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ON A REMOTE PACIFIC ISLAND, SOMETHING NEW HAS BEEN BIRTHED. SOMETHING NOT OF THIS WORLD…
Holly Truong is a field biologist on the verge of an experimental breakthrough on swarm intelligence. But when she receives news that her estranged mother has been found dead in faraway Melanesia, she is compelled to put everything on the back burner and go in search of answers.
Waiting for her there is an experiment of a completely unexpected kind: a recreation of alien life, made possible by a secret SETI program called Metis Eye. Earth is now host to a bizarre new life form — one utterly unlike anything the planet has seen in its four and a half billion years of existence.
However, as shocking as the revelation is, a deeper, far more terrifying secret lurks in the heart of the jungle. A secret that if left uncovered could mean the end of civilization itself.
Nature, red in tooth and claw, has returned to claim its dominion, and Holly is about to find out that she is the only one standing in its way.
Read from the book
A thunderstorm had just passed, leaving a sultry, dripping stillness in the lower reaches of the rainforest. Soon, the temporary calm would be a thing of the past as the myriad occupants of the jungle returned to their activities, but for now the silence lay heavy, pierced only by the sounds of someone crashing through the thick undergrowth. Quick gasps of labored breathing accompanied the noise of twigs snapping and shrubs being pushed aside.
A man ran through the vegetation. His step was nimble, suggesting expertise in navigating the difficult terrain, but there was no hiding the sheer exhaustion he felt in every fiber of his pumping muscles. It was evident he had been running for a while. Maybe all day—he had no way of telling. Time had become a dimensionless abstraction, with only the white mark on his hand where his watch used to be reminding him that there were things such as hours and minutes and that, for some reason, they were in dwindling supply.
All that mattered was that he get out of the jungle at any cost.
“It’s Ricky,” he gasped for the umpteenth time, holding on to the syllables like a drowning man a lifeline. “My name is Ricky.” Ricky… something. That fall in the stream earlier had been a godsend, with the cold water bringing him back from his fugue state, but much of his mind remained frustratingly blank.
It’s a start. Give it time.
Not everything was shrouded in a fog; glimpses from what he assumed was a recent altercation flashed in his memory as he ran. A battle. He wasn’t alone; there were others. All dead now, he felt strangely confident. He was the sole survivor.
But for how long?
Fatigue finally took its toll, making him stop and slump against a tree, his legs shaking under him. As he waited for his breath to recover, he gave himself a once-over out of long-inculcated habit. He was mostly in one piece: there were cuts and bruises aplenty, but none that hampered function. He wasn’t all that hungry, no more than the last time he’d been lucid. Just terribly thirsty. So much so that it hurt when he swallowed. And yet, the thought of water seemed to stoke some nameless fear in him—a fear that for now lay deeply buried.
Fear of something out there? If only his rifle were still with him. He distinctively recalled having it the previous night: he had pressed it tight against his body as he sat curled up in a hollow somewhere, scared and alone and muttering to himself while the jungle sang to him.
He blinked. Yes, the jungle had sung to him with the sound of flutes.
You’re tripping. Imagining things. Jungles don’t sing.
Before he could examine the absurdity of it any further, his attention was captured by a most unexpected sight: golden-yellow beams of sunlight winking at him through gaps in the tree trunks ahead to his right. On its heels blew in a salty tang he recognized beyond doubt—the sea. He had reached the end of the jungle.
Not bad, Ricky Dunn, not bad at all.
A big grin crossed his face at the double fortune. Then, as some crucial synapse made a connection and fired off dormant parts of his brain, it slowly started coming back. His last name was Dunn. Middle name Walter. Born in Des Moines, Iowa. He still lived there, with his wife Gail, and his son, two-year-old Jeremy. There was a baby girl on the way—they hadn’t decided on the name yet. And he was an army veteran: the Rangers, 3rd Battalion. Now he worked in the private sector. As to his present whereabouts, he was on an island, somewhere in its northern half.
Doing what?
No matter. It will come in time.
He breathed in greedily, filling his lungs with the wholesome sea breeze. But as he did so, he became aware of a new smell—a sharp, coppery scent that didn’t quite belong among the dank notes of the forest. The odor wasn’t being carried by the breeze either; its source was somewhere near.
Very near.
Dunn went rigid, instinctively crouching to present a smaller target. Enemy combatant? No, this felt like something else. Something far worse.
