Code Red Lipstick (16 page)

“There's no point fighting it.” Allegra laughed as the door opened.

Jessica couldn't turn her head. Her eyes swivelled to the left, her heart beating furiously. It was the man in the blue baseball cap again. He'd returned to finish her off.

“Is she out yet?” Lyndon removed the cap.

“Almost. Just a few seconds longer.”

“We don't have time to waste, darling.” He picked Jessica up and threw her down on the bed like a rag doll.

“If you'd done your job properly with the wire today or even with poisoning that blasted dress yesterday, I wouldn't have to tie up loose endings now,
darling
,” Allegra answered sweetly. “Starfish must think you're terribly incompetent when you can't follow his simple instructions.”

“Touché,” Lyndon said, “but I wasn't to know that daddy's little helper would come equipped with some kind of safety rope, was I? Starfish forgot to tell us that bit of useful info when he suggested cutting the wire. And it's hardly my fault that Jessica changed dresses at the last minute. Forging a backstage pass is one thing, but clairvoyance is another. Even Starfish doesn't have that talent.”

“Of course, dear. Whatever you say.” She snatched the eyeshadow palette out of Jessica's frozen hand. “I don't need to guess whose handiwork this is.” Allegra scooped up her mum's necklace from the bedside table and dropped it into her jacket pocket.

“You should double-check with Starfish what other gadgets she's got,” Lyndon murmured. “They could be useful to us.” He rummaged in her make-up bag, examining lipsticks and an eyeshadow applicator.

Allegra stared down at Jessica. “You don't mind, do you, Jessica? You won't need MI6 goodies ever again. I've already left word with Camille that you've decided to return to London. No one can help you.”

She leant down until her lips were almost touching Jessica's ear. Her perfume was sickly and suffocating.

“Especially not your father,” she added. “Jack's not feeling well today. I'm worried about him. Who knows how long a man in his condition will last without his medication? I'm guessing not long, given what he's been through.”

Jessica tried to open her mouth but her whole body was frozen. A veil of blackness slowly fell behind her eyes, shutting everything else out. She couldn't fight it. The drugs were too strong. She watched Allegra leave the room. Lyndon followed, clutching her make-up bag. As she slipped away, one word remained imprinted in her mind like blood in fresh snow.

Dad.

Jessica soared through the sky in a helicopter. In front of her was the pilot. Someone sat next to him. Her long blonde hair was tied into an untidy ponytail and her face was obscured.

“Mum!”

She turned around and smiled, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “Don't worry, jellybean. Everything's going to be OK, trust me.”

The helicopter coughed and spluttered.

“What's wrong? What's happening?”

“I don't know.” Her mum turned away again.

“No! Do something!”

Jessica shook the pilot but he flopped forward. She grabbed for the controls.

“It's too late,” her mum said calmly. “There's nothing you can do. We have to accept our fate. There's no other way, Jessica. Nathan said we're expendable. He was right.”

“Help me, Mum, please!”

The helicopter nosedived into a steep descent. The ground hurtled towards her. They were going to crash. She couldn't do anything to stop it.

“Mum!”

Her eyes flew open. Her breath was raw and ragged, hurting her ribs and throat with every gasp. She was alive. Just. Every bone in her body and every inch of her skin screamed with pain. Her head felt heavy and she couldn't think straight. It was like trying to see through thick pea-soup fog. She had to concentrate.

Think. What had happened?

There was a syringe. It was stuck in her arm. Allegra had stabbed her with it. She'd been drugged and partially paralysed. She tried to move and managed to wriggle her toes but the effort exhausted her. She rested for a couple of minutes until she had enough strength to push herself on to her side. The movement made her head swim. She was violently sick until she had nothing left to bring up.

Emptying her stomach made her feel better. The room had stopped spinning and her arms and legs tingled as the feeling flooded back. She looked at the clock on the bedside table. It was six thirty a.m., the day of Teenosity's launch. She'd been knocked out all night. She swung her legs out of bed and stood up. Her legs crumpled beneath her and she fell to the carpet.

Get up, get up, get up
. She breathed through her mouth, trying to control the waves of nausea. She wasn't going to lie here, waiting for Allegra to come back and kill her. She grabbed the side of the bed. Carefully, she pulled herself into a sitting-up position and closed her eyes. As soon as the dizziness passed, she used the bed to lever herself up. Slowly, she got to her feet.

