‘If you’re watching me then I haven’t made it,’ she said.
It was the first time anybody had heard her voice.
It was small. Perfect. Inoffensive.
‘It might also mean that my brother didn’t make it either, in which case, we’re together again.’
Angelina gave a little laugh and Kelly scanned the people sitting around the table. They were transfixed by the petite but mighty artist of talent.
‘This is my testimony. They’ll do it publicly. They have to. If you are listening to this and I’m dead, then it’s because they couldn’t find this footage in the rock, and the only way to get to it was to create a fuss around my death. Somebody more intelligent found it, didn’t they?’
They listened.
The story began decades ago in a lab in San Diego. Angelina had included footage which played alongside her words. People used as test animals and filmed for scientific posterity. She explained the breakthrough when the properties of glutamate, hydroxy-11 and androstene-3 had first been combined and the alarming results. Like Oppenheimer, they became death, the destroyer of worlds. Except this weapon wasn’t anything like so crude as a big heavy bomb. It was insidious. Microscopic. Silent.
Angelina explained how high doses of the compound called Neurohydroxy-14 combined with regenerative biology – already in use for decades – could become a lethal weapon for any military force.
She highlighted with the aid of a neat short video how 5G radio waves and magnetism could affect the central nervous system when primed with a stimulant that also induced natural feral rage.
It had the potential to create monsters.
And that was exactly what they were doing at Hampton-Dent.
But potential wasn’t the same as reality, Kelly thought.
Then things took a personal turn when Angelina was filmed in Rydal and she explained how special the place was to her. How she respected the forging of rock over millennia, its resilience and potency.
‘If I’m dead and so is Jamie then congratulations, you followed my map. You broke my code which led you to the cave.’
Angelina’s smile was infectious and the team at Eden House watched her in life, as she was, full of vitality, passion and grit.
She described an ex-intelligence officer, who thought he lived in the English Lake District and had a dying wife, but who was really an asset who could be awoken at any time, using nanotechnology inside his head. She said she was the natural choice to keep an eye on him from her studio in Chapel Stile. She said she was ashamed.
It was a confession.
A deathbed revelation.
The footage switched to a clip of a man throwing chairs and objects around a room. His rage almost jumped off the screen. It was like watching a wild animal at work. When he finished, he was bleeding and exhausted, and still manic. As the camera closed in on his face, they saw that it was a younger Melvin Stone they were looking at.
‘Don’t trust Joe Folly,’ she said, and they all held their breath.
‘What did she just say?’ Kelly asked.
‘He craves fame, not justice. Everything you need is in room 13 at the Old Man Guesthouse in Skelwith Bridge. I chose it.’ She smiled. ‘I hope I didn’t die there but if I did, at least I’ll be there forever.’
The last clip was of Jamie Robbins.
They watched in silence as the young man they’d got to know through reputation alone spoke to them from the grave. He was charming, intelligent and engaging. He held an iPad and talked them through a demo. It involved an unnamed young man whowas dressed in a hospital type gown, who appeared lucid, affable and chatty before the test. Then Jamie proceeded to tap the keys on his iPad and seemed to control him. It was the weirdest thing any of them had ever seen.
The video ended.
‘What the fuck did we just watch?’ Emma whispered.
‘Do you think it was for real?’
‘Poor wee girl,’ Dan said.
‘I need a smoke,’ Kate said.
