by Nikki Owen
The number. I recognise it. ‘That is the date of my birthday.’
Another bang.
‘You won’t stay here, will you?’ she says.
‘I need to know my friend is okay.’ Bang. ‘I have to know that she is—’
The door smashes open and five officers in black spill in, reeking of gun powder and oil, grabbing Abigail straight away as she kicks and thrashes. They pull out a needle, stab her in the thigh with it and I watch in horror as she fights then goes limp and is dragged away.
My eyes follow her feet around the corner as, on the screen in the room, Black Eyes calls my name.
‘Maria?’
I turn, trying to count to stay calm, three remaining officers guarding the door. One, two, three, four…
‘Can you see me?’ he asks.
Five. I make myself turn to the screen, I watch now as Black Eyes stands five metres from Patricia who, I am relieved to see has been given a chair and is already being tended to by a physician. ‘Yes,’ I manage to say. ‘I can see you.’
‘Good, because, Maria, you mean so much to me. And when people mean a lot to us, we often find we have to do things for that person for their own good, even if, at the time, it might not feel that way to them.’
I swallow, uncertain why he is saying this, but relieved my friend is alright. ‘Yes.’
‘Which is why I need to make sure that your commitment to the Project is 100 per cent solid.’
I hesitate, don’t reply.
‘Because you see,’ he continues, ‘when I said everyone lies…’
My heart races. ‘Yes?’
‘I meant it.’
The attending physician steps out of the way and, raising his gun, Black Eyes shoots Patricia dead in the head.
Chapter 33
Black site Project facility, Scotland.
Present day
‘No! No, no, no, noooooo!’
The officers try to grab me, but I throw them off, arms and legs punching and kicking out as on the screen, Patricia’s body lies dead on the floor, one solitary red hole in her clear, milk-pale forehead, a pool of her blood staining the clinical white tiles of the room where she was held.
I slam myself forward, grabbing at the computer where my friend’s image lies, as if doing that will save her. ‘Wake up! Wake up!’
I yell, shout, fly my fists as tears rip down my face and cheeks, staining every part of me as the officers grip my wrists tight. But I kick them off, hard, making a bolt for the door.
I get to the open corridor, darting my head left and right, disorientated, blinded by the wetness that floods my eyes and brain and mouth. ‘Patricia!’ I shout. ‘Patricia!’
I run, the officers chasing me, and I try to think straight, figure out where she could be, picture the space from the screen, get the map of the facility in my head. I take a right, sprinting now, faster than anyone can catch me as I slam through doors, past subject numbers, knocking them over, surging forwards. I skid to the situation room, an alarm now blaring above my head, but it is not loud enough to drown out the distress and pain inside me. My friend. She is my friend. No one can hurt her, no one. She is mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.
My fingers moving fast, I input the code somehow on the door and slam into the vast hangar of computers and people in the situation room. Everyone stares. They look up from their work and watch as I streak into the area, shouting out Patricia’s name, yelling for her over and over again.
I stop, heaving in great swathes of breath as one hundred and twenty pairs of eyes blink at me and, as I see them, it hits me: they won’t be here for much longer.
‘You’re all going to die!’ I yell. ‘They are killing you! The Project is giving you drugs that will kill you! You are just a number to them! A fucking number!’
The officers burst in now and I run fast towards a deep blue door, the colour of the ocean, on the very far right side, brushing past the shoulders and backs of subject numbers who are now whispering, and I hear the word Typhernol mentioned in a ripple of rising chatter.
The blue door, when I skid to it, is locked. There is a key pad but I don’t know the code, brain so wired and distraught, I can’t think straight to decipher it. The officers are rounding on me now and so, fast, I spot a subject with a gun at his side and, before he can even react or speak, I grab the weapon, point it at him and tell him to open the door.
He hesitates, glancing to the officers.
‘Input the code – now!’ I shout.
His hand shakes as he moves forward and I grab him, hooking my arm around his neck, shoving the barrel into his skull.
