The Whisper of Persia (The Girl in the Mirror Book 3)

by Philip J. Gould

  She blinked away the memory and inserted the second key into the lock, twisting it with a flick of her wrist. The door creaked open noisily; dampness and the lack of recent use made the hinges remonstrate against the sudden incursion.

  Sophie entered promptly, closing the door behind her. For a moment she felt lost. Standing in the hallway, she felt like she was making a colossal mistake, and that she was trespassing in her own home.

  With the windows boarded up and daylight a couple of hours’ away, the entire apartment was subdued in impenetrable darkness. One or two windows to the back of the building permitted light, but the barest minimum. Just inside the hallway, a little above Sophie’s shoulder height, a light switch operated the two overheads at either end of the hallway. She pressed it on, not expecting anything to happen.

  Incredibly, the electricity had not been cut off. Power surged immediately into the light bulbs, but the one at the other end of the hallway, closest to what had been Sophie’s bedroom door, popped suddenly in a cascade of sparks and glass fragments. The other over Sophie’s head burned brightly.

  At first glance, the apartment looked exactly how she remembered it, apricot-white walls, photo-frames with family portraits lovingly placed in various positions along one side, a black Dynasty runner sprawling the length of the hallway floor, but she hadn’t moved deeper in yet, nor ventured towards the living room just a few feet ahead of her.

  The door to the living room was closed and bore some signs of her skirmish with the armed intruders; a few bullet holes splintered the wood, but nothing a bit of Polyfilla couldn’t fix.

  Sophie considered the living room door for a moment. “I’m not ready for this yet,” she whispered to herself. Instead, she walked the length of the hallway towards her bedroom, passing the panic room which her father had intended for her to stay in whenever he was away (and which she habitually didn’t), and tread carefully over eggshell-thin glass to get to her room, small splintering sounds from the shattered light bulb cracking underfoot.

  She opened the door and stepped into her bedroom, clicking on the light that dangled within a pink lightshade from the ceiling, illuminating her familiar surroundings.

  Her room was exactly how she remembered it; the duvet was strewn aside on her bed, just how she had left it; her wardrobe door was open to reveal her clothing (now mostly too small), and a deep bookcase filled with children’s books and a few toys, warmly reminded her of a fleeting childhood that her father’s genetic tinkering had barely allowed her to experience.

  “The only thing missing is Flopsy,” she said sadly, recalling that the stuffed toy had been left in America, having travelled across with her in her backpack. Devastatingly, she’d been forced to leave it behind, stowed in the overhead cabinet of the Boeing at Fresno Airport, along with all her other possessions, including the last of her serum.

  Crossing to a chest of drawers, Sophie pulled open the topmost receptacle and hastily frisked through it. There was underwear for all ages, her father proactively purchasing knickers, vests and bras in preparation for his daughter’s fast growth. She rifled through the drawer and found suitable undergarments for her slender adult frame.

  The second, third, fourth and fifth drawers contained other clothing items, socks, tops, T-shirts, trousers, and jeans, again in an array of sizes to cater for sudden overnight development. There was very little choice, but Sophie didn’t much care. Functionality was her main concern.

  Selecting pyjamas and clean undergarments, Sophie bounded over to her bed and emptied her jeans’ pockets of all that she carried. In one was the thumb drive, safely contained within a carefully folded piece of paper − she had packaged it whilst on the Virgin Atlantic flight from Las Vegas.

  Opening the paper out revealed it to be the photograph of her father with the younger woman. She had discovered it last within the envelope that had been left for her at Fresno Airport. Her other pocket revealed the small vial of blue liquid; the piece of paper with her father’s written instruction was still attached to it with the red elastic band.

  It was hard to believe, but from the possessions she’d travelled to America with, these small meagre items, along with the clothes she was wearing, was all that she had left.

  The only other thing she carried was her father’s mobile phone, still functioning if not a bit battered-looking. She tossed it down to land alongside the other items.

  She thought about calling Emily upon arriving at Gatwick Airport, and the woman would have expected it, but Sophie found that she couldn’t.

  She wasn’t ready for the reunion, instead feeling the need for comfort only solitude could provide. Plus she was extremely fatigued.

  Despite several hours’ sleep on the plane she was utterly exhausted; compounded by getting completely soaked through from the great British weather, she now felt chilled to the bone. All she wanted to do was to lay in a hot bath and try and cleanse her body.

  Across the hall from her bedroom was the bathroom, and on the way she wrestled free from her sodden clothing, careful to side-step the broken glass and making a mental note to clear it up. Dumping her jeans and T-shirt in a corner and wearing just a bra and panties, she stood and studied her reflection in the mirror above the sink.

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” she muttered. Owing to her invisibility and, until now, the lack of mirrors, this was the first time she’d checked her appearance since the hotel room in Miami, where Barry and herself had masqueraded as husband and wife, or Mr and Mrs Mason. In truth, even then she hadn’t really looked herself over.

  Now, she saw for the first time the adult Sophie Jennings, a fully-grown twenty-one-year old. Her eyes roamed down her body, following the contours of her breasts and further as she drank in her reflected image.

