The Arena: The Awakening (1) (5 page)

“
Damn it”
he thought,
“I hope that plane’s comfortable and has food on board”.

Chapter 7

The Debrief

The Arena was cold and quiet. There were several nurses working around Mia, plugging various monitoring machines into the wall and then attaching sticky electrode pads all over her body. This was the norm after a mission, and nobody spoke. All her vital signs were checked by the team while she lay on the state-of-the-art medical bed. The officials who watched her at the beginning and the tall man had all left the Arena. Mia just lay there staring at the ceiling. Before long, the medical team had dwindled away as well with only one nurse left with her. As it was quiet, she could hear a set of footsteps drawing closer.

“Mia, I’m Dr Campion. Do you remember me?” said a quietly spoken male voice.

She couldn’t see the person speaking as he stayed behind her and didn’t come into view. Mia hadn’t noticed but she was actually restrained to the bed with a couple of buckled straps. She tried to turn her head to see who was speaking but she couldn’t move far enough around. He was standing just in the shadows and out of view. She gave up trying to see him and replied

“No, I don’t remember you”. She could hear him pacing up and down behind her.

He asked “What can you tell me about your last mission?”

Mia took a moment and replied “The target was acquired, it was a clean open shot, mission completed”.

Unknown to Mia, Dr Campion was watching all of her medical scanning machines when she talked. He made mental notes as he was looking but as with the last few debriefs he had completed with her, her heart rate and other body vitals didn’t alter when she replied. The nurse who stayed with Mia after the others had left the Arena was now sitting at the side of the bed.

“Is she injured in any way?” asked Dr Campion.

“She has a slight scratch on her hand but nothing else” replied the nurse.

“Mia” asked Dr Campion. “Where did you get the scratch on your hand?”

“Not sure,” she replied. “I didn’t notice that I had a scratch until you just pointed it out”.

With that, Dr Campion simply said to Mia “Thank you for answering my questions and I’ll see you next time.”

Mia heard his footsteps recede and the rear Arena door squeak as it opened and closed. Again, she was resigned to looking at the ceiling and waiting. For what, she didn’t know but she lay motionless on the bed.

After about thirty minutes, she heard the squeaky door open and a different set of footsteps coming towards her.

“Mia, that was a well-executed mission you accomplished for us” boomed a deep commanding voice.

Mia recognised the voice of the tall man in the Arena when she first arrived.

“I’m Doctor Cooper and I want to thank you for your participation in this project but I’m afraid it’s time to make you forget about what you’ve done over the last few days.”

He was holding a syringe in his hand and leaned forward towards Mia’s right arm. As he stuck the needle into her shoulder, she didn’t even flinch.

“In a few moments Mia, you’ll forget what has happened and later today, you’ll return to your normal life. We’ll see you again in a few months and we’ll start the process all over again”.

Mia nodded in acknowledgement and Dr Cooper walked off towards the door. Closing her eyes, Mia expected to lapse into unconsciousness but she didn’t. As she lay there, she felt that she had started to lose control of her limbs. She couldn’t move her arms or her legs at all and within a few moments, she couldn’t even speak.

She started thinking to herself
“This feels familiar.
”

She remembered not being able to move. This time however, whatever the doctor had just injected her with, didn’t take away the memories of her exploits over the last few days. She remembered everything! Before long, the medical team came back into the Arena and started disconnecting all of the medical equipment.

Mia was thinking to herself “
Your injection didn’t work
” but obviously, she couldn’t tell anyone. Within a couple of minutes, four doctors and two nurses appeared and started to pick Mia up off of the bed. She could see another nurse approaching with Mia’s wheelchair that she initially arrived in. Like a well-oiled machine, they lifted her into the chair and strapped her in to stop her falling forward and started to wheel her in the direction of the squeaking door.

As she was pushed through the door, Mia found herself once again blinded by the bright lights as the Arena lights had been dimmed for the time she had been in there. When she stopped blinking and regained her focus, she could see Kyle sitting in a chair next to the reception desk. As she got closer, he got up as if to greet her. As usual, he didn’t speak directly to her, he half-heartedly smiled at her and said “Thank you” to the nurse pushing the chair and took over from her.

As he pushed Mia towards the elevator at the end of the corridor, she could hear him quietly say “Nice to have you back honey”.

Mia thought to herself
“I don’t know who you really are but I’m quite sure you’re not to be trusted”
.

With the injection Dr Cooper gave her not working, she remembered snippets of arriving at the Arena and seeing her supposed husband punching numbers into two different keypads. She thought to herself that he knew exactly what was going on in the Arena and exactly what Mia had been doing over the last three days. She believed that he was working for them and looking after her was a false persona created by whoever it was controlling The Arena.

Within a couple of minutes of being in the elevator, Mia was being pushed up the ramp and back into their minivan again. She heard the '
clunk click
' of her chair being secured and before long, they were back on the road heading home.

As the miles passed by, Mia stared out of the window and wondered to herself how this situation happened. Her memory only went as far back as arriving at the Arena three days ago but she was getting flashbacks to her life in the chair at their house in Alexandria. Mia didn’t seem to have a problem with what she had done over the last three days with regards to the killing, she was more concerned with why she was being kept in such a vegetative state by people she didn’t really know. She had lots of questions but she couldn’t tell anyone. Only having the thoughts in your head would drive a normal person mad but Mia seemed ok with her own thoughts. How long that would last is another story.

The countryside flew past and finally they were back at their house. Mia’s chair was unloaded from the van and wheeled back into the house.

“I’ll get on with your dinner soon Mia,” said Kyle.

She thought
“Great! Back to mushed food.”

