Rollerskater: Revelations
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 scenes of graphic violence.
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The satphone rang insistently.
The Captain looked up from a dossier, and with his cane moved over to it, answering it.
“Captain of SAID-MI5?” said a voice on the other end.
“Speaking,” he replied. “What’s the matter?”
“Armed Forces Liaison, sir. We’ve just had word from the Project Director at Project LUCIFER.”
The Captain seated himself. He was already patting his pocket.
“Yes?” he said.
“The subject has escaped, sir. The Project has effectively ceased to exist, sir.”
He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his inhaler, which he shook.
“Were the correct protocols observed?”
“Yes, sir. Three Typhoons were scrambled to intercept, and all three were taken down.”
The Captain placed the inhaler in his mouth and pressed down, breathing the vapour.
“I see. Have their families been informed?”
A long pause.
“Sir, I must tell you…there were no casualties.”
The Captain was silent for a few moments.
“Please could you repeat that?”
“There were no casualties, sir. The planes didn’t even suffer lasting damage. All recovered. There weren’t many witnesses. We’ve managed to prevent word getting out.”
The Captain slid the inhaler back into his pocket.
“Understood,” he said. “Instruct LeTellier to increase the Threat Level from SEVERE to CRITICAL at once.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Captain paused in thought. Did he dare do this? Go over Bernardette LeTellier’s head? Go over the Prime Minister’s head?
He thought again of himself, injured in a field.
A red-haired woman in colourful clothing, pointing something at his face.
He had no other choice.
“The Ministry of Defence is to put Operation Harmony into effect immediately. Tell Myers to relegate all police to support roles. Call up the Army Reserve and have them all deployed inside six hours. Do you understand?”
A pause.
“And the Prime Minister, sir?”
“He understands the implications of Harmony,” the Captain said. “One last thing.”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Have all Vanguard-class submarines on standby.”
The soldier on the other end paused for a long time. The Captain wasn’t sure if it was from fear or because he was making notes.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “God save the Queen.”
“God save the Queen,” the Captain replied.
The call ended, and the Captain stared at the phone for many minutes. He set it down, steepled his fingers, and sat, stony-faced.
Then he rose, taking his cane with him.
It’s Hell, sir, came a whisper inside the Captain’s head.
*
The trilling of a telephone broke the silence in the Cabinet briefing room.
Mortimer looked at K-Os. She was a medical marvel, standing there, watching him, never faltering. He wondered if she even needed to blink.
Before she could say anything, his hand went for the phone and he pulled the receiver to his ear.
“Prime Minister speaking,” he said.
“Good afternoon, Prime Minister,” said Bernadette LeTellier. “I’ve just been debriefed as to a situation that unfolded this morning. Project LUCIFER is no more.”
Mortimer raised his eyebrows, took a few seconds to digest this.
“I beg your pardon?”
K-Os glared at him. He turned away from her gaze.
“The subject – the prisoner – escaped shortly after 0900 hours this morning. You will be aware, of course, that this was when we had intended to euthanise him.”
“He’s fucked off?” Mortimer said. “Well, then, where is he, now? The Moon? Shoot him out of the sky!”
“The RAF scrambled jets to take care of him. He disabled them all.”
“Jesus wept.”
“That’s not all,” LeTellier said, in her stern, reserved tone. “Upon coming into this knowledge, the Captain of SAID-MI5 has put Operation Harmony into effect, going over my head, and, I presume, yours. As of right now, there exists a dual power structure. The Captain has granted himself extensive emergency powers. He’s answerable only to the Queen, now. You’ve been relegated, in effect, to an advisory role.”
Mortimer trembled. His fist tightened so hard around the phone receiver that it began to creak and squeal. It seemed genuinely close to breaking in two.
“What the fuck is he playing at?” Mortimer growled.
