The Glimpse

by Claire Merle

  Ana tore to the studio where she’d woken and smacked down on the only free bed in the doorway. This time she had no blanket, someone had taken it. Most girls lay with their hands over their heads, muffling sobs and moans or the sounds of others.

  The alarm stopped abruptly. Ana’s ears continued to ring. Boots tramped. She clutched her arms together to try and stop the trembling. She couldn’t believe what was happening. This was a nightmare. The insane were in charge of the insane, and nobody, not even Jasper, knew who she was. Did they know how to wipe people’s minds now? Had her father had years of Jasper’s memories erased to protect himself?

  Two orderlies entered the studio. They stood like prison guards on either side of the blue doors, sneering in disdain at the smel. The vomit odour hit you when you came in from the outside. That was the silver lining of having a bed by the door, Ana supposed.

  Beyond, something rattled across the tarmac. A nurse 254

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  entered pushing a huge plywood and metal troley.

  Hundreds of tiny plastic containers shaped like eyes lined the troley’s two shelves, their coloured beads rattling within transparent casings. The nurse wheeled the contraption up the edge of the hangar. With a distiling sense of horror, Ana realised why the other girls were al lying on their fronts. Large white numbers had been sewn on the backs of their blue robes; the nurse was matching up the numbers one through to eight with the eight different types and quantities of pils inside the transparent eyes.

  No one voiced any objection to the medication, though several girls sniveled and cried as they swalowed their cap-sules. The nurse passed Ana without pausing. But once everyone had been administered their meds, she returned to Ana’s bed pushing a wheelchair. Head bowed, she didn’t so much as catch her eye, let alone speak as she waited for Ana to get up. Ana glanced at the orderlies posted by the door. She recognised the one who had brought her from Dr Dannard’s office. The scar was unmissable. The orderly stared at her.

  Thinking better of making a fuss, Ana clambered off the bed and lowered herself into the chair. The nurse in charge of medication retrieved a needle. Ana shriveled.

  Sedation seemed to be standard routine for getting moved around the compound, but that carried no reassurance in a place like this. Being knocked unconscious while Dannard and the scarred orderly were in charge chiled Ana to the core.

  Her only recompense was that they were probably taking her for the twenty-four-hour assessment. Perhaps she 255

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  wouldn’t even have to spend a night in Three Mils. She exhaled and held out her arm.

  *

  Giant trees stretched up towards the sky. Raindrops dripped through leaves the size of old paper fans and um-brelas. No sooner had Ana opened her eyes and marveled at her surroundings, than she knew something was wrong.

  She was halucinating or dreaming. She needed to wake up. The cold drops turned into a torrent of gushing water, sinking into her skin, choking her.

  She shook her head and blinked. A hoary tiled wal appeared three feet in front of her. Something hard pressed into her back. Disorientated, water stil pouring so she could barely breathe, she wiped her face.

  She was slumped on the floor in a shower cubicle big enough for seven or eight people. And she was naked.

  ‘There you go,’ someone said.

  She struggled to draw her legs to her chest. They wobbled and thumped back down like dead animals.

  Her arms at least were cooperating. She crossed them over her breasts, squinting through the water and the fuzz in her head to see who was out there, standing several feet back from the open showers, observing.

  ‘Helo. I’m Dr Cusher,’ a female said. ‘How are you feeling today?’

  ‘She has low self-esteem,’ a man said.

  ‘She has low self-esteem,’ a man said.

  Dr Dannard. Wake up! She screamed inwardly at herself.

  Time to wake up! She smacked her lips together. Her cheeks felt as though they’d been stuffed with cotton.

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  ‘Good heavens,’ the female voice said. ‘Could someone turn this off? We can’t hear ourselves think in here.’ The shower reduced to a dribble. Ana felt a surge of gratitude.

  Thank goodness it wasn’t only Dannard again.

  Somebody sane.

  ‘So,’ the female psychiatrist began. ‘You’ve been institutionalised before. But it’s not on your records. You must have been . . . Let’s see – Emily Thomas, eighteen years old, eight years ago everything was put on the same system, so that would have made you ten, at most.

  A childhood trauma.’ She said nodding. ‘Death in the family?’

  Ana began to shiver uncontrolably.

