Soul Protector (10 page)

“You could’ve rung and let me
know. I’ve been stuck in waiting for you.”
Like I’d had anything
better to do
.

“I would’ve called if I could.
I felt bad letting you down, but there wasn’t any time. The CSPs
were spotted again. The Soul Protector who called in said they were
in a disused warehouse, but they obviously found out we were
coming. By the time we got there, they’d gone.”

I was annoyed to see a smile
playing on his lips.

“Anyway, it appears you found
something to occupy yourself with while you waited.”

“Huh?”

“Chocolate.” He pointed at me
and made a circle sign with this finger. “You’ve got it all round
your mouth.”

I quickly raised my hand to rub
off the evidence. As I wiped, I couldn’t help giggling. “Oh damn,
guess I’m busted.”

“That’s better. Couldn’t take
you to the office looking like Coco the Clown, could I?”

“Oh, we’re still going? I
thought it might be too late.”

“No, they’re expecting us.
Anyway, it’s a twenty-four hour operation. Never closes.”

He paused for a moment, and the
way he looked at me made my insides melt. I felt the heat start to
creep up my face.

“You curled your hair.”

“Oh… I just fancied a
change.”

“It looks really pretty.”

I felt my blush so intensely, I
was sure I looked like a beetroot. I didn’t know what to do, so I
ruined the moment by bursting out with laughter.

“What?” Dan pulled a face.

“Nothing, sorry, I’m just
rubbish at accepting compliments”

He studied me for a couple of
seconds, before grinning and shaking his head.

”Right, we need to go young
lady. Are you ready?”

“Of course,” I said, grabbing
my bag. “Take me to your leader.”

As Dan led me outside, I was
drawn to a sporty looking Jaguar sat in the parking area.

Dan flicked his key fob, and
the Jag flashed its lights at us.

“This one?”

“Well, it’s not really mine,
it’s a company car.”

“Some company.”

As Dan pulled out onto the
road, I had a question that had been bugging me. “Dan, did you ring
in sick for me yesterday?”

“No, not me personally, I
phoned the Office and asked one of the SPs to do it for you.”

“Oh, thanks. How did they know
where I worked though?”

He turned towards me and raised
his eyebrows. “They have access to pretty much everything.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, they’ve got contacts
everywhere. SPs work for the Police, the Government, the
hospitals... They’ve got access to all sorts of private files and
information, which is fed back through the Office. It comes in
really handy.”

This place was sounding more
and more sophisticated.

~

After driving North up the M1
for about half an hour, Dan turned off the motorway. With the
metropolis way behind us, all I could see lit up in the headlights
were fields and trees.

“Not long now,” said Dan,
turning onto a single-track road.

I wasn’t sure where I expected
the Office to be, but I never imagined it would be in the middle of
nowhere.

“It’s quite a commute,” I said,
squinting through the darkness towards some old stone structures
which looked like derelict farm buildings.

“It’s not too bad. This is
it.”

I looked beyond the old
buildings for something that vaguely resembled a place of work.
“Here? You’re kidding, right?”

“No, this is definitely it,” he
said, driving down a steep dip.

We came to a standstill, facing
head on to an old stone wall covered in ivy. Dan pressed a button
and his window dropped down. He leaned out the car and spoke to the
wall.

“Dan Sullivan with the new
registration. All clear.”

“Good evening, Dan,” a smooth
female voice answered back. I looked around to see where it had
come from, but there was nothing obvious.

To my amazement, a zigzag
pattern began to appear in the centre of the wall. The black lines
quickly became bigger, until a gap formed, and then both halves of
the wall slid into the mud bank. Ahead of us was a long tunnel,
with low level lighting on either side.

My jaw dropped briefly, and I
snapped it shut again as Dan manoeuvred the car through the
darkness.

I turned to watch the stone
wall shut behind us, but it was already closed.

“I don’t know what I was
expecting, but I know I wasn’t expecting that.” I said.

“Quite cool, huh?” I could just
make out the white of Dan’s teeth as he spoke.

