The Eternity Project

25

MANHATTAN



‘So how’s he doing?’

Ethan sat on the edge of a small table as Karina flopped down onto her couch. The tiny apartment glowed from the light of a couple of small lamps set into alcoves in the walls, the blinds drawn against the gusting wind and rain outside.

‘Tom looks like death warmed up,’ she replied. ‘He must be exhausted, too. He fell asleep pretty much as soon as I got him back to his apartment.’

Lopez sat opposite Karina, her legs curled up beneath her on an armchair as she sipped from a coffee mug.

‘You thought about putting him under surveillance?’ she asked. ‘After what happened today, he must be a risk again.’

‘He’s been a risk since the auto wreck,’ Karina replied. ‘Tom’s usually full of life but the way he looks now I think he’s still in shock. It’s going to be a while before he shakes it off.’

‘If he ever does,’ Ethan said. ‘I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but the guy’s just taken the biggest hit of his life. That kind of thing can take decades to get over.’

Karina nodded thoughtfully but didn’t reply. Ethan was about to ask her about Donovan when Karina’s cell trilled nearby on the table. Ethan reached across and grabbed it, tossing it across the room. Karina caught it deftly in one hand and answered.

‘Yeah?’

Ethan could just about hear the reply buzzing from the cell, a male voice. Although he could not make out the words, there was no mistaking the veil of trepidation that fell across Karina’s features. She clicked the cell off and leaped up off the couch.

‘We’ve got a call-out,’ she said.

Lopez stood up. ‘Your man Donovan isn’t taking kindly to us being here.’

Karina hauled her jacket on and grabbed her badge and her gun.

‘I don’t give a damn what he does or doesn’t like,’ she shot back. ‘We’re better off with your help right now than without it.’

‘What’s the call-out?’ Ethan asked.

‘Don’t know if there’s a crime yet,’ Karina replied as she opened the apartment door. ‘Precinct got a call about screams and possible gunshots from downtown.’

‘How come the uniforms aren’t handling it?’ Lopez asked.

‘Because the call came from the Supreme Court building,’ Karina replied. ‘Same place we were at this afternoon. Want to bet that your mysterious photographer might turn up?’

Ethan grabbed his jacket and dashed out of the apartment with Lopez.

*

Karina drove down to the court building through the rain and the flowing rivers of headlights cruising Manhattan’s streets, the occasional blast of her siren and blue grill lights splitting the traffic down Broadway until they turned left and swung into the sidewalk alongside two police cruisers. The flashing lights illuminated the rain spilling from the inky-black sky above in sparkling rainbow halos.

Ethan and Lopez got out of the car to see Donovan glaring at them, Glen and Jackson alongside him.

‘What the hell are they doing here?’ Donovan demanded of Karina as she strode toward the court building. ‘This has nothing to do with the Hell Gate case.’

‘They’re with me,’ Karina snapped. ‘What’s the story?’

Neville Jackson replied as he picked up a carbine from the rear of one of the cruisers. ‘Emergency call from the guy on the front door,’ he said, ‘heard what he thought sounded like gunshots and a lot of screaming from somewhere up on the fourth floor.’

‘He heard that from the ground?’ Ethan asked.

‘Sound echoed down through to the rotunda,’ Glen Ryan explained. ‘The guard thought maybe somebody had broken in and was armed, and didn’t want to play the hero without calling for back-up, in case he was outnumbered.’

‘Smart move. He armed?’ Lopez asked.

‘Yeah,’ Jackson replied, ‘but only with a pistol.’

Donovan gripped a compact-looking automatic assault rifle, and gestured to Ethan and Lopez.

‘You two stay to the rear. Let’s move.’

Ethan and Lopez followed Donovan and the team up the steps into the rotunda, the circular hall filled with the sound of thousands of raindrops hammering the roof. A uniformed guard, his elderly face pinched with concern, hurried up to them.

‘I haven’t seen or heard anything since I called,’ he said urgently, ‘but I sealed all the exits. Whoever made all that noise is still inside the building. There’s been some kind of electrical disturbance so the elevators are out.’

Donovan glanced at a nearby staircase. ‘Any staff not yet accounted for?’

‘Just one,’ the guard replied, ‘a junior clerk on the fourth floor. I heard screaming coming from somewhere up there.’

Donovan nodded. ‘Stay here and cover the main doors. We’ll check it out.’

