UNDERCOVER on the TITANIC (book 1)

Part 24 - Brain Wave Activity

He pulled off his welder's mask and slipped a weird helmet of wires over my face. I couldn't see properly. My head was full of images that flashed and changed and my stomach lurched unpleasantly. Murga adjusted something and the images became sharper . . . Flashes of barely remembered childhood memories . . . vague places and faces I could not name morphed into abstract shapes like three-dimensional bar codes.

Murga was recording my brain wave activity . . . A familiar face appeared in my mind, a beautiful woman with long blond hair. The image was replaced by another and another and my horror grew as I realized Murga was scrolling through my thoughts looking for something . . . stealing my memories. I was losing pieces of my mind . . . literally . . . I could not let him win. 

I resisted with every fibre of my being.

The image of the woman reappeared in my head. She had a loving smile. I felt safe. I knew who she was but I couldn't remember her name. I struggled to stop her memory leaving but she was gone and tears streamed down my face. 

For a moment I almost gave up but I knew she was still inside my head. I desperately need to escape . . . I had to find her.

Then my brain clicked and the paralysis vanished. I jumped up without noticeable effort, as in a dream, and I was running at high speed. I ripped the wires off my head as I ran.

I glanced back at the thunder of heavy feet. Murga was moving with astonishing speed after me. I watched him hurdle a carton of tomatoes and side step around a case of baked beans but he was moving too fast to make the turn and he hit a rack. Incoherent curses filled the air as the rack fell on him, triggering a series of secondary crashes as two other racks fell over.

I didn't stop as I bounced off a rack and found I was at the checkout counter . . . wondering how I had got there. 

The check-out alien had disappeared so I ran to the exit. Miguel was waiting outside with Pacman.

'I wondered where you had gone,' he said as a police car pulled up and an officer got out. We tried to look like innocent bystanders as he walked into the store.

I gave the officer an abbreviated explanation about finding a man tied up in the freezer, without revealing that he was my father, but, by the time we got back to the freezer, Murga was gone. He had disappeared completely and taken Dad with him. There was nothing in the freezer except the carcasses. The partition and the light were gone and only a slight odour of ozone lingered.

The cop examined the freezer for hidden doors or any sign of criminal activity but found nothing apart from the overturned racks in the store. The checkout alien was rummaging through the cans and broken glass jars and cursing in some alien language. The cop asked him what happened.

'I not know. Duh kids come in to store and mess around.' He pointed at me. 'Dat kid say man hurt in frizzer. I call 911.'

Eventually the cop decided that I was the only witness and there was no evidence of a crime. So he made some notes, wrote my name and address in his note book and told me to call if there was anything else.

I was still shaking as we continued our walk to Miguel place. I told him about finding my father with Murga but I didn't mention Triple Oh or about the conversation between Murga and Mr Bragg or the horrible black face with tusks. It was too incredible and I was afraid he would think I was making it up.

When we reached Miguel's garage, I made him lock the door behind us. He went looking for the epoxy adhesive while I wondered how I had got away from Murga. How had he escaped with Dad? The strange freezer smell lingered in my nostrils, perhaps the drug had affected my perception. My knees were still shaking. I sat down on an old, wooden Coca Cola crate. The details were slipping away from my memory like an old dream. Who was the friendly woman in my memory? Had Murga been only a nightmare? Or, I was going crazy. I couldn't think of a better explanation.

When Miguel returned, I was looking up at a narrow, boat-shaped object suspended from the ceiling. It was painted bright orange with turquoise stripes of varying widths. 'What's that?' I asked. 'It looks like a giant bar code.'

'How did you guess the name?' Miguel asked with surprise as he squeezed a thick fluid from two tubes onto a piece of cardboard and mixed them together with a wooden stir stick. 'That's my uncle's ice boat. He calls it a coffin on three skates with a sail on top that will go up to 100 km/h.

If you like, you can come sailing with us. The lake usually freezes over just before Christmas.'

'The epoxy is ready. It's the quick setting type so we have to work fast.'

We spread epoxy liberally on the broken edges of my skateboard using wooden stir sticks and we stuck the bits back together, covered them with plastic wrap and clamped them between two pieces of wood.'That should be as good as new in two days,' Miguel declared. 'But I must warn you the wheels don't work too well in the snow. Maybe we should take them off and turn it into a snow board.'

Pacman growled softly and my panic returned with a rush of adrenaline. The hair on Pacman's neck bristled like a porcupine . . . Murga? I peered through a gap in the garage door.

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