I faced forwards again and
squinted to try and get some bearings. As I peered through the
dimly lit space, I saw the underground car park ahead. There were
roughly forty vehicles parked, with spaces for about another
hundred.

Dan pulled up in a reserved
space, and we both jumped out.

He walked round to my side and
I felt the familiar shivery sensation as he got close.

“Gracie, once we’re doing the
registration bit, I think it would be better if you let me do the
talking.”

“Why? What’s going to
happen?”

“Nothing much, it’s just easier
if I answer the questions. I know exactly what they’ll want to
hear.”

“Oh God, who are
they
.
They’re starting to sound scary.”

“
They
are nothing to
worry about. They’re called Soulfellows. You’ve probably heard of
them? They’re the guys who control the whole SP organisation.”

I thought for a moment…
Soulfellows
. The name did ring a bell, but I couldn’t pin
down the reason why. After a few moments, it came to me.

“Yes, yes, I have heard of
them. Aren’t they a secret society like the Masons?”

“Sort of, but it’s a lot harder
to get in,” he said.

“Because you also have to be a
Soul Protector?”

He nodded. “And they’re not
that scary,” he carried on, “it’s just easier if they believe you
stuck to the rules. They don’t like it if they think they’ve got a
maverick on their watch.”

“Me, a maverick? Well there’s a
first.” I couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit proud he thought of me
like that.

We came to a standstill outside
a glass screen. There was an image of a hand etched into the glass
and Dan placed his palm on it to match the outline. The screen
opened and we walked through the gap. I was amazed at what I
saw.

The whole place was a hive of
activity. It was a huge open-plan space, with glass panelled rooms
off to one side, and solid-framed rooms opposite them. Along the
back wall were giant screens displaying technical data, and what
looked like live-streaming from various locations.

In the open-plan area, there
were dozens of desks and people sat tapping away furiously at
computers while others walked around with little mouth pieces on,
their footsteps clicking on the tiled surface as they spoke to some
anonymous person in a different location.

I stood still, trying to take
it all in.

“How can all this be going on
in the middle of nowhere?”

“Welcome to the Office,” said
Dan. “I’m guessing it’s not quite the tin pot operation you were
expecting?”

“Uh no, it’s the opposite of
what I was expecting. Now tell me, is your boss sat in a private
room somewhere with a fluffy white cat on his lap?”

Dan chuckled.

I carried on gazing around me
at all the activity. “Is this the only Office or are there
more?”

“There’s a few more. Every
continent has its own Office. This one is European Operations, but
the main HQ is in Los Angeles.”

“Blimey, Dan, how many SPs are
there?”

“Several thousand in the UK,
and world-wide there’s over a million of us.”

“And nobody normal has a clue
about them?

Dan gave me a half-smile.
“Don’t you mean
us,
Gracie? Nobody normal has a clue about
us
. Don’t forget, you’re a Soul Protector too.”

I frowned at him. I just
couldn’t think of myself as one of
them
.

He ignored my expression and
carried on. “Soul Protectors have been walking on earth since early
man, and just like regular people, our numbers keep growing.”

“Unbelievable.”

“Come on,” he said, starting to
walk again. I fell in with his step as he made his way over to a
large silver desk opposite the entrance. I noticed security badges
pinned on the chests of the guys sitting behind it. Dan introduced
me, and made small talk with them, filling out a form they’d
slipped in front of him.

I watched Dan as he spoke.
There was a lot more going on than just his looks. He had this
presence
about him
.
Something about the way he held
himself and the way he spoke to people made them look up to him. He
was one of those rare people who commanded respect, but did it in
such a nice way, people fell over themselves to attend to him.

Another guy, his badge said
Robert,
approached the desk and told Dan that the Operations
Director needed a quick word with him.

Dan looked at his watch.
“Alright. Sorry, Gracie. This shouldn’t take long.”

I smiled a goodbye at the
security guys, and dutifully followed Dan out of the open-plan area
and through a corridor. We stopped at another glass-screened door
with an identical palm print outline. Dan raised his hand and the
glass slid to one side.

