by Anna Ferrara
To my relief, the odd-coloured woman was still outside, although clearly very cross with me. She took one look at Paul, swore and dug into the gym bag she had down her front.
The vial of copper-coloured liquid that came out of it, she shoved into my hands. “Pour this down her throat to neutralise the tranquilliser. When that’s done, follow me! The guards are on their way! We need to hide!”
I did as she said right away; propped Paul’s lifeless body up against the nearest wall for support and massaged her throat when the vial had been emptied into her mouth.
To my horror, the odd-coloured woman ripped out a handgun from the back of her jacket. She moved away from the exit door we had been heading towards before and ran towards the other end of the corridor instead.
Shit. The plan had changed, and it was all my fault. I realised I might have blown my only chance of getting out of the Wonderdrug Psychiatric Centre in that moment. All because I wanted to get Paul out with me? But I couldn’t have left her. The odd-coloured woman would never have come back for her, I could tell. Getting Paul out was a risk I simply had to take.
“In here, Lane!” the odd-coloured woman shouted from afar. She had gotten a door at the far end of the corridor open and had already gone inside but stuck her head out just to wave at me. “Hurry!”
Paul was still unconscious so I propped her up on my shoulders and dragged her towards the odd-coloured woman. Sweat rose on my forehead and on the parts of my body under Paul’s heavy warmth. I felt myself straining to breathe and move on, felt my muscles become wobbly and sore, but I kept on going.
I made it past the two elevators in the middle of the corridor right as the LED indicators on them started changing. ‘3’. ‘4’. ‘5’... I gathered all my strength and pushed myself into a run.
It was thoroughly difficult to run with Paul on me and I never thought it would be possible yet I made it happen. Door after door after door after door passed like lamp posts would if you saw them from a moving bus.
I made it to the door the odd-coloured woman was at just as both elevators chimed ‘ding’ and thrust Paul and myself through the door right in the nick of time. The odd-coloured woman shut the door behind us right away. Quietly.
We were in a storeroom full of floor-to-ceiling metal shelves filled with boxes of tissues, toilet paper, soap, toothpaste, sanitary pads, floor-cleaning detergent, dish washing liquid and other household items. The storeroom wasn’t particularly big—only about twice the size of my former micro-apartment—and was lit by florescent lights that weren’t particularly bright. I recognised most of the scents in the air—soap that had been in the bathroom in my ward, antiseptic that was always on the sheets—but there were unfamiliar smells in there too. Cleaning chemicals and paper, it seemed.
I was huffing furiously from the exertion of getting us in there but the odd-coloured woman did not give me a chance to rest. She dragged me—with Paul still as heavy as a bag of bricks on my back—towards the shelf furthest from the door and pulled us down into a crouch behind it. My knees crashed into the cement floor with huge thuds and hurt like a motherfucker but all I could do was grimace and let tears take over my vision because the odd-coloured woman warned me—through angry, sharp gestures—not to make a sound.
“You should not have done that,” I heard her whisper as I wiped tears from my eyes and set Paul down. “Next time I tell you to do something, you do exactly as I say, are we clear?”
“I couldn’t leave Paul,” I whispered in return.
“Stop. You do exactly as I say from now on, are we clear?”
I nodded for she had the intensity of a military commander and made me feel very small and feeble, for some reason.
The odd-coloured woman pulled a huge, empty box out from a low shelf—the shelf closest to the ground—and put it between us. “Get in and lie down now.”
“Into the box?”
“Yes. Do it, hurry.”
I did as she said, halved my body and curled up into a foetal position to fit into the box which was only half my body’s length.
“Lane?”
I sat up and turned at once. “Paul! Are you okay?”
“Great, just in time,” the odd-coloured woman said. She directed her commanding gaze towards Paul—who looked like she was in a daze—and said, “Speed. Vent. You follow me and close up. We lead them away then tracker out. Tablets, go off radar. Got it?”
