Binary, page 18
He looked up its side and calculated a path along the windows and piping lining it.
“We should go up.” Bruce climbed several feet. “Come.”
“Wait,” I shouted. “I can’t climb the side of that thing.”
He hopped down. “Why not? Are you damaged?”
“No,” I answered. “I’m just not like you. We’re different. Remember?”
Bruce thought about it. I knew he understood, but he did not at the same time.
He glanced skyward again. “Get on my back.”
I looked up again. “No way.”
“Trust me,” he said.
I flipped a mental coin. “What if you drop me?”
“That will never happen,” he answered.
“What if I can’t hold on?” I asked. “What if I fall?”
“Why do you doubt yourself?” he asked.
It was not how I wanted to test my athletic prowess, but there was no other way in Bruce’s eyes. I looked up and back down the alleyway we had emerged from. An officer in the distance came into view as the bouncers exited the back door. I looked back up and took several fast breaths to build nerves and absorb the building’s staggering height.
“Hey,” shouted an officer at the alleyway’s end.
I looked back. Bouncers were moving from the rushing officer’s path.
Bruce’s gaze remained upwards. “We have to hurry.”
I wrapped my arms and legs around him as tight as I could before closing my eyes. “Okay. Go.”
Concrete hit the side of my face as tiny lead projectiles embedded themselves into the building. Bruce climbed. Another moment and the officer would have been close enough to get a solid mark.
The upward acceleration was quick and frightening. My stomach dropped as we ascended. Gunshots echoed beneath us. My grip struggled against gravity.
We must have been fifteen stories up by the time I opened my eyes. The helicopter circled the building and spotted its bright light upon us. My hair blew in its wind, and I looked down, only to regret doing so.
Bruce never broke concentration. His fingertips punched through the concrete for grip as he climbed.
“Continue to the top of the building,” called a familiar voice. “Lie on your stomach when you reach the top and don’t move.”
I looked back as the helicopter turned to its side. Desmond Pope came into view with an entire team of guards in the chopper with him. It was worst-case scenario.
Bruce was near one of the building’s corners and shifted around it, away from Pope’s view. It was apt thinking, but we did not have long. The chopper’s lights intensified as it made its way to the corner we rounded.
I looked down again. We were high. Really high. A fall would have been certain death.
Bruce smashed out a nearby window, cutting his arm to open it so we could enter.
“Alexis,” called Pope, “make your way to the rooftop with the machine and everything will be alright.”
Lies. That was all I heard. He knew Bruce would not cooperate. He was seeking an excuse to terminate.
24-5
Seeking refuge
We moved through various parts of the building, and I relied on Bruce for guidance more than expected. It was dark and the helicopter’s spotlight left my eyes adjusted to a blackened state. I held his hand in trust as he led me.
I was not frightened. Not at that moment. I was trying too hard to stay alive to think of anything else.
Bruce discovered a place to hide as my eyes adjusted—an old utility closet. He pried open the metal door and bent it back into shape once he shut it. Though he could exit anytime he wanted, I was locked in.
I sat on the floor to rest with laboring lungs, tired muscles, and a growling stomach.
“Bruce?” I asked.
“Yes, Alexis?” asked Bruce in return.
“When the officers were approaching us...” I took a few breaths, “...you said you were remembering again. What do you mean?”
My body was failing me. I eased to my side in a fetal position, starved of nutrients, and pushed to a brink of exhaustion.
Bruce laid next to be and cradled me in. “Alexis...”
“Huh?” I muttered.
There was no way to stay awake in the comfort of his arms. I drifted into Never-Never Land. I cannot say it was the soundest sleep I had ever had, but faced with everything, it was one of the most pleasant nights of the week—an unexpected slice of heaven.
Bruce said something during my last moment of consciousness, but I was already fading and could not make it out.
“* ******** ***, ******.” said Bruce. “*** *** ****. * ** *****.”
Chapter 25
Descension
IT WAS REASSURING TO know someone could protect me when I needed it. I had never laid in a man’s arms before but could not imagine it being further perfect than the night I spent in Bruce’s. Minus being hunted like varmint; it was a comfortable place to wake. I laid there for a moment, thinking about everything that had happened since I had entered the compound and gotten snatched from it.
Bruce gasped and his chest expanded, startling us both. He tried to stand, but I grabbed his forearm for reassurance.
“You’re okay,” I said. “It’s your lungs activating. That’s all.”
He relaxed, but not fully. “I am sorry, Alexis. I do not know why my body jolted.”
“It’s called a reaction, I said. “A reflex. It’s okay.”
Bruce sat back and held me. His chest rose and fell as he breathed. It was human. Comforting. His breath on my skin waged an unspoken war at my resistance to the way I was feeling towards him.
I knew Pope and his men would search the building for us, but the spot we found was obscure. I doubted they would locate it and believed Bruce would wake me if they got close. His hearing was better than mine.
