But this time I was ready.
Glenn flipped his knife around in his left hand so it still pointed forwards as he raised his fists. He slid one foot behind him and bent his legs.
“Oh, come on!” I said. “Do we really have to go through with this? You know you can’t win.”
“I’m not going down to a jumped up little runt like you,” Glenn panted. He jabbed out with the knife. I stepped back and watched it slice past my chest.
It was a clumsy move, made by a man who’d become so reliant on his Shifting power that he probably didn’t even bother trying any more. Whereas I tried not to take it for granted. I knew the power would fade in a matter of years when entropy set in. It’s why I trained so damn hard.
I stopped the blade as it came in for a second swipe with an upward block, then punched with my left, sending Glenn’s head snapping back. Like the blades of scissors I caught his arm between mine and twisted. There was a satisfying crunch and he screamed, dropping his knife to the floor. I kicked out, the side of my foot connecting just below his knee, and it bent back on itself at an unnatural angle. Dislocated but not broken, I reckoned. I swiped his other foot away and he crumpled to the floor like a coal stack being demolished. He rocked on the floor, sobbing and cradling his arm, but I didn’t have much sympathy.
“I’m cold and tired and you made me wait for hours in the rain,” I said, as much to myself as him, as I knelt down and rolled him on to his side and into a puddle. “And you had to go and pull a knife, didn’t you?” He groaned as I pulled his injured arm back, pinning his two wrists together. “Why didn’t you just come quietly? Number four did.”
The hunt for the remaining adult Shifters hadn’t let up in months, with the new boss breathing down our necks demanding results – and giving us a good shouting even when we’d got them – and the Government breathing down his neck and watching every little thing that went on at the agency. It was exhausting. So when I found number four and he invited me in for a cup of tea before coming into ARES without a fight, it had made a refreshing change.
“Why can’t you all be like number four?” I said.
Aubrey appeared around the corner.
“About time!” I said, pressing my knee further into Glenn’s back. He made a gurgling noise as his mouth was pushed deeper into the puddle.
“I couldn’t find a way around. Besides, I knew you’d be OK on your own.”
She clearly hadn’t seen me being smacked in the face by the bin. But she was right. I had managed on my own. The first few times I’d gone up against an adult Shifter had not gone this smoothly. I’d still been a bit of a mess after what had happened at Greyfield’s; haunted by what had been done to me and what I’d done in return. Aubrey had told me to try and forget it and throw myself into the job. It had worked. I’d managed to go a whole week without having a flashback from that night. I was still having nightmares though. They weren’t going anywhere.
Aubrey passed me her cuffs and together we slapped them on Glenn’s wrists.
He struggled for a moment, spitting swearwords and insults in our direction, then went loose and stopped struggling. I rolled him onto his back and he smiled up at the grey clouds overhead.
The cuffs were designed to stop anyone from Shifting, by sending a disruptive current through the body and stopping the brain from focusing. Only we’d modified them a little in our hunt for the members of the project. Now they also made the wearer a bit more compliant.
Aubrey looked down at his twisted leg. “Did you have to?”
“He had a knife, Aubrey. A really big knife.”
She rolled her eyes at me, threw me my clothes, and knelt down next to him. As I pulled my T-shirt and jacket back on, Aubrey rested one hand on his calf and the other behind his knee. There was a loud, comic pop, like someone pulling their finger out of their mouth, and his leg was straight again.
He let out a muffled cry, like someone being woken from a dream, then returned to staring dully ahead.
Between us, we hauled him to his feet and pushed him forward.
“Come on, Pylon. Let’s get him in the van.”
“About this nickname,” I said as we half-carried, half-dragged Glenn down the street. “I’m not sure I like it. I mean, other people call each other Bunnykins or Peanut or Studmuffin. But the Pylon?”
“Well, look at you. You’re tall and all spiky. I think the Pylon is perfect.”
We directed Glenn all the way back along the canal, past the boat yard, and to the pub where we’d found him.
