Rollerskater: Red
I | II | III | SSI | IV | V | SSII | SSIII | VI | VII | SSIV
VIII | IX | X | XI | XII | SSV | XIII | SSVI | XIV | SSVII | XV | SSVIII | XVI | XVII
This instalment contains mild blood and potential triggers for trypanophobia (fear of needles).
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The old man in red looked at her sceptically.
‘Old’, of course, was a relative term – he was old in comparison to others of his kind, but she perceived him as a day-old mayfly, barely crawled out of the water, already nearing the killing dusk.
Perhaps that was the cause of the quizzical look on his face whenever he saw her. She looked like a twenty-one-year-old woman, and yet even Stonehenge was but a few minutes old to her. He must have found that disquieting. She, in turn, found him disquieting.
He’d told her his name after they met in Harri-Bec’s living room. Callan Crucefix, hunter and killer of vampires.
He licked his finger, then turned a page. He was reading a comic book, a new one, titled Action Comics. It was concerned with the adventures of Superman, a mythological figure that had emerged sometime in the twentieth-century interwar period. She had never been particularly interested in such literature. The myth of Superman was only notable in that he was more powerful than most men she had ever encountered. She imagined that was why these beings, always dying, found him interesting to read about.
“Is there a reason you’ve asked me to come here?” K-Os asked, folding her arms in front of her.
Callan shot her another look, then held his finger up.
“Quiet,” he said. “Am readin’.”
“You were the one who asked me here,” K-Os said.
“An’ a shall speak tae ye when ave finished ma readin’,” Callan replied.
K-Os scowled and looked out of the window. These people. How could it be that she could know them inside out, and yet their internal worlds still remained a mystery to her, no matter how much she knew about the human brain? Her careful study of this bizarre anatomy while employed with surgeons, physicians and coroners was what allowed her to maintain this form by force of will, and yet her phenomenological experience was universes away from what went on in mortal minds.
She thought of Socks, then. Where must he be now, after Wiltshire? He had irritated her at first, then she had come to respect him, then she had come to consider him a friend – the first person she had called a friend in many years. And yet, still he bewildered her. He, like all human beings, held concerns and anxieties that she, ever-undying, could not even begin to countenance.
Thus, also, Callan. This man, sitting at the precipice of death, both escapee from the world of normals and liaison with the strange, wasting his time reading about heroes of myth. Why were humans so frivolous with their finitude? Why was there no urgency to anything they did? It alarmed her to think that humanity knew something about the universe that she did not. That, in her infinititude, her knowledge of the world was incomplete, the mere fact of death, and her immortality, closing her off from complete understanding.
How could she be so old, and yet still so youthfully ingenuous? For all her years, was she not merely an overgrown naïf?
She turned her attention back to Callan, who had closed the comic book and had been waiting patiently for her to come out of her reverie.
“It wis a good wan,” he said. “D’ye read comics, hen?”
“No,” K-Os replied, shaking her head. “They don’t interest me.”
“Aye,” Callan said, smiling. “Well, first time fer everythin’.”
He slid the comic over towards her, spinning it so she could see the cover artwork. She glanced down at it, then back up at Callan, whose expression was once again sceptical.
“Why do you keep looking at me like that?” she said.
“Do a?” Callan replied. “Ma apologies, hen. Harri told me aw aboot ye. Are ye really tha’ auld, if it isnae an insult tae ask?”
“Only humans find being asked their true age insulting,” K-Os retorted. “I do not age. I see no reason to hide it. Elderliness is not an affliction, it is simply a fact of my being.”
“Aye, aye,” Callan said. “Then, perhaps it’s the uncanny aspect. Ye doon’t look yer age. Ye look twenty-wan an’ stupit.”
K-Os curled her lip in disdain. He chortled.
“My apologies, lassie,” he said. “It’s just tha’ a remember bein’ twenty-wan and a wisnae a’thin’ like as, ehm, articulate as ye are.”
“Is there a point to this meeting or not?” K-Os snapped.
Callan smiled slightly.
“Aye,” he said. “But first, let’s get the drinks in. My treat.”
*
The red goggles gaze at her emotionlessly.
He looks like a fly up there, Doctor Bush thinks, caught in a web. Big, red, listless eyes and a black, bound body. The chains holding him place remain as adamantine and rigid as ever. The strangeness of the situation maintains its persistence. He speaks to her tersely, when he speaks at all. He does not forgive her.
