BEGIN REPORT
FILE 016: HOPE
Still in my car. Still wondering how much longer I can keep doing this for. Still wondering if I'll ever see the light at the end of the tunnel. The sun should be rising soon, but somehow the daylight doesn't seem to expel the terrors of the night. They stalk me no matter the time of day. So, I'll just sit here sipping on my cold coffee, praying that each day brings me something else.
You'd forgive me for thinking that the grizzly old Simon Roper was going to take me into the Adam & Eve and buy me a drink, but he didn't. Instead, he looked at me with those haunted old eyes, grabbed my hand and began marching across the gravelled carpark and towards the street. I'd pulled back, asking him what the hell he thought he was doing.
He had told me that what he had to say couldn't be said in public. That there were potentially people watching him all the time. I told him I still wasn't prepared to go anywhere with him as I didn't know him. He suggested we go to my car and then proceeded to hand me a gun.
A bloody gun!
He slipped it covertly into my hands and told me that I could sit next to him in the driver’s seat and if I felt threatened, or if he made any attempt to hurt me, then I could defend myself. You couldn't have said fairer than that.
What followed was a conversation that wouldn't exactly open my eyes but would put me on another course. A course that led to hope.
I'd asked him about what he'd seen in Hell. I told him that the video had caught on fire part way through. He told me it was just as well, touching his scars lightly, his milky eyes lost in the distant past. He didn't want to tell me what he'd seen down there. After I'd pressed, he'd warned me not to force the conversation and that I had to stay focused - finding Eleanor.
That brought me crashing back to reality.
He told me that after he'd "left" Hell he'd had nightmares. He wouldn't tell me exactly what, but it had broken him. Horizon had tried to help him, but really all they wanted were answers to what he had seen. It had gotten too much. He'd resigned. They had refused his resignation request. He'd quit. They'd hauled him in front of their CEO, Galloway, who had told him in no uncertain terms that he was going nowhere.
So, he had escaped. Changed his identity. I'd asked him how he had come to know Stark. He'd told me that some connections needed to be protected. Out of desperation he'd adopted the identity of David Harrison and become a recluse, hiding out in Lincoln. He told me that he had to hide from them because of what they may do to him.
I asked him what he meant by that. At that point his mouth had finally stopped moving, his eyes blank. And then he looked at me. I saw a fire in his eyes I'd never seen before as he told me that he was going to show me and that, if I felt comfortable with him, he'd take me somewhere that would give me answers.
I asked him where that would be.
He told me he was going to take me to somewhere called "the well".
Shit! I car has just pulled up. At this time. In the early hours. And there's no bloody number plate on it. Oh shit. Oh shit...
END REPORT
Copyright © 2022 by Jim Allenby
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