by Mike Essex
I steadied my body as the walkway crashed to the ground, my knees bending to take what they could of the impact as I splashed down into the water. Above us the sound of twisting metal intensified until it was replaced a loud shattering sound. A large piece of glass fell inches from my face as the ceiling gave way. I looked up to see what was happening but couldn’t see anything through the fog.
I rubbed the water out of my eyes only for it to be replaced with the smoke. I lifted myself above the water and looked around for my friends.
Unable to see Tom or Grace in the darkness I ducked beneath a piece of the fallen walkway and hid whilst the glass shattered onto the ground. Section by section the roof shed the last remaining pieces of itself that had done their best to cling on all this time.
I couldn’t tell if the sound of shattering glass had stopped or if it had merely been drowned out by the ever growing sound of metal scraping but either way I knew I couldn’t stay any longer. I’d avoided the glass but if the roof came down that would be it.
I tried to shout out for Grace and Tom but the smoke filled my lungs and made it hard to breathe. I bent down on my knees as close as I could get to the water, without submerging my head.
“Come on Tom,” I said to myself.
“Leave him,” said Tobias. “He knew the risks.”
I ran my hands over the area hoping to find Tom’s body. Between the chunks of the walkway and the shards of glass it was too difficult to find him. I tried to get my bearings but in amongst the chaos it was impossible. The ceiling let out an almighty creek as the structure weakened further.
I coughed again, this time far deeper than the others. My mind flashed back to the burning soldiers I’d seen in London. They had been trapped in containers as they filled with smoke, their faces desperately screamed out for escape and I’d just left them there to save myself. It was a miracle I’d made it out of there alive.
“The snatcher won’t save you this time,” said Tobias. “You need to do it yourself.”
With desperation I made one last search for my friends but it was fruitless. “Grace! Tom!” I shouted out, not caring how much my lungs hurt or how much it made me cough.
“Look at the smoke,” said Tobias, with an upbeat tone to his voice. “It’s flowing to the right. That’s the way out.”
I couldn’t take it anymore and nor could the snatcher’s body. I told myself they’d made it out and must be waiting for me outside. It was the only way I could force myself to leave.
“That way,” said Tobias, as I saw the way the smoke was flowing.
A light started to form in the distance but it was not from the dreaded machine, it was an exit. It had to be. Up above the sound of metal scraping stopped suddenly and that’s when I knew I had to run. With what felt like the last bit of energy in the snatcher’s body I ran towards the light.
In the distance I saw a figure silhouetted in the exit. I ran until the snatcher’s legs felt like they were going to give out, as bits of rubble fell all around me.
My vision started to clear as I got closer to the figure. It was a man, standing tall waving out his hand for me to come closer.
It took less than five seconds for the roof to come down, huge metal girders cutting their way through the shops like they were nothing. The entire centre started to shift away from me as the other walls came down. I jumped and ran until I made my way to the exit, diving out into the light and landing on the silhouetted figure.
I looked back to see the entire shopping centre come down, collapsing in on itself with a hellish fury. In all my life I would never hear a more horrific sound than that day. Metal upon glass, brick upon stone, every surface collided against one another, smashing their way into oblivion.
I looked down at my feet and panted deeply, sucking in the sweet clean air, resting my head in my hands.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I heard Grace say, relieved she was alive.
I looked back to see her pointing a gun at the man who had moments ago been silhouetted, except it wasn’t Tom as I’d expected. It was someone far, far worse.
FIFTEEN
March held his hands in the air as Grace aimed her gun at him.
“I can explain everything,” he said.
“Explain? You nearly killed us!” said Grace. “You triggered the explosion didn’t you!”
“No, of course not, I…”
In her anger Grace fired the gun, hitting the ground by him. The gunshot startled both me and March.
“Woah, woah, woah,” he said. “We can talk about this right? I just want to help you stop a common enemy and to make things right with Emmie.”
He looked at me when he said my name. I wondered if he knew I was in this body now.
“So I see you’ve made a new friend,” said March. “I never expected you’d work with him.”
“You killed my brother!” she walked closer to him, and fired off another bullet, just to the side of his head. His took a sharp inhale of breath from the shock.
Watching them there I wasn’t sure what to say. Part of me knew if I said the wrong thing I could give away who I really was. The other part of me was just enjoying seeing March suffer for what he’d done.
“That wasn’t me. It was Gabe and the other people with the Hearts suit. That was their job,” he explained.
“You’re the Jack of Hearts, March. You’re just as much a part of this as anyone else. What about everyone in the other suits. Had they just served their purpose?”
The crunching sounds started to wane as the collapsing roof found a new resting place. I looked back at the shopping centre, all collapsed in on itself. Tom couldn’t have survived in there. Another Club gone, just like Olive and Chris. I was the last member of the Deck that had a card with a Club on it now.
“We all had a purpose,” said March. “The Clubs were to protect Emmie and Will, the Hearts were to protect Eli, the Spades were there to support us and Diamonds like you were supposed to capture Tobias.”
