Mika Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Glossary of Māori terms

  The SHORTCUTS Series

  Imprint

  Prologue

  LAS VEGAS, 2034

  Atticus Tāura shakes his head. ‘We have to withdraw it, Selwyn. We have to. It isn’t ethical.’

  Selwyn Bruce, CEO of B-Cell, lets the statement hang in the air. He strolls to the window of the eighteenth-storey Las Vegas boardroom, takes a moment to adjust his tie – a Daniella Cavelli in watered pink silk – and runs his hand over his stomach. Then he turns to the gathered vice-presidents.

  ‘I think, what is important to remember here, is our original intent—’

  ‘To improve the lives of the sufferers of diabetes,’ Andi Canterell, VP of Human Resources interrupts. The CEO gives her a sharp look.

  ‘Sorry.’ Canterell picks up her pen and busies herself scribbling nervously on her legal pad.

  ‘As Ms Canterell has pointed out, B-Cell’s intent when we embarked on this line of research, was altruistic. And it still is, Atticus.’ Selwyn takes a step closer and puts a hand on Atticus’ shoulder. ‘We have a real ability to help these people, just not in the way we originally perceived. It isn’t ethical for us to withhold that help.’

  ‘But we’re responsible. We made it!’

  ‘Well, technically, you made it,’ Canterell mutters, evoking a titter from the other VPs.

  ‘And it’s not our fault that the new insulin proved unstable over time,’ Selwyn asserts. ‘The backlash was Nature’s doing.’

  ‘We should have foreseen it,’ Atticus insists.

  ‘We’re not gods. The point is that given what we know now, we’re prepared to do something about it. B-Cell is investing heavily in cybernetic prostheses, developing a whole new range of limbs, eyes – new phalange prototypes. These products will go a long, long way towards improving the lives of the afflicted.’

  Atticus frowns. What’s happened to Selwyn? Does the money really mean that much? There was a time, once, when Atticus could appeal to him, make him see sense.

  ‘Selwyn, please, I just need a bit more time. I’ve been working on a way to revert sufferers to their original genome. It’s not finished yet. I’ve been thinking about families, about the way we confer immunity, and how families protect themselves. There are some things—’

  The CEO drops his hand. ‘Tāura, I’m sorry. This company has to evolve to stay profitable, and we are doing that. But we need the development space. And, quite frankly, we need the funds. We cannot afford to support a non-profitable activity. Your group will be disbanded to make way for the robotics division.’

  Atticus glares. ‘What about my staff?’

  ‘The professors left earlier today – we think they may have left the country – and the others are being ... deployed ... elsewhere. It seems none of them are keen to stay with you, since your research is no longer being funded.’

  Atticus is surprised. A close-knit group, he’d expected more loyalty.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he growls. ‘If you won’t do it, then I’ll find someone else to fund my research!’

  The CEO grimaces. ‘Ms Canterell, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  Smiling hawkishly, Canterell hands Atticus a yellowing document.

  Atticus looks at it blankly. ‘This is my employment contract.’

  ‘Yes, and if you’ll turn to pages 12 and 13, you’ll see the clauses about restraint of trade, non-disclosure, confidentiality, and patents. And if I could draw your attention to the bottom of the page...’

  Atticus drops his eyes to the bottom margin. Atticus Tāura. His signature.

  ‘Go home, Tāura. You’re done here,’ the CEO says as he sweeps from the room.

  Chapter One

  NEW YORK, 2058

  The rain is coming down hard now, pummelling the windscreen in grey, almost horizontal sheets. Mika frowns. Taking one hand from the wheel, she rubs at her eyes. It’s been a long trip and she’s tired. She can barely see ten metres in front of her.

  The waka rolls violently. Mika purses her lips and shifts the vehicle to a lower gear, struggling to control the vessel in the surging waters. A vehicle bumps her from behind, the waka lurches, and Mika is thrown forward.

