Sleepless

by Louise Mumford

‘Go.’ Delores pushed her, talking to Harriet. ‘Make sure she’s not seen. I have one more thing to check here.’

  Before he was whisked inside, Thea was almost sure she saw Moses briefly open one eye and look straight at her.

  Chapter 41

  Harriet put her finger to her lips.

  Thea had been in the Staff Bubble before on her first meeting with Delores. It was a weird mirror of the one that had been used for the clients and the design was identical: same huge central area with the cafeteria and strategically placed seating, a gleaming lift shaft in the middle and wheel-spoke walkways with light coming from the curved glass roof.

  Empty. Echoing.

  Thea grabbed both of Harriet’s forearms and held on tight. ‘Harriet, you’ve got to help, you—’

  But then all the words stuck in Thea’s throat and she clamped her hand over her mouth to try and stop any ragged gulps of air.

  It wasn’t even really crying at first; it was some kind of chest-heaving, head-thumping pressure in her body that needed to be released. She felt Harriet’s arm across her shoulder, supporting her as her knees buckled and finally the hot tears came.

  They were for herself, alone in a game being played by people a lot more powerful than her, with rules she hadn’t been allowed to learn.

  But they were also for Ethan.

  ‘Thea?’ Harriet’s voice seemed very far away. ‘Thea?’

  She felt Harriet half-pushing, half-leading her into another room and forcing her to sit down.

  ‘Breathe.’

  So she did. And that was all she did for a while. It was all she could concentrate on, because, when she stopped, other thoughts came rushing back at her and clogged her throat.

  Harriet busied herself to one side. Thea realized she was sitting on a bed, in a room similar to her own back in the other sphere, but messier, as if the person in it had rushed to leave.

  ‘Here.’ Harriet pushed a warm mug into her hands, holding her own over them to warm Thea up. ‘Everything has happened so quickly. I’m not surprised you’re in shock. The … problems … the fire. The new people taking over. At least you’re okay.’

  ‘Ethan is dead.’

  Harriet fumbled the teaspoon and it clattered noisily. Saying those words nearly set Thea off again, but she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and sat up straight like her mother would have done, her eyes gritty and sore.

  ‘Kyle did it; he killed him. I was there.’

  ‘But how—’

  ‘We found Moses at the lighthouse. The real Moses, not the one we saw here. He tested the sleep tech on himself and it made him hallucinate. It made him mad – for a while. It killed Ted, kind of, pretty much anyway—’

  ‘Who’s Ted?’

  ‘The tech, Harriet!’ Thea gripped one of Harriet’s wrists. ‘The tech is dangerous!’

  ‘We know it caused some issues,’ Harriet soothed, gently wriggling her wrist out of Thea’s grasp. She nudged the tea to her lips, making her take a drink. ‘But that was only briefly. And then of course, the fire. We think one of the clients started it, in their … incapacitated state. But we’ve been told that all of the clients have now been safely evacuated from the island.’

  Thea tried to read Harriet’s expression: wide-eyed but steady. Would she be able to tell if she was lying?

  ‘No! It’s not just the hallucinations! It’s what happened after. It just kind of mushes your brain, leaves you a blank. I’ve seen it! And do you know why they’re so keen to get this sleep technology working?’

  ‘Really, I—’

  ‘Dreams! They want to get into our dreams – the REM sleep, remember? – and they want to … to … use them, to influence us—’

  Harriet shot a quick glance towards the door. ‘Thea! Slow down – you’re not making any sense and anyway, I’ve got to get you to Delores before Kyle comes back. She wants to see you before Aspire get their hands on you. We don’t have time for this.’

  Thea took a deep breath, staring into her mug. Then she pierced Harriet with a fierce glare. ‘You saw all the clients board a boat, yes? You actually saw it yourself?’

  Harriet didn’t answer. She took a step back and clasped her hands together, kneading her fingers.

  ‘When was the last time you saw any of them? Moira? Richard? Rosie?’

  No answer.

  Harriet suddenly sagged and sat down heavily next to her. She rubbed her face, smearing the mascara into the dark circles under her eyes, her lips flaking as if she’d bitten them a lot lately.

