Chapter 5: A known stranger (beginning)

'What do you need to know?', the unknown guard said as he carefully sat up. Doctor Thorne handed him his clothes before his patient had to bend down and pull his stitches.

'Well, sir', James said, 'If you feel up to writing, I'd prefer it if you fill in the file yourself. I'll read it over and ask further information when necessary. I've indicated what boxes you don't need to fill in now in case you don't feel up to it yet. Sadly, you're expected to get to work as soon as possible, so you can't spend as much time in here as you and I wish. You're supposed to be on your way quite soon, I reckon.' The speech was by rote, he'd said it so often.

The man gestured for the file and pen that James was holding in his hands and nodded gratefully when he received them. He started reading and writing immediately, though the doctor noted how carefully the man held himself. The new guard wasn't as unaffected as he wished.

'Thank you, I appreciate your effort. Believe me, I relish any rest you can give me', he said gratefully.

The man looked at him as he said it, then continued writing. Absentmindedly he remarked: 'I have been told by my interrogators I had to check in with you and then immediately go guard "the latest addition to this place". I don't suppose you know where I can find this poor person?'

James froze. Was he talking about Eggsy? But how could he be talking about guarding Eggsy when he had died two days ago? James needed to be careful, and find out more.

'When were you given this order, exactly?', he asked.

The man thinks for a moment. 'A day or four ago? I don't quite remember', he guesses, 'At the beginning of the –what do you call it? The "initiation"?'

James thinks about that for a while. Initiations don't usually last more than a day or two. If the man had been tortured for four days he would be in a worse state than usual. His wounds were the same, though, if somewhat better healed. So he must have been tortured the usual two days and then mostly forgotten due to the commotion of "the latest addition" escaping.

He told his patient so, and the man conceded that he hadn't been touched the final two days, though still given food.

'I didn't see the interrogators again', the new guard remembered, 'and the guards bringing my food seemed occupied with other things than myself. You said that the one I had to guard has escaped?'

He sounded hopeful, perhaps hoping he could escape as well.

James should nip that in the bud, he realized, for his sake and that of his loved ones. 'The boy tried to escape. He failed. He… died of his wounds.' It had been only days ago, and he couldn't keep a little bit of grief slipping in his words.

The man deflated: 'Oh. I'm sorry.'

'So am I. He was a young man with a kind heart. He shouldn't have been here at all. No-one should be; no-one should die like that.'

James looked down and away. He thought of watching the recordings; of Eggsy blowing through the corridors like a whirlwind, shooting and slashing his way to freedom heedless of his wounds; of Eggsy slowly losing to the poison, stumbling, falling, collapsing in an empty corridor; of his naked and lifeless body being carried away to the morgue by cleaners who gave him the bare minimum of respect.

James was pulled from his thoughts by a clipboard being held in front of his face. 'Oh, ah, thank you.'

He took over the clipboard and skimmed the file. He saw immediately that far too much information had been left open.

'You've written down barely any history. No name, birth place, date,…' All the personal information filled in was that the person before him was male, probably English, probably in his late forties or early fifties… The word 'probably' was used a lot.

'That would be', the man explained somewhat reluctantly, 'because I don't know myself. I have been hit near my eye by a bullet in the year 2015, and it has left me with severe amnesia. You will notice that that information is in my file.'

So it was. It appeared the man before him had had to stay in the care of an American hospital for two years, with no knowledge whatsoever of his former life. He had been in need of extensive surgery and long-term recovery. James remarked that it must have cost a fortune to stay in hospital that long in America

'It did cost a fortune', the man confirmed. It seemed as if he wanted to say more then, but felt reluctant to at the same time.

'You can trust me. I'm a doctor and I respect my oath of silence. No information in this room will be shared with others- unless there is the potential of harm to others', James insisted. 'Besides, I really do need to know as much about you and your history as I can.

The man without a memory conceded and begun to tell his story, refusing to meet the doctor's eyes all the while.

'I was found unconscious in front of a hate-spreading church in Kentucky. The church was full of people killed in horrible ways; it was thought the church-goers had all started attacking and killing each other, just like The Disaster, which happened the day after. I myself was extremely wounded as well, but alive through sheer luck. Had the shot to the head been slightly more to my right, it would have killed me.'

'The head wound left me comatose for four months, due to a severe swelling in the brain. When I woke up four months later, it was to a reduced eyesight and a memory wiped clean of all personal information. There were no other long-term effects- thanks to some small miracle, no doubt. I still had to undergo a year of exhaustive training to even speak decently. Six months after that, I was finally able to move completely independently. They treated me as well as they could, trying their best to keep the medical bills to a minimum, but the final sum was still outrageous. I dislike being so tied down, and I could have run, but I owed them my life and sanity and I don't take debts like that lightly.'

'It is how I was recruited', he explains, 'I feared I would be homeless, destitute and scrambling to pay the hospital bills until I died, when I was suddenly offered this job. I would have some small role in the household of a rich man's remote mansion, just another low-level employee but with surprisingly good pay. I just thought one of the patients sharing the long-term recovery ward had wanted to help a fellow out and had recommended me to her husband- our boss.'

He waved around himself and laughed bitterly: 'And now I'm henchman number three in a Bond movie.'