The room lurched and she collapsed on to the bed. She waited a couple of minutes, until she felt steady enough to try again. Focusing on the door, she stood up and managed three steps before stumbling. Again, she picked herself up and staggered on. It was only a small distance but it felt like miles. This time, she caught the handle as she fell and the door swung open. The alarm had been disabled. She heaved herself up. Now, she was in the hallway aiming for the lift. The muscles in her legs grew stronger with every step.

Jessica hammered on the lift button, praying Allegra or Lyndon wouldn't reappear. She was far too weak to fight them off. The lift opened and she hauled herself inside, sinking to her heels as it glided down to the ground floor. The doors opened. A dark, empty corridor led to reception. Was it a trap? Was someone waiting for her by the doors? It had to be a possibility. She could reach safety in a matter of seconds. Once outside, she could alert the police.

She hesitated as she stepped out. What had Allegra whispered in her ear? Her dad was sick. She couldn't leave him here. She had to find Sam too. They must be somewhere in the building. They were the loose ends Allegra had to be planning to tie up. She turned her back on her escape route and staggered away. She had to get to the basement.

Jessica managed to get to the lab by steadying herself against the walls. She pulled herself through the door at the back of the lab and slowly went down the stairs on her bottom, stopping and resting every couple of minutes. She stood up and pushed the door. It had already been deactivated and just swung open.

She staggered through the room and peered around the door leading to the loading bay. All the lorries and boxes had gone. The drivers must have already distributed Teenosity across Paris. She ducked back inside and opened the next door, revealing a narrow corridor. A single door was on her right. It could be another storage room.

Something banged. It sounded like a door slamming shut close by. Now she could hear voices. They were getting louder. She looked about. She couldn't escape or put up much of a fight. She had to get inside the room. She tried the door but this one didn't automatically open. She dug out the security pass she'd used the previous night. Luckily, Allegra hadn't bothered to search the back pockets of her jeans. She'd never told Nathan about the pass either, so Allegra hadn't known to look for it.

Please let it work.

She swiped the bar and the door slid open, revealing darkness. She threw herself inside as two security guards rounded the corner. She pressed her ear to the door as they stomped past. They hadn't heard her. She looked about. A weak light lit up the room. It was another lab, but this one was small and cramped. The fusty smell reminded her of chemistry lessons back at school. An old man was fast asleep on a camp bed in the corner, a blanket thrown across his thin, frail legs. He had a shock of white hair and his face was crinkled and tortoise-like.

His eyes flew open. They were as bright as fresh cornflowers, contrasting with his skin, which was coarse and heavily lined like old parchment paper. His eyes darted from her to the door as if he were trying to calculate something. He leapt agilely off the bed and dived into the corner, shrouding his face in darkness. She was taken aback. He'd moved quickly for someone so old.

“Who are you?” he said.

“My name's Jessica—” she began.

“Well, Jessica, you can go straight back to Allegra and tell her the answer's still no. I won't do it any more. She's done her worst and I won't change my mind. She can't get anything else out of me.”

She blinked. If she hadn't seen his face, she could have sworn his voice belonged to a much younger man.

“Allegra doesn't know I'm here,” she said. “I sneaked past security to try and find my dad. Have you seen him? His name's Jack Cole. He's missing.”

The man looked away and didn't reply.

“Please help me,” she said, edging closer.

He shrank back against the wall.

“I haven't seen him,” he said, “but I've heard the name before.”

“Did Allegra mention him? What did she say? Please try and remember.”

“It doesn't matter now. It's too late.”

“What do you mean?” Her heart rattled against her ribcage. She'd come this far; she couldn't be too late.

His blue eyes bored into her face. “Allegra said he was looking for me but he walked straight into a trap and now he's paying for snooping around. Apparently he's a very a sick man.”

She steadied herself against the wall. “Is he still alive?” Her voice sounded thin and reedy, like that of a bird's. She almost couldn't bear to hear his answer.

“I think so,” he said, “but probably not for much longer. Allegra can't risk him getting out of here and talking. She'll never let him go.”

“Where is he?”

The man shrugged. “Somewhere here, I guess, unless they've moved him already.”

“But why was he looking for
you
? It doesn't make any sense.”

“I don't know,” he replied, “but it's possible my mum hired him after I went missing. It's the sort of practical thing she'd do.”

He emerged from the shadows and sat on the bed, his head in his hands.