The officers, three of them, move in, but, while they have guns, what bothers me more is the needle that is gripped in the hand of the one to the left.
‘Stay back or I’ll shoot him!’
They stop, eyes darting between each other.
I instruct the subject number I’m holding to tap in the code and he does so, but it does not work.
‘Do it again!’ I yell.
‘I… it… it needs my thumb print, too.’
I hesitate, checking the door then seeing he is correct, I twist him round and, grabbing his wrist, shove his thumb to the door. It clicks. Fast, I return my arm to his neck, slam him in front of me as armour then point the gun again to his head.
‘No one moves,’ I say, inching back. When I glance into the room behind me, I see it is the same one Black Eyes was in on the screen in room 17.
One of the officers moves a foot. ‘Stay back!’
He halts, and ramming the subject number once in the ribs then slamming the butt of the gun into the back of his head so he collapses out of the way, I dart into the room and lock the door.
I catch my breath and turn. It is dark. The lights that were on before on the screen in the room are low, but I can see enough to put one foot in front of the other. One step, two. The heat is high and sweat springs out all over my body.
‘Patricia!’ I call into the void, but all that comes back is the echo of my own voice.
Black Eyes could be anywhere in here and my training, distant, comes straight back to me now as I scan the room, check all areas, slowly, carefully, gun out and ready at all times.
‘She is dead.’
I jump at the sound as, from behind the shadows to the right where a small table sits, Black Eyes appears.
He looks frail, his pinched face more pale than normal and when he inhales, blue veins spike out on his neck and brow, and his hands rise and fall in a branch formation of twigs and leaves of bones.
‘It’s over now, Maria, your past. It’s over.’
I point the gun at him. ‘Stay back.’
He halts, resting a finger on the edge of a narrow red chair.
‘You lied to me,’ I say. ‘You killed her.’ Tears tumble down my cheeks. ‘You said you would let her go.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry? Sorry? You are not sorry!’ I wipe my face, still holding the revolver straight out. ‘You only care about power! You and all the fucking governments. Harriet Alexander is the Home Secretary of the United Kingdom. Her job is homeland security and yet she believes killing people is justified!’
He exhales. ‘It is a necessary evil.’
As I hear that – evil – Chris’s words come to me, the ones he muttered on the phone when we were in room 17. ‘The Project are evil motherfuckers,’ I say, spitting the phrase out at him. I point the gun towards the red chair. ‘Sit.’
He does as I say, staggering a little then lowering himself down.
‘I need to have all the codes to this facility, including the location and code to Isabella Bidarte,’ I say now, thinking fast.
He shakes his head. ‘I’m afraid that isn’t possible.’
‘You are lying.’
He sighs. ‘I’m not.’
‘You are!’ I shout. He falls silent, my voice bouncing off the concrete walls.
He regards me. He crosses one leg over the other and drops his
shoulders. ‘Aren’t you tired?’
‘What?’
‘Tired – you must be so tired running away all the time, my dearest Maria. Running away from who you really are.’
‘I know who I am.’
‘Do you?’
I go to speak, then hesitate. Isabella, Balthus, Ines, Ramon and Papa. All the faces of the people I knew appear in my mind, each one of them smiling with eye creases. I shake my head, wipe them away, re-focus, hold the gun tight. ‘I want the codes. I want to know where Isabella is being held.’
‘I can get them, the codes, but I have to make a phone call.’
‘No phone calls. You will have them with you. I know Project protocol.’
He smiles. ‘I am so proud to regard you as like a daughter to me. It’s been… nice to act like a father to you, Maria.’
Anger surges up. ‘You are not my father!’ I stride straight to him and ram the gun to his thin skull. ‘Where is Isabella Bidarte?’
‘I don’t—’
I shove the gun harder. ‘Where. Is. She?’
‘Room 720. The… the hospital wing.’
I drop the gun, move back, and he exhales hard, heavy, his whole torso dropping.
