No Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  “That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. What I’ve been trying to do.” I try to keep my voice low, patient, but I must have gone up a decibel or two because everyone is back to frowning at me.

  “Sorry,” I breathe. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to need a little more help than that.”

  “Important,” says skull-face, again indicating the girls. “Save them.”

  “I know,” I say. “I really, genuinely know. But if you just give me a few pointers—”

  Again the glowers. A few fingers to lips.

  “Keep them safe.” Again.

  “I know!” I can’t help it. I’m a patient soul, but this is just... I shout at them. I’m not stupid enough to grab the guy by the lapels and shake him, but I do shout in his face.

  And the world rips and tears, holes burn through reality and through me and then—

  AN INDETERMINATE TIME LATER

  —I am lying on my back by the side of the pool, the back of my head throbbing where I was thrown backwards.

  I groan as I open my eyes. The groan gurgles and dies. I look up into the silver tip of Kayla’s sword.

  39

  “What the feck are you doing here?”

  “You,” I say. Because suddenly it’s starting to make sense.

  “I asked you a feckin’ question!” Her eyes are furious dots in a contorted face. Somewhere in the background I can hear a girl crying. The sword floats an inch above my nose.

  But all I can think about is the skull-faced man, about his command. Now. I think he meant now. Here. Now. In this moment.

  “Of course you can’t save her,” I say slowly, ignoring her talking, ignoring the blade. I’m too busy figuring things out. “You kill her.”

  “What?” Kayla actually flinches at the words. “I... what? What the feck are you talking about?” There is a look of utter panic on her face. And this must be it. I have her. I’ve got her. I go to push myself up but the sword comes back. It is quivering now, though.

  “You’re one of them. You betray us, and you kill her. Her but not Ephemera. You can’t kill Ephie. Something stops you and you’re trying to figure out what.” That must be it.

  But that’s not it. No. Because the sword stiffens, straightens. “I am going to cut out your feckin’ gizzard, you little lying sack of shit,” she says, and her voice is abruptly calm. “You don’t ever talk about me and my girls. You don’t have the feckin’ right.”

  Her sword arm comes back. I am acutely aware that the girls are watching this. They shouldn’t see this. What a stupid thought to end your life on.

  There is a cough behind us.

  “Sorry,” says Clyde.

  Kayla glares around behind her. Her sword doesn’t move.

  “Terrible timing,” Clyde says. “Or, you know, alternatively, quite good. Depends on your point of view, I imagine.”

  “S... S...” I pull in a breath to get myself under control. “Something like that.”

  “What do you want?” Kayla hisses. The girls, I see, have let go of the edge of the pool, are floating lazily away. The excitement is apparently over. Which is good news.

  “Well,” Clyde swallows audibly. “It’s just... Shaw sent me down here. She was asking... wants the whole team to assemble. All constituent parts attached. Well... she didn’t specify that. Sort of assuming.” He laughs high and nervous, not taking the Twins’ lead.

  “Why?” Kayla asks.

  “Well, you know,” Clyde blusters, “she seems like she’s quite fond of us as we are. You know, whole, and hale, and hearty, and—”

  “Why does she want us to meet?”

  “Oh!” Clyde swallows again. “My prototype. The one to throw the Progeny out of people’s heads. Think we’ve got something workable up and running. Want to... try it out and stuff.”

  “That was fast,” I say, doing my best to keep my voice casual, trying to ignore the sword still hovering above my head.

  “It was Tabby mostly,” Clyde says. Even though the bulk of Kayla’s admittedly petite frame blocks my vision of him, I can still hear the smile in his voice. Maybe Kayla and I are the yang to their ying. The better they get along the closer Kayla comes to using me as an anatomy lesson for the Twins.

  “So,” I say, playing it far cooler than I am, “better be getting along then.”

  “Yes,” Clyde says. “Probably should. You know how Shaw’s a stickler for timing.”

  Still Kayla doesn’t move. Not for a moment. Then with a grimace of something very close to hatred she stands. It takes me a moment to follow suit. My hands are shaking badly. My breath is shaky. But I manage it, because in the back of my head a small victorious voice is shouting at Kayla—now you get yours. Now you get yours.

