The Girl Who Ran

by Nikki Owen

  ‘I cannot go back.’ I stand, pace. ‘The Project killed Balthus, they killed my Papa. You have to stop them. We sent you the files. You have seen what they do. The way they operate is wrong, immoral and unjust. Do not believe whatever it is they have been telling you.’

  She gestures to the television. ‘And you think what terrorists are doing is right?’ She waits for a moment, her slim green eyes on me. ‘I know it was Ines who killed Balthus,’ she says now.

  I halt, turn. ‘What?’

  She slots back a stray hair. ‘I know all about what happened at Ines’s house. I know she shot Balthus and your brother. I know you killed Ines. I know your brother killed your adoptive father, Alarico.’

  At hearing his name, at hearing what she has to say, I stop, my hand slapping out to the wall of wood and plaster. ‘How… how do you know this? I only told you that the Project were involved in killing Balthus. No detail was given in the email.’

  ‘Maria, when will you wake up and see that, when it comes to security, governments know everything.’

  ‘What do you—’

  ‘What do I mean? Is that what you were going to say? What do I mean?’ The veins spring out on her neck as her voice raises. ‘I mean we have known for a long time of the existence of the Project, Maria. The UK government, the USA government, even the Spanish government – we are all involved. There – do you understand that now?’

  I feel as if I’ve been hit by a bat to the head. The Basque people, the ones on the file who died. ‘Did… did the Spanish government supply Basque people to be tested by the Project?’

  ‘They were all former ETA members, convicts, yes, supplied by the Spanish government. People with no one who would really care if they disappeared.’ She sighs. ‘I know this all sounds harsh, but Maria, you must understand that this is what we have to do as leaders, as governments – make the tough decisions, carry out the terrible things others don’t want to do, things we have to do on behalf of our electorate in order to protect them. To protect us all.’

  I lean back on the wall now as the whole picture forms. The Basque subject numbers and their original test origins were all ETA terrorism convicts. Somehow, I find the chair and sit in it, although I don’t know how much time passes, just seconds, probably, but each one feels like an hour.

  ‘Ines, my adoptive mother, was a prosecutor of ETA terrorists,’ I say in a daze, my mind drawing the inevitable conclusion. ‘She was the Minister for Justice. Did she supply the convict names to the Project?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘And so my Papa was killed because he found out that Ines was supplying ETA convicts to the Project…’

  My sight blurred, I look to the television, to where now the Prime Minister is talking to the screen, a frown on his brow, deep circles under his eyes. I blink back tears, a deep lump in my throat forming. It hits me in waves, all of it crashing up and over my mind. Who tells the truth? Does everyone hide behind a cloak to mask their real selves? ‘Does he know about the Project?’ I say after a moment, gesturing to the screen.

  ‘The Prime Minister? Now he does, yes. As does the USA president. We all have security at heart you see, and it’s never been needed more than now, which is why, Maria, to cull the Project’s work, now we all know about it, at such a vital time would not make sense.’

  Her words: now we all know. They all know about the Project, about the lie and the testing, yet they want it to continue. And why? Terrorists will carry on murdering, I alone can’t stop them, and meanwhile, everyone will continue to spout a mantra of words that mean nothing, words that, with one press of a button, can be instantly transformed to sound like something more convenient. I stand. ‘I want to leave.’

  ‘Maria…’

  ‘I want to leave. Now. Re-start the investigation into Project Callidus and let me go. I will not work with them again. You said you would investigate. You have to stay true to that commitment.’

  Harriet Alexander rises. ‘Maria, I’m afraid I can’t do that. Believe me, please, when I say this, working with the Project – it is the right thing to do for the safety of our country.’

  But I have decided I am leaving and that is that. I go to the door but it is locked, so I bang at it, set about unbolting it when a buzzer, low, growling, sounds and the door flies open. Fast, I am pushed back as two men and one woman in grey suits, each with a button pin, pile in. They wrestle me forwards, grip me tight, cuffing my wrists, and I panic, thrash my head, arms, torso, the metal scent of their skin punctures the air, their arms banging into me, brushing against the scar on my thumb, sending a bolt of pain searing through to my chest.

