Panoptic

Panoptic

  By Jacob Magnus

  Copyright 2012 Jacob Magnus

  Blood ran down his scalp. He wiped it and tried to rise, but the guard kicked him in the chest, and pressed him into the ground with his boot. Soro struggled under the pressure, and looked for a way out. All he could see was the man’s shadow, a mere silhouette against the brightly lit cherry blossom tree. As he looked up, the guard raised his baton, another shadow against the pink and purple blossom.

  The shadowy baton fell, like a fragment of black blossom, rotten before its time, from the radiant tree. Soro watched it fall, seeming as slow and graceful as the blossom, and pictured the moment when it would strike, and raise a red flower from his skull.

  The instant seemed to expand, as if a god, in his black humour, wanted him to appreciate the wonder of existence, in the very last moment before it was extinguished. His mind sped free, and sought safety in the past.

  ***

  He pulled up in a dingy side road, the tarmac a flickering wash of grey and green in the light of old, rusted streetlights. The air smelled bitter, tainted by fumes from the factories on either side, their Spartan concrete lurid with graffiti. A huge blue-skinned Cyclops gazed at him, his eye winking in the flickers of the lights. It was so beautiful it made his fingers itch, but the street lamp flicked on and off with a broken rhythm, the promise of a ruined shot. He tasted copper and sulphur, and the acrid stink of burnt plastic.

  He left the rental there, hoping it would still have all its tires when he came back. The night was quiet, the air still, warm and muggy, too much for spring. He wiped perspiration from his brow as he jogged along silent streets towards the New Verity compound.

  He didn't mind running, but something felt wrong, more than just the uncomfortable warmth. He felt odd, out of place, the same kind of feeling he always had when he'd been spotted on a job. But that couldn't be it. He'd parked five blocks down from the compound, to be sure he wasn't seen making his approach.

  He knew the value of stealth.

  But still he felt that gnawing irritation, eyes on his back, searing the skin. He tried to shake it off. He'd been on a hundred night jobs, a thousand. He'd crawled under fences and snuck over rooftops, and he'd always captured his prize. He didn't need to get the freeping critters over this, a simple vegetable snap.

  Pum pum pum.

  He narrowed his brows, but he kept running. Leaves rustling in the wind. A hot engine cooling. Marshmallows falling through a time warp. Not footsteps.

  Not footsteps.

  Pum pum pum.

  He flinched, halted, turned around. He swept his eyes over the street, from the graffitoed walls to the shadowed back doors, to the scratched, rusting lamps. He saw a scrap of shadow lurch behind the nearest, dented and bent, the victim of some sloshed driver. He peered closer, and tried to ignore the beating in his chest, the cold moisture that trickled down his back.

  It moved again. Small, lumpish, quick.

  His shoulders, hunched before, now relaxed, and he sighed. "Squiz!"

  There came no answer.

  "Squiz, I know it's you. Allons! Get back to the car, camerado. Wait for me."

  No reply.

  "I know you hate it, but you have stop following me. People don't understand. It's dangerous. Allons!"

  A small dark shape detached from the lamp post, hesitated, and darted away into the night.

  Soro waited until he could no longer hear the sound of scampering. Then he turned, and hurried on his way.

  ***

  He caught sight of himself in the jutting mirror of a truck as he passed by. The hazy light gave his reflection a ghoulish pallor. His blue jeans looked even more scratched and worn than usual, the pockets of his sleeveless denim jacket bulged with obscene mystery, and his grey polo neck looked like a garment stitched together from corpse hide. He couldn’t see the scuffed climbing boots in the mirror, and he wished he couldn’t see his face. The curve of the mirror distorted his features. It took his sharp jaw and cheekbones, his aquiline nose; it twisted and stretched them into an eerie form, suited for wearing flayed skin, better suited for feasting on cadavers. The mirror warped and shifted all his features, except his eyes. They shone orange brown, even in the pallid street lighting, and they gazed with such intensity it startled him to see it.

