Chapter 11
Two weeks, four days ago
Kathy stood at the entrance of TGN’s headquarters. She checked her watch: it was dead on nine o’clock in the morning. Right on time. She couldn’t allow herself to pause or to appear nervous. If this was to work, she would have to appear confident, seamless, streamlined.
She glanced to her left and right as she prepared to walk towards the rotating doors: nobody was there. She sighed. How she wished Thomas and Gregory could have come along with her for support! But there was no use in her wallowing. The decision had made sense. They could not accompany her.
She remembered the conversation well. The three of them had met up the previous day at eight a.m. in the morning to discuss tactics. They had chosen a nondescript little café in which to meet. They would have breakfast together and discuss work, just like any other group of friends or colleagues who were meeting there. Their chief concern was not to raise any suspicion.
“So how do we get in there?” Gregory had asked. “Do we sneak in?”
“Sneak in?” Thomas had balked. “No, the best way is simply to walk straight in through the front door. If you look confident, like you’re meant to be there, then nobody asks questions.”
So that is what Kathy had to do: look confident, like she was meant to be there. Not easy when you’re about to enter the offices of the organisation which had kidnapped her best friend and messed with his mind. This place had other associations for her, too- it was very near to where Arnold (she shuddered at the very thought of his name) had assaulted her. It was where she had found Thomas, at long last, only to watch him die. No, this place had no good memories for her at all.
The conversation had continued:
“So who goes in?” Gregory had asked.
“Well, all of us of course!” Kathy had jutted in hastily. “We need each other. I mean, we all need to go there. We all have an interest in what’s going on there.”
“I can’t go,” Thomas had admitted sullenly. “They know me there,” he explained. “I can’t exactly go in undercover when they know me as the man they kidnapped and held for several days. I’d be recognised straight away.”
Kathy had looked at him gobsmacked. His admission had shocked her, for she couldn’t imagine going in alone with Gregory- a man she still barely knew or trusted. Nevertheless, she had to agree with it: Thomas wouldn’t stand a chance in there.
“Neither can I,” Gregory had added. At this, both Thomas and Kathy had been surprised. “When you found Thomas,” he said, indicating towards Kathy, “he insisted he was Gregory. He insisted he was me. Now, granted, the information on the papers you gave me was limited. It appears that TGN couldn’t find any more information about me. But they know enough. They could recognise me, too.”
Thomas had nodded, but Kathy had been seething.
“So I’m going in alone?” she had demanded, almost raising her voice. “So what was the point of bringing you two along?”
“Look, Kathy, you’ve got my support,” Thomas had said reassuringly. “I want to get to the bottom of this more than anyone. But I can’t go in there. I simply can’t. An investigator needs to be able to go undercover, and I… well, I can’t do that.”
“And I’m a reporter for a major national newspaper! We can give you a wire, and you can transmit everything you’re hearing to us from wherever you are. It’ll be as if we’re with you all the way.”
Kathy felt for the wire as she began to walk towards the building. She smiled. At least, in some small way, she was not alone.
“And you’re the perfect undercover investigator,” Thomas had continued. “Nobody can remember you. You’re a nobody, an invisible person… sorry,” he had interjected when he saw Kathy’s look of offense. “I mean, you’ve told me about what happened to you- about how all memory of you has been wiped from the face of the planet. For some reason, I can remember you, but nobody else can beyond a vague feeling of having seen you before. And that makes you perfect for this mission.”
She smiled again. That, today, was some form of security: nobody could recognise her when she entered the lobby of TGN’s headquarters, because nobody could remember her- which was convenient, considering that she had been here once before, and then she had made quite a scene.
“So what’s the plan when I get in there?” Kathy had asked. “Alone?” She had punctuated this last word with such force that it made Thomas wince- although Gregory seemed unperturbed by it. “I mean, am I supposed to simply walk in there and say ‘Hi, I’d like to know what you do here’?”
“You’ve done undercover investigations before,” shrugged Thomas. “You know the drill.”