The ARES van was still waiting for us. Only someone had taken the time to scratch their name into the black paintwork with a key. Brilliant. Just what I needed. The Regulators would go mental when they saw that.
I kicked the bumper in frustration and it fell off.
“Why don’t we get special issue vehicles? You know, with titanium armour and run on flat tyres. All that fancy military spec stuff?”
“With ejector seats and smoke bombs?” Aubrey said.
“Sure, why not? We’re spies, aren’t we?”
“We are most definitely not spies, Scott.”
“Well, secret agents then. No arguing on that. So, where are all our cool toys?”
Aubrey smiled and shook her head. “Budget cuts.”
“Budget cuts?”
“Yeah, and when you don’t officially have a budget, because you don’t officially exist, then it makes it harder to complain. What do you want us to do? Go on strike?”
Aubrey slid open the door and we bundled Glenn inside. He curled up in a corner and started to snore happily. We slammed the door closed.
“So that’s seven down,” Aubrey said, with a happy sigh.
“And only one left to go.”
I hoped number eight wouldn’t give us any trouble.
CHAPTER THREE
“I’m driving!” Aubrey shouted, grinning at me.
“Oh, come on!” I moaned, opening the passenger door. “You drove on the way here.”
“And wasn’t it a lovely drive?”
“You almost got us killed. Three times.” I held up three fingers to emphasise my point.
“Stop complaining and get in.”
I hopped up onto the seat as Aubrey fired up the engine. She’d stepped on the pedal before I’d even shut the door.
Aubrey drove like a lunatic, cutting between lanes like a skier doing the slalom. After all, if anything went wrong – and it did, all the time – she’d just Shift. I think she did it in part just to scare me and in part because it was one of the few times now that she didn’t have to obey anyone’s rules. Everything had changed at ARES in the past few months. After everything went down at Greyfield’s, the Government had been informed and now the agency reported directly to the Ministry of Defence. Everything we did was watched, monitored, measured. One toe out of line and the new boss came down on us hard. There were security systems as backup to the security systems and more paperwork than ever before. Aubrey threatened to quit on an almost daily basis. But the truth was, it was even worse for Shifters not in the Agency. Now, anytime someone wanted to Shift, they had to apply, in person, and provide evidence of why their Shift would lead to a better world.
Ad verum via
, as the motto stitched in gold thread on our new, too-stiff uniforms said. Towards the true way.
That had been Mr Abbott’s dream too. A man I once believed was my friend. But who I learned was nothing but a power-crazed maniac who was willing to do anything to bring about his vision of the true way. Six months ago, I’d stood outside a burning hospital watching his dreams turn to dust while he was trapped inside screaming my name.
I shuddered at the memory.
“Please slow down!” I shouted over the sound of a car blaring its horn.
“We’re still miles away and I’m hungry,” she said, changing into fifth gear. “And once we get this guy back, we still have to type everything up.”
“If we get this guy back,” I said, closing my eyes as Aubrey squeezed between two trucks.
I knew there was nothing to worry about. Not really. Aubrey was one of the best Shifters in the Agency and we were in no real danger. But every time I heard the screech of brakes from a truck next to us, it brought back a memory I’d been trying to forget for almost a year: the night I’d got my little sister killed in a car crash. I’d managed to Shift to a new reality where she was alive again. But the image of her crushed body was yet another of the images that came back to haunt me at nights.
“Please, Aubrey. Just a little slower,” I said, resting my hand over hers on the gear stick.
She side-eyed me, as if working out if I was joking or not, and then let up on the accelerator pedal.
“Besides,” I said. “I’m in no rush to get back to HQ. Not with everyone panicking about the big visit tomorrow.”
“Gee, I can hardly wait,” Aubrey said. “The Prime Minister coming to have a good old nose about the place. Just to make sure we’re all behaving. Gah, that place!” Aubrey slammed the steering wheel with the palms of her hands, causing the van to swerve wildly. “Once we bring in the last of the Ganymede guys, I swear, I’m quitting.”
“You said that after number two,” I said.
