Power

by Joe Craig

  Then what she had said sank in. The video clip was a fake, Jimmy thought. He couldn’t move, he was so overwhelmed by the mixture of horror and relief in his gut. On the one hand, it meant that Ian Coates hadn’t bombed the tower block after all. Maybe he’s not a monster. Jimmy felt a surge of warmth towards his father and was desperate to push it away, but it felt like the heaviest weight he’d ever carried and it wouldn’t budge.

  Then there was a terror that made Jimmy’s hands shake—he was the one who’d put the video clip on the TV. All of this chaos was his fault. He remembered Eva’s strange expression when she’d given him the video. Of course, Jimmy thought. She knew it was fake. William Lee had forced her to give it to Jimmy and she hadn’t been able to reveal the truth.

  The crowd gradually dispersed, leaving Jimmy isolated in the middle of Piccadilly Circus. He felt as exposed as the naked cherub on the statue in the middle of the junction. What an idiot, he scolded himself, clenching his fists. He’d ignored his own doubts about the video clip and been carried away with Viggo’s haste to get it on to the TV.

  I have to get to London Bridge, Jimmy insisted in his head. I have to tell them about Miss Bennett. He felt like he was coming out of some kind of trance. Everything in his head was so foggy. Nothing made sense. No, he realised. They probably saw it for themselves.

  He rubbed his face hard, unable to make sense of his thoughts. I’ve been used again, he told himself. By a man I’ve never even met! He couldn’t help letting out a growl of loathing. How had he let this happen? Britain had nearly been plunged into chaos because of his stupidity. And now Miss Bennett was even more powerful. Jimmy couldn’t stop himself imagining her delight at guaranteeing her position as second-incommand to Ian Coates.

  If anything happens to him… Jimmy thought. Then he stopped. He looked around. Piccadilly Circus was emptying quickly. The wind whipped across the tarmac, throwing litter into elaborate curls while a stray dog scavenged in the bins. The Londoners who had been so desperate to take action only a few minutes before had filtered away, deflated. Have they accepted her? Jimmy asked himself. Do they trust her? Fragments of Miss Bennett’s speech floated into his head:

  “If any tragedy should occur, and for any reason Ian Coates is unable to resume his rightful position at the head of Government…” Jimmy shuddered in horror. “That honour is one that I myself will be forced to reluctantly accept.” Slowly, the pieces were falling into place in Jimmy’s head.

  “She’s taking over!” Jimmy said aloud.

  “I will be making another address in one hour,” Miss Bennett had said. Suddenly Jimmy was certain of one thing: Miss Bennett would be Prime Minister within sixty minutes, and Ian Coates would be dead.

  Unless I do something.

  He felt a tidal wave of raw energy rip through him. It seemed to explode in his brain, leaving chaos. Miss Bennett had to be stopped. But Jimmy knew the only way he could do that was to help his own father.

  Confusion made him shake. He felt his programming stealing that energy and directing it towards his muscles. He surged into action, pumping his legs into a sprint through the streets. Where am I going? he asked himself desperately. He had no idea where the Prime Minister was. He could hardly even see what was directly in front of him because of the tears welling up in his eyes.

  You know already, Jimmy heard in his head. It was like trying to grasp a sliver of a dream that he’d already forgotten—just like all of his dreams. But the knowledge was there. The assassin in him knew. The hospital, he told himself. Of course.

  His feet pounded on the pavement. He remembered the surprise on the faces of the agents in the hospital car park when he’d ‘borrowed’ the clothes he had on now. Those agents weren’t there for me, Jimmy told himself, straining to pick up his pace now that he knew where he was heading. They were security for the Prime Minister. And now, Jimmy realised, Miss Bennett would use those agents not as security guards, but as assassins.

  Ian Coates drifted in and out of consciousness. When he was awake his whole body burned with pain. There was still poison in his system, corroding his insides. Meanwhile, anti-venom chemicals were being pumped through his blood from a machine next to the bed. They came in a concoction so powerful, though, they were almost doing as much harm as good.

