Hard Return

by Rosie Claverton

She tried to breathe, but the fear gripped her whole chest like a vice. They would hear her breathing. They would hear her panicking. She was only making things worse by trying to fight it. Her heart was beating so loudly that it would give her away, like a poem by Poe.

  Amy squeezed her fists, seeking the pain of her nails digging into her palms, something to break the cycle. But there was something in the way, something in her hand. She looked down at it, her brain struggling to recognise it. A mobile phone.

  She still had her phone. With trembling hands, she unlocked it, and began to type. Painstakingly slowly, but she was trying not to hear the crying and the swearing and something heavy hitting the floor.

  She checked the message and hit send. The reply was immediate: ACKNOWLEGED. ACTION INCOMING.

  ‘There you are.’

  Someone yanked on her hair, pulling her out from under the desk. The phone spilled from her hand, skittering across the floor and into a dark corner. The man was tall and pale, with an Eastern European accent. Amy recognised him as P4, one of the enhanced prisoners – well, formerly. He had been demoted during the day shift. It seemed like it was a lifetime ago.

  ‘Come then, little girl. Come along with the others.’

  Amy was manhandled back into the Eye Room, where a group of agents were kneeling on the floor in front of the empty dark screens. She counted ten people – all the Eyes from the day shift and four from the night shift. IN3 and IN5 were missing, as were the day shift security agents.

  ‘Tell us how to override the bedroom lock,’ her captor said, shaking her. ‘Tell us or I start killing these people.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, quickly, immediately.

  ‘It can’t be done,’ IN2 called, from the floor. ‘The bedroom lockdown can only be overridden from the inside.’

  ‘I wasn’t asking you!’ the man shouted, his grip increasing on Amy’s shoulder. ‘I was asking this little bitch.’

  ‘She’s new,’ IN2 continued. ‘She doesn’t know anything.’

  P4 pushed her to the floor and snorted. ‘Of course she doesn’t.’

  Amy rolled onto her knees, like the others, and counted the prisoners in the room with them. She identified seven people, most of whom she knew by designation. But the one that immediately leapt to the forefront of her mind was a man she had been staring at for most of her waking hours: P6 aka IN0.

  He was holding a makeshift club, so they obviously thought he was one of them. Nothing in his expression or posture gave him away – he was prisoner, not agent, and he was going to play his part until the end. Not that he could do anything to help the situation by revealing himself, but Amy also thought that he didn’t want to. That the night Eyes were trying to preserve this experiment at all costs, up to and including murder.

  ‘Ask her about the reward!’

  It was the lonely journal writer who asked – P12, the one who spent his nights writing screeds in his notebook for no one to read. His comment was addressed to one of the enhanced prisoners, an exceptionally tall black man with dreadlocks, known to her as P2.

  ‘When do we get the reward?’ he asked, wearily, as if it was the last thing he wanted to ask.

  Amy had no idea what they were talking about, but she tried to blag it. ‘You’ll get it when you meet the criteria.’

  She heard IN2 snort behind her and hoped she hadn’t said something ridiculous.

  ‘We have met all the ones that count!’ P12 whinged.

  ‘There is only one,’ IN2 said, sneering. ‘Get everyone out – and ‘everyone’ isn’t here and you’re not even out.’

  Only one? Amy remembered Owain telling her this was only the first stage of the experiment. Did the men even know that? Or was it Owain who had been deceived? And IN2 was right – everyone wasn’t here, even counting the men out in the corridor. She'd heard their voices and there were three at most. That meant nine prisoners in the bunker. P5 was on his way to a hospital, which left two people unaccounted for. It wasn’t rocket science to work out who.

  ‘Where are P7 and P8?’ she asked. ‘Jason and Lewis – where are they?’

  ‘I told you we needed them!’ one of the enhanced prisoners shouted. ‘You wouldn’t fucking listen, Pansy!’

  ‘I don’t give a fuck about your boyfriend!’ Pansy screamed back.

  ‘Both of you shut the fuck up,’ the dreadlocked man said. ‘Someone needs to go up and get them. That’s it. Then we go.’

  Pansy put up a token protest, but it soon fizzled out.

