Identity X (7 page)

He
opened the latch and slid back the mirrored glass and dust blew up from inside
the frame.  He wasn’t even sure he had ever looked out here before, or if this
window had been opened in the last four years.  He moved his head and shoulders
forwards to peer outside and he could feel the wind whipping past with a
greater force than down at the level of the pavement.  The odour of food from
the sandwich shop teased him from below, carried forth by the heat of their
whirring extractor fan, circling upwards like a twister.  He pulled his head
back inside for a hesitative moment, but could still hear the door being shoved
back and forth from the outside just meters away from him.  It had to be done. 
He ran across the floor and snatched up his telephone and identity card and
without a second thought he hauled his body up and over the window frame.  He
balanced his feet down onto the small ledge that was beneath him.  Resting his
finger tips onto the adjacent window frame and pushing his shoulder up into the
vertical support columns that held the building in the ground, he slid the open
window back into a closed position.  His jacket billowed behind him, and the
friendly oncoming winds pushed him closer into the wall.  He shimmied his feet
along the ledge and gripped the wall to stop himself shaking, and by wrapping
his body around the vertical columns he made progress along the ridge.  He
couldn’t see through the mirrored glass properly, but could almost convince
himself that he could see movement in his old laboratory.  If he could see
through, then maybe there was a chance that whoever was inside could see out. 
There wasn’t time to waste hanging around making assumptions and predictions. 
He had to find a way off this ledge fast, before whoever was inside with the
gun that had unleashed the bullets only minutes before, realised where he had
disappeared to.

As he
approached the corner of the building he could see another building attached. 
The mood of the wind was as fickle as it was strong and as it blew around the
corner he had to fight with all his strength to hang on.  The attached building
had a flat roof and he could almost taste its safety like the satisfaction of a
warm hot chocolate on a winter’s day.  It looked a damn sight safer than where
he was currently precariously perched.  As he manoeuvred his body around the
corner of the building he screamed when he suddenly felt the sharpest and most
surreal of pains that he had ever experienced.  It was a tight searing pain,
hot and acidic.  He looked down towards his right shoulder and he could see
that there was a bloody looking opening in the top of his arm.  It looked more
like a graze than a hole and Ben prayed that whatever it was that had caused
the damage on his suit had slipped past him rather than get wedged in his
body.   He shuffled himself behind the protection of the building, and turned
to brace his back against it.  His right arm felt very heavy and suddenly quite
useless, and what he assumed must have been a bullet had caused an inordinate
amount of pain.  It burnt worse than when he had out of curiosity touched the
hot plate of the iron as a child.  It hurt worse than when he had been shot in
the foot by a stray arrow at outward bound camp during an archery session.  It
hurt all the more for knowing that he was balanced on the ledge of a first
floor office building with an unknown entity chasing him with a gun for reasons
of which he had no idea.   

Ben
leapt towards the roof of the next building which was located only a foot or so
below him but which felt like a much more dangerous distance away.  He landed
on his right hip with a thump onto the roof.  He sat round onto his backside,
comforted in the embrace of a temporary reprieve, and he pressed his palm
against the shoulder wound whilst hissing in a sharp breath through gritted
teeth.  He had only moments, and the previous sense of tiredness and lethargy
that he felt had been ripped apart by the adrenaline that was pumping through
his veins courtesy of his galloping heart.  He heard nothing of the wind as it
blew past the edge of the building, or the rapid chirrups of the city birds
circling overhead.  He was wired, and he could feel his heart pounding
rampantly as if he could still hear the whoosh of the extractor fan in his
ears, willing him on to make the next decision. 
Where now?
  He fled
across the roof, no idea whether the gun toting maniac was following him or
not.  He charged over the roof past air conditioning pipes and air vents.  He
bounded towards the edge of the roof and leapt forwards without a single lucid
thought, jumping to clear the small space that separated the current building
from the next.  He landed on the next roof, never once considering the danger
of a misplaced step or a misfortunate trip.  He found a wall that housed a door
that would permit him entrance to the building below.  It was the last building
in the row.  There was nowhere else to run to.  He tried the handle but found
it to be locked.  Considering a feat of incredible strength, he wondered if his
adrenaline levels had spiked sufficiently to break through the door, head first
like a raging bull, but assumed his conscious thought for the matter rendered it
an unlikely possibility.  Edging back around the corner of the wall, he could
see the shooter, wearing nothing but black just climbing his way from the ledge
onto the first flat roof. 

