Jimmy Coates: Power
Joe Craig

The country is under attack, but the people don’t know the truth. Is Jimmy too late to save even himself?

To Mary-Ann Ochota, always.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Excerpt

Dedication

01 THE MESSAGE

02 TUNNEL VISION

03 THE WALNUT TREE PROJECT

04 CRATE EXPECTATIONS

05 TURNING UP THE HEAT

06 NELSON’S SHADOW

07 LUCK OF THE EGYPTIAN

08 DOCTOR’S ORDERS

09 THE OTHER WING

10 THE HOLLINGDALE INCIDENT

11 RATE OF DILAPIDATION

12 THE CORPORATION

13 WHAT’S UP. DOC?

14 POWER AND LOYALTY

15 ERT IT

16 POWER AND CONTROL

17 PUPPET SHOW

18 VISITING HOUR

19 MESSING ABOUT ON THE RIVER

20 THE MAKING OF A MONSTER

21 TIME TO SHOOT

22 POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY

23 BURYING A HATCHET

24 THE LAIR OF THE RIVER SPIDER

25 MESSAGES SENT

Acknowledgment

About The Author

Other Books By

Copyright

About the Publisher

01 THE MESSAGE

“This is Jimmy Coates…”

The boy paused and stared harder into the lens of the tiny camera attached to the top of the computer monitor. His eyes didn’t flicker. “I mean, I am Jimmy Coates.” He could hear his voice trembling, but he knew he had to go on. He had to get his message out—tell his story. Tell people the truth.

“This is going to sound like the craziest—” He cut himself short, startled by a noise behind him. He looked round. The glow from the lamp-post outside filtered through the slats of the Venetian blinds and the rain on the windows, lighting the small second-floor office in disfigured orange lines, like diseased skin. Nothing had changed.

He glanced again at the infrared detector in the corner of the ceiling. He knew it wouldn’t be flashing. Only minutes earlier he’d disabled the office’s alarm system. But if anybody passed by the building they might notice the gleam from the computer screen. If they investigated any further and saw Jimmy’s makeshift rewiring of the entry system at the door, they’d certainly call the police. There wasn’t meant to be anybody in the office of the Hailsham Gazette this late at night.

“I know I look like a normal boy,” Jimmy went on, trying to steady his breathing so he could get the words out. “I’m twelve. But…” Again he stopped himself. His mouth wouldn’t form the words. They raced through his head, but he couldn’t force them out. He wanted to scream everything at once: I’m the perfect assassin. They made me that way. They designed my DNA in a test tube…

At the same time he knew that some parts of the truth were better left out. Nobody would believe him, and if they did, they’d be terrified instead of listening to what he had to say.

Jimmy forced himself to concentrate and adjusted the direction of the webcam, making sure his face was clear on the monitor. It was so strange seeing himself like this. His features didn’t look like his own. His cheeks were thinner and his eyes looked grey.

But in front of him on the desk was something that strengthened his resolve. It was the latest edition of the Gazette. The headline leapt out: BRAVE BRITAIN TO HIT BACK AFTER FRENCH ATTACK OUR OIL RIG.

“The Government is lying,” continued Jimmy. “The French didn’t attack the oil rig. They’re just telling everybody that, and like always they’re controlling the newspapers and TV and the Internet…” Jimmy half-scrunched the newspaper in frustration. “But now they should know it isn’t true. I’m the proof. I blew it up—by accident.” His words rushed out in a torrent. “Everybody has to know. If the Government carries on with plans for war, everyone needs to know their reasons for it are a lie. People will die for nothing.”

He stopped and took a deep breath. It felt like there was so much more to say, but before he could go on, he saw a reflection in the screen. A blue flash. He’d stayed too long. The police were coming.

“Spread this message,” he insisted into the webcam. “And protest every way you can. I know you can’t vote, but…” Again he tailed off. The Government had abolished voting when they created Neo-democracy, so Jimmy wondered what possible way there could be to protest about anything. The sound of a siren cut through his thoughts.

“Just spread this message,” Jimmy pleaded. “Tell everyone.”

He shut off the webcam. It took him less than a minute to post the clip of himself on as many video-sharing websites as he could think of. He knew Government censors would remove it as soon as they found it. They might even shut down the websites completely. He just had to hope that enough people would see it first, and that they’d even spread it themselves on to other sites.

Next Jimmy found the newspaper’s publishing software and quickly set up some new headlines for the Gazette:

FRENCH DIDN’T ATTACK.

NO REASON FOR WAR WITH

FRANCE. GOVERNMENT LYING.

He knew they would never dare to publish anything like that, but Jimmy thought that if the staff saw them, maybe they could also spread the message.

The wail of sirens was louder now and the whole office was filled with the flashing blue light. Jimmy jumped up from the computer and dashed towards the door, taking the half-scrunched newspaper with him. He could feel his brain counting off the seconds before the police came charging in. Every muscle urged him to race away to safety, but as his hand settled on the door handle one thought held him back: maybe somewhere in this news office would be information about what had happened to his family. Maybe he could even track them down and rebuild his life. A normal life.

Jimmy could sense tiny vibrations in the floor. Somebody else had breached the building. He could feel the muscles in his thighs tightening to force him to run. Stay, he pleaded with himself. But Jimmy was fighting his own mind and body. Inside his skin were two beings interwoven. Only one was human.

38 per cent of Jimmy’s DNA was identical to that of any other human being in the world. The rest was the template for something entirely new. An organic assassin. Not robot or machine, but even more deadly. A custom-designed being meant to kill for the British Government. His future had been programmed into his blood. It was his human side that constantly resisted that future. And that’s what had turned him from the Government’s finest weapon into their number one target.

The assassin instincts in Jimmy were growing stronger by the day. He was designed to be fully operational at the age of eighteen, when his human feelings would be completely controlled by his assassin DNA. But extreme danger had kick-started his development early. He had no idea how long it would be before the assassin in him would take over completely, or what that would feel like. All he knew was that time was running out.

Every second of his life he felt that tension inside him. Now it was as painful as ever. The assassin in him was efficiently marshalling his body as if he were on a mission. Escape. Survival. And rationally, Jimmy knew he should trust that instinct. Yet at the same time he could see the faces of his mother Helen, his sister Georgie and his best friend Felix. Were they still together? Were they still alive? He longed to comb the office, to study every memo, article and report. Somebody must have news of what had happened to them.

BAM!

He’d hesitated too long. The door jolted open. The wood smacked against Jimmy’s shoulder and the handle stabbed into his ribs. Before he could react, an enormous figure barrelled into the room. Another followed—two huge policemen, made even more bulky by the Hawk-801 body armour. Jimmy was knocked to the floor, but his powers were already working, fizzing through him.

His fingers had locked around the door handle and as he fell he kicked out, jamming his heel into the lowest hinge. With a crack of splintering wood, the door came free from its frame and followed Jimmy down. Before the two policemen even had time to turn their heads, Jimmy jumped up, leaning his shoulder into the door. It battered the first policeman, then Jimmy kicked the bottom half of it up to crunch one edge into the second man.

Through their grunts and moans, Jimmy picked out two noises. One was the crackle of a police radio. Backup was on the way. The second noise was the click of a Sig Sauer P229 sidearm.

Jimmy didn’t want to wait to find out whether they’d really shoot a child. He couldn’t even be sure that they’d seen who it was in the room—that’s how fast Jimmy had moved. Instead he charged towards the empty doorway. If back-up was on the way, that meant there was probably nobody covering the corridor or the exterior of the building.

Then came the shot. To Jimmy the sound of it wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t even shocking. All human responses had shrunk away, swamped in an instant by his programmed instincts. The small explosion of the gun was almost pathetic compared to how Jimmy had anticipated it in his mind. And the anticipation of an assassin had yet again saved his life.

Jimmy had already twisted the unhinged door to hold it behind his back. The bullet imbedded itself in the wood with a feeble thud. Another shot followed, but by then Jimmy had dropped the door and disappeared.

While his limbs pumped with such power and speed, Jimmy felt supremely calm. It was as if his nerves were coated in something that numbed them to the fear, but still heightened his alertness. He raced out of the building, feeling almost as if he was flying. The drizzle on his face felt refreshing. The sirens in his ears were like hunting horns, driving him on faster and harder.

Jimmy knew exactly where he was going. Hailsham was only a small town and his system had easily absorbed the layout of the streets. More than that, he was suddenly aware that his legs were powering him along a predetermined escape route. The assassin had already planned for this.

He pounded away from the high street, cutting through the stillness, a bolt of heat in the rain. His steps reverberated louder as he left the sirens further behind. He wove along the residential streets of endless, identical houses, then cut through an industrial estate and vaulted the iron fence at the back in one huge leap.

