Jimmy Coates: Blackout

Then she saw her chance. There was a slim gap in the side of the tunnel. It was less than half a metre wide, and completely dark. Eva thanked her luck – she’d found a remnant from when different service tunnels had been joined together to create the NJ7 labyrinth. She rushed towards it, and stepped into the shadows.

To her shock, her step faltered and she nearly fell. The opening in the concrete was in fact a staircase leading downwards. Eva could make out a sliver of light at the bottom. She gingerly stepped down towards it, her shoulders brushing against the cold concrete on both sides.

She paused halfway down to listen for Lee’s footsteps. There was no noise coming from behind her. There was, however, the sound of quiet conversation coming from below. Eva crept further on, but lurked in the shadows. When her eyes adjusted to the bright light of the room in front of her, what she saw banished any worries about William Lee.

Half a dozen NJ7 technicians were hurrying around the room, passing each other papers and mumbling instructions to each other. Their white coats almost glowed under an intense green light. In the centre of the room, on a large metal slab, was the scarred and scorched body of what looked like an older teenage boy. His limbs were being held in place and gradually manipulated by metal clamps. Aimed directly into his eye was an intense green laser being fired from a large machine attached to a computer.

Eva couldn’t look away from the boy – not because of the laser, or the obvious injuries from these strange operations, but because his chest was steadily rising and falling. This boy was alive.

Jimmy took a twisting route through London, constantly scanning his surroundings. His brain was building millions of fragments of information into an instinct he couldn’t explain. Someone was out there. Someone was following him.

Get over it, he urged himself. If somebody from NJ7 was on to him they would have struck by now. It’s nothing, he insisted in his head, pausing to check the reflection of the street in a darkened shop window. Just paranoia. He rubbed his eyes hard. Every bit of him ached in a way he had never felt before: like his limbs were being compressed from every direction and his head was trapped under a spinning washing machine. He searched inside himself for the power of his genetic programming. It was constantly swirling in him, ready to burst through his veins and take him over in an instant. Jimmy relied on it more and more. Without it, the agony was too much.

He drew on that inner strength, a centre of burning power that felt like it came from just behind his stomach. It flooded through him with a violent surge, swamping the pain. Jimmy couldn’t help letting out a gasp of relief, but it was combined with a low growl of aggression: the two sides of him battling together to sustain the whole.

He sprinted off with renewed energy. There was a buzz in the air in London’s streets and Jimmy imagined it seeping into his skin. There were hundreds more people out than usual, because of all the rallies in support of both sides – final preparations before the ballot the next day. He found his way to Trafalgar Square, where a pro-government rally was just coming to an end. He mingled with the crowds to further protect himself from anybody following.

How can all these people support the Government? Jimmy wondered, looking around at the placards and banners. He considered whether they’d been paid to come out tonight, or even forced by NJ7. At the southern end of the square there was a big screen flashing messages and government slogans into the night: “Efficiency. Stability. Security.” Jimmy couldn’t help letting out a huff. In front of the screen was a middle-aged woman ranting into a microphone about how the Government would keep taxes low and manage the country better than Viggo ever could, because he had no experience.

“…And why should you have the stress of making important government decisions?” she went on. “Government is for governments! Giving people a say in what happens to the country just creates muddled decisions and confusion!” There was a general murmur of approval. “Why should you have to worry?” Everybody cheered, but Jimmy huffed again, a little too loudly this time. A bald man with a thick puffer jacket and a government placard looked round and glared at him.

Jimmy hurried to the other end of the square where a large group of Viggo supporters had set up their own, slightly smaller screen and were chanting in support of freedom, democracy and everything Viggo stood for. Viggo’s smile flashed up on the screen and Jimmy couldn’t help smiling too. For a few seconds he slowed down to watch, proud of the part he’d played in making this possible.

“Join me and change the country!” declared Viggo from the screen. It was showing some of the best bits of his speeches from the last few months. “Believe in change! Believe in democracy! Believe in freedom!” Each sentence drew a cheer from the pro-Viggo half of the square. Even the sight of the man’s face, blown up so large on the screen, seemed to have the crowd mesmerised. Jimmy delighted in the genuine enthusiasm around him. Whole families were there, including people of about Jimmy’s age. For the first time, Jimmy really felt part of something special, something historic. The country’s going to change, Jimmy thought. It’s going to be great.

