Broken Hero Read online

  It stands directly above me. It holds the beam up high.

  And then it brings it down.

  3

  This is far from the first time I’ve been in a life-threatening position. My whole job description at MI37 seems to largely involve being more carefree with my will to live than most people consider healthy.

  Actually, one time I really did die. Well, I might not have done. I got a do-over. Maybe. I’m not really sure how parallel timelines work. But it didn’t stick. Hence my being here, watching my life expectancy shorten dramatically.

  And the thing about repeatedly exposing yourself to terrifying, life-threatening danger—you sort of get used to it. Once you’ve crash-landed one mangled aircraft in an irradiated ghost town, you’ve crash-landed a hundred mangled aircraft in a hundred irradiated ghost towns. I don’t think it’s really a healthy adaptation—in a very literal sense, actually—but I suppose it’s a natural one. There’s probably even a biochemical reason for it involving the desensitization of adrenaline receptors in the body, or something similar. I imagine Clyde could go on about it at great length.

  So, at this point, when death is more proximal than I’d like it to be, I do sort of expect to find myself shrugging, saying “Oh bollocks, not again,” and fighting my way free.

  So I fight. My legs scramble for purchase on the floor. My arms scramble for anything to hang onto, to drag myself away.

  And I don’t find anything.

  I’m caught completely flat-footed. My weight is wrong, and I am too slow, and the club is coming down just too fast.

  I am helpless.

  And sitting on my arse on the bar floor I am suddenly, horribly struck by the inevitability of my own death.

  It will not be in an attempt to save the world. It will not be sacrificing myself for a noble goal. It will not have great philosophical meaning that will resonate through the lives of friends and strangers alike. It will simply be short, blunt, and very, very messy.

  The club descends, adrenaline dragging the moment out in slow motion. I can see the grain of the wood, the jagged splinters. I can see the oil in the knuckles of the robot’s hand. I can see each individual lens of glass on its large eyes.

  My stomach is a knot. I think I’d vomit if I had the time, but there isn’t. Maybe that’s a good thing. No one wants to be found dead in a pile of his own yak.

  They say your life is meant to flash before your eyes at times like these. I wish it did. I could really use the distraction.

  Instead I am acutely aware of the club. Of my fingers scrabbling at the smooth floorboards, my feet drumming up and down in a panicked, senseless frenzy. I can feel the wind of the club descending. A foot away. Six inches. Five. Four.

  I am going to die.

  Three.

  Really, genuinely going to die.

  Two.

  And it’s probably going to hurt very badly.

  One.

  4

  There is a sound like trains colliding. Like the world ending. And I don’t remember it being this noisy last time I died. And then I think, well, if Descartes was right… I am thinking, so I must be being. Or to put it another way, I am not being dead.

  I realize I have closed my eyes. I could not quite stare death in the face. I open them.

  The robot is not there. The club is not there. Not quite.

  Adrenaline still has me clenched in its crushing grip. Time is ducking under the usual rules. The robot is in midair. The club is whipping sideways, sliding away from me, from the side of my ear, the distance increasing. Its ruined leg is spinning free from its body. There is a long, protracted, “Naaaaaaa!” echoing out of its chittering mouth.

  I sit. I watch it fly away, collapse. There is an enormous, ruinous boom of sound. It slaps me like I’m a misbehaving child.

  Clyde. Clyde at the very last possible moment. Pulling power out of some other reality’s proverbial arse. Clyde saving me.

  And then I vomit. All over the bartender, unfortunately. He’s still not really together enough to object. And he is a bartender. This can’t be the first time it’s happened to him.

  From the tangled ball of metal comes a jerking, clicking voice. “Gooten ma ma ma.”

  And suddenly all my fear, all my terror, is sublimated. It is rage, pure and blinding. I am dragging myself to my feet, heaving myself up on the bar, with arms that feel stiff and useless, with hands and fingers that are shaking, with a shoulder that screams in pain, and goddamn this fucking piece of scrap metal. Fuck it straight to hell.