  It was quiet for a minute or so. Occasionally Harriet looked as if she was about to say something, but then she seemed to change her mind. Thea realized that Harriet was clutching her hand and she held on, thankful for the warmth.

  ‘I’m so, so sorry,’ Harriet whispered at last. ‘I don’t know what’s going on and then this new company taking over, except they aren’t taking over because they owned us anyway? I don’t understand.’

  The two women stared at each other, then Harriet bent closer to Thea, so close Thea could see the flecks of old mascara under her eyes. She whispered, ‘I … don’t think I like this …’

  Thea didn’t know what to say so she squeezed the hand holding hers. Harriet darted a glance towards the door.

  ‘I have to go and see if Delores is ready for you. Please don’t leave this room, Thea. I think it’s – I think you’ll be safer here.’

  She hesitated briefly in the doorway and looked back at Thea, biting her lip and frowning before she left the room. Thea was alone.

  She ran her hand over the duvet. Her head was so heavy, Thea thought blurrily, and it had to be down to her eyes. They felt like rocks. Her neck, in comparison, was a broken flower stem. The room was so warm and the bed was so comfortable that it made sense to just lie that heavy head down for a few moments …

  Chapter 42

  She was exactly where she wanted to be. This room was fire-lit and as warm as a burrow. There were scones on a cute little table in the middle and a bowl of thick cream and jam with big pieces of fruit in it. She had a blanket over her knees and her chair was big enough for her to curl up.

  ‘See? I said it would be amazing.’ Rosie leant over. Her hair covered one eye, but she was smiling and scraping cream from her knife.

  It was amazing. She didn’t have to do anything or be anywhere, and it was so cosy here, like living in a children’s programme. There were pictures on the walls in delicate gold-rimmed frames: holiday shots of a bird in a shawl wearing glasses perched on her beak, sometimes standing with other similarly dressed birds in front of the pyramids, or the Eiffel Tower.

  ‘Where is she?’ Thea asked.

  Rosie crammed a scone into her mouth leaving a purple smear on her lips. She swallowed a few times before answering. ‘The cuckoo? She jumped,’ she said casually, eyeing up another scone.

  ‘But who’s going to call the time?’ Panic rose in Thea’s chest.

  ‘Oh, we can’t do that. Don’t worry. They’ll kill us if we go outside.’

  The fire crackled and a log split with a hiss. Thea was suddenly angry with the cuckoo for jumping. She had a job to do; this was her responsibility. You couldn’t trust anyone these days. An empty wing-backed chair stood by the fire with a single feather on the seat.

  ‘One of us has to call the time,’ she said.

  Rosie broke open another scone and tapped the knife on her teeth; there was the sound of metal scraping on enamel. ‘No, we don’t,’ Rosie said.

  It was too warm in the room. She pushed the woolly blanket from her and let it slide to the floor. She didn’t want to go out there. Rosie should go. It wasn’t her problem. Rosie should volunteer because the time had to be called and it wasn’t her job to do it.

  ‘You should do it,’ she said to Rosie.

  ‘Do it yourself,’ Rosie snapped back, impatiently flicking her hair back from the eye it had covered. Except there was no eye, just a red, gaping wound where her eye should have been, as if some
one had taken an ice-cream scoop to her face. On her temple there was a heart drawn around the metal disc. ‘I don’t know why you have to spoil it. There’s nothing else to do. Just have a scone, relax.’ Rosie dug into the jam again and smiled as she spread it onto the scone, but the smile wasn’t like before, perhaps it was the eye that gave it menace.

  There was a diving board contraption in front of the double doors, on which the cuckoo stood before it shoved her out of the clock to call the time.

  Thea didn’t want to.

  She got up. She didn’t stand on it but edged around it, leaning over to push one of the doors open a little, just to see what was going on.

  Down below her there was fire. The golf ball building was crumpling in on itself and the fire ate it up, swishing its tongue around and around, lapping up every last bit. Then her body jolted and suddenly she was too far out. She couldn’t scrabble for purchase. Someone had hold of her neck and they were pushing her over the edge, even though she was trying to hold on, her body fizzing with adrenaline. Tensing, she tried to grab something, anything to stop her from dipping, from moving, from lurching off the edge. She was going to fall. Every muscle in her body tensed for impact as she …

  … woke up.

