Power

by Joe Craig

  “Poison?” Mitchell blurted out. “I don’t…”

  “Come on!” Lee hissed. “Get your brain switched on. The poison that sent Ian Coates to the hospital.”

  Mitchell nodded hurriedly, while Lee drew a pair of latex gloves from a box and put them on.

  “We tested everything that Ian Coates might possibly have come into contact with before he collapsed,” Lee went on. “In the end it was something quite simple, but the best assassinations are always simple, aren’t they?” He lowered his face and stepped closer to Mitchell, who shrunk a little in the shadow of this giant.

  “You mean assassination attempt,” Mitchell muttered, “don’t you?”

  “Of course,” Lee conceded, with a leering grin. “We all hope that Ian makes a full recovery.” There was an awkward pause while Lee signalled to one of the lab technicians, who hurried over, bringing a small plastic pot. “We traced the poison to this,” Lee declared, showing it to Mitchell.

  Mitchell’s exhilaration seemed to freeze in his veins. Lee was showing him a small, plastic, see-through pot, containing a single, pale white cube about the size of a large dice. The label gave away what it was, and what presumably Ian Coates had eaten. Even though Mitchell didn’t speak Icelandic, the label didn’t need translating. He recognised it straightaway.

  “Shark meat,” announced Lee. “From Reykjavik, Iceland.”

  Mitchell didn’t know how to react. He knew that the raw, untreated meat of a Greenland shark was highly toxic. Icelanders traditionally buried it for months before it was fit to eat. More importantly, Mitchell also knew how that particular tub of shark meat— raw shark meat —had come to be in London.

  “You were in Reykjavik, weren’t you?” Lee asked.

  “Yes.” Mitchell’s voice came out louder than he’d expected and several technicians turned to look at him. “I was tracking Zafi, the French assassin. I followed her to Reykjavik. She was in the market and I nearly…” Mitchell’s memory of that fight was strong. He could almost taste the salt in the air, and feel the crunch of Zafi’s bones against his fists. “She got away,” he murmured.

  “But she didn’t get away with any shark meat, did she?” Lee furrowed his brow and examined Mitchell’s reaction. “I’ve read the Reykjavik police report from that incident. It says that after the fight there was shark meat all over the floor of the market.” He waited for Mitchell to respond, but he didn’t, so Lee pushed further. “Raw shark meat. Enough to easily fill a tub about this size.”

  Mitchell stared up at Lee. A part of him longed to shrivel away and disappear, but that part was crushed by the urge to split Lee’s chin with a single uppercut.

  “Yes,” Mitchell growled, having trouble finding his voice. “I brought the shark meat to London. I was obeying orders. I didn’t know how it would be used. I didn’t know—”

  “It’s OK,” Lee reassured him, seeing the violence flare in Mitchell’s eyes. “That’s what I’d assumed. How could you possibly have known what it was going to be used for? And I know there’s no point asking who ordered you to bring it,” Lee continued. “Was it a text?”

  Mitchell nodded.

  “Of course,” said Lee. “So anybody with access to NJ7 encryption and communication could have made it look like the order was coming from someone else.”

  “So…” Mitchell began, but Lee held up a hand to stop him.

  “I just want you to say sorry,” he explained, with a casual shrug.

  “Sorry?” Mitchell was puzzled. Lee nodded, so Mitchell said it again, more firmly: “Sorry.” It still didn’t sound sincere, but Lee didn’t seem bothered.

  “I forgive you,” he said, with a glint in his eye. “Now eat it.” He held the tub out to Mitchell, who stared first at the white cube, then up at Lee, then back at the tub. “Eat it,” Lee repeated, more firmly.

  “But…” Mitchell could feel his body preparing to strike. He saw exit routes from the lab flash through his mind. He saw Lee’s blood spurting from his nose and ears. He saw the bodies of all the technicians.

  “Don’t you want to?” Lee simpered. Mitchell was disgusted by him. Lee may not have had Mitchell’s strength, but he was revelling in his authority. They were the tactics of a bully.

