The Farm, elapsed time : unknown.
For a time, Greg did nothing. Just sat on the edge of the bench - cum - bed in the featureless room.
Food was brought in for him by a figure in a hospital surgical gown, her face masked, her hands protected by latex surgical gloves, disposable paper surgical galoshes around her shoes. The figure said nothing, merely brought in the food on a tray, placed it on the table, backed out.
A huge black man in military fatigues stood behind her the whole time she was in the room. He was armed with an assault rifle: the barrel of the rifle was trained steadily on Greg from the moment the orderly entered the room.
Greg refused to rise to the challenge, of course, and duly ate the food: bangers and mash and a steaming mug of tea, served in a disposable plastic cup. Plates, mug, utensils and tray were made of soft plastic: blunt and harmless.
The tea was a familiar blend: Greg recognised Yorkshire Tea's distinctive flavour at once. He didn't react outwardly: nor did he respond outwardly when he remembered that his casserole had been left on. It was probably a pile of burnt, dry greasy crap on the bottom of the crockpot by now.
Afterwards, after sufficient time had elapsed that Greg recognised that he had not been drugged by the food or the drink, he returned to the bench and sat down on the edge once again.
Soon, he felt the telltale signs of fatigue: he must have been up for hours, and it was past his bedtime. Greg shrugged, lay down on the bench and closed his eyes, just to rest them.
Natural sleep followed. And so did the nightmare.
The elements of the dream were all there: the desert, the long line of Iraqi soldiers marching one abreast, their weapons pointing down in surrender.
Greg turned, looked at the men in the dip below the dunes. Behind them was a large concrete building, which now lay gutted: the men were loading crates into US Army trucks.
They were all from Greg's detachment. Smudge was one of them. Greg watched as Greg looked up at him, gestured for him to lend a hand getting one of the crates into the back of the nearest truck.
Smudge called him Peck. He always did.
And then, a flash of light low on the horizon ...
When Greg got up, he was sweating again. This time, he remembered more of the nightmare. He remembered the ground around them suddenly erupting in a cloud of sand and fire. A huge wind came up from the epicentre of the blast, picked him up bodily, flung him into the air.
The wind felt like a blast from the Messengers.
Greg shook his head to clear it.
The figure sitting at the table cleared his throat. Greg turned around, startled, to see who the man was.
They'd darkened the room: the man was backlit, a faint chiaroscuro effect casting his face into shadow. Libra tensed, prepared to activate his night vision.
Something Astraea said, some time ago, swam into his forebrain. A few weeks back, she'd been giving him lessons in real night fighting, blindfolded, out in a field round the back of her home at midnight; an arena where she had the advantage of long experience.
"Don't rely on your edges," she'd told him. "I'll bet that's what sends us all round the bend: we grow to depend upon them, on the rush of power we get when we turn them on. Don't let the Messengers pick your fights for you."
He kept his night vision suppressed. But he did turn on the State of Grace, the self - control, just in case he was now under some sort of influence.
He sensed nothing extraordinary: no unusual influences, no unwanted guests in the room. The chap at the desk remained stubbornly normal. Greg got up, stood, faced the figure.
"By the terms of the Geneva Convention," he began, "I am entitled to tell you only that I am ex - Major Gregory Malpas Stewart (Retired), and my serial number, which used to be ..."
"Don't worry about telling me your security number, Peck," said the figure with a wave of his hand. "I already know it from long acquaintance."
Greg sat down at the sound of the voice. "Who the hell are you?" he asked the man, as he tried to figure out whose voice it was. It was so familiar, but he couldn't quite place it ...
And then the realisation dawned, as did recognition, and horror and puzzlement. He got up, stumbled across to the table. "You called me Peck," he said. "There's only one man I ever allowed call me that, but it can't be him ... he died back in '91. So who the fuck are you?"
The figure reached for his face, removed something. There was a green glow around his eyes; Greg realised that the man was wearing some sort of night vision goggles. "I heard you could see in the dark," he said. "We've got surveillance tapes, taken under nightvision filters, of you manoevuring in the dark as if it was daylight ... and not a sign of any sort of enhancement. Still beats me how you do that. I always remembered you had good night vision, but it was never that good ..."
Greg reached the table, peered at the spook. The shadowed individual sighed. "Lights," he said. The room brightened, and Greg nearly stumbled back from the table as the face became clearly visible for the first time.
"It's me, old friend," said the Government spook in the cheap grey suit. "Your old mate Smudge."
"I remember the night you died," Greg said. "Or was that all staged for my benefit?"
"I'd received an offer for a ... promotion," Smudge said. "I had to give up my old life, start afresh with a new name, a new identity and a clearance so many levels above Top Secret that the Queen doesn't know we exist." He shrugged. "Nice to see you made good use of your share," he said.
