The Watch – Part 77:

The phone rang at half four in the afternoon. I jumped up and answered it immediately.

‘Hello,’ I said excitedly.

‘Sebastian,’ Amy said through a yawn.

‘Hey, you’re awake. How are you?’

‘A little tired still,’ Amy said, trying to hold back another yawn, ‘but I got uncomfortable so I decided to get up. Thanks for the chocolates by the way. That really means a lot, you know that.’

‘Just thought I would surprise you for when you wake up, that’s all,’ I said.

‘Anyway, are you busy?’

‘I’m as free as the wind,’ I said.

‘Then we have a lot of research to be getting on with,’ she said. I could tell she was smiling. I smiled as well and said.

‘I’ll be right over.’

‘See you then.’

‘Bye.’

‘Bye.’

We both put the phone down at the same time. Grabbing my coat and shoes, switching off the TV, I practically ran out of the door and down the road, making the trip from my house to Amy’s in record time.

 ‘You didn’t hang around,’ Amy said, answering the door. She had changed into a blue patterned shirt and jeans, brushed her hair and washed her bags away from under her eyes.

‘I didn’t want to keep you waiting,’ I said, stepping into her hallway. She shut the door and made her way up the stairs to her bedroom. When I entered after her, I saw that her computer was already on and all the webpages and Word documents that she had up earlier were back on display, ready to be searched through thoroughly.

‘You can take this chair if you like,’ Amy pushed an office chair similar to hers up to me, which I took gratefully and sat on it, adjusting its height accordingly to allow me to sit in a comfortable position.

‘Wow, this is one nice chair,’ I said, feeling myself sink into the thick cushion underneath.

‘I know, right,’ she said, sitting down on her own chair and pulling herself towards her desk, ‘I took it from my mum and dad’s office room. They won’t mind.’

‘That reminds me,’ I said. ‘When did you say they’ll be back?’

‘That reminds me also,’ Amy span around to face me. ‘They called me just before you arrived and told me that they were stuck in a traffic jam for a while. A was a massive accident on the A1. Apparently, from what I’ve heard, there were at least a four cars and two lorries. The queues were incredibly long both ways, and to go the long way round would literally be the long way round, and after working the hours they have, they really don’t want to do that, so they’ve decided to check into a motel for the night before making their way home in the morning. They said they’ll be home at some point today. Meaning we have the entire house to ourselves until they get back.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ I said, hoping to make the most of the time we have. Amy spun around once more to face her monitor and clicked a couple of times to bring up a forum website.

‘This website is where many people post their own stories about any strange goings on that they’ve witnessed here and there every now and again. And ever since this person showed up, there has been a new section dedicated to all the stories about him. It’s updated whenever anyone sees anything out of the ordinary that they believe is connected. There was an entry a couple of days ago explaining how they believe they saw him walking out of this shop in London, but all the comments are stating that it was just an ordinary man doing ordinary things.’

I was listening intently. Amy continued, ‘however, the latest post goes into some detail about how he was walking down the road and all of a sudden there was an unexplainable gust of wind after something strange ran past him. It was too fast for him to make out any distinguishable detail, but he swears he saw a suit similar to the one he wore when he saved us at the shopping centre yesterday, and he was carrying someone on his shoulder. The whole experience was over in a matter of seconds.’

That was today. I ran past someone who looked at me strange. Who knew that he was a member of this website? Small world.

Amy continued, ‘of course, as you can pretty much expect, there are a dozen entries about the shopping centre incident. But that’s not all that I’ve found. As you saw earlier, there are many news reports about this guy from last year and earlier. The story that got a lot of attention, was of the office fire that broke out because of a faulty connection between computers. No one was killed or even hurt badly because of this person who saved them. He made sure to save as many people as he could before going back inside to tackle the fire, and he managed to save everyone in the entire building. That’s some feat considering that there were over fifty people in that office block, all scattered throughout on different floors.’

That happened last year, which means my future-self will go back in time to save all those people and stop the fire. Of course, I only did that because I learned about it here.