He began sprinting again. So close now. Expending the last ounces of his strength, he charged through the final stretch of trees into the open. And there he halted because there was nowhere else to go. About fifty yards ahead, the land dropped off into the vista of a wide, empty ocean. The jungle had terminated in a cliff.
To his right, the ledge narrowed into a sharp promontory. The setting sun hung low over it, indicating he’d spent all day trudging through the forest. But it was not true about there being nowhere to go. As his dark-accustomed eyes adjusted to the light, he saw that the slope on his left was navigable. It led to a muddy beach about two klicks southwest.
Dunn nodded gratefully at the welcome sight. He probably had an hour before it got completely dark. He could spend the night at the beach and, in the morning, hike and swim along the coast down south.
There was a settlement down south.
The idea, however, instead of giving him hope, filled him with that same vague dread. His mind kept returning to his rifle. He needed it—somehow, everything depended on it.
But wait. Wasn’t he forgetting something?
As if compelled by its own volition, his right hand traveled to his chest, where it felt something hard nestled beneath the shirt.
My pistol! I didn’t lose it after all!
Feeling giddy with a renewed sense of purpose, he reached under the shirt and unclipped the holstered weapon. A Smith & Wesson M&P. The weight on his practiced hand said it was loaded.
Just in time, he thought, as the jungle behind him rustled. He spun around, the metallic smell assailing his nostrils once again. He didn’t have to search very hard to locate the source—it was standing in plain sight next to a bush, watching him watch it. The alien.
Colored beads of light moved inside its skull like fireflies doing a mating dance.
Dunn was surprised at his lack of surprise. It was as if he’d expected the creature to be there, standing on all fours and bobbing that nightmare-inducing head in discontinuous little jerks like so. The alien. Not, Jesus, what the hell is that thing? Simply, the alien.
He stared. Yup. It was this abomination that had been stalking him all night; how could he forget those crazy lights flipping on and off as it darted about in the pitch dark?
Well, you’re not gonna stalk me anymore. Time to die, freak.
He racked the gun and aimed.
But his fingers didn’t follow through. Maybe it was the sight of the bizarre creature that did it, but right then all his repressed memories came flooding into the forefront with the semblance of a dam bursting. A moan escaped his lips as he dropped his gun and, clutching his head, staggered back a step. He remembered every single horrible detail: his mission, that bloodbath near the camp, people losing their shit…
Most importantly, he remembered the real reason for his seeking the edge of the jungle.
All strength seemed to leave his body as he fell to his knees in the grass and laughed—peals of loud, bitter laughter that rang hollowly among the trees like a gong about to shatter. It had all been for nothing. All day he’d been running for nothing. He’d been tricked into coming here—and by his subconscious no less. Reeled in like a blind fish on a hook.
The creature slunk back into the bushes, startled by his cackling.
Not for nothing. Do what you came here to do.
Dunn wiped his eyes and picked up the gun. Right. The endgame. He backed away, taking care not to trip on the stony ground. To his relief, the creature remained where it was. He then turned and hurried to the cliff’s edge; there was no telling how long this latest spell of clarity would last.
A brisk wind climbed the precipice and ruffled his sweat-matted hair as he found a seat among the rocks and looked west. Toward home. The dying sun had infused the towering cumulonimbus clouds on the horizon with every possible shade of red and violet, lending them a desolate beauty that seemed apt. Dunn allowed himself a forlorn smile. Not bad as far as last sights go.
There was no escaping the island—he saw that now. But breathing your last while lying face down in the muck of the jungle floor, and then having your body gnawed at by those… ball things was no way for a soldier to die. This way was clean. Dignified. The real reason his autopilot had brought him here.
Some sixth sense warned that the alien had stepped out from the jungle behind him. He pictured it approaching like a cat on the prowl.
Let it. I don’t care. Dunn took a final look at the ocean, closed his eyes, and stuck the pistol’s muzzle inside his mouth. He willed his last thoughts to be of his wife and kid, and the baby he would never see.
However, to his infinite frustration, what occupied his brain in the final milliseconds before the bullet tore through it was a solitary, nagging worry.
He was wrong about the island. He’d been wrong from the very beginning.
And now, no one would ever know.
A cold wind blew across the Sacramento River.
Holly Truong lowered her binoculars and pulled on the drawstrings of her hoodie, wondering why she hadn’t put on an extra layer underneath. She’d been in such a big rush to have everything loaded into the car and drive to the test site. And David had been of no help at all—he’d started making last-minute changes to his code the moment the trail cameras pinged confirmation on the birds.