“That can't be right,” she said. “My dad came here to look for Sam Bishop. He's a thirty-four-year-old nanotechnologist who used to work here. Have you seen him?”

The man looked up and laughed softly. Tears rolled down his face.

“What's so funny?”

He wiped his eyes on the cuff of his grey, stained shirt. “You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

He stared deep into her eyes. “I'm Sam Bishop.”

She tried to speak but no words came out.

The man burst out laughing again. “You see! I said you wouldn't believe me. No one will.” His voice was manic and high-pitched.

“But that's impossible. You can't be Sam. I've seen the photo. He's—”

“A young man?”

She nodded.

“I am a young man but now I'm trapped inside the body of an old man.”

She sat on the bed next to him. He was clearly insane. He couldn't have gone from the age of thirty-four to eighty in the space of over two months. It was a physical impossibility, wasn't it?

“Allegra told me even if I managed to escape, nobody would ever believe me,” he said. “I'd be declared insane and locked up somewhere. I'm as good as dead already. If I do ever get out, I can't go home. How can I turn up on my mum's doorstep looking like this? She'd drop dead of a heart attack.”

She stared at him, shocked. He was deadly serious. She remembered how Lyndon had talked about Sam using nanotechnology to make Teenosity.

“The nanorobots in Teenosity were supposed to halt the ageing process,” she said slowly.

He gave a bitter laugh. “The experiments always went wrong in the final stages for some reason. It was a total disaster.”

Jessica stared at his wrinkles. It was unthinkable. Yet it was the only logical explanation.

“Teenosity did the reverse,” she gasped. “It speeded up ageing.”

“Exactly. When I told Allegra the ageing process was being accelerated, she lost it. Big time. You see, she'd convinced herself there'd be a cure for ageing in her lifetime.”

He sprang to his feet and paced the room.

“She made me work fourteen-hour days to try and find the correct formula. Eventually I'd had enough and told her I was quitting. She demanded my notes, and that's when I made the biggest mistake of my life. I was stupid.”

He paused and fiddled with a row of test tubes on the counter.

“What did you do?” she said.

“I told her I didn't make notes. My work was in here.” He turned around and tapped his lined forehead. “I managed to make it out of her suite and get into the lift without being stopped. I hadn't even bothered to go back to the lab to fetch my bag. I just wanted to get the hell out. I think I'd reached the third floor when Lyndon got in. He stuck a needle in my thigh and I blacked out. When I woke up, I was here.”

“That's terrible. I'm so sorry.” Jessica looked down and noticed she'd picked the skin around her nail again. It was bleeding. Had her dad been ambushed like that as he returned to his hotel that night? He'd almost made it back before he was snatched. He could have broken free inside AKSC days later and managed to make his Code Red call.

“That was just the start of it,” Sam said. “Later that night, Allegra told me the plans had changed. I had to continue making the faulty nanorobots. I couldn't understand it. I told her I wouldn't, that I was going to the police and I'd have her arrested for assault and imprisonment. She laughed and said if I refused to cooperate, she'd have my mum killed. Everyone knew most of her guards were ex-cons. What else could I do?”

He shivered as he folded his arms across his thin body.

“You had no choice. It wasn't your fault.”

“I guess not, but it didn't make it feel any better. I was trapped. A guard had emptied my hotel room. He brought everything to me here, along with some equipment to use during the day. At night, I was escorted back up to the main lab to work. It was the same routine, day in day out, for weeks. A few nights ago I managed to drop a paper swan in the hope someone would see it and realize it belonged to me. I was always making origami.”

“I found it! That's how I knew Allegra was lying about your disappearance.”

“So it did work.” His face broke into a smile for the first time, making his teeth look unnaturally white and healthy against his skin. “I thought Allegra would come to her senses and realize my work was pointless, but if anything she became even more obsessed. I worked around the clock to produce the nanorobots single-handedly, as she didn't trust anyone else to help me. Three weeks into my captivity, I tried to escape, but I must have triggered an alarm. Her guards stormed in and I was knocked out and drugged again.”

“And Allegra did this to you?” She shuddered.

“When I woke up, Allegra said it was time to do a proper test. Up until then, I'd been experimenting on single skin cells and nothing more. Allegra said she couldn't bear animal testing.”

He sat back down on the bed and wept.

“You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to,” she said, resting a hand on his shoulder.

He shook it off. “No, I need to. I want people to know what she did to me.”