Greg remained poker - faced. "How'd you know about that?" he asked.
"All the survivors made good with their share of the loot," Smudge replied. "All those who survived what followed, that is. A few of the others got cocky, flashed their cash around, ended up dead. You know how it is."
"I know," Greg said. "How many are left?"
"Out of seven of us?" Smudge said.
Greg nodded.
"You're looking at all of the survivors," Smudge replied. "You and me ... and I can't do anything about my share, either, now I'm dead, if you know what I mean."
Greg nodded. "This conversation is not under surveillance," he stated. "You wouldn't be so open otherwise." He pulled up the only other chair, sat down facing Smudge. "The ... bloody thing we did ..."
"Yeah," Smudge replied. "And we swore we'd never get cocky, never expose ourselves afterwards. We swore to drop out, go underground, just get out of the whole thing and retire gracefully. Remember that?"
"I remember," Greg said.
"So, then," Smudge said, "what the fuck is all this Libra bollocks then? Why have you started coming on like some great terrorist leader all of a sudden?" Smudge leaned forwards. "What happened to you in November 2000? What's it all about then, eh?"
Greg sat back, stone faced. He had nothing to say.
Interesting, mused the observing spirit peering over Libra's shoulder. A moment later, and the spirit's presence was gone.
Libra felt the change, glanced around. Nothing.
"I thought we weren't being monitored," Libra said.
"We're not," replied Smudge.
"All the same ..." Libra said, glancing around the room once again.
The studio was dark when Emrys returned to his body. He opened his eyes, focussed them on the dark and gloomy studio.
"Oh, thank God," he said, a moment later, clutching his head. "Another minute, and ..."
He stumbled up out of his favourite chair, went over to the sink across the room. He had to push aside his easel to get to the sink, and to the aspirins and the water jug which had been placed there.
This was a ritual Emrys had perfected since the Change. The remoteness of the aspirins and the jug forced him to get up out of his chair, before his joints locked or something equally painful happened.
He hated doing this, but someone had to be informed about The Farm, and the only way Emrys was going to be satisfied with the intelligence thus gathered was if he recorded it in every detail.
Around the sink were Emrys' most famous paintings, propped up against cupboards or lying flat on the floor. All were gathering dust: they hadn't been viewed at a public hanging for years: a situation which predated the Change, when he'd had his first breakdown.
The curtains in the studio were shut, but it was pitch black outside, almost 1am. Emrys had been reconnoitering the Farm that day since about eleven, and he felt like shit.
Not only were the noises he heard in proximity to the imbued or monsters giving him grief: the prolonged sitting in one position had a tendency to cause his body to seize up on returning, unless he did something physical immediately his consciousness was back in his body.
Emrys presumed that this stiffness was part of the noises, a terrifying side effect. The first time it had hit, Emrys had been stuck in one place for three hours, his joints locked, soiling himself uncontrollably until the sun came up.
It was only after Emrys had drained the water jug and swallowed the aspirins that he turned to look at the easel, half - shrouded in the darkness. Beside the sink was the studio light: Emrys turned the dimmer switch, and light gradually increased in the studio,
The likenesses of Libra and Smudge, sketched in charcoal on cartridge paper, were uncannily accurate. Somehow, Emrys had been able to draw the image on the easel whilst he had been sojourning at The Farm.
Sitting at the easel with a box of charcoal sticks and a blank sheet of paper was Emrys' way of activating whatever it was he did when he went sojourning: and there was usually something interesting on the canvas on his return.
Over the head of Libra was a symbol of hunter code: balanced scales. The image made Emrys' eyes blur with pain just looking at it. This was the same with every chosen or creature he had spied upon; each had a hunter symbol of some kind over their head, identifying them as either some type of balancer, or some type of monster.
Most normal people didn't have symbols over them, apart from one or two, whom Emrys had occasionally spotted on his sojourns: people who'd heard the Call, yet had done nothing about it. Emrys liked those people: they didn't trigger the noises in his head.
Emrys removed the sketch, looked at it once more, and took it across the room to another chamber, just off the studio. There, carefully hidden in a small cupboard, was Emrys' other portfolio - all of his intelligence concerning the Farm.
As Emrys placed the new sketch into a portfolio folder, a whisper seemed to enter his ear, as if someone were whispering a few inches from his ear:
ALMOST TIME.
Emrys glanced up and around at the Message he had received. Then he completed his task, closed up the cupboard door, sighed and headed off to bed. Time to mount bold rescues another day.
Hopefully.
By: Fiat Knox
Copyright © Fiat Knox, 2001