by Nikki Owen
Kurt watches me. ‘It’s happening,’ he says into his phone. ‘I’ll call you back.’ He slips his cell into his pocket, stands and stares.
‘What is happening to me?’ I stumble. ‘What did you do?’ But the room is spinning and I cannot get the words out. I slap my hand to my chest and force myself to speak. ‘You have to help me.’ Another wave of pain hits. ‘Help me!’
But Kurt does not move, does not call anyone. Instead he just watches and waits.
‘What have I taken?’ I say. And then I understand: this cannot be happening in real life. It must be a flashback of some sort, a dream, a nightmare, perhaps, all of it happening in my head. ‘Wake me up!’ I yell, my voice feral, untamed. ‘Wake me up!’
I try to take my pulse on my neck, but my arms are weak and it is impossible. Heat gushes round my body, and the smell of the sweets and marshmallow and chocolate make the nausea worse. I focus on the room, focus on jolting myself awake. I slap my face, spit on the floor, try to walk, but everything surges, throwing me from side to side, thrashing me against an invisible wave, against a heaving tide of nausea.
I crash into the wall, sliding down it. My arms are limp, my legs are useless. Kurt is nearer now, his arms crossed over his chest.
‘Who are…you?’ I say.
‘I am your therapist.’ His voice is soft, a gentle coo.
‘No,’ I manage to say, shaking my head, his image blurred, distant now. ‘No.’ My eyes dart up. And then I see it: the camera.
But Kurt must trace my line of sight, because he says, ‘Ah, you found it.’ He picks up the tiny camera. ‘I wondered how long it would take you. They have to have some way of watching you from where they are. They need to see exactly what is going on with you.’
My pulse rockets. I do not understand what he is saying, whether this is all a dream. My temperature is rising, sweat popping out all over my limbs, my skin. My blouse is drenched, my hair is damp. ‘Help,’ I plead, and then I slump to the left, my cheek skimming the wall as my head thumps on the floor.
I lie there, blinking, washed up, motionless. My whole body is paralysed, saliva dribbling from my gaping mouth. I can see the room at an angle. The legs of the chairs, the corners of the tables, but only just, like shadows in a dark alley.
‘It’s me,’ I hear Kurt say, and I know he must be on his phone. ‘Yes, you better send them in now. Let’s get her up there and tested before the drug wears off.’
My mouth dribbles, but I will myself to talk, speak. ‘You…have to…help me.’
I hear Kurt take a step towards me. ‘I am helping you.’
I want to ask who he is sending, but I am beginning to drift in and out of consciousness. Or is it back to consciousness? Returning to reality? And then, in front of my eyes, I see Kurt’s shoes. ‘Please,’ I try now, desperate. ‘What is happening? I don’t understand.’
He crouches down, his eyes level with mine now. ‘You should know what is happening. You have the answers in there.’ He jabs my forehead with his finger.
Saliva pools in my tongue. ‘I don’t know what…what you mean.’
He tuts, hard, loud. ‘Yes, you do. Don’t you realise that yet? I know what you’ve already discovered. It’s been part of the plan all along, a test, a test for you.’
‘No,’ I croak.
‘Yes!’ he shouts. ‘Jesus.’
‘No, no,’ I say over and over, muffled, spitting out dribble, bile.
He stands now, quick, sharp. ‘Dr Andersson was right about you,’ he says. ‘It’s a pain in the ass being your handler, even if you can help blow Al Qaeda away.’
My eyes go wide, my brain, even in its paralysed state, still computing. ‘Why…? Why Al Qeada? I can’t help you.’
‘Yes you fucking can!’ And he kicks me hard on the side of my head, then freezes. ‘Shit! Oh, shit.’
Pains vibrates through my skull. The room sways, the blood in my head rushing to the spot where a lump is already forming.
Kurt squats in front of me. ‘Fuck. Are you okay? Shit. I didn’t mean…It’s just…We’re on the same side, but you keep on saying…I lost my temper.’ He lets out a breath. ‘Shit.’
I try to speak, try to ask him what is happening, but the room keeps swaying and, as hard as I attempt to avoid it, a black swell fills my sight and everything—Kurt’s face, the sweets, the door to the room—all fade away.
