by Lee Isserow
“But I'm still alive... still have a pulse, right? So my blood is moving like it should...”
“But not in the, uh, affected area.” the doctor said, moving to a set of silver drawers behind him, retrieving a syringe and vials to collect blood. “I'm going to collect a blood sample and we'll get a better idea of what's going on in there...”
“Have you seen anything like this before?” Ben asked, concerned at the doctor's manner.
“Not like this myself, no. It might be one of any number of conditions... I'm sure all will be revealed once we've got a sample under the microscope.”
Ben wasn't convinced, but let the doctor slap a strap around his left arm nonetheless. He watched the veins in his wrist engorge with blood, and when they were good and thick, the doctor informed him there'd be “Just a little pinch.” as he inserted a needle with plastic wings at the base into the juiciest of the veins. He reached for one of the vials and clicked it into place in a slot built into the plastic.
Ben caught him cocking an eyebrow. “What's wrong?”
The doctor pulled the vial out and clicked it back into place. Nothing was coming out. “Well that's curious...” he said, pulling the needle out.
Ben winced, and the doctor grabbed a ball of cotton wool, putting pressure on the vein he tried to tap. There was a small bead of bright red blood on the skin where the needle had been, but it did not flow as he pressed on it. He looked at the cotton wool, and discovered there was no blood saturating into the fibres. Inspecting other veins, he tried again, inserting the needle without the warning, and once again clicked the vial into place. But still, the vial remained empty.
“Might have to try the other arm.” said the doctor. He removed the strap from the left arm, placing it on the right, and waited for the veins to get full and thick. He tried one point of entry, a second, then a third, and did not seem to be concerned that he was sticking Ben like a pin cushion. Not a single drop of blood flowed into the vial.
“May have to make do with a swab.” he said, placing the needle on a plastic tray, returning to the drawer for a swab. He removed it from sterilised packaging and instructed Ben to hold his shirt up. “This might be uncomfortable,” he warned, before digging the cotton bud deep into the wound, twirling it between his forefinger and thumb before pulling it out. The head of the swab came out ragged from the friction, but was still bright white, as if it hadn't just been a few centimetres deep in the guts of a man.
The doctor disposed of the swab, needle and vials in a bin with a biohazard sticker on the lid, and turned to Ben with the expression of a man trying to remain professional whilst grabbing at straws. “Iron deficiency,” he said. “That's what this looks like to me.”
Ben had seen the symptoms of an iron deficiency on his search, and it didn't match up. He thought about disagreeing, but the doctor was already over by his desk fixing him up with a prescription. “This'll have you sorted in no time,” he said, passing the script over to Ben, who thanked him half-heartedly before leaving the examination room.
Heading round to the hospital pharmacy, Ben joined the queue. He delved into his pocket for the script, but his fingers found something harder than the thin slip of paper the doctor handed him. He recognised it before even bringing it out of his pocket, the sharp edges of the business card he had been given by Ailes in the interrogation room.
He ran his finger over the raised lettering of his name and number. The man seemed to understand his condition, or at least understand that what he was going through wasn't normal. He had said there were unexplained deaths, missing people, and if any of it tied in to what Ben was experiencing, it was a hell of a lot more likely to answer his questions than taking some iron supplements.
He left the queue and turned to the exit, dialling the number on his phone as he walked through the automatic doors.
It rang once. Twice. A third time. Ben looked at the screen and checked the number he was calling to the one on the card, mouthing each of the digits out as he confirmed they had been typed in correctly. He felt a chill at his waist. Looked down. His shirt running thick with blood.
It couldn't be real. The doctor had poked and prodded and nothing had come out. He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, opened them again.
The blood was gone. It was all in his head.
It had to all be in his head.
On the fifth ring there was the click of a connection. A deep inhale before the speaker said anything. “Mister Graham.” Ben could almost hear the smile on the words. “Glad to hear you've changed your mind.”
Ben hadn't changed his mind. Not even in the slightest. But given what he had gone through the previous night, and that he seemed to have a condition neither he, nor a doctor could explain, this was the last option left on the table.
21
Ailes appeared a little too excited to receive the call. Ben tried to ignore the exuberance in the almost childlike voice on the other end of the phone. The conversation was short. Ben didn't push Ailes for answers, imagining that he wasn't willing to go into specifics on an open line. This was proven correct when Ailes promised that he would explain everything his department did when they met in person. Ben thanked him pre-emptively, even though there was nothing to be thankful for as of yet. Ailes finished the call by saying he would send GPS coordinates to Ben via WhatsApp, and wished him a good night.
Ben wasn't convinced he would have a good night. There were too many questions – including why Ailes would send him the coordinates of their meeting point rather than an address, let alone why he insisted on using WhatsApp.
The latter became clear when Ben installed the app, and the first thing that popped up was a notification informing him that any communication over it would be secure and untraceable. Exactly the type of thing a government employee would want when transmitting coordinates. The message came in from Ailes, and a second question was answered when Ben put the GPS coordinates into Google Maps and they gave him the address. Thames House. The home of the British Security Services.