I did not get it but Paul seemed to. She stared intently as the odd-coloured woman spoke and by the time the odd-coloured woman was done with her instructions, the dazed look that had been on Paul’s face was gone and she looked all ready for a fight.
The odd-coloured woman, who now actually did look a little blue under the whiteness of the florescent lights in the storeroom, shoved a brown tablet into my hand. “Swallow this now or they’ll see you. And get your head down. Paul, help me get her box into the shelf.”
Paul gave her a sharp, obedient nod and took one side of the box I was in. The odd-coloured woman took the other side. I sank down and tried to put the brown tablet into my mouth but, without warning, both Paul and the odd-coloured woman turned towards the door, jerked the box violently in the process, and shook the brown tablet out of my hands.
It fell somewhere at the base of the box where my feet were. I tried to sit up and reach for it but the odd-coloured woman pushed my head down and shoved the box I was in into the shelf. I couldn’t move much afterwards. The box was too small and I was curled up too tightly.
Fuck. I wanted to say something about my lost brown tablet but, through the slit between the cardboard flaps over my head, I could see that the odd-coloured woman and Paul had already disappeared. A metallic clang—from the ceiling, I think—sounded a second later.
The door to the storeroom slammed open right after that. I heard heavy, hasty footsteps move in and appear really close to me.
Through the slit, I could see two tall, tanned and muscular men in dark blue, armoured uniforms, wearing black helmets, searching the room with huge, threatening rifles in hand. Both of them had binocular devices propped above their foreheads and black objects stuffed inside one ear.
They weren’t dressed like the security guards at Wonderdrug; they were dressed like the man who shot me outside the construction site in Manhattan. They didn’t look like they were hired to ramble the premises and issue verbal warnings—the way the guards seated in Wonderdrug’s Security Office looked; they looked like physically-adept, tactically-advanced troopers with the ability to incapacitate and inflict serious damage.
“Clear!” one of them shouted to nobody in particular. He remained still for a moment then turned to look at the ceiling, where a black, globed security camera hung. “Must have been hacked, sir. Roger that.” He turned to the other trooper and nodded. Both of them pushed the binocular devices on their foreheads down over their eyes and looked around the storeroom.
One of them stopped moving when he looked up at the ceiling while the other stopped when he looked right in the direction of me.
Fuck, he knows, I realised at once. Those binoculars must be heat detectors and that brown tablet I dropped must have been a temperature regulator of sorts! I ran my hands all over the base of the box as quickly as I could and felt my heart plunge when I felt nothing like a brown tablet within reach.
The trooper with his eyes on me began moving towards me slowly. The one with his eyes on the ceiling slung his rifle over his shoulder, took a handgun out from his holster, then climbed up the shelf that was right under the grill that covered an air duct.
I watched him yank the grill open almost effortlessly, flinched at the deafening clang its metal made when it hit the concrete ground, and saw him disappear into the air duct in the span of a few seconds. In the meantime, I got a whiff of male sweat and heard heavy, firm boot steps coming towards me. I clutched my legs tighter and tried to make my uneasy, rapid breath as quiet as was possible but that did nothing to help
me. The box I was in swayed dramatically to the right, the cardboard flaps vanished from sight and before I knew it, there was no longer anything between me and the trooper—who had the thickest, most-muscular neck I had ever seen in real life—peering down at me through his high-tech, multi-coloured binoculars.
He grinned and said hi.
I jumped up and tried to punch him but he grabbed my wrist before my hand could even get anywhere near his face.
His grip of my wrist felt as solid as metal cuffs and I felt the tip of his rifle ram into my stomach, hard.
“Don’t move,” he said and flipped the binocular device back up onto his forehead. His eyes were mostly grey with a brownish or amber ring in the middle, somewhat like the eyes of a tiger.
I didn’t move at all. “Paul, I’m caught,” I said in my head. “And watch out, one of them’s gone after you!” I prayed she would reply but she never did.
