Hysteria

by Gordon, Christopher

  “Invite him over,” Del Amitri says. “Tell him you liked to get to know him better so he ditches his goon squad.”

  “Direct approach?” she says walking into the half-light toward Del Amitri. “Because you can’t build a case against him?”

  “I can’t wait that long,” he says.

  “So call the cops,” she says. “Oh I nearly forgot but the cops are busy looking for you, cop killer. How about you tip off one of your FBI colleagues, anonymously? I’m sure right after the FBI are through putting the fire out their asses after Damien sues them for wrongful arrest... or do you think it will go that far? We own people Del Amitri. We own you. But forget all that as you seem the kind of martyr that would gladly throw way your life to make up the lost years to your daughter... but we both know she’s not. She not your daughter is she Del Amitri? I wonder as you reside on death row if she will visit knowing you are not her real father and the woman she calls mom is not her real mother?”

  “Maybe I’ll just kill you for old time’s sake,” Del Amitri says. “And walk on out of here.”

  *

  HARRY HUNTER LOOKS AT HIS WATCH. Forty eight hours since Angel’s last report. If she were any over agent deep undercover on this assignment, he’d be speed dialing her next of kin with condolences over his agent’s untimely death. But this is Angel. The kid who survived two years on the streets of Rio. Survived the drug cartels. The death squads. Survived the streets where eleven years olds train as assassins. Where life is worth less than the price of a loaf of bread.

  Her silence could simply be attributed to progress. No doubt she’s simply tied up. Nothing to worry about. He sips his green tea and pulls Del Amitri’s file. Now his silence is something to worry about.

  Angel HUNTER AWAKENS. SHE’S bound to a chair. She’s notes her clothes are gone. No doubt ripped to shreds in a search. She shivers in a military grey boiler suit. She subtly pulls at the rope around her wrists. There is no give. They bite hard into her bones. Expert knots. Designed to numb her hands.

  She’ll have only a few minutes to escape. And when she does, her fists will be useless even with the element of surprise on her side. She’ll need to rely on her feet. She tries to move her ankles. Rope cuts deep into her flesh. She can tell her feet are numbing fast.

  Cameras high up in each corner of the room zoom in and out. A mirror wall. No doubt, it is two-way glass. So this is an interrogation room? Why else would they let her live unless they wanted information?

  She keeps her head bent forward. Resists the instinctive temptation to blink. Keeps her eyes to a squint.

  Her eyes adjust to the gloom of the single low hanging light bulb.

  She hears footsteps. One, no two people. A key turns in the door. The lock clicks. The metal door opens. Damien enters with a female nurse pushing a tray on wheels displaying of syringes and drug bottles.

  Angel tries not to stare. Let them think she’s still out of sorts. Slow to react. Let them feel over confident.

  The light from the bulb glints in the syringes.

  She feels her stomach back flip and bites her lip to calm herself. She needs the sudden sharp pain to stay alert.

  “Wake her,” Damien says.

  A syringe punches the skin in her arm.

  She bites her lip harder. Keeps her head low. She must refuse to look up. At any cost, she must get Damien in close.

  Damien’s aftershave lotion crawls across her face. His face an inch from hers.

  She feels his hands grip her hair tight as he yanks her head back.

  “Don’t forget to let me know when you wish to die,” he says. “And I’ll be sure to consider your request.”

  He’s close enough now. She smiles.

  He grins and looks at the nurse. “Something painful to begin with.”

  HE turns back to Angel as if expecting to read fear in her face.

  She remains impassive.

  He leans in closer.

  She spits in his face.

  He jolts backwards. Letting go of her hair. His head hits the low hanging light bulb. IT begins to swing back and forth.

  She keeps her head bent forward looking at the floor. Counting out the beat to the momentum of the arc as she watches the silhouette of the bulb on the grey stone floor.

  Back and forth it swings. She needs to time her move to perfection.

  Another needle enters her arm.

  “In a moment you will tell me everything,” Damien says.

