Broken Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  “At least we made it that far,” I say. It sounded cooler in my head.

  “I just… I just wanted to share my life with you,” Felicity says. She’s still not looking at me. Eyes on the road ahead. “That’s all.”

  It is an enormous thing to say. I mean, I knew it, I even reciprocate the feeling. But still. To just state it as if it’s nothing. As if it’s just simple.

  “And now all this shit.” She lays on the horn, suddenly and viciously, blaring her way between two cars, forcing her way forward through the traffic.

  “I’m just… I’m paralyzed by it,” I say. “I haven’t…” I shake my head. But somehow I need to reciprocate her honesty. “I haven’t even started to pack. I can’t. I can’t see the future.”

  Felicity brakes hard. My head snaps forward, body pulling tight against the seat belt.

  “You haven’t what?”

  There is an edge in Felicity’s voice that was lacking. A sharp edge tearing through the emotional numbness.

  Shit. Wrong confession. Too big. I should have gone with the fact that it was me who left the MI37 fridge door open overnight that one time or something.

  “It’s just…” I try to explain, but already my ability to hit the right emotional tone has gone. The moment is over. “I mean, the future is fucking terrifying.”

  “I asked you about moving in well before that future echo showed up. You told me you were packing well before it showed up. You lied to me.”

  Oh crap. We’re establishing a timeline now? This reminds me of the murder investigations I used to run. And I’m not a good enough liar to get away with murder. It’s probably easier if I confess now, beg for leniency.

  “This whole job is a death sentence,” I start. “I mean, do you really imagine that a day comes when we get to quietly retire from this and live in a little thatched cottage somewhere in Devon?” OK, maybe that image was a little too specific… “Or do you imagine a poorly attended funeral, the only mourners people almost at the end of their own short trips to an early grave?”

  Felicity nods. It doesn’t resemble her agreeing with me so much as it does the clockwork of rage winding up. A pendulum’s unforgiving tick.

  “And how long have you felt like this exactly?”

  Alarm bells are ringing in my head. It’s a trap!

  It’s a trap! Contrary to popular opinion, honesty is not always the best policy. There is definitely a time and a place for a well-placed white lie. Unfortunately in this particular time and place that lie is not as simple as stating that you read online that the door suction on fridges can lessen over time and suggesting a replacement part be ordered. And while the correct piece of conciliatory fiction is probably out there somewhere, I’m buggered if I can find it. Which leaves me with the unpalatable truth.

  “Since Scotland,” I say. “The first Uhrwerkmänn. Back in the pub.” And then, because surely a little pathos cannot hurt, “I almost died.”

  “That was the day I brought up the whole idea of moving in together!”

  I am beginning to think of the timeline as something alive. Some insidious snake conspiring against me.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. My last possible tactic. Full-on apology. “I thought I could deal with this all on my own. But things haven’t exactly been getting better.”

  “On your own?” Felicity nods again. She’s still not agreeing with me. “After I pour my heart out to you and ask you to move in with me? To twine your bloody stupid life with mine? Your immediate reaction to this appeal to live a shared life is to keep everything to your bloody self?”

  I need to start watching movies with fewer explosions and more talk-y bits. Maybe I could find some examples of what I’m meant to do in these situations.

  “I think we got away from the bit where I’m destined to die,” I say. But if I want to rescue this with humor I’m going to have to be a hell of a lot funnier than that.

  “You selfish arse.”

  Felicity punches the stereo again. The LCD cracks further.

  “And now a real treat,” the DJ tells us. “We’ve got a full hour of Gregorian chant coming up.”

  “Felicity, I…” I start.

  She cranks the volume and drowns me out.

  47

  THE DAY OF THE ANNIVERSARY

  To say things are uncomfortable at work is a little bit like saying that being suspended over hot coals can make you sweaty.

  The best way to make amends for this—for everyone to get back on everyone else’s good side—is for us to find Friedrich, formulate a plan, and kick his arse. We are however rather falling at the first hurdle.

