by Tim Heath
As they led him through the main doors, down the corridor and into the central control room, someone came running to him shouting. The guard left him at that moment and returned to his post.
“Thank goodness you are here, Doctor, she's just in this office.”
At that moment, she started shaking violently on the floor. Letting his training kick in, James got down beside her, checked her vital signs, then checked her eyes, which were starting to roll. Opening his bag, he took medicine and the needle, joined the two together and finding a vein, plunged the needle in hard, giving her the antidote she needed.
Initially, nothing happened. That worried James, though he didn't show it. Then calm returned. The turnaround was rather dramatic. Just five minutes after convulsing on the floor, suffering from severe stomach cramps, eyes distant, foam building at the mouth, she was moving around, talking freely, feeling no pain.
James was there to monitor her for a while. Business returned to normal in the office, and her two other colleagues were now back working on computers, doing whatever necessary stuff they were previously doing.
An hour after his arrival, Eleanor was feeling much better, and James was leaving. He put his business card with his phone number close by for her, should there be any further signs. He already knew there wouldn't be.
He put his bag in the boot, now empty of the device which he'd managed to hide, quite quickly in the end, in the main room. With Eleanor recovered, and things got back to normal, he had been left to himself somewhat, and while continuing to monitor his patient, had managed to slip the package into a dark corner, underneath a desk that no one sat at, between wires and cables that went into nearby machines. No one had noticed anything.
Driving through the main gates, only now did he wonder what he'd done. James had taken a brief moment to check the package he'd been given after leaving the café and was sure it wasn't a bomb. Confident, in fact, that it was what he'd been told it was. But still, what was going on? What hideous crime had he just committed? The gates opened and the guard waved to him as he passed. He pulled out onto the empty road and headed back to get on with the rest of the day, to deal with his patients who needed his time, people pushed to the back of the queue while he played spy or criminal. James was not yet sure how this particular role would turn out.
8
Present Day
“How long have I been here, Lorna?” John asked, awake from yet another vision. It had been just a flash of something, this time, a glimpse. They were coming more regularly now. Things felt like they were speeding up.
“I've been with you for four days now, John. Before that, I'm not sure,” she lied. She knew how long John had been there precisely, but for the first part, he was unconscious and then was kept heavily sedated while everything was set up and tests done.
“So I've been here for all these days, and still no one is here to see me?” he said, back on the theme that he'd brought up the other day.
“It's a little more complicated than that John. What you are seeing, you clearly see for a reason. It's warning us of something to come. We need you to remain here until we are sure what needs to be done. Do you understand that? So no, we haven't tried to contact your family yet, but you can be assured they are certainly concerned for you.”
She did not know his family. She knew nothing of his life outside of the hospital, besides the situation he'd been in when they found him, in that news van with the rest of his crew, all of whom were dead.
“I guess you're the nurse,” he said with a slight smile, the kind that was playful but also showed he didn't believe a word she was saying. That didn't surprise her. She'd never been a good liar and wasn't too happy about all the practice she was getting in becoming one.
Three Weeks Ago
The small team that had taken the program off Felix's hands had quickly brought Lincoln into the new, very experimental, program, and the first vision implant was going well. Their patient was responding. Maybe this would work.
Midway through, word came of a second survivor, and they went to work straight away putting together the paperwork that would give them full control over the patient.
The medical staff knew full well what they were now doing. Just seconds after the vision finished, the patient shot bolt upright, nearly scaring the nurse beside him to death. It wasn't something the team were expecting either, but it created some amusement.
“It works,” someone announced to the rest of the team.
That night, by the time the second patient had been put through the program, again reacting after the first vision, again scaring the life out of the same nurse with him, the problems were starting to show. Like Lincoln, where it had been assumed some weakness of the heart had caused the cardiac arrest, the second guy had died. Again it was a heart attack.
Twenty-four hours after the second death, and with a team of fresh thinking army personnel in place, the data had been extensively studied, codes of practice drawn up, training provided. Beta-blockers were made available; adrenaline was a huge problem in both men, and the visions, brought on by memory replacement had just been too real with which to cope.
The nurse in question––a senior manager called Alison––was reassigned, and Lorna was brought in to replace her.
She was put through a day of training. It was specific training to this program, starting with an understanding of what it was, what the patient would be seeing, covering areas of psychology, brain function, sensory awareness. It was detailed and time-consuming. It was everything Lorna needed to keep her mind from her loss and sadness she felt. She adapted very well to it.
When John arrived, she was there to receive him, though it was two days before he would be started on the program. He was unconscious and had been found in quite a bad way. He had some severe wounds, including one on the back of his head, but that gave them the idea about connecting directly to his temporal lobe and the visual cortex, two of the main areas active during the visions. Great care was taken, and the room well protected afterwards. A synthetic material was used to fill the cavity, a standard army technique for a quick patch-up job on the field of battle.
