These were not the best of circumstances.
The alarm was a klaxon, blasting from little black speakers which might have, in a different time, encouraged the working masses to reflect upon the glory of their struggle. Now it was a cry of distress, loud enough to make bubbles pop in my ears as I moved–neither walking nor running–through the clamour. There had to be protocols for this situation, but not knowing any, I fell back on brute force.
Rounding the corridor, I saw a man in a white shirt locking shut a heavy door as he glanced up at me and opened his mouth for what could only be the beginning of another round of code words I couldn’t respond to. I bunched my hand into a fist and drove it as hard as I could into his nose. Something cracked and he fell, blood bursting between his fingers as he cupped his face. I drove my knee between his legs, and as he crumpled forward, flecking the wall with little drops of crimson blood, I put one arm across his throat and the palm of my hand against his face and hissed, “Exit. Now. Or I’ll wear you.”
His shoulders were broader than mine, his chest rose and swelled like the panting of a beached whale, but I dug my fingers hard into his skin and snarled, “Exit!”
“Stairs at the end of the corridor,” he stammered. “Down three floors.”
“What’s the security like?” When he didn’t answer, I snarled, “Tell me or I’ll walk you straight into the nearest fucking bullet!”
“We go into twos. One watches the other, full gear.”
“Guns? Suits?”
He managed a nod.
“What’s the answer to your call sign? What’s the call and response?”
He didn’t answer.
“Tell me!”
Still no answer; he wanted to live. The sweat seeped in dark patches beneath his armpits, his stomach deflated and his spine tensed, but he did not speak.
I scowled, drew my hand back and drove his skull as hard as I could into the wall. Blood streaked down the concrete as he fell, and I stepped by him and ran towards the end of the corridor, my USB stick in the palm of my hand. The door ahead opened, and as the two men came through, half-dressed in rubber suits, guns in hand, I didn’t slow but raised my hand and shouted, “Circe! Circe!”
They hesitated, the moment when doubt and fear combined, and in that moment I closed the distance, grabbed the first one by the neck
switched
shook Alice off as she staggered back, USB stick falling from her hand, raised my gun to my colleague and fired, point-blank range into his side, and as he fell I stepped past him and kicked the gun from his hand, turned back to Alice as she tried to regain her balance, grabbed her fingers, wrapping them round the butt of the gun and
switched
my fingers round the butt of the gun
pulled the trigger.
The man half into his suit fell, clutching at his thigh. I picked my USB stick up, felt the weight of the pistol in my fingers, and as the door slid towards its lock, rammed my foot into the gap, let myself through.
In the stairwell the alarm was muffled but still howling. I heard voices above, footsteps below, and descended. Small square windows lined the stairwell, letting in boxes of yellow light; below, a door slammed. I raised my gun and as the first man rounded the corner, dressed now in full hazmat, I put a bullet through his belly, just below the ribcage. His body swung sideways and I twisted by, heard a gunshot, felt mortar explode behind my left ear and ducked, curling up behind the bulk of the wounded man. Another gunshot snapped at the wall above my head, sending the sound of concrete and metal singing up the stairwell. As another bullet smacked overhead I grabbed the back of the injured man’s suit and yanked it free from his trousers. A small inch of bare skin, I pressed my hand to it, closed my eyes and jumped.
The pain burst like the first hot light from the morning sun. I bit my teeth, felt blood in places it should not have flowed, reminded myself that my arms could still move, that my head could turn, that I could reach behind me, grab the gun from Alice’s hands, turn again, look down, aim at the man who stood below me and fire.
As the man below me fell, Alice kicked me from behind and I slammed up against the railing of the stairwell, blood bursting across my chest, my sight, my tongue and my mind. I tried to grab her, but my hands were in unwieldy rubber gloves. She drove her elbow into my chest and I howled, an injured dog as humanity collapsed behind the pain, then she reached by me and grabbed the gun still in my hands. I held on tight, tried to wrap one leg around her chest, pin her in place, felt her hands over mine, felt something give around the sleeve and even as she sensed the rubber come away beneath her hand, I reached up to press my wrist against her neck, fumbling for an inch of skin, and it was
there.
I snatched the gun from the man’s hands and staggered off him, climbing breathless to my feet, heart rushing from Alice’s adrenaline. Beneath me the injured man wailed, a long, low sound that hummed off the metal railings. I grabbed my USB stick once again, and half-ran, half-fell down the stairs.
How much easier all this would be if I weren’t carrying something physical with me.
The door at the bottom was locked, an electronic panel whose code I did not know. Above I could hear shouting, see the slow drip-drip of blood spilling down the side of the stairwell. My mouth tasted sharp and vile. The nearest window was barely wide enough for a child to worm through and high above the stair, but there was street light outside and nothing better in here, so I levelled my gun at it and emptied the magazine. Glass crumpled, cracked and on the final shot shattered, falling like sleet. As footsteps thundered towards me I hauled myself up by my skinny arms, slithered forward, tearing skin on glassy teeth, blood slicing from my bare hands, my belly, my chest, and as the first gunshot snapped behind me I wriggled through the ruined window and flopped, head first, into the world outside.
A concrete car park framed by a concrete wall. I landed on my palms, felt something crack, pain shoot up through my right arm, then tingling numbness in my elbow. Tried to get up, fell, tried again. I wiggled the fingers of my right arm, and every bone and muscle, every tiny connection shrieked, and I did not move them again. A muzzle flash behind my left shoulder and a smack of bullet into concrete propelled me up, and, cradling my arm, cradling any part where the pressure of finger against skin might outweigh the shock still reverberating through my body, I ran.
Chapter 54
Alice Mair.
Nice body, shame about the use I was making of it.
I ran through the night, a bleeding woman underdressed for the weather, out on to an alien street in a place I did not know.
Let no one tell you that fear is fun or exhilarating. Their fear is the fear of the funfair ride where reason tells you the seat belt will keep you safe.
True fear is the fear of doubt; it is the mind that will not sleep, the open space at your back where the murderer stands with the axe. It is the gasp of a shadow passed whose cause you cannot see, the laughter of a stranger whose laugh, you know, laughs at you. It is the jumping of the heart when a car backfires in the street; it is the shaking hands that shake and shake as your thoughts do, until you laugh at it because you cannot comprehend that it is a thing for which you should weep. It is the flash of the snake’s head as it turns in the forest, the startled jump of a deer, the furious flapping of a sparrow’s wings and yes, I am human
I run.
And I am afraid.
Once upon a time
a long time ago
Hecuba came to me in the body of a man with great sideburns and an ivory cane, and said, “I’ve found them.”
I was Victoria Whitten. Her parents had named her for a queen, and left her the wealth of a princess, and her husband had beaten her until I’d lost patience and stepped into Victoria’s skin and beaten my husband. He now lived in Norwich, I in London, and once a month he wrote to me to assure me that he was well, and I did not reply.