Chapter Text
He awakes with a start. It's as if bursting through the surface of deep water, having come up just a little too quickly - not quite the bends, but a definite punch of nausea, coupled with the sensation of pressure behind the eyes.
He's fully clothed and has clearly been asleep for some time; folds of jacket have left a soreness at his ribs; his trousers are tight, twisted uncomfortably around his right thigh, and his belt is digging into his hip.
There is little time for discomfort, though. He leaps out of bed - his bed, in its usual place in his flat; he looks around in instinctive concern - his furniture, his things, all as per usual, but something is definitely wrong, something is very wrong, the light is...it doesn't feel...the air isn’t…
...as he rips open the curtains, a well-trusted thump of always accurate dread beating through his heart, and, more so than ever before, the anxiety is so much more than justified.
Everything shoots into sharp silence. He can’t breathe. His eyes widen. He looks left, right, cranes his head to the edge of the window as if the reality he’s looking for might somehow be just around the corner, at the edge of the scene.
It isn’t.
The view he’s so used to is gone. The view he has is…infinitely opposite.
The horror twists through his veins so cold it hurts.
This is not London.
He stretches out his hand, willing one of the three guns secreted about his flat to his palm, desperate for the instant comfort and backup of a weapon, but nothing happens.
He reaches out again.
Nothing.
Truly nothing, though.
There is no feeling of metal in this room at all.
He clenches and flexes his fist, screws his eyes tight, and pushes his mind through the second-worst imagery he can conjure, and there's still nothing. He can see it, all around him, in the furniture, in the stationery laid out at the desk - his stationery, at his desk, still - and nothing connects with him. He casts out line after line but nothing will bite. It’s as if his eyes completely deceive him.
It’s as if he’s no power at all.
Sweat starts at the nape of his neck, as his ears prick and his eyes begin to scan the view frantically.
The belongings are his, undoubtedly.
But this - he stares, and stares out of the window, as if staring would make it change somehow - this is not England, at least, it’s no part of England of which he’s ever seen or heard. It isn’t Amsterdam, nor is it Gothenberg. It isn’t Singapore, or Bombay. It certainly isn’t Cairo, and it’s nothing like Hong Kong. It’s too small, too curious to be America, and it’s too quaint, surely, to be Russia.
Where am I? What’s happened?
He flexes his hand again, shifting a hopeless, wishful gaze to an empty nail in the wall. The nail that should hold a portrait of his mother, the portrait he took down, one of the few things he had intended to take with him…
Fragments of memory return, puncturing the dense pressure on his mind, enhancing his neutered terror.
Racing back to his flat in the car. Seizing his briefcase, packing in the painting, the novel he’d bought at the station a week before, his wallet, his Scout knife, and a gun. Searching for his passport...knowing he didn't have much time, looking for paperwork, just the essential documents, and then a rattle, a hissing sound…and then there's only now.
And, here.
Wherever that is.
__________________________
It takes him longer than he’s used to to regain control of himself. Too many shocks at once.
He grasps the windowsill, needing something solid to keep a hold on, to keep focused, and save himself from over-reacting. He gulps air in, can’t seem to get enough of it. It’s too dry in here - there’s a fan winding, somewhere, and the noise is devastatingly irritating, now he notices it…
…he has to get out of here. Has to get outside, at the least.
As he reaches for the door, he notices a card on the side, propped up in the lap of a crudely painted Dutch wooden doll.
Welcome to your Home from Home.
What the fuck?
As he reaches for the door handle, he notices too late to stop himself from banging his hand on empty space that there is no door handle, and the door, with a click and a whirr, is opening, apparently of its own accord.
There’s a heavy breeze outside, and the sky is grey. He edges out, looking left, right, clocking corners and doorways, of which there seem to be many.
The place seems deserted.
He edges out, carefully, choosing his steps well on the cobbled ground.
Behind him, the little building that contains the terrifyingly accurate replica of his London home is painted in pale yellow, an archway leading from it, lined in blue. In front of him, a line of rough-cut stone steps, leading down through leafy paths to the Village that lies, spread out beneath him.
A small square, lined with benches hewn in white stone. A fountain, elegant, decorative. Statues everywhere. Patches of grass. Countless buildings in Mediterranean shades of pink, yellow, green and blue.
Everything is just a little off-scale. Everything is slightly strange.
And in the distance, there’s a beach. And the sea, eventually, the tide apparently far, far out at the moment. A path, leading around it. A steep hill - perhaps even a mountain, behind the apparently edge of the curious buildings.
A bell chimes, and knocks him out of his wondering. The tower is only metres away, across a small courtyard, and he runs to it, up the narrow flight of stairs that coils around it, looks for whoever might be ringing it, but as he reaches the top of the tower, he sees that it is mechanical, and that there is no-one here, either.
He stares until his eyes are dry from the buffeting winds at this height, and still sees nothing.
The place seems deserted.
But it isn’t.
