Revenge (2 page)

“Was I too rough for you?” the girl pouted. “I’m sorry. I was playing. I wanted to see what you could do.” She stood up, moving with a strange elegance that didn’t seem to fit someone so young.

“If I’d wanted you dead, Jimmy Coates,” she continued, “you would never have even known I existed. I could have killed you quietly, quickly and from a distance.” She moved towards him, almost gliding across the floor, her eyes never wavering from Jimmy’s. “I think I would have done it painlessly though. You seem nice.” Then she winked. Jimmy lost all feeling in his cheeks for a second. He was a picture of astonishment.

“My name is Zafi Sauvage.” The girl held out her hand, which was covered in a black leather glove. In a daze, Jimmy shook it. The whole thing felt so bizarre. He wouldn’t normally shake hands with anybody – especially not some strange girl, and
especially
not one who, only seconds before, had been trying to break his neck.

Felix brushed the others aside and shoved his hand in Zafi’s direction. “Yeah, hi,” he started. “I’m, like, delighted to meet you.” Jimmy grimaced at the unusually posh accent Felix was trying on. “Frightfully delighted. My name is Felix. And may I welcome you by saying that, frightfully and awfully, you’re, like, a knockout.”

“If you’re not here to try to kill me…” Jimmy interrupted. He didn’t finish his sentence. There were too many questions all bursting to get out at the same time. Who did this girl work for? What did she want? How had she found out where Jimmy and the others were hiding? Above all the others was one question that repeated in his head like a siren.
Is this girl a
programmed assassin like me?

“I can’t believe it,” Georgie whispered, echoing his thoughts. “Another one. A third assassin.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me to sit down?” Zafi said, raising one eyebrow. Felix immediately ushered her to the end of his bed.

“Don’t mind them,” he blathered. “They’ve forgotten their manners. Hey, look what I can do.” He pulled out his top lip and, with his thumbs, shoved it into his nostrils. He glared at Zafi like this until she let out a high giggle.

“My, how attractive,” Zafi laughed. “Look what I can do.” She pulled off her glove and pressed her palm flat against her eye. She twisted her hand, which made a
weird sucking noise. Then she pulled her palm away and her eyeball popped out. It bounced around on the end of her optic nerve halfway down her cheek. She beamed with glee.

“Wow.” Felix was so impressed that his voice quivered. Zafi calmly popped her eye back into its socket and flicked her hair behind her ear.

“Jimmy, look at this,” Felix insisted. “It’s so cool.”

But Jimmy wasn’t paying attention. He was examining the window to confirm what he suspected: the frame had been lubricated with some kind of grease. Zafi had opened the window expertly and with less noise than a shadow. But Jimmy didn’t stop to admire her work.

He looked back at Zafi. Why did she look like she was about to smile, Jimmy wondered. Didn’t she take any of this seriously? It was as if the corners of her mouth couldn’t help curling upwards.

With the lights on, it was obvious that there was no green stripe on her chest. Instead, three vertical stripes formed an emblem just as powerful and just as proud. In his night-vision, Jimmy had assumed they were green, but one was blue, one white and one red. It was the Tricolore – the French flag. That seemed to answer the question of who she worked for.

Jimmy realised that because the French Secret Service, the DGSE, had helped him, relations between Britain and France were worse than they had been for
centuries. In fact, both had threatened war. Jimmy was starting to see that if Zafi was an enemy of Neo-democratic Britain, she could be an important ally for him. His curiosity became urgent now.

“Hey, you two lovebirds,” he began, “stop messing about. I need to know what’s going on.”

“Didn’t you see what she did with her eye?” Felix panted. Jimmy ignored him.

“What’s this ‘conversation’ you wanted to have with me?” he insisted. But before Zafi could answer, Georgie marched towards the door.

“I wouldn’t bother fetching your mother,” Zafi whispered. “She’s a little drowsy at the moment.”

