Breathe

by Christopher Fowler

  9. FRIDAY 1:49 PM

  Faced with a full-scale staff riot, Meera and Ben are trying to think what to do. ‘What about blocking the air ducts?’ suggests Meera.

  ‘There are hundreds all over the building.’

  ‘Then we’ll do it another way. Call the police.’ Meera grabs the nearest phone and punches out a number. Ear-splitting feedback causes her to drop the receiver.

  She tries her mobiles – all IT staff seem to have at least three – but the signal is scrambled. ‘Now that is electro-magnetic interference. There’s no way of getting through to the outside.’

  ‘Try the computers.’

  The same goes for the internet and e-mail systems. As Miranda logs on, the computer screens start rolling with static and weird images. An old episode of Bewitched seems to be playing on many of the terminals.

  Ben sees that the directors’ offices are empty. He calls out to one of his colleagues, Jake, who is busy feeding his hard-copy documents into a waste-bin fire.

  ‘Where are the directors?’ he asks.

  ‘They’re up with Dr Samphire, preparing for the satellite presentation on the top floor.’

  ‘I can go downstairs and see if the lobby doors are still open,’ Miranda offers. Doing something will make her feel better.

  Sally, one of the office assistants, is lying across her desk, being licked and fondled by two work mates. ‘Don’t do it, Miranda,’ she pleads. ‘Some of us don’t need the outside world anymore.’ Her eyes are rolled over into the whites – no pupils at all. ‘I’m sick of being told what to do every working day of my fucking life. Ask yourself what’s better; invoicing or a really good orgasm?’ One of her lickees takes Meera’s mobiles away from her and smashes them. Sally laughs hysterically.

  ‘It almost seems a shame to spoil the fun,’ says Ben.

  ‘Nevertheless, I think we’d better spoil it before someone else gets killed, don’t you?’ Meera snaps back. ‘There are over a thousand people in this building, and right now, most of them are going insane.’

  ‘We’re not.’

  ‘You’ve been here less than a week. Miranda temps, and I had a holiday. None of us has worked through the whole night. It’s the ones who have had prolonged exposure that worry me.’

  Miranda is prepared to set off alone. ‘I can look after myself,’ she tells them. ‘I know my way around this place. I’ll meet you back here. If I can get away, I’ll call the police.’ She kisses Ben. ‘When we get out of this place, I’m going to show you how to relieve stress. Horizontally.’

  10. FRIDAY 2:07 PM

  Ben and Meera make their way up, but progress is slow, as burning pieces of furniture are being thrown down the centre of the stairwell. The air is acrid with smoke. The security guard who whacked him earlier rises from the steps in front of Ben. His eyes are white, too.

  ‘Fucking hell, not you again,’ Ben complains. The guard takes out his Taser and fires it up.

  ‘This is going to hurt you more than it hurts me,’ he promises. A blue arc cracks between the weapon’s points. Behind him, Meera detaches a fire extinguisher from the wall and brings it down hard on the guard’s head.

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’ Meera would like to take the extinguisher with her, but it’s too heavy. She’s hitched up her sari to an undignified, but rather fetching, height.

  Ben pockets the guard’s Taser. Incredibly, the guard gets to his feet behind their backs and comes after them again. Ben swings around the stair-pole and kicks him hard in the face. The guard goes down –

  – and gets back up.

  Ben wonders what they’re feeding him. The guard grabs Meera around the neck and starts choking her. Ben remembers the Taser and powers it into the guard’s groin. The guard screams and collapses –

  – and gets back up.

  ‘He’s got balls.’ Meera and Ben nod to each other, then drop to the guard’s legs and tip him over the stairwell. This time he hits his head on every landing, spinning madly. He won’t be coming back again. They continue upwards.

  ‘I’ll do the directors,’ Ben suggests, ‘you do Room 3014.’

  ‘Got it.’ They split up when they hit the top floor.

  11. FRIDAY 2:16 PM

  Meera runs to Room 3014 and uses Clarke’s key to open the door. Inside, she goes to the air-con system’s master control box and tries to open it. She gets the razor-sharp doors apart, but is dumbfounded by the maze of electronics before her. She doesn’t see Clarke coming up behind her, raising his cricket bat. The bat has steel edges that look as if they’ve been sharpened for some purpose other than hitting sixes.

