The World Walker Series Box Set

by Ian W. Sainsbury

  “What happened?” she said. “What’s wrong? Where is he?” She scanned the roof for Westlake. There was no one else. The door was rattling. That must be him.

  “Seb, Westlake is here,” she said, “he’s behind you—the door.”

  Strangely, Seb didn’t even glance that way, just continued limping toward her. Something felt wrong. Something was wrong.

  “Stop,” she said. Seb stopped. He looked at her, his face a mask of pain.

  “Say something,” she said. Seb just looked at her.

  “Seb,” she said, “say something.”

  She looked into Seb’s eyes. She may have used up all her Manna, but something deeper and more primal spoke to her and she knew. It wasn’t Seb.

  Westlake looked at Meera Patel and saw the change in her expression. He was too far away from her and she was still far too close to the edge. He thought fast.

  Behind him, the door to the roof flew open. Westlake didn’t react. He watched Patel. Her eyes flicked to the doorway, then back to Westlake. She blinked. Her eyes were shut for a fraction longer than a normal blink. She held her breath. Westlake knew the signs. He’d seen people make decisions in the field, under intense pressure. He’d seen people fling themselves out of windows, suddenly produce a concealed knife or turn guns on themselves. He had seen the same moment of decision in the eyes of all of them. He saw the same moment unfold now.

  Patel turned, her legs bending. She was going to jump. Without hesitating, Westlake pulled a gun from his shoulder holster, released the safety and fired, all in one smooth, unhurried, practiced sequence.

  Walt came through the door and saw Westlake on the far side of the roof. Meera was to his left, three or four meters nearer to the edge. She looked at him, then back at Westlake, before turning away. Westlake moved fast and a single shot rang out. The hem of Meera’s dress flicked backward as if it had been caught in a gale-force wind. A pink cloud of blood blurred Walt’s view as Mee’s right leg exploded above her knee and she fell heavily onto her side.

  Before he’d even realized he’d made a decision, Walt was running across the roof toward Westlake, who was now standing up straight, his gun still pointing at the woman below him.

  As he ran, he felt a sudden searing pain in his shoulder, followed almost immediately by another in his lower back. He’d been shot.

  “Tranquilizer darts,” said Sym, now just a voice in his head. “I’ve slowed down the effects. Ignore it.”

  Walt said nothing, all his attention focused on the man in front of him. Westlake was now turning to face him, aware of the threat. The gun barrel was swinging toward him. Fast. Too fast. Walt increased his pace, his entire world now contracted to include nothing other than his legs pushing forward, his arms pumping, his breath fast, ragged, but strong. He felt strong. Even when the puff of smoke appeared at the end of the barrel and the bullet smacked into his chest, flinging his upper body sideways for a second, he barely noticed.

  There was a certain satisfaction to be had in the expression on Westlake’s face as Walt plowed into him, his shoulder dropped like a quarterback with anger management issues. Westlake didn’t look angry, panicked, or afraid. He just looked surprised. He continued looking that way for the last 3.45 seconds of his life, as Walt’s momentum carried both of them over the railing, off the roof and, shortly afterwards, onto the sun-cracked dusty tarmac of the Mexican street below.

  A small crowd had gathered around the mess at the bottom of the building by the time the ambulance arrived. Orfelia Mendez, the first paramedic to reach them gestured for the crowd to move away. She knelt by the two men, but there wasn’t much urgency in her movements. They had fallen over a hundred and thirty feet. One had landed on top of the other. The one who had hit the ground first had broken his fall with the side of his skull, so Orfelia didn’t bother taking his pulse. The man on top was bleeding most noticeably from an exit wound in his back. The bullet must have hit him in the chest and passed through a number of internal organs before punching through part of his spinal column.

  For the sake of appearances, rather than any hope he might have survived, Orfelia put two fingers on the man’s blood-slimed neck. To her shock, there was a tiny, faint, fluttery pulse which was so erratic, it was bound to fail imminently.

  “Crash cart!” she shouted to her colleagues, turning toward the ambulance to get their attention. As she did so, a hand caught hold of her wrist in a surprisingly strong grip.

