Jimmy Coates

by Joe Craig

  Suddenly William Lee dived across the room. Miss Bennett and Ian Coates had become too distracted to keep an eye on him. But he wasn’t launching an attack. Instead, he made for the broken remains of the Prime Minister’s stereo. Nobody was in a position to stop him. Before Eva could draw breath, there was a crackling sound, a flurry of sparks, and an explosion. Eva jumped up, screaming.

  The smell of burning filled the room and when the smoke cleared, William Lee was lying on his back, bare wires sticking out of his mouth. His eyes were wide open and the skin around his lips was black. Miss Bennett and Ian Coates rushed to him. Miss Bennett yanked the power cord out of the wall and pulled the wires from Lee’s mouth. The man’s body jerked horribly.

  Eva couldn’t watch. She looked away, instinctively burying her head in Olivia Muzbeke’s shoulder.

  “It’s OK,” Felix’s mum whispered.

  How is it OK? Eva shouted in her head. She fought to hold back her tears, but she couldn’t stop her horror. A man had just electrocuted himself in front of her. The smell attacked Eva’s nostrils. And this was just after she’d discovered that her friend’s brother was being brainwashed to become an assassin. My friend? Eva was shocked at her own thoughts. Is Mitchell my friend now? He’s an assassin! A killer!

  She buried her head deeper into Olivia Muzbeke’s coat and felt the woman’s soothing hand on the back of her head. It’s no good, Eva thought. Once they’ve got everything they need from you they’ll probably kill you too! Suddenly she felt a realisation jolt through her. The security forces were missing, sent all over the place on false emergencies by William Lee. The satellite surveillance system was still down. It would only be down for a few more moments, but maybe that was enough.

  “You have to get out of here,” Eva whispered, straight into Olivia’s ear. She felt the woman’s body tense up, but held her in a hug so that it wasn’t noticeable. “Get out!” Eva insisted. “There’s no security. No surveillance. Get out as quickly as you can and get as far away as you can.” And then she realised. “No, go to London Bridge. Be under the flyover in the morning.”

  She could feel Olivia’s breath quickening. “But… but…”

  Eva glanced over her shoulder quickly. Miss Bennett and Ian Coates were crouched beside William Lee, trying to bring him round while shouting into their phones at the same time, trying to get hold of a medical team.

  “Get out now!” Eva whispered. She released Felix’s mother and threw herself across the room to the foot of Ian Coates’ desk. Under the desk, glinting in the shadows, was the knife Olivia Muzbeke had tried to embed in the Prime Minister’s throat. Eva seized it now and, without even thinking, slammed it into her upper arm.

  “Aargh!” she screamed. Blood spurted everywhere and pain shot through her whole body. What have I done? she cried inside.

  “Eva!” said Miss Bennett, rushing to her. “What happened?”

  “She attacked!” Eva yelled. “She found her knife! She’s a killer! Stop her!”

  Miss Bennett and Ian Coates stood in the middle of the study, confounded. Olivia Muzbeke’s armchair was empty. She had already left the building.

  Jimmy couldn’t take his eyes off Neil Muzbeke’s face until he was startled out of his thoughts by his mum’s voice.

  “Jimmy!” she shouted. He looked round to see her lit up by a flash from the strobe light. She was crouched at the top of the stairs that led down to the basement of LOCO. “Find cover!”

  Cover, thought Jimmy, desperately trying to piece himself back together. Yes – protection. Survival. His programming was humming inside him. It didn’t care that his best friend’s father was the would-be assassin in his grip. How was it possible!? Enough! Jimmy ordered himself. He quickly pulled the balaclava back over Neil Muzbeke’s face. He couldn’t let the others see who it was – not yet. Only the cool, unfeeling killer in Jimmy stopped his focus evaporating in a storm of confusion. It kept him moving.

  “Get this man out alive!” he ordered, dragging him across the floor. He saw his mum hesitating, confused. “Just do it!” he shouted.

  “Where’s Chris?” his mother asked.

  Before Jimmy could answer, they heard Saffron’s voice.

  “He’s up there,” she said softly. She had struggled down from the higher levels, clutching the wound in her arm. “They took him again. The Capita. They have him up on one of the balconies.”

