by Nikki Owen
At first, when we search, there is nothing, but then, after one, two seconds, everything changes. The screen flickers once, twice and the numbers switch to flat, green lines that crackle across the glass and peak into mountain tops then dip to the bottom of the file. Neither of us moves.
Chris wipes his mouth. ‘What the fuck …?’
‘What is happening? Is it a loose connection or a faulty wire?’
‘No …’ He stops. The screen has begun to pixellate fast, out of control as, slowly, something flashes across the glass.
‘Holy shit!’ Chris says. ‘What was that?’
My chest goes tight and my fists scrunch to two tight, nervous balls. ‘I do not know.’
The screen goes black. Chris drags his chair towards the computer. ‘This isn’t right …’
I go to speak, begin to open my mouth to attempt to explain something, anything of what is occurring, when I stop.
Because there, on the screen, is an eye.
Yet it is not static, not an image or a photograph, but real, moving, blinking.
A silent scream slips from my mouth as the eye stares straight back at me. Someone has accessed this computer. Someone knows where I am.
Someone is watching me.
The eye blinks then, as quick as it appeared, it vanishes from the screen without a trace.
Chapter 15
Montserrat mountain valley, nr. Barcelona.
26 hours and 26 minutes to confinement
‘Holy shit! Holy shit! What was that? What was that?’ Chris jumps up from his seat, hands scouring through his hair. ‘What the fuck was that?’
‘Black Eyes.’ I say the words. I say his name and expect to feel fear, yet instead experience a strange stillness, my emotions landing like sediment at the bottom of a glass.
‘Black Eyes? What …’ He shakes his head. ‘What’s that? I mean what is …’
His voice fades and he is pointing to the screen now. I look. The eye is gone and has been replaced with a series of words and numbers. I grab my notebook and lean in.
Chris quits pacing and looks. ‘That says Black September. Why does that say Black September?’ His voice is higher than normal.
I analyse what Chris is staring at, an urgency building up fast. He is right. Black September and the year 1973 are listed. And something else.
Subject number 115.
It is the number from my flashback in the villa. The same subject number that was on Dr Andersson’s cell.
Chris stares at it all. ‘Holy shit. It’s got your name on this. And your age. And … what the …? Is that a clock?’
I look down. There on the bottom of the file is my subject number—375—and my name, plus my age, thirty-three, and by it is a yellow flagged box that clicks each second, minute, hour, day, month and year away.
‘Is that …’ Chris whistles. ‘Is that thing counting down your age?’
I try to think. How is it all connected?
I look up. ‘It says September is Black. What does that mean?’
‘Seriously? You don’t know? Who are you involved with? Shit.’ He paces. ‘Black September—they were the gang responsible for terrorist attacks in the seventies.’ He points to the screen. ‘1973—that’s when it all kicked off. But look—that age thing.’
‘It must be tracking me.’
‘But how? Why?’ He rakes a hand through his hair. ‘Whoever this data belongs to, how old you are is a big deal.’
‘It is?’ I turn back to the screen and scroll down and feel a wave of pain in my stomach. How can all this be linked? How can the woman, Raven, be part of whatever information is on Dr Andersson’s SIM, be part of how old I am?
I look to Chris. ‘You say this Black September organisation were terrorists.’
‘Yeah. Big time serous shit.’ He shakes his head. ‘You know, it all went underground, the response to it. There was a load of us hackers way back who got wind of some unit that was set up in response to that kind of terrorism, to a shift in approach, but … Hey, you don’t think that’s connected to whatever you’re involved in, do you?’
I hesitate, think about what he has said. Balthus trusts this man. I decide to take a risk and tell him. ‘The group who is tracking me … It is called the Project. They are unknown to the government. They are, as you say, underground.’
He blows out a breath. ‘Jesus.’
I look back to the screen, back to the data and the facts. If it is linked, then why? And what is the significance?
‘We need to get out of here,’ Chris says. ‘Like, now.’
I turn. He is right. If Black Eyes is watching, they could track our location. I reach for my USB stick, start to download the files.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Saving the file.’
Chris shakes his head. ‘It’s protected. I set up a shield. Let me do it.’
