‘You . . .’
‘Yes,’ says Freeman. ‘I sent him. And as soon as he gave you the necessary information, it triggered the memory wipe that I implanted. It’s a neat trick. I’d say you should learn it, but . . . anyway. It was all a matter of timing. Introduce the Angel Group, a potential threat. Give you more time to develop your powers, to think that the Group was going to leave you alone . . . then bang. Introduce a very real threat, give it a name and send you on your way.’
Jesus.
‘Of course,’ he says, ‘Smith nearly put paid to the whole thing, as is his prerogative, being an Olympic-level pain in the backside. He was desperate to bring you and your friends in, terrified at the idea of rogue elements running around when his precious plan was so close to fruition, so he went over Pandora’s head and dreamed up that “terrorist” rubbish. Shutting down the city and everything . . . he always did have rather a penchant for desperate measures.’
‘You’re one to talk.’ We’re standing in space, buffeted by winds of time, and Freeman’s voice is multiplied by a hundred, his laughter by a thousand.
‘Very funny,’ he says. ‘Anyway. I had to work pretty fast at this point. I’d been anonymously drip-feeding information to those imbeciles Maguire and Silver for a while, leading them in the wrong direction, channelling them towards Skank, predicting that through him they’d eventually team up with you. It was all falling into place and then Smith blundered in. Lucky that you happened to show up at my flat that evening, I hadn’t planned that.’ We’re in the little living room of Freeman’s poky flat, the explosion that tore away the wall frozen, fire and smoke hanging as if painted in three dimensions. ‘But it worked out pretty well. I convince you that they’re after me, gaining your trust, you distrust Smith even more, he tries to frame you as terrorists. You already thought he’d tried to have you killed. Voila! An arch nemesis is born.’
‘It might interest you to know,’ I say, ‘that Smith and I have become best buddies since he tortured me.’
He’s looking at me almost fondly. ‘Lovely. But academic now, really. May I continue the story?’
‘Do you have to? No offence, but it’s been going on for bloody ever. Couldn’t you just whack the rest on an Extended Edition DVD and I’ll get to it after I save the world?’
‘But you love stories,’ says Freeman, and now something else drips into his voice. Just a tiny edge of mockery. I actually prefer it, it’s better than the unctuous, fatherly tone he’s been adopting up until now. ‘That’s the whole point. And this is actually one of my favourite bits, because again, I didn’t even plan it. Imagine my surprise when I found out that Smiley Joe had kidnapped not just you but Tara, a little girl we already knew about. How much more perfect could that have been? I’d love to know whether it was a coincidence, or whether your power somehow drew you to that alleyway.’
‘Drew me there?’ Like it drew me to the park, when I found Kloe . . .
‘We still know so little about how it all works,’ says Freeman. ‘Prophetic dreams, feelings, sudden knowledge, even subconscious knowledge that we should go a certain way . . . it’s fascinating. But however it happened, the important thing is that it happened. An instant protective bond. Some quick thinking and last-minute scrambling on my part, and presto. Pandora kidnaps Tara to draw you into a confrontation with the Group. Daryl hit the nail on the head when he said there was something suspect about that meeting, that it was right up your street. Of course it was. We designed it that way.’ He smiles, triumphant but somehow regretful. It’s a weird combination to wear on one face. ‘I think that was the last straw for the poor beagle. The guilt must have been appalling. And he had absolutely no inkling of my grand scheme.’
Tara . . .
I need to know, but I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of showing I care, so I ask a different question. ‘Why did Pandora shoot you?’ We’re in the top room at the Kulich now. Phantom Pandora nods her head, bullets fly with the volume turned right down, Freeman’s body jerks and he falls . . . but then he gets up, looks at me, smiles, speaks, even as his wounds continue to bleed in front of me.
‘Well, by now I was definitely out of the Group. They didn’t trust me one iota. So Pandora made it look like she’d killed me to stop Lucius becoming suspicious.’
‘You faked your own death.’
‘In a manner of speaking,’ he smiles. ‘I was going to use my own power to heal myself but before I could . . . I just healed. Like that.’ He snaps his pale fingers and we’re back in the cave of shimmers.
‘How?’
‘You! When you brought yourself back from the dead, you brought me back as well. And Leon, as a matter of fact. There was no way he would have survived the beating your cousin gave him otherwise.’
‘I didn’t bring myself back,’ I say. ‘Tara did.’
‘So you assumed,’ says Freeman. ‘In actual fact, Tara has no abilities. She’s just a normal little girl.’
I brought myself back from the dead.
And Leon . . .
And Freeman . . .
I feel sick again, deep down, like my soul itself is going to throw up.
I could have saved Eddie.
Freeman smiles a little sadly. ‘Heard that, did you?’ I say. ‘So I could have saved him, then?’
‘Let’s not dwell on such things,’ says Freeman. ‘Let’s talk about Tara. There was never anything special about her, at least not in the way we led you to believe. But once you’d come back from the dead and we’d implemented our little dearest daughter gambit, we knew you’d carry on protecting her. All to keep the Group as the bad guy . . . and to keep her from Smith, of course.’
