Severance Package

by Duane Swierczynski

  Nichole looked down at Jamie’s mangled fingers and said,

  “Oh, God.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m not going to be able to stitch anything. There are no stitches in this kit.”

  “That’s fine. Whatever you can do.”

  “I’ll tape it best I can, try to sterilize everything with this Scotch I found in David’s desk. You can get it looked at later. Okay?”

  “Seriously, whatever you can do.”

  “Want a drink first? It’s Johnnie Walker Black.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “I think you’re going to regret that decision in about ten seconds.”

  Nichole got to work. Jamie looked up at the ceiling tiles, and listened to peeling and tearing sounds of tape. He didn’t want to know the gory details. Better that he pretend she was expertly stitching up the flesh of each finger, so perfectly, in fact, that a few days later he would be able to flex his fingers and ping! ping! ping! ping! ping!—the stitches would pop out, and he’d be completely healed. Even though he knew there were no stitches.

  “Here we go.”

  “You haven’t started yet?” Jamie asked.

  “Brace yourself.”

  Jamie kept his eyes transfixed on the off-white ceiling tiles, imagining that the dimples in the material were craters big enough to hide in. He heard the quiet hollow thoooomp of a corktop being removed from a bottle.

  “Cheers.”

  There was no way Jamie could have prepared himself for the agony that washed down over his mangled hand. The old pain—the pain that caused the horrible gashes in the first place—was like a memory of the beaches of heaven compared to this NEW PAIN. The burning-acid molten-flesh drilled-bone torture of NEW PAIN.

  “Shhhh now.”

  Nichole held his wrist steady while the rest of his body writhed violently. Jamie shrank and floated up into a big crater on the ceiling.

  A few minutes later, he opened his eyes. The light was harsh. He was back down on the floor.

  Riiiiip.

  “You passed out,” Nichole said.

  “Urrrgghhhhh,” Jamie said.

  “Don’t throw up. I’m halfway done.”

  She continued working.

  Passing out didn’t erase a single memory. There was no blissful moment of, Hey now, where am I? Why is this tall woman fussing over my hand? Why is she only wearing a bra? Jamie remembered everything. Nothing had changed. Except that he felt like he needed to throw up.

  “Nichole.”

  “Yeah.”

  Riiiiip.

  “Do you have any idea why David wanted to kill us this morning?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Did he lose his mind?” Jamie asked. “I think that’s the theory I would prefer. The stress of the job, he goes postal …”

  “That what you believe?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither.”

  Riiiiip.

  “That’s because you know what’s really going on, don’t you? That we’re actually some kind of secret intelligence agency.”

  “If you don’t already know, then you’re not supposed to know.”

  “Jesus, Nichole, c’mon!” Then he added a faint “Ow.” She had pressed down hard. Maybe even on purpose. “I almost died this morning. Along with everybody else. I deserve to know.”

  “Trying to concentrate here.”

  “Can you at least tell me if we’re working for the good guys?”

  Nichole looked at him with a lifted eyebrow.

  “You know? The U.S. government?”

  She returned to her tapework.

  “Reason I ask,” Jamie said, “is because if we are the good guys, then how come David Murphy was allowed to come in this morning with orders to kill us? That’s not something the good guys do, is it? Especially to people like me, who until about an hour ago had no friggin’ idea we actually worked for the government?”

  “You don’t work for the government,” she said.

  Jamie would have stormed out of the office had Nichole not been taping up the remains of his hand. This was not right. This was not fair. Guy in the military, he gets a draft notice, gets told, yeah, you might get a ball blown off in another country, or come home in a flag-draped box. That’s how we roll, Private. Guy puts on a police badge, same deal, only you take your risks in your own backyard. Death’s unlikely, but certainly possible. You know walking in.

  But Jamie wasn’t a cop or a solider. He was a public relations guy who thought he was working for a financial services company, and did so because of decent pay and medical benefits. He didn’t sign on for anything else.