  The bulb swings between them both.

  “In a moment you’ll be dead,” she says.

  He laughs and walks behind her.

  From his reflection, she can tell he glances at her hands and feet.

  He walks around front again and as the light bulb swings away, he leans his face into hers.

  She needs to hold his attention for a moment longer than he will wish. Find something his ego can’t resist.

  She looks into his eyes. “One last kiss for old time’s sake?”

  He smiles. Leans in.

  She has him.

  The light bulb swings into view.

  She looks up. Parts her lips. Tries to remain calm. Imagines herself on a playground swing, looking up at the sky feeling like she’s swinging up into the clouds. Squinting to enjoy the intense orange fireball in the sky bath her face without burning out her eyes.

  She leans her head forward to meet Damien’s lips. Sees him close his eyes as if trying to imagine a girl like her could ever love someone like him. She Brushes Damien’s lips for the briefest moment and pulls away sharply as the light bulb swings into her peripheral vision. She turns into its arc. The bulb is almost upon her face. Mouth open wide she bites into the glass. Hard.

  Feels the intense heat like biting into an apple as hot as the sun. Every cell in her brain is screaming at her to spit out the searing fireball of pain. She crunches her teeth down harder. If she gives up now at the hardest part she’ll be dead before she hits the floor.

  She lets herself topple with the momentum of the swinging bulb. Shattering the glass and clenching down on a wide sliver of the bulb. Holding it firmly between her teeth like she’s a Rio ghetto street kid holding a winning lottery ticket. She jerks her head to one side. Into Damien’s face. Slashing the glass upwards and across his lips and cheek.

  His eyes spring open to see her head butt him and topple the chair over onto its side.

  She raises her knees to her face and slashes the glass at the ropes binding her ankles. Once, twice, three times.

  Damien screams. Stumbles over Angel as he clutches his face. The nurse bends to help Damien up.

  With the fraying rope still tired tight around Angel’s ankles, she kicks out at the medic tray and hurls it at the nurse’s head.

  The nurse collapses.

  Angel slashes at the ankle bonds once more. Twice. Three times. The knot frays but not enough.

  Damien springs to his feet and lunges at her.

  She kicks out at his leading leg. Connects her heels on the inside of his knee. Kicks it out. Feels the connection snap his anterior cruciate ligament as Damien’s full weight on that knee pushes his knee out further and he collapses to the floor.

  Angel slashes at the rope again. Once. Twice. Three. Times.

  It snaps.

  She stands. Her numbness seems to reside mainly in her feet. She steps forward. Compensating for the weight of the chair lashed to her back and arms by leaning forward. Her legs now free, she runs at the mirror wall. Hurls herself across the room. Twists her body so the chair takes the impact.

  Through the glass she falls.

  She glances back at the interrogation room. Two military men in black raise their weapons at her.

  She throws herself back at the mirror wall and rubs her hands against the glass shards sticking up out of the wall.

  “Freeze or you’re dead,” a guard says.

  The rope around her hands snaps.

  She falls forward off the chair.

  Bullets ra
in down on the chair. Slicing it in half.

  She crawls to a door and rubs her wrists. The numbness in her wrists dissipates and the pain kicks in. She feels relief rush through her body as her wrists take her mind off her mouth of weeping blisters.

  The door flings open and a trooper runs in.

  For behind the door Angel kicks out at the back of the trooper’s knees.

  He falls backwards and she punches the side of his neck. Taking the Glock from his hand, she pushes shim forward into the outside corridor. Using him as a shield.

  Two exits. One each end of the corridor. But the corridor is blocked with troopers carefully inching their way towards her. Their covering gunfire is more than a match for her single Glock.

  She seems to be in a third floor corridor bridging two halves of a military base. The entire complex housed under a twenty story high glass dome. Either its night outside or they are underground. The last building before the main gate and freedom. The entire corridor is a huge glass tube. Rumbling blow her is a convoy of trucks marked, Fantasy Fifteen. Each is leaving through the main gates. Disappearing up a spiral ramp.

