Tham Cheng-E - Surrogate Protocol

Landon coughs out a laugh. “No ah… I make coffee, professionally.”

“Ah! A barrister!” Marco’s voice travels across the hallway.

They explore the attic and then trudge back downstairs and to the back of the house. Marco surveys the kitchen without touching anything. He pops his head into the lavatory, makes a face, and steps away. Landon leads him back to the living room.

“Do you have a lawyer?” he asks.

Landon shakes his head.

“Then you must have a deed. May I see it?”

Landon’s mind races. There is only one spot in the house where he keeps such stuff. He returns to the kitchen and pulls open almost all drawers in sight before he notices the larder by the corner—the old kind with framed doors, wire netting and a steeple with a ring attached to its point so you could hang it from a rafter. It has been choked with documents and papers ever since the household fridge took its job almost a century ago.

A pile of paper spills out when Landon opens the larder door. He riffles through them, sweeps out another pile and shudders as a hard sneeze takes him. From the same pile he pulls out a grey-blue envelope thick with documents. He upends it and slides out a stack of certificates, old letters and a deed dating to January 17th 1972 , bearing his current name. It has an identity number matching the one he now uses.

Back at the living room Marco is smoking, leaning against a side door that leads out to the yard. He graciously steps aside when Cheok enters from the same door with a watering can.

“You a guard?” says Marco as Cheok passes him.

Cheok dispenses a hard stare; his eyes bloodshot from the alcohol. “I am a gardener, not a guard. Please, smoke outside the gate. Not in the garden.”

Marco snaps a laugh and plucks the cigarette from his lips as Landon strides up with the heavy, yellowed piece of paper. Marco takes it and scans it through. “Arthur Lock your father?” he asks.

“That’s right.”

Marco turns on his phone camera. “You don’t mind if I—”

“Not at all. Go ahead.”

Marco lays the deed on the floor and snaps it. He then picks it up almost reverently with both hands and returns it to Landon. “Nineteen seventy-two? You must’ve been an infant when you got this house.”

Landon chuckles modestly. “I don’t look my age.”

At last Marco moves out of the door. He offers his hand, beaming widely. “Thank you, Mr Lock. You have been very forthcoming.”

Landon takes it. “My pleasure.”

Without warning, Marco wrenches up the handshake and caps a gleaming, egg-shaped instrument over Landon’s fingertip. A depression mysteriously appears over its surface and delivers a jolting prick. Marco then stashes it and lets go of Landon’s wrist—all with fluid precision. “DNA verification, nothing more.”

Landon, speechless, examines the microscopic red dot on his finger as Marco walks away.

The GTR whines to life, its 3.8-litre V6 rumbling. The coupé purrs down Clacton Road and rounds a bend. Marco pulls over at a bus stop, lights his third cigarette, and with his free hand opens an antiquated device fashioned of bronze and black leather fortified with brass at the edges. Inside a screen of convex glass folds up and a dull blue light flickers.

The keypad flips open to reveal a tray containing a clear, gelatinous substance, into which Marco sets the egg-shaped instrument. He draws deeply on his cigarette and scans the rolling script. Three more draws and he flicks the stub out of the window and speaks into the device, “One-Niner-One. Run blood Serum diagnostic.”

The device speaks in soft, irregular clicks. More text appears on screen. Marco checks the traffic around him and speaks again into the device. “Track signature from blood sample.”

A soft whir, and a profile unravels. There is a head-shaped blank where a mugshot would have been.

Name: Qara Budang Tabunai

Race: Mongol-Han

Born: 5 November 1644

Last Contact: 14 March 1822

A knowing smirk passes across Marco’s face. He taps on the keypad and speaks into the device, “Confirm location track.”

The device clicks away like a camera’s shutter and then lapses into silence. Marco scowls when it reports tracking failure thrice. He takes out a small touchpad and switches it to a street map. Twice the touchpad attempts and fails to triangulate Landon’s position, and as a result suffers the brunt of Marco’s wrath when he hurls it over the dashboard. For God’s sake, what is wrong with this one? All Chronies can be tracked. Chronies are supposed to be tracked. It’s in their darn blood to be tracked!

Marco strains to calm himself. His thick chest deflates with a great exhalation. Experience has taught him that anger masks reason. He looks beyond the window into the rushing traffic and mulls over his options, unaware of the mite-size camera inside the plastic covering of the dome light.

Far out of sight, Julian nestles in his car and watches Marco on a folding screen the size of a postcard. He loses the profile for an instant when Marco shifts, but gets it right back when Marco leans over and mulls by the window. When Marco pulls out of the bus stop Julian starts the car and follows him.

THE SELECTION FOR CODEX took three months. Candidates were expected to receive the call for a final assessment interview. If you didn’t receive the call in four weeks, you didn’t get the interview and you’d failed Selection for good.

John received his after six months.

He shuddered. He remembered how close to death he had been at the end of Selection. It wasn’t about the grit, guts, or sweat they’d squeeze out of you like they did in the Special Forces. Selection was a waltz—a refined excruciation of everything except your lungs and muscles. No long runs, no endurance marches, no killer loads, no weapons training, no close quarter combat, no air-drops, no hostage rescue. They expected you to know all that already. Selection was mental and candidates suffered alone. No camaraderie and no patsonthe-back. Throughout Selection there was just you and the Coach.

The Coach was standing beside a burnished stainless steel surgical chair. He was wearing a balaclava like an executioner and John knew him only as T-Eleven. The room was tiny, nine by nine feet, made of raw concrete like a bunker.

As if on cue the Coach pointed to a steel cylinder on which the word GAS was stencilled. It was stowed under the chair and connected to a silicone mask by a silicone hose. “You have forty per cent chance of death. Upon death full disbursement of your death benefits goes to your next-of-kin, whom I believe is…” he flips a page on his clipboard, “your wife, Ginny Tay, age 37?”

“Affirmative.”

John didn’t even know why he’d say that. The proposal was as ludicrous as anything could get. The word just slipped, like it did a thousand times over because in Selection that was the only thing he could say. It was the only thing he was supposed to say.

John looked at him. “You mean I could die?”

T-Eleven stepped aside from the chair like a sommelier and offered him the clipboard. “Sign here and you may leave.”

This was it. This was why only a rumoured two per cent finished Selection, and even less conquered it. John’s knees went soft, his guts churned because his heart had sunk right down to them. He touched the icy surface of the raw steel and started crying. T-Eleven strapped him in, fitted the silicone mask over his face, and the gas started hissing like a gloating serpent.

T-Eleven scribbled on the clipboard. His actions were insouciant, remorseless. It was just another day at the office. Even though there was neither odour nor pain, John wept because that was the only sensible thing left to do. The weeping rendered his large, leonine face flushed and moist. His strong, massive chest convulsed, and with tremendous effort he kept his roiling mind on Ginn and their daughter.