Anti-Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  I am rushing back to myself. I am losing control. But in this last fleeting moment, I feel it inside me. The last spark of Version 2.0. And he understands this printer. He built it. And I am beyond desperation. I am into nanoseconds. So I reach down into myself—unsure of how I even do it—reach to that last bit of me that is him, and I shove that into the machine too.

  And then it’s gone. The printer. The building. It slips out of my consciousness before I know if it worked. Everything is ripped out of my hands. I race away.

  And then… then I am Arthur. I am Arthur.

  And I am alone.

  96

  WHO CARES HOW LONG LATER

  When I come to, there is a barrel pointing at my face. It is attached to a very large gun, which itself is attached to a very angry looking marine. He looks a lot like he is considering pulling the trigger.

  Behind him is the towering mass of Version 2.0.

  It is on fire.

  The marine hauls me roughly to my feet. My throat aches. Each breath hurts.

  But I am me. I am not Version 2.0. These marines are not. No one is, in fact. Which means…

  Holy shit, it means we won.

  I look around. Look at the survivors. The victors. Tabitha is on her feet too. Another marine has a gun trained on her. There are many marines, I realize. Sweat slick, their shadows long and quivering in the light of Version 2.0 burning.

  Do they get it? Do they realize this is victory?

  Another marine stands over Kayla. Her eyes are open. She looks at me. And I see the sparkle of imminent violence there, waiting to be unleashed. She can get us out of here.

  I shake my head.

  We won. We saved humanity. But we didn’t wash it free of its sins. We killed people to get here. I will make sure we answer for that.

  Something else lies on the floor. A dull battered piece of machinery. Something that looks like a badly abused toaster on top of a battered torso. Bent limbs, smoke drifting from them. Clyde’s mechanical corpse.

  Except… except… I remember those last moments. The last dash to preserve my friend.

  So maybe that’s not his corpse.

  Maybe…

  I go to scan the room, knowing that we’re nowhere near the 3D printer I found, but just in case, just maybe… And then my eyes fall on her. And all other thoughts leave me.

  Felicity. My Felicity.

  She lies there. Not twenty yards away from me.

  The marine’s gun is inches from me. And I do not care.

  I break and run to her.

  There is a shout from behind me, from the marine, and a blur of movement from Kayla. A shot rings out, and at the same moment a grunt. The bullet goes well wide of me, of Felicity. It buries itself in the ground.

  “What in the name of goddamned hell?” a voice shouts from the pack of marines.

  But then I am on her. On my Felicity. My hands on her. Running up her sides, feeling her. Her physicality, her real-ness. And I am turning her head. Her brow is soft and clammy with sweat. Her eyes are closed.

  I reach to pull back one eyelid, and then I cannot.

  We kicked Clyde out of people, but… but… what about the people he infected? That wasn’t just digital. Can Tabitha’s code really have removed a fungus?

  I don’t think I could bear it if it hadn’t worked. To know we had done so much and yet have achieved so little.

  To know Felicity was dead.

  My finger hovers above the pale skin of her eyelid.

  “Someone get that goddamn dumbass back here and goddamned cuff him already,” says a familiar voice from among the pack of marines.

  I don’t dare know. But I cannot not know. I have to. I don’t want to. I want to. I have to.

  I push back the lid.

  And my heart stops.

  Clear. Her eye is clear. Is clear brown. Is her eye. My Felicity’s eye.

  For a moment she stares into nothing, and then she twitches. Her whole body convulses. A great wracking shudder that runs the whole length of her body. Her arms flop. Her feet kick. Her eyes roll wildly.

  “No!” I shout, but I don’t know what I’m protesting, what outcome I’m trying to avoid. All I know is that she has to be OK. She has to be. That is the world I fought for. The one she is in.

  She convulses once more, curls up, tight and fetal, rolls over, face pressed to the fleshy floor.

  And then she retches. Massively. Epically. The sort of retch that J.R.R. Tolkien could write a three volume tome about. There are emotional peaks and troughs to this outpouring of vomit. Felicity coughs, and gags, and finally flops to the earth.

