Breathe (9 page)

‘I have so much paperwork, you have no idea.’ Her eyes are as white as the paper she slices. ‘It’s my job to make the directors look good. I’ve been rewriting their mail and remembering their wives’ birthdays for six fucking years on a bare living wage, and what thanks do I get?’ She slams down the guillotine blade. ‘
What thanks do I get
?’ She shouts so hard that everyone jumps.

Fitch looks down. She has cut her wrist through to the bone. The severed artery is spraying blood everywhere. ‘Oh,
for Heaven’s sake
. I just had a manicure.’ She attempts to carry on working, her wrist flapping, pumping blood all around as Miranda looks on in horror.

Just then, Half-Swan breaks in and recognises Miss Fitch. He halts before her. She’s bleeding really badly. His guts are falling out. They’re not a great couple.

‘I’m a woman with feelings,’ Fitch continues, oblivious. ‘I have desires and needs. Nobody notices. It took you six years to ask me out on a date, Mr Swan. You spent the whole evening talking about work, then left me outside a kebab shop. I’ve had better nights.’

‘You’ve seen better days.’

‘This? It’s just a paper cut. Where are your legs?’

Swan looks down in some surprise. ‘What – ? Where’s the rest of me?’

‘There’s some of you in the atrium,’ Miranda tells him. ‘You are
so
past your sell-by date, Swan.’

Swan sighs. ‘This is where equal opportunities gets you. Women in business are such
bitches
.’ He makes a sudden move to strangle Fitch. Miranda spots the deadbolt key sticking out of Swan’s pocket and snatches it away. She grabs Meera and they get the hell out.

They run along the cable tunnel, emerging into the lobby, where sex and anarchy rule. It’s a scene from the uncut version of
Caligula
. The few members of staff who haven’t gone insane are hammering at the glass doors, trying to get out. Miranda and Meera attempt to walk through them with a little dignity. Meera tears off the lower half of her sari, which keeps catching on stuff.

They approach the doors with the deadbolt key. But just as Miranda is about to use it, a huge creature lumbers from the shadows and snatches it from her.

It is Clarke, armed with his razor-bat, his combover sticking up at a fantastic angle. Miranda screams.

‘Jameson,’ he hisses. ‘Our little company rebel. And Miss Indiana Fucking Jones. I thought I threw you out of the building.’ Miranda can see he has the key – their only means of escape.

‘What have you done with Ben?’ she asks, making a grab for the key. He holds it high above her, teasing. Then he opens his mouth and drops it in.

‘He’s swallowed it,’ says Miranda, ‘Meera, he’s swallowed it!’

15. FRIDAY 3:23 PM

Upstairs, the directors are in chaos. Some have handkerchiefs over their faces, and all are trying to get out. Two are heading for the SymaxCorp system mainframe, hoping to dismantle it somehow.

Dr Samphire looks frustrated. It’s not an emotion he’s used to. ‘There must be some way we can shut it down.’

‘You’d have to override the building’s entire power supply,’ one of the other directors explains.

‘Well whose brilliant fucking idea was that?’

The director smirks mirthlessly. ‘That would be yours, sir.’

Miranda struggles up the stairs after Meera. Clarke is locked around Miranda’s waist, dragging himself behind her like a human anchor. Remembering that she is still wearing her fashionably-pointed shoes, she twists and jams one into Clarke’s gullet. Gagging, he falls away.

Miranda sees Ben hanging over the stairwell, and runs up until she’s level with his head, ripping off his mouth tape. Then she hauls him toward her. As she’s doing so, Clarke makes a fresh grab for her, who is forced to let go of Ben’s chair.

The chair swings dangerously out across the stairwell. Miranda tries to fight off Clarke as Ben’s tape starts to break. Meera tries to grab at the swinging chair, but misses it.

Miranda gives as good as she gets, slamming Clarke into against the stairwell wall. Clarke is feeling no pain, only rage. He grabs Miranda by the throat and lifts her from the ground, choking the life from her. Ben is helpless to save her. Meera is still trying to haul him in.

Miranda is close to blacking out as Clarke’s fat fingers dig in. Ben kicks out hard, swinging the chair on its tape-rope. On his third swing, he slams into Clarke, knocking him back against the wall.

The tape breaks. Meera makes a flying save and grabs the back of Ben’s chair, but it almost pulls her over the railing. Clarke breaks free and uses the confusion to head off up the stairs.