  ***

  Soon he came to the compound. He'd chosen to approach it from the east, away from the front entrance. From here, the chain link fence, and the squat buildings beyond, looked like any number of others. There was nothing unique about the sight, nothing to make it stand out. He felt a trifling sense, akin to vertigo, that he was in the wrong place.

  He reached up to his shoulder, and experienced a momentary shock as his hand failed to encounter the comforting presence. His sense of unease deepened.

  "Stupid. Stupid. Throw it off. Toss it out."

  He took a deep breath, and drew nearer the fence, under the twisted branches of an elm that fought paving slabs and pollution. No large and melodious thoughts fell on him. He'd have to make them himself.

  "Get in. Get it. Get what you came for."

  ***

  He walked up to the fence, and brushed it with his hands; he felt chilly steel, surprising in the warm air. Some rust flaked off on his hands, and when he brushed it off, he caught the metallic taste of it in the back of his throat. Crouching down, he found the spot he’d seen before. Those roaming street map vans had brought their owners a lot of bad press, and for good reason, he mused. But for someone like him, they were proving a useful resource. Down at the ground, the roots of the elm tree had twisted writhed in slow motion, probing, pressing, thrusting through the soil with inexorable force. The men who had built this fence had made it well, but they hadn’t counted on nature and time. The elm’s roots had riven cracks through the paving slabs, bent the lower bar of the fence, and gouged a rent in the compound’s security.

  Soro added to it with the help of a prying iron.

  He felt a twinge of guilt as he helped nature and entropy to damage the fence. On the other hand, he prided himself on doing no harm, or as little as possible. And what he had come for he would steal away without changing anything. No matter how much he took, the firm’s owners would lose nothing.

  “They should pay me,” he muttered as he strained at the fence. “I’m doing them a service. Think of all that publicity, and no charge, thank you, sir.”

  He leaned back to assess his handiwork. The gap under the fence looked big enough to accommodate a fat rabbit. “Good thing I’m small.”

  He crawled under the fence. This was why he wore rough, scratched jeans, why his denim jacket bore so many marks and scrapes, and why his climbing boots had long ago lost their new leather lustre. No matter how many times he got them cleaned or repaired, or bought new clothes, his gear would always look ragged and shabby.

  In the end, you learned to take pride in the ragamuffin look.

  With much sweating and soft cursing, he slithered out on the other side of the fence. He stayed low, hunkered down, and scanned the interior of the compound. Ahead he saw the low blocks of the labs. On this side of the fence, he saw they were faced with yellowish bricks, and ringed with a well-lit walking path. He saw security cameras covering that path, and…

  But no.

  “Where are they?” he said under his breath.

  According to his research, the Verity labs were patrolled by private security, professionals contracted out from Gell Shield, a serious, respected firm. When he’d learned they were working the labs, he’d felt a frisson of nerves, but it had passed. As always, he’d told himself that he and the guard had mutually compatible interests. If he kept out of their way, they’d never know he was there.

  Until the pictures sold.

  Even so, he’d
played it cautious; he’d spent a week longer on planning than usual, and he’d come ready to bolt at the slightest sign of bad news. You did not want Gell Shield to give you their full and enthusiastic attention.

  He should have been happy to see they were absent.

  But he wasn’t.

  “It’s not the guard you see that gets you,” he muttered, double checking to be sure he hadn’t missed some vital detail. “It’s the guard who sees you.”

  Checked and re-checked, clear remained the coast.

  He shrugged. “No arguments.”

  Soro made his way around the buildings. He’d entered from the east side, and now he walked to the north, with the labs on his left, and the fence on his right. He kept his eyes open, and he listened for footsteps, voices, or, worst of all, the gruffle and murmur of dogs. Though he heard nothing, he didn’t relax. He couldn’t. Though he wasn’t a thief, or any kind of crook (so he told himself), that wouldn’t keep him out of trouble if the guard caught him in a moment of lapsed vigilance.

  His route brought him around to the front of the compound, to the gates, and the car park. He strained his senses to the utmost.

