Nikki Owen - The Girl Who Ran

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.’

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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