by Kim Curran
I was glad to hear the sound of the planes arriving to hide the choke in my throat.
We flew home into glorious mid-morning sunshine, as if the weather itself mocked us. The atmosphere in the copter on the return trip was heavy and numb. The rush of excitement was gone, leaving the cold reality of what had happened. We had won. The bad guys were dead or defeated. The good guys saved.
But at what cost?
Zac stared out of the window at the streets below, his angular features illuminated by the sunlight. I guess I could see what girls saw in Zac. What Aubrey probably saw in Zac, with his square jaw and Roman nose. It didn’t make it any easier knowing he’d saved my life. Was that my blood flecked over his face or an enemy’s?
I squeezed the bandage around my arm, feeling the sticky wetness of the blood seeping through, but I couldn’t feel anything. Either the anaesthetic was doing its job or the adrenaline was. It wouldn’t be long before they both wore off and the pain came back.
It’s only pain, that voice in my head said again.
The copter banked hard and I had to hold on to a strap to stop myself from sliding.
“Set down in three,” Ladoux said.
We dropped altitude fast, making my stomach flip so hard I thought someone had Shifted. I even looked around, hopeful that the world had changed. Everything was as it had been.
Whatever had taken over me back there in the battle was starting to fade, too. What was I doing? Leading men on missions when I should be working out a way to get the hell out of this reality. And yet I felt like I owed them all something. Felt responsible for them all.
Ladoux set the helicopter down and we piled out, the blades already slowing. Zac helped Hedges out, and walked him back into the Hub. Hedges really needed to go to the infirmary, but Cain told us he needed to be debriefed on whatever the hell X73 might mean first.
I let Zac and the rest walk ahead of me, grateful for this moment of peace. If the turmoil in my mind could ever be called peace.
My hands shook so hard, my fingers were a blur. I needed to keep it together for a little longer. Enough to get me through the next hour. The next day. Enough for me to find Aubrey and get us all out of here.
We rode the lift down in silence. Turner was fighting to hold back her sobs. Zac wrapped an arm around her, and she buried herself in his chest. Unwin too was trying hard to hide his tears. Williamson just let them flow. Ladoux, however, looked straight ahead, her expression as cold as my own. I swallowed a couple more of Frankie’s painkillers.
The lights had returned to pale green and the alarm had been silenced. In its place was a stir of excited voices. As I stepped into the Hub, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Everyone was smiling and laughing, as if I’d walked into a cocktail party rather than a military headquarters. A group of people were gathered in the middle, peering over each other’s shoulders. A hand reached up to be high-fived by members of the group.
“What the hell is going on here?” I shouted, my voice cutting through the laughter. “What kind of animals are you people?”
The group parted as I walked forward, revealing Aubrey standing in the middle of the group, a smile frozen on her face.
CHAPTER NINE
The buzz of excitement silenced like a scratched record. The group who had all been gazing at Aubrey in delight turned to me, cowed and nervous. Eyes darted between the two of us like spectators at a tennis match.
“Captain Jones brought in the Red Hand’s second in command,” CP said, stepping forward. Her face was flushed and her fringe plastered to her face with sweat. “We were in and out before they knew what was happening. Nobody got as much as a scratch. You should have seen it, sir. She was incredible.” CP’s smile was spread so wide, it looked as if her head might flip in two. Aubrey had been smiling, but under the force of my stare, it faded into a complete blank.
“He’s in the cells, Commandant,” she said quietly. “Awaiting interrogation.”
The group, sensing my anger, all suddenly found something more important to be doing, leaving me standing in front of Aubrey, CP at her side, and my squad behind me.
“Tyler,” Zac said, a subtle warning in his voice.
I couldn’t remember having ever felt anger like this. Hot and indignant and all directed at the girl I knew I loved.
“Nice work, Tyler.” The slap on my back was so hard, I spun around, fists instinctively raised, ready to fight.
To his credit, Cain didn’t even flinch. He merely looked me up and down.
“Two successes in a single day. Good work.”
“Success,” I said, the word hissing between my teeth. “You call the death of two people a success?”
“Extraction complete. I’d call that a success. The losses were…”
“Don’t you dare,” I shouted. “Don’t you dare say collateral damage or wrap this up in military speak. They were my team and they’re dead because of me.”
Cain grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the corner, away from Aubrey and the people watching. “Because of the enemy, Tyler. The enemy. They’re the ones who killed our people. Not you.”
“I led them in there. I let them die and for what? To recover one spy, who probably doesn’t even know anything?”
The pain in my leg and head was back, and with it, the cold, sickening realisation of what I’d done. Of who I’d become. I hadn’t recognised myself back at the tower, giving orders, making life-and-death decisions as easily as choosing what to have for breakfast. I’d killed a boy for the sake of the mission. It might not have been my bullet in his chest, but it might as well have been my finger on the trigger.
“You did your duty, Tyler. As you’ve done time and time before and as you’ll do again.”
I shook Cain off me, still quaking with anger. I couldn’t look at him. Because he was right: I had done this before. I sensed it, like a guilty memory surfacing after you’ve tried to hide it. The me I was here, he was ruthless and focused. He was a killer. And all because he believed in doing his duty.
