TWENTY-SEVEN
He left the food hall and ran along the upper landing of the shopping centre. It was busy. Hard sunlight shone down through the atrium’s glass roof onto hundreds of jostling people.
His mind was busy too. His heart was pounding. He—
He slowed down. He was being stupid.
James came to a halt, and slowly turned around, scanning the crowd. No one gave him so much as a passing look. Too many minds were focused on their Saturday shop, too many attentions were wrapped up in conversations with partners or friends or whining kids.
Sounds, too many sounds, all boxy and hollow. It was like being underwater in a busy public baths, and hearing the swell of voices in the air transmitted by the water alone.
His palms were tacky with sweat. He looked at his hands, holding them out in front of him. For one, quick, stomach-swooping moment, they weren’t his hands at all. They belonged to someone else.
Big Wooof. Big, big Wooof. Alienated and scared by parts of his own body, James reeled. Owen had been wrong. Some insane kind of transmutation was happening to him, right there, in broad daylight, in front of hundreds of people. Or Owen had been right, and he was simply going mad.
Someone was looking at him. James felt it, like a sixth sense, a hot tingle. He looked up, searching the crowd as it poured around him.
He saw the man, the lean blond man in the black suit. The man was standing twenty feet away, the crowd flowing around him too. The man was staring right at James.
James knew he’d met him before somewhere. Where, where, where?
Why is he looking at me?
James turned his head a few degrees to the right, very slowly. Ten yards to the blond man’s left, another figure was making a silent, still island in the stream of bodies. The dark-haired man in the black jeans.
He was staring at James too.
James froze. He had every intention of running, but his legs wouldn’t move and his body refused to turn. It was as if they had some hold on him, some hypnotic hold, just like that bloody replacement window con man hadn’t. This was how Jack and Gwen and all the poor suckers he touched must have felt: charmed and immobile.
This was what it was like to be a prey item locked in a predator’s gaze.
The blond man turned his head and looked through the crowd at the dark-haired man. The dark-haired man turned his head and looked back. Simultaneously, they started to walk towards James. They took strong, purposeful strides. They moved closer together until they were coming on, side by side, in step.
Two figures. Side by side.
Two shadows beside a phone box, in the middle of the night.
James remembered. The memory returned in a hot, dizzying hit, as if he’d been whacked between the eyes with a mallet. He bolted.
Oh, now people noticed him. They cried out and complained loudly as he shoved his way past them. Who did he think he was? Where did he think he was going? Couldn’t he show some bloody manners?
His spinning mind supplied answers as he ran. To the first two questions, he had no idea. To the third, no he bloody couldn’t.
He looked back. The men were coming after him. He slammed through the crowd to the head of a descending escalator, and pushed his way down it. A woman bellowed as he kicked over the shopping bags she’d set on the step beside her. A man cursed him as he elbowed past. A young guy riding beside his girlfriend tumbled down two steps and clung to the handrail as James barged him to one side.
He leapt off the escalator onto the middle level of the atrium. Above him, the two men were weaving down after him, single-file, switching back and forth to avoid people. They had to wait while the bellowing woman gathered up her spilled purchases with the help of other shoppers. Forced to a halt, the two men kept their eyes on James as they slid down the moving steps.
James started running immediately he was off the escalator. He crashed into an elderly man and knocked him flat. He stumbled as the elderly man fell, but didn’t stop. More people began to shout at him. He ran on.
The two men reached the bottom of the escalator, and started to sprint after him.
James crossed the landing space, looking left and right. He needed another down escalator to reach street level. He turned, and collided head-on with a young husband and wife. They had two kids with them, and the youngest tripped as he tangled with James’s legs. Bumping down hard, the kid started to cry immediately.
‘You stupid bastard!’ the wife yelled.
‘Look where you’re going, shithead,’ the husband roared. He was thick-set and hefty, a bloke used to responding with his fists. He swung an angry punch at James.
Instinctively, James raised a hand, just a warding hand.
The thuggish husband grunted and sailed backwards through the air. He actually left the ground. He flew ten yards and struck a retail barrow set up in the middle of the landing to sell Russian dolls and autographed photos of footballers. The barrow went over beneath him in a huge and noisy clatter. A general commotion began.
James ran to the escalator. People were getting out of his way.
The lower escalator was a long sweep. As soon as he got onto it, James found his progress blocked by shoppers. Some of them tried to shrink and cower away from him. Some of them cried out in alarm.
Penned in, James looked back up the sliding steps. The two men appeared at the top of the escalator and began to rush down after him, dodging around a few solo riders, who flinched from them. The two men were gaining.
James gripped the moving rail. He looked over at the drop, at the faces looking up to see what the fuss was about. The dark-haired man was four steps behind him, reaching out a hand.
James vaulted the moving rail and dropped.
Dozens of people screamed.
Jack put down the cordless slowly. He paused for a moment.
‘Jack?’ asked Toshiko, rising from her seat. ‘Jack, what’s the matter?’
‘Was that Gwen?’ Owen asked.
‘Jack?’
Jack turned to face them. ‘You know,’ he began quietly, ‘you know how this all seemed terribly, you know, wonky?’
