Praise for Nikki Owen

‘Powerful and gripping - an adrenaline-filled thriller you won’t forget’

Sunday Times bestseller Kimberley Chambers

‘Taut and clever, with a fascinating, complex lead character in a terrifying situation.’

New York Times bestselling author Gilly MacMillan

‘A gripping and tense thriller’

Heat Magazine

‘A must have’

Sunday Express ‘S’ Magazine

‘high-octane … made me feel like I should be hyperventilating at times’

New Books Magazine

‘Always a step ahead of the reader’s expectations’

David Mark, bestselling author of The Dark Winter

‘Fast-paced thriller … building with pace to a dramatic finale.’

Gloucestershire Gazette

‘Seizes your attention from the very first page.’

Liz Robinson, LoveReading

‘A great conspiracy thriller and a mind-bending tale!’

Booktime

‘One of the UK’s most exciting new thriller writers’

Talk Radio Europe

‘Truly excellent!’

My Weekly

Born in Dublin, Ireland, NIKKI OWEN is an award-winning writer and columnist. Previously, Nikki worked in advertising as a copywriter, and was a teaching fellow at the University of Bristol, UK, before turning to writing full time. As part of her degree, she studied at the acclaimed University of Salamanca – the same city where her protagonist, Dr Maria Martinez, hails from.

Nikki’s novels are published in many languages around the world, and her debut novel was selected for TV Eire AM prestigious Book Club choice and Amazon’s ‘Rising Star debut selection’, the AudioFile Earphone Award and was a finalist for the USA Independent Publishers Award. Her second book was awarded the Book Noir Book of the Year Award.

Nikki now lives in the Cotswolds with her husband and two children.

To Dave, Abi and Hattie – my beautiful little family.

Contents

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Copyright

Chapter 1

Deep cover Project facility.

Present day

The room is strange and yet familiar. I know where I am yet it is all new, and when I arrive at a white door marked Project Callidus – Clearance Grade Two, I know that this, finally, is the right place.

I know I am truly home.

I enter. I return the black security card into a zipped pocket and proceed. Everything is neat and ordered. The walls are white and gleaming, and the door three metres and eleven centimetres ahead of me is brown, neat and straight, a gloss to its surface reflecting the strip of muted, butter-yellow lights above me. There is barely any sound. My black boots brush in clipped, precise patterns on the cream polished tiles and, as they do, I count my steps, pausing at the now familiar notice that sits encased on the wall, a note repeated at careful, measured intervals throughout the clean, frosted walkways of each Project facility in the world.

Order and routine are everything. The Project is our only friend.

I read the words on the wall and a feeling passes over me: I am one of them; finally the rightful place for me in the world is here. For is that not what we are all searching for? Acceptance? I reach the far wall, stop and turn right. In every way now I know where I am going, but there are moments when I wonder who I truly am, when I think it’s hard to find a place in the world when you don’t know who you are supposed to be.

Striding seven more steps in the glow of the bulbs above, I reach a small grey monitor. Ahead, another subject number talks in hushed tones to a fellow colleague, and while we follow protocol and acknowledge the other’s numerical existence, each one of us is careful to make no eye contact at all.

There is a quick crackle from the monitor. ‘State your name and subject number.’

I clear my throat. ‘Dr Maria Martinez. Subject number 375.’

One second passes, two, until a mild buzzer sounds and, as per measured routine, I lean in to allow a soft pink light to scan my retina. The door ahead of me clicks, followed by a familiar whoosh of air and, striding seven more steps, I knock on another door. This one is thick, metal and heavy with silver casing and deep, solid locks with a sensory entrance system designed to withstand the harshest attack.

‘Enter,’ announces a familiar voice from inside.

In my nightmares and memories, the sound of him, of his accent, used to bother me. It would pull me into a downwards spin of fear, but now my mind has learned to find the Scottish lilt comforting, helpful to me and a welcome element in my daily routine. Placing my hand on the steel of the door and, the internal scanner tracing every groove of the unique lines on my skin, I walk in. There is a banging noise from somewhere, a mild moan, but my brain ignores it and my eyes remain facing forwards.

‘Subject 375,’ he says, inhaling through flared nostrils on a thin, pointed nose, ‘you are three seconds late.’

His skeletal fingers drum on a white file that sits on a metal desk, eyes as dark as oil, two round patches of bitumen pressed into deep, bottomless sockets. As he breathes, his head tilts and his tissue paper skin shines translucent, stretched across bones so thin that the blue roots of his veins glisten, criss crossing his face and neck and arms, down to where two spindled wrists hang on hooks from his triangular joints. He wears a white coat and a brown lambswool jumper, his shirt cornflower blue, and on his legs that bend like twigs about to snap hang trousers scratched from polyester and cotton that stop at his ankles where the bones jut out.

I speak. When I do, I am careful to ensure my voice does not shake or flip or fold. ‘Forgive me, Dr Carr.’

He regards me. He taps a single finger on the metal table and looks to the right where a large, rectangular mirrored window rests. I catch my reflection. Hair back to black, cropped neat to the scalp and neck, my green contacts are now gone to reveal birth-brown eyes that match a tan skin which softens to honey in the glow of the light hitting the curve of my elbow. Since I was brought here and recommenced training, much of my body has changed. Where before I was lean, now I am strong, muscular, the definition of my biceps and triceps outlined under the soft cotton white t-shirt and the smooth black brush of my Project-issue combats. My stomach is taut and when, on instruction of Dr Carr, my legs stride to the chair and sit, my quads tighten automatically, flexed, honed.

He installs a smile on his face, no eye creases, and clicks his pen. ‘Time for our daily chat.’

A ripple of nerves passes through my spine down to the soles of my feet. I smell in the air, for the first time since entering, his familiar scent, a scent I have known for almost three decades since the Project took me and began their conditioning programme. Hot garlic, stale tobacco – the odour trail of his presence left long ago in my road map of memories. My immediate instinct is to run, to bang on the door with curled-up fists and yell for them to let me out, yet instead I find a way of breathing through it, of practising mental yoga in my head and moving my mind in a gentle rhythmic flow of reassurance and calm. He has taught me to react this way. When pushed to its limits, the mind can achieve so much, he says. And so I inhale his aroma and ignore the bubble of worry that threatens to burst, and gratefully channel the emerging inner-strength that the Project has helped me cultivate.

Dr Carr crosses one leg over the other and opens a folder. From the mirrored window, the moan from earlier sounds again, low, but audible.

‘Have you received your Typhernol injection today at the allotted time?’

‘Yes.’

‘Any reactions, symptoms?’

‘I had a headache at 06:01 hours, followed by a short nosebleed that lasted forty-seven seconds.’

He makes a note. ‘Now, Maria, as we always do in order to reinforce why we are all here, can you state for me your name, subject number, age, status and reason for being at this Project Callidus facility.’

I clock the four corners of the white room, note the laptop on the table and, next to it, one picture frame with a photograph of two people unknown to me, and yet somehow there is a flicker of familiarity at the sight of their faces, a grain of remembrance I cannot place. My eye switches to a second, smaller, clear window that throws a view onto a bank of subject numbers working silently on rows of computers beyond, each with their sight locked in front of them on their tasks. Satisfied all is in order, I begin.

‘I am Dr Maria Martinez. Subject number: 375. I am thirty-three years old—’

‘Soon to be thirty-four.’ He smiles. ‘Soon.’

I nod at this fact and continue as per routine. ‘I am a member of Project Callidus, conditioned with my Asperger’s to assist in the Project’s covert cyber and field operative missions. We protect the UK and global nations against terrorist attacks of all kinds, and, due to the NSA prism programme investigation, we are black sited and are no longer affiliated to MI5.’

He sucks in air. ‘Good. Now – my name, the special one you reserve just for me, what is it, Maria?’

‘Black Eyes,’ I say, delivering the response as per requirement. This is his favourite part of our talks, or so he says. ‘Your name, Dr Carr, the one I have always given you since you trained me from a young child, is Black Eyes.’

He nods and smiles, and I notice tiny crinkles fanning out by his eyes. ‘Thank you.’ He leans back a little in his chair, his stomach concave, and his jumper seems to sink into him.

‘Now, since you arrived here, how do you think you are adjusting?’

‘I have fully memorised the map of the facility and know all routines down to the last second.’

‘Do you recall yet the immediate events leading up to your arrival at this facility for your Project re-initiation?’

I hesitate. Images sometimes come at night, blurred events, faces, but nothing yet definable or real. ‘No.’

‘And so when you see this’— he slides the laptop to me and clicks to a page — ‘what do you think about?’

I read it fast, photographing the data to the memory banks within ten seconds. Facts. The file contains spool upon spool of facts about me. Dates, times, images all collected by my handlers over the years, undercover Project handlers at school, university, work who watched me grow up and who took me, with the help of my adoptive mother, Ines, to train me on missions, then drug me with Versed to make me forget what I had done. There are facts about my time in prison for a murder I did not commit, a murder I was set up for by the Project to get me out of the way while the NSA scandal blew up. Details on my adoptive family, how Ines killed my real father, Balthus, and shot my adoptive brother, Ramon, after pretending it was he who had given me to the Project. Facts about how I killed Ines at her Madrid apartment to protect my then friends, Patricia and Chris, the whole scene covered up by the Project, dressed up as a gangland drug killing. There are pictures of each person I have known, intelligence on them, and I resist the urge to reach out and touch the image of their nearly forgotten faces; at this black site facility we are taught that the Project is our only friend.

I look to Black Eyes. ‘When I look at this data I think about the killings.’

‘Done by you or by others?’

‘Both.’

‘You have killed several people, Maria – how does that make you feel?’

I hesitate. Feelings, for me, are the hardest questions to answer.

‘You see, Maria,’ Black Eyes says now, ‘you are vulnerable, or at least, you have been vulnerable to outside influences, and it affects you from time to time, as I suspect it’s doing now. But that is why I am here. You must learn to lock it away, shut such trivialities from your mind, forget your past, forge your future. Ines gave you to us from Balthus and Isabella, your real mother, so you could be someone better.’

‘Ines gave me to you so she could have cancer drugs from the Project in return,’ I say, struggling to keep a worm of emotion from rising in me. ‘Ines lied to all of us and was working with the Project all along. Ines… Ines helped to kill my Papa.’

‘He is not your Papa,’ he suddenly snaps. ‘He is Alarico. He was your adoptive father.’

My eyes flicker to Papa’s image on the computer: warm smiles, creased eyes. ‘I… I miss him.’

I drop my head, feeling an acute sense of failure. I have tried to forget my family, my friends; I have come a long way and it has been hard, too hard sometimes. I glance around the room, at the walls and the window, deeply sad yet resigned, my feet weary and heavy, and the thought arrives that this here now, with Black Eyes, with the Project, is the only option I have left. The only option now. I am on my own. Everyone has deserted me. Gone or dead, I don’t know – it always varies, but one thing throughout it all has been consistent: the Project. It’s all I have left. I have tried, in the past, to fight them, have actively railed against them, but for what? What good has it done? What good does it do to fight for what you believe in when all you are is a wounded soldier in a losing battle? Is it not better to lay down your arms and surrender? To try and at least see down the barrel from their point of view? Here, with the Project now, with Black Eyes every day, I can see now that it offers me something of what I need: a routine. And maybe this is where I was meant to be all along, a place where a daily routine is standard, surrounded by people like me, working, perhaps, for a greater good. I can learn, maybe. I can attempt to understand what it is they are really trying to do and possibly then acceptance of it all will be easier. You can’t control everything and sometimes there comes a moment when you must accept that this is the way your days are meant to be. This is, all along, who you were meant to be.

Black Eyes lets out a long sigh and shuts the laptop. He glances to the picture frame on the desk. ‘The past is hard to deal with sometimes.’ He lingers on the image for a second then looks back to me. ‘And, Maria, a lot has happened to you. But, what you have to remember is that it’s the future that truly shapes us, if only we let it.’

I listen to him and as I do, the Project’s phrase, the one bolted to the corridor walls, enters my head, clear and true. ‘Order and routine are everything,’ I find myself chanting.

