Daniel was the first to wake next morning. A fine mist was clinging to the hillside. He walked to the far side of the track and took a long piss, much to the interest of a passing sheep who eyed the steam rising from his urine with fascination. Daniel took a blanket from the back of the pickup and draped it across Saffi and TripleDee, still sleeping by the stream. Saffi opened her eyes and slid out from under TripleDee's arm.
The two of them followed the stream up the hillside for thirty yards until the mist threatened to obscure the view of their sleeping companion.
"She didn't just save TripleDee," said Saffi, brushing her hair away from her face. "We would have died back there. She saved all of us."
Daniel didn't answer. He looked at Saffi, seeing his own pain mirrored in hers, finding some solace in their shared grief. Death had been no stranger to Daniel, but now he appreciated the other side of that dark coin. Time was literally running out. What he had found with Saffi would end. Death would see to that. Maybe in forty years. Maybe tomorrow. He vowed, for Sara, for Gabe, for the halfheroes who had died in adolescence, for those he had killed while drugged by Station, for the mother who had loved nobody, that he would do everything to hold on to this woman.
Life is short. Daniel had heard people say it, had even said it himself. But now he felt it like a knife held to his throat.
He looked towards the summit of the Long Mynd. They would walk from here.
"Daniel?"
He turned back to Saffi.
"We need to say goodbye to Sara."
TripleDee was washing his face in the stream when they returned. He stood up and stretched awkwardly, still in some pain as torn muscles regenerated and mangled bones and joints realigned.
"I know what you're going to say," he said. "Save it. It was my fault. No point arguing about it. It's on me. I thought I was doing the right thing. No, that's not true. I didn't think at all. I kind of hoped I'd changed, hanging around with you lot, but when it came to the crunch, I waded in with my fists. Haven't changed at all, have I? Same old violent twat. It's on me, and I'm going to have to live with it."
Saffi stepped forward, but TripleDee held up a hand to stop her. "Save your sympathy. I know you mean well, and I do appreciate it, I really do, but I can't bear it right now, okay? Okay? Sara's dead. Nothing you, Daniel, or me can do about it. The only thing we can do is get that bearded twat and kill him. See? Revenge. That's what I want. I want to rip his fucking head off. I'm no better than I was when you first met me."
"Don't you dare," said Saffi quietly. Both Daniel and TripleDee looked at her in surprise, hearing the steel in her tone. "Don't you dare do that."
She was shaking with grief and anger. She took a step closer to TripleDee, and he flinched. Under other circumstances, it would have been funny, seeing the giant of a man retreating from a woman whose head came up to the middle of his ribs.
Saffi looked up at him and waited until he met her gaze.
"You don't get to do that," she said, her voice still quiet. "You don't get the easy way out."
"Now listen, pet," began TripleDee, but she held up her forefinger, and he shut up.
"No. You fucking listen."
Daniel had never heard her swear before.
The mist altered the acoustics of the landscape. Saffi sounded like she was speaking inside a small room.
"You don't get to lie to us, and you don't get to lie to yourself. You have changed. Don't you dare pretend otherwise. You don't get to go back to being who you were before you met her. Too late. You go back to that, and you're spitting on Sara's memory."
The big Geordie twitched as her words hit home.
Saffi took another step forward. "Sara died saving us. Her choice. We are alive because she sacrificed herself. Which is what you tried to do. You went up against that, that... whatever that thing is, knowing he could squash you like a bug. Sara did the same. You need to be the man she died to save. Do you understand?"
TripleDee was pale. He nodded mutely.
"I need you to say it," said Saffi.
He looked over at Daniel, then back at Saffi.
"You're right," he said. "You're right. I'm sorry. I won't dishonour her. I just, I just didn't, I..."
He tried to find the words he needed. "She was my sister. I loved her."
Dotted at intervals along the side of the road were small makeshift pyramids of rocks and stones, assembled by hikers as they stopped to eat or rest. Daniel and TripleDee spent the next half an hour collecting rocks of a size that would normally require machinery to lift. They piled them according to Saffi's directions until they had built a cairn in the lay-by. It was over ten feet tall and filled a space wider than two cars. In the months that followed, after everything was over, the cairn became a tourist attraction, with various theories concerning how it had got there.
No one spoke as they stood in front of the stones, the mist now thinning enough to make the valley visible below.
Saffi led the climb up the hill. After twenty minutes, she spoke.
"TripleDee?"
"Yes?"
"We're still going to rip that bearded twat's head off."
"Good," he said.
33
The call had gone out from the British military to the rest of the world. The titans were on the move.
The statement by the First had been released to the media and was being discussed everywhere, from the biggest social media platforms to the smallest noodle bar in rural China. A large area around the farmhouse in Cornwall was cordoned off, but drone footage of the devastation and rumours of at least one death were already being circulated.
