Helix - Volume I

1

“Wrong place, wrong time”

Six months ago Dr Samuel Mountford would never have considered suicide. But now, as he stared out at the velvety black night pierced by the hazed lights of cars and lorries, he realised his time had come to an end.

Clinging to the railings of the bridge with one hand, and staring down at the motorway absently, he fumbled in his pocket and procured his ID card. He looked content in the picture, almost happy, and it saddened him to think this had all started with such promise.

He laughed bitterly, throwing the card off the bridge. It fluttered to the ground, eddying in air currents, before it landed on the roof of a supermarket lorry, carried away with the latest batch of groceries, never to be seen again. He would never need it again – he presumed ID cards were unnecessary in death.

Taking a gulp of night air, he shivered. What had he actually gotten out of life, he wondered? He'd only ever had one girlfriend, and that relationship hadn't lasted. He didn't have any children. He didn't have a dog. He didn't have a nice house. Sure, his scientific views had been posted in journals worldwide, but that truly wasn't the be all and end all.

The Genesis Project... he shivered again at the very thought. He had been a part of it. He had been a founder in that twisted scheme of political greed and scientific frenzy. And because of that, now he had to pay the price.

Samuel had nothing left to live for any more. A light drizzle began to cascade through the ebony sky, and he blinked through the rain, salty tears dripping from his eyes. He gripped the railings again, shakily, and climbed atop, facing down the motorway.

A light and wintry wind blew from behind, and in a way it willed him on. He exhaled a deep haunted breath, and then let go. He tumbled through the air, his vision stinging and blurred. He heard the horn of some great juggernaut, and the lights blinded him.

“I'm sorry,” he whispered.

Moments later, the lorry and Dr Samuel Mountford collided.

Meredith Jones was no normal woman. As if schizophrenic tendencies weren't enough, she had multiple personality disorder. Meredith was her usual side - a depressed melancholic person, lost in her own thoughts. Meredith wasn't dangerous. Renee on the other hand... Renee was uncontrollably violent, vicious, and murderous. Only a generous dose of sedative, and sheer force, could keep her down.

Deep inside the Helix headquarters, she lay manacled to a bed, a fearful nurse scurrying about her, attending to the great wounds left by her wrist slashing.

“This is her fifth suicide attempt now,” one doctor whispered to another from behind a mirrored layer of glass. “It's getting impossible to tell whether our endeavours were what caused this in the first place.”

“What I worry about,” the other doctor muttered. “Is where she got a weapon from in the first place.”

Meredith watched the nurse with narrowed eyes, and she knew for definite that there were suited, bespectacled types, talking about her from behind the mirror – she could sense them.

A nurse applied bandages around her wrists, and she watched balefully. The woman was short, with clipped back ginger-brown hair, freckles, and a pointed smile.

“Enjoy this, do you?” Meredith hissed. “Maybe I'll do it again for your benefit?”

The nurse as good as blanked her, and so she simply shook her head, glancing back round the room. It was clinical, all sterile white surfaces and gleaming metal instruments. Shadows played in the corners of the room, lucid, and cast by the overhead bar lights that flickered like a indecisive and impromptu light display.

Kill them... A little voice whispered. The words were said so seductively, so tantalisingly. Meredith knew it was easily done, yet she held back.

They all hate you. They all glance at you, feeling little pity, but luck. They feel lucky to be sane, unlike you.

She shook, teeth audibly grinding. She tried to ignore the voice, but it wouldn't go away. It was a car alarm ringing in the nearby street. It was the music in a night club, fast, unrelenting, destructive - like the ecstasy tablets so often passed around. Such was the addiction to a drug, a rampant craving that could not be denied. She gave into Renee's temptations and surrendered to the darkness.

From the other side of the wall, the observing doctors had no time to react, and could only watch in horror as Meredith's countenance grew fierce and she unleashed a vociferous scream.

