Fletcher (19 page)

Five.

Without breathing, I thrashed wildly before tumbling to the floor. There was an audible sound as my skull found the leg of the desk. I rolled onto my side and pretended to heave weakly.

Fifteen.

My lungs were beginning to feel the pressure. Blood hammered through my head and I started fighting the urge to breathe in.

Twenty.

My chest burned with a savage heat. The edges of my eyes twitched as my vision began to blur. Deception wasn’t paying off, until

Thirty.

The latch snapped open and an armed guard stepped in—dark visor, flak jacket, oxygen mask. A searchlight created a solid beam through the thick gas. Target acquired.

Thirty-one.

I crossed the distance with a leap and crashed into him. He was larger than me, and stronger, but I had surprised him and his shot went wide. I slammed an open palm into his chin in an effort to dislodge the gas mask, but his head snapped back instead, dispersing the force of the blow. An elbow stung my jaw, almost triggering a breath. I landed another blow on his face, but the mask held.

Thirty-six.

My struggles were weaker now, and I felt his hands pin my arms to the side. Blood carried burning agony to the rest of my body and my sight was draining rapidly. I spasmed, lurching my head backwards, before snapping forward into the most devastating head-butt I could muster.

There was burst of glass and plastic and the gas mask snapped down the middle. As his grip on my shoulders loosened I pulled the mask off his face and sank my teeth into his exposed lips, screwing his nose shut with my free hand. I felt the cartilage tear, but the seal held and I drained a breath of stale air from his lungs. Life throbbed back into my body; colour returned to my vision. My heart broke into a victory beat. Working quickly, I stripped him of his oxygen tank and cracked the valve against the wall. The tank bucked in my hands as the pressurised air blasted the
gasp
away from my face, but I tightened my hold and regained my strength for a second.

The camera saw the heavy handgun I lifted from the body, and I began encountering real arms fire as I fought my way to the centre of the complex. With a weapon in my hands I was safely back in my comfort zone, and they couldn’t beat me at my own game: killing. I followed the rusted exit signs—still present from the asylum days—and marked my wake with twitching corpses.

I walked past a door half-open and caught the scent of terrified computer technician again. It reeked of stale foods and sweaty terror. On the whims of a fresh idea I kicked it fully open and stepped inside. I sensed a movement to my left; an instinctive twist-bang-bang saved my skull from potential lead lining. McBeard slumped to the floor, handgun clattering by his side. I locked the door and dragged his body to the fingerprint scanner. I personally love fingerprint scanners. It makes my life so much easier if everyone carries their password around in an easily-detachable format.

“Hope you don’t mind,” I whispered to no one in particular, “but all your precious shit is getting scrubbed.”

Local databases: delete. Camera feeds: delete. Cell records: delete. Conversations: delete. Online backups: delete. Revision history: delete. Delete, delete, delete. Damn you, and your data.

I heard the clink of steel in between keystrokes, lifted the gun and fired eight shots through the door without looking up. It tumbled open, and three distinct bodies hit the floor. I continued typing.

User records: delete. Log files: delete.

The smell of cologne hit me, and my heart double-tapped.

***

I had hit him in the stomach twice, but the real damage was from a bullet to the throat. Blood foamed up at his mouth as I came closer; he was alive and conscious, but not for long.

“Good shot.”

My chest was burning again, and I forced myself to breathe. This wasn’t me. Not again.

“Nothing witty?”

I found my words. They’d been hiding under the waves of confusion. “Vincent.”

“You... You won, K.”

“Vincent, you’re dying.”

“Had to end somehow.”

His two companions seemed dead, but I was beyond checking.

“Vincent. You’re dying.”

He nodded. “Rather this.”

“No one kills my friend—”

“—but me.”

He finished my sentence with a cough of red. The waves of confusion gave way to an alien hollowness. I lifted his head slightly before he spoke again.

“No hard feelings. Keep fighting, K.”

And then he was gone and I was alone and there was fire and gunshots and an explosion and I was outside in the rain and I was running and I kept running because the hollowness was angry and I was angry but killing didn’t make anything better–

“If you hurt her, I will kill you.”

