by A. G. Taylor
“Hey, are you listening?” his uncle said, snapping his fingers rudely in Alex’s face. Alex raised his head to show he was.
“I saved you from that home, didn’t I?” Uncle Pete went on – a speech he’d given many times before. “Well, you’ve put a strain on our finances, son. Food, clothes, games…”
Alex couldn’t remember receiving clothes, games or anything other than the most basic food to live on since he’d been in his uncle’s care, but said nothing.
“When I was fifteen, I was out paying my way…”
Alex suppressed a smile, remembering a conversation he’d overheard between his mum and dad years before, back when they lived in Adelaide. His mum had received another letter from her brother asking for money… He’s never worked a day in his life, his father protested angrily as she slipped a cheque into an envelope…
“Well, today it’s time to pay your way, kid,” Uncle Pete continued, placing a suntanned hand on Alex’s shoulder. His gaze softened. “Come on, Alex. It’s just until we have enough money to move back west. You don’t know how much I hate Melbourne. Nothing’s gone right for me since I moved here.”
Alex looked through the window at the sunlight streaming down between the high-rises and wondered what was so bad about it.
“What do you say? Just a couple more jobs? Let’s go for lucky number six and then grab a burger.”
Alex nodded and tucked the hammer back in his pocket.
Uncle Pete grinned. “That’s my boy. Now, let’s see the magic.”
Alex looked from his uncle to Stella and back again. Both had their heads turned to watch him like he was something in the zoo. That’s probably where they’ll put me when we run out of banks, Alex thought. Trying to ignore them, he closed his eyes and concentrated – thought about becoming nothing…
When Alex opened his eyes a few seconds later and looked down at his arms, he was already fading away. Up front, Stella swallowed loudly.
“This part still gives me the creeps, Pete,” she whispered. The man jabbed her in the arm to be quiet.
“That’s it, kid,” he encouraged. “You’re doing great.”
Alex concentrated harder – imagined his arms, legs and body fading more, becoming totally transparent. When he looked down again, his body was completely invisible and he had the dizzying sensation of floating above the back seat of the car. Placing his hands where he thought his knees were, he took a couple of deep breaths and fought down the urge to be sick that sometimes came with the change.
“You okay?” his uncle asked. “You still there?”
Alex nodded, but laughed when he remembered there was no point in doing so – no one could see.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” he said aloud.
“Then what the hell are you waiting for?” Pete demanded. “Get over there and get the money before we roast in this car!”
Alex pulled a face at his uncle, before opening the back door into the heat of the morning. He closed the door and took a step out onto the road… A motorcycle whizzed by, inches from his nose, the rider oblivious to the fact he had almost mown someone down. They can’t see you, Alex reminded himself. Careful. Looking left and right, he ran across the street through a gap in the traffic.
For the sixth time in as many weeks, Alex was about to rob a bank.
6
The central branch of the Melbourne Savings Bank was already busy at noon that day – filled with shoppers and office workers on their breaks. Many were eating lunch on the go or drinking takeaway coffees as they stood in line at the counters.
Invisible, Alex slipped into the foyer behind an overweight man in a suit, dodging around the heavy glass door before it swung shut. Inside the high-ceilinged foyer the air was deliciously cool after the rising heat of the day. Sidestepping the man’s bulk, he moved across the polished marble towards the far wall with the fire alarm point.
Weaving unseen through the crowd, Alex made the wall with relief and edged along until his shoulder was next to the glass-fronted box that read In the event of fire break glass. He reached inside his pocket, pulled out the hammer and raised it (a rather difficult operation because he could see neither the hammer nor his hand). Here we go again, he thought as he drew back the tool and smashed it down hard on the alarm.
An ear-splitting siren went off.
For a moment everyone inside the bank froze, looking around stupidly as if trying to work out what was going on. Then half the people decided the alarm was probably just some kind of practice drill, staying right where they were, while the other half started crowding towards the exit. Alex pressed himself into the wall as a woman walked by – close enough for her arm to brush him, but too preoccupied with getting out of the bank to notice anything strange.
The foyer started to empty quickly as the alarm continued, although some stubborn customers had taken the opportunity to move closer to the tellers as others left the line. Alex saw a gap in the crowd and ran across to the door beside the row of service windows. Presently, the door opened and a suited man wearing a Branch Manager badge emerged to hustle slowcoaches towards the door.
“Move towards the exit,” he said, shooing people away from the tellers. “Please, this isn’t a drill.”
Several of the people in line groaned, like they’d rather stay in a burning building if it meant getting served faster that morning. As the manager moved away, Alex caught the door and slipped through into the restricted area of the bank. The security door clicked shut behind him and he edged down the corridor, keeping close to the wall in case anyone came running in his direction.
A door to the left stood open and Alex went through, finding himself on the other side of the counter where the bank tellers sat. The bank employees were in the process of leaving in an orderly procession by the back door. Through one of the glass windows looking into the foyer, Alex saw the manager usher the last customer out, take a final look around to make sure the area was clear and then exit.
