The Killing Files. Nikki Owen

me. You have Patricia. Jesus, you even have your mother and brother. Maybe they can even help? Ines knows a lot of people high up in the Spanish government—she’s Minister for Justice now.’

      Black Eyes. Raven. My tortured, sweat-drenched nightmares that keep me awake in the middle of the night when there is no one to soothe me. I glance to their scratched sketches on the wall. ‘No.’

      He sighs. ‘Please. Just consider it. Say if you could connect what I can hopefully remember from a conversation with Ines to what you have told me about this woman—Raven? It may help you know where the memory is coming from. If you know the facility, it will lead you to the file.’

      I open my mouth to tell him no then hesitate, but I do not understand why.

      ‘This woman,’ Balthus says now, pressing on, ‘she said the file she loaded up will give you what you need to know, tells you what you’ve done, that it will help you know who you really are. Why note down all the dreams you recall, Maria, want to know how it’s all connected, if you don’t want to find out how to put an end to it all?’

      I look down, confused. I thought the answer was obvious. ‘I have my notebook. I like to record information. That is why I require the details. I just record the data, all of it.’ I glance to my coding books, to the structure and the formality of them.

      ‘But this woman said the files could help you. Don’t you want to know who she is, find the file? Don’t—’ there is a pause and when he speaks again, his voice is oddly lower, more quiet ‘—don’t you want to know who you really are?’

      I look at Balthus’s photo on the board, stare at all the unframed images and notes and encryptions and news articles, and, after a second, they all start to blur into one solid image of colour. I switch, glance to the turrets of books in neat, multiple piles, to the solitary seat, the makeshift wooden crates for tables, to the single toothbrush that lies on the shelf. I walk three steps to the worn piano by the wall, gently press my finger down on a key, the smooth ivory cold beneath my skin. E sharp tolls out.

      ‘I know who I am,’ I say after a moment. ‘I am Dr Maria Martinez, a plastic surgeon, born in Salamanca, Spain. I want to remain hidden. I do not want to go back to the Project or to their files or to anyone from there. It is too chaotic. I will record what memories appear, but no more. I do not want to endanger my family.’ I glance to the image of Harry. ‘I do not want to endanger you and Patricia.’

      ‘I understand that, I do. I really do,’ he says. ‘But they’ll find you, Maria. You know that, I know you do. I worry about you there on your own with no one. You need answers. I can help you. I have a contact. I sent you an email about him. He’s called Chris. He’s a hacker, used to be in Goldmouth. He can—’

      An alarm sounds, high, war-siren sharp. My head jerks up.

      ‘Maria? Maria, what’s wrong?’

      I sprint to the laptop, head dipped at the noise, but my feet are so sweaty, I slip on the tiles, toppling into the crate, knocking the computer clean off the upturned box.

      ‘Maria?’

      I shake myself off, wincing at the scream of the siren, dragging the laptop over to me, scanning it fast.

      ‘Maria? Shit. Can you hear me? Maria? What’s happening?’

      Leaning forward, keeping my fingers strong, steady, I click the icon flashing on the screen.

      ‘Someone is on my property.’

       Chapter 5

       Undisclosed confinement location—present day

      I don’t know how much time has passed. I blacked out, only coming to now as somewhere in the room a noise clicks high in the air, one, two, three, four.

      My body instinctively bends forward, brain attempts to gauge the level of danger and then I remember: Patricia.

      I call her name, yell into the abyss of black. There is a click, another trip of light mixed with darkness and then, finally, a voice, singular, pure.

      ‘Doc? Doc? Are you there?’

      She’s okay! ‘Patricia?’

      ‘Doc!’

      ‘What is your status? Are you injured?’

      ‘No. No, I don’t think so, but … my leg—it hurts. Help me, Doc.’

      I open my mouth to ask her specific diagnostics, but the air is so black and hot, so suddenly suffocating that it feels as if a palm is being pressed into my nose and mouth, an acrid taste of metal poisoning my lips. I struggle hard against it. I have to know where we are, and yet nothing here seems to make sense, but I do it. My conditioning, my training, despite my horror at it, kicks in and I begin to function on cognitive thought.

      ‘Doc! Doc, where are we?’

      Click. The sound, there again on the surface of the room—it makes me halt.

      ‘Doc—what was that?’

      Tap, tap, tap. My heart rate rockets. ‘Patricia, stay still.’

      I listen. It’s like the beak of a robin on a window pane.

      ‘Who is there?’ I ask to the thick stench of the room. Click, tap. Click, tap. My breathing becomes fast, shallow. ‘Who is there?’

      But no answer comes back. I slap away the fear and strain my neck, try to catch sight of something, anything, but just as my eyes clear, just as they begin to see through the haze, the click sounds again and something happens inside me.

      A heat, a surge of liquid in my veins burns its way through me, scalding one second then freezing the next, and an ice-blade of pain stabs me. I cry out.

      ‘Doc! Doc, what is it?’

      My mouth opens to yell, but I am mute, a primal fear taking over, a tsunami of fight or flight, the words, ‘You are in danger! You are in danger!’ screaming over and over in my head, and I must be moaning, groaning, because I can hear Patricia shouting at me to stay awake.

      My eyelids vibrate, brain attempts to calibrate a connection, find an answer to what is happening to me, but the codes, numbers, solutions that instinctively inhabit my head are all jumbled up, as if I have been shaken like some unwanted toy then discarded on the ground and kicked under a bed to gather dust and wither.

      ‘Patricia,’ I gasp, my chest ready to explode. ‘Escape. I need you to escape.’

      ‘I don’t … My leg aches, Doc, but I think I can …’ A grunt, a scrape. ‘My hand—it’s free.’

      ‘Does that mean …’ The searing pain is so hot in my chest now, it burns and I have to force myself to concentrate once more on my eyes. ‘Does that mean, if your hand is free you can be mobile?’ And then I spot something: a lick of light. There! In the corner …

      ‘Doc, it won’t … I don’t know. Oh, God. My leg feels numb.’

      The single sliver of light disappears and I try to reach out, grab where it was but nothing moves. A hazy, grey film is slowly bleeding over my lenses.

      ‘Something is happening to me …’ I swallow. ‘Drugged,’ I slur. ‘I must be drugged.’

      ‘Are we …’ Patricia’s words waver. ‘Does that mean we’re at the Project? At their facility?’ There is a shake in her voice, a tremble.

      And then I hear it: water. A trickle of water, a rush of liquid. I shake as a terrifying thought tears into me: we are drowning. We are not actually in a room or a cell or in a locked-away facility, but we are drowning, almost dead already and this haze, this grey film, this distant cry of Patricia’s Irish voice that I can only just detect is the last twisted haemorrhage of