by Ian Somers
‘Did you kill him?’
‘No. He’ll be out for at least twenty-four hours. We can come back here and get him after we’ve dealt with Blake. I have to contact Canavan, in case we don’t survive the night.’
The seriousness with which he said it was disturbing. I became aware that this would probably be the most dangerous mission of all. I felt pangs of anxiety in my gut and the headache I’d suffered that afternoon returned with a vengeance. I winced and rubbed my temples. I felt unsteady on my feet and my stomach was twirling.
‘Bentley, this would not be a good time for you to have one of your headaches.’
‘I don’t choose when to have them.’
‘Go upstairs and soak your face in the sink or something. We’ll be on the road again in less than an hour. I’ll need you to be at your best tonight.’
I listened in to Hunter’s call with Marie Canavan. He told her of Portman’s confession and said that we would travel to the Imperium Building without delay. She informed him that she had been able to contact Elizabeth Armitage, who had been in Copenhagen, and that she was already on a flight to England. It appeared that Canavan had also secured the capture of Ballentine, with the help of someone called Burrows, who I’d never heard of before that day. They would try to get to Manchester as soon as possible, but we could not risk waiting for them. Blake could be transported at any moment. We had to get to the building before that happened.
After the call, I took Hunter’s advice and went to the bathroom and soaked my head in a sink of warm water. I felt truly ill. Nothing would make the headache go away this time and as I sat on the side of the tub I saw the ghostly figures of Romand and Williams standing either side of me. For the first time their hallucinations had sound. Every previous occasion they simply stood there silent and ethereal. Now they were more tangible and had voices.
‘… it made a monster of a good man …’ I heard Romand saying.
‘We know you have great power, Ross,’ Williams said, ‘and you have so much potential …’
I thought for a moment they were speaking to me or to each other. They weren’t. These were memories of my time with them. I recalled Romand saying those exact words while we were together at the Atkinsons’ house. What Williams said was one year earlier, when he was about to give me the papers written by Rudolph Klein.
Somehow obscure memories were playing out in the bathroom as if they were being projected by my mind into some form of reality. I felt my sanity was giving way. At least I was now sure that what I was seeing were not ghosts. Simple memories only.
I doused my face with water again and the apparitions were no more. The headache was excruciating now and I struggled to even open the door. It was twinned with an overwhelming sense of dread. I couldn’t tell if it was the anxiety I often suffered with, or if this was my precognitive gift ringing the alarm bell. I eased myself down the staircase and back into the kitchen to find Hunter tying up Portman, who was still unconscious.
I stood in the doorway to the hallway and tried to clear my mind. I heaved in deep breaths. Hunter was saying something but his words did not register with me. I was too focused on the floor of the kitchen. I was staring at the tiles in the corner. I had seen this room before. I gasped when I recognised it as the room from the vision I had the week before – the one in which Hunter was lying dead on the floor of shattered tiles, bloodied and battered. The anxiety I was experiencing was my precognitive gift. We were in mortal danger!
‘Hunter, they’re coming for us,’ I screamed. ‘We have to get out of here.’
‘Who is coming for us?’
‘My precognitive gift …’ I panted. ‘Someone is coming …’
‘How long do we have?’
I didn’t even have time to answer him. The hall door was smashed inward and I turned lethargically to see Boxer’s injured companion stepping over the threshold. His left arm was in a sling; in his right he was holding an automatic weapon. The sound was deafening as he pulled the trigger. The muzzle ignited and a volley of bullets was fired along the hallway at me. My attempt to deflect the shots was unsuccessful. Two bullets made their way through, one striking me clean in the right shoulder, another hit the wall and a part of the bullet ricocheted off it and struck me in the stomach. I collapsed onto my back, reeling in shock. The pain and the heat of the bullets raged inside me and I fought to pull air into my lungs.
