The Prometheus Man

by Scott Reardon

  Wrapping both hands around the handle and leaning back with all his weight, the man was finally able to pull it out. And as he did, Tom saw the scar with two zippers twisting up the back of his hand.

  It didn’t really register at first. He was so woozy all he could think was: Oh, this is the man whose life I actually want to take.

  The man stopped and watched him looking at the scar. Except he hadn’t really stopped. His face stayed in place—curious—but the rest of him feinted toward Tom’s ribs with the knife. As soon as Tom went to cover them up, the man feinted back and came right over the top. With both of his hands around the handle, he knelt over Tom like he was a human sacrifice. As he plunged the knife into Tom’s stomach, Tom only got his hands up enough to absorb some of the thrust.

  The first inch hurt the most. Tom pushed and clawed at the man’s hands, but the blade kept slipping in. There was enough blood now that the man’s fingers were slithering through his. All Tom could see was wet silver pouring in.

  There was a gunshot.

  They froze.

  A second gunshot.

  They turned in unison. The man’s hands were still covering the handle, so Tom placed his fingers on the flat sides of the blade, delicately, and started pulling it out. Whatever friction held his fingers against the blade came from the ridges of his fingertips and the viscosity of his blood.

  He saw the outline of a man on the fire escape. The man raised a handgun, to show he was armed, and leveled it at them.

  The man from the autohof raked his hand through the gravel and came up with Tom’s briefcase. Trying to make it to the stairs would have brought him within range of the man on the fire escape, so he fled across the roof toward the office building next door. He threw himself over the edge.

  “No, don’t,” the man on the fire escape shouted.

  But it was too late. Tom watched the other man arc up a little and descend out of sight. There was the sound of breaking glass from the window he’d thrown himself through.

  While the man on the fire escape was yelling, Tom hobbled over to the roof entrance and somehow made it down the stairs to the ground floor. He had barely managed to open the double doors to the alley when he heard a car engine. It was accelerating—in his direction.

  He hobbled across the alley and saw a little Renault slide to a stop at the double doors he’d just come through. The car door was being thrown open as he turned the corner and cut down another alley. Blood was running into his shoes, and the soles started to suck at his feet. It was the only sound in the alley.

  The scar on the man’s hand flashed in his mind. Then he saw the hand entering frame in the video.

  He noticed how drowsy he was, but even through the drowsiness, he could feel the branches of the nerves in his body, splitting the pain, spreading it. He needed medical attention or he’d bleed out.

  He saw the scar on the man’s hand. Then he saw the hand enter the frame.

  He turned down another alley, looking for a doctor’s office. Some lights came on, and when he looked down, he realized his steps were shaking little drops of blood off his clothes. He rested for a moment and tried to catch his breath.

  You lied. You didn’t get her to her family safely.

  He imagined Silvana trapped in the rubble, waiting for help, unable to comprehend what had just happened.

  Even if she isn’t dead, you couldn’t do anything.

  He saw the scar, then the hand enter frame.

  He approached a fork in the alley. The alley to the left was dark except for the bluish-white light over a door. He went left and wiped his hand over the wettest part of his clothes and smeared his blood on the stucco under the light. Then he squeezed his shirt and pants to wring out as much blood as possible on the pavement. When he looked back, the fork seemed so far away he wasn’t sure he could make it back. But he concentrated on each step, willing the pavement to turn under him.

  If you trip, soon you’ll see your brother.

  He saw the scar, then the gun coming toward his brother’s head.

  Finally he retraced his steps back to the fork and stood there out of breath. Then he staggered down the alley to the right. He didn’t know how far he would get, but all he could think was: he’d finally found the man who killed Eric, and now he couldn’t do anything about it because he was about to die.

  CHAPTER 39

  Marty’s been lying to you.

  That thought raced on a continuous loop through Karl’s head as he watched Bogasian hurl himself off the side of a building and through an office window. Bogasian was supposed to be working with Dr. Nast, and yet he’d just blown up the roof of Nast’s home. And if Marty was lying to him about that, he would only be doing it for a good reason. Marty never took a risk unless there was a proportionate reward on the other side of it.

  When Karl turned toward Tom, he was gone too. Karl jumped off the fire escape onto the roof and lifted his radio. “He’s on foot. Cover the west entrance. I’ll go east.”

  “Copy,” James said.

  Karl flew down the stairs and crashed out the double doors into an alley, so fast he almost ran into James’s parked Renault. The car was empty—James was probably already searching the alleys. Since Tom had to be close, Karl exhaled halfway before he spoke, to take the volume off his whisper.

  “Do you have eyes on him?”

  “Negative,” James said.

  “Forget Tom Reese. I need you to go up to Nast’s apartment and see if there are any survivors. If they’re in critical condition, take them to a hospital. Otherwise put them in my car.”

  A pause. “What?”

  “Just do it.”

  “Copy.”

  Four alleys emptied into the one he stood in. Karl figured he had one shot at this.

  He’s scared. He has maybe thirty minutes before he bleeds out—

  Karl leaned over and scanned the pavement.

