by Nikki Owen
Chris goes to get the book, but Patricia stops him, grabbing his arm. ‘No!’ She gestures up ahead. The police are scanning the area, much nearer now to our location, questioning passers-by.
Chris glances to me, to the novel then looks back to where the police are scouring the road near to the coffee hut. ‘Damn it.’ He goes to turn.
‘No! We must retrieve the book,’ I say, distressed at the thought of leaving evidence.
‘Doc, the police are just there. We have to go, it’s too risky.’
I hesitate, my sight darting between Patricia, Chris and the torn, dirt-streaked novel. The police ahead begin talking to the coffee shop vendor.
‘Doc! Let’s go.’
I look to Chris, desperate to read a signal from him of what is the right thing to do.
‘Doc,’ Patricia calls to me, ‘there’s no time! We’re best to just leave it and go!’
I’m torn. The police are nearing now; if I ran to get the book, I could be spotted, but the book is valuable evidence, a vital link.
‘Doc! Come on!’
I take one last glance at the novel on the ground, scattered with snow and dirt. I try to imprint all the Voronoi diagram information to my brain, then securing the worn picture of Isabella tight in my hands, I duck into the tent of trees and hurry out of sight.
Deep cover Project facility.
Present day
Black Eyes talks to the spotty subject number in the situation room while, around me, I scan the area as much as I can without drawing any attention to myself. I was right. Each subject that sits at one of the consoles in the vast, windowless hangar of a room beyond cannot be more than thirty years of age, indeed far under it. Their unlined skin, their late pubescent spots, their colt-like limbs. They resemble, as I consider it now, my own frame and face and stage of bodily growth when I was younger and taken to the Project against my will.
‘Subject 375?’
I jump, not having heard Black Eye’s voice initially, so focussed was I on the area in front.
‘What were you doing?’ he asks. He regards me for a second, frowning, and I have come to learn that, with him, this is not a good sign. But is he cross or simply mildly irritated? I cannot tell.
‘I was counting the subject numbers,’ I reply, ‘to remain calm, as I was trained to do.’ And as the words come out, while they are, in part, true – my mind has in moments been counting the subjects present – it has not been in order to keep me calm. So why did I feel the need to lie?
‘We have intelligence from the field,’ he says finally, his nostrils sucking in to the bridge of his thin nose as he inserts a breath. ‘It indicates an imminent threat. 277 here is helping us use the data you’ve just seen to track and eliminate an attack. 277?’
‘Sir. We have narrowed the list down to within a three kilometre radius of the target’s location.’
Target. What target?
Black Eyes draws his full height upwards and points to the computer screen. Green lights flash to the right of the console. I count every one. ‘This is the data we are awaiting analysis on, am I correct?’
Subject 277 nods. ‘Yes, Sir.’
Black Eyes turns to me. ‘This data here will provide us a link, a way in to a situation we want to… rectify. But, Maria’— he coughs— ‘Subject 375, we have not found that way in yet. I need you to analyse this data, tell us what we are missing.’
I am drawn instantly to the numbers and facts and reams upon reams of precise information. I begin to track it all, faster, it feels, than ever. Dates, phone numbers, transcripts of personal emails, all of them one after the other presenting themselves of free will.
Black Eyes paces then stops. The heat of his body is only centimetres away from mine and I am alarmed to realise that I find this fact comforting. As I track the figures, Black Eyes circles me, swooping round the platform.
‘This is all personal, private data of individuals,’ I say, analysing.
‘Yes. We, along with the Americans and every other first world proactive agency under the sun, have been dealing with this kind of data for years. There is no such thing in the modern world as privacy.’
Americans. The word filters in to my head as I continue my analysis, momentarily distracting me. Why would the word Americans alert me so much?