I tried to get away before he pulled the trigger once more. I turned and dragged myself towards the kitchen as bullets whizzed over my head and shattered the tiles on the floor. I thought I was done for. I would have been if Hunter hadn’t intervened. He sent out a pulse of electricity that bounced off the walls of the hallway and blasted our attacker through the open doorway, and sent him smashing through the windscreen of Portman’s car.
‘Are you all right, Bentley?’ Hunter asked as he kneeled over me. ‘Where are you hit?’
‘Leave me,’ I panted. ‘This isn’t over. You’ll die if you stay.’
‘Peter Williams gave me an order two years ago. It was to protect you with my life and I mean to obey that order to whatever end. I will never leave you.’
‘Hunter, you have to get out of here!’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Last Fight
Hunter clamped his hand over my injured shoulder to stem the blood loss. It didn’t do much good. There was blood spouting from my stomach, too. I felt dreadfully cold – cold from the inside out.
‘I’m going to die,’ I kept saying. I couldn’t stop myself from saying it over and over. ‘I’m going to die, Hunter.’
‘You’re not going to die,’ he said. ‘Concentrate on the bullets in your body, draw on your psychokinetic gift, and force them out the way they went in. I’ve done it before. It’ll hurt like hell, but it’ll save your life. Do it now.’
I could actually feel the metal of the bullets inside me. My body ached for them to be repelled. I focused my mind completely and concentrated on the bullet in my shoulder. I felt the cold metal grating against my muscles. My gift was rising. I channelled it within myself and pushed the mangled bullet out of the wound. I went to my knees with a cry as it tapped the wooden floor in the hall. I was just about to repeat this process with the fragment in my stomach when an almighty crash came from the back of the house. I looked up to see the furniture of the kitchen being blasted against the wall. Portman’s body was sent upward and smacked off the cupboards above the counter. I doubted anyone could survive such an impact.
‘I’ll buy you some time,’ Hunter said as he strode back to the kitchen. ‘Now get on that bike and get to the Imperium and finish this.’
‘Hunter, you can’t beat him!’
I hunched over and sucked in energy to my body and pushed out the other bullet. The fighting had already begun by the time I’d managed to get to my feet. I saw Hunter being thrown against the wall, only for him to pounce forward and fire out a bolt of electricity. I staggered forward to the doorway, blood pouring down my clothes and dashing the floor. Boxer and Hunter had a grip of one another on the other side of the room, lines of electricity stretched out and licked the walls and ceiling. Boxer towered over my friend – he seemed to fill the room.
Hunter was thrown to the floor and I used my gift to build a protective barrier around him. It was ineffective. Boxer reached straight through it and grabbed hold of Hunter’s coat then tossed him through a gaping hole at the back of the house. He landed half way down the back garden with a loud thump and he was very slow in getting to his knees.
‘Fight me!’ I screamed at Boxer. ‘Come on, I’m not afraid of you!’
He turned around and his artificial green eyes were set on me. He placed his hands on his hips and shook his head, laughing.
‘You will be afraid of me,’ he said. ‘As soon as I’m done with your friend.’
‘Fight me.’
‘I’ve already beaten you, Bentley. You will realise that soon enough.’
He stomped over t
he rubble and into the back garden. Hunter was back on his feet again and was swaying from side to side. I hoped he was playing possum. He was about to take another pounding because Boxer was not tired and still uninjured. There was seemingly no way of fighting him or even slowing him down.
That’s when I realised just how powerful Hunter really was. All the occasions I had fought with him, the times we’d been at each other’s throats, when I thought I was more powerful than him, I was really utterly outmatched. He had allowed me to get the better of him when we battled in the woods near his home and when I threw him against the wall at Canavan’s house. I never believed he possessed such devastating power.
He raised his arms above his head and pointed his fingers together at the sky. There was light all around him, swirling like fireflies, then far above the earth, deep within the low swirling clouds another light appeared. This one broke the clouds apart. There were flashes above the houses before an immense streak of lightning was drawn from the heavens and fizzed into the garden. Boxer took the full force of it. This was no random streak of lightning. No, this was constant. An unwavering line of blinding power that brought Boxer to his knees, screaming. The thick line of electricity stretched down from the sky and stung Boxer for more than a minute. Then the garden was instantly plunged into darkness.