The shock training stopped not long after Seymer’s death, and Wiltshire. The government has other motives, now, other incentives. She is tasked with feeding him and maintaining his medical care. She is constantly amazed that his body has never atrophied in all that time up there. You would expect muscle wastage, bone disintegration, emotional breakdown – but he remains a solidly-built man. Were he standing, she suspects he would stand something like five feet and five inches, not very tall, but built strongly for his height.
They have asked her to take something from him. To do that, she must gain back his trust. To do that, she must feed and talk to him. She is struggling to make headway in that direction. But she must. It is her duty.
Holding a plastic bowl, she steps on to the cherrypicker and the soldiers, gruff and still twitchy after the incident last autumn, pull the levers and raise her up. She rises until she meets him.
“Hello, Mister Parish,” she says. “It’s Doctor Bush. I’m here to feed you and check you over. Is that alright?”
There comes no response from the imprisoned man. She feels cold. It’s like he’s waiting for something, serene and patient as a Buddhist monk.
She raises the plastic bowl.
“Lentil soup,” she says. “Your favourite.”
Parish does not reply. She unseals his mask – she has come to know these seals very well since her mistake last autumn – and pulls it away, leaving only his eyes covered.
Parish does not speak. His jaw is held rigidly closed, producing a grimace. They brush his teeth twice daily and send in a dentist to check his oral health every few weeks, but she cannot understand how his teeth are so immaculate after so long in these conditions.
“Open,” she says. This is the only time of the day that he obeys her.
She puts the spoon in to his mouth and he sups from it. He swallows, says nothing, closes his mouth.
Suddenly, it seems strange to her that she knows barely anything about this man she’s been feeding and caring for over months.
She asks, “Do you have a first name, Mister Parish?”
Parish does not reply.
“They don’t let me look at your files, see. I don’t have that sort of clearance. I’m just here to keep you fighting fit.”
Parish opens his mouth again and she lifts the spoon to it.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
She withdraws the bowl for a second and tries to keep her composure.
“I know you see me as a torturer,” she says. “When I became a doctor, I vowed I would help my patients. You are my patient, Mister Parish. And I can’t help but feel that I’m hurting you—”
“Oi! Quit that fucking nattering!” shouts a soldier from below. “You’ve a job to do, so bloody well do it!”
Bush nods, wiping tears from her eyes.
“This is what they’ve got me doing now,” she murmurs. “Feeding an impossible man soup. Christ…”
“Blake,” Parish says.
She looks up at him.
The red circles of his eyes do not betray emotion, but they are staring right at her.
“What?” she whispers.
“Blake,” Parish says again. “My name is Blake Parish.”
She smiles slightly, biting her lip and looking down.
“Thank you, Blake,” she says.
“Right, that’s it,” the soldier barks. “Feeding time’s over!”
The lift comes down, and the half filled bowl falls from her hands, spilling through the grating of the lift platform.
“But…” she says. “The mask…”
“We’ll put it back on,” the soldier says. “After all, you can’t be trusted to do that, can you, you stupid bint?” He smiles wickedly.
“Go on,” says the other soldier. “Off you fuck.”
Bush sighs, nods, and salutes the soldier, then rapidly leaves the chamber, glancing over her shoulder.
He told me his name, she thinks. He told me his name.
*
The Cabinet observed the red crystals uncertainly.
They were contained within glass boxes, cubiform, laid out in the briefing room at 10 Downing Street. There were three of them, all roughly the same shape. They were uncut, unpolished, not jewellery but weaponry. They were the colour of blood.
“So,” Prime Minister Barnabas Mortimer said, smiling viciously. “What do you think?”
The Cabinet had been reshuffled somewhat since Seymer’s unfortunate death, as had the procedures for managing the government’s response to the Episode.
Afua Boateng sat to Mortimer’s right side, scowling. It was clear she did not understand why the Prime Minister had kept her on and appointed her as Home Secretary. If she asked, he would have answered that he simply wanted to annoy her, and if she wanted to keep her children in that nice private school, she would do as she was told. Mortimer suspected she never asked as she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.
“It was my understanding, Prime Minister,” Boateng said, and even after three months with him at the helm the disgust had not left her voice, “That the official position of this government was that all anomalous persons and objects were to be classified as threats to national security and dealt with securely. Am I to understand that our ministry has since reneged on that promise?”
