Why You Were Taken

THE ULTIMATE BLOODLESS REVOLUTION ₃₆

Johannesburg, 2021

James opens the sliding door, flooding the car with light. Dust motes dance in the white air. Inspector Mouton stands beside him, gun drawn and pointed at the twins.

‘Is that necessary?’ James demands, anger gravelling his voice.

Mouton ignores him.

‘Come with us,’ Mouton says to Kirsten and Seth. ‘Come quietly and no one gets hurt.’

‘Fuck you,’ the twins say in unison. Kirsten can’t even look in James’s direction. She looks at the car, and sees where the paintwork has been touched up. It was James who had tried to run them off the road on the way back from the seed bank. James who had hidden the letter from her mother. James who had tried to incapacitate her with pills.

Her heart was in shock, as if she had just been stung by a jellyfish. A swarm, a smack. His betrayal was like deep blue venom spreading throughout her body.

‘Your friend is very sick,’ says Mouton. ‘You don’t have much time. If you come with us, we’ll give you the medicine she needs.’

‘Go!’ Kirsten says to Seth, ‘I’ll see to Keke. You get out of here.’

‘No way,’ he says. ‘I’ve only just found you.’

‘The deal is for both of you,’ says Mouton. ‘Just one of you is useless to me.’

Keke’s phone starts vibrating and wailing, the SugarApp counter is at 0: ‘DANGER ZONE.’

‘Fine,’ says Kirsten, ‘we’re wasting time. Let’s go!’

Mouton halts them, pats them both down, takes their guns, including the sling-smuggled Ruger. He finds the pocketknife and magic wand. Puts the knife in his pocket and looks at the lipstick, undecided. He has never seen Kirsten wear colour on her lips. He is about to inspect it when James makes an agitated sound.

‘Come on,’ says James, ‘we need to move.’

Mouton hands the tube back to Kirsten.

‘Go,’ he says, and pushes the pair in front of him. They walk in the main entrance, which has been deserted by the regular security detail, and into the elevator. James tries to take Kirsten’s hand but she stands as far away from him as she can, squashing herself into the cool corner. The mirror, meant to make the small space seem bigger, reflects their taut faces and the result is claustrophobic.

Worried that she would get sick again, Kirsten closes her eyes and breathes into her corner, resting her forehead on the mirror. Her breath and sweat mists up the glass, veiling her reflection. Mouton inserts a wafer-key and they start moving down – past ground level and two levels of basement parking listed as the bottom floors – and still further, until they are deep in the ground and Seth can almost feel the weight of the earth above them.

‘Kitty,’ says James.

Shut the fuck up, she wants to say. Your words are poison darts.

‘Let me explain.’

‘There is not an explanation that would make this okay.’

‘Van der Heever said to bring you in or he’d kill you.’

‘And you believed him?’

‘I know what he is capable of.’

‘And yet you are delivering us to him.’

‘Don’t you see? I didn’t have a choice.’

Kirsten sneers at him.

‘I can’t believe I ever let you touch me.’

‘How long have you worked for the Genesis Project?’ asks Seth.

‘It’s not like that,’ answers James. ‘That day, in 1988, when you were taken—’

‘You mean when you took us,’ says Kirsten.

‘Just like you did today,’ says Seth. ‘Deja-fucking-vu.’

‘After that day,’ says James, ‘I kept tabs on you. I made sure you were okay. I watched you from afar. Watched you grow up, as I grew up. I loved you – I did, I loved you – from the very beginning. We were meant to be together. Don’t you see? We’re a family. A different kind of family… that day we met—’

‘Oh my God,’ says Kirsten, ‘everything was a lie.’

They step out of the lift and stand before a massive security door, like something out of a high tech bank. It reminds Kirsten of the Doomsday Vault. Mouton keys in a 5-digit code and puts his thumb to the scanner pad, two green lights glow (Serpent Eyes) and the door unlocks with a decisive pop. Kirsten lifts her hand to her face and narrows her eyes to cope with the intense light.

Everything is white: a passage with many interleading doors is made up of clean white floor tiles, white painted walls, a whitewashed cement ceiling. They walk along the passage and make a few turns. Every corner looks the same and Kirsten wonders how they’ll ever find their way out again. They are rats in a 4D maze. She takes as many photos as she can with her locket. Some of the doors seem to lead to more passages; others open up to deserted labs. Huge machines whirr away. Ivory Bead. Wet Sugar. Coconut Treat. A hundred shades of white. Stuttering holograms of static. Glass upon glass upon glass.

The employees seem to have left in a hurry: Seth sees half-drunk cups of tea, open desk drawers, an out-of-joint stapler, an abandoned cardigan.

