Why You Were Taken

WHITE HOLE ₃₉

Johannesburg, 2021

‘No,’ says James, breaking his silence. ‘It can’t be.’

‘What have you done?’ whispers Kirsten.

‘You came to me for help,’ Van der Heever says, ‘you wanted to have a baby.’

‘Not like this,’ she says.

‘I know it’s still a novel idea to you, but this is how all babies will be made in the future.’

‘No,’ says Kirsten, shaking her head.

‘There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s a perfectly healthy baby!’

‘You’re saying he’s ours? Mine and Kirsten’s? You used our DNA?’ asks James.

‘That’s what I’ve been telling you! All your best traits, with none of your problematic genes. We switched off two for cancer, and one for dementia, I believe. He’ll have Kirsten’s hair, your eyes. Your fine motor skills, and Kirsten’s artistic talent.’

The baby starts fussing, his skin blooms pink. The doctor motions for James to take off Kirsten’s handcuffs, and as he does so, she feels his fingers slip into the back pocket of her wrecked jeans. A set of small keys: for Seth’s handcuffs, she guesses. She takes the baby from Van der Heever without thinking, just scoops him up with her un-broken arm and rocks him, inhales the warmth of his skin, kisses his forehead. The baby calms, gazes up at her, barely blinking. She can feel him, smell him, and in that moment she knows acutely this is no dream. This baby – her baby – is real. Her whole body stupidly longs for the bundle in her arms.

‘Why did you do this?’ Kirsten asks, keeping her voice low. ‘Why bring us in and tell us everything? Why didn’t you just have us killed, like the rest?’

The doctor puts his hands behind his back, strolls towards the empty incubators, leans against one of them.

‘I’m getting older now. Softer? My health isn’t what it used to be. It’s too late to switch off the genes that are causing my heart to fail. My career has always been all-consuming. I’ll continue working but it’s time for me to start taking some time off. Play golf. Travel. Watch my grandson grow up.’

‘You can’t be serious,’ says James. ‘You think we can just forget all this and play Happy Families?’

‘Grandson?’ says Kirsten.

Van der Heever’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘You haven’t told her?’

‘Why would I tell her?’ demands James. ‘Why would I tell anyone?’

His words hang in the air: the outburst makes Kirsten’s head spin.

‘Father?’ she looks at James. ‘He’s your father?’

‘Not by choice,’ spits James. ‘I broke all ties with him as soon as I had an idea about what he was doing. But this… my imagination didn’t go this far.’

‘Not your choice,’ says the doctor. ‘Indeed. It was my choice.’

‘What?’

‘My choice, to be your father. You were the first of the 1991 seven to be chosen to be incorporated into the clonotype program. You were the first to be… taken.’

Kirsten thinks of the list, pictures it in her mind, sees the code of the last person on the list: number 7. Sees the colours, and recognises Marmalade’s date of birth. So he was also abducted, she realises, was also a victim. Abducted and then used to lure the rest of us. Bait. A toddler version of Stockholm syndrome.

James blinks.

‘I am one of the seven?’ he asks, amazed. ‘I am not biologically tied to you? We don’t share the same blood?’ Something dark and heavy lifts off his shoulders; a shadow escapes his face.

‘I did… care for you,’ says Van der Heever. ‘I didn’t make the same mistakes my father made, with me. You were always well-cared for.’

‘You abused me,’ says James.

‘I never lifted a hand to you.’

‘You used me as a lure,’ says James. ‘I was a child.’

Kirsten gazes at the baby who has now fallen asleep in her arms. His energy, like James’s, is orange (Candied Minneola). Fresh, tangy, sweet. Mini-Marmalade. She feels a rush of tenderness.

‘So, you now have a choice,’ says the doctor. ‘You can take your baby, walk out the door, and never look back. As long as you keep the Genesis Project a secret, no harm will come to the three of you. We will be watching over you—’

‘Surveilling us,’ says James.

‘Yes, surveilling you. And making sure you are safe and that life is… easy.’

‘What’s the catch?’ asks Kirsten.

‘No catch, if you are willing to co-operate.’

‘And if we aren’t?’

‘Then we’ll take the baby back.’

‘Like you took us,’ says Kirsten.

‘Like we took you. For the greater good.’

‘I have a hard time believing that you’re just going to let us walk out of here,’ says Seth. ‘What are you not telling us?’

‘I said I would let Kirsten and James go, with the baby. You, on the other hand, we can’t release. With your history, your contacts at Alba… we just can’t take the chance. I’m sure you understand.’

Seth nods.

‘No,’ says Kirsten.

