Hard Return

by Rosie Claverton

  How was she meant to handle insubordination? How did Owain handle it? This part was new to him too. In the police, he had worked as Bryn’s partner before heading the Cyber Crime division, but he'd only had Catriona working with him. In the NCA, he had been Amy’s handler, nothing more. Wasn’t he equally out of his depth in this environment?

  Which posed the question, why had Frieda sent a relatively junior and inexperienced agent to manage this operation? Maybe Owain was here for a different reason altogether. One skillset he did have was solving murders. Frieda had accepted her presence here very readily. Was it because she shared those skills? Was Owain really here to find out who murdered Mole?

  Not that he would tell her if he were. Owain now played his cards close to his chest. If he wanted her here, he must have a good reason, or he would’ve sent her back to the flat. That possibility was still on the table and they both knew it. He had always been reluctant to use the powers he'd been given over her, but she knew that he would if he felt it was necessary. Owain was a good soldier when it was Frieda giving the orders.

  Was she also a good soldier? This place was already a horror story – a secret military experiment designed to study the formation of terrorist cells. She wondered what had happened to the other experiments, how they had ended. Had it been bloody? Had there been casualties? Deaths?

  Amy was not Frieda’s puppet. She had to tell someone about this, but who? What could Bryn do about it? Would he even believe her? If she couldn’t persuade Bryn, then there was no point going to a journalist. What would the NCA do if they felt their secret was being threatened? Would they come after her? After Jason?

  She knew how to do the right thing, even if it was the illegal thing, but she also knew how to survive. She had survived by taking Frieda’s job and avoiding prison. She had to first survive this experiment on the opposite side to Jason, and then they could work on tearing it down, on running if they had to. She had played Frieda’s games for too long.

  For the time being, she had to focus on the here and now. Amy logged in to her laptop and connected to the local network inside the bunker. She seemed to have managerial level access, because she could view basic employee information for all the current and past agents in the bunker, as well as the anticipated surveillance feeds and logs.

  From the notes, it appeared that each agent was assigned two prisoners and, with their partner on the night shift, they monitored their charges continuously. The prisoners, like the agents, were identified by their position rather than any defining feature – and just like the agents, when one left, another came in to take his place.

  Jason was designated P8. He was being monitored by ID4 and IN4, and he had inherited his number from Mole. The files on the prisoners were empty of any identifiable information – the only reason Amy could place Mole was because his file contained the word ‘DECEASED’. Instead, the files listed their criminal convictions and some strange bits of trivia, like the fact P9 had lost an expensive watch and P6 had an anchor tattoo.

  Amy pulled up the logs for P8. She scrolled back through the record until she came to the first week of March. The entries were brief, mundane: ‘AM: 5am rise, shower, breakfast, washing up, laundry. PM: lunch prep, lunch, washing up, cleaning, dinner prep, dinner, washing up.’ Over and over, the same thing. Mole’s final days had been filled with thankless tasks.

  The log entries ended on 4th March. His last documented action was washing up on Wednesday night, then nothing. Was his death not considered notable? For an awful moment, Amy considered that this might not be the first death in the compound, that this was a mundane, everyday thing to them. To be swept under the carpet, but to be expected.

  She checked the entries for other prisoners on the date. 5th March was blank for all of them. Had someone on-high shut down those entries as part of a cover-up? Had they been replaced in reports to the higher-ups with more laundry and dinner prep? Surely that was unthinkable – that a man could die in a place like this and no record of it survive.

  No written record.

  There it was, the missing link. These were reports on a screen, but they were made by people. People currently sitting in this room or sleeping the day away in their bunks. The people were still here. If she wanted to know what had happened on 5th March 2016, she had to question the people.

  The thought of interrogating strangers made her queasy. She had done it once before, trapped in a building with people she needed to question, and it had gone badly wrong from the first attempt. She could feel herself starting to panic and took a deep breath, then another. She focused on the sensation of breathing, like she'd been taught, the connection of her shoes to the ground and her fingers to the keys, the low hum of technology all around her.

  Setting aside the daunting prospect of interviewing agents, Amy returned to the familiar: the data. She couldn’t find any link to the original video footage, so that would take some digging. However, the text entries for 6th March were freely available in all the records.

  In an entry for P7, the agent had written: ‘AM: 5am rise, shower, discovered body (P8), raised alarm (G), attended meeting (G), lunch prep.’ The least absorbing way to write about a corpse in the history of crime.

  Who was G? She double-checked the records and couldn’t find any labelled G. She opened P1 and found it blank. The records started with P2, documenting every move of the other eleven prisoners, but completely omitting one.

  Who was this prisoner and why was his record completely suppressed?

  Her gaze drifted away from her computer screen to the position on the far left of the room: ID1. It must be ID1 and IN1 who monitored P1, but where did they record their findings? Was Owain privy to that information or did it get reported directly to someone further up the chain?

  Amy shut her laptop irritably. She only had more questions, and no obvious answers. The information was there, but it was either locked away or contained only within people’s heads. The first, at least, was hackable, but the second?

  She would need a lifetime to crack it.

