The Farm, elapsed time : unknown.
"Come on, wake up," said a voice, echoing and distant as if from a great height. Libra tried to ignore the voice and go back to sleep, but someone was patting his cheek ...
Libra opened his eyes. His hand shot out to restrain the gentle hand patting him. Libra regretted the rash action, because his whole body felt like one big bruise. Libra groaned, tried to rise. The face of young Brummie girl Anna Dawson smiled down on him, and Libra felt gentle hands restraining him.
"What was that?" he asked. "Another interrogation?"
Anna shook her head. "Another failed escape attempt," she replied. "Your third."
"How far did I get?"
"The elevators," Anna replied, "before Michaels and a couple of the others managed to take you down. You're hurt because they had to subdue you by force."
"Michaels came after me?" Libra asked.
"Yeah, he was the one who landed the punch on you that brought you down," Anna replied, with a smile. "You were magnificent. Todmorden and Williams are still in the infirmary."
"The other guards?" Libra said. Anna nodded. "That's another two down," he said, relaxing with a grim smile.
"And you still have your teeth," Anna said.
"That," Libra said, rubbing his jaw, "is a bloody miracle."
"Hold still," Anna said, laying on her hands to Libra's chest. As warm fire began to fill Libra's body, accelerating the healing process, the young brunette smiled. "They just let me in to change your sheets. They don't know that we can do this shit yet ..."
Some time later, after Libra had been given enough time to recuperate, Smudge visited Libra in his cell. Libra, for his part, feigned continued injury even though the treatment he'd been given by Anna had led to his complete recovery in a matter of hours.
"Sorry, old friend," he said. "You've got to spend a bit of time in isolation for this. We can't allow the inmates to start thinking they have a chance of getting out of here."
"How much time?" Libra asked, as three guards came into the room to lead him off.
Smudge shrugged. "Until you learn to cooperate," he said.
Isolation was one floor below the main detention area; a dark, bare circle hewn out of the local rock, lit by spotlights, with six isolation cells equally spaced around the perimeter.
Libra's cell was number three. Callously, the guards shoved Libra into the square cell, slammed the door shut. The magnetic lock automatically activated with a hefty sounding snap.
Instantly, the lights in the cell dropped to half power, leaving Libra stumbling around the cramped cell.
"Damn it," Libra said, calling on his gift of clear sight to make the darkness go away. He glanced around the bare grey room, taking in the single bunk at the far end. The room had seen occupation: it stank of male and female urine and other wastes, as well as other, older, scents: the scents of old death, of walking beast, of strange reality barely contained.
This cell had been used before, to contain ... others.
Libra sat down on the bunk, stared at the door for a while, and waited.
After a moment, there was a shimmering to his left. He turned, faced the entity, scowled.
"Thought you'd eventually find me here," Libra told the strange thing before him. "Who, what the hell are you, and why have you been bugging me?"
There was silence from the glowing thing. Libra focused his sight on it more closely, trying to glean more information from it ...
It's me, said the voice in his head. Libra put his hand to his temple, frowned.
"What the hell?" he started.
Don't be afraid, the voice replied. I am here to help you.
"You're a Thing, something nobody else can see, even with the sight, and you want to help me," Libra said. "How can you do that? What kind of a Thing are you?"
I know it's hard to believe, said the voice, but I am not like other Things. I have been touched by the Messengers. I am one of you.
"Bollocks," Libra said. "I've never heard one of us do what you're doing. Prove it. Show me what you look like, for real."
All right, then, said the thing. A moment later, it was fully visible, and Libra could see its face. A face which smiled.
Remember me? it said.
Libra stared at the shimmering, insubstantial shape, his jaw dropping as he recognised who the face belonged to. "Shiiit ..." he said.
So, said the shimmering Thing, what do you think of Red Sector's crowd?
"You know about Red and Blue Sector?" Libra asked.
Of course, replied the shimmer.
"And how would that be?"
