The Girl Who Ran

by Nikki Owen

  ‘Jesus,’ Chris says, ‘the old woman who killed that family?’

  ‘I stare into the room and everything in front of me blurs. The woman I killed.’

  Abigail looks to me, a soft orange light glowing from the console behind her. ‘The officer on the train was from the Project, yes. Look, I’m so, so sorry, but Maria, this is what they do, the Project. They got you to believe that it was your friend all along who was betraying your trust. Got you to think it was her who had the tracker, led you to them.’

  ‘I thought she dropped the book you gave her on purpose, to show the Project where we’d been,’ I say, but to myself, my eyes down, tears threatening to spill over and break away. ‘I even… I even told her that. I called her a liar.’

  ‘It was all the Project. They knew how you’d react so they set it all up to lead… to lead you back to them.’

  ‘So the blackmail messages,’ Chris says now, ‘the ones the Home Secretary received – or so we thought – that was all a—’

  ‘A setup, yes.’ Abigail nods, mouth downwards, lines crinkling on her forehead. ‘It was all created to make it appear that Patricia was the mole.’

  ‘Fucking hell.’ Chris throws something. ‘Fucking bastards.’

  Tears stream down my cheeks now, stinging my skin, falling past my neck to the bones on my shoulders underneath my Project issue shirt. I feel dazed, as if my head has been hit by the heaviest hammer, the hardest blow. ‘Patricia is… is not with the Project?’ I say, the shock gradually beginning to take hold. ‘She was never my handler in prison or sent there by the Project or MI5 or any other group?’

  Abigail shakes her head. ‘No. No, she’s exactly who she’s always said she’s been. Everything she told you in prison, about her family, about who she really is, what’s she’s done – it’s all true.’

  I listen to her words, each one piercing me and, as the pain of the reality hits, my mind turns to ask the one question I have been dreading, the one that makes my stomach fold in on itself. ‘Is she… Is Patricia the enemy?’

  Abigail coughs, blood flakes streaking her skin. When she sits back and inhales, the orange light still pulses behind her as she says the words my heart was dreading to hear. ‘No.’ She wipes her mouth. ‘Patricia is definitely not the enemy.’

  The words entire slam into me, bam! And I stand, cannot take it or bear it or deal with it. I pace, Abigail watching me, leaning forward, one hand stretched out towards me, but I ignore it, ignore her as she asks if I’m okay as I pace and pace and pace, all the time moaning slightly, then more, tapping my leg then shoulder then head until I reach the bookcase and, halting, spread out my ten fingers to it, leaning on it, lungs burning, as in my mind a picture of Patricia walks in, her beautiful long, limbed body, beaten on the ground, beaten by the Project for what? For the biggest deceit? For me? To get me to do what? Kill? Maim? Lie for them?

  ‘What have I done?’ I say quietly then louder and louder. ‘What have I done?’

  ‘Take a breath…’

  ‘No,’ I say aloud, as what has happened fires in bullet rounds in my brain. Bang, bang. ‘No, no.’ Bang, bang, bang. ‘No.’ Bang. ‘NO! I hurt her! I hurt my friend!’

  ‘Google?’ Chris says, but again, I do not respond, and I hear him say to Abigail to bring the phone nearer so he can speak to me, but his voice seems distant, as if in another room, another world and I am here, trapped forever in my own never-ending nightmare.

  ‘Maria?’ Chris is nearer now, Abigail close to my side, but I can smell her, a nauseous scent of antiseptic and blood, and it hits my brain, congeals in there with all the other thoughts and with the lights in the room and the computers and the filing cabinet containing the details no one wants the world to see, all of it spinning round and round and round.

  ‘I need you to breathe,’ Chris says, reciting the words he has seen Patricia say to me. For a moment it works, and I become calmer, but then the orange light behind Abigail pulses faster and the whole thing spirals again, Patricia’s beaten body floating once more into my consciousness.

  ‘Talk to me. Talk, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I thought she was lying to me…’

  ‘Good. Good that’s it.’

  I breathe hard. ‘I thought… I thought she was working for the Project.’

  ‘That’s because they made you believe that. They all lied. It’s not your fault.’

