by Nikki Owen
There is a beeping of what must be buttons or a screen console of some sort that springs into the air now and my breath quickens. And as it does, oddly, my mind twists to an image of Patricia. I am struck by the unexpectedness of the image and as I slowly focus on it, I realise it’s not a picture in my head of Patricia here, beaten and bruised at the Project, but instead it’s a memory of her from another time, one where her face is clear, unmarked. So what is it? A passing thought? Or something more significant?
‘Please sit,’ the officer now instructs in the air above me.
There is a chair in the centre made of soft brown leather and wood. It has a tall back and big, thick arms. I sit as ordered, yet my mind insists on returning to the image it has just seen and, gradually in my head, a clearer picture begins to emerge. I see a tavern. I see Patricia in a tavern with warm light, hot red wine and a fire.
‘Maria, can you look at me?’ Black Eyes says. ‘Look at the window?’
My sight slowly rises to meet the level of his. It is hard to achieve, the contact, the direct line of vision as, in my head, the memory burns a little brighter and I start to see flashes of Chris and Patricia, all of us shaken, slightly hurt as if… as if we had jumped from somewhere.
‘I need you, today, to begin the true process of letting go,’ Black Eyes says now. ‘Letting go of your friends, of your family, of what you were.’
‘Why?’ I hear my voice say.
He pauses, levels my vision with a gaze. ‘So you can discover who you really are.’
The memory of the tavern flickers then, as if doused in water, the whole thing goes out and disappears into whips of smoke before I can fully grasp its meaning.
‘Are you ready?’ Black Eyes says.
Above my head, the lights are switched off.
Goldenpass railway line, The Alps, Switzerland.
Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 24 hours and 23 minutes
Chris hobbles forwards. ‘Ouch. Fuck.’
Chris has twisted his ankle. It is preventing him from moving with ease, and each time we shuffle in the growing darkness, he winces and swears. I examine our surroundings. A steep grass verge is behind us, the train far away in the grey horizon now. The daylight near faded, above our heads I can just about make out the peaks of the frozen Alps beyond. An oil slick of navy and black seeps across the sky, covering up the last splash of orange from a sun that has now long slipped behind clouds. Scents of crocus petals, snow, fern leaves and defrosting rivers drift by.
I shiver and wrap my arms around myself to stay warm. While we have coats on our backs, a lack of sufficient insulation in them means that our bodies are feeling the cold, goosebumps and shakes and chattering of teeth, and when we press our feet into the dusting of snow, wetness seeps into our shoes creating wet patches on our skin. The frost clamping our mouths, we walk in silence for some time until talk inevitably turns to the events on the train.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Patricia says. ‘Who the fucking hell was that woman?’
‘She knew my biological mother,’ I say, stepping over a rock and counting to three to keep myself calm. In the far distance, yellow lights flash and flicker too fast for me to feel comfortable with.
‘Seven hundred and twenty-one,’ I say.
‘Huh?’
‘Ahead in that village,’ I say to Patricia, pointing, ‘there are seven hundred and twenty-one lights.’
Chris looks to me. ‘Your brain’s running like a speed car at the moment, Google. You okay?’
I nod, but the truth is, I’m not sure.
We trudge forwards like this for the next hour. Our muscles are seizing up. Each time Chris takes a step, a small whimper slips from his lips and even though he takes it in turns leaning on us, my senses oddly getting used to his closeness and scent, the trek is a struggle. After thirty-three minutes of dragging feet, we arrive at a small wood cabin and use the opportunity to rest for a moment and check we are not being followed. The cabin is closed with a padlock on the door, but with roof eaves that overhang enough to provide relatively dry, soft ground underneath, it offers a quick place away from the frozen trail beyond.
Spotting an upturned crate tucked behind the back, I grab it and ease Chris down to sit. Crouching in front of him, I pull up his trouser leg, scoop up a handful of snow, wrap it in a cotton handkerchief from my bag and press it into his ankle.
He winces. ‘Ouch! What are you doing?’
‘This is an ice pack. It will reduce the swelling.’
‘Oh.’