Vincent had his gun trained on my chest when he spoke his first words to me. My face was hidden behind the brim of my hat, with my body protected by my hostage. In my right hand was a kitchen knife big enough to skeletonise a cow. Behind me gaped a thirty-foot drop into the street.

I raised my head, looking past the barrel and into his eyes.

His resolve gave way to shock for a split second. “You’re young?” he almost stammered. Almost, but not quite.

I had cocked my head to the side before responding. “You’re alone. Young, too. But, more importantly, alone.”

My snark didn’t do anything to help my cause. A shudder ran through the woman I was holding; a faint whimper crawled out of her throat. The knife throbbed as she swallowed.

“Let her go” he said. “It’s over.”

“Far from it. There’s nothing at all on the police radio. That’s how I know you’re alone. That means no backup, no snipers, nothing. Bold, coming here by yourself. What gave it away, Officer V?”

He hadn’t expected that, but he regained composure in an instant, for a second time. That had impressed me, I remember.

“You’ve done your homework.”

“Nope. I just noticed you at crime scenes you weren’t supposed to be at. Mine. It wasn’t much at first, but something in your eyes gave it away. I’m impressed, though.”

He’d not been expecting proper dialogue.

“It wasn’t easy. You’re a living, breathing anti-profile. That’s why no one believed me at first; the only thing tying all the murders together was that they had practically nothing in common.”

“Except for the murder part.”

The gun didn’t waver, and I had seen that his concentration was still intact. He had something to say, though, and I wasn’t going to stop him—not with that Glock in his hands.

“I’m the only person who knows what you look like. Until now, I didn’t even know if you were male or female. The mass poisonings scream woman. The axe murders, man. The drug dealers looked like a mob hit, the kindergarten looked like someone from the military gone AWOL. The forensic countermeasures imply that you’re in the police force, but you’re not. Anatomical knowledge suggests medical training, but I scoured hospital employment records for weeks: nothing.”

“But you found me.”

“Yes. It’s over.”

I pulled my hostage closer.

“You’re meant to humour me. How did you find me?”

“I’m done talking. Drop the knife and step away.”

I flashed my eyes. Now it was my turn to do some talking.

“No. I’ve seen your records; you can make the shot. But you don’t know about the twitch. You’re too good at what you do. See, when someone dies...when someone dies, and they expect it, they see it coming, what happens is a kick of life... A burst of flailing adrenaline. A twitch. Shoot me now and her head will come clean off.”

Tiny gasps from under the knife. I tightened my grip as I watched him weighing things out in his mind. He thought about doing it—one innocent life in exchange for me. That was what impressed me most: a calculating, pragmatic intellect which seemed to be far too absent elsewhere in the world.

I giggled before continuing. “Interesting. That’s...interesting. You’re actually considering it. You won’t, of course. You’re too bound up at the moment, but I can see it inside you. It’s in your record too. Most crimes solved, most criminals shot. It’s something, something deep and twisting and nasty.

“So humour me. How did you find me?”

He was quiet for a second longer than he wanted to be. I could see his mind racing forward, watching me for any sudden movements. Hyper-alert. I liked the attention.

He started speaking again. Everyone made mistakes, he said: mine was that my complete lack of a consistent signature was, in itself, a signature. It was a matter of finding the boxes I hadn’t checked yet and seeing where they led. It took three attempts, but he finally got lucky.

I had spent his explanation sliding out onto the windowsill. To him, it looked like uncomfortable shifting, but I was now precariously balanced on the edge. Cue exit.

“I like you, Officer V. You’ve got promise...and I can show you how to make the most of that. You’ll try disregard me now, of course. To be expected. But one day, one day you’ll find yourself forced to choose between what’s right, and what’s necessary. Between what you should do, and what you want to do, and I can see right now... I can see that you won’t disappoint.”

He sensed my departure, tensing up and stepping closer.

“Cheerio, Vincent. It’s been a pleasure. You may call me K.”