“P-eight-seven acquired, tenth floor store,” the trooper in front of me said. “I repeat, P-eight-seven acquired, tenth—” Three loud claps cackled above and made us both look. Gun shots!
Fired at Paul and the odd-coloured woman or by them? I couldn’t tell. Nothing had changed where I was.
“1073, report status,” the trooper in front of me said. His eyes remained on the ceiling and he looked concerned. “1073, can you report status?”
1073 did not report status. The trooper in front of me removed his grip of my wrist, flipped his binocular device down over his eyes and turned his rifle and head up towards the ceiling.
I saw nothing but the opportunity to run and I grabbed it by the balls. I jumped out of the box and tried to make for the door but the trooper—much taller, much fitter—dashed towards me and got me in his arms before I could even get far.
He slammed me down onto the ground and knocked the wind out of my lungs in the process. I gasped and felt myself struggling to breathe again but the angry trooper could care less. He pulled me onto my feet and rammed my back up against a wall with his large, strong, partially-gloved hand pressed against my neck.
“Backup! Tenth floor store! Now!” he yelled.
I coughed uncontrollably, for his grip was restricting air to my lungs, and tried to push him away but he was too heavy and too strong.
“I said don’t move!” he yelled again, his face close enough for me to see the large pores and glistening specks of sweat on it.
I didn’t give a fuck about what he said because I knew I would pass out if I didn’t get some air, fast. His whole body was covered in thick clothing and bulletproof padding so I lunged towards the only part of him I could touch—his cheek—and bit down with every last ounce of strength my jaws had.
The trooper screamed, grabbed me by the hair and wrenched me away from him like I were weightless. He threw me down on the floor and smashed the end of his rifle against the middle of my face with a ferocious amount of force.
I heard a loud crack and felt my nose burn as if acid or some corrosive liquid had been freshly poured onto it. Blood trickled onto the side of my chest in one steady stream and left my rude t-shirt damp.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the trooper’s finger twitched twice while on his rifle’s trigger.
I felt sharp, burning sensations in both knees and thought I would soon pass out like before, but I didn’t. Instead, I stayed awake and saw bloody holes in both my knees and also blood pooling on the floor underneath my legs. I tried to get up but it hurt too much to move either leg. That was when I realised the bullets the trooper’s gun fired weren’t tranquillisers no more.
“Why the fuck are you doing this?” I asked. All I ever did was try to get my freedom back. Surely that didn’t warrant treatment as horrific as that?
The trooper wiped the little bits of blood my teeth had drawn from his cheek and raised his rifle to hit me again.
“Stop.”
Both the trooper and I turned and found Paul suddenly standing next to us, pointing a rifle—the other trooper’s rifle!—at his temple.
I became giddy with relief. Paul looked fully conscious and had that confident manner I once admired all over again.
“Hit her again and you’re dead,” Paul said to the trooper.
He flipped his rifle around and rammed the barrel against my neck at once. “Shoot me and she’s dead,” he replied. I saw him gulp.
“You know she can’t die, right?”
“She might,” he said. “If I sever her head from her neck? Hard to heal properly when your head’s in a totally different place, right?”
“Your bosses wouldn’t let you.”
“Oh yeah they would. You’ve both used up the maximum amount of pardons, unfortunately. A dead specimen is always better than no specimen at all.” He smiled a little, slightly nervously, but dropped the smile the moment something black and metallic appeared right next to his hand.
A handgun. The one his buddy had taken out of his holster right before climbing into an air duct. The odd-coloured woman was holding it and she was smiling. “Let them go. Please.” She had her own handgun in her other hand pointed at him too.
For a good few seconds, the asshole of a trooper looked pale and downright afraid, but then, all of a sudden, he heaved sharply and began to smile again. “No thank you,” he said with what sounded like relief.
Paul and the odd-coloured woman turned their heads to the storeroom’s door even before it slammed open and froze when the hoard of, perhaps, fifty troopers, in dark blue uniforms similar to the trooper’s in front of us, barged in with their rifles all aimed at us.
