Eleven Graves

by Aman Gupta

  “That’s it? Sure, we can do that. Go ahead, tell him Vik,” said Vanessa.

  “Okay, sure. It’s inside my body. In my left shoulder,” said Vik.

  Morgan looked shocked.

  “You shouldn’t have told us that,” said Morgan.

  He started smiling. So did Vanessa. She pointed the gun at Vik.

  “Sorry, if I broke your heart,” said Vanessa, smiling.

  She pressed the trigger repeatedly. The gun only had blanks.

  Vik smiled, “You’re a lousy actor. So next time, create an ironclad story, okay?”

  Vanessa was startled. Morgan was stunned.

  “You knew I was manipulating you? How did you know?” asked Vanessa.

  “Oh, so many things. Off the top of my head. The way you threw yourself at me the moment we met. You forgot you had told me that you’re dating someone when we first met, when you were anxious to tell me your life story in bed. The fact that you knew my name even though I never told you. You even knew about the girl, yet pretended to be unaware. How about the fact they let you go after I used your login? I mean, not even a suspension. That’s just dumb. You know what happens when you think you’re smarter than everyone? You forget the little things. However, I didn’t connect you to Morgan until he showed up with Eric and Ginny.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” said Vanessa.

  “When you thought you were playing me, I was just playing you. I needed you to get to the top. Which I’m guessing you didn’t discuss with your superiors. Otherwise, no way that would’ve happened. So, thanks for that,” said Vik.

  “Okay, you got me,” smiled Vanessa. “Too bad we’re on the opposite sides. We would’ve made a cool team.”

  “Thank you,” said Vik.

  “For what?” she asked.

  “For making it easier,” said Vik.

  He pulled the trigger twice and shot her in her head and heart.

  Morgan was livid for a few seconds.

  “Sorry about killing your girlfriend,” said Vik.

  “Ah, no worries. I’ll get a new one,” said Morgan. “You don’t have the chip on you, do you?”

  “Of course, I do. Ask anyone. They’d say I’ve got a huge chip on my shoulder,” said Vik.

  “You had no intention of running into me or Vanessa, did you?” said Morgan.

  “No, not really. You both should’ve minded your own business,” said Vik.

  “You know you still owe me. I created this version of you,” said Morgan.

  “Yes, I see the irony,” said Vik.

  Morgan got down on his knees.

  “Clamentine’s would be so happy seeing you like this,” said Vik.

  “Clamentine? Oh you mean, that family. You killed them, not me,” said Morgan.

  Vik lowered his gun. He took out a dark bottle from his pocket, and threw it at Morgan. He caught it.

  “Drink,” said Vik.

  “What is this, poison? If you want to kill me, be a man and do it properly,” said Morgan.

  He opened the bottle and spilled its liquid in front of him, some of it splashed back onto his pants and jacket.

  Vik looked up at the sun in the sky. Few seconds later, the liquid caught fire. In a split second, Morgan’s clothes were engulfed by flames. He fell on the ground, as he removed his jacket. The fire rose around him, burning his flesh and body.

  “Liquid Death… Easy to remember,” said Vik.

  Vik grabbed his bag and walked away, while Morgan burnt alive. He was screaming. Then he wasn’t.

  CHAPTER 16: JUSTICE

  Jay made a phone call to Olivia around 9 PM, when he left the Tech Centre on the top floor in Verati headquarters in DC.

  “Where are you?” asked Jay.

  “Just got out,” said Olivia.

  “Do me a favor, please. Ask someone for my personal number again. And make sure you frustrate them so much that they are forced to meet you near the beach. After that, get lost,” said Jay.

  “Okay. Where are you?” asked Olivia.

  “It’s really happening, Liv,” said Jay. “I lost.”

  “Jay..Jay…Jay..” said Olivia, checking her phone for a signal.

  “Hello..hello.. Liv, I can’t hear you,” said Jay. His phone suddenly lost all of its network signals.

