“I can’t . . .”
“You must, Eddie. It’s the human thing to do.”
I was still looking at him, trying to decide what to do for the best, when a blast of searing energy slammed out of one entrance, incinerating a whole bunch of aliens. They blew apart, great lengths of burning ropes flying through the air. More energy blasts raked across the cavern, blasting aliens out of the way, as Honey Lake came striding in with her shimmering crystal weapon in her hands. She laughed cheerfully, a bright and wonderfully sane sound in that hellish place, like a Valkyrie come down to Hel to rescue her heroes. She fired again and again, and pieces of ragged tentacles flew this way and that as she opened up a space around her.
“Heads up, guys!” she yelled cheerfully. “The cavalry just arrived!”
I whooped with joy and relief and ploughed through the nearest aliens, hacking them apart and kicking the pieces aside so I could get to the next. My golden blades tore through them as though they were made of paper. I waded through alien gore like a hungry man going to a feast. A cold and vicious rage burned within me, not just at what they had done and planned to do, but at what they had made me do. I killed and killed, and it was never enough. Walker cut about him with his sword, deadly and elegant, and Honey fired her gun, and soon we’d cleared the whole chamber of living alien forms.
But more bodies slipped out of the walls, and rose up out of the floor, and dropped from the ceiling; again the entrance ways were blocked and the chamber was full. Because the alien was the mound, and we were just destroying things it had made to fight us. The alien was distracting us, keeping us busy, while the clock ticked down to the great experiment in the streets of Roswell. I had to stop the alien, not just its extremities. I called up my Sight, focused it through my mask, and made myself concentrate on what really mattered. The dark and secret heart of the alien mound: the one thing it couldn’t live without. I glared around me, Seeing terrible things hidden in the walls and floor of the chamber, until finally I Saw, deep below my feet, something that blazed and burned like a dark sun: living energy sourced in alien flesh.
I yelled to Honey to blast the floor with her energy weapon where I pointed, and she nodded quickly and hit the floor with everything she had. The floor rocked beneath our feet, splitting apart, forced open by the crystal weapon’s implacable energies. They dug deeper and deeper into the alien tissues until finally I could see the dark heart itself. It wrapped itself in thick protective alien tissues, struggling to replace them as fast as Honey’s weapon burned them away. I formed one long, slender, and very deadly blade from my golden right hand, and sent it plunging deep into the dark heart of the alien mound.
It exploded. Alien flesh was no match for other-dimensional strange matter. Particularly when driven by the terrible cold anger of the human heart.
The individual alien forms collapsed, sinking in upon themselves, the long ropy tentacles already rotting and falling apart. The cavern shook like an earthquake, great jagged cracks opening up in the slimy walls. The floor seemed to fall away beneath my feet in sudden drops and shudders. The whole mound was dying, rotting, falling apart. I ran for the nearest exit, Honey and Walker right behind me. I followed my Sight back up through the mound, heading for the surface even as the mound collapsed in on itself, sinking down into the earth. I ran through piles of dead alien bodies, kicking them aside, punching holes through walls where necessary. Strange lights flared all around me, vivid energies spitting and crackling helplessly on the air. I ran for the surface with Honey and Walker.
We burst out of the final exit and kept running out into the fresh and human air of Roswell. We jumped over cracks opening up in the back lot, urged on by the sound of the dead mound slowly sinking down into the earth. Finally I decided I was far enough away, and only then did I let myself stop and look back to see the last death throes of the alien mound. It was dry and cracked and corrupt now, disappearing into the hole it had made for itself. Walker and Honey and I watched till all of it was gone and there was nothing left to show it had ever been there but a dark hole in the ground of a deserted back lot.
“Go down,” I said to it. “Go all the way down to Hell, where you belong.”
I put away my armour and stood there in the empty street, just a man again. I was shaking and breathing hard from exertion and emotion and from relief that we’d stopped the filthy experiment before it even started. Honey and Walker stood with me, breathing just as hard.
