by CT Grey
“Really.” I frowned. “Please, tell me more.”
“Just hang on a second,” Wally said as a single train pulled into the station. We climbed aboard this train that was unlike anything I’d been in on Earth. It did not have a driver, posters, or even seats to accommodate needs, not to mention windows. Instead it was a short, cigar-shaped tube that was designed to propel down the tunnel fast and extremely quietly unlike all the metros that I’d ever taken in my life. “Some people claim that the Exopolis was already here, when the builders and miners arrived a couple of years ago.”
“Are you saying that…?”
“I am.” Wally nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, but you see, every bit of technology you see here was developed on Earth, and so far, nothing I’ve seen points towards aliens living here first.”
“How can you be sure?” I asked, just as the train pulled into a next station.
“Well…” Wally took a deep breath. “I’ve seen and heard about things. Many things. And then there’s this one person…” He stopped and turned to look at me. “Are you going to get out or not?”
“Here?” I looked over my shoulder and saw a well-lit cavern with nothing of particular interest behind the single lit up platform.
Wally nodded. “That’s right. We have arrived at the Agency. Seven miles and three stops from the Dome 1. And this, sir, is your destination.”
“If you say so.” I followed him out onto the platform, and as soon as the train left us alone I asked: “Who’s the person?”
Wally glanced at me. “Mister Bluefield.”
My eyes blew wide open when I heard Wally spitting out Harry’s old handle. It was the name he’d used long time ago, when he’d still been operating in the field. But why Wally was telling me that, I didn’t know. I simply couldn’t understand, as Harry of all people should had known better than to use anything that could had been tied to him. But then it all started making sense when Wally said: “But you didn’t hear that from me, okay?”
“Okay,” I said. “You can trust me.”
Wally smiled and said, “Good.” Then he pointed down the cavern towards a small, very well hidden tunnel that was guarded by two uniforms I’d never seen before, because they didn’t look like any other twenty thousand faces I’d already gone through in the vetting process. “I believe that is where they took them sir. And sir, if you need me I’ll be somewhere in that other tunnel.” He waved his toolbox towards another similarly well-camouflaged entrance at the opposite side to the Agency. “So, good luck.”
I shoved forward my hand and said, “Thank you Wally.”
“No problem sir.” Wally grabbed it and shook hard. “I’m glad I could help.”
I watched him departing before I turned around and approached the guards as casually as I could, even though I could feel my chest tightening. It wasn’t easy as my heart was racing a hundred miles an hour when I stopped in front of the guards to produce my badge. The guard didn’t even look at the photo on it as he swiped it against the reader and then uttered in a heavy Russian accent: “You may proceed, sir.”
“Thank you.” I smiled at him and then gave a quick nod to his Chinese companion, who looked like a medieval midget in his composite armour beside the Russian’s bulky frame. The Chinese returned the gesture as the massive vault door started hissing and clonking like a steam hammer. The door opened inwards and rolled aside to reveal a small tunnel and a large natural cavern that looked vastly different to the one in our London base. Maybe it was because the whole room was lit from top to bottom, so that workers hanging up stuff on the grey walls could actually see what they were doing. Or maybe it was the black polished obsidian floor under the glass cabinets so of full of memorabilia that it made me gasp. Or maybe it was the white marble Agency logo in the middle of the floor, which tried its best to incorporate all the different intelligence agencies under one banner that caught my attention. That was wiped out by a strikingly beautiful attendant in a form-fitting red dress crossing the floor to me. I just couldn’t believe she was from a secretary pool when one with her figure should had been used in the field, and not wasted with us old farts.
“Sir.” She stopped at front of me and fixed her blue eyes behind blond curls on me. “Welcome to the Agency headquarters. Could I please see your ID so that I can guide to your office, please?”
Office? “Yes, of course.” I fumbled through my pockets and then waited impatiently as she checked it against her clipboard. But the longer it took, the more nervous I became. “Is there a problem?”
“Sir.” She handed my badge back and tried to smile innocently even though I sensed that her mind was harbouring something else in the background. “I’m so sorry but I cannot seem to be able to locate your name or your office in the early arrivals lists.”
“Right.” I cleared my throat. “Well, obviously there has been a mistake because my boss, Sir Heraldine, said that since there was nothing to be done on Earth side, I could come up and check in before they start hauling my stuff here. So my question is: are you okay if I have a look around while we wait for my orders to come through?”
“By all means sir.” She said even though I was certain she was going to send me back, because the Agency wasn’t going to be open officially for business for several weeks. We had not even been allowed to get details in the new facility. It was supposed to be according to Addison: ‘a big surprise.’ Then she said: “By your credentials you’re part of Agency. So I would say it’s perfectly acceptable for you to go to sublevel two and check the senior analyst offices past the CIC. One of them is going to be yours, anyway.”
I cocked my brow and said: “Thank you Miss…?”
“Just call me Madge sir.”
