“Is it the game?”
“It’s the danger.” Hearing footsteps, rapidly closing in, on the metal flooring outside, Mika picked Robyn up and ran out of another door at the side of the room and found himself in a white corridor, also with metal grating on the floor. With Robyn lying in his arms, laughing, he winced as the closed hole in his stomach pulled on the skin. Ignoring the mild irritation, Mika ran along the corridor, painfully aware of the footsteps that were coming faster than he could run carrying Robyn, and turned the handle of a door to an office. It wasn’t locked. He set Robyn down on the desk and locked the door. “I’m not sure how long it’ll hold.”
Robyn was only half-listening, busy looking around the sparsely furnished office. There was the desk she was sitting on, two chairs (one behind the desk and one near the wall), a large filing cabinet in the corner and a coat stand by the door. “Everything will die. Plants, animals-“ she stared up at him, suddenly scared, “-people.”
“Not if I can help it. Where would we be without people?”
She looked towards the window, but Mika quickly realised that she was listening to another of the things only she could hear. “The stars are crying for someone to help them. They don’t want to die. They scream and they tell me things. They say that this is the end.”
He heard the sound of someone trying the door. “And the stars tell you all this? What else do they say, baby?”
Robyn’s eyes went wide and she curled herself up as she heard a bullet be shot into the lock. Pieces of metal fell to the ground and Johnny pushed the door open with one finger. He grinned at having so easily caught and cornered his prey, and Mika squinted in disgust at the holes where his teeth once were. “The stars say to stay away from the bad man.”
“Nowhere to run,” he said.
“No. Nowhere to run,” agreed Mika, smiling back at him amiably. He placed his hands on the desk and vaulted over it so he was now between the desk and the window. He wrapped one strong arm around Robyn’s tiny waist, pulled her up to him and fell backwards through the window with her. There was a loud bang as the couple hit the metal lid of a wheelie bin. Johnny went around the edge of the desk and peered out of the shattered window to where the man and woman lay, still, eyes closed, possibly injured, on the bent metal lid.
Johnny wasn’t really bothered about them so long as they were out of the building, but supposed he should check that they were okay and call them an ambulance if they were hurt. That was part of the reason he had been dismissed from his last security guard job – lack of compassion. So he turned around and began to make his way out of the building. On his way he out, he patted his trouser pocket to make sure he still had his mobile phone, just in case he needed it to call nine-nine-nine.
Mika groaned as he realised where he had landed, but was just glad that the bin hadn’t been open when he’d fell onto it. He opened his eyes after a moment and pushed himself into a sitting position. In mid-fall, Robyn had rolled away from him and now lay beside him on her front. She heard Mika and moved onto her knees. She looked up to the window they had crashed through felt for Mika. “Is he gone?”
“For now, but he’ll be back.”
“So, let’s get gone before he gets here.” Robyn swung her legs around and slid off of the bent lid. She waited until Mika had cleared it then looked again at the damage they had caused. “Did we do that?”
Mika rolled his eyes and tapped Robyn on the shoulder to remind here of why they were here. Johnny had said that Mr Jordan-Smyth was in the next building over so, Robyn at his side, he walked briskly over to the building, looking nothing like an intruder. “This is the place. Come on,” he said, not looking at her. The building was skyscraper tall and was covered in windows – they were both glad it wasn’t daylight.
“Mika?” Robyn easily matched his pace and they breezed through the open automatic doors. He ignored her call and she quickly stepped around, so she was right in front of him. “Why did you help those people earlier?”
“I don’t know.” That was true. He didn’t know why he had done that. All he knew was that something was hurting them that shouldn’t be. He opened his mouth to say something else but Robyn silenced him by holding up a finger – she still had questions.
