Great North Road (18 page)

All she knew was that they were near the sea; she could smell it in the air as she walked down onto the hot tarmac of the apron. A windowless van was waiting for them. She didn’t protest when Elston told her to get in.

This time the drive was barely ten minutes. When they stopped, gravity was different, lighter than Earth. The reception area was a huge metal cave as big as any airport hangar, with curving walls illuminated by bright artificial lights. There were a lot of struts arranged in triangles, reinforcing the walls.

She was quickly hustled away down a corridor that seemed to be built from ducts and pipes and cables, the only unencumbered flat surface the concrete floor. There were pressure doors at every junction. And she went through a lot of junctions. Part of her thought that might be deliberate, that they were intentionally disorienting her.

The section she wound up in was like a clinic in a dirt-poor country. Metal furniture and not much of it. Desks with minimal electronic modules, none of it neat, all sprouted a tangle of fibers and cables. No windows. Guards that were ordered not to talk to her.

She only ever knew three rooms. Her cell, four meters to a side, with a small bed that hinged down from the wall, a plastic office chair, a table where she ate all her plastic tray meals, a toilet, and a washbasin. Room two, the interview room, was next to it.

Angela was taken straight there. It was almost identical to the cell. Square with a table in the center, her chair on one side, two chairs on the other. The guards sat her down and secured her wrists and ankles; then a technician came in and stuck various electrodes and sensor pads on her skin. Smirking when he unzipped the front of her prison service overall to apply the heart monitor and another couple of cold pads just below her bra, which would monitor temperature and perspiration. She glared back at him, but inside the dread was building.

Death was the only true fear. But it wasn’t something she had control over, she was realistic about that. Then again, they hadn’t brought her here simply to kill her. The restraints, the sensors, the unknown location, the effort involved getting her here—it all meant one thing. They wanted the truth, and she was going to give that to them. But the truth they so desperately wanted wasn’t important to her. That was her one hope. Her talisman. The knowledge that would keep her sane and rational.

Once all the patches were stuck to her body, the technician manipulated a couple of cameras on segmented metal stalks so they could track her eyes, watching pupil dilation and blink rate. Then there was a simple mike so vocal stress patterns could be analyzed.

“You’re so ready,” he said, stroking her cheek. Angela didn’t flinch, just awarded him a sneer.

Elston was one of the interviewers. The junior of the pair who occupied the chairs opposite her for all those countless hours. It was Major Sung who asked most of the questions, again and again.

“We’ll begin with the calibrations,” he told her as the technician finally left and the door slid shut.

Angela gave him her best pitying look. “You want to know about the monster. I’m not here to hide anything. I just can’t understand why you didn’t look into this earlier.”

“So you know, we haven’t stopped searching,” Sung replied levelly. “There is no evidence it ever existed, no trace. We have had no sighting in the wilds around Abellia. No forensic proof. Nothing. We’ve spent a small fortune examining this, and now we need to know if it really is just a bullshit legal defense ploy.”

“It’s not! I saw the fucker. It’s real!”

“We’ll get to that. But first, tell me your name.”

“Angela Tramelo.”

“Age?”

“Eighteen,” which was what appeared on her birth certificate, which was presumably the file he was reading.

“What were you studying at Imperial College?”

“Sports physiotherapy.”

And so it went. She thought for about eight hours. They gave her something to drink when she asked. Even unstrapped her twice so she could use the toilet in her cell. But other than that the questions went on relentlessly. What did you see? What room were you in when the attack happened? What did the alien look like? What did you do? Why did you run? Describe the alien in more detail. Did you see it actually kill the others?

Did you kill them?

Did you have a glove made of blades?

Did you hate Bartram North?

Did he hurt you?

Did you detest the sexual acts he made you perform?

Why would the alien kill them all?

After they removed the sensors and electrodes and unstrapped her they took her back to the cell, gave her a meal tray, a plastic pack containing a clean T-shirt, underwear and trousers, soap, toothpaste and brush, a towel—and locked the door. She had no idea how long it was before the door slid open again; she was asleep on the bed. The guard brought in a fresh meal and said: “You’ve got half an hour.”

