Hard Return

by Rosie Claverton

  What was wrong with this picture? What was she missing?

  There was a knock at the door, and IN4 entered without waiting for her invitation. Amy gathered herself, put on her Frieda mask, and gestured for her to sit.

  She merely nodded at Amy’s laptop. ‘I’ve submitted the report.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Amy said. ‘Take a seat.’

  IN4 was perplexed. ‘It’s not…complicated. He’s recovering fine from his injuries, doing all the usual things. There’s nothing to report.’

  ‘Take a seat.’

  IN4 let the door fall closed and sat down across from her.

  ‘I need to get back to my station.’

  ‘Tell me about P6.’

  Now IN4 was even more confused. ‘That’s not my place, ma’am. IN3 monitors P6.’

  ‘I know that. I want your perspective.’

  IN4 looked flustered. Because she was being asked about her colleague? Or because she knew something she wasn’t supposed to?

  ‘No one is in trouble,’ Amy said, soothingly. ‘I just need an update on the situation.’

  IN4 was a deer in the headlights. ‘S-situation?’

  Amy decided to take the plunge. ‘Handling an agent is outside IN3’s training for this assignment. I need to know if the partnership is working smoothly.’

  IN4 visibly relaxed. Now that Amy had let on that she knew the secret, it was easy to tell the rest. ‘Oh, very well. They knew each other before they came here. IN1 – I mean, IN0 has seniority, of course, but I don’t think it’s causing them any problems.’

  ‘I trust the line of communication has been secured.’

  ‘IN0 reported yesterday that the second hatch is still operational.’

  ‘You are very well-informed, IN4. It’s good to see someone so diligent working here.’

  IN4 beamed with pride at a job well done. It was easier to get people to confirm or deny things, rather than questioning them. She'd learned that piece of knowledge from Jason. She'd just continue saying things as statements and see where IN4 landed.

  ‘I am looking at candidates for the IN1 position. Do you have the skills for that role?’

  IN4 looked dumbfounded. ‘IN2 has seniority—’

  ‘Seniority isn’t everything. There’s also merit to consider. IN1…well…’

  ‘It’s not his fault,’ IN4 protested. ‘Under the circumstances, I think he’s doing well. We were going to reshuffle the room, but we thought it would draw too much attention – from the day shift, you know. People who weren’t “in the know”.’

  The more Amy learned about IN0, the more concerned she became. This wasn’t one or two bad apples – this was a conspiracy among the entire night shift. They were all in on it. Who was this IN1? Why had he been thrust forward like this? To replace IN0, yes, but why him?

  Suddenly, the timings of the whole debacle clicked into place and Amy couldn’t help the smile that came to her lips.

  ‘It’s merely a lack of experience and training,’ she said.

  ‘Technicians can make very good agents,’ IN4 said, earnestly. ‘I mean, I don’t have to tell you that, do I? But he really isn’t up to speed on the handling of G and P2 – it’s a difficult assignment for anyone.’

  ‘I don’t think it would be too difficult for you.’

  Another blush, and a demure nod of her head. IN4 knew she was in with a good chance here, if she played her cards right.

  ‘Until I can formally review the positions, I don’t want the news getting out that I’m considering a reshuffle. I can count on you to keep this conversation confidential.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Content that she had bought IN4’s silence, Amy let her go, and let her Frieda mask drop. It was exhausting, acting as if she were this competent, cool operator instead of a nervous wreck threatening to shake apart at any moment. Maybe Frieda was also a constant ball of anxiety beneath her icy exterior. Or maybe not.

  The knowledge that there was a conspiracy among the members of the night shift, particularly within the Eyes, opened up a series of interconnected doors that would take Amy days to explore. For now, she stuck to the important details: IN0 had previously been IN1 and was now P6. The new IN1 was the former TD1, the missing technician that Amy had supposedly replaced. This change had been organised within the night shift, not by the external agency. Maybe the agent who'd held Owain’s job – her job – had known about it, but they weren’t around to ask.

