by Mark A. King
She felt the weight of the pistol in her hand. Unlike in the movies, she had no time to check the chamber. Iona scrambled for the nearest wall, one of the remaining Olympic buildings.
The bike buzzed like a hornet trapped in a bottle. The sound came nearer, and then a shot made Iona instinctively dive to the ground.
Masonry debris sprayed her body. From the ground, she could see her attackers turning the bike for another attempt, and this time they had a clear shot.
Iona crouched and held her gun in front of her, trying to anticipate the movement of the rider and the gunman.
Take out the rider. Do you know how to use a gun? That was often something they said on TV. The police in other countries would probably have firearms training as standard. How hard could it be?
There would be a kick-back, but she knew from watching cop shows that gently squeezing the trigger was the correct way to fire. Snatching at the trigger in panic was likely to reduce the accuracy.
The attackers fired again, the shot echoing across the space between Iona and them. The ground sparked, followed by the sound of a ricochet.
Aim. Track. Anticipate. Fir—
A loud crack from behind the bike. Then another and another. The final shot hit the driver on the shoulder, his hands jerking at the handles and destabilising both riders. They were flung across the concrete surface. The motorbike skidded before smashing into a pedestrian barrier. Both riders were still alive, though covered in cuts, gashes and blood.
In the distance, Danielle Green held the firearm at the end of an outstretched and steady arm. Smoke snaked from the muzzle.
She must have gone back and grabbed a gun from the downed bikes.
Iona moved towards the two men writhing on the ground. The driver, the arsonist, reached for his phone and started to say something.
Danielle was nearer to them. She sprinted towards the rider, closing the gap.
Iona screamed at her, “The gun. The other guy’s still got the gun!”
Danielle dived just as the shot boomed.
The gunman, exhausted by his own efforts, dropped his weapon as Danielle Iona reached him. She bent down, wrestled the gun from him, and pistol-whipped him, knocking him out cold.
Iona arrived.
“Thanks for saving me,” Danielle breathed.
Iona nodded curtly. It wasn’t the time for talking. Iona turned to the driver, his face a mess of peeled skin and grazes from the fall and angry burns from the fire earlier. “Who did you phone?”
“Piss off, bitch! Like I’m going to tell you. You’ll find out soon enough,” he growled.
She pointed the gun at him.
He’s not going anywhere. I don’t have time for this. He can only have phoned Armitage or someone close to her.
Iona tucked the handgun away, and Danielle did the same with hers.
The distant thunder of a gunshot punctured the approaching sirens. Cal!
“Sorry,” Iona said. “I need to help him.”
“So do I,” Danielle said. “But the best help I can give is to break the story. You go after Cal. I’ll be fine. They don’t seem to be that interested in me. I’m guessing they’re after you, as they’re aware that you know too much. And they’re chasing Cal because the phone is switched on, and they’re tracing it.”
Iona looked at Danielle. She was smart, clever, and right. They didn’t have time to waste. “See you soon, Danielle.”
Danielle managed a smile before Iona sprinted in the direction of the gunfire.
Cal
Fortunately, one of the motorbikes came after me.
I lost the rider and gunman for a few minutes as I sprinted across the pedestrian walkway between the Olympic Park and Stratford.
I reached the stairway before they could get a clean shot at me.
I wondered if I’d make it to the station and be able to board the train before they found another way around.
Would my plan even work? Could I harness the feelings, the emotions, and the sheer loss of those who had died long before I was even born? The idea was ridiculous, but I’d seen and felt more than I could rationally explain. I didn’t feel like a god, an angel, or a protector of any kind. I was running for my life just like anyone would do. Pulse throbbing and thundering inside my ears. Legs jittery with adrenalin. Breath gasping, lungs burning, fear driving me forward.
I couldn’t help but worry about Danielle and Iona, but the best way to help them was to draw the enemy away, to spring the trap.
Did I have the abilities that Merla had told me about, and was I in fact, Abna Neito?
I hoped that the station was empty, that the approaching roads and paths were clear.
As I ran down the pedestrian steps and headed towards the station, the snarling motorbike wound its way across the road and mounted the pavement.
As I looked back, I raised my head to the sky and thanked the city planners. They’d installed numerous blocks, poles, and posts to prevent vehicles from ramming the station. I heard the bike stop, followed by footsteps behind me.
A bang reverberated, the gunshot echoing against the buildings like an sonic boom. Thankful for my attackers’ lack of shooting skills, I continued to zig-zag my way into the station.
Somewhere nearby, sirens wailed.
I hid inside the station and waited. The plan wasn’t to escape; I needed them to follow me.
The motorbike rider and his gun-toting mate were waiting outside, reluctant to enter.
An unmarked police car pulled up, it’s blue lights flashing through the grill and bathing the entrance of the station in intermittent eerie light.
A burly driver stepped out and opened the door for a woman who matched the pictures I’d seen of Verity Armitage.
She barked something at the two motorbike men, who scampered back in the direction of the pedestrian tunnel.
The man-mountain car driver led Armitage through the doors and into the station concourse.