  ‘Tangaroa!’ she whispers under her breath, calling on the sea god of her ancestors for protection. The waka pitches again. Mika yanks at the steering, pulling hard to the left to get out of the queue. In the choppy water, the waka is slow to respond. Mika can do nothing more. She holds her breath, her eyes straining to penetrate the wall of rain. Another jolt. The larger transport crowding her from behind. She’s in danger of being sandwiched in, her waka crushed between two hulls.

  Come on!

  She didn’t travel first the Pacific, and then the Atlantic, to be shipwrecked arriving on the dock. She has a meeting to make. Biting back her frustration, Mika guns the accelerator. The prow of her waka touches the transport in front, the way a bull might caress the bullfighter’s cape as it thunders past. Mika exhales as the waka pulls clear. The manoeuvre has prevented a goring, but she’s going to have to head straight to the ramp now. Determined, she squeezes her prow through the traffic, pushing to the front like the smallest kid at a tuck shop queue.

  Coming through, people.

  At last, the waka’s hull touches home. Quickly, Mika changes transmission, and drives the little transport up the ramp onto the land.

  The Ellis Island entry point is in chaos. What Mika can see of it, in any case. Gale-force winds and driving rain have reduced visibility to next to nil.

  Is this the immigration point? Mika opens the window and is immediately soaked.

  A man in a flapping yellow raincoat peers in, his face ruddy from the rain. Even with the wet, Mika can smell the engine fumes. She shivers in her wet clothes, but only partly from the cold. She waits for the officer to scan her pupil.

  Please don’t make me go back.

  The man shakes his head. ‘The bio-scanner is down. Cybernetic reader, too. The console was hit by flying metal. We’re back to working like cavemen. Where are you from?’

  ‘New Zealand.’

  Someone behind sounds a horn. Raincoat man pulls away from the window and roars into the wind. ‘Hold your damn horses, why don’t you? I’ll get to you when I get to you.’ He turns back to Mika. ‘Where did you say?’

  ‘New Zealand. It’s an island—’

  ‘Staten Island? You’re a local? You do know you’ve landed at Ellis? Day like today, you should’ve taken the expressway, not the shortcut across the Bay. What kind of idiot are you? I suppose you wanted to see how your home-made transport handled a storm.’ He shakes his head in disgust.

  ‘No, no, you misheard me. I’m from—’

  But huddled deep in the hood of his plastic raincoat, the official either doesn’t hear, or doesn’t care to hear. ‘All we need. Locals wasting our time, coming through the immigration line. Drive on,’ he grumbles, gesturing impatiently. ‘You’re holding everyone up.’

  ‘I—’ But raincoat man has already turned his attention to the next vehicle in the line. Mika shrugs. If he’s going to make it this easy to get in, who’s she to argue? Sliding up the window, she shifts the waka into gear.

  He shouldn’t have called her an idiot.

  ‘For your information, mate,’ Mika mumbles to herself, ‘this isn’t just any old home-made transport. It’s a waka. And her name is Torua, if you care to know.’ Mika revs the engine, giving the
man a good whiff of Torua’s engine fumes, and speeds into the gloom.

  The rain hasn’t abated any as Mika takes the bridge to the mainland. On the road, the visibility is even worse. There are transports everywhere. Their lights glare, the milky beams multiplying in the gloom. Mika slows, getting an earful of honking and tooting from the traffic backing up behind her.

  Keep your hair on.

  She turns on Torua’s GPS system and, doing her best to keep her eyes on the road, punches in the rendezvous point.

  ‘Calculating.’

  The message had said it wasn’t too far from the bridge. Mika doesn’t want to miss the turn-off, or she could end up miles out of her way. She can’t afford to miss the guide.

  ‘Left turn approaching.’

  Mika peers ahead, but can’t make out the intersection through the fog of lights.

  ‘Left turn approaching in ... twenty yards.’

  ‘But I can’t see anything!’ she wails.

  Finally, the intersection fades into view. Hang on, there are two lefts. Which one is she supposed to take: the hard left or veer left?

  ‘Left turn approaching...’

  ‘Which lane?!’

  The middle, take the middle.

  The lights change.

  Mika guns the engine to get across the gap.