  A vast pool of purple vomit lies before her. There is fur in it.

  “Jesus,” I hear a voice from behind me say.

  It’s out of her. That’s all I can think. And I know then that she’ll be OK. Because it’s lying on the floor in front of me. All the poison, the infection, all of it voided from her body.

  She lies on her side, panting weakly.

  The marine who has come up behind me grabs my arms. He pulls them back roughly. I feel something close around my wrists.

  Felicity’s eyes swivel up, fix blearily on my face. And she smiles. She smiles. She smiles. It is so bright it makes the fire behind me seem paltry.

  “Knew you’d save me,” she says. “Told you.” And then she closes her eyes, and they pull me away.

  IN THE CORRIDORS

  We move at speed. All around us the tunnels quake and crash. Collapsed ceilings send us in circuitous routes. Violent lurches send me to my knees. The marines do not help me to my feet despite my bound hands. I elbow my way up against tattered walls. And then I run some more.

  We enter a room and the smell almost drives me to the floor. A hundred people, all on their hands and knees. Each one bowed before a pool of purple vomit.

  “What in the goddamned hell?” It’s the General. He was with the marines who found us. So far he is not entirely sure what happened with Gran, but he knows we’re in the shitter. He stares at the room.

  “Zombies,” I say. “They used to be. But we freed them.”

  “Fucking refugees.” Apparently even saving the human race won’t make the General happy.

  They round them up. And then we run again. This place is sweltering. Sweat pours off me. I’m so tired, my eyes almost droop. But I force them open. I am looking for something.

  For someone.

  Clyde has to be here somewhere. Some version of him. Surely. I saved him. It was a long shot. But… This worked. Why can’t that?

  We pick up more recovering zombies. Most are half-naked, shivering from the rigors of pouring the fungus out of their system.

  There are so many of us now, it feels like some sort of mad carnival. The marines are outnumbered ten to one, then fifteen to one. People, slowly coming back to themselves, yelling and weeping, laughing and screaming. These people have thrown off a waking nightmare and the sudden sense of freedom is so foreign that it leaves them devastated, struggling to deal with it.

  Kayla runs beside me. Felicity is back on her shoulders. My Felicity. Injured, but stable. The infection out of her. Saved. Kayla bears her easily enough. Still indefatigable. Still only ruffled, it seems, by briefly having her mind evacuated out of her body.

  And Tabitha too. Tabitha runs with us. But the toll on her seems to have been greater. She lived her worst fear today, I think. I can still remember her, lying in Clyde’s grave, clutching her tinfoil-lined hat, screaming about Version 2.0, wanting to overwrite her mind. And then it happened. And then we killed him. A man she had loved once. Her second bereavement of the day.

  Gran is not with us. His absence feels like a hole in the crowd.

  We pass through rooms devastated by the marines’ ingress. Walls riddled with bullet holes. Smashed crates, smashed machinery. The bodies of mangled monstrosities, products of Version 2.0’s mad experiments.

  And I don’t see Clyde.

  We round a corner, see another collapsed ceil
ing. The marines waste no time, there is none to waste. They open fire into a wall. It collapses under the hail of ammunition. We pour through.

  And I don’t see Clyde.

  But then… I hesitate in the flow of the crowd. A devastated machine in the center of a room stops me. A fluid-filled sac, punctured by spider-like limbs ending in needle points. The whole device supported by a utilitarian metal box.

  It’s the printer.

  But the needles are broken. The wires are snapped. And the sac is empty.

  He is not—

  “Tabby?”

  I barely hear the word. Only realize it was said when Tabitha freezes. A marine grabs her arm, pulls, but it’s as if he heaves on stone. She stares at a shadowed corner.

  The crowd seems to sense something is happening. Marines unsling their guns, point.

  “Tabby, is that you?”

  I can see Tabitha’s jaw working. See her eye twitching.

