Mutation (5 page)

‘Well, you did a pretty crap job of it,' Luke muttered.

‘Luke!' his mum snapped.

‘No, Emily, it's all right,' said Montag in a tone that was completely at odds with the words coming out of his mouth. ‘It's natural for him to be angry. It's part of the grieving process.'

Ms Hunter narrowed her eyes at Luke, probably wanting to know why on earth he needed to
grieve
the death of a man he barely knew. But before she had time to respond, the doorbell rang again.

I looked at my watch. Eight o'clock already. That would be Dad at the door.

Stupid curfew.

Ms Hunter stood up. Tonight was really not going well for her.

Montag waited until she was out of the room. Then he leant across the table, jabbing a finger at Luke and me.

‘You foolish – arrogant –
children,
' he hissed. ‘What could you
possibly
think you're achieving here?'

‘So, what,' I said, ‘you expect us to just lie down and take it?'

‘Do you honestly believe you can stop what's being done here?' Montag said. ‘Like it or not, Jordan, the world has changed. This is the way things are now. The only question left to you is how much more blood you want on your hands before you accept that.'

Things would've got ugly very quickly if Dad hadn't walked into the room at that moment. He glanced at the doc, surprised to see him here, then down at me. I tried to wipe the anger from my face, but he must have caught the edge of it. ‘Jordan? You okay?'

‘Yeah,' I said, abandoning my half-finished meal. ‘C'mon. Let's go. Thanks for dinner, Ms Hunter.'

‘Don't mention it,' said Luke's mum tonelessly.

‘Oh, Abraham, before you go …' The doc got up and crossed to talk to Dad. ‘Would it be possible for you and Samara to drop in to see me tomorrow?'

A little shiver sparked up my spine.

‘Sure, doc,' said Dad. ‘Have you figured out what's –?'

‘I think it would be best if you waited and let me explain in the morning,' Montag cut in. ‘I believe I've ascertained what's been troubling your wife and the baby …'

‘But?' said Dad.

The doc looked uncomfortable. ‘Let's just say things may be slightly more complicated than we'd first thought.'

Chapter 5

S
UNDAY
, J
UNE
14
60
DAYS

‘Okay,' said Georgia, gesturing excitedly with her hands as we walked down the street, ‘this time
you
can be the princess and I can be the dinosaur.'

I glanced down at her. ‘Georgia, I don't think I really understand this game.'

We reached the end of our block and I turned the corner, into another identical street lined with more identical houses. Prison cells dressed up as homes. Georgia stomped around behind me, arms up above her head like claws.

‘Princess! Princess! I'm going to eat you up!'

Usually, I would have played along, but I just didn't have the headspace for it today.

Mum and Dad were already on their way to see Dr Montag. After a solid hour of pestering last night, they'd finally agreed to let me come with them – but first, I had to drop Georgia off at a friend's place.

Back home, there would have been a dozen aunts, uncles and grandparents falling over themselves to take Georgia for the day. Phoenix was a different story. It had taken Mum ages to find someone to mind her on such short notice.

I stopped at the house.

A second later, Georgia's hands clamped down on my hips.

‘CHOMP! CHOMP! CHOMP!' she shouted, hammering me with her fingertips. ‘EAT! EAT! EAT!'

‘Oi,
stop,
' I said, batting her away with one hand and pulling the front gate open with the other. ‘Settle down, will you? We're here.'

‘I
know
we are!' said Georgia, letting go of me and rolling her eyes. She raced up the path and started banging on the front door. I caught up to her just as the door swung open.

A freckle-faced girl stood in the doorway. It was Lauren, one of the Year 7s who'd pestered us almost non-stop during our stint as Pryor's staff-student liaisons.

For a second, I thought we'd come to the wrong house. But then I heard footsteps thundering up the hall behind her, and Georgia's friend Max poked his head out.

‘Georgia!' he said. ‘I'm making a spaceship for us to live in!'

Georgia burst out laughing, and the two of them disappeared into the house.

‘All right,' I said, wanting to get down to the medical centre ASAP. ‘Well, tell your mum –'

‘Thank you for saving Jeremy,' Lauren said in a rush.

‘Huh?' I said. ‘Oh, right. No problem.'

‘No, seriously,' said Lauren. ‘Thanks. If you hadn't come in, Tank would've …'

‘What were they attacking him for anyway?' I asked.

‘It was so stupid!' Lauren threw up her hands, like she'd been waiting for a chance to vent all of this. ‘Jeremy was just drawing on his schoolbag, and that other guy, Mike or whatever, saw what he was doing and just
clicked
it at him.'

‘What was it?' I asked. ‘What was he drawing?'

She pulled a face, as though this was a weird question for me to be asking. ‘It was nothing!' she said. ‘Just this circle with – Hang on.'

Lauren leant inside, reaching for the phone table, and came back with a notepad and pen. She flipped to a blank page and started scribbling something.

‘Here,' she said, holding the notepad up in front of my face. ‘It was this.'

She'd drawn a kind of spiral thing – a circle with a bunch of lines twisting out from the middle.

‘What is it?' I asked.

‘How should I know?' said Lauren. ‘I thought he just made it up, but obviously it meant something to Tank, because five seconds later he was smashing him onto the floor.'

‘Uh-huh,' I said, but my attention had suddenly shifted away from the notepad, to the hand that was holding it. Between each of Lauren's fingers was a thick smudge of slightly paler, freckle-less skin.

She'd been holding hands with Jeremy.

