Why You Were Taken

CRACKED COBALT ₂₈

Johannesburg, 2021

A few kilometres away from The Office, something happens to the motorbike. There is a loud bang, as if someone had shunted a wheel, and they go skidding, screeching off the road, and slam into a stationary 4X4. They lie still for a moment. Kirsten’s left arm sparks with pain. She touches it gingerly with her other hand. Blue gleam (Cracked Cobalt). Broken.

She remembers Seth wasn’t wearing a helmet.

‘Oh my God,’ she says, trying to turn to see him, but he’s also pinned to the tar. ‘Oh my God. Seth? Seth?’ She doesn’t recognise the sound of her own voice. She tries to wriggle out from the bike, but only manages an inch. She looks around for help, but the street is dead. Seth groans, brings his hands up to his head.

‘Are you okay?’ she asks in the stranger’s high-pitched voice.

He doesn’t say anything for a while.

‘Depends on your definition of “okay”.’

Kirsten sighs loudly, lies down. ‘You can talk, which means you have a pulse. That’s something.’

He gets up, tries to find his balance, staggers on the spot for a while, before realising that Kirsten is trapped by the bike. He comes over to her side, releases her. Once she rolls clear he lets the bike crash down again.

‘Something happened,’ he says, ‘to the bike. I heard it.’

He kneels down to get a closer look, tries to spot any signs of sabotage, but he doesn’t know what he’s looking for. He always liked the idea of a bike, but liked the idea of being alive more.

‘Donorcycles,’ says Kirsten, wincing. ‘That’s what James says they call them in the ER.’

‘Cute,’ says Seth.

Kirsten deflates her helmet. Opens the compartment at the back of the bike, retrieves their things. She checks Keke’s insulin pack. Three out of the five vials are broken.

‘Let’s try get a cab,’ she says, limping in the direction of the main road. The left leg of her jeans is hanging on at the knee by a thread, her calf is bloody and gravel-bejewelled. Her shorn head is bruised and dirty; she supports her injured arm as she walks.

‘You look like you’re straight off the set of Terminator 8,’ says Seth.

‘You don’t look too bad yourself,’ she says, gesturing at his newly-bleeding forehead. There are sparks in her arm. She eases her shirt off, revealing a tank top, and ties it into a sling. Seth hands her his hoodie to wear.

‘Is your arm broken?’

‘I don’t know. Think so. Never broken an arm before.’

Seth can’t say the same.

‘The pain is blue. Different shades. Right now it’s Cyan Effervescence. I think that means broken.’

‘You’re one of those people,’ says Seth. ‘Those points-on-the-chicken people.’

She looks sideways at him.

‘Those people that taste shapes,’ he says.

‘Taste shapes, feel flavours, smell words, hear colours, see sound… yes. My wires are crossed. I have no walls between my senses.’

‘So that’s why they wanted you,’ he says.

‘Hey?’

‘All the kids that were abducted had some kind of talent, some aptitude, something that set them apart. Musical genius, edgy horticulturalist, uber-athlete, super-linguist…’

‘What’s yours?’ she asks. ‘What’s your super power?’

‘Maths.’

‘Yuck,’ Kirsten says. ‘Sorry for you. You must have drawn the short straw.’

‘Maths is the language of the universe.’

She looks at him with his fauxhawk, smudged eyes and eyebrow ring.

‘Seriously.’

There are no cabs, so they catch a communal taxi instead. The passengers inside move up quickly when they see the state of the new fares. Even the driver seems concerned. Kirsten pays him double to expedite the journey and he takes the cash with an upward nod. It’s a quiet trip. Kirsten can feel the glares cutting into her body, as if it isn’t lacerated enough. A few passengers are exchanged en route: they swap a sweating businessman for a woman with blonde dreadlocks and a see-through blouse, a couple of floral aunties clutching an over-iced cake inch their way out and in jumps a metal-mouthed schoolgirl in a uniform (Dried Cornflower). Kirsten catches the girl staring at her, so she smiles, but the girl quickly looks away.