I smiled at her as I left her standing by the entrance to greet another early arrival, who had just stopped behind me, and proceeded at the best speed I could get from my legs in the Moon’s microgravity towards the elevators. It wasn’t easy, given that I had not taken any walking lessons, just skipped the acrobatics and followed Wally through the portal just as if I was walking into another place in Earth. Yet, somehow I managed to find my way into one of the elevators without knocking down the priceless artefacts and other memorabilia we had been gathering together since the dawn of monarchy. And there I let out three and half years of anticipation out as I gazed at the double row of buttons sticking out from behind the cardboard cut-out designed to protect the lift from possible workmen-related damage.
According to some of the schematics and designs I had eyed privately in the archives - without anyone from the top floor knowing - had indicated that what was going to be underneath the lobby was going to be spectacular. It was going to combine everything different agencies had gathered under their wings, even if some of technologies would remain highly classified. I just couldn’t but feel a thrill of excitement when I watched all ten buttons and counted six of them lockable by manual keys.
What secrets would lurk behind them?
So, I did what every little boy in the lift always dreamed of and pressed all of them one after another. I didn’t care if they were going to take me beyond my level. Builders would understand, and they wouldn’t question on seeing an agent in their own house. Who wouldn’t do that? I said to myself when I felt a jolt in my stomach as the lift plummeted and a few moments later opened on a new level. Most of the top ones seemed to follow somewhat standard pattern of offices and shops, but as soon as I reached the sixth floor I was welcomed with a scene which immediately reminded me of the horrors I’d experienced in the Stasi interrogation complex. It was not just the silence of desolation, but the wash of colours, iron bars, and countless numberless doors following each other as far as an eye could see. They were things, which I’d learned through my own experience to be to start stripping away anyone's will to put up a fight as soon as they stepped inside the facility.
“Sir.” A guard stepped towards me and blocked the door from sliding shut. “Who are you and what you are
doing here?”
“I’m sorry,” I struggled to get words out. “I pressed a wrong button.”
He glanced at softly glowing buttons and asked: “Ten times?”
I fixed a glare on him, and realised that just like it’d been with East Germans his arrogance started to really get on my nerves. How dare he? I thought as I pushed my hand into my coat breast pocket and pulled out my badge. “Do you—“ I started saying just as he grabbed my badge, glanced at it before he motioned me to follow him.
“Stay there.” He pointed a place next to the two-tone wall. “And don’t try to go anywhere.” Then he took my badge to his supervisor sitting in the glass cubicle outside the prison complex that so perfectly copied the Hohenschönhausen design down to the minutest details. I could only marvel at the fearsome effect it was having on me, when I saw the supervisor stepping out from his glass-walled office. He didn’t need to say it, because I could already see it in his beady little eyes that I wasn’t going to be able to talk my way out from this situation easily. And if this failed, this was it: the end of the line. And there would be no future for me or my daughter.
“Mister Jackson.” The supervisor stopped at front of me. “Why are you here?”
I crossed my hands behind my back and tried to stand as tall as I could, as I addressed his concern with an authoritative tone. “You don’t need to know the details.”
“Is that so?” He looked at me from under his half-moon glasses.
“Yes, it is so, but since I don’t see any harm, as we should be developing a professional relationship in the future: I got permission to come and check the facilities. Is that a problem?”
“Well yes,” he said. “You’re not cleared below level four.”
“Are you sure?” I frowned at him as if I couldn’t believe he’d not bought my lie, which was as close to the truth as I could put it, since I needed to develop a relationship with him one day, anyway. And that made me wonder if I’d stepped onto Wally’s landmine. Had I? Was it all bullshit and nothing he’d said was true?
“Positive sir.” He shoved the clipboard to me and said, “Sign that.”
I browsed the text quickly and as I reached the last line I realised that this wasn’t a normal NDA. Far from it. In fact as I read the language I understood straight away the trap Legal team had set into this place. Level six was not only copying Stasi’s details, it was using in every turn every technique we’d invented to keep its secrets secret, even if it meant a vicious destiny to people like me. And that could as well happen in here, in the place where no one could hear me screaming.
Then again, I also realised by doing this and insisting I sign the document - which I’d already signed back on Earth - it also could mean that Wally had been right. If they’d not brought down here all three types of undead, they were doing their best to hide something else. So I looked at him sternly and asked: “Do I really have to?”
“It’s either that,” the supervisor said calmly. “Or get to experience first-hand what’s going to be one of our subjects until your boss comes to bail you out.”
“You know what,” I said proudly. “Let’s do that. Call my boss.”
“Very well, Mister Jackson,” the supervisor said. “But don’t blame me if he tells me to keep you here for rest of your life.” Then he signalled the guard, who pulled out his sidearm and proceeded to arrest me American-style. For the life of me I didn’t know if he was just a trained monkey, because he looked surprised to find out that I wasn’t carrying any sort of weapon other than a pen in my pocket and a mobile in my hand. But then again, I’d known our closest “ally” believed in superior firepower, and not intelligence, even if we were in the main hub of all that the best intelligence agencies in the world could offer. So it didn’t surprise me that he was showing brutality all the way to one of the cells when it was meant to be that way.
