The Killing Files

by Nikki Owen

  Blinking, almost drunk now with pain, I set down the cell phone and the SIM card, and shuffle to the small set of metal drawers to the right of the bath and lower myself down to the edge. Pain swells. I pull out some bandages, surgical scissors, a suture kit then, biting down on my lip, I recheck the wound. The oozing has eased and the blood flow slowed, but it needs attention, fast, and so I slot my finger into the wound. A sharp stab tears through me.

  ‘Maria? Are you okay?’

  The cell phone. I had almost forgotten Balthus was still on the line. ‘I am in pain.’

  ‘Oh. I … Is there anything I can do?’

  I wince. The wound stings. ‘No. You are 1,246 kilometres away.’

  Sweating, I search for a flannel. Locating one hanging its batwings over the sink, I roll it up and stuff it into my mouth, and, ignoring my burning nerves, rip open a bottle of surgical alcohol. I blink, knowing it will hurt, knowing I have no choice, so I take one large bite down onto the flannel and, counting to four, tip the alcohol onto the wound.

  I scream into the flannel, agony searing down my calf, through my thigh. Five long seconds pass before I can look down again, check the area, hands trembling as they hover over my leg, my breathing soft, shallow, brain not wanting to do what it has to do next. Even though I am a doctor, have tended many injuries, my head twitches and I realise I have never before treated myself; at least, I don’t think I have.

  Swallowing hard, I take out the suture kit and, fingers shaking, lay out what I need, counting and recounting everything in front of me. This is it now. I have to do it.

  ‘How much time left?’

  I glance to the cell. ‘Six minutes, three seconds.’

  Reaching out, I pick up the medical tweezers and grip them tight. Routine, I tell myself. To complete this task, I simply need to follow routine, and so I bite down hard on the flannel and, lowering the tweezers to the wound, I begin to extract the bullet from my leg.

  After one minute and twenty seconds have passed, the suture kit is soaked in blood and the procedure is complete.

  I drop my head. Pain pulsates through my leg, the bullet now sitting in the soap well on the sink, splashes of red streaking the white enamel bowl where stained medical strips and scrunched up antiseptic pads lie discarded like roadside rubbish. I look at it all and feel a sudden stab of nausea and worry. The mess. The disorder. It takes every slice of willpower in me to grab the cell and the SIM card, and stagger away from it and back into the bedroom.

  ‘How’s the leg?’ Balthus asks.

  I grunt a reply.

  The time on the clock by the crate next to the bed reads 07:01. I stop, check for any sounds, for any signs of entry. When all appears clear, gasping at the pain, I grab some clothes from the beat-up drawers, pausing to grit my teeth as a wave of heat from the wound charges through me then ripples away. I wait then change. Black jeans, fresh grey tank top, a checked shirt and a black cotton bomber jacket, shoving them on, counting the items methodically, wincing when the denim skims my injury. I scream then bite my lip. Blood oozes out.

  ‘Maria, I’m worried about you,’ Balthus says, but I don’t know why. ‘How much time left now?’

  A slice, a sting shoots through me. ‘Five minutes and thirty-seven seconds remaining.’

  I wrench on a pair of biker boots, a baseball cap and slip on some clear, no-prescription glasses with a thick, black frame then, grabbing my cell and Dr Andersson’s SIM card, turn. This may be the last time I see my villa, I realise. I take a picture of it all in my mind and stand still for three seconds. The silence of the sunshine on my face, the gentle flutter of the morning birds outside, the slow sway of the orange trees in the groves. The air, when I smell it, is warm and fragrant, a fresh, light wisp of heated earth that wanders in through open windows, through unfilled crooks and corner crevices, catching me by surprise. It’s then a wave of sadness hits me. I have been happy here. No social rules to follow, no chit-chat to make, no confusing body signals to be unable to read.

  I put the cell phone to my ear and speak to Balthus. ‘You said you had a contact, a hacker I can go to.’

  ‘Yes,’ Balthus says. ‘His name is Chris. American, but he used to be an inmate here.’

