Jimmy Coates

by Joe Craig

  “You can’t…” Eva tried to protest, but her words were lost as a line of NJ7 agents rushed past her. “What about…?”

  “If he won’t be him,” Mitchell said softly, “maybe he’ll be worth saving.” He gave her one final glance before he disappeared into the gloom of the NJ7 labyrinth. “Thank you, Eva.”

  “If you’re staying, I’m staying!” Eva whispered after him. As soon as the words left her mouth, she asked herself why she’d said them. Had Mitchell heard her? Eva settled her nerves and rushed back up the corridor towards Miss Bennett’s office.

  Jimmy’s eyes adjusted to the dark after just a moment. He was buzzing now with the full force of his programming fizzing through him. He fought to keep his human mind active, desperate to control his instincts, but also to use what he knew to puzzle out what could be happening.

  He was on the top-level balcony of the club, and he knew the last shot had been fired from the same level. Meanwhile, Saffron and Viggo were fighting their way through the crowd on the level below. Somewhere out there in the blue haze, there were answers that he had to find.

  Then, just as he thought he was winning control of his mind and bringing together the courage to act, his world was blown apart again. This time it wasn’t by a bullet, a crossbow dart or even a fist, but a sudden burst of light. Everything flashed white, then disappeared immediately. Then again, the whole room exploded into brightness before plunging back to total black. Strobe lighting – the would-be assassin had activated the club’s strobe system and it made Jimmy’s night vision useless. There wasn’t enough time for his eyes to respond to the constant shifts between extremes of light and dark. Effectively, Jimmy was as blind as any normal human in the room, seeing events only in momentary slices. The moments in between were blank – and blank moments, Jimmy knew, were deadly.

  Before he even had the chance to panic, Jimmy climbed over the balcony railing. It was the only way to keep moving. The club was still packed with people, and although the top level had begun to clear, the staircases were blocked. Jimmy pictured his path down the outside of the balconies. Protect Viggo, he told himself, pushing away his fear. Find the shooter.

  He gritted his teeth and quickly lowered himself, the confidence in his movements spreading to his consciousness. For once, he was grateful that he couldn’t see how far he might fall. His programming screamed at him. Get down! Protect Viggo! Find the shooter! From the bottom edge of the balcony, he swung himself on to the next level down, crashing into a group of screaming clubbers. As soon as he clambered to his feet, he rushed to look out again over the balcony at this new level.

  He felt a burning drive inside him to keep moving, but forced it away for long enough to piece together the flashes of what he saw. Saffron had made it another two levels down. Jimmy picked her out among the crowd, on the side of the club to his far right. But she wasn’t with Viggo. Under fire, she’d had to let him go. In the next flash, Jimmy saw that he was struggling behind her. He’s moving, Jimmy realised with relief. He can’t be hurt that badly.

  Jimmy pushed himself up over the balcony railing, ready to vault two more floors to reach them, but the next flash showed him that the crowd around Viggo was clearing. Saffron was too far from him – she’d been swept forward in the people’s panic to get down the next staircase. Then, out of the shadows swooped the Capita’s team of guards. They swamped Viggo. Jimmy watched the man struggling and tried to work out where he’d been shot. How badly would it hamper his combat skills? In seconds, Jimmy saw the answer: the Capita guards easily overpowered him and bundled him away.

  “NO!” Jimmy cried, leaping over the balcony. He caught the balcony below and pulled himself over the railing, landing with a roll, but he was still one level too high. He peered out across the void, but Viggo and the Capita guards had disappeared.

  BANG!

  Another gunshot, a new wave of screams from the clubbers fighting to get out. The Capita wants Viggo alive, Jimmy thought to himself. They’ll shield him from the bullets. And that’s when he glimpsed his friend again, in the thick of the crowd, being frogmarched on either side by Capita operatives. They were forcing their way through the crowd on the next level down, barging everybody out of their way. They’re using the crowd to shield him, Jimmy realised. The assassin in Jimmy let out a ripple of appreciation – the Capita tactic was one that would probably work. But Jimmy pushed away the joy, horrified that a part of him was enjoying a strategy that could cost innocent lives. Find the shooter, he told himself, trying to order his thoughts, then save Chris.

