Cooper held open the door for Michael. The woman pushed him forward and, as he stepped inside, he smelt the staleness of dust which suggested the room had neither been aired nor cleaned in a while.
Cooper stayed in the doorway. “Thank you,” he said to the woman. “You may wait outside.”
“Sir.” She nodded.
Cooper let go of the door and it closed with the squeak of rarely used hinges.
The briefing room was dimly lit with painted white, solid walls. A spill of daylight found its way through a series of narrow windows above head height so Michael couldn’t see out of them. At the front was a small stage-like platform fronted by a bench-like desk and, on the wall behind it, a white screen that looked out onto racks of seating. Like a classroom or a lecture theatre.
Cooper hopped up onto the platform. “Well, come in, Michael. Come in.” He waved his hand in encouragement.
Michael took two wary steps. Ransom’s words, that Cooper would own him for the rest of his life, echoed in his mind.
“Are you uncomfortable?” said Cooper.
“No.”
Cooper smiled. “Sometimes, you don’t have to be a perceiver to tell when someone is lying.” He stepped back off the platform and stood in front of Michael. “Turn round.”
Goose pimples raised on Michael’s arms and down his spine. Turning his back on Cooper while they were alone together in the room felt dangerous. But he did it anyway.
He heard the jingle of keys behind him and felt the warmth of Cooper’s fingers on his wrists. With two, brief, metallic clicks, the handcuffs were released. Michael felt the relief of freedom and – rubbing his wrists to encourage circulation to return – he turned back.
Cooper held the handcuffs up to shoulder height. “I don’t think we need these anymore, do we?” He dropped them on the bench with a clatter. “We trust each other, don’t we?”
Everything he knew about Cooper suggested there was a level of distrust between them, but Michael was not about to argue the point.
“Take a pew.” Cooper gestured at the front row of seats. Michael took it as an invitation to sit.
Cooper leant back against the bench and folded his arms across his flabby chest. “Thought any more about my offer?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
Michael shrugged.
“I heard you spoke to your father yesterday. What did he say about me?”
“Nothing much.”
Cooper raised his eyebrows. “From what I know of Brian Ransom, I’m sure it was nothing good.”
“He said, if I signed up with you, there would be no going back.”
Cooper shrugged. “I’ll be honest with you. Soon enough, life outside this complex as a perceiver will be virtually impossible. It’s only a matter of time before legislation makes it official. What I’m saying is, Michael, your only choice is to sign up with me.”
“Or I could be cured.”
“You don’t want that,” said Cooper.
Michael had thought he didn’t want it. But getting his perception back had made his life worse, not better.
“Anyway—” Cooper spun around on his heels and hopped up the small step onto the platform “—I said I wanted to show you something. And so I do.”
He touched the top of the bench. There was probably a computer screen or control panel embedded in the wood because, at the behest of his fingers, the screen on the wall flickered and an image appeared. It was a paused video image of a queue of blurry people taken from a vantage point above the entrance of some sort of building. Cooper touched the panel once more. The images started to move.
A woman’s voiceover emerged from two speakers on either side of the wall: “This CCTV footage shows everything was normal at the start of the day at the cure clinic in West London.” The images showed what looked to be parents and their teenage children, some of which looked barely thirteen, standing on a pathway.
“Nobody knows what happened, but something sparked the teenagers into violence.”
The image changed to shaky eye-level footage of angry teenagers throwing bottles. “This footage was posted anonymously to a pro-perceivers website. Although we’ve been unable to verify its source, witnesses say it’s an accurate reflection of what happened.” A woman in a white coat was dragged by her hair out of the building and into the shade of a tree where she was kicked by a boy of about fourteen years old while an older girl urged him on.
The image then changed to show a dozen teenagers – their backs to the camera – pounding fists into the air. Chanting: “We won’t be cured! We won’t be cured!”
“A doctor was taken to hospital where she was treated for minor injuries,” said the voiceover. “Damage to the building was superficial, but staff and visitors to the clinic have told us they were frightened for their lives.”
The images became steady, sharp and professional. They were taken from outside the grounds of the building which was surrounded by the yellow tape of a police cordon. Uniformed officers stood on guard with no sign of the teenagers. This, it seemed, was the aftermath.
The camera panned to show the reporter at the scene, a suited woman in a warm coat with a scarf round her neck: the same one who provided the voiceover. “It’s thought what happened here today was organised by those opposed to the normalisation of our teenagers,” she said, looking directly into the camera. “Police believe an underground network – possibly of teenagers themselves – is gathering momentum. And, from this evidence, gaining support. Officially, officers say they are following a number of leads and are appealing for members of the public with any information to come forward. But a source close to the investigation told me, they may be close to isolating the ring leaders.”
The images returned to the shaky footage of teenagers throwing missiles at the clinic. As it closed in on one of them, Cooper stopped the playback.
Michael looked at the heavy-set older teenager with shocking blond hair and a shiver of recognition passed through him.