  ‘You disappoint me, Miss Mangeshkar,’ says the supervisor. ‘A bright girl like you stepping out of line, tampering with company property, jeopardising your career advancement.’

  Ignoring him, Meera turns on the Taser. She applies it to the machinery, causing a small explosion that shorts out the system. But, as she watches, the system’s electronics neatly reroute themselves.

  ‘That’ll be the tamper-proof protection system. I’ve been watching you for a while, Miss Mangeshkar. Your spelling is atrocious.’ Clarke slowly lowers the cricket bat. Instead, he snatches the Taser from Meera and hits her in the stomach with it. Meera convulses in shock.

  ‘As a consequence of your inattention to detail, your employment here is officially terminated.’ Clarke hits her with the Taser again. Another violent shock.

  ‘Kindly empty your desk and see the human resources officer.’ He hits her with the Taser a third time.

  ‘A suitable reference will be forwarded to you.’

  Meera’s body is wracked by electrical activity, and she collapses, almost losing consciousness. Clarke lifts his raised boot and swings a vicious kick at her. ‘We hope your time with us has been enjoyable and instructive,’ he concludes.

  Meera rallies for a last-ditch attempt at stopping the man who employed her. She rises painfully to her feet with arms raised, ready to put her kickboxing lessons into practice, but she’s small and slender, while Clarke is heavy-set and demented. The supervisor’s eyes slowly cloud over, the pupils simply fading away. Meera sees the change and flinches, preparing for the worst …

  … as Clarke again raises his cricket bat.

  12. FRIDAY 2:25 PM

  Miranda has had a tough time getting downstairs. The lobby is in chaos as she reaches it. The main doors to the building are locked. She tries them all – same story. She runs to the dazed reception guard. ‘Is there a way of opening these manually?’ she asks.

  The guard is catatonic, motionless. ‘I went to university,’ he tells her.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I have a master’s degree in art history. Just so that I could wind up as a fucking security guard. A fucking trained Alsation could do this job. A blind one. With three legs.’

  ‘The key. I need the door key.’

  ‘My mother didn’t raise me to stand watch over some rich fucker’s property.’

  ‘The key!’ she shouts, slapping his face hard and preparing to duck in case he hits her back. But it seems to do the trick.

  ‘There’s a single master that overrides all the deadbolts to the outer doors and the atrium.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Out there.’ The guard points through the glass to the foliage-covered annexe.

  The white-eyed Swan is just finishing locking the door to the atrium from the inside. He pockets the special deadbolt key and continues to pull June behind him. Although she is now conscious again, he has tied her hands together. He drags her across the forest floor of the atrium. ‘You’ll get what’s coming to you, you painted Jezebel,’ he pants. ‘My God, you could afford to lose some weight.’

  Meera is small, but she’s fast. As Clarke swings his bat, she drops to her knees and grabs his raised boot, tipping him off-balance. Clarke is back on his feet in moments. Obsessive men have hidden reserves of power. Roaring like a bear, he slams Meera backward into one of the floor-to-ceiling panes of g
lass, with tremendous force. The glass holds, but its surround doesn’t. The whole thing starts to crack around the edges. Clarke charges forward, pinning Meera against the glass with his orthopedic boot as the rest of the frame cracks.

  Clarke shakes his head piteously. ‘If only you could have learned to wear a dress like the other girls.’ He pushes down hard.

  The entire panel divorces itself from the frame and falls out, taking Meera with it.

  She falls slowly at first, almost gracefully. Meera plummets through space, sailing down on the glass sheet.

  As Swan manhandles June on her stomach across the atrium, June hears a strange noise – shattering glass – and looks up. Swan looks up, too. The sheet of glass carrying Meera explodes through the roof of the atrium. Non-lethal fragments rain down, but the great window pane lands on Swan, shearing him in half at the softest point of his waist, and spraying June in blood.

  Meera falls through the roof into the top of a tall, artificial palm tree.