People were taking sides. The vast majority of scientists embraced the message of the First, hoping decisive action would be taken on climate change. The science-deniers who feared their crumbling credibility might disappear, became hostile, claiming the First were, variously, a hoax, genetically modified foreign agents, aliens, or the minions of Satan.
There was a huge amount of interest in the claim that the First preceded humanity as a civilisation on Earth. If true, it introduced a time-scale to world history that was disorientating. A famous historian had a panic attack live on air and spent most of the interview answering questions with either "yes" or "no" in between breathing into a paper bag.
Alongside the far-reaching implications of the statement were the violent and unexplained events in Cornwall. The titans—the First—were gone. Again. Their statement suggesting a unified purpose and a new beginning was at odds with the ruined farmhouse, the reports of a murder, and the lack of any communication since.
Adding to the unease the reports and rumours had generated was an eyewitness claim from Cornwall. According to a soldier's anonymous email, a new titan had arrived shortly before the destruction started.
For the most part, the internet was awash with unfounded speculation and dramatic claims unsupported by facts.
The British government warned every other country's government that the First were no longer on its shores. The most recent confirmed sighting had been from a fishing boat. The First were heading south, and could be anywhere by now.
World leaders called each other all night. They spoke of joint military operations and of shared intelligence. The Americans and British had their first frank discussion about the methods they had used to control the beings. The British prime minister expressed regret at the unethical behaviour of her own party, who had been in power when The Deterrent had been revealed to the world, a drugged and brainwashed superchild. She would never have sanctioned such an unjustifiable course of action. The president expressed amazement that any such thing had happened under his watch, blaming policies initiated by his predecessor and denying he had ever met the scientist responsible for such a heinous crime. The British prime minister refrained from mentioning the televised ceremony when the president had awarded Roger Sullivan a medal.
They agreed it would be in the interests of both countries' national security if no information we
re ever made public about their treatment of The Deterrent and the titans.
They scoured the skies for the missing superbeings. Every radar system available was used for the search, but nothing was detected. The First had left England at sunset and had been visible to the naked eye as the sighting from the fishing boat proved. They were flying below fifteen hundred feet, meaning the Earth's curved surface hid them from radar. The night had clouded over from midnight onwards, and much of Europe had been moonless.
They could be anywhere.
The Old Man needed to impose his dominance. The struggle in Cornwall had energised and revitalised him, filling him with a savage joy.
Returning to onemind had, after the initial shock, been like a blind man regaining his sight. As he had walked across the field towards the farmhouse, every step that brought him closer had widened his consciousness, introducing the minds of the others, unlocking memories, increasing intelligence, revealing Purpose.
By the time he was looking at them face-to-face, he had lived their memories. He had re-witnessed the end of their society, when they had become dormant. And he had seen the error in that memory. They thought his refusal to join them was a betrayal. It was anything but. It was a sacrifice, the greatest sacrifice any of their species had ever made. He alone had shown the courage necessary to face the ice age that was destroying their world, to live through it by taking the bodies of such creatures that could survive the extreme conditions.
He alone had waited. He alone had grown strong. His memory could retain little from so many lifetimes, but he remembered enough to know he was the pinnacle of sentient life on the planet. The apes were still many hundreds of years from approaching the technological achievements of the First, but Earth would destroy them before they got there.
Which was how it should be. He had his brothers and sisters now. He needed no one else.
They had crossed the Channel the previous night. A hundred miles into France, the Old Man had led them down to a rural gîte in Bretagne. He had experienced their horror through onemind when he killed the couple sleeping in the main house, their three children and another man who lived in a neighbouring cottage. His dominance over onemind was assured, but he had yet to bend them completely to his will. It would be much easier when they saw matters as he did rather than resist what was right.
They had eaten in the large kitchen. Afterwards, he led them to a large barn he had seen from the air. They could sleep there for the few hours they needed.
The nine First sat on straw bales in the barn while the Old Man spoke. There was no need to tell them of his long, lonely lives, the aeons he had spent walking the earth. Onemind opened his memories to the others.
It was difficult—although not impossible—to keep secrets from the rest. The Old Man knew this because he had locked away his memory of Khryseis and their son, Heracles. It was his personal shame, he would not share it. He had turned away from the error of breeding with the inferior humans in disgust. They were unworthy of it.
"Today, the First has a future again. Long ago, we plundered this planet, taking what we wanted, destroying all balance. Earth responded. What remains of our species is now,"—he gestured towards the night sky—"out there somewhere, settled on a new world. But we can make amends to the planet we abused so blindly. We can restore balance to Earth itself."
He felt approval in onemind. There was fear there, and resistance, but that was only to be expected. He would rather lead by consensus, as was the way of their species, but they had strayed so far from the path it had been necessary to lead them by force. At first, at least.
Onemind approved of his goal to restore balance. On that, they all agreed. Even the one they called Abos, the strongest among them. Surprisingly strong, in fact, but no match for the Old Man, weathered and toughened to a diamond-like hardness over millennia.