  In his delirium, he found his mind twisted with torment. The toxins streaming through his brain threw up thick swirls of colour, each one darker than the last. The browns were full of hatred. The blues brought fear. The dense black was pure guilt.

  Flashes of light pushed through the darkness and grew into vivid pictures before exploding and disappearing again. Some were memories from his childhood that he thought he’d forgotten. Others were moments from his family life—the life he’d destroyed. And some were scenes he could never possibly have witnessed, and wished he could never have imagined: a tower block gushing with flames. His daughter running for her life from Secret Service agents. Jimmy gasping for breath as NJ7 bullets tore through his chest.

  The terror jolted him back to reality. He automatically squeezed his thumb down on the clicker that delivered more painkilling drugs to his bloodstream. It didn’t seem to have any effect. He pressed the button over and over, with all the strength he could muster, but the burning in his veins only increased. He dropped the clicker and reached for the call button that was attached to the bed frame.

  As Prime Minister, his treatment had involved every comfort that only the very wealthiest patients in Britain would have experienced. That included total privacy, of course—a large hospital room to himself, up on the top floor of the private wing, with stunning views of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, just across the Thames.

  The most experienced specialists in the country were on call around the clock, with somebody posted in the waiting area immediately outside the room at all times. At the push of a button, either a doctor or a senior nurse would come running to his bedside. But no matter how many times Ian Coates pressed the call button, nobody came.

  “Doctor…” he tried to shout, but his voice was so feeble he barely heard it himself. The effort made him cough and splutter. “Doctor…” he tried again, determined to get attention. This time his voice was stronger, but would never have carried beyond the walls, and it left a stabbing in his chest.

  I’m the Prime Minister of Britain, he thought to himself, fighting the pain with stubborn concentration. Why don’t people come when I call?

  The blackness rose again. No, he thought desperately. Don’t black out. As the world faded away from him, he doubted he would ever come round again. At the edges of his consciousness, he heard a crash outside. Hold on, he told himself. He tried to twist in his bed to keep his muscles awake, but even curling his fingers took a huge effort.

  Then came another crash. What was happening? At last the door burst open. But what came in wasn’t a medical professional. In fact, it hurtled in so fast Coates couldn’t even make out whether it was human. The shock destroyed any strength he had left. As his eyelids clamped down over his eyes, he felt something pulling on the drip that connected his forearm to the machine next to the bed. He tried to muster his strength, but couldn’t stop the drip being pulled out.

  My medicine, he thought to himself in horror. Without it I’ll die! At the same time, he felt the darkness in his system melting away. He opened his eyes. He still felt like there was a thick fog in the room, but it was clearing. The door was open and the light from the waiting area filtered through to his brain, seeming to bring him another level of strength.

  Finally he was able to focus. What he saw through the open door made his lungs heave in a desperate gasp of air. A doctor was sitting at his post, as he was meant to, but the man’s head was bent all the way backwards, over the chair. His neck was snapped.

  At first Ian Coates thought it was another gruesome vision from his delirium. But the image stayed in his head as if it had scored itself into his eyeballs. He opened his mouth and this time his cry came out with the f
orce of a head of state. “Doctor!”

  “The doctor’s dead,” came the reply. Only now was Coates aware of the shadow over his bed. Moving awkwardly, he shifted to see a boy of about thirteen standing by him, grasping in his fist the tube that he’d just ripped from the Prime Minister’s arm.

  “Mitchell!” Coates gasped.

  Eva had never run so hard in her life. She forced her legs to keep moving long after they would have given up, sprinting up the stairs two at a time. Mitchell had deliberately sabotaged the lift to limit the escape options for the NJ7 agents. But after that, Eva hadn’t been able to keep up with him.

  She reached the top floor with the crashing of Mitchell’s attack still echoing through the waiting area. A violent sickness lurched in her chest when she saw the doctor draped backwards over the chair, his eyeballs rolled back into his skull. Eva pulled away, holding her face in her hands, shaking. Then she had to step over the bodies of six NJ7 agents, unconscious but not dead.

