by Mike Essex
“If we want to stop Eli then we’ll need him,” I explained.
“He’s lying to you, like he always does,” said Rex.
“Just hear him out,” I said. “Please, do this for me.”
“Talk,” said Rex.
March looked at the storm raging outside the truck and then back at Rex.
“I promise I will help you. Just get Emmie to safety, then I’ll talk,” said March.
Rex pushed March onto one of the seats and then bound his hands with handcuffs, looping them through the back of the seat.
He’d always been kind hearted, able to see the good in people but something had changed about Rex. Although he was clearly a lot physically stronger than before, his wider frame and arms a testament to that, there was a darker side to him now. Not that I blamed him for changing. This was a man who’d lost the use of one lung in order to save me. His world was darker just for knowing me.
“What will you tell Eli?” I asked Jacobi, who seemed disappointed there hadn’t been a fight between Rex and March.
“Oh, we don’t deal with him directly,” he replied. “I’ll have our shell company tell his shell company that the prisoners escaped.”
“Can’t you tell him we died? We’ll have the upper hand then.”
“Too risky. He’d want to see the bodies and then what do I tell him?”
Jacobi was right. It was better to keep his involvement in our escape a secret than to gain a few hours pretending to be dead. At least until we knew what was ahead of us.
It took twenty minutes more for Grace to find Jill and arrive back at the truck. Jill looked absolutely drenched when she came on board; her bare feet were covered in mud.
“Everyone on board?” asked Grace.
“Yup, let’s head out,” said Jacobi.
Whilst March sat tied to his chair, Rex sat down next to me and I lay my head on his shoulder again. I closed my eyes and smiled. Eli was still out there but without the machine he was on his own. For the first time the odds were in our favour.
TWENTY FIVE
“Where the hell are you going?” shouted Grace.
“Home,” replied Jacobi. “We have to get everyone to safety.”
“So you’re just leaving Tom out there? What about no soldier left behind?”
“That’s the American military and we don’t serve a country,” he replied. His soldiers didn’t even respond negatively to this, it was just Jacobi being Jacobi.
“So you’re going to do nothing?”
“Look, I’ve got the guys back at HQ searching the area for any CCTV footage that could help us find him but let’s face it we’re in the middle of nowhere. He could have travelled miles in any direction before he’d reach a camera.”
Grace looked away from him and didn’t reply.
“Show a little respect,” said Jacobi. “If it wasn’t for us you’d be dead right now. Some other military force would have swooped in and gunned you all down.”
“You’re such an asshole,” said Grace.
“Don’t be pissy with me. It was your ex who kidnapped one of our best soldiers.”
“What did you say?” Grace stood up face to face with Jacobi.
“Look,” said Jacobi. “Tom is a good man and we will do what we can to help him but this is my army and these are my orders. I make the call, you follow, do you understand?”
Grace looked like she was going to explode at Jacobi. Everyone on the truck was watching the two of them unable to look away. For Jacobi this was about standing strong and being seen as a leader, for Grace it was about alleviating her guilt over Gabe and saving a good man. She clenched her fist like she was about to strike him and then turned, punching hard on one of the seats.
“It’s on you then,” said Grace.
Jacobi let the words hang there and then jumped out of the back of the truck. Moments later the truck started up and he drove us away from one base and towards another.
“You ok?” I asked Grace, lifting my head up from Rex’s shoulder.
“I was just about to ask you the same question,” she replied.
“The vengeance girls have been through worse,” I told her.
“We sure have Emzie, we sure have.”
“So where are we heading?”
“London, but don’t worry about security. Jacobi’s military ID will get us into the city no questions asked. Those barriers don’t have any jurisdiction over us.”
“And if he sells us out?”
“He won’t. He does have some morals.”
The journey back to London took just over an hour, although it was surprisingly smooth once we hit the motorway. That had been one of Eli’s big wins; shrinking our country’s military budget and using it to help redevelop the country. Some doubted him at first, but when you can control any person on Earth it makes it hard for people to declare war on you.
I wondered how Eli was coping now he lacked the ability to control anyone. Would he still be able to lead and keep the public on his side, or would they simply see him for the fraud that he really was, once he tried to implement change without being able to force it to happen?
Part of me was tempted just to watch him squirm, to tune into the news every day and watch his rapid downfall from the top. He had so many incomplete policies and half fulfilled promises that without me or Will to complete them he’d be faced with a public backlash when they all fell apart. In some ways that felt like it would be a kind of justice, perhaps one even sweeter than his death, but it came with a great risk.
Every day we waited for his downfall was another day he could capture us all over again. He may have lacked overall control but he still had plenty of people ready to do his bidding. He still had the British military and secret service; forces that far eclipsed anything Jacobi could put together. Those soldiers wouldn’t need to be controlled; they’d complete his orders at the request of their higher-ups out of pride for their country.
He was still a very powerful man and I knew the second I underestimated that, he’d win.