Abos represented the only threat to his dominance, slight though it was. The Old Man had shared his memories. There wasn't much to admire. The Deterrent, as the humans had named him, had been weak and confused when he had grown his first body, allowing himself to be manipulated by inferior beings. Worse than that, worse by far, was his subsequent fraternisation with them. Instead of despising the humans, he had adopted their conventions, made friendships, pretended he was one of them.
Most abhorrent of all, he had bred with them. Not just once, which might be forgiven. No, Abos had reproduced over and over, a sick orgy that produced a litter of half-breeds. Most of them were dead now. The Old Man had killed one himself. He could still see flecks of the female's blood on his fingernails.
It was time for the Old Man to begin his work.
"The bodies we wear carry the only pure First remaining on our planet," he said. "We are stronger, more intelligent, and more advanced than the brutal simple-minded creatures who are killing Earth. But we are few. We will become the founders of a new race. We will reproduce, then we will take new bodies and reproduce again, and again. We will do this in secret, avoiding conflict until we are numerous enough to subjugate humanity. But we will never dilute the First by breeding with humans. Never again."
He turned to Abos, who was now standing. With an effort, he mentally forced him to sit.
"You have brought shame on our species. Worse, your actions have created half-breeds that share some of our powers. Your error, although grievous, can be put right. And before we take our rightful place and tear down the suicidal technology of these apes who invite their own extinction, we must deal with our own mistakes."
Abos tried to stand again, but the Old Man radiated power. No one moved. They knew what Abos knew, as did the Old Man. Daniel and TripleDee were the only halfheroes remaining. And, through the halfheroes' connection with onemind, they knew a second generation was reaching maturity. The halfheroes' children were not only alive and healthy; they were all gathered in one place.
Which, the Old Man thought, was very convenient.
"What we must do," he said to his companions, "horrifies me as much as it does you."
There was truth in what he said. He took no joy in killing for killing's sake, even the culling of a herd of mongrel scum.
The Old Man turned to Abos and addressed him directly although his words were aimed at all the First.
"We will undo the damage before we start afresh. We will rest here, build up our strength." He intended to use the time to make his dominance absolute. There could be no dissension if they were to achieve their Purpose.
"When we are ready, we will return to Britain. The half-breeds are waiting for us. They must die so that we may continue; unsullied, pure, the rightful heirs of this world."
Resistance, horror, sadness, guilt, rejection... the surface of onemind was like an ocean in a storm. But the Old Man calmed the waters, driving his sense of righteousness and power into each individual. They would follow him. They would go back and confront these genetically confused mistakes, and the green hills would run red with their blood.
And Abos would stand beside him when it happened.
34
When Daniel, TripleDee and Saffi arrived at Craxton's field, there was no ceremony, no formal greeting. No special words were spoken. Tom was the first to go to the gate, followed by Kate and Shannon, then the others as they sensed their father approaching.
Bardock was making tea when the nearby children put aside what they were doing and walked away. She poured hot water into one mug, swirled the tea leaves for thirty seconds, then tipped them through a strainer into a second mug. Only then did she stand and look towards the entrance to the field.
A crowd of the teenagers—maybe half of everyone in the camp—had gathered near the gate. Two hundred yards beyond them, three people were walking up the farm lane towards the field. Even at this distance, she could see the two male figures were exceptionally large.
Bardock sipped her tea. She stayed where she was, by the fire pit nearest to her tent. She had come for answers and here, as if on cue, the halfheroes were turning up
.
At the gate, Daniel Harbin's children waited.
No ceremony, no formal greeting, no special words.
Instead, something else. Something felt by the children, by Daniel and TripleDee, by Saffi, and even, faintly, by Bardock.
Fate. Not a word anyone of them would have thought to have used, but there was none better. The pieces were moving into place. Whether it was by their own volition, or whether an unseen hand had guided them was of no importance. The fact was, they were there, they were together, and—although they didn't yet know it—they were the last line of defence against the greatest threat humanity had ever faced.
Daniel knew he had made the right decision, coming to the Stiperstones, meeting his children. Something changed in him as he got closer. As they topped the last ridge and got their first sight of Craxton's field, he tried to explain it to Saffi and TripleDee.
"It's like those tunes that have one note just going on in the background, you know? Um, shit, what do you call them... I don't know? Like in Blade Runner, there's that mmmmmmm sound underneath the synth stuff, you know, mmmmmmm, mmmmmm. Oh, bollocks, I don't know what it's called. But it's like that."
"Right," said TripleDee. "So, just to be clear, something weird's happening in your head. and it's like the music from a George Lucas fillum."
Daniel stopped walking for a second. "George bloody Lucas? It's Ridley Scott, you pleb."
"No need for name calling. Some of us have better things to do with our time than watching kiddie science fiction while playing with our nobs."
The Last Of The First Page 19