The space beyond looked similar
to the main area we’d just come from. I followed Dan to an office
on the left-hand side. He knocked on the door, and a tall man
walked out, dressed in a shirt and trousers. He acknowledged me,
before lowering his voice and talking so only Dan could hear. I
stood by his side feeling like a spare part. My mind began to drift
and I wondered if, after Dan dropped me home, I would ever see him
again.

A noise behind us snapped me
out of my thoughts. Dan looked over my shoulder and I heard him
mutter something under his breath.

I peered round to see three men
in the same black outfit that Dan was wearing. They were holding on
to a guy in jeans and a hoodie, who looked to be in his thirties.
As they moved towards us, the guy was putting up a fight and the
others had to work hard to restrain him. They approached us and the
detainee locked eyes with me. In that moment he stopped resisting,
and I noticed his eyes were filled with panic.

“Please help me,” he said,
panting. “This isn’t right. They can’t do this. You have to tell
someone.”

Without warning, he reached out
and grabbed hold of my coat, yanking me forward towards him. I
didn’t have time to steady myself and fell forward, crashing into
him.

“Tell the newspapers,” he
hissed.

Dan was quick to jump
in-between us and release the man’s grip, catching his stray arm
and bending it up behind his back. The guy leaned forward and
whimpered.

“Don’t resist and it won’t
hurt,” Dan said, as he handed him back to the other monitors. Then
he moved to my side and bent down so only I could hear what he was
saying.

“Are you okay, Gracie? Did he
hurt you?”

I shook my head, patting my
down coat. “It’s okay, I’m fine. Just a bit ruffled, that’s
all.”

The Operations Director, who’d
been silently observing until that point, turned to face the
monitors. “Gentlemen, would you mind telling me what you’re playing
at?”

“Sorry Sir. We brought him in
wearing cuffs, but after the interrogation, we thought he’d calmed
down.”

Another monitor cut in, “he
requested the dignity of walking to the SEC without them, and we
thought it’d be okay.

The Director shook his head and
raised his voice. “There are procedures. CSPs should be in cuffs at
all times. End of story.”

“It won’t happen again,
Sir.”

“It had better not.”

Dan looked from the Director to
the monitor. “Is this guy linked to the group?”

The monitor shook his head.
“He’s definitely not one of them. His primary surname is Hunter,
real age is eighty-six. He’s got a terminal illness.”

The Director sighed. Dan looked
over towards the guy in the suit who stood with his head bowed,
defeated.

“What’s going on mate? Why did
you let yourself get to the red stage?”

I looked above the guy’s head,
imagining the red aura that would be visible to the monitors.

He stopped struggling for a
minute and looked up at Dan. The panic in his eyes had been
replaced with desperation.

“Please stop this, I’m begging
you. Don’t make me go to the SEC.”

His voice was choked up and it
was hard not to feel sorry for him.

He carried on. “I’ll listen to
this man’s mind, I’ll do whatever he wants, put his thoughts and
motivations before my own. I promise you. Just don’t make me go in
there.”

Dan shook his head and for a
brief moment I thought I saw pity in his eyes. But he took a deep
breath, and his face hardened again.

“What happens to you now is out
of our hands. You know the code, so you must have known this part
was inevitable.”

“But I know there are other
guys out there getting away with it. I’ve heard a couple have been
changed for years. If they can do it, why can’t I?

“Because it’s wrong,” the
Operations Director said. “You can’t just abuse your gift to steal
bodies. That’s as good as murder.”

The detainee surprised me by
laughing. “You have no idea what you’re talking about do you?” He
stopped laughing and brought himself up to his full height, almost
as tall as Dan.

“You wait ‘til you get to my
age. Inside I don’t feel any different from when I was in my
twenties, but I’m held back by my old body ravaged with lung
disease. Life is precious. You hear that all the time but you only
really appreciate it when it’s being taken away from you. Well I’ve
had enough of feeling old and sick. I’ve found a second chance to
live again in a body that’s fit and well. I’ve got the energy of my
youth back and no one would turn their back on a chance like
that.”