“She didn’t want him to know, though. I don’t think he was proud. Just… he wouldn’t have seen the seriousness of the situation. God, he had good grades, I know, but he was stupid, Arthur. So very, very stupid.” She shakes her head again. Old regrets that won’t come loose cling to her. “I was no better, of course.” She seems to find a little humor in self-recrimination.
“Anyway we all went to meet these people. All three of us. I was interested, or so Joy told him. And she was coming so I didn’t feel weird. Such silly lies. If I hadn’t gone…”
She closes her eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she says. “This is a very long answer.”
I squeeze her hand. “It’s OK.”
Another head shake. “No, it wasn’t.” There isn’t so much a ghost of a smile on her face as there is the bloody corpse of one. “There were Progeny,” she tells me. “Six of them.”
I blanch at the name of the alien mind worms we dealt with a month ago. The ones that started this whole mess with Clyde. Vile maggot-y things with tentacles that infect people and live in their hindbrains. Once you’re infected there is no cure. Your mind is no longer your own. You’re essentially a corpse who hasn’t stopped moving yet.
“We got there,” Felicity says, “and straight away they infected him,” she says. “Then they infected…” She swallows hard. “They infected Joy. They killed her. Right in front of me. And I didn’t know it. I just knew something was in her head. But I got away. Kicked out one’s legs. Crushed its windpipe. Blinded a second. Broke the jaw of a third. And then I was out. God, I was so scared, Arthur.” She presses herself against me.
“I called the police. Of course I did. I didn’t know better. I was gibbering and screaming, and I called them. Took them an hour to arrive on the scene. I don’t think the officers believed me. And when I took them back to where it had all happened there was no evidence at all. They just left me there. Just… left me.”
She draws a very long and not at all steady breath.
“I filed a missing persons report the next day. And then, the day after that, a nice man from MI37 came to see me. And he told me about what was going on and he asked me to help. And I was still scared, but what he told me, Arthur, God it made me so angry. So very angry at what had been done to Joy.”
She speaks to my chest now, not looking up at me. Trapped in history.
“I showed the agents where it happened. And they made some calls, and correlated some things, and we drove a few places. And then we found them. Found the Progeny. They were all together in a flat in Clapham. All of them except the one whose throat I’d crushed. I think it was that detail that made MI37 recruit me, actually. It was a pretty bloodthirsty agency back then.”
Her arms are around my waist and she squeezes for a moment.
“Mark was there. Joy was there. And…” She trails off, and she’s so quiet for so long that I think she’s done. That’s all she’ll tell me, she’ll let me fill in the blanks myself.
“They shot her, Arthur. I watched them do it. They captured them all, tied them up, put them against a wall, and shot them from a distance. To keep us safe from infection.”
Felicity swallows hard. “She was screaming at me the whole time. Screaming that she was my sister. Asking me how I could do this to her. But I saw what happened when they were shot. I saw the aliens in their heads. And I knew she wasn’t human anymore.”
“That’s awful,” I say. My arms are as tight around her as hers are around me. “No one should see that.”
“I know,” she says. There’s unexpected firmness in her voice. “Anyway, MI37 were ready to be done with me after that. It was thank you for the help, have a good day. They honestly thought that would be it. But,” and suddenly her face is as hard as a rock, “I knew no one should ever have to see what I had seen. That it should never have happened. I knew I should have been stronger when Joy and Mark got infected.”
“No—” I say, but she rides right over me.
“I knew I was going to do everything I could to stop it happening to anyone else. So I didn’t go away. I didn’t say goodbye. I insisted they take me on. I demanded it.” She chuckles mirthlessly. “Broke a guy’s nose over it.
“They took me. And that’s what I did. I stopped other people living my nightmare. That’s what I still do.”
She pulls away from me, swallows, wipes her eyes.
“Damn,” she says, looking at the make-up on her hands. “That’s why I don’t tell that story.”
I hug her. Hard and fierce as I can. “You do good,” I say. “You do such good.”