“I believe he is trying to prevent a descent into anarchy, Prime Minister. The man who has just escaped is incredibly dangerous. On the Captain’s orders, we have increased the Threat Level to CRITICAL. The MoD is currently deploying soldiers on the streets of major city centres up and down the country, and jets have been sortied to patrol British airspace. A naval blockade is also in place around the coast. The Taoiseach has been informed, but already we’re facing questions from the Irish Republic, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the European Union—”
“He’s gone bloody mad,” Mortimer said. “He’s a nutcase.”
LeTellier paused.
“From where I’m standing, Prime Minister, he may be the sanest man in the country.”
Mortimer slammed a fist against the wall.
“You listen to me, you snivelling cow,” Mortimer said. “You just keep an eye on him. That bastard isn’t in charge, I am. I’ll have him bloody hanged if he tries to usurp my authority. You understand me?”
“Loud and clear, Prime Minister. Oh, and one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“We know she’s in there with you.”
There was a click, then the long drone of a dial tone.
Mortimer looked at the receiver and hung it up, then at K-Os.
“Well?” she said. “What’s going on out there?”
Mortimer scowled, then, bellowing in rage, threw a chair across the room. K-Os watched impassively.
“Prime Minister,” Afua Boateng said. “What on Earth is the matter with you?”
Mortimer stopped, then sat down in a leather chair.
“It’s the end,” he said, softly. “The day we’ve been awaiting has finally arrived.”
He turned his gaze to savagely meet that of K-Os’s sullen sneer.
“Twilight of the freaks.”
*
Harri-Bec seemed far away, staring off into space. She hadn’t spoken in two or three hours. She knew that Callan Crucefix was a dead man. It was as if she kept trying to find the words, felt an urge to eulogise him, but some part of her refused to admit it. She simply looked out over Trafalgar Square, clutching to the railings by the entrance to the Tube station, like if she let go, she would lose all hold on the world and disappear.
A crowd of people had started to assemble in Trafalgar Square. Socks hadn’t quite noticed it at first, but the crowd had swelled from a small group of maybe two dozens, to a boiling mass of almost fifty, then one hundred.
“What is going on over there?” Socks asked, if only to fill the silence.
“I don’t know,” Harri-Bec said, numbly. “London is still telling me that something is coming. I wish it wouldn’t be so vague.”
Monica Eno was crouched next to them. A group of two or three pigeons had perched atop her head, shoulders, and arms. She seemed fascinated by them, whispering to them and to herself in the way young children do, narrating the thing that had her preoccupied. She moved her arms gently as to avoid startling them.
Socks turned his gaze to the square once more. The fourth plinth had formerly been used for public art installations. However, since the beginning of Episode curfew restrictions, it had been left officially empty, to discourage congregation. But now people seemed to teem around the empty plinth.
Overhead came the swoosh of a military jet, and so loud it was that Socks felt cause to duck, as if the wings might take his head off.
“Jesus,” Socks said, looking to Harri-Bec, whose eyes had gone wide with shock.
Socks followed her line of sight to see what was happening.
Soldiers were marching in to Charing Cross, up Whitehall, the Strand, and the Mall. A surprise pincer movement seemed to be underway. They wore dark uniforms, and their faces were covered by masks and helmets.
Immediately the soldiers set about creating roadblocks. They were followed by riot police, carrying truncheons and shields. Clearly, they had been alerted to the congregation on the square. Socks turned to Harri.
“Come on,” he said. “If those soldiers spot us, we’re done for.”
Harri-Bec hesitated a few moments.
“Alright,” she said. “We’re getting back on the Tube.”
“No,” Socks said. “We’re heading that way.”
He pointed to the square.
Harri-Bec blinked and shook her head.
“Are you insane?”
“Yes,” Socks said. “I have been since Christmas before last. Come on.”
He darted across the road, with Harri-Bec and Monica Eno following him. The soldiers and police were coming in thick and fast, now, but he slipped past them, hurrying to the crowd and getting himself lost among the mass of people, who must now have been numbering more than two hundred.
All gazes were turned to the fourth plinth.
