Page 83 of Prodigal Son

“Ryan Anderson is in on this, too?” Albie asked.

“In some way, I guess. You’d have to tie her up and smack her around to get the real truth, though, ‘cause I don’t know it.”

Unprompted, Nicky stepped in and slapped him, open-handed, but hard.

“Ahh!” Clive shouted, ducking away too late, eyes squeezing shut. “What was that for?”

“For your shit attitude,” Albie deadpanned. “I need the names and contact numbers of your handlers, all of them.”

Clive heaved a sigh. “Fine.”

One of the young ones handed Albie a pad and pen, and Axelle realized that was more or less it. A few hits, but no broken fingers, no spray of blood. Was Clive that easy? Or was Albie that good?

Raven stood up, fast and sudden, and left the pantry. Long strides, not trying to sneak out. Axelle noted the way Clive’s gaze caught on her, and followed her out before she got to her own feet, and shot the man a murderous gaze. When he finally noted her, and startled back in his chair, it gave her a small measure of satisfaction.

Raven was taller than her, legs longer, and she could walk much faster. By the time Axelle caught up with her on the other side of the kitchen, Raven was rooting through one of the big industrial freezers.

“You alright?”

Raven straightened, frosted bottle of vodka in-hand. “Yeah. Let’s get smashed.”

Twenty-Three

“Understand something,” Morgan said, once they were all seated, holding cups of hot, spiked cider that Nora had brought them with a grudging look. “I didn’t know all of this at the time. I’ve managed to piece it together bit-by-bit over the last thirty-some-odd years, and I’m confident that it’s the truth, but I acknowledge there are things that I’ll never know. Maybe even that I don’t want to know.

“Project Emerald wasn’t a military experiment, but it was to have military applications. From what I’ve gathered, the government contracted a highly experimental neutral third party to come up with weaponized humans. Not soldiers, let’s be clear about that. These were assassins, designed to blend in, to infiltrate, to kill, and carry out delicate plots that couldn’t be handled by bombs and waves of shock troops. This organization didn’t even have a name, but was a group of doctors and military professionals who’d all been discharged for behavioral reasons. People who the military didn’t trust to responsibly carry out orders and shape the next generation of young troops. Wild cards.

“Based on the files I read, their plan was to get hold of children – actual babies – and raise them as assassins from the ground up. Never coddle them, or give them sweets, or let them think they were loved. No play-dates, and crayons, or–”

“Jesus,” Eden whispered with great feeling. “Jesus Christ.”

“You get the gist,” Morgan said with a shrug. “We were all brought up with training and lessons on warfare, and spy tactics. We didn’t think anything of it, for so long. It was the only life we’d known. We were prepared, in every way, to serve the Crown in this way – that’s what they told us, anyway.

“What actually happened was that someone high-up, outside of the project, found out what was going on and shut it down. Shut it down hard. Everything was disbanded, and we were turned loose.

“They didn’t want to turn us loose, mind. Not all of them. There was some debate amongst our handlers. The scientists and doctors, the ones who’d put all the work into developing us, hated the idea of destroying their years and years of work. Certainly, we could be repurposed, they argued. But the ones in charge – the chief of which was a bloke who always told us to call him Morris – wanted us put down. We knew too much. We were live ordnance with the pins pulled, ready to go off in their eyes.

“Doc Hannaford got us out. And once we were loose, there was no stopping us. They’d trained us too well, and we were too resourceful. Once we were in the wind, that was it.

“We didn’t have names as such, so we all adopted identities. Scrambled about a bit, but all eventually figured out what we wanted to do, and how to do it. We were trained to kill diplomats and kings; crafting resumes wasn’t any big deal. We found workarounds for drug tests – anything that required blood, or hair, or piss, or fingerprints. Anything that might ping in a database somewhere. And things were quiet for a long, long time.

“But then Pseudonym started up.

“I didn’t – none of us knew, at first, that it was at all related to Project Emerald. Why would we? It was just this massive corporation, lots of smaller businesses and divisions under its umbrella.

“I was still working for MI5 when I found out what it really was. A bomb threat got called in: suspicious package in one of the parliament offices. Turned out to be a fake, but it had been left on purpose to scare everyone: mission accomplished on that front. It was sloppily done, and we caught up with the perp three days later. He was some grungy druggie piece of shit, living out of his mum’s flat. Conspiracy theorist, you know? Hated the government, wanted to give everyone a good rattle. He had a whole bulletin board full of intended targets – we took it in for evidence. And one of my techs put a list together so we could go check out those places, ask if they’d had threats, warn them, you know. The Pseudonym main offices – big shiny skyscraper – were there. I had time, so I went myself. Turns out they’d had other threats. The president wanted to talk to me. Would I mind taking the lift up to the penthouse and having a chat with him? Sure. So, I did. And guess who the president was.

“He was about a hundred years old, but I’d recognize that face anywhere: it was Morris.”

“You’re shitting me,” Fox said.

Morgan shook his head. “He recognized me, too. I thought the old bugger might have an aneurism right there. We kept it short. I was polite. And then I got the fuck out of there. When I got home that night, Nora said there’d been a black car parked on the street for an hour. We packed up and left our townhouse that night. I quit my job over the bloody phone.”

“You disappeared,” Eden said. She sounded numb. “No one would give us any explanation–”

“Because I hadn’t given one. I got in contact with the rest of the boys, and I went down deep. Things were quiet for a while.”

“Then why did Dad get involved?” Fox asked. His heart pounded, a steady, sustainable canter.

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