Shift (41 page)

And in that euphoric moment of re-birth, he decided to make the transformation complete, to shed the burden of his tortured past. A new start with no excess baggage to carry ever-onwards towards oblivion. A new life on a new planet. All worries bundled up and tossed to the wind on the spreading cloud of exhaled memory.

And then something unexpected happened. Deprived of an identity or purpose of being, he found himself reaching out, searching for something he knew he must find but couldn't understand. He grasped the struggling pilot's mind, read it and copied it. A complete accident. Some in-built survival mechanism that abhorred a vacuum. Whatever the reason, the memories and body of John Bruce became wedded to his own Colonist intellect and powers. Not that he had any memory of being a Colonist. He was John Bruce, the first man chosen to fly to the stars.

But a new suit of clothes was no panacea. Underneath he was still the same, instability and paranoia were not things one could exhale.

And now his physical form lay dying beneath him. One lapse of possession and his world had been invaded and abused. Anger pulsed throughout his being. He pushed inside John's head, sensed Peter's presence, grabbed hold of him, squeezed and pulled and ripped him out, spitting him into the void.

Pain hit him. And something else. His body was under attack. Hundreds of thousands of tiny machines—nanotechnocytes—were coursing through his body on a search and destroy mission. A wriggling army unleashed by the bullet lodged in his shoulder.

He fought them. Using whatever powers he could summon. He attacked them from the higher dimensions; burning, stripping away at the fabric of matter that held them together; ripping them out; expelling them in their hundreds.

He fell to the floor. Other bodies—humans—crawled all over him, trying to help but getting in his way. He swept them aside, sending rolling waves of paramedics crashing over the lip of the stage.

The hotel Metropole shimmered into view. Nick swung towards it, dropping to street level. People were streaming out from the hotel doors, running into the street, disrupting the traffic. What the hell was going on inside?

Nick followed the surge of people back through the hotel into the auditorium, blurring through a wall of panic-stricken people.

And stopped. John Bruce was on stage, staggering and . . . all around him the air writhed and warped and pulsed blood red. The alien was coiled around his body.

"I'll send the pictogram," said Louise.

And pray the Colonists were already responding to the first message, thought Nick, trying to make sense of the scene. Injured people were lying everywhere. Those that could walk were trying to run and those that could run had spilled onto the street. It was chaos.

John fell down. Nick edged closer to the stage, wondering if attracting the alien's attention was a good idea or not. Could Louise pull off the angel stunt twice?

And what was the matter with John? Why was he on the floor? Was he . . .

Was that blood?

Two paramedics ran on stage. One second they were kneeling besides John's body the next they were flying through the air.

Which didn't make sense. Was the alien turning against John? Didn't he want his body to live?

A blaze of intense light flared at the back of the auditorium then flashed past Nick, heading for the stage.

It had wings.

The alien was frantic, tears running down his face, insect-machines inside him, killing him while he watched and thrashed.

"Stop!" commanded the angel, its voice resonating like a hundred strong choir. "The Lord thy God commands thee!"

He glimpsed the angel through a film of tears. How could he stop? Why would God want him to stop? Wasn't human life precious?

Or was it a test? The supreme test. Accept death and prove your faith? God waiting in the wings, like he did with Isaac, waiting until the last second before stepping in and healing his disciple's poor broken body.

Or was it all a trick? Satan again, in one of his many guises—laughing at him, fooling him, making him die for nothing.

"No!" he boomed. "You're no angel. God wouldn't do this! This is Satan's work."

He lashed out, swaying unsteadily, anchored to the physical John Bruce while flailing at the false angel.

Nick watched from below. John Bruce was back on his feet. The alien pulsing blood red and lashing out in fury. A frond must have caught Louise. She was being pulled towards the alien, her wings beating wildly.

He thought arrow. He thought sharp. He thought cut that frond. Bursting out of the auditorium floor he flew at the narrowing gap between Louise and the alien. Impact. He hit something, kept flying, was Louise free?

