WHERE THEY FALL, page 25
They had stopped going to Torquay after Lizzie passed away. This was the first time Cynthia and Jenny had set foot in the Holiday Park for three years. Their moods were a mess. Loving memories accompanied the place, but so did the unshakable feeling of longing and loss. Add the fear and the questions triggered by Cameron Cole’s shock text message and both of them were in a state of restless disarray.
“I’m going to text the number back,” Jenny said, standing up and walking to the window.
“I don’t think that’s wise, honey. We don’t know whose phone number it is. I think it’s best if we just wait to hear from him.”
Tears welled in Jenny’s eyes. “Is Dad going to be okay?”
Cynthia forced a smile. “Your dad is Cameron Cole. He’ll be fine.”
FORTY-THREE
An unsettling sense of nervousness flowed through the corridors of Project Alpha.
Since its inception, the project had operated with an atmosphere of omnipotence. They existed above the law. They operated without fear of the outside world. In fact, when inside the underground facility, they had behaved as if the outside world didn’t exist. That changed soon after Lachlan Harvey’s arrival. That changed when Sebastian had returned to the lab with two frightened tourists.
Alana had locked the facility down and ceased any lab work until they got an update. They returned all subjects to their rooms and the lead scientist had enforced level 2 access restrictions. No one, other than guards on duty and the three leaders of the facility, were free to roam the halls. They had gone into hiding. They had set up and bunkered down to wait it out until further instructions came.
Alana sat alone in the empty cafeteria. She sipped a lukewarm mug of peppermint tea and tapped her glossy purple fingernails on the metal table. Her satellite phone rang on the table beside her, echoing through the empty dining hall with a piercing screech.
She clenched her teeth and stopped tapping her fingers. “Yes,” she said as she pressed the receiving button, her tone already carrying an air of defeat.
“Alana, it’s Victor.”
Alana’s face reddened at the sound of Prime Technologies’ head of security. “We have not captured the nosy detective. He appears to have Alexandra in his possession.”
“Jesus, Victor. What an absolute cluster fuck. How has this happened?”
“I won’t speculate. Nor will I justify to you.”
“But—”
“Just listen! I’ve gone up the chain of command. I’ve pulled out our get-out-of-jail free card.”
“You’ve contacted Minister Galloway? I thought that was a last resort.”
“Open your fucking eyes, Alana. This is a last resort. We have a cop sniffing around far too close. We have a trail of bodies in the desert and now I cannot get through to Sebastian.”
“Where is he?”
“His tracker shows he’s on route back to you. He went as far south as Aroona Dam, and now he’s turned around. The mapping software shows that he’s about to go through Lyndhurst.”
“So, what does that mean?”
“I hope that means that he’s cleaned up the mess. But I can only speculate.”
“So why contact the Minister?”
“Alana! Are you not listening? The cops have Alexandra! Holland can’t save her. These cops are going against their orders. They’re trying to be heroes. They’re coming for Harvey. I’ve had to bring in the others.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I’m waiting for an update. Once we hear from Sebastian, I want you to dispose of the two women. They’re a liability. They’re a nuisance that we don’t need. Dispose of them and activate the concealment of the facility. I want you to go dark.”
“And then?”
“And then you get rid of Harvey.”
“What?” Alana raised her voice. Anger, shock, and disbelief embodied the sting in her words. “No way. He’s already proven himself in the four days he’s been here.”
“Alana, get rid of the biologist! This is not negotiable. Project Beta may need to be activated. We always knew this could be a likely scenario. We have planned for it.”
Alana opened her mouth to speak, and then as she exhaled, she thought against it. She knew her place. Despite the role she played within Project Alpha, she knew that within Prime Technologies, like Lachlan Harvey, she was expendable. They all were. She clenched her hand into a white-skinned fist. “Yes, Victor. I’ll do as you say. Once I hear from you, the tourists will disappear.”
“And…”
“And Lachlan Harvey will too.”
“Good. I’m glad you understand. I’ll see you soon.”
“You’ll see me soon? You just left yesterday?”
“Alana. I’m on my way back.”
Victor disconnected the call. Alana sat alone in the dining hall. Disappointment surged through her bloodstream. Fear rose from the pits of her stomach. Victor was coming back. The realisation that she was nothing more than an expendable asset infuriated her. It was a slap in the face for the years of dedication she had given. She stood. She roared across the empty room. Alana threw the phone against the concrete floor, watching it shatter to pieces.
“I’ll show them all,” she spat as she stormed off towards Area A. “Let’s see who’s expendable.”
FORTY-FOUR
Chung woke up disorientated.
As if she had somehow accepted the dire position she found herself in, she agreed to be more compliant. She agreed to tell Cole as much as she knew about the facility for a lighter sentence. Her sense of defiant bravado seemed to have faded with her dignity, as she lay bound in a pool of her own urine.
