The Catalyst

by Helena Coggan

  “What are your conditions?” asked Loren.

  Maria swallowed, and seemed to lose her resolve under their scrutiny. “You say Amelia’s army blew up that shopping center? Killed all those people?”

  “Yes,” David said. “And carried out another bomb attack besides.”

  “And her commander killed that woman?”

  “Yes.”

  Maria took another deep breath. “Okay. I’ll show you the e-mails and let you trace this . . . Regency, if you promise that when you find them, you keep my sister safe. You don’t hurt her, you don’t arrest her or put her in prison or anything, you just let her go. Don’t wipe her memory, either — I know you have ways to do that. I want you to sign to it. On a piece of paper, so you can’t delete it or anything. And then I’ll give you the e-mails. Okay?”

  David, Loren, Terrian and James all looked at one another.

  “Deal,” they said together.

  “James,” David said, “go draw up that contract. Maria, go with him. I’ll sign it too if you want. We all will.”

  Maria, who had been clutching the table so hard it looked like she would soon lose the ability to ever let go of it again, headed out of the room with James. Rose caught her at the doorway and hugged her. Maria smiled bemusedly before James near-dragged her out the door. Rose knew how eager he would be to get to the computers on something this big.

  She turned to the remaining people in the meeting room. David, Loren, Nate and Terrian, all still looking slightly stunned, were staring at the doorway after James and Maria.

  “No,” Rose said into the sudden silence, “I have to say I did not see that one coming.”

  It took James six hours to track Regency down. After Maria had given the Department access to the e-mails, there was nothing more she could do to be of use to the operation; thus, along with Nate and Rose, she was assigned to what Rose assured her was the high-ranking and well-respected post of Tea Fetcher. In those six hours, the three of them fetched thirty-four cups of tea, twenty-eight mugs of coffee, and three biscuit trays — most of it for the consumption of Terrian, Loren and David, who were in the meeting room, pacing back and forth by the windows and looking very tense.

  At about eleven o’clock, the morgue staff came and took Laura’s body away. After this, David assumed a sort of comatose state, sitting in front of an untouched cup of tea with his head in his hands, unmoving. Rose knew better than to try to stir him.

  “Is there anything we could have done?” asked Nate quietly, a few hours after that. He was staring out of the window at the marks of Laura’s blood on the pavement. His voice was hollow. “Anything at all?”

  “No,” said David grimly. “Nothing.” He moved a hand slowly over his face, his movements stiff; he had not stirred for a long time. “There is no defense against Hybrids.”

  For a moment Rose worried that someone might take note of the clear, heavy weight of knowledge in his voice, but no one seemed to; the silence picked up from there and stretched long and light ahead of them.

  Maria fell silent after a few minutes and spent the rest of the time sitting in a corner, looking pale and frightened. Rose could see her determination crumbling, her unvoiced fears playing out across her face. Rose could not begrudge her worrying about her sister, Maria not having known Laura herself, but Rose still had to look away. She couldn’t bear the weight of someone else’s loss as well as her own.

  After a while, Nate, who had been pacing up and down by the window, sat down next to Maria and put his arm round her shoulder. She leaned against him. Terrian stared at them for a second, opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked at David, who gave him a half-amused What can you do? kind of look, and then made an odd little nodding gesture between Rose and the door that led to the office, which Rose had no idea how to interpret.

  Rose herself sat in the opposite corner, thinking. Mostly, she thought about Laura; the years she had spent in the suggestion therapy wards, looking after distressed relatives; the games she had played with Rose when she was little and David was on a case; her husband and grown-up son, who would have been informed by now of her death; the way Rose had had to take a second look at her bloodied corpse before her face became recognizable . . .

  No, not Laura. Please not Laura.

  What had Laura ever done to deserve this?

  She had had nothing to do with Hybrids, had borne no particular grudge against them; in fact she had been Rose’s only hope if their secret ever came out — the one person whose forgiveness and acceptance she could have been fairly sure of . . .

  Oh, stop being so selfish, for the love of the Angels. Laura is gone.