She came and went, but never went far. Then he was ready for the first vision, and from then on, she was with him for every waking moment. A camera was also installed in the room, just to keep her on her toes. Not that she didn't have enough to worry about already.
Three Months Ago
Back in his office, James' mysterious stranger sat glued to his chair, as the early data picked up by his secret box was starting to come through. Telephone calls, internal memos, blueprints, orbit patterns: the works. He had thought he was onto something big but had no idea how big. He'd been monitoring all press releases from the base for months, and they'd said quite a lot without saying much at all. It all talked about big stuff, but his observations of the base, watching as much as he could from a distance, showed another secret side which didn't fit with what was openly shared.
Now he knew why. Now he had the inside line, picking up on everything that was being said inside the control room, every message being sent between the teams. Everything. And it painted a clear picture. He couldn't believe his good fortune.
None of this seemed possible weeks before. There seemed no way of ever getting near enough to the base to learn anything. That was until he spotted James, one of three on-call doctors, when he was there for his first visit, as the chief doctor had been suddenly taken ill. He had watched him enter the base, through the gates, and walk around freely. He'd watched him step up to the main building, where he was met and led through the doors.
Thirty minutes later, seeing James get back into his red car, he had followed him as he left the base. It was about an hour's drive, but eventually, James pulled into his surgery, a full afternoon's clinic ahead of him.
James didn't notice the stranger walk into the surgery that day; he didn't know all the patients anyway. Far from it. He was one of four doctors working in the clinic,
each with thousands of potential patients on the books, situated as it was in a busy part of West London. The man scanned the list of doctors but was helped by James coming out of his room at that moment, walking over to the reception area, talking with a staff member. Dr J A Brookes M.D. was written on a plaque on the door.
Just a week later, the set up was in place, unknown to the dear old lady involved. Her medical records had been accessed and changed, her allergic reaction to penicillin temporarily removed. She was in for some mild discomfort. Dr Brookes saw her, spoke with her and diagnosed the problem, prescribing her an antibiotic: penicillin. The prescription was written by hand in his hand writing. She would not take them, but it was enough to frame him.
Her records were then put back as they were before, the warning clearly visible for anyone to see, unavoidable. A lawyer was paid to file a complaint, contact made supposedly on behalf of the family, and a young lawyer from an average London firm marched into James' room at the surgery on Tuesday morning, without the knowledge of the elderly patient, and claimed to be her lawyer. Papers were thrown onto the shocked doctor's desk, with claims of malpractice. He could be struck off for this.
A copy of her medical records was among the papers too, a yellow highlighter crudely indicating, as if it could be missed, the confirmation of her severe allergic reaction to penicillin. A copy of the prescription was also there, prescribing a level of drugs which would be standard in the situation, for anyone who was not allergic.
James felt cornered, unprepared. The evidence looked damning. It was correct that he had been busy, often working sixty, maybe seventy hours a week. The extra trips to the RAF base didn't help. But still, to miss such an obvious thing, he didn't know how he could have. He was careful, and yet the evidence in front of him looked damning.
It only got worse hours after that, when, as he sat in a local café, a cup of coffee in front of him, James was approached in person by this smartly dressed stranger, claiming to be a reporter. He had wind of the story and threats were made. That was all James needed. He'd left that encounter with the lawyer with some sense it could be dealt with. Now if the press got hold of it, he was finished.
It was a hostile opening to their connection as James wanted to punch the guy for being so sleazy, but he knew that would only make things worse. He was instead surprised when the reporter suggested he might be able to help. He had connections with the family, excellent links. He was confident he could make this go away, but James would have to do something for them in return. He never did understand who the 'them' was, but he wanted his error kept quiet. He was happy to play their game, for the moment, if it meant coming out of this all with his career intact. And so the plan was put into motion. They occasionally talked, before the face to face meetings started again. First, he was to take some photos of the RAF base to where he occasionally went. Then finally, after that time in the café one late morning, he was to plant a listening device. After that, it was promised, the allegations would go away. He wasn't needed anymore, but he wasn't told that, as a backup. Always better to keep the threat there, just in case something extra was needed. It wouldn't be.
After everything that had happened, James started to suspect a setup but had no way of proving it. If the mysterious stranger was to be believed, then his problems had now gone. But it all seemed rather convenient, the otherwise random connection between the potential lawsuit, and this so-called journalist, who appeared and offered to make it all better. To make it all go away only once he had done something for them. And yet he'd done it. It was just some photos at first, but then that device. He felt nervous, feeling that in his last action he'd overstepped the mark. Surely, once they found it, they'd be able to check the CCTV or something? Surely there'd be some record of him being the one planting it? Surely he wouldn't have been that lucky as to get away with it when he had no real idea what he was doing?
