Alchemist (91 page)

He stared at the guard, straight into his eyes. The guard returned his stare smugly. Conor stared harder, harder, concentrating, desperately concentrating in spite of his blind panic, concentrating, pouring all his energies into those two round beads. Kept on staring. The guard's smile was slackening, his jaw dropping. The hand holding the gun began to lower. The guard's eyes were glazing now, losing their focus, he was drifting. Drifting …

Now!

Conor leapt at him, grabbed the wrist of his gun hand with his left hand, heard a bang as the weapon discharged, slammed the knuckles of his right fist as hard as he could into the guard's nose and fell against the desk with him, bringing his knee sharply up between the man's legs. He punched him again, then again, gripped his gun and jerked his arm down on the edge of the desk, sending the gun clattering to the floor.

The guard flailed with his free arm, catching Conor's ear a glancing blow. In blind fury Conor grabbed him by the hair and smashed his face into the keyboard. ‘Where is she?' He smashed the guard's face down again. ‘Where is she, you motherfucker?' He smashed it down again, then again.

The guard screamed, ‘Please don't! Stop. Please stop.'

Conor twisted him round by his hair. ‘Where is she? Tell me
now
!' He jammed a hand into the guard's groin, squeezed hard.

The guard howled in agony.

‘Where? Tell me or I'll rip your fucking balls off.'

‘Le – level two.'

Conor squeezed again.

‘L-l-lift. Lift. Level two.' The man was panting and blood trickled from his mouth and nose. ‘T-turn right. Sign. Signed.'

Without letting go of his hair, Conor pulled the card out of the slot on the workstation and held it up in front of his nose. ‘Do I use this?'

The guard nodded.

‘Pin number? What's the fucking pin number?'

‘Zero six two six.'

‘You're shitting me and I'm coming back for you, you understand that?'

The guard signalled with his eyes.

Conor gripped the card in his teeth, pulled the guard's head as far back as he could, then slammed his fist up into the base of his chin. The guard's eyes rolled. Conor released his hair and he fell motionless on to the floor.

Conor knelt and grabbed the gun and raced to the lift.

The room smelled of antiseptic. Monty blinked in the glare of the lamp overhead. Her arms and legs felt as if they were being gripped in a vice. She tried to raise her head, to turn it, but that, too, was clamped tight.

She stared at the tiled walls, terror rising in her throat. A group of people in scrubs were gathered to one side with their backs to her, occupied with something they were blocking from her view. They turned occasionally to glance at her, and only their eyes were visible above their masks. Crowe. Seligman. Linda Farmer, whom she had met only once, the Director of Medical Information – and another woman she did not recognize.

There was a clatter of an instrument. She saw Seligman hold a tiny bloody object up to the light in long-handled forceps and examine it carefully. After some moments he
lowered the object and raised a second. There was a murmured exchange of words, then several members of the group turned again and looked at Monty.

She began praying, silently, desperately. She tried visualizing a gold cross; thought of the Lumiel square in her handbag. Then, despairingly, of Tabitha Donoghue's smashed body on her car roof.

The woman she had not seen before was walking towards her, slowly and carefully, holding a metal tray out in front of her as if she were presenting an offertory to an altar. A large frog crawled pitifully across the tray. Where its eyes should have been she saw raw and bloody empty sockets.

Monty's throat muscles went into spasm. She gurgled in terror.

The woman moved the frog closer, so close it almost touched Monty's nose. Shaking, gulping at air, she could smell the creature, could see the loose skin beneath its neck pulsing as it breathed. She shut her eyes tightly. They could not make her watch, she still had that freedom.

When she opened her eyes again, the woman was moving away. Monty swallowed. Moments later the woman returned with another tray, which she again presented close to Monty for inspection. Neatly arranged on a bed of crushed ice were the frog's bloody eyeballs.

Her insides corkscrewed in panic. She jerked her wrists, her legs, her neck against the straps.

Someone wheeled a rattling trolley up to her. The group were gathering around her now. Seligman leaned over her, rummaging in the instrument tray, selecting first a small, gleaming scalpel which he raised in one hand and inspected, then an instrument with a long, thin handle and a flat round steel scoop on the end.

‘Noooooooooooo!' she screamed.