  Which begged one very important question: why?

  Why would this group of NCA agents conspire to send one of their own into a den of prisoners, at least one of whom was a murderer? Why would they pick the technician, of all people, to replace him? She could see that he was forgettable and expendable, but was that the only reason? What did they need this IN0 to do on the inside that they couldn’t do from the outside?

  After working for the Agency for a year, Amy could only think of two reasons: he was in there to investigate the crime, or he was protecting someone or something. If he was investigating a crime, why wasn’t he doing it officially? Frieda had sent in Owain to look at the murder – it would’ve helped him to know there was someone on the inside. So, what was he protecting?

  Then, it hit her. He wasn’t protecting an object or a person. He was protecting the truth.

  They knew who had murdered Mole. All of them. They knew, because they had watched it happen – or as good as watched it. Then, instead of raising the alarm, they had decided to send an agent in to make sure the truth didn’t get out. To silence the killer, or merely to make sure he didn’t say or do anything stupid?

  Yet she had seen the footage from 5th March, and she hadn’t witnessed a murder. The footage she had watched perfectly corroborated the idea that Mole had died of exposure in the garden. The footage she had watched…

  She pulled up the footage again and fast-forwarded to the dormitory section of the corridor, just after 1am. She ran the tape at double-speed and waited. Waited, and waited. She stopped the tape at 3am. P10 had never visited the bathroom. On this one night, of all nights. Why not?

  If she looked at the file properly, she was sure she would find evidence that the video had been tampered with, the same few seconds or minutes looped continuously to replace whatever had been there before. It was likely the same for the other end of the corridor and the exit door – it was easier to mass-replace the problematic section of hours instead of just the troublesome spots. The technician had probably worked flat-out to fix the video – and she was sure it had been the technician now – and so time was of the essence. He wouldn’t have known about P10’s little bathroom ritual and so he edited right over it.

  She now had evidence that agents in the compound had witnessed a murder and covered it up. They would carry on covering it up until the day the experiment ended, and beyond. Did they believe in this scientific torture method that much? Or did something else drive them?

  Amy had no answers that could help her understand them. What she did know is that this was dangerous knowledge, and she had just told IN4 that she knew all about it. If they found out that their cover-up was in jeopardy, she didn’t know what they would do to save their own skins.

  And Amy was standing directly in their way.

  Chapter 43: Baby, It’s Cold Outside

  Jason needed gloves and a hat. Also something to break a window.

  The outside light had switched off at midnight, the time the doors were supposed to lock, leaving Jason and Lewis with only a watch backlight to see by. The moon was stubbornly hiding behind a thick cloud, which meant the temperature was marginally above freezing but it was also pitch black. They had edged their way round the building a couple of times, but the windows were all too high to reach, and finding a missile in the late winter darkness was all but impossible. That didn’t stop Jason digging through the rubbish heap to find
something.

  ‘Now I know what Mole felt like,’ Lewis said humourlessly.

  ‘Mole didn’t die out here,’ Jason said. ‘Neither will we.’

  Jason heard Lewis sigh.

  ‘You’re still on about that then.’

  ‘We’ve just been locked out of the building. Bo’s eyes are full of bleach. Someone threw me off the fucking roof. How much more proof do you need?’

  Lewis suddenly seized his shoulder. ‘What the fuck? What roof?’

  Jason hadn’t meant to tell him like this, but it was out now.

  ‘I guess it was technically through the roof, not off the roof—’

  ‘Fuck!’ Lewis was angry. He always got angry when he was upset. ‘Someone pushed you? Why the fuck didn’t you say something?’

  Jason didn’t know how to say, ‘Because Stoker is always attached to you like a pathetic puppy dog’, so he said nothing and kept searching. He winced as his frozen fingers snagged on a piece of wire or fragment of glass.

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was dark.’

  ‘Nikolai couldn’t have done it. He was there the whole time. After that… I guess the fight was a pretty big distraction.’