  ‘Can you trust him?’ I step back into the living area, shuffle past the torn newspapers, the splinters of computers and crates, biting down hard on my lip, pressing back the urge to shout out loud that I can’t cope with the chaos. The bandage pulls tight at my leg.

  ‘Yes, I trust him. One hundred per cent,’ Balthus says now. ‘I got to know him well—he’s a good sort, good soul. He lives near Barcelona in a village up by Montserrat. I’ll text you his address.’

  ‘No, do not text me. It may not be safe. Tell me now. I will remember it.’

  ‘Okay. Okay.’

  I hold Dr Andersson’s SIM card in my hand and, reaching into my rucksack, open my notebook.

  ‘How much time left now?’ Balthus asks.

  ‘Three minutes and fifty-two seconds.’

  ‘You’d better go.’

  I hold out the SIM card at arm’s length in the sunshine. ‘I have one more thing to do first.’

  Wiping a bead of sweat from my forehead, I take out an extra cell from my bag and slip the SIM card into it, tapping the keypad fast to check for data.

  ‘You still there?’

  I keep my eyes on the phone. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Checking Dr Andersson’s SIM for data.’

  ‘Jesus,’ he mutters. ‘Hurry.’

  My eyes scan for numbers, codes, anything that may help. At first, there appears to be nothing. The card is clear, the data apparently corrupt, but something niggles. Unsure, I turn to my notebook. Flicking the pages, my brain registers every word, every sketch and algorithm I have ever recorded from my dreams and flashbacks, until I arrive at a series of numbers that looks familiar. I think. Where are they from? Who gave them to me? The configuration is short, complicated, yet, somehow I know that it could be of use, could hold an answer, and I begin to work through it, methodically, efficiently. After seven seconds, I crack it.

  ‘It is a SIM code over-rider,’ I say aloud, amazed. How did I know this? Who taught me to use this code?

  ‘What?’

  I ignore Balthus, locked on to my task, a missile to target as, one by one, my fingers tap in the decoded key.

  ‘Maria, what’s going on?’

  Data. Data flashes up, one followed by two lines of it, short, sharp, but then something scrolls up, something new. Something significant. I look again to be sure. Can it be …? My pulse starts to rise.

  ‘It is a subject number.’

  ‘What?’

  I analyse the information again in front of me, knowing what it is, but not wanting to say aloud what is true. ‘Maria, what can you see?’

  ‘I see a subject number similar to the one on the MI5 report I hacked into from your office.’ I track the number, say it in my head, trying to make it true. Sweat steams beneath my cap, escaping past the rim and to my brow as I look at what I see. ‘This one is number 115.’

  ‘What? But you are subject number—’

  ‘375.’

  We both go silent. The lemon trees in the distance rustle and within them sit small starlings, their heads bobbing up and down in the sunshine.

  ‘It means there are others,’ Balthus says after a few seconds. ‘If that’s a different subject number, it means somewhere else, others like you might still be alive. Jesus …’

  Balthus’s words pinball in my skull. Others. Like me.

  ‘Could it be connected to the file, to the woman you remembered?’

  ‘Raven.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The thought arrests me. The flap of her veil in the breeze, the memory of her invisible face, the smell of the heat and the sand, the secrecy, the hush of some deep, dark void, and her long, loud pleas. I glance again to the subject number—could this be, as Balthus says, connected to her?


  I shake my head and look again at the phone, scrolling down then stop. ‘There is something else next to the number.’

  ‘What?’

  I check again. ‘It is a grid reference number.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you think they are related?’

  My mind instantly begins to attempt to determine the location of the map point, trying to forge any connection that may be there.

  ‘Maria,’ Balthus says. ‘How much time’s left now?’

  ‘Two minutes, two seconds.’

  ‘Damn it, you have to go. You can’t wait any longer. I’m on my way to the airport now. Can you keep the SIM card data safe? Take it with you?’

  I drag my brain away from fact tracking and take one more look at the information on the screen. A subject number. A grid reference. Data. How do they connect? If there are others like me out there then is there a chance I can end all this, stop the danger? I want to know who I am. I don’t want to be pressing my nose up to the window of life any more.