Now the interior of the bank was deserted apart from Alex. The only sound was the relentless drone of the siren. He waited against the wall for just a moment more (just in case some straggler came running through on his way out to the back), before pulling the rolled-up cash bags from his belt and going to the counter.
There were six swivel chairs – one for each of the tellers – and an equal number of cash drawers. Alex started at the farthest left, pushing the chair away and pressing the button to open the drawer. It slid out smoothly, revealing a tray of notes and coins. Alex opened the first bag and began to fill it with red twenty dollar notes, then yellow fifties and green hundreds. In each tray, he was careful to leave a couple of notes under each spring-loaded holding flap so as not to trigger the security alarm. When he’d taken all he could, Alex moved to the drawer on his right and repeated the operation. After half a dozen such jobs, he found that he was getting faster at opening and emptying the trays. What didn’t change was the feeling of guilt – the realization he was stealing money, something that his parents would never have condoned.
But they’re not here, Alex reminded himself. Uncle Pete is.
And Uncle Pete got what he wanted or there was hell to pay – Alex had learned that during the past few months. He had the bruises to prove it.
The bag was getting full, so Alex pulled the drawstring tight and tied it to his belt. The filled bag hung there – invisible as long as it was in contact with his body. The ability to fade out (the name he had given to his power) had started to reveal itself just a few weeks after the fall virus hit and Alex was still learning how it worked. He’d tried to keep his invisibility a secret at first, instinctively realizing that it would not be a good idea for Uncle Pete or anyone else to know about it. However, it wasn’t that simple, especially when he had a tendency to wake up in the morning semi-faded out.
Alex moved on to the next drawer, opening and emptying it in ten seconds flat. Looking up, he saw people moving around in the street through the main door. In the distance,
the siren of a fire truck drew closer. Alex guessed that he probably had three or four more minutes. Plenty of time, he thought as he pressed the button to open the fourth drawer…
Whap!
Purple liquid exploded from the drawer, hitting him full in the face and chest and covering the rest of his body in a fine mist. Stunned, Alex stumbled back, dropping the bag in his hand as he did so. It immediately became visible as it hit the ground, spilling banknotes across the carpet. He looked down and realized that the bag wasn’t the only thing not so invisible any more…
His upper body looked as if someone had thrown a bucket of purple paint over it. He blinked the liquid from his eyes and examined the fourth drawer. Nestled where the money tray should be was the remains of a silver cylinder, split open to expel a dye-pack (Alex had read about those on one of the websites where his uncle had done the research – the cops put them in bags to mark money stolen by criminals). Criminals. The cops. A wave of panic swept over him as he looked down at his dye-covered hands and arms.
Go away, he prayed. Disappear.
Slowly, the dye began to fade out and become transparent. Invisible again! Alex had a brief moment of relief, before the fire alarm abruptly ceased. A terrible silence fell over the bank. Although he was fully faded out again, Alex crouched down – sensing that something was about to happen.
The front door of the bank crashed open noisily. Six men wearing helmets and body armour ran into the foyer, their boots screeching against the polished marble. Alex backed away from the counter, all the while keeping his eyes on the six cops in the doorway. It was plain to see from the body armour they weren’t just normal police, but some kind of Special Forces. In their arms they held odd-looking rifles at the ready and crouched low to the ground as if expecting to be attacked at any moment.
Alex kept perfectly still – for a moment he didn’t even breathe.
“We know you’re back there!” the leader of the cops shouted into the bank, splitting the silence with his booming voice. “Come out now with your hands raised and you won’t get hurt. This is the only warning you’re gonna get!”
Alex wondered if Uncle Pete and Stella were still sitting in the car across the street, but instinctively knew they would have made a run for it the moment they saw the police go into the bank. He was on his own and would have to make his own escape. But he still had one advantage – the cops couldn’t see him…
“Okay, kill the lights!” the leader yelled back through the door and instantly the bank was thrown into semi-darkness.
Alex blinked as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. The cops closed and locked the main doors behind them. Clearly they didn’t want him slipping by them, which suggested they knew about his skill. Perhaps they aren’t so stupid, after all, Alex thought with a sinking feeling.
“Activate the ultraviolet!” the leader commanded. The lights in the ceiling above the foyer flicked on again, but this time with a fluorescent purple hue. Alex looked down at his arms with shock – in the UV light the dye was completely visible once again. In fact, it glowed a fluorescent purple that stood out a mile. I’m in trouble, he realized, creeping further from the counter.
“Captain, back there!” one of the men shouted. “I’ve got movement!”
“Take him down!”
As Alex broke for the open doorway into the back of the bank there was a terrific sound of shattering glass. A hail of missiles tore through the teller windows and hit the walls around him. As he ran through the door, Alex had time to see a dart as long as his fingers embed itself in the frame of the doorway.
A tranquillizer dart.
Well, at least they’re not trying to kill me, he thought as he stumbled headlong into the darkened corridor.
Yet.
