by Nikki Owen
Tapping the screen once more, he hacks into the hospital map and its internal alarm system. It all works well until, in the frost that floats between the trees and snow, gunfire rips through the air.
Chapter 20
Weisshorn Hospital, Lake Geneva, Switzerland.
Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 03 hours and 23 minutes
Gunfire explodes around us.
We run, dart into the trees, the forest flying by our eyes in a blur as we tumble into a bush, thorns ripping into our skin, cheeks and hair. The noise fires around us screeching into my head, hammering so loud through my ears, it feels as if my skull will explode and bits of my brain will be splattered all over the snow in red diamond flakes of congealed matter.
‘Doc! Doc!’
Patricia presses herself next to me. Her skin slick with sweat gives off her scent, of talcum powder and baby bath bubbles, and for a moment it calms me, but then I think of the tracker, and the gunfire tears through the air again and I thrash my head down, ram my palms to my ears, curling my neck into bent knees, my lips emitting a low moan.
‘What the fuck is happening? Chris asks, his voice fast, frantic, but Patricia does not reply. Instead her hand is in her bag, fumbling for something I cannot see.
Chris crouches in the brambles, the frost pulling at his coat. ‘I can’t see where the hell this is all coming from.’
The bullets fire out for three more hellish seconds then, as fast as they began, they cease. All falls still and silent, only the birdsong dancing on the breeze that blows through the leaves of the fir trees. The thorns digging into my arms and face, slowly I lift my head and lower my hands from my ears. The hospital building glistens white and yellow where the early spring sun falls in innocent, oblivious rays, and I blink at it. The thought of it, the regular, continue-onno-matter-what order of it helps me lift my head further, an ache in my neck throbbing where I must have wedged it tight between my knees.
Patricia pulls an empty hand from her bag and crawls nearer to me. ‘Oh, Doc, you’ve got thorn marks all over your face.’
I touch my skin and feel small warm trickles of wetness, and when I hold my fingers to my eyes, I see their tips stained bright red with my own blood, my Basque blood, blood that the Project want, blood originating from the real father and mother that I never knew about until recently. I turn to Chris and, forcing my brain to think and to perform logically, I scan the area.
‘Where… where are the shooters?’
‘I don’t know,’ he says, also scouring the horizon.
The barbed wire twists in spirals on the roof of the wall as before, but there are no snipers visible, no guards to be seen. The wild flowers of pastel and cream ripple in the wind.
‘I reckon it was random shooting,’ Chris says now, turning back to us and crouching down so his knees jut out and touch his chest. ‘We must have tripped some sort of wire or… or switch or something. I don’t think they’ve actually seen us or they’d be out here now hunting us down.’ He stops, catches his breath.
I examine the forest bed, tracking the entire area. ‘When I go into the hospital, I will aim to disable any controls for external trip wires that I find.’
Chris nods. ‘Good call.’
‘Nope,’ Patricia says. ‘No bloody way.’
‘What?’
‘No. Uh-uh. No. Doc, you are not going in there, not now.’
‘Yes, I am.’ I brush the blood from my face, but instead it smears into one round mass of pink paint.
‘Doc, how do you feel right now?’
‘I do not understand what you mean.’
‘We just got shot at with loud gunfire and you had to roll into a ball and cover your ears to cope with it. And look at your face—’
‘Do you have a mirror?’
‘What? No, Doc, no. That’s not what I mean. I—’ She throws up her arms and exhales. For a second or so, she bites her lip, shakes her head and momentarily flutters her lids shut. I am unsure what to do, uncertain as to what I have perhaps done, what she has done. Usually, I find when people stop talking mid-sentence, despite not being interrupted, it can be a bad thing.
When finally, Patricia opens her eyes, they glisten with fresh tears that threaten to spill over. ‘I worry about you, Doc.’
I say nothing. Instead, I listen, not comprehending at all what is expected of me, not knowing what to say, what to keep hidden. I glance to Chris; he is scanning the hospital perimeter and checking on his phone for any alarm alerts, and I so desperately want to join in with the routine, with the mathematical shelter it provides.
