chapter 4

Darcy woke up suddenly feeling a sense of panic and distress, looking around her new surroundings wondering where she was. She thought about the train, the explosion, and worst of all, the people. Had they all died?

  The room was brightly lit with a large window allowing brilliant rays of sunshine to burst into the open space. Two machines sat next to each other, wires coming out from the sides, that were stuck to Darcy’s arm and chest, which made a

continuous pulsing sound with each beat. She was sitting on a long bed surrounded by a curtain and a single door that was shut and had

a tiny window.

  Darcy went to lift her arms but all she heard was the sound of metal clanging against metal, and her arms resisted any movement. Looking down, she saw two metallic handcuffs wrapped around her wrists secured to the railings of the bed. Puzzled, she tried again, but her arms refused to move from the restraint.

A man in a white overcoat then walked into the room. He said nothing and just looked at Darcy. He had grey silver hair, a tall physique, small hands that held a clipboard and the other held a pen. There was a logo on his coat and a name badge positioned underneath, which Darcy tried to read but her eyes went in and out of focus as she stared at his name tag. He just stood there writing down something on his clipboard, the pen lightly moving along the page as he occasionally glanced up and continued writing.

  ‘Where I am?’ muttered Darcy, getting her words muddled.

The man quickly looked up but ignored her and carried on writing.

She asked again, ‘Where am I?’

This time he stopped writing, turned around, and left the room, leaving the door open after his exit. Which then allowed a large man, wearing a police uniform to walk in followed by a female Officer who had golden blond hair, tucked nearly under a police hat. She stood by the door and the male Officer walked up to Darcy and looked at her.

  ‘Where am I? Please tell me,’ Darcy asked, slightly frustrated that nobody was telling her.

  ‘You’re in the hospital.’ he responded, looking at her with complete contempt. His voice was low and deep and he spoke with an accent Darcy did not recognize. Maybe Spanish or perhaps Italian.

  ‘What happened?’ Darcy eyes were still out of focus and she strained to see what their names were. This time the female Officer stepped forward and spoke, calmly and slowly, ‘You blew up a passenger train. Do you not remember?’

  ‘No,’ yelled Darcy. ‘It wasn’t me. I tried to warn you.’

  ‘Yeah. Warn us after you’d already left the bomb on the train. Maybe a guilty conscience.’ The female Officer was no longer calm and you could hear the sarcasm in her voice.

  ‘No! It wasn’t me,’ pleaded Darcy. ‘You don’t understand. It wasn’t me.’

  ‘Save it,’ interrupted the male Officer. ‘You can think about it as you rot in prison.’

  ‘One hundred people died because of you,’ said the female Officer.

Darcy looked numb. She had killed all those people, the mother and her little girl with the pigtails, the man, and his friend, and of course the Senator. Tears started to roll down her cheeks at the thought of what had happened. One hundred dead.

  The two Officers looked at her and despite the tears, remained emotionless and angry. Darcy’s actions had killed people and she would face justice.

  Finally wiping the tears, she sniffed a little and regained her composure. Darcy knew it was not her who blew up the train. But the police wouldn’t understand, no matter how hard she tried to explain, no one would believe she was from the future and was being controlled to carry out the bombing.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked the female Officer holding up an x-ray.

Darcy rubbed her eyes and starred at the image. The black and white shadow was from Darcy’s head and spine and a dark object was visible on the base of her spine.

  ‘The doctors found a burn on the back of your neck and after taking an x-ray found this,’ he said, pointing to the dark image on the x-ray.

  ‘I don’t know,’ stammered Darcy. ‘I think it’s a device to make me do things.’ It sounded ridiculous, but she said it anyway.

  ‘Do things?’ asked the slender female. She pulled off her hat and allowed her blond hair to fall to her shoulders.

  ‘I don’t know,’ repeated Darcy. ‘I don’t know how it works. Someone put it there and it makes me do stuff.’

  ‘Right.’ Darcy could hear the sarcasm in his voice. ‘You’re telling us that someone did this to you and what you did yesterday wasn’t your fault?’

  ‘Exactly. I’m from the fu…’ she stopped, realizing that she was about to say, from the future, which sounded stupid.

  ‘Sorry, you’re from where?’

She just shook her head and looked down, awkward and unsure what to do or say next. The room was dimming a little as the sun became obscured by clouds, filling the sky with dark grey shapes.

  ‘We’ll be back. The doctors wants to look at you and check you over. Then it’s the lockup for you.’ The male Officer stepped forward and rattled her handcuffs.

  ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ he finished with a smile. Then they both turned around and left the room, leaving Darcy alone wondering what she was going to do.

  She watched as they talked to a uniformed Officer who was stationed outside the door, and he waved after they disappeared down the corridor.

The machine next to her beeped twice followed by a flashing light and a hiss released clear liquid down a tube straight to her arm. She felt the liquid run though her veins, warming her bloodstream but also numbing her senses and removing any pain she felt. Her headache quickly disappeared and the tingling on the back of her neck vanished. Her eyes then dropped slowly at first, then with a heavy fall, shut completely and Darcy drifted off into a deep sleep.

Don't worry Alice, Wonderland is better when you are completely Lost.

I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.

If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there.

While asleep, Darcy was dreaming about Alice. She remembered that her mother had not read this classic book to her, but the story was still there, lodged into her mind and she now felt like Alice, in Wonderland, lost and feeling different.

  The morphine had completely numbed her entire body and removed any pain she was feeling, but she was also hallucinating, floating on clouds, dancing through the air and her brain jumped between various thoughts. She was thinking about what had happened to her, imagining Alice talking to the Cheshire cat and Control torturing her and asking her to do things. She kept saying no, crying out to the dark figures as they laughed and sent jolts of electricity into her. She then floated off on to another cloud, this time falling off and tumbling to the ground, and the Mad Hatter giggled and ran off into the woods. Wait.

