“Give me the gun.”
Velia complied with no resistance.
“Forget who I am. Forget who they are. You don’t know we exist. Forget what happened today.”
Mercy got closer to Velia and kept whispering what she said before.
“Come on, we may have no time.” Lark shouted.
The Empath boarded the helicopter and flew away from the rooftop with her new friends. Velia was left alone, surrounded by dozens of unconscious men and swirls of smoke. Unable to recollect what she was doing up there, she went down to her office. The building was in commotion, people were running around while officers were looking at her. The feeling of her dad, sick and barely alive was engulfing her, the angst of being impotent to such circumstances were slowly taking over as she tried continuously to keep them at bay over the last months. She wanted to be alone, cry and scream. Once at her office, she typed her password and a voice assistant asked:
“What is your job here?”
“Research Manager.”
“What is your name?”
“Velia Morant.”
“What is your main patient?”
“I... I don’t know.”
“Do you know who Mercy Rogers is?”
“I don’t know her.”
“Amnesia Protocol activated - All other activities are suspended.”
A video started playing from her computer. Velia had made this recording a few months before with some modifications added on a weekly basis.
“Hi. This message is part of a protocol in case of memory loss caused by your condition or a patient intervening with your memories. First, you have to fill a questionnaire to assess the level of amnesia. An email will be sent to you with the full report, please read it carefully. Also, a copy of it will be sent to your Doctor to schedule further evaluations and follow-ups.”
Her level of paranoia was so high that she predicted this situation, so she covered her bases by creating this protocol. After filling in the interactive questionnaire, a video about the history of Mercy appeared. Several files were provided and another link led her to Ciana, Taran, Braith, Lark and other patients in the institute.
“Please select the pictures of the patients that you do remember.” The voice asked her.
Velia kept reading, typing and researching for hours.
The storm following the incident was difficult to weather because the members of the board placed most of the blame on her and were determined to make her pay. The events were carefully reconstructed with the resources available, including witnesses and footage. Nevertheless, it was not reported nor leaked to the local or international news in order to protect the reputation of the institute, its ties to the government and the confidentiality of the research.
“Where are we at with this incident?” Gabriel asked in the meeting room alongside the members of the board.
“The helicopter was tracked down to the coast. Witnesses recognised them and based on CCTV footage, it is most likely they are in Europe now.”
“They will be difficult to contain over there. They could be anywhere.” A member of the board said.
“They are in Spain. I know Mercy very well. There is no other place she would be.”
“We were reviewing the footage of the incident and we are concerned about the effects Miss Rogers had on your memory.”
“Have I shown any flaws in that matter? Have you read the medical reports?”
“The whole incident is the big flaw here.” Said another member.
“The incident happened because we were not prepared for the progress to be so fast. We are taking measures now once Miss Rogers has been retrieved.”
“You are very confident about that.”
“I have my reasons. We created them, we made them into what they are now. Even if they fail to acknowledge that, even if all of you fail to acknowledge that as well.”
“We have five trained subjects with special skills on the loose. They are human weapons, many of them have the ability to attack, track and even read minds.”
“We have resources and, besides, they have family members, friends, people who they want to contact. We know their weaknesses as we know ours. They don’t even know themselves very well.”
“Frankly, Dr, I have always had your back but in this scenario, we are going to assign a team to supervise the execution of your plan as we don’t know if you have been influenced by Miss Rogers in any other way.”
The team was made of one guy from the army, a member of the board and a colleague of hers. None of them had a clue about how to deal with the subjects but that was no obstacle for Velia. She dedicated herself to update her back-ups, deal with the plan once they were recovered and on the side, keep tabs on the process to catch them, but there was actually a ban on sensitive information in case she, somehow, was to warn Mercy.
At a meeting, she suggested that if they were convinced about that theory, the best play would have been to actually expose her to that sensitive information in a controlled environment and monitor her to see how she tries to make contact. Using her as a decoy was not a crazy idea but they did not want to take the risk of exposing their plans to Mercy. Velia had contemplated the leak of information coming from any member of the board and from herself by designing contingency plans but there was no time to be sure of any possible mole, so she started the search herself. She started the procedure to recover the subjects by bringing Ciana’s parents, Taran’s flatmate and Velia’s dad into the institute. She also ordered the detention of Lark’s Doctor. Braith turned out to be difficult to coerce, but once with the other four, capturing Braith would be easy. In fact, she had done it before. All the family members were brought up with the excuse of a medical emergency and were kept in the institution, making video messages for the runaways. Taran’s flatmate was the only one who was briefed with real information on the matter but half of the story was fabricated as well. The idea was to use all of that content to put pressure on the fugitives. Velia requested a list of people who were gathered in a room and brief them partly about the situation. It was a selected group of people from different positions within the institution who were asked to help in all sorts of ways to track the five subjects on the run. She coordinated the operation with a delegate from the army who delivered an electronic database three days later. Later on, by using the database, she addressed the board.