The manacles burst off as though the patients wrists had been too enlarged to hold them any longer. Meredith rose from the bed like Frankenstein emerging into life as a consequence of a rogue lightning bolt. She rounded on the nurse, forcing her into a corner, then lifting her up into the air without even making contact. A raw power emanated from Meredith, and she struck fear into anyone who saw her.

One of the doctors slammed his fist against the emergency button. A red light began to flash through the shadowy corridors of Helix. A whirring alarm started up.

Meredith threw the nurse against the opposite wall, and then, with a burning intensity she raised a hand. A locked drawer lurched open from a small metal cabinet. Twenty or so syringes rose up into the air, needles pointed towards the nurse. Meredith clicked her fingers and the needles jabbed into the nurses hands and feet, impaling her to the wall.

A doctor scrambled to the door, but Meredith span, locking it with only her mind. Then she turned her attention back to the nurse, squealing like a pig heading for slaughter.

“You shouldn't have ignored me, you stupid bitch,” she spat, before surgeons knives and scalpels rose into the air, glinting under the blinking bar light. Then she made her move. They hurtled across the room, embedding themselves into the nurses back, arms, head. Then Meredith swung her hand, and the syringes fell to the floor. The lifeless cadaver of the nurse slid to the ground grotesquely, streaks of crimson painting the wall left in her wake.

The doctors glanced at each other. It was a morbid, drawn out glance. A glance which said a million words, without either man opening their mouths.

The door to the medical room burst open, and Meredith – or rather, Renee – looked at both of them, studying them as if they were insects under the microscope.

“Worthless scum,” she muttered, raising a hand.

Terrible screams filled the corridor. Yet no one heard, for they were drowned out by the security alarm.

Gabi Taylor lounged back on the sofa, resting in her boyfriends arms. She glanced at him. Tristan Dawson had an affable nature, amiable at the best of times, arrogant at the worst. She loved him though, and recently, her feelings had only strengthened.

When people spoke about relationships, they mentioned the big, grand gestures, but it was at times like this - simply sitting in front of the television in each others company - that Gabi pondered on spending the rest of her life with Tristan.

He had scruffy black hair, and sharp blue eyes like two pools of endless water. She found clarity in those eyes.

They had been together for over a year now, and she could barely remember what it had been like before that time. Feeling a romantic mood in the air, she turned to him, pushing a hand through his hair. “I love you,” she whispered.

He glanced from the screen, and looked at her with a puzzled expression. Then he wrapped his arm around her more tightly, and kissed her on the lips. “I love you too.”

The moment was inexplicably interrupted by a violent outburst on the television. The BBC news reel played, and the damned incessant theme song was unleashed, fervent and severe. They both turned to the screen to see the breaking news banner sliding along the bottom. The news reporter was a woman with a blonde bob and glasses perched on the end of her crooked nose.

“Meredith Jones, extreme schizophrenic and sufferer of multiple personality disorder has escaped from confinement in Bristol. Police are advising people to stay away from her, and certainly not to approach her. She is highly dangerous, and eight people have all ready died in her escape.” As the woman spoke, a chilling picture of the felon in question was displayed beside her. She had a pale face, drained of all life. She had grey eyes, and tied back blonde hair, which was so light it was almost turning grey.

“Bristol... God, I hope she doesn't come this way,” Gabi muttered.

Tristan shook his head. “She's a psycho, she's probably headed right out of the city and onto the motorway.”

Gabi nodded, and then reached across to the coffee table, switching the television off and making the room descend into darkness.

“Hey, I was watching -” She cut him off with a finger, and then a kiss to his lips.

“Tristan... Mum and bro are out all night, so we have the house to ourselves,” Gabi said, hoping he would understand what she meant. He pulled her close, kissing her again.

The lamp above the television illuminated the corner of the room in a pool of artificial light. A sliver of ghostly white moonlight peeked through the blinds. The rest of the room was held in darkness.

“I did tell Selene I'd be crashing here tonight...” Tristan said, almost weighing up the options. Selene was Tristan's older sister. His parents had died in a car crash three years after he had been born, and his older sister had become the mother of the family. She was a busy, career driven woman, and she had little time for her brother any more.

