The Prometheus Man

by Scott Reardon

  The shooting stopped again. Tom heard the metal chuckle of a reload. He watched the shot-out hole in the wall and saw the shooter’s shoulder move down on the other side. The man was lowering himself to look through and check the damage.

  Tom picked himself up and ran as hard as he could at the wall. It was so rotted it looked like papier-mâché. He’d already covered half the distance before he saw a man’s chin appear in the hole. And as he lowered his shoulder and hit the wall, he saw an eye. It was looking at him—and widening.

  The entire wall shook as he crashed through it and landed on top of the shooter. He was still skidding as he grabbed the man and hammer-fisted his face until he stopped moving.

  Tom took the man’s radio and put the headset on. He shouldered the automatic rifle and went back for Silvana and her father. They helped Dr. Nast to his feet, and the three of them rushed over to the staircase. They would be easy targets while they were on the stairwell, so Tom slowed them down before they came to it. They waited for sounds—voices, footsteps, something. Tom inched closer to the railing, so he could get eyes or ears on anything there. Once he confirmed everything was clear, he motioned Silvana and Nast over.

  A wood plank creaked on the floor directly above.

  Tom pointed his rifle at the ceiling and waited for another sound.

  After a moment, he took a step back—he could feel the stress in the floorboard and tried to put his foot down as slowly as possible.

  It creaked anyway.

  Ping.

  Ping.

  He looked down. There were two tiny holes in the floor where he’d been standing. He looked up. There were two holes in the ceiling, similarly spaced.

  Ping.

  A divot materialized an inch from his foot. There were three holes in the ceiling spaced equally—three feet apart. Now he knew where to aim. He trained the automatic on the next spot in the trail and fired a burst.

  He waited.

  No sound.

  Then blood ran from the holes in the ceiling in strands.

  He realized he couldn’t lead them out of here the way he’d thought. He didn’t even know how many people were in the building. He motioned Dr. Nast and Silvana back into the apartment, gave them time to find a hiding space, and then pressed the TALK button on the radio.

  “Requesting assistance,” he said. “Northwest corner of the seventh floor.”

  A long silence. Then: “Rendezvous northwest corner. Seventh floor. I’m approaching from the southwest stairwell.”

  “Copy,” Tom said.

  He found the door to the southwest stairwell and hid around the corner and waited. He heard the door to the stairwell swing open and shut. He stood with his rifle trained on the doorway and counted ten seconds, his pulse jumping in his throat.

  No one came.

  Sweat ran down his face and stung his eyes. He tried to wipe it with his shoulder. His hands were so sweaty they felt slippery against the rifle. He wiped them on his pants and re-gripped.

  No one came.

  He whipped around to make sure someone wasn’t already behind him.

  There was another small stairwell opposite the one he crouched near. To cover one, he had to turn his back on the other. He was trapped. He stood there, looking back and forth, straining to hear someone’s approach. He wanted to move, but he didn’t want to make a sound.

  His eyes searched the darkness of the first stairwell, trying to make out a boot or the outline of a person moving toward him. For one insane moment, he wondered if he’d somehow missed someone in the half-second that he’d turned around.

  Something moved in his peripheral vision.

  When he whipped around, Bogasian was on the fire escape. Tom lurched backward as the wall beside his face exploded. From the other side of the window, through the falling glass, Bogasian was already sighting the follow-up.

  The wall exploded a second time. Shots boomed through the hallway, echoing over one another. As Tom collapsed behind a corner, he fired a burst and saw Bogasian was already barging through the broken window.

  Tom scrambled down the hallway and ducked through the doorway of an apartment missing its front door. Two walls had been knocked down completely, allowing him to see into the adjacent apartments. There were several six-foot holes at chest level in the remaining walls, which were spray-painted and marked for demolition. He crept to the other side of one of the holes and waited for Bogasian.

  Forty feet away a pair of eyes looked right at him.

  Silvana.

  Her lips parted to whisper something, but Tom shook his head. She raised one of her hands, but he couldn’t see what was on it until she stuck it in the light. It glistened—slick with her father’s blood. He was bleeding out.

  Tom nodded, trying to exude calm, like they’d figure it out. Silvana stepped back from the hole in the wall, and her face faded to black.

  He checked his magazine. Empty. When he slid the chamber open, he found a round. He waited with his gun trained on the missing front door. But he didn’t like it, just leaving the two of them out there, so he made his way through the shadows, stepping around diagonal strips of light from the street.

  A floorboard compressed.

  He froze in a crouch. Sweat pooled in his shoes and on the back of his shirt. His legs were so tired they started to shake.

  The floorboard made another sound as a large weight came off it.

  There was a thin band of light thirty feet to his left. It had nothing solid to reflect off of, so he only noticed it when Bogasian’s arm swept through. A handgun winked in the light. He heard Silvana say “You don’t have to do this” as Bogasian leveled the gun in her direction. Bogasian took another step, out of the light.

  Tom only had a second, so he aimed for the spot in the darkness where he thought Bogasian was and fired.

  He heard the gunshot from his weapon—followed instantly by one from Bogasian’s.