The other persons sitting in the briefing room nodded and murmured in agreement. Mortimer continued to smile, and allowed the murmuring to die down of its own accord. His eyes glinted a faint topaz in the light.
“I am afraid that we have had to compromise,” Mortimer said. “But with good reason. In the waning months of last year, our colleagues in SAID-MI5 were very nearly killed by a being from another world…”
“The same being with which you tried to kill the Chancellor?” asked Anthony Regent, indignantly. He glanced at the man sitting to Mortimer’s left, who timidly glanced back at him, then at Mortimer.
“I believe we have already discussed this, Regent,” Mortimer said. “Researchers at MI5 determined the nature of the being to be a living meme, one that could alter one’s thoughts. A form of advanced hypnotism, essentially. While it may seem that I tried to kill the honourable gentleman, I assure you that it was not me at the helm on that day. Physicians have deemed me fit to work.”
“If we could get back on topic?” John Reed, First Secretary of State, said. He was a tall, thin man with grey hair and round spectacles.
“Absolutely,” Mortimer said. “As I was saying, this being attacked our highest offices of state and our most specialised arm of the military. And not a day later, our Prime Minister was found dead in the bathroom of this very building.”
Mortimer paused for a moment, frowned as if attempting to force himself to shed a tear, then continued.
“Therefore, I think it apt that we must look for other avenues and means by which we can fight these people. I must admit, there is something I have brought you here to discuss that has not previously been disclosed to the Cabinet.” He held out his hand. “That is why we have Bernie joining us today.”
Director-General of MI5, Dame Bernardette LeTellier, was a small, bird-like woman with cropped blonde hair and an aquiline nose. She wore a pinstripe suit jacket with a pencil skirt. She stood.
“Our researchers came into possession of this material through sources we are not at liberty to discuss,” LeTellier said. She pushed a button and a screen folded down from the ceiling. She had a laptop affixed to a set of cables that came up from a hole in the table. She pressed a few buttons and a succession of images appeared on the screen.
“During the Incident at Wiltshire last year, bullets tipped with this material were successfully deployed during an attempt to arrest associates of the Rollerskater, whose identity is known to SAID-MI5 as ‘Katherine Osborne’ – one Ms. Chelsea Rose and one Ms. Dolores Mykhailiuk, since disappeared.”
She tapped a few more buttons, and the picture changed, showing video recorded from the dashboard camera of a Mastiff. A woman on a motorbike approaching soldiers at speed. A shot in the shoulder and a puff of pink, indicating blood splattering from a wound. The bike went careening out of view.
“As you can see, the bullet would have incapacitated her,” LeTellier said. “At least, if not for the intervention for another fugitive, one Liberty Parish, thought to be the daughter of Blake Parish, the man currently being detained at the Project LUCIFER facility.”
“This is ridiculous,” Regent said. “How much are we spending on this gubbins? They’re out there causing all sorts of havoc. One of them even got away from the police in Manchester.”
“I’d watch your mouth if I were you.”
Sir Robert-Anthony Myers KBE QPM – Metropolitan Police Commissioner and acting in the role of the newly-created National Police Commissioner – was Britain’s most senior police officer.
He was a large man, larger even than Regent, wide, muscular under his black police uniform with gold aiguillette and gold-trimmed shoulder epaulettes, fat-necked and with a face like a joint of beef. He spoke in an accent that was clearly affected.
Regent seemed to shrink away from him like an adolescent cat in an alley accosted by a larger, fatter cat.
“I’ve got soldiers posted in every city and town all over the country and these people keep slipping from our fingers,” he grumbled. “Mortim— Prime Minister, surely you can see that this is frivolous?”
“I wouldn’t be so hasty,” LeTellier said, with a small, asymmetric smile.
The Cabinet suddenly became aware of a low thrumming noise that was emitting from the glass boxes.
“What—” Boateng said.
The boxes burst open, and the crystals transformed before their eyes into three juddering, vibrating figures that vaguely resembled parodies of men.
Mortimer grinned widely.
“My friends,” he said. “Meet the rubric homunculi.”
*
Callan sipped at a glass of red-hued bitter.
K-Os sipped at a glass of port. She peered over the glass at the man in red.
“You still haven’t told me why we’re here,” she said, reproachfully. “I receive a note this morning at the safehouse in Ealing Broadway: ‘Meet me at the Lucky Devil, Thornton Heath.’ It took me almost an hour to get here, manipulating ontology very conspicuously along the way, putting both you and me at great personal risk. So, this had better be important.”
