by Kim Curran
He went bright red and breathed out of his nostrils, like a bull ready to attack. This was not the fight he had been expecting.
“Jack Glenn, as empowered by ARES I hereby charge you with–” He didn’t let me finish.
He charged, clearing the space between us in two long strides. He was so fast I had to Shift in order to flip over his back and out of the way, and he went crashing into the fence behind me.
The crowd booed their dissatisfaction. They’d paid to see men beat each other into a bloody pulp, not jump around.
Glenn pushed himself away from the fence and roared at the crowd to shut up, before turning back to me.
Now he knew what he was up against, he was going to be more cautious. He raised both fists under his chin and came at me, bouncing left and right, his head twitching as he watched for any coming attacks.
He faked low and punched high. I blocked the blow aimed for my left cheek and countered with a punch to his throat. I was a good Shifter. Maybe a great one, if the rumours I heard at ARES were to believed. But I was also a bit handy when it came to martial arts. A black belt in kickboxing, not to mention a year of training at ARES. Bonecrusher was finally going to get a fair fight.
Glenn choked, unable to breathe, yet still managed to flail at me, trying to grapple me around the head. I easily spun out of the way and finished with a back kick to his thigh that drove him down onto one knee. He must have become so used to going up against drunks and washed-up fighters he’d forgotten the basics. Well, I was about to give him a refresher course.
He stood up, clutching at his throat and dragging his back foot slightly. I saw him clench his jaw trying to fight back the pain. I’d give him one thing: he wasn’t a quitter.
Glenn came at me again, throwing out rapid-fire jabs. I only just managed to dodge the blows as his anvil fists brushed the hair on the side of my head.
I didn’t see the sidekick and for a moment all I knew was white-hot pain exploding from my knee. I managed to focus enough to Shift and the pain vanished. This time I managed to grab his foot before it connected. I held it as Glenn and I looked at each other. His eyes begged me to let him go. But the echo of the pain tingled like an image afterburn and I wasn’t in a forgiving mood. I twisted his foot. He went spinning around and landed heavily on the floor.
“Just give up,” I said. “This is one fight you’re not going to win.”
The crowd started to cheer again, but I couldn’t work out what they were saying. Even if I managed to persuade Glenn to come with me, I might have them to contend with. I looked out of the cage, trying to find Aubrey to check she was OK. I found her jumping up and down, shadow boxing and looking like she was having a great time. Alright for some, I thought.
I didn’t see Glenn get to his feet and before I knew it, he’d grabbed me in a headlock and was squeezing hard. I thought about Shifting, then decided I wanted to settle this the old-fashioned way. I pressed against his face with my left hand, while punching his knee with my right. Sergeant Cain had called that move the “back breaker”. Glenn cried out and let go. He staggered back, gasping for breath, his face now the colour of beetroot. Time to end this. I aimed a punch straight for his groin. I wasn’t that old-fashioned.
He doubled over, making little gurgling noises. I spun on my back heel, flipping my foot around in a roundhouse, which connected with his jaw. Spittle and blood sprayed across the floor of the cage as Bonecrusher toppled.
The crowd went suddenly silent. Men who had bet sure money on me going down in five seconds now stared open mouthed, dirty bank notes clutched in their hands. I wondered if they would all turn on me, pissed that I’d lost them money. But slowly they started to clap and then cheer and finally whoop.
The dwarf reached for his microphone again. “Unbelievable! A first time contender takes down Bonecrusher in...” he checked his watch. “In one minute and thirty six seconds. Let’s hear it for the electrifying… Pylon!”
The cheers grew louder and a chanted started up.
“Pylon. Pylon. Pylon.”
I raised my hands in victory and turned in circles.
“Hey, Rocky,” Aubrey shouted up. I snapped out of my reverie to see her pointing behind me. I turned to see Glenn making a swift exit out of the cage and through the crowd.
