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Peter Archibald sat at his desk, the light from the window shining across the front half but not hitting him. The shadows kept his face from view so James could not see him. James wasn't sure why he'd been called in.
"James, I'm worried."
That put the clincher on it. James had never before seen or heard of Peter Archibald being worried. He managed to keep the look of surprise from his face as he replied.
"What is it, sir?"
"She hasn't reported in, James. I don't know where she is."
"Well, it has been known for her to get stuck in situations. She could just be held up."
Archibald took a deep breath. "Yes, I know. But she hasn't been this long before reporting in. Especially when she has given a time that she would."
Archibald's brow furrowed and he pulled the bottle from behind his desk toward him. He poured some of the liquid into a glass and set it before himself. He seemed apprehensive, something James had never seen before.
"I never should have let her have the operations, James. It was not right."
"I'm sorry, sir?"
"I let her become what she is now. It's my fault she went to those butchers. I was the one who let them put those things inside her. I PAID for it goddamn it! And now she is probably dead. Killed by one of those people I sent her to kill."
Archibald stood up and moved over to stand in front of a painting on the wall. The picture depicted a child of about five or six sitting in an armchair. Her long, black hair spread out across her shoulders and the grin on her face seemed to give a moment of cheer in these drab surroundings. James looked harder at the painting. He had never paid much attention to the picture before, but now he saw a resemblance in the child's face to that of Peter Archibald. Was this Archibald's daughter? He wasn't sure but he thought he may have seen this girl before.
Then it dawned on him who the girl in the picture was. A look of shock flashed on his face but he quickly managed to get rid of it. Luckily Archibald had his back to him and so hadn't seen his mistake.
"Sir, I..."
"I want to be alone, James. I think I need to think. Go and see what you can do about that character you met. I may have a job for him and his associates."
"Yes, sir." James turned to leave and moved to the door.
"James?"
"Sir?"
"We have to find her."
"I know, sir."
* * *
Peter had been sitting in the dark for some time now. The only real illumination in his office came from the moonlight through the window.
He had been staring out of the window for a lot of this time, looking at the lights down in the street fifty floors below. It had been several hours since his talk with James and he didn't feel any better for it. He was thinking that maybe it was time to terminate his employment.
The files on his computer were requiring his attention, so he thought it was time he stopped worrying about her; she was a big girl now and could handle herself. He would do some work.
The terminal lit his face as he logged on and entered the commands to pull up the files.
SECURE FILE: Priority A1
Experiment: A7T4B
Codename: Atlas
Report Number: 49A
Project Supervisor: Dr Celia Janus
We have completed the gene recombination on the subject now and no more actual work on this is now required. We expect it will take another four months for the new DNA to take over the host and rebuild the body mass, and it will be a year before the transformation is completed.
The subject is still unaware of the treatments so far but surveillance has proven that they are becoming suspicious of the illness and other side effects brought on by our experiment. We have decided to move the collection forward and will be bringing the subject into the laboratory in the next two weeks.
Peter mused over this. Project Atlas had been one of his pet projects into gene re-engineering and he was hopeful that the results would be good. Then he could get rid of the metal he had in his body and still breathe.
He was just about to send a memo to Celia to get the extended report and results up to now when he heard a noise outside. Normally a noise coming from outside a window would not be a problem, but the glass in this window would stop a personal rocket launcher, and unless it was a major explosion the sound wasn't getting through. He threw himself across the room and into his en-suite bathroom.
The window withstood the barrage admirably, it was a pity the masonry around it didn't. The rectangle of glass fell in, squashing the oak desk like it was plywood, the computer and other items on it faring worse. The barrage did not stop there however, the missiles from the Grounjet streaked into the office removing any trace of anything from the locality.
When the firing stopped there was little left of the floor, the floors above and those below. Nothing could have survived that. The unmarked Grounjet pulled away and powered off across the city.
* * *
The will-reading for Peter Archibald was a sombre affair. James looked around at the others in the office of Mr Moody. Over in one corner were the two 'friends' he had known, Maurice and Janet. They had chatted to him at almost every party he had been to in the last three years.
On the other side of him sat the woman in the thick black veil. He couldn't see her face, but he remembered her at the memorial. They had not been able to find a body in the mess that was left of the Bold Industries building, and a memorial had been given for Archibald and the other fifty-seven employees who had died in the onslaught.
The gerbil-faced visage of Mr Eric Moody peered at them from behind the chestnut desk. "Good afternoon," he said in a monotone voice.
"You are all here for the reading of Mr Peter Archibald's last will and testament. I have read through the document and will now follow the instructions that he gave."
Whilst reading from the will, Moody started to open the top drawer of his desk.
"To all those present at the reading of this document, I know who you probably are. There will be James, my assistant. That annoying couple who follow me around at all the parties I go to, and my daughter Lucinda. Yes, James, I have a daughter. I wonder if you worked it out yet.
"To Maurice and Janet Spencer, I leave a bill for five thousand, three hundred and fifty three pounds, and seventy two pence for the time wasted with you over the past thirty six months..."
Maurice snorted loudly and stood up to leave. Janet burst into tears and stood up to follow him.
"...I also leave them the sum of ten million pounds each to do with as they please."
Maurice's jaw fell open and he gawped as his wife collapsed in a dead faint to the floor. There was a momentary pause while the two of them were removed from the room by a couple of juniors. Once they were gone Moody continued with the reading.
"To James, my loyal assistant, I leave his job and a pay rise of five percent. This is to be pre-dated back to the start of the financial year. Finally to my daughter."
Moody reached back down to the drawer he had opened before and retrieved something.
"To my daughter I leave this knife," Moody threw the knife across the table.
It hadn't been aimed well and wasn't travelling very quickly but it was still quite a feat for the young woman to catch it without hurting herself.
"And the rest of my assets," Moody finished.
The action on the part of the woman had caused her veil to fall away and now James could see that he had been right. It was her and she was Archibald's daughter. Why had he never seen the resemblance before?
Paul Taylor, 11/04/01
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