Suddenly, a boot caught his foot from behind and he tripped. Neither of the officers held on, they both let go, and Kareem crashed to the floor, unable to break his fall with his arms. He landed heavily on one shoulder, knocking his head against the side of a desk. Blood dripped from a fresh cut to his forehead.
“Hey, are you okay?” one of the officers asked, dragging him back to his feet.
“You be careful now,” the other added. “You seem a bit clumsy.”
A couple of police officers seated nearby laughed.
Kareem felt dizzy and struggled not to vomit. He felt nauseated, having been disoriented by the sharp blow to his head.
An alarm sounded.
The room swung around him. Police officers were leaving their desks, walking calmly to the exits as he was pushed on against the human current rushing the other way.
The officers shoved him down a narrow corridor, turning one way and then another. Kareem was confused by the rush of walls and doors and windows. His head was spinning. He had no idea where he was within the building. His sense of spatial awareness had been thrown out of kilter by the knock to his head. Vertigo swept over him and he vomited. He couldn’t help himself. His stomach muscles contracted violently. Spew splattered across the walls and floor.
“Ah, fuck!” one of the officers cried, kicking him and knocking him into a door.
Kareem gagged. Bile rose in his throat. Vomit dripped from his mouth.
“He’s a goddamn animal,” the other officer yelled, stepping over the sick on the floor. He unlocked a door and Kareem found himself hurled inside. He struck a metal table bolted to the floor. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead. Without his hands to steady himself, Kareem collapsed to the floor.
“Shit! Who’s going to clean up this mess?” the first officer yelled from somewhere within the corridor.
“We should make him lick it up,” the other snarled, slamming the door and locking him in the interrogation room.
Kareem curled up in a fetal position. Although his arms were pinned behind him, curling up into a ball was the only way to lessen his stomach cramps. His head rested on the cold, hard floor and he cried.
He wasn’t sure how long he lay there, but having his arms in cuffs behind his back stressed his shoulders. Slowly, he worked his way into a kneeling position. Pushing off against the wall with his shoulder, he staggered to his feet and looked around the room.
The interrogation room was small. The walls were scratched and scuffed. A large mirror dominated one wall, dark and austere. There were two steel chairs chained to either side of the metal table. A microphone sat on the table, with a black cord running to one side, down the leg of the table and across the floor, before disappearing into a small hole in the wall.
Kareem leaned against the wall. He could have sat in the chair, but he was fascinated by his reflection in the dark, smoky, one-way mirror. Shuffling his feet, he walked over to the mirror, unsure of his footing, expecting his legs to betray him and collapse at any second.
Up close, he could see a dark bruise forming high on his forehead. The skin had split. Blood trickled down one side of his face, running down his cheek and neck and disappearing beneath his bloody shirt.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, half-laughing. “You think you’ve got him. You think you’ve captured your enemy, but you haven’t.”
Kareem swayed before the mirror. He could see the table behind him in the reflection and stepped back slowly, eventually feeling the hard ledge. Half-sitting, half-leaning, he continued to talk.
“I know you’re watching.”
Silence was the only reply.
“I know. I know too much, but it’s not what you think. Ha, even if I told you, you’d never believe me.”
He felt giddy. If he could have, Kareem would have rested his hands on the table to steady himself, but he couldn’t. He instinctively tried to move his hands, feeling them restrained by the cuffs.
“I know who I’m talking to,” he said, making eye contact with himself in the mirror. “And it’s not who you think. I’m talking to you, Dad, to you, Mom. I don’t know when they’ll show you this, but one day they will, and when they do, I hope you’ll believe me. All I ever did was try to stop these attacks.
“It sounds crazy, but I remembered them. Madness, huh? How can you remember something that hasn’t happened? I don’t know the answer to that, I just do.”
Tears came to his eyes. He watched as they rolled down his cheeks, so dark and menacing in the sullen mirror.