I was once an inmate.
"Bloody hell," Libra said. "How'd you get out?"
It was difficult, the shimmer said. I only managed because I have abilities and knowledge you do not possess. You cannot use the same tricks to escape that I did. You will need to come up with your own escape route.
"Great," Libra said, sacrastically.
However, I can feed you with knowledge to assist you, the shimmer said.
"What sort of knowledge?" Libra asked.
Tactical information, the shimmer said. Knowledge I can discover, while I am in this form.
"Ah, yes," Libra said, "which brings me to my next question. How, exactly, can you sustain yourself in 'this form?' How can you be what you say you are, and do ... this?
I wish I knew, the person said. I was wandering through town one day, three years back or so, and suddenly there was this huge, booming roar in my head. There was this ... Thing at the other end of the street, and two men standing in its path, totally ignorant. I tried to move, to get to them to let them know that they were in danger. I couldn't move. All I could do was yell at them.
Bloody Hell, how was I to know they were Sais?
"Sais?" Libra said. "Oh. English. Like me."
Yes, the spirit said. I yelled at them in Welsh. I had no idea. It's like the balancers. There's no way of telling who's a balancer from one of the normals, is there?
"Balancer?"
Like you, the spirit said. Touched by the Messengers.
Libra shrugged. Imbued, chosen ... now balancers. What's in a name? A rose is a rose, and all of that. "Go on," he said.
But then, suddenly, I felt that I could ... just tell them ... without speaking, the spirit said. So I just ... spoke the words in my head. One of the two men turned to see this Thing, and ... and he woke up, kind of like you did, all that time ago.
"He became imbued," Libra said. "And the other?"
He turned, following his mate; he saw; and ... he froze. The spirit shook its head. The Thing went for the second one. The first one did something, and suddenly the Thing was sent flying from them both, but not before the second man had been seriously injured. The spirit looked downcast for a moment. He died, you know.
"And the one who became imbued? A ... balancer?"
One of the first inmates here, the spirit said. Along with me. He glanced around. He died here, trying to escape.
"Why couldn't you help him?" Libra asked. "Why did you get away, where he did not?"
He didn't believe me, the spirit said, when I told him ... what I could do.
Libra shook his head. "Were you capable of doing what you did when you dropped by my end of town last year? When we were following those hitchhikers?"
Oh yes, the spirit replied. I never told you my name, now, did I?
"No, you didn't."
I'm not surprised, the spirit said. DS Croft and DS Brennan never knew how I know so much about what's going on. They think I've got some really good connections in the Welsh underworld or something.
"The Taffia?" Libra quipped.
Something like that, the spirit said, seemingly unaware of the sarcasm. I occasionally help them out when they've got problems with ... well, animal control. This is the big problem with the part of the world you're in, you see, he added. North Wales is werewolf country.
Smudge stood in front of the viewscreen, watching as his superior shuffled the printout he'd just emailed through to Whitehall.
"It's all in there," Smudge said.
"H'mm. I dare say it is," the elderly minister replied, laconically. "Are you certain this Stewart is all he's cracked up to be? I have his psychiatric evaluation, you know." The minister tapped a manila folder to his left. "It makes for some very interesting reading."
"I've read my copy," Smudge said. "However, I also accessed his more recent medical documents, and it appears that he had been turning it all around, getting on top of things before he ... before whatever it is happened to him."
"Are you certain that it isn't some sort of bizarre side effect of GWS?" the minister said.
"No, sir," Smudge replied. "Our covert DNA specimen taken after his return home in 1992 showed no genetic alterations. We recently did a full body workup on him. The markers are the same. Whatever is affecting him, it doesn't leave any traces in his DNA."
"How about those possessed people we sent down to you in November last year?" the minister said. "How did the inmates react when they were allowed to mix?"
"Predictably," Smudge replied. "There seem to be two camps among the ... the self - styled chosen. One side wanted to reach out, try to understand the victims ... and the others just wanted to torch them."
