THIRTEEN

Eve

 

Holly sat on the bed reviewing discs that had already been perused by other eyes. Her legs stretched in front of her, shoes off toes curling and uncurling in an unconscious relaxation exercise. Smoke curled from the cigarette in her right hand, a blue column of vapour reaching up and mingling with the dense acrid fog hanging in a cloud above the bed. Her eyes peered intensely behind black-rimmed round spectacles, piercing the blue haze and spearing the small monitor screen perched on the desk to the left of the bed.

She had been staring at the screen for hours, watching the various pieces of video that made up the visual diary of Alex’s movements over the past three days. The volume was muted. There was not a lot of sound on the recording in the first instance. Much of the history she was watching was of a lone, perhaps lonely figure. Even were it not, she would have watched with the sound off. She liked to study the body language of her latest project, believed it revealed more about his state of mind than any amount of dialogue. She would go through the catalogue of discs again with the volume up, whether it was necessary or not. Shelton would demand it. She demanded it of herself.

She was still smarting at the way Shelton had spoken to her, was still angry that he had scored such a direct hit on her sensibilities. It was true she had taken more than a passing delight in her befriending of Alex. In her shepherding and schooling of him. It was a task she had warmed to with the ease borne not just of the familiarity of her task, though familiar it was. Holly Stowe had performed many such tasks in her time, acting as friend, lover, confidante, whore. Whatever the role, she had always been equal to the task, applied herself fully to the performance. The trouble was, with Alex the line between performance and reality had blurred. Somewhere inside her was the nagging suspicion that she was beginning to fall in love with him. Love was a word she did not even think about lightly. You could cut off all her fingers and still count the times she had actually been in love on those that remained on only one of her hands.

The problem was his innocence. She had never before encountered someone so straightforwardly innocent as Alex. It was a character trait that was enormously appealing. After years of corrupting so many so called innocents, none of whom were innocent at all, they were merely parading about in false clothing, and being so corrupt herself, (she was being brutally honest with herself for the time being, a practice she disapproved of usually and did her best to avoid), she had been drawn irresistibly towards the young man she had encountered on the island. Not that it would have mattered had she not been, she was a professional and she prided herself on her work. Work that had taken her all over the world, several times. No matter where she was though, what, or who the job was, was immaterial. And, it was hard to avoid, no matter where in the world you were, when you got right down to basics, a bed was a bed was a bed. It hadn’t all been hard work though, as she would have been the first to admit. There had been plenty of pleasurable experiences, the Arab prince at Oxford sprang to mind, the ageing gun runner who had been whiling away his “retirement” in pampered comfort in Geneva, the French mademoiselle with her incredible unshaven armpits and her passion for vanilla ice cream. But Alex was special. With his shy, blushing grin, his dark eyes peering up at her through thick dark lashes. His embarrassed fumbles that became more assured under her expert tuition but still retained something of that first nervous reticence. His eagerness to please and his unabashed pleasure when he made her laugh, which he was able to do more often and more easily than she ever expected. It was a combination of all that and much more she had not expressed, that made her feelings toward him doubt the necessity for what Shelton was doing to him, and made her question the man’s motives.

She was aware of The Adam Project, had to be to be so closely involved with Alex. After all he was The Adam Project. She knew more about the project than Shelton realised and she was circumspect about revealing the amount of knowledge she had. Shelton would not approve, quite the opposite, he would disapprove in the strongest terms and Holly knew enough about Anthony Shelton to know that could mean her own demise. She had played the game long enough to know the rules and one of the most important rules was that once you were in the game, it was virtually impossible to get out of it. She was very bright, entitled to list a whole slew of letters after her name, but none of that meant anything in this world she had discovered early on. The only thing that mattered was power. Anthony Shelton was a powerful man and if she wanted to get out of the game alive, she knew she would have to acquire power of her own, and so she had been doing all the while since the game had begun. She was a whore, it was true, but she was her own whore, pimping herself in pursuit of her own ends. Which was why she was so disconcerted at her feelings for Alex. Feelings were never meant to be part of the game she was playing. Someone had called a time out and slipped in a rule change when she wasn’t looking.

The cigarette had burned to the filter in her hand. She stubbed it out, drew another from the crumpled packet beside her and waved the yellow flame from her lighter across the end, sucking in another lungful of smoke and exhaling slowly. On screen the picture spooled back through another day. She watched the figures flick silently back through the minutes and hours in the corner of the screen, watched Alex in the silent pantomime of life. Occasionally, she would stop the recording, holding the picture in freeze frame. Her fingers would move over buttons on the remote control, changing the image on the monitor. The recorder was a new model, unknown to the consumer and officially, still in development, barely at the prototype stage. The Clinic had been in receipt of the recorders for two months. Holly could section the picture on the screen, break it down into segments and paint a grid over the picture, she could enlarge any one grid to full screen size and paint a new grid and enlarge again. This could go on ad infinitum but in reality, picture quality was lost after three such blow-ups and to make any sense of the pixels after that would require access to a Super Computer and a lot of free time. Time, as Shelton had stressed, was one thing they did not have.