Amy continued to explain what else she managed to find out. ‘And according to this news report, although has been branded as fake by a load of people, but so many other people have put forward their own version of the story complete with bits of evidence to back up their claims of a robot, about the same size of a human, rampaging through the streets of Oxford at the beginning of the year. Due to its rather out-there claims, the story was covered up by a team that currently remains anonymous. I’m not entirely sure whether I believe this story or not since it could be just someone jumping on the bandwagon just to get attention, but there is so much detail in this story that when put together with what we saw yesterday and all these other stories, it is hard not to believe it. What do you think?’

‘I think you’re right in thinking that it is hard not to believe, but I wouldn’t put it down as actual fact, unless someone can put forward some kind of evidence that speaks for itself.’

‘Good answer,’ Amy said, excitedly. I’ve never seen her so enthusiastic before. Her excitement is certainly preventing any tiredness that’s trying to break through.

‘Thank you.’

‘Is there any more information about that team that covered it up?’ I asked.

‘Not as such. I mean, there is so little information that it’s hardly worth mentioning if I’m honest.’ Something clicked inside my head and a brainwave manifested itself.

‘I’m not sure you should dismiss the idea of there not being a secret team covering up such claims,’ I said.

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because the incident at the shopping centre only spread via word-of-mouth. There weren’t any camera crews or journalists or anything to spread this kind of story, except the people on that website. We both expressed our wonders about why the police weren’t alerted and the place wasn’t shut down for further investigations.’

‘Now that you’ve said that,’ Amy said thoughtfully, ‘that does make sense. Maybe there is some truth behind it, but we’re not going to know for sure unless we hack some government website of some sort, and I wouldn’t want to take that kind of risk as we may not even find anything that is remotely useful and we can get caught.’

‘And I don’t fancy staying in jail for the rest of the summer,’ I said.

‘Me neither.’

Amy resumed, ‘there really isn’t that much more that I can show you at this point. I’ve combed the internet as much as I can during the many hours through the night and these are all the facts that I can find, and even then they’re sketchy at best.’

‘I’m sure that if you dig deeper, you’ll be able to find something that is legitimate in quality,’ I said.

‘I know,’ she said with a heavy sigh, ‘but whoever this team is, if they do exist, could be the ones behind all of this covering up, only leaving these forum websites because they know that no one will believe them….’ Amy stopped talking rather abruptly, causing me to ask what the matter was.

‘What if that person who’s saving people is a member of this secret team?’ she asked.

‘That is a possibility,’ I said leaning back. I know that I am not, but I have to act as if I have just as much of a clue about this as Amy does. ‘Which would explain how those cover ups can happen so quickly, because he can alert that team before he goes into any scenario. But that doesn’t explain how the office block fire wasn’t covered up. I mean, he was there, saving people and putting out the fire, caught by camera and journalists alike, and the team was nowhere in sight, I can only assume that is.’

‘There is that, yeah,’ she said thinking. She ran her hands through her hair to get out any knots that may have grown since she combed it.

‘Are there are no other major incidents that the news has managed to get their teeth into?’ I asked.

‘Not as many as they would have liked,’ she said.

‘But that might be something in those articles that can open some kind of ideas,’ I said.

‘How about this one,’ Amy said, opening a minimised website. It was on the BBC website and didn’t have an article as such, but a video. ‘I have watched this before, but I couldn’t see anything so I didn’t think it was worthy of bringing up,’ she explained.

‘Maybe I should take a look at it. I have fresher eyes that you and so might be able to spot something in the background,’ I said.

‘Be my guest,’ she said clicking on the play button and activating the full screen function, allowing me to see the video in all its glory. It was of just a news camera pointing at some kind of abandoned building. A news reporter’s voice was dubbed over it, explaining that there are people inside who were taking as hostage by some crazed criminals who wanted to make a statement.

‘It is unclear as to what that statement is right now as the Police refuse to comment on the situation,’ the woman’s voice said. The camera spun around to show that there were indeed several Police cars and SWAT vans complete with their own crew, getting ready to make their move, but wanted to make sure that everything was one hundred percent before going in as a single miscalculation can be catastrophic.

‘It has been exactly seven hours since the criminals took, approximately, ten people as hostages. Those poor people must be terrified at this moment, just waiting for some kind of miracle to happen.’

