Identity X

by Michelle Muckley

  That night he returned home after covering more than ten miles of pavement and the odd field crossing, bruises on his behind and red chaffed palms. He sat in the bath with his father at his side listening as he told him what a wonderful day he had spent, and how not one of his fellow classmates had a bicycle as wonderful as his. But then Ben smelt the bleach, and his eyes began to sting. His screams brought his mother running into the bathroom to find his skin reddened and hair lightened from the bleach that his father had carelessly used to wash his hair. It was Ben’s first memory of his father’s demise. It was the first step in Ben’s journey to the empty floor where he sat today, where only last night he had celebrated NEMREC’s success.

  Ben reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out the contents: the seemingly useless identity card, a few coins that would just about make up enough to buy one of those pastrami sandwiches, and his telephone. He scrolled through the menu to find Hannah’s name. He hit the button with the green telephone symbol and waited, staring absently into the space before him. No answer. He dropped the telephone carelessly onto the floor, and threw his head backwards against the wall.

  “I can’t believe it,” he whispered to himself airily. He racked his brain, trying to recall every face that had passed through the lab in the last few months. He knew who was responsible for this, but he couldn’t understand their idiocy. “Another day! Another day and I would have called you!” He had two weeks of funding left, and had planned at the end of today to report to Bionics and tell them that it had worked. Instead, they hadn’t waited and had simply closed him down.

  Have they bought out the staff? Did they lose confidence in me? Has the whole thing been shut down and relocated without me?

  Thoughts of them relocating the lab overnight were virtually impossible to comprehend, and too painful to consider.

  One of my team been some sort of an informant? They knew we had done it? They cut the funding the.....wait, Saad. He wanted this work. Could he have stolen it? Overnight?

  “In less than twelve hours?” he finally said out loud. Endless possibilities raced through his mind, and yet nothing quite seemed possible. How could a whole laboratory just disappear overnight? He was jerked back into reality by the sound of his telephone buzzing against the floor in a tune far too cheerful for his mood.

  “Hello, Hannah?”

  “No, it’s me. What’s up?”

  “What?” He took the telephone away from his ear and glanced at the screen. “Mark,” he said as he held the phone back up to speak. “I’ve got a problem.”

  “What’s going on?” Ben explained how somebody had broken into the laboratory and stolen the equipment. Or how they had been shut down. Or how an insider had stolen the data. He explained how everything was gone and that he had no idea why. How a lifetime of research and personal aspirations had disappeared overnight. “I don’t believe it, Ben. Listen, I’m coming over. Just stay there. Don’t go anywhere, OK. I’ll be there soon.” With that, Mark hung up and Ben waited.

  He had to eat something. He was beginning to feel queasy from the emptiness of his stomach, and he could feel it turning and pulling at his insides. He caught sight of the coins that sat on the floor to the side of him. Totalling them up they seemed to amount to about six pounds, and that would be enough to get him one of his beloved pastrami sandwiches. Mark wouldn’t be here for another fifteen minutes. He grabbed the keys and fiddled up the coins. He left the telephone and the identity card where they were and headed down the stairs. The sunlight was streaming in through the windows as he approached the door, and he thought how unusual it seemed that there were no buses passing by to cast the door in shadow. He pushed the handle of the door down and after releasing the heavy door sufficiently, he started to move his body into the open space.

  At first, the high pitched ping confused him, as did the small cloud of dust that swirled to the side of his face. He couldn’t quite make out what had just happened. It took only a second to glance down, his eyes following the responsible object. He watched as the deformed slug of a spent bullet hit the ground and rolled away from him. Then a second hit the door. It flew past his head at a proximity that seemed like only millimetres away. It too hit the door leaving behind the same trail of dust and pain in his ears. He scrambled back inside, taking cover behind the door. He forced it shut, dropping the money that he had been clutching in his hand. Ben was stupefied and still, and watched as the third bullet hit the pane of glass. He jumped back in fright, falling and hitting his back against the tread of the first step. His first thought was that he was thankful not to be dead. The second was considerably more confusing.

  Why had the glass not broken?

  He stood up as two more bullets hit the glass at the level of his eyes. Both left nothing but a small cloud of dust and a crater in the glass as they ricocheted from the door, landing on the pavement.

  “Bullet proof?” he asked rhetorically as he stroked his fingers against the pane of glass. Not a single palpable mark was present on the inside. “Why the fuck is that bullet proof?” The confusion of his survival had for a few seconds shielded him from the realisation that somebody had just made an attempt on his life. When the next bullet hit the glass panel it woke him from his daydream. He could hear screams coming from outside, as the crowd fluttered around like the feathers of a terrified bird, and he knew that there was no way out through these doors. He back- heeled his way up the stairs, climbing frantically on all fours, dragging himself to the top. Stopping briefly to catch his breath, he scrambled to his feet and raced into the empty laboratory.

