Jon Evans - Swarm

Hot air whooshed out into the foggy day, and cold air began to seep in. It felt like I had torn a hole in the fabric of the universe. Toothy fragments of glass clung to the pane’s triangular steel frame, making the newly created aperture look like a shark’s mouth. I dropped the bench, rushed back to the sheet, grabbed it. Bending over caused agony to race up my damaged back. I hustled back and knelt to tie my improvised rope to the bench.

A door flew open. The thug. The bench was far from that entrance, and the greenhouse’s gravel trails wound indirectly, but I figured I had ten or twenty seconds at most. Panic made my fingers slow and clumsy, like my brain had been transplanted into somebody else’s body and I hadn’t quite figured out yet how to work it. It took me two attempts to tie a simple reef knot. Then I grabbed the sheet, stepped to the edge of the building, and realized I didn’t know how to transition from standing vertically to rappelling horizontally.

I heard pounding footsteps, turned, and saw the thug charging towards me like an unleashed bulldog.

Necessity was the mother of revelation. I scrambled out of the window and suddenly found myself half-rappelling, half-sliding down the side of the building. Blood flowed freely from my left hand, gashed open by a shard of glass. No time to worry about that. It took all my strength to hang on to the knotted sheets as I stumbled backwards – downwards – as fast as I could.

The building’s stone walls were covered with ivy, which gave me good traction; but then I reached a big window. My feet slipped on that smooth glass and I fell, banging my elbow so hard against the window that I nearly let go. Blood dripped from my wounded hand as I gasped for air.

When I looked up,I saw two terrifying things: the FSU thug staring down at me, and the sheet visibly fraying where it sawed against a clinging shard of glass.

I tried to hand-over-hand downwards. A mistake. Without my legs to support me, the twisted sheet began to slip through my hands, and I couldn’t clench hard enough to hold it. I slid down at a pace moderated only by what friction I could impart with my palms. The sheet-burn was agonizing. Then suddenly there was no sheet left, and I was falling towards a large and bristling thorn bush.

It was almost as good as a haystack. Most of its thorns broke or bent or gave way, and it absorbed enough of my impact that I rolled onto the damp earth with nothing worse than a few dozen more nicks and bruises to add to my already-impressive collection. I was on my feet and running before the thug could summon backup.

The London fog was thick, and once on the street I could see no end to the mansions arrayed in either direction. The wrought-iron gate at the end of the road prevented vehicle traffic but allowed pedestrians. The man in the little security cubicle looked like he wanted to stop me, but I was gone before he could react, racing into a public London street where even a billionaire, I hoped, would have to fear the consequences of his actions.

Once the first hit of desperate adrenalin wore off, I slowed to my usual running pace. For a second I flashed back to my run through Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco on the day Lisa Reyes had come to our lab, the day all this madness had begun.

I heard an engine growl behind me, and stiffened with fear, but the Audi that whipped past paid no attention. Past the residential oasis I emerged onto a street thick with shops, buses, pedestrians – and cameras. I knew I didn’t have long before Argus found me.

I spotted an Oxfam sign. I knew them from previous visits to London; a secondhand charity shop, like Goodwill in the USA. Breathing hard, covered with fresh cuts and bruises, dripping blood from my left hand, I opened their door and walked inside.

“Do you have a phone?” I asked the little old lady behind the counter. “I’ve just been hit a car.”

“Yes,” she said, startled, “yes, of course, are you all right?”

“I don’t know.” I tried to look dazed while surreptitiously surveying the goods on offer.

“I’ll call an ambulance. Sit down. Please.”

“I just, I’m cold, I need to cover up,” I explained, trying to feign delirium as I grabbed a big black hooded sweater. It wasn’t hard. I wasn’t exactly feeling fully compos mentis .

“Yes, of course, sir, please, sit, I’ll -“

“I think I’d better walk to stay warm,” I told her, and strode out of the store, leaving her dumbfounded. Once outside I donned my new hoodie and started running again. Even if she didn’t call the police, I needed to get away from Argus.

I zigzagged haphazardly through the streets of London for what felt like a very long time, fuelled by the fear of being prey, trying to alternate between back alleys and huge crowds. I ran until my lungs were burning, and my legs too weak to continue. Then I walked.

Finally I decided that if I hadn’t lost my invisible panopticon pursuers, I never would; so I found a little green square of a park and slumped onto a bench, gasping for breath. Rational thought returned slowly to my brain. I tried to stanch my bleeding hand with the hoodie’s sleeve, and took stock of my situation.

Assets: almost none. Clothing, including a face-hiding hoodie and a decent pair of Asics; knowledge, most of it dangerous, or useless, or both; liberty, probably temporary.

Liabilities: where to begin? Police forces around the globe thought me a mass-murdering terrorist; Anya and the forces of her “billionaire uncle” were doubtless already after me, aided by all of London’s million-strong closed-circuit cameras; Jesse and Sophie were presumably in unfriendly custody; no one else might help me; my wounded hand probably needed stitches, and my back still hurt like hell; and I had no money whatsoever.

Realistically it was only a matter of time, probably only hours, before either the police or the Russians recaptured me. Meanwhile, the fate of the free world arguably rested on my shoulders. I felt like a paraplegic Atlas.

I supposed I could add one item to my Assets list, in a way. I quite literally had nothing left to lose.

With that in mind, when my breath was recovered, I stood and headed for the nearest corner shop labelled FOOD & WINE. A small lineup waited at the cash register. I approached the proprietor directly, and said, “Excuse me, I’m a tourist, new around here, can you just -” before pretending to notice the other customers and demurring, “Never mind, handle them first.”

The grizzled man behind the counter frowned at me, turned to the lead customer, took her money, opened the cash register. Without allowing myself to stop and think about it, I leaned over, reached in, grabbed a fistful of twenty-pound notes, and turned and ran.

I half-expected pursuit, but those present were so shocked that I heard no cry of fury or dismay before the door shut behind me and I was on the street and running again. Pedestrians stared at me curiously but nobody intervened. I stuffed the stolen money in my stolen hoodie’s inner pocket, jinked down a side street, gradually adopted the gait of a man running for fitness rather than his life, and eventually slowed to a sedate walk.

I didn’t even feel guilty. When you are wanted worldwide for crimes against humanity, mere theft seems like a misdemeanour. In a quiet corner I counted my money and found myself with a net worth of two hundred and eighty pounds, which under the circumstances was a million times better than zero. Now that I had money, I had options; and now that I had options, I began to formulate a plan.

Everything that was going on was too much. The putative Russian drone attack on America, whatever had happened to Sophie across the Atlantic – with Jesse and Sophie gone, captured or compromised or whatever, those problems were beyond me. I couldn’t change whether the world as I knew it would survive or collapse. I didn’t play in that league.