She hugs me back, a little brusquely, then pulls away. “I know,” she says. “I’m glad you know. And I’m glad the government is remembering it too.”
I nod. “I’ll be on my best behavior tomorrow. I promise.”
She smiles, dabs at one eye again. “Thank you.” She stands up from the bed, busies herself by starting to take apart her pistol. She pulls a cleaning kit out from one drawer. Gun maintenance—a good sign from Felicity Shaw that a conversation is done.
“What about you?” she says after a while. “All this talk about me, but how are you, Arthur?”
I think about that for a while. And in some ways my worries seem petty after that, even if they are perhaps a little more immediate.
“It’s nothing,” I say.
She turns, looks at me hard. “I asked you. Tell me.”
I shrug. But she is my boss after all. “It’s this Clyde stuff still,” I say, slightly embarrassed. “We keep on throwing around phrases like bad guy,” I say, “but… well, it’s all relative, isn’t it? Before all this… when Clyde overwrote that woman’s mind, that was evil, but we didn’t condemn him then, because he was fighting toward that same goal we all believed in.”
Felicity doesn’t say anything, just moves from one gun part to the next.
“So,” I say, “what’s changed? When did he become the ‘bad guy’? What if he’s the hero in all this? I mean… we’re working with the CIA. They’re hardly known for being the fuzzy-wuzziest of bears.”
Felicity puts her gun parts down, turns in her chair to face me. She makes sure that I’m looking directly at her deep brown eyes. “I’ve been doing this for a while, Arthur,” she says. “Trying to do the right thing with all my heart. And you know what I’ve discovered defines heroes?”
I think about that. And maybe that’s what I’ve been trying to figure out ever since I joined MI37. I wish I’d known I could have just asked.
“Sacrifice,” Felicity says. “Sacrificing personal interest for the greater good. That’s what you do. Every time you risk your life to save the world. That’s the sacrifice you offer up. That’s what Clyde used to do. But let me tell you now, trying to kill us in a cemetery was not heroic. Whatever this Clyde 2.0 might be, whether he used to be our friend or not, he is not a hero, he is not the good guy. That’s you, Arthur. You.” She turns away, goes back to her gun with a certain ferocity.
My heart feels large in my chest. I look at her, this good strong woman who has done so much for the world despite what it has done to her. This woman who has done so much for me. And I cannot help but cross the room and kiss her—my personal hero.
She kisses me back. And then the kissing progresses, and then, in a little while, we lie back on the bed together, and we forget all our worries for a time.
13
AREA 51 HEADQUARTERS
We all disembark from Gran’s shiny car. Tabitha took shotgun this morning, sitting up next to the CIA agent and being unusually verbal. The fact that their chat was so dense in tech jargon that it became the conversational equivalent of a circuit board meant I lost some of the finer points, but it definitely seemed to be a friendlier exchange than any I’ve managed with Tabitha to date.
I, on the other hand, was perched between Kayla’s rock and Felicity’s delightfully soft place. I preferred Felicity. Though, it has to be said, Kayla did not give me a single death stare for the entire
ride, which is perhaps the longest she’s ever managed.
Kayla and I have never managed to be on the best of terms. She introduced herself by way of stabbing me in the lungs. I responded by accusing her of trying to kill her step-daughters, which, it turned out, was as wrong as it was hurtful. Things have improved since then, though I’d never describe them as friendly. But since Clyde’s funeral her behavior has actually verged on the side of warmth. I am beginning to become a little suspicious.
As we exit the car, instead of making for the entrance to Area 51, Kayla instead heads for the trunk. She punches the lock with savage efficiency and it pops open. Gran looks a touch concerned.
“Need better locks,” Kayla informs him.
Gran’s, “Groovy,” sounds a little less than genuine.
Kayla reaches into the trunk and pulls out a sword in a scabbard. At first I assume it’s hers. It’s a touch odd—Kayla always seems to have a sword on her, usually tucked under a flannel shirt—but it’s not half as odd as when she tosses it to me.
