Panic Button

Twenty

The room was deathly quiet, save for the gentle click and whir of computer hard drives. They lined the space, stacked up on metal shelves, connected by an insane spaghetti of cables. Green router lights flashed, casting an ethereal glow across the dimly lit basement room like stars in a subterranean sky.

The only occupant of the room sat with his back to the little staircase that led to the outside world above. This basement was his world, built with his sweat and toil. He sat facing a bank of computer screens and clicked off the microphone that stood on the desk before him. Staring at the computer monitors, he was mesmerised by the same fuzzy digital noise each one of them displayed. The signal was gone, all communications cut — game over.

The man turned on his swivel chair and surveyed his painstakingly constructed empire. All around him, pinned and adhered to every available inch of shelf and wall, were printouts and photographs alongside lists of surveillance data and jet plane schematics. The entire room was a web of information, a pernicious cocoon from which to exact his revenge.

He glanced, coldly, at the photographs of his victims.

There was Dave, his idiot soldier, gurning into the camera with his arm around the girl he had so easily betrayed. How effortlessly he had been groomed to kill. And Gwen, the religious hypocrite, peering up at the camera she had obviously been holding in her own hand to take the picture. Her look was that of the coquettish tease, her eyes barely concealing the deep conflict within her body and soul. There was the impostor who had pretended to be Max, the grainy photo of him as blurred as the identity he’d projected to his fellow passengers. No matter, he had served his purpose just as well. And Jo. The single mother. The alcoholic. The sad pathetic excuse for a life who had done nothing to save his dear little Lucy, and yet who professed to love her own daughter beyond measure. Even to the point of poisoning another human being to death. He almost admired her for that, he had to admit, but for the fact that she had brought his plane down ahead of schedule… into the sea.

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.