  ‘No! No, she was not… She was my friend… I should have known… I should have trusted her.’

  I rip my hands from the shelf, smear the tears from my cheeks and eyes. ‘They lie, they all fucking lie all the time, all of them. Governments, leaders – all of them. And for what?’ I stalk now, almost toppling over Abigail, nearly knocking the phone from her thin hand. ‘For themselves! Because they think… they think they are doing the correct thing, think that the decisions they are making are the right ones, but they are not and the end result is people die. People… people die and get hurt and they ruin lives because they do not care! They just do not fucking care! And now I am one of them and I believed Patricia was the enemy. I believed everything they told me, let them drug me and let my mind forget and now my first ever friend is being held by the Project. And’— I pause, heave in a great bucket of breath—‘and I helped put her there!’

  Everything now merges into one, and despite Chris shouting out to breathe and Abigail pleading for me to sit down, I run over to the shelves, stop, chest heaving, staring at all the books, cases and cases of information that means what? Nothing. Nothing when, with one flick of a button or one lick of a flame, it can be gone in seconds. Forever.

  ‘Aaaaaaargh!’

  I throw myself forwards and begin tearing all the books from the casing. They all topple over, each and every one tumbling to the ground, leather and binding broken, bent spines. I pull at them, tear and scream until I finally stop, gulping in air, body bent double, my head dropped, eyes rammed shut.

  I am exhausted, distraught, not moving for one second, two, three. Everything is still, quiet, save the brush of Abigail’s breathing, the rustle of Chris on the cell phone wherever he may be as, in my head, it all comes up and out, all the images of everyone in my life. Of Balthus and Ramon, of Ines and Harry, and of my beautiful Papa, all of them standing there inside my mind, and I cry out, not a scream, but a deep, guttural moan of love and loss and pain and all that it’s caused me my whole life. Of priests dead, of nuns lying, of Kurt – real name Daniel – and his corpse on the street, bullet in his brain, of Dr Andersson from MI5 pretending to be a doctor to help me then trying to kill me at my villa, and oh, my precious villa, my idyllic, calm Salamanca. Of running. Of being at Montserrat abbey with monks and the abbot shot just helping us, and me then letting the Project take me to Hamburg. Of the officer I killed there, strangled with my bare hands. Of Raven and the files that told me about the other subject numbers, of the cancer drugs for Ines. Of Chris, of him walking into my life and making it better. And of Patricia, who has been who she has always been – calm, loyal, kind, caring – lying somewhere in this facility at the mercy of the Project.

  ‘Google?’ Chris says now, voice hushed, steady. ‘I need to know you are okay.’

  Slowly, I open my eyes and the strange sight of the ransacked room swims before me as I register what’s in my line of vision. ‘They… they are empty.’

  Abigail watches me now as I stumble back and take in the view of the books that lie strewn on the floor, but, instead of pages inside them, there is nothing but space. ‘They… they are just boxes. Empty boxes.’

  I pick one up, turn it in my hands, run my fingertip along the gold binding. I hold it, this empty vessel that should be full and feel the weight of the thirty decades of my life bearing down on me, the clock ticking on the time I have left.

  ‘We have to find Patricia,’ I say, something in my brain finally clicking into a logical, methodical place, my heart tired, a blank void opening wide somewhere inside me at what I now know. I look up now to Abigai
l.

  ‘I can help,’ she says. ‘I’ve got nothing to lose.’

  She stands near me, holding out the cell phone as we blink down together at the books, at the shelves and the empty spaces. Chris’s voice breaks the silence.

  ‘Er, guys?’ he says. ‘I think we have a problem.’ He squints forwards. ‘There’s… there’s something trying to get through on the screen behind you.’

  We turn. The orange light that was glowing before is now pulsing wildly.

  Abigail squints at it. ‘Oh, shit.’

  I move forwards. ‘Why is the light…?’ But I stop, because now on the screen in front of us, an image is transmitting, live into the room and what I see on it makes me shriek, makes Abigail cry out, causes Chris to shout, ‘No!’

  There, on the monitor in front of us, is Patricia with a gun to her head.

  And holding it, looking up to the camera, is Black Eyes.