Number two was a quietly spoken man who’d sobbed after we told him how he’d been given his power back, and then tried to strangle Aubrey.
“Yeah, and after number three,” Aubrey said.
Number three worked on the trading floor of the London Stock Exchange, where he’d been using his power to play the market and make a packet. He’d not come quietly either. Number four was the only one who had. A lovely guy, working as a caretaker in a graveyard. He’d said being around the dead made him feel safe.
“They were dead when I got here. So there’s absolutely nothing I can do to change that.”
It was number four who’d given us the names of the remaining members of the project. And we’d tracked them all down apart from the very last one. So far, we knew absolutely nothing about him apart from his name: Frank Anderson.
“But this time I mean it, Scott. I’m quitting. If only to see the look on Sir Richard’s face.”
Sir Richard Morgan. Our new boss and, as Aubrey liked to put it, asshat of the highest order. Sir Richard had taken over from his son as head of ARES after it became all to clear that Morgan Junior didn’t have a clue about what was really going on at the agency. Since starting, Sir Richard had been busy trying to make up for his son’s lack of control. Our first day back at work after Greyfield’s, he’d pulled us in to his office and screamed and shouted at us for a full hour. He’d known Aubrey had been there, because her name had been found on a scrap of paper recovered from the wreckage. And he had his suspicions about my involvement.
“I hate to say this,” Aubrey said, checking her rear view mirror. “But I almost miss Dick.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I said, remembering when Richard Morgan Junior had been in charge. Morgan was a jumped-up prat, but he’d been a harmless jumped-up prat. And at least, as a Shifter himself, he’d had a vague idea of what we were up against. Something Sir Richard had clearly forgotten long ago.
The lights of the oncoming traffic streaked across the damp windowpane leaving glowing trails. I turned away and tried to hide my yawn.
“Tired?” Aubrey asked.
“I guess. It’s been a pretty full-on day.”
Aubrey glanced towards me and then back at the road. There was no point in trying to hide anything from her. She could see through me better than anyone else. “You still having the nightmares?” she said.
Ever since that night, I’d not slept well. Images of that night kept haunting me. Sergeant Cain, my old instructor, lying in a pool of blood. Abbott’s face contorted in pain. Benjo Greene, the grossly fat cannibal, crunching through metal tools, blood pouring from between his sharp teeth. Worst of all were the things I’d seen when I was hooked up to Abbott’s simulator. The things I’d done.
“They weren’t real, you know?” Aubrey said, taking her hand off the wheel and laying it on my knee. “The simulator.”
Like I said, she could see straight through me. I’d told her all about what Abbott had done to me and what I’d done while hooked up to his machine. The simulators had been designed for training Shifters: a tool to help them experience different choices and see how the consequences could possibly play out, without actually affecting reality. Only Abbott’s version had been different. His simulator made you experience your very worst choices. But they were still your choices. Even though I was now in a reality where none of those terrible things had happened, I had done them. Given the right circumstances, some potential version of me was capable of doing it all again, inflicting all that pain. I shuddered, despite the heating being on max.
Aubrey had told me time and time again that I hadn’t done those things. That they weren’t real. And I tried to believe her.
But I hadn’t told her everything. Maybe now was the time I did.
“There’s something I haven’t told you… about that night,” I said, picking at a loose thread on my cuff.
“What?” she said.
This would be the third time I’d told her the truth. The truth about what had really happened at Greyfield’s and how we’d escaped. The last two times, she’d looked at me with so much fear I’d chickened out and Shifted my decision to tell her. As I tried to force the words out of my mouth, I wondered if this time would be any different.
“That night, I did something…”
“Scott, how many times do I have to tell you?” she said.
“No, not the simulators,” I said hurriedly, worried that if she interrupted I’d never get it out. “Something else.”
“Scott, you’re scaring me,” she said.
“I’m scaring myself,” I said.
She glanced over at me. My expression must have really worried her because she steered the van across the lanes of traffic and pulled up in the lay-by. A truck speeding past made the van shake almost as much as I was.