‘What if you go into that hospital and there’s some big alarm that goes off and makes a huge noise?’ Patricia says now. ‘Or… or, I don’t know, what if there’s more gunfire? I mean, you just covered your ears and hid in a ball, Doc. How are you going to cope?’ She shakes her head. ‘How did you ever cope on the operations for the Project that you say you went on?’
Chris bolts up like a meerkat. ‘Why?’
‘What? Why are you asking—’
‘I was drugged,’ I say quietly, perhaps more to myself than them. ‘They gave me drugs to deal with operational situations and numb me. Then they gave me Versed to forget it all. Except, no drug can deal with me, with what I am.’ I pause, tired suddenly, exhausted.
Chris looks over; Patricia drops her head. Above in the clear snap of blue in the sky, a black kite bird of prey circles the air, scavenging for scraps.
I unzip my rucksack, take out my notebook and rip through the pages until I find a blank one. The thoughts and fears and anxieties collide in my head creating a mashed-up jumble. It’s only when I grab my pen and scratch ink to the page of facts and figures – on the lives of composers, on the pattern formation of the snowflakes that lie on petals and leaves, on the names of all the people I have known and their meanings – that I lose myself for a few seconds and my mind has a clear space to breathe and think.
After a small while, Patricia sits down and crosses her legs. She looks at my hands where they work on the notebook, fingers now forming diagrams and calculations on the trajectory that the enemy bullets may have made. Chris looks too, craning his head to see.
‘You think the gun shots came from over by that outbuilding?’ he says, narrowing his eyes as he follows the line of the fully formed sketch of the entire hospital plans on the page. ‘How in the hell did you manage to draw all that so fast? Actually, no, don’t answer that.’
I go to speak to him, to explain my findings when there is a pain in my head, sharp and pointed, spiking into the back of my skull where my spine dips in a well between my earlobes. My fingers fly to the pain source.
‘Doc?’ Patricia unloops her legs and scrambles forwards. ‘Doc, what’s the matter?’
The pain radiates outwards, tentacles of it whipping up towards the crown of my head. I ram my eyes shut and hear my mouth moan, but it doesn’t sound like me: wild, an animal caught in a trap.
Patricia is near. I feel her, the warmth of her hands, Chris too, the baked goods scent of his tanned skin, but none of it makes the pain go away. My body remains folded in on itself until one full minute later, the pain finally recedes and the shores of my mind return to still waters.
I flop back, exhausted, aching, the blood in my veins pumping so hard, my heart beats in big fist bumps against my rib cage. I grab my notebook, try to record the final trajectory that I was formulating in my brain before the headache took hold, but when I go to pick up my pen, it slips from my fingers and clatters to the ground, only rolling to a stop when it hits a thick wall of plump crocus stems.
‘I have to go… go to the hospital to find… to find Isabella.’
‘No, Doc.’
I lift my lids to hers. ‘Yes.’
She looks to Chris. ‘Please, can you go instead? Look at her—she’s in no state right now to be sneaking around from the Project.’ She turns back to me. ‘What’s caused the headache, Doc?’
‘I…’ I wet my m
outh, my lips dry. ‘I do not know.’
‘Has it happened before?’
I hesitate. Do I tell her? Does the truth make life better or are lies there to protect us?
‘I experienced a similar headache on the way to the tavern,’ I finally decide to say. ‘However, it was not as severe as… as the headache which has just now occurred.’
‘Right, that’s it,’ she says. ‘Chris, you’re going in.’
He looks to me. ‘Are you sure?’
‘No,’ I say, trying to pull myself up, then falling back down.
‘Yes,’ Patricia says, snapping out the word. ‘Chris, you’re going.’
‘You seem very certain of that.’
‘What? Jesus. If Maria goes in there, she’ll set off an alarm or something. It’s too risky. Nosebleeds before, now headaches – Doc, what’s going on?’
I open my mouth to answer, but then realise, with worry, that I don’t have one. Why is it all happening?
