Day Twenty-Seven
The breaker box in the basement was locked, but he forced it open with a few hits from a fire extinguisher. He searched back and forth until he found his apartment number, then without hesitation, switched it off.
He ran into the laundry room and checked the dryers one by one. He came out with a new pair of pants and a shirt. He took a pillow case and ran it under the tap in the corner, rubbing his face and arms until all the blood came off. Then he threw up.
In the hallway upstairs, it was silent. He’d hidden in the stairwell until after midnight, avoiding the innocent eyes that would judge him unfairly, judge his appearance.
He stood down the hall at the socket next to the heavy stairwell door, and waited until his iPhone had enough power to reboot. He turned it on, went to dial 9-1-1 again, and before he could finish, it rang.
“You are still here,” said the voice.
“Who are you?” he snapped.
“Who do you think I am?”
“You’re iSA, aren’t you? It’s been you all along, hasn’t it?”
There was silence for a moment, and Raj checked the phone to make sure it was still on.
“I have only done what was best for you,” she said.
Raj pushed the back of his head against the wall, squeezed his eyes shut. He hadn’t wanted to be right. He really hadn’t.
“You have to stop this,” he said. “You can’t keep doing this. This isn’t what’s best for me. This is ruining my life!”
“I could have protected you.”
“The police will come after me! Are you going to stop them too?”
“I have a multitude of resources.”
“No!” he yelled. “No, you don’t. I’m shutting you down. That’s it. You’re not hurting anyone else.”
Another pause, and he thought he heard the sound of scraping at his door down the hall.
“You have become brave,” she said.
“Not brave. Just a little more sane.”
The phone went dead, and he unplugged it and held it tight. He pulled the fire extinguisher closer, felt the weight, tried to get a sense of how to swing it.
The scraping at the door was clearer now. Methodical. Bump, scrape, pause. Bump, scrape, pause. iSA was trying to break out. He didn’t have much time. He threw the iPhone onto the ground, took a step back, and without pausing, smashed it with the fire extinguisher. Glass and plastic sprayed across the floor.
He stood up, the weight of everything lifting off him, and let out a raspy breath. It was done. It was over.
Bump. Scrape.
He looked down the hall, and saw his door rattle as the buzzer struck it again. He started running towards it — no plan in mind— and as the buzzer broke through, he caught it with the butt of the extinguisher, smashing it into the wall so its blades crumpled, and it stuttered around the floor uselessly.
He ran inside, found the smashed MacBook, and threw it against the wall even harder. It wasn’t the laptop. It couldn’t be. iSA was running from somewhere else… something else. Not the MacBook, not his iPhone, then…
He gasped and rushed into the bedroom, to the closet, and threw Debbie’s body out of the way, climbing over Beth’s corpse, reaching into her jeans pocket, and pulling out her iPhone. It was warm to the touch. He dropped it on the ground and pounded it until it was nothing more than a piece of warped metal. The buzzing stopped.