Grace held her breath as she drove up to the entrance of the underground car park at the Janus Justice building. The roller-shutter automatically began to rise and she exhaled, relieved that the security system had not yet deactivated her access. Guards were stationed on all the external doors and gates. They were all new and, once they’d seen her lanyard, nodded at her as she made her way up to the top floor, unaware she was no longer employed there. The grind of the lift mechanism meant the bio-security pad had responded to her fingerprint, but she still wasn’t home and dry.
As the lift rose, her heart rate rose with it. It stopped with a judder and the doors opened. She hovered for a moment on the threshold – Grace afraid of being caught doing something wrong, Gracie agitated that she might not get what she wanted. The corridor was empty and silent, the lights strips of soft luminescence along the ceiling, turned down for the night. She angled her face away from the security camera – just another employee doing her job.
She found a wheelchair by the empty guard station and pushed it towards Siberia ward. The door opened before she got there.
Her breath caught in her throat.
George appeared, his large shoulders slumped, regarding her with his soft brown eyes. ‘Evening, Doctor G. You’re working late. I thought you’d gone already.’
‘Hi, George. I’m on call. It’s an emergency, one of the patients having fits, apparently. I’m going to pop him down to the clinic and check everything’s okay with his reel.’ She pointed to the wheelchair as if it somehow explained everything.
‘Well, don’t stay all night, they might think you’re one of the patients and put you in a bed.’ He chuckled.
‘I won’t.’ She forced a smile and he continued on his way.
Grace peered into Siberia ward. It would only be a matter of time before another member of staff came along. She quickly pushed the chair over to Remy’s bed without looking at the other offenders.
Putting the brake on the chair, she detached his fluid lines with shaking hands and paused briefly before removing his headset. What if snapping him out of his reel caused him to freak out? His closed eyes looked sunken into his pale face, lines from the frame imprinted onto his skin.
Taking a deep breath, she put her hands under his armpits and tried to lift him, but he was heavier than she’d expected. Approaching from a different angle, she pulled his legs across the bed towards the chair, wondering how the hell she was going to get him onto the chair without him crashing to the floor. It was warm on the ward and sweat prickled her skin.
‘I would’ve done it for you if you’d asked.’
Startled, Grace turned around to see George again. He lumbered towards the chair and rearranged Remy’s dead weight easily. He said, ‘If you’re taking him for more than an hour, you’re going to need to sedate him, because otherwise he’ll wake up with the Scaries.’
‘The Scaries?’
‘Yeah, you know, when you wake up out of a horrible dream and you don’t know where you are and you’re not sure if the dream is still going on. We call it the Scaries. Happens sometimes.’ He rummaged in his pocket, brought out two nasal sprays and held them out to her. ‘These can be pretty useful in tricky situations.’ Grace took them and put them in her jacket pocket.
‘Thanks, George.’
‘You want me to take him somewhere for you?’ He reached out to the handles.
‘No, no, that’s fine. Thanks, you’ve been very helpful.’
George considered her for a moment, then said, ‘Doc, I don’t know what you’re doing. But I do know I owe you. I owe you for my sister’s life.’
Grace nodded, biting her lip.
‘I tell you what,’ George said. ‘I’ll just push him to the lift for you.’ He started moving Remy towards the door.
‘I’ll follow, I just need to get something.’
Quickly, she pushed at panels behind the workstation that sat by the entrance to the ward. A couple of minutes later, she found what she was looking for – drugs that would reverse the sedative quickly. She suspected that she was going to need Remy alert as soon as possible.
Grace followed George out into the corridor, feeling a growing sense of excitement. Maybe she was going to get away with this.
Safely in the lift, the doors began to close on George and he raised a large hand in a childlike wave.
Grace put her hand on her heart and whispered, ‘Thank you.’
George nodded before the doors shut firmly and the lift moved down.
Remy was wrapped only in his white sheet, like a toga. She wished she’d brought something more substantial for him to wear. Just a few more floors to go. She peeled open a sterile hypodermic packet, filled the syringe with the clear liquid from the bottle, held it up and cleared the bubbles and injected Remy in his bicep.
The lift doors opened to the underground car park. There was no point in trying to conceal her activity from the CCTV. She would already have been recorded in the corridor and the lift. George knew she’d taken Remy from Siberia, that she was the last person to see him. It was only a matter of time before the police were onto her.
There was no way she could go back to the life she’d worked so hard for.
Two security guards stood chatting by the roller-shutter to the car park. Grace wheeled Remy behind a car so they wouldn’t be able to see him and then ran over, shouting, ‘There’s an intruder up on Floor Three!’ They immediately ran to the lift and when they had gone, Grace moved Remy to her car.
