Walt swirled the bourbon around the glass. The greenest Manna user could alter his or her appearance easily enough, but they couldn’t hide their Manna use from others with the same ability. He thought about one of the last times he had seen Seb, when he’d realized he was in the presence of someone far more powerful than anyone he had ever encountered. Mason’s servants—what other word was there for them?—had wiped out the Order in Las Vegas, killing Seb’s friend Bob Weller and kidnapping Meera. Seb had met Walt near the scene of the slaughter the next day. Seb had appeared from nowhere. Walt always knew when Manna was nearby, but he’d been taken by surprise when Seb had walked around the corner. And when Seb had got mad and the whole desert floor seemed to shake, he had felt no Manna use at all. Nothing. Which was impossible. He neglected to mention that detail in his report to Mason, worried that his abilities were fading. And when other Users had met Seb and seemingly been able to pick up his Manna signature, he was glad he had said nothing. And when Seb had died, Walt had detected his Manna signature clearly, so he had dismissed his earlier experience as a failure of his own Sensitive ability.
But here was someone who must be Using, changing his appearance and taking on five armed men single-handed before disappearing without a trace. And not a single Manna user had even known he was there. Impossible.
Walt took one more look at the photograph. No doubt about it at all. It was the face from a movie made halfway through the previous century.
Walt considered the evidence. The Manna Seb had absorbed at Roswell had been the holy grail for all Users since 1947. Every significant Manna user on the planet had, at some point in the last seven decades, tried to soak up that Manna. It was the Manna community’s equivalent of the sword in the stone. Walt had tried to access that incredible store of Manna twice. The sensation of incredible power just out of reach had been so frustrating he had wept. But the Roswell Manna had been waiting. Finally, Seb Varden had come along. The only one able to absorb it. And when he had, he’d absorbed all of it. Weeks later, it had died with him. As if it had never been.
Not for the first time, Walt remembered how bravely, how calmly Seb had gone to his death. Undoubtedly the most powerful human in history, sacrificing himself so that Meera could escape. And escape she did, despite Mason’s plans. It was the first time Mason had failed, to Walt’s knowledge. And over a year later, he still hadn’t found her, despite the global reach of his organization.
Seb Varden? Walt watched the photograph gently and slowly tear itself into tiny pieces until they settled into a tiny cloud of dust which, as he stood up, sank unnoticed into the carpet. Are you still out there?
15
Upstate New York
Thirty-four years previously
It was a harder hike to the abandoned mine than Mike Breckland had anticipated, mostly because of the heavy rainfall overnight, which had turned the path his wife had followed into a mudslide. Mike found he could make better progress by getting off what was left of the path, but this meant pushing through branches and bushes. Within ten minutes, he had a good sweat going. He was grateful for the leather gloves Eliza had bought him last birthday.
After twenty-five minutes he stopped, drank some water and looked for marks on the trees ahead. He could make out an X cut into the bark of a tree about fifteen yards ahead. He smiled. He’d married a bright, resourceful woman.
Approaching the mine, he marveled that Eliza had found it at all. From above, the rock walls were so overgrown with lichen and fungi that, coupled with overhanging tree branches, the entrance was all but invisible. He came around in a slow circle, his footsteps slower and more cautious now. If there were any illegal activity going on up here—as unlikely as it seemed—there was no point alerting anyone that he was coming.
When he spotted the gate from about ten yards out, Mike came to a complete stop, waiting and listening for nearly a minute. When he heard nothing, he walked up to the gate and listened again. Just the natural sounds of any forest after rain; the stretching of wood as it dries, the calls of birds enjoying the feast now accessible from the softened earth. Mike examined the freshly oiled hinges and the new padlock on the gate. He smiled. His wife didn’t miss much—there were a good few fellow officers he could name who wouldn’t have noticed the details she had reported.
One last listen changed nothing, so Mike took the bolt cutters out of his backpack, positioned the jaws on the mid-point of the shackle and with one practiced movement, cut through the metal. He replaced the cutters, took out his flashlight and pushed the gate open. The narrow route between the rock walls hardly looked inviting as it descended into blackness.
The forest sounds faded as he walked, replaced by drips of water, following channels cut by rain through the rock over millennia. About thirty yards in, the path took a turn to the left. He looked behind him. The glow of daylight was just visible from the entrance. He’d replaced the batteries in the flashlight before leaving the station. He shook off a brief stab of fear, an echo of an ancient superstition warning humans to stay clear of the unknown. Especially in the dark.
A few steps more and he stopped. The path was blocked. The rocks looked like they’d been there for a hundred years. In fact, that probably wasn’t a bad guess, mused Mike, as small collapses often blocked corridors near the entrances of old mines and this one looked like it had been out of use long before his father was a boy.
He squatted down and thought. Mike Breckland had a logical mind, and although he was sometimes accused of being slow to make a decision, he was never suspected of cutting corners. Although he was keen to get back into the sunlight and fresh air above, there was a puzzle here. Why would someone oil the hinges to get into a mine that was blocked? And why would they buy a padlock to keep anyone else from doing the same? He swallowed some water, chewed gum and worried away at the mystery.