‘It’s a good deal,’ says Seth. ‘If I were you, I’d take it.’

‘No way,’ she says.

‘It’s not like it would be the end for you, Mr Denicker. You would work for us,’ he says to Seth. ‘A chemgineer of your ability would be a great asset to The Project. You would choose your hours; we’d pay you handsomely. Not that you’d need the money. Everything down here is complimentary. And you’ll have an extremely beautiful companion in that journalist who also needs to stay.’

‘But I have to live… underground – literally – for the rest of my life?’

‘For the foreseeable future, yes. Until people come to understand and accept our work. It’s not as dreary as it sounds. Think of it as… living in a high-end hotel with every one of your needs met.’

The doctor takes a clicker out of his lab-coat pocket and switches on a hologram in front of them. It’s like a hotel brochure in 4D: there is a picture of a beautiful suite, impeccably furnished, followed by other images the doctor clicks through.

‘We have a heated swimming pool, sunlight rooms, halls of trees for nature walks. Movies, games, room service 24/7. As a bonus, you’ll have a personal assistant who will make sure that your every need is fulfilled. Mouton, remind me, what is the young lady’s name again?’

‘Fiona,’ says Mouton. ‘Fiona Botes.’

Seth’s face flushes.

‘The finer details will all become clear once you settle in.’

The doctor switches the projection off.

‘You’ll also have access to all of this,’ he says, gesturing at the lab equipment. ‘Everything you need. We have equipment you wouldn’t believe exists.’

‘But I’ll be your prisoner.’

‘That’s looking at the cloud, instead of the – rather significant – silver lining. I’m giving you – giving all of you – a way out. A unique mercy. I’d advise you to give it some serious consideration.’

‘Five-star prison, with benefits, or death,’ says Seth. ‘I guess I’ll take prison and see how it works out.’

‘You can’t work for them!’ says Kirsten. ‘They represent everything you hate.’

‘Did you not hear the options presented?’ asks Seth. ‘You’d prefer me dead?’

‘Of course not. I just thought… I just think you’d prefer it, over this. Over them.’

‘Then you overestimate my moral compass. Or underestimate my will to stay alive.’

As they re-enter the den Kirsten sees Keke’s eyes flutter closed. Without warning, James leaps at Mouton, tries to bring him down, scrabbles for the gun in his hand. Mouton roars. Kirsten whisks the baby onto the couch, needing both hands free to unlock Seth’s cuffs. The doctor, now behind his desk, calmly opens a drawer, takes out a shiny pistol, snicks off the safety mechanism. Mouton, outraged to see that Kirsten had Seth’s keys, aims his gun at her and fires.

The shot knocks her to the ground and she feels a sudden heaviness in her chest, and a sick warmth spreading. Her hearing is muted but she can hear the baby crying, as if he is behind a wall. She can’t see, can’t breathe. Her breastbone is on fire. A mint-coloured lightness; a searing sadness. The baby – her baby – wails.

This is what it feels like, she thinks, to die.

She expected relief, if anything. Instead it feels like her heart is being stretched, shredded. She tries to reach for her child but she can’t move. She waits for the eventual blackness, blankness of death, but it doesn’t come.

She senses movement through her closed lids and opens them. Her vision is blurry: the animated shapes of James and Mouton are still struggling in silent slow motion, the white figure of the doctor has his pistol pointed at them. Keke on the couch.

She can’t see Seth. Where is Seth? She feels her heart beating, so she knows she is still alive. Things are coming into focus. She’s pinned to the floor. She tries to move again and that’s when she sees him: her brother, slack-mouthed, white-skinned, lying on top of her.

‘Seth?’ she says, but can’t hear herself. ‘Seth?’ but he doesn’t move, and then she knows that the warmth and the crushing weight is his. Knows that he had jumped in front of the bullet meant for her heart and had trapped it in his own instead. She shuffles under him, uses her good arm to try to ease his body off hers, tries to get free. Her sense of hearing starts to return and the baby’s screaming slashes her vision. She hunches over Seth, tries to find his pulse, but there is too much noise and too much yellow adrenaline singing through her body, numbing the pads of her fingers. She begins CPR, just as James had taught her.

1 and 2 and 3, she says to herself. 1 and 2 and 3.

Blue sparks travel up her injured arm and lodge in her clavicle, shock her jawbone. She continues the compressions: wave after wave of jagged Pollen Yellow and Traffic Light Red and Fresh Sage Leaf Green. Van der Heever keeps his gun aimed at Mouton and James as they struggle.

