Rollerskater: Liberty
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This instalment contains some scenes of graphic violence.
Gabriel Seymer walked down a corridor, flanked by two heavily-armed guards in black body armour, mauve berets on their heads. He did not speak to them. Their presence was, in itself, a confirmation of the nature of the situation.
He wore a brown Armani suit with a double-breasted blazer and blue pinstripes, and a pair of Guess glasses framed his face, which was middle-aged and handsome.
He was one of the New Boys, a rather inaccurate term for them these days, given that they were getting on in years. Fifteen, twenty years ago, they had been the fresh faces replacing large swathes of the party old guard, but by now they had become more or less the majority. But their base still regarded them as vivacious young people, and it was in the party interest to let them go on thinking that.
They came to a wooden door. Seymer removed a card from his jacket pocket and inserted it into a device by the door, and the door disengaged with a kachunk, swinging open to reveal that the wood was decoration for four inches of solid steel. Both soldiers saluted, assuming their positions by the door, as Seymer stepped through the doorway, closing the door behind him.
A wall on the far side of the room was covered by screens, showing various camera feeds – a soldier’s body camera, a helicopter’s infrared, CCTV, reconnaissance – illuminating the room with ghostly white light that held the occupants, grouped around a conference table, in silhouette. Officially, this room did not exist, its blueprints had already been destroyed, and anyone discovering it by chance would meet an unfortunate accident before they were able to say a word about it.
It was the command centre, though not the base of operations, for the Secret Anomalous Investigations Division of the Security Service, MI5, created by a directive issued directly, and secretly, from the higher echelons of government in the months immediately following the Episode.
It had been created through what they liked to call “inventive” interpretation of the Civil Contingencies Act in the wake of that missing week that had come to be known as the Episode. After all, a missing week constituted a rather large civil contingency, and preventing it happening again was top priority.
Eyes turned to look at Seymer as he entered.
“Good morning, Prime Minister,” said Anthony Regent. The Defence Secretary was tall, with a triangular body shape – broad shoulders running down to narrow hips. His eyes were dark and haunted, especially in the near-monochrome of the conference room.
Seymer had taken the role of Prime Minister shortly after his predecessor’s resignation, which had come as a result of his predecessor’s inability to adequately resolve the crisis to a standard that Parliament had deemed acceptable. Seymer, then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, had been elected to the role within weeks.
“Let’s skip the pleasantries,” Seymer replied, tersely. “Situation report.”
Regent swallowed. Eyes darted to look at each other.
“Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”
Seymer sighed. “The good news, Anthony, if you would.”
“We have located several anomalous persons at the university, as you were briefed.”
“Then what’s the bad news?”
“Well…” Regent said, uneasily. “They seem to have…erm…escaped, Prime Minister.”
Seymer removed his glasses, slowly, and reached into his pocket for a handkerchief of fine silk, which he then used to clean the lenses.
“I see,” he said, quietly, like the soft rattle of a pot of water on a hob, a lid sitting just atop.
“It seems to me,” said a voice from the shadows, “That SAID-MI5 is not quite as capable of getting results as we were promised.”
The speaker leaned forwards. He wore a black suit with a black tie embroidered with tiny red fleurs-de-lis. His black hair was combed back into a widow’s peak, and his eyes seemed to glow a light reddish brown in the light of the television screens.
“Be quiet, Mortimer,” Seymer snapped.
First Secretary of State and the Deputy Prime Minister, Barnabas Mortimer. He and Gabriel had been friends, once, but they had become bitter rivals for reasons neither quite remembered, but that he was sure Hansard and the bods in Fleet Street knew.
Indeed, Mortimer’s appointment to the role was not Seymer’s decision; he had been appointed to the role by the previous Prime Minister. If it had been his decision, he’d have picked anyone else in lieu. Nevertheless, Seymer begrudgingly acknowledged Mortimer’s ruthless political competency, and so when reshuffle time had come, he had reneged on the opportunity to have him removed. Mortimer’s levelheadedness was almost frightening. Nothing seemed to stir him. It was as though the world was in his back pocket.
Mortimer smiled slightly. There was nothing he liked more in this world than annoying his old nemesis.
“Pray tell, Regent,” Mortimer said, snidely, as though talking to a fag back at Eton. “Where exactly did all that funding the Cabinet granted you for training, equipment and resources go? Up a few noses in Soho, I suspect.”
Regent’s face twisted angrily. “Why, you—”
“That’s enough,” Seymer said. “Barnabas, if you cannot behave like a functional member of this Cabinet than I shall see to it that you are removed.”
“I’d like to see you try,” Mortimer said.
“Gentlemen,” a woman sitting at the far end of the table said. Afua Boateng, Foreign Secretary. Her face was stern as a schoolteacher’s. “If I could take your attention away from squabbling for a moment, and draw your attention back to the matter at hand. The siege at the university has gone tits-up, that much we have ascertained. Now, I can only keep a media blackout going for so long. We are doing all in our power to prevent this leaking out on social media, thanks to our friends at GCHQ, but it is only a matter of time before word gets out. I ask you kindly to put aside your differences until this situation is resolved.”
Seymer sighed. “Well said.”
Mortimer sneered, peering around the table. “It’s hardly Regent’s fault, anyway. Seymer, where is that snivelling oik you appointed as Chancellor, anyway?”
“He’s…running late.”
“Oh, quelle surprise.”
Just then, the door came open. Douglas Baird, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was short, blond, and timid looking, wearing round spectacles that gave him a permanent look of a rabbit caught in headlights. Even the newspapers had cottoned on to his permanent look of fright, and had taken to referring to him by cruel nicknames, which only got more crass the redder the masthead.
“Have trouble finding the place, Bairdy Cat?” Mortimer asked, spitefully.
“I apologise,” Baird said, dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief. “I had…some things that needed attending to.” He spoke in a soft Highland Scottish accent.
“Things more important than the Episode?” Mortimer sneered.
“Yes, Mortimer, as a matter of fact.”
“Oh, very interesting. Perhaps you will enlighten us as to what that might be?”
“Will you both be quiet?” Seymer snapped. “Baird, please ensure you come here as quickly as possible in future. I don’t think you should find it too hard to get to. It is, after all, walkable from Downing Street.”
Baird hung his head. “Yes, Prime Minister. Of course, Prime Minister.”
“Good. Now, Regent, how are things progressing on catching these people?”
They turned to the screens, flickering with shapes, colours and faces.
“We are regrouping, Prime Minister,” Regent said. “We will surprise them.”
“See that you do,” Seymer said. “The fate of the nation is at stake, Regent. Do not fail me now.”
“That assumes that is not already the case,” Mortimer said.
Regent scowled hatefully at him, picked up the telephone and began to dial. A direct line to MI5.
The mission resumed. First target: Whoever had freed the captives…
*
Socks and Liberty looked across at each other.
“Well?” she said. “Your name?”
“Er…right,” he said. “It’s…”
CHOPPA-CHOPPA-CHOPPA-CHOPPA-CHOPPA…
Behind them, a helicopter flew into view and hovered above the square. There was a slight whirr as motors began turning.
“This way!” Liberty shouted, grabbing Socks’s hand and running with him to her left, ducking into the university building through a set of automatic doors, just in time for them to see the helicopter strafe the concrete with bullets, throwing up dust and debris.
“Shit!” Socks shouted.
“They really are eager to get hold of you,” Liberty said. “Quickly, take this.”
She pressed something into his right hand and he examined it.
It was a small, whitish crystal, like quartz, and veined with what appeared to be gold.
“What’s this?” Socks said.
“It’s a crystal.”
“I can see that.”
“It’s tuned to the frequency of their thingamajig,” Liberty said.
“Thingamajig?”
“The thingy they use to find folk like us. The two signals resonate against each other and cancel out, the thingamajig can’t detect you. I’m wearing one too, see?”
