Halfheroes

by Ian W. Sainsbury

  He paused. Not a natural showman, Titus nevertheless appreciated the drama of the moment. He knew this speech, and what was about to happen, would be watched by billions when they released the footage in an hour.

  He raised his voice.

  "I promised you my secret. Here it is. When I say that I want to make the world a better place, I actually mean it. I see a problem. And I can fix it. I call my solution The Utopia Algorithm."

  There was a sound like an explosion and everyone flinched, bodyguards running towards their employers, hands reaching for weapons.

  In the chaos that followed, only a handful of people saw what happened next, but the cameras captured the moment perfectly. Huge shards of shattered glass—the strongest bullet and bomb-proof glass in the world—fell from the dome above the stage. When they reached a spot ten feet above Titus's head, they stopped falling, hanging in the air. Six very tall, muscular figures in dark suits followed the glass, floating down from the high ceiling like giant dust motes caught in the spotlight.

  They landed on the stage, three on each side of Titus. One of them made a gesture, and the glass hanging above him moved back to the rear of the hall, before sinking to the floor.

  The audience stared at the stage, many of them held back by their security teams. Over a hundred guns were pointing at the six strangers.

  The husband of the world's most successful fashion designer was the first to say it.

  "They're him."

  Then everyone saw it. The six men, over seven feet tall and built like linebackers, all looked exactly the same. They all looked like Titus Gorman.

  20

  Daniel stared at the Globule's screen, his hands shaking. He had just watched a three-minute video euphemistically titled Welcome. The man who had planned his kidnapping was Titus Gorman.

  In the video, Gorman had apologised. He hadn't taken this course of action lightly; he considered taking another human being's liberty to be a heinous crime, something he would have to live with for the rest of his life, blah blah blah.

  Gorman had expressed regret that he couldn't tell his guests—call me your guest to my face, you arsehole—why he had been forced to imprison them. He was a man who understood logic, and logic had dictated his actions. Halfheroes represented the greatest risk to the project he was about to launch, so halfheroes had to be taken out of the equation.

  Gorman had concluded by explaining that the Globlet in each room linked to an offline database containing over ten million books, plus almost every album ever released and every movie ever made. There were also courses available in many subjects.

  Perhaps I'll take up cross-stitch, you shithead.

  Daniel was trying to avoid thinking about the last thing Gorman had said before the video had faded to black. Something about not wanting to keep them locked up longer than was necessary.

  Daniel was trying not to think about Station.

  Three years. That was what Gorman had said. Three years. Naturally, Titus hoped it would be shorter, but his guests should prepare themselves for a three-year stay.

  Three years.

  Daniel's self-control slid away as a panicked rage burst through his mental defences.

  For the next few minutes, he had no conception of who he was, where he was, or what he was doing. He lashed out with his fists, he punched and kicked at the walls and the door. He tried to pull the bed away from the floor, only to find it was bolted in place and he lacked the strength to move it. He lumbered from one side of the room to the other, making incomprehensible, guttural noises. He couldn't form a single thought, because his mind was turning in on itself, away from reality, burrowing into a cocoon of pain. Trying to think was like swimming from the bottom of a dark pool, looking for the light from the surface, but never finding it. The pain from his hands as he repeatedly punched the solid door was sharp enough to break through the numbness, albeit temporarily. Daniel welcomed it, saw the pain as a lifeline, kicked up towards the light revealed by the bones breaking in his fingers as he smashed the door over and over again.

  Time passed. Seconds, minutes, hours... he didn't know or care. He saw the surface, a bright light; warm, welcoming. He broke through and floated up into a world of light where he could drift in a haze of no-thought. Shapes, half-visible in cobwebs of fog, came closer before receding and vanishing. Sounds came and went, words spoken on an old radio in a faraway room, tuned somewhere between two stations.