I focus back on the task in hand. Sight on the screen and on the documents that stack to my side the whole time, I read email after email, fast, scanning so quick that a knoll of a headache begins to form at the base of my skull. I read about feelings and emotions of people, random, anonymous people anywhere in the world, their personal communications hacked, stolen without their consent, so I, now, can pilfer through them on command of the Project.
Black Eyes turns to me. ‘Have you found anything yet?’
But before I can answer, Subject 277 spins his seat round. ‘Sir, I have the next set of transcripts.’
Without saying a word, Black Eyes nods and the subject slides across a new set of files. I take them, start scanning each one. It seems futile. What I am flicking through are only words, words talking about emotions and feelings, words that, unlike binary code, are not going to…
Wait. Is that it? Is that what they’re searching for? ‘Here,’ I say, fast.
Black Eyes immediately looks. ‘Tell me.’
I trace my finger toward an email that tracks through a series of metadata. ‘This is not a personal email,’ I say, ‘but a business one, but look here.’ Black Eyes leans in. I swallow as my nose detects garlic, stronger than normal, in small clouds of warm breath. ‘There is a code hidden here in the personal message that tail ends on the metadata information bulked over it.’
He reads the screen then frowns. ‘Explain.’
I try to recall emotions I have learnt in training. ‘People talk in… hidden meanings. This message is no exception. At first, I thought the code we were searching for, the answer, was in the meta information this man, in this instance, required for his website launch.’
‘Get to the point.’
‘The code is not hidden in the metadata. It’s instead in the main text. The words he uses – they are different.’
‘How?’
I point. ‘The vocabulary here is irregular. In his previous emails, which I have scanned at speed, he uses a consistent regularity of written words, of style and form, but this communication differs. It follows a unique path and, in fact, it is very clever. See?’ I trace my fingertips over the area of concern.
‘They are words.’
‘Yes. They are words that translate into a code.’ I pause, touch the back of my head. ‘They are a message.’
Bringing up a separate spreadsheet page, I begin to tap in the words and execute a file run across each one. At first nothing changes, the letters and numbers hanging static in the air, filling the room with a heavy silence only punctured now and then with the clack of one hundred and twenty-seven keyboards in the hangar beyond. I launch a fast program using the metadata link from the actual email online, then wait. I sit back as, before my eyes, flashes of information speed across the green screen.
‘Is that…?’ Black Eyes drags over a chair, sits, stares at the screen then, shaking his head, claps his hands and smiles, one that makes creases prickle out all across his face. It is so sudden, so unpredictable and unprecedented that the entire control room floor of subjects stops what they are doing and turns to stare.
‘Maria, you did it!’ he exclaims. ‘She was right.’ He smiles. ‘She was right.’
His cheeks swell into two pink apples fattening up a face that usually resembles a skeleton’s sunken skull. He slaps my shoulder, the touch taking me completely by surprise. Then, in an animated fashion that I have never before witnessed on him, he picks up a blue phone on the side of the console. He turns to me.
‘That is the attack there, in code, is that correct?’
‘Yes.’
I watch his face, comparing it to pictures of expressions I have recorded before
. He is happy, I think, happy with me, perhaps, and yet, why does this not please me? Do I not want to be the best subject I can? Am I not a member of the Project Callidus family? A family who cares, who actually has my own interests at their heart for once in my life? Is that not what we want, as human beings – to be part of something, something meaningful?
‘Subject 375?’
‘Yes?’
‘I want you now to tell me exactly what you have interpreted from the metadata you uncovered.’
I nod, prepare to decipher and speak. And as I do, as I begin to decode the data in front of me, my eyes flit to the right and I see one hundred and twenty-seven subject numbers look up, blink at me, then return to their work.
Chapter 19
Weisshorn Hospital, Lake Geneva, Switzerland.
Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 03 hours and 50 minutes
We arrive at the outskirts of Weisshorn Hospital hidden by a line of fir trees decorated by baubles of ice. It is quiet. There is a road to our left, grey and winding, cleared of snow for vehicles to pass, and when I sniff the air I detect damp pine needles, a forest bed of earth and the fresh scent of spring water running across river rocks. The sun peeks over the horizon as day fully breaks, the sky a soup of morning mist. Birds jump from branch to branch while squirrels scurry up tree trunks from a forest floor of fat white and lilac crocuses and small beds of wild flowers the colour of chalk drawings.
‘So,’ Chris says, checking his map, ‘the hospital is just one hundred metres through these trees.’
We trek until we reach a final clearing where the wide road has been replaced with a narrow side one that dips down on each side into a hidden ditch. I count every step so I know the exact distance and time back to the main road. Patricia exhales, drops her bag to the ground and wipes sweat from her brow. ‘Whoa – is that the hospital?’
To our right looms a large white building. Constructed with oblong concrete blocks and guarded by a perimeter of antique brick wall topped with corkscrews of barbed wire, the hospital lies nestled under a canopy of trees, huge towering firs swaying in the breeze. In front loops a long driveway laid with gravel and pebbles.
I take out the photograph of Isabella from my pocket, the one from behind the cross in Ines’s cellar, unpeel it and blink at the image in the shine of the sun. ‘It is the same,’ I say. ‘Papa knew she was here.’
Chris comes over. ‘Okay, so I’ve done a scan on the perimeter and it’s blocked.’
I look once more to the photograph then focus on Chris. ‘Is there an electronic surveillance system?’
He opens up his tablet device, switches on the black signal box and taps the pop-up keyboard. ‘Running a check now.’
As Chris works fast, Patricia stands by me and points to the photograph. ‘What d’you think you’ll do when you see her, Doc?’
I glance up. A robin lands on the barbed wire ahead then immediately flies away. I stare at the fencing then look to the photograph in my hands, to the contours of Isabella’s skull, to her blonde flowing hair, her smooth, unblemished skin. ‘She is older now.’
‘Yes.’
‘She could be in danger.’
Patricia shifts from foot to foot, leaving small prints of her shoes in the snow. ‘Look, Doc – and don’t take this the wrong way – but d’you really think it’s wise to go in there, into the hospital?’
‘I do not understand what you mean by, “take this the wrong way”?’
Chris taps his computer. I watch him for one second; he shoots me a glance. I turn back to Patricia for her answer.
She sighs. ‘I just want you to know that I think you’re strong, okay?’
‘Okay.’ Why is she telling me this?
‘But you’ve been through a lot, you know.’ She bites on her bottom lip and I start to think: why does she do that? ‘The train,’ she continues, ‘being held at the Project, being trapped in the cellar. The Project will be after you if you go in there, into the hospital. It’s more of a risk for you than Chris. So I thought that… well, how about Chris goes in instead?’
‘No,’ I say immediately. ‘It will be me. I have to find her. I have to find who I am.’
‘But you know who you are.’ She swallows. ‘You… I know who you are, Doc. You’re… you’re my friend, and I think it’s a mistake you going in there. This is the Project, for God’s sake. They don’t mess about. They could… they could hurt you.’
‘Friend,’ I say aloud.
‘What?’
‘A friend is a person with whom you have a mutual liking.’
‘I… Yes. Doc, are you okay?’
I am unsure how to respond, not entirely certain of my own feelings. Chris looks towards me, and for the first time, I feel the need to match his gaze, to keep my eyes on his, no matter how much it makes me want to scream, want to run in case he can see what is inside my manic mind. After a few seconds, I drop my lids, count to five and try to push the tracker and the Project to the back of my thoughts. Patricia moves nearer to me; I take one step back.
‘I’m in!’ Chris suddenly says.
I blink an odd wetness from my eyes and turn. ‘You are in their system?’
‘Uh-huh.’ He swivels the laptop our way. On the screen is a detailed map of the hospital: rooms, black lines, a warren of corridors and computer links. I snap a photograph of it in my mind so I can recall, when I am in there, every nook, turn, barrier and window.