She held out her ankle, and sure enough, there was a small anklet, and hanging from it was a crystal of a similar size and dimension to the one Socks was holding.
Liberty had a slight overbite, and spoke with a rural-sounding dialect, though not one Socks could place.
“Hold it to your ear,” Liberty said, with a sort of girlish enthusiasm. “Go on!”
Socks did so. It was indeed humming, albeit very softly.
“What do I do with it?” he asked.
“Stick it in your pocket,” she said. “It won’t completely hide you but it will at least make you invisible to the thingamajig.”
“They’ll find other ways,” said a voice from further down the corridor. Socks turned to see Chelsea Rose, accompanied by Dolly Mixture. “Trust me. I’d know.”
Chelsea, being almost six feet tall, towered over Liberty, quite comically so.
Liberty smiled shyly again, playing with the hem of her dress.
“Have you seen K-Os?” Dolly asked.
“No,” Socks said. “Liberty, did K-Os know this was coming?”
“She…likes to plan for contingencies,” Liberty said.
“I’ll take that as a ‘Yes’,” Dolly said, angrily. “When will that stupid bitch learn to clue us in to her schemes?”
Liberty snapped her fingers and manifested two more crystals – one set into a hatpin, which she gave to Dolly, the other set into a bracelet, which she gave to Chelsea.
“How come they get fancy jewellery and I don’t?” Socks asked.
“You don’t seem the type,” Liberty said.
“Well…” Socks said, realising he had no comeback to that. He quickly pocketed the crystal.
“Where’s Daisy?” Chelsea asked. “We need to find her. She’s even more of a rookie than you are, Socks.”
“Thank you,” Socks replied, sarcastically.
Just then, the automatic doors slid open, and soldiers burst in.
“I thought you said they couldn’t find us?!” Socks exclaimed.
“The crystals only make you invisible to their thingamajig, not to human eyes!”
The senior officer in the mauve beret stepped forwards.
“This is unfortunate,” he said. “We gave you an opportunity to come quietly, but it seems we were being too kind.”
“Eat shit, you fucking fascist,” Chelsea spat.
“If you will not comply then I am legally required to notify you that our orders have changed,” the senior officer said, mirthlessly. “Straight from Mister Seymer himself. Shoot to kill.”
“Mister Seymer…?” Dolly asked.
“We’ll never come quietly,” Chelsea said. “You’ll have to shoot us.”
“Chelsea!” Socks cried.
The senior officer’s facial expression remained stony and fixed. “Shoot her,” he said. “Take the others.”
The soldiers raised their guns.
“No!” Dolly shouted.
Chelsea covered her face.
There was a loud sound.
But it hadn’t come from the guns.
Like a set of bowling pins, the soldiers were suddenly struck by a blow from behind with a concussive blast.
Standing behind them, with silver hair and eyes that glowed pearlescent, was Daisy, taking the form of Ella Foe, clutching her bass guitar.
“Not today,” she said.
The senior officer rolled over, wiping blood from a lip that had split when he had been knocked into a nearby wall.
“Kill her!” he ordered, pointing.
White tendrils whipped from Ella Foe’s back and snatched guns from hands, emptying them of ammunition and dashing them against the walls.
Ella Foe looked at them all.
“Well?” she said. “Don’t just stand there, run!”
She quickly followed her own advice.
“What’s the plan?” Socks said.
“We’ll try to find K-Os,” Dolly said. “Both of you try to distract them.”
“Got it,” Socks said.
Quickly they ran for the stairwell, Dolly and Chelsea running down into the university’s underbelly while Liberty and Socks went for the upstairs.
“Socks,” Liberty said.
“Yes?” Socks replied.
“No, it’s nothing,” she said. “It’s just…what a strange name.”
“Long story,” Socks replied.
*
“What the hell do you mean?” Regent thundered into the telephone. “You had four of them, lined up and ready for processing, and one of them caught you off guard?”
“We’re sorry, Mister Regent, sir,” replied the senior officer. “They are proving to be trickier than we thought. But we’ll get them, sir, don’t worry about that.”
“You’d better bloody well see that you do!” Regent roared, slamming the phone down.
“It’s as I’ve been saying,” Mortimer uttered. “If I may, Prime Minister, SAID-MI5 is a waste of resources. I recommend that we divert funding to—”
“If I wanted to divert funding from SAID-MI5, I would say so,” Seymer said.
Mortimer smiled slightly.
“We’ll capture them,” Regent said. “Trust me. There’s not a single bloody fairy on earth that can repel five-point-seven by twenty-eight millimetre rounds.”
“Children,” Mortimer said, laughing convulsively, as if his body hadn’t been built with laughter in mind. “Children! Are running circles around you!”
“Mortimer, much as I hate to admit it, has a point,” Seymer said. “Regent, I want you to step up firepower. Arresting them is, at this time, low priority. It is clear that even if they were to be contained, they would still present an immediate and present danger to the armed forces, and therefore people, of this country. I hereby formally request that SAID-MI5 switch to Priority Omega. Kill without capture.”
Regent nodded, gravely. “As you wish, Prime Minister.”
“Finally, some action,” Mortimer said, wryly.
*
The university building was a labyrinth of corridors and stairwells that interlocked in bewildering ways. Long, silent walkways stretched on for metres and metres, lined with offices, seminar rooms and common rooms. The university had been built in the 1960s with the clear intent of using a small space with maximum efficiency. It smelled of decades of paint and Dettol.
The main buildings were notoriously hard to find one’s way around. In his first week, Socks had got lost at least twice, and the university’s navigation app was quite frustrating and difficult to use. In a way, he understood why K-Os found this place so appealing. It was the very definition of ordered chaos. One found oneself moving from department to department, stumbling from maths to psychology to literature and back to physics. The whole pantheon crammed into these long, narrow passageways.
Nevertheless, Liberty and Socks found their way to an empty and unlocked classroom and ducked inside, hiding under a table.
“Are we clear?” Socks said.
“I think so,” Liberty said, looking around. “For a few minutes, at least.”
“Good,” Socks said. “So, how do you know K-Os?”
“You first.”
“Oh, you know,” Socks said, casually. “Invited her to a Christmas party. Got drunk. Walked home with her. Got attacked by a shadow wizard. Had my life changed permanently. I got a magic arm, which then got eaten by the living personification of evil.” He held up the prosthetic left arm. “It happens. You?”
Liberty did not smile, and her pale blue eyes looked down at the ground.
“I met K-Os shortly after they took my father away,” she said.
There was a long pause.
“I’m sorry,” Socks said. “Do you mind if I ask how…?”
“We lived up in the hills,” Liberty said. “Far from any settlement. Nothing but rolling fields for miles around. The feeling of soil under your feet. That was our home. Just us and the Earth.”
Socks peered over the top of the table, and there was no-one in sight.
“What happened?”
Liberty sighed, closing her eyes. “It was one morning in summer. I woke up and looked out over the hills. I saw these black dots coming closer and closer. I realised what they were – vehicles. I shouted to warn my father, but he had already seen them. The vehicles stopped, and men in black armoured suits climbed out, waving guns. My father demanded to know what they were doing, and they said that they worked for the government, and we had to come with them. Said that a week had gone missing, that they were going to make us ‘useful’.”
“So…how did you escape?”
“Well, my father told them that wasn’t going to happen. So the men made a big mistake.”
“That being?”
“They threatened me with their guns,” Liberty said. She smiled a little pridefully. “I’ve never seen my father so angry. He told me to run. I got far away, further up into the hills, and I hid among the trees. I hid there for hours. When I came back, my home was destroyed, and my father was long gone. I searched everywhere for him, hoping he had escaped. I gave up by the next morning. I could only imagine him in the back of one of those black cars…so tiny.”
“I’m sorry,” Socks said.