‘When did this happen?’ I asked Amy.

‘About a couple of months ago,’ Amy said. ‘How didn’t you know about this?’ Amy asked curiously.

‘I was away with my parents in some country. They were away on business and they thought it would be nice if I got out of the country for a bit,’ I explained. ‘How come you didn’t hear about this?’ I asked Amy.

‘I did, but I never connected it with the person,’ she said.

‘No, I suppose you wouldn’t until now,’ I said simply. Amy nodded. ‘Keep watching because this is where you have to focus. Like I said, I didn’t see anything, but you might.’

The scene changed dramatically from calmed planning to sudden agitated curiosity. The doors were flung open and out poured the ten hostages, running away in a state of panic as fast as their legs could carry them. Then, to complete the sudden miracle, the criminals themselves came out, with the hands over their heads, signalling their surrender. The video made a jump cut to another news report on the situation.

‘It is unclear as to what happened in that building, but we can say that it was nothing short of a miracle indeed. Maybe the criminals knew that they were beaten and so gave up, or maybe they were forced to do so by someone inside. We have tried to get a couple of statements from those who were inside the building, but none has come forward.’

‘That’s pretty interesting, if I do say so myself,’ I said to Amy, ‘considering that we are questioning the existence of some secret team that has a habit of covering certain incidents up.’

‘Are you saying that they could have made them swear to secrecy?’

‘Not in those words, but yeah,’ I said.

‘I always thought it was down to not wanting to talk about that traumatic experience,’ Amy said.

‘Well, I would imagine that would play a part in it,’ I said.

‘Hmmm,’ Amy said thoughtfully, ‘but did you see anything strange.’

‘No.’

‘You need to watch it again. Pay close attention to when the hostages are coming out.’ Amy rewound the video to that exact point and pressed play. I watched with as much concentration as I could. The doors swung open and…

‘Something else came out along with the hostages,’ I said.

‘Exactly.’

‘You don’t reckon it’s.’

‘I do reckon it’s him fleeing the scene.’

‘Do you also reckon that it was him that made them swear to secrecy?’ I asked, wondering why I would have a reason to do that sort of thing.

‘If it wasn’t him that the team must have caught up with those ten people individually and had a conversation with them,’ Amy said.

‘Why individually?’

‘Well, because they all went their separate ways,’ Amy said.

‘Oh, right, yeah, of course they did.’

‘He must have been moving an incredible speed to be barely noticed by the cameras,’ Amy said. ‘But what I can’t figure out is why he decided to go out via the front doors? He managed to get in via a different entrance so why didn’t he exit that way as well?’

Because he wanted to be caught by me so that I can then complete the paradox. ‘I have no idea,’ I said.

‘You don’t think he wanted to be caught?’ Amy asked.

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Because he went out through the front doors,’ Amy said bluntly.

‘Maybe,’ I said.

‘You think something different.’

‘I believe that we may be coming to a conclusion too fast before we’ve studied some more information,’ I said.

‘I guess you’re right,’ Amy said. That was a close one. Although, I can’t see as to how my secret would have been released, but I wanted to avoid that particular theory anyway, just in case. ‘So we have a person with superpowers – the ability to run at incredible speeds – running around saving people and stopping crimes, and to top it all, we suspect that there’s a secret team, covering up particular scenes, but not all of them for reasons that we have no clue and I doubt we’re actually going to get that answer any time soon, if not ever,’ Amy summarised.

‘When you put it like that, you might as well say that we’re living in some kind of comic book world of some sort, yet we’re not and it’s real. As real as it can be.’

‘Do you think that team can be more than just a team, but an organisation?’ Amy asked.

‘Giving the amount of crimes that they have supposedly covered up over the past year or so, they must be a rather large team, which anyone would say that would make it an organisation,’ I explained.

‘A secret organisation.’

‘The Illuminati confirmed,’ I said as a throwaway line that everyone on every comment section all throughout the Internet uses to explain something that they can’t explain.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ Amy said chuckling. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised at all.’

Just then, the doorbell rang, making us both jump.

‘Who could that be?’ Amy asked, getting up and heading downstairs.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Thanks for watching

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)