Committed Chapter 19

The bullet sliced through the air just over Paris’ right eyebrow like a knife-blade.  Paris flinched back, losing his grip on Arthur Helen’s arm.  Arthur began to bring the gun down but Ariadne was already in motion.

            She kicked her father in the knee, which caused him to stumble backwards against the table.  She chopped down on his gun hand.  The pistol fell out of his grip and clattered across the floor.  Paris leapt for it and pointed it at Arthur as he pulled Ariadne back.

            “You don’t know what you’re doing,” Arthur wheezed, clutching his arm with one hand and favouring the knee that Ariadne had not kicked.

            “Can you access the security cameras for the building from that?” Paris asked, gesturing to the touch screen behind Arthur with his free hand.

            Arthur Helen gave him a sharp look but said nothing.

            “I’ll check,” Ariadne said.  Her voice sounded hollow.  She walked around her father without looking at him and stepped up to the touch screen.

            For a moment she stood there with her eyes locked on the first name on the lower family tree.  Three question marks looked back at her where her name should have been.  Her first name.  She followed the bold line through the generations at all the names she’d had, all the lives she’d lived.  Hundreds of lives where she’d been given over to Janus.  She couldn’t imagine what her father had said was true.  How could putting a ring on her make her suddenly love Janus?  Was it even possible?

            She knew it was.  The sensation was uncanny to the point of being unnerving, but she knew it was true.  She knew that she had lived these past lives the same way she knew that gravity was holding her down and that she wouldn’t suddenly float away.  She knew it was true the same way she knew that the floor was solid beneath her and she wouldn’t suddenly sink through it.  She knew it with a cold certainty that was more terrifying than anything she’d experienced thus far.

            For hundreds of years, she had existed in an induced state of infatuation for a man she knew to be cruel.  What countless horrors had she lived through in those lives?

            “Dido killed herself,” Ariadne said.  Her gaze was locked on the bolded name DIDO on the family tree.

            “Yes,” her father answered.

            “We learned about this in history class.  After Aeneas left…for Rome.  That was when she did it.  She burned herself alive because he had gone.”

            Above DIDO on Janus’ tree was the corresponding name of AENEAS.

            “Did I kill myself because I couldn’t be with Aeneas?”

            “No,” her father replied, his voice grim.  “The myth says that Dido killed herself.  The truth, according to the records that our family and Janus’ family have kept, is that Aeneas…Janus couldn’t stand to leave you behind but he also couldn’t take you with him.  So, knowing that you would be reincarnated in the next life and he would be able to get you back then, he told you to kill yourself so that you wouldn’t have to live without him.”
            Ariadne felt like ice.

            “And?”

            “Dido followed through with this request so convincingly that the mythology records it as her committing suicide.  I suspect, at the time, you completely agreed with Aeneas.  He asked you to kill yourself so you wouldn’t have to be without him.  I don’t think it ever crossed your mind to even try.”
            Ariadne just kept starring at the name of her past life.  She wasn’t crying anymore, but she felt the paths that her hot tears had run going cold against her face.  She had willingly killed herself because Janus, Aeneas, whoever, had told her to.

            “Ariadne…” Paris didn’t seem to have anything to say to that.  What could anyone say to that?

            Ariadne reached forward and closed the image of the two trees.  She scanned the available icons on the touch screens desktop and found an icon that looked like a camera.  She touched it and a series of six squares showing various camera images from the entirety of the building appeared.  She scanned the six of them but didn’t see the two police officers from her house earlier.  However, the images that were shown were of the lobby, several hallways, and part of the stairwell.

            “Check to see if you can select the camera for the elevator,” Paris offered.

            Ariadne selected a drop down menu on the side of the camera view and scrolled through the list until she found one for headed as ELVTR-CAM and selected it.

            The top right screen switched to an image of the interior of the elevator that they’d been on earlier.  A single man stood in the elevator.  The image was full colour, but he was all blacks and whites.  His skin was dark as charcoal and his hair a thin layer of gray.  He stood calmly in the elevator, powerfully built, wearing civilian clothes.  But Ariadne could see the bulge under his right arm where his weapon was holstered.

            “I think he’s coming for us,” Ariadne said.

            “We need to leave Ariadne.”

            Ariadne just kept starring at the man in the elevator.  Who was he?  Somebody else that Janus had hired to hunt her down?  Was there really any point in running?

            “Ariadne!”

            Paris yell made her jump and turn around in surprise.  He was looking at her with eyes wide with fear.  But not fear of the man coming up the elevator.

            “We need to go.  I need you to stay with me, okay?” he asked.