“I think we know who this person is, don’t we?” said Cooper.
Michael shrugged.
“Oh, come on. Don’t you recognise your friend? It’s Oliver Smith, isn’t it? The one who abandoned you in the hotel room by jumping out of the window.”
“He didn’t abandon me,” said Michael.
“If you say so. The news report is interesting, though, don’t you think?”
“Are you threatening me?” said Michael. He could be using Otis as a bargaining chip, just as he used Michael as a bargaining chip with his father.
“It’s no threat, Michael. It’s just more information so you can make a decision. I wanted you to realise what the world’s like outside. Some perceivers – like your friend Smith – want to plunge us into civil war. I want to prevent that. Either way, perceivers will be caught in the middle. There will be no place for your kind in society, whether they’re cured or arrested. What I’m offering you is a chance to avoid all of that, to serve your country.”
Michael didn’t want to serve a country that forced its teenagers to be ‘cured’ of something that wasn’t a disease. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in a cell either. Or to allow someone to get inside his mind and destroy his perception, along with whatever else of his brain in the process. He wanted another choice. He needed another choice.
“Why me?” said Michael.
Cooper smiled. “I thought you might ask that. Why am I wasting my time with you when there are thousands of other perceivers out there? Because you’re special, Michael. If there’s one thing I agree with your father about, then it’s that. Have you heard of other teenagers crying out in pain when they first experience perception?”
Cooper waited, allowing Michael to consider his question.
“You haven’t heard of it,” said Cooper, “because it doesn’t happen. Do others say they can perceive the minds of others around them all the time? That the whispers are always there in the background? They don’t
say it because they don’t experience it. You’re strong, Michael. Stronger than anyone else. Your father knew what he was doing when he created you. You can be more valuable to me than anyone else. You can perceive more than anyone else. That’s why I want to find a role for you.”
Michael closed his eyes. He heard the whispers inside of him. They pushed him into believing Cooper. The man he had fought so hard to run away from.
“If it matters so much to you,” said Michael, “why don’t you just force me?”
“I need you to do this willingly,” said Cooper. “I need you to trust me and for me to trust you.”
“I don’t trust you,” said Michael.
“But I’m telling you the truth, you must have perceived that.”
Michael lowered his barrier and perceived the man who stood before him once again. Not deeply – he couldn’t control his perception enough for that yet – but enough to tell he wasn’t lying.
“Think about it,” said Cooper. “But don’t take too long or I’ll have to make the decision for you.”
Cooper stepped off the platform and picked the handcuffs up from the bench. “Sorry Michael, but we have to put on a show for everyone else.”
Michael looked at the cuffs with disdain, a symbol of how he was locked into a choice between two unpalatable options.
“Stand up and turn around.”
Michael did as he was told. He felt the metal encase his wrists.
Cooper led him back into the corridor where the woman in khaki was waiting. “Take him back to his cell.”
The woman gripped Michael’s arm and obeyed his order.
In his cell, he stood passively with his face towards the wall while she unlocked the restraints. As she did so, he felt something being pressed into his hand. Small, almost imperceptible. She closed his fingers around it.
He turned to face her. Instinctively, he looked beyond her eyes, into her mind. He perceived her feelings – sorry for him, but frightened and desperate for him not to react.
He said nothing and made no movement as she turned and left the cell. He waited for the sound of the guard locking the door, then sat on the bed. He opened his fist to reveal a small, scrunched up piece of paper. He unravelled it. Barely five centimetres square with torn edges, it contained a series of numbers written in blue biro:
5 9 2 0
6 4 9 1
8 7 6 4
3 0 5 5
He read them over and over again and wondered if the numbers meant what he thought they meant.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MICHAEL WOKE to the sound of his cell door being unlocked.
With sleepy eyes, he blinked into the gloom to see a hunched figure creep in.
He perceived him before he recognised him. It was Ransom.
A bundle of cloth hit him in the face.
“Put those on,” whispered Ransom.
They were a pair of khaki trousers and T-shirt, like he’d seen others in the complex wear.
“I said I’d get you out of here,” said Ransom. “It’s time to act on that promise.”
Michael stumbled out of bed and put on the clothes. He didn’t have time to scramble around for a pair of underpants, so he went without.
“I thought Cooper wasn’t going to let you back in here,” said Michael.
“I called in some favours,” said Ransom. “Now, less talking, more speed.”
“What about the guard? The cameras?” said Michael.
“They were really big favours. You got the security codes?”
Michael looked at him for a moment, his mind still foggy.
“You should have a piece of paper with numbers on it,” said Ransom.
Of course. Michael reached under his pillow where he had stashed the tiny scrap. He held it in his hand, not sure of what to do.
“You trust me, don’t you, Michael?”
“I don’t know.”
“Perceive me.” He opened his arms in the same gesture Michael had seen before.