Gabi kissed him again, her warm brown eyes grew vivid, and her clipped back red hair seemed aflame in the light. He looked down at her, innocence portrayed in his expression.

He kissed her, and she pushed him back against the sofa so she was lying on top of him. Tristan kissed at her neck, and she shivered with delight. A car shot past the road outside, dazzling lights dancing along the walls like a disco.

She stroked his arms, sliding her fingers across his face. He reciprocated, holding her hips, caressing her back. Letting out a tiny whimper, she pulled back, staring into his face. An endless expression of desire, love and dreams met her gaze.

“Are you... ready?” she asked daringly, thinly disguising her first time fears.

Tristan moved his head, petting the side of her face. “Only if you are.”

She nodded firmly, and fell back into another kiss.

Nathan Fox was used to gatherings of journalists. Like flies to a pile of horse shit, a media frenzy was always guaranteed. Murder. Now that was a story worth telling, and that was also how he found himself grappling for attention, shoving camera men and writers in a desperate attempt to reach the front of the throng.

His jaw cracked with a yawn, and part of him longed for the warm and soft confines of his bed, but the phone call from his boss had been less of a request, and more of a command. A lose-your-job-if-not sort of command.

A police cordon was in force on this section of the motorway, and as far as Nathan had discerned, a middle aged man had plunged off the overhead bridge and into the path of an oncoming lorry.

Obviously, suicide was the word that filled everyone's mind at first, but he wondered if the man had been pushed. He wondered if he was finally on the brink of a major story. As a police officer walked towards them ready to make a statement, his hopes were shattered.

The officer was a brunt looking male, and he turned to a colleague for a moment, his whispered conversation quite audible. “How did they get here so bloody quickly?”

Nathan scowled. The police and the press were sworn enemies, and obstructions frequently came from both quarters. Most of the time an uneasy alliance was made so both parties could get their information, but the disdain between the two was undeniable.

“Ok, I'm going to make this short and sweet, because I'm sure we all want to get back home. At around eleven thirty, a man was sighted up on the bridge acting strangely. Twelve minutes later, he climbed over the railing and jumped off. He died immediately. This case looks likely to be suicide. Due to the timing of the fall, the man crashed into a lorry. No charges have been made against the lorry driver, and he is not implicated at all,” the officer started smiling, clearly finding something amusing – and probably not the death that had just occurred. “That's your lot, goodbye.”

A round of moans and groans took the crowd, and the flash of cameras lit up the dark sky. “A name!” One man called out. “Give us a name!”

The officer gave them a nonchalant shrug and wandered back over to the cordon. Several police officers stepped in to block the entrance and an aqua blue sheet had been erected to shield the body from prying eyes.

More demands rose up into the air, swallowed by the uncaring police. Nathan turned and walked away, pocketing his pen and notebook. He understood the futility of the requests – the police officer wouldn't tell them any more, it wasn't like he owed them anything. His boss wanted the story covered, and after a little bit of digging he'd have the story. A bridge dive suicide. It would probably hit the third or forth page, maybe the second if he was lucky.

He climbed into his car, put the air conditioning on warm, and drove back into Bristol to find a suitable café for his work. Suitable wasn't a specific category. Suitable was anything.

~*~

Nathan tapped at the keyboard of his laptop, taking sips of the coffee, and glancing out at the street. He scrubbed a hand through his tousled brown hair, watching a gaggle of drunk young women, staggering down the street in skyscraper heels. The Corner Café had the dullest name in history, but the coffee wasn't bad, and the doughnut he had just devoured had been satisfactory in a sugar and fat filled way. The seat was red and soft, and was also torn apart in eight distinct places. He tried not to take too much notice of the general cleanliness.

His countenance bore annoyance, and it was all because of a distinct lack of information. The identity of the bridge diving man seemed to be concealed at every corner. The police were keeping quiet and refusing to issue any further statements. There were no undercover journalist exposes, and no news websites were reporting the name of the dead man. For Nathan, it seemed he had reached a dead end.