Then I realize it’s my sword.
I am rather proud of my sword. I found it in the ruins of Chernobyl, buried beneath an ancient Russian military installation. I’ll be the first to admit it looks a bit on the beaten up side, but I always think it makes up for that by being wreathed in goddamn fire.
But I didn’t bring it with me. I left it in England, because of, well, because wandering around foreign agencies with a flaming sword seemed a little pretentious, to be honest.
“How did—?” I start.
“You forgot it,” she says. “Feckin’ idiot.” She looks away for a moment. I try to catch the expression on her face. I expect a death stare, but instead it seems something between a grimace and… embarrassment? When she looks back at me, her expression is carefully neutral. “Anyway, you’ll need it for lessons.”
I take a moment with that one, but don’t get very far. “Lessons?” I venture.
She rolls her eyes. “Me. Teach you. Sword. Lesson.” She cocks her head to one side, as if regarding a particularly stupid dog and trying to get down to its level. “Are you following me?”
And her accent is thick but… “You’re going to teach me how to use a sword?”
“Yes,” Kayla speaks slowly. “I am going to teach you how to use a feckin’ sword.” She shakes her head. “Can’t tell which of us is the bigger feckin’ idiot.”
Regardless of the thawing in our relationship, it cannot be denied that every single time Kayla has come at me with a sword she has been aiming to kill me. And now she wants me to volunteer for the experience?
I look at Felicity. Felicity can deal with Kayla. She can save me from this death trap. Except she has never been very supportive when it comes to my issues with Kayla. She shrugs at me.
“But…” I desperately pedal for room. And I need to keep my promise to Felicity. I need to make a good impression. I need to keep this civil. I scramble for an excuse. “Clyde downloaded everything I need to know into my brain.”
It’s odd to say that like it’s a good thing.
Kayla just shrugs. “We’ll see.”
“Awesome, dudes.” I look to see Gran giving us a thumbs-up. And this is hardly the time for his level of enthusiasm. “We don’t have anything to do ’til your versions turn in the interim report anyway. I’ll set you up with a room.”
For the first time since I have met him, briefly, and rather unfairly, I hate Agent Gran.
ONCE AN INTERIM REPORT HAS FAILED TO APPEAR
I stand in a large bare room. It reminds me of a school gymnasium, except instead of ugly brown brick and sneaker-scuffed wood, the whole thing is constructed of the same gray plastic as the rest of Area 51. I have started to think of it as the architectural equivalent of a unitard.
“OK.” Kayla discards her shirt to reveal the tight green tank-top underneath. Her frame is thin and muscular in a way that makes me think that body fat is as scared of her as I am. Her scabbard is slung across her back, she whips out the katana in a movement so fast I can’t trace it.
She strikes a pose, sword held upright bisecting her face, one shoulder aimed at me, feet wide apart. Not exactly a defensive stance.
“Get ready to meet me,” she says.
I swallow instead.
“Stop wasting time, you big feckin’ pansy.”
Unfortunately for Kayla, I have grown very comfortable with my overpowering fear of her. Challenging my manhood in this fashion is unlikely to work.
She rolls her eyes again. “I’m going to come at you in five seconds whether you’ve drawn the feckin’ thing or not.”
That, though, does work. I sling the scabbard away and bring up the sword in front of me. A wave of red light ripples up the blade, ignites at the tip, and flames swallow the blade. A great gout of fire flashes up toward the gymnasium roof, then the sword settles down to a steady burn.
Kayla regards me from her side of her katana, a critical expression on her face. “That’s the wrong grip,” she tells me.
I check my grip against the swordfighting encyclopedia Clyde dumped in my head. I’m pretty sure I’ve matched it exactly.
“I don’t think…” I start.
“Not your hands.” Kayla shakes her head. “You’re holding it feckin’ fine. It’s the grip. You’re using the wrong grip.”
“But—” I say.
Kayla steps forward and moves her sword in a small, extraordinarily quick move. Then my arm sings with excruciating pain and my hands open like they’ve been stung.