  Chapter 17: Dig for Victory

  The ground was surprisingly soft considering how bloody cold it was, and Jason started to enjoy the mindless task of turning over the earth.

  He discovered that Stoker knew a lot about gardening. Prison rules said you didn’t talk about another man’s crimes, but Jason was beginning to wonder how this mild-mannered, green-thumbed giant had ended up inside. They were planting out potatoes and peas today, as March was the best time for them. Next week, they were going for carrots and turnips, but only under glass. This was really recycled old windows found in a pile of junk down the side of the building.

  Jason had looked through the rubbish heap while collecting more glass but found nothing to write home about. It had obviously been picked clean of useful things by the inmates long before he arrived. The junk was mostly building materials, as if they'd stripped down the building but had forgotten to take anything away. The old windows were single-glazed in wooden frames, whereas the building now had double-glazed, vented windows more suited to its new purpose.

  Gareth had laid out some crumbling bricks in a rough square, ready for Jason to set the glass on top. There were already half a dozen of these – what had Stoker called them? Cool frames, cold frames, something like that. They were building two more today, ready for the carrot planting. Beside them, there were two big plastic cylinders, one with a tap like a keg and the other with a hatch and the smell of rotting vegetables. If they were making their own compost, they were taking this thing seriously.

  As Jason carefully laid down the old window, he looked for where Gareth had got to. He watched him bending over a frame, touching oddly at the glass. When he looked up, he swiped at his eyes, and then stared hard at his audience, as if daring Jason to question him.

  ‘You miss him,’ Jason said.

  He was fishing more than anything. If Gare
th was missing someone from in here, he might give something away; if it was about something else, he'd contradict him. People just loved to be right and making statements about other people was the fastest way to find out the truth of them.

  ‘So what if I do?’ Gareth said. ‘Doesn’t make me gay or nothing. Just sad, isn’t it? He loved those peppers. It’s wrong that he ended out here.’

  ‘Who did?’ Jason asked, remembering that he was supposed to play dumb.

  Gareth looked over towards where Stoker, Anchor, and Dreadlock were working on the planting, before taking a step closer.

  ‘I don’t like you, Jay Bird, but I reckon everyone here has the right to know. A man died here, just before you came. Went by the name of Mole, the one what loved the peppers – loved all the planting and cooking. Doing all the jobs you’ve got now, because he was a sucker who couldn’t play poker. Sweet with it, though. Knew he was dumb as shit and just got on with it. The Governor was sweet on him, I think – not in a gay way. He was useful to him, kept his papers in order, though I don’t think he could read too good. He was just tidy. Been here the longest too, right from the beginning.’

  Jason tried to take in this burst of information quickly, but he was still stuck on the first sentence. What had he done to earn Gareth’s dislike? He'd only been there five minutes! Suddenly, it clicked, where he'd recognised him from. He was one of Stuart Williams’ boys, part of a gang that Jason and Lewis had opposed as soon as they were old enough to understand the word ‘enemy’. Jason was surprised he hadn’t already tried to punch his lights out. Then again, Stuart had been on the out ever since his big drug dreams had been doomed by the death of the mastermind behind them. Maybe Gareth figured it was better to be Jason’s friend than his rival, especially in here where Stuart and his reputation couldn’t protect him.

  Having worked out why he knew Gareth, Jason belatedly thought to follow up on the real information. ‘The Governor must be gutted to lose him.’

  ‘He doesn’t say much, really. Keeps himself to himself. But he’ll need a new errand boy.’

  That wasn’t like the Martin that Jason had known – the stammering man who anxiously rambled his way through a meeting. It seemed prison had taught him to keep his mouth shut, that silent deadly men were the most intimidating kind. Coupled with his crimes, that might be enough to explain how he had managed to crown himself king of this place.

  ‘You fancy the job?’

  Gareth laughed, drawing the attention of Dreadlock. He saluted at him and continued.

  ‘My writing’s fucking awful – proper chicken scrawl. I was never into the accounts with Stuart. That was more the domain of your boy Damage.’

  Jason felt the emotional punch to his gut as keenly as if it had been delivered by Gareth’s fist. Damage was Lewis’ little brother, murdered just to frame Jason for the deed. He would still lie awake at night, wondering what would’ve happened if he'd just stayed home that night. Damage would be alive, but the drug scene in Cardiff would’ve been a very different place, a more dangerous and cruel place. He just wasn’t cut out to weigh lives, to judge if a thing was for the many or the few.

  ‘I heard Lewis tried to end you after that.’

  Jason couldn’t read the tone of his voice. Was he pleased? Disappointed?

  ‘You heard right.’

  ‘You sorted it out, did you?’

  ‘We did.’

  ‘Good thing and all. Don’t want no more deaths here. It’s bad for the Project.’

  ‘Jay Bird! You'd better start on lunch!’ Dreadlock’s voice boomed across the garden.

  Before Jason could ask anything more, either about the murder or the Project, Gareth was back to contemplation of the frames and Stoker was bounding across to him, ushering him back round the front of the building and the only door in or out.