“I hid out in the hills for a while. My father taught me how to survive. Perhaps he knew one day these things would come to pass. And then one day, while I was out foraging, this strange woman appeared.”
“K-Os,” Socks said.
“That’s right. She said she’d been following some shadowy government agency and she knew that they had taken my father, though where, she didn’t know. She urged me to come with her for my own safety. Seeing no other option, I decided to follow her in the hope of finding my father again. I’ve been living close by ever since. It’s so strange to be living so close to human settlements…I miss the hills.”
“You’re coping pretty well,” Socks said. “You’re very strong.”
“Oh, it’s not all me,” Liberty said. “My father taught me something, once.”
“What was that?”
“One time when I was little. It started raining, and I cried. I always preferred the sunshine. It was so cold and wet. My father came to me. He put an arm around me. I remember quite clearly what he said.”
“What did he say?” Socks asked.
“He said, ‘There cannot always be sunshine, Libby. Remember how the grass gets dry in the summer. How the land thirsts. The dark clouds and the rains nourish the land just as much as the sun and the warmth.’ He told me to smell the air. You know the smell of rain on soil, right? Petrichor. And he said, ‘Remember, sadness is its own kind of growth. Rain reminds us of that. Now, let there be no more crying from you. No crying until the end, Libby.’” She smiled. “I’ve never forgotten that.”
Socks peered over the table once again.
“Your father sounds like a good man,” Socks said. “We’ll find him.”
“Let’s survive this first,” Liberty said.
The door was suddenly kicked in, and soldiers stormed into the room.
Socks pressed a finger to his lips.
Neither of them could breathe or make a sound. Socks could feel his heart pounding in his chest.
There came the sound of heavy boots thumping against polyester carpet tiles as the soldiers walked in. There was rattling, the sound of guns pointing in all directions.
The footsteps got closer and closer. There was a small squeak as the soldier turned, coming down the walkway towards them…
They saw the jackbooted feet and black combat trousers come towards them, turn and stop.
There was the unmistakeable click of a gun priming to fire—
WHABOUMPF
The soldiers screamed in shock.
A tree had rapidly sprouted, seemingly from under the carpet, its branches and leaves exploding into the room, its roots tripping soldiers, tables and chairs scattering as the space was rapidly filled by wood. After a few seconds the tree started to bear fruit, which began hailing down on to the ground.
Socks quickly crawled out from under the table, picked up one of the fruit and stood, holding it. It was a red apple. He, perhaps unwisely, bit into it. It tasted like any other apple. He turned to Liberty.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“There was an apple pip on the carpet,” Liberty said. “I accelerated its growth. It’s fortunate we’re close to soil, or that wouldn’t have worked.”
The soldier who had been preparing to fire cried out, staggering back against the lectern at the front of the room, clutching the left side of her face with her left hand. She dropped her gun to the ground. Liberty saw her, and stepped over to her.
“Liberty, don’t,” Socks said. “We’ve got to go.”
“No,” Liberty said. “Look, she’s hurt.”
The soldier moaned painfully.
“What’s wrong?” Liberty said.
“Get away from me, you freak,” the soldier said, waving Liberty away with her free hand.
Socks could see that there was blood flowing between the soldier’s fingers.
“It’s her left eye,” he said. “One of the branches must have hit her.”
“Let me see,” Liberty said.
“Get away!” the soldier shouted.
“Get away from her!” shouted another soldier, righting himself after the tree had knocked him over.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Liberty said. “I promise.”
“Didn’t you hear me?!” shouted the other soldier. “Present arms!”
The other soldiers pointed their guns at Liberty.
“Liberty!” Socks shouted.
Liberty stepped over to the stricken soldier, crouched down and gently placed a hand on her shoulder.
“I am not going to hurt you,” she said. “Do you believe me?”
The soldier looked at Liberty, then at the others. She reached for her gun with her free right hand.
“Fall back!” she shouted. “If she tries anything I’ll kill her.”
The other soldiers looked at each other and lowered their weapons.
Liberty smiled.
“Show me your eye,” she said.
The soldier pressed the muzzle into Liberty’s chest as she removed her left hand from the injured eye.
Liberty examined it for a few moments, then placed her hand against the injury. She took it away after a few seconds had passed, and the injured eye had completely healed.
The soldier’s mouth fell agape, and she lowered her weapon.
“My…my eye…” she said, her voice an awed whisper. “You healed it…”
“You’re welcome,” Liberty said.
“But why?”
“Because if I didn’t, then I would be like you,” Liberty said, disdainfully. “Running around with a killing-thing in my hand. As though a killing-thing would make me strong. A killing-thing is not strength. It is weakness. It is easy to kill. It is far harder to preserve life. Never forget this.”
The soldiers stared in disbelief, and possibly shame. It was clear some of them wanted to raise their weapons, but couldn’t bring themselves to do it under Liberty’s icy gaze.
The fruit hanging from the tree rotted and fell to the ground, the leaves fell and crumbled to dust, and the branches withered and split away, and the trunk collapsed in on itself, leaving only a hollow stump, filled with beetles and wood dust. Liberty placed her hand against it, looking up at the soldiers again.
“You made me accelerate that tree’s lifespan,” she said. “All eighty years of its life in a few minutes. All that potential. The lives it could have sustained. Wasted. This is all you and your killing-things do. You waste.” She turned to Socks. “Come on, let’s go.”
Socks followed after her, bewildered, as the soldiers seemed to gaze listlessly at the ground. They left the classroom, escaping up the stairwell.
“Where are we headed?” Socks asked.
“Outside,” Liberty said. “I need to recharge.”
*
She was water, formless, but ever-flowing, the ichor of life, oozing through pipes and chutes. Cold did not freeze her, heat did not burn her. She split herself into strands, spread herself out, she was raindrops, she was rivers, she was oceans. Her consciousness maintained a hazy, though structured form, and she went in search of herself, meeting herself through cracks and intersections, before going in search again. The soldiers might capture some of her, but not all of her.
Familiar voices! She could hear them through thin plasterboard, the vibrations of her molecules forming a makeshift ear. Droplets flowed through pipework, performing reconnaissance, forcing themselves through a simple valve…
A surge shot through the pipes, bursting them. In an instant, a tap in a staff kitchen that stank of coffee grounds and microwave meal prep exploded, and from it sprayed a mass of thick pink liquid. The liquid coated the walls and floor, and began to flow towards a central point on the kitchen floor, up and out of the basin, down the fridge door.
A hand was the first thing to form, then an arm, a shoulder and a torso. The head came next: A long, braided ponytail. She propped herself up on the arm, beclothing herself in grey tube skirt and magenta and turquoise diagonal colour-block vest top, and stood up on two feet clad in golden skates.
She opened the door to find Chelsea and Dolly standing in the corridor, debating their next move. Dolly turned.
“K-Os! There you are! Where have you been?”
“The pipes,” K-Os replied, succinctly. The sound of running water continued from the room behind them. A puddle was rapidly spreading across the floor.
“Why didn’t you warn us this was coming?” Chelsea asked.
“I thought I had more time to prepare,” K-Os replied.
“How did they even find us?” Dolly said.
“They have a device,” K-Os said. “From my understanding, it detects chaotic fluctuations in base ontology. Anyone whose body is infused with chaotic energy can be detected by such a device, unless a countersignal, such as the one found in your crystals, is used to cancel it out.”
“You knew that they had this?” Dolly asked.
“My plan was to try and source one and reverse-engineer it. I decided to return to my studies here at the university and then enlist the help of Harri-Bec in tracking one down. Unfortunately, it would appear that SAID-MI5 had other plans.”
“You could have said something,” Chelsea said, indignantly.
