Power

by Joe Craig

  With a wild grunt of horror, Jimmy threw himself at the metal shutter once more. He kicked at it and wiped his hands all over it, clawing madly until the grey was smeared with dark red, and shouting out for help. None came. When Jimmy finally stepped away, his chest was heaving and his mind was frantic. There had to be another way out.

  He ran to the other side of the car park, to the door that led on to the stairwell that served the flats. Jimmy opened it with an impatient tug, but then had to stop dead. The doorway was blocked, floor to ceiling, by construction rubble.

  Jimmy stared at the huge rocks and metal rods that barred his exit and kicked out. He managed to knock the corner off one of the rocks, but it only revealed another layer of rubble behind it. Jimmy knew he didn’t have enough time to claw his way out, even if that was possible. As a final attempt to attract the attention of the outside world, he punched his palm into the fire alarm. There were no bells, no sirens.

  Jimmy’s rising anger mixed with a cold fear. His hands wanted to tremble, but his inner strength held them rigid. Who were the men who’d assembled the bomb and brought it here? Who were they working for? What was it about this particular tower block?

  Jimmy closed his eyes for a second to settle himself, then strode back across the concrete towards the white van. As soon as he stood in front of the open van doors again, he sensed a change. The condensation on the glass tubes was disappearing. When Jimmy held his palms up towards the crates he could feel they were slightly warmer than before. That’s the detonating mechanism, Jimmy realised. He didn’t know whether he’d worked it out himself or if it was his programming. The line between the two was constantly blurring.

  Now when he looked across the crates, he imagined he could see right to the heart, where he knew there must be a simple heating system. There was no need for a timer or remote signal because as soon as the heater reached a certain temperature, the explosives at the core would become unstable, setting off the chain reaction through the wires and blowing the entire tower block out of existence.

  He desperately looked around him, thinking that perhaps if he could find enough water, dousing the crates would dampen the explosion. But in truth he had no idea whether water would have any effect, and there wasn’t any to be seen anyway.

  The only liquid around was petrol—lots of it. Could Jimmy possibly use that to lessen the force of the explosion? It seemed crazy, but if he was right about how the bomb was designed…

  Jimmy dashed back to the attendant’s booth and picked up the man’s blood-soaked newspaper. He took it to the van and held it against the driver’s window, then jabbed his elbow into it hard. He leaned in through the shattered glass to release the hand brake, then he walked to the front of the vehicle and, as carefully as he possibly could, he heaved on the bumper to pull it out of its bay. If this bomb was going to explode, Jimmy thought, he may as well use it to blast through the metal shutter.

  It was difficult to move the van at first, and Jimmy didn’t want to pull too hard in case he rocked the thawing nitro, but he reasoned that if it had been stable enough to drive through the streets of London, tugging it a few more metres was worth the risk. He took the strain in his back and thighs, then jumped back to the driver’s door to push and steer at the same time. Eventually the van was right up against the metal shutter.

  Jimmy wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve. The van was giving off more heat now. He could feel it a metre away. It won’t hold much longer, Jimmy thought. Now came the harder part. Jimmy grabbed the mug of tea from the attendant’s booth. It was still steaming and spattered with blood. Jimmy smashed it against the wall and used the handle to prise open the van’s fuel cap.

  By now, even the outside of the van was warm to the touch. Jimmy could feel it matched by the rising heat of his own fear. Even if his plan worked, he would only be able to reduce the power of the blast, not prevent it completely. That left a worrying question: Jimmy might stop the whole building collapsing, but how was he going to survive himself?

  He went back to the front of the van and tore into the cushion of the driver’s seat, pulling out a whole spring and great fistfuls of wadding. He twisted the wadding tight around the spring, leaving a length of metal at the end for him to hold. When he finished he admired his creation: a huge, mouldy candyfloss stick that smelled of damp. Then he pushed the padding into the van’s fuel tank, feeding it down as far as he could, and held it there to soak up some diesel.