There was pressure building in Ben's head once again. This wasn't just a man with potential answers. This was a man from the government, who had enough power to sway police away from him as a suspect in a murder investigation.
He closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, exhaled slowly, tried to picture a tap at the back of his neck. It was an exercise a therapist had given him many years previous. He imagined himself turning the tap ever so slightly to let the pressure drip out. A slow trickle that he pictured pouring down his back and dissipating into nothingness. Ben opened his eyes again. The pressure was still there, the exercise failing as always. There was, however, a lingering catharsis. The same catharsis he had taken away from every therapy session. Even if the therapy and the exercises didn't actually do anything to relieve the pressure build-up, they always gave him a moment of serenity at the notion that there was the possibility of one day being able to wield control over his problems.
Ben held the card in front of him, flicked at the corner absent mindedly, bending over a triangle of black into the rectangle of pristine white. He would go to Thames House, he would see what this man Ailes had to say. It couldn't be any worse than anything he had been through over the previous few days. He was certain it couldn't be as agonizing as the knife to the gut, or as horrific as the nightmare of being drowned in blood.
Months later, he would think back to how anxious he was on that night, about something so small and simple as walking through the doors to Thames House. And when he thought about it, he would laugh to himself about how very wrong he was. Those doors were the gateway to experiences that were more painful and terrifying than anything he had ever lived through before.
22
Walking up Millbank the next day, Ben didn't find it hard to spot Thames House. The monolithic structure was built of massive concrete slabs, on the ground floor they were up to two feet tall and three to four wide. Above those floors, the slabs became larger, with art deco chevrons above each of the windows.
He followed the coordinates. They were not for the main entrance, and had him walking along the bank of the river. He passed a few archways built into the side of the building, each of them was four or five times taller than him, with intricate nautical imagery carved into the stone. Entry was blocked off by solid, dark wooden doors engraved with further etchings, and each of those doors was locked tight. He continued onwards, seeing a larger archway that he was certain had to be the entrance on the map. It was twice as tall as the arches he had passed, with intricate brickwork on the underside. A low staircase with ramps on either side led to three sets of doors with mirrored glass set into the frames. He reached for the circular door handle to the middle of the three doors and heard a click. He pulled it. The old wood was thicker and heavier than he expected. Ben tried to quell the anxiety bubbling in his gut, accompanied by building pressure in his head, and heaved the door open, stepping inside.
His boots clacked on the granite tiles as he walked across a grand entryway towards a single, solitary desk at the centre of the room. He looked up to discover the ceiling went up two, perhaps even three floors high. Similar nautical etching from the archways and doors outside was laid out upon the ceiling, but grander, with much more detail. Ancient vessels rode upon rocky waves towards land. Ben wondered if they were transporting goods, or looking to colonise. The hard edges and lines felt hostile, somehow reminded him of that old British Empire mindset, and gave him the impression that it was definitely all about colonisation.
“Mister Graham?” the receptionist said.
Ben looked down from the ceiling and saw the short, mousy man hiding behind the grand desk. He nodded, not sure whether he should be perturbed that his name was known without having to state it.
“Elevator three,” said the man, indicating to the far side of the grand entrance. “Agent Ailes will meet you when you get off.”
Ben wanted to say something, but didn't know what. He shot the receptionist a polite smile and walked in the direction indicated. Elevator three dinged as he approached, the doors gasping open as he walked towards them. He stepped in and looked for a button to press, but there were none. The doors sighed gently as they closed behind him in a soft, silken movement, and started taking him through the building.
The mechanism relocating the elevators was smooth and silent, to the point that Ben couldn't tell if he was moving up or down. Hell, he thought, I could be moving side to side in a great glass Wonkavator and not know it.
The elevator dinged just before the doors opened, parting to reveal Ailes' beaming face. “Mister Graham!” he exclaimed in his unusually pitched voice. “So lovely to see you on this fine sunny morning!”
The floor they were meeting on was all walls, covered in bright red wallpaper. There were no windows, the only light provided by rows of bulbs built into the ceilings. Ben looked around and couldn't help but ask; “Are we underground?”
“Underground! Ha!” Ailes said, as he started leading the way down the hallway. As Ben followed, he couldn't help but notice that his question hadn't been answered.
The corridor was long, with many closed doors on either side. Small half-spheres, about the size of a baseball, were installed in the ceilings above every door. Their surface was a solid glass mirror, tinted black other than for a single red light shining out from within. Ben once again felt the notion pulsating through his skull that he was being watched at every door they passed. But at least this time, he tried to reassure himself, he knew who was watching.
They turned the corner at the end of the hallway, which led on a little way before reaching a grand set of double doors. Ailes reached in his pocket and pulled out a keycard, holding it against the lock on the door for a moment. The lock clicked open and he returned the card to the pocket, pushing the left hand door wide open, and gesturing for Ben to enter. Ben did as instructed, nodding with a polite smile. The doors led to a grand meeting room, three of the walls lined with bookcases, a large rectangular old oak table at the centre, with sixteen chairs around it. Windows lined the far wall, streaming in bright whiteish- blue daylight from behind net curtains. Something didn't feel right about the light, as if the frequency was different to the daylight Ben had been in only minutes earlier. He walked towards the windows and lifted the netting up, to see large bright bulbs lying behind a thin sheet of diffusion paper, behind them was bare brick, with silver card stuck to the wall. It was refracting and reflecting the bulbs, to make it appear more like natural daylight coming through the 'window'.
