by Nikki Owen
‘You know, prison.’
I pause my counting. What do I say to his question? The truth?
‘It’s okay,’ Chris says, ‘I know your deal.’
‘Did we have a deal?’
‘What?’
‘You said what again.’
‘What?’ He slaps his forehead. ‘Jesus. No. I mean I know about your conviction, you being in jail. I don’t mind.’
Four hundred and three pixels. ‘If you know about my conviction, why did you ask what I was in prison for?’
‘Um, I was just … making conversation.’
‘Oh.’ I don’t know what to say. ‘Okay.’
He taps his coffee cup now, watches the screen as the modem fires. ‘So, whereabouts in Spain are you from?’
I swivel my head so I can see him. ‘Salamanca,’ I say, unsure whether to tell him or not, and yet finding my lips automatically wanting to speak, as if they have a mind of their own. I look at him in more detail. There is a small rip on the sleeve of his marble grey T-shirt, which is half tucked into dirty light blue jeans, baggy on the leg. I lean in and sniff the air. This close he smells slightly different—raw cake mix spritzed with musk cologne.
I sit back. ‘You smell good.’
A laugh spurts out. ‘What?’
‘I said you smell good. Why are you laughing?’
‘I know what you said, it’s just that …’ He stifles a cough, moves back a little, rubbing his chin, and I find myself becoming concerned at how I may have acted.
‘Balthus told me to be friendly,’ I say after a second, looking down. ‘But sometimes I … say things that people …that people do not like.’ My cheeks flush. I spin back to the safety of pixel counting on the computer, feeling exhausted at the short exchange. Five hundred and two pixels …
For a small while, Chris does not speak, but after a small while, he leans in, not too much, just a little and says, ‘You smell good, too, by the way.’
Finally, after a while, the computer splutters into life and the screen I was awaiting pops up. I whip round immediately, ready to search for the map reference.
Chris points to the screen. ‘You’re going to use a proxy, right?’
My fingers suspend themselves above the keyboard. ‘You are a criminal hacker. I thought this would be a secure line.’
He shakes his head. ‘No. Well, yes, it is, but I like to make sure everything’s like, well, super secure, you know?’
He looks at me, waiting. For what? ‘Oh. Yes.’ I say, though not sure why.
He smiles. ‘Cool. So, you need to use a proxy. I can’t have anyone finding me. Finding you.’ He tuts. ‘Us. Sorry—I promised Balthus.’
‘How do I know if I can trust you?’
He shrugs. ‘You don’t. You just have to, I don’t know, take my word for it, I guess.’
A shot of adrenaline charges through me. I look at this man, the black hairs on his arms, his nut-brown skin chalked with tiny scars. The body can tell a thousand stories, Papa used to say to me. You just have to figure out the plot.
Over by the window, the shutter outside swings forward then back silently in the breeze. I look back to Chris. I trust Balthus and Balthus trusts Chris.
‘I need to perform a search,’ I say, finally.
‘No problem. Want me to sort the proxy and stuff?’
I hesitate. ‘Yes.’
He delivers me a wide grin. ‘Cool.’ Then he takes the keyboard and, tapping in a code, sets up what I need to begin.
To calm my nerves, I start in my head reciting all the famous people in the world with Chris as a forename.
Chapter 14
Undisclosed confinement location—present day
I try to understand what Ramon is saying, but it does not make sense.
‘But Patricia was here,’ I say, searching the floor, the light weaker now, a single shaft of it projecting forward as in my head doubt begins to mushroom.
‘No, M, she wasn’t.’
‘She was there,’ I say, nodding forward to the spot I assumed my friend was, but all my sight catches now is an empty space of black dirt floor, dust rising in the shaft of light that beams in the room. ‘I heard her,’ I find myself saying, ‘I did.’ My breath is short, sharp and I struggle to understand what is happening.
Ramon shifts on the crate and delivers me a long stare. He clasps his hands together, folds one knee on top of the other and juts out his chin. ‘M, it was the drugs. What you saw, heard—it wasn’t real.’