  ‘Let me go!’

  Harriet Alexander walks over from her desk, holding the document from the aide in her hand.

  ‘Balthus thought I didn’t know about his little fling with that woman that led to you, but he, like you, thought there were things that could be kept secret.’ She whips in a breath, momentarily glances to the photograph on her desk, then dabbing one cheek, she clears her throat. ‘There is an election coming up and we need to have order. But to get order, we first need chaos. And while terrorists think a big bomb in a city will do it, we know that all it takes to create what we need is one lone gunman.’ She leans in and I flinch. ‘A single match can launch a thousand fires.’

  Then she nods to the officers and they start to drag me away.

  ‘No!’ I shout. ‘No!’

  ‘The Project needs you, Maria,’ she says now. ‘We need you. I promise you, you will see. It will all make sense to you. We need to take you to their black site facility in Scotland now.’

  And as the officers pull me from the room to take me back to the Project, on the television screen that hangs on the wall the camera lens pans to the chaotic bombed sight of the Southbank building lying in broken steel and rubble where bodies lie torn and strewn in deep, charred pools of their own blood.

  Chapter 30

  Black site Project facility, Scotland.

  Present day

  I stare at an image of Chris on the small screen of a cell phone propped up on the table.

  ‘Google! You’re okay!’

  At first, I do not speak. I am frightened. Still not 100 per cent sure if this is a test or not. I gaze at the face of a friend who, it feels, I have not seen in a long time.

  ‘Where are you?’ I hear my voice say.

  ‘Not far from where you are now in Scotland.’

  ‘This is a black site. There is no map for it.’

  ‘In this day and age, there’s always a map. And besides, I had to find you.’ He pauses. ‘I had to find you and Patricia.’

  At the sound of her name spoken in Chris’s stretched out drawl, flashes of memories fly back and forth, faces of the people and the places I have known, the images fuzzy and blurred. Chris being here, near; Patricia being held by the Project. The thought of it destabilizes me and what is happening hits me. Whether it’s unexpectedly seeing Chris’s familiar face or hearing the words that subject 209 has to say, it seems to be jolting me out of what feels has been a long, dormant time, as if I have been sleep-walking these past few weeks and I’m only now waking up.

  Abigail looks to me. ‘Are you okay?’

  I blink at the screen where Chris’s solid frame sits. ‘How did you arrive here from the Alps?’

  ‘Hitchhiked to stay low. You know me’— he grins— ‘the relaxed type.’ He pauses and his grin drops. ‘It’s so good to see you.’

  I track the contours of his face, and have the strongest propulsion to reach out and touch it, to have him here, next to me, not to hold him or him to hold me, but to at least smell him, his skin, see his hair flop into his sunken eyes. Until this moment, I hadn’t realised just how much I miss him.

  ‘How did you find me?’ I say now, choking back a dry throat.

  ‘Through me.’

  I turn now and look to Abigail. She is resting by the bookshelf, clutching her chest, struggling to breathe. I go to her immediately
.

  ‘You need to sit down.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sit.’

  She does as I say, her body sliding to the chair and, as I aid her, I feel her rib cage and realise how slight she is, how underweight.

  ‘I’ll be okay in a minute.’

  ‘Does this happen often?’

  She nods. ‘Too much, now.’

  I check her pulse on her wrist and feel the heat of her forehead and realise that I didn’t even hesitate at touching her. It’s been what feels like a long time since I have worked as a doctor, but the need inside me to treat and mend must still be strong.

  ‘How did you contact Chris?’ I say, checking her pulse once more.

  ‘Is it okay?’

  ‘Hmmm?’ I count. ‘Oh, yes.’ I drop her wrist.

  ‘You’d all been tracked.’ She coughs, rubbing her arm. ‘That’s how I knew who Chris was and that he’d been left behind in Switzerland. That’s how I found him.’