Then we say, together: ‘The Project is our only friend.’

A smile spreads on his face and reaches his eyes then, clearing his throat, he flicks a page. ‘Now’— he taps a file with photographs— ‘to pressing matters. You know these two people, correct?’

He presents me with two images. I take a sharp breath.

‘This,’ he says, pointing to one, ‘is Patricia O’Hanlon – your cell mate at Goldmouth prison when you were incarcerated for the murder of the Catholic priest before your acquittal.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you were good friends, close, yes? Your first real friend, would you say?’

I swallow, nervous. Why is he asking me this? ‘Yes.’

His finger traces Patricia’s swan neck, her shaven head and blue saucer eyes, and as he does, I feel uncomfortable, concerned, but I don’t know why. ‘And this,’ he says now, ‘is Chris Johnson. We have a lot of data on him. Convicted American hackers tend to pique our interest. I believe it was Balthus that originally put you two in touch?’

‘Yes,’ I say, my throat oddly dry. ‘I met Chris at his villa in Montserrat, near Barcelona. I went there after MI5 found me at Salamanca villa. Chris was in prison for hacking a USA government database. Balthus was Chris’s prison governor before he was in charge of Goldmouth.’

Black Eyes moves the file nearer to me and my vision catches Chris’s familiar deep brown eyes, his uncut hair flopping to sharp cheeks and stubbled chin, and somewhere inside me, I feel an indefinable pull towards him, and towards the faces on the pages, an urge to scoop them to my chest and hold them tight.

‘Maria?’

I whip my head up in fright at his sudden voice. ‘Yes?’

‘The Project is your only friend.’

His eyes reduce to small slits, one second passing in the silence, two. He looks from the faces in the file to me, then back again in a seesaw pendulum of time. I shiver, not knowing what to do, worried, scared even at how strongly I felt just now when I saw the faces of my friends, yet shocked at how much I want to please Black Eyes, please the Project, do whatever I can for them, find a place where I belong, accept that this is where I am to live my life.

After ten seconds pass without a word, Black Eyes scrapes back his chair and, striding to the glass mirror on the far side, he turns and faces me.

‘Maria, I have something to show you.’

He steps back and presses a buzzer. I watch, a nervous swell inside me licking the shores of my brain as the mirror of the window begins to move and a grey blind behind starts to rise. It reaches the top, clicking to a halt but still I cannot see fully what is beyond, when another snap sounds and this time a light switches on from the other side. A brightness floods the room and I have to blink over and over as it assaults my eyes, my hand shielding them. I have to resist the strong compulsion to duck and curl as, slowly, I finally see what was causing the moaning earlier.

‘Doc! Doc!’ the familiar Irish lilt of a voice shouts out.

I manage to stand and step forward, as what emerges in front of me, limb by limb, bone by bone, is a beaten, bruised and tied-up body.

When I find my voice, only one word comes out. ‘Patricia.’

Chapter 2

Madrid Barajas Airport, Spain.

Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 32 hours

Even the earbuds I wear can’t cancel out the chaos and noise. People march back and forth, left and right, criss crossing the glaring bright gloss of the polished airport walkways. Babies scream and toddlers yell, coffee cups clink and trolley wheels screech, tannoy systems above my head bark the next flight departure as, in the near distance, wine glasses tinkle at a champagne bar, and a group of people laugh at a joke I will never understand.

I stand and blink and watch it all as the airport scene crashes into my senses, body and mind temporarily paralysed by everything. The noise, the smells. Tinny music from open shops. Coffee, beer, oil, sickly sugar, stale cigarette smoke, burger fat, perfume, leather, sweat, the faint soak of breeze block urine. The slurp of a straw. The bite of a sandwich. Every single scent, I smell. Every tiny pinprick of noise, I hear. It all smashes into my brain, colliding into my white and grey matter until I don’t know which way to look.

‘Doc?’

I slip out an earbud and look to my friend.

‘They’re not going to spot us,’ Patricia says, her voice low, calm. ‘We’ve got through security and I know airports are a nightmare for you, but look at us.’ She points to herself. ‘We’re in business suits and wigs. Jesus’— she smiles,— ‘I’ve never looked so smart. So it’ll be alright. Okay?’

I nod and tap my finger.

Another smile. ‘Good. You’re doing great. I’m right with you.’

She looks down at herself now and I watch her angled arms, her swan neck and her shaven head disguised by a long, mouse-brown wig that settles on suited shoulders. A cream, silk blouse slipped under a black jacket sits against smart tailored trousers and neat, flat ballet pumps on the end of flamingo stalks for legs. My friend. My first true friend.

‘It is too loud here,’ I say.

She takes my palm and presses her five fingertips into mine as she has always done. ‘I know, Doc. I know it’s too much information flying into your head from the airport, but I’m here.’ A group of passengers shuffle nearby and Patricia forms a little bubble of space around us so no one brushes against me. I catch her familiar scent of talcum powder, fresh linen, bubble baths. It makes me breathe a little slower.

Chris wanders over. He fiddles with his suit and his newly dyed bottle-blonde hair, and shakes his bright red Converses. ‘The security guards are hanging around a bit back there. We need to get moving towards boarding.’

Patricia eyes his feet. ‘You couldn’t have worn a pair of smart shoes, could you? We’re supposed to be pretending to be professional business people.’

He fidgets, pulling at his yellow tie, at the sleeves of his smart navy suit, shoulders twitching. ‘I feel like an idiot.’

‘You look like one.’

Chris glares at Patricia. He scratches where a white shirt clings to a flat surfer stomach and pulls at his trouser band muttering, ‘It’s too fucking tight.’

I observe my friends without any understanding of what their exchange means, the glances between them, the words. Funny or serious? Heartfelt or fickle? Ahead, a large bang slices the air as a café tray clatters to the floor, cups and plates and cutlery smashing into cold cream tiles, the sound of it hammering my head. I wince. It’s exhausting. I need stability, something factually familiar for my mind to cling onto, a lifeboat of facts.

I turn to Chris. ‘The term “idiot” means a person of low intelligence. You hacked into a CIA website, that takes intelligence to achieve. Therefore, the term idiot in describing you is wrong. On this occasion.’

Chris pulls his tongue out at Patricia. ‘See.’ Then he turns to me. ‘Thanks, Google.’

‘I have informed you before – that is not my name.’

He smiles, big and wide. ‘I know.’ Then he starts humming a song I have come to recognise from a singer he seems to greatly admire called Taylor Swift.

‘That is the melody entitled…’ I listen… “Shake it Off.”

He grins. ‘In one.’

Patricia rolls her eyes. ‘We have to go. Doc?’

‘Yes?’

‘Stay by me.’

We find a semi-quiet patch in a coffee shop and sit. Immediately anxiety hits. The slurp of peoples’ lips and tongues as they sip their drinks. The clink of cups. The steam from the milk machine and the mechanical grind of coffee beans. Teeth biting down into crunchy lettuce. Someone’s lace undone, the thread hanging loose, dragging along the floor. It all collides inside me. I try to focus, count, look to Patricia who mouths to me, ‘How can I help?’ except I don’t know the answer, only know that here and now I need to keep any potential meltdown under control so no attention is drawn to me or to us. Three hours ago we were in Ines’s apartment and I killed her with an iron nail to the neck, and watched Ramon and Balthus die. The last thing we need is a scene.

‘Doc, deep breaths.’

I nod, watching Chris closely as he walks to the counter, orders our drinks, but immediately, this tips me into a panic.

‘I want a black coffee,’ I say. ‘What is he ordering for me? It can only be black.’

‘It’s okay,’ Patricia says. ‘He asked me and I said black coffee. I told him for you.’ She smiles. Soft cheeks, lines opening wide at her eyes. ‘Okay?’

I nod, but inside I am panicking.

Chris is talking to the barista now, easy, light, making random conversation about the bustle of the airport. To give myself something to focus on, I examine his movements, his facial expressions. How easy it seems to come to him, how simple such dialogue appears for him. I try pressing some of it into my memory, the way in which he acts, remember it so I can perhaps use it, mimic it, cover me up. It’s hard to find a place in the world when you don’t know who you’re expected to be.

Done with that yet still anxious, I turn my focus to checking and rechecking the time of our flight to Zurich where Chris has secured us a safe house through his hacking contacts until we can get further away and out of sight. Finally, Chris returns and it’s only then I can be assured that the right drink has been bought. I sip slowly. The liquid is hot, scalding my palate and tongue, but I like it, as if it polishes the tips of my mind so they are ready to be used. Now and then the multiple sights, sounds, smells of the airport hit me, make my body go rigid, but breathing and counting help, and so I do that, run through numbers in my mind, murmur the digits with the tips of my fingers pressed one after the other into my thumb, all the while glancing to my friends, grateful that they are here.

‘Okay, so, I checked my email,’ Chris says, emptying two full sachets of sugar into a latte, ‘and my buddy in Zurich is all set for us to rock up there. All secure. Also, from what I can tell, it looks as if the Alexander woman has read the message we sent her.’

Patricia looks up. ‘What? The Home Secretary?’

‘Yep, Balthus’s wife, Harriet Alexander herself.’ He draws out a computer tablet and taps the screen. ‘About twenty-seven minutes ago. No, wait…twenty-eight minutes ago she read the whole file that reveals the Project Callidus bombshell, from way back in 1973 up to right now.’ He starts listing things off with his fingers. ‘The thousands of Basque blood-type people they’ve been testing on, the cancer drugs for Ines, the Project taking Maria and drugging her, Maria being Balthus’s kid, all of it, all of the stuff we hacked into in Hamburg.’ He grins at us and I wonder if his face has ever, in his life, been fixed into a frown; I resist the temptation to stick my finger into the dimple on his chin.

‘Well,’ Patricia says, ‘hopefully that’ll be it. That’ll be enough for the government to kick-start an investigation into the whole Project bollocks and it’ll finally all be over. No more running.’

‘Can your software connect to her server system?’ I ask.

‘Ah, you’re thinking of hacking into her emails, tracking who she contacts about the subject of our little message. Yep, thought of that. There’s something blocking me at the moment, don’t know what it is yet, but I’m on it.’

We finish our coffee. Chris taps on his computer the whole time and, ten minutes to go until our flight is boarding, he excuses himself to attend the lavatory. I use the spare time to carry out a reassuring check of the contents of my rucksack. One by one, I place them on the table in a neat line: three pay-as-you-go cell phones, two fake passports, money in several denominations, one wash bag, two packets of energy tablets and the other essential items I require to be on the run and hide, all itemised on a list in my head. But it is the last three things that I unpack, that now amid the din and the cappuccino milk steam and the idle chatter around tea-stained tables, that give me the most sense of calm and reassurance: my notebook and two old photographs.

I rest my hand on the worn notebook cover, flick a finger over the dog-eared pages, pages that have housed my thoughts and calculations and mathematical probabilities for years, each spare section crammed with drawings and codes scribbled feverishly after awaking from dreams and nightmares that would jolt some distant, drug induced memory.

Patricia leans in, looks at a page filled with algorithms and coding. ‘I may as well be seeing spots as to understand what on earth all that means.’ She inhales. ‘It’s been hard for you, hasn’t it, Doc? Everything that’s happened.’

I touch the page with my fingertips, let them skim the curve of the equations before me, the lines, the sketches of pencilled memories forgotten and only sometimes remembered. ‘Ines killed Balthus,’ I say, sticking to the facts, unable to express the sorrow I truly feel inside.

‘Yes, Doc, she did.’ Her voice is a soft pillow, a floating feather.

I blink, turn my attention to the two photographs from my bag.

‘Is that your dad with you when you were young? He has the same dark hair and eyes as your brother.’

‘Yes. Except they were never my biological father or brother.’

‘No,’ Patricia says. ‘No, I know. Balthus was your biological father, and that’s hard – you watched him die when you’d only just found out who he really was.’

I swallow. My eyes are a little blurred. ‘Yes.’

