Halfheroes

by Ian W. Sainsbury

It's all right, it doesn't affect the plan. I'll have two more Aboses to program and play with, that's all.

  Roger's panic attack was joined by a bad case of acid reflux. Gorman was too sharp, too intelligent. The sooner he could kill him, the better.

  He calmed down, congratulated his boss, and prepared to indoctrinate an extra two candidates.

  38

  Eight months later, when the plan had reached the point of no return, with Gorman's neck snapped by one of his own titans, and Roger about to break the biggest news story in history, the impossible happened.

  Roger waited for the medication to take effect and calm his heart palpitations. While he did so, he looked afresh at the tall, golden-eyed woman opposite.

  "The world thought you were dead. I thought you were dead. Where have you been?"

  Abos looked back at him, saying nothing.

  Those golden eyes were different to the other titans. Unnervingly so. Very unlike Roger remembered them back in the eighties. The intelligence behind them was so powerful it was like looking into the sun. Roger dropped his gaze, another prickling of the skin under his shirt collar giving him an urge to loosen it. He fought that urge. The Deterrent had been superior to his human masters physically, but the brainwashing regime had kept him dull-witted. The same as with the titans now surrounding Roger. But Abos must have been clear-minded for the best part of four decades. What if his, or—rather–her species was more intelligent than humanity? What then?

  "You're a woman," said Roger, unaware he was echoing Daniel's Harbin's words when first meeting Abos. Then, after considering the consequences of this change of gender, Roger laughed. He couldn't stop himself.

  "Oh, no, this is too good. All that time, Station... Hopkins... they never thought... they were all looking for a guy. Oh, that's great, that's so funny... "

  Abos waited him out. When he could speak again, he asked the obvious question.

  "What do you want?"

  "First, my friends. They were here earlier today. I know they have been killed. Are you giving them new bodies?"

  Briefly considering lying, Roger decided against it, partly because he remembered Abos's uncanny ability to read body-language, but mostly because there was no real advantage in hiding the truth.

  "Yes. They should be back with us in ten days."

  Abos shook her head. "Sooner. The process is much faster after the first time."

  She looked at the titans one by one.

  "It was you, not Titus Gorman. You are using my brothers just as I was used. You know this is wrong."

  Roger shook his head. That naivety was still there, then. He could see The Deterrent in this woman now.

  "I don't expect you to understand. Gorman was responsible for a cyber-attack on a global level. He is an enemy of our country, and the world. He brainwashed the titans. I got control of them and stopped him doing any more damage."

  He waited. That was a big, fat lie. Abos didn't go for it.

  "You insult me," she said. "I know you are lying. And if Titus Gorman truly controlled my brothers, you would be powerless to stop him. No. You have always been in control."

  That was the part of Roger's plan that had given him the most pleasure. It was also a secret he would take to the grave. The titans were programmed to obey any of Gorman's commands unless they might harm Roger. Right until the moment Roger said the words that transferred their allegiance back to their true master. When he'd said, "Game over, Titus," the geek had chuckled for a moment until every titan walked away from him and stood at Roger's side. Even the most brilliant mind has weaknesses, and, once Gorman had been convinced Roger also cared about redistributing wealth, he had trusted him implicitly. He'd still had that look of hurt incredulity on his face after a titan had broken his scrawny neck.

  "Yes," admitted Roger. "You're right."

  He sighed. The cost of what he was about to do was clear to him. Killing this body and bringing back Abos as a titan would mean snuffing out that intelligence. It was a high price to pay.

  But Roger had resigned himself to this a long time ago. He was on the verge of becoming not only the most envied scientist on the planet, but a true American hero. He had to think of the bigger picture.

  "Kill her."

  Abos flew out of the building the same way she had come in, pursued by four of the six titans. She drew them away from the mountain and up into the thin desert air.

  She had been surprised to see Roger Sullivan at first, then it had made sense. Very few people who knew what had happened to The Deterrent were still alive. Those who knew about the brainwashing techniques were fewer still.