  She counts one truck every five seconds running under the bridge at high speed. Her timing needs to be perfect. A split second Too soon or too late and she hits the tarmac and wakes up a pancake. She raises the Glock, aims at the windows and squeezes the trigger.

  She needs to cross the corridor without taking a hit. She pushes the trooper ahead of her.

  The other troopers stop firing.

  She drags him back along the corridor.

  A scream comes from a room adjacent to her prison.

  A door opens. Medical orderly exits carrying a tray of medicines.

  Angel elbows his throats. Snaps his knee and as he drops she brings her Glock down on the back of his neck. Her fingers twitch with life after numbness and she snatches at the tray of spilling drugs hoping to get lucky and catch a painkiller.

  Through the open door, a girl lays on a table. Madison. Tied at the ankle and wrists. A hundred glowing tubes attached to her body.

  The troopers at the far end of the corridor rush forward.

  Madison lifts her head and stares with tears in her eyes. Her eyes meet Angel’s for a moment that seems like a year but cannot be but a split second. In this moment, Angel fights a memory of herself on a table in a ghetto shack where the walls drip with sweat and blood. A drug cartel enforcer leaning over her. Explaining she has two choices. For her obedience, she gets her life. Or she can have death. As she lay on the table, her arms and feet bound and she remembers choosing death. Their death.

  And now silently sharing this moment with Madison, she now an understanding is reached.

  Angel tries to say something but her mouth h is fused shout with blisters.

  Angel tears her lips open. Stifles a scream from the pain and mouths the words, I’ll come back for you. I promise.

  She pushes her human shield through the window to the long drop and together they fall.

  *

  DAMIEN AIMS A GLOCK AT ANGEL HUNTER. The pain of his slashed face making his arm tremble.

  Angel twists her body in the air. The trooper, now beneath her, takes the full force of the impact on the roof of the eighteen-wheeler truck.

  Bullets rain down from the bridge.

  The truck swings towards the main gates and Angel rolls off the roof and over the side. Her hands reach out and grab hold of the unconscious trooper. Gripping his bootlaces tight. The boots begin to slide off his feet.

  Angel swings from the trooper’s boots and hurls herself onto the roof of the truck as it passes through the main gates.

  Damien lowers his weapon. “Fly, Angel, fly,” he says. “I’ll soon clip your wings.”

  A lieutenant approaches Damien. “Sir, the General requests your attendance.”

  Damien’s stomach back flips.

  “Not now,” he says. “I have an Angel to kill.”

  Chapter Thirty Six: Betrayal

  The launch of fantasy fifteen turned McKenzie into a global super star. Every day was a dizzying combination of TV and radio chat shows, prime time infomercial slots, and movie premieres with Hollywood starlets hired by the press officer assigned to him by the fantasy fifteen corporation. It was safe to say, fantasy fifteen was a global mega hit, making McKenzie and Damien billions of dollars. And yet, McKenzie could not sleep at night.

  He lay awake in bed in his new penthouse apartment of the new one world trade center building. At first when the owners told him the tower was designated for office space only, he calmly offered them a billion dollars for the lease. The money meant nothing to him. He would have paid that and more to see his parents for just one more day. Besides he was making more than that a month from the global sales of fantasy fifteen it amused.

  But after he moved in to the eighty first and eighty second floors, he realized just how desperate he was to spend his time above the city. At its highest point.

  He looked down at the memorial pools set thirty feet into the concrete site of the old towers some seventeen hundred feet below and wondered if he could survive the fall. Would the water be deep enough or would the surface feel like concrete against his face? He leaned against the panoramic floor to ceiling high windows he watched the world enjoying its new freedoms. All thanks to fantasy fifteen and all thanks to McKenzie keeping his silence over the Madison Del Amitri incident. He caught his reflection in the glass and felt too ashamed to look at himself. It was as if he had grown an evil reed eye in the center of his forehead that kept watch on him.