Seligman rotated the scoop between his finger and thumb. Light glinted off it.

‘No!' she said. ‘Please, no. Anything. Anything you want. Not my eyes, not –'

‘I will be quite quick,' Seligman said to her, with no trace of
emotion at all. ‘It is very important with the eyes to be quick, because the optical nerve endings die so very fast.' Then his expression hardened. ‘The frog is a cold-blooded creature, Miss Bannerman. Cold-blooded creatures feel very little pain; did you know that?'

She stared back at him, voiceless now.

‘I did not use any anaesthetic on the frog, so I am not going to waste precious time using any on you.' He reached up and made a small adjustment to the angle of the lamp.

Then Crowe's voice: ‘Have you thought of anything you would like to tell us before Dr Seligman begins, Miss Bannerman? Or shall we remove one eye first and see how things go?'

‘Nothing,' she gulped out. ‘There's nothing. We – I – only spoke to Mr Wentworth – Zandra Wollerton; no one else. I didn't talk to anyone else and they – they are dead. I didn't, I promise, I swear.' She knew she was incoherent now.

‘What about Mr Molloy? To whom has he talked, Miss Bannerman?'

‘I don't know.'

‘I think you do.'

‘Please. I don't. I really don't. I haven't – seen him – not since – I don't know where he is.'

There was a brief silence, then Crowe said, harshly: ‘Take the first eye out. We'll talk to her again when you've finished. A little pain might concentrate her mind.'

The woman who had presented the trays leaned over Monty, pressed her fingers deep into the base of Monty's throat, at the top of the strap, forcing her head back. Another pair of hands pressed down on her forehead.

Panting in terror, Monty could only watch as Seligman's gloved fingers came down towards her right eye. She closed her lids, squeezed them tightly shut, fighting with all her strength to resist the pressure of his fingers as he tried to prise them open.

She was losing. First her lashes, then the rubber of his gloves rubbed painfully against her eyeball; then she saw a watery haze of light as he succeeded, the pressure from his fingers relentless, as if he were used to this, did it every day of the week. He had the lids peeled back now, wide open.

‘Retractor,' he said calmly.

Gloved fingers appeared holding a tiny wire hinge with rubber edges. Monty saw it coming towards her eye, felt the acute discomfort as it was inserted, forcing her lids wider.

‘Right,' Seligman said. ‘I'm now going to cut through the conjunctiva.'

No, please no, you are not going to do this. Please no
. Monty stared into Seligman's eyes, pleading desperately, pleading with all her heart. His brow furrowed in deep concentration as he leaned forward, until his masked face was inches from her own. A flash of light bounced off the gleaming blade of the scalpel as it came slowly, rock steadily, down, then blurred out of focus a fraction of a second before it made contact with her flesh.

Level 2 … turn right … signed
…

Conor barged out of the lift before the doors were fully open and found himself in an empty anteroom identical to the one he had just left.

He slid the card into the door, keyed in the number, pushed it open, then looked, wildly, both ways down the corridor, holding the gun out in front of him. The corridor was deserted. He sprinted down and after twenty yards he hit an intersection with a battery of signs. He tore down to the left, towards the door marked Theatre 1. Then on. Another ten yards.

Theatre 2.

He pressed his face to the glass porthole in the door. They were in there. Green scrubs clustering around the gurney. The surgeon bending over Monty …

The key card fell from his shaking hand as he pushed it against the slot. He knelt, tried to get his nails under it, but it stayed stuck to the floor as if held by a vacuum.
Jesus, come on!
Frantically he prised it off the floor then rammed it into the slot and hammered in the numbers. The light flashed green and he charged the door with his elbow. It did not budge. He tried again and it bucked but did not yield.

Was it locked from the inside? He pushed again, then pulled and it opened immediately, a large, heavy door on a weighted spring. Someone looked round, a woman he did not recognize.

‘
Don't touch her!
' he screamed, swinging the gun at all of them. ‘Move away from her. Move away from her or I'll shoot! Move! I'll shoot, I'll goddamn shoot! Move!'

For an instant everything froze, as if a pause button had been hit on a video.