  Chapter 31

  Black site Project facility, Scotland.

  Present day

  ‘Let her go,’ I yell at the screen, striding forwards. ‘Let her go!’

  Abigail pulls me back, but, jumping at the unexpected touch, I yank my arm away and round on her.

  ‘How did he know I was here? Was it you? Was it?’

  ‘Don’t say another word!’ She shakes her head, scanning the console. ‘He doesn’t know we’re here. He only has hold of the computer feed line. They’re trying to track our location. They must be picking up some sensory movement somewhere, but it’s being blocked. Room 17’s transmission feed must have an output wall around it.’

  ‘Maria, I want to talk to you,’ Black Eyes says, his voice slicing into the room, a blade against my skin. I freeze, every hair on my body rising. I want to run, not away from him, but this time at him, at the Project, at every single fucking one of them.

  I stalk to the screen. ‘Is this microphone working?’

  Abigail checks it then nods as, reaching for the phone where Chris still is, she pulls it to her ear and begins feverishly tapping on a keyboard.

  ‘Let Patricia go,’ I say to Black Eyes. ‘I know everything now. I know you set her up so we would think she was the one who led you to us. I know the UK Home Secretary is involved, the USA, Spain. I know all your secrets.’

  ‘Doc?’

  ‘Patricia!’

  I spin closer to the screen and scan every inch of my friend’s beaten body as she struggles to speak. Bruises now track her skin alongside welts of old wounds, and on her head where her scalp is bare and her hair shaven, long lacerations circle her skull from her brow to her ears.

  ‘She is not the enemy,’ I say now, fast, urgent. ‘You have to let her go. You have misunderstood why she is here. I have misunderstood why she is here.’

  Black Eyes stares at the camera, the gun lowering a little and for a second, it seems as if he might let go of it entirely, but then he inhales a sharp lick of breath, his chest protruding, the spindle of his knuckles twisting around the handle of the revolver so his skin pulls tight and white over each and every translucent bone.

  ‘Maria, I am very, very worried for your wellbeing.’

  He lifts his head and in his eyes I think I see tears. I step forward, mesmerised, as if in a trance, the image of this man I have feared for so much of my life suddenly looking older, more lined, a sag to his skin where his cheeks droop, a weight to the lids of his eyes.

  ‘I know about your wife,’ I say now, unsure why the words want to come out, yet somehow understanding that it is the right thing to do. Beside me, Abigail continues to tap on the keyboard, the cell now by her fingers, simultaneously texting Chris and working on a complex code. Specks of red blood lie in pinpricks on her lips. ‘I know that she set up the Project decades ago. I know that what I witnessed in the sensory chamber was real, not an hallucination. The drugs were tested on her. Your daughter died.’

  ‘Maria, stop whatever it is you think you are doing.’

  Patricia flops a little and he pulls her back up. I jump, desperate to get to her, yet, for one of the few times in my life, I hesitate, not knowing quite what the next step should be. I reach my fingers to her image on the screen. My friend. My first friend. I’m sorry, I want to say. I am so, so sorry.

  ‘You mean a lot to me, Maria,’ Black Eyes says now. ‘I know you may not believe that, and I wouldn’t blame you for, quite frankly, hating me, but believe me when I say that I am on your side.’

  ‘You lied to me.’

  He sighs. ‘Yes. Yes, that is true, but Maria, everyone lies. I did it with good reason, with you at the heart of my interests.’

  The phrase, everyone lies – it casts a line in my mind to the Home Secretary, to the things she told me about in London.

  ‘Harriet Alexander knows all about the Project,’ I say, rapidly, no time to rethink. ‘The Project was supposed to have separated from MI5 and the UK government were not supposed to know anything about it. That is what I was always taught in training when I was young and when I was growing up, that Callidus was secret, covert and performed better that way.’

  He nods. ‘Again, yes, this is all true, as for a long time, governments were indeed, unaware of our existence. But Maria, the world changes, needs change, as do critical situations, and that, therefore, alters our actions. And we are forced to lie. You know this happens.’

  ‘It should not.’ My sight flips to Patricia; her eyelids are drooping. Fear billows.