  ‘I am going to find the file,’ I say after a moment.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I do not want MI5 or the Project to harm you or Patricia or Mama or Ramon. If the file can provide information on the Project that will put a stop to the entire programme, information on others like me, then I have to find it. Dr Andersson came for me today. It will be someone else the next day. It will never stop. And you—and my family—will always be in danger. Therefore, I am going attempt to find the file by locating the facility my flashback was based in.’

  Balthus lets out a breath. ‘Okay, good, good, but look, let me help you. I know you can handle yourself, but still. Get to Chris’s place and I’ll fly over there now. We can figure out together what to do next.’

  ‘They will be watching you if you come to me.’

  ‘Then I’ll be careful. I have contacts who can help me slip out.’

  I look at the ripped images and faces that lie on my villa floor. ‘What about Patricia?’

  ‘I’ll get her, too. Okay? She’ll be safe.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Good. Then go. Please, please, go.’

  I ram everything into the rucksack—the SIM card, the extra cell, all of it—I turn to drag myself away then pause. Dr Andersson’s body lies lifeless and broken on the floor, her blood already drying in cemented cracks over the shine of the tiles, my eyes on her stomach where a tiny baby girl once was, pale, stretch-marked skin glistening in the morning sun. I look at her one more time then biting down hard on my lip, fighting back an emotion I do not want to feel, I turn and, securing my rucksack to my shoulder, bandaged leg throbbing, walk away.

  I wrench open the back door of the villa and am greeted by a blast of warmth and sun. For a second, I let it sink into my skin as I blink at the images of the distant Salamancan mountains, the birds and olive trees and groves upon groves of fragrant citrus fruits. I breathe it all in as, directly in front of me, a Carbonell’s wall lizard, rare, endangered, slides onto the fire pit. His skin is yellow, broken by curved edges of black, and, when his tail moves, it whips round, long, thin and fast, his hind legs two stabilisers on the bricks. It hovers there for three seconds, tongue flicking out, then one second gone, it scurries away.

  ‘Time?’ Balthus says.

  His voice from the phone makes me jump. ‘Two minutes.’

  ‘Christ.’

  I throw my rucksack into the truck, turn on the ignition, look to the cell. ‘I am switching off now.’ I go to hit the red button.

  ‘Wait!’

  I pause.

  ‘You mean a lot to me, Maria. Just remember that, yes? No matter what happens.’

  I sit, unsure what he means or what I am required to say.

  ‘You still there?’

  ‘Yes. The time remaining is one minute and fifty-two seconds.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus. Right, yes, yes, go. Go. Oh and Maria? Please look after your—’

  I switch off the cell—there’s no time left. I put the vehicle into gear, check all around me for anyone arriving then pull away.

  As the truck speeds off, dust billowing in the air, I slip one last glance in the rear-view mirror.

  My villa fades away until nothing of it is left.

  Chapter 12

  Undisclosed confinement location—present day

  Straining my neck, I get a glint of the timer again. Patricia has been quiet, falling asleep at the exertion of moving her arm, so I use the silence to see whatever I can.

  It is difficult at first, the room swathed in darkness, a stench of dirty water saturating the air, pricking my nostrils, but it is there, the timer, I know it is, and, despite my head pulsing a pain that shoots like steel through to my shoulder blades, I force my neck backwards, as, slowly, a sliver of light appears.

  ‘Patricia? Can you see the timer?’

  But she remains quiet and while worry bubbles, I calm myself. She is okay. She’s just sleeping.

  My eyes scan the area before the light slips away. The timer is on a clock rotation device. It is small, compact like a shiny penny and is connected directly to a tube that leads to a drug bag hung into a spiked metal medical stand, long and thin. While I have seen devices similar to it before, this one is unlike any other. Its size is unusual, being so small—the timers I am familiar with are more substantial, as big as the base of a coffee mug, but this …? I squint, strain my whole torso—this device is so condensed that it appears unreal, made up, somehow, by a child, not actually functional, rather decorative, for play. As if this is some sort of game.

  ‘Patricia,’ I whisper, ‘I think I can see the details of it now.’

  I track the circumference of the timer, trace the outskirts of its mechanism so I can gauge when it’s set to go off next, but what little light illuminates from the window is fading now and it is becoming impossible to see. My body slumps back, exhausted. My neck unable to sustain the twisted position any longer, I am forced back into a front-facing position.