With that, I let go of the girl and the knife and tumbled back out the window. Vincent’s retort was lost to the whipping wind, and I felt a bullet graze my ankle. One floor hurtled past before I found the railing and swung my body inwards, bursting through a closed window.

Glass was everywhere, and I knew Vincent would be on his way down. I pulled the bigger shards out of my knee and headed for the door before running straight into the occupant of the flat.

“You’ll do,” I had growled, before punching her smartly in the throat. I felt the windpipe crumple under my knuckles but couldn’t stop to enjoy the moment.

Door, stairs. Burst of concrete by my ear from Vincent, a floor up. I like to think he missed on purpose. I was faster than him, though, and put three flights between us by the time I sprinted out of the lobby. He didn’t catch up.

It was in the news the next day. Star policeman saves two lives, killer on the loose. Usually I’d have been pissed, but I wasn’t even mad. The game had just begun.

#0192

“Where the fuck did this extra femur come from?”

22: Free

I collapsed in the middle of a field. The rain soaked my skin and cut through my last reserves of warmth and energy. Body heat—non-existent. The grass slumped over my face under its own water weight. Droplets exploded on my eyelids.

I wasn’t sad. I was cold.

In the distance, a truck rumbled. I started to shiver slowly, but the downpour was easing up and something resembling light was creeping up from the east.

I wasn’t sad. I was tired.

There was nothing but a solemn breeze by the time I moved. I pushed through my green wrappings and emerged into the drizzling, dismal (drismal?) morning gloom. Swathes of green surrounded me, but off to my right was a short fence running alongside a dirt road. I needed to get warm, and I needed to get moving.

I wasn’t sad. I was free.

In my hand nestled the handgun, one bullet left. The jumpsuit hugged my skin. My bare feet were slashed up and I spent four minutes pulling out a briar’s love bite. There was no blood flow and the cold numbed any pain, but standing up was still a tender process. Movement? More tender still. I headed towards the road, step by step, rubbing mud over my jumpsuit. On the barbed wire fence I shredded the top until nothing but rags covered my upper body, and flicked deep scratches along my sides. I no longer looked like an escapee; I looked like a traumatised, escaped abductee.

I wasn’t sad. I was on the loose.

I covered my chest with muddy arms, pressing cold steel to my skin, and stumbled down the road. My look was only partly deception; exhaustion laid hooks deep into my bones and dragged me downwards. Multiple times, I stumbled into the dirt. But just as many times, I rose again, fighting off gravity and pain and everything else.

The car was a literal
deus ex machina
, humming down the road and pulling to a halt meters before me. Something jazzy was crackling through the radio; it made me think of the Midnight Hour. I heard the owner speaking, repeating himself (herself?) into a phone: something about an ambulance. A location; repeated twice, then once more. Signal death, clearly. She (he?) tried again. No luck. I stood, shivering, until I felt a blanket over my shoulders.

Save the bullet for later.

It was definitely a she. A plump woman, something of a deep voice. That’s what threw me. I huddled in the back seat of the car, heat blasting into my face, half-listening to the words she was speaking. The sun struggled to break the clouds behind me; we were heading further west. Not too far, I hoped. Time passed, the car stopped, and we got out. I found myself on a couch, still hugging the weapon to my chest. She told me she was going to call the authorities.

I stood up, told her she shouldn’t be so trusting, and shot her in the face. She slumped back over the couch, decorating the worn fabric with a rich, red gout. Her death struck me as senseless and tasteless, and I almost felt like regretting it for a second. It was just tacky… I showered and recovered slightly.

I didn’t linger around the house. Pictures everywhere indicated the existence of a family. Initially, I toyed with the idea of creating a human marionette troupe, but the idea of killing indiscriminately was both lacklustre and nauseating at the same confusing moment. Instead I stole fresh clothes and fresh bread. I found a motorbike in the shed and took to the road.

The weather had become miserable again. I rode as fast as the damp ground would allow, doing what I could to outstrip the rain behind me. The murky sprawl of the city opened up in front of me, and I accelerated.