Tracker

Consciousness gradually returned. He could feel rough carpet under his back and turned slightly to ease a cramp that was beginning to twinge in his left calf muscle. A sharp pain stabbed through his back near the top of his spine and brought him to full wakefulness.

He looked up, still uncomfortable with the pain, and saw her looking down at him. Tall, shapely and beautiful. The memory of her came back to him in a rush.

He rolled onto his side and the memory of his back being cut and stitched returned but there were no memories beyond that.

He held up his hand hoping that she would take it and help him to his feet but she shook her head, a tear rolled softly down her smooth right cheek highlighting her luminous brown eyes.

Grimacing with pain he managed to ease himself up to a standing position. He reached out to wipe the tear away but his hand passed through her face. He nearly overbalanced stepping back in shock. His legs were still not working properly.

“You are not here?”

“I am not,” she looked so sad.

“I remember you.”

“That makes me happier,” she smiled a weak smile.

“Where are you? How are you appearing so real before me?”

“There is a device in your back. They call it a ‘Tracker’. I see everything you see and ‘they’ see everything I see.”

He could hear the slight emphasis on ‘they’, “Do you have a ‘Tracker’?”

“No. I am in a tank. They call it a ‘sensory deprivation tank’. I am breathing through a tube.”

“Then how am I seeing you?”

“You are not. I am in your mind. I am being transmitted to you through the ‘Tracker’.”

“I only remember you and the operation on my back. What is happening? What do they want?”

“You will be given instructions, through me, from time to time. Until then I do not know either.”

“Do you know me? Do you remember?”

“Yes. I remember it all.”

He shook his head. There were no memories. He could feel her warmth, her touch light on his skin but there was no name, no location, no time.

There was a small mirror in the bathroom. He tried to see the wound but the operation was too close to his spine to see anything by twisting around. There was no reflection of her in the mirror.

“Perhaps you are a vampire,” he joked with her.

“If I was a vampire I could not look in the mirror and see a reflection so how would I do my hair?” she joked back at him.

“Vampires must be very scruffy individuals,” he considered.

He walked towards the door picking up a bag of golf clubs as he passed the threshold. They seemed very heavy and didn’t rattle or jostle each other when he hefted them onto his shoulder. Instinctively he wanted to rest them down and examine them but he was unable to do so, his feet kept moving him out of the door.

He negotiated the two flights of stairs with some difficulty; his legs were still weak and shaky, carrying the bag of clubs was not helping him.

“How did I get up here? Are you nearby?” he asked of her.

“I do not know. I have no information about where you are now nor do I know how you arrived where you are. I only know where I am and how I came here.”

He stepped out of the door into bright sunlight. No clouds, a warm day.

“I must be a bad person,” he said to her.

“Why do you suppose that?” she replied.

“I am being punished for something.”

“We have no knowledge of that. Perhaps it is that you are being rewarded.”

“You are imprisoned in a tank. That cannot be a good thing.”

“It is not uncomfortable. ‘They’ tell me it will not be for long.”

“Who are ‘they’?” he asked her.

“I do not know that, either.”

“You remember everything.”

“I remember being abducted as were you.”

They lapsed into silence for a while. She walked beside him casting no shadow in the bright sunshine. He was comfortable in her nearness.

He considered her image for a while, “I remember touching you. Your skin is smooth and silky.”

“Thank you. I enjoyed that. You were very gentle.”

Another silence while they basked in each other’s company.

They walked for nearly half an hour, making several turns.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“I know not,” she replied.

“Why are we going this way, then?”

“There is no choice. This is the way ‘they’ wish you to go.”

“Perhaps I should choose a different direction.”

“How will you know it is different? You will go where ‘they’ want you to go.”

“What are we to do when we arrive?”

“How will we know that we have arrived?” she said.

He thought about that. Then he asked her, “Do you know what I am thinking?”

“I am in your mind.”

“Yes. Then?” he frowned, briefly.

“Yes.”

“I must be careful what I’m thinking.”

Her laugh was full and throaty like a mature woman who knows her worth to a man, “You have rude thoughts but they are about me so I am entertained,” she paused for a moment and then said, “We are here.”

“Where? Anywhere is ‘here’ if that is where you are at the time.”

“You must turn left into this doorway and go up the stairs,” she explained.

“If I do not?”

She gazed at the floor for a several moments before looking directly into his eyes, “You will be compelled to do as you are told. If you fail I will be allowed to die.”

“I do not wish to sound cold-hearted but how do I know you are not already dead? How do I know you exist at all? If ‘they’ can block my memories then ‘they’ can insert memories of ‘their’ making. Why do you not tell me who ‘they’ are’?”