  ‘But it does happen,’ he says. ‘Neurotypical people lie over two hundred times a day. Two hundred, Maria.’

  ‘Many of these are white lies. Twenty-five per cent of lies are told for the sake of someone else.’

  ‘Yes, which is precisely my point. We like to help others, it is what we do as a species – deceive. It’s called survival.’

  ‘It is not what I do.’

  ‘It isn’t? Are you certain of that?’

  Patricia’s head and neck hang a little to the right, the butt of the gun resting on her ear.

  Abigail leans over to me. ‘Keep him talking,’ she whispers, angling herself so she cannot be seen on the camera. ‘We’re just seeing if we can locate which room they’re in and if there’s anything Chris can do remotely to help.’

  Black Eyes’ Scottish lilt floats into the room. ‘You didn’t tell Patricia about your headaches and their severity, did you, Maria?’

  My mind tracks back through the memories I have which have not been blurred by the Typhernol.

  ‘You see,’ he continues, ‘by not telling her, by omitting the facts, you are, indeed, lying. And you have been deceiving yourself, Maria.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Now your memories are returning, you believe you have been forced here, but, if you think about it, is that really the case?’ He exhales, long, heavy – nostrils billowing in two sails from his nose, flapping up then falling again. ‘You came here of your own will.’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘Really? Think about it.’ He tilts the gun to Patricia’s skull and she whimpers. My heart nearly collapses right there and then. ‘You accepted what we said about your friend, about her being the enemy, but Maria, if you think about it, she is. She is stopping you from being who you are.’

  My eyes flit to Abigail; she mouths, ‘Keep him talking,’ except chitchat has never been my strong point. I try facts.

  ‘I am a person who is thirty-three years old and who may not live to their thirty-fourth birthday.’

  ‘Ah,’ he says, ‘so you know about that.’

  My vision flicks to Abigail, to her fingers on the keyboard. ‘I have seen the file that details the drugs and conditioning,’ I say to Black Eyes. ‘I have seen the file that says I am the longest surviving subject number. I have seen the subject numbers at the Project facility here – they are all younger than me.’

  For a moment, Black Eyes does not respond. His fingers fall loose on the gun handle leaving a tiny escape gap, and when I look at Patricia, I will her to take the chance, to slide a
way and run, but instead her body remains limp, the bones of her chest barely moving at all. Tears once more threaten to erupt from my sockets.

  ‘You are the one that the conditioning has truly worked on,’ he says finally, his eyes rising, yet his shoulders still down, weighted. ‘I… We…’ He stops, looking at Patricia then back to the camera, exhaling into the cold, clinical air. I grind my teeth, petrified at what he might do to my friend. To my side Abigail shows me a text from Chris that just reads: breathe.

  ‘My own daughter was so young,’ he says after a moment. ‘So young to die. And at the hands of monsters.’ A tear, solitary, barely visible, slips down his face. He wipes it away. ‘That memory you had in the sensory chamber, Maria, yes – that was all true. You must have… you must have recalled it from when you were very young.’

  ‘Your wife founded the Project,’ I say.

  He smiles now for the first time since he appeared on the screen, small lines fanning out on his worn, pinched face. ‘My beautiful wife. She was so clever, so sharp. I owe everything to her – we all do.’

  Abigail motions for me to talk more, pointing to her watch, but it is hard and I am so worried for Patricia. I hook on, instead, to connections, let my brain run with the data.

  ‘Your daughter died and you began the Project,’ I say.

  ‘Yes.’ He doesn’t look up, instead hangs his eyes low, gun in his grip. ‘My wife knew it would all get worse – terrorism, the rise of such groups, the growth of the use of computers, although even she couldn’t have predicted the extent to which the cyber world has developed. She was already working for the intelligence services when I met her.’

  ‘She had the drugs tested on her.’

  ‘Yes.’ He sighs. ‘Yes.’ Again he smiles, tiny fanned eye creases. ‘She developed the drugs herself, originally. Did you know that? Exceptional biochemist.’ He pauses. ‘But she got to see you. She got to see you before she died and somehow, she knew you could be it, the test child. Your blood type, straight from Balthus and Isabella.’

  My heart nearly stops. ‘You know the name of my real mother.’