There was movement at the back of the car park, where a couple of black vans had been parked. The glare of the sun off their chrome trim was too bright to make out exactly what was going on, but I thought I heard a throbbing snarl rise up from inside as two blacksuits broke free from the pack and walked that way.
‘Hey, stop right there,’ Atilio yelled at them. ‘Don’t think I won’t shoot you in the back, Merc.’ When they ignored her she turned back to the first. ‘You’re gonna be neck deep in crap when my XO finds out about this. Now I’m gonna give you one last chance. Let the kids go. I don’t care who they belong to, chump, right now they’re coming with me.’
‘Oh, it’s not about who they belong to,’ said the blacksuit, his teeth and eyes glinting. ‘It’s about what they know.’
‘What they know?’ Atilio said, and for the first time I saw her gun waver. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Don’t you dare,’ said another guard, this one wearing an armband. He took a step closer, raising a finger towards the blacksuit who’d been talking. ‘You shut your mouth.’
The first blacksuit ignored him. At the far end of the car park the two men were wrestling with the van doors, but I knew they weren’t responsible for the way the vehicles rocked on their wheels.
‘It means they are right, Captain,’ the blacksuit hissed through his smile. ‘We are responsible for what’s going on, we are taking—’
Atilio didn’t so much as pause. She squeezed the trigger and the blacksuit stumbled back, his expression one of surprise, his hand held to his chest and the round hole that had been punched through his shirt. She loosed another two rounds, one hitting less than a centimetre away from the first, the second catching the suit in the forehead. His head snapped back and he flopped to the ground, twitching.
I couldn’t keep track of what happened next, it was too quick. Another of the blacksuits lifted a shotgun and fired, Atilio either rolling out of the way or sent flying by the shot. Simon butted the back of his head into the face of the blacksuit behind him, bringing his hands around like a club to try and finish him off but missing and tipping earthwards like a felled tree. Roke opened fire with the cannon, his aim wild, tearing over everybody’s head, and all the time I heard him shouting:
‘Jesus, what are they? What the hell are they?’
Four shapes were bounding across the car park, teeth like broken glass, their skinless bodies almost glowing red and blue in the fierce sunlight. And those eyes, like two silver pennies, promising nothing but pain.
‘Dogs!’ I found myself screaming as the warden’s pets charged, so much saliva floating from their jaws that they could have been running through surf. My fear suddenly turned to downright panic and I squirmed against my chains, feeling them cut through my skin as I tugged at the metal.
Roke must have recovered his composure because the trail of fire cut down past two blacksuits and caused the lead dog to flip over in an explosion of blood. But the other three were on him in a heartbeat, pouncing over the blacksuits and me before landing on the truck so fast and so hard that it was shunted over the concrete. He had time for one scream, so utterly desperate that it didn’t sound human, then there was nothing but the horrifying sound of tearing flesh.
They’d come after me next, and it was that thought that spurred me on. I gritted my teeth, pulling on my restraints with everything I had. The cuffs were strong, designed for people with my strength. But the chain that linked my arms to my feet obviously wasn’t. I could feel it stretch behind my back, then with a ping one of the links snapped. I eased my cuffed hands under my feet then pushed myself up, black veins still pulsing behind my eyes.
‘Get him,’ boomed one of the suits, pointing at me.
Two blacksuits threw themselves at me, but one flew back before he could make contact, a perfect circle punched into his forehead. I snapped round to see Captain Atilio lying in a puddle of blood beside the truck’s bonnet, her face contorted with pain as she squeezed off the last few rounds from her pistol. She missed the second suit but she got his attention long enough for me to attack.
I squatted down then launched myself, wrapping my cuffed hands around his neck and pulling him towards me, using my momentum to bring my forehead down on his nose. He dropped to the floor, squirming. I couldn’t keep my balance, making use of my fall to angle my knee down on his neck. There was an almighty crack, then he lay still.