"Let me guess ... Red Sector fancied the barbecue," the minister said.
"Yes," Smudge said.
"And the genetic damage to the victims?"
"That's the strange thing," Smudge replied. "The damage was not physical there, either. But it was psychological ... as if someone had tried on a leotard two sizes too small for them, and then left it lying around, all stretched like."
"And is there evidence of the same psychological damage among the current inmates?"
"No sir, not as such," Smudge replied. "Apart from ... well, apart from Inmate 23, of course, and ..." He glanced around nervously.
"Inmate Five," the minister said, ominously.
"Yes sir," said Smudge. "Inmate Five."
"So where is Inmate Five right now?"
"Isolation," replied Smudge.
"Where Libra is now."
"Yes."
"Interesting ..."
"Red Sector are very ... impulsive," Libra said. "Anna Dawson's all right. But Karen Whittaker, she's ..."
Hot headed? Emrys' spirit said.
"Very," Libra replied. "She's in charge right now," he added. "Took over after Walter died."
Walter's dead? Emrys said, dismayed.
"Ah, so you don't know everything," Libra said.
No, I don't, Emrys said, sadly. Walter was all right. He'd only just arrived when I made my escape bid. He was a good man. At least, being around him made the noise tolerable.
"Noise?"
I'll tell you about it later, Emrys said, hurriedly. So, who else is there?
"Kevin Jones, Michael Pollard, Nigel Hughes, Gavin Clarke, Teri Butler and Toni Daly, as well as Anna Dawson and Karen Whittaker, of course. Nobody new since I arrived," Libra said. "And in Blue Sector, we've got James Worthing, Timothy Davies, Alex Pritchard, Wendy Clixby, and of course the Sacred Trust."
Are they still there? Emrys said.
"Yep, all three," Libra replied. "Mary Chesters, Joanna Cagney and Mother Superior herself."
Anastace Deveraux, Emrys breathed, his voice barely a whisper.
"A formidable woman," Libra said. "I've seen chosen put on a light show - one of mine is actually well known for it - but I have never seen light blaze from anyone like I saw it blaze from Anastace."
So she's still putting on God's Own Lightshow to keep the proles in line, Emrys said.
"She makes a weekly ritual of it," Libra said. "She says it keeps Red Sector's 'malicious intentions' at bay, but I really think it's Mary Chesters who does that."
With the thing she does ... everyone suddenly feeling like they're stoned, or drugged, Emrys said. I felt that, once. It was strange. Michaels tried to raise a hand to hurt me, but he couldn't even lift a finger in anger.
"Freaky," Libra said. "Something to remember to take into account, for my next escape attempt."
How many are there? Emrys asked.
"Those are all the people I know of," Libra said. "Apart from the guards, and Smudge of course."
So that's sixteen, then, Emrys said. Something in his voice ... a little too nervous ...
"The strange thing is," Libra said, "everyone's got different numbered jumpsuits - mine's 42 - but there are huge gaps in the numbering. There's no five, six or seven, no numbers between sixteen and twenty three, and the numbers kind of stop after twenty seven. I'm the first number after twenty seven. So there must have been forty one inmates, and I'm number forty two. So where are the missing numbers?"
Dead, Emrys said. I was there. I was twenty three. Trust me, you do not want to know what happened to the rest.
"I think I do," Libra said.
Emrys looked at Libra, shook his head. Maybe I'll tell you, he said. But right now, I have to go. I'll be back tomorrow.
"But -" Libra said. Too late. The spirit was gone, and Libra was alone.
"What the hell," Libra said, reclining on his bunk. "Weird spirits, rogue coppers, and I'm stuck in the bloody Village like Patrick McGoohan, only the inmates are all bloody nuts." He looked down at his jumpsuit, and the number 42 on his chest. "Figures."
By: Fiat Knox
Copyright © Fiat Knox, 2001