Writelink Arena

Some time ago, I put up the first chapter(s) of a piece and then abandoned it in favour or writing non-fiction for the time being. I’m between drafts of a piece, so I’ve rewritten that first chapter, with a different slant.

As you read this, it is hot off the word processor and doesn’t even have a proper title. No development work has been done. As ever, I would be interested in any feedback. It’s about 1600 words.

[More:]

With a loud buzz, electronic locks slammed open and the door soughed gently ajar. Siân Bennett did not move from her seat. Her clear grey eyes watched events unfold.

Nick Reagan stepped in and laid a soft smile on her. “Hello Siân.”

Her fists clenched into tight balls. “Well, well, well.” She put out her right hand, palm open. “Why don’t you come and shake hands, Reagan?”

He gave a good-humoured twitch of the head and reached into his breast pocket. He withdrew his hand holding a flat piece of glowing electronic equipment. “Two years in development. Personal magnetic field generator. Surrounds me to a distance of about five centimetres.” Dropping the generator back in his pocket, he offered his palm. “Still want to shake hands.”

Siân watched the door close and listened to the locks slam back into place.

Reagan made himself comfortable opposite her. “So, how are you keeping?”

“Couldn’t be better,” she replied. “I have everything I need here. TV, DVD player, Internet access, plenty of books, and I can order more, of my own choosing. I have my own bathroom bedroom, and a maid service of sorts. I have a wonderful view of the Cheshire countryside.” Siân gestured at the panoramic window, and the greenery beyond the reinforced glass. “I could even have sex if I wanted. One or two of your morons have hinted that they would be happy to service my requirements.” She let her hands flop into her lap. “Everything a woman could possibly need.” Her eyes narrowed and her voice took on a hard edge. “Apart from my privacy and my freedom.”

The smile played around Reagan’s lips. “You’re a dangerous lady, Siân.”

He gave him a mock-sweet smile. “Switch that toy off and I’ll show just how dangerous I am.”

“You killed a man.”

“He was trying to kill me.”

“The law accepts self-defence, but not to the point of murder.”

Siân snorted. “What does the law have to do with it? When did I stand trial? When was I interviewed by a police officer? When did I get to speak to my lawyer? You locked me up here with so much as a by-your-leave nor kiss-my-arse, you bastard.” She threw out an arm in the direction of the computer. “My emails are monitored and blocked when those arseholes out there —” now the arm waved towards the locked door. “— don’t like what I’ve written or who I’m writing to. I’m allowed no visitors, and when they do come in, even to clean out this shithole, they come in numbers, armed to the teeth and fence me into a corner on the pain of instant death if I so much as fart out of place.” She lowered her voice to a hiss. “There have been times when I’ve been tempted to move.”

“To die?” Reagan’s eyebrows rose.

“This is not living. Now when the hell do I get out of here?”

“Never.” His face remained impassive. “You murdered a man.”

“I was defending myself —”

“NO.” For all his vehemence, Reagan did no more than wag a disapproving finger at her. “With your power, you could have disabled him. Closed down his conscious mind. You did not. You killed him. You lost it, Siân, and you shut down his mind for good. That makes you a danger to the general public, so we locked you away, here,” he looked around the ascetic, white walls, “where you can do no harm.”

“Why didn’t you just shoot me?”

“And lose all the valuable information from your brain?” Reagan laughed. “Not likely. We need to know what makes you so different to every other person on this planet.” He shrugged. “It was simpler to tell you family what we told them. That you were dead. That you had killed the man who attacked you, and crawled away trying to get help. In doing so, you went over the edge of the cliff and your body was washed out to sea.”

“Notwithstanding the fact that the incident happened in the heart of Birmingham?”

“Your parents, brother and sister don’t know that. As far as they’re concerned, you were on the North Devon coast. T them you are dead. You’ve been dead for two years now.”

