Large, beefy hands grabbed his shoulders. They pulled him away and the door handle slipped from his fingers. The man turned Michael’s body to face the nurse.
“What do you want done with him, sir?” he said.
Sir? What person in a white coat ever called a nurse sir?
“Back in there,” said the nurse. He stood aside and Michael found himself staring back at the treatment room he had run from.
The man’s strong hands pushed him, and Michael went sprawling inside. His body crashed against the desk. The vials in the admin tray tinkled as they knocked together.
The door closed and Michael heard the sound of a key turning in the lock. He tried the handle just in case. It wasn’t going to open. “Shit!”
He looked around the room. There was a window. One of those long, rectangular windows that opened from the bottom and angled outwards. He tried the handle. That, too, was locked. He could try to break the glass, but it was double glazed. The only way to smash it would be to break the vacuum seal between the two panes. He frantically looked for a small, sharp object. He pulled open drawers, knocked books off shelves; desperate for something like a screwdriver or a drill bit. Not exactly standard equipment for a medical treatment room.
He reached for one of the hypodermics. The needle was thin and fragile, but he prayed it was enough. He ripped off the packaging. Just as he heard a key being placed in the door. Too late to get out the window. But he could use the needle as a makeshift weapon. He hid it behind his back.
The key turned. At the last second, he thought to reach for one of the vials in the admin tray and secrete it in his pocket.
The beefy man entered followed by the nurse and, behind them, a woman in a white coat. She really did look like a doctor. Tall and slim and neat, with long brown hair pinned back from her face, a bold blue blouse and straight black trousers under her doctor’s garb. Her eyes widened when she saw Michael. A startled stare, like she was looking at the impossible.
Michael wondered if she, too, perceived he was a norm.
“There he is, Doctor Page,” said the nurse, pointing at Michael.
“Thank you, Alan,” said Doctor Page, her voice soft and preoccupied. Still staring at Michael. “Leave us, please.”
“What?” said the nurse.
“Thank you for bringing this to my attention,” she clarified. “I will deal with this.”
“Ma’am,” said the beefy man. “I wouldn’t recommend …”
“It’s fine, really,” said Doctor Page. “Just take the hypodermic needle he’s hiding behind his back and I will be fine.”
Michael stood as the beefy man came forward, reached for his arm and prised the needle from his fingers. There was no way the doctor could have seen it was there. Even if she saw he was concealing his hand, she couldn’t have known what was in it.
“If you’re sure …” said the nurse.
Doctor Page nodded.
The nurse grabbed the admin trays – with their hypodermics and vials of curative liquid – and exited, taking the beefy man with him.
The door closed and Michael stood alone with Doctor Page. He stood beneath her gaze. A scared kid without a weapon, without a plan or a way to escape. What happened next was going to be up to her.
And then she did the most unexpected thing. She hugged him.
She engulfed him in her arms and drew him close. He felt her breasts press against his chest as she gently squeezed him. So close he could smell the musk of her perfume. Michael – confused and uncomfortable – stiffened against her embrace. Until she finally let go and he was able to pull away.
“My God, Michael. What are you doing here?”
She knew his name. His real name. Did she perceive it? He didn’t know how to respond. It was still her move.
“Did they take your picture, Michael?”
“Picture?”
“Yes. Did they check you in? Did they take your details?”
“Uh … yeah,” he managed.
“My God, Michael,” she said again. “Why? Don’t you know all that stuff goes straight to Cooper?”
“Cooper?” The name chilled him. Michael flashed back to the man slumped on the fire exit stairs with a kitchen knife in his stomach. “He’s alive?”
“We have to get you out of here.”
There was a knock at the door. Doctor Page was so startled, she visibly jumped. For a second, Michael thought she looked just as scared as he was.
“Doctor Page?” called a voice from outside. It was the beefy man. “Are you all right?”
“Yes! Just a minute!” She looked at Michael. Looked into him. Her eyes gently unpeeling layers from his mind. “It’s so good to know you’re okay, Michael, but I wish to God you hadn’t come.”
“You know me?” The realisation struck him with the force of an electric shock. “My name? My life?”
But the beefy man was knocking again.
“Yes, yes!” said Doctor Page. She took Michael’s hand and propelled him to the door. She opened it to find the beefy man standing there, his body filling the doorframe. “It was a simple mistake,” she told him. “This boy’s already been cured. Must have got turned around in the system. He was so confused, poor lamb, he didn’t realise. I’ll take him back to recovery.”
“I’ll do that for you,” said the beefy man. “You have more important things to do.”
“No, no. It’s all right. I’m going that way, anyway.” She squeezed past him. The man stood aside to allow her through. Michael tagged along behind, his hand still in hers, like a small child being helped across the road. Then they were in the corridor again, the beefy man behind them and a clear path ahead.
“Do you know your way out?” Doctor Page whispered.
“Yes, but …?”
“No time for questions,” she said. “Cooper’ll be on his way, if he’s not here already. I want you to get out and keep going. I’ll cover for you here as much as I can, but it won’t be long before someone realises.”
