The Minders

by John Marrs

  CHAPTER 86

  EMILIA

  Hello, Emilia.”

  The greeting came from behind Flick, a disembodied voice hidden in the twilight of the church. “I think it’s time we talked.”

  Its familiarity was immediate but made no sense. Only when the figure moved and a firework’s white light caught his eyes and lips did every wisp of air leave her lungs.

  “Ted,” she began, and swallowed hard. He offered her a brittle smile. “You’re . . . you’re alive?”

  “Looks can be deceiving.”

  “But I was there when they killed you!”

  As he took another step closer to her, she steadied one trembling hand with the other but kept her gun pointed at the ghost.

  “I’m not here to hurt you,” he assured her, and she believed him. His tone was as calm and persuasive as it had been when he’d reassured her that he’d look after her following her discharge from hospital.

  “I don’t understand,” she continued. “I saw them stab you and take your body away. How are you here?”

  “Because you saw what you wanted to see,” he replied. “As you are doing now.”

  Emilia looked at Flick for her reaction. But Flick continued to glare at her captor, looking equally rattled.

  “What do you mean, I see what I want to see?” Emilia asked.

  “You’re correct when you said you watched me die. I’m now what you used to refer to as ‘an Echo.’ Perhaps not so much constructed by your data, but more accurately someone from your past who is bleeding through to your present.”

  Emilia struggled to make sense of what he was saying. “You are dead?”

  “Alas, very much so.”

  She let out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding and shut her eyes tightly. When she opened them again, he was still there. Dead or alive, there was no question it was definitely Ted.

  “It wasn’t what I wanted, I promise you,” she replied, as if urgently needing to clear her conscience. “But you’d lied to me about everything, about who you were, our marriage, my career, and all I wanted was the truth. In return for bringing you to the lighthouse, they told me they’d get it out of you. But they didn’t tell me they were going to kill you. I didn’t want to work for the Hacking Collective but they left me no choice.”

  “You’re not working for them.”

  Emilia’s eyebrows drew together. “I’m ashamed to admit that I have been.”

  Ted shook his head. “I admit that I wasn’t completely honest with you because I believed that for your sake, it was better for me not to be. But you are also guilty of lying to yourself. You’re not working for the Collective, and the night I died, there was nobody else on that jetty in Geneva but you and me.”

  “What? No, you’re mistaken,” she exclaimed. Ted’s attention remained fixed on her. “Do you not remember seeing the young woman with a child . . . a little boy . . . she came up behind us, and before I realised what she was about to do, she stabbed you, and then others arrived in cars and a boat to take your body away.”

  “You’re rewriting your memories with an alternate version of reality that’s more acceptable to you. The people you think killed me are your projections. They weren’t there. They’re Echoes. You killed me.”

  Emilia shook her head. She remembered it as clear as day: the assassin, the cleanup operation, Bianca and Adrian afterwards . . . that was how the series of events had unfolded.

  Wasn’t it?

  Now a doubt was creeping in as she ran through the sequence of events again, the memory beginning to modify itself. This time, her recollection featured no killer, no boat, and no strangers attempting to force her along the jetty. Suddenly all she saw was a long, sharp silver spike in her hand that she now recalled was a medical device called a Shroder, followed by an unsuspecting Ted glancing into the distance. Taking the opportunity to strike, she calmly embedded it with force into his skull. Then she rolled him into the water before running back towards the road and passing a woman with a pushchair.

  “No,” Emilia said adamantly. “That didn’t happen. You’re doing something to me. You’re alive and you are screwing with my head. I didn’t kill you.” She moved her aim towards Flick. “Tell him.”

  “Tell who?” Flick asked.

  “The man I’m talking to! Tell Ted that I didn’t kill him.”

  “But he’s dead.”

  “No, he’s fucking not!” she yelled. “Look at him, for God’s sake, he’s standing right behind you! Who else do you think I’ve been having a conversation with?”

  Flick turned to look behind her and then back at Emilia. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see anyone but you.”

  An angry Emilia’s aim alternated between Ted and Flick, her finger gradually putting pressure on the trigger. Suddenly something struck her. “Do you know who Ted is?” she asked. Flick nodded her affirmation. “How?”

  “Because if you mean Edward Karczewski, then he trained me. He trained all of us. He trained you.”

  “To do what?”

  “You used to be one of us, a Minder, and he was head of the programme.”

  “And a Minder is what exactly? And what programme?”

  “It’s a coded name for someone with exceptional perception. We were specially selected, trained, and medically manipulated to store the country’s most sensitive data inside our brains. And it remains inside us for up to five years or until the government has time to finish its plan to safeguard the UK from the threat of hackers. But taking on the role means turning our backs on anyone we know and love for that period of time.”

  “That sounds utterly ridiculous.”

  Karczewski laughed. “As ridiculous as you having a conversation with a dead man? Or not remembering that you killed him?”

  “If I am like her, then why can’t I remember any of that data?”

  “Because your implant and data were removed in a procedure a year ago. Your training and skills remained; however, there was a complication that left you in a catatonic-hybrid state. The procedure damaged your brain.”

