Broken Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  “Wait,” I pant. I’m terrified of stopping, unsure if I’ll be able to get going again if I really do grind to a halt, but my body’s needs are starting to scream. I stumble toward him, trying to remain in motion. “It’s a dead end,” I say, “we’ll be trapped.”

  “No.” Volk’s head emerges from the cave’s darkness, shocking in its abruptness. “It is a tunnel. It goes deep.”

  “It’s our best bet,” Hannah says. “Come on.”

  I hesitate. Not because she’s wrong, but because… for bloody stupid reasons, I realize. I hustle into the tunnel.

  The darkness is sudden and absolute. I stagger, crash against stone. “Slowly, you imbecile,” Hermann snaps. “We must be quiet now.”

  I try to regain some semblance of control over my limbs. Describing my success as partial is generous. Each step feels like falling. My chest heaves.

  I glance over my shoulder. The cave entrance is a sharp wedge of whiteness. The world beyond is bleached by the sun. What happens out there is invisible to me.

  “Come on.” Hannah’s hiss is harsh, bouncing off the cold rock walls.

  I reach out, feel along the wall. I drag my toes over the ground with each step, waiting for something to bark my shin, for my head to strike a ledge. But the floor is surprisingly smooth.

  I have questions—Who built this? What the hell is our plan? Does anyone have a glass of water handy?—but no energy to ask them. I just stumble along, using the ponderous thump of Volk and Hermann’s footfalls to chart a path into increasing darkness. Twists and turns take us away from the light of the cave entrance. My eyes probably should have adapted by now, but there’s nothing for them to adapt to.

  Exhaustion comes in increasing waves. Some deep tidal move gaining power. My hands shake, my legs.

  “Have to…” I manage to get out, but a third word is just too much.

  “Not yet.” Hermann’s voice is harsh and surprisingly close. “I will not have them taking you so you can spill our secrets to them.”

  Fortunately, “Bugger off,” fits into my exhaustion’s two-word limit.

  “Here,” Volk calls from up ahead. “We can stop here.”

  Hermann mutters to himself. Perhaps my hearing is heightened by my enforced blindness, perhaps Hermann is just pissed off, but I definitely catch, “…always contradicting me…” before he stomps off.

  I stagger toward Volk. Blind as I am, I can sense the space around us changing, some difference in the air temperature, in the timbre of my footsteps.

  I bump into something large and metallic. It takes me a moment to realize it’s Volk’s hand. “Sit here,” he says. His palm is surprisingly gentle against my chest—and a significant portion of my abdomen—as it guides me. “Rest.”

  I don’t need telling twice. A moment later someone sags beside me.

  “Felicity?” I say, reaching out.

  “Oh, Jesus, get off me.”

  Hannah then.

  “Maybe we can risk a little light here,” says Volk.

  There is a grumbling sound from Hermann, then a hawking noise. A moment later a ball of flaming oil arcs through the air and lands with a heavy splatter. Globules of light flicker, revealing a large, rough cavern.

  Behind us a neatly round hole marks the tunnel we entered through. I lie on the ground between Hannah and Tabitha. Clyde is sprawled opposite, next to Felicity. Kayla squats on her haunches looking mildly disapproving. Hermann and Volk hulk over us.

  Clyde looks up at Hermann. “Oh,” he says, “it’s a flamethrower. You know, I was thinking, I knew Lang was into making you guys all anthropomorphic and everything, but building a mechanism that allowed you to spit oil seemed a touch above and beyond what was really necessary for verisimilitude. I mean, not that I’m one to guess about the inner workings of a man’s mind. My degree is in chemistry. Not a psychologist by training or inclination. Maybe spitting was part of some important childhood trauma that was mixed up in the whole id, ego, super-ego complex that was Joseph Lang. I have no idea. But a flamethrower. That makes a lot more sense.”

  Hannah shakes her head tiredly. “Of course it was a bloody flamethrower. What the hell else would it be?”

  I decide not to mention that I had shared Clyde’s curiosity.