  ‘He could be working with them, or they just knew what he was like.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me? I’m not smart like Amy but—’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with that.’

  ‘Then what’s it about?’

  It was a good question. Why was Jason holding back from Lewis? They were best friends, and he would trust him with his life. While he did want to talk it all over with Amy, it was exactly Lewis’ way of thinking that he needed in this situation. Yet he'd barrelled on alone, making his decisions solo, and only complicating the situation further.

  ‘It’s Ben, isn’t it?’

  ‘I haven’t got a problem with Stoker,’ he said, hotly. ‘I just don’t know if I can trust him.’

  ‘I trust him.’

  ‘Do you? Have you told him about me then? That I’m spying?’

  Lewis’ silence was telling. Jason snorted, and picked up a long metal pole. It might’ve once been a rake, but now it was going to be a smasher of windows. Or, at least, a tapper of windows until someone found a way to let them in.

  ‘I wanted him to like you.’

  ‘Everyone likes me. It’s my face.’ Jason hefted the rake and grabbed Lewis’ arm. ‘I’ve found a pole.’

  ‘Ben doesn’t like you. He thinks you’re…uh…’

  Jason stopped and resisted the urge to press the freezing metal into Lewis’ arm. This was worse than trying to figure out why Amy was in a sulk, which could be anything from ‘you forgot my sister’s birthday’ to ‘this coffee is cold’.

  ‘Thinks I’m what?’

  ‘Homophobic.’

  Whatever Jason had been expecting, it wasn’t that.

  ‘I am not,’ he stuttered.

  ‘You’re awkward around gays.’

  ‘I am not,’ Jason repeatedly, stupidly. ‘How would you know anyway? What gays?’

  Jason could feel Lewis staring at him through the veil of darkness.

  ‘Us, Jay. Me and Stoker.’

  Jason felt everything in his brain lurch to a sudden stop. It wasn’t just banter. It was real. Of course it was real. Only an idiot would deliberately miss every single sign since he'd walked into the place – if one of them had been a girl, he'd have clocked within five minutes, and not just because his mam liked romcoms. He hadn’t really wanted to know. Because it didn’t sit right with him, and he couldn’t exactly say why.

  ‘Oh,’ he said.

  ‘It’s probably only an inside thing,’ Lewis said, hurriedly. ‘Stoker, that is, not me. I’m gay. Like…really gay. Sorry.’

  ‘How long have you been…y’know…?’

  ‘Gay? Fucking men? Use your words, Jay.’

  Jason shook his head. They didn’t have time for this now. They needed to get inside before they both froze to death, and he could have his little freakout later.

  ‘Not now,’ he said, and started them forward, carrying his pole under his arm like a lance.

  ‘Yes, now. We can’t start this now and not finish it.’

  ‘We can finish it once my balls are less brassic. Uh, I mean…’

  ‘I don’t want to shag you, Jay. Not anymore.’

  Lewis laughed nervously. Jason tried not to think. He shoved the pole blindly towards the building, and it scraped against the wall. He took a couple of steps closer and probed along the edge, until he hit the metal edge of the windowframe.

  ‘I’ve got the window,’ he said, his voice tight.

  He was so glad he couldn’t see Lewis’ face right now. He'd have that slight pink tinge of embarrassment that he always got when talking about sex, the awkward, hunched-up shoulders, and that look of disappointment that reminded Jason keenly of his mam. Yeah, he was glad of the cloudy night.

  He banged the pole against the metal windowframe, the clanging sound seeming to echo through the woods. Yet nothing changed inside – no curtains opened or lights came on, no running feet coming to their rescue, or vodka passed through the slight opening of a window. Nothing.

  ‘Maybe it’s the bathroom window,’ Jason said, and shuffled them along a few feet until they heard the next metallic clang.