She let go of Michael’s hand and stopped walking. He felt her touch his back and give it a little nudge: a signal for him to keep going. He took a couple of steps then glanced behind. She had already turned away from him and was walking in the opposite direction.
He breathed deep. He was back on the plan: get out now; think about it later.
The way back to the entrance was unimpeded by other people. He walked with confidence, giving the impression he had every right to be there. He held his breath as he walked past the buxom woman at the head of the waiting area. She didn’t so much as look up from her computer.
Emerging outside through the main entrance onto a landscaped gravel area, he realised how far away he was from his agreed rendezvous point with Otis. The main road lay some one hundred metres down a thin, gravel drive edged with trees and shrubs and he had at least a ten minute walk after that. Not exactly prescription for a quick getaway.
In those seconds that he paused, he heard footsteps on the gravel behind him. His heart beat faster, but as he turned, he saw that it was Elaine and her mum, their ginger hair bright in the autumn sunshine. He sighed with relief.
“Hi, Elaine!” he said, trying to sound all bright and cheery.
“Oh, hello,” said Elaine, that vacant stare on her face that reminded him of Jack.
“I just called my dad and he’s stuck in traffic,” Michael lied. “He doesn’t think he can pick me up. Couldn’t give me a lift, could you? Just to a bus stop or something?”
Elaine, now cured and unable to perceive his lie, looked up to her mother. “Mum, can we give Eric a lift?”
Her mother looked across at Michael. “Oh, hello again,” she said. “I suppose we could.”
He walked with them to an adjacent car park, a square of black tarmac layered with the yellow and red of fallen leaves from the overhanging trees. Elaine’s mum’s car was a light blue Renault which had seen better days, but was roomy enough. He got into the back seat. Elaine offered to sit in
back with him and they made their way slowly up the thin, gravel drive.
“It’s so strange.” Elaine looked across at Michael. “It’s like you’re here, but you’re not here.”
“What do you mean?” said Michael.
“I can see you, but I can’t feel you.”
“You mean, you can’t perceive me?”
She thought about it for a moment. “I can’t perceive anything. It’s weird.”
“Do you remember what happened?”
“Mum held my hand while the doctor gave me an injection.”
“Anything else?”
“The recovery room.” She smiled. “They gave me chocolate.”
Her mum called out from the driver’s seat. “I’ve enrolled Elaine in a new school. Isn’t that right, ’Laine?”
“I can make new friends,” said Elaine. “No one will ever know I was a perceiver.” Then she stopped talking and gazed out of the window. There was something serene about her. Disoriented, but oddly happy. Looking at her, it was difficult for Michael to believe what Otis had said, that the cure had taken part of her soul and thrown it in the rubbish.
The car braked suddenly. “Bloody hell!” gasped Elaine’s mum. The tyres skidded on the gravel and the car jolted them against the seatbelts with a sudden stop.
A large black car had turned into the driveway as they neared the entrance which was only wide enough for one vehicle. They’d come to a stop centimetres from the other car’s front bumper.
“Don’t these people look where they’re going?!” said Elaine’s mum. She sat there resolutely and made some gestures out the window. After a few moments, the other car backed down. It reversed slowly out onto the road.
Elaine’s mum put her car into gear and, with the scattering of stones from her wheels, continued out of the driveway.
Michael looked out of the side window at the offending car as they passed – it was large, imposing, sleek and black. He caught a glimpse of its front seat passenger: He was a middle-aged man with a full head of dark hair, dressed in a suit. He had his elbow resting at the base of the window while he gazed out at the scenery.
With a chill, Michael recognised him.
It was Cooper.
Even though he knew who it was, Michael continued to stare. A moment too long. Cooper turned his attention from the scenery towards him. Their eyes locked.
Michael ducked down into the footwell, out of sight of the window. Too late, he feared.
“What you doing down there?” said Elaine.
Michael kept quiet. He held his breath. And hoped.
Above him, he heard the tick-tock of the car’s indicators. A rev of the engine. He held onto the back seat as the Renault jolted forward and sped away from the clinic.
CHAPTER NINE
MICHAEL THREW OPEN the passenger door of Otis’s ugly, dented hatchback. “We need to go.”
Otis – caught by surprise – jolted in the driver’s seat, almost dropping his phone. “Jesus!”
Michael hopped in and shut the door. “We need to go now!”
“What happened?”
“Go now, ask questions later.”
Otis started up the engine, put the car into gear and pulled out of the lay-by onto the main road. Michael swung his head round to look out of the back window. There was no sign of Cooper’s sleek, black car.
“Is someone following you?” said Otis.
“I don’t think so.”
Michael sat round to face front and allowed himself a relieved sigh. The road ahead was clear. The speedometer on Otis’s dashboard pushed sixty.
He braked sharply at the approach to a roundabout. They swung round to the third exit. He put his foot down as soon as they turned off onto the dual carriageway.
“So what happened?” said Otis.
Michael checked behind him again to make sure Cooper wasn’t there, then he explained everything.
“This nurse perceived you?”
“Yeah,” said Michael.