  I have set Tabitha and Clyde to working on likely locations for Friedrich’s hideaway. This, unfortunately, involves discovering every large underground space in Britain. And since digitalization has not been a priority at MI37, that means trying to dig up every map we have. And that everyone else has. And when Tabitha is refusing to acknowledge Clyde’s presence on earth, the whole thing becomes a touch time consuming.

  Tabitha, however, is not the only one denying the existence of others. After silently dropping me off outside my apartment last night, Felicity went straight to her office this morning, closed the door, and has not opened it since. Earlier, I stood outside it for five minutes but could never picture what would happen after I knocked on the door. The future was utterly blank to me.

  After that, I retreated back to the conference room. Kayla and Hannah sat there. Kayla tapped at her phone. I didn’t want to ask. Research isn’t her thing. She’s a field operative. Unless there’s something that needs its insides moved to its outsides she doesn’t usually get involved.

  Which left Hannah. I stared at her. She is a top-class MI6 agent. She should have good ideas on how to track people down. She has likely had extensive training on the subject. I should ask her how to run this operation. But our relationship seems a bit beyond that point.

  “We need to know about the Uhrwerkmänner,” I said instead. “Something to help Kayla and Clyde narrow their search down.”

  “Yes.” No inflection. She might have been agreeing with me, or mocking my statement of the obvious. All the liveliness had gone from her.

  “Help with that,” I said. I opened my mouth to add something else. I don’t know what. A word of encouragement, advice. A question perhaps. But I just couldn’t. Her appearance on the team heralded this whole operation. And I know that’s just coincidence, but part of me can’t help but blame her.

  I turned my back and walked away.

  And now I sit here in a long-abandoned office, and stare at my computer. On the screen I have open a copy of the London Times dated to August 1963. Pinned to the wall on my right is a large map of England. A full five feet tall. Beside me is a box of tacks with bright red heads. I have spent the day going through newspapers looking for anything, any evidence of the Uhrwerkmänner’s existence. Any story that could possibly be attributed to them. Looking for locations, for any cluster of activity.

  There is not a single pin in the map.

  Everything is too vague. Any story that could conceivably be them is too full of ambiguities to convince me. I know now that there are simply too many things that go bump in the night for me to definitively say of one incident, “Yes, this is them.”

  I can’t see the future, and now I can’t even make out the past.

  I should go out. I should buy Felicity something. A new orchid perhaps. Or a seed. Something symbolic. Something that requires time. Even if we don’t have it. A peace offering. Something to make it clear that I still love her. No matter how caught up in my own shit I get.

  God, I need her help with this.

  I consider going back to her office door. Knocking. But I can’t go empty-handed.

  I go to the conference room, but no one is there. I consider going down to the lab to tell Clyde and Tabitha that I’m stepping out for a moment. But I think their frostiness might bring the paralysis back—too palpable a reminder of our failure
s.

  I’m almost at the elevator that leads up and out of the MI37 offices when my phone buzzes in my pocket. A text message. Felicity. My heart booms, a solitary burst of thunder, my abdomen becoming an aching void. My finger punches the screen.

  “Conference room. Now.”

  As three little words go, they are not over-brimming with romance. I check the top of the screen. Five recipients. This is unlikely to be a romantic rendezvous. My heart sags, crushes the organs that now seem over-stuffed into my gut.

  I check my watch. Somehow it has become 6:30 p.m. Maybe I’ll have a chance to visit a florist after this latest crisis is over. There must be somewhere in Oxford that sells flowers late at night. Maybe we can do our anniversary tomorrow. Erase today. Pretend it never happened.

  Tomorrow. Ha.

  Clyde and Tabitha are already in the conference room. They sit across from each other. Clyde stares at Tabitha. Tabitha stares away, at the corner of the room.

  And Felicity. She is there too. Standing at the head of the table, tapping her toe against the floor.

  I take a seat. Try not to copy Clyde’s impression of a teenager mooning over his unrequited love. Then I worry I’ve gone too far in the Tabitha direction. I glance at Felicity, then away. At her, away. Then I worry that all this is making me look a jittery coke head.

  I look at my watch instead.

