The Medusa Project: Double-Cross Read online

  ‘Oh . . . oh well, I’m glad I’m here, then.’ I cleared my throat, unsure how to respond to all that emotion. ‘I’m also going back to search for the information we need at the Norgene Clinic’

  Amy stared at me for a second. It was disconcerting to know she was under Geri’s sharp features.

  ‘I can help with that,’ she said.

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘You’re going home.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense, Nico.’ Amy leaned forward earnestly in her chair. ‘I can get us into the clinic by pretending to be a woman wanting information on fertility treatment. Once we’re in, you can sneak off and search the files.’

  ‘What about your parents?’

  ‘They don’t live that far from the clinic – I’ll go there straight after. It’ll maybe delay me getting home by an hour or two, that’s all.’

  I considered this. Ed wouldn’t like it, of course, but Amy’s suggestion certainly made sense.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Here’s what I think we should do.’

  The Norgene Clinic opened at nine a.m. Amy and I were at the door by five past. Ed had contacted me several times by remote telepathy. He reported that the others were furious I’d gone off on my own, though he was actually grateful I was seeing Amy safely home. Clearly, Amy hadn’t told him she was accompanying me to the clinic – and I certainly wasn’t going to!

  I’d had no problem getting the pair of us off the ferry. First, Amy had transformed herself into another woman – older and plainer than Geri. It was the weirdest thing – her skin stretching as her face lengthened and her eyes growing narrower, her nose longer and her hair, which had been a sharp blonde bob, thinning to a mousy, middle-aged crop.

  She finished and looked at me expectantly. ‘I’ve never done it without a mirror before. How do I look?’

  ‘Fab,’ I said with a grin. ‘It’ll work great.’

  We’d just walked out with everyone else, then ducked back before the customs and immigration check. As before, I’d unlocked a storeroom door – this time on the ferry terminal concourse – where we’d hidden until the other passengers had exited.

  I’d found a back way out of the terminal through a series of warehouses, most of which were completely deserted. Amy had been nervous throughout, but no problem to deal with.

  We’d caught two trains to get here, on each occasion with Amy – still disguised as the older, plainer woman – buying the tickets and me keeping my head down and tugging my cap low over my face.

  Throughout all of that I’d stayed remarkably calm. But now I was nervous – our success in the fertility clinic would rely on Amy being able to carry off the cover story I’d given her. I wasn’t at all sure she’d manage it.

  But Amy proved me wrong within seconds.

  ‘I have to see one of your consultants,’ she said, striding up to the reception desk.

  The receptionist – a plump, middle-aged lady wearing a horrible pink jacket – glanced from Amy to me.

  ‘This is my son,’ Amy lied. ‘I had to bring him with me. I have to speak to a doctor.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to make an appointment,’ the receptionist said.

  ‘It’s just a quick query,’ Amy pushed on. ‘I’m sure the doctor can make time for me. I’m planning an article on local fertility treatments for The Times and I want to feature the Norgene as a recommended centre.’

  The receptionist studied her carefully. ‘I’ll speak to Mr Mitchell. He’s the senior consultant on duty this morning. Maybe he can give you a few minutes.’ She ushered us into the waiting room.

  It was formal and silent, full of straight-backed chairs and piles of mags. We were the only people in the room.

  ‘Well, they bought me being your son,’ I said quietly as we sat down. ‘I’m surprised they think you’re old enough.’

  Amy giggled. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to interview this doctor . . . I don’t know anything about fertility treatments.’

  ‘If someone comes before I’m back, just ask about the process . . . what he does when someone comes along and wants a baby,’ I suggested. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  Amy nodded. I took a deep breath and slipped out of the waiting room. The reception area was round the corner to the right. A series of other doors were to my left. I wandered along, glancing at the names on the doors as I passed. The second door was labelled Admin. This had to be my best bet for finding records on Sydney Church.

  I opened the door a crack and peered round. Six pairs of eyes met mine instantly. Man, the room was packed! Full of women at desks or filing cabinets.