“I don’t understand,” she complained. “We hurt people – they don’t do it themselves. I don’t like this game. The rules are all wonky,” she added sulkily. She tilted her head to the side and listened for any sounds outside. She could hear the sounds of Johnny searching for them in the big bin, he threw a wooden crate to one side and it cracked on the ground, and she imagined him muttering under his breath – her hearing wasn’t good enough to pick that up, so she only imagined it.
Mika crossed the lobby and looked at the large board nailed to the wall which told people where they could find the most important employees of FDR Industries. He ran his finger over all of the names on the board and stopped when he found the name he was after - Gareth Jordan-Smyth. He was on office number 13 on the first floor. “Next floor up. We’ll take the stairs.” Being distracted, Robyn hadn’t heard the footsteps getting closer to the building, but Mika had picked up on it and hoped that Johnny was still too far away to see that they were in the building. He spun around looking for the stairwell when his eyes fell upon the metallic door to a lift. No. Lifts took too long, and they didn’t have time to waste. He caught sight of a white swing door, which he could see led to the stairs, whistled to Robyn who was fascinated by the approaching man outside, and raced for the door. Robyn tore her eyes away from Johnny, who had not yet realised that she and Mika were the figures inside, and twisted round, her long red hair swinging out behind her. She caught sight of Mika’s disappearing black t-shirt and sped across the lobby, catching him up on the first flight of stairs. Her rubber heeled boots didn’t even make a sound on the stairs, though Mika’s trainers didn’t squeak as she thought they would. Again, this fixation with footwear had nothing to do with what they were here for, but she wanted to be distracted to keep her from thinking too much. Mika, on the other hand, loved thinking. His brain never switched off. He was always aware of every single thing, however tiny, that was happening. They covered the last few steps to the first floor and ran through a maze of corridors until they found the correct office on the opposite end of the floor. Robyn was half a pace behind Mika all the way.
Mika couldn’t stop in time and rammed his shoulder into the door with a gold plated thirteen on it. Inside, he saw a sight that screamed ‘wrong!’ and threw out his arm to halt Robyn in her tracks as she ran in behind him. She nearly fell over his arm but got her balance back as she saw what he did. It was enough to stop anyone in their tracks. “Looks like someone got here first,” she muttered, ducking under his arm and wondering over to the man, slumped over his desk. “There’s a lot of blood.”
Mika sniffed the air and turned to one of the two-seater sofas opposite the man. There he saw another figure, this time a woman, with a bullet hole in her chest. Much of the blood in the pool on and around the desk belonged to the woman, rather than the man, and the heady mix of the two scents had indicated that. Quite intoxicating really – and he could tell from the scents that the woman was O positive and the man was AB negative. The thick, off-white carpet bore reddish-brown bloodstains from the table to her body. “Blood everywhere.” Robyn looked up at him, Mika stared back at her. The sight of the blood disturbed him quite a bit, not just because there was so much of it but more because it was too cold and stale for it to be of any nourishment. “No-one did this to them. They did it to themselves.” Mika caught sight of the gun they had both used and walked over to it.
Robyn felt the man’s neck for a pulse – the woman had died many hours ago – and found only a very weak and faltering one. She could tell that it was much too late for him to be of any use. He didn’t even have enough blood for a nibble. “He’s as good as dead.” She gr
abbed hold of a photograph in a silver frame from the table and looked at it. “Hey, he had a family… and he looks happy.”
“The woman had a family too,” Mika added. He grabbed hold of the gun, twirled it around in his hand and shoved it into the waist band of his bark blue jeans.
“What would make them kill themselves?”
“Same thing that’s making everyone outside go crazy. Same thing that we’re going to stop,” Mika told her, glad that she hadn’t gone off into her own world again yet.
“Well, we can’t threaten him into telling us.” Robyn moved around the room and wrapped herself into his arms. “What do we do?”
Mika crossed his wrists over her chest and looked over to the now dead man. He smirked at the body, oddly pleased by the sight of a dead body that he hadn’t caused. It was a strange feeling, different, but not quite as thrilling as executing the kill personally, or even watching Robyn do it. “We use our brains. If we were keeping top-secret information around, strictly underground stuff, where would we leave it?”
