From the Indie Side (40 page)

“Why did you come here?” the officer asked.
The pitch and rhythm of his speech had changed. For the first time,
he sounded real rather than like a recording.

“To warn you about a bomb,” Kareem said.

“Where is the bomb?” one of the other
officers asked. Kareem’s head had twisted to one side. He could see
the female police officer he’d originally talked to behind the
bulletproof glass. She had come through the door and had her gun
trained on him as he lay there. Radios squawked and chattered in
the background.

“Please,” Kareem cried. “You’ve got to
believe me. There is a bomb in the building.”

“This building?” the male officer behind him
asked. “In the police station?”

“Yes.”

“What does it look like?” the woman asked.
“When is it set to go off?”

“I don’t know,” Kareem replied. “I didn’t see
the time.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t—”

“Get him the fuck out of here,” another
police officer yelled, interrupting the first officer. “Harrison is
on his way. He doesn’t want anyone muddying testimony. Throw him in
an interrogation room.”

Kareem felt himself being dragged off the
ground with a surprising amount of brute force. It took a second
before he realized he was being lifted by two officers, one
grabbing each arm and shoulder.

“You’ve got to get out of here,” he yelled as
they manhandled him through the door. “Evacuate the building! Clear
the block! There’s a bomb, a dirty bomb!”

His feet shuffled as he was thrust forward.
Dozens of police officers stood or sat at desks throughout the open
floor beyond the door. They watched with a surprising degree of
indifference, he thought.

Suddenly, a boot caught his foot from behind
and he tripped. Neither of the officers held on, they both let go,
and Kareem crashed to the floor, unable to break his fall with his
arms. He landed heavily on one shoulder, knocking his head against
the side of a desk. Blood dripped from a fresh cut to his
forehead.

“Hey, are you okay?” one of the officers
asked, dragging him back to his feet.

“You be careful now,” the other added. “You
seem a bit clumsy.”

A couple of police officers seated nearby
laughed.

Kareem felt dizzy and struggled not to vomit.
He felt nauseated, having been disoriented by the sharp blow to his
head.

An alarm sounded.

The room swung around him. Police officers
were leaving their desks, walking calmly to the exits as he was
pushed on against the human current rushing the other way.

The officers shoved him down a narrow
corridor, turning one way and then another. Kareem was confused by
the rush of walls and doors and windows. His head was spinning. He
had no idea where he was within the building. His sense of spatial
awareness had been thrown out of kilter by the knock to his head.
Vertigo swept over him and he vomited. He couldn’t help himself.
His stomach muscles contracted violently. Spew splattered across
the walls and floor.

“Ah, fuck!” one of the officers cried,
kicking him and knocking him into a door.

Kareem gagged. Bile rose in his throat. Vomit
dripped from his mouth.

“He’s a goddamn animal,” the other officer
yelled, stepping over the sick on the floor. He unlocked a door and
Kareem found himself hurled inside. He struck a metal table bolted
to the floor. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead. Without his
hands to steady himself, Kareem collapsed to the floor.

“Shit! Who’s going to clean up this mess?”
the first officer yelled from somewhere within the corridor.

“We should make him lick it up,” the other
snarled, slamming the door and locking him in the interrogation
room.

Kareem curled up in a fetal position.
Although his arms were pinned behind him, curling up into a ball
was the only way to lessen his stomach cramps. His head rested on
the cold, hard floor and he cried.

He wasn’t sure how long he lay there, but
having his arms in cuffs behind his back stressed his shoulders.
Slowly, he worked his way into a kneeling position. Pushing off
against the wall with his shoulder, he staggered to his feet and
looked around the room.

The interrogation room was small. The walls
were scratched and scuffed. A large mirror dominated one wall, dark
and austere. There were two steel chairs chained to either side of
the metal table. A microphone sat on the table, with a black cord
running to one side, down the leg of the table and across the
floor, before disappearing into a small hole in the wall.

