Daniel looked at the faces of his half-brothers and sisters as they watched the golden-eyed figure floating in front of them. Behind, five identical beings now walked between the sculptures towards them. There was little fear in the halheroes' expressions. He saw anticipation. This was what they did best. Growing up in a world that doubted their existence, treated with suspicion or hostility by those who knew about their powers, they had become self-reliant, strong, and lonely. Daniel didn't see a group, he saw a collection of individuals, spoiling for a fight.
He looked at Sara and Gabe. They were friends, weren't they? A team? And yet, he had shared nothing other than his time with them. Their banter was lively, but superficial. He only knew Sara had lived in France because he had dreamed it. He knew virtually nothing about Gabe. And what had he told them about himself? Nothing important. The survival of their parent, for instance. That would have been a good starting point.
He had been a fool. A blind, lonely fool.
And now it was too late.
Sara was shaking him, her hand on his arm. Her face was blurred by his tears.
"Daniel. What is it?"
"I'm sorry, Sara, I'm so sorry. Run. It's your only chance. Run."
TripleDee had overheard.
"You're kidding, right? There are thirty-two of us and—unless my maths is completely fucked—only six big nerds. I like those odds."
"Jesus, Triple, they're not halfheroes."
Daniel remembered his fight with Abos in Station, when an adrenaline-laced hallucinogenic compound released into his bloodstream had sent him into a psychotic rage. He had hurt Abos, but only because she was trying to save him. She had wrapped a steel door around his body. At any moment, had she wanted to, she could have crushed him like an insect.
"What the fuck are they, then?"
"Abo- Deterrent. The Deterrent."
"What? The what?"
Sara had heard something in his voice.
"Daniel, what do you mean? What haven't you told us?"
Then the screaming started.
The titans walking towards them had raised their hands. The closest halfheroes collapsed, one by one. They fell as if someone had thrown a switch in their brains, turning off every bodily function. Their screams were cut short as windpipes snapped and ribs folded as if an invisible fist had grabbed them, squeezing lungs and pulping hearts.
Six of the group fell this way, dying in agony before anyone could react. When they did react, it was with a mixture of practised aggression seasoned with unfamiliar panic and terror.
Those who could fly did so. Daniel saw a woman rise, then abruptly swerve to the side at unimaginable speed as if swatted out of the air. She hit the exposed brickwork hard, her body bursting like overripe fruit.
The titans encountered their first resistance then. Half a dozen of the sculptures tipped and scraped along the marble floor before the halfheroes mentally threw them towards their attackers. It bought them a few seconds' respite from the onslaught. The sculptures stopped as if hitting an invisible wall. They hung there, bizarre, vaguely humanoid shapes turning in mid-air, before the titans gestured, and the statues hurtled towards the halfheroes.
Everyone scattered. Three weren't fast enough, and the statues hit them at a bone-breaking speed before pushing them through the snapping bannister, past the floating titan and down to their deaths below.
Daniel turned away from the slaughter, looking for an exit. If he could find a way out, he might save a few. Sara and Gabe, at least. He scanned the vast window, but it opened onto a sheer drop. There were doors downstairs to the left, leading into the mountain. There might be other exits underneath the mezzanine.
He looked at the titan floating opposite, about three yards from the railing. His face was blank. Impossible to read. Daniel had a sudden flash of the famous photograph of Abos when she was The Deterrent, carrying a car bomb away from the centre of London along the Thames. Since getting to know Abos, the iconic picture had been marred for him by the knowledge that its subject was drugged and brainwashed at the time. Looking at it again, he had seen the blankness in The Deterrent's eyes. The steely determination and strength millions of people assumed was behind that expression—that heroic gaze into the far distance—was nothing of the sort. It was an absence of self-determination, a drug-addled half-awareness of reality. He saw that same expression now in the eyes of the giant Titus Gorman clone.
"Oh, God." History was repeating itself. He had to get away, tell Abos. She wasn't the only one who had found other members of her species.
He had to act. But how? What could he do? Only a few seconds had passed while Daniel was thinking, but during that time, he had heard, with perfect clarity, sounds he knew would haunt his dreams until his dying day. Snapping bones, punctured flesh, the slap of soft skin meeting solid walls, the splash of blood on marble, the screams of the injured and the blood-wet coughs of the dying.
"Daniel!"
Sara, watching the same bloody scene, had seen a way through, while each of the five titans behind were busy killing. He turned and saw it too. TripleDee turned from the rail. Gabe was there, too, nodding. If they were fast, if they moved—
"Now!" Sara hissed the word and broke into a run. As if watching a video frame by frame, Daniel saw TripleDee and Gabe turn to face the door. Daniel began his own turn, bracing his foot against a supporting post and tensing his muscles, ready to join the others in a sprint for freedom.
Then, as frame followed frame with the same inevitability of pre-recorded film footage, he saw it. The hovering figure beyond the railing turned its head, and those golden eyes, those inhuman eyes, locked onto Sara, tracking her movements. The seven-foot body tilted in preparation, a predator fixed on its prey, a falcon about to bring death to its unwitting victim.
