She nods.
‘I’ll fly us.’
‘Are you sure?’ I don’t have to read her mind to know what she’s thinking – she doesn’t want me to lose control and launch us both into space or something – but I take her hand. ‘It’s all right,’ I say. ‘I can do it. Trust me. And . . . I don’t know. Might be good to get a bird’s-eye view. See what we’re dealing with.’
She’s not convinced, but she nods, and I think just gonna fly, fly like normal, fly like this isn’t even a thang, and up we go, and it is different, it’s usually effortless but this is like . . . if there was something more effortless than effortless, this would be it. It’s like I’m not even doing it myself, it’s just happening, and I have to lock on to myself, overthrow it, re-assert control, force myself to be in charge, even though it feels good for it to be so easy, subconscious, autopilot. Up we go, and I ask Lauren to think a shield around us in case of aaah things like that! Something swoops towards us, a four-winged shadow, but it glances off the bubble that Lauren has created and I think a snapping motion and crunch, there go two of its wings, bye bye, haha this is easy – no no no not easy don’t get cocky – and I realise that I’m not in charge, definitely not. Need to get under control. I thought I was, I thought I had it, but – stop panicking stop panicking stop panicking – no, I do have it. I do. I bring us to a halt in the air, gripping my inner panicking self and forcing his head into some cold water – yeah shut up shut up shut up useless boy – and we survey London, our city, bathed in bright violence. ‘My God,’ whispers Lauren. ‘Look at that.’ Less than a mile away we can see a beast bigger than a giraffe, with many-jointed arms and a single huge red eye, swinging at a group of soldiers, knocking them aside like skittles. It opens its mouth to roar but then takes the full force of a tank projectile in the head and topples over. Another rumble shakes the ground and the front of an old Victorian building half crumbles into the road.
And then I look to my left, and I can see the neighbourhood where I left Alex, and I have to find him. I have to. ‘Detour.’
‘What? Stanly—’
I pick up a lot of speed very quickly, flying full pelt in the direction of Ronnie and Isobel’s house. ‘Stanly!’ Lauren yells. ‘What are you doing? Where are we going?’
‘Need to find Alex!’
‘Who?’
‘Another empowered! He did this!’ I bank sharply, dodging some lightning. I’m starting to realise that I can feel when it’s about to come, the air takes on a different quality, a subtle acridity, like a smell but . . . kind of beneath a smell, something that I pick up in some unspecified area of my brain. It means I can swing to the side as it snakes viciously towards the ground. In less than thirty seconds I land us on the street and start jogging up the road towards the old couple’s house.
‘Stanly!’ Lauren calls.
‘Wait there! I won’t be long.’
Shouldn’t be doing this.
No time.
I have to, though.
Several houses and cars are ablaze and people are running around, hysterical and panicked. Ronnie and Isobel’s house, mercifully, isn’t burning, its front door is closed, windows boarded up . . . and Alex is standing in the garden, looking up at the fiery sky. He looks completely lost, like a child in a supermarket who can’t find his mother. I bellow his name but he doesn’t seem to notice me, even when I’m right in front of him, grabbing his shoulders, shaking him. ‘Alex! What did you do?’
He doesn’t look at me. ‘I’m . . . I . . .’
‘You knew this would happen!’
Now he looks at me with those empty eyes, and barely nods. ‘Why?’ I ask. ‘Why did you lie to me? Why would you want this?’ The ground shivers again, and the roof of a burning house collapses inward.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Alex, although he doesn’t sound sorry or upset or angry or happy or anything. His voice, his eyes, his whole body, they’re empty. Like he checked out and only left a little bit of himself behind.
‘Why?’ I ask again.
‘I lost her,’ he says. ‘She . . . I lost her, and they said they’d get her back for me. He said they would . . . but they didn’t. They can’t. And now I’ll never have her back.’ There are tears now, his voice a low cracked drone, and I take my hands from his shoulders as he speaks. ‘What’s the point of a world where everything just ends?’ he asks. ‘Where everyone lies? Where everyone’s cruel? What’s the point? Why is this world worth saving?’