Atilio was up, even as the rest of the blacksuits opened fire. She ducked behind the bonnet and ran to the passenger door, diving inside. I saw her hand pull the radio from its rack. One of the blacksuits moved to stop her, sliding round the truck so fast he was nothing but a smudge of black against the sun. But he wasn’t quick enough.
‘Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Under attack by PMCs on Pear Street Car Park. Repeat, PMCs are hostile. Mayday, May—’
Atilio’s voice fell silent, replaced by radio static. I felt arms on me, a blacksuit hoisting me up to my feet and adding a punch to the gut for good measure. When my eyes had stopped watering I saw that Simon had been rounded up too, Zee and Lucy held tight by their throats. Two of the dogs were still feasting on the remains of Roke, their bloodied muzzles rising up every now and again to sniff the air. The third had found its way inside the truck, howling through a wet throat. One last heartbreaking shot echoed from inside the cab, followed by Atilio’s final, indecipherable words, then quiet.
The guards that Atilio had shot weren’t going anywhere, and neither was the one whose neck I’d snapped. Only one of the downed blacksuits was struggling up, and he and the rest were glaring at me, the smiles wiped from their faces. I flashed them a grin, charged by nectar. They should have learned not to underestimate me back in the prison.
‘What now?’ I said to them. ‘You can’t kill me. Your boss needs me alive.’
Those blacksuits who weren’t wearing armbands broke into that same pulsing laughter. The others looked uneasy, although I had no idea why. I realised that the suit was back on the radio, listening intently to somebody on the other end. I remembered Furnace’s words, his invitation to the tower. They wouldn’t kill me, there was no way, not when their master, their creator, was waiting for me to make my choice, waiting for me to choose which side I was fighting on. At least, that’s what I was banking on.
‘Hey, Sawyer,’ said the suit with the radio. ‘It’s for you.’
He approached, holding the handset out so I could hear the voice on the other end. It scraped through the receiver like gravel, terrifyingly familiar.
‘I warned you,’ the warden said, the words like needles in my ears. ‘I warned you that your betrayal would cost you everything. Look at what you have done. Look at the destruction you have wrought upon your own city. And this is just the start. This is your punishment, forever knowing that you were the one responsible for the end of the world.’
‘Yeah yeah,’ I said, my heartbeat so loud I could hear it in my words. ‘And when I’m lying on the operating table being cut to pieces by your freaks I’ll come to regret the error of my ways. Come on, Cross, I’ve heard it all before.’
A burst of static blasted out of the handset, one that might have been a laugh.
‘Oh no, Sawyer, no no no,’ the warden said, and even though I couldn’t see him I knew he was wearing that corpse’s smile. ‘Dr Furnace may want you alive, but I don’t. I’ve wasted enough time on you. Take one more look at the city, Alex, take one more look at the world you have created. Because it will be your last.’
The blacksuit pulled the walkie-talkie away, but not before I heard the warden’s final words fizz from the handset.
‘Kill them,’ he said. ‘Kill them all.’
Changing
I thought they’d taunt me for a while, dangle the inevitability of my death in front of me the way they always did, driven by the sick sense of humour that all blacksuits possessed.
I was wrong.
The closest blacksuit lifted his shotgun, pointed it at my chest and wi
thout so much as a word or a laugh he pulled the trigger.
The world came apart, becoming a blur of sky and concrete and black suits that dissolved into a sickening spiral. I realised I was airborne, and for a crazy moment wondered if I’d managed to shed this grotesque body, if that fistful of lead shot had somehow released me from the warden’s curse, let my spirit soar free into the sunlight.
Then I hit the floor, my flesh wrapping itself around me again, even tighter than before. And this time there was pain, not the itch of the nectar but real agony that scrubbed the inside of my chest like a cheese grater. I tried to lift a hand, to feel the wound the shotgun had opened up, but nothing seemed to work. I had no control. I was the pilot of a sinking ship, my body slowly descending into the depths and absolutely nothing I could do about it.
I heard another shot, the growl of the dogs, a scream. Was it Zee I heard yelling ‘no’ over and over again at the top of his voice? Or was it a blacksuit?