Now security lights gave way to darkness, but Jimmy had no doubt where he was. He’d found his way back to the playing field of All Saints School, where he’d arrived earlier that night. Despite the mud, his pace hardly dropped. In seconds he had crossed two football pitches and was climbing into the cockpit of a Tiger Hellfire IV helicopter, which was just where he’d left it.

His chest heaved, but every breath of cold air seemed to pull in more strength to keep him going. Before he’d even strapped on his helmet, his hands were already darting over the controls and the chopper rose several metres off the turf. He carefully balanced the roll of the machine, but at the same time he reached into his pocket and pulled out the crumpled ball of newspaper he’d snatched at the office. There was one thing he had to find: a doctor.

For a second Jimmy was mesmerised by his fingertips. A blue tint had bloomed across his nails and into the skin alongside. It seemed to glow in the faint light, reflecting the LED display on the chopper’s control panel. The sight made Jimmy feel sick. So far this was the only visible damage from the one thing that put him in more immediate danger than anything else. More than the police scouring the town for him, more than the British Secret Services, more yet than the assassin instincts inside him that were gradually overwhelming his human mind. As if all that wasn’t enough, he had radiation poisoning.

The French Secret Service had tricked him and left his body damaged by massive over-exposure to uranium and actinium. A fully human body would have been destroyed by now, Jimmy was sure. But he had no idea how the radiation was affecting him. He just knew he had to find a doctor who could help him as soon as possible. He scrabbled through the pages of the newspaper. His eyes scanned the text with the processing speed of a computer, letting each sheet fly away into the night when he was finished with it. At last he came to a directory of local health services.

By now he had brought the helicopter above the line of the buildings around the field. He hovered there. Where should he go? He studied the tiny print, his eyes’ natural night-vision enhancing the available light.

Jimmy knew it would take luck to find a doctor who would examine him willingly. He was an enemy of the State, and anybody helping him would surely be found and punished. But he knew that out there were other people against the system of Neo-democracy. Jimmy had to find a doctor who not only had the expertise to treat radiation poisoning, but wasn’t afraid to stand up to the Government.

A thought burst into life. If the doctor’s afraid, it hissed, use force.

Jimmy’s heart jolted at the violence in his own head. The power of the darkness inside him was growing and it shocked him, even though he knew that in this case it was right. He would probably have to at least threaten violence to convince a doctor to help him.

He scrunched up the last sheet of the Hailsham Gazette and hurled it out of the cockpit. There was only one place Jimmy had any chance of finding a hospital with the right, modern equipment—and the right doctor. He ran his fingers over the control units of the chopper and tore through the sky towards London. In seconds, he was away from Hailsham, soaring over open country.

Suddenly, Jimmy heard a sound. A distant thud. His eyes jumped to the horizon. At first all he could make out were the shapes of the clouds against the night sky. Then he picked out a tiny flash. Soon there was another just alongside it. They disappeared behind a cloud for a second, then emerged brighter. Not brighter, thought Jimmy. Closer.

Only then did the helicopter’s 2012 four-beam Doppler radar system confirm it. Two planes. It hadn’t taken long for the police to identify who had broken into the local newspaper, and these days the Secret Service kept a constant watch on the police. Jimmy’s only surprise was that it had taken them this long to send the Royal Air Force.

He felt a sudden swirl of panic that his programming quickly crushed. Forward, he heard throbbing in his brain. Faster. But the chopper wasn’t fast enough. His ears could pick out the sounds of the two planes ripping through the clouds towards him. He was exposed. A single shot would take him out.

With the flick of a finger he shut off the lights on his helicopter. The Nomex Honeycomb panels and Kevlar skin of the chopper made tracking it by radar almost impossible at the best of times. If Jimmy stayed dark and low enough he could escape precision guidance systems on the planes’ missiles. Now the pilots would have to rely on their own aim, and that gave Jimmy his chance.

The display on his control panel still glowed, as did the banks of LED lights and switches. Even that was too bright. Jimmy didn’t want to give the planes any chance of seeing what they were aiming at. His hands darted across the controls, overriding the onboard computer to shut off any system that gave off a light.

Now Jimmy’s senses prickled, heightening his awareness in a way he’d never experienced before. Every tiny ripple of air tingled the hairs on his forearms. His eyes flickered hundreds of times a second, his night-vision illuminating his path in a faint blue haze, giving his reactions precious extra split-seconds to guide the machine.

He could feel the grip of the assassin on his muscles, holding them steady, guiding his limbs. The power of the Tiger Hellfire surged through the mechanism around him. It was as if his body had a direct connection to the 1200 kW turboshaft engines. His slightest thought impacted on his flight path before he even knew what he was doing.

He crossed a motorway, the helicopter low enough for the runners to whoosh over the car roofs. He dodged between two lorries expertly. Still he could sense the presence of the planes holding a position above him, like hovering eagles waiting to swoop on a vole.

Even in the darkness Jimmy could see the animals in the fields scampering away. He dipped beneath every telegraph wire, leapt over every fence and swung past the front door of every farmhouse. Meanwhile, the engines rumbled, straining to push the chopper beyond its supposed maximum velocity.

The planes kept pace with him. Their two floodlights danced across the fields with Jimmy, sometimes catching him in their glare, but only for tantalising glimpses. Jimmy was making it impossible for them to fire at him, but he still wasn’t getting away. It was no good, he thought. Even if he reached London, he would never be able to land.

Then he realised that NJ7 had no intention of this chase ever making it that far. Rising up from the horizon ahead of him were more than a dozen black dots. A cluster of state-of-the-art military helicopters. Each one held steady, just above the land. Then, as one, a dozen sets of floodlights flashed into life. Jimmy squinted in the glare and felt the sweat break out on his forehead. And NJ7 could see every drop.

02 TUNNEL VISION

There was nowhere to hide. Jimmy wanted to throw up his hands, or brace himself for the explosion of the missiles, but his body wouldn’t let him. The lights from the enemy choppers had shown the assassin in him a new way out. They lit up a track that crossed directly between them and Jimmy. And approaching slowly from the right, like a worm across a battlefield, was a train.

Instead of turning his helicopter around, or even slowing down, Jimmy charged straight ahead. The helicopters confronting him did the same, moving towards him as a pack. They were hunters, designed and built to complete a mission with total efficiency—and a zero failure rate.

But so was Jimmy. His eyes locked on to the train. His muscles relaxed when he should have been growing more tense. It was as if some chemical had been injected into his system to make his limbs more supple and give him greater control. But it all came from within.

He was nearing the tracks now, winning the race with the choppers ahead of him. The planes overhead fired two rockets, but Jimmy was already into his defensive manoeuvre. He dodged so quickly that he didn’t have time to be afraid. The explosion rocked the cabin, but it was the ground behind him going up in flames, not him.

At last he reached the tracks and turned. The detour to avoid the rockets had worked in his favour. It had given the train time to reach him. Jimmy slowed to keep pace with it and once again brought the chopper as low as it would go, gliding past the telegraph poles, wires and signals, sheltering alongside the last carriage of the train.

The fleet of NJ7 helicopters circled over the top, then wheeled round to follow, just behind the train. Jimmy could almost feel himself smiling, against his will. Something inside him was revelling in the danger and the furious pace, responding to it with a detached fury of its own.

Jimmy switched his display system back on. The lights didn’t matter now, and he needed to keep track of his pursuers. What he saw surprised him. They were pulling back. When Jimmy looked up, he realised why. Only a few hundred metres ahead, the track went into a tunnel. Jimmy was hurtling directly towards the side of a hill.

Pull up, he pleaded with himself. But his body flicked away his fear. Please, he begged, battling his own instincts. His body wasn’t responding. The ground loomed towards him. Was this part of his programming, he wondered. Perhaps he was destined to destroy himself to avoid capture.

The world seemed to slow down around him. Every clump of mud in the hillside was cast into sharp relief by the floodlights behind. The sharp outline of his own helicopter’s shadow grew rougher and rougher, larger and larger. There was nowhere to go. Above and around him was a net of military firepower controlled by NJ7. Ahead of him was solid earth, with no way through.

Through, Jimmy thought. Of course. At last he realised what his programming was planning. With split-second timing, Jimmy’s hands heaved on the controls. The helicopter slowed momentarily, darted sideways, then charged along the track, directly behind the train.

Jimmy plunged into the tunnel, but the rotors of the chopper were too wide. They snapped off with a powerful crunch and shattered in every direction. Jimmy knew he had no control now. All he could hear was the piercing screech of his runners scraping along the track. In the fountain of sparks, Jimmy saw that the nose of his cabin was pressing against the back of the train.

This was only half the plan. For the rest, he had to move faster than he ever had before. He swung himself out of his seat and around the side of the helicopter. The metal casing was burning hot to the touch, but he wasn’t holding it long enough to care. The friction of the tracks was slowing the chopper, while the train powered ahead. Before a gap could open up between them, Jimmy flung himself forwards, pouring all of his strength into stretching for a safe landing.

