Border Princes

by Dan Abnett

  Oh, what the hell?

  He poured it out into his glass, put hers in the sink, and slid the bottle into the recycle bin.

  Sipping from his glass, he walked back into the lounge and turned off the uplighters and side lamps. He was wearing her dressing gown. It was soft, and it would be OK so long as Owen never saw him in it.

  He peeked out of the window.

  The shadows were still there.

  They weren’t shadows.

  James swallowed. He was being silly. He was a little bit drunk and a little bit strung out. They were the shadows he’d seen before.

  He knocked back the last of the wine, then looked back out.

  Not shadows. Men. No, definitely shadows. Who stood still that long, who stared up that long?

  He pulled off Gwen’s robe and found his jeans and his shirt. He put on his shoes without socks, and had the good sense to pocket his keys.

  He slipped out of the flat, squeezing the door shut after him.

  His downstairs neighbours, the Aussies, were in. He could hear them having loud sex as he slunk down the dim staircase. Their mountain bikes cluttered the hall.

  He edged past the bikes in the hallway blackness, stepping on menu leaflets and junk mail that all three flat owners had discarded on the floor.

  He opened the front door.

  It was cold outside. Cold as marble. An October night, almost Halloween.

  Yeah, great idea to think of that right at this second, James decided.

  He stepped outside. The sky was a silent black bowl pinpricked with dots of fire.

  His breath steamed the air. He wished he had brought a coat.

  He walked down the path into the street. There was a distant noise of late traffic. The amber smog of Cardiff stained the low sky in front of him with light pollution. Two streets away, someone was yelling and laughing.

  He strode directly across the road, tacking between parked cars, their bonnets and roofs just displaying the first etching of frost. He headed towards the phone box.

  He headed towards the shadows of the two men. They were still there. Silent, unmoving, even as the night wind licked the trees and all other shadows rocked and nodded.

  A step closer now. They still didn’t move. It had been his imagination, his stupid imagination. Just shadows. Just shadows.

  He closed on them.

  ‘Hello?’ he said.

  There was no answer. Black and violet shadow patterns stirred as the trees hissed and creaked.

  ‘Who the hell are you? What do you want?’

  He stepped forwards. The shadows had gone. He jumped. Where had they—

  All in his mind.

  He felt decidedly stupid. He turned.

  Two grey shapes stood in front of him.

  ‘Jesus!’ he said, recoiling. Anger swelled. ‘Who the hell are you?’ He lunged forward.

  The grey shapes vanished.

  James spun around. They were behind him again. Just shadows.

  ‘What the hell are you? What do you want with me?’

  He lunged again. The shadows melted.

  He spun. Behind him again.

  ‘What do you want?’

  We are here only to protect the Principal.

  ‘What?’

  Your actions and behaviour are contrary to the Principal’s best interests.

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

  He looked around. A trio of boozed-up lads were ambling down the street on the opposite side of the road.

  ‘All right?’ one of them shouted.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,’ James called back.

  He looked back at the pair of shadows. They’d gone again. He wheeled. They were right behind him. He grabbed at them.

  They darted away.

  ‘Shit!’ James cried. He grabbed again, without thinking, not where the shadows were, but at where his gut told him they might be.

  He realised he had taken hold of something.

  A matt-grey forearm, studded with thorns.

  James looked up from the arm. The grey thing he was holding onto tried to pull away.

  ‘No, you don’t,’ James said, tightening his grip.

  It struggled, but it couldn’t break free.

  ‘What are you?’ James demanded, gazing into its grey face. ‘Are you what Jack saw? Are you?’

  Let go.

  ‘Not a chance.’

  Let go.

  ‘Not until you tell me what you are.’

  You will not remember this.

  ‘I’ll... what?’ asked James.

  The alarm buzzer woke him at eight. He thumped it off. It was Saturday. Bloody Saturday. He cursed himself for not resetting the alarm the night before. He hoped it hadn’t disturbed Gwen.

  He woke again at nine, then at ten thirty. Daylight was streaming in through the window. James roused and looked around. He was alone in bed.

