Being Read Free Page A

unclench.
    I felt the movement.
    Movement.
    I could move.
    And in that same miraculous instant, I was suddenly seeing a face. Above me. Behind me. Hovering over my head. Brown eyes, olive skin, a slight beard showing beneath a surgical mask. Kamal, the anaesthetist. I could see him. My eyes were still closed, but I could see him. It wasn’t possible, but I didn’t care. I could see him.
    I could see all around me.
    The pain had gone.
    How?
    How had the pain gone?
    How could I see all around me?
    There shouldn’t have been time to think about it, no time to take anything in… but somehow there was. There was all the time in the world – and I took it all in:
    A small white windowless room.
    White white light.
    Machines and monitors.
    Silver cutting instruments laid out on a tray, like an exhibit of lunatic cutlery.
    A metal table covered with papers and tapes and photographs.
    A white door guarded by a thickset man in a suit.
    And there, standing over me, two masked men, peering intently into the meat of my belly: Casing and Ryan. Professor Casing was the narrow-faced one, the one in the white coat and glasses. Ryan was tall and severe, dressed in a plain black suit. He had silver eyes, a grey face, coal-black hair. An automatic pistol was clipped to the back of his belt.
    They were looking at me, looking inside me, and now I was looking at them. I didn’t know how, but I was looking at them.
    Look.
    Shit, look what they’ve done to me. What have they done? My poor belly… white and flat with a slash of red and – shit! – what is that? Look – a gaping slice, like a bad clown’s grin, fastened back with tiny black clamps, and inside me…
    Oh God, the things inside me… the things I saw. Unknown things. Terrible things. Black and brown things, red things, silver things… creamy-white shapes of living metal or plastic or God knows what… all of it moving like a blood-dark shimmer inside me.
    I couldn’t think about it then. It was just too much. There wasn’t time. The frozen moment was nearly over - all the time in the world was fading.
    And I was moving.
    I was moving.
    As Casing dug a spatula into my guts, and Ryan leaned over to get a better look, something electric shifted inside me – and I moved, faster than I’d ever moved before. Jerkingupright, tearing the mask from my mouth, ripping the tube from my throat… I didn’t know what I was doing.
    But something inside me did.
    With tapes and wires snapping off all around me, I saw myself snatching the pistol from Ryan’s belt and jamming the barrel against his head, and then a voice hissed out of my mouth.
    ‘That’s enough,’ it said – a cold dry whisper.

3
    Ryan barely reacted to the sound of my voice, he just turned slowly and looked at me, his eyes calm and still. But Casing was shocked beyond words. I’ll never forget the look on his face – it was the horrified look of a man who’s just seen a monster. A pale naked monster.
    As he stood there staring at me, his eyes aghast, I glanced at the spatula still poised in his hand. The blade was smeared with a scrape of washy brown liquid.
    A scrape of something.
    A scrape of me.
    There wasn’t time to think about it. The big man by the door was moving towards me now, pulling a pistol from inside his jacket. He was huge – thick and heavy - with a large bull head and sharp little eyes. I looked at him for a moment, wondering how a man that big could move so fast, then – without taking my eyes off him – I jabbed the gun against Ryan’s head.
    ‘Stop there,’ I said, ‘or I’ll kill him.’
    The big man hesitated for a moment, then stopped. He was halfway across the room.
    ‘Drop the gun,’ I told him.
    He looked at Ryan.
    ‘Do what he says, Cooper,’ Ryan told him.
    The big man’s eyes never left mine as he stooped down and placed his gun on the floor.
    ‘Turn round,’ I told him. ‘Stand against the wall.’
    My voice was unfamiliar. Dry and weak, a croaky whisper. And the