Half asleep, I involuntarily rolled to my side at one point, snuggled up behind him, and wrapped my arms around his waist. A subtle smile crept around inside me, and the world’s troubles did not have time to enter my thoughts. I was out again, but it did not last long.
I opened my eyes. They should have been in the building by now.
“How long have I been asleep?” I asked.
“Hours,” answered Bruce.
“How many hours?” I asked.
“Five,” he said.
I sat upright. “Five?”
“Yes,” he answered. “They are in the building now, Alexis. I can hear them. Somewhere below us.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?” I asked.
“Because you needed rest,” he answered.
We had to move. I got to my feet. Bruce rose from the floor behind me.
“Come on,” I said. “It’s time for us to go.”
“Go where?” asked Bruce.
“I don’t know yet,” I answered, “but we can’t stay here.”
Bruce partially unbent the door before looking back at me. He did not want to lead me into harm.
“We must,” I reassured. “We have to go.”
“But they will—”
“No,” I interrupted, “they won’t do anything, Bruce.”
He unbent the door and exited the small, dusty room, turning back to me to hold out his hand and giving one last look to evaluate my worries—ones he did not understand. I was not concerned about my safety. I was concerned for Bruce’s.
The building was undergoing extensive repairs and looked different than I thought it was going to when we entered a hallway. It was not in shambles or falling apart, but it was a construction war zone: sheetrock, plywood, air-compressors, hammers, and hardhats left behind by the previous day’s shift were strewn about with a thin film of drywall and sawdust sediment over them.
It was not long before we found a stairwell and started our descent. There was a plaque on the wall next to it:
‘22nd FLOOR’
Twenty-one more stories and we would most likely find ourselves on the run again. It was not the most comforting thought, but we got lucky and made it to the eighth without incident. Suspense was killing me. Every floor and corner we turned left me waiting to get ambushed. No matter what, we had to get out of there and to safety.
If I was unconscious for five hours, the sun would soon rise. It would be difficult to stay from sight in broad daylight, but we could not stay in the building. They would find us if we did.
The stairwell descent was too easy. They were giving us space for reasons I did not know. I knew those at the compound were not backing off. Bruce was too valuable to walk away from, and Pope would not leave without a fight. Paranoia set in.
“Bruce,” I said. “We can’t just keep going down.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because there’s probably a legion of men down there waiting for us,” I answered.
Bruce stopped. “What for?”
“Did you just make a joke?” I asked.
“Joke,” he said. “A play on words using—”
“Never mind,” I said. “There has to be another way out of here.”
“But we have already been up,” said Bruce. “The only other direction is down.”
He was right. A modest nod on my part was all it took before we were moving again, but there was a change in Bruce as our altitude diminished. He slowed or paused each time an unfamiliar sound reverberated into the empty stairwell. His growing caution showed signs of serious concern for the first time since the world came down around us. It showed further progression in his development.
“I hear something.” He paused for the fourth time. “Do you hear something?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “I think so. Why do you think I wanted to stop three floors ago?”
We braved our way down another flight of stairs before encountering a makeshift roadblock. Coils of razor wire had been unraveled down the stairs as far as we could see.
“Great,” I said.
It did not seem impossible to navigate, but it would have cut me to ribbons along the journey. Bruce probably could have crossed it, but I’m sure it would have slowed him down. The comfort of his hand was the only thing keeping me from freaking out about it.
“You are applying significantly more force to my hand than you were a moment ago,” said Bruce. “Are you okay?”
“Dandy, Bruce,” I answered. “Just dandy.”
“What is dandy?” he asked.
“I was being—”
The sound of breaking glass cut me short. I looked up. A rain of clear, triangular particles was hurtling towards me from the skylight above the stairwell. All I could do was gasp before Bruce yanked me from harm’s way.
I peeked through his sheltering arms to catch one of the compound guards tossing a purple orb through the skylight’s frame. It lit up as it fell.
“They’re here,” I said.
I backpedaled as my counterpart looked up to see the falling orb and ran to the nearest stairwell door. Bruce followed closely. We made it only halfway across the large floor filled with dusty cubicles, desks, chairs, and computer desk as the door closed behind us.
A bass-toned explosion followed a purple flash that moved through the room with currents of what looked like watery currents of lightning through a stormy sky. There was no escaping its flow, which quickly shifted to what looked like a fire in zero gravity, only there were no flames.
Bruce moved to shield me behind a desk, but the lightning reached us mid-motion and I could no longer control my legs. My equilibrium was sliding off track. I became confused, like a child who had spun until they were too dizzy to stand.
I tumbled out of control, bounced off the side of a cubicle wall, and hit the ground. Nothing would move. I could not call for Bruce. I thought my neck broke for an instant, but my body was sore enough to tell it had not. Every muscle ached as if I were a gym-rat.
I struggled to pick myself up and looked for Bruce. My vision had clashed against the orb’s effects and lost. It was hard to see, but my eyes were adjusting.