  “What the fuck is going on?” he screamed through panicked and desperate breaths, the room spinning around him. His mind switched to survival mode, and his eyes scanned the room for another exit. The only way out that didn’t involve going down the stairs was through the windows. Then he heard somebody at the door downstairs. There was no time for consideration. Waiting here was certain to bring only one thing and he didn’t want to think about that. His only choice was the window.

  He opened the latch and slid back the mirrored glass and dust blew up from inside the frame. He wasn’t even sure he had ever looked out here before, or if this window had been opened in the last four years. He moved his head and shoulders forwards to peer outside and he could feel the wind whipping past. The odour of food from the sandwich shop teased him from below, carried forth by the heat of a whirring extractor fan. He pulled his head back inside for a hesitative moment, but then he heard the door being shoved back and forth from the outside just meters away from him and it reminded him he had no choice. It had to be done.

  He ran across the floor and snatched up his telephone and identity card and without a second thought he hauled his body up and over the window frame. He balanced his feet down onto the small ledge that was beneath him and slid the open window back into a closed position. His jacket billowed behind him, and the oncoming winds pushed him closer into the wall. He shimmied his feet along the ledge and gripped the wall to stop himself shaking, and by wrapping his body around the vertical columns he made progress along the ridge. He couldn’t see through the mirrored glass properly, but could almost convince himself that he could see movement in his old laboratory. If he could see through, then maybe there was a chance that whoever was inside could see out. But there wasn’t time to waste hanging around making assumptions and predictions. He had to find a way off this ledge fast.

  As he approached the corner of the building he could see another building attached. The mood of the wind was as fickle as it was strong and as it blew around the corner he had to fight with all his strength to hang on. The attached building had a flat roof and he could almost taste its safety. It looked a damn sight safer than where he was currently. As he manoeuvred his body around the corner of the building he screamed as he felt the sharpest of pains searing through him, hot and acidic. He looked down at his right shoulder and he could see that there was a bloody looking opening in the top of his arm.
It looked more like a graze than a hole, but nevertheless he shuffled around the corner and into the protection of the building. His arm hurt worse than when he had been shot in the foot by a stray arrow at outward bound camp during an archery session. It hurt all the more for knowing that he was balanced on the ledge of a first floor office building with somebody chasing him with a gun for reasons of which he had no idea.

  Ben leapt towards the roof of the next building which was located only a foot or so below him. He landed on his right hip with a thump onto the roof. He sat round onto his backside, comforted in the embrace of a temporary reprieve, and he pressed his palm against the shoulder wound whilst hissing in a sharp breath through gritted teeth. He had only moments, and the previous sense of tiredness and lethargy that he felt had been ripped apart by the adrenaline that was pumping through his veins courtesy of his galloping heart. He heard nothing of the wind as it blew past the edge of the building, or the rapid chirrups of the city birds circling overhead. He was wired.

  Where now?

  He fled across the roof, no idea whether the gun toting maniac was following him or not. He moved at a good clip, past air conditioning pipes and vents. He bounded towards the edge of the roof and leapt forwards without thinking, jumping to clear the small space that separated the current building from the next. He landed on the next roof, never once considering the danger of a misplaced step or a misfortunate trip.

  He found a door that would permit him entrance to the building below. It was the last building in the row. There was nowhere else to run. He tried the handle but found it to be locked. He wondered if his adrenaline levels had spiked sufficiently to break through the door, head-first like a raging bull, but assumed his conscious thought for the matter rendered it an unlikely possibility. Edging back around the corner of the wall, he could see the shooter, wearing nothing but black just climbing his way from the ledge onto the first flat roof.

  “Fuck! Fuck!” Ben rolled his body back behind the security of the brick wall. He tried the handle, more desperately this time. The door moved ajar, and he could see that it was padlocked from the inside. He kicked it over and over, heaving his weight behind it and praying that the door would smash open. It budged, but stayed firm. He kicked the door one last time. It buckled under the pressure and the wooden door frame splintered away from the wall, leaving just enough space for him to slip through. He ducked inside, wedging the door back into place and crept down the first few stairs and into the shadow and safety of the building.

  Through the small space that was left from the damage to the door he could see the black boots and trousers of the shooter stood just feet away. It sounded like the shooter tested the door, but there was no desperate pulling and smashing. No attempt to force it open. If there had have been it would surely have buckled inward like a flimsy garden gate. Instead Ben heard his voice. It was deep and gravelly, and belonged to nobody that he recognised. He spoke in a muffled tone, but Ben could hear his words. He was making a telephone call.

  “Sir, he got away.” Silence again. It seemed like an impossibly slow wait for him to speak again. “Certainly. We’re moving into phase two? Yes Sir.” And that was it. He saw the feet turn, walk purposefully away, the rooftop gravel crunching under his feet. For the first time in what felt like hours Ben breathed again, relishing the relief that he had achieved a stay of execution. But yet he couldn’t understand it. There was nowhere for him to go. There was only one exit from that roof that didn’t lead to the end of his life. Ben had been able to breach the door with only his foot, pushing his body weight against it. This guy had a gun. Ben knew this all too well. He could have shot through it in seconds, yet he had left him.