  Emilia recalled the video footage she’d watched of herself twelve hours before she first awoke. She had been horrified to see herself being walked and fed by staff, as if she were a zombie.

  “The operation caused scarring and significant damage,” Karczewski continued. “In the months that followed, you showed no response to external stimuli, no psychomotor activity, and no interaction with your environment. Then one day and without warning, your brain, well, simply restarted. It was as if you’d come back to life—and then you disappeared.”

  Emilia shifted from one foot to the other. “You made me like this—that’s the truth you didn’t want me to know.”

  “The truth is much more complicated than that. Your name is actually Dr. Megan Jane Porter, although you prefer to go by MJ. Emilia is the codename you use to communicate with other Minders on message boards. It’s a name taken from Shakespeare’s The Two Noble Kinsmen. And you are responsible for this version of yourself because you were the neuroscientist who created the procedure to implant DNA data into human brains.”

  Emilia let out a snort. “Me? Do you expect me to believe that?” But her face crinkled as an image slowly returned: a painting or graphic swirling with shapes, numbers, musical notes, and words. “I . . . I . . . I was a volunteer. That’s right, I solved a puzzle . . . yes, I remember it . . . it was a puzzle only a certain number of people could figure out.”

  “You didn’t solve it—you designed it. The puzzle and the programme were devised by you.”

  “This is bullshit. Bullshit! You’re a liar. I am not imagining you, you are here, right in front of me, no matter what Flick says.”

  “Then shoot me. If you’re not fabricating me, you’ll kill me.”

  Without hesitation, Emilia pulled the trigger. A panicked Flick div
ed for cover under a pew as the first shot rang out, but Karczewski remained where he was. Twice more she fired and twice more he remained uninjured and upright.

  Emilia took a step back, her mouth open and her hands trembling.

  “Do you believe me now?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she whispered. Thoughts raced around her head like hens in a coop breached by a fox. She couldn’t trust anything about herself anymore. “Who am I, Ted?” she asked.

  “You’re one of the country’s foremost neuroscientists and we worked together for the government in biochemical counter-espionage. It was your synaesthesia that gave you the idea to devise this DNA-storage project. But you admitted to me that your initial test results were flawed—memory bleeding and Echoes were serious side effects that had the potential to derail the programme. However, you believed they were temporary and would vanish once each brain settled. You manipulated the results of your clinical trials to get the answers you wanted and insisted on becoming a Minder yourself to prove your concept.”

  “What side effects was I covering up?”

  “Those related to episodes of schizophrenia, hallucinations, psychopathy, paranoia . . . in your absence, we came up with solutions for the second selection of candidates. At least, with some of them.”

  Emilia frowned. “Second selection? Are the Minders I found not the first?”

  Karczewski shook his head. “No, they’re not. Four of the first five were killed out in the field.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “You happened. With no monitoring or the safety net of the lab to keep you grounded, the Echoes convinced you the other Minders were enemies of the state and selling their secrets to the Hacking Collective. Back then, all five of you were able to communicate with one another, so you used their trust to get them to reveal where they were located. And one by one, you executed them with a Shroder, the implement that pinpoints exactly where the implants are and destroys them.”

  Emilia’s eyes remained locked on Karczewski’s, searching for signs of deception. There were none. She directed her attention towards where Flick had been standing. “Get up before I start shooting again.”

  Flick’s head slowly appeared, followed by her body, until she was facing Emilia.

  “Is what he’s saying true?”

  “I . . . I don’t know what he said . . .”

  “He said I killed the first handful of Minders. Is it true?”

  “It’s what it says in the data implant.”

  Karczewski continued. “After their murders, and for reasons you never explained, you appeared suddenly at the laboratory and told us what you’d done. I kept you hidden there, hoping the reversal procedure you developed would be successful and I’d get the old MJ back. But some of your procedures were flawed, leaving you temporarily catatonic. Then you awoke, created another false reality, and escaped, and this time you believed you were being manipulated by Bianca and Adrian to track down the new Minders. But Bianca and Adrian don’t exist.”

  “Of course they do . . . this all started with them. They’re trying to find me now.”

  “They were pseudonyms used by two of the first Minders, again based on Shakespearean characters, alongside Gardiner and Lago. The existence of that team is all in your imagination.”

  “Liar!” she said defiantly. “They were all working for the Hacking Collective. I shot Gardiner and Lago before Flick arrived. Look.” Her head turned to where she’d left their bodies, but the area was empty. “Where are they? What have you done with them?”

  “Bianca, Adrian, Lago, and Gardiner are the figures that you think have been chasing you. Your first four kills were actually the Echoes who haunt you. Everyone you think has been helping or hindering you only exists inside your own imagination . . . the pregnant woman in the hospital grounds who warned you about me, my killer . . . you are, and have only ever been, working alone.”

  “No! I’m not mad!” Emilia shouted. “Tell him,” she directed at Flick. But Flick looked like a rabbit caught in headlights, unsure of which direction to turn.