  Blood. A little dollop of it.

  The next one he found was just a dot. But once he found it, he had two points, and when he connected them, he had a line. And the line was pointing down alley number two. Karl followed the red dots like a trail of bread crumbs.

  Then the alley split. He stared down one alley and saw a cat licking at something on the ground. He went over, picked the cat up and raised it into the streetlight. There was blood on the white fur around its mouth. He patted it on the head and put it back down.

  He followed the alley to another fork. This time both branches curved out of view, and there were no cats to bail him out. So he walked up the alley to the left, illuminating the ground with the light on his phone. He was about thirty feet in, about to turn around, when he saw blood smeared on the stucco exterior of a building, right under a security light.

  He looked around. It was the only light for fifty feet.

  He stood there, not liking his shit luck.

  Then he doubled back to the fork and took the alley to the right. His steps got quick—he knew he was close—and he pointed the light on his phone at the pavement as he walked. Tom would have cupped his hands under the bleeding to put the biggest gap he could in the blood trail, but eventually it would spill over.

  Finally Karl found what he was looking for—a big streak of blood.

  He was running now.

  As he came out of the alley, he saw the green cross of a pharmacy. It shared the same building with a doctor’s office. The glass doors were locked, so he went around back. The rear door was ajar, the doorknob ripped out.

  He nudged the door open and stood, listening. Deep inside, someone was yanking drawers open and swiping their contents onto the floor.

  Tom was so cold he could feel where the nerves in his teeth rooted into his face. It took him a long time—a minute almost—to realize what this meant:

  Shock.

  He wasn’t sure at what point he’d pass out. He’d never been so aware of his heart pumping with so much thrust. It was pumping minutes of his life out of his body and all over th
e Chiclet-white tile. He could feel himself getting sleepy.

  You’re going into shock.

  He lurched forward and tore through the cabinets until he found an emergency-care manual in English. His fingers were so sticky with blood that a page ripped off and stuck to his thumb. He licked and sucked where the paper met his thumb until the page slipped off.

  The table of contents—like most tables of contents—was useless. He flipped to the index.

   Blood loss.

  —Rapid.

  Soon you’ll see your brother.

  The next thing he knew, he was at the bottom of a paragraph with no idea how he’d gotten there. He caught himself looking around for a place to lie down and had to look at the blood on the floor to scare himself back into action.

  He went around ripping out drawers, searching for suture needles. Eventually he found some. They came pre-threaded, so he sat down, stripped, and then disinfected.

  He started with his stomach, but pushing the sides of the wound together was like shaping Cream of Wheat.

  He gave up and jabbed the needle into one flap, pushing it inward until a sharp little metallic head was birthed into the inner wall of the wound. Then he pushed it through the opposite wall and turned it upward until it came out his stomach. He yanked both ends of the suture upward, which pulled the wound closed. But as soon as he let go to put in another stitch, the whole thing fell apart.

  One of the doctor’s offices was being renovated, and there were a bunch of tools in the hallway. He got up and rooted around until he found a soldering iron.

  Surgeons had been using hot metal to stop bleeding for thousands of years, and he told himself the soldering iron was just a primitive version of the same thing. He plugged the iron in and rolled onto the gurney. Once it was hot, he stared at it and took a breath—then another breath. He pinched the hole in his stomach shut as best he could and let the iron go down toward it.

  He smelled it before he felt it. The pain whited everything else out. The smell was hard to describe. It just smelled wrong. He lifted his head and saw two pieces of flesh being melted into a swollen mass on his belly. But the hole was nowhere close to being sealed. He dipped the iron back down. The smell hit him again. But when he looked, he saw he was pushing the iron down in an area three inches from his wound.

  The soldering iron fell to the floor. This he knew not because he felt it slip out of his fingers but because he heard it thud, far away, like someone else had dropped it.

  Eric was sitting on the counter.

  “I’m sorry,” Tom said.

  He saw blood everywhere. It was someone else’s blood now, someone else’s mess.

  A shadow on the floor moved. He looked up. A figure stood in the doorway.

  Tom slapped his hand into a tray full of instruments by the table. He came up with a bunch of things and dropped them all except for a scalpel. The figure walked up and took it out of his hand.

  “You’re bleeding out,” the figure said.

  It was Karl’s voice. Except he wasn’t talking, he was shouting. In Tom’s face. Still Tom couldn’t quite hear him.

  “Do. They. Have. Blood. Here?” Karl was enunciating like this was the tenth time he’d asked.

  “Don’t take me to the hospital.”

  “You need help.”

  Tom thought of the pictures of those men. For a moment he wasn’t scared he was going to die. He was scared of what they’d make him do if he lived.

  “Wake up.” Karl slapped him and then put his phone to his ear.

  “Leave me. Please. Just leave me.”

  “I’m going to move you.”

  Tom’s head lolled to the side. Everything he carried inside him, everything that existed only because he remembered it, began to go dark. His mother dropping herself into the Volvo for the last time. His dad waving goodbye through the windshield. Eric grinning as he gave him his first beer.

