cut, charred skin and deep, gaunt eyes. Gone is the rose of her cheeks, replaced now by two worn-out hollows, and when I look at her I know she is the enemy, yet for some reason, a lump forms in the base of my throat and I have to swallow it away.
A Project officer, younger, files over to me. He wears a grey shirt made with soft cotton fabric and beneath the front of the right hand shoulder is the letter H followed by a three-digit number.
‘I was called here,’ I say. ‘What do you require?’
He turns to me but makes no eye contact. ‘You need to guard the detainee. I have been asked to go to the control centre. I will be back in three minutes and thirty seconds.’
He turns, exits, and I do not move. My eyes stay ahead, my body now defined, muscles strong, hands skilled and slim from the medical school training.
‘M-Maria?’
The woman lifts her head from her slump on the floor. Her gaze is raised to me but I do not look at her. The lump in my throat tightens.
‘Detainees are not permitted to talk,’ I say, eyes front.
‘It is you, isn’t it? Maria? You … you cut your hair.’ She coughs. Blood speckles the white tiles, and her eyes dart left and right then settle back on me. ‘I know you think I am the enemy, but I am not. That’s just what they made you believe.’ She heaves in oxygen. ‘They set me up, Maria—you have to believe me. They’ll do it to you, too, if they have to. I’m not a terrorist …’ She coughs again, wipes her mouth. ‘They’ll be back soon, so you must listen. There … there is a file. It’s encrypted.’ She licks her cracked lips. ‘It’s on a file within a computer that’s not … that’s not attached to anything, a standalone device. No server is linked to it, but it contains a file that you created, a hidden file, away from the Project. Do you understand? Do you understand what that means?’
‘Detainees are not permitted to talk.’ I strain not to look at her. She is the enemy, and yet her words, her injured presence—they bother me.
‘It has details, the file,’ she continues, ‘ones they cannot track. It will give you what you need—confidential data, who the Project has tested on, the files and names of who they’ve killed. What they’re doing is wrong, Maria. They can’t treat people like this, they can’t act like gods of the world, and yet that’s what they do. Give man power and I give you an eternity of pain.’ She spits out some blood and I fight the urge to wipe it away because, for some reason, I feel connected to this woman but I don’t know why.
‘Maria?’
‘Detainees are not permitted to …’ I trail off, confused, unsure which side she is really on.
‘You are struggling, I know,’ she says now, low, laboured, ‘struggling with who I am … but we were in the field together. Maria, I helped you and you helped me. They’ll mess with your memory after they’ve done with me, like they always do. The file will give you what you need, tell you what you’ve done—the truth! Find out who you really are, Maria! I know you, I do. We were … we were friends.’
My eyes briefly flicker to her then, snapping back into position, I look away. ‘I have no friends.’
The door bolts open and the officer with the H on his shirt returns accompanied by two other, higher ranking officers. They stride to Raven, haul her up, but as they pull her away, she digs in her feet. ‘The file,’ she whispers. ‘Find it!’
They yank her forwards and as they do she shouts, ‘They will make you complete it, Maria! Prepare, they told us. Wait. Engage! Eliminate the threat. They will make you kill me! You know this, Maria, I know you do. Fight it,’ she says, her feet leaving trails of blood in their wake, ‘fight the Project! Help!’
But I do nothing, instead watch her go and as she does, as she is dragged screaming away past the cold, pale doors of the Project walkways, what bothers me about her so much comes to me, slapping me hard on the face.
‘I never knew your name,’ I say aloud to the now empty room, the words echoing in a void that can never be filled. ‘I never knew your name.’
The image begins to swirl away, soft at first then faster downwards as a noise vibrates in my ears and I realise it’s the radio alarm clock clicking on, blasting a newscaster’s voice into the kitchen.
I intake a sharp breath and my eyes fly open taking in a woozy, hazy view of my warm, sun-drenched kitchen. I touch my head with a shaking hand then, falling forward, grab a glass, fill it from the tap and drain the water until it is sliding down my chin, fangs of liquid on my shocked skin. I slap the glass down, slam back into the wall, smear my lips with the back of my hand and try to steady my breath. The memory, the subconscious dream still fresh in my mind—these have happened before, but not this strong, not with her so vividly in them. I throw my hand to the side, feel my way forward, the image of the hijab throwing me off centre. What she said about the files—was that true? Did she store a data file at the Project? Did that actually happen? I spin round, brain firing left and right. My notebook. I need my notebook, need to write it all down, record it so I can track it and try to make sense of what is hidden in my head.
The news piece on the radio is talking about the American national security agency, how Edward Snowden has revealed more information and is in hiding now. I try to pay attention. I try to press it all to my mind so I can lose myself and record it all on my wall, but the words are too much, the noise all too loud and I can’t think straight, the dream of the woman and her screams still lingering in my mind even in the bright glare of the summer sun. A dull moan slips from my mouth and I slap my hand down on the radio, silencing it as I count the steps that I now stumble into the lounge.
My eyes automatically scan the solitary armchair, the old brown piano with its back against the wall, the towers of books that sky-scrape their way across the room, the thousands of newspaper articles plastered to the wall, covered in scrawled notes of black pen and pin tacks and sketches of blank faces of people I don’t remember. I look at it all, my sight hazy, struggling to focus until, finally, I spot my notebook on the cabinet island by the far wall.
I immediately go to it, flip past the pages of algorithms and codes and sketches of Project facility buildings, all vague memories of events and details, and scratch out what I have just seen. Done, I slam the book shut. I stare at the cracked brown leather cover that curls at the corners. My memories, my nightmares are in there, the ones I don’t know about, the details and facts I cannot even recall occurring and yet, somehow they are in my head. Somehow, despite the drugs, I recall them. But why?
I think of Raven. What if there is a file? What if I have just recalled something that happened a decade ago despite the drugs Black Eyes gave me? If the file the woman stowed away is at the Project, does that mean it is still there, now, after all these years? I hold out my hands, look at my fingers, long slim trained doctor hands, a plastic surgeon’s, helping to reconstruct faces and injuries and a mix of disgust and sadness hits me. The Project made me become a doctor. It was not my choice or conscious will, instead it was a foregone conclusion, a fait accompli. But what are we when we are not in control of our own choices and life? What does that eventually do to us? And what do we eventually do as a result?
I stare again at my fingers and skin and cut-to-the-quick nails. I am Dr Maria Martinez. Raven said they would make me kill her.
Did I?
They have made me believe I have killed before, they got me convicted of the murder of a priest because they—MI5—wanted me hidden and out of the way when the NSA prism scandal
