Stiletto

by Daniel O'Malley

  Other ghosts bled in and out around her as she took in the very recent past. She saw men and women looking up at the cloud as it erupted and then falling down, clutching their eyes. She saw a car crash into another car ten minutes ago, and then she vaulted over the wreckage in the present. She flinched as a man with blood dripping from his eyes staggered in front of her, only for him to vanish when she plunged back, blind, into her own skin.

  Then, in the here and now, Felicity heard the Antagonist ahead of her say good-bye and put his phone away. She held her breath so that he would not hear her gasping approach and slowed so that her foot remained on the ground a second longer. She drank in the picture and knew exactly where he was, just a few feet in front of her. Then she screamed out and threw herself at him, driving her shoulder into the small of his back and sending him flying.

  Felicity rolled and came to rest down on one knee. For two heartbeats, her hand was flat to the ground as she mapped the scene—Odette lying there and walls there and the Antagonist sprawled there—and then she pushed up like a sprinter in the starting block and moved toward him.

  The Antagonist had barely opened his eyes and turned over when he saw the heel of Felicity’s bare foot hammering down toward his windpipe. His instincts flared, and he flailed his hand in front of him and swept her leg away. She was thrown off balance and fell on him but managed to drive her knee into his rib cage. He howled and shoved her off. She rolled and came up into a crouch.

  “Gruwel!” he snarled.

  Felicity didn’t answer, but she paused, flexing her toes on the ground. Then she darted forward and struck out with her fists. He stepped back hurriedly, out of reach, and she jabbed at empty air.

  She dipped into the past again and saw him in the moments that had just occurred. Her powers could not see him in the present, but a second ago he was standing in front of her, two steps back. He was wheezing, but he smirked at her blind flailing. She saw those long spurs slide out of his wrists and he was stepping forward to attack her now! She jerked her body back and heard the movement of his attack missing her. Felicity reached forward and caught at where his arm should be. She felt his forearm and braced herself automatically, then gripped and twisted and pushed. She sent him staggering.

  You can see him only in the past, the analytical part of her mind observed from the backseat. You’re operating with a delay, so you’ll need to act faster than he does. A second, half a second, can make all the difference in this game.

  “So, you’ve got a few little tricks up your sleeve,” she said. She flinched at the feeling of droplets spattering across her face.

  “I’ve got a few up my throat too,” said the Antagonist.

  What the fuck is this stuff? she thought, and she scruffed at her face with her sleeve. She looked into the past and saw him breathing out a spray into her face. He spit on me? That can’t be good. She wrenched herself back into the present. The Antagonist was still speaking.

  “. . . problem is that with your eyes already swollen, I don’t expect much got in. But it should be enough, eventually.”

  What was he talking about?

  “I’ve read your file, Gruwel,” said the Antagonist. His voice was moving, and she turned her head to try to follow him, to pinpoint where he was. “When we learned that they’d assigned a guard to Odette, we checked up on you. I know what you are—a soldier, a killer. My cousin is a scholar and an artist, and they put a beast like you behind her so that you could knife her in the back. But now you can barely see,” he gloated. “I’m actually mildly impressed that you caught up with us. According to your file, you don’t have any abnormalities that make you impervious to the fog, so you must be in a lot of pain. I certainly hope so.”

  Don’t listen to him! Where is he? What is he doing?

  A few seconds ago, she saw, he had been crouched, and then extending to leap for—he hit her, but she’d thrown up her arm so that his spur caught in the bunched cloth of her coat rather than slicing through her cheek. His weight made her left leg buckle, and she grabbed his shirt so that they fell together.

  Good. If we’re grappling, then I know exactly where he is. She clutched at his wrists and tried to deliver a knee to his crotch. She connected, but there was none of the squishing she’d anticipated, nor did Simon’s strength waver for even a moment. Did I miss? Then she remembered the white-skinned man from the row house and his novel approach to genital configuration. So, he may have his willy tucked away in his abdomen, she thought. Fine. I doubt he’s retracted his skull, and she slammed her head forward in the hope that it would make contact with his nose or forehead.

