Where We Go | Book Three

12. Nothing Else to Live For

I lifted myself slowly, feeling that dull ache starting to set in my arm. Julia had already packed away the bottles of serum and the syringe had not long been disposed of.

"How bad?" she asked.

I shook my head, the pounding still resonating against my temple. "Different..." I spoke. "It started badly... but then I heard Soph, and it went in another direction."

"Direction..." Ben muttered from the other side of the table. I looked up as the reflection of the laptop in his pupils went black. "The directory," he said to me, his eyes widening.

Only a heartbeat passed before he pushed himself away from the table and sprinted into Jackie's office where he had broken down the night before. Each of us at the table looked at each other before, one by one, we ran after him.

"Care to explain?" Chris said, bursting through the door behind him.

Ben was already sitting in the mess of papers from the previous night, none of which I'd had a chance to look at. His eyes met mine, a frantic excitement within them. "You said there were emails here."

"Yeah," I scowled. "I hadn't read through any of them properly yet... Is that a good sign?"

"If we can corroborate some of the names from the files with the emails and then find the directory..." he paused, turning to one of the bookshelves. "We've got a chance."

Chris looked at us. "Then what are we waiting for?" he scoffed. "Where are we looking for this directory?"

Ben shook his head, bemused. "It could be any one of the hardbacks on these shelves. You saw the state of the files on her computer, Chris. Search in any order that's not alphabetical."

I crouched on the floor beside him, scooping up half the papers in a pile and sorting through which were emails. Chris, Pilot, Julia, and Sophia took a bookshelf each. Sophia searched the lower shelves as best she could. Page after page we scanned words like computers processing data, discarding anything that wasn't of immediate use. Ben had almost finished another stack of papers when I noticed a pattern.

"There's a Dr Lawson that keeps getting repeated in these emails," I said, reading through another page.

"Lawson was a name in the files," Ben confirmed. "What are the emails about?"

"There's something about collaboration, funding, and... Oh, shit."

The room stopped and the air from my lungs was sucked from me as the others turned from the shelves.

"What is it?"

"A backup laboratory," I said.

Ben's mouth dropped and he took the paper I handed him. His stare focused on the words, his lips mouthing them to himself. I felt myself holding my breath, waiting for him to speak. Inside, I knew his mind was racing. Memory after memory his eyes darted, sifting through every piece of information he knew.

"Dr Lawson..." he muttered finally. "I do know the name... I just can't remember the lab."

"Would this help?" Chris asked. From the last shelf, he pulled the hardback book Ben had described. On its cover was one simple word in gold letters, 'DIRECTORY'. In smaller letters beneath the header, '(PROPERTY OF E.D.I.N)' had been stamped in the same lettering.

Ben closed his eyes and exhaled. "Yes."

"What exactly is in this directory?" Pilot asked as Ben took the heavy book and opened it on the desk.

Ben began to scan the index page with his finger. "I'm glad you asked Pilot..." he said. "In this book is a record of everyone mum had contact with at EDIN..." He looked up, to the blank stares that faced him. When none of us reacted, he continued. "Which includes names and, lucky for us, business addresses... Like the lab."

Chris's brows pressed together. "It's been years," he said. "What if she's not there anymore?"

"She's a scientist," Ben replied. "She wouldn't walk away from this work... They've got nothing else to live for."

Pilot nodded. "If they are anything like the scientists at EDIN, Ben's right... No offence."

"None taken." 

In the book, he seemed to find what he was looking for and began siphoning down the pages to find the excerpt he wanted.

"Right there!" he exclaimed, pointing at the name. 

All of us lowered our heads, crowding around the open book. Beaming from the page like a streetlight was the name Dr Sarah Lawson. Her name had been circled and, just as Ben had said, an address was beneath it.

"Cornwall," Chris read aloud. "Why is it always Cornwall?"

Ben's eyes drifted across the page. "It would've needed to be close enough that they could move resources in an emergency. What I find more confusing is that..." 

He pointed to a comment that had been made at the bottom of the page, a single line joining it with Dr Lawson's name.

'All Naxor & JCR-23 data transferred 09/12'

"Does that mean they have copies of everything?" Chris scowled.

"Ninth of December..." Julia muttered. "You don't think...?"

Ben shook his head. "I have no idea."

If we'd had a few more moments, maybe we would have been able to work out what those words meant and find out why Jackie had transferred data to a seemingly unknown woman. But we didn't. 

At the peak of our breakthrough, an alarm began to sound throughout the house. Blaring and high-pitched and seeming to come from every room through invisible speakers.