Part 16
Subject Seven peeked out from the dirty alley between two skyscrapers downtown. She watched the businessmen pass by up and down the streets in their perfectly pressed suits, distinguishable solely by the color. Clutched at their sides were briefcases, black and brown and the occasional steel for those that were especially paranoid.
Finally one of them came strolling towards her down her side of the street. He was a short, thin man with slicked brown hair and glasses. Though he didn't stick out any more than any of the others in the swarm.
She slipped back into the alley slightly, hiding between the concrete walls. She took a deep breath and he passed by. Quickly she leapt out and wrapped her left forearm around his neck, her right hand covering his mouth. She jerked him back into the alley, her hand muffling his screams.
"Shh," she whispered quietly into his ear while he struggled. "It will all be over soon."
Her right hand slid around to the back of his head and pushed forward. There was a loud crack and his body went limp. She moved her arms under his, clasping her fingers together around his chest as she dragged the lifeless husk further back into the alley; away from prying eyes.
Minutes later she emerged dressed in his black suit and red tie, she adjusted the knot of the tie around her neck and stepped to the edge of the sidewalk. The traffic trickled down the street steadily, Seven waited for an opening to cross the street patiently.
Her hand slipped into the back pocket of the well-fitting slacks and retrieved the brown leather wallet. She unfolded it as she waited and thumbed through the cash inside. Along with the cash were several credit cards and the driver's license of the former owner. She pulled the license from the clear plastic pocket and let it drop to the ground, through the metal storm grate and into the sewers.
She looked up to find an opening in the traffic and hurried across the street, her new dress shoes clacking across the asphalt before reaching the car garage at the other side.
As she walked through the parking garage she fumbled through the contents of her new pants finding a key ring and other strange objects she'd never seen before. One was the man's cell phone, she pressed on the keypad as she inspected it. She held it up to her ear to hear it ring and an unfamiliar voice answer.
"Hello?" Said the woman on the other line.
"Hello?" Subject Seven replied, somewhat confused.
"Who is this?" The woman asked.
" . . . Seven?" She replied, referring to herself by the only name she had even known.
"You must have the wrong number."
There was a click as the woman hung up the phone and Seven pulled it from her ear. She examined the keypad and pressed the button depicting a small red telephone. She dropped the cell phone into her pocket and reached inside once again, retrieving a small pink paper packet.
"Sweet N Low?" She muttered to herself.
She tore open the packet and pinched it open. She peered into the small packet, investigating the white crystalline powder it contained. With a wet finger she pushed her finger into the packet and drew it out, touching the powder to her tongue.
Quickly she dropped the packet and began spitting out the unbearably sweet substance.
She continued to spit, wiping her tongue on the sleeve of her black blazer as she ascended the concrete ramp to the second floor of the parking garage where she had left Dr. Pearson's former sedan.
Suddenly the phone rang in her pocket.
She stopped for a moment and reached for the cell phone, drawing it from her slacks and staring at the screen above the keypad that read out a series of strange numbers. Her index finger pressed the button with a small green telephone and she lifted it to her ear.
"Hello?" She answered, mimicking how the woman moments earlier had replied.
"Hello, this is Detective Fredrick James, do we have a moment to speak?" The man on the other end of the line asked.
"I suppose so," Seven replied, somewhat curious.
"I wanted to let you know that you're a person of interest in the murder of Doctor Douglas Pearson, does that name sound familiar?" The detective asked.
Subject Seven paused, her mind racing with questions, "I have had this telephone for no more than ten minutes. How did you know to call it? Who are you? How do you know who I am?"
"Because I know that you killed an innocent man to get it," the man replied casually. "You dragged him into an alley and snapped his neck like a chicken wing. You had your reasons and nobody's on my ass about it. I'll let it slip as a murder of necessity. The real question here is how you knew Pearson and if you were the one that cut him to pieces. The coroner said that whoever did it was a surgeon."
"I am not a surgeon," Seven replied.
"How'd you know the victim?" Detective James asked.
"Victim?" She asked with a scoff.
He chuckled, "You know something you're not telling. Am I gonna have to make this official? Drive up there and bring you down to the station? It's a lot of work and they'll just wind up throwing you in prison. I'm not looking forward to all the paperwork I'll have to do. The interrogation, the arraignment, let's just do things this way."
