The eye of the lion

No one could have prepared me for the events that were about to occur. Not me, nor any of us who feel our humanity. Even so many years after being there, some parts seem to me to have been lifted out of a dream or some crazy thriller movie.

Waiss had sat down again and his face seemed pale. He murmured as though to himself,

“They’ve done it...”

Randall and I exchanged a glance.

“What’s wrong, Doctor?” I asked. “What are you saying?”

Waiss looked at me and tried to recover his composure. He smiled nervously.

“It’s nothing. I’m sorry. All this has rather taken me by surprise. I mean... what the hell is happening in the world?”

He kept smiling with a great effort and taking the bottle by his side, he poured a little wine into his glass. The change in him was obvious as he drained the glass in two gulps.

I looked at the time on the news-screen and realized that the moment had arrived. I stood up.

“Excuse me, Doctor, may I use your bathroom?”

Waiss looked at me and nodded, indicating where it was.

“Go down the corridor. The first door on the left. No. Let me show you.”

“Don’t bother yourself..” I replied, starting to walk towards it. “I’m sure I’ll find it. I won’t be long.”

Randall came to my aid at that moment, trying to distract Waiss.

“It’s unbelievable that this is happening!” he declared, looking towards the screen. The Doctor nodded and poured himself some more wine.

“It’s insane...”

Waiss continued talking and I disappeared down the corridor and into the bathroom. I looked at my watch and heard Mark talking in my ear.

“We’re in position. Ten seconds before we cut the cameras.”

“Perfect. Get Randall ready for the signal.”

I walked towards the bathroom door and took the surgical gloves out of my coat pocket. I opened the door, being very careful not to make a noise. Mark said,

“Randall ready. In three seconds.”

My pulse was racing. I looked at the door at the end of the corridor from where we had entered Waiss’ private rooms, and saw the camera located close to it, and its pulsing red light. I was ready.

“Now!” said Mark.

I heard Randall raising his voice in the dining-room.

“My God!” he exclaimed.

My rubber-soled shoes advanced carrying me with them down the corridor towards the door, passing the dining-room.

Randall was on his feet just then, pointing and diverting Waiss’ attention towards the screen.

“What?” the latter asked, disconcerted.

“There, in the press conference!” pointed Randall.

“A man that’s standing in the room, I know him. I saw his face on the Most Wanted Criminals show!”

“What? Are you sure?” asked Waiss, looking at the screen.

I walked towards the door, seeing that the camera’s red light had gone out and surprised at the ingenious scheme Randall had thought up to distract Waiss and allow me to pass the table

without being seen.

The door opened silently and I went out.

“Mark’s a genius...” I thought. I wouldn’t have been able to get out of there without him opening the door from a distance, as only Waiss could do that with a magnetic card.

I walked confidently. I had at least thirty seconds before the failure of the cameras was reported. Waiss’ office was only one floor away, and Kelly’s note-book was awaiting me there, locked in his secret safe.

I started to run up the stairs.

“Twenty seconds max,” said Mark in my ear-piece.

“Hell,” I thought, just as I was arriving at the floor where the office was and making my way towards it. “Where is that bastard Kratz and his grandiose distraction plan?”

I arrived at the door and looked at the panel which contained the electronic lock. Nothing happened.

“Mark?” I whispered. “What the hell is going on?”

Nothing.

Tense, I wiped the sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand.

The lock let out a hiss, I heard a metallic sound, and the door opened with an electronic ‘beep’.

“Sorry...” apologized Mark as I entered the office.

“There’s some weird interference in the equipment.”

“How much time?” I asked as I quickly pushed the button beneath Waiss’ desk and the wooden panels opened revealing the safe.

“Fourteen seconds.”

“My God, I’m not going to make it,” I thought.

I whipped my scientific calculator out of my coat pocket and removing the sheath I placed it on the safe door, where it remained, held there with magnets. I pushed the ‘on’ button and the machine began to work, trying to decipher the safe’s combination.

“Come on, come on!” I muttered to myself.

“Ten seconds. You have to go back now, sir, or you’re not going to make it,” warned Mark.

“Come on, damn it!” I groaned.

Meanwhile, one floor above, Randall was paying the price for his audacious dramatic improvisation. Waiss did not seem very convinced.