So Kathy had tried to use all of her contacts to find someone on the inside of TGN… that is, until she remembered her embarrassing condition. She had then asked Thomas, who had used Emile Johnson and Ellie Summers to find her a woman named Martha who worked as a cleaner there. She was a trusted friend of a trusted source, who would be willing to sneak her in, give her the relevant codes and access to all the information she needed. Thanks to Thomas, the plan was simple: she would walk in as if she belonged there, find Martha and find out what she needed to know, before leaving swiftly and reporting back.
“One final thing,” Kathy had queried. “Identity cards- what if I need one?”
It was afternoon when Kathy asked this. The basics of the plan had been agreed at the café meeting in the morning and Thomas had sorted out the contact during the day. News of Thomas’ resurrection had spread fast and everybody wanted to help the miracle man, so finding Martha had been a relatively easy affair. The three of them had met up after Thomas had finished work to finalise plans.
“You will meet Martha in the lobby,” Thomas had explained. “And she will give you a fake identity card. It will be borrowed from someone who is off sick that day, or something. Take a passport photo with you and some glue so that you can cover up her photo with yours.”
“Or something?” Kathy had queried. This had sounded a little too vague and blue sky for her taste. “That doesn’t sound very legit.”
“Well, it is,” Thomas had waved off her concerns. “I’ve worked with Martha before. She’s not a permanent cleaner there- she works for an agency, so she’s been at TGN for about two weeks now and will probably be transferred somewhere else in another two weeks. Trust me, she’s helped me out with other stories before and she’s never let me down.”
“How will I recognise her?” Kathy had asked.
“She’s large, she’s Asian and she’s got bright red hair. You can’t miss her. But if you do, look for the woman with a name badge saying ‘Martha’. ‘Martha Marsden’.” Thomas had smiled at this point. “I know you can do this, Kathy. I’m only sorry I can’t come with you.”
So, that was the plan: Kathy was to meet Martha in the lobby, from whom she would procure some identification. She would then explore the building using Martha as a guide and find out anything she could about exactly what TGN did, and about anything specifically related to Thomas’ case.
It sounded easy in theory. But then, theories never do work in practice.
Still, she put one foot in front of the other until she reached the rotating doors behind which lay all the answers.
As she began to walk, she noticed that she was not alone. Up until now, she had been engrossed in her thoughts so that she had not been aware of her surroundings beyond what was necessary to ensure her anonymity. Now, though, she noticed that she was surrounded by a steady crowd of suited workers also walking into the TGN building. The tide of people was constantly ebbing and flowing as people were entering and leaving the building in a regular cycle. This both reassured and worried Kathy: on the one hand, she would not appear conspicuous within such a vast crowd; on the other hand, what if someone in the crowd noticed that she were a stranger and raised the alarm?
She had raised this concern to Thomas the night before, but he had simply waved her off before explaining,
/> “Look at the size of the TGN building. How many people do you think work there? Hundreds, probably. There is no way that any one person could or would recognise his every co-worker. You’ll be fine.”
So in she went, disguising her nerves with some careful acting. She reached the rotating doors and passed through without a hitch.
Once inside, it felt different from when she had last been here. Then, she had been panic-stricken and disoriented. Her last visit had been just after Arnold’s assault and she had to be dragged away by the police due to her heightened emotional state. Now, however, she could look around and take stock of her surroundings: nay, she had to, if this mission was to be successful.
She stood at the entrance of a vast lobby. It was pentagonal in shape with an elaborate spiral staircase in the left-hand corner of the room. It was a dazzling silver colour, glinting in the sunlight which was streaming in through the huge windows that dominated four of the five sides of the room. On the right-hand side was the reception desk. Kathy smiled and winced at the same time as she remembered her last visit nostalgically, when she had broken down in tears before the poor receptionist. It was the same woman on duty today: she recognised the lazy nail-filing and the brazen hairstyle which complemented the receptionist’s thin face. Her head resembled a tree in some ways, with her face as the trunk and her hair as a sprawling, willowy mess of blonde hair. Kathy gulped at the thought that she may be recognised, but remembered that she was now the “invisible woman”- nobody could recognise her.