It takes them fifteen long minutes to reach Parkview and they jump out when they get to Tyrone Avenue. There seems to be some kind of afternoon street party going on: the road is strewn with streamers, and paper lanterns float above them on invisible wires. Small crowds of people are milling about, drinking craft beer and warm cider in dripping plastic tumblers. A food truck hands out hot crêpes and galettes. Warm air, acoustic tunes on the speakers, and the laughter of strangers. The cafés and restaurants spill their swaying customers out onto the pavements. Despite the sunshine, empty wine bottles act as candleholders, growing capes of white wax. As they pass the tables, someone says a toast and glasses are chinked.

‘This is it,’ says Seth, motioning to a florist with street art for signage that reads “Pollen&Pistils.” Inside a petite girl with a beehive, her back turned, is wrapping a fresh arrangement of hybrid green arums (Neon Cream). They enter the shop, a bell jingles, and immediately her eyes shoot up to the back-wall strip-mirror, where she sees Seth’s reflection.

‘And in come the walking dead,’ she says, spinning around with a giant pair of scissors in her hands. She is wearing glam 50s make-up: dramatic eyeliner, striking red lips, beauty spot on powder-pale skin.

‘Well,’ says Kirsten, ‘I know we’re not looking our very best.’

The different colours and fragrances in the small room swirl around and Kirsten has to blink through them and step slowly to make sure she doesn’t walk into anything. The back wall is a painted mural, graffiti-style, of an outdoor flower market, and this also affects her depth perception.

‘I didn’t mean that, honey,’ she says, ‘I’m talking about when You-Know-Who finds out you Called A Friend.’

‘I didn’t have a choice,’ says Seth. The girl palm-weighs the scissors, purses her ruby lips. ‘Seriously,’ he says, ‘there’s a lot more going on than you know. The bugsweep you sent…’

Her wide eyes flicker.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, handing her the dead boy’s locket.

She looks down and wipes the blades of the scissors on her red and white damask apron, leaving sharp lines of bright green (Cut Grass) that cut across her torso.

‘Your current assignment?’ she asks.

‘We seem to have a bigger problem.’

She puts down the scissors, closes and locks the front door of the shop and turns the ‘closed’ sign to face the street. Automatic blinds shudder across the glass façade. Once the blinds are in place, she claps and they all disappear into darkness. She hits a button under the counter, hidden from view, and a portion of the mural on the back wall starts rolling up.

They follow her down a tapering passage that leads to a security gate. She punches in a complicated code and then has to stand on her toes to look into the small screen above the number pad. A red laser scans her retina and it clicks open.

The door opens up into a large bleached-looking room with a few shoulder-height cubicles. Bright lights, chipboard ceiling boards and cheap wooden veneer desks: not what Kirsten had expected a rebellious cult’s underground HQ to look like at all. There are a few people dotted around, grinding quietly at their desks, who look up unseeingly as the three enter, then return to their screens. A few of them lift their chins at Seth.

They walk towards the back corner, where there is a typical office kitchen attached: a basic sink, bar fridge, and coffee machine. A man springs up from a small Formica table tucked around the corner and Kirsten and Seth both jump.

‘Sorry!’ he says, ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’ He is a wiry man with a nervous demeanour and a pale moustache. ‘I shouldn’t have jumped up like that. I guess I’m a jumper. I think I’m just a little nervous. Very nervous. I wasn’t thinking. Sorry.’

The flower girl doesn’t make introductions and no one shakes hands.

‘I’m the Lab Man,’ he says, rubbing his palms on the back of his trousers. ‘I’m the one who will be looking at your samples.’ He speaks too quickly and finishes his sentences by putting his index finger to his lips, as if to stop himself from saying more. Seth takes the still intact Fontus samples out of his bag and hands them over, along with Kirsten’s bottle of pills. The florist raises her eyebrows at the pills but doesn’t ask any questions.