  When he pulled it out a waft of fumes smacked him in the face. It combined with the scent of nitroglycerin already lining his nostrils and set off alarm bells in his head. Was this really a good idea? He gulped, gathered his courage and returned to the bomb.

  Using his twist of seat-padding like a paintbrush, Jimmy carefully dabbed the wires with diesel. Despite his nerves, his hand was rock steady. When he leaned in to get to the wires towards the back, his cheek was millimetres from the glass tubes. The heat was much stronger now, making Jimmy sweat harder. Any second, the nitro could reach flashpoint—but Jimmy planned to give it a helping hand.

  He dashed back to the attendant’s booth and quickly saw what he needed: hooked on to the security guard’s belt was a torch. Jimmy wiped the blood from the handle and unscrewed the plastic cap on the front of the flashlight as he ran across the car park.

  Now he was a few metres away from the back of the van staring at the enormous bomb in front of him. What am I doing? he thought to himself desperately. I’ve covered a giant bomb in diesel. At the same time, his thumb clicked the torch on and off, itching to connect the bare filament with the diesel fumes. Jimmy could feel the battle raging inside him. His familiar, rational terror was obliterated by a wash of something else—something close to joy. His programming was thriving on the heat and the danger, relishing the chance to set off a massive explosion. Not just set it off, Jimmy reassured himself. Control it.

  He knew that lighting the diesel would raise the temperature of the bomb by the critical few degrees needed to set off the blast. But in the seconds before that happened, the flames would burn through the wires, eliminating the delicately designed chain reaction. The crates of nitroglycerin would go up separately and randomly—not as one huge, coordinated eruption.

  Finally, Jimmy brought the torch up to the seat stuffing soaked in diesel. He carefully clicked the torch and a spark lit a couple of strands of cotton at the very tip. Immediately, the fumes ignited and the whole twist of material became a flaming beacon.

  He stared into the back of the van again. This time the flickering of his flame made the glass tubes seem to dance, as if they were excited about what Jimmy was about to do. This could be the biggest mistake of my life, Jimmy thought.

  Just do it, he ordered himself. With that, he hurled the flame towards the bomb, twisted on his heels, and ran.

  06 NELSON’S SHADOW

  BANG!

  Jimmy was lifted off his feet. The heat stabbed into his back and the whole world disappeared in a white flash. He slammed into the wall at the far end of the car park and slumped to the floor, his brain juddering in his skull.

  He rolled for cover behind a car to watch each tube of nitroglycerin roar harder and hotter than the last one. Between blasts, Jimmy caught glimpses of flames melting the insides of cars. The fire spread, buckling the metal of every vehicle until its own petrol tank gave way and added an extra explosion. Jimmy hardly noticed that he was choking back the black smoke. He was fixated on a single thought: had he succeeded? The chain reaction would have blown the whole tower block to pieces in a single blast. Compared to that, this was a minor accident.

  Then came an explosion so strong Jimmy felt like it would crack his eyeballs. It sent a rumble through his whole body, juddering his bones and mashing his organs. For a few seconds he couldn’t breathe. He realised the him was trembling—badly. So was the floor. When Jimmy looked through the chaos he could see the pillars that supported the ceiling were crumbling.

  At first, small cracks open
ed up in the concrete, then chips of it came away and the cracks grew. Jimmy watched, aghast, as a huge cloud of grey dust mixed with the fire and black smoke. I’ve got to get out of here, he thought. But the only way out was through the exit where Jimmy had dragged the van. The metal shutter had been blown to smithereens with the first explosion, so that wasn’t a problem any more. But to get out, Jimmy had to run straight past the bomb—while the crates of nitroglycerin were still blowing up.

  There was hardly any gap between explosions now. The heat was too great and the thaw was too rapid for any of the nitro to hold. Blast upon blast rocked the whole place. Jimmy staggered to his feet, almost knocked down every time another detonation sent shockwaves through the floor. Concrete rained down around him. He couldn’t see anything more than a metre in front of him, he could only hear the explosions and feel the impact. He felt his inner sense trying to time his run, but surely that wasn’t possible.