  Instead, her forehead glanced off his chin, which seemed to startle him, because he flinched and she shoved forward against his wrists. He fell back, and she scrambled up. A pause to read the situation as it was a moment ago, and she saw that he was also standing. Her back was against the wall and he was lunging forward, raising his left leg to kick at her.

  Dodge! She twisted wildly to the left and heard a crack like a detonation. A hand against the wall and a moment’s incredulous peek into the past gave her an image of the Antagonist kicking a hole through the bricks. Cut his legs out from under him! She swung around, crouched down, swept out in a kick that caught his ankle, and (his other foot still being lodged in the wall) brought him flat down on his back.

  He’s got the weapons, but no training. Take him down quickly, because he just needs to get one lick in with those spurs and you’re dead. She heard the breaking of bricks as he wrenched his foot out of the wall, and her Sight strobed flashes of him pushing himself up and turning to face her.

  It was ugly, awkward fighting. He had the strength and the spurs, but she had the skills and the Sight. They both had the kind of hate that meant they didn’t hesitate and they didn’t fight clean. They spat, swore, and slung litter. Again and again they came together and fell back. Felicity’s attacks and dodges became more and more rigid as the fog took its toll. It became harder to look into the past, but each time, she managed to get in a blow or twist out of his way. Finally, goaded and frustrated, the Antagonist rushed in toward her. His spurs were low and ichor dripped from them.

  She twisted down onto the ground under the spurs and kicked up hard into his stomach. He fell, winded, and she rolled onto him. The Antagonist feebly tried to bring his arms up, but she was quicker. End it! She struck down at his face, her hand a dagger. End it!

  It would have killed a normal person, she was sure of that, but it didn’t kill him. He shrieked, and she pressed down, scrabbling and clawing until he flung her off. The bubbling, blubbering sounds that came out of his mouth were nothing human, and she braced herself for more, but instead he turned, clutching at his face, and fled away into the city.

  I’m not following him, she thought wearily. No one could expect me to. She shuffled over to where Odette lay and knelt down. She’d better be okay, Felicity thought. She was fairly certain that she had trodden on the girl at some point during the fighting, but there was no blood that she could detect.

  What do I do now? she thought. Try to pick her up and shamble out of here? It simply wasn’t going to happen. The adrenaline and rage that had helped her ignore the pain she was in were fading, and all she really wanted to do was lie down and pass out. Even dying didn’t seem like that bad an option. Then she remembered that Leliefeld also had a phone. Was it still on her? She was listlessly pawing through the girl’s clothes when she heard a distant sound.

  “Felicity Clements!” came a faraway shout. It was curiously muffled, but it had a distinctly English accent.

  “Here,” she croaked. “Here! Here!” She heard boots on asphalt and felt a hand on her shoulder.

  “Pawn Clements, we’re here,” said a voice. It was muffled by a gas mask.

  “It would have killed you to get here five minutes earlier?” She wheezed. A mask was pressed against her mouth, and she breathed cool, clean air.

  “Well, you know how it is,” said the Checquy man. “B
een a bit busy.”

  “The terrorist who caused this,” said Felicity weakly. “He was just here, no more than a minute or two ago.”

  “We can still catch him?” said the trooper.

  “God, I hope so,” said Felicity. She put her hand down on the ground for a moment. “He went that way. Fuck him up if you can.”

  “Can you describe him?” asked the trooper. “What does he look like?”

  “Well, he’s not lying blinded on the ground,” she said testily. “That should make him stick out. He’s blond, has a pointy nose, and is wearing a blue designer suit.” She took in another deep breath of that glorious air. “Oh, and he’s missing an eye.”

  “Right,” said the trooper. He sounded a little taken aback. “Brilliant, we’re on it.” He spoke into his radio, issued instructions. “So, which eye is he missing?”

  “This one,” she said, holding up her hand.