  She had felt a brief surge of rage at what he had done, but it passed through her and was gone like a flame flickering into life before being blown out. What followed was pity. This was a man near the end of life, and these were the choices he had made. He was a pathetic figure.

  The conversation she'd had with Roger Sullivan was only part of what had happened during the past twenty minutes. Most of her attention had been focussed on the other titans.

  Her awareness of the other members of her species was very different to what she experienced with Shuck and Susan. During her years as a teacher, she had often used lego with the children, enjoying helping them find new and creative ways to connect the brightly coloured blocks. Sometimes, the box of lego would contain pieces made by a different company. There was no way of making them fit together, however hard the children tried. This was a similar experience, but far more painful and frustrating. Abos knew her mind should fit with the others, but the connection was wrong, the shape was awkward, every approach she tried failed.

  As she flew upwards, she hoped that fixing the titans' minds on a common goal—even if it was killing her—might bring them together and make it possible for her to find a way in.

  It didn't work. Nothing worked. Their minds weren't closed, exactly, they were just twisted out of their natural shape. She couldn't undo the damage.

  As the air grew cold at the altitude she'd reached, Abos stopped, turned head over toe like a stalled aircraft, and fell. From this height, White Sands looked like a cloud which had drifted to the ground to die.

  The other titans watched her fall. They followed as she picked up speed. Abos could make out details now, see the telltale regular lines of the building below, white on white.

  The appeal behind the human concept of gambling had, so far, eluded Abos, but she knew what she was about to do was the equivalent of sitting at the roulette table and putting everything she owned on red.

  She could see the moonlight reflecting on the broken window now. She adjusted the angle of her descent a little.

  If she died, she knew Roger would bring her back. Or, rather, she believed Roger would bring her back. Oh, all right, she acknowledged to herself as the wind screamed past her plummeting body, she hoped Roger would bring her back.

  If he did, she thought her unparalleled experience of multiple human existences would enable her to fight the drugs and psychological conditioning to which she would be subjected.

  If Roger didn't bring her back, she would die. If he brought her back and she couldn't fight the conditioning, she would be a slave. Perhaps the roulette analogy was unfair. More accurately, Abos was putting all her money on a single number. The odds weren't good.

  The impact would shatter this body. The internal trauma would crush its internal organs. As she was travelling head-first, bits of the brain would splatter every wall in Titus Gorman's headquarters. If Roger Sullivan was still sitting at that desk, he would be covered in pieces of brain matter, blood, and flesh.

  She checked, just before hitting the glass. Roger was still sitting there.

  Good.

  39

  The hospital registrar had been nervous when she'd delivered Abos's message. Daniel was used to making people feel nervous—he was built like a professional wrestler, after all—but at that stage, he'd needed someone to wet his lips with ice twice an hour, and it would
be another ten days with the catheter before he'd even be able to piss into a bottle. Her nerves were nothing to do with him.

  "Your friend - the one who brought you here. She asked me to give you a message."

  Daniel hoped, with every ounce of his being, that the registrar wasn't about to say, "She said she was going back to White Sands."

  "She said she was going back to White Sands," said the registrar.

  Bollocks.

  It was fifteen days after his arrival. In the morning, the chief surgeon of the hospital had assured him that, with his self-healing abilities, he might be discharged within six to eight weeks. Once he was out, he was should rest in bed with daily check-ups for another six weeks. Following that time, he might try a short walk every other day, for no more than ten minutes. All things considered, if Daniel followed the program that had been prepared, it was possible he would be back to full fitness inside a year.

  Daniel decided he was walking out of the hospital by the end of the week.

  His decision wasn't solely because he was bloody-minded, and didn't intend to let any sodding doctor, however many sodding letters she had after her sodding name, give him a sodding timetable for his sodding recovery. It was more than that. It was the past six days since he'd regained consciousness, with Saffi. It was the two visitors she'd brought with her yesterday, and it was the video they'd shown him this morning.