  He rushed blindly to where Bogasian had been standing. Silvana was on the floor, cradling her unconscious father. She didn’t say anything when she saw him. She just shifted her eyes to a door across the room, and he understood. He noticed Bogasian’s gun lying on the floor. There was blood on it.

  The door led him into the main hallway, back by the stairwell. When he turned, he saw Bogasian. His left hand was dripping blood with the regularity of a leaky faucet.

  Tom put the rifle on him and motioned for him to put his hands up.

  Bogasian saw him, took a few steps in his direction, and stopped. His hands went up as an afterthought, barely above waist level. The bleeding flicked red droplets down his wrist, and he stood there indifferent to it.

  “You’re not going to have me arrested, are you?” he said.

  “You’re a murderer.”

  “Of who exactly?”

  They looked at each other, and they both knew of who exactly.

  “You don’t have the briefcase, you don’t have anything.”

  “I have you.”

  Bogasian shook his head like he was disappointed. “You’ll need more than that.”

  “The proof is in your skull. And you can bet they’ll open you up to get it.”

  “I’ve noticed people aren’t shy about that.”

  “I saw the pictures. Are there others?”

  “They tried.”

  “We’re the only ones?”

  Bogasian smiled.

  They stood there awkwardly. Now that Tom had found the man who shot his brother, he realized they didn’t really have anything to talk about. There was just…nothing to say.

  “You killed Alan Sarmad,” Bogasian said.

  Tom didn’t say anything.

  “That’s how it starts. First, you kill the guilty.”

  Tom wondered if Bogasian knew he was empty.

  “You look like your brother,” Bogasian said. “Eric, right?” He took a half-step in Tom’s direction. “I can’t remember his name sometimes. You get so you can’t remember a lot of things.”r />
  Another half-step.

  “He tried to help me. After the operation. You deserve to know that.”

  “He felt bad for you.”

  Bogasian laughed a little. “He did this to me.”

  Tom thought he had never seen such sorrow in another person’s eyes.

  “He didn’t know,” Tom said.

  “That doesn’t matter. That never matters.”

  “It matters to me.”

  “Anything that matters to you and no one else doesn’t really matter.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Bogasian smiled again. “You’re one of those people. You think what you do actually says something about the world.”

  Another half-step.

  “I wish you hadn’t come here.” Bogasian froze, and his eyes turned sad. “I know you had to, but I really wish you hadn’t come.”

  Tom tightened his grip on the gun. “Get down on the floor.”

  Bogasian kept gliding toward him. When he stopped, he leaned forward. “You’re empty.”

  He lunged, knocking Tom off-balance, and pinned him against the railing. Immediately Tom’s cuts were open and flowing. Bogasian wrapped his arm around Tom’s neck and squeezed.

  Tom couldn’t pry him off him. So while he choked, he went for the stairwell railing. He pivoted as much as he could around Bogasian and threw them both into it.

  The railing bent for a second and then ripped out of the floor. They paused over the edge of the stairwell as they both fought for balance. Tom went over the edge first. He managed to twist as he dropped and jam his hand at the rail, which was still attached to the floor above at one end. His fingers closed around it, and all of a sudden he’d stopped falling.

  He could see the blur of Bogasian falling after him.

  His other hand shot out. He reached for Bogasian’s wrist, and Bogasian must have also reached for his because their hands snapped around each other. They looked at each other in shock.

  Another anchor ripped out of the railing. They dropped three feet and swung into the wall. Tom’s grip on Bogasian slipped a half-inch. His left hand got smashed between the railing and the wall and went numb. The gash on it drooled fresh blood down his arm and into his face, but he didn’t let go. Something inside him just wouldn’t do that.

  He glanced down.

  Bogasian was watching him.

  Bogasian couldn’t understand why Tom didn’t just let go of him. He watched him start to shake, knew he wouldn’t be able to hold them both for long, not with his middle finger broken.

  Bogasian sensed they were getting lower and lower. Whatever was still keeping the railing attached to the floor was bending. Metal was lengthening. And the math was simple: there was too much weight.

  The only thing Bogasian ever really knew about Eric was that he’d tried to help him. And Tom was here because of Eric.

  He let go.

  Tom tried to hold him, but Bogasian’s hand started to slip. Bogasian was looking at him and nodding It’s okay, let me go, it’s okay.

  They were both still looking at each other when Bogasian fell. Tom watched him fall forty feet before he disappeared into the darkness. There was the slapping sound of something filled with liquid colliding with the ground.

  Tom hung there and listened for a sound he knew he wouldn’t hear. A gasp or a moan. Then he started climbing back up the railing.

  When he was halfway, Karl appeared on the seventh floor and looked down at him. He was shouting and pointing at something Tom couldn’t quite see. Tom was too exhausted to understand. He just kept trying to climb up the rail. But as he got closer, he saw the section he was holding on to had split from the rest. There were only a few bolts left holding it, and Karl was hauling back on the railing to take some of the weight off.

  Tom’s hand was on the seventh floor when there was a series of sounds. Something creaked, and something else snapped. Tom looked at Karl for help. Then his hand clawed at the floor, and he fell six stories.

