About a week later, after John had gone to sleep, Paul thought he heard someone moving around in the kitchen so he went out to find Barney standing there. "Hey," he greeted. "It's been a few months."
"Sorry," Barney frowned
"No, it's fine," Paul shook his head. "So.. I've been here for over a year now. Of course, it's only been a few months for you, but still. A whole year. That seems so crazy like it hasn't been anywhere near that long, but at the same time I feel like I never grew old in the first place."
"Yeah, well, it feels like it has been years for me." Barney sighed. "I'm outrageously stressed out."
"Yeah, I can tell," Paul said admittedly. "Sometimes seem like a whole different person than the guy I met when I first got here."
"Yeah, I know," Barney gave a small smile. "Anyway, I need to talk to you about John and saving him.. How are you feeling about that?"
"Fine, I guess," Paul shrugged his shoulders. "I'm just really scared that I'm not going to be able to manage it. Like, I keep thinking, what's if I can't do it? What if I can't save him and I lose him again? I don't think I'll be able to handle losing him again."
"Yeah, I figured you were going to say something like that," Barney nodded. "Uhm, I'm sorry to have to do this to you, Paul, but I'm going to need you to come with me."
"Come with you?" Paul knitted his brows together, puzzled. "What do you mean? Come with you where?"
"The F.H.O. Headquarters," Barney said.
"What? Why?" Paul frowned.
"We're holding a meeting to talk about your case and the president of the F.H.O. wants you to be there," Barney said and he was clearly fighting back an anxious look. "He wants to speak with you about your plans and what not."
"Oh," Paul said. "Okay.. Right now?"
"Yeah, you just need to go change your clothes," Barney nodded. "You should put on a suit or something."
"Okay," Paul said and headed to the bedroom he shared with John. He moved silently about the room, even though he knew that Barney's magic would keep John asleep. He put on his best suit and shoes. He tied his tie carefully and before he left the room he knelt down beside John and kissed John's forehead.
"Ready?" Barney said when Paul walked back into the kitchen.
He nodded. "Yeah, I suppose so."
"All right," Barney said. "Let's do this." He grasped Paul's shoulder tightly with one hand and snapped his fingers with the other hand.
Paul suddenly found himself swallowed by darkness and he was falling. His heart leapt into his throat and he tried to scream but no noise came out. Then, as quickly as the strange sensation of falling through nothingness had started it was over, and his feet were on solid ground again. The he was falling again, but this time he toppled onto the floor.
"Okay there, Paulie?" Barney asked.
Paul got back in his feet. "Oh, yeah." He said sarcastically, brushing off his suit. "Bloody fantastic, thanks."
"Great," Barney said and pulled back the sleeve of his suit jacket to glance at a very advanced looking watch. "Right, well, we've got a little while until the meeting so we can have a look around. Sound good?"
"Yeah," Paul nodded.
"Okay, come with me," Barney led Paul into a room filled with grey cubicles. "So, this is where all of our reporters are. They write up all the reports for each case we have." The two of them walked up to a woman with fiery red hair and hazel eyes that seemed to light up the room. Her pale cheeks were sprinkled with freckles. "Here, we have Miss Lillian Adams."
"Oh, please, call me Lilly," she smiled, revealing a set of perfect white teeth. Paul noticed that she spoke in a thick Scottish accent. She stood and reached out to shake Paul's hand. "Mr. McCartney, it's such a pleasure to meet you. I am a really big fan."
"Oh, it's nice to meet you, too," Paul shook her hand and smiled.
"Lilly is my fiancée," Barney said, slipping an arm around her waist.
"Oh, my god," Paul grinned. "That's brilliant! When is the wedding?"
"Next year!" Lilly grinned. "I'm so excited, I can't even begin to tell you. Oh, Barney, I need to talk to you later. Alone."
Barney looked at her curiously, but nodded. "Okay." He nodded. "Well, I need to get Paul to the court room. Our meeting starts in a little while."
"Okay," Lilly nodded and kissed Barney's cheek. "I have to get back to work, too. Good luck, and I'll see you later."
"Yep," Barney smiled. He pulled her in close and kissed her.
She looked at Paul when Barney let go of her and her cheeks turned about as red as her hair. "As I said before, it was very nice meeting you, Mr. McCartney. I hope I can see you again sometime and we can talk a bit more and get to know each other."
"That would be lovely," Paul nodded as he followed Barney away from Lilly. Before they could turn out of the room and into a long hallway, he turned back and called to Lilly, "And please, call me Paul!"