  She rushed into the Prime Minister’s room and was caught off guard by yet another horror. The man looked like he had aged a hundred years. His skin was so pale she could almost see the muscles and bones in his face, and his cheeks were heavily pockmarked. His hair had turned from a lush brown to the colour of dust and he was covered in sweat.

  For a few seconds Eva couldn’t help seeing Ian Coates not as the Prime Minister who had done so much to keep Britain in a state of fear, but as the father of her best friend —a friend she missed and feared for more than anybody in the world.

  “He’s going to be fine,” said Mitchell calmly. He was busy punching keys on the machine Coates had been attached to and reading the numbers that came up on the display screen just next to it. “The kill order only came through from Miss Bennett a few minutes ago. The doctor refused to contaminate the drugs, so they…” Mitchell waved his hand in the direction of the hallway. “They needed to find somebody else who could do it, and it looks like that took time. The poison hasn’t got through his system yet.”

  “Poison?” gasped Ian Coates, his head shaking and his eyes rolling about the room. “Miss Bennett?”

  “Prime Minister!” shouted Mitchell. “Can you hear me!”

  “Are we too late?” asked Eva, rushing up to the display screen. “What does all of this mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Mitchell replied straightaway. “I mean…” He hesitated and his face creased with doubt. “I do know, but I don’t, like, know what I know. It just…”

  “It’s OK,” whispered Eva. “I understand.”

  Suddenly the Prime Minister seemed to lurch into life. He grabbed Mitchell’s arm and stared at him, his eyes a dark red. “What’s happening?” he demanded, sounding as if he had a throat full of acid. “What are you doing?”

  “We’re saving your life,” Mitchell replied. He pulled his arm away sharply. “According to this blood work, you were on your way to recovering before they tampered with your drugs tonight. So just keep still, keep your hands off me and you might survive.”

  “Keeping still might be a bit of a problem,” said Eva. She was peering out of the window, not across at the moon-like face of Big Ben, but down at the water. Even on a choppy night like this one, the lines that cut through the waves were obvious. They were the tails of seven speedboats tearing across the Thames from the opposite bank. They were like black sharks, only distinguishable from the water because of their wake catching the light.

  “Get away from the window,” Mitchell ordered. With simple, bold movements he pulled the cords that brought down the Venetian blinds. “Turn out the lights. All the lights. In here, out there and in every room along the whole corridor. Quickly.”

  “If we move now, we can get him out of the hospital,” Eva protested.

  “It’s too late,” replied Mitchell, his voice low and strong. “They know their security has been breached. They’re coming.”

  19 MESSING ABOUT ON THE RIVER

  Jimmy tore through London. He didn’t have time to care about being seen or caught on camera. He just had to run.

  The streets were still far busier than they would usually have been at this time of night. People were wandering about, most of them confused. They had nowhere to direct their anger since Miss Bennett had told them what she wanted them to believe. So their anger was mutating into fear.

  Some people were still shouting at anything and everything in the street. Either they hadn’t heard Miss Bennett’s message, or they didn’t believe it. There was uncertainty on everybody’s faces. Jimmy twisted past two bunches of young men, hassling each other and arguing. The fear and the anger created a bitter, almost violent mix.

  When Jimmy came to Parliament Square, that violence was much closer to the surface. This was where the most serious protestors had come—right outside the Houses of Parliament. Unfortunately, Government supporters had converged there too. People were calling for Miss Bennett now, and many for William Lee. The names merged into one horrible sound. Jimmy had to weave his route carefully to avoid bursts of fighting. Then came the batons of the riot police. Jimmy pressed on, not looking to either side, but wincing at the grunts that punched through the shouts and screams. Each one was another blow that had met its target.

  The face of Big Ben appeared to be deliberately looking away, sickened by the savagery of the people massed in the square. Even the gothic turrets of the Government building seemed to be recoiling in disgust.

  That place is empty, Jimmy thought to himself, picturing the unfortunate members of parliament and civil servants who might have found themselves stuck inside. Powerless, as always. Jimmy wanted to shake every protestor and shout, The people you want are under your feet. That’s where NJ7 was—controlling everything.