“Callum McKinley. You’re a royal pain in the arse. First you kill my husband. Then you run into two of my employees. Now you’re hanging around with low-life scum like Danielle Greene and discredited police officers like Iona Stone. I’ve been watching you, Cal. You can’t hide from someone with access to as many CCTV cameras as I have. Besides which, I’ve been tracking the phone movements.” Her voice boomed in the empty space. She sounded cocky and in no mood for games. “Hand over the phone. It’s all I want. It doesn’t belong to you. It was stolen from my husband by a couple of idiots who clearly didn’t know what they were doing. It’s important to me.”
I hid behind a row of ticket machines and said nothing.
A moment later the two motorbike men returned, dragging Iona with them.
They frogmarched Iona up to the woman.
“Hello, former-Detective Stone,” Armitage growled. “Such a shame. You know I once thought highly of you, thought you might make a fine addition to the team. Not for the police work, that’s just the nice front, but for the real work we do. Highly paid. Good prospects. Sad to say it didn’t work out, but at least you did provide me with some leverage on Jimmy Kinsella. He’s dead now. Poor old Jimmy.”
Iona tried to lunge at her, only to be slapped hard across her face by Armitage’s bodyguard.
I went to intervene, but quickly realised the futility of it.
Armitage stood forward, arms outstretched as if performing to a theatre audience. “Come on out, Mr. McKinley. Hopefully you know what I’m capable of. I’ve been through too much recently to just let you get away. Besides, if you have anything, anything at all, that could link me to my employers, then you’ve given me no choice but to act. Vince, my trusted chauffeur, what can I say about him? He’s not much of a talker, but he likes the rough stuff with the women. Do you get what I’m saying? Not very PC, I’ll grant you that, but who am I to judge? I don’t want to discriminate, now, do I? I try to cater to all tastes. Vince would like nothing better than to be left alone with young Iona here.”
I thought about what was coming Armitage’s way. She would suffer the fear of night and the loss of light and hope.
“Don’t listen, Cal. Take the phone and run!” Iona cried.
Of course, Armitage has no idea about the memory card. She still thinks I have all the evidence.
I waited a moment, readying my legs and taking a huge gulp of stagnant air. I dived out from behind the machines.
“There. Get him!” Armitage shouted.
I hurtled over the entry barriers before anyone could shoot, and darted towards the Night Tube. A train approached; I heard and felt the vibration underfoot.
I needed the Central Line, westbound, heading towards Liverpool Street.
The train was the right one. It pulled up at the platform just as I arrived, and mercifully, it was empty. The doors opened, and I ran towards the carriage behind the driver’s cab. I stood there, pacing, urging my pursuers to arrive and follow me.
The two bikers hurtled onto the platform, followed a few moments later by the rhino bodyguard dragging Iona. A gunshot rang through the tunnel, thundering against the support arches. The Tube driver jumped out of the cab and scrambled for the exit. In a world of global terror, he didn’t know they had zero interest in him.
Behind the three men and Iona, Armitage sauntered in as if she were just browsing in a shop and she had all the time in the world.
As they boarded one of the carriages at the far end of the train, I stepped out and jumped into the open cab of the Tube driver. I closed the doors and engaged the power before anyone could start moving towards me. They’d find it hard to get through the metal security door, but I was fairly sure it wasn’t bullet-proof.
The train hurled through the tunnels; I pushed it as fast as I could safely take it. It should have stopped at Mile End, but I only slowed there. I couldn’t tell how far through the carriages the others had come. Really, it wasn’t safe to cross between cars when the train was moving, but safety was hardly Armitage’s concern.
I knew that the authorities would be aware of the situation by now. No matter how connected Armitage was and how much she could influence and conceal, there had been too many gunshots, a frightened train-driver ,and now a speeding train that had failed to stop at a station. I wondered about Danielle and if she was safe.
I didn’t want the authorities involved. I didn’t want to risk Armitage getting away. Armitage had so much power and authority, she could probably spin it so I looked like a terrorist stealing a train.
As we approached Bethnal Green, I heard banging on the cab door.
They’re here. Not much time now.
“Stop the train, McKinley. Give me that bloody phone or I’ll shoot this bitch. I’ll do it myself, I swear,” Armitage screamed.
I did my best impression of a harassed and distressed voice. “Okay. Okay. Whatever you want.”
I slammed on the brakes. The train screamed like a banshee. Sparks filled the tunnel.
Then I cut the power. We sat in darkness for a moment.
Darkness was no longer my domain. I was only one part of the equation.
Merla Kali was the other.
Maria
“We need to go to Liverpool Street station. Now!” I shouted to the cab driver.
“What?” Raf asked.
“Don’t ask. Just trust me,” I said, though why he would trust a twelve-year-old girl who had gotten into nothing but danger since she’d arrived in the city, I had no idea.
“I need to get you to your dad. It’s important we remain safe. It’s not safe for you to be anywhere else,” Raf said.
I thought about this. “Have they caught the people who killed my Am’ma, my mum?”
“No.”
“The people hunting me?”
“No.”
“The people who promise the weak everything and then sell them to the highest bidder, or who get them so dependent on drugs or debt that they have no choice?”