Patricia touches the second photograph, this one more sepia-toned and worn. ‘You were a cute baby.’

I take the second image between my fingers and stare. In it stands a woman, my biological mother, long hair falling in wisps around her face, two grainy, willowed hands on the ends of ribbon-thin arms cradling me – her new swaddled baby. I map the skirt that skims the ground where ten toes on bare feet rest on a bed of gravel surrounding a sprawling, stone hospital-come-nunnery with a crucifix on the door. I blink at the photograph and battle with a feeling inside me, strange and unwelcome. Anger and sadness, a tumbleweed of sorrow that, try as I might, will not go, but instead rolls along the barren land of my heart and mind, leaving behind trails in the sand that vanish with one whip of the wind. Isabella Bidarte – my real mother. I try the phrase out in my head, wear it like a new pair of shoes, walk it up and down the corridors of my mind, but it feels odd, stiff, as if using it for too long would create a blister filled with pus that would burst and seep and hurt.

I turn the photograph in my hands. On the back is scribbled an address and the geolocation coordinates of a hospital – Weisshorn Psychiatric Hospital, the place Isabella was last kept in Geneva, and next to it the date of her death, all etched out by my Papa and hidden from Ines before he died.

Patricia stares at it. ‘He knew she was kept there, didn’t he, your dad? He’d found out about what Ines was doing – getting the cancer drugs to keep her alive in exchange for you.’

Too sad to speak, I trace the address and date with my fingertips as, to the right of the café, a television repeats a news feed detailing the killings at Mama’s apartment.

‘A triple homicide was reported in Madrid, in what is being cited as a cartel crime. Spanish lawyer and member of parliament Ines Villanueva; her lawyer son, Ramon Martinez; and a British prison chief, Balthus Ochoa, have all been implicated in what sources are saying is a decade-long fraud ring stretching into millions of dollars and which includes trafficking in illegal medical drugs. The bodies of the three were found at Villanueva’s central Madrid house this afternoon. Villanueva, who was a likely pick to become the next leader of the right wing, and prime minister …’

Tilting her head so I can see her eye-creased smile, Patricia nods to the television. ‘Same story they’re telling like before, same bullshit.’

‘It is all lies. The deaths did not happen in that way.’

She sighs as the television screen flashes across the faces of Ines, Balthus and Ramon.

We finish our coffees. I carry out a final check of my belongings, secure the photographs in an inside pocket near my notebook and, acknowledging the presence of my passport one more time, in my head I begin to carry out a run-through of the airport journey when Chris runs up to the table, breathless.

‘Jesus,’ Patricia says, ‘what’s with you?’

He swallows, pointing behind him. ‘People…’ He gulps air, slaps two palms to the table and hauls in some oxygen. ‘C-coming…’

‘What d’you mean?’ Patricia says, frowning. ‘You’re not making any sense and we’ve got to—’

‘Shush!’

Patricia opens her mouth on the verge of speaking when Chris raises a hand and finally spits out the words he wants to say.

‘The Project – they’ve found us!’

Chapter 3

Madrid Barajas Airport, Spain.

Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 31 hours and 30 minutes

I turn, stand, focus. ‘Tell me.’

He swallows. ‘So, I was just walking back and looking in the duty-free bit, and they have the mirrors and stuff there and I’m sure there were two guys watching me.’

‘This is ridiculous,’ Patricia says.

‘What? No. I was followed.’ He looks straight to me. ‘I’m telling you – they were different, these guys.’

‘How?’

‘Just, well, I guess they were, like, rigid, you know. Kind of robotic and—’

‘Christ,’ Patricia says, ‘this is the last thing we need, you freaking out on us like this.’

‘I’m not freaking out.’

‘You are, and you’re going to upset—’

‘No!’ His voice is raised. I flinch. The people at the next table stop eating mid-sandwich bite and narrow their eyes.

Chris lowers his head. ‘No. Please,’ he whispers, ‘you have to listen to me. I know they have to be different because I recognise them, from when I was locked up for hacking, okay. One of the two guys who investigated me via the UK, well they were MI5. The other one, I’m not sure…’

‘You have to be sure,’ I say. ‘Now.’ My eyes scan ahead, quick fire.

‘I’m sorry. I recognise both of them, just can’t place the second one.’

‘One of them is definitely MI5?’

‘Yes.’

The cogs in my head, as if tripped by a switch, begin to turn at such a rate, for a second I feel dizzy.

‘Shit,’ Patricia says. ‘Doc, MI5 wanted you dead. If they’re here, this is not good.’

‘Oh fuck.’ Chris rubs his head. ‘Oh fuck, oh fuck.’

As my friends swear repeatedly, I scan the crowds.

‘Maria,’ Chris says now, ‘I’m sorry. I sent that email. MI5 must have tracked it.’

‘Why would you be sorry?’ I ask. ‘This is not your fault.’

‘It is,’ Patricia snaps.

I look between the two of them. ‘We cannot determine with any mathematical certainty why these men are here. We can only assume.’ I pause, my mind firing at such a rate now, the probabilities and conclusions whip out. ‘We can only assume a level of danger which requires some amount of action on our part.’

Patricia blows out a breath. ‘Shit a brick.’

Chris nods. ‘Too right.’

I scan the busy foyer, the noise so loud, my body wincing at the near physical hurt it causes me. Heads, hats, citrus perfume, detergent, the smell of ice cream and pancakes, a series of buckles and trailing laces.

‘I can see them,’ Chris says.

‘Where?’

He gestures to an area by a burger bar thirty metres away. ‘Right… there.’

I follow his line and spot two men, black jackets, casual clothing, no suitcases, no definable baggage, just coffee bean eyes and steady strides.

‘Doc,’ Patricia says, ‘is it them? Could MI5 be back working with the Project now, you know, running it or something?’

‘I do not know,’ I say, sight missile-locked on the two figures. Flickering fluorescent lights, the clatter of suitcase wheels, the hum of a fan somewhere in a nearby store, the oppressive stench of chip fat. It all collides in my head, making it harder to think straight, but even between the chaos, a cold calm descends and a phrase, one drummed into me by the Project, despite my resistance, enters my head as easy as walking through an open door. Prepare, wait, engage.

I turn to Chris. ‘You are certain it is them?’

He gulps. ‘Yes.’

‘Then we have to go.’

He rubs his face. ‘Oh man, oh man, oh man.’

Bags secured, Patricia moves backwards, her feet stumbling a little, Chris following as the three of us slip behind a large silver pillar that houses neat billboards for expensive Parisian perfumes.

‘Doc, what do we do now?’

I glance to the area ahead and watch the two men. They walk five steps then stop and, as they do, my brain carries out a full and rapid assessment of the immediate threat. Each man is approximately one hundred and sixty-six centimetres tall, the right man blonde, the left brown, no distinguishable facial features, no definable scars, and by quick track of their frames, each appears to be built to endure long distance runs over twenty kilometres, yet still bulked enough to carry the weight of a full army training kit on their backs.

Patricia bites her lip. ‘They’re not real travellers, are they? Oh, God.’ There is a shake to her words. She chews on a nail. ‘You think they’ve seen us?’

Chris risks a glance. ‘Maybe… Fuck.’ He slips out his phone, sets up a fast proxy, starts tapping on a screen I cannot see. ‘Let me… Hang on.’

‘What are you doing?’ I ask, but he shakes his head, taps his phone and does not reply.

I scan the shops to calculate the best route forwards. By the entrance of a chain of toilets, a toddler is squirming in a ball on the floor screaming while his mother flaps around him, coils of hair springing up, shored by sweat, the father nearby, scratching his head, tutting into a smartphone that’s stitched into his hand. The noise of it all ricochets around my brain.

‘Doc,’ Patricia whispers, ‘should we get out of the airport?’

‘No.’ I take a breath, try to count the noise away. ‘We must board our flight and travel to Zurich as planned.’

‘You think that’s wise? Won’t they know where we are going?’

‘Negative.’ I swallow. Someone make the toddler be quiet. ‘We look different. Our email tracks have a high probability of being invisible.’

Chris, head up from his phone, points. ‘They’re moving.’

Patricia bites down harder on her fingernail. ‘Doc, I’m bloody shitting it.’

‘If you soil yourself, you could impede our escape.’

She ceases eating her hands.

The billboard with the perfume advert on the pillar is a rolling one. I observe it. Every six seconds, there is a change of posters, promoting gilded watches, branded clothing, vintage bottled cognac, champagne and truffles, and each time a new poster flashes, the entire board moves from side to side creating one small yet significant space behind it, a scooped out hole. A blind spot.

I turn to my friends. ‘There is a place to hide, there.’ I point. ‘It will provide us cover to plan the next move. When I say go, we all go. Do you understand?’

They nod.

‘Does that mean you understand?’

Two frantic nods. ‘Yes.’

‘Good. I will count to three. On three, we will run to the billboard.’

‘We won’t be seen?’ Chris checks.

‘No.’

‘Okay.’ His eyes flick ahead then back to me, a breath billowing from his chest. ‘Go for it.’

‘Okay. On my count: One…’

Patricia slaps a hair from her face, mutters, for some reason, what I believe is a slang word related to a man’s genital area. The billboard begins to revolve to the side.

‘Two…’

Chris taps his foot. He shields his phone screen with his hand as his eyes dart left and right in the glare and bustle of the concourse beyond.

‘Three. Go!’

We run. Lights, sounds, sharp slaps of heat and noise. They all fly through my ears as we weave in and out of the crowds. The men do not immediately follow us and yet still there is something about the way they move, about the assurance of their steps.

We reach the billboard. ‘Which way?’ Patricia whispers.

To our right is a concourse of cafés and shops, people spilling out of them in various states of speed and urgency. To our left is the open floor, shining, twinkling in a yellow brick road that leads off to the departure gate announcing cities and flight numbers. My brain photographs it all. Istanbul, Melbourne, Washington, Paris, locations that span the world across data lines that lie hidden underground.

‘They know we are here,’ Chris says. ‘I’m certain now.’

I whip round. ‘What?’

He turns his phone to me and my heart starts to race at an alarming speed.

‘I hacked into the Madrid police database,’ he says. ‘You know, to be on the safe side, get some firm intel. I found this.’

‘Oh, holy fuck,’ Patricia blurts. ‘It says wanted. It’s us!’

There are pictures of all three of us. My mouth runs dry so fast that I have to lean against Chris to steady myself.

‘Hey,’ he says, ‘you okay?’

‘They have us in different wigs,’ Patricia says. ‘Shit – they’ll know what we look like!’

‘I have put you in danger.’

‘Huh? What? Oh Doc, no. None of this is your fault. Doc, it’s okay.’

‘Er, no,’ Chris cuts in. ‘It’s not okay.’

We both look to him, mouths open.

‘Why?’ I say.

Very slowly, he guides his eyes to the left. ‘Because they’re looking right at us.’

Chapter 4

Madrid Barajas Airport, Spain.

Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 31 hours and 13 minutes

‘Oh, Jesus, they’re – they’re looking straight towards us,’ Patricia says, ducking behind me.

I stare now at our faces on the police alert in Chris’s hand, and a feeling wells inside me, one of guilt, of shame and confusion. By making friends, have I done the wrong thing? Is life not easier, better, safer when we are on our own?

‘Doc? Doc, you alright? Should we go?’

My head snaps up, refocussing. ‘Negative. If we move now it will alert the men. They have images of us. We must wait. We must prepare.’

Chris tips his head to the left towards a landslide of bodies approaching. ‘What about them?’

I direct my sight to where Chris points. A pack of students has entered the walkway, flooding the air with chatter in a melody of Italian and French, a river of language rushing forwards amid a sea of brown limbs, all long and lean and clad in assorted patchwork pieces of denim and cotton and hooded drawstring sweats. Tinny music, the tap of phones, beeps, rings. The sounds send my brain into red alert, and I am about to move when two teenage students stop almost next to me and kiss. I find myself staring, unable to look away, and when I inhale I detect bubble gum, washing powder, body odour masked by a sugary scent.

‘Hey, Google?’ A pause. ‘Maria?’