“This is really strange,” declared Randall, without taking his eyes off the television screen. “I have an excellent memory for faces, and I’m sure that man I saw was a wanted criminal.”

“But where is the man?” asked Waiss.

“I don’t know, I only saw him for a few seconds among the journalists, but he disappeared,” said Randall.

Waiss shook his head and poured himself some more wine. As he did so he shot a glance towards the corridor that led to the bathrooms.

“This world is going to the devil, Mr. Randall,” he said, taking a sip of his wine. His complexion was starting to look a little rosier than usual. “It wouldn’t surprise me if we were surrounded by criminals on all sides.”

Randall nodded. He figured he had to find something to keep distracting Waiss for a few more minutes, and fast. Hopefully he would just keep drinking and get drunk.

He was about to open his mouth, when something stopped him.

They both felt it. The floor was moving under their feet. The entire building was shaking.

“What the hell?” murmured Waiss putting his hands on the table as though trying to hold it down.

“Earthquake?” asked Randall standing up, this time genuinely surprised. If he was looking for a way to distract Waiss, this one had showed up by itself.

“There are no earthquakes in Britain!” snorted the Doctor getting up as well. There was a rumble of thunder.

And at that moment, all hell was let loose.

With the strength of a furious rhinoceros, a powerful shock-wave shattered the large dining-room window, making the curtains billow like sails and flinging the astounded Waiss and Randall to the floor.

The entire building shook as though it were sitting on the back of an enormous creature that was just waking up. The sound of an alarm filled the place. Then came the bang of the explosion, as though a cannon had just been fired next to the window.

Waiss staggered to his feet and looked towards the window with a terrified expression. Randall got up too, holding on to Waiss, and then they both saw it.

Like an agonized monster in the throes of death, the huge Chelmsford refinery was spewing fire and metal into the cold night, splitting and writhing, bellowing and creaking in a symphony of metal, glass and dismembered men.

“The ducts beneath the factory!” Waiss managed to shout, his lips trembling with fear. “They’re going to explode!”

Randall looked at him for a moment, disconcerted, not knowing what to do. Just like the factory, the plan was biting the dust.

A tremendous explosion threw them to the floor again and chunks of cement came away from the ceiling while a formidable thunderbolt made the room’s furniture lurch and the foundations of the building creak. Huge cracks appeared in the walls and the lights started to flicker.

“Get out of the factory!” shouted Waiss with all his might, rising to his feet amid the tremendous noise of the explosions.

“Let’s all get out!” shouted Randall, his head bleeding. “It’s collapsing!”

“No!” replied Waiss, grabbing his shirt and pushing him towards the exit. “I have to get something first!!”

Another explosion shook the factory and a ball of fire flew in through the window, knocking the two down again. The lights went out and the emergency electricity kicked in, illuminating some dim amber lights. The ringing of alarms filled the air, mingling with the roaring of the fire and the creaking of collapsing buildings.

In the midst of all the chaos, I had managed to survive a flight of stairs collapsing and the shattering windows, and dragging myself through the dust I’d managed to get back to the floor where Waiss’ rooms were, when another explosion flung me down and left me almost unconscious.

I called the team’s radio in vain - the radio was dead, and

perhaps them too.

In the midst of my confusion I considered that what Mr. Kratz had called a “distraction” was an under-statement. The son of a bitch certainly hadn’t held back! He was going to kill us all!

At that moment the door of Waiss’ floor opened with a creak and he staggered out in a cloud of dust, making his way towards the emergency stair-case followed by Randall. What with the noise and the dust, neither of them had noticed my presence.

I laboriously got to my feet and thought (aloud, due to the deafening noise) that that had been lucky. That way Waiss wouldn’t know if I had been locked in the bathroom all that time or not.

I stood up and followed them down the stairs. Through the shattered windows I managed to see a dozen or so factory employees and guards running desperately towards the main entrance as the chaos continued.

My first suspicions of a bomb had been cast aside minutes before. This carried on and on without stopping. I considered with great anxiety that the building we were in would be a huge pile of rubble in no time.