  Standing on the edge of the bed, someone’s hand on her hip.

  ‘Thea?’

  She looked down at Harriet’s worried face as she wobbled on the springy mattress.

  ‘What was I—?’ Thea stuttered.

  Not a hallucination, not a hallucination, not a hallucination. She was not turning into Richard and Ted and Moses. She was not. Thea thought back to the lectures she’d had, which seemed years ago now – micro sleep, that was it. The body snatching some rest. That was all.

  ‘Just a bad dream, I’m sure.’ Harriet helped her to sit down and then squeezed her arm, her eyes sad. ‘Delores is ready to see you now.’

  Chapter 43

  ‘We don’t have much time. You will have to trust me.’

  Delores’s desk was covered in paper, some of which she was hurriedly stuffing into a satchel. She didn’t even look up as Thea came in. Her coat had been thrown over the back of the chair, its arms trailing limply, and she’d pushed up her sleeves, crumpling the silk of her blouse.

  Thea laughed.

  She hadn’t meant to – it had just come gurgling out of her throat in a spasm, like vomit.

  ‘Trust you? Really?’

  Delores stopped and considered her. She flung her hair over her shoulder in annoyance and then sighed, opened a desk drawer and got out a hair clip. She twisted her hair up and away from her face in one smooth, practised move. Suddenly the Delores from Moses’s video diary was staring back at her.

  ‘I’m trying to save your life Thea. When I say we don’t have much time, I really rather mean it.’

  ‘How can I trust someone who had Ethan killed, who drugged and hid Moses away, who … who—’

  She paused. On Delores’s desk was that heavy-looking ornament, a sinuous twist of stone on a plinth, veined with greens and purples, coloured like a bruise.

  ‘I may as well tell you now that we had cameras placed in the lighthouse. I’ve seen what happened. What Moses gave you.’

  Thea almost laughed at her own stupidity. Of course they had the lighthouse rigged! Who had she thought she was dealing with?

  ‘You can keep the memory stick if you so wish. It doesn’t matter to me now.’

  Thea shifted her weight uncomfortably though she refused to sit in the chair behind her. Her trainers were soggy from the snow and one foot had gone numb. She had the feeling that she should be doing something: something action-heroine style, not just meekly listening to Delores.

  ‘You have become a particularly sticky problem, do you know that? I believe you told Ms Stowe that your mother was retired from her activist days? Not quite true, hmm? She’s being a bit … vocal.’

  The mention of her mother was a punch to Thea’s stomach that made her eyes water. If she had been by her side, Thea would have felt instantly smarter, stronger, braver but at the same time she wanted her mother as far away as possible from all of this. No megaphone, no placards, no petitions.

  ‘What have you done to her?’ Thea heard the crack in her voice.

  ‘Done?’ Delores frowned a little. ‘We have done nothing to her. What kind of business do you think we are? No, your mother may be vocal, but nobody really listens to her anymore.’ She attempted a smile that wasn’t successful. ‘You are lucky that you are special. Rare. It’s the only reason you are stood here and not …’

  Delores came around from behind her desk and brought a cup with her, a dainty, fragile porcelain bowl filled with a fragrant, hot liquid. Thea took it but sniffed at it suspiciously, remembering from somewhere that cyanide smelled like almonds. Suddenly everyone wanted her to have a drink.

  ‘Drink the damn tea, Thea. If I’d wanted you dead, you would never have made it out of the lighthouse.’

  ‘Like Ethan?’

  Steam curled up from her waiting cup. She drank the damn tea.

  ‘Really? We’re not in the business of murdering people, Thea. I saw how Ethan died and it was due to some glitch in those badly damaged discs. Deeply, deeply regrettable.’

  Delores was quite close to her, but her face was marble and the expression carefully carved. It was like trying to work out if a statue was telling the truth. Thea put down her cup, then did her best impersonation of Delores’s icy cool.

  ‘I don’t think I believe that,’ she said. ‘And, you know what? I’m sick of being talked at. I’m done with listening quietly while you spin whatever story you’re believing today. Let’s start with Moses. The truth.’