I click straight on the internet browser then stop. The realisation hits me: I don’t actually know what I am looking for. Stalling, pausing for breath, I lean back, think. What should I do? Who am I searching for? If MI5 are involved, if what Bobbie said is all true, then what? I cannot simply saunter into a secure website and effectively knock on the door. Can I?
I wipe the sweat from my palms, registering my rise in pulse, my brain knowing that already my blood pressure will be elevated, my heart rate will be intensifying. I am scared. I recognise the emotion, but at the same time, there is a sense of urgency in me, of energy that seems to be pushing the fright aside, like a battering ram. I haven’t felt so alive in such a long time.
A stomp of boots wakes me out of my thought pattern and I listen, breath hard, chest taut. Finally, the sound passes. Pausing to steady myself, I face the computer screen and let my brain kick in. A word walks into my head: Callidus. Bobbie said that Callidus, this Project Callidus, is part of MI5, that they thought I was safe in prison.
I search the internet for the term ‘Callidus’ and hit a brick wall. Just definitions, ones I know already, Latin terms and descriptions. I sit back, track my thoughts. Bobbie said the answer is in my notebook. I flip the pad open, examine it again. Still I find no message from Bobbie, no hidden meaning anywhere, so what did she mean? Why did she direct me here? I leaf the notebook pages and try to clear my mind, attempt to take in everything I have scribbled, my head fast, prison still, even now, in this office, affecting my Asperger’s, my skills, my acceleration. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all, because it begs the question: will I always be this way? Brain wired, dancing on the edge of crazy?
I force my eyes back to the notebook and try to focus. For some reason, my brain locks on to one page in particular. It is thick with unfamiliar codes, each of them number heavy, sitting side by side with algorithms and thought patterns. I stare at them until the etchings begin to merge into one, my sight blurring, swirling round and round until: smash! I sit up with a start. I have used these codes before. But how? I swallow hard. Desperate, I shut my eyes fast, willing an image, a memory—anything—to appear.
Slowly first, then quick, like a torrent of water, it appears: my university professor. There was a challenge one day, a mathematical one that he asked me to do. I questioned, at the time, why he wasn’t requesting any of the other students to perform the calculations and he replied that none of them were as fast as me, none of them as accurate. I recall completing the test for him in a few minutes and he thanked me, made a phone call, relayed the data to someone via email.
My eyes fly open. He was my handler. My professor was my handler and he was asking me to hack into a computer website. A shriek escapes from my lips and I slap my palm to my mouth. I glance at the door. I wait, one heartbeat, two. No one is coming. Slowly, I lower my hand as I realise that my university professor made me hack websites. And it wasn’t simulation as he said it was, it wasn’t for advanced mathematical practice: it was for the Project. For Callidus.
My hands won’t cease shaking. The lies, deceit. Why? Why them? Why me? I sit, staring for two, maybe three seconds, when I remember that Balthus will return anytime soon. My brain, reluctantly first and then at speed, engages. I thrust aside the anger that spurts up and I make myself scan my notes. I examine the patterns first, just like I did at university all those years ago. I trace a finger over them. One, two, three encoded methods—they are all there. Yet these patterns are encrypted, protected by myself. Slowly, I pick up a pen and begin to decode them.
I close my eyes and start to imagine my fingers on a c
omputer keyboard, imagine codes on a page. It is hard, but after a few seconds pass, the instinct returns. How I solved the challenge that day in the dusty university office—it returns.
I open my eyes, swallow, nerves slapping me. Because it means I can do it. Was that the answer in my notebook Bobbie meant?
Feverish, I find myself being able to decrypt my note patterns. I decode the method first, scribbling it down, every detail, every step. Done, I flop back, look at my frantic notes. And that is when I realise what I am staring at: a full procedure on how to anonymously hack a website.
I barely breathe. I am a doctor, a plastic surgeon. How do I know how to do this? I gulp hard, inhale, then check the time. I have to keep moving.
With unsteady fingers, I begin to tap the keyboard, start searching for something on Callidus—anything—that will give me a clue, when the door unlocks and starts to creak open.