Air sanitiser streams in through the air vents, sounding like the sea. It reminds Kirsten of being on a ghost ship, many of which she explored, looted and floating endlessly on the Indian Ocean. Why had she been so captivated by stories of the Somali pirates? Because she had known all along, had a deeply buried awareness, that she, herself, had been kidnapped. Her life had been seized, snatched, carried off. It left her an empty vessel, unmoored. Haunted.

‘That book I gave you,’ says James, ‘The fairytale. Hansel and Gretel. I gave it to you for a reason. Do you understand, Kitty? It was for a reason. I have a file on your real parents. I’ve tried to give it to you a thousand times, but every time I… I knew if I gave it to you we’d end up here.’

At the end of a nondescript passage Mouton pushes them into a room. They are shocked by the sound of a friendly dog barking. A beagle rushes to Mouton and nuzzles his shin with a low whine and a wet nose. Mouton opens a drawer, takes out a treat, and feeds it to the hound. Gives her a cursory pat on the head, gives her loose skin a gentle shake. Locks Seth’s and Kirsten’s guns away in a safe full of meticulously arranged weapons.

Kirsten recalls the image of dog hair on Betty/Barbara’s jersey, remembers the journo telling her that Betty/Barbara’s flat had dog food bowls, but no dog. Seth looks up, at the opposite wall, and Kirsten raises her eyes too. They stand and stare.

Pinned, stapled, and tied to the vast wall are hundreds of objects. Rings, coins, photographs, pieces of jewellery, dead flowers, frayed ribbons, candy, baby shoes, old toys. Like a vast artwork, a collage of found objects, except they know as they are looking that these objects were not found, but taken. Special things stolen from the people he had killed. Objets d’amour. Not just a regular serial killer’s bounty of murder mementoes. Not just a random hairclip or sweater or cufflink, but tokens of genuine affection. Layer upon layer of love, lost.

A love letter engraved on an antique piano key. A muddied toy rabbit. An Olympic gold medal. She sees the Holograph photo-projector she had given to her parents. Both feel their rage build. The beagle barks. Mouton ushers them out of the room and raps loudly on the adjacent double door. A voice inside instructs him to enter, and they tumble in.

The room couldn’t be more different to the bleached Matrix of the way in: soft light, warm colours, wood and gold, linen, organic textures. It’s someone’s office. No, more intimate than that: someone’s den. Keke is lying on the couch, as pale as Kirsten had ever seen her. She runs over, puts her hand over her mouth to see if she is still breathing, and she is, but the movements are shallow. How long has she been unconscious? Her nano-ink tattoo is so vivid it looks as if it is embossed, and her body is slick with perspiration. James hands her a black clamshell kit (New Tyre) that she unzips. Three brand new vials of insulin stare back at her. Kirsten fumbles with the case with shaking hands, can’t seem to co-ordinate her fingers. Eventually she gets a vial out, then looks for syringes, needles, but can’t find them. She hadn’t even considered this part: that she would have to load the syringe and inject her friend. Her trembling hands are all but useless.

‘Let me do it,’ says James. He finds something that looks like a pen in the side pouch, snaps the vial of insulin into it, and presses it against Keke’s thigh. He presses a button and Kirsten hears the hiss of the jab, watches as the vial empties. He puts the back of his hand to her forehead, then measures her blood sugar, pressure and pulse with his phone.

‘She’s going to be okay,’ he says. Kirsten doesn’t answer him, doesn’t look at him, pushes him out of the way and grabs Keke’s hand, bunches it into a tight fist, covers it with a blanket.

‘We wouldn’t have let her die,’ comes a voice from behind the mahogany desk. Dr Van der Heever swirls around in his chair and Kirsten recognises the icy irises behind his black-rimmed glasses (Wet Pebble).

‘You,’ says Kirsten. The word comes out the colour of trailing seaweed.

The doctor nods at Mouton, who forces Seth’s hands behind his body and clicks handcuffs on him. James takes Kirsten’s arm out of her sling to handcuff her. He does it as gently as possible, trying not to hurt her. She winces and squirms at his touch, as if his skin burns hers. There is a neat, metallic click, a perfect aqua-coloured square. She doesn’t see the second click, the bracelet for her injured arm, and James squeezes that same hand. She glares at him and he looks away. Slowly she tests the cuffs, and it’s true: he has left one open.

The doctor notices her hostility.

‘Dear Kate, don’t blame James,’ he says. ‘He had no choice but to bring you in.’

‘There’s always a choice,’ says Kirsten.

‘True. His options were: find a way of bringing you two in, or see you die. He has seen Inspector Mouton’s… convincing… work. He chose to bring you in.’

‘Mouton has been the one killing for you? A policeman?’ she asks the doctor. Then, to Mouton: ‘You killed those people? A sick woman, a young mother?’

‘He was simply following orders. He is extremely good at his line of work.’

‘Plus he gets to clean up the mess when he walks in as an inspector. I bet he’s really good at covering his tracks,’ says Seth.

