Eventually, a woman entered the lobby. Auburn hair, freckles, a black skirt with a white blouse.
‘I’m Lexi,’ she said, reaching out her hand to shake Jasper’s. ‘Your father’s secretary. We met four years ago at your parents’ Christmas party.’
Jasper studied the woman. He didn’t have any recollection of her.
‘Did your father know you’re coming?’
He continued staring, undecided about how best he should play this. Calm, controlled and indifferent? Or the kidnapped, brainwashed, amnesic son, desperate to speak with his dad?
‘Your father is in a meeting,’ Lexi continued. ‘I’m afraid it might go on all day.’
‘Could you give him a message?’
‘Of course.’
Jasper held out the brown envelope. ‘I’ll wait in his office for a reply.’
‘I’m not sure he’ll be able to look at it right now,’ Lexi said. She smiled condescendingly.
‘Tell him it’s urgent. And I won’t be leaving.’
Lexi’s smile grew tight. ‘Why don’t you come with me?’ She took the envelope and showed Jasper to a huge office. One wall of clear glass overlooked the City and the river.
Jasper tested the soft-padded chair behind his father’s imposing desk. He swivelled around to gaze out of the window. A light gauze of tissue covered the pane; tissue that automatically filtered the sunlight when it got too bright. His father’s office provided a perfect view of the Board’s Headquarters.
Four cream smoke tops rested on the four corners of a giant brick building surrounded by high walls, electric fencing and a wasteland that was once destined to become a hub of business and leisure activity. The ambitious project to redevelop the power station had halted in the 2018 Collapse. Financiers pulled the plug, leaving the lavishly converted power station surrounded by rubble.
Jasper considered calling his mother. She deserved to know the truth about Tom. But at the same time he wondered if she was strong enough to take it. Did she know what her own husband was capable of? Had she been ignoring it all these years, pretending to herself that if she didn’t see it, it wasn’t happening? Weakness wasn’t an excuse. She was just as responsible for closing her eyes, for refusing to see what lay right in front of her. She should know.
When he’d entered the office, the room’s screen settings had appeared on his interface projection:
sync to local visual/ small/ large.
He selected ‘
small
’, and a panel of tissue over the window transformed into a white screen. Jasper hand gestured dialling then pointed to the home icon from his list of contacts. A red light blinked showing the call was connected to his mother’s interface. He waited for her to accept it.
At the same moment, the door to his father’s office flew open. David stormed in, red in the face, glasses steamed up. He stalked across to the desk, shaking the brown envelope.
‘Where did you get this?’ he growled.
‘Where do you think?’ Jasper answered, sitting forward to meet his father’s glare.
‘You’re going through a rough patch, son. And I’m very busy. We’ll talk about this when you’ve had a chance to get over the last few weeks.’ The fury in his voice didn’t match his words.
Jasper rose from his father’s leather chair. ‘Perhaps I don’t want time to get over them.’ The light on his interface turned green. His mother’s voice echoed across the speaker.
‘Jasper? What’s going on? Where are you?’
‘Now we’ve got Mum here too,’ Jasper said, ‘perhaps
Dad
, you’d care to explain to both of us why I found two different autopsy reports for Tom hidden in your drawers? One saying they’d found significant residues of LSD mixed with ketamine in his bloodstream.’
‘David, what’s happening?’ Jasper could see his mother’s face. Her eyes, red from crying, were projected on the darkened window panel behind his father’s desk.
‘I haven’t got time for this now,’ his father said, flinging the envelope so the corner hit Jasper hard in the chest. ‘You’re too messed up to know what you’re talking about.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us? Did you have something to do with it?’
‘What?’ Lucy’s voice came out high pitched, climbing towards hysterical.
‘The reason Ana’s father had me committed to Three Mills Mental Rehab Home on the night of our binding was because I had Tom’s research material, which showed a significant discrepancy in the original Pure test research results. Isn’t that right Dad?’
‘David?’
‘How dare you come here and pull me out of a goddam meeting for this crap?’
