Professor Iversson waited until she'd seen Lex safely unconscious before turning to leave. As she did so she saw two members of staff, Briggs and Rathbone, had arrived.
Rathbone was head of security and Weyland's chief administrator, although she often thought of him as being more like Chief Enforcer. Briggs was the team leader in charge of all things medical.
"Is all the equipment here?" She asked Briggs and he nodded briskly, his intelligent eyes dark and beady behind thick lensed glasses.
"All arrived from the mainland a couple of hours ago, just like you requested Professor." He replied in his usual clipped tones "We're good to go for the CT scan and the MRI scan, plus the medical team are standing by."
"So Patel and Warner agreed?" Iversson asked.
"For what we offered them you bet they did!" Rathbone said, his dark and angularly attractive face taking on a look of heavy irony "Even for such elevated medical luminaries it's well worth their while, believe me!
"They've been told they have to be here and available over the next week and then on call afterwards." Briggs put in, looking faintly nettled.
"And you think their discretion can be relied upon?" persisted the Professor.
Only someone really listening for it would have heard the slight tremor of anxiety beneath her smooth, professional composure. When she'd been part of a government unit she'd had access to in-house physicians and medical equipment – whose time and silence would have been taken as read. Now it was a question of hiring in, which made her uneasy.
She had been assured that the contracts these specialists had been hired under were pretty fireproof but she still had her doubts "Almost unlimited money might give you access to the top surgeons in any field you care to name," She thought "But what's to stop them going public with what they know?"
"I spoke with both of them personally," Rathbone smiled with satisfaction, as if reading her mind "Neither of them will know enough for them to say conclusively what we're doing here and with what they've signed we could sue their asses from here to Kingdom Come for breach of contract. They can't prove anything… and even if they could we have insurance in place – "
"Alright, there's not time to go over that now." Iversson cut him off hurriedly. She knew the Corporation had ways of enforcing its will on people. Even those who were determined to cause problems soon found they had some fairly compelling reasons not to do so. She didn't like to probe too closely because she suspected what she discovered would not fit very well with her own code of ethics. Rathbone was – she suspected – utterly unscrupulous, but he was also fantastically competent at making problems go away. He reminded Iversson of some of the CIA operatives she'd worked with over the years – in fact she strongly suspected he might have had some former experience in that field. Just like them, there were parts of his job she didn't want to know about.
He shrugged "Have it your way Professor."
"Shall we take the child down now?" Briggs asked. As usual anything outside his specific area of responsibility was just an irritant to him.
"Yes." She said firmly "Go along without me and start prepping him for the scan. Tell the team to be very careful now. If he does have a brain tumour as his mother seems to think, we don't know how far advanced it is."
Rathbone raised an eyebrow "How is the prisoner doing?" The security chief couldn't help the look of avid curiosity that stole over his lean features.
"We just put her under," Iversson said "I can't risk having her make trouble over these next few hours, I don't want to have to worry about what she might be getting up to. She looked like she was going to pass out from fatigue anyway. Now… what about the exotic?"
"He's over on the North Island," Rathbone said "I transferred him to your team there personally."
"Then that's where I'm going next." Iversson said "I want to make sure he is secure so I can devote all my time to the child."
He gave her a quizzical look "You don't trust your team to do it?"
Iversson gave him a cool smile, detached and professional. She had her own reservations about her team, but she wasn't about to share them with this corporate attack dog.
"Like you, I always find it's best to see to important details personally," She said, in a tone that declared the subject closed "Now I really must go, I want to get back as soon as possible so we can get started."
She turned and clicked purposefully down the corridor, until she reached South terminus, the entrance to the corridor that gave access to the North Island. She pressed her finger to the DNA recognition pad, held her eye in place in front of the lens and keyed in the code. The door slid open noiselessly.
The two man-made islands that made up the complex were connected by a long, enclosed passageway suspended above the surface of the water. It was so long in fact that there was a small railcar that could carry you over if you didn't want to spend the best part of thirty minutes walking across. When she arrived at the North Terminus ten minutes later and – once her DNA and biometric eye scan had been accepted – she stepped out into Island North.
This part of the complex was a lot more basic than Island South. The riveted, cast iron and harsh strip lighting was more reminiscent of the interior of a warship or an oil rig than a state-of-the-art corporate HQ.
The huge degree of separation between the two main parts of the complex was intentional, planned specially for just such an eventuality as today. She'd explained to the board of Weyland Corp it would be best to have a facility where they could keep as much distance as possible between certain subjects. She entered the elevator and pressed the button. As the lift sank further and further, so did the temperature. It was a long way down. She was now entering the levels of Island North which were below the surface of the ocean and that made it cold. Both of the Islands had floors that were underwater and this too was intentional. The idea was that being surrounded by water made it more difficult to escape.
