Sleepless

by Lou Morgan

  Another clanging sound brought her back to herself. She had separated from Juliet and Grey without quite realizing it, and was startled to find that not only was she suddenly alone in the enclosed section of the platform, her key was no longer in her hand. And without it, she was trapped.

  She stared at her open palm. Her empty palm. It had been there a second ago, hadn’t it? She’d used it to open the door, then the gate. Or had that been Grey? Had she left her key in the door? In the lock of one of the gates? She ran back to the gate they had come through and pushed her fingers between the metal bars, feeling for the lock. There was no key. She patted down her pockets. Nothing. She looked on the ground. Still nothing.

  “Grey!” She couldn’t see anyone in the garden. Couldn’t hear them either, but surely they hadn’t gone far. “Grey!”

  No response.

  “Grey!”

  There was no reply from Grey, but a sudden rustling sound from the bushes made her freeze.

  “Grey?”

  The bushes rustled again, and then went quiet.

  Izzy took a step back, away from the plants.

  A twig snapped, closer this time, and nowhere near the bush that had been moving. Another.

  The sun had dipped behind the concrete hulks of the nearest block, and Izzy shivered again, but less from the chill in the air than from fear. One of the larger shrubs in the border was swaying from side to side like someone was shaking it.

  Izzy swallowed hard. “Hello?” she called.

  The swaying stopped.

  “Who’s there?”

  There was a burst of movement behind the plants. Twigs snapped and branches were shoved aside, leaves scattered. And then nothing.

  No one had opened a gate, and there was no way anyone could have climbed over the vents and up the sheer concrete wall to the upper walkway without Izzy having seen them.

  And that meant they were still in there with her.

  “Grey!” She tried again, and this time she shouted so loudly that her throat hurt. He had to hear her now, surely…

  But if he did, he didn’t reply.

  There was absolutely no sound from the bushes or from the garden. Only one part of that was a good thing.

  Desperately, Izzy ran back to the gate and wrapped her hands around the bars, shaking the whole thing with every ounce of her strength. It was so heavy, the lock so strong, that it barely even rattled.

  And as she let her hands slide from the bars, she heard the first footsteps behind her. Slow at first, tentative, careful. And then heavier. More purposeful. Someone was walking towards her exposed back – and whoever it was, she was locked in there with them.

  They came closer and closer and with the sound of every footstep, her skin crawled. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as what felt like breath moved across her skin.

  She screwed her eyes shut, still unable to bear the thought of turning round.

  The creak of metal hinges followed by the sound of a gate slamming snapped her back to the world. She whirled to face the sound and found herself staring at a small poodle on a lead blinking at her, its head cocked on one side. Holding the other end of the lead was Mrs Johnson from the seventeenth floor. She was standing between the two security gates, a key in her hand.

  “Is everything all right, love?” she asked.

  Izzy stared mutely back at her and nodded, once. It was the only thing she could think of doing – that, and holding up her hand in a friendly wave.

  Her hand that was still clutching the key; clutching it so tightly that the edges had dug deeply enough into the flesh of her palm that they had almost broken the skin.

  Her key. In her hand all this time.

  Mrs Johnson held the gate into the garden open for her and smiled as she stepped through it and let it close. She gave Izzy another smile and tugged gently on the lead, then set off down the path through the garden, leaving Izzy feeling shaken beside the gate, staring through the metal fencing. There was nobody in there.

  As her panic subsided, something began to stir at the back of Izzy’s mind. Something like this happening once in a while she could put down to tiredness, to stress. But twice in a couple of days? That couldn’t be a coincidence. Could it?

  She rested her forehead against one of the black metal bars of the fence. It felt cool, soothing the throb of the headache that was building behind her eyes. She had just about got her pulse back to normal and her panicky shallow breathing under control when she heard a scream rip through the calm evening air from the other side of the lake.

