Anything but Ordinary (13 page)

Was she being punished?  That would make some sense, she supposed. But it seemed unlikely. They
needed
her; they had made that pretty clear. Or was that a lie?  Suddenly she felt weary. ‘Why does this sort of thing keep happening to me?
’

‘Ah, you’re awake,’ it was The Director. ‘We were getting concerned.’

‘You were?’ Tamar was nonplussed.

 ‘I am sorry that we put you in the containment room again,’ he said smoothly. ‘I know you don’t like it in here. But your behaviour was, quite frankly, rather alarming.’

‘It was?’
he’s lying
, she thought.

‘Oh, yes,’ said The Director smoothly. Tamar was beginning to loathe that unruffled, smooth demeanour of his.  She knew also that he had her at a disadvantage here. She was feeling uneasy in this room, like a trapped animal. That, she thought, was probably the idea.

‘Don’t you remember anything?’ The Director asked.

‘Yes,’ she thought. ‘I remember getting the hell out of here. I should never have come back.’
But she did not remember anything after she had returned to the hangar.  What had they done to her?

‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember.’ for a split second, no more, an expression of satisfaction flitted over The Director’s face. Then he looked sombre. ‘Well, he said. When you and the Alpha Team returned from your mission, you began exhibiting erratic behaviour. We have tried to account for it. The mission itself, you remember that?’

Tamar weighed it up and decided. ‘No,’ she said.

The Director nodded sagely. ‘It was a success anyway,’ he said, ‘as far as we could tell anyway. Target neutralised – by you, I might add, and most efficiently. However, your behaviour after your return … It is possible that the target was warned in advance and may have activated some sort of magical booby trap in the event of his own demise.’

‘Warned by whom?’ said Tamar, obediently following the script. She wanted to see just how far he was going to push this ludicrous rigmarole of lies. 

‘We are investigating the possibility of a leak within the agency,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell you any more about that at the moment. What I
can
tell you is that you were rambling incoherently about going home, just as if
this
wasn’t your home. And wolves and – oh, all sorts of nonsense, then you became violent and we had to sedate you.’

‘He doesn’t know,’ she thought.

The Director was clearly hypothesising on her motives for her sudden departure, and he was counting on the fact that they had been fooling around in her memory again, in order to plant doubt in her mind by making up this ridiculous story.

‘He doesn’t know where I went. They didn’t have me followed. And he knows that I know he’s a wolf. He must have been listening when Slev warned me, so he’s trying to make me believe it was all a fantasy, in case I remember. Imagine trying to convince me that this place is my
home
.’

 
‘Just how much of my memory did they try to remove?’ she wondered. Was she have supposed to have totally forgotten her former life? Surely not. No, they had tried to remove just enough to cause her to doubt the memories she had. To wonder if she
had
been attacked by some “booby trap” that had affected her mind.

It was damned clever, she realised. In the face of such doubt most people would agree to just about anything they were told in order to allay suspicions that they were unreliable – or worse, crazy.  It was a way of chastening her, making her behave herself in future, to make her want to behave as expected and not argue, and probably, in time, to come to accept whatever they told her as the truth.  But their memory modifications had not worked this time. And because they had not, she would never know just how much they expected her to have forgotten. She would just have to guess. Then she realised that it did not matter in any case, whatever she
did
remember they would not expect her to admit to anyway. She would not want anyone to think she was crazy now, would she?

‘Wolves?’ she said now. ‘That’s weird,’ she added and treated him to her most innocent stare. 

He appeared to swallow it because he smiled. ‘Why don’t we get out of this unpleasant room?’ he suggested. 

She wondered idly why the process had not worked on her memory this time. 

 With a sudden guilty feeling Tamar realised that, while she had been wondering how much of her memory they had tried to access, she had thought of her life with Denny and her friends as a
former
life. 

‘What if they
had
been successful?’ she wondered. What if she had truly been made to forget everything up to this point? Her life, her friends and oh God –
Denny
!’

