by Karen Hayes
She focuses on me, her gaze serious and heavy. She's definitely not the flirtatious type. At least not one to drape herself all over men.
'Listen, let's do it this way," she suddenly says. "What if I just tell you everything, eh? Because if I don't, my head will explode. From what I can gather, we seem to be in the same boat. So how about I tell you about me and then you do the same? How does that sound?"
I nod. "Sounds good. Mind if I check the place out in the meantime? It doesn't mean I won't be listening to you. I just need to remember something."
And then she starts talking. She talks and she talks and she talks, rambling passionately like a preteen retelling an action blockbuster. A burly woman pretending to be a nurse; men in black driving a Jeep; a murdered roommate... I would have never believed any of it had I not just found myself in a very similar situation.
As she tells me her side of the story, I keep searching the house. I exit the bathroom just as she gets to the point of the ambush apparently waiting for one of us outside.
"So we can't leave through the front door," I sum up.
"Exactly!" she stares at my hand clutching the key. "What's that you've got there?"
"The key to a stash I made here somewhere. It was in my coat together with the apartment key."
She raises a brow. "Oh well, then we'd better find it, hadn't we? Did you look behind the picture frames?"
"Please. This isn't a B-movie."
"You should. You never know. Love the coat."
"Because you didn't have to climb drainpipes in it."
"And you," she makes a vague sign in the air, "have you lost your memory too? Did you just come round like I did? What hospital were you in?"
"I wasn't in hospital," I reply, wondering if I should tell her about the dead body. We may be in the same boat but still the girl is a dark horse. I know nothing about her. Nor myself, for that matter. So I'd better not start rocking the boat that we're both in.
"I came round standing in a side street not far from where I'd parked my car," I tell her. "The key was in my pocket. My memory was completely gone. The only thing I could remember was your face."
"Likewise."
"It might be because we used to be together. I think we were actually together when this..." I tap a finger on my temple, "when this happened to us."
"You mean someone erased our minds?"
It sounds crazy. Then again, what other options do we have?
"You know what I think?" she says. "I think they attacked us next to the night club. We were probably there together. I found your message in my phone mentioning it. In which case-"
I swing round toward her. "The Oshumare club? Have you been there?"
"I've just come from there. The guard remembered us. The cab driver brought me here. I had to give him your watch. A real expensive one."
I can't remember any watch.
"How do you know the club's name?" she asks.
"Its address was in my satnav," I wrinkle my forehead, trying to reconstruct the events of our evening. "So you think we were together in the club when someone attacked us?"
"Not in the club," she corrects me. "We'd already left it. For some reason, we decided to go for a walk. That's when they attacked us. I remember fighting back. Then something happened... I think I went completely berserk. You did too. The fear... I can't describe it. It felt like the whole world was bathed in blood."
"I wonder if that's when we lost our memories?" I repeat, trying to piece the picture together. "Immediately after that, you must have gone home and scared your roommate who called 911. That's how you ended up in a clinic. And I... I suppose I just kept on walking until I finally came to on that back street," I sit back down. "Whatever happened by the club is the reason why we forgot our past, including the memory of each other."
"How can you be so sure? We can't remember anything, can we?"
She starts pacing the room, her every movement lithe and intense.
Yes. She's a dancer. That's right. A student in some ballet school or other. I wonder if I met her at a show?
In one fluid motion, she leans forward, picks up the melting ice bag and places it on the desk next to the sleeping computer.
"Then, once you were in the clinic, you received a visit from a big woman disguised as a nurse," I keep musing. "Followed by four men in a car. This doesn't seem to sum up."
"What doesn't?" she turns to me, puts her knuckles on the desk and leans across it.
My fingerprints prickle again. My heart starts pounding: a level, heavy beat so unlike the earlier palpitations. As I clench and unclench my fists, I can feel strength flooding through me. I feel like dropping to the floor and doing a hundred pushups.
Now I understand: all my earlier fits of malaise, the hallucinations, the shivering, the funny heartbeat - this was only my body's reaction to becoming nearer to Sarah.
Which is very strange. Probably the strangest thing of all that has recently happened.
Trying to calm down my breathing, I explain,
"If we presume that the woman disguised as a nurse came to the clinic to kill you, then what was the point in sending the men in black?"
"Well, I don't know... a backup?"
"In that case, why did they arrive so late? By then, she'd already changed into scrubs, stolen a name tag and got access to your room. Then they just arrive out of nowhere - no disguise, no cover story - and beeline for your room? Had they been supposed to help the "nurse" get you out of the building, they would have already been posted by the entrance waiting for you. Instead, they arrive after the fact! I may be no expert in covert missions but the whole thing looks sort of botched."
Munching on her gum, she checks the desk drawers. "So you think they're two different teams, do you? In that case, it still doesn't sum up. I left her for dead in my hospital room. I saw her shoot herself up with whatever was in that syringe. In which case, once the 'men in black' found her lying there, they wouldn't have just let her go. But I stumbled into her later that night in my own apartment! She hit my roommate on the head! She might have actually killed her."
