Sofi crossed the room to where Gabrielle stood. ‘I’ll need your help, Gabrielle.’
‘And my blood, I assume.’
Ten minutes later, Bo returned with two large rabbits. ‘I skinned them. Thought it might make things a bit easier,’ he said. He stomped the snow from his boots and handed them to Gabrielle.
‘That’s perfect, Bo,’ she said, laying them out on the clean cloth she’d laid on the table. Taking a scalpel from her medical bag she made the first incision.
Helix made himself useful brewing more nettle tea as they all watched Gabrielle and Sofi working together. Gabrielle relaxed, as soon as Sofi explained why she needed the rabbit bladders. It helped that Sofi could regulate her body temperature to a level that would prevent Gabrielle’s blood haemolysing once it was filling the bladders. Sofi drew the required amount of blood from Gabrielle’s arm by adapting the intravenous infusion kit carried in the battlefield first aid pack she’d procured from Mace. With the bladders filled they needed to work quickly. Sofi swapped seats with Gabrielle. SJ looked away as Gabrielle made an incision in the crook of each of Sofi’s arms big enough to insert the flaccid sacks of blood below the skin. ‘How long will it take for the wounds to heal?’ Gabrielle asked.
‘If we use the butterfly sutures the scars will be invisible after approximately four hours.’
‘And what temperature are you keeping it at?’
‘Between two and six degrees Celsius.’
Gabrielle got up from her seat. ‘OK good,’ she said, putting the used equipment into a small metal dish. ‘You’re all set.’
‘Will it work?’ Helix asked. ‘Lytkin will be able to extract the DNA, yes?’
‘That’s the part that bothers me,’ she said, closing up her medical bag.
‘I understand, but we can’t risk it not being your blood.’
‘No. I get that.’ She slipped her arm around his back. ‘What do we do now?’
‘We’ll leave in a while.’
Gabrielle clung a little tighter. Sharing her anguish, he pulled her in. ‘Travelling at night would be better, but we can’t afford the time. The sooner we’re back in London the better. It’ll give me time to work out the end game.’
‘What about the bean counter?’ Bo asked. ‘If he sees Gabrielle after you’ve gone, he’ll know what’s going on, won’t he?’
‘You’re right. That’s why he’s coming with us.’
‘Hold on, Helix. What about those things in his neck?’ Gabrielle said. ‘You can’t take him to Bristol or London, you’ll kill him.’
‘I can take care of that,’ Sofi replied.
Gabrielle slipped away from Helix, her hands clamped to her head. ‘Bloody hell. Can you revert to your Spanish—’
‘Mexican,’ Sofi corrected.
‘I don’t care.’ Gabrielle yelled. ‘Just anything except me. And stop bloody staring.’
Helix placed his hand on her back. ‘I know it’s freaky, but it’s not for long. Things will get back to normal.’
‘I don’t want normal,’ she said, her eyes moist. ‘Well, I do but not without…’
He understood. He didn’t want to leave either. ‘We’ve got a solution for Wheeler’s problem,’ he said. ‘Sofi, playing you, can examine him on the pretence that you’re considering whether or not you can remove the devices. Getting close will enable her to capture the device IDs. She can hack the Justice database and reset the boundaries, so he doesn’t get his head blown off when we cross the perimeters into Bristol or London.’
‘Why do you need him?’ SJ said.
‘He could be useful. Plus, if he’s close, I can see what he’s up to.’ He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. ‘OK. This is how it’s going to work.’
22
25 Hours
Helix watched through one of the small windows as SJ and Bo picked their way over the mud and slush to the cookhouse. They were going to announce to the village that Gabrielle’s mysterious friends were on their way back to London and that the bean counter was going with them. The news of the bodies in the pit wouldn’t go down quite so well, but he wouldn’t be there to hear the complaints. Apart from a patchy, poorly organised and demotivated militia, there wasn’t anyone to maintain law and order outside of the cities. Survivors had learned to fight their own battles. If that meant a body buried in the woods, then so be it. It wasn’t arbitrary, it was a last resort and it was now rare.
Helix held the door open for Gabrielle as she led the way into the school room. They left Sofi to change into the clothes Gabrielle had given her. He ran his fingers over the edge of the handmade table surrounded by six low chairs. Small chairs for small people. Some people spent hours staring at art. Handcrafted objects held the same allure for Helix. Each item bore its maker’s signature, not in words, but by marks from the tools and the finish. Some were finer than others, a master guiding an apprentice perhaps. Farther back, the tables increased in size, surrounded by an assortment of salvaged chairs. Each row represented a step on the stairway to adulthood. A worm-eaten casement clock on the wall chimed ten. ‘What time does school start?’ he asked.
‘I ring the bell at 10:30. We start late so they can finish their jobs before school. They come in through here,’ she said, pushing open a door onto a wide veranda. ‘If you follow the path up to that ridge and turn right, you can avoid the middle of the village. It’ll take you up to the fork in the path, the one that leads back to the pit.’
‘Nice collection,’ he said, halting in front of the bookcase. He recognised some of the legal texts that had belonged to Gabrielle’s father amongst the biology and botany. They looked impressive, not that there was much use for lawyers out in the sticks. ‘What subjects do you cover?’
‘Sorry?’ Gabrielle said, shaking chalk dust from scraps of paper on her desk in front of the blackboard. ‘What did you say?’
Helix weaved