Callan smiled, wiping some foam from the whiskers on his top lip. She didn’t like the way he smiled. There was something secretive about it, like he knew a secret she didn’t know. It was the smile of a little boy holding a spider cupped in his hands just before he throws it in a girl’s face.
“Am jus’ curious aboot ye,” he said. “Wanted tae ask ye a few questions. See, a dinnae even ken if a can trust ye at this stage. A ken a great deal of yer life stoory, aye, but a still don’t get yer motivations.”
“What do you mean, ‘motivations’?” K-Os said, indignant.
“Well, it seems tae me that ye’re quite familiar wae the vampires and their origins. A’ least, judgin’ by yer acoont a’things. But somethin’ aboot yer stoory’s just no’ addin’ up.”
“What are you talking about?”
Callan sipped at the beer.
“You were there,” he said, gravely serious, though his mouth still smiled. He shook his head. “You were there, and you could have stopped it, an’ ye didn’t. Noo, why is tha’, hen?”
“What are you implying?” K-Os asked.
“You’ve existed alongside vampires since their inception, aye? Then why didn’t ye destroy ‘em all? Why didn’t ye do summin’ about it? Why did ye stand by and let ‘em rise up again?”
K-Os slammed the glass down on the table, hard enough to cause a large crack to form in the glass.
“You don’t understand,” she said, jabbing her finger in his face. “I am not God. I am not the ruler of this world. I am not a police officer.” She held up the magazine laid out in front of her, now spoiled by droplets of red. “I am not your Superman, understand? All I represent is change. The constant flux of all that exists. My enemy is that which seeks to halt or limit change. I am the ouroboros, forever devouring myself, and when the last change that will ever occur has occurred, my work is done. It is not my responsibility to hunt and destroy the vampires.”
Callan laughed.
“Now a know why ye look twenty-wan,” he said. “Ye really are that stupit.”
K-Os sat, silently for a moment, then seized her glass by the stem, launching it at the wall in rage.
“You want to know the truth?” she said, her voice low and furious. “This universe was formed by the death of two previously: One in which Order existed as a prevailing and contesting force against Chaos, a second in which Chaos as a contesting force had been almost entirely eradicated. When that second universe died, its entire substructure was fractured. Order still exists, of course, otherwise there would be no reality, but it became distributed throughout psychic space and the root system…”
“The strings,” Callan surmised. “Aye? Ye’re towkin’ aboot the strings?”
“Not just the strings,” K-Os said. “At the beginning of this universe, penumbric was formed out of pure energy – literal scar tissue in the physical layer of reality, dispersed throughout time and space as a material that physically should not be able to exist. It is not made of atoms, Callan. It blinds microscopes, it defies sets of scales, research about it inevitably fails. You cannot measure it, nor its physical attributes. You shouldn’t even be able to observe it. Yet it exists. A paradox in the palm of your hand. It is the beginning and the end, the living and the dead, rolled into one.”
“So the strings…”
“Entanglements in psychic space intruding on physical space. The extrusion of chaotic energy into the cracks in the root system.”
“An’ rubric?” Callan said, scratching his chin. “Rubric’s…what, like a spin-off?”
“The enemy is different, now,” K-Os said. “The Blood Moon, the vampires, they’re not a cult of Order. They’re…”
“A cult of Chaos,” Callan said, shaking his head. “All-consumin’, all-devoorin’, Chaos.”
K-Os nodded her head, slowly.
“Christ,” Callan said. “An’ so tha’s why ye cannae destroy them, because—”
“We are two sides of the same coin,” K-Os said. “The vampires represent the destructive aspect of Chaos, the blight, the eternal ravening in its belly. Penumbric and the strings represent its creative aspect, new life, the formation of patterns and tessellations in the root system…”
“An’ you?” Callan asked.
“I am the middle way,” K-Os said. “I am Change. I am that which is created by that which is destroyed, and that which is destroyed by that which is created. That is why I have so many enemies. Because the Blood Moon wishes to usurp reality. To consume everything is to become everything. Meantime, the British government is trying to imprison me for interfering in their fragile order.”
Callan nodded, placing something on the table.
“Then there’s jus’ wan mair thing a have tae ask ye,” he said.
K-Os said nothing, but he asked anyway.