Kareem leaned against the wall. He could have
sat in the chair, but he was fascinated by his reflection in the
dark, smoky, one-way mirror. Shuffling his feet, he walked over to
the mirror, unsure of his footing, expecting his legs to betray him
and collapse at any second.

Up close, he could see a dark bruise forming
high on his forehead. The skin had split. Blood trickled down one
side of his face, running down his cheek and neck and disappearing
beneath his bloody shirt.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said,
half-laughing. “You think you’ve got him. You think you’ve captured
your enemy, but you haven’t.”

Kareem swayed before the mirror. He could see
the table behind him in the reflection and stepped back slowly,
eventually feeling the hard ledge. Half-sitting, half-leaning, he
continued to talk.

“I know you’re watching.”

Silence was the only reply.

“I know. I know too much, but it’s not what
you think. Ha, even if I told you, you’d never believe me.”

He felt giddy. If he could have, Kareem would
have rested his hands on the table to steady himself, but he
couldn’t. He instinctively tried to move his hands, feeling them
restrained by the cuffs.

“I know who I’m talking to,” he said, making
eye contact with himself in the mirror. “And it’s not who you
think. I’m talking to you, Dad, to you, Mom. I don’t know when
they’ll show you this, but one day they will, and when they do, I
hope you’ll believe me. All I ever did was try to stop these
attacks.

“It sounds crazy, but I remembered them.
Madness, huh? How can you remember something that hasn’t happened?
I don’t know the answer to that, I just do.”

Tears came to his eyes. He watched as they
rolled down his cheeks, so dark and menacing in the sullen
mirror.

“Nothing matters anymore. In a few minutes,
I’ll be dead. I only hope I can stop the bomb.

“I just hope you remember me, not as a
killer, not as a martyr or even a hero, just as a paramedic,
someone that cared enough to help a stranger. That’s me. That’s all
I ever wanted to be.”

His eyes glanced up at the ceiling. Grief
welled up in his chest. He choked on his words.

“Why me?”

Kareem wanted to wipe his eyes, but he
couldn’t, and that seemed to underline the helplessness he felt in
that moment. Any effort he made was futile, doomed to fail. He
couldn’t even wipe the tears from his face, much less effect any
real change. The bomb would go off regardless, and that realization
hurt far more than being thrown to the ground by the police
officers.

“Why me?” Kareem repeated, only he was no
longer staring at the ceiling. Again, he looked himself in the
eyes, steeling himself. His posture stiffened. He knew his words
would be replayed, at first in some courtroom, and then on the
news, before making their way into some documentary or something.
Kareem spoke with slow deliberation. He had remembered the future;
now he chose to speak to the future.

“Why not?”

He breathed deeply, adding, “Everyone dies.
Sooner or later, we all die. I’d prefer later, much later, but if
it has to be sooner, then let it be for a good reason. It doesn’t
matter if I die as long as I die trying to help, trying to make a
difference. That means something, right? Is there anything else a
man can ask for in life than to give in death?”

He flexed his arms, pulling at the handcuffs
behind his back.

“You know, this would be a lot easier if my
hands were free,” he said, looking at one of the cameras in the
corner of the room. A glowing red LED suggested someone was
watching, or at least that he was being recorded.

He laughed. That change of emotion allowed a
rush of memories to flood his mind.

“I can see the bomber,” he added. “One of
them at least, the driver. He starts out in some kind of mechanical
room before taking the bomb to the roof. There’s big spools, cables
for the elevators, I guess. Lots of large machines, or are they
industrial air conditioners recirculating the air? I need to get up
there somehow and try to stop him.”

Kareem was suddenly sure there was no one
behind the mirror. If there had been, surely they would have said
something. He only hoped that someone was watching the live video
feed, or at least recording it.

He could hear voices in the corridor. From
the pitch, there was a man and a woman.

“In here,” a police officer said. Kareem
could see the officer staring at him through the small, reinforced
glass window in the door. Keys jangled as the door was unlocked.
Kareem backed up against the far wall, not knowing what would come
next.

“If only I could remember everything,” he
mumbled to himself.