  Despite the hair band, her hair was a clump of wild, tousled tangles which she did not look forward to putting a brush through. Cuts and bruises marred her entire body head to toe, and smudges of dirt uglified her face, but she was still faintly attractive. Where the bullet had grazed her ear in Washington, just a couple of inches away from ending her life, there remained just a scab. Fast healing was another side-effect she’d recently became aware of. Thanks dad.

  Like with the lights, Sophie was again taken aback by the discovery that hot water ran readily from the tap on the bath. She turned it on full and poured a good measure of Radox into the flowing stream, instantly creating a waterfall of foamy-suds.

  Five minutes later she submerged her naked body into the water, the only evidence of this occurrence being the splash and ripples as her weight dropped down like an oversized stone. Warmth instantly soothed her body, the small pain receptors in her brain that registered the aches and sores blighting her nerve-endings, suddenly evaporated.

  “Oohing,” and “Ahhing,” the cosy feeling transported Sophie back to a time when her mother and her father were alive.

  How easy a bath could make things appear almost normal; that nothing of the past four months had truly happened. Sophie could almost hear her father in the living room through the open doorway, him busy behind his laptop tapping the keys furiously. She imagined her birth mother whom she saw only at Christmas or on birthdays. Then images of Meredith leapt to mind, the carefree nine-year-old who, in the beginning, believed she lived in a mirror.

  Sophie allowed her head to slip under the surface, her ears filling up with water that gradually subdued her hearing. Holding her breath she continued deeper until she was completely immersed.

  For what could have been five minutes, she held herself beneath the water’s surface. Closing her eyes, she imagined how it must have felt to be inside her mother’s womb. Imperceptibly, she thought she could hear her mother’s slow heartbeat thumping as an echo around her, the rhythm calming her. Focusing on the ‘thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump’ of her mother’s imagined heartbeat, she felt safe
, secure and comforted. So comforted, her body over-relaxed. It felt good, the best she’d felt in a long time. Too good. Suddenly she felt darkness creep in as sleep’s fingers caressed the edges of her consciousness, beckoning her to follow.

  WAKE UP!! An inner voice screamed at her.

  Sophie burst up from the water like a breaching whale, out of breath and inextricably panicked. Gasping and choking for air, the fantasies that she was inside her mother’s womb, or that her father was still in the living room, and all other aspects conjured up by her mind dissipated like smoke from a joss stick.

  No longer in any mood for a bath, she removed the plug, sat back and brought her knees up to her chest. She watched as the water slowly drained away around her, the plughole gurgling it down noisily. When it was all gone and she started to feel a little cold, she stood up and finished cleansing herself using the shower.

  The living room resembled a picture from a war story. The leather sofas were shredded, their springs jutting out like barbed wire, lethal and sharp. What was once a coffee table was a pile of broken wood pieces, demolished under the weight of one of the intruders who’d tried to hurt Sophie and who’d felt the brunt of what she was capable of. Surveying the room, it was hard for the young woman to imagine having spent time happily living here with her father. Bullet holes peppered the walls and ceiling and brass casings littered the floor. Surprisingly after four months, the smell of cordite remained thick in the air.

  Sophie shook her head in dismay. She hadn’t wanted to go into the living room but felt compelled to. That and the simple need for food and water had motivated her forward; not before holding herself under siege for more than twenty-four hours behind a locked bedroom door. Stepping into the kitchen adjoining the living room, it looked practically undamaged and habitable, compared to the room behind her.

  After taking a long pull of water directly from the tap of the kitchen sink, water sloshing over her face and skin, she half-heartedly crossed the small room to the fridge-freezer, hoping to find a few stray vials of ochre serum that may have slipped free during her rush to flee after thwarting the initial attack. Pulling open the door she soon discovered that she had been thorough with her collecting up of the small bottles. As expected, there were none there. Dismayed, she searched the fridge for any other delights it might yield. It was a fruitless exercise, practically bare with just a half-empty bottle of curdled milk, a slab of mouldy cheese, a jar of jam, and leftovers from an unidentifiable meal that was now host to a decomposed mass swimming in a puddle of ghastly brown and green soup.

  “Ergh,” Sophie exclaimed, closing the disgusting sight − and pungent smell − with a fast shove of the door. In desperation she turned to the waste bin, pressing the foot pedal to open it. Inside were a dozen or more empty vials, but none containing any dregs.

  “Bugger it!” she cursed. Now what? The only serum in the world had been left in her backpack. It could be found with Flopsy stowed in the overhead cabinet of the aeroplane her and Barry had leapt from.

  Time to forget about it. That was all gone... and the only person who could have produced more − her father − was dead.

  Then it suddenly dawned on her, a sound seemed to audibly click inside her head.

  “My father!” Running from the kitchen, Sophie rushed to her bedroom and went straight to the items she had carried back from America. Before sleeping, she had moved them from the bed onto the dressing table. They were still there now.

  Reaching for the vial of blue liquid, she plucked free the folded piece of paper from beneath the red elastic band. Excitedly, she unfolded it and placed it down so that she could read it. Her father’s scrawl appeared to her:

  A remedy to your predicament... drink me!