  My pistol is still in my hand. I advance, through billowing clouds of dust, stumbling over rubble. I hold the gun out in front of me, clenched in a death grip, my knuckles white. Behind me I can hear Felicity calling my name, but it’s dim, something heard through water. I have something to take care of before I fully come back to the world.

  The shadow of the robot resolves through the cloud of devastation. It is tattered and twitching. Its arm stump jerks through a repeating cycle of movements. Its eyes snap back and forth.

  “Ma. Ma. Ma. Ma,” it repeats over and over, hard and guttural. The exposed gears in its head stop and start.

  I point my pistol.

  “Fuck you.”

  I empty what’s left of the magazine into its head. Its eyes shatter. Gears spin away. Metal mangles. It stops jerking, lies still.

  And just for good measure I vomit again, all over the bloody thing. Bloody deserves it.

  I stand there for a moment, staring at the metal corpse. Trying to work out where my head’s at. Trying to find my way back to baseline. But all I can see is that club descending over and over. All I can think about is that feeling of powerlessness. It’s all I can do to stop myself from loading a new magazine and shooting the thing some more.

  “Arthur!” A hand grabs my arm. Felicity’s. She breaks through my fog. She fixes me with a stare, looks deep, searching to see if I’m OK. I don’t think I am.

  “We have to get out of here,” she says.

  To emphasize her point, half the ceiling collapses.

  I hack and cough as dust swallows us. I try to get my bearings. I want to run. I want to scream. I want to fight. I don’t know what I want. I try to hang onto the last scraps of my professionalism.

  “The bartender,” I manage when I stop hacking. “We have to—”

  “Together.”

  It’s hard to find the bar in the fog, but the moaning ceiling adds urgency. “Here!” Felicity yells. We both grab an arm. It takes a lot, but he moves.

  And I want to say something, to explain how wrong this all feels, how I can’t seem to get my breathing under control, and how I just want to stop and curl up, and have this all go away, but I can’t. I have to save this man. I have to not die. I have to not die. God, I can’t, I can’t…

  Sunlight, bright and sharp. Abruptly we are out of the nightmare of the pub, out on a street in a little Highland village, with the wind cutting through, and the sound of cattle lowing to each other somewhere in the distance. We are in reality. We are safe.

  Behind me, the pub gives one final groan, and caves to the ground.

  5

  “My feckin’ sword!” Kayla stands and stares at the pile of rubble that used to be a drinking establishment. “Someone please tell me you got my feckin’ sword out of there.”

  Nobody answers. Felicity is too busy coughing up a lungful of plaster dust. Clyde and Tabitha are knelt beside each other, each repeatedly checking to ensure the other is OK. The crowd of innocent… well, mostly innocent bystanders stares and tries to find words for their bewilderment.

  And I… I just… God, I don’t know. I can’t look behind me. I can’t look back at that place. The robot’s club didn’t make contact with my skull but it still feels like something has been knocked seriously out of alignment. I’m having trouble catching my breathing—

  The club falling. Coming to kill me. And there’s nothing I can do.

  I shake my head, try to snap out of thi
s, slow the rise and fall of my chest. We’re still in the field. I’m still in charge. And that really is a crowd of bystanders for once.

  I get enough air in to shout, “Someone call 999!” I’m sure we got everyone out, but this has to follow the script of confusion. Generally the British government is of the opinion that people shouldn’t know that the world is actually terrifyingly strange, and we try to keep things like this hushed up.

  “Did you see that?” I hear someone say. Not a good start.

  I walk toward Felicity, as steadily as I am able—

  —the club, falling, inevitable—

  —take a breath and say loudly, “Must have been a gas leak. I was seeing the weirdest stuff before it blew.” It’s a horrible lie, but sometimes a horrible lie is all it really takes. Something for people to cling to as reality fractures.

  I reach Felicity, put a hand on her shoulder. She’s wiping at the dust caked beneath her nostrils. Her suit is torn, her hair matted. It basically makes her look like a badass.

