The Secret Gift

by Ian Somers

  He was out of his mind. He might have been born crazy, or been driven over the edge by his upbringing, or the years of killing for Armamenti Tal-Future, or the decades in wandering the world. It didn’t matter what the cause, he had me in the palm of his hand and there was no escape.

  The chatter died off as we entered the city. It was then, when I had time to think, that I was overcome with sorrow for my fallen friend. I couldn’t believe he was gone. The world would be a greyer place without him. My life would certainly be a lot less eventful. At least he died the way he would have wanted. There was no long goodbye. He would have hated that. Hunter went out on his shield, like Romand had. He never wanted to die of old age. That didn’t make me feel any better. I was lost without him. An unbeatable monster was leading me to the most evil man in the world. Blake. The bane of the Guild. There could be no worse situation to find myself in.

  The Imperium was a ten-storey building, its exterior almost completely covered in glass. It stood isolated from the smaller and older office blocks of an industrial area in Manchester. Only a few windows on the top floor were illuminated. The rest showed only shadow. The ground floor also seemed to be deserted, apart from the reception area, which was brightly lit and full of uniformed guards. There was also a large warehouse situated at the rear of the building and there were two trucks parked at its loading bays, which were being filled with machinery.

  It looked like Portman was telling the truth; they were only hours from relocating the operation to the North Sea. Was there still time to stop them? That was the question I pondered as Boxer wrenched me out of the car and pushed me across the pavement and forecourt to the glass entrance. I was getting the distinct feeling that I would not leave this building alive.

  The doors automatically parted as I drew near and when I passed through them there was a loud wailing that made me jump with fright. Some of the uniformed guards rushed at me, pointing their guns.

  ‘Back off,’ Boxer told them. He pulled an automatic pistol from inside his coat and showed it to the guards. ‘I set off the alarms.’

  The guards holstered their weapons and gave Boxer a wide berth as he led me across the marble foyer.

  ‘You want to see Ms Pearson?’ a woman at the reception desk shouted to Boxer. ‘I can call her down if you like.’

  ‘Please do. She’ll think Christmas has come early when she sees what I’ve brought to the party.’ He chuckled as he looked down at me. ‘They believe you to be quite the prize, Bentley.’

  I wanted to make a wise crack, in the hope it would irritate him, anything just to wipe that wicked smile from his face. I couldn’t think of a witty riposte, though. I was all out of ideas, humour and strength. The wound in my stomach was terribly sore and I was struggling to keep it closed. My right arm was going numb from the shot I’d taken in the shoulder and my head felt like a balloon. Simply remaining upright took a great deal of effort.

  The elevator doors parted and a muscular, mean looking woman stepped out and came pacing across the marble floor towards us. Her beady eyes were directed right at me, never looking away for an instant. She was also smiling. Smiling like it was indeed Christmas morning and I was an unexpected present.

  ‘Well, Ms Pearson,’ Boxer said. ‘Look what I caught in Prestwich.’

  ‘Well, well, well,’ she said, looking me up and down. ‘This is a surprise. Mr Blake will be most pleased.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn if he’s pleased or not.’ Boxer stood between me and Pearson. ‘The price for this one is a million pounds.’

  ‘You’ll get your money in time.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘You think we have that type of cash lying around?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘As soon as we’ve moved to the new facility. No more than two days. I’m sure you can hold out until then.’

  ‘I’ve killed more agents. One of them high priority. That’s another hundred thousand.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Scottish killer. Huntington.’

  ‘Good work, Jermaine. You might even get a bonus for taking care of that one – Mr Blake was quite eager for him to be removed for some reason.’

  Money is the root of all evil. Or so they say. I believed in that old saying as I listened to them bargaining for the heads of Guild agents. I was sick just thinking that Hunter had been killed just to top up Boxer’s bank account. They were loathsome characters. But there was worse awaiting me. Brian Blake. I knew his motivation was not financial. He had more sinister reasons for doing all this. He’d often been described as a fascist who believed all non-gifted were a lower form of humanity. The future he wanted to bring about belonged to those born with true gifts. The rest of society was to serve us as slaves. I knew that was his ultimate goal. A horrible prospect. The death and suffering that he could inflict would overshadow any war, famine, dictatorship or depression that mankind had ever endured. And he was now very close to realising his vision of domination.