Michael looked into his father’s eyes. Beyond his hazel irises, deep and penetrating. A cocktail of emotions flowed from him. Anxiety, sorrow and a touch of fear – all hovering on an undercurrent of love.
Michael withdrew. He shivered. He had no love for his father – not after what he had done to him – and he had no desire to feel his father’s affection for him.
“Now, would you prefer to stay in this cell, or did you want to escape?”
“Escape.”
“Good man,” said Ransom. “Follow me. Be quiet. And forheavensake stop looking like a nervous wreck.”
Ransom peered out of the cell door, then exited into the corridor.
Michael followed.
At the security door, Ransom produced a swipe card from his pocket. He grinned at Michael, then swiped it through the reader.
“Number?” said Ransom.
“Oh.” Michael unfurled the scrap of paper in his hand. He tapped the first number from the list onto the pad: 5, 9, 2, 0.
The door clicked open.
There was no guard in the corridor outside. There was no one at all. The lights were dimmed to a night time glow. They turned left. Ransom swiped the card at the next security door and Michael tapped in the second number from the scrap of paper.
The same at the next door.
At the last door, Ransom stopped. “I can’t go any further.”
“What do you mean?” said Michael.
“A teenager alone, dressed in those clothes, is far less conspicuous than taking me with you.”
Michael looked down at the khaki he was wearing.
“There’s a car,” said Ransom. “Parked at the back of the building on the other side of the roundabout. A white Renault Laguna. It’s unlocked. Get into the boot. Someone will drive you out through the security gates.”
“Then what?”
“Then you’re free to do what you want.” Ransom took both of Michael’s shoulders in his hands and looked him direct in the eye. The earnest anxiety coming from him was difficult to block. “But Michael, please take my advice and run. Run as far away as you can from this place. From Cooper, from your friends, from the country if you have to. I can’t escape from this mess, but you can. You must.”
“And you?” said Michael.
“I’m on Cooper’s leash. I can’t leave.”
Ransom reached forward and swiped the card through the reader by the security door. Michael looked down at the list of numbers. Then back up at his father.
He hated his father. For all the things he had done to him. But he was still his father, the only link he had to his past. Suddenly, he didn’t want to leave him.
Ransom must have perceived it because he said, “You need to go. Now.”
“There’s so many things I need to ask you,” said Michael.
“No time.”
Michael glanced back the way they had come. Back towards his cell. He didn’t want to go back there, but if he ran, he may never know the answers to his questions – and he needed those answers.
He pushed Ransom against the wall – so fast, the man had no time to perceive him. In his surprise, Ransom’s mental barrier slipped. Enough to let Michael through: beyond his eyes and into his mind.
“Show me your memories,” said Michael.
“Whaa—?”
“How you created me,” he insisted.
A flash:
Ransom in his office. Younger. In shirt and tie. Sitting at his desk, silhouetted against the window. Another man stood beside him.
Flash out again. To the corridor, in the present.
Ransom resisted.
Michael pushed.
He looked deeper. He had to believe what Cooper had told him, that he was strong. Strong enough to break his father’s resistance and pull the memories from his head.
“Show me.”
The man standing next to Ransom’s desk – unkempt with straggly hair – wedged his hands deep into his trouser pockets. “We’ve actually d
one it, Brian.”
“You’re sure?” said the younger Ransom.
“Oh yes. We’ve found the gene that causes perception.”
“Will my children be perceivers?”
“You carry the gene. There’s a fifty per cent chance. If the donor egg comes from a perceiver too, then I’d say, Brian, it’s pretty likely …”
The memory dissolved.
“Show me more.” Michael concentrated harder, deeper.
The same unkempt man, but at a later time in his life when he had shorter hair, in an armchair in someone’s house. Ransom sat opposite him. In Ransom’s memory was the bitter smell of black coffee that drifted up from the mug in his hands.
“You sure you want to do this?” said the man, who Ransom remembered was called Lockwood.
“Think of a world where everyone can perceive each other,” said Ransom. “Think how people would understand each other. Conflict would be reduced. People would be happier.”
“Sounds too good to be true,” said Lockwood.
“I know. But you can’t deny that life’s been better for us with perception.” Ransom sipped his coffee. It was hot. It scalded his lip.
“Sure. I applaud what you’re doing, Brian, you know that. There’s just a little bit of me that’s frightened we’re trying too hard to play God.”
“God or fate or evolution gave us this gift,” said Ransom. “We were born with it. You’ve got to remember, what we have is a natural genetic mutation which is already spreading among the population. All we’re doing is helping evolution along a bit.”
“By triggering the change in children who would otherwise have been born normal,” said Lockwood.
“Right.” Ransom blew steam from his coffee and took another tentative mouthful. “I have no regrets. I made sure I gave this gift to my child, didn’t I?”
The memory dissolved.
Then re-formed.
Mind Secrets: A Science Fiction Telepathy Thriller (Perceivers Book 1) Page 17