  Finally, there was darkness and quiet. There was a peacefulness in that darkness, a sense of a question: why go back?... stay here. He stayed, lacking the energy to do anything else. He had stopped caring. The darkness was good. He could rest.

  Then the thoughts emerged. Slowly, like air bubbles in slow motion. They originated from far below, he sensed their approach, then watched as they passed, rising out of sight. A long gap then another bubble. Daniel could not look away, could not ignore them.

  ...

  ... Halfhero. Not human. And not like Abos. Humans are scared of you. But compared to Abos, you are weak...

  ...

  ... You will die one day, but Abos will live in a new body. You are a mistake. You should never have been born...

  ...

  ... You are no better than your mother. Just like her, you hate yourself, and, eventually, you will destroy yourself...

  ...

  ... At least she produced a child. She left something behind, even something as half-formed and dangerous as you...

  ...

  ... You will die like your mother died, unloved...

  ...

  A memory surfaced, sharp and clear. The night he'd typed his mother's name into Glob. Finding there was a tiny shred of feeling left, despite his childhood, despite the contempt she'd shown towards him. She was still his mother. Only, she wasn't. Not any more. Daniel had read the article reporting his mother's death. It had happened six years before he escaped from Station. A car had hit her. She had been drunk, of course. He had felt nothing. Their only connection had been biological. But when he had tried to tell Abos, he had found he couldn't say the words. He had swallowed the knowledge, kept it somewhere dark.

  ...

  ... Unloved. And alone...

  ...

  ... Your children were monsters, and you can never be a proper father. Not now...

  ...

  Something pulled at his attention. He ignored it, focussing on the thoughts torturing him in the darkness. He agreed with them, and he didn't care anymore. There was a kind of peace here in the dark, even if it was a bleak, empty peace.

  Whatever it was that wanted his attention was persistent. It wanted him to look away from the rising thoughts. In the end, he capitulated. Maybe then, it would go away. He had no eyes to see, not there in the darkness, but he opened them anyway, a muscle memory giving him a way of interacting with the nothingness.

  There was a face. He didn't see it at first. Then he noticed a symmetry in the blackness, lighter patches becoming visible. Abstract at first, slowly gaining definition. The brain, hard-wired to see patterns, detected a familiar shape, a form.

  It was George.

  Abos had George's face now. Daniel saw it every day. But this wasn't Abos. It was George. Something about the tilt of the face, the hint of amusement never far from her eyes.

  He tried to look away but could not. There was no judgement in her expression. Back then, George had known Daniel would go back to Station with Abos and destroy it, because she had seen it. She had seen his success, just as she had seen her own death, the two outcomes inextricable knotted together. She had accepted her part, and she had treated him as if he were a good man. Not a mistake, not a halfhero. Not half-anything.

  Her face looked at him.

  The thoughts had gone.

  He remembered who he was. And where he was. His awareness returned in bursts, like a car engine misfiring before the spark plugs ignite the petrol and air and the engine starts.

  His body hurt. He couldn't move his fingers.
He was lying down. Something soft beneath him. He was on a bed.

  The darkness made itself present again; a caress, a promise of forgetfulness. Just turn towards it and he would own the darkness and the darkness would own him.

  Just give up.

  Daniel opened his eyes, blinked against the sudden light, tears blurring his vision. He brought his hand up and wiped away the moisture, feeling something around his fingers. He blinked again and looked. His hands were bandaged, the fingers in splints.

  Using the heels of his hands, he pushed himself up against the wall behind the bed, his head throbbing as he did so. He flexed his fingers. They were healing, but not as quickly as his injuries normally healed. Fresh bursts of pain made him hiss, sweat breaking out on his forehead. He bit the end of a bandage and unwound both hands. The bruising was extensive, and colourful, but fading.

  This must be how normal people heal.

  He looked down at his body. White drawstring trousers, white T-shirt. Fresh clothes, no bloodstains from his self-destructive rampage.

  He was still hungry. Not as hungry as he had been, but his stomach was groaning.

