Will had moved up to the wall of force and now he kicked at it, keeping his gun trained on me. “Not your problem, is it?”
“Is that the only thing you care about?” I said. “Killing me?”
Will shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you? This isn’t about you. This is about every adept who’s ever been fucked over by a mage who wanted something. You’re not the only mage we’re going after. You’re just one more name on the list.”
“And this is how you’re planning to work your way down it? Killing everyone one by one?”
Will shrugged. “It’s all you mages listen to, right? Anyway, it works.”
“No, it doesn’t! Using violence to solve all your problems just means you end up with bigger problems that’ll multiply faster than you can deal with them. Let me put this in terms you’ll understand. You will run out of bullets”—I pointed down at the spent ammo at Will’s feet—“and out of people”—I pointed at Captain America and the Chinese kid—“before you run out of problems.”
Will didn’t even look at me. “I figured you’d say something like that.”
“Rachel’s the next one on your list, isn’t she?”
Captain America glanced at Will. Will stepped back from the wall without answering. “You’ll lose,” I said.
“We beat you,” Will said.
I pointed at the Chinese kid. “You. Your name’s Lee, right?”
The Chinese kid—Lee—drew back a little. He’d been standing well back and looked like he’d been trying to avoid attention. “Uh . . .”
“You found me for Will, right?” I said. “So I guess he’ll be using you to keep looking for me, and then for Rachel too. Well, Rachel is stronger than me. Much stronger, and that’s not counting the guy she hangs out with. If you’re having this much trouble with me, how the hell do you think you can beat her?”
Lee looked around. Captain America gave him a nod. “We’ll be stronger by then,” Lee said. “We’ll have had more practice.”
I threw up my hands. “Jesus Christ, you think you’re playing a computer game! Killing someone does not make you level up! All it gets you is nightmares for the rest of your life and the never-ending hatred of everybody who ever cared about the person you murdered!”
My voice had risen to a shout, and both Lee and Captain America stood staring at me; without looking I knew Anne had turned to do the same. I stood balancing on the train, the wheels rumbling beneath my feet. The futures of Lee and Captain America flickered, shifting. Will’s didn’t, and his eyes stayed steady. “They said you were good at talking your way out of things,” he said. “Not going to work this time.”
I felt Lee and Captain America’s futures waver and then fall into line to match Will’s. I wanted to swear, wanted to keep shouting, but my precognition was starting to sound a warning and I knew we were out of time. “Anne,” I said. “Go. Get down.”
Anne turned and ran, crossing the gap from the fourth to the third carriage with a running jump. I gave Will’s group a last glance and followed, putting a little extra speed into the leap to make sure I cleared it. Up ahead I could see a dark wall with streetlights running along the top of it, and the tracks ran into a black circle. We’d had a long run in the open but London’s a built-up place, and every railway line in the city goes underground sooner or later. In this case sooner or later meant now. As soon as I’d made it onto the third car I dropped and craned my neck back to look.
Will, Lee, and Captain America were staring at us through the forcewall, watching the tunnel entrance draw nearer. I wasn’t close enough to see their expressions but I saw the jolt go through Captain America as he figured it out, and as the tunnel mouth swept over us he yelled a warning and turned to run. Lee followed; Will stayed a little too long and had only just started to sprint away as the fourth carriage passed into the tunnel, and through the shrinking window of the tunnel mouth I had one last glimpse of their backs before the forcewall hit the top of the tunnel and physics took over.
I didn’t get much of a view of what happened next. It was all very fast and my attention was focused on hanging on. Looking back on it with the benefit of hindsight and having read the accident reports, what I think happened was this.
The forcewall hit the brickwork at the top of the tunnel and, just as it had with the bullets, the forcewall tried to transfer the momentum of the impact down into the freight car. The forcewalls I use are powerful by one-shot standards but there’s a certain maximum amount of momentum they can transfer. This doesn’t matter in normal situations because there’s no way a normal human can break the wall’s limits. The momentum in the sixty-thousand-pound freight car fell well outside the wall’s limits. The wall resisted for a fraction of a second, then vanished as the energy stored in the discs ran out.
But in that fraction of a second the wall transferred enough momentum to put a major dent in the freight car’s velocity, and all of a sudden the fourth car was moving at a different speed from the rest of the train. The freight car wasn’t harmed, at least not directly—the discs spread the momentum through a large enough volume that the car got away with only minor buckling. The coupling between the third and fourth cars didn’t do so well. It had been designed to withstand gradual stress, not instant stress, and it snapped, separating the first three cars and the engine from the rest of the train and sending a massive jolt through the metal.
The coupling between the fourth and fifth cars had a different problem: instead of being stretched, it was suddenly and violently compressed. The buffers absorbed some of the impact but the rest was transferred into the cars. Something had to give, and the back wheels of the fourth carriage went off the track, followed by the front wheels of the fifth carriage as the two freight cars jack-knifed into the side and mouth of the tunnel.
The rest of the train ploughed into the now-derailed carriages at full speed.