“If I had done that, you would not have felt safe coming here,” K-Os explained. “If you didn’t feel safe coming here, you would have split up, and if you had split up, they would have sent multiple strike forces instead of one big one. I was able to therefore change a number of small surprise attacks, which would be almost certain losses, into a large-scale surprise attack, the result of which I at least have some control over. And, of course, it helps that I had Liberty on my side.”
“That little tree-hugger is pretty powerful,” Chelsea conceded. “So what now?”
“We need to find Daisy,” Dolly said. “She’s not safe on her own. Did you see where she ran off to?”
Chelsea said nothing.
“Oh…right…” Dolly said, sheepishly.
“Okay, this is the plan,” K-Os said. “You two attempt a rendezvous with Daisy. I will try to get hold of one of their detection devices.”
“What about Socks?” Dolly asked.
“Where is he?” K-Os asked.
“He’s with Liberty,” Chelsea said.
“Then he’s in safe hands,” K-Os said.
“If you say so,” Dolly said. “Oh, by the way, won’t you need one of those crystals?”
“I won’t be needing one,” K-Os said, smiling. “I’m going to lead them right to me.”
*
Seymer gazed at the screens, his fingers steepled. He had not said anything for some minutes. The other Cabinet ministers were becoming anxious.
“Still no word of capture or killing, Prime Minister,” Regent said.
Seymer remained silent, as though deep in thought.
“This hasn’t gone to plan, has it, Gabriel?” Mortimer asked.
Seymer looked at him momentarily, then slowly and methodically unsteepled his fingers, as though uncoupling a mechanism.
“In Cabinet situations, you will refer to me as Prime Minister,” he said. “Is that clear?”
Mortimer’s veil of smugness fell for a moment, revealing the seething hatred beneath.
“Is that clear, Mortimer?” Seymer snapped.
“Yes, Prime Minister,” Mortimer said, begrudgingly.
Seymer returned to looking at the screens.
“How?” he said. “How are they evading capture? We have the equipment and the training. We made several arrests in the summer with no problems. Why is this any different?”
“Prime Minister, if I may,” Regent said, hesitantly jumping in. “I believe that these people are far more coordinated than we were led to believe. They also seem to have abilities we did not anticipate. Perhaps we need a review of tactics.”
“Cut off the head and the body dies,” Boateng said, sharply. “That young woman in the rollerskates. She seems to be in charge. Perhaps you should focus efforts on her. Without her, their tactics will become destabilised. She seems to be the glue holding them together.”
Seymer looked over at her.
“Regent,” he said. “Tell your soldiers to focus their efforts on killing that rollerskater. The rest will soon follow.”
“As you wish, Prime Minister,” Regent said, dialling again.
Mortimer said nothing as he sullenly glared at Seymer.
*
Liberty and Socks found their way up the stairwell, along an empty corridor. Socks had by now become aware that the university was empty – almost certainly evacuated by the soldiers, probably under the pretenses of some threat to the lives of the students. The disagreement was, of course, on the exact nature of that threat.
They found another stairwell and went down it, down into a small square of grass and flowerbeds known as the “Secret Garden”, with benches and picnic tables, flanked on all sides by flat, Brutalist facades of concrete, glass and steel. Staff and student alike would frequently come down here for some fresh air and quiet without actually needing to leave the university premises. The “secret” nomenclature was half in jest; the Garden was not featured in the university’s promotional material, but more or less everyone knew about it.
They ran outside and Liberty placed her feet on the grass. She closed her eyes, smiling serenely.
“What are you doing?” Socks asked.
“As I said, recharging,” Liberty said. “Healing someone and making a tree live out its entire life in a few minutes costs a lot of energy. This lawn is a monoculture with very little biodiversity, but it has just life force enough to perk me up a bit.”
She closed her eyes and smiled serenely, as if in deep thought, or listening for something.
Socks looked down at Liberty’s bare feet on the grass. The nails were natural and unpolished, and the toes splayed naturally as a result of seemingly having never worn shoes.
“Don’t your feet hurt?” he asked.
“No,” Liberty said, opening her eyes. “Should they?”
“Well, I mean, I know my feet would hurt.”
“I almost never wear shoes. To do so would be to sever my connection with the Earth. Perhaps that is why you people so heartlessly destroy life. You have deafened yourselves to her song.”
“You sound like K-Os,” Socks said. “I take it that you know…”
“That she isn’t human? I could tell straight away. Her vibrations are different. She is so old, and she can see so much. The whole universe sings through her. The dancing that never stops even when at rest.”
Socks nodded. “She’s probably my best friend.”
Liberty smiled. “You choose your friends well.”
CHOPPA-CHOPPA-CHOPPA-CHOPPA-CHOPPA
They both looked up at the sky, and there was a helicopter gunship hovering overhead.
“Shit,” Socks said. “They’ll have spotted us.”
The grass around Liberty’s feet had grown long under her influence, such that her feet were no longer visible. She turned to Socks. “We can escape.”
“Back into the building?” Socks said.
“No,” Liberty said. “They’ll have blocked the corridors by now. I must admit, I told a bit of a lie. There was another reason I took us outside.”
Socks was surprised. “Well?” he said. “What is it?”
The helicopter rotors spun overhead. The helicopter was trying to establish visual contact, to ensure the right people were going to be obliterated by its guns…
Liberty looked up at it, then turned back to Socks.
There was a flash of bluish-white light, and Socks had to cover his eyes.
When he uncovered them, he could only stare in disbelief.
Standing in front of him was Liberty, and from her back unfurled six wings, made of white crystal veined with gold.
“Oh my God…” Socks said. “You’re an…you’re an…”
“Quickly,” Liberty said. “Put your arm around my neck.”
“Your neck? I’ll crush you!”
“I may be small, Socks, but I assure you, these wings are not just for decoration.”
Socks quickly threw his right arm around Liberty’s neck.
CHOPPA-CHOPPA-CHOPPA-CHOPPA-CHOPPA
Liberty left the ground just as the helicopter began to spray the ground with bullets. BBBBRRRRRRRTTTTTT
Socks hung on desperately as they soared into the air.
As though in disbelief, the helicopter stopped firing for a moment, as Liberty effortlessly carried someone larger and heavier than her around her neck as if it were nothing. The crystalline wings beat, tinkling musically as they achieved higher and higher altitude.
“Oh my God!” Socks shouted.
As he struggled to maintain his grip, he began to feel something loosening. There was a momentary panic, like the pang of fear one gets when they feel their pocket and their wallet is missing.
Socks was able to look at his left arm just in time to see the prosthetic detach and go tumbling to the university building’s roof, smashing to bits on impact.
“Did…your arm just fall off?” Liberty asked.
“Yeah…” Socks said, looking down at the ground. “Yeah, it did…”
The helicopter swung around, trying to achieve higher altitude to engage Liberty in aerial combat.
“Steel yourself,” Liberty said. “Things are about to get quite bumpy.”
*
One of the parlour tricks Daisy had learned in the summer was the ability to store her guitar in a space between the ontological and the psychic. Ella had shown her how to do it. It involved opening a small fissure in her being, not large enough to cause injury, but enough to be somewhat painful – in terms of physical pain, about as painful as being tattooed or receiving a vaccination. The limbo-space was just large enough to contain her guitar, and so she kept it with her in her spirit.
The guitar was no longer Jules. After Jules’s final triumph over the umbric users outside the water tower, whatever residual elements of his consciousness had passed on to some unseen land. All that was left was the energy of his base pattern, infused into the guitar, ritually powered by Ella Foe.
Daisy was still grieving him, but she was getting closer to the point where she would be able to move on, and this was reflected in that the guitar no longer felt that it had to pretend to be Jules. It was a new entity that had been born from Jules – his love for Daisy, his need to protect her, and the essence of his being.