I dropped beneath the waves of unconsciousness, the world vanishing for what might have been a second or an hour. I fought it, trying to stay afloat, trying to keep my head above the darkness. The pain in my chest was pounding harder, and by sheer force of will I managed to open my eyes. Sunlight screwed its way in, but past its glare I could see what they’d done to me.
My arm – the one that was mutating – had taken the worst of the shot. It had almost been torn clean off, just a knot of elbow bone and a few threads of twisted ligament still connecting it. The limb lay on my chest, concealing another ragged hole there which was oozing dirty blood. The impact must have stripped my shackles clean away as well because they were nowhere to be seen. I cried out silently, my lungs refusing to lend precious air to my fear, my disbelief. Nectar was pouring out of the severed artery in my arm, pooling beneath me, trickling away on the sun-baked concrete.
Or was it? I squinted into the light, tried to make sense of what I was seeing. The nectar was being pumped out, but it wasn’t draining away. It looked as if it was forming a black web between the two halves of my arm, as if a spider was hard at work there. The skin of my ruined limb was bulging, swelling out then shrinking, almost like it was breathing.
And inside that nectar I saw fragments of fire, red flecks that burned alongside golden ones under the morning sun.
‘Let the dogs have them,’ I heard a blacksuit shout, followed by more screams. And then another voice, surely a blacksuit, ordering somebody to stop. An argument was breaking out between the guards, but I couldn’t understand the words. I couldn’t make sense of what was going on up there, my eyes refusing to focus on anything but my wound. I could barely even remember why I was lying on the floor. It was as if every single resource in my body was being diverted to my arm, the nectar doing its best to patch up a wound that should have been fatal.
The web was twisting itself into thicker strands, knotting together as though an invisible pair of hands was manipulating it. The black liquid had covered my entire arm now, from my fingers all the way up past the exposed bone to my shoulder. It looked like it had been burned to a crisp, only the sensation was cooling, like a breeze blowing against my skin. Gradually, incredibly, the pain was lessening, settling back into that infuriating, unscratchable itch I knew so well.
I heard a blacksuit swear, a dark silhouette rising above me, casting the world into shadow.
‘Go on, finish him off. Don’t mess it up this time.’
‘No, Dr Furnace forbids it. Get away from there. That’s an order!’
‘Screw your orders.’
I heard the pump of a shotgun, the acrid smell of gunpowder stinging my nostrils. I blinked twice, the world gradually swimming back into shape and revealing the smoking pit of a shotgun barrel like a black hole in my vision.
I was moving before I even knew it, my broken, blackened arm sweeping up from my chest and smacking into the weapon just as the guard pulled the trigger. He obviously hadn’t been expecting me to move, as the gun clattered out of his hands, the shot carving a hole in the concrete inches from my head and making my ear pop into silence.
The suit bent down to reclaim the shotgun, but the same arm – the limb that had almost been severed in two, which should have been nothing but a hunk of meat on the car-park floor – shot out and grabbed him round the neck. I watched, half in horror and half in fascination, as strands of nectar rose from my fist like scorpion tails, darting forward and puncturing the blacksuit’s throat. He tried to pull away but the nectar wouldn’t let him, the claw fastened in his flesh, lodged there until the colour drained from his eyes, turning them from silver to lead.
I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t want to. All I knew was that the strength was filtering back into my body, the nectar’s insatiable bloodlust taking over. My arm seemed to have a mind of its own, tossing the corpse of the blacksuit to one side, raining nectar down onto the floor.
I pushed myself to my feet, and this time when I stretched out a leg the ankle cuffs snapped as if they were made of silk thread. One side of my head was ringing, the other drenched in silence, making me feel even more unbalanced. The world seemed to have slowed down again, the blacksuits lurching towards me like clumsy puppets, firing off shots that were too far away to do any damage. Somewhere in the confusion I noticed that Zee, Simon and Lucy were on the move, heading for the ramp that led down into the car park.
And next to them … Were two blacksuits locked in battle?