  Chapter Nine

  The scream echoed off the buildings around the lake, bouncing back from the concrete until it filled the air and seemed to be coming from everywhere all at once. Without even thinking, Izzy doubled back on herself and tore open the gate she had just walked through, back into the cage. Not stopping there, she unlocked the gate directly ahead of her – the one that opened on to the terrace in front of the Barbican Centre. The tables dotted around the terrace were starting to fill up now as people finished work and either came to meet friends for a drink or to see a play or film in the Centre, and several of them were looking around for the source of the scream.

  Izzy already knew who it was. It was Mia.

  She sprinted across the terrace, opting for the fastest route back around the lake, the one with the fewest gates. Instead of backtracking past the school and church and then under the bridge they’d been on earlier she ran straight across the terrace, leaping the low chain that divided the Barbican’s section from what served as the yard of the Guildhall School of Music, and right over to the sole gate on the eastern side of the lake. With shaking hands, she unlocked the gate and wrenched it open.

  She could see them now – Grey, Mia, Juliet – but there was no sign of Tigs. They were standing at the top of the steps above the waterfall that cascaded from an industrial concrete half-pipe into this end of the lake, directly in front of Brandon Mews. There was a narrow metal walkway beneath the stairs and the waterfall – a mesh gantry, sunk almost into the water. Long ago, someone had obviously had the bright idea of planting things alongside it, surrounded by the lake, but the space was dark and dingy and the plants were either mostly dead or had turned into long, straggling weedy things that trailed in the water. It was – in spite of the windows overlooking it, most of which were shrouded in net curtains – a hidden place. A secret place. The kind of place where bad things could happen, and nobody would ever know. Izzy had never liked it.

  Her foot slipped on the wet metal, sending her skidding towards the water. She lurched back to catch her balance and smacked the side of her head into the concrete of yet another pillar, this time, one supporting the weight of the stairs above her. Seeing stars, Izzy blinked hard and shook her head to clear it. The sound of the waterfall pouring down all around her turned to a high-pitched whine and then settled back to a dull roar.

  And, faintly, the sound of sobbing.

  Izzy took the bare concrete stairs two at a time, racing up them until she came to the viewing platform over the waterfall, looking out over the lake and towards the garden. Mia was huddled into Grey, clinging to him with her head pressed deeply into his shoulder. Juliet was a couple of steps away, her face sickly pale. Hearing Izzy come up the stairs, Grey turned his head to see who it was. His lips pressed together in a grim line, and Izzy wished that she hadn’t caught his quick downward glance.

  Because that’s when she saw him.

  The floor of the platform was made of the same steel mesh as the walkway, designed to let anyone standing there see the flow of water from above before it gushed over the concrete lip and tumbled into the lake below. Green weed had grown beneath the mesh, waving in the flow of the water. And tangled in it, his eyes staring wildly and sightlessly up from beneath the stream, was Dom.

  He was lying face up, his features distorted by the running water and the weed weaving through his hair. One hand was outstretched and limp, drifting towards the surface
. He looked blank, somehow. Whatever had made him ‘Dom’ had gone, and despite the fact that he was wearing exactly the same clothes she’d seen him in last, at Tigs’s place, Izzy somehow couldn’t quite put the two things together. Dom was Dom. This was a body.

  This was Dom’s body.

  Dom was dead.

  Dom was dead.

  She heard her voice, sounding far away as if it belonged to someone else. “We should call the police.”

  Grey nodded, dumbly reaching into his pocket for his phone. But as he pulled it out, Mia shook so violently that it slipped out of his hand and fell into the lake with a splash. Grey’s shoulders sagged, but given what they were all looking at, a lost phone was hardly their biggest problem.

  “He said…” Mia whispered. “He said there was someone, didn’t he? And we didn’t believe him. I didn’t believe him. Why? Why didn’t I believe him?”

  “Mia…” Grey tried, but Mia pushed him away.

