Nikki Owen - Spider in the Corner of the Room

I move the chair back, suddenly frightened. I am delving into something way above my head. I glance around. Balthus is still on the phone, Harry is now making tea. I set my eyes back to the screen. The bomb is still there, shimmering like a mirage in the desert. The voice in my head whispers: Codes. Check the codes. Hesitating, nervous, I examine my notebook. They are complex calculations, mapped full of equations and encrypted messages, but still…I take a picture of them with my mind and then go quiet. Think. What can I see there? What is the common pattern?

Bit by bit, as if unravelling a gift, the codes begin to decrypt themselves. I sit and work it out, connecting, undoing, re-establishing. When I lose the trail, I kick back my seat, swear, move back, carry on. Once I am finally done, I look down at myself and realise I am shaking.

Harry returns with tea. He sets a cup down in front of me, steam rising to my face, stinging it. ‘Are you all right? You’ve gone pale.’

I cannot speak. The codes whisper in my head, the decryption. I could do it. Not much at first but then faster, quicker, as if I have always been able to manage it, like a fish that just knows how to swim. I put my hands to my sides, grip the seat rest. ‘I think I can access the secure site files.’

Harry pauses. ‘How?’ He slowly lowers into his seat.

I swallow, inhale, count, anything to make me feel normal, normal for me, at least. ‘My notebook.’

I hover my fingers over the keyboard and begin. I cross-reference everything I do on the laptop with my notes, stopping when I hit a problem, rerouting, using a new code. Balthus comes over-I hear him, hear Harry telling him what is happening, but I barely register their voices, so consumed am I with the process. When I reach the last code, I expect it all to unravel, but nothing happens. I have hit a wall. I shake my head. How can it stop there? I have followed the entire method. I leaf through the writing pad fast, scanning every single page, but still nothing. I look up, drained. If I can’t access this, then what? How can I prove what is happening to me?

I slam the book shut, tossing it to the side, cross with it, the pad landing backside up. I close my eyes, open them, defeated. And then I see it. A tiny scrawl the width of a millimetre running along the back cover at the bottom. Heart rate shooting up, I grab the book, thrust it in front of my eyes. The writing-it is not mine. I study it and begin to realise it is a scrawl, something I do not recall writing: an algorithm. A complex algorithm.

And only one person could have put it there: Bobbie Reynolds.

With an anger surging up from my stomach, I force my fingers to hack a safe site. And Bobbie’s algorithm is the key. Just as she said all along, there, in my notebook has been the one thing I have been looking for: the answer.

I have to glance to my notebook, but it shocks me how fast it comes back. Balthus and Harry watch, but remain mute, their breathing deep, their bodies stone still. I input the algorithm following the pattern tracked in my notepad and when it happens, when the access is unlocked, the effect is instant, deadly.

A document. A classified document appears on the screen.

Balthus stares at it. ‘This is an eyes-only briefing paper from 1973. We shouldn’t be reading this.’

I try to examine it but falter, my mind bombarded with the data, with the awful possibilities this new information brings. I am frozen to the seat, my hands fixed mid-air, poised to type but refusing to move, refusing to acknowledge what they have just uncovered.

Harry studies the document on the screen, reads aloud from it, his voice, at times, wavering, shaking.

‘“We are proposing an experimental training programme, code-named Project Callidus. It will be tasked with developing and conditioning high-functioning, high IQ people with Asperger’s who can operate covertly within a new cyber-terrorism era. It will be based at the safe MI5 facility in Scotland”.’ He looks up. ‘The rest has been redacted. This is from decades ago.’

I stay still, scared, sick. The Project is a conditioning programme, a covert-conditioning programme in Scotland. Papa all that time ago, the memory I finally found in my rubble of grief: medical documents from a hospital in Scotland. The codes and dates he found, the reason he was scared. He said something was being done to me; he was right.

I rub my eyes. All these years-has this conditioning been happening my whole life? And what sort of conditioning? My eyes flutter open, pulse pounds in my wrist, hammering through my veins, against my skin.

‘This,’ Balthus says, pointing, ‘here.’

We make ourselves look. In between the blacked-out paragraphs there are words, clear, legible words. There is a new section, fresh, dated from 1980. My year of birth. My fingers remain hovering over the keys, frightened to move. It is a new section, updated. It details that a new subject-subject number 375-has been presented to them, one that must be kept at home, unknown, in a controlled, natural environment, as opposed to the clinical surroundings of the Scottish facility full-time.

‘No,’ I say, quietly at first then louder still. ‘No.’

Balthus crouches down to me. ‘Maria, it’s okay.’ But I shake him away, because I need to look, need to see the truth with my own eyes. This child, the document states, will be tracked and tested. The conditioning plan, including frequent physical and mental tests, will continue without the subject’s knowledge until a specified age, using covert handlers for designated operations. Thereafter, the subject will be indoctrinated into the programme full-time, scanned for any adverse neurological changes due to age. They will, once tested, be activated for service.

I begin to wretch. Harry comes to me, but I shake my head, scared to be touched or comforted by anyone. My breath is short, laboured, but I force myself to scan the last two lines, not wanting to read on, but knowing I have to, knowing the answers lie there, in black and white.

‘Oh my God,’ Harry says. ‘Oh my God.’

The penultimate line states: non-licenced drugs are to be used for the Project. Test child subject has shown no signs of physical or mental deterioration to date. Subject has been conditioned on complex mathematical calculus, code training, technical assimilation, non-verbal reasoning and advanced physical training. Regular handler reports to be given, as arranged, every six months.

And, as I reach the end, a lone shriek flies out of my mouth.

Because everything else is blacked out except one name. The test child. Subject number 375.

‘Maria Martinez,’ Balthus says.

My chest is heaving. The painting now hangs from the wall, shredded, ripped open, the canvas irreparable, the frame fractured. I stay as still as I can and listen, blood rushing around my ears. The street below-the cars, the buses, the pedestrians-they are all there. They all exist. But Kurt? Daniel? Where is he in all this?

I inch towards the painting and inspect it. At the back of the frame against the wall is a white sheath. I poke it. It is attached to the frame and, when I pierce it, my finger breaks a hole straight through to the wall. I halt, take a breath, hesitating yet, at the same time, knowing I have to do this, knowing I have to uncover all of it.

I extract my finger and observe the frame. Apart from the broken corner, it appears normal, untouched. My fingers run along the underside of it. Beginning at the top, they work systematically from left to right, feeling for anything unusual. When they arrive at the end, I begin to contemplate if it was hasty of me to rip the painting, when I feel something.

A long tube. Slowly, my fingers touch the lump, heart slamming. It is eight milimetres in diameter, narrow, definitely there. I draw in a breath; then, gripping it, I tear the tube from the frame.