  A vehicle screams towards her.

  Oh my god, oh my god.

  She stomps on the brakes, but already she knows it’s too late. As the two vehicles plunge towards each other, like jousters in a medieval battle, Mika stretches her mind across the ocean to Aotearoa, to her sister.

  Huia.

  Mika.

  The voice is weak and thready. Mika’s heart clenches. Huia needs her. Needs her to get to Vegas. She has to—

  There’s an agonising crunch, followed by a whine that starts in Mika’s teeth and settles in her bones. Torua spirals out of control. Mika is flung sideways, her head glancing off the side of the waka, before she’s thrust upright again in a brutal whiplash. Soundless now, torque and momentum carry the vehicle through the intersection in a slow-motion blur, the front left corner trailing something with it. Obligingly, the object allows itself to be dragged along, throwing up silent sparks and shedding debris. Resisting the urge to cover her face, Mika grips the steering wheel and gently turns Torua into the curve. But the waka has power yet. It hurtles through a barrier, barely slowing. Losing the foreign object, it slides another twenty metres before coming to a stop on a huge traffic island.

  ‘Right turn approaching in twenty yards—’ Mika switches off the GPS, and hunches over the steering wheel, panting. When her pulse has slowed, she takes a deep breath and checks herself over. A few bruises. A bump the size of a small kūmara on her elbow, but otherwise all intact.

  I’m okay. Alive.

  Mika’s heart leaps again. But what about the other driver? The other vehicle?

  Flicking the compression, Mika flings open the hatch, pushing hard against howling wind. She climbs out of the waka, the hatch slamming shut as soon as she lets go. Mika squints through the rain. The bull bars, two rows of thick bars that encircle the waka, have been scraped back to the metal, the barnacles and rust of the ocean voyage sloughed off like dead skin. But, not built to withstand playful whales and floating garbage, the other vehicle hasn’t been so fortunate. Glancing off Torua’s bull-bars, it has struck a tree, and is a mess of broken branches, twisted steel, and glass, the driver door buckled inwards where the two vehicles collided. Instinctively, Mika knows it can’t open. Boots crunching on broken glass, she clambers onto the hood. The windscreen’s gone, leaving a glass-encrusted frame. The driver is slumped forward over the dashboard, oblivious to the rain thwacking at his back. Probably concussed when his head hit the windscreen.

  ‘Hey! Hey there! Can you hear me?’ she screams over the sound of the storm. She pushes her hair out of her face. ‘I’m coming. Hold on.’

  Using her boot, she breaks a branch underfoot, clearing the way so she can skirt around to the other side of the vehicle, then yanks on the passenger door, which, to her surprise, opens easily.

  Oh thank god.

  Climbing into the cab, she brushes away the glass on the seat with a dripping sleeve, then scoots over and gently pulls the man backwards by his sweatshirt.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ But he can’t hear her because he’s dead, a branch buried deep in his eye socket. Mika jumps back, relieved when the man slumps forward again, the grisly eye no longer looking at her blankly.

  What have I done?

  Leaning back in the passenger seat, Mika lets the rain wash down her face. Then she bursts into tears.

  Chapter Two

  SOFT STROKING AT HER hair startles Mika from her sobs. She twists in her seat and peers into the face of a child. The kid pulls its hand back, cowering. But even shied away, Mika can see that the force of the crash has caused the five-point safety harness to draws lines of blood along both sides of the child’s neck.

  A boy or a girl? Mika can’t tell the child’s gender from its appearance.

  ‘Oh Maui, save me,’ she breathes. ‘Are you all right?’ There’s a slight bob of its head. Straw hair pokes out in all directions from underneath a black beanie, as if it has recently had a bad haircut. The clothes are not the child’s. What kid would choose to wear so much black?

  ‘It smells funny,’ the child says.

  At first, Mika thinks the child is referring to the stink of body odour permeating the stale air inside the vehicle. But then she smells it too: the sharp acidic smell of a sparking battery pack.

