Free Ellie Quin Episode 5: A Girl Reborn by Alex Scarrow

girl. She has a gene-neutral frame, she was developed for the planet below us, Harpers Reach. To all intents and purposes a very normal looking female.’
    ‘And the target age, councillor?’
    ‘Well…’ she looked at Deacon, ‘let’s start by saying late teens, early twenties?’
    Dr Takao-Jones nodded.
    ‘How quickly can you develop the candidate to that age?’ asked Deacon.
    ‘That is a sliding variable, uh…sir. The faster it is done, the greater the chance of…
failure
.’
    ‘Then what’s a reasonably reliable amount of time?’
    Dr Takao-Jones pulled a pained expression at having to give an answer to that question. They were asking him to throw a wet finger in the air and test the wind direction. He could put the DNA into a female foetus, crank up the steroids, poke the stem-cells into action with targeted stimulants and have an adult body inside, say, a week. But, even with a perfectly stable, completely readable genome that might, no, almost certainly
would
produce a horrifically deformed aberration of a human being.
    ‘Three or four months,’ he replied.
    Councillor Hayden sat back in the cabin and crossed her arms. ‘That’s far too slow.’ She looked at Deacon. ‘We need to know what she’s capable of…
now
.’
    Deacon shrugged. ‘It could be nothing. You know, she might just be perfectly normal.’
    ‘Why would Mason go to all that trouble to produce a
normal
human being? No, he’s
hiding
something inside her. We need to know what we’re dealing with and what those terrorists intend to do with her.’
    Dr Takeo-Jones noticed Deacon cock a brow and shot a glance his way. She, quickly pressed her lips firmly together. He suspected she’d blurted out more than she’d intended to.
    Which, of course, now, made it even more dangerous for him to politely decline their request.
    She turned back to him. ‘Dr Takao-Jones…what about a month?’
    A month
? What was he meant to say? That’s fine? Super, no problem? He estimated the fail rate was going to be high. Even if he didn’t produce some disfigured monster, the growth candidate might simply just die in the tube.
    ‘May I recommend something, Councillor?’
    ‘Of course, Deacon.’
    ‘We’re asking a lot. Asking this technician to rush the process may end up giving us a corpse in a vat and whole lot of useless information. But, we can ‘multi-thread’ this process. That way we’ll have more information to work on in the same time period.’
    Dr Takeo-Jones nodded, he understood what Deacon was saying. ‘Exactly. That is what I was about to suggest, Councillor.’
    ‘What?’ She looked from one man to the other.
    ‘We grow a number of candidates at the same time.’
    Her eyes rounded at the prospect.
    ‘It’s no more a hazard than having
one
of her,’ added Deacon. ‘They’d all be contained and all very
flushable
should something unexpected develop.’
    'Yes, that's true…multiple redundancy.' She nodded slowly. ‘And…that would give us more data to work from.’
    ‘Precisely.’
    She carried on nodding, her arms still folded, the toe of one foot tapping the plast-mat floor of Dr Takao-Jones small cabin. ‘The irony here is that we’re making more copies of the Trojan horse Mason has created.’
    ‘But, as I said, all of them perfectly contained and destroyable.’
    ‘What if…’ she pressed her lips together thoughtfully. ‘What if Mason created something with…psionic abilities?’
    ‘A
reader
? You mean like a boojam?’
    ‘Yes. Or worse.’
    Deacon shrugged. ‘Boojam’s can read minds. They can’t
control
minds. They can’t move objects. They can’t-’
    ‘I’d rather you didn’t patronise me.’ She looked at him coolly. ‘I’ve been around long enough not to be treated like some dumb blonde intern.’
    ‘My apologies, Councillor.’
    ‘I just want to be sure that if we create something potentially dangerous…that we can damn well
un-create
it.’ She turned back to Dr Takao-Jones. ‘How