The door opened and the officer stepped into
the room, followed by a medic.

“I’m going to have to stay here with you
while—”

The officer never finished his sentence. His
body convulsed. He dropped the keys, grabbing for the table as he
fell to the floor. The medic was wearing a baseball cap pulled down
low over her forehead. She held a Taser hard against the officer,
continuing to shock his body with fifty thousand volts for several
more seconds.

The police officer rolled on the ground. His
eyes rolled into the back of his head. A dark wet patch soaked
through his crotch. Still the medic continued to electrocute him,
leaning over the officer as he squirmed in agony. The Taser
crackled, seething in anger.

“Deb!”

Deb tossed a heavy medical backpack on the
table, finally stopping the Taser. She kicked at the officer’s legs
so she could close the door behind her.

“Quick,” she said, pulling a set of keys from
her pocket. Kareem turned his back to her, allowing her access to
his handcuffs.

“I don’t understand! What are you doing
here?” he said, relieved to be able to move his arms in front of
himself as she unlocked the cuffs. He rubbed at the marks on his
wrists.

Deb slapped a paper napkin down on the table
in front of him, saying, “Kareem Hadee Rafid. I have 9.4 million
reasons to believe you.”

“But—”

“But nothing,” Deb insisted. “Oh, and you
were wrong. You
can
change the future. The death toll at the
museum was revised down. No one died, Kareem. You saved them. There
was confusion over who was missing and who’d been taken to which of
the hospitals, but the death toll has been set at zero. They’re
calling it a miracle!”

Kareem was stunned. Was she right? Had his
knowledge of the future allowed him to change destiny? Or could it
be that he only remembered the initial announcement about
fatalities and had missed the subsequent revision? Kareem wanted to
believe her. He wanted to believe he could change the future, but
after the blow to his head, he wasn’t so sure. His memories were
fragmented.

Deb tossed her baseball cap to him, pulling
off her baggy jacket and dropping it on the table as she added,
“Put these on.”

She handcuffed the groggy officer to the leg
of the table, saying, “Sorry.”

“Yeah,” Kareem said sarcastically. “Probably
not a valid defense before a judge.”

“Come on,” Deb said, picking up the medical
kit and handing it to him. “You take this. It’ll make you look more
like a first responder.”

Kareem pulled the cap down low over his
forehead. Deb stood in front him, licking her fingers and rubbing
at his grimy face, trying to clean him up. She used the napkin and
some water from a bottle to dab at the blood, wiping it away.

“It’s not great, but it will have to do,” she
said. “Where’s the bomb?”

“Up top. My memory is a bit of a blur.
There’s some kind of storage room up there, and someone near the
helipad.”

“Figures,” she replied as they stepped out
into the hallway. “They’ve evacuated the building. Bomb squad’s
been called in. God knows when they’ll get here. They’ve got the
SWAT team doing a floor-by-floor search.”

“How did you get in?”

“My sister snuck me in. She thinks I’m madly
in love with you and had to see you one last time. Since I’m a
paramedic, the remaining duty officer thought I was here to tend to
your wounds.”

“Huh,” Kareem said, following Deb through the
rabbit warren at the back of the old station.

“They’re sending some guy from the FBI over
for you. Shit, is he going to be pissed!”

Deb led him to the fire stairs running
through the building. They opened the steel door. The concrete
stairwell was quiet. Voices echoed faintly from a floor below.

“There’s twenty-two floors,” she said. “This
should take us to the top.”

“Not us, me,” Kareem said, taking her gently
by the inside of her arm. “You’ve got to go. Get out of here.”

“I’m not leaving you,” she replied. “We’re in
this together now, remember. Someone, somewhere was watching the
video footage from that interrogation room. I’m in this as deep as
you are now.”

“You could die.”

“So could you.”

“Please,” Kareem pleaded. “You don’t
understand. I don’t remember you. I don’t remember seeing you up
there.”

“What
do
you remember?” she asked,
allowing the door to the fire stairs to close quietly behind
them.

Kareem raised his hands and rubbed at his
temples.