The Secret

Three

Numbers are everywhere, floating through space, through the galaxies. The numbers 2961998 appear randomly, peeking behind a star cluster, running away from my curious clutches. Why, numbers, why do you abandon me? Why did Grandma and Grandpa abandon me? What am I doing, floating through space? Why have I abandoned myself?

I hear yelling – initially echoes, but now evolving into something faster, more complicated, more terrifying. It brings me back from my dream. Why am I dreaming in the first place?

I struggle to bring my lead eyelids apart. They feel so heavy. I feel trapped. I’m numb everywhere, but my ears never fail to pick up the chatter around me.

“She could do with a little fattening up and training, and then I think she’d be fine as a recruit,” one man is saying.

“She’s too skinny. Look at her. A bag of bones, sunken cheeks, hollowed ribs. She’d be better off fed to the sharks!” another says.

“She’s the right height though, and let’s be honest: she was curious, otherwise she wouldn’t have ended up in the sink hole, wouldn’t she?” the first man pauses for effect. “That’s what we need in our spies. Curiosity.”

The other man pauses in thought. Recruits? Spies? Curiosity? What is this?

“One chance, Sven. This is all you get,” he eventually allows. “Blow it, and I’m firing you.”

The first man who, apparently called Sven, lets out a little sigh of relief. “Thank you, Dr Parker. I appreciate you trusting me with this important task.”

One of the men, Dr Parker, leaves the room. Sven leans over closely and whispers: “Are you awake?”

I so desperately want to thank him for sparing me from becoming a meal for a bunch of sharks, but my lips feel like slabs of stone. Instead, my eyelids, after a bid of attempts, finally open. The white light floods my vision, but eventually I adjust. I’m in a medical examination room; with surgery equipment gleaming at me on one side and a complete floor-to-ceiling glass wall on the other with a view of the rainforest. I am lying on a freshly made bed, staring into an impossibly good-looking young man’s sea-blue eyes. He has a sharp, angular jaw and a rugged, yet polished look to his face thanks to a roughly shaven beard. I don’t know what to do, so I keep staring at him.

“I knew you’d be perfect for the job, it was in my gut,” he says with a soft smile. He realises I am still numb, and unable to move anything but my eyes, and quickly adds “Don’t worry; I understand the drug is still leaving your body so you’ll be numb for a while.”

I stare at him, basking in his handsomeness. Suddenly, I feel self conscious. My eyes flit over my body and I realise that I’m completely naked. I try to submit to my impulses of covering my chest with my arms but he doesn’t seem to care that I’ve got no clothes on. In fact, he goes over to the medical equipment and brings over a stethoscope and places it on my left breast, listening for my heartbeat. He shines a pen light into my eyes and makes me look at his finger as he waves it in front of my face. And he tells me to open and close my eyes to test if I understand English.

“You’ve got the normal, healthy signs, except we’ll just have to wait for the drug to wear off, so just relax and enjoy the view.” Sven shrugs. “Welcome to our headquarters.”

Headquarters? My eyes flit from the breathtaking view of the rainforest onto him, and he meets my gaze. The drug is wearing off ever so slowly and I manage to knit my eyebrows together to express my confusion.

“Oh, sorry, I haven’t told you yet. Welcome to the South American E3 Headquarters, the home and heart of the E3 Corporation. I’m Sven, your trainer, and it will be my job to prepare you to become one of our spies.”