With the car door open to her left and Remy in the chair to her right, Grace geared herself up to getting him into the passenger seat. The drugs she’d given him to combat his sedation appeared to be working as he was beginning to stir. His eyelids flickered and his arms twitched. ‘Come on, Rem. We need to get out of here.’
Lifting his arms over her shoulders, she tried to pull him up. It was hard to get a good grip on him that would allow her to lever him up. He was a dead weight, still not come round enough to move himself. How had she imagined she could do this?
As she struggled, she didn’t hear the roller-shutter come up. By the time the car had pulled up behind her, its tyres squeaking on the eco-tarmac, it was too late. She turned around as Remy fell back into the wheelchair with a groan.
Conrad jumped out of his sleek black car, leaving the engine running. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ He whipped his phone from his pocket. ‘I’m calling security.’
Grace looked around in a panic and was about to run away, when Gracie suddenly took charge. She took a step towards him.
‘No, you’re not going to call security, Conrad.’ She ducked towards him, snatched his phone and flung it to the far side of the car park. The sound of the crack reverberated around the walls.
‘The hell…?’ he said, staring after it. He turned back to her, outraged. ‘You fucking mad bitch!’
‘You’re not going to call security, and you’re not even going to stop me leaving.’ She was amazed by the confidence in her own voice. ‘Because you’re in enough trouble. It’s very late. I suppose you’re here for some kind of emergency meeting about the protestors and the hackers?’
‘Yes, I am!’ he barked. ‘And any minute now there’ll be the head of security, board members, and a number of other people turning up.’ He looked over to Remy, slumped in the wheelchair. ‘You won’t get away with this, Grace. You and him, you’re both going down. What the hell has gone wrong in your head?’ His expression was one of disbelief and contempt.
‘Oh, I’m going to get away with this, Conrad,’ she said confidently. ‘You’re going to let me leave, with Remy. In fact, I’m going to go further than that.’ Her voice was low and menacing now. ‘You’re going to help me get him into that car. If the guards come back, you’re going to tell them it’s fine. You’re not going to say a word to anyone else and you’re going to delete the security video too.’
His laugh was strained and high-pitched.
‘And what do I tell the Department of Justice? That I lost an offender?’ Sweat began beading his forehead, reflecting the strip lights above.
‘Remy was never here officially,’ Grace said calmly. ‘I brought him in. He was never arrested. No court orders, no papers were signed. He’s a ghost.’
‘You’re mad if you think—’
She grabbed him roughly across the face, digging her fingernails in hard.
‘Yes, I am fucking mad!’
Conrad’s eyes widened. She clutched at his face, her nails causing tiny moons, and through gritted teeth said, ‘I have enough dirt on you to destroy you. I’ve got all the files, photos, videos. I know what you do in Siberia, the torture that goes on in Tier Three, the unlicensed drugs you use. I have evidence for all of it. I know all about your friend in the Department of Justice – your minister and your dirty little dealings.’
The hint of a smile came to Conrad’s lips. Did he realise she was faking it?
‘You don’t know shit,’ he said.
‘Don’t I? It wasn’t hackers, it was NewsFlex who got into the computer system and found all the information. They’ve seen everything.’
His eyes lit up at this. Was he falling for her bluff?
‘I know plenty, and if you don’t let us go my husband is going to lay all your dirty laundry out there for the world to see!’
Conrad’s smile disappeared altogether.
‘Dan knows the whole story. One call from me and your shitshow is over. I’m pretty sure your minister is going to deny all knowledge and what’s going to happen to you then? So you’re going to do things my way, aren’t you?’
His face had drained of colour. He nodded.
‘So who’s the bitch now?’ she whispered and let go of him.
‘You’re going to give me my job at Tier Two back. Then you’re going to destroy the security footage of this,’ she waved her hand around. ‘But first of all, help me get him in the car.’
‘Jesus Christ…’
‘You’re going to do this or, I swear, I’ll destroy you, your reputation and your company. You do things my way and we both walk away with what we want. No one needs to suffer, Conrad.’ She knew his sense of survival, his ego and his desire for money would win out over doing the right thing.
She wasn’t going to beg.
Not long later, Remy was sitting in the passenger seat, the wheelchair empty next to Grace’s car. She sat in the driver’s seat, the door shut but the window lowered. Conrad leaned over the car, one hand on the roof, his face almost level with hers.
‘You realise that this means we have a hold over each other?’ he said, wiping the sweat out of his eyes. ‘I’ll let you go now, but I’m not going to destroy the security tapes. They’re my insurance. We’re trapped in this agreement. Both of us. One step in the wrong direction and I’ll have you.’
She started up the engine, and before she pulled off, she said, ‘So be it.’