Lauren caught me looking at her and whipped her hand around behind her back. ‘Anyway, thanks again,' she said hurriedly. ‘Mum said she'd drop Georgia back at –'

But she was drowned out mid-sentence by a high-pitched squeal from down the hall. Georgia came bursting through the doorway, squeezing past Lauren's leg to get out of the house. Max was right behind her, swinging a little foam sword above his head. Georgia turned left and right, searching wildly for an escape route, then jumped up and started climbing me like a tree. Max ran circles around us, swatting the sword at Georgia's ankles.

‘Help me!' she gasped between hysterical giggles. ‘Help me! He's gonna
kill
me!'

I reached down and snatched Max's sword out of his hand.

‘Hey! That's
mine!

' Lauren raised an eyebrow at me.

I looked at the sword, then shook my head and handed it back. ‘You be nice to my sister, okay?'

‘I
am
being nice,' Max said. ‘You're the one who's being a stealer!'

‘Right,' I said. ‘Sorry.'

It had been a stupid overreaction. But I was starting to feel like that was the only way I knew how to deal with anything anymore. This place was messing with my head. And having Georgia here in the middle of it all was like this constant
weight
.

I had to protect her.

But how was I supposed to do that when I couldn't even keep my own brain under control?

Georgia was staring up at me, brow furrowed.

‘What's wrong?' she asked.

‘Nothing. Everything's fine.'

Sixty days,
I told myself.
Hang in there. Concentrate
on the job in front of you. Concentrate on dealing with
Tabitha –

Georgia's eyes went wide. She grabbed me by the shirt, shivering like she'd just stepped into a freezer.

‘Jordan,' she whispered. ‘Who's Tabitha?'

I walked up the steps to the medical centre, Georgia's terrified expression still burned into my mind.

Tabitha.

Had I accidentally said the name out loud?

Couldn't have,
I thought.
No-one else reacted. Just
Georgia.

And it wasn't just the name either. She was
afraid
. Like she knew Tabitha was something dangerous.

I stopped at the top of the steps, and turned instinctively to look back out at the town. Checking that the coast was clear, though I wasn't even up to anything. My eyes passed over the Shackleton Building. I imagined Shackleton sitting up there in his office, tracking my every move, and my lower back gave another dull throb.

The doors slid open to let me into the medical centre. Mum and Dad were standing in the middle of the waiting room, talking to Dr Montag.

The doc tensed up as I approached.

‘Jordan wanted to sit in with us this morning,' said Mum, apparently mistaking his frustration for confusion.

‘That's not a problem, is it, doc?' I smiled.

‘Of course not,' said Montag, tightening his grip on the laptop under his arm. He looked back to Mum and Dad. ‘Shall we?'

I started towards Montag's office, then hesitated as the doc moved off in a different direction.

‘This way, please.'

The doc led us across to the other side of the reception area, down a winding corridor, to a door marked STAFF ONLY. He pulled out a key and let us in. We headed down a flight of stairs, along another corridor, and finally stopped at a tiny room with nothing in it but a desk and a few plastic chairs.

‘I really must apologise,' said Montag as he ushered us inside. ‘Maintenance are doing some work on my office today. Why they couldn't have chosen a more convenient time is beyond me, but … Anyway. Please, have a seat.'

He was lying.

Why? What was his
real
reason for dragging us all the way down here? What was he about to do to us that he didn't want anyone else to see?

‘What have you got for us, doc?' asked Dad, chair creaking under him as he sat down. He reached across and squeezed Mum's hand.

Montag took a breath. ‘All right,' he said, setting his laptop down on the desk in front of us. ‘As you will recall, Samara, this all began just over a month ago when you first came in to see me, complaining of, among other things, intermittent nausea and shooting pains in your stomach. We ran a series of tests at the end of which I informed you that you were five weeks pregnant.'

‘Doc, we already know all this,' Dad cut in. ‘Why are you –?'

‘Because,' said Montag delicately, ‘that assessment may not have been entirely accurate.'

Silence.

Montag waited, face all doctorly calm.

‘What are you saying?' asked Mum.

Montag turned to his computer and brought up an image of a little blob. Leaning forward, I could make out the shapes of a head and some tiny hands and feet.

‘This is an average foetus at nine weeks,' said Montag. ‘The image is at actual size – something approaching two centimetres. Based on my original assessment of your pregnancy, we would expect your baby to be at approximately this stage of development by now.'

‘But …?' said Mum.

‘
But,
' Montag continued, ‘when I performed an ultrasound earlier this week, what I actually found was
this.
'

The doc clicked to the next image.

I jolted in my chair. Mum tightened her grip on Dad's hand.

The image in front of us had just exploded in size. We were now looking at a baby almost a quarter as big as the laptop screen.

Dad's face went cold. ‘I don't understand.'

‘Neither do I,' said Montag. ‘At the moment, all I can tell you is what I've observed: as of a few days ago, your baby is just over fourteen centimetres in length and weighs in at approximately one hundred grams – figures more consistent with a baby at fifteen weeks.'

‘You're telling me I'm
fifteen
weeks pregnant?' said Mum. ‘Surely that should have been –'

‘No,' said Montag. ‘You're not. And you're not nine weeks pregnant either.'

‘But you told me –'

‘Samara, my estimates were based on
normal
rates of prenatal growth. But that's not what's happening here. Your baby is developing at remarkable speed. Somewhere between two and three times as fast as a normal pregnancy. You may actually have been carrying this child for as few as six weeks.'

‘Six weeks …' Mum repeated.

Which means she didn't get pregnant until after we
got here,
I realised.

‘You're serious,' said Dad, shaking his head at the doc. ‘You're actually –
How?
How is this happening?'