The Shadows Below

Chapter Six

Kasia.

The first thing I'm aware of is the smell of grass, and then the texture. 

I'm no longer naked, but I'm in clothes I don't recognise. I'm alive? Didn't I overdose? I push myself and throw up, but there's nothing there. Finally comes the realisation they've dumped my body in this field to fend for myself. It's dark but as I look around, I can see the sky starting to lighten. 

My head hurts and I'm hungry. They pumped my stomach and my last meal seems like a year ago. But there's another hunger. As though I might die again if I can't get what I need. Something. Something I need desperately and now it seems as though I can't think of anything else but that. I smell something - did I smell that last night? When they put that goo on my nose, and it settled, that new smell came to me. It was strange and it's strange now and I can't think of where it might be coming from. But I need it. And that need scares me now, but my wanting overrides that fear and gets me moving to where the smell is stronger and stronger.

I see the animal in front of me, giving off that smell, a small part of my mind - getting smaller by the minute, reminding me it's a cow. It's munching calmly on grass but I can see the cut on its neck and then I feel sick again. Reason returns, if just for a moment. They did this. Knowing what I would need. A voice in my head - me, but not me 'Now'. Now the need and the want are fused and I have lost control. And the last few steps I don't even notice taking before I'm there and I'm drinking in something I don't want to name, can't name but it's there and in my mouth. 

The pain is gone in an instant. I'm gone too, there is another me in my mind and all there is, is rage and more blood. A prick on my own neck and way too quickly, I'm blacking out again.

X

'Welcome back.'

Someone cleaned the blood off and the voice in the back of my mind is gone but I'm still in the same truck as Marion Hardcastle. We're moving, no clue as to where.

Well, different because I'm seated in an actual seat. Restraints are back.

'What the fuck did you do to me?'

'Language. As I said before, I have a list of names to remove. And the method of their removal is required to be violent and brutal enough to throw the suspicion onto someone else.'

'What happens when 'someone else' fesses up?'

'Doubtful. And there are a few of them to share the blame. You will be travelling with a contingent of soldiers, selected for recent actions that would otherwise see them dishonourably discharged.' I recognise my new clothes then, it's an army uniform, but I don't recognise the insignia.

Marion sees me looking at the uniform. 'You should fit right in.'

'I wasn't dishonourably discharged. It was more akin to a respectful resigning.'

'Oh, silly me, it must have been some other couple that had an affair.'

'Neither I nor her were married. You should really start revising a dictionary.'

A short chuckle but it's not much of a victory as she continues, 'Your records have been wiped, if you try to escape, you will be without identification and will have to try for refugee status. I doubt you'll have that consultant position then.'

She pulls out something from her purse, a plastic vial with some clear liquid in it. 'This is your new medication, to silence that voice you heard. A secondary personality, triggered by the ingestion of what you drank last night.'

'You weren't very far away then.'

'I didn't need to be close to see, knowing what I had been told.' Her eyes glinted and I wonder if her aunt had that same glint.