  He got up, grumpy and bewildered, and expected to find Gwen in the shower. She wasn’t there either.

  He found the Post-it on the counter, attached to a packet of croissants. Gone off on my jaunt early. See you later. XX Gwen.

  James sighed and headed back to bed.

  TWENTY-SIX

  She got the eight fifty out of Cardiff Central, Platform 1.

  It was a dull morning, with a flat sky that teasingly promised to clear and warm up. Gwen was a little tired, but she soldiered on, invigorated by a sense of purpose.

  She got herself a window seat and settled in. Almost three and a half hours to Manchester Piccadilly. She’d bought a coffee and a breakfast roll from a Baguette-away on the concourse, and a paper and some magazines from the news-stand. She sat back to read the headlines. Someone shouted something outside, and coach doors double-slammed.

  After a few minutes, the train started to move, just a silent, sliding motion. A faint vibration made her steady her coffee cup.

  The speaker crackled some kind of ‘welcome, here’s the buffet’ announcement that she didn’t properly listen to. The carriage was half-full, and no one seemed likely to invade her space.

  The speed picked up. Suburban east Cardiff toiled by like a laboriously moved stage backdrop. The sun came out for about ten minutes. She had a go at the quick crossword.

  Bored with that, she sat back and put on her MP3 player. Random shuffle. She looked around the carriage, amusing herself by watching the other passengers: a middle-aged man in a suit, reading a broadsheet; two young student travellers with bright cagoules and Gore-Tex backpacks that kept impeding people on their way down the aisle; a young mother with a small boy, who was playing with some toys as she passed him grapes from a Tupperware box; a nice-looking young bloke, who seemed intent on snoozing; a trendy type with fashionable specs working on a laptop; a nondescript guy reading a novel. A young woman who thought a lot of herself, texting on a fancy clam-shell phone; another middle-aged man who looked like a teacher or an academic, working through a sheaf of documents with a pen; two matronly women in expensive twin-sets, travelling together, chatting animatedly.

  Her MP3 randomly selected ‘Coming Up For Air’. She looked out of the window at the trees flashing by and thought about what she’d say to Rhys.

  When she’d had enough of that, she picked up one of the magazines she’d bought.

  James wasn’t entirely sure what Gwen had meant by ‘later’, so he assumed the evening. A plan to welcome her with a really pull-out-the-stops, home-cooked meal formed in his mind. He liked cooking, and he figured he’d get a lot of boyfriend points with a gesture like that.

  He left the flat and set off on foot, intending to pick up some bits and pieces at the upmarket deli and grocers he liked to use. It was a good walk – he usually drove – but the sun was coming out, he was in no rush, and he felt he needed the exercise and the air.

  His head was a little muddy. He’d lolled around in bed far too long, and polishing off a whole bottle the night before had been a mistake, nothing paracetamol wouldn’t cure. />
  Jack, Ianto and Owen were arranged in a little, conspiratorial huddle in the work station area of the Hub when Toshiko arrived. They all looked at her and nodded hello. Owen looked especially sour. He yawned.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked, taking off her coat.

  ‘Sorry to drag you in, Tosh,’ said Jack, not sounding sorry at all. ‘A little situation has come up.’

  ‘Situation?’ she asked.

  ‘A confluence of events,’ said Jack. ‘Pull up a chair. I’ve already run through this with Owen and Ianto.’

  ‘Where are Gwen and James?’ Toshiko asked, sitting down.

  ‘I haven’t called them,’ said Jack. ‘Not yet. You’ll see why.’

  Toshiko glanced at Owen. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

  ‘Just listen to Jack,’ said Owen, darkly.

  ‘OK,’ said Jack. He held up the black tile. ‘This has been doing weird things all night. The pattern’s changed a couple of times. You got to figure that we’re on some kind of countdown now.’

  ‘But still nothing on any of our systems?’ asked Toshiko.

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Nothing we can see,’ said Owen, pointedly. Toshiko didn’t fully understand the reference.