He was still working, furiously tapping away at his laptop inside their Honda CR-V.
The biologist in her said she shouldn’t be complaining; the weather was perfect for finding large flocks of starlings. There was a group of about five thousand right there on the wooded islet not far from her spot. Another six or seven thousand congregated on the far bank, on the big transmission tower amidst the freshly harvested cornfields. Twelve thousand in all, give or take. A good number—bigger than last time, but not so big as to overwhelm the drones she was preparing to launch.
Today was going to be different. She could feel it in her bones. No crashed drones like last time. No snags, no freaky CPU lags, no code bugs. Just pure, glorious success. All they had to do was gather the birds, hold formation for a couple of minutes, and take them to the drop-off point a quarter of a mile south. Easy peasy.
At least, that’s what she told herself. Herding mice with cats, David called their endeavor, and when feeling less optimistic, she’d have wholeheartedly agreed.
Brushing aside a strand of hair that had escaped her ponytail, she shot the blond man inside the car an impatient look. Of half-Vietnamese and half-Irish-American descent, Holly had a naturally ambiguous face that was hard to read. Her jet-black hair framed an oval face with a rounded chin and a button nose, making it appear softer than she usually felt, while her slim, wide lips with their droopy corners made her look preoccupied even when she was in the best of moods. Dreamy eyelashes fluttered over a pair of probing green eyes, further muddying the waters. People who went around telling other people they should smile more were usually thrown off their game with her.
“Sun’s getting low,” she urged.
“Nearly there. I’m prepping the config file. How many drones are we deploying?”
“Eight. Start with two, then scale in increments of two.”
This did make him look up. Rising from his seat, he craned his neck to peer at the islet. “You reckon there are so many?”
“I see three more clusters: two on the far bank and one on this side. We take the group on the islet and sweep northwest to the pylon. Then cross over to this side, gathering what we can in a west-to-east arc.”
“Ambitious today, are we, hon?”
She winced. The dreaded h-word, always at the wrong time. David wasn’t just her research partner: he also happened to be her boyfriend. The problem was, she liked to keep the worlds separate, and he rarely did. Right now, she was an ethologist and a postdoc scholar from Sacramento’s UC Davis; David, an Assistant Professor of Engineering who specialized in swarm robotics. They were collaborating on an interdisciplinary project part-sponsored by the US Department of Agriculture. If they could demonstrate proof of concept with today’s numbers, they’d be assured funding for another six months, not to mention finding themselves one step closer to solving a problem that had bugged environmentalists and farmers for decades. A lot was at stake. “Hon” made it seem like they’d just finished drawing up the shopping list for the weekend.
“Should I program a flock shape?” he asked, his stylus poised on the touchpad next to him.
Holly scratched her chin. “No. Nothing fancy tonight. Set the drones to free-react. We need longevity, and we need cohesion.”
“You got it.”
She hurried to the Honda’s boot and took out two of the sixteen drones nestled inside. Quadcopters with lightweight 180mm carbon-fiber frames, each had an onboard 64-bit computer for packaging sensor data and making tactical inflight decisions. More unusually, mounted on each drone was a custom-built plastic casing made to look like a peregrine falcon—the starling’s mortal enemy.
“Config’s ready. Uploading it to the drones now,” David said, easing some of the tension that had set in her shoulders. She released the first two drones and watched as they flew toward the islet.
The starlings gave each other cries of alarm and noisily took to the sky. The two drones were the push—the proverbial stone that set the avalanche in motion. The others would draw the flock in, shape it, and keep it confined to a preprogrammed aerial path.
Her hands moved fast, reaching into the trunk for the next pair, waiting for the blinking LEDs to go green, then releasing them in the air. Meanwhile, the birds flew to the opposite bank, where a smaller group of starlings joined them from the fields. The new drones raced west to prevent the flock from prematurely turning toward the river.
The common or European starling, first introduced to North America in the late nineteenth century, had grown in the intervening decades to become one of the top agricultural pests of the continent. Annually, starlings were estimated to cause over a billion dollars of crop damage in the United States alone. There was great interest in curbing their numbers humanely, or, barring that, in directing them away from cultivated areas.
The two researchers aimed to achieve the latter, by exploiting a key characteristic of the starlings’ flocking behavior. Apart from being a nuisance, starlings were famous for flying in beautiful, otherworldly formations called murmurations that ranged in size from a few hundred birds to colossal swarms numbering in the millions. Fast, extremely agile, and capable of behaving as one entity, murmurations had evolved to confuse predators such as the peregrine falcon—itself the fastest living thing on the planet.
