‘How stable is Paul?’ she asked Sandy.
She shrugged.
‘How does it work?’
‘What?’
‘Don’t play games, Sandy. For fuck’s sake. Level with me. Who controls the nanotech?’ Kelly forced her to look into her eyes. ‘This isn’t a game,’ she said.
Sandy grinned. ‘Paul was taken off the programme months ago, but he was already addicted.’
‘ToYouthBlast?’
Sandy laughed.
‘What am I missing?’ Kelly asked.
‘We couldn’t put something so powerful on the open market,’ Sandy said. She was serious now. ‘Mass distribution was designed to prep the population for incremental progress.’
Kelly stared at her, gobsmacked. ‘Incremental progress?’ It sounded so matter of fact. So emotionless.
The woman’s arrogance bypassed the deaths of thousands of people. Her own narcissism trumped the morality of murder. She wondered if Sandy had always been like this, or she’d been trained over time, like a circus cat, doing tricks for treats. She saw that Sandy had no soul left. Zero humanity. Like all killers, whether they got their hands dirty or not, she was an empty vessel, devoid of life itself.
Kelly glanced at Johnny.
‘You’re too late,’ Sandy said.
Johnny took Sandy’s tied hands and forced her to stand up straight.
‘That was the worst thing you could have said to her,’ he said.
Chapter 59
Paul sat in a corner of the kitchen and rocked forward and back.
His body was covered in a layer of sweat but it wasn’t ordinary perspiration; it was sticky and grimy and synthetic. It was as if he was covered in a diet soda drink. He felt it clog his pores and struggled to believe he was still breathing.
The kitchen fixtures morphed into blobs, and he pressed his thumbs against his temples.
In his hand, he held a large kitchen knife, and he pointed it out in front of him, even though his eyesight had begun to fail him.
‘What are you pointing that thing at me for?’ the other man said.
Paul wiped his eyes and felt them burn as if he’d poured chemicals in them.
‘Are you feeling hot?’ the man asked.
Paul tried to ignore him. He didn’t trust anyone.
All he wanted was to go back to before, when everything was normal and their future was so bright, it blinded them. Now he knew that what really dazzled them was greed.
‘Do you get headaches?’
Paul looked up and nodded.
‘Do you remember when it started?’
‘We felt like kings. They flew us first class. We stayed in the Mandarin Oriental in Manhattan.’