  “He knew that I was running out of serum, so made me this...” Sophie picked up the small bottle of liquid and watched it disappear in her hand − a frustrating by-product of her genetic alteration which made it impossible to look at anything she held.

  But my father lied to us, she thought to herself. Who’s to say this ISN’T just a serum to counter the effects of my condition, but a cure? Although she had often wished she had been normal, frequently voicing it, since the events began back in July, she didn’t doubt that her abilities had been of crucial benefit and very much a blessing.

  She didn’t know if she was quite ready to be rid of them, not just yet.

  A remedy to your predicament... drink me!

  “The predicament I most have is not having any serum and being stuck like this... invisible... forever!”

  Still, she couldn’t be sure. Next to the slip of paper were the other items her father had left her. The photograph and the thumb drive.

  Maybe the answers are on here, she pondered as she picked up the thumb drive. It didn’t matter that she could no longer see it, she could feel it and almost sense the answers contained digitally within.

  Almost as though telepathically responding to a mental summoning, Sophie’s mobile began to ring. It was Emily, and it wasn’t the first time she had tried calling her over the past twenty-four hours.

  Sophie had ignored all nineteen previous calls, the last one only twelve minutes earlier.

  The Show Must Go On... played, her father’s familiar ringtone. Sophie snatched up the handset and answered.

  “Where have you been? I’ve been sick with worry...” Emily spoke like an upset parent, her voice shrill and tinged with annoyance.

  “No time to explain. I need your help.”

  She went quiet for a moment, probably to clear her head.

  “Okay... how?” The tone Emily used indicated that she would return to the former question.

  “I need you to come to me. My father’s thumb drive; I need to see what’s on it.”

  “Sophie, I’m not coming to America... I’ve only been back here a few days...”

  “No, I don’t want you to,” she said. “I’m in London.”

  Emily took a moment to digest this information. “Where?”

  “Home,” Sophie replied softly and sadly.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Dominic

  Shortly after 6:00 a.m., Dominic watched from the water’s edge as Elspeth disappeared across the sea in the Bell 206 helicopter, the twin-bladed, single engine aircraft floating a couple of metres above the choppy waters of the North Atlantic Ocean, at a height believed to be below radar detection. Sea mist sprayed Dominic’s face as he lowered his hand from waving off the ginger-haired woman, her face having turned away even before the black helicopter had taken off. When all he could see of the chopper was a small dot in the distant sky, and the sound of its beating rotors were no longer heard over the roar of the sea, Dominic turned around and began his morning jog along the shingle beach. From within one deep pocket of his hooded sweatshirt, he pulled free his iPod and inner-earphones, plugging them into both of his ears.

  The album Black Holes & Revelations by Muse played, blotting out the noise from the ocean and the occasional howl of the wind. In addition to taking his mind off running, absorbing himself in music helped him think. Shutting out any distractions, the early morning run had become more than just an exercise regime; it was fast becoming a ritual.

  Whilst the ninety sons of GYGES enjoyed another hour in bed, Dominic would be out running until sweat drenched his clothing and matted his long dark hair, no matter how cold it was outside. The weight which he’d piled on during the three months he’d ‘laid low’ would drop off fast, his body returning to the shape and fitness he once took meticulous pride in. He anticipated that by Christmas he would be back to peak condition, just in time for when his plans would truly begin.

  When he jogged into the hastily erected compound building, some of the identical boys were wandering the corridors and heading towards the mess hall for breakfast. Dominic barely acknowledged them as
he advanced towards the private rooms where he spent most of his time.

  After a shower and a bowl of mixed fruit, he sat down to read the newspaper. Delivered by the Bell 206 helicopter with fresh supplies daily, it was Dominic’s only way of keeping abreast of what was going on in the world outside − although, a day out of date. It reminded him of when he holidayed in Greece. The papers on the newsstands were always a day behind.

  The front page of The Daily Mail was reporting a story about a scandal involving a prominent Tory MP and a night spent with three prostitutes in a drugs den. Dominic flipped over the page to more articles of impropriety or impending doom and gloom. He riffled through a couple more pages until a headline caught his eye.

  “Interesting,” he said to himself.

  CALIFORNIA UNDER SIEGE

  The news story detailed the events occurring in Fresno, California, where it claimed a gunman was shot and critically injured by cops after a high speed car chase. The journalist glossed over some details about the situation, but indicated the incident started at Fresno Yosemite International Airport when a flight from Miami landed. It was claimed that the gunman had an accomplice − possibly female – and that she had escaped, despite the airport being locked down and completely surrounded by police. No description of the gunman’s accomplice had been released; however Dominic read that a joint operation between the FBI and Intelligence Agents was in full swing, and that the events were being linked with the death of George Jennings. Although not confirmed, an inside source had suggested that the gunman and his accomplice had a few hours earlier travelled on a flight from Cuba, possibly using the aliases of ‘Mr and Mrs Mason’.

  Dominic would have continued to mull over the bulletin, but another caption gained his attention.

  “He-llo beautiful,” he said quietly, sitting up straight, as though it helped with his attention.