  Laura was gone.

  Rose pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and groaned.

  Finally, just as the sunlight began to fade from the sky, James’s cry rang from the office. Everyone was on their feet immediately. Rose was nearly crushed in the doorway and in the stampede down the corridors. They burst into the office and gathered around James’s computer. He looked exhausted, but his eyes were bright.

  “Got him,” he said, triumphantly, sitting back in his chair. “He’s got good people on computer security, I’ll give him that.”

  Loren’s finger found the pulsing green dot on James’s screen. His eyes widened and he leaned back.

  “Oh, no.” He half laughed in disbelief. “The clever bastard.”

  “Where?” asked Nate impatiently. “Where is he?”

  “The War Rooms,” Loren said incredulously. “He’s in the Cabinet War Rooms.”

  “But the Gifted armies bombed that.” David leaned in to squint at the screen. “Felix abandoned it years ago.”

  “Apparently not,” said James. “I’ve hacked into the camera database and found the thermal registers. There are life signs for about seven hundred people there, easily.” He looked up at David. “This is bigger than we thought. Much bigger.”

  Nate held up a hand. “Hang on. Explain. What are the War Rooms?”

  “They were built during the Second World War — one of the human wars, before the Veilbreak — as a sort of bomb shelter–cum–government base,” Loren said. “The leader of Parliament ran the country from there when needed. The Ashkind took it as a base during the War of Angels and expanded it. But the Gifted armies bombed the entrance. Apparently they didn’t destroy as much of it as they thought.”

  “It looks like they didn’t destroy anything,” David said, examining the diagrams more closely, “just the entrance. It would have been fairly easy to build another, though. God.” He leaned back in amazement. “He’s been using the whole thing as an underground base for years. And we never noticed.” He tapped the floor. “Right under our feet.”

  There was a silence for a few seconds.

  “Right,” Terrian said, after a while. His voice had a new strength to it. “Let’s go bomb the bastard, shall we?”

  David looked at him sharply. “No! Weren’t you listening? That’s exactly what we shouldn’t do!”

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  David sighed in exasperation and pulled down a map of London from a shelf. He found Westminster and circled the War Rooms with a pencil.

  “This is where Felix is hiding,” he said. “He would have had to dig further to create enough space to contain seven hundred people. He can’t dig sideways, because it’s surrounded by buildings with basements. He could dig into St. James’s Park, but there’s a high risk someone would notice the tremors from the work, and eventually he’d end up digging into the middle of the lake. So he has to dig down. If you tried to bomb it, you’d only skim the surface and drive them further underground. And there are only going to be a couple of entrances, which will be very well defended. It’d be suicide, Connor.”

  “So what exactly do you suggest we do — leave them alone? After they blew up Westfield and killed Laura?”

  David put his head in his hands. He looked very tired. “No. I suggest we try subtler methods.”

  Ter
rian laughed harshly. “Look at this! David Elmsworth, suggesting subtlety.”

  David looked up at him sharply. Everyone was staring between the two men now. Rose and Nate glanced at each other nervously.

  Slowly, very slowly, David straightened up and stepped toward Terrian. To his credit, Terrian did not step back.

  “I suggest,” David said, very softly, “that if you dislike my methods, you should stop listening to me. Fire me if you must. After that I give you six months, maximum, before this whole Department collapses and your career is consigned to the governmental dustheap. This whole operation is useless without me and you know it.”

  Fury blazed in Terrian’s eyes. James’s gaze flickered between them uncertainly. Loren was watching David, his fists clenched. Nate leaned back against a filing cupboard and folded his arms.

  There was a pause of about six seconds, wherein Rose could see Terrian struggling for a dignified response and failing to come up with one.

  The ensuing dialogue could only be described as a detailed explanation of what Terrian thought about David’s advice, its quality, and its giver, followed by a suggestion as to where David could shove it.

  James and Loren were on their feet immediately, but Rose was faster. Anger blurred her vision, and with a bang Terrian was thrown backward onto the desk. She focused, and before he could strike back, the desk was swept from under him. By the time he hit the ground, Rose’s gun was out and pointed between Terrian’s eyes.