  39

  Alessio looked up as Odette came into the room, and immediately jumped to his feet.

  “You’re here! It’s been crazy, ’Dette! They’d taken us up the Shard to see the city, and there was this green cloud growing across the river, and I realized that it was right where our hotel is. And then the teacher got a call, and we all went down, and there were two men in the lobby who said I had to come with them and they drove me here and put me in this room and told me to stay here and no one’s told me anything and it’s been hours!”

  Odette blinked. Her normally calm brother was evidently completely freaked-out. She hugged him tight and looked around the room critically. They’d been delivered to the Annexe, the Checquy’s headquarters for international operations. It was a somewhat squat, unassuming building in the southernmost part of London. It stood only a few meters from a decidedly unsquat, extremely assuming office building that contained some impressive and flashy businesses, including a television production company, a modeling agency, and the editorial offices of a notorious magazine that featured lithe young women wearing mainly hats and gloves, so the Annexe was often overlooked entirely by passersby—which was, of course, the point.

  Alessio had been deposited in a sort of break room where Checquy office workers could hold little meetings or presentations. He’d been supplied with a microwaved pizza, a few bottles of water, a battered edition of Tom Brown’s Schooldays, and some old copies of the Beano Annual. An armed guard outside the door had escorted him to the lavatory twice.

  “So what’s going on?” he demanded.

  “I can’t tell you right now,” she said and looked up at the ceiling meaningfully. His eyes grew wide.

  “Are they—are they going to kill us?” he asked weakly.

  “I don’t know,” said Odette. She took his hand in hers and reflected on the past hour.

  She’d woken up in the back of a wide ambulance strapped to a stretcher. On the other side was Pawn Clements, looking absolutely dreadful. Her face was swollen from the fog, and there were bruises on her cheeks. A mask covered her nose and mouth, and her skin was mottled red. Two medical personnel, a man and a woman, were leaning over her doing medical things.

  “Oh no,” said Odette, and they looked at her with distaste burning through their gas masks.

  “It’s all right for some,” said the woman. The fact that Odette had emerged from the fog with absolutely no marks on her—even the cut from Simon’s spur had closed up tracelessly—apparently did not sit well with the woman.

  “How is she?” asked Odette.

  “Not well,” said the man. “She’s been knocked about, her skin looks like it’s been chemically burned, but it’s her eyes that are—”

  “Don’t talk to her,” interrupted the woman. “Do your job. And you,” she said, turning to Odette, “how do you feel?”

  “All right, I think,” said Odette. “Then keep quiet.”

  What do they know? she thought. What happened? Where did Simon go? Do they have him? What is going on? But they weren’t questions she could ask. All she could do was watch as they worked on Clements.

  They’d driven to the Annexe, which was apparently the only Checquy office in London that the fog hadn’t reached. Both the Rookery and the Apex had been sealed off to prevent fog from getting in, but there was no way that the ambulance could have made it there through the crowds and the carnage.

  So instead, they’d maneuvered through the panicked traffic, mounting the curb at several points, and eventually got to the Annexe garage. From there, a team of concerned-looking nurses had whisked Clements away in one direction and three extremely large women had whisked Odette away in another. They’d ordered her to strip for decontamination, and she’d experienced the most intense shower of her life, with seven nozzles jetting carbonated water at her from multiple angles. Afterward, she felt as if she’d gone down two dress sizes. They’d provided her with virulent-yellow scrubs and bed socks in place of shoes and then led her through dingy, linoleum-floored corridors and put her in with Alessio.

  The two of them sat silently and held hands.

  If they come in and try to hurt my brother or take him away, I will kill them, decided Odette. It was not immediately clear what would happen after she did that—she really couldn’t picture any further into the future—but it was a decision that she felt she could stand by.

  The door opened, and an Indian man in a suit entered and closed the door behind him. He wore no expression and Odette tensed. Alessio looked at her in alarm as her hand tightened around his. Under the table, a spur slid out of her other wrist.