  This was not right.

  This was not fair.

  Not to his wife and baby, who right now had no idea what was happening up here.

  This was the horror of 9/11, or at least, the horror Jamie imagined whenever he thought about what it was like on one of those burning floors of the towers. The horror that your family will never know what happened in your last minutes alive. Like you were already dead.

  He felt eyes. Nichole was staring at him.

  “I’ve been thinking about what to say to you,” she said. “Because I do want you to live through this. And the less you know, the better. Trust me on this. I can’t speak for the rest of this company, but I’m one of the good guys. I may be the only good guy here. You probably saved my life, so I’m going to try to save yours. Fair enough?”

  Jamie swallowed. His mouth tasted like death. “Yeah.”

  “David is a bad guy. David sealed this floor and tried to kill us. Molly stopped David, but now she’s trying to kill us. That makes her a bad guy, too. That’s all we need to know.”

  “Okay.”

  “Our strategy is simple. We avoid Molly, and we try to make it off this floor alive.”

  “I’m hoping you know how to do that.”

  “Yeah,” Nichole said. “We ask David.”

  She showed him a syringe.

  “That wasn’t in the first aid kit, was it?” Jamie asked.

  Thirty-five hundred miles away, Keene asked: “Find your Girlfriend yet?”

  McCoy grunted, then drained the rest of his Caley. He walked back to their tiny kitchen for another can. Keene was going to have to think about fixing supper soon. Whenever McCoy reached the six-pack point, he became ravenous. And he was especially cranky when he was hungry.

  Keene took over, cycling through the cameras on the thirty-sixth floor, spending barely a second on each office. In the conference room, the boss was still on the floor, the blood around his head looking like an oddly shaped pillow. The corpse of his faithful employee, McCrane, was situated across the room. Kurtwood’s dead body was still in the hallway of the abandoned section of the office. The still-alive DeBroux and Wise were in the head office. But no Girlfriend.

  Where could she be?

  Keene hoped she wasn’t dead. Otherwise, McCoy would be insufferable for weeks.

  Girlfriend was doing her hair.

  She had no choice. Six shots had been fired, and she had twisted and rolled and managed to avoid every single one … except one. A lucky shot, most likely fired when Nichole Wise really started to lose control, and was firing blind. Because there was no possible way that had been intentional. That kind of shot was the stuff of military snipers, not workaday Company watchdogs. Wise didn’t have the precision.

  The bullet had sliced through the air, then the glass, then more air, and then her cheek.

  It had gouged a bloody trail high across her cheekbone, and it had carried enough ground glass to make it hurt.

  The pain didn’t matter, though. Her appearance did.

  After cleansing her face and the wound, she reached behind her head and pulled the clips from her hair. Her hair was quite long. Paul had liked it that way. She kept it up and away from her face during the workday. Home, alone with Paul, she let it down. Home alone with Paul, she’d often wander around the house without clothes. It left him quite powerles
s, even if he thought he was in control.

  Now she let some of her hair fall down in a wedge over the right side of her face; the rest was clipped up behind her head. She used hot water to smooth out her hair, tease some of the drywall dust and blood and ground glass out of it. After a minute of grooming, it looked passable. This was not a look she’d ever used before. Perhaps this was a good thing.

  At the end, she was going to have to look presentable.

  That would be the final exam.

  Boyfriend would see it.

  And, God willing, Boyfriend would give her the promotion she so desperately craved. No. Needed.

  Good thing Boyfriend couldn’t see her now.

  She had wanted him to see the pain she endured—that was part of the interview. But not the aftermath. A good operative was super-resilient, able to bounce back from any form of punishment. Most American operatives didn’t have much of a threshold for pain.

  This would distinguish her from much of her competition.

  She kept bandages and liquid skin in her right bracelet; tweezers and a simple stitching kit in her left. She used them now, working quickly and efficiently. Time was against her. She’d already wasted a minute on her face and rearranging her hair.