I turn to Chris. ‘What?’

‘They’re all moving – the students. If we move with them, they could be good cover.’

The teenagers pull away from each other, the girls smiling in a way I do not understand. The chatter rises, smacking into my ears, slap, slam. Startled, I look to Patricia.

‘It’s alright,’ she says automatically, trotting off what she’s had to say to me now so many times. ‘Deep breaths. It’s going to be loud and close, but I’ll stay right by you, yeah? Chris is right – the students’ll be good cover.’

I nod, but my eyes are on the moving mass. ‘Their skin, their scent.’

‘Deep breaths.’

Chris starts to move. ‘Let’s go.’

We dart in and out as, ahead of us, the boarding gates appear. People, limbs, spit and sweat. Announcements hanging from the ceiling with flashing orange letters and numbers declaring the areas our flight is leaving from. Our feet brush the tiles as we surge forwards amid the slippery mass, sliding across the mirrored thoroughfare where the shoes of the students clomp down in hooves of plastic and leather, jostling, laughing, bumping into me. Head down, I bite my lip and try not to scream.

Hidden by the human cloak, we remain out of direct sight. Some metres nearer now, the men move rapidly, steady, their presence two dark monoliths against the landscape of pick-a-mix colour. My heart rate rockets. We duck, weaving, as Chris keeps watch and Patricia spreads five fingers on her thigh, but every time someone’s arm or leg grazes me, I flinch. Every time I smell their burger breath, feel the heat of their perspiring skin near me – deodorant, talcum powder, flowers and musk – I want to scream at the top of my voice, curl up into a tight ball. It is impossible to switch off.

We finally approach the flight gates, Patricia to my right, Chris to my left. We drop our speed as the students slow down lolloping and laughing at each other, and as I risk a small glance, I find myself fascinated by their ease with each other, their calmness, happiness even, transfixed at the way in which their limbs seemingly absentmindedly intertwine, vines of arms and fingers interlinking as if all branches from the same tree. They oscillate and flutter, and I imagine a shoal of clownfish swimming over into a new anemone, relaxed, loose, just another day hanging in the reef.

I unpick my gaze from the students and inspect the two men. They are talking to each other.

‘They’re calling our flight,’ Patricia says.

The entrance to our boarding gate is drenched in sunlight from a vast glass and steel dome above. Glass, steel, huge masses of heavy concrete. I do the maths in my head.

‘If a bomb went off here, the glass would shatter and kill and maim the people beneath it.’

Chris stares at me. ‘Seriously?’

‘Of course.’

‘Oh shit. Shit!’ Patricia whispers. ‘They’re looking this way.’

She’s right. ‘Walk.’

We stride, not running, not wanting to create attention. Backs straight, footing as sure as we can make it, we mimic three busy work colleagues eager to catch their business flight. Soon we reach the gate. Patricia’s face is pale. Chris’s fingers are tapping his phone.

‘Good afternoon,’ the flight attendant says, his eyebrows two tapered caterpillars. ‘Boarding passes, please.’

We hand over our travel documents, fake IDs, as from my peripheral vision I see the two men searching through the students, casting them to the side, one after the other. The lights above shine bright, a traffic of chatter and laughter pummelling the air. I count to stay calm.

‘Hurry up,’ Patricia mutters, but, just as the line begins to move again, everything stops.

The flight attendant looks to us. ‘Could you step aside for a moment please?’

‘But we’re getting on the flight,’ Chris says.

My teeth start to grind. Breathe. One, two, three. One, two, three. The men are moving towards us in the pile of students washing up near the gate.

‘We have to run,’ Chris whispers.

‘Negative.’

‘Yes,’ he insists, stronger now. ‘The attendant’s stopped us.’

‘They are nearer now,’ I say.

Patricia’s eyes go wide. ‘Oh God.’

‘God has nothing to do with…’ I halt. Something is not right. The men have stopped. Their movements – why are they now so still? Keeping my head as rigid as I can, I check the CCTV cameras, their small domed lenses, dark black caps, blinking in the nearby areas. All seems as it should, all cameras facing the correct way, all security staff, in the immediate zone at least, carrying on with their duties as before.

Patricia shuffles from foot to foot. ‘Shall we peg it? This is fecking MI5. Shit.’

I trace the outline of the officers. They may have been trained, like me, to prepare, wait, engage. Is that what they are doing now? If I were them, what would I do next?

‘Doc? Doc, I think we should move.’

‘Holy fuck,’ Chris says.

I look to him. He is staring at his phone. ‘What is it?’

‘I’ve just…’ A shake of the head. ‘No way. It’s—’

‘They’re coming!’

We look up at where Patricia is staring. The second man, the one with the slightly narrower shoulders, is touching his ear, scanning to his right and moving slowly forwards. I track his eye line, wincing at the sharp clatter of some tray that is dropped in the distance, my assaulted brain just about keeping it together. What is he looking at, the man? What can he see?

I force my brain to focus, think clearly. Maybe Chris is right – maybe the flight attendants know who we are and have been informed to keep us back and make us wait.

I turn to Chris and Patricia. ‘We must go.’

Chris points to his phone. ‘You have to see this email.’

‘Not now. We must leave first.’

We all turn, ready to duck from sight and out of the airport, my mind already fast forwarding to a next plan to hide, when the flight attendant calls to us with a bright white smile beaming on his face.

‘Hello? I’m so sorry about the short delay.’ We hesitate. He gestures over to us. ‘If you’d just stand to the side and allow our late wheelchair passenger through, who we were waiting for, then you can board. Apologies for the inconvenience.’

We look to each other, the three of us, our chests visibly deflating, eyes blinking in what? Shock? Relief? I cannot tell, but we watch a wheelchair board the ramp and, with one nod of the attendant, we follow it fast through the final doors that lead to the plane ahead.

Outside, the Madrid air hits me. Aviator fuel, warm concrete, the roar of jet engines, all of it colliding in my head. I grind my teeth and blink at the blue sky that swirls through clouds spun with cotton. I stay close to Patricia.

As we reach the door of our Zurich-bound plane, Chris stops me.

‘I got an email.’ He swallows, catching his breath. ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you before.’

My heart rate shoots. Alarm bells sound. ‘From who?’

An attendant smiles. ‘Welcome to the flight. Boarding passes, please.’

I thrust her my pass, ignore her and turn to Chris. The woman frowns.

‘Who is the email from?’

Chris pauses then, lowering his voice, he tells me what I didn’t expect to hear.

‘It’s a reply from the UK Home Secretary – from Balthus’s wife.’

Chapter 5

Deep cover Project facility.

Present day

I’m not certain how I feel when I see Patricia held and behind the screen. Shock? Fear? Nothing? I am too scared to answer.

Stepping forward, I observe my former friend as if she were a specimen in a lab. On her head are fresh red lacerations. Deep bruises strangle her neck. Her body is clothed in a dirty grey t-shirt, ripped trousers hanging from her legs that lie crumpled at odd angles. She raises her eyes and calls out my name, but the officer kicks her in the stomach and her middle folds in, body collapsing flat to the floor. I want to slap my hand to my mouth, but something tells me that would be a bad thing to do right now.

‘What do you see, Maria?’ Black Eyes says, a crackle of something indefinable stepping across his voice.

‘Patricia,’ I say, quick, as steady as I can.

‘This O’Hanlon woman – she is not your family.’

‘No,’ I respond, ‘she is not.’ Patricia is looking at me with big eyes, but when before they were blue and clear and shining, now her eyes seem dulled and bloodshot.

He regards me, holding my face with his sight and I so desperately want to tap my finger, my foot, anything to help my mind deal with the intensity of the attention.

‘You had two fathers,’ Black Eyes says, ‘adopted, biological. Now both dead.’

A heartbeat. ‘Yes.’ My sight remains locked on Patricia.

He folds his arms across his chest, watching the scene behind the screen. The officer is hauling Patricia up, but her body must be weak, because her rib-caged torso keeps buckling, her legs bending, feet toppling.

‘I lost my father, too,’ Black Eyes says, sight on the screen. ‘I was fourteen. He was in the SAS.’

Beyond the window, Patricia whimpers. We observe, Black Eyes and I, riding for a moment in a slow seesaw of sound left, right, left, right.

‘Why is she here?’ I dare myself to ask.

‘She is here because she is the enemy. You do understand, don’t you, that after everything that’s happened, she is no longer your friend?’

Friend. I roll the word in my mouth, feel it, test it out. For a long time, I never really understood what having one meant.

‘You made the only choice you could, Maria, by being here. Here is where you belong. Patricia O’Hanlon is the enemy because she does not agree with the aims and objectives of the Project. She does not agree with you being here. Yet this?’ He stretches out his arms to the room. ‘This is where you belong.’

‘This is where I belong,’ I say, the words marching out of my mouth of their own accord.

‘That’s right. And you don’t need people like Patricia O’Hanlon when the Project is our only friend.’

He reaches forward and presses a button. The grey blind rolls down slowly, one centimetre at a time, but the movement of it must jolt Patricia awake as, suddenly, she raises her head, staggering up a little. She begins screaming.

‘Doc! Doc! Help me!’ She wobbles forwards. ‘Don’t listen to them, Doc! They’re lying! They’re all lying! They’re going to—’

The officer hits Patricia on the skull with the butt of his gun and she crumples, falling unconscious to the tiles. Without thinking, I slap my palms to the screen, startled, as before me the officer starts dragging Patricia’s clubbed-seal body out of the room.

‘Where are they taking her?’ I ask fast, pressing my face into the glass trying to see round the corner. ‘She needs help.’ I turn to Black Eyes. ‘Why did he do that? Why?’

I gulp in air, as to the side of me Black Eyes rolls back his shoulders, snapping the bones that puncture his spine one by one. He regards me as I stare at the screen as the blind descends, then he steps to his desk and picks up the photograph that sits on it.

‘When people we love die, it is often hard for us to cope with. Would you agree?’

I blink, the image of Patricia still fresh and raw in my head, not fully comprehending what is happening or why. Black Eyes holds the frame in his fingers closer to his face and as he does, I find myself staring at the picture of the two people in it, my brain prodded by some odd curiosity, a vague, foggy notion that they look familiar. Both female, the oldest appears to be in her thirties: slim, caramel skin, hair in long black cascades down a suited back, wide collar, wire-rimmed spectacles clutching high cheekbones and resting against thick branches of brows. Beside her is a girl, young, at estimate under ten years old, the same hair as the older woman, same features, just softer, plumper, the sharpness to her cheeks not yet defined, still hidden under an infantile cushion of baby milk and bread.

‘Who are they?’ I ask before I can stop myself.

He does not respond, seeming, at first, as if he will not say anything at all, but then he sniffs, takes a breath and traces one thin finger over the printed faces. ‘They are – were – my family.’ He swallows; the pointed triangle of his Adam’s apple juts out, then sinks in. ‘They passed away a long time ago.’

Returning the frame to its allocated slot on the desk, Black Eyes picks up the file from the table, clutches it to his chest, then stands and stares at the grey blind where Patricia once was. For a few seconds time is suspended, the air swinging in silence around us. I steal a glance at the photograph on the desk.

Ten seconds pass, until, raising his chin, Black Eyes strides to the door and, unlocking it, gestures to the white-washed gleam of the walkways beyond.

‘Come. It’s time I showed you something.’

Zurich Airport, Switzerland.

Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 28 hours and 30 minutes

From: Harriet Alexander (Secretary of State for the Home Department)

To: Maria Martinez

Subject: Re: The Project

Dear Dr Martinez,

Thank you for your email. I’ve had your message decrypted and have verified the details contained within it. This information now is for our eyes only and has been seen by only the most trustworthy members of my immediate staff. You managed to find my private email address, so I am responding directly from that – given the nature of the situation you have brought to my attention, I believe it’s our most secure method of communication at this time.

Firstly, you have my gratitude for informing me of the true cause of death of my husband, Balthazar. Balthus was a dear husband and, while I did not know of your existence, I am sorry for the sadness I am sure you must be feeling at this moment.