‘Oh.’ I thrust the USB stick to Chris. He takes it.
‘You have heard of the word please, right?’
‘Of course.’ I hold the USB stick out further. ‘I need you to download it all.’
‘Christ.’ He takes the stick and, fingers flying fast, starts to secure the documents to my files.
‘Can you retrieve the last section, where it says critical next to my age?’
‘Yeah, hang on.’ He taps the keys, but the screen suddenly starts to fade fast. ‘Shit. This isn’t right.’
‘What is the problem?’
‘I don’t know. It’s just all disappearing.’
Chris sets up the download, but still the data pixellates until all that is left is a pin-prick dot, minute, black. Then: nothing.
‘Shit, is that big eye coming back?’
I stare at the empty screen, an urgency surging forward, expecting to see Black Eyes reappear. ‘Did you secure the download?’
‘I don’t know, maybe, but I do know that if I don’t pull this now, we’re screwed.’
Dropping to his knees, Chris wrenches the table away and starts ripping out the wires, dragging away lines of cables and as he does, they all spill out onto the floor, rolls of intestines gathering on the tiles. Done, he crawls back out, catching his breath. My USB stick is still in his hand.
‘I have been here—’ he swallows, hair dropping forwards ‘—for six months now and not once, not once has anyone found me. And then you show up and a fucking Cyclops springs onto the screen and a bomb flashes up with a whole heap of intelligence data.’
I try to focus on what he says, but my mind races, thoughts screeching round my brain, adding, subtracting. What does Switzerland and Geneva refer to? Why would the Project be connected to Black September?
‘Well?’ Chris says now.
I snatch the USB and turn. ‘I am sorry. I may have put you in danger.’
He stares at me and, at first, I think he is going to leave, going to walk away from me and the chaos I have brought upon him. But then slowly, he does something that surprises me: he smiles and sighs.
‘D’you think this is the first time I’ve been in trouble?’
‘Oh.’ I think. ‘No.’
‘Correct.’ He turns, pulls one last cable from the wall then, snapping back the pictures of the old people from the wall, he clicks a button behind and a small metal safe door swings out to show a bunch of passports, money, keys and cell phones. ‘Handy how the past,’ he says tapping the photographs hanging mid-air, ‘can mask the present.’
He wrenches a duffel bag from a cupboard, fills it with the safe belongings then turns and checks his watch.
‘Look, I don’t know what you’re mixed up in, but I like you, I like Balthus, and he’ll be on his way now and I promised him I’d get you to him. You ready to go before whoever you’re involved with finds us?’
I glance round the room, at the ripped computer, at the screen where Black Eyes was. ‘Yes.’
‘Good. Then let’s go.’
I gather the SIM card, my USB stick and my notebook and go to walk, but find that I
don’t move. For a moment I can’t, as all the information I’ve just seen, all the events of the last ten hours swamp my mind. I don’t know who I am. I suddenly want to scream. I want to run back to my villa and hide away forever and never deal with anything or anyone again.
Chris stops, looks to me. ‘You okay?’ He dips his head, smiling again, creases crinkling at his eyes. ‘You ready?’
I look at him, at his eye crinkles. Balthus knows him, I tell myself, he trusts him and his smile is good. I know it is good.
‘I am ready to go,’ I say after a moment, gripping the strap of my rucksack.
‘Great.’
We walk through the back of the house past a broken blue door and two rusty metal tubs of water to a small black car with splashy tyres parked in the shaded alleyway, hidden from the sun. We both get in, Chris driving, and pull away fast.
The dust on the road flies up as the car speeds along a warren of clay-coloured roads that wind up towards the first stage of the huge, jagged mountain range beyond. My mind, as we drive, turns to facts and data and to the people I know. If the Project are flashing up on a screen in a house in Montserrat, then they could be anywhere. They could be with anyone.
Glancing to Chris and watching the route we are taking, I pull out my cell and text my brother and check that he and Mama are safe.
Undisclosed confinement location—present day
The timer ticks in the room and my panic rises. I look to my brother. His face is bathed in one streak of light and when the bulb above his head swings, his cheeks sink in and out of a blackness.
