by Nikki Owen
Undisclosed confinement location—present day
Ramon ceases pacing and rolls his head. I don’t know what to do. The light in the room has weakened and the bulb above us hangs limp in the air from the ceiling where droplets of moisture now gather and fall.
‘Why did you contact the Project?’
My brother inhales. It is long and drawn in, sending his eyes up into his brow so all I can see in the dimness of the room is the pale white of his eyes.
‘You needed help.’
Worry and confusion collide in my head. How can Ramon believe the Project could help me? The thought scares me because, in all the time I have known about the Project and the hold they have over me, I never imagined that hold would extend to my brother. The fear that grips me now is more than I have ever felt. It rips into me, tearing open so wide what I held true, that reality is barely recognisable any more, because it’s not just me they are poisoning—my entire family is infected now, too, and it is all so painful to contemplate that my brain is unable to process the emotions of it. I begin to lightly bang my head on the back of the chair.
‘The Project are dangerous,’ I say. ‘They cannot help me.’
‘They are doctors. M, stop banging your head—you’ll hurt yourself.’
‘They perform tests on me. They will hurt you.’ The thought makes me bang my head a little harder.
‘No, they won’t, and tests can help you.’ He shifts forward. ‘M, please stop.’
‘No.’
‘Yes.’ He tuts. ‘See, M, this is what I don’t understand. You’ve been seeing the Project for years—why won’t you just accept that all along they have been there to help you?’
I halt hitting my head. His words, my brother’s words. Seeing the Project for years. A cold shiver runs down me as I connect it all, as, one by one it all slots into place like a puzzle, the files, the ones Chris hacked into at the monastery upturning the false information about the contact being papa when all along, it wasn’t papa at all, just like Ramon said. ‘How do you know I have been seeing the Project for years?’
He remains quiet.
‘I said how do you know I have been seeing the Project for years?’
‘You know.’
‘I want you to say it.’
He closes his eyes. ‘Because I’m their contact.’
Blood rushes up to my head. I instantly thrust myself forward, rattling my arms and legs to break free. ‘Let me out.’
‘M …’
‘You sent me to the Project! You were the contact, not Papa. You let them test on me! How long have you been with them?’
‘M, calm down.’
‘How long have you been in touch with them?’
He shifts from foot to foot. ‘Several years.’
‘How many?’ He is thirty-six years old. Two decades of contact would take him to starting at sixteen.
‘M, stop!’ His voice rises and I slap back into the chair at the sounds, and when I look at my hands they are red and bulging where my fingers and nails dig into the wood.
‘Maybe it’s ten years? More?’ he says. ‘I got the information on the Project from Mama.’
And then, when he utters that, it all makes sense. The Project being able to find me. MI5 discovering my villa, the handlers, the file Chris located at the abbey with all the surveillance data on me, my locations, actions, full day-by-day whereabouts right down to the last second. ‘You accessed the details Mama believes are for an Autism Centre and you have contacted the Project, and the Project have turned you. They have convinced you they are helping me and are now using my own brother to conspire against me.’
‘Maria, that’s not true.’
‘They are dangerous,’ I say, urgent now. ‘You can’t trust them. Ramon, whatever they have told you, you cannot believe them.’
‘He said you’d say that.’
I stop at his words. ‘Who said I would say that?’
The light swings once then twice above his head. ‘Dr Carr.’
‘Dr … Dr Carr.’ I say the words as if in a trance and when I blink, the room feels as if it is swaying and yet everything remains still and frozen and set in stone and time. Ramon does not move. He hangs his fingers by his side and, tipping his head to the left, observes me as I now frown and drop my chin, my mind inside grappling with the weight of what is real and raw and utterly urgent.
‘M? M, say something. You’re worrying me.’
I lift my head. ‘You know Black Eyes.’
‘Black who?’
‘Black Eyes is Dr Carr. Which facility are we at?’
‘What? What do you mean facility?’
I look at the room again. The walls I recall from my dreams are white, but here there is no light and the walls are black and soot-filled, so what does that mean? What location can that be?
‘If Dr Carr has been contacted,’ I say now at speed, ‘or if Project officers are on their way, we have to get out of here. They could arrive soon.’ I try to pull myself up and out, but the rope drags me back and pins me to the chair. Breathless, I look round. The crate is upturned, my journal sits on it, open on a page where Ramon left it. ‘We have to get away from them. We are all in danger. Mama, is, too. It says so in my journal what they can do. It details everything the Project has done to me that I can remember.’
He sighs. ‘M, Mama is fine.’
‘How do you know Mama is fine? Have you seen her? We could be anywhere now. The Project has facilities in places I still do not know of. We are not safe.’
‘M,’ he says, his voice low and hushed, ‘Mama is fine because … because she is here.’
Mama at the Project? Panic bolts up like lava. ‘No! Mama is not well. If the Project has Mama it means none of us are safe now. You must understand this. Mama has cancer—this will endanger her health.’
He shakes his head and rubs the bridge of his nose with his fingers. ‘M, please stop.’
‘We have to get out!’
