I sat, silent and ill. The boy opened his mouth again, in Valerie’s voice.
“Morphine.”
“Stop it.”
“You’re asking the insane manifestation of your psychotic thoughts to stop tormenting you over the death of your equally psychotic friend, while waiting to die in a facility which doesn’t even exist. Vincent was right. This is some Malice in Wonderland shit.”
“Go away.”
“Why? Your trio is already down to two. Strauch is getting bored and it’s only a matter of time until we’re down to one. We all know that it’ll get to a point when he wants to cut his losses and put you down, and you are hopelessly unprepared. Don’t you want some company before they take you out behind the chemical sheds?”
“Never liked that movie. Go away.”
“Let’s see: sleep deprivation, torture, perpetual drug exposure and mental trauma. You’re dancing on the edge, K.”
“Stop using her voice.”
He went back to my voice. It still didn’t sound right, but it was better.
“You were always so good with pain. What happened?”
“Science happened. I’m still fuzzy on the details.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it.”
“You aren’t real.”
“Maybe not. But I’m out there, somewhere, a real-life Lazarus. Or… Or you’ve been crazy for a lot longer. Which is the preferable option?”
“I’m not crazy.”
“You say, to the strange apparition of your post-traumatic stress and dementia. Now listen, carefully.” He vanished, imperceptibly. One moment he was staring me down with his sapphire eyes, and in the next there was nothing but darkness in the space he occupied. I switched my focus to my ears. The scratching had returned. This time it was to the other side of the wall. The rat was in my cell.
I shifted as quietly as my muscles would allow. The darkness was absolute, but I was able to triangulate the sounds. The creature was just within reach, poking around the edges of the door. My hand slowly extended through the air. I held my breath and fought the dizziness.
Here we go.
I launched my hand downwards. The tips of my fingers felt fur and I reached further, closing my grip around the body. There was a chittering and it started to struggle wildly.
I brought the body to my mouth and bit down upon the leg. My teeth passed through the skin and bone, slicing the limb off. I dropped the rat onto the floor and spat the flesh into the toilet bowl. Vermin blood dribbled down my chin. It was going crazy on the floor below me, skittering to and fro. I breathed in the gasp and slumped back to the mattress.
***
“Sometimes you confuse me, K.”
Strauch was talking, as if from a great distance.
“I understand that hunger can be powerful. But the rat?”
I shrugged and mumbled back, “I like to be the one hurting things.”
I tried to pout, but expressiveness wasn’t coming easy.
“I will ask you again. Do you want to cooperate?”
I gathered my strength for a second before snarling. “You said it yourself. I’m a survivor. I do what I have to so that I can survive. The moment I’ve done what you need, I die. Dose me up, Doc.”
***
I started to slip in and out of reality. Time melted into a slow stream. The next two days flicked from hazes of pain to long stretches of mind-numbing boredom. I had to make my move soon, or RailTech would grow tired of my avoidance.
I slumped on the floor in my cell. My back was turned to the camera. My free hand slowly traced the floor.
Dried blood.
I found the evidence of the Rat Incident. Small spatters surrounded the pool where I’d dropped it. Focusing on the tip of my finger, I traced the blood trail around my cell. It led under the bed. To conceal my movements, I sat upright and pretended to throw up some more. I slumped down in a better position.
My questing fingers followed the trail to the logical destination—the hole. Rats don’t just fall out of the air, right? They aren’t airplanes or newborns. They have to come from somewhere, like traffic wardens and politicians. There had to be a hole.
The corner of the cell, under my bed. Corrosion had eaten through the steel, leaving a gap scarcely three fingers wide. I probed through and touched concrete. I explored further, and my questing touch found metal. A flutter passed through my system as I repressed the instinct to fist-pump the air.
A nail.
Dislodged by vermin or corrosion, there was a nail sticking out of the concrete. Dry fragments sat around the head. It had once been part of wooden boarding. I teased it gently, and it slid out and into my hand. It was thin and rusted and shorter than my middle finger, but the size would be useful. I pulled it closer to my chest and planned my next move.
***
The guards came for me the next day. I had spent all my time trying to focus myself, but my eye twitched in a way I could not control.
“I ask the same question, Fletcher. Are you ready?”
I shivered. I had started to truly fear Strauch and his mystical bottle of liquid, on an instinctive level. The human body was not designed to cope with the illusion of being in absolute pain. Slowly, painfully, I nodded, avoiding eye contact. He smiled, I assume, and waved towards the guards.
“Our technical analyst will oversee you and make sure you do what is needed. Goodbye, Fletcher. I will not parade your corpse for the crowds.”
I shuddered at the words. Hands descended on my shoulders and I was uncuffed and lifted to my feet. They guided me outside and led me to a small, plain room. At a desk was a laptop; a portly technician sat beside it. Unpleasant-looking fuzz stretched around his neck. I was seated in front of the screen.
I soaked in as much information as possible. The guards had tazers and batons, but no firearms. Nerds McBeard wore authentic, old-fashioned glasses. The laptop had no mouse, but was plugged in with a power cable. Both chairs were on wheels. A camera watched the room from the corner. There were several vents around the top of the wall—I had to assume that it wasn’t for the air-conditioner.