  Clearly, I was going to have to be more creative in my approach.

  ‘Fire!’ I yelled, rushing into the room. ‘There’s a fire in one of the offices. Set off the alarm. Get out now!’

  5: The Discovery

  The women in the office looked startled as I yelled again.

  ‘Fire! You have to get out of here!’

  For a second, I thought they were all going to stay in their seats. Then one rose, grabbing her bag and walking out from behind her desk.

  ‘Come on!’ she urged the others.

  Suddenly they all moved, swarming towards me together. I was surrounded. Questions flew at me.

  ‘Where’s the fire?’

  ‘How bad is it?’

  ‘Is anyone hurt?’

  ‘It’s in one of the rooms upstairs. I was with my mum and the doctor. We saw the flames,’ I said breathlessly. ‘They sent me down here. We need to get out, warn everyone else.’

  ‘I’ll tell reception – they can sound the fire alarm.’ One of the women rushed off. The others followed her, calling in at the other rooms as they went.

  I followed them to the end of the corridor then, as they headed round the corner towards the waiting room and reception area, I doubled back to the admin office.

  Once inside, I sat at the first computer I came to. The woman who’d been using it hadn’t logged out so everything was still up and running.

  I scanned quickly through the document files as the fire alarm sounded. Its piercing screech filled the air – and my head. I tried to ignore the noise.

  It took a couple of long minutes to find the archive for old patients. They were listed by surname and initial. I typed Church, S. into the find box.

  There. I raced down the form that flashed onto the screen, desperately trying to pick up the main points.

  S. Church . . . surrogate . . . in vitro transfer . . . Mrs O’Brien . . . frozen embryo . . .

  I stopped. Frozen embryo?

  I read the section quickly. It was full of medical jargon I didn’t understand, but the gist was clear. The baby, a girl, had been originally conceived through IVF as one of twins – a boy and a girl. While the boy had been implanted in his mother’s womb, the girl embryo had been frozen and stored for three years. At this later stage, she had been transferred to a surrogate mother at the request of the natural parents – Mr and Mrs O’Brien. A healthy baby – Amy O’Brien – was born eight months later.

  I read the words again, trying to make sense of them. Amy was clearly the baby in the report. With a jolt, I realised that the ‘twin’ referred to must be Ed. He’d never mentioned being an IVF baby, but maybe he hadn’t known. Anyway, like me, he was three years older than Amy – the dates fitted.

  I frowned. All this meant that Amy must have been implanted with the Medusa gene at the same time as Ed. Which meant William Fox had been responsible, not the person to whom Geri later sold the gene code . . . not ‘Sydney’.

  Heart sinking, I raced to the bottom of the page where the surrogate mother’s name was clearly spelled out: Susie Church.

  Susie. Not Sydney. Sydney Church did not exist.

  I sat back, staring at the screen, the fire alarm still piercing through my head.

  I’d followed a complete red herring. Amy’s birth had nothing to do with the sale of the Medusa gene.

  For a moment, the disappointment overwh
elmed me. Then I sat forward again. While I was here, I might as well see if the clinic held any information about William Fox. I went to the main network docs folder and searched his name.

  It came up straight away in an article dated the year before I – and the other Medusa teens – was born. William Fox had worked here as a consultant. I flicked down the list of other consultants, making a mental note of their names. Each name was logged next to the consultant’s place of work. One in particular caught my eye: Professor Avery Jones, psychologist, Sydney, Australia.

  Was this the Sydney William Fox had been referring to in his conversation about the sale of the Medusa gene? It looked as if Jones and Fox had some serious disagreements over the clinic’s policies in genetic experiments.

  Before I could search any further, the fire alarm stopped and a hefty security guard flung open the admin office door.

  ‘Oy!’ he shouted. ‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’

  Switching the computer off, I leaped to my feet. The security guard advanced, arms outstretched.