There is a light outside the cabin, weak but yellow, shining from the right hand corner of the hut where cobwebs hang in white cotton strings of snow, and, satisfied Chris’s injury is tended to, I take out my notebook from my bag and start scribbling.
‘What are you doing?’ Patricia asks.
‘Writing down everything the woman said to me. She said she wanted to ensure I was okay – she asked if I was okay. She said that time is running out.’
‘She did? But what does she mean by… Wait… What?’ She stretches her neck forwards to my face. ‘Doc, is that… Is that blood?’
I touch my cheeks; the woman’s blood is on my cheeks in tiny speckles.
‘Did… did you shoot her, that woman on the train?’
I wipe my cheeks with the heel of my sleeves. ‘Yes.’ I wait, as I say the word, expecting to feel shame, regret, and yet all I feel is relief: there is now one less person from the Project to chase us and to hurt my friends.
‘But, Doc, why?’
I carry on writing. ‘After you jumped, she attacked me. She was going to hurt me.’ I pause, lower my pen. ‘She was going to hurt you and Chris. She killed that father and his boys. They were innocent. Another father who was… who was innocent.’
‘Oh, Doc.’ She tears off her wig and slumps against the wooden slats of the cabin, rubbing her face. Under the lemon light, her skull, once uncovered, shines in small iron filing re-growths of hair that pierce through her scalp where she hasn’t shaved for a while.
‘Are you okay, Doc?’ she says. ‘I mean, do you want to talk about it?’
‘No.’
She waits for a while in the night and the snow. ‘What’s going on?’ she says after a moment. I raise my head from my notebook. ‘I mean, the Home Secretary gave us the information she did, and you chose not to go to her. And I said you should – you’d be safer there. And now look – the Project and God knows who else are after us.’
Chris looks on, phone in his hand, the other one holding the snow pack to his swollen ankle.
Patricia emits a sigh. The air hangs heavy and cold. ‘Doc, I just worry, that’s all,’ she says. ‘I mean, if you killed that woman, Doc, that means they’ll be after you. And not just the Project and all them lot – the local police will be looking for you, too. They’ll have your face on camera from the train.’
‘She’s got a point,’ Chris says. ‘As soon as I get a secure connection, I’ll check the local police lines, see what the chatter is.’
I look at Chris, at Patricia. I don’t feel remorse at the killing, but I do feel guilt at the danger my friends are in. At the danger those two boys and their father were unknowingly subjected to. ‘People die because of me.’
Patricia shuffles forward, her wig swinging from one hand, her other laid out in five star-shaped fingers. ‘Let’s get going,’ she says. ‘We can find somewhere warm, hide out for a while, maybe in that village over there, plan what to do next, yeah?’
Chris nods. ‘Then I can try and fix the signal blocker device, and start figuring out if anyone’s transmitting our location.’
Patricia swallows. ‘Sure. Yeah.’ She shoves on her wig. ‘Good idea.’
As Patricia gathers her bag and Chris frowns at his phone, I briefly find myself thinking of the Project woman on the train and what she said.
Don’t trust anyone.
We all stand, ready to leave, and in the bulb that blinks above us, two moths fly close by. One flitters away
, escaping into the looming night sky, but the other lands on the hot glass, stuck, trapped, singeing its legs first then torso and wings until, three seconds later, it is dead.
Chapter 12
Unknown village, The Alps, Switzerland.
Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 22 hours and 17 minutes
We reach a small tavern tucked on the edge of the village we had seen in the distance earlier. I walk in, register it all and stop. Candle flames, rugs and the clink of glasses. Beer, bottles of spirits and the bubble of hot, spiced wine. A log fire and the crack of its flame, the charred whiff of burning wood and the lemon-stung scent of pine tree walls where a singer sits on a stool strumming a song.
‘Hey – he’s playing Nirvana!’ Chris says. ‘That’s… yep, that’s “Come As You Are”. Awesome!’ He looks to me. ‘You coming in?’
Patricia coaxes me in by finding a table in the very far corner where a moose head hangs on the wall next to two skis mounted in a cross by a portrait of an old man snowboarding in a bear suit. Everyone at the bar stares.