‘Stop it!’ shouts van der Heever. ‘Stop it immediately!’ but the men carry on their clumsy wrestling. ‘This has been my life’s work. It cannot end today!’

No one pays any attention to the flailing doctor.

‘This lab will self-destruct as soon as my heart stops beating. Do you understand that? Do you realise what is at stake?’

Kirsten looks up momentarily, sees his face is taut with anguish, and feels nothing for him. She turns her attention back to Seth, only then realising that there is no blood. She sticks her finger into the bullet-hole and finds it dry. Kevlarskin. Tries for a pulse again, and finds it. Out cold, but alive. The baby screams and screams from the couch. Mouton is eventually able to throw James to the ground. He stops resisting when he looks up into the barrel of Mouton’s gun.

‘Let me reiterate,’ says the doctor, taking a calming breath, ‘If I die, we all die. There are explosives in every room that were designed specifically to blow this place to dust. We cannot risk anyone finding any evidence here. I have a one-of-a-kind pacemaker in my heart: if it stops beating, the pacemaker sends a signal to the bomb and detonates it.’

This seems to calm the room. Kirsten crawls over to the baby, gathers him up, tries to comfort him. Puts a pants-polished knuckle into his mouth to suck on. Van der Heever follows her with his pistol. James moves to stand up and go towards her, but Mouton shakes his gun and says ‘Uh-uh,’ motioning for him to stay where he is.

‘You said you wouldn’t harm her if I brought her in! I had to believe you. I’m asking you as the person you raised as your son…’

‘You were never my son,’ says the doctor, giving Mouton the signal to shoot them both. Mouton takes aim at James, and Kirsten shouts ‘No!’

Before Mouton squeezes the trigger, Keke presses the button on the magic wand that Kirsten had tucked into her fist earlier and tasers him in the back. He yells out, his body convulsing with the current, letting off a few shots into the ceiling and then into the wall.

She tasers him again, knocking him off his feet; unconscious. The doctor fires at Kirsten but she ducks, and the bullets land in the gilded frame of an oil painting. Keke points the lipstick at Van der Heever. Just as James gets Mouton’s gun out of his hand and points it at the doctor, the doctor turns his pistol on him.

‘If I die,’ he says again, ‘we all die.’

Keke hesitates, not sure what the taser would do to the incendiary pacemaker. Kirsten cries out as the doctor shoots James in the shoulder. James clenches his jaw and pulls the trigger, twice, and Kirsten sees two black apertures appear in the doctor’s white coat. The force of the shot pushes him back a few steps, and he looks at James in astonishment.

‘You were never my father,’ says James.

Somehow, the doctor has enough strength to grasp his trigger, and he shoots James again, this time in the chest, causing his body to fall backwards and collapse at an awkward angle. Now, battling to stand, Van der Heever aims at Kirsten and the baby, but Keke moves quickly and tasers him before he has the chance to fire, and he falls down onto his knees, then onto his front. Kirsten crouches over James.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she says, putting pressure on his wound. ‘It wasn’t your fault. You were four years old.’

James’s face crumples.

‘You were four!’ Her hands, slippery with blood, slide off his torso. ‘Hold on,’ she says, putting them back in place. ‘Just hang on,’ she says.

She tears open his shirt, front and back, grabs his medical bag, claws it open, empties the contents onto the floor beside her. She finds some Platelet-Plasters, rips the backing off with her teeth, and sticks them onto the entry wound. She knows it won’t help.

‘Kitty, you know your Black Hole?’ he says, ‘That cold… emptiness…?’

‘Don’t talk,’ says Kirsten.

‘You have always been the opposite of that, to me.’

‘Sssshhh.’

‘Whatever the opposite of a black hole is. A white hole?’

‘Yes, a white hole,’ whispers Kirsten past the stone in her throat.

A white hole: the opposite of a vacuum. The opposite of nothing.

The ability to escape.

Kirsten realises they’re sitting in a pool of red. Sees he’s fading. James puts one hand on her arm, the other on the baby.

‘You were always that. You were everything,’ he says, and the light goes out of his eyes. She shakes him, tries to wake him, but she knows he is gone. She doesn’t say that white holes don’t exist.

‘I love you too,’ she says to his still body, ‘I love you too,’ and for the first time in her life that she can remember, huge sobs crash out of her mouth and she is wailing, tears mixing with blood.

A shrill siren stings their ears.

‘We need to go,’ Seth says to Kirsten, grabbing her arm, lifting her off the floor, away from James’s still body.

‘We can’t leave him here!’

