Manipulator by Thom Parsons Page A

Owen said to the man who was now quickly hurrying away, clipboard in hand ready to perform whatever it was that he did here. Owen, followed by the other two members of his team moved in the direction that the young man had pointed out and headed down the corridor. He counted the doors off as he moved, finally coming up to the one that he was looking for.
    It was exactly how he expected it to be. Empty.
    The huge private room before them was fairly spacious, and more importantly, concealed from the corridor which they had just entered the room through. The last thing that Owen needed were windows from which prying eyes could look through to see what was happening. Also to his benefit, there were adequate seating arrangements as well as plenty of worktop space for Nick to set up his laptop and electronics. A perfect makeshift base.
    He dropped the duffel bag off on the floor at the far end of the room, well out of the way of the doors and the bed. Kate and Nick followed his lead and did the same. If Marcus was going to be brought in here soon, Owen didn’t want to get in the way of the doctors and the nurses doing their jobs.
    Time to set it up.
    Nick began to show Kate how to set up some of the portable PRoGRaM equipment, and knowing that he wasn’t going to be much help, Owen just steered clear of the two of them. Instead, he just paced slowly around the private room that they were in. Once again, he let himself daydream.
    There was a time not so long ago when I was in a room just like this… He thought, as he drifted off into a not so distant memory…
    “Mr Archer, how are you feeling?” a deep voice nearby asked him.
    Owen opened his mouth and tried to talk, but his entire body ached, right down to his vocal chords. He lay there with his eyes closed in a room filled with silence. Gradually, he summoned the strength from deep within him to say just one word.
    He moved his head to face the direction that the deep voice had spoken to him from. “Annie,” he whispered back, hurting all over as he said this one word. The vibration from his vocal chord sent a shockwave of pain which rippled through his body, forcing him to open his eyes.
    “Mr Archer? What do you remember?” the deep voice asked him. This time, Owen could see the man who was speaking to him. He was a forty year old man with a solid jawline and short cropped black hair. The eyes that were hidden behind the man’s thin glasses were terrifying, and were studying Owen intently from the foot of the bed. He wore a long white doctors coat and around his neck hung a stethoscope. He looked nothing like a Doctor, but Owen didn’t judge on appearances. Regardless of how this man looked, this was the guy that was trying to save his life.
    Mentally, he tried to will together his most recent memories, but even this caused him agony. “In the car,” Archer started to say, speaking in slow, short sentences, feeling pain every time he opened his mouth. “Annie was driving. There was a man. At the side of the road. He had a gun. A hostage. An Execution. I saw him. He had a black mask or bag over his head, and there was a man behind him, but he had his hood up… holding a gun…”
    Consciousness left him. He was pushing himself too far, too fast.
    Darkness surrounded Owen. How much time has passed now? His eyes flickered. Archer could feel himself slipping to and fro, in and out of consciousness, hearing voices talking around him echo in his head. He felt like he was floating, stuck inside a void in his own mind. He finally managed to open his eyes once again, only to see the same doctor that had been treating him earlier looking over some charts from the bottom of his hospital bed.
    “Mr Archer?” the doctor asked, assessing whether or not he was conscious. As Owen locked looked up, he locked his eyes with the doctor’s, giving the man the answer that he was looking for. He walked around the bed to Owen and then sat himself down at the side of him. Suddenly,