Broken Hero (51 page)

At least it’s a change.

Time passes. The pain comes again. But this time, instead of burying me it brings light. A sharp crack of it that I try to shy away from. But it pursues me. There is the beeping, but other noises too. I get the impression of being surrounded by enormous amounts of activity. And I don’t want any part of it. It is too much. I think of the falling girders.

Oblivion, I think, is taking a turn for the worse.

“He’s awake!”

Whoever is shouting is doing it too loudly.

I blink. The room is a smear of too-bright color and sound. Beeping, and chairs scraping, and voices, and feet slapping on a vinyl floor.

“He’s awake!” The same voice again. The same volume. But I know that voice.

I blink more, try to bring things into focus. I feel like I have been too confused for too long.

Aren’t I meant to be dead? Wasn’t that part of the deal? I seem to remember being sure about that.

Didn’t I get shot in the head?

I try to raise my hand, to feel for the spot where pain bloomed. It comes again, sharp and hard, leaving me gasping. My arm flops to the bed. It feels weak.

The bed.

I am in a bed.

More blinking.

“Arthur? Arthur, can you hear me?”

A shape. An oval. A silhouette. And then a face. And then a face I know.

“Felicity?”

“Oh thank God.”

And it is her. And with that recognition everything else starts to snap into focus. Details of the room. Details of everything that happened before coming together at once.

A hospital bed. A hospital room. No, a ward. And more than just Felicity here. Others too. And windows and light. It is day, and I am alive.

“I’m alive,” I say. I don’t understand it. This should be impossible. If I’m alive reality should be dead. So either way… Well, I should be dead.

“But you’re not.” Felicity kisses my forehead. Her lips feel sweet and cool, tamping down the fire of the pain there.

I’m not.

I’m not and Felicity is kissing me. After everything I did. After everything I failed to do. I do not deserve this.

I try to twist away, but my body feels sluggish and it makes my head hurt. Still she pulls away. There is concern in her eyes.

“Are you—?” she starts.

“I’m sorry,” I say. It needs to be said. “I’m so sorry. I screwed everything up. I got… I got everything twisted. I made everything worse. MI37… Moving in…”

She shakes her head. “There’s nothing to worry about. We’ll talk about that later. When you’re feeling better.”

Nurses and doctors are entering the room. Other people are leaving. I should be paying attention to who they are, but I only have eyes for Felicity.

I jerk my hand about, find hers, squeeze.

“I don’t know why I didn’t move in with you,” I say. “I can’t think of the reason why.”

She smiles. “Well, you took a blow to the head.”

“Please,” I ask. “Please, if I haven’t screwed up too much, can I move in with you?”

And she smiles. But, “We’ll talk,” is all she says.

Just before the nurses leave, they prop me up, and pull the curtains back from around my bed so I can get a proper look at the room. It has four beds in total. Two are empty. One is not.

Clyde lies in the bed opposite mine. He has an oxygen mask pulled down around his neck. He waves.

“Hello, Arthur, terribly good to see you.” His voice sounds husky. “They tell me I’m not supposed to speak for another few days but that’s rather an exercise in futility, I’m afraid. Just keep jibber-jabbing on to people about how I’m not meant to talk to them, and then I keep on going until all of a sudden I’m coughing up blood again, and then the nurses come in and tell me how I’m not meant to talk to anyone. So then I start trying to explain it to them. And that just makes everything worse, but it turns out I have an almost pathological tendency to tell people not to make a fuss. So, to make a long story short, they tend to tranquilize me quite a lot. Not entirely unpleasant, though one does worry about developing a dependency. The last thing I—”

“You. Shut it.” A strident voice from the door. And Tabitha, it seems, has a different tactic from the nurses.

“Oh, sorry,” Clyde says. “I was just—”

“Shut it.” Tabitha crosses to his bed, eyes aflame.

Clyde hesitates, mouth still open.

“It. Shut. Now.”

Clyde shuts it.

Tabitha sits on the edge of the bed, reaches out, messes his hair. “Fucking idiot,” she says. Clyde grins hugely.

I narrow my eyes. “Wait…” I say. “Are you two…?”

Clyde opens his mouth.

“You say a word,” Tabitha tells him, “and I will throttle you with your own tongue. See if they can fix that.”

Clyde satisfies himself with grinning hugely.