The back of the train seemed to jump up and smack him in the face. The impact knocked all the wind from his chest. The tips of his fingers caught a metal rim of some part of the carriage, but he couldn’t even see what he was clinging on to. Somehow he managed to claw his way round to the side of the train for a firmer grip and closed his eyes against the rush of wind and dust in his face.

The train burst out of the tunnel with the body of the chopper bouncing behind it. Jimmy opened his eyes to see that the whole airborne fleet was there waiting for him. Within a second, the sky was lit up with the blast of rockets. Jimmy gasped and clenched every muscle. He couldn’t believe it—NJ7 were actually going to blow up a train full of innocent passengers just to kill him.

But they weren’t. Instead, the rockets slammed into the broken and battered helicopter he’d just left. The rotorless body of the chopper erupted into a huge ball of flame. It tumbled along the track, spitting fire and debris in a huge circle around it.

Jimmy rattled on towards London, untouched.

The Cavendish Hotel on London’s Jermyn Street offered five-star accommodation from a past era. It was one of the city’s oldest remaining independent hotels, but everybody knew it wouldn’t survive for long. Hardly any tourists were allowed into the country these days, and there was no reason for British people to come and stay, even if they could afford it. That left only wealthy foreign businessmen, and most of them had better taste than to stay within the Cavendish’s sprawling corridors, with its peeling paintwork and lights dim enough to hide the stains on the walls.

More importantly to Zafi Sauvage, the service was erratic. For example, the management team didn’t care enough to ask each other about her—the pretty twelve-year-old girl who had recently appeared on the cleaning staff. As long as her uniform was tidy and she appeared busy with something, successive managers each assumed she was on work-experience for somebody else. It was an assumption Zafi nurtured through artful manipulation.

She even had the head concierge believing that she was sixteen, and the daughter of a foreign investor, on an undercover fact-finding mission. It was far-fetched but just about believable. Perhaps more so than the truth. Who would have believed that she was a genetically designed assassin working for the DGSE—the French Secret Service?

Zafi set about polishing the handrail on the main staircase, while she peeked down at the clock in the lobby. It was 4.50 a.m. In ten minutes she knew there would be a shift change and she knew exactly which team would be starting work. Memorising the rota had been one of the first steps in her assimilation on to the staff.

She left the gold of the handrail gleaming and trotted back up to the landing, where a service door took her into the Cavendish’s behind-the-scenes labyrinth. The twisting passages and spiral staircases of the ancient building were the perfect place to vanish.

This was just the first stage of Zafi’s disappearing act. From here, the whole world could become her labyrinth. Travel documents were easy to come by and easy to copy. Entire false identities could be created while inattentive receptionists took coffee breaks. The kitchens were a bountiful source of supplies and, thanks to the many empty bedrooms, she was well rested. The only question was where to go. Could she ever return to France? Her last mission for the DGSE had gone perfectly until the final moments. Instead of killing her targets, she’d helped them escape.

Zafi pattered through the corridors of the hotel, trying to picture the scenes back in Paris. Did her Secret Service bosses know yet that her targets were still alive? Could they possibly suspect that she’d failed on purpose? She was overcome by a rush of desperation. Would she ever get the chance to prove to them that she could be effective?

Her step was so light on the floorboards that there was hardly a creak. She made it to a storeroom of long-forgotten lost property and snatched up her jacket and a shoulder bag she’d packed full of essentials. In the pocket of her uniform she could feel the outline of her mobile phone, heavy on her skin. She knew the DGSE must have been trying to get in touch, but she didn’t dare check her messages.

Zafi slipped out of a fire escape into the back alley behind the hotel. Her timing was perfect. A rubbish truck rumbled into view at the end of the alley. The silhouettes of two burly refuse collectors lumbered towards the back door of the hotel. Zafi skipped past the pile of black plastic sacks and kept to the shadows. She easily slipped past the men without being noticed.

When she reached the truck, she pulled out her phone. It would be so easy to toss it away forever. Her old life would be over—crushed in the back of a rubbish truck. The DGSE would try to track her down, but they’d never find her. She was too good for that. She would let them assume she’d been killed in action by the British.

Her fist squeezed the phone so tightly it almost cracked the plastic casing. But she didn’t throw it. Her arm refused to move. She could feel her breath growing short and her limbs tightening. In seconds the rubbish men would be back and her chance would be gone. What was stopping her?

She glanced at the display on her phone. One new message. Her imagination dreaded what it might say. She’d failed to complete her mission. They could be recalling her to Paris to receive some kind of punishment. Or perhaps they were already laying a trap for her. Had she turned from France’s greatest weapon to an embarrassment, or even an enemy? Zafi gritted her teeth and told herself not to be so dramatic. It was just a mission, she thought. But without a mission, I’m nothing. In the corner of her eye she could see the rubbish collectors coming back, their backs laden with plastic sacks. Zafi pulled in a deep breath. I’m an assassin, she told herself. I can handle it. She delicately tapped the buttons on her phone and read the message.

As usual, it was in the form of an encrypted stream of letters and numbers. Zafi relished the warm hum in her brain, allowing her to read the code as simply as if it was a French nursery rhyme. When she saw what it said, the warmth spread from her head to the rest of her body. They obviously didn’t know what had happened—and they weren’t interested in the details. For now, at least, it looked like they trusted her. Zafi felt a surge of delight. They needed her. Something more pressing had come up and she was to turn her attention to it immediately.

At last Zafi smiled. This would be her chance. Who would care about the past if she completed this new mission? It would be the greatest achievement of any French assassin in history. It was the chance to prove she was still the best. To the DGSE and to herself.

She pulled off her maid’s uniform to reveal a thin black tracksuit underneath. She tossed the uniform into the rubbish truck, slipped the phone back into her pocket and set off at a jog. She headed south, towards Westminster. Her new target wouldn’t be hard to find.

She’d tried to eliminate him a couple of times before, but on each occasion somebody had been there to stop her. She’d tried to shoot him, but Jimmy Coates had got in the way. Then, more recently, she had intended to poison this target with the raw, untreated meat of a Greenland Shark. An NJ7 operative had ambushed her in Iceland and stopped her getting away with the poisonous meat.

This time Zafi knew she would succeed. She had to. For a short time she had let confusion get in the way of her identity. But she was back. And to prove it to everybody, only one man had to die. The five words of the message drummed through her head: “Terminate the British Prime Minister.”

Jimmy couldn’t believe that after an explosion like that on the track the train had continued its journey—and without the slightest delay. It was unusual for a train to be on time even without such a catastrophe on the line. He could only assume that NJ7 wanted to keep the little drama secret—as secret as an aerial fire fight and an explosion could be.

Even so, with every shift in the rhythm of the train’s rocking and every variation in the regular beat of the journey, Jimmy expected the worst. They’ll search the tunnel and the wreckage, he told himself. They’ll know I’m alive and that I’m on this train.

He had found a corner at the end of a carriage where he could sit without being observed. After he’d climbed in through the window he’d found a book that had fallen from one of the baggage racks and now he was leaning against the door to the toilet, pretending to read.

He didn’t even see the words on the page. He couldn’t settle his eyes on one thing for more than half a second. Nothing in his surroundings changed. Nobody came for him. Yet he couldn’t stop his nerves clattering as hard as the train. The cold from the floor crept through his body. He could feel heat spreading from his stomach and knew that his programming was trying to warm him and settle his nerves at the same time, but he fought it.

They’re trying to kill me, he told himself. It’s right to be on edge. The last thing Jimmy wanted to do was relax. He wasn’t ready to. His imagination was still replaying the explosion over and over, and his ears were still ringing from the successive booms. Most of all, he could still feel a rage inside him that was bursting to be let out.

At first he thought he was angry at the people who’d tried to blow him up, but slowly he realised that wasn’t true. The faceless pilots meant nothing to him, even when they aimed their rockets and pulled the trigger. Jimmy’s anger was for their boss. Not just the British Government, but one man. The new Prime Minister. The man who had given the Secret Service greater powers than ever before. The man who had fuelled public fear and hatred of the French to strengthen his own position. The man who had forced Neo-democracy even deeper into the British system and removed any chance that people might have to vote. The man who had once been Jimmy’s father—Ian Coates.

Jimmy had to put his book down and hold his head. He’d never felt such confusion. It was like madness. His hands were shaking violently and he knew now that he had to give in to that inner wash of calm. It dampened all of his emotions, blunting their bite. He concentrated on that inner cloud, cursing himself for resisting his programming. If he was to stay alive, he had to stay focused. And that meant not thinking about his father.

Over the past few weeks Jimmy thought he’d learned when to listen to his programming—he’d even been able to control it at times. But it was changing so fast, and it felt like the human in him was changing too. The lines weren’t so clear any more. Nothing was clear. He closed his eyes and let his lungs slow his breathing, despite the smell of the nearby toilet. He thought back to all the times when this strange force swelling inside him had saved him, trying to forget that without it he wouldn’t have been in trouble in the first place.