The carpet was red. It had a professional look and felt springy and soft under her feet. There was a sort of red-carpet-walkway effect leading towards the five elevators which were on the fifth wall in the lobby. They were straight in front of her, and most people were not even bothering to register at reception and were merely heading straight for the elevators, eager to begin their day’s business.
Kathy had spent too long standing in one spot and glancing around. She noticed the eyes of her new colleagues looking back at her with mildly quizzical expressions but she did not panic. She figured that nobody would recognise her but that this would not raise suspicion as they may simply assume that she was a new employee. With this in mind, she gave an apologetic smile and began to walk with the crowd.
Not too swiftly, though. She knew that once she reached the elevators, she would need an ID card to survive, and for that she needed to find Martha. Her eyes darted about the place- what had Thomas said? She scanned her memory: she was looking for a large Asian woman with red hair. How hard could that be to find?
Apparently, quite hard. She was walking unnaturally slowly and was again gaining the attention of her fellow workers. This was not how it was supposed to be- in fact, this was the very opposite of how an undercover mission should be going. Still, she needed time to scan the room with her eyes and find her contact.
It was nine o’clock in the morning, and the lobby was full. It was rush-hour and everybody was arriving at work. With that in mind, it was not surprising that all she could see as she gazed around was a more or less constant sea of black suits and corporate hairstyles. A large Asian lady with red hair… how tricky could she be to find?
She thought she had found her mark when she spied the back of a large woman with red hair, but as her target turned Kathy saw that she was Caucasian, not Asian. Half way across the room was another lady wearing a suit who fitted the bill of an Asian with red hair, but who was in fact quite skinny. This was tricky.
Kathy was almost at the elevators now, and she was close to panicking. Where was her contact? The mission could not succeed without her…
Suddenly, a tap on the shoulder: she did an about-turn on the spot, and there she saw her.
Martha should have been obvious. She was large, bordering on obese. She had an Indian complexion. And she had red hair. Her natural colour it clearly was not, for it was bright and neon and little flecks of black hair were showing through on her scalp which needed to be retouched. Moreover, as she was a cleaner, she did not have the standard black suit worn by corporate types: rather, she wore a set of turquoise overalls and had with her a trolley containing all her cleaning equipment. If that hadn’t been enough, the large name-badge with the word “Martha” on it should have been a give-away. In a sea of mainly thin, mainly Caucasian and mainly male office workers all wearing suits, she should have been clear a mile off.
Kathy was so relieved she wanted to hug her. But this was an undercover mission, and she realised that the suits did not interact with the cleaning staff. She had already aroused the curiosity of her colleagues once this morning; she did not want to do it again. With that in mind, the exchange was furtive. Kathy gave Martha a slight nod, which Martha returned. She then furtively handed over the passport photo which Martha stuck onto a stolen ID card with remarkable speed, and which Martha handed back with utmost secrecy. Watching this woman work was incredible: her profession was cleaning, but Kathy ventured that her true calling should have been magic. Martha’s sleight of hand was impressive.
Kathy examined her new ID card. For today, she would be called Eve Thompson. The card gave sparse details about her identity, except that she was born on 5th February 1981 and worked on the fourth floor in the research and development department. Beyond that, this woman was an enigma.
“She’s off sick today,” explained Martha in a hushed voice and thick accent. “And she’s only recently been transferred to that department. If you go there and say you’re Eve Thompson, nobody will suspect you.”
“Thank you,” Kathy smiled. There followed an awkward silence as Kathy was unsure what to do from here. She had been told that Martha would be her guide once she was inside, but the woman in front of her simply stared blankly back at her. She seemed as clueless as Kathy. Both women were conscious of the tension of the situation: a suit and a cleaner staring awkwardly at each other in the foyer would arouse suspicion, no doubt. So something needed to happen quickly.