“Do we have a problem, Tyler?” Cain said.
I finally looked at him. “No. We’re good.”
He nodded and patted me on the shoulder. “It’s always tough losing men. But their sacrifice won’t be forgotten. It was all for the greater good.”
“Ad verum via,” I mumbled.
“Exactly. And with the intel Hedges has, we might be able to crush the Red Hand once and for all.”
We both looked over at Hedges. He must have been strong and handsome once, but now he looked like a shell of a man, his face a bruised ruin, half-starved and broken. Could a man like this really be so important?
You take power where you can find it, the buzzing voice in my head said.
Power. Duty. Choices. I felt as pinned as when Frankie had taken over me. Only now, I was the one stopping me. I needed help. And I’d just flipped out at the one person I believed could help me.
Aubrey stared at me, her gaze fixed and unreadable.
I walked over to her. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have congratulated you. It’s only that…”
“You have no reason to explain yourself to me, Commandant,” she said, which wasn’t the same as saying I didn’t need to apologise.
“Still, I’m sorry.”
She nodded. But there was no softening in her expression. “Our guest is waiting. We should probably see what he has to say for himself.”
She spun around, her large boots squeaking on the tiled floor of the Hub, and headed for a tunnel.
I glanced around at the group who were doing a pretty terrible job of pretending they hadn’t been watching the whole exchange. My squad had been watching too, although judging by the expressions on their faces, they were as annoyed as I was. Only Zac smiled.
“Permission to fall out?” he said.
“Yes, of course. Fall out,” I said, waving them away with my hand.
When I looked back, Aubrey was disappearing through a doorway. “Hang on,”
I called, struggling to catch up with her thanks to my throbbing leg.
She slowed her pace and waited for me.
“Thanks,” I said. “I still haven’t quite found my way around here.” I reached into my pocket and swallowed two pills straight from the bottle.
“Zac said you were having trouble.”
I found myself irritated by the idea that she and Zac had been talking about me, and jealousy added to the mix of emotions rushing through me. Maybe now wasn’t the time to be baring my soul to her. It could wait till later.
The tunnel sloped downwards, getting darker and damper the deeper we went. The walls became smoother, covered in a slick layer of water breaking through the cracks.
“How far down do you think we are?” I asked.
“Oh, about a hundred feet. It’s an old tunnel system that was used during the last war as a shelter. After the strike on Old Street, ARES moved in here and started building.”
We turned another corner. There was a row of rough wooden doors; they looked old, way older than the rest of the Hub. Black metal hinges had been hammered into place with nails as big as my thumbnail.
“What are these rooms?” I asked, peering through a small window covered by thick metal bars.
“Cells. They’re hundreds of years old. CP told me they used to keep those too evil for the Tower of London locked up down here. Chuck ’em in the cells and leave ’em to rot. No reprieve. No buying your way out.”
I ran my hand against the surface of the wood. “How many do you think died down here?”
“Who knows? Hundreds? Thousands, maybe?”
“And on this our country was built.”
She stopped to look at me with a quizzical, confused expression. “Don’t you believe in what we’re doing?”
“Of course I do,” I said, quickly. “We have to defend ourselves, right? Protect the country. I get that. It’s just…”
“Just what?”
I looked down at my feet. “I lost Cooper today. He was just a kid.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. But Cooper wasn’t much younger than you.”
“Exactly! And I’m a kid.”
Aubrey let out a small snort of air and the corner of her mouth hitched in a grin.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing.” She carried on walking. “You’re not like I imagined.”
I’m not like I imagined, I wanted to say. I wanted to blurt everything out. To tell her that we loved each other. That there was a better place for us all. But the words refused to come. So instead, I focused on not tripping over on the uneven ground.
“This is it.” She’d stopped in front of a large wooden door. A new chrome lock had been drilled into it, complete with a palm reader. Aubrey nodded at me.
“What?” I said, not knowing what I was supposed to do.
“Only senior officers have authorisation.”
“Oh, yeah. Right.” I placed my hand on the reader, waited for verification.
“Commandant Tyler. All area access,” the familiar electronic voice chirped as the door opened.
Inside was a small damp room hewn out of the rock. Sitting chained to a chair was a muscle-bound young man. I scanned his tattoos: swastikas on each knuckle, a bulldog on his right arm, a crown on his left. His face was quadrisected by a red St George’s Cross. I noticed a ring on his little finger that had a gold lion on it, that he’d recently gone down a belt notch, and a hundred other tiny details about him, including the fact he’d cut his head shaving it. It was a weird experience, this heightened awareness. It must be all part of the training from this reality.
“This,” Aubrey said, “is George Burnley. Otherwise known as the Brute.”
The “Brute” was drooling, his eyes staring into space.
“You’ve cuffed him?”
“Of course.”
“He’s a Shifter, then?” I said, stepping forward. “Bit old, isn’t he?”
“He’s sixteen,” Aubrey said, “and responsible for the deaths of at least seven ARES officers, not to mention a series of vicious racial attacks.”