‘There’s something else,’ says Seth. ‘I know it sounds insane, but I think I may have a chip, a microchip,’ he rubs the back of his head, ‘and I need it destroyed. We think it has some kind of tracker system…’

The man’s eyes grow wide; he holds the samples to his chest, as if to protect them. The florist bangs a drawer shut and glares at Seth.

‘So not only do you bring a civilian in, but you send the target our fucking GPS co-ordinates?’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t have a choice. The chip is the only clue we have. They’ll find the shop, they won’t be able to get in here.’

She stalks out, head down, speed dialling.

‘So the chip,’ says the man, ‘the microchip, it’s still in your… actual head?’

As opposed to his non-actual head? His theoretical head? thinks Kirsten.

‘Yes,’ says Seth. ‘You have a scalpel?’

The man gulps. ‘I can’t take it out. I don’t do blood. I faint when I see blood. I’m haemophobic. Once, in high school, I fainted on the stairs because there was this big poster with a cartoon vampire on it, a blood donation drive. It was this big friendly kind of looking vampire, kind of like a Nosferatu-looking vampire, not a contemporary kind of sparkly good-looking vampire, but friendly, with a big toothy smile, and fangs. He had a cartoon speech bubble and it said “I vant to suck your blood.” And I just fainted. There, on the stairs. Fainted, bam, just like that,’ then he remembers his finger and puts it to his lips.

Seth rummages noisily through the drawers but finds nothing he’d be happy to cut his head open with. He sighs, rubs his eyes. ‘Fine,’ he says to Kirsten. ‘Fine,’ he says again, more firmly, motioning to her bag. She takes out the pocketknife.

‘Do you have any alcohol?’ she asks the Lab Man. He shakes his head. As if on cue, the faux-florist comes back with a first aid kit, a half-empty bottle of whisky and some toasted sandwiches.

‘Thanks,’ says Seth, and she winks at him without smiling. Kirsten wolfs down half a sandwich, its gooey melted cheese like golden lava on her tongue. It’s one of the best things she’s tasted in years. She feels a rolling brown spiral mow towards her, and just before it touches her it disappears. She washes her hands, uses hand sanitizer, and swabs the knife and the back of Seth’s head with the booze. Seth sits at the table and the man turns away, busying himself with the lab kit he brought with him.

With her good arm, Kirsten begins to touch Seth’s scalp. At first they both flinch at the feeling: it’s too intimate an act for strangers. But we’re not strangers, they both tell themselves. A slight buzz remains where they connect.

‘So, what made you get into biopunking?’ asks Kirsten. He knows she’s trying to distract him and feels like telling her to just get on with it; he’s not a child. He feels the cold blade against his skin.

‘In high school I saw a YouTube video of the LSD experiments they did on British soldiers in the early 60s. It’s hilarious. Ever see those?’

Kirsten is concentrating too much to answer but the Lab Man starts giggling.

‘I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it,’ he smiles, nodding at them, then immediately looks away. ‘LSD-25,’ he says, ‘Acid. Soldiers be trippin’.’

Seth smiles, despite himself. ‘They were considering using it as part of their chemical warfare, to incapacitate the enemy, so they tried it out on the men. They go from these upright marching men with machine guns to complete jokers. They can’t read the map and get lost even though the hill they need to find is right in front of them. They just walk around in circles and hose themselves. One guy climbs a tree to feed the birds.’

Kirsten finds the small thickening and quickly excises it, squeezing the chip out. Seth doesn’t flinch; his only movement is to spin his ring. It’s a much neater procedure than her own was.

‘The troop commander eventually gives up, and falls on the floor laughing.’

After applying pressure to stem the bleeding she sprays it and covers it with the extra plaster she had brought with her. Rinses the chip under the tap and hands it to Seth, who stares at it.

I didn’t believe it until I saw mine, either, she thinks.

‘It was so powerful. A simple drug changed men trained to kill into fools. Affectionate fools. Imagine the lives that could have been spared in our wars. It kind of hit me in the face. That’s what made me want to become a chemical engineer.’ He hands it over to the Lab Man, who hesitates before taking it. He holds it up to the light, taps its glass capsule with his fingernail, then holds it close to his eye, looking at it through a magnifying glass.