  ‘They were tracing us all along.’

  As the words sink in, in a slow-motion movie reel of a movement that gets quicker and quicker, pictures start to flash in my mind one after the other. Memories return fast, click, click, click, images of events that have not long happened, of Patricia and her betrayal and the tracker found in her phone, her gentle lilting voice screaming for me in the concrete car park. Of the Home Secretary and her perfume and the office with the TV and the tiny window, of her words about Balthus, about her knowing that Ines killed him, about her knowledge, in depth, of everything that happened that day. Of the officers bursting into the room and how she said I would be taken to the Project black site facility in Scotland, of what she said about the emails from… Click, click, click… until, instead of being blurred and far away, the memories become vivid, real and clear and, finally, I recall every single aspect of what happened up until now.

  ‘The UK government were behind the blackmail messages,’ I say fast, breathless at the speed at which the memories have hurled themselves at me, wanting to be remembered, all the information finally coming to me. I tell Chris about all of it, about the whole setup and how the Home Secretary and Spain and the USA are involved, about the messages, the deceit of it all, how she is now part of the Project, about Abigail and what she has told me. And what the countdown clock Chris found really means amidst it all.

  ‘What? Jesus fucking Christ! Are you sure? You mean, that clock thing we found could count to your… to your death? Oh my God.’

  As Chris swears into the phone, calling world governments liars and scumbags, and calling the Project evil motherfuckers, I look to Abigail.

  ‘Why could I not initially recall everything that happened just before I came here?’

  ‘You’re being given Typhernol.’

  ‘But that should not affect memory. Dr Carr said that is a drug to help keep me calm. Versed was the drug that made me forget. That is the one they have used since I was young.’

  ‘And you believe everything Dr Carr says?’

  I think about this. ‘Y… yes.’ But even as the word tumbles out, I am doubting it.

  Abigail looks at me with downturned eyes. ‘Maria, they’re trialling Typhernol now. And that’s what’s messing with your head, making you forget, making you… easy to manipulate. They want you to forget what happened before here so you will do what they want you to do.’

  The reality seeps in as I realise the Project has been giving me something to make me forget key information in order to mould me into the person they want me to be: obedient, pliable. If that’s the case, if my mind has been used, bent to someone else’s will then, who, really, am I?

  ‘When was the last time you were given an injection?’ Abigail says now.

  ‘Two… two days ago.’

  ‘Well, it should be out of your system soon.’

  She coughs up more blood and I find a tissue on a shelf and hand it to her, fingers shaking a little at the news, my brain processing the entire time. Black Eyes lied to me. He lied to me about Typhernol, he lied to me about what I saw in the sensory chamber. So, if he lied about that, what else was he lying about?

  I turn to Chris. ‘Can you access the system here?’

  ‘Huh? Oh, yeah, but there’s a wall stopping me from remotely finding where you are specifically. Why? What do you need?’

  I stay motionless for a moment, bring up the floating memories of the time in the Home Secretary’s office, of the words she spoke. ‘There was a bomb… in… in London at the…’ I think, wait for it to come, tick, tick. ‘At the Southbank Centre.’

  ‘Yeah, it was massive. It killed over 500 people or something like that.’

  Taking to Chris must be helping, as the memory comes faster now, fully formed. ‘When… when I was in the Home Secretary’s office, she talked about requiring chaos to create order, then she said that it only takes one gunman to kill many. She mentioned this in the context of upcoming political elections in the UK, the USA and Spain.’

  Abigail sits up. ‘There’s some intel about a lone gunman that involves the UK.’

  I look to her. ‘You have seen that data, too?’

  ‘It was when you were in the situation room with Dr Carr. It came through on the feed to go to you and I wasn’t supposed to look at it, so I didn’t because it was too risky, but then when you’d gone, just before I saw you with Dr Carr in the corridor, I managed to sneak a look at what you’d deciphered and saw it. Thing is, it reminded me of something.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but I’ve seen chatter before on this that seems to keep slipping under the radar. The Project keep letting it pass by.’