I chased after him, but my way was blocked by people patting me on the back and trying to shake my hand.
“You got something, kid. You could make some big money. Stick with me and I’ll see you right,” the dwarf shouted, his cigar bouncing around between his clenched teeth.
“Where did he go?” I said, trying to see over the press of people.
“What? Bonecrusher? Forget about him. You’re my new kid now.”
I pushed the dwarf away so hard he went toppling off his crate and into the crowd below. I shouted at people to get out of my way and elbowed them aside. When I finally broke free of the audience, I saw the back door swing closed.
I slammed the doors open and looked left and right. I just caught sight of Glenn cutting down an alleyway that ran from the canal back towards the city centre. I chased after him, instantly feeling the cold night air on my bare chest.
I turned into the alley and was hit in the face with a green wheelie bin. I staggered back, unable to see for the pinpoints of lights dancing before my eyes. I shook my head.
Glenn slammed the bin at me a second time, knocking me off my feet. He turned and leaped to grab hold of a wall at the end of the alley. He chin-lifted himself over it effortlessly.
I clambered back onto my feet and shoved the bin out of the way with a growl. Glenn was going to pay for that. I raced at the wall and seconds before slamming into it, I leapt, planting one foot on the wall to the left, springing off it, and grabbing hold of the wall in front of me. It was a neat free-running move I’d been practising for months and this was the first time I’d pulled it off without needing to Shift my way out of head-butting brick. It still needed work though. I had the most tenuous of grips on the wall and had to scrabble with my feet to get purchase. Finally, I managed to pull myself up, and swung over.
I landed heavily on the other side, the shock sending tingles of pain up my shins. Glenn was waiting. He smiled as if he was actually impressed.
“Well, well, looks like you’re one of ARES’ finest. I’m honoured. But what does the old agency want with me now?”
“You know full well what they want,” I said, straightening up. “We’re shutting down Project Ganymede, once and for all.”
Glenn nodded as if that was a perfectly reasonable request. Then he got that glazed expression I knew only too well. He was trying to Shift: trying to change some choice he’d made along the way that brought him here, change the reality he found himself in by undoing his choices. Only that wasn’t going to happen.
I sighed before I said it. It was becoming a bit of a cliché. “Are you going to come quietly?”
He looked to his left where the road led to a busy street and then to his right where it led to a warren of council flats. He was breathing hard, whereas I had hardly built up a sweat. He knew he couldn’t outrun me. There was only one thing for it. He was going to fight.
He reached down, hiked up his trouser leg, and pulled out a large, jagged knife from a calf sheath: all black blade and holes bored out for extra lightness. Military issue, I knew. I’d come up against one of these three months ago when we were tracking down number five. That guy had not gone quietly at all. In fact, he’d gone very loudly. And I had a nasty scar on my upper arm to prove it. It could have been worse. It had been worse. In another version of reality number five stabbed me in the stomach. I still remember looking down to see my intestines falling out of the gash in my stomach, before I Shifted to safety.
But this time I was ready.
Glenn flipped his knife around in his left hand so it still pointed forwards as he raised his fists. He slid one foot behind him and bent his legs.
“Oh, come on!” I said. “Do we really
have to go through with this? You know you can’t win.”
“I’m not going down to a jumped up little runt like you,” Glenn panted. He jabbed out with the knife. I stepped back and watched it slice past my chest.
It was a clumsy move, made by a man who’d become so reliant on his Shifting power that he probably didn’t even bother trying any more. Whereas I tried not to take it for granted. I knew the power would fade in a matter of years when entropy set in. It’s why I trained so damn hard.
I stopped the blade as it came in for a second swipe with an upward block, then punched with my left, sending Glenn’s head snapping back. Like the blades of scissors I caught his arm between mine and twisted. There was a satisfying crunch and he screamed, dropping his knife to the floor. I kicked out, the side of my foot connecting just below his knee, and it bent back on itself at an unnatural angle. Dislocated but not broken, I reckoned. I swiped his other foot away and he crumpled to the floor like a coal stack being demolished. He rocked on the floor, sobbing and cradling his arm, but I didn’t have much sympathy.
