Sever - A Wattpad Featured Story

Chapter 25

Langdon Bay, Dover

Despite the blistering wind on the cliffs, Eddie wiped his lip and flicked the lighter. He hadn't so much as stoked up a flame before his brother knocked it away.

'Hey.'

'Just because the war didn't kill you,' the fair brother said, and they both watched the narrow white cigarette tailspin towards the water below, where not so far away, investigators were still pulling shrapnel from Dover's wrecked border control centre jetty. It was ten days since the attack.

'Now, what's put the fear of God in you this afternoon, Eddie? Mum tried calling you.'

'She's a persistent old bat.'

'Who knows when you drop her calls. What's going on?'

Eddie paused, then coughed. 'I spoke to the Prime Minister this morning.'

'Thought you were leaving politics to me?'

'A chat between old school friends, that's all,' Eddie said. 'The good news is that the international contract to deliver the hormones we use is on hold indefinitely. They've ceased negotiations with Professeur Dubois in Paris, and he's agreed not to re-enter into talks until we can illustrate a safe passage into France. We've bought some time. And better still, we've seen to it that the press don't know the contents of the stolen shipment. They think it's just Fertility.'

'Indeed some of it was. But we need them to abandon this international treaty altogether. They can't deconstruct the base strains, else they'll find out what we did.' The fair one rubbed his frigid palms together. 'You've been smoking at home too? Between your wife's drinking and your vices—'

'Prime Minister Seaford won't let it fall on the security guard,' Eddie continued, ignoring his brother. 'He needs the culprits to be foreign.'

'What, why?'

'He has some agenda on immigration. This morning he lobbied for iD tags to be enforced on non-British passport holders. Next he'll go to the social sector, then schools. They'll slowly tag us all.'

The lighter haired brother gasped. He'd partaken in his share of game playing over the years but this option hadn't even come close to consideration before. 'But if everyone's traced, that means.. they'll find out.'

Eddie blew into his pressed together palms. Three times he turned to his brother, then back into the headwind without word. On the forth time, his voice lacked its usual distinction. 'You know we could quit now whilst we're ahead. Everything would even itself out eventually. The next generation need not be affected.'

'But this has made us,' said his fair brother, sternly. 'We've lived up to Grandfather's legacy.'

'All the more reason why we bow out now, with our own legacy intact.'

'That's not exactly what you mean, is it Eddie? You're suggesting that I bow out now? You'd continue to supply your wonder cure, Fertility, until P.O.D. settled down and natural fertility returned.'

'Really? You're getting touchy about that? Problem - solution; same thing.'

'Damn right I am, with no credit where credit's due. They'll give you a knighthood next and my chances of office will be dashed. And what happens if, in twenty years, we were wrong, and it wasn't our mistake that caused this infertility.'