  ‘Towel – p-ple-ase,’ she said. Her jaw juddered so hard she almost bit off her tongue.

  The psychs conferred over a clipboard. At the edge of the shower room, the orderlies that had brought Ana stood in an alcove, smoking cigarettes and gossiping.

  ‘She cuts and dyes her hair,’ Dannard said.

  ‘Identity disturbance,’ Cusher said, jotting something down.

  ‘And low self-esteem,’ Dannard added.

  ‘Not fat though,’ Cusher said. ‘Bulimic?’

  ‘I’l have the nurses keep an eye on it.’

  ‘Yes, good. Cuts, bruises?’

  ‘No,’ one of the nurses said, puffing out smoke and waving it away.

  ‘Why did you come here, Emily?’ Cusher asked, her face a mask of impartiality. ‘You look troubled. Why don’t you tel us what’s troubling you?’

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  Al vestiges of hope that Cusher wasn’t as insane as Dannard vanished. ‘C-c-ol-d,’ she managed.

  ‘Anything else?’

  Ana stared at the woman through strands of dripping hair. Her lethargic mind could only compute the cold, the embarrassment of her nakedness, the insanity of being interviewed in a shower.

  ‘When’s the tessst?’ she asked.

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She wants to know when the test is,’ Dannard said.

  ‘She’s obsessed with the Personality Diagnostic Analysis Test.’

  Test.’

  ‘Ah,’ Cusher nodded. ‘You’re afraid of our little test, are you? Tel me about that.’

  ‘I jus wanna do the tesst,’ Ana said.

  ‘Tel me about that,’ Cusher repeated. Irritation wound through Ana, twisting her in its grip. ‘What wil the test tel us about you that you can’t tel us yourself?’ Cusher asked.

  ‘You prefer machines to people? You don’t like people, do you, Emily? You don’t trust them.’

  ‘I jus wan ta do the frigging test!’

  ‘Got a temper,’ Cusher said to Dannard.

  Ana suddenly remembered her father’s Golden Rules.

  When speaking to a psychiatrist, never show any emotion but polite attentiveness. Never improvise. Never use sar-casm. Never joke. Never admit guilt. She clamped her mouth shut. But it was too late.

  Cusher made a note. Dannard peered over her shoulder and nodded.

  ‘The usual,’ Cusher said. ‘Two miligrams of Diopaxil 258

  and four of Benzidox, to be upped to a maximum of six and eight until our review next week.’

  Ana flushed with panic. ‘No!’ She lunged forward to grab Cusher, her useless legs dragging behind her.

  Cusher’s boot struck her hard. She yelped.

  Cusher’s boot struck her hard. She yelped.

  ‘For goodness’ sake,’ Cusher said. The orderlies on standby crushed out their fags and charged forward.

  Something warm trickled into the corner of Ana’s left eye, blotting out her vision. In a last-ditch attempt, she flung up her arms and wrapped them tightly around Cusher’s black-trousered leg.

  ‘Pleeease, the tesst!’

  A blow to the back winded her. She colapsed, faling face down on grimy tiles. As she gasped for air another blow struck. Pain swept through her skul. Rivulets of burning ice. So bright the hoary room f
lared snow-white.

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  21

  Cole

  The Right Honourable Dr Peter Reed wasn’t late, but something felt wrong. Cole scanned the Gospel Oak checkpoint again with his infrared binoculars. The checkpoint cabins lay fifty metres beyond the entrance to Gospel Oak station, where Gordon House Road turned into Mansfield. Usualy at this time of the evening, the straight two-lane highway saw a regular flow of chauffeur-driven saloons, one or two every few minutes.

  Cole had been watching from under the railway bridge for a quarter of an hour and nothing had gone in or out.

  He focused his binoculars on the guy sitting in the booth on the right-hand side of the road. The guard forked up a microwave dinner from a cardboard container. The light microwave dinner from a cardboard container. The light of a reality TV show glowed on the cabin wal. Cole couldn’t see the security guard in the left-hand booth.

  He shook his shoulders inside his puffa jacket to keep warm. His mind wandered to Ana. She was strong and re-sourceful, but he was worried about her. An institution run by the Board, whether a prison, an orphanage or a psych dump, was a dangerous place to be. The Board’s object-ives were always the same – a quiet, subservient population, who cost as little time and effort as possible.

