Power

by Joe Craig

  With a grunt of frustration he returned to his bandaging. He looked himself up and down, frantically trying to work out the length of the cloth wrapped around him. It seemed impossible—like guessing the number of sweets in a giant jar. Jimmy tried to think, but the bullets ripped through his concentration.

  “Come on!” he shouted out loud. Any second the helicopters would make way for the Special Forces. Don’t bother measuring, he told himself at last. As long as the length of the bandage, plus the length of Jimmy’s body, came to less than the height of the building, he would survive. He tied one end of the bandage round the mop handle, then teased out the other end by loosening the bandaging round his left calf. When he’d found enough of the end he tied it tightly round his ankle.

  He double-checked his knots, unable to force away the two terrifying images that haunted him. In one, the bandage snapped and Jimmy smashed head first into the hospital forecourt. In the other, Jimmy was left dangling where the helicopter gunmen could pick him off, like a worm on a fishing line.

  Then came silence. The shooting had stopped. Jimmy’s time was up. The click of the door shattered the protection of his hiding place. He peered out in time to see the first set of huge black boots pounding into the ward. Jimmy swallowed his fear with one huge gulp and burst out from under the bed with an explosion of power.

  The Special Forces soldiers swivelled to shoot. All they saw of Jimmy was a streak of white crashing through the Venetian blind. Jimmy heard the gun fire, but it instantly faded, replaced by the breeze. Jimmy seemed to hang in the sky for a second, the fresh air awakening his hope. Maybe this crazy plan was possible. Maybe he was going to make it and his programming had saved him again. For a split-second he had the sensation that he could fly.

  Then he started to drop. The velocity stole the breath from his lungs. It felt like his heart was going to punch through his throat and come out the top of his head. But that was just the first couple of metres —the easy part. After that came the inevitable unravelling of Jimmy’s bandaging.

  The blue of the sky and grey of the street merged into one horrible mess. Jimmy spun round so fast it felt like his brain was twisting out of sync with his body—as if it wasn’t just the bandage unravelling, but Jimmy’s entire being as well. At first he tried to hold himself strong, but his roll was too rapid. His muscles went limp. His arms flailed about like useless wings and his head rocked back and forth until he thought it would snap off.

  After a few seconds the rhythm of his spinning settled and he was able to distinguish which direction the ground was in. Unfortunately it was zooming towards him. Jimmy could feel his upper body was exposed to the cold now, then his weight shifted as the bandaging started reeling off his right leg. He keeled over in his fall until he was completely upside-down, spinning round his leg.

  I was wrong, Jimmy thought. There’s too much bandage. Suddenly the axis of his rotation changed again—the other leg was unwrapping itself. There’s still too much, he thought. I’m too close to the ground. I’m going to…

  Jimmy’s terror was wrenched from his heart. The last metre of the bandage unspooled and he felt his ankle bearing the huge pressure. If it had been an ordinary rope, his foot would have been pulled clean off his leg, but there was enough elasticity in the bandage to slow him down more gradually. He kept spinning with the momentum of the unravelling gauze, and he could feel the blood pooling in his head. He knew he was slowing down, even though the pavement still surged towards him. He was travelling fast enough for his whole skull to smash into smithereens on impact.

  Jimmy closed his eyes, tensed his body and wrapped his arms around his head, desperately hoping his bones were strong enough to stay intact. But the impact didn’t come. Jimmy winced. He felt his whole skeleton screaming as the joints were pulled to breaking point, then the tips of the hairs on his head brushed gently against the ground. The bandage was at full stretch. It was as if he’d jumped with a perfectly calibrated bungee cord.

  He hung there for what seemed like eons, waiting for the inevitable spring upwards. With a flood of wonderful disbelief, Jimmy felt the rush of the wind return and opened his eyes. With so much blood surging around his optic nerves he could hardly focus.

  Jimmy felt lighter than air again as he was thrown up, tumbling over himself. His skin prickled at the cold—without the covering of the bandage he was left in just hospital underpants, but that was far from his biggest problem.