He was telling the truth. Half an hour later she was back in the interview room with the pervy technician feeling her up. Sung and Elston came in.

“I’d like to go through yesterday’s testimony again,” Sung said.

Angela groaned in resignation and slumped her shoulders.

That style of questioning went on for five days without a break. Every detail she could remember, every incident queried as they made her describe the event repeatedly. Each time they looked for discrepancies, hounded her at the slightest variance, mocked, shouted, sounded sympathetic.

On the sixth day Angela was taken to the third room. It was a lot bigger than the others. But then it had to accommodate a machine the size of a hatchback car. When she saw it for the first time she thought it was a medical full-body mag-rez scanner. It wasn’t a bad guess. They didn’t use it that day, nor for several more. Instead she was strapped down on a metal gurney with only a blanket for padding. She refused and struggled the first day. It took three guards to force her down while the same technician fastened the restraints.

“What are you fucking doing, you bastards?” she screamed at them. It made no difference, the abuse, the curses. They didn’t care. As before the sensor patches were applied, the cuff around her arm to monitor blood pressure. The only thing missing was the camera to watch her eyes.

Then the technician wheeled in an IV drip.

“No!” she yelled. “No no no. You can’t do this.”

“I’m sorry, but we can,” Major Sung said. He nodded, and the technician slid a needle into the vein on the top of her hand.

It took a while for whatever they were using to take effect. The room stilled, then grew hot. Walls began to move—breathing. Voices sounded like orchestras. Insistent voices. The technician loomed large, adjusting the flow, making it just right for her, he told her. And the voices began. She started speaking. Profound thoughts about how the universe worked. How colors were so important. How Marj was such a comfort when she was a child. She could remember Marj, so that was real, truthful. Marj who was sweet. How she missed her mother, who if they didn’t know was French you know. How she loved her mother. How she hated the alien. The alien that was a dark shadow cast across her memories, bursting out of the nicest images of her life.

The gurney spun around like a carousel. She threw up.

Angela never did know how long that part lasted. Days at least. The drugs left her too confused between the sessions. Often they’d have to feed her milk drinks with proteins blended in, or soups where someone patiently spooned the warm liquid between numb lips. Her swallow reflex kicked in, otherwise she would have drooled it all out again.

She was definitely ill at some point. Feverish and shaking. People argued around her. She’d almost recovered when they strapped her down on the table again. The needle was as big as her arm, and the narcotic spewed out of the end, engulfing her in Champagne bubbles that glowed with magical light. She started talking again, but always aware of what she said. They probably wouldn’t expect that. The narcotic was supposed to have a stronger effect.

They let her recover for a whole day. Then she had to be guided on unsteady feet back to room three. Once again she was strapped down on the gurney. “I fucking hate you,” she told them. “When I get out of here I’m going to kill all of you. I’m going to lead the alien right here and watch and laugh while you scream and die.”

“Hold still,” the technician said. This was new. This was different. No sensor pads now. A metal crown with adjustable screw clamps that went around her head. He turned the screws until the contraption was fixed to her, pressing into her flesh, then he fastened it to the gurney somehow. She could hear the harsh metallic
clunk
as it slotted into its lock mechanism.

Delicate metallic spiders swung into view, except normal spiders didn’t have legs ending in flat plastic hooks. She cried out helplessly, mewling pitifully as he carefully hooked their curved edges around her eyelids, holding them permanently open. She couldn’t blink now. Couldn’t move her head—not that she tried, too scared any motion would rip her eyelids. Couldn’t move her limbs. “What are you doing?” she yelled at them. As always, they never bothered to answer her.

The gurney was wheeled across the room, and she was suddenly sliding into the guts of the big machine, which had to be some kind of scanner. Light shone into her eyes. It was bright, zipping through the spectrum in strobe flashes. And she couldn’t blink. Then the machine started buzzing and humming loudly, like it was preparing for takeoff.

“Get me out of here!”

