“You need to pull out, Bob,” he says, with no warm-up, no preamble, no social nattering. “Let Chris hand over to the NCA when they arrive, deal with the fish tank, then get Johnny and the OCCULUS crew out of there. We’ve got a developing situation.”
I resist the urge to swear. “Change of plan, why, exactly?”
“I want you to get up to Nether Stowe House to support the Target One team ASAP. Schiller’s making an end-run and the evidence from Target Two is frankly irrelevant at this point—nothing short of a bloodstained altar and a pile of bodies would do. The take from Target One is deeply alarming and we’ve run into problems—Cassie and Dr. O’Brien appear to have sprung a trap and are boxed in. They need a distraction and the special backup I arranged for is late.”
Shit! Here I am at the far end of the M25. “I’m at least an hour away by road, with blues and twos.”
“Not if you hit on the ASU. I’ve put in a request and India 97 is en route to Heathrow to ferry you out there. They should be landing in about ten minutes. Get moving.”
I don’t waste time arguing. If Mo is in danger it’s not just a screaming emergency, it’s personal. And these days she doesn’t carry a white violin. I know she’s an Auditor and anything but helpless, and she’s got the All-Highest of the Host of Air and Darkness with her, but they’re up against the Sleeper’s living avatar. This is what I’ve been afraid of all along, and I get a weird shivery feeling in my stomach that it takes me a little while to recognize as gut-wrenching fear.
I stride briskly back towards the cubicle farm and nearly walk into Johnny coming the other way. “What’s eating you, guv?” he asks, raising an eyebrow; he looks pleased with himself about something.
“I’m needed at Nether Stowe House an hour ago. The SA’s sending a chopper.”
“Oh right.” Suddenly his expression is as sober as a heart attack. “Yer other ’alf ran into trouble?”
“So I gather.” I start moving again, and as soon as we reach the cubicle farm I fill Chris Womack in on the situation. “So Johnny and I need to be on the other side of the airport in ten minutes—”
There is a thunderous bang from the front door and as I try and munch carpet tiles Johnny tackles Chris. “What—” She tries to speak, but my ears are ringing and I can barely hear anything. Boots rush past the cubicle from behind us, with much shouting—the OCCULUS team responding to a perimeter breach—and there’s a brief crackle of automatic gunfire, still painfully loud through the building wall and the cubicles. I close my eyes and look around, outside at the mindscape around the warehouse and the terminal building and the bright, shining hard-focused minds with their wards and their guns—
“Fuck, it’s the police!” I yell.
“On it,” Johnny says tensely, and he’s away.
Fuck, this is the very worst outcome, or close enough: there are cars outside and men and women with guns converging on the building and up against the walls outside the loading bay, a dozen of them already and more coming and that’s an airport fire tender bulling the OCCULUS truck away from the entrance—
Mo is in trouble. I could end this and be on my way—
I force the panic back down but it keeps bubbling up. It shouldn’t be anything new but just because she’s been in danger before and I haven’t been there doesn’t make it any easier; this one’s different because the SA told me to go and I can’t, not unless I—
There are fourteen of them outside and they’re in my way and all I have to do is grab their minds and squeeze and their crappy little wards will fracture like glass—
Another gunshot. Shouts: “Disengage! Stand down! Stand down!”
I’m shaking. I swear I’m shaking, lying here on the carpet feeling the warm, soft, crunchy things all around the building, flickering lights against the infinite darkness of un-life, and it would be so easy to kill them all, the constellations in the neighboring warehouses and the distant galaxy of Terminals 1–3 and beyond them the M25 motorway; and I could extinguish them for her, I would extinguish them all in a heartbeat and go flying to her rescue if I couldn’t already see the look on her face when she learned what I’d done—
(Does this make me a monster?)
Seconds that feel like minutes slide into minutes that feel like hours as I lie there shivering, not trusting myself to move a millimeter or twitch a finger, silently weeping with the strain of holding back the infinite hunger. I distantly realize that I’m overloaded, irrational, and suddenly unable to cope. The breakdown on Mo’s shoulder in the safe house was a warning temblor, not the earthquake itself; I don’t trust myself not to kill thousands of people by accident and I’m paralyzed with fear of what I have the potential to become, if I haven’t become that thing already.
Hasty footsteps. “Bob? Can you hear me?” It’s Johnny.
Someone else, voice full of concern: “Oh fuck, did he catch a bullet—”
“No, something worse, seen ’im get it bad but never like this before—”
I push back at the voices in my head and try to block out the hungry awareness and force myself up until I’m kneeling and braced against the floor on my palms. My head is spinning. I want to throw up.
“Bob”—it’s Johnny, kneeling beside me—“it’s going to be all right.” His voice low-pitched but urgent. “Someone set the airport police on us but the skipper’s on it”—he means Captain Partridge—“telling ’em it’s an unscheduled exercise, crossed wires—standin’ off while they confirm, then we’re gonna get you out of here—”
“Get me to. Nether Stowe House,” I grate, and Johnny and whoever else is there with him recoil from whatever they hear in my voice. Flying will be good: flying will get me up above and away from all the souls laid out so invitingly like a giant buffet in all directions.
“What’s wrong with—” a hushed voice asks Johnny.
“Not sure mate, but I think ’e’s leveled up from tactical to strategic and ’e needs ’is personal Auditor bad only she ain’t ’ere—”
“But his eyes—”
I concentrate on my deep breathing and the whole mindfulness shtick and on trying not to casually squeeze the contents of a taxiing aluminum tube of intercontinental goodness into my imaginary mouth—it’s a Boeing 777 or Airbus A330 and it’s nearly two miles away, a distantly rational part of me realizes—
“Get me out of here,” I tell Johnny, working hard to make my voice as normal as possible, and then I push myself up and stand. Cubicle farm, office, a worried-looking warrant officer in airport firefighter drag (spoiled slightly by the MP5 with Basilisk sights he’s carrying); he takes a step back behind Johnny, but Johnny is made of stern stuff and stares me down calmly enough. Johnny’s mind … if I let my inner demon off the leash I think it might actually break a tooth on Johnny. “I’m not safe, and the SA wants me at, at Target One.”