  From inside the building, Miranda hammers on the doors. June looks up at her in a daze. ‘June!’ she shouts, ‘June! You have to get the key!’ But June is too stunned to register anything. ‘The key! In his pocket! The key!’

  As June gathers her senses, she realises what Miranda is asking of her. She reaches into the still-twitching corpse’s jacket and fishes for the key. As she does so, the top half of Swan convulses violently, making her scream. The half-a-corpse latches onto her, pulling her over and trying to drag itself on top. The ragged stump of Swan’s spinal cord is poking out from the bottom of his rib cage, so June stamps on it. As Swan falls back with a gurgling yell, she grabs the key and makes for the entrance door.

  She has trouble finding the lock, but spots it and inserts the key. While she’s trying to twist it, Half-Swan starts clawing at her. Oddly, his lower half appears to have died. It’s only the part with the brain in that she has to worry about now. His right hand is trying to lock itself around her ankle. This is definitely sexual harassment, as defined in the office bible.

  13. FRIDAY 2:37 PM

  Ben reaches the directors’ boardroom and bursts in.

  The directors number a dozen men, no women – there’s a surprise. They are seated beside Dr Hugo Samphire, drinking coffee at the long, walnut-veneer table, which is surrounded by colour-coded plans on raised boards. Some are furtively eating digestive biscuits. The front-man is talking to his New York audience at the start of the satellite video presentation. They’re completely oblivious to what’s been going on below.

  ‘Who are you?’ Dr Samphire snaps at Ben. ‘The satellite presentation is about to start. What the hell do you mean by barging your way in here?’

  Ben is momentarily dumbfounded. He looks at the wall vents, which should be pumping the same poisoned air into the room as in the rest of the building. ‘You give your staff different air,’ he says, amazed that Miranda has been right all along.

  The directors are glancing at each other; how can an employee know about this? The audience on the video monitor is starting to look puzzled.

  ‘Kill the link,’ someone orders. ‘We’ll call them back.’ One of the directors breaks the satellite connection. ‘You have to leave right now. Somebody call security.’

  Ben is starting to understand the true nature of management. ‘You don’t even know what’s going on down there, do you?’ he realises. One of the directors is trying to call security, but having no luck. ‘The line’s dead,’ he tells the others.

  Dr Samphire’s sense of order has been affronted. ‘There’s nothing in the air that’s not perfectly safe to breathe,’ he bridles.

  ‘There’s a dead body in the main ventilation shaft.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘Think so? Try breathing this.’ Ben goes to the door and slams it wide open. On the other side of the corridor, he wedges open the stairwell door. The poisonous air pours in, rolling across the floor like plague-pit fumes.

  ‘The compounds we’re using will all be fully approved.’

  ‘You added drugs.’

  ‘Only to enhance efficiency for the purpose of preparing today’s presentation.’ Dr Samphire tries to sound reasonable in a we’re-all-men-of-the-world way.

  ‘Meanwhile, just to be on the safe side, you had a separate air supply installed up here.’

  ‘We don’t need to work as hard as our staff. We’re directors.’

  The directors are in an uproar. Nobody wants to risk breathing the bad air. They are arguing among themselves, two or three heading for Ben, when Clarke appears in the stairwell doorway. He has his razor-edged cricket bat slung across his back like some kind of Home Counties bounty hunter.

  ‘Mr Harper reports to me,’ Clarke explains. ’I’ll enjoy taking care of this.’

  With the door between June and Miranda, June fights to get the deadbolt key in the bottom lock. Half-Swan appears to have vanished into the tropical undergrowth, wriggling away like some kind of grotesque reptile. Meera chooses this moment to fall out of the tree, hanging onto the palm fronds, and lands in the soft earth. With her sari torn open, Meera increasingly looks like a Bollywood action heroine, except when she opens her mouth.

  ‘Jesus Fuck. Ow. Bollocks.’

  June is shouting for someone to help her. Meera grabs the key and turns it, opening the door. As she does so, and pulls herself and June through, Half-Swan springs from the bushes, hauling himself along by his hands, shoving his way inside with them. He slams the door shut, turns the key in the lock and makes off with it, dragging himself away into darkness.