Satisfying her curiosity, Holly resumed normal play mode and continued to study Alex. Her mind once more fully focused on the matter in hand and her self-examination over, at least for the time being.

 

Ricci found Borkan playing virtual reality golf, headset on and standing on the small circular platform with the rolling foot pads. It was a glorious day in Augusta and Chazz was in the pair following the old master himself, he looked at the leader board and saw that the Golden Bear had just birdied the fourth hole and was sharing the early lead with Payne Stewart. He teed off, striking a near perfect drive down the rolling, emerald fairway.

“Thought I’d find you here,” there was a note of disgust in Ricci’s voice.

His head may have been in Augusta, but Borkan sensed the entrance of his opposite number as soon as he opened the door to the gaming room. With a small sense of regret, he cancelled the game, saving it to memory and removed the headset.

“What’s on your mind, Kyle?” Borkan had changed from his black suit. Gone too was the white shirt and black tie. Even in the comfortable grey sweat suit, though, Borkan retained his casual sense of grace. He stepped from the platform and took a long drink from the frosted glass of mineral water on the table next to Kyle.

“What do you think?” Ricci’s retort was loaded with sarcasm. Borkan allowed it to wash over him, unperturbed.

“Relax. You know the procedure. You’ve done this a million times.”

“I am relaxed. I’m also organised.” Borkan’s voice had been light, no sense of reproach implied by his tone, but Ricci inferred it anyway. “While you’ve been in here enjoying yourself. I’ve been in the armoury.”

Chazz nodded. He could smell gun oil on Ricci’s hands, the scent of discharged weapons clung to the man’s clothing, subtle, but there if you knew what it was.

“You should try something a little more recreational, Kyle.” This time, Ricci did not have to infer anything. He rose to the bait.

“What? Golf? It’s a game for old men. Maybe that’s why you like it!”

“It’s a game that requires thought,” he ignored the jibe at his age, he was only seven years older than Ricci.

“That’s not what you’re supposed to be thinking about, old man. It isn’t on the agenda.”

“It’s also a game that gives you the opportunity to think. You wouldn’t understand, unless you’d played it.” Borkan finished in the same easy, quiet tone that at once conveyed his dislike for and disdain of his colleague. Chazz Borkan had never met Peter Rappaport, Alex’s father had been before his time, but the two men were similar in many respects. It was one reason Alex had liked him so much, without knowing why.

Borkan didn’t think Alex liked Kyle much at all and he was sure that Kyle knew. Maybe that was why Kyle disliked Alex with the obvious loathing he did.

“So, are you going to share your pearls of wisdom?”

It was time to stop the antagonism. Each was aware of the other’s feelings, and both of them were okay with the situation, as long as it did not interfere with their jobs. The nature of their profession was that there were always long periods of down time, followed by quick bursts of intense activity. The animosity gave them something to focus on from time to time.

“There aren’t any,” Borkan admitted in reply to Ricci’s question. “Alex is a smart kid but for all his talents, a kid is all he remains. I don’t expect him to put up too much resistance when we find him…”

“More’s the pity.” The words slipped slyly from Ricci’s mouth, sneaking out like a fox in the night.

“. . . Assuming that he’s still alive and not some banquet for the bottom feeders between here and the mainland.”

“Oh no, he’s alive, Borkan. I can feel it. The old man feels it too.”

“Wishful thinking, Kyle?”

The other man shook his head. “I know it. Here!” He pointed to his stomach, “Gut feeling, instinct. And you know it, too, don’t deny it.”

Borkan knew what Ricci was feeling. It was part of the man’s make up, part of his own too. Call it instinct, premonition, whatever name you gave it it was the same thing. The thing that kept them alive, the thing that gave them their edge and they had learned not to ignore it. In its way, it was as incredible as what Alex could do, only it was much more indefinable and they had had to learn it, they hadn’t been born with the ability the way Alex had with his, or had they? Wasn’t that what Shelton’s project was all about? Either way, there was a sadness inside Borkan when he thought about Alex’s future, be it long or short, and his hand in it.

He stripped off his sweatshirt and slung it over his shoulder. “I’m gonna take a shower,” he said.

