Edge (43 page)

    Now a full-time writer, in his time he has taught business analysis and software engineering on three continents, and is a black belt in shotokan karate, cross-training in other arts. A trained hypnotist, he remains severely addicted to coffee. He is currently finishing
Point
, the even darker sequel to
Edge.

 

 

 

His hands were claws because they had to be. Josh hung in shadow beneath the bridge, like a frozen bat on the underside; but he could not flit away: he needed to wait.

    "–happened to him?" said a voice overhead.

    
Police officer.

    You could tell from the tone.

    "Disappeared," someone said.

    "Like a bleedin' ninja, or one of them magicians, like."

    The sniffling kids were gone, led away by murmuring adults. You might call them traumatized, but not if you had seen what Josh had seen: in Africa, in Siberia, in post-Deathquake Japan.

    
Like claws.

    He could not let go, that was the thing.

    
Like steel.

    Only failure of will could stop him now, but the stubborn aggression that had kept him alive so many times before was active again. If only it had neared the surface earlier, he might have avoided the despairing stance on the bridge, hands on the rail as if contemplating the jump –
was I really thinking of it?
– leaving it to the emergency response centre of the brain, the amygdala, to react when the hand clapped his shoulder, and that was it: the craziness that could have turned worse, into murder.

    Black Thames beneath; but he would not let go.

    
Like steel.

    Entering endurance-trance in order to survive.

There were voices in Suzanne's head, howling self-accusation. She was a neuropsych therapist and supposedly good at her job. It would not have taken expert verbal technique to short-circuit Josh's reaction, then lead him into a psychological space where he could grieve as he needed to.

    
Où es tu, Josh?

    When her thoughts reverted to her native French, she was in trouble.

    
Calme-toi.

    She needed to breathe, to calm down. There must be some way she could help Josh.

    Call Tony.

    She paused, thinking it through. Tony Gore had helped during last year's infiltration of the Knife Edge final. If the authorities were targetting her for surveillance… but she was not engaged in illegal activities now, and neither was Josh. She needed to make that call.

    When she picked up the phone it showed a message waiting, but the pane read
Message from: Adam
. She minimized it.

    "Call Tony," she told the phone.

    "Which Tony, please?"

    
Merde.

    "Call Tony Gore, urgent."

    While she waited, she pointed the phone at the wallscreen, transferring the display. When Tony appeared, his face was larger than lifesize.

    "Suzanne. Hey, doll. What's wrong?"

    "I don't know for sure that it's bad."

    "But you're ringing me at three in the morning, flagged urgent."

    "It's Josh…. Sophie died today."

    Yesterday, technically. Was it really three a.m.?

    "Hang on." Tony turned to one side. "Am? Josh's daughter died."

    There a swing of motion, and Amber, Tony's wife, was on screen, rubbing her face.

    "Josh? Oh, Suzanne. Awful news. How is he?"

    "He's distraught. It's why I needed to talk."

    Amber blinked. As an ex-soldier's wife, she was used to hearing about tragedy and people going off the rails. The image tilted, then Tony was back on.

    "What's he done, Suzanne?"

    "Ran off into the night in thin clothes. Hours ago. Without his phone."

    "Shit."

    Civilian phones were DNA-tagged and GPS-linked, but people like Josh and Tony were not so easily found. Their handsets broadcast subversion code that altered the data inside the surveillance nets. Ordinary police could not have found Josh, even if they tried – which they would not, unless Suzanne used her authority to declare him at risk of self-harm.

    Irrelevant. Josh had left his phone behind.

    "Running is therapeutic," said Tony.

    "It's been five hours."

    Josh might still be running. During Tony's time in the Regiment, he had been able to run for longer than that. Josh had kept the discipline on leaving the army, that was all.

    "What about his state of mind?"

    "He was on the edge of losing it," said Suzanne. "Presenting all the signs. But how that might manifest, I couldn't tell."

    Five hours ago.

    "I'll call you back." Tony's face tightened. "Try to rest, sweetheart. Our Josh is a survivor."

    "Yes…"

    "Out."

    The screen blanked out, as did her thoughts, leaving only feelings: sadness and fear, swirling together, corkscrewing through her body, unnerving her.

The Regiment was not perfect, but they had soldiering skills that others lacked for two reasons: training and resources. They could spend hours firing the latest weapons, using ten thousand euros worth of smartshells or nanoflechettes in a session. They could slip through enemy forces, because guile was a primary focus of their discipline, along with extreme physicality.

    With hands like steel claws, he remained beneath the bridge.

    
Listen.

    No one remained above, no humans, but spyballs and motion sensors were something else. He had escaped immediate capture; now it was time to evade the enemy.

    
Police. Not hostiles.

    For his own sake, he needed to get clear, to think. Treat it as an exfiltration exercise through enemy territory, provided he remembered not to harm anyone who tried to arrest him. Things were bad enough already.

    
How could I screw up like that?

    The answer was: reflex-fast, no conscious thought involved.

    
Shut up.

    Pressing his tongue against the roof of his mouth, he stilled his mind.

    When he moved, screams sounded, but only along his sinews as they cracked into motion. Then he was crawling to the end of the bridge – avoiding spycams – where he hung in place for minutes, before using counterpressure to climb around the end struts, then clamber onto the stairs.

    He was in a surveillance blind-zone.

    An automated street-cleaning drone moved like a giant louse along the kerbside, its lights strobing orange. It would have anti-vandal countermeasures, but for urban infiltration the Regiment's training was allinclusive: he knew how to avoid tripping the detectors.