‘Turn off the timer,’ I say, but my brother does not move. ‘The Project are not who they say they are. They lied to Mama when I was young and they are lying to you now. Whatever they are making you do, stop.’
Ramon remains solid and does not shift, not even one inch as, drop by drop, the liquid in the drip begins to work its way towards the needle in my arm.
Panic floods me. It will trip soon. ‘Ramon—take it out. Now.’
‘They voted you Worst Girl in School. Do you remember that?’
‘What?’ Drop, drop. ‘Why are you saying this?’ The timer is ticking faster now. I count the seconds as they speed by and know that at any moment the drug will enter my veins. ‘Take out the needle. I know they will be watching us, you, but you need to do it.’
‘You cried,’ he says now, as if I had never spoken. ‘I know you remember. You cried all night in your room after they voted you worst girl. I slept on the floor because you didn’t want to be alone. Five years after Papa died and you still struggled without him.’
His words make me hold my breath. School. It was like a living nightmare. I never understood the rules and, as I got older, the teenage games everyone seemed to be playing, especially the girls, baffled me, especially the way they would be with boys. Why couldn’t you say someone looked awful if they did, in fact, look awful? Especially if they asked you?
I feel suddenly tired, weak and when I speak, my voice is cracked. ‘The boys used to laugh at me. You used to laugh, too.’
He stays silent. For a moment, his chest remains so still that it appears as if he is not breathing at all, even though the air around us is damp and loaded. When he does eventually talk, his voice is chalky, ripped. ‘I didn’t know what to do.’
I say nothing. The timer ticks.
‘You have no idea what it was like.’ He sucks in a breath. ‘Everyone thought you were odd. The girls laughed at me when you did your odd things and I couldn’t even get a girlfriend because of it.’
‘That does not make logical sense.’
‘That’s what I mean!’ He tuts. ‘You were my sister, but oh my God, it was a pain having you trailing after me.’
He briefly shuts his eyes and confusion swamps me. I don’t understand what my brother is talking about or why it exhausts me; trying to figure it out, trying to decipher the social connections, it wears me out. I lick my lips. They are dry. A heat is rising in the room and it feels as if it is closing in on us, as if the walls are surging forward almost, the only space there is the immediate air around our faces. When Ramon finally opens his eyes and speaks, it is about a different subject.
‘We are in a city, do you know that?’
I look round. Is he lying? I try to detect clues. There is a window, but it is thick and heavy with a type of black soot and when I track the frame, I cannot see any latch or distinct opening, as if the entire thing has been fused shut some time ago.
‘The Project does not have any facilities based in cities.’ But then I stop, because, in truth, I cannot be completely certain of this statement. I cannot be completely certain of anything.
My eyes land on the brickwork ahead. ‘The walls are padded, Ramon,’ I say. ‘Why?’
‘For your own safety.’
A fear, right then, deep, shakes within me. What have they told him to make him believe this is all acceptable, that this is the right thing to do?
‘Okay,’ he says, ‘so it’s time for you to have your medicine now.’ He goes to leave.
‘No!’ Panic hits and I thrust forward but am slammed to a halt by the ropes. ‘Wait!’
He stops, turns and as I catch the side of his face unshadowed by the weak light, for a fleeting second I see the face of the brother I knew when I went to school: skin soft and unmarked, no stubble or sharp bones, just plump red cheeks, wide eyes and a deep summer outdoor tan. A small lump swells in my throat.
‘Why are you keeping me here?’ I say. ‘Why are you not freeing me from them? Freeing us?’ My voice is quiet, broken.
Ramon hangs his head and when he raises it again, when he lifts his face to mine, his eyes are wet and his mouth is downturned.
‘Because I love you.’
The timer clicks and with one, loud rush, the drug enters my blood.
Chapter 16
Montserrat mountain road, nr. Barcelona.
25 hours and 59 minutes to confinement
The woman code named Raven floats into view beneath the sunlight. I observe her face. Her eyes are brown, wide like saucers, and when she flickers her lids her lashes are as fine and as exquisite as threads of silk. The Middle-Eastern sun beats down and bakes our skin covered in cloth and gauze.