The ridiculousness of her situation suddenly dawned on Kathy. This was an undercover mission, which required that she be hidden and inconspicuous as possible- yet she had already drawn attention from the other workers here at least twice, and was doing so once more. She had been told that Martha would be her guide, but how suspicious would an unrecognised newbie trailing a temporary cleaner look? She bit her lip in thought.
Martha was no help. “Bye. Good luck,” she suddenly said. Kathy was taken aback, but before she could respond the woman had disappeared. It amazed Kathy how easily a woman who should stand out could blend into the crowd and hide at a second’s notice.
She felt alone and lost, but she deliberately strengthened her will to hold out against her collapsing nerves. She had an ID card, and that was enough, she told herself. She had done other undercover work before and managed to blag her way around with less than that. So, she no longer had Martha- but to be honest, aside from the personal comfort of having company, being alone was an advantage. She shut her eyes momentarily and took a deep breath to prepare herself.
She knew what she had to do. To avoid looking suspicious, she had to copy everyone else: enter the elevator, go upstairs and do some snooping.
The elevator was but five metres away. She had stepped off the pathway towards it when she had spoken to Martha, and now she stepped back on. When she was merely one metre away, however, her path was blocked.
A burly security guard stood before her. He was large like a Rugby player in that his overweight appearance was merely a front for the huge bulk of muscle underneath. His thin beard supported a mean-looking mouth whose lips curled cruelly downwards at the edge. He clasped his hands in front of his waist and raised his eyebrows as he gave Kathy a thorough looking over.
“May I see your ID, please?” he asked curtly.
Inwardly, Kathy panicked- but on the outside, she maintained an expression of calm and confidence. She began to worry that he had seen her exchange with Martha- but surely not? The sleight of hand had been too swift,
too well done; Martha was too much of an expert to allow herself to be observed, or to create a shoddy product which would not pass inspection. That much Kathy expected from the sterling reference Thomas had given her.
So, confidently, Kathy handed over her fake ID card to the guard. He looked it up and down twice, ran his finger over it and glanced at Kathy’s face for confirmation.
“Eve Thompson?”
“Yes,” replied Kathy with a professional smile.
“I haven’t seen you round here before,” he said. If there was a voice equivalent of a poker face, he had it: she could not tell whether he was giving a friendly greeting to a new employee, or tacitly implying that he knew she shouldn’t be there. Still, she knew that the best way to get in somewhere was to simply act confidently like you had the right to be there- so she opted for the former option and chose to reply politely.
“I’ve recently been moved to a new department,” she explained.
“Which one?” he asked.
“Research and development.”
“Hmm,” he pondered. “Where were you before?”
She faltered. On the inside, she was panicking- where had Eve Thompson worked before? Think! But, wait, no- then she remembered that she could say anything, because she had to assume that this man did not know Eve Thompson, nor what other department she had worked at before. If he did know Eve, then she was already screwed.
But what departments did TGN even have? Come to think of it, what did TGN even do? She couldn’t simply make up a department and hope for the best… but what else could she do?
Too long a hesitation would be a dead giveaway for a lie, so she chose to say the first thing in her head:
“Accounts,” she said quickly.
The security guard looked at her sceptically. “They moved you from accounts… to research and development?”
“Yes,” she nodded curtly, only half-conscious of what she was doing.
“I haven’t seen you round here before,” he repeated, but this time not even trying to mask his cynicism. He suspected her, and she knew it.
“Well… lots of people work here,” she smiled. “You can’t be expected to recognise everyone.”
“No, I suppose that’s true,” he smiled. He seemed to go through a sudden and inexplicable change of heart. “Fair enough. Carry on.”
The guard stood out of her way and let her pass onto the elevator. She breathed a silent sigh of relief. Nevertheless, something didn’t sit right with her. Had the guard let her through because she was such a good actress, or because of some darker, more sinister motive? He had clearly suspected her. Or maybe he was a friend in disguise. For the moment, though, she chose not to allow such questions to trouble her.
