But I was beyond all of that.
This one last time I would reach for it, and this time Afridi would bleed.
“There is nowhere left to run to, Mr Carver,” Afridi’s smug, condescending voice blasted out of a speaker under the helicopter. “I’d like to say I don’t want to harm you, but that simply wouldn’t be true. I’d love nothing more than to kill you both, right now. Unfortunately, I find that I need the pair of you. Thanks to your little distraction, most of the subjects in the Project are no longer viable. You two may well be the most important sources of data left to me. Return to your vehicle and drive back to the complex.”
“Fuck that,” Johnson called out. “Take him out, Roasties.”
“I’ll take him, ma’self,” Turner snarled. “I’ll climb up in his wee chopper and nut the bastard to death.”
“Do it, Carver.”
I knew that voice. The words rocked me, and my grip on the fissure faltered. I turned to find Pearson beside me, hands by his sides as he looked at me calmly. His eyes were steady, clear of the fear and the horror for the first time since his death.
“Do it,” he said, glancing over to Mackenzie. “For the squad.”
“For the squad,” I muttered, as I reached for the fissure and ripped it wide.
My vision blurred as the power tore through me, overriding my senses, driving all thought from me. This was nothing like the force I’d thrown at the bullets. That was a whisper in the face of a hurricane.
Dimly, somewhere at the base of my consciousness, I felt panic.
This was too much. Too much for my mind to handle, too much for me to come back from… but I was past caring. This one time, in this shithole of my life, there would be justice. This one time, I would do what was right.
The power tore out of me, burrowing a hole out through the tatters of my sanity as I sent it out in a white-hot surge that burnt along my arms, and out of my hands. The helicopter rocked back, and then froze, caught like a fly in amber as I tore at it. The spinning rotors stopped dead, shivering for half a second as they slammed into a force as immovable as mountains, and then exploded into fragments that hung in the air like a cloud of razors.
I smiled then, a grin of savagery as what little remained of me revelled in this power stolen from gods and demons.
And then I closed my fists and turned the force inward. A thousand jagged shards formed from the shattered rotor blades spun in a vengeful swarm around the stricken machine, clawing rents into the fuselage until the gunship exploded, the blast wave and flames held tight within a sphere of pure force.
I felt a touch on my mind and looked up from where I’d sunk down to the dirt. The fiery wreckage dropped hard, crashing into the sun-baked earth as the flames devoured it. I frowned, staring until my eyes caught the movement at its heart.
The door was a twisted mess that should never have been able to open, but Afridi sent it skittering over the rocks with a single kick. Flames clung to him, dancing over his skin, encasing him rather than consuming. He clambered out of the wreckage, body jerking as his torso twisted and spasmed.
“That was a mistake,” he hissed, flicking flames from his body like water.
I staggered back. How had he survived that? How could anyone?
A blast of fire shot past me and I scrambled away from the heat. Mackenzie stood with one hand outstretched, her face twisted in pain as she grasped at her head with the other.
“This is down to you, Roasties,” Johnson murmured, close to my ear. “She has nothing left. She reached her limits getting out of the complex. If she keeps pushing like this there’ll be nothing left of her to save.”
I looked back to Afridi. Mackenzie’s flames had driven him backwards but didn’t seem to be doing much else. He stood with both hands raised against the fire surrounding him, warding it off, and already her flames were fading. I watched as she sank down to her knees, and toppled sideways into the dirt.
“Shift yer arse, Roasties!” Turner urged me on.
I didn’t stop to argue, or even to think, sprinting forward over the broken ground towards Afridi. I dropped to the dirt as Mackenzie’s flames died and Afridi shifted to face me. The slide probably wasn’t anywhere near as timely or graceful as I thought it was, but it did the job. Something passed over my head, the air splitting as Afridi sent a ribbon of something dark slashing past me, hissing like a spiteful cat.
My fumbling hand snatched up a rock and I hurled it before I’d even stopped sliding through the dust. Afridi flinched away, shock etched into his features, deep enough that I would have laughed any other time.