‘Didn’t you see the news? Ashby Barber’s confessed. He made a statement saying the original DNA tests were poorly researched. The recording between you and the Chairman of the Board is genuine. So tell us, Dad, aren’t LSD and ketamine what the Psych Watch use to tear people off the street they want to keep quiet? You knew Tom was being spiked. Just enough to make him start seeming unstable.’ Jasper stepped around the desk to face his father square on, rage flowing through him. ‘Did you choose money over your eldest son?’
David threw back his arm and punched him hard in the jaw.
Pain burst through Jasper’s cheek. He staggered backwards.
‘You’ve lost it kiddo,’ David said. ‘They’ve messed with your head.’
Jasper cupped his chin, while his mother’s voice, cold and quiet came across the speakers.
‘Link me to the big screen so I can see everything.’
He selected the synch button: ‘
Large
.’ At once, all the tissue window fabric turned opaque and Lucy’s face loomed over them: pale, beautiful and fifteen times larger than life. Her blonde hair, usually so immaculate, hadn’t even been brushed.
‘Jasper,’ she said, ‘bring me home the autopsy.’
He nodded and moved around to pick up the envelope.
His father got there first. ‘The boy’s been brainwashed,’ he spat. ‘This is ridiculous!’
‘Ashby Barber is dead,’ Lucy countered. ‘They’ve just announced it.’
‘I’m in the middle of a very important meeting. This will have to wait.’
‘Give Jasper the autopsy report,’ Lucy said, ‘or I’ll call the BBC and tell them you’ve got the Secretary of State for Health and three other government officials in there secretly signing the BenzidoxKid agreement.’
David reached for a drawer in his mahogany desk. ‘Don’t you threaten me, Lucy.’
A tear welled in her giant blue eye. ‘You . . . you bastard!’
‘I’m putting an end to this nonsense,’ he said, producing a box of matches. As he lit one, Jasper dove for the autopsy report. Papers and ornaments scattered off the desk. David pulled away. Flames guzzled the envelope. Jasper fought to get it back. The tissue blind hanging over the nearest window pane caught fire. Yellow flame licked up the length of the window, charring the centre of Lucy’s face, quickly spreading out across the glass wall.
The air began to fill with black smoke. Jasper struck his father hard in the stomach. David seized a decorative iron paperweight and smashed it into the side of son’s head. Darkness exploded over Jasper. Smoke filled his lungs and he lost consciousness.
‘Did they buy it?’ Dombrant asked Cole.
‘I think so, yeah.’
‘Let’s do this now then, and fast. Ana you keep watch.’ He handed her a thumb-sized plastic container. She got out of the van, and as Cole helped the Warden split the sedative between the Psych Watch patrollers, she took the bumpy contact lens with its lights and circuits from the watery solution, and fixed it in her right eye.
It took a couple of seconds for her eye to adjust and then her whole body whooshed with the sensation of having walked into a virtual world. The concept was the same as the interface – electronic virtual information superimposed on the external world, except with the contact lens it was impossible to distinguish between the two. She turned her gaze down the street towards the Project wall. She could see through the wall, and beyond. Six red glowing figures moved about, taking down a ladder, chatting, stretching their legs. She watched them for a minute, then scanned along, turning a full circle, checking for all signs of life in the immediate vicinity. It was amazing all the people she could see behind the walls of their flats cooking, working, sleeping, cleaning.
The bolt on the back of the van clanged. Behind her, Dombrant opened one of the doors.
‘Nobody move,’ he said. She watched the Project wall and listened as he and Cole carried the first guard down from the front and dumped him in the back. When she glanced around, she saw six men and women huddled together in the darkness, shrinking away from the listless body.
‘There must be a Paralyser in the van somewhere,’ she said. ‘Otherwise they’d be starting to recover.’
‘And there may be more at the Headquarters,’ Dombrant said. ‘Keep your deflectors on at all times.’
Ana and Cole nodded. She continued surveying the area, while they moved the second patroller. As soon as both Psych Watch men were in the back, she hopped in with them.
‘We’ll stop again en route for the shirts,’ Dombrant said. ‘I’m sure this lot will help you strip the Watch.’
‘Wait!’ A hundred metres down the road from the Special Ops, on the other side of the Project wall, a man dangled from a tree branch. A moment later, he swung onto the wall and climbed down it like he had suckers on his hands and knees.
‘Are any of the Project guards really good at climbing?’ she asked.