She found herself in a lift with three other suited figures. There were two men and one woman. One of the men was a stranger to everyone on the lift, but the other man and the woman seemed to know each other well. They ignored Kathy’s presence completely except to ask her which floor she was heading for, and then returned to their conversation.
Kathy listened in- furtively, of course. She could not let herself be seen eavesdropping, but this conversation could give vital clues about where she was and what they did here.
The man was called Roderick and the woman was called Susan, from what Kathy could gather. They both worked together on the fifth floor- this they did not say, but she observed which button they pressed in the elevator. They did not say what they did on the fifth floor; rather, their conversation was rather banal.
“Did you go to Rachel’s party last night?” asked Roderick.
“No,” Susan replied. “I was too busy. Nathan and Nick were playing up all night. I couldn’t get them to bed until midnight.” She said this with exasperation. “Every night it’s the same.”
Roderick gave a look of sympathy. “You missed out,” he said. “Everyone was so psyched to have finished the Talcom case. It was like all these people, who had been so uptight and serious for the past six months, had suddenly let it all go. We had some mad times.”
And that was it. There were no vital clues, no hidden hints about what goes on where. All she had gathered was that two people called Roderick and Susan worked on the fifth floor and that Rachel, whoever she was, had a party last night.
In the absence of any conversation, Kathy spent her short time on the lift planning her strategy. She decided to play her part well. Without any other leads, she would pretend to be Eve Thompson, just transferred to research and development. She would go to research and development and introduce herself as Eve Thompson. She would present herself as a shy, retiring character, saying little but listening much. If there was a spare moment and enough intelligence, she would sneak into an office and rummage round in the files. She knew that somewhere in this building there would be folders relating to whatever had happened to Thomas and she was determined to find them.
The lift reached the fourth floor and she stepped out. Before her was a three-way junction with corridors going off to the left, to the right and straight on. There were signs on the wall indicating where the corridors led. She had only been told that her alias worked on this floor, but not in which department: so she did not know whether to go left to “Paranormal Investigations”; right to “Quantum development” or straight on to “Chemical Engineering”.
She stood there for a moment, baffled. All she knew of TGN at this point was that they were linked to Thomas’ disappearance, and that they had done something to him which caused him to suffer an identity crisis. With hindsight, this whole trip seemed grossly underprepared: she knew nothing of the structure or function or purpose of this organisation. None of these departments seemed at all relevant to Thomas’ case, and she had no idea where to go.
This building had twelve floors. It was entirely possible that her expedition to the fourth floor was a wild goose chase and that the relevant files and people were somewhere upstairs or downstairs. Still, the fourth floor is where she was, and she may as well start somewhere: so on a complete blind hunch she plumbed for “Paranormal Investigations”.
She turned left. The corridor was long and bland. The grey walls and dull lighting created a feeling like that of a dingy basement. On the walls, periodically, were paintings and posters of abstract art and vaguely uplifting sentiments. The lack of windows was striking, and Kathy instantly missed the natural light of the sun on her skin. Overall there was something depressing about the dark, banal feel of this corridor.
It occurred to Kathy how ordinary a building this was, considering how mysterious she had expected TGN to be. Sure, not many offices had a “paranormal investigations” department, but aside from that she could have been in any skyscraper or large office block.
She neared the door. It had been a long walk down the corridor and she had become lost in her thoughts. As she gazed from side to side at the paintings and pictures on the walls, trying her utmost to keep alert to her surroundings, the door almost crept up on her: she had neglected to look in that most crucial of directions, forward. She stopped herself just millimetres before she would have banged her head and prepared herself.
This whole floor looked boring. After the dull, grey corridor she had passed through, she was now standing before a dull, grey door with a dull, grey label on which was written “paranormal investigations”. She mustered up the courage to play her part and opened the door.
