Joe McCrane gazed up at the towering behemoth of glass and concrete before him, the festive lights of the city reflected in it’s windows. The ground floor of the plaza was brightly lit and crowded with Christmas eve party-goers drinking mulled wine and perusing a buffet. The door opened as someone entered, warm light spilling down the staircase to where Joe sat in his wheelchair.

Joe sighed and followed the signs to the accessible entrance, traipsing around to the back of the plaza down a dark alleyway and past the foul-smelling bins, finally coming to a narrow, steep ramp up to a door where several layers of paint were peeling. As Joe manoeuvred himself up the ramp, a bottle clinked. He stopped, peering into the darkness, but could see nothing. Presuming it to be a stray cat or perhaps a fox he shrugged and hauled open the door, surprised that it was not locked. Instead, he rolled straight into a large Christmas tree.

Several ornaments fell to the ground with a loud crash, and silence swept the room. As Joe brushed needles from his shirt, a woman in a shimmering, deep green dress stepped forward.

“I told the staff not to block the accessible entrance,” she said loudly, glaring across at a member of staff who was sweeping up the mess, “I’m sorry, Joe.”

“Hannah,” Joe looked up awkwardly at his ex, “it’s uh… nice to see you.”

A soft murmur grew to a loud chatter as the crowd lost interest.

“I’ll get you some wine,” Hannah smiled, “I doubt the table is low enough for you to reach.”

“Appreciated. Non-alcoholic, please,” Joe replied.

“Turns out the drinking was making the active combat flashbacks worse,” he added, seeing a quizzical look pass briefly over Hannah’s face.

“Good for you,” Hannah smiled then disappeared into the crowd, as Joe scrambled to think of what he could possibly talk about without it becoming even more awkward. His thoughts were interrupted when the room was plunged into darkness, with only the streetlights outside providing any illumination. There was the sound of breaking glass and screaming, several sets of footsteps crunched broken glass underfoot, and then came the sound of a gun being fired into the ceiling.

“Stay exactly where you are and no one gets hurt,” the man who had fired the gun said to the stunned crowd. Joe craned his neck to try and see what was going on, before giving up and pushing gently through the crowd.

“You and you, make sure no one leaves this room,” the apparent leader pointed to two men dressed all in black, carrying assault rifles.

“And you’re coming with me,” there was scuffle and the sound of someone stumbling in high heels, struggling against being grabbed and dragged out of the crowd. The emergency lighting finally kicked in as Joe made his way to the front of the crowd, just in time to see Hannah being dragged towards the stairwell, a pistol pressed to her head. Several heavily armed men followed. With a pleading gaze Hannah locked eyes with Joe as she was hauled away, before she disappeared through the doors.

Almost immediately, Joe could feel old instincts kicking in. He slipped back into the crowd to give himself time to think. The invaders were few in number but clearly knew what they were doing, having carefully positioned themselves so that only two were needed to survey the whole room and all of it’s exits. If Joe wanted to get anywhere, he would need to isolate the guards.

A commotion broke out at the other end of the room; seemingly someone had tried to push their luck and try to use their phone. Joe used the distraction, moving towards the accessible bathroom, and was stopped by one of the guards.

“It’s discriminatory to block the accessible bathroom,” Joe said.

The guard was flummoxed but immovable.

“It’s ableist,” Joe insisted.

“Um…”

“You’re telling me you could plan whatever this is and not think about disabled people, typical,” Joe continued.

“Fine, go, but I’m keeping my eye on you. No funny business,” the guard huffed.

Joe moved down the hallway and into the bathroom, closing the door behind him, being careful not to fully lock it. As predicted, an emergency assistance cord was dangling in corner. After untangling it so it was usable, he flushed the toilet, then with an almighty push heaved himself sideways onto the floor. He grabbed the cord and tugged. A few moments later he heard footsteps approach.

“Help, I’ve fallen,” Joe called.

Several muttered curse words could be heard through the door before it was pulled open. The guard holstered his weapon and righted the wheelchair, before crouching down to pick Joe up. Joe picked his moment then sprang, coiling the cord around the attacker’s throat as tightly as he could and pulling hard. The guard grasped fruitlessly at the cord, his face turning purple with alarming speed, before falling limp. Joe maintained the pressure just to be sure before rifling through the unconscious man’s gear, picking up an assault rifle, pistol, several clips of ammo, bullet-proof vest and a walkie talkie. With practiced ease he climbed back into his wheelchair, reset the call button and exited the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

Joe turned towards the end of the corridor and made for the lift, but after pressing the button several times discovered emergency power didn’t extend to the elevators. Cursing, he tucked the assault rifle behind his back and moved back towards the main room, sticking to the shadows.

