The Arena: The Awakening (1) (9 page)

She was thinking
“What if the serum has less effect on her this time round? Would she be able to move? She had her memories back from a certain point but would she actually be able to function?”

She convinced herself that she needed to focus on the task at hand and got back to looking through her 'scope.

It was now 5.45pm. Mia checked her markers at the plot and there was still no wind to take a reading from, so this would be an easy shot. She estimated that there would be less than two seconds of flight time for her bullet and, if he sat where he was supposed to, there would be minimal disruption to the people around. As she was thinking and planning, she noticed out of the corner of her viewfinder that the subject had arrived early. He was smartly dressed but looked like he'd had a long day. His suit was ruffled and his tie was undone. Mia radioed in to the Arena and was given the green light to go regardless of the time. She could see that the subject was ordering his drink and he was sitting on the seat she was told about, reading his newspaper. She checked her markers once more. Everything was set. She took a deep breath and exhaled half of it. She put the cross-hatches of her 'scope directly in the middle of his face and gently squeezed the trigger of the rifle.

Everything slowed down for Mia at this point. It was almost like she was viewing what she was doing from another point in the room. Once the bullet had left the rifle, she continued to look at the subject through the 'scope. What seemed like an age passed before it struck the subject. Similar to her other missions, the subject’s head almost disappeared from his body. It was different this time as he was sitting down, so his body just remained sat there. It didn’t fall over or slump onto the table. It was still holding the newspaper as if nothing had happened. The blood from the shot had, unfortunately, sprayed over a woman sitting not far from him and that’s what started the screaming at the scene. Mia could see through her 'scope that people were reacting now to what had happened. Her job was done so she radioed in “Mission Complete” and started her usual routine of packing her stuff up ready for leaving. She continued to show no emotions about what she had done, or the carnage in the park she had just caused.

As she packed her things, she could hear the sirens of the police and ambulances heading over the bridge towards the scene. She did think to herself that, from the time of the shot to them heading towards the park, it was pretty quick but, again, it wasn’t an issue. She carried on with her routine and freshened herself up before quickly scanning the room and making sure she had left nothing behind. As she did so, something happened that she wasn’t expecting. She started to think about the subject. She remembered that he looked like - he'd had a bad day and wondered if he had a family at home waiting for him? The woman who got covered in blood, how would she cope in the future after that happening? All those people who had seen it happen, would they be alright?

“
Something’s wrong.”

Although she was emotionless about it, she couldn’t get the thoughts out of her head. She left the room with her case and took the elevator to the foyer. She pulled her case straight past the check-in desk and out into the main street. Without realising it, Mia had made her first mistake in two years of working for the Arena. She hadn’t checked out of the hotel!

She headed towards where she had parked her car in Brooklyn, which meant she would walk past the scene she had created. Mia had finally stopped thinking about the victim and the surrounding people and was now focused on getting to her car. As she walked across the bridge, she could see the scene and the hundreds of people now there. It looked chaotic even though it had taken her a while to get there. As she walked past and looked over, she could see that the body had been covered over by a blanket of some type and standing next to it, giving what looked like directions to the police officers on scene, was a man dressed in suit trousers and a white shirt with an ID badge of some type hanging around his neck. He was probably about 6 foot tall and bald with a goatee-style beard. She stopped for a moment and looked at what was going on. He looked like he was in charge and people, without question, were doing everything he asked. Once it looked like everything was under control, he stood back and looked around the area. He looked up at the bridge but obviously couldn’t see Mia and then across the river towards Manhattan. Mia did think to herself that he was quite an attractive man, but there was something more about him that caught her attention. He looked familiar to her. She couldn’t quite place him, which bugged the hell out of her, considering she was starting to get her memories back. After a few moments, she thought to herself that he could be someone from the Arena as they had organised this, so she carried on into Brooklyn, trying to put it out of her mind. When she cleared the bridge she stopped, turned around and looked back at the amount of police, ambulance and fire vehicles that were now present on the bridge. Parked closest to her was a fire truck in front of which was a classic convertible Dodge Challenger. It looked out of place but she did like the look of it. She got a brief sense of familiarity from it but, not giving it a second thought, she carried on and found her Aston Martin in the parking lot.

As she loaded her stuff into the quite small trunk, she went through the ritual of changing the number plates. Before long, she was behind the wheel and driving back into Manhattan to get the ferry back off the island. As she approached the Brooklyn Bridge again, she drove through the police checkpoints and past all the emergency services vehicles and onto the island. What Mia had noticed was that a few of the vans parked on the bridge were not marked as police or emergency services. She didn't give this a second thought and carried on as normal. This was her second mistake! She had been taught to drive away in the opposite direction from a scene, but she didn’t see it as an issue in this case as she needed to get to the ferry.

Those unmarked vans were actually FBI camera vans that were taking detailed photographs of the area, and every vehicle and its driver crossing the bridge in each direction.

When she reached the ferry terminal, it took only five minutes to get boarded and before long the trip to Staten Island was under way. She grabbed a coffee on the boat as she didn’t want to have to stop again before getting back to DC, as the car was fully fuelled and ready to go. The sun was starting to settle and darkness was looming over the island. She stood at the back of the boat looking at the skyline of the city. She could see that the lights were coming on in the buildings, giving that iconic view that so many tourists flock to see each year. As she took it all in, she looked towards the Brooklyn Bridge to the right of the island and she could still see the flashing of both blue and red lights emanating from where the park would be. She had a half smile on her face. It actually came across as more like a confused look than anything, as she thought to herself about her next step. She was getting excited to get back to the Arena and see if anything else happened to her. She
longed
not to be put back in that chair again.