  Karl watched Tom fall until he disappeared in the shadows. He heard him hit the floor. Then he rushed down the stairs.

  At the bottom, he found Bogasian’s body. It had been crushed by its own weight against the ground. Blood sprayed the tile and painted the wall. There was a stack of decaying furniture a couple feet from him. When Karl climbed up it, there was some blood, but he couldn’t find Tom’s body.

  He ran into the street and then the alley behind the building.

  They were empty.

  CHAPTER 49

  (Three months later)

  Schroder-Sands was hosting its first annual Muscular Dystrophy Hope Gala at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC. According to the press release, it was an event you didn’t want to miss.

  Karl couldn’t have agreed more.

  He arrived early, and it was still photo call outside the hotel. A famous actor and a senator were gripping each other in one of these “We did it!” holds while flashbulbs strobed out half a city block. The actor flashed a peace sign, and the senator, like a good Texan, wasn’t going within a mile of that one. He just hefted his fist.

  Karl tried to slink along the perimeter of the lobby, but a waiter thrust a glass of champagne into his hand. The lobby was lit up in red, which diffused along the walls into princess pink. A man nearby leaned over to his lady friend and whispered, “It’s quite vaginal.” And they both started laughing. Karl laughed too, and when the couple stopped and looked at him, he raised his glass. They both smiled uncomfortably and fled to the other side of the room, and all of a sudden Karl was having a whale of a time.

  He choked down his champagne as he looked for Marty. He didn’t see him anywhere, so the first thing he did was get a real drink. Then he ordered two more because the bar looked busy and he didn’t like any nonsense between rounds. After that, he filled a jacket pocket with some butter mints and planted himself at a small table in the corner. He sat there, sipping beer and sucking on mints even after everyone else had filed into the ballroom.

  His phone vibrated.

  The message said: We’re ready.

  As he approached the Grand Ballroom, he could hear—and feel in the back of his throat—four hundred people applauding, really slapping their hands together. He opened the door and saw Fritz Lang, CEO of Schroder-Sands, taking the stage.

  Then he spotted Marty.

  He was seated at a table of people like him, not the beautiful people but the politicians—who proved what some guy once said about Washington being Hollywood for ugly people.

  Lang raised his arms to hush the audience. But they wouldn’t wind it down. Some people cheered louder, not about to let him rain on this, their parade for him. He managed a patient smile. Karl had never known who Marty’s contact was at Schroder-Sands. He’d figured it must have been someone pretty high up, but he’d never imagined it would be the CEO himself.

  Lang dipped his head toward the mic. “Now I think we all know who this event is really about. And if you know their story, you know there isn’t time to keep them waiting.”

  The clapping died off instantly.

  Lang stared over the audience. “Since Schroder-Sands began Project Hope three years ago, annual deaths of children from neuromuscular disease have fallen 5 percent. We have saved the lives of literally thousands of children—”

  Clapping from one of the tables.

  Lang turned on them. “No,” he said. “Don’t clap.”

  A hush fell over the audience. This was his second scolding, and he was going to lose them with a third.

  “Our innovations went to eight thousand children last year. It’s given hope to thousands of others, and you know what?” He pounded the podium with each of his next words. “That’s. Not. Good. Enough.”

  Thunderous applause.

  “We. Will. Not. Stop.” He was still pounding. “Ever.”

  Even more thunderous applause.

  Lang stood beaming.

  Karl looked at Marty, and Marty glanced over and did a do
uble-take. Then he smiled. Karl smiled back. And as he did, he took his phone out of his pocket and held it up so Marty could see it.

  He took the draft email with a video attached and hit SEND.

  Marty’s phone lit up. He pressed something on the screen and sat watching the video.

  Two hours earlier, Karl had met privately with the director and the deputy director of the CIA and shown them the video of Dr. Nast. Nast sat in one of those spaceless, blacked-out interview rooms across from an unseen interviewer.

  “So you used stem cells to enhance a person physically?” the interviewer asked.

  Dr. Nast nodded.

  “And you had no idea about the actual purpose of what you were working on?”

  “They told us it was a life-saving treatment for a man with a rare neuromuscular disease.”

  “What was the actual purpose?”

  “To weaponize a human being. Basically.”

  “Eric Reese,” she said. “Why was he was killed?”

  “The principals chose not to reveal the program to the US government. Instead they developed it for sale to other governments. Once substantial sales had been made, everyone involved in the development or distribution of this technology was killed.”

  “Except you?”

  Nast nodded. “Except me.”

  “You presented physical evidence to us. Can you please explain for those watching what that evidence is?”

  “I have tissue samples from the body of the man we augmented.”

  “The test subject?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  “Ian Bogasian.”

  “You said ‘body.’ That means he isn’t alive?”

  “Correct.”

  “How valuable is the program Mr. Bogasian was associated with? Do you have any idea of the dollar amounts involved?”

  “A biotechnology firm just licensed a far less advanced stem cell technology for $120 million a year. I assume comparable amounts were transferred to the executive overseeing our project.”

  “And that man’s name?”