  I leaped backwards. The guard reached the desk at which I’d been sitting. Instinctively, I raised my hands and deployed my telekinesis. I rammed the desk into him, then spun it sideways so it shoved against his legs.

  The guard stumbled, lost his footing. With a yell, he fell over.

  Heart thundering in my ears, I sped past him and raced outside the building. Amy was in a huddle of people at the end of the clinic’s driveway.

  Everyone stared at me as I flew towards them. They were all talking at once. I caught snatches as I ran up.

  ‘He’s the one . . .’

  ‘Said the fire was upstairs . . .’

  ‘. . . set off the alarm . . .’

  Amy was standing in the middle of the group, eyes wide and mouth open. I grabbed her arm and dragged her away.

  ‘Hey, come back!’

  ‘Stop!’

  The staff’s cries echoed after us, but I ignored them, focusing only on putting as much distance between us and the clinic as possible. Amy was panting beside me, clearly struggling to keep up.

  I pounded along a tree-lined avenue, then took the left and two rights back to the station. I raced through the open door and stood, panting, in the entrance hall, gazing up at the screens.

  There was a train to London in five minutes. ‘I’m getting on that,’ I said, pointing up to the announcements board. ‘You need to get a cab outside to your parents’ place.’

  Amy stared at me, still gulping in lungfuls of air. She’d changed back to herself as we’d run – though I hadn’t noticed until this moment. Her bottom lip wobbled.

  ‘Go home?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said impatiently, glancing again at the board. ‘I’m sorry I can’t take you right to the door, but I need to get out of this area fast.’

  ‘I knew it was you setting off the fire alarm. Omigosh, why didn’t you say you were going to?’

  ‘It just . . . I had to think quickly . . .’ I explained. ‘It wasn’t planned.’

  ‘What did you find out in there?’ she said.

  ‘That your surrogate mum wasn’t the Sydney we’re looking for and . . .’ I hesitated, then explained what I’d learned about Ed and Amy being IVF twins.

  Amy’s eyes rounded as I spoke. ‘Omigosh,’ she breathed. ‘So I’m really three years older than I thought.’

  ‘I don’t think it works like that.’ I frowned. ‘A frozen embryo doesn’t grow, does it? So it isn’t exactly alive.’

  Amy nodded. ‘But if William Fox put the gene in me at the same time as Ed, how come Geri didn’t know about it? And how come the surrogate who was carrying me three years later didn’t die like my mum did?’

  ‘I don’t know. For all you know she did die.’ I took a deep breath, trying to keep my nerves under control. I badly wanted to find the platform my train was leaving from. It would be here in just a couple of minutes. ‘I’m sorry, but I really have to go.’ I said. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Sure.’ Amy swallowed. ‘It’s just . . . I don’t want to be left out . . . I want to help . . . I want to stay with you . . .’ She smiled – a sweet, timid smile. For the first time I noticed there was a dimple in her cheek.

  I grinned at her. Maybe a bit of flattery would do the trick. ‘You look cute when you smile.’

  She blushed crimson and lowered her eyes.

  ‘It’s not that we don’t want you with us,’ I said, patting her arm. ‘But it’ll be really useful to have you back here. Ed can communicate with you telepathically so you can let us know what’s going on – I mean, I’d love you to come, but your parents will worry and Ed . . . well, he’d never forgive me if I showed up in France with you again.’

  Amy looked up, her eyes all warm and glowy. ‘You’d love me to come?’

  I glanced at the announcements board again. My train was due in any second. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘But you’ll get me in terrible trouble if you don’t go home now.’

  ‘Okay,’ she nodded.

  ‘You’re a star.’ Relieved, I reached forward, pecked her on the cheek and rushed away.

  The London train was pulling in as I reached the platform. I scrambled on board and flung myself into a seat by the window. As we pulled away, I caught sight of Amy standing at the fence beside the taxi rank, scanning the carriages.

  I waved, but she didn’t see me.

  I sat back in my seat and let out a long, shuddering sigh. That had been close.