  40

  No one will meet my eye.

  They won’t meet each other’s either. We stand in a circle and it strikes me that we look like the shiftiest prayer group to ever meet. The thought almost makes me laugh, which would be terrible timing.

  We’re gathered around a small black disk that looks like it’s mostly held together with duct tape. A flat red button protrudes from the center like some day-glow mushroom.

  “It causes interdimensional friction,” Clyde tells us. “Anything that exists on more than one reality, a Progeny for example, should be pretty much fried. While onereality folks like you and me should get a free ride.”

  “You have tested this, right?” I’m not overly keen on the word “should.”

  “Didn’t kill any guinea pigs,” Tabby says.

  “Or rats. Or my cats,” Clyde adds. “Good thing about the cats really. Penicillin kills cats actually. Or possibly guinea pigs. One of the two. Anyway, would have been a disaster if that, whichever one it actually was... is... had been the first test subject. Would never have made it to human tests. Robbed humanity of a great asset.”

  “Your point, Clyde?” Shaw asks.

  “Oh. Yes,” Clyde flusters. “A point. Well, just, I suppose, you can’t always be a hundred percent certain from animal tests. That’s all.”

  He shrugs.

  “Not completely reassuring, Clyde,” Shaw says.

  His head retreats between his shoulders.

  But that’s not it. That’s not why we can’t look at each other. Otherwise, when Tabby says, “We’ve checked it best we can. No theoretical way for it to harm people. That we can find,” then Clyde would smile, or look at her. But he doesn’t. None of us smile.

  Because we’re all wondering which one of us it is. It doesn’t matter how many alternatives Shaw throws out, we’re all quietly certain that the traitor is in this room. But if we talk we might give our suspicions away, and nobody wants to be wrong.

  I don’t think any of us wants to be right, either.

  Which, in the end, is why we have to do this, no matter how unsafe it may be. We have to get some trust back. We’re never going to be a team until we do this.

  “OK then,” I say, “let’s do this.”

  Clyde hesitates.

  “Do it,” Shaw says.

  He hesitates.

  “Now,” Kayla says.

  “Just do it, Clyde,” says Tabitha.

  Clyde’s hand comes down.

  41

  I’m on the floor. I don’t know how I got on the floor. I feel broken.

  Slowly I find my hands, my feet. They seem further away than usual. Getting on all fours is hard. Getting on my feet is harder. My head throbs. My stomach rolls. The world lurches left then right. I don’t think all the signals are getting through. It feels like working a marionette. Apparently I am no good at working marionettes.

  Next time someone tells me there’s no theoretical way something can hurt me, I’m going to pop a couple of ibuprofen just in case.

  Everyone else is lying where they stood. Tabitha sprawled out like some recently crashed bird—dress and hair spread out like broken wings. Kayla is sprawled backward, fringe thrown out of her eyes for once, revealing surprisingly long, soft lashes. Shaw
is curled up on herself, as if knocked back into infancy. And Clyde...

  Wait...

  Clyde...

  Where the hell is Clyde?

  A wave of bile rolls through my stomach. A sickness greater than the one the little black disk brought on. And oh shit. Oh no.

  I scan the room a final time. Clyde has to be here. He must be here.

  But he’s not.

  The Twins.

  I look at Kayla. Right now she couldn’t stop a kid from crossing the street, let alone a Progeny-infected magician. And I don’t have the time to wake her up.

  I have to get to the Twins.

  I stagger forward. My vision blurs. For a moment all I can see is blood. Blood in the water.

  Another step. Another. I half brace myself against the wall, half crash into it. It takes me five tries to get the door handle to work. And maybe this is all Clyde did. Maybe he just came around and went to throw up in the bathroom, went to offer a sacrifice to the porcelain gods. It could happen. It could be.

  And he had the presence of mind to shut the door behind him?

  Another wave of vertigo and nausea. I hear a groan as I stumble out into the corridor, but if I turn around now, I’ll never be able to keep going. It’s a hundred miles to the elevator. I trip, bite the floor. I rather wish someone would show up with a shoulder to lean on and a glass of cold water.