His voice is cotton-soft and I try to focus on it, cling to the lifebuoy of the sound, but all I can think of is Patricia, and, when I blink in the gloom, my eyes sting and a wetness prickles out onto the red hot flush of my cheeks. I close my eyes.
‘Is she safe?’ I say after a moment. ‘Does the Project have her?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why do you not know?’ I open my eyes. I can feel my chest tighten as my sight becomes singular and funnelled.
‘M, I don’t know anything about Patricia, but what I do know is that it was the drugs you’re being given that made you see your friend.’ He pauses. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Then you have to help me,’ I say, an anger, a hint of fire burning up inside me at the confusion, at the fear. ‘You have to help me escape.’
His head drops. ‘No.’
A shiver from somewhere runs over me. ‘Yes. You must.’
He lifts his head now and when he directs his eyes to me, I see they are tinted with light pools of wetness.
I don’t speak. I am confused. Nothing here makes sense and even though my brother is with me now, he is not helping me escape.
‘M, you have to talk to me.’
I force myself to look at him. He is pristine. The crate upturned, he is sitting one leg swung over the other as if he were posing for a catalogue shoot on the deck of a boat. His hair, when the light catches it, is wet with gel, not a strand out of place and when he opens his mouth, I see his teeth are straight and glowing, and his clothes when he moves are starched and pressed where his muscles flex long and lean from years of early-morning swimming.
‘M? M, are you okay?’
‘You have not called me M since I was twenty-one,’ I say.
‘We grew up.’
‘Why are you here?’
He hesitates. He opens his mouth then closes it and scratches his chin with his index finger and thumb. I glance around the room. The place still does not look familiar.
‘I am here,’ Ramon says after a few seconds, ‘because I want to help you.’
‘Did they send you?’
‘Did who send me, M?’
‘The Project.’
He stares at me. He says nothing in reply and keeps his gaze on me, on my torso and limbs, and when I turn my head away, unable to bare the intensity of the attention, he scrapes forward the crate and moves closer to me. My breath quickens. I can smell him now, my brother. I can smell his washed skin scrubbed with soap, lemon colgne, and when I raise my nose I get mould and damp from the black of the room, and all the scents mix together to create a bucket of aromas that smack a punch in my nose. I gag.
‘M,’ Ramon says, moving in nearer, ‘what’s the matter?’
‘The smells,’ I say, pressing back my head as far as it will go against the damp wood of the chair I presume I am sitting on.
‘Oh, sorry.’ He moves back, fixing the crate to its original position and running a hand along his slacks. I breathe out and allow myself a glance left and right then straight ahead towards Ramon. I shake off the scents, try not to let them engulf me.
‘Tell me …’ I stop, shake my head away from the smell of mould that remains in my nose. ‘Tell me why you are here. They have not hurt you, so what have they asked you to do?’
‘I … I cannot answer that.’
‘Why?’
But he does not respond.
‘I asked you why?’
His eyes rise, but they are not sparkling as usual, are instead
dulled and washed out, as if the person behind them is not really there, and for the first time I start to wonder whether he will hurt me.
‘Ramon, who tied me up?’ My voice rises with my fear. ‘Who connected me to the timer and the drug?’
Ramon’s eyes flicker upwards towards where the timer now begins to click a little louder, a little more pit pat put into the room.
My eyes dart to the drugs and back. ‘The timer is set to go off at intervals,’ I say, words tripping out. ‘The Project have either forced you to be here or convinced you that they are good. They are not. Untie me and we can escape together.’
He hesitates. ‘I can’t. I … I can’t help you escape.’
‘You can. It is simple.’ I jerk to the timer. The fluid is rushing faster now. ‘You need to untether me—I can take out the needle.’
He fleetingly closes his eyes, inhales a long breath. ‘Maria, what do you think is happening?’
The needle starts to dig further into my skin, the liquid building pressure in the vial. Fear flies up. Why isn’t Ramon helping me? Why? And then I stop, suddenly understanding the situation. ‘They are watching us.’