I clutch my rucksack, stay close to Patricia and slip into a leather-clad alcove that smells of cheese and cinnamon. I breathe out, deep and long, not realising until this moment that my body is tired, worn, my muscles tense and sore.
‘Drink?’ Chris says.
‘I do, yes.’
He laughs.
I go rigid, immediately looking to Patricia for reassurance. ‘Did I tell a joke?’
Patricia smiles. Chris shakes his head and flattens his hand to his chest. ‘Sorry, sorry. You’re so great. I meant, would you like me to get you a drink?’
‘Oh.’ My shoulders loosen a little. ‘Yes. Something red.’
‘Wine?’
I think about this. ‘Yes.’
He grins. ‘Well, okay then.’
Chris limps to the bar through a small crop of tables where eight jumper-warm people sit huddled in hushed conversation around glasses of steaming cinnamon wine and floating fruit. To their side stands a tall, red-bricked chimney stack over a fired stove roaring in the centre of the room, its shaft creating a pillar for me to hide behind. I scan the faces of the customers, trying to pinpoint anything unusual, odd, but no one looks up, no one presses any buttons on a phone or stands and stalks towards us. With all for the moment safe, I allow myself to rest a little.
‘This is nice,’ Patricia says, popping on a smile of soft apple cheeks and featherdown eye-creases.
I try to connect with what she means. There are thick, waterproof ski coats hooked on the back of wooden chairs, hot chocolate drinks in beige mugs, bottles of gin and vodka and tanned, golden whiskey behind the bar. I click picture after picture in my head, try to compare them with filed memories of other places to which people have referred to as nice.
‘That woman, the one on the train,’ Patricia says after a moment, stretching out her arms then bringing her chin down to rest in the heel of her palm. ‘That woman on the train – what she said bothers you, doesn’t it, Doc?’
From my rucksack, I take out the two photographs and my notebook, and setting them on the table, I feel a pang of sadness and worry.
‘What exactly did she say?’ Patricia asks.
‘Why do you want to know?’
Her face flushes pink, two petal patches blossoming on her cheeks. ‘I just…’ She stops. Her fingers fiddle with her drink, but I’m unsure what this means. Is she simply touching her glass or does it signify something else, an unspoken sentence? I scour my learnt behaviour actions, wonder if she is nervous? But what could she be nervous about? Being on the run?
‘I just want to know so I can help you,’ Patricia says now, head slightly down, fingers fallen by her side, out of view. ‘I… You’re my friend. I want to know you’re okay.’
I consider her words and as I do, a feeling comes over me, of what? Of guilt? Of thinking something about her that may not be accurate? Maybe. I’m not used to having friends, to having people that genuinely care about me. Perhaps I should relax a little.
‘The woman on the train said that she knew my mother’s name,’ I say after a moment. ‘She used the present tense when referencing her. She answered in the positive when I asked if Isabella was alive.’
Patricia reaches forward and touches the photograph with the tip of her fingers. ‘Doc, I know I’ve said this before, but don’t you think, given everything that’s happened – the woman on the train, the Project tracking us – don’t you really think the best place to be now is in England?’ She glances to where Chris is leaning on the thick wooden bar.
‘I have decided already that I have to find Isabella. I have no…’ My words falter as I look at the picture of my smiling Papa, feeling unsteady. I reach out my fingers and touch his strong face, move next to Isabella and her long Rapunzel hair. ‘I have no family,’ I say after a few seconds. ‘Isabella is my family. She may have answers that will help.’
‘But, Doc, she’s never tried to get in touch with you.’ She sighs. ‘You’ve got to ask yourself why she’s never tried to contact you.’
‘There are many answers to that question: she may be dead. She may believe I am dead. She may not have been allowed any access to communication devices. She may be imprisoned. She may be—’
‘Okay.’ She holds up her hands. ‘Okay, I’ve got it.’
‘Got what?’
Sighing, she spreads out both palms so the fingers lie in two fans on the table. ‘Oh, Doc, we’ll figure this all out, and besides’— she gestures her head towards Chris who’s now hobbling back from the bar with a loaded tray— ‘you’ve got this fella here, haven’t you?’
