In a whirl of noise and shouts and accusations, Judge Ronald Hamburger sentenced Sonia—predictably—to a televised death by firing squad. To be carried out in three hours’ time, after the trial had been aired. The actual execution would be run on every single network, every TV and radio channel. It would be a stern warning to the population. It would show the horrors of terrorism.
And hell, it would make
great
TV.
Sonia J’s brain was in turmoil as she sat in her cell. A part of her thought of the trial as a circus parade, a farce of the most epic proportions. And yet the cold hard reality of her situation still smashed her in the face like an expertly aimed half-brick.
She was going to be executed.
Murdered ...
Welcome to the Nex State, she thought sourly as she banged her mug rhythmically against the bars of her cell. Unfortunately, it did little to annoy the Nex. They didn’t have the imagination, it would seem.
With every passing moment Sonia J was growing more and more tense with expectation, awaiting the explosion that would blow a hole in the cell wall as the REBS came pouring in to rescue her. But reality kicked her in the face. Durell had successfully flushed out and exterminated a great number of REBS over the previous few months: their strength was in severe decline, and could they really spare such hefty resources to rescue one woman?
Sonia closed her eyes and thought of the man she was protecting. The
real
leader of the REBS. She smiled a little at the thought. At least, somehow, the Nex had got their wires crossed by insisting on her status as the top dog. When, in reality, it was a lot more complicated than that. And
his
identity had to remain a carefully guarded secret. Because if they ever discovered who secretly controlled the REBS, who masterminded their modest hits, then Durell would surely throw every resource he owned into their elimination. And the REBS just did not have the resources, nor the technology, to combat such an onslaught.
The JT8s came for Sonia after three hours. They beat her savagely with the butts of their Steyr sub-machine guns, strapped her arms behind her back with wire and dragged her into the narrow cold corridor. She was going to die.
And nobody was going to save her.
The execution yard was large and grey, with high walls that had thick coils of barbed wire along their summit. An anti-mortar mesh spanned the skyline. Snow was still falling heavily on this gloomy afternoon and the yard was crammed around its edges with baying reporters and cameramen. Sonia J’s gaze came to rest calmly on the firing squad.
Ten slim masked Nex—holding heavy-calibre 13mm NailGuns—stood in a line, facing one of the walls. The wall had a disturbing peppered quality about it: innumerable former rounds had pounded the surface so that it looked like a crumbled moonscape.
Sonia J shivered, glancing around the crowd, unable to brush the gathering snow from her shoulders because of her bindings. Her outfit was painfully thin, designed for the hothouse interiors of the TV studio, not the chill of a London snowstorm.
Judge Ronald appeared. He seemed subdued, but brightened a little as the TV CAMS tracked his entrance.
‘Welcome back, folks! And thanks for tuning in!’ he proclaimed.
Sonia J was prodded to stand against the wall. Now that she was close enough she could make out ingrained old dried blood and tiny embedded shreds of splintered bone. It smelled bad. Like a charnel house.
Sonia felt herself fill up with an unbearable fear as she face the masked Nex. They levelled their NailGuns at her.
‘One minute to execution, folks!’ came the jolly words of Judge Ronald Hamburger.
Sonia closed her eyes, not wanting the black masks of the Nex killers to be the last things she saw as she died. She thought back to better times as the execution yard clock counted down the last few seconds of her expendable life ...
I
will fucking kill them, thought Carter.
I will maim them. I will burn them. I will fuck them with white-hot pokers.
‘
That’s my boy!’
cheered Kade.
‘I will fucking burn you as well, fucker.’
‘‘Don’t be like that! I’m here to help!’
‘You never help me, Kade; you merely prolong my misery.’
‘One day you’ll thank me. We will sit like brothers,
Brother,
and you will look deep into my soul, and I into yours
—
we have shared many moments in this life, and our crossing is a jewelled prologue of what will come, what will be, what
will
exist. . ‘
‘Just what the fuck
are
you, Kade?’
‘
You will learn soon enough.’
‘So you can read the fucking future now, can you, shit-head?’