“So,” I said finally. “You came back, Honey. Right in the nick of time. What changed your mind? What about the game and the prize?”
“How was I going to be able to get anything done here with all this nonsense going on?” said Honey reasonably. “Besides, I didn’t get into the spy game to turn my back on people. I serve the American people. As I decide best.”
“What are we going to tell the townspeople?” said Walker. “Do we tell them anything?”
“Would they believe us, without evidence?” I said. “They don’t even have the farmer and his cow in the morgue anymore, remember?”
“This is Roswell,” Walker said dryly. “They’ll believe anything, or at least just enough to make money out of it. This time next year, this will all be a television movie. I wonder who they’ll get to play me?”
“You were never here,” Honey said sternly. “None of us were.”
“Right,” I said. “This isn’t the Nightside. We have to keep a low profile.”
“There could be more aliens . . . from where those things came from,” said Honey, hefting her shimmering weapon. “They could be back.”
“My family will take care of that,” I said. “We have connections in faraway places. Treaties and compacts work both ways. Or we’ll kick alien arse till they do.”
“I never knew you could do that,” said Walker.
“Not many do,” I said.
“And you wonder why other organisations don’t trust the Droods,” said Honey. “Your family has secrets the way other families have pets. Would it kill you to share information like that so we could all sleep better at nights?”
“Possibly,” I said. “We don’t take chances. But . . . I will talk to the Matriarch. Sharing can be good. What say the three of us go back to Alexander King, give him the answers we’ve accumulated, and then share the secrets he gives us?”
“Hell,” said Honey, “I’m game if you are. Nothing like hanging out with a Drood to help you see the bigger picture.”
“Fine by me,” said Walker. “But will the Independent Agent agree?”
“The man is dying,” I said. “He doesn’t have enough time left to haggle. He can give his prize to three agents who’ve proved their worth or risk his precious secrets falling into unworthy hands after he’s dead.”
“And . . . Peter?” said Honey. “How do we tell an old man that we got his only grandson killed?”
“We don’t know that he’s dead,” Walker said immediately. “He’s just . . . missing in action.”
“Alexander King wanted his grandson in the game,” I said. “He knew the risks.”
“Did Peter?” said Honey. “He didn’t operate in the same world as the rest of us.”
“No,” said Walker. “He worked in industrial espionage. I’m pretty damn sure he wouldn’t have shared the prize.”
“The game is now officially over,” I said. “We’ve been to all five of the designated areas, investigated each mystery we found there, and come up with an answer. We may not have uncovered the answer to the original Roswell mystery, but I think this . . . is better. Certainly it’s more than enough to prove our worth as the Independent Agent’s successors, which was supposed to be the whole point of the game. Time . . . to call it a day.”
“How are we supposed to let Alexander King know?” said Walker, glaring at the teleport bracelet on his wrist. “How do we persuade these infernal contraptions to take us back to Place Gloria?”
I took out Peter’s phone and showed it to the teleport bracelet
around my wrist. “See this?” I said loudly. “Proof, evidence, and answers to all the questions we were set. I know you’re listening, Alexander! We can either give this to you or . . . take it back to our respective organisations. So, beam us up, Scotty!”
And that was when Peter King stepped out of the shadows, stabbed Honey Lake between the ribs with a long-bladed knife,
snatched the phone from my hand, and disappeared, teleported away.
Honey made a shocked, surprised sound, and then collapsed as the strength went out of her legs. I caught her and eased her to the ground. Her whole left side was already soaked with blood, and more ran down between our closely pressed bodies. Walker was saying something, but I wasn’t listening. Honey made a pained sound and blood spilled from her mouth. I held her tightly to me. I looked up at Walker to yell at him to get some help, but the look on his face stopped me. It confirmed what I already knew.
“It was Peter all along,” said Walker. “The treacherous little shit. He killed Katt, and Blue, and—”
“No,” said Honey. “That was me.”
“Hush,” I said. “Hush.”