After a few minutes had passed, he could only come up with one possibility: there must be a way through the blockage. He stepped closer and slowly played the powerful beam of the flashlight over the old rocks in front of him. A fine layer of dust covered most, but not all, of them. On one side, some of the dust had been scuffed away, as if someone had climbed them. Mike followed the path with his flashlight until he got to the top. Then he stepped closer, hoisted himself carefully onto the first foothold he could find and examined the rocks closer to the top. On this side of the pile, they were smaller than many of those around them.
Mike reached out a gloved hand and took hold of the rock nearest the ceiling. He pulled slowly and it came away easily. Looking at the rock’s neighbors, he could see they would be fairly easy to remove. He was about to do so, when—unexpectedly, terrifyingly—there was a soft groan from the darkness beyond. Mike slipped down the rubble, landed hard on his side, rolled, unholstered his gun and pointed it alongside the flashlight. He was glad no one else was there to witness the way his hand was shaking.
“What the hell?” he whispered, then raised his voice. “Police officers. Who’s there?”
His voice echoed into nothingness and absolute silence descended once more, all the more unnerving after the single sound he had heard. Or had he heard it? Could he have spooked himself so badly he was imagining things? Hardly. Mike was many things, but wildly imaginative was not one of them.
“Answer me,” he called, and waited. The groan, when it came again, was softer, barely more than a ragged exhalation. It sounded like someone in pain.
Mike holstered his weapon. He could manage the flashlight or the gun while climbing, but not both. There was no way he was going over that pile of rocks in the dark.
He pulled the rocks away quickly now. Whoever or whatever was beyond knew he was coming, and didn’t sound in any kind of condition to prove a threat.
When he had cleared all of the loose rocks away, there still wasn’t space to crawl through and Mike had no intention of getting wedged underground. He looked at the gap. A child could have gotten through, maybe. He remembered Eliza’s concern about
the boy. He was beginning to think she had been right to be worried, just maybe not in the way she had thought.
Quickly scrambling back down, he took the bolt cutters from the backpack. The rocks below the loose ones would not be so easy to move. A few blows from the cutters dislodged a fairly substantial piece of stone, which Mike managed to prize out and send tumbling down behind him. The rocks around it were freer now, and half a minute’s work left a gap big enough to get through. Mike took a breath and crawled forward into the darkness.
The slope on the other side was steeper and Mike cursed as he slipped and slid down to the floor. He felt his pants tear on his left leg and his right shoulder took most of the impact when he landed. He was winded for a moment and crouched until he could catch his breath.
The flashlight had rolled away a few yards. Mike followed the beam and tried to make sense of what he was looking at. Blood was dripping slowly onto the rock floor a few yards ahead. He stood up, grabbed the flashlight and aimed the beam upward. The blood was coming from the end of a leg. The foot was missing—from the look of the stump, it had been sawn off with a serrated knife. Mike had seen similar injuries before. There was an amateur-looking tourniquet tied tightly above the severed foot to staunch the blood loss. The other foot was also missing, but the injury was older, maybe a few days. Both hands had been removed.
Mike took a step forward. He gasped as he stood on something and stumbled. The flashlight revealed one of the missing hands. Two of the fingers had been gnawed to the bone—Mike guessed his appearance must have scared away the rats responsible. The other missing limbs were in a similar condition. He swallowed hard and took a couple of deep breaths before moving forward again and shining the light onto the victim’s face.
Mike had no way of recognizing the man propped against a pile of rocks in the corner. His face was so badly beaten, it was just a mass of swelling and livid blue, black, green and yellow bruises. He was breathing, but the breaths were shallow and irregular. Mike put two fingers on his neck. A faint pulse, but weak.
“I’m going to get help, ok? I’m a police officer. Just hold on, we’ll get you out of here real soon.”
At first, it seemed the man was too far gone to be able to respond, but as Mike turned to go, he spoke, although the words were too faint to hear. Mike went back and leaned in, putting one ear close to the cracked, blood-caked lips.
“Sir? What did you say?”
There was a pause while the man took a few more shuddering breaths. Then he raised his head slightly and spoke again, the words almost too soft to hear.
“Never thought the boy had it in him.” Then his head fell forward onto his chest.
Mike scrambled back over the rock pile. At the top, he turned.
“I’m leaving my flashlight for you. I’ll be right back when I’ve radioed in for help.” As Mike ran back up to the entrance, taking out his radio and, waiting for enough signal to call in, he wondered why the man hadn’t tried to escape, as terrible as his injuries were. Then he remembered the angle of the man’s legs as he sat awkwardly on the heap of rocks in the corner. Both knees had been smashed.
Eliza Breckland’s class was reading Catcher In The Rye. A bit of a stretch for some of them perhaps, and she’d had to deal with a few nervous giggles initially at the frequent use of the word ‘crap’, but she knew the novel would grab them after the first couple of lessons. Eliza’s English Literature teaching method had been tested over many years. She simply had a student read a section aloud, then another, then another. Everyone had to do it. She knew this risked exposing the slower readers to ridicule from their peers, but her own attitude to those who struggled was so supportive and encouraging, it shamed those who might be unkind. That approach wouldn’t have worked with every teacher, but Eliza was so well-liked that she rarely had to raise her voice. A disappointed look from Mrs. Breckland was worse than the slap they might get at home. A smile from her felt like winning a prize.