Her high heels rang on the floor as she walked down the gun-metal grey corridor. Both islands were something of a rabbit warren once you got down to their lower levels but the corridors of Island North were particularly labyrinthine. Chilly, dank passages wound around and around, all looking the same. Several of her staff had spent their first days on the job hopelessly lost in the bowels of Island North – the ones who were cleared to be down here anyway. There weren't very many who were. This was where the Corporation kept things that were… sensitive.
When she reached the end of her journey she showed her ID to the men on guard down here and then all the electronic security procedures had to be gone through yet again. When finally the thick metal door opened to admit her, the heat hit her in the face like a wall. She stepped into a control room large enough to house a small lab, a giant bank of monitors and control panel. There was also a window made of super-thick glass through which you could see into the room beyond which was only partly illuminated.
As she entered from one door Lloyd, a member of her team, was just emerging from the shadowy holding cell. Danzig, another of her staff, was seated in the chair overseeing the panel.
Iversson stifled a slight feeling of irritation that she always felt whenever she saw the pair of them. It could not be denied that both of them were fantastically gifted scientists but something about them set her teeth on edge.
Physically they could not have been more different. Lloyd was a tall, blonde Californian who, despite his brilliant intellect, always put her in mind of an over-enthusiastic golden retriever. Danzig was slender, intense and pale with a broad brow and deep-set eyes. He had a habit of quoting Nietzsche – which he obviously thought made him seem profound. It was all part of the air of superior ironical detachment he cultivated. It irritated her immensely.
"Be honest with yourself Jeanette," The Professor told herself "They're both just too damn young!"
As soon as the thought popped into her mind she squelched it, telling herself she was being unfair and unrealistic "Both of them are over thirty-five, hardly teenagers! And both of them have proven themselves to be responsible in the five years they've been working for me. I'm just getting old." Iversson thought morosely.
She herself would be sixty the following year.
Ridiculously, both men were wearing long cotton shorts and t-shirts. Even though it was blowing a frigid gale in the outside world, down here wearing anything else would be unbearable for any length of time. They were keeping it warm for the sake of their new acquisition – one of the few things they knew for sure was that his species liked the heat. She could already feel beads of perspiration starting to pop out all over her brow and prickling between her shoulder blades.
Lloyd wiped some sweat out of his eyes. He was wearing his surfer's shoulder length blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail and flip flops on his feet. This was something else that made her tut under her breath even though she knew she was probably just being mean spirited. The room was very humid.
"Oh hey Professor," He said "Couldn't wait, huh?"
"I've just come to check in," She said "How is the exotic?"
"Looking good," He said "Pulse, respiration and body temp all healthy and about what I'd expect. I already took bloods, DNA and tissue samples."
"No sign of regaining consciousness?"
"Still totally out of it, man!" He grinned at her, his teeth showing white in his tanned face "The number of darts we took outta that thing – it's gonna be asleep from now until Christmas"
"'He' Lloyd," Iversson said, ever the stickler for accuracy "I think from all the available evidence we can safely say he's a 'he' – not an 'it'."
"Oh, yeah," He snorted, raising his eyebrows "I guess we can!"
She ignored the innuendo and continued "And I don't want him asleep until next year, just the next few days or so. I very much hope at some point we'll be able to wake him up."
"Well he's hooked up to a pretty heavy dose of morphia for now," Danzig put in "We have him on oxygen and we're monitoring him in case there's some sort of adverse reaction, but barring that he should be nice and peaceful for a long as you want him to be. In the meantime we can continue our observations until you want to install the spinal implant."
"Yeah," Lloyd grinned "We've been thinking of codenames. We can't just keep calling them Mom and Dad, it's too messed up! They need proper codenames like … I don't know … Mars and Venus or something."
"Lloyd," Danzig interrupted, his large pale forehead creased in a pained expression "If you're going to plunder the ancient world for references Hades and Persephone would be infinitely more suitable."
"Hmmm," Iversson gave a slightly weary sigh and walked past the two of them to look through the viewing window. It was the first time she'd actually seen him up close; he was even more bizarre and horrible and breath-taking then she'd imagined. It was hard convincing herself he could be real "An actual alien life form in my custody!" She thought "As career defining moments go this has to be pretty near the top of my list."
