Bleak Life

It was a cold Friday night.  Tom Bernam was the last person left at the offices of Bernam and Bernam, a medical firm that was run by Tom and his father.  They specialized in robotic limbs and the regeneration and repair of human tissue.  

Most of the lights on the office floor were off.  Everyone had left for the night though Tom couldn’t help feel another presence.      

Along the corridor in her cubicle, Jennifer James sat staring at her computer.  The smoke from her cigarette was faint.  She had systematically picked her cubicle with smug precision for the distinct purpose of not setting off any of the fire alarms adorning the ceiling.  

Tom crept closer, hearing only the smallest sounds coming from the office. He assumed Jennifer had her headphones in as usual.  

As he peeked round the corner in to her cubicle he was struck with a very strange sight.  Her computer was on, headphones plugged in and music playing, but where was Jennifer?  He knew what was to follow.  

The faint glow of Jennifer’s cigarette still burned away in the ashtray.  

Two pointed pieces of metal were jabbed lightly in to the side of Tom’s neck.  The effects of this were enough to startle him but not to hurt him.  

“You should know better than to sneak up on a girl, Tom.  Especially one who’s as jumpy as me.”  Jennifer cocked her lip in victorious yet friendly manner.  

“I thought everyone had left.”  Tom exclaimed.  He stared forward not even flinching.  This was the kind of game he was used to playing with Jenny.  

“So did I.  Looks like we were both wrong.  I only came to get some things off my computer.  I’m going soon.”  She removed the stun gun from his neck and jaunted back in to the office, picking up her things and removing a disk from the computer.  

She walked passed her employer who was still glued to the spot.  She gave him a fleeting glance with her chocolate brown eyes.  

“Oh, Tom?”  She called from down the corridor, her back still facing him.  

“Next time you try to sneak up on me, I won’t hesitate.  I’ll kick you in the face.”

Tom heard the sound of lift doors opening and closing.  The sound of its creaky descent slowly whistled away in to an empty silence.  

Out in the icy Liverpool air, Jenny crept across the deserted car park.  Her tiny black car sat at the farthest end in front of a grassy area shrouded in dying trees.  Their leaves lost long ago to the cold dead touch of perpetual winter.  

In the distance Jenny thought she heard movement.  She peered around the car park but all she could see was black. 
She pressed the button on her keys and saw her mini cooper light up in the shadows.  It seemed like a candle in the dark that gave her hope and warmth.  

A rustling in the distance caused Jenny to claw at her leg trying to find the stun gun in her pocket.  This time she knew someone was out in the darkness.  She was being followed.  

Tom swiped his keycard through the reader and all the doors on the main floor slammed shut sending a chill down his spine.  No matter how many times he locked up, the strange technological wonder continued to shock him.  

The tiny cat eyes lit up along the hall guiding him from the card reader to the lift around the corner.  

He pressed the button and waited.  He waited for the unearthly grinding and ghostly whisper to creep up the lift shaft.  Silence pushed another chill down his spine.  

It was uncommon for power to be cut in such a tech savvy building.  If the card reader worked, why weren’t the lifts?  With all the doors being locked, the stairwell was not an option.  

Toms dark sense of suspicion kicked in and without a second to react, the two prongs of a stun gun were jabbed in to his neck, this time without the delicate playfulness his colleague had shown earlier that evening.

The shock was so intense that he didn’t even feel it before passing out.  

Jennifer ran to her car and through herself in to the back seat.  She slammed the door and  locked them with the keys still clutched tightly in her hands.  

She heard something slam against the window.  When she looked up there was a man at the door dressed head to toe in black.  His face obscured with some kind of gas mask.  

He took something out from behind his back, as if it where attached to his suit.  In his hand he held a small, sharp hammer.  

He swung his arm back and began to pummel the car window with sadistic intent.  

Jenny was not one to scare easily but the nature of the attack had thrown her off guard and she had no idea what to do.  The shatter proof glass would hold him back for a while but his psychotic tirade on her car would eventually take its toll.  

Composing herself she made a split second decision.  Reaching her hand under the back of the drivers seat she quickly found her target.  

She unlocked the doors of the car and waited.  

Her assailant almost ripped the door open as he pulled the handle.  His eyes met Jenny’s as the bang went off.  Again and again she fired three rounds from the handgun in to the mans chest.  

He fell back away from the car and made a blood churning sound as his entire body fell back and his head smashed against the icy concrete.

She walked over to the corpse lying on the cold car park floor.  She knew that no one could still be breathing after three shots from her gun to the upper chest.  

She lifted the mask from his face and was stunned that his green eyes were pinned open.  His flesh was a horrible pallid color.  

She couldn’t help wonder who he was.  It all seemed to calculated to be a random attack.  What did he want?

Angela Bernam awoke to the sound of an alarm buzzing next to her bed.  The sound was practically unfamiliar.  She had heard it only once before when the system was being tested.