  How can I be less hungry? I haven't eaten.

  He brought his left hand up under his T-shirt to his chest. An area of a few centimetres diameter on his chest had been shaved. There was a small plaster there.

  "They fed me intravenously."

  Daniel realised he had spoken out loud. His voice sounded harsh and dry. He cleared his throat. There was a plastic cup on a shelf cut into the rock wall. He slid off the bed, lightheaded, taking small steps. He filled the cup from the tap and took a long drink. The first few swallows cut like gravel, but his need for fluids won out over the discomfort, and the pain receded as he drained the cup, refilled and did the same again.

  "Daniel? Daniel? Is that you? Are you okay?"

  Sara's voice.

  Daniel knelt by the door, putting his cheek to the floor. He looked to the right. No one was there.

  "Daniel? Thank God. I thought I was alone, apart from that prick and his mates. This way."

  He shifted his head towards the sound. Lying on the floor in the cell to the left, her face pressed hard up against the metal door, was Sara.

  The last time he'd seen her, she had been in the house in Newcastle being attacked by hundreds of ball bearings hitting her body. He had heard bones break.

  "Sara! You okay?"

  She smiled. It looked weird from that angle.

  "Yeah, fine. A little sore, still."

  "But...Sara, you were in bad shape."

  "Nothing a few days enforced rest in a psycho's prison couldn't sort out."

  "What? How long have we been here?"

  "Hard to say for sure. No clocks, no windows. The automatic lights dim to half-strength for eight hours in every twenty-four, so I'm going to guess that's eleven through to seven. In which case, five days, although I wasn't really with it when I arrived. Might be six."

  Daniel jerked back from the door in shock, then pressed his face up against it again too fast, squishing his nose. Tears and snot ran down his cheeks.

  "Ow! Six days? How long was I unconscious for? Did you see them come into my room? What did they look like? Any idea where we are?"

  "Woah, there, boy, slow down, will you? When I woke up, it was all quiet in your cell. A few hours after I'd worked out that I didn't have enough strength to get out because of the child-sized meals, that northern twat up the corridor woke up and had a tantrum."

  "Fuck you too, pet. I suppose you like being in here."

  Daniel recognised TripleDee's voice. He slid his face to the left so he could see back up the corridor. The drug dealer's face stared back at him, then disappeared back into the cell, with a parting, "Oh, for fuck's sake."

  Sara laughed.

  "I'd assumed TripleDee got his nickname because his name's Davey Dozy Dickhead, but after the little hissy fit he had when he woke up, I think he might be named after his three GCSE grades. Probably cookery, PE and modern dance."

  "Fuck OFF." TripleDee had stayed close enough to the door to listen in.

  "Daniel, why were you unconscious so much longer than the rest of us? I thought your cell was empty at first. But a guard went in every few hours. The last time he left, he had medical equipment with him. What happened to you?"

  Daniel didn't mention his own panicked response to being imprisoned. He was sure Sara would understand—she knew a little about his years at Station—but he wasn't proud of his loss of control.

  "I was disorientated when I first woke up. I fell. My body's not healing as fast as usual, and I'm weak. They patched me up, fed me intravenously."

  "Yeah, Gormless has done his homework. He knows feeding us a survival-level diet means we won't be able to use our powers properly."

  Daniel smiled at Gormless. Sara wouldn't give up anytime soon.

  "You okay now, Daniel?"

  "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Peckish, though."

  "Tell me about it. I could eat three horses. And a goat."

  Daniel thought back to the fight in Newcastle. He remembered losing consciousness, a mask being pulled over his nose and mouth. The whole mission had been a trap. IGLU security had been compromised. He wondered what Saffi was doing, what resources might be available to an organisation the UN had no official knowledge of.

  "Hey Triple?"

  There was no answer, but he knew the man in the next cell was listening.