  ‘Christ, what is keeping him alive?’ asks the shocked Miranda. She turns to June, who has fallen in beside her. ‘There’s got to be another way out.’ She looks at the torn and bleeding Meera. ‘What the hell happened to you?’

  ‘I fell out of the building, all right? We need to find Howard.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Let’s just find him, okay?’

  Clarke walks Ben ahead of him, goading him with the razor-sharp tip of his cricket bat. ‘This is what happens when you leave your workstation unattended.’

  ‘Have you seen what’s going on down there?’

  ‘What’s the matter, Mr Harper, are you afraid of a little hard work?’

  ‘It’s not the work that bothers me, it’s the mass psychosis of a building filled with deranged, homicidal maniacs.’

  ‘That’s the trouble with people like you, Harper. There’s always an excuse.’ He swings the bat at Ben’s throat, and somehow manages to pin him to the railings by the handle. He produces a huge roll of silver tape and starts taping Ben up.

  ‘You killed Felix,’ says Ben, dumbly.

  ‘A little man trying to hold back a big industry. People like him – people like you – don’t deserve to survive. I bet you don’t even vote.’

  ‘Why did you hide his body in the air-pipe?’

  ‘To infect the others.’ Met with an uncomprehending stare, he sighs and explains. ‘From the day I started work, I just wanted to do my job well. After thirty years of late nights and no holidays, I became a supervisor. I had no friends, no woman, no life, but it didn’t matter. I sacrificed everything for my employers. Then along came Mr Draycott …’

  … Clarke studied Draycott, hating his crisp, white shirt and gym-toned chest, hating the cool, young new boy with all the answers in his report. He raised his cricket bat, and his righteous anger did the rest.

  Disposing of the body was a bit of a fag, though. He had to drag, shove, fold, drop and bend Draycott to get him inside the grille, ramming him through to the steel shaft below. As the body landed with a slam, his employment papers drifted down after him. Moments later, the air-con system started up. That, of course, was the problem right there …

  ‘Don’t you think I knew my days were numbered?’ Clarke hisses at him. ‘All I ever wanted was a little respect. A little acknowledgement. Was that too much to ask?’

  Now completely taped up, Ben is stuck at the top of the st
airwell. The worst thing is having to listen to his supervisor play the sympathy card. ‘I can see how you feel,’ he says carefully. ‘If you don’t have a job in this country, people treat you like shit.’

  ‘They treat you like shit if you do,’ warns Clarke, somewhat mollified. ‘When I come back, I’m afraid I’m going to have to terminate your contract.’

  14. FRIDAY 3:05 PM

  June, Meera and Miranda are keeping an eye out for Half-Swan, who has scuttled off again. They round a corner in the basement and find Howard in his deckchair, smoking dope and listening to the Chemical Brothers on his iPod. He smiles and peace-signs them.

  ‘Hey guys.’ Howard wants to high-five, but nobody’s in the mood. Half-Swan is sitting on top of a tool cabinet above him, poised to drop and attack. His colon is hanging below his shirt-tails.

  Meera yanks Howard’s headphones off, pulling him backwards. She and Miranda drag Howard clear into the next room as Swan throws himself at the flimsy door, hammering it hard.

  ‘Don’t you know what’s happening up there?’ asks Meera.

  ‘Holy Jesus Mother Of God! What the fuck was that?’

  ‘Mr Swan,’ says June. ‘The top half of him, anyway. He’s kind of dead but he won’t lie down.’

  ‘No shit. Oh man, I warned you. No pain receptors, your brain keeps functioning as long as they tell your heart to keep beating. I fucking knew this would happen.’

  ‘How did you know?’ asks Miranda.

  ‘Oh fuck.’ Howard looks sheepish. ‘You’re looking for someone to blame, it’s me. I designed the SymaxCorp system.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yeah. I started when I was still at school – didn’t come out of my room for about three years. It was all theory, of course. Dr Samphire found me and made it happen. I ran it through every conceivable scenario, then pointed out the potential problems. He had some ideas of his own about those. He wanted to keep me where he could keep an eye on me. One of his little jokes; the whizz kid becoming the janitor. I don’t mind it down here. It’s cosy.’

  ‘I thought the directors were to blame,’ says Miranda, disillusioned.