  Jimmy twisted to check the sightlines. Where would an assassin be hiding? Another gunshot, and everybody flinched except Jimmy. The rifle! Jimmy had seen it – without even realising what he saw. It was just a solid black line that appeared for an instant above the balcony railing on the level below to Jimmy’s left, on the opposite side of the club to where Saffron and Viggo had been. At the next flash, the black line was gone and the shooter was on the move again, but Jimmy had seen enough. He climbed up on to the balcony railing to extract himself from the crowd and ran along to his left, not believing he could travel so fast on a strip of metal so thin.

  He leaned into the curve, racing round the room, his toes beating the handrail, propelling him forward faster, into the darkness and the flashes of light. Jimmy cursed the strobe light. It meant he was always half a second behind the real world. He scanned the level below, checking for the movement of the shadows. A figure caught his eye. Saffron was climbing out over the balcony on the level below. Was she also trying to get out of the crowd? Was she trying to go back for Viggo? Jimmy kept running, streaking through the lighting, away from Saffron and closer with every step to where he’d seen the gun.

  But he couldn’t help looking back again. Something inside him, some instinct – human or not – fired him with concern. What he saw tore his hopes in two. A single strobe flash picked out the silhouette of a woman clinging to the railing of the balcony. In that same flash, the shooter must have seen the same thing. Another gunshot ripped through the club. Jimmy watched helplessly, still running, but unable to stop himself slowing down. Saffron’s body shuddered. Her shoulder spat blood and she lost her grip.

  “NO!” Jimmy screamed.

  In the next flash, Saffron was hanging by one arm from the bottom edge of the balcony. Her other arm was swaying limply by her side, a trail of red snaking down from her shoulder. Jimmy stopped dead, barely able to keep his own balance, teetering on the handrail. On one side of him, Saffron was swinging in the air, her fingers slipping, losing her grip, with a huge drop beneath her. On the other side, somewhere in the darkness there was an assassin waiting to strike.

  The mission, Jimmy heard in his head. Find the shooter. His thoughts seemed to be attacking him from the inside like rapid-fire bullets. His programming would accept no other answer – he had to run on, he had to ignore Saffron and find the shooter. For a split second, Jimmy remembered Chisley Hall. Leave her! Complete the mission!

  But Jimmy refused to give in. He locked his muscles in place, risking losing his balance and falling from the balcony. All the time, he watched Saffron swinging in the void, each flash of light revealing her to be slipping further and further down. There was nobody to help her. The crowd had streamed away, fleeing from the latest shot, stampeding on to the lower levels.

  The mission! The words screamed in Jimmy’s head. Save Chris! Find the shooter! Jimmy’s head throbbed and his chest felt like it would burst. Let her drop! She’s not important!

  “The mission is to get out alive!” he shouted, desperate to overpower his own instincts. “All of us!” He tore the soles of his feet from the handrail and sprinted – to his right, towards Saffron. The screams of the crowd had faded for him now. All he could hear was the pounding of his own blood through his head. His steps hammered into the balcony rail at twice the rate of the strobe light, as if the flashes were fuel to his engine.

  He was only a few metres away when a final shot eru
pted through the hall. It echoed round the balconies and in Jimmy’s head. His mind automatically analysed the sound of the shot, and the faint sounds that had come directly after it. The noise told him that this bullet had landed in flesh. I could have stopped it, Jimmy heard himself thinking. He knew that with as much certainty as he knew anything. That single shot was the one he could have prevented, if he’d followed his programming and run after the shooter, instead of going back for Saffron.

  He pumped his limbs harder, straining for the extra speed that could save Saffron’s life. He squinted into the flashes of white, the strobe mixing with bitter tears, smearing his vision to a blur. All he could see was the image in his head of the one bullet that should never have been fired. Who had it hit?

  Mitchell hauled off the black sheet that covered his brother. He gazed at the unconscious body. A part of him felt like the first time he’d seen it might have been some kind of dream. But there was Lenny Glenthorne, staring blankly up, with a green laser burning into his right pupil.