  Hannah arrives, bustling, energetic. She fidgets in her chair. But she doesn’t bring any conversation with her.

  After another miserable minute, Felicity looks to her. “Where’s Kayla?” she asks.

  Hannah shrugs. “No bloody clue.”

  Felicity sighs, pushes hair out of her eyes. “Well this can’t wait,” she says. “We have an Uhrwerkmänn on Jericho Street. One of the crazy ones. And in about half an hour the students are going to be on that street in force. Go and take care of it.”

  And that’s it. She turns to go.

  “Wait,” I say. It leaps out of me. Unplanned. Almost, but not quite unwanted.

  Felicity waits. She doesn’t turn around, but she waits. “Is there a problem?”

  God, I wish I’d had time to buy her that orchid.

  “No,” I say eventually. Lamely. “We’re on it.”

  Hannah grunts, but Felicity doesn’t say a word. Just walks away.

  48

  JERICHO STREET

  There is a simplicity to a direct threat. It may be only tangential to the larger problem of the Uhrwerkgerät, but it is something to directly strike out at. There is no tomorrow here. We just hit this mad machine hard and walk away.

  I almost enjoy the run to Jericho. Oxford traffic prohibits any sort of rapid progress by car and so we handle domestic emergencies on foot.

  We scrabble around a corner onto Jericho. Felicity didn’t give us an exact address, but finding the ten foot tall robot wreaking wanton destruction isn’t the trickiest bit of detective work I’ve ever done.

  Hannah is the first to skid to a halt. I get the feeling she could have outrun me more completely than she has. I’m not sure why she didn’t. Maybe survival instinct. I’m sure she’ll be as satisfied as me to shoot something today, but the Uhrwerkmänn could cause serious bodily harm should it choose to get up close and personal.

  Clyde and Tabitha arrive shortly after. They may have got here quicker, I suspect, if Clyde had held his tongue.

  “—no need to worry, is all I’m saying,” he finishes as they slide to a halt beside us.

  Tabitha is clutching her new laptop to her chest. It has a matte black case. As she turns it protectively away from Clyde, putting her body between it and him, I see the streetlights catch on a pattern traced in a more reflective shade of midnight. A skull or a snake. I don’t quite catch it before the light flees the laptop’s surface.

  “I’m just saying…” he continues. “Well, knowing me, probably not just saying anything. Wittering on about all sorts of things probably. Like now, actually, come to think of it. This is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about. But I just mean to say, forgetting all the other blather, and I hope this doesn’t come across as combative. Meant as a point of discussion certainly, but one that opens onto vistas of frank and respectful communication. But I just wanted to say, in a manner of speaking, that judging a chap based on one minor lapse of judgment, which I might add—well I am going to add—which happened during a fairly intense bout of combat. Fisticuffs and all sorts were involved, I assure you. Well, no need to assure you, you were there. You saw them. The fisticuffs themselves. Themself? No themselves. Both sound odd. But that’s not what I’m getting at. An ancillary point at best. But it seems a bit harsh to judge me solely on the fate of one laptop given the depth and breadth of our relationship. And I have apologized. One momentary lapse.”

  Tabitha narrows her eyes. Like a shark before it tastes your tibia.

  “Two lapses,” she says and taps her stomach. A hard flat slap. One containing no compassion for any spark of life that nestles inside.

  That actually shuts Clyde up. Which is helpful because it gives me a chance to say, “Maybe we should be focusing more on that.”

  I point. Their eyes follow my finger. They see.

  The Uhrwerkmänn is in the middle of the street. Its bulk is picked out by streetlights. It is on all fours. It kicks and smashes at the road. An ugly spastic crawling.

  “Gone!” it screams. A sound on the edge of legibility. A sound like a knife being sharpened in the back of its throat. Its colossal fist smashes into the tarmac, leaves a crater.

  As satisfying as it will be to slap this thing personally, I do double check, “Any word from Kayla?”

  Hannah just shrugs.

  Tabitha pulls an earpiece from her pocket, jams it in her ear. “Kayla,” she says. “Bothered to show up yet?”