Meanwhile, followed by Randall at a safe distance, Waiss had found Marina’s room empty and was running shakily towards

the place where the large metal door was. The heat was becoming unbearable and it was clear that the sprinkler system was broken because only a few sprinklers were working and they were almost useless. The fire was already dancing all over the place like a crazy phantom, and parts of the building were starting to fall.

Quickening my step and dodging obstacles in the blaze, I managed to catch up to the other two and I was about to reach Randall’s side when we all stopped, looking with astonishment at something in front of us.

The metal door was wide open. The armed guard I’d seen defending it on my first visit lay dead on the floor in a pool of blood.

“What’s this?!” shouted Waiss, running into the reinforced room. Randall and I followed him.

We entered a spacious air-conditioned room in which enormous super-computers, like big black refrigerators, were working and emitting a soft humming noise, now accompanied by the spluttering of intermittent short-circuits. Some were starting to let off dense black smoke.

“Oh my God, no, nooo!” shouted Waiss, running between them. He tried to shut them off from a control table, but it was useless and the keyboard didn’t respond. Waiss threw it to the floor in despair and ran towards the back of the room. Randall and

I were right behind him.

There was an area behind the computer center where there were some kinds of large freezer with glass doors. Inside them we could see a collection of large test-tubes in which, to our horror, floated tiny human embryos.

The freezers were in flames, the liquid in the test-tubes was starting to boil and the embryos’ inert bodies were cooking like shrimps, dancing in a macabre fashion in the glass.

Waiss took it all in, his face aghast.

“My entire life’s work!” he wailed.

He ran towards one of the computers and we followed him. The freezers were starting to crack. Waiss made his way through a smoke-filled passage towards a large machine that seemed to still be in good shape and anxiously opened a large panel in the apparatus. When he looked inside it he saw a gaping hole where there must have been a removable hard disk drive. He covered his face with his hands. And retreated as though he had found something repulsive in the computer.

“No...No...” he murmured to himself. “It’s gone!”

A thunderbolt shook the building, almost knocking us over, and part of the ceiling fell not far from us, crushing several of the expensive machines like soda cans while fire started to surround the room.

“We have to go now, Doctor!!!” I shouted as I grabbed Waiss by the shirt and shoved him towards the door. I didn’t like the guy much, but I wasn’t going to leave the idiot to fry. He still had a lot to tell us.

Randall and I almost carried him to the metal door. We had just passed it when the ceiling of the computer room collapsed and the machines exploded like firecrackers, knocking Randall over. I took a few steps to help him up and when I returned with him, we saw Waiss immobile, looking at something in front of him.

It was Kratz. He was observing us coldly, smiling. He was somewhat battered but he was pointing a 9mm at us.

He raised his left hand, in which he held a removable hard disk drive. And he showed it to us.

“Is this what you’re looking for, Doctor Waiss?” he asked.

Waiss looked at him with an anguished expression. I took a few steps towards Kratz.

“What the hell are you doing?! We have to get out of...”

“Not another damn step, Haile!” Kratz cut me off, cocking his pistol.

I stopped dead when I saw his decisive gesture.

“It’s not you I’ve come to kill,” he affirmed.

Randall and I looked at the fat Doctor, who was trembling.

“I have money. A lot of money. I’ll give it to you!”

stammered Waiss. “...I can make you a very rich man!”

Kratz looked at him and smiled sadly. As he shook his head, an expression of fury was taking over his countenance. Then, with a slow gesture he raised his arm and hurled the disk to the floor with all his strength. It hit the ground like a stone and shattered. Waiss howled.

Kratz looked at him with cold disdain. Waiss was crying.

“Many died tonight so that I could do that...Doctor”, declared Kratz.

A new explosion shook the building and silenced the alarms. The fire was getting close to us.

“That was my entire life’s work!” moaned Waiss.

“The work of the devil!” replied Kratz, pointing the pistol at him again. Waiss fell to his knees, shouting,

“You don’t know what you’ve done!! You’ve destroyed a perfect creation!”

A voice echoed in the room, coming from behind Kratz.

“An abomination!”

Randall, Waiss and I looked towards the origin of the voice, paralyzed.

Emerging from the shadows, illuminated like a ghost by the fire from the elevator, walking calmly towards us like a vision from hell, was Edward Kelly.