Survival

by Joe Craig

  Stovorsky sounded more agitated now. “The British are still waiting off the coast in their destroyer. A destroyer, Jimmy.”

  He emphasised the word, but Jimmy stood motionless, his face blank. His mind was tearing itself apart. I am human, he wanted to scream. But his programming wouldn’t let him. It was rolling through every sinew: 38 per cent, it seemed to whisper. Only 38 per cent human.

  “They call them destroyers for a reason,” Stovorsky continued. “Not just ‘big ships’. When the Brits work out there’s no way of them taking over the mine, they’ll destroy it.” He clasped his head in frustration and let out a grunt. “It’s so simple!” he cried. “I could train a monkey to do it if I had time.”

  “But instead of a monkey,” Jimmy murmured, “you found me.” He felt like a black wave was overpowering his senses. He fought his way back to the surface. “So this is the way it works,” he muttered.

  “What’s that?”

  “You lie to me to get me to go on some mission that has nothing to do with me except that you think I’m the only person who can do it.”

  For a moment Stovorsky was taken aback. “You’ve changed,” he said.

  “I used to be easier to fool.” Jimmy was barely holding back his temper. “I told you I need to get back to Britain and you want to send me to Africa.”

  He saw a smile creep on to Stovorsky’s face. It creased up the man’s cheeks and made his eyes as small as pinholes. “You’re better at geography than you are at chemistry,” he announced. “I don’t blame you for not trusting me.”

  “Why?” Jimmy barked. “Because you’re lying?”

  “No.” Stovorsky’s smile vanished. “Because I have no reason to tell you the truth.”

  Jimmy was thrown. His wanted to trust the man, but he remembered how wrong he’d been about Colonel Keays. Was Stovorsky any different? He certainly seemed more desperate for help.

  Forget what you think, Jimmy told himself. Instead he closed his eyes and delved for guidance from inside. At first all he could feel was his burger.

  I don’t have to do this, he thought. Walk away. Stay dead. He felt a kick through all of his muscles. His programming was blaring out a warning, like a buzzer in his ears. I can’t trust him, Jimmy thought, forcing away the noise.

  That second the fear for his family connected with that massive drive inside him – the urge for control. He knew that if he wanted his family out of reach of NJ7, the best way to do it was to exploit the DGSE resources at Stovorsky’s disposal. Then he could do whatever he wanted – disappear, return to Britain to try to prevent the war… or destroy NJ7. Jimmy shuddered violently. Where had that thought come from?

  He made a decision. It doesn’t matter if he’s lying. Let him think he’s using you. Use him.

  His eyes burst open. He stared at Stovorsky. Suddenly the bright lights of the service station seemed to pierce Jimmy’s skin and ignite his veins. He sat down and his hands grabbed for the laptop. He pulled it close to disguise the fact that he was trembling. Still, his brain was throbbing. Words screamed through his head: no more mistakes. They came with a fizz that thrilled every part of him. If it was safer not to trust Stovorsky, he wouldn’t. My rules this time, he thought. My mission.

  When he looked up Stovorsky was grinning. “Thank you, Jimmy.” Jimmy ignored him. “We’re on the same side now,” Stovorsky went on. “So don’t worry. I’m going to help you.”

  “I know,” Jimmy replied. Because I’m going to force you to.

  12 THE HALF-LIFE OF DEAD RABBITS

  Jimmy held himself stiff in the back of the off-roader. To the right was the ocean, while to the left was the desert. It was as if each one was trying to stretch out further than the other. But Jimmy didn’t feel like taking in the scenery.

  He breathed deeply, hoping the ocean wind would settle his nausea, but the air was so hot and dry it felt like it was going to burn through his sinuses into his brain. It just made him feel more sick and he clutched his stomach.

  The Panhard PVP 360 hurtled south along the coast of Western Sahara, bouncing as if it was trying to take off. The driver showed no inclination to ease his foot off the accelerator. Unusually the top was down. That was so the integrated armoured steel hull didn’t interfere with the satellite signal to Uno Stovorsky’s laptop.