The scenery changed the further north they went. Thicker, dense mallee scrub gave way to low-lying spinifex grass and saltbush. The soil itself shifted from the nutrient rich brown of the Mount Lofty Ranges and Adelaide plains to a rugged red, rustic and raw. He had navigated through a small pass in the mountains, following the old, and no longer used railway tracks from decades gone. Disused and damaged railway sleepers hugged the red dirt beside the old track, as if the railway workers threw them to the side when they replaced damaged ones, and didn’t bother taking them away. Cole hadn’t seen another car since leaving the main highway at Port Augusta. It’s as if he entered a vortex, leaving the real world behind and entering a parallel universe absent of all life.
Blake slept as Cole and Chung conversed. He studied his partner in his peripheral vision; frustrated that it had been her they ran off the road. It should have been him. He had emailed them. He had sent the threat.
“I’ve been there six or seven times,” Chung said, referring to the desert facility. “We started building it in 2018. I was there during the construction phase.”
“What’s it for? What is Project Alpha?”
“It’s a laboratory. It’s a site for pushing edge science. The entire facility is over eight-thousand square metres of subterranean infrastructure.”
“It’s underground?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get away with building something like that undetected?”
“We have many people on our team, Detective. Some of them are in high places. We also waited for the satellites contracted by Google to update their photos of the area. As soon as Google updated their photos, we moved in. There is no satellite imagery that we know of being taken during the construction phase.”
“But how do you know that? How could you orchestrate that kind of timing?”
Chung laughed. “If you think corruption doesn’t run this world, then you’re naïve, Detective. Many people on Google’s payroll are in the pockets of others. Prime has many hands in many places.”
“So you took Harvey against his will?”
“We did.”
“Why? What do you need synthetic biologists for? What does this lab do?”
“You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me, Chung. I’ve seen some pretty weird shit in my days.”
Chung sighed. The discomfort she felt, tied down and bound in the back of the van, had climaxed. Her right leg was numb. Pins and needles riddled her right arm. “If I tell you, will you make this journey to prison a little less painful?”
Cole looked in the rear-view mirror and made eye contact with Chung. For the first time since being detained, she looked remorseful, scared.
“Sure,” he said. “But the cuffs stay on.”
“Okay…” she cleared her throat. “We’re producing humans.”
The statement came out so matter-of-fact that at first Cole couldn’t comprehend what she said. “Come again?”
“We’re using state-of-the-art synthetic science. We’re manipulating cell growth at an accelerated pace through the influence of the algorithms associated with cell division. The viability of developing humans from the composition of synthetic DNA is being tested.”
Cole pulled the van off the single-lane road and came to a stop on the red gravel. He turned his head to face his captive.
“You’re making humans from test tubes?”
“You could say that, Detective.”
“What in God’s name are you doing that for? What purpose can that serve?”
Chung shuffled again. “Among other things, Detective, it’s for expendability. If we have people at our disposal, people that don’t have families or commitments, people that don’t have illness or a conscience or memories, people that don’t have social security numbers or Medicare numbers or birth certificates, then in theory, we have people that don’t exist. People that don’t exist can get away with an awful lot.”
“That is so fucking wrong! Why?”
“Our motto, Detective, is that if it can be done, it will be done. We took this project on, because all the theories suggested it was possible. And here we are.”
Cole turned to Blake and gave her a gentle nudge. “Hey, Rach,” he whispered. “Sorry to wake you, but you need to hear this.”
Blake opened her eyes and massaged the back of her neck with her functioning hand. She looked around, as if trying to remember where she was. She winced, the pain of her injuries flaring up as she moved. “Hear what?” she moaned.
“Chung! Tell us everything!”
Disbelief and incessant questioning consumed much of the conversation. After the pair had extinguished their questions and done their best to accept the outlandish answers Chung provided, Cole stayed true to his word. He climbed into the back and removed the bindings holding Chung to the floor. He removed her cuffs, let her stretch and then returned the cuffs to her wrists, this time allowing her to place her hands on her lap.
The sun sank behind the endless horizon to the west. Sunset brought with it a plague of mosquitoes, the ravenous bloodsuckers replacing the flies. Stars appeared in the sky before darkness had fully claimed the day. Clouds moved across the skyline, swallowing the display of twinkling lights. By the time Cole pulled away from the gravel and continued their journey north, a blanket of grey clouds consumed most of the sky above them.
Hunger, thirst and a thumping headache collided in waves of discomfort. Regardless, Cole forced his eyes open and continued to push north. The mood in the van was a mixture of trepidation, excitement, and eagerness, knowing that closure could most likely present itself within a few hours. Chung had shown them on mapping software exactly where Prime had built the facility, buried under the red dirt northwest of Lake Callabonna.
They refuelled in Hawker. The service station itself was closed but allowed pre-paid payments for fuel. A single streetlight on the highway flickered a halogen glow, casting unnerving shadows over the gloomy truck stop. Cole pre-paid with his credit card at the bowser. He knew that this might allow Prime to track him, but he assured himself that everything was in motion. They were so close now. While Cole refuelled, Blake escorted Chung from the back of the van and allowed her to drink some water and go to the toilet, utilising the poorly maintained and unsanitary unisex toilet at the service station. Four minutes passed and then they were off, back again on the flat stretch of treacherous desert highway.