My head flies up. Balthus. My pulse rockets. How did time move so fast? I shut the screen down, stand, rush to move, but it is too late.
Balthus is standing in the doorway. ‘What the hell are you doing at my computer?’
I open my mouth to speak, to explain, when I stop. Because there is someone by Balthus’s side. Someone I know. Someone I thought I could trust.
Harry Warren.
I awake to find myself in a van.
It jostles along what must be a road. I cannot move or speak, my mouth gagged, my wrists bound, brain groggy. There is a stench of vomit and bodily fluids, and no matter how much I try, no matter how hard I attempt to steady my breathing, I feel out of control, hysterical, peering into the edge of an abyss. Attached to the trolley I am laid out on is a heart rate monitor. It bleeps and I stretch my eyes to it as best I can. It is professional, hospital standard. Why am I hooked up to this? And who did it?
To quell the bile that threatens to erupt, I try to get clues—any clues—as to where I am, but when I move my head to the left, pain sears me, burning like a cigarette into skin. I press my lips together hard, clench my fists, wait for it to subside. Five aching seconds pass and finally the pain bows a little, enough of a gap for me to carry on. I dart my eyes round fast. To my left is a small window. Sun shines in through the glass, so I know it must be daytime, but where? The rest of the van, inside, is white, medical equipment running along the sides—bandages, medicines. But other than that, this is not an ambulance, it is too sparse, too unequipped.
I go to take another look at the medicines when then I hear it: breathing. I stay very still, frightened, scared at who it is, at what they will do. There is no one I can see here in the back of the van with me, so it must be someone in the driver’s seat. Kurt? I want to shout his name, but the tape on my mouth is too tight. Whoever they are, they must not realise I am awake.
Careful not to move, I try to see where I am through the window. From what I can determine, we are travelling south. The sky here is lighter and there is less traffic noise, which means we are out of London, but where are we bound?
In desperation, I look at the heart rate monitor, still beeping, blue lights flickering. It tracks my pulse. I lower my chin and look to my chest. There are four electrodes attached to my ribcage. I begin to panic. My heart rate soars.
Is this a memory I have forgotten?
Times passes, and through the window trees fly past, followed by endless grey sky. And then, after what seems like hours later, I begin to see aeroplanes…to hear engines.
The van halts and everything jolts forward. My whole body goes rigid with fear.
‘Hang on.’ A man’s voice. There is a clatter, a crash. ‘I think she’s…Shit. We have to get her on that plane. Now.’
The monitor begins to beep, wild, frantic. I try to claw my way out, try to bash my arms, but I cannot. The monitor beeps faster and faster still.
Someone’s hot breath is on my cheeks. I jerk my eyes to the right and suck in the tape.
A man in a mask is staring at me.
‘She’s awake,’ he says.
Before I can scream, I am injected with a drug. Everything fades to black.
Chapter 19
‘I said what are you doing at my computer, Maria?’
Balthus looms in front of me. I do not move. My eyes dart to Harry. He is not smiling. I swallow, a surge of dread welling up inside me.
Balthus strides to the laptop, pushes me aside, peers at it. ‘Were you using this?’
But I stay mute. What do I tell him? He knew my father but does that mean anything? Does that mean I should trust him?
Harry steps forward. ‘Balthus said he spoke to you, Maria.’
‘What are you doing here?’
Harry walks to a chair. ‘Balthus mentioned that he knew your father—Alarico.’
I let myself give one sharp nod, nothing else. A wind whips at the window from outside. The clock on the wall ticks into the silence.
Harry sighs and sits. ‘We knew we’d have to tell you, one day.’
I freeze. ‘We?’ I clench my fists tight, hard, over and over. The room feels suddenly hot, heavy, despite the window breeze. What is going on?
‘Yes,’ he says, setting down a legal file. ‘That’s why Balthus called me, told me to come over immediately.’
‘What? No. Why would he be calling you? He said there was an emergency.’
‘There was an emergency, yes. You, Maria. You are the emergency.’
‘No.’ I shake my head once, twice, dart my eyes between the two men. ‘“We”. You said, “we knew we’d have to tell you”. Who is “we”?’
But they do not answer, each of them glancing from one to the other.