Then something cut through Jimmy’s excitement. A shout was out of place. Jimmy looked round and saw the crowd from the Government rally was dispersing and some of the supporters had come over to the pro-Viggo end of the square. The bald man with the puffer jacket was waving his placard and booing. Jimmy was ready to ignore it all and run on, but a Viggo supporter in a high-visibility jacket tried to wave the bald man away. Whatever he said, it wasn’t taken well.

The bald man’s face reddened and creased into fury. Suddenly he shoved his placard into the other man’s chest. The Viggo supporter staggered backwards for a second, then hurled out his fists one after the other, trying to fight back. Jimmy responded immediately. He wove through the crowd, snatching a ‘Vote Viggo’ cap from the head of a teenager on his way past. He kept his head low, then at the last second jumped up and brought the cap down over the face of the Viggo supporter. In the same movement, he dragged the man backwards and took his place.

The bald man swished his placard clean over Jimmy’s head. Immediately Jimmy delivered a jab to the man’s gut with the knuckles of his left hand, then landed his right fist in exactly the same spot with a powerful cross punch. The man’s puffer jacket wasn’t nearly enough to cushion the blows. His eyes widened and he flailed at Jimmy even as he gasped for breath. Finally Jimmy extended his right thigh and held it steady while the lower part of the limb flicked out. His toes hit the man’s kneecap like a spike in a pinboard.

Jimmy felt a rush of calm aggression urging him to deliver one more blow – a fatal one. No, Jimmy ordered himself, locking his arms and legs. After half a second, he snatched the ‘Vote Viggo’ cap again and mashed it on to the bald man’s head.

“What was that?” the man gasped, rolling on the floor and clutching his knee. Jimmy was already sprinting away, but he heard the answer flashing through his head: that was a fouette. How did he know that? That swift kick was a move he hadn’t used before, but its devastating effect was obvious. Suddenly a new world was flooding through his mind: La Savate combat technique. His programming was still adapting, still growing.

At the edge of the square he glanced back and saw more men and women in high-visibility jackets making sure the brief eruption of violence was definitely over. Jimmy crouched in the darkness of a doorway. La Savate combat technique, he thought to himself, stretching his limbs. I like it.

Eva shivered and hugged her coat more tightly around her. It was difficult, though, with such a pile of papers hidden in her arms. How much longer will I have to wait? she wondered. She was on the ninth floor of a multi-storey car park on Great College Street in Westminster, Central London. She rocked from foot to foot and peered around her into the deep shadows.

It had taken longer than she would have liked, but she had eventually managed to slip away from the NJ7 labs unseen. Now moonlight streaked in between the pillars of the car park, casting a dim sheen over patches of empty concrete. The rest was blackness. Only the silhouettes of a couple of cars interrupted the empty expanse. Probably stolen or abandoned, she thought to herself.

Suddenly she felt hot breath on the back of her neck.

“Don’t turn round,” came Jimmy’s voice in a whisper.

“How did you—?”

“Were you followed?”

Eva gave a small shake of her head.

“Are you sure?”

“Jimmy!” Eva said sternly, spinning round to face him. They were standing in near-total darkness, but Jimmy’s eyes caught what little light there was.

“I wasn’t followed,” Eva insisted. “I know what I’m doing. I have to live a secret life every moment of the day and night. What do you think that’s like?” They were so close that Eva could feel the warmth of her own breath bouncing off Jimmy’s face. “I might not be genetically perfect but I’ve learned a couple of things, OK? So don’t be so…” She didn’t know how to finish her sentence. She could feel Jimmy’s tension and saw his eyes constantly darting around the car park.

“OK,” he sighed at last. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I need to trust you. It’s just… inside me…” He closed his eyes for a moment and felt his teeth grinding together. “It makes me so…” He shrugged off his thought and opened his eyes again. “Did you…?”

Eva pulled the piles of papers from under her coat and thrust them at Jimmy.

“What’s all this?” he asked. “I needed the data from his hard drive. Dr Higgins wouldn’t have printed out what I need. He couldn’t have.”

