Jack frowned. ‘What did you say?’
She was still smiling. ‘You know, that’s the Boer War model of that gun. You should have asked for the Mark V. Bring you right into the twentieth century, with all the benefits of a nitrocellulose propellant-based cartridge.’
‘Where did you hear that?’
‘Tony Bee was a gun enthusiast,’ said Megan. ‘I learned a lot from him.’
‘No,’ said Jack. ‘I meant the “pick you off where you stand” part. There’s only one person I said that to. And he took a dive before he told anyone else.’
Megan reached out slowly with her left hand to clutch a scaffolding pole. In the next flash of lightning Jack saw her knuckles were white where she gripped the briefcase handle in her other hand. ‘You’re not from round here.’
‘No,’ said Jack.
‘America.’
‘Further.’
‘New Zealand, then,’ continued Megan unhurriedly. ‘Or Australia.’
‘Further,’ Jack told her.
She laughed. ‘You can’t get further than Australia.’
‘No,’ grinned Jack. ‘You can’t get further than Australia.’
‘Oh, I might surprise you.’ And now Megan’s smile seemed different. More secretive, perhaps. Even facing a guy with a gun, she was confident. It reminded him worryingly of Wildman, and how he’d faced Jack in almost this exact spot.
Jack kept his eyes locked on Megan’s. Not offering her an excuse to break this look between them, as though it physically bound them together.
‘You didn’t just hear all that from Anthony Bee, because you never met him. And you can’t have heard about me from Guy Wildman, ’cause he didn’t survive the fall. Somehow… you are them. And Sandra Applegate too, probably. And maybe others before that?’
‘You’re good, aren’t you?’ cooed Megan. Another flicker of lightning revealed that she was licking her lips. Nervous, or relishing the moment? ‘I’m a warrior,’ she said. There was pride in her voice now. She let go of the scaffolding, and it seemed to Jack that she was standing taller. ‘I want to return home, to obtain urgent medical attention. If you’ll let me.’ Megan hefted the briefcase up, slowly so that she would not alarm him. It was heavy — he could see the strain in her arms. Jack’s Geiger counter showed negligible radiation. Megan was showing him her means of escape. ‘To do that, I must refuel and launch my ship.’
‘Neat briefcase. Lead-lined?’
‘Why don’t you just let me get out of here?’ asked Megan. ‘I can be gone within the hour.’
She was watching him for a reaction. He knew it, and didn’t give her one.
‘You could even help me, Jack.’
Now that got a reaction, and she saw it at once.
‘It is Jack, isn’t it?’
He tightened his grip on the revolver. Made sure his stance on the concrete was steady, his feet solidly placed.
‘Now how would you know that?’ Jack considered the options. ‘Right. Owen told you. Or he told Megan. Same difference, cos you’re not Megan any more. Are ya?’
‘I’ve only borrowed her,’ pouted the alien. ‘Think of it like… renting a car.’
‘The price is too high,’ Jack snapped back. ‘Like it was for that woman in the Mini down there in the street. Some passer-by you let bleed to death in her own car, just so that you could get here?’
Jack could feel the anger building in his chest. His shoulders and arms tightening. His hands gripping the Webley.
Megan’s smile faded. She backed away from him, moving further along the scaffolding.
‘Stay where you are!’ bellowed Jack. ‘You’re not borrowing anything. You’re killing humans indiscriminately-’
‘Humans?’
‘You don’t care what happens to them, they’re just transport. Arms and legs.’
‘I release them in the end.’
‘Yeah, I’ve seen that,’ retorted Jack. ‘Just here. You’d remember that, right? You release them when they are incapacitated. No inconvenient loose ends, because you condemn them to death before you let go. By which point, it’s too late for them to do anything but die. You take what you want, and you leave them with suffering and pain and ultimately death.’
‘You’re wrong about me,’ she said. Her voice was calm but clear, even against the noise of the storm. ‘I retain memories of the humans I’ve possessed. I learn what they learn, know what they know. Feel what they feel. Put the gun away, Jack. You don’t need to hurt me to make me understand about human suffering and pain. I know how humans treat each other. I know how Bee and Applegate loved and respected one another. How Wildman craved the respect of his friends, and never knew that he’d earned it. I know how Owen Harper screwed up my life and broke me into pieces that I never put together again.’
‘That’s not you. You’re not Megan.’
The alien used her eyes, her expression, her whole demeanour in a desperate entreaty. ‘I am Megan, she’s here. But so much more.’
A gust of rain buffeted them through the open side of the building. Megan shuffled aside and wrapped her arm around the nearest scaffolding post. She was in no rush to take a leap, Jack decided. ‘Let her go,’ he demanded. ‘You know nothing of what it is to be human.’
‘Don’t get moralistic with me, Jack. I know enough. I know you talk a good story about human rights. But I know that some humans have more rights than others.’
Jack thought about Gwen earlier. ‘You sound like a friend of mine,’ he told Megan. ‘Only she really means it.’
‘Come on,’ Megan taunted him. ‘Why did no one care about a few dead vagrants? I took them for sustenance because Bee and Wildman and the others knew no one would miss them. Imagine the hue and cry if I’d killed a couple of stockbrokers, eh? Or a policeman.’
‘You did kill a policeman. Policemen. And those soldiers.’
Megan shuffled uncomfortably. ‘Not so many hobos around an army base. Needs must.’
‘And a secretary, who only wanted to drive Wildman home. An A amp;E nurse who attended Applegate. People who wanted to help. So why should I help you now?’
‘To put an end to it?’ Megan’s tone was hopeful, pleading.
The Webley was getting heavy in Jack’s outstretched arm. ‘You may have briefly lived these human lives. But you’ve learned nothing about being human.’
‘I understand the human need to survive.’
‘You’ve surrendered that right,’ said Jack. ‘Give me those fuel packs or I’ll shoot you where you stand.’
Another crash of lightning. Jack saw that Megan was half-hidden by the scaffolding poles now.
‘Get back out here,’ he told her.
She slid further behind the scaffolding.
Jack lowered the muzzle of the revolver, squeezed the trigger, and shot Megan through her right foot.
The report from the weapon was shattering, echoing off the bare concrete walls. Megan shrieked in shock and anger and pain. She half-spun around the scaffolding pole, lunging for a cross-bar as the shot twisted her around. The briefcase dropped, bounced on one corner, and fell by the far edge of the platform.
‘Get back out here,’ Jack repeated slowly.
Megan had regained her balance. She shuffled reluctantly forward again, whimpering. Her right shoe was a ruined mess of leather and blood. She couldn’t put weight on it, so she slid down and sat on the wooden planks of the external platform. It was a defensive posture, but Jack knew it made her more dangerous, because she knew she was completely cornered.
‘I only want to refuel my ship and leave Earth,’ she pleaded. ‘Let me go.’