“Sorry, excuse me,” Socks said, jostling his way through the crowd, until he found himself sufficiently covered. He turned and saw Harri-Bec and Monica, a few layers of people away from him. Harri-Bec made a face at him, a face of puzzlement and irritation.
“Hey,” Socks said, to a person standing next to him. “What’s going on here?”
“We were told to come here,” the person, a young man dressed in woolen clothing, replied. “So we’ve come.”
“But what are we waiting for?”
The young man smiled serenely.
“The Second Coming,” he said.
Socks was about to ask what that meant, when his question was answered.
Up on the plinth, a light began to manifest, golden and shimmering. It took a few moments for Socks’s eyes to adjust, but it quickly became apparent what he was seeing.
A thousand strings, dangling around the square, affixed to unseen points, intersecting, interweaving, connecting.
There was the sound of singing, a low-level hum that seemed to move through the crowd like waves emanating out of the plinth.
He didn’t like this.
The soldiers had moved in close now, around the crowd. Socks turned to see them, faceless and masked, the police waiting behind them. All of them were carrying Armalites, none of their uniforms had insignia. This was black ops, had to be. This was MI5. The Captain.
When things kicked off in the next few moments, a lot of people were going to die.
Christ, Socks thought. I miss my Mum.
The singing grew louder, and the hum more intense, until everyone present could feel it vibrating their bones, shaking their organs. Almost the entire crowd, excepting Socks, raised their arms in exaltation towards the plinth, and the gold-glowing strings rearranged themselves, criss-crossing into a focal point that burned bright like a burning ribbon of magnesium.
And on the plinth, a shape began to come into focus.
Socks’ mouth fell open in astonishment.
Hazy at first, the shape became more and more defined. A skeletal pair of legs, muscles, a digestive system, a nervous system, skin, hair.
Nothing at all, then all at once.
There on the plinth stood Naomi Carter, back from the realm of ghosts.
A hush fell over the square as Naomi examined her arms and legs, feeling her face, running her hands through her long hair.
Her eyes drifted over the assembled crowd, and she smiled in a way that Socks found deeply disconcerting.
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre,” she said, in a strange, sing-song voice.
“The falcon cannot hear the falconer,” came a reply from the crowd.
Naomi laughed, but tears dripped down her cheeks.
“Things fall apart,” she said, choking on her own words. “The centre cannot hold…”
“Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,” the crowd said in response.
Was she hypnotising them, Socks wondered? Had she discovered some latent ability?
No. This wasn’t hypnosis. These people had assembled here for a reason.
Naomi Carter had brought them here. To bring herself back into the world.
Socks remembered Dolly telling him, on the long walk to Swindon, that she had been visited by Naomi Carter in her dreams.
The pieces were fitting together.
He really didn’t like this.
“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,” Naomi continued. She was now openly weeping, falling to her knees as she spoke. “And everywhere…”
“The ceremony of innocence is drowned,” the crowd said.
“The best lack all conviction,” Naomi said, and now her face crumpled hatefully. She looked in the direction of Whitehall. “While the worst…”
“Are full of passionate intensity!” the crowd roared.
A dreadful silence fell. Naomi brushed the hair from her eyes, standing once again.
“Do it,” she said, and leapt from the plinth.
A surge of people rushed forth to catch her, and in the same moment, Socks turned, ostensibly in the direction of Harri-Bec and Monica, but actually towards the soldiers. He had been expecting them to shoot into the melee.
To his shock, the soldiers turned, facing the riot police behind them.
It was only then that Socks connected the dots.
No identifying patches.
They weren’t with the Army.
With a crackle of gunfire, mere anarchy was loosed upon the world.
*
The phone rang once again, and Mortimer dived for it.
“Prime Minister speaking.”
His face fell.
“What?!”
K-Os raised an eyebrow. She had really expected him to be more calculating than this. Her impression of him was that he was a bumbling fool, someone who had failed upwards, rather than a serious threat.
Still, she kept her distance. He was still a force to be reckoned with.
