The Anti-Hero
30th December
The sea was expectedly calm on the cold moonless night. And he found his way struggling through the sand away from the water.
1st December
The news channels have started setting off a mass hysteria already and the newspapers wrote in an ink so redolent of panic that if it were not for the one page preventive instructions by the government people would have given up buying newspapers. Reports of new cases from different parts of the city showed up like some daily political embezzlement. This city had been through a lot, but has always fought back, until now. The feeling was unmistakable- like the flame of the only lamp you have is flickering while sucking in the last few drops of oil and you are rushing around trying hard to find some, before it goes off. But there isn’t any left!
The Mayor met the head of the CDC with regards to having the matter taken up with the different health authorities of the country. While every theoretical detail had been wired to the research labs all around, yet it wasn’t possible to create the antidote for the new epidemic without an actual specimen in hand. Stricken by a general aura of gloom, all the administrative and financial machinery in the city slowed down by degrees. The souls started to abandon the streets. The city had almost come to a standstill. And amidst this imbroglio, the police department launched their most risky and aggressive mission till date. The city wide extensive search with an aim to track down the most dreaded name in the city along with every last name associated. Commissionaire Burroughs wasn’t ready to let the police department await the doomsday counting days and cursing fate. He planned to serve justice to the city for one last time. He planned to hunt down Jonathan!
More and more policemen started getting exposed to the disease, as they were made to scour through the darkest and untrodden corners of the city in search of those chronic fugitives. One night the media debated the news of these deaths of policemen in a manner so unforgiving, bringing in persons from various think tanks of the city to allege the government and the head of the police department for culpable homicide. The Mayor tried convincing the Commissionaire to call off the investigation. But Burroughs had decided his swan song. There was no stopping him.
31st December, 00:15 hours: Three gunshots in the air shattered the uneasy silence. The tunnels lit up three times. The first was a shot in the dark, giving him a glimpse of his target. The next two were precise. The tunnel felt silent again.
It was a frustrating night at the police HQ. And the never-ending conversation between Inspector James and the commissionaire almost lasted the whole night till dawn. ‘We were this close to having him. There is no way the shots had not hit him sir.’ said James to Commissionaire. ‘ Although it was dark, I had a clear shot. With that angle of shot, the bullet would have……’
The commissionaire too angry to take explanations, interrupted, ‘Then why isn’t he here in front of me with his hands cuffed bleeding to death, pleading in pain, or DEAD already!’
‘Sir, the bright side to this is that at this hour of emergency, we are not the only ones trying to get him down.’ James made an observation on the events earlier that night hoping to make good for the lost opportunity. And when he failed to get the commissionaire’s attention, he got up to him and asked ‘ What about the call sir? Aren’t we going to find who made the call?’ ‘I don’t think that would be necessary now’, looking at a message he just received from the hospital, the commissionaire left.
14 years ago:
The young boy had first taken the city by a storm. He was a genius in one of the more volatile ways that rarely offered any scope for appreciation. He stroked his hostile chord with the government when he laid the foundation of the first ever juvenile criminal web in the heart of the city, shooting to fame with his first robbery at the break of dawn. It was nothing the city had seen before. An unknown face, that manages to turn up from nowhere under the sun and take away the wind from the sails of the authority. His element was surprise! He challenged the administration to keep their powder dry, to be alert all the time, to think beyond their run-of-the-mill policies! Appeared when least expected, no Intel inputs, no records of crimes of such patterns anywhere in the state, or in the neighbouring states. The peace keepers knew, this time, they were facing something new. Something they had never prepared themselves for in this peaceful city. It was far from textbook!
Back then when one of his accomplices was caught, they could make him say so little about him that it only added to the mystery. Apparently it turned out that the accomplice himself didn’t know enough. All he could remember was what Jonathan would say them before they started “-What makes crimes so tough is the attempt to make it foolproof. And yet they always find out who! It may delay the authorities, but never forever. So why hide?”
When the courts and offices were locking themselves down, there was someone in the courtroom the commissionaire owed a favour who volunteered to stay back to help with any kind of paper, the investigation needed. It was more of an operation than an investigation because everything was out there in the open. Burroughs has found out recently that the previous commissionaire along with concerned persons of the govt. have had details about Jonathan almost for five years now. But what prevented them from any action was Alan Neuman!