Chris chews on his lip, glances around the area for a moment, to the barbed wire and to the outbuilding where the gunfire came from. Looking back to us, he slips out his tablet.
‘This program here connects to my phone,’ he says, tapping the screen then handing the device to me. I take it. Colours and black-and-white maps spring up on the screen, the interior skeleton of the hospital building.
‘The sections here,’ he continues, pointing, ‘these are alarm area triggers, I think. Remember in Hamburg at the Project place there, you were stuck and I disabled the alarm inside remotely?’
White corridors, guards casing me, my skin blue from bruising. ‘Yes.’ I touch my arm, roll up my sleeve a little then a little more, puling at it until it reaches my elbow.
‘Well, this is the same system. Watch.’ He shows me what I need to do, how to cut any alarms that he may set off, allowing him, hopefully if our calculations are accurate, to access not only the email system and therefore the blackmail source to the Home Secretary, but helping him to get to the room of subject 21. To Isabella.
Chris looks at me. ‘Is that okay? Do you need me to run through it again?’
‘No. I recall every aspect of it. Is that not why you call me Google?’
A smile breaks out on his face and for a split second, it pleases me.
‘I’ll go in,’ Chris says, ‘but you stay safe’— he whips his eyes to Patricia— ‘out here.’
‘Oh my God. Doc!’
Patricia is peering at my arm where my full sleeve is finally up revealing the flesh of my upper muscle. ‘Is that the tattoo Black Eyes gave you in Hamburg, the one he scratched on with the fountain pen?’
Chris slaps his hand to his mouth. ‘Jesus.’
We all look down now at the words scratched into my skin by Black Eyes as he held me down while I screamed: I am Basque.
I blink at the scar, at where the skin still smears in red rings around the letters. ‘He said he etched this on me so I would never forget who I am, yet I am unsure who I truly am, and the woman who made me, who gave birth to me, is in there.’
Chris exhales, shakes his head. For a moment, it seems as if he may turn away, but then, quite by surprise, his eyes with a strange moistness to them, he reaches forward. And with the most gentle and unexpected of actions, he touches my cheek with his fingertips where my blood lies dried and smeared. To my surprise, I don’t flinch.
‘We’ll find her,’ he says.
Patricia looks between the two of us. Chris’s fingers linger on my skin for three seconds, and as he climbs out of the bushes and drops down to a ball and scurries out of sight towards the hospital, on the breath of the breeze that floats through the crisp early morning air, I can still smell his scent on my skin.
Chapter 21
Deep cover Project facility.
Present day
‘Subject 375,’ Black Eyes says to me, ‘can you explain aloud what you have deciphered from the data provided to you.’
The lights from the control area in the muted situation room blink in soft focus as I look to Black Eyes. The room is still. Beyond in the wide hangar space, the ant worker subject numbers continue diligently at their consoles, but, every now and then I notice one look up, yet, with the light and the data and the intelligence information to interpret in my mind, I cannot quite make out their face.
I turn to Black Eyes to deliver my findings. ‘There is a bomb,’ I say. ‘It is a medium-sized bomb, due to explode in a crowded shopping centre in the Södermalm district of Stockholm at 13:00 hours tomorrow afternoon. The data deciphered indicates that the organisers have deliberately selected a Saturday, as it is a time when the city will be filled with people and tourists.’
‘Good,’ he says. ‘What else?’
I glance for less than a second to the hangar. One lone female subject number is looking at me. ‘The bomb will be contained in a white mail van. The van will have the company name Post Bokstäver on the side. Yet this is not a real mail van. It contains a bomb that can be detonated remotely.’
‘How?’
‘Using a cell phone.’
‘Did you decipher the cell’s number?’
‘The data was unavailable.’
Subject 277 leans in. ‘Sir, this has just come in now.’
Black Eyes takes the transcript proffered by the officer. ‘This contains the data, you think?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
Black Eyes hands the document to me. I take it, scan it straight away, gorging on the lines and lines of numbers that salute neat and still on the page. Within nine seconds, I have the answer. ‘The number is 07210 546 810.’
