Halfheroes

by Ian W. Sainsbury

  The words meant nothing, but the voice fired up a sequence buried in a backroom at the end of a cluster of synapses, a tiny response flaring into life when everything else was shutting down.

  His lips found new shapes.

  "Help me."

  A gust of wind caught the tiny pieces of his story and scattered them, like sparks rising from a fire, burned carbon flaring and vanishing into the emptiness.

  The first twelve hours at ULH Hospital, Albuquerque, were critical for Daniel. The two weeks that followed were filled with procedures, the surgeons working their way through the long list hanging on the end of his bed.

  Highly trained, expensive medical professionals did what they were paid for. Broken bones were set, wounds cleaned and sewn up. Lost blood and fluids were replaced. A punctured lung was drained and re-inflated. An artificial coma was induced to allow the body to tackle the major repair work. And, when they saw how fast this particular body healed, the hospital's many specialists found daily excuses to visit the new patient. Other hospitals might have leaked the story, but ultra high-end facilities like the one in Albuquerque relied as much on their reputation for discretion as they did on the skill of their staff.

  The patient occupied the suite on the top floor. CEOs, senators, investment bankers and criminal bosses had all been treated there. They arrived and departed by helicopter. Their own John Doe must have arrived the same way, but the helipad log was blank.

  The senior registrar had signed the patient in, placing private possessions in a drawer next to the bed, including a collection of British credit cards.

  Since every bank account on the planet had been wiped out and the money redistributed, platinum credit cards didn't quite hold the same cachet. But they denoted the likelihood that—when everything returned to normal, as the President had promised it would—the injured man would have no problem paying. What the registrar didn’t know was that all of Daniel’s money had been moved out of cash and into gold days before the Utopia Algorithm had launched. George Kuku’s brokers had followed her instructions, emailed to them the same week that she had died. The value of gold had risen significantly as soon as the banks had been compromised.

  There was another reason for the senior registrar's cooperation. She had been the only one to meet the individual who delivered the patient. There had been no helicopter. The tall woman's instructions concerning the level of care she expected for the injured man had been clear and explicit. On the roof, after handing over the patient, the golden-eyed woman had given her an email address to write to immediately. Then she'd flown away. Without the aid of a helicopter. The registrar had seen the footage from Geneva. She'd seen the lawyer on the motorbike get killed. And the drone base in Nevada blown sky high. She wasn't going to refuse anyone who had golden eyes and could fly.

  When Daniel regained consciousness, it wasn't Abos sitting in the visitor's chair, asleep.

  He had time to consider the inaccuracy of his first lucid thought in over a week a fraction of a second after he'd thought it.

  I can open my eyes.

  No. Even as he tentatively confirmed the knowledge with the fingers of his right hand on the oddly flat dressing on his face, he knew the truth.

  I can open my eye.

  He touched the dressing again. He knew the eye had gone. His field of vision was curtailed. It would take some getting used to.

  His lips were dry.

  First things first. He reached under the covers with his left hand and felt around. There were so many tubes, dressings and what felt like hard plastic attached to his torso and limbs, that it reminded him of the time he'd put his hand in the back of the television as a child. The memory faded as he found his genitals. They were much as he remembered them. Nothing missing. He prodded, lifted, cupped.

  There was a cough.

  He looked at the woman in the chair. She was awake. And she was smiling.

  "Don't panic, Daniel. The doctors tell me that was the only part of your body you didn't break."

  He was all out of snappy responses today. He tried for a smile instead. It hurt his face.

  "Are you thirsty?"

  He nodded, subtly sliding his hand away from his testicles.

  She picked up a glass from the table, filling it from a cooler in the corner before holding it to his lips. He swallowed. It was the most delicious thing he'd ever tasted.

  She refilled it after he'd finished, and he drained a second cup.

  "More?"

  He nodded again, and she handed him the glass this time. His left arm was less damaged than his right, and he was able to grip it without much discomfort. He looked at her properly.

  The woman sitting opposite was in her early forties. She had dark hair. Lustrous hair. Daniel had never used the word lustrous in a sentence. He wasn't sure he knew what it meant. Whatever internal dictionary provided him with appropriate words for every occasion had selected this one for this moment, and he liked it.

  "Pardon me?"

  The woman looked amused.

  "I didn't say anything."

  She leaned forward. "That's strange. I could have sworn you said lustrous."

  Daniel laughed to cover his embarrassment. The laugh turned into a gasp of pain as his chest shifted, moving still-healing bones further than they were used to. His arm jerked, and he threw the water all over his face.

  The woman grabbed a towel and patted his face, before sitting down on the edge of the bed. She was still smiling.

  "I get clumsy," he said. "I mean, I'm clumsy anyway, but apparently it's much worse when I'm close to a beautiful woman. Wait. Did I say that out loud, too?"

  She laughed. There was something familiar about that laugh. It was a husky laugh, low and, well...

  "Dirty laugh. Really dirty laugh. You're very sexy. Oh God, I'm saying everything I'm thinking now."