Behind the seeming complexity of a murmuration was a simple rule. All each starling had to do to maintain formation was keep a fixed distance between itself and its seven nearest neighbors. This simple behavior turned a leaderless swarm into a seeming hive mind. Scale-free correlation, the phenomenon was called. The neural net algorithm running on David’s laptop exploited this behavior to predict and contain the swarm’s movements in 3D space.
As the drones closed in, the murmuration responded, temporarily stretching into a corkscrew pattern. Then the rear ranks caught up with the middle and turned the whole thing into a ball shape again.
So far, so good.
She nodded encouragingly at David, but he was frowning. He had his own view of the field: a composite graphic rendered from the drone cameras. Holly picked up her binoculars and trained them on the pylon. Immediately, her heart sank.
She’d estimated an additional seven thousand birds at most. Now, as the birds roosting in the grain silos behind the tower began taking to the sky, she realized she’d been horribly wrong. She’d undercounted by a factor of four, if not more.
“Goddamn it!” she cried, stamping her feet. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Why didn’t I think of the silos? “We need more! Let’s take it up to twelve.”
“Twelve drones! Are you serious?”
“I underestimated. I’m sorry. Eight are not gonna cut it.”
“Need I remind you we never deployed so many at once?”
Theoretically, the algorithm could handle two dozen drones, but in practice, silicon reflexes were no match for wetware honed by millions of years of evolution. A drone getting in the way of a fast-turning murmuration was not a pretty sight.
“You fixed the pathing problem, didn’t you? You’ve been working on it the whole week!”
“Yes, but—”
“Then what are you afraid of?” she said, throwing out a challenge.
The rapidly snowballing flock drew closer to the tower. She slapped the car door animatedly. “They are not going to be here tomorrow waiting for us to have another try. We may not find a flock this big for weeks. It’s now or never!”
“Okay, okay.” He started typing, flashing the new configuration to the machines. Worst case, she knew he could always take manual control of the drones with the mini joystick beside him.
The new drones flew wide before closing in. A few gained altitude and raced ahead, intending to swoop in from the opposite direction.
At the tower, a great black mass rose into the sky and engulfed the approaching murmuration like a monster mother devouring her young. Holly gasped. The combined swarm was huge. Now she wasn’t sure if even twelve would be enough.
Somehow, the murmuration held. It turned and moved toward the river. The collective hung over the water for a few seconds, as if confused about which way to go.
Please don’t go downriver.
The birds headed downriver. At the same time, her phone began to ring.
Not now!
“There aren’t enough drones pushing from downstream.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me. Hon, we can’t.”
“David, stop pussyfooting around. All sixteen, now!”
Shaking his head, David began typing anew. “Bossy, bossy. There! You can send them to their deaths.”
When she looked up after releasing the last of the drones, she couldn’t believe her eyes. The murmuration had finally turned in their direction.
“Woo hoo! Here it comes!” she hollered in delight.
The evening light bouncing off the birds’ iridescent plumages made the roiling mass shimmer with alternating waves of auburn and black. More birds from this side of the bank rose to meet the group. A surge of electricity ran through her body. The swarm seemed to cover half the sky as it came rushing toward her. The sound of thousands of flapping wings filled the air.
We did it! We’re steering the avalanche!
“Holding pattern time,” she shouted as the birds passed overhead. “Let’s see if we can sustain it for two minutes.”
David moved the murmuration to a spot a little distance away. There the swarm danced in mesmerizing whorls—left, right, up, down, forward, and back—though always staying inside the imaginary boundaries laid down by the drones. The drones themselves were at various places, some right next to the murmuration and some much further away, all positioned by the arcane math of the neural net. The couple beamed at each other. Obviously, there would have to be many more trials, but today was a big win.
Their celebration was cut short by a sudden chorus of shrieks. Holly stared, befuddled. The murmuration now seemed erratic, less fluid—as if it were dealing with stresses and strains it wasn’t accustomed to. The birds were still following predictive behavior, but some new factor was stretching those intuitive mechanisms to breaking.
“Stupid falcons!” David said, gleaning off the sky cameras. “I see three. There may be more.”
He wasn’t talking about the drones. The actual peregrine falcons were at the scene. With the starlings’ freedom of movement severely restricted, the falcons were probably picking them off like items off a buffet table. No wonder there was chaos in the ranks.
