Long Division (32 page)

I cleared my throat. ‘Did you hear what Dr Baker said?’

He shifted, nosing my hip gently, making my muscles go a little tighter. ‘When?’

He was irritatingly cagey now. I tried to catch his eye. ‘After Slater. He and I talked. You seemed a bit…out of it. Did you hear any of it?’

Part of me hoped he had, so I wouldn’t have to tell him. But, to be honest, I wasn’t sure I was going to. Did he need to know what was coming? I wasn’t convinced it was something I should even bother with disclosing. He was dying after all. Once his last mission was complete, that bloody thing in his head was going to kill him. And for the rest of us? Well, we were already screwed. My headache told me that much. Did he really need to know—or care about what would happen?

James didn’t answer. He stared past me. One of his arms slipped over my stomach to hook around my hip. I sighed and brought a hand to the side of his face, cupping his head, where I supposed the tumour was. The action invited his cheek to tilt towards me and his eyes closed. I felt his shoulders, pressed against my thigh, relax.

‘What now?’ he asked me softly, sleepily.

I turned my attention from him for a moment to look at the clock on the wall. It was well after midnight. I sighed. ‘Nothing. Now we rest.’ It was, after all, all we could do.

He took in a deep breath. ‘That’s all I want.’

I put my hands on his shoulders and attempted to ease him up. He moaned unhappily at the disturbance. ‘Ah-ah, none of that. No good sleeping on the sofa. Come on, let’s get to bed.’

He obediently trailed after me, stumbling drunkenly. I turned back to him just as he hit the wall. He really wasn’t well off at all. I touched his elbow in an attempt to steady him, when my eyes fell to the computer sitting just on the desk in the office. Its screen was going mad: all lines and jumping. I stared at it in distant fascination and stepped closer, inadvertently pulling James with me.

‘What?’

My first thought was that someone was hacking us. But when the machine started to spark and spit with current. I jumped back in alarm.

‘Bloody hell!’

I shot a look to James. He was still swaying, barely conscious. The naked light above my head went to flickering. And then everything was. Everything electrical went blinking in and out; sparking, humming. I ducked as a shower of sparks rained down, and it was then I realised: it was
James.
James was doing this. When I turned to face him, I knew I was right. He wasn’t there, not really, not fully. All his muscles were jumping, twitching. How he managed to stay upright was beyond me.

It was like a seizure. An electrical seizure.

I held his shoulders, did my best to soothe him; to get him away from all of this before he managed to set our flat on fire. I pushed him down the hall, electrical outlets spouting sparks as we went and didn’t stop till I’d settled him back into the familiar embrace of his bed. For a moment longer I could hear everything going mental, and then, with a sigh from James, it stopped.

I paused for a moment in the dark, breathing hard, assessing if it was for certain done, and then went on a run-through of the flat, examining every gadget, trying to assure myself that nothing was melting down. I could smell no smoke.

For a long time I stood there in the stillness of the gloomy sitting room. Again faced with something new. Something terrifying. How much worse could it possibly get?

When I came back to him, he was asleep, or very nearly. As I slid out of my dressing robe I kept my eye on him. Was he capable of something like that in his sleep? If he had a fit…No. I shook the image of Slater’s last moments from my head. I couldn’t start worrying now.

I lay down with a groan. My entire body ached. I hadn’t taken note of it till now but it was certainly obvious. James, in his sleep, must have sensed me, for he rolled in to my side and his head nestled against my heart. I slowly slid an arm around him and attempted to get comfortable. No, he would do nothing to me.

There was no chance of me sleeping, of course, not after what I’d just seen. All the new information tumbled about in my head like clothes in the wash. It was a bleak glimpse into the future. And James was more unpredictable than ever.

I listened to his breathing. It would be easy to just lie down and give up. We’d been leaning towards that more and more these days, it felt like. And now the fight was over. Fox was dead, James had a tumour—and the rest of the world was not so far behind. If it didn’t kill us all, life wouldn’t be worth living, anyway.

The light from the InVizion tower glowed round the edges of the drapes. That was the centre of it all. Whatever evils it had stored on the memory banks of its computers, whatever signals would be sent from the aerials, it would all come from there. All of the research had to be there. Everything was. I wasn’t so foolish to believe they didn’t have other storage, other places, but if Fox could hack it, why couldn’t we?

I swallowed. If only there was a way to break in. Destroy it all! Of course that was just wishful thinking…

James stirred against me, breathed deeply.

A spike of idea ripped through me, making me so excited I almost jerked upright.

James!

He had the power. He could do it.

I cast my gaze down to him slumbering peacefully against my chest; not a care. I wished I could have that calm. But I knew I’d not be sleeping tonight. Tonight I had to think.

I woke early; James was still asleep. He had since moved from my side and lay curled in a miserable ball.

After I checked his breathing, I left him where he was and I went straight to make myself a coffee, before settling in a chair with my computer. It had survived the electrical onslaught of last night—thankfully—it had been far enough away from James, I supposed. Yet my files were out of places, sorted thoroughly, organised to fit James’s tastes.

Once the device was up and running I started a search for the InVizion tower. A plethora of images filled the screen. I scrolled through them, scanning for anything that looked relatively like schematics. I wasn’t very surprised when I didn’t find any.

My eyes flicked to the window, with its perfect view of the tower, now shrouded in the hazy morning air. After what I’d seen last night, James did not need to be physically touching a device to make it go haywire. And he hadn’t even been
trying
last night. What could he do if he focused that…energy he had on a specific target?

I could see it in my mind; picture it clear as a film: James standing before the tower, arms outstretched, the entire, massive building sparking, leaning, collapsing under his influence; everything inside going up in smoke. It sent a comfortable flutter through my belly. Perhaps a little dramatic, but I was desperate for some sort of salvation and James, just as he always had been, seemed to be my saviour.