I have reviewed your files on this organisation called Project Callidus. Please be assured that I was unaware that this group existed. I am currently seeking to set up talks with the Chief of MI5 with a view to beginning an investigation, but, as I am sure you understand, timing with these things is everything and I have to be very careful and measured with what we do next. Your safety, Dr Martinez, is paramount.

To that end, I would be grateful if we could meet. I understand this may be a complicated request. However, I strongly believe that, after reviewing the initial data you relayed to me, a meeting between us would aid in the investigation in the Project and MI5’s involvement in it.

Please do consider my suggestion. In the meantime, there is one more thing. After hearing of Balthus’s status as your biological father, I was naturally curious about the woman he had a baby – you – with. You asked in your email about her grave and its location. I thought it only right and fair to share the information with you as to her status.

Her name, as you know, is Isabella Bidarte. She is from Bilbao, Spain. The last known location of her is Weisshorn Psychiatric Hospital in Geneva, Switzerland. She was born in May, 1968. I, first, after your grave location request, also assumed she was dead. However, after a confidential investigation by my closest team, I can tell you that Ms Bidarte is indeed still alive, her residence understood still to be the Weisshorn Hospital in Geneva.

I trust this news is of value to you. This has been difficult for me, as I am certain it has been for you. I am sorry for the distress you have, over the years, I am sure, been caused at the hand of our security services. I hope this news of your mother contributes in some way to atoning for that.

Please do consider strongly my request to meet with you in order to aid our vital investigations and put an end to Project Callidus’ operations. Let us keep secure lines of communication open.

Yours truly,

Harriet Alexander

I look up from Chris’s computer tablet at Patricia, my hands shaking at the shock, yet my brain curious and elated at the email.

‘She is alive,’ I say. ‘She is alive.’

Patricia comes close to my side, the milk of her skin and the warm bath of her scent reaching my brain. ‘I’m right here.’

She touches my fingers and my mind becomes a little calmer, small clouds of our breath billowing in the frozen air.

We are hidden by a wall outside Zurich Airport. Close by, the external glass façade of the busy building glistens by a freezing taxi rank and the pencil-straight road washed in paint strokes of sunshine, leaving weak yellow lines across fine snow-covered pavements. I pull out my notebook and the photograph Papa had hidden in Ines’s Madrid cellar. I gaze at Isabella’s face, at her river of hair, her flowing skirt, her baby – me – swaddled and held in arms so smooth and melodic they sing like swans. Could she really be alive? Could it be true? Or is the whole thing a fabrication? Quickly, I begin to write down the email contents, cross match for any patterns, hidden codes or messages, but no matter how hard I look, there is nothing secret to find.

Chris hurries over, cupping his hands and blowing on his fingers. ‘I thought spring was supposed to be warmer here.’

Patricia rolls her eyes. ‘Wimp.’

He stares at her, shudders, then looks to me. ‘Okay, so—’ He sneezes.

‘Bless you.’

He tilts his head at Patricia and raises one eyebrow; I have no idea why.

‘Okay, so,’ he continues, ‘I’ve double-tracked the email on my system and it’s from her alright – it’s from Harriet Alexander.’

I clutch the sepia-tone photograph in my fingers. ‘Are you certain?’

‘Yep. The thing is, she said what she said, you know, about investigating the Project, but if MI5 are tracking her then they’ll know she’s talking to you.’ He points to the email. ‘They’ll know now she’s planning to investigate it all.’

‘Doc,’ Patricia says, ‘he’s right. They’ll follow you and then MI5’ll want you dead and the Project will want you with them, just like before. The Home Secretary asked to meet you. Wouldn’t that be the right idea? She’s based in Westminster – it doesn’t get much safer than there. The Project and MI5 can’t get you then.’

‘Hang on though,’ Chris says. ‘What if she knows something – your mom, Isabella?’

I turn to him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Okay, so, what if we find her and she can, I don’t know, tell us something to really put the nail in the Project’s coffin? Because the way I see it, you can’t trust—’

Patricia shakes her head. ‘No. No way. Too risky…’

‘A nail in a coffin?’ I say, but Patricia continues.

‘The police have our bloody pictures, Chris, for God’s sake. They’ll find us. And then MI5 will get to us before we get back to the UK and we’re all stuffed.’

‘Wimp,’ he says. ‘We’ll be fine.’

Patricia rolls her eyes and looks to me. ‘Doc, I don’t like it. It’s risky. God, I’d rather we went to the safe house of Chris’s in Zurich than go to the hospital in Geneva.’

There is a wall straight in front of us. It is beige, bland, the grouting along the brickwork in neat patterned lines, each one with a clear beginning and an obvious ending. I calculate the length of the edges to help my brain to think straight in the midst of the plane engine roar in the air around me, the birds in the swaying fir trees near the network of road and railways, the tremble of trolley wheels and the faint scent of distant cigarette smoke. Yet it is only when a lick of aviator fuel flicks my nostrils, jolting me upwards, that the thought occurs to me.

The brick and the grouting and the definable end. I think about that word – end – how it sounds and what it means…

Slowly at first then faster, I study the cellar picture in my hands then scan the dates scrawled on the back. ‘There is an end.’

Patricia looks over. ‘What d’you mean?’

I spin round to Chris, my mind moving at speed. ‘Isabella’s birth date and death date are both on this photograph.’

He looks.

‘If she is alive,’ I continue, brain planning now at lightning speed, ‘as the email said, why is the date of her death written here? It was written over two decades ago. The conclusion can only be that either my Papa wrote down the date without it being true or—’

‘Or the Home Secretary is lying,’ Chris says.

I look to him, his body stomping from foot to foot, his breath blowing small, white candy strands into the air, and for the first time since we arrived in Zurich, I feel a strong urge to turn to him and nuzzle my face in his neck and just smell him.

‘I have to know whether she is alive or not,’ I say now. ‘And if Weisshorn Hospital was her last known location then that is where we will go.’

Patricia stretches bolt upright. ‘Doc, no. I don’t think that’s a good idea. There’s a high chance she’s not there and then what? Why on earth d’you want to go there, Doc, when it’s so risky? Why?’

I stare at Isabella’s image. ‘She is the only family I have left,’ I say, quietly, softly.

Patricia’s shoulders drop. ‘Oh, Doc.’ Around us, lace patterns of snow float to the tarmac and evaporate into nothing. Patricia wipes her eyes, but doesn’t speak and when I inspect her left hand, I see her index finger and thumb pressing hard against each other so the skin is white.

‘Ok, so Google,’ Chris says. ‘You freak out on trains, right?’

I tear my sight from Patricia. ‘What?’

Chris leans against the wall and, fast, flips open his laptop. ‘There’s the Goldenpass route to Lausanne in Geneva. It’s long, but quiet, a tourist route, but not busy at this time of year. We can lie low.’ He looks to me, hair flopping in his eyes. ‘Would you be okay with that? It would mean it’s calmer for you to, well, to deal with.’

I study the details he has pulled up on the journey. Wide-open carriages, large windows, space, clean mountain air and no crowds. ‘We will have to change outfits so we are not recognised.’

‘No sweat. I’ve got untraceable credit cards that can buy us new stuff, and an uncanny ability to deactivate security cameras.’ He pauses, drops still for a moment, looks to the photograph in my hand. ‘Hey, we’ll find her, whatever the ending. We can go under the radar, figure out everything we can. We’ve done it before, we can do it again.’

I watch his lips move, smell his scent. ‘Can you hack into the Weisshorn Hospital, track any data?’

His face breaks out into a grin. ‘For you? Anything.’

Patricia coughs. ‘What’— she stops, swallows— ‘sorry – what time does the train depart?’

‘In one hour,’ Chris says. ‘We all ready to go?’

‘Yes.’ I throw my rucksack to my shoulder. ‘But first, I need to use the toilet facilities.’

‘Oh. Okay,’ Patricia says. She slips her cell phone from her bag, checks it and slides it out of sight.

Chapter 6

Goldenpass railway line, The Alps, Switzerland.

Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 26 hours and 20 minutes

I am unable to pull my eyes from the palette of watercolour before me. Aching blue lagoons of sky sifting in a mist of citrus and orange peel. Carpets of green grass shoots sprinkled with sugar flakes of snow all scattered among petals of spring painted with brush strokes of yellows and lilacs and multi-coloured confetti. Majestic mountains rise up, backs straight, muscles taut, mountains that, each time I gaze at them, each second I take in their strong, solid presence as they whisk past the window, a lump forms in my throat. When my sight drifts up to the fading turquoise of the sky, my breathing softens, and I think to myself that no matter what happens, no matter what wars are raged, what lives are slain, what untruths are spewed and sewn, the mountains that soar high above us are always there. Solid, present and true.

‘Doc, you okay?’

I peel my forehead from the window. Patricia now wears a wine-red sweat top with a hood and pocket, and on her legs blue jeans the colour of the night sea hug her skin. Her brown wig is still in place, as is Chris’s bottle-blonde mane as he sits by us hunched over his laptop. We are all now casually dressed, but, despite the simple comfort of the clothes, the fresh cardboard cotton of the t-shirt I currently wear itches my skin, irritating me. It’s unbearable, so I go to take it off, but Patricia reaches forward.

‘No, Doc. Not here.’

I stop. ‘Why?’

‘People don’t get changed down to their bras in public places.’

I drop my hand. ‘Oh.’

Scratching my stomach to bat away the clothing annoyance, I glance round the carriage. It is sparse. An old man with white hair wearing a pressed herringbone coat, black tie, cotton-blue shirt sits two seats beyond reading a daily newspaper containing headlines about the NSA and their surveillance of the German Head of State. Near to him is perched a young woman, small bird-like shoulders hunched over a worn-out copy of Animal Farm, the dog ears of the cover touching the tips of ten porcelain fingers as she turns the page, nails bitten, faded black jeans on petite, slim legs.

The only other group in the carriage is a father in his early thirties with two children, both boys under the age of ten, one nestled under each arm. The children are swaddled in navy blue duffle coats sewn with eight toggles apiece and they sit across a wooden table, opposite an elderly woman whose stomach and chin rest in kneaded batches of dough, square metal-framed glasses perched on the tip of a podgy nose as, making conversation with the small family, she points out the various Alpine sights that trundle past.

I observe the father for a moment, watch the way he smiles each time one of his sons whoops or claps at spotting a random cow or a snow-covered mountain top. A father, living, breathing. I hold my gaze on the family scene then, swallowing hard, I touch the picture of my Papa and the photograph of Isabella and her baby.

‘Hey,’ Patricia says, leaning forwards a little, ‘what’ve you done to your thumb?’

‘What?’

‘Your thumb – have you hurt yourself?’

I glance down at the small wound peeking out beneath a pale plaster still partially wet with blood. ‘I cut it.’

‘Where?’

‘In the toilets in Zurich.’

She leans forward. ‘Ooof, that looks sore. Must have been some wallop you gave it.’

I hide my hand out of sight and try to ignore the sting. ‘It is healing.’

The train jostles on and I take out my notebook, careful to avoid contact with my thumb. I check our current location against the brief list I have compiled to help me tackle the journey. Places, times, exact locations, short, sketched scenarios.

Satisfied we are on schedule, I peer through the wide window again and breathe easier. I turn my attention to Chris and his laptop.

‘Have you hacked the Weisshorn database yet?’

He shakes his head. ‘Yeah, but it doesn’t make sense.’

‘What does not make sense?’

Chris sits back, scratches his chin. ‘Well, okay, so I’m in their system, yeah – the hospital’s. I still can’t find Isabella’s name, but, either way, there seems to be some kind of glitch with my computer.’ He swivels his laptop to me and points. ‘See it?’

There are a series of numbers, stretching across the screen and linking to the database Chris is trying to hack. ‘They are codes,’ I say.

He nods. ‘I know, right? And every time I click on them, the screen shakes, just for a second.’ He shows me, and, sure enough, it shakes.

Patricia leans in to see. ‘Why’s it doing that?’