  ‘Come on, sweetie, I have to get you out of here,’ Mika says, as calmly as her voice will allow. Leaning over the seat, she unsnaps the harness, and tucks her hands under the child’s armpits to pull it forward between the front seats. ‘Don’t look.’

  Despite the warning, the child turns to look at the driver.

  ‘I’m sorry about your papa. It was an accident. I...’

  Two small hands gently push Mika out into the rain.

  Outside, the wind has picked up, whipping debris from the accident into tiny tornadoes that swirl threateningly around them. The ferocity of the weather has emptied the streets of life. The child looks into the whirling sky and smiles. Long lashes and soft features.

  A girl.

  She lifts her arms above her head, palms outstretched. Blood trickles from welts at her neck, several blue bruises evident on her pale skin. Mika needs to get her medical attention. And not just for her injuries. That smile, her reaction, the kid’s got to be in shock – she’s just seen her father’s head turned into a kebab on a stray branch...

  Suddenly, the broken transport sends an electrical arc into the sky. Like a backwards lightning strike, its fingers search for contact in the metal architecture of the old bridge overhead, now clearly visible.

  ‘Quick, before it reaches my waka!’

  Mika grabs the child and drags her to Torua, climbing up and slamming the hatch door behind them.

  She thrusts the girl into the back of the vehicle, near the hatch to the lower living level. Then, leaping into the pilot seat, she starts the engine and, backing Torua away from the tangle of arcing metal, pulls out into the roadway.

  Away from the danger, and inside Torua, Mika immediately feels safer. The waka was a gift from her people, all their aroha and wairua carved into its sturdy construction. Not able to accompany her on this journey, they’d done everything in their power to give her the best chance of arriving safely on the land they’d long since cut all contact with. This vehicle is her lifeline, her support when she is far from her whānau, and from Huia. When her mission is complete, Torua will carry Mika back to her island home.

  Mika peers through the windscreen. The local residents have finally taken heed of the weather warning because there are fewer cars on the road. Or perhaps they’re there, only Mika can’t see them.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m going to find someone who’ll take care of you,’ she calls ove
r her shoulder as she punches at the keypad of her outdated GPS, looking for the nearest medical centre. The GPS’ voice, programmed to sound like her kuia, is rich and soothing, easing some of the panic racing in Mika’s veins. She caused a man’s death today. She should really go to the authorities and report the accident, except that would mean delays. Immigration didn’t register her entry, so they could turn her back. Send her home. Even without that complication, she’s missed her meeting with the guide. Her mission is jeopardised. Mika hasn’t got time for complications. Huia hasn’t got time. But Mika can’t just leave the kid.

  ‘Come on.’ Mika taps the screen with her nails, encouraging it to respond.

  ‘Calculating...calculating...calculating.’

  Even with the window wipers on full, Mika feel like she’s back on the water, Torua’s lights barely illuminating the way ahead. She needs the GPS but, for the moment, it’s having trouble orienting her. Probably some high buildings interfering with the triangulation. She risks a backwards glance at the girl. She’s from here; maybe she knows her way around?

  ‘Hey, why don’t you come up here and be my navigator? Careful now.’ Mutely following Mika’s instructions, the girl takes up the co-pilot seat.

  ‘Strap yourself in, honey. Until my GPS kicks in, in this pea soup, I have no idea where we’re going.’

  When her passenger has fastened herself in the harness, Mika takes a good look at her. The girl sits impassive, her hands unmoving in her lap. She has a thin nose with sharp cheekbones set high above caved-in cheeks, and bloodless blue-tinged lips. She keeps her eyes on the screen, hypnotised as it scans for their destination. Mika shivers. It’s unnerving for a child – she can’t be more than ten or twelve – to behave so mechanically. It’s true she’s just survived a horrific trauma, perhaps even seen her father die, but it’s more than that. The child has the tired, haunted, broken look of a victim of illness or neglect. That’s what it is. It’s as if long-term suffering is etched into her features. Only unlike the evocative swirls and whorls of Mika’s own tattoos, there’s no beauty in the story Mika reads on the child’s face.