‘She had. But like I said, it was an accident. That’s why you should never pick up a gun if you see one.’
‘Had she been bad?’
‘Yes, but that’s not why she got shot.’
‘Was Natalya bad?’
‘No, not really.’
‘A little bit?’ Josh looked up at his father, registering how tired he looked.
‘She trusted the wrong person, that’s all.’
Mareta was sleeping when Richard arrived to check on her, her breathing slow but insistent. He reached out for her hand, shackled to the bed. Her fingers folded into his as she woke. Her hand felt soft and warm.
‘How are you feeling?’
Her pupils dilated and contracted, struggling to find focus through a curtain of morphine. ‘Yani?’
Was Yani her husband? Her son?
‘No, it’s Dr Hulme. I came to check on you.’
‘My leg, did you save it?’
‘Yes, but we need to get you to a proper hospital.’
‘You know what I did to that man?’
Richard had caught snatches from the guards of how Brand met his end. Each retelling was more gruesome than the last. ‘It’s not my job to judge you,’ he said.
‘I had to do it,’ she whispered. ‘He was going to kill me. I had no choice.’
He studied her face, the olive skin, the calm brown eyes, the high cheekbones. ‘Are you comfortable? Is there anything I can get you?’
‘Maybe some water.’
Richard crossed to a sink at the far end of the room and filled a beaker from the tap. He helped her sit up and put the beaker to her lips. She took tiny sips then sank back into the pillows.
‘Thank you.’
Then she tried to reach out for his hand, the cuffs rattling against the bed frame. The tips of her fingers traced a circle on his palm.
‘Help me. If I stay here, I’ll die.’
Sixty-four
Cuffed and shackled, Lock was wheeled through an airlock and into the testing room. Red air hoses hung from the ceiling at intervals of six feet. The two bio-suited guards who’d brought him in made a final check on the restraints.
Lock lifted his head in time to see them go back through into the airlock. Another man in a bio-suit was coming the other way. On his back was a respirator. Richard Hulme looked like the world’s most unlikely astronaut.
Lock noticed that Richard’s hands were shaking as he laid out everything he would need on the bench. Swabs. Sterilized syringes. He crossed the room to something that looked to Lock like a super-charged temperature-controlled beer cooler which was plugged into the wall.
Richard opened it, took out the first of twelve aluminium vials, then closed the lid again. Lock knew that the vaccine had to be kept at a constant temperature. Richard had told him that. A tiny red heat marker on the label turned blue as soon as it moved more than three degrees above. On this vial there were two heat markers. The second had been placed there by Richard to denote that the contents were saline solution.
Richard rolled up Lock’s sleeve. Lock had attended enough executions in his life to know that the person about to die rarely exhibited any great hysteria, either because their mind was already gone or because they’d received a little something to level off their mood before they got into the chamber.
Lock didn’t like needles. Never had. So he looked the other way as Richard dabbed at a vein on his arm with a sterile swab. A near comical precaution, given the circumstances. If Lock was going to die he doubted a lack of hygiene would play any part.
A clear screen ran the length of one wall. He could see Stafford watching him. As the needle slid in, Lock gave him the finger. It was what Stafford would expect. And if Stafford was looking at him he wouldn’t be too focused on Richard.
It seemed to be working. With Lock strapped down and plenty of firepower between the two men, Stafford smiled, waving four fingers in a goodbye gesture.
Richard finished filling the syringe. He tapped the barrel to force out any tiny bubbles of air.
As the needle pressed against Lock’s skin, Stafford stepped forward and pressed a button on the console in front of him. He leaned forward to speak into a microphone. A speaker on the wall inside the testing room relayed his voice. ‘Change of plan.’
‘But. .’ Richard started to object.
The airlock hissed open and the two guards rolled another gurney in. The man on it was of indeterminate age, his skin weatherbeaten, the rest of his face almost entirely obscured by a bushy beard. He was muttering to himself. The guards pushed the man’s gurney level with Lock and left. Richard shrugged his annoyance and reached for a new needle.
Stafford got back on the Tannoy. ‘Shouldn’t you use the syringe that’s already filled, Dr Hulme?’
Richard picked up the syringe intended for Lock and pressed the needle into the man’s arm. The man closed his eyes with a look of serenity worthy of a junkie. Maybe he was dreaming of all those virgins, Lock thought.
Richard pressed down on the plunger, emptied the contents of the barrel, withdrew the needle from the man’s arm and swabbed it down again.
The man’s eyes opened. A look of vague disappointment crossed his face.
‘Now Lock,’ Stafford ordered.
Richard opened the cooler again, broke out a fresh syringe from its pack and filled it with a batch of live vaccine.
A thin film of sweat settled on Lock’s palms. His mouth was dry and tasted of copper.
On the other side of the screen, Stafford’s face remained neutral. ‘Just think, Lock. You’re making history here.’
Lock flipped him the bird for a second time. This time he meant it.
Preparations complete, Lock stared stoically at the ceiling. The last thing he wanted to see of this world was Stafford’s smug features.
The jab of the needle barely registered against the background of pain his body was already experiencing on an ongoing basis. He felt a warm sensation spreading across his forearm. Too late now to do anything, except wait. He’d thought about sticking to the original plan and feigning a fit, but Stafford wouldn’t buy it, even if everyone else did. Plus, he didn’t rate his acting skills.
The next thing he knew Richard was dabbing at the puncture point, a tiny blush of blood spreading across the swab. Richard secured it with some surgical tape.
‘How do you feel?’ Richard asked him.
‘As bad as I did before.’
‘OK, contestant number three,’ Stafford said, with all the gaiety of a gameshow host.
‘What happens now?’ Lock asked Richard.
‘We give it twenty-four hours and then you’re exposed to the live agent.’
‘And then?’
‘We wait to see if the vaccine’s effective,’ said Richard.
‘And if it’s not?’
Richard broke eye contact. ‘You’ll die.’
Sixty-five
The procession of trial subjects took over an hour to work through. Led in two by two, to save time, most of them proved compliant. Some less so. In one case, a lot less so: subject number eleven laid out one of the guards cold with a devastating head butt, the default method of attack for someone whose arms and legs are bound. Richard had to inject the man in the leg. None of the subjects showed any reaction to the vaccine.
When it was over, Richard joined Stafford in the observation room.
‘Good job.’
‘A charge nurse could have done that,’ said Richard, stepping out of his bio-safety suit.
‘They could have, but it’s important that you feel part of the team,’ Stafford said.
This hadn’t occurred to Richard until now. By making him perform the menial task of actually injecting the trial subjects, he was complicit. He’d breached their human rights as much as anyone else. He could claim duress, but what had Meditech done bar ‘rescue’ Josh from the animal rights people and then keep him safe? Any claims he made would now look like special pleading. Stafford had played his hand beautifully.