Unsure what she means, I follow her eye line to see Chris crashing into the table, drinks clattering as, heaving up his leg, he slumps into the seat beside me. I shoot a glance to Patricia – her fingers are still spread in a star shape on the table.
‘God,’ Chris says, ‘it’s boiling in here.’
Alerted to his words, I immediately assess the temperature. ‘It is not boiling. That would require water and a temperature of 100 degrees Celsius at a sea level pressure. However, as you increase in altitude, water can be boiled at a lower temperature.’
‘Rrrright…’
‘The optimum room temperature is 21 degrees Celsius, which this tavern seems to be at.’
He nods at me and I think I did a good job at conversation there, so, buoyed, I try something else. ‘What level of discomfort is the pain in your ankle?’
He holds his drink. ‘Huh? Oh, okay. Swelling’s not so bad now.’
‘That is because I put snow on it.’
He grins. ‘You did.’
‘It reduced the swelling.’
He keeps grinning. ‘Good.’
‘Good.’
‘Good.’
I can feel my cheeks get hot as a rush of blood hits the skin. ‘Good,’ I say again, smiling now, copying Chris’s wide grin, but not completely sure why.
We sip our wine and, for a while, we do not speak. The bar lulls in the enveloped warmth of pine wood, candle flames and, by the fire in the centre that crackles and spits, the guitar man continues to sing the Nirvana song Chris likes so much.
‘Okay, so,’ Chris says, wiping his face and pulling out his computer tablet and tapping the screen. ‘Let’s see what we can find out. By the way,’ he says, sipping his drink and wincing, ‘that vin chaud is strooooong stuff.’
Patricia shifts in her seat and studies what he’s doing. ‘I thought you said that we couldn’t risk being tracked?’
‘We can’t,’ he says, clicking the tablet, ‘that’s why I have this little thing.’ He waves a small plastic box, matt black, only five centimetres in length and nearly as slim as a credit card. I reach forward, and snap it from his fingers.
‘Who gave you this?’ I say.
‘Huh? What? Oh, I made it.’
I pause. ‘You?’
‘Don’t look so surprised. I can do stuff, you know.’
I watch h
im, wondering what my surprised face looks like. There is a mirror on the far right wall and I look into it and study my features – cropped hair, same worn wide eyes, olive-tanned Salamancan skin – but no matter how hard I trace the contours of myself, I cannot determine what constitutes surprise.
Refocussing back on the table, I study the black box. Wires thin as cotton are embedded into the spine of the back and, when I flip it over, there is a smooth section into which I can slip the tip of my finger. ‘This is a button?’
‘Hmm? Oh, no, but… I wonder if that’s the connection I need to get it working. I was going to put something in it but…’ He rustles in his bag and withdraws a tiny black circle, same slit thread and mirrored surface. ‘Here. This would do it.’
Patricia looks on, clutching her wine glass. ‘What will it do, this thing of yours?’
‘Block any trackers on us, any remote signals,’ Chris says. ‘I hope.’
Patricia’s chest for one small second ceases to move then, taking her glass, she downs a big gulp and sets the drink back down.
I examine the card. It is well made, sturdy, with grooves embedded on to each corner. I check its sides, its outer skin then, without consciously thinking, without analysing in advance what I intend to do, I begin to pick the box apart. I can hear Chris protest, but it is just white noise in the background of my brain as my hands move fast, my fingers flipping and flying as, at quick speed, I unpick the device, fitting the button, re-routing wires and reinserting each minute item until, within eleven seconds, the entire mechanism is back together. I thrust it to Chris. ‘Now it works.’
He opens his mouth to speak then closes it. He takes the card from me, and begins testing it. ‘Holy crap. You’re right – you’ve done it. It works. It fucking works!’
‘That is what I said.’ I pause. ‘Though without the swear word.’
Chris’s smile seems to cover his whole face as he stares at me but then, it drops, changing instead to a frown. ‘Hey, your nose – it’s… it’s bleeding.’