Ricci nodded, said nothing as the other man left the room. He had noticed the small rash on the inside of Borkan’s elbow and unconsciously scratched at his own arm. The other man was allergic to the injections of serum that he and everyone else on the island were subjected to once a month. Ricci did not know what the phials of urine yellow fluid composed, only that they did their job, and that was all that mattered. Without regular doses of serum, Alex would know just about anything he wanted about any of them. And that most certainly would not be good for business. Then again, Kyle thought with a grin, the little shit would really get a kick in the ass if he could know what he really thought about him, about what he wanted to do to him. Little bastard would have nightmares, would piss his bed if he took a look under Kyle’s lid. He often thought it would be worth it. Still, Alex would find out soon enough what was occupying Kyle’s thoughts and it wouldn’t take a mind reader to figure it out. He laughed at his own private joke. He looked at the VR machine. If it was good enough for Borkan… He placed the headset in position, stepped onto the platform and switched the machine on. He scrolled down the menu until he found the most violent selection in the catalogue and began to play.

 

Christmas morning. The sky was loaded with rain clouds but so far the safety catch was on and no water had fallen. Not that that was important inside The Clinic. Underground, the temperature was a steady sixty-eight and the light was the same normal tone it always was during the day. The light sensors were attuned to a timer and as the day wore on, the lights would automatically adjust, their glow softening towards evening to simulate the oncoming night. The lights could be overridden but everyone used the changing hues like clocks.

Holly watched Alex open the small mound of presents before him. He sat in bed pulling shiny foil from the packages. There was no one to watch him, or so he thought and his face betrayed his dismay. Anyone else watching the tapes would have just thought Alex was unhappy with his presents, (on the disc he gave them scant regard, unwrapping, staring at them for a second or two and then discarding), or maybe disappointed, perhaps upset, that he was alone. Indeed, that would have been part of it and Holly herself would have thought no more about it if Alex had not walked out four days later. She would have assumed Alex was pining for her. It was not vain or immodest, she remembered how upset he had been when she left him the previous Wednesday, ostensibly to visit her parents. In truth she had not seen her parents for years. Watching the monitor, she knew there was more to Alex’s apparent torpidness than missing the woman he loved. She went back further, watched his reactions while interacting with other people, this time with the sound up, listening for any hint of discontent in his voice or speech patterns. She was quietly impressed with him. No one, she believed, could have noticed the change in Alex, except for herself, and even she would have struggled, may not have seen the change in him without the benefit of hindsight.

Her eyes were tired now, she had been staring at the screens for a long time and she needed a break. She hit stop and Alex’s image faded from the monitor. She stretched the lethargy from her limbs and rolled her head around on her shoulders, loosening the muscles there. She glanced at the ashtray on the bed. The heavy glass dish was overflowing with ash and the stubbed out remains of cigarettes. Her mouth was dry and she smacked her lips distastefully. She needed a drink, and she needed to pee. Rising from the bed, she walked to the bathroom, picking up the ashtray and emptying its contents into a wastebasket on the way. Bright fluorescent strips lit the bathroom in a harsh glare. She filled a glass with tap water and swallowed down its contents gratefully. Unsnapping the buttons of her leather trousers, she tugged down her underwear and sat on the toilet. She sighed with relief as the pressure on her bladder subsided. That was when the lights went out.

It did not happen immediately. The lights flickered briefly, the harsh glare dimming for a second before brightening again. Holly did not see it, she had closed her eyes, fingers sliding under the frames of her glasses and massaging the soft skin around her eyeballs. She noticed it the second time but thought it was just her tired vision. Then the lights flickered rapidly and she knew it was not her eyes, and then it went black.

The darkness lasted only while the main power was out and before the back up generator kicked in. Seconds only, but it was enough for two things to happen. In times of stress, time has a tendency to become pliable in the mind. Holly was suddenly plunged back in time, reliving a childhood nightmare. Her stepfather shouting, screaming at her in rage. It wasn’t her fault, it had been an accident. She wanted the milk. Her stepfather had risen from the table, disappeared in the direction of the toilet. She should have got down from her chair and walked to the end of the table where the bottle of milk stood, balanced precariously on the edge. She should have got down and walked instead of reaching across the expanse of kitchen table. But she hadn’t, she had stretched her arm out instead. She was far too small to reach the bottle. With a child’s logic she knelt on her chair reaching out further. The bottle was still beyond the grasp of her small fingers and she had to stand on her chair to grasp hold of it. She thrust out with her hand, fingers just grabbing the top of the bottle and pulled it towards her. The bottle toppled over, her grip not tight enough and milk poured from its wide neck, soaking into the open sports pages of the Sunday paper. The four-year-old Holly gasped in surprise, snatching her hand from the bottle and falling quickly back into her chair. Eyes wide, she saw the river of milk run to the edge of the table and pour in a thin, quick drizzle over the edge to the linoleum floor below. The white rope of milk was chased over the edge by the rolling glass bottle, which fell in a seemingly endless plunge before crashing onto the hard kitchen floor.