"Why do you care?" She asked.
"Because my boss is on my ass about it. We've got plenty of evidence pinning you as the killer, problem is we can't find you. Personally, I don't want them to find you either. So don't get back in that car, it's a damned miracle nobody's seen you in it yet," he said, Seven pulled her hand from the car door handle.
"How am I to get around the city then?" She asked, folding her arms as she walked away from the black sedan.
"Take a cab, I know you've got a wallet full of fresh money to burn. You can manage without it. Hell, if you're that attached to it I can have a couple friends of mine work on it for you. But first, you gotta give me what I want," he said.
"What is that?" Seven asked.
"The problem here is that they want someone to pay for this. You killed the son of a very wealthy and powerful man and that bastard is determined to get someone frying for it. I don't want that to happen. I think you could be useful and it'd be a hell of a shame if that happened. I saw what you did to that Doctor and I gotta say that I'm impressed and the way that you killed that poor sap whose suit you're wearing is just too good to pass up. You've got skills and I'll be damned if I'm letting them go to waste."
"What exactly do you want of me? How am I to know that you will not do the same to me as he did?" She asked.
The detective chuckled, "Because I know what you can do if I cross you. How about this, you meet me in half an hour at the Burger King on 21st street and we can talk this over in person."
"I take a taxi?" She asked.
"Yep, you've got plenty for the fare."
Seven wandered out of the car garage and asked, "How will you know it is me?"
She lifted her hand into the air and a taxi pulled up to the curb.
"You're five-foot seven, one hundred and eight pounds, light brown hair, brown eyes. Your right hand is darker than your left with scars around both wrists. You're wearing black slacks and a black blazer, white dress shirt with a red tie. Your shoes don't fit your feet either," he said, Seven looked around suspiciously.
"How do you know this?" She asked, climbing inside the cab.
"Burger King on twenty-first street," she said quickly to the cabby.
"We've all go our talents," he replied. "I'll see you there in a while."
The line clicked and Seven pulled the phone from her ear and pressed the button with the small red telephone. She slipped the phone into her right front pocket and gazed out of the window, staring at the world outside passing by. The same businessmen walking up and down the sidewalks, practically indistinguishable from each other. Her hands tapped rhythmically on her thighs to pass the time.
"You look agitated," the cabby said, glancing back at her.
"I have a meeting," she said quietly.
He chuckled, "You're in business too huh?"
"We all are, are we not?" She asked. "You are in the business of driving about passengers."
"Fair enough. What's your line?" He asked, making conversation.
Seven's eyebrow raised, "My line?"
"Yeah, your line," he said with a shrug. "What do you do?"
She paused for a moment before finally answering, "Pharmacology."
"A pharmacist huh?" He asked.
She shook her head, "No, I am a drug representative."
"Oh, I gotcha," he said as the car sat still at a red light. "You give the medicine to doctors, right?"
"Yes, exactly," Seven lied, not quite sure what her supposed job actually entailed.
"How's it pay? You went to college, right?" The cabby asked curiously.
"It pays enough. Yes, I went to Hopkins," she said, recalling conversations with Dr. Pearson.
"Could pay better, huh?" He asked rhetorically.
"Always," she replied.
The cabby chuckled, "Ain't that the truth?"
Minutes later the cabby pulled up to the sidewalk beside Burger King. Theresa reached into the pocket and retrieved the black leather wallet belonging to the former owner. Her fingers opened the wallet and she looked up to the fare meter. Quickly she drew out the money and handed it to the cab driver. He unzipped a pouch in his lap and counted out the change, handing it back to Theresa.
"Have a good day, lady," he said with a smile.
"You too," she muttered, climbing out of the taxi.
Theresa stretched, the taxi pulling away from the curb. She rolled her shoulders and let out a quiet sigh. She walked up the pavement to the glass door of the restaurant and tugged the handle, the door came swinging open and she stepped inside. Immediately she was bombarded with the scent of french fries and hamburgers. She looked around to see the patrons talking amongst themselves as they ate. She found a booth in the corner, far from others and sat down with her back to the wall and waited.
Time crawled sluggishly as she rhythmically tapped on the tabletop with her fingers, supporting her head with her free hand. Her eyes staring at the side door of the restaurant anxiously, her heart skipping a beat every time someone entered. Finally a lanky man in a tweed suit appeared beside the bench across from her, in his hands he held a tray piled high with food. He set the tray down on the table and slid into the booth.