  At last, Lee sighed and pulled the tub away again. Had he seen in Mitchell’s eyes how close he’d come to being savagely attacked? “Well, in that case…” Lee twirled the tub in his fingertips, glaring at Mitchell, then turned to the computer and tapped a few keys. A window came up showing a search in progress. “My team finally found a partial fingerprint on this tub that didn’t match the PM’s.”

  “Whose is it?” Mitchell grunted, a rising fear gripping his lungs.

  “That’s what we’re about to find out,” replied Lee. “This is a search of the internal NJ7 database. Every agent, former agent and staff member is in it, as well as every member of the Government and civil service. So are their fingerprints.” Mitchell watched the ‘percentage completed’ number rise in the search window, while Lee rattled on. “There’s a different database for the general public, of course,” he explained, “but searching that would take much longer and I’m confident this will give us a positive result.”

  As the number on the screen approached 100, Mitchell’s anxiety grew. In his mind, every possibility was slowing ticking round as he tried to work out what Lee was trying to achieve by bringing him here. Then at last Lee explained.

  “Quite simply, Mitchell,” he said with a sigh, “the person who took the poison to the Prime Minister is about to appear on this computer. So that’s your mission: kill whoever’s face comes up on this screen.”

  Mitchell’s insides twisted into a whirlwind of turmoil. The assassin in him was taking hold of every muscle, sending a devilish delight through his mind. At the same time, Mitchell’s human fear burned stronger and brighter. He knew exactly whose face was going to appear. He remembered his trip to Iceland just as he remembered every day since he’d discovered he was a genetically designed assassin. And in all of that time only one woman had been in control of his orders. Others had taken a hand in training him and supporting him, but only one person had instructed him to bring the shark meat back to London. There was no way those instructions could have come from anybody else. His new target was surely Miss Bennett.

  Mitchell was suddenly aware that Lee was still talking to him, giving him further details about how he was to go about his mission, making sure to complete it in total secrecy. He couldn’t trust anybody at NJ7. Everybody was a possible threat. But Mitchell’s mind was miles ahead of Lee. The risks were already pounding through every thought. Of all the targets in the world, surely there was nobody more dangerous to take on than Miss Bennett.

  She may not have had even a fraction of the combat training that infused Mitchell’s blood, yet still he couldn’t be in the same room as her without feeling totally under her power.

  I can’t do it, he heard himself thinking, followed immediately by a roar that seemed to blast away the whole room, yet he knew was only inside his head. I must, he heard, I will. It’s my mission. My life. Then, finally, the computer screen showed a new message: search completed. Next to it was a face—the face of Mitchell’s new target.

  Eva Doren.

  16 POWER AND CONTROL

  Jimmy knew the sudden darkness was no accident. In the same instant a wail of sirens went up in the streets all around him. The blue flashes were like flames flickering up the wall of Piccadilly Circus. London was in lockdown.

  Jimmy held himself tense, his senses twitching, ready to protect himself wherever violence broke out. His night vision quickly surged into action, casting the whole city in a blue haze and giving everybody on the street the look of a zombie with glowing blue eyes. People were flowing in from every direction, and for a few seconds they stumbled into each other, some of them stopping, but very quickly they found mobile phones or lighters to see by, and the wave moved on.

  Jimmy pushed through the mass of angry peopl
e, desperate to reach a side street, or anywhere he could move more quickly to reach London Bridge. But as he battled across the central reservation of Piccadilly Circus, past the statue of Eros, he realised why it was so hard to move freely. He smelled the horses first, and knew what it meant before he saw them: the cordon of mounted police and armed crowd control units.

  They were trying to manage the flow of people, blocking off the side streets to keep everybody where they wanted them—either Trafalgar Square was already dangerously overcrowded or the police were simply blocking the route to Westminster. Jimmy felt the crowd surging in different directions, like a single beast, but there was nowhere for it to go. He ducked down and tried burrowing between people, but he was quickly even deeper in the pack, surrounded by shuffling feet.

  Then a few of the feet started stamping. There were more sirens, more flashes of blue, more shouts, colliding with each other and rising up into a roar. And Jimmy knew that any second the roar would erupt into a riot.