‘Just one of his many talents,’ says the doctor.

‘Why?’ asks Kirsten, ‘Why the list, why the murders?’

Doctor Van der Heever pauses, as if considering whether to answer.

‘It’s complicated,’ he says, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

Keke’s breathing seems to get deeper; her sheen is disappearing.

‘The truth is,’ says the doctor, ‘the truth is that Deletion is always a last resort. We did everything we could to stop it from getting to this stage. Unfortunately, people don’t always know what is good for them. Or their daughters.’

‘You mean my parents? My so-called parents?’

‘Your – adoptive – mother. After being loyal for over thirty years she suddenly decided that she wanted to tell you about your past. She was a brilliant scientist, a real asset to the Project. Her decline was most unfortunate. If she had just been quiet, as she had been all these years… so many lives could have been spared.’

‘Including hers?’

‘Including hers. Your father’s. And your cell’s.’

‘What? Cell?’

‘Your mother deciding to tell you about the Genesis Project compromised the cell. We don’t take chances. Compromised cells are closed down, their members removed from the program.’

‘Killed,’ says Seth.

‘Deleted is our preferred term.’

‘I’m sure it is,’ says Kirsten.

‘Every generation,’ says the doctor, interlacing his fingers in front of him on the desk, ‘the Genesis Project selects 7 very special infants to join the program. We are very rigorous when it comes to this selection and hundreds of babies all over the country are considered. They need to match certain – strict – criteria. They must be absolutely healthy, highly intelligent, and have some special talent or gift. Also, during their gestation, their parents must have at some time seriously considered family planning—’

Kirsten: ‘Family planning while pregnant? You mean… abortion?’

‘Abortion, or adoption. They must have gone as far as signing the papers: a demonstration that they were not 100% committed to raising the child themselves for whatever reason.’

This stings Kirsten and Seth equally: so they were not wanted in the first place anyway. When they had discovered they had been abducted a little flame had ignited in their hearts: they were once loved, once cherished, before they were stolen away. Now that flame is snuffed out. Not one, but two sets of parents that didn’t truly want them. Kirsten knew she shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, in the original story, Hansel and Gretel’s parents lost them in the woods on purpose.

‘Why?’ asks Kirsten, ‘why would the Genesis Project steal children?’

‘The Project is concerned with far more than seven little children. In fact, the clonotype program was really just a small hobby of mine in which the others indulged me. Our vision is far more all-encompassing than that.’

‘You wanted to clone us?’ asks Seth.

‘Not clone you as such… more like, try to isolate the genes you carry that makes you… different. Special. Then we could recreate those genes in a lab and, well, graft them into new babies being born. Can you imagine?’ he asks, eyes sparkling, ‘Can you imagine what our country could be if all our citizens were healthy, clever, strong, creative?’

‘So that’s what the Fontus thing is about,’ says Seth. The doctor throws him a sharp glance. ‘GeniX. Eugenics. You audacious motherfucker.’

Van der Heever shifts in his chair. ‘The word eugenics has become unpopular of late.’

‘Perhaps because it’s an archaic, racist, ethically reprehensible practice,’ says Kirsten.

‘What we do isn’t racist,’ he says.

‘Really?’ asks Kirsten. ‘Is that why you are using the country’s drinking water to practically wipe out South Africa’s black population?’

‘No,’ says the doctor, ‘not the black population. The poor, uneducated population.’

‘This is post-apartheid South Africa. Most of the poor people are black.’

‘Merely coincidence,’ shrugs the doctor. ‘Many non-whites are rich. In fact, very rich, not so?’

‘Coincidence?’ says Seth, ‘we have that fucked up legacy because of people like you who dabble in social engineering.’

James manages to get Kirsten’s attention without anyone else in the room noticing.

‘Listen,’ Dr Van der Heever says. ‘Fertility rates are plummeting the world over. It’s a well-known fact that in first world countries infertility is most prevalent in the educated and employed strata – we may even go as far as to say – the intelligentsia. The higher IQs go, the less chance of procreation. To add to that, we have the Childfree Movement: Ambitious couples are choosing to prioritise their careers and lifestyles over starting families. And yet the world’s population is still mushrooming out of control. People with limited resources, limited faculties, are reproducing, putting a huge strain on the world’s – finite – reserves.’

James wiggles his finger to draw her eye down, then, barely moving, he points at his shirt, the couch, his jacket, then touches his hair.

‘It’s a catastrophe waiting to happen,’ says the doctor. ‘So, the three of us,’

‘The Trinity?’ asks Seth.

‘The Trinity,’ he says.

Kirsten, frustrated, looks away, but James keeps staring at her. When she looks at him again he does the exact same thing. Shirt, couch, jacket, hair. He actually points twice at the couch, which she missed first time around.