  It serves you right, Mitchell thought. He crept closer, planting his hands on the slab right next to his brother’s shoulder. He was disgusted with himself when he saw that his fingers were trembling.

  “It serves you right!” he said aloud, confident that nobody would disturb him. On his way to the tech labs he’d passed line after line of NJ7 staff. By now, everybody had evacuated the underground complex. Mitchell was alone with the young man who had once been his only family. And my worst enemy, he thought. Through his mind flashed a thousand images of his brother’s snarl, the sound of his mocking laugh, the feel of the back of his brother’s hand across his cheek.

  “Does it hurt?” Mitchell whispered, leaning down to his brother’s ear. His words echoed back to him off the walls of the lab. Mitchell clenched his fists. What was happening? Why wasn’t he happy at what he saw? When Eva had first shown him this sight, he hadn’t felt the flood of joy he’d always expected to have when he finally got to see his brother suffering. That was shock, he’d told himself. Now, the second time, he wanted that rush of vengeful pleasure.

  “You had it coming!” he shouted, trying to force his spirit to feel something. But still his hands trembled and his chest felt empty. He slammed his fist on the slab. “What are they doing to you?” he whispered. “Are you still in there? Are you still… human?” He swallowed the word, feeling his head swirl.

  At last he pushed himself away from the slab, short of breath. He circled the slab, inspecting the machine that was firing the laser into Lenny Glenthorne’s eye. There were tiny flickers in the green light. What did it mean? Was the laser doing something to Lenny’s eye, or was it meant to go straight to the brain, carrying some kind of information? Or training, Mitchell thought.

  There were no clues on the machinery, but Mitchell inspected it closely anyway, thankful for the details to distract him from the torment in his mind. Then a noise broke his concentration. A soft shuffle. Were there still NJ7 agents marching past the labs on their way out? No, this was a single person, and not somebody marching. This was the step of someone who didn’t want to be heard.

  Mitchell’s defensive instincts surged into action. He didn’t want to be seen. He wasn’t meant to be here. He quickly replaced the black sheet over his brother and dashed silently back up the dark staircase that led to the main corridor. There, from the shadows, he saw a tall woman in a long grey coat gliding past. The light caught her earring. Mitchell held himself still in the darkness, analysing everything he could about the stranger. She wasn’t NJ7 – she didn’t move with the precision or strength of anybody with a military background. In fact, Mitchell thought, she moved more like a zombie. Her gaze never wavered, her steady pace never changed.

  For a second Mitchell considered whether he was watching a ghost. A shiver ran through him. Don’t be stupid, he told himself. Then, at the end of the corridor the woman paused. From under her coat she produced a black balaclava and pulled it over her head. Some ghost, thought Mitchell.

  Ian Coates let the music fill his head, wishing it could wash away his thoughts completely and take him to another world. He was alone for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime, relishing the cool air and the soothing orange glow of the desk lamp. He didn’t know where his staff had gone, and he didn’t care. Even his bodyguards had been called away on some emergency. He might be the Prime Minister, but he knew that Miss Bennett was the one in charge, and if she’d decided to use the entire Secret Service to mount some huge operation without telling him, he wasn’t going to try to get in her way.

  Maybe it’s a training exercise, he thought to himself, or someone’s coming to kill me. He dropped his head back in his chair and allowed himself a laugh, though there was no happiness in it.

  He closed his eyes, trying once again to focus on the music. Every note of the baroque piano piece seemed to hammer away at another fear, another regret. But very quickly his brain started twisting the music into new sounds. Instead of relaxing his mind, the melody taunted him, as if it was singing, and every note was another word he hated to hear: power, betrayal, death, family… Jimmy.

  “Enough!” he roared, jumping to his feet. He picked up each speaker in turn and slammed it to the carpet, stamping on it until the music was a tinny whimper, then it stopped completely.

  When he looked up, a shock ran through him that nearly knocked him off his feet. His heart juddered in his chest: there was somebody else there. A figure was standing in the shadows in the corner of the room.