Crowe spun round. Conor saw the cold grey eyes above the mask and in that instant he wanted more than anything on earth to pull the trigger. He had never fired a gun in his life but he could do it now, do it easily. But the bullets might go astray, might hit Monty.
Monty. Had to get Monty out
.

All eyes were on him.

‘Move! I said move!' The gowned figures started moving, backing away. He swung the gun again, watching them like a hawk, then fixed his stare on the surgeon. ‘Drop the scalpel.' He jerked the gun forward, gripped it with both hands, aimed it squarely at the surgeon. The scalpel clattered on to the tiled floor.

He remained in this position, half in and half out of the doorway. He glanced over his shoulder. Corridor still empty. He was thinking clearly surprisingly clearly and he felt calm. He was in command. One step at a time now. He caught Monty's eye.

‘Hands on top of your heads, all of you, put them up.'

They obeyed.

Glanced behind him again. Nothing. Looked up at the ceiling, at the television camera, directly above him at the fire extinguisher system, back at the camera. Other people would be watching, reacting. No time to waste, not one second.

‘You!' He yelled at a gowned woman, pointed the gun squarely at her. ‘Push that trolley here. The rest of you stay still; anyone moves they're dead.'

The hatred was exploding inside him. The hatred he had been storing for years. Had to release it, had to, before it destroyed him. The woman was pushing the gurney towards him now, wheeling Monty towards him, bringing Monty back to him. Her face was white but she looked OK, not hurt, she was OK.

Got to stay calm. Come this far. Hold it, got to hold it
.

Come on, Crowe. Make my day. Give me the excuse to shoot you. God, I want to shoot you, you goddamned piece of shit
.

He stared down the barrel at Crowe. Seligman. Linda Farmer. Short, hard, bangs of anger exploded inside him like firecrackers. He felt the energy surging from him. He stared at the octopus lamp. Crowe. Seligman. Farmer. The lamp again. There was a flicker. A bulb blew. Then another.

Crowe was staring hard at him. Conor quickly looked away.
Got you, you bastard, I'm not letting you go, oh no
.

He stared back at the octopus. Felt the energy shooting from him like rockets. The remaining bulbs exploded simultaneously. Flames sheeted out of the lamp and thick acrid smoke rose from it, spread out across the ceiling. The lamp was on fire, burning, crackling. Conor smelled the acrid reek of the smoke. Then a streak of brilliant orange light suddenly flitted across the room.

It was followed by another.

Then another.

Conor's eyes shot to the ceiling. The rotating warning light of the halon gas extinguisher system had come on. Crowe and Seligman looked up in alarm and took a step forward, towards the door.

‘Back!' yelled Conor. ‘Get back!' Flashes of orange streaked their faces as the mirror in the lamp housing revolved. One end of the gurney was within reach now. Conor grabbed the metal rim behind Monty's head with one hand, and with the other jabbed the gun at the woman in scrubs who was staring, petrified, holding the gurney, her eyes moving from him to the light and back again.

Conor yanked the trolley back towards him, then rammed it hard forward, smashing it into the woman's midriff, sending her backwards on to the hard floor.

Then six loud klaxon bleeps sounded. They were followed by a digitized warning voice:

‘FIRE EXTINGUISHER HAS BEEN ACTIVATED. EVACUATE THIS ROOM IMMEDIATELY. FIRE EXTINGUISHER HAS BEEN ACTIVATED. EVACUATE THIS ROOM IMMEDIATELY.'

Panicking, Crowe, Seligman and Farmer all moved forward.

Conor threw a glance at the flashing light and screamed, ‘Don't move! Don't move another goddamned inch!' Swinging the gun hard on them, he moved backwards through the door, hauling the gurney into the corridor and rolling it aside to let the door swing shut. The instant the lock clicked home he rammed one end of the gurney into the door, swung the other end across the corridor and wedged it against the wall, barely giving Monty a second glance. It was a perfect fit. No way that door was going to open.

A warning light flashed on the outside wall. Monty was staring at him in shock.

The digitized voice was still audible.
‘EVACUATE THE ROOM. EVACUATE THE ROOM. TEN SECONDS TO ACTIVATION. NINE … EIGHT … SEVEN …'

There was frantic pounding on the door. He saw a fist hammering on the porthole, trying to punch through the glass.