Cloak and Shield

by Mark Ayre

  “No, it hasn’t,” confirmed Steadman. “Isla, it seems congratulations are in order.”

  Isla found even asking them to clarify was beyond her. Her stomach seemed to lurch, seemed to roll. She reached a hand to it and screamed. The first noise that had escaped her since soon after Steadman cast her into the red room.

  Glancing down, she saw her sense of touch had not lied. Her stomach wasn’t churning as it did when hungry or unwell. Something moved beneath the surface. Isla kept in good shape—she had entered the red room with a flat stomach. Minutes later, her tummy bulged beneath her shirt. When the churning stopped, the bump was perfectly round and smooth, when whatever lay beneath moved, the bump twisted and contorted into all sorts of shapes.

  And that wasn’t the worst of it, though perhaps it should have been. Isla knew little about pregnancy but would have guessed the bump belonged to a woman six months gone. Isla had not been pregnant minutes, let alone months, nor did she have three months to prepare for labour.

  Before her very eyes, she could see the bump growing. Within a minute or so, she would be ready to burst.

  A second time, she screamed.

  “Come now,” said Steadman. “It’s time to start thinking baby names.”

  Adam stepped back through the wall and, with blood streaming from his nose, shot dead one of the two remaining agents. Before the other could react, Adam had a gun pointing at the man’s head.

  “Guns on the floor,” he said. “And do you have a tissue?”

  The man sneered but dropped his rifle to the carpet. He unbuttoned his holster and drew his pistol.

  “You should step back into your cell,” he said, dropping the second gun. “No chance you get out. All you gunna do is earn yourself a lot of pain.”

  “I asked for a tissue. Not cliched threats.”

  From nearby, more pounding feet. Those sitting in the monitor rooms would have seen Adam kill four agents and hold a fifth at gunpoint. They would not send so few next time. Adam stepped closer to his mark and was glad to see the man flinch.

  “They’ll be here in a second,” the flincher said. “Your time is running out.”

  “You’ll die before they catch me,” Adam said. “That’s a promise, so it’s in your best interest to ensure I stay free as long as possible. Now, how many control rooms are there in this place, where your snoopers watch over the cameras?”

  “One per floor,” the guy said.

  “How many floors?”

  “Five.”

  “And each room monitors the floor it’s on?”

  The man considered lying, then shook his head. “No. Each room monitors a floor other than their own. The floor assignments change daily, so I don’t know which floor will be monitoring this one.”

  None of this surprised Adam. The organisation had always been careful. This was their centre of operations; they would do anything to keep it protected. Now they knew Adam was loose; cameras would trace his every move. If he got into a lift, one control room would tell another, and the guards would be there when the lift doors opened. No matter where Adam went, they would be prepared. That was if he got anywhere before the oncoming army recaptured him.

  The feet were almost there. Adam shoved the gun into his hostage’s stomach.

  “Turn, move.”

  They stepped out of one corridor, into the next. Adam initially moved them from the rushing feet, speeding them along and hoping to keep one step ahead of the enemy until he had a plan.

  The cameras would have audio. Adam moved close to the man behind who he walked, pressing the gun into his hostage’s back and whispering.

  “Lead us to the lift closest to the control room on this floor. Do so without taking us too close to the enemy. If I see them, I’ll kill you.”

  The guy said nothing, but at the next fork was proactive in choosing a route, rather than waiting to be prodded in one direction or another.

  Adam could hear the feet. It was hard to tell from where they came or how close the enemy was. This complex was a hive of corridors, each looking the same as the last. Without the help of his hostage, Adam would be lost. He had to hope the guy was too afraid of being shot to lead his captor wrong.

  Soon, they turned into a corridor down which lay three lifts.

  “Which room is the control?” Adam asked.

  “Fourth on the right.”

  Adam looked. Less than ten metres from the third lift on the left. That was good.

  “Who monitors the lift cameras?”

  “No one by default. Anyone can.”

  Adam nodded. He would have to hope that, once they stepped inside, the focus would flit to whichever floor they approached.

  “How many people staff the control room?”

  “Probably four.”

  “All armed.”

  “For sure.”

  “Fine. Call the lift.”

  At the third lift on the left, the guard pressed CALL. The feet grew closer. The corridor ran in two directions, and it sounded as though the enemy were coming from both.

  The lift binged. The doors opened. Adam shoved his man inside and followed as the first guards appeared in the hall and started firing. On one wall of the box was a control panel with the floor designations, 0 through -4. They were on -2. Beneath the panel was a slot. The guard withdrew a card.

  “Ground floor,” said Adam.”

  “Can’t do ground. Not got the clearance.”

  “Minus one then.”

  A guard appeared. Adam shot him dead. His captive slid his card into the slot and pressed -1. Adam killed another assailant as the doors slid closed.

  “Now what?” asked the guard.

  The lift juddered, then began to rise. As it did, Adam stepped through the wall and dropped into the corridor they had just abandoned.

  Here were twelve armed men and women. Adam ensured none could see him as he staggered to the control room and stepped through the door.

  Two men, two women. At the screens, one of the women had just noted the lift was one man short and was frantically trying to find Adam. The other three were looking over her shoulder so did not notice Adam, who was affecting none of their senses.