  “Which level?” Jimmy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Saffron’s voice was ragged.

  Jimmy could already feeling a thousand strategies taking shape in his head. “I’ll find him.” He silenced his mother before she could protest. “You make sure she’s OK.” He nodded towards Saffron. “Then find the lighting controls. Stop this flashing. Put the place in darkness again.”

  “I’ve been trying,” Helen replied. “But…”

  Jimmy was already dashing up the stairs. At the first level balcony he paused. He had to move carefully now. The club was almost silent. The crowd had made it outside, and only the occasional sound was coming through the walls. The crowd will attract attention, Jimmy thought. They’ll have called the police. That was all bad news for Jimmy. The police would either be in the pay of the Capita, or under the influence of NJ7.

  Jimmy crept round the balcony, listening, looking up at the levels that circled the hall above him. Still the strobe flicked on and off in numbing rhythm.

  “Chris, can you hear me?” he called out, then immediately dashed on in the shadows to mask his position once more. “I need to know you’re OK!” I need to know where you are, he thought. Any noise will do. Answer me! There was no response, just Jimmy’s own voice echoing back.

  Jimmy moved up and up, circling each balcony, making sure there was no way the Capita could slip past him. Come on, Jimmy thought. Any noise! Where are you? The flashes of the strobe hammered into Jimmy’s mind. When would they stop?

  “You need Chris alive,” he shouted, addressing the Capita now. “If you want the H Code, you have to get him to a hospital, which means bringing him down – past me. You’re trapped!”

  Still nothing stirred above him except the wafts of dust in the air. Is there another way out? Jimmy wondered. The roof maybe? It was a strong possibility. Had the Capita called for a helicopter? Jimmy expected to hear the sounds of a chopper at any moment. I have to keep going, Jimmy told himself. Corner them. Create panic. Create mistakes.

  He made it to the seventh floor. They’re close now, he told himself. As soon as there was any noise from above, Jimmy would pin down the Capita’s location.

  “I’m coming for you,” Jimmy whispered, knowing his voice would carry and the echo was enough to mask his position. Then it finally came – the noise Jimmy had been waiting for. But it wasn’t a voice, or even the sound of a step creaking on the floor. It was a whirring, a soft buzz. An electric motor, Jimmy realised. He’d heard that noise before. In another country, another lifetime almost, when he’d last come across the Capita. It was the noise of an electric wheelchair. That meant only one thing: the Head himself was here.

  The Head was the man in charge of the whole Capita organisation, the founder of a global crime network that made him more powerful than any head of state, despite his extreme physical weakness. Jimmy had never seen the man except in shadow, but still he had built an image of him in his mind: a withered, useless body that only existed to keep its head alive. The Head. That was him. Sometimes when Jimmy pictured the man he was just a head in a glass jar attached to a wheelchair, and he couldn’t dismiss the image no matter how hard he tried. Nonetheless, if the Head was here, he would want to be right next to Viggo to hear the information he wanted as it came out of the man’s mouth.

  Jimmy rushed up the stairs to the next balcony. He was only one level below them now, he was sure of it.

  “You’re close now, Jimmy,” came a voice, cutting through the hall like the next strobe flash. It was a thin, old voice with a strong Italian accent, but every syllable was clear, hissing
with authority – the voice of the Head. “Don’t worry about the lights, Jimmy,” he said. “We’ve made sure they can only be controlled from up here.”

  Was that a lie? Jimmy tried to find clues in the voice, but he knew the Head was the master of manipulation.

  “You’re trapped,” Jimmy called out, pacing across the balcony, searching for the point he thought was precisely below his enemy. Then came the whir of the Head’s wheelchair again.

  “You’re just as trapped, Jimmy,” the Head called out. “You want Viggo alive, but you can’t get him unless you come to us. We don’t care if he dies as long as he gives us the H Code first.”

  They’ve moved, Jimmy realised, constantly measuring where the voice was coming from. But there’d been no noise from the motor… Jimmy paused, recalculating his position. Keep them talking…

  “There is no H Code,” Jimmy shouted, desperate to find something that would make the Capita agents and the Head give away where they were hiding.

  “But you’re living proof that there is!” came the response from the Head.

  Jimmy stopped dead. “What?” he gasped.