  Impossibly, the man with the bullet wound had grabbed her and was now trying to speak. His head was twisted to one side. Small, pink bubbles formed as he tried desperately to form words.

  “Señor?” said Orfelia. She bent her head close to his.

  “The roo—,” said the man, his voice barely audible. He pulled her closer. “The roof. Bullet wound. She needs help.”

  Orfelia nodded her understanding.

  “I’ll get someone up there,” she said. She turned to the ambulance. Two men were approaching with stretchers and bags.

  “Alejandro! There’s someone on the roof with a gunshot wound.” The second man turned and ran back to the building.

  “Thank you,” the man whispered. The grip on her wrist tightened for a moment, then loosened. Unnoticed, a flesh-colored spider ran lightly along the man’s fingers onto her arm and sank into her flesh.

  Orfelia went through the motions of CPR, but she’d seen enough people die to know when there was a chance of bringing them back. This one wouldn’t be coming back.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and waited for the driver to bring two body bags. She sat on the sidewalk while she waited. Her cell buzzed in her pocket. One long buzz meant an email. She took it out and looked at it. No new emails. It was near the end of her shift—maybe she was more tired than she realized. If she’d checked sent messages, she would have had about two seconds to see an email send without a subject before it deleted itself.

  As the bodies were lifted away, she stood, stretched her aching muscles and jogged back to the ambulance. They’d found a woman on the roof with a gunshot to her leg. She was pumped full of painkillers, but as they lifted her into the back of the vehicle, she pulled the oxygen mask off her face to speak to Orfelia.

  “Are they—?”

  Orfelia wasn’t sure what the young woman wanted to hear. One of the men must have shot her before the fall from the roof. The truth was usually the best choice.

  “They both died,” she said.

  The woman looked at her for a long moment before putting the mask back to her face and lying down.

  For the rest of the day, and for much of the week that followed, Orfelia couldn’t get the image of the dead man out of her mind. She discovered later that he’d been shot twice with powerful tranquilizer darts designed to bring down animals, then once with a bullet at close range into his chest. Yet—somehow—he’d pushed the man who’d shot him off of the roof, then survived long enough to tell her about the injured woman. Orfelia knew she would never be able to forget the expression on his face when he finally succumbed to his terrible injuries.

  He had been smiling.

  Westlake’s unit followed the exit strategy perfectly. Their commanding officer was down and the police and ambulance response had been faster than anticipated. The fall from the roof had drawn a crowd, some of whom had gone up to the top of the apartment building to gawp at the bodies below. There was no way of getting to the target.

  Leadership of the team fell automatically to Beta, one of the snipers positioned on the roof of a neighboring building. Seconds after the two men had gone off of the roof, she had packed the rifle, put it back into her backpack and took the stairs down to ground level.

  At the bottom of the stairs, she’d put on a pair of sunglasses and a baseball cap. Then she’d pushed open the door and walked into the building’s lobby, head down.

  The sound of weapons being cocked stopped her in her tracks. She looked up. Six police officers were positioned around the lobby. They were all
pointing handguns toward her. She wasted no time wondering how they had known she was there. That would come later. She quickly considered her chances. Against six of them? Effectively zero.

  A seventh officer stepped forward.

  “Your bag, please, Señora,” he said, “and any concealed weapons. Now, please.”

  Beta knew when she was beaten. She also knew there would be chances to escape. She’d been in worse positions before. She shrugged the backpack from her shoulders and let it fall. It hit the ground with a metallic clunk. Next, she removed the knife from her boot.

  She turned, knelt, and waited while they handcuffed her. She still had the garroting wire secreted inside the necklace holding the crucifix around her neck. An opportunity would come up sooner or later. She expected to be free within a few days.

  Meanwhile, Beta knew the unit would leave her behind. The loss of both leaders triggered automatic withdrawal from the field.

  Meera Patel would have to wait. For now.