“Fuck! 
Fuck!”  Ben rolled his body back behind the security of the brick wall.  He
tried the handle, more desperately this time.  The door moved ajar, and he
could see that it was padlocked from the inside.  He kicked it over and over,
heaving his weight behind it and praying that the door would smash open.  It
budged, but stayed firm.  He glanced around looking for somewhere to hide,
knowing that his time was running out, but found nothing.  He kicked the door
one last time.  The door buckled under the pressure and the flimsy looking
wooden door frame splintered away from the wall, leaving just enough space for
him to slip through.  He ducked inside, wedging the door back into place and
crept down the first few stairs and into the shadow and safety of the building. 
He crouched down to hide in absolute silence before hearing the interruption of
footsteps as the shooter approached.  Through the small space that was left
from the damage to the door he could see the black boots and trousers of the
shooter stood just feet away.  It sounded like he touched the door, but there
was no desperate pulling and smashing.  No attempt to force it open.  If there
had have been it would surely have buckled inward like a flimsy garden gate. 
Instead Ben heard his voice.  It was deep and gravelly, and belonged to nobody
that he recognised.  He spoke in a muffled tone, but Ben could hear his words. 
He was making a telephone call.

“Sir,
he got away.”  Silence again.  It seemed like an impossibly slow wait for him
to speak again.  “Certainly.  We’re moving into phase two?  Yes Sir.”  And that
was it.  He saw the feet turn, dust flying up as he turned his heels to walk
purposefully away, the rooftop gravel crunching under foot as he did so.  For
the first time in what felt like hours Ben breathed again, relishing the relief
that he had achieved a stay of execution.  But yet he couldn’t understand it. 
There was nowhere for him to go.  There was only one exit from that roof that
didn’t lead to the end of his life.  Ben had been able to breach the door with
only his foot, pushing his body weight against it.  This guy had a gun.  Ben
knew this all too well.  He could have shot through it in seconds, yet he had
left him. 
Why had he let me go?

Ben
shuffled his left hand out through his jacket, then after peeling out his
injured right arm, began to inspect the wound.  His crisp white shirt had a
matching frayed hole at the level of his shoulder, stained with the deep red of
his blood which was seeping down the fabric in irregularly scalloped waves.  He
clumsily unbuttoned his shirt with his left hand to assess the damage further. 
There was a cut and it was deep enough to cause a reasonable amount of
bleeding.  It was serious enough to worry about.  He loosened off his tie and
wrapped it around the wound forming a makeshift bandage which he tightened with
a collaboration of his left hand and his teeth, feeling as if he was currently
somewhere between ridiculous and Rambo.  He wiped his bloody hands on the
lining of his jacket and fixed his shirt the best he could.  Putting his jacket
back on, he looked almost presentable.  He made his way through the dark and
empty corridors trying to recall what this building was.  He had a new sense of
caution that he had never felt before in his life.  He assumed that after
somebody tried to shoot you it was impossible to keep the same carefree
attitude.  Somebody wanted him dead.  Right now everybody was a suspect.

Passing through the stock room
was easier than he had
anticipated.  He had expected at least some resistance or confusion, but found
none.  The rooftop
’
s lack of discernible
architecture had disorientated him, and as he hid in the shadows staring at the
boots of his would-be killer on the other side of a flimsy wooden door, he
hadn’t given any thought to what building he had concealed himself in.  All he
could think of was the proximity of his impending death and the wound that he
had already sustained on his arm, which was causing him considerable
discomfort.  As he inched his way through the stockroom containing rows of
clothes and coats there had been a single thought running through his mind, so
much so that he was struggling to focus his attentions on the more pertinent
need to find an adequate escape route. 
Why didn’t the shooter break down
the door and assassinate me?
  He must have known where he was.   There had
been nowhere else for him to go, and yet the man who had chased him into the
laboratory, shot at him, and risked his own life skirting around the edges of
buildings simply gave up. 
And who was it that he called?
  He was sure
he remembered hearing him say Sir.  There was a level of deference in that
voice that made him nervous.  He wasn’t a random maniac that had mistakenly
selected Ben.  He was following orders.

Seeing
that the stockroom was clear he tucked himself in a quiet corner and removed
the sleeve of his jacket and shirt so that he could assess the wound on his arm
further, attracted to it as a result of the constant throbbing that was driving
him crazy.  It was worse than the headache and the gnawing emptiness in his
stomach combined, which he had at least for the time being forgotten.  The
wound looked like it had almost been burnt and therefore conveniently cauterised,
and with closer inspection under the apparent safety and camouflage of the
clothing store, he confirmed his earlier suspicion that it was indeed more like
a graze than a hole, for which he was thankful.  The bullet must have skimmed
past him rather than travel through his arm.  He thought of the times when he
had sustained a paper cut, and how they always seemed to hurt more than any
serious type of injury.  Even when he had been accidentally shot in the foot as
a child it didn’t seem to hurt as much as this.  He had after all been
biologically anaesthetized at the time, high on endorphins surging through his
brain as the adults had swarmed around him like bees to honey.  Their buzz was
electrifying and whilst some of them tried to comfort the crying children,
others tried to establish how they would be able to get the arrow out of the
ground and free the impaled Ben.  Another teacher, who despite the natural
delirium which had pacified his pain still appeared incredibly pale to Ben,
proceeded to stagger to the ground and throw up.  Some of the vomit ricocheted
back up and onto the legs of the surrounding children.  He of all teachers had
perhaps been the most successful in calming the otherwise agitated crowd, who
it seemed found the fact of seeing their teacher regurgitating an earlier
muesli breakfast highly amusing, in spite of their own unpleasant involvement.