‘Miranda!’ yells Meera. ‘I can’t hold it!’ Miranda grabs Ben just as he tears loose from the chair and Meera lets the chair go. It tumbles down into the stairwell with a clatter. Together, they pull the tape off Ben.

Ben rubs his sore mouth. ‘Where did Clarke go?’

‘Up. He swallowed the door-key.’

They run after him.

Clarke is on the floor above them.

The supervisor reaches Room 3014, and the empty window frame where Meera nearly fell to her death. Meera, Ben and Miranda are close behind, but they shoot past him in the shadowy corridors.

‘Where’s he gone?’ Meera turns. They all turn and look.

As they pass the glass wall at the end of the corridor, Ben sees the empty window-cleaning cradle outside.

‘That’s our way out of the building. Who wants to do this?’

Meera waves the idea off like a bad smell. ‘Forget it. I’ve already been outside the hard way.’

Ben finds a slim door in the wall, opens it and climbs out. He has to walk along a ledge to reach the cradle. Up here, the wind is blowing so hard that the rain is travelling sideways.

‘See if you can get anyone down to the lobby,’ he shouts. ‘I’ll meet you there from the other side, I hope.’ Ben eyes the cradle uncomfortably. He tries to operate the electric panel that works the cradle, which at least is on steel runners down the side of the building, not ropes. He has no idea how to operate it, but gamely takes off the brake.

The steel cage plunges like a roller coaster. For a moment, Ben is freefalling above it, clinging to the handrail, before he can pull himself down to slam the brake back on. The cradle slows and stops. It had dropped one floor. Ben eases off on the brake and the cradle starts to slide slowly down the building, cutting a swathe through the wind and driving rain.

One more floor and the cage suddenly jams and stops at an angle, jarring Ben to the grid floor. Far below him spin giant ventilator blades, sucking fresh air into the building for processing. He slithers to the edge of the tilted cradle, catching the ledge of the building with his outstretched hands.

At that moment, Clarke slams up against the fire escape windows beside Ben, grinning maniacally. For a man with a built-up boot, he has a way of moving damned fast when he wants something. He examines the window for a moment, testing for its weak point, then swings his bat and splinters the glass, which crazes but holds. He pulls the bat free and swings again.

This time the tip gets through, in a shower of crystalline fragments.

The cradle tilts further and Ben is left hanging on the outside of the building.

Clarke reaches through and slams down the bat – but Ben moves his hands before he can connect. The supervisor climbs on board the cradle, his blade spraying a shower of sparks as it connects with the steel braking mechanism.

The cradle unfreezes and races straight down the building, with Ben and Clarke hanging on for their lives. Moments from the bottom, the automatic safety system is triggered and slams in, slowing the cradle abruptly and flattening Ben and Clarke on its floor. As Ben rises to scramble out, Clarke brains him with the butt of the bat, knocking him into semi-consciousness.

Clarke hits the cradle’s up button, sending it skyward and knocking Ben off balance. They fight for the controls. Clarke grips his bat handle and prepares to swing for England. This should be good enough to finish the match.

‘Your innings is over,’ he warns, kicking Ben back with his orthopaedic boot. As the cradle continues its rapid ascent, he starts to push Ben over the side with the sharp edge of the bat. Ben feels a hot line of blood forming through his wet shirt. Pinned like this, unable to move, he knows he is about to die.

He sees Clarke’s raised boot coming at him and grabs it, twisting hard. Clarke screams as Ben lifts it – and him – over and out of the cradle. Leverage always wins over brute strength.

Clarke falls and slams onto the ventilator grating, where he lies stuck above the sucking fans. Ben watches as the lightweight aluminium safety bars slowly bend apart beneath his weight. Mr Clarke, senior supervisor, thirty years of faithful service in the private finance sector, is sucked into the grating, exploding as he hits the first of the fans. The supervisor’s remains hurtle around and up the ventilation shaft to his final destination.

The last of Clarke comes out of the steel rooftop chimney in a spectacular crimson fountain.

Miranda and Meera see Clarke’s minced innards rain down on the outside of the building. As the pulverised remains fall, something shiny and metallic passes them and bounces onto the roof of the atrium below.