  Mitchell felt a wrench in his stomach and his mouth went dry. The sounds of the room seemed distant, detached. He barely heard William Lee muttering, “Well, Eva Doren. I have to admit I’m surprised, but never mind. If she’s the one responsible for poisoning the PM, she’s the one you have to kill. Unless you want to try some of this raw shark meat yourself?”

  The words echoed around Mitchell’s skull. He couldn’t muster enough power to think the order away. “But…” he gasped at last. Lee wasn’t interested.

  “Make it quick,” he said. “She’s young.” With that, he stalked away, checking on the rest of the work being done by the NJ7 technicians. Mitchell stood in front of the computer, staring at the headshot of Eva. It was a standard NJ7 identity picture, but to Mitchell, Eva still managed to have a sharp look while somehow looking vulnerable at the same time.

  How could she possibly be responsible for poisoning Ian Coates? Mitchell eventually forced his muscles to unfreeze and moved back through the corridors. He could feel his whole body fizzing with a black energy. His programming was driving it through him, preparing him to kill. He tried to contain it, but the struggle only increased its intensity. Before he realised it, he found himself running through NJ7’s passageways, the beat of murder drumming in his heart.

  There’s something wrong, he told himself. Eva didn’t do this. Mitchell’s brain felt like it was twisting in on itself, trying to wring out some kind of clarity while his programming grew in strength. He thought back to Reykjavik, to the fight with Zafi and the order from Miss Bennett to bring the shark meat to London. She’d said she wanted to analyse it—to understand Zafi’s methods. More and more details were coming back to Mitchell now. There was no way Eva could have been behind the assassination attempt on the PM. She’s being used, Mitchell realised. Like I was. It has to be Miss Bennett.

  The tunnels of NJ7 seemed to be closing in around him as he ran. He was close now—any second he would come to Miss Bennett’s office. All he needed was to reach her before he saw Eva. Then he could force her to explain what was going on. She could give him fresh orders. But at the same time Mitchell had no idea how his programming would respond if Eva was there as well. Would he have the strength to resist completing the mission William Lee had just given him?

  He sprinted round the last corner. Immediately, his worst fears were confirmed. Walking up the corridor towards him on the way out of Miss Bennett’s office, sorting out a handful of notes, was Eva.

  “Oh,” she said, looking up. “Mitchell.” There was a light in her expression that was completely out of place in these dark halls. It wrenched Mitchell’s gut. His killing instinct responded with a surge so powerful that for a second he couldn’t breathe.

  “You OK?” asked Eva, still smiling softly. Mitchell couldn’t remember the last time anybody had looked pleased to see him. But that joy was smashed by another blast of violence in his bloodstream. He was ready to kill.

  When Eva saw Mitchell coming towards her down the corridor, she was surprised at how relaxed she felt. She couldn’t let life at NJ7 become normal. If she relaxed, she might let her guard down. He’s an assassin, she reminded herself. He’s not entirely human. But she knew that the same was true of Jimmy, her best friend’s brother. Sometimes she couldn’t believe how upsidedown the world had become.

  She was risking her life every day by pretending to be working for NJ7. Miss Bennett trusted her now. Eva had infiltrated the heart of the world’s most deadly Secret Service, a double agent, working for enemies of the Government—her friends. And yet she’d been the one to deliver that video clip to Jimmy. It had been on Miss Bennett’s orders, of course, but Eva wished she’d been able to think quickly enough to warn Jimmy that it was a trick.

  She walked towards Mitchell, pushing her mouth into a smile and finding that it came easily. Of all the people at NJ7, he was the one she felt most comfortable with. But then she saw the look in his eye. Her smile dissolved. Mitchell let out an anguished grunt that shocked Eva into dropping her papers.

  What’s he doing, she asked herself desperately. Before the thought was even finished, Mitchell was pounding towards her like a tank. They’ve found me out, Eva thought. I’m dead. She couldn’t move. Her brain was frozen, her muscles were like brick. She couldn’t even scream. All at once it felt like every cell in her body was coated in terror.

  Mitchell’s fist whipped up from his side so quickly that Eva felt it before she saw it. It slammed into the centre of her chest, punching all the air from her lungs. Mitchell lifted her off her feet by the shirt and slammed her against the wall. He held her there, glaring into her eyes.

