The Memory Thieves

by Darren Simpson

  The director didn’t answer. He studied Cyan calmly. And the longer he gazed, the drier Cyan’s mouth became.

  It was a relief when the doctor got up. “I’m going to check on the files, as implausible as this all seems. I’m sure it’s some form of misunderstanding; you must have misheard. But it’s not a matter to be taken lightly.” Leaving the desk, he nodded towards the bench. “Take a seat, Cyan. Don’t go anywhere.”

  Cyan put his hands in his pockets and made sure he was in Dr Haven’s path. As he stepped out of the doctor’s way, he pulled out his locket and clipped it to the back of Dr Haven’s coat, low enough to avoid eye level, but high enough not to dangle.

  He fumbled and snapped his hand back when Dr Haven turned to look at him. “There!” blurted Cyan, with a finger flying to the window.

  The director’s eyes went to the glass. He gave Cyan a puzzled look. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I thought… Thought I saw something.”

  The doctor’s eyebrows met while he scrutinized Cyan’s face. He nodded again at the bench. “I said sit down, Cyan.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Of course.” Cyan shuffled backwards to take a seat.

  Dr Haven left the office with the locket clipped to his coat. When the door closed, Cyan hugged himself and prayed Ruby was watching…

  A little later Cyan was still in the office, doing his best to pace his breathing. His stomach and shoulders were tight with nerves.

  The director finally returned.

  Cyan got to his feet and – with an inquiring look on his face – walked once more into the doctor’s path.

  Dr Haven crossed the office, apparently lost in his thoughts. He didn’t react or slow down when Cyan stooped behind him, unclipped the locket and slipped it back into his pocket.

  Cyan cleared his throat. “Did you catch him?”

  The director didn’t respond. He stopped at his desk, took out his own staff locket, put a thumb against its screen and raised it to his mouth. “Mr Banter.” He waited for a moment. “We have a potential security breach. I’d like you to change the access code to three-one-one-two. I’m not entirely sure of the exact level of threat, but until we have a more accurate assessment of the situation, I’ll be changing the code every hour. Thank you.”

  The doctor snapped the locket shut and returned it to his pocket. He frowned abstractly at his computer until Cyan’s words stirred him.

  “Are the files okay, Doctor?”

  Dr Haven turned his head abruptly to Cyan, as if surprised to find him in his office. He tightened his tie. “The files are fine, Cyan. We have this in hand. You can leave now.”

  “Good to know. Thank you, Doctor.”

  Cyan let himself out, cruised across the foyer and left through the revolving door. He paused on his way down the marble steps, taking deep breaths to steady his heartbeat. Gradually, his stomach began to settle.

  As soon as he was ready, he strolled along the sanctuary’s front, turned the corner and ran.

  Scarlet – one of the sanctuary’s younger residents – was sitting on a bench behind the building, staring ahead at the mossy cove.

  Remembering Ruby’s stunt in the foyer, Cyan approached from behind. He tapped Scarlet’s shoulder. “Ahoy.”

  Scarlet turned to look up with her narrow brown eyes. “Ahoy, Cyan.”

  “I’ve just seen Plum on the harbour. He’s looking for you. Says he’s found something really cool.”

  Scarlet’s eyes lit up. “Yeah? What is it?”

  Cyan shrugged. “Dunno. Only one way to find out. Off you go.” He patted her back to effectively shoo her off the bench. The second she was out of sight, he crouched and reburied his locket.

  He’d only just finished when Ruby appeared. She frowned at the sand by his foot, before her eyes widened. “Oh my god. You seriously got away with it?”

  Cyan nodded, then cursed when Ruby punched his arm. “You’re unbelievable!” she hissed.

  “What about you? Did anyone come?”

  “No, but it’s only a matter of time. I climbed out through the window, just like you said. Left the door locked behind me.”

  “So, you tracked my locket?”

  Ruby bobbed on the spot with her hands clasped together. “I did!”

  “Where did Dr Haven go?”

  “He took the lift down. To a blank space that wasn’t on the screen.”

  “A blank space?”

  “He went beneath the sanctuary.”