From my point of view I just heard a massive grinding, booming crash, something like a gigantic set of dinner plates being thrown down a staircase, and I felt a shudder through the wheels and metal of the train. Dust and debris went flying, along with shattered bricks from the tunnel mouth. And then just that quickly it was over, and the carriages kept rolling, carrying us away down the tunnel. Anne and I were left in the darkness, riding the back end of the suddenly much shorter train.
With the roar of the train there was no way to talk, and the tunnel made it too risky to move, so I lay flat and waited for the train to stop. After only a couple of minutes I felt the pressure as the train engaged its brakes and began decelerating, slower and slower. It came to a halt with a final screech of metal and a moment later I heard the engine door open up ahead. I knew the driver would be coming down on the right and I reached up to touch Anne, signalling for her to descend on the left. We climbed down the carriage, slipped by the driver as he hurried past on the other side, and started walking towards the fuzzy grey patch that marked the end of the tunnel ahead.
By the time we came out into the open we could hear distant sirens, but the section of track we were on was empty. We walked along the lines until we found an exit and climbed up and out to street level. No one followed.
chapter 8
By the time Anne and I cleared the area the sirens had converged behind us. We took a looping course around, heading back towards Camden Town as more and more emergency vehicles arrived. My phone was under half a ton of rubble in my bedroom but Anne had managed to keep hold of hers, and as we walked back through the empty streets the first thing we did was check what had happened to Luna and Variam. Anne’s first call didn’t get an answer, nor her second, nor her fifth, but as we crossed Chalk Farm her phone beeped. Anne read the message and gave a sigh of relief. “They’re okay.”
“Both of them?”
“Both of them.”
I relaxed a little. Putting Anne in danger had been bad enough. If Luna and Vari had been hu
rt . . . “Can you call them?”
Anne shook her head. “They’re busy with the police. It . . . didn’t sound like they were going to get away soon.”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “Bomb going off in Central London. Right.” Now I was going to have the antiterror divisions of the Metropolitan Police and MI5 crawling over my flat. This was going to be a major headache.
“Is it going to be a problem?”
“I can probably call in some favours and get it settled, but I’m going to have to stay away from the shop for a while. Getting dragged into a police station with Will’s lot out there would be bad.” I nodded at a side street. “This way.”
We crossed the street. “Will Luna and Vari be okay?” Anne asked.
“Believe it or not, I’ve actually drilled Luna on this.” My contingency plans had been for something more along the lines of a fireball than a high explosive, but still. “She knows what to do, and she and Vari haven’t done anything illegal lately as far as I know. They should be fine.”
“Okay. That’s good.” Anne looked around. “Ah, where are we going?”
“I’ve done enough running around in bare feet for one night,” I said. “I’m going to get some shoes.”
* * *
The Morrisons supermarket in Camden Town is a huge white building sandwiched between railway lines, and it’s so big it has its own roundabout and bus stops. By the time we got there the sky was lightening in the east, and I spent a few seconds checking for watchers before we slipped onto the grounds and to the outbuilding beyond the car park. The door to the outbuilding was locked; I took a key from a hidden location behind a ventilator and let us in.
The inside was dark and filled with the hum of machinery. I led Anne through the pipes and generators to a locker in the corner of the room labelled HAZARDOUS WASTE DO NOT TOUCH. It had a combination lock, which I opened and handed to Anne. “Hang on to this a sec.”
Anne watched curiously as I pulled out a big gym bag. “You hide that here?”
“Nobody comes here except the maintenance guys,” I said, unzipping the bag. I pulled out a pair of shoes and some socks and started putting them on.
“What’s inside?”
“Shoes, a coat, two full changes of clothes, shaving kit, and a towel,” I said, tying my laces. “Plus loose cash, a prepaid credit card, a knife, a multitool, spare keys, a first-aid kit, a phone, rope, cleaning supplies . . .”
“Why do you have all of this here and not at your flat?”
“In case I can’t go to my flat.” I grabbed the knife, phone, and cash, slung the bag back into the locker, and relocked it. “Let’s go before this place starts waking up.”
* * *
“An annuller?” Anne said in puzzlement, looking at the white arch.
We were in the old gym in Islington. It’s Council property, and I’d managed to talk my way past the sleepy watchman on the door and up to the duelling hall. The azimuth focuses at either end of the duelling pistes were old, but the annuller was new; they’d installed it recently. “Yeah,” I said, putting my fingers to the arch. This one was made out of what felt like carbon rather than stone; it must be one of the new models.
“You’re worried about a spell?” Anne asked.
“Not exactly.” The material was different but the design was familiar, and it took me only a few seconds to confirm that I knew how to work it. I focused my will into the item, letting it charge. “Something that’s been bugging me for a while is how those guys keep finding me. It’s been years since I’ve been to that casino, but they seemed to know exactly where I was.”
Anne thought about it. “Do you think they followed you?”
I shook my head. “I think it’s something to do with that Chinese kid, Lee. Remember what he said on the train? He knew you were in the living room.”
