Broken Hero (37 page)

Unfortunately, due to the mild cranial scrambling of my most recent injuries, what actually comes out is, “How the hell do you even hide a sword in that outfit?”

Kayla closes her eyes. She seems to find my idiocy painful. “You don’t,” she finally spits. She reaches across the table, grabs a steak knife. “You make feckin’ do.”

Kayla launches herself across the room. I manage to get to my feet, scramble in her wake. The center of the room is almost clear of diners now. They press up against the walls, slowly creeping toward the back of the room. Survival instinct versus the paralysis of sheer terror.

The sensible response in other words.

I on the other hand move rapidly and in the wrong direction. I plant one foot on a chair, launch myself, crash down on a table. I leap from one to the next. Tablecloths skid beneath me. Cutlery flies. Crockery smashes.

Hannah is on her back at the front of the room. She’s clutching her left shoulder, pistol lying discarded on the ground. Friedrich’s arm is still reaching through the devastated front windows, scrabbling after her.

It reaches up above her. Ready to swat her into oblivion.

I aim my pistol.

Kayla beats me to it. She leaps almost a third of the length of the room. Her body arches back, arms raised above her head, steak knife clutched in both fists. I really hope it’s one of those Japanese knives. The ones that make soda cans look like they’re made of butter. Except this doesn’t look like it’s that classy a restaurant.

Kayla slams into Friedrich’s hand. A red-headed battering ram. She plunges the knife down, punching toward a seam in the metal, ripping, tearing.

Friedrich’s swat is arrested. The bee-sting stab of Kayla’s knife holding him still.

Abruptly he whips his hand back and forth, shaking it with improbable violence.

Kayla rides the bucking bronco of his fingers for about two seconds, which is at least one and a half seconds more than seems possible. Then she’s flying toward one restaurant wall. She spins in midair, manages to get her feet beneath her. Then she is leaping away, somersaulting backwards, landing on her feet.

Friedrich’s hand retreats. She flings the steak knife after it and I see it slam into the joint between two fingers even as she snatches up a second knife.

Then it’s not only the hand pulling back. Friedrich steps away.

The bastard can be hurt.

The front of the restaurant is pure devastation, glass, and brick, and splintered tables. I land in the mess of it as Kayla pulls Hannah to her feet. Hannah grimaces, spitting curses. When she’s finished she manages, “Bloody clipped my shoulder.”

Kayla nods quietly, a look of surprising empathy on her face. Then she violently wrenches Hannah’s arm up and back. Hannah screams. There is a pop that makes my stomach shudder.

Kayla nods. “Right as feckin’ rain,” she says.

Hannah is still gasping. But there’s not really time to waste. “After him,” I yell, pointing in the general direction of all things clockwork and brutal.

And then, just to make sure nothing can get any worse, Hannah and I manage to collide with each other as we go through the goddamn window.

I land hard, and mostly face down. Still I get the better of it. I collided with Hannah’s injured shoulder.

She howls again. She manages to fit a lot of four-letter words into it.

“Oh God, are you all right?” Suddenly Clyde is there, running out of the burgeoning darkness. He comes to a halt beside Hannah. “Well I guess obviously not. The whole screaming thing. Bit of a giveaway, I suppose. Should be asking how I can help.” He levers Hannah to her feet. “I mean, well, now I am helping. And you’re back on your feet again, so that’s good. No worse for wear, I bet. Made of tough stuff.”

Why does he sound like some terrible TV dad version of himself?

Hannah steps away from him, starts down the street. I can hear the pounding of giant metallic feet and the revving of a truck engine. “Come on!” She sounds impatient. “They’re getting away!”

I start after her. I’ve lost track of Kayla, but that probably only means she’s ahead of us. Probably armed with a can opener this time.

“Oh!” Clyde says from behind us. “I can help!”

Even as I run, I brace myself. Clyde’s help has not, historically, been as helpful as promised.

Hannah suddenly yells. She’s running hard, despite still needing to hold her shoulder. But now her feet are pedalling wildly through thin air. She lifts up into the sky.

“What the bloody arse hell?” she yells. “Put me down!”

“But I’m lifting you onto the rooftops,” Clyde calls from behind us.