Bruce was a murky sight when I saw him struggling to right himself. He made it to his feet as I pulled myself up but lost his balance and stumbled some ten feet past me over an office chair in the middle of the aisle. I rushed to his side.
“Bruce,” I said. “Come on, Bruce. You’ve got to get up.”
He found the strength to make it to his hands and knees. I grabbed him to help but could not budge him.
“Come on,” I grunted.
Bruce rose to his feet. “I am okay.”
He followed me across the room, hoping to find another stairwell. I would have settled for another closet at that point. Another anything leading us to temporary freedom.
We were wounded rats in a maze trying to sneak past starving cats. I glanced to Bruce. He was regaining his senses.
“You ready?” I asked.
He pulled me behind him to take the lead. Another deep-toned explosion sounded out from an unknown room in the building as he overtook me.
We went through multiple rooms, each as abandoned as the next. Tables, desk, fax machines, and other office equipment flew by as we dashed about—no reasonable place to hide found.
An exit in the last room on the floor caught my attention. We moved through it and into a hallway, cutting past a stack of paint buckets and old lumber before turning left into another room: an office with no other exit. He tugged me back into the hallway, and we rushed towards the end of it and the opposing stairwell at the other end of the hall. We did not enter. People were talking on the other side of the door on a nearby level.
The hallway was quietly inviting and calm. My urge was to move up once we found another stairwell, but I knew that was not an option. Not if we wanted to get out of there.
Bruce stopped. “Why do we not go back down the side of the building?”
“No way,” I answered. “Going up was scary enough.”
He thought for a moment before moving for the last door in the hallway and reaching for its knob.
“Hold on,” I said.
I moved in and listened, tilting my head for a better earshot to grab clues before easing gradually forward and cracking the door open. I peeked in.
Two soldiers with long-barreled weapons walked quietly in search of us at the far side of the empty room. I was unfamiliar with the munitions. They were not anything I had seen at the compound, but the suits they adorned matched Desmond Pope’s.
“Let’s go back to the stairwell and keep going down,” I whispered while easing the door shut. “They’re searching for us in there.”
We moved back to the first stairwell, but Bruce hesitated after he entered. He looked towards the door below and back up the stairwell before turning back to me.
“Now, Bruce,” I urged. “There’s nowhere else to go.
He moved; I followed. The stairwell ended, and we reached the first floor. Ground level. The moment I had been trying to avoid was upon us. A grim feeling set in as Bruce reached for the door handle.
“Be careful,” I said.
He cut me strong eyes. “I will not let them hurt you.”
I was being protected by someone capable, but I remained unsure to what extent. The men looking for us wielded unique weapons, ones I assumed were designed to combat Bruce. They left the weapons out of the files I read, no doubt amongst the pages of blacked-out paragraphs.
Bruce turned the door at the end of the stairwell’s handle and eased into the room ahead. I flinched as a minor explosion from the lower side of the frame knocked his feet out from under him. There was smoke in the air, but he was already rising back to his feet by the time I turned back to him.
“Bruce,” I said. “Are you—”
“Hurry,” he interrupted.
Men shouted as I followed Bruce across the first floor of the building. He passed through another door and a second explosion at the bottom of its frame turned him nearly upside down. He rose to his feet and looked my way with large wounds gaping in his lower legs.
“They booby-trapped the doors,” I said.
“Yes, Alexis. I am aware of this.”
“Check the frames before you move through them,” I said.
He nodded and continued as combinations of fluid and dark blood ran down the outside of his right leg. The booby traps had exposed his metallic skeletal system to our dusty surroundings, and he was bleeding out.
“Your leg...” I said.
He stopped to look. “I will be okay. It is... It’s not terminal.”
Pope’s men were growing closer, talking amongst themselves as they stalked us. Each area we passed through trying to dodge them held a similar layout: fax machines, cubicles, printers, computers, desks, and chairs. It was repetitive. We were in some sort of financial building.
Bruce stopped when he reached the next door and checked its frame before entering. A small device the size of a box of matches was resting firmly against the lower portion of the frame.
“Come here,” said Bruce.
I eased over. “What is it?”
“Another trap,” he answered.
There was a small eye on the device and a nearly invisible blacklight laser emerging from it, catching on settling dust. The opposite side of the door held a tiny sensor the size of a penny to receive the beam.
“It looks like an electronic tripwire,” I said. “There’s a laser that shines from the little box here. It goes over to this small thing on the door and the signal is constant. If the signal gets broke, it detonates.”
He reached through the door and squatted down, moving his arm outside the beam’s reach to see if it would go off, but nothing happened.
“Negative,” said an unseen guard. “No clear shot without hitting the girl.” He paused. “Ten-four.”
I looked back and the guard move from sight. I barely saw him before he dipped behind the wall in the hallway outside the door across the room. If I had not been standing where I was, he would have shot Bruce.
“Are you ready?” asked Bruce.
“Ready for what?” I asked in return.
The guard reached his hand in and waved a small object over the device on the door next to him to deactivate it and stepped through with another behind him.