  Her black skirt was fine—the color masked the blood—but her pantyhose were ruined, sliced open in a dozen places by the sharp glass. They had served her well. The pantyhose weren’t ordinary; you couldn’t buy them in a plastic egg in a department store. They were a special order, reinforced by woven Kevlar. Her legs had scratches and cuts, but no major gashes.

  Her blouse was similarly reinforced. The worst damage she’d taken had been to her left forearm. She had rolled up her sleeve to access her bracelet.

  Perhaps she should have rolled her sleeve back down.

  Like the pantyhose, the blouse had to go. She wore a sleeveless shirt over her bra, one that didn’t look strange when paired with a skirt. It would do for the remainder of the interview.

  Her legs and feet were bare, but she could easily recover her shoes before she departed.

  Her hair now covered her face.

  Glass had been plucked out; flesh taped, bonded, or sutured; clothes wiped clean.

  Girlfriend was ready for the remainder of the morning activities.

  She allowed herself the luxury of staring at herself in the bathroom mirror for a few moments. She was deep within the offices of Philadelphia Living. She’d stolen a key from the publisher two months ago. She’d followed him to a bar called The Happy Rooster—how appropriate, that name. He had been drunk and had stumbled off to sing karaoke. She slipped her hand into the bag, secreted the key, and disappeared into the shadows before he’d reached the second chorus of “Afternoon Delight.” In the meantime, she’d kept the key in a compartment in her right bracelet. She was glad it had finally been of some use.

  Now she looked at herself, and was stunned by the passage of time.

  Ten years ago, a much scrawnier, timid version of herself would have been looking back from the mirror.

  A little girl, so eager to please.

  Now she was different.

  She was a young woman, much stronger, much bolder.

  But still, eager to please.

  Some things cannot be beaten from your soul.

  Girlfriend spoke to herself in Russian. Mumbling, really. Nonsense rhymes. Things she would say to herself when she was a girl.

  That was enough now. No more indulgences.

  Number three was still missing. He had never shown up to the meeting, yet there was evidence he had arrived at the building.

  Number three might still be hiding on the floor.

  Or, Ethan had been clever enough to find a way out of David’s traps.

  BACK TO WORK

  If you really want to succeed, you’ll have to go for it every day like I do. The big time isn’t for slackers.

  —DONALD TRUMP

  Twenty floors down, somebody finally spotted him.

  Well slap him and call him Susan. Weren’t security guards supposed to keep an especially keen eye on the fire towers? You know, as a potential security risk? Glad to know the Department has been in such safe hands all these years. Then again, that was probably the point. A heavily armed, man-heavy, hard-core, SWAT-style building security team would be kind of a red flag to the enemy. And what was the use of running a cover business if something like that blew the cover?

  Still, Ethan knew there were fiber-optic cameras up and down the friggin’ tower. Even the lowest of the low-rent skyscrapers had ’em. He waved, then saluted each with a middle finger, on the way down. Hello, asses. Notice me.

  Every couple of concrete staircases, he collapsed. He didn’t know if it was the nerve-agent blast or the pen tube in his throat or the remnants of that friggin’ French martini worming its way through his mind. But Ethan felt like hell.

  So he collapsed.

  He didn’t feel bad about it. As long as he fell on his back, no worries. If he ever pitched forward, however, they’d find a hung-over twenty-something with a pen tube sticking out through the back of his neck. That would be a tough one to explain to his parents.

  Ethan’d told them he was in law school.

  For seven years now.

  Maybe they didn’t know how long law school took.

  By floor sixteen, however, everything changed. Ethan felt an awesome weight on his head and shoulders. His eyes felt heavier than ever. When he started to pitch forward toward a cold slab of landing, it took every last bit of strength to buck himself backwards. Must … land … on … back….

  Absurd, wasn’t it, how your most basic needs could change within an hour?