‘No idea. I’ve checked the OS, but it’s all fine.’

‘Can you not tell using a file or something and bypass the shake, or whatever you do?’

‘Nope. My trace files won’t open right now. No idea why.’

Connections firing, I rip open my notebook and cross-reference my written data with the online file then sit back. Nerves prick my spine. Something is not right. I wait for a second, think through the program on the laptop with the details in my notebook from dreams long gone. The motion of the train back and forth, the rhythm and gentle chug of the sound and its predictable pattern soothes my brain, and I flip through my cerebral files, checking, referencing, interweaving the recalled data in my mind as if it were open in a book in front of me. Connections, link, numbers…

‘There’s a thread,’ I say finally, noting that just five seconds have passed.

Chris’s eyes flip wide open. ‘Jesus, that was quick.’ He’s right – even for me that was fast work. The train, the lull of it, the empty white bowl of the mountains and snow – that must be enabling my mind to work at such speed. Patricia watches me closely, frowning.

‘The thread,’ I continue, scanning the laptop, ‘is linked by an algorithm like this one’— I swivel my notebook to him— ‘that attributes a line at the back of this hacking program into the hospital.’

‘What? You serious?’ He peers at the page. ‘You got all that from there? But what does it mean?’

I try to think it through, but the woman with Animal Farm breaks open a baguette of ham and cheese and the scent flicks at my nostrils. Butter, stale bread, sloppy ham with veins of fat, the sugary fug of processed cheese. I pinch my nose shut and, trying to focus on anything but the smell, look to Chris’s laptop and the information from the hospital contained on it. The data merges together in my mind, line after line of it racking up a catalogue of knowledge at such speed and with such force that I have to slam my palm down on the table to steady myself. I am aware of the stares towards me, but I ignore them, focus on the screen as, slowly then faster still, an answer begins to form, until, with fear, I realise what is happening.

‘There is a tracker.’ I swallow. ‘It’s linked to the program, activated when you connected with the hospital database.’ How did I come to that conclusion so fast?

‘What?’ Chris studies the screen, eyes wide. ‘Holy fuck! But if they’ve targeted my actual laptop it means that, whoever’s done that, whoever’s singled this device out must have done it deliberately. They must have known I’d try and get into Weisshorn and as soon as I did, they sent a virus to my computer to locate it. Fuck.’

‘It may not be deliberate. It is common for servers to have an instant defence virus attack sent out when any hacking is detected.’

Chris’s shoulders drop and his features visibly soften. ‘Oh God, d’you think so? God, yeah, shit. I should know that – do know that. Sorry. I’m just… Fuck. This kind of stuff makes me nervous.’ He leans over his laptop, fingers moving fast. ‘I’ll cut all links now to their database and get out of there. I have software that should stop any viruses, but it must have bypassed it.’

Patricia watches us. ‘What if hacking into that database means they know where we are? I mean, they can do that, right? Find locations and stuff?’

We stare at her. Chris swallows. ‘She’s right.’

‘So it would be better,’ Patricia says, ‘if we… if we get off this train?’

Chris smacks the laptop shut, throws his hands up as if the computer were a hot coal, a burning ember. ‘Shit. Shit, shit, shit.’

Panic wells inside me at the prospect of the Project finding us before the investigation can cull them. I steady myself, gaze out at the patches of snowflakes that stick on the window. Outside, deep lakes give way to fields of fir trees and sugar-dusted green pasture. Sometimes I imagine that if I look at nature long enough, it will make everything better and, like the snowflakes melting on the warmth of the window, it will all disappear.

I turn to speak to Chris, when a tannoy announces in French, German then English that Brunig-Hasliberg is the next station up. At the barking sound, my hands slap to my ears while, ahead, the two boys whoop and clap and tell their father that this is the best train trip ever, and can they have some sweets.

Patricia looks to me. ‘Doc?’ She jabs a finger to her ears. ‘The tannoy’s stopped.’

‘We need to get off this train as soon as we can,’ Chris says. He is fidgeting – does that mean he is anxious? ‘I’ll have to leave this laptop on here so they won’t find us – it’ll be full of the virus now.’ He fumbles over a paper map looking for a station.

I lower my hands. ‘Interlaken Station would provide a good place to alight the train as it is located between lakes Thun and Brienz. It will therefore provide more places to hide, and better access to more low-key transport opportunities. It is also a place popular with backpackers.’

Chris nods. ‘Okay, yeah – I see where you’re going with this. If it’s full of backpackers, we can slip right in, unnoticed. Awesome.’

‘It’s not on our routine, Doc,’ Patricia says to me. ‘Will an unscheduled stop be okay with you? I’m not sure if you can cope.’

‘I can… cope.’

Patricia gives me a flicker of a smile. I drink in her face, her soft smile, and feel happiness. Soon the train begins to ascend, lurching and heaving through the white dust of the mountain that yawns steep through the Brunig pass. As I observe the lakes laid out in mirrors of deep blue ice alongside our carriage of glass and gold, I worry about the tracker linked to Chris’s computer, and so to remain calm, I watch Patricia and I tell myself how lucky I am to have finally found, amid this confusing world that changes in a heartbeat of time, someone whom I can truly trust.

Deep cover Project facility.

Present day

We walk along a white corridor with low-level bulbs that do not assault my senses. All is quiet.

Black Eyes strides by my side. In his hand is clutched his folder, and in the light that glows down in calm, controlled pools beneath our boots, his fingernails appear to glisten as they pinch the plastic edges of the documents.

We reach a junction and halt. Having witnessed Patricia behind the glass pane just moments before, I am jittery and my finger taps the side of my thigh where my combats skim my skin, The cold air gives me goose bumps. Black Eyes shifts his vision down. He regards my finger where it flaps and, with a flicker of a frown, he flares his nostrils and returns his chin to its upright position. No one speaks.

I count my breaths while we walk further to within the bowels of the building. I find myself, illogically, searching for Patricia everywhere. I try to stop doing it. I know it is wrong – no longer is she my friend and even though the memory of her skin beaten into blueberry bruises on her neck and arms and legs haunts my mind, I tell myself that the Project alone should be my only focus, that what they do is for the greater good. Yet still, images of her broken body enter my thoughts and I have to push them away, place one foot in front of the other and recite in my head as many birth dates of classical composers as I can.

Black Eyes remains quiet as we halt, and a familiar whoosh sound hisses into the air as, before us, a door bows open into a room that I have never entered before. I pause, suddenly nervous, but unsure why.

‘Maria,’ Black Eyes says, extending a periscope of an arm forwards, ‘please enter.’

I peer into the room. It stretches towards a larger door three metres beyond. I walk in upon instruction then halt as told, and turn.

‘Where we are about to go,’ Black Eyes says, ‘is all part of your therapy, Maria. Do you understand that?’

I nod, yet inside there is uncertainty building. I have so many questions but am nervous to ask them, and when Black Eyes looks at me, it feels as if he can see into my head, read my thoughts. I press my lips tight together. Nothing in, nothing out.

‘Patricia O’Hanlon,’ Black Eyes says now, consulting his file, ‘should no longer be regarded as a friend, colleague or anything else of significance by you. Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good.’ He lets out a sigh. ‘I know this part is difficult. We are accustomed to the trauma individuals feel – the assault of noise and thoughts and smells, so where I am about to take you will shut all that off and allow you to have no intrusions, help you to… come to terms with your situation, yes?’

‘Yes.’ The room swims a little. I press my heels hard into the floor as an anchor.

‘So, Maria, shall we?’

Black Eyes gestures to the next door and closes his folder, and as he does I catch sight of the photograph that lies on the main page: Patricia. Her skin is clear, before the cuts and bruises, her neck long and slim, and while the sudden image of her alarms me, what grabs my curiosity the most is the word dangerous stamped in red writing across her face.

I begin to move forwards, normal, try not to show any eye movement toward the document while I work through the unexpected reaction in my head. I register an emotion – what? Anger? Hurt? For some reason unknown, seeing the word dangerous in relation to Patricia makes me cross, yet it is not directed towards the Project because of what they have done to her – I am cross, instead, at Patricia herself.

Blindsided by this sudden realisation, I attempt to decipher what the feeling means, and the reason behind the emotion drifts within sight, but then slips away out of reach.

We halt at the second, larger door and Black Eyes claps his palm on the folder. I jump. ‘In we pop,’ he says, and he opens the door.

I peer into the room beyond, into a place I have never before been.

‘This,’ he says, ‘is the Chamber. In we go.’

I hesitate then obey. Patricia’s photograph peeks out from the white folder’s edge.

Chapter 7

Goldenpass railway line, The Alps, Switzerland.

Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 25 hours and 31 minutes

As the train slows to the scheduled halt at Brunig-Hasliberg Station, Patricia unfolds herself from her seat and announces she’s getting off.

Instantly, I panic. ‘Where are you going?’

She smiles, her back stooping over where her head skims the metal rod of the caged luggage rack above.

‘I’ve read about this place,’ she says. ‘It has a little bookstall and everything. The train’ll be here for ten minutes or so, so I fancy a little wander round, stretch my legs.’

‘Is that wise?’ Chris says.

‘It’s only for a bit. I’ll be careful. I just need to get some air.’

She yawns and stretches her arms. I peer out. A small station with sloping roofs sugar-coated in snow rolls in front of us and lurches to a stop. It is constructed of brick, metal and wood, and under the low-hanging eaves of the worn tiles are housed creaking oak shelves crammed with dog-eared second-hand paperback books of fiction and fact, a metal honesty box slotted at the end where the shelves fall away and the tall wide station doors yawn open to the ticket office beyond. It is quiet. To the left of the make shift bookshop sits a jumble of bric-a-brac for sale and, feeling the need for stability, I count it all: three old radios, a peeling wooden horse, a stack of board games, twenty-seven ornaments and fifty-two picture frames – items passed on, no longer needed. I count five people waiting on benches by the far right side, heads hanging over smartphones stuck to frozen white fingers.

‘Do you have to go?’ I say.

‘Oh, Doc,’ Patricia says, ‘I just want to have a nosey around. I’ve never really been anywhere like this or, well, anywhere really. It looks really pretty.’

‘You have been to places,’ I say, thinking this through logically. ‘You have been to Ireland, to England and to prison.’

She bites her lip. ‘It’s not the same, Doc.’

‘Not the same as what?’

She throws a glance to Chris then turns back to me. ‘I’ll be just five minutes, okay?’

‘Five minutes?’

‘Yep.’

I click the timer on my watch. She pauses, then breaks into a soft smile.

Patricia alights the stationary train. A late stab of sunshine rushes through the window, casting a buttercup glow on the tables and metal grey marled walkways of the carriage. I try to quell my worry for the safety of my friend by counting once more the passengers near to our allocated seats. I watch again the two young boys sitting with their father, scan the doughball woman opposite spilling from the edges of her chair. The boys have now shed their duffle coats and are squabbling over who is to have the last biscuit of what seems to be a discarded packet.

‘Can’t you just share, poppets?’ the woman says.

The boys cease momentarily their squabbling and blink at her with four deep brown eyes.

The father leans in, scoops up the boys, his gaze on dough woman. ‘It’s okay,’ he mutters. ‘They’re okay. Thank you, though.’

I watch them for two seconds longer, curious at the odd lump in my throat, then switching my attention to my belongings, I lay out the old photograph of Isabella and me. Taking out a pen, I turn to a new blank page in my notebook and, starting from the top and working my way to the bottom, I scratch down the series of events, where, from hacking and investigating, we have discovered key information on the Project.

Chris leans over. ‘What you doing?’

‘This is a timeline of all the points where we have uncovered Project files.’

‘Right. Why are you doing it?’

‘I am trying to define a pattern to pinpoint if the virus that attached to your laptop from Weisshorn is coincidental or deliberate.’

Chris goes quiet. He slopes back in his seat, glances to Patricia on the platform. She is flicking through books. I watch her. She slots a novel back to the shelf then, pausing to glance left and right, she takes out her phone.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ Chris says.

I blink once more at Patricia then turn to him. ‘Why are you saying sorry?’