“Fuck me,” Mortimer said. “Well, are you securing the perimeter? Right. Very well, then. And what about Her Majesty—? Good. I should bloody well hope so. Christ. Yes, I shall inform the Cabinet. Goodbye.”
“Who was that?” Afua Boateng asked.
“LeTellier again,” he said. “In the last few minutes, there’s been a shooting on Trafalgar Square. Paramilitary, with guns. Many casualties reported, many of them police.”
The ministers gasped and murmured. K-Os remained silent.
“Jesus Christ,” said a large, thick-necked man that K-Os identified as Robert-Anthony Myers. He turned to K-Os, veins in his neck bulging, and pointed a sausage-like finger at her. “And we’re sitting here letting this thing order us around?”
K-Os looked from his finger to his face. It wasn’t often that she got to meet someone taller than her.
“I have nothing to do with this,” she said.
“Don’t bloody lie to me, you little cow,” Myers rumbled. “I know what you do. You think police don’t have intelligence on you dating back decades? You’re an agent of the Devil.”
“That’s rich,” K-Os scoffed. She turned her attention to Mortimer. “Would you like me to tell them, or shall I?”
Mortimer scowled.
“I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re on about,” he said. “Oh, you think I’m the Devil. Why? Because I love my country? Because I believe that people who haven’t earned a living should not be handed it on a silver platter? Why, have you considered a career writing for the Mirror? I’m sure they’d be happy to have you.”
“Enough!”
Even K-Os was startled.
Afua Boateng had risen from her seat, and her face was set.
“I’m tired of this, Mortimer,” she said, slowly. “All this talk of loving your country. Of a better Britain. Yet in the same breath, you talk of doing away with people. Mortimer, you are not a Conservative, you are…”
“Afua, don’t.”
“You are a fascist,” Afua said, ferociously. “And proud of it! I am a black Conservative, Mortimer. Do you have any idea what I’ve been through? My parents left Ghana in the 60s. The whole life they knew, friends and family left behind, all for a fresh start in a strange country.”
Her face creased bitterly.
“And I have worked hard to get here. You have no idea what I’ve endured to be standing in this room with you. The barbs of white aristocrats like yourself, asking ‘What is she doing here?’ Don’t talk to me about loving this country, you slime. I had to study day and night to pass my O-Levels. I barely made it to Oxford. You want to talk about an unearned living? Look in a mirror!”
She was physically trembling, as if years of anger had come foaming up to the surface.
“Everything you are, everything you have, it was all handed to you, Barnabas Mortimer, and I am not going to stand here and watch you declare yourself a petty tyrant!”
Silence fell across the room. A chair squeaked, and all turned their attention to it. There sat a man with neat blond hair, looking timid and molish.
K-Os identified him as Douglas Baird, Chancellor of the Exchequer.
“S-sorry,” he said, quietly.
Mortimer stood in shock for a few moments, then his expression hardened.
“It’s her,” he said, looking at K-Os. “She is here to sow discord. Don’t you see? Her name is K-Os, for Christ’s sake! She’s here to turn us against each other. To make us weak. Make us vulnerable. She’s the enemy, here, not me!”
The ministers looked at each other, then at K-Os, who looked back at them dispassionately.
“I have nothing to do with this,” she said. “It’s all you, Mortimer. It always has been.”
Mortimer wheeled on her.
“You bitch—!”
He went to raise a hand against her, and she caught it.
“Your number is up,” she said, darkly.
She turned, casting an eye over the other ministers.
“Time to come clean.”
*
There was a flash.
A bullet smacked into a sandstone plinth, throwing up dust and debris. Socks’s side still hurt with phantom pain from the bullet he had distinctly felt pierce his ribcage.
He ran towards Harri-Bec and Monica. All around him noise, shouting, footsteps, the occasional clatter of gunfire. The air was thick with choking gas, which he guessed had been fired by the riot cops.
“Are you alright?” he shouted over the noise, covering his mouth with his shirt.
“Yes,” said Harri, though she looked terrified. “We should get out of here.”
