Manipulator (11 page)

“
Mr Archer, can you hear me?”
A distant memory called out in his head. “
Do you know where you are? You’ve been in a car collision and have been slipping in and out of consciousness. You’re in an ambulance on route to hospital. Can you see the light that I am holding up? I need you to follow this light with your eyes for me. To the left… and the right. Good. Looks like we have normal levels of brain function. Mr Archer, I need you to keep as still as possible, we still don’t know what sort of internal injuries you may have, and we don’t want to take any chances.”

Owen shook his head and brought himself back into the present day. Reliving memories wasn’t something that he enjoyed doing, but every time he heard an ambulance siren these days, he couldn’t help but think back to the crash and the events that came collapsing down around him afterwards.

Owen could feel the car begin to slow down.
We must be nearing the location.
He had to get his head into gear, get into the game, especially seen as they had brought Kate along with them. He couldn’t afford any slip ups now.
Who knows if she might report it. Get your head in the game, Owen.

“We’re here!” Nick shouted, mainly for the benefit of Owen who was still slipping in and out of his daydreams in the back of the Jeep. “Latest update from the hospital. As of three minutes ago, Marcus slipped into an unstable condition. He’s currently undergoing emergency surgery.”

Nick pulled the vehicle up next to the pavement a short walk away from the hospital. Having U.S. Government issued plates on their Jeep had its privileges, especially when it meant that they could pretty much park wherever they wanted to without worrying about the authorities.
Oh, the benefits of being in the FBI.

The three of them jumped out of the Jeep together, each grabbing one of the huge black duffel bags that Nick had brought along for the journey. Owen threw the black bag that he had picked up over his shoulder and then made a beeline for the hospital, with Nick and Kate following right behind him.

They needed to talk to Marcus Ortega. That was a matter of fact. More importantly, Owen needed to see if he could shed any light on the death of Annie.
Could it really be a murder? It all seems a little coincidental.
Firstly, the fact that I receive a video detailing Annie’s death being no accident. Then spotting Marcus at the original crime scene... and then Marcus ending up in a car crash incredibly similar to that of Annie’s. Something doesn’t add up. There’s something bigger going on here. Something more than meets the eye.

Owen knew that Kate and Nick felt the same way that he did. There was something that wasn't quite right about this whole situation.

The three of them walked briskly towards the hospital, not wanting to waste any more time than they already had in the midday traffic rush. Owen just hoped they weren’t too late…

Marcus may well have not be able to communicate with them, but Owen knew that he and his team had a bit of an advantage. Before the memory analysis teams were implemented by the FBI, and before memory assassination even became a thing, PRoGRaM’s simulation techniques were top of the agenda. In fact, PRoGRaM’s original purpose was to communicate with people who were in a comatose state. Even though it hadn’t exactly been used for this in recent days, Owen was about to take PRoGRaM back to its roots.

But then that left the problem of Marcus being trapped in a fixed location. Not even the FBI had the pull that they were going to need to get Marcus moved out of the hospital this shortly after his admittance. But there were ways around that. Nick had developed something a long time ago that was going to help them right now. It was the main reason that got him onto the team in the first place. The only downside was that they needed space and privacy in order to operate it. It was impractical in most situations, but right here, right now, it was perfect.

A portable PRoGRaM device.

They couldn’t bring Marcus to PRoGRaM, so instead Owen was going to bring PRoGRaM to him.

Chapter Twenty One

Date: December 9th 2035

Location: Wilson Place Hospital, New York

As Owen, Kate and Nick walked into the hospital, Owen took charge and walked up to the reception where a young woman was sat typing tentatively away into her computer. She glanced up and saw him coming. A genuine smile worked its way onto her lips as he approached the desk, but Owen kept his face completely devoid of emotion as he flashed his FBI badge to her.

“I’m Agent Archer. We’re here to see Marcus Ortega, admitted this morning,” Owen said, wasting no time in getting to the heart of the matter.

“Okay. Give me just a moment,” the receptionist responded, the smile slowly fading from her face. She glanced around Owen, looking at Kate and Nick who were standing just behind him.

“They’re with me,” Owen clarified as both Kate and Nick pulled out their FBI badges and flashed them to her. Satisfied that all three of them were who they said they were, the receptionist turned her attention back to the computer, tapping quickly away at the keyboard sat on top of the desk.

“He’s on the fourth floor,” she said to Owen, taking another breath in as if she was going to give him more information, but Owen had heard all that he had needed to hear.

“Thanks,” he said to her with a curt smile and a nod. He speedily turned from the reception, trying to get his bearings and to find a way up to the higher levels of the hospital.
 

“Wait!” the receptionist shouted to them. Owen stopped walking away, and turned his head around to see what was wrong. “You can’t see him! He’s in surgery!”

Owen gave a single nod, keeping his face emotionless as he did so. “I know,” he replied loudly back to her, cutting the conversation dead in its tracks. He continued his walk towards the elevators at the opposite end of the reception area. Nick and Kate followed his lead. Together, the three of them luckily managed to bag an empty one. Owen punched in the button for the fourth floor.

The three of them rode the elevator up in silence.
 

Ping!

The doors opened, and Owen moved forward, stepping out into the central waiting area, eyes sharp, looking for somebody who could point them in the right direction. He spotted a man nearby in a white lab coat sitting behind a desk. Owen couldn’t work out if he was a doctor, or just one of the hospital's lab technicians. Regardless of this, Archer walked up to him, flashed his badge and asked the man where he could find Marcus Ortega.

Nobody argued with the badge.

“Room twelve,” the young man said after checking the information out on the computer in front of him. Standing up, he proceed to point in the direction of a corridor nearby. “Fifth door on the left,” he clarified. “Marcus is due to be moved out of surgery and into that room anytime now. You can all wait inside.”