  As the weeks turned into months, he wondered what happened to Oscar Del Amitri and Angel. It seemed both had vanished. He turned back to the window and this tie the reflection in the glass was not his, but Madison’s. Again, her ghostly image bore the same evil red eye winking at him.

  He spun around but he was alone. With all his billions surely he could buy himself some sleep before he hallucinated himself into an early grave? A dozen times, he picked up the phone to call Damien on Madison’s progress but he was afraid of the answer. Deep down he knew it would end in her death. And perhaps he had always known this. And who knows, if he had not handed over Madison to Damien, maybe he would be next on Damien’s list. Maybe his silence saved his own life. And that was why he allowed himself to be bought. Expensive, but it seemed everyone had a price he told himself. Only that didn’t make him feel any better about the situation. What would mom and dad have done in his position? Probably fought each other from opposing points of view. No help in wondering, he was on his own in this whole damn mess of a world. A world with new horizons.

  He dimmed the lights in his apartment so the reflections faded and allowed him to gaze out the windows with less chance of being haunted by Madison’s ghost.

  A tiny bright red light on the roof of the neighboring trade center building flickered and vanished. So he wasn’t imagining things? He turned all the lights out and stood in the darkness. There it was again. Winking at him. He held out his hand and looked at it. A tiny red dot of light appeared in the center of his palm. It traveled down his arm and rested on his chest.

  For the first time since he handled over Madison, he feels his tiny friends scurrying around inside as if something had awoken them, and that was never a good thing. Sparks of lightning leapt over his hands. His thoughts turned to panic. Run, McKenzie, run.

  His phone rang. He jumped. Realized the phone was in his hand. He answered straight away.

  “McKenzie, this is Angel,” the caller said.

  “Long time no-”

  “Shut up,” she shouted, “they are coming for you McKenzie. Get out of there.”

  “Who is-?”

  The window exploded and shattered glass sprayed the bedroom.

  McKenzie found himself on the floor. Somehow, his tiny metallic friends had preempted his muscle groups and honed his survival reaction response time down to a fraction of its normal level. Saving his life by throwing him to the floor. He crawled ac
ross the floor as more windows exploded around him. Showering him with deadly shards.

  McKenzie put the phone to his ear, “What’s happening?”

  His plea was met with the rumble of an engine. Sounded like a motorbike.

  “Angel?”

  “Are you blind as well as stupid?” Angel shouted. “Your best friend forever put a hit out on you.”

  “Who?”

  “Who do you think genius?”

  “Damien?”

  “I’m two minutes from your locale,” Angel said. “Can you survive that long?”

  The doorbell rang.

  “Expecting company?”

  “No,” McKenzie said and racked his brains. “Just the pizza guy.”

  “Good invitee him in,” Angel said. “Offer him a million bucks to be your decoy”

  “He won’t live long enough to spend it,” McKenzie said

  “Oh now you have a conscience?” Angel said.

  That hurt. Did no one respect him?

  “Fine,” Angel said. “Offer pizza guy ten million to borrow his uniform and meet me in the lobby.”

  She hung up.

  McKenzie dug glass shards out of his feet and pulled on a pair of sneakers, he crawled to the door and reached up to the handle. The door opened an inch and shuddered against the latch chain.

  “Pizza delivery for mister chase,” a young kid said.

  “Slide it through the gap,” McKenzie said.

  “Do I look like I’m gonna rob you, man?” the kid said pushing the box through the gap. “Bill’s inside.”

  McKenzie caught a glance of the pizza guy. A kid his age who seemed harmless. At least no weapon that he could see. “Want a fat tip?”

  “Wait until you see the bill first, mister,” the kid said.

  “How’s ten million bucks, sound?”

  “Are you high?” the kid said. “I’ll settle for a toke of what you’re on.”

  This was taking too long. McKenzie dodged laser sight beams crisscrossing the room. He flicked off the latch chain and kicked the door wide. He reached up, grabbed the kid’s ankles, dragged him to the floor and into the apartment, slamming the door shut.