Georgie turned to her with horror on her face. Jimmy felt a double layer of confusion – first was a lurch of panic for his mother’s safety, but beneath it came a reassuring warmth. To his programmed side, it made perfect sense. Felix’s cry for help. The crash of the bed on the floor – the other people in the house must have been drugged somehow to keep them out of the way. Assigned Zafi’s mission, he would have done the same. As the thought ran through his head, Zafi explained it to the others.

“I sent some sleeping gas under the necessary windows before I came through yours.”

Georgie looked at Zafi with a mixture of disbelief and anger. Then she marched out of the room anyway.

“Doesn’t she trust me?” Zafi asked with a cheeky sparkle in her eye.

That was enough for Jimmy.
How dare she make a
joke of it
, he thought. Didn’t she realise she was playing with people’s lives? And she hadn’t even started to explain what she was doing there. Jimmy gripped Zafi’s shoulders and held her down on the bed.

“How can you do all this?” he hissed, his eyes only centimetres from hers. His face was turning red, but Zafi’s only reaction was to open her eyes wide and give a little smile.

“What a silly question,” she replied, ever so gently. “The same way you can, Jimmy Coates. I’m a genetically programmed—”

“No, I mean, how can you bring yourself to do it?” Jimmy was really seething now. “Don’t you realise that attacking innocent people, drugging them, even killing them – it’s wrong.”

“It might be wrong,” Zafi whispered back, “but it’s not me doing it, is it? It’s nothing to do with me. I watch it happen. Maybe I’m sad about it, maybe not. It’s not my responsibility.”

Jimmy wanted to scream right in her face. He felt like tearing her to shreds on the spot, but instead his grip melted to nothing. He slipped off her. If he’d demanded any more answers, he might have had to admit to himself that he envied her.

Georgie came back into the room. She didn’t look happy. “I can’t wake Mum,” she announced.

“What about my parents?” Felix asked.

“I can’t wake any of them, OK? It’s like they’re hibernating or something.”

“They’ll be asleep for a few more hours,” Zafi said, sitting up and flicking her hair behind her ear. “They’ll be fine by lunchtime.”

Jimmy wanted to get up and reassure his big sister, but he was still distracted by a small question at the back of his mind – what would he be capable of if nothing was his responsibility?

Georgie started the questioning again. “You’d better explain what’s going on.”

Zafi sighed. “But this is so much fun,” she said, too brightly. “It’s like a sleepover.”

Felix almost laughed, but only because he was nervous.

“I work for France,” Zafi continued with a shrug. “My government expects that Britain and France might be drawn into a war.”

“What?” Georgie gasped. “Why?”

Jimmy cut in to explain. “Yesterday, the French sent a fighter jet into British airspace.”

“Only after NJ7 bombed a French farmhouse,” Zafi added.

“But that wasn’t to attack France,” Jimmy sighed. “It’s where we’d been hiding. NJ7 were trying to get us.”

“Well, all they’ve got for themselves is trouble.”

Zafi and Jimmy stared at each other.

“I’ve come to invite you to join the right side,” Zafi announced.

“You want me to work for France against Britain – in a war?” Jimmy tried to keep his voice as calm as possible. Zafi nodded.

“Who says there’s going to be a war?” Felix asked. “That’s rubbish. Nobody’s loony enough to start a war.”

Jimmy wished his friend was right, but he was far from sure. He walked over to the window. It was still open from when Zafi had sneaked in. For a second, he hesitated. Perhaps something in his head was suggesting he could escape into the night and disappear forever. It only lasted a second. He slid the window shut. It closed as silently as it had opened for Zafi, but to Jimmy it felt like the portcullis on a castle coming down to trap him inside.

Did she expect him to give an answer straight away? He had already put everybody he loved in mortal danger to avoid working as an assassin for one government. Surely it was madness of the French to think he would kill for them.

So why was he still thinking about it? And why was his hand shaking?

“I came to you before,” he began eventually. “To the DGSE, I mean. When we needed your help. I offered to co-operate then.”

“To co-operate?” Zafi questioned. “Or to join us?”

“I offered information. But Uno Stovorsky said he didn’t need it. And he never suggested that I work for you.”