The two men turned into a long hallway where the walls, ceiling, and floor were a blinding white, making the charcoal black doors on either side stand out brilliantly.
"What do you think of her?" Barney asked as they walked.
"She's wonderful," Paul nodded. "You're a very lucky man."
"Yeah, I am," Barney smiled. "I wonder what she wants to talk about, though." Neither of them spoke for a few minutes, and then they came to the end of the hallway. There was a door that was the same white as the doors, ceiling, and floor. "This isn't going to be pleasant, but I have my orders. I have to show you this."
"What is it?" Paul asked. "Are we going in?"
"No," Barney shook his head. "It's too risky to send you in there."
"Why?" Paul asked.
Barney sighed. "Just watch," he said. He pulled back his sleeve and pressed a button that was on the side of his watch, then tapped the top of it a few times. He gestured to the wall where a screen was appearing out of nowhere.
The screen showed a white room with a metal chair in the center of it. Behind the chair, a door opened and a man dressed in all black with a gun on his belt dragged a woman into the room. She had long, stringy white hair and her cheeks were hollow. Her face was wrinkled, and her eyes held the pain and wisdom of many years. She was dressed in all white.
"Barney, he's not going to kill her, is he?" Paul frowned.
"No," Barney sighed. "Much worse than that."
Paul watched the screen with wide, anxious eyes as the woman was forced into the metal chair and her arms were chained to the armrests. The man dressed in all black hurried from the room, slamming the door behind himself.
The woman sat there, staring ahead for a long time. Then, after a few minutes, she began to twitch. Just her head at first, but then over the next several minutes her whole body began to shake violently. Another few minutes passed and she opened her mouth and squeezed her shut...and screamed, though the screen Paul was watching her on had no audio. He was thankful for that. He didn't know if he could stand to hear her screams.
"Barney? What the hell? What's happening to her?" Paul asked, his eyes growing wider as the woman collapsed forward, her head hanging and her whole body going limp. "Is she..dead?"
"No," Barney said. "She's much worse than dead. She's been driven insane."
"What? How? Why?" Paul said in a panicked voice as the screen turned off and disappeared altogether.
Barney was disturbingly calm. His expression was hard, cold, and resigned like he'd seen this happen so many times and it didn't even have an effect on him anymore. It was, to Paul, so much worse than seeing him stressed. "She was a spy for the Shadows, and she was caught."
"So that's what they do to the Shadows?!" Paul roared.
"That's what...we...do to many of their prisoners," Barney said, spitting out the word 'we'. "Our prisoners are separated into three groups. The Ones. They get fired, but when you get fired from the F.H.O., all of your memories are wiped and replaced with new ones. Fake ones. You get a fake life. The Twos are executed. Then, there are the Threes. The Threes are people who are caught as spies or traitors, captured Shadows, and sometimes...people who fail the F.H.O. They are put in the room you just saw and they are driven insane."
"What was that room, anyway?" Paul said. "And how does it drive people insane?"
"It's called the White Room," Barney said. "And it is enhanced with an advanced technology that triggers the part of the brain that stores tragedy. Supposedly, people...see things. Things that drive them mad. We're not sure, exactly, what they see. It could be memories, it could be things that aren't real, it could be other things. All we know is they go mad and there's no coming back from the effects of the White Room."
"That's terrible," Paul said. "What happens to them afterward?"
"They're put in solitary confinement," Barney said. He looked angry, but he tried to hide it. "The only times they ever see other people are when their meals are brought to them. They just keep seeing things that aren't there. Most of them last a couple of years, depending on how old they are. The woman you just saw is eighty eight years old. She'll probably last a month or two at most."
"And does everyone go crazy that quickly?" Paul asked.
"No," Barney said. "That woman took sixteen minutes and thirty nine seconds before she collapsed. If we put a kid in there who'd had a relatively good life, it good take several hours for them to collapse. Now, if we put someone like you in there, who'd lost so much in their life and been through so much shit...it'd take minutes."
Paul frowned.
"I'm sorry you had to see that," Barney matched the Beatle's frown. "But I had my orders. We've got to get to the meeting." Barney strode past Paul, heading down the hallway.
"Barney," Paul said and Barney stopped. "You don't agree with this, do you?"
Barney turned around and looked at him, still frowning. "No, I don't. But it is what it is. Come on, we really need to get going." He turned again and kept walking. Paul followed that time.