  Too close. But maybe my risky search in the clinic’s admin office had thrown up the information we needed.

  Maybe our Sydney was a place – not a person – and maybe Professor Avery Jones was our next, vital clue.

  6: Sydney

  It turned out that the article I’d found wasn’t the first place that Professor Jones had publicly disagreed with William Fox. According to Ed, who did the research online, they’d been engaged in a long-running feud over several years.

  It took a while to discover this, however, as most of the next three telepathic sessions I had with Ed involved him berating me for taking Amy (now safely back at home) to the clinic and drawing so much attention to myself while I was there.

  The third exchange took place just as I drew into Liverpool Street Station in London.

  Why did you go to the clinic anyway? It’s so typical of you to go off on your own like that. I bet you didn’t find out anything useful either . . . I mean, if the Sydney who Geri sold the Medusa code to has nothing to do with Amy’s surrogate mother, then . . .

  And on and on he ranted.

  I waited until he was finished – well, there isn’t much choice when Ed’s inside your head – then told him what I’d found out about him and Amy originally being IVF twins.

  That shocked him. His voice in my head went completely silent and, when he spoke again, his tone was sadder and calmer.

  So, if we were originally twins, Amy was conceived at the same time as me, which means this Sydney person can’t have been responsible.

  I acknowledged that this was the conclusion I’d already come to and told him about the existence of Avery Jones in Sydney. Ed went straight off to investigate, making contact with me half an hour later.

  Okay, we’ve done some research on Professor Avery Jones, Ed thought-spoke. He’s still practising as a psychologist and he still lives in Sydney Australia, but get this . . . He stopped all his consultancy work at fertility clinics within a few months of William Fox dying.

  Just after the point when Geri must have sold him the Medusa gene code, I thought-spoke.

  Exactly. And there’s more. Avery Jones knew about Medusa. We found a blog he wrote saying that he knew William Fox was working on a synthetic biology project involving mutant genetics. It was published the week before Fox died – and it actually uses the Medusa name. It hints that Jones wanted the gene and that he was on the verge of finding out a load more about it. But he never wrote about it again.

  We have to go to Sydney
to find him, I thought-spoke. I expected Ed to begin ranting at me again, but to my surprise he agreed.

  I know. We’ve already been onto Laura. She’s going to help.

  Laura was Harry’s mum and Dylan’s godmother . . . She knew all about our history and had already put herself in danger to help us escape England on the ferry to France.

  How can Laura help us get to Sydney?

  Well, firstly, Geri doesn’t know we’ve been in touch with her, so there’s no trace on her phone. Secondly, Laura’s got someone who’s agreed to fly you in secret to Helsinki and arrange for us to meet you there.

  What about when we get there?

  Laura’s managed to get in touch with all our parents. They know Geri’s watching them, but they’ve smuggled our original passports – you know the ones from before Geri gave us new identities – down to her. She’s going to give them to you – plus four tickets from Helsinki to Sydney.

  What if Geri traces us?

  It’s a risk, but she’s likely to be focusing on airports in England and France.

  This was true, though not entirely reassuring.

  Three hours later, fortified by a chicken sandwich at Victoria Station, I arrived at the small town of Bixbury in Kent, where Laura was going to pick me up and explain the details of the plan.

  It was early afternoon and the sun was high in the sky, beating down on my head through the still air. This had to be the hottest day of the year so far. As I waited outside deserted Bixbury Station, my thoughts drifted to Ketty. Ed hadn’t mentioned her earlier – and I didn’t have a phone to call her with. Those thoughts led to others and it was with a jolt that I realised Laura was driving up beside me in a green Mondeo.

  Slim, suited and with her highlighted blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, she poked her head out through the open window and offered me a brief, anxious smile.

  ‘Get in.’

  ‘Where’s Harry?’ I asked, sliding into the passenger seat.

  ‘At school.’ Laura drove off, her lips pressed tightly together. ‘Which is where you guys should be, too.’