  “Take that back,” she said, her voice shaking with fury.

  “Rose!” David said sharply. “Rose, get away from him.”

  She felt Nate’s hand on her arm, pulling her away, and she wrenched herself out of his grip. He went for the gun, but Rose dodged and stepped back, clicking the safety off and aiming it again at Terrian’s head.

  “I said,” Rose repeated, “take it back.”

  She had never seen anyone look so angry in her life. His eyes were fixed on the gun. It did not quite register with her yet, but the fact that he didn’t try to get up meant that he considered it a genuine possibility that she might fire.

  “Rose,” said James hoarsely. “Jesus Christ, put the gun down.”

  “Not until he takes it back.”

  “Rose.”

  She turned her head toward him. He was standing two feet away from her, his computer screen forgotten, hands raised uncertainly to shoulder height. Even Loren, behind him, looked slightly wary. David looked shocked and angry in equal measure. Beside him, Maria was just managing to stop Nate, who looked more enraged than Rose had ever seen him, from running at her.

  So having evil forced upon you, and accepting it, is entirely different from choosing evil.

  Loren’s words, a far-distant memory.

  Put the gun down, said a weary voice in her head. Aren’t you one of the good guys?

  But good guys had guns. Without guns, they would never get anything done.

  Put it down.

  No.

  Put it down, you monster.

  Slowly, Rose lowered the gun and stepped away from Terrian.

  Maria let go of Nate, who promptly walked up to Rose and hit her. Rose did not react. It stung, but she did not react.

  “If you ever,” he said, “do that again . . .”

  “I very much doubt I will have cause to,” Rose said quietly.

  Nate turned away and stormed out of the office. Maria followed him hurriedly.

  After a few seconds of silence, Terrian picked himself up from the scattered papers and crushed wood, brushing himself off. He was almost spluttering with anger. From an uninvolved perspective, it would have been almost funny.

  Terrian straightened up and moved toward Rose, but David hastily stepped between them. Loren took a step closer, watching the three of them closely.

  “Connor,” David began, “whatever my daughter has done —”

  “Shut up,” Terrian hissed. “Get out of my way.”

  “No,” David said calmly.

  “I said,” Terrian repeated, “get out of my way.”

  “No,” David said again.

  Terrian glared furiously at Rose. She hated hiding behind her father, but she knew from the look in Terrian’s eyes that to do anything else would be stupid. Then he looked back at David. Rose could see him reasoning it out: to back down now would make him look weak, but if Rose could knock him to the ground, starting a fight with David would be next to suicide.

  “All right,” he said. He took a deep breath. “All right, then, Major Elmsworth. You think you can just defy a senior officer, in a time of crisis? All right then.” Another breath. “This department is going to bomb the War Rooms tomorrow and go in with two hundred army troops, and you”— here he jabbed a finger into David’s chest —“you”— pointing at Loren, who raised his eyebrows —“you”— at Rose —“and you”— at James —“can lead them. I’ll sit here in Westminster and watch you make fools of yourselves. Then see how eager you are to defy me.”

  He gave the four of them one last, triumphant glower, and stormed out after his son.

  For a long time, no one moved.

  “Okay,” Rose said quietly, “I’ll admit that wasn’t my best move.”

  “No,” replied Loren curtly, “it was not. Well done, Rose.”

  Another long silence. James got to his feet, pushing his hair out of his eyes.

  “Well, he never really liked me anyway,” he said cheerfully. “If we’re leading a suicide mission tomorrow, I may as well get some sleep beforehand. Good night, everyone.”

  And with that he picked up his bag and left.

  Another silence, this time broken by the sound of the door creaking open and Tabitha poking her head nervously into the room.

  “I heard . . . noises,” she said. “Is everything okay, Dad?”

  Loren leaned back against a filing cabinet, closed his eyes, and swore.