‘Because it is,’ I say.
He just shakes his head, and I snap. I thought I was angry before but now something erupts, a rage that makes my fist hot, and I punch Alex in the face as hard as I can, as hard as I’ve ever punched anything or anyone, so hard that his head snaps around and he stumbles backwards, and it hurts my fist but I don’t care. ‘So you’d destroy it?’ I yell. ‘The whole world? Everything? All the other lovers who are lucky enough to be alive, you’d have them die, terrified and screaming? Because of your pain? Because your pain is so fucking important?’ I hit him again and he doesn’t resist, he doesn’t answer, he doesn’t even look me in the eye. I can hear Lauren shouting my name but I don’t care. Everything I did, I always thought I was doing the right thing, I thought I was helping, even though this world and its people make me feel sick sometimes, but Alex, this guy, this thing . . . he knew, and I hate him, and I hit him again and again, screaming. ‘I didn’t know! You did! Look what you’ve done!’ He’s still not fighting back and something is trying to drag me away from him, someone with power. I spin around, ready to attack whoever it is, but it’s Lauren, pulling me away, and her expression is like a bucket of cold water.
‘Stanly,’ she says. ‘You have to stop. You can’t do this. You can’t fall apart.’
‘But he—’
‘Look at him.’
‘Lauren—’
‘Look.’
I look, and as quickly as the rage came it subsides, because I’m not just looking, I’m seeing him, bleeding and pitiful, crying silently, on his knees. How can I hate this thing? What even is he any more? ‘Alex,’ I say.
He looks up at me. ‘What about the girl I love?’ I ask. ‘She doesn’t matter? Because you lost yours?’
He just stares.
‘You’ve condemned her. You’ve condemned everyone. Everything. To die.’
‘It was dying anyway,’ he whispers. He isn’t looking at me now, he’s staring past me, at the chaos, the crumbling city. ‘Look at the world, Stanly. The way it is, the way things work. The way people are. It was dying anyway.’ He can’t even kneel now, he falls back, slumped against Ronnie and Isobel’s front door. ‘I just helped it along.’
There’s no reasoning with him. He’s gone. Useless. No fight in him whatsoever. He might as well be dead. ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘If that’s how you feel. I have to try and save it.’
‘Why?’ He really doesn’t know.
‘Because,’ I say. ‘Because . . . I do.’ I turn back to Lauren, ready to leave, to stop indulging myself and get on with what I always say I’m supposed to be doing . . . but something stops me. ‘What was her name?’
‘What?’ asks Alex.
‘What was her name?’
When he answers, it’s almost too quiet for me to hear. ‘Leila.’
I nod. ‘Lovely name.’ I crouch down in front of him. ‘I’m sorry you lost her. I really am. The girl I love is called Kloe, by the way. And if anything happens to her, I’ll be back for you. And you’d better hope you’ve been eaten by a monster.’
He just stares at me, and I grab Lauren with my mind and fly us both away.
Rightio.
Time to try that hero thing, I suppose.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, as we fly. Lauren doesn’t answer. I’m glad I can’t hear her thoughts.
We catch up with Smith and the others quickly. They’re making their way
along by the river, presumably heading for the nearest bridge. ‘You took your time,’ says Smith, with typical grace.
‘Whatever,’ I say. ‘Where are we heading?’
‘Tower Bridge.’
‘Bit of a way. I’ll fly us.’
‘Why on earth didn’t you suggest that before?’ snaps Lucius.
‘I don’t have to take you.’ He shuts up, and I extend my mind around our party and lift us all into the air, to a comparatively safe height, up and over the river. We’re barely halfway across when something breaks the surface and bites its way towards us, three triangular jaws snapping, teeth as crooked as arthritic fingers, two serpentine tongues moving around one another. Smith fires into the mouth until his gun is empty and the creature curves away, hissing furiously, re-entering the water with a splash.
They’re getting bigger.
We cross the river and I decide to keep us in the air, continuing towards the Shard and keeping an eye out for—
(Stanly . . .)