  Half sprinting, half stumbling, Jimmy strained forwards with a flood of excitement. I can make it, he told himself.

  BOOM!

  Jimmy was flung into the sky by a pressure wave travelling at 9000 metres per second. The world swirled into an orange and black blur of flame and smoke. All he could feel was pure heat all around him, as if it was coming from his skin itself. Jimmy was thrown across the street inside a massive fireball. Then he slammed against something hard, and although the orange around him disappeared, he still felt like he was on fire. He heard a cry and realised it was his own voice, mixing with hundreds of other peoples’ screams.

  He felt his body trying to stand, but he couldn’t. The last thing he saw was the huge tower block he’d just escaped. One side of it was crumbling, then it slumped downwards and collapsed.

  The traffic around Trafalgar Square was even worse than usual. Cars honked and buses snorted as they stacked up in all the surrounding roads. In the very centre of the noise, in the pedestrianised part of the square, a tall, slim man in a long, navy coat was standing on top of an upturned plastic box, a megaphone to his mouth.

  “My name is Christopher Viggo,” he announced, drawing the attention of a small crowd. “Perhaps you’ve seen me on the news, and if you believe what you’ve been told, I’m an enemy of Britain.” He paused to make way for a confused murmur. “So I’ve come here to tell you what’s really going on in this country—and what you can do about it!”

  He spoke like a true leader, with controlled passion in every word and every movement. Georgie and Felix watched nervously at the edge of the crowd.

  “There should be more people,” Felix muttered.

  “There will be,” Georgie reassured him. “Look, they’re coming to see what’s going on.”

  She was cut off by her mother, Helen Coates.

  “Get among the crowd,” she told her daughter. “Before they go anywhere. Take these and give them out.” She handed her daughter a box of leaflets then hugged her coat close to her. “You too, Felix.” As she spoke she looked anxiously around the square. “Put them into people’s pockets if they won’t take them.”

  Before Georgie or Felix could respond, Helen hurried back to stand by Christopher Viggo, whose speech was gaining momentum—and a bigger audience with every passing minute.

  “Does Chris think he’s going to beat NJ7 with leaflets?” muttered Felix, taking a fistful from the box in Georgie’s hand.

  “He’ll have to if people can’t hear what he’s saying.” Georgie rushed up to a woman standing a couple of metres from Viggo’s makeshift stage. “What’s going on with this traffic?” Georgie asked. “Nobody can hear Chris.”

  She was talking to Saffron Walden, Christopher Viggo’s girlfriend and a partner in all his campaigning. She was jumping from foot to foot to keep warm. A woolly hat covered her head and her coat collar was turned up, so between them only her eyes were visible—two hazel jewels shining out against her dark black skin.

  “The traffic’s only going to get worse,” she explained. “Apparently there are road blocks around Waterloo. Nobody seems to know why.”

  “In that case,” said Georgie, “Chris either needs to shout louder or we should find a different spot.”

  “Looks like we should be moving on anyway.” Saffron’s eyes flicked to the far side of the square, where a camera crew had appeared. “Once the cameras arrive, the police aren’t far behind.”

  “Will they put Chris on the news?” Georgie asked.

  “That would be good for us,” said Saffron. “But it depends whether the Corporation is allowed to show it.” She caught Viggo’s eye and gave a quick nod towards the southern side of the square, where three police vans were pulling up. “Looks like the police have received their instructions from NJ7,” she said to Georgie. “Time to go.”

  Viggo started to wrap up his speech. The parts that Georgie could pick up were about the dangers of having a government that didn’t need to rely on the votes of the public. Some of the crowd were responding with cautious smiles and nods, while others looked confused—or even angry.