‘No, no, Carter. But there are things here you do not understand; things you cannot remember ... Do you recall your little brother Jimmy? Do you remember his head splitting open like a ripe melon when he fell from that pipe onto the rocks? And later, the sanatorium? After you murdered Crowley? The sterile white walls, the stench of iodine ... oh, joyous days, happy days!’
‘Sanatorium?’ Confusion.
Doubt.
But reality—
consciousness—
came crashing back into Carter’s world, and his blood-sticky eyes opened to see square tiles scrolling past his swaying vision. Nausea swamped him—for he had been badly beaten—and vomit splashed thickly from his quivering lips, running down his chin and leaving a foul trail across the tiles. He was ignored; his vomit was ignored; he tried to turn, to struggle and fight but weakness had invaded his limbs and his strength had left him.
Carter was being dragged by his arms and his boots thumped along the tiles. The Nex who dragged him ignored his feeble struggles and muted groans of pain.
Carter shivered when he remembered the beating. It had been a long horror, a torture: they had punched him and kicked him, jumped on his spine, then beaten him with weapon butts. He had vomited blood, felt ribs smash within the cage of his body; and then they had injected him with a bright silver liquid and pain had screeched through him like nothing he had felt before, fire eating him from the inside out, burning him like raw acid in his veins and organs ... to finally drain away, leaving him a hollow man.
Carter was dumped unceremoniously on the floor. He slumped into a heap and closed his eyes for several moments. Then he felt soft hands helping him up onto a seat. His eyes flickered open and he saw the face of Alexis, her copper eyes glowing, her smile filling him with confusion.
Carter looked around. ‘Where am I?’ he croaked.
‘The Sentinel Corporation HQ in New York,’ came the voice of Durell. Carter turned slowly, burning inside with hatred and anger and a sudden need to
kill.
‘What does it take to kill you, motherfucker?’
‘I do not die easily.’ Durell smiled from within the shadowing folds of his hood. His blackened clawed hands pushed back the hood and he moved across the carpet—past the lithe form of Alexis—to stand in front of Carter in all his deformity.
‘You call that evolution?’ snarled Carter.
‘I am the core, and this is the price I pay,’ said Durell. ‘Just like a queen bee abandons her ability to fly in order to rule—the greatest of sacrifices—so I must bear the burden of enormous power. However, this talk is needless. You work for me now, Carter. You have joined the ranks of the most powerful army this world has ever seen! You have killed for us—you assassinated Jahlsen, murdered one of your own Spiral men.’
‘You used me. Used ... Nicky.’
‘Sorry about that.’ Durell smiled again, his eyes glittering. ‘She was a clone, yes, one of our superb experiments closely linked to Nex work. When you create a Nex, sometimes—depending on the pattern—you can clone a subject. It doesn’t always work—some of our first trials were messy, although the original clone of Gol was a good one. Until you blew him up.’
‘Hey.’ Carter grinned through bloodied teeth. ‘Sometimes shit happens. But what about the real Gol—the one who betrayed
you
in Egypt? Durell, your Nex are far from perfect... I’ve read the recent Spiral memos, the ECube blips. They’re starting to turn, aren’t they? You’re losing thousands in unexplained incidents as they melt on the streets. And as for the rest—can you trust them, Durell? Can you
really
trust them?’
‘Enough. We have your boy, Carter. You
will
do what we require.’
‘Show him to me.’
‘In a little while—when I have explained our position.’
‘No, fuck you, show him to me or I swear to God ...’
‘God abandoned you a long time ago, Mr Carter. However…’ Durell nodded to Alexis, whose lithe figure slipped from the room. ‘I will allow you to see him. For a few short minutes.’
Carter waited. Minutes stretched into pain-filled hours. Carter’s body screamed at him. Durell moved to the window, staring down over New York City—his world, his
dominion.
‘Daddy!’
‘Joe!’
Joseph sprinted across the carpet and fell into Carter’s arms. Carter held his son tightly, inhaling the boy’s scent. As Joseph pulled away there were tears on the little boy’s cheeks.
‘Are they being good to you?’ asked Carter softly.
Joe nodded. ‘Why are you bleeding, daddy?’
