"But he's not human."
"Quite so. Would you want a toddler with superpowers deciding to go on the rampage? Or would you rather a well-behaved child who obeys his elders?"
I glared at him.
"What gives you the right?"
"National security. The safety of the world. And the fact that we agreed to follow orders when we signed up to work for Station. Come on, Cress, it's for the best."
He was feeling a bit more secure. Perhaps he thought I was wavering. He even smiled, tentatively.
"What, precisely, is in that powder you give him, Father?"
He stopped smiling.
Father distanced himself from his behaviour by going into professorial mode, knowing full well I wouldn't be able to follow everything. I stopped him and—despite his protestations—made notes.
"The powder is a mixture. We had to experiment with quantities and dosage. There is some vitamin D in there, the label wasn't completely inaccurate. We found chlorpromazine works to a certain extent if we were very careful with dosage. We considered an injection of sodium piothental might be more effective, but it induced an almost catatonic state, followed by an absolute refusal by the subject to allow future injections."
"Boxing Day," I said, but Father was still talking.
"In the end, it was an experimental American drug that proved to be the best fit. It's at its earliest developmental stage, but Quetiapine proved very efficient for our purposes when mixed with chlorpromazine. We used some more common synaptic inhibitors, of course. Considering our lack of a control group, and the highly experimental nature of the treatment, we managed extraordinarily well, developing, within a short period, a—"
"What does the drug do?"
He stopped in mid-flow, then thought for a moment, choosing his words carefully.
"Cress, it doesn't hurt Abos in any way, I want you to know that."
"What does it do?"
"It slows him down, Cress. It makes him more reliant on us. More compliant. It makes him suggestible. The educational programme Carstairs started enables us to help Abos become a patriotic defender of democracy, freedom, and the British way of life."
With an effort, I un-gritted my teeth.
"You're brainwashing him."
"Now, Cress, that's not true. We want Abos to embrace the right values as he grows. We don't want a superpowered Nazi, or communist, flying around the place, do we?"
"You're brainwashing him," I repeated, all the pent-up anger draining out of me in a wave of tiredness. It was all I could do to hold my head up. "How could you? You, a scientist? A father? How can you help Carstairs abuse Abos?"
"Cress, don't be naive. There are some decisions that are too serious to be taken by individuals like us. Some threats to our country must be dealt with by institutions like Station."
"Is that how you see him?" My tone was flat. "As a threat?"
"No, probably not. But that's my point. I am not qualified to make that kind of assessment. Neither are you. Particularly you, I'm afraid."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Carstairs claims you're in love with Abos. I can't say I agree, but I have concerns about your relationship. I worry about it, as should you, Cress. He's not human."
My face flushed again, and I felt some energy finally return along with my embarrassment and anger.
"How dare you. How dare you." It was good to raise my voice, to challenge Father, to force him to defend the indefensible."If you continue blindly messing around with his brain chemistry, we may never discover who he is. You can't possibly know what kind of damage you may be doing to him. How could you?"
"There are risks, Cress, I don't deny it. But what choice do I have?"
"You have the choice to say no. To refuse to help. To rally support from your fellow scientists and make Carstairs see that this is wrong."
Father shook his head.
"But I don't believe it is wrong. And if I were to walk away, they would appoint someone else. No one has quite the level of expertise and experience with the subject that I do. It would be irresponsible in the extreme. I can't do it."
I sat and looked at him, then stood up and left the room.
An hour ago, Father knocked on my door. I didn't answer, but I listened.
"I don't know what you're thinking of doing, Cress, but please remember how deeply involved I am at Station. I could never walk away without endangering you. Their methods are brutal. Morally indefensible, perhaps. But effective. If you can't trust yourself not to interfere, you must ask for that transfer. An attempt to thwart Carstairs would be seen as treason. Treason, Cressida. They would lock you away for the rest of your life. We are trapped, both of us."
He's right, of course. Such a logical man. I want to hate him for what he's doing, but I can't. He's still my father.
I can't go back to Station. I'll ask for a transfer tomorrow.
I feel like I've betrayed Abos, and my betrayal is the worst of all.
27
Daniel
I underestimated Station. Hopkins, and others like him, are the kind of people who say, "the end justifies the means," as if it's true. As if repeating it with absolute belief somehow makes it acceptable. As if the "end" they are pursuing justifies any "means" that they choose. Betrayal, lies, manipulation, brainwashing. Violence, torture, death.
Beware those who are certain of their beliefs. If in doubt...good.
I said sometimes you don't know when a chapter in your life is about to come to an end. The chapter that closed for me in that corridor with Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber was followed by blank, empty, wasted pages. Hard to think about it. Even now.
I was a young man. Still a kid in many ways.
At least, at the end of it all, there was the best chapter of all. I met George. The single most important person in my life, even though our time together was short.
I went to sleep one day at the age of twenty-one. When George woke me up, I was thirty-five.
When I look back on those years—which is something I've avoided—it's easier to pretend I was unconscious the whole time. It means I can treat any memories as dreams. Or nightmares.