But for tonight’s crisis, he blamed himself. Why had he hesitated to escape from that newsroom when he knew the police were so close? He’d been stupid to even think that there might be news of his family there. Why would a local newspaper in the south of England have any interest in reporting the fates of three insignificant Londoners? That’s even if they’d been allowed to without censorship.

The last Jimmy had heard, his mum, sister and best friend had been in the custody of NJ7. Then the French Secret Service had sent an assassin to kill them, to punish Jimmy when a deal had gone bad. He had no idea what had happened to them after that.

For all Jimmy knew he was completely alone in the world. Right now, the power in his blood was the only ally he had. It could remove the pain of loneliness. It could remove his father from his mind completely. It’s on my side, he told himself. It’s me. But at the same he shuddered with terror. If this power inside was him, he was more killer than human.

03 THE WALNUT TREE PROJECT

Mitchell Glenthorne shifted uncomfortably in his seat and his knee twitched under the table. The eyes of everybody in the room seemed to burn into him. He wasn’t used to the scrutiny of the most powerful people in the country.

Around the long, lozenge-shaped table were the dozen men and women who could do almost anything they wanted with Great Britain. Thanks to Neo-democracy, they didn’t need to worry about the opinions of the British people. They could get on with the efficient day-to-day running of the country, much of which was done from here, the Cabinet Room at Number 10 Downing Street.

But however powerful these people were, they were under the control of a single man—Ian Coates, the Prime Minister. He was sitting at the centre of the table, leaning on his elbows with his shirtsleeves rolled up. Directly behind his head was one of Downing Street’s old portraits. Mitchell didn’t know who it was, but he recognised the new flag just above—a Union Jack, with an extra green stripe running down the centre. That green stripe was the emblem of NJ7.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Ian Coates announced, “this is Britain’s finest asset.” It took a second for Mitchell to realise they were still talking about him. “A miracle of British science and genetic engineering.” The PM’s voice was low and stern. Mitchell wondered whether he spoke quietly on purpose, so that people had to crane their necks and listen closely for every word. He certainly wasn’t a charismatic speaker. Usually his imposing physical presence was enough— broad shoulders, thick brown hair and a heavy brow. But today Mitchell noticed the dark bags under his eyes and skin so pale it was almost yellow.

“He’s only thirteen years old,” the PM continued, “but Mitchell’s recent heroism has made Britain stronger, and shown us true British success.”

British success? When Mitchell thought back over his missions, all he could remember was the empty ache of failure. He wondered whether that was what the PM meant by “British success”.

“Learn from him.” The Prime Minister tapped his pen on the table and drew in a deep breath. “I invited him to this meeting because he’s an example to everybody.” Mitchell thought he saw a glimmer of emotion in Ian Coates’ bloodshot eyes. It quickly passed. Could the man have been thinking of his son, Mitchell wondered? Nobody was allowed to mention the fact that for eleven years Ian and Jimmy Coates had lived happily as part of the same family.

“Now we need people like Mitchell more than ever,” the PM declared. “We have a new danger.”

Let me out of here, Mitchell screamed silently. He longed for a mission, or at least to get back to his simple, disciplined and anonymous life in the underground bunkers of NJ7. It was almost as if the sunlight filtering through the lace curtains carried poison into his skin.

At last the Prime Minister took his eyes off Mitchell. “I’ve asked William Lee to brief you all,” he announced, with a dismissive wave towards the man on Mitchell’s right.

“Thank you, Prime Minister.” Slowly, the man stood up —and up and up. He was by far the tallest man anybody in the room had ever seen. Mitchell had started to get used to it over the last few days, but clearly several members of the Cabinet were overwhelmed. William Lee towered above them, his shadow running the entire length of the tabletop. Mitchell would have described the man’s face as Indian, but he knew that didn’t quite capture the unique character of his features: long, thin nose; eyes like black olives.

“Jimmy Coates is alive,” Lee began. “He’s in Britain and he’s spreading misinformation about the Government. Miss Bennett, the file.” He turned and looked down at the person on Mitchell’s left: the Head of NJ7, the most frightening and beautiful woman Mitchell had ever known. He was barely able to gather the courage to turn and look at her now.

She nodded to Lee with a delicate smile and tossed a manila folder into the centre of the table. Its contents spilled across the lacquer— printouts of web pages, stills of Jimmy’s video message, photos of the break-in at the newspaper office in Hailsham, along with reams of other documents and reports.

Mitchell’s eyes remained on Miss Bennett. Apart from Mitchell, she was the youngest person in the room. Mitchell guessed she must have been in her late thirties, but with such glowing skin and bright red lipstick she often seemed younger. She looked as she always did—her back straight, her mouth in a knowing half-smile, her chestnut hair pulled back tightly and held in place by a green clip. Yet Mitchell was suspicious. She wouldn’t normally have co-operated so readily with William Lee. Mitchell wondered whether at that very moment her assistants were delving into Lee’s past in another effort to undermine his position.

Technically, William Lee was nothing more than Director of Special Security for the Prime Minister, but he had quickly won Coates’ trust and established himself at the heart of the Government. When he spoke, he had all the authority of a world leader.

“Lies spread fast,” he said. “We’re following protocol, which means Miss Bennett has an NJ7 team working with the Corporation as we speak, to shut down any websites that carry his messages and limit the damage. But these lies seem to be spreading more quickly than any we’ve encountered from any opposition before. We traced the initial breach of information security to the office of a local newspaper in Hailsham. The editor and staff are in custody. They’re sharing what they know.”

Mitchell couldn’t help shuddering. He didn’t need to see the pictures in the manila folder. He knew what Lee meant by “sharing what they know”. He’d seen the stale bloodstains on the floors of NJ7 interview rooms.

Suddenly Lee was interrupted by a heavy sigh from Miss Bennett. Everybody looked to her.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she said, in a way that made it obvious she wasn’t sorry at all. “But shouldn’t you tell everybody exactly what this boy’s saying that’s so dangerous?”

Lee responded calmly. “Fine. He’s saying that the Government’s reasons for going to war with France are based on a lie. He claims we weren’t attacked by the French.”

“And were we?” Miss Bennett’s smile broadened, but her eyes glinted like blades.

“Were we what?”

“Were we attacked by the French? Or were we wrong?”

“Wrong?” Lee snapped. “The evidence was presented, discussed and agreed upon. You were there, and you agreed with the Prime Minister’s decision.”

“I agreed on the basis of the evidence,” Miss Bennett replied. “If it turns out that evidence was misleading, and we have new evidence…”

“The decision to attack France has already been taken,” Lee interrupted, “and now we must follow through.”

Mitchell tried to shrink into his chair. He was stuck in the middle of the argument. Even though he was secretly delighted that Miss Bennett knew exactly how to infuriate William Lee, he hated having the eyes of the room aimed in his direction again. In desperation he looked to the Prime Minister, hoping he’d put a stop to the discussion. But Coates was staring into the middle distance, his head swaying slightly from side to side. Was he OK, Mitchell wondered?”

“Tell me,” Miss Bennett was saying, “have you considered why Jimmy Coates’s message is spreading more quickly than anti-Government messages have in the past?”

Lee wasn’t phased by the question. “I’m sure your team at the Information Division knows much more than I could about which messages people choose to disperse over the Internet.” He let out an awkward chuckle. “It seems to me that people will forward any old rubbish. They send all their friends personality quizzes, ridiculous jokes and pictures of monkeys dressed as penguins.”

“I haven’t seen that picture,” Miss Bennett cut in. “I think I’d like to. Mitchell, make sure I see the penguin-monkey that Mr Lee knows so much about. I don’t want to be left behind.” Mitchell squirmed. “And find out about ‘jokes’ as well. I might like them.”

“Miss Bennett!” William Lee couldn’t help raising his voice now, and looked around the room for support. Mitchell knew that only the Prime Minister would have dared tell Miss Bennett to be quiet and right now he looked far away, concentrating on something else.

“No need to shout,” purred Miss Bennett. “All I’m saying is that it looks like people are responding to the boy’s message. Maybe they believe him, and maybe they want to believe him.”

Mitchell was amazed. He’d seen Miss Bennett argue with William Lee before, but never in front of so many other people.

“A message doesn’t spread itself, does it?” she went on. “It takes members of the public to—”

“Members of the public?” roared Ian Coates, suddenly bursting into life as if he’d just woken up from a nightmare. Everybody was startled. “Since when did we take the advice of strangers in the street on how to run the country?”

Mitchell watched the faces of Miss Bennett and William Lee. They were both dumbfounded by Ian Coates’ outburst. But as the PM went on, Mitchell noticed a change in his voice. It was thin and frail, like the voice of a man thirty years older.

