Tham Cheng-E - Surrogate Protocol

“Heard your wife give birth already yah?” He tilted his chin towards the back of the store, where the woman had gone.

Koon’s handsome smile wrinkled the corners of his eyes. He called over his shoulder in a Mandarin dialect Anton didn’t know, and in time the woman emerged bearing a bundle in her arms. Anton wasn’t inclined to look because he didn’t know the family. But Amal went right for it. He parted the swaddle and started cooing expertly at the infant.

“Born September,” said Koon, impressed and amused by Amal’s repertoire of baby language. “Almost two months old now.”

“What’s his name?”

“Kuan Yew,” said Koon.

Amal flashed an exaggerated look of disgust. “Hard to call lah—” said he, prolonging the last syllable into that growling drawl of his.

But Koon, evidently familiar with Amal’s droll candour, merely chuckled. “His grandfather wanted to name him Harry.”

Amal’s grimace passed into a grin. “I like Harry better.” He then turned to Anton who was silently observing them from behind. “What you think? The Kuan-yin or Harry?”

This put Anton in a spot. Amal perceived his discomfort and immediately threw an arm over his shoulder, chortling boisterously and showing off his blood-red tongue against his pearly white teeth. “We going to be great business partners, eh?”

“Yes, Amal,” said Anton undecidedly. “I suppose we are.”

HIS ARMS ARE wrenched behind his back in a way that if he stops walking they will hurt even more. A large hand clasps over his mouth and foils his attempt to holler. Whoever is holding him feels like a giant. In no time Landon is shoved into yet another car. He is kicking, thrashing. The jab of a fist across his left cheek almost knocks him cold.

Landon clutches his swelling jaw and glares wide-eyed at his assailant.

“Sorry.” John steps on the accelerator. “It was the only way to get you in.”

Screeching, the car reverses across the driveway. It catapults over a speed hump and sends sparks flying. To the crank of gears the car bolts forth with an impatient groan and purrs down a larger road. Landon lunges for the door handle and John yanks him back.

“Dr E.W. Peck is dead.”

Friday . Landon shudders at the news. Guilt lances deep into his heart.

“I warned you about not getting too close,” John adds.

“Where the hell were you?”

“At your house, when she took you.” John squints through the windshield, slabs of lamplight passing across his face. “I tried to get you out.”

“And failed.”

There is resentment in the sidelong glance John throws at him. “If you understand her abilities I hope you’d think better of me. She fought like a ghost,” he confesses. “I had to let her kill me before I could get to you.”

“How?”

“Worked out a struggle; switched her weapon for one bugged with a Neut—what we call a neuro-transmitter.” He swerves and the car skids a little. “An obsolete tool that tricked her brain into thinking she had blown my head open. Afforded me a break but it didn’t turn out the way I wanted.”

“And Cheok?”

John’s gaze freezes through the windshield. “She slit his throat.”

It almost sends Landon into a seizure. He watches one passing streetlight after another and tries to remember Cheok but sees only parts of him: that thick, sweating chest, the stumpy arms, the pink cellophane bags with food, the way he placed his beer can on his belly…

“The Tracker was sent for him because the order for you just came in.” John tosses him something black and intensely familiar.

His journal.

Landon yields to a surge of anger. “Didn’t figure you for a thief.”

John shrugs off the accusation. “CODEX knows you’re the real deal. It turns out you’re hiding something they want and your Tracker left me a message that led to the journal, though I can’t imagine why she’d do that.” He nods at the book. “First entry, 1859.”

Landon flips to it and sees the name Harriet circled in pencil. “Who was she?”

“Not a who , but a where .” John swerves again to overtake a car. “It refers to Mount Harriet—the old name of Dempsey Hill. The plantations there were your sustenance; they kept your family alive in the early days.” He enters the highway and accelerates. “Your current home in Clacton is not your family plot, but one that was transferred to you under the protection of another faction.

“In other words,” John turns briefly to him, “your real family plot has been in Dempsey Hill all along.”

Landon’s expression sours at the revelation. “FourBees…”

John retrieves a folder from the dashboard and hands it to him. “Inside you’ll find an old record of a Seer who transferred the Clacton property to you. He had acquired the final site in Mount Harriet through Hoo Ah Kay, who had earlier won it from a “certain destitute young man who chalked up a prodigious amount of debt” . We matched them against the clues from your diaries and found out it was you. A clever move to safeguard the property. Do you remember the name Origen?”

Landon looks despondently out of the window and shakes his head.

“Your time is up, Landon.”

“I know.”

“And you’re getting all chummed up with her?”

“She said she’ll work something out!”

Unbelievable . John looks away and snorts the ingenuous remark.

“Don’t get all self-righteous on me, John.” Landon drives a finger in his direction. “She told me all about Internment and that you’re as much a killer as she is.”

John alternates between braking and accelerating as he weaves through the traffic and overtakes one vehicle after another.

“You’re all the same, aren’t you?” says Landon. “And that you’re going to take me to a safe place to milk me dry and then murder me?”

John says nothing.

“Where’re you taking me?”

“Away from her.”

“Cut the crap, John,” Landon seethes. “Where exactly are you taking me?”

John realises there is no better way of putting it. “Some place safe.”

An invective slips out of Landon in a bitter laugh. “You’re not a bodyguard.”

“I never said I was one.”

“So you’re going to kill me?”

“No.”

“But you are going to let them milk me?”

“Possibly.”

Landon throws back his head in despair and closes his eyes. “Just how are they going to milk me, John?”

No response.

“HOW THE HELL ARE THEY GOING TO MILK ME?”

“I don’t know.” John relents. “I’m only tasked to keep you alive.”

“You’re one big walking lie, John.”

“I withheld some truth.” John’s tone is calm, icy. He checks the rear-view mirror and veers hard to the left, causing Landon to lurch. “But that doesn’t make me a liar.”

“Yeah?” A vein surfaces just beneath the skin of Landon’s neck. “So you think I’m the hare between two hounds? You think I can’t bail if I have to? Where in all your shitty lies can I find a single bit of truth, huh?”

John watches him from the corner of his eye. “Take your hand off the door handle.”

“ Answer the question, John. Tell me one truthful thing you’ve uttered.”

“My sick daughter,” says John.

Landon suddenly feels beaten. He throws himself into the seat and draws his hands miserably across his face. “For two centuries I’ve been running from some invisible threat and I’m so darn tired of it. If you’re going to kill me just do it now and be done with it.”

John whips out a small holstered pistol from the side of his seat and hands it to him. “A token of trust. Strap it to your ankle. It’s cocked and ready to go. Safety’s where your right thumb is.”