She hid, now, on the top floor of the library, a tall building that gave her a good vantage point. She remembered coming here after first becoming Ella, shortly after Jules had died. The smell of old books seemed to calm her. She looked southwest, back towards the campus. A helicopter was hovering over the main squares. The place was crawling with soldiers. It was only a matter of time before they stormed the library.
She never had wanted to get caught up in this. All she’d ever wanted was a normal life, something she would, now, never have.
She clutched the guitar close to her body and felt it whispering to her. If you had a normal life you wouldn’t have me.
That was true. But also, if she didn’t have the guitar, she would still have Jules.
There came a sound from the shelves behind her, like a rattle, a gust of air.
They’re here.
She turned around, her eyes glowing in the dark, fretting up her fingers in preparation to play a concussive blast. She said nothing, merely stood.
The sound of footsteps came closer. Daisy raised her hand.
Two figures emerged from the shadows.
“Daisy!” one of them shouted, just as she was about to bring her fingers down on the strings.
It was Chelsea and Dolly.
“You couldn’t have announced you were here?” Daisy said, lowering her hand.
“And attract the attention of the guards?” Chelsea said. “Yeah, fat chance. Anyone in this building?”
“It’s empty, as far as I know.”
“They must be distracted,” Dolly said.
“Or…” Chelsea said, holding a hand up. “Planning something. Shh. Do you hear that?”
Quietly, in the distance: choppa-choppa-choppa-choppa…
And then suddenly very loud: CHOPPA-CHOPPA-CHOPPA-CHOPPA-CHOPPA…
“Oh, fuck that!” Dolly cried.
A helicopter was hovering just in front of the library.
“How did they find us?” Daisy said.
“Shit,” Dolly said. “You don’t have a crystal. Chelsea, she doesn’t have a crystal!”
“Crystal?” Daisy asked.
Chelsea, however, seemed not in the least bit perturbed by the sudden emergence of the helicopter, which appeared to be lining up a shot.
“Chelsea?” Dolly asked.
Chelsea smiled. “You know, I’ve always wanted to try something like this. I got close in London earlier this year, but it never happened.”
“What are you talking about?” Daisy said.
“Watch and learn, sisters,” she said, snapping her fingers.
There was a sound above them, from in the ceiling. A low, rhythmic rumble.
Remm rem rem rem rem rem rem rem rem rem remmm remmmmmm—
Daisy and Dolly watched, amazed, as a silver motorbike launched itself at truly astonishing speeds from the roof, crashing through the cockpit of the helicopter, punching a hole in the fuselage, somersaulting several times and landing on the pavement below as the helicopter exploded in a ball of flame, flaming wreckage tumbling to earth around the bike as it patiently waited for its mistress.
The other two looked in stunned silence at Chelsea.
“Bike’s magic,” she said.
“Bike’s magic,” they replied.
“That was so fucking cool!” Daisy shouted.
A moment later, the realisation that she had just watched someone die set in. She went a trifle pale.
There came the sound of footsteps up the stairwell.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Chelsea said. “At arms, sisters.”
“Where’s this ‘sisters’ thing coming from?” Dolly asked.
“It’s my new thing. I’m trying it out.”
“Right.”
Daisy readied her guitar, Dolly reached into her bag, readying some assortment of confections to weaponise, and Chelsea simply snapped her fingers.
“Let’s show these bastards why you don’t fuck with us.”
*
K-Os skated out into the main square.
Her plan was this: lead them to her. These people were armed and dangerous. If they wanted to kill anyone, it would be her. These people did not fool her. She had been there to see every war in human history. She had survived Agincourt. She had survived Flanders. A pissy little SWAT team could come for her, if they liked. She would show them precisely why that was a bad idea.
Above her, there was the chopping of a helicopter’s rotors, and a small speck buzzing around it like a mosquito. She squinted – her vision was stronger than that of a human, but she could not quite work out a definite shape.
She realised quite quickly what it was.
Liberty.
Damn it. She had shown her true form to Socks. K-Os had hoped to avoid this. She had to end this as quickly as possible. But to do that, she would need to get hold of their detector. And for that, she would need to draw them out here.
She had seen a few rough schematics, sourced through some of her contacts abroad. The penny-pinching privatisers in central government had, of course, outsourced the manufacture of the devices to companies abroad, and that lowering of cost came with the price of lower security. The diagrams had been leaked quite quickly, although the poor soul who had unthinkingly leaked them for a week’s wage had probably received a bullet behind the ear by now.
The device’s operation was, at least to her, fairly basic. It simply consisted of common electronics, such as those found in radios, that had been repurposed in such a way that they could be attuned to chaotic fluctuations in base reality, combined with more experimental parts, such as a quantum solenoid.
Normals were invisible to this device, but individuals with chaotic abilities could be detected from some miles away depending on the device’s power. She had heard rumours of larger devices, built using the same principle, being installed during “routine maintenance” on television broadcast towers to provide wider coverage. This device, however, was small and handheld, about the size of a normal radio, with a small display and an electronic alarm which would go off, not unlike a carbon monoxide detector, when it discovered chaotic fluctuations nearby.
Her name was K-Os. She was the nexus of all chaotic energy on this planet, the aperture by which chaos could infuse mortals with the power of the dancing, the music of the spheres. Her mere presence would make their detector scream. She stood in the centre of the square and waited.
Sure enough, a minute later, a small strike team arrived, one of them clutching a small metal box whose electronic buzzer made a reedy sort of piiiiiiiiiiiiii noise.
“Switch that damn thing off,” said one of the soldiers. “We found her.”
“Put your hands where I can see them,” said a familiar voice. K-Os looked, and saw that it was the senior officer in the mauve beret, the commander of the operation. He was pointing a Desert Eagle at her, and stepped carefully towards her.
“That isn’t standard issue,” K-Os said, putting her hands up.
“The government…had some help from the Americans, in setting up our little division,” the senior officer said, stoically. “They issued me this rather handsome weapon.”
K-Os studied it carefully.
“Do men fear you when you wield this weapon?”
The senior officer’s facial expression did not change.
There was no sadism in his reply – it was clear from tone alone that the officer took it to be absolute truth. Sadism was, for him, something in which only weaklings and cowards indulged; his moral code was one founded on a strict and sincere pragmatism. Death meant nothing to him; it hung over him as it did all other men, and that he had made peace with that fact was what made him a ruthless killer.
His reply was simple and succinct, consisting of one word.
“Yes.”
K-Os paused for a moment.
“Then it is fortunate that I am no man.”
Before he was able to pull the trigger, the senior officer realised two things: Firstly, a strange feeling of warmth emanating from his hostage, and two, his hostage, who stood an impressive six-foot-two, matching him in height, had seemingly shrunk to about five-foot-nine.
He realised why that was all too late.
A pink, milkshake-like puddle had gelled around the officer’s boots, binding him in place, and from the puddle burst a tentacle-like appendage, which quickly whipped the gun out of the officer’s hand and placed it into K-Os’s hand. K-Os pointed the gun at him.
A soldier fired at her.
PEOWWW!
“What the fuck?!” shouted one of the soldiers.
K-Os was just as surprised as him.
Enveloping K-Os’s body was a golden suit of armour, which burned with heat and light.
K-Os looked down at it.
“That’s…new,” she said.
*
Liberty’s wings beat hard against the air as the helicopter swung to get a fix on its target. It was the heavy, slow, menacing way that it moved that unnerved Socks the most. He had never had a head for heights, and especially not now.
The rush of wind was too loud for him to speak for her, and any attempt to open his mouth to speak was met with a rush of air down his throat that made him choke. He was amazed by how firm her grasp on him was; this was someone who was very good at flying, and far stronger than she initially appeared. It occurred to him that Liberty may well, much like K-Os, not be entirely human, if at all.