‘So she is Smith’s.’ I can’t help it. I need to know. And like Freeman says, hell, might as well not dwell on the fact that I could have brought my cousin back to life. Live and learn, eh? Better luck next time, Stanly.
What is the POINT of you?
‘She is indeed Smith’s,’ says Freeman. ‘Her mother was a low-ranking Angel Group employee who made the mistake of getting involved with him. He was married at that point, by the way.’
‘Why the hell would I care—’
‘The devil is in the detail.’ Freeman smiles. ‘Anyway. Knowing what a thundering arsehole Smith is, and seeing that the mother was utterly unable to cope, Pandora made arrangements to have her transferred, and for the baby to be quietly adopted by a kindly, childless couple. Smith never even knew there was a child. The synchronicity of you running into her was quite beautiful – who better to protect her than our friendly neighbourhood superhero Stanly?’
‘Smith knows about her now, though.’
‘Yes,’ says Freeman. ‘Someone . . . can’t imagine who . . . arranged to have some sensitive files delivered to him just a few days ago.’
‘You? Why?’
‘You already hated him,’ says Freeman. ‘I thought he would benefit from a good reason to hate you in return. Plus, if I’m absolutely honest, I quite enjoy making his life unpleasant. I genuinely can’t stand the man.’
And I genuinely can’t stand you. ‘What about Mr and Mrs Rogers? Did you pay them off or something?’
‘They were rewarded handsomely for looking after the girl, yes.’ An almost subliminal image of Pandora handing a cheque to a younger Oliver Rogers. ‘And for keeping up the charade that she was yours from the future, of course. That took some threatening as well, as I’m sure you can imagine. But as I’ve probably communicated, as well as being rather good at forward planning, I’m also a gifted improviser.’
I feel like a donkey with the word GULLIBLE painted on it. With shit. ‘You wrote the note. And built the place in the woods.’
‘I had it built, yes.’
‘And the shimmer that was there?’ A flash of the woods, and a man in a dark suit opening a crate and releasing something. It’s barely visible, like li
quid air, and disappears quickly. The man turns towards me and morphs into Freeman.
He nods. ‘Yes, I had it left there. After shimmers link with empowered, there’s often an interesting side effect. The subject’s abilities get a sort of . . . shot in the arm. It’s one of the reasons that Smith’s infernal machines are so dangerous. If any empowered were to wake up their power levels would be enormous, but without the necessary control.’ I think of the release of energy when I woke the empowered at the secondary site, and they appear around us, spasming and freaking out as they’re jerked back into reality. Freeman continues speaking. ‘Leaving that shimmer for you served a few purposes. For one, it would give you a bit of a head start and you’d know what you were dealing with when the time came. Secondly, it would ramp up your power levels, which I knew would come in handy. And it was a nice extra detail in the story, to thicken the plot.’
I look at my hand to make sure it’s still there. Spiders’ legs run all over my body. I hear Smith’s voice, hear him yelling. ‘You’re supposed to keep the damn thing under control!’
A shimmer.
Alex.
He was controlling the shimmer Smith used.
HE tortured me.
I wish I’d hit him more when I saw him earlier.
‘My intentions when I made you leave Kloe and Tara in the woods were honourable,’ says Freeman. We’re back in the cavern, the real cavern, in real life, or whatever I have that passes for a real life, and I grab the opportunity for another attack, but Freeman moves to catch it, twisting it around and sending it right back at me. It racks my whole body, disorientating but not exactly painful. ‘Nice try,’ he smiles, rubbing his temples. ‘Pandora wanted the girl to stay safe,’ he continues. ‘She was never quite as enamoured with the idea of adding Tara to the plan as I. And I knew you’d work better if the love of your life was safely hidden away. I never wanted any harm to come to either of them.’
‘This still doesn’t explain why you wanted to release the monsters,’ I say. ‘I thought you wanted to bring order to the world. It’s not order up there, it’s bloody chaos. It’s Armageddon, you tit, people are dying! You made me a murderer!’
Freeman shakes his head. ‘No, no, no. I’ve made you a saviour!’
‘What?’
‘It quickly dawned on me that I wasn’t going to be executing any sort of regime change using political strings alone,’ says Freeman. ‘I needed Smith’s plan to go quite spectacularly wrong. What better way than for his machine to be destroyed and hundreds of monsters released into the capital city? Smith is disgraced, I step in with my solution, et voila! Within a year I’m running things, and the world as you knew it – chaotic, unstable, dangerous – ceases to exist.’
‘Not going to happen,’ I say. ‘Smith knows it was you. He—’
‘Will not survive the night,’ says Freeman. ‘Even if he’s lucky enough not to get his head bitten off by a monster, there are . . . other methods by which he might meet a sticky end. And most importantly, there is no material proof. Just the word of a few people based in a city that’s currently being devoured by an apocalyptic rain of otherworldly abominations. I have plenty of allies outside the blast radius. And when the smoke clears, nobody is going to care who did what. What they will care about is what they’ve seen. What they’re now aware of. Great striding beasts, beyond comprehension. Humans love the ritual of othering – it’s one of the best ways of bringing them together, uniting them against a common enemy. And now they’ve seen the other to end all others. Who knows? I might even have accidentally achieved world peace.’
