by John Marrs
Yet despite all the hope that filled her, something buried inside pecked away at her like a vulture picking at a carcass. It’s all too good to be true, it warned. Your time here is limited. You’d better lead with your head or your heart will get you killed.
CHAPTER 16
CHARLIE, MANCHESTER
Mapping out a city centre using his long-term memory was a challenge. Much of his first week had been spent holding a fold-up map, a novelty for his generation, who’d grown up relying on smart glasses or phones to direct them. But anything that could track his whereabouts was strictly off limits. He’d used the map to navigate every street, cul-de-sac, and dual carriageway, along with train routes, taxi ranks, and trams, until he knew Manchester off by heart.
It was an ever-expanding metropolis and its tentacles spread out in so many directions that it would have taken months to put to memory each area beyond the inner ring road. The city’s redevelopment over the last two decades had seen an influx of workers relocating there, especially from the south of England. Demand for housing meant that buildings of historic interest and high-rise offices and apartments jostled for space in the sky. The city also housed its own slum area, where low-income immigrants had made their homes inside a sea of tents before the country’s borders went into lockdown.
Meanwhile, high-speed trains meant a commute from London to Manchester took as long as getting from one side of the capital to the other. The daytime footfall of residents, tourists, shoppers, office workers, and shop staff followed by the nighttime demands for bars, restaurants, and entertainment centres meant it rivalled New York as a city that didn’t sleep.
Charlie had become proficient in what one of his trainers had named “dry-cleaning”—a countersurveillance technique to ensure he wasn’t being tailed. He made mental notes of anyone he saw more than once in a short time frame and cars that slowed needlessly in his proximity. He avoided patrolling police and traffic officers wearing body-armour cameras. He ate his meals in a rotation of different cafes so as not to create a pattern, and he mixed his outfits to keep his appearance varied. He checked to see who might be walking behind him using the reflections in shop and car windows or the paintwork of dark vehicles. And he also carried a spare set of jeans, a sweatshirt, and trainers in his backpack for if he needed to change quickly. After each day of exploration, Charlie slept soundly knowing he and his secrets were safe.
The novelty of living in a plush hotel had yet to wear off, but he was aware that it wasn’t going to be conducive to a spiritually rewarding second life. He could afford to remain there for his five-year tenure, but he needed a purpose, otherwise he would be replicating one non-existence with another. Charlie knew that he performed better when he was in a routine and around others. A job would help.
Unable to access the internet on a device of his own, he had made use of Manchester Central Library’s community computers to search for employment. And there was one role in which he could utilise all he’d learned during training—a sector referred to as monetised mothering. For a monthly subscription, individuals and businesses hired personal mentors and coaches in just about any subject, from life skills to gym instructors and educators. And clients didn’t need to leave their houses or offices to make use of them. “Virtual-reality systems bring the world to your doorstep,” the advert read. “If you have the skills to help clients change their lives, then we want you.”
Following a Skype interview with an AI chatbot the following day, Charlie was offered training as a “positivity mentor” and offered a temporary contract, to begin two days from now. To celebrate, he went against medical advice and rewarded himself with a pint of cider at La Maison du Court’s bar.
Each Minder had been implanted with a mandatory disulfiram-ethanol reaction device which, when in contact with alcohol, discouraged them from drinking. His first few sips tasted like nectar. But he’d not even downed a quarter of his glass before the first wave of nausea struck. He hurried back to his suite and twice vomited into the toilet whilst vowing never to break the rules again. And when he lost his grip on the glass of water he was using to rinse his mouth out, it smashed against the porcelain sink.
“Shit,” he muttered, more out of habit than annoyance. He picked out the pieces, holding one up to the light. His intolerance to alcohol made him want to test another of his procedures. Charlie slowly unbuttoned his jeans, rolled them down to just above his knees, and glided across the surface of his skin with a shard. The first time he left only a faint scratch until he repeated the action with more pressure. A third time, he pressed harder until the glass was several millimetres deep. Blood oozed from the self-inflicted wound and dripped down his thigh until the denim soaked it up.