  He levelled out about a third of the way up the building, and that’s when he finally pulled his body under control. He transferred his weight with the slightest twitch of his muscles. They responded before he even knew what he was trying to do. The views of the streets and the shouts of the people below him were pushed into the background by the commanding, rapid-fire decision of the system inside him.

  He felt his back arching, his arms stretching out to the side. He was poised in an elegant dive, controlling his descent expertly. Then he realised that his programming had no intention of heading for the ground a second time. There were too many people down there. Instead, Jimmy swung himself towards the building. His trepidation melted into exhilaration. He had dived from the top floor of the building and survived. Not only that, but he was now in complete control.

  Now Jimmy was calm enough to notice more details of what was happening around him. Inevitably, a crowd had gathered to watch. People were being marshalled out of the way by security agents. If Jimmy reached the ground, there would be Special Forces waiting for him. Mid-flight, he glanced up. He just caught a glimpse of a line of heads sticking out of the top-floor windows—and the line of guns that came with them.

  Just as Jimmy was about to hit the side of the building, he jerked his head backwards, leading his body into a backwards somersault. He couldn’t stay still for a moment. If he did, he was sure he’d be shot down. Don’t they even care that they’d be shooting a child in full view of the public? Jimmy wondered.

  After a double roll, Jimmy caught the bandage and scurried upwards, hand over hand, swinging back towards the building. How long before the soldiers in the building cut the bandage? He hit the wall at the third floor, but was more than ready. He thrust his legs forwards and pushed himself off the wall with his bare feet. He heard the crack of guns. The bullets pinged into the brickwork of the hospital. Dust spattered his face, but Jimmy was already away.

  He swung round the corner of the building, which took him over a security wall. It was perfect—nobody from the forecourt could follow him unless they came through the hospital itself and out of the side exit. This time when his feet made contact with the building, his legs were pumping at full pace. The impetus of his swing carried him on for a few precious moments, sprinting up the wall. Then, just as the bandage reached full stretch, Jimmy dug his fingers into tiny indents in the brickwork.

  He strained to hold himself in place, but he knew he had to move before the gunmen found him and took aim. He clung on with one hand while with the other he reached down and undid the knot at his ankle. Then he kicked against the wall and flipped backwards, aiming for the top of a tree. He landed in the upper branches with an awkward crunch of bone on wood. Softer than a hospital mattress, Jimmy thought, spitting a leaf out of his mouth.

  The burns all over Jimmy’s body screamed for attention. Every branch of the tree seemed to stab or scratch at his skin as he clambered down to the ground. But he wasn’t in the street. He realised that when he’d flown over the security wall he hadn’t escaped the hospital complex, he’d leapt back into it.

  St Thomas’ Hospital was made up of two huge buildings immediately next door to each other. One was the block for the public hospital— that’s the one Jimmy had been in. But now he found himself in the car park of the other part of the facility—the private wing.

  With relief, he spotted a ramp that led down to the lower level of the car park, and when he made it to the bottom of the ramp he could see an exit to the street. Jimmy assumed NJ7 agents were already on their way
between the wings of the hospital to find him. He had to keep moving, stay out of CCTV range and change his appearance as quickly as possible. Clothes would help, he thought, shivering in his scratchy hospital pants.

  His limbs seemed to already have the solution. Jimmy found himself stalking through the car park along the line of vehicles. He hunched down to look through the drivers’ windows. At the other end of the line, by a service door into the hospital, two figures were sitting in their car. Jimmy was already working out how best to fit into adult sized clothes.

  Still three cars away from his target, Jimmy dropped to the ground and rolled underneath the adjacent vehicles. He sprang up next to the driver’s door and pulled it open with one fluid movement.

  “Take off your shirt and trousers now!” he ordered in a low, stern voice. It didn’t have the effect he was expecting.

  The driver was a huge black man—not fat, but even sitting at the wheel it was obvious he was over 185 centimetres tall and his chest was like a concrete bunker. He looked at Jimmy slowly, munching on the last crisp in a packet. His expression was completely blank, except for a hostile stare.