‘This plan,’ I say. ‘Did you copy it from Alan Moore?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘It’s all a bit Watchmen, isn’t it?’
‘I’ve never read it.’
‘Philistine.’
‘Charming,’ said Freeman. ‘But as I was saying . . . the world will be scarred, of course. In need of reassurance, structure . . . and who better to provide that than me? A man with a soothing voice and a master plan.’ He laughs again, such a normal laugh, hiding a demented psychopath. All this information is spinning in my head and I try to clear it, focus, come up with some kind of solution.
But all I can think is I’ve lost. He has me. His plan has gone off without a hitch, all because I’m the world’s thickest, most easily-led superhero. In fact, the irony of the word superhero is so vile to me that I never want to hear it again. If I want to save the world then it means him winning. Fury and shame and guilt rise inside me, hot, acidic, burning and twisting and wrenching, but there’s nothing I can do about it. My head hangs, defeated.
‘So where do I come in?’
‘Ah,’ says Freeman. ‘Of course. To business.’ That laugh again, making me shiver. ‘We realised that the shimmers were causing the cracks in reality, trying to come through to our world, to discover the source of the energy that they could sense, and letting the monsters out in the process. Quite accidentally, I might add. Shimmers are no more vindictive than a thunderstorm. I theorised that if we gave them a big enough source of power to feed on, they would close the gaps. We experimented on much smaller scales and my hypothesis was proved right. One of the reasons the Group first turned down my idea was that we simply didn’t have anyone strong enough. Leon is one of the best, but Lucius vetoed us using him. Profoundly un-Christian, wouldn’t you say? And obviously I wasn’t going to volunteer. I’m not powerful enough anyway. But then you came along. After you brought Leon, yourself and I back to life at the Kulich, that was when I knew it had to be you. My own personal Chosen One.’
‘You’re not powerful enough?’ I ask. ‘You’re the one who’s got me at your mercy.’
‘Only because you’re letting me,’ smiles Freeman. ‘Poor Stanly. Still living the story. You could have me on my knees right now. You could be hurling me around this cavern, and there wouldn’t be a thing I could do. But this is the climax, and I am the villain, and in your head that means that I am more powerful. That it will take some kind of miracle, or an outside agent, to help you stop me. Untrue. You are more powerful than me. You just don’t—’
‘Don’t say it,’ I say. ‘The villain-explains-it-all shtick? Sick of it. Several stops past sick of it, in fact. No more. Let’s just get this over with.’
‘As you wish.’
‘So how does this work? You throw me to the shimmers and they stop what’s happening?’
‘That’s the long and short of it.’
‘What about when I die? They won’t be able to feed off me any more.’
‘They can keep you alive indefinitely,’ says Freeman. ‘So that’s not a problem. As I said, absolutely remarkable creatures. It’s almost a shame to permanently close their world off from ours, and most of them have already quietly found their way back here so there’ll be few if any left for us to study.’
Realisation, like choking on clarity. I’m finished. This is it. There is no alternative . . .
Unless I give them Freeman.
He’s got to be lying.
He’s got to be as strong as me.
Maybe . . .
Worth a try . . .
‘What makes you think you’re going to get out of this cavern alive?’ I ask. ‘To go back and fulfil the rest of your plan? I mean, if you’re telling the truth, and I am more powerful than you, I could just kill you and then give myself to the shimmers. That seems like a pretty good compromise to me.’
Freeman’s hand flies to his mouth. ‘Oh, goodness gracious me. I didn’t think of that.’
I roll my eyes. ‘Spare me. Come on then. What insanely clever idea did you come up with to stop it from happening?’
‘Not especially clever,’ says Freeman. ‘A touch clichéd, in fact. But no doubt effective. If I don’t send a series of messages at a certain time, Kloe and Tara will die.’
‘You son of a�
�’
‘Grow up,’ he snaps, his face suddenly a cold, ruthless mask. ‘Did you honestly think that I sent your twin Achilles heels to an isolated spot in the forest purely out of the goodness of my heart? To keep up the charade? Yes, I wanted to keep them safe, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t going to come in handy at some point. If I don’t leave this world, they will never leave that forest.’
Bastard.
You bastard.
‘You said your intentions were honourable.’ My voice has gone small again.
‘Sometimes one must be economical with the truth,’ says Freeman. ‘And what does it matter anyway? Truth, lies . . . what does it matter?’
I hang my head. I’m almost prepared to let him see tears. ‘Why would you do this?’
The voice that responds is suddenly, weirdly, different. Sad. ‘Why would I do this,’ he says. ‘Why, indeed. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe it’s all just another story.’
I look up, and the smile he wears seems so sad, so kindly, so genuine, that I want to tear it from his face. It’s real. He really feels it. And he has no right to. ‘But as I said, it doesn’t matter,’ he says. ‘The result is the same. What matters is the position you are in now, and whether you can afford to pick and choose which parts of my story to believe.’
Ace of Spiders Page 41