Then Charlie let go, allowing the glass to remain embedded inside him and wondering if, at any point, he would feel it. But the operation to null his pain receptors meant that physically, he felt nothing. If he was ever located, he could be tortured without feeling a thing or giving up his knowledge.
However, what Charlie hadn’t counted on was how little he also felt emotionally. There was no hesitancy or rush of adrenaline from cutting himself, no initial panic and no remorse. For the last few years, fear, regret, and anxiety had controlled him; they pulled at his strings and influenced just about everything he did. He’d often wished that he weren’t ruled by his heart. Today, it seemed, he wasn’t.
He tested himself again by thinking of his friends, of the last time he’d seen them, how they had vanished from his life and how it had all been his fault. Typically, it was a guaranteed way to dampen his spirits. Only now, there was a vacancy where self-pity had once lived.
Charlie tried again, this time pushing himself further, considering what he knew about his country, its leaders, the secrets it didn’t want to share, and the mistruths it spread. His memory flitted between homespun lies and international cover-ups, including the real perpetrators behind a Summer Olympics bombing, the explosion of an unmanned Indian spacecraft on a mission to Mars, and even a Eurovision Song Contest vote fix.
He should have possessed a level of conceit, because after spending years surfing conspiracy-theory websites, he was now privy to all the answers. Or perhaps he should be dismayed by the world he lived in and what the people who controlled it were capable of. But again, there was nothing. There wasn’t even an urge to spill any answers to the online communities he’d once frequented. Instead, there was an absence.
Charlie tugged at the glass until it came free from his skin and pressed a towel against his leg to stem the bleeding. And he began to calmly wonder, if he couldn’t feel physical or emotional pain, just how much of his old self remained? Who was he now?
CHAPTER 17
BRUNO
Name: Bruno Yorke
Previous Name: ███ ███
Age: 36
Previous Occupation: Stay-at-home parent
Dependents: One
Strengths: Analytical; methodical; focused
Weaknesses: Ruthless; passionate; loyal
You are going to fuck this up,” the voice sneered.
“Please be quiet.” Bruno sighed, shaking his head. “Give me five minutes to myself without offering an opinion.” He wrung his hands together tightly like a wet tea towel.
Bruno was surrounded by dozens of people inside the motorway service station’s central seating area. He tried diverting his attention towards the buzz of the chatter reverberating throughout the open space. But the voice demanded to be heard.
“You should’ve told them you were struggling before you left the programme,” it continued. “But you didn’t, did you? And now, mi parri, you have me. You have us all.” He broke into a laugh, swiftly followed by a hacking cough.
Bruno gritted his teeth, turned slowly, and fixed his gaze on an elderly West Indian man with grey dreadlocks tied loosely together, resting on his shoulders. He wasn’t
looking at Bruno, though. His head was cocked to one side, fixated by something on his phone. The object of Bruno’s irritation laughed again, and this time, Bruno looked at the man more closely. His lips were tightly shut. He was real, but the projection of a voice was not. Once again, Bruno had attached a voice in his head to a random stranger.
Bruno turned back in his seat, then pulled the brim of his baseball cap down over his face and the glasses he didn’t need back up to the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t sure what annoyed him the most—the derision of someone who didn’t exist or the voice being correct. He was struggling, and if he wasn’t careful, he was going to fuck this up.
He clenched his fists, curled his toes, and concentrated on suppressing the stranger’s voice and all the others in the background discussing and criticising him. Echoes was the word Karczewski used to describe them. “These voices are Echoes from the DNA implanted in you,” he said. “Your brain personifies them by attaching images and voices to them even when no images and voices have been coded. They see you as their anchor. They’re harmless, and our case studies show that almost all of the time, they’re eventually absorbed into a Minder’s subconscious.” But Bruno wasn’t an ordinary Minder. He wasn’t like the others.