‘Who is “we”?’ I shout.
Harry raises his head. ‘Me and Balthus,’ he says finally. ‘That is the “we”. We were both friends of your father, Maria. Me, Balthus.’ He exhales. ‘Both of us.’
I wake up in a white room. My breathing is frayed, torn at the edges, as it slowly dawns on me that I am no longer in the van. I dare not move, blood crashing through me, knuckles white while my fingernails dig hard into the soft underbelly of my palms. Slowly, I let my eyes scan the area. There is an IV drip in my arm. Straps sit tight around my legs. There is a heart rate monitor to the left, a metal table laid with syringes close by it. And I’m alone, but…I cannot be sure. Panic forces its way in, slamming hard into my thoughts. Where am I? What do they want? Where is Kurt?
I go to move my head when something pulls at it. Hands shaking, I place one palm on my hair. My scalp is covered in electrodes. They are on my forehead, my temples, on the back of my skull. When I tug them, I can feel leads protruding from each electrode. I turn my eyes to the right; there is an electroencephalograph machine by the bed, and I realise in horror that someone is recording my brain activity.
I close my eyes fast, not wanting to look. Instead, I make myself think of the facts, details, anything that will pin a tail on the real picture. Think, Maria, think. How old am I? Start with that. If this is only a memory, not real, then my body will be the teenage me, not the adult me. Peeling open my eyes, I slowly raise my hands, turn them over in the air. They are full size, adult. Trembling, I feel my face. There are no spots and my nose feels larger, my hair is cropped along the edge of my scalp.
Which means only one thing: I am me. Now. Thirty-three years old. The horror of the situation grips me, squeezes me tight, because if I am normal, if I am my usual age, then this is not a memory. This is real.
The panic, again, begins to appear, the primitive urge to flee strong. Why am I here? There is a flicker of movement by the window. I stay still, my breathing loud, like rushing water in my ears. The window is covered by a white blind, but the fabric is thin and there, behind it, I can just make out three shadows, none of which are moving. Does that mean they are watching me? Waiting to do something to me?
A beep bursts from the heart rate monitor and I jump, my eyes landing on the metal table of syringes, and it happens again, but this time fast, like the flip of a switch. No warnin
g. No rapid breathing. Just a cold sensation, a gentle, familiar slide, like a fish slipping back into a river. My eyes close, lids flutter, and I feel a sudden, sharp pain of a recollection. It hurts so much that I call out for my father. And then I smell it: burning flesh. I panic and look down.
A screech.
My body: it is not mine.
It is now younger, skinnier, my stomach concave, my knees protruding. And I am not on my own. My mother. She is by my side. I blink. How did she get there? She bends over me and rolls up my gown, cooing, exposing me from the chest down, telling me not to worry. I try to cover myself, but my mother slides one palm round my wrist. I scream, but she slips one finger on her mouth and whispers, ‘Ssssh, darling, ssssh.’ I shake my head and then my mother is not there, and instead her image has been replaced by a man with black eyes. Was he there all along and not my mother? The man leans over me now, a red-hot piece of metal in his hands.
‘Can you feel pain?’ he asks, and his accent, it is Scottish.
The heat from the metal is strong and I know what’s going to happen. I writhe, thrash my head side to side, cry out for my mama, my papa.
‘They are not here, I’m afraid,’ Black Eyes says, voice flat, lifeless. ‘Now, tell me if you can feel this.’
He lowers the hot metal and my eyes going wide as he presses it deep into my stomach. I howl.
The acrid stench of burning flesh stings the air.
The room swirls. My heart rate peaks. The image, the memory—it sinks, deep, to the bottom of the ocean. Everything becomes dark, murky. A splutter of breath and I open my eyes. I gag, immediately try to sit up, my chest heaving, my eyes wild at what I have just seen. But the straps on my legs are too tight and I cannot move, so I dart my eyes downwards and frantically check. My body—it is normal again, full size, adult. Which means that it was a memory, I just had another memory. I gulp in air, as much of it as I can, as my mind drifts to the scar on my stomach, the one I showed Dr Andersson in the prison. He did it, I realise now with clarity. Black Eyes gave me that scar for certain. He is connected to all of this.