The Suicide Exhibition: The Never War (Never War 1) (34 page)

‘Where is the Ubermensch this man is linked to?’ Guy wondered.

‘We don’t know. London somewhere. But how he got there from the burial site in France where he was discovered, we have no idea. Do you?’

Davenport gave a short laugh. ‘Modesty forbids.’

‘I see.’ Hoffman took another completed drawing – the office door was swinging open. He numbered it and placed it on the pile. ‘We should go.’

‘Is this what you wanted us to see?’ Davenport asked.

‘Part of it. Not the most important part.’

‘You coming?’ Guy asked Davenport, who was still standing beside Number Nine. He was staring down at the next drawing.

‘I think you should look at this,’ he said.

‘Why – what is it?’

Guy could feel the blood draining from his face as Davenport replied:

‘He’s drawing a woman. And I think it’s Sarah.’

THE NEW PICTURE
showed a view across the desk. Sitting on the other side was a woman. It was unmistakably Sarah Diamond.

‘You know her?’ Hoffman asked.

‘Where the hell is she?’ Guy said. ‘What’s she doing?’

‘More to the point, what can
we
do?’ Davenport demanded. He turned to Hoffman. ‘Well?’

Hoffman shook his head. ‘Nothing. We can watch, but there is no way that we’ve found to communicate or interfere.’

Hoffman removed the page as soon as it was complete. Immediately, Number Nine was drawing again. A closer view. Sarah’s face – the thin features, the slight curl to her collar-length hair… But her expression was contorted, her mouth open in a cry or a gasp.

They watched in silent horror as the pencil moved down from the face. To the neck. Drawing the hands clasped round Sarah’s throat. Throttling the life from her.

She was desperate to talk, to tell someone about Station Z and all that had happened over the past few months. But as she started her story, something about Jeff made her uneasy. He was charming, attentive, sympathetic. But…

‘Where’s Andrew?’ she asked.

‘He’ll be here shortly.’

‘I’ve never told anyone about these things before.’ Not that she had said anything much yet – just that there were unidentified traces showing up on RADAR.

Jeff nodded amicably. ‘Is that a fact?’

The way he said it made her even more nervous. The same intonation as Andrew Whitman used. The same phrase. In fact, now she thought about it, the whole way he spoke, right down to his accent, was very similar.

Sarah shifted on the chair. Her foot nudged against the leg of the desk, and she drew it back, glancing down.

It was all she could do to keep from leaping to her feet. She struggled to keep her expression neutral, looking straight back up again. Had he seen her reaction?

The floor was bare boards. No rug or carpet. And across the floorboards a dark stain was spreading slowly from under the desk. Viscous, and blood red.

‘Where
is
Andrew?’ Her voice was strung out with nerves.

Jeff smiled. His pale lips seemed to crack as they drew back from discoloured, broken teeth.

‘I think you know where he is.’ Jeff got slowly to his feet. ‘Now, you were about to tell me everything.’

Sarah stood up too, backing away from the desk towards the door. ‘Not a chance,’ she murmured. She turned to run.

But the man was already moving, blocking her path to the door. He grabbed her, shoving her across the desk, hands gripping her throat, forcing her back. She gasped for breath as his thumbs bit into her windpipe. Tore at his hands, scratching and scraping and digging in her nails. But the grip didn’t loosen. She scrabbled behind her on the desk top, hands searching for something – anything – to use as a weapon. He forced her down across the desk.

Sarah managed to twist her head. It was over the back of the desk, so she was looking down at the floor behind. At Andrew Whitman’s body bleeding out across the wooden boards. The thin blade of a letter-opener had pierced his chest, ornate gilded handle projecting upwards.

Her fingers grazed the top of the handle. Couldn’t reach.
Sarah pushed herself back across the desk, the man’s hands still tight round her throat. His face was close to hers. She could see the thin maze of lines etched across his skin, like ancient cracked porcelain. The emptiness of the deep, dark eyes. Misting over as her brain was starved of oxygen.

Further back. The musty stench of death seemed to emanate from the Ubermensch as he bore down on her, his weight pressing her to the top of the desk. Stretching down, her hand finally grasped the thin knife, pulling it free with an unpleasant sucking noise. She twisted her hand as she jabbed upwards, blade first.