  How was he supposed to find out information if he could barely spend any time alone with anyone? He hadn’t even caught two minutes alone with Lewis! He just hoped Amy was having more luck, wherever she was, and that Cerys was keeping her out of trouble. Who was he kidding? Amy was probably fretting and Cerys was related to him, so trouble stuck to her like glue.

  He had to make his own luck, right here. It was the only way out.

  Chapter 18: Evidence of Absence

  Owain relieved Amy of her post just before lunchtime.

  He still didn’t look like he'd slept, the circles beneath his eyes deep and dark, but he smelled of shower gel and he wore new clothes, so that was something. She shut her laptop before he could look over her shoulder, though she was sure all their browsing was logged for posterity. Frieda was nothing if not thorough.

  ‘Stay out of trouble,’ he told her.

  How exactly she could find trouble in a sealed underground bunker, she didn’t know, but if he thought she would hide in the locker room until bedtime, he was very much mistaken. Day and night were much the same here, the same strip lighting levels 24/7 making sneaking around theoretically impossible. However, at all times everyone was very much occupied either with sleeping or working or eating, leaving the corridors empty except for the fetching of coffee supplies or a trip to the toilet.

  Returning to the locker room, she stored her new laptop in her locker and removed a small set of lockpicks from one of the hidden pockets in the rucksack. Jason had given her a lesson once in how to use them, but he was rusty and she had barely been paying attention. Still, some of it might’ve lodged in her brain and she hadn’t much other choice.

  Burying the tools in her jeans pocket, she headed back out into the corridor to take a look around. To her right, there were a pair of bathrooms and dormitories. The men’s bathroom was directly opposite the women’s, and she pushed open the door a few inches to peer inside. They were an exact mirror of each other, except for a standard row of urinals down one wall.

  She hurried past the surveillance room and the exit door, to the next door on the left. It opened to reveal the laundry room, with one washing machine and one tumble dryer. There was the strong smell of detergent and a couple of mesh bags queued up on the floor, waiting their turn. It was a sad little room that reflected the sad little lives lived in this bunker.

  The next door down had a small window with closed blinds, which she immediately pegged as Owain’s office. Across the corridor was a closed door with no distinguishing features except that it was locked with a keypad. Of course it was. Who the hell used mechanical locks these days, especially in military-style bunkers?

  It was a digital keypad and she inspected it for signs of wear. The 1 key looked a little scuffed, but otherwise she could find no distinguishing marks. She didn’t know who had locked this door, so she couldn’t begin to phish for information about them. Owain probably knew, but he wasn’t going to hand over that intel to her. She looked around for any cameras trained on the corridor – who watches the watchers? – but she couldn’t see anything obvious.

  She scanned the wall for weaknesses where she might access the wires directly, though manual overrides were not her strength, and noticed that the floor was filthy. Whoever’s responsibility it was to clean and empty the bins wasn’t doing a very good job. How did you even provide security clearance for cleaners in a place like this?

  She caught herself staring at a perfect boot print in the dust, a brownish tinge suggesting mud had been tracked in from outside – probably when they had brought her in last night. Had it only been last night? It already felt like an age.

  So much had happened in the last forty-eight hours – their plan to leave, frantically finding equipment from all their sources, and then…yesterday evening.

  Amy felt her face flush just thinking about it and forced the memory down. She was no good to Jason if she was daydreaming about his body instead of focusing on getting him out of there. Back to their flat, back to their bed…

  Focus.

  She was still
staring at the boot print. Suddenly, seized with inspiration, she pulled down the sleeve of her cardigan, scooped up a pile of dust, and wiped it over the keypad. Gently blowing on it, she found that the most pieces were stuck to only four keys: 1, 2, 3, and 4.

  Rolling her eyes at such poor security, she pressed the numbers in order and the light flashed red. Maybe not such terrible security after all. The numbers were unlikely to represent a birthday, but could be the date of a wedding anniversary or other recent event. Of course, it could be a random code that just happened to use those four numbers, and then she was stuffed.

  Unless…

  Amy entered the other obvious combination and the door flashed green. Opening it with a smirk, she allowed herself another little eye roll. Entering the numbers backwards did not a sound security system make.

  The air inside was stale, as if the door hadn’t been opened for days or weeks. It was also surprisingly loud, and she quickly shut the door behind her, so the noise didn’t carry down the corridor. Fumbling for a light switch, she was greeted by a sleek, modern server coupled with its cooling system, plus a couple of filing cabinets, a compact desk, and a folding bed. A coaster on the desk had a pattern of 0s and 1s and, when Amy looked closer, it appeared to say GENIUS in binary.

  This was the lair of an IT technician. So, where the hell were they?

  IN3 had told her there were no other technicians here, but she hadn’t said that she was first. She recalled now the security agent saying that ‘the new technician’ had arrived, again implying that she had a predecessor. Where had they gone – and when?

  A couple of laptops were stashed next to the folding bed, this room a kind of all-purpose storage cupboard as well as the tech office and server room. One appeared to have been the victim of a coffee spillage, while the other had been cannibalised for parts. It was likely then that her laptop was the one belonging to the former technician.