“Members of the public?!” Coates repeated, even more indignant. “The system of Neo-democracy protects the British people from the ignorance of the general population.” His eyes bulged with rage and his temples were throbbing. Mitchell found he couldn’t look away from the beads of sweat glistening in the furrows on the man’s forehead. “The vital decisions are taken by experts,” Coates was saying. “By us. Nobody in Britain should live with the responsibility that they might have to make decisions of national importance. The consequences of such decisions are immense.”

Around the table, the Cabinet members were either staring into their laps or shooting each other glances of concern at the Prime Minister’s outburst. But nobody dared interrupt him.

“It is more vital than ever,” he went on, “that the country is fully behind this Government. The war with France is a vital part of that process. It’s the perfect way to unite everybody in Britain. And we’ll be united behind Neo-democracy.” He fixed his glare on William Lee. “That’s why we’ve come up with the Walnut Tree Project.” With another curt wave, he indicated that Lee should continue the briefing.

“Quite simply,” Lee explained, still rattled by the PM’s rant, “we have planned a new French attack. Not a strike on an oil rig or military target, but an attack on the British people themselves. This will be the best reminder to everybody in the country that we have a common enemy.”

“You’re going to attack British citizens yourself and then blame the French?” Miss Bennett wasn’t aghast, as Mitchell expected her to be. She sounded like she was calmly clarifying the details.

“We’ll try to minimise casualties, of course,” Lee replied. “But for the attack to look genuine, some members of society may have to be sacrificed.”

“Expendable ones,” Coates explained. “Criminals the courts haven’t convicted yet, homeless people, the unemployable…”

“I’ve chosen the most suitable site I could find on such short notice,” said William Lee. He picked up a large roll of paper from the floor and unfurled it on the table. It was a map of London. “In order to have the most impact, I realised that it had to be somewhere in London. And then I thought—why not use this to solve our other little problem?”

Everybody looked puzzled. Mitchell already suspected what Lee had in mind before he explained, “Jimmy Coates escaped our aerial task force. The strike on his helicopter was a success, but it turns out Jimmy wasn’t in it.”

Sounds like a British success, Mitchell thought to himself.

“Our investigative team now believes he could only have slipped away on the train. The train reached London twenty minutes ago, making it too late to seal Waterloo Station. But if we stage the attack carefully, in the vicinity of Waterloo, and we clear the area of police and ordinary security services, we might be able to tempt Jimmy Coates out of hiding to try to stop the explosion. We’ll make sure he doesn’t succeed, of course. At the very least, we may be able to pick up his trail. With any luck we’ll blow him up along with the building.”

Finally, Lee leaned forward, his shadow extending over the map of London like night falling across the city. He extended an elegant index finger and tapped a small lane called Walnut Tree Walk in Lambeth. All he said was, “A tower block.”

Everybody craned forward to get a look at the exact spot. The people at the far end of the table had to stand up to see and a general murmur broke out. Mitchell waited for someone to make an objection, but from the fear on their faces it was obvious nobody was going to. He wondered whether he should protest himself, but when he took a breath to speak it seemed to freeze his throat. He looked again at the map. The lines swirled around with the confusion in his head. He didn’t understand the politics of it, but he understood that the Government was going to blow up its own people just so they could blame the French.

“It’s for the greater good,” Lee whispered, resting a hand on Mitchell’s shoulder. Mitchell quickly nodded and made his face go blank. It wasn’t his job to react to Government decisions. He was lucky to even be at this meeting.

“Prime Minister.”

A firm voice broke through the hubbub. It was Miss Bennett. Her icy tone forced everybody back into their seats and commanded their attention. “Clearly you won’t be dissuaded from this ridiculous plot, and I can see the logic in it, but I must urge you not to rush into this. A disaster like this will certainly pull the country together and distract people from Internet rumours, but it does seem a little…clumsy.”

“Clumsy?” barked Coates.

“Yes. Like sending a torpedo to kill a mosquito.”

“It would do the job,” mumbled William Lee.

“It would also do the job to give an NJ7 team a little more time to shut down or reframe the necessary websites and spread counter-information. Meanwhile we’ll continue to hunt Jimmy Coates. We know he’s in London. There isn’t a square millimetre of the city that’s not covered by cameras or real-time satellite imaging—or both. We’ll find him and kill him by the end of the day.”

“A day is too long,” Coates rasped. “The operation is already under way.”

“I thought you’d say that.” Miss Bennett shrugged. “So my objections are over-ruled?” The Prime Minister nodded. With a flourish, Miss Bennett unclipped her hair and let it tumble about her shoulders. She tapped her hairclip on the table and with a broad smile announced, “You’re a fool.”

There was general shock around the table, but Ian Coates looked close to smiling too.

“We’re blowing up a tower block,” he insisted quietly. Then he pounded his fist on the table and roared, “We’re blowing up the tower block on Walnut Tree Walk! If anybody has any problem with that they can leave the room now!”

Mitchell looked up and down the table. Nobody made eye contact. The only noise was the soft shuffle of people shifting in their seats. Mitchell knew that if anybody left the room now they would never make it to the street. Miss Bennett was simply watching calmly. The Prime Minister broke the silence.

“We all agree that Neo-democratic principles are vital to the strength of this country, don’t we?” There was a reserved murmur of agreement from his Cabinet. “And that it is our duty to protect Neo-democracy whenever it is threatened.” Again, people nodded and muttered, slightly louder this time.

“Then the British public has nothing to fear from the people in this room. We’re protecting them.” Coates’ voice rose steadily and started to quiver. “The danger comes from beyond Britain’s boundaries. If people don’t know that then it’s our duty to show them.” He pushed himself to his feet and supported himself on the table. “Their fear will protect the system, and it’s the system which is protecting them. If they question the system then they’re not afraid enough!” Mitchell watched, astounded, as the Prime Minister swayed more violently, then staggered backwards, knocking his chair to the floor. “Don’t they realise there’s a foreign country only thirty-six kilometres away across the English Channel, and that it’s full of French people?!” The PM was staggering about now, blinking frantically and unable to balance himself. Every member of the Cabinet, except Miss Bennett and William Lee, rushed to try and support him. Like a feverish bear, he swiped them away.

“There are horrors on our doorstep!” he wailed, his words slurring into each other. “If people are sleeping so soundly at night that they can spread the cankerous filth of an ignorant, traitorous boy…” He rocked to one side and threw his arm out towards the mantelpiece to catch himself, but missed and sent a huge vase crashing to the floor.

Suddenly, people were rushing everywhere to the sounds of screams and desperate shouts for help. Mitchell was transfixed. He felt like he was watching everything in slow motion: the Prime Minister’s eyes rolled back in his head. His arms shuddered and his upper body twisted like a snowflake in the wind. Finally, his legs seemed to melt away from under him. He swivelled and collapsed forwards on to the table, smashing his forehead into the wood. His outstretched fingertips were centimetres from Miss Bennett’s hairclip.

04 CRATE EXPECTATIONS

Jimmy hurried away from Waterloo Station. It hadn’t been hard for him to stay unnoticed by the commuters bustling their way to work. They kept their grim faces downcast unless they were squinting up at the departures board. Jimmy was more worried about keeping his face off the surveillance cameras. With facial recognition software, he’d be picked out of the crowd in seconds.

Fortunately, that also worked in his favour. It meant that nobody would be monitoring the camera feeds personally, and there was no software that knew to look out for a boy wandering through the streets alone.

On the train journey he’d managed to find out a little more vital information from a leaflet he’d found behind the snack bar. It was the train operator’s guidelines on emergency procedures, and it confirmed what he’d thought: the only major hospitals left in the country were in the big cities. It set out clearly that in the case of a significant incident at Waterloo, the nearest hospital with the facilities to cope was a place called St Thomas’.

Jimmy didn’t want to risk going anywhere else. If the other hospitals weren’t big enough or well enough funded to cope with more than a few casualties, there was no way they’d be any help with Jimmy’s radiation poisoning. He’d be putting himself in danger for nothing. No—he had one shot at going to a hospital so it had to work. It had to be St Thomas’.

Jimmy had only been to hospital once before, and he’d been too young to remember now which hospital it had been. He’d fallen in an adventure playground and his mum thought he’d broken his arm, so she’d taken him for an x-ray.

All Jimmy remembered was sitting in the waiting room for hours and hours, only to be told that he was fine. It was almost funny now to think of the way his body had developed. Since his powers had kicked in, it took a lot more than falling down to break his arm. All those cuts and bruises he’d suffered while he was growing up—those days were over. Jimmy knew that it was extreme danger that had awakened his programming early, but he wondered whether there was anything that could possibly make it go away again. He quickly told himself to put thoughts of the impossible out of his mind. His programming couldn’t be switched off. It was part of him.