Mia remembered the meals she was eating while on the Boston assignment. On the way up there, she stopped at a steak house she knew of just outside the Denville area of New Jersey and had one of their famous steak burgers. She could feel herself salivating at the thought of it but tried not to let herself get too carried away as her mushed-up food was on its way.

Chapter 8

The Tea Party

The flight to Boston wasn’t the greatest. When the boss said he had a plane waiting for Hank, he didn’t say that it was a four seater flying washing machine. The turbulence was horrific all the way from Morristown to Boston. By the time Hank climbed out at the other end, he didn’t really want to work, he wanted to curl up in a dark room somewhere, try not to vomit and have a good long sleep. As he took deep breaths and tried to settle his stomach, the engine on the plane came to a stuttering halt. Just as it did a parade of three government standard issue Ford Crown Victorias drove onto the tarmac and stopped next to where Hank was standing. The boss had arranged for the Boston field office to provide transport for Hank to the crime scene. It was only a twenty minute drive from the airfield to the city centre but with Hank feeling as rough as he did, it might as well have been two hours. Every bump, every turn just made him feel worse. Eventually they reached the outer cordon of the crime scene. He checked in with the senior investigating officer on scene from the Boston office. Thankfully he had already been told that Hank was there to observe only and that he wouldn’t be taking the job from them unless he noticed something serious that the investigating team had overlooked. This gave him a free pass to wander around the sectioned-off crime scene and take a closer look when he felt like it.

The cordoned off area extended eight hundred yards from the crime scene and across the park opposite. Given the time it had taken for Hank to get there from Morristown, it was quite dark now and not only had the body been removed from the scene but the officers on scene had gone home for the evening. Only a couple of night shift Sheriff’s Department officers were left, making sure no one entered or disturbed anything. In the back of Hank’s mind, he had a thought about the distance the sniper had been shooting from in the other investigations. He knew he would need to look a little further than the area cordoned off by the field office. With the light available, there wasn’t anything else Hank could do for the day so he arranged for a lift to his hotel and would start afresh in the morning.

The Bureau had arranged for Hank to have an overnight room at a hotel not far from the crime scene to give him easy access to the investigation area whenever he needed it. As soon as Hanks head hit the pillow of his bed, the day was done. It was however, only the start of what would be a restless night.

Waking at three o’clock in the morning wasn’t the good night’s sleep Hank had been looking forward to. He woke up in a puddle of sweat as he had been tossing and turning all night. He had been unable to shut off enough to sleep well and his dreams kept focusing on the Mercedes he was looking at earlier in the day.

As he couldn’t get back to sleep, he grabbed a quick shower, put on his suit and headed out for a walk back to the crime scene. The city was nice and quiet at that time of the morning. The only noise was from the city refuse company collecting the garbage from the alleyways between the buildings. The air was crisp so Hank put a pace on and walked towards the area of the cordon. As he knew he needed to look beyond the cordon, he walked around the outskirts of the park and carried on until it was almost out of view. Hank always tried to keep line of sight with the assassination point and before long he found a hotel that overlooked the crime scene. He turned around and looked back on the route he had taken. He estimated in his head that it was about one thousand yards from the hotel to the assassination point. Still within a reasonable distance considering what he had seen the day before in Blairstown.

He went into the hotel and struck up a conversation with the female receptionist. Hank introduced himself as FBI and showed his identification. After the small talk and pleasantries, Hank asked if he could take a look at the guest register. The receptionist agreed but it meant that he had to come around the other side of the desk as it was held on the computer. As he scanned the listings, the receptionist offered to make him a coffee which he gladly accepted. Hank had been on the lookout for a coffee shop on his walk to the hotel but, as everything was closed, he needed his fix from somewhere. As he scrolled through, Hank realised that he wasn’t really going to find anything worth pursuing as he didn’t have a name to pursue. Well, it would have been uneventful right up until the point where he scrolled past the name Laura Richards. Hank froze when he saw it. He felt his chest tighten and struggled to take a breath. The receptionist returned at this point with his coffee and could see that he was in some type of distress.

“Where is your CCTV system?” he wheezed at her.

“It’s on this computer system here” she replied.

Hank went quiet for a moment as he composed himself and started to breathe normally. This wasn’t what he expected to have to deal with on this trip at all.

“Can you bring up the reception area for yesterday at 3.30pm please?” he asked.

Without question, she brought it up on the screen. He could see a petite woman dressed in a business suit carrying a handbag and pulling a suitcase. The CCTV only covered her from the rear so he couldn’t make out her face which started to calm him down even more.

The receptionist asked him if he was all right to which he replied “Sorry, I just saw a name from my past. Must just be a coincidence”. He asked her for a printout of the guest list, swigged his coffee and left in a hurry.

As he walked through the streets, he kept saying the name over and over in his head. Laura Richards had been the name of Hank's wife who died a few years before. Suddenly coming across it had upset him more than he thought it would. He hailed a cab and asked to be taken to the FBI field office.

After about twenty minutes, he arrived. There was a nightshift agent working in the office who let him in and checked his ID. Once inside, Hank grabbed a desk with a computer and logged on. Before he did anything more, he looked again at the list the receptionist had printed out for him. He looked again at the Laura Richards name. He tried his hardest to focus and not let his mind wander. He could see that she was in room 615. What he did find odd was that she checked in earlier that morning and then checked out same day. Using the FBI buildings database, he looked up the hotel and the room number. He could see that the room had been on the fifteenth floor of the building. Also, from cross- referencing the mapping of the city, it had a perfect clear line of site to the crime scene. From the edge of the room window, it was one thousand and fifty yards away.