  ‘He’s been shot twice,’ Boxer told Pearson. ‘At least he’s clever enough to use his gift to stop the blood. I’d give him three hours before he’s dead.’

  ‘We have one or two doctors knocking about the place. We can patch him up before shipping him out to the new facility.’ She moved to me and placed her hand on my uninjured shoulder. ‘You’ll be all right, Ross.’ Her smile made me want to puke all over her manly face. ‘I think you deserve a bonus, too. What with you killing that Zalech person last year. I wasn’t too keen on him.’

  ‘Join the club,’ I said, forcing a smile. ‘How much would something like that earn me?’

  ‘Oh, I think I could sanction a six-figure sum.’

  ‘Sweet.’ I played along as best I could. ‘How much do I get if I tell you where two agents will be tonight?’

  ‘Another six figures.’

  ‘Where do I sign up?’

  ‘We can arrange all that after you’ve spoken to Mr Blake.’ She turned stiffly on her heel and nudged me forward. ‘This way. I’ll bring you up to see him.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Blake

  Boxer was practically glued to my side as we left the elevator and strode along the corridor on the top floor of the building. He knew I could still put up a serious fight if I wanted to. He was strong enough to stop me with a single blow, and this was the only reason why I was to be brought in front of Blake. Boxer wasn’t the only protection, there were six armed guards outside one of the doors ahead, and a seventh guard at the opposite end of the corridor. Pearson was also armed. She walked behind us and I could feel her eyes burning holes in the back of my head. She eventually moved ahead of me when the armed guards blocked our way.

  ‘Stand aside,’ she ordered. ‘Mr Blake has a visitor.’

  I don’t know who pushed the door open. My mind was too confused to focus. Boxer placed his monstrous hand on my injured shoulder, squeezing slightly, before shoving me inside.

  The room was poorly lit and it took my eyes a moment to adjust. Blake was lying on a wide bed, his arms fixed by his side, his head propped up with a mound of pillows. His face was gruesome to behold. The bottom half of it was melted – probably from the fight with the pyrokinetic all those years before. No lips, no nose, no chin, no cheeks, just melted flesh draped thinly over his skull. The upper half of his head was relatively intact. He was ancient. Dull eyes hooded with drooping lids, a grid of lines across his forehead, thin strands of white hair spilling into the pillows. I had imagined he was being treated here to bolster his gifts, like the procedures Zalech had undergone in this very building. I had been wrong. They were keeping him alive. Machines either side of the bed were attached to his arms with wires and tubes. A nurse sat at a computer in the corner of the room, closely monitoring the screen.

  Blake’s head never budged as I moved across the room. Only his eyes followed me. There might have been a smile if he had a proper mouth. Boxer grabbed my arm, pulled me to the end of the bed and told me not to move. Pearson had her gu
n drawn and was pointing it directly at my face.

  ‘I killed Huntington,’ Boxer told his employer. ‘He suffered greatly before I broke his neck. I found this one with him. He is injured, but will most likely live if he is operated on soon.’

  ‘Good.’

  The voice had emanated from some speakers that were connected to the computer the nurse was sitting at. I saw now that there was a mechanical device on Blake’s throat that was attached to the hard drive with two wires.

  ‘It is a great relief to me that Huntington is no more,’ Blake continued. ‘Alas, my only regret is that I lacked the vigour of youth in order to rid this world of his presence with my own two hands. You have done well, Jermaine, and will be rewarded accordingly. And you, boy,’ his eyes focused on me, ‘you have played on my mind so very often in recent times. You are such a talent. You could be the one who finally destroys the Guild once and for all.’

