Nikki Owen - Spider in the Corner of the Room

I stare at the syringe. If I fight it, they will hurt me; if I do the tests, will they leave me? Somehow, it feels whichever road I take, it will lead to a bad place. ‘What…’ My head sways a little. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘This is a code program,’ he says, swivelling the laptop round to me. ‘The code is encrypted. I want you to crack the code.’

I try to focus. There are blocks of letters on the screen. At first they seem random and then…I begin to catalogue them. One, after the other, after the other. In my head, I match them, trace the links, spot the connections, the holes. It is easy.

‘Can you do it,’ he says, ‘because the time is-’

‘It is a meeting.’

The man presses a button on his watch. ‘Go on.’

I trace the code. ‘It is for a weapons programme, but that is not all-there are details of a conversation. A transcript.’

‘What does the conversation say?’

I scan the letters. ‘It gives times and dates.’

‘Specifically. I require details.’

‘Twenty-third of September. The meeting is in Tehran. It involves one lieutenant, one colonel and one senior Iranian intelligence officer.’

‘Does it give a task and target?’

‘The American Embassy.’ I swallow. ‘A bomb will go off at fourteen hundred hours on that date. The device will be brought in through the cleaning services’ company van.’

The man in the mask presses an intercom buzzer. ‘Did you get that? Make the call.’ He releases the button.

I touch my forehead, breathe a little. ‘Can I go now?’

‘No.’ He closes the laptop and hands me a directory. ‘Take it.’

‘Wh-what?’

‘I said, take it.’

My eye spots the loaded needle. Slowly, I reach out, take the book.

‘This is a telephone directory containing every phone number in Edinburgh,’ he says. ‘You have two minutes to scan the first hundred pages and memorise every number.’

‘What?’

‘Go.’

I hesitate, then glancing once more at the syringe, open the directory. My fingers fly through the book. I scan the pages like a computer, committing each address line, name and number to memory. It takes me one minute and forty-three seconds to complete. I sit back, breathing hard.

The man removes the directory from my lap. I try to steal a glance to the window where the singing was, but the man grips my chin and directs my face to his. ‘Eyes front,’ he says. His fingers smell of petrol.

‘Now,’ he says, letting me go, ‘tell me all the details you memorised.’

I recite everything, a hundred per cent accurate. He turns to an opaque screen to his right and nods.

And it goes on. Next, he gives me a computer language to learn called Ruby. He tells me that it is a high-level scripting language, and he allows me three minutes to master the basics. I do it in two. When I tell him I have finished, he says, ‘Close your eyes.’

I hesitate, look at the guards’ guns. I close my eyes.

‘Can you see in your head everything you just learned?’ the man says.

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Now open your eyes.’

I do as he says. He taps something into his laptop then turns to me.

‘Why are you keeping me here?’ I ask.

He snaps on a pair of latex gloves, but says nothing.

‘Did you hear me. I said why-?’

He punches me on the left cheek. ‘Try to deflect them,’ he says.

I clutch my face, my cheekbone reeling from the shock. ‘Why did you-?’

‘I said deflect!’ And as I see his fist hurtling towards me, I instinctively flick up my arm; his fist hits my radius bone. It pulses with a dull pain.

‘Good,’ he says. ‘Now stand.’

I do not move. My body is frozen.

‘I said stand!’ He pokes me hard in the stomach. I get up.

‘Okay,’ he says, ‘deflect.’

This time I somehow make myself ready. He tries to punch me on the head, stomach, arm-I stop every one of them. He follows me around the room, kicking at me, slapping, punching, but I move fast, faster than I ever knew I could. He orders me to stop, but I want to keep going. I feel a sudden rage within me, an anger at him for hitting me, hurting me. He goes for my head, but I dart to the left and he tumbles. I feel on fire now, alight, ready to burn. I turn for him, screaming, everything pouring out of me, all of it. I jump on him, punching his head, his torso, anything. Slam, slam, fuck him, slam. An alarm sounds. A door whooshes open followed by the sound of boots, but still I punch.

‘Who are you?’ I scream at him, hair wild, eyes ablaze. ‘Who the fuck are you?’

I raise my fist again, but two arms hook underneath my shoulders and drag me away.

‘No!’ I shout, but they wrench me back, out of the door and into the other room, the white room with the bed and the monitor and the vials of blood. I struggle, but they throw me to the bed and strap me down. And that is when I see Black Eyes. He enters, his head cocked, his fists formed, a woman in a white coat by his side.

‘I said we would not be nice if this happened.’

‘Fuck you,’ I say and spit at him.

Black Eyes smiles and turns to the woman in the white coat. ‘Strap her down, give her one dose of Versed, get her returned to London, then meet me in my office.’

And he turns and walks away as the woman prepares to inject me with the drug.

My eyes go wide at the sight of the needle. ‘No! No. No.’

The needle punctures my skin and the drug courses into my vein. ‘No!’

The effect is instant. Heat rips through my blood, courses through my muscles, my bones, nerves. I scream. My limbs feel as if they will explode, my head feels as if it will split in two, my skin prickles as if it were on fire.

I scream and scream until the drug takes over, sedates me, and everything white in the room decays into black.

I don’t now how long I scream for.

When I stop, when I look up, shoulders heaving, breath ragged, Balthus is holding the phone, ready to call in the guards; Harry is stood by my side.

‘Maria,’ Harry says, ‘please. Please, calm down.’

I gulp. I swallow back the snot, the spit, the nausea. ‘She’s lying. Dr Andersson is lying.’

Balthus sets down the phone and walks over until he is just one metre away.

‘Stop!’ I say.

He goes still. ‘Maria, Harry and I just want to help you.’

I shake my head. ‘No. No you don’t, otherwise you would believe me and not Dr Andersson.’

‘Maria, Dr Andersson is a trusted physician.’

‘Bobbie Reynolds says Dr Andersson is with MI5, that she is my handler.’ The word ‘handler’ lodges in my throat, threatening to constrict it, kill me off.

Harry sighs. ‘Maria, hear what you are saying. My dear, please.’

Balthus steps nearer again and I move back, unsure, unsteady, every inch of my body feeling as if it’s on fire. Burning.

‘My father said something was being done to me. He talked about reports, codes, data on me from a hospital in Scotland.’

‘No, Maria,’ Balthus says. ‘You spoke about this to your mother, didn’t you?’

I halt. How does he know what I talked to her about? ‘Were you listening?’ I say. ‘Did you bug our table in the visiting area?’

‘Maria,’ Harry says, his voice a soft coo, ‘Ines told us what you said.’

‘What?’ My hands begin to rake through my hair and, as much as I try, I cannot stop them.

‘They agreed with Dr Andersson’s assessment of you.’

‘What? How could they? I have Asperger’s. They know that.’ The visiting area, when Mama was taken ill-I saw Ramon talking to Dr Andersson. That is what she was speaking to him about. ‘She is plotting against me,’ I say, frantic. ‘They all are.’