“I am real. We are short of time. You must go up to that door and enter.”

He tried to resist. One step away from the door; the pain hit him hard. She screamed, eyes wide with fear. His right leg gave way so that he sank to the ground resting on the golf clubs.

“Sciatica, Mate? My brother was a martyr to it. Want a hand, do you?” a passer-by proffered him an open hand.

He took it and got up, “Thank you. I shall just go and rest in that doorway for a while.”

“Right you are, Mate. Sure you don’t want an ambulance, or something?”

“No, no. I shall be fine. Thank you. You are kind.”

The stranger smiled and walked on.

“We must hurry. Time is short.”

He took a deep breath and entered the door. He was faced with a flight of stairs. His back was still painful. He shifted the clubs to the other side to ease the pressure on the Tracker.

Five flights of stairs. Gasping for breath he stood in front of a locked door.

“I need a drink. I am dehydrating.”

“In the bag. Water. Small pocket at the top contains a key.”

He put the bag down and found the water. Two bottles. He drained one of them in two long draughts and then searched the small pocket. A standard door key, he tried it in the lock. It fitted and turned easily. He went into the room.

It was a small flat. Empty except for rugs, tables and chairs.

“Why did I have to walk here? I could, just as easily, been left here to wake up in the first place.”

“True. They wanted us to become better acquainted.”

“Are we not already acquainted? According to you and ‘their’ version of my memory we were very well acquainted.”

“It is ‘their’ plan. Not mine. You must open the bag.”

He shook his head wondering why he would want golf clubs five floors up from the ground.

He slid out the contents of the bag onto the floor and looked at it with bewilderment.

It was a disassembled half-inch sniper’s rifle with telescopic sights.

“What do I do with this? I have no idea about these things.”

“You do. You were a sharpshooter in the Army. You were—are, an expert.”

“What am I to do with it assuming that I can assemble it?”

“You can assemble it. Then you are to shoot someone.”

He sat back on his haunches, aghast, “Who?”

“It doesn’t matter. You are to do it.”

“You will die if I refuse?”

“Yes.”

“An innocent person will die if I do not refuse?”

“That is not our concern.”

“It is mine. I am faced with a paradox. If you do not exist other than in some specious memory then the threat means nothing and so I will be killing a man for nothing. If you do exist and I kill this man then how do I know that ‘they’ will let you live knowing what you do?”

“The instruction said that ‘they’ would let us go.”

He shook his head, “What does that mean, really?”

The assembled gun was very long. He mounted it on the bipod and took up a prone position with it, surprised at how comfortable and natural it felt.

“So I am a bad person.”

“No. You are a good person.”

“And yet this gun feels, what? Right?” he peered through the sights at a pigeon on a roof some way away, “How can I be a good person if I can use something like this?”

He looked directly at her. She was standing to his right, looking out of the window, thinking. She was so beautiful it took his breath away to see her in that soft light, tantalisingly close and yet so distant from his touch.

“You were....” she started to say and then glanced around fearfully as if someone was threatening her, “You were always good. Always. But you cannot speak out against ‘them’. ‘They’ will catch you and punish you. Somehow ‘they’ always know. ‘They’ will win.”

She looked frightened.

He found himself opening the window. He felt almost robotic as if someone else was operating him by remote control, which they were. His were only minor adjustments to make. ‘They’ would always make the big moves.

He set the gun up on a table by the window so that he had a good view downwards with no view from below of the muzzle. He brought another table up to lie on and put rugs on the table in the hope that they would help to prevent him sliding about although the tables were far from highly polished.

Down below there was a large crowd. There was no great angle on the shot because he could now see that the target zone was around seven hundred metres.

“Seven hundred and eighty four metres from this point to the lectern,” She told him.

“I still have to allow for the drop on the shot,” he told her, hoping that the sights were poorly set. Clearly, there was no time for a sighting shot.

A woman stood at the lectern. Late fifties, perhaps early sixties. Smart, assured, composed.

“Shoot her,” she said.

“Has she spoken out against ‘them’?” he asked.

“I know not.”

He sighted, squeezed. The rifle punched him in the shoulder. The target gasped and held her chest. There was no movement from the crowd for several seconds. The target collapsed behind the lectern, out of his view. Hundreds of eyes turned towards the sound of the shot. Security scrambled.

Agony racked him. He felt warm blood trickling down his back. He was paralysed.

She screamed, “I am dead!” and screamed again.

His memories came flooding back. He saw her face and remembered.

“I love you,” he thought out loud.

An overwhelming blackness engulfed him.

And then there was nothing.