  ‘Yeah …’ I said awkwardly. ‘As I was saying to Pearson downstairs, I’d be happy to help you out if you’re paying a hefty reward.’

  ‘Your reward will be a future of limitless possibilities. You do not yet realise your true potential at all, do you? And I am quite sure you do not realise that you have been fighting on the wrong side since you were kidnapped by that French meddler, Marcus Romand.’

  It took a lot of restraint to hold my tongue. I didn’t like anyone speaking ill of Romand. Especially this withered piece of Nazi filth. I would have liked to put a crush layer on him right then and watch him squirm as the life was slowly pushed out of his decaying body.

  ‘You serve evil, Ross Bentley,’ he continued. ‘I am your salvation. You see, I am the great liberator of the gifted. I intend to free all the gifted people of the world. First, it will be those within the Guild of the True. Then I will move on to Der Orden der Befahigen and then finally JNCOR. A world of gifted united under one banner. A collection of the most wondrous people who walk this earth. We could lead humanity into a new era of peace and prosperity. No longer would the course of our societies be dictated by banks and corrupt capitalist whores, military commanders who bow to weapons manufacturers, socialists who cringe in the face of globalist corporations. No, their time is at an end. The world and everyone in it will have to unite and serve our new, gifted regime.’

  ‘Sounds cool.’

  ‘You do not take me seriously. I can see that by simply looking into those innocent eyes of yours. They see little, your eyes. I think perhaps I should show you something that would force you to take me seriously. Something that may incinerate that innocence that lives in those pretty eyes of yours.’ His left hand slid slowly to a table next to the bed. Pearson lowered her gun and helped Blake to lift a collection of papers from the table top. ‘I have here the truth about the Guild. This should be enough for you to see clearly that you have been duped by the Council. You believed you were a freedom fighter. In truth, you were nothing more than an agent of evil all along. The Guild is not what you thought it to be. You have been surrounded by lying scoundrels from day one. Marcus Romand, Peter Williams, Michael Huntington. All of them responsible for the deaths of countless gifted individuals. All of them at the behest of the greatest villain of all.’

  ‘I always knew they were killers. What you’re telling me isn’t news.’

  ‘I am sure they told you that the killing was a necessity, yes? That they had to do it to preserve the Guild? That it was for the sake of the common good?’

  I nodded.

  ‘They lied. It is an organisation that is built on untruths. Did you know that I was once the Primicerius of the Guild? Yes, many years ago I tried to lead them from their dubious origins and to mould them into a group that could withstand the test of time and the coming of a new millennium. It would, and should, have been a golden age for the gifted. Sadly, I was betrayed by those who lied to achieve their goals. I was cast out. They did this…’ He waved his hand weakly over his burned face. ‘Thankfully my will has always been stronger than my flesh could ever be. And now I have returned to ruin their kingdom of dishonesty.’

  He held out the papers.

  ‘Take them,’ he insisted. ‘See for yourself.’

  ‘Careful,’ Boxer grunted as I leaned forward to take the papers from Blake. ‘Don’t do anything foolish.’

  I took the papers from Blake and walked to the other side of the room, to the soft glare of one of the lamps. I tore off the binding and gazed upon the first page. I was sure this was the great secret that Blake had used to turn the likes of Ballentine against the Guild. I honestly had no interest in reading these secrets, but I had to stall them. I had to buy myself more time. The opening page had official watermarks and stamps that made me believe it was genuine. But more than that, for some reason I knew it was real as soon as I laid eyes on it.

  Ship Itinerary – Private Cruiser.