I watch him and a hatred forms inside me, years and years of trauma and abuse rising to the surface. ‘I am not your fucking daughter,’ I say, words seeping out like venom.
He nods, wiping his mouth, sitting back up. ‘True – you are not, but…’ he coughs, ‘but you must admit, Maria, we have known each other for a long time, and with that, don’t you think, comes a certain bond?’
I don’t know what he means but as I start to demand the codes or I’ll shoot, something catches my eye. I look to it, unsure first, the air darker, but then, as I inch forwards, I see it: the bare sole of a long, milk-pale foot.
‘P—Patricia?’
Black Eyes glances to where I am staring, but doesn’t say anything.
‘Patricia?’ I move faster now as an ankle comes into view, a leg, hip until finally, limb by limb, the whole body appears.
‘Patricia!’
I drop to my knees, gun toppling to the floor, and grab her under the arms. ‘Oh my friend! My friend!’
I smear away the blood from her eyes, her beautiful blue eyes, open but not seeing anything, her brain not working, her brain that made her who she was – loyal, kind, caring and above all understanding. She loved me. Patricia loved me.
‘Help her!’ I cry. ‘We have to help her! I need medical supplies now!’
I haul her up to me, hugging her into my chest, the faint scent of her still there, of talcum powder, of warm baths and washed linen. I breathe it in, tears slamming down my face in heavy waterfalls. ‘I am sorry!’ I sob. ‘I am so, so sorry!’
I hold her to me, her neck flopping into my shoulder, her long spaghetti arms sinking to the side as I think of all the times she has been there for me, from when I first met her at Goldmouth prison, when she tried to kill herself, when she helped me understand people and their words and hidden meanings.
‘Wake up!’ I say, shaking her. ‘Wake up!’ But even as the words come out, I know they will never be possible.
Her arm hangs by me and I take it now, blinking back the tears, sight blurred as I hold up it up, saying her name over and over as, spreading out my fingers, I put her five to mine, our palms touching for the very last time, the tips of her skin still tinged with warmth.
I don’t see Black Eyes walk over. I hold my friend tight and I don’t see Black Eyes picking up the gun I’d thrown to the floor. I don’t see the officers enter or the medicine vial in the hand of the one to the right who gives it to Black Eyes.
And when Black Eyes comes over to me and crouches down, I don’t see the needle pierce my skin and puncture my thigh.
All I see, as the room sways and my sight begins to fade, is, for the last time, the face of my friend.
My first ever, my first true, friend.
Chapter 34
Black site Project facility, Scotland.
Present day
I wake up strapped to a hospital bed in a white room with no windows.
I blink, glance down, head groggy as I take in the bleary sight of my body. I am dressed in a gown, cornflower blue, tiny dots all over it in regular diamond constellation patterns and when I turn to the side, there is a low, sustained beep that indicates all my physical outputs are being monitored and recorded. I try to see more, but my vision goes hazy and the room sways.
I go to move but a pain shoots through me up from my groin and into my stomach as, on my arm where the flesh of my bicep lies, I see the words that Black Eyes scratched into me in Hamburg with the nib of a fountain pen: I am Basque.
‘Who is there?’ I say, my voice croaking as I lift my head now, limbs heavy. The pain in my groin fires again and this time it is so severe, it knocks me back, and I flop to the bed, drenched in sweat.
‘Try not to move.’
I go rigid. Black Eyes is in the room. He scuttles in from a door that slides to the right and I start to shake. My hands, arms, legs, chest ripple, yet even though I am scared, trapped, the tremble I feel is not because of my mind, it feels more physical, more medical.
‘What have you done to me?’
Black Eyes steps to my side and, checking my heart rate on the monitor, turns. He scans my body, every inch of me, circling my legs and stomach.
‘Do you feel hot?’ he asks.
‘I said, what have you done to me?’
He stops, looks straight at me, the darkness of his eyes seeming heavier somehow as, stretching out the branch of his arm, he clatters his fingers to my brow. I go rigid at his touch, at the sandpaper of his skin, at the tobacco and garlic stench of his breath that has haunted my nightmares for three decades.