As he makes his way back down, his gaze fixed on his feet now, needing to keep himself steady and placed as the situation is so dizzyingly peculiar, a crunching, squeaking sound makes itself heard. At the base of the tower, he hides behind it a little, peering around to try to catch the source of the noise without being seen by whatever it is.
Whatever it is sees him immediately. It greets him with a cheery wave.
It’s a thin, thin man, dressed in a black and white striped shirt, sat behind the wheel of what he could only describe as some kind of cart; the type that might transport a man and his luggage along a particularly long train platform, for example.
"Ah, widzę że jesteś nowym Numerem Szóstym! Witaj w Wiosce! Jak mogę Ci pomóc?"
He wasn’t expecting to be greeted in Polish, a language he hasn’t heard in many, many years. Not a language with which he is comfortable, not any more, but he understands the gist of what the man says…and yet, it makes no sense to him at all.
The driver wears, he notices now, a circular badge on his chest, emblazoned with the number 116.
The wind picks up at this level too, swirling and, he would swear - because by this point it’s no stranger than anything else that’s happened to him - pushing him towards the cart.
"Nie znasz Polskiego?” the driver offers, looking a little confused, as if somehow he were not as expected. “Zabawne,założyłem... ale nieważne, mogę spróbować innych języków..."
He takes another step forwards, leaning down, looking deep into the man’s eyes - a laughing dark blue, flecks of yellow dotting the irises so brightly as to be both obvious, and remarkable.
“Wäre Deutsch besser? Kann ich Ihnen helfen? Möchten Sie irgendwohin gehen?”
He catches himself, shocked to hear himself addressed in the German with which he is so very familiar. The man’s accent is excellent; he’s almost certainly a native, but it’s so clear and distinct that he couldn’t place it any further.
He clears his throat, but when he speaks…it is in English.
Because this is not Poland, no, and it is not Germany, but wherever it is, someone knows a little more about him than he might have imagined.
“Are you taking me somewhere? How did you find me?”
“Gut geraten, wie mir scheint. Sie sind im Dorf.”
“Take me to the nearest station. Immediately.”
“Ich befürchte wir sind nur ein Lokaler Service.”
He tries with all his frustration and desperation to bend the frame of the car so that the man will be crushed, so that he’ll have something over him, that he’ll have to drive him exactly wherever will get him where he needs to be, where he was meant to be, a place which was certainly not this…
…but still, nothing comes. His knuckles crack with the effort and he slaps his arm angrily, trying to stop pins and needles from crawling up it. Biting his tongue to keep from losing any more control, he snaps, “Then take me to somewhere where I can find a car that will drive me to the station.”
"Wie ich sehe sind Sie die neue Nummer Sechs. Ich könnte Sie herumführen, wenn Sie möchten? Eine Rundfahrt kostet nur zwei Punkte.”
“I don’t have any credits. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t want to take a round trip of anywhere. I simply want-”
"Sie werden eine Karte haben. Kontrollieren Sie Ihre Taschen. Hier, geben Sie das her. Sie werden sich daran gewöhnen.”
He reaches into the silk-lined pocket of his jacket, even now unable to disobey such polite instruction. Just as he was told, there is a card, thick, sturdy plastic. It’s a light teal, with several holes punched through it. The number ‘6’ is writ large, in red, in its centre.
“Whatever’s going on here, I assure you, I shan’t be the one to get used to anything.”
“Ich bin mir ziemlich zicher, dass ich nicht weiß, was Sie meinen.”
The man stretches out a bony hand and nabs the card from him. Slotting it into a small machine, he allows it to beep, twice, then pulls it out again, and hands it back.
He returns it to his pocket. At least he has something, he concludes.
The man pats the seat next to his, invitingly, and smiles. “Kommen Sie rein, machen Sie es sich bequem.”
Well, he’s paid for it. He might as well.
The cart is too small for his long legs, and the position is undignified, but, as the cart begins to whirr, its electronic motor kicking in easily, it seems strangely fitting.
And he’s paid for this, so it seems. It couldn’t hurt to see what kind of place this is.
“How long have you been here?” he asks the driver, curtly.
“Lange genug! Sie werden sehen, dass wir hier alles haben, was Sie brauchen.”
Something in the totality of his words sends a chill through his veins.
“Hier ist der Dorfladen.”
The driver gestures to a green-walled, cube-shaped building, whose front is dominated by a large glass window, displaying the kind of things you might see at any village store in any village across England. They travel so slowly that he has the chance to notice that they’re labelled in English. This, he thinks, is something. What, he couldn’t say, but it is something.
And still he sees no-one. The shop door sports a sign stating “Open!”, but there’s no further indication that it’s anything of the sort.
The driver nudges him with a sharp elbow, and he jumps a little at the unexpected contact. Number 116 gestures upwards, to a grand, pillared building that stands at the top of the hill, which is lined with a number of curious buildings. A walkway leads to its grand double doors, and at its top -
“Dies ist der Green Dome.”
“The Green Dome. A creative name, indeed. And what, pray tell, happens at the Green Dome?”
“Ich denke, dass werden Sie früh genug erfahren.”
That’s enough.
No more of this.