  She shakes her head at me.

  “All right,” I say, “we’ll do this the slightly more painful way then.” For the first time in a while things feel easy. Thoughts coming easily. “First we set up a containment zone. Enough people have seen this bloody thing already. We stop it from moving any closer to the town center. Tabitha and Clyde, you two get behind that thing. Clyde, you’ll—”

  “No.”

  Tabitha’s refusal detonates the bridge beneath the train of my thoughts.

  “What?” I manage.

  “Not going with him.” She doesn’t even bother looking at Clyde.

  I try to find the right expression to put on my face. Angry seems unlikely to work. And sympathetic is never an emotion that seems to survive contact with Tabitha’s emotionally caustic hide. I go with some amalgamation of conciliatory and conspiratorial. “Look—” I start.

  “Send him on his own. Probably impregnate it. Screw up its life. Patronize it until it self-destructs.”

  Clyde, who seemed as if he too was on the verge of opening his mouth, instead chooses to remain silent.

  “Well,” I say, “that doesn’t seem to be an entirely likely scenario…”

  “I’ve got this.” She taps her earbud. “Don’t need to be near him to give him information.”

  “Tabby.” An unfortunate wheedling quality has crept into Clyde’s voice. He knows better than me how disastrous that is. He cuts the plea short and settles for looking disconsolate instead.

  I’m not the only one who’s going to benefit from kicking robot derrière, I think.

  “OK,” I say. “Look, Clyde, you stay with me. Tabby and Hannah can go—”

  “No.” It’s Hannah this time.

  “Jesus,” I say. “When the hell did this become a democracy?”

  The Uhrwerkmänn lets out another cawing screeching, “Gone!” and scrambles a few yards down the street. I can see two kids leaning out of an upstairs window staring down at it. Wonder fills their eyes.

  Hannah shakes her head. “Whatever. Just makes no bloody sense for me to be behind it. Because Clyde—he doesn’t need backup. He can shut off the street himself. Use some of his bloody magic to… I don’t
know, fuck with my head and poke the Uhrwerkmänn in its rusty arse or something. Then you and I are the shooters up front. It’s going to take both of us to dissuade it from coming into town. Better yet, Clyde’s in front and we’re behind. That way he can push it away from the town center instead of toward it. We slow its retreat and do damage. Then you shove Tabitha up on the rooftops in case it tries to go that way. Or just for a good observation spot. Give her good view of the field of engagement so she can prep Clyde with the right spell.” Another shake of the head. “Bloody obvious.”

  You know, it would be nice if someone didn’t second guess me all the bloody time, as if I hadn’t done this before.

  “Look,” I say, “how the hell do we just shove Tabitha up on the rooftops? Unless you brought a stepladder with you.”

  “Actually,” Clyde says. “I do know a spell…”

  Damn it. I mean, I know he’s helping. It’s just he isn’t.

  The Uhrwerkmänn saves me from recriminations. It plunges its fist into a shop front. Glass crashes. A burglar alarm wails. How are we still standing around talking about this?

  “Just get behind the damn thing with Tabitha,” I say. “It’s ten foot bloody tall. I’m sure even Tabitha can shoot something that size.”

  “Don’t have a gun,” she says. “Would prefer rooftops.”

  I claw my fingers down my face.

  “Fine,” I say finally. “Get up on a roof. But Clyde is not bloody helping you. Clyde, punch that thing in the face. Hannah, get behind it.”

  There is hesitation. “Now!” I bellow.

  Batteries fly into Clyde’s hands. He palms them into his mouth.

  Hannah and Tabitha are slower. Tabitha stares at the rooftops. “Well, how the hell…?” she says.

  “I don’t know!” I snap. “Maybe get behind the bloody thing like I bloody suggested.”

  The Uhrwerkmänn is suddenly backlit. Something coming up the street behind it. A truck perhaps. Red light fills the space, turning the robot into a manic, mashing silhouette.

  “Gone!” it screams, dragging the sound out, prolonging the auditory agony. “Gooooooone!”