Day of the Predator - Alex Scarrow [15]
‘What is it, Mads?’
Or maybe Foster was right – she should keep the truth from him for as long as possible …
She pulled her glasses out of her handbag and put them on, then took the silly bonnet off her head with its long, ridiculous ostrich feathers. All of a sudden, dressed in her tight corset and billowing lace skirts, she felt dishonest, a phoney, a fake and, her eyes meeting Liam’s, she felt like a liar.
A worn-thin smile spread across her face. ‘Nothing, Liam. Let’s go home, eh?’
CHAPTER 9
2001, New York
‘Are you sure?’ shouted Sal.
‘That’s what Bob says.’ Maddy’s voice echoed from the archway through the open door into the back room – ‘the hatchery’ as they called it now. ‘He says to attach the end of the protein-feed pipe to the growth candidate’s belly button.’
‘How do we do that?’ Liam replied. ‘It’s not like there’s a socket to screw the thing into.’ The small slimy foetus squirmed gently in his hand, stirring in its slumber. He grimaced as it did, feeling small fragile bones shift beneath its paper-thin skin.
It looked as vulnerable as a freshly hatched bird fallen from a nest, and yet he knew that this tiny, shifting, pale creature in the palm of his hand would soon be a seven-foot-tall leviathan, bulging with genetically enhanced muscles, with a deep, intimidating voice rumbling from a chest as broad as a beer barrel.
‘Bob says you need to push the feed pipe through the belly button,’ Maddy’s voice came back.
Sal’s lip curled. ‘You mean … like … as if we’re stabbing it?’ she called out.
‘Well, obviously don’t stab it with the pipe!’ Maddy’s voice echoed back. ‘Gently do it!’
Liam looked at Sal and shook his head. ‘I can’t do it. I’d be sick. Here …’ He passed the foetus to Sal.
‘Oh, right … thanks, Liam.’
Sal cradled the thing in her hand and then gingerly reached into the perspex growth tube beside them to retrieve the feed pipe dangling down inside. She grimaced as she fumbled in the slimy growth solution, finally pulling out the tip of the feed pipe. As the slime dripped like mucus from the end of it, she could see the pipe ended with a sharpened tip.
‘Bob says you shouldn’t have to push too hard. The belly button skin is very thin and should … Oh, that’s just gross …’ Maddy’s voice faded away.
‘What?’ called out Liam. Maddy didn’t answer immediately.
‘Maddy?’ chirped Sal. ‘What’s gross?’
‘He says the skin should pop just like a blister.’
Liam looked sheepishly at Sal. ‘Really, I can’t do it. I’d be … I’ll be sick over the poor little fella.’
‘Shadd-yah,’ Sal muttered, ‘you are hopeless sometimes.’
She took the end of the pipe between her fingers and gently drew it up until it hovered an inch above the foetus’s tiny belly: translucent skin criss-crossed with a faint spider’s web of blue veins and a small inward twist of rubbery skin.
She took a deep breath. ‘OK … here goes.’
She gently pressed the sharp end of the feed pipe into the small whirl of flesh. The foetus shuddered in her hand; finger-length arms and legs suddenly flailing, its walnut-sized head slapping against the palm of her hand.
‘Uh … Maddy! It doesn’t like it! It’s struggling!’
‘Bob says that’s perfectly normal … just push it in until the skin pops.’
She heard Liam mutter something about Jesus before his legs buckled beneath him and he sat down heavily on the floor, then slid over on to his side.
‘I think Liam’s just fainted!’ shouted Sal.
‘Never mind him,’ Maddy replied. ‘We need to get the foetus hooked up before it starts starving.’
‘OK, OK.’
She pushed the tip against the belly button again, this time pushing despite the foetus’s protests, until she felt the skin give way, as promised, with a soft pop. A small trickle of dark blood oozed out on to its belly.
‘It’s in!’
‘Right, now, put bonding tape round