  “Think back to each scenario you have been involved in,” continued Karczewski. “Was there any interaction between Bianca and Adrian and a third party not affiliated to your mission? A shop assistant, a police officer, a member of the public? Are there any witnesses who can prove you haven’t been alone in all of your excursions?”

  Emilia frantically recalled every situation she had been in with Adrian and Bianca, but aside from their own field ops, they had never spoken to or been acknowledged by anyone other than her. He was correct: she had been alone in the hospital grounds; the jetty in Geneva; the Eurostar she travelled in; the lorry car park where she thought she had attacked Bianca. The truck driver had only asked her if she was all right because she was the only one present. The waitress at the cafe where she’d seen her family had muttered something under her breath when Emilia had ignored her because she was the only one present.

  “My children!” she said suddenly. “I’ve seen my real family,” she blurted out. “Justin and the girls, I saw them at their school, then I sat behind them in a cafe. I’ve watched videos and seen photographs of us together. I felt a physical connection between us. Something inside me longed to be with them all again.”

  “You weren’t longing for them,” Karczewski said, his tone unexpectedly softening. “You were longing for what they have. You and I tried to start a family naturally and then through IVF, but after five years, we had no success. Your yearning to become a mother has manifested itself with imagined feelings for two children you’ve never met. And their father, well, he’s an ex-boyfriend of yours from university. He has since married and they are his daughters. You once showed them to me on his Facebook profile.”

  “I have a Caesarean scar . . .” She lifted up her top to expose her stomach, but no scar existed. Ted waited quietly and patiently as Emilia processed his revelations.

  “But everything I’ve done, the people I’ve killed, it was so that I could be with them again,” she said. “If they don’t exist, it means it’s all been for nothing.”

  “I’m sorry, MJ, I truly am.”

  “And you and I . . .”

  “Everything I told you about how we met and our marriage is true. It’s why, after the first killings, I didn’t want to tell those in charge that you’d returned. They would have kept you off the books and locked you in a secure unit without trying to treat you. I couldn’t let that happen, so I told them you had been terminated until I could work out how to help you.”

  “If we were that much in love, why did I want to be a Minder? Because Flick said that means being separated for five years. Why did I want to be away from you for that long? Why didn’t you fight for me?”

  “Being unable to have a family changed your perspective on marriage. You became distant, you pushed me away and threw yourself into this project. When you told me you wanted to be one of the five, I begged you to change your mind. But you’d already undergone the procedure without telling me; the DNA was already inside your head. After you were hit by the car, I naively thought this could be our second chance. But along with your brain’s reconstruction came the Echoes’ regeneration.”

  It was almost too much information for Emilia to absorb. Her head was spinning with flashbacks of the life Karczewski described, along with her behaviour. Now she wished she had taken his advice all those months ago and used her amnesia to start her life afresh.

  “What about the baby?” she said urgently. “The girl Sinéad brought with her to the safe house?”

  “You left her in the village pub’s toilets before you drove away.”

  “Is she okay? Is she safe?”

  “How could I know that? I only know what you know.”

  “The story about my colleague who killed four people we worked with—that was an actual event but it had nothing to do wit
h me, did it?”

  “No, I planted a seed of doubt in case the truth of what you did to the first four Minders ever bled through. If that ever happened, I hoped your memory would cross wires and attribute what you did to another event so you wouldn’t realise your involvement.”

  A deflated Emilia paced back and forth in silence, contemplating what the revelations meant. “What will happen to me now?” she asked eventually. “What should I do?”

  “It’s up to you.” Karczewski moved towards her and placed his hands on her shoulders. “MJ, what you need to remember is that what your brain has done is nothing short of miraculous. Following a significant trauma, it’s come back to life. This has potentially huge implications for neuroscience. You could put right your wrongs by helping the team that once worked for you.”

  “You said they’d lock me away and leave me to rot.”

  “That was before your brain repaired itself. Now you’re an anomaly.”

  “I’m a laboratory rat.”

  “You’re a case study.”

  “I’m a killer.” Emilia let out a long, exhausted puff of air. Her arms were sapped of energy and fell to the sides of her body, but still she held on to her weapon. Twice she had lived this life and all she had to show for it was a trail of bodies and a head full of voices. She had the answers she craved, but they were the wrong ones.

  A groan caught her attention and she glanced towards the crucifix; she realised that she alone must have found the strength to tie Elijah Beckworth to it. She looked again to Flick and noticed her face was grimacing and her hand was resting on the middle of her stomach, as if protecting something valuable. The penny dropped and a sour smile edged at her lips.

  “MJ,” Karczewski continued. “Just put the gun down on the floor and walk away. It’s the only thing you need to do.”

  “And if I return to the facility, what if it happens again? What if I kill more innocent people?”

  “But you won’t.”

  “You can’t know that because you’re not real. You are one part of my brain that’s communicating with the other. Now that I know who I was and what I’ve become, how can I take the risk of ever being her again? I do believe that you wanted the best for me, but by hiding me, you allowed the monster inside me to return. You allowed her to kill again, only this time, you were a victim too. And I’m truly sorry for that. But I think this is the end of the road for me. If I lost myself again, I don’t know that I could ever come back.”