Suddenly, watching the broad back of The Director as he walked calmly ahead of her, she became choked with hatred.

*

 Things, on the surface anyway, had returned to normal. Tamar was back on the team as if nothing had happened. She suspected that Team Alpha had no idea what had happened to her. They had probably all had their own memories altered at times. Certainly, there was no restraint between them and no one asked her where she had been. She wondered how long she had been missing. Probably not more than a day. But she would never know for sure. 

But it was not the team’s behaviour that was puzzling Tamar, it was her own. Now, more than ever, surely, she should be trying to get herself
out
of here. It was not as if it would be difficult. She had allayed The Director’s suspicions, she was sure. They would not be expecting an escape attempt again so soon. So, again she wondered. ‘Why am I still here?’

The same mixed motives as before applied of course. She was still here, because she was not ready to leave. 

 She became aware that Slick was saying something to her. Instead of focusing on him properly, she squinted up her eyes and sighed heavily. 

‘You’re imagining I’m someone else when you do that, aren’t you?’ asked Slick with frightening perspicacity. 

Tamar was too astounded to deny it. ‘How the hell did you know that?’ she sputtered in a shocked voice. 

Slick seemed unperturbed. ‘It happens to me all the time,’ he said. ‘I have a kind of generic face. A bit of “soft focus” and I can be anyone you want. Hey whatever works for you babe, I’ll take it.’

‘You wouldn’t mind that?’ Tamar thought of herself as broad minded, but this seemed outrageous.

‘I told you, it happens all the time. I’m used to it.’

‘Well, I’ll leave it if you don’t mind,’ she said stiffly.

‘Who is he?’ asked Slick curiously. But Tamar pretended she had not heard and moved off with her nose in the air and her head in turmoil. 

‘That chick is off the map,’ said Slick to Ray who happened to be sat close by and had heard everything.

Ray grunted noncommittally and then said. ‘You’re just pissed off because she said no again. If anyone’s gotta problem round here, it’s you. Why don’t you try keeping it in your pants for a change? Give us all a break.’

‘What’s
your
problem?’ muttered Slick and slouched off to put the TV on. 

* * *

Tamar was out on surveillance. She found this ironic, considering that she had recently been the object of this activity. Activity was the wrong word for it.  It was hours and hours and hours of dull watching and waiting.

However, the good news was that her act had clearly been completely swallowed; otherwise, they would never have let her do this. Not that she was alone, of course. But Ray, who was partnering her, would have had no chance of stopping her had she decided to take off again. 

As yet, despite three days of acute boredom, she had shown no sign of wishing to take off. 

They were, not that it matters, watching a house that was suspected of being a Troglodyte stronghold.  There had so far been no evidence of it. Trogs were hard to miss, being reptilian in appearance and between five and seven feet tall.  From being a feudal society of warring clans, they had developed into a strong part of the mystical underworld. The magic community’s answer to the Mafia, dealing in drug peddling, murder for hire, kidnappings all the usual crimes. The scum of the otherworld.  The warring clans still existed, only now they were more like factions, but the wars went on. 

Still, if they
were
in there, they weren’t coming out – even at night. 

Ray yawned widely. ‘Mind if I put the radio on?’ he asked. ‘It’ll help me keep awake.’

‘Sleep if you like,’ said Tamar. ‘I don’t need to. I’ll wake you if anything happens.’

‘Naw, I’m not tired, just bored.’ He flipped the radio on. 

The song playing reminded Tamar poignantly of Denny. He had sung it to her once, but it could, she had felt at the time, quite reasonably, in fact, more appropriately, be sung by her, to him. 

’Cause I wanted to fly. So you gave me your wings

And time held its breath.  So I could see … you set me free.

You’re in my heart

The only light that shines there in the dark
When I was alone, you came around,

When I was down
You pulled me through,
And there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do for you

‘
You set me free
,’ she murmured under her breath.  She was not listening she realised, to the radio.  The words running through her head were not in tune with the radio.  She was remembering …

More than three hundred miles away, as Denny swung the car round bends, slamming the accelerator viciously and furiously, he unexpectedly started to sing.  

