Identity X

by Michelle Muckley

  “Matthew!” Hannah choked as she realised what had happened. She turned to Mark, still lying on the floor as she scrambled to her feet. “Mark, open the door!”

  “I can’t,” he said as he struck his fist into the ground.

  “Open it,” she screamed, grabbing the gun from his hip as she knelt on top of him, tearing open the fresh wound. He recoiled. “Open it now!” She trained the gun at his head, and with her other hand rubbed at her bruised neck.

  “I can’t!” he repeated, as he pushed his way out from underneath her, kneeling up in the face of his own gun. “I can’t open it for another ten minutes. He has my card,” as he pointed at the door.

  “You can override it. I know that. Do it.” She was standing above him, and held the gun in a strong grip aimed at his face.

  “I just told you, I can’t! Not for ten minutes.” He sat back on the settee and leaned his head against his hands. Hannah moved in closer towards him. “It’s a safety mechanism.”

  Hannah could feel the effects of the adrenaline charging through her system, and her hand was shaking as she held the gun out in front of her, and so she gripped it a little tighter with both hands. She was trying to think of another way out. She knew that there must be an exit from the bunker other than through Mark’s office. It was only logical, but she didn’t know it. “Get up. Come on.” She waved the gun towards him, its nose hovering around in front of his face. She motioned for him to move towards the desk. “You must have plans for the bunker. Show me them.”

  “There are no plans. Why would there be plans?”

  “Because there are plans for everything in this place. I’ve seen them before. Nothing is left unplanned.”

  “Not this. This place is supposed to be a secret. Its existence is only known by a handful of people. I’m your only hope down there, otherwise he will never find a way out.” She looked towards the door as tears swelled in her eyes, unable to cover her terror at the thought of his entrapment. “Now stop being stupid, and tell me where Ben is. I’ll let you go if you tell me where he is.”

  “Never.” The first one fell, streaming down her cheek.

  “Catherine, I just don’t get it. Two days ago you were set to hand him over. What the hell changed?”

  “Shut up, let me think.” She looked again at her watch.

  “Catherine. Your son is trapped. You just have to tell me where Ben is and you and Matthew can walk out of here like nothing happened. I won’t even try to stop you. I’ll let you go.”

  “I said shut up,” and she looked at her watch again.

  “Why do you keep looking at your watch? Is he waiting for you? Is he close?” The excitement in his voice almost got the better of him, before she interrupted him again.

  “I said shut up,” she repeated as she hit the side of his head with the barrel of the gun. He recoiled a little, and clutched at his head. As he brought his hands away, there was a streak of blood across his finger tips.

  “Fuck, Catherine,” he spat through gritted teeth, pain and anger smothering him in equal measures. “You know if they come in here and find you with a gun at my head, they’ll shoot you on the spot. They won’t think twice. Then Matthew will have no parents. Do you realise what you are playing with? He’ll be an orphan.” The words burnt her like acid.

  “I can’t let you have him. Either of them.”

  “Why? It’s so easy. Just tell me where he is. If he is close it can all be over in minutes.”

  “No. You see, you don’t know me as well as you think. You think I am just a cold bitch that joined this agency to make up for the past. To avenge the death of my mother. You thought that I could just live with him and not feel anything. You think that I am the same person as I used to be.”

  “You are, Catherine. You are the same. You are the same girl who walked in here who said that she wanted to kill the same people who killed her mother. You think every bullet that you have fired, every person’s life that you have taken somehow makes up for the loss of her life. And you are right, Catherine. It does.”

  “It doesn’t. You’re wrong. It just destroys my life, and Matthew’s life.”

  “And Ben’s life.” It was a blameless sarcastic response, as if he was an outsider looking in, judging her from his ivory tower of morality and perfection. Look at what you did. You. All you. How could you live with yourself?

  “You won’t take them from me.”

  “I will, Catherine. You are holding that gun up to my head shaking like a little girl, pretending that you’ll shoot me. But you won’t, because you need me. And you need this. This agency. This life. This is all you know. It’s not Ben you need. It’s me. You won’t shoot me. Tell me where he is.” She looked at her watch again. At least six minutes had passed since the door had closed and sealed Matthew inside the cocoon of the underground bunker.

  “Open the door,” she stammered.

  “I’ll open the door when you tell me where Ben is.”

  “Open the door, or I’ll shoot you now.”

  “If you shoot me you’ll never get in and you’ll never get Matthew back.” Mark started to stand up, forcing her backwards.

  “Open the door.” She pushed the gun into his forehead unsteadying him a little, and he felt the cold metal hard up against him.

  “I said tell me where Ben is and I’ll open the....” Suddenly Mark let out a gut wrenching scream as he felt a bullet pierce his flesh just underneath his shoulder. The force shot him backwards, landing on the settee.

  “You fucking shot me!” he said as he clutched his right hand across his left shoulder. He doubled up in agony pushing the heel of his hand into the open wound. Blood oozed out through the gaps between his fingers. He pulled his hand away to reveal a perforating wound which had ripped through his skin.