“No.” She forced the words out past the pain and the blood. She needed me to know the truth. “I killed Blue and Katt. Tried to kill Walker. Even sabotaged my own sub at the loch, so I wouldn’t be suspected. I thought . . . it was my duty. To win the prize at any cost.”
“Honey . . .” I said, but the hard knot in my stomach wouldn’t let me say anything more.
She smiled briefly, showing perfect teeth slick with blood. “Never fall in love with another agent, Eddie. You know it’s never going to end well.”
She died in my arms. I held her for a long time.
It all went bad so quickly.
CHAPTER NINE
The Spying Game
Why be an agent? All right, you get to play with all the best toys, you get to see the world (though rarely the better parts), and now and again you get a real chance to stand between humanity and the forces that threaten . . . You get to be a hero, or a villain, and sometimes both. But what does any of that buy you in the end? Except death and suffering and the loss of those you care for. What makes a man an agent? And what keeps him going, in the face of everything?
Why be an agent?
Walker and I stood together in a dirty backstreet, looking down at Honey Lake’s body. I’d like to say she looked peaceful and at rest, but she didn’t. She looked like a toy that had been played with too roughly, and then thrown aside. I’d seen a lot of people look like that in the years I’d spent playing the spying game. When all the fun and games, all the adventure and romance, adds up to nothing more than bright red blood on a white jumpsuit.
“She was a good agent,” said Walker.
“Yes,” I said.
“She wouldn’t want us to just stand around, waiting to get caught.”
“No.”
“My teleport bracelet is gone,” said Walker, looking at his bare wrist. “Yours too?”
“Yes,” I said. “Honey’s bracelet is gone as well.”
Walker sniffed loudly, shooting his impeccably white cuff forward to cover his wrist. “Peter must have taken them with him.”
“Only one way he could have done that,” I said, still looking down at Honey’s body. “Peter must have been working with his grandfather all along. The Independent Agent always intended for his nephew to win the game, to keep his precious secrets in the family. This whole contest was a setup to establish Peter King as the new Independent Agent. I should have known. It’s always about family. The rest of us were just here for show. Window dressing for Peter’s great triumph.”
“And we’re left stranded in Roswell,” said Walker. “With a dead body at our feet and the local law no doubt already on their way, tipped off by an anonymous source. How very awkward. Time to be going, I think.”
“We have to go to Place Gloria,” I said. “Alexander and Peter have to pay for this.”
“Yes,” said Walker. “They do. I’ve always been a great believer in an eye for an eye, and a death for a death. Comes of a traditional public school upbringing, no doubt. Unfortunately, getting to the Independent Agent’s private lair isn’t going to be easy. We can’t be sure Place Gloria is where or even when we think it is. Remember the flux fog? The exterior we saw may have no connection at all to the more than comfortable retreat we walked through.”
“You’re just talking to distract me,” I said. “I appreciate the thought, but don’t. What are we going to do about Honey?”
“Communications should be working again, now that the alien mound has been destroyed,” said Walker. “We’ll call her people and tell them what’s happened, and they’ll get the local people to do what’s necessary. The Company’s always been very good at cleaning up after itself.”
I looked at Walker, and to his credit he didn’t blink. “Just walk away and leave her?” I said. “Leave her lying here in the street, alone?”
Walker met my gaze unflinchingly. “You’ll pardon me if I’m not overly sympathetic, Eddie. She did try to kill me back in Tunguska. And she did murder poor little Katt and your friend the Blue Fairy.”
“I know,” I said. “She was an agent.”
“Yes,” said Walker. “And that’s why she’d understand. In the field, you do what you have to do. She wouldn’t have hesitated to walk away from you and leave your body to be taken care of by the Droods.”
“Is this why we became agents?” I said, and was surprised by the bitterness in my voice. “To play games, to chase after secrets that are rarely worth all the blood spilled on their behalf . . . To end up stabbed in the back, just when you thought you’d won, bleeding out in some nameless backstreet . . . With most people never even knowing who you were, or what you did, or why it mattered?”