  “Who are you?” Coates barked, trying to force some authority into his voice. “What are you doing in here?”

  Suddenly the shadow leapt forward. All Ian Coates saw was the grey coat billowing out behind his attacker, and the flash of a blade. Ian Coates let out a yell, but his body didn’t panic. He was NJ7-trained, and even though he hadn’t seen active duty for years, he still had more strength and speed than any civilian. He instantly dropped his weight to one side, letting the attacker come at him, waiting for the perfect split second to dodge.

  The blade lunged straight for his throat. Coates leaned back, swinging his neck away, every fighting instinct firing inside him. But the attacker’s reach was long. Coates had to sway so far that he almost lost his balance and had to step backwards to steady himself. As he stepped, he tripped on the remains of the speakers at his feet. He fell on to his back with a clatter, shards of plastic digging into his spine, a metal blade propelled towards his Adam’s apple by the hand of an assassin.

  CRUNCH!

  The attacker was thrown to one side and crashed into a filing cabinet. Ian Coates blinked several times, gasped and clutched his neck. It was still whole. When he was at last able to focus, he saw Mitchell standing over him, holding out a hand. It took several seconds for Coates to realise that the first sound he’d heard had been Mitchell’s knee breaking the intruder’s ribs.

  “Where are your bodyguards?” Mitchell shouted.

  “They… they…” Coates could barely get his voice out. He still clutched at his throat, as if he couldn’t believe there wasn’t a dagger sticking into it.

  Next to them, the intruder was wrapped in the long grey coat. Only now did Coates see from the curves of his attacker’s figure that it was a woman. Miss Bennett! The name flashed through his mind, but he dismissed it straight away. If she wanted him dead, he wouldn’t even have seen the blade coming. Then who…?

  Mitchell spotted the woman’s muscles twitch. He grabbed her collar and hauled her across the room. “Your security!” he shouted. “Where is it?”

  “I don’t know… I…” Coates was at last finding his voice, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the balaclava that covered the head of the woman slumped against the wall.

  “NJ7 was being evacuated,” Mitchell said, thinking aloud. “Every agent left. We got a message…”

  “From Miss Bennett?” Coates blurted out. “She let in an assassin to—”

  “No.” Mitchell was firm, dismissing Coates�
�� idea completely. He too knew that if Miss Bennett wanted Ian Coates dead, there would have been no mistakes. But the suggestion set Mitchell’s mind racing. If Miss Bennett hadn’t sent this assassin, who had? Surely not Christopher Viggo. He would have sent Jimmy or done the job himself. Surely not the French, who would have used Zafi, their own child super-assassin. And whoever was behind this, what good would it have done to assassinate Ian Coates if Miss Bennett was still alive? It wouldn’t change anything. Miss Bennett was the one who really ran the country. If somebody wanted to change things, they’d have to deal with her as well. They’d have to…

  “Miss Bennett!” Mitchell gasped. “Where’s Miss Bennett!?”

  That moment, the door crashed open and Mitchell’s question was answered. Miss Bennett stood silhouetted in the doorway, her hair unusually wild, like a black fire round her head. She had one hand on her hip, while the other was tensed at her side, gripping something. As she strode into the Prime Minister’s study, the light caught the fury in her eyes. That’s when Mitchell saw what was in her hand. Her fingers were locked into the thick bush of hair on top of William Lee’s head. The man’s bean-like body extended across the carpet in Miss Bennett’s shadow.

  “Look what I found,” Miss Bennett announced, anger infusing every syllable. She thrust Lee’s body forward and dumped it into the centre of the room. The only sign that he was still alive was the grunt when his chest hit the floor.

  Ian Coates looked at her, aghast. “He tried to…?”

  “Yes, Ian,” sighed Miss Bennett, expertly tidying her hair, “this idiot tried to stab me. You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “I thought you had him under control,” said Coates.

  Mitchell felt Miss Bennett’s gaze skip across him. She took in everything around them in an instant.

  “This woman came for you at the same time,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “I’m relieved to see that.”