  Invariably, 260

  their methods of attainment included sedation, medication and demoralising conditions. And when those weren’t enough, brutal punishment.

  Cole tucked away his binoculars and blew on his stiff fingers. Nothing was working out the way he’d imagined.

  He realised now how little he’d actualy seen in his Glimpse, and how his efforts over the years to remember everything about it had only watered down the memory.

  Now al he had was a vague impression of events and the words he’d used over and over to describe the moment to himself.

  I kiss her and the whole universe slots into place.

  Music plays in my head. Music so beautiful, I think I’m listening to the stars singing.

  Directly after the shaman had left the Project, Cole had written the melody of ‘Second Sight’. But as often as he tried, he’d never been able to finish the piece, not until he’d seen Ana leaving the Academy of Music a couple of months ago and something in him had clicked. He’d tried months ago and something in him had clicked. He’d tried folowing her and had been thwarted by her chauffeur-driven saloon. Shocked and disheartened to learn she was Pure, he’d wondered how on earth their paths were ever going to cross. He’d asked after her at the Academy but no one seemed to know who he was talking about. Then he’d gone to the concert to help Jasper Taurel. He’d come face to face with Ana and the overwhelming feelings he’d had for the girl in his vision came hurtling back. He hadn’t doubted the girl whose hand was bound to Jasper was the girl for a second.

  Eight years ago, when he’d woken from the Glimpse, he’d felt galvanised, as though al the negative 261

  charge from the losses and pain of his childhood had been stripped away. When his eyes had met Ana’s in the Barbican lift, he’d felt that same sense of electrification, like he was being given a fresh start.

  Cole struggled to remember as much detail from the end of the Glimpse as he could. It was the part he’d never liked thinking about. He and Ana were near a Community checkpoint, surrounded by men who wanted her to stay.

  She’d been afraid of something; she’d persuaded him to leave her behind.

  A Glimpse isn’t immutable, he reminded himself. When the time came, if Ana chose him, he wouldn’t leave her no matter what.

  Movement flitted in the centre of the road beyond the checkpoint. Cole retrieved his binoculars and adjusted the focus. A man lumbered up the street, landing with greater weight on one leg than the other. A ponderous man with a limp. Cole’s pulse accelerated. He edged out man with a limp. Cole’s pulse accelerated. He edged out of the bridge’s shadows.

  The minister had abandoned his car and veered from the plan they’d spent months finessing. Unless the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry had panicked and lost his nerve, there had to be a good reason for it. Either his car had been sabotaged or he’d been forced to make a quick getaway without anyone seeing.

  Cole watched the old man’s progress through his binoculars. If the minister had come from his house, he’d jogged over a mile. Cole would have been impressed if the situation didn’t make him so anxious.

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  Within a hundred metres of the checkpoint, the minister staggered to a halt.

  Come on, Cole thought. Don’t give the security guard any time to think about this. Keep going.

  Under the cabin’s blue LED lighting, the minister’s face burnt purply pink and contorted with pain. The security guard stood up. The minister limped to the booth, unclipping his ID stick from his lapel.

  Cole watched as the guard scanned the ID. The minister’s information flashed up on the white cabin wal.

  Name: The Right Honourable Dr Peter Reed.

  Birth: 6th Sept 1970

  Employment: Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.

  ‘Come on now,’ Cole muttered. ‘You don’t want to flag

  ‘Come on now,’ Cole muttered. ‘You don’t want to flag up a government minister, do you?’

  The security guard smiled uncertainly. Peter said something and the guard laughed.

  Cole clenched his hands together and sucked in his breath. ‘That’s it,’ he muttered. ‘Tel him you had a spot of bother with the wife. Domestic tiff . . . Now get out of there.’

  The guard held out the ID and Peter, chest heaving, reclaimed it.

  Just a little bit further. Cole resisted the temptation to step forward and wave the minister on. Peter knew roughly where Cole was hiding. If he’d brought the car, as they’d agreed, he’d have driven under the bridge past Cole and they’d have met up at the nearby Lido ruins.