Owen nodded. Toshiko just stared.
‘Well, you won’t believe what Gwen just said to me,’ said Jack.
He was flying, arms out, falling. Someone was screaming in a really piercing way.
He landed. He landed with legs coiled like springs to cushion the impact. He didn’t even fall or stumble. As soon as he was down, he sprang forwards and started running again.
A pathway opened in the crowd in front of him, Terrified, horrified faces recoiled out of his way.
More screams rang out in his wake. He didn’t need to look back to know that the blond man and the dark-haired man had followed his example and thrown themselves off the escalator.
They would be coming. Fast now, fast, and making no sound.
He could see the entrance of the shopping centre ahead. Oblivious crowds washed in and out, only just beginning to ripple as they realised something was up. The entrance itself was two pairs of automatic glass doors framed by side panels of floor-length glass.
There were too many people, too many people in his path. Some were too slow getting out of his way; others were too scared or confused. One young guy simply ducked down and James sailed over him.
There was no time to stop, no time to even slow down. The main doorways were too thick with people.
James raised his hands in front of his face in a protective cross. He accelerated. He came through one of the side panels in a splash of shattering glass. Shattering strengthened glass. Fragments flew in all directions, and the main weight of the glass panel collapsed like a sheet of dislodged ice, cascading across the pavement in a glittering, crashing torrent.
Yet more screams and hysterics. Shoppers fled in panic. James didn’t stop. The road ahead was two strides away, heavy with crawling traffic.
He didn’t break stride. He took off. Bang! off the roof of a minicab. Bang! off the bonnet of a Mini. Three powerful skips took him across to the far side of the road.
Behind him, Mr Dine exited the shopping centre through the hole in the glass panel James had made.
Mr Lowe came out a second later through the main doors, slamming pedestrians aside like a charging bull. People tumbled out of his way, some struck so hard they would require medical attention. One girl actually cartwheeled on her way to colliding with a heavy rubbish bin.
Though Mr Dine had exited the shopping centre first, Mr Lowe’s ruthless drive put him in the lead. He flew out across the traffic, crunching in the roof of an Audi and then vaulting over the high back of a minibus. His gymnastics, his sheer grace, would have scored him maximum points at any Olympics. No one really saw it because he had become just a blur by then.
He landed on the far pavement, his impact cracking the expensive zigzag paving stones.
Mr Dine landed beside him. There was a terrible commotion of voices and shouting and car horns all around them. They each scanned the crowd. They looked at one another.
There was no sign of James.
Mr Dine looked at the scrum of injured people outside the Mall entrance.
‘That was unnecessary,’ he said.
‘It was appropriate. Only the Principal matters,’ Mr Lowe replied.
Thirty yards east of them, the passengers of a bendy-bus erupted in alarm. A man was clinging to the outside of the moving vehicle, looking in at them through the window. The driver began to slow the bus as he heard the ripple of panic behind him.
James gazed in at the alarmed passengers. So much agitation, so much fear. As the bus slowed, he let go of the hand- and toe-holds he had dug in its metal skin.
He landed on his feet and used the bus’s momentum to propel his onward flight.
They were behind him still, both of them. He could taste it.
He crossed the road again, weaving through the moving traffic, and ran down an underpass. He slowed. He was barely panting.
He took out his mobile.
‘How could she not know?’ Owen demanded.
Jack shrugged. ‘How could she not? How?’
‘Just take it easy,’ Jack suggested.
‘I will not. I bloody well will not!’
‘Then go and sit over there where I can’t hear you,’ said Jack.
‘I’m having trouble understanding this too,’ said Toshiko.
‘Join the club,’ Jack snapped.
‘Something hot,’ Ianto called. They crossed to the station he was monitoring.
‘Show me,’ Jack said.
‘Some kind of incident at the Capitol Mall,’ Ianto said. ‘Reports of property damage, injuries. Some kind of foot pursuit. Some guys apparently leapt off a moving escalator.’
Jack studied the screen. ‘Not much to go on. Could just be—’
His phone rang.
‘This is Jack.’
‘Jack, it’s James.’
Jack hesitated before answering. He pointed to Ianto and then at his phone. Ianto nodded and started to tap at the keyboard.
‘Jack, are you there?’
‘Yeah, James. We were worried about you. Where a—’
‘Jack, listen to me. Something’s going on. Something wrong.’
‘James, what do you—’
‘Just listen. I haven’t got much time to talk. They’re after me.’
‘Who’s after you, James?’
‘The men. For Christ’s sake, Jack, help me. I’m going crazy here. Talk to Owen. Owen can tell you about it. Tell him I said it was OK to tell you.’
‘James,’ said Jack carefully. ‘I think I already know. Owen didn’t need to tell me.’
There was a long silence.
‘Oh,’ said James. ‘OK. That’s good, then. I trust you, Jack. I trust you.’
‘Glad to hear it. What kind of trouble are we talking? Scale of one to ten?’
‘Twenty-seven, you idiot! Please!’
The line muffled for a moment. There were some indistinct noises.
