Vicious Memories

Chapter 77 - Eva

54 Months Ago

Eva knew The Doctor hated their new research compound more than anything else, and over the past two months he'd been a nightmare to be around.

He hated the gray corridors and the harsh, exposed lighting. He hated the sour tang of recycled air. He hated the subterranean maze of rooms that made little sense in their layout. He hated the armed security operators posted at every corridor, the keycard entries that required new codes every day, the sense of crushing weight suspended overhead at all times. He hated the huge sealed door leading out to the mountain that couldn't be opened without going through a lengthy protocol, that the only way to get fresh air was to travel two miles underground out to the water-dock in the middle of the ocean. Most of all he hated the lack of windows, saying only that it reminded him of a place he used to work.

But Eva loved the compound for every one of those same reasons.

It was a place perfectly insulated from the outside world. A place where everything could happen the way she wanted it to.

The only thing she didn't like was the command center.

The three of them stood there now, near the back of the room, looking down at the tiered rows of workstations and the mass of surveillance screens that took up the entire wall before them. Everything in this room flashed, beeped, or flickered. It made Eva feel out of place when she compared it to her old office, with its reams of handwritten notebooks and collated binders, or to the lab with its spare desks and organized data files. This room was all noise and color, an assault on the senses.

"Good," Liam said to The Doctor. "I assured the director that you were the most capable option." He shot a barely veiled sneer in Eva's direction.

The Doctor scowled at the look, but nodded grimly and cracked his knuckles. He had already begun to shift from foot to foot, ready for his task in the field.

Liam's slate gray eyes looked Eva up and down. "It'll be me."

"I know that already," she snapped.

"Good. This makes it much easier. The director informed me that you withdrew your name from the pool of candidates. This way I don't have to fight you for the second spot."

"As if you'd win that battle," Eva scoffed.

"Don't be so sure."

That was it. All this build-up for nothing. When the trial began in nineteen days, The Doctor and Liam would be embedded among it's unknowing participants.

At first Eva had wanted to go. Leaving something so crucial in the hands of another was almost unthinkable, and if she hadn't grown to trust The Doctor so completely she would have insisted on being one of the two. But as it was she didn't strictly need to be on the ground anymore, and though she was still teetering on a knife's edge there just wasn't that final push to get her out of her comfort zone and into the chaos of field work. She would be able to control everything better from this hellish command center.

"I'm going back to the new lab," The Doctor said to her, his mouth twisting in distaste as he thought about their cramped subterranean offices. "Just to confirm before I spin up the final batch of samples, we're doing a complete memory wipe for the subjects."

Eva regarded him for a moment, thinking as she so often did of the night they had spent together before coming to this place. For the first few days here they had stayed close, touching more than was necessary, speaking to each other with barely concealed grins on their faces. Then Liam had arrived, and the pressure of their work had slowly crushed them back into their usual routine. She lamented not calling him back to her apartment that morning.

"Eva?"

"Sorry," she said. "That's correct. No memories, just their names."

"You're sure? I still stand by my side of our argument."

"I'm sure. This is the logical place to start. No need to leave them a memory if we haven't ruled out that total loss won't work. The literature is clear that you have a point, but I still think it would be too hard to have a memory of the past while trapped here." She smiled wryly, a lament. "I've never personally been able to move on without closure. Let's not give the subjects that regret unless we have to."

Liam watched their exchange with cold interest, but The Doctor just nodded, accepting Eva's conclusion.

He turned to leave the command center, then stopped as something clattered on the metal desk between them. Eva looked down, noticing that it was her personal phone, the one she had hooked up to the compound's secure communications network.

The little metal rectangle buzzed furiously, vibrating as it slid ominously to the left. Eva didn't recognized the number on the glowing screen, but the phone demanded an answer.

She had it in her hand in a moment, the glass cold against her ear.

"Eva Margal," she said.

The voice on the other end didn't waste any time with pleasantries.

Just a few words - that was all it took. A single sentence passed through the phone's speaker and into her disbelieving ear. The rest became unintelligible garbage.

In those few seconds Eva's world transformed itself into something grievously illogical, and it began to crumble around her.