“I couldn’t get into his computer,” Eva explained. “But I will. When I’ve had more time. I’ll get the access codes and…”

Jimmy had already stepped away and was spreading the papers out on the bonnet of a Range Rover, rifling through the pages. His hands moved swiftly to pass each sheet in turn across the car’s bonnet and his eyes scanned each page for less than half a second. He was hardly even aware that his pupils were flicking at a rapid and regular pace, or that every detail seemed to be lodging somewhere in his mind.

Within a minute he swept his hand across the bonnet, letting the papers fall to the floor.

“These are useless!” he sighed. “You were meant to…” He stopped himself, struggling to contain his frustration, not wanting to shout at his friend.

“I told you!” Eva protested, scrambling on her hands and knees to gather up the papers that had slid to the floor. “It’s not easy! I can’t just break in and make a run for it. And there are NJ7 technicians in every bit of that whole department round the clock.” She paused. Her voice was trembling more and more. “Jimmy, I saw the most horrible thing.” She couldn’t carry on gathering the papers now that this memory had come back to her.

“You won’t believe what they’re doing down there,” she whispered. “They’ve got a boy, a young man I mean, but he can’t be much older than me. And he’s still alive, but unconscious, and they’re firing this laser into his eyes, as if they’re trying to zap his brain or…” She tailed off, fighting back the fear in her chest.

“I’m sorry,” said Jimmy softly, crouching down to put a hand on her shoulder. “I shouldn’t have taken it out on you, it’s just that…”

“Jimmy, tell me…” Eva took a slow breath and fixed her eyes on the boy in front of her. “Is that how they made… you?”

Jimmy looked away. It was the first time that night that Eva had seen his eyes remain still for more than a moment. Then he looked back at her and explained.

“I’ve seen that boy too,” he said, standing up and regaining his composure. “It’s Mitchell’s brother. I saw him a long time ago, when I managed to break into NJ7 to try to find out where Felix’s parents were being held. I remember Dr Higgins had Mitchell’s brother lying on a metal table. His name was Lenny. Lenny Glenthorne. I remember it. They must still have him, and they’re still experimenting on him. What are they doing to him?”

“Is he also… an assassin?”

“No,” Jimmy said quickly. “He’s not like Mitchell or me. I don’t think he is, anyway. For Mitchell and me they did have a laser, I think, but before I was even born. The laser was to build the chemical combination of my DNA. I think the laser they’re using on Lenny must be different. Otherwise—” He stopped himself suddenly and every muscle tensed, like a startled animal.

“What?” Eva whispered, but Jimmy cut her off with a firm gesture. He slowly beckoned for her to follow him round the other side of the Range Rover, where they crouched, looking over the bonnet towards the pedestrian lift.

Eva couldn’t believe how fast her heart was beating, and how thin the air felt. It was like she was being strangled.

Jimmy looked up at her, an urgent stare in his eyes. He made small, forceful gestures, pointing at her, then at his eyes, then in the direction of the lift, telling her to keep watching the lift doors. She nodded, but Jimmy knew she’d have no idea what she was meant to do if she saw anything. He dropped down to the wheel of the Range Rover and carefully removed the hubcap.

A few seconds later a crack of light appeared between the lift doors. Before they could open more than a centimetre, Jimmy was in action. A single flick of his wrist sent the hubcap spinning towards the lift with the impetus of a torpedo. As soon as it left Jimmy’s hand, he grabbed Eva’s shoulder and pulled her across the concrete to the other side of the car park, where the shadows were darkest and the down ramp offered an escape.

Jimmy moved so fast Eva was half running and half being dragged. But then came a noise that stopped them in their tracks. It wasn’t the thud of the hubcap connecting with an NJ7 attacker. Instead came a clang as the disc slammed into the back wall of the lift. It was followed immediately by a short, nervous burst of laughter, then a boy’s voice:

“That was so cool!”

The voice echoed through the concrete structure, and sent a thrill through Jimmy’s heart. He dropped Eva’s collar, hardly noticing when she stumbled to the floor. Then came another shout, this time a girl:

“Jimmy, wait!”

It was the voice of his sister, Georgie. She was with his best friend, Felix, who for some reason had his hands pressed down on the top of his head. Together, they were strolling out of the lift, huge smiles on their faces.