She may as well have entered another time zone. The room before her was reminiscent of an office from the seventies. The carpet was a faded brown colour which was almost identical to that of the wallpaper. A flickering light hung from the ceiling and was swinging as if it had just been pushed by someone. The one good thing about this room was: light! On her right, where the wall should have been was a huge window overlooking the London skyline. After the long walk to this place, she almost bathed in the natural light now pouring over her.
There were three men in the room working. Two of them she could not see, for they were busy
at their desks and had their heads turned away from her. One of them, however, instantly looked up when she entered and stood to greet her. He was a skinny fellow with unfashionable glasses, a scraggly beard and equally shaggy hair. His shirt was outdated and unkempt. His sweaty face appeared frazzled, like one who was so engrossed in his work that he would not allow himself a break.
“Martin. Martin Neuberger,” he introduced himself. “And you are…?”
“Eve Thompson,” Kathy smiled. She displayed her fake ID badge with nervous pride. “I’ve recently been moved to the fourth floor, although I’m not sure which department I’m supposed to be in…”
Martin moved towards his desk and shuffled through a few files. When he found the one he was looking for, he gave an unsure smile and returned to Kathy.
“Yes, I’ve got your files here,” he said. “You’re lucky. You’re in the right department. Your desk is over here.”
He beckoned her to move to her right, and what she saw pleased her. Her desk was easily the best in the whole office. While her three co-workers were relegated to three untidy tables on the darker side of the office behind a partition, Kathy’s desk was right next to the window. She could bathe in the natural light of the sun and, what’s more, her desk was of much superior quality: it was made from mahogany, had a degree of privacy from her colleagues and was larger than theirs by far. Kathy deduced that this Eve Thompson figure who she was impersonating must be someone comparatively important- say, a manager-type position, who had been sent here to supervise the researchers beneath her.
“We’re very excited to be working with you,” interjected Martin. “I read your paper on Out of Body Experiences. Very interesting. Very insightful. We’re looking forward to where your leadership will take our research.”
Kathy was bemused. “Er, thank you,” she said nervously. “I hope I can deliver on your expectations. Now, if you excuse me…”
She made her apologies and bid Martin to return to work, while she “set up her desk”. In actual fact, she was really after a bit of privacy so that she could mooch in this Eve’s drawers and computer files and, maybe, hopefully, find some clues about what had happened to Thomas.
The drawers yielded little evidence. They were simply full of rulers, paperclips, staplers and the like- but that was to be expected. In a modern office, even one which had the atmosphere of one from the seventies, everything was stored on computer.
So, to the computer she went. Yet a problem arose which should really have been expected: the password. Obviously, an organisation like TGN was big on security… well, it should be, reasoned Kathy. Part of her worried that security had been too lax for her; that her entry had been too easy. Nevertheless, she needed Eve’s password to log into Eve’s computer. If she could not, her visit to the fourth floor would have been fruitless.
“Will you need this?” a thickly accented voice asked from behind her.
She started, and span round. Yet she need not have worried: it was Martha.
“I am sorry for leaving you downstairs like that, but staff and cleaners don’t normally mix. It would have aroused suspicion,” she explained in hush tones. “But I knew you were coming to the fourth floor, so I came up here to clean. I expected to find you here, and here you are.”
She smiled. “Don’t worry- the others in this office don’t suspect a thing. They just think I’m cleaning your desk for you.”
Kathy nodded and was glad. The partition wall between her and the three others was most comforting right now.
“Besides, they wouldn’t notice anyway. They’re all too wrapped up in their work. The people of the paranormal investigations department don’t have a reputation for being the most sociable.”
Suddenly Martha extended her hand towards Kathy. In it was a piece of paper with the password on it, and Kathy breathed a sigh of relief. She looked down at it: SPARKLEFISH_45. Her eyes were on the paper for but a second before she looked back up to Martha, but when she did so her contact had vanished completely. Martha was good.
With the password in hand, she logged onto Eve’s computer with ease and began a search for “Thomas Wilson” in the company files.
A result came up immediately in a folder called “The Cybertech Files”. She opened it up and read with astonishment:
Thomas Wilson, born 29th July 1988. Deceased 11th November 2011.