  They arrived at Westminster the next morning to find fifty people gathered around the War Rooms entrance, all wearing the gray uniform of the Department squad teams. David stared at them, stricken.

  “We were supposed to have the army,” he muttered. “Why is this not the army?”

  “Are squad teams not better than the army?” Rose asked.

  “Not here,” he said. “Our squad teams are just soldiers with extra training, and in any other situation they’d be great, but we’re not going to win this battle using skill, we’re going to win with sheer force of numbers. Fifty is not going to cut it. They’ll outnumber us fourteen to one. Excuse me?” He ducked under the Do Not Cross tape and looked around. “Has anyone got Connor Terrian on communications?”

  Someone had. They handed him a walkie-talkie, saluted respectfully, realized David wasn’t paying them the slightest bit of attention, and walked away. David held the button down and spoke, staring at the bricked-up entrance to the War Rooms. Rose had to admit it looked, at first sight, fairly innocuous.

  “Hello, Ground Control,” he said. “We appear to be somewhat lacking in arms.”

  “Yes, I know,” came Terrian’s voice, crackly over the intercom. “I put in the application for two hundred troops last night, and . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “It didn’t go through,” Terrian said. “Apparently the Department needs to prove its competence against Regency before the Government will commit three-figure troops.”

  “Did they?” David asked innocently. “Did they really say ‘the Department,’ Connor?”

  Silence.

  “Ground Control, are you still there?”

  “No,” snapped Terrian. “No, they didn’t. They said me. Is that enough?”

  “Oh, yes,” David said, grinning. “Yes it is.”

  He disconnected before Terrian could start swearing at him.

  James and Loren approached from behind the War Rooms. James was doing a quick head count of the troops, and the look of confusion on his face was quickly descending into one of anger.

  “All right,
” he said, as he and Loren accepted walkie-talkies from the soldiers, “how’s he messed up this time?”

  “It’s not so much how he’s messed up as his likelihood of doing so again,” David said. “Where’s Tabitha?”

  “At our old house,” Loren replied. “She insisted she could look after herself for a day. Anyway, my only other options were leaving her with Terrian or taking her into this. What’s our situation?”

  David ran a hand over his face and sighed.

  “Well, as I see it,” he said, “less than ideal. We’ve got fifty troops, lots of explosives, a target that extends about a hundred feet underground, and no visible entrance to bomb.”

  “But that’s ridiculous,” James said in disbelief. “They don’t seriously expect us to take Regency out with this, do they?”

  “Apparently they do,” David said.

  There was a grim silence.

  “You’re being very quiet, Rose,” Loren said. “Any ideas?”

  “None,” Rose said. “Just a thought. And not a very nice one.”

  “Well, fire away,” David said. “We haven’t got anything.”

  “It’s not even a plan,” Rose said in frustration. “It’s just . . . we may as well go ahead with whatever Terrian thinks, mightn’t we? We’ve got nothing to lose.”

  David grimaced in acceptance, but James looked at her as if she had gone mad. His hair was still wet. It had darkened to a gold-brown in the light of the morning clouds.

  “Nothing to lose?” he repeated incredulously. “We have everything to lose, Rose.”

  “Not like that,” Rose said. “I just mean . . . our chances of actually succeeding with this aren’t good, so we may as well follow Terrian’s plan, because it’s his fault all of this is happening, isn’t it? If he can be seen to mess this up, they’ll take away his control, and we can use — what was it you said yesterday, Dad? — subtler methods without him sticking his nose in.”

  A pause while they absorbed this.

  “Actually,” David said slowly, “that’s true. I spoke to Terrian just now, and the reason we’ve only got fifty troops is because the army doesn’t trust him enough to give us the two hundred he asked for. Specifically him. He messed up the Argent case, remember?” Rose noticed Loren shift slightly where he stood. “And Laura — Anyway, this is backfiring on him. He thought that sending us on a suicide mission would be a win-win situation, because if we fail, he could blame us, but if we succeed, he could take the credit. But the government is allocating troops based on his reliability. As far as they’re concerned, ultimate responsibility rests with him.”