Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Three

Days past. Lisa stamped her feet and demanded to see Alex for several hours until she was removed from the corridor and we were locked up again. Kept in one room we weren’t allowed to leave. The nights acted as days and the days became nights. As there was no natural light, I couldn’t tell the difference.

I began to feel ill without sunlight, by stomach gave horrible painful lurches hourly, especially after the meagre meals they gave us, mostly bread and soup. It took Lisa to say it out loud, that we were prisoners. She said this after the first day we spent in the small white room, and I nodded grimly.

Doctor Stewart came to visit us several times in this imprisonment. At first, I asked why, if we had caused so much trouble, he didn’t just let us leave? He pressed upon us the seriousness of what we had done, said he just wanted us to understand how they operated in Project Forty-Five. He said he admired Lisa’s spirit and wanted her to join the team, he said nothing to me. Once again I felt a twinge of unease about Lisa, what exactly did she know?

However, every time the doctor visited, Lisa would start demanding to see Alex, she paid little attention to what he said, when he started talking about her responsibility and begged her not to raise her voice. I sat with my head in my hands shaking, almost laughing with the stupidity of it all. When Doctor Stewart had slammed the door behind him, I spent my time frowning at her, and she spent her time pacing.

On the third night (or morning) of our imprisonment I dreamt about the time I had woken up to Lisa ringing my doorbell, the moment she stepped into my life. Except this time she was knocking on the door, banging in fact, with a chair.

I sat bolt upright in my sleeping bag, she was in fact ramming a plastic chair against the door. She was also screaming for release, it took me a while to notice that as the hammering rang out over everything. The walls seemed to be shaking with the sound of it.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ I asked groggily.

‘Getting the fuck out of here,’ she answered back wildly. She looked like she had been pacing all day, her hair was sticking up where she had been running her hands through it and her clothes were crumpled and stretched. The banging resumed as she turned away from me.

I stepped towards her I attempted to pull her arm away from the chair. I’m embarrassed to say she resisted me very easily and my effort made very little difference to her determination.

‘You just don’t understand!’ I shouted over the crashing, ‘they’ll only let us out once we play nice and do what they say, this is getting you nowhere.’

‘They can’t keep us locked up in here forever!’ she yelled back.

‘Yes they can, no one knows about this facility,’ I reminded her. She shrugged and continued to bang, my head started to throb.

Massaging my forehead I tried a different angle. ‘Please consider what Doctor Stewart said, work for them, keep calm and eventually you’ll get the answers you want.’

‘I’ll never work for them,’ she sniffed back.

I shook my head in hopelessness. I wondered how this had happened, how Lisa’s recklessness had landed us in this place. Not for the first time, I wished I had ignored the buzzer that morning and gone back to sleep.

‘It’s the only way to get out,’ I said angrily, ‘is to behave.’

At that moment the door clicked open, Lisa stopped in mid swing of her chair and I removed my hands from my face to look up.

A prim looking woman I had never seen before stood there. She was wearing a crisp white suit which she smoothed down.

‘I want to talk to Alex,’ Lisa shot out as her head snapped up to view the stranger.

‘I was told ‘ou would say that,’ the woman had a strong French accent. She smiled broadly and her whole demeanour became instantly Romantic and exotic, it took years from her softly lined face.

‘Where is Doctor Steward?’ I asked in the politest tones I could muster.

‘E is indisposed,’ she bit her lip slightly.

‘You mean he doesn’t want to deal with us anymore?’ Lisa sniffed. She folded her arms.

‘Exactly,’ the woman smiled again. ‘We have one condition.’

‘Before we can-’

‘Leave this room, yes,’ the woman said impatiently, She smoothed her dress again. She took me by surprise by shaking my hand firmly. ‘I am Jacqueline Beauclerc, I am in charge of secrecy here at Project Forty-Five. It is my job to insure that this facility and its inhabitants stay hidden from the general public.’

She glanced at both of us sternly. ‘Occasionally there are those who slip through the net.’

‘You want us to keep quiet,’ Lisa snorted, ‘Doctor Steward already told us this, and besides, he made it clear that no one would believe us.’