  Vessel: The Blue Fin

  Sale Date: 5 – 6 – 1989

  Departure Time: 11am (Singaraja)

  Passenger List:

  Ian Garrott

  Daniel Shelser

  Katherine Kinlan

  Stephanie Parker

  Li Woo Sung

  Suzana Fuentez

  Sebastian Kowatich

  James Barkley

  Angus Robertson

  Henrik Valstrom

  Luigi DiVadino

  Sarah Washington

  Jerome Happer

  I recognised only one name from the list of passengers: James Barkley. The man who was to achieve the sixteenth gift. The man who was to become insane. The Kematian. It was all very familiar to me. I knew of this story. Barkley and twelve gifted friends had been travelling the world on some sort of hippy voyage of exploration. Golding knew of his powers and wanted him to work for the fledging Golding Scientific as an assassin. Barkley refused him time and time again. Golding had eventually lost patience and hired Melissa Nijinska – Boxer’s old colleague from Armamenti Tal-Future – to track Barkley down and kill him. She had found them on a tropical island in south-east Asia. The document I was looking at seemed to confirm all that I had learned of this tale. Barkley and twelve others. Travelling to an island. The date was a good match for the story that Romand and Hunter had mentioned.

  Nijinska was a mageleton and had created a tsunami that wiped out almost every living thing on the island. Barkley survived, though, and in his rage over the murder of his friends he achieved a higher power, killed the assassin and became the crazed and all powerful Kematian. But why show me this? I knew about what had happened all those years ago. This simply confirmed the story as fact – or at least part of it.

  I was about to toss the sheets back at Blake when I paused. I held the paper close to my face and examined the passengers’ names once again. There was a name missing. Hunter had told me that Jim Sterling had been on that boat. He was one of Barkley’s closest friends. He had fought the monster that Barkley became. Why was he not on the list?

  ‘It is genuine,’ Blake said. ‘Those were the only people who went to the island that day.’

  ‘Wrong,’ I replied. ‘There’s one name missing.’

  ‘You refer to Jim Sterling?’

  ‘He fought Barkley. They were friends before they travelled to that island. They were the only two that made it out alive.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Two of them survived!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This is not real. You made this up.’

  ‘One man left that island. The great enemy. The great shadow. He went there as James Barkley and he left it as James Sterling. He changed his name after what happened so he could disappear into obscurity. He eventually found his way into the Guild. You now know him as Jim Sterling, the Primicerius of the Guild. Your leader. The man who orders you and your friends about. The man who orders you to kill. The Kematian.’

  ‘It’s lies. You’re lying.’

  ‘Turn the page if you doubt me.’

  I said I didn’t believe it, but in my heart I knew it was tr
ue. I could just feel it. I slowly turned the page and it confirmed my gut instinct. The heading explained that this was part of Nijinska’s team’s surveillance on Barkley. There were four photographs. A youthful Jim Sterling was in each, smiling and laughing as he boarded the boat. The name ‘The Blue Fin’ was visible on the side of the old cruise ship.

  ‘We found those documents when we infiltrated Golding Scientific. They were locked deep in their vaults. Golding’s people never knew the full story of the Kematian. They never knew that Jim Sterling was the leader of the Guild – he has remained so well hidden over the years that they never even knew of his existence. It was simply useless information to Golding. I, on the other hand, recognised its significance as soon as I saw it.’

  ‘It’s quite significant …’

  ‘Now do you believe?’ Blake asked. ‘Now do you see why we had to wipe them out? All of those who mentored you have been protecting him for years. Williams, along with Jonathan Atkinson, who found him, protected Sterling and projected him into the highest rank of the Guild. They believed he was the future. Your life has been a lie, Ross Bentley. You have been working and living alongside despicable villains since you left the Golding Plaza Hotel two years ago. They brainwashed you. Eventually Sterling would have told you the truth and you would have been so deep under the layers of lies that you would have willingly accepted whatever he told you.’

  The shock of what I had just learned seemed to weaken my knees and I staggered to the window and supported myself with the sill. I had always known they were withholding information from me. The strange conversation I’d overheard between Hunter and Canavan. All the mystery surrounding the Kematian story. How Hunter used to get mad every time I mentioned Barkley’s name. How violent he became when Portman said that Blake knew of a great secret about the Guild. They kept those things from me, but could they have knowingly served the great villain? Could they have been faking it all along? How does one fake friendship? How can a person imitate love?