“Nothing matters anymore. In a few minutes, I’ll be dead. I only hope I can stop the bomb.
“I just hope you remember me, not as a killer, not as a martyr or even a hero, just as a paramedic, someone that cared enough to help a stranger. That’s me. That’s all I ever wanted to be.”
His eyes glanced up at the ceiling. Grief welled up in his chest. He choked on his words.
“Why me?”
Kareem wanted to wipe his eyes, but he couldn’t, and that seemed to underline the helplessness he felt in that moment. Any effort he made was futile, doomed to fail. He couldn’t even wipe the tears from his face, much less effect any real change. The bomb would go off regardless, and that realization hurt far more than being thrown to the ground by the police officers.
“Why me?” Kareem repeated, only he was no longer staring at the ceiling. Again, he looked himself in the eyes, steeling himself. His posture stiffened. He knew his words would be replayed, at first in some courtroom, and then on the news, before making their way into some documentary or something. Kareem spoke with slow deliberation. He had remembered the future; now he chose to speak to the future.
“Why not?”
He breathed deeply, adding, “Everyone dies. Sooner or later, we all die. I’d prefer later, much later, but if it has to be sooner, then let it be for a good reason. It doesn’t matter if I die as long as I die trying to help, trying to make a difference. That means something, right? Is there anything else a man can ask for in life than to give in death?”
He flexed his arms, pulling at the handcuffs behind his back.
“You know, this would be a lot easier if my hands were free,” he said, looking at one of the cameras in the corner of the room. A glowing red LED suggested someone was watching, or at least that he was being recorded.
He laughed. That change of emotion allowed a rush of memories to flood his mind.
“I can see the bomber,” he added. “One of them at least, the driver. He starts out in some kind of mechanical room before taking the bomb to the roof. There’s big spools, cables for the elevators, I guess. Lots of large machines, or are they industrial air conditioners recirculating the air? I need to get up there somehow and try to stop him.”
Kareem was suddenly sure there was no one behind the mirror. If there had been, surely they would have said something. He only hoped that someone was watching the live video feed, or at least recording it.
He could hear voices in the corridor. From the pitch, there was a man and a woman.
“In here,” a police officer said. Kareem could see the officer staring at him through the small, reinforced glass window in the door. Keys jangled as the door was unlocked. Kareem backed up against the far wall, not knowing what would come next.
“If only I could remember everything,” he mumbled to himself.
The door opened and the officer stepped into the room, followed by a medic.
“I’m going to have to stay here with you while—”
The officer never finished his sentence. His body convulsed. He dropped the keys, grabbing for the table as he fell to the floor. The medic was wearing a baseball cap pulled down low over her forehead. She held a Taser hard against the officer, continuing to shock his body with fifty thousand volts for several more seconds.
The police officer rolled on the ground. His eyes rolled into the back of his head. A dark wet patch soaked through his crotch. Still the medic continued to electrocute
him, leaning over the officer as he squirmed in agony. The Taser crackled, seething in anger.
“Deb!”
Deb tossed a heavy medical backpack on the table, finally stopping the Taser. She kicked at the officer’s legs so she could close the door behind her.
“Quick,” she said, pulling a set of keys from her pocket. Kareem turned his back to her, allowing her access to his handcuffs.
“I don’t understand! What are you doing here?” he said, relieved to be able to move his arms in front of himself as she unlocked the cuffs. He rubbed at the marks on his wrists.
Deb slapped a paper napkin down on the table in front of him, saying, “Kareem Hadee Rafid. I have 9.4 million reasons to believe you.”
“But—”
“But nothing,” Deb insisted. “Oh, and you were wrong. You can change the future. The death toll at the museum was revised down. No one died, Kareem. You saved them. There was confusion over who was missing and who’d been taken to which of the hospitals, but the death toll has been set at zero. They’re calling it a miracle!”