  “I don’t think this shirt will fit you, son,” he said in a deep murmur, crumpling the empty packet in his fist. Jimmy looked down at the shirt stretched across the man’s awesome pecs. It bore a small, subtle logo: a green stripe.

  “And I don’t think mine is quite your style,” added the man in the passenger seat, keeping his eyes straight ahead. He was also in a black shirt with the green stripe on his chest catching the light.

  Only now did the second man glance at Jimmy. His eyes widened. “Hey,” he gasped. “You’re that boy…You’re—”

  Before another sound could escape the man’s mouth, Jimmy was in action. He jumped up, aiming both his knees at the driver’s face. In the same movement he leaned over the roof, flipped forwards on to his back and landed with his heels on the other side of the car, flying into the top of the other man’s head as he emerged from the passenger door.

  They were strong men, but the sudden attack caught them off guard. Weren’t they expecting me? Jimmy wondered. Why didn’t they have their weapons already drawn? He’d never known NJ7 agents to be so unprepared.

  Jimmy dragged their unconscious bodies out of the car one at a time and lay them on the tarmac. Why hadn’t they recognised him immediately? The only explanation was that they were here on some other mission. But what other assignment could two NJ7 agents be on that required them to be at this hospital?

  Jimmy quickly pulled the shirt and trousers off the smaller agent. The man wasn’t much smaller than his partner though. Jimmy had to roll up the sleeves of the shirt, turn up the trouser legs and pull the belt so tight around his middle that he needed to force a new hole in the leather to fasten the buckle. He took a pair of socks as well, but decided the oversized shoes would only slow him down.

  He knew he had a matter of seconds before these agents came to or somebody spotted the disturbance. He glanced round the interior of the car and snatched a London street map from the floor. One destination was drumming through his head—the Hollingdale Institute. He even had a name: Professor Zigmund Wilson. If that’s where a senior doctor at this hospital would go with radiation poisoning, then that’s where Jimmy had to get to. If only he knew where it was.

  He couldn’t stop himself glancing at his fingers again. His skin was so raw they were almost glowing red. That will heal, Jimmy told himself. It felt as if his skin was soothing itself with every second that passed. It was the blueness on his fingertips Jimmy wasn’t so sure about. It had spread even in the short time since he’d last looked at it. His toes had looked the same. He tried to work out whether he felt nauseous or wanted to vomit, but couldn’t separate real symptoms from psychological ones. How damaged was his body? And was the damage spreading or being healed?

  He didn’t know what address to look for to find the Hollingdale Institute, but he quickly realised that didn’t matter—attached to the NJ7 agent’s belt was a mobile phone. That was all he needed.

  Jimmy dashed out of the car park, at last making it to the street. On the way, he checked one of the signs outside the hospital and punched the phone number into the agent’s mobile. He ran on as he waited for somebody to pick up, and kept going while he spoke, not caring which direction he was heading, just glad to be putting some distance between himself and the hospital.

  “Hello,” he said, twisting his voice without intending to into the voice of an old man. “I have an appointment with Professor Wilson, but I didn’t write down the time. Could you check it for me, please?”

  “Professor Wilson?” said the receptionist.

  “Yes, that’s right. Professor Zigmund Wilson.”

  “There’s no Zigmund Wilson at this hospital.”

  “Oh, is this the Hollingdale Institute?”

  “No, this is St Thomas’ Hospital.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Jimmy, a smile breaking out on his face. “I must have the wrong number. Do you know how I can reach the Hollingdale Institute?”

  “I have the number here, hold on one moment.”

  Jimmy slipped into the mouth of an alley between two boarded-up shops and peered back round the corner to check the street. He was constantly aware of the threat of being tracked, and every second that this phone was in his hand he was even more vulnerable. At last the receptionist came back on the line and gave Jimmy a number.