‘This building is going to blow up,’ says Seth. ‘We won’t get out in time if we take him.’ Kirsten looks at Keke, sees how grey she still is, feels her own strength leaking out of her body. Despite losing so much, she finds that she still wants to live. They leave the office, but stop almost immediately when faced with the colourless maze of passages and rooms.

‘I don’t know where to go,’ whispers Keke. ‘I was carried in. I was barely conscious.’

Kirsten looks at the photos she took with her locket. The pictures get them halfway but then they are lost. The siren blares. She looks around, tries to think, but all she can see are the bombs in the walls. She looks down at the ground.

‘Can you see that?’ she asks Keke, pointing at the floor tiles (Toaster Waffles).

‘What?’

‘Scuffmarks.’

‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ says Seth.

‘Breadcrumbs.’

‘What?’

‘Hansel & Gretel. It’s a trail of breadcrumbs. There weren’t any marks coming in,’ says Kirsten. ‘Marmalade… was walking behind us. He marked it for us.’

They follow the grey marks on the floor, turn a few corners, and find the exit: the huge vault-like door. It’s locked. Keke, panting, sinks to the floor. She is perspiring heavily again.

Shirt, couch, couch, jacket, hair, thinks Kirsten, and punches 49981 into the number pad. One of the two red lights turns green, and the door remains locked. They both see the small biometric scanpad at the same time, know that it’s for a thumbprint.

Inky dread, mixed with neon nerves: Kirsten hands the baby to Seth, tells him to wait with Keke. She follows the scuffmarks back to the den. She doesn’t look around at the devastation, the bodies, tries to remain clear and focussed. She leans over Mouton’s vast torso, finds her pocketknife in his jeans.

As she pulls the knife free his bear claw grabs her wrist. She screams white bolts and knees him as hard as she can, landing a good one in his stomach, but he hardly flinches. He grunts and starts pulling her body towards him. A meaty tug-of-war. She screams, kicks. The siren screeches zigzags.

She uses her fractured arm to elbow him in the face, breaking his nose so that he can’t see. They cry out at the same time and he loosens his grip. Kirsten launches forward, scooping Mouton’s gun off the floor and turning on her back, taking aim from between her knees. He roars and lunges at her, but she is quicker than him and gets two shots in and rolls out of the way before he crashes down next to her. She shoots him again, and again, until she has emptied the magazine; until she has no doubt that he is dead.

How much time does she have left? She has no idea. She is hyperventilating, trying not to shake. Picks up the pocketknife again and springs the blade.

Kirsten starts to cut off James’s thumb. She can’t saw through the long bone, she doesn’t have the strength or the time, so instead she cuts deep around the bigger knuckle until the joint is exposed, then digs the knife into the joint and pops the thumb out. The horror of what she is doing does not escape her, but she can’t afford to think about it now. She files it away somewhere close and dark. She grabs the digit and runs. She doesn’t think of the mutilated hand left behind, the body, the face, the lips. She thinks about getting to Keke, to Seth and her baby, and getting out in time. Staying alive.

The alarm is increasing in intensity: she is sure there are only seconds left. She flies out of the room, intent on the exit, but halfway down the first corridor she hears something that stops her. Barking. Then beneath the siren: a snuffle, a whine, a whimper. She takes a few more steps. She doesn’t have time to save a dog. If she went back for the beagle they would probably all burn. She begins to scratch and whine. All the swearwords Kirsten knows explode in her head, splattering the inside of her skull. She turns around, runs back to Mouton’s memento room, and gathers up the dog who is sitting waiting for her as if she knew she would come.

With the dog in her arms she hurtles back down the corridor, reaches the security door where Keke is lying on the floor. She holds the thumb to the scanner while she punches in James’s code again. Both lights turn green and the door jolts open.

She puts the dog down and levers Keke up, supports some of her weight with her good shoulder and gets her through the door. Seth carries the baby, and a gun. The elevator is disabled, so they jog up the stairs, losing count of the flights – flights and flights of stairs – going as fast as they can, the dog at their heels.

They all lose the rhythm at different times, causing them to stumble, waste split seconds. Keke stops with only a few more steps to go, sways and falls down, causing her and Kirsten to tumble down half a flight, sending the dog into a flurry of barking. Keke doesn’t get up. Seth passes Kirsten the baby and picks Keke up, throws her limp body over his shoulder for the last few stairs.

They trip out of the front door. Kirsten glances down at the baby to see if he is okay. He frowns back. She tucks him further into her body to protect him. The blue gleam from her broken arm is gone. They get to barely a hundred meters away from the building before there is an ear-splitting roar behind them which hurls them up into the air and crashes them down again onto hard concrete with such force that they are knocked out. The baby wails.