The Legacy by Gemma Malley Page B

and started to walk away.
    ‘That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?’ Jude asked desperately. ‘What do I say to the men? What do I do?’ He looked down miserably at his handheld device. ‘Do you even realise what I’ve got here? Are you even aware that I worked for months on this communications network? That it’s unrivalled as far as I know? Do you care that I don’t just film attacks; that because of me, you or I can speak directly to the leaders of the soldiers, send for back-up, give orders when dead bodies spill out of lorries instead of drugs? Do you?’
    He stared at Pip defiantly, angrily.
    Pip looked back at him, then nodded. ‘Of course I know, Jude,’ he said quietly. ‘Tens, maybe hundreds of lives have been saved because of what you have done.’
    Jude started in surprise. Pip had never so much as said thank you for the network, never seemed to show any interest in it. ‘So what do I tell them to do?’ he asked.
    ‘You tell them to go home,’ Pip said quietly. ‘And then you track the lorries back through their journeys. I want to know where they came from and where they stopped on their way. Can you do that, Jude?’
    ‘Track lorries? Sure, I can do that,’ Jude said heavily, turning back to the images and feeling his blood turn cold at the sight of them. ‘I can do whatever you want.’

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    Chapter Four
     
    Richard stood at the window of his large office, looking at but barely seeing the panoramic view of London, the symbol of all his power and success. He felt ill, felt tired, felt . . . scared.
    Power and success. Already it felt as if they were evaporating. He walked over to his desk and gripped it. Slowly he breathed, in, out, in, out. He would find an answer. He always found an answer.
    But even as he told himself everything would resolve itself, he found his mind flooded with doubt. For so long he had buried all thoughts of Albert Fern, of his protestations as Derek led him to his death. ‘ You don’t have anything, Richard . . . Without the exact formula you know nothing . . . The circle of life must be protected . . .’
    Richard shuddered. How he hated his former boss, his former father-in-law, the man who had treated him with such contempt, forcing him to undertake menial tasks in the laboratory when it had been clear he was meant for greater things. But Richard had had the last laugh. It had been an article he’d happened upon while at university that had convinced him he should go and work for Albert – an interview in which Professor Fern had made an offhand remark about his pursuit of the cure for cancer, saying that he feared they would cure ageing before they cured every strain of that terrible disease. He’d done his research and from what he’d read, Albert had seemed to be the real deal. So Richard had waited for an opening, for a job to come up in his laboratory. And when it had, he’d been ready.
    Everything had gone to plan too. More to plan than Richard had allowed himself to dream. Except . . .
    He moved towards his large leather chair and sat down heavily, then pulled out from his top drawer the papers he’d stolen from Albert’s desk on the day of his death – meaningless scribbles, equations and streams of letters that even the most brilliant scientists had been unable to interpret. All Richard could hear in his head was Albert’s taunts about the circle of life. The circle of life? What was it?
    Angrily, he let the papers fall from his hands back on to the desk. Several times over the years he’d almost thrown them away – they were meaningless drivel and he hadn’t needed them. Despite Albert’s protestations, his team of scientists had been able to recreate Longevity, as he’d named it, from the professor’s original sample. The drug had sailed through all testing and trials and had taken the world by storm, and Albert Fern had been recast in the history books as a genius who had died of natural causes before his great discovery