The truth was that I was conscious for between six and eight hours every day, according to George. During this period, I exercised, ate, and performed essential bodily functions. there were children's books to read, to keep my mind stimulated. Not too stimulated. Lots of Enid Blyton, but no Roald Dahl. My captors really were prize bastards.
The children's books were necessary because of a side-effect of the drugs. I could reason to a certain extent. I could make straightforward decisions. Should I eat the banana first, or the sandwich? Will today's story be The Faraway Tree or Noddy? But anything more taxing brought on a headache.
I didn't sleep as such. It was more of a daily medically induced coma. I always had a cannula on one of my hands connected to a drip on a wheeled stand.
I would wake at some point every day. I'm only guessing it was every day. I have no way of knowing conclusively as my room had no windows, clocks, or calendars. The first thing I'd see would be a doctor or nurse checking my chart. They would ask inane questions about how I was feeling, then put a fresh bag in my drip. Whatever they gave me kept me docile, obedient, and hardly present in any meaningful way. I would let myself be fed, then led to the toilet. In the toilet, I would sometimes remember to look at my body. There were often dressings on my chest or side. There was no shower or bath, just a small sink. I don't remember that I smelled bad, so they must have given me sponge baths in bed.
There was a small gym next door. It had a treadmill and an exercise bike, plus resistance machines to maintain muscle tone. While I worked out, anodyne new age music played, with a voiceover murmuring feel-good mantras. I can't remember a single one, but I enjoyed listening to them. Remembering that makes me angry. Even now, if I see a motivational poster, I want to puke.
After exercise, there was more food. Sometimes a doctor would visit and ask questions
. They would ask me to remove my cotton pyjamas. They'd use a felt tip pen to draw lines and arrows on my body, before making notes.
I was allowed to read afterwards. There was no television or radio. After what seemed like an hour, the lights would dim. My drip would be changed. Soon afterwards, I would feel tired. My eyelids would droop, and a nurse would help me to bed.
I didn't sleep, I was unconscious.
I had no dreams.
That was the pattern of my life. Without variation. For fourteen years.
The day everything changed started the same as any other. A nurse, a new drip, a slow float to the surface where a kind of half-consciousness awaited.
"Good morning, Daniel."
This, at least, served the purpose of reminding me of my name. I'm not sure I would have known it otherwise. Daniel Harbin was in there somewhere, but deep down, inert. Waiting.
Food, toilet, gym.
No doctor visited. I sat at the small desk and looked at the selection of books. Had I already read The Adventures Of The Wishing Chair? The cover looked familiar, but I couldn't remember anything about it. I started reading. Within a page or two, I stopped. It seemed unsatisfying. I wasn't enjoying the story. I pushed it away and opened The Faraway Tree. After a paragraph, I dropped it in frustration and picked up Look Out, Secret Seven. My head felt strange. Things were moving inside my skull, the tectonic plates of personality shifting. I felt adrift, confused.
The door opened, and someone came in. It took me a while to respond. I read the same line a few times, then lifted my head.
A visitor. Not a doctor, or a nurse. This was new. I stared at her.
She was in a wheelchair and was the first person I'd seen in more than a decade who wasn't wearing a medical uniform.
She was about my age, mixed-race, wiry black hair pulled back with a red headband. She wore a shapeless brown and black dress that gave little indication as to the shape of her body. Her face was thin, her skin a little sallow. Her gold-flecked brown eyes regarded me with ferocious intelligence. My mouth went dry. A tremor had disturbed the surface of my drug-maintained calm.
When she spoke, her voice was a surprise. It was rich, warm, cheerful. Even that first time, stoned out of my mind, I know it did me good to hear it.
"It's taken me a long, long time to find you, Daniel. You're the first of us. And you're the strongest. They've treated you badly, but it ends today. It ends now."
I felt a strange stirring, a sensation I couldn't place. It was a feeling I hadn't experienced for fourteen years, and my mind went through such a grating gear-shift to allow it that I felt dizzy. I gripped the side of the desk for a moment, then recognised the odd sensation for what it was. It was curiosity. My brain was very slowly, very painfully, waking up.
I looked at the drip on its stand next to the desk.
"Yesterday's dose was half strength," said my visitor. "The one hanging there now is a saline solution. I need you to be you, Daniel. I'm a clever woman, and I have some tricks up my sleeve, but if we're going to break out of Station, I'm going to need you to smash a few things."
I blinked. Moment by moment, I felt myself returning, but it was a nightmarish sensation, bringing with it memories I didn't want to face and a sickening suspicion about the length of my stay in that sterile, windowless room.
"How long?" My voice sounded strange to my ears. Weak, croaky, deeper in pitch than I remembered. I coughed. "How long have I been here?"
She sighed. Her hands were together on her lap, but they were not resting there. Her right hand held the wrist of her left tightly. When she let go, her left hand twitched and spasmed. With an effort, she placed her right hand on mine. Her skin was dry and warm, the pressure on my hand firm. She waited until I looked at her. Her voice was full of sympathy, but I saw strength and determination in her eyes.