 The
tight grip of his tie had stemmed the bleeding, and he adjusted it into a
bandage style dressing, which even for a field soldier would have seemed
makeshift and substandard.  Satisfied by his efforts, and seeing that the silk
bandage appeared to remain as intended, Ben rummaged through the rails, staying
close to the ground in case his solitude was interrupted.  He found a grey
T-shirt and put it on, and then stuffed his old shirt behind one of the
cabinets.   There was also a selection of jackets and trousers.  He reasoned
that whoever it was that was trying to kill him seemed to be taking orders, and
if there was some kind of inexplicable instruction for his death, it couldn’t
hurt to look different than when he came in.  They were looking for a guy in a
suit.  With this in mind, he pulled off his trousers and found a casual looking
pair of brown chinos and a blue jacket, the kind that you would throw on for a
Saturday out in the park and that he would have undoubtedly worn himself this
weekend.  It was stylish, but casual, and most importantly very different from
what he crashed into this building wearing.  Ripping apart the security stitching
of his new pockets and pulling at his wounded shoulder as he did so, he stuffed
his identity card, keys, the few coins that he hadn’t dropped, and his
telephone inside.  With anxiety induced sweat pouring from every one of his
pores, his hair flopped down onto his face and stuck to his forehead.  He ran
his hands through it in quick succession, trying to make himself look like he
hadn’t just been chased and shot at. 

With
his new casual attire, he broached his way towards the exit door.  He tried the
handle but it was locked.  It didn’t take long to find the exit button.  It was
the same type that he had in the lab.  Virtually identical.  Briefly, thanks to
the unlikely resemblance of the door to the laboratory, he became transfixed in
a depression about what it was that he had just lost.  All of his research, all
of his effort, simply gone overnight.  He searched for a way to comprehend how
it could have been taken as it had, and who was responsible.  He couldn’t
understand why Bionics would shut him down in this manner.  As for his theory
regarding Saad and his apparent appropriation of the data, it was difficult to
make any definitive conclusions or convince himself that he was to blame.  He
had never even met the man, and had no logical reason to accuse him of the
theft.  Sure, he had a lot of money and that usually meant a lot of power, but
how could he manage a theft on such a scale overnight?  How
could anybody do
this overnight?

As he
began to focus on the necessity of his impending escape by pressing the exit
button, he once again felt the danger of his situation as he heard footsteps
approaching and a voice on the other side of the door.   Snatching his fingers
from the button, he scanned around looking for somewhere to hide.  A clothes
rail lined one wall, but with a stroke of good fortune he realised that his
legs would be visible from underneath and that as a hiding place it was an
unacceptable choice.  The nearest corner had several boxes stacked up on top of
each other, and looked just about wide enough by his impetuous estimation to
crouch behind.  He bolted for the boxes as he saw the red flashing button turn
green.   A girl no more than eighteen years old walked through.  As he peered
out from the shadow of the boxes he could see that she was carrying about
twenty coats under her arm, pulled directly from a rail and still attached to
the coat hangers.  She was chewing gum, and her eyes were black under the
layers of heavy makeup.  She paid him no attention, and the slow closing door
gave him a chance to see out into the store.  Immediately he recognised where
he was.  If he could get out of the doors unnoticed he could slip into the
array of hanging rails that littered the shop floor.  The girl threw the coats
onto a pile in the corner and sat down onto one of the unopened plastic boxes. 
She was facing him and thus foiled any chance of a quick escape.  Taking the
gum from her mouth, she pushed it underneath one of the finger grips of a close
and conveniently placed box where it would be it seemed, be left to solidify
before eventually repulsing the unfortunate soul who would come to find it.  
She pulled a chocolate bar out from her pocket and peeled back the wrapper. 
The very sight of it was enough to reignite the agony of his empty stomach and
he felt it somersault, unleashing a gurgling cry.  Gripping onto his stomach
and clenching his muscles, he hoped desperately that she hadn’t heard it.  Only
moments passed before he found himself entertaining fantasies about holding her
hostage for her chocolate, and the insanity of the thought amused him more than
he knew to be acceptably appropriate.  She was small, and he was a fairly big
guy, he could easily overpower her.  He could have that chocolate bar snatched
out from those tiny little fingers with no more than a snatch and grab.  The
very fact that he was even entertaining these thoughts and making such criminal
calculations was enough to remind him that he wasn’t thinking clearly.  He
could attack her for the chocolate, but then what?  By the time he had
convinced himself that he should leave the girl and the chocolate in peace,
for
my own benefit,
she was standing back up and making her way back towards
the doors licking her sticky chocolate coated finger.  He concluded that she
was clearly a bitch, and wanted to tease him. 