  “And that’s in Hackney, isn’t it?” Jimmy said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  “No, no, that’s wrong,” replied the receptionist. “The Hollingdale Institute is in Mill Hill. It says here that it’s on the Ridgeway, Mill Hill.”

  Jimmy snapped the phone shut, slipped it down a drain and ran north.

  “Will he survive?” barked William Lee, marching through the corridors of the NJ7 bunkers with a mobile phone pressed against his ear. “Answer my question, doctor!” he shouted. “Will he survive?!”

  He reached a small metal door marked discreetly with the number 10 and charged straight through it. Suddenly the bare concrete walls and strip lights gave way to a different world: thick carpet, lavish interiors, walls lined with old paintings of grim-faced politicians.

  When Lee reached the Prime Minister’s study he snapped the phone shut without saying goodbye. The room was packed with people, who all turned to give him their full attention. Some were the same people who’d been gathered round the Cabinet table when Ian Coates collapsed, others were senior detectives, civil servants and Secret Service staff.

  “Listen very carefully,” Lee announced. “The doctors have ruled out heart failure. They’ve ruled out a stroke. They’ve ruled out aneurism and a dozen other conditions that sounded like gibberish to me.” He cast his eye across the faces in front of him. After what he’d just heard from the doctor at the hospital, he couldn’t shake the feeling that somebody in the room had attempted murder.

  “It’s their informed opinion,” Lee went on, dropping his voice, “that the Prime Minister collapsed because of unnatural toxins.” There was a moment’s silence as the news sunk in. “Poison.” A harrowed murmur broke out around the room. “Detective!” A bearded man in a brown suit stepped forward.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I’m assigning an NJ7 research lab for your forensic team so that no evidence needs to leave this site, understand?” The man nodded. “Take everything down into the bunkers,” Lee ordered. “Analyse every scrap and every particle of dust.”

  He gestured to everybody standing around him. “The doctors can’t cure the PM until they know what poison is killing him. The chances are high that there are still traces of it in this room. Find it. The Prime Minister’s life is in our hands.”

  He pulled out his phone to make another call, but barked one final thought before leaving: “After his collapse and the bombing today, he’s become the most popular British Prime Minister this century. The public is behind him. So good luck.”


  10 THE HOLLINGDALE INCIDENT

  The Ridgeway in Mill Hill was a long, winding road which looked as if it belonged in the country, not the suburbs of London. On either side were high banks of trees casting deep shadows. In the fading daylight Jimmy was hardly visible to the drivers of the few cars that whizzed past.

  He pushed his sleeves up again. The NJ7 shirt was starting to annoy him, but it was the only one he had. What’s more, he knew the fabric was state-of-the-art. It was keeping him warm in a biting wind and was probably even soothing his burns, which were hardly uncomfortable any more. Still, he’d have gladly swapped the shirt for a jumper and a pair of shoes.

  It had taken him longer than he’d expected to walk here, but he knew that it was safest to travel on foot for now. When NJ7 lost him at the hospital they would have immediately extended the search to cover all buses, trains and cars passing through the vicinity. As it was, Jimmy didn’t understand why he hadn’t already encountered a ring of Special Forces and police. Surely NJ7 would also have set up a perimeter patrol and stopped anybody walking away from the hospital?

  Jimmy tried to shrug off his anxiety, but the closer he came to the Hollingdale Institute the more edgy he felt. It’s just paranoia, he told himself.

  At last he rounded a bend and saw his destination. This was no ordinary hospital facility. It looked more like Batman’s country manor —a huge building, with turrets and towers of grey/blue stone that twisted into the clouds. Jimmy wouldn’t have been surprised to see a bolt of lightning split the sky or a vampire stalking the rooftops.

  He jogged to the main gate, keeping pace with one of the security cameras as it swivelled, staying just outside its field of vision. Every step was guided by a force inside him that locked his muscles in precise movements. The booth at the main gate was empty. Jimmy felt a prickle of suspicion, but he had to press on. If there was the chance that somebody here could help him, it was worth the risk of an ambush.