“What are you…?” Jimmy’s words were breathless and soon drowned out by Eva and Georgie running to each other and crushing each other in a hug. Jimmy was so stunned he didn’t even take in the happy words they were exchanging. He quickly came to his senses again.

“You want to chat a bit louder?” he whispered. “I think there’s a deaf wombat in Australia who didn’t quite hear you. And how did you find me?”

“We nearly didn’t,” panted Felix. “You run too fast. We saw you come in here, but we didn’t know what floor you were on. We’ve just had to check every level!”

Jimmy couldn’t help smiling. He hadn’t wanted anybody to know what he was doing, but at the same time he was impressed that Felix and Georgie had managed to follow him.

“You nearly took off the top of my head!” said Felix, his grin revealing the longest line of teeth Jimmy had ever seen, every one of them at a slightly different angle. Meanwhile, his hands were still clamped down on top of his crazy nest of black hair. Finally Jimmy realised what had happened.

He jogged to the lift, where the hubcap had lodged in the back wall, trapping a clump of frizzy black hair with it. “Er, yeah,” Jimmy mumbled, realising he had aimed the missile at the level of an adult’s chest, but that instead it had skimmed the top of Felix’s head. “Sorry.”

Felix shrugged. “I needed a haircut anyway.”

“What’s going on?” Georgie asked, in her most stern voice. “You can’t just go sneaking off, you know.”

“Looks like you’ve done the same,” Jimmy replied. “Didn’t Mum notice? Or Chris? And what about the security guards?”

“Everybody is so distracted with the election we could have driven a herd of geese through the building,” Georgie explained. “And we saw what you did to the security guards so we just told them we were with you.”

Jimmy shook his head in amazement.

“I thought you might have gone out to get some midnight snacks or something,” said Felix. “I don’t think I’d have come if I’d known you were meeting Eva. No offence, or anything, Eva, it’s just, you know…” Eva glared at him, so he held up his hands and stretched his eyebrows so high they looked like they were going to merge with his hair. “What?” he squeaked.

“Why didn’t you tell us you were meeting Eva?” asked Georgie.

“It’s complicated,” Jimmy replied, sheepishly.

“So explain it.” Georgie wasn’t going to be put off. Jimmy suddenly felt as powerless as any normal boy. There were no assassin skills designed to get round an older sister. Georgie stood there, arms folded, her head tilted to one side and her lips pursed.

“You’re in so much trouble,” Felix whispered. “All the way here she’s been telling me what she’s going to—”

“Shut up, Felix,” snapped Georgie. “Let him explain.”

Jimmy felt like the pressure of a waterfall was building up inside his head. His whole life was constructed out of secrets. The first secrets had been the ones his parents kept from him: that they were really NJ7 agents given the long-term mission of raising an experimental government assassin, designed genetically and grown organically.

As soon as he’d discovered the truth about himself, Jimmy’s life had imploded. His father had betrayed him, choosing to stay loyal to NJ7 rather than join him and his mum on the side of Christopher Viggo. Then the man had revealed that he wasn’t even Jimmy’s real father. He had been richly rewarded for his loyalty to the Government: Ian Coates had risen to become Prime Minister of Britain.

All this flashed through Jimmy’s head as he wondered whether to reveal his latest secret to his sister. It was possibly the most dangerous secret of them all, and one that he had guarded obsessively for the last six months. He could feel his fingers shaking, while his mouth and lips seemed to have frozen, refusing to form the words.

“Well?” said Georgie, but her expression was softening. She stepped up to her brother and placed her hands gently on his shoulders. Jimmy looked up into her face. It was a long time since he’d felt like a younger brother, but Georgie’s searching brown eyes somehow made him feel glad he was.

Slowly, he raised his hands and turned them round to show his sister the backs of his fingers. In the strange half-light of the car park it took a few seconds for her to see what he was showing her. But then her expression changed.

“They’re blue,” she gasped. “What is this? What happened?”

“It’s still happening,” Jimmy said in a whisper, almost choking on the words. “I have radiation poisoning.”

His own whisper echoed back to him and spun through his head. He looked at the confusion on the faces of Felix, Georgie and Eva and suddenly found himself unable to stop.

