David Silva - The Disappeared

The nearest monitor flickered and Jake felt something tighten in his throat.

The two kids had started a fire inside the room. He watched as the smoke thickened into a dark, angry cloud and began to run the line of the ceiling in all directions. Within seconds the hungry gray mass seemed to consume nearly every square inch of the room.

“Come on,” he said, anxiously waiting for the overhead sprinklers to kick on. He didn’t think the fire itself was going to pose much of a problem. But the smoke could be a different matter. It had already dropped a thick curtain over the picture on his monitor. Behind that curtain, in faint outline, he could see the two boys huddled on the floor, next to the supply cabinet.

He watched until the sprinklers finally kicked on, then he crossed to the far end of the room, and pulled down the handle to the fire alarm mounted on the wall. Instantly, the quiet halls, the vacant rooms, the entire building erupted into the deafening rattle of a bell.

“That should wake up a few people.”

He went back to the console, sat down, and rolled his chair to the left, where a bank of override switches had been built into the panel. He started at the top and threw the switches for all the exits, the elevators, the stairway doors, the offices, the labs, every room, every lock in the building that he had the power to control. When he finished, he checked the monitors and was stunned to discover the two kids were still trapped. For some reason, the door to their room had failed to open.

“What the—”

He tried the switch again, once up, once down, and when that didn’t work, again, once up, once down, and finally another half-a-dozen times before giving up the futile effort. There was only one way that door was going to open. He would have to go down there himself and open it manually.

He was on his way out, keys in hand, when D.C. showed up.

“You the one who set off the alarm?”

Jake nodded, and motioned toward the far monitor, which was little more than a dark-gray hue now. “It’s the room with the two boys. The override’s jammed. I can’t get the door open. I’m going down to see if I can do something with it.”

D.C. sat at the console, and quickly scanned all four monitors. “Jake?”

“Yeah?”

“Just keep going after you’ve got it open, understand? I’ll watch things here until the fire department shows.”

He nodded and went out the door without a word. He didn’t tell D.C. that he’d had no intentions of returning anyway. Not tonight. Not tomorrow night. Not ever. The line had finally been crossed. He had been willing to accept that this was a research facility, that the sleepers were being monitored with the hope they would someday awaken. But twice tonight the monitors had caught someone pulling a gun. That had been enough. The fire had been too much. At $6.50 an hour, he could just as easily be playing night watchman at one of the industrial complexes, cruising around in a car, flashing his spotlight into the shadows, and listening to music on the radio. This had never been what you would call a dream job.

Jake crossed the floor to the elevators, entered the basement car, and waited for the doors to close. It was the first time he had ever stopped to wonder if someone were watching his movements the way he had always watched everyone else’s.

Teri was the first one into the lab. She stepped inside the door to the left and turned to wait for Walt, who had kept himself like a shield between her and Mitch from the elevator all the way down the hall.

“How you doing?” Walt asked as he entered.

“Fine,” she whispered.

“Never a dull moment, huh?”

Mitch directed them to the far side of the room, against the windows, and had them face outward. He sat on the corner of the nearest desk, picked up the phone, dialed a number and hung up again after he couldn’t get an answer.

“Christ.” He mumbled something about the doc not being there.

“Trouble in paradise?” Walt asked.

In the reflection in the window, Teri watched Mitch stand up and start to pace back and forth in front of the desk. He looked like a worried man, and that worried her, because she had always thought of him as having everything under control. She didn’t like the idea that something might be going wrong. When things went wrong, people got hurt.

Walt was watching him, too. Only he was watching him for a different reason. Teri didn’t immediately realize this, but when the fire alarm suddenly went off, Walt went off with it. He turned and closed the distance between the two of them in less than a second. Mitch never had a chance to use his gun.

Teri turned and screamed. “Walt! Don’t!”

But by then, they were already grappling.

Walt smashed his fist into the man’s jaw and Mitch went flying over the desk backwards, Walt on top of him. The gun jarred loose and bounced around on the carpet only a brief moment before they were on it again, each man trying to take sole possession.

Teri moved away from the windows, a hand to her mouth to hold back the scream that was trying to force its way up from her throat. She had stepped forward momentarily when the gun had bounced free, but she had been too slow and now she was backed against the electron microscope with nowhere else to go.

“Please!”

Mitch landed an elbow to Walt’s face. His head snapped back, and Mitch met him with another shot to the face, this one so loud that Teri cringed. Walt rolled over, momentarily dazed, blood flowing out of his nose and a cut over his right eye.

The gun was within Mitch’s grasp now. He climbed slowly to his knees, breathing heavily, then to his feet, blood dripping out of the corner of his mouth. He bent over to pick up the gun, wrapped his fingers around the handle, and…

…and Walt rammed him from the side, full-body, full-force.

They tumbled over a chair, and it was Mitch who was the first one standing. He slammed a foot into Walt’s side that rolled him over twice. Walt grabbed for his ribs and curled into a ball, in obvious pain.

“Don’t!” Teri screamed. “Please, don’t!”

Mitch, who was bent over, his hands braced on his knees, trying to catch a breath, looked up at her. His eyes were pure black, cold, empty. This was a duel to the death, she realized bleakly. He was not going to stop. Not until Walt was dead. And if he couldn’t kill Walt, then he would die trying. It was all… right … there .

“Please?”

He shook his head and bent over to pick up the gun, and this time Walt rammed him going the wrong direction. Walt hit him low, around the waist and it looked like a perfect Sunday afternoon tackle. He nearly picked him up off the ground and the force of the hit drove Mitch backwards across the room, Walt’s legs pumping, Mitch trying to get his feet planted, both men moving straight at the window.

Mitch went through first. The back of his head slammed into the window, shattering the glass and opening a hole big enough to drive a car through. Walt went through right behind him, his hands still wrapped around the man’s waist.

It happened that fast.

And then it was over.

Teri heard a faraway scream that only later she would realize belonged to her. She went to the window, and looked down at the two dead men. Walt’s neck had been broken, his head twisted back at a hideous angle, a bone protruding out the front.

She closed her eyes and turned away.

D.C. had finally shut down the fire alarm, and had gone out to the lobby to check to see if any trucks had shown up. It was getting down to the final few seconds now. Once the trucks started arriving and the fire crews started going through the building floor by floor, then all hell was going to break loose. Sooner or later they were going to stumble across the room in the basement with the sleepers.