Immediately, subject 277 begins tapping in the cell phone number to his system. The screen flashes as data and more numbers from people across the globe fly in, all connected by thin black lines.
‘We have the ability now to block signals remotely to practically all types of mobile communications devices,’ Black Eyes says. ‘We have advanced technology that we want you, Maria, to be a large part of. If we cut off the terrorists’ communication networks, you see, jam them, we cut off their ability to plan attacks. We cut off their ability to detonate bombs.’
He looks to the officer. ‘Subject 277 – status?’
‘All communication lines now jammed, Sir.’
‘Good. Send a communiqué to the relevant security teams, give them the report on the threat with instructions to lock down immediately the van and all persons connected. Understood?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
The subject number scratches his spotty skin then dances his fingers on a keyboard that sends a message about the information I have deciphered.
‘Well done, Maria,’ Black Eyes says now, turning to me, his head tilted and the bone of his shoulder jutting out under the thin stretch of his woollen jumper. I shiver, but I don’t know why. ‘Project Callidus, you see, exists for the greater good. “Cranes” is our name for peace – and you just saved countless lives, Maria.’
‘Four hundred and twenty-one.’
‘Pardon?’
‘The amount of lives estimated that could be killed from a bomb of such magnitude is four hundred and twenty-one. This is deduced from analysis of maps and retail and tourist footfall data for the seasonal time of year in the area.’
A wide smile springs up on his gaunt, skeletal face. For a moment, it looks as if he is about to cry, small globes of tears threatening to break free of their moorings, but then he sniffs, swallows hard and clears his throat.
‘You know so, so much,’ he says after a moment, his voice so low, so quiet, I strain to hear it among the whir and hum of the computers in the huge situation area beyond.
He goes then to move, indicating that it is time to leave, but there is something else I have to inform him of.
‘Dr Carr, there was further data I deciphered in the data given to me.’
For a second, it feels as if time stands still, but then he raises his chin, measured and pointed into the air. Again, unsure why, my body trembles a li
ttle. ‘Tell me.’
‘There is a gunman.’
‘How many?’
‘One.’
‘What?’
‘One.’
He sighs. ‘Maria, there is always one gunman.’
‘This is different to simply one gunman.’
He bores his gaze into mine, gone the smile, gone the warm, welling tears, and in their place a cold tundra, a looming blizzard. ‘Explain.’
I hesitate. Why do I feel uncertain? Nervous? I glance to the hangar; the woman who was looking before shoots me a gaze then whips her sight back to her screen, then rises and leaves. Something about her sparks something in me, but her face is obscured and I cannot place it.
‘Subject 375 – I said, explain.’
‘There are multiple towns and villages located on the data spools,’ I say, robotic, steady. ‘On their own they simply signify geolocations, places. However, the second series of intelligence gathered indicates significant activity.’
One second, two. ‘Continue.’
‘There are a series of lone gunmen. From initial findings, they all appear to be members of the same terrorist cell and—’
‘Do you know the name of the cell?’
‘No. Not yet, but—’
‘Continue.’
A mixture of irritation at his interruption and worry at the snap of him mixes inside me. I move it aside for the moment, carry on. ‘The cell is communicating, but they are not using phones or social media or any other lines of electronic discussion. I have not been able to determine so far their exact method of information exchange facility. But I have identified that they are aware that secret government services are blocking signals and they know these intelligence agencies are becoming increasingly sophisticated at jamming cell phones and GPS satellites.’
‘So, is that all you know?’
I hesitate. ‘No.’
‘What else is there?’
‘Each lone gunman has a… a target.’
Black Eyes does not reply. He fixes his sight on me and delivers me a narrow stare. Subject 277, on the nod of Black Eyes, gets up and leaves.
‘Each gunman will, one by one, go to a designated, preplanned town or village and shoot a minimum of ten people,’ I say when the door clicks shut. ‘Then, after two days, the next gunman will strike and so on.’