Tham Cheng-E - Surrogate Protocol

“Keep to your end of the agreement, Khun,” Hannah said, stubbornly refusing to look at him.

He placed his hand on the small of her back in the pretence of amity. “I know you deserve better,” he wheedled in a tender voice. “We’ve been good together, haven’t we? We could still be.”

“Leave us alone.”

“Now you have a reason to stay alive.” Khun wrapped his beefy arms around her slender waist. “I don’t blame you; I know how lonely it gets. But careful, my dolly, now you have something to lose.”

The leverage Khun possessed was evident. Hannah knew she had been careless. She briefly considered blowing herself up there and then, taking him along.

But in the midst of their conversation they had failed to notice Poppy’s arrival. He was standing beside them with a stick of kacang putih in his hand. He was doggedly chewing away, masticating the sugared peanuts between his rear molars and shifting his gaze from one grown-up to another.

Arthur came up from behind him and wedged himself between Hannah and Khun with deliberate recklessness, putting a friendly arm on Khun’s shoulder.

Khun, being the larger man, regarded his aggressor with a downward gaze and showed his teeth in a forced grin, his fists poised to deliver a knock-out blow.

“A hundred a week,” Arthur blurted. “That’s more than twice of what I’ve paid you for the documents.”

Behind furrowed brows Khun sneered at his unexpected offer. “If it’s about her, you’ve got it wrong, my friend.”

“I’m paying for her services,” said Arthur. “Eight weeks.”

“What makes you think she’s up on the market?”

“Do me a favour, Khun,” Arthur grovelled. “Everyone says you are a reasonable man.”

Khun shook his head, as if admiring Arthur’s gumption. “She’s going to cost you.”

“Whatever that’s in my means to pay.”

“One thousand six. Eight weeks.”

“One thousand four.” Arthur counter-offered. “That’s all I can afford.”

Khun grinned at Hannah and stuck a fresh cigarette between his lips. “He just saved your ass for the next eight weeks.” He lit the cigarette with a match, took a long draw and popped a smoke ring into Arthur’s face. “A hundred seventy-five a week, every Thursday, number forty-three, Orh Kio Tau . Look for Kiong, he’ll work out the interest.”

Khun swaggered away. Hannah was lost in a flood of memories that reminded her of a vulnerability she had never confessed to. Killing Khun was never an easy option. There would be consequences, and CODEX had punitive measures that made death desirable, a luxury even. Once, she had sought to leave the service and had paid dearly for it.

Poppy was crouching by her feet, wearied by the prolonged standing. She looked at him and suddenly felt drawn to him. Amid her turbulent existence he was a fading glimmer of innocence. She found his presence calming. It put her in a trance, somewhere far away, living out the emotions she thought she had kept buried.

“I’m paying for peace,” Arthur told her. “And it’s worth every cent.”

Hannah’s lips quivered, teetering on the verge of speech. But she held back because she was suddenly filled with distaste for the way Arthur had bailed her out of the situation. She had never needed help, certainly not from him. Her heart swelled with pleasure whenever she recalled the day they met, yet there were times like this she wished they hadn’t. Life would’ve been easier. She would’ve remained impervious to whatever came her way.

Yet when he took her hands into his she did not resist. She didn’t know why, and it set in her an inexplicable self-loathing.

His face began moving towards her and she stiffened. It was the best she could do.

“Can I kiss you?” he asked.

“Not on the lips.”

She closed her eyes. A pleasant sense of mystery accompanied Arthur’s request. The anticipation offered unexpected warmth, like the caress of a bed beneath a wearied body.

Arthur kissed her between her eyes and she broke into tears. The tenderness of it carried a terrible sorrow. Her breath slipped, her shoulders convulsed. And Arthur held her.

It was something she ought to have forgotten.

MARCO PERCHES A palm-sized display over the steering wheel. It shows the driveway, the garden, and Cheok sweeping away where the trimmed branches have fallen. Nothing peculiar, nothing happening. The door opens and a colleague sinks into the seat beside him with takeaway coffee in condensed milk tins. Marco takes his share, holding it carefully by a string tied to the top of the tin.

“Status went up a notch after the fire,” says the colleague.

Marco drinks and grimaces when the liquid scalds him. “Ghosts found something?”

“Got some intel from our Tracker too.”

“What’s our Chronie hiding?”

The colleague shrugs and blows at his coffee. “Eyes only to the Seers. They’re the brains, we’re the brawn.”

“Being out in the field has its benefits, Fabian.” Marco bites into his toast. “How long until Internment?”

“Retrieval estimates three days, stretched. They might do it in two.”

Fabian hands Marco a brown paper folder. It opens to a personnel profile that bears a coloured mugshot of Cheok in relative youth. “Nothing new,” says he, easing out his toast from its paper bag. “The usual two-to-one config.”

Marco tosses the folder over the dashboard. He ponders, and the colleague chews his toast in dreadful anticipation of what is coming.

“Pull an SX on him.”

Fabian stops chewing and feigns ignorance. “Who?”

“The gardener. Who else?”

“There could be other options.”

“And this is the best.” Marco retorts with toast in his mouth. “Non-chronie Trackers are dispensable. We take one guy down and we get an easier ride. It’s standard protocol, Fabian. So don’t ever try to be a field operative if you’re not at least a century old.”

“There’s a long investigative process for an SX. We’ll be implicated.”

Marco tears another bite off his toast and drums his fingers on the steering to ease his frustration. “That’s my expertise, Fabian.” He speaks through his chewing. “You pull the SX and I show you the tricks to cutting red tape. That gardener is old and expired and we can’t afford compassion because it gets in the way. Do him neat and quick and you’ll be doing everyone a favour. We pull a fast track on our case and he gets a hero’s funeral and his family gets the money. Everyone’s happy.”

Fabian brings the tin of coffee broodingly to his lips but does not drink. “I don’t know,” he whispers almost inaudibly.

“I settle the paperwork, you get the job done, comprende ?”

Landon rises from the therapy bed, fighting lethargy. A bruise of sorrow lingers in his chest. He finds his fists clenched tight. The back of his neck is moist with perspiration. There is spittle at the corners of his mouth. His muscles quaver and his heart races with the exhilaration that follows a recollection.

This time he seizes the memory and holds it in place. It is vivid, tactile, like a dream made real. Even the scent of her apartment lingers.

Hannah .

Beside him Dr Peck is scribbling. His assistant leans against a shelf, fingering a touchpad. Landon tracks her as she claps out of his sight on her stilettoes and reappears in front of him with a cup of water.

Her powdered, unsympathetic face carries a glimmer of caution in the eyes. She probably thinks he’s a freak turning mental and that Dr Peck is just too much a gentleman to point that out. He must’ve put up quite a show during the hypno-sessions.