  He picked up a landline after he reached his private floor and dialed Olivia’s number. After few seconds, the landline went dead. The chair felt the pain and the agony in Jay’s heart and mind, when he kicked it away.

  He was standing alone in the dark corner room, looking outside as the world was preparing for its final showdown. People just didn’t know it yet. It didn’t look like it was less than a week to Christmas, as people had other things in their mind. The view was calmer than the sea before a storm, only this storm wasn’t being driven by Nature.

  He knew every movement of his inside the building was being monitored, at all times. Such was the protocol, that he had designed himself, when he trusted Josh to do great things. He didn’t know anymore where Josh’s allegiance lied. Josh had also began suspecting Jay, when Jay was caught in a lie for writing suspicious codes for a period of time. Jay knew that Josh wouldn’t be able to connect the dots yet. For the master didn’t teach his pupil all his secret signs.

  As the clock struck 10 PM, Jay decided to take matters in his own hands to protect the ones he loved. He could only trust himself at this point, as Victor and Anthony had always made their intentions clear to him – they only cared about Josh. President Tom Clifford was also a changed personality, as from a naïve observer’s perspective, he had left the sane station. However, Jay was not just a naïve observer.

  Jay scanned his card to access the elevator.

  ‘Access Denied – Admin. Building in Lockdown’

  “What the hell? I didn’t issue a lockdown,” said Jay.

  He went to the emergency staircase, but couldn’t open the iron door as it was bolted from the inside. Jay smashed everything he could find, on the door, but couldn’t do more than make a lousy dent on the only door to a place that was created to prevent infiltration. Another one of Jay’s ideas.

  He smashed the glass panel windows on the side, hoping to find a way down from the 29th floor. He looked down and saw no one. Almost as if he was alone in the building. He grabbed a chair and threw it from the 29th floor. The chair smashed and rolled, as it landed on the concrete floor. No security guard came to check who threw it.

  “Now, you’re just pissing me off,” said Jay.

  He went to his room and opened the secret vault behind the wallpaper. Originally, the vault was created to act as a quarantine room. Jay inherited it when he occupied the entire floor for himself.

  He took out a Zipline Gun that he had kept in his stash of non-lethal weapons. He knew he had only few minutes before the security arrived, as the camera strips on the ceiling would alert them, since he wasn’t meant to circumvent the lockdown.

  He fired it at the nearby ten storey building almost 100 meters away, managing to get a lock in his first attempt. He tied the other end of the rope to the iron door, and created an obstruction for the gun using the table, so that it didn’t slip away. He hoped that the line would hold long enough for him to safely get off.

  He heard the elevator move and the footsteps of guards on the staircase.

  Wasting no more time, he got on the line and did his most frightening version of the Flying Fox. His hands were wet and shaking the entire way. He heard gunshots being fired at him as he was descending down the line. Luckily for him, the guards didn’t have neither a good aim nor night vision goggles.

  The elevator opened and one of the guards immediately cut the rope. He looked out the window but realized Jay had already accessed the door on the roof of the other building.

  “Deploy all riders. He’s out,” called the guard on his radio.

  Jay ran down the stairs as the elevator was taking too long to arrive. He went to the first floor, and jumped from the back side of
the building onto a dumpster in the dark alley. It was overcast, he could feel few drops of rain, every few seconds, on his face. Limping, he hurtled to the nearby parking lot, where he had parked a spare car for emergencies.

  He scanned his palm on the window to unlock the car and got inside. He opened the voice activation console and uttered the command to start the car. Breathing heavily, it took him three attempts to get a voice match.

  As he was driving out of the parking lot, he saw the guards in Verati uniform driving by. One of them managed to spot Jay. Jay raced away his car in the opposite direction.

  A high speed chase ensued, through the traffic. After a few minutes, four vehicles were following Jay, and a chopper.

  “Sorry, not today,” said Jay.

  He maneuvered his car through some sharp turns, forcing two of the cars to crash into oncoming traffic. The other two SUVs started firing heavy artillery onto Jay’s sedan, forcing Jay to take turns that he didn’t wish to. The final turn did him in, when he was compelled to turn left to avoid hitting a pedestrian who had jumped his turn. Pretty soon he realized that he was driving towards a dead end which was a mile away.