“Yes,” Tabitha says. “Easier to have a discussion with him when he can’t talk. Freaked out a bit. I did. First pregnancy. Then the whole near death thing. His. Mine. All that. Latter put the former in perspective.”

“Oh,” I say. “So…” And how to broach this exactly. “The…” I look at her stomach.

Tabitha grimaces. “Gone,” is all she says. Then, as if sensing that maybe even from her this isn’t enough. “In the fight. Nothing permanent done.”

“Another time,” Clyde says in his scratched voice. “I mean not to suggest necessarily that it would be me, or you, well obviously it would be you, I suppose, but—”

“Shut the goddamn fuck up.” And then to make sure he does, Tabitha kisses him.

I turn away. That moment is not mine to watch. Instead I try to process the news. I can’t tell if it’s good or bad. But the kiss is still going on, so maybe that is all the answer I really need.

Another face appears at the door. Not Felicity’s. That’s all I care about at first. Just some young girl. And then I realize that I know who it is.

“Ephie?” I say.

Clyde and Tabitha break their clinch. Clyde has the decency to look embarrassed. Tabitha doesn’t.

Ephie looks at Clyde as she steps into the room and rolls her eyes. “Like that’s the worst a pan-dimensional demigod has seen you two do,” she says.

“Ach, I’m right here. There’s stuff you have no need to feckin’ share.” Kayla follows her step-daughter into the room.

Ephie it seems has decided to modify her wardrobe slightly. Her hair is not scraped back in a ponytail, but instead hangs loose. She’s dyed the tips light pink. They match her sun dress, unseasonable in the November chill, but good for showing off the tattoos that cover her shoulders and upper arms. Dense floral patterns in green and red and yellow.

Kayla catches my look. “We’re negotiating,” she says, looking grim.

From Ephie’s smile, it looks like she’s winning the negotiations.

I try to work out why the Dreamer is here. There’s only one reason I can think of.

“You’re why I’m alive,” I say, “aren’t you?”

Ephie’s smile dissolves like so much mist. She nods, serious now.

“You said you wouldn’t,” I say. “That it would violate too many other realities.”

“Yes,” she says. “I said that.”

It takes me a moment to realize it, but she looks embarrassed.

“So it didn’t.”

She shrugs, awkward, looking for a moment like the thirteen-year-old she is. “Think I’m probably going to get in some trouble,” she says. “But, well, you twisted a lot of things to help me out. Collapsing the device, getting injured. There was a lot less I needed to do to make sure the future echoes were only promising you injury, not death. Not to say there wasn’t collateral damage…” She trails off, but it seems like she’s leaving out the most important part.

“Collateral damage?” I prompt. Possibly with slightly too much alarm in my voice. A machine pings.

“Like,” she shrugs, “who do you think killed JFK?”

I stare at her for a moment. “Lee Harvey Oswald,” I say. “With the grassy knoll, second-gunman theory knocking about.”

“Yeah,” Ephie says, “so that’s changed.”

Wait… “I used to think it was someone different?”

Ephie shrugs. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Just give yourself a headache.”

Kayla grimaces. “I did.”

I can’t help but notice that Kayla hasn’t threatened her daughter with a sword any time in the past few minutes.

“You two seem on better terms,” seems like the more tactful way to say it.

“Well,” Kayla shrugs. “She did good. Even with tattoos.” She reaches out and ruffles her daughter’s hair.

“Mum!” Ephie pulls away, tugs at her hair, then shrugs. Reality ripples and suddenly her hair is piled upon her head in a giddy heap of tangles. The pink hints have become blue.

Kayla rolls her eyes. “Feckin’ kids.”

Ephie smirks. “Had enough of them, have you?”

“I’ve feckin’ apologized!” Kayla throws up her hands. “God, more of you feckers. Don’t know what I was thinking.”

Which makes it sound like the artificial insemination plan is off the table. Or off whatever it was on. I don’t want to think about that too closely. Still, this seems like a more unmitigated positive for me to get behind.

“There you bloody are,” a voice says from the door. It’s Hannah. She’s looking at Kayla. “I thought you said we were going to go down the pub now we know he’s awake.”

“Ephie wanted to see him,” Kayla says without any hint of apology in her tone.

“She finished?”

“Good to see you too,” I say.

Hannah looks at me. “You know you’ve ruined my perfect record of kill shots, don’t you?” She grins.

I point weakly at Ephie. “Technically that was her not me.” I swear I can still remember the bullet striking my skull. I can remember dying. A shiver runs through me.

