The Arena: The Awakening (1) (10 page)

He sat down and opened up the envelope. As he drew out the first picture, he could feel himself welling up a little and his heart starting to race. He stared at the woman in the picture looking at the detail in her face. What stumped him a little was that it did look like her but at the same time it didn’t. There were slight facial features that didn’t match his memory of her. However the differences didn’t matter. As far as he was concerned, it knew it was her. She was alive!!!

After about ten minutes of deep thought, Hank decided to head back to Morristown and call it a day from there. He headed down in the elevator and walked into the foyer area. As he stepped out of the lift, he could see agents and officers running all over the place. He walked to the reception desk and asked what was going on. The reply he got shook him to his core.

“There’s been a shooting in the park the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge. The guy’s lost his head.”

Everything suddenly slowed down for Hank. As he looked around the room at everyone running out of the building, he couldn’t help thinking
“Is it her? Is she here in Manhattan still?”

When he composed himself, Hank ran outside and jumped into
Laura
. The roar of the engine echoed around the buildings in the Plaza. He nailed the throttle to the floor and took off in a cloud of smoke in the direction of the Bridge. Hank didn’t usually use the full power of
Laura’s
muscle but the thought of slowing down didn’t enter his brain at all. As he fought his way through the traffic, he found himself overtaking marked FBI cars and leaving them for dust. He was going to be first there regardless.

As he skidded to a halt at the far end of the bridge, he ran down the stairs to the scene and it was complete carnage. There were people running around left, right and centre. People screaming and lots of people walking around covered in blood. Hank looked past all of that and focused in on the body, which was now slightly slumped forwards onto the table in front of it. He switched into full
“Ground Commander”
mode as he had been taught and started detailing people to do certain things. Clearing the area was at the top of his priority list, as well as getting the body covered up to reduce the impact on the public. Within a few seconds, a paramedic had covered the body and various officers had started to move people away from the scene. There was one woman who was extremely traumatised as she had been sitting next to the victim and was covered in blood. Hank detailed a uniformed detective at the scene to take her outside of the area and debrief her about what had happened.

Once everyone had a task to do, Hank looked around the body for anything that could identify him. He had nothing, not even a wallet with a driver's licence. This was going to be a wait-and-see after CSIs had done their bit. Hank stepped back and looked up at the bridge. There were people still coming and going and he looked across the water towards Manhattan, as this was the direction in which the victim was facing. He could see that there were lots of high-rise buildings along the waterfront and he knew that somewhere in there was Mia, and where she had taken the shot from. By now, an emergency mobile command unit had been set up on the bridge overlooking the scene. Hank went up there and spoke to the officers manning the station. He detailed them to start a search for the name Laura Richards in the area he was looking at, especially in the hotels. It didn’t take long before they came back with a match at one of the upmarket hotels. Hank knew he had to get there as soon as possible but, before he left, he asked one of the operatives to put the make, model and number plate of her car on the hotlist and if it’s seen, to track it.

Within ten minutes, Hank was at the hotel and travelling up to the penthouse suit where Laura Richards was meant to be. The front desk had given him a swipe card for the door of the suite so he could enter without causing any damage. He was sweating and his heart rate was up, thinking about the possibility that his wife could be in this room. He had almost forgotten that she was a killer and that he was there to do his job and bring her in. As he entered the room, he had his gun drawn and covered every corner of each room before proceeding to the next. It was apparent that there was no one there and that he had missed his chance of finding her this time around.

Hank took a seat on the sofa in the room, called the command unit on the bridge and ordered them to send a CSI team to the room to do their thing. As he was on the phone, they told him that there had been a hit on the car. His cell phone beeped as they sent him through a photograph of the car and its driver crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, past one of the command unit’s camera vans, not forty-five minutes ago. Hank took a quick minute and looked at the picture. It was her!

“Where’s the car now?” he asked.

They told him they had tracked it through Manhattan, down to the Port Authority area and then picked it up again on the Staten Island cameras. It was heading south.

Hank knew she would be heading back to DC so asked them to live-track the car as best they could. Though it was showing different number plates again, there couldn’t be too many maroon coloured Aston Martins heading from Staten Island to Washington. Hank locked the room up, went to the reception desk and told them that a team would be there shortly to examine it. He ran from the hotel and jumped into
Laura
and headed off to try and catch up with the Aston Martin.

It wasn’t long before
Laura
was steaming down the New Jersey Turnpike towards Philadelphia. Hank was using the full power of
Laura
to try and catch up but, before long,
Laura
turned into one of those cars that would go anywhere, except past a gas station. After about an hour, he got a call from the command unit saying that the Aston was passing Baltimore. Hank was quite a way behind but that didn’t matter to him. He told them that, when it entered the DC area, to track it closely and, if it disappears, switch to the CCTV cameras in the city where they’d lost it so they could then try and find the driver on foot. Hank pushed the throttle on
Laura
to the floor and, before long, he was stopping for fuel again. He decided that, since things were in hand with the tracking of the vehicle, it didn’t matter that he was stopping all the time. He had the feeling that this was it. He was going to find her!