“And we were all supposed to protect each other,” said Grace.
“Tobias was gone and Will and Emmie were safe. The Deck had achieved its objectives, so Eli gave the order to shut things down. He kept the Hearts, and spared Jill because he thought she’d be useful. Trust me, if I had been any other suit then I’d be laying in that pit right now too.”
“So Kenan was no longer useful!” Grace’s gaze hardened. “Why wasn’t he saved with Jill?”
“She outranked him as the best hacker. He was just a Three of Clubs, she was higher.”
“That’s it? That’s all it came down to? Those stupid bloody cards!”
“I’m sorry. I would have stopped it if I could. I convinced Eli to capture Jill and then kept my head down. It was the only way I could protect Emmie.”
“Protect her? You think you actually did that?” she was shouting at him now, with no care who heard us. “She’s stuck in some machine, begging for death and you think for one second that what you did helped her?”
“What we did, surely Grace?”
“What did you say?”
“We’ve all done things we didn’t want to in order to help her haven’t we? You never told her you were working for her father. How many years did you keep that a secret?”
“Don’t try to twist this on me. I worked for Gabe not Eli,” she replied.
“That may be true, but she’s in this situation now just as much because of me as you. You knew we were going to operate on her that day and you didn’t stop it.”
“Shut up!” said Grace.
“The core that’s inside of her, the very reason Eli can control her now, you let it happen just like the rest of us.”
I let out a gasp and hoped they didn’t hear me. March had to keep believing I was the snatcher. I couldn’t react, even though all I wanted to do was bury myself back in the rubble, along with Tom. Everything I knew about the Deck was toxic now. My relationship with March and my friendship with Grace were being destroye
d in front of me.
Grace did nothing to deny the allegations. Perhaps out of fear or perhaps because there was nothing to deny. She looked moments away from ending the situation by putting a bullet in March. I knew I needed to diffuse the situation.
“You tried to kill us back there,” I said, pointing at March.
“So you can speak,” he replied. “I thought you’d cut out your own tongue; that must make talking painful. .”
“Answer him,” said Grace, no doubt pleased for a new topic of conversation.
“That explosion? That wasn’t me,” he explained.
“So you expect us to believe you just showed up right after the explosion for no reason?” I asked him.
“Look, I know the timing is unusual. But that explosion was nothing to do with me.”
“So you didn’t leave this memory card in there?” Grace ejected it from her phone.
“No, that wasn’t me. If it’s what triggered the explosion then maybe it was left to trap anyone that went sneaking around down there.”
His explanation seemed plausible but I’d lost all of my trust for him a long time ago.
“So you’re here to help us with Emmie,” I said. “How did you know we were here?”
“We’ve had Grace’s bike bugged for years,” he replied.
“What did you say?!” she edged suddenly towards him.
“Something isn’t right with Emmie. We’re losing her and I don’t think she’ll be able to cope inside the machine much longer. I had to bring forward my plan to save her.”
A voice crackled in my ear. “He isn’t lying Emmie,” it was Cleon. “The longer you stay in the snatcher’s body the more chance there is your own body won’t make it.” I wished he’d told me that before I spent hours getting used to the motorcycle.
“Ok,” said Grace as she put the gun down. “If what you’re saying is true and there’s a chance we can save her then you need to take us to her right now.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to say since I got here,” said March. “Jesus, you always were gun happy.”
“Don’t push me,” said Grace.
“Ok, ok. The car is this way.”
As we walked towards March’s car I looked back at what had once been the Deck’s base. It was nothing more than rubble now, filled with the dead bodies of those unlucky enough to be Clubs, Spades and Diamonds.
“Come on,” said March.
“Wait,” I said. “There’s something in the distance.”
“Then we’d better get moving,” he replied.
Ignoring him I ran towards the base. My legs still ached from running through the shopping centre but I had to be sure of what I’d seen before we left.
“Keep running,” said Tobias, unusually supportive of me running towards danger.
As my mind confirmed what my eyes had seen I knew I’d been right to run back. Tobias only confirmed it when he said. “You need all of the allies you can get.”
I shouted back to the others. “It’s Tom! Come help him.”
SIXTEEN
Tom had looked better. His face was bloodied and covered in dirt and his hands were covered in cuts from crawling across the glass. Worst of all he’d lost almost all use of his legs and was barely able to drag himself forward to meet me.
“Don’t move,” I told him. “Help is on the way.”
“Oh good. You … made … it,” he flopped down onto the floor.
“No, no, no,” I refused to let Tom die after all he’d been through. Not after we’d been given a second chance at saving him. “What would Chris say if you didn’t make it huh? Your mission isn’t over yet soldier.”
He turned his head towards me and through gritted teeth formed a smile before his eyes closed again. I put his face in my hands and held him upwards to stop him from collapsing to the floor.
“See you soon … Chris,” said Tom as he closed his eyes.
I placed two fingers on his neck and waited with baited breath. His pulse was slow but was still there.
March pulled up alongside us in a car. “The medical kit is in the boot,” he told Grace and she jumped out and retrieved it.