‘I had an accident, but I’m fine, son. I’m absolutely brilliant.’ He ruffled the boy’s short blond hair. ‘They feeding you?’
‘Yes. And the nice lady, her—’ he pointed to Alexis — has been playing games with me.’ Carter glanced over at the Nex, frowning, but Alexis was looking away—at Durell. Something unspoken was passing between the two and Carter returned his attention to his son.
‘I’m sorry, Joe, but I’ve got to go away. I have something to do—an important job. But then I’ll be back and we’ll be together—for ever. I’ll never leave you again ... I promise.’
‘You will come back, won’t you, daddy?’
‘I’ll come back soon,’ said Carter softly, releasing the boy.
Alexis took Joe by the hand and led him from the low, long-ceilinged room. As the door closed Carter stretched, testing his body. Pain flared in a hundred places but he pushed it aside and concentrated his attention on Durell. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘You will bring down Spiral.’
Carter paused for a long moment. ‘I would rather die,’ he said eventually, his voice barely more than a whisper.
‘And you would condemn your son?’ Durell moved across the carpet to stand close to Carter, whose nostrils wrinkled at the Nex insect stink. Durell’s armoured spine crackled softly as he moved and Carter realised that he had never been this close to Durell before without trying to kill him. It felt very strange.
‘One day, I will gut you like a pig,’ said Carter.
‘We shall see. However, for now you must come with me; we need to prepare you for your mission.’
‘And how do you suggest I
bring down
Spiral?’
‘In an ironic twist of fate,’ said Durell, ‘I find myself in possession of a MicroNuke, a fully functioning SpiralGRID map and the perfect location in which to concentrate the core of Spiral personnel. The rest just takes a little imagination. As you will witness. Indeed, as you will
instigate
.’
The Grey Church was filled with streamers of sunlight. As the SpiralGRID fizzled and crackled, and the five Sleeper Nex composed themselves, shaking their huge triangular heads, after the nausea of their sudden sideways-shift journey, The Priest leapt towards them with his Glock bucking in his fist—
Mongrel and Simmo leapt to the left and right of The Priest as their own guns came up. The Sleeper Nex jumped apart in a blur of movement, huge bodies crashing through old wood pews as The Priest met the first creature head on. Its claws lashed out, whirling past The Priest’s face with only a single millimetre to spare. He caught himself, swayed to one side, whirled low and slammed the heavy blade of his black knife into the Sleeper Nex’s armoured side. The blade slid smoothly between plates of armour and a spraying jet of blood pulsed out. The Sleeper reared up, a high-pitched chittering sound coming from its gaping jaws. Its belly was exposed now and The Priest unloaded the rest of the Glock’s magazine into its unprotected abdomen and watched black scales peel back under the multiple impacts of the bullets. Entrails spilled out like a tangle of squirming eels.
Simmo, backed up by Rogowski and Mo, hammered bursts of bullets into the two Sleeper Nex to The Priest’s left. A hail of flying metal cut one apart, punching it backwards, sending it slamming against the ancient stone of the church wall. The second Sleeper leapt towards its twitching comrade and slammed into Simmo whose gun fired an unaimed spray of bullets, making Mo and Rogowski dive to the floor in panic.
Simmo’s huge hand grabbed the Sleeper’s throat as he was pounded into the ground. A claw slashed down, raking the wooden slabs of the floor where his head had been. Simmo’s huge fist cannoned into the Sleeper’s triangular head again and again. Mo leapt onto its back, slipping a little on greased chitin and lifting his gun to the back of the creature’s armoured head.
Suddenly, the Sleeper Nex’s head spun around. It snapped at Mo with long fangs as he screamed and recoiled, his gun blasting a hail of bullets into its open maw. Its jaws jerked forward and bit through his wrist, slicing flesh and bone as easily as a razor cutting through jelly. Dark crimson gushes pumped from the stump to the rhythm of Mo’s beating heart as he shrieked like a girl, severed tendon ends flapping against his arm. Simmo, still punching, caught a brutal blow to the head from a savage backswing of the Sleeper’s clawed limb. He lay for a moment, stunned, cigar resting against his broken cheek.