"Fourteen years."
She waited. I was far from alert, and I couldn't comprehend what she had told me. I must have looked as blank and as numb as I felt because she squeezed my hand and gave me a small smile.
"We'll talk about it later, Daniel. For now, I've bought us a few hours so you can get your strength up."
I stared back at her. My hand went up to my upper arm, feeling the place where the power button used to be. There was no scar there, but I still felt a lump under the skin.
The door opened, and a nurse pushed a covered trolley into the room. He was unfazed by the woman in the wheelchair. He nodded at us, left the trolley and went out the way he had come in.
My visitor took her hand from mine and tugged at the corner of the cloth covering the trolley. It fell away, revealing two whole cooked chickens, and bowls full of baked potatoes, spinach, peas, carrots, and cauliflower. There was a bunch of bananas and a full fruit bowl with apples, pears, and grapes. There was a jug full of milk and two glasses.
She leaned across and set the two glasses on the desk.
"Would you mind?" she said. I reached over and poured two glasses of milk, my hand shaking a little.
"Thank you." She took three bananas and put them in her lap.
"The rest is for you. You will need your strength, Daniel." She lifted her glass. "Cheers."
In a daze, I clinked my glass against hers, and we drank cold milk together, in a secret government facility buried in the heart of London. A woman in a wheelchair, and a man who had been drugged and kept asleep for fourteen years.
I felt that strange, but increasingly welcome, sensation again.
"Who are you?"
She smiled then, the milk moustache giving her features an impish quality.
"Georgina Kuku," she said. "Call me George. I'm your sister."
28
George kept looking at her watch. I leaned over.
"What time is it?"
"Five forty-five."
I frowned. "Morning or evening?"
"Evening."
I pictured myself on a summer evening, walking along a street. It was a dream-like image, insubstantial. I turned to George.
"Fourteen years. 2015?"
She nodded and handed me the last banana. The entire trolley's contents had been consumed, and George had done her fair share of the consuming. Considering she looked painfully thin, she could pack away her food. I wouldn't have wanted to challenge her to a pie-eating competition. Maybe she really was my sister. Half-sister. If we shared the same father, had she inherited some sort of power from him, too? I looked at her again. A gust of wind could knock her over, never mind a bullet.
"What month?"
"December. Christmas soon."
I altered the mental picture, making it evening; wintry, woolly hat weather, with coats buttoned up and scarves wrapped round faces. I made the street lamplit and added flakes of snow. Then I looked at the white walls, the drip, the monitor, the hospital bed. I couldn't believe my mental picture had any connection with reality. It felt less substantial than Enid Blyton's magical wishing chair, which could take you to far off, fantastical lands.
I started to pull the needle out of the cannula. If we didn't go now, I was sure my mental image would turn out to be a fantasy, and I would never see the sun again.
"Let's go."
George put her hand over mine and stopped me.
"If that needle leaves your vein for more than five seconds, you'll trigger an alarm. Wait."
She looked at her watch again.
"Ten more minutes. We have to wait until after six."
"Why? What happens then?"
"Change of shift."
She pointed at the banana I was holding.
"Eat up."
At five past six, there was a knock on the door. I stood up, fists clenching.
"Don't worry," said George, smiling. "He's part of the plan."
The door opened, and a guard walked in. He was a big, burly man in his thirties. He unclipped his handgun and put it on the table, before undressing, folding his clothes at the end of the bed.
I looked at George quizzically.
"Oh, he doesn't know we're here."
The guard didn't turn at the sound of her voice, just unlaced and pushed off his boots before removing his trousers. He then went to the small wardrobe, took out my spare pyjamas, and put them on.
I whispered, not wanting to break whatever spell he was under. "How? How is that possible?"
"I mess with people's minds, Daniel. In a nice way. Usually."
George dug into her pocket and brought out a sealed packet. She handed it to the guard, who opened it and removed a needle and cannula. Without hesitation, he found the vein on the back of his hand and tried to push the needle in. It took him three attempts to find it, and, by the time he did, blood was dripping from his hand. He seemed not to notice.
"Daniel, transfer the drip, please. Remember, once it's out, you have five seconds."
Still only half convinced this was really happening, I did as she asked with a casual confidence I may not have displayed had I been thinking straight. An idea occurred to me as the guard padded away and got into my bed.
"Are you messing with my mind?"
George laughed with open pleasure.
"Of course. Daniel, you've been in a semi-catatonic state for fourteen years. If I wasn't giving you a kick-start, it would take weeks before you would be in any kind of state to escape."
I examined my own mental processes, as far as that's possible.
"I can't...I mean, nothing feels weird. I...what are you doing, exactly?"
George spun her wheelchair to face the door.
"No time now," she said. "I'll explain at the hotel." She gestured with her thumb at the pile of clothes. "Get dressed and let's get moving. I promise I won't peek."
The corridor outside was empty, just as George had promised. I insisted on opening the door, then running through, ready to confront any guards. She followed, chuckling at my frown.
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