I glance over my shoulder. Clyde’s eyes are blazing sparks of white light in the night, casting illumination onto his upraised palms as he lifts them up. With each inch they ascend, Hannah gains another foot.

“You’ll have tactical oversight,” Clyde says. Then, again with that odd paternal smugness in his voice, “Plus you’re injured and this will keep you out of harm’s way.”

“I will bloody shoot you in your bloody face if you don’t put me bloody down this bloody minute!”

Hannah is actually aiming at him.

Jesus. This is so not the time…

“Do it.” Tabitha’s voice is flat as a judge’s gavel landing.

“Don’t do it!” I snap back. I don’t think she will but better safe than sorry.

“But Tabby…”

The steady ascent of Clyde’s hands falters. Hannah jerks wildly through the air. At least it’s probably throwing her aim off.

In the background the truck’s engines rev again. I can’t hear Friedrich’s footsteps any more.

“…I’m protecting her,” Clyde continues. “I’m keeping her safe. Being responsible.” He’s talking with his hands now. Hannah whips back and forth through the air above my head. “I’m trying to show you…”

He pauses, trying to find the words. His hands pause with him. Hannah hangs into the air, about a foot above my head. The truck’s lights blaze. The sound of it rolling into motion.

“Put her down, Clyde,” I say, but he’s lost in his confusion and misery.

“They’re getting away with the pissing Uhrwerkgerät.” Hannah’s voice is full of frustration.

“Put her down!” I say again, trying to break through.

“You’re being a stupid selfish idiot who’s messing up the whole goddamn mission,” Tabitha tells Clyde. It is less than helpful.

“I’ve got the shot.”

In the chaos I almost miss Hannah’s words. But then they catch me. In Clyde’s moment of paralysis she’s gained her equilibrium. Her pistol is gripped in both hands. One eye closed she sights down the barrel.

She’s going to shoot it. Shoot the Uhrwerkgerät.

I’m not a demolitions expert, but I’m pretty sure nothing good happens when you do that. Hannah probably knows that too, but desperation has the better of her.

“No!” I yell. I launch myself into the air, snagging at her trailing foot.

I grab it, just as she fires. The shot explodes out into the night in a cloud of flame and cordite fumes. It lances through the intervening space.

It hits the Uhrwerkgerät.

And bounces away. The sound of the ricochet sings out in the night. A sharp clear sound, strangely sonorous in the space between the old stone houses that line Jericho Street.

I’m sure that will leave a mark, but it hasn’t ruptured anything. The bomb isn’t going to kill us all tonight.

And then, as the truck accelerates away, the night unspools before my eyes.

Oh God. It’s happening again.

A future echo.

It’s like the backdrop to a movie. As if the whole scene before us is some scene painted onto cloth. And someone has pulled the thread. And behind the world, behind the thin scrim of reality, is just the emptiness of space. A sucking rushing void. I see stars glinting, impossibly distant.

And this unreality is so much more real than the paper-thin buildings around me, this petty pretense of existence. This is absolute, implacable, unstoppable. It is everything we are not. And it undoes me.

The void in my vision becomes the void in my mind. Gaping lacuna of thoughts and emotions. The echo is eating me up, consuming the flickering flame of light and passion.

My face is bloody. Vessels rupturing around my eyes, my ears and nose. The blood covering my face, soaking my shirt. But it’s so distant. Such an unnecessary concern. In the face of this. This absolute. This undeniable. This truth. This implacable, unstoppable future.

And then it is too much. It overwhelms me. I fall to my knees. I see Hannah lying face down in a pool of her own blood. I hear Clyde hitting the floor. Tabitha’s voice moaning, “No, no, no, no, no, no,” in the earbud in my ear.

And then the darkness consumes everything.

When I come to, the pool of blood I lie in has started to congeal. For a moment I lie there, breathing shallowly, encased in my pain.

Friedrich is getting away. Taking the Uhrwerkgerät with him.

I have to get up.

I heave. The blood resists. Things I’d rather not rip do so anyway. I think I just left half my eyebrows behind on the asphalt. I grab for my gun.

But the truck is gone. Long, long gone. Police sirens are rushing to fill the space it has left.

The future echo was more powerful this time. Why?

