by T. C. Edge
But I will do it. I will pull that trigger, and watch the blood splatter. I will callously watch a man die. Because yes, he does deserve it. And yes, it will save lives.
But still, that doesn’t make it easy.
The clock seems to click louder in my head as it sit there. Which is odd, really, because it’s not actually making a sound at all. It’s in my head, the clicking, an endless countdown that’s been there for some time.
Only now, it’s growing louder, pounding inside my skull as the seconds add up to minutes, and the minutes crawl their way towards an hour.
The ticking is only broken when Adryan returns. He rushes in quickly and stops before me, his eyes turning straight to the gun in my hand. Surveying my expression, studying me like he did when we first met, and like he’s done so often since, he quickly determines that I’ve done what I’ve had to. That the pieces are in place and ready for the final act.
He sits beside me in silence, and for a good few minutes no words come. And then, gently, his voice whispers.
“Are you ready?” he asks.
I dip my chin and say: “Yes,” with all the decisiveness and finality I can muster.
And then I turn my eyes to his and ask: “Are you?”
The question isn’t about him having to kill, but about leaving this place, leaving this building. He’s never stepped foot beyond the dividing wall, never walked the streets of Outer Haven. Just as much as mine, his world is about to change forever, one way or another.
He nods like I did, and says: “I’ve been ready for a long time, Brie.”
I know he has. For many years. Ever since his wife was taken from him he’s waited for this day, bided his time, worked from the inside in a bid to see Cromwell fall.
And now, that effort has reached its zenith. And it’s time for me to act.
Standing from the sofa, I take a long breath and begin to pace. I have to shed some of this nervous energy, to make sure my hand is steady when it pulls the trigger.
I find myself moving to my room and looking upon my parents’ faces. Taking the picture off the wall, I whisper in the quiet: “Give me strength,” before kissing them both, folding the photograph in two, and depositing it into my pocket for safekeeping.
I migrate from room to room as the time grows near, checking the clock each time I pass it. The minutes move like lightning, each circuit of the apartment seeming to strip several of them from the countdown.
Adryan watches me and tries to offer some calming words, my agitation rising fast now. All over my head, the doubts spread, the worries and fears trying their best to throw me off course.
I don’t give voice to them, don’t let them settle. I shake them free and pace harder, until Adryan halts me with his strong arms and firm gaze. Those silver eyes smoulder at me, and his presence helps to calm me. He doesn’t need to speak. Just that look in his eyes is enough to help me refocus.
And when he does speak, this time it’s just a soft whisper.
“It’s OK, Brie. You can do this. I’ll be right here, waiting for you.”
He smiles a gorgeous smile, and draws me into his chest, and through one eye I glance again at the clock and find that it’s time for me to go. Releasing me, he moves to the sofa and collects the gun, before gently fixing it to my belt and concealing it beneath my shirt.
It looks so odd, hidden beneath my current attire, and yet in my mind I’m wearing the rugged clothes from back home. I’m dressed as Zander might be, or one of the soldiers of the Nameless, wrapped up in black and looking fierce.
In my head, I’m dressed like warrior, like an assassin.
In my head, I’m dressed to kill.
We walk to the door in silence, and Adryan turns me to him again. His lips move in, but not to mine. They glide across my forehead instead, before he fixes me with a final stare, his hands attached to my shoulders.
“Finish this, Brie,” he whispers. “Finish it.”
And with no response, no words forming in my head, I turn and open the door, and drift out into the corridor. Moving around the curved passageway, I head straight for the northern side, for the exact lift I ordered Humbert to take.
I walk like a Savant, rigid and cold and upright, acting almost on autopilot now. The floor is quiet, although a couple of lifts open as I pass, people returning home from their workplaces and barely passing me a glance.
Deep in my head, I hear a fluttering voice, and turn away from it. I can’t be distracted now, not now.
I reach the northernmost side, now directly beneath Director Cromwell’s residence 50 floors above me, and stand before the lift. I check my watch a final time and know that Humbert will be arriving in moments only, her timekeeping precise enough to have her arrive at the exact instant I specified in her office.
When I hear the whirring of the motors, my pulse gallops harder. She’ll be here in seconds, and I’ll step in. And only half a minute or so later, the doors will open on level 99, and I’ll be face-to-face with Cromwell.
In a single minute, or maybe two, all of this will be done.
It hardly seems real.
The whirring grows a little louder, and then I hear the mechanism that controls the doors click, and they slide right open. The interior appears, and before me I see Ingrid W. Humbert, standing in the centre, barely registering my arrival.
I step inside. Humbert’s voice issues a new command.
“Level 99,” comes her soft but empty voice.
The doors close, shutting me off. A part of me wants to tell her to stop, to let me out, but I say nothing. The lift begins to rise, and my lungs start to fill and spill with a renewed ferocity.
And in my head, that fluttering voice sounds again, this time harder, louder, but still indistinct.
It’s Zander. I can’t hear him, my mind all over the place.
Report! I think I hear him say, his voice blurred. Brie…report!