The grip slackened, for just a moment. For just long enough to enable Sarah to push herself backwards again. The bulk of her weight was over the edge of the desk and she fell – breaking free finally from the creature’s grip.

She crashed to the floor, landing half across Whitman’s body. Her palm pressed down on his chest, blood oozing half-clotted between her fingers. She screamed, throat already burning and sore. Rolled off the cooling corpse, and staggered to her feet.

The image showed Sarah from above, staring up wide-eyed at her attacker. A single drop of red splashed to the middle of the white sheet. It landed on Sarah’s neck, close to the hands grasped round it, blotting into the paper.

Number Nine was crying blood. A thin trickle from his left eye, welling up and dripping as he drew. Then the whole eyeball exploded. Gelatinous debris spattered across the picture followed by a gush of blood.

Guy took a step back. Davenport swore. Hoffman seemed unperturbed.

‘Perhaps your friend will be all right. She is fighting back.’

‘What the hell just happened?’ Davenport demanded.

Number Nine kept drawing, the pencil moving through blood and flesh.

‘The affinity between the viewer and the Ubermensch is more than just communication,’ Hoffman said. ‘They are linked somehow. Physically.’

Guy stared at the bloodied, empty socket. Blood was congealing round the edges already. ‘You mean, whatever happens to the Ubermensch is also visited upon this poor man?’

‘It seems so.’ Hoffman carefully pulled the stained sheet of paper across the table. Number Nine kept drawing, oblivious, as Hoffman folded it. He kept the grisly contents inside, and dropped the paper into the nearest sconce of burning oil. At once the sickly-sweet smell of burning tissue filled the air.

‘An eye for an eye,’ Davenport murmured.

Sarah didn’t look back until she reached the door. She pulled it open, glancing over her shoulder as she fled into the corridor outside.

The Ubermensch was coming across the room. The letter-opener jutted out from its left eye. It reached up, grasped the handle and pulled it out. There was no blood. Just an empty hole – darkness. Then thin orange filaments licked out from the eye socket, feeling their way round the Ubermensch’s cheek as if seeking for air.

Sarah pulled the door shut behind her and ran. She needed to get out, needed air. There was a fire escape through the door at the end of the corridor – she’d used it before when she’d wanted to leave quickly and unseen.

The cold chill of the outside air was like a knife after the warmth of the embassy. Her coat was still over the back of the chair in Whitman’s office. The fire escape was attached to the back of the building, little more than an iron ladder with a small platform at each floor level. She clambered down, fast as she could, hands almost freezing to the cold metal.

Above her another figure stepped out onto the ladder and started down. It moved quickly and easily, with none of the awkwardness of the creature in the burial chamber. Still a dozen feet off the ground, Sarah jumped. She kept hold of the sides of the ladder, letting the handrail slip through as she fell, slowing her descent. The cold of the metal was burning now, tearing the skin from her hands.

The impact jarred right up through her legs as she hit the ground. One ankle buckled. She ignored the pain and ran.

The image was blurred and vague. It showed Sarah’s back as she ran. As the Ubermensch pursued her down a narrow alleyway.

‘Perhaps it’s getting dark,’ Guy said.

‘It only has one eye,’ Hoffman said. ‘This is how it sees now.’

‘That should help Sarah escape,’ Davenport said.

‘I wouldn’t put money on it,’ Hoffman told him. ‘Even severe injuries don’t slow them down for long.’

A similar image. But closer to Sarah now. Her terrified face looking back as she ran.

There was a road at the end of the alley. There would be people. She could lose herself amongst them. Just round the next corner. Sarah glanced back – the Ubermensch was gaining on her. But she’d make it, she was far enough ahead. She reached the corner.

And the world changed.

The wall down the side of the alley was gone, bitten off abruptly. Where there had been a busy street, there was nothing. An empty wasteland of rubble scattered over mud. The ground dipped unevenly into the crater the bomb had left.

On the other side, the remains of a shattered building stood precariously against the darkening sky. Joists from the floors stuck out like enormous broken matchsticks. The wall of an upper storey protruded awkwardly over the empty space below, sagging under its own weight.