The man landed on Merton Road, just out of range of the Special Ops, as though he was aware of them and knew to avoid them. He brushed himself down, paused for a moment, then darted across the street. A second later he jumped a wall and was at the crossroads with Merton Lane. Seeing the Psych Watch van he froze.
‘It’s Blaize,’ Cole said.
Ana waved to him, surprisingly glad to see him. After a moment of shock, recognition filled his face and he began running towards them. She dashed to meet him with her Paralyser headset, so that the vibration in the back of the van wouldn’t lock down his limbs.
*
Ana lost track of time bumping along in the back of the van. The interior was crowded and airless; the dreamy obedience of the guards disturbing. Blaize, as cocky as ever, had joked about it at first, getting his fellow guards to do small, stupid things. Then he’d asked Cole’s ex to kiss him and Rachel had embraced him on the lips. Shocked, he didn’t speak again, until Ana explained about the Benzidox and the Paralysers and he told her what had happened in the Project, how the Special Ops had tried to make Mikey shoot his brother.
After about half an hour, one of the patrollers started regaining consciousness. Seeing Ana’s reluctance with the Stinger, Blaize grabbed it and stung him for her. Now they were having to do both guards every five or ten minutes. It was making her sick.
After a while there came shouting, fire crackers, bottles smashing. Sticks battered the van walls in a thunderstorm of sound. They had to be nearing the Board’s Headquarters and with Cole and Dombrant wearing the Psych Watch shirts the rioters wouldn’t be able to tell them apart from the real thing. She entwined her sweaty fingers and squeezed out the tension.
A thousand chanting voices echoed on the air. Ana felt the van slow. A thump landed on the bonnet up front – the sound of metal crunching and bending.
Ana and Blaize watched each other in the darkness. Her heart felt like it was stuck in her throat. The van stopped. Dombrant spoke, his voice muffled through the metal divide.
‘Held up by protestors,’ she caught him saying.
A guard answered. There was another exchange. Then someone patted the bonnet and they were moving forward again. The van veered left.
Ana moved her Stinger from her right hand to her left, and rubbed her hand on her trousers.
I’m inside the Board’s Headquarters.
Every interview she’d ever had with the Board seemed to flash through her mind. They were under her skin, inside her, worming away at her thoughts.
‘You all right?’ Blaize whispered.
Her chest heaved. She was hyperventilating. The van stopped. She shuffled towards the back doors. The bolt clanged, the door creaked and light poured in. It was all she could do to stop herself from leaping out.
‘Slowly,’ Dombrant said. She slackened her body and descended. Without moving her head, she shifted her eyes, taking in what was once the power station’s turbine hall. White tiled pillars set two metres apart held up the hall on either side. Beyond the pillars, she could see the cobbled street circling the Headquarters, armed guards in turrets securing high surrounding fences. Several saloon cars were parked in the hall, but there were no signs of the other Psych Watch vans. Perhaps they’d made their deliveries and already left.
‘You’re late,’ a voice said. Cole’s hand moved to the Stinger on his belt. Feet clopped across the gravelly floor. The rigid, even strides sounded like a Board member rather than someone from Special Ops.
‘Get them all out fast,’ Dombrant murmured. Ana tucked her headset in the waist at the back of her trousers, then pulled her T-shirt over it. As she lined up with the other captives, she realised her green T-shirt and jeans borrowed from Lila, didn’t match the Project uniform.
Dombrant crossed the hall and greeted the Board member. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘We were trying out a few back routes. Hoping to avoid all the protests.’
‘I’ve been assigned to show you where to take the volunteers.’
Volunteers, yeah right.
The woman strode to the van. Cole hurriedly slammed the back doors – Watch patrollers unconscious inside – and Ana found herself face to face with a woman who had thick glasses and no eyebrows.
A muscle beneath Ana’s eye twitched. She’d been interviewed once by this Board member. She focused on relaxing her face and staring vacantly ahead. Blaize stood two down in the line from her. To play along, he had to still be wearing the fourth headset Dombrant had given him in the van, or he’d be paralysed. Would the Board member notice? And what would happen when the
volunteers
were no longer in range of the Paralyser emissions? They’d all start waking up, asking questions, panicking, fighting. If that happened before they’d been reunited with the others, it would be a disaster.