Robyn wriggled around in his arms to face him. “Underground?” she suggested.
“Brilliant.”
“Yeah, brilliant idea,” came the throaty voice of the security guard who had been chasing them. “About six feet underground. No, that’s not the Crash Room – it’ll be you.” He took one of the guns from a holster by his hip and levelled it at Mika’s head. He squeezed the trigger without a moments hesitation, but Mika ducked, pulling Robyn down with him, and was out of range before the bullet had even left the barrel. The bullet went wild and the two snuck around and out of the room even as he realised that they were no longer in his line of fire.
“See ya,” Mika left hanging in the air as he fled down the corridor, matching his speed exactly to that of Robyn. She began running down the double flight of stairs, one at a time, and Mika simply leapt over the banister onto the bottom few stairs. He jumped them, grabbed her hand and strolled out into the lobby. It would take Johnny a good few minutes to even register their absence. Mika knew that the guard would be too busy investigating the two dead bodies in the room before he even realised they were gone.
David lay in a heap by the wall, sinking further and further into unconsciousness. A tiny voice deep in the back of his mind told him to get up and find the people who had done this to him. But he found the comforting, velvety blackness to have an irresistible pull. He somehow knew that he was nearing death with every second he stayed under but the pictures he saw demanded that he stay ever longer.
His wife and twin sons were sitting in the car as it pulled into the driveway to their home. David could see everything, hear everything, but he was not with them. It was as if he was hovering above them He felt a surge of emotion for them; for the family he had made for himself; and hated himself for not being there now.
“Mummy,” said 5-year-old Alex. “Why does Granny live on her own?” He didn’t really understand that her husband had died and she now had no-one.
“Duh!” scorned his brother Matty. “She likes having her space, silly. She can eat ice cream for brekky and no-one can tell her off.”
“Matt’s right.” His wife smiled and walked around to the backdoor of the car to let the boys out and wandered into the house. “She eats ice cream in the morning.”
David allowed himself to float to the ground and walked in behind him. He reached out to touch his wife but his hand went straight through her. That didn’t surprise him in the least and he just shrugged.
Rebecca shuddered and closed the door. This had never happened – might never happen – but it could happen, all too easily. It was daytime, late afternoon he guessed. The woman kicked off her shoes and slumped on the sofa in front of the TV, exhausted from her long waitressing shift. The boys were sitting at the coffee table already arguing over their colouring books and crayons. She flicked over to one of the sports channels and watched the highlights of last nights football match. “David?” she called. “David?” He was standing behind her and turned at the sound she’d thought was him. Hearing nothing more, she turned back to her sports show and watched for a few more moments until another noise came and Alex started crying.
“Mommy,” he sobbed. “Where’re all the bangs coming from?”
“I don’t know, honey,” she replied, folding him into her arms. Matty also started crying and she held him in her other arm. “Sssh! It’s okay, it’s okay. Sssh!”
Two men burst through the door into the living room, one holding a rifle, the other a small but deadly-looking dagger. David pushed himself up against a wall and watched, both unwilling and unable to intervene. Rebecca and the two men, both unidentifiable in black balaclavas, were shouting at each other but David couldn’t make out the words. The children were still crying and holding on to each other, knowing that something bad was about to happen but not understanding what. David didn’t even feel the residue of the intense emotion he had felt a minute before – there was nothing. He was passive, empty. Rebecca stood up and looked the gunman straight in the eye.
David could hear the three adults talking, the words rushing straight past his ears, not sinking in. He was aware of the actions in the room, the gunman keeping a steady grip on his weapon, the man with the dagger twitching slightly as he flexed his hand around the knife, the children holding each other in unknown terror. Then suddenly, everything was happening in slow motion and was all too real.