  Cyan put a hand to his head. “There’s another floor! That must be where he’s keeping Jonquil!”

  “It has to be.” Ruby sucked in her lower lip. “I don’t know how he got down there, though. He used the lift, but I saw inside the lift when we were on the staff floor. It only had buttons for floors one, two and three.”

  “That’s the staff, communal and engine floors.”

  “Exactly. No button for an underground floor.”

  Cyan frowned at his feet, then looked up and clicked his fingers. “He uses a code. Three-one-one-two. That’s what gets the lift to take you down.”

  Ruby turned her head a little but kept her eyes on Cyan. “How’d you know the code?”

  “I heard it in Dr Haven’s office. He told Mr Banter to change it. Three-one-one-two.”

  “He let you hear that?”

  Cyan froze, struck by a thought. “Hang on. He said he’d change the code every hour.” He gripped Ruby’s elbow. “If we want to use that lift, we need to do it now.”

  “Now? Right now? But…” Her chest rose and fell. “Shouldn’t we get a plan together first?”

  “No time! This is our only chance, Ruby! If we don’t go now the code’ll change, and then we’ll never get to that hidden floor!”

  Ruby’s shoulders sank. “But we can’t. It’s too…too…”

  “Come on!” Cyan tugged her hand and began to move, but she pulled her fingers away.

  Cyan looked at her desperately, his eyes pleading. “Please, Ruby. We have to use this opportunity. For Jonquil’s sake. And all the others!”

  “Wait a minute. Just wait.” Ruby swallowed deeply and closed her eyes.

  When they reopened she was glaring at Cyan. “Okay,” she said. “I’m coming. But if this goes wrong, I promise you Dr Haven will be the least of your worries.”

  Cyan took her hand again, slowly this time, holding it between his palms. “Thanks, Ruby. I—”

  She shoved his hand away. “Just go.”

  They were soon standing by the door to Dr Haven’s office. Ruby pretended she was poised to knock, while Cyan peered down the corridor to watch the foyer. No one was looking, so he dashed to the lift and swiped his stolen access card. The doors parted and Cyan darted in.

  As soon as Ruby was with him, he punched the lift’s buttons: three-one-one-two. The doors closed and the lift began its descent.

  The number two button blinked off.

  The number one button blinked on.

  The number one button blinked off, and still the lift descended.

  Ruby moved to the lift’s front corner, doing her best to hide behind the doorway’s edge. Cyan went to the opposite corner, doing the same.

  There was a gentle bump.

  The doors opened.

  Cyan listened for sounds from beyond the lift. He heard only a faint, rhythmic whirring, accompanied by thin, regular chirps.

  Holding his breath, he peered cautiously around the doorway’s edge. The lift had opened onto a long corridor like the one on the staff floor, but with a linoleum floor that was scuffed and stained. Its concrete walls were cold and bare, without plaster or paint. Bulbs in cage-like fittings hung from the ceiling, spilling out a low light that dimmed and flickered.

  Cyan heard the nerves in Ruby’s whisper. “What on earth’s that noise?”

  He cocked his ear. That ominous whirring still filled the dim corridor. And those shrill electronic chirps – like the trills of mechanical birds, scared and trapped in cages…

  He whispered
back. “No idea. But it looks like no one’s around. Better send the lift back to the foyer, before someone notices it’s down here.”

  Ruby nodded gravely and pressed the number two button. They stepped out with the doors closing behind them.

  “I don’t like this,” whispered Ruby.

  “Me neither.” Cyan eyed a red-brown stain on the rubbery floor by his feet. “Let’s get searching. If we hang about talking, we’re going to get caught.”

  The whirring grew louder as they crept along the corridor. Cyan tried the first door on the right, but found only chipped shower cubicles, dirty floor tiles, rusty metal hoses.

  Hearing Ruby whisper his name, he followed her to a corridor that branched off to the left. It was straight and long, with doors lined up along both walls.

  He gestured at the small, luminous rectangles attached at head-height to each door. “What are those things?”

  “Screens, I think.”

  They tiptoed to the first door on the right. Their mouths fell open when they saw its screen.