Amy—the girl currently reading—had a beautifully expressive voice, and Eliza closed her eyes, feeling that magic sensation as she felt the class come together as a whole, wrapped up in Holden Caulfield’s adventures, allowing themselves to fall under the spell of a master storyteller. So when that spell was abruptly broken, she was initially reluctant to rejoin the real world. Moments like that were rare in a teaching career and she felt a sense of loss as she looked at Amy, her finger on the page where she’d stopped, her mouth hanging open.
“What’s the matter?” she said, then she followed the direction of Amy’s gaze. Through the long low window at the side of the classroom she saw Mike. He was standing in the corridor, waiting patiently to catch her attention. He still looks good in that police uniform, even if he has put on a few pounds. Eliza was about to smile when she saw the expression on his face. And the color of his skin. He looked paler than she’d ever seen him. And, when she finally met his eye, she knew immediately that whatever he’d come to tell her wouldn’t be something she wanted to hear.
“Sit down, Amy,” she said. “Silent reading to the end of the chapter, everyone.” She went outside, closing the door quietly behind her. As she did so, Mike’s radio crackled into life. He held up a hand and walked away a few paces, his voice quiet and urgent.
“Oh, Jesus,” he muttered. He didn’t immediately come back to her, so she walked over to him. He looked up as she approached. His eyes were sympathetic, but his mouth was drawn into a thin, hard line.
“I went up there,” he said. “You were right to be worried. Found the boy’s father in a critical condition.”
“His father?” she said, taking a quick glance back at the classroom. The boy’s head was tilted toward the book, but his eyes were shut tight. “How bad are his injuries? What happened?” She gestured toward the classroom. “Do you want me to tell him? Or is that something you need to do? Might be better if I’m here, he knows me.”
Eliza turned and started to go back to the classroom, but Mike gently took hold of her elbow.
“Eliza,” he said. She stopped. Turned. Looked at him.
“What is it?” she said.
“You followed him up there. Think about it for a second.”
Eliza hesitated. Mike was looking at her strangely—a mix of love and pity. She realized he was struggling to find the right words. Finally, he settled for the unadorned truth, although his voice stayed gentle.
“He did it,” Mike said simply, nodding toward the classroom.
“But he couldn’t-.” She stopped. Remembered the incident with Davy Johanssen. “He wouldn’t.” She tried to take another step, but Mike gently pulled her back.
“His own father said he did. He had been tortured. I’m sorry, Liza.” He waited, looking at her. Dimly, as if from a great distance, she was aware of noise from the classroom.
Her eyes filled with tears and she swallowed. She knew Mike too well.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?”
Mike rubbed her upper arm as she hugged herself, feeling suddenly cold. The noise from behind her grew in intensity and she started to turn.
“I just had an update. He died before we could get him to a hospital, Liza. I have to bring the boy in on homicide charges. The mother is being notified. I need to take him now.”
Suddenly, the door of the classroom was flung open and a group of pupils rushed out, talking over themselves in their rush to get to her.
“Mrs. Bre—,”
“He’s collaps—,”
“Get a doctor—,”
“He’s bleeding, I think he knocked h—,”
Eliza rushed in, closely followed by Mike. There was a huddle of children at the back of the class. They cleared a path for her. One girl was trying to cradle the head of her most promising student. The suspected murderer. While Mike called 911, Eliza bent down and held the hand of the thin, pale, gifted boy as his body jerked uncontrollably, his lips drawn back from his teeth, a mixture of froth and blood running from the corner of his mouth.
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16
New York
Present Day
“Scrooge?” said Seb2 as Seb watched fire trucks scream up the hill toward the fiery beacon that used to be Cubby Vashtar’s house.
“I couldn’t think of anything else,” thought Seb. “Anyway, it worked, didn’t it?”
“It worked,” said Seb2. “The look on his face when he couldn’t shoot you…”
“I know,” thought Seb. “Brilliant. Mee’s gonna love hearing about it.”
He turned away from the conflagration and Walked, appearing in the hallway of their Mexico City apartment. He could appear anywhere he liked, of course, but after Mee had screamed and dropped whatever she was holding the first few times, they agreed it would be better if he gave her a little more warning.
“I’m home,” he said. The TV was still on in the other room. “Mee?”
“In here,” she said.
Seb walked through. Mee was sitting on the couch, hugging her knees. Seb could see she’d been crying. He knelt down beside her and kissed her neck.
“What’s up?” he said. She didn’t say anything at first, then motioned toward the TV. Seb twisted to look at the screen. It was the New York apartment building, the fire now finally out. All the windows had exploded during the blaze and there were black streaks on the walls. A reporter was speaking, but Seb’s attention was caught by the headline at the bottom of the screen: Single mom and four children die in apartment fire.
Seb didn’t know what to say. He reviewed the last few hours in his mind. He felt as if he was suddenly caught up in someone else’s nightmare.
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 46
