Voices moved, shouted, feet ran, I waited.
Codes and cards were sought, two hundred and twenty seconds, two hundred and forty.
On the three hundredth second, someone inputted a code and the door began to open.
I shot a burst of yellow pepper spray into the face that appeared in the gap, and at a man’s scream, slammed the door shut again and braced against it.
Voices, high and fast, a babbling sound, then someone a great deal more aggressive and confident than his still-howling partner began to slam his full weight against the door. I pushed back, first strike, second strike, third strike, and on the fourth I moved off, and he fell shoulder-first, balance gone, through the open door and into the room. Again, a burst of pepper spray, and this time, for his enthusiasm, a smack across the side of the face with the end of my baton, teeth breaking, blood drawn, and damn right too for the man had a gun in his hand. He falls, I take his gun, and fire almost entirely at random, at the door.
Busy silence within, hard silence outside, accompanied by the ever-present hum of the computers.
Intensive courses: I thought learning how to use a gun would be hard, but in America it was forty bucks and a smile.
They waited; I waited.
There was only one way in and one way out. The man at my feet groaned, half conscious, hands pressed to his face. I nudged him with my toe. “Off you go,” I said, and although he was half blind, he didn’t need telling twice, fumbled his way to the door, ran away on all fours, looking for a place to dry his eyes.
Waited.
Three hundred and twenty seconds; less than another hundred and my USB stick would be done.
Then a voice, speaking English, soft and familiar, and though I was prepared, my breath came fast.
“Ms Donovan?” Gauguin. Who else but Gauguin? “Ms Donovan, are you there?”
I pulled a firecracker from my mop bucket, began to tape it round the can of pepper spray.
“Ms Donovan? Ms Donovan, can you hear me?”
No point answering, but the flash drive hasn’t finished downloading and I need a little more time.
“Hello,” I said. “Come in and I’ll shoot things.”
An over-blown sigh, but perhaps also, a slight breath of excitement? Did Gauguin do excited? “Ms Donovan, there is no way out.”
Why Ms Donovan? The passports he’d found in my luggage bore a medley of names, but Rachel Donovan was an old, old alias.
“I think we’ve met before,” he mused, through the half-open door. “It would appear we were in proximity, for a while.”
“Can you describe my face?”
Silence from outside. Then, “I have your photo in my hand.”
“How many times have you looked at it?” Silence, again. “Close your eyes,” I suggested, “see if you can tell me what I look like.”
Silence. From my mop bucket I pulled the pair of safety goggles.
“Ms Donovan,” he said at last, “whatever you are, however you manage your… your trick, you are too remarkable for this to be your end. However, I am tasked by Mr Pereyra-Conroy to protect his interests, and protect them I will.”
Four hundred and sixty seconds.
Sixty-one, sixty-two, sixty-three…
“Please — throw the gun down and step out,” he went on, reasonable — but there it was, fear, fear in his voice, fear that I had thought was excitement but no, it is fear, for I am the great unknown, a thing he cannot explain, and Gauguin isn’t excited by such things, but rather, he is afraid.
Four hundred and seventy-three, seventy-four, seventy-five.
On the four hundredth and seventy-ninth second, the USB stick finished downloading the full content of Perfection’s core programming from the servers. It made no sound, there was no change to the room, no computers exploded, no sparks flew. A thing which had been unique was now cloned, and I tied my smart white shirt across my nose and mouth, pulling it tight by the sleeves, as Gauguin waited.
At last he said, “I saw the footage of you speaking with Dr Pereyra-Conroy at the noodle bar.”
I picked up the USB stick, taped it to my ankle, pulled my sock over the tape.
“Her security swore she ate alone, though they watched you the whole time.”
Baton under one arm, the gun stolen from a fallen guard held tight, a firecracker taped to a can of pepper spray, safety goggles on my face, plastic bag containing the remains of my tools and a pot of yoghurt hooked into my elbow and really, I was starting to run out of limbs, only my legs free, ready to run.
“I saw you again on the cameras at the party in Dubai, just before the diamonds were stolen. And again, here, in Tokyo, at the 106, exploring the apartments, circling the Pereyra-Conroys. I was there, must have looked straight at you, but it would appear that the connection between the image I have on a screen and the image I see — or rather, fail to see — of your features in my mind is severed. Such a lasting disconnection implies that you have achieved something far more than merely some… temporary magic trick. Dr Pereyra says it is the most exciting thing she has ever heard of in her whole career.”
Filipa Pereyra-Conroy is one of the most exciting people I’ve met in mine, I muse, but I say nothing now, for he is focusing his words, his attention all on me, lest he forget, making himself a prisoner to the awareness of me, this moment, now.
Behind me, servers begin to shut down, a slow whine of disappointment, a whimper of breaking parts. Byron14’s USB stick stole a lot of data, but it only needed a few kilobytes’ worth to implant a virus as it committed its crime. It won’t stop them, of course, not a little pissy bit of code, but I think Byron enjoyed the gesture, as the room turns to sudden, fan-washed quiet.
Silence. I close my eyes, and picture Gauguin nodding to himself, understanding what I’m doing, perhaps caring, perhaps not.
He said, “Even being forgotten is a modus operandi of its kind.”
A threat; he just threatened me. With what, precisely?
Modus operandi: from the Latin, first known use 1654, a way of doing something.
Abbreviation: MO, used by police forces across the world.
Other police abbreviations: APB, MVA, CSU, SWAT, FTA…
Modus operandi, a tool used by police forces to link crimes
and Luca Evard said, “I promise you won’t be harmed.”
Here.
Here.
Now.
This moment.
I am here.
This space.
My universe.
The whole universe.
Here.
And Luca Evard speaks.
and he says, “You don’t have to be afraid.”
He isn’t here — the past consumed him, left him sleeping on a bed in Hong Kong. The past swallowed the words we had shared, it killed him, the past killed him as surely as it killed his words, as surely as it kills me
he can’t be here. They can’t have brought him to Tokyo. He sits in perfection still where I left him, waiting for me in a moment frozen in my memory
He cannot be here.
And of course, the thief that Hope Arden has become, the professional, knows that he can. Gauguin followed my money, he would have followed my MO, and who waited at the end of that trail? Who was the world expert in the woman everyone forgets, years of his life given to this single purpose?
Luca Evard, here, now.
The universe opens and the skies fall, galaxies turn and oceans dissolve away, I think perhaps this moment will last for ever, destroying everything I ever built, erasing the perfect moment in Hong Kong, because look, here we are, here he is, seeing me as a thief, knowing me as a thief, knowing perhaps that I’m something more. Does he know that he has forgotten does he understand what he has forgotten does he suspect does he hate me did he ever love me at all like I loved him
a professional thief who has my name lights the fuse in the firecracker.