“I’m cold and tired and you made me wait for hours in the rain,” I said, as much to myself as him, as I knelt down and rolled him on to his side and into a puddle. “And you had to go and pull a knife, didn’t you?” He groaned as I pulled his injured arm back, pinning his two wrists together. “Why didn’t you just come quietly? Number four did.”
The hunt for the remaining adult Shifters hadn’t let up in months, with the new boss breathing down our necks demanding results – and giving us a good shouting even when we’d got them – and the Government breathing down his neck and watching every little thing that went on at the agency. It was exhausting. So when I found number four and he invited me in for a cup of tea before coming into ARES without a fight, it had made a refreshing change.
“Why can’t you all be like number four?” I said.
Aubrey appeared around the corner.
“About time!” I said, pressing my knee further into Glenn’s back. He made a gurgling noise as his mouth was pushed deeper into the puddle.
“I couldn’t find a way around. Besides, I knew you’d be OK on your own.”
She clearly hadn’t seen me being smacked in the face by the bin. But she was right. I had managed on my own. The first few times I’d gone up against an adult Shifter had not gone this smoothly. I’d still been a bit of a mess after what had happened at Greyfield’s; haunted by what had been done to me and what I’d done in return. Aubrey had told me to try and forget it and throw myself into the job. It had worked. I’d managed to go a whole week without having a flashback from that night. I was still having nightmares though. They weren’t going anywhere.
Aubrey passed me her cuffs and together we slapped them on Glenn’s wrists.
He struggled for a moment, spitting swearwords and insults in our direction, then went loose and stopped struggling. I rolled him onto his back and he smiled up at the grey clouds overhead.
The cuffs were designed to stop anyone from Shifting, by sending a disruptive current through the body and stopping the brain from focusing. Only we’d modified them a little in our hunt for the members of the project. Now they also made the wearer a bit more compliant.
Aubrey looked down at his twisted leg. “Did you have to?”
“He had a knife, Aubrey. A really big knife.”
She rolled her eyes at me, threw me my clothes, and knelt down next to him. As I pulled my T-shirt and jacket back on, Aubrey rested one hand on his calf and the other behind his knee. There was a loud, comic pop, like someone pulling their finger out of their mouth, and his leg was straight again.
He let out a muffled cry, like someone being woken from a dream, then returned to staring dully ahead.
Between us, we hauled him to his feet and pushed him forward.
“Come on, Pylon. Let’s get him in the van.”
“About this nickname,” I said as we half-carried, half-dragged Glenn down the street. “I’m not sure I like it. I mean, other people call each other Bunnykins or Peanut or Studmuffin. But the Pylon?”
“Well, look at you. You’re tall and all spiky. I think the Pylon is perfect.”
We directed Glenn all the way back along the canal, past the boat yard, and to the pub where we’d found him.
The ARES van was still waiting for us. Only someone had taken the time to scratch their name into the black paintwork with a key. Brilliant. Just what I needed. The Regulators would go mental when they saw that.
I kicked the bumper in frustration and it fell off.
“Why don’t we get special issue vehicles? You know, with titanium armour and run on flat tyres. All that fancy military spec stuff?”
“With ejector seats and smoke bombs?” Aubrey said.
“Sure, why not? We’re spies, aren’t we?”
“We are most definitely not spies, Scott.”
“Well, secret agents then. No arguing on that. So, where are all our cool toys?”
Aubrey smiled and shook her head. “Budget cuts.”
“Budget cuts?”
“Yeah, and when you don’t officially have a budget, because you don’t officially exist, then it makes it harder to complain. What do you want us to do? Go on strike?”
Aubrey slid open the door and we bundled Glenn inside. He curled up in a corner and started to snore happily. We slammed the door closed.