  Jack put the tile down. ‘I was kicking my heels here, trying to come up with something and failing miserably. I got hung up on the idea that maybe one of the events that’s occurred recently, maybe in the last week or two, might hold a clue. After all, there’s been plenty of wild stuff going down. I went through everything I could think of, every angle, every loose end.’

  ‘And?’ asked Toshiko.

  ‘I found this,’ said Jack.

  ‘We don’t know that it’s connected to your doohickey in any way,’ Owen objected.

  ‘True, we don’t,’ Jack replied, tapping some keys on the nearby work station, and angling the flat screen so that Toshiko could see it, ‘but even if it’s not, this is a doozy. It’ll roll your socks right up and down.’ He looked at Toshiko. ‘Figuratively.’

  Fuzzy black and white footage appeared on the screen, jerking frame by frame. Jack skipped through the time code with a blurting whizz or two of the picture.

  ‘What am I seeing?’

  ‘A little data-capture I carried out last night. This is the mini-mart in Pontcanna on Thursday. Security-cam footage taken at the time James and I cornered your con man.’

  Toshiko leaned forward. ‘What exactly am I looking at?’

  ‘You’re looking out across the checkout lanes towards the store front,’ said Jack, freezing frame and pointing, ‘from above and to the right of the lanes. These are just shoppers here, OK. Checkout girl, checkout girl, checkout girl... OK. Let’s punch it.’

  The footage began to play in real time. There was no sound.

  ‘There’s our guy. He’s trying to get out. The tubby guy there with the shopping cart has blocked the lane. And there’s James. He’s running up, he’s spotted the guy. The guy sees him. Decides to use the tubby guy’s cart as a weapon and... bingo.’

  ‘Whoa!’ said Toshiko. ‘Run that back. Did I see that right?’

  Jack stepped the footage back and replayed. ‘Our guy rams with the cart and... pow!’

  ‘That’s not possible,’ said Toshiko.

  ‘And yet,’ said Jack.

  ‘How?’ she asked, looking up from the frozen screen image at Jack.

  ‘I’ve always envied Captain Analogy’s upper body strength,’ Jack said.

  ‘Stop making fun,’ said Toshiko.

  ‘Maybe the trolley wasn’t as heavily loaded as it looks on the footage,’ said Owen, ‘just empty boxes.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘Nobody, and I mean nobody, slings a shopping cart the entire length of a store, not even an empty one, and especially not by gripping it at the top. You could shove it a fair way, tip it over, sure, and if you got under it, you could probably lift it and toss it a few yards, but not what we just saw.’

  ‘PCP, something like that,’ said Toshiko.

  Owen shook his head. ‘He was clean as a whistle on the labs, and don’t you think we’d have noticed if our mate was off his chuff on hard drugs? So off his chuff, I’m saying, that he’s experiencing freakazoid physiological effects?’

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ said Toshiko.

  ‘Don’t say anything,’ said Jack. ‘I got something else to show you.’

  The snack trolley made its way down the aisle.

  Gwen sat up and looked for some change. The rocking of the train was making her sleepy, and there was still more than half the journey to go. As she reached over, one of the magazines slipped off her lap.

  She bent over to pick it up. She wanted to take it with her. There was a whole feature on Glenn Robbins and her career after Eternity Base that James would want to read. She folded the magazine open on the right page to remind herself.

  The trolley was taking ages to arrive. It was having trouble negotiating its way past the students’ backpacks. They were getting up to move them, apologising.

  Come on, I need bad train coffee, Gwen thought.

  She noticed the small boy with his mother again and smiled. He was playing with a bright, plastic Andy Pinkus toy.

  She thought about James. That put a bigger smile on her face. It was kind of sweet. She’d only been away a few hours, and she missed him, really missed him.

  On cue, the MP3 offered up another track by Torn Curtain.

  ‘Coffee, tea, madam?’ the snack girl asked.

  ‘Sir?’

  James realised he was being spoken to. He frowned. On the other side of the seafood chiller counter, the assistant was holding a taped-up plastic bag towards him.

  ‘Your fish, sir.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sorry, do you want this, sir?’