Sara didn't turn see the threat. The gap she had spotted would close in seconds, as the nightmare versions of Titus Gorman ripped, crushed or tore apart their targets before looking for the next halfhero to kill.
She ran. Gabe and TripleDee followed.
None of them saw Daniel turn back.
The golden eyes widened a little just before Daniel ploughed into the flying figure, but it was slow to react to the unexpected turn of events. Daniel had taken three steps and thrown himself over the wooden railing, hands raised above his head as he jumped into space. Every thought was gone now. The horror around him had vanished as had everything other than the simple course of action he was committed to. Run, jump, kill.
Daniel brought down his fists with every ounce of strength he still possessed. He swung at a slight angle, aiming at the side of the giant's head. Gravity assisted him as his body began its fall. He was above his enemy, and his descent added to the force of the blow that caught the left cheekbone and snapped the head to the side. The brutal impact would have broken a human neck, but this was no human. Where Daniel got lucky was the fact that even a super being cannot avoid the laws of physics. The super-brain inside the super-skull followed the progress of the cranium a fraction of a second later and smacked into the bone, deforming, bouncing off and hitting the other side. Again, this would have been fatal in a human. The flying figure experienced a gap in consciousness which lasted nearly a second and a half.
Long enough for him to lose the ability to fly. Long enough to fall.
Daniel and the titan plummeted to the marble floor three stories below. Keeping the giant between himself and the floor would, Daniel hoped, lessen the extent of his own injuries. He closed his eyes.
Above him, Sara, Gabe and TripleDee were more than halfway across the room. The human response to extreme danger had long been reduced to fight or flight. Higher brain functions were not required when life or death decisions were made, the reptilian, ancient part taking over. The three sprinting halfheroes were in a Zen-like state of simplicity. Living in the moment, it seemed, was a doddle when the moment involved running away from super-powered killers intent on ripping you into small pieces.
And so it w
as that, when Gabe slipped on freshly spilled blood, and, on scrambling to his feet, found himself staring up into implacable golden eyes, neither Sara nor TripleDee noticed. There was just the door, ever closer, and the possibility of not dying. Nothing else. Not even the sickening crack as Gabe's neck was broken.
Three floors below, another pair of golden eyes re-opened and, four feet before hitting the unforgiving concrete, the titan whose chest Daniel was kneeling on regained his power of flight. There wasn't enough time to prevent the impact, but it slowed itself sufficiently to avoid any serious injury.
Daniel rolled to one side, groaning, as the titan rolled the other way and curled its knees up towards its chest, gasping.
He had hit it with everything he had, and it had fallen three floors onto concrete with Daniel on top. The result of which was, it was a bit winded. Winded. Daniel looked for a way out. Underneath the mezzanine was a laboratory of sorts. Huge metal tables, monitoring equipment. Stainless steel tubs big enough to contain two friendly humans. Or one Abos. It made the outbuilding in Cornwall look cheap, but Daniel knew it had been built for the same purpose.
There was a door at the far end. Maybe it was a way out. If he could just—
A massive hand grabbed Daniel's neck and lifted him off his feet. He looked into the eyes of the being about to kill him. There was no expression at all in the face of the titan. No hatred, no anger. Nothing.
Daniel hoped he had bought Sara and the others enough time to get away
There was a crash from upstairs and a shout. The huge face turned. He threw Daniel backwards through the window and flew away without looking back.
Daniel tucked his head forward before hitting the glass so that his shoulders took the impact. He had always known his brain was capable of throwing up inappropriate reactions in stressful situations, but, as the glass shattered and the warm desert air flowed over his skin in the moments he presumed would be his last, he outdid himself.
"Must be a bugger to keep clean," he thought as his progress outwards ceased, shards of glass reflecting a thousand suns, before he dropped down the cliff face beyond.
Sara threw herself through the door and kept running. There was an SUV parked outside the garage to her right. In one motion, she opened the door, slid onto the seat and put her hand where she hoped to find the ignition key.
It was there. Who would steal Titus Gorman's car?
She started it, the engine coughing into life as TripleDee opened the other door and got in.
"Gabe? Daniel?"
He glanced back at the open doorway and shook his head. With a sob, she threw the shift into Drive and pushed the accelerator to the floor. The car's wheels spun on the white sand before they gripped, sending it lurching towards the open gates.
Daniel didn't scream. He fell in near silence. The only sound was the air bending itself around his plummeting body. He relaxed. It wasn't surrender, it was one last instinctive decision by his brain. The impact, when it came, would be less devastating on a relaxed body than on tensed muscles.
There was no fear.
Time had no meaning.
Pain had no meaning. Not yet.
His hip shattered as it caught an outcropping of rock first and sent him spinning. His descent slowed, and he fell end over end.
The tree that saved his life broke five of his ribs, his jaw, the radius and ulna shafts and all four fingers and thumb in his left hand, before cracking his pelvis, snapping his right femur into three uneven pieces and tearing every ligament it could find around his right foot.