  I make it on my hands and knees. Feels like I’m swimming—desperately trying to come up for air. I’m not even sure if I’ve pressed the elevator button until the doors open and I fall in.

  I throw up before the doors open again. I feel better for it. Just about make it to my feet. Stagger across the open expanse toward the pool. My vision is blurring, but I can already see the answer to my question. One girl. Just one girl, hanging on to the edge of the pool as if her world is crumbling, sobbing out her heart.

  The sound of footsteps behind me. I half turn, half fall. Kayla weaving her way toward me. Sword drawn.

  “No,” she slurs. “No you feckin’ don’t. Not my girls. No.”

  In the background I can still hear Ephie sobbing over and over, “It was him. It was him. He took Ophelia. It was him.”

  Too tired to explain. Too sick. Too heartsick. Headsick. I lie back. Back here again. Back on my back again. Kayla advances.

  And then, either Ephie realizes the effects of her words, or by chance she hits the part of the cycle that redeems me. But I don’t feel any better at all, don’t feel any hope, any relief as she says, “It was Clyde. Clyde took Ophelia. It was him. It was Clyde.”

  42

  Kayla’s gone when Shaw and Tabitha make it down. She was screaming. Howling. She saw the blood in the water. And I was trying to explain it was there before. But then Ephie said it was Ophelia’s, and Kayla seemed to almost be pulsating with fear and rage. I thought she was going to pop something. Like some terrible eighties horror movie. Smash cut to an exploding head and a collapsing mannequin. She left then, her sword scoring an inch-deep groove in the concrete floor.

  I wouldn’t want to be Clyde right now.

  Oh God. Oh shit and balls. Oh Clyde.

  Clyde.

  I trust Clyde. Oh Jesus, what sort of fool am I?

  Beware the painted man’s false promises until he shows his second face. The very first thing I was told. The very first thing. And I can still see, when I close my eyes, one of the Sheilas saying, maybe it means you, Clyde. Him saying they weren’t really tattoos.

  It was all there. All of it. He cast the spell. He brought the Dreamers here. He made the disk that knocked us all out. Jesus.

  How long? That’s the only question. How long has he been against us? It can’t have been since the beginning. I can’t believe that. I won’t believe that. If I do...

  Shit and balls and fuck, fuck, fuck.

  I watch Shaw and Tabitha go through the same thing when I tell them. Tabitha has her head between her knees. And I can tell she’s crying and trying not to show it because, well, because she’s Tabitha, and she’s not the sort of person who can cry in front of us all. But this has broken something, this betrayal. Something feels cracked in all of us. Shaw walks back and forth muttering to herself and shaking her head angrily, occasionally barking things into a walkie-talkie and ignoring the responses.

  And in the background Ephie keeps on sobbing. And eventually I manage to pull myself together enough to go over to her, and stroke her head, and tell her it’ll be OK, we’ll find Ophelia, we’ll find Clyde, we’ll fix this, we’ll make it right. And slowly, slowly she subsides until the squid and octopuses come and wrap her in sinuous limbs, carry her back into the pool, spread-eagled on her back, hair spread out like a peacock’s tail, somewhere between sleep and catatonia.

  Tabitha’s next. She’s sitting curled into herself. She won’t show me her face.

  “Talk to me,” I say. “Give me something here. Please.”

  It takes a while, a little coaxing, but eventually she says, “No.” It’s not just a denial of my request, but of everything, of the whole world.

  “I know,” I say. “I don’t know.” I look about. “I don’t know how to process this.”

  Finally she looks up, her heavy mascara in thick trails down her cheeks. Funny—I’m not sure if that’s by accident or design. Not that funny really.

  “He was the best of us,” she says. “Best of us and not one of us. Fuck. Fucked up.” She shakes her head, more and more violently. Her hair thrashes about her head. I touch her shoulder and she stops and looks up at me. Pain and distress. Hate too. Not of me. Of herself. “I fucking kissed him.” She looks at her hands, her feet. “He’s got a fucking girlfriend. They’ve dated since university. And I kissed him. Who does that? What bitch? He was the best of us.” She shakes her head again, a final vicious spasm. “Fuck.”