  The growl of a distant car. The ozone smell of train tracks nearby. The wail of a baby, reduced by distance to a plaintive whisper. The guard shack at the main gate glowed from within, and he saw, through the toughened glass, a computer, a control panel, a phone, and an empty chair.

  “I could have walked in the front!”

  He felt a little aggrieved at having wasted so much effort.

  Not one to waste an opportunity, he moved on, though the mysterious absence sent cold thrills down his back, and made the hairs on the nape of his neck prickle. He kept to the grassy verge of the compound, close to the chain link fence, and away from the well lit path that ran around the labs. The scent of the grass tickled his nose, but here too he caught an odd tinge; the warm night air wafted a damp, pungent aroma, as if the fresh spring grass was already wilting and rotten. The silence, loneliness and unpleasant odours combined and lent strength to the anxiety of trespass.

  He felt like a fly on the lip of a biting plant, at the moment when the sweet scent of nectar gives way to the stench of digested flesh.

  His discomfort grew, and he sensed an almost palpable force, pressing him back, even as it drew him on. For the first time, he thought of giving up, of going home.

  What would he lose?

  “Pride. Self respect. Confidence.”

  Not good enough.

  “The prize. Special. Unique.”

  Aye, that was it. Beauty. On this dark night, in this forbidding, fenced off place, stood something special, a unique work of art. No one had seen it yet, no one off of Verity’s personnel roster. He would be the first.

  “And she will give her first to me,” he said, and smirked.

  “Allons.”

  He wished Squiz was with him.

  ***

  Sinews strengthened, determination regained, he squared his shoulders, and walked on. The northernmost building in the complex of yellowish labs jutted out. He approached it, and rounded the northeast corner.

  And he saw it.

  Not what he’d come for. According to the information he’d gleaned, that lay further still, in a grove on the west of the complex. He saw the front entrance up close. He saw something that had, until then, been blocked from sight by the guard hut. He saw the front gate itself, smashed and rent, hanging off its hinges.

  He saw the tire tracks, deep gouges across the grass, veering off to the west, around the buildings and out of sight.

  And he heard the screams.

  ***

  From around the corner of the labs he heard them, the howls of a woman in pain. Caution told him to slow down, back away, avoid trouble. Caution told him to mind his own skin.

  He ignored it.

  He followed the trail of ripped grass and turf. He followed the woman’s anguished cries. He turned the final corner, and froze.

  He’d found the Gell Shield guards.

  The car tracks ran west, in a wobbly line to edge of the company’s private grove. They terminated in a grey green army jeep, circa World War II. He saw a tight group of guards clustered around the vehicle.

  The guards milled around the halted jeep, waving their batons and cursing. He couldn't see their captive, but he could hear her. She wailed like a cat in an oven.

  His trained eyes saw the jeep and the huddle of guards as a foreground; in the background of the picture lay the grove. The trees gleamed against the dark, light by halogen beams set in the soil. They made a shining semicircle, framing New Verity's prize creation. He couldn't see it, except maybe a flash of vivid pink when one of the guards shifted on his feet, but he knew it was there. The picture was framed by earth and sky, grass as black as space.

  Again, the itch. His fingers longed for the camera.

  He had a perfect opportunity. He'd known he'd have to evade the guards, and he'd come prepared to make a distraction, at least to take their attention off the precious grove long enough for him to get what he'd come for. He hadn't expected anyone to beat him to it, and he had never imagined that his competitors would be so generous as to make a diversion for him. The stalled jeep and its yowling occupant had the guards all in a bundle.

  It was a perfect opportunity.

  All he had to do was walk around, staying in the shadows between the fence and the lighted path, and Gell Shield would never know he'd been there. That was a benefit worth paying for; the firm was always getting sued by someone. Excessive force. Brutality.

  The screams continued to sound in his ears. They set his teeth on edge, and made his heart shudder.

  "It's not my fault," he muttered.

  No one answered him.

  "I didn't ask you to come. I didn't want you to come."

  The screams dwindled to silence.