No. She was still struggling, commanding John to stop, to listen to the Word of God.

Nick turned, flew back, imagining himself the sharpest knife forged from the hardest metal. He aimed for a point as close to Louise as he dared and hit it hard. Louise came with him. The two of them barrelling away though the upturned chairs of the second row. No, the three of them—he hadn't noticed earlier—in his rush to free Louise he'd forgotten to tell John to stay put. The wingman must have followed Nick on his kamikaze dash.

A brilliant flash of light exploded high above them. Then another. The ornate auditorium ceiling lit up as three, four, five intense balls of light materialised.

Weapons? Colonists? Something else?

Nick melted into the carpet taking Wingman John with him. The balls of light elongated and took shape: ghostly translucent white jellyfish several metres in length. They converged over the frantic alien, their delicate fronds reaching down and caressing his writhing body.

Gradually his colour dimmed, pulsing from blood red through pink to translucent pearl. And the writhing stopped. Slowly, he began to rise. All the Colonists began to rise. Were they lifting him clear? Was he alive? Dead? Tranquillised?

John Bruce's body collapsed to the stage floor, then the auditorium shuddered and disappeared. Nick was back in his body, sitting on the sofa in Louise's lounge. Louise was by the window. A boy stood by the fireplace. A non-spectral version of the boy/Colonist who'd brought them home.

"It's over," the boy said, his face impassive, his lips still out of sync. "We are leaving."

The room vanished and back came the auditorium.

"Wait! What about all this?" shouted Louise. "Don't we get any help putting things back together again?"

The Colonists flickered once then disappeared.

"We're probably better off without their help," said Nick.

"But what about John?" shouted Louise. "The alien was killing him. You can see the blood. He's probably shredded his insides."

Nick hoped she was wrong. The alien had no reason to attack his own body but . . .

If he was insane and . . .

"Did I do this!" Louise rushed past him, streaking towards the stage, her fears spilling behind her. Oh God, no. Not this. Please don't say I tipped him over the edge with my angel act. I told him to wait. I didn't mean . . .

Nick followed. "It was nothing you did, Lou. We don't even know what happened. We don't even know how John got here."

Two paramedics were bent over John's body. His shirt was being ripped open, dressings applied. More people rushed in from the wings.

Nick and Louise watched, helpless. Should they reconnect John? Would that help or hinder? What if John's body died? What would they do with John then?

John was loaded onto a stretcher. Four men grabbed a handle each and rushed him off stage, passing through the wings, along a corridor towards a red-doored fire exit at the back. The doors swung open. An ambulance was waiting. More paramedics, security personnel, police. Emergency lights flashed. John was bundled into the back of the first ambulance, the doors slammed shut, wheels began to spin.

Three blurs followed, hovering above John's body.

A heart monitor flashed numbers that Nick desperately tried to read. The numbers started to tumble. Flat-line.

"No!" shouted Louise as a paramedic worked on John's battered body, shocking him, injecting him, pummelling him back to life.

"We've got to do it now, Nick!" shouted Louise. "We've got to put him back!"

"And if he dies?"

"We've still got to do it. What life would it be for John without a body?"

"It hasn't been that bad for us, has it? Given a choice between this and nothing at all—I'd choose this every time."

"It's not your choice, Nick. It's his!"

She was right but . . . what were they going to say to John? He thought he was in a flight simulator. How did they explain that he was now in an ambulance looking down on his body fighting for its life?

What if he panicked and flew off? What if . . .

"Just do it!" screamed Louise.

"Switching frequency," he said. "No call for alarm, John. This is another drill."

He searched for the words, treading a line between the truth and something he could sell.

"This simulation tests your ability to cope with enemy counter measures, John. They've corrupted your visuals to make you think the docking bay is your body. It's not. You need to land at a point an inch above your hairline in the centre of your forehead. Approach slowly and think yourself there, John. You're cleared for landing."