  “What do you think the H Code is, young man?” asked the Head.

  Ignore him, Jimmy ordered himself. Keep searching. He’s up there, above you. Listen for the motor. The whir came again, and Jimmy followed it. Listen for the voices.

  “Viggo promised it to us, and we will find it eventually,” explained the Head.

  “He lied to you,” Jimmy replied. “It doesn’t exist.”

  “But you exist!”

  Then there was a new sound – a grunt. Chris! Jimmy sprinted a few metres further round, to where he thought the noise had come from, but he quickly realised he was going round in circles. He’d covered this part of the balcony before. They were just above him, but where? How were they confusing their position?

  “Jimmy!” It was Viggo this time, for sure. He sounded in great pain, but it was definitely him. “I’m sorry, Jimmy!”

  Jimmy picked up his pace again, following the voice.

  “I told them I had the H Code, Jimmy,” Viggo cried out, the blood bubbling in his voice.

  Jimmy couldn’t hold back any more. “Where is it?” he shouted. Enough lies, he thought. I have to know. “What is it? What is the H Code!?”

  He heard another wheelchair whir and shadowed it, dashing back to where he’d just been.

  “In a way, Jimmy,” said the Head, with a soft laugh, “it’s you!” Jimmy felt the words stab him in the throat. “The H Code is the technology that’s in you! It’s the guidebook, the template… it’s everything we need to reprogramme an unborn human’s DNA to make them… not human.”

  Jimmy’s blood seemed to freeze in his veins. “Chris!” he called out. “That can’t be true!”

  The only noise from Viggo was a low groan, almost drowned out by the whine of the Head’s wheelchair. Jimmy fought back the insanity rising in his head and ran towards the sound.

  “He has it, Jimmy!” said the Head. “He hid it! And we paid him millions for it!”

  Lies, Jimmy insisted in his head. Chris would never sell that!

  “He smuggled it out of NJ7 when he left all those years ago,” the Head went on, “and he’s had it hidden ever since!”

  Jimmy shut out the voice as it echoed round the hall, flooding every floor. He leapt up, grabbed a strut in the ceiling and, in the same movement, punched a hole in the floorboards. The wood shattered instantly and Jimmy burst up through the floor above. The Head’s voice might have been distorted by the echo in the hall, but the whir of his wheelchair had given him away. Jimmy had found him. He surged to his feet, ready to strike, ready to seize Viggo and take down his enemies.

  But then the strobe light flashed once more. Jimmy spun round on the spot. He was still alone. The only thing he’d found was an empty wheelchair. It spurted forward half a metre on its own, letting out one more whir that seemed to mock the lone boy standing in front of it, ready for a fight, but with no opponent.

  “No!” Jimmy cried. He brought his hand sweeping down into the centre of the wheelchair, connecting with nothing but air. “No!” How had he let a simple decoy deceive him? Then he spotted them – away on the other side of the hall at the same level, across the empty space in the middle.

  The Capita woman’s white coat flashed like a firework. Ahead of her were the four Capita guards. Two of them were carrying what looked like a wooden wheelbarrow. In the split second that it was lit up by a strobe flash, Jimmy realised it must have been some kind of antique wheelchair. Inside it, peeking out from under a pile of blankets, Jimmy just caught a glimpse of the back of a man’s head. His view was cut off immediately by the other two guards, and what they were carrying – the bleeding, dying figure of Christopher Viggo.

  “Chris!” Jimmy called out, hurtling round the balcony as the Head and his Capita guards reached a short flight of steps that led up to a trapdoor. Jimmy had guessed right: they were heading for the roof. But before they were up the steps, a new figure swept out of the darkness. Jimmy only saw it for an instant, lit up in the flash. It bundled into the Capita unit like a bull blasting away a flock of pigeons. In the next flash, the Capita agents were scattered, confused. Viggo was gone. And Jimmy was sure that somehow a new enemy had arrived. One that didn’t need to keep Viggo alive: NJ7.

  And apart from Jimmy, there was only one other person in Britain who could have blown the Capita unit apart in a single moment. Jimmy knew it immediately: Mitchell had arrived to kill Viggo. Then,

  BAM!

  Something slammed into the back of Jimmy’s head.

