Delete: Volume 3 (Shifter Series) (22 page)

God, I hated myself. I was so righteous. So right.

Screw you, I thought. Screw you and your patronising know-it-all bullshit. You know what? You’re right; I’m not you. And I never want to be you. I’ll never be as certain as you are. I’ll always doubt myself, but that’s what makes me the better person. I would find my own way.

I had less than fifteen minutes to get back to the Hub and stop Hedges.

“Captain Black,” I said, pressing the button on my collar and waiting to be connected.

“S’up?” Zac replied.

“How quickly can you get to London Bridge?”

I heard Zac cough over the radio. “Actually, I’m already there.”

“What?”

“Aubrey sent me after you. She saw Katie at the Hub and knew you were up to something. But if she’d come after you herself, it would make her look like a stalker.”

“Where are you?”

Headlights flared in the dark. “Opposite you.”

I ran over to Zac’s car and wrenched open the door. “Back to the Hub. Now!”

My expression must have been all the explanation Zac needed. He hit the accelerator, turning the car in a tight circle and speeding off towards the bridge.

“Captain Jones,” I said. I was hoping to hear Aubrey’s voice – so I could warn her and explain why I’d lied – but all I was getting was static. The panic rose in my chest.

“Yeah, the network is down,” Zac said. “Must be a glitch at base.”

This was more than a glitch. It was Hedges putting his plan into action.

“Oh, you have to be kidding me.”

I saw what had caused Zac to slow down: the army roadblock up ahead. Three soldiers were on guard. I didn’t need to look at my watch now. The countdown ticked in my head as if the digits had been burned into my brain. We had less than fourteen minutes. I considered what to do for a moment, then decided.

“Go through it.” Zac opened his mouth to protest. “Go through it!” I said again.

He slammed on the pedal. The engine roared in response, like a caged animal wanting to be let loose. The soldiers barely had time to react before we crashed through. The barriers shattered under the impact, bouncing off the windscreen and cartwheeling away. Through the rear-view mirror I saw the soldiers get to their feet and raise their guns.

“Zac…” I said in a warning tone.

“I know.” He downshifted into third and the car lurched forward, just as the pops of gunfire sounded behind us.

Bullets slammed against the rear window like someone performing a drum solo on the car. But the glass held.

“Come on, baby,” Zac said, willing the car on like a jockey might his horse.

The gunfire slowed. The car rolled on. We’d escaped. I looked to Zac and we shared a moment of victory. But then I checked the rear-view mirror again and my smile faded. I saw one of the soldiers running out of the guard box, carrying a rocket launcher. He raised the launcher to his shoulder and…

Everything became heat and noise and pain. The car was thrown into the air, spinning once, twice before crashing back down on the concrete. I reached out for the last decision I’d made. And the world flipped.

We were still at the checkpoint. This time, I’d told Zac to stop. We still had thirteen minutes till the Emperor was scheduled to arrive. There was still time.

One of the soldiers tapped on the window. I nodded to Zac and he wound it down.

“Can’t you read?” the solider said, leaning forward. “You can’t come through this way.” I recognised the Yorkshire accent. It was the lance corporal from earlier. The one I had left with a bloodied nose. I detected a certain muffle in his voice that suggested it was still causing him trouble.

I turned away, hoping he wouldn’t see me.

“We’re on S3 business,” Zac said, leaning his arm out of the window so that the lance corporal could see his S3 tattoo.

It was probably the worst thing he could have done. These guys did not like S3.

“Get out the car,” the jance corporal shouted.

Zac’s brow furrowed. “I don’t think you heard me. I am Captain Black of the SSS. I suggest you let us through.”

The barrel of a rifle appeared at Zac’s temple. “Easy, now.” Zac raised his hands slowly away from the steering wheel, opened the door, and stepped out. They’d be coming for me next. And if they recognised me, it would all be too late. I stared at the digits on my watch as if I could fix them in place as easily as I could a Shifter. But time was something I had no control over.

I heard the exchange of loud voices: Zac trying to reason with the soldiers. One of them walked around to my side of the car.