At the edge of the crowd he quietly sought the attention of one of the staff members, and after much gesturing managed to persuade them to come to him. He ushered them back into the shadows.

“Tell me you have an emergency override for the elevator,” he whispered, keeping half an eye on the remaining guard still posted at the other end of the room.

They nodded, “it’s in the manager’s office, but they’re not here, and I don’t have the key.”

“Tell me their office isn’t upstairs,” Joe continued.

The awkward silence said everything. “Just by one floor,” they offered meekly.

“Ugh fine, I can manage one flight of stairs. What am I looking for?”

“First door on the left. “Manager” is engraved in the glass, you can’t miss it. There will be a keycard on the desk. But it’s locked.”

“Not a problem, I just need to borrow your tie. Have you got a phone?”

The member of staff nodded as they slowly undid their tie, looking confused.

“I took out one guard. The other one can’t see the accessible entrance from where he is. Get outside, go several blocks, and call the police,” Joe grabbed their tie and pulled out the pistol, heading into the stairwell before they could reply. As he suspected, it was unguarded. He re-holstered the gun and folded up his wheelchair next to an emergency evacuation chair, then hobbled as quickly as he could up the stairs and cautiously out into the first floor corridor. There was no one in sight.

The manager’s office was exactly where Joe had been told. He cast an eye over the thin glass, wrapping the tie around his wrist. A carefully placed strike shattered the window. As he brushed the window frame to remove any shards, the walkie talkie he was carrying crackled to life.

“I heard a noise on the first floor. Can’t take my eyes off these party-goers,” a voice said over the static.

“Sending someone to investigate. Over and out,” came the terse reply.

With a renewed sense of speed, Joe reached through the broken window and unlocked the door, stepping through and closing it behind him. With the tie still wrapped around his hand he bent down and selected the largest shard of glass, then positioned himself to the side of the door as footsteps clattered down the stairwell and into the corridor.

As the door opened Joe slashed the right shoulder of the guard, who dropped his gun. Before he could cry out, Joe had a hand over his mouth and the improvised blade at his throat. A simple headbutt knocked the aggressor out, Joe struggling under their weight, feeling the broken glass on the floor cut his own flesh. He barely noticed the pain through the adrenaline.

Joe laboriously dragged the guard away from the shards of glass before using the tie to binds his hands, and stuffing tissues in his mouth as a make-shift gag. He removed the walkie-talkie, Kevlar vest, and weapons and ammo, discarding them in a side room before returning to grab the elevator pass and hurrying back down the stairs as best he could. Despite doing this as quietly as possible, he knew he now did not have long until his efforts were discovered.

Joe was relieved to sit back in his wheelchair again with the assault rifle feeling almost comforting at his back, and took a moment to gather his breath before once again heading towards the lifts. After a few moments desperately searching in the dim light, he saw a card-reader, swiped the card and pressed the call button, which to his relief lit up. As he waited, Joe heard a commotion behind him. The first guard, still red in the face, staggered out of the bathroom behind him, desperately patting his pockets.

“Ground floor,” the lift helpfully announced it’s presence as the doors slid open.

“You!” the guard exclaimed as Joe practically threw himself into the elevator, hammering the close button harder than he ever had in his life. As the doors closed, he smirked at the furious guard.

“Yippee ki-yay, mother f-“ the doors closed. It was at this point Joe discovered he had no idea which floor to select, but having seen his fair share of action moves quickly settled on the top floor. As the elevator climbed the tower, the walkie-talkie once again hummed to life.

“Some cripple got the elevator working and is heading your way, boss.”

“You have to be the most incompetent goons I have ever hired. Not only do none of you know to use a walkie-talkie, but you were bested by someone who cannot walkie. Stop the damn lift. Over and out.”

Joe felt a renewed sense of determination, reaching around to pull out the assault rifle. There was little point in being stealthy now.

The lift juddered to a halt and the lights dimmed.

“This is an emergency. This lift will not stop at your destination. Please exit the lift and proceed to the rescue point on the roof,” the disembodied voice announced. Joe held up the rifle as the doors opened but found no one there, so pushed out into the dark corridor and through the only door. The sudden gust of cold night air was a shock to the senses as Joe found himself on the roof gazing out at the city below. The whir of a helicopter and the screech of sirens could be heard approaching in the distance, still some way off.

“Well, you’ve proved a surprisingly capable adversary so far but it would seem I have thwarted your rescue efforts,” a voice came over the walkie-talkie.

“We’ll see about that. Yippee ki-“

“Over and out,” the walkie-talkie fell silent.