“So that’s seven down,” Aubrey said, with a happy sigh.
“And only one left to go.”
I hoped number eight wouldn’t give us any trouble.
CHAPTER THREE
“I’m driving!” Aubrey shouted, grinning at me.
“Oh, come on!” I moaned, opening the passenger door. “You drove on the way here.”
“And wasn’t it a lovely drive?”
“You almost got us killed. Three times.” I held up three fingers to emphasise my point.
“Stop complaining and get in.”
I hopped up onto the seat as Aubrey fired up the engine. She’d stepped on the pedal before I’d even shut the door.
Aubrey drove like a lunatic, cutting between lanes like a skier doing the slalom. After all, if anything went wrong – and it did, all the time – she’d just Shift. I think she did it in part just to scare me and in part because it was one of the few times now that she didn’t have to obey anyone’s rules. Everything had changed at ARES in the past few months. After everything went down at Greyfield’s, the Government had been informed and now the agency reported directly to the Ministry of Defence. Everything we did was watched, monitored, measured. One toe out of line and the new boss came down on us hard. There were security systems as backup to the security systems and more paperwork than ever before. Aubrey threatened to quit on an almost daily basis. But the truth was, it was even worse for Shifters not in the Agency. Now, anytime someone wanted to Shift, they had to apply, in person, and provide evidence of why their Shift would lead to a better world. Ad verum via, as the motto stitched in gold thread on our new, too-stiff uniforms said. Towards the true way.
That had been Mr Abbott’s dream too. A man I once believed was my friend. But who I learned was nothing but a power-crazed maniac who was willing to do anything to bring about his vision of the true way. Six months ago, I’d stood outside a burning hospital watching his dreams turn to dust while he was trapped inside screaming my name.
I shuddered at the memory.
“Please slow down!” I shouted over the sound of a car blaring its horn.
“We’re still miles away and I’m hungry,” she said, changing into fifth gear. “And once we get this guy back, we still have to type everything up.”
“If we get this guy back,” I said, closing my eyes as Aubrey squeezed between two trucks.
I knew there was nothing to worry about. Not really. Aubrey was one of the best Shifters in the Agency and we were in no real danger. But every time I heard the screech of brakes from a truck next to us, it brought back a memory I’d been
trying to forget for almost a year: the night I’d got my little sister killed in a car crash. I’d managed to Shift to a new reality where she was alive again. But the image of her crushed body was yet another of the images that came back to haunt me at nights.
“Please, Aubrey. Just a little slower,” I said, resting my hand over hers on the gear stick.
She side-eyed me, as if working out if I was joking or not, and then let up on the accelerator pedal.
“Besides,” I said. “I’m in no rush to get back to HQ. Not with everyone panicking about the big visit tomorrow.”
“Gee, I can hardly wait,” Aubrey said. “The Prime Minister coming to have a good old nose about the place. Just to make sure we’re all behaving. Gah, that place!” Aubrey slammed the steering wheel with the palms of her hands, causing the van to swerve wildly. “Once we bring in the last of the Ganymede guys, I swear, I’m quitting.”
“You said that after number two,” I said.
Number two was a quietly spoken man who’d sobbed after we told him how he’d been given his power back, and then tried to strangle Aubrey.
“Yeah, and after number three,” Aubrey said.
Number three worked on the trading floor of the London Stock Exchange, where he’d been using his power to play the market and make a packet. He’d not come quietly either. Number four was the only one who had. A lovely guy, working as a caretaker in a graveyard. He’d said being around the dead made him feel safe. “They were dead when I got here. So there’s absolutely nothing I can do to change that.”
It was number four who’d given us the names of the remaining members of the project. And we’d tracked them all down apart from the very last one. So far, we knew absolutely nothing about him apart from his name: Frank Anderson.
“But this time I mean it, Scott. I’m quitting. If only to see the look on Sir Richard’s face.”