As he saved the file and gulped down the last dregs of coffee, he began to give up hope. So much for the second page story, he thought to himself. And then all of a sudden his mobile phone rang, the Doctor Who theme tune pulling raised eyebrows from around the café.

He answered it eagerly, slamming his mug down onto the greasy table.

“I have information,” a voice announced from the other end of the line.

“Who is this?” Nathan asked.

“That's not relevant, I-”

“How did you get this number?”

“I know the name of the dead man. I have more information as well.”

Nathan listened intently, but the voice was somehow disguised, shadowed. He couldn't even tell the gender of the person speaking.

“Are you interested?”

“Uh... sure,” he replied tentatively.

“Meet me behind St Mary's church tomorrow.”

“When?”

“Sunrise.”

Then the line went dead.

Gabi smiled at Tristan, catching her breath. She brushed her fingers against his bare chest, his arm around her.

“I love you,” she whispered, pulling the dressing gown on she had retrieved from upstairs.

“I love you too,” Tristan replied simply. “I guess a lot has changed this evening.” A grin slowly formed on his face.

She tapped his nose and narrowed her eyes. “Was it good for you?” she asked, climbing on top of him again. “I could always remind you...” Tristan's hands went down her back and through her hair, and she was just about to kiss him again when a smash emanated from the hallway.

They shot up as one, coiled figures unravelling. A shadow slivered along the wall, and footsteps came through the door. The wintry brush of cold air against Gabi's skin told her all she needed to know.

Someone had broken in.

“Tris...” she whispered feebly. He nodded at her, fear glinting in his expression. He climbed up from the sofa and stood rigid in front of Gabi. She sat upright, twirling a clump of her hair from her fringe nervously.

The moment was like a dream sequence; blurry yet hasty, unfathomable shifts of reality at every moment. A feminine figure strode through the doorway, into the room, and she stared at Gabi and Tristan menacingly.

“Who the hell are you?” Tristan asked, defending her with only his trousers on.

The woman was crazed; it took only a second or so for Gabi to see that. Her clothes were plain and in bad condition, and there was a dark substance smeared over her hands and top. She feared it was blood.

“Wait a minute...” Gabi whispered. The woman's face... “Meredith Jones. It's Meredith Jones! The woman on the news!”

“Well done little girl,” Meredith said with a bitter laugh. Tristan took a shaky step backwards. “Now I want you to listen, and listen carefully. I'm only going to say this once. As you no doubt saw on the news, the police are after me. I need to hide out. You're going to let me stay here for a bit, ok?”

Tristan glanced round to Gabi, and she raised an eyebrow, trembling. The news story had described Meredith as an extreme schizophrenic, as dangerous... Now this criminal stood before them.

“Ok, but please don't hurt us,” Gabi found herself saying. She didn't understand how. Her mind was scrambled, and finding the words to speak were like fishing for letters in a bowl of factory rejected alphabet soup.

“Please don't hurt us,” Meredith repeated, mocking Gabi's request. “So is lover boy going to protect you?”

“His name is Tristan,” Gabi growled, standing up. A courage blossomed within her, and she forced her prior fears aside. It was like the time in year eight when she had stood up to a vicious little bully.

Meredith was about to say something when Tristan abruptly lunged at the intruder. Meredith side stepped, as if the air around her was vacuous and incomplete, and she appeared a metre away within the blink of an eye. Tristan rolled over, hitting the laminate floor hard and sliding back. Gabi gasped, raising her hands to her mouth.

Tristan was about to get up when Meredith put a hand out in front of her and a burst of light occurred. Gabi shuddered. The very air seemed to ripple, and she felt a force pressing against her body. It was like the air blasting out of an office fan, but even stronger. A pistol suddenly appeared in Meredith's hand, and the woman exhaled heavily. Gabi's mind quivered, as if a moth had just fluttered through her head.

“What... was that?” Gabi asked. “I could feel it.”

