LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER EIGHT – I DREAMED

      Heathrow airport was full of armed police. It always was. Jimmy knew that. But he still couldn’t force down the feeling that every one of them was staring at him. CCTV cameras peered into every corner of the terminal building.

      Suddenly, there was a bang. Jimmy jumped. He sniffed for the smell of cordite and swivelled round, expecting the black nose of a machine gun to be pointed straight at him.

      “Calm down,” Felix hissed. “It was just that guy dropping his suitcase.”

      Jimmy said nothing. He marched on through the terminal. There weren’t many people about – it was before the midmorning rush, and in any case, not that many people travelled in and out of Britain these days. The light glared off the lino floor. The sounds of people getting on with their business mixed with the squeaking of their shoes and the ticking of the terminal clock.

      In Jimmy, every muscle was ripped tight. He and Felix had been paired off together, while the others spread out around the terminal. Each group was to check in at a different desk and at a different time, though every now and again Jimmy caught a glimpse of one of them through the crowd.

      “I should be tense,” Felix carried on. “Not you. They could bring me down by sneezing too hard.”

      But I’m the one they’re after, Jimmy thought. He checked the back pocket of his jeans again. The corners of the fake documents dug into him. Another false identity. Another new life he’d destroy as soon as it was finished with. He’d examined them in the van on the drive to the airport. He’d looked as hard as he could without getting car sick, and they seemed good – too good in fact. The more pieces of this operation Jimmy saw, the more he was worried about who these new contacts of Viggo’s might be. Still, he had no choice now but to go along with the plan and remember his false details: Sam O’Shaughnessy, from Acton.

      Suddenly, he let out a yelp of pain and pressed his fingers to the point where his right ear joined his skull.

      “What is it?” gasped Felix.

      Jimmy’s head felt like someone was firing lightning bolts at him. And it wasn’t the first time it had happened that morning. Felix quickly realised what was wrong.

      “Again?” he asked. They stopped and Jimmy bent double, holding his head. “It’s like Harry Potter and that stupid scar, isn’t it?”

      “Yeah,” moaned Jimmy sarcastically. “It’s exactly like that.” That was the fourth time in the day already. Each attack hit in the same spot on Jimmy’s head and with the same pain – a precise and piercing stab that lasted thirty seconds or so, then dissipated to nothing. He took a deep breath and pulled himself upright.

      “You OK?” Felix asked. Jimmy nodded and squeezed out a smile.

      “So what’s wrong with your head?” Felix said as they reached the queue for check-in. Jimmy didn’t know how to answer. It wasn’t like anything he’d experienced before. His only explanation was that it must have something to do with his programming developing.

      He liked to think that he was more comfortable with his programming now – that he knew roughly what it was capable of and almost how to control it. But really he had to admit he had no idea. It was like an alien growing inside him. More than that – the alien was him, and it was more him than the human part.

      “Dunno,” he shrugged, trying to sound casual about it. The truth was, the pain wasn’t the only new phenomenon Jimmy had woken up with. There was something else. Something much more worrying to him. He had tried to bring it up a couple of times – with Felix and with the others too – but each time he had stopped himself because it sounded so insignificant. The last thing he wanted was more attention on the tiniest detail of his development.