  “I’m Pawn Malhotra. Miss Leliefeld, I’ll need you to come with me. Mr. Leliefeld will remain here.”

  “No,” said Odette. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m not leaving my brother. Not without some sort of explanation.” He opened his mouth. “One that I can trust.” He closed his mouth, pursed his lips, and reached into his coat. Odette braced herself, but he produced a mobile phone. He turned away and spoke into it before holding it out to her. She wavered for a moment but then retracted her spur and held out her hand.

  “Hello?”

  “Odette, this is Myfanwy Thomas.”

  “What is going on?”

  “What’s going on? The worst attack on the United Kingdom since the Blitz is what’s going on,” said the Rook. “Clouds of that stuff erupted in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast, Manchester.” Odette closed her eyes.

  “Jesus.”

  “Quite. The press are calling it the Blinding. The good news is that it’s dissipating. And, for the most part, it’s been nonfatal. We’ve had astoundingly few reports of deaths, and those have been due to car accidents and some heart attacks and falls. It was your friends, though, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” whispered Odette.

  “They’re spiteful little shits, you know. Thousands of innocent people have been affected, and a few appear to have had an especially bad reaction to the stuff. There’s panic—the stock market had an epileptic fit before trading was suspended, the roads are jammed, and we’re only just getting major rescue teams in. The whole world is looking at us on their television screens and demanding an explanation. Every army on earth is braced to defend against a similar attack. If we get through the next twenty-four hours without war breaking out, I will be astounded.”

  “I—I don’t know what to say.”

  “I don’t need you to say anything, Odette,” said the Rook. “I don’t know if I can trust you. Last I heard, your cousin was coming to take you away with him.”

  “He was forcing me!”

  “You say. I have no proof of that,” said Thomas. “The only witness is currently unconscious in the medical facility of the Annexe. But here’s the thing. They tell me that Pawn Clements’s eyes have been damaged, very badly. And I understand that you’re quite good with eyes.”

  “I—yes, they’re my focus,” said Odette, and winced. “They’re my specialty, I mean. But Marcel is far more experienced.”

  “Marcel is here at the Apex,�
� said Thomas. “We can’t leave right now, not easily. And he’s actually working on someone else, some civilian child. So I want you to fix her eyes.”

  “What if I can’t?” said Odette.

  “Try. Try as hard as you possibly can.” And the call ended. Odette looked up at Pawn Malhotra.

  “All right,” she said finally. “Let’s hurry.”

  The Annexe had a little medical clinic, an emergency facility, Malhotra told her as they walked, nowhere near as well equipped as the rooms she’d visited in the Rookery and Apex House. It now formed the core of a hastily established field hospital. Benches lined the corridors leading to the clinic, and members of the Checquy who had been caught in the fog lay on them, unconscious. It was crowded and crude, but it was apparently all that was available. All the public hospitals, it seemed, were crammed full with members of the public. Odette felt a shameful wash of relief that the people she passed were all unconscious. She could imagine the hateful looks she would have gotten. Has word gotten out that the fog didn’t affect me? she wondered. Do they know it was unleashed by Grafters?

  Finally, they arrived at the actual clinic. She hurriedly scrubbed her hands and arms and was ritually swathed in a surgical gown by nervous swathers. Her hair was rolled up on her head, and the cap and gloves were put on her.

  Clements had been laid out on an operating table with sterile sheets draped over her in strategic locations. She was unconscious and, for the first time that Odette could ever recall, looked vulnerable. In some places, the sheets had been folded back, and Checquy people were applying products to her red skin. The workers were all gowned and scrubbed and looked like fairly standard-issue medical staff. There were three figures, however, who did not look at all standard-issue. Clad in surgical gowns, masks, and caps, they stood against the wall, each of them holding a large gun wrapped in a sterile plastic bag. They all evoked the adjective hulking, and it was clear that they had not taken any oaths to do no harm. Odette glanced at them, swallowed, and took refuge in the familiar problem of surgery.