Before he had a chance to bend down, I slammed the door open, knocking him onto his back, rolled out and came up holding his rifle. It was an LMT sharpshooter’s rifle. Heavier than the ones we were issued at S3. Older and less reliable, too. I could see why the army resented us so much. Tough.

The corporal’s eyes widened in angry recognition. “You!”

“Yes. Me. Place your weapons on the ground and there’s a chance this won’t go as badly for you as it did last time,” I said.

His eyes tightened in defiance. I clicked off the safety, just to make sure he knew how serious I was.

“The future of this country depends on what you do next, Lance Corporal. Make the right choice.”

He lowered his weapon and laid it on the ground, muttering obscenities as he did. His fellow squaddies did the same, without the swearing.

“Zac, can you reach into the guard box and remove the rocket launcher they have in there?”

“The what?” Zac said. But didn’t bother to ask again. He walked into the box and came out holding the launcher in his arms like a baby. “Now, what are you boys doing with a big gun like this?”

“Protecting the motorcade,” the lance corporal said through gritted teeth.

As if on cue, I heard rumbling engines and saw flashing lights as a line of black cars streaked past on the opposite side of the river. The Emperor and his escort.

“We have to go!”

Zac threw the launcher onto the back of the car and leapt into the driver’s seat. I ejected the clip from the rifle and dropped in on the chest of the solider who still lay on the ground.

“This ain’t over,” the lance corporal shouted, as we burned away.

I only hoped he was right.

Seven minutes. We were racing behind the last car of the Emperor’s escort as it headed for the Hub.

“Overtake them,” I said.

“Not a good idea.” Zac pointed to a helicopter overhead. It was bristling with weapons, covering the motorcade from the sky. He was right. If we tried to get ahead, they’d blow us away before we had a chance to say “Trap!”

I pushed the button on my throat mic. “Captain Jones,” I said. Still nothing but static. “Sergeant Cain.” Nothing. Did they know, I wondered, that they were already under attack? “Shit,” I said, slamming my hand on the dashboard.

“You want to tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Ladoux was working with the Red Hand.”

“Ladoux! I don’t believe it. She saved my life.”

“Ladoux and Hedges, too. And he’s got the X73 virus and he’s going to release it in the Hub when the Emperor arrives.”

Zac blinked. “But they tortured him. I saw the scars.”

“They turned him,” I said. “And we have less than six minutes to stop him.”

Zac’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “And the network?”

“I think he’s got to it.”

Zac nodded. “It’s the first thing I’d do. OK, try to intercept the Emperor’s security channel.”

I pulled out my tab and tried scanning for a different frequency. I picked up old radio channels broadcasting propaganda messages and music, but nothing in Chinese.

The escort pulled off the road. We were nearly at the Hub. The front car pulled to a halt outside the bunker. I jumped out before Zac even had a chance to slow the car down.

“Stop!” I shouted, running forward. “It’s a trap!” But my voice was drowned out in the
thump
of helicopter blades.

I headed for the middle car, the one I assumed the Emperor Tzen and his Shifter guards – the
Banjai Gonsi
– would be travelling in. When they saw me, they would do what they were trained to do: Shift and get the Emperor out of here.

Car and van doors opened. Men wearing black and carrying large weapons piled out and pointed everything at me. I held my hands up, to show I wasn’t a threat, while I scanned the vehicles, looking for Tzen. Neither he nor his Little Guards were anywhere to be seen. I heard a low groan of machinery and turned to see the large doors to the Hub close with a booming slam.

“Where’s the Emperor?” I shouted at one of the bodyguards, a thick-necked man with a shaven head.

He grinned. “He is already inside. So, if you planned on harming him, you are too late.”

“The motorcade was a diversion,” I heard Zac say, from behind me.

The big man nodded, proud of himself and his work.

“You have got to get him out,” I said. “It’s a trap!”

The bodyguard looked unsettled, unsure of what to do. And my panic wasn’t helping things.

“This is Commandant Tyler of the S3,” Zac said. “We have intel that someone inside the Hub is planning on…” He turned to me, unsure if he should continue.