  "What am I supposed to do, anyway? I don't have a gun, and if I tried to use one, I'd probably blow off my own ear."

  A warm breeze moved through the trees, making the leaves rustle, and carrying the scents of sap and the perfume of cherries. Left alone with his heart, Soro sighed.

  "I hope I live to regret this," he said.

  Whatever was going on at the jeep, he was sure the Gell Shield boys wouldn't shoot their captive out of hand.

  Kind of sure.

  ***

  He walked to the front doors of the labs, careful to stay out of the line of the cameras. He might have to play the hero, but he wasn’t about to play the stupid hero.

  He crept up to the double doors, which some convenient, helpful guard had left open, peered inside at the blue carpets, cream walls and white Styrofoam ceiling tiles, and spotted the telltale nozzle of a sprinkler set in the ceiling. Nearby he saw the round, flying saucer shaped smoke detector.

  Grinning, he pulled a long yellow tube out of his pocket, and twisted the end.

  The yellow tube grew hot.

  It burned his fingers, so he tossed it through the double doors. Then, without waiting to see what was going to happen, he grabbed a drain pipe by the doors, and climbed.

  An electronic shriek pierced the silence.

  Mouthing his choicest curses, he scrambled up the pipe even faster, and swung himself up onto the low, flat roof. The speedy climb cost him scratched knuckles, and a bruise where his knee bumped the edge of the roof. He sucked down the pain, and hoped that the worst of it had passed.

  The smoke bomb had done its work, for sure. He’d had it custom made by a friend at a special effects company. It was guaranteed to spew out choking gouts of black smoke, impenetrable to the eye, enough to make any smoke alarm scream for its salt. The smoke was produced by a chemical reaction, not combustion; he hadn’t wanted to do any damage.

  Just then, he wanted to do some damage to the fire alarm. The thing wailed like all the souls in Hell, and he, lying flat on his belly on top of the lab, had no way to escape it. If he stood up, his silhouette would be obvious, and he
’d be sure to be spotted. If he rolled to either side, he was likely to fall off the roof.

  It felt like a bad trap, and that cold feeling in his gut wasn’t only because of the chilly concrete slabs pressing into his belly.

  But he hadn’t heaved himself up onto the roof for exercise or penance. He crawled to the edge, and shuffled until he was lined up with a vent for an air conditioner. It had the stink of harsh solvents, and he didn’t like to imagine what went on the labs it ventilated. This was a biotech firm, after all, and for all he knew, they had vats full of human hearts, grown from a single mass of cultured tissue, beating in time as they pumped artificial blood through clear plastic tubes.

  He tried to push the image out of his mind. He failed.

  Using the air vent as cover, he peered across the grass to the jeep. Last time he’d seen it, it had been surrounded by a pack of Gell Shield guards. Now he’d see if his improvised distraction would do the trick.

  He saw nothing, not grass, not the trees in the grove, and none of the guards. He saw the black void of night. It rippled and shimmered, and then it broke up into a fine black mist.

  His smoke bomb had worked all too well. But as the night breeze wafted the cloud of smoke away from the entrance, he heard loud, anxious shout, the soft pad of boots on grass, then the hard thud of men running on a solid path. The smoke roiled and gaped wide, giving him a moment’s clear view of the stretch of ground between the entrance and the jeep, just in time to see the last of the guards disappear under the rim of the roof.

  “Got them all,” he whispered, unable to repress a grin of triumph. “And that means…”

  He looked up, and saw the jeep. It stood where it had been, immobile, and, as far as he could tell through the billowing smoke, neither surrounded nor occupied.

  It would be a problem if the guards had taken their captive with them, but he was banking on a panic reaction. If they proved to be quicker on the uptake, he could do little about it.

  He hadn’t come here on a rescue mission.

  He crawled to the edge, checked the path for guards and cameras, and found a single camera covering the patch of ground where he wanted to make landfall. Scowling, he thought fast, and then he shifted around behind the camera, and, using its own steel mount as a hand hold, he swung down, and dropped the last little way to the ground.