  Saffi was, well... Saffi was... Daniel had never had a girlfriend, never had a sexual relationship with anyone he could pick out in a line-up the following day. In Station, he'd been visited by several women in the darkness of his room—some more than once—but none had ever acknowledged what had passed between them. He'd caught the eye of a few possible suspects during mealtimes but had always been blanked.

  So this thing with Saffi was an enigma. He wasn't even sure if it was a thing. She was there every day. She helped him take his first few steps. After watching the physiotherapist work, she repeated the exercises in between sessions, moving Daniel's legs and arms through a range of motions. Saffi talked about her life when Daniel was too tired to speak, telling him about her privileged childhood as the daughter of a diplomat in the Middle East.

  She had led a sheltered existence right up to the point a car bomb planted by supporters of the extremist Wahhabi sect took her religiously moderate, tolerant, wise and loving father from her. Her mother had died within a year, leaving Saffi—an only child—halfway through a university course. She abandoned her literature and film studies degree and went back to the United Arab Emirates to put her mother's affairs in order.

  It was while she was home that she found out her best friend from childhood was now a paraplegic. Nayla had always been ill, suffering from a wasting condition that baffled even the expensive specialists. Now, Nayla told Saffi the truth about herself. Her father, she said, was not her father. Her mother had been pregnant when they married.

  Nayla's real father was The Deterrent. The abilities she'd inherited from her non-human parent had, in her case, been more of a curse than a blessing. Since her late teens, her body had progressively weakened.

  "Nayla is the reason I'm here," Saffi told Daniel. "Last time I saw her, she said she'd had a vision of me in a hospital room with someone I—, er, someone badly injured. She knew it was America. She told me to pack and wait for an email. I came as soon as I received it. I have a question for you."

  Daniel had a feeling he knew what the question would be. The time for keeping that secret was past.

  "You were unconscious when they brought you in. The registrar said she'd been given my email address. You didn't give it to her. Who did?"

  He opened his mouth to speak when there was a knock on the door. The handle turned and rattled. Muffled voices could be heard outside.

  "You're supposed to use the security card. Hold it against the panel. No, the other way round. No, now you've got it upside down. Look, move out of the way and let me—"

  At that point, the door flew off its hinges, skidded halfway across the room, pirouetted on one corner, and fell to the floor with a crash.

  Daniel pushed himself up on the pillows, wincing with the effort. Saffi leaped out of the chair and stood next to him. She was holding his hand.

  "Alreet, you soft southern ponce? You look like shite."

  Daniel gawped at TripleDee. Then he broke into a smile as a figure emerged from behind Triple's bulk and ran to the bed, was about to throw herself into his arms, then stopped as she took in the bandages, drips and tubes.

  "Sara!"

  Daniel shrugged.

  "Sod it, it might hurt, but it'll be worth it. Give me a hug."

  She leaned over tentatively. Daniel wrapped his plaster cast right arm around her neck and drew her in.

  "Ow. God, it's good to see you. Argh, my ribs, how did you get away? My bastarding shoulder. Nah, don't kiss me that side, I can't see you."

  Daniel started crying just before Sara did. The sobs were painful, lighting up his broken ribs with every heaving breath, but neither of them cared. They wept for Gabe, and for every brother and sister, every halfhero they never got to know, and now, never would.

  When they disengaged, Sara hugged Saffi while TripleDee stepped forward.

  "I, er, well, I'm sorry how it all turned out, man. No one could have known about those things waiting for us. No one could have known."

  Daniel narrowed his eyes. "What, I'm supposed to trust you now, am I? You one of us? Turned your back on the pimping, the drugs, and the murdering?"

  Triple stood his ground.

  "Well, yeah, actually. And I hardly did any murdering. Not of anyone who might be missed, anyhow."

  "Oh, well, that's all right then."

  Sara moved forward again.

  "He helped me escape, Daniel. He's helped ever since. And when we broke out of the prison when we were... connected... I could see he regretted his bad choices. I could see a better man."