I jerk with surprise and almost drop my passengers, and Smith showers me with colourful insults.
(Stanly . . .)
It’s Sharon’s voice. It is. It is, I know it is. But . . . she’s in my head. Kind of? No . . . not in my head exactly, I can hear her in my head, but her voice is everywhere, in the air, like I’m just tuning into it. Obviously she would be picking up on the same power that Lauren and I picked up on, and she’s using it. Boosting the signal.
She’s looking for me.
She’s alive.
I can’t believe it. Maybe they’re all OK. God, please can they all be OK. ‘I have to take us down!’ I call. We land, taking cover in the shadow of some buildings, and I sit down and close my eyes and think. Sharon, I think. Can you hear me? I imagine my mouth as a huge amplifier, my ears as satellite dishes, my brain a great pulsating mass pumping waves of thought out through the city, blanketing it in Sharon’s name. Can you hear me?
(Yes.)
I can’t believe it. I actually laugh out loud. ‘What the hell are you laughing at?’ says Smith.
I ignore him and think. Where are you? Are you OK? Are you all together?
It takes a few seconds for her to reply. Her voice is faint, but definitely there. (We’re OK. I’m with Connor, Eddie and Skank. Fitz bolted.)
Things get a bit too anarchic for him?
Sharon laughs. It manifests as a sort of tickle in my head. What about Nailah?
(We did catch up with her but she went off again. She said she was going back to the Shard.)
Well that’s a coincidence and a half. What? Why?
(She said she wants to finish what she started. Get as much information as possible, show the world what the Angel Group has done.)
She doesn’t think the world will notice the force-10 monster apocalypse? Christ’s sake. Where are you guys?
(Eddie’s place. Eddie wants to come and find you. So do I.)
I bet Connor doesn’t. Can you try to make your way to the Shard too? That’s where I’m heading.
(It’s a bit of a way . . . lots of monsters . . .)
Take my mum’s car. It’s still at Eddie’s. Unless something’s eaten it.
(OK. See you soon, I hope.)
You will. Take care.
(You too.)
I open my eyes and stand up. The sounds of Armageddon rush back into my ears, and Smith looks at me, radiating distrust. ‘I was talking to my friends,’ I say.
‘What?’
I tap my temple. ‘Psychic radio.’
Lucius looks intrigued. ‘Fascinating!’
‘Where are they?’ asks Smith.
‘Good few miles away.’
‘I’ve never heard of empowered being able to communicate over that kind of distance.’
‘Things are different now,’ I say, somewhat inadequately. ‘Ready to fly again?’
‘To be honest,’ says Smith, ‘I think I’d rather go on foot.’ There’s a general chorus of nodding and agreeable noises from the soldiers, and I shrug.
‘Suit yourselves.’ I reach out, levitate the wreck of a car and bring it towards me, rotating it slowly over my head. Smith raises an eyebrow. ‘Weapon,’ I say, and we press on. The rain has intensified. It’s refreshing. More importantly, my powers feel like mine again. Guess you get used to it. Considering the rage I felt when we found Alex, considering everything for that matter, I now feel strangely calm. Seems like there should be adrenaline. I should be pumped. Maybe I should be cracking wise. I’m a super-person, after all – the hero suffix doesn’t really feel appropriate now – and apocalypses are what we do.
Less of the plural. Let’s try to get this singular one out of the way.
I’m surprised that there aren’t more people around, but grateful too, especially when we emerge on the soggy black expanse of Southwark Park and see a giant striding across it. It’s at least twenty feet tall, legs like redwoods, its top half an obscene bundle of limbs and mouths, like a scrunched up drawing of a monster, and when it sees us – or notices us, or whatever it does, because I don’t spy any eyes – it lets loose a siren scream and a jet of some stinking pink gas that fouls its way skyward. It starts to stomp in our direction and the soldiers let rip with their guns and I rise up off the ground and hurl my car. The bullets don’t seem to cause it much bother but the blunt trauma of the vehicle visibly shakes it and it lashes out with one long knotty arm, catching one of the soldiers and slamming her into the ground. The giant keeps coming . . . and then it’s not coming. It screams and thrashes its tangle of limbs and I look behind me to see Lauren and Leon staring at it, Lauren’s face a mask of furious concentration, Leon’s eyes slightly narrowed, which for him is downright emotional. They’re keeping it at bay.