  He picked up his pace and made it to Westminster Bridge. It was even busier here than in Parliament Square. Londoners streamed in both directions over the bridge, either to join the protests or to escape them. Jimmy bobbed between them, every now and then catching a glimpse of his destination: St Thomas’ hospital. It looked out over the river, directly opposite the Houses of Parliament. A narrow, tree-lined street and a low wall separated it from the water.

  From here it looked like the place was deserted— every window was dark. What if his father had been moved? Or what if Miss Bennett had already succeeded and the man was dead? Jimmy elbowed his way to the side of the bridge and stopped, leaning over the handrail. His eyes scanned St Thomas’. The lights around the rest of the city had come back on now, so why was the hospital still in total darkness? Surely even if the Prime Minister wasn’t there, the other patients were. No— the place was too dark, Jimmy thought. Something was going on.

  Jimmy felt his muscles tense up. His body had made its decision, but it took a few seconds for his mind to catch up. At last he realised what the assassin in him had seen straightaway: seven shadows cutting through the water, heading across the Thames towards the hospital. Speedboats manned by NJ7 forces—small, black boats with solid hulls and sharp noses.

  The cold air coming off the water bit into Jimmy’s cheeks, but inside he felt a burning urgency. There was no doubt now. Ian Coates was trapped in St Thomas’ Hospital and these soldiers were on their way to kill him. Jimmy didn’t have time to wonder why Miss Bennett was sending so many men, or why the agents already at the hospital weren’t doing the job. That would have to wait. For now, he had no choice.

  Jimmy climbed up on to the handrail effortlessly and crouched, holding on to one of the ornate green lampposts that ran the length of the bridge. At first some of the passers-by gave him funny looks. Those looks turned into shouts when he dived out into the air.

  The screams were left behind on the bridge and were mostly ignored in the confusion of everything else. Meanwhile, Jimmy seemed to hang in the air forever. The sounds of London swirled around him on the wind. He loved the rush of the world through his skin. It came with a wild fantasy: what if he could fly? Nobody would be in his way. There would be no bridge, no river—he
would surge to the top of St Thomas’. I’d be unstoppable, he thought, closing his eyes.

  For a second it felt as if all of his troubles were evaporating. He was weightless, suspended in mid-air, perfectly still, while the universe spun around him. I’d never stop, he heard himself thinking, stretching his arms out over his head. If I could fly, I’d keep going, on and on, away from London, away from Europe, and I’d never come back…

  SMACK.

  The impact of the Thames slapped the fantasy out of his imagination. His hands broke the surface of the water, then his head, then the rest of him plunged into the black, stinking swell. The sudden cold gripped his senses. He couldn’t see anything at first, and the air in his lungs streamed out of his mouth and nose in a flurry of bubbles. In the blackness, Jimmy couldn’t stop the bad memories. He’d been here before.

  When NJ7 had first sent agents to take him from his home, he’d gone on the run, without knowing who the men worked for or how he was able to overpower them again and again. At the time he could never have known what trials were ahead of him, but he remembered the pure fear and how it so quickly flowered into aggression. His powers had been waking up. Now they were stronger than ever and developing all the time.

  Jimmy’s jaw opened automatically and his mouth sucked in a gulp of fetid Thames water. It churned inside him, feeling as if it was filling every corner. However much he hated the bitter flavour, the ice cold sensation in his organs and the queasiness in his stomach, he knew his body was extracting the oxygen. He was breathing water and this was almost the exact spot where he had first done it when he’d jumped from a helicopter without knowing whether he would even be able to swim, let alone breathe.

  He was deep in the water now, skimming the riverbed. It was thick with debris and dying plant life. Jimmy wove through it like a shark through a shipwreck. The slightest twitch of his body propelled him forwards as if he had evolved to travel through water at speed. He surged on, thrilled at his own transformation into a human torpedo. And that was exactly the effect he had when he reached the first speedboat.