  Another clump of wet sand smeared across Jimmy’s cheek. He wiped the back of his sleeve across his face.

  The material of his camo suit was rough and it smelled as if it hadn’t been washed since the last time it had been worn, but at least it fitted him, which was better than the clothes he’d been wearing for a while.

  Jimmy noticed that Stovorsky hadn’t changed out of his suit and raincoat. This is the desert, he thought. Don’t you even want to loosen your tie?

  “Fortunately actinium has a very short half-life,” Stovorsky shouted over the noise of the truck and the wind. He was leaning back in the seat next to Jimmy. One arm was dangled over the side of the PVP while the other tapped away at the laptop balanced on his knee. “It will still be a year before we can safely operate the mine, but without you doing this for us it might be a hundred years – or more.”

  Jimmy didn’t understand a word Stovorsky was saying and he didn’t care. He just wished the man would be quiet so he could concentrate on not throwing up. Actually, Jimmy thought, maybe I should throw up. At least that might shut him up.

  “There’s just one more thing you need to know,” Stovorsky went on. Jimmy’s patience ran out.

  “Only one thing?” he snapped. One thing you haven’t mentioned in the last six hours of endless talking? “That’s great news.”

  “I don’t mind your sarcasm, Jimmy,” replied Stovorsky, still in that loud monotone, still not looking up from his laptop. “By the time you’re eighteen the assassin in you will have forced it out of your system. If you survive that long.”

  Jimmy felt a surge of anger, but he had no reply. Stovorsky’s words were terrifying because they were probably true.

  “You might find some bodies in the mine complex,” said Stovorsky, ignoring Jimmy’s furious glare.

  “I thought you said the French team all managed to evacuate.”

  “They did. But on their way out they crossed paths with some lunatics who were fighting their way in.”

  Jimmy drew in another deep breath and half closed his eyes, trying to shut out the bumps and lurches of the journey to concentrate on information that might be important for his survival.

  “That’s why I can’t just send a hazmat team,” Stovorsky went on. “If anybody’s left alive in there, they might be dangerous.”

  This gets better all the time, Jimmy thought to himself.

  “And you’re sure I won’t need a protective suit or something?” he called out.

  “I told you,” Stovorsky replied. “You don’t need one. And a hazardous-materials suit seriously restricts your movements. You’ll need to be ready to defend yourself if necessary.”

  Jimmy shot him an uneasy look.

  “For years,” Stovorsky explained, “there’s been local resistance. The natives had a problem with the French running the mine. They thought they should have been allowed to do it themselves. They put together some kind of nationalist force. Mostly they weren’t very effective, but lately they’d seemed a bit more organised.” He shrugged. “Nothing to worry about now. The Brits blew most of them up. That was the blast we’re worried about – the one that might have ionised the actinium.”

  Jimmy couldn’t believe the casual way that Stovorsky was talking. People had been blown up. Jimmy wondered how many. He was going to ask, but then a horrible shiver came over him. He realised that soon he might see for himself.

  “We should be thankful to them, I suppose,” Stovorsky continued. “They’re probably the reason why the British messed it up in the first place. Otherwise there’d be a Union Jack flying there right now.”

  Stovorsky flicked a finger in the direction they were travelling, but he still
didn’t look up. For a second Jimmy didn’t know what he meant. Then, in the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of something on the horizon. He turned his head, squinting against the sand and dust in the wind.

  The beach stretched out ahead of them for miles and miles. It shimmered in the heat, blurring the horizon so that the blue of the sky melted into the sand and the sea. But somewhere in that haze was a short slab of black. Even from here, Jimmy could recognise the outlines of Mutam-ul-it’s vast machine halls and the trace of smoke still rising from them.

  “Here’s your radio, Jimmy,” said Stovorsky, turning to look at Jimmy at last. He tossed a large white handset into Jimmy’s lap. It landed with a thump. “The signal’s encrypted and you’ve got lithium batteries in there with twenty-four hours’ charge, so you can leave it on in case we need to contact you before you contact us. And we’re watching too, to check you’re OK.” He tapped the screen of his laptop. To check I’m OK, thought Jimmy, or to check I’m doing what you want me to do?