She pressed the button on the alarm to stop the sound and went to her nightstand for her glasses.  

“Security.”  She seemingly addressed to the air as she glided across the bedroom.  “Where in the house are the intruders?” 

She rubbed her eyes and placed her glasses on her face as she adjusted to the darkness.  

“Terrace door is open.  No life signs detected.  No intruders.”  Angela was concerned.  It was not unlike her husband to work late but without him she barely knew how to work the security system.  

She walked quietly and composed in to the living room.  The terrace door was unlocked but hadn’t seemed to have been opened.  

Angela locked up and returned to her bedroom.  The security system was no longer flashing.  She assured herself it was a minor fault and Tom could look at it in the morning.  

She placed her glasses on the night stand and turned off the bedside lamp.  She was confused for a moment.  Had she even turned the lamp on?  

A hand with a powerful grip pulled her from behind and tossed her to the bed.  The dark figure encroached upon Angela as she began to sob.  

A large crash broke the painful silence followed by a hellish bang, and another and another.  

The dark figure fell lifeless, slumped over the bed.

Beyond the broken window, still pointing the smoking pistol was Jenny.  Her green eyes gleaming in the moonlight.   

Jenny kicked in the terrace door and ran through the house till she reached the bedroom.  Angela was still fetal on the bed.  Cold tears clung to her face, quickly freezing in the harsh cold that barged in through the shattered window.  

“Angela get up, we can’t sit around.  They want us dead now move!”  The crunching glass beneath her feet seemed to loud as the sound clung in the air of the suburban mansion.  

Angela started to nod as she slowly lifted herself out of the bed.  Jennifer grabbed her by the arms and yanked her to her feet.  She dragged her to the wardrobe and tossed any comfortable and warm clothes at her to wear.  

“I have no idea whats going on here.”  Angela proclaimed as she was quickly guided in to the passenger seat of Jenny’s now slightly dinted car.  

“Those things that attacked us, they have memory cards with pictures.  Pictures of me, of you and Tom.  They seemed to have had more files but they have been deleted systematically over time from what I can tell.  I can’t get them back but I think they where pictures.  Other people.” 
“Wheres Tom?”  Angela whispered in a painful hushed tone.  

“The power is down in the Bernam building.  All but one floor.  The bio-mechanical suite in the basement.”  Theres only two people with access to that floor after 10pm.  Tom... and you.”  Jenny proclaimed.  

“I’ve never set foot in that building.  Why would I have access to it?”  Angela looked concerned as she pondered the nights turn of events.

“Because he trusts you.”  Jenny filled Angela with a hope and a warmth that she only truly felt when Tom was around.  

The stairwell leading to the basement was well lit.  Everything was white and pristine.  It looked and smelt clinical.  

The women cocked their eyes at each other, both acknowledging the irony of anything that was comparable to a hospital made them feel sick.  

As they entered the bio-mechanical suite, they were greeted with the sounds of machines all around them moving in harmonic unison.  

From behind one of the machines Tom ran at them.  

“Oh god, you came.  I thought I’d never see you.  I was attacked and... something brought me here.”  Fear filled Toms eyes as tears filled Angela’s.  The two embraced each other in a kiss that lasted only seconds.  

Jenny took her handgun from her jacket and fired a shot in to the back of Toms head.  Angela screamed in agony as if the pain caused by the bullet had seeped from Toms body in to hers.  

Anguish and rage filled her.  Jenny moved the gun to Angela as if ready to fire however as she pulled the trigger the gun just clicked.  It had run out of bullets.  

Angela grabbed a sharp cutting tool from one of the work surfaces and slashed across Jenny’s face.  He skin sliced open in a clean and precise cut but failed to bleed.  

Jenny dug her nails in to the flap of skin and ripped it from her body revealing a shiny layer of metal and wires.  She continued to scratch and rip and tear at her own flesh like an animal until all there was of her face was a metal exoskeleton.  

Angela took in a breath, preparing her lungs for a devastating scream but the sound never came.  

Before she had the chance, Jenny lifted a solid block of metal from one of the tables surrounding them and smashed it into Angela’s face so hard the she broke her nose and knocked her unconscious.  

The next day, as a new window was being fitted in her bedroom, Angela Bernam worked around her home.  Cleaning as she went from room to room, dusting and polishing, brushing and tidying.

She picked up her glasses from the nightstand in her bedroom and snapped them between her fingers before throwing them out with the rest of the rubbish.    

In the afternoon she baked a cake but refrained from eating any.  She just sat at the kitchen table waiting for her husband to come home. 

At the office, Jenny and Tom passed each other in the corridor without saying a word.    

Tom went to his office and sat at his desk.  His green eyes reflected in his computer screen.  Jenny went to her office and sat at her desk.  Everyone at Bernam and Bernam sat in their cubicles.  

As each clock turned its hand to 9am, everyone of the little cubicles began to awaken.  Each member of staff typing in harmonic unison.