  “You OK?” I ask.

  “I think so.” She nods. “You?”

  I don’t want to lie to Felicity so I ignore that question. “We still have to get out of here,” I say instead. “Before local law enforcement shows up and we have to explain things.”

  She nods again. “Good thought. Go get Kayla. I’ll handle Tabitha and Clyde.”

  I steel myself, then look back at the building. For a moment the world seems to quaver.

  I could be in there. I could be under that.

  My breathing pattern threatens to slip away from me again. I yank hard on my own reins and muscle the rising bubble of panic back down again.

  Kayla is waist deep in rubble, flinging massive chunks of masonry left and right, and shouting curses at the world.

  As casually as I’m able I ask, “Can I do Clyde and Tabitha?”

  “You really want to step in sexual tension so thick you’ll have to wash it off your clothes later?”

  I glance over at the pair. They kneel close to each other. Their hands seem to move without conscious will, tentatively reaching out and then pulling back. Both look deathly worried for the other, but then casually feign indifference whenever their own health is inquired after.

  Tabitha and Clyde’s relationship has more history than some small European countries. In the game of on-again/off-again, they’ve been off for about eleven months, but that looks likely to change soon.

  I do the mental math. Post traumatic stress disorder or watch Clyde and Tabitha end their dry spell right in front of me.

  “OK,” I say, “I’ll take Kayla.”

  I approach her, dodging the occasional flung bricks. They whistle past my head, threatening the sound barrier, then detonate against buildings on the far side of the road.

  “Erm—” I clear my throat. “Kayla?”

  She pauses from her work, looks up at me. I try to work out if I could dodge a rock if she chose to fling it directly at me. I suspect not.

  “We were thinking that—” I pause, swallow. I am field lead, damnit. Just because Kayla could break me like a twig…

  Except it’s not really her death stare that’s making my palms sweat. It’s the spar of wood jutting out of the rubble next to her.

  Whistling down. Five. Four. Three—

  I swallow again. “We’re leaving,” I say.

  Kayla turns away from me, grabs something deep in the pit she’s excavated.

  “Kayla,” I say, trying to sound as if I’ve lost my patience and not as if I’m desperate to get away.

  She heaves, muscles bunch. The rubble shifts, some deep tectonic movement. Then with a grunt, she straightens, arms wrenching, and something like half the pub’s front wall comes up with her. She flips it away. It comes down with a crash that makes me jump despite myself.

  So much for keeping a low bloody profile.

  Kayla stoops again, plucks something out of the cloud of dust.

  It gleams silver. She examines her sword’s blade.

  “Just so you know,” she says conversationally, “if the blade’s nicked, I’m going to sharpen it on your feckin’ spine.”

  That, at least, is a threat I can deal with without the fear overcoming me. “Oh,” I say, “just come on.”

  LATER, ON A TRAIN HEADING BACK TO OXFORD

  I focus on the steady clack of the train wheels on the track. The shuddering rhythms of the train car. I’m actually grateful for the post-adrenaline exhaustion. It’s stopping me from going too deep into the task of mentally cataloging all the times this job has almost killed me.

  My hands are still shaking, and my mind cannot stop poking the wound in my psyche, the sudden introduction of fear. The words “The Future” hang in my mind and suddenly feel elusive. This train has a destination but where the hell am I heading?

  I turn to Felicity. “You know,” I say as conversationally as I can manage, “no one ever discussed MI37’s retirement policy with me.”

  “Mmm?” She rolls her head toward mine, shrugs.

  “I mean,” I plow on, “how many people actually retire from MI37?” I can’t think of one story I know that involves a grizzled MI37 veteran. I’d ask her where they all went, except I’m suddenly sure the answer is a graveyard.

  Felicity gives me another shrug, and accompanies it with a puzzled look. “Arthur, I’m the oldest member of MI37, and I’m forty-three, I don’t think you have to worry about your state pension yet.”

  Not a completely reassuring answer all told.

