34.

London, United Kingdom

The small screen fixed to the entrance door remains desperately black. Jay presses the videophone button for the third time.

"Doc, it's me, Jay, open up..."

This time a faint crackling sound sizzles, the display stays off, but a nasal voice comes out of the integrated speaker.

"No, no... Jay is dead, they got him..."

Jay adjusts his glasses. It's worse than he had imagined.

"Doc, it's me, I am telling you. Turn on your video, you'll see. I'm not dead, and nobody 'got' me. Doc?"

No answer this time, not even statics through the speaker. Jeremy knows the extent to which a paranoid episode can take hold of the Doctor. He has pulled him out of it more than once before. But the Brit has never turned him away at the door. Each time he has eagerly awaited his arrival. He has welcomed him with open arms so that he could help him overcome his anxieties. Today, his irrational fears have reached a whole other level. Doc has gone far into his delusions, so far that even his trust in Jeremy has evaporated. He will have to play it tight to get him out of this state. He presses the button one last time.

"Doc? I know you can hear me, Doc... I'm going to use the emergency exit, OK? We can talk more comfortably then."

Still no answer, but at this point, Jeremy isn't really expecting one. He leaves the porch, passes the small gate, and turns left onto Portobello Road. Almost a quarter-century earlier, Jeremy had run away from home—to his parents' great dismay—to come and help the Doctor settle in here. He had participated in the layout of the old bomb shelter. Over the years, he had closely followed the modifications and improvements made by his friend. He knows that the refuge has a second exit, allowing entry and departure without going through either of the two houses built above.

Fortunately, it is night, and this residential portion of Notting Hill is deserted. Jeremy casts a circular glance, then crosses the street. On the other side, along the sidewalk, he spots a manhole cover. Without tools, he struggles to lift the heavy cast-iron panel but eventually manages to place it askew on the edge of the metal insert, from there he can easily push it to free the opening. He then swoops into the gaping mouth, clinging to the steel bars that disappear into the darkness. Once he has been swallowed under the street, he stabilizes his position and brings the cover back in place above him.

Jay now resides in total obscurity. He finishes his descent by feel, rung after rung. When his foot touches a flat and firm ground, he searches his pocket to pull out Sarah's mobile phone. He turns it on and uses the flash light to orient himself. He can only discern the surroundings, but he has been down here before and knows what this main conduit looks like. He stands in a small niche that borders a wide corridor. In the middle flows murky water with not very pleasant yet nonetheless bearable odors. The current is weak, and the liquid circulates with barely audible rustling. On either side of the narrow channel, about five feet apart, thin ledges overlook the water's surface. Jeremy proceeds on one of them. Bending his head slightly to avoid bumping it, he covers in the opposite direction the distance previously traveled on the street. He soon arrives in front of another niche quite similar to the one he left, but instead of housing a ladder to climb back outside, it shelters a metal armored door with visible rivets. The top is rounded, giving it the appearance of a submarine hatch. An impression completed by the bolting wheel that occupies the center of the steel panel.

Jeremy positions himself properly in the axis, then jumps the small canal to land lightly in the middle of the niche. Out of habit, he tries the opening lever, but of course, the mechanism is locked from the inside. Jay knocks three times on the metal door, then turns to another videophone, fixed on the niche's wall.

"Doc, it's me ... you can see it's me ... who else would know about this entrance?"

A crackling betrays the use of the intercom, but no answer follows.

"Doc?"

"Go away, impostor!"

Jeremy decides on a plan of action. The Doctor needs to focus to get out of his current state.

"Doc, in French, please. You know you and I, it's always in French. You remember our pact, right?"

No answer.

"Do you remember? When we were just pen pals?"

This time the Doctor responds.

"So in French: Va-t'en, imposteur !"

"Doc, Doc, come on, how can you believe it's not me? Think... I know your secret exit, our pact that's almost thirty years old, what more do you need?"

"They have been inside Jay's head. With ... with machines in his brain. They could recover all his memories."

"Doc? Turn on the camera, you'll see it's me."

This time the small screen lights up, casting a faint glow into the niche. Jeremy turns off the phone and positions himself in front of the videophone so that the light illuminates his face. On the screen, he sees his friend, disheveled, emaciated, haggard.

"You see, Doc, it's me..."

On the other side, the paranoid tilts his head, to discern better. He squints his eyes, biting his lips.

"It's a trick, he harangues... They manipulate the video, a deep fake, that's it?"

"Doc... It's your system... I'm sure you must have a way to control the video feed to check if it's altered."