I finally calmed down enough to take charge. “Planning on assassinating the Emperor and everyone else inside there. So we have to get those doors open.”

The man lowered his weapon, his face pallid and tight. It was his job to protect the Emperor, and if I was to be believed, he had just failed.

I ran toward the doors, where two S3 soldiers stood looking confused and uneasy. “We have to get the doors open.”

“No can do, Com. They open from the inside only. And we’ve been told they’re on lockdown till the treaty is signed.”

I slammed on the metal sheets. Ten inches thick and capable of withstanding a bomb strike. But there had to be a way of opening them. Any minute now, Hedges would release the virus. A virus that tore straight through the brain faster than anyone would have time to Shift. The images of Frankie’s slideshow flashed through my mind. But instead of the faces of strangers, I saw Aubrey and Katie. Their eyes bleeding. Their bodies giving up. Their mouths crying for help.

“What can we do?” the Emperor’s guard said, laying his hand against the metal.

“Step aside, please.”

I turned around to see Zac with the rocket launcher we’d taken off the men at the roadblock readied against his shoulder.

I nodded and pulled the guards out of the way. I waved at everyone to get back. We took cover behind the row of cars and waited.

It took Zac an infuriatingly long time to work out how to operate the launcher. I was almost about to take it off him and do it myself when there was a
whoosh
and the rocket blasted out of the barrel, throwing Zac off his feet.

It exploded on impact with the doors, creating a fireball ten-feet high. Metal blackened. Stone shook. But when the flames died down, the doors were still intact.

I ran back to the door. The metal was too hot to touch, and when I tried, my hand came away covered in soot. I looked around for something, anything, that I could use to pry the doors open. There was nothing but rubble and dying fires. I ignored the heat and clawed at the hair-thin crack between the doors with my fingernails. Some of the guards tried to help, all of us tugging and banging on the doors, trying desperately to get in.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. One of the guards spoke to me. I didn’t understand what he was saying, but I understood the gesture. A hand to his ear.
Listen
.

I stopped banging and leaned in, closer to the door. There was a noise coming from the other side. Thudding and screaming. I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead against the still-hot metal. I didn’t care about the pain. It was nothing compared to what my friends inside were going through.

There had to be something I could do.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

This time, I didn’t even bother calling Zac.

I’d run out of the arch, leaving Ladoux rocking and laughing inside, and I’d kept running.

I had two miles to cover in fifteen minutes. When I used to run home from ARES HQ before… before all of this, the best I could do was an eight-minute mile. But I was stronger then – I didn’t have a body that had grown up on rations or gone through week after week where I was lucky enough to grab a couple of hours’ sleep at a time. Not to mention the bullet hole in my leg. But I’d also never had something driving me like this.

I ran, jumping over burned-out cars and through the rubble of buildings. Under precarious bridges and over the ruins of roads.

You can make it. You can make it,
I kept hearing him, over and over, pushing me on. Faster and Faster. For the first time since I’d woken up in this reality with his voice in my head, we wanted the same thing.

I’d ignored the screaming of my muscles, the vomit rising in my throat, and I ran. As I had done when Frankie commanded me to. Only this time, I was the one in control.

I’d thought of Frankie, down in the Hub, an innocent doctor doomed to die with all the other Shifters. Had it been her screams I’d heard through the doors?

If only I was able to undo the choice I’d forced on her that night, I wouldn’t be here – the broken landscape of London blurred around me – none of this would be here. Then why was I still fixed in this place, in this reality? Why couldn’t I just give up and go back to the world I knew – the safe, peaceful world?

Because you have a job to do.

I thought it at exactly the same time as I heard his voice say it. I almost laughed at the irony of us being on the same side for once. Because I knew there was still a chance I could stop this. And as long as there was a chance, I would see this though.

I’d pounded past a road sign, which hung by one screw from a wall. I was near the Embankment. If I kept up the pace, I could still make it. But my limbs were starting to scream in revolt.

It’s just pain.

To my right, I’d seen the Emperor’s motorcade gliding past. Hedges might already be getting ready. I had to make it this time.