"Come here, both of you." She said sharply. When they both came to stand next to her at the window she said "It's strange, even though my whole life I've been working towards this, it's different now I see him with my own eyes. You study something so long from a distance; you forget this is a living thing." Lloyd opened his mouth to say something but she held up a hand, cutting him off.
"Living things are amazing; that is why we do what we do," She continued "But they are also unpredictable, violent and they can be dangerous. You have to remember to respect living things. I would suggest that what we have here is one of the most amazing and the most dangerous organisms either of you is ever likely to see. This creature broke into the last facility I worked at, not just one of his species but – I am fairly certain – this actual individual. On his own he killed over thirty-five people, many of them trained, heavily armed soldiers, in a variety of very unpleasant ways. One of them, I seem to recall, he dispatched by ripping off his head and spinal column. With his bare hands."
It was impossible that the exotic could have heard her in his sedative-laced torpor behind the thick layer of glass, but one of the large, clawed hands twitched very slightly, taloned fingers flexing… almost as if remembering.
She glanced sideways, saw Lloyd swallow. It was all too easy to imagine them closing around your throat.
"Do you understand what I'm telling you?" Iversson said pleasantly "If this subject were to regain consciousness and escape, it's unlikely any of us would escape this complex alive. I need you to keep this knowledge always in the forefront of your minds, because the safety of everyone at this facility depends on your treating him with the utmost seriousness."
"And," She added, leaning over the control panel display "In the time since I've entered this room, his brainwave patterns and heart rate have altered. I'd suggest that whatever dosage you have him on you need to increase it – or try a different compound. In addition to being very aggressive, we know anecdotally that his species are incredibly resilient." She waited a few moments for them to digest this, before she turned to go. At the door she paused, one fingernail tapping impatiently against the doorframe "Just remember," She told their shocked, smooth faces "I need you to concentrate on the job please, not thinking up silly names."
After he parted company with the Professor and the medical chief, Rathbone's radio crackled and he made his way over to Island North. There was one more little matter that had arrived shortly after Iversson and her subjects that he needed to deal with.
He arrived in the hangar to find Jonas Haagens shivering between two of his enforcers.
His face froze in panic when he saw Rathbone "You!?"
"Ah, Mr Haagens." He said pleasantly "Nice to see you again."
"Your staff wouldn't let me go home!" Haagens said in aggrieved tones.
"Well you have been through a very traumatic experience."
"Traumatic experience?! That thing was all set to cut my fucking head off!"
"Exactly why we wanted to bring you here for observation." The tone of Rathbone's voice Haagens started to shudder all over again, there was something about the Weyland security chief's eyes. They looked like something you normally saw looking up from underneath your boat on a dark night.
"Look I've done my part, now I just want – " Haagens stopped short and ran his hands distractedly through his hair "In fact, I don't even care about the money, I just want to get out of here and forget any of this ever happened!"
"Well I'm afraid I can't let you do that until one of our team has taken a look at you, Sir." Rathbone told him "We don't want you coming out of the woodwork with a lawsuit for emotional distress further down the line, now do we?"
"Oh yeah, like you haven't got enough shit on me to keep me quiet forever!"
"Nevertheless, I'm going to have to ask you to come with me."
Rathbone escorted Haagens down the chilly corridors of North to the icebox that called itself an elevator and they began their long descent into the dark confines of the lower levels.
Rathbone sneaked a glance across at the bowed blonde head.
The truth was Haagens had been keen enough to take the money at first, when the likelihood of Woods ever being seen again had been just a hazy possibility. It was when things started to get real that he'd begun to get frightened and that's when it had become necessary to lean on him.
Rathbone had tapped Haagens' phone with his full consent and knowledge – just a little bit of extra insurance to make sure they saw a return on their investment – and that's how Weyland Corps had come to know that Woods had resurfaced. When she'd asked Haagens to come and meet her it had seemed too good an opportunity to miss so they'd made him go, although he hadn't wanted to. They'd also learned from him that she was specifically looking for Iversson so had taken the decision that the Professor should go too, in case they needed her to negotiate.
He had personally fitted Haagens with a wire and a tracking device. What followed had not been textbook. It had been a messy operation - the messiest - eight of his men had died, four were seriously injured. But at last they had struck pay dirt - they had bagged her! Had managed to bag all three of them.
Rathbone sighed, now he'd actually seen Woods with his own eyes he couldn't get her out of his thoughts. She was gorgeous, a real head turner, even worn down and miserable and dirty as she was. He'd actually felt a little jolt of electricity when he saw her. Rathbone was ex-CIA and in other respects he was pretty hardened but he'd always been a sucker for a stone-cold fox with a mean temper.
