Beth turned to look at du Bois. He was driving like a lunatic, weaving the Range Rover in and out of the angry traffic. He was covered in drying blood.
‘Understood.’ This seemed to signal the end of the conversation though he wore no headset and she hadn’t heard the other side of the conversation from the Range Rover’s speakers.
‘What?’ Beth managed. She didn’t feel hurt, just weak and hungry.
‘You have no idea, do you?’
‘What?’ she managed again.
‘Someone’s put a lot of tiny machines called nanites in you. They’re very advanced. It’s technology derived from one or more ancient alien civilisations.’
‘What?’ Beth wondered why he would make this nonsense up.
‘You’ll have to cope with the denial later. Suffice to say, unless the damage is too much or there’s too little left of your body, they will put you back together.’ He slewed the Range Rover off the hard shoulder, up the slope at the side of the road and then back down onto the motorway in front of a furious driver who was liberally using his horn to critique du Bois’s driving.
‘Where?’ she asked, thinking this would be easier.
‘On the way to Southampton airport to stop the very nasty gentlemen who have kidnapped your sister from getting onto a private jet and flying somewhere even less convenient than Hampshire.’ Du Bois drifted the Range Rover across three lanes as they headed up a hill. Beth glanced behind her to see Portsmouth disappearing from view.
‘Those people…’
‘Who? The gunmen? They’re up ahead. Their van has changed colour and they’re driving carefully. I have a satellite link feeding me footage. At least I think it’s them. There are a couple of possibilities.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘The footage? It’s being fed directly into my head. Remember those tiny machines we discussed.’ He was clearly mad. She still had her great-grandfather’s bayonet and suddenly she was hell on wheels in a gunfight and could survive being shot. She saw the faces of the zombies one after another as she’d shot them almost instinctively.
‘No, not the gunmen. The zombies.’ Du Bois didn’t say anything, just concentrated on weaving in and out of the traffic. ‘They were dead, weren’t they?’
‘They were slaved. Normal people who had been infected with a specific type of nanite that allows someone else to control them.’
‘Innocent people?’
‘Yes.’
Beth started to shake.
‘Could they have been helped?’
‘Given time and resources.’ After he had answered honestly, it did occur to him that it would have been better to lie.
Beth was not prone to hysteria, or panic, or tears, but she felt a pressure in her chest and was finding it difficult to catch her breath. She was also shaking like a leaf. Du Bois spared a glance at her. He could see how pale she was, even covered in dry blood. He wished he could have this sort of response, a normal healthy response, to having just killed a lot of people who largely didn’t deserve it. Instead for him it was a very cold and clinical, some would say cynical, equation. He would kill tens and many thousands would survive.
‘Okay, Beth. If you concentrate you can control this.’
‘Control this? Control this! I’ve just committed mass murder with some fucking madman! I don’t want to control this!’
‘We had no choice. The death of those people was the fault of the men who have your sister. I need to know if you want your sister back.’ They were on the hard shoulder now, undertaking car after car.
‘You bastard.’
Manipulative or not, he needed her help.
‘Undoubtedly. I need you to handle a gun. Are you with me?’ She said nothing but he noticed that the shaking had stopped.
‘Why didn’t we just drive away with Talia? This thing’s armoured, right?’ Beth asked, though in the heat of the gunfight it hadn’t occurred to her.
‘We were armed to the teeth and very difficult to kill. It never occurred to me that we’d lose.’
‘So they can’t be killed either?’
‘There are ways, and I’m carrying two now.’ He had his .45 back. It was loaded with the only magazine of nanite-tipped bullets he had. He also had the punch dagger on his belt buckle. Beth didn’t say anything.
King Jeremy glanced in the side mirrors again. It was definitely the same Range Rover and it was closing on them fast. They must have been augmented somehow, which worried him. He’d heard rumours of other agencies that knew about the lost tech. He’d heard names like the City of Brass and the Circle but nothing more than that. If the goth girl was living tech, it could explain why others would be interested. He assumed they hadn’t fallen for the cosmetic changes they’d made to the van. The gunfight had been fun but he didn’t relish another.
Dracimus was next to him in the van’s cab. He hadn’t stopped talking about the fight and shooting the blond guy. Baron Albedo was in the back looking after the girl and stopping Inflictor from doing anything to her. Jeremy was trying to decide whether or not to try and bluff it or put some more of his uploaded skills into use and drive like he was playing Fire and Gasoline. British cars were boring. He had a pretty good visual overlay to make the whole thing look cooler if he went for it. He wanted to, but getting out of the country stealthily would make life easier.
Inflictor made the decision for him. King Jeremy heard one of the hatches on the rear window being popped.
‘Inflictor!’ King Jeremy screamed. His voice was drowned out by the thunder of big-bore rounds.
Du Bois was trying to make up his mind if it was them or not. The muzzle flashes, the roar of automatic fire and the sparks on the road helped. It looked like an entire magazine was fired. Du Bois was yanking the steering wheel from side to side, braking hard and then accelerating even harder as he tried to dodge the cars screaming to a halt or that had been hit. The cars that braked got rear-ended. One crashed into the central reservation, flipping into the lanes on the other side of the motorway. A tumbling, airborne car sideswiped the Range Rover. Du Bois fought with the vehicle, feeling two of its wheels leave the ground. He wrestled it back down onto all four.
Inflictor ejected one magazine and rammed home another. This one had red tape around the bottom of it. He poked it out through the firing hatch and pulled the trigger.
‘King J?’ Baron Albedo called.
‘Go ahead!’ Jeremy had to shout over the roar of the gunfire. Baron Albedo moved to the firing port in the other rear window.
Tracer fire filled the air, drawing lines of phosphorescent light between the van and the Range Rover, the lines continuing onwards as the rounds bounced off armour. There were two guns firing out the back of the van now. The second was accurate. Round after round impacted. The first was all over the place, firing at anything that moved, even cars on the opposite side of the road, causing more crashes as cars tumbled and flew through the air.
Du Bois accelerated, trying to get between the van and other vehicles. Their side of the road was mostly clear. The opening salvo had caused a pile-up that had effectively blocked the road behind them.
‘This many rounds, they must be Americans,’ du Bois muttered.
‘What now?’ Beth demanded over the sound of bullets impacting and the vehicle’s screaming engine.
‘We find a way to stop it without getting your sister killed!’ he shouted back. He hoped that the roadblock would work.
Then the ground started to shake. It shook so much that du Bois had to slow down to maintain control. He noticed that the van did the same. A crack in the motorway went shooting past – Du Bois almost crashed in astonishment. Something shot up out of the ground and grabbed the underside of the van.