  "Got double-crossed, did you? Delivered us, the other halfheroes, and yourself, to Gorman. Gift-wrapped with a pretty bow on top. You're probably glad you're in there. I wonder what your new friends would do to you if they had the chance?"

  "FUCK OFF."

  TripleDee was too easy to wind up. Took a lot of the fun out of it.

  Daniel pictured the room in Newcastle at the moment Sara had been overwhelmed. She'd been grabbed by someone who'd walked through a solid wall like it was a shower curtain.

  "Wait. Wait. Sara?"

  "I'm here."

  "In Newcastle, the guy who grabbed you. He walked through a wall. Not like I do. I mean, he went through it like it wasn't even there. Is he in here?"

  He was quiet while he considered the possibilities. Getting a message to the guy was the first problem. Then there was the issue of not having enough strength to use his power. Maybe if everyone near to his cell gave him a third of their food for a day, by sliding the plates under the gaps across to his cell...difficult, but not impossible...

  He could hear laughter from TripleDee's cell, bitter and forced. Then Sara's voice again.

  "Daniel, I'm sorry."

  TripleDee stopped laughing long enough to shout out.

  "He hasn't seen it, has he? Yeah, sounds like a great plan, Danny boy, nice one." He laughed again, but there was no amusement in the sound, just an edge of desperation.

  "Sara? What's he talking about?"

  "Look at your Globlet. I'll be here when you're done."

  Daniel got to his knees, paused a moment while the dizziness passed, then rose to his feet.

  The Globlet was brand new. He recalled smashing the last one. It flickered into life when he picked it up. There was no port for a charging cable on the case which meant it was the latest generation, with wireless charging. The computer-loving, Kraftwerk-listening child geek in Daniel couldn't help but be impressed.

  This time, when he pressed the welcome icon, it was replaced by folders. Alongside books, movies, education, music, games, and myglob, was announcements. The folder icon, a red light atop a nineteen-seventies American cop car, was flashing.

  He pressed it. It contained one file, named escape attempt.

  Daniel pressed it.

  21

  Abos looked at the screen. It didn't occur to her to ask Shuck how he had learned to pause and rewind live television. By the time she did wonder how he seemed to know so much without having to study anything, the answer was already obvious. But it was days before that happened, and weeks before she
discovered the full implications of what she had discovered.

  Titus Gorman was addressing a roomful of people in Geneva. Abos had just watched six members of her own species crash through the ceiling and stand alongside the tech billionaire.

  Shuck paused the video and turned to look at her.

  "They are as we are?"

  She nodded her agreement, staring at the impassive faces of these new members of her species. They all looked as if they'd grown up in an alternative universe where Titus Gorman had been an impressive physical specimen as well as a genius. They towered above the original, the man whose blood had given them life. While his eyes required glasses, theirs did not. His slightly bent nose was straight on their strong faces and his slouched posture contrasted with the athletic readiness of the giants around him.

  "But they obey him. Like slaves."

  Abos nodded again. She knew of one way the unformed minds of her species could be limited, directed to follow a narrow path laid out by others. By ending Station, she thought she had ended that abusive practice. But this new evidence suggested otherwise. She felt distant from the events unfolding in front of her, unsure how to react. Now in her third consecutive human body, and a parent, her biological provenance—whatever it turned out to be—was not the only factor at work in her psyche.

  Daniel and his siblings were halfheroes. For the first time, she felt a little of the emotional baggage such an epithet might carry. Could she, after all this time, be considered half-human?

  Shuck pressed play, and the images on the screen moved. Titus spoke to the audience, demanding all weapons be handed over. One of his twins jumped from the stage, holding a laundry bag.

  "I call them Protectors," said Titus as the giant moved to the first table and held out the bag. The chief bodyguard of the Chinese tech company chairman stared up at the dark-suited man who had just crashed through bombproof glass without injury. He hesitated. His employer hissed something. The tension in the room was palpable even when viewed on the small screen in a Cornish farmhouse kitchen.