Ducie by Chris Freeman
Chapter 7. Two Spice Girls and three Power Rangers
Lucas knew the Estate was empty, but paranoia had his senses primed to a hallucination-inducing level. The Portia tree outside the office window cast moving shadows into the room, causing him to flinch at the thought of an intruder. Ironic, since here, Lucas himself was the real intruder.
Since he’d stopped taking his pill, Lucas felt different somehow. Physically he was as healthy as ever, but his mind felt driven by an agitated curiosity. Something didn’t stack up about life on Ducie. About Eduardo. About 61. Why had he never considered it before? And why was he the only one that could see it now? The pill. He knew it had to be the pill. He hadn’t consciously decided to stop taking it. It’d happened by accident after he’d lost his monthly batch. By the time he’d gone to see Eduardo to get them replaced, he got distracted by something or other and it was the next day before he remembered he’d missed a dose. By then his mindset was already beginning to alter and the idle questions he’d always had about Ducie began turning into ferocious itches he needed to scratch until they bled.
Lucas guessed that whatever was hidden wouldn’t be on full show in the main office. Ducians regularly came into that office for various reasons. It would be too risky to leave stuff lying around. He wasn’t entirely sure what his plan was, but he’d considered finding the entire stock of pills and dumping them in the ocean just to see what happened to people if nobody had them to take any more. Eduardo was shipping them in from somewhere though, so no doubt he’d just get the supplier to bring a replacement batch. Pointless.
Lucas tried a few drawers that turned out to be locked. They were fragile locks that would have succumbed to a sharp tug, but he didn’t need to be leaving a trail of broken furniture in his wake to arouse suspicion. A grey two-drawer filing cabinet in the corner caught his eye next. Lucas pulled the bottom draw. Locked. Inside, a number of hanging files filled the entire capacity of the drawer, each labelled with a name he recognised. Quickly realising they were arranged alphabetically, Lucas scanned the labels for his own name.
- ….Daniel Maldonado, Jennifer Martinez, Lionel Martinez, Lucas Medina
He pulled the file out and sat at Eduardo’s desk, pausing briefly to check for the noise of anyone about to spoil his fun. Nothing.
The first page was a form of some sort:
Name – Lucas Medina, Date of birth – 07/12/1990
Subject reference number – 00017, Counterpart – Paul Addison
Counterpart reference number – 00041 …
Lucas paused and found himself talking to himself out loud. Something he didn’t do as a habit.
- Who the hell is Paul Addison?
He jumped out of his seat and returned to the open filing cabinet. This mass of paperwork inside a hulk of metal potentially containing information that Lucas sensed could change his whole perception of life. He didn’t know why precisely; he just sensed it. His heart fired out deep thuds of energy around his body, his palms clammy, his forehead carrying the heat of a borderline fever.
Addison was the first file. He took it to the desk and was greeted with the same form as he’d seen in his own file.
Name – Paul Addison, Date of birth – 19/05/1990
Subject reference number – 00041, Counterpart – Lucas Medina
Counterpart reference number – 00017 …
The next section read like a short biography of sorts:
“Paul Addison was born in Birmingham, England on 19th May 1990. He joined the project on 17th August 2007 as our 7th recruit. We have classified Paul’s addiction as grade 4, placing him amongst the most severely dependant of the recruits”
Lucas was now in full dialogue with himself.
- An English guy? Who the hell…?
The paranoia about being caught in the act had now given way to acute intrigue and confusion. Fleeting thoughts came and went through Lucas’s head, as his mind fought to rationalise this bizarre discovery. A dream! It had to be a dream. Lucas took a paperclip off the top of the file, unwound it and jabbed the point of it into the back of is hand. The pain was instant, but subsided just as quickly, leaving behind a slight pulsing sensation in his hand. His mind offered up another straw to be clutched at: Perhaps this was a set-up. The documents were planted there to keep him distracted, because somehow someone knew he was coming…. He dismissed the idea out loud.
- You’re talking crap Lucas. Get a grip! Get a grip!
He returned to his own file.
“Lucas Medina was born in Mar del Plata, Argentina on 7th December 1990…”
Lucas thought he’d imagined the voice at first, but then it came again. A crackle, like that of a radio walkie-talkie preceding it the second time.
- What the hell man?
Then footsteps coming down the stairs. Lucas scanned the room for an escape. The window was one solid pane with no hinge. The door into the room was the same direction the noise was coming from.
- Shit! Shit! Shit!
The voices were getting closer. He could make out words now.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m on my way down there. Give me chance. I’m not bleeding Superman you know.
The walkie-talkie crackled as the response came in.
- Just get a move on son, yeah?
- They’re all at the beach party anyway mate. I don’t know what you’re even shitting yourself for.
The voice sounded like it was almost outside the door. The files! Lucas scooped the documents off the desk, hastily filing them away again and gently closing the cabinet drawer. The minimalist office with its locked cupboards and single entrance didn’t lend itself well to a game of hide and seek. He took the only option he could see and wedged himself underneath the desk, pulling in the chair as close in as he comfortably could to conceal himself.
The door opened….
Lucas tried to suppress his breathing, but the more he did, the more the urge came to take a huge gasp. Torture. The walkie-talkie crackled once more.
- You downstairs yet Superman?
- Yep. I’m in the office.
- Well…anything?
- Yeah, there’s 2 of the Spice Girls and 3 Power Rangers in here. They look like they’re having a ball though. I think we’d best leave them to it.
- Don’t get lippy with me Baz.
Lucas briefly revisited the idea that this was all one hell of a messed up dream, but the cramp in his legs quickly convinced him otherwise.
- Well of course there’s nobody down here you fool. All the guinea pigs are down at the beach celebrating king guinea pig’s birthday.
- Just check the other rooms and get back up here, ok?
- Yes, Sir! Anything you say Sir! Three bags full Sir!
The door closed, but to be safe, Lucas waited a good while before taking a huge gasp of air to refill his lungs. He could still hear the man in the distance exchanging banter with his walkie-talkie. After a few minutes that seemed like longer than the rest of Lucas’s life to date, the man could be heard going back up the stairs and silence returned.
Lucas checked the corridor and when he was sure there was a safe route out he took it, gently closing the front door to the Estate and sprinting up the drive towards the beach. With every step, he expected a voice to call, a gun to fire, to be grabbed from behind. Nothing came. He was out of there.
He’d come on a speculative whim, looking for a batch of pills or anything else he could find, but had stumbled on more than he’d bargained for. Who were those people? Were they part of the 61? They couldn’t be! They didn’t sounds like anyone he knew. Everyone was at the beach anyway. His immediate instinct was to tell someone. To go back mob handed to confront the men. No! He’d wait. Bide his time and continue not taking the pills. The right time would come to do something with what he now knew. Whilst in reality, he didn’t actually know anything, other than that his suspicions that something about this place didn’t add up were looking more and more like a safe bet.
&nbs