Jimmy prowled through the streets towards the River Thames. He reckoned the streets were safer that the tunnels of the Underground system, and he’d memorised the map from the train leaflet to guide him to St Thomas’. But within minutes he saw that he had a problem. Armed policemen were blockading the roads and pavements.

Jimmy slipped into the doorway of a café to hide, feeling a surge of anger at himself. How could he have hoped to walk to the hospital? They’ve already set up a ring round the station, Jimmy realised. He’d been counting on it taking a little longer for NJ7 to work out he’d been on the train, not in the wreckage of the helicopter.

There was nothing for it but to turn round and walk back in the direction he’d come. Retracing his steps increased his chances of being recognised, so he chose a different route, while still making his way back towards Waterloo Station. All the time, he was racking his brains. If he couldn’t get to the hospital on foot, it was obvious NJ7 would have the Underground platforms monitored as well—that’s if the trains were running at all.

By now Jimmy was feeling like every thought had to fight its way through a veil of tiredness and hunger. He didn’t dare try to remember the last time he’d slept for more than a couple of hours at a time, and his stomach was aching for some kind of breakfast.

Very soon he was back in the network of road tunnels around Waterloo Station. If they’ve set up a ring, he thought to himself, I’m safest in the centre. He could feel frustration biting at the back of his mind. He didn’t have any time to waste, yet it looked like the only thing he could do was wait. His programming was throbbing through his brain, like dark liquid coating the inside of his skull. It was lining up his options: surely NJ7 wouldn’t be checking the boot of every car, would they? What about the undercarriages?

Jimmy rounded a corner and realised that his body had subconsciously guided him to one of the station’s service entrances. He moved without hesitation, keeping his head ducked low behind the mounds of discarded plastic crates. This was where the stock was delivered to the retail and refreshment outlets. It was a little late for a delivery, but if any supply lorry had been held up it could provide Jimmy with two things: a much needed breakfast and a potential escape opportunity.

Within seconds, Jimmy’s prayers were answered. A white van swung into one of the bays. It backed up to a set of loading doors and stopped. Jimmy waited for the driver to get out. He’d have to choose his moment carefully. What was in the van, he wondered. Sandwiches? Crisps? Muffins? There was nothing on the van that gave any clue—no writing, no logo… But Jimmy’s chance to find out didn’t come.

The van simply waited for about a minute, then pulled off again. Jimmy let out a soft grunt of annoyance. His stomach turned over. Why on earth would a van pull up, wait, then pull off again? It didn’t matter. Jimmy had a choice: find a way into the station through the doors and swipe some food, or wait here for another van to show up. He wasn’t in a waiting mood.

Checking the positions of all the security cameras, Jimmy crept out from his hiding place. He had to move slowly, letting his inner voice guide him through the lines of sight of all the cameras as they swivelled. He was only a few steps from the doors when he heard the squeak of old brakes. In an instant he dived behind another pile of crates, just in time to watch the same white van return to the bay it had left barely minutes before. Jimmy hunched low, peering between the plastic slats. Now he was intrigued.

Again, the van did nothing but sit there for about sixty seconds before roaring off. This time Jimmy didn’t move. Instead he counted. He couldn’t help it. A part of him longed to get into the back of the station and keep moving. But his programming froze his limbs and wouldn’t let them budge. After three minutes his patience was rewarded. The van returned.

Jimmy tried to get a look at the driver, but he couldn’t see past the reflection on the window before the van drove off again, only to be back three minutes later. It must be circling the station, Jimmy realised. But why? Was it some kind of signal? Was the driver waiting for instructions? Was he looking for someone? Jimmy couldn’t help wondering whether this van was part of the operation that was searching for him. But that didn’t feel right. Why would NJ7 have a single white van circling the station and returning to the same bay every few minutes?

The mystery only deepened when the van next returned. This time the driver gave two short blasts on the horn. Two well-built men in grimy blue overalls emerged from the station and immediately flung open the back of the van. Then they started loading it with crates, which were all either sealed or covered in grey blankets. As the first one emerged from the darkness of the station, Jimmy’s skin prickled, but he didn’t know why. He peered more closely at the crates.

They were obviously very heavy and the men were taking great care handling them. They wore huge gloves and set each crate down in the van like they were putting a baby to bed. Jimmy wanted to creep closer to work out what was going on. Something inside him seemed to be drawing him forwards. He took a deep breath to calm himself, but it only intensified the feeling. Then he realised why: it was something in the air.

Nitroglycerin.

The word seemed to lurk in his brain without him realising how it got there. It was as if he’d breathed it in. At first he wasn’t even sure what it meant, but then a low hum vibrated through his body, bringing with it a frightening certainty: highly volatile explosive.

Felix Muzbeke opened his mouth as wide as it would go —which was wider than most—and in a single bite consumed more than half a bagel.

“You’re disgusting,” said Georgie Coates softly.

Felix grinned, which allowed a strand of pastrami to escape his lips and hang from the corner of his mouth.

“How come you’re not fat?” Georgie asked, chomping down on her own bagel. Felix shrugged and kept chewing. A businessman shoved past them to reach the front of the queue so Felix and Georgie hurried out of the way and back on to the main concourse of London Bridge Station.

“What is it about Chris and stations?” Felix asked, once his mouth was at last free of bagel. “We’re going to spend the rest of our lives hiding in underground passages.”

“They’re good places to hide, I guess,” replied Georgie. “We don’t exactly want Miss Bennett to be able to drop in any time she likes. Chris is the Government’s biggest enemy.”

“Apart from Jimmy,” added Felix, with a hint of pride.

“Maybe.”

Georgie’s eyes were constantly scanning the faces of everybody else in the station. Any of the security staff could be looking for them, acting on instructions from NJ7. Any of the commuters could be plain-clothes security staff.

Meanwhile, Felix watched Georgie carefully. She was paying more attention to the surroundings than she was to her bagel. Every now and again Felix wondered whether she might have hidden inside her some of the same powers that Jimmy had. Perhaps she just hadn’t discovered them yet. Felix didn’t dare to ask, but he was amazed at how well Georgie adapted to this life of hiding, of constantly monitoring everybody around her, of surviving on station food when every journey in public was a potential death trap. He felt almost as reassured being with her as he would have with Jimmy. Plus, there was the chance that she wouldn’t finish her bagel and he’d get the leftovers.

“Come on,” said Georgie firmly, “we’d better get back. We’ve been in the open too long already.” They hurried across the station forecourt.

“It’s not my fault,” replied Felix. “They took ages to make my bagel.”

“Next time just have something normal. You know, from the shelf.”

“What’s wrong with pastrami and pineapple?” Felix polished off the last bite with a grin and took Georgie’s bottle of smoothie from her hand.

“Hey!” she protested.

“Just a sip.”

“OK, but drink with your head down.” Georgie flicked her eyes towards the security cameras. Felix struggled to drink from the bottle while keeping his face turned towards the floor.

“Do you think Jimmy can drink without moving his head?” he asked.

“Most people can drink without moving their…” Georgie turned to see that Felix had ended up with a dribble of smoothie down his chin. “OK,” she corrected herself. “Most sane people.”

Felix wiped his mouth and couldn’t help chuckling. He’d never imagined that he’d end up being such close friends with Georgie. Not only was she a girl, but she was two years older than him. Despite that, it didn’t feel weird. There was nobody else for him to spend time with. No school, no socialising…No family, he thought. He felt a chill run through his bones. The idea crept up on him without warning.

Felix’s parents had been seized in New York by men who looked like NJ7 agents. They hadn’t been seen since. But they were constantly on Felix’s mind, on the edge of every thought. He used to think he’d seen them every time he was in a crowd of people, but such illusions quickly faded. He couldn’t let the hope that he would see them again do the same.

“Hey,” he said brightly, trying to distract himself, “what do you think Jimmy feels like when he’s doing all that stuff?”

“What stuff?” Georgie asked. “You mean his…” She dropped her voice and whispered, “Powers?”

“Do you think it’s like an electric shock?” Felix wondered aloud. “Or like a hot shower?”

“Oh, I would so love a hot shower,” Georgie groaned.

“He could have so much fun,” Felix went on. “I mean, you know, if people weren’t trying to kill him and everything.”

“If you ask me, his powers are useless,” said Georgie quickly. “He could be the strongest boy on Earth, but he still wouldn’t be able to change the Government.”

“He probably is the strongest boy on Earth,” Felix pointed out. “Except for Mitchell maybe. But he’s not just strong. What about everything else? Can you imagine it? He could call a bank and make his voice sound like the bank manager and tell them to pay him millions of pounds. He’s probably living in luxury somewhere. He could—”

“I don’t think banks work like that,” Georgie pointed out. “And since when could Jimmy imitate voices?”

“He can,” Felix insisted. “He told me. I bet he can fly too.”

“How are you such an idiot?” Georgie sighed, unable to hide the smile on her face.