  With four shots, Adam killed the three standers. This emptied his clip, Hoping the remaining woman didn’t know as much, he pointed the gun at her head.

  “Hi,” he said. “Looks like I need your help.”

  A flutter seemed to run through her body. Something internal, some subconscious signal which whispered to Eve, starting in her brain and ending in her fingers.

  The pill had been no trick; the girl who had slipped it to Eve had been a disgruntled employee. Perhaps she had been skipped over for one too many pay rises, or maybe she had developed a conscience and no longer wished to be involved with the torture and murder of countless innocents. Her reasoning mattered not to Eve. What mattered was that the girl needed a weapon and in Eve had found one.

  And what a weapon Eve intended to be. It took supreme effort to keep from leaping from her chair with a smile on her face and mass destruction at her fingertips. She could have started with her mother but didn’t want to jump the gun. What if her abilities needed time to warm up? If she sprung into action only to find her powers were on the south side of mediocre, she would have given herself away. If they managed to sedate her, the organisation would again subdue her abilities. This time, no unhappy workers would get the chance to slip her something. Her one chance of saving Adam and escaping would be lost.

  Playing for time was easier now her mother was telling a story in which Eve was interested. She did not have to force herself to ask a question because the questions were bubbling to the surface. They demanded to be asked, and now Eve had an excuse to do so.

  “I still don’t understand why they were so desperate to capture Adam and me?” she said. “If one in sixty girls could give them a child or two with special abilities, they must have hundreds by now. I guess they had no moral compunction in killing a million girls to
get what they wanted?”

  “You cannot let morals get in the way of science, no,” said Sandra. “But it was not so simple. If too many girls went missing, eventually it might be traced back here. They had to tread with caution. Instead of funnelling an endless stream of women through the red room, they restricted themselves to two or three batches a year. I believe, with the latest trial, we pass 750 women in three decades.”

  For Eve, a level head meant complete control over her power. When her short fuse went off, anger quickly sent her abilities spiralling. When her mother spoke of 750 mostly dead women without a drop of concern or guilt, Eve almost broke the woman’s neck. Had she started, she would not have stopped. She would have killed everyone in the building. Still might.

  Somehow, she kept both temper and power under control. She clutched the edge of her chair and let Sandra go on.

  “Of the 750, six have survived. I believe that will be seven by the end of the day but each new member of your special race has had problems. They are… why are you standing?”

  “There’s a trial today?”

  “Yes. It’s probably already happened. I don’t know.”

  “Ten women?”

  “Nine, actually. I took one for my… for Lucy. I need to talk to you about Lucy. I’ve not finished my story.”

  Nine women. Over 700 had already died. Eve’s heart broke to think of them, but there was nothing to be done. These nine, she could save. Innocent, unknowing, they possibly sat somewhere in the building, waiting for an easy payday, with no idea they were going to die.

  Probably they were already dead. It didn’t matter. If there were a chance, knowing what she knew, Eve would have to take the risk.

  “Sit down,” said Sandra before an invisible force threw her from her chair into the wall where she hung, toes inches off the ground.

  “Come on, mother,” said Eve. “I want to see where I was conceived.”

  “How’s the drink?”

  From the glass, Hattie lifted her eyes. Above her stood Yacob: tall, imposing, sneering. Since delivering her favourite wine, he had shown not one drop of decency or kindness. She wished she could say she was surprised.

  “Where’s my daughter?” she asked.

  “About a minute away. She’s brought friends.”

  Hattie’s eyes widened. She clutched the stem of her glass a little tighter. “Who?”

  “A guy we don’t know. The monster, Grendel. Omi.”

  Hattie’s breath caught. Just over a year ago, she had arrived at the facility. After learning she was gay, her parents had kicked her from her home. With homelessness beckoning, an offer for £2,000 had been too good to pass up. From the moment she had walked through the doors, she had been treated with contempt by everyone but the women whose ranks she would join when she became a mother—Ursula and Rachel had been particularly kind, Sandra too—and Omi.

  After she fell pregnant, Steadman had told her she could never leave. She was too important. They set her up in a beautiful room ruined by its lack of a window and the way the people who shared the building looked at her. One of the guards had been kind, sympathetic. When they spoke, Hattie had cried and hugged him, thanked him. He had pinned her to the bed and tore off her clothes. He had left her full of self-loathing and guilt, though she knew she was not to blame for his actions. He had left her wanting to die.

  Leaving the facility had been a relief. Of Omi, she had at first been afraid, but he had loved her daughter and had always been kind to her, even when she treated him like dirt, which happened more often than she liked to admit. She wished she could have taken his offer to lean on him. Instead, she had turned to the bottle. Now she was its slave.

  She took another drink.

  “Let me talk to them,” she said to Yacob. “When Omi arrives, I’ll convince him to lay down his weapons and come quietly. Please don’t hurt him.”

  Yacob looked at her as he might have a dog that was defecating on his carpet.

  “We have a plan,” he said. “Sandra has devised it, and it’s quite brilliant.”

  A quiet sense of relief arrived. Hattie took another drink. A mother herself, Sandra would not want her guards to shed unnecessary blood.