Deceased? But… Kathy checked her watch. The 11th November had been and gone almost two weeks ago- yet she had seen Thomas alive only the previous day. Puzzling.
There followed a lengthy biography of Thomas’ life, personality and experiences. She skimmed through it, but there was nothing new…
…until she reached the fourth page, where she found this entry:
In November 2011, shortly after his death, TGN began to be interested in Thomas’ case. We visited the house of his mother and picked him up after releasing his mind. After an intensive treatment lasting several days, we released him into the world with newfound knowledge of his situation. He was then mysteriously killed- presumably when Cybertech discovered what we had done- only to be brought back to life the following day, with the fallacy restored. He is currently alive, but mistaken. We will begin a mission with him shortly.
“We will begin a mission with him shortly…” Out of all the baffling, unclear content of this text, this one sentence stood out to Kathy. The text read like a report on an ongoing situation, submitted by an agent or employee working here. Clearly, whatever they had done to Thomas, they were planning more…
“We will begin a mission with him shortly…” Yet the word ‘mission’ implied Thomas was willing. It implied that he were some sort of double agent. She suddenly began to have doubts about whether she could trust him- indeed, this had been too easy. Martha and the fake ID card? And how people acted suspicious, yet allowed her on her way… maybe she had not sneaked in at all, she pondered. Maybe she had been allowed in, and TGN actually wanted her there- for some mysterious, sinister purpose, no doubt.
She began to feel the beginnings of panic inside her, but managed to calm it. She was preparing to leave when she noticed that the “Cybertech Files” had articles about other people, including herself and Gregory:
Gregory Smith, born circa 1989. Current status: in a time loop.
She scanned the article and, once more, found a paragraph which raised more questions than answers:
From the evidence we can gather, Gregory is stuck in a time loop which, for him, is infinite. He must be captured by Cybertech at some point in the future and then inserted into one of their machines, at which point we suspect Cybertech will use their temporal capacities. It is a most unfortunate situation for both him and Thomas.
Before she could allow herself to think on this too much, she checked her own file. It now seemed more and more likely in her head that this had been a trap of some kind- and perhaps her file would tell her just what kind of trap it was.
Like the other articles, Kathy’s contained her name, age, date of birth and basic details. She read through three pages of her life story, horrified that she had been a victim of their spying too, until she reached this paragraph:
We suspect that Kathy may attempt to infiltrate the building to investigate what has happened to herself and her friend. If she does, security has been given a mug shot of her face with which to recognise her. If she is seen, do not stop her. Allow her to continue with her undercover investigation. Management will find her and deal with her in due course.
Now the panic in her soul was writhing around like some untamed monster. It was hard for her to maintain a cool composure, but she knew one thing: she needed to escape. No longer certain whether Thomas was still with her or with TGN, no longer sure whether Martha had been helping her or simply leading her to where TGN wanted her to be, she stood up and began to walk briskly to the office’s exit and intended to simply walk into the elevator, go downstairs and leave.
Except it wasn’t that easy. As the turned the corner o
f the office’s partition wall, she saw her path blocked by four people: two burly security guards, one man with a pencil moustache and a woman with red hair and an equally red dress. The latter opened her mouth, smiled and announced to the office:
“Hi, I’m Eve Thompson. I’ve just been transferred here from the sixth floor.”
A hushed silence fell over the room. The two security guards were smiling at Kathy in an evil way: they already knew she was a fake. The moustachioed man was gazing at her as a parent looks at a naughty child. The office staff, previously engrossed in their work, suddenly all turned from their computer screens and gazed in shock at the two women before them, both of whom were, allegedly, Eve Thompson.
The man put his hand on real Eve’s shoulder and smiled a thin smile with his thin lips. “I can assure you, gentlemen, that this is the real Eve, and that your Eve over there is an imposter,” he declared, now pointing towards Kathy. “Follow me, if you will, Miss Turner.”