Everything I would need was pre-installed on the laptop. A modified Tor browser to access the deep internet, decryption tools and archiving programmes all had shortcuts on the desktop. I opened up the browser and started typing.
McBeard was actually paying attention. It was annoying. He was tapping notes on a small tablet. It would have been a lot easier if he had been writing them with a nice, sharp pen.
I mindlessly flitted through links, spooling myself past hidden sites and secure email servers and munitions catalogues with no apparent order. I was stalling while I listened to the breathing of the guards behind me.
One had the distinctive rasp of a smoker. He was still a threat, but his reactions might be slightly slower. The other one took long breaths. I started breathing in reverse: when he drew air in, I pushed it out. I allowed myself to fall into this pattern.
I slowly shifted my legs until the balls of my feet pressed against the back of the desk. I’d have to move quickly.
Overpower, jump, overpower.
I pushed off from my anchor and launched my chair across the room. Non-Smoker was caught on an exhale and had nothing with which to brace himself. I opened my mouth, caught the nail as it fell out, and slammed it into his neck. He thrashed and gasped, while his friend shouted and grabbed for his tazer.
I leaped from one onto the other. Nerds McBeard wore a look of impotent shock. I caught the guard as he raised his hand and sunk my teeth into his face.
An animalistic moment passed. Days of sleep deprivation, torture and starvation unleashed something insane onto Smoker, a thrashing second of panzerfleichen as I mauled my prey. This was my bid for survival, no holds barred.
The nodes of the tazer cuffed me and sent me reeling out of my psychosis, but his respite was brief and I forced myself into a rapid recovery. I smashed his head into a desk, making sure to bring the temple into t
he corner. He didn’t get up.
I snapped my head up as the door slammed. McBeard had run for it—possibly for the first time in his life. The hiss of the gasp vents made me suck in a lungful of clean air. Thick smoke started to fill the room. The camera in the corner blinked, and I flung myself onto the table.
Five.
Without breathing, I thrashed wildly before tumbling to the floor. There was an audible sound as my skull found the leg of the desk. I rolled onto my side and pretended to heave weakly.
Fifteen.
My lungs were beginning to feel the pressure. Blood hammered through my head and I started fighting the urge to breathe in.
Twenty.
My chest burned with a savage heat. The edges of my eyes twitched as my vision began to blur. Deception wasn’t paying off, until
Thirty.
The latch snapped open and an armed guard stepped in—dark visor, flak jacket, oxygen mask. A searchlight created a solid beam through the thick gas. Target acquired.
Thirty-one.
I crossed the distance with a leap and crashed into him. He was larger than me, and stronger, but I had surprised him and his shot went wide. I slammed an open palm into his chin in an effort to dislodge the gas mask, but his head snapped back instead, dispersing the force of the blow. An elbow stung my jaw, almost triggering a breath. I landed another blow on his face, but the mask held.
Thirty-six.
My struggles were weaker now, and I felt his hands pin my arms to the side. Blood carried burning agony to the rest of my body and my sight was draining rapidly. I spasmed, lurching my head backwards, before snapping forward into the most devastating head-butt I could muster.
There was burst of glass and plastic and the gas mask snapped down the middle. As his grip on my shoulders loosened I pulled the mask off his face and sank my teeth into his exposed lips, screwing his nose shut with my free hand. I felt the cartilage tear, but the seal held and I drained a breath of stale air from his lungs. Life throbbed back into my body; colour returned to my vision. My heart broke into a victory beat. Working quickly, I stripped him of his oxygen tank and cracked the valve against the wall. The tank bucked in my hands as the pressurised air blasted the gasp away from my face, but I tightened my hold and regained my strength for a second.
The camera saw the heavy handgun I lifted from the body, and I began encountering real arms fire as I fought my way to the centre of the complex. With a weapon in my hands I was safely back in my comfort zone, and they couldn’t beat me at my own game: killing. I followed the rusted exit signs—still present from the asylum days—and marked my wake with twitching corpses.
I walked past a door half-open and caught the scent of terrified computer technician again. It reeked of stale foods and sweaty terror. On the whims of a fresh idea I kicked it fully open and stepped inside. I sensed a movement to my left; an instinctive twist-bang-bang saved my skull from potential lead lining. McBeard slumped to the floor, handgun clattering by his side. I locked the door and dragged his body to the fingerprint scanner. I personally love fingerprint scanners. It makes my life so much easier if everyone carries their password around in an easily-detachable format.
“Hope you don’t mind,” I whispered to no one in particular, “but all your precious shit is getting scrubbed.”
Local databases: delete. Camera feeds: delete. Cell records: delete. Conversations: delete. Online backups: delete. Revision history: delete. Delete, delete, delete. Damn you, and your data.
I heard the clink of steel in between keystrokes, lifted the gun and fired eight shots through the door without looking up. It tumbled open, and three distinct bodies hit the floor. I continued typing.
User records: delete. Log files: delete.
The smell of cologne hit me, and my heart double-tapped.