“Natural talent,” Felix beamed. “You finishing that bagel?”

Jimmy’s programming was in control, processing the world around him by breaking it down into millions of tiny pieces of information— including the scent of every chemical in the air. He picked them apart like flavours: diesel fuel, stale bread, rotting vegetables, sweat, cats…and hundreds of other things.

He had never been able to do this before. His programming was growing, developing all the time. The realisation made him shiver. He longed to shut off his senses, almost wishing his own skull could collapse in on itself to squeeze the thoughts out of his head.

The slamming of the van doors jerked Jimmy back to reality. By the time he had come to his senses, the van was pulling away. Jimmy wanted to feel relieved. Whatever was in those crates, it was gone now and nothing to do with him.

Yet all Jimmy could hear were the doubts circling in his head. They spiralled together and grew into a thumping determination that overpowered every other emotion. Once he’d caught the scent of nitroglycerin, the assassin in him couldn’t let it go. The odour brought with it snippets of information locked in his brain. He never realised he knew anything about explosives, but now he could feel it. And the feeling was telling him that nitroglycerin was bad news.

It wasn’t used in construction or ordinary demolition. Too unstable, Jimmy heard in his head. Hard to control. There had to be a very special reason why that van’s load included nitroglycerin, and Jimmy had a strong suspicion it wasn’t to throw a fireworks party. He had to follow that van.

Making sure the other men had gone back into the station, he reached down to the bottom of the pile of crates in front of him. Supporting them was the platform used to move them around—a small wooden square on metal wheels. With a sharp jerk, Jimmy snatched it out from under the crates, which came clattering down to the tarmac. Before the noise had even started, Jimmy was already hurtling away.

When he reached the road he jumped up and threw the platform under his feet to use it like a skateboard. He landed with a bang and the small metal wheels growled on the pavement. Jimmy could see the back of the van rounding the corner. He pushed off hard against the ground to speed up, but he knew he would never catch up at this rate. With a delicate twist of his knee, he turned into the road, ducked low and caught the back of a passing car.

The exhaust fumes made his head swim and the car behind honked furiously. Jimmy didn’t care. He steadily moved hand over hand towards the front of the car, even while it was shifting through the traffic. Jimmy kept his eyes firmly on the back of the van, four or five vehicles ahead. He rode every bump in the street’s surface like a snowboarder across ice, keeping his head below the level of the car windows.

The traffic picked up speed now, but even at fifty or sixty kilometres per hour, Jimmy managed to push himself off the front of the first car and catch the back of the next. Again, he clawed his way forwards, until he was close enough to see the face of the front seat passenger in the wing mirror. After only a couple of minutes, the van turned into a side road. Jimmy gently guided himself in the same direction, letting go of the car and taking back control of his own navigation. He ignored that meek inner voice telling him he had no idea what he was expecting to do or find.

It was a fairly quiet street, with large housing estates on either side of the road. Jimmy hung back. There was no other traffic to hide behind now. About a hundred and fifty metres down the road the van turned off into a driveway. Jimmy lost sight of it and had to hurry forwards. He was just in time see the van disappearing down a ramp into the underground car park beneath a residential tower block.

Then the shadows were lit up by a flash. A loud crack followed almost immediately. Jimmy shuddered. Was that a gunshot? He jumped off his makeshift skateboard and ran down the street. The noise of the world seemed to drop away—the traffic on surrounding streets, the shouts of children in the playground between the estates, a TV game show blaring out from an open window in the tower block itself. All Jimmy could hear was the echo of that single gunshot mixing with his feet pounding the pavement.

Just as Jimmy reached the ramp leading down to the car park he was nearly knocked off his feet. From under the tower block came a moped, roaring into street. The driver’s face was covered by a black helmet, but Jimmy recognised the blue overalls. It was the van driver, speeding off up the street.

Jimmy froze. He looked back down the ramp. A solid metal shutter was dropping into place to seal the car park. He turned to look up the street. The moped had disappeared. Jimmy felt a surge of warmth in his legs. They unlocked and thrust Jimmy forwards—but not after the moped. Instead, he dashed down the short slope and dropped into a roll to slip underneath the metal shutter just before it reached the ground.

His programming was telling him one thing: that underneath this building there were crates of nitroglycerin hidden in the back of a van. And somebody had just been shot. Jimmy didn’t know why, and he didn’t know how he’d stumbled on all of this, but there was no way he could leave it alone.

Of course, Jimmy also had no way of knowing that NJ7 had hoped he would find the van. The driver had followed his instructions to circle Waterloo Station and attract attention with obviously suspicious movements. NJ7 had struck lucky. They might not have been able to find Jimmy, but they’d done the next best thing. They’d drawn him in and trapped him in Walnut Tree Walk.

05 TURNING UP THE HEAT

The metal shutter slammed down on to the concrete, cutting off the last sliver of daylight and sealing Jimmy in the car park. Strip lights cast soft shadows around the rows of cars, lined up between huge supporting pillars. Jimmy stood up and dusted himself off, but the first thing he saw made him feel like his knees would give way.

Next to the entrance was the security attendant’s booth. A cup of tea was perched on the ledge inside, still steaming. But the only thing left of the attendant was an explosion of blood and brains on the back wall.

Jimmy staggered back from the booth, clutching at his mouth and nose, as if he could block out the stench of fresh blood. After a second his insides swirled with the force of his programming. It gushed up through his body, blasting away the shock, but it was too late to stop Jimmy retching up the measly contents of his stomach.

Suddenly, the curiosity that had brought him here took on a fierce urgency. While a part of him wanted to curl up in the corner and catch his breath, he knew that wasn’t an option. Instead, Jimmy found the guard’s phone and walkie-talkie. Both had been smashed—presumably by the same man who had blasted the attendant’s head off.

He drove past me on that moped, Jimmy realised, the sickness rising up inside him again. I could have stopped him. He felt dizzy, but his programming seemed to crank up a gear. It was like a belt fastening a notch tighter inside his skin, pulling his thoughts into calm, emotionless order.

First he found the van. That wasn’t hard—it was parked in the central row, right next to one of the pillars. The rear doors were locked, but Jimmy jabbed his elbow into the catch. There was nothing he could do to help the attendant now, but if he was right about the van containing explosives he had to warn somebody.

He pulled the van doors open and saw that the vehicle was completely full of crates, stacked up three high and covered in a thick grey blanket. When he pulled back the corner of the blanket, he nearly threw up again at what he saw. There were dozens of crates and every single one was packed with slim glass tubes of a clear, jelly-like substance, all connected by a network of black wires. The whole van was one giant bomb.

Jimmy wanted to warn people. He thought of all the residents in the tower above him, of the children in the playground alongside the building. They all had to evacuate. But Jimmy’s feet wouldn’t run. Instead he remained rooted to the spot while his eyes darted around the contraption in front of him. He traced the lines of wire like he was following the map of a labyrinth, examining the piles, counting precious seconds. How long did he have before it blew up?

Come on, Jimmy told himself, feeling the sweat crawling down his neck. There’s no way you can defuse a bomb. There was no ticking clock, no red digits showing him a countdown. There certainly wasn’t anything that looked like an off switch, and all the wires were the same colour—black. Then he noticed the condensation on the glass tubes.

Of course, he thought. Nitro freezes at thirteen degrees. The chemical was usually a liquid, but Jimmy realised it had been cooled into a solid to make it easier to transport. At the same time, he knew that as nitroglycerin thawed, it became even more unstable.

The piles of crates in front of him seemed to change shape. In Jimmy’s imagination, some of them even became transparent. He could see exactly how this bomb was supposed to work.

To his horror, he felt a rush of pleasure. Something inside him was impressed by the artful construction of the bomb—thrilled even. It was built in such a way that it required only a single detonator. That would shoot a charge through the wires, setting off a chain reaction as it raised the temperature of each tube of nitroglycerin to melt them in a specific order. That delicately arranged chain reaction would multiply the size of the explosion a hundred times.

The beauty of it was that the bomb was virtually sabotage-proof. The detonator was nowhere to be seen —presumably hidden at the very centre of the pile of crates. Jimmy noticed tiny gold rings round the connections between the wires and the glass tubes. A second trigger mechanism, he realised. Any attempt to disconnect the wires or get to the detonator would set off the chain reaction early. That left no way of stopping it, and no way of predicting when it would explode, even with the expertise of an assassin inside him. Jimmy knew this bomb could blow up at any moment.

He ran back and heaved on the metal shutter at the entrance, gritting his teeth and straining every muscle from his neck to his calves. It wouldn’t budge. Jimmy fell back, panting. He didn’t understand it. In the past, he’d busted through reinforced walls at embassies and Secret Service facilities—why did a residential tower block need protection that was even stronger? He went to the attendant’s booth to find the controls. The desk was dripping with blood. Jimmy forced himself to wipe it away. Thick chunks of hot, quivering flesh came with it. But it was useless; the controls did nothing.