Hunter swayed on unsteady legs. Boxer was lying on his back, with sparks of electricity still dancing around him and smoke twirling from his body. My friend staggered forward a few steps and nudged the stricken giant with his boot. There was no reaction. Hunter let out a sigh of relief. He was covered in blood, his face bashed, one of hands distorted and broken. Lord knows how many new scars he had under his coat. At least he had finished off Boxer …
A hand reached through the falling snowflakes and gripped Hunter’s leg. Boxer rose ominously from the grass and Hunter was tossed across the garden and smashed through the window and landed on the floor next to me. He was barely conscious. He posed no further defence against the tall assassin, who was stalking up the garden towards me, green eyes glowing through the snowfall. I fired blasts and waves at him. Nothing I did had any influence. When Boxer reached me he simply swiped me away with one arm. It felt like I’d been hit by a car. I was sent tumbling onto the floor and knocked my head against part of the broken wall.
He had a hold of Hunter when I managed to straighten myself. One hand on the back of his head, the other wrapped around his neck.
‘Don’t!’ I pleaded. ‘You don’t have to kill him.’
‘I know I don’t have to,’ he replied. ‘But I want to.’
‘You’re a coward,’ Hunter spat. ‘I’d have kicked your head in if you hadn’t got that mask on. You only beat me because Golding and Blake paid the scientists to build that stupid looking thing.’
‘I agree,’ Boxer laughed. ‘You would certainly have beaten me if they hadn’t made this ugly looking mask.’ His grip tightened around Hunter’s neck. ‘Ain’t technology a bitch?’
‘Bentley,’ Hunter hissed at me. ‘Run!’
With one swift movement the giant twisted both arms and snapped Hunter’s neck like a twig. Boxer tossed his lifeless body aside and I saw him land on the broken tiles in the corner, just as I had seen in the vision days earlier. It had been a premonition of this terrible moment in time. Hunter wasn’t moving. Surely he could not survive such an injury.
Everything that Hunter and I had shared was now nothing more than memories in the caverns of my mind. I did not scream. I did not cry. I simply watched him, stupidly hoping he would return to life and spring back to his feet. He didn’t. I was alone with this monster who I could not fight.
Boxer pulled the mask off his head and let it fall at his feet. He no longer had any need for it. His dark face was weathered and grim. His eyes more lifeless than the mechanical ones he’d just shed. How could the human race spawn such abominations? Marianne, Zalech, Boxer, Golding, Shaw. I had faced them all. I suppose it was only a matter of time before one of them got the better of me. I was just a normal lad from a quiet suburb. How could I hope to contend with villains of this calibre?
‘You just gonna stand there like a statue while I kill you?’ Boxer asked, a smile twitching one of his cheeks. ‘Or are you at least going to make a run for your bike?’
‘I can’t outrun you.’
‘I’ll give you a head start.’
I knew he was impossibly swift. Hunter had told me that kinetic fusion enables a person to move at speeds that should have been impossible. I couldn’t hope to outrun him, not with the injuries I had. I would have to give myself a head start.
I pulled in as much energy as I possibly could, and with it came the ceiling of the kitchen and contents of the bathroom, all crashing down upon my foe. It wouldn’t hurt him in the slightest, but it distracted him for a few seconds and I used that time to race through to the front of the house.
The cool air met my face and snow scratched my eyes as I ran. I bounded over the garden wall and onto the icy pavement. He was behind me, I could hear him barging through the front of the house. I kept on forcing myself forward until the bike was in sight. I still had time. I could make it.
I pounded across the slippery road and slid on my knees to the bike. The snowfall had obscured my view of the kinetibike as I had approached it. Only now that I was close to the bike could I see it had been torn to pieces. The engine was smashed, the handlebar bent, the exhausts ripped open. He had sabotaged it before entering the house, just in case one of us escaped. He’d beaten me before the fighting had even started.