  As the police squad pushed through the crowd and put Beta onto the back of a car, First Sergeant Caravantes smiled broadly as he considered his enhanced career prospects. All from an anonymous email tip, which had disappeared from his cellphone immediately after he’d read it. Inspector Caravantes. Now that sounded good.

  32

  Seb woke up with his eyes shut. He tried to open them, but as his eyelids flickered, he passed out again. Almost immediately, he regained consciousness. This time, his eyes opened.

  He was strapped to a bed in a hospital room. He looked around quickly. Not just any hospital room. It was the exact duplicate of the one he’d woken up in after being stabbed at the age of fifteen. There was a needle in his arm. A tube was connected to the needle, which in turn, was hooked up to a drip hanging from a metal stand. An alien—a Rozzer, he reminded himself—was backing away from him. Worryingly, the alien was holding something that looked a hell of a lot like a scalpel. Standing by the door, Mic looked on.

  “What the f—?” thought Seb.

  “They brought you here, they pumped you full of anesthetic, I countered it immediately. They can’t understand how you’re still awake. And I think they’re a bit scared. You were supposed to stay unconscious, so they could slice you up and have a look see.”

  “Well, thanks for stopping them. Can you pick up the program you left in their mainframe?”

  “Doing it now.”

  “Great. I’m going to ask some questions.”

  Mic had opened the door and was waiting for his colleague with the scalpel to join him. Seb glanced at the door and it slammed shut, sealing itself against the wall. Mic tried the handle, then waved his hand in the air in a series of tiny gestures. An aperture appeared in the wall and grew rapidly. Seb raised a finger and it shrank even more rapidly before disappearing. Both aliens stiffened in an almost human-like gesture of surprise, then turned and faced Seb.

  Seb sat up, the straps holding him falling away as he moved. He swung his legs over the bed and hopped down onto the cold tiled floor. He was barefoot, wearing a hospital gown. He blinked and his outfit was replaced by sneakers, jeans and a T-shirt.

  “You fellas want to tell me what this is all about?” he said.

  Mic took a small step forward. His voice came from a monitor on the wall at the foot of the bed.

  “Classification incomplete, results unsatisfactory,” he said. “Specimen study initiated for further research on return.”

  “Ok, let’s take this a step at a time,” said Seb. “Am I the specimen in this scenario?”

  “Correct.”

  “And you are trying to classify me, but you haven’t succeeded.”

  “Success delayed, facilities inadequate.”

  “So, you were going to poke me around, probably kill me, then take my body home with you?”

  Mic’s expression was, as always, unreadable.

  “Termination unnecessary, stasis possible with cooperation.”

  “I don’t have to die, but you can take me home by—what? Putting me into some kind of hibernation?”

  Seb was sure his better comprehension of the Rozzer’s opaque speech patterns was down to his Manna-enhanced brain processing at speeds he couldn’t consciously control. But he could almost understand them now, that was the main thing. Not that he much liked what they were saying.

  “Correct,” said Mic. It seemed the aliens were quick to adapt to a new situation. Seb had demonstrated superior power, taken control of the technology on their craft sufficiently to prevent them from getting away. They had shown no further resistance, just passively accepted that Seb was now asking the questions. They seemed far more comfortable answering questions than asking them. Something nagged at Seb’s mind, something he had felt each time he had been here. Something that didn’t quite fit.

  “We’ve gotta go, right now,” said Seb2. “I have some answers. You’re not going to like them. And we only have a few days to decide what we’re going to do about it.”

  “About what?”

  “I’ll tell you at home. While I’m still here.”

  “While you’re what?!”

  “Just Walk, will you.”

  “I can do that now? From here.”

  “I sure as hell hope so. And we can ignore any future attempts to grab us now.”

  “Good” thought Seb. “But there’s something else. I think I know what’s been bugging me.”

  He turned away from the aliens and looked up at the featureless ceiling.

  “Come and visit me,” he said. He waited for a few seconds, but there was no response.

  Seb Walked.