Monica stood up doggedly straight. She seemed remarkably unruffled.
“I’ll keep us safe,” she said. “It’s what I was built for.”
“Don’t go doing anything stupid,” Socks said.
“I won’t do anything you wouldn’t do,” Monica replied.
Just then, two men holding guns came towards them. They looked oddly familiar under their masks. Socks found it hard to place them, until they flipped the faceplates up.
“Well, well,” said Ollie. “Fancy meeting you here, eh?”
“Come on,” Lewis said. “We don’t have time for this. This way, we’ll cover you.”
They started running northwards, Charing Cross Road, towards Leicester Square, Harri said.
A police blockade had been set up around the Hippodrome, so Ollie and Lewis led them eastwards, along Cranbourn Street, then north towards Seven Dials.
They ducked into a back-alley called Tower Court.
Around them, they could hear distant, echoing shouts, breaking glass, gunfire…
“Jesus wept,” Ollie breathed, checking his gun for ammunition. “Hoo-wee. Whole city’s at war.”
“D’you fancy explaining what the fuck is going on?” Socks asked.
“Ooh! Am I mistaken, or does it sound like someone’s got a little bit more confident since last we spoke?” Ollie said.
“Yeah, living in the fucking forest for the better part of five months will do that to you,” Socks said. “Tell me what the hell we just ran away from, or you are not gonna like what happens in the next ten seconds.”
“I second that,” Harri-Bec said. She looked like she meant it.
Ollie looked at the both of them. He sighed.
“Naomi Carter went missing back in October,” he said. “But she found ways of contacting people.”
“How?” Socks said, before answering his own question. “The strings.”
“Something like that,” Lewis said. “Someone’s been helping her coordinate things. She’s been patient, biding her time. Moving money about, getting people kitted up. Waiting for the perfect moment.”
Socks shook his head in bewilderment.
“But why Trafalgar Square?”
“Massive psychic crossroads,” Ollie said.
“So why the guns?” Socks said.
Ollie wiped sweat from his brow.
“She also wants revenge.”
“Revenge?” Harri-Bec said.
“On the British government,” Lewis said. “She’s been alone for the better part of six months. Rumour has it that it’s driven her half-mad. Only thing that kept her going was her need to get revenge on the people who put her in that position. So she positioned people, convinced the cops they were government forces, then hit them with a surprise attack.”
“The use of Yeats was pretty inspired,” Ollie said. “I heard she’s an English Literature student. Was. Is? I don’t know, at this point.”
Socks bowed his head.
“It’s my fault,” he said. “I got her into this.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Ollie said, bitterly. “You have a talent for fucking things up, Oxford.”
“Fuck off,” Socks replied.
“Tell that to Jules,” Ollie replied, bitterly. “What’s the plan from here?”
“We keep going north,” Harri-Bec said. “Head through Seven Dials, then northeast up Shaftesbury Avenue. Turn left the end of the road and head for Oxford Street. If I can get us into the Tube network, we’ll be safer. Come on, let’s go.”
Ollie nodded, putting his faceplate back down.
“Godspeed,” he said.
Without another word, he disappeared with Lewis in tow.
Socks watched him go. Around them, sounds of fighting continued. A helicopter surged overhead, heading in a southwesterly direction. He flattened himself against the wall, as did Harri and Monica, and then the threat passed.
What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouched towards London to be born?
*
Naomi ran, barefoot, to the van.
It was a Ford Transit, parked just beside Nelson’s Column. It looked like any other workman’s vehicle. That had been the idea. She hurried over, wrenched open the doors and jumped into the back. It was only as she sat down that she remembered the number of bodies she’d seen littering the square.
There had been a young man in a police uniform, his eyes wide. He had been making a sound like “Hell, hell, hell,” which she had at first taken for an assessment of the situation, but she now understood to have been “Help, help, help.”
And then there was the young woman. She was already dead, and there was a hole in her head. She was laying on the ground, her eyes open and looking up at the sky. Her mouth had been open.