He said nothing.
The sense of darkness I got from the Emptyman had gone. He was gone, no longer a threat, but that left the Emptywing, Westbourne. While the boss still ruled and remained unchallenged, nothing would change for me or those I sought to protect.
Words and thoughts were coming in a rush, as if they were not my own. As if I had confidence in who I was, and more importantly, what I could become. I could trace the umbra.
“Mr. Driver, please take us to Liverpool Street station.”
He looked in the rear-view mirror, at Raf, then at me. “Yes, Miss,” he replied.
My physical abilities had not changed. My balance was still uneven, my gait lopsided, my legs sore and weak. But I was not defined by these things.
I never had been.
“Pull up as close to the entrance as you can get,” I told the driver.
The Merla who existed in other worlds had it wrong. She believed she was here to tempt, to seduce, to lure, to inspire, or to free those who were restrained by the rules of the day. She thought that without her, the city would die. But she missed the point. I was here to protect those who suffered from the darkness of others.
Raf tried to take my arm as we descended the elevators. I shrugged him off politely. This was not a time to lean on someone else. I had to stand alone, to lead, to face the Emptywing and defeat her.
As we sank below the layers of the recent Crossrail excavations, I felt the souls buried there.
Hundreds of plague victims.
Children, just hastily buried bones who had never lived, never loved, their legacy unfulfilled, their potential descendants wiped before they even had a chance to exist.
Impoverished adults who had tried to flee the city, horrified by the putrid, squalid deaths of a quarter of the population: their friends, family, and loved ones. The city gates stopping their passage; only those with certificates of good health signed by the Lord Mayor could pass through—hard to obtain for those who had nothing. Their anguished faces and futures now just dust in a plague pit.
If ever there were a place filled with umbra, with the darkness of pain, suffering, and loss, it was in the walls and earth beneath this station.
The victims of the plague hovered one slipstream of reality away, mourning their lives cut so violently short by swollen buboes, sometimes the size of apples, in the groin, neck, and armpits. Their crippling pain tearing at their very souls and their pleas for mercy and for death went unheeded, for in their time it was taboo, inconceivable to help someone take their own life. To watch your father, mother, sister, or child die in such trauma; that is the darkness. The people in the plague pit had watched their families suffer and die. Even if they had survived, what sort of future would they have enjoyed? Future lives taken from them, like the future lives Westbourne had taken from those in the city of today.
And on the platform of the station, waiting for a train that would not arrive, I stood with Raf and I called the victims. This was their time. This was their chance to claim the futures for those who might face the same fate by different means.
Were they ghosts that came? Not in the sense that they could be seen. But in the minds of Westbourne and her henchman they would be as real as the air they breathed. The Nameless; the souls, the spirits, the emotions, the personalities, the lost futures. The Nameless came in their hundreds. Bitter angry faces of disease and decay, of grief and despair.
They did not seek revenge.
They came, as I had asked them, to protect the futures of those still living.
Behind the Nameless, I could feel the light.
Cal was nearby. Abna.
I told my friends to wait and more would join them soon.
I had called the victims of the plague pits and they were waiting. Cal was about to unleash the souls of Bedlam.
Cal
The dark walls of the tunnel pulsed and throbbed. Spirits came and coalesced; I could see them for who they were and what they could have become, yet I knew they were no more tangible than the wisps of vapour that rose f
rom the Underground vents at street level. These were the nameless lost people of the plague pits. They whispered to me. Hundreds of disparate voices filled my head.
Merla has sent us.
We came to protect those who still live.
There were mothers who had watched their children die writhing in pain, their only comfort, death.
Fathers who had tried to find sanctuary for their families, only to be imprisoned in the squalor, unable to flee.
Brothers and sisters whose promise was snuffed out in the breath of disease and poverty.
I imagined the bird-beak masked doctors of the plague, cowls raised, reciting prayers and mixing herbs.
Some of them stood only feet away, victims themselves.
A stench of decay filled the tunnels. Merla could smell it, too.
But nobody else would be able to sense the lost futures of these spirits and souls, apart from Westbourne and her employee.
Behind me, Armitage said, “Who’s there? McKinley, you better hope that’s not the police. You’re screwed if it is.”
I said nothing.
In the burial grounds behind the walls and floors of Liverpool Street station lay thousands of bodies from Bedlam, or as it should be called, Bethlem.
I beckoned them.
The lost souls of Bethlem waited in front of my train cab, standing shoulder to shoulder with those cast into the plague pits. The brethren of the burial grounds awaited my command.
The patients of Bethlem had lost their lives and potential due to intolerance, ignorance and sometimes, barbaric treatments. Bedlam became a byword for chaos, anarchy, lunatics, derangement, madness, bedevilment, and social disorder. But these were words, labels, attitudes, and cruel treatments applied by those who lived in times of bigotry, superstition, and punishment.
Inside the various incarnations of buildings and regimes, the barbaric treatment of psychiatric inpatients had continued.
Chained, malnourished, beaten, flogged, abused, and tormented, their lives a living hell, their deaths early and tragic. Futures lost on this timeline.