  Jimmy stumbled forward, but caught his balance and turned the momentum of his fall into a spin. His foot came round at head height and smacked the cheek of his attacker. Jimmy saw the impact in a single strobe flash and what he saw astounded him. The face he’d just kicked was covered by a black mask, but the eyes were Mitchell’s. So was the build of the body. And on the breast of the figure’s black, silken shirt was a green stripe. But if that was Mitchell, who had taken Viggo?

  Jimmy ducked instinctively, driven by his programming to protect himself. Keep moving, he heard. Keep striking. And that’s what he did – he landed an explosive jab in Mitchell’s middle then sprinted away, searching the darkness for Viggo. After two steps he ran straight into someone running the other way. Jimmy was barrelled to the ground and heard the other person fall too. The light flashed again and Jimmy saw him: the same figure sitting up on the floor right opposite him. Mitchell’s eyes. Mitchell’s body. Black shirt with a green stripe on the chest. How was this possible? Mitchell was in two places at once.

  Jimmy pushed himself up, fighting his own confusion and fear. This Mitchell had been carrying Viggo, but dropped him in the collision. Jimmy dived forward, desperate to protect his friend. He scooped up Viggo in his arms, straining under the man’s weight, forcing all his strength into his back and legs. He had no time to steady himself. He spun as soon as the darkness came and ran.

  He knew that in seconds Mitchell would be on his feet and catching up. He’s faster than ever, Jimmy thought, terrified that at any moment his enemy would spring up from the shadows, transported across the floor in an instant. Jimmy wrenched his legs forward, one step after another. If he could just reach the stairs, he had a chance…

  “Jimmy…” Viggo wheezed. Jimmy felt the man’s breath heaving in irregular lurches. There’s blood in his lungs, Jimmy heard himself thinking. He tried to ignore whatever Viggo was trying to say and ran on. He could hear Mitchell’s steps behind them, pounding closer. All the time, a hot glow oozed from Viggo’s wounds across Jimmy’s neck and back.

  “Jimmy…” Viggo whispered again. “I’m sorry.”

  The words gripped Jimmy’s brain and tore a new seam of despair.

  “So it’s true,” said Jimmy, more to himself than to the man in his arms. “You sold everything to the Capita for your own power? And you tried to fix the election?”

  “It
was just…” The words died on Viggo’s tongue. His eyes were pleading.

  “And what you sold…” Jimmy went on, spitting out the words, “…was me?”

  “Not you…” Viggo protested, his strength slipping away. “Just… the technology… a computer chip… the H Code…”

  “You wanted the Capita to…” Jimmy couldn’t finish what he was thinking. It was too horrible to imagine, but he had to say it. He wanted to scream it, to use the words to stab Viggo’s wounds even deeper. “You’d let them make more of me!”

  “No, Jimmy!” Viggo protested, but Jimmy watched his eyes in the next strobe flash. They were stretched wide and completely bloodshot. Was there any truth left in them? “Jimmy, I never…” He choked up every word, buffeted with each step that Jimmy took. They were only metres from the stairs now.

  “So where have you hidden it?” Jimmy insisted. “Where is the H Code?”

  “I can’t…”

  Suddenly a figure burst up from the stairwell. It swung through the darkness and knocked Jimmy off his feet. He and Viggo sprawled across the floor. In the next flash of light he saw the back of this attacker, bent over Viggo, arm raised, ready to strike. Was that Mitchell? How was it possible? He had been behind them!

  There was no time for indecision. Jimmy leapt up and threw himself on to the boy’s back. He caught the raised right hand just as it swept down towards Viggo’s neck. Jimmy twisted the fingers until they snapped and threw the boy to one side as if he was flicking a rag doll to the floor. All the time, Jimmy was measuring his opponent’s physical presence, his technique, his speed. The body was just like Mitchell’s – perhaps even bigger – but the muscles were nowhere near as strong, the combat skills not as advanced. So who is it? Jimmy screamed to himself, just as the boy charged, burying his head in Jimmy’s solar plexus.

  The breath burst from Jimmy’s body. For a second he thought his stomach was going to explode out of his mouth. He staggered backwards, but his attacker kept on driving forward. Jimmy felt his senses slipping away. He couldn’t draw breath. If the pressure persisted he knew he would pass out.