Frazer Lee - Panic Button

The man stood, weary after too many long hours in the chair, and turned his back on their faces. He felt nothing for them, not even pity. It was over. He glanced at the wall chart fixed to a section of wall between racks of hard drives. Names, locations, dates and times — stretching back almost forty-eight hours. Each name was crossed out in red marker pen. A grim schedule of executions. Dawn, Rory, Emily and the others — all taken care of. His son had done him proud, getting the luggage ready in time for the flight.

He walked through the tunnel of hardware and intelligence, toward the stairs. Ascending, he paused to turn off the power. His secret world, the Alligator’s lair, was plunged into darkness. Computer cooling fans slowed to a whisper and died, as though mourning their master’s departure.

It was over now. He locked the door behind him.

Just one last job to do.

One name left on the wall chart, not yet crossed out like the others.

Sophie lay on the bed, staring at the grubby old teddy bear.

More than once, she’d thought about reaching out and holding the toy, about cuddling it for comfort. But the bear wasn’t hers, and never would be. If she took it now and held it, and the nasty man came back, he would think she liked it. He would think she’d given up somehow, by cuddling the bear. Its face was dirty and she didn’t like it. Sophie sighed and, still lying down, turned over to face the wall. She heard the bedsprings creak and pop beneath her. The rickety workings of the bed reminded her of the old trampoline in Nanny’s garden. How happy she was the day she’d first played on it, jumping higher and higher, then falling down, laughing and bouncing. But now her Nanny was dead.

Sophie winced as she replayed the muffled gunfire in her head, clenching her eyelids shut in a desperate attempt to blink away the image of the old woman falling to the kitchen floor. Run , her Nanny’s eyes had said. But then the masked man had taken her away, hurting her as he’d bundled her into the back of his van. She could still remember the rank metallic smell inside the vehicle, still feel the sharp sting of the needle he’d injected into her arm before her world had darkened and she’d drifted away.

It seemed like days since she’d woken up on this bed. Maybe it had been days? She couldn’t tell because there were no windows and the nasty man had taken her phone away. She’d hunted for her phone inside the room, just in case he’d dropped it. Then she could have called her mum, or sent a text, or called the police, and someone would come and rescue her. But the phone was nowhere to be found and she’d cried herself to sleep again. Sometimes she woke up crying too, wrenched from pleasant dreams in which she was back with Mum and Nanny baking cakes in the little kitchen. To wake up in the gloomy room, each time with that filthy teddy bear smiling at her, was like a little death.

Sophie felt tears welling up in her eyes again at the thought of her Mum and her Nan. Was her Mum dead now? Had the nasty man shot her too? Sophie didn’t think he wanted to kill her; he kept bringing her horrid lukewarm food to eat and tepid water to drink after all.

She propped herself up on her elbows and glanced over at the door. The red light next to the lock was always looking at her, like an angry little eye. Soon the red light would turn green, the door would open and the nasty man would be there with more yucky food for her to eat. If he wanted her dead, why would he keep feeding her? Maybe it was just a cruel game of his. Maybe next time he opened that door he would kill her.

But she wasn’t afraid of him. She wasn’t afraid of death — at least that was what she kept telling herself, over and over. Sophie just wanted to be with her Mum again. She lay back and closed her eyes. Saying a silent prayer that it could be so, she drifted off into a troubled sleep under the watchful glare of the little red light.

Later, while Sophie still slumbered, the light turned green.

“Wakey, wakey, rise and shine.”

The man stood over Sophie’s fragile little body, smiling quietly.

Little girls were so delicate when they slept. He noted the fingers of her right hand were just touching the teddy bear they’d left for her. It was grubby from its exile in the attic, but it felt correct for it to be one of Lucy’s. This little girl had probably never had toys, her slut mother had drunk all their money after all, and the father was nowhere to be seen.

He knew where the father was though. It hadn’t been exactly difficult to track him down via his data trail on All2gethr. Thought he could hide, just like the others. How wrong he was, how naive they all were.

The man recalled the first time he had seen young Sophie, the day that had truly set his plans into motion. Keeping tabs on her mother’s movements, he hadn’t given much thought to the fact that she had a daughter. But when he had seen her holding the child’s hand as they’d walked home, he had been reminded of all that he had lost — more tangibly than ever. The thought that this woman, the same drunken harridan who had sat idly by while his sweet Lucy poisoned herself to death, could profess to enjoy her daughter’s company had simply become too much to bear. He had obsessed over it, night and day, and could draw no other conclusion than that of fate placing this child at his feet as recompense for his great loss. The mother didn’t deserve a child; her actions were testament to that. She couldn’t be trusted to raise a child; her lack of moral values made that much a certainty too.

He’d been a good father to his Lucy, but still she had fallen prey to the evils of the Internet, succumbed to the drink and drugs peddled by the modern world. He’d had to admit to his own failings before he could act, confident that what he was doing was right. This time he would not fail. He would exact his revenge efficiently, without overlooking a single microscopic detail.

Lucy had become lost to him because she had managed to keep her secret world hidden. So he had created a secret world from which his targets could never hide. He knew everything about them, and this knowledge would be their undoing. They were so reliant on technology it had been easy as pie for him to conceal the fact that he’d already had their loved ones killed. The saucy text from Sarah to Dave — sent after she’d been drugged and taken to the hanging room. The All2gethr chat messages from Emily to Gwen — a simple matter of looking at the sister’s chat archive in order to emulate her messaging style. Their bodies were gone now, drowned with the plane. Only Sophie remained.

When he’d laid eyes on Sophie for the very first time, it was as though fate had offered him a second chance to prove himself as a father, and as the moral crusader the modern world so sorely needed. It was then that he knew he must take the child for his own, and dispose of the mother.

The little girl stirred, becoming aware of his presence in the room. She opened her eyes and looked up at him, towering over her like a shadow. He beamed down at her, his new little girl. His prize. How pretty she was.

“Hell-o Lucy. Did you sleep well?”

The girl flinched. Probably still sleepy, poor lamb.

“My name is Sophie.”

Ah yes, still half asleep! He smiled at her, patiently.

“Your name is Lucy now. Do you understand me? L-U-C-Y.”

A glimmer of fear passed over the little girl’s face.

Fear is healthy, fear is good, stops a young girl from growing up to become too much like her whore of a mother.

She nodded at him .

“Good girl. I should like to introduce myself properly. My name is Rupert Turner.”