Identity X (10 page)

“Ami,
will you help me?”  She nodded reassuringly.  After everything that had
happened this morning he had only one other question.  “Ami, where have they
taken my son?”

“Ami, come on.  Where have
they taken him?”

“Ben,
I don’t think you understand.  It’s not going to be as simple as walking up to
the door and asking for him back.”  She could barely look him in the eye. 
Instead she looked around at the broken buildings remorsefully, in search of
absolution for her involvement. 

“Ami.” 
Ben bent down in front of her and took her face in his cupped palms as he had
with Hannah only days before.  Her cheeks were frozen, and in spite of her
olive skin appeared pink and wind battered.  At first she had looked so tough
walking across the square in her Macintosh and heels, all knowing and his only
source of help.  Now he found himself wanting to comfort her, as he saw the
softer Ami that he had grown so fond of in the laboratory.  He knew how he felt
about her ever since the first day when she walked in, introducing herself as
she threw her bag under the nearest chair in a nonchalant manner that he was
not used to seeing in his colleagues.  The rest of his team were uptight and
focussed, with no space for fun in their structured and orderly lives.   But
Ami breezed in without it seemed, a care in the world.  Her eyes were as black
as collapsed stars, absorbing all light and mass in close enough proximity,
engulfing Ben until he couldn’t recall the number of nights he had wished to be
close enough to submit to her and be utterly devoured.  He fell for her in an
instant, but he suppressed and stifled his passion for the love of his work and
his son.  “Ami it doesn’t matter how difficult it is.  Where have they taken
him?  Nothing else is important anymore.  Where is he?”

“Ben
there is so much that you don’t understand yet.”  She looked over to her right
hand side.  Ben followed her eye movement to see what had alerted her attention
but saw nothing.  

“Start
by telling me where they have taken him.”  As he finished speaking he saw Ami
look over again at her right hand side.  As she did so Ben heard a high pitched
whistling sound above their heads.  It had until today been an alien sound to
him, like the first night in a new home when creaks and churns in the depths of
the night unsettle you by their unfamiliarity.  He instinctively looked up,
recognising the sound from earlier and following its path.  It was moving too
fast, like an asteroid through the atmosphere, there one moment and gone the
next.  Ami heard it too, and it clearly wasn’t unfamiliar to her either. 
Immediately he heard her scream, fright and panic straining through her voice.

“NO!”
She set off immediately to run towards her right, grabbing Ben as she took
off.  Ben’s eyes were still following the path of the travelling sound that
whizzed past his head, and on his right he saw clearly for the first time a man
dressed in casual grey trousers and a winter jumper slumping down onto the
ground inside a doorway.  Ami was running towards him, her head ducked down and
her shoulders hunched over protectively.  She was moving at a speed, and
dragging Ben along with her.  It had taken only seconds for him to realise that
the sound he had heard had been a racing bullet, the very same one that had
caused a cavernous red hole in the centre of the man’s forehead.  Ami stumbled
to the pavement in front of the man lying motionless on the floor, unperturbed
by his head oozing a bloody gloop onto the grey pavement as she cradled him.  She
pulled Ben down to join her, pushing him towards the door and underneath the
cover of the canopy of the ornate porch.  She gripped Ben’s arm with her free
hand and as she did so she opened her mouth to speak.  Her eyes caught sight of
something to her left, interrupting her, and Ben suddenly realised he could
hear the same air splitting sound again.  It was the same abrasive whistle of
the metal bullet piercing a channel through the air as it came thundering
towards them.  Ami’s head shot back as if she had been punched full on by the
clenched fist of a fifteen stone powerhouse before falling flaccidly,
collapsing into his arms and pushing him fully behind the wall of the porch,
protecting him even in her death.  He saw the hole in her skull burst open spraying
him with blood and fragments of her flesh and bone.  Her head flopped forwards
and hit him in the chest.  Immediately his sense of smell was unbalanced by the
incursion of the hot metallic scent of her iron rich blood amalgamating on his
torso.  He began to fidget and shout in revulsion as her body lay lifelessly on
top of him.  He fumbled his hands up through her hair and grabbed her by the
face and held her as he had done so only moments ago.  He calmed himself by
taking some deep breaths and then rolled her head back to reveal the full force
of the impact.  There was a hole in the side of her skull from which poured
scarlet blood and lumps of matter.  He became gripped by the nausea of the
sight of death before him as his fingers slipped around in the warm silken
fluid as he brushed her hair back from her blood streaked face.  He felt an
immediate sense of guilt for her loss.  The horror of what he saw before him
wasn’t just death.  Death had visited his life before.  He knew death.  He had
shaken it by the hand and invited it in.  What he saw today was incomparable. 
As his father had lain peacefully in his own bed, tucked in with the same
perfection and precision as an adored child by his unwaveringly devoted wife,
he had learnt the value and peace that can emerge from the passage of life. 
There was no peace here, and as the encumbrance of her limp body obstructed his
escape, he thought about how only minutes ago she had told him that she wanted
the chance to grow old, and he began to cry.  The tears streaked through the
crimson droplets that had settled on his face, before falling onto Ami’s cheeks
and doing the same.