‘Very scientific methods,’ murmurs Seth in Kirsten’s ear, causing her to almost choke on the last bite of her sandwich. He takes a swig of whisky and then offers it to her. She doesn’t wipe the mouth of the bottle: they are double-blood-siblings now.

The Lab Man puts the chip on the tiled floor and steps on it. It doesn’t break, so he steps on it again, this time putting more weight on it, and still it doesn’t break.

‘Very interesting,’ he says, causing Seth to snuffle and Kirsten to laugh out loud. He turns around, unsure of why they are laughing, then turns back to the chip. ‘Superglass,’ he mumbles. ‘Super. Glass. Hmm.’

‘Why is that interesting?’ asks Kirsten.

‘Because superglass was only put on the market in 2019,’ says Seth.

‘Yet I’d guess that the chip itself,’ says the man, ‘was created in the early 90s. But tracking biochips were only invented in 2007, so this isn’t making sense. It’s not making sense at all.’

‘It must be, like, an early prototype,’ says Seth. ‘The guys who made it were obviously far ahead of the crowd, but didn’t share it. Technology wasn’t as open-source back then.’

‘There is a code on here,’ the Lab Man says, ‘which could link back to the manufacturer.’ He scans in the miniature barcode on the chip and reads out the numbers. Kirsten knows the colours by heart now, recognises Seth’s numbers from the list.

‘Made by… GeniX, it says.’

The Lab Man hands the chip back to Seth.

‘Excuse me,’ Seth says, holding up the chip, ‘I need to go to the little boys’ room.’ Within a moment of him leaving they hear the gush of water through pipes in the wall. Good riddance, thinks Kirsten.

Seth comes back, and the flower girl sidles in.

‘I’ve evacuated the office, and we now have security outside. Hopefully they’ll be able to stop anyone from coming in.’

She gives Seth a hard look. There is something close to an apology in his eyes.

‘I’ll let you know the results as they come in,’ she says, stepping aside so that they can leave. They nod at the Lab Man and make their way outside, where there are still many noon-drunk creeps wandering around on the chunky pavements, enjoying the music and the open air. Seth and Kirsten survey the faces of the people around them. A man leaning against a broken algaetree streetlight acknowledges them with the slightest movement of his head: Kirsten hopes that he is the security post.

A cab rolls to a stop in front of them, and the leaning man motions for them to get in. They hesitate, but then the driver flashes a card at them: a green rabbit. It happens so quickly that Kirsten wonders briefly if she had imagined it.

They climb inside, and Seth gives the driver the address of TommyKnockers. Kirsten feels every bump of the drive; every pothole sends more blue sparks flying up her arm. She needs to talk to distract herself from the pain.

‘Why the green bunny?’ she asks. ‘Seems a bit, I don’t know, too fun and quirky for what you guys do.’

‘No science journals lurking in your house, I can tell.’

‘You don’t have to be snarky. I prefer pictures. It doesn’t make me dumb. It’s how I see the world – in thousands and thousands of photos. Pictures fly at my brain all the time as if I’m some kind of five dimensional dual projector. From reality, hyper-memory, from my senses… books are just too much of an assault… you wouldn’t want to be in my head.’

‘Mine neither,’ says Seth. ‘I see formulae and patterns and equations in everything. Sounds like a similar affliction.’

We’re similar, in some ways, he thinks.

‘We’re similar,’ she says, ‘of course we are. We’re twins.’ It sounds strange to say it out loud. He finds it strange to hear it.

‘Ever heard of the Fibonacci sequence? The Golden Ratio?’ he asks.

‘Of course. It’s that pattern that keeps appearing in nature. And in beautiful things. Didn’t know the Fibonacci part.’

‘He was a mathematician. He discovered it by theoretically breeding rabbits.’

‘Theoretically breeding? That doesn’t sound like much fun.’