It makes no sense. He knows the plan. There’s nothing to report yet…
I shut my eyes and picture his face, and the pathway between our minds opens up. And suddenly, surging into my head, his words come out loud and clear, clattering into my mind.
And I realise, in that moment, he wasn’t saying report.
He was saying abort.
ABORT, BRIE, ABORT! he shouts, his words clear and deafening now. HE KNOWS YOU’RE COMING. IT’S A TRAP!
A panic surges through every part of me. I turn to Humbert and my mouth opens and prepares to call for her to stop.
But it’s too late. The lift is already slowing, stopping.
And the door is opening.
31
All goes suddenly quiet. Ahead of me, the doors reveal darkness, a darkness even my Hawk-eyes have trouble seeing through.
I blink hard and the room begins to grow in focus, a wide expanse ahead. My heart attempts to climb up my throat as Zander’s voice echoes in my ears, and into the silence, I whisper: “Take me down.”
Humbert doesn’t react. Because she doesn’t have time to.
From nowhere, two figures materialise, pouring inside the lift from the left and right. My instincts take over and I activate my Dasher powers, ready to defend myself as the shapes loom.
But they loom too fast, my powers doing nothing to slow them. And as they come into view, and I see the dark cloaks and shining eyes, I know that they’re very much like me.
Hybrids. Stalkers. The agents of Artemis Cromwell.
In a flash of speed they scoop me up, each taking an arm. I kick out with my legs, thrashing and twisting and coiling my spare limbs, but it has no effect at all.
Not on these warriors, these hunters.
Not on these men designed to kill.
I’m dragged from the lift and into the wide room, and see that it’s filled with nothing but a large table and chairs, the rest of it silver and chrome and lifeless like everywhere else here.
My voice surges from out of me, calling hopelessly for help, pouring forward to issue some aimless command at the old
lady in the lift to give me some aid. It has no effect at all, my mouth quickly gagged by a mask and my arms forcefully dragged behind my back and locked in restraints.
As my body is contorted, I turn my gaze on one of the Stalkers and find his otherworldly eyes staring back. I flash an order inside him as quickly as I can.
ATTACK YOUR PARTNER. KILL YOUR PARTNER. SET ME FREE!
A slashing palm ends my attempt, the man’s open hand connecting with devastating force on my cheek. A stab of pain cuts through the skin and flesh, leaving a terrible sting as a set of blacked-out goggles are quickly fixed over my eyes, blocking my ability to use my powers.
I’m forcefully shoved forward, and hear a chair being moved. I’m pushed down into it, and then, suddenly, the four hands leave me and I hear the two men step off to one side.
Silence falls, my gasping breath blocked by the gag. I turn left and right and attempt to stand. A rush of air blows from the right and I’m dragged straight down again, my legs tied and wrist restraints fixed to the chair.
I struggle for a few more moments, screaming at the top of my lungs through the mask that covers my mouth. No sound escapes, only my heartbeat and the struggling sounds of my limbs giving any voice to the room.
But soon, my thrashing ends, my limbs locked tight. The logical side of me calls for me to stop, but it’s not really reason or logic that directs it.
It’s defeat. It’s failure.
I’m about to be killed.
I go still, and wait for the inevitable. A bullet to the head, most likely. Quick and easy and clean, that’s the way these people like to do things.
Nothing happens. Only silence reigns.
And then, it’s brief reign ends.
Footsteps sound, tapping gently against the cold floor. They come from afar, ticking like a slow clock, creeping nearer, growing louder.
They’re measured, slow, one following the other with total precision. I feel a presence growing near, a hand drifting towards my face, old fingers taking hold of the mask that covers my eyes.
Then it lifts, pulled up onto my forehead, and I’m greeted by a flash of purest white, the shining shape of a man standing before me. Draped in the finest of white suits, and with hair of the same tone, and ghostly skin so pale it gleams, I look upon the man I’ve been yearning to see for so long.
Finally, I’m face-to-face with Director Artemis Cromwell. Only, it’s him holding the gun, and not me.
I stare right at the man, and he stares right back at me. In his hand, he holds my weapon, passed to him by one of his slaves. He inspects it briefly, before swaying the end of the barrel in my direction as a cold and distant smile inches onto his lips.
“So this is what you were going to kill me with?” comes his voice, deep and detached and glacial-cold.
He sways it across me again, his finger hovering on the trigger, and I flinch as the muzzle slows at it points to my heart. Then, he tosses it to the side, and it’s caught by one of his agents.
“It’s a crude weapon really, isn’t it Brie?” he says. “And hardly efficient.”
I look up into his clear blue eyes, like frozen circles of ice, and make an attempt to infiltrate his mind. I dip in and see a staggering world before me, but am immediately cast out.
“That won’t work on me,” he says calmly.
His long fingers approach once more, and drag down the mask over my mouth. I gasp in a long breath, spraying a cough into the room.
“You’re…you’re a Mind-Manipulator?” I splutter.
He begins to circle me, his feet tapping one more.