“I’m pulling back the drones,” he announced.
“No! Cancel the holding and direct them to the release point.”
“It’s not worth the risk. We can always try again.”
“And the falcons are gonna be there again. You can’t have thousands of prey without predators nearby. This has to work in the real world!”
The starlings settled their debate. The next second the murmuration broke into two, four, and then eight groups. Next, it was pure pandemonium as fifty thousand birds launched themselves in every possible direction.
Holly tried to run to the car but was quickly engulfed in a storm of wings and panicked shrieks. She threw herself on the grass and shielded her face. She could hear the confused birds hit the car as David cursed and fed new vectors to the drones.
The chaos lasted several minutes before the sky was clear again. When she rose, the ground was littered with feathers and bird poo. And occasionally, a dead starling.
The peregrines were nowhere to be seen. They were probably stuffing themselves silly somewhere.
“How many did we lose?” she asked glumly. Her cheeks burned with the humiliation of defeat. It was all her fault. She should have listened to David.
“Five down. Luckily, none seem to have fallen in the water.”
He hopped out of the car and came to her. His six-foot-two, muscular frame made her look small in comparison, even though she was above average height. “Are you okay?”
“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t h—”
David placed a finger on her lips. “No need to apologize. I wouldn’t have listened to you that last time anyway.”
The drones that had escaped crashing were now gently touching down on the grass around them. Holly looked at them unhappily. “Still…”
He kissed her lightly. “Sometimes, you can be as stubborn as a rock, but I love you for that. Because sometimes that’s what it takes to get the job done. You made a call; it didn’t work out. Big deal. We’ll try again.”
She nodded. “On the plus side, the configuration held.”
“Absolutely. We should be proud. If not for the hawks…” He shrugged. “I’ll think of some tweaks to the algorithm.” Then a crooked smile broke his lips as he thumbed at the car’s rear seats. “Meanwhile, I know of a way to put this behind us.”
It was hard to tell if he was joking or being serious. Knowing him, probably a bit of both. “Yeah right,” she said, rolling her eyes but also pleased that he wasn’t upset. “What grown woman doesn’t dream of doing it in the backseat of a car?”
Blessed with the temperament of an eternally huggable golden retriever, David was never one to let life’s little snags sour his mood. Holly was twenty-nine and he three years older, but he made her feel like they were a couple of pining teenagers. The fact that they were nearly two years into their relationship mattered little to him.
Not that Holly was complaining. Far from it. After her father had passed away, she’d been terribly lonely for a long time. With no other family to lean on and no time for dating, she had immersed herself in her work, banking on twelve-hour days to fill the emptiness. So when a handsome but unknown Assistant Professor of Computer Science approached her out of the blue, enthusiastically gushing about her research paper on starling flock dynamics, and how he saw a practical application for it, she had been intrigued—and not just by his project proposal. By the time he summoned the courage to ask her out—a few weeks into their collaboration—she’d taken to David Callahan’s infectious energy like a fish to water.
He came from a world very different from hers: parents still together; three siblings, all happily married with kids; and an extended family consisting of several aunts, uncles, and cousins who all kept in touch with each other. She’d met them at a wedding last year and had been blown away by their warmth and friendliness.
David was deeply in love, too. Holly secretly knew from a mutual friend that he had almost popped the question a little while back. Then he had stopped himself, wanting the occasion to be more than dinner at a fancy restaurant. Apparently, he was waiting to whisk her off to Paris come December.
She liked being whisked off to exotic locations. With her limited post-doc salary and student loans to clear, nearby Baja California was as exotic as it got.
Holly nudged him away with her elbow. “Go fetch the crashed drones, Romeo—it’ll be dark soon. Do you want me to help you look?”
The drones had high-fidelity GPS transmitters accurate to a few meters. “I’m good. You should get that.”
Her phone was ringing again.
***
It was an international call, country code +675. You better not be a telemarketer, she thought as she watched David walk away. “Hello?”
“Ms. Holly Truong?”
“Yes?”
“Hi. My name is Jim Mooney. I am calling from the US embassy in Papua New Guinea.”
“From where?” she asked, unsure if she’d heard him right.
“Papua New Guinea. It’s an island nation near Australia. Do you happen to know a Miss Myra Summers?”
The name sounded both intimately familiar and distant, like a well-known melody she hadn’t heard in a long time. Her body instinctively stiffened.
“You there?”
“Yeah.”
“Myra Summers. Do you know her?”