‘We met in varsity,’ says the doctor, ‘took the same ethics class in first year. The debate question was: should South African citizens be required to obtain a permit before they procreate? This is, after all, what people do in Europe and other such countries, when they want to adopt a pet, an animal. There is a battery of psychological tests; a home screening. The system works well. The whole class was in an uproar: of course not! everyone yelled. What about human rights? The constitution! But the three of us argued in favour of the hypothesis. Human rights on the one hand, quality of human life on the other.’

Shirt, couch, couch, jacket, hair.

Seth wonders how many times the doctor had given this impassioned speech; how often he rehearses it in the shower, or while shaving.

‘When tap water became undrinkable, it came to us. It was such an elegant solution. Dose only the state-subsidised drinking water, and leave the more expensive waters pure. If the privileged citizens drink Hydra for whatever reason, and find they have problems conceiving, they have the means to get help. Fertility clinics abound.’

‘It’s cruel. Barbaric.’

‘Nature is cruel, Miss Lovell. Do you know that the embryos of sand tiger sharks kill and eat their siblings in utero? It’s the epitome of survival of the fittest. You can’t fight evolution.’

‘Children may be the only gifts a poor family has.’

The doctor laughs.

‘Ah, now you’re being sentimental. What about the burden those ‘gifts’ cause the family, and the country? The planet? What about those children who have to be brought up in dire circumstances? They fall through the cracks. Before we started implementing The Program the situation was reaching breaking point. Hundreds of babies being born every day and South Africa’s education system was broken.

‘Do you know what a broken education system does? It puts people on the street. Criminals. Beggars. Infants were being hired for the day by professional street beggars to garner more sympathy from drivers. There were newborns for sale, advertised in the online classifieds! Other babies were lost on crowded beaches never to be claimed, left in dumpsters, or worse.

‘In May, 2013, I was having a personal crisis. Wondering if my work would ever make a real difference. In that month two abandoned babies were found: one wrapped in a plastic bag, burnt. The other was stuck in a sewage pipe – his mother had tried to flush him down the toilet. A healthy newborn! And you talk to me of barbarians. The bottom line was that children were too easy to come by, often unwanted, abused, neglected. The Trinity vowed to take a stand against their suffering. It was – is – incredibly personal. We all have our own stories. Christopher Walden was brutally sodomised – raped – by his priest at a church camp. He managed to escape to a nearby house and use their telephone to call his parents. You know what they did? Told him to stop making up stories and go back to camp. Then they called the priest and told him where he was.’

The doctor walks over to Mouton.

‘Mouton,’ he says, now with compassion in his voice. ‘Show them your arm.’

For the first time, Mouton is hesitant to obey orders.

‘Show them,’ says the doctor. ‘Help them to understand the work we are doing here.’

Mouton sets his jaw and lifts the sleeve of his shirt, revealing the entire burn scar. It travels from his wrist to his armpit. A swirling motif of shining vandalism.

‘That’s not one burn. It’s not from a once-off childhood accident. Marius’s father used to hold his arm over a flame for punishment every time he cried, because “Men Don’t Cry”. A candle, the gas stove, a cigarette lighter, whatever was handy at the time. It started on his first birthday.’

Mouton pulls his sleeve back down. Shirks his shirt into place.

‘My scars aren’t so obvious,’ says Van der Heever, ‘my father preferred the crunch of breaking bones. That, and psychological abuse. Once, my dog, the only friend I had, followed a farmworker home. My father was furious. That night I put out extra food out for him, for when he came home. The next morning, when he returned, galloping and barking and happy to see us all, my father shot him in the head. The dog had been disloyal, he said. It was to teach me the value of loyalty. I was six years old.’

He takes a breath, lifts his glasses, rubs the bridge of his nose.

‘I’m sure you can’t imagine that now. It was before your time. Babies were seen as… expendable. Too many to go around, and most born to undeserving parents. Abuse was inevitable. Unchecked procreation was a scourge on our society. I knew when I heard that story about the baby being flushed down the toilet… I knew then that my work was vital.’

Shirt, couch, couch, jacket, hair. Blue, brown, brown, grey, yellow.

‘Don’t you see?’ he asks, ‘what we planned so long ago, what we have been working towards, is finally starting to come to fruition. Peace and Purity. By tamping off the birth rate we have solved a host of societal ills. There are no more abandoned babies. Schools now have enough books and tablets and teachers and space for their learners, and children are looked after and cherished. Fewer uneducated people means less unemployment, less crime, less social grants. More tax money to invest in the future of the country. Better infrastructure, better schooling, better healthcare.’

Blue, brown, brown, grey, yellow, thinks Kirsten. 49981. It’s the code, she realises: the code to get out.

‘Don’t you see?’ he says again, this time more urgently, pride like fever in his face. ‘We did it! We are responsible for the ultimate bloodless revolution!’