  “Oh god,” breathed Ruby.

  Filmed from somewhere above, a boy no older than twelve trudged slowly up and down a small, grimy room. The cramped space had padded walls and a scuffed rubber floor, and was empty apart from a thin metal bed and low steel toilet.

  Cyan peered closer at the screen. The boy was barefoot and wore a grey hospital gown. His arms were tightly crossed while he paced, with his fingers digging deep into raw, bruised skin.

  Ruby shuddered. “He must be in there. Behind that door.”

  Cyan tried the handle but it wouldn’t move. He found his staff card and whipped it through the slot by the door, only to get a buzz and a red light. Still the handle refused to budge.

  Ruby was venturing further into the corridor. Her gaping eyes caught the glow from its screens. “There’re loads of them,” she croaked. “Loads…”

  Cyan tried the handles of the next few doors. Each screen showed identical padded rooms with identical beds and toilets. And every room held a solitary resident.

  He hugged himself as if the temperature had dropped. “This is them,” he whispered. “Dr Haven’s…casualties.”

  Some lay on their beds, curled into shivering, bony balls. Some paced, shook and shouted without making a sound; the rooms must have been soundproofed. Others sat on the floor, hunched against walls with their faces ground into their knees. At least three of them had raw, red bald patches where hair had once been, and Cyan spotted bandaging behind ears and above necks.

  One resident looked vaguely familiar; a pale teen with a bob of ragged blonde hair. After squinting for some moments, Cyan realized where he’d seen her before: on a photo in the orderlies’ staffroom.

  “Amber?” He swiped his card through the door’s slot. But again, the buzz and red light.

  Frustrated, he moved along the next two doors. When he saw the second door’s screen he gasped and shook his head, struggling to believe his eyes. “Jonquil…”

  He almost didn’t recognize her. Her black hair was lank and tangled, and she looked thinner, with her neck and cheeks gaunt and sallow. She was lying rigidly on her metal bed. Her bare arms trembled on its rubbery mattress.

  Cyan tried his card, this time more slowly, but yet again: the buzz and red light.

  He grunted in anger. “The card’s not working. There must be limited staff access. We need to find a card that works. Maybe there’s one on this floor.” His eyes searched the corridor. “There’s got to be. We should split up and look.”

  He backtracked the way he’d come. “We’ll do the same as before. I’ll try the rooms on the left; you do the ones on the right. Okay?”

  With eyes agape and her mouth wide open, Ruby stared back and forth between Cyan and the screens. “I… I just can’t believe this. I mean…I know what you told me. But I can’t believe they’d… Not like this…”

  “Card,” hissed Cyan. “We need to find a card that opens these doors. You take the rooms on the right, okay?”

  Ruby’s head twitched in what Cyan took to be a yes. Nodding in reply, he checked around the corner, then skulked back into the main corridor. As he brushed past a metal trolley, that whirring hum – more sinister than soothing – filled the chill air. The bulbs above him blinked and stuttered.

  The next room on the left was more than halfway along the corridor. The light beneath its door was lambent white, and that drone-like whirring came from within. Cyan opened the door a crack to peer inside. He saw polished linoleum flooring, pale grey walls, snatches of white metal and plastic.

  No one seemed to be about, so he let himself in.

  The whirring came from a machine that filled half the room. It looked like a swollen, white plastic tunnel, long enough to fit the bed attached by rails to its shadowy mouth. There was another plastic bed not far from the first, with what Cyan recognized as X-ray machinery suspended above. Thick cables slinked from both machines to a white booth, with computer screens visible behind its darkened glass.

  Seeing no sign of access cards, Cyan neared the dark doorway at the room’s far end. Leaving white light behind, he stepped carefully into a much smaller space. His eyes slid from left to right, adjusting to the dim, greenish glow.

  Every inch of every wall was covered in sheets of dark plastic, arranged as neatly as the butterflies in Dr Haven’s office. Images of grey, blue and green glowed against black gloss. Cyan realized he was looking at scans and X-rays, stuck to illuminated walls.