He leaps out of the cart - hardly a danger at this pace, but apparently dramatic enough. The driver screeches it to an unexpected halt, and calls after his sprinting figure; “Warten Sie! Wo gehen Sie hin? Ich sollte Sie zumindest zurück bringen! Nummer Sechs! Sie haben bezahlt...”
But it’s too late. The man is already running far from him, darting one way and another through the deserted pathways, searching for, and soon finding, the steps that will take him up to the walk that will lead him to the doors of the Green Dome.
Number 116 shakes his head, sadly, and continues on his way to find, hopefully, a more obliging customer. “Manchen Menchen kann man es einfach nicht recht machen. Nun gut. Er wird es hier nicht lange machen mit dieser Einstellung...” he mutters, to the receding winds.
_______________
Number 6 would later come to regret the way he bolted towards the Green Dome. It might, perhaps, have been better, have been less predictable - less him and therefore more advantageous to take his time, to learn more about the ways of this place, to find out, if not where he was, for that, he still does not know, but at least how it worked. Of that, he feels, he’s pretty certain.
The first Number 2 was a smug, unpleasant being of a man, the type that he’s struggled with his whole life, those that have such a sense of entitlement and of their own excellent that the idea that anyone won’t immediately do everything they’re asked to by them is unimaginable. He showed that Number 2 a few things, but, he fears, that rashness, that’s cost him, in the long run.
When, defeated, by his relentless refusal to co-operate, he was surprised to find that within a matter of days, a new Number 2 had been shipped in, airlifted in a shiny, private helicopter the likes of which he hasn’t even seen royalty using. And then when his methods didn’t work out, another. And another. Each think they have the measure of him. Each have presumed he just needs a nudge in the right direction, that they only need to put him in this situation, in the other, and everything they want to know will pour forth.
He’s had a lot of time to think about what kind of man he is, and, worse still, about what kind of man they perceive him to be.
Time passes, but time is a difficult thing to measure in The Village. He counts it in escape attempts, at first. In method and imagination, in false accomplices and near-death experiences.
All of these things become, or seem to become, so numerous, that they are meaningless.
He counts the new Number 2s, ever the adversary, ever the challenge; the innumerable confrontations, episodic and exhausting, some there for just one day, others nagging at him for weeks on end. Occasionally he’s been so toyed with and tested that he has no idea how much time has passed in between, for the Village appears to have no seasons.
And then all this, too, becomes meaningless. The adversaries blend into one another. Some have been preferable to others, but the merry-go-round of goading, tasking, evading and defeating is wearing, even for a man who used to thrive on such things.
After all, he had tried to resign from such a life. It seems as if, for this action, he is to remain subject to an eternity of this bureaucracy.
He has debated telling them the truth. He’s told them plenty of lies. If real truth be told, in places, he’s lost between his own and their lies, the things they’ve said to make him say one thing or another, the things he’s told them to test their willingness to let him go.
In the first instance, he felt that if he would tell them what they wanted to hear, they really might let him go. But, as the game has been played, as the Number 2 has become, in each new incarnation, increasingly devious, in places, even excessive, he’s come to doubt whether they might only want to force the truth out of him to justify…further action against him.
Number 6 does not fear death.
But he does fear extinction.
In The Village, to the best of his knowledge, these are one and the same.
____________
Number 6’s telephone releases its customary buzz at a little before dawn. Rolling his eyes and expecting the worst, seeing it as the heralding of the latest round of ‘fun and games’, he answers, cheerily as he can for a man who’s just leapt from his bed, “Greetings! The new Number 2, I presume?”
“Oo, hello, Number 6! No, I’m afraid not, but he is here now.” The voice is equally cheery, female and pleasant, expressing a brightness that doesn’t fit with the general tone taken by Village residents. “He’d love to have breakfast with you, if you’re willing?”
“Willing? Am I willing?”
“I mean, er, if you’d like to?”
“If I’d like to?”
“I think you’re just repeating what I’m saying. Breakfast, here. With the new Number 2. He’s really looking forward to seeing you again.”
“To seeing me again?” Again? Which of the previous Number 2s might be back? That gives him a sense of deep, deep unease.
“Look, Number 6, I know you’re used to the whole pantomime thing some of my colleagues enjoy, but I’m afraid I’m not very good at that yet, so when I say I’m sure I don’t know what you’re playing at, you’ll just have to believe me. Now. Breakfast will be served in one hour, at the Green Dome. I’m sure I don’t need to give you directions.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Be seeing you!” she intones, satisfied.
Number 6 simply rings off, without returning the farewell.
He tries to count back those who’ve invited him for breakfast, and those whose plots have been unsuccessful, but not sufficiently so that there’s no way the powers that be would let them return. He can’t find any particularly suitable candidate for this.
Either way, at least this won’t be the guessing game that generally accompanies each new arrival. At least he’ll have something to go on, and, after all, breakfast at the Green Dome is always infinitely better than anything he might come by in the Village itself. Certainly, it’s preferable to the old pint of milk he has in his little fridge, and his half-pack of ersatz cornflakes.