The search party combed the area, as well as a nearby river where Mrs Chapman purportedly used to take the children to swim and picnic. Anne Chapman, having a record of PPD or post-partum depression, is being questioned despite the divers not finding anything incriminating. Mr Patrick Chapman is standing by his wife, stating they are both ‘extremely anxious’ to find the twins. In a strained voice, on camera, he urged anyone with information to come forward. The SAP, faced with a dearth of any kind of evidence and an already-cold trail, promised they would keep looking, but don’t seem to hold out much hope of finding the children, dead or alive.
Kirsten and Seth stand pale under the fluorescent light in the office, looking at each other, speaking aloud as they process the jolt of information.
‘Holy fuck,’ they say at the same time.
‘Samuel and Kate,’ says Kirsten. ‘The mad woman – Betty/Barbara – called me Kate.’
‘Samuel and Kate, abducted at 3, become Seth and Kirsten.’
‘Moved to a different province, and split up.’
Kirsten shakes her head. It doesn’t make any sense.
‘Wait, it says ‘brown-eyed.’ She looks into Seth’s blue-green eyes that mirror hers (Sound of the Sea).
‘They must have had our irises lasered. Strōma’d the brown out. It’s easy enough to do.’
She thinks of her biological parents, the Chapmans, and feels overwhelmed. What they must have gone through. What she and Seth must have gone through. There is an extreme feeling of loss for the life she should have had, the life that was taken from her. And here he is now, standing in front of her: the missing piece of her puzzle.
‘The Black Hole,’ she says. ‘It finally makes sense.’
He blinks at her. She has the feeling he understands, maybe he felt The Black Hole too but filled it with other things.
‘I was always – disconnected – with my father,’ he says. ‘Never met my mother. Never felt he really wanted me around, didn’t understand why they had me in the first place.’
‘Exactly,’ says Kirsten. ‘But why abduct a child you don’t want? Surely a creep so desperate for a baby would, I don’t know, love the child more?’
Seth is silent.
‘It doesn’t add up,’ says Kirsten, ‘It’s too much to take in. I don’t have the mental bandwidth to cope with this.’ She moves to run her hands through her hair but feels her prickly scalp instead, the plaster on the back of her head. Realises she’s been holding the knife all along and puts it on the desk. He glances at it and narrows his eyes.
‘Whose knife is that?’ he asks.
‘This?’ she says, ‘It was my father’s – well, whoever he was – the man who pretended to be my father for 28 years. Why? What’s wrong? Why are you freaking out?’
‘Who was your father? What did he do?’
‘Who was my father? I don’t know. He was a research guy, a lab guy, a grindaholic who ignored his wife and daughter to read a lot of scientific literature. I still don’t actually know what he did. Will you please tell me why you are getting so freaked out by the knife?’
‘You’re not quite Nancy Drew, huh?’
‘What?’
‘Did you even think to look up that insignia?’
‘No. Why would I? And who the fuck is Nancy Drew? I’m a fucking photographer, not a member of the Hawks. All this,’ she motions around her, ‘this fuck-circus, is new to me, okay?’
He stares at her, then scans the insignia of the pocketknife and does an image-match search. Nothing comes up.
‘You recognise it – the logo – I can see.’
‘Yes, I recognise it,’ says Seth. ‘But… it’s impossible. An urban legend, a myth. It’s not supposed to exist.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Seth points at the diamond-shaped insignia. He traces an angular ‘G’ in the left of the diamond and a ‘P’ in the right.
‘The guys at Alba are going to flip out when I show this to them.’
Kirsten looks at the knife, looks at him. She sees him smile for the first time.
‘G.P.’ he says. ‘It’s the fucking Genesis Project.’
NON-LIZARDS
27
Johannesburg, 2021
‘Okay,’ says Kirsten, ‘there’s no easy way to say this, so, well, here goes: I need to cut a microchip out of the back of your head.’
‘Wow,’ says Seth, ‘just as I was beginning to think we were getting on.’
‘The crazy lady—’
‘Now you’re speaking about yourself in the third person.’
‘The other crazy lady, Betty/Barbara, said she knew they were tracking her because she could feel the microchip in her head. And the killer – killers – whoever is trying to kill us, knows where we live. Knew that lady who took her toddler to that park.’
‘Look,’ says Seth, shaking his head, ‘that just can’t be true. Technology for trackers didn’t even exist when we were kids. Wait, is that why the back of your head was bleeding? You tried to look for a fucking microchip?’
‘Not tried, I found it!’
‘Show me,’ he says.
‘I planted it in a taxi. It could be anywhere.’
He looks around the office, rolling glassy eyes. She knew he wouldn’t believe her.
‘Next you’ll be telling me to wear a tinfoil hat.’
‘Actually, that’s probably not a bad idea.’
‘Ha,’ he says.
‘I’m not fucking with you.’
‘Okay,’ he says, ‘but you’re not cutting it out with that thing. I know someone.’
‘We don’t have time to fuck around!’ shouts Kirsten.
‘Look,’ he says, ‘I need to go to Alba. That is not negotiable. They’ll be able to remove the chip. Analyse it. Then we need to get bullets, and get you a weapon.’
‘What the hell is Alba? What about Keke?’
‘We can only find your friend when we have more information. The chip is the only thing we have at the moment.’
A thought strikes Kirsten.
‘Hackerboy Genius,’ she says. ‘Keke’s contact. His number will be on her phone. He can get into anything: it’s how we found you.’
‘You think he’ll know something?’
‘He’ll know more than what’s on this drive,’ says Kirsten, ‘She asked him to dig.’
Seth shoves his Tile into his backpack.
‘We’ll call him on the way.’
‘What is the Genesis Project?’ asks Kirsten as they head down the fire escape stairs, towards the basement. Seth shakes his head. ‘There’s not a lot to tell. I mean, there have been rumours for years, but I don’t think anyone actually believed them.’
Kirsten thinks of her father: heavy, steel-framed glasses, dulled by time. Big hands, badly tailored trousers, egg-yolk stains on his ties. She finds it difficult to imagine that he was involved in any kind of covert movement. Unless he was good, she thinks, unless he was very, very good.
‘It’s a bit like The Singularity – never gonna happen, but still as scary as shit.’ He shoots a glance at Kirsten, as if to size her up, as if to see if he can trust her. ‘When I started at Alba—’
‘You still haven’t told me what that is.’
He stops on the sixth landing. The caged light next to his head flickers: a loose connection.
‘Alba is a bit like Fight Club. The first rule of Alba is: never talk about Alba.’