  Why did he let me go?

  Ben shuffled his left hand out through his jacket, then after peeling out his injured right arm, began to inspect the wound. His crisp white shirt had a matching frayed hole at the level of his shoulder, stained with the deep red of his blood which was seeping down the fabric in irregularly scalloped waves. He clumsily unbuttoned his shirt with his left hand to assess the damage further. There was a cut, deep enough to cause a troubling amount of bleeding. He loosened off his tie and wrapped it around the wound, forming a makeshift bandage which he tightened with a collaboration of his left hand and his teeth. He felt as if he was currently somewhere between ridiculous and Rambo. He wiped his bloody hands on the lining of his jacket and fixed his shirt the best he could. Putting his jacket back on, he looked almost presentable.

  He made his way through the dark and empty corridors trying to recall what this building was. But he moved slowly, with a new sense of caution that he had never felt before in his life. Somebody wanted him dead. Right now everybody was a suspect.

  FIVE

  Passing through the stock room was easier than he had anticipated. He had expected at least some resistance or confusion, but found none. The rooftop’s lack of discernible architecture had disorientated him, and as he hid in the shadows staring at the boots of his would-be killer on the other side of a flimsy wooden door, he hadn’t given any thought to what building he had concealed himself in. All he could think of was the proximity of his impending death and the wound that he had already sustained on his arm. As he inched his way through the stockroom containing rows of clothes and coats there had been a single thought running through his mind.

  Why didn’t the shooter break down the door and kill me?

  He must have known where Ben was. There had been nowhere else for him to go. Yet the man who had chased him into the laboratory, shot at him, and risked his own life skirting around the edges of buildings simply gave up. And when he made that phone call there was a level of deference in that voice that made him nervous. He wasn’t a random maniac that had mistakenly selected Ben. He was following orders.

  Seeing that the stockroom was clear he tucked himself in a quiet corner and removed the sleeve of his jacket and shirt so that he could assess the wound on his arm further. The constant throbbing was driving him crazy. It was worse than the headache and the gnawing emptiness in his stomach combined, which he had at least for the time being forgotten.

  The wound looked like it had been burnt around the edges and therefore conveniently cauterised. With closer inspection under the apparent safety and camouflage of the clothing store, he confirmed his earlier suspicion that it was indeed more like a graze . The bullet must have skimmed past him rather than travel through his arm. He thought of the times when he had sustained a paper cut, and how that always seemed to hurt more than any serious injury. Even when he had been accidentally shot in the foot as a child it didn’t seem to hurt as much as this. He had after all been biologically anaesthetized at the time, high on endorphins surging through his brain as the adults had swarmed around him like bees to honey. Their buzz was electrifying. Some of them tried to comfort the crying children, others tried to establish how they would be able to get the arrow out of the ground and free Ben. Another teacher proceeded to stagger to the ground and throw up. Some of the vomit ricocheted back up and onto the legs of the surrounding children. He of all teachers had perhaps been the most successful in calming the otherwise agitated crowd, who after being vomited on by their teacher became much quieter, and much less interested in Ben.

  The tight grip of his tie had stemmed the bleeding, and he adjusted it into a bandage style dressing, which even for a field soldier would have seemed makeshift and substandard. Ben rummaged through the rails, staying close to the ground in case his solitude was interrupted. He found a grey T-shirt and put it on, and then stuffed his old shirt behind one of the cabinets. There was also a selection of jackets and trousers. He reasoned that whoever it was that was trying to kill him seemed to be taking orders, and if there was some kind of order out for his death, it couldn’t hurt to look different than when he came in. They were looking for a guy in a suit. With this in mind, he pulled off his trousers and found a casual looking pair of brown chinos and a blue jacket, the kind that you would throw on for a Satu
rday out in the park and that he would have undoubtedly worn himself this weekend. He ripped open the security stitching of his new pockets, the effort pulling at his wounded shoulder. He stuffed his identity card, keys, the few coins that he hadn’t dropped, and his telephone inside. With anxiety-induced sweat pouring from every one of his pores, his hair flopped down onto his face and stuck to his forehead. He ran his hands through it in quick succession, trying to make himself look like he hadn’t just been chased and shot at.

  With his new casual attire, he broached his way towards the exit door. He tried the handle but it was locked. It didn’t take long to find the exit button. It was the same type that he had in the lab. Virtually identical. It reminded him of all that he had just lost. All of his research, all of his effort, simply gone overnight. He searched for a way to comprehend how it could have been taken as it had, and who was responsible. He couldn’t understand why Bionics would shut him down in this manner. As for his theory regarding Saad and his apparent appropriation of the data, it was difficult to make any definitive conclusions or convince himself that he was to blame. He had never even met the man, and had no logical reason to accuse him of the theft. Sure, he had a lot of money and that usually meant a lot of power, but how could he manage a theft on such a scale overnight? How could anybody do this overnight?