  “And I’ll shoot you again. Open the door.” She pushed the tip of the gun back against his head, steady this time, without the shakes. She hoped that he wouldn’t call her bluff. She knew as well as he did that without him that door wasn’t going to open. But she also knew that after making a bullet sized hole in his shoulder and threatening his life, the balance of power was in her favour, reinforced by every nervous transmission of his pain and fear. He raised his head and watched her staring at him. All it took was for somebody to walk through the door, but the chance of that happening without his express invitation was unlikely. He knew that he was cornered and that he had to go along with her plan. He had underestimated her.

  He limped upward and Hannah backed away as he sat down at the computer.

  “Show me what you are doing.” He clicked on an icon on the screen and tapped out a series of numbers.

  “Do you have your access card?” She nodded and reached inside her pocket. “I need the numbers from it,” he said as he took the card from her. “It needs two people to override it. My access code and that of another agent. It’s supposed to make the person inside the bunker safer.” He copied in the numbers as they appeared before him. As he pressed the enter key, she heard the mechanism inside the door clicking into life and after what seemed like an age, she saw the green light appear and the red one shut down.

  As she stood up behind him, her eyes caught sight of the pile of files on the desk. She recognised Ben’s handwriting on a sheet that was slipping out to the side, teetering on the edge of falling. She pulled the first file towards her and opened it up. Seeing it was Ben’s notes, she turned to look at Mark.

  “Why do you have these here?” She pushed for an answer, encouraging it out of him with the tip of her gun in the base of his neck.

  “I’m still a scientist, Catherine. It’s really quite remarkable, although I don’t understand it all just yet. He, and NEMREC really are quite brilliant.” His praise tasted like the false success of a cheated victory, and she wanted to shoot him all the more. Instead she gathered the files close to her and took the telephone from her back pocket. As Mark tried to step forth from his seat, she pushed the gun back towards his head. “Wait
there,” she said as she dialled Ben’s number. Before even one ring was complete he answered, and she could sense the desperation in his voice.

  “Oh God, Hannah. Are you there, shall I come now?”

  “No, not yet. There has been a delay.” She could see Mark watching her, itching to know where Ben, the scientist and friend who he loved, hated and admired in equal quantities, was located. She could see his hatred chipped into the wrinkles around his eyes as they became a little more prominent as he listened to them speak. She wondered who he hated more, Ben for his brilliance, her for her deceit, or himself for his failure to see the operation through to what he would describe as a successful end.

  “What delay? Do you have Matthew?”

  “There is a change of plan. Meet me at the docks. You are looking for dock two. Look for the boat from earlier, and get on it. We will meet you there. Bring the documents.”

  “But Hannah, wait.”

  “No, Ben. Things got fucked up, and you need to meet me there instead. No questions. Go now.” She hung up the telephone, not giving him time to question her instructions.

  She heard the latch of the door handle to Mark’s office engage as somebody placed their hand the other side.

  “Careful!” Mark shouted as he too realised that somebody was about to enter and wanted to warn them about his trigger happy captor. The door flew open as Captain White put the full force of his boot behind it. Hannah fired off a couple of shots, hoping to put some delay between her and their approach, and dropped to the floor concealing herself behind the side of the desk. She saw Mark cower behind the desk as Captain White returned fire. The bullets struck the wall, sending small clouds of plaster dust tumbling across the regulatory furniture. Hannah fired off a few return shots and then wedged her back up against the side of the desk whilst trying to keep an eye on Mark. She grabbed a smoke bomb from her inside pocket and taking the lighter placed a spark on the homemade fuse towards the base of the bomb. She waited for the first plumes of pink smoke to appear, before hurling it towards the entrance door. Soon the smoke filled the office, and she saw Mark trying to scramble over the desk to safety and into view.

  “Don’t shoot,” he shouted as he hauled himself forwards. She knew that Captain White wouldn’t risk firing a misplaced shot into his boss’s chest. She lit another smoke bomb to buy more time. As she threw it towards the door, she pulled back hard on Mark’s leg, and he yelped in pain as he fell backwards. She paid no attention as he slumped into a pathetic heap clutching the oozing wounds on his torso. She squeezed the trigger again and a solitary bullet left the gun, before she heard the click of an empty chamber. Tossing it to the ground she gathered up the files, and crawled along the floor to where the entrance door to the bunker lay. She snatched up her access card as heard the first of the random bullets sailing her way as Mark gave the order to fire at will. Keeping low, she pulled herself as fast as she could into the open space of the doorway, shoving in Ben’s files first. The bullets continued to rain in her direction, quick whipping sounds as the metal pierced the air, followed by the blunt thud as they struck the reinforced walls. As she forced the door behind her, she could just hear Mark shout the instruction to get to the docks, number two.

  As the door closed it brought with it near silence, the only sound the occasional hollow thud as a random bullet struck the other side of the wall. She collected the files into a neat pile, and counted ten, each filled with Ben’s written words. Finding the files was a small victory and one that in no way could powder over the cracks of what was lost. But she hoped that their reclamation would be a comfort to Ben, and more importantly prove her allegiance.