Meredith pointed the gun at Tristan but kept her eyes on Gabi. “You felt it?” She sounded interested. “Look at me. Look at the air around me. What do you see? What do you feel?”

Gabi shivered. “The air is shimmering...”

“Perhaps you're an Esper,” Meredith said. She laughed all of a sudden, turning her attention back to Tristan.

“Don't shoot me! God damn it, don't shoot!” Tristan cried, launching himself into a panic.

Gabi waved her hands fervently. “Please!” she added.

Then all of a sudden the world outside the house relented its silence. The whirring sound of rotary blades filled the air, and Gabi knew a helicopter was hovering overhead. Lights erupted outside, as if the sun had risen a little too early.

Esper... What did she mean? What was that feeling? And the gun... it appeared from nowhere!

“This is the police! The house is surrounded Meredith. You have two minutes to come out through the front door with your hands up in the air where we can see them!” The order was barked through a megaphone, and Gabi realised all the attention was now focused on her home. This was all just a bad case of wrong place, wrong time.

Tristan shuffled back along the floor, until he was leaning against the cold marble fireplace. It was never lit. Central heating had shunned it into obsolescence.

“Damn!” Meredith cursed. “How did they find me...?”

“Maybe you were careless,” Gabi muttered.

“Shut up little girl!” The gun was turned on her, and Tristan carefully clambered up, desperate to keep Meredith's attention elsewhere. Gabi kept her eyes on the gun. She didn't want to accidentally betray her boyfriend. Memories of their living room love making returned, and she found herself fighting back a smile.

If you don't get out of this situation, there won't be any more living room love making to smile about!

“The police are here, you can't get away now,” Gabi said, sliding a hand through her scarlet hair to check it was clipped back properly. If reporters were going to burst into her house with cameras, she didn't want the shame of looking ridiculous on live news coverage.

“You just saw me conjure up a firearm... don't you think I might have a few other tricks up my sleeves?”

Gabi stared at the woman in horror. She guessed by tricks, Meredith didn't mean procuring rabbits from hats. There was something malicious in the woman's temperament, something psychotic. And it was this unhinged state that worried Gabi.

Lights swept past the window every few moments, and the drone of a helicopter could still be heard over the house. Gabi wondered how her mother and brother were... She wondered if she'd ever see them again...

Meredith suddenly moaned. “No... not now... Please, Renee.”

Yes, Gabi thought. Definitely unhinged...

The schizophrenic screamed and gasped, and her eyes seemed to shake in their sockets. “Hello,” she finally said, a smirk playing on her face. It wasn't just the voice that was different. The whole way she carried herself, the facial expressions... in that moment Meredith had changed. The news report had mentioned multiple personality disorder, Gabi thought. She felt unsettled.

“One minute, Meredith!” The megaphone voice instructed from outside. Gabi wondered just what the police were planning to do when the minute was up. Suddenly Tristan was bending down and grabbing a large lacquered candle stick from the fireplace. He lifted it above Meredith's head, but almost instantly she span round, aiming the gun.

A bang erupted, and a pungent smell filled the air. There was a flurry of activity out on the lawn, the police lights locked onto the house, radiant beams coming through the window like tunnels of lights inviting them to heaven.

“See you around, Esper,” Meredith said, before taking one step forward and melting into the air. Tristan was staring straight towards Gabi, locked in a startled torpor. She blinked when she saw the blood dripping from his face.

Then suddenly he fell forwards, as rigid as a cardboard cut-out. Gabi lunged toward him, so he fell into her arms. She screamed, fat tears pouring from her eyes. When the police burst into the room, she was hysterical.

/ To Be Continued /

Helix Playlist #01: Careful - Paramore

A/N: Thank you for reading the initial pilot chapter of Helix. The stories just starting, so don't be too critical – there's plenty of time to build up the characters yet. Please leave a review – first impressions, what did you think? If I get some positive feedback, chapter 2 will be winging its way to you soon! I want this story to have the feel of a TV show, so there will be one new chapter “episode” per week.