  And out of the shadows steps a man. Naked, his hands cupped over his manhood. He is tall, though not quite my height. A few years younger than me. His hair is disheveled. A scruffy beard is on his chin. And despite it all, despite his obvious confusion, his nakedness, there is something almost collegiate about him.

  Holy shit, it worked. It actually worked.

  “Tabby?” he says. His voice shakes.

  Her jaw works.

  “Clyde?” she says.

  “Tabby,” he says again.

  And her tears fall.

  97

  MOUNT RUSHMORE, THREE DAYS LATER

  They put us in a cell inside Thomas Jefferson’s head. I wonder if that’s part of a convoluted metaphor or just an accident of architecture. Everyone else is too preoccupied by the whole being-put-in-a-cell thing to discuss it.

  It’s not exactly how I hoped things would go. We piled out of Version 2.0’s compound about two minutes before the whole structure sunk into the ice. We were packed onto helicopters like sardines. Rotor blades struggled against the weight of all the occupants. We raced low over an ice cliff, and I wondered if we would fall.

  But we didn’t. We came back here. And our questions were ignored, and me and Tabby and Kayla were herded into this cell. And the only soldier we’ve seen since has been the one who brings our food. And he makes your average rock look talkative.

  Still, they did bring me one piece of good news. Felicity.

  She lies on a low crib beside the cell’s bed. They returned her from the infirmary early this morning. I sit on the floor beside her. Her arm drapes over the edge of the cot and into my lap. I hold her hand tightly. I do not want to let go. I never want to let go. Never again.

  When she first came back, quite a lot of kissing ensued. I saved her after all. My Felicity. The woman who sacrificed herself for me. For the world. My hero.

  Kayla made barfing noises from her corner of the cell. Tabitha just sat and stared.

  That’s pretty much all Tabitha has done since we got here.

  Since she saw Clyde.

  I rebuilt him. I really did. As he was. When I first met him. When Tabitha fell in love with him. I don’t know if it was the right thing to do. I think it was. I hope it was. But I still remember reaching for that piece of Version 2.0 to get the printer to work.

  Back in the compound, when we found him, he called out to Tabitha, and she recognized him, and she knew. But that was it. That was the whole moment. Then the tide of humanity got in the way and pulled him away from us. We lost track of him after that.

  He hasn’t been brought to the cell yet. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing. But Tabitha hasn’t said a word since she saw him.

  The scene is interrupted by a rattle at the door. I stand up immediately. It is early for food. Mid-afternoon. But does this signal good news or bad? Is this our release or a bullet to the back of the head?

  The door opens.

  Of all the people I considered, none of them were Duncan Smythe, the British civil servant who sent us on this little journey across the pond.

  “Ah,” he says, “there you are. Marvelous.”

  He is still thin, still with his comb-over and mustache, still with his umbrella. I have no idea what to say to him.

  Kayla shifts. There is something of a caged lion in the movement. “What the feck is going on?”

  “Ah.” Smythe blinks at her. “Quite the question, that is. Quite the question indeed. I mean,” he shifts his umbrella from one hand to the other, “quite a few implications there. The world outside you might mean, for example. Quite a lot going on there, or so I’m told. The briefs they write about these things. Veritable novels they are. But for the most part it’s happy reading at least. Always nice to have an upswing in events. The general North American populace is a big feature. The long-term effects of the fungal infection, which now, thankfully, seems to have retreated from these shores.”

  There is a chance that the slight incline of the head in our direction is an acknowledgment of some sort. But perhaps he is just shifting his weight.

  Kayla seems unimpressed. She stalks a step toward him. “I mean,” she says, “what is feckin’ going on with us.” Her finger travels a circle, describing the occupants of the room.

  “Ah.” Smythe clears his throat. “A smaller issue, but in some ways a trickier one.”

  That does not sound exactly like good news.

  “The Americans are quite angry at you,” he tells us in his unruffled way. “A lot of talk about you murdering some marines and a CIA agent. A lot of talk about insubordination, and threatening the lives of soldiers, and even conspiring against the human race.”

  “We saved the human race,” I can’t help but point out. Because it’s bloody true.