"Copy that, wing leader."

Nick watched John descend, his approach made more difficult by the sudden movements of his destination as John's head jerked and spasmed.

He was in position. "Now think yourself inside, John, aim for the centre of the brain below you and pull yourself in."

Did the blur disappear? John's head was jerking so much Nick couldn't tell.

John's body arched, spasming violently then collapsed. Flat-line!

More paddles, more shocks, more desperate moments.

Had they killed him?

The monitor showed a pulse again. He was alive. Just. And John had to have connected. The blur had disappeared. But what kind of life would he wake up to? The John inside had no idea of the life his other half had been living. And what the hell had happened back in the auditorium? Would John have to answer for that?

"John, this is important," shouted Nick, aiming his words at John's head and willing them inside. "Listen to me. This is your wing leader."

Nick prayed John could hear. He'd been able to hear Louise when he'd taken physical form. This had to work.

"You don't remember anything after the SHIFT flight except for what I'm going to tell you now. During the SHIFT flight something went wrong. You think the neural shielding failed. You remember a violent headache then nothing. Go to SHIFT control and ask for help. Tell them to check the before and after full-spectrum brain scans from the flight. It might help get your old job back."

And provide an explanation for John's amnesia.

But it wouldn't explain everything.

"The only other thing you remember is more recent. The details are hazy but you remember a man handing you a glass of water. As you drank it you noticed the man was watching you. He looked strange—triumphant—and then he said something even stranger. He said, 'see how you like VCH, spaceman,' and then everything went blank."

"What's VCH?" asked Louise.

"Insurance," said Nick. "You're waking up now, John. Your body's injured and you need to fight."

John was now on his own.

"Insurance against what?" pressed Louise.

"Whatever happened back in the auditorium. Something tells me that John's going to need a lot more than amnesia to resurrect his credibility and VCH is a powerful hallucinogenic that clears the bloodstream in under an hour. No one'll be able to say he wasn't drugged."

Voices echoed inside John's head. Distant voices, as though he was at the bottom of a long deep well and they were at the surface shouting down to him.

"Picking up signs of internal failure! Switching to back-up."

"Fight, you bastard, fight!"

Faces loomed and faded. Was he in the back of a truck? Everything was moving and swaying from side to side.

"He's coming to!"

"How much further to go?"

Someone at the front—the driver?—turned to answer.

"Nearly there. Is he gonna make it?"

John waited for the answer but everything went black. Then white. He was on a gurney being wheeled along a long white corridor. Why did that feel familiar? He felt he should know? But the feeling escaped him. Swing doors banged close to his head, a masked face peered down at him, a gentle voice, reassuring words, the smell of disinfectant, lights, even brighter lights and then darkness.

Louise was leaning against a farm gate watching her animals when Nick arrived. It was the first time he'd seen her in days. He thought she might have called but . . . it must be difficult returning to a village where a close friend and neighbour has been murdered and no one's quite sure if you're a victim or an accomplice. So many bridges to re-build. It was bad enough at the college. People there weren't sure if he was a pariah or a celebrity. Even after being cleared by the police.

"How's it going?" he called out as he neared.

She smiled. "Better now I've got my menagerie back together again." She nodded to a couple of goats cavorting in the early spring sun. "I feel almost normal again. How about you?"

"Well, my classes are fuller. I used to be merely eccentric—with occasional flashes of brilliance, of course . . ."

"Of course," she echoed, joining in the easy banter.

"But now I have an aura of danger about me. I'm a man who discovers mutilated corpses, has human body parts lurking in his saucepan and successfully evades a police manhunt for over a week."

"I think technically it was only four days. The DNA found on the body didn't match yours, remember. And the CCTV footage from the college showed that you couldn't have left the body parts on your desk."

He waved her argument aside. "A mere technicality. According to some of my esteemed colleagues it was all my fault anyway as I must have angered the murderer or why else would anyone want to frame me?"