‘Because if it’s deliberate, the virus, then that means there’s a high chance they’ve been in my laptop before.’ He shakes his head. ‘I’ve got protection and all, defences and everything, but these guys’ —he blows out a breath— ‘they’re in another league. It means, without realising it, I could’ve led MI5 and the Project to the abbey in Montserrat – to you. And then they turned up and the Project took you away.’

I watch him as he frowns. Sometimes I wonder if neurotypical people must be as exhausted with all the unfounded assumptions that they make as much as I am exhausted with trying to understand the inferences of their unfound assumptions in the first place. Maybe, when we scratch at the surface, we’re not so different after all.

‘If I was not taken away that day,’ I say, ‘I would not have been in the Project facility in Hamburg and we would not have been able to hack into their system and discover the files that revealed how many people like me they have tested on. It means we would not have been in a position to contact the Home Secretary and potentially put an end to the entire Project via what will be an in-depth, governmental investigation.’

He drops his head for a second. ‘Thank you. You’re…’ He stops, though it’s not clear why. When he speaks again, his voice is low and a bit wobbly. ‘I’ll do all I can to help you find your mom, okay? I… I still miss my mom every day and it’s been years since she died.’

I feel a strange need to reach out and touch him, hug him, even, but instead, not knowing what the right action is at all, I have a go at arranging my lips into what I think is a sympathetic smile, then, picking up my pen, I channel my feelings into facts.

We work together on the Project file timeline. The carriage is quiet. Every three seconds or so, one of the small boys whoops at some card game they are playing, and when the father looks at them, I notice crinkles by his eyes. When he ruffles their hair with a gentle hand, the pang that stabs me inside comes on so unexpectedly that I have to stop writing and try hard to prevent my thoughts from wandering to Balthus and Papa.

‘Do you remember in my house in Montserrat where we found that kind of countdown thing?’ Chris says after we’ve been working for a few minutes. ‘You know, the one with your age on it, counting it down?’

My pen hovers in the air as I look over to him and trip off the exact date, location and time of the occasion he is referring to.

He turns his tablet to me. ‘Well, d’you remember the timer thing? This?’

I study the screen. Dates, numbers, the tick of a clock. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘That is the same one as before.’

‘I know, right? I kept a link of it on file along with all that Black September terrorist stuff from 1973 that kick-started the whole Project in the first place. I thought, while we’re looking for connections while the train’s in the station, I’d go through all the stuff we’ve found since being at my place. But, the thing is, this clock definitely seems to be linked to something else other than what we found, only, I don’t know what.’

I look again at the screen and try to fit what I see to anything from the Project facility in Hamburg, but the only aspect that piques my curiosity is my allocated subject number that sits in the yellow square next to the countdown file. I point to it. ‘It states my subject number here.’

Chris nods. ‘375.’

The fir trees outside ripple. I watch the leaves bend from one branch to another until they merge into a single sea of pale mint green. A thought begins to form.

I turn. ‘Click on there,’ I instruct Chris, unsure why, but cogs turning.

‘You’ve got an idea?’

Following my finger where it brushes the screen, Chris takes the cursor and hovers it over what appears to be a tiny grey square that sits in the corner by the age countdown flash at the very bottom of the laptop. He clicks on it once, twice, but nothing appears. The carriage sways a little as people alight and ascend, bustling in with them the smell of toffee popcorn and burnt sugar. Alarmed at the scents, I cover my nose with my hand and watch as the boys with their father pull at his coat and beg him for food.

‘You alright?’ Chris says.

I nod. Only my eyes peek out. ‘My brother, Ramon, fed popcorn to me in the cellar at Mama’s house in Madrid where he had me imprisoned.’

‘Ah.’

Once the smell fades, nothing is still appearing on the grey square on the screen. I check my watch. Patricia has been away three minutes and one second now. I peer to the window. She is tapping her phone as, two paces from her, a woman wearing a plain navy baseball cap, blue sneakers and tight black jeans steps out from inside the bric-a-brac shop and halts. Why, I think to myself, is Patricia using her phone? It is for emergencies only. I drop my hand and press my face to the window to get a better view when Chris calls out my name.

‘Maria, you have to see this.’

I turn to see, on the tablet screen, numbers. Hundreds and hundreds of numbers.

Chris scans them all. ‘They just sprang through when I clicked the grey box again. Why’s there a line through every single one?’

‘They are subject numbers,’ I say, immediately, almost to myself as in my brain I am photographing each one and cross referencing it with the pre-sorted data in my head until I am 100 per cent certain. ‘Yes. I can confirm they are all subject numbers.’

‘How do you know?’

My eyes speed over each line again, but there is no mistake in the match. ‘They are the same numbers as on the file we found in Hamburg. Then, 2,005 out of 2,113 were marked deceased.’

‘So why are they crossed out? They weren’t crossed out before.’ His eyes narrow. ‘It’s as if someone’s put a line through them all. I mean, you don’t do that on a computer file, so why have they done it? It’s like they want to make a point. Like the numbers, the people have ceased existing or something.’

‘As if they are all dead,’ I say.

‘Shit.’ He blows out some air. ‘That Black Eyes guy, the one that came up on the screen, d’you remember? On my computer in Montserrat? Do you think he’s behind this again? D’you think this thing is programmed, maybe, to match remotely, like, real life events? You know, people dying and stuff? The Hamburg files said they were their subject numbers, right? So, are the rest now dying, too?’

I am about to answer when Patricia returns. My eyes track her every move as she rushes towards us clutching two worn books with cracked spines and tea-stained pages, catching, as she passes, the eye of the woman with the dough ball chin and stomach.

‘Doc,’ she says, breathless, slipping her cell in to her pocket and plaiting her legs and arms into the seat, ‘you have to see this!’

She shrugs off her coat, confetti flakes of snow floating from the sleeves and vanishing into the carpeted floor below.

Chris looks over. ‘What is it?’

‘There was a woman…’ Patricia gulps some air and slides onto the table a worn, old book. ‘She…’ Another swallow. ‘She gave this to me by the book store.’

It is a copy of 1984 by George Orwell.

Taking the novel in my hands, I smell its pages. Coffee, mothballs, mint and lavender, each stain and rip and pencilled etching depicting the tracks of the readers who have lived in these words, all of their movements documented and preserved in the multi-coloured cover and spine that now sit in my hand. I leaf the old, yellow courier typeface.

‘Who gave this to you?’

‘A woman on the platform.’ She pauses. ‘Doc, she said you have to read page 97.’

‘Okay.’

‘No, Doc. You – she said your name.’ She looks between Chris and I. ‘She knew who you were.’

Chapter 8

Goldenpass railway line, The Alps, Switzerland.

Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 25 hours and 25 minutes

A tsunami of fear hits.

‘Where is she?’ I say.

Patricia scans the platform. ‘There. Doc, that’s her! That’s the woman who gave me the book!’

We all dart up. The train is beginning to pull away from the platform. We sprint to the door, watched by the father and his sons and by the dough ball woman pressed into her seat.

‘There, Doc. Look! Do you know her?’

I scan where Patricia is pointing, but all I see are books and assorted junk and bric-a-brac. ‘There is no one.’

She thrusts her hand ninety degrees west. ‘There!’

The train shudders to a temporary halt and I see her. The woman. She has buttermilk skin, a navy baseball cap with tiny wisps of chestnut hair peeking from underneath, black jeans, blue sneakers, chocolate brown eyes and a face I recognise. A gasp slips from my lips. There is a flash of memory inside my head: of Kurt, the Project intelligence officer whose real name was Daniel, passing as my therapist after prison, of the spiked coffee with the Versed drug that the Project used on me to transport me to their facility.

The woman who brought the spiked coffee to me.

‘She is with the Project,’ I say, remembering. ‘She is the girlfriend of a Project officer that Balthus killed. She… she was at Montserrat Abbey when the Project took me.’

‘No shit,’ Chris says, ramming his head to the window. ‘Fuck.’

I grab 1984 from Patricia and scan page 97. At first, there is nothing obvious of concern, no code jumping out, no immediate message.

Chris scans the page too. ‘See anything?’

I search. ‘There are words.’

‘Yes, but anything… unusual?’

A whistle blows and I jump, instantly clicking my tongue at the noise. On the tannoy, the conductor announces that there are cows on the line, which are finally moving and the train’s departure will be in one minute’s time.

‘Doc, you’re clicking – you okay?’

I let out a quick breath, count to ten, try to think straight. ‘There is nothing here,’ I say to Chris. ‘The words seem normal.’

Chris reads the page then stops. ‘Wait. What’s that there? I’ve read this book, like a hundred times before – that line shouldn’t be there.’

I re-read. ‘You are correct,’ I say, amazed. ‘There is an extra line.’

Patricia looks. ‘What?’

Together, Chris and I examine the page in front of us.

‘There’s a code,’ he says after a few seconds, voice low, eyes locked on to the book.

‘Where?’

He goes to take the book but I am clamped to it. ‘Can I… can I have it for a sec? Thanks. It’s difficult to see, but if I angle it…’ He rotates the page ninety degrees.

I spot it – the code in the letters. The whistle of the guard, the bark of the tannoy must have stopped my brain from working at it before.

Patricia bends in. ‘What is it?’

‘There’s an extra sentence at the bottom of the page,’ Chris says. ‘Exactly the same as the one above it.’

‘Not exactly the same.’ I trace the prose, mind firing now. ‘Here. It angles differently and there are three extra letters.’

Chris narrows his eyes. ‘And two extra numbers.’

I begin decrypting the code, as does Chris, his mouth murmuring the numbers we see. But I go fast, more rapid than ever. I grab my notebook and tearing it open to the area I need, tracking fast the data that I have recalled in the past, I decipher the hidden code in Orwell’s novel, catching my breath at the rate at which I work. Chris’s lips move along the indecipherable words and numbers, his mind analysing, as Patricia looks on, glancing from time to time to the platform bookstore in the near distance then back to us, before slipping her phone from her pocket, checking it, slotting it back out of sight once more.

I examine the last section of the page, reading, re-reading, but it’s only when Chris mutters two elements of a code we both deciphered from the files held within the Project facility in Hamburg that the idea forms.

‘The code you just relayed,’ I say. ‘It connects.’

He wipes his mouth, eyes flying over the numbers. One second passes, two, three until he pulls his head up and mutters, ‘Jesus.’

‘What?’ Patricia says, glancing between the two of us. ‘What?’

‘It’s a warning,’ Chris says.

‘Huh? A warning? A warning for what? Doc, what does it say?’

My eyes stay on the code, decrypting it again to be sure, but still, no matter how much I wish to deny it, the message is the same.

‘It says the Project knows where we are.’ I close my eyes. ‘It says they are waiting for us at the next station stop at Interlaken.’

The train starts to pull away and pick up speed.

Deep cover Project facility.

Present day

‘This is an anechoic chamber.’

Black Eyes nods to a white-haired officer as he opens a door. The officer presses a green button and one hundred and seventy small LED wall-lights ping into life in a room that stretches in a long, tubular shape like an airplane cockpit of a space.

I place one foot inside. When I inspect the initial area, I see that each light throws a soft blue glow on my skin, face and hair, and when I twist my arm around to reveal the spongy underbelly beneath, a kaleidoscope of tiny rainbows dances along my skin in drunk, swaying circles.

‘Please walk in,’ the officer says.

I hesitate, then step forwards and the door behind me immediately whooshes shut, a draught of air sealing it behind me. I whip round, startled, and frantically scan the door, its metal whiteness a cold block of ice that freezes out the world from me, from these lights and sounds. A shiver breaks out all over me.

‘Walk three steps forward, please,’ the officer’s voice instructs over an intercom.

‘What is happening?’

On the curve of the wall there is a small, square window with a deep blue rim and, through it, I see Black Eyes. ‘This is the next stage.’

There appears to be two sections of the chamber. I move my feet into a different space where the light is almost gone. My pulse pounds. When I look once more through the window I see the officer. Worry shoots up my spine.

‘Stop there,’ the officer orders.

