‘Rox?’
Mongrel coughed, pushing himself up onto his elbows. His grey face looked like a corpse’s. His eyes were shadowed, and his tongue licked at lips that were desiccated and split.
‘How you feeling?’
‘Like whole fucking world fell on me.’
‘You had six bullets inside you. I’ve managed to get five of them out, but the sixth is too close to your heart—I can’t remove it here. You had one of your lungs clipped, but I’ve given you an internal staple—and that had to hurt. I’ve also stapled several ribs and your clavicle back together, although some of your shoulder blade is nothing more than mushed bone powder and needs serious surgery. Mongrel, you are one tough motherfucker. Believe me, you should be fucking dead.’
Mongrel grinned. ‘Hey. You is looking at picture of testosterone. It take more than six bullets and fall off mountain to kill this squaddie!’ He coughed again, mouth smiling but eyes haunted with pain and exhaustion. He climbed to his knees, and Roxi tried to settle him back down.
‘What are you doing? You’re not going anywhere!’
‘Carter in trouble. World in trouble! We need be moving ...’
‘Oh no, no, look, you’re tagged up to a pouch of blood! You think you’re going to war with a bloody cannula in your arm? Be serious, Mongrel, you’re down and out of the game—but at least you have your life, man. At least you can still breathe God’s sweet air! As long as you don’t try and do anything strenuous, that is!’
Mongrel climbed to his feet. He ripped the bag of blood from its little plastic tripod, opened a loop of plastic, and hung the bag around his neck so that it dangled, like some huge crimson medallion, against his hairy tattooed chest. His torso was a mass of bruises, purple discoloured patches of skin and joins of puckered flesh where Roxi had diligently stapled his body back together again. He breathed deeply, pain rippling through him like an ocean swell as his eyes closed and he fought the nausea of collapse.
‘Come on. I have motherfucking big score to settle.’
‘You’re being stubborn and stupid, Mongrel!’
His eyes glowed in the darkness. ‘You said I still breathing God’s sweet air? Yeah ... and I believe it for fucking reason ... it time for some payback, Roxi. It time this old Mongrel finally made God proud of him.’
Carter stared at Alexis, his eyes hard. His unwept tears stayed that way. Then he turned to stare at Durell.
‘You think I am one of your kind?’
‘Yes. You are the PureBreed. The original Nex, from before these—’ Durell half turned, a snarl on his deformed features, hand sweeping across the ranks of the silent battalion ‘—before these
corruptions
came into existence. You were one of the original Nex—one of those that worked, a sweet dream, a crystal promise. But you were wild—too wild, and we tamed you with the KillChip.’
Carter laughed savagely. ‘You
tamed
me? So you mean to say that
without
Kade I was even fucking
worse?’
‘Yes.’
‘Get to fuck, Durell. This is nothing more than a ruse, a bluff. Something like that ... I would have known. I would have remembered. I would have been
told.’
‘In the same manner you knew the true identity of Kade? The fact that he was an AI living inside your head? An
implant?
No, Carter, you were one of a squad—the original
Nex
DemolSquad, part of an elite Spiral unit who hunted down the most dangerous terrorists of our time. You worked outside the law, outside the military. It was your squad who single-handedly assassinated the FBI’s ten most wanted criminals. You brought death and destruction to the evil men of the world. But you don’t remember that, do you? You don’t remember those days of savage bloodletting?’
Carter gave a little shake of his head. ‘How far back does this go?’ His voice was nothing more than a whisper; belief no more than the width of a razor’s edge away.
‘You remember your brother? Jimmy? And the bridge? And what you did to those other children afterwards? Glass, Trigger, Johnny Jones? And Crowley? Do you remember that?’
‘I did nothing to those children. I was only twelve years old!’
‘You murdered them, Carter. You slaughtered them like pigs in their beds. You were uncontrollable. You were driven
insane
by the murder of your blind brother!’
‘And you call
this
sanity?’