She'd made such an impression on him that his opinion of the former hacker had sunk even lower. He couldn't feel any sympathy for a man who'd sell out a woman like that. Rathbone felt no guilt or sense of hypocrisy that it was he himself who'd persuaded Haagens to do it. He had no prior allegiance to Woods - it had been just a job like always - but Haagens had been her friend. He should, thought Rathbone, have shown more loyalty.
He could even feel a tiny sneaking sympathy for the creature – the "exotic" as the science team insisted on calling him "He might be an alien from a totally different planet, but I know a fellow sucker when I see one." He thought, with a grim little smile "Poor bastard has a weakness for sexy, angry bitches. Hell, I can sympathise!"
Iversson hurried as quickly as she could back to the terminus and the rail car that would take her back to the relative comfort of Island South. She fervently hoped that she had managed to impress on them the gravity of the situation. The next forty eight hours were going to be crucial for the child; she really didn't want either of his parents to inadvertently get in the way of what she was trying to do for him.
Not for the first time she wished she was dealing with this situation via the unit. It wasn't her current team's expertise she doubted but sometimes she did worry about their level of commitment and seriousness. They acted like they'd snagged a post at some trendy new internet search provider rather than a team working to make scientific history, but they were the best she'd been able to find in the time available to her. Not for the first time she reflected that money couldn't buy you everything.
It had been different in her old job. Her operatives at the unit had mostly been older than those working under her now and service to your country was a vocation not a job. Most of her former colleagues had had the same burning sense of mission that gripped her and she often felt that this was lacking in the younger generation or at least those of them who worked for Weyland Corps. She had checked tentatively to see if any of the unit specialists were amenable to being hired but those she'd contacted had all been reassigned and they didn't want to give up their generous and secure government pensions.
"I would have been reassigned too if I'd just waited it out," She thought "The truth is I had my own reasons for wanting to leave." She frowned. It had not been an easy choice… but there were compensations.
"I would never have been granted the freedoms at the unit that I have been here at Weyland," She thought "Those small-minded bureaucrats at the Department would never have given us the funding to set up this complex. What a total lack of vision! They have no idea of the real value of things. Maybe if we'd had a facility like this we would never have lost Alexa and Selim in the first place, then that poor child would not have spent the first five years of his life enduring God only knows what…."
Even though she was alone on the car apart from the single operator – who had his back to her and never took any notice anyway – Iversson had to bite her lip hard to keep it from trembling. She was not accustomed to giving way to emotions publicly but the thought of any child being unloved or mistreated always threatened to bring her to tears. Especially this child; she'd thought about him so often over the years, this little boy (or girl, at the time she hadn't been sure) that she'd failed to rescue. This phantom baby had hovered at the edges of her mind. She'd wondered so many times how he was; whether he was healthy or happy; always she had seriously doubted it.
She admired his mother; whatever the woman might have done Iversson had always felt that Alexa was a strong and principled person. Coulter (there was a name from the past) had described her as cold – "the Ice Queen" – but Iversson did not believe in flaunting your feelings before the eyes of the world. She had always approved of Alexa's reserve, no matter how difficult it had made her own job. The people she'd killed Iversson rationalised thus: she'd done it for her baby. What mother could not understand that?
She had no doubt that Alexa would make a good mother... but how could any woman protect her child from such a father? It was he who had plagued her worst imaginings. Now she had seen him for herself she realised her nightmares had not done him justice; if there existed anywhere a less fit guardian to have power over a small infant she couldn't envision one. Even unconscious, every line of his body proclaimed his capacity for pitiless violence. To think of all this murderous strength so near to that little boy chilled her to the bone.
She alighted at the South terminus and clicked down the corridor towards the room where her most precious prize was currently also sedated, though for very different reasons. This room was also kept fiercely warm in deference to his alien nature. She felt her heart ache within her chest as she looked down at him.
"Already he's so much larger than a human child would be at his age." She thought "He can only be a few months away from being five years old, but he looks more like a child of eight or nine. I wonder if his mental development has kept up ..."
She held a hand to his forehead, bony and wrinkled with odd protrusions. His skin felt warm and moist, he was running a slight fever.
She turned to one of the two medical staff assigned to watch him "I think we could do with turning the temperature down just a touch." She said quietly and the woman hurried off to obey. Then she ran her hand down his face, over his cheek, the tip of one finger resting on the sharp point of one of his translucent white tusks. "You poor baby," She whispered "Does your head hurt? Don't worry. I'm going to make it all better."