And if it did come out, he knew for sure he would be on his own. The stranger would be gone. Out of sight. And James couldn't accept that. He arranged one final meeting, where he pretended to make demands about wanting confirmation the issue was put to bed then they'd gone their separate ways. James was the first to leave, but waited in a hire car, a black Laguna. He followed the guy all the way to his office, which was indeed a sleazy tabloid newspaper. No surprise there then, he mused to himself. It fitted. He'd obviously been set up, but if he was at risk of going down, he wanted his piece of backup information. He needed to know the name of the guy who had suddenly dropped into his life, whom he'd worked hard at keeping away from everyone close to him, especially his wife, Lorna.
Walking in through the main doors, he'd chatted up the girls on the front reception area, playing it cool, going on to ask about a reporter who once interviewed him for some big piece, saying he'd like to get in touch. He described the man as best he could, from memory, but there was still a look of confusion on the younger of the two girls' faces, not much more than twenty, she'd only worked there for seven months.
“Oh, I think I know who you mean,” the other said, as a look of recognition spread across her face, her eyes sparkling. How typical, James thought to himself, putting two beautiful women on their front desk. The older one, who was maybe just twenty-five, cleavage showing, a red bra strap visible on her right shoulder, continued:
“The guy you're after is called John...something....I remember now––John Westlake.”
Present Day
John Westlake lay awake in bed, as Lorna came over to check his condition. His wounds were starting to improve, and the dressings changed every day. They still had some way to go, and one injury on his left leg still required antibiotics. But apart from that, progress was good. He'd survived a nuclear explosion; anything else was a bonus.
John still had no memory of anything before waking up in that hospital room. A doctor had come to him, on John's request, and they'd chatted about the issue of memory loss. When ready, it was agreed that he would be given help, professionally trained experts to come in and work with him, in the hope of getting his long-term memory back. His recollection of the disaster and what followed was kept subdued, controlled by the constant drugs fed to him through the tube attached to his left arm. They hadn't told him that, of course. But there seemed no harm in him having his long-term memory restored. In the moments before death, what else would he have to think about?
Two Months Ago
It was a fresh morning, a slight breeze blowing, leaves moving around carefree on the ground, like little children playing chase in the park. Dark clouds sat on the horizon, looking ominous, threatening a soaking at some point. John would keep an eye out for them.
He pushed that thought from his head and started his jog. It had been too long, and just thirty seconds into it, he could feel it. His engine inside, heart, veins, oxygen supply, just weren't up to it. After two minutes at a medium pace, he paused. Catching his breath, he started again, slower this time and more steady. Fitness was going to be a much slower process than he had hoped.
Running through the country tracks, over fields and through the occasional wooded area gave him time to think, to process. It was now a welcome escape from the pressures of life, his working world in particular. Everything in him was telling him he was onto something big. Part of him, and something he was trying to suppress, to deny, was telling him to walk away altogether; to leave it. To not get involved with something so top secret, so high level. He knew it was the kind of situation, in the films anyway, that ended in one killing here, a murder there. He could just imagine a team of hitmen waiting for him behind the next group of trees. And who would know? Who would find him out there, even if someone had noticed that he was missing? He didn't dwell on that thought for long but did start watching the path ahead of him, just in case.
His more ruthless nature wanted answers, though. Opening the situation up to an outsider, and one he assumed was currently unnoticed, would mean the public could one day know the truth. But what truth was he goi
ng to uncover? That was the real question that had kept him awake most of the night. Full of nervous excitement, and fear that kept him from sleep, he finally gave up as dawn broke. Pulling on his running shoes, he thought the fresh air might give him some respite. And it was, in a way. It was giving him time to slot his thoughts into place, to align his priorities and hopefully allay his fears.
Thirty minutes was all he could manage, and he walked the final bit back home. He'd made it back without fainting, and he congratulated himself. And no sign yet of a kill squad. For all the good the run had done as he walked through the front door again of his pleasant and cosy cottage, it all came back to him, like a mantle that he was wearing. He needed some answers, and he needed to pass this on to someone else, someone who could share the load.
Twenty-five minutes later, after a shower and hot drink, he walked into his home office area and sat down to start listening to and reading the latest output from his listening device left in the control room at the RAF base. The box was continually transmitting, whatever it was picking up. That message was sent out to a hub, which then relayed to his own computer sitting in front of him. It wasn't entirely untraceable, but it would take some time. He didn't know how long he had. He assumed, if they were onto him, the signal would stop first, proof that they'd found the box. That would give him advanced notice, long enough to get away from there, but it was a scenario he hadn't thought much about. He had no idea where he would go, apart from just driving as far as he could.
His main problem was that it was such time-consuming work. He needed to bring in others, maybe a team to work with. While there was only one of him, the stuff coming in was hours and hours of information from many people. Telephone conversations into the base, private chats between offices there, emails, memos. The lot.