“As we all think that Mercy has an insider somehow because they need to know our position on the hunt, I took the liberty to follow a plan. We haven’t enrolled new employees in the last month, so I carefully requested the phone records of the current ones. When filtering that information, I made a list of the ones who have received phone calls from Europe and North Africa, which is the furthest they could have gone by now without being detected. I gathered that group of people and fed them with wrong intel about our search. Only one of them made an international call less than an hour after that. He has been monitored by our security services. We have “accidentally” exposed him to more information and he had actively passed that information to Miss Rogers. Here you can find all the records about this operation. I suppose you can take it from here as you don’t completely trust me.”
“Brilliant,” said Gabriel. “They are in Madrid all together. I think you should continue the operation yourself. Under supervision, of course.”
“How do you know that any of us have been compromised?” A member of the board said.
“I gave instructions to the security services about that. They implemented the same plan with all of you.”
“So, what are the results?”
“You all came clean, for now. I know that we are all vulnerable to an attack from Miss Rogers, including me. I am taking preventive measures in that regard but the only thing I can tell you is to do all you can to accelerate our containment plan once we get her back.”
“You are so sure we will.”
“And that is why she should be in charge. Keep us posted.” Gabriel repli
ed.
“One more thing. I think I have earned the right to know about the data leak.”
“What data leak?”
“The information Braith took with him before he ran away.”
“We did not find anything with him.”
“I am sure you have tried to look at what could be copied from that particular machine,”
“You are right, we did indeed.”
“And?”
“It was mostly information about Mercy, general reports and research. Nothing to be alarmed about.”
“Could I see it?”
“What for? There’s not much to tell.”
“OK, I will cut the crap and speak bluntly.”
“Is that so?”
“I already did the tracking of the documents and there is one that worries me: a list of potential subjects.”
“Leave that to us from now. You have too much on your plate.”
“With all due respect…”
“That would be all, thank you.”
They all knew that Velia would not stop with such a soft caution. What is more, somehow, she felt encouraged to continue. There were several subjects of interest around Europe and some of them were in Spain. Subjects who had shown enormous potential but the question remained if they would be of any use to the fugitives. If Mercy realised the power she has to enhance the other four, she could try to replicate that model with ones and create a powerful squad able to defend her from the institution or any government body. Perhaps Velia was just being paranoid but that paranoia had protected her many times from failure and led her to create countless contingency plans. The fact remained: Mercy had access to that list but she probably had not read it yet, maybe she had not even realised what an asset that list could be. But then again, it was a factor that Velia took into account when making her move.
“We specifically told you to leave the list alone.” Said Gabriel, erupting at her office.
“The list is part of my plan.”
“And what is that exactly?”
“Divide and conquer.”
“You better not defy us so bluntly, it is not very wise on your side.”
“I know where they are. We made contact this morning.”
She laid some CCTV photos of Taran and Ciana on the table.
“We need to alert the authorities immediately!”
“Are you out of your mind?” Velia asked. “You saw what they are capable of.”
“We are talking about highly trained operatives.” Gabriel replied.
“They are not ready to deal with our subjects and, in the best of cases, it would be a difficult mess to cover. The press will ask questions, there will be witnesses to silence and collateral damage to assume.”
“You are not ready to take them either. Look at what happened here.”
“They took us by surprise. Now we are prepared.”
“The board is pushing me, I cannot let you do this.”
“Let me present the case to them.”
“They won’t listen. Once I show them these photos, the relevant authorities will be alerted.”
“If they sniff us…”
“There is no escape for them.”
“They will run again and again until somebody else gets hold of them and all of our research will be lost.”
“It is what it is.”
“It doesn’t have to be. All of these years cannot end in someone else’s lab.”
“My hands are tied.”
“Give me a week.”
“You have a 72-hour head start, that’s all.”
“Ok, I need to start doing this now.”
“Also, I need to know everything. I can be of help.”
“I need to coordinate with the department of robotics, the satellite surveillance units and must have Ciana’s parents available at all times.”
He left an agitated Velia reaching for her medicines and getting ready to make her first move.