I didn’t hear him enter the room till he—without invitation—dropped himself into my lap. I had to lurch my hand away to save myself from being scalded by my coffee.

‘James!’

He didn’t speak, just made himself more at home. His head tilted till it was against my shoulder and I huffed my breath in irritation, but I couldn’t really deny him. Not with what I was planning on asking.

It was remarkably easy to make myself comfortable. The soothing warmth of being close to him slowly flooded my body. It was almost a physical ache of pain. I wanted him nearer. I wanted to pull him to me as tightly as possible, melt into him, if I could. I allowed myself, instead, to slide my hand up into his hair and stroked my fingers through it slowly.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked after a quiet minute.

He didn’t answer. He was staring at some fixed point on the wall. When stuck like this I found it strange he’d suddenly decided he needed me.

‘James, are you in pain?’

He blinked slowly with owl-eyes. ‘I’m fine.’

I frowned and touched his face, pulling his head round. He seemed tired. The rings under his eyes were a deep purple, like bruises, and his eyelids drooped. There was a sallowness to him I hadn’t noticed before. At the rapid rate he was declining, I didn’t see how the final phase could be very far away.

‘You set off quite an electrical storm last night.’

He frowned, pained. ‘Hmm? What?’

I cleared my throat. ‘Don’t remember? You sent all of the equipment in the house sparking and crashing. I don’t think your computer survived. Sorry.’

James scowled and slid his eyes over to my machine.

‘Mine was out of the danger zone,’ I said quickly. I studied him. ‘So you don’t remember doing that?’

He pressed several long fingers to his temple and massaged impatiently. ‘No. I don’t know. You think I’d do that on purpose?’

I couldn’t tell if it was an honest question or sarcasm. I had to assume the first.

‘No,’ I said quietly. ‘No. I don’t think you would.’ I shifted and tried to meet his eyes. ‘But…if you wanted to, I believe you could do.’

He paused for a very long time, frowning. ‘Why,’ he spoke very slowly, ‘would I want to do that intentionally?’

I became aware of the fact my heart was thudding faster with growing excitement. I turned my gaze to the window, to the tower beyond, shining ghostly in the fog. ‘If it would stop InVizion?’

He let out a derisive snort and gave me a look. ‘How exactly do you propose that?’

I pointed to the tower and his eyes followed. He stared at it for a very long time before he started to shake his head. I broke over him. ‘Wait, just listen to me. I’ve been thinking about it all night. You have power, James. If you could do all of that without even thinking about it, then I can only imagine what you could accomplish if you’re concentrating—’

He was starting to withdraw from me. His arms pulled against his chest and he began to curl up into a ball in my lap, expression closing off. A well of frustration bubbled up in me at that. I’d been fixating over this since it had first come to me and he wouldn’t even listen!

‘You know you can do something about it, James. And I know, too! I don’t know how much power you have, obviously. But I think you have an idea about it, and I think you don’t want to let on.’ I wasn’t sure if he could hear me, but he was scowling in displeasure. ‘Look, if you’d just think about it. Go down there with me and have a look. I’m not saying do anything stupid but—’

He fixed me with a stare. ‘You’re saying I should destroy all of their equipment somehow, aren’t you? You think I can just waltz down there and look at the building and use my “magical powers” to somehow “break” their tower.’

His use of childish phrases was enough of a clue to just how irritated he was. I wasn’t backing down, though. Not from this. ‘Won’t you just think about it? Just go down there with me and see!’

He let out a noise that was just about as close to a snarl as one could manage. ‘See? See what?’

I gript his hips firmly. ‘I don’t know! If you feel anything! If you can do anything! Just go with me and do nothing at all!’

He shook his head, eyes closed. He was starting to stress. I’d pushed him too far, damn it. He’d have some sort of anxiety attack and I’d be stuck with nothing and feeling guilty. His breathing was coming faster, in choking breaths it hurt to hear.

‘Okay, easy, easy.’ I pulled his head to my chest, irritated. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up. You don’t have to do anything. Promise.’

He didn’t move, but thankfully managed to get his breathing in order. I bent my head and kissed that mop of red curls. It might have calmed me more than I’d intended, so I didn’t stop. I let my fingers run through his hair; watched it flop messily about, and planted soft kisses where I could along his brow, temple, top of his head. I wanted him to know I wasn’t cross, though I was—a bit. I wanted him to know that he could be safe here, in my arms.

Perhaps it had been useless to try. I’d suggested it and he’d refused. There wasn’t much more I could do besides that. Nothing but wait. I just wished I knew how much time we had left.

When James had finally gone still in my arms I leant back over to my computer and pulled up the last batch of messages Fox had sent before he’d snuffed it. The ones he’d been in such a state about. I’d been over them till my eyes blurred, but out of desperation I returned. They’d no doubt had more meetings since those had been sent. I’d no doubt missed new information discussing the final phase…but…all of this had to have been planned, right? And now I knew about the tumours, and Baker, and James and all of it. The bastards always spoke in code but I felt enlightened. I knew their end game. I just didn’t know the date. That’s all I needed to find. And surely,
surely
they had spoken of it more than once.

The first half was all numbers and graphs. It was what Fox had wanted James to translate so badly and I had a sick feeling it had to do with his demise. Well, sod all I could do about that so, on to the next page.

Reading through the dialogue was like reading one of those papers where you placed random words in to create a nonsense story. Things would go normally, till a completely out of place sentence or adjective or noun threw me off completely. I did my best to try and guess what meant what, and sometimes I thought I was right.