“Myra Summers is my mother,” she admitted with some reluctance. Used to be. Until she packed up and left.
“I see. I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. Your mother passed away last night here in PNG.”
What in the blazes is he talking about? “I’m sorry. Who are you, and what do you want?”
“Jim Mooney. United States Embassy. I know this must be difficult for you. I assure you this is not a prank call. You can call the embassy board and verify my number if you wish. Your mother was found dead in the Emerald Dive Resort at Alotau. Are you aware she was staying there?”
“No…”
“Are you aware she was in PNG?”
“No.”
“Do you know why she might be visiting here?” When Holly didn’t respond, he asked, “Was she on prescription medication of some kind? Any substance abuse history?”
“No.” Her responses were automatic, coming from a far-off place.
“It’s just that the preliminary cause of death seems to be cardiac arrest caused by an overdose of phenobarbital. It’s a sedative commonly used to treat seizures. Of course, we’ll know for sure only after the coroner’s report is out. Bear in mind that this is a police case, and repatriation of her remains could be delayed.”
On again being greeted by silence, he said, “It’s understandable if you’d like some time. I can call you back. The embassy—”
She realized only a few seconds later that she had hung up and was staring into empty space. Mom is dead? That’s not possible! There must be some mistake. Besides, why would anybody call her regarding Myra? How did that man even get her number? A different Myra, surely. She’d have to call him back and set it straight.
On her phone’s browser, she searched for “Jim Mooney, United States Embassy, Papua New Guinea”. The top result took her to an official page of the embassy. Jim Mooney was listed under the Consular and Visa Services section.
Not a prank then.
“Mooney,” said the voice from before when she dialed back.
“It’s Holly Truong.”
“Hi. I was about to call you. Sorry about the disconnection —the phone service here can be very unreliable.”
“Look, Mr. Mooney, I think you have the wrong person.”
“You are Myra Summers’ daughter, isn’t it?”
“My mom’s name does happen to be Myra Summers, but—”
“Are you telling me there’s more than one Myra Summers who has a daughter named Holly Truong?”
The finality of the statement felt like a door being slammed shut.
It’s not possible. There’s no way…
“Why did you call me?” she blurted.
“What a strange question. When a US citizen dies alone overseas, the embassy tries to contact the next of kin.”
“I am her daughter, but we’ve been estranged for a long time. We don’t keep in touch.”
“Ah. So you didn’t speak with her recently? Say in the last twenty-four hours?”
“We haven’t spoken in many years.”
Holly was eleven when Myra left her and her father, Philippe Truong. There had been some sporadic contact over the phone in the following years, but the calls had stopped completely around the time she turned seventeen.
“Not according to the police,” the man said. “They tell me she dialed your number from her room at 12:26 am local time. The time of death was soon after that.”
What is he talking about? Mom never called me!
“Actually,” he continued, “I didn’t know you were related until you told me. I just dialed the last person she called. I didn’t even know your name. I got it when my first call went to your voicemail.”
“There must be some mistake.”
“Ms. Truong,” he said, a little briskly this time. “I understand if you don’t want to be involved, but facts are facts. Anyhow, if you can point me to another family member, I’ll get off your back immediately. Her husband? Any siblings of yours?”
“I am an only child. My father is dead. She, too, was an only child. There’s no one else. She…erm, was not very sociable.”
“That’s unfortunate. Not a problem though. The embassy can take it forward from here, but we’ll need you to sign a waiver.”
“Okay.”
“If you give me your email, I’ll send the forms across. An electronic signature will do.”
She told him.
This is not right. She does have a family—it’s just not me. “Wait,” she said. “There is someone who’d want to claim her.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Last I know, he was running a biotech company in your neck of the woods. Myra was working for him. I don’t remember the firm’s name, but the umbrella company is called The Cantor Group. Cantor’s a Fortune 500 company.”
“I know Cantor. Their subsidiary C-Tel is a major telecom provider in PNG. Who is this person?”
There was a bitter taste on her tongue as the syllables rolled off it. “Adrian Tate.”
“Got it. Any relation to the fella who owns Cantor? A Roland Tate, if I remember right.”
Adrian fucking Tate. And his equally horrible father, Roland. Sir Roland Tate now, after he went back to the UK and received his knighthood. Two rich schmucks, who, despite having everything in the world, had stolen the one thing that mattered to her the most.
Myra. Adrian. Roland. A three-part concoction of awfulness that deserved each other.
She had hung up again, but this time it was out of rage.