The helicopter was pursuing them. Liberty was seemingly trying to avoid flying too far from the university. Socks couldn’t ask her why, but he assumed it was because she didn’t want to get too far from K-Os. There was something more to their relationship that Liberty wasn’t letting on, of this he could be sure – but he had little time to think about it, as they wavered and bucked in the sky.
He suddenly began to notice something, out of the periphery of his vision, and he was horrified when he realised what it was.
The helicopter in pursuit had radioed for assistance. There was now a second helicopter bearing down on them.
Liberty attempted to make a bold move, trying to draw the fire of one helicopter such that both would be getting in each others’ ways, but of course, these were expert pilots, and they were done playing such games. Liberty’s wings stretched for one moment, and one moment was all it took.
He heard the shock of impact before the sound of the gun going off.
Liberty screamed.
Socks felt a sting like broken glass burning the residual limb on his left arm. He looked down to see blood spilling from fresh wounds, shattered crystal shards sticking out of it.
On Liberty’s right, a wing of crystal had taken a direct impact and shattered, and she could no longer maintain altitude. Left with five wings, she was now beginning to tumble to Earth, and Socks with her.
*
K-Os held the senior officer at gunpoint. Her finger, clad in golden, almost translucent armour, slipped around the trigger.
He looked at her sternly, and said, emotionlessly: “You can’t kill me. You don’t have it in you.”
“I’ve killed before,” K-Os said. “Men far more powerful than you have died by my hand.”
“Then to kill me would be an act of cowardice,” the senior officer said. “I am a mere man.”
K-Os hesitated.
“Shoot her,” the senior officer ordered.
Several guns went off at once.
Ptew! Peoww! Ptoiinnng!
The bullets bounced off of the shield.
Of course, K-Os thought.
When Cosimo Chesterton had died, he had bequeathed unto her the Jerusalem Sword, a weapon of unmatched ontological power. She had used the power of the Sword to maintain her form. This armour was, presumably, the Sword’s attempt to protect her form from coming to harm.
“You can’t win,” K-Os said. “As long as this armour is protecting me, your bullets won’t do any damage.”
There came some chatter over a radio, and a soldier shouted to the senior officer.
“Sir!” she said. “We have confirmation that a target in flight has been shot down.”
K-Os’s expression wavered. Liberty.
The senior officer did not smile, but there was evident relish in his voice.
“Well,” he said. “It would seem that your friends are about to die, Miss Osborne. You may have no physical weakness while you wear that armour…but what about your friends?”
K-Os looked up.
Liberty, and Socks with her, were tumbling to Earth.
There was nothing she could do.
She was powerless.
The senior officer was right – she had no physical weakness in this armour, but that did not mean that she had no weaknesses at all. K-Os, the lonely immortal, had one very important weakness – she cared about her friends, these fragile mortal things that vanished into nothing as quickly as a raindrop on a windowpane. Her inability to save them all, that was what, ultimately, killed her inside.
As she found herself caught in her own private distress, she suddenly felt something lift from her body, a great weight bursting out of her like a pillar of light. She realised quite quickly what had happened.
Her body was no longer clad in armour.
She looked up.
The Sword had transformed into an enormous hand, attached to an arm, and the arm was reaching up into the sky, holding its flat palm out to catch the two tumbling figures…
“Fire at will,” the senior officer said.
K-Os turned back to him.
Without hesitation, she fired the gun.
*
The bike did not “think” in any meaningful way, though it could be said to be somewhat “alive”. Its “thoughts” could be assumed to be an extension of Chelsea’s base pattern – she imbued it with a low-level telepathy, and in return, it could serve as her eyes, allowing her, despite her visual impairment, to ride the bike effortlessly. When the call came from above, the bike did not so much think “I must follow”, as though an expression of intention, as much as receive a signal and react to it, as though an animal reacting on instinct. Functionally, however, the result was the same.
There was a semi-circle of soldiers in the library. Shelves lay dismantled and broken on the floor, scattered books were strewn across the ground. Several soldiers lay in crumpled heaps. The bike was able to “see” this, and in an instant, charted a course around the soldiers. Their bullets would not harm it, it had an invisible shield, but the path of least resistance was the most efficient. In the microsecond it took to calculate, it had already initiated the process of getting from A to B.
What the occupants of the room heard – and saw – was a motorbike engine revving: remmmmmm rem rem rem rem rem rem remmm remmmm – followed by the bike hurtling through a wall of wired glass, shattering it instantly, crashing into the library and sailing over the heads of several soldiers, who cried out in surprise, firing bullets that bounced off the shield, leaping over broken shelving and incapacitated soldiers, before screeching to a halt in front of the three women standing at the library’s front.
“Good bike,” Chelsea Rose said, turning to the other two. “Hop on, sisters!”
Daisy and Dolly did not hesitate to leap on the back of the bike, though it was quite a tight fit (not that Dolly was complaining).
The soldiers opened fire and more bullets bounced off the shield. The bike carried them to the back of the room, then cycled back round to point towards the front of the building again.
“Chelsea, what are you doing?” Dolly said.
“It’s not me,” Chelsea said. “It’s the bike…I think it’s showing off.”
“Surely it’s not going to…” Daisy said.
“Hold on tight, girls!” Chelsea said, grinning widely.
The bike’s engine revved.
“Stop!” shouted one of the soldiers. “We order you to—”
The bike surged forwards as soldiers leapt out of the way and it crashed through the front window. For a moment it felt like flying, before a horrible rollercoaster lurch as the bike plummeted to the concrete square below. The bike landed on the pavement with a krump.
“You fucking lunatic,” Dolly said, after a few moments, inspecting her body involuntarily for damage.
“You’ve got to know when to fold ‘em,” Chelsea replied. “Or so the saying goes. Never did learn how to play poker, I couldn’t be arsed to buy a deck of Braille cards.”
From the hole in the library above, the soldiers fired their guns into the square below. The bullets ricocheted off of the pavement, pockmarking it with holes.
“Come on,” Chelsea said. “Let’s find K-Os.”
High above, the whip-crack of machine gun fire faded into a resigned silence as the bike sped away.
*
Socks opened his eyes to a world of translucent gold light. For a moment he thought he must have died and this must be the afterlife, but as he came to his senses, he was able to see what exactly was emitting the light. A translucent gold hand was holding him in its palm, and he was resting against its little finger. Across the palm, he saw Liberty, resting against the thumb.
Her wings were retracted. While she appeared to have suffered no bodily harm, she was unconscious.
He attempted to crawl over to her and rouse her, but a searing pain in his left arm reminded him that he, too, was injured, and bleeding quite heavily.
The arm was travelling downwards. He peered between the fingers, seeing the concrete and glass of the university getting closer. He rested against one of the fingers, and found himself gently deposited on the ground, suddenly unsupported by the finger, and collapsed on to his side.
He was able to survey the scene from here: Liberty lay still on the ground, flat on her back, her arms limp by her sides. K-Os was holding a gun, and her body was clad in a golden suit of armour. An array of soldiers stood in a semi-circle, their faces agape in shock.
Lying on the ground was the senior officer, his mauve beret laying on the ground beside him. He was clutching one of his ears, though, eerily, there were no cries or moans of pain. It was clear that he was hurt – blood ran between his fingers from the injured ear – but whatever switch in his brain that was meant to cause him to show it in his countenance had either never been switched on, or forcibly switched off. He seemed to be trying to will himself to stand up, despite the pain.
K-Os looked at the other soldiers, keeping her gun pointed at the senior officer.
“Nobody move,” she said, calmly. “If you fire a single bullet, I will make sure that the next shot kills him.”
Remmmmmbembembembem
Socks was able to look just in time to see the arrival of Chelsea, her bike, and on its back, Daisy and Dolly.
“The cavalry’s here,” Chelsea said, grinning.
“Socks!” Daisy cried.
K-Os looked down at him. She had apparently only just noticed the state he was in.
“Shit,” she said.