  Suddenly, the whole square seemed to judder. There was a deep boom that echoed off the buildings and lingered in Georgie’s ears. She staggered backwards and only just managed to keep her balance. The square became chaos. Screams pierced the traffic noise and there was the tinkle of hundreds of breaking windows. Several people had fallen over, but they were pushed away or trampled as the crowd scattered in all directions. When Georgie looked up she saw a pillar of smoke rising from beyond the rooftops. It was like a giant black reflection of the white stone of Nelson’s Column, and just as unmissable.

  Frozen in shock, she found herself running alongside her mother. In seconds they’d forced their way through the crowd to join the others. Felix and Saffron were helping Viggo protect his boxes of leaflets and his megaphone from the stampede.

  “What’s happening?” Georgie cried out.

  “I don’t know,” Viggo called back calmly. “We need to get out of here and find a TV.”

  Jimmy drifted in and out of consciousness. He was vaguely aware of a screaming pain all over his body, but also the thrumming of his programming through his blood. It numbed the agony. It was keeping him alive.

  Jimmy struggled to make sense of the flashes of the world that he saw around him. There were hundreds of people, sirens, blue lights, shouts. Then he realised he was moving—or being moved. Somebody had wrapped a silver space-blanket round him and put him on a stretcher. Between moments of blackout, he saw the faces of other people— some of them children. A lot of them were also wrapped in space-blankets or on stretchers. Jimmy strained to remember how this had all happened. He wanted to ask somebody, but couldn’t pull in the breath to speak. Was there something covering his mouth and nose? Yes, he realised slowly, an oxygen mask.

  He blacked out again, but only for a few seconds. Now he found himself in the back of an ambulance. Who else was there with him? Paramedics? Other victims of the explosion? Jimmy’s mind was overcome by questions. How could anybody have survived being in the tower block when it collapsed?

  Gradually, Jimmy felt a little strength creeping back into his system. He felt like his body was in tatters, but sensed his programming churning inside him more fiercely than ever, healing him from within. Unfortunately he wasn’t yet strong enough to stave off the next blackout. He gritted his teeth and tried to force his eyes to stay open, controlling his blinks as if they were one-handed press-ups. He failed.

  When he came round again there were voices. Paramedics. They were radioing ahead to the hospital, describing the injured boy’s condition. They know nothing, Jimmy thought. They don’t know who I am and they don’t know all my injuries will heal faster than they’ve ever seen.

  Then he caught a snatch of the word “Tommy” on the ambulance radio and it finally sank in. The ambulance was rushing him to the very place he was desperate to be: St Thomas’ Hospital. This was his chance to survive. His burns might heal themselves, but his radiation poisoning was another matter.


  As the siren wailed, Jimmy’s body tingled. He knew his whole body must be covered in terrible burns, but it was exhilarating to feel a prickle rising to the surface inside his scorched skin. His head was held in place by something, so he couldn’t see what was happening to him, but he could feel the paramedics quickly covering almost every part of him with a cool dressing. He imagined his skin healing as they worked—a creeping redness covering the dull grey layer that he knew lay within.

  The next thing Jimmy was conscious of was the ambulance tearing into the Accident and Emergency bay of the hospital. Jimmy forced what strength he had into his shoulders and arms to push himself on to his elbows. The paramedics rushed to push him back down, but Jimmy caught a glimpse of the hundreds of people pouring in to the hospital, some bleeding, some being carried, others wheeled on a stretcher like Jimmy. Most of them were covered in blood, but they were conscious and heading into the hospital. Jimmy was aghast at the injuries. Were all these people from the tower block?

  The cries and the blood swirled around in his head, all illuminated by a single, powerful floodlight on top of a TV news van, even though it was still daylight. Then Jimmy saw the news reporter talking into a camera, her back to the chaos. It looked like the Corporation news van had arrived even before the ambulances. How was that possible?

  Jimmy heard his own voice spinning through his skull like a distant echo. Then the oxygen mask was pressed over his face again and another tidal wave of darkness hit him.

  07 LUCK OF THE EGYPTIAN