I shrug. "This is something we might never know. If she's as strong as you say she is, and if the substance in the syringe was relatively harmless, then I'd venture a guess that she might have come round and left your room before the 'men in black' got there. It must have taken them some time to get from the car to your room, don't you think? The hospital security might have stopped them. Still, that doesn't explain why the 'nurse' had to inject herself."
"No idea," she says. "I don't understand anything, either. She was probably just a nutter. A fellow mental patient."
She runs her hand across her forehead glistening with perspiration. The dim light can't conceal her flushed face.
Is she feeling the same thing as I am? Or does she have her own reactions? Because she is reacting to my presence, that's for sure.
Having said that, I seem to be getting used to this new experience. I'm still tense but my heart is calming down.
"They're all nutters, each and every one of them," she repeats, slumping into a chair and staring at me over the laptop screen. "You should have seen her face when she injected herself. They're probably drug addicts. Or a religious sect."
"Actually," I say, "I wonder if their religious practices require the participation of bearded van drivers?"
She frowns. "This isn't funny."
"I'm not trying to be. This is what happened: I located my car, then followed an address in the satnav. It turned out to be my father's place. I was just about to go in when this van came from around the corner and rammed a car parked by the house. There were three people in it. When I hurried to help them, I saw that at least one of them had a gun. He pointed it at me. So I just jumped into my car and left. It looked as if they were tailing someone."
"What's the van driver got to do with it?"
"It's just that the accident looked weird. The guy was driving nice and quiet, the street was straight as a
die. All of a sudden he goes bug-eyed and next thing he rams that car when there was no reason whatsoever for him to do so."
"He might have swerved to avoid a child running across the road. Or he might have just fainted."
"There was no child running across the road. I was the only one anywhere near that place. And if he fainted, don't you think it was a bit of a coincidence, crashing into a carful of armed men?"
Shaking her head in apparent disbelief, she resumes her gum chewing. Very annoying. I avert my gaze, pretending to study the key I'm still clenching in my hand.
"They were probably cops," she offers. "Some special-op unit? One of those plain-clothed ones?"
"I don't think so. The gun had a silencer," I reply, then hurry to change the subject. "Did you look everywhere? The drawers, the wardrobe? Did you notice anything out of place?"
"Not really. The light was too bad. I couldn't see anything."
I turn to the floor lamp in the corner - then freeze as a memory begins to resurface from the depths of my subconscious.
"So what do you suggest?" Sarah keeps talking. "We can't go to the police. Well, I can't, anyway. They'll just say I'm a nutcase and accuse me of trying to kill Rose... what are you looking at?"
I stand up and walk over to the lamp. "Why did you put a T-shirt over it?"
"To dim the light. I didn't want anyone to see it through the window."
"It's adjustable. You should have just turned the dimmer over here."
I feel for a small round switch by the lamp's base and turn it, dimming the light even further. Then I remove the T-shirt. It's thick - warm enough for this weather. I actually need to change. I could use a clean pair of jeans and some running shoes. And a warm jacket.
I lay the T-shirt on the bed and crouch by the lamp. I definitely remember doing so before. Sarah walks closer watching me but refrains from asking any questions.
Carefully I lay the heavy floor lamp on its side and check the bottom of its massive stand.
There's a tiny hole in it. I insert the key and turn it. The lid opens.
Inside the stand is a mess of electric cables and steel bolts securing it to the pole. A square paper parcel is taped to the inside of the stand.
"Wow," Sarah leans over my shoulder, peering at it.
Her breathing tickles my ear. A faint whiff of strawberry gum makes me cringe. The prickling in my fingerprints resumes. The back of my head grows hot.
Sarah must be experiencing the same because she steps back. "So this is your stash?"
"It looks like it," I extract the paper parcel, replace the lid and stand the lamp back up, then rip the tape and the paper off.
Inside the parcel there's a wad of banknotes and a USB stick shaped as an antique Ford model T, its plug disguised as the exhaust pipe.
"That's a lot of money," Sarah comments.
I look at the fat wad of hundred-dollar notes in my hand. She's right. Five grand at least. "Enough for us to jump town."
"Do we have to?"
I stuff the money into my wallet and begin to undress. "There's something I need to tell you. When I came round this morning, I was standing over a dead body. Someone must have seen me and called the cops. I think they saw me leaving the scene. They're after me now. So basically we're in the same boat."
She studies me. Her eyes glisten in the dimmed light. "Did you kill him?"
"I don't know. I can't remember," I hang the jacket in the wardrobe and pull on the T-shirt. Then I head for the desk, slide the memory stick into the laptop and press Enter. "Do you remember how you ended up in the clinic?"
She gives me a faint smile. "No idea. According to Rose, I had a fit so she called 911. At least I managed to find that out. And you, how much did you learn?"
With a shrug, I enter the password and wait for the laptop to wake up and process the data. "Not much. Probably because I have no roommate. I might have spent all night just rambling about town. In any case, the murder is already in the news. According to the media, 'the police are already on the trail'. Which means I can't keep the car. I need to lie low somewhere."