She ushers me to move. The woman’s hand, now, beckons me, fingers thin, nails round and smooth at the edges, long, elegant bones on the end of her palms gliding towards me, and, as they do, something happens: I begin to float along, an apparition, a ghost.
We move together, simultaneously, the woman and I. She is talking to me fast in Arabic and to my surprise I understand her, even talk back to her, as if it was a language I was born with, have always spoken. We are discussing an operation, a target. She has stopped, the woman, now, here, the desert hot, sticky, sweet honey drops of heat sliding down our skin, and as I look around, there is only a sprinkle of uninhabited sand-coloured buildings nearby. Taking out a computer tablet, the woman shows me something and I peer in. It is a series of algorithms, of equations and numbers, and I understand it all, every single part of it, yet there is a connection missing, a link, but I cannot place what.
The woman slips her hand into a pocket and unfolds a piece of paper. She points to it, holds it near me and I see a code, a complex code on how to hack a social network website. She speaks now again, fast, and mentions the CIA. She talks about how difficult their system is to penetrate but not impossible, that who I am, my age, is vital, and I listen, yet not because I want to join in her hacking, but for another reason, a reason that somewhere inside me feels infected, wrong. I watch myself as I reach into my pocket and switch something on. What? A phone? A tracker? It is unclear, but what I am certain of is that this woman knows me, trusts me, yet I know in my head that I will betray her. The feeling is so strong, so powerful, that a pain radiates across my chest, and, while I try to fight it, an unfamiliar part of my brain tells me that it is the right action to take, the only action—that it is for the greater good. For the Proje
ct, I am going to betray her. I am going to hurt her.
I am going to kill her.
Static appears and the mirage of the woman escapes to the sky. She hovers, a bright firefly, beautiful, mesmerising, impossible to catch, and I try to grab the mirage, attempt to keep it locked in my consciousness, stowed away, but it flutters off, flapping left and right until its wings rotate and it disappears from my view entirely.
I wake up and intake a sharp breath.
‘Hey. Hey. Are you okay?’
I jump. Chris is to my left, driving. I had forgotten he was here at all. The sky has become darker, sudden deep grey swirls of clouds threatening to open.
‘Where are we?’ I rub my eyes. The memory of Raven lingers, a warm fug of freshly tumble-dried linen.
‘We’re on the road way of Montserrat now. You’ve been out of it a while. You okay?’
‘I …’ I shake my head and pull myself up straight. ‘How long have we been driving for?’
He shrugs. ‘Dunno. Twenty-five, maybe thirty minutes?’
I rub my shoulders where they have cemented stiff from a lolling head. I fell asleep. I must have been more tired than I realised. I smooth my hands through my hair, think about the woman I have just seen. Was it just a dream? Was what I felt real, something that has actually happened? I reach for my rucksack on the back seat, scrambling for my notepad—I have to write it all down.
I scratch pen to paper and record everything I have just recollected and glance over to Chris. ‘Has anyone followed us?’
‘Huh? Oh. No.’ His eyes remain on the road. ‘It’s hot. There’s some water in there if you want it.’
I look to where he’s pointing where a plastic bottle in a shelf under the dashboard peeks out. I set down my pen, unscrew the cap and gulp down all the liquid, Chris throwing me sideways glances the entire time.
‘It’s all right. I didn’t want any.’
I drain the bottle, wipe my chin with the back of my hand. ‘Okay.’
We drive. The clouds have swallowed the sun now, transforming the sky to a thundering wash of orange and grey that gathers in a soup of broken marble in the air, thick and looming, and when I breathe in I smell a faint aroma of peat and vegetation and burnt tarmac. I wind down the window a little and the outside ushers in through the gap. Rosemary, now, saturates the air, pungent and fragrant, its delicate fragrance mixed with the heavier, muggy odour of rich, rocky moss. I feel a warm breeze on my face and when I look up, the turrets of the mountain bear down, raised and rigid at the summit of the gods. A world ruled by a nature we will never truly understand. I give the turrets one more look then, tuning back to my notebook, finish writing what I recall about my dream.