  Smythe acknowledges this fact with the briefest flicker of a smile. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, there is that.”

  A pause.

  “And?” I push.

  Another flicker of the lips that may just be a smile. “Well, in the eyes of Her Majesty’s government that does rather make the Americans’ position untenable,” he says.

  Felicity stirs on her bed. “And what does that—”

  “What about Clyde?”

  It’s Tabitha. Finally standing from the corner she’s been sitting in for three days. Her knees pop loudly. “What about him?”

  “Which one?” Smythe arches an eyebrow.

  “You know which fucking one,” she snaps.

  “You are speaking about the version of Clyde Marcus Bradley that was recovered in the aftermath of the attack on Version 2.0, I assume,” he says.

  “He’s not a version,” I say. Because he’s not. I don’t want to hear that word ever again. He’s Clyde. The one. The only. Ours. I rebuilt him. I brought him back flesh and blood.

  “The Americans are quite concerned about him,” Smythe says, in his quick, smooth way.

  “They’re concerned over nothing,” I say. “He’s not Version 2.0. He’s the old Clyde. He’s on the world’s side. Humanity’s side. He’s its bloody hero.” My whole body is rigid. I am ready to fight on this one, and right now I don’t feel like my track record is too bad.

  Smythe inclines his head again, and then he nods. “Yes,” he says, “I am rather inclined to agree with you.”

  And then Smythe steps aside. And there, standing behind Smythe, he is.

  Clyde.

  He stands there, shoulders stooped, head tilted to one side, slightly embarrassed look upon his face. They have found him glasses, and a tweed jacket, and corduroy trousers. And he is Clyde.

  A sound escapes Tabitha. Something more than a gasp. Something a little deeper, a little throatier. Clyde’s eyes lock on hers. She takes half a step toward him, then hesitates. He opens his mouth, but the words seem to catch.

  And then she is on him, flinging herself across the room and crashing into him, knocking him back a step. She buries her head in his chest, locks her arms around his waist. And holds him. Holds Clyde.

  After a long, long moment he looks u
p from her. There are tears in his eyes. I think there are tears in mine as well.

  “Hello, chaps,” he says.

  Felicity’s hand snakes out and clutches mine.

  And like that we are together, and we are whole. MI37. The world’s long shot. And we came through. Somehow, despite it all, we pulled it off.

  “Well, come on then.” Smythe clears his throat once more. “I rather think it’s time that everyone got to go home.”

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A great many thanks to the usual suspects: Jeff and Ann Vandermeer, Paul Jessup, Natania Barron, Moses Siregar, Sam Taylor, Michelle Muenzler, Mark Teppo, Darin Bradley, Ennis Drake, and Sally Janin. These are the people who encourage, cajole, and inspire me along the way. Thank you to my agent, Howard Morhaim, who makes pretty much all of this possible. Thank you to everyone at Titan for giving this series new life, especially Cath Trechman, Miranda Jewess, Tom Green, Ella Bowman, and Katharine Carroll. Also thank you to the team at Amazing15.com for the awesome covers. They make me smile. And finally, as ever, thank you to my wife Tami, for her continued and unflagging support, for being wiser than me, and for generally being the best person I know.

  These are the people responsible. Now you know who to blame.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jonathan Wood is an Englishman in New York. There’s a story in there involving falling in love and flunking out of med school, but in the end it all worked out all right, and, quite frankly, the medical community is far better off without him, so we won’t go into it here. His debut novel, No Hero was described by Publishers Weekly as “a funny, dark, rip-roaring adventure with a lot of heart, highly recommended for urban fantasy and light science fiction readers alike.” Barnesandnoble.com listed it has one of the twenty best paranormal fantasies of the past decade, and Charlaine Harris, author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels described it as “so funny I laughed out loud.” He has continued the Arthur Wallace novels with Yesterday’s Hero and Anti-Hero, both available from Titan Books, and the fourth book in the series, Broken Hero, will be available in October 2015. He can be found online at www.jonathanwoodauthor.com..