THIAGO
The bullfighter stood ready in front of the beast while the massive audience cheered madly on a hot Sunday afternoon. A spectacular show, perhaps the best of the season so far and yet the best seemed to be coming in a few moments. The matador raised the small swords but instead of running against the bull, he held the ground and suddenly inserted them deeply in his own thighs, both at the same time. The spectators were confused, some of them scared for the imminent peril of the self-inflicted man. The animal took the chance to run over the bullfighter before some of his colleagues came to support him. He was taken out of the arena, wounded and barely alive amid a mix of screams from the public. As all of the people at the bullring, Thiago did not know what was happening but, in that moment, he had a snow episode so he excused himself from the private booth shared among friends and left for the restrooms. After a few meters, Thiago had to stop and leant against the wall as looking for safety. During such episodes, it was as if a snowstorm was happening in front of his eyes. Sometimes it would take a few seconds to settle, on other occasions, it would take minutes. The more intense, the least he could see but with the years he learnt that staying still was the best he could do. Not many people knew about his condition and he felt uncomfortable letting anyone into a very private matter for him like this one. Somehow, he associated it with a variety of blindness, making him a disable and feeling less than the rest of the world. The doctors reassured him that this was not the case but he could not help to feel how he felt. He was there, leaning against that wall, feeling sorry for himself when her presence came into his life. Thiago saw her in the middle of his snowstorm, felt her presence and immediately wanted to follow her, even if he could not recognise her facial features he knew that there was no other choice but to walk next to her. In a second, the snow settled which was very strange to happen that fast.
“You are different.”
“What do you mean?” He asked while following her a couple of steps behind as she was walking at a fast pace.
“Your eyes. You see the world in a different way.”
“My eyes are damaged.”
In that moment, the thickest of the snowstorms made him completely blind.
“Your eyes are perfectly fine. You are not damaged. Far from it. Keep walking.”
“I can’t see.”
“Keep walking, follow the sound of my voice.”
He felt compelled to do so, motivated by a strange sense of happiness and adventure. It was like being on a video game, interpreting clues, sounds, textures on the floor, the wind, the temperature.
“Do you know where we are?”
“At the parking lot.”
His vision was back again, revealing he was right.
“You are not disabled.”
The red-headed woman threw some keys at him.
“Take me for a spin.”
They drove outside of Madrid to a cabin far from a train station and from civilisation. They barely spoke on the way but he felt so happy that for the first time in years, he forgot to check his phone.
“You don’t have a wife or kids, do you?”
“No, I have a girlfriend though.”
“She will be fine.”
A slim geeky guy emerged from the cabin to welcome them. The red-headed woman ran towards him to join in an embrace.
“I saw the bullfight on TV! I can’t believe it!”
Another woman came out of the cabin with two other guys.
“You could have killed him.” She said to the red-headed friend.
“Meh, the guy got what he deserves. And that is just the beginning.”
“You are exposing us.” Said the tallest of the two other guys.
“Who’s this?” Asked the second one.
“How rude of me. I haven’t even introduced myself. I am Mercy and you are…”
“Thiago.”
“Well, Thiago, these are my friends Ciana, Taran, Lark and Braith.”
“What’s he doing here?” Asked Taran.
“He is, in hi
s own way, like us. I have been practising in identifying who is different like we are and he screams differently.”
“Listen, Mercy, you can’t just pick people from the street and bring them here.” Said Ciana“It is reckless.
What are you going to do next? Tell him about SETBACK DAY?” Braith added.
“I don’t see the problem. Let’s vote for it.” Taran said.
“I don’t mind.” Said Lark, while leaving to head to the forest.
Braith scoffed and followed him.
Mercy welcomed Thiago to the house and excused herself to freshen up. The newcomer explored the property and found a basement full of paintings. While going through the new-found studio, he saw through a small window how Braith stopped Lark at the path behind the cabin.
“Is she making you do this?” Braith asked.
“What? No? I really don’t care.”
“I did not want to share this but I think she is manipulating us, you know, into doing things that are convenient to her.”
“But she promised not to do that.”
“I know but it is a huge temptation not to do it. It would be very difficult for me.”
“There is nothing we can do about it. I mean, there is no way to stop her and I trust her.”
“But there is a way to know, at least for me and maybe for you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We have been sharing with each other what it is like to be us. The way we perceive things, right?
”“Right.”
“And how we get an extra layer of information that we can interpret. Like the world comes for us with subtitles, only they are not words so we have to translate them.”
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