“Harold Kelman?”
The aged British man, former head of the Ministry of Joy, looked up from where he sat.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
The young man grinned. “Nope. But I know you. They say a lot about you in the history books.”
Kelman snorted. “Nothing good, I’ll be bound.”
“Yeah, they don’t talk much about the Smiler stuff. That was kinda whack. Still amazed a whole nation bought into Martian psychic therapy.”
“Amazing what you can sell if you package it right.” The old man laughed, but there was no humour in it.
The stranger took the seat next to him. He sat back easily, as if unconcerned with what was going on in the older man’s mind. There was a long pause as the duo stared at the opposite wall of the waiting room.
“...are you here to see someone?” Kelman asked.
“Nope, just passing through. You?”
Kelman stared. “That’s rather private, isn’t it?”
“Hey, I’m a chatty guy. I like to get to know people.”
A longer pause. And then Kelman heaved a huge sigh, looking more old and tired than ever.
“My daughter. She… developed some kind of viral infection. The doctors can’t seem to identify it, but she’s… very weak. I pay her a visit every day I can. But with my busy schedule, I fear that someday she might… slip away. When I’m not there to comfort her. Ironic, that my brother created Marmalization to ease pain, and yet now I can’t do anything for my own child.”
His voice became cracked, emotion leaking through. The stranger sucked in air through his teeth.
“Damn,” he remarked. “Heavy. No dad should have to see their kid go before them.”
“And you would know?” Harold’s tone was almost droll.
“No. But I’ve seen it happen again and again, where I come from. Children getting their lives cut short, right in front of the people who love them the most. It’s messed up. Imagine having to cradle the body of your own family when their only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Harold sighed, but offered no comment. There was an even longer silence.
“You care a lot for your daughter,” the stranger said.
“Obviously.” Another humourless laugh.
Then Kelman looked over at the stranger. And he sensed something seemed off when he saw the tiny smirk at the corner of the younger man’s mouth. But he was old, and couldn’t be sure. Ever since the Smiler incident, he’d gone a little paranoid, always looking over his shoulder…
“Would you save her yourself, if you could?” asked the stranger.
The sense of wrongness grew.
“...more than anything.”
Then the stranger turned to him and looked him dead in the eye.
“Harold Kelman. History says that your daughter dies in a week, from the Bugster Virus. But I’ve come to change that. I can give you the power to save your daughter and make things right. In return, I need you to do something for me. Think of it as equivalent exchange - I scratch your back, you scratch mine. There’s a lot at stake, Harold Kelman, and I wouldn’t come to you if I didn’t think you weren’t the man who could do this.”
The former head of the Ministry felt very much like a cornered canary before the cat strikes.
“Do what?” he asked.
The stranger pulled something from his pocket.