‘We would take great steps to discredit you,’ Jacqueline nodded curtly. Lisa looked outraged but I wasn’t too concerned, the woman was honest at least.

‘It’s not that no one would believe us then,’ Lisa started angrily, ‘you would make sure they wouldn’t.’

‘You still don’t understand,’ Jacqueline said, equal anger rising in the voice that had been so calm until now. ‘You are so determined in your quest. First there would be disbelief, then panic, world wide panic.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Imagine if you found out the monsters under your bed were really there all along?’

‘But people have a right to know.’

I signed deeply. ‘She’s right,’ I said from my behind my hands that rubbed my tired eyes. ‘Tony Callister’s parents have a right to know, Lisa had a right to know what happened to her sister.’

‘If you tell a few, you should tell them all,’ Jacqueline continued calmly, ‘and people have a tendency to overreact. We made our decision long ago.’

‘What about the P.V.R?’ I asked.

‘We keep them away with promises of their fantasy world, and I’m sure Doctor Stewart has told you how we are able to use them.’ She explained matter of factly. I remembered that first unpleasant chat with the Doctor.

‘If you expect us to donate blood to these animals you’ve got another thing-’

‘Alex has agreed to speak with ‘ou.’ She sounded a little desperate, desperate to cut Lisa’s shrill whining off. I looked up from rubbing my face in my hands.

It definitely make Lisa shut up, she stood with her mouth open like a fish, just for a few moments until the sneer returned. ‘Doctor Stewart finally given in?’

Jacqueline frowned, ‘it is not a case of Doctor Stewart’s approval,’ she said, ‘the meeting will take place on Alex’s terms.’

‘So when is that?’ Lisa looked ready to storm the door.

‘He has only agreed to speak with ‘ou,’ Jacqueline’s frown deepened, ‘you will ave to be patient until he lets he meeting take place.’

‘But he’s a murderer,’ Lisa spat, ‘he shouldn’t get a say.’

‘Yes, he’s a murderer, and your track record with our patients hasn’t been good so far. You wait until he says, and you follow our rules. Okay?’

We both nodded, Lisa grudgingly.

‘I had to push Doctor Steward through a lot of hoops to get this deal, so if I let you out of this room you’ll behave yourselves.’

Even I was a little angry at being spoken to like a five year old, I expected Lisa to kick off again, but she didn’t. She shrugged non-comitally, and after Jacqueline raised her eyebrows she nodded with a rigid jaw.

I wish I could’ve walked out of our stuffy prison into bright sunshine, but of course it was the middle of the night, because the place was a hive of activity, with the workers patrolling the corridors and the shouts and snarls of various inmates ringing out. All I needed was some fresh air, just one gasp of what was outside this hole.

‘Any chance I could leave for just a moment?’ I asked Jacqueline.

She shook her head sternly, ‘not at night,’ she said, ‘in the morning you can.’

I looked at my watch, it was half past two, ages before daylight.

Lisa took my elbow, ‘lets go and put some pressure on Doctor Stewart,’ she said.

‘I think I’ll just spend a while on my own,’ I responded immediately, ‘don’t worry, I’ll keep out of trouble.’

As I turned the corner, I knew exactly where I was going, to another empty room, at least I hoped it was empty. For some reason I knew the way, or my feet did, in this massive place I was drawn back to that room as if I was floating there.

Mercifully, the room was empty and pitch black. My heart started to thump so loudly I knew she could hear it, the thought that she could hear the blood running through me was exciting and dangerous. I pulled the release on the blind and I saw her once again, the feeling flooded from me.

‘Elizabeth,’ I tested the word, it sounded beautiful and it tasted beautiful in my mouth. Because the room was still dark behind me, she sparkled out even more. Her soft hair, her pale eyes, and the innocent smile that played on her lips, I didn’t care that she wasn’t Teresa, I didn’t care who she was, I just wanted to be near her.

I pulled up a plastic chair and watched her. I looked into her eyes until I was sure the sun was rising outside.