  ‘I’ll get them.’ The other man in the argument was grim now, determined. ‘I need a light. And for you to open that bloody door.’

  Pansy sighed deeply but opened the laptop he was carrying under his arm. It looked like it might’ve been Owain’s. Amy watched him enter a login, start their system, and open up a menu she hadn’t seen before. He had accessed high level clearance beyond even her new powers, possibly on a par with Frieda’s. She wished now she had focused her attention on access instead of surveillance.

  ‘It’s done,’ Pansy said, sulkily.

  The man nodded, and left the corridor, presumably going back the way they'd come – from somewhere near the kitchen. She had a strange echo of Pansy’s words in her mind – your boyfriend – and knew he had to mean Lewis. She'd never met Lewis, but she'd seen photographs, heard Jason talk about him endlessly, and, of course, seen his criminal record. She found the idea that he was someone’s prison boyfriend surprising, but then checked herself. Who knew anything about anyone without asking?

  ‘What are you going to do with us?’ IN2 asked, and Amy realised that had been her line.

  ‘Nothing.’ The dreadlocked man seemed to be in charge, or at least in charge of the talking. ‘You wait here until we’re gone. Someone will check up on you eventually.’

  Sooner than he thought, if Amy’s message had gone through. With Pansy’s command of the computer system, it was likely he'd cut off the line of communication to Control, but he didn’t know about the mobile. How quickly could Frieda get someone down here? If she tried official communications and found them disabled, she would act fast to retrieve her agents.

  Or would she?

  A cold feeling settled in Amy’s chest and her eyes drifted towards IN0. He was protecting the experiment at all costs. Was Frieda? Had she known about all of this and wanted it to continue to its natural end? She might estimate the risk to the hostages as low, especially if she knew she had an agent on the inside.

  Maybe no one was coming. Maybe they were on their own.

  Chapter 45: Through the Looking Glass

  ‘Tell me the plan again.’

  Jason’s voice was taut like a guitar string and he felt drunk on adrenaline. He fished his phone out of his bag, but there were no messages. Amy hadn’t texted him. Maybe Amy wasn’t able to text him.

  ‘Jay—’ Lewis started.

  ‘Again, Lewis. How do they get out of the compound? What happens next?’

  Do they kill the agents?

  ‘Pansy didn’t get that far. He thought there would be some kind of release system on the inside, a manual one that wasn’t networked. He said that just made sense, from a security perspective. We all just went along with it.’

  ‘And if there isn’t? What then?’

  Lewis shrugged helplessly.

  ‘Why now?’ Jason demanded. ‘Why go now?’

  ‘When the signal jammer dropped, Pansy could access the internet for the first time – not the network in Hell, but the actual internet. He arranged all the onward stuff, like transport and safe houses, that kind of thing. He didn’t trust Them to keep their promises.’

  ‘Smart fucker,’ Jason said, who wouldn’t trust Frieda as far as Amy could throw her. ‘Wait, what’s ‘Hell’?’

  Lewis pointed downward. ‘That’s where they are. Torturing us from down below. Hell seemed app
ropriate.’

  ‘How do we follow them?’

  Jason saw Lewis hesitate, and felt his heart harden against him. Did he not trust him anymore? Had he reacted that badly to Lewis’ revelation that his best mate now couldn’t tell him the truth?

  ‘Lulu?’

  ‘I know I said you were barking, Jay, but maybe they left us outside for a reason. It’s not part of the plan, but then I wouldn’t be in any plan to leave me behind, would I?’

  Jason exhaled, trying not to show his relief. Lewis was upset with Stoker, not with him. His…partner, or whatever he was, had left him behind and he was smarting. Jason was in the clear.

  ‘I thought we had to get everyone out?’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Lewis asked.

  ‘Loose lips, sinky ships. Let’s get out of here.’

  He could see Lewis was still not quite with him, caught up in his betrayal. Jason grabbed his shoulder and bodily hauled him out of the dormitory and into the corridor.

  ‘Where can we get a weapon?’

  But Lewis had stopped. Charging down the corridor was Stoker, red-faced and out of breath, some mixture of panic and anger in his expression.

