Rewired: Project Insula

Chapter 6

It had been around 15 minutes since Meera spoke to her parents and in that time, she had managed the sole job of removing her smartglasses. She still sat cross legged on her living room floor, hair tied into a frenzied bun of dark wire, wearing nothing but a rather large jumper; the sleeves hanging ragged over her fingers.

She sat in silence, staring down at the floor; the only noise coming softly from her TV which lit up the small room in a white glow.

She felt braindead, although she didn't realise that's how she felt, because she couldn't realise anything at this point in time.

Speaking with her parents was hard. Seeing them worry and panic made her situation feel even more serious and her even more afraid.

Afraid of what, she didn't know, but hearing them beg her to come and stay with them in India was not within their nature.

“Please come and stay with us Meera. You will be safe here, not a target.” Meera's father had told her sternly.

Meera wanted to explain how the attack wasn't targeted towards anybody, but then she realised she would have to try and explain why the attack happened in the first place.

She had at least concluded that it had something to do with her instinct to follow the security men back at the Hospital, the men Rhys had wanted her to leave.

“Don't get your hopes up” was the line that kept recurring in her head, spoken almost cryptically from her mind's version of the Rhys she was currently conjuring in her brain. This would often distort into a disgusting and mangled image of him, stood smiling at her, with no eyes and sharp teeth.

“It was my fault. If I had just done what he had said, neither of us would be in this mess” She said to herself through gritted teeth, after seeing grotesque mental recreations of Rhys's death.

“No.” She replied to herself angrily. “Always thinking about yourself”

She shut her eyes, pushing stale tears out and onto her bare leg.

What burrowed into her collapsed cavern of a mind next was in fact not a hateful or blaming thought, but instead a frustrated message from her neglected stomach. The deep bellows from her insides came through like how an ignored attention seeker. She put a hand softly over her stomach and winced at the uncomfortable empty feeling that was left in the aftermath of the gurgling growls.

Her mind suddenly snapped into gear as her instincts drew her to think about eating. She didn’t want anything, nothing at all, but this empty ache was only adding to the fire.

Meera stood up slowly, creaking and cracking echoed throughout the room as her ligaments and tendons popped back into place. This was followed by the prick of pins and needles in her left heel, which had been tucked away, asleep, under her thigh.

She limped like an old lady over to her kitchen to see what food she could eat to fill this emptiness inside her; blinking a few times to clear the mist in her eyes, she sought out the bread bin sat neatly on the side, the lid already slid slightly over to the edge.

Meera peered inside the bin, not bothering to move the lid over fully and caught a glimpse of the bag that contained whatever bread she had left over from the week. She reached in and tugged the bag out of the bin, knocking the lid off the bin and loudly onto the side.

Meera flinched at the noise and let out a defeated sigh.

“What am I doing?” she muttered to herself, clutching the bag of bread in her hand tightly.

She laid the bag onto the side and stuck her hand in. Two crusted slices of bread were what was retrieved from the now empty bag. Meera sluggishly sat herself on the kitchen counter and began eating the normally disposed ends of the bread loaf.

All that was going through her head was getting rid of this numb ache in her stomach, so that she can at least comfortably lose her mind. She munched away at the pieces of bread, swallowing hard to allow the dry loaf entry down her even drier throat. Each piece made the ache slightly lighter whilst her brain began making up strange stories in her head about what the bread was actually doing to her insides.

“Oooo… That piece soaked up a lot of the ache” She thought to herself.

After completing the chore, Meera blankly brushed her hands together to get rid of the crumbs and clumsily dropped down onto her feet from the kitchen counter. Her sofa was the next target for her, so she began drifting over towards it.

If she was asleep, the ache wouldn't come back was what she thought. She knew that the disturbing recreation of Rhys would probably visit her in her sleep, but that was okay. Seeing him all day in her head had pretty much desensitised her to the unpleasant imagery, she just wished that the same could be said about her own thoughts. Those were what tore away at her heart. The thoughts that she could hear spoken in her own words. That was what was making her lose this battle. Hearing her own voice blame her for everything that happened.

…

Meera didn't dream when she finally got to sleep. Perhaps it was a much-needed stroke of luck on her part, or maybe she hadn;t been asleep long enough before the Television woke her up.

See Meera had forgotten that when she first set up her TV, that she had allowed certain breaking news announcements to interrupt whatever was on at full volume. She thought that this way she could keep up to date on what was happening around her, mostly to try and impress Triller had any kind of recent crime trivia been the topic of conversation.

At around 8:00am, around an hour after Meera had finally entered the luxury of nothingness, the TV turned itself up to 85 and blared the BREAKING NEWS tone out into the living room and directly into Meera's ears, ripping her out of her slumber.

Meera sat up with a heart that seemed to be trying to burst out of her chest. She looked over to the bright TV with wide eyes which soon turned to squints as her eyes tried to adjust to the intense light. It took her around a minute to fully adjust to what just happened, just in time for the news story to begin on the screen.

A camera looked on at a horrific wreckage on the side of the road from above. There was police tape around the site and officers walking around looking busy.

“Two teenagers have died in a collision with a Van early this morning in Kennington.” Spoke the typically spoken news lady as the camera zoomed in and out at random points of the scene.

Meera sat up, now opening her eyes to normal.

“Kennington…” Meera said out loud. “That's so near…”

The lady on the TV continued talking.

“It is reported that Police arrived on the scene after a report of an explosion from a nearby resident.”