Images kept coming back to her, of the dead and dying. She had wanted revenge, but to see it was something else. Men curled in foetal position or splayed out. The fountains dyed crimson with dead blood. All around her, the sound of trickling, which she only understood now to be bodies, pumping out what remained of their life.
All that had been of her making.
“Everything alright, Naomi?” said the driver, a kind-looking man to whom she had spoken in his dreams some months ago.
She looked at him, and her eyes must have been like discs, because he seemed to flinch from her.
“Yes,” she said. “Please, just take me away from here.”
“Righto,” the driver said. “There’s a gun in the floor, if you need it.”
She nodded, and the engine started up.
As the van pulled away, she tried to think of the good things, of seeing her mother and father again, of seeing Hugh again, maybe.
But she had this strange feeling, a buzz in her brain that sounded almost like laughter.
She said nothing more, and around her, the country fell apart.
*
“BBC News, and if you’re just joining us – within the last hour there has been a violent incident on Trafalgar Square. Witnesses who were at the scene have described to us a sudden exchange of gunfire between uniformed soldiers and members of the Metropolitan Police Territorial Support Group. We do not yet know the number of casualties. Authorities have set up a cordon around the area, preventing our reporters from getting near the scene.
“At present, members of the public are being asked to stay in their homes or workplaces. Lockdown measures are in place across the capital to prevent further injury. Additionally, city centres across Britain are implementing security measures of their own. We are already receiving reports of violence in Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, and Glasgow—”
The screen went black. Then:
BBC News
We apologise for the interruption
All programming is currently suspended
until further notice
PLEASE REMAIN CALM
*
Mortimer wrenched his hand out of K-Os’s grip and rubbed his wrist. He glared at her.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I am the Prime Minister. That is my part to play, and I play it well.”
“But you did not earn your position,” K-Os said. “You inherited it. From Gabriel Seymer. A man who, in otherwise good health, slipped and broke his neck in a bathroom in this very building.”
“Yes,” Mortimer said. “A tragedy. What are you implying, K-Os?”
“I know what you did,” K-Os said.
Mortimer furrowed his brow.
“You mean to say I murdered Gabriel Seymer?” he said. “Or had him murdered?”
“You seemed very happy when he died,” Boateng said.
“Stay out of this,” Mortimer said. “Yes, it’s true. I hated Seymer. Hated him to my very bones. I was overjoyed when he died. I freely admit that. But do you really think I would go so far as to have him killed? Do you have any idea – any at all – what that would do to my political reputation?”
“But I don’t think you care about politics,” K-Os said, warily. “Because your end goal isn’t to be Prime Minister. It’s to become the leader of a new Empire. One founded on blood and destruction.”
“What in God’s name are you talking about?” Mortimer barked, turning to the others. “Jesus Christ, she’s insane.”
“You are not human,” K-Os said, pointing a finger at him. “Admit it, Mortimer – you’re a vampire!”
Mortimer looked at her, bemused. He blinked twice.
“I beg your pardon?”
K-Os faltered.
She had a horrible realisation in that moment. For Barnabas Mortimer, coward, fascist, bully, and usurper, was doing something that he would otherwise never do.
Barnabas Mortimer was telling the truth.
There was a creak on the other side of the room, and all eyes turned in its direction.
The sound of hands, clapping, very slowly.
“I must give you credit where it’s due,” said the man who clapped, now standing. His demeanour was confident, his stance rigid. “You’re very clever.”
He stepped closer, but K-Os did not need to see him up close to know who it was.
“Unfortunately,” Douglas Baird said, removing his glasses. “Not quite clever enough.”
Mortimer scowled, turning towards Baird.
“What the hell is this?” he said. “Baird, you bloody fool, what are you doing?”
Baird smiled at him.
“Mortimer…” K-Os said, her voice almost trembling. “Get behind me.”
“Fuck yourself,” Mortimer replied. “Baird, do you know something? I despise you. You are a worm. Yes, I admit it – I tried to kill you, back when the Arsonist was on the prowl. Because I think you deserve it.”