  Suddenly, the street lights in front of him began going dark, as Jay slowed down his car, and turned off the car’s headlights. Within a few seconds, the entire area went dark.

  The chopper lost track of Jay, who parked the car alongside the road. With no buildings nearby for any transient lights, it was pitch dark.

  Jay smiled. “Thank you.”

  The chopper and the SUV went past him. Jay could hear cars crashing onto each other with wild honking sounds on the both sides of the two lane road. The chopper and the SUVs circled back. The chopper was using every lux of the huge spotlight attached to it.

  Jay had changed his lanes and was driving back towards the city. The chopper and the SUVs were moving slowly, as they were being forced to scan for Jay’s car while navigating through the cars piled up on the road.

  Jay was driving as fast as he could. That half a mile felt like driving from the abyss into the light. Soon, Jay made it out of that dark zone and sped away towards Sarah’s home. Jay usually stayed inside the Verati campus. Not that Sarah cared anymore.

  He changed his car twice along the way, robbing one of them from an innocent woman through the imaginary gun in his jacket’s right pocket. Some areas were gridlocked due to the protests, forcing him to take the longer route.

  Eventually, he made it to Sarah’s suburb home as the clock struck 23:59 on December 19th.

  He parked his car on the opposite side of the road, few houses away. He looked at the parked cars to see if anything looked out of the ordinary. He always suspected that Sarah and Katie would suffer due to his actions. One of many reasons he had tried pushing both of them away, though he had failed miserably with Katie.

  He got out of his car when he couldn’t see anything out of place. He went to the house and knocked on the door. But the door was unlocked. He saw a guard knocked down near the porch.

  Petrified, he opened the door and locked it behind him. He ran through the house calling out Sarah and Katie’s name, but could only hear himself.

  “Daddy, help,” shouted Katie after a few seconds.

  He ran upstairs and entered Katie’s room. The window was open, and the room looked staged for a kidnapping.

  He looked outside the window and saw a masked man putting Katie in a van.

  Another man noticed Jay and started shooting. Jay was forced to retreat. He ran downstairs, and went to the backyard. The van had left by then. He ran after it, but it was too fast. Within the minute, Jay was travelling on the route the van had taken. He only hoped that the van hadn’t altered its route.

  Speeding blindly for a tens of miles, he was starting to lose hope. It was too much for him to bear. His vision blurred as teared filled his eyes. The rain didn’t help either.

  Couple of hundred yards ahead, he saw a barricade that suggested the road was closed. He slowed down his car.

  “I took the wrong road. I took the wrong road,” uttered Jay. He choked up.

  As he closed on the barricade, he noticed a worker standing on the road, waving his hand.

  “No way ahead,” shouted the worker.

  Jay stopped his car and began taking a U-turn.

  “Sorry, road is closed man,” said the worker who had come up to the car.

  “What happened? Did you see any car here?” asked Jay.

  “Been closed for days. I’ve been standing here for hours, didn’t see anyone go by,” said the guy.

  The worker walked away and Jay started going the other way. But the tires screeched a second later. Jay again took a U-turn and started going after the worker.

  He hit the guy from behind. He got out of the car, and went to the worker who was lying in the middle of the road.

  “Where’s she? Where’s she?” asked Jay.

  “You hit me. You hit me,” said the guy, in pain.

  “You’re with them,” said Jay.

  “I’m not with anyone,” said the guy.

  “Your clothes aren’t wet enough,” said Jay. “Also, I’ve seen this move before.”

  The guy punched Jay. He got up and began kicking Jay in the gut.

  “You should’ve stayed away,” shouted the guy.

  Jay gained his balance, and speared the guy onto the ground.

  He punched the guy’s face repeatedly.

  “Where’s she? Where’s she?” he yelled with every punch.

  Soon, the guy passed out.