Think positive thoughts, he told himself now. That will keep them quiet. He recalled trips he’d taken as a boy to visit his mum’s family in Wales. He loved the adventure of a long car journey as it meant hours of streaming cartoons on the screen in the back of his mother’s headrest. The only interruption came from service-station stop-offs, like today’s location, only he wasn’t here to top up on snacks.
He dipped in and out of actual people’s conversations, picking up words here and there and fragments of sentences until calm and order slowly returned to his mind. And for the duration, he kept his view locked on one man sitting five tables away.
Eventually, that person left his tray of half-eaten food where it was and Bruno followed him to the toilets. Despite the bathroom area being relatively empty, the man chose to use one of several disabled cubicles in a separate section. Bruno hovered outside, listening. There was a gentle rustling of something being opened, followed by two long sniffs. It wasn’t hard to infer what he was up to.
Bruno took a deep breath, removed a cloth from his pocket, wrapped it around his knuckles, and just as the door unlocked, he used all his strength to shove it hard, knocking the man backwards and to the floor. Shutting the door behind him, Bruno pushed the disorientated man over while he was struggling to his feet. He slumped over the toilet pan and barely had time to stretch out his arm to protect himself when Bruno yanked it at a ninety-degree angle, causing the bone to snap.
His victim opened his mouth to scream but Bruno was too fast for him. He turned him quickly, grabbed a hammer from his waistband, and began hitting him in the face and head with it. He heard the man’s teeth snap and slide back into his throat like bar skittles. And as he choked on them, Bruno grabbed him by his head and slammed it against a metal handrail. It took four dull thwacks before his head cracked open like a horse-chestnut case. Now unconscious and bleeding profusely, the man gasped his last, bloody breath.
Bruno took a moment to regain his composure, then pulled the dead man up into a sitting position and left him slumped on the toilet seat. Finally, he took two post-circulation £1 coins and thrust them into the man’s eye sockets. He pushed the eyeballs further inside until they popped like grapes and the coins fitted snugly. Then he took a step back, removed the cloth from his hand, and flicked away two of the man’s teeth embedded in it.
“You got him good!” came the same West Indian man’s voice. “ ’Tis a pity he’ll never know why.” Bruno turned quickly to see the dreadlocked man behind him in the cubicle. Bruno reached his arm out to touch him but he felt nothing.
“He knew,” Bruno said firmly. “And if all these people want is money, I’ll make sure it’s the last thing they see.”
He took a moment for himself to absorb his actions. The first name on the kill list he’d spent months planning was now crossed off. And it wouldn’t be long before he had set his sights on the second.
CHAPTER 18
SINÉAD, EDZELL, SCOTLAND
Sinéad awoke with a start. It wasn’t a noise that brought her out of a deep slumber, it was the silence. She propped herself up by her elbows and took a handful of deep breaths. “Hello?” she said, just to hear the sound of her own voice.
She couldn’t remember when she had last slept so soundly. There was something to be said about the purity of the air in the Scottish countryside. It had been her eighth evening in the Angus village of Edzell, and each night was a world away from the broken sleeps she had when her husband, Daniel, was lying by her side. Often, she’d wake up, a tightened fist filling her stomach, worrying about something she’d said or forgotten to do that would bring about his upset later that morning. Now she was no longer hamstrung by him.
Sinéad climbed out of her sleeping bag, stretched her arms high above her head, and unzipped the entrance to the tent. Mile after mile of rolling green countryside lay before her under an endless blue-and-white cotton sky. A canopy of treetops sheltered her from last night’s rain, and it was the pitter-patter of drops falling from leaves and branches and onto canvas that had soothed her to sleep. She made out the tiled rooftops of houses and shops and the occasional winding road in the distance, weaving in and out of the village. The only reminders that a world existed outside Edzell were white wind turbines planted in diagonal lines across the hillsides and leading to other towns.