“What
do you want from me!” he screamed as hard as he could, his words stumbling over
the lump of pain that sat in his throat.  He sobbed as he said the words over
and over, quietly and with no particular audience.  He was paralysed by what he
had seen.  He sat there for several minutes cradling Ami in his embrace, until
he saw a dust cloud whip up in front of him as another bullet hit the ground. 
His leg was in full view, and whoever was responsible for the death of Ami and
her friend had a new primary target.  He dragged his foot towards him,
wriggling his whole body about underneath Ami’s in order to break free.  He
held her head up towards his lips, his fingers weaving in and out of her slick
black hair.  He kissed her on the unblemished half of her forehead and silently
offered an apology.

He
couldn’t stay here, and so far he knew he had ridden a wave of good fortune to
still be alive, but he couldn’t shake the thought that his luck was about to
run out.  He tried the door handle.  It was locked.  He pushed harder and
harder.  The door gave way a little but it didn’t budge.  He rammed it again
with his intact shoulder, harder still this time.  It hurt terribly, but he
kept jamming his weight behind it.  He could feel the skin on his arm breaking
and bruising underneath the repetition of each impact, but there was no other
option.  Eventually the door burst open in a cloud of wooden shrapnel, and his
body fell into the empty room amidst a cloud of kicked up dust.  As he stood
back up he spotted that the man who was lying under Ami was still holding a
gun, and he wondered for a moment if it had been meant for him or not.  He
didn’t know what type it was.  He barely knew anything about guns.  He dragged
the awkwardly ample body towards him wiping his bloody hands on the man’s torso
before picking up the black handle of the gun, examining it as he held it in
his right hand.  His hand was still weak from where he had been shot earlier,
but he mustered the strength to grip it.  He had never fired a gun before, but
he had seen them fired hundreds of times on the television.  He tucked the gun
into the waistband of his stolen trousers.  His mind raced fortuitously ahead,
and his hands delved into the pockets of the dead man.  Inside he found what
looked like an identity card, immediately recognising the small credit card
sized green plastic token.  He considered that this card may grant him access
to the underground station and a possible escape from the unfortunate position
that he had been backed into.  He shoved the card into his pocket and headed
into the unknown cavernous building.