“Open number thirty one,” he hollered at a hidden camera.
“Look,” I said. “Can we talk about your behaviour towards prisoners as—“
“Shut up,” he said as the door before me clonked and started moving aside.
“We’re reasonable men, you and me. So please, listen to me—”
“Yeah.” He unlocked my hands and then shoved me into the cell as if I didn’t have any kind of rights. “We were reasonable, but it was you who wanted to go down this road.”
I turned around and saw him raising a hand to stop me. “I have a daughter.”
He turned to look at me as the door slid close. “You think about her while you’re in there 'cos that’s what I would do. Period.”
I was alone in a bare concrete cell that was slightly larger than my walk-in wardrobe. It didn’t have lights, mattress, let alone a bunk. All it had was a narrow ledge on the wall and by the feel of it, a toilet unit at the other end had not even been connected. It just sat there, wrapped in the plastic, waiting for someone to connect it to the pipes. And that was less than what I’d received in the hands of Eastern German’s back in the days before the Wall came down, because they’d had at least bothered giving me a bucket, a lid and a small cup for a water before they’d taken my toothbrush away.
By any comparison Hohenschönhausen had not been the most pleasant place. Not by a long shot. Especially not to an Oxford graduate, who had made a wrong turn and ended up trading his life behind the Wall to a British consulate against his mother’s wishes. She’d expected me to take a role in the conservative party, instead of trading it for a lousy desk job down the street. Then again, as I thought about it now, all my relatives were in much worse positions. And they were most probably fighting for their lives at the very minute, unlike me, who’d followed the consulate’s plan and accepted the life behind the curtains, upon my rescue. And if only I’d believed what my gut instinct had told me, when the terrorists brought down the Whitehouse on 9/11 I would be out there with them now, instead of sitting in a copy of my worst nightmare.
All the pieces fell into place. I should never have believed what Harry had fed me on the top floors of Thames House. The truth was I knew next to nothing of what was really going on. That wasn't much comfort. I pulled my knees to my chest and tried to make sense of it all. The only thing I was sure of was if I hadn't done what I did I'd be worse off and Casey would never learn the truth about the rewritten history of mankind.
Suddenly a ray of light shot into the darkness as the cell-door opened to reveal the supervisor standing by the door, looking very, very concerned.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Before I tell you,” he said. “Would you just sign this please?”
I looked the clipboard and said, “Not before you take out that line.”
“What line?” he frowned at me.
“The one, where you’re going to do me bodily harm if I tell anyone about what I have seen. Because I really haven’t seen anything.”
“All right,” he sighed and then placed the clipboard under his arm. “I give up. So for the sake of co-operation I’m going to forget that you ever let curiosity run you down in this hole, Mister Jackson. It never happened.”
“Really?” I frowned at him. “Is this a trick?”
“It’s not a trick Mister Jackson,” he said and gestured for me to come out.
“Twenty minutes in the hole and you let me go?”
The supervisor shook his head. “Not twenty minutes, more like twelve hours.”
Twelve hours. I closed my eyes and realised how easily I’d fallen to deprivation of sensory information. Was it going to be like this now on till we returned to Earth? But even then he should not be telling me this unless there was something else that had provoked him to do so. “What is going on?”
“You know very well what is going on. So come out and go do your job.”
“My job?” I asked curiously. “What do you mean by that?”
“You know very well what I mean,” he snapped at me just as if he’d been for last ten hours negotiating on my behalf. “My order
s are to let you out and make sure you do your job … one way or another. And if it’s going to be the other, you’re never going to leave this place with all your parts intact.”
“I see,” I said anxiously, trying to hide my smile. “Of course, I will get straight into it when I get back there.”
“No.” The supervisor shook his head and then moved away from blocking the doorway.
I ran after him and caught him few doors down. “What do you mean by no?”
“You’re not going back there but into your office. The new one.”
“I am?” He pulled my possessions in a clear plastic bag from his pocket and handed them to me. “What’s in there?”
“What do I know?” The supervisor shrugged his shoulders as he waved a hand to the steel barred door. “Nobody tells me anything, and that’s how I like it to be. The less I know about anything, the better it’s going to be for me and my staff.” Then he walked past his office and headed straight into the elevator to push a button, before he stood by the door to block them from closing. “So what’s it going to be Mister Jackson? Are you going to stay down here and force me to do something I don’t want to do, and you certainly don’t want to experience? Or will you step in like a good boy and do what ‘they’ are asking you to do?”
I smiled at him as I stepped into the lift and saw it was prepared to run straight to the second level. Like me, his hands had been tied by the Authorities. We were all part of the brotherhood that was selected on the qualities other than leadership. That was their job, and ours was to follow without a question … even if it felt sometimes like a wrong thing. So I knew that there was no point in trying to stop it in the middle and continue my misbehaviour. Twelve hours in the darkness had done me in. I wanted to get out and I was willing to accept supervisor ideology in regards of the secrets. They were secret for a reason and, if anything I was very lucky to be granted a second chance, when they could have easily abandoned me and make someone else from their large pool of multinationals take my job.