Power

by Joe Craig

  “If you’ve heard the rumours about who…about what I am,” said Jimmy, trying to sound relaxed to put the doctor at ease, “then maybe you’ve also heard the truth about Britain and France going to war.”

  “The truth?” the doctor scoffed. “That might be your truth, boy, but the rest of this country knows full well that the French are a threat and this Government is doing its best to defend the nation. You spreading lies just puts every true British citizen in danger. Look at what happened today! You witnessed the French blowing up a London tower block! Still think we can all be friends?”

  Jimmy rolled the syringe of his blood across the floor. Maybe the doctor was right. Maybe today’s explosion just proved Jimmy had been wrong all along. It didn’t matter who was to blame for what—the two nations were destined to go to war and nobody could stop them until they’d destroyed each other. They had that power.

  “I don’t believe it,” Jimmy said suddenly, as if replying to his own thoughts. Even if the whole of the British Government was crazy, and the whole of the French Government was crazy too, Jimmy refused to believe that there weren’t enough sane people in both countries to stop a war. But unlike the Governments, the only power the people had was the truth—and Jimmy was the person who could deliver it to them.

  The doctor snatched up the syringe and cupped it in his hand, staring at the blood.

  “I’m going to find some pretty amazing things in here, aren’t I?” he said, his eyes wide. Then he glanced nervously at Jimmy. “I need to take this to the lab, but…”

  “It’s OK,” said Jimmy. “I promise I won’t go anywhere. I’ll wait here.”

  The doctor’s relief was obvious. On his way out he pulled a dust sheet off a TV trolley and turned on the set. “They control the channel at reception, I’m afraid,” he declared as he left.

  Jimmy didn’t feel in the mood to watch TV, but the screen very quickly drew him in. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had the chance to watch anything. It felt like a connection to his old life—even though it was the Corporation rolling news channel, which he would never have dreamed of watching before, and there was no sound.

  They were showing pictures of the collapsed tower block. Half the building was still standing, with people’s kitchens and bedrooms ripped down the middle, as if Godzilla had chewed up the rest. Jimmy was fascinated. It was so strange seeing what it looked like from the outside, and after everything had happened. Nothing could capture the heat or the noise, or the light that seemed to burst through Jimmy’s head when he thought about it.

  Then the image switched to the scenes of the casualties being brought in to the hospital. It took a few seconds for Jimmy to connect the pictures on the screen with the fact that he’d lived through this. One of those ambulances was the one that had brought him to where he was sitting now. His memories of it were hazy pictures flashing through his mind in total disorder. He had to shut his eyes for a moment to set things straight.

  When he opened them the news had moved on to the next item. There was an incredibly tall Asian man addressing a press conference. The caption rolled across the bottom of the screen: PM IAN COATES COLLAPSES, RUSHED TO HOSPITAL. WILLIAM LEE CALLS FOR CALM.

  Jimmy’s chest lurched. He stared at the words repeating on the TV as if they’d have a new meaning the second, third or fourth time. He looked for the volume control on the TV, but there wasn’t one. He assumed that was also controlled from some central system. He blinked rapidly, as if what he was seeing was irritating his eyes. What had happened to Ian Coates? Was this William Lee in charge now? Who was he? Jimmy had never heard of him.

  He forced himself to stare at William Lee’s mouth, trying to lip-read, but the camera cut away too often for him to make sense of anything. In any case, that wasn’t the real reason Jimmy was concentrating on Lee. He was desperate to distract himself from the swirling in his gut and fizz in his sinuses. He’s not my real father, Jimmy reminded himself, forcing back the emotion. But he was losing the fight. He hated himself for acting as if he still cared about the health of Ian Coates.

  Zafi Sauvage sat cross-legged on her top bunk at the youth hostel while students and travellers wandered in and out of the dormitory.

  “Aw, cute bunny,” said a teenage girl, seeing a fluffy toy rabbit in Zafi’s hands. She pointed to the rabbit’s T-shirt and giggled. It had YOU’RE THE BEST printed on it in bright red letters. “What’s his name?”