  From there, they’d planned to ride together on Cole’s bike, folowing 263

  the Heath’s border half a mile until they ran into their escorts from the Project, who would take them over the wal.

  The minister limped from the checkpoint up the centre of the road. Cole trained his binoculars on the guard who had let him through. The man poured a flask of water into a tea urn. Reassured, Cole refocused his vision on to where he’d first seen Peter jogging, searching for signs of anything amiss, anything scuttling in the shadows.

  The soft rumble of a hybrid closed in from behind. Cole backed up against the bridge wal. A split-second later, the bridge’s arched underbely flared with light from the vehicle’s headlights. The car flew forwards. Too fast.

  vehicle’s headlights. The car flew forwards. Too fast.

  Too loud. A screaming contrast to the eerie quiet of the last twenty minutes. Al wrong. As it whooshed by, the world blazed white, then fel black.

  Cole swung to check Peter’s progress. Stil a hundred metres off, the minister stumbled right, fleeing for the pavement.

  ‘Peter!’ Cole shouted. He sprinted forwards. The car headlights swerved across the minister’s path, lighting him up for an instant. Then he disappeared. A crack split the air.

  Cole’s knees weakened. He gazed in disbelief at the dazzling shafts of light. The car slowly reversed revealing the minister’s crushed head, brains and blood smattered across the road.

  Cole clutched his stomach. His skin burnt. He was about to vomit or pass out.

  A door clicked open. A bulky figure got out of the car and stroled around it to the minister’s body.

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  ‘Is he dead?’ A voice inside the car said, carrying on the night air.

  ‘Course he’s bloody dead,’ a second voice answered.

  Metal glinted in the man’s outstretched hand. ‘Brains everywhere,’ he added, prodding Peter with his foot.

  ‘You sure you shouldn’t shoot him?’ the voice inside the car said.

  car said.

  Cole fumbled towards the pavement and heaved. His eyes watered. His hands wouldn’t st
op shaking.

  ‘Near the bridge!’ a voice shouted.

  For a moment, Cole was faling through cloud –

  everything soft, hushed, grey. Then with the pop of gun-fire, he was back. A man wearing night-vision goggles sprinted towards him. The hybrid switched gear, swinging around. A siren wailed in the distance. Cole’s arms and legs kicked with adrenalin.

  He flew thirty metres to his bike, mounted, flipped the key and stepped on the gear pedal. As the bike jerked forward, another shot echoed through the darkness. It impacted in the arched wal behind him. Shattered brick rained down, covering him in a cloud of dust as he revved on to the empty road.

  Hunkered low against the wind, he pushed his bike faster than it had ever been before. The archaic engine roared and jounced with the effort, choked by the diluted ethanol fuel. Cole’s skin was on fire. The night breeze cooled the sweat on his face, making him shiver.

  Beyond Gospel Oak station, the streetlights died. The road waned into the moonless night. No pedestrians. No 265

  cyclists. No bonfires or shanty houses. Only Pures had reason to travel this way.

  Cole passed the station and cut his headlamp. Darkness enveloped him. The slip road towards the Lido ruins lay two hundred metres up ahead.

  two hundred metres up ahead.

  A Psych Watch siren whirled in the distance and two police sirens grew closer. Pale yelow light crept up behind Cole as the car that had run over the minister gained on him. In a few seconds, they would have him in their sights.

  Squeezing his brakes, Cole swung hard left. The back wheel skidded across the road. Burning rubber stung his nostrils. The front wheel thumped the kerb. He accelerated. The bike bounced up the pavement, now a grey silhouette in the bleed from the headlights. A second later the pavement ran out. He slammed down on to uneven ground, disappearing into blackness. The bike juddered through long grass and bush. Cole shielded his face with one arm as brambles slashed his face.

  Up ahead, sirens flashed. He held his course, cutting a line to the slip road. Headlights flooded the bracken further off to his right, as the pursuing vehicle overtook.

  Everything lit up and then went dark again.

  Cole let go of the throttle. The bike ground to a halt in a thicket of high shrubs. It took several shaky attempts for him to kick out the stand. As his adrenalin ebbed, shock wrapped over him. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move his limbs properly. He vomited again into the bushes. The Psych Watch van with its prison-break siren drowned out the sound. The police sirens came next.