Kareem was stunned. Was she right? Had his knowledge of the future allowed him to change destiny? Or could it be that he only remembered the initial announcement about fatalities and had missed the subsequent revision? Kareem wanted to believe her. He wanted to believe he could change the future, but after the blow to his head, he wasn’t so sure. His memories were fragmented.
Deb tossed her baseball cap to him, pulling off her baggy jacket and dropping it on the table as she added, “Put these on.”
She handcuffed the groggy officer to the leg of the table, saying, “Sorry.”
“Yeah,” Kareem said sarcastically. “Probably not a valid defense before a judge.”
“Come on,” Deb said, picking up the medical kit and handing it to him. “You take this. It’ll make you look more like a first responder.”
Kareem pulled the cap down low over his forehead. Deb stood in front him, licking her fingers and rubbing at his grimy face, trying to clean him up. She used the napkin and some water from a bottle to dab at the blood, wiping it away.
“It’s not great, but it will have to do,” she said. “Where’s the bomb?”
“Up top. My memory is a bit of a blur. There’s some kind of storage room up there, and someone near the helipad.”
“Figures,” she replied as they stepped out into the hallway. “They’ve evacuated the building. Bomb squad’s been called in. God knows when they’ll get here. They’ve got the SWAT team doing a floor-by-floor search.”
“How did you get in?”
“My sister snuck me in. She thinks I’m madly in love with you and had to see you one last time. Since I’m a paramedic, the remaining duty officer thought I was here to tend to your wounds.”
“Huh,” Kareem said, following Deb through the rabbit warren at the back of the old station.
“They’re sending some guy from the FBI over for you. Shit, is he going to be pissed!”
Deb led him to the fire stairs running through the building. They opened the steel door. The concrete stairwell was quiet. Voices echoed faintly from a floor below.
“There’s twenty-two floors,” she said. “This should take us to the top.”
“Not us, me,” Kareem said, taking her gently by the inside of her arm. “You’ve got to go. Get out of here.”
“I’m not leaving you,” she replied. “We’re in this together now, remember. Someone, somewhere was watching the video footage from that interrogation room. I’m in this as deep as you are now.”
“You could die.”
“So could you.”
“Please,” Kareem pleaded. “You don’t understand. I don’t remember you. I don’t remember seeing you up there.”
“What do you remember?” she asked, allowing the door to the fire stairs to close quietly behind them.
Kareem raised his hands and rubbed at his temples.
“It’s hazy. I remember, then I forget. Ha! I remember that I remembered, but I can’t remember what I remembered. God, it’s so frustrating.”
“Take it easy,” she said, resting her hand on his chest. Her fingers were gentle. Her voice was soft.
Kareem closed his eyes. His head throbbed.
“My memory’s a blur. There’s a bomb. There’s guns going off. There’s blood everywhere. There’s a digital display, it’s counting down to zero, I think, but not in minutes, not even seconds. I remember being surprised by the counter as it’s simply counting down from some massive number, racing down toward zero.”
“Does it get there?”
Kareem opened his eyes, saying, “I don’t know.”
“Well, no sense wasting time.”
Deb started up the stairs. Her boots struck a steady rhythm, crunching on the dust and debris that had gathered on the rough, concrete stairs over the years. Out of habit, she stuck to the inside of the stairs, taking the path of first responders, leaving room for anyone fleeing from above to come around the outside.
Kareem followed her. She set a good pace, forcing him to keep up. The physical exertion of winding back and forth between the landings gave him something to concentrate on, allowing him to forget for a moment. His heartbeat raced. Kareem regulated his breathing, pacing himself behind her.
Black numbers on the insides of the various fire doors indicated the floors laboriously falling behind and below them.
“Feel that burn?” Deb asked as they passed the tenth floor.
“Yeah,” Kareem replied between breaths.
“Gotta love those thighs.”
Kareem was silent.
Deb added, “Gonna hurt tomorrow morning.”