With a wild grunt of horror, Jimmy threw himself at the metal shutter once more. He kicked at it and wiped his hands all over it, clawing madly until the grey was smeared with dark red, and shouting out for help. None came. When Jimmy finally stepped away, his chest was heaving and his mind was frantic. There had to be another way out.

He ran to the other side of the car park, to the door that led on to the stairwell that served the flats. Jimmy opened it with an impatient tug, but then had to stop dead. The doorway was blocked, floor to ceiling, by construction rubble.

Jimmy stared at the huge rocks and metal rods that barred his exit and kicked out. He managed to knock the corner off one of the rocks, but it only revealed another layer of rubble behind it. Jimmy knew he didn’t have enough time to claw his way out, even if that was possible. As a final attempt to attract the attention of the outside world, he punched his palm into the fire alarm. There were no bells, no sirens.

Jimmy’s rising anger mixed with a cold fear. His hands wanted to tremble, but his inner strength held them rigid. Who were the men who’d assembled the bomb and brought it here? Who were they working for? What was it about this particular tower block?

Jimmy closed his eyes for a second to settle himself, then strode back across the concrete towards the white van. As soon as he stood in front of the open van doors again, he sensed a change. The condensation on the glass tubes was disappearing. When Jimmy held his palms up towards the crates he could feel they were slightly warmer than before. That’s the detonating mechanism, Jimmy realised. He didn’t know whether he’d worked it out himself or if it was his programming. The line between the two was constantly blurring.

Now when he looked across the crates, he imagined he could see right to the heart, where he knew there must be a simple heating system. There was no need for a timer or remote signal because as soon as the heater reached a certain temperature, the explosives at the core would become unstable, setting off the chain reaction through the wires and blowing the entire tower block out of existence.

He desperately looked around him, thinking that perhaps if he could find enough water, dousing the crates would dampen the explosion. But in truth he had no idea whether water would have any effect, and there wasn’t any to be seen anyway.

The only liquid around was petrol—lots of it. Could Jimmy possibly use that to lessen the force of the explosion? It seemed crazy, but if he was right about how the bomb was designed…

Jimmy dashed back to the attendant’s booth and picked up the man’s blood-soaked newspaper. He took it to the van and held it against the driver’s window, then jabbed his elbow into it hard. He leaned in through the shattered glass to release the hand brake, then he walked to the front of the vehicle and, as carefully as he possibly could, he heaved on the bumper to pull it out of its bay. If this bomb was going to explode, Jimmy thought, he may as well use it to blast through the metal shutter.

It was difficult to move the van at first, and Jimmy didn’t want to pull too hard in case he rocked the thawing nitro, but he reasoned that if it had been stable enough to drive through the streets of London, tugging it a few more metres was worth the risk. He took the strain in his back and thighs, then jumped back to the driver’s door to push and steer at the same time. Eventually the van was right up against the metal shutter.

Jimmy wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve. The van was giving off more heat now. He could feel it a metre away. It won’t hold much longer, Jimmy thought. Now came the harder part. Jimmy grabbed the mug of tea from the attendant’s booth. It was still steaming and spattered with blood. Jimmy smashed it against the wall and used the handle to prise open the van’s fuel cap.

By now, even the outside of the van was warm to the touch. Jimmy could feel it matched by the rising heat of his own fear. Even if his plan worked, he would only be able to reduce the power of the blast, not prevent it completely. That left a worrying question: Jimmy might stop the whole building collapsing, but how was he going to survive himself?

He went back to the front of the van and tore into the cushion of the driver’s seat, pulling out a whole spring and great fistfuls of wadding. He twisted the wadding tight around the spring, leaving a length of metal at the end for him to hold. When he finished he admired his creation: a huge, mouldy candyfloss stick that smelled of damp. Then he pushed the padding into the van’s fuel tank, feeding it down as far as he could, and held it there to soak up some diesel.

When he pulled it out a waft of fumes smacked him in the face. It combined with the scent of nitroglycerin already lining his nostrils and set off alarm bells in his head. Was this really a good idea? He gulped, gathered his courage and returned to the bomb.

Using his twist of seat-padding like a paintbrush, Jimmy carefully dabbed the wires with diesel. Despite his nerves, his hand was rock steady. When he leaned in to get to the wires towards the back, his cheek was millimetres from the glass tubes. The heat was much stronger now, making Jimmy sweat harder. Any second, the nitro could reach flashpoint—but Jimmy planned to give it a helping hand.

He dashed back to the attendant’s booth and quickly saw what he needed: hooked on to the security guard’s belt was a torch. Jimmy wiped the blood from the handle and unscrewed the plastic cap on the front of the flashlight as he ran across the car park.

Now he was a few metres away from the back of the van staring at the enormous bomb in front of him. What am I doing? he thought to himself desperately. I’ve covered a giant bomb in diesel. At the same time, his thumb clicked the torch on and off, itching to connect the bare filament with the diesel fumes. Jimmy could feel the battle raging inside him. His familiar, rational terror was obliterated by a wash of something else—something close to joy. His programming was thriving on the heat and the danger, relishing the chance to set off a massive explosion. Not just set it off, Jimmy reassured himself. Control it.

He knew that lighting the diesel would raise the temperature of the bomb by the critical few degrees needed to set off the blast. But in the seconds before that happened, the flames would burn through the wires, eliminating the delicately designed chain reaction. The crates of nitroglycerin would go up separately and randomly—not as one huge, coordinated eruption.

Finally, Jimmy brought the torch up to the seat stuffing soaked in diesel. He carefully clicked the torch and a spark lit a couple of strands of cotton at the very tip. Immediately, the fumes ignited and the whole twist of material became a flaming beacon.

He stared into the back of the van again. This time the flickering of his flame made the glass tubes seem to dance, as if they were excited about what Jimmy was about to do. This could be the biggest mistake of my life, Jimmy thought.

Just do it, he ordered himself. With that, he hurled the flame towards the bomb, twisted on his heels, and ran.

06 NELSON’S SHADOW

BANG!

Jimmy was lifted off his feet. The heat stabbed into his back and the whole world disappeared in a white flash. He slammed into the wall at the far end of the car park and slumped to the floor, his brain juddering in his skull.

He rolled for cover behind a car to watch each tube of nitroglycerin roar harder and hotter than the last one. Between blasts, Jimmy caught glimpses of flames melting the insides of cars. The fire spread, buckling the metal of every vehicle until its own petrol tank gave way and added an extra explosion. Jimmy hardly noticed that he was choking back the black smoke. He was fixated on a single thought: had he succeeded? The chain reaction would have blown the whole tower block to pieces in a single blast. Compared to that, this was a minor accident.

Then came an explosion so strong Jimmy felt like it would crack his eyeballs. It sent a rumble through his whole body, juddering his bones and mashing his organs. For a few seconds he couldn’t breathe. He realised the him was trembling—badly. So was the floor. When Jimmy looked through the chaos he could see the pillars that supported the ceiling were crumbling.

At first, small cracks opened up in the concrete, then chips of it came away and the cracks grew. Jimmy watched, aghast, as a huge cloud of grey dust mixed with the fire and black smoke. I’ve got to get out of here, he thought. But the only way out was through the exit where Jimmy had dragged the van. The metal shutter had been blown to smithereens with the first explosion, so that wasn’t a problem any more. But to get out, Jimmy had to run straight past the bomb—while the crates of nitroglycerin were still blowing up.

There was hardly any gap between explosions now. The heat was too great and the thaw was too rapid for any of the nitro to hold. Blast upon blast rocked the whole place. Jimmy staggered to his feet, almost knocked down every time another detonation sent shockwaves through the floor. Concrete rained down around him. He couldn’t see anything more than a metre in front of him, he could only hear the explosions and feel the impact. He felt his inner sense trying to time his run, but surely that wasn’t possible.

Half sprinting, half stumbling, Jimmy strained forwards with a flood of excitement. I can make it, he told himself.

BOOM!

Jimmy was flung into the sky by a pressure wave travelling at 9000 metres per second. The world swirled into an orange and black blur of flame and smoke. All he could feel was pure heat all around him, as if it was coming from his skin itself. Jimmy was thrown across the street inside a massive fireball. Then he slammed against something hard, and although the orange around him disappeared, he still felt like he was on fire. He heard a cry and realised it was his own voice, mixing with hundreds of other peoples’ screams.

He felt his body trying to stand, but he couldn’t. The last thing he saw was the huge tower block he’d just escaped. One side of it was crumbling, then it slumped downwards and collapsed.

The traffic around Trafalgar Square was even worse than usual. Cars honked and buses snorted as they stacked up in all the surrounding roads. In the very centre of the noise, in the pedestrianised part of the square, a tall, slim man in a long, navy coat was standing on top of an upturned plastic box, a megaphone to his mouth.

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