Tom was another unexpected problem. Even if we left Eli to destroy himself, Tom was still at risk. Finding Eli wouldn’t be difficult, he was on the news almost every day, but actually getting to him would be tricky. Even if we did somehow kill him, he’d likely have given orders for Tom to be killed in the event of his death, complicating things further.
I was making myself angry thinking about how foolish we’d been to leave Tom all alone out there. I told myself that although Eli may have been lucky, so had we. We’d escaped, the machine was useless and no-one had died. Well apart from the snatcher, aka Sutekh.
Poor Corinna.
The State of London looked as new and pristine as the day I’d seen it formed. Magnificent skyscrapers stretched high up into the sky, taller than anything I’d seen in Birmingham. The road along the river Themes was paved in gold, a far cry from the homeless shanty town that had once been here.
The biggest change was the military forces that patrolled the streets. Without wars to fight abroad our army now spent their time keeping the major cities safe. This was the way it had been in Birmingham since the Siege and it seemed people were no more alarmed by it here. Citizens walked past the soldiers, waving at them as they went.
One citizen tried to take a selfie with one of the soldiers and to my surprise they actually let them do it. They didn’t smile for the photo but the fact they allowed it to happen spoke volumes. These soldiers were as much about positive PR for Eli as they were about actually keeping the streets safe.
Of course he’d never say such a thing. I’d taken control of enough people in enough meetings on his behalf to know that what he said publically was always perfectly written and designed to further his own agenda. Perception was everything to him and he knew that the smallest bit of an uprising could tear that all down.
Back in the machine we’d dismantled a few of these uprisings ourselves, many before they had the chance to become threats. This didn’t just
happen to Pastor Nathaniel Phipps, but also gangs, cults and other political forces.
The methods weren’t always the same; murder, prison sentences, mysterious disappearances, sex scandals and drug overdoses just some of the tools he used but the results were always the same. Any threat to Eli was either publicly discredited or privately disposed of. It’s no surprise he had the lowest rate of protest for any British Prime Minister since records began.
The military force may have been for show but it didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous. Their weapons would fire just as well as any we possessed and their force was much greater than ours.
Once they started looking, an inevitability really, it was only be a matter of time before they found me.
TWENTY SIX
Jacobi’s military company, QWS, was a public facing company with offices that you couldn’t miss if you looked up in the centre of London. Few knew that Jacobi ran it, he preferred to stay anonymous in case someone made the connection to his royal past, so he plucked the Q-Whitehall citizen who had the most business acumen to be his minion at the top.
The QWS headquarters was a dull office building, kitted out with the latest computers, sitting on fancy desks next to glass fronted meeting rooms named after famous military conflicts. It looked classy and for all intents and purposes was a very successful business. After I’d bought down both TethTech and the McDougals’ business empire there was a huge gap for a private military company and Jacobi had stepped right in.
If there was one person who had profited more than anyone else from the destruction in my wake that had been Jacobi.
Not that he cared for wealth. As part of the old Royal family he could have access to more wealth than most people dreamt of if he simply reunited with his family. After the public backlash over the Siege they preferred to remain hidden in the shadows. That was something Jacobi knew far too much about after they’d abandoned him under the city of London with only a few guards for company. I doubted any riches in the world could make him forgive them for that.
No, fame and money were not Jacobi’s style. He’d always been a man who preferred to live in secrecy and the other side of QWS was a testament to that. Whilst any other man with his success would work from the highest room in the tallest tower, Jacobi preferred to burrow himself as low underground as he could.
I’d seen the office part of his business many times by jumping between the bodies of his staff but I’d never seen where he worked or what he did. Jacobi had a twin and a Tether, as did his staff but there were large periods of time when I simply couldn’t reach them. He had a secret even Eli couldn’t seem to crack and it all led back to one majestic theatre.
“Look Emmie. It’s the Keyes theatre,” said Grace, pointing up towards large gold lettering on the front of the building.
I’d been here before, trapped in the building whilst it shifted around us, forming its way into the huge building in front of us. Moments from death I had hallucinated and imagined myself performing in the theatre and people calling it the Keyes theatre in my honour.
“I’ll never understand how you made this happen,” I said to Grace.
“Well I have a confession to make,” she replied.
“Ok.”
“It’s not actually named after you.”
“What?”
“Well, once the public started take sides with your father we petitioned for the name to be changed. People seemed to take to the idea and before you know it we had a Keyes’ Theatre, a Keyes’ radio station, I think there’s even a Keyes’ post office somewhere around here.”
“Oh. Well that sucks.”
“Don’t get me wrong, we always intended for the name to be in your memory but we couldn’t have people knowing that. Besides the public think you’re dead.”
It was true. One of the first sob stories Eli sold the public was that Will and I had died in the Rapture. His wife had died in the Siege and with his children taken by the Rapture it was an exceptional story that won their hearts. He hadn’t needed to take control of anyone that day, just a few powerful words were enough to win them over.
“Anyway, don’t worry. Jacobi bought the theatre two years ago so we can just say it’s in your name now,” explained Grace.