  Still nothing. The blackout blinds didn’t shift an inch, and the room beyond seemed unusually quiet. Surely even the best-glazed windows couldn’t block out all the sound, not of a group of grown men drunkenly playing poker. Had they lost more time than he'd thought? Had they all gone to bed immediately after curfew?

  ‘What time is it?’ Jason asked.

  Instead of Lewis’ voice, a perky young woman with an RP accent said, ‘The time is twelve-twenty-one a.m.’

  ‘That is a fancy-arse watch you’ve got.’

  ‘I didn’t pick it,’ Lewis said, defensively. ‘I won it off Alby in a poker game.’

  Jason almost dropped the pole. ‘Off Alby? What was Alby doing with it?’

  ‘He said his mam had bought it for him for his birthday.’

  ‘Lulu, you idiot,’ Jason said, exasperated. ‘That’s not a birthday present. It’s the missing watch – the one Alby stole off Joe.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Lewis muttered. ‘Of course it bloody is.’

  Tired of waiting, tired of his mate being an arse, and tired of his own brain making him doubt his integrity, Jason rammed the pole into the corner of the window pane. It shattered with startling ease, raining down shards of glass which glanced off his thick coat and fell onto the hard earth. Jason cleared out the edges of the frame with a crude sweep, before tossing the pole aside.

  ‘Give me a leg up,’ he said.

  Lewis boosted him up onto the windowsill and then Jason was in the mess hall – which was pitch black. He turned and reached down for Lewis, who gripped his forearms and dug his toes into the brickwork to get himself up and over the sill. Jason crossed to the doorway to turn on the lights, but nothing happened.

  ‘Looks like the power’s out,’ he said.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Lewis said, a note of dread in his voice.

  ‘What? Are you hurt?’

  ‘No, it’s just – this was the first step.’

  Jason felt his own heart rate increasing, the sudden knowledge that he was about to be shoved straight into a situation he had no idea how to handle. ‘The first step of what?’

  ‘Of Pansy’s plan. For the Project. This is how we break out of the compound.’

  Chapter 44: All Your Base Are Belong To Us

  The first warning was the loss of video from the compound.

  IN3 crashed through her office door, slightly out of breath from running.

  ‘We’ve lost all the feeds.’

  Amy was about to
joke, to ask if she'd tried turning it off and on again, when the lights went out and the laptop switched to battery. The power was gone.

  An alarm started wailing. IN3 opened the door, revealing the red lights on the corridor floor – emergency lighting. Amy crossed the corridor to the Eye Room, where everyone was on their feet, all eyes looking to her. For leadership, for certainty.

  She had nothing to offer them. She was a fraud.

  ‘This is not a drill,’ she said, because it felt like a good idea. ‘We need to…leave.’

  They continued to stare. Then, IN2 clapped his hands together.

  ‘Evacuation procedure now! Wake the sleepers, and head for the Hide. You heard Agent Lane – we are evacuating.’

  Amy was pathetically grateful that he had taken charge, that one nod from her was enough for them all to cascade out of the Eye Room and down the corridor to wake their colleagues who hadn’t already sleepily stumbled out at the sound of the alarm.

  For a reason she couldn’t quite name, Amy returned to her office to pick up her laptop. Maybe she felt secure with the technology beside her, like a comforter, or perhaps she thought it might be useful. When she got inside though, it was her bag she reached for, and her phone. Her connection to Jason. Was this the real reason she'd come back?

  And then they came.

  The walls of her office shook, a shock vibrating through her bones. She gripped the back of her chair and then, without thinking about it, threw herself under her desk. Isn’t that what they said to do in earthquakes and hurricanes? To take cover?

  She heard shouting and someone screaming. She heard her door slam open – and then the invader moved on. Ran on, into the mess in the corridor. Had anyone made it out? Was the Hide also exposed, or had they refused to open the hatch?

  How long could she hide under the desk? They would find her eventually. Her vision started to go dark around the edges, and she realised she was breathing too fast. Panicking. She was under attack, and she was panicking.

  What a leader. They were counting on you. Look where you are. Pathetic.