***
I had hit him in the stomach twice, but the real damage was from a bullet to the throat. Blood foamed up at his mouth as I came closer; he was alive and conscious, but not for long.
“Good shot.”
My chest was burning again, and I forced myself to breathe. This wasn’t me. Not again.
“Nothing witty?”
I found my words. They’d been hiding under the waves of confusion. “Vincent.”
“You... You won, K.”
“Vincent, you’re dying.”
“Had to end somehow.”
His two companions seemed dead, but I was beyond checking.
“Vincent. You’re dying.”
He nodded. “Rather this.”
“No one kills my friend—”
“—but me.”
He finished my sentence with a cough of red. The waves of confusion gave way to an alien hollowness. I lifted his head slightly before he spoke again.
“No hard feelings. Keep fighting, K.”
And then he was gone and I was alone and there was fire and gunshots and an explosion and I was outside in the rain and I was running and I kept running because the hollowness was angry and I was angry but killing didn’t make anything better–
A Toast, To Vincent
“If you hurt her, I will kill you.”
Vincent had his gun trained on my chest when he spoke his first words to me. My face was hidden behind the brim of my hat, with my body protected by my hostage. In my right hand was a kitchen knife big enough to skeletonise a cow. Behind me gaped a thirty-foot drop into the street.
I raised my head, looking past the barrel and into his eyes.
His resolve gave way to shock for a split second. “You’re young?” he almost stammered. Almost, but not quite.
I had cocked my head to the side before responding. “You’re alone. Young, too. But, more importantly, alone.”
My snark didn’t do anything to help my cause. A shudder ran through the woman I was holding; a faint whimper crawled out of her throat. The knife throbbed as she swallowed.
“Let her go” he said. “It’s over.”
“Far from it. There’s nothing at all on the police radio. That’s how I know you’re alone. That means no backup, no snipers, nothing. Bold, coming here by yourself. What gave it away, Officer V?”
He hadn’t expected that, but he regained composure in an instant, for a second time. That had impressed me, I remember.
“You’ve done your homework.”
“Nope. I just noticed you at crime scenes you weren’t supposed to be at. Mine. It wasn’t much at first, but something in your eyes gave it away. I’m impressed, though.”
He’d not been expecting proper dialogue.
“It wasn’t easy. You’re a living, breathing anti-profile. That’s why no one believed me at first; the only thing tying all the murders together was that they had practically nothing in common.”
“Except for the murder part.”
The gun didn’t waver, and I had seen that his concentration was still intact. He had something to say, though, and I wasn’t going to stop him—not with that Glock in his hands.
“I’m the only person who knows what you look like. Until now, I didn’t even know if you were male or female. The mass poisonings scream woman. The axe murders, man. The drug dealers looked like a mob hit, the kindergarten looked like someone from the military gone AWOL. The forensic countermeasures imply that you’re in the police force, but you’re not. Anatomical knowledge suggests medical training, but I scoured hospital employment records for weeks: nothing.”
“But you found me.”
“Yes. It’s over.”
I pulled my hostage closer.
“You’re meant to humour me. How did you find me?”
“I’m done talking. Drop the knife and step away.”
I flashed my eyes. Now it was my turn to do some talking.
“No. I’ve seen your records; you can make the shot. But you don’t know about the twitch. You’re too good at what you do. See, when someone dies...when someone dies, and they expect it, they see it coming, what happens is a kick of life... A burst of f
lailing adrenaline. A twitch. Shoot me now and her head will come clean off.”
Tiny gasps from under the knife. I tightened my grip as I watched him weighing things out in his mind. He thought about doing it—one innocent life in exchange for me. That was what impressed me most: a calculating, pragmatic intellect which seemed to be far too absent elsewhere in the world.
I giggled before continuing. “Interesting. That’s...interesting. You’re actually considering it. You won’t, of course. You’re too bound up at the moment, but I can see it inside you. It’s in your record too. Most crimes solved, most criminals shot. It’s something, something deep and twisting and nasty.
“So humour me. How did you find me?”
He was quiet for a second longer than he wanted to be. I could see his mind racing forward, watching me for any sudden movements. Hyper-alert. I liked the attention.
He started speaking again. Everyone made mistakes, he said: mine was that my complete lack of a consistent signature was, in itself, a signature. It was a matter of finding the boxes I hadn’t checked yet and seeing where they led. It took three attempts, but he finally got lucky.
I had spent his explanation sliding out onto the windowsill. To him, it looked like uncomfortable shifting, but I was now precariously balanced on the edge. Cue exit.
“I like you, Officer V. You’ve got promise...and I can show you how to make the most of that. You’ll try disregard me now, of course. To be expected. But one day, one day you’ll find yourself forced to choose between what’s right, and what’s necessary. Between what you should do, and what you want to do, and I can see right now... I can see that you won’t disappoint.”
He sensed my departure, tensing up and stepping closer.
“Cheerio, Vincent. It’s been a pleasure. You may call me K.”
With that, I let go of the girl and the knife and tumbled back out the window. Vincent’s retort was lost to the whipping wind, and I felt a bullet graze my ankle. One floor hurtled past before I found the railing and swung my body inwards, bursting through a closed window.
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