  He twisted his head. A bag of clear liquid hung next to him.

  "You're pumped full of drugs, Daniel. You're not out of the woods yet. The doctors thought you'd be unconscious for another ten days at least. You heal fast. I knew that already, but seeing it up close is something else."

  Daniel must have drifted back to sleep for a moment. When he opened his eyes again, she was standing by the door. She looked back.

  "I'll tell the doctor you're awake. It's good to finally meet you, Daniel. I only wish it wasn't like this."

  Struggling to stay awake, Daniel observed his brain piecing together what it would normally have done within seconds.

  "Saffi?"

  The dark eyes filled with tears. He fell backwards into a deep, warm, dark hole. His mouth was moving as everything went dark. He hoped he wasn't saying anything embarrassing.

  "I knew you'd have a great arse."

  35

  Nine days earlier

  Abos slowed her approach as she got close to White Sands. She was within ten miles of the location, but she could feel nothing, no sense of the others. No, that wasn't true. She could feel her species pulling at her consciousness as keenly as a magnet attracts iron filings. But the specific connection she had established with Shuck and Susan in the Bay of Biscay was missing.

  The onemind had gone.

  She approached the glass side of the building, a faint glow betraying its presence.

  The titans knew she was coming. If she was aware of them, they were aware of her. But there was no sharpness to the signal she picked up from them - it lacked all definition. Her brothers, waiting for her in the building below, were being kept in a half-aware state. Station had done the same to her with drugs and crude, but effective, brainwashing techniques. She imagined psychopharmacological and psychological techniques had come a long way since the early eighties.

  Abos came to a stop three hundred yards short of the cliff where she had found her son's twisted body. She had carried him to the city she had seen when they had flown in that afternoon. His heart rate had been low, his breathing shallow. She did not know if he would live or die.

&n
bsp; After so much time searching, finding the others of her species and Daniel in the same place had been a shock.

  That afternoon, Shuck, Susan, and she had detected the titans' presence at the same moment. Unmistakable. Without exchanging a word, they had begun their descent towards the incongruously white landscape.

  As they got closer, Shuck had noticed it first.

  —a building—

  —yes. I will try to communicate—

  There had been no response, other than a door opening at the front of the building. Five titans stepped out, looking up at them.

  —they may intend to harm us—

  —I have considered the possibility. We are awake, and we are onemind. We can defeat them if we must—

  —if they return to the dormant state—

  —then we can bring them back—

  —and they will be free—

  —yes—

  —wait—

  Abos had felt it then but, for a moment, did not understand. Despite the improbability, it had become clearer, sharper, and—

  —Daniel. Daniel—

  The three of them had broken off their approach and followed the cliff face down to the injured man

  —I have to get him to a hospital. He is close to death—

  The decision was made in the time it took Daniel to take one, wet, gurgling breath. There had been no debate about whether Abos should go or stay.

  Susan and Shuck had watched wordlessly as Abos took to the air, Daniel alongside her, his body carefully held in the position in which he'd been found, by the simple expediency of bringing a chunk of the desert floor along with him. When Abos had left with her son, they turned back to confront the titans.

  Three hours later, Abos floated in front of the huge window, its surface now marred by the jagged hole marking Daniel's exit point. Abos knew Susan and Shuck were gone. Her awareness had shrunk, the onemind lost. They might be dead. She had no reason to believe her kind was hard to destroy in their dormant, slime-like state.

  She doubted they had been killed, though. Her kind were few, it seemed, and hard to locate. It would be wasteful to destroy two possible slaves, when all it took was fresh blood to bring them back and enslave them in turn.

  Then she knew what she had to do. The risk was great, but there was no other option. She could not know if she would succeed or fail, but, if there was a chance of the former, she had to try.

  The old man sat at the desk and waited. All six titans waited with him. They knew the third newcomer was outside in the darkness. Behind them, two of the stainless steel containers held new occupants.

  He folded his hands on his lap, feeling calmer than he had all day. The escape of the halfheroes had worried him, but their confrontation with the titans had solved a potential problem. Until today, he couldn't be sure that the children of The Deterrent wouldn't be able to upset his plans. He would rather have killed, rather than imprisoned, them, but he had still needed Gorman back then, so had held his counsel.

  The arrival of the three new titans had disturbed his equilibrium. There had never been a hint that someone else was looking for other members of the species. Yet here they were. In his own back yard. After breaking the bodies of two of them, his titans told him the third had escaped.

  That was one problem with psychological programming. You had to be clear in your instructions. Gorman had been unexpectedly helpful for this part of the plan. A background in coding meant he knew how to be clear, logical, and thorough when coming up with a sequential set of commands. Unfortunately, programming a thinking being, rather than a computer, was as much of an art as a science. When confronted with unanticipated problems or complex decisions, the titans fell back to basics. When the third intruder had flown away, they had defended their master against the two remaining threats, rather than split up and give chase. Not a terrible decision. Just not very nuanced.

  His watery eyes blinked. Why had the third titan returned? And where had it come from? He might get some answers before destroying it and reprogramming its new body. Calling them titans was pissing him off. He would think of something better.