She led me inside the theatre, it looked the same as I remembered it, but there was something I just couldn’t shake. A soft ringing sound lingered in the air that hadn’t been here before. It sounded like part of the audio system had been broken and it was just emitting a low hum like someone had forgotten to turn it off.
“Can you hear it?” asked Grace.
“What is that?” I replied.
“It’s the same signal as an innocent blocking device gives out. You know, the ones people used to use so they could stop their twin seeing what they were up to.”
“Weren’t those banned after TethTech fell?”
“Sure and didn’t that work out well for your father?”
She was right. Without innocent blocking devices Eli could control pretty much anyone he wanted. The Government had been quick to ban them amongst fears that any technology made by TethTech had played a role in the Rapture. Their efforts to protect people had only put them more than risk.
“So how are you doing it now?”
“It’s not that hard actually,” said March, whilst Rex dragged him along by his handcuffs. “Just a case of tapping into the same frequency. Give my congratulations to your tech team.”
“Riiight, I’ll do that,” said Grace sarcastically.
“I’ll see you by the holding cells,” said Rex, kissing me gently on the lips and then carting off March. “Don’t worry about Will, we’ll take care of him in the medical bay as well.”
“Let me show you the way,” said Grace. “But first I know there’s someone else who will want to see you.”
She led me into the theatre hall itself, a huge room that stretched high up to the sky. Thousands of red and white folded seats lined the aisles, pointing themselves towards a huge wooden stage that looked barely used. At the side of the room was a small unassuming white hatch with a poster of different types of ice cream next to it.
The hatch opened up and Rufus poked his head out from inside. “Oy, oy!” he shouted after he’d seen Grace and then once he saw me; “What the f-ing f! Get in here!”
Rufus opened up the door in front of the hatch and we walked into a large kitchen area where several chefs were cooking delicious looking meals. He took off his apron and patted one of the metal work-surfaces encouraging us to jump on it.
“Hey!” shouted one of the chefs as I jumped up.
“I’ll sanitize it ok Jeff,” said Rufus. “It’s my kitchen and my rules, alright? Sorry about this lot, it’s like they’ve never seen a couple of women before. Get back to work.”
The other kitchen staff turned back to the food they were preparing.
“So this is you? It’s really you?” he said, moving his hands up and down in the air around my body as if I was a mirage.
“Yes, it’s me. No Skin 2.0 here,” I replied, jokingly holding my hands to my face.
“Well bloody hell, that’s a turn up for the books isn’t it?”
“So how have you been?”
“Oh you know. I pretty much run this place.”
“Is that right,” I laughed.
“Well you know what they say. The best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach and I’m pretty much the man in charge of those stomach’s…”
“… and their other parts sometimes,” joked Grace.
“Grace. Shh, we’re in polite company,” said Rufus, laughing back.
“So you’ve met someone?” I asked.
“Actually,” Rufus looked around the kitchen. “I have.”
He pointed to one of the kitchen staff. “His name’s Jules,” he whispered to us. “He’s Jeff’s twin which is probably why Jeff doesn’t like me so much.”
“I’m so happy for you,” I leant in towards Rufus and he gave me one
of his big bear hugs in return.
“Thankfully I’m Jeff’s boss so, he’s got to just lump it!” said Rufus.
“It could be worse,” said Grace. “At least we’ve got the blocking device so he can’t see what you two get up to at night.”
“Haha, that’s true. He’d be telling me to sanitize a lot more things if he did.”
“You are terrible Rufus!” I replied, pleased that he’d found someone who made him happy.
“Anyway I’m sure you’ve got a lot of people to see so go on skedaddle. I’ll still be here when you get back and you’d better come back this time!” he said, reaching for a frying pan.
“I will,” I replied.
TWENTY SEVEN
Deciding between seeing March in the holding cell and Will in the medical bay was an easy decision. March deserved to wait in isolation for a long time and think about the harm he’d caused.
Grace took me down to the medical bay where Will was being treated for the burns over his body. She offered to come inside but I asked to be alone with him.
He could barely keep himself upright on the bed as they applied various ointments across the deep red gazes on his exposed chest and arms. When he saw me he did his best to crack a smile in-between the gritting of his teeth.
I sat next to him and supported him whilst the doctor did what she was trained to do. She hooked him up to a heart rate monitor which maintained a rather slow but thankfully steady pulse and gave him some morphine which he was thankful for. The doctor told me his symptoms mirrored someone who had come out of a coma.
I looked at Will, who was sweating profusely and whose face was turning red. The doctor took his temperate and replied “I’m sorry that’s all we can do for now. I’ll be back in an hour to check on the medicine.”
She left the two of us on our own and closed the door to give us some privacy. For a moment the only sound was the beeping of the monitors.
Will spoke first; “I’m glad you’re ok,” he said weakly.
“I don’t understand,” I told him. “I feel stronger than ever and you can barely walk. It’s not right.”