  Cranial cross-sections were arranged in meticulous rows, as if a brain had been thinly sliced and pinned up for scrutiny. Some cross-sections went from the side of the head rather than the top, so that Cyan could see noses and throats, grooves of grey matter. Glowing skulls grinned at him from every direction, while others looked sidelong to reveal grey vertebrae, hanging down like chains of bone.

  A spurt of nausea hit Cyan’s stomach. After glancing around for access cards, he reversed out of the gloom and nearly tripped over a cable while stumbling backwards through the larger room.

  With his face set and pale, Cyan continued along the corridor, and slipped through its final door to find a room he remembered all too well.

  White tiles and halogen lights. A row of trolley beds. A metal cabinet and stainless-steel sink. This was where he’d been injected with water and sedated, before waking up days later in the medical quarters upstairs.

  Still no hint of cards, so Cyan moved quickly to the door at the room’s other end. This time it wasn’t locked. Peeping carefully around its edge, Cyan found a narrow space filled with filing cabinets.

  He stepped inside and opened the nearest cabinet. There were no access cards, but after opening another drawer he realized he’d found something else.

  The residents’ files.

  Cyan had to move on – to keep looking for access cards. But he couldn’t help lingering.

  He reached out, about to flick through the files. Then he froze, scolding himself, and slid the drawers shut. There was no time.

  It took some effort to back away. Cyan tried the door opposite the one he’d come through. It opened and – peering through the crack – he saw that the next room was also deserted.

  Cyan stepped inside. His nostrils flared and his stomach fluttered. The air was caustic with antiseptic.

  This room was as harshly lit as the last. The breath caught in Cyan’s throat. He’d stumbled upon an operating theatre.

  Surgical lights loomed like huge insect eyes over an operating table. And by the table’s side: a small trolley topped with stainless steel instruments.

  Cyan shivered at the sight of scalpels, scissors, clamps and saws – even a surgical hammer and drill – all lined up in perfect parallel. Box-like machines surrounded the operating table, each of them covered in screens and dials, wires and tubes.

  Cyan stood transfixed, until sudden sounds made him hunch on the spot.

  Footsteps, echoing in the corridor. The clop of hard soles, leisurely but fi
rm – certainly not Ruby’s.

  And they were getting closer.

  Cyan whirled to face the door. He tilted an ear, trying to pinpoint where the footsteps were coming from. They dulled and lost their echo, but sounded closer now, perhaps next door.

  Cyan crouched behind the operating table. He held his breath, listening out.

  The footsteps faded, then echoed again through the corridor. And then, the click of an opening door. A frightened cry. Ruby.

  Cyan shot up from cover, heard scuffing shoes and smothered shrieks. A loud slam followed by frantic banging – the sound of fists against a metal door.

  Cyan was already on the move. He launched himself towards the corridor but stumbled to a stop before leaving the theatre. He saw Dr Haven ahead, passing through the white-tiled room, strolling towards him.

  The director stepped through the filing room and smiled warmly from the operating theatre’s doorway. “Hello, Cyan. Or as you residents like to say, ahoy.” He lifted a finger to his head – a parody tap of an imaginary cap.

  Cyan glared. “Where’s Ruby?”

  “Safely out of the way.”

  The doctor turned towards the thumping sound from the corridor, calling out. “You can stop guarding the lift, Mr Banter! I’ve located both of them. Cyan’s in the operating theatre. Didn’t I say he’d be near the files?”

  “You…” Cyan’s tongue moved drily in his mouth. “You knew we’d be here?”

  The doctor regarded him with some amusement. “Of course I knew. I helped you to get down here. You don’t honestly think I’d divulge a passcode with a resident in my office, do you?”

  Confusion twisted Cyan’s features. “But how? How did you know I was trying –” his startled eyes roved the theatre – “trying to find this place?”

  “Well. It was quite clear that someone was up to no good. First a mysterious intrusion on the staff floor; toppled glasses and a missing access card. And then your little excursion, far out on the sands. Residents don’t usually – how did you put it? – fancy a change. I ensure our medication curbs any urge to…rock the boat, if you’ll pardon the expression.”