There was a road on the other side of the building. If she could get there, get through the ruins, she might still be safe. Sarah slipped and slid down the incline. She didn’t dare look back. She knew that if she did she would see the Ubermensch gaining on her, orange tendrils like lichen erupting from the empty eye socket and spreading across one side of its face.

Her ankle caught the edge of a blackened brick and gave
way, pitching her forwards. She landed painfully, hardly noticing that the ground where she fell was the front of the building, laid out where it had fallen. Almost intact.

She dragged herself to her feet and staggered on, foot shattering through a window. Broken glass scythed into her shin and calf. Warm blood was running down her leg. Thank God she hadn’t bothered with stockings, she thought – they’d be ruined. She gritted her teeth against the pain, limping on, cursing how mundane her anxieties were compared with the horror stalking after her.

She did look back. She had to know how close he was.

There was no one there.

Crying tears of relief as well as pain, she staggered to the edge of the crater and reached the shelter of the building. Where had the creature gone? Had it given up? Looking back across the bomb site, drawing in painful ragged breaths and rubbing her bruised neck, she could see that the edge of the crater was level. The paving was still there. If she’d been less panicked, less scared for her life, she’d have realised it was quicker to skirt round the edge of the crater than try to get across the middle of it, negotiating the uneven ground and debris.

With that realisation came another. Slowly, she turned. She hardly dared look. Hardly dared to hope she might be wrong.

A figure stepped out of the shadow of the bombed-out building, right behind Sarah. A single eye stared back at her, the other a mass of curling orange tentacles.

‘Oh no,’ Guy breathed as the drawing took shape.

In the background, Sarah – hand pressed to her mouth in terror. In front of her, a black circle – the end of a tube… A barrel. A gun, pointing straight at them out of the paper.

‘It’s going to shoot her.’

THE SOUND OF
the gunshot echoed off the ruined building. The bullet impacted on the chest, tearing its way through flesh and bone.

Sarah staggered back, light-headed and confused. The man had come from nowhere, stepping between her and the Ubermensch and firing at point-blank range into the creature. He must have followed it round the crater.

The Ubermensch was knocked backwards by the shot, crashing into the end of a broken wall. Its chest was torn open, orange and red spattering out – blood and tendrils and the pale glint of exposed bone.

‘That won’t stop it!’ Sarah heard herself shouting. She grabbed the man’s arm. ‘We have to get away from here.’

She had recognised his thinning red hair, but only when she saw his face did she realise it was Alban, the MI5 man.

‘What the hell is that?’ Alban gasped.

The creature was already pulling itself upright again. Already coming back at them.

‘You can’t kill it,’ Sarah told him as they backed slowly away. ‘It isn’t really alive.’

Number Nine cried out, thrown back by the invisible impact. He fell backwards, and lay still for a moment before hauling himself back to his feet, pencil twitching in his hand as if he
was still drawing in the air. The front of his gown was plastered in sudden blood. Then the man slumped down again. Pencil again met paper.

‘The gun was pointing
at
him,’ Davenport realised. ‘Sarah may be all right.’

‘For now,’ Guy agreed grimly.

Number Nine gave a grunt of pain, his head knocked suddenly sideways. Blood trickled from his ear.

‘What the hell’s happening?’ Guy wondered.

The drawing was erratic, a confused mess of what might be rubble – fallen stone, shattered wood, and broken bricks.

She hurled the broken brick as hard as she could. It caught the Ubermensch on the side of the head, glancing off. The creature tilted its head to one side as it stared back at Sarah.

Alban fired again. The bullet hit the upper arm, going right through and ricocheting off the brickwork of a broken wall. The Ubermensch barely slowed, running at the two of them across the broken ground.

Blood was seeping from Number Nine’s shoulder, as if from a bullet wound. His breathing was ragged. The drawing barely more than scratches across the paper.

‘It’s killing him,’ Guy said. It was horrific to watch.

‘He won’t die unless the Ubermensch is destroyed,’ Hoffman said.

‘Surely he can’t go on,’ Davenport said.

‘They heal. But it takes time. There is pain.’

‘No,’ Guy decided. ‘He can’t even draw, it’s inhuman to let him suffer like this.’

‘You want me to put him out of the pain?’ Hoffman asked. ‘I can shoot him. It might even kill him.’ He seemed indifferent.