            “Paris…”

            “You need to stay with me,” he said, emphatically now.  “We need to go.  We can’t let him catch you, right?”

            “Right,” Ariadne nodded.  But there was no energy behind it.  She felt empty.  What was the point anymore?

            Ariadne stepped forward and reached into one of the pockets on her father’s suit jacket.  She felt her hands close around his keys.  Right side pocket, where he always kept them.  Before he could grab her she pulled her hand out and stepped towards Paris.

            “Let’s go,” she nodded.

            “Say something witty.”

            “What?”

            “Show me that you’re still in this with me,” Paris said.  “Say something witty.”

            “Paris I-”

            “No, I can’t listen to you if you’ve given up,” Paris interrupted her. “You may have lost hope but I haven’t.  We can beat him.  Janus isn’t invincible.

            “Ariadne…”

            Ariadne ignored the plea in her father’s voice and stepped past Paris out into the officer without a backward glance.  “We going to take the stairs?”

            As if in answer she heard a series of shots fired behind her.

            Half way to the doors out of Arthur Helen’s office now Ariadne whipped around.  Her first thought was that Arthur Helen had somehow overpowered Paris and taken the gun from him.  What she saw instead was Paris pointing the gun at the window that the two window cleaners outside had just finished cleaning.

            The glass shattered outwards, reminding Ariadne of the sound the vase had made when she’d struck her mother in the head with it.  Her mother who was now dead.  Ariadne felt a new wave of sadness threaten to rise up and overpower her but she fought it down.  Now was not the time.

            “What are you doing?” Ariadne cried.

            “Improvising!” Paris cried.  “I know that sounds cliché but what the hell else do you call this?  Come on!”

            Paris used the suppressor of the gun to clear the shards from around the window and leapt out onto the platform the window cleaners had been using.

            Ariadne followed him.  The two window cleaners were still on the platform and looked at the two of them in utter shock as Paris pointed the pistol at them.

            “We’d like to go down please,” Paris demanded.

            Ariadne felt a rush of vertigo as she glanced over the side of the platform.  She gripped the rail tightly and tried not to think about how high up they were.  Part of her felt a pang of sympathy for the people down below.  She hoped nobody was hurt by the shards of glass falling down.

            One of the two window cleaners picked up the platform controls, which were at his end, and pressed the button to lower them down.

            “Ariadne!”

            Arthur Helen raced to the window but stopped short of jumping out at them as they began to lower.  Ariadne looked up at her father and held his gaze as they went down.

            “That’s far enough,” Paris ordered.

            Ariadne dropped her gaze back down from her father and looked through the window of the floor they were now on.  They’d only gone down two floors and were now looking into a deserted break room.

            Paris turned the pistol on the window.  “Cover your eyes,” he warned.

            Ariadne covered her face as he fired a few shots into the window and kicked the larger shards out of the way before jumping through.

            “Come on!” he cried.

            “Thanks for the lift,” Ariadne said to the two window cleaners and leapt through after him.  She didn’t look up at her father again.  Instead, she grabbed Paris’ offered hand and the two of them bolted out the open door into the hallway, making a beeline for the door to their left marked with the word STAIRS.

Achilles pushed through the double glass doors into Arthur Helen’s office, ignoring the frantic looks from the secretary.  Clearly she did not feel confident enough to go in and check on what had happened inside herself.

            Achilles found Arthur Helen standing at a shattered pain of floor-to-ceiling length window gazing down towards the ground.  For a brief moment Achilles wondered if Ariadne and Paris had shattered the glass and jumped to their deaths.  Somehow, that seemed an unlikely end to this particular hunt.

            Arthur Helen turned and saw him standing in the doorway.  The man’s face did not bear the expression that Achilles had imagined from a man of his authority and wealth.  He looked like a man defeated by something far greater than himself and fully aware of his own inability to overcome it.  Achilles was suddenly very curious to know what had happened in this room before he got there.

            “You said twenty minutes,” Achilles reminded him.  He’d waited in front of the building for the signal to come up and take Ariadne and Paris in after speaking with the Hellenistic Inc. CEO.  Now he wished he’d come up immediately.

            “There were window cleaners,” Arthur Helen explained as though he were in shock.  “She took my keys.”

            “Do you have a personal parking space?” Achilles asked.

            “Parking Garage.  Level 1,” Arthur Helen nodded.

            Achilles turned and bolted.  Ignoring the elevator, he raced past the bewildered secretary for the door marked STAIRS down the hall.

            His senses began to come alive.  It was like blood was finally starting to pump into his veins again.  As though he had been long dead, he was coming alive once more.  The hunt was on.  This is what he lived for.  This was his element.

            Ariadne and Paris wouldn’t get far.