World Will Fall

5. Daddy's Girl

5

Daddy's Girl

The Grüne Hügel Privatklinik was more like a five-star retreat than a medical centre. Halfway up a hill, overlooking a crystal-clear lake and small Austrian village, the place was a converted white stone mansion with cream marble floors and a giant tropical fish tank in reception.

I half expected to be thrown out for being too poor and scruffy, a common feeling I got whenever I went into anywhere remotely fancy. Philippe obviously thought the Punto was too classy, so we’d switched cars outside Berlin and stolen another old banger with red doors that didn’t match the rest of the mint-green Polo.

We looked like something a dog had spewed up, but we were validated with smiles from the pristine staff in their crisp white uniforms.

“What if they report us?” I asked as we entered through one of the spotless automatic doors.

“They’re very discreet,” Philippe assured me. “It’s why I come here.”

“Welcome back, Mr Vazquez,” the pretty young receptionist said with a smile, her teeth whiter than snow. “Just a check-up or will you be staying with us?”

Philippe draped an arm on the desk. “Just a check-up.”

“And will your daughter be in need of attention?” the receptionist asked, her eyes betraying her smile as she looked me up and down.

“Oh, she’s not—”

“Yes,” I said, doing my posh telephone voice. “That should be splendid.”

I hooked my arm around Philippe’s, pouring it on. “Can I have a sweetie, Daddy?”

Philippe snatched a couple of fruit lollipops from a huge crystal dish on the reception counter. He stuffed them aggressively in my hand. One strawberry. One blackcurrant. Yum. Yum. Yum.

The receptionist tapped away at her computer and told us to wait in Consulting Room 1B. “To the right of the elevators, second room on your left down the hall.”

“Daddy?” Philippe asked me, as we made our way past a small fitness room with glass walls, where two overweight, silver-haired men plodded away on adjoining treadmills.

“Well, you are in your forties,” I said.

“I’m thirty-nine.”

“Either way, you don’t want them to think you’re a paedo kidnapper,” I said, sucking on my strawberry lolly.

“If you’ve got the money, they really don’t care,” Philippe said, pushing the consulting-room door open.

Dr Gradel, placed a cold stethoscope on my back and leaned in close. So close I blushed.

“Breathe in,” she said, listening carefully.

Perfect teeth. Gym-bunny calves. Dark, glossy hair like Becki’s. And, I guessed, a bit of Turkish in her genes. She was a real sophisticated beaut, maturing nicely into her dirty thirties.

“Okay, good,” she said, scribbling on a stainless-steel clipboard. Even their clipboards were high-end.

I sat on the examination bench next to Philippe, both of us in a smock, fresh from a hot shower and a full physical.

“Well, the good news is you’re both doing well. Mr Vazquez, you’re in excellent condition, considering. Your heart is strong, if not entirely reliable.”

Not entirely reliable. I wondered what she meant by that. She seemed miffed about something.

“Been drinking a lot lately?” she asked.

“Just the odd Scotch,” Philippe said. “You know me.”

“I thought I did,” Dr Gradel said, under her breath.

Ooooh. Bitchy. Was there something between them? Had they shagged? I sensed a frisson of tension.

“Chloe …”

Yep, I was Chloe Vazquez now.

“You’re also doing well, considering your organ isn’t your own. Incredible case study. Father donates his own heart to child and receives a new organ cloned from his own DNA.”

I knew Philippe had spun her a story while I was changing into my medical gown. Did she believe him? I guess they were paid enough here to believe anything.

“I imagine much of your accelerated progress is down to the medication your father has been on all these years,” said Dr Gradel. “Some of the enhanced benefits may have passed on through proteins in the cells.”

“Enhanced?” I asked. “Like steds?”

Philippe and Dr Gradel looked at each other, equally confused.

“Steroids,” I said.

“They’re non-steroidal,” Dr Gradel said. “Though they do result in enhanced physical and mental performance, including increased immune strength and bone density.”

So that’s why Dr J thought his machines had gone screwy. And it made sense. JPAC didn’t want their best assassins getting sick or injured. Not when there was a global village to intimidate and control.

Phillipe stood and stretched. “It increases stamina in all departments,” he said.

“Not all departments,” Dr Gradel said, ditching her clipboard and pen on a characterless grey cabinet.

They’d definitely shagged.

“You never told me you had a daughter,” she said to Philippe, peeling her latex gloves off at the wrist and dropping them in a cylindrical, stainless-steel bin.

Come on, cell memories, throw me a dream bone. I want to know what she looks like naked.

Good grief, what was I becoming? It was like Philippe’s inner schoolboy was at the controls of my brain and body, sniggering, wolf-whistling and tossing off all over the inside of my mind.

Ugh. Gross. Were all men like this, even when all grown up? The thought depressed and disgusted me a little.

Philippe gave the doctor some flam about not finding out about me until a year ago.

“Brought together by a shared heart,” Dr Gradel said, seeming genuinely touched.

“Chloe,” she said, handing me a notepad and silver bullpen, “I’ll need to know what medications you’ve been taking.”

I scribbled out a long list and handed it over.

“Wow,” she said, reading through the list. “Who prescribed all these?”

“The NHS,” I said.

“Ah, public health,” she said, bending over to reach inside a low cupboard.

Me and Philippe caught each other admiring the view.

“What?” he mouthed.

“Pervo,” I mouthed back.

Philippe held his palms open as if to say “pot and kettle”. Dr Gradel spun around and the pair of us averted our eyes to opposite ends of the ceiling.

“I forget we’re more advanced here,” she said, handing me a small white box with the Grüne Hügel logo on the front. It was full of tiny blue pills called GXK. “Forget your previous medication. Just take one of these a day.”

“Wait, that’s it?” I asked.

I was used to popping thirty to forty pills. All the colours of the rainbow. A lot of them big. So big you felt them go down, from throat to stomach. Somehow it didn’t feel right taking one teeny, weeny pillette.

“That’s it,” Dr Gradel said. “We developed it here at Grüne Hügel. It will do the job of all your current medication, only far more efficiently. Greater immunity. Better heart health. Fewer side effects.”

“And way fewer pills,” I said.

Dr Gradel paused a moment. “Of course, they’re not cheap.”

“It’s okay,” I said, smiling and sucking my blackcurrant lolly down to the stick. “Daddy will pay.”