Another guard was pulling a dog from the army truck, yelling. Even though I couldn’t hear him I could lip read his words: Kill him, boy. But the dog wasn’t having any of it, its gaze refusing to meet my eyes, its body hunkered, tail between its legs. I watched as it turned on the suit, clamping its jaws down on his arm, then retreated back across the roof, ears flattened to its head. The other two followed with nervous backward glances and I didn’t blame them.
I was changing, and fast.
My arm seemed to have doubled in size in the seconds since I’d found my feet, hanging from my shoulder like a broken branch. My fingers now reached past my knees, still coated with nectar, marbled with those glowing red galaxies, but somehow being fused together into an obsidian blade. I tried to move them, to separate them, to wiggle them, anything. But they were stuck fast.
‘No!’ I heard myself shout, tearing at my arm with my other hand, the good hand. It would have been better if the mutant limb had been lying on the roof, better to spend the rest of my life with only one arm than to see myself turning into one of them.
A blacksuit was suddenly in front of me, moving fast. I flinched, but once again my arm knew what to do, the nectar in my system operating it automatically. It twisted back then thrust forward like a spear, my fingers slicing into the blacksuit’s stomach. His mouth became an ‘O’ of surprise and he looked down to see my arm inside his guts, up to the elbow. He grabbed it, shaking his head in denial.
With a grunt of effort I swung my body round, flicking him away. He slid off my arm, tumbling end over end across the roof and sliding to a halt on his side, sunlight pouring through the ragged hole in his torso. The sight of him there, the knowledge of what I’d done, sat over my thoughts like a weight, a pressure that pushed everything else to one side. I growled, the noise throbbing up my throat, making me smile.
No, I called out again, but this time it was just in my head, lost beneath the rolling swell of a sea of nectar. I scanned the car park, seeing the blacksuits close in, their eyes full of fear. Right now they were all just meat, already dead even though they didn’t know it.
None of them could fight me. I was unstoppable.
I had set off towards the nearest blacksuit when I heard the sound of thunder above me. A shadow threw itself over everything and I teetered round to see a chopper hovering next to the edge of the roof. There was a hiss, like a snake, and four missiles slithered out of the launchers, two from each side, heading right this way. Three sailed over my head, and I lashed out at the fourth, managing to swat it away like a f
ly. It darted off on a tangent, hitting the vans on the other side of the roof and detonating in a fireball the size of a house. The floor shook as the three other missiles found a target, a fistful of heat and noise catapulting me over the concrete.
Something was cutting through the nectar, and I realised it was fear. The air was on fire, bringing a scalding pain with each breath. In every direction was heat and smoke, and above it all the relentless buzz of the chopper. There was another hiss, two more white trails blasting overhead and causing another wave of destruction. The flames around me danced in the shock wave, curling up and splashing down like I was swimming in a burning ocean. If I didn’t move now then I’d be cooked alive.
But there was nowhere to go.
I panicked, throwing my huge arm over my face. I’d have to run for it, into the flames. I couldn’t even keep my eyes open, the force of the heat drying them out, hot enough to make my eyelashes wither.
I started running, keeping my eyes closed, my hand up. I bumped into something soft, sending it flying. Then everything went white, a light so fierce it seemed to ring in my ears. My trainers stuck, melting on the concrete, but I kept running, not breathing, not looking, not feeling, only throwing one foot in front of the other.
I struck a wall, momentum flipping me over. Then I was falling. I hit something solid, too soon to be the street below. I risked opening my eyes, seeing that I’d landed on the ramp. Flames had taken hold of my clothes, burning off the smiley face on what was left of my hoodie, and I patted them out as I got to my feet.
Above me, through the gap, it looked as if the heavens were burning, and I retreated down the ramp into the glorious darkness of the level below. I hurdled the barrier down onto the next floor, and again, dropping level by level until the carnage was just a whisper overhead. Eight floors later and I was back on solid ground, the car park’s lights now off and a constant rain of dust drifting from the steel rafters.