“Why did ma brother have to die?”
And it was then that she realised what he had placed on the table.
*
The syringe fills with red blood.
Blake does not audibly make a sound of discomfort, but his muscled arm tenses.
“Relax, relax, relax,” Bush whispers. “You’re cutting off the flow. It will take longer.”
Blake’s arm immediately softens. Bush finishes withdrawing the blood.
“All done,” she says. “I’ll be back at dinner time.”
“Wait,” Blake says. His voice is muffled behind the mask.
“Yes?”
“Why do you need my blood?”
“I send it off to a lab,” Bush says. “We want to make sure you’re still healthy.”
“I feel like a caged animal,” Blake protests.
“Well, it’s not up to me to let you go,” Bush says. There is a trace of guilt in her voice. She places a plaster on Blake’s forearm and carefully covers the skin with the sleeve of the flight suit.
“I will not work for your government,” Blake says.
“I know,” Bush says. “Like I say, it’s not up to me.”
“Isn’t it?”
And the red insect eyes stare at her again. Bush thinks for a moment that this would be what the eyes of God would be like, stern and yet emotionless. He really does look like an avenging angel. She tries to avert her gaze.
“You know how I got here, don’t you?” Blake asks.
“You were captured,” Bush replies. “Up in the Lake District. You were the loudest signals for miles. The two of you.”
“Don’t even think about putting her name in your mouth,” Blake says, forcefully. “You leave her alone.”
“It’s not up to me,” Bush says, feeling like a parrot.
“It’s always up to you, Doctor Bush.”
“Emily,” Bush says, softly.
“What?”
“You told me your name. I’m telling you mine. It’s Emily.”
There’s a silence. How did they not know each other’s names until now?
Bush sighs. “I’ve not read your file, Blake. That’s why I didn’t know your first name. I’m your carer, not a government official. All I know is that you were captured and then taken here.”
“Then you don’t know why I’m in this suit,” Blake says. “You don’t know why they call me Lucifer.”
Bush starts at this. There are rumours. No official information about the capture has left the Project Director’s office. It is at the highest level of secrecy the Government maintains. But there are rumours.
“Is it true?” she says. “About the wings?”
“They’re using technology from an old enemy,” Blake says. “It’s the only thing capable of stopping me.”
“Even if you could, there’s no way you’d leave here alive,” Bush says.
“Is that a sure bet, Emily Bush?”
She opens her mouth to respond.
“You finished?” a soldier calls from below.
Bush turns to him.
“Yes,” she says. “I’ve got the vials.”
“Good. Come down here and we’ll pass it on.”
Bush turns back to Blake.
“I’ll be back at dinner time,” she says, again.
“Actually, you won’t be,” the soldier says, below.
Bush wheels around.
“What?” she says. “On whose authority?”
“The Project Director’s,” the soldier says. He smiles nastily.
Bush sullenly turns to Blake.
“Sorry,” she says, pressing the button that lowers the cherrypicker.
She salutes the soldier and walks over to the blast door, away from the room.
Much to think about. Is the Project Director beginning to doubt her ability? Is she about to be removed from the project and replaced with another doctor? But there’s a more important line of thought, dancing in the centre of her mind like flames licking logs in a campfire.
He knows my name, she thinks. I told him my name.
*
The faceless red man-machines jittered and vibrated.
“What the hell are those things?” Boateng cried. “My God, they’re horrible.”
“They’re our secret weapon,” LeTellier said.
“I thought our goal was to stop these freaks from overrunning the country,” Regent said. “Mortimer, what’s your game here? Are you really sinking to their level?”
“No,” Mortimer said. “As I said, to stop these people, we have to think like these people. Conventional tactics weren’t doing it. We’re not sinking to their level, we’re anticipating their next moves and counteracting them.”
“They are under direct government control,” LeTellier said. “We ordered a trial strike with them in Manchester. Granted, we did not anticipate that they would be prevented from achieving their objectives, but we’re ironing out the kinks. Already we’ve used them to aid in the capture and incapacitation of several pre-anomalous individuals.”
“I don’t like this, Prime Minister,” Boateng said. “Where did they even come from?”
“Unfortunately, that is information is so top secret not even I, nor Bernie, know the answer,” Mortimer replied. “Only a few employees of the Civil Service, MI5, MI6 and Her Majesty have any idea how this technology was recovered and put to good use.”