‘We have taken some of your eggs.’
He moves back a little, reading a file that sits on a small metal table to the side. I replay his words in my head, yet each time I repeat them, they still seem unreal.
‘You took my…’ I stop, swallow. ‘You took my eggs?’
‘Yes. For tests.’
‘I… I… What?’ The horror of what he said hits me and I try to get up, but nothing works well and I flop back and cry out.
‘Sssh. There’s no need to worry. You’ll see. This is all just routine.’
I glance round, frantic, my brain attempting to grasp onto something, anything, that will give me an anchor into the present, but nothing comes up.
He inhales. ‘Maria? Maria? Do you know what day it is?’
I don’t reply, I thrash my head, desperate to escape.
‘I’ll tell you: it is 28th May.’
I halt, compute the date, mind still fuzzy then, slowly realise the significance. ‘I am now… thirty-four years old.’
He smiles. ‘Yes. It is truly marvellous news, isn’t it? You are okay, Maria, my dear. It has worked after all these years of knowing each other – the test child programme has worked!’
‘I… I will live?’
‘Yes. Your blood results are coming back normal. It seems the drugs haven’t harmed you, rather, they have improved you. You’re in the tiny percentage that the conditioning has worked on, we’re unsure why, and will run more tests, but it’s amazing. I didn’t dare believe it would happen, but it has!’
His words, as he says them, sink in, triggering something in the back of my mind that flickers – a question, a frightening conclusion. If the conditioning has worked on me, the Project will want to keep me here. They will never let me leave.
Black Eyes keeps smiling but all I feel inside is horror as, inch by inch, I look down and, my vision now fully returning, see metal stirrups either side of me with my legs hanging in them.
‘What have you done to me?’ I immediately begin to slam my legs. ‘Let me out!’
‘Sssssh. Sssssh, it’s okay. You’ll make it worse if you move.’
I wriggle my feet, yell out, but it does no good. Black Eyes jots down a note on a f
ile then looks to me, his head tilted to the side.
‘Why have you got me in stirrups?’
‘Our doctors have given you a full examination and its seems the day-to-day routine drugs on you have also been working.’
‘I know about the Typhernol,’ I spit. ‘Take my legs out of these.’
‘Yes, well Typhernol has worked, that and other drugs.’
I fall still, a lick of fear whipping across me. ‘W—what other drugs?’
‘Hmmm? Oh, hormone drugs, to make you ovulate. We wanted to test your eggs, you see, find out why the conditioning has worked on you specifically. If we can recreate what you have achieved, understand the DNA of what makes your brain work, then…’ He exhales. ‘We’ll know how to help the world. We’ll be able to keep up the greater good.’
A panic rushes over me as I listen to what he says. Eggs. DNA. The greater good. ‘You cannot do this!’
‘It’s okay. We can. I know it seems a bit extreme, but it really is a standard process, analysing your eggs. The plans are still all in place. The governments are now fully signed up to our strategy of chaos and order. We are all working as one now, for the greater good. Everyone on the same side.’ He pats my hand. ‘To save lives, Maria – that’s what you and I are here for. You are a doctor, you know what it is to save a life.’
‘Your plan is not saving lives – it is killing them.’
He nods. ‘Yes, well, perhaps, to a very tiny extent, but either way, when we issue you again with Typhernol, you won’t remember this conversation and, as far as you’ll be concerned, the Project will be your only friend.’
He checks his file once more and leaves, and the air swamps around me. His words fly around my head and as I think of them, I slam my legs again, try to break out of the stirrups, but no matter how hard I bang my ankles against the metal, it does no good.
I flop back, exhaustion washing over me in waves as the reality of my situation strikes. Abigail is no longer here. Chris knows where the Project black site facility is, but even then, he will not know where I am and won’t be able to get past security. I may be alive, I may have got to thirty-four years old, but when I think of my future, it feels as if I am already dead.