Listening carefully, she could just about detect the faint sound of flowing water. The river Esk ran towards its neighbour Brechin, some five miles away. It was under loose rocks beneath the stone Gannochy bridge where, yesterday, she had buried an emergency escape kit.
For someone who had only ever stayed in hotels, camping had been a shock to the system, but a pleasurable one at that. In fact, anything far removed from her former life was bringing her happiness. As advised by her trainers, Sinéad had spent most of her first week becoming familiar with the area. She had not visited Scotland before so it was all new, and by settling in a less densely populated village instead of a large city such as Glasgow or Edinburgh, she would not need to focus too much of her attention on countersurveillance. If she was being followed, it would soon become apparent.
Some nights, Sinéad slept in her camouflage-coloured woodland tent, yet she also maintained a room in a nearby hotel in the centre of town. Later that morning, she returned there to shower, change her clothes, and tuck into breakfast.
She took in the fixtures as she ate. She liked the characterful exposed brickwork, uneven plastered walls, and oak beams of this hotel built at the turn of the last century. It was the polar opposite to her modern apartment that Daniel insisted on filling with branded furniture and fittings, each surface sparse and devoid of quirk or personality. He didn’t appreciate the one-off items she bought from flea markets to restore. So eventually, she stopped.
A middle-aged couple wearing matching rose-gold wedding rings entered the restaurant. Yesterday, Sinéad had accepted their invitation to join them for breakfast and learned they were visiting Scotland to celebrate their thirtieth wedding anniversary. A pang of envy touched her until she reminded herself that a relationship wasn’t the only route to fulfilment.
However, today Sinéad had no time for conversation. She and the couple wished each other a good morning before she made her way back to her room to log on to the ReadWell message board. She was expected to visit at least weekly, but caution always got the better of her and she visited daily.
She speculated as to how many other Minders there were. Had they started off as broken as her? Had they required as much rebuilding as she had? Sinéad assumed they too were able to store and process vast amounts of data thanks to anomalies in the formation of their brains. And she wondered if they all had synaesthesia, a
nd if so, which variation of it. As a child, she’d been teased by schoolmates when she told them music made her see colours. Now, it was something she was proud of. She was using it to protect her country.
But preventing its secrets from being revealed sometimes left her conflicted. There were dreadful, horrendous things the country had done over the centuries involving slavery, mass murder, incitement of civil war, and plundering less civilised nations to line its own pockets. And when she had learned the truth of the Mumbai tsunami that killed her parents and thousands of others, it had been the hardest secret of all to keep. The data revealed it was one of the biggest human-made disasters in history, an underwater earthquake being the result of seabed fracking by a British-owned company. A subsequent sizeable investment in the Indian economy kept the truth under wraps. The world deserved to know what Britain had done to prevent it from happening again, but she had been sworn to secrecy. It was the price she must pay for her brand-new start.
A part of her still questioned why she had been chosen, despite Karczewski’s reassurances. “I’ve made so many bad decisions and put my faith in the wrong people,” she’d admitted early in training. “How do you know history won’t repeat itself and I won’t mess this up?”
“Because you have incredible determination and inner strength,” he’d replied. “Probably more so than any of our other candidates—and our training will help you to harness it. This isn’t about what poor decisions you’ve made in the past, it’s about your courage and your focus and your ability to start from scratch. There is more to you than others have led you to believe.”
How many of those eighty-six made the final cut, Sinéad didn’t know. She opened a rucksack lying by her feet and checked that it contained all she needed for the day. Inside were a compass, ordnance survey map, torch, energy bars, and waterproofs to slip over her clothing. She kept exactly the same objects in the boot of her car, inside the tent, and under Gannochy bridge. And each contained a hunting knife with a four-inch, double-edged, stainless-steel serrated blade. She had never hurt another person in her life, but this version of herself wouldn’t hesitate to kill to protect what she knew. No one would take her knowledge, her new life, or her confidence away from her.