“You can’t work in the shadows and still expect applause,” said Walker. “The right people will know, and sometimes that’s the best we can hope for.”
“Anything for the family,” I said. “Anything for England. For humanity. But for us? What about us, Walker?”
“Duty and responsibility are their own rewards,” said Walker. “Old-fashioned, I know, but some things don’t change. The things that matter. We do it because it has to be done. We do it because if we don’t, who will? Who else could we trust to do it right?”
“She shouldn’t have died here,” I said. “Not like this.”
“It’s always somewhere like this,” said Walker. “That’s the job. Did you . . . love her, Eddie?”
“No,” I said. “But she was . . . special. If things had been different . . .”
“If,” said Walker. “Always the harshest word.”
“Why did you become an agent, Walker? I had no choice; I was born into the family business. So was Honey, I suppose. But why you?”
“For the sheer damned glamour of it all,” said Walker.
I couldn’t manage a smile for him just yet, but I nodded to show I appreciated the effort. I turned my back on Honey and walked away. Walker strode calmly along beside me, flourishing his furled umbrella like an officer’s stick. Say what you like about Walker, and many people have; the man has style. We left the back lot and the empty street behind us and went back into the town of Roswell to walk among sane things again.
“We can’t let Peter take the prize,” I said. “Not after everything we’ve been through. Not after what he did. He’s not worthy.”
“I’ll see him damned to Hell first,” Walker agreed cheerfully. “And his bloody grandfather too. Peter must have been the one following us earlier. I said it had to be a professional . . . He probably changed the settings on his teleport bracelet while he was still in the Sundered Lands, leaving ahead of us so he could arrive here separately.” Walker frowned. “Surely he couldn’t have known about the alien threat in advance . . . No . . . No; must have come as a very nasty surprise to find he was trapped here with the rest of us. That’s why he stayed well back until it was all over, before maki
ng his move.”
I nodded. I didn’t really care. It was just details.
Walker found a public phone and told the CIA about Honey. I contacted my family through my torc. That wouldn’t have been possible with the old torc, supplied by the corrupt Heart, but Ethel’s upgrade to strange matter had gifted us with many new options, some of which we were still getting used to. The Drood communications officer was all over me the moment he recognised my voice.
“Where the hell have you been, Edwin? We haven’t been able to reach you for days! You know you’re supposed to report in regularly.”
“I’ve been busy,” I said.
“But where have you been? It was like you’d dropped off the whole planet! We’ve had the whole family searching for some sign of you. Even Ethel couldn’t locate you, and she sees in five dimensions!”
“Good for her,” I said. “Now shut the hell up and patch me through to the War Room. I want to speak to the Matriarch. The whole game’s gone to hell, and the Independent Agent has screwed us all.”
“I’m here, Edwin.” The Matriarch’s cool and utterly professional voice sounded as though she was standing right next to me. “Where are you? What’s been happening?”
“The game was fixed from the start,” I said, doing my best to sound equally calm and collected. Even after everything that had passed between us, I still didn’t want to let myself down in front of her. “Alexander King never intended to let any of us get our grubby little hands on his treasure trove of secrets. So I’m going to be a very bad loser and take them anyway. I need to know where his secret lair really is, Grandmother. Tell me.”
“If anyone in this family had even a strong suspicion where to get our hands on the Independent Agent, we’d have kicked in his door and shut him down long ago,” the Matriarch said calmly. “We don’t like competition, we don’t like people who change sides according to which way the wind is blowing, and we’ve never approved of his methods. We would also very much like to get back all the records, trophies, and forbidden weapons he’s stolen and cheated us out of down the years. Alexander King is no friend of this family and never has been. I’m sorry, Edwin. His present location is a complete mystery to us. The space-time coordinates he provided for your transport to Place Gloria were a strictly one-time-only thing. I did send three field agents after you, just on the off chance, but they ended up materialising halfway up an Alp with not even a climber’s hut anywhere in sight. Callan in particular was very upset about that.”
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