The universe turned white. A single slim black line sliced down the middle. The universe turned black. A single white line sliced down the middle. It turned white. A white circle appeared.

She couldn’t blink. Couldn’t stop seeing the light.

“What the hell is this?”

White. Black. White. Black. White. Black. Each with a shape: circle, triangle, rectangle, square, pentagon, hexagon. More. Geometries she didn’t know the name of. Blank. Single images materialized. Tree. House. Ball. Car. Human. Horse. Dog. Lake. Wineglass. Table. Chair. Keyboard. Plate. Mountain. Beach. Rose. Shoe.

They were showing her an encyclopedia of everything. Monochromed. Chromatic. It was bewildering. She felt as if her brain was going to explode from the quantity of vision they were forcing in. And she couldn’t blink. Tears were pouring out now, trickling down her cheeks.

“I will kill you,” she promised in a whisper. The light was burning her now, inflaming her neurons. The pain was swelling. Thudding behind her temples in time to her heart. And still the images kept power-strobing in.

Nothing made sense. She didn’t know if she’d been unconscious or not. The difference in her existence was in the images. They weren’t so bright, and they moved now, like solid clouds scudding about. The sound of the machine had gone as well. People were talking instead.

She felt gentle pinching sensations but her mind was spinning so she didn’t know where they came from. Then the shapes withdrew and she could blink. Her eyes were incredibly sore. She squeezed them shut, tighter and tighter. Tears still came squeezing out of the sides. She was sobbing uncontrollably now.

Then there was a prick on her arm. She opened her eyes to see Elston pulling a syringe away. “I can’t take this anymore,” she told him in a dead voice.

He looked like she’d slapped him. “Almost over,” he murmured in an embarrassed tone.

She could feel her thoughts losing cohesion again. This time it wasn’t as bad as the IV drip. She could still think, though it was difficult, as if she was drowsy, rising from a deep slumber.

Something clamped across her face, and she couldn’t see. She felt the gurney moving again. The air changed and she knew she was back in the machine. To confirm that, the humming and buzzing and whirring started up again, setting her teeth on edge.

“You’re in Bartram North’s mansion again,” Sung’s voice said softly. “It’s the night of the murders. You said you were on the seventh-floor landing when you heard something.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I did.”

“You went into the lounge to see why the lights were off. And you slipped on something. Then you found the light switch. The lights came on, you said. You’re in the lounge, Angela, what did you see? What was in there, Angela? What was going on?”

“I’ve told you!” she moaned. “They were there on the floor. Dead! All them, dead.”

“Then what happened? What happened after you went into the lounge?”

“Bartram’s door opened. I saw it open.”

“What did you see then, Angela? What came out?”

“The alien,” she moaned. She didn’t need drugs to remember it, she’d never needed drugs for that. “The alien was in there. Monster with its claws out. Mariangela is behind it, and Coi and Bartram. Their blood. Everywhere their blood. Oh God, it’s ripped them apart. There’s just pieces left now. Pieces.”

“Look at it, Angela, as it comes for you, what do you see?”

“Monster!” she screamed. “Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster.” And the screams became sobbing. “It killed them. Killed all of them.”

She despised the memory now. It was the memory that was the cause of the deaths she’d witnessed. The memory that had trapped her, that controlled her life. The memory that had imprisoned her in here with her torturers. She wanted to rip the vile thing from her head.

The machine began to power down, its noise fading out. The gurney trundled over the floor again, and the blackout cups were lifted from her eyes. Elston, Sung, and the technician were staring down at her. They didn’t look happy, but then when have captors ever been pleased by their victims?

Her head was freed from the crown, straps removed from her limbs. She was too drained to move. Her whole body was shaking despite the weakness, the sore eyes, the terrible headache, the nausea. She was used to such affliction now, it was how she lived.

“What is that thing?” she growled, glancing at the big machine.

“A mind reader,” Sung answered simply as he helped her sit up on the gurney. “It scanned how your brain interprets images. Then once it had cataloged those patterns, we got you to remember.” He pointed at the screens on the wall.