She enjoyed the trip back to DC more than she had ever done. She loved the 'new' car and, as the roads were pretty clear, she could open it up a little on the way down. After a few hours, she saw that DC was only about thirty minutes away so she started planning her route into the city. She wanted to do it differently this time as her last car had been towed away, plus she didn’t want the Aston to be returned to the car park it was stolen from. She knew of another long-term parking garage in the Foggy Bottom area of DC so headed there to park up the car.

Before long, Mia was standing outside the side entrance of the Arena about to go in. As far as she was concerned, it was now her time to break free. However she went in and carried on as normal, going through the usual ritual with the nurses and doctors. She had no visible injuries this time and had her usual chat with the unseen doctor who stood behind her, asking her questions about how she felt about what had happened.

She just kept thinking to herself
“Get on with the injection!”

The time finally came where she was injected by the nurse. After a few minutes, she started to lose control of everything again. Her arms went limp and her legs started to feel really heavy. All that excitement about what could happen was gone in Mia’s mind. Before she knew it, she was back in her chair being strapped in. She was thinking to herself that surely this couldn’t be happening again? Why can’t she move anything again? Her memory again wasn’t affected, she could still remember everything. Why couldn’t she move herself? As the nurses were getting her ready, she looked down at her right arm and focused hard on it.

“
MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!”
she said to herself over and over again.

In what seemed like a split second, her arm twitched.

“
Oh my God!”
she thought.

She quickly looked around to see if any of the nurses had noticed. They were too busy getting her stuff ready and tending to their own work to notice.

“
I knew it!”
she thought.

As she sat there relieved that something was happening, she was a million miles away in her thoughts when Kyle came in to take her home.

As he pushed her into their minivan which was parked in its usual spot outside, she was thinking to herself,
“You’re going to tell me everything!”

Chapter 14

The Chase

The thought of “
Can I bring her back
” was short lived in Hank’s mind. It didn’t take long once he was home to be sound asleep and in the land of dreams. He was exhausted and running on empty, so a good night’s sleep was what the doctor ordered to get him back on track.

He didn’t get up until 9am which, for him, was a good thing. After a good breakfast, he headed into the office as he had a couple of things he wanted to catch up on plus he wanted
Laura
and to hand back the Crown Vic. On the way in, he grabbed his large ritualistic coffee and went to work. When he got to his desk, he had left himself a note not to forget to chase up the licence plate mentioned to him the night before. He put it at the top of his list and logged onto the computer to see what he could find out about it. Before long, he was tracing it back from Manhattan to DC. There was a large section of data missing as it had disappeared but, using his ingenuity, he worked out that it had taken the Staten Island Ferry to get to the city.

He carried on tracking it back and was quite taken aback when he discovered a picture of it, in DC, pulling out of the very same car park Hank was standing in only a couple of days ago.

“Well I’ll be damned!” said Hank out loud.

He started zooming in as far as he could on the photographs. The pictures were digital, but not of a high resolution, so they were badly pixilated the further in he went. He still couldn’t get a clear picture of the driver but could see that it was again a woman driving the car. Using his raised access level again, he logged on to the CCTV in the area at the time and found a woman walking towards the parking lot just before the traffic cameras see the car pulling out of the street. She was smartly dressed, pulling a suitcase behind her. Hank figured she was surveillance aware, as none of the cameras picked up a clear shot of her face. It did, however, highlight that she had long, dark red hair, similar to the long red hair his wife Laura had had. He knew he needed a clearer picture but he didn’t have the equipment at the office to get one. However he was aware that the lab in Federal Plaza did, so he selected the best pictures he could find and emailed them across asking for them urgently to be enhanced.

Before long, the morning was over and Hank was itching to see how the pictures were coming along at the lab. He looked out the window and saw that the weather was good, so he decided to head to Federal Plaza and see them for himself as he wasn’t getting any replies to his emails. He fired up
Laura
and headed towards the city. He didn’t usually like taking
Laura
in there but something about today felt different, like it was the right thing to do. Before long, he was entering the city and fighting his way through the traffic. Sitting in the traffic didn’t usually bother him too much, but he knew he was on a mission to get what he needed, so he opened the glove box and pulled out the portable blue light and put it on the dashboard. This helped with the traffic and parted the way for him to get through to the downtown area. Eventually, he pulled up outside the Plaza and, after getting out of the car, spoke to the security officers who patrolled the area and explained that the car was his and that he was a federal agent. They agreed to keep an eye on it for him which set his mind at ease.

As he walked through the foyer of the building and across the great FBI seal embossed into the floor, Hank realised that he didn’t actually know where the photography lab was. He walked over to the floor listing board and before long established it was on the seventh floor, so off he went to the elevator.

It seemed to take ages to get there even though, in reality, it was only a couple of minutes. Hank spoke to the reception area at the department and, after looking up his request, said it would still be a couple of hours as they were on an urgent project for Homeland Security. Hank decided that it was pointless him going away and coming back later as he was there already. Instead, he went upstairs to use one of the hot-desks and catch up on his messages. After a couple of hours, he called down to the photographic lab and was told that they were doing it now and, if he could wait thirty minutes, it would be done. Hank looked at his watch. As it was nearly 5pm and he had been there all day, another half hour wouldn’t kill him. When he finally went downstairs, he went to the receptionist and she handed him an envelope. As she did, she said to him that she had also emailed him copies for future use. Hank thanked her and walked to the other end of the waiting area before opening the envelope. He had waited so long for them, but was unsure if he wanted to see what the person actually looked like in case it was his dead wife.