  Must … eat … Big … Mac.

  Must … land … on … back … so … pen … tube … doesn’t … kill … me.

  Ethan’s wish was granted.

  He landed on his back.

  And gurgled loudly before he passed out.

  Maybe it was just his nerve-agent-riddled imagination, but as he drifted into unconsciousness—and Ethan knew this was going to be one of those long-haul blackouts, not one of those wimpy pass-out sessions that lasted only a few seconds—he thought he heard footsteps pounding toward him. A fist on a steel door. Someone saying, Is anyone in there? The faint sound of a metal door latch twisting to one side. Another footstep, fainter still, on the concrete landing above.

  And the final bit of sensory input, just before Ethan grabbed the heavy black curtain by the corner, folded it up over himself, and rolled over to one side:

  You’d better come down to sixteen, Vincent.

  Molly flipped open the compartment on her bracelet that held the ear receiver. She flipped the micro-size ON switch, then pushed it into her ear canal. The receiver was pretuned to pick up all internal radio contact. She didn’t expect to hear anything useful, but it was possible that Ethan had made it out of the building and was calling for backup. If so, she’d hear the security chatter. Not a huge worry. She’d just have to speed the assignment up. Hope that her reaction time would impress Boyfriend.

  She’d been wearing the ear receiver for only a few minutes when she heard:

  You’d better come down to sixteen, Vincent.

  Static.

  What’s going on?

  Static.

  I’ve got a guy down here you should see.

  Static.

  Let me guess. He has cuts all over his hands from pushing through a window.

  Static.

  No. He’s unconscious and he’s got a pen sticking out of his throat.

  Ethan.

  The scream made sense. Ethan must have felt something was off, and tried to flee early. Probably had enough sense to avoid the elevators—they were easier to control or sabotage or both. But he didn’t have enough sense to realize that a man who would sabotage an elevator would do the same thing to a fire tower. That miscalculation had earned him a blast of weaponized sarin.

  Molly knew the effects of sarin; she’d br
iefly trafficked on behalf of an Afghan warlord years ago. And Ethan probably had enough sense to know what was happening. Probably felt his skin burn and his eyes bleed and his throat start to close, and he had been smart enough to attend to his throat first. Bleeding eyes will hurt—but a lack of air will kill you.

  Look where that got him. On the sixteenth floor, surrounded by building security.

  Ethan Goins was supposed to have been seated in the conference room-with the others. She had arranged everyone in order: Ethan was third. First, David. Then Amy Felton. And then Ethan, the hired muscle. She had even checked to make sure that Ethan was on the floor. His office door was open. His computer on. At the time, Molly had assumed Ethan stepped out to use the men’s room.

  And he had.

  The men’s room …

  … on another floor.

  It all clicked into place. The thirty-seventh floor was currently unoccupied. A mayoral candidate based his headquarters there until a dismal showing in the May primary bounced him out of the race. Now there was nothing but office partitions and rented desks that needed to be picked up and restocked. There were also two restrooms—men’s and ladies’—on the thirty-seventh floor. Unlocked. Free to anyone in the building who preferred a little privacy when attending to bodily functions.

  Like Ethan.

  He must have been on his way back down—the fire tower staircase was the easiest way between two floors—when David had engaged lockdown, as well as the sarin packages. Ethan had opened the doors. Ethan had received a wet surprise.

  Poor Ethan.

  Actually, screw Ethan. He was to have been third. This was not the way it was supposed to have unfolded.

  Now building security had discovered him.

  There was a good chance he was already dead. Sarin is nasty. Hard to shake the effects, even if you are tough enough to perform a self-serve tracheotomy.

  But what if he were alive?

  Ethan knew a lot. If he regained consciousness, he could ask for a pen and paper. Another pen, that is. Then he could make the remainder of the morning considerably more difficult.

  Molly needed to make it to the sixteenth floor as quickly as possible.