He
ducked as far into the wall of boxes as his anthropoidal form permitted,
concealing himself once again in the shadows and hoping that she would pass him
by without detection.  She headed for the clothes rail that sat against the
opposite wall, and he praised his decision not to hide there.  She selected a
pair of dark trousers and used the inside edge of the cuff to wipe her hands,
before pressing the red button and once again activating the doors.  This was
his chance.  He waited for her to pass through, and as soon as there were a few
feet between them he slipped out behind her, light footed and surreptitious as
a ghost, arriving in the main area of the shop behind her.  As he came out into
the light she became acutely aware of his presence as he breezed past and
turned around to see him only feet behind her.  She looked at him, her eyes
scrunched up with confusion, her brow frowning and forming two deep vertical
lines between her eyebrows.  She glanced back at the doors to the store room to
see them just closing.  He had been quick to put distance between the store
room and himself.  He wanted to shake her suspicion, and he wanted to do it
fast.  He soon formed the opinion that the girl had an inappropriate level of self-interest
considering the amount of time she must have spent applying the eye makeup,
reinforced by the thick orange layer of foundation coming into view.  He shot
her his best come-over-here-pretty-lady smile, the kind that forms only on the
left side of his face and with a subtly raised eyebrow.  He had perfected it
whilst he was at university, and it had worked miracles.  Once he had started
work and had the funds to add a suit and an averagely expensive pair of shoes
into the package, he found that it had served him very well.  Today though,
dressed in the cheap clothes that looked even worse in their starched just
unfolded way, he looked like nothing but a forty year old man who was trying
too hard.  Her eye muscles contracted inwards, and her obvious distaste of the
sight before her was clear to see, such was the antipathy of his advances.  It
began to infect the rest of her face, looking as if she had simultaneously
encountered a revolting combination of taste, smell, and sight as her nose
scrunched up and mouth turned downwards at the corners.  She began to walk away
from him, all the while keeping a watchful eye that he didn’t attempt to follow
her.  It had worked, and he knew that he should be grateful, but he also knew
on some ludicrous and inexplicable level that he could not help but feel
disappointed in his ability to repel a woman.

He
slipped through the store without further hindrance and out into the street. 
He tucked his hands in his pockets and ducked his head down low as if bracing
an oncoming wind.  He wanted to look back towards his lab, but it was too
risky.  He had heard some sort of commotion as the bullets had hit the windows
earlier, and wondered if a crowd had gathered, or if indeed the shooter was
back out in the street initiating ‘Phase Two’, whatever that was.  As he
reached into his pocket and felt the plastic case of his telephone he suddenly
remembered what he had arranged before the moment that somebody had attempted
to extinguish his life.  Mark.  He was on his way to the lab.  He had to warn
him.

He
ducked onto Fifty First Street, a quiet side street that ran away from the main
Central City station.  From here he could see back out onto the main Fiftieth
Street, and it seemed to him that everything appeared to be carrying on as
normal.  There were mothers pushing pushchairs, wom
e
n carrying bags of shopping in luxurious
structured carrier bags that advertised their expensive tastes.  There were men
dressed like he was only half an hour ago in suits and ties, with hair slicked neatly
into place.  He scanned the crowd, not wanting Mark to be one of these guys
approaching the lab.  Who knew where the shooter had gone?  He could be in the
lab for all Ben knew waiting for anyone that turned up.  He pulled out his
telephone and scrolled through the list of recent calls until he saw Mark’s
name and then he hit the green call button.  He heard it ring a couple of
times, and then it sounded like it connected.  He could hear some sort of
static on the line and a click.

“Mark?” 
He spoke quietly, his finger held up to his ear to block out the humdrum of the
background normality.  He waited for an answer.  He was sure that he could hear
breathing. 
Oh God
!  He was too late.  The panic rose in his throat,
bursting from the steady pulsatile state of a natural geezer into a furious jet
of pent up angst. 
Had they already got him?  I have to go back. 
Just
as he was contemplating the first steps back towards the laboratory, he heard a
voice speak on the other end.

“Yeah
mate
, what’s up?”

“Listen,
Mark.  Don’t go to the lab,” he spluttered.  “Don’t whatever you do go to the
lab.”  His words sounded as frantic as he felt.