Now really was not the time. I snatched up more rocks, hands scrabbling in the dirt, and hurled them at his face; jagged chunks of dusty stone the size of my fist that would have smashed a crater into his skull if any of them hit.
Afridi dodged, twisting and lurching faster and faster, even once the rocks had stopped, until I finally grasped what it was he was doing. His torso thrashed, shuddered, and split as he phased into three blurred images. Afridi hadn’t just grasped my ability and Mackenzie’s fire, he had others too. I didn’t know why I was surprised. Nothing else had gone my way lately.
His laughter was wild and high, as delight flirted with hysteria.
“Really, Carver,” he said as his body slowed again and became a single, solid figure. “Are rocks the best you can do?”
“Fuck you!”
He frowned, tutting at me as he wagged a disapproving finger. “There really is no need for all of this. Return to the complex with me, Carver. Mackenzie is in no condition to be running through the heat like this.”
I glanced back to where Mackenzie had slumped to the ground, surrounded by the figures of Pearson, Turner and Johnson as they watched over her.
Johnson’s shout came too late, and I turned back to Afridi just in time to watch the attack coming. The tendrils writhing out of him looked like they were formed of a dense, oily, smoke; but they flew towards me like lightning, and felt like ice-cold spiderwebs. I froze as they settled on me, and then screamed as they sliced through the stolen uniform and the pain began.
I rolled in the dirt, not knowing how I’d gotten down there as I convulsed. The pain was cold, cutting away at me like a thousand frozen knives as the tendrils sought out my nerve endings and laid siege to my nervous system. This was more of an attack on my mind than my body, clawing at my sanity via the pain centres of my brain. I had precious little left to me, and I wouldn’t last long.
I fell slack as the pain stopped, and the back of my head crunched down into the rocky ground. The touch was feather-light, just enough for me to register it as a hand shook me.
“For fuck’s sake, Roasties. What’s the point in having a squad if you don’t use it?”
My eyes flickered opened and I squinted against the sun into Johnson’s face.
He had touched me. I had felt it.
“What are you, Johnson? Are you real?”
“I haven’t the first fucking clue, mate,” Johnson said with a smile. “Use me anyway.”
I took the hand he offered me and clambered to my feet. The smoke-like tendrils thrashed around me like kelp in a sea at storm, but they did not touch me. I was surrounded by a sphere of pure force, safe in the eye of this cyclone.
I walked towards Mackenzie without stopping to worry if the protective bubble would move with me. Afridi screamed, practically raving as he abandoned the black tendrils and hurled fire at me again.
Pearson and Turner turned as I approached, stepping over Mackenzie and forming a circle with me. We stood in silence, we four, and for the first time I met their eyes unflinching—the dead and the living, and at once I realised why Afridi had never understood why my sanity ever truly broke.
I was already fractured. I was a shattered mirror, the shards of glass pushed tight together, close enough to still function, but broken nonetheless.
Turner grinned at me as he offered his hand. “It took you bloody long enough, Roasties. I was
beginning to think you were as stupid as you looked.”
I snorted and took his hand, reaching to grasp Johnson’s with my other hand. Pearson stood facing me, the fear finally gone from his face as he reached to take the hands Johnson and Turner offered.
Power tore through me as doorways opened in my mind, portals to rooms filled with pain, horror, and self-loathing that I had locked away behind barriers formed from my own guilt. The force surging through me was almost more than I could fathom, and still more lay waiting at my fingertips.
“Take it, John.” Pearson’s whisper cut through the roaring in my ears, and I reached out to grasp it.
Afridi flew backwards at the first blow, tumbling over the cracked earth before he rose into a crouch and pulled a shield of force together around him.
I reached out again, prodding at the shield with a tentative thought and watched him tumble again. I toyed with him for a moment, a cat playing with its prey. And then I destroyed him.