“It was in Western Sahara,” he said quickly. “The French Secret Service tricked me. They sent me to a uranium mine. They told me it was safe, but they knew it wasn’t and…” The words tumbled out of him, as if they’d been building up for months. At times he talked so fast he hardly made any sense, but eventually his story came out, along with all the information he’d gathered in the last few months.

“I read about what happens with radiation,” he said, “but it just tells me what’s meant to happen. And some of it isn’t happening, or it’s different because, you know, I’m…” He paused, breathless.

“It’s OK, Jimmy,” said Georgie. “Go on.”

“The level of exposure I had should have… well, it should have killed me by now. I have some of the symptoms but not all, and not all the time. My muscles ache, but sometimes it might be to do with my programming and I know that sometimes I might just be feeling it because I think I’m meant to. But I also have headaches – worse than I’ve ever had – and this…” He held up his fingers again, wiggling them. “…the blue spread at first and I thought my fingers were going numb, but then it stopped, or maybe it’s just slowed down, I can’t tell any more. But I don’t know if this would happen in anybody else, or if it’s just in me. I keep thinking I should be dead by now, but I’m not, and I don’t know whether I feel weaker because of the poisoning or because my programming is changing, or taking me over and making the rest of me weak, or…”

At last he had to stop. His breath was short and he could feel the muscles in his face contorted in anguish. Felix, Georgie and Eva were staring at him. What were they thinking? Jimmy longed for them to still see him as normal. Now he felt so stupid. He should have known that eventually Georgie and Felix would find out everything.

“You need to see a doctor,” said Felix with a shrug, as if Jimmy had merely sneezed or revealed that he had a nasty rash.

“Thanks, genius,” said Jimmy. “I tried that already. The first doctor just checked that I’m not a danger to other people – which I’m not, by the way. Then NJ7 got to him. After that I tracked down a specialist, but NJ7 got to him first.” Jimmy dropped his eyes to the floor. “It looks like my illness is more deadly for doctors than it is for me.”

“You should have told us,” Georgie said softly. “Why didn’t you? You idiot!” She couldn’t help raising her voice now, and she clenched her fists in frustration. “Didn’t you think we’d help?”

“What could you have done?” Jimmy asked. “What will you do now? Invent a cure?”

“You have to tell Mum,” said Georgie. “Forget about the election. That’s nothing compared to this. Tell Mum and Chris, and they’ll help you…”

“Chris knows,” Jimmy admitted. “He found out from the first doctor I went to see. Chris was tracking me and he found my test results. It was months ago now. I made him promise not to tell anybody, then all this election stuff happened and—”

“So Chris has known about this for months?” Georgie was furious now. “But you didn’t think you should tell me? Or Mum?”

She stared at Jimmy, and all he could do was look anywhere but into her face. Then after a few seconds he heard his sister’s breathing change. When he finally looked at her, he saw that now there were lines of tears on her cheeks catching the light.

“It’s OK,” Jimmy found himself saying, unsure whether he believed it himself. “I told you – the blueness has stopped spreading.” He held up his fingers again, but the sight of them only seemed to make Georgie even more upset. “So it’s probably not getting any worse.”

“That’s just weird,” said Felix in a whisper, examining Jimmy’s fingers.

“Didn’t you notice it?” Eva asked, looking from Felix to Georgie and back. There was shock on all their faces. “I mean, you’ve been living with him for the last few months, haven’t you?”

Felix stretched his eyes in wonder and Georgie bit her bottom lip.

“Sorry, Jimmy,” Felix muttered. “I guess there’s been a lot going on. I did see that your fingers were blue once, but I just thought, I don’t know, you hadn’t washed your hands, or something.”

“It’s not your fault,” Jimmy reassured him. “I’ve been hiding everything. I didn’t want to tell you. I…” His voice faded from his throat. He wasn’t even sure why he’d been trying to keep his poisoning a secret. He told himself it was because he didn’t want to distract everybody from trying to win the election, but deep down he knew that it was something more. Telling people about his secret would have made it seem more real. Not telling made it easier to deny the danger spreading within him with every beat of his heart. It made it easier not to take notice when his condition got worse.