  Delores returned to her chair and sat down, unzipping her tall, spike-heeled boots before dropping them to the floor and massaging her feet.

  ‘As you wish.’ She took a sip from her own cup. ‘Are you going to sit?’

  Thea’s legs made the decision for her – she crumpled into the chair, a bright shaft of sunlight instantly slicing into her eyes. She squirmed out of its glare.

  Delores sighed. ‘Moses.’ Her eyes softened. ‘I did love him, you know. You saw him in the video; you saw the man he was. Who couldn’t love that man? And he loved me … but he loved his precious technology more.’

  Voice hardening, she swung her legs up onto the arm of her chair, a jarringly nonchalant move at odds with her steely cool. It reminded Thea of the woman in the video, the one with silver moons on her belt and jangling bracelets.

  ‘I couldn’t see exactly what you were watching but I know he used to love making those stupid video diaries. Logs, he always called them, like he was Captain sodding Kirk. I thought I’d got rid of them all. So you’ve heard his side. But there are always two, aren’t there? It wasn’t just him, you know. He couldn’t have done it without me. The great genius Moses Ing. But who spent hours reading all the data, hmm? Me. Spreadsheets, funding, even finding Ted – all me. Not the glamorous stuff, I’ll admit. Eternal fucking female problem – we do all the legwork and get none of the glory.’

  Her eyes blazed.

  ‘So yes, when he did what he did – his choice, mind you – and tested it on himself, what could I do? He had to be cared for. Debts had to be paid. Aspire were interested in it, even though it was nowhere near ready, so I made the best choice I could … at the time. I’ve been able to keep him safe.’

  ‘You were drugging him.’

  ‘He is a liability to himself.’

  ‘But it’s easier to steal something from someone too drugged to know what’s going on, right?’ Thea lowered her voice, her heart thumping in her throat. If she was a white-crowned sparrow, she was a sparrow having a conversation with a leopard. ‘I know the real reason for Morpheus. You want to get inside our heads.’

  ‘Do we? You must know more than me. I’m not in charge of all of this, remember? In fact, soon I will be very much sacked. What the company wants to do with it is their concern.’

 
‘Mind control?’

  ‘Hah! Really? That is the stuff of silly sci-fi films. We can’t even get the tech to work properly yet. I thought we’d ironed out all the glitches but, well, we’re finding that REM sleep is a much bigger problem, one we haven’t solved, no matter how hard we try. You’ve seen the result.’

  Unclipping her hair with one hand, Delores twisted it absent-mindedly into a rope as she gazed out of the window, a demented Rapunzel. Thea stood, overcome with a wild urge to try running away while her back was turned, try to make it to a boat on her own, just run and keep on running until the snow disappeared into the wood, then the wood changed to shingle and the shingle turned to sea … and freedom.

  She would probably only make it to the ground floor if she was lucky.

  ‘What really happened here?’ Thea asked.

  ‘The Sleep Centre …’ Delores paused, and then tried again. ‘REM sleep in some of our clients was disrupted, which led to hallucinations. The Sleep Centre became compromised and we dealt with it as best we could but, well, you saw the damage, yes? Someone managed to start a fire. We had to shut off that whole wing.’

  ‘But everyone was safely evacuated?’

  The mask didn’t drop as Delores faced Thea, but behind her were the smoking remains of the Client Bubble, cutting a white curve out of the view.

  ‘The company made the decision,’ she said quietly.

  Delores’s next words dropped into Thea’s brain like cold jelly, slithering into her very soul. ‘Like they’ll make a decision about you.’

  Thea’s cup trembled in her hand.

  ‘But I can help you.’

  Chapter 44

  ‘Our little white-crowned sparrow.’

  Delores stood behind her desk in a classic power pose, her palms placed flat on the desk-top, facing an imaginary boardroom. Thea sat down suddenly, as if someone had kicked her in the back of the knees.

  They’ll make a decision about you.

  Her little sleep therapy group: Moira with her owl glasses and tortoise-Richard – where were they? What had happened to them? She hoped it involved a boat, all of them clambering aboard, making awkward jokes and choosing where to sit. She hoped that they were now on the mainland, maybe back at Sanity’s End where the owner would be grumpily dishing out tuna and dandruff sandwiches for all.