  Zafi stared blankly at the girl and stabbed her penknife into the middle of the bunny’s chest. The teenager backed away and rushed out of the room. Zafi couldn’t help giggling. She carefully extended the slit down the centre of her new toy and opened up a cavity among the stuffing. The rabbit was perfect for the job—easy to handle, easy to conceal and about the size of a hand grenade. She was about to start the delicate process of arranging the explosives inside it when her phone vibrated. It had to be her contact at the DGSE. Can’t they just trust me and let me get on with it? she thought to herself. At the same time she knew they were right to be checking up on her, after her failure on the last mission.

  She checked the message, and sure enough it was another encrypted text from the French Secret Service. But as her mind spun the letters and numbers into new shapes to decrypt their meaning, Zafi’s confusion grew. Her bosses were congratulating her. “Good job,” said the message. “Is the mission complete?”

  Zafi had to read it several times, just to make sure she’d decoded it properly. The mission hasn’t even started yet, she said to herself, bemused. Her fingers were already tapping through the functions on her phone, accessing the Corporation news feed. And that’s when she discovered her mission had just become a little more complicated: Ian Coates had collapsed—and it had nothing to do with her.

  Jimmy was startled by the click of the door. The doctor strode in and Jimmy turned away to wipe his eyes. He regretted it when he felt how raw his skin was.

  “What’s all this about?” he asked boldly, still not making eye contact.

  “You mean that?” the doctor replied, waving at the TV. “You didn’t hear about the Prime Minister? He collapsed.”

  “I can see that,” Jimmy muttered through clenched teeth. “I’ve been doing all my own reading for a while now. What’s wrong with him?”

  The doctor huffed and was about to say something when the news moved on to the next item. Jimmy caught it in the corner of his eye and whipped his head round to watch it so fast his neck gave a loud click.

  “Turn the sound up!” Jimmy begged, rushing up to the screen.

  “I can’t. It’s—”

  “But…” Jimmy fumbled round the edges of the set again, vainly hoping he’d overlooked the volume control the first time. “I have to hear this!” Finally he had to give up and gripped the sides of the TV, watching intently.

  “What’s the matter?” asked the doctor. Jimmy could hardly hear him. On the screen was footage of some kind of public demonstration in Trafalgar Square. It was hard to tell how many people were there— Jimmy thought that perhaps they were deliberately choosing camera angles that didn’t show the crowd—but the upturned plastic box at the centre was clear. From there, a tall man with shoulder-length, dark blond hair was addressing the square through a megaphone—Christopher Viggo.

  Viggo was the man the British Government had most to fear from. An ex-NJ7 agent and a fanatical opponent of Neo-democracy, he was a constant thorn in their side, travelling the country in secret, gathering support wherever he could. The Government wanted him dead—and once they’d even sent Jimmy to do the job. That was supposed to have been Jimmy’s first mission, but he’d rebelled against it at the last moment. Ever since, Jimmy had also been on NJ7’s hit list, and Viggo had strived to convince more and more people that Neo-democracy was an evil abuse of power.

  In these images, Viggo was speaking as passionately as ever, with his full-length navy coat flapping in the breeze like a cape. But Jimmy wasn’t watching Viggo. He wasn’t even thinking
about what the man might be saying. Because in the very corner of the screen, standing by the makeshift stage and drifting in and out of the shot, was Helen Coates. Jimmy’s mother.

  “When was this?” Jimmy gasped, unable to tear his eyes away from the images. Then he shouted, “When did this happen?”

  “That was this morning,” the doctor replied, taken aback. “And you’re not missing anything with the sound down—they always blank out his voice and have an actor reading some of the things he said. And I can tell you…” He punctuated his sentence with a soft chortle, awkwardly trying to ease the tension. “…the things that man says go from dangerous to hilarious to just plain crazy!”