  ‘Patricia, you must now wake up.’ When there is no reply, I get concerned. ‘I need to check your status. You are injured. Wake up.’

  There is a sudden, sharp clunk. I freeze. My fingers grip the chair and my feet curl into the dirt floor beneath.

  ‘Patricia?’

  Clunk. It sounds again, once, then twice. My whole body becomes rigid. ‘Who is there?’

  My voices echoes in the blackness, but no reply comes back.

  The rope digging into my skin, heartbeat banging against my rib cage, my eyes track the room straining to see something, anything that will give me a clue as to what is happening.

  ‘Patricia, is that you? Can you move now?’

  Steps ring out, there on the air, soles of shoes on stone. My fingers form instinctive fists.

  There are more steps, louder now, nearer and I count them. One, two. Closer. I swallow. Three, four. They sound like shoes, smooth sole, not boots. Five, six. I sniff the air and smell aftershave, spiced, heavy. A man?

  Two more steps echo, advancing now, sweat streaking past my cheeks and mouth. I try to spit it away.

  Seven, eight, nine.

  The steps are near now and I can hear breathing, low and gruff, and the spiced aftershave scent now is so strong, it makes me feel sick.

  Ten.

  The steps halt.

  ‘Hello, Maria.’

  My breathing stops, chest ceases, hands grip still. Because someone stands there now, in this room, in this room-size coffin, and even though it is dark, even though the drugs have distorted my lucidity, I know them. I know their voice, the Spanish lilt. I know their face.

  The person looking at me right now.

  I know who they are.

  It is my brother. Ramon.

  Montserrat mountain valley, nr. Barcelona.

  26 hours and 54 minutes to confinement

  By the time I reach the town at the foot of Montserrat mountain the sun is beginning to fade. I swin
g the truck to a halt and pull the handbrake in place, flopping to the steering wheel as sweat drips past my eyes despite the window being open.

  I pull out my cell phone then pause. The seven-hour journey around the cities Valladolid and Zaragoza was hot, dusty, taking longer than normal, sticking only to dirt roads, back routes to stay off grid and out of sight. A breeze brushes my face, and I lean against the window frame now for a moment, let my head rest, my brain recalibrate. I have not stopped. Not to eat, not to drink. Too scared, too worried that, at any point, MI5 would discover what I have done, catch up with me. Kill me. Kill my family and friends. The image of Dr Andersson’s limp, lifeless body flashes across my mind mixing with Raven’s face, but instead of sadness or upset, a flame of anger whips up inside me and my brain lands on one thought: the file.

  I look up now and get my first view of Montserrat mountain ahead. What strikes me most is the colour of the serrated, misty mass rising up on the horizon. It is deep pink. It has a dusky hue to its sharp, unforgiving surface that pierces a clear blue sky tinged with the orange glow of the afternoon sun. The mountain is majestic against the canopies of white pines, of sweet maples and scented lime trees, of hollies and oaks and yews that thrive in its dense undergrowth, and the rocks, when I track them, jut in jagged blades that stick up tall into the air like broken glass bottles glued together in clusters of red clay boulders, thousands upon thousands of years in the making. I track the saw-toothed edges, counting every single one. They would slice a falling body in half like a sharp knife through an onion.

  I look now to the area where I am parked. The street is empty for afternoon siesta time. Each house that rests in the town is sand in colour, their windows now closed with white wooden shutters that sometimes swing a little in the breeze, rippling small echoed creaks through the empty, narrow roads. There is a small moped to the right of me, rusty and blue, and when I turn my head, I see an old barrel on its side with a thin black cat curled up asleep on top of it.

  Running my hands through hot, sweaty hair, I catch sight of myself in the truck mirror and lean in. Minute blonde curls lick my brow, black roots are painted along my parting and when I check my cheeks and chin I see that they are dusted with a grey and brown film of dirt and sun. The bruises around my mouth and cheeks are deeper now, crops of small blackcurrant buds smeared on, tiny thorns of cuts welded into my bone and skin. I look beat and tired.