    Pre-dawn was smearing turquoise to the east. There was no foot traffic, no vehicle in sight besides the drone.

    
Now.

    Two lunging steps and a shoulder-roll, and he was inside the carapace, clinging once more, squeezing his eyes to slits against the grit and noise.

    Phase one of his evasion was under way.

 

    When the door chime sounded, a rush of acid filled her stomach.

    
Josh!

    But the wallscreen, switching to building surveillance, showed three bulky men on the landing outside her door. They had already passed through the locked ground-floor entrance. Two wore police uniform, while the third was dressed in a suit and overcoat.

    "Adam?"

    He had left a message on her phone, hadn't he?

    "Oh, God."

    She pressed the release, and electromag locks clicked open. When she pulled back the door, she blinked her sore eyes, unable to read their expressions.

    Bad news?

    Adam said: "Can we come in, Suzanne?"

    "Of… course. Yes."

    She was panicking, but she could not speak freely in front of the uniformed officers, not unless she could be sure they knew who Adam Priest was: not a civil servant in the Department of Trade and Industry as his ID declared, but a serving officer in MI5.

    "I'm Inspector Edwards." The larger officer held up his phone, showing the official sigil. After a second, it echoed on the wallscreen. "And this is Inspector Calvin."

    The smaller man showed his ID the same way.

    "Is Josh all right?" said Suzanne.

    Inspector was a high rank; she was almost sure of it.

    "Ma'am?"

    "My… boyfriend. He's in a state of distress – his daughter died – and he went out running. I'm worried about him."

    "And his name is Josh?"

    "Josh Cumberland." She nodded towards Adam. "You can tell them, can't you?"

    "I already have," said Adam. "I could tell you I'd just bumped into the officers by chance, but you probably wouldn't believe me."

    Suzanne had no answer. There were implications here, but she was too tired to unravel them.

    "Coffee, ma'am?" asked Inspector Calvin. "I could make some all round."

    Suzanne said, "I'll just–"

    "I'll do it." Inspector Calvin nodded towards the kitchen alcove. "No problem."

    "Do you think he's in danger?" asked Adam.

    "I'm afraid–" Suzanne blew out a breath. "He might turn that violence inwards."

    Then she wondered whether she had heard correctly. Had Adam said he's
in
danger, or he's a danger? She closed her eyes, her nostrils feeling odd as she inhaled, dragging alertness into her mind.

    Something was wrong, but not what she had feared.

    "Where would he run?" said Adam. "Any particular place?"

    Inspector Edwards was checking his phone. He was behind Suzanne, a gloomy reflection in the now-dark wallscreen. He looked up – at Adam? – and shook his head.

    Adam's eyes gave the tiniest flicker.

    
Do they know each other?

    "He likes exploring new routes," said Suzanne. "No special place."

    "So is Josh very fit?" asked Adam. "I mean, the way he was in the military."

    There had been a time, after last year's
Knife Edge
final, when Josh had been recuperating from cut- and stab-wounds: a snarling patient who was hell to live with as he forced himself back to full activity.

    "He ran fifty kilometres last Sunday," said Suzanne.

    "Some kind of marathon race?" Inspector Calvin was working the coffee machine. "I've always wanted to try that."

    "Longer. But just a training run."

    "By himself?" asked Adam. "That's disciplined."

    "He is," said Suzanne.

    From the micro-expressions on the three men's faces, they disagreed. Their reactions were out of kilter, unless… unless Josh had done something. Not selfharm. Something else. Something not disciplined at all.

    Josh. Please.

    Vast reservoirs of energy inside him made Josh an electrifying athlete and lover; but the same energy could detonate as violence. Her memories of him fighting would have been awful, had she not used therapeutic techniques on herself, so that the images were distant, flattened and blurred, losing their impact.

    "Here you are, Dr Duchesne." Inspector Calvin had brought two mugs. "Mr Witten."

    "Cheers," said Adam.

    Suzanne looked. There were no other coffee mugs.

    "Aren't you and your colleague–?"

    "We'll leave you in peace, ma'am."

    Inspector Calvin smiled at Adam, and said: "Steve."

    "See you later, Ron."

    The two men left. When they were gone, the flat's security system caused the electromag locks to snap home.

    "Do police inspectors wear uniforms?" asked Suzanne. "I thought they were plainclothes."

    "That's only the detectives," said Adam.

    "Oh. But one of them called you Steve. Is that, what, a cover identity?"

    "It's my real name. It's 'Adam' that's my cover." Steve/Adam gave an asymmetric shrug. "Sorry."

    "I thought Philip Broomhall was your friend."

    "He is. He also knows me as Adam Priest, and I'd be grateful if you allow him to continue."

    "But you're really… Steve Witten, is that it? And you don't work for the DTI."

    "I think you knew that already." His face was lean, his grin cheeky, like a kid's. "You know, in China, it's no big deal. People change their names throughout their lives."

    She realized there was no ring on his left hand.

    
Don't look at his finger.

    Last year the wedding band had been white gold. Now there was only a depression in the skin.

    "What's happened to Josh?" she said.

    Adam – no, Steve – sipped from a retro mug labelled PSYCHOLOGISTS DO IT THOUGHTFULLY. When he put the mug down, he kept his face blank.

    "As far as I know, he's alive, uninjured, and somewhere on the streets of London."