25th December, (at the Neuman laboratories)
The west winds had started to grow colder. The fog had deprived the city of its share of sun for the last three days.
The commissionaire had come to meet Dr. Russell who was heading the team of research in Alan Neuman’s lab. The commissionaire had a few questions about his employer Mr. Alan Neuman, the once upon a time giant of pharmaceutical business. The word of the mouth was that Neuman flourished because of his connections in the previous government and that the last two years after the re-elections had not been his best of times. This research might have been his only chance to turn things around once again and set the record straight. His labs were among the dozen others in the city who were researching on the same thing. The anti viral for a new mutated virus, that seemed to have broken an epidemic in the city! ‘As of now, what do we know about this virus?’ the commissionaire asked Dr. Russell. ‘The virus as we are calling it right now is RV x5115. The virus could be transmitted by all the known modes, survives extreme heat and cold, and is non reactive to all the antivirals created until now. It is extremely lethal in the sense that it stimulates the pain centre causing unbearably excruciating pain characterized by different gross symptoms through its different stages and subsequently causing death due to shock. No class of pain killer is effective. That explains the failure in symptomatic treatment. All the previous victims of the virus had died wishing for death. And it does all this very quickly.’ ‘Any breakthrough in the cure part?’ ‘None so far. But to tell you in simple words commissionaire, it is a unique problem we face here. Theoretically, only a living human body which has carried this virus for at least 24 hours can produce antibodies to the virus. And the maximum any victim had survived is 16 hours. There is this 8 hours gap, we need to fill.’
Meanwhile, Commissionaire received an anonymous call.
23rd December
It was the first time in last three weeks that the newspapers got themselves a good headline. There was this doctor from a neighbouring state who claimed to have developed some theories as to how the virus could be contained. All this time, he had been in contact with Mr. Louis Finch of the Finch pharmaceuticals, the current biggest name in this business. The media talked of him visiting the city in a couple of days to meet Mr. Finch and proceed with his findings.
Same night, at Neuman residence.
‘We have to get this guy. Before he meets Finch and kills our only shot at reviving our company! I need to know what he has found. Get him, will you?’ Alan asked Jonathan while he stood there staring at the sleeping city through the window of the penthouse. ‘One last time, I owe you this and nothing more.’ He said and turned to leave. Neuman stopped him, ‘I know it pains you, the fact that people out there blame you for this. It is just that they need a face to dump their anger on. And you have been the name of evil for quite some time now. But trust me; I shall make it all right. Just get me the damn doctor! ‘
30th December
The doctor visiting Finch arrived in a private jet furnished by Mr. Finch himself. Finch was a veteran who knew that by calling the doctor to his place he had already ruffled some feathers among his business rivals. Not that it was problem, unless Alan Neuman was one of those rivals. Because Neuman had Jonathan whose reach is beyond what those dozen policemen could secure. So that morning, Finch got his Assistant make a call maintaining anonymity. It was made to Commissionaire Burroughs. But there was more to Finch’s plan than just this call. He handed the assistant a briefcase. The contents of the briefcase were quite elementary. A syringe, a vial and a pair of gloves. The vial read: Specimen RV x5115.
From the fleet of shiny black limos leaving the airport to the tunnelled highway beside the sea coast, the entire route had been scripted by Jonathan tagging specific times to specific locations. When the cars would reach the long dark tunnel, which would be at around 22:10 hours, as per Jonathan’s impeccable calculation, the engine of the car with the doctor would breakdown at that exact moment with the lights of the tunnel, owing to some arrangements he made. And then in that span of momentary darkness, the doctor would be transferred in another car coming from the opposite direction. Then, as the lights kick in, Jonathan would appear before them and lead the policemen into a merry’s chase! In this way he planned to delay them and reduce the number of police going after the doctor.
It was 22:10 by his watch and the fleet of cars entered the tunnel. The next 5 min witnessed a series of events as planned. And the car with the doctor successfully disappeared in the horizon. But in a manner quite unprecedented for Jonathan, none of the police cars followed the doctor. He was trapped. Apparently Burroughs never cared about the doctor. He had strictly instructed them to go after Jonathan. In no time, policemen poured out of the cars with guns in their hands. But before inspector James could order to act, Jonathan decided to embark on the second part of his plan. It didn’t matter that there were now a dozen more policemen. He could still lead them in a worthless pursuit among the narrow passages below the tunnel. Those were like smaller tunnels and he knew every connection. He had known this place since he was a young boy. The chase went on long.