Dismayed, Joe surveyed his surrounded. A draft of warm air buffeted his face. Joe turned to the large vents next to him, his focus renewed as he realised they lead back into the building. Pulling the universal Allen key from the emergency repair kit on the back of his wheelchair, he set to work removing the grate covering the vent. A few minutes later it clattered to the floor and Joe peered inside the large, mental tunnel. It was steep but if he was careful, Joe felt sure he could manage. He leaned back, bumping his small front wheels up into the vent, then heaved his back wheels in and edged towards the drop. Slowly and cautiously, using his legs to brace himself, he began to lower himself down the vent. As he got closer, he realised he could see the deep green of Hannah’s dress through a grate below him. An irritated voice drifted up towards him.

“What the hell is that noise? Go and investigate.” There was the sound of two sets of footsteps leaving the room.

“He’s resourceful, you know,” came Hannah’s voice.

“He divorced you, didn’t he? How smart could he be?”

Hannah laughed, “Flattery will get you nowhere, Lars, you know that. Let’s just finish this and get out.”

Joe stopped. His mind raced, praying he was mistaken and that it wasn’t Hannah’s voice he could hear.

“The noise stopped,” Lars said.

“Thank goodness. For a moment there I was worried he was coming through the vents,” Hannah chuckled.

Joe began breathing heavily, his blood pumping in his ears, his head ringing. Hannah’s voice was unmistakable. His grip loosened and he was sent careening down, crashing through the grate and falling to the floor in an explosion of bent wheels and smashed ceiling tiles. The floor to ceiling window overlooking the city cracked by flying debris, and the door at the other end of the room was jammed shut by a heap of bent metal and broken tiles. Pain surged through Joe’s left ankle, almost certainly broken. It didn’t matter. He quelled his shaking hands as he gripped the assault rifle, aiming it squarely at Hannah.

“Yippee ki-yay, mother fucker.”

“For the record, I was joking,” Hannah sighed, pulling a small handgun from beneath a ruffle in her dress.

Joe fired a brief round into her hand. She screamed and dropped the damaged gun, clutching at it as blood poured between her fingers. At the sound of the gun, someone outside the room started pounding the blocked door. Painfully, Joe rolled to the left to dodge a bullet from Lars’ gun; the pounding at the door stopped with a yelp. Joe aimed the assault rifle at Lars’ torso and pulled the trigger. Winded from the impact into his Kevlar vest, Lars staggered backwards into the cracked window which bowed outwards and snapped under the weight. With a yell Lars found himself hanging onto the window frame for dear life as Joe crawled across the room.

“Grab my hand,” Joe said, crawling forwards and stretching out his arm.

Lars clawed at the outstretched hand, gripping the medical alert bracelet on Joe’s left wrist.

“No, don’t!” Joe exclaimed, too late. The bracelet snapped under Lars’ weight. With a look of horror, Lars lost his grip on the window frame and fell. Joe looked away before he landed.

An angry screech made Joe look over his shoulder. Hannah stood over him with blood spilling onto the carpet, holding a rod in her good hand.

“You ruined everything!” she screamed, bringing it down as hard as she could on Joe’s head.

***

Joe woke up in the hospital the next morning, surrounded by beeping monitors. A sad paper chain clung to the medical equipment in the corner.

“Good to see you awake,” a nurse bustled into the room.

“What happened?” Joe struggled to sit up.

“The police found your ex-wife beating you over the head with the cardboard insert from some wrapping paper. Kind of ruined any chance she had at claiming to be an innocent victim,” the nurse said, “you passed out from the pain of the broken ankle. Fifteen different breaks. Fairly impressive.”

“My wheelchair,” Joe suddenly remembered the crumpled heap it had been left in after the fall.

“Not to worry, Santa’s been,” the nurse stepped aside to reveal a brand new wheelchair topped with a jubilant red bow.

“It was too hard to wrap,” she explained.

“Thank you,” Joe exclaimed.

“You’re a hero,” the nurse answered, passing him the Christmas morning newspaper. On the front page was a photo of his ex-wife with one hand cuffed to a policeman, the other wrapped in blood-soaked fabric. Her dress was stained and her hair dishevelled. The headline read;

Hero ex-soldier foils high-stakes fraud attempt.

“And not just for your sacrifice in combat,” the nurse gestured to the wheelchair.

“Oh, that?” Joe smirked, “far less heroic. I caught meningitis several years after leaving the army.”

The nurse laughed, “Which explains why she would invite you to a party where she would fake her own kidnapping so she could sue the security firm; she thought you were no longer a threat.”

A patient’s alarm pinged down the corridor, pulling the nurse from the conversation. As she left Joe’s room she made sure to wish him a very Merry Christmas.