Chapter 15

The Fruitful Loss

“Hank, she’s left the car in the Foggy Bottom area and walked on foot towards the White House. We lost her around the Lafayette Square area.”

That wasn’t what he wanted to hear at all. Hank was just coming into the DC Metro area and working his way through the stop/start traffic. It took him an age due to the road blocks around the White House security area. There was no parking in the area at all unless you were disabled, so he pulled over just around the corner in front of the Department of Veterans Affairs offices in Vermont Avenue. He took the portable police light from his glove box and put it on the dashboard to stop him being towed and walked around to Lafayette Square. There was a bench just inside the square and Hank took a seat and looked around to see if anything jumped out at him. He could see that on the corner there was the Appledore Rehabilitation Centre and other Government buildings. There was nothing he could see that pointed towards where she would have gone to. He turned around and looked directly at the White House.

He thought to himself
“All this security, and we’ve lost her. One of the most heavily guarded buildings on the planet and we’ve lost her!”

Hanks disappointment was short lived. His cell phone rang and it was the Control Centre back in New York.

“
Hank, we think we’ve found her but can’t be one hundred percent sure.”

As he listened, his phone beeped as he had a message come through:

“
We can’t be sure it’s her, as the person we were following was definitely walking
.”

This threw Hank a little as he opened the message on his phone. The picture was of a girl in a wheelchair being loaded into a minivan outside the Rehabilitation Centre opposite where he was sitting. He looked closely at it and could see the same dark red hair, but that was all. There was something about it though. He couldn’t place what it was. Perhaps it was his feelings towards the case influencing his judgement, but he felt that this was the right avenue to pursue. They managed to get the plate of the minivan and had the address of the registered owner in Alexandria.

Hank had been on the road all day and, by this point was starting to feel it. He had a lead to follow but it was no good if he was too exhausted to follow it through properly. He got back into
Laura
and drove to the Hoover Building a couple of blocks away. On the top floor, there were a few single accommodation rooms for visitors to use when necessary, so he checked into one of them and flaked out on the bed. He had the overnight bag from the trunk of
Laura
that he’d replenished that morning before setting off, so he knew the next day he could start afresh.

It was a restless night. The bed was uncomfortable, the room didn’t have any air conditioning and was really warm. He tossed and turned all night worrying about what he would actually do if he did find Laura the next day. Would he bring her in or would he let her go? Would she even remember him? It wasn’t a good set of questions to be mulling over. The night dragged on with Hank only getting minimal sleep before it was 6 am and time to get up.

After getting showered, shaved and ready to go, Hank remembered that he hadn’t spoken to his boss in a couple of days, so he needed to update him with what was going on. He went downstairs in the building to the hot-desking area and sent a message to him explaining what he had found out and why he was back in DC. When he had finished, he walked across the street to a diner to grab some hot food and coffee. He was in a more positive mood by the end of his meal. He felt almost recharged and it wasn’t long before he was on the road to the minivan owner's address in Alexandria.

It wasn’t a bad drive to get there. It was familiar to Hank, as he had lived in the Annapolis area for a while with Laura and visited Alexandria frequently when they went out for drives on the weekend. Before long, he was sitting opposite the address looking at the house. It was actually quite a nice place. It was a colonial-style bungalow with nice grounds. The garden was well kept, with a mixture of lawn and flowers blooming in the warm sunshine. Parked on the driveway was the minivan. It was still only 8.30 am, so he didn’t want to go into the house that early as they may not actually be awake yet. He watched the house for any signs of movement but there was nothing. He gave it another half an hour before walking over to the property. He figured 9am was a decent time to be knocking on a door. What he wasn’t aware of, was that the occupants had been up for quite some time and he would have no idea of the conversation that was going on at that very moment.

Chapter 16

Restless Answers

It wasn’t the most peaceful night for Mia. She had lay there all night willing parts of herself to move. Time after time she repeatedly moved her arms and legs. After a few hours of perseverance, she found she could control the functions of them, as well as move her head freely. She was almost back! The only thing left for her to do was speak. She was cautious with this step though. She didn’t want to make any noise and risk waking Kyle.

She whispered “Hello” over and over again.

She then tried “Help” over and over until she was confident that she could control her throat and mouth.

It had taken all night but finally, she was up and out of bed walking around the room in her nightshirt.