I halt. Unsure what is expected of me, I shift slightly to the side.

‘I said, stop!’ he shouts.

I instantly freeze, staggering at the loud volume assault. Black Eyes’ voice swims in, ordering the officer not to yell.

‘Maria,’ Black Eyes says after a fraction of silence has passed, his fingers, from the window, still clasping the file where Patricia’s head lies, ‘this is a place that can help you. Take a breath, calm down.’

I feel a strong urge to run away as fast as I can, to pound down the door with my fists, but manage to stay put.

‘You see,’ he continues, ‘we have found that subject numbers sometimes need assistance in… controlling their feelings, their reactions to situations. Although, as I’m sure you are realising by now, you, my dear, are… well, unique.’

As he cranes his head and speaks directly to the officer, my brain sparks somewhere at something Black Eyes just said. Other subject numbers. I don’t move, fear and uncertainty preventing me from barely breathing as I aim to think straight in this strange environment, attempt to locate what alarm is being triggered inside my mind. Why does the phrase other subject numbers suddenly tweak something in my mind, something distant, a hazy recollection of an event not long passed?

‘Maria? Are you ready, Maria?’

‘I think so.’

‘Good. Then let me tell you what will happen next.’

Chapter 9

Goldenpass railway line, The Alps, Switzerland.

Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 25 hours and 20 minutes

With Interlaken Ost Station fifty minutes away, Chris grabs all his equipment, fingers shaking, and shoves it in his rucksack. Rising into the aisle, his full head height skimming the ceiling of the carriage, he rolls his shoulders and turns.

I zip up my rucksack. Legs jigging in my seat at the nerves of what’s ahead, I afford a brief glance to the window. The early night air descending on the mountains has produced a low mist that merges from yellow to deep blue then black, and in the fields that yawn wide into the elbow of the valley below, the petals of the spring crocuses bob on the heads of their stems and sway in the breeze of the train as it rolls on by.

‘Right,’ Chris says, eyes to the left and right. ‘The hard drive’s erased. I’ve copied everything we need onto a file. I’ve tried using a signal blocker thing I have, but it’s not working, so we’ll try that later.’ He looks up to the far door of the carriage then back to our table. ‘How we gonna do this? I mean, why would this book woman warn us if she works for the Project?’

‘We do not have the answer to that at present. However, our priority is to reduce any threat level to us all, so the best course of action based on probability of harm or death is to alight the train and leave.’

‘Shit. What if it’s a trick?’

‘People, it seems, play tricks all the time,’ I say. ‘This is no different.’

Patricia wrings her hands together over and over. She secures her bag to her shoulder, gripping it and, catching strands of her wig in the handle where it pinches her jumper, she stands.

Chris glances over to her. ‘You okay? You seem jittery.’

She nods but keeps her eyes down, and when I look at her other hand, wondering how jittery appears, I see her thumb nail picking at the skin on the cuticles of her forefinger. I spread out my five fingers; Patricia looks at them and gives a thin smile.

I scan the train. I check the people and the families and the smattering of random, vague faces, observing life as it is: normal, regular, each person connected by an invisible thread of relationships. I glance to my two friends, slip my fingers into my bag and stroke, for one second, the spine of my notebook and rub the soft edge of the photographs tucked inside.

Breathing in once, and with the Project’s mantra in my head – prepare, wait, engage – I withdraw my hand, secure my bag and start walking. ‘We have to find a way off this train.’

We negotiate the sway of the carriage and come to a stop by the door that opens up to the outside between the two cabins.

‘Doc?’

I am scanning for the best exit. ‘Yes?’

‘I’m not used to this kind of thing.’

She chews her nails and I search for something appropriate to say. ‘It is highly unusual to be chased by a covert organisation previously unknown to the UK government, who would kill you if they had to in order to capture your friend.’

She lowers her fingers from her mouth and, taking this as a signal that I have delivered an adequate comment, I recommence examining the area.

I observe the eyes and the faces of each and every passenger. Patricia moves close by me now, nail nibbling again, and I use the partial cover her body provides to study the travellers. The old man is asleep in his seat, head hanging, brow tapping the window. The young girl has her face glued to her chewed copy of 1984, music shoved in her ears, while the father and his two boys, it seems, have fallen asleep, each body resting on the pillow of the other, the bread-faced woman opposite watching them, smiling. Nothing jumps out, nothing screams, run. I breathe a little easier.

We move along one metre further to the far door where we are due to alight and consider our options of escape once on the platform. The train is moving a little faster now, not at great speed, but the chugging has increased in its ascent up a steep incline.

‘Have you located any remote device trackers?’ I say to Chris.

‘I don’t know. My phone’s picking up some strange signal, not a virus or anything on the cell, but different.’ He searches the carriage. ‘I don’t know where it’s coming from. And look.’

‘What?’

‘Well, after we realised we were being traced with the Weisshorn virus, I quickly checked those subject numbers, you know, the ones crossed out. There was a link underneath the yellow edge of the countdown square.’

Patricia looks to him. ‘I thought you couldn’t get a Wi-Fi connection.’

‘I can’t. I mean, you don’t need one for this. It’s just embedded code.’ He turns to me. ‘I didn’t see it at first, it was hidden behind a series of encryptions that created the strike-through lines across the numbers, but I did a little digging and, well, it led to a place, just a file name header, but a place all the same.’

‘What place?’

He hesitates, eyes flickering to Patricia then back to me. ‘The Office of the Ministry of Justice. In Spain.’

‘Doc, isn’t that where Ines used to work? Wasn’t she a member of parliament in that department?’

‘She was the Minister.’

‘Well, the subject numbers,’ Chris continues, voice hushed, ‘whoever the people were – they seemed to have been, like, generated from there, from the Justice Ministry. What d’you think it means? Do you think it’s all connected? Or is it just random, because Ines was always involved with the Project anyway?’

I grab his phone, examine the data, but no immediate answer comes.

‘Er, Doc?’

I scan the data again. It seems valid, but how are the subject numbers linked? How can the government Ines used to help run be involved? It may simply be that Ines stored the data at the department. Only facts will tell.

‘Doc?’

‘Yes?’

‘Doc, you need to look up, like, now.’

‘Why?’

‘Who’s she?’

Patricia is pointing to the dough woman, striding down the aisle at a speed that betrays her age.

Chris’s mouth drops. ‘What the..?’

The woman moves quickly, unusually so for her height and build, her sight locked on us as she makes her way up the carriage. My pulse rises. I glance at the boys and the father where they lie asleep: the father’s arm drops to the side, loose, oddly limp.

‘What’s that in her hand?’ Chris whispers. ‘Is that… Oh, shit – is that a gun?’

Prepare, wait, engage.

I instinctively slam my two friends out of the way.

‘That is a Beretta 92-FS pistol with a 9mm silencer.’

Chris rams himself behind me. He is close, but I cannot let the confined space bother me, not now, not with my friends at risk.

‘Doc,’ Patricia says, a wobble to her words, ‘I don’t like it.’

She looks like a harmless grandma, her chest a plumped, padded duvet encased in a lilac gilet, the armholes encircled with delicate flower patterns. She smells of boiled sweets and lavender. Nice, sweet – except for the gun.

‘Do not move,’ the woman says. Her voice is a clipped typewriter of words, harsh, metallic.

I stay walled in front of my friends, arms spread in an iron fence to either side. ‘Who are you?’

‘You know who I am with.’

‘If you’re MI5,’ Patricia says from behind me, ‘you can fuck off!’

‘I am from Project Callidus, not MI5, and there’s no need for such language. There are children present.’

I glance to the father and the boys. Do they know? Do they know who they have been travelling near? My heart races. I feel the bodies of Chris and Patricia behind me, their heat and breath, the shake of Patricia’s arm, the warmth of Chris’s torso. I have put my friends in danger again and at every turn they have found me, so if I run, will this never, ever end? But the email, the email we sent from Madrid airport to the Home Secretary – the Project will be investigated and culled.

‘Who are they?’ I say, gesturing to the father and boys. ‘Are they the Project, too?’

Her green eyes briefly flit behind her. ‘With the Project? Them? Oh, no, no.’ She sighs. ‘They are… collateral.’

My blood chills.

‘What?’ Chris says.

‘Children,’ she says. ‘They can just get far too inquisitive sometimes. It can cause… problems. Sweet little poppets they were, though.’

‘Jesus,’ Chris says. ‘You… you mean you killed them?’

‘No,’ I say, panicking. ‘No, no, no…’ My sight goes straight to the little family. The father’s hand hangs over the edge of the seat rest, the boys’ heads are slipping downwards just a little more than sleep would normally allow. I start to sway, even though the train travels relatively straight. ‘The Project are for the greater good. How… how can this be for the greater good? I have to help them.’

‘No.’ She slams her arm across the walkway, blocking my path. ‘It’s time.’

I stare again at the father, think of the way he smiled at his sons, ruffled their hair, the way his eyes creased when his lips upturned – a family, a real loving family. I clench my teeth, heart slamming against my chest, a rage in me burning. ‘I am not going anywhere with you.’

She emits a small sigh, bosom rising then falling. ‘You have no choice, Subject 375. Project Callidus needs you.’

‘How do you know that number?’

‘Because I am here to see you back to our family. Our nickname – Cranes, remember? We represent peace.’

‘You are not my family.’

She smiles and it confuses me – there are creases fanning from her eyes.

‘Doc, don’t listen to her.’

Chris thrusts his head forwards. ‘The Project is over. The British government has all the information on the entire programme. It’s no longer a secret.’

The smile remains on her face, but now her eyes droop downwards, making the creases deepen. I try to decode it, translate what it means. Eye creases with a smile mean happiness, doesn’t it? So, is that what she feels upon seeing me? Content, whole? If so, why?

‘Leave us the fuck alone,’ Chris says now, moving forwards a little. I feel his warm, moist fingers link between mine; I surprise myself by not pulling away.

‘The Home Secretary – she has an email,’ he continues. ‘An email with all the files stretching back thirty years on every twisted little thing the Project and MI5 have done.’

‘You mean this email?’ The old woman’s words are cashmere soft as she slips her hand into her pocket, pulls out a phone and holds it aloft with the full email and file sent to Harriet Alexander when we were in Madrid.

Chris shifts forward, looks. His mouth hangs open. ‘What the fuck?’

The woman switches her gaze to Chris. I do not move. The old man in the carriage ahead is absorbed in his newspaper. The young woman has earbuds in connected by a thin white wire to her phone. In her lap open at the page is Orwell’s dystopian novel.

‘Mr Chris Johnson,’ she says, ‘the way you encrypted that email to the UK Home Secretary, well, you gave us a hard task to decode it. If you are game, we are very interested in acquiring your special… services. Better to have you onside than off.’ She smiles. ‘Still, we found you all. Eventually. But of course, we did have a little help.’

‘Fuck you.’ Chris spits at her.

She glances down to the saliva on her gilet, then points her gun to Patricia’s head and looking at me, says, ‘I’ll make the choice for you now really very easy: come with me or I kill your friends.’

Chapter 10

Goldenpass railway line, The Alps, Switzerland.

Time remaining to Project re-initiation: 25 hours and 01 minutes

‘Doc, don’t listen to her,’ Patricia says, her voice shaking. ‘She doesn’t mean it.’

The woman thrusts the gun towards Patricia’s head. ‘Oh, but I do.’

Outside, the landscape flies by in grey and black and yellow, pinpricks of lights glowing in the distance against the slopes of the white mountains, flickering as the wooden chalets and guesthouses and bars switch on for the evening.

I look at the woman and feel disgust, anger at the sight of her. ‘Leave.’

‘I’m afraid I cannot do that.’

‘You know I have been trained,’ I say. ‘You know what I am capable of.’

‘You think I am on my own?’ She shakes her head. ‘We are everywhere, subject 375. They are waiting for you, so we can either make this easy or hard.’

The air feels clammy. I catch sight of the dead family, the innocent little boys and their father. I can’t let anyone else die. I uncouple my fingers from Chris and prepare.

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