Daisy jumped off the bike. She hadn’t shown this much concern for her friend in some months. She ran to his side, and looked angrily up at K-Os.
“You didn’t even check on him?!”
“I was…preoccupied,” K-Os said.
Dolly jumped off the bike as well, surveying the situation. She quickly ran past K-Os, to Liberty’s side, feeling her neck for a pulse.
“Strange…” she whispered. Nobody heard her.
Daisy examined Socks.
“He’s losing a lot of blood,” Daisy said. “My God, what happened to his arm?”
“Liberty…wing,” Socks said. “Shot. Helicopter.”
“He’s delirious,” Daisy said, looking up at K-Os. “You just left him here like this?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m holding a man at gunpoint,” K-Os said.
“Guys…” Dolly said.
The senior officer suddenly leapt from the ground and, with a precise movement characteristic of martial-arts training, took the gun out of K-Os’s hands. He was struggling to maintain his balance – the sound of the gunshot had damaged his eardrum and, in turn, his vestibular system. He wobbled, pointing the gun first at K-Os, then at Daisy, then at Socks.
The senior officer’s finger slipped on to the trigger.
“Mister Seymer sends his regards,” he said.
“Guys!” Dolly shouted.
All eyes turned in Dolly’s direction, though they only looked at Dolly for half an instant.
Liberty was sitting up, her back straight, and her blue eyes, already striking in their brightness, now shone with a ferocity like the blue of a gas fire.
The senior officer looked from Liberty, to Socks, to K-Os, and then, with considerable effort, pointed the gun at Liberty.
“You will cease and desist,” he said to her.
Liberty said nothing. She merely stood. The expression on her face was incomprehensible. It was a mixture of disdain, anger and unbridled terror.
Liberty stepped forwards, seemingly possessed, and as her bare sole touched the concrete, thick, thorny brambles erupted from between the paving stones.
“Do you hear me?” the senior officer said. “You…will…cease and desist.”
Liberty continued to step forwards, towards the senior officer.
Socks tried to sit up and get a better look at what was going on, but the pain was too much, and he found himself sinking back to the ground.
“Open fire!” shouted one of the soldiers.
Guns went off.
Liberty kept walking, as walls of brambles erupted, pushing aside paving stones, forming thickets strong enough to absorb the impact of the bullets.
The senior officer, his hand shaking, pointed the gun and fired.
Liberty held her hand out.
The bullet smacked into a wall of brambles. The brambles receded into the ground, and the bullet, still hot, lay on the pavement. Liberty bent down, picking the bullet up, as a bramble whipped out of the ground and tore the gun from his hand.
“No more guns,” Liberty said, her voice loud and imposing.
The brambles removed the gun’s magazine, tipping unfired bullets on the ground with a tink tink tink, and disassembled it, until it was merely a harmless pile of metal, which was then discarded on the ground as the brambles receded.
The senior officer stared, disbelieving, as the girl – far smaller than he – looked up at him.
“Leave this place.”
“To whom am I speaking?” the senior officer replied.
Liberty spoke to him in a strange, double-layered voice; one was her own voice, and the other was a terrible, thunderous voice that seemed to emanate from every patch of green and every speckle of colour around them:
“You speak to a vessel,” she said. “You will leave. You will take your killing machines with you.”
The senior officer seemed to fall to his knees.
Socks could scarcely move, and could only stare, his face pressed into the concrete, at what happened next.
The senior officer reached into his boot for something, withdrawing a large tactical knife, and in a quick motion, slashed Liberty across the chest.
“No!” K-Os shouted, leaping forwards.
Liberty staggered backwards for a few moments. Blood dripped from her wound, staining her pure white dress.
The senior officer turned to the soldiers.
“Now’s your chance,” he ordered. “Fire at will.”
“Wait!” Daisy cried.
“Start with her,” the senior officer said, pointing with the knife, dripping with blood, at his victim.
As the brambles withered and crumbled to dust, the soldiers pointed their guns at Liberty. It was clear that even they did not feel good about doing this, but orders were orders.
The guns clicked, fingers slipped on to triggers, and death would be swift—
There came a roar, a roar that reverberated against the sky, and it seemed to almost threaten to shake the buildings around them to gravel.
Liberty clutched the wound on her chest, her face contorted in unimaginable rage. And she screamed, so loudly that windows rattled in panes and leaves on tree branches rustled:
“THE VIOLENCE ENDS.”
A deathly silence fell across the scene.
The soldiers hesitated.
“Don’t just stand there,” the senior officer said. “Shoot her.”
“Don’t!” Dolly shouted.
No use.
The soldiers turned their guns on Liberty, and fired.
Liberty should have fallen.
But she refused.
The bullets did not so much bounce off of her as cease to exist. They could not harm her – the intention of harm was simply counteracted by a powerful counter-intention…the counter-intention that Liberty had shown Socks in the classroom.
The power to negate harm.
The power to heal.
A blue light burst forth from Liberty’s body, and the guns in the soldier’s hands were immediately neutralised. They liquefied, turned to powder and gelatine, transformed into bouquets of flowers, into brown rabbits that leapt from their hands and skittered away, or simply vanished. The senior officer’s knife transformed in his hand into a red rose with a thorny stem.
As the wave of blue light struck Socks, he immediately felt himself rejuvenated, and sat up, to Daisy’s amazement, as she helped him to stand.
Soldiers, horrified, began shouting into radios, sounding a retreat.
“You cowards,” the senior officer said.
His subordinates did not hear him. Their focus now was escaping.
A helicopter dropship hovered overhead, and someone leaned out, signalling where the makeshift rendezvous point would be. Soldiers ran as if their lives depended on it, abandoning whatever they were carrying to make a break for it.
The senior officer looked at the others.
“This isn’t over,” he said.
No longer clutching his ear, he fled towards the dropship, discarding the rose on the ground.
The blue light in Liberty’s eyes faded and she immediately fell to the ground, apparently asleep. The knife wound across her chest had healed instantly, though her dress was still damaged. Daisy ran to her and knelt beside her.
“Should we help her?” she said.
“I think she’s alright,” K-Os said. “I’ve never seen her do that before.”
“It must have something to do with her wing,” Socks said. “She has wings, by the way, just so we’re all clear.”
Daisy looked at him, and there were a series of expressions on her face that seemed to say that she didn’t believe him, and then she realised that she had a magic guitar, so of course it would make sense for this girl to have wings, and then she seemed to realise that was just as absurd, and eventually she just gave up.
K-Os skated across the square. There was a box, about the size of a radio, that had been left on the ground. She picked it up by its handle, hefting it and inspecting it.
Mission accomplished, she thought.
“What’s that?” Dolly asked.
“It’s a machine that SAID use to find chaotic anomalous persons,” K-Os replied, turning it over in her hands. “Looks to be in good condition.”
“Let’s smash it,” Chelsea said.
“No,” K-Os replied. “This device will be important in the months to come. We are now sworn enemies of the British government. This device can help us find anomalous individuals with powers similar to ours. If we get to them before the government, we can protect them and help them defend themselves.”
“Well, that’s no fun,” Chelsea said. “But that’s fair. Got to protect our own, right?”
K-Os blinked twice. “Well, Chelsea, that’s probably the most mature thing you’ve ever—”
“Pub, anyone?” Chelsea asked, grinning.
K-Os’s face fell.
“Chelsea, it’s eleven o’clock in the morning,” Daisy said.
“Your point being? Been quite an exciting day, innit.”
“I’m almost amazed that I’m saying it, but I’m with Chelsea,” Socks interjected. “I could use a drink. Plus, I’d assume classes for the rest of the day are cancelled…”
“Wahey!” Chelsea whooped. “That’s what I’m talking about, Tilburys!”
There came a small sound from the ground. Liberty seemed to stir and sit up.