“That’s true.” Anne frowned. “And he couldn’t have seen me through the windows . . . Do you think that’s the kind of magic he can use? Some sort of seeking?”
“That’s my guess. He was the first one to show up back on Friday night. I think Will’s using him to find me.”
The annuller hummed briefly and then came to life, a pale silvery glow hanging in the archway. “You too,” I told Anne.
Anne nodded and moved next to me. We stepped through the archway at the same time and there was a silvery flash, followed by a moment of vertigo that passed quickly. Looking around, I saw that the archway was dark again.
Anne shivered slightly. “That always feels weird. Like I’m in the wrong place.”
“I know what you mean.” There were some chairs along the wall, and I dropped into one with a sigh. “Well, if it was a standard tracer that should have broken it.” All of a sudden I felt completely exhausted. I’d had only a few hours of sleep and I’d been running on adrenaline ever since the attack. Now the aftereffects had set in and I just wanted to collapse.
“I could wake you up,” Anne offered.
“Thanks, but no. I’d just have to pay for it later.” I looked at her. “Thanks for what you did tonight. I’m not sure I would have made it on my own.”
Anne smiled and we sat for a little while in silence. The gym was quiet and empty, and from outside the morning sun was sending shafts of sunlight through the windows above, motes of dust hanging visible in the air. All around us the rumble of traffic and voices was starting to grow to a gentle swell, the steady rustle of London waking up for another summer’s day. It felt peaceful and calm. “Can you talk to me about something?” I said. “Otherwise I’m going to fall asleep here.”
“Well, I was going to ask,” Anne said. “Are we safe here?”
“Right,” I said with a sigh. “That.” Nothing like the prospect of violent death to keep you awake. “It depends on whether the annuller broke their tracking ability. If it did, they’ll have to figure out a new way to pick us up.”
“Actually, what I meant was whether you know we’re safe here,” Anne said. “With your magic.”
“I’ve been looking nonstop since we left the train,” I said. “I haven’t seen any sign of them finding us here but that doesn’t mean they can’t find us, it just means they’re not doing it right now. If some of them were hurt in that crash they’ve probably pulled back to regroup.”
“Do you think they’re okay?”
I shook my head. “Anne, I swear, only you would worry about something like that.”
Anne was silent. “I’m not sure,” I said. “I think they got off the carriage before it hit.”
“What if they didn’t?”
“I don’t know.”
“Alex?” Anne said. She was looking at me with those odd reddish eyes of hers. “What you said on the train, about killing someone? Did you mean it?”
I looked off into the corner of the gym. “Yes.”
Anne sat quietly. I knew she was deciding what to ask next and the question I was afraid of was how many. Somehow I knew that no matter how I answered, it wouldn’t lead to anything good.
“You feel like you’re on the same side as people like Will, don’t you?” Anne said.
I looked at Anne in surprise, then nodded. “Pretty much. You know what’s really screwed up about all this? If Will’s lot had just come into my shop asking for help defending themselves against Dark mages, I’d probably have said yes.” I sighed. “And Will might be trying to kill me, but a lot of what he’s saying is right. Mages do treat adepts badly. And if I were his age and in his position, I’m not a hundred percent sure I’d be doing anything different.”
“What about now?”
I shrugged. “When you’re twenty you’re all about action. You want to change things. If you make it to thirty you learn about consequences. Will’s lot haven’t learnt that yet. But then the reason they’re after me is because of the crap I did when I was twenty . . .” I raked my hand through my hair. �
�Damn it. I don’t know what to do.”
“There has to be some way,” Anne said.
“Right now I don’t know what it is,” I said. “Will’s lot might be stupid and they might not care about consequences, but that doesn’t make them less dangerous; it makes them more dangerous. And as long as they’re together I don’t think I can beat them.”
“You’re not on your own, though,” Anne said. “You’ve got me and Luna and Vari.”
“So Vari should burn them to death?” I said. “Luna should curse them and have a bullet bounce into their head? Is that what you mean?”
Anne looked away. “No.”
I looked at Anne curiously. “Other people really matter to you, don’t they?”
Anne was silent. “You know, Will was willing to kill you back there,” I said. “He would have tried to get around you, but if you’d made him choose between shooting you and letting me get away, he would have shot you.”
“I know.”
“But you still don’t want to hurt him.”
Anne stayed quiet for a little longer this time. “Do you know what I see when I look at someone?”
I shook my head.
“Everything,” Anne said. “Their movements, their nerves, the play of their muscles and skin . . . It’s like a tapestry of green light, layer on layer. Every part connects to every other part and everything works together. Even when it’s hurt it works to repair itself.” Anne’s voice was quiet, and she was watching me as she spoke; I knew she was trying to make me understand. “That’s all I do, when I use my magic. Your body wants to heal; I just give it a little help. Watching it rebuilding, growing . . . It’s beautiful. I can’t imagine ever wanting to hurt it. I know what Will and his friends were trying to do. But . . . even then, I don’t want them hurt.”
Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952) Page 98