Myers cleared his throat with a loud harrumph.
“While public security is my first priority, I do not appreciate the government going over the heads of the police.” He had a slight rhotacism that in no way diminished his ogre-like presence. “Our officers are more than capable of bringing these people in. If you look at the statistics—”
“With all due respect, Sir Robert, the statistics mean fuck-all,” Mortimer retorted. “What happened in Manchester embarrassed the government and the police alike. Several members of the public saw it. This war has spilled out into the streets and people are getting wise to what’s been going on. We must take drastic action against these people, and if that means using their own anomalous powers against them, then we will.”
“And the Armed Forces?” Regent said, outstretching his hand towards the chittering, crystalline androids. “You’re replacing them with these things?”
“No,” LeTellier said. “These machines can only be remotely controlled, and they run out of energy far faster than a man. They are useful only in situations where there is a significant risk to human life.”
Regent scowled, taking his seat. “I don’t like this at all. This sets a dangerous precedent.”
“I must agree with Regent,” Boateng said. “This puts us in a very unsafe position.”
Douglas Baird cleared his throat.
“Erm…if I may contribute?” he said.
Mortimer glanced at him, hatefully.
“These machines will enable us to cut costs,” Baird said, timidly. “By spending less resources on protection and weaponry for our forces, we can recover more quickly from the run on the pound that followed the Episode last year. What’s good for the economy is good for the country.”
Mortimer sniffed, then smiled.
“Thank you, Douglas,” he said, which was unnerving coming from him. He turned his attention to the others. “I rather think that settles it, don’t you?”
“Like hell it does,” Regent said. “Mortimer, this is playing dangerously into the Rollerskater’s hands. What we need is to immediately start a recruitment drive for SAID-MI5. We can start headhunting for the best among our armed forces, right away.”
“And have another Carlson incident?” Mortimer snapped. “I think not. No, I think it’s time we took a more dynamic approach. The deployment of these homunculi firstly, but for our more pernicious friends – the ones in the Rollerskater’s inner circle, who continue to elude us…there is one more course of action we can take.”
LeTellier’s hand shot up to her mouth.
“Prime Minister, surely you’re not suggesting—”
“I am,” Mortimer said.
“I’m sorry,” John Reed said. “What are we talking about?”
“They’re not ready,” LeTellier said. “You cannot begin deploying them now.”
“They’ll learn on the job,” Mortimer replied. “Do we have any other choice?”
“But what are they?” Boateng asked.
LeTellier paused. “Their official designation is the Central Anomalous Volunteer Reserve – Cavers, for short…”
Mortimer smiled. “But informally, we call them a different name. Freaks on leashes. My honourable friends, we have a new kind of soldier, steadfastly loyal to our government and our monarch. An army of freaks with powers beyond our imagining, who swear no allegiance to the Rollerskater. The enemies of our nation may be able to evade our bullets, but can they evade others of their own kind?”
Boateng was stunned.
“You mean to say the captures carried out by the Police and SAID-MI5—”
“Enforced conscription,” Mortimer said, succinctly. “Did you think they were simply shipping them off to prisons and mental homes, Afua? What a waste that would be. We’re fighting an enemy unlike any ever faced before. It would be foolish not to take advantage of the resources at our disposal.”
“My God,” Regent said, banging his fist against the table. “He’s gone mad!”
Mortimer looked across the table at him and paused for a few moments.
“No,” Mortimer said. “Pragmatism in the face of an insane world is not madness. It’s the closest thing to sanity that we have left.”
Regent’s face contorted and his cheeks reddened.
“I cannot sanction this any longer,” Regent said. “Mortimer, effective immediately, I resign. Find someone else to be a lackey to this absurdity.”
Mortimer appeared to withdraw into himself for a few moments.
“It’s Prime Minister,” he said, darkly.
Regent looked at him, then at the others, straightened his lapels, and walked out, slamming the door behind him.
“I’m afraid I must agree with Regent,” Boateng said. “Mortimer, this compromises national security.”
“I think we’ll be the judge of that, Home Secretary,” LeTellier said. “I personally agree with the Prime Minister’s assessment of the situation. We have to fight freaks with freaks.”
“I’m with the Home Secretary,” Myers said. “We must approach with caution.”
Mortimer cleared his throat, then clicked his fingers.
Immediately, the chittering crystal men turned back into little red crystals.
“We’ll put a stop to this madness,” he said. “Trust me.”