  Stovorsky reached forwards and gave the driver a jab in the shoulder. “This is about as close as we can go, Jimmy,” he announced. The driver slammed on the brakes and the PVP skidded across the sands. “It’s up to you now.”

  Jimmy clipped the radio to his utility belt and stared out in the direction of the mine. He knew he still had a choice. He could still refuse to go. Inside him was a cloud as dark as the smoke rising from the mine, and hotter.

  The line between his programming and his own mind was more blurred than ever. He didn’t know who was making decisions any more – Jimmy Coates the boy, or Jimmy Coates the assassin. Does it matter? he wondered, crushing the trepidation in his stomach with huge mental effort. I know what I want. He glared at Stovorsky. You’re going to give it to me.

  Without hesitating another second, he pushed open the door and set off across the sand.

  * * *

  Zafi Sauvage dipped the end of her little finger into the froth on her hot chocolate and tried to draw a smiley face. Looks more like a dead rabbit, she thought to herself with a smile. She sucked her finger and went back to staring out of the window of the coffee shop. Rivulets of rain zigzagged down the glass. With that, and the cap pulled down low over her face, she knew there was no way Mitchell Glenthorne would notice her.

  He’s meant to have the skills of a top assassin, she thought, wanting to snigger, but controlling herself. She knew that luck was on her side for now – it was only this easy to shadow him because he was preoccupied with shadowing somebody else.

  At the moment her subject was leaning back on a bench across from the coffee shop, pretending to read a film magazine. It occurred to Zafi that whoever he was following might even be sitting in that same coffee shop where she was. She didn’t care. She had her target; she just needed to find her moment.

  Just then she was distracted by a soft vibration in her hip pocket. She pulled out her phone and discreetly checked the message. It was encrypted of course. Whoever had sent it would have used a Secret Service computer, or a mobile phone that bounced everything through a DGSE server. But Zafi didn’t need any software to decipher the text. She had found out very young that she had the ability to retain incredibly long strings of letters and numbers in her head. Complex algorithms were reduced to simple codes, as if she was seeing the symbols in three dimensions, with space between the shapes for their meanings.

  The message was from Uno Stovorsky.

  Zafi let out a sigh of disappointment at what it said. She downed her hot chocolate in one massive gulp, then dashed out into the rain of North London. Her target would have to wait. She had confidence she’d be able to find him again fairly easily.

  Her new assignment was a strange one: track down the mother and sister of Jimmy Coates. Make contact. But she wasn’t to do anything else until she’d received another message – not kill them, nor protect them. Just find where NJ7 was housing them and make contact without the British Secret Service noticing her.

  There was an unfamiliar churning in her gut as she jogged down the escalator into Camden Town station. Did it mean something, or was it the effect of British hot chocolate? It slowly worked its way from her stomach to her mind. Could it be confusion that she hadn’t been ordered to kill these new subjects. Or was it fear that she still might have to?

  13 MUTAM-UL-IT

  The closer Jimmy came to Mutam-ul-it, the darker his feelings grew. The place was deserted. Even the French press helicopters had to keep their distance because of the smoke. There was no way they would have been able to see Jimmy, which was just as well. If the crew of the British destroyer found out that he was there, Jimmy was sure the mine would suffer a few more missiles.

  He could almost feel their presence, just off the coast, waiting. They were probably at that moment planning their own strategy to make the mine safe, so they could take it over just as they’d planned. Perhaps they’d also realised they could send in a genetically modified assassin and Mitchell was on his way. Or here already, Jimmy thought.

  He tensed up, his programming prickling at his skin from the inside. What if British long-range surveillance could see him? He tried to force away his doubt by marching faster. All the more reason to make sure Stovorsky gets Mum, Georgie and Felix to safety, he told himself with false confidence. While he was inside the mine, the French would have to do exactly as he said. And they couldn’t touch him.

