Miriam turned, suspecting the answer was about to be revealed. She stood and exited the bathroom, and the padding of bare feet on marble told her that Betty was following. She then picked up the phone on the bedside table.

“You’re both awake now,” the caller said. “Good. There’s not much time left.”

Mariam recognised the voice instantly. It was Gabriel, the science teacher from Nthoroane High School. She pictured the short, silver- haired man seated in the Lion Bottle Store. He had worn a threadbare tweed jacket, but the true measure of the man was found not in the cut of his cloth, but within the haughty cloak of his aristocratic air and manners.

Mariam guessed that, somewhere in the past, Gabriel’s family had noble titles attached to their names: professors, doctors, engineers. But no longer. Maybe that was why he had become a science teacher. It was an attempt to cling on to that once-illustrious past. When she met him that morning, she had hoped to buy documents containing the handlers that Evo Institute had initially employed to enforce The Twin Effect Law, but circumstances had clearly changed. “Had the man figured out my intentions? If so, then why am I stiII alive?” she thought.

“I’m in need of your unique skills,” Gabriel explained, as if reading Mariam’s thoughts. “I expended much effort to lure you here to Greylingstad, to entice you with the promise of answers. You almost came too late.”

“So this was all a ruse,” Mariam asked.

“No. Not at all, Ndlovukazi. I have the documents you’re looking for. Like you, I took full advantage of the tumult among our employers, your former and my current that is, on order to free the papers you came hunting for. You have my solemn word on that. You came to buy them, and I’m now merely negotiating the price.”

“I’m not interested in negotiations.”

“But you’re interested in what I sell. That means the price is whatever I want it to be.”

“And what is that price?”

“I want you to find Repo66 for me.”

Miriam struggled to keep up with the negotiations. “Repo66?”

“Yes,” Gabriel responded simply.

“But diseases no longer exist.”

“That’s what the propaganda says,” Gabriel continued. “Not all diseases have been cured. The only thing that was cured was the dying environment and the ever growing population. My son, David, has lung cancer, and I need you to get the samples for him. They have fallen under the clutches of another compatriot of our organisation, one I find most distasteful. The man is the leader of an apocalyptic cult, Umthetho waMose.”

“The Law of Moses,” Betty translated aloud, her face hardening at the mention of the name.

“Alright, get this,” Gabriel continued from the phone. “A decade ago, the cult had been behind a series of mass suicides in two villages in the Free State, and another in Western Cape. Twin Effect Members were found either poisoned by their own hand or drugged into submitting. One site was even firebombed in a final act of purification. Most believed that the LOM had dissolved after that, but in fact, they’d only gone underground, serving a new master: Evo Institute.”

Mariam wasn’t surprised by the news. Her former employers often harnessed such madness and honed its violence to serve their own ends.

“But the new leader of LOM, Connor Maddox, has greater ambitions,” Gabriel said.

“Connor Maddox? I thought he died after assassinating the president in ’21.”

“Oh dear, that was just a ruse. He’s very much alive. And like us, he plans to use the momentary loosening of the Evo Institute’s reins to exert his own independence and wreak great havoc on this government. For that reason alone, he has to be stopped. But my concern falls mainly on curing my son, but if we can stop him while getting my son the help he needs, then who’s to say we aren’t doing something that matters.”

“By ‘we’ you mean you’re coming along too, right?” Betty asked.

Gabriel laughed over the phone. “No, I’m not.”

“We don’t even know where to find him,” Miriam pointed out.

“That’s what Miss Betty’s exquisitely artistic body is for,” Gabriel explained. “The tattoos are your map and guide. Also, this is a time sensitive situation, so you need to get this done before 6PM.”

Mariam glanced at the radio clock. The deadline was in less than an hour.

“That’s why I took these extreme measures,” Gabriel went on. “I did it to ensure your cooperation. The collars not only punish, they also kill. Leave the town limits of Greylingstad and you will meet a most agonizing end. Fail to get my Repo66, and you will meet the same fate.”

“And if I agree … if I succeed?”

“You will be set free. You have my oath. And as payment for services rendered, the documents I possess will also become yours.”

“But you’ve already taken my money,” Mariam said. “It’s only fair I just get the documents.”

“I’m the one settings the rules here, Miriam,” Gabriel reminded. “If I were you, I’d get moving. The clock’s ticking.”

Miriam considered her options, but it did not take long, though. She knew she had only one option: to cooperate. She also understood why Gabriel had collared her and turned her into his hunting dog. She dared not risk her neck with a vicious maniac like Connor Maddox, who was a well- known Anti-Twin Effect terrorist.

“Study her tattoos,” Gabriel said before hanging up. “You’ll find the connection there, and if it helps, start from her arms.”

Miriam instantly focused her attention on Betty’s naked arms and the sprawl of her tattoos. That was the first chance she’d had to gotten a good look at them. In black, yellow, and crimson inks, a strange map had been indelibly etched into her skin, but it was not a chart of streets and avenues. In meticulous detail, the artwork depicted an intricate network of crisscrossing tunnels, widening chambers, and watery pools. It looked like the map for some lost cavern system. It was also clearly an unfinished work: passages faded into obscurity or ended abruptly at the edges of the tattoo.

“Looks like we’re going on a witchhunt,” Mariam muttered.

Tell us: do you think Mariam and Betty made the right decision to do what Gabriel wants instead of going to the police?