  “Mi…Mi…” Eva gasped, but she couldn’t pull in enough breath to speak.

  Mitchell raised his arm above his head, aiming for her neck, but Eva could see his pupils rapidly flicking from side to side. She knew one blow would end her life. Mitchell was built to kill and now she felt his power —in his speed and the effortless strength in his arm. But she knew he wasn’t fully developed yet. There was still a human voice somewhere in his head. There had to be. If only she knew how to call to it now.

  Mitchell’s hand hung in the air above his head for what seemed like an age, ready to chop. Then, at last, he let out another raging moan, clenching his jaw tight. At the very bottom of Eva’s dread was the hope that Mitchell’s human pity was fighting for her.

  “Shark meat,” Mitchell grunted, forcing the words out as if his own face was refusing to speak.

  “What?” Eva croaked, finally finding her voice.

  “Shark meat.” Mitchell’s forehead was dripping with sweat. His eyes were bloodshot. He was a quivering ball of power that had nowhere to go. “That’s where the poison was.”

  “Shark meat poisoned Ian Coates?” asked Eva, her words soft but clear.

  Mitchell scrunched up his face and nodded. “You sent it,” he whispered, straining against the muscles in his own shoulder, holding back the killer blow.

  “No!” Eva rushed to explain. “I remember it…” She couldn’t stop tears rolling down her face. “It was in a little pot…Shark meat from Iceland…”

  “Poison!” yelled Mitchell.

  “I didn’t know!” Eva wanted to scream now, but she knew that it could tip Mitchell over the edge and finally make him the killer he was born to be. She consciously relaxed every muscle, hanging limp in Mitchell’s grasp. “Miss Bennett told me to take it to him. It was in a pile of other gifts from governments around the world…”

  Finally, Eva watched the muscles in Mitchell’s shoulder relax. The ball of pure strength sank and he lowered his arm. When he looked Eva in the eye again, she saw more desperation than anger—more pleading than fighting.

  “I didn’t know,” Eva repeated in a soothing whisper. “It wasn’t me.” She could barely stop herself sobbing, but knew she had to be strong. Mitchell respected her—the human in him did, anyway. “I’m not your target.” She could feel her body shaking, but Mitchell lowered her to the ground. The floor under her
feet was one of the most wonderful sensations she’d ever experienced.

  “Having trouble with your mission, Mitchell?” The whisper rushed up the corridor. Eva and Mitchell both turned quickly, like rabbits who’ve heard the click of a hunting rifle. At the end of the corridor, strolling slowly towards them, was the long, bean-like silhouette of William Lee.

  “It wasn’t Eva,” Mitchell panted. “She just took the tub to the PM’s study. She—”

  “I know.” Lee cut him off. “I heard everything. I made sure to be a little closer along the corridor this time, and to listen a little harder. I thought you might find this particular target…emotionally challenging. So I thought I’d follow you and see how things were going.”

  “I’ve done nothing wrong!” Eva was shaking. “You can’t kill me!”

  “No, you’re right,” Lee sighed. “I don’t think I can. Instead, you’ll bring me all Miss Bennett’s secrets.”

  “What?”

  “Her files, her modes of control, her codes, her contacts at the Corporation and everything she has planned.”

  Eva was frantically trying to work out what to do, but her brain was still coming down from the relief of surviving Mitchell’s attack.

  “She’s obviously trying to use this crisis to take power. I knew she would eventually, I just didn’t think she’d resort to actually poisoning the Prime Minister.”

  That was the first time Eva had heard it spelled out so simply: Miss Bennett had tried to kill Ian Coates. She might still succeed if things didn’t go well at the hospital.

  “What if…” Eva gasped.

  “It’s OK,” smiled Lee. “She’ll never be Prime Minister. Because I’m taking power.”

  Eva’s head spun. Did nobody in the Secret Service care that the Prime Minister’s life was on the line? Were they all so hungry for power?

  “I’m going to run this country the way it should be run!” Lee went on, barely keeping his voice level. “I’m taking power and nobody can stop me! The British need me, Eva. Now bring me Miss Bennett’s secrets so I can wipe her out!”