  Hermann launches a few more gobs of flaming spittle into the cavern. The light is yellow, guttering. Under better circumstances it might give the whole event a campfire-like feel. But right now, though, the ambience has more of an I’m-exhausted-and-surrounded-by-puddles-of-flaming-spit vibe.

  “All right,” I say, when I have the breath to speak at any sort of volume. “Let’s take stock. Where are we? What have we got?”

  “Where are we?” Hannah laughs. “We’re in the middle of a bloody cave in the middle of bloody nowhere surrounded by murderous magical assholes. And what have we got? No bloody extraction plan. No goddamn plan at all. Just like all your goddamn pissing missions.” She shakes her head. “Jesus, this was meant to be a promotion, not a death sentence.”

  It’s that last part that needles me. Because of all of us, who’s had their death preordained?

  “Fine then.” I throw up my hands. “What would you do? What would the great and wonderful Hannah Bearings do to get us out of this pickle? I fucking abdicate.”

  Felicity starts to work the heel of her palm against her forehead. Kayla looks like she wishes she’d brought popcorn.

  Hannah stares at me. A desolate look. And there’s a part of me that feels sorry for her then. She shakes her head.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know any more. This is too late. I would have done it all differently up front. But now… here… I mean they spit fucking magical blood. What the hell do you do?” She looks away from me. “I don’t have any fucking answers for you. Aren’t you always harping on about how you’re the field lead? About how you’ve got the bloody experience?”

  It feels like a very hollow victory.

  “Let’s just go through the backpacks,” I say into the silence. “Figure out what we’ve got left.”

  We pool our belongings. For shit that weighs so much, it seems very paltry all of a sudden.

  “Maybe at night,” I say, looking at the pile. “Maybe we can slip out and away.”

  “Away?” Volk sounds puzzled.

  Hermann snorts, sends another flaming spitball into the cave. It lands a little closer than I feel is necessary. “They are talking about running away,” he says. “They are talking about abandoning us.”

  Volk twists his head to one side, looks down at us. “Is this true?”

  I shrug, feeling awkward under the massive weight of his stare. This feels like kicking a massive mechanical puppy. “I don’t see another way. We are absurdly outgunned here.”

  “No.” I expect it to be Hermann, but it’s Felicity. I look up at her, and there is a glaze of determination on her face that almost borders on madness. “We came here to learn to fix things.” Her voice is tight. “We have to fix things.” She stares directly at me. “The Uhrwerkgerät will not go off. Ever. Ever. Do you understand me?”

  The future echo. Denial. This is a conversation that’s knocking at the door of Felicity’s mental defenses, asking politely if it’s OK to move the wrecking balls into place.

  And what do I do in the face of love like that? “OK,” I say. “We’ll stay. That’s OK. We’ll do that.”

  The fierceness does not leave Felicity’s face. Her nod is tight and sharp.

  Volk leans back, nods. “See,” he says to Hermann, “I keep telling you. There is nothing to worry about.”

  Hermann says something that sounds both very German and very offensive.

  Hannah shakes her head. “You lot are bloody crazy.”

  My eyes narrow, and I turn to look at Hannah. Words boil in the back of my mouth. Felicity grips my arm, shakes her head.

  “You lot see if you can rustle up a meal,” she says in a voice that fakes calm about as well as Dick Van Dyke fakes a cockney accent. “I want to
talk strategy with Arthur.”

  She pulls me deeper into the cave, still with that tight fierceness in her eyes. The one that insists reality conform to her will if it doesn’t want a sound kick in the crotch.

  “So,” I start, as friendly as possible, trying to set a cheery tone despite the circumstances.

  “What part of ‘the future of MI37 rides on a good report from Hannah Bearings’ was confusing to you?” Felicity hisses.

  I wince. This is likely to proceed poorly. Felicity is still planning for a future I can’t imagine.

  I fumble for words. “I’m sorry,” I say, always a good place to begin.

  She glares at me. “You’re going to say ‘but,’ and I have no room in my life for ‘but’ right now.”

  I decide to not say “but” after all. Instead I hold my tongue.