  ***

  “Get a team to the docks,” Mark screamed at Captain White as he pulled him through the open door from a nightmarish haze of pink smoke. “Dock number two.” Captain White was more interested in the wound that Mark had sustained to his shoulder, and whilst praying that it was not attributable to his own hand he focused his efforts on trying to get some pressure on the gaping hole. There was a fine trickle of blood from the rear exit wound. It was a fact that would have satisfied Hannah a great deal should she have seen it. By pulling himself across the desk he had opened up the wound, tearing more fibres apart.

  “Sir, you need to lie back. Come on, Sir,” Captain White said as he tried to exert some pressure to force him to lie down. Mark slumped against the outside wall of his office, no longer able to sustain his protest. He mobilised his unwounded shoulder to punch his frustration against the wall behind him, striking it three times in short succession. “Get a medic here,” Captain White called to one of the office workers who was rounding the corner after hearing the commotion, attracted like a magpie to silver as the plumes of smoke billowed out.

  “White, get the teams moving. They cannot let him get away.”

  “Sir, all the teams are across the other side of the city. They are almost half an hour away.” Mark recalled with self-reproach his decision to send every agent chasing after the cottage that had proven to be nothing more than a false transmission. Idiot! “Then get that door open,” he snapped. “I want that bitch back in here to answer to me. Me! You hear that. She shot me! She’s a fucking dead woman.”

  “You need to rest. You are bleeding heavily. You must stay here,” Captain White said, relieved to hear that the hole in Mark’s shoulder was not the result of one of his stray bullets.

  “Get that door open. Now. And get the teams on the way.” He pushed Captain White’s hand away and motioned for him to re-enter the smoke filled office and work at getting the door open.

  “Sir you know that there is a delay.”

  “Just get on it. When it’ll open, I want it open.”

  Captain White stood to his feet and took his telephone from his belt clip to call to the Surveillance Centre. Mark listened as he relayed the instructions to get the teams en route to the docks, and followed by asking them to work on getting the bunker door open. As Mark pulled his chin back to get a better glimpse of the entrance wound on his chest, he reached his fingers in a spider like fashion across his shoulder to investigate the bullet’s exit route. He discovered an irregular, corrugated edge to an otherwise warm cavity, the feel of which made him think of Ami. The hot poker-like pain seemed implacable, and he could smell the faintest whiff of burnt skin. He promised himself that there was no way in the world that Catherine would get away with what she had done. Capturing her and seeing her lose her life would now almost be as satisfying as watching Ben do the same. In his propensity for gleeful revenge, he never once considered Matthew, the bounds of the Agency within which he worked, or how it might be that he could learn to live with himself after the consummation of the plan that was forming in his mind.

  TWENTY ONE

  Hannah ran along the unwinding corridor, a brilliant white slope which steadily descended, all the while clutching the cardboard files to her chest. As she passed each door, she used her elbow and her body weight to lever each handle in her search to locate Matthew. She pushed each door, slamming them open and shouting his name over and over in the hope that she would see his familiar blond curls. After a futile search through at least six rooms, she arrived at a fixed circular table aligned with the central axis of the room. Twelve satellite stools were fixed in position around it. Bursting into the room like a rogue meteor from the depths of another solar system, she dropped the files onto the table and continued searching the rooms that branched away from the central chamber.

  Indistinguishable in every static detail, every surface white. The only variation to the colour scheme was the beige trim of the folded up blankets that sat neatly on the end of every bed, unused and sealed in a plastic airtight bag. The white metallic cupboards reminded her of school lockers, with small slits across the front panel. Room after room, the same scene was repeated.

  As she turned back to the table after exiting the last replica room, she couldn’t begin to see a way out. More importantly she had covered each room and her
search for Matthew had proven fruitless. Each room was an isolated pocket, and the only corridor that seemed to lead anywhere was the one that went directly back to Mark’s office. She snatched at her telephone and prayed for a signal. There wasn’t even one bar.

  Beyond desperation, she threw the telephone down onto the table and slumped onto one of the small white plastic stools beneath her. She rested her head into her hands in an attempt to stop them shaking. She suppressed her tears, determined not to allow her desperate predicament to be the reason that her mind shut down. She pressed her cheekbones firmly and rhythmically, pressed her lips together. She told herself to think logically and to formulate a plan, steadfast that somewhere in her mind was the education to find a solution. She nibbled at the skin around her thumb whilst she subconsciously stroked the files on the table with the other hand. In that moment she felt something familiar brush at her side. It was the gentlest displacement of air in an otherwise static and sterile environment and it indicated that she wasn’t alone. It was a familiar feeling, followed by a grip so gentle that nothing could replace it, and something that she could never mistake.

  “Matthew?” She flew up and round in one fluid motion, like a lazy sail whipped into life by a passing breeze on an ocean tide. He stood at her side, his hand resting onto her arm, his eyes wide as caverns and hopeful for the security of his mother. With no further words, she grabbed him and squeezed him close to her chest, his natural smell a remedy for her fear. “I looked everywhere for you. Where were you hiding?”

  “I hid in the cupboard like Catherine did.” She dropped down to her knees to be at the same level, desperate to get as close as she could to him.