‘This tiny amount would be capable of rendering a subject unconscious for a few hours,’ she says. ‘Given the amount of buds harvested from that cutting, Niema could have created enough sedative to knock out the entire village.’
Emory murmurs, an idea suggesting itself. ‘Would it need to be inserted or ingested?’ she asks.
‘Inserted,’ replies Thea. ‘Why?’
‘Do you think the sedative was used on the dead woman Seth found?’ asks Emory, ignoring Thea’s question. ‘Adil told me that he overheard Niema talking to another woman in here the night she died.’
Hephaestus takes an angry step towards her, forcing Seth to step quickly between them. He flashes a warning glance at his daughter, but he can understand her impatience. She’s trying to save the entire island, while Hephaestus is protecting the memory of the woman who put it in danger.
‘I overheard Niema talking about an experiment she was going to conduct, and how risky it was for the subject,’ says Emory, staring past her father at Hephaestus. ‘If it worked, she said it would give humanity a better future.’
Thea snorts contemptuously.
‘Is that what she thought she was doing!?’ she exclaims, shaking her head. ‘At least that explains why the dead woman’s blood was full to bursting with conidia.’
‘What’s conidia?’ asks Clara.
‘It’s the fungus which connects us to Abi,’ she says briskly. ‘A few hundred spores will allow her to access our thoughts, but for anything more – say enforcing a curfew, or taking control of a body – there needs to be around a thousand in somebody’s system. I ran a post-mortem on the dead woman you left in my lab, Seth. She had double that number. That’s what killed her. Your people were engineered from the ground up to handle huge quantities of conidia, but such a quantity is lethal to humans. It always has been.’
‘Why would Niema intentionally flood a human system with something she knows will kill them?’ asks Seth, horrified.
Thea is studying the chair, running her fingers along the rivets, her disgust at its purpose plain.
‘If you came to work at Blackheath, a condition of employment was that you had to have Abi implanted, which is why myself and Hephaestus can hear her,’ she explains. ‘Our research was worth billions, and it was Abi’s job to monitor our thoughts and make sure we weren’t stealing secrets, or committing corporate espionage for a rival. Anybody who left the company had their memories wiped, so they couldn’t take their research with them, but that was the limit of what she could do. Niema always talked about giving Abi greater control over her employees, but she could never find a way to make it work without killing the host. About fifty years ago, she came to me, claiming she had the answer and wanted my help to start human trials. I reviewed her research, and disagreed with her assessment. I told her plainly that anybody she tried her procedure on would be dead within a few days. Moreover, I would end my life before giving control of my body to Abi. Niema listened, and seemed to agree. Naively, I thought she’d dropped the idea.’
She flicks the chair’s metal headband. ‘Evidently, that was another thing she was lying about.’
‘Why would she carry on with an experiment that dangerous?’ asks Emory.
Thea taps the console of one of the machines absently. ‘Niema had everybody under her thumb for so long, that she couldn’t stand the idea of going back to a world where she wasn’t in control. She wanted the same authority over humanity that she had over you. She didn’t want to let them out, and watch them destroy her precious island, or build a civilisation that wasn’t exactly to her specification. She didn’t want to feel threatened again.’
‘She was afraid,’ says Seth softly.
‘Powerful people usually are,’ replies Thea. ‘They have the most to lose.’
SIXTY
Emory’s outside the lighthouse, on the very edge of the cliffs, staring down at the thrashing water far below.
For the first time, she can see the outline of what happened last night. Niema’s failed experiment, then her return to the village. She laid bare her secrets and made an announcement, which somebody stabbed her for.
There’s one piece missing, and she has a plan to get it. Once she has that, she’ll have everything.
She blows out a breath, wondering what good it will do. Even if she can prove who killed Niema, the only way to stop the fog is to execute them. How would she live with herself if she let that happen?
But what’s the alternative? Keep the secret? Let the murderer live in the cauldron garden with them forever, while everybody worries whether they’ll do it again?
Her eyes drift upwards to the darkening sky. The sun is already rolling down the side of the volcano, the moon clambering over the horizon. The fog will hit the coast in the morning. Whatever her decision, she’ll have to make it fast.
Hearing a noise behind her, she sees Hephaestus emerging from the lighthouse, his face stricken. His eyes are closed as he sucks in deep breaths, trying to compose himself.
Occasionally, she forgets that Niema was his mother. She can’t imagine how hard this must be for him.
Not that she can find much sympathy.
She hates the elders so much, it actually frightens her. It’s a slithering presence in her body, squeezing her heart, and pressing against her lungs. It’s whispering in her thoughts, as loud as Abi ever has. It wants them to suffer. It wants them humiliated and hurt, the way Adil was all those years ago.
‘I don’t have the power to do that,’ I say. ‘Niema directed me to preserve every human life. I can’t act against them.’
‘What if one of them killed her?’ she demands.
‘If you want to save the island, you may have to do something you don’t want to do.’
‘You can’t expect me to hurt them?’
‘No, but you may have to stand aside and let Adil do it.’Emory considers that as she walks towards Hephaestus, close enough to be heard over the roar of the ocean, but far enough that he can’t catch hold of her the way he did in Thea’s lab.
‘Can we talk for a minute?’ she asks.
He stares at her blankly, as if baffled that she’s addressing him. It’s been the same way ever since she was a little girl. Unlike Thea who took apprentices, or Niema, who made herself part of the village, Hephaestus never lived among them. He never talked to them, or spent time with them. He barely ever looked at them.
She didn’t understand that attitude until she saw the little girl in the cauldron garden. Hephaestus doesn’t believe the villagers are people. He still thinks of them as tools. Interacting with them is worthless, because they’re worthless.
‘I know you were helping Niema with her experiments, and I know the woman my father found on the rocks wasn’t your first victim,’ says Emory, before he can speak. ‘We found the other bodies in the infirmary. Niema was trying to get this experiment right for years. I overhead the conversation between you two in the rear yard two nights before she was killed. You didn’t want to do it, but she talked you into it. That’s why you threw the body off the cliff. You were hoping to hide the evidence so Thea would never learn you were involved.’
Each fact hits him like a hammer blow, chipping away at his calm exterior, revealing the guilt lurking beneath. He was a billionaire’s son. He never had to learn to hide his emotions convincingly, or make excuses for his behaviour. The world did that for him.
‘That’s –’
‘You’ve known Blackheath wasn’t sealed for years, and you kept that secret from your only friend,’ says Emory, keeping up the attack. ‘How do you think she’ll react, when she finds out?’