  The gates loomed over him, twisted and charred, as if they were bowing to the tower of black smoke. Jimmy broke into a jog and entered the compound. Suddenly nothing was as simple as it had seemed on Stovorsky’s laptop. The smoke was low and thick now. And it wasn’t so obvious which buildings were which. None of the signs had survived the blasts. Jimmy had to think back to the plans he’d seen, but whenever he thought he knew where he was, a clearing in the smoke showed him a glimpse of something out of place. Where was the central maintenance system that would tell him the true extent of the damage? And where was the actinium stored?

  Jimmy choked in the smog and shielded his face with the back of his arm. As he moved through the complex, the smoke became so thick he couldn’t see where he was going. There was a nasty smell too – simultaneously bitter in the back of his throat and sickly sweet in his lungs.

  Every step he took was carpeted with blood. Then he realised that the stench was roasting human flesh. He breathed in short gasps to stop himself puking. How did I get into this nightmare? he wondered.

  In horror, he picked his way through a dense forest of body parts. He felt his disgust grow into a seething anger. Didn’t the British or the French Governments care that they had caused so many people to get ripped apart? How could they justify this slaughter, no matter how much money was at stake?

  Jimmy felt violence throbbing inside him. Was he the only person in existence who cared about what was right and what was wrong? The whole of the rest of the world had turned rotten. Maybe he should let Britain and France destroy each other in a stupid war, he thought. They were as bad as each other.

  But then he realised that in the carnage around him were real people, not governments. And there were at least three other people in the world that he knew who weren’t evil. Three people he cared about in London who would be trapped in the middle of it all if there was a war. He tried to calm himself down by focusing on them, but only fuelled his anger with fear. They were so far away and yet it was up to him to keep them safe.

  Suddenly there was a noise. Jimmy jumped. It was only faint and it was immediately blown away in the wind, but it was new and out of place. It sounded like an engine starting. Had Stovorsky and the driver somehow followed him? He looked around, trying to work out which direction the noise had come from. Then he picked out a black rectangle surging towards him out of the smoke. The front grill of a jeep.

  Jimmy’s first instinct was to jump out of the way, but his limbs wouldn’t move. Yet it wasn’t fear that rooted him to the spot. His muscles weren’t tense. They melted in a wash of calm. His pr
ogramming instantly took control. For the first time, Jimmy felt a gush of joy with it. The danger might be extreme, but the thrill of combat was even greater.

  He waited until the jeep was close enough for him to pick out the detail of the grime around the headlights, then he ducked his left side and jumped at the vehicle. His shoulder crashed into the bonnet, denting the metal. To Jimmy it felt like no more than a pat on the back. He bounced all over the jeep, rolling in the air, and landed softly in the sand.

  The jeep disappeared into the blackness, but Jimmy’s ears were locked on to the sound of its engine. He could feel his mind using the information like a number in a simple calculation. He could pinpoint the jeep’s position and velocity. It was coming back.

  Jimmy had no time to think about who might be in the driver’s seat. He could either start asking questions or stay alive. He crouched low and dug his fingers deep into the sand. As soon as he saw the outline of the returning truck, his hands shovelled madly, throwing up a curtain of sand and ash. Mixing with the smoke, it made Jimmy almost invisible. But still he didn’t try to run.

  The jeep swerved about, out of control, brakes squealing. A slim figure dived out of the driver’s seat. In a single instant, two thoughts flashed through Jimmy’s head. Run, said one. The other was, Destroy. He flicked away the first with ease and listened to the second, not knowing which had come from his human anger and which from his assassin’s genes. He didn’t care. He was already hurtling across the sand towards the figure.

  Jimmy was certain: attack was the right decision. Whether this was the British coming to take over the mine, or a trap set for him by the French – it didn’t matter. Both sides deserve destruction.

  While the driver stumbled and slipped on the sand, Jimmy burst onwards, faster and faster. He was wearing heavy desert boots, but his toes still dug in to give him extra spring. The figure ahead of him was only visible for flashes at a time. Jimmy saw the desert camouflage just like his own and the limbs pumping in desperation. But did he also see long black hair?