He lifts his eyes now to mine. The air is stagnant. One whip of oxygen skins the edges of the walls and floor, and when I look to my journal I see scrawled writing, notes, maths equations and sketched drawings. The fork from the popcorn lies next to the open pages and when the light bulb swings, glints of metal prongs catch the ripples of air as, before me, Ramon bends down, shuts my journal and picks it up, knocking the fork to the floor in front of me. He slides the journal under his arm and, pausing to press his fingers into the cover, he takes one step to the side where the timer and the medical stand sit.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask. ‘It is vital we get to Mama.’
‘M, Mama is safe.’
‘How can you be certain? The Project has her.’
‘You have to stop talking about the Project like this, M. They do not have her.’
‘You said she is here. The Project are dangerous,’ I say, regardless. ‘And if the Project do not harm her, MI5 could take her in order to get to me and kill me, just as they tried to in my villa.’
‘What? Kill you? What the …?’ He wipes a palm across his mouth and for three seconds, does not speak. ‘They won’t get to Mama just as much as no one is going to kill you. MI5? Jesus, M. You’ve always done this ever since we were kids. Exaggerating, saying you’ve been taken by people, writing down weird made up stories about doctors and white masks and needles. You just wanted to be a doctor, that’s all, so you could make people better, give you a sense of control over life’s events after Papa died. It had nothing to do with the Project. You’ve got to stop making things up, blaming other people.’ He stops. ‘I love you,’ he says after a moment, his voice soft, low. ‘I really, really do, but you always make it about you, always. I exist too. All Papa ever saw was you.’
‘That is physiologically untrue. Papa was not blind, therefore he could see you in the same ratio as he could see me.’
He opens his mouth to speak but then shuts it, huffing out a great sigh of breath. ‘That’s not … that’s not what I meant.�
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‘How do you know the Project will not get to Mama and hurt her?’ I say, fast, my mind calculating now every eventuality of how Mama could be located and used by either the Project or MI5. ‘You cannot be one hundred percent certain.’
‘Yes, I can,’ he says, ‘because a) the Project is not who you say they are and b) Mama is not with the bloody Project because Mama is upstairs in her house in Madrid!’
The whole room stands still. All of it, everything. Ramon’s words hit my brain and, at first, they just hover there, suspended in mid-air, levitating in my mind.
‘Are we in … Mama’s city house?’
‘Yes.’
I keep my eyes down, not daring to look up in case they give away the fear and bewilderment I now feel. The Project has facilities in several locations, but all along, this has not been one of them.
‘We are in Madrid,’ I say aloud after a moment, sounding the phrase out. I try to think through my movements before this room, and small flashes of memories whip by of an airport and people and noise and scaling a tall building.
‘Which part of Mama’s house are we in?’ My voice shakes.
‘The basement.’
I compute the information and force myself to scan the room. The dark walls, the damp and the droplets and the suffocating air that swings on a pendulum between hot and cold. As a child I would come to Mama’s Madrid place many times when she was working on a case in the capital, but I was never allowed into the basement. I was only permitted as far as Papa’s study in the room before the top-level entrance to the basement steps below. ‘You kept me in Mama’s house for the Project. Why?’
He pauses. ‘Because I was worried about you. You disappeared after prison and you came here through the window, M, the bloody window, and it scared the shit out of us. I mean, what the hell? So I contacted them. I contacted them about you to see if they could help calm you down.’
He flicks something on the timer now and a rush of liquid floods the still air. I jerk my head to the right. ‘What are you doing?’
Ramon turns one more switch then, securing my journal under his arm, steps into full view. His hair has slid to his eyes in the heat and under his arms are two circles of damp.
‘Turn off the timer, Ramon.’
‘They will be coming soon,’ he says now.
I bolt forward. ‘No. Ramon, no.’
But he simply sighs and shakes his head. ‘M, it’s the right thing to do, it really is. You’re out of control. The things you say—’ he gestures to my journal ‘—the things you write. M, you need help. I love you, you are my little sister—and you need help. The Project are there for you. Yes, their recommended methods are a little … unorthodox, but they’re on your side, at the end of the day.’ He exhales. There are tears in his eyes. ‘We all are.’
I thrash forward again. ‘Ramon, no. Do not give me any more drugs. Ramon, it makes me forget! This is what they do. Do not believe them! Do not tell them anything more about me!’ Mama is upstairs. Ramon is with the Project. She is in danger.
‘No, M. They said the medicine would do you good, keep you under control until they could get here and help us with you.’
I throw my body forward. ‘Ramon, do not leave me here!’ And as I say the words, as I smack my body towards my brother with all my energy, snapshots of images begin flooding back to me, click, click, click, one after the other like a camera as my short-term memory finally starts to expose itself in full. I see the Project and a room and the man on top of me and the ICE room that Chris helped me break into undetected. I see it all, finally, recall every single part, right up until I arrived here.
My brother ascends the steps, opens the door and turns. ‘It’s okay, M. It’s for the greater good.’
He leaves, the sound of the door, as it closes, vibrating through the room and into the darkness of my ears and head.
The timer by my side ticks.
Chapter 30
Deep cover Project facility.