The power I unleashed was a visceral thing, a feral beast uncaged that ripped and clawed at Afridi’s shield as if it were nothing. I sent him staggering across the baked dirt as he threw fire and tendrils of smoke at me that I batted away with barely a thought.
The power. Jesus Christ, the power! With this I could do anything, be anyone. There was nothing that could hope to stand against me. I ground Afridi down until he had nothing left to throw at me, then I hefted him into the air before me. He dangled there, thrashing, like a puppet at war with its strings.
“You wanted to find true power, Afridi,” I said in a voice that I struggled to recognise as my own. “Did you like what you found?”
I didn’t wait for an answer. The power was already talking to me louder than what little conscience I had left, and I’d spent so many years ignoring that small voice that I hardly heard it. I sent the force surging into him, reaching down into every orifice and tiny cut, and then I ripped him to pieces.
The ground came up to catch me as I fell, and then all sensation left me. I felt nothing as Pearson grabbed my hand and helped me to my feet, but by then the world was already fading to white, and I was already gone.
*
The bunkhouse snapped into existence around me between blinks and I stared around me wildly.
“Here, Roasties,” Johnson called, stepping past the bunks to bring me a steaming mug. “I reckon you probably need this.”
I looked down at the cup and cradled it in my hands, huffing against the steam as I tried to suck the warmth from it and into my flesh. Pearson grinned at me as I took a sip and looked around at the bunkhouse. It looked like something out of the fifties, worse than anything I slept in during basic training.
“Where is this? What am I doing here?”
“One last job, matey,” Turner said. “Nothing too hard, just a decision you need to make.”
“It might just be time to say goodbye, Roasties,” Johnson told me as he put a hand on my shoulder. “It all depends on the choices you make.”
I looked around at the three of them, friends I’d had for years, and then visitors that I’d had for half a decade. The question was clear in their eyes. Did I end it all now, and push my fractured parts together, going on alone? Or did I accept what I was, maybe what I’d always been meant to be? I glanced over my shoulder, back towards where I sensed I’d left everything else behind, and then back to Johnson. I suppose the answer must have been clear in my eyes as well.
Johnson nodded, a faint smile on his lips. “So be it, mate. Some people were always meant to be broken.”
EPILOGUE
I smiled back at the furtive glances of the other people in the lift. To be fair, I wasn’t looking my best. The month I’d spent in the hospital in Kabul had helped with the worst of my injuries, and the two I’d spent in Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham had done the rest. But I still looked like I should be horizontal. At least I was in a suit this time round.
Mackenzie caught my grin and looked down at the floor, shaking her head, her long dark hair almost hiding her own smile. I hadn’t wanted her to come along to this little reunion, but she’d dragged me the length of the Registan Desert whilst I raved in the truck next to her. There isn’t much I’d say no to if she asked me.
McCourt’s offices hadn’t changed; the same cold opulence laid out in marble and chrome.
“Good morning, sir,” the receptionist smiled up at me. It was more than she’d done the last time I was here. Then again, maybe she didn’t recognise me. “Can I help you?”
“I doubt it,” I told her, avoiding the kick Mackenzie aimed at my leg for my rudeness. “You might want to tell McCourt that John Carver is here to see him though.”
I turned my head to nod at the security guard against the wall. He was a bigger man than the last one I’d met here.
The name must have sparked a memory that my face hadn’t, and panic stole through the cracks in the mask of the receptionist’s professionalism. Her eyes shot past me to the security guard, but he was already moving.
“I wouldn’t bother, love,” I told her. “I just want McCourt. Nobody needs to get hurt here.”
“I think it’s time you left, sir,” the security guard rumbled as he took another step towards me.
“Would you?” I asked, turning to glance at Johnson.
“Be a bloody pleasure, mate,” Johnson said with a grin. I almost felt sorry for the guard. He couldn’t see the thing that held him. All he knew was that, he couldn’t move.
Mackenzie mouthed a sarcastic ‘sorry’ at the receptionist as I watched Turner kick the doors in. I’m not sure she noticed though—she was busy stabbing at the panic button.