“Very astute, My Graham,” Ailes said with a smile. “Now, would you be so kind as to take a seat?” he signalled with a hand to the table. Ben turned and looked at each of the sixteen chairs set at the table. It was clear which one was intended for him, a small stack of papers and a pen were laid out in front at the chair at the head of the table. Ben did as instructed, settling into the ancient looking captain's chair, which creaked under his weight. The upholstery set into the base of the chair was thin and old, he could feel the hard wood under him.
“Before we go any further,” Ailes said, smile still fixed on his lips. “I'm going to need you to sign the Official Secrets Act.”
Ben looked at the papers stacked in front of him. The top sheet had two insignias on it. The first was some kind of royal seal, with a silhouette of the queen. The second was a more official looking, with something written in latin. Under them, it read Official Secrets Act in a crisp, black font. He turned the page and started reading. The language was archaic, and seemed as if it were being purposefully obtuse, but he persevered on to the second page, aware of Ailes' sighs and eye rolls with every paragraph he got deeper into the paperwork.
“You're not signing your life away,” Ailes said, clearing his throat. “It's just a formality, agreeing that you will not discuss any of what we tell or show you with anyone on the outside.”
Ben glanced up at him. Ailes appeared to be in a hurry, and didn't know what the rush was about, he certainly wasn't going to sign something without understanding what it contained. He continued to read, ignoring Ailes' disgruntled sounds and movements. As he came to the final page, Ben turned back through the stack, initialling every page in the box indicated, and signing on the dotted line at the back of the final page.
“Jolly good,” said Ailes, collecting the paperwork from him. “Do please come with me.”
Ailes led him back out through the double doors to the corridor. They walked all the way along, past each of the spheres that had watched them on the journey to the meeting room, and returned to the elevator. Ailes motioned for Ben to wait by a set of doors, and moved over to the far side, where a panel was built into the wall. He retrieved his keycard once again, held it to the panel, and typed in a code. The elevator dinged and the doors opened. Ailes gestured for Ben to enter first and followed him in. Once again, as soon as the doors had closed, Ben couldn't feel any motion from the metal cage. A few seconds after their journey began, it ended, the doors dinging open again.
The floor they had arrived at was a flurry of movement. Suited agents walked to and fro in a hurry, some carrying manilla folders, others with tablets. The two of them manoeuvred into the flow of traffic, and followed a stream of people towards a set of glass doors with Operations Room etched into the surface. The doorframe beeped quietly as they walked through it, keeping a count of everyone who entered and exited.
The large room through these doors was a hive of activity. Its dark walls were offset by chrome desks and chairs, florescent tubes held aloft over them that were attached by chains to a ceiling shrouded by shadow, that appeared to be raw brick, as far as Ben could tell. There was no lighting for the room itself, each workstation was individually lit, with large screens built into the wall at the far side of the room acting as the only source of ambient illumination.
The desks seemed to be arranged in sections. At one, the screens showed waveforms, the analysts sitting at them each had headphones, and appeared to be listening to 999 calls. A second set of desk
s comprised of people reading blogs and news stories that had been flagged, sending relevant stories on to someone higher up, and discarding those that did not seem relevant. A third set of desks had people crowding round a larger monitor, looking at maps, tracking some kind of pattern. Ben stood in silence, looking from section to section, trying to discern what they all did, when thin fingers wrapped around his arm.
“This way.” Ailes said, with that smile still pasted on his face. His grip was loose, as if he didn't wish to startle or put too much stress on his new recruit.
Ben realised something about this man, the stranger who had approached him, and walked him through to the inner sanctum of his department. The smile that was constantly on his lips wasn't from some kind of affectation or politeness. It was from fear. This man was afraid of him, as were many of the people in the Operations Room. He had caught brief glances in his direction, that shifted away as quickly as they arrived. Whatever their job was here, whatever they were analysing, he was a part of it. And by being a part of it, somehow, he was putting the fear of God in them all.
23
Ailes ushered Ben through the Operations Room, down another corridor and through an unmarked door. It was dark on the inside, no furniture, and the only light was coming from the other side of a two-way mirror.
The room on the other side of the glass was bright white, and extremely well illuminated. It was so well lit that Ben could only make out the corners of the room if he concentrated on them. It looked like an infinity curve, the type of white they use in photoshoots and television commercials, a white that seemed to go on and on and never stop.
“What's this?” Ben asked.
“I can't really explain what we do here with words...” Ailes said, with a chuckle. “Forgive the Matrix-ism... but you have to see it for yourself!” The smile that came with those words was genuine. A pride in his tone, at being in charge of whatever he was about to show Ben.