  “Listen to me, Arthur,” she says. “The safe path forward is very narrow and fraught with many dangers. I do not need you shoving us bodily toward one of them. We get out of this intact. Alive. MI37 unharmed. That is what we do. That is what defines MI37. That is why we must survive. Because the world needs people like us. Tight, close, and efficient. Hannah has to be part of that. You have to let go of whatever it is you have against her and let her in. That has to happen for MI37 to survive. And the world needs that if it’s going to survive.”

  Her words are all waves battering against the rock. Eroding away at my nihilism, but too slowly. I can’t find a way to let her break all the way through.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to her. And that’s honest, because I am sorry that my behavior hurts her. I am sorry that I cannot find a way to bend on this. I am sorry that I cannot see the way forward that she can. But all those other truths will just get me in trouble. So I keep it short and simple.

  Felicity narrows her eyes. I don’t think she trusts me. “I don’t want you to be sorry. I want you to change your attitude.”

  I nod. “I understand.” I hedge my answers.

  Her eyes don’t soften.

  “I understand,” I repeat. I lie. To the woman I love, I lie. Because why spoil what future she has left with the truth?

  She holds the stare longer. “Good,” she says finally.

  I reach out, pat her arm. “I wonder if Hermann will let us roast marshmallows in his mouth?” I ask.

  She rolls her eyes. But the groan becomes a grin. Disaster averted.

  Just in time for another one.

  “I mean late! Fucking late! Why I used the word. Late. I am late.”

  All heads snap to stare at Tabitha. She is standing staring at Clyde. The top of her head barely comes up to his chin. She is leaning forward, buoyed up by her anger. You can almost feel the heat coming off her.

  Clyde is sputtering, shoulders pistoning, strangely out of sync, too thrown off course to even shrug properly. I think we all are. This domestic crisis has no place in our current predicament.

  “But…” he splutters. “We… Just last night… I mean… How… When…?”

  Felicity claws at her face. “Are you kidding me?”

  Clyde is still processing. “You mean… when we… we…” He stares at his hands, vaguely thrusts one hand at another.

  “Stop talking.” Tabitha is shaking her head. “Mistake. Made a mistake. Shouldn’t have told you.”

  I think she’s told more than Clyde now. Everyone is staring. Kayla is grinning. Hannah looks almost as bewildered and aghast as Clyde. That’s probably the more appropriate response. This couldn’t be more mistimed.

  “Fucking thought you should know. Fucking wrong.” Tabitha grimaces.

  “What?” Clyde is horrified. “No! Of course you should have told me, Tabby. This is huge. This is amazing. This is us. This is life. We made life. You and me. We… We…” He steps toward her, hands out ready to embrace her.

  Apparently this was not the reaction Tabitha wanted.

  “Get off me.” She slaps at his hands, back-pedalling fast. “Get the fuck off me.”

  Clyde comes up hard, as if slamming into a brick wall. “What?” He is back to confusion.

  I turn to Felicity. “You have to stop this. This is awful.”

  “Me?” It’s Felicity’s turn to look horrified.

  I sweep a hand around the room. “Who else?”

  “I don’t want you to touch me,” Tabitha is snapping at Clyde. “You can’t touch me. You can’t…” She sweeps her hands down the length of her body, hesitating over her midriff. “You’ve already…” But she can’t get the words out.

  Felicity grunts. “At some point I’m going to have to hire somebody for their tact.” She takes a deep breath, then louder, calls, “Tabitha, shut up.”

  To be fair, I think that was a level of tact that lay within my grasp.

  Clyde blathers on, seeming not to notice. “You don’t mean that,” he says. “I mean. I don’t mean… What I meant was, was I don’t want to put words in your mouth. Understand the whole putting things into you is a bit of a sore point right now, in fact. Probably shouldn’t be drawing attention to it, actually. But I guess what I mean is that I’d really ask you, well beg you actually, to just reconsider the whole thing here. I mean, we could—”

  “Clyde, you shut up too,” Felicity snaps, advancing on the pair. Kayla, Hannah, Hermann, and Volk have formed a semi-circle around them—an audience looking at the show. Hermann is quietly shaking his head.

  Felicity levels a finger like a pistol. “Time.” She points at Tabitha. “Place.” She points at Clyde. Then the finger circles above her head, pointing at the ceiling. “Not here. Not in this postal code. Not in this fucking country. Not until this crisis is averted. Not if either one of you wants to avoid being spayed.”