Tomorrow. What a novel concept, he thought. The idea of waking up in the morning and seeing a new day rising seemed foreign, as though he’d only ever lived for a single day. In his mind, today was all there was. Time began and ended today.
The sound of boots drifted down from above. Kareem pulled his cap lower, setting it just off his ears. He moved in close behind Deb. For her part, Deb straightened. She was shielding him, obscuring him from sight.
Two black-clad members of the SWAT team jogged down the stairs toward them. They were talking casually with each other. MP5 machine guns hung on canvas straps running over each shoulder. They met Deb and Kareem between landings on the stairs.
“What are you two doing in here?” the lead officer asked.
“We’ve been called up to fifteen,” Deb said, lying with an ease and confidence that convinced Kareem. She sounded cheery.
As they’d stopped climbing the stairs, Kareem leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees and sucking in air. On one hand, his heavy breathing was a bluff as he sought to hide his face. On the other, he was struggling under the weight of the medical pack on his back.
“Okay,” the officer replied. “Tactical has cleared seventeen. They’re sweeping eighteen. Make sure you stay below them. Understood?”
Deb nodded as the officer continued past them.
The second SWAT officer stopped beside Kareem. He rested his hand on Kareem’s shoulder, saying, “Fucking terrorists, huh! Force us up the stairs. What bastards! Would have been nice to use the elevators, huh?”
Kareem was shaking. Somehow he forced out a fake laugh, saying, “Yeah.”
Kareem kept his head down, not wanting to make eye contact. The SWAT officer patted him on the shoulder and then continued on after the lead officer.
Deb turned and looked at Kareem. Her eyes were wide with terror. Neither of them said anything. They continued up the stairs, quickening their pace.
Chapter 05: Bomb
“Shhh,” Kareem whispered, raising his index finger to cover his mouth.
“I see him,” Deb whispered in reply, peeking between the rows of metal shelving and ducting in the upper storage floor.
Kareem pointed. Two police uniforms hung neatly on hangers to one side.
“Plan A must have been to blend in as they escaped,” he whispered.<
br />
“So what’s plan B?”
Kareem shrugged. At least one of them was a police officer, Kareem was sure of it, but he didn’t know why he was so sure. The second bomber was an enigma. In his fleeting memories, he’d never caught a glimpse of the second bomber, and that worried him. He had no way of knowing who the second bomber was. Given that the first bomber was dressed like a police forensic officer, with dark blue coveralls, his accomplice was probably wearing something similar. But that was a dangerous assumption, and Kareem knew it. The second bomber could be dressed like a member of the SWAT team for all he knew.
Kareem scanned the shelves. This particular side of the broad maintenance room must have been used by the janitors. He picked up a plastic bottle containing bleach. From the weight, it felt almost full.
“What are you doing?” Deb asked in a whisper.
“Whatever happens, we can’t let these guys escape. Let’s put a dent in at least one of their plans.”
Quietly, Kareem unscrewed the cap and poured bleach over the uniforms, dousing the garments. Bleach dripped on the floor. The pungent smell filled the air. Kareem poured bleach into two sets of polished black shoes, soaking them before screwing the lid back on and putting the bottle back.
“Is that it?” Deb asked, pointing at what looked like bags of cement stacked high on a wooden pallet at the far end of the floor. The bomber was wiring something to the base of the pallet.
Kareem nodded.
“Hurry,” a voice said from a maintenance elevator off to one side. “We’ve got to get this thing set and get out of here.”
From where Kareem and Deb were behind the storage shelves, the elevator was out of sight. The bomber slipped a pallet jack under the bomb, raising it up so he could wheel it into the elevator. He wiped his forehead with a rag, then stuffed it into his back pocket. Kareem could see a handgun tucked into his jeans, its pistol grip visible against the small of his back.
“One last surprise for SWAT and I’ll join you on the roof,” the bomber said to his accomplice. The doors closed and the elevator whirred to life.
From the Indie Side Page 29