  “No. I should have listened. I should have…” With a noise that was half yelp, half sob, she spun away from the three of them and fled down the steps.

  Juliet made a move to go after her, but Grey shook his head. “No. Let her go.”

  He blew out a long, sad breath. “Iz? You OK?”

  Izzy couldn’t tear her eyes away from Dom’s water-bleached face. The current caught his hand and it bobbed against the flow, gently turning his wrist so that he looked like he was beckoning to her.

  “The police…” she began, but Grey didn’t appear to be listening. Instead, his eyes were fixed on the top of the final flight of stairs above them.

  There were another dozen or so of the metal steps, flattening on to another landing, this time concrete. The landing butted up against the outer wall of Brandon Mews, and a grimy glass door led into a large empty space with a domed plastic roof, encrusted with years of moss and algae. There was a lock on the door, but Izzy knew perfectly well that no resident’s key fitted it. She’d tried often enough, peering in through the dirt at the deserted corridor beyond.

  Grey was frowning up at the door.

  “What is it?” Izzy followed his gaze.

  “Nothing… I don’t know. I just thought I saw…” He blinked twice, then shook his head. “It’s nothing.”

  Izzy moved to the bottom of the steps, all the while trying her best to ignore the shape in the water. Her best wasn’t good enough. It was an effort to speak, to form the words and make them come out in the right order – to say what she was thinking. It was an effort even to think.

  “We have to go. We have to find Mia, call the police. We can’t just leave him here.” Izzy’s eyes kept sliding back to Dom. It really did look like he was watching her, waving to her. It was going to take a long time to get that particular idea out of her head. If she had been sleeping normally, it was the kind of thing she knew would turn up in her nightmares.

  Except she wasn’t sleeping, was she? None of them were.

  Shaken, Grey leaned on the concrete balustrade of the steps. He straightened up almost immediately, paced from one side of the landing to the other and then leaned on the balustrade again. His footsteps sounded heavier than they usually did, as though he were carrying a dead weight. “You’re right,” he said quietly, looking at Izzy. “We should find Mia. We’ll get her home and call the police from there.”

  Juliet let out a howl. “We can’t just leave him here!”

  “What do you want to do, Jools? You want to fish him out of the water? You want to carry him around the Barbican?” Grey’s voice was low but angry. “Maybe we should take him home; drop him on the sofa?”

  “No.” She lowered her chin and shook her head, refusing to look him in the eye.

  It was like being in the middle of a bad dream. Together, they turned and walked down the steps and away from the waterfall, leaving what was left of Dom still bobbing in the current. Izzy had seen him. She’d seen him. She knew it was horribly, hopelessly real … and yet somehow, she didn’t quite believe it. She couldn’t … couldn’t bring herself to. It was Dom. Just yesterday he’d been sitting in Tigs’s apartment, hadn’t he? Sitting there and talking about how someone was watching them. How someone was following them.

  What if there had been someone between the gates with her earlier; someone else? What if she hadn’t been imagining it?

  And what if, Izzy thought, her blood turning cold even as the idea crossed her mind, the person in the garden and Dom’s killer were the same…?

  Tigs opened the door to Mia’s duplex when they rang the doorbell. Her eyes were red as she answered Izzy’s unspoken question.

  “Mia’s in her room. She asked me to come over and wait in case Dom came back. I thought it was him,” she said quietly. “When the door opened. I thought it was him, and everything was all right. But then she said…” Tigs stopped talking, her voice fading to nothing. She stood back to let them inside. Looking at the others, Izzy wondered whether they felt the same way she did. It was a kind of heavy numbness, like being under a huge weight of water.

  At the thought of water, the image of Dom flashed before her eyes, beckoning to her. Calling her. Light flashed on flowing water, reminding her of broken glass.

  As she walked through the narrow entrance hall and into the living room, she was startled to see Noah sitting at the table, a pile of paper spread out in front of him. “Where’ve you been?” she asked. He blinked slowly at her.