  “Like to see you fu—” Tabitha starts, stepping merrily into the face of Felicity’s anger.

  The sound of Felicity’s hand slamming into Tabitha’s cheek echoes around the room. Tabitha takes a step back, eyes wide.

  “Hey!” Clyde takes a step forward. He stops, brought up short by the barrel of her forefinger.

  “You put it back in your pants,” Felicity snaps. “We could all take a break from your grunting.”

  Confusion crosses Clyde’s face, terror fast on its heels. His eyes go wide. “You could hear…” he manages.

  “I’m half convinced that’s how the death cult knew we were coming.” There is no humor in Felicity’s voice.

  Clyde crumples into himself. All the fight gone from him.

  Felicity turns to Tabitha. “I shall be expecting your HR violation form indicting my actions here on my desk upon resolution of this Uhrwerkgerät fiasco. I shall be formally reprimanded, my salary docked, and yours will have an end-of-month bonus. That will be the end of the matter. You will not expect regret on my part, and I shall not experience it.” She turns to face the larger group. “If any of you think we are here for anything other than the retrieval of Lang’s papers, if any of you think anything other than a successful outcome is acceptable—” She turns and looks at me for that one, “—then you better think again. There is one ending to this I will accept, and I will bitch-slap the shit out of anyone who gets in its way.” She looks up at Hermann. “And that includes you, you tin-can asshole.”

  Silence reigns. And God, I love her so much in this moment.

  Felicity stares at everyone in turn. “Now someone fix a damn meal,” she snaps. “We’ll need our strength for what’s to come.”

  31

  SEVERAL AWKWARD HOURS LATER

  My makeshift torch gutters in a sudden gust of air. Shadows leap on rock walls.

  It could be quite dramatic. Unfortunately, however, I made my torch by soaking one of my sweat-drenched shirts in Hermann’s oil-phlegm and the stench bellowing off it rather undercuts the moment.

  “You should change your feckin’ diet,” Kayla says. “There’s something feckin’ wrong with you if your shirts smell like that.”

  It was my suggestion to explore the cave system while waiting for night to fall. Three
tunnels lead out the back of the cavern we’d found. Felicity took the first one with Hannah, looking for an opportunity to smooth things over. Hermann and Volk took the second. So I, in my infinite wisdom, picked Kayla to help me explore the third. That left Clyde and Tabitha with a little time to talk things over while they guard the camp. Or Tabitha with ample time to murder Clyde. One of the two…

  God, I don’t even know what to think there. I mean… Clyde… Didn’t they just start…? I guess it’s been almost two weeks. But… Clyde a father? Tabitha a mother? I mean… I’ve seen Tabitha dote on her laptop. But another living thing?

  Jesus.

  “Which one you want?” Kayla brings me back to the present. We’ve come to another fork in the tunnel. This place seems riddled with them.

  “Right,” I say. I always say right. It’s a system. Plus the tunnels twist enough that we have yet to circle back on ourselves.

  Kayla uses her sword to score an arrow into the wall, pointing the way back to camp. She examines the sword’s edge before slipping it back into its scabbard.

  “Feckin’ labyrinth, this place,” she comments as we start off again.

  “No Minotaur, though.”

  Kayla turns to me, cocks an eyebrow.

  A second later a roar echoes down the tunnel toward us.

  “I feckin’ knew it.” She shakes her head, resigned. “You had to feckin’ say it.”

  I shake my head. “No. No way.”

  We both strain, listening for something else, any other clue. “It was something else,” I say. “Organic. Water or, I don’t know, rock heating, cooling, something like that.”

  “This isn’t a feckin’ house built in the seventies.” Kayla’s expression indicates her opinion of me, never very high, just dropped a couple more notches.

  “It was not a Minotaur.”

  Kayla winces. “There you go a-feckin’-gain.”

  But there is no roar this time. I shake my head, more confident now. “Sound probably bounces oddly down here. All this rock.”

  Kayla snorts. “You have no feckin’ idea what you’re talking about, do you?”