‘I call it purity,’ said Durell. ‘You are Nex PureBreed. You are a true representation of what the Nex could be—could aspire to. All other Nex you see around you, they are corrupted, twisted half-breeds. If you came with us you could help us, we could make the Nex pure again. You are unstoppable, Carter. They called you the Butcher, but nobody
truly
understood.’
‘Yes,’ said Carter, nodding. His mind was raging. Hatred danced in his eyes like fire. ‘Once again, you would use me as a pawn. Well, I am fucking sick. Sick to my heart. Sick to my core. I am nobody’s slave. I will not join you, Durell. The Nex are
wrong,
Durell. The Nex are a corruption of what man should become—and I will not be a part of its continuation. Of its
contamination.’
Durell sighed. He held out his clawed hand, the one without the gun, in a gesture of friendship. ‘Come back to us, Carter. Please come back to your oldest friend. I miss you, Carter. I miss you.’
‘You
miss
me?’
‘Yes. I miss you. I miss the good times.’ And Carter looked into Durell’s eyes and saw there in those slitted copper depths—saw the vision of a tall, dark-haired man, incredibly handsome, a powerful and athletic figure who—
CRACK
was leading the squad down a dark alleyway as the group were suddenly ambushed from all sides, machine guns blazing, grenades exploding, as the five members of the nex squad sent sub-machine gun bullets yammering through the dark saudi street as
—
CRACK—pain
the terrorist, writhing in agony under his boot—come here carter, come here and hold him—and carter held him as durell smiled and pulled free his gleaming, shining implements of torture—now you’re going to tell us where the hostages are, fucker—you’re going to weep like a baby—fuck you, I will never speak—durell smiled, handsome face turned into a demon’s by the flickering fires of the burning hotel, you will tell us everything, he whispered, a promise of pain to come ...
CRACK—a smash between Carter’s eyes –
over here, get the fuck over here and they were running, along the battered booming alloy panels towards the docked submarine — guns fired after them in the dark shadowed bay and carter whirled, seeing the red star of russia stark and bright against the matt black flanks of the sub, and durell arrived with feuchter close behind and carrying the bulging satchel of explosives and
—
and he smiled, eyes fixing on carter as with an injection of grim black humour he said, are we having fun yet? and he grinned that famous witty durell grin ... the one they all loved...the one they all trusted implicitly ... with their lives ... with their hearts ... with their souls ...
CRACK
panting, blinking, bright light
the bright sunlight of
Africa.
Carter opened his eyes. Looked up into Durell’s.
‘You remember?’ asked Durell softly.
‘What happened to you?’ said Carter.
‘I became greedy. Sought too much power. Too much strength. I was betrayed—by The Avelach.’
‘It did not betray you, Durell. You betrayed yourself.’
‘Maybe. But now you could come back, we could be a unit again, be the old DemolSquad—the original, the first, the best DemolSquad. What do you think, Carter? I’m not a bad man—I just want what is best for the world. Best for mankind.’
‘You mean best for the Nex.’
‘Like I have already said, the Nex are an evolutionary stepping stone. You can help us take it one step further. You can help us take it to the stars.’
Carter considered his options. Then, slowly, he spat in Durell’s face, a precise and deliberate movement. ‘No.’
Durell’s hand of friendship fell away. He lifted Carter’s Browning but Carter did not flinch. He stared down that barrel and beyond, into Durell’s eyes.
‘I am going to kill you,’ said Carter, voice soft, face falling into a deadly mask of serenity.
‘You cannot.’ Durell smiled. ‘The KillChip contains my DNA. My RNA. We are linked, Carter. We are linked ... and if you kill me, then the KillChip will slowly disintegrate. I will no longer be there to hold it in place. The Kill Chip will gradually dissolve, will release itself like an acid into your brain, will poison you like a fast-growing tumour that will torture you over the coming months—before eating your head from the inside out. To kill me, Carter, you must, ultimately, kill yourself.’
Carter considered this.
The Browning’s dark-eyed muzzle remained unwavering.