  ‘Dr Carr said it was just a simulation.’

  She shakes her head. ‘Nope. No way. From all the data I’ve seen, this thing seems real.’

  ‘Then why would he lie?’

  Chris’s line crackles. ‘Anything I can do to help?’

  Abigail swivels her chair to the room 17 keyboard. ‘This system here isn’t connected, but, Chris, let me see if I can set up some sort of worm you can catch.’ She taps a device. ‘If you’re stopped accessing the facility here each time by the wall, maybe the worm’ll help you pull through and burrow in under it into the geolocation system so at least you’ll know exactly where we are… just in case.’

  ‘Cool. And the surveillance?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do. It might take a while though.’

  As Abigail’s fingers speed across the keyboard in front of her, I shake my head, struggling to comprehend what suddenly, unexpectedly, seems to be unfolding in front of me. It’s all come on so quick. Only three hours ago, I was fully signed up to the Project, to what they meant, what they stood for and how they act. But now? Now I am discovering that, just like everything else, it is all a lie.

  ‘I need to sit down.’

  I shift to the second chair and check the time; soon I will need to be at my next appointment to avoid any suspicion.

  Abigail leans in. ‘I know this is hard,’ she says, ‘hearing all this, hearing what I had to say. You don’t know who you are in here—I didn’t after a while, even though I’d put myself inside Callidus to find out what the hell they were really doing. They do a number on everyone, the Project does. They’re experts at getting everyone to think their way, to believe that what they’re doing is for the greater good, but I’m telling you it’s not. I mean, look at what they did to your friend, setting her up like that.’

  I freeze. ‘What did you say?’

  She pauses. ‘I… I thought you knew, you know because you mentioned the trace thing the Home Secretary talked about.’

  ‘Knew what?’ Chris says, his deep eyes now wide in the cell screen.

  ‘Oh, shit.’ Abigail rubs her head, coughs once and looks to me. ‘The Project got Patricia’s sister to say she had cancer so Patricia would worry and contact her.’

  I go cold, a line of ice sliding down my spine.

  ‘How do you know this?’ Chris says.<
br />
  ‘Because they roped me in to set it up, create the Facebook trace and all of it.’ She turns to me. ‘I’m so sorry. I tried not to be part of it, but they ordered me to. If I kept refusing, it would’ve looked suspicious.’

  My whole body feels paralysed and when I speak, my mouth doesn’t seem mine. ‘What… what happened?’

  Abigail swallows. ‘The Project knew that Patricia’s sister hated Patricia for killing their mother—’

  ‘It was euthanasia,’ Chris says. His voice is a hush, a brushed breeze of his normal zippy self. ‘It was euthanasia.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She clears her throat. ‘We, um, we got her sister to… to, um, lie and say she only had three weeks left to live. They wanted it to sound like… to sound like Patricia was making things up.’

  Chris’s head drops. ‘Oh, Jesus Christ.’

  Abigail looks between him and me, continues. I feel as if the floor has opened up beneath me. ‘The Project were watching Patricia’s sister’s Facebook page and realised Patricia was monitoring it, checking her status update, that kind of thing, spending a long time looking at old family photos. They wanted you back with them, Maria, but were struggling, so that’s when they got the idea to get the sister to post the message about her fake cancer.’

  Chris shakes his head. ‘But then everyone who friended her page would think she had cancer.’

  ‘No. They mocked up the page and created a coded link to it so only Patricia could see it, and the Project told the sister they were Interpol and searching for Patricia, saying she’d committed a serious crime or something, and, of course, Patricia’s sister, hating Patricia, happily agreed to help track her down, go along with the fake Facebook bait.’

  My hands tremble, body shakes. ‘Who—’ I stop, swallow. ‘Who planted the tracker on her cell?’

  Abigail lets out a long breath. ‘The woman on the train.’