“Come on then,” says Ephie, “we shouldn’t tire him out.”

“I’m fine,” I protest, but truth be told I am tired now. Kayla and Ephie cross the room. Tabitha though seems to show no sign of leaving, settling her head on Clyde’s shoulder.

“Maybe you’ll end up permanently mute,” she says to him, a smile on her lips. He kisses the top of her head. I don’t think I’ll ever understand them.

Halfway across the room, Kayla pauses. “Hey,” she says to Hannah, still waiting in the doorway, “did you tell him yet?”

“How the hell would I have bloody told him? He’s been conscious for about twenty minutes and you’ve been here the whole time I have.”

Kayla shrugs. “Telepathy?” Off Hannah’s expression, “This job has shown me weirder shite than that.”

“Tell me what?” I say before the moment spirals away from me.

Hannah grimaces slightly. “MI6 turned down my transfer request,” she says. “Looks like I’m stuck with you bunch of dysfunctional bastards.”

And then she’s turning away, and she’s gone, Kayla and Ephie eclipsing her exit, and before I can even process that news they’re all gone.

“How are you feeling?”

I start at the sudden interruption into my thoughts. And it’s Felicity. The one person I was waiting for and I almost didn’t notice here because—

“MI6 turned down Hannah’s transfer request,” I say.

Felicity nods.

“So she’s not going to MI6,” I say.

Another nod.

“She’s staying with MI37.”

Felicity nods a third time, but I know her patience isn’t legendary.

Hannah’s staying. Which means…

“MI6 isn’t taking over MI37,” I say. “They turned Hannah away.”

And Felicity smiles. “Yes,” she says. “I knew that.”

“So I didn’t…” I try to come to terms with this new reality. “I didn’t screw it all up. I didn’t steal your legacy.”

Felicity nods. “Not for lack of trying maybe.”

Oh fuck. Oh Jesus. And how to put it into words. “I am so… I can’t even express…” I look at her, helpless before the limits of my vocabulary. “I fucked up,” I tell her. “So much. And I couldn’t see it. Not until it was too late.” I bite my lip. Realization hits me. “It’s too late, isn’t it?”

Felicity sits down heavily on the bed next to me. “Well,” her smile is a little tight, “you were under a fair amount of pressure at the time.”

“Not enough to excuse what I did,” I say. “I was an ass.”

Felicity’s smile is broader this time. “Not much of a defense attorney, are you?”

“I will make it up to you,” I say. “Even if you don’t take me back. Even if it takes the rest of—”

“Well,” Felicity cuts me off, “you did save the world.” Another smile. “Again.”

I shrug. “I suppose so, yeah.”

“That’s why they denied her transfer request, you know? Because of you.”

I need a moment with that.

Because of me.

“You saved MI37, Arthur,” Felicity says quietly. “You’re the one who put it in danger, but you saved it in pretty spectacular style, I do have to say.” Her fingers curl around mine. She leans in close. “You almost died,” she says. Her voice is a fist of emotion.

“I thought I had to,” I say. “I couldn’t see another way out.”

There are tears in the corners of Felicity’s eyes. They are in mine. “I don’t want to live without you,” she says.

“I didn’t even want to die without you,” I tell her.

She holds me then, pulls my weak body up out of the bed and clutches it to her. We kiss. Long enough that I think it may make Tabitha regret hanging out with Clyde.

When we break, her hair is messed. I push it out of her eyes.

“Can I ask you a question?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Can I please move in with you?”

“Yes.”

It is like light inside of me. A bubble of joy filling me as we kiss again. Longer. Deeper.

Eventually she pulls away. We’re still smiling.

“To new beginnings,” she says.

I smile and nod. “To new beginnings.”

Jonathan Wood is an Englishman in New York. There’s a story in there involving falling in love and flunking out of med school, but in the end it all worked out all right, and, quite frankly, the medical community is far better off without him, so we won’t go into it here. His debut novel,
No Hero
was described by
Publishers Weekly
as “a funny, dark, rip-roaring adventure with a lot of heart, highly recommended for urban fantasy and light science fiction readers alike.”
Barnesandnoble.com
listed it has one of the twenty best paranormal fantasies of the past decade, and Charlaine Harris, author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels described it as “so funny I laughed out loud.” He has continued the Arthur Wallace novels with
Yesterday’s Hero, Anti-Hero
and
Broken Hero
, all available from Titan Books. He can be found online at