And then, there was her stepfather, still buckling the belt looped around his waist, his face turning a mottled shade of purple with anger. He began to shout at her. Holly started to cry but her tears only seemed to enrage him further. She had been a bad girl, she knew it and that made her cry harder. She flinched as he raised his hand, expecting to feel the slap of his palm against her face but instead she felt herself tugged out of her seat and carried across the kitchen into the garden. Her stepfather was shouting now about her punishment. His roaring tirade making little sense to the four-year-old girl until she heard the one word that struck terror into her. Last summer she inadvertently followed her mother into the coal bunker at the bottom of the garden. Her mother had not realised she was there and when she left, she closed the door, shutting Holly inside, the summer sun cutting off and leaving her in sudden darkness. She had screamed in terror, stumbling over a mound of coal and falling to the dusty floor. Her mother opened the door and pulled her out immediately, hugging the frightened child to her breast, uttering a stream of soothing words into her ear. Her trembling stopped after twenty minutes.

Now, her stepfather told her he was going to lock her in the coal bunker until she learned some sense. Holly screamed in anguish and struggled in his arms, panic firing her arms and legs and she squirmed and screamed in her stepfather’s embrace, her small muscles struggling in vain against his grip.

They reached the coal bunker and he flung open the door and virtually threw Holly inside. She stumbled forwards, hands in front of her and fell into a pile of coal. From the garden, her stepfather watched with a twisted grin on his face as she rolled over and tried to stand up. Her screams of panic having no affect. She watched his face as he closed the door on her, shutting out the light and plunging the bunker into total darkness. She did not hear the bolt being drawn across the door, its action easy after being recently oiled and her cries blanking it out. Her stepfather listened to her for ten minutes, until her voice was hoarse and ragged and her throat was clogged from her tears. He left her in the bunker for three hours, her mind running riot. There were all sorts of things in the dark. Nasty, horrible things, things that crept and crawled, that could stare at you with their big ugly eyes, hang right there in front of you, in the dark. And it was so dark you wouldn’t know they were there, just waiting for you to open your mouth to scream just one more time. Just once more, because now they had found you, now they were ready and waiting and the next time you screamed, they would drop right into your mouth, horrible, hairy legs that would run over your tongue and down your throat, scraping all the time they went. And you would die. It was that simple. Holly knew it. And so she stopped screaming and she stood there in petrified silence, hands over her mouth, breathing only when she had to because her nose was blocked with the snot that had run when she had cried and she had to force air in and out of her mouth without opening it, just a tiny thin crack for the air to get through.

When her stepfather opened the door three hours later, she saw her mother standing behind him, face set rigid. She saw the smirk on her stepfather’s face, the look of satisfaction held there concealed from her mother. Holly staggered out of the bunker, her pretty blue dress ruined by black streaks of coal dust grimed into it. Her face and hair coated in the same grime that covered her arms. She ran past her parents into her house and upstairs to her room. She never spoke to her stepfather again.

The memory faded an instant before the lights came back on, the emergency generator clicking smoothly into action. Holly shuddered at the recollection. From the day she had been thrown into the coal bunker, she had had an unnatural fear of the dark, a phobia she had struggled to come to terms with ever since. She had studied phobias, her own in particular until, for the most part, she had beaten it. Most of the time her fear was nothing more than a name in a reference book. Scotophobia was nothing to be ashamed of, across the globe there were millions of sufferers, but a fear was a weakness and Holly kept her weaknesses to herself. If someone knew your weaknesses, they could exploit them. Holly was an exploiter and had no intention of becoming the exploited, that was not part of her plan.

She took a deep breath, to calm herself and focus her mind. The darkness had been swift, the memory it evoked sharp and bitter, but gone now, she was in control again.

The second thing that happened was also a memory. This one a lot more recent, and far less traumatic, than the first. When she arrived on the island, she had been met by Andrew. Amongst the pleasantries and his bringing her up to speed with the little amount of knowledge he had imparted to her, she remembered his mentioning of a power failure. The dipping of the lights now suddenly brought that comment to mind.

When was the power failure? How long had it lasted? Where was Alex at the time? Holly quickly tugged up her panties and trousers, fastening buttons as she went. It was suddenly very important that she knew the answers to those questions. She left her quarters and went in search of Andrew Elwes.