*
The red and black umbrella lay on the table.
K-Os looked at Callan, then down at it, and went to grab it, but he somehow managed to pre-empt her. In his hand, it transformed into a long, heavy sword of red crystal, which he held two-handed in front of him.
On instinct she held out her right hand and produced a golden sword from her arm, which she clutched defensively.
“He wis fifteen,” Callan said. “An’ a wis twelve.”
“I’m sorry,” K-Os said. “It was not my intention—”
“You browt this world intae bein’,” Callan said.
“But not the scars,” K-Os said. “The scars were not of my making.”
“Some of ‘em musta been hidin’ up in Perth and Kinross,” Callan said. “They took up livin’ there because you didnae deal with ‘em. Not you, nor the so-called ‘Great Ur’. Ye simply sent ‘em intae hidin’. Ye didn’t…ye didn’t tear the heart oot and deconstruct ‘em, ye decapitated ‘em and let the bodies crawl away.”
“And unravel the root system?” K-Os said. “The scars are beyond my power to heal. I don’t have moral culpability for what happened to your brother—”
“He was FIFTEEN!” Callan roared. His eyes were watering with grief and rage. “He died alone. He died screamin’. A couldnae even say goodbye. He was – Christ, he was a child, you selfish bitch!”
“You are all children to me,” K-Os said. “Damn it, Callan. I am not omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent.” She pointed to herself. “This here, that you see, is all that is present here. It is not my job to police reality, to go from place to place adjusting this and that and making it just so. I created this world only in the sense that this world created me. I am not God!”
“A dinnae believe in God,” Callan said, pointing the tip of the blade at K-Os. “I realised long ago tha’ there’s no benevolent maker tha’s lookin’ oot fer us. A dinnae expect ye tae be God, hen. But a dae expect ye tae at least care for us. Tae hear oor children’s cries. Tae be responsible.”
“You judge me by your finite perspective,” K-Os replied, pointing the tip of the blade at him. “I am not your enemy, Callan. The vampires represent my worst aspect. But I cannot purge them from this world without purging myself. I am trying to work out how to decouple my existence from theirs. But increasingly I worry it cannot be done.”
“Then dae the right thing,” Callan said, bitterly. “Kill yerself.”
“I have died before,” K-Os said. “It didn’t stick.”
“A dinnae care,” Callan said. “You shouldn’t exist. Ma brother would still exist if you didn’t.”
“You would not exist without me,” K-Os said. “Life is chaos.”
“Then I’ll kill you,” Callan said. “An’ finish the job.”
“Put the sword down,” K-Os said. Her eyes flickered to the sword. “I don’t want to use this, Callan.”
Wordlessly, Callan raised the sword.
There were several very long seconds as he swung it towards K-Os. Rubric was one of the very few materials that could cut her and do damage.
“THAT’S ENOUGH!”
The two ceased their fight and turned. Paddy, the barman, stood atop the stairs, his face red with rage.
“This pub is neutral territory,” he said, quietly. “No fightin’ in here.”
K-Os relinquished her sword, allowing it to disappear back into her body.
“I’m sorry, Paddy,” she said. “We were just finishing here.”
Callan looked at her. The sword in his hand transformed back into an umbrella.
“I’m sorry about your brother,” K-Os said, quietly. “I am doing everything in my power to make it right. But this is not the way, Callan.”
“Then wha’ is?” Callan asked. He slumped into a chair, defeated. “Nothin’ a dae will ever bring Euan back. Ave killed hundreds of these bastarts and they jus’ don’t die.” He looked up at her. “An’ it’s aw doon tae you.”
“Then perhaps the solution is not this,” K-Os said. “Perhaps the solution is something else.”
Callan looked at her, then at Paddy.
“Am leavin’,” he said. “Enjoy the comic, hen.”
And the man in red left, taking his umbrella with him.
*
She finds the red folder in a locked cupboard.
It’s not hard to break in. A hairpin is all it takes to crack the padlock. The real danger is time and getting caught, by the Director or his footsoldiers. Not long ago she felt allegiance to them. Not now.
The cupboard is metal with matt grey paint and sticker residue, and the door is open. She peers past it at the windows, clutching the red folder to her breast. Occasionally she will hear footsteps or a door slam and start, then realise nobody is coming.
She learns all about her patient in a few minutes.