Jonathan stood there still in one of those tunnels and he could make out in the dark, from one end of the tunnel a figure, gliding in slowly without making much noise. The person on the other end fired a shot through the tunnel. It was a shot in the dark. The tunnel lit up for a second and Jonathan’s eyes met that of the inspector’s for a second. The next two shots were precise. It had hit him. The inspector ran towards the other end of the tunnel, but Jonathan wasn’t there.
Jonathan ran through the tunnel that would lead him to the beach. He hid himself in the dark and tied his wounds. And he kept running.
Mr. Finch’s assistant who had been given the briefcase, was standing beside the highway, waiting for the police to return. And he saw someone in the dark, running towards the sea. Someone he could recognize. He immediately climbed down the railings and jumped over to the shore to follow him. He followed him along the coast until he was close enough to throw the briefcase at his head. That sent Jonathan into the ground. It made him disoriented. He tried hard to open his eyes. All he could see was that he was being injected with something. His attempt to fight the guy despite having bled heavily got him a piece of cloth from the cover of the briefcase but the guy escaped. The sea was expectedly calm on the no moon night. And Jonathan found his way struggling through the sand away from the water.
8 hours later: (09:00 hours, 1st January)
Early that morning, Alan Neuman’s people found him on the shore, with the piece of cloth in his clenched fist and on the sand beside him at a distance was the broken vial with a label that read: RV x5115. Jonathan was rushed to the hospital, the news of which had reached Alan Neuman and Commissionaire Burroughs in no time. Neuman brought Dr. Russell along with him as he had been informed of the vial found beside Jonathan. Dr. Russell reached the hospital and quickly procured a blood sample from him before he was sent to isolation. Dr. Russell went to the lab to carry out a few serological tests. Alan stood there still wrapping his head around the series of events in the last few hours. He and Dr. Russell had seen a lot many patients pass through the tortuous stages to end in death. Meanwhile, in the lab, Dr. Russell detected the virus in Jonathan’s blood. He kept this news to himself. It was only a matter of few hours now. Russell went ahead to maintain the protocol and kept testing for antibodies at the end of every hour until he died. It had been past twelve hours already and Dr. Russell had been carrying out tests.
It was the 15th sample, he was carrying the test on and not in his wildest of dreams, he had imagined that what he would see next would change everything. The first antibody to the virus was staring at him from right there in Jonathan’s blood. Dr. Russell stared at it for sometime as if trying to make sense of what actually happened. He stood there with those little questions in his mind and slowly it dawned upon him that it had been 16 hours that Jonathan had spent in isolation but he had been injected the previous night. 8 hours have passed on the beach. Jonathan has now survived for 24 hours after being injected with the virus. It was the biggest breakthrough everyone was waiting for. On further investigations, Dr. Russell found that Jonathan suffered from a condition called CIPA- Chronic insensitivity to Pain and Anhidrosis! It is a condition in which the patient is not able to feel pain. This shielded him from the excruciatingly painful stages of the infection. The news of the moment was that an antidote to this viral menace was in the pipeline after today’s discovery. Through mass production of this antidote, the entire city could be treated. The news spread like wild fire all around the city. For the first time in over a month, the streets of the city witnessed people who gathered at the gates of the hospital to get a glimpse of Jonathan. The media too waited there to cover him. He was their hero now.
’You are panting!’, said Mr. Neuman. ‘Yeah. It takes a lot of effort to bear the pain and even more to conceal it.’ said Jonathan. With a plain face, he walked past the hospital gate into the abyss of stubborn lights and growing sounds, to be the villain and the hero they knew him to be. Thousands of them stood there in anticipation. He crossed the gathering and walked over slowly to the side, where Commissionaire Burroughs waited for him with those handcuffs. He was put into the jeep and taken away. Jonathan couldn’t feel pain but sure did understand it. ‘Pain’, he thought, ‘must be a great feeling that it leaves such honest smiles behind when it leaves.’
The satanic prescriptions! 