  33

  Upstate New York

  Thirty-four years previously

  Isaac Newman had made his millions from property, so when he finally decided to retire and enjoy the fruits of his labors, he bought a fifteen-story Manhattan brownstone within sight of Central Park. The first twelve floors were converted into luxury apartments which commanded eye-watering rents. The thirteenth floor was left unoccupied for two reasons. One was practical. Isaac wanted the top two floors for himself and didn’t want to hear any noise from downstairs neighbors. The second reason was pure superstition on his late wife’s part. “Isaac,” she’d said, “you’ve been pretty lucky so far. Why tempt fate now?”

  A man who had backed all of his hunches and had won nearly every time was not easily rattled. But when his son turned up with a broken nose, a weeping woman who looked like she probably lived in a trailer park and a sick child in a wheelchair, he wasn’t sure how to react. Luckily, his daughter, Rosa, was visiting, and bustled around the visitors, offering drinks and making them comfortable.

  Isaac watched his daughter fuss over her brother, getting him an ice pack. Jesse was moaning a little and looked scared. Isaac hadn’t seen his son for over a year. He looked healthy enough, apart from the nose. Evangelical Christianity evidently suited him. Particularly with the $3m startup loan from his old man. Not a loan he was ever likely to see repaid, since Jesse had never been dependable, reliable, honest, or interested in doing an honest day’s work in his life. Sometimes Isaac was glad Greta hadn’t lived to see how their boy had turned out.

  “And how about a drink for you?” said Rosa to the boy in the wheelchair. Funny, the skinny kid couldn’t move his legs, but he looked so healthy he was almost glowing. It was hard to take your eyes off him. Was he some protégé of Jesse’s, another miracle healing he was going to try to convince Isaac that he’d brought about? Isaac rolled his eyes. He hadn’t actively practiced his Jewish faith for half a century or more, but it still stung a little that Jesse had turned to Christianity, when the religious bug finally bit him at college. Still, Isaac had been convinced his son would end up a drug addict, petty criminal or worse, so he had agreed to finance the church upstate when Jesse had come to him. Even if he thought it should have been a synagogue. God is God, though, right?

  Rosa sat down finally, smoothing her blouse over her swollen belly. Seven months preg
nant, and Jesse hadn’t said a damn thing about it. Probably hadn’t even noticed. Isaac felt a twinge as he recognized a weakness—or was it a strength?—he and his son shared. When they had their eye on the prize, their focus became so narrow they barely noticed anything going on around them. If Isaac hadn’t been so intent on winning a bidding battle for a huge development in Montana, maybe he would have noticed how tired Greta was getting back then. Maybe he would have taken her to the doctor earlier. Maybe there would still have been time.

  “Dad? Dad?”

  Isaac snapped himself back to attention. It was easy these days to get a little lost in memories. He was eighty-one and Greta had been gone for fifteen years. About time he let it go.

  “Sorry, son, wool-gathering again. Retirement gives me time to reflect and sometimes I get caught up in it.” He smiled at Jesse. Still had Greta’s eyes. “What brings you here? Are you going to introduce us to your friends? And what the hell happened to your nose?”

  Isaac saw Jesse flash a look toward the crippled boy. Was that fear in his eyes?

  “Dad,” said Jesse. “This is —,” He stopped short, remembering the boy’s angry reaction when his mother had tried to say his name back at the church. He swallowed hard and looked over at his attacker. That boy—that evil boy—had somehow perverted God’s power. He still couldn’t believe what had happened. He was waiting for God to restore order and punish this sinner.

  Jesse had been introduced to God’s power while at college. A female Christian, twenty years old with the longest legs he’d ever seen, had taken him to an old clapperboard church in a poor neighborhood. Despite his misgivings—which bordered on scorn—Jesse went along because he hoped the Christian in question might sin a little with him later. But he’d found power there, real power. It had changed his life. The first change he’d noticed was that he didn’t want heroin any more. The urge just vanished, which was supposed to be physically impossible. He converted to Christianity. Then, as long as he kept going back to that church, he found he could heal other people, not just himself. And they wanted to give donations in thanks. Jesse reasoned that God didn’t want him to be poor.