When I was alone, you came around,

When I was down
You pulled me through,
And there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do for you

Cause I wanted to fly. So you gave me your wings

And time held its breath.  So I could see… you set me free.

Dawber looked curiously at him. ‘That’s nice,’ he said. ‘What brought that on?’

‘I don’t
… I’m not sure.’

‘Well, at least you’ve calmed down,’ said Dawber in undisguised relief. ‘I thought you were going to get us killed, the way you were driving.’

Denny smiled quietly. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I feel better. It’s going to be all right.’

‘Dawber looked somewhat askance at this remark, remembering all the stuff he had heard quite recently from this guy. Most memorably a lot of stuff about, oh what was it? Oh yes,
Armageddon
!

‘The hell you say?’ he remarked sceptically.

* * *

‘We’re on the move,’ said Ray snapping off the radio.  ‘There they go.’

Tamar snapped her focus back to the matter at hand. The three figures emerging stealthily into the dark streets were indeed Troglodytes. Tamar recognised the reptilian skin and the ungainly build.  These were unbalanced – their walking strangely lopsided. Tamar realised suddenly and with some amusement the reason for their strange gait. They had had their tails docked. 

‘Cascar clan,’ she said.

‘How the hell do you know that?’ asked Ray, impressed.

‘The tattoos,’ she said.

Ray peered into the shadows. All he could see were silhouetted shapes with the occasional blur of scaly skin highlighted by the ambient light from the night’s half moon. ‘What tattoos?’

‘Clan tattoos, on the forehead. They are a bit hard to see in this light. I suppose you have to know what you’re looking for.’

‘Okay, you’re the boss,’ said Ray. ‘What do we do now?’

‘Follow them,’ said Tamar unhesitatingly. ‘I want to know where they’re going.

‘We won’t need the car,’ she added. ‘Troglodytes don’t move fast, and they can’t drive.’

Ray looked unhappy about this, apart from anything else (like having to run away if they were spotted) it was starting to rain.

*

It was uncanny, Ray thought. He was soaked through, he squelched unhappily as he walked, but Tamar looked barely damp. How did she
do
that?  His admiration for Tamar knew no bounds and he was unhappy in the extreme about her apparent bond with Slick, who he felt was an immoral womaniser; but he was rarely forthcoming about anything much and she certainly had no idea of the respect he had for her. If anything, because of his dour attitude and limited communication, she had the idea that he really did not like her much. 

However, she did take pity on him when she glanced over at his miserable face with the rain running down it.  ‘Here,’ she beckoned him.  She waved a hand, and he felt a warm glow run through him which more or less dried him off from the inside out. 

‘Thanks,’ he said in surprise.

Tamar grinned in the darkness. ‘Well, you looked like a drowned rat,’ she said. ‘Look sharp,’ she added abruptly. ‘Looks like journey’s end.’

It was a large abandoned storage facility.  The Troglodytes showed their tattoos and were waved inside. 

‘Call it in,’ hissed Tamar. ‘Looks like a meeting. Could be a lot of them in there.’

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Ray fumbling for his radio. 

‘I’m going inside,’ she said.  

‘Could be dangerous,’ said Ray mildly.

Tamar smiled wickedly.  ‘That’s their problem,’ she said.

* * *

Tamar had her feet up on The Director’s desk. She was, perhaps unconsciously, copying a demeanour of Denny’s that she herself often found irritating. So she knew she was annoying him.

The raid on the Troglodytes had been another unqualified success. Tamar had not actually been carried along the corridors in triumph on the shoulders of Team Alpha, but the sense of victory when she returned had been palpable. 

The Director considered looking pointedly at Tamar’s feet but decided against it. He knew that a crisis was coming. Now, if ever, was the time to placate her and bind her more closely to the operation. She had been chastened, now she must be given her freedom to choose. After this victory, he was certain that she would now decide for herself that her place was here.  And when he was sure of her, it would be time to show her the real reason she had been brought here.