  “She’s alive,” Jimmy whispered, letting the doctor’s words fade into the background. “She’s with Chris. They must all be alive.” He was thinking rapidly now, trying to work out if there was any reason why Felix and Georgie wouldn’t be with his mother and Viggo. “They’re alive. They’re OK.”

  This time, Jimmy didn’t want to fight the emotion. It felt wonderful—as if he was coming alive again after being a zombie. Happiness suffused his whole body. His smile stretched his lips almost to his ears. It tested the burns on his face that were far from healed, but he didn’t care about the pain. It was washed away by the tears rolling down his cheeks.

  Jimmy held his head for a second, then jumped up. “Yes!” he shouted. “They’re alive!” He turned to the doctor. “I have to go and find them! Will you get ready to treat me when I come back? I’ll…I dunno…make an appointment or something.”

  The doctor looked confused and a little bit scared. “Hold on, Jimmy,” he insisted. “You think I can let you go running around London like a wild animal?”

  “But you said yourself if I don’t have radioactive stuff actually on me, then I’m not contagious, so I—”

  “It’s ridiculous, Jimmy.” The doctor threw up his hands in exasperation. “You’re sick.”

  “I don’t feel sick,” Jimmy protested.

  The doctor raised his hands to the ceiling, then clapped them together as if pleading with the ceiling fan. “Listen to me,” he ordered. “Wait here until the sample comes back from the lab.”

  Jimmy was about to protest, but the words stopped on his tongue. Had the doctor said “sample” or “samples”? How many samples had the man sent to the lab? One or two? Jimmy’s elation froze. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but suspicion dug into his brain. He decided to try a little test.

  “Thank you for helping me, doctor,” he said softly, playing the innocent child.

  The doctor eyed Jimmy warily. “It’s my duty,” he replied. “As a doctor.”

  “But it’s so brave,” Jimmy went on, pushing as far as he could go. “And it must have been a hard decision to make—do you treat me, or do you protect your career, your hospital…possibly even your own life? So, seriously…” He paused and dropped his voice to an emphatic whisper. “…Thank you.”

  “Thank you!?” the doctor spluttered suddenly. “Did you think I was going to treat you?!”

  Jimmy squirmed as if he’d picked up a bad smell. He was disgusted at how easily the doctor’s act had crumbled.

  “I couldn’t treat you even if I wanted to!” the doctor went on, throwing his head back in derision. “All I can do is send the blood to the lab. It’s not personal, Jimmy. Even if it turns out I’m infected already, I can’t help myself. I’ve put in a call to Professor Wilson at the Hollingdale Institute. Zigmund is the only one who could possibly do anything about it!” His chest juddered with a silent laugh. “You thought I was going to treat you? An enemy of the State? I’d be thrown in prison for the rest of my life! I was only talking to you until…” He marched towards the door.

  “Until what?” Jimmy called out, but the man didn’t stop. Run him down, Jimmy heard himself growling inside. Stop him. End him. He felt his muscles go rock solid, set for violence. No, Jimmy ordered himself. “Please,” he begged, forcing his words out against his own body’s will. “I need you!”

  The doctor paused at the door. He turned round, but his eyes swept the floor. He couldn’t look at Jimmy. “It’s too late, Jimmy,” he announced, a new tremor in his voice.

  “No, it isn’t,” Jimmy protested. “You can still—”

  “You don’t understand. The building’s in lockdown…” He trailed off and stared out of the window.

  “What are you saying?” Jimmy asked, but the question didn’t seem to register on the doctor’s face. “If you can’t help me, put me back in the ward. Forget about me. Let me be…”

  “What?” the doctor snapped. “Normal? But you…” His voice faded away, then he muttered, more to himself, “When you cried…” He squinted at Jimmy, as if he’d seen something new in him. The doctor opened his mouth, but didn’t seem able to find the right words. “If I’d known, Jimmy, I would never have…” He gulped and opened the door. “I was just following my instructions. I was to keep you occupied until extra security could…Sorry,” he whispered finally. “I can’t help you now.”