‘I will enter via this door,’ I say, pointing on the map to an area at the side of the building.
‘What? Oh no. I can’t disable the alarm there, but here’— he indicates a low hanging roof area to the left ahead side— ‘this one I’ve managed to access, although be careful – I think there’s another sensor there. If there is, and you spot it when you’re in there, text me and I’ll link into your signal and see what I can do.’ He pauses. ‘Here’s where I reckon she’ll be, by the way, your mom.’
‘How do you know that’s where she’ll be?’ Patricia says.
‘Huh? Oh, because that’s the older patients’ wing from the plans, and I guess, well, I guess Isabella will be old now.’
I stare at where Chris’s finger hovers over an area of the map separated from all others and try to imagine the face of my real mother today. There is a cordoned-off section of the hospital ward system that appears on the map in the shape of a scorpion’s tail. Each segment seems to consist of a locked-in partition and when Chris clicks on one of them and taps some keys, a series of numbers spring up, quick fire across the screen.
‘Binary units,’ I say instantly. ‘These are names and numbers that correlate exactly with the ones I found in the Project Callidus facility in Hamburg.’
‘That’s what I thought – and they’re just like the ones we accessed via the Weisshorn database when we were on the train. Plus, look – there’s one number here: 375.’
Patricia squints at the screen. ‘Doc, that’s your number.’
‘Exactly,’ Chris says, ‘and I thought, okay, so they have Maria’s subject number – sounds about right if the Project are emailing the Home Secretary from here – but then I got thinking: what if you input Isabella’s full name, date of birth and geolocation of country of origin and run it through into numbers divided by—’
‘Divided by the number of subject numbers who have died.’
‘You got it.’
Patricia stares at us both. ‘What on earth are you two on about?’
‘You arrive at Isabella’s number: Subject 21,’ I say.
Chris nods. ‘Subject 21.’
We look now to the screen where the map pulsates beneath the fingerprint-smeared glass casing, as there on the point of the scorpion’s tail is a room with a number of the occupant inside allocated to it: subject 21.
‘D’you think it could be her?’ Chris says now.
A sliver of sun bursts through the tree tent, splashing, momentarily on the screen of the tablet, flashing everything on it yellow and white, blu
rring, temporarily, the thick black bars of the hospital map. For a second, my mind is cast back to Goldmouth prison, to being locked in solitary confinement, to being pressed in with no room to move or hide or curl up away from everyone and everything, to London and to running and being chased by the Project.
‘Maria?’
I jump slightly, look to Chris.
‘I think it could be Isabella. I know you don’t like to assume anything, but it’s… it’s a logical conclusion. Whatcha reckon?’
A subject number. They gave my biological mother a subject number too. How far does the Project’s hold stretch? ‘I think… I think you could be correct.’
‘Good. So I think the plan should be first to sort out the email thing – send the message we agreed to the Home Secretary saying the Project will compromise, you know, promise to keep the investigation out of the public eye, blah, blah, blah – then get to Isabella after that. That way, we’re cutting off their blackmailing source before they can do anything to harm your mom.’
Patricia looks to me. ‘Doc, you okay with that?’
But I find myself ignoring her and focussing on Chris. ‘Where do I go to check if the Project is indeed the email source from this location?’
‘Here.’ His finger sits on a small room three corridors away from that of subject 21. ‘Once you’re in, contact me and then, just like we did in Hamburg at the Project facility there, I’ll lead you through the hacking system.’
‘But we cannot access their second-layer database.’
He shakes his head. ‘We don’t have to. If what I can tell by looking at their system so far is right, I can jump through a couple of hoops in their initial firewall and slot a worm virus in.’
‘They will detect a virus.’
‘Nope, not this one. It has an outer casing, making it untraceable.’ He stops, stares directly at Patricia.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
Chris watches Patricia for two seconds, then turns to his computer.