My sword flies up and away, a flaming javelin. It comes down point first, perfectly spearing a small, track-driven robot scuttling along the edge of the room. The thing spits sparks and dies.
“Crap,” says Kayla, “they’re going to make me pay for that, aren’t they?”
FORTY-FIVE TERRIFYING MINUTES LATER
I am sweating, aching, have nearly voided my bowels a total of seven times, and yet I am remarkably whole. All my limbs are still attached, all my organs remain unpunctured.
The thing which has really taken the soundest beating is my confidence. Once Clyde put the requisite information in my head I thought I might be able to at least vaguely handle myself in a fight. Kayla hasn’t even been going super-speed and since we started, I think I’ve managed to disturb exactly one hair on her head. It lies at a slight angle to the rest of her bangs.
She regards me as I lean on the hilt of my sword, panting and slowly burning a hole into the gymnasium floor.
Eventually she nods. “Not bad,” she says.
It’s not the first time this lesson she’s caught me off guard, but at least it’s the kindest blow so far. I look up at her. “Really?” That is not exactly how I’d describe my performance.
She shrugs. “Well, I beat you shitless. There is that. But you do know your stuff. It’s only it’s,” she taps her head, “up here, not,” she taps her arms, “down here.” She thinks about this and nods to herself. “Stop thinking. You’ll do better.” She nods again. “Your problem in general actually.”
And then she smiles.
Kayla MacDoyle smiles at me.
Not a maddened baring of the teeth as she lunges at me, or a satisfied smile as she hoists me over some battlement into a fiery pit. It is undeniably a friendly smile.
Unfortunately, my fear is so ingrained at this point that her baring of teeth immediately, and mindlessly, causes me to genuflect. I am, and I think this speaks well of me, immediately ashamed of this reaction. But at that point I have already flinched and it is already too late.
Kayla stares at me, and for a moment I think I glimpse genuine hurt. Then the emotion is savagely murdered by anger. “Oh, go feck yourself, Agent feckin’ Wallace,” she says.
And then she moves.
I don’t even see it. It is a blur, and then her sword is against the back of my neck. I can feel her breath behind the blade. She is behind me and I don’t think I’ve had time to blink in surprise yet.
“If I want
ed to feckin’ hurt you,” Kayla murmurs, her mouth inches from my ear, “you’d be feckin’ dead.”
“I…” I start. I know I have misjudged. I know I have let my lizard brain rule when I should have used something with a few more higher functions. But my fear of Kayla is something deep-rooted, based in the very fabric of the universe. She is intimidating in a very profound way, and I cannot shake that from my system. And this sudden change in demeanor… It has no origin. I have done nothing different. I don’t understand.
All of which I should say to Kayla of course. Interspersed with profuse apologies. But by the time I turn around she’s already at the door.
She’s going so fast, she almost runs over Agent Gran. The way a steamroller might run over a hippy commune.
“Yo,” he says, though whether it’s a greeting or an expression of surprise I am still too discombobulated to tell.
“Feck off,” Kayla tells him.
“Totally,” Gran says, failing to get out of the doorway. “Except, you know, wondering if you’d mind, erm… fecking off in the same direction as me. Your Clyde versions—they have a hit.”
14
The Clyde versions’ three heads peer down at us from the massive wall monitor—the world’s nerdiest Cerberus guarding the gates to geek hell.
“Data report,” Gran says in the oddly perfunctory manner he seems to reserve for the versions.
The versions peer over Gran’s head at the rest of us, clustered on the far side of the conference table. Tabitha looks pointedly at her six-inch platform Doc Martens.
Kayla on the other hand stares fixedly at the versions, casually emanating waves of hate toward me. Felicity keeps looking back and forth between the two of us. And how the hell am I going to explain how I screwed that one up?
To make good, I decide to help with the whole going smoothly thing here. “What did you find?” I ask the versions.
The versions, as one, smile at me. The phrase “inhuman synchronicity” passes through my mind and I bat it away.
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