‘What? Who?’
I scan the room for any recording devices, hair matting to my head, sweat dripping. ‘They have used fake spiders before to covertly record me, so what are they using now?’
‘M, you sound crazy. You’re worrying me.’
My eyes land on a hole in the wall, tiny, black, barely visible in the murkiness, but there, real. ‘The hole one metre to your left. That could be a recording device.’
He spends two seconds staring at it, then, shaking his head, he returns his attention to me. ‘M, do you know what is happening?’
A thought slaps me right on the cheek bone, cold and stark. ‘Are you a hallucination?’
At first, he does not utter a word, and then he does something, something odd and unusual. And frightening.
He shoots up to his feet and screams, unexpected, unprompted.
The noise ricochets around the walls. It bangs around my ears and against my skull, and even though the padding on the brickwork smothers some of the sound, my brain feels as if it will explode, the force of it is that much. I cower. Ramon kicks the crate and I can’t move, cannot get out of his way because my hands are still tied and the timer still ticks.
After two, perhaps three seconds pass, he finally comes to a stop and heaves in three gulps of breath. The corn on the cob bulb above swings above us. I say and do nothing, too confused to try. Ramon takes one look at me and, withdrawing a handkerchief from his pocket, wipes spit from his mouth, dabs his lips at the corners then, sliding the white cotton cloth back to its home, he clears his throat.
‘I apologise for my outburst.’
I don’t know what to do. I stay as still as I can and try to assess the situation. What is happening? What have the Project told him? How have they brainwashed him? My pulse is charging through my wrist as I think to myself what I can do, think through the next steps and tell myself that, no matter what happens, it will be okay. Because, no matter what the Project have said to him, Ramon is my brother and he wouldn’t hurt me.
Would he?
Montserrat mountain valley, nr. Barcelona.
26 hours and 40 minutes to confinement
Chris taps the screen and sets up the proxy. He creates the information he needs to ensure a secure line and while he waits for the next stage, he stretches his arms high above his head and yawns.
‘So,’ he says, yawn over, ‘how was prison?’
‘It was a large, brick-built place constructed in the British Victorian era.’
He drops his arms and looks to me. I face the computer.
‘The proxy is ready,’ I say.
‘Oh. Right.’ He leans in to the screen and taps the keyboard in the next required part of the process. His fingers work fast and carefully and I find myself enjoying watching the movement of them as they work, lost in the rhythm of their dance.
‘Hey, you know, your conviction was bigger than mine,’ he says after a moment, still working the keyboard. ‘I don’t know if I can trust you.’ He turns, grins.
‘Why are you smiling?’
‘Huh? I was just—’
‘I was acquitted of murder in a retrial. You were in prison for hacking government websites. You were not acquitted.’
A laugh spurts from his mouth.
I watch him, curious. ‘That was funny?’
He leans back in his chair and lengthens his arms outwards, this time towards each wall and when he does, I see the dark shadow of the hair under the pit of his shoulders.
He looks at me and smiles. ‘I like you,’ he says.
‘How can you make that assessment? You do not know me. I do not know you.’
He nods. ‘Okay. Okay, sure, sure.’ His arms drop and he turns his torso to me. ‘You seem like an oddball, but that’s kind of cool with me—and you know Balthus—so I’m going to tell you who I really am.’
I glance to the door. I can be out of it in two seconds and through the main house door in under eight.
‘I’m a hacker,’ he says. ‘I’m from Idaho. I’m thirty-one years old and when I was twenty-three I got my first hacking conviction for smashing open some shit firewall of a defence behind a government military facility.’ He exhales. ‘Anyway, by the time I reached the prison Balthus was at, the one he was at before Goldmouth, I’d been inside twice more. I was supposed to be extradited to the US from the UK, but it didn’t happen. Balthus—he was good to me, helped me with my case.’
Chris folds his arms across his chest and his T-shirt tightens over his rib cage and abdomen, making each muscle and bone jut out, and I watch him, finding myself uncertain, not sure what to think.
