what Forty Days expected of him, but he could only assume it was this. He inspected the sample from the head. It looked degraded but it was the best he had. He encrypted it with what he assumed was the key provided for the purpose and sent it out into the ether, to the address he also assumed was provided for the purpose.

The MRI scan had found the two numbers etched onto one of his ribs, right beneath where the word
Chosen
had been cut into his flesh. Tiny digits drawn with some fine, diamond-toothed drill: a twenty-one digit number that looked like a jump address and a sixty-four digit one that might be an encryption key. The whole procedure must have taken Jones hours: he would have had to cut through skin and intercostal muscles to get to the bone, then put everything back together afterwards. Had he done all that, there in Simms’ stackroom? The guy was insane, no doubt about it.

Simms was past caring about any of it. He was done with Forty Days now. They were a disappointment, in truth. For all their weirdness and apocalyptic talk they’d ended up being one fairly straightforward piece of DNA collection. He’d imagined this job being one the young punks like those in the Double Helix talked about for years. Something
big
. But beneath all the nonsense about
Soldiers of Megiddo
, there seemed to be nothing more to Boneyard. Gideon Jones hadn’t been back in touch. There were no stealth plug-ins in his brain. It was all boring.

Maybe they’d pay him for what he’d done and maybe they wouldn’t. That was the way it went. They hadn’t even formally employed him, just given him vague clues and left him to join the dots. The hell with them. Simms was at least left with the knowledge he’d done the job, got the DNA. His strike rate remained a perfect 100%, unless you counted the Zombies of Death gig. An anti-climax but there it was.

He just had to hope neither the GMA nor clONE knew about his night’s work.

He sat down at a street café in the full heat of the sun and ordered strong, sweet coffee and several sugary, high-fat cakes to bring up his blood-sugar levels. While he sat, basking in the glorious heat, he let his mind go blank.

‘Mrs. Douglas? Can I speak to you?’ Three days later, Simms stood shouting through the door of the ramshackle house on the outskirts of London. His attempts to electronically hail the woman inside had gone nowhere. But of course, old people sometimes didn’t have even the basic plug-ins. How did they survive? But she was definitely in there. He could hear her pacing about, like she was searching for the best place to hide.

‘Mrs. Douglas? Please? I only need a moment of your time.’

She’d taken some finding. Devi’s address had turned out to be vague: the name of a street. Simms had asked around all morning. Most people hadn’t wanted to speak to him. Those that did knew nothing about Dr. Grendel’s granddaughter. People liked to keep to themselves. He got that. But eventually, by a process of elimination, he’d tracked her down. The ruined old house, plants growing from cracks in its walls, was the only one he hadn’t tried. He’d actually walked past it several times, assuming it was derelict.