  “The doors will open,” Yacob said. “When the foursome arrives, we will allow Grendel deeper into the building. We will lure him into a cell from which he cannot escape. We will sedate your daughter and execute both stranger and traitor.”

  “No,” Hattie shouted. Knocking her wine aside, she jumped to Yacob and grabbed his shirt, meaning to plead for Omi’s life. He shoved her into her chair and backhanded her with such force she fell into a spell of dizziness.

  “Shut up,” he said. “The traitor is lucky we’re only killing him. For what he’s done, he deserves far worse than a quick death, but we’ll take no risks. And you’ll not have to worry about it for long. We don’t need a pathetic, waste of space alcoholic. As soon as your daughter is in our possession, I’ll have the pleasure of putting a bullet in your skull.”

  Still recovering from the hit to her face, still holding her cheek, Hattie at first could not process what he had said. At last, realising her life was on the line, she looked up.

  “Sandra wouldn’t want that.”

  A nasty smile. “These are Sandra’s orders, foolish girl.”

  “No,” Hattie denied. “She wouldn’t. I’m Hattie’s mother.”

  Yacob sighed. He glanced to the floor, to where Hattie had knocked her glass. It had smashed, and the liquid slid along the metal.

  “Careless,” he said. Moving to the side of the room, he collected another glass and brought it to the table. Grabbing the wine bottle, he said, “I love McDonald's.”

  “What?”

  He smiled. Unscrewed the cap.

  “I love McDonald's. To me, the Big Mac is all but sacred.”

  He poured the wine into the new glass, filling it almost to the brim.

  Hattie said, “I don’t understand.”

  “To this organisation,” Yacob said, “Delilah is the Big Mac. You are nothing more than the flimsy cardboard in which the precious burger arrived. We will take her in, and cast you aside, as it should be.”

  He slid her the glass.

  “Finish this fast,” he said. “It’s almost time to go.”

  Isla screamed.

  Pain as she had never experienced consumed her. Minutes ago, she had been in the red room, an inferno incinerating her body. This was worse. There was a reason she had long ago decided never to have children. In her sexual liaisons, few as there had been, she had been cautious. Always, she had made her paramours wear protection. Now she had to suffer childbirth without the stuff that came both before and after.

  And to what was she giving birth? Adam and Eve were an attractive duo cursed only by powers they needn’t reveal. Since then, the children of the red room had not been so lucky. What if she got another Grendel, a monster with no ability to speak and insatiable blood lust? Or a Lucy, who had no form but the form she stole from others? What if she had something worse.

  Her vision blurred. Someone above her was trying to help her breathe, telling her she was doing so well. She wanted to grab them by the throat and smash their faces into her stomach, which felt like a boulder sitting atop her. She wanted to roll from the bed and run for her life, as though the pregnancy was tied to the red room’s vicinity rather than her body. From one corner, Steadman and Abbot watched, hunger in their eyes. She wanted them to die.

  She hated herself. Had she not sat in the room next door while Hattie gave birth? Had she not lowered her head and got on with her work knowing she was responsible for the death of nine women, and the ruination of another? When her daughter was born, Hattie had cried tears of joy. When they told her she was bound to them for life, and could never take her daughter away, Hattie had screamed and pleaded and cried with desperation. Isla sat next door, telling herself it was a job. She had to do as told. She had no choice.

  There was always a choice. />
  She screamed. The face leaned close (it’s almost here. You’re baby is almost here.) It. It was right, wasn’t it? Some horrible, despicable monster. Some beast who would devour Isla once birthed.

  Fine. So long as the creature rose and chomped up Steadman and Abbot as soon as she finished with Isla.

  She. What made her think she?

  The pain reached its apex. If there had been windows in the facility, Isla’s scream would have shattered the glass. Had they not been underground, surrounded by thick steel and dirt, police from miles around would have mobilised, assuming someone was perpetrating a horrific crime.

  Isla screamed. She was going to die.

  Then, it was over.

  Silence, but for Isla’s beating heart and panting breath. The encouraging midwife who had helped her give birth moved away. All thoughts of monstrous spawns of Satan vanished in an instant. Isla twisted her head, craned her neck, desperate to see her baby.

  “Where… where…” she could bring herself to say no more. She was utterly broken, weakened to the point of no return. “Where… where…”

  When Steadman decided to take her baby, there would be nothing Isla could do. Like that, he would rip a piece of her away she had never known existed. A piece she now saw she needed more than she needed her heart to beat, her lungs to breathe.

  She opened her mouth to call again. The midwife was at one side of the room. Then, he turned. He came to Isla and pressed a small shape into her arms. Only when Isla looked at that shape did her eyes remember how to focus.

  “Say hello to your daughter,” said the midwife, and Isla burst into fresh tears.

  The tiny baby in her arms was no monster, no beast, no spawn of Satan. She was a perfect ball of pure joy. She was all Isla’s.

  She was love, and Isla was never going to let her go.

  Never.

  “You should give yourself up,” said the woman. “Any second, that door’s gunna burst open and—”

  “I know,“ said Adam. “Save the pep talk.”