Daniel flipped face down before the final drop to the floor. The speed of his descent had been almost completely scrubbed off by then, but there was just enough left to enable a small stone on the pure white sand to puncture his left eye.
By then, mercifully, he was unconscious.
Back in Gorman's headquarters, an old man walked through the door leading from the interior of the mountain, and climbed the steps to the platform that served as Titus's office. He settled himself into the leather chair, hanging a silver-topped cane on its arm. He placed his hands in his lap and looked up at the mezzanine.
Blood dripped from the top floor, pooling on the concrete beneath. The old man swivelled in the chair and looked at the hole in the glass. The sounds of fighting were over now, the only sound that of the air rattling the jagged edges of the broken window.
"Titan," he called.
The closest giant floated over the railing and landed in front of the desk.
"Sir?"
The old man jerked a thumb towards the glass. "That's gonna need fixing. Survivors?"
"Two, sir. They stole a car. We can catch them before they reach the highway."
The old man shook his head. "Let them go. Gorman wanted them locked up because he thought they might stop you. I guess we just found out he was worrying unnecessarily, didn't we? No, if they're the last two halfheroes alive, let them tell their story. Makes Gorman look even worse."
He tapped his long, thin fingers together.
"Clean up the mezzanine. Gather all the bodies and incinerate them."
The titan nodded and turned to go.
"Oh," said the old man. "Almost forgot. There are two more bodies back in the chamber. Don't burn them. Put them in the freezer. They should look their best when I present them to the President. It's time to go public, boys."
The titan walked away, down the steps and through the same door the old man had entered by. He followed the corridor past the sleeping quarters and the medical room and walked through the enormous archway that led into a natural cavern inside the mountain. Strange equipment that looked like it had grown out of the rock dominated the centre of the cavern. The titan looked at the nearest slab, one of four that projected from the central rocks like the spokes of a wheel. He had been awakened there, but he had no memory of that time. Smaller figures slept there now, but it was the sleep of death.
The titan picked up Robertson and tucked him unceremoniously under one arm. He paused at the second body, looking at the unbreathing features of the human whose blood had given him life.
He scooped up Titus Gorman, walked back to the medical room, and placed both corpses in the freezer.
34
When Daniel's consciousness returned, bits of it were missing. This was a problem because, although he knew something—in fact, a great number of things—was seriously wrong, he didn't know what those things were. He didn't know how he had got here, or even where here was. He couldn't remember his name.
The blackouts lasted longer than the periods of wakefulness. It was so unlike anything he had ever experienced, he found himself fascinated by what was happening. Until now, he had experienced life from a central point, a place of cohesion and selfhood, continuity and potential. In the present moment, the self engaged with the outside world. But the sliver of time constituting the present moment was so tiny. The remembered past and the imagined future were so much bigger, a vast city around a speck of dust. And the past and future could be arranged into a rational, understandable order. The reimagined past became the story of a life. The imagined future was entirely malleable and, on the many occasions it replaced plans with chaos, a little patience was all that was needed. As soon as the chaotic future slid through the present, it became the writable past. The story continued.
A woman fell from a cliff. She looked up at him as she fell.
Now, as near to death as he had ever been, his story was unreadable. The fictional narrative that was Daniel Harbin had been torn up into tiny pieces and thrown into the air, words, sentences, and paragraphs falling randomly, some caught by the wind, others landing beside his broken body.
His mother pouted, watching him from a double bed on the white sand beside him. The word mother had no meaning. She wore a negligee, one black strap hanging, exposing most of her right breast. She was young, her eyes as yet un-dulled by a diet predominantly consisting of vodka.
"He made me feel special. Chosen." She wasn't
talking to Daniel. Her eyes looked towards someone who wasn't there. "That's all anyone wants, isn't it? Not even to feel special, really. Just to be seen. By somebody. Anybody."
Dark. Complete blackness. Eyes open, nothing to see. Then a thin vertical yellow line hanging in the nothingness.
"You awake?"
The line widening, light from outside spilling into a simple room. A bed, a desk.
Station.
A memory. Daniel tried to cling to the word. Station. He didn't know who, or what he was, but this was a strong image, a momentary sense of being someone, somewhere, sometime.
A warm, soft form crawling into bed next to him, reaching for buttons. Hands on skin. Urgent, passionate. A night-time gift that could never be spoken of in daylight. Someone wanted him. He responded. Again and again, he responded.
A woman fell from a cliff.
"I." The word came from Daniel's cracked lips, sand and blood mingling on his thick, furred tongue. One splintered tooth had made a deep cut in his lower lip. Four more of his teeth marked waypoints on his journey down the cliff. The tree had kept two of them, one so deeply embedded in its trunk that it would remain there until the tree withered and died.
"I."
The word was all he could say, but it held no meaning. It was a sound his throat, mouth, and lips wanted to shape. It was agony, but he said it again, an open sound followed by a constrictive movement at the back of his broken jaw.
A woman fell.
"I."
When the golden eyes looked into his, he gave no response. Did golden eyes meant comfort or threat? He couldn't remember.
He watched the woman fall.
"He is close to death."
The golden eyes looked away. There were two figures standing behind.
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