  ‘Yeah, thanks.’ He took the heavy little pack and put it in his basket. Where had his mind been? What had he been thinking about? He’d just completely zoned out in the middle of the shop.

  He thought the walk might have helped his head, but it was worse. He had a pain behind his eyes, and his ears felt as if they were slightly blocked up. Everything had a boxy, hollow sound to it.

  He wandered on through the shop, ignoring the expensive, pre-packed dinners with their enticing photos. Veg, that’s what he needed.

  Why was that man looking at him?

  Oh, he wasn’t.

  He’d seemed familiar though. Where had he seen him before?

  James drifted into the fruit and veg section. What did he need? He couldn’t remember what he was intending to cook. He had to turn the package over in his basket to read the label.

  Sea bass. Right, sea bass. He needed tarragon, shallots, garlic, some new potatoes, some mangetout.

  He pulled a plastic bag off the roll, and went over to the trays of garlic bulbs to select a couple. They looked good. The skins were the colour of vellum. They were some special quality strain of garlic, according to the label.

  Someone reached in past him into the tray to pick up some garlic. James looked down at the invading hand. That was just rude. People could wait just a moment, couldn’t they?

  There was no one beside him. The hand was his hand. He stared down at it. It didn’t look right at all. He didn’t recognise it.

  James shook himself. He closed his eyes and opened them again. The hand was still there. It didn’t look like his, but it was. The fingers wiggled. It made a fist. He could feel its attachment to him.

  ‘This is stupid,’ he said out loud.

  It was stupid. It was his hand, all right. Absolutely. There was nothing funny about it. It looked perfectly normal.

  James realised he was breathing quite rapidly. The pain behind his eyes had grown a little sharper. He grabbed two bulbs of garlic, bagged them quickly, and dropped them into his basket. What else did he need? Apples. Apples? Apples. He picked up a packet of conference pears and put them in his basket with the garlic and the fish.

  Why wa
s that man looking at him?

  Where had he seen that man before?

  Ianto opened the box.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Toshiko. She was very unsettled.

  Ianto took the object out of the box.

  ‘It’s the side-arm Owen was carrying a week ago Thursday,’ said Jack, ‘the night we went after the Amok.’

  ‘It looks broken,’ said Toshiko. The weapon was buckled, as if it had been twisted in a vice.

  ‘You may recall,’ said Jack, ‘in all the hullabaloo, Owen ended up pointing it at James.’

  ‘To be fair, I wasn’t quite myself,’ said Owen.

  ‘No one saw what happened after that, but James managed to disarm Owen, grab the Amok, and get it contained.’

  ‘OK,’ said Toshiko. That agreed with her memory of events.

  ‘The gun got damaged in the struggle,’ said Jack.

  ‘It’s beyond repair,’ said Ianto. ‘I put it in the Armoury. I was intending to break it down and dispose of it.’

  ‘When I showed Ianto the mini-mart footage of James’s cart-tossing world record, he went to fetch it. It had been bugging him. Look at it close, Tosh. Real close.’

  She took the broken weapon from Ianto and turned it over to examine it. ‘It’s been sheared around. Twisted. What could do that?’

  ‘What do those grooves suggest?’ asked Jack. ‘What do they look like to you?’

  ‘Well, fingermarks,’ said Toshiko, ‘but that’s just—’

  Jack took the gun from her. He punched something else up on screen. ‘They’re fingermarks, all right. Fingers pressed into the steel so deep, they actually left prints in the metal. We got a match. Want to guess who with?’

  ‘Oh God, please don’t say James,’ Toshiko answered.

  Despite the coffee, Gwen had nodded off for a bit. She woke up, and had to remind herself why she was on a train. She was going to Manchester, to see some bloke. That was it.

  She felt like crap.

  The doze hadn’t left her with a headache exactly, but she felt genuinely odd. It was a nagging, empty sensation, as if she’d lost something.

  She looked around. Had she lost something? Had she mislaid something before she’d dropped off? A pen, her MP3, her magazines, her wallet, maybe that was it.