Ethan watched as the guard jogged toward the main entrance. Lopez followed Karina and the team up the stairwell, their boots tapping softly as they hurried through the building.

‘They could have moved to another floor,’ Lopez whispered urgently to Karina. ‘Your team isn’t nearly large enough to cover the entire building.’

‘The missing clerk is our priority now,’ Donovan rumbled back. ‘If they’ve taken a hostage and the kidnappers make a run for it, they’ll still have to get past the guard downstairs. They won’t get far and we’ll have uniformed support outside within minutes.’

Lopez glanced at Ethan, who shook his head fractionally. There was no point in arguing with Donovan right here on the stairwell of a building that may be harboring an armed criminal.

Slowly, the team gathered in front of a door that led onto the fourth floor. Donovan gripped the handle as Glen Ryan, his rifle held before him, took up position. With practiced efficiency Donovan pulled the door open and Glen rushed silently through with Jackson right behind him. Karina followed them both as Donovan slipped into the corridor.

Ethan grabbed the door with one hand, waited five seconds to give the team time to get clear, and then followed them in.

The corridor was black as night, the only illumination coming from adjoining rooms with glass windows in the doors that allowed the faint glow of streetlights to permeate the gloom. Ethan could see the team making their way down the corridor, checking through the window of each room, before opening the doors and clearing each space, moving slowly and silently across the floor.


Ethan moved along behind them, nipping forwards as they split into two groups, each checking rooms on opposite sides of the corridor. He hurried forward with Lopez alongside him and rapidly checked the windows of the remaining rooms.

‘Bingo,’ he whispered, waving the team forward as they emerged from a pair of rooms two rows back. He pointed to the study room.

Donovan took the lead and the team silently entered the study, the under-slung flashlights on their rifle barrels sweeping the darkened room.

‘Clear,’ Jackson hissed.

‘Struggle?’ Karina whispered, looking at the files and sheets of paper scattered across the entire room.

Ethan shook his head in confusion, as did Donovan. If there had been a struggle, he would have expected to see files dropped in one particular area as the person holding them, presumably the clerk, had dropped them in favour of defending herself. But the papers, thousands of them, coated the entire floor like a sea of trash.

Donovan backed out and headed further down the corridor, with Karina alongside him. Lopez shadowed her closely as she raised her rifle, the flashlight beam slicing into the darkness ahead and reflecting off something metallic at the far end.

Ethan, just behind the team, hesitated as something odd began nagging at him. A strange sensation washed across his skin, as though static electricity was flaring off the walls and lifting the fine hairs on his body. He felt his ears twitch involuntarily, as though he were trying to listen to something behind him as a powerful compulsion to look over his shoulder swept through his awareness.

The corridor behind them was pitch-black, a mysterious void. Ethan was about to whisper a warning to the team when Karina’s voice called out huskily.

‘I can see someone.’

The flashlight beams caught on a face at the end of the corridor, somebody kneeling on the ground. Karina broke into a run, followed quickly by the rest of her team as they dashed to the elevator, the white beams of light dancing and reflecting off the doors.

Karina aimed her beam straight at a human face.

‘Jesus!’

Karina staggered to a halt and collapsed backwards, landing hard on her butt on the carpeted floor of the corridor as her flashlight illuminated a face crushed between the warped and mangled elevator doors.

The features of a once-pretty blonde girl of maybe twenty-five were twisted sideways, her jaw shattered and yanked up across the side of her face. One of her eyeballs had burst inside her fractured skull, an arm dangling down to brush the floor beneath her.

‘Goddamn,’ Donovan said.

Glen Ryan played his beam over the elevator. The shaft itself was clearly visible around the elevator, which dangled from its cables within the shaft instead of hugging the walls. The entire car was crushed like a packet of potato chips, the metal warped and crunched as though hammered in a giant’s forge.

‘What happened here?’ Karina gasped.

Ethan looked at the shattered hulk of the elevator. ‘That must have been what the guard thought was gunshots,’ he guessed. ‘Somebody must have taken power tools to it.’

‘Question is, who?’ Lopez said, ‘And where are they?’

Ethan felt again the overpowering desire to look over his shoulder. On impulse, he whirled, staring into the deep blackness behind them. Karina’s flashlight beam spun to slice into the corridor, and, as Ethan glanced at it, he saw a galaxy of dust motes suddenly whorl away from them as though somebody had sprinted past.

‘There’s somebody behind us,’ Ethan said.