‘By killing you, I kill myself,’ he said musingly, eyes gleaming. And he smiled then. Understanding flooded him. Filled him. ‘That is a sacrifice I am willing to make. Kade? You there, my friend?’
‘I will always be here, brother. Until the day we both die.
‘
Carter stared into Durell’s eyes. ‘Kill this motherfucking piece of shit.’
Kade smiled in the hollows of Carter’s mind-tomb.
‘
Your wish is my command.
‘
Carter fell, plummeting into a world of black and white. And yet it was different. It had changed. It had
all
changed. Euphoria flooded him. The world spun to a standstill. And Kade was there, looking out from
his
eyes, and the black and white flickered, was flooded with colour as Carter—
Carter
breathed.
The air smelled like rose blossoms. His limbs were weightless and awesomely powerful. His vision had true clarity.
There was no pain. All his injuries had faded into a gentle, throbbing pleasure.
‘We are one,’ said Kade.
‘We are together,’ said Carter.
‘Brothers of the soul,’ said Kade.
‘For ever,’ said Carter.
Carter’s hand slammed out, so fast that the movement could not even be called a blur. The Browning fired once, the bullet skimming off over the motionless Dreadnought and hitting a Nex soldier’s head, producing a spray of blood mist.
Carter leapt forward fist and elbow ramming into Durell’s face with an awesome double impact Durell staggered back on skittering claws Carter’s boot came down on his armoured kneecap with a crunch as Durell screamed a high-pitched scream as Carter took the Browning from his limp hand and jumped high into the air whirling spinning coming down with an elbow smash against the crown of Durell’s head and slamming the falling bleeding Nex face first into the deck.
Carter stood over Durell, Browning in one fist, staring down with a snarl of contempt. Kade, within him, revelled in this joining, this merging and blending of ultimate hatred, ultimate force. Carter levelled the gun.
Durell stared up.
‘You could be so much more,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Carter, shaking his head sadly. ‘I am happy with what I’ve got.’
Carter started to fire, bullets blasting from the Browning’s barrel and punching holes along Durell’s armoured chest and throat. Durell scrabbled at the wounds, his high-pitched insect keening rising to an awesome shrill pitch. More bullets entered Durell’s head, cracking chitin, burrowing into flesh, eating into the brain beyond, popping one slitted copper eye until the gun’s firing pin clicked and Carter stared down at the mess of mangled flesh below him ... at the—amazingly—still living, breathing and
thinking
body of Durell.
Durell rolled over in the spreading pool of his own blood, and started to crawl. Carter followed, leaving boot prints in the congealing mess. All around, the ranks of the Nex were emotionless, unmoving, guns held low.
‘Why do they not fire?’ asked Carter.
‘Because you are PureBreed,’ said Kade.
‘But they have tried to murder me before!’
‘That was before,’ said Kade. ‘This is a battle for supremacy. This is a war between generals. This is the deciding factor, the final, finishing blow. They want you, Carter. The Nex—well, they want you to lead them. They want you in charge. They want you as the ultimate general. They
love you,
Carter. Can you not feel it? Can you not feel their pride? Durell was a deviation; but you, you are the real fucking thing. You are the PureBreed. You can do no wrong.’
Durell had reached one of the Gravity Displacers and Carter stood just behind him as Durell rolled over, wheezing, single remaining copper eye glaring at Carter. He started to laugh then, bubbling pulses of blood and phlegm spraying up and out.
‘You have killed us both,’ he croaked.
‘We all have to die.’
Carter stooped, took a firm hold on Durell’s battered shell, and hoisted him onto the slope of the Gravity Displacer. Durell slid and rolled, out of control as his clawed limbs flailed. But in a final twist of irony, as he was sucked towards the Gravity Displacer—he could not defy gravity. He slid, kicking, a wail rising from his shrill lips until he impacted with the mouth of the machine and it crashed him, compressed his bones and flesh and his shell in a snapping, crackling instant. The Gravity Displacer folded him over and over into himself; it compressed him down unto infinity.