An outsider
would have found the scene, had he been able to view it, extremely curious. For
that matter, Liam still found it so too.
They had been
stripped to their underwear. Through the heavy goggles, Liam glanced at the
other people in the little circle. The goggles hid their expressions, and Liam
wondered whether they too felt the tingle of excitement mixed with a good dash
of fear. There was a reason this job was mainly carried out by young people –
no kids, no mortgage, sometimes no parents, even.
The blazing lamp
in their midst picked out every little detail on their skins, giving the two
girls opposite him a strangely alien look to them. One of them stood with her
shoulders slumped and her belly out. The other stood proudly upright,
entitlement clinging to her like an expensive fur coat. Only here for the
thrill, no doubt.
On his left the
other boy was fidgeting with his toes. Liam was happy to see he was just as
skinny as he was, which meant there would be no testosterone-fuelled bragging
or fight picking. He had been on the receiving end of those a few times too
often already. He still wondered why The Company allowed mixed teams; surely
they realised the mere sight of operatives in their bra’s would cause
spontaneous combustion in some men’s brains.
Liam became
aware of a prickling sensation on his skin and shifted uncomfortably. It
wouldn’t take long now. Nausea crept up on him and his head felt light. He
really disliked this stage – come to think of it, he disliked a lot of things
about this job, except the pay check.
Feeling
distinctly queasy, he was zapped away; his essence sucked into the bright
light.
Every
consciousness was different. Some people sorted everything neatly, others had
everything jumbled together. It was those last ones you had to be careful of,
because you never knew when a memory would jump out at you.
Liam shoved the
heavy goggles onto his forehead and signalled for the others to stay together.
Though this mind seemed neat, they had to remain on their guard. Nothing was as
dangerous as getting lost in someone else’s brain. He clearly remembered the
stories about the McCarthy team. Only two out of four operatives managed to
return. Another team was sent in and only managed to release Roberts from an
innocent-looking teapot after several intense hours. The teapot turned out to
contain memories of child abuse and Roberts had to be pensioned out. McCarthy
himself was never found.
Liam carefully
stepped around a free-floating memory. He caught a glimpse of a giggling
red-haired girl in the misty substance as he moved past. The memory they had
been instructed to extract surely wouldn’t be a floater. Any owner of the
memory that had been described to him would have taken precautions.
As he took in
their surroundings, he saw that the space was littered with old wardrobes –
this lady obviously had style. Victorian, Edwardian, Art Nouveau… not a whiff
of Ikea.
‘Don’t get to
see this sort of quality often,’ the other boy muttered next to him, running
his hand over the old woodwork. ‘I’m Josh,’ he added, extending his hand. Liam
gladly shook it – he couldn’t remember ever shaking hands with a colleague
before.
‘Ready?’ Josh
carefully opened a drawer.
‘Just childhood
memories,’ the proud blonde girl sniffed, peeking over their shoulders. ‘I thought
HQ told us to look for something unusual?’
‘If you know it
all so well, Charlotte, then why don’t I see you open your own drawer?’ Josh
bit back. With a disdainful ‘puh!’, Charlotte turned her back on them and
paraded past the wardrobes.
‘Come on, let’s
follow her,’ Liam urged Josh, who was shooting murderous looks after the girl.
‘However irritating she may be, we can’t let her out of our sight.’
Josh shrugged
but did walk on. ‘A prolonged stay in a teapot wouldn’t hurt her,’ he grumbled.
They walked past
the other girl, who stood studying a portrait of an old man with a bunch of
grapes on his head.
‘Seems
improbable, Annette,’ Josh told her. ‘The memory we’re looking for surely won’t
fit underneath the frame.’
Annette sighed
and returned the portrait to a side table. ‘You’re probably right.’ She looked
up at Liam. ‘Five years worth of memories, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, it was.’
Liam wondered why she wanted him to confirm a detail about the assignment –
surely she’d received the same briefing he had. Was she just insecure? He shot
a quick glance at her slumping posture. Insecurity would be an odd trait in a
Memrex.
There was a
shriek behind them and Liam abruptly turned in Charlotte’s direction.
‘Stupid thing,’
Charlotte huffed irritably, nudging the offending hinge she had stumbled over
with the tip of her shoe.
‘What’s that?’
Liam remarked, his voice sharp.
‘Oh. Ah.’
Charlotte’s expression instantly changed, and she stooped to wipe away the
dust.
‘A hatch,’ Josh
said, inspecting the contraption. ‘This must be what we’re looking for.’
‘Differs enough
from the furniture,’ Liam agreed. ‘Who would like to do the honours?’
‘No-one,’
Annette hissed behind them.
Liam looked up
to see Charlotte’s eyes widen. Slowly he turned to face Annette.
She was holding
a rifle.
‘Impossible,’
Josh stammered behind him. ‘We came here half naked and empty-handed.’
Annette grinned.
‘Did you really think she’d be unprepared? This rifle was here all along,
waiting for me.’
‘Who are you?’
Liam asked, hoping to drag out the conversation long enough to come up with a
brilliant escape plan.
‘Her
granddaughter,’ Annette snapped at him. And she pulled the trigger.