  Jay searched the guy and found a phone on him.

  He ran back to his car and rammed through the barricade.

  He looked at the call log, while testing the range of the engine of the car he was in. But he didn’t recognize any number. The vehicle maxed out at 100 miles per hour.

  The phone rang. Jay picked up the call, but didn’t utter a word.

  “We’re on our way to TS-78. Is he following us?” asked the guy.

  “No,” said Jay.

  The guy hung up. Jay took the next left turn and travelled on the only road to TS -78.

  After ten minutes, he could see a car in the horizon as he descended down the steep road.

  Pretty soon, he was gaining on the van as the road’s condition was a driver’s nightmare. He was driving as fast as the road was letting him.

  The road was dark, with zero visibility. The car’s high beams were as bright as a torch light through a cloth. He saw Katie lying on the road facing Jay’s car few yards ahead. Jay immediately applied the brakes and turned the steering wheel. The car stopped a hundred yards away in the middle of a field. He opened the door and ran back towards Katie. The wind and the rain wasn’t helping his chances.

  He saw she was unconscious, and bleeding through her nose. Her pulse was weak when he felt it. He picked her up and ran towards his car. The water pouring from the sky didn’t wake her up either. With a horrific wind blowing against him, he ran as fast as he could. The limp from the fall wasn’t aiding him much either.

  “Stay with me. Please. Stay with me,” uttered Jay.

  He put her in the passenger seat.

  After a couple of attempts and desperate cries from Jay, the engine finally started. He reversed the car out of the field, and went back the way he had come.

  The nearest medical facility was almost twelve miles away or so said the car’s navigation system. The rain had turned torrential. He didn’t care if he was being followed. He couldn’t know either.

  He picked her up and ran into the hospital when they reached. She was still breathing, barely. He found a nurse doing her rounds, and asked for her help.

  They put Katie on a stretcher, while she called the doctor on-duty.

  In a matter of few minutes, Katie was taken into OR.

  Jay was asked to wait outside. He resisted, but realized it would only delay Katie’s treatment. He couldn’t see past the green curtains on the window.

  After thirty minutes, the
doctor came out of the room. Jay got up from the chair and confronted the doctor.

  “She was injected with some unknown drug, and had an allergic reaction, due to which she passed out. We’ve given her some medication to counter the visible effects. We’re doing tests meanwhile so that we can start the correct course of her treatment,” said the doctor.

  “Will she be alright?” asked Jay.

  “Too soon to tell. Is she your daughter?” asked the doctor.

  “Yes,” said Jay.

  The doctor called the nurse and told her to get Jay to sign the paperwork. He was also told to get his wounds checked, when the doctor noticed Jay in physical pain.

  Jay refused to go.

  “I’m not leaving her alone,” said Jay.

  “The general ward is just next door. You’re not helping anyone by standing here. Anyways, I’ll have to call the cops so that they can get a statement,” said the doctor.

  “Statement?” said Jay.

  “Yeah, she was clearly a subject of intentional injury. I have to call social services and cops. Hospital policy,” said the doctor.

  “Social services? I didn’t hurt her,” said Jay.

  “That’s not for me to say,” said the doctor.

  The doctor walked away. Jay was forced to follow the doctor, as he didn’t want the cops to get involved.

  After a brief discussion, he managed to convince the doctor to hold off calling the cops, till Katie recovered. When he returned to Katie’s room, she had woken up.

  “Hey, oh my god, I was so scared,” said Jay.

  “Where am I?” asked Katie.

  “You’re safe. I’m not leaving you,” said Jay.

  “Those people, why did they take me?” asked Katie.

  “I don’t know. But they’re not going to hurt you anymore. Do you trust me?” asked Jay.

  Katie nodded.

  “Do you want something to eat?” asked Jay. “Maybe ice-cream.”

  Katie smiled.

  “What time is it?” asked Katie.

  “2 in the morning..Maybe 3.. I don’t know,” said Jay.

  “Is mommy okay?” asked Katie. “She left in a hurry after she got a phone call.”