  Across the aisle from us, Clyde is deep in conversation with Tabitha. Kayla sits at the far end of the car, ignoring us all. Besides MI37, the car’s only other occupants are a few tired-looking men in suits, and the one requisite twenty-something with a beard, backpack, and inability to wear clothes that have been washed any time this month.

  “But,” Felicity rolls on, oblivious to my internal floundering, “if we’re on the topic of the future, there is something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

  The future. Something in my gut curls up defensively. I can poke the wound, but the last thing I want is someone else jamming their fist in it.

  I turn away, then force myself to turn back. This is Felicity. The woman I’m sharing my life with. Plus, clambering up my own arse has never proven itself to be that useful a tactic.

  “What?” I manage.

  “Well,” she says, “I mean, I’m not one to usually put much emphasis on these sorts of things. And, you know, it’s really just a coincidence of calendars. Really, putting a date on it is silly. But, there is this coincidence, or confluence, or whatever you want to call it—”

  She’s stopped looking at me, while she talks. I put my hand on her elbow.

  “Felicity,” I ask, “why do you sound like Clyde?”

  She looks at me. Her cheeks flush slightly. “Our one year anniversary is coming up,” she says as quickly as she can.

  My gut twists again, unbidden. That stab of panic that I can’t somehow get a lid on. The image of the club, crashing down on my reason. Jesus. The idea of “now” has suddenly become fragile. I can’t deal with this future stuff. Why the hell did I bring it up?

  “And,” Felicity continues, smoothing her pants legs, “it has occurred to me—” She hesitates, composes herself. “You spend a lot of time at my place these days.”

  I smile at her. It feels like a rictus. I feel trapped. I want off this ride for a moment to catch my breath. And the fact that I know this is all irrational is not helping at all.

  I try to focus on the facts. She’s right. I don’t think I’ve seen my apartment in about two weeks.

  Felicity waits for a reaction I’m not giving her, then closes her eyes.

  “God,” she says, “I’ve got a meeting with the Prime Minister tonight, and this is the conversation I’m having trouble with.”

  The meeting with the Prime Minister is a Big Deal complete with capitalization and many, many late night talks about dress code, appropriate phras
ing, and general web research about the man’s favorite football team. Turns out he’s a Cambridge United man, the poor bastard.

  I’d love to have that conversation actually. That’s the sort of future I can deal with right now. It’s short-term and definitely not happening to me.

  But we’re not having that conversation. I attempt to get a grip on myself. “I stay at your place a lot,” I say. It sounds like bad movie dialog.

  “Yes.” Felicity nods, steeples her fingers, lets them collapse into her lap. “So, I think, and, well if…” She cuts herself off again, mumbles something that could possibly be, but surely isn’t, “Fucking Clyde,” and then turns to look me in the eye. “I think you should move into my place, Arthur,” she says. Then she looks sharply away.

  Moving in. Moving in. That’s all. No need for all this panic. Because the answer is obvious. I love Felicity Shaw. I open my mouth.

  Nothing comes out.

  The club descending.

  No. Not now. Not pissing now. But my hands are starting to shake.

  “I mean,” Felicity continues, not looking at me, “you’ve basically been living at my apartment for eleven months now, and it really doesn’t make sense for us to be paying for two places. We could rent your place out, or, well, I don’t know how you feel about selling it. I don’t want to push anything. But that makes a certain amount of financial sense. I mean, that could set us up with a good nest egg for later in life, if, well, I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but down payments on houses can be a significant barrier, and that would definitely put us ahead. When the time comes, of course. If the time comes. But, well, what I’m saying is that this is a good first step, that—”

  I’ve got lost somewhere in the blur of words and eminently sensible logic. I’m stuck in my own head. There’s an image of a house, and a white fence, and there are rose bushes, and a rather picturesque path, and perhaps a thatched roof, I can’t quite tell, and Felicity is there, and she’s wearing a summer dress, and really looks very fetching. But I’m not there. I’m somewhere else. I’m in a bar, having my head caved in by a robot with a club.