  Tom looked at the room, then at Karl. He tried to speak, but the words died in his throat.

  I don’t care what you people do to me. I still have my family. I belong somewhere. And I’ll never belong to you.

  CHAPTER 40

  Bogasian crashed through the window, hit a desk, and rolled onto the floor. When he came to, for a moment he didn’t remember how he’d gotten there. He rocked back and forth a few times and worked his way to his feet. There was a maze of deserted cubicles outside the office. It was quiet except for a copy machine beeping for maintenance. It was the kind of place he’d always imagined his messages went on nights when there was no response.

  As he made his way down the hall, he saw someone poke her head out of an office and disappear back into it.

  He paused outside the room, his heart seizing in his chest. Then he forced himself to look inside. It was dark, but he didn’t turn the light on. He could make out photos on the walls of a family smiling, their heads nuzzled together. The room was empty.

  He heard footsteps behind him on the other side of the cubicles. He whirled around and caught a glimpse of a woman holding a little girl’s hand. They disappeared down a hallway.

  Sweat dampened his back. He knew them. Three years ago he’d murdered them in their sleep.

  He let himself out the back door of the building, got in his car, and drove to a motel. He rolled onto the bed in his room. It was easy to sleep because he didn’t want to be awake.

  Bogasian’s eyes flipped open in the dark. He saw movement in the corners of the room. He bolted up in bed and swung his head back and forth, searching every inch of every shadow. His heart thudded in his chest.

  More movement.

  He whipped around.

  Movement to the left.

  Now to the right.

  Whatever it was, it was just out of view. And he knew no matter how fast he moved or how still he stayed, it would always be there, pulsing on the edges, threatening to become visible.

  There was movement on all sides of him now.

  He bowed his head and let the dark crawl over him. He bit his lip and held his breath as it seeped through his eyelids and floated up his nose. He waited for all the images of everything he’d done to catch up to him.

  He wondered how Tom dealt with it.

  The memory of Tom on the roof came to him. He’d never seen a dying person fight like that. People didn’t fight to the end. People fought until they saw the end. And once they’d seen that, it had them. The sadness had them.

  But it didn’t have Tom. And he had almost a pint of blood smeared all over the roof before Bogasian even got there. Bogasian wondered why, and then he remembered Tom staring at his scar. There was only one place he could have seen it before.

  The resemblance was obvious now that he thought about it. They could be brothers, which meant they probably were. Eric was the one who came to him weeks after the surgery and said, We can take these things out of you. And Bogasian had just stared at him, knowing he could choose to care or not care. Meanwhile Eric stood there repeating himself, begging, eventually walking away.

  Eric came to the lab less and less after that. And the few other times he was there, he argued with the others. He threatened to go to the police unless they did a procedure to mitigate the side effects.

  Now Bogasian understood why they’d injected Tom. It was a way to motivate Eric to stay on and keep his mouth shut. Besides, when they were done with Eric, they were just going to kill him anyway. They had to now.

  He and the others made the decision to record what they’d done to Eric. They did it as leverage in case their employers decided to do the same thing to them. They never should have done that. Bogasian went on to do worse things, but they would never exist for him the way the video did. He spent months thinking about it, never watching it, before he decided to do something.

  The recording showed Eric’s face pretty clearly. It also showed that his death was a planned execution, not a mugging gone wrong. That would kick the investigation up to Interpol. From there, they’d figure out Eric
entered Tangier under a false identity, and then using work visas, they’d track that identity to a company connected to Schroder-Sands. It wouldn’t take long to discover the stem cell labs after that.

  He uploaded the video at 2:00 AM on a Friday night, wearing only his boxer shorts.

  When he killed Eric, he put a large wet cut between himself and the world. But when he posted the video and no one did anything, he realized there was nothing out there keeping track, no one to whom any of it mattered. And the cut healed—which meant he never would.

  CHAPTER 41

  Tom didn’t want to wake up ever again, but eventually his eyes opened. He might have been staring at the room for hours, maybe days, before he realized this was a bedroom and he was the person in it.

  There was nothing on the walls. No furniture other than a dresser, a table, and the bed he was on. The curtains were closed, but judging from the little triangle of light on the windowsill, it was sunny out. He preferred it dark and had a feeling that whoever set up the room for him knew that.

  He started to sit up.

  There was a noise in the hallway.

  He dropped back down and closed his eyes. The door opened. He didn’t hear a lock.

  Someone came in. Tom opened his eyes a few degrees, but his eyelashes and the dimness of the room clouded his view of a face. Whoever it was moved down against the floorboards rather than over them, and he guessed it was a man. The man slid a tray onto the table by Tom’s head, and his upper body shifted out of view. Tom sensed he was being watched and hoped his eyes appeared closed.

  The man moved back into sight and bent over him. Tom waited until he could smell him—

  He shot up, pulled the man onto the bed by his collar, and locked him in a sleeper hold. His mouth was right next to the man’s ear.