It was hard to imagine three civilian women would warrant a storeroom full of troopers but there they were, stuffed to the brim in the small storeroom, blocking any hope we might have had of ever getting out.
“Identify yourself!” one of them said to the odd-coloured woman.
She stared at him, her smile gone and looked more thoughtful than she was afraid. “No,” she said. With that, she turned her gun on him and shot him right in the middle of his forehead, faster than I could even gasp.
The last thing that trooper did before melting to the ground like Arden Villeneuve once did was stare at the three of us in absolute horror. When his head hit the ground with a loud thud, all hell broke loose.
All the troopers in the storeroom turned their rifles on us and fired with rapid speed. I felt Paul grab me and saw the world swoosh by as we dodged bullets together at breakneck, superhuman speeds. I saw the odd-coloured woman levitate—yes, she actually levitated—up towards the ceiling. She shot rapidly downward with the two handguns in her hands, hitting many a trooper square in the face.
“Code 33! Code 33!” one of the troopers at the back shouted. “Tenth floor store NOW!” Around him, troopers began collapsing with bloodied holes in the middle of their faces. Half the ones standing aimed their guns up at the odd-coloured woman who was flying—yes, flying!—around the ceiling like a supernatural being while the other half turned their guns on Paul and I.
I barely registered what was going on at first because the scene before my eyes changed faster than my brain could process but at some point, the rate of change began to slow and I began getting glimpses of Paul struggling to haul me away while the few remaining troopers sprayed bullets at us with eyes wide with hate. Only when the scene stopped changing did I notice the bullet holes in Paul’s chest, limbs and cheek and see the volume of blood spurting out of a hole in her neck.
“Paul!” I grabbed her right before she collapsed and sank down onto the ground with her in my arms. I threw my body over her motionless one and felt a shower of pain burn into my back and the back of my head as the racket of unrelenting popping sounds continued to surround us. “Paul! Stay with me!”
“Lane, listen,” Paul whispered in a voice that sounded like it was gurgling. Her eyes were large and scared in a way they had never been before. Her lips were deathly pale, her mouth wide like a fish’s would be fresh out of water an
d every huge, desperate breath she struggled to take in through her mouth seemed to do nothing to make her feel better. “Stick with her... she knows... your real parents... why advantages exist...” Her face turned one shade paler after she said those words and her eyes rolled back into her head.
“Paul! No!” I shoved my hand over the hole in her neck and tried to plug the bleeding but all I felt was blood tickling my fingers as it continued rushing out of her body. “Look, you were right, I see that now. We need the numbers to survive, so we need you to hang in there! I’m going to get you out of here, get you help and you’ll be fine! I promise! All you have to do is hang in there!” Tears poured down my face after I said those words because I knew I was lying. I could tell Paul was not going to make it and I knew it was all my fault. I screwed up! Again!
“Okay,” Paul whispered, so softly I could barely hear. She gave me a small smile and stopped straining to breathe. “But just in case, I need you to know... you are more than your job and things... Lane... don’t let people tell you who you are... you’re not nobody... you’re... beautiful... in your own... magical... little... way.”
I blinked the thick tears in my eyes away so I could see her better but all I saw was the spark go out of her eyes and her smile fall as the muscles on her face went weak.
Paul never moved again after that.
Not even when I willed her to. Or shook her! Or yelled!
I took her into my arms and wept more than I had ever done for any person before her. I cried more for her than I ever did for my parents or Arden Villeneuve or any other lover. Paul was the one for me, I realised then, only I had been too distracted and ignorant to realise it before.
A trooper grabbed me from behind, did something to my neck that caused me a hell lot of pain and threw me face down onto the floor.
Only when I felt the violent throbbing in my neck and saw the blood streaming down into a puddle under my face did I understand the trooper had sliced my neck with the blood-covered dagger he was holding in his hand. He stared at me as if waiting for me to pass out but I refused to.