Because we’re getting closer to the point of origin. The ripples in the fabric of space and time getting larger as we approach the actual disturbance, each one rocking the boat of my existence to a greater and greater extent.

Because we’re up shit creek, basically.

I look around. Clyde is lying on his back, still out. The front of his jacket is covered with blood. Tabitha is further away, curled up fetally in the light of a streetlamp. Kayla spread-eagled and shadowed fifty yards ahead of me. The glint of the steak knife still caught in her hand.

And Hannah. She sits a few yards from me, head in her hands and pressed between her knees.

“Are you OK?” I ask. I don’t go to her. The gulf between us is too great.

She looks up. Her face is a horror show. Blood has seeped out from around her eyes, the lashes matted together, the whites bloodshot. It has flowed freely from her nose, painting a sad clown’s carnival make-up around her lips. It has soaked her shirt, her trousers.

“Do I bloody look OK?”

I shake my head. “Not really, no.”

“So why the bloody arse hell are you asking me?”

I actually think about that for a moment. “Because I’m the field lead. Because you’re part of my team.”

Her sardonic laugh is barely audible this time. A bubble of ironic mirth just managing to surface through the mire of… of whatever the hell it is that Hannah feels. Disappointment? Frustration? That can’t be too far from the mark, I think.

“God,” she shakes her head. “You are, by far, the worst agent I’ve ever come across. Ever. I mean, you are truly terrible.” The laughter is stronger this time. “But you know what really gets me? Your crapness isn’t even really the problem. I might be able to work with it eventually. I think I could get you to pay attention to me in the end. Learn some basic fieldwork. It would suck, but I’ve been undercover in Kandahar for six months before, I can do suck. What I can’t do is bloody hopeless. Because it’s not you. It’s all of you. It’s this whole dysfunctional shit show of an agency.”

“The police are coming,” I interject. “We should wake the others. Get out of here.” I don’t need to hear this. This is for Hannah really, not for me.

“Shut the fuck up,” Hannah says. The first real hint of emotion beyond dull disappointment creeping into her voice. “I’m talking. And I really, really hope you actually listen, because it’s about the last time I talk to you.” She pushes her hands deep into her hair. “You’re a disaster. I covered that. But what else would anyone expect you to be? You’re a police detective who has never received a day of training in his life. Apparently none of you have. There is no attempt to educate, to immerse you. Just the hope that the skills you have are enough.” She’s becoming animated now, voice gaining decibels. “And if they aren’t, well, shit, sorry, I guess we gambled the fate of the world on the wrong bloody group of idiots. Our bad. But at least there’s no culpability because no one can complain about your total and utter failure when they’re all fucking dead!”

Her cheeks are flushed now. “You want to know what the real problem is?” She finally releases her head long enough to shake it. “You don’t, because you’re banging her. I mean, Jesus.” Now the head shaking has begun it seems it’s here to stay. Behind us Clyde starts to stir. “I mean,” Hannah continues, “don’t even get me started on that. Actually, no. Let me get started. I mean first off it means she should be discharged immediately. You are bloody military intelligence. That sort of thing is
not
OK. And if you want an example of why it’s not you’ve got Clyde and Tabitha right there in front of you as a walking, talking, bloody real life instructional bloody video. Jesus. You let them screw basically in front of you in Nepal, and then are all shocked when the situation blows up and leads to us actually creating the bomb you’re trying to stop from being…” She trails off and just froths for a moment. “That was in the field too. That was your chance to stop things. Because, shit, Felicity isn’t going to do it. Because she goddamn sucks. Kayla is the goddamn best of you and she in all seriousness suggested holding a cage match of potential suitors so she could weed out weak seed. She showed me a location she had picked out for the bloody octagon. That is the
best
you have to offer. Remember that. Please. If you remember nothing else of me. Remember that. This stupid bloody rant, that is likely bouncing off your remarkably thick skull.”

If I remember nothing else of her?
I try to puzzle that out. Apparently not even the blood caked on my cheeks is enough to hide that. It just fuels Hannah’s frustration.

“I am putting in for a bloody transfer. The paperwork will take a week or two. But I am out of here. Part of your team, Wallace? Fuck no.”

I stare at her. Her bloody visage staring back at me.