Alex ran over to one of the men – the one with the knife – who had crouched down and was holding his arms out to him. Matty yelled out to him but clung to Rebecca’s legs. “You can do what you like to me but don’t you dare hurt my children,” she said, not letting one single tear drop. It just wouldn’t do to let the boys see her cry. “Alex. Come here. Don’t hurt the kids.”
Alex turned to his mother but was unable to move as the man grabbed him around the waist and turned him back. Alex bent into the man as if to hug him and David heard the knife slide into the child’s gut. Alex cried out in pain and the woman dropped to her knees in shock. The older man twisted the knife, ruining his liver instantly, and pulled it out. The lethal curved blade was covered in blood and glinted in the sunlight. “You mean like that?”
“You bastard!” she screeched. “You killed my baby!”
The boy fell to the floor, let go by the knifeman, and blood began to pool around him. “Who’s next?” sneered the man with the rifle. He pointed the gun at each of them. “You, or the boy?”
Rebecca pushed Matty away from her and stepped forward. “Please, he hasn’t done anything. Let him go and take me instead.”
“Oh ho ho,” chuckled the knifeman. “I don’t think you understand. There’s no instead of.”
“Only second,” he pointed at Rebecca, “and third,” then at Matty. The rifle looked more scary than she thought possible and she was suddenly glad she couldn’t see his face. “You’ve seen your first child die, and I know that hurt. I wonder how painful it’ll be for him to watch his mother die.”
“Mummy!” sobbed Matty as she straightened up. “Mummy!”
David looked away as he bent to tie up his shoelace. He heard a gunshot, followed by the sound of a knife slicing through clothing and a second gunshot. He looked up to see his second son lying dead and his wife rapidly dying on the carpet. He stood, rooted to the spot, unable to move. No, that was wrong – he tested every limb until he was sure that he could move should he want to. But he didn’t want to, even though he felt he should. His innocent family needed his help and yet, he felt… nothing. For his young family, for the people he loved most in the world, for the three he was supposed to lay down his life for. He watched them as they lay dying on the floor, unfeeling. Deep red blood met from three bodies to form a large red stain on the carpet. So red. So much of it. David stood, transfixed by the hypnotic sight, and didn’t even notice the tiny movement. Rebecca snapped her eyes open
and took a shallow breath. David looked over to her and drifted across the room. He still felt emotionless even as he passed over the limp, lifeless bodies of his children. They were dead but he didn’t feel anything for them.
“David, I know you’re there,” she whispered. “I just can’t see –“ Rebecca coughed and let her head fall back to the ground. “I can feel you here. I know you think you’re not important, but you are. You can’t change what’s already happened, but you can stop what will. It’s up to you now.” Rebecca closed her eyes for the final time and let her head fall to the side. Dead.
David closed his eyes and felt himself fall to the ground beside her. A second or two later, he reopened his eyes back in his sore and painful body, crumpled on the floor. “I could help,” he realised. It wasn’t that he didn’t really want to help – he just felt like that because he didn’t think he would make a difference. He struggled to his feet and staggered over to the unattended front desk, reaching over and feeling for the phone. Picking up the handset, David punched the familiar home number in and waited as it rang. And rang. And rang.
Suddenly the image of his wife and children lying dead in the living room flashed into his mind. The incessant chatter of the football commentator did nothing to deaden the dread. The sight of thick, dark blood and the sound of pained screams filled his mind in full technicolour and surround sound. He dropped the phone on the floor and thought about rushing home to try and save them but found that urge repressed by a memory. Something that Rebecca had told him while she was dying in his dream. He couldn’t change what had already happened, but he could change what was about to happen.
He blinked a few times, trying to shut out the image, prating to a God he didn’t believe in that his family were okay. “Oh, God.” He leant on the desk and dropped his head into his arms. “Oh god, oh god, oh god. Please let them be okay.” Suddenly, everything went fuzzy again and things started swimming before his eyes and he felt the ground come up to meet him.