'Apparently,' he continued, 'the woman had noticed how I reacted to sudden noises, how I tracked the movement of the people around me, how scarred my body was, how I was the only one to survive in a crowd of forty people bent on murder,…'

'I guess she thought a man as alert like that, as capable of violence, would make a good guard. I might have been a good guard, once, or a good soldier. I suspect that some of my more… violent… dreams could be memories from a time in my life where I was some kind of soldier. I can't trust those dreams completely, though, because they're ridiculously fantastical.'

James noticed that slowly, the man started to relax and look into his eyes more. He was also surprisingly talkative. The man had just needed someone to talk to who wouldn't judge him. It appeared James was that person.

He could understand the desperation to just have someone to talk to who listened. It was why he appreciated his talks with Emrys so much. Busy as he was, the man did try his best.

Then again, his chatty behaviour could also be due to the painkillers the doctor had administered. They tended to leave one a bit…loopy. Now that he thought about it, the man was slurring a tiny bit, if you paid attention.

'Why,' the man mused, 'my fantastical dreams are almost spy movies!'

The word "spy" caught James' attentions. Could it be the man once was a spy like Eggsy, who'd lost his memory on a mission gone wrong? It would explain how the man was capable of withstanding the initiation with hardly any problems, while most new employees had needed quite a lot of help to work through it physically and emotionally.

'When you say "spy movie", what do you mean?' he asked curiously.

'I mean that there are lighters that explode, poisons in hidden in pens and knives hidden in shoes… There are interrogations and seductions and shoot-outs and chases… It's all so bloody unbelievable! I would think it was all fantasy if it wasn't for…' The man stopped talking.

James made a motion for the man to continue. 'For…?'

The man's voice becomes soft and warm in a way it hadn't been before.

'The spy dreams aren't nightmares. Some of them are very nice- there are even puppies, for some reason. I have friends in my dreams, whom I care about a lot and I think they care about me too. Especially this one bald man, who's very Scottish. I never really understand what he's saying, but it's both fond and biting. It's nice. There's also this young man. He's so bright, so caring, but at the same time he's a killer like me. He makes me feel so proud, so loved. Like I did something with my life, and it was good. I love them. I love him.'

James reconsidered the man's talkative behaviour and came to the conclusion that that emotional revelation was definitely influenced by painkillers. The Englishman in front of him wouldn't bare his emotions like that when he'd been so reserved before. It had been foolish of the doctor to assume that the man had been sufficiently fed during his initiation, when the guards had been so occupied that they had forgotten to let him out at all.

But the painkillers weren't giving the man new feelings, they were only lowering his inhibitions slightly. The man still needed someone to talk to, or he wouldn't be as chatty as this, showing his sadness and loneliness so easily.

The man's voice became bitter for a moment: 'Nearly every spy dream I have feels real- as if that was my life once, even though it can't have been. As if someone could love me, as if I ever was a gentleman spy, hah! A damn assassin would be more probable.I must have killed a lot of people, after all, to come out the only survivor. And none of it was my choice. I don't think I wanted to kill anyone, and I still did, because someone told my brain to.'

He paused. It must have been horrible, James thought, waking up with no memories at all, having to hear that you had killed a lot of people, never being certain what exactly you'd done, how guilty or innocent you were. Never knowing how much of the killing was you being controlled and how much of it was just you. Knowing that your mind- the one place where you should be safe- had been invaded so easily, had been persuaded to do something so horrible.

James could empathize. He'd killed the whole OR and three patients during The Disaster himself. He wasn't arrested. So many people had killed and hurt other people that day, that half the world's population would have to be incarcerated. The doctor wasn't held responsible for his crimes, but he still resigned six months after the fact, as soon as he wasn't essential to the hospital any longer. Primum non nocere. He took his promises very seriously.

James regretted it now. He'd slipped into a downwards spiral as soon as he had no work to occupy his thoughts anymore, and his emotional instability and the high costs of a psychiatrist had worsened his money problems. His financial insecurity had left him vulnerable enough for the boss to seduce him into his service easily.

The man continued his story, interrupting the doctor's musing: 'I should have been arrested. I can kill so easily, after all. If I were incarcerated, I couldn't be told to do it again.'

'I would have been arrested if the world didn't go to shit right after. The authorities are still looking for an explanation as to why we were hit by The Disaster so much sooner than the rest of the world, but they consider the church and The Disaster similar enough to let me go as well. '

'Then again' the man mused 'the authorities are also still looking for an explanation as to why the world was hit by The Disaster at all. Did you know that the hospital staff couldn't even check any databases for who I was until some six months ago, because so many government facilities were down for so long?'

'And did they find out who you are?', James asked curiously, despite the many blank spaces in the file hinting at the contrary.

The man shook his head. 'They didn't find anything on the name I'd given them. They thought I might have unconsciously picked up that name because it was so similar to John Doe. All my records say 'John "South Glade" Doe' now, after the church where they found me. I don't like it.'

'Is that why you didn't fill in your name?', the doctor asked, 'Because you prefer being called something other than after that place?'

James smiled at him reassuringly in response to the man's hopeful nod. 'This file is no way an official record,' he said, 'so you can call yourself whatever you want, as long as you feel that that is your name.'

'It is a bit of a strange name. In truth, it belongs to my dreams more than it does to me,' the man warned him. He was smiling softly, though, and seemed far more at ease.

'But I'd like to call myself Harry. Harry Hart. Pleased to meet you.'