Back at the house, the clones waited quietly to begin with. They had tidied the kitchen and settled in the living room. Tempting though Kim’s laptop was, they adhered to their promise not to have any communication with the outside world.
‘How long do you think they will be?’ said Emma.
‘Journey time from here to there may be about an hour, if there are no setbacks,’ said Alain. ‘Assuming Joe has been taken to the growth unit at the warehouse and it is not too challenging to extricate him, allow another hour. Three hours in total?’
‘I can envision any number of problems arising out of this exercise,’ said Hugo. He ticked them off on his fingers. ‘Number one, we’re assuming Joe is able to leave and that he has not suffered any injury. Number two, even if they manage to find him and get him out of the facility, whoever is holding him may very well resist his extraction and make efforts to retain him. Number three, they may follow them when they leave and bring trouble here. We have to remember their expressed intention is to find us and return us for deconstruction-’ he shuddered, ‘-which I am very keen to avoid at all costs.’
There was silence while they all digested this.
‘Ending us will mean no more to Osborne and Griffiths than snipping the heads off flowers. I am willing to believe they have no empathy for our situation.’
‘We can’t help Joe at this point,’ said Brontë. ‘But we could try to balance things a little more in our favour. What if we were to use the time to relocate?’
‘Permanently?’ said Hugo.
‘I was thinking temporarily, until after they had returned and we had time to see whether they were tracked or not,’ she replied. ‘Kim and Joe seem willing to help us and at present, they are the only resource we have.’
Add comment
Comments