  “He was the only person I was sure it couldn’t be,” I say.

  “Me too.”

  “We’ll find him,” I say. I try to find something that sounds like confidence. “We’ll fix this. Fix him. We’ll get it out of him.”

  She looks at me like I’ve gone mad. “What? We can’t. He’s gone. Don’t you understand that? Clyde’s dead. He’s dead. He just hasn’t stopped moving yet. We’re just waiting for Kayla to put her sword in him.”

  “His machine—” I start.

  “Was a lie!” She’s shouting now. Shaw looks over, but I hold up a hand to keep her back. This needs to happen. It’s time to get everything out.

  “Don’t you get any of this?” Tabitha demands. “The machine to kick out the Progeny—it can’t be made. Some Progeny fuck lied to us. Just made something to knock us all out. So he could take Ophelia. It was a lie. He was a lie.”

  “You did the research,” I say. “You read what was in the book. You thought this was possible. He didn’t make the machine he said he did, but that doesn’t mean the machine we want isn’t possible. You can make it. You can help us fix this. Help us make it right.”

  “I’m a research assistant.” She enunciates the words. “Understand that. I shouldn’t be in the field. I shouldn’t be making shit. I do research. Just learn stuff. Don’t apply it. I go out in the field—Clyde gets infected. Build stuff—he steals Ophelia.”

  “No,” I say. I shake my head. “No, that’s not right. You’re wrong.” I get down on my knees. I’m close to her and Tabitha’s aura of “bugger off” is so highly developed that it feels like a violation of private space, but I think she needs some human contact right now. “You are not responsible for this. You didn’t do this. Clyde didn’t do this. The Progeny did this. Evil mind worms from outer space. Not you. Not me. Not Clyde. We’re going to get him back. We’re going to fix this. Me. Shaw. Kayla. You.”

  There is a glimmer of hope, something maybe. And then she drowns it. But she’s not talking to me anymore. I see the shutters go down. I’ve done my best, what I can. I beckon Shaw over. She shoves the walkie-talkie back into her pocket.

  “Please can you talk to Tab
itha,” I say. “I think she needs to talk this out. Shutting down will be bad.” Tabitha reminds me of parents, of lovers, of husbands and wives I had to visit when I worked with the murder squad, when I delivered bad news. Some of them took it quietly, some took it loudly. All of them needed to talk. Not usually to me, but to someone. They needed to reconnect with humanity, to confirm, “It wasn’t me.” Tabitha needs that now.

  “What are you doing?” Shaw asks me.

  “I’m not sure... Something with Kayla. I mean, someone has to stop her.”

  “Stop her?”

  “I think Kayla is going to kill Clyde,” I say. “We have to—”

  “Arthur.” Shaw reaches out and grabs my arm. She has a sad smile on her face. “You really don’t know Kayla at all.”

  “What? What do you—”

  “The girls’ prediction,” she says. “That Kayla can’t save Ophelia. Kayla believes that body and soul. With complete conviction. And with good reason. The girls tell the truth. Kayla won’t chase Clyde because she doesn’t believe she can do anything. She wouldn’t have stayed here as long as she did if she could have done something about it.”

  God. I just accused her of planning to kill her daughters. And then the one guy I trust took her daughter off to kill her. And she’s sitting alone somewhere feeling powerless.

  “Where is she?” I ask. “I need to talk to her.” I need to try and make some of this right. Anything right.

  “Try Halal House, near the bus stop.”

  “Where?” There was something about that sentence that I missed, I’m sure.

  “She likes falafel, Arthur.” Shaw speaks slowly, patiently. Her hand, I notice, is still on my arm. “Halal House. Near the bus stop. She likes the food there. She finds it comforting. Whenever she’s upset she usually goes to eat there. Try there.”

  I nod and turn to leave.

  “Arthur,” she says. She still hasn’t let go of me.

  “Yes?” I turn.