She was planning how to play it with Kyle in the morning. She knew she needed to get the maximum amount of information out of him as possible to start piecing her life back together. In her head, she decided that it was best to keep the element of surprise and play along in her usual state to see what happened. It wasn’t long before she heard the door of Kyle’s room opening, so she quickly dove back into bed and under the covers. She could hear him going through his usual morning ritual getting everything ready. She could hear the kettle boiling and then his footsteps walking along the corridor to her room.

As he entered, he said “Morning” in a soft voice and set about getting her up and ready for the day.

She found it hard to play limp as she could move all her body now, but she carried on playing along. Before long, he had loaded her into her chair and was wheeling her into the dining room for breakfast.

As they sat there with Kyle spoon-feeding her the mushy breakfast he had prepared, Mia decided to test the water to see how much attention he was paying to her. She twitched her arm to see if he noticed, but he didn’t and just carried on.

She did it again and this time, he sat back and looked at her and said “Are you alright Mia?”

He started to stand up and she suddenly grabbed his arm. He paused and sat back down.

“Who are you?” she asked.

Kyle looked startled for a moment, then sat back in his chair.

“What do you mean Mia? I’m Kyle, your husband” he replied.

“Trust me Kyle, I know that you’re not, I want to know who you are” she said raising her voice a little.

Kyle stared at her for a moment and she saw that his eyes glanced over the counter to the telephone sitting on the worktop.

“Trust me,” she said. “If you even think about it, I’ll kill you before you leave that seat. Now start talking. Who are you?” she asked again.

Kyle put his hands up in a surrender type movement. Although he was in shock at what had just happened, he knew exactly who she was and what she was capable of so he knew the game was up.

“OK Mia” he replied slowly. “My name’s not Kyle but my real name is not important. I’m not your husband, I work for the Arena and I’ve been looking after you for the last couple of years on their behalf.”

“Why?” she asked.

“They needed you to have a normal type life where people saw you on a daily basis as part of their cover. They needed someone who couldn’t be blamed for the assassinations they needed doing.”

“Who are the Arena and why do they have control of me?” she asked.

“When you got damaged in your accident, the Arena took control of your healthcare and well-being as you had signed yourself away to them in your initial contract with the NSA. You were their perfect candidate for project M.I.A. They brought you back from the dead with their knowhow and the serum.”

“Are they the NSA?” she asked.

“No, I don’t really know who they are but they’re definitely not the NSA. They are government; they’ve got big funding from somewhere. Dr Cooper is the main man. He’s head of the whole thing.”

Mia started thinking about other questions she had and what else she needed to know.

“Why do you work for them when you don’t know who they are?”

“I work for them as they pay well and I was fed up being a field agent for all those years. I’m basically a glorified babysitter now making a lot of money.”

Mia could sense that Kyle’s tone was changing the more he spoke.

“So you’ve kept me here as a complete vegetable for the last two years for a good paycheck?” she asked.

“Well, someone was going to have to do it” he replied nonchalantly.

Mia could feel herself getting angry. She hadn’t felt that emotion for quite a long time and in the back of her mind wondered what she was actually capable off.

“How many people work at the Arena?”

“I don’t know but it’s quite a few. I would say at least twenty officials,” he replied. “Why?” he asked.

“Because I’m going to burn their house down!” she replied, with
serious
authority in her voice.

“You can’t. You can’t get in there without the access codes. They’re only active when you're out on a mission” Kyle said with a smirk on his face.

“Yeah, but I’ve got your codes Kyle. They should do,” she snapped back at him.

He was infuriating her more and more with his attitude to the whole thing. When she said that, Kyle’s smirk slowly disappeared. He realised that her knowing what was going on was obviously not a new thing and had potentially been going on for a while. Mia had made up her mind that this man, this
imposter,
had been part of a group that had kept her captive for their own self-motivated agenda and that he needed to die, but not before she got as much out of him as she could.

“How much do you know about the serum?” she asked.

“Not too much. I know that when they gave it to you it brought you out of your paraplegic phase for 72 hours at a time. I don’t think they knew it would bring you back permanently. The injection they gave you when you came back was just a cleansing medication that purged the serum from your system. It returned you to your vegetative state.”

With that comment, Mia felt herself lose control.

She lunged at him, but he said “Wait! They can bring you back.”

“What?” she snapped.

“They have a formula to bring you back to who you were before they changed you.”

“Who has it?” she demanded.

“Dr Cooper. He keeps it in his office safe in case of an emergency if they needed you to take the fall for something.”

With that, Mia had heard enough. Just as she was thinking about striking him in the throat, the doorbell rang. Today was just about to get more serious than she could have imagined.

Mia looked at Kyle and said “You better play along,” as she slumped back into her chair pretending to be in her vegetative state.

She looked out of the window next to where she was sitting and could see, parked across the street from her house, was the classic Dodge Challenger she had seen in Manhattan the day before. She heard Kyle open the door.