‘So,’ he says, grinning. ‘Now you know me at least a little more.’ He moves aside, points to the computer. ‘It’s all ready. What do you want to search?’
Hesitating, I pull my chair towards the computer and, calling up a search engine, I tap in the grid reference number from Dr Andersson’s phone. After three seconds, the answer flashes up.
‘Switzerland?’
I ignore Chris and look to the screen. Lake Geneva, Switzerland blinks in front of me in straight, formed letters, round and clear. I scan my memory for any connection, but I cannot find one that lights anything up, and even though I have been fed and am not now as tired as before, still my mind runs blank. Is it a place I have been to before with the Project and cannot recall? Is it the location of the Project facility where Raven was held?
‘Hey,’ Chris says, ‘this yours?’
Chris is holding the SIM card from Dr Andersson’s phone. I snatch it back.
‘Whoa, okay, okay. I was just looking because it’s odd.’
I am sliding away the card then stop. ‘What is odd?’
He leans in a little. I lean back. ‘It’s just that, well, it’s not a standard SIM card.’
My curiosity, despite my best efforts, is peaked. ‘Tell me why.’
‘Um, well, do you mind?’
‘What?’
He points to the card. ‘Can I … If I could have it, I can show you.’
I hesitate as the issue of trust flags again in my brain. But then I think of Balthus, and I find myself slowly handing over the SIM.
‘Thanks. Okay so, this groove here, see?’
I bend in, squint. ‘Yes. I see.’
‘Well, it’s computer-linked.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s like, compatible with a computer. But,’ he shakes his head, ‘not in an ordinary way. See, the groove is specially made, customised, really.’
Neurons fire in my head now, back and forth. ‘Is it compatible with this computer?’
He shrugs. ‘I guess so. Want me to try?’
‘Yes.’ I then pause, remember what Balthus told me. ‘Please.’
He smiles. ‘Okay, then.’
He slots in the SIM card to a slit no more than 1
.5 centimetres long on the side of the computer. He takes the keyboard towards him and, tapping in a series of numbers and figures, leans into the screen and waits. His leg is jigging and on his face, his cheeks flush as the late afternoon heat beats in the window where the shutter outside has come loose.
‘Ah. Fuck.’
‘What?’
He rubs his chin. ‘Well, this bit’s encrypted.’
I look. He is right. The access to whatever data is on the card is locked, enshrined in a code that is so long, my brain plays catch-up with following it.
‘I can access this code,’ I start to say, ‘however—’
‘Oh, I can do it.’
‘What?’
‘The code. I can hack it. Seen this kind of thing before.’
I suddenly become concerned. ‘How?’
‘Er, duh? Hello? I’m a hacker. I hacked the US government. They have the highest level of security. Which means, actually, this is high-level stuff, too.’ He pauses, looks at me.
I look away, uncomfortable, unsure how to respond. ‘Can you access the SIM?’
‘Huh? Oh, yeah. Sure. I don’t know what all this is about, but if Balthus is part of it, I trust you.’
Chris starts the process at speed. I take out my notebook and write down what he does, the sensation strange—I do not recall learning from someone else like this before, learning coding and decryptions in such a way. Yes, the Project has taught me a lot, but that I have no real recollection of. Watching Chris, gaining knowledge from him it makes me feel … happy, like I’m not on my own, not the only one living in a head like mine.
‘Okay so,’ Chris says after less than thirty seconds have passed, ‘I’ve brought up the next phase … I’m gonna try moving the cursor over everything.’
On the screen there is a ticker tape of numbers that snake in a line across the glass where a file of black and white sits. ‘Look out for an icon structure,’ he says.
‘What type of structure specifically?’
‘Black. Square.’
I stop. A black square structure. Heat rises to my head as I connect two elements. ‘When I was in Balthus’s office,’ I say, fast, ‘I hacked into a confidential website through a black square.’
‘Cool, well, let’s see what we can find.’