“You’re the doctor, fix him,” I told March, as Grace passed the kit to him.
“I’m a scientist, not a doc…”
“I don’t care! FIX HIM!” I cut him off mid-sentence.
He looked visibly shocked that I’d shouted at him. For all he knew the snatcher had no interest in Tom. I had to try harder to stay in character, but I couldn’t stop myself, Tom needed to survive, no matter what.
March removed the shrapnel, bandaged up the cuts in Tom’s legs and cleaned the blood off his face. He used tweezers to remove each of the pieces of glass from Tom’s hands and then after applying an antiseptic gel he wrapped the remaining bandages around them.
Tom’s eyes opened and I told him to be strong. March threw a bottle of water towards Tom. Too weak to catch it, it bounced off Tom’s body and onto the floor.
“Careful,” I said to March.
I handed Tom the water and helped him to drink it. He struggled to keep the water down but we kept trying until the bottle was empty. Some of it got into his system at least.
“Ok, now comes the hard part. We need to perform a fracture reduction,” said March.
“A what?” I asked.
“His leg is fractured. We need to reduce the swelling and stop the loss of blood. Look, explaining it won’t help and we’re running out of time,” he said. “Now hold his leg flat.”
I held both hands on Tom’s right leg whilst March removed a syringe from his kit and filled it with fluid.
“This is just an anaesthetic Tom, ok? Now bite down on this,” March removed his belt and placed it between Tom’s teeth.
March felt around Tom’s leg, prodding different places and checking to see how Tom reacted. When he thought he’d found the right area he pierced the skin with the needle and injected the anaesthetic fluid inside. Tom gritted his teeth, biting down hard on the belt.
“Is it done?” I asked March as he removed the needle and put the bandage back in place.
“Almost, keep holding his leg tightly. Tom, keep biting down ok?”
Tom nodded, as tears formed in his eyes. I wanted to tell him it’d be ok and that Chris was watching him, but I didn’t want to break my cover. The snatcher wouldn’t say those things and neither could I. I’d almost lost it already by bossing March around so much, I couldn’t risk it any further. Instead I just looked at Tom and waited in anticipation.
I felt Tom’s leg shift sharply to the left as March tried to reset the bone. Tom made a groaning sound, muffled by the belt in his mouth. The anaesthetic clearly hadn’t kicked in yet.
I knew it was for the best but as I watched Tom struggle through the pain I felt a huge burden. This was no life for anyone to endure; especially someone like Tom who had never wanted to be a hero.
“That’s nothing,” said Tobias after hearing my thoughts. “Your father did much worse to me every day.”
“How can you be so cold?” I asked him in my mind.
“People get hurt, people get healed. That’s life. Why focus on the pain when you know this will save him.”
“He’s only in this situation because of you.”
“Is that right? Little old me?”
“He blamed you for the death of his parents during the Siege. That’s why he joined the Deck, to make sure no-one else could do what you did.”
“Sounds to me like he was blaming the wrong person. He should be thanking me for killing what remained of the Seperationists, they’re the reason his family is dead not me.”
“Either way, he didn’t choose any of this.”
“No-one ever chooses to be in pain but sometimes we don’t have a choice. He chose to help you and the pain is just a necessary outcome of that. You blame yourself too much. He has free will. He knew the risks.”
I heard a deeper crack as the bone popped back into place. When
March told him it was over Tom spat out the belt and took a huge intake of breath.
“You won’t be able to walk on it for days,” explained March. “But this’ll keep you alive until we can get you to a hospital. Someone give me a hand.”
The three of us worked together to help get Tom into the car, where he sat on the back seat. His head flopped to one side as the anaesthetic finally kicked in. I helped buckle him in and sat on the seat next to him.
Grace sat in the front passenger seat and put her gun on the dashboard pointing towards March.
“Drive,” she said.
March turned the ignition key and started driving.
SEVENTEEN
“We should call Jacobi,” I said.
“I wouldn’t,” said March. “If they see reinforcements coming the whole base will go into lockdown. There’s no way you’ll get inside then no matter how big an army you bring.”
“He’ll have to open up eventually,” I replied.
“Trust me, he’d rather shut the whole program down than do that,” said March.
The full impact of his words hit me hard as it dawned on me what he meant. Backed into a corner my own father would rather kill me than let me go. I felt cold.
“He has reinforcements as well,” said March. “I don’t know how big an army Jacobi has but I wouldn’t want to pit him against the entire British military.”
“You’re kidding?” said Grace.
“Why would I? He runs the Government. The army effectively works for him now,” said March.
“And he could always use Emmie’s body to control Jacobi’s army and turn them against each other,” she replied.
“Exactly. A stealthy approach is the only way, and thankfully Eli can’t control either of you,” he said.
“There’s one thing you need to tell us,” I said.
“Just one?” he asked.
“For now,” I replied. “How did you escape?”
“I didn’t. I’m on a supply run for medical equipment. Eli wanted us to stock up to try to calm the effects the machine is having on Emmie and Will,” said March.