7
Alex crouched under a desk in one of the office cubicles trying to control his breathing, which was coming in ragged, noisy gasps after his flight from the front of the bank. In the darkness at the rear of the building he was mercifully out of the ultraviolet glare and invisible again, but all the external doors seemed to be locked from the outside. A trap, Alex realized, and cursed his uncle’s “foolproof” plan.
At the sound of a boot pressing into the carpet, he held his breath and peered round the edge of the desk. Two of the armoured cops stepped cautiously through the main door and looked around the rows of cubicles.
“He could be anywhere in here,” one hissed, loud enough for Alex to hear.
“Use the torch,” the other said. “I’ll cover the door so he doesn’t slip through.”
The cop who had spoken first nodded and removed something from his belt – an oversized lamp that emitted a UV beam. He advanced down the row of cubicles, a dart-gun held out in one hand and the lamp in the other, sweeping it left and right. Alex shrank back as part of the beam shone under the table, showing up droplets of fluorescent dye on the carpet. The cop went left, taking him away from the hiding place, but Alex knew it was only a matter of minutes before he was discovered.
Moving out from under the desk as silently as possible, he poked his head around the cubicle wall and checked out the burly cop guarding the only unlocked exit out of the room – he didn’t fancy his chances. Worse still, that cop also had a UV lamp in his hand and was waving it around. Got to get rid of the dye somehow. Alex looked round and up for an alternative – and his eyes fell on something in the ceiling.
Set into one of the tiles was a metal nozzle that he recognized as a sprinkler fitting. Inside the fitting was a temperature sensitive cell designed to trigger the sprinkler system in the event of a real fire. The other cop’s footsteps approached as he made his way back to cover the cubicles he hadn’t checked. Not wasting another second, Alex carefully slid open the top drawer of the desk and instantly found what he needed – a cigarette lighter, the disposable kind Stella and his uncle used all the time. Taking the lighter, he stepped up onto the desk and raised it to the nozzle, aware of the table creaking under his weight.
“Hey, did you hear that?” the cop at the door yelled to his partner. “Over to your left!”
Alex struck the wheel on the lighter and held down the gas button. The flame flickered around the nozzle and within seconds he felt the heat burning his fingertips. Alex gritted his teeth. Come on.
“What’s that light?” the nearest cop asked, flicking his lamp towards the ceiling.
The sprinkler spurted into life, spraying an arc of water in all directions. Simultaneously, six other nozzles around the room went active. Alex lowered the lighter and stood stock still as the water poured around him. The cops waved their lamps around in confusion and in one of the flickering beams Alex caught a glimpse of the dye washing away from his body. When he looked down he saw a pool of purple mixing with the water collecting on the carpet.
“What do we do?” yelled the cop nearest the cubicle over the sound of the water jets. The bulb in his lamp exploded in a shower of sparks. “Aren’t these things waterproof?”
Taking advantage of their confusion, Alex put his hands on the flimsy cubicle wall and jumped into the walkway behind it. He ran for the door, aware of the water bouncing off his shoulders and head, creating an outline for the guards to see. Luckily they were too preoccupied with their exploding lamps to notice as he slipped through the door and into the corridor beyond.
Alex moved fast towards the back of the building – hoping to find some kind of exit that he’d missed the first time. Getting trapped in the office space was stupid, so no more mistakes. Rounding a corner, he found exactly what he was looking for – a set of double doors with an illuminated Emergency Exit sign above them. Splashing through the water pooling across the tiled floor, he ran full pelt for freedom…
He drew up fast as a figure stepped out of the shadows – the big cop from the foyer. The leader. In the darkness of the corridor Alex could make out the whites of the man’s eyes and his hard gaze. Alex flattened against the wall, hoping he hadn’t given himself away. The leader scanned the corrid
or ahead, as if sensing something, then raised a UV lamp. He swung the beam across Alex, but this time no dye was illuminated – the water from the sprinklers had done its job. Alex almost cried with relief.
Sweeping the lamp around again, the leader reached for a communicator clipped to his chest. “All units, report.”
“Foyer, no movement, over,” the comm barked back a second later.
“Office area, no sign,” came a second reply. “But we’ve got dye residue on the floor here. Looks like the sprinklers washed it off the target’s body, over.”
The cop leader sucked his teeth in frustration and flicked off his lamp. “Okay, all units hold position. He’s trapped in here and we’ll get him if we have to wait till Christmas. Shoot anything that moves. I’m calling in back-up, over and out.”
Alex edged along the wall, centimetre by centimetre, until he was almost level with the hulking cop. He was aware of the water splashing off his body – a dead giveaway for anyone paying enough attention, but the man’s mind was elsewhere.
“Beta team,” the leader said into his comm, “prepare to move in. We’ve lost the dye-tagger. And someone shut off these damned sprinklers, over.”
Alex moved past him and turned his attention to the exit at the end of the corridor. The doors were closed with a metal bar across the middle that pushed to open. Even with the sprinklers going full blast, the noise would be sure to attract the attention of the cop. He looked round at the man and the rifle slung over his shoulder, wondering if he could possibly be fast enough. Then his eyes fell on a dart-pistol tucked into the back of his trousers. Dare I? thought Alex.