Book excerpt: THE SEQUENCE BY LUCIEN TELFORD

She was full from the buffet, sweaty, sauntering along under Serekunda’s oppressive late-summer sun. There were nicer places on the planet. Not a whole lot of paved roads here, and they hadn’t found one yet. She kicked up red dust with each step, wore a face mask under her Ray-Bans. They were still burning gasoline in this part of the world, and the cars blew out a charred, sooty exhaust that adhered to everything, got into her ears, clagged up her hair, made it difficult to see.

“We need to talk about whatever the fuck just happened to me, and you, back in Ulaanbaatar,” she said, still walking, eyes ahead.

“I know, Kit.”

“Even getting through the Perimeter is an achievement, let alone threatening lab workers like us. We’re the reason the wall was built in the first place.”

They walked past a barking Rhodesian ridgeback tied to a tree, the carbon-coloured dust that coated all things in this town bursting from its ruffled spinal fur with each woof.

“I told you something is up at the lab. Your work is being monitored, but I don’t know by who. This Weissach man, he’s the only one I know. Someone high up in NegSense must be watching.”

“And Weissach, he discussed Zeus specifically?”

“Yup.”

“And did you give him any of the data?”

“Well, yes, I gave him data, but nothing about Zeus. There isn’t any. Trust me, I looked for it.”

Trust. Wrong word.

“That was private, Avery! My data!” She pulled the mask down to her chin. “Fucking Christ in a fucking pancake!”

The dog continued to bark. She took a breath to calm down, waving her hand in front of her face for air. She wondered if the animal was overheating too, how long it had been there, and if the incessant barking was ever going to fucking stop. Traffic slowed at the intersection ahead, causing the dust to ease, and for a moment she could see much better. They paused where the two well-travelled dirt roads met. There were no stop signs and no traffic lights.

“Zeus,” she panted, short of breath, “as you know, is the recipient of an edit I’ve been working on in my spare time. A successful edit, Avery. But this one is different. This one is important, and you can’t steal my research and fucking sell it. You understand? That’s industrial espionage! Fucking prison time! Or worse!”

The dog was barking louder now at something on the other side of the intersection. She looked to see what had its attention and saw a man in a cowboy hat, an aluminum briefcase open in his hands. She took off her glasses, trying to find the dog’s owner. Unable to locate one, she turned to ask Avery if he could.

What she saw next didn’t make sense. A steel ball the size of a plum exploded outwards from inside Avery, leaving a gaping fist-sized hole that made a repulsive sucking noise clean through his shirt. The ball made a perfect horizontal beeline a meter above the road, hissing as it went, steaming with Avery’s dripping internals into Cowboy Hat’s gleaming briefcase. Avery dropped to his knees in disbelief, looked up at Kit, his eyes all questions, blood pulsing through his fingers, rivers of it surging out of the hole in his midsection.

On the other side of the street, beside the biggest Mercedes wagon she’d ever seen, snapping that aluminum case shut was the man wearing the white cowboy hat and a black bolo tie. He was Asian, smiling. He climbed inside, closed the Benz’s door, then lowered his window, his face visible, watching. The car crawled away with a faint electric whine. The man had a tattoo on his cheekbone, a Chinese character of some sort. She blinked back to Avery, blood pooling beneath him, in terrified realization that this was fucking really happening.

“Ave?”

Her vision narrowed as she knelt beside Avery Hill, likely, she felt, for the last time.

“Ave? What the fuck was that?” She opened her holo, swiped for “Emergency,” and was answered straightaway by a calm, gentle, female voice.

“One-one-six emergency. What is the nature of your call please?”

She had no clue where they were. “Yes, hello. I’m near the Kairaba resort. We are two foreign nationals. One has suffered a critical injury from some sort of metal projectile. Please hurry. He’s got an open wound and he’s hemorrhaging from it.” She tore the shirt off Avery’s back, folded it and pressed it against the flow of blood, trying to plug the cavity in his chest.

“Please hold for ambulance service.”

“Avery I . . .”

His lips bubbled, blood and saliva dribbling off his chin onto the ground, past the sucking hole in his midsection.

“Fuck girl . . . said he wasn’t gonna hurt me. Fuck . . . fuck a duck.” Coughing. Bleeding. “Kit . . . they know about you. They know about Zeus. They’ve known for such a long time.” His eyes fell out of sync, and he wobbled backwards in her arms.

Her wrist warbled at her. “Please continue to hold for our next available ambulance operator.”

“You said ‘they,’ Avery. They. Who was with Weissach? Who did this to you? Who was with him in your home?” She was angry and scared and revolted all at once. Digestive organs fell out of the void as she helped him lie down on the dusty roadside.

“What did you give Zeus?” Avery sputtered. “Why’s he so special?”

Gurgling fluids and something like breath came out of the blackened cavity. She retched hard into the loose dirt beside him, caught the shadow of someone moving toward her from behind. The feeling was like a snakebite as the barbs of the man’s taser buried themselves deep into her neck. Her body stiffened at the sharp, excruciating paralysation of electrocution. She resisted, glimpsed his silhouetted cowboy hat. She fought the pain with every ounce of strength until the current forced her into an immobilized unconsciousness.

*