"I figured you could eat," he said, pushing the tray towards Seven.
She looked over the pile of food, four different sandwiches wrapped up in paper, two drinks and two cartons of french fries.
"I am not hungry," she said quietly.
The man began to unwrap one of the sandwiches, "Well, I'm not going to eat all of this, so feel free to help yourself."
"I will keep that in mind. Where were we?" She asked.
"Right," he said with a mouth full of burger. "The doc kept records. Lots of them. We don't know what they mean, it's not like he wrote down what he did in detail. We do know that there were different subjects he was working on and only one wasn't deemed a failure. Now I've gone ahead and figured out that you were the successful subject of whatever God forsaken experiments he was carrying out and that you were none too pleased with him. Nobody else would believe it though."
"How did you come to this conclusion?" Seven asked suspiciously.
The detective swallowed, "From the notes. There's no trace of the failed experiments, he didn't keep them around. We didn't find any animals around either that may have been the test subjects. But we did find one hell of a big freezer. It was empty of course, but for a freezer that big to be in a lab like that . . ."
He took a sip from his drink.
"Groceries," she said.
"Yeah, something like that, right?" He said with a chuckle.
She snatched a french fry from one of the cartons, "So what is your proposition to get me out of this?"
"Well, the good doctor had assistants. Quite a few of them. Turns out all of them quit but the last one. He was fired for some reason or another, we don't know. The notes only say when he was terminated, no reason why. So judging by what was going on in the place, it must've been something big. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"
Seven shook her head, "No. I have no memory of an assistant."
"Are you sure?" He asked with his eyes glaring into Seven's.
She nodded, "Positive."
The detective took another bite from his burger, "See now that's interesting. He was fired after the last test subject had been deemed a success. So you should have some memory of an assistant, unless you're hiding it from me."
Seven scoffed, "I have nothing to hide at this point. I do not remember any assistant whatsoever."
He shrugged, "Fair enough. Maybe you just weren't fully operational then. I'm no doctor, what the hell would I know. I do have his name though, the assistant, and I know where he lives. He's an ER surgeon now, so he's gotta be handy with a scalpel. At least as handy as you are. And since he was fired . . . he's got a motive, doesn't he?"
"One would suppose so," Subject Seven said, pulling another french fry from the carton.
"It's a risky business doing what I plan on doing, so I need a little reassurance you're not going to come back and bite my ass for doing this," he took a sip from his drink. "Once I set him up, you're home free. Problem is that then you can do whatever you want, you can give me the big fuck you and I stuck my neck out for you for nothing. That's an uneasy situation for me."
"What precisely is it that you want of me?" She asked.
"I'm putting together a team," he said. "The world is filled with trash, murderers, rapists, thieves. I became a cop to take care of the slime. But you know what I'm doing most of the damn time? Paperwork. All this red tape, all this bullshit. I put them away and a few years later they're out on parole doing the same shit that I put them up the river for. There's no real justice, no closure. What's the point anymore? I have to follow rules and regulations, bureaucratic horseshit. I have to compile evidence and more often than not it turns out to be a waste of time and taxpayer money. That just doesn't sit right with me.
"You know, I once had a case. This son of a bitch raped his 8 month old daughter. They had to hospitalize her for internal bleeding and who knows what else. And guess what? We never got enough evidence to do a goddamn thing about it. So right now he's still doing it after nearly killing her in the first place. Look me in the eyes and tell me that's justice. And she'll grow up to be a hooker and a junkie, just like all the rest and we end up throwing them in prison instead of the ones who are responsible for it happening in the first place."
Seven folded her hands, "What does this have to do with me?"
"I'm putting together a team to bring justice to these heinous motherfuckers and it'd be a pleasure to have you on it. You're good, we both know that. Sure, you may not give a shit about the cause but you're gonna run out of money and if you leave a string of bodies everywhere you go, someone's gonna take notice. You work for me, you get to do something you're good at and you get paid, and I rest a little easier at night, simple as that," he said nonchalantly.
"This is in exchange for rescuing me from my predicament?" She asked.
The man nodded.
Seven smirked, "Then I suppose we have a deal, detective."