“What happened?” she asked. “I was flying…and I blacked out.” Horror filled her eyes. “Oh, goodness! Is Socks…?”
“I’m okay,” Socks said, smiling.
“Oh, thank heavens,” Liberty replied, smiling back.
“I’ve never been better,” Socks said. “That blue light healed me right up.”
Liberty’s smile faded.
“The what?”
“The blue light,” Socks said. “It healed you and me.”
Liberty covered her mouth.
“Oh…” she said. “Oh no…”
“Why oh no?” Socks asked, suddenly worried. “Liberty, why oh no?”
“Well, usually it’s fine,” Liberty said. Her eye darted to Socks’s left arm. “But I’m not sure…”
Suddenly, Socks felt a searing pain in his arm, and bent double as if winded. He clutched the arm and gasped in pain.
“Socks!” Daisy shouted, looking at Liberty. “What have you done to him?!”
“I haven’t done anything!” Liberty said. “But look at his arm!”
Socks’s arm was no longer bleeding, but there were small scars where the crystals had been embedded. The crystals had not been ejected; the flesh had simply grown back over them.
“Oh my God, I can’t look,” Daisy said.
“What’s going on?!” K-Os shouted, skating over to see what the noise was about.
Socks cried out in pain. His arm throbbed. It was like broken glass under his skin.
He collapsed to the ground, and could only watch, horrified at what happened next.
His residual limb exploded open, and from it erupted a mass of crystals – the same crystals that had comprised Liberty’s wing, the same crystals that had been imbued with energy from her outburst – which violently changed form until, finally, they formed a strange, spindly-looking crystalline arm, white and veined with gold, at whose end was a left hand possessing three fingers and a thumb.
As quickly as the pain had come on, it had faded. There was a slight feeling of pins and needles. Socks looked down at the arm and, experimentally, tried to move the fingers.
He opened them.
He closed them.
He made a fist.
“Oh my God,” Socks said. “It’s a new arm…”
“Oh my…” Liberty said.
Daisy could only stare in amazement.
She turned to Chelsea.
“So, about that drink…”
Chelsea put an arm around her.
“I knew you’d come around,” she said. “Prosecco is on me!”
She snapped her fingers gleefully and the bike came to her side. She jumped on it, and immediately it roared into life, leaping from the university squares on to the road below.
The rest began to walk in the direction of the stairs that would take them off campus. They’d have to settle for a bus, it seemed.
Socks surveyed the now-empty squares. There were bullet holes pockmarking the ground and discarded equipment – guns, helmets, armour – was strewn about the place. He frowned. Was this all K-Os and he could bring to this place? Death and destruction?
Then he looked down at his new arm. It seemed to give him a sense of ease. There had been destruction today, to be sure, but that was no reason to overlook what had been gained.
“Hey, Liberty?” Socks asked, examining the shimmering gold veins in his crystal arm.
“Yes, Socks?”
“What’s this stuff called, anyway?”
Liberty stopped in her tracks to look at him somewhat condescendingly.
“K-Os doesn’t tell you anything, does she?” she said.
The gold veins on Socks’s arm shimmered in the early autumn sun.
“It’s called penumbric,” Liberty said.
She walked ahead of him, and disappeared down the steps. Behind her, growing out of the cracks in the pavement, was a trail of bluebells.
Socks looked down at his arm. At his command, like Liberty’s wings, it retracted, leaving once again a residual limb, with his new arm ready to be called up whenever he needed it.
Faintly, Socks could hear something humming. His right hand dived into his pocket and withdrew the crystal Liberty had given him, still softly singing.
“Penumbric…” Socks said, quietly.
He smiled slightly, putting the crystal back in his pocket, and followed after her.
Perhaps this year won’t be so bad after all.
*
The helicopter flew over fields, farms and rivers. The soldiers all bowed their heads in shame.
“We really fucked that up,” said one of them, to nobody in particular.
“We’ll get them next time,” said another. “We’re SAID-MI5. Best of the best.”
“Best of the best,” reiterated several of the other soldiers.
The senior officer sat at the rear, saying nothing.
“We’re going to be alright, right, Captain?” asked one of the soldiers.
The senior officer said nothing for a few moments.
“Of course,” he said.
The helicopter continued flying for a few more minutes.
“Hey,” said one of the soldiers, checking a map. “This dropship is way off course. Captain, what’s going on?”
The captain stood.
“Comrades, the British government extends the fullest gratitude imaginable to each and every one of you. Your service these past few years has been greatly appreciated. This failure does not besmirch your records. While SAID-MI5 is not publicly acknowledged by any body of government, rest assured that you shall all be buried with full military honours, and you will all be remembered as heroes who died protecting their country.”
With that, the floor opened up beneath the captain, and he dropped through it, vanishing into an open field below. The floor then sealed itself shut.
“What…” one of the soldiers said, fearfully. “What did he mean by that…?”
Around the interior of the helicopter, small plastic domes that one could easily mistake for instrument casings or machinery of some kind popped open.
There was a loud hiss.
The soldiers did not smell the gas, nor could they see it. But they felt its effects almost immediately. An unbearable feeling of choking, painful muscle contractions, salivating and convulsions. Normally, this would result in death within about ten minutes, but this was not a normal situation.
It gave the soldiers little to no comfort as they scratched at their throats, trying to escape the sealed container, that the gas being used to kill them was in fact illegal under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and that its deployment in warzones would in fact be considered a war crime.
The helicopter wavered, spinning hopelessly out of control as its engines were remotely cut. With no pilot on board to guide the dropship safely to ground, it fell from the sky, and it came down in a field of rapeseed.
The senior officer watched through binoculars from a distance, as the fireball plumed and the smoke rose into the sky. He spoke into a satellite phone.
“Mister Prime Minister, sir,” he said. “Protocol Zero has been carried out. All neutralised.”
“Very good, Captain,” the Prime Minister replied. There was a trace of sarcasm in his voice. “See to it that you succeed next time.”
“Yes, Prime Minister,” the Captain replied.
The air boiled with burning fuel and flesh, and the rapeseed was scorched.
The mournful wail of sirens came over the horizon.
The Captain lowered his binoculars and walked away.
*
“Well, that was a shitshow,” Mortimer said.
Regent opened his mouth to say something.
“I’m afraid I must agree with you, Mortimer,” Seymer said, regretfully. “Regent, this is the first major mission we’ve sent SAID-MI5 on and they were forced to retreat. How do you justify that?”
“They were unprepared for what the mission would entail, Prime Minister,” Regent said. “I can assure you we will be re-training soldiers and preparing them.”
“They already know that SAID-MI5 exists,” Boateng said. “That sort of thing doesn’t just go away, even with GCHQ combing the Web for references to them. That’s the one piece of media we can’t wipe: A human brain. Now that they know, they will be readying their defences. We won’t get the jump on them next time. It seems that simple assassination is out of the question…”
Seymer steepled his fingers in front of his mouth.
“Baird, I’d like you to do something for me, if you’d be so kind.”
Baird had been very quiet, and looked up from the desk looking quite meek.
“Mister Regent has proven that we cannot over-rely on SAID-MI5 to get the job done. We need a diversity of tactics to stop these individuals wreaking havoc.”
“So…” Baird said, timidly. “…what would you have me do, Prime Minister?”
“Redirect funds,” Seymer replied. “To Project LUCIFER.”
In the dark, a wide rictus grin crossed Barnabas Mortimer’s face. As the screens slowly switched off, his face became obscured in shadow, until all that remained was the white of his teeth, and his eyes, shimmering in the dark.
“Now this will be fun,” he said.
He laughed.
Another time, another place…
ROLLERSKATER
ARC III
“New Culture”
BEGIN
Rollerskater will return later this year
This work is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Illustration copyright © Igzell Vázquez, 2020.
ARC THREE: NEW CULTURE
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