Blood Ransom (13 page)

‘
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

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

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 then I felt a sharp prick in my own shoulder. A second of sickness. And the light faded to
black.

43

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?’

‘
Created?
’ I said. As I spoke the truth crashed down on me.

Of course.

‘Oh my God, all these babies are clones, aren’t they?’

‘More than that, Rachel,’ Elijah said, walking over to me. ‘All these babies are clones of
you
.’

44

I woke, sore all over. As I came to, I realised there were bindings on my feet and wrists and a blindfold over my eyes. Low voices were speaking above my head. Beyond them was
the steady chug of an engine.

I was lying on something hard that smelled of wood, but I was warm for the first time in hours. Really warm.

I listened hard, trying to make out what the voices were saying. A man and a woman were speaking.

‘We go in one hour,’ the woman was saying. A soft Scottish accent.

‘Yes, ma’am.’

Footsteps coming closer. I stiffened.

‘Are you awake, Theo?’ The woman’s voice was surprisingly gentle.

Well, there was nothing to be gained by pretending to be asleep. Not trussed up like this, anyway.

‘Yes.’ The word came out as a croak. I suddenly realised my throat was parched. I was desperate for a drink.

Someone tugged at the knot of my blindfold. It fell away and I found myself looking at a red-haired woman with a long, oval face and startling green eyes.

For a second she stared back at me. Then she smiled – a soft smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

‘Where am I?’ I said. ‘Where’s Lewis?’

‘Lewis is fine,’ the woman said, drawing back a little. She took a glass of water from a ledge beside her and held the straw inside it to my lips. ‘And you’re on
our
boat now. Quite safe.’

I sipped at the water, looking around. I was clearly in some kind of engine room. Pipes and metal machinery were all around. A man stood by the door. He was staring at me, an expression of
curiosity on his face. A rifle swung from his hand.

The woman took the drink away and placed it back on the shelf.

‘Who are you?’ I said. ‘What . . . why have you taken me and Lewis?’

The woman tilted her head to one side, studying me. She had long eyelashes that perfectly framed her green eyes. Not beautiful exactly, but striking.

‘We’ve been following you for a while,’ she said. ‘Once Lewis hired that boat it was easy to place a tracking device on the hull. We hoped you’d lead us to Elijah
Lazio. You have. Now we just need all the information you can give us on the layout of the island and Lazio’s resources.’

I frowned, still unable to make sense of what she was saying.

‘Who are you?’ I said again.

‘I’m Amanda Lennox,’ the woman replied.