She learns that he lived in the forests around the Lake District, giving off chaotic energy readings strong enough to be detectable from space.
She learns the name of his daughter, Liberty Parish, who is currently being hunted by MI5.
She learns that, combined, MI5 considers them and their associates to present the greatest domestic threat to national security since the IRA.
She learns that he was able to evade capture until he was sealed into an experimental ‘rubric-lined suit’ (and finds little documentation to explain what ‘rubric’ is).
She learns the exact parameters and protocols for containing him.
She learns, above all else, that they fear him, and they lock him away like an animal because they fear what he will do if he escapes.
She learns who Blake Parish is, what he is capable of, and why they want him to join them or die.
A door opens at the end of the corridor. She practically throws the red folder into the cupboard and closes the cupboard door, then dives under a desk, holding her breath.
Footsteps. Footsteps. Footsteps. Stop.
“Hello? Anyone here?”
Don’t breathe. Not even for a second. Don’t breathe.
It all goes dark. For a moment she thinks she’s been shot, but then she realises the light has been switched off.
Footsteps. Footsteps. Footsteps.
She crawls out from under the desk, straightens her coat. She carries her heeled shoes in her hands and tiptoes barefoot out of the room, for fear of creating noise. Then, closing the door behind her, she hurries down the corridor.
The door opens, and through it steps the Project Director. Even barefoot, she is taller than him.
“Doctor Bush,” he says. “What are you doing up so late? You should be in the dormitories.”
“Yes, sir,” she says. “I was just…catching up on some paperwork.”
He looks down at the shoes in her hands and squints.
“Going somewhere, Doctor Bush?”
“To bed, sir. As you said. I’ve been on my feet all day. They’re sore.”
The Project Director purses his lips.
“Yes. Quite. Well, away you go, Doctor.”
She nods and continues walking. Suddenly, he grabs her by the arm.
“I’d be careful, if I were you, Emily Bush,” he hisses. “I think you’d do best to avoid getting ideas above your rank. Just a little word to the wise.”
Bush swallows.
“Yes, sir,” she says, and walks away. His eyes follow after her and even as she turns the corner, she feels the hard gaze digging in the small of her back, like prongs on a taser.
*
The red line ran all the way down the platform.
Below it were the words “OXFORD CIRCUS”.
“How did it go?” Harri-Bec asked.
K-Os looked at her, then up at the ceiling.
“Not well,” she said. “He blames me for something that…happened to him.”
Harri-Bec frowned sympathetically.
“Callan’s nothing if not enigmatic,” she said. “He reminds me of you in some ways.”
K-Os shot her a glance.
“Learned anything new?” she asked.
“Not much,” Harri-Bec said. “I think they’re getting smarter, K-Os. They’re closing in.”
K-Os nodded. “I’m worried, Harri.”
“You? Worried? That’s unlike you.”
“We could lose this war.”
Harri bit her lip.
“Don’t talk like that,” she said.
“We’re fighting entropy,” K-Os said. “This enemy is so different to all others I’ve faced until now. Don’t you see, Harri? The enemy isn’t Umbric, not any more. The enemy is…myself.”
A train rolled into the station and stopped.
“This is my train,” K-Os said. “I’d better get going.”
“Right,” Harri-Bec said. “There’s a safehouse available in Stratford.”
“Thank you,” K-Os replied. “Speak soon.”
She approached the train just as the door alarms sounded, crouching her tall frame under the low ceiling, and entered the preternaturally empty carriage.
The red doors slammed shut, and Harri-Bec watched from the platform as the train slid away.
In her hand K-Os clutched the comic book, its front page warped and stained from liquid damage. She frowned at it. She began to understand why these fleeting animals looked up to Superman.
Because Superman has answers. Superman is not afraid. Superman does what other men can’t do. Superman saves the world.
She drew up one of her legs on to the seat and clutched it close, running her fingers idly along the wheels that were extensions of her body, the wheels that made her who she was. She had existed in this form for so long. But for how much longer?
She heard the roar of wheels on the rails beneath her, the clattering of carriages through echoing tunnels.
For the first time in a long time, K-Os felt afraid.
Another time, another place…
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ARC FOUR: BLOOD MOON
I | II | III | SSI | IV | V | SSII | SSIII | VI | VII | SSIV
VIII | IX | X | XI | XII | SSV | XIII | SSVI | XIV | SSVII | XV | SSVIII | XVI | XVII