The
inside was a striking contrast to the ornate facade of the old buildings.  The
covered windows that he had been unable to see through as he had walked towards
Ami concealed a rundown interior, even derelict.  The floor was scattered with
old paperwork, which disturbed the carpet of dust as his feet paced through
them.  His eyes were darting around, ignoring the peeling paintwork and doors
which were hanging from their frames by nothing but the odd screw.  The rooms
formed an interconnected labyrinth with no discernible exit to freedom.  He
looked towards the windows, single paned and easy enough to break, especially
with the butt of the gun resting inside his trousers, but the thought of the
noise and commotion seemed like a prime reason to try to avoid it.  There was
at least one man on his tail, and as Ben considered the concept of Phase Two
and wondered if that was indeed where he currently found himself, presumed that
he must be being followed.  The twenty seconds or so that he had been running
through the field of old paperwork, discarded crisp packets and matchboxes as
they lay scattered on the floor felt chaotic and lacking in purpose as he
searched for a way out.  He knew that he was getting close to the opposite end
of the building which would face onto the main Seventieth Street, and therefore
he assumed that he was getting closer and closer to some sort of public place
which he presumed must offer an increased level of safety.  To his right, he
could see a door on the far side.  It was the first door that sat in the place
where it should, secured by a frame, and from the look of the window lined wall
which it intersected must lead to the outside.  Every other broken door was
different, and he reasoned that it must be his best chance yet.  The inertia of
his run was broken as his body hit the thick wooden door.  He tried the handle,
never really expecting it to budge, and he remained unsurprised when the door
sat stubbornly in place.  Gripping it tight with both hands, he crouched a
little, making his arms straight and in line with the level of the handle.  He
braced his feet apart and placed the sole of one foot against the door frame
and pulled and twisted the handle as hard as he could.  He prayed that with
time the mechanism of the lock, or even the door itself would have degraded
sufficiently for him to be able to disturb its position, but it stood firm,
barring his escape.  The windows to either side were also locked shut, and the
several layers of paint that had been applied whilst the window was closed
prevented their movement as he put all of his body weight behind the lower
section of the old sash window.  Briefly he felt the paralysis of his
predicament and the fear of his entrapment, and like a caged lion he began to
pace around in small circles, his hands running through his sweat drenched hair
as he muttered words of desperation.  He remembered the gun as his arm brushed
past the handle sticking out from his waistband.  He took hold of the handle
and instinctively the gun slid into position, his finger slipping onto the
trigger as he had seen thousands of times in movies.  Not since the age of ten
years old when his father had taken him to the local fair and he had fired the
rifle with the purposefully misguided aim had he held a real gun in his hands. 
His breathing was hard and shaky, and the sense of power that he had seen so
many characters exhibit as they held the cold black metal in their hands was
lost to him.  He felt at risk with the weapon capable of both protecting him
and ending his life, depending solely on whose hand controlled its power.  He
didn’t know if it was loaded or ready, but despite all of his other concerns an
overwhelming sense of necessity crept upon him.  In his life he never had the
need for such an accomplice, and had no desire to own or fire a gun.  But
today, every rule by which he had lived his life so far had been subverted into
a position where they no longer held any weight, and whatever position it was
that he had found himself in, this weapon suddenly seemed like his best, if not
his only option. 

Gripping
the handle tighter to secure it in place, he thought back to the movies he had
seen, and the countless fools like him who had no idea about guns and when
faced with the task of using it held it shakily in front of their assailant and
pulled on an empty trigger.  Remembering every Hollywood lesson, he popped the
button to the front of the handle and the magazine slid out of the gun, hitting
the floor.  Instinctively he jumped back, his fear of its power betrayed. 
Snatching the magazine back up from amongst the scattered papers he could see
that there were more than a handful of bullets, and looked just short of being
full.  He slid it back into position, ramming it hard with the base of his
hand.  He pointed the business end of the gun towards the handle of the door,
and with a last quick look outside through the disintegrating layers of
newspaper to check for random passersby, and a glance over his shoulder to
check that there was no other target behind him which required his urgent
attention, he squeezed the trigger.  The bullet left the gun at a force that he
had never experienced before.  The muscles in his arm shuddered at the impact,
shooting upwards as his shoulder buckled from the shot.  The bullet flew
upwards, tearing into the plaster of the wall, and a small cascade of crumbling
lime plaster work feathered to the ground.  Ben held his breath, realising that
a different strategy was required.  He stuck the nose of the gun directly into
the locking point between the door and the frame.  Bracing not only his hand,
but also his stance, arms, and shoulders, he fired again.  This time, although
his arms jolted back, his shoulder painful and acid hot, he stood firm.  Shards
of wood sprayed backwards and the door wobbled out from its position and he saw
the safety of daylight stream through.   He dragged the door open, its swollen
underside catching on paperwork and floorboards alike as he forced it open. 
Realising the gun was still in his hand, he stowed it back into his trousers
and covered it with his stolen jacket.  He stood for a moment on the steps of
the old building, looking both left and right.  He could see the entrance to
Seventy Fourth Street on his left.  Just in view was the back end of a black
van, the kind that until today didn’t automatically look to him like the kind
that people get bundled into.  But now, knowing that this van had not been
there only ten minutes before, and was stationary with the engine running, it looked
exactly that.  He didn’t doubt that this was for him.  He had no idea if Ami
was responsible for this van, or if it was the person, or people that shot
Ami.  He wasn’t interested in sticking around to find out either.  He pulled up
his jacket collar and slipped down from the steps making his way right.  He
knew that only two streets away from here there must be an underground line. 
If he could make it there, he would be able to get away from here easily
enough, as long as that identity card worked, which would put an enviable
distance between himself and the owners of this black van.  After that, he had
no idea what his next move was.  He had to find Hannah.  He had to find his
son.  But with Ami dead he only really had one option.  Mark.  He had to get to
Twenty Second Street, even though every single thing about that decision felt
wrong.