A new window opens on the screen. I run the cursor along row after row of little icons. Well, what do we have here?
"You do remember the password, though," Sarah points out.
I stare at my fingers in disbelief. "I didn't even notice entering it."
"Which is a good thing. Had you stopped to think about it, you probably wouldn't have been able to remember it," she pulls up a chair a bit closer and sits next to me. "What have you got there? Let's take a look."
Our bodies almost touch. Still, I'm probably used to it by now. The tension is almost gone; the only thing that persists is a weak tingling sensation in my fingertips.
The memory stick contains a single file titled Test_2. It consists of several files. One is a zipped archive with dozens of Word documents inside, each containing a black and white picture of a person followed by blocks of text. It looks like a human resources database.
The problem is, the text is coded. This is the first time in my life that I see Word documents covered in all sorts of funny little symbols. The pictures, too: most of them depict men in their fifties or occasionally younger, with a few women thrown in for good measure.
I close the archive and check the other files. All but one turn out to contain single images.
The remaining file is also a Word document. All of the images are some sort of chart or diagrams covered with explanatory notes - also in code.
I can make neither head nor tail of it all. Some look like numbers or inscriptions while others resemble chemical formulas.
I open the images one by one, each containing what appears to be sequences of equations. Each has a faint signature in a corner. These must be hastily taken low-quality scans.
"Is this why they're after us?" Sarah asks. "This is useless crap!"
"I have a funny feeling it's not," I say. "And what's this?"
Sara heaves a long-suffering sigh as I open the last .jpg file. It's a black and white picture, blurred and grainy.
What's that... a child? A midget? It's an indistinct outline of a person so skinny that it's ugly: a washboard for body, matchsticks for arms. A large head with dark eye sockets is staring directly at us. Two dark spots for nostrils and a gaping mouth. The creature seems to be screaming, frozen in desperate terror against a gray background.
Same signature. In the opposite corner, a few lines of illegible handscript. The stare of this childlike being is filled with mortal dread.
I hurry to close the file.
"What is this-" Sarah begins.
"Don't know, don't care. Don't ask. Your guess is as good as mine."
Pensively I touch the memory stick, then run my fingers over the plastic Model T. Immediately a new memory kicks in, sweeping over me - taking me to another place and time.
A deafening drum beat assaults my ears. The erratic music drowns out the hum of a large crowd, its shadowy outlines gyrating in the strobing light.
I'm sitting at a low table in a corner with Sarah next to me, opposite a gray-haired man. His lips are blue on a gaunt face.
The man leans over to me and pushes the memory stick across the table toward me. "I'm risking a lot by agreeing to see you," his voice struggles through the music. "But I have to do something to teach that bitch a lesson..."
He keeps talking. His voice, filled with a spiteful fear, trails away, consumed by the beat. The shadows move faster in the light.
Then I'm back in my dimly-lit room next to a glowing monitor and the dark-haired girl who is staring at me open-mouthed. I'm clutching the memory stick which I must have pulled out of the slot without even realizing.
"Are you all right?" Sarah asks. "You nearly broke the computer."
"I remember now. This night club, we were there together, you and I. We were looking for something. We met a man there who gave us this data. And when we left the club, that's when those thugs attacked us, whoever they were."
/> Before Sarah can answer, I hear a rustling noise coming from behind the front door.
Chapter Six
Sarah
A QUIET RUSTLING noise takes us unawares.
Once we began looking through the files, I completely forgot about the ambush downstairs. Now the realization scorches my mind:
They've come for us.
I look at Chris. He looks at me. Soundlessly he springs up from his seat, walks to the front door and peers through the peephole. Then he returns and slides the memory stick into his pocket.
"Who's there?" I ask. I think I know the answer.
He shakes his head and fishes out the car keys from his jacket pocket. "They've covered the peephole."
It's a good job he's already changed his clothes. You can't climb walls in that bespoke gear of his. Much better in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.
I sling the backpack on and hurry after him toward the open window. "Are we going out here?"
"You have any other ideas?"
He climbs out first to check the pipe clips. They seem to hold. The pipe softly groans when he lowers his weight onto it but it doesn't budge.
I follow him. Pressing my back to the wall, I try to catch my breath. Surely the pipe can't hold our combined weight!
The wet tarmac glistens in the golden lamplight below. It might not be much of a drop but it's gonna hurt, that's for sure.
Chris peers through the window into the apartment. I can hear the sound of wood being splintered as our pursuers try to force the door.
"Let's go," he finally says.
I have no choice. Slowly I begin to inch my way along the wall, listening intently to every creak of the pipe and every growing sound coming from his apartment.
Keeping my balance proves easier than I thought. I'd love to shuffle faster but that might loosen the pipe in its bearings. I don't fancy a fall and neither does Chris.
I reach the corner of the wall. How am I supposed to climb around? I force my gaze away from the tarmac and give Chris a questioning look.
"It's all right," he says with a faint smile. "I'm holding you."
As if that's gonna help! He might fall with me, that's all. Still, his support gives me an added boost of courage. I nod.