The camera suddenly began focusing its attention on a man stood with his hands in his jacket pockets, staring off into the distance; his face looked stricken with anxiety and fear.

Meera stood up and walked slowly over towards the TV.

“We received word shortly after, that private investigators are on the scene now and are treating the case as a murder investigation.”

The camera zoomed in to the man.

Meera continued to approach the TV.

“It was initially thought to of been an accident, but the Van driver has seemed to of fled the scene…”

Meera's eyes fixated on the familiar face of the man standing in the rain.

"Chief Inspector Daniel Green of the Barrier Government Agency has urged people local to the area to stay indoors, but stay vigilant as the man could be very dangerous.”

Meera placed her hand on the TV screen and peered into the face of the man.

“Daniel…” She whispered.

She watched on from the comfort of 5 inches away from the screen as the man pulled his smartglasses from his pocket, just before the camera cut to an interview with an Old Lady.

“Yes I heard everything! There was a horrible loud bang, and you know what? I straight away said to me husband. That's the Russians!” The old lady exclaimed to the interviewer, before being swiftly cut off at her possibly reputation damaging statement.

Meera picked up her glasses from the floor where she had left them and put them on. With a quick gesture of her hand, the television rewound itself to the close up image of Daniel Green removing his glasses from his pocket.

She stood staring at the still image, reaping in the warmth that seeing his face brought to her; the reminder of his soothing voice and curing words.

Meera stood staring at Daniel for a good while, until her vision was interrupted by a call notification. It was a number that she had never seen before, or thats what she initially thought. She began to get the suspicion that she recognised the last 4 digits from somewhere, but she couldn't match it with anything.

She let the call ring out, justifying her decision with her current state of mind.

Instantly after the call rang out, the same number began ringing again. This frustrated her greatly. It was getting in the way of the first feeling of happiness she had had in a long time, even if it was selfishly from a news report involving the death of two young boys. Then again, Meera wasn't there, not the Meera that she had grown into. She was locked away somewhere deep inside her depressed mind.

After letting the call ring out one more time, there was peace and silence once again. Meera let out a sigh of relief and began cycling through the still images of Daniel again, allowing her to briefly relive the heart warming words he had spoken to her.

This time another notification popped up, but in the form of a message. It was from the same number.

It was a spoken message and it said “Meera, it is Daniel Green. We met the other day. I need you to call me asap.”

It was him.

Hearing his voice filled Meera with an all too real and unwanted sense of love. This sudden and intense emotion allowed the real Meera to take control for a second, as she began to realise how disgusting and selfish she had been, just to try and feel happy.

“f*****g hell Meera” she said out loud to herself.

The call came through again, this time Meera answered it without hesitation.

“Hel-..”

“Meera where are you right now?” Daniel asked before Meera could even say hello.

“Wh- what?” Meera responded puzzled.

“Where. Are. You.” Daniel replied sounding stern and frustrated.

“I'm at home, why?” Meera replied, suddenly feeling uneasy.

“And home is around 10 minutes from Kennington, am I correct?”

“Erm.. Well..”

“Am I correct?!” Daniel shouted.

“Y-yes!” Meera replied finally, shaking her head trying to wake up properly.

“Meera I need you to stay indoors, do not go outside, lock everything that can be locked and try not to make any noise.”

Meera suddenly started shaking. She couldn't tell if it was from fear, or a weird kind of terrified excitement.

“Do you hear me Meera?!” Daniel asked, sounding frustrated again.

“Y-yes, I hear you.”

“I'm going to come to yours and take you some place safe.”

“Can you explain what's happening?” She asked, nearly bursting into tears.

“I will explain it when I see you, okay?”

Meera stared off into nothing before ending the call in silence. Were her parents right? Was she being targeted? No, that wouldn't explain the worldwide cases that Daniel had linked together.

But why did he sound so exasperated, and why did he not try and make her feel safe like last time? Oh, stop it Meera, you aren't a damsel in distress. Besides, the lady on the News basically gave out the same warning to everyone that lived near the scene anyway. Daniel probably assumed I didn't watch the news this morning or something. Right?

Meera's thoughts were going at a thousand miles per hour, questions and contradictions flooded in as she began deductively analysing everything she had seen and heard in the last 200 seconds.

This was a welcome change to not being able to think at all, but that didn't cross her mind at all. It was like the real Meera was finally allowed out from her cage, deep in the back of her depressed mind, and boy did she have questions.

The questioning and worrying inside her head carried on until she managed to get to the part about locking everything up. After skipping a heartbeat or two, Meera sprinted over to her front door, pushing any piece of furniture out of her way in a survivalistic frenzy. She skidded over to the door and tapped frantically on the face to bring up her keypad.

4-7-9-1-0, s**t, that's not it.

4-7-9-4-0. – Security – Lock all doors and windows.

“Locking all windows and doors” spoke a robotic female voice, which was followed by latches clicking around the apartment.

“Upstairs toilet window is open. Unable to lock.”

Meera span around on the spot and ran towards her stairs.

Just as she arrived at the bottom step, she froze at the sound of –

BANG BANG BANG

Huge knocks on her front door rang through the apartment.

Meera stopped, staring forward, like a deer in headlights.

BANG BANG BANG

Meera didn't think about grabbing a knife from the kitchen, until she was already at the front door, finger primed to display the peephole camera.

“f**k f**k f**k” she muttered to herself. The suspense of not knowing what was on the other side was eating away at her, and what would she do if it was another one of those… things.

She closed one eye instinctively and pressed the button, revealing who – or what, was stood on the otherside of her door.