“Not possible.”
“He looked into me. Like you and Jennifer sometimes do.”
“Adults aren’t ’ceivers.”
“You can’t know that for sure.”
Otis glanced in his rear-view mirror and slipped into the left hand lane. “No one had it before us teenagers. That’s why they hate us. Among perceivers, I’m about the oldest there is. It couldn’t have existed before that, people would’ve noticed.”
“Are you sure? Because this nurse … he must be about ten years older than you – and he had it. I’m telling you, he really had it. You can perceive me if you don’t believe me.”
“I perceive you believe it, Michael mate, but there’s no way it’s true.”
“I think it is,” said Michael. “I think they’re lying to you.”
Otis looked at him. For as long as he could possibly keep his eyes off the road. Like he was really wondering if it was possible. Then he turned away, reached forward and switched on the radio. Music blared out of the speakers. Loud and raucous. He turned it up. The base shook the car in a steady rhythm that blocked out the sound of the tyres rumbling over the road, and chased away difficult thoughts.
~
OTIS ENTERED THE flat and threw his keys into the kitchen. They hit the back wall and dropped onto the worktop below. Michael followed him in and closed the door.
Jennifer jumped up off the sofa, turning off the TV with the remote as she did so. “Well?” she said, approaching Michael. Her eyes looked intently at him. He knew she was trying to perceive him before he had a chance to tell her. “Did they …?”
“… cure me of something I don’t have?” said Michael. “No.”
She seemed relieved. She sat back down on the sofa. Otis joined her. He put his arm around her shoulders. She allowed it to rest there, but didn’t sink into his affection. “So,” she said, “what happened?”
He told her what he had told Otis. She sat, open-mouthed, listening to it all.
“What do you think, Jen?” said Otis. “Adult perceivers – is it possible?”
“Yesterday and I would’ve said no, but today …?” She let her doubt fade away.
Jennifer pulled her phone from her pocket. “We need to tell people.”
Otis reached across her and spread his hand over the screen. “No.”
“We can’t fight this together, Otis, if we don’t share information.”
“We don’t know anything for sure.”
“Then how are we gonna find out? You can’t send Michael back in there – and we can’t go without risking being cured.”
Something triggered in Michael’s mind. He’d been so focussed on escaping Cooper, he hadn’t thought about anything else. “I almost forgot.” He delved into his pocket and pulled out the vial of liquid he’d taken from the nurse’s desk. It was warm from being close to his skin. He handed it to Otis.
“What is it?” he said.
“That,” said Michael, “is the cure.”
Otis’s eyes widened. He turned the glass tube around in his hand. “This?”
It was about ten centimetres in length with a rubber stopper on one end and clear liquid inside. On the outside was a label that read: CLINIC #1. 50ml. Serial no. 537986B
“Let’s see,” said Jennifer. She took it from him and held it up to the light. The liquid sparkled with purity. “It’s so small.”
“But powerful enough to change your life,” said Otis.
“What are we going to do with it?” said Jennifer.
“We should get it analysed,” said Otis.
“How are we going to do that?” she asked.
“I know someone.” He grabbed it back from her.
“Who?” Jennifer asked.
“No one you know.” Otis looked at his watch. “I’ll be a couple of hours.” He got off the sofa.
“You’re going now?” she called after him.
“You know what they say,” said Otis, halfway to reclaim his keys from the kitchen. “Strike
while the women are hot!” He tossed his keys into the air and caught them again. He gave her a cheeky smile as he went out of the door.
CHAPTER TEN
FROM THE Action Against Mind Invasion website, www.aami.com:
WHERE DID PERCEIVERS COME FROM?
The short answer is, nobody knows. One day teenagers were those young people who hung around on street corners looking glum, then four years ago we found out they were looking into our minds.
We found out. It’s almost certain they existed before then. As Professor Olong of the University of Birmingham says: “It seems likely these children were perceivers before their teenage years. The research we’ve been able to do so far suggests they were capable of perception in a limited form before puberty. Probably misunderstood as instinct, or the ability to read body language. While the children themselves kept quiet about the truth for fear of being singled out as abnormal.” [www.dailynews.co.uk/science/olong]
As for why perception appeared all of a sudden, the reasons are still unclear. “More research needs to be done,” says Olong. “But it seems to me that something in our environment must have triggered this change. For a fifth of teenagers to suddenly have this condition, it cannot be a coincidence.”
~
JENNIFER STOOD IN the kitchen, her back resting against the worktop while reading something on her phone.
“Hi, Michael,” she said without looking up.
Michael stepped into the kitchen. It smelt of the curry Otis had cooked last night. The pans he put in soak were still in the sink, the bubbles from the washing up liquid no longer on the surface, just an orange goo floating in the water. A kettle on the side rumbled loudly as it boiled.
“What are you doing?” he asked her.
“Nothing.” Her eyes stayed focussed on the phone.
“You’re always on that thing.”
“Need to keep in touch with other perceivers.”
“Why?”
Mind Secrets: A Science Fiction Telepathy Thriller (Perceivers Book 1) Page 6