“Oh no, nothing like that,” comes his voice from behind me. “I’m just immune to such things.”
He completes the loop, returning in front of me, his body a strange mix of old age and relative youth. His hands are heavily wrinkled, deep lines spreading from the corners of his eyes and mouth. And yet, there’s a strange youth to his cheeks, his skin less afflicted there than on the other features of his face.
His eyes, though, carry a depth, staring at me and barely blinking as he hovers.
It’s a disconcerting look, and one that has me turning away. And shutting my eyes, I think of Zander, and Adryan waiting for me below, and all those I care about across Outer Haven.
And when I open them again, their corners are wet.
I can’t help it. I don’t want to cry, to show weakness. Even though I’m going to die, I don’t want to give this man any satisfaction. I don’t want to go out, pleading for my life, my cheeks stained and eyes red and mind lost to thoughts of fear and failure.
So I squeeze my eyes shut again, blocking the flow before it starts, and grit my teeth as hard as I can. And then, with my eyelids still locked tight, I simply whisper: “How?”
The ruler of this building, of this city, of this world, doesn’t need anything more. He knows what I’m asking. And when he speaks, I know it’s my fault. I know that all of this is my failure, my doing.
“Romelia Woolf,” he says quietly. “You think you got her, but she’d already figured you out, Brie. She’s been reporting to me for some time now. And now, she’s completed her task. She’s brought you to my door…”
I open my eyes, and let my body fill with hate. And instead of a soft expression of fear and sorrow, I let my visage reshape with a grimace of fire.
Zander must have found the truth in her mind, excavated it from the depths. But it was too late. Much too late…
“Ah yes, that’s it, Brie,” continues Cromwell, looking upon my expression with some glee. “You have a lot of hate in you, that much is clear. I wonder what else we’ll find in there, what secrets your mind holds…”
“No…” comes my voice.
I cut it off, bite my tongue, and turn away. He can’t find out what I know. If he does, they’ll all be doomed.
“Just do what you have to do, Director Cromwell,” I say, looking to the floor. “Please…don’t drag this out. If there’s a shred of empathy in you, you’ll let me die quickly.”
I keep my head low, but through my Hawk-vision, scan the men to the left and right. One stands, his hands behind his back, staring right at me. The other does the same, but his hands are in front of him, gripping the gun they took from me.
He’s only a few metres away. Near enough…is he near enough?
I have no choice. I have to try.
With a sudden twist of my neck, I swing my head up to him and draw his eye. I dart straight in, charging into his mind and calling out the order to kill.
But not the other guard. Not himself. Not Cromwell.
Me.
I deliver the command with such clarity and focus that is fuses immediately. The glaze spreads across his eyes and the order takes hold. And suddenly, abruptly, his hand swings up, points the gun right at my head, and pulls the trigger.
I shut my eyes as the room explodes with a single bullet. But the endless darkness doesn’t come.
Instead, a flow of air sweeps from the other side, and I hear a heavy thud. And creaking open my lids, I look to see the other Stalker standing in my path, blood seeping from his body and onto the cold metal floor.
And on the floor, amid the blood, I see the shape of the shooter, the gun still in his hand, his body knocked out cold.
“Good, very good,” comes Cromwell’s voice.
I turn forwards again and see him standing just where he was before, no fright imbuing him, no alarm spreading through his face at the sight he just witnessed.
He merely looks at me, and smiles an awkward, alien grin.
“Oh, you truly are gifted, Brie, and brave too,” he muses. “Just a look, and nothing more, and you nearly had my man killing you. But, you’re not the only one with gifts, as you can see,” he says, nodding towards the standing Stalker.
I look at the man as he turns back to me, a bullet hole cut into his side, blood spewing to the floor. But there’s no pain on his face, no fear that he might die. He just stands there, his body emptying of blood, wai
ting for further orders.
“Do you see that, Brie,” crackles Cromwell. “Total and utter loyalty. If I so wish, he will stand there until his body gives out. You may be able to control minds, Brie, but I can control an entire people.”
I stare at him, horrified at his words, and then turn back to the Stalker. Something in me feels sorry for the man, bred to be what he is. He has no choice in the matter, no more than anyone else. And here, right here, his life will end unless his master says otherwise.
“But,” continues Cromwell, “ I’d never waste such a useful resource.” He turns to the Stalker. “Bind his arms until we can have the kill order removed. Then get yourself to the infirmary.”
The man nods, bends down to his unconscious comrade, binds his arms, and then begins walking towards the lift, leaving a trail of crimson in his wake.
And alone now with Cromwell, I know I’m totally helpless. And he does too.
I fix him with a stare, my heart freezing as I look upon him, and a growl issues from my throat.
“You’re not going to kill me, are you?” I ask.
That horrible smile rises once more, and his old neck twists from side to side.
“Oh no, Brie…I have another purpose for you.”
And with those words, I shut my eyes, and think of my brother’s face. And from my mind to his, I simply say…
Forgive me, Zander.
I’ve failed.
The Enhanced will continue in Book Five…
Next Up
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