  When Abos flew through the hole in the window, the old man jumped despite himself, his heart palpitating. He looked up at the intruder as the titans rose to meet it.

  "A woman? Whatever next?"

  He had to admit she was a wonderful specimen, despite the fact that, underneath that dark skin, behind those glowing eyes and killer cheekbones, was an unappetising blob of slime.

  "Let's have a look at her."

  The titans went to grab her arms, but she floated down on her own, landing lightly in front of the desk. Two titans protected the old man. The other four formed a square around their visitor.

  "Fascinating," said the old man, placing both hands on his cane and getting to his feet. He peered up at the tall figure. Unaware he was doing it, he smoothed what was left of his hair across his liver-spotted scalp and smiled, displaying a set of suspiciously white teeth. She may have been a walking soup, but she was undeniably attractive.

  "Well, you have my attention, my dear. No doubt you have a message."

  The woman didn't move. She stared at him evenly. The old man thought he had become accustomed to those eyes, but this was different. He felt hot, the skin crawling on the back of his neck.

  "Speak up. Someone sent you. A rival. Perhaps he wants to make a deal? Well, we'll see about that. Come on, who sent you?"

  In answer, the disconcerting figure took a step closer, looking at his face. He stumbled backwards and might have fallen if it were not for the steadying arm of the nearest titan. Anger and attraction fought for dominance as he leaned on his cane. He was still a sexual man. Not emasculated like the current, limp-dicked millennials. His impulses had diminished with age, but they were still present. Perhaps it was time to indulge again. His titans could restrain her... but no. She was too disturbing. Why the hell was she staring at him that way?

  Then she spoke.

  "Roger? Roger Sullivan?"

  He forgot to breathe, shook off the titan's arm and sat down heavily, before reaching into his jacket pocket and tipping some pills from a bottle into his shaking hand. He swallowed them and looked again into those golden eyes. It was impossible, but who else could it be? Who else knew who he was? No one living, other than Mike.

  "Abos?" he croaked. "Is that you?"

  36

  Roger Sullivan's life, professionally and personally, had been a disappointment ever since his dismissal from Station in nineteen eighty-one following the disappearance of The Deterrent.

  He had saved some money during his time in Britain, but much of it went on his new identity. Some might have called it cowardice, but Roger knew leaving his wife and son across the Atlantic and changing his name was essential if he were to survive. Six months after his return to the States, he read that McKean had drowned in Scotland. Station was tying up loose ends. Hopkins was terrifying, and—assuming he was still in charge—was making sure those who knew the origins of Britain's superhero would never go public. Signing the Official Secrets Act wasn't enough of a guarantee for a psycho like Hopkins. Roger watched for news of the other scientists involved in the project, but only Lofthouse's death, seven years earlier, had been reported. It didn't stop Roger presuming the others had been silenced by their government.

  He took a job teaching chemistry at a public school near Boston. He hated every minute. His real field of expertise was metallurgy, but he dared not pursue it lest he be traced by Station. He taught dull-witted adolescents about the periodic table, formulas, and bonding for twenty-two years, until retirement.

  His only pleasure in life came from his many sexual encounters. As a young man, he had assumed the thrill of seduction, the pure, ancient, imperative to want to screw every attractive woman he met, would pass. When this failed to happen, he fought against his baser instincts for a while, then, when they showed no sign of abating, embraced them instead.

  Professionally, his
talents had been wasted. The respect due from his fellow scientists for his work with The Deterrent would never be forthcoming. Worse, he had been driven into hiding, forced to live a life never truly his own. If thousands of shallow, but exciting, sexual encounters were the only compensation, then so be it.

  He delayed retirement as long as he could. The school he was working for decided for him. He had shaved a few years off his real age when constructing his fake identity, so he was actually in his seventies when the principal called him in for a little chat. The end of his teaching career was marked by the presentation of a chemistry book he loathed, and the prospect of ten to twenty years of failing health followed by an anonymous death.

  Retirement was even worse than teaching. At least there had been a few blouses to look down while students bent their heads over a test paper, a few skirts to look up from between his fingers. Now, on a fixed income, in a cramped apartment, in a small town, there was no escape from the stench of failure.

  He travelled, but any cultural enrichment he hoped to experience was spoiled by the drain on his limited finances.

  Occasionally, he would look up a colleague from the old days online. Most now enjoyed the kind of sunny retirement available to those with the money to afford it. The resentment curdled his guts. He was always delighted when he found an ex-associate in the obituary column.

  When he saw news of a gas explosion near Liverpool Street in London, he experienced a few minutes of exultation. Station was gone. Hopkins dead, surely. And unless the obsessive attitude to secrecy had changed, all records of his work there would be lost. He was free. Exultation gave way to depression. He was an old man now, out of touch with the scientific community. The time for making a name for himself was long gone. He closed the blinds, put some porn on the television and got drunk.

  Next morning, he considered suicide for two minutes, before concluding he wasn't the type. He would screw his way out of depression.