The Gurney Attack

As I rose, only few rays of sunlight were visible across the horizon. The pain from last night was gone, but the aching feeling of guilt was still present. There were few scars left on my face, yet I clearly felt that those exact spots on my body had suffered. My vision turned from blurry to sharp, and I found myself on the side of a long road, with on each side houses, sometimes bars. All of them were unlit, closed, filled with darkness and peace. 

But I could not stay on one place — I had to move, and move quickly, as I knew that they were already close. The ripped clothes I had were wet as never before, and I could feel them press against my body when I started walking forward, creating a sticky, annoying appearance to my skin.

I crossed a closed restaurant.

It’s a sight like never before. 

I turned my head to the distance in front of me.

Only a few seconds later I heard something echo across the sleeping city. 

A rumble… No, a loud explosion, something full with smoke rising in the air. The earth shook, wind blew in my face, making me close my eyes and small pieces of rocks, sand and even dust started whirling and twirling all over the place.

I let out a gasp, hunched over and quickly rushed to a dark corner where the wind couldn’t blow, where I fully opened my eyes and let the shock wash over me.

I heard screams, cries and people rushing out of their houses. 

And in that very moment, when I heard somebody curse out of fright, I felt something cover my mouth, a bag over my head and silence cover me. A heavy object violently fell on my head, and slowly but surly my consciousness drifted away. 

“Arthur? Arthur?” 

My eyes opened, I sighed in an odd type of relief, and let my vision freely return. As all of my senses came back, I felt the rope tightly squeeze my hands and my feet. I felt the cold surface of the iron chair press on me, making me shiver. In front of me was a round, grey, shining table and parallel to it a man in a suit with carefully cut brown hair and a sharp face.

Apart from that man and the table there was only a locked door and a bright lamp on the ceiling.

“Where… am I?” I carefully whispered.

“Go slow, kid, there’s a lot in front. Better start off with the simple things… So let me ask you a question first.”

The man pulled out a yellow piece of paper out and slides it to my side of the table. I scanned it and without even reading the text, gave the man an angry look.

“Do you know what this is?” The man asked. 

I shook my head.

“Oh come on,” He continued, “don’t you recognise it? Please — take another look!” 

I scoffed. Since this man seemed persistent, I decided to read it: perhaps that would satisfy him.

“Report on Gurney attack:” It said, “The process was to happen on the fifth of January, somewhere around eleven in the morning. The victim would be outside, in his garden. Our weapon of choice would be a complete setup of bombs circling the victim’s house that would detonate exactly five minutes before eleven.”

I stopped reading and held back my breath.

“What is this?” 

My voice shook out of fear.

But the man seemed desperate.

“Read it.” He said.

I continued reading.

“After Rabbit One would signal the victim, thus distracting him, the bombs would go off one by one as a chain reaction in order to cause as much as damage as possible. Rabbit One would approach the house after the bombing, commits a full act of set-up suicide in order to give the police another obstacle. The Gurney attack would be complete.”

Chills went down my spine.

“What is this?” I asked again.

The man smiled bitterly:

“This is what you had in deposit for so many years. After what happened, the car hitting you last night and all, you probably don’t remember it, but believe me: you had it for way too long.”

“This is cruel!” I exclaimed.

It wasn’t the way everything was set up in order to cause most damage, but the fact that these people… whoever they were, they had a person of theirs killed only for the cops to stumble upon something that would slow them down.

“You know the funniest thing?”

As the man reached for something in his pocket, pulled it out, cold and paralysing fear completely took over my mind.

It was a small tube, with at the end a long and sharp needle.

“All of this happened because of you!” He said.

That was the last drop. Both of my sanity, and of the deadly poison that hung on that needle. The transparent drop fell on the paper. The spot where it had hit turned black and shrunk into a small hole.

“Don’t you wonder how?”

I swallowed as the needle gingerly came closer to my face. The man’s voice was as merciless as never before:

“Of course you do… But if you find out, then it might as well be the end for me, and we don’t want that, do we?”

The shining tube that lightly shook was only a few millimetres away from me. It turned and stopped at the side of my neck.

“Now I’m going to test you, young man. If you don’t tell me how you got this file in one minute, this poison will invade your body and you’ll be dead on the ground in ten seconds. I’m waiting…”

As if the extreme danger right behind me was not enough, the man calmly put a timer on the table.

“I’m waiting.”

The timer started ticking.

So did my mind.

I began crossing my memory like never before, looking for the right moment in my life. 

Was it theft?  

The timer struck forty seconds.

Perhaps did I find it in the trash? No, that was a thrown away book…

“Thirty seconds left…” Said the man impatiently.

I gapsed in tension.

Was it by a friend? Did I see it on a bench outside? Maybe did I pick it up at my job? 

Something began floating up.

Come on, it was somewhere recent… A place I’m at every day! 

The timer counted off fifty-five seconds. Soon my fate would be sealed. 

Suddenly I snapped my fingers, said something incomprehensible out of relief and spoke with words rapidly flying into the man’s face.

“I got it when I was picking up my mail!” I yelled.

The man withdrew the needle, stopped that awful timer and chuckles.

“Well, thank you… You have done a lot for us, you know.”

Those were the last words before I was unconscious yet again. But of course — there were some questions that were unanswered. Only one month after I finally got on my feet I found out that the explosion was indeed an attempt on the Gurney attack, only this time it failed. And the way I helped? Well, that was only a single lie from the man in order to both frighten me and set me on the right path.

I have never seen that man again, nor have I been in that cursed city. I live a different life, hidden away from somebody, and try to lay low, as what I did was awful, and I know that if the government gets a hint of what happened…
I’ll be a dead man.