I look back at the beast and throw the vehicle again, once, twice, thrice, four times, the dead chassis shedding more and more burned bits of itself with each impact, and finally the creature falls, coming to earth with a crash that makes the ground vibrate. The soldier it knocked down is nursing a bleeding head wound, and she empties a clip into the fallen monster with extreme prejudice. ‘Save your ammunition,’ snaps Smith, and we head on through the park. My eyes are adjusting to the dark much easier than they might normally and I notice that the trees look weird. Their trunks are warped, like parts of them have melted, the branches sag and there’s a rusty red film over the leaves. They smell weird too, like burnt treacle. Another fun side effect of whatever the literal hell is going on.
I’m grateful when we reach the streets again. Urban destruction I feel like I can handle, but the trees made me feel funny in my stomach. We can spy the Shard now, rearing up a few streets away, muzzle flashes lighting up the sky around it; looks like soldiers have already thought to reinforce their position. ‘Hey!’ Lucius calls, pointing. ‘Look!’
A woman is running in our direction, dragging a small child by the hand, with something in pursuit . . . no, two . . . no, three things . . . not things, oh God . . . and for a second I think I know them and my whole body goes cold – no no no black multi-legged no SMILEY JOES NO – but as they pass through a patch of light I see that they’re actually dogs, black six-legged red-eyed hounds letting loose horrible strangled barks as they scuttle along. They’re still fairly horrendous-looking . . .
But at least they’re not Smiley Joes.
Just dogs.
There are scarier things than these.
These are nothing.
Lauren psychically drags the mother and child towards us as Smith and the soldiers lay down covering fire. Leon sends his sword whipping towards the dogs, slicing away the legs of one – nice – and I pound the other two with relish, basically flattening my car – and them - with the force of the blows. Now there are just silent stains where once there were monsters, and I toss the dead car aside. Goodbye old friend, someone in my head thinks, and I
actually have to stifle a giggle.
It’s the first time I’ve seriously considered that maybe I’ve gone a bit mad.
The dog that Leon de-legged is still alive, howling and thrashing around but basically helpless. The sword returns to its sheath and the two guns emerge from inside his jacket and float over. They position themselves above the creature and fire, and it stops thrashing, and the weapons whip back into Leon’s jacket, lightning quick. ‘Show off,’ I say.
Leon glances at me, as blank as ever. ‘Come on,’ says Lucius. ‘Let’s press on.’ The soldiers move in protectively around the woman and her child, telling them everything’s fine and to come with us, and we continue towards our destination. Trucks and tanks have formed a perimeter – yay, I love a good perimeter, me – around the Shard, interspersed with soldiers and gun platforms, but Smith doesn’t even have to show his ID, they just part and let us through, although I’m not exactly oblivious to the looks I get from some of the soldiers. Sod you. Here to help.
We head into the typically boring corporate lobby, all anonymous décor and rubber plants. Smith goes to talk to some men in suits while the woman and her son are handed over to another soldier. ‘It’s all right, madam,’ he says, pulling off his helmet and smiling as though we’re dealing with an earthquake or a flood rather than this Book of Revelations bollocks. ‘We have an area downstairs for civilians, come with me.’
I turn to Lauren. ‘Apparently Nailah’s on her way here. She’s dead set on completing her mission, whatever she thinks that is. They’ll kill her if she makes trouble. Can you keep a look out?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘I think so,’ she says. ‘Are you?’
‘Yeah. Sorry about before. I’m all business now.’
She nods and pats me on the shoulder. Every little gesture helps. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Um . . . right. I’m going to try and work out what the hell to–’ I’m cut off by another tremor, a massive one. Multiple windows shatter and people stumble around, flailing, falling to the ground.
Ace of Spiders Page 35