Baird’s expression did not change. Mortimer continued.
“Deep down, I think you also think you deserve it. You are a coward, Baird, unfit for the world of politics. I have no idea how you made it this far. The only reason I’ve kept you on for so long is that I like to see you squirm.”
“Mortimer, do as she says,” Boateng said, having observed K-Os’s break in her usual stoicism, and disturbed by it.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Mortimer said, jabbing a finger at her. “I am the Prime Minister.”
He turned back to Baird, closing his eyes in defiance.
“Baird, you snivelling little parasite, do me a favour and get—”
Mortimer made a sound like a balloon deflating rapidly.
For a moment, he didn’t comprehend what had happened, but then he looked down, and confirmed it.
Douglas Baird – timid, whimpering Douglas Baird – had plunged a hand into Mortimer’s breast, and gripped his heart.
“Ah…ah,” Mortimer uttered, quietly.
Then he began screaming.
“All this time I spent, letting you push me around,” Baird said, over Mortimer’s shrieking. “And all the while, you never knew that I was the one pulling the strings.”
He grinned, and in his mouth appeared a set of red, crystal fangs.
“Do you know, Barnabas? I’ve been enjoying it, watching you desperately scramble for power. I snapped Gabriel’s neck in the bathroom here. I did it with my own two hands. I did it just for you, Barnabas. Just so you could get a taste of the power you’ve been yearning for your whole life, before I finally snatched it away from you.”
As he said the word “snatched”, Baird tugged on something in Mortimer’s chest, causing Mortimer to scream again.
“The problem is, you’re just another weak, mortal human. A fragile sack of guts, possessing no ambition beyond eighty years or so. Look at it this way. At least you won’t have to grow old and die, hated and alone, like poor old Maggie. You get to die young. Oh, and you are going to die, Mortimer. In case that wasn’t clear.”
“N…n…” Mortimer uttered. There were tears in his eyes.
“Stop this,” K-Os said, in vain.
Baird turned to her, keeping his hand inside Mortimer’s torso.
“Ah, the Rollerskater,” he said. “I had almost forgotten you were here. You had the right idea, coming here, but I see now that you misapprehended which one of us was a servant of Great Geb. Still, even if you had known, it’s not like you could have stopped what has already been set in motion. This phase of our plan is almost complete. You see, SAID-MI5, the Army and Police are currently distracted by a spontaneous outbreak of rioting in every major city centre across the country, instigated by one of your former charges, as I understand it. A certain…Naomi Carter?”
K-Os’s eyes went wide.
“Naomi…” she said, covering her mouth.
“Oh, yes,” Baird said. “Who do you think has been aiding that stupid girl through the strings, this whole time? The Fairy Godmother?”
He laughed horribly.
“We have waited long, gained mastery of the strings. And now the time has come to take back what is ours. To recreate the world anew. The time has now come…”
Baird looked at Mortimer, who whimpered softly.
“…for Armageddon.”
There was a horrible sound of tearing flesh. Members of the Cabinet screamed.
Baird tore the heart from Mortimer’s chest, and before his eyes, consumed it.
Mortimer did not scream, then. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. In the space of a few moments, something inside him flickered and vanished, like a candle left by an open window.
The body jerked and seemed to empty, crumpling in Baird’s arms.
Barnabas Mortimer was dead.
“I’m warning you,” K-Os said, quietly. “Whatever it is you’re planning, I’m going to stop it. Give up now, and I will make it easy for you.”
Baird turned his gaze to her, his chin still stained with blood. He laughed derisively, and without saying another word, he, and the dead lump of flesh that had once been Prime Minister, vanished into thin air.
Boateng made a horrible, animal-like keening sound, falling to her knees. K-Os looked down at her, then at the other ministers.
All of them looked like men who had seen the end of days. And they were right.
“It’s finished,” she said, and disappeared in a streamer of golden light.
Another time, another place…
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Illustration created using elements of an image by Mike Lacey on Unsplash.
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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