‘I don’t want to bore you.’

The nerves in Kirsten’s broken arm hum.

‘Tell me. I’m interested.’

‘So in theory you’d start with one pair of baby rabbits. When they mature at two months, they have their own pair of baby rabbits. So it’s just one pair for the first and second month, then an additional pair in the third month. How many pairs? 0, 1, 1, 2. Then the parents have another pair. 3. By then, the first babies are mature enough to breed, and they have a pair, along with the parents. 5. Then 8, 13, 21, 34, 55… etc. In a year you’ll have 144 rabbits.’

‘So you just add the number to the number before it to get the next number.’

‘If you wanted to suck all the beauty out of the equation then yes, I guess you could say that. So the sequence is fn = fn-1+fn-2 where n>3 or n=3’

‘Okay, you just lost me.’

‘It’s not important, I get carried away. The cool thing is that the ratio plays itself out in nature. Pinecones, pineapples, sunflowers, petals, the human body, DNA molecules. Like, a double helix is 21 angstroms wide and 34 long in each cycle. It’s also in lots of different algorithms. So, handy in… software and stuff.’

‘Hacking?’

‘In theory.’

‘You smartypantses like your theories.’

‘Goes with the territory. Science, and all.’

‘Ooh, “science”,’ she mocks, smiling. ‘Using a strange and beautiful ratio to bring down the baddies. A green bunny.’

‘It’s the symbolism, more than anything.’

‘I like it.’

‘Any reason you chose bright green? The green number is 3, so that kind of makes sense.’

‘It’s a nod at bioartist Eduardo Kac. He created artwork based on a transgenic albino green fluorescent rabbit called Alba. They bonded. Once he had finished his research, the corporation he was grinding for went back on their word and didn’t let him take her home, and she died in the lab. It was sad. They were attached, after all that time. The corp became, like, the epitome of bio-bullies, and she’s kind of our mascot.’

‘Poor Alba,’ sighs Kirsten. ‘What did they splice her with, you know, to make her glow?’

‘GFP of a Jellyfish gene.’

Kirsten thinks of the beautiful jellyfish she saw at the aquarium, when she had learned of Betty/Barbara’s death.

‘I don’t know, it seems wrong to me.’

‘That’s the whole point. He used transgenic art to spark debate on important social issues surrounding genetics, and how they are affecting and will affect generations to come. It was ground-breaking, for its time.’

‘And poor Alba lives and dies in a lab.’

‘Yes.’

‘Not cool.’

‘Not cool.’

‘And so… Fibbonacci, Kac… you pretty much have an obsession with bunnies?’

‘Science does. Theoretical bunnies, anyway.’

The car stops, the driver cuts the engine. Seth looks past Kirsten, out of the car window, and says ‘We’re here.’

She moves to get out, but he puts his hand on her shoulder. Still, a kind of vibration.

‘Stay here, this will just take a minute.’

Kirsten watches him disappear down an alley, then lies down on the back seat, cradles her arm, and closes her eyes. Keke, she thinks, we are on our way. Keep breathing, keep breathing.

Rolo sees Seth coming and begins to lift the red rope to allow him access into the club. Seth gestures to show he’s not going in, and Rolo clicks it back into place.

‘Mister Denicker,’ he says in a low rumble, ‘what can I do for you?’

‘Good to see you, my man,’ says Seth, and they click their fingers together, leaving two five-hundred rand notes in the giant Yoruba man’s palm. ‘I need to see your – associates – again. The ones you introduced me to a few years ago.’

‘You wish to make another purchase?’ he enquires.

‘I do.’

‘The people themselves change. They have various addresses, and various contact numbers. Are you looking for heat, or spike?’

‘Heat.’

‘In that case, I suggest you contact Abejide.’ He takes out his handset, which looks like a toy in his huge hands, and pushes a button. Seth feels his Tile pulsate. ‘Tell him I sent you.’

Seth turns to go, when Rolo says: ‘I gather you know, Mister Denicker, that you are being followed?’