  He rushed out and hurriedly slammed the door after him. Jimmy jumped to his feet to follow, but was stopped by a rumble in his stomach. The drawers of the bedside units started rattling. The clatter grew louder, then the beds themselves shifted on their wheels, vibrating with the floor.

  Jimmy watched through the square window of reinforced glass in the door as the doctor locked the ward from the outside. Jimmy was still struggling to make sense of the man’s words. Then he heard the drone of engines. He turned to look out of the window. Between the slats of the Venetian blinds he could see the silhouettes of a fleet of helicopters— the same helicopters that had chased him from Hailsham. They charged towards the hospital, keeping perfect formation and maintaining their altitude at precisely the level of the top floor—where Jimmy was standing, alone.

  A second later, they opened fire.

  09 THE OTHER WING

  Jimmy dived to the floor. All around him the windows shattered and bullets pinged against the lino. The TV screen became a smoking pile of sparks and splintered plastic. The choppers were strafing the entire floor with machine gun fire.

  Jimmy crawled under one of the beds. He could see the exit, but there was no way he could make a dash for it. Between him and the door was a hailstorm of bullets. He wanted to curl up under the bed and close his eyes, but he could already feel that the dark power in his blood had other ideas. It gripped his brain, squeezing out the fear.

  In a flash, Jimmy scampered across the floor, holding the bed frame over his head and wheeling it above him like his own giant tortoise shell. When he reached the next bed, he moved under it, and used that as his shield instead. He rushed from bed to bed, butting each one up against the next to create an unbroken protective roof. He could hear the shots ripping into the mattresses above him. Some bullets even tore straight through and lodged in the thin metal springs, barely millimetres from the top of Jimmy’s head.

  At the end of the room he calculated whether he could break through the locked door with one ram. But then he peered out from under the bed and his thinking changed in an instant. There was a shadow across the window in the door. Then someone crossed in front of it —a figure in black.

  Jimmy winced. There has to be another way out, he thought. He wheeled towards the pile of mops, buckets and rags in the corner of the room. They’d been shot to pieces, but Jimmy was able to salvage a short length of mop handle. He tested the wood, trying to work out whether it would hold his weight.

  What am I doing? he thought desperately as his hands worked. He seemed to be constantly a step behind his own brain, conscious of only snippets of the plan. When he pieced them together he was horrified. Can I do this? At the same time he knew he had no choice. The only other way out of this room was through the window.

  Jimmy tested the broken mop handle against the legs of the bed, making sure that it wouldn’t pass between them horizontally. It was just long enough. He positioned two buckets underne
ath it to stop it twisting and slipping under the bed frame, then turned his attention to his bandaging.

  His whole body was still encased in white gauze bandage. It flapped around his hands where he’d wriggled them free and was loose on one arm as well, from when he’d taken the blood sample. But the rest of him was tightly wrapped. It looked like a single length of bandage running dozens of times round his torso, then down his right leg and back up again to go down the other leg, and end at his left ankle. At least, Jimmy hoped it was a single, unbroken bandage. If it wasn’t, his plan was going to end with a cruel splat.

  Still the bullets hammered around him. He had to shut it all out. The slightest miscalculation now would have consequences as serious as any bullet. He pulled on the end of the bandage that hung round his arm and tested it with three sharp tugs. It seemed strong enough, but strength wasn’t all Jimmy needed. He had to have elasticity.

  Jimmy had never bungee jumped before, but he’d heard enough about it to understand the principle—a free dive from a great height with strong elastic attached to your ankles, which pulled you up again just a fraction before you hit the ground. It could be the perfect escape. There were, however, a few snags: he was using bandage instead of elastic. He didn’t know how long the bandage around him would be when it all unravelled. And he had no idea how tall the building was. Apart from that, he thought with a deep breath, it’s a perfect plan.

  He glanced up at the window, where the Venetian blind was dancing under the barrage of bullets. He knew he was on the top floor, but how high up was that? He could take a guess, but a guess wasn’t good enough. He could feel his mind whirring, recalling every piece of information it had, but the only time he’d seen the building from the outside was when he’d been barely conscious.