McCourt wasn’t hard to find. The route to his office wasn’t long, but he met us in the hall before we even reached it.
“John?” he blurted, face creased in shock and confusion. “My God, mate. I thought you were—”
McCourt had never been all that small, and I’d lost a lot of muscle mass in Afridi’s little holiday camp. I’d never have been able to lift him with my arms alone—so I used my mind instead.
The door to his office probably wasn’t designed to withstand the impact of a thirty-five-year-old man hurled through mid-air, and it tore from its hinges with a satisfying crunch. We stepped through the threshold, McCourt staggering to his feet where he’d landed in front of the desk.
“Would you do you something about the door, sweetheart?” I asked, shooting a grin at Mackenzie.
“I can manage that,” she said with smile. Fire shot up from the floor, filling the doorway behind us with a sheet of flame that felt like it was scorching my hair even from this distance.
McCourt was on the verge of losing it. He stared back and forth from the fire, to Mackenzie, then to me; eyes bulging as his mouth flapped over the words he couldn’t get out.
“How are you, Jim? You’re looking well.” I said, sinking down into the chair behind his desk. “Business booming?”
He stared at me, gaping. “What?”
“How’s work? Looks like you’ve made some changes round here since I left. Is this a new desk? It’s almost like you came into some cash, mate.” I eyed him, watching his face contort as he caught my meaning. He swallowed hard but didn’t speak. “You look surprised to see me, if I’m honest.”
“I…” McCourt stared at me, then at Mackenzie, who was leaning against a bookcase, inspecting her nails. “I just hadn’t heard you were back, mate.”
“Bullshit,” Mackenzie muttered, and I shot her a tight grin.
“No, Jim. I don’t think you expected to see me again, at all.” When he didn’t respond, I leaned forward and laid my arms on the desk. “So, it seems you know a man called Janan Afridi?
McCourt almost choked on his own breath. “Who?”
“Janan Afridi? Bumped into him while I was away.” I nodded at Mackenzie. “You could say he introduced us.”
“I don’t know—”
I waved his assertion away. “Maybe the name doesn’t r
ing a bell, but he knew you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bullshit,” I said, echoing Mackenzie with a friendly grin.
“You could get your girlfriend to burn his balls off,” Turner suggested, circling McCourt like a ginger shark.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I muttered, as McCourt frowned at me and Mackenzie shot me a startled look.
“Oh aye?” Turner cocked his head on one side.
“She’s my fiancé.”
“Um… John?” Mackenzie gave me a wide-eyed look.
“Smooth,” Pearson snorted. “Bloody smooth, mate. Most people ask first.”
McCourt didn’t seem to know where to look first. “Carver, what the hell is going on? Are you out of your fucking mind, mate?”
“Yes,” I told him with a grin. “And you have no idea how good it feels to finally admit it. That said, you stitched me up, McCourt. You sold me out to that bitch Joanne, or Artemis, or whatever the hell she called herself, and you sent me off to Afridi. About the only thing you didn’t do was gift-wrap me.”
McCourt shook his head, gnawing on his lip, but I wasn’t about to give him the chance to talk now.
“You fucked over a bloke from your own squad. There are things that just aren’t done, Jim. That’s one of them.”
His eyes flicked past me to Mackenzie. “He’s lost it, can’t you do something?”
“Nah, mate.” She shrugged. “You’re fucked.”
They make the windows in skyscrapers to withstand high impacts. Paragon’s offices were only on the fourth floor, and London doesn’t have as many skyscrapers as you might think, but it made a pretty noise when it broke. The glass exploded out over the street as I sent McCourt flying through it. His screams were loud enough to stop the traffic even if the spectacle hadn’t been. There aren’t many people who’ve seen an executive piss himself as he dangles fifty feet above the street.
“You don’t fuck with the squad, McCourt,” I shouted out over his screams. “Say it.”
The Lore of Prometheus Page 30