  ‘I’ve been fucking looking for you! I went round and round this fucking place five fucking times!’

  Lewis stumbled forward and Stoker kissed him, a rough full-body kiss that Jason realised he was staring at before he hurriedly looked away. Yeah, that was going to take some getting used to.

  ‘You got a problem?’

  Jason turned back to him, trying to ignore the pink on Lewis’ cheeks and focus on the angry bulk of Stoker. He held up his hands.

  ‘No problem, me. Just want to get out of here.’

  Stoker took a step towards him. ‘I haven’t got a problem with Lewis having exes, you know. I just don’t want them interfering in my business.’

  Jason couldn’t help himself. He laughed out loud, staring at Stoker in disbelief.

  ‘I’m not his ex, Stoker. I’m just his mate.’

  Stoker looked like he'd been slapped with a fish.

  ‘Then why do you act like you own him, huh?’

  Jason looked to Lewis, who was staring at Stoker. Did he act that way? He'd come in here with the aim of getting Lewis out, of saving him from the Big Bad NCA. Maybe because he hadn’t been able to save Amy from Frieda, or maybe because he'd felt so useless to her this past year. Whatever it was, he hadn’t been treating Lewis like an equal in this, but some damsel in distress.

  How the hell did he tell Stoker all that without him getting the wrong idea? ‘Oh, Lewis just reminds me of my kinda-girlfriend and I babyed him because I can’t do it for her.’?

  ‘He came in here to get me, Ben,’ Lewis said, pre-empting him. ‘He’s not a con – not anymore. He’s working…well, he’s working against the people running this place.’

  Working for them, working against them – Jason wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing anymore, but the explanation seemed to make Stoker look even more uncomfortable. At least he wasn’t in angry-panic mode any longer.

  ‘You the law then?’

  ‘Not me,’ Jason said, using a phrase of Amy’s. ‘Just an interested third party.’

  That didn’t seem to help matters. Stoker shuffled his feet and moved away from Lewis, before suddenly meeting Jason’s eyes intensely.

  ‘It was me,’ he blurted. ‘It was me what pushed you off the roof.’

  In his mind’s eye, Jason replayed the scene on the roof, inserting Stoker into the narrative. He was the right build, and he had the strength. Jason had just assumed he'd been on the ground with Lewis when Nikolai had punched him, but then Nikolai probably would’ve ended up in a body bag. Now that he thought about it, it was probably Stoker’s absence that gave Nikolai the confidence to take a swing.

  ‘What the fuck, Ben?’ Lewis said, horrified.

  ‘I don’t know!’ Stoker wailed, in the biggest display of emotion Jason had seen from him.

  Lewis turned away from him, tight-lipped and shaking with fury.

  ‘We need to get out of here,’ Jason said, making sure he included both Lewis and Stoker in his gaze. ‘The rest is for later.’

  ‘It was Pansy,’ Stoker said, unable to stop confessing. ‘He said we should leave you behind. But the agent, the girl in charge, she said we all needed to get out for us to, y’know, win.’

  ‘What girl?’ Jason said, suddenly intensely focused on Stoker.

  ‘I don’t know – a girl? Brown hair about here.’ Stoker gestured at his chin. ‘It’s got this odd pinky bit in it.’

  ‘That’s Amy,’ Jason said, marching up the corridor. ‘We have to go now.’

  ‘How do you know where to go?’ Stoker called.

  ‘I found out when you pushed me off the roof,’ Jason called back and kept walking.

  The kitchen cupboards had been dismantled, revealing the gap between the kitchen ‘wall’ and the external wall. A rope ladder had been constructed from knotted sheets, like in the best prison escape movies, and was still suspended into the dark hole. Between the hole in the wall and the hole in the roof, the place was basically an ice box.

  Jason turned to Stoker and gestured down into the abyss.

  ‘After you.’

  Stoker nodded and started down the ladder. Lewis caught Jason’s arm.

  ‘Jay, I’m sorry. I’ve really fucked up.’

  ‘Not now, Lulu. We’ve got to get out of here.’ Find Amy. Save Amy.