The van’s headlights cut through the night as they reached the sleepy township of Leigh Creek. Blake commented on the eerie lack of activity. Chung sat in the back and mumbled something about the diminishing population of the town.
“There’s nothing out here but red dirt and rotting kangaroo carcasses,” she said. “It’s no coincidence we built the lab out here. As far as people per square metre, there are few places on the planet more remote than out here.”
Blake shuddered as the statement sank in. She checked her service pistol magazine and chamber, making sure everything was as it should be. She had discharged four rounds in Elizabeth. Twelve remained. Until that day, firing her weapon had been something she conditioned herself into thinking she may never need to do. She hadn’t had time to process the fact that she had shot someone.
Leigh Creek came and went. Copley was the same. A town so insignificant, Cole wondered how people endured a life out here under the desert sun, so cut off from the hustle and bustle that he had grown to associate with a normal life.
“There’s no such thing as normal,” Chung had whispered.
“No. Not when you and your sadistic company try to make people! You’re the ones that make normal impossible. ”
“Think of the opportunities,” Chung replied.
“We’re not doing this again,” Blake interrupted, shutting down Chung’s justification of the unethical science. “We’re going there and putting an end to it. Period.”
Silence swallowed the van. The smell of urine, sweat, and stale coffee filled the cab. Blake lowered her window to allow fresh air inside, but closed it again after a swarm of ravenous mosquitos the size of flies came through the window’s opening.
“Why is everything so damn vicious out here?” she asked, swatting a mosquito onto the window.
She received no reply. Cole appeared to be lost in thought. He was mustering every ounce of energy and wit to maintain a grip on both reality and the steering wheel. So focused on the headlights illuminating the straight road before him, he hadn’t even noticed Blake open the window, let alone hear her question. Coffee could only do so much. He hadn’t slept a whole night through in almost three days. He was a resilient guy, he always had been, but doubt seeped in to his thoughts. He needed to hold on longer. This would all be over soon. One way or another.
Cole slowed down as he passed a large road train semi trailer parked just off the highway. A white truck with two red shipping containers mounted to the tray. The oversized transporter’s wheels stuck out from the gravel, forcing Cole to swerve across a double white line in the highway’s centre to avoid it. Whoever had parked it had done so carelessly. And in a hurry.
“Did you see that?” he said, pointing to the road beyond the truck.
“See what?” Blake replied, staring into the headlight’s yellow glow.
“That truck took up half the bloody road!”
He slammed on the brakes. Blake winced as the seatbelt pushed against her broken arm. Chung rolled around in the back like a crash test dummy.
“What the hell…”
FORTY-FIVE
The damaged remains of a van lay crumpled on its side.
Shards of shattered glass lay across the bitumen like flakes of scattered snow. Light from Cole’s headlights illuminated the brutal scene before them. Blake looked from Cole to Chung. She reached for her service weapon, concern radiating from her swollen face.
It wasn’t the fact that a severe car accident appeared to have happened with no emergency services being notified. It wasn’t the sickening amount of blood pooling beside the crumpled vehicle. What rattled Blake is that the van lying on its side like a crumpled tuna can was identical to the one they were in. A new model black Ford Transit van. Impeccably clean. Tinted windows. South Australian plates.
Cole turned to Chung, who lay sprawled in the back, recovering from the abrupt stop. “Is that one of yours?”
“I can’t see anything from here.”
Cole grabbed his weapon and jumped out of the van. Hairs of the back of his neck tingled, the open darkness causing the shadows to dance with ominous intent. Beyond the reach of the headlights, the desert was pitch black; the clouds consuming all moonlight. If someone lingered beyond the headlights glow, Cole would never know.
He raced to the back of their van and pulled Chung out. She almost lost her footing as he yanked her from the vehicle. With one hand on Chung’s cuffs and the other on his weapon, Cole approached the crumpled van.
“Is this one of yours?”
Chung studied the crash. “It appears so.”
“What the hell are they doing out here?”
“How do I bloody know? You’ve had me trapped in the back of that van all day, covered in piss!”
Cole’s eyes narrowed in the darkness. He clenched his jaw.
Blake pulled the keys from the ignition of their van and joined them on the road. She had always been a big-picture thinker. She didn’t want a survivor from the crash waiting out in the darkness and then seizing the opportunity to race towards their unoccupied vehicle and take off, leaving the three of them stranded in desert darkness.
Cole opened the back of the damaged van. The smell of death spewed from the cab. Blood dripped over the rear bumper, its rhythmic pat-pat-pat as it contacted the bitumen, offering a sickening soundtrack to the scene.
Five dead bodies lay slumped in the cab, covered in blood. Chung gasped, then her face turned ashen in the yellow illumination of the car lights.
“You know them?” Cole asked.