Suddenly, I wasn’t so worried about why we were fighting and what we lost. Because if it was to stop animals like this, then it was worth it.
Aubrey closed the door behind us. “He was recruited into the Red Hand from a neo-Nazi group called the English Defence League that sprang up at the beginning of the war. They believed the government brought the war on us by allowing foreigners in the country.” The disgust was clear in Aubrey’s voice. “We rounded up most of them in the early days. But George here proved useful to the Red Hand. He’s an explosives expert.”
“You take power where you can find it?”
“Something like that.”
He had a nasty gash across his cheek, which was oozing gently. “Was that your handiwork?” I said, pointing at the cut.
“He didn’t want to come quietly,” Aubrey said.
“They never do,” I said. “Right, uncuff him. We’re not going to get any sense out of him in this state.”
“But what if he Shifts?”
I smiled. “Fixer, remember?”
“Sure, I remember,” she said, pulling out a key from a pouch on her belt. “I wasn’t sure you did.”
She undid George’s cuffs and then stepped away hastily.
He blinked his eyes and smacked his lips together, as if waking up from a long sleep. He went from drowsy to rage in a matter of seconds, trying and failing to break free of the chains. He strained at his bindings, the muscles on his arms bulging.
“There’s no point,” I said. “The chain isn’t going anywhere and neither are you. Unless you cooperate.”
“I will never cooperate with you scum who are destroying this nation.”
“Then you will stay here and rot,” Aubrey said.
He let loose a torrent of such foul abuse directed at Aubrey that I reacted without thinking. I punched him in the throat, leaving him gasping for air.
“If you ever, ever,” I shouted, “speak to her like that again, I will tear your tongue out, do you understand me?”
“I’d like to see you try,” he croaked, holding onto his throat.
“Now, Captain Jones is going to ask you some questions and you are going to answer them civilly or,” I pulled the knife I’d used to cut Hedges’ bindings and ran the tip across the red lines on George’s face, “I will remove each of your tattoos. One by one.”
He went cross-eyed looking down at my blade.
When I pulled it away, I saw the change in him. Gone was the big-man act, leaving only a scared teenage boy, sitting abandoned in a cell.
“What do you want to know?”
“X73,” Aubrey said.
George’s bulldog face wrinkled in confusion. “I don’t know what that is.”
“Don’t lie to us,” I shouted, spraying his face with spittle.
He blinked. “I’ve never heard of it. I’m telling the truth.” And the desperation in his eyes made me believe him.
“What about the attack they are planning?” Aubrey said, walking to stand behind him.
“I don’t know. They said something about a programme and a virus. I thought they might be planning on hacking S3’s computers. But they don’t let me in on the strategy stuff. I’m only there to blow things up, you know?”
Aubrey laid her hands on his shoulders and leant in close to his ear. “If you are lying to us, this will go badly for you.”
He tried to twist around in his chair to look at her. “I swear on my life. I ain’t lying.”
“Your life isn’t worth spit,” Aubrey said, quietly. “If you want to keep it, you need to give us something.”
“I… heard they had a spy in S3.”
This didn’t come as a surprise to me. They’d known about our raid on the tower after all. “Who?”
“I don’t know. I heard they’d turned a loyal member of the S3. But I swear that’s all I heard.”
“And what about Slate, your
leader?” Aubrey said.
I recognised the name from the argument between the two guards at the tower.
“I’ve never met Slate. No one has, as far as I can tell. But there are rumours that Slate’s a Shifter, too.”
Did that mean there were more adult Shifters out there? Maybe one of the men from Project Ganymede? I remembered the men Aubrey and I had rounded up. None of them had struck me as the type to lead an army.
“If you give us the identity of Slate, I’ll see what I can do about giving you a cell with a view.”
“I’ve never met her.”
“Her?” Aubrey said.
“Yes. That’s all I know. That Slate is a woman.”
A woman and a Shifter? Could it be Frankie? Could she be tricking everyone yet again? It sounded exactly like her.
“That’s all I know. I promise ya. Can I go home now?” George looked pathetically at me, a single tear running down the tattoo on his face.
“I wouldn’t hold out too much hope for that,” Aubrey said, slapping the cuffs back on him. After a moment, he slumped again in his chair.
I followed her out of the room. “What do we do with him now?”
“He’ll be processed. Probably executed.”
I didn’t care he was a teenager. He was a killer. The justice of his punishment gave me a sense of calm. “Good,” I said.
Are you so very different? that niggling, gnawing voice said again. I pushed it away.
“I have an idea of who Slate might be.”
Aubrey stopped and turned to me. “Who?”
“Frankie Anderson.” She looked confused. “You probably know her as Francesca Goodwin.”
“The doctor?” Aubrey said, her eyes wide. “What makes you think that?”
“Let’s say I’ve had dealings with her in the past.”
“But George said Slate was a Shifter. The doctor went through entropy years ago.”
The lack of scar made me believe Frankie hadn’t been a part of Project Ganymede. But there were other ways to hold on to your power. I knew thanks to Benjo Green. And who better than a doctor to work that out? “I think she might have found a way around it.”
“OK. But if the Red Hand have infiltrated the division, how do we know who we can trust?”