  Daniel's expression didn't change, but he knew he would never forget the webmind. It had only lasted a few hours, but when they were all linked, no one could hide. It had changed him. He had seen the good and the bad clearly enough to know the gulf between them was not so great. People he labelled as evil were not so easily categorised when you shared their mind. It should have come as no surprise that human personalities were so nuanced, but Daniel felt more than a little shame at his black and white attitude.

  He looked at TripleDee, then lifted his less damaged left arm from the sheets. The big man shook his hand gently.

  "Probation," said Daniel. "That's what this is. Thank you for helping Sara. I'm willing to give you a chance, but it'll take more than a few days good behaviour to make me trust you. I might never trust you."

  Sara caught his eye. He looked back at Triple.

  "But I'll try."

  "I canna ask for more than that. Thank you. And thank you for what you did back there. I think you, well, you did, you - you saved my life. Both of our lives."

  He pulled a battered paper bag out of a pocket.

  "I brought you some grapes," he said, pulling out two grapes on the end of what had, until recently, been a big bunch. "Got hungry in the lift. Sorry."

  Daniel knew Sara would have called Saffi as soon as they found a phone. But that must have been two weeks ago.

  "What took you so long?"

  Sara raised her eyebrows in mock-indignation. "Well, that's charming. We've been hanging around forever trying to get in. Your doctor told Saffi not to mention us to you until you were out of the woods, then they said we could visit today."

  Saffi coughed. "Next week. They said you could visit next week."

  "Oops. Must have got my dates wrong. I'm so scatty sometimes."

  Daniel laughed at the thought of Sara as scatty. He looked at the three of them standing around his bed. IGLU was finished. Apart from Saffi's friend Nayla, every known halfhero still alive was here in this room.

  "You'd better all sit down," he said. "There's something
I need to tell you."

  Because of his weakened condition, the telling of that story took the rest of that day and half of the next. Daniel had to stop and sleep every couple of hours, and his physiotherapist and medical checks couldn't be postponed.

  Daniel's time at Station was already well known to Saffi, and he had told Sara a little about it, but he had told no one about Abos. As far as the world knew, The Deterrent had died in the storms of nineteen-eighty-one. When his story reached the point at which he got to George's flat in Putney and met his father for the first time, only to discover his father was now his mother, the hospital room fell silent.

  He told them how Station had been destroyed, how he had nearly killed Abos. He told them about George, and about the blood she had provided to give Abos a new body. Finally, he told them about Shuck, and the other members of her species Abos was hoping to find.

  When he had finished, Sara spoke.

  "Those creatures we met at White Sands - they are the same species as The Deterr—as Abos—then."

  Daniel nodded. "Yes. And they must have been brainwashed, like Station did to Abos. What the hell is Gorman playing at?"

  Sara, TripleDee, and Saffi exchanged a quick look.

  "What?" said Daniel. "What have I missed?"

  Saffi came and perched on the bed next to him.

  "Titus Gorman is dead, Daniel."

  "Saves us a job, I guess." He looked around the three faces. No one looked happy about Gorman's demise. "What?"

  Sara reached into her bag and pulled out a laptop.

  "What you've just told us about brainwashing makes perfect sense, Daniel. But it couldn't have been Gorman who was doing it. I didn't want to show you this today, but I think I need to."

  "Show me what?"

  Sara put the laptop on the wheeled tray that pushed into position over his bed at mealtimes. She and TripleDee stood by the picture window that looked out over Albuquerque and the red-hued desert beyond.

  Saffi took Daniel's hand again. Maybe he wasn't kidding himself. Maybe she didn't pity him. She was old enough to know what she wanted, and she was making it clear she wanted him. Unless his inexperience meant he was reading her all wrong. The tiny bit of pressure from her soft, dry fingers on his skin was all he could think about. It was as if nothing else existed. He thought he could never pay attention to anything else while she was touching him. A bomb could go off, and he'd still be sitting there with the same goofy half-smile on his face.