‘Looks like you have nowhere left to run,’ Boxer said. He was standing right behind me. He probably could have caught me before I reached the bike. He was simply toying with me.
‘What are you waiting for?’ I asked, without turning to him. ‘End this now.’
‘I’ve heard so many great things about you, Bentley. I was actually expecting you to be the one to give me the fight, not Huntington. I must say I am disappointed in you. My employer, though, thinks you are most valuable. That means they’ll pay me a handsome sum to bring you in alive.’
‘Why would they want me?’
‘They probably want you to work for them. Just like I do. They’ll make you a very wealthy man. Isn’t that what you were after in the first place? Isn’t that why you entered the Million Dollar Gift?’
‘Yes.’
‘On your feet, then. Don’t bother trying anything stupid. You’ll only get yourself killed.’
‘What could I possibly try?’ I replied as I stood and stuffed my hands into my jacket pockets. ‘You’re indestructible after all.’
‘And don’t ever forget it.’ He raised his arm and beckoned a car from the other end of the street. It came speeding up and slid to a halt right next to us. ‘Get in,’ Boxer ordered. ‘I’ll take you to meet Blake.’
I was pushed into the back seat and Boxer squeezed in next to me and shouted at the driver in a foreign tongue. We sped away from the street and were soon on a busy road leading to Manchester. I wasn’t bleeding as much as before; I was using my gift to close the wounds, as Hunter had described for me many times. I would always raise my eyes to the heavens when he told me about the technique. I never actually thought I’d be caught out by a bullet. Thankfully some of his advice had gotten through to me. I was still in bad shape, though. I’d bleed to death sooner or later because I simply couldn’t use my gifts for a prolonged amount of time in such a weakened state.
I actually found it difficult to focus my gifts to stem the bleeding because of the two young men sitting in the front. They were alarmed by something. They kept shouting at each other in a language I didn’t understand, and the passenger turned to me more than once and gave me a look as if I was the grim reaper. Then he returned to shouting at his companion and the word ‘diablo’ was repeated many times.
‘My Brazilian friends here think you are the devil himself.’
I remembered the hit list I’d found in Brofeldt’s a
partment. They had given me the code name of Devil. Did these people actually believe there was a supernatural explanation behind my powers?
‘Why do you people call me that?’ I asked Boxer.
‘Maybe because you look like death,’ he tittered. ‘You’re as pale as a ghost.’
‘So would you be if you’d been shot.’
‘Shot?’ This amused Boxer. He spoke to the others in what I guessed was Portuguese, considering they were from Brazil. They all laughed. ‘I’ll never have to worry about being shot,’ he said, turning back to me. ‘It would be about as much use as throwing salt at me.’
‘Hunter said to me once that we all pay for our sins in the fullness of time.’
‘He certainly paid for his.’
‘At least he died fighting,’ I said bitterly.
‘Yes. He had a relatively honourable death. I’m surprised by you.’ He was watching me with those emotionless black eyes of his. ‘You surrendered without much of a struggle.’
‘I didn’t have much of a choice.’
‘There is always choice. You could stop using your gift and you would bleed out before we reach our destination. Some would consider that an honourable way to die. I would consider that honourable.’
‘I’m quite happy to disappoint you.’
‘The desire for wealth overcomes your sense of honour. That is common these days.’
‘Where’s your honour? You work for Blake because he gives you money. You said so yourself.’
‘I am not in your situation. I joined him of my own free will. You, on the other hand, will go to him injured, frightened and captured. You go to him in an effort to save your life, or to get rich quick.’
‘Maybe I have reasons you’re not aware of.’
‘Make sure killing is not on your agenda. I would not be pleased if you became violent in front of my employer. I do not think you would enjoy my company as much as you do now if I was displeased with your behaviour.’