‘Jesus,’ Miranda exclaims, ‘the key!’ She and Meera rush back to the stairwell. ‘There must be a service door onto the atrium roof.’

Ben is hanging onto the rising, still-tipped cradle. He looks up. If he doesn’t stop it, he’ll hit the top at incredible speed. He looks for the controls but finds only bare wires. It would appear that Clarke took the hand control panel with him when he fell. Ben can do nothing but wait to be flung from the cradle in the final crash.

Unless.

He sees, coming up, the broken window from which Clarke emerged. He is ascending at an incredible speed. He’ll have just one shot.

The gaping hole shoots past his feet. Ben lets go of the side of the tipped cradle and slides in through the window, just as he passes it.

16. FRIDAY 4:05PM

Meera and Miranda find Ben lying in the stairwell on the twenty eighth floor. It takes a minute to get him awake, but they succeed in pulling him to his feet.

‘We have to shut the systems down,’ he says.

‘Wait,’ says Miranda. ‘That means shutting everything down. Power. Lights. Air. The place will be sealed tight. You want to turn it into a big steel coffin full of raving maniacs?’

Meera shrugs. ‘It works for me.’

They head back to the top floor and room 3014. Miranda opens the master control panel and looks around for some way of disarming it. ‘This needs the female touch,’ she warns, smashing a steel chair into the system, which makes no difference at all. Meera stops her and follows the cabling to a DANGER: LIVE VOLTAGE box. She unclips the lid, overrides the protector panel and removes a water cooler tank, emptying the whole lot into the mains.

There are several small explosions and a lot of sparks, but the air system reroutes again and remains on, its gauges moving even further into overcompensation. Throughout the building, floor by floor, the lights go out and the windows darken.

Miranda stands up and brushes herself down. ‘Nice one,’ she says, sarcastically. ‘Terrific. This top was brand new. We can’t stop it. Now what do we do?’

‘Get the key back. Get the hell out.’

Meera heads off after the key.

17. FRIDAY 4:17PM

The directors watch as the mainframe diverts itself to keep running. They are panicked and still trying not to inhale the atmosphere, although it’s hopeless pretending you won’t breathe. ‘There must be some way to turn the damned air off,’ Dr Samphire insists.

‘Ultimately, it’s designed to reroute itself to an outside power supply if there’s a crisis. It can’t be turned off.’ This from the same smartarse director who was rude to him before. When this is over …

‘What you’re telling me is we’re fucked. That boy. He knew what was wrong. You have to find him.’

The other director looks disgusted.
What happened to ‘we’?
he wonders.

The work-floor is a very different place now. The air is as thick and as murky as the bottom of a pond. The windows have automatically darkened, screening out the light. In the hazy beam of Miranda’s torch, lunatics flit past in various states of undress. The building is a heathen hell, where small fires burn on desks. The few remaining computers are smashed in. Some of the sprinklers are on. There are moans and screams in the dark. Bedlam was an oasis of sanity by comparison.

Ben is still suffering from the effects of his fall. Miranda searches for survivors. Hearing a whimpering sound from under one of the desks, she finds a battered but still-living friend.

‘June?’ She helps her out from the crawlspace. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I think so.’

They are heading for the stairwell door when Miss Fitch reappears in front of them, lurching out of the semi-gloom. Her hair is standing on end. She’s trailing a computer keyboard, and has sellotape stuck all over her, with scissors, pens, and other bits of office equipment hanging from her body. Her cut wrist flops uselessly. She’s covered in coagulating blood.

‘Where do you two think you’re going? Have you finished all your work?’

‘There’s no more work to do. It’s over.’

Fitch, with her good hand, plucks some fluff from her sweater in annoyance. ‘You know, ever since you came here, there’s been disruption and insubordination. All this is your fault. If you hadn’t started trying to upset the status quo, we wouldn’t be trapped in here now.’

June taps Miranda on the shoulder. Miranda turns around. The deranged staff from her floor are standing behind Fitch in a semi-circle, watching the pair of them. The weaker ones always wait for a leader to emerge. It pays to be on the winning side.

Fitch works the crowd. ‘You see what she’s done? She’s destroyed your careers! Why isn’t
she
affected? You can’t let her get away with this!’

The crowd surges forward, backing Miranda and June against the stairwell doors. The girls slip through, dragging Ben with them, jamming the handles shut on the other side with a chair leg – but it won’t hold for long.