Her mind then continued to flash disjointed thoughts; colours swirling, images popping up and disappearing quickly. In the distance, she saw a thin outline, a shadow of a person and then it was replaced by the Queen of Hearts, shouting, ’Off with her head,’ over and over. The Queen vanished and the shadow was back, closer this time, repeating what the Queen from Alice would say, and Darcy felt like her head had fallen off.

  In the bleak landscape stood a derelict house, crumbling and barely standing. She pretended it was her home when she was a girl. She wanted so badly to believe she was playing outside, wearing a breathing mask to avoid the contaminated air and her father was chopping down what little wood he could find.

  Her mind flickered on and she was now kneeling

beside her mother. The pale woman looked at Darcy as tears ran down her face, squeezing the small girl’s hand and taking her last breath. This surreal state that Darcy was in felt like riding a violently rollercoaster, sending her up and down, round and round and she was completely unaware of her surroundings, while the clear liquid kept her sedated and pain free.

She was also completely unaware of the man who had just walked into her room, dressed in medical clothes, blue scrubs and a floral cap, with a name tag clipped to his lapel. A metallic stethoscope swung from his neck as he shut the door quietly behind him and walked up to the two machines that beeped. He had a large black eye, along with a few bruises that were visible on his face, which had led to an awkward conversation with the deputy who stood outside guarding the room.

  ‘Hey Doc,’ he had said, watching the surgeon walk up to Darcy’s room. The man had frozen before entering, not sure what to say in reply. He looked at the Officer and offered a quick ‘hey’ back. But the Policeman carried on talking.

  ’That’s quite a shiner you’ve got there.’ Again the Doctor did not know what to say, just a blunt ‘yes it is’, leaving the officer waiting for further explanation about the facial injury.

  ‘How you’d get it?’ he asked, prompting a response.

The doctor looked at him with a blank expression, until he finally answered.

  ‘Oh. It was a patient. Lost control and took a hit at me.’ He looked away hoping to escape and quickly stepped into the room shutting the door behind him.

  Now standing at Darcy’s bedside, the Doctor quickly pulled out a syringe from his pocket and swirled the green liquid around the holder, spraying a small amount from the end of the needle. He then injected the fluid into the tube that hung from the morphine bag. The machine beep before releasing a small dose of morphine to help with the pain relief and the green liquid joined the travelling fluid as it journeyed down the tube, into Darcy’s arm and then flowed around her body. The Doctor quickly pocketed the injection, flicked a switch on the unit and left the room, disappearing down the corridor without a word

to the young Officer who watched with a puzzled face.

  The green liquid reacted almost immediately, sending Darcy into a frenzied state, causing her body to move violently. Still in a dreamy world, she started to shake, ever so slightly at first. Yet, as more and more of her body became infected, the more she started to convulse, the more she started to lose control. Her heart rate then increased, the cuffs rattled against the railings, and she juddered, lifting off the mattress and crashing down onto the soft foam..   Normally the heart monitor would have reacted to an elevated rate, alerting medical staff to a possible cardiac arrest, but no sound came from the machine. The only sound was Darcy’s body hitting the soft mattress.

The Officer was oblivious to what was going on in the room and stopped when a large man with sandy hair approached to peer through the window.

  ‘Help you?’ said the Officer, hand by his side, cradling his pistol.

Pete peered through the small window of the door and then thumped the door open as he shouted in horror at the Officer.

  ‘Call help, now!’ he screamed, bursting into the room watching as Darcy trembled and shuddered. The Officer shot into the room and panicked by what he saw. Pete repeated for him get help, rushing over to Darcy’s side trying to figure out what was going on.

  The Officer almost tripped over himself, diving out of the room and running down the corridor shouting at any medical staff he could find.

  Pete gathered up the tube that run from the machine and examined it, watching her body shake and jerk. Green liquid was trickling down the tube.

  Two doctors and a nurse suddenly burst into the room, dragging a crash unit with a defibrillator behind them. In one swift motion the nurse ushered Pete out of the room and the Doctors shouted orders and shook Darcy with the unit. The machine was displaying a very faint pulse, barely beeping, but shot up after the shock, and then quickly dropped to an extremely low beat again.

  The Doctor repeated his orders and the paddles were placed on her chest and a blast of electricity was sent through her body. Her pulse jumped up, the machine beeped louder, but it

dropped again. The process was repeated, this time the voltage was increased and both Doctors watched the monitor, until Darcy’s pulse finally resumed a steady beat. Her body was still shaking, not violently, but twitching uncontrollable. The nurse reacted by quickly removing the tube from Darcy’s arm and injecting her directly in the thigh, with something she had pulled out from a drawer. The shaking stopped immediately.

  Pete and the young Officer had been watching from the doorway, both their faces showed concern, but for different reasons. The deputy then turned to Pete.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked, with a cautious look.

As quick as a flash, Pete told him he was a lawyer and would be representing Darcy, hoping the young man wouldn’t ask to see any identification. He seemed to buy it and nodded.

  ‘You know what she did?’ he asked Pete, the Lawyer.

  ‘Yes I do, but I’m not here to judge.’

  ‘But she killed all those people. They’re saying over hundred died in the explosion.’ The Officer was clearly distressed by this and the tone in his voice was one of anger.

  ‘Everyone deserves a fair trial.’

  ‘I guess so,’ stammered the Officer. ‘But I don’t think she’s going to be much help,’ pointing to Darcy and the group of medical staff around her.

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Pete, walking away from the room. ‘I’ll be back shortly,’ waving his hand in the air and disappearing into the distance.