Identity X by Michelle Muckley

Meet me at the park behind Seventy Fourth Street. 
Stay out of sight.  They’re looking for you.”
    “No
way!  Why should I trust you?  Where is everybody from the lab Ami?  Huh?  How
do you know all this?  You know too much.   I can’t trust you.”
    “Ben
you can’t trust anybody.  Whatever you do don’t trust anybody.”  After this all
he could hear was the empty hum of a dropped call.  She had hung up.   
    For a
moment he stood there in the doorway watching the nearby crowds as they passed
him by on the main street.  He began walking back towards them in a daydream, a
state of mental paralysis, the people knocking him left and right whilst his
telephone hung limply in his hand.   His mind was overloaded by everything that
had happened for which he could offer no logical explanation.  He lived his life
through a series of logical explanations, and when there was doubt he would
retrace his steps and find the fault, the mistake, the unexplained variable,
until the time when fact combined with discovery and elicited the conception of
his understanding.  He felt like his body was being pulled in a million
directions by every random synaptic response charging around in his brain.  Ami
was wrong about one thing.  He still had somebody that he could trust.  He had
known Mark his entire life, and he had stood at his side in the line-up for
football practice, he had stood at his side when they graduated from
university, and he had stood by his side throughout his father’s illness and
death.  If ever there was anyone he could trust, it was him.
    Lacking
the advantage of a functional identity and the freedom to use the underground
train system to travel around the city he was confined to moving around on
foot.  He had purposefully selected the shopping mall knowing that it was close
to the centre of the city and hence not too far.  Mentally it felt close, but
the city was crammed full of people, and his progress was stunted as he weaved
his way through the crowds.  Ben couldn’t remember the last time that he was
out in the streets at this time of day.  As he usually arrived for work around
seven thirty in the morning, he was used to seeing the labours of preparation
for the day ahead, the streets relatively sleepy and calm.  He was surprised at
just how many people were roaming the streets in the middle of the day.  Maybe
it was because it was lunchtime, but he could barely cover any ground at an
acceptable speed.  Every step that he took felt like he was pushed back another
two.   He pushed his way sideways to the nearest side street; Fifty Eighth
Street.  He was still at least a fifteen minute walk away from the shopping
centre on the main road, and if he was skirting his way through the side
streets he could add on another ten.  It was time to pick up the pace. 
    He
walked with his head down and hands in his pockets, showing no concern for his
fellow travellers.  He held his telephone in his hand and kept it inside his
pocket.  He couldn’t lose it.  This was the only way that Hannah would be able
to call him, should she get a chance.  He was propelled onwards by a developing
sense of responsibility for what had happened.  He had no idea what he had
unwittingly involved himself in, but whoever it was that was after him, they
were serious.  They had tried to kill him, and there was a good chance that
they had taken Hannah and Matthew.  If he hadn’t drunk himself into such a
stupor on Wednesday night maybe it would have been different.  Maybe then he
wouldn’t have slept for a whole day and he could have been around to protect
her.  Slept for a whole day?  No, that just didn’t make sense.  Through
the disorientated muddle of his thoughts, even at a stretch of the imagination
he couldn’t see how it was possible for him to have slept for such a long
time.  He had been drunk many times before his celebratory night of inebriation,
and yet had never suffered the same