“Thank you,” Owen said to the man who was now quickly hurrying away, clipboard in hand ready to perform whatever it was that he did here. Owen, followed by the other two members of his team moved in the direction that the young man had pointed out and headed down the corridor. He counted the doors off as he moved, finally coming up to the one that he was looking for.

It was exactly how he expected it to be. Empty.

The huge private room before them was fairly spacious, and more importantly, concealed from the corridor which they had just entered the room through. The last thing that Owen needed were windows from which prying eyes could look through to see what was happening. Also to his benefit, there were adequate seating arrangements as well as plenty of worktop space for Nick to set up his laptop and electronics.
A perfect makeshift base.

He dropped the duffel bag off on the floor at the far end of the room, well out of the way of the doors and the bed. Kate and Nick followed his lead and did the same. If Marcus was going to be brought in here soon, Owen didn’t want to get in the way of the doctors and the nurses doing their jobs.

Time to set it up.

Nick began to show Kate how to set up some of the portable PRoGRaM equipment, and knowing that he wasn’t going to be much help, Owen just steered clear of the two of them. Instead, he just paced slowly around the private room that they were in. Once again, he let himself daydream.

There was a time not so long ago when I was in a room just like this…
He thought, as he drifted off into a not so distant memory…

“Mr Archer, how are you feeling?” a deep voice nearby asked him.

Owen opened his mouth and tried to talk, but his entire body ached, right down to his vocal chords. He lay there with his eyes closed in a room filled with silence. Gradually, he summoned the strength from deep within him to say just one word.

He moved his head to face the direction that the deep voice had spoken to him from. “Annie,” he whispered back, hurting all over as he said this one word. The vibration from his vocal chord sent a shockwave of pain which rippled through his body, forcing him to open his eyes.

“Mr Archer? What do you remember?” the deep voice asked him. This time, Owen could see the man who was speaking to him. He was a forty year old man with a solid jawline and short cropped black hair. The eyes that were hidden behind the man’s thin glasses were terrifying, and were studying Owen intently from the foot of the bed. He wore a long white doctors coat and around his neck hung a stethoscope. He looked nothing like a Doctor, but Owen didn’t judge on appearances. Regardless of how this man looked, this was the guy that was trying to save his life.

Mentally, he tried to will together his most recent memories, but even this caused him agony. “In the car,” Archer started to say, speaking in slow, short sentences, feeling pain every time he opened his mouth. “Annie was driving. There was a man. At the side of the road. He had a gun. A hostage. An Execution. I saw him. He had a black mask or bag over his head, and there was a man behind him, but he had his hood up… holding a gun…”

Consciousness left him. He was pushing himself too far, too fast.

Darkness surrounded Owen.
How much time has passed now?
His eyes flickered. Archer could feel himself slipping to and fro, in and out of consciousness, hearing voices talking around him echo in his head. He felt like he was floating, stuck inside a void in his own mind. He finally managed to open his eyes once again, only to see the same doctor that had been treating him earlier looking over some charts from the bottom of his hospital bed.

“Mr Archer?” the doctor asked, assessing whether or not he was conscious. As Owen locked looked up, he locked his eyes with the doctor’s, giving the man the answer that he was looking for. He walked around the bed to Owen and then sat himself down at the side of him. Suddenly, Owen was aware for the first time that he was completely and fully conscious. His eyes were open, ears were wide, and brain was sharp. Owen was feeling a lot better than he could remember ever having felt whilst being stuck in this room, aside from the minor headache that was pulsing through the back of his brain.

“I believe you have suffered some kind of…
psychotic break
from your accident,” the doctor explained to him slowly. “The police interviewed several people from the scene of the crash and not one of them report seeing a man with any sort of weapon. Do you understand me Mr Archer?”

This time, Owen didn’t try and reply with words. Instead, he just nodded his head, attempting to save his own strength.

“Now. I'm going to run some tests on you, to make sure that the crash didn’t cause any permanent brain damage. You’re going to be here for a while, Mr Archer, so get comfortable. We have a lot of questions we need to ask you.”

Owen understood everything that he was hearing, but at the moment, all he could think about was Annie.
Why haven't they told me how she's doing? Why are we not sharing a private room together?

“Annie,” Owen managed to say, speaking just that one word, letting the doctor know that he desperate for an answer.

“Mr Archer… Your wife…” the doctor said slowly, as he sat still at the side of Owen's bed. “I don’t know how to tell you this sir.” He started to shake his head from side to side slowly, before looking Owen dead in the eye. “She didn’t make it.”

Chapter Twenty Two

Date: December 9th 2035

Location: Wilson Place Hospital, New York

There was a rap at the door as someone knocked several times in quick succession, snapping Owen’s consciousness back into the present and out the memory of what had happened a few weeks back. Archer quickly wondered how long he had been stood there daydreaming, and as he looked at the room around him, he saw that Nick and Kate had pretty much set all of the portable PRoGRaM equipment up. He really must have been staring into oblivion for some time.

Whoever it was that was knocking at the door let themselves straight in without waiting for an answer from Owen or his team. Easily in his mid-to-late forties, with a full head of short greying hair and some stubble around the lower half of his face, the man that had entered the room was clearly a doctor of some stature. He dressed smartly, wearing a standard white doctors coat over the top of an admittedly plain shirt and tie, whilst underneath his arm he carried around a huge amount of paperwork.

“Good afternoon,” he announced to everyone as he walked in and closed the door behind him. He looked quickly at each of the three agents that stood before him, and took an even longer time staring at some of the equipment that Nick and Kate had set up in the background of the room. Knowing full-well that he wouldn’t get any answers about the equipment if he were to actually ask about it, he decided to just drop it there and then.