‘James? James, are you there?’
‘Jack, they’re coming! They’re—’
‘CALL ENDED’ read the screen of Jack’s phone.
‘Did you get it?’ Jack asked. ‘Please tell me you got it.’
Ianto nodded. ‘GPS is just punching it up. Phone location...’ He looked at Jack. ‘Phone location two hundred and thirty-three yards south of that Mall.’
‘I’ll start the car,’ said Owen.
The dead centre of Cardiff: gleaming shops and boutique arcades, and bold new developments overlapping with the last relics of the City’s poorer past. Saturday afternoon, a weak sun smiling, the town crawling with the retail-hungry and the credit card debt-addicted.
The black SUV ploughed through the inner-city traffic, anonymous as a storm cloud.
They pulled up on double yellow lines and got out. Jack, Toshiko and Owen.
‘Ianto?’ Jack asked into his Bluetooth.
‘Hearing you.’
‘Fix?’
‘You’re right on it.’
Jack looked around at the other two. ‘Boiled egg,’ he said.
Side by side, they began to run.
James looked up and down the tiled cavity of the underpass. He stuffed his phone back into his pocket. No signal.
Traffic thumped by overhead. He took a step towards the east end of the underpass.
The man in dark jeans appeared, walking slowly down the slope towards him. James switched back. The blond man in the suit came down the steps to the west.
James tried to back away from both advancing figures, a feat he quickly realised was technically impossible.
He held out his palms in either direction.
‘That’s far enough!’ he barked. His voice echoed along the little tunnel.
They slowed down, but continued to advance.
‘I mean it!’ James cried.
They halted.
‘I want you to leave me alone. Leave me alone!’
That is not possible, ever.
‘What?’
The safety of the Principal is our paramount concern.
‘Which of you said that? Who said that?’
The dark-haired man took a step closer.
‘Whoa! No you don’t!’ James exclaimed.
The dark-haired man stopped.
We are here only to protect the Principal.
‘Yeah, so you said.’
Your actions and behaviour are contrary to the Principal’s best interests.
‘Great. Maybe I can help with that.’
The blond man smiled. ‘That is unlikely. You have been compromised.’
‘I’ve been what?’
‘You have been compromised,’ said the dark-haired man. ‘Your investment has been damaged and, as a result, your self-protection protocols have been compromised.’
‘I really don’t understand,’ said James, keeping his hands raised, aimed at both of them.
‘That is the point,’ said the blond man. ‘You don’t understand. By now, you should, but you clearly don’t. We see this. This proves your investment has compromised you.’
‘Lower your hands,’ said the dark-haired man.
‘Just explain... please. Explain what you mean,’ James said, keeping his hands up.
The blond man sighed. ‘Explanation should not be necessary. The jeopardy upload should have re-installed your base consciousness by now. This also proves that your self-protection protocols have been compromised. You should know yourself and understand this situation. You should not be resisting. You should be ready and willing for extraction.’
‘Well, I’m not,’ said James, ‘whatever that means.’
‘You are—’ the dark-haired man began.
‘You, shut up,’ warned James. ‘I’m listening to you both. I want to understand, but you’re going to have to start making sense really soon. Speak plainly. Explain it in terms I can grasp.’
‘Plainly?’ asked the dark-haired man.
‘Information evidently must be seated in terms that can be understood using this milieu’s frames of reference,’ said the blond man. ‘Like the fact that chocolate ice cream... is animal fats and flavourings, pretty much.’
The dark-haired man looked uncertain. ‘None of this is important. Only the duty is important. The Principal must be protected and recovered.’
He moved forwards.
‘Back off!’ cried James.
The dark-haired man did just that. With a groof! of punched-out air, he flew back down the underpass and fell down, rolling hard.
The blond man sprang at James. James tried to ward him off, but the blond man clutched him tightly.
James swung around and slammed the blond man into the wall. Tiles shattered and flew off their cement settings.
The blond man dug his fingers in tighter, and James whirled him in the opposite direction. Another wall, another impact. Yet more cracked and fragmented tiles.
Don’t do this. Don’t do it. This is a mistake. You will come to see that. This is an ugly thing that stains my duty and tarnishes my—
‘Shut up!’ James cried. He wheeled around and threw the blond man into the ceiling. The blond man crunched into one of the recessed lights and shattered it.
He fell onto the floor, landing on his hands and knees in a rain of clear plastic debris.
The dark-haired man was running at James. James reached out and his fist connected. The dark-haired man turned three, boneless somersaults on his way back down the underpass.
James turned and made his escape. He took the underpass steps three at a time. He heard sounds behind him.
He ran off down the street, and jinked left into a residential side-street, a quiet, exclusive mews.
He glanced behind him.
They were coming after him. They had changed. They had revealed their true forms.
They were grey shades, thorny shadows from the high walls in his dream, leaping and scurrying, like whispers, like wraiths. They were barbed, and armed for killing.
They ran faster than he could. They were made that way. They ran faster, leaping, bounding, closing the distance. They made no sound. Not even footsteps.
Still running, he looked over his shoulder. The shades were there.
One pounced—