“And you have yourself a guinea pig.” Siân’s eyes narrowed once more, tiny daggers aimed at the centre of his forehead. “A guinea pig who won’t co-operate.” She drew in her breath, and lounged in the chair, forcing herself to relax. “Is that why you’re here, Reagan? To try persuade me to co-operate? Your boffins know they can’t force me. I’d kill all of them before they could get the EEG electrodes into place.”

He stood and walked to the window, staring out across the rain-sodden pastures, to the distant dish of Jodrell Bank radio telescope. “This place, Framlingham Park, is the most secure institute in the country,” he said. “It houses some of the most dangerous, criminally insane men and women in the world. The staff are experts at their job.” He turned back and faced her. “Even if you killed all our boffins, as you describe them, how far do you think you would get?”

Siân laughed. “Switch off the magnetic field surrounding this cell, open the door and send your people in, Reagan. I don’t care who they are, how many they are. I’ll be out of here in ten minutes, and you know it. Why else would you go to all this trouble? I know about your criminally insane inmates. They’re in wards, three, four, sometimes as many as eight to room. Yet I’m in permanent solitary confinement. I don’t even get to walk the grounds like some of them do. I’m kept in the lap of luxury — by your standards — they’re not. I have no medication. They don’t even tamper with my food because they know it would invalidate any EEG readings they could get. I’m not like the rest of the lunatics here. I’m special. So special it must be costing you a quarter of a million a year to cut me off from the rest of the world.”

“We consider it an investment,” Reagan told her as he returned to his seat. Crossing one knee over the other, he asked, “How many people can you control at one time?”

Siân shrugged. “Dunno. I’ve never really tested myself.”

“All right, let’s try another approach. What is the largest number of men you’ve had under control at any one time?”

“Four,” Siân answered right away. “I was in a pub in Brighton and they were hassling some girl. I moved by them and touched each one on the shoulder as I passed. Then I made all four of them strip and run out of the pub, across the road onto the beach.” She smiled at the memory. “I recall they were prosecuted for public order offences and the local newspaper reported that they couldn’t remember why they did it. Now cut the questions, Reagan and tell me what you want.”

The insouciant grin came back to his face. “What makes you think I want anything?”

“This is a social call, then?”

With a laugh, Reagan capitulated. “All right, you win. How would you like to get out of here?”

“And be taken to a hospital where they’ll do the CT scan? Forget it. Whatever the secret is, whether it’s my brain or my mind, it dies with me. Besides, you’d never risk it. The first person I touched would be all over your guards and I’d be gone.”

“I don’t want to take you to a hospital,” he said, digging into his side pocket. “I want to get you out of here. But I have some precautions to put in place.” He came out with a black, metal bracelet, about the size and shape of a cheap, digital watch. Where the face would normally be was a small, but solid slab of metal. “Know what this is?”

“It looks like an electronic tag.”

“Spot on,” Reagan said. “State of the art technology. Satellite controlled. Inside here,” he tapped the metal block, “ is enough circuitry to tell me what you’re doing and where you’re doing it twenty four hours a day. There’s something else, too. He flipped it over and showed her four tiny, needle-sharp points, one on each corner of the gleaming metal. “They sit on the skin. They don’t pierce it, just sit there. You misbehave, and I push a button on the computer. A second or two later, the time it takes for the signal to hit the satellite and bounce back, you get fifty thousand volts surging through you. That should be enough to keep you quiet while the law get to you and they’ll wall you up until we get there. It’s tamper proof, too. Try to cut the web strap and you trigger the charge. The casing is welded together, but try to burn through it and aside from burning your arm, you’ll trigger the shock mechanism again.” He tossed the tag onto the table between them. “Agree to wear that, and you can walk out of here.”

Siân looked from the tag to Reagan and back again. “That’s all there is too it, huh?”

“No. Not quite. Wearing the tag is a condition of your freedom, not the price you pay for it.”

Her anger began to rise. “I knew it. So come on. What do you want?”

“There’s another like you. Someone with the power to take over and control other minds. He’s out there somewhere,” Reagan waved through the window, “he’s already killed twice and we have the feeling that he’s behind a series of armed robberies. If you want out of here, you have to agree to help us catch him.”