  “Could ask you the same thing.” He paused, and the temperature in the room dropped. Then he tapped the top sheet. “I was doing this. You all need to see it.”

  “Can’t it wait?” Grey already had the landline handset in his palm. “We need to call the police.”

  “I really don’t think that’s a good idea, Grey.” Noah’s voice was flat.

  “I’m sorry … what?” Grey stared at him. So did everyone else.

  Noah stared blankly at his papers. “You can’t call the police.”

  “Again, what?”

  “You can’t call the police. Not yet, at least. I’m not sure they’re going to be able to help us.”

  “Dom is dead, Noah. We’re calling the police.”

  “Yeah. No.” Before anyone could react, Noah had jumped up from his chair and knocked the phone out of Grey’s hand. It clattered to the floor, its back cover and batteries spinning across the wood and under the sofa.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Izzy seemed to be the only one who could speak – Grey, Juliet and Tigs were just staring at Noah.

  “Remember that video? The one of the guy who took the FokusPro?”

  “The prisoner?” Grey found his voice. “The crazy guy?”

  “Him. Guess what? He wasn’t crazy when he took it.” Noah riffled through his pile, finally settling on a sheet from somewhere in the middle. He pulled it out and slid it across the table, tapping it pointedly. “When he took it, he was one of the most decorated snipers any army’s ever seen. He was hand-picked, along with another twenty or so soldiers, to test a new performance drug the military were developing for troops. It was supposed to give them an edge when they went on patrol or on missions or whatever. In the beginning, they trialled it on snipers serving in the Balkans, then on soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

  “And?”

  “And it worked so well that they tried making it stronger. Which is when it did that. You can read about it, if you want. It took a bit of digging, but I found out enough to make you want to throw up a couple of times. I did, anyway.” He waved at the stack of paper. “What it boils down to, though, is this – twenty-five soldiers were selected for the first-in-human trials of a drug a hell of a lot like FokusPro. A couple of weeks later, almost all of them reported a range of … unexpected side effects. Another week or two? They were all dead – including our friend, Mr Psychopath. He was the last one. Was.”

  Izzy was almost too afraid to ask. Almost. “The side effects. What were they?”

  “I don’t think you really need me to tell you
, do you?” Noah’s face twisted into a ghoulish smile. “Nightmares. Memory loss. Insomnia. Hallucinations – seeing things, hearing things.” He snatched up a sheet and sat back in his chair to read from it. “‘Subjects displayed a rapid and complete descent into violent psychosis, with absolute failure to respond to a variety of treatments. It is our finding that this is directly and solely attributable to their participation in human trials of FPX348, and as such we cannot recommend that further development of the drug should ever be permitted.’”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means,” said Grey slowly, “that whatever they took, it turned them into crazies, and then they died.”

  “Correct!” Noah was almost laughing. “Except for one thing. It’s not just the drug that they took. It’s what we took, too.”

  Chapter Ten

  Izzy went cold all over. She felt the chill start somewhere on her scalp and crawl all the way down to her feet, as though someone had poured ice water over her head. “Is this real?” she said. It was all she could manage.

  “Yep.” Noah nodded. “I told you I’d find out what was up with those pills.”

  “Would’ve been more helpful if you’d got round to it before any of us took them, wouldn’t it?” muttered Grey.

  Noah simply raised an eyebrow at him. “Really? So I don’t remember you asking me if I’d been able to track any more down online, then, do I?”

  “Not you as well—” Izzy began, but Grey cut her off.

  “Oh, come on. Like you wouldn’t have if you could,” he snapped.

  Izzy opened her mouth to reply, but nothing came out. She was left opening and closing her mouth like an idiot.

  “You still haven’t explained why we shouldn’t call the police.” Compared to Juliet, who was now shaking on the sofa, Tigs looked and sounded remarkably calm. She poked at the pile of printouts, picking them up and flipping through them. “What about Dom?”