  Lewis went down the ladder, and Jason forced himself to wait. Count to ten. Deep breaths, in and out, in and out. Just like he'd gone through with Amy, back when she was fragile, when she needed him to breathe for her. How did Amy even get in there? Why did Stoker think she was in charge? What the fuck was going on?

  He reached ten, and his foot was already on the first rung. It was a wild, bucking thing, but he felt it go taut. Lewis must’ve caught hold of it. He scrambled down as fast as he dared, alert for the sound of tearing cotton, before red light appeared below him. His foot hit the ground sooner than he expected, and he sensed Lewis next to him. The main lights were out down here too, with only a red floor-level glow to see by. How the hell had Pansy managed that? Why wasn’t Amy stopping him?

  He turned to see a white light some distance in front of them, giving him night blindness in the low-lit corridor. Lewis groped for his arm and, together, they stumbled drunkenly towards the light. As they approached the beacon, Stoker’s features became clearer beneath the light. He was standing in front of an open door, about where the mess door was upstairs. It was an exact reflection of the compound, merely subterranean, and it was freaking Jason out.

  Further down the corridor, he heard someone shouting and banging against one of the doors, with another beacon of light flooding his vision. Stoker nodded towards the door, and they stepped through together.

  ‘Took your time,’ Dreadlock said.

  ‘They had wandered,’ Stoker said, and said no more.

  ‘Are you happy, Dreadlock?’ Pansy said, sounding on edge. ‘Can we go now, miss?’

  ‘If you can.’

  Her voice came from near the floor, coming out of a sea of shadowed faces attached to kneeling bodies. It sounded alien, harsh, but he would still recognise her anywhere. He tried to control his expression, even though he doubted anyone could see it, because that would be one small step to something very stupid.

  ‘Where is the release for the hatch?’ Pansy demanded.

  Silence.

  The sharp thwack of impact had Jason leaping forward, but Lewis had a tight hold on his arm. They had already been left behind once. They couldn’t afford to be enemies again. But what was the use of being here if he wasn’t protecting Amy?

  ‘You like hitting women, Pansy?’ Jason said, sneering. ‘Are they the only ones who won’t fuck you up?’<
br />
  ‘She needs to know her place. Why’s she even playing the game? She’s already lost!’

  ‘The house always wins.’ Dreadlock sounded distant, almost dreamy. ‘They set this up to watch how we'd do it. Either way, if we escape or we don’t, they still get what they want.’

  Chapter 46: The Charge of the Night Brigade

  Cerys was startled from sleep by her ringing phone. What time was it?

  She tried to reach for it, but something was weighing down her shoulder: Catriona’s head. The DVD logo was bouncing around the television screen – what had they even been watching?

  The phone was still ringing.

  Mumbling an apology to Catriona, Cerys reached forward with her clumsy left hand and answered it. ‘‘lo?’

  ‘Cerys, it’s Owain. Something’s gone wrong at the compound. I need you.’

  The words caused her stomach to flip-flop, in that way she hated. She wished she could hear his voice and feel nothing at all.

  ‘Is Jason hurt?’ she said, her voice shaking. Get a grip, Carr.

  Catriona shifted away from her and ran a hand through her messy ginger curls, an expression of curiosity on her face.

  ‘I don’t know. The prisoners have taken over the bunker and communication has been lost. Frieda won’t intervene, but I think it’s…well, it will go to shit. It was a powder keg when I left. Amy can’t handle it. I nee—You—We have to help them.’

  He was going to say it again, but he stopped himself. She was glad he didn’t. She needed to think about this with her rational head. Not that there was anything to think about.

  ‘How soon can you be here?’

  ‘I’m parked outside.’

  Cerys hung up on him, resisting the urge to throw her phone. The presumptuous twat!

  Catriona was still looking at her, a blanket falling off her shoulder and dark smudges under her eyes from lack of sleep. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘The compound has been taken over. Owain wants to save everyone. You in?’

  ‘I’ll get my coat.’

  If Owain was surprised to see Catriona with her, he didn’t say anything. She climbed into the back before Cerys could insist she take the front, leaving Cerys riding shotgun with the dickhead she was still in love with. He pulled away without waiting for her to fasten her seatbelt.