A spark seems to light in the Doctor's gaze.

"Ha! Ha! I can do that, yes, I can do just that."

That's all Jeremy wants. To focus Doc's attention on a task, to engage his mind enough so he can call on his rational side.

Doc's face disappears, but the communication remains active. Jeremy can hear the Doctor frantically typing on one of his keyboards. After a few minutes, he reappears on the small screen, undecided.

"Jay?" he says timidly.

"Who else could it be?"

"They want to kill me, you know?"

"Hmm..."

Jeremy isn't sure if he should soothe his friend or confirm that the threat is indeed real this time. He's just starting to crack the shell of paranoia, and his next sentence will be crucial. He thinks for a moment, judging that appearing as a liar would be the best way to discredit himself. He decides to lay his cards on the table.

"Doc? This time it's true, Doc..."

The Doctor holds his head in his hands.

"I knew it! I knew it!"

Both palms on his forehead, he points towards the camera, his index fingers forming two ludicrous horns.

"And they sent you... They control you with their machines in your brain and they..."

Paranoia seeps in again, a drastic measure is required. Jeremy interrupts his friend and orders in a stern voice:

"William! William Worthington! You're going to open this door right now, enough is enough!"

He sees Doc's look change. This name, neither of them has used it since the Worthington estate fire—more than twenty years ago—which had claimed the lives of Doc's entire family. That night, William, already psychologically unstable, withdrawn, and passionate about computers, was working in the basement in his technical room, which had saved him from the disaster. But the trauma had broken him, he had entered a catatonic state for weeks and had been placed in a psychiatric hospital. Only Jeremy had been able to penetrate his shell and bring him back to reality. Doc's mental health had been forever tainted by it. He had entered the ward as William Worthington, the sole heir to the family fortune. But he had come out as "The Doctor," the only name he would respond to, from then on, probably in homage to his hero character from the mythical English series "Doctor Who."

Breathless, Doc stands dumbfounded on the screen, caught in a battle raging at the edges of his consciousness and subconscious. Jeremy continues: "Even you can't really give credit to such an idea ... remote-controlled people? What else? This isn't an episode of Doctor Who, William!"

Doc's mouth has opened slightly, as if he wants to say something, but his bewildered look denies this will.

Jeremy softens and resumes. "Yes, Phoenix uses nanobots, yes he is capable of making them explode, or I don't know what, in the brains of his victims. But that's where it stops, do you understand?"

"Phoenix?" stutters Doc.

"Yes, Phoenix ... he's behind all this."

Doc has straightened. He now speaks more coherently, voicing his thoughts aloud. "Did he kill all the members of RoTP?"

Jeremy swallows hard, his throat knotted with grief. Not just its members. "Yes, Doc..." His tone has sounded softer, more gravelly.

"To find me, right?" continues Doc.

Jay doesn't answer, he struggles to suppress a sob with difficulty. But the Doctor seems well on his way and adds on his own.

"I'm not crazy, Jay. Phoenix might not be able to remote control people, but his job for the CIA was to produce nanobots capable of binding to the optic and auditory nerves to relay information. The perfect spy, can you imagine? No need to infiltrate the enemy with long operations, just inject nanobots into one of his close ones..."

"Doc, open up, that's what we need to talk over. What you've discovered about Phoenix, what I know ... together we must be able to stop him."

The Doctor casts a suspicious glance at the camera, probably wondering if Jay could have been subjected to spy nanobots without his knowledge.

"Doc," Jeremy whispers in a gasp. "This time, I need you..."

The Doctor maintains his distrustful look.

"Phoenix... He..." Jeremy takes a deep breath, his eyes welling with tears as he unfolds: "He killed Sarah, Doc ... that son of a bitch killed her..."

In his den, Doc startles, as if suddenly awakened from a long dream. Is it the last words of his friend? Or is it the fact that he pronounced them in English, as if their weight in his native language had been too heavy, too real?

A sound of metal scraping against metal indicates the Doctor is activating the mechanism from the other side. The thick watertight door opens inwards. Doc doesn't come out. He grabs Jay's arm and pulls him into the shelter. He closes it hermetically behind them and turns to the Frenchman.

"Jay? My very own friend?"

He tilts his head and displays the contrite look of a child who acknowledges his mistake.

"What do you think?" answers Jay, removing his glasses.

He passes a sleeve over his eyes to chase away the tears that threaten to cross the barrier of his eyelashes.

Doc throws himself into his friend's arms.

"I'm sorry," he says simply.

On his cheeks flow the torrents that the Frenchman could not, or did not want, to express.