17 hours and 41 minutes to confinement
I slam my back against the wall and, catching my breath, recite the name and birthplaces of Mozart, Debussy and Wagner to calm me down. I listen out for any officers coming this way. After counting ten seconds, and when all seems clear, I grip the cell phone tight, pad forwards and observe the area.
The ICE room is six metres by six metres with no windows or soft furniture, and on the walls is a light pattern of leaves that appear as if they have been stencilled on with a grey lead pencil. It is cold. A small fog of my breath billows into the air and I pull the dead man’s sweater tight over my chest and hook the combats up to my stomach so they don’t slip down my hips. The lights in this room, as outside, are low-stimulus, casting small shadows of my frame across the side of the walls and when I move my arms, they rise slowly across the dimensions of the space making it seem as if my body is bigger than it is.
Over to the right sits a computer. I walk to it now and slowly, I peer down. It seems to be linked, from first glance, to a modem in the corner on a shelf-size table that juts out like an ice sculpture and dominates the room. I remain as I am and keep my eyes set on it. Could this be it? Could this be the computer Raven informed me of?
I text Chris to update my status then take two steps towards the computer, but something is not right. I bend forward and realise what is unusual about it. Old. The computer is old, not a modern laptop or a flat screen update, but a bulbous, cumbersome machine, a small, fat dinosaur of a device with a modem that sits by the potbellied screen where two green lights flash, switched on, ready to be used.
The cell phone vibrates, making me jump a little. I compose myself and read.
Creating a secure line now to speak on. Ready in three. Two. One. OK. You can call me now if safe.
I call Chris’s cell and Balthus picks up.
‘Oh, Maria, thank God you’re okay. Where are you?’
I tell him, my eyes on the computer.
‘Does it look like the one the woman in your memory described?’
‘It is possible.’
‘Doc?’
Patricia. When I hear her voice I instantly smile. ‘Are you safe?’ I ask.
‘What, me? Doc, I’m fine. I’m more worried about you. Are you hurt?’
I touch the bruises now appearing on my wrist where the officer held me down, and glance to the phrase etched in ink by Black Eyes on the flesh of my upper arm. ‘I am hurt but not a concerning amount. I am in the ICE room.’
‘Okay. Okay, good, good. I’m going to pass you on to Chris, okay? But Doc, be careful. We’re all here, yeah? You’re not on your own.’
I breathe in and let her words sit in my head and stay there.
Chris comes on the line now. ‘Hey, Google, so what can you see?’
‘My name is not Google.’
‘I know.’
I look to the room and describe the computer as I have seen it so far.
‘Sounds like a standalone one, all right. Way old, too. Have you switched it on?’
‘It is on standby.’ I lean in. ‘Pressing the button now. There is an old hard drive station to the right.’ I wait, one second, two, until, finally, a fan inside splutters to life and the screen flashes green once, dies, then reappears with an operating page.
To the side is a chair made of grey plastic with black rubber soles. I pull it out, no sound made on the floor and, keeping the cell to my ear so no one passing by will hear any extra voices, I continue to Chris.
‘The screen is fully functional now.’
‘Cool. Anything on there yet?’
It first appears flat and empty, but then, as the screen flickers and moves, an icon, a red and blue icon with a yellow bar like a vulture’s beak, appears. I describe it to Chris.
‘Whoa,’ he says. ‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know how to access it then bypass the code?’
I think to my notebook, remember all the images photographed in my head of the data an
d numbers in there. ‘I can access the first level and then jump to the second.’
‘Nice. If there are more levels after that, I can help. Oh wait—Patricia says five fingers again. What the hell is that?’
I think of Patricia’s hands held up to mine and, listening out for any external sounds, I roll back the shirt sleeves and get to work. The first task is to concentrate on the computer and locate the yellow symbol on the screen that matches the one from my memory of my notebook and coding. Almost instantly, a series of numbers flash up, but then: nothing. The screen plummets into black and my eyes tear across the glass, searching for something that is not there. I try to think fast. What have I done? Has clicking on the icon crashed the system? Do they know I am here and have alerted Black Eyes?
I tell Chris what has happened, unsure if he can help but aware that if I waste any more time, I could be found.
‘Okay, hang on,’ he says, and I hear some rustling and then he’s back. ‘Sorry. Packet of chips. Okay, so you should see a blue square, top left hand corner. You see it?’
I look. He is right. There is a tiny blue square in the edge of the screen no more than one millimetre in diameter and when I squint at each corner, I see they are curved and round and soft at the edges. ‘It is pulsating,’ I say.
‘It is? Ah, okay. Don’t touch that then—it’s a trap. Kind of. Okay, now look at the yellow part of the icon instead and hover the cursor over it. I’m trying to access their system now at the same time, so I’ll be a sec.’
There is a clash of sound from outside. I don’t move, instead wait and listen. It sounds like metal being toppled somehow somewhere, but it is difficult in this room where my breath blows, to determine the exact location. After five seconds, the sound passes and the air returns to quiet. I swallow, look to the screen and carry on.
The cursor, when it hovers over the yellow of the icon, does, as Chris said it would, shimmer. I lean in and study it. There are pixels as it moves, black, tiny pinprick dots that flash in and out, and when I sit back, they seem to disappear.