“The DGSE didn’t need you then, did we.” Zafi explained haughtily. “We had me.” At that she gave a sly chuckle. “But yesterday changed things. France needs you now.”

Jimmy couldn’t order any of his thoughts. “I don’t understand,” he started quietly. “I thought there were only two of us. Me and Mitchell. We’re both English. How come you’re also… like us, except that you’re French?”

“I suppose you want a history lesson,” Zafi sighed. “Well, the team of scientists that designed us fell out with each other twelve years ago. One of them was French and he escaped back to Paris when he realised there was going to be trouble.”

“And he took you with him?” Felix gasped. His mouth was hanging open.

“Sort of.” Zafi smiled at him fondly. “I wasn’t born yet, was I. But he took with him all the files and the chip he needed to make me.”

“So nobody at NJ7 knows about you?” Jimmy asked.

Zafi shook her head. “They’ve been looking for something called ZAF-1.”

Jimmy recognised that name. He’d heard it inside NJ7 Headquarters, but he didn’t know what it meant.

“You’re… ZAF-1?” he suggested.

“You should pay attention more closely, Jimmy Coates.” Zafi looked up at him and fluttered her eyelashes. “I said they’re
looking
for ZAF-1. They think it’s a Secret Service agency. But there’s no such thing. There’s only…”

“…Zafi.” Jimmy completed the sentence for her.

“That’s right – me!”

“They don’t know anything about you,” Jimmy exclaimed, the words tumbling out in his excitement. “I was there, in NJ7.” He looked at Georgie, Felix and Zafi in turn. “I heard them talking about ZAF-1, trying to work out what it meant. They were scared of it, but didn’t know what it meant…”

“Not yet,” Zafi cut him off. “They will soon. They’ll work it out from Dr Higgins’ papers.”

Dr Higgins – the scientist behind the original organic assassin project. The name still gave Jimmy an odd feeling. He wanted to hate the old man, but wasn’t physically able to. The result was like being seasick, but enjoying it. Jimmy wondered where the doctor was these days. Higgins had gone on the run after doing some assassinating of his own. He could have been anywhere in the world. For all Jimmy knew, NJ7 had already found him and taken their revenge.

“I don’t have any more time, Jimmy,” Zafi said softly. She stood up and placed a hand on his wrist. “And nor do you.” Jimmy tensed up. So did Georgie and Felix. “I did what I could tonight to help you,” Zafi continued.

“What do you mean?” Georgie asked suspiciously.

“I created a diversion so they couldn’t follow you out of London so easily.” Zafi thought for a moment and smiled to herself. Jimmy couldn’t stand the way everything seemed to amuse her. “I need you to come with me now.”

Jimmy looked at his friend and his sister. He could see on their faces what they thought. The last thing they wanted was for him to leave them. But everything inside him was drawing him to go with Zafi. Surely he couldn’t – up to now, he had done everything he could to avoid causing harm to anybody. The DGSE would almost certainly send him to kill. But who?

He closed his eyes and pictured Paduk, the huge Secret Service agent who ran the Prime Minister’s ‘Special Security’. He pictured Miss Bennett, who had pretended to be protecting Jimmy for so long as a fake form teacher at school. Then she had emerged as his most venomous enemy – Head of NJ7. They had stolen his life. They had tortured and tried to kill the people he loved. Was this the chance that he had wanted so badly? Was this the opportunity to get his own back and be working for a good cause at the same time?

Then Jimmy pictured Ian Coates.

“I’ll do it,” he rasped. His voice seemed reluctant to leave his throat. “I’ll do it.”

“Jimmy you can’t!” Georgie shouted.

Jimmy was already moving towards the window. It was Zafi who stopped him.

“I presume we can leave by the front door, no?” she chuckled.

Jimmy felt himself laugh too, but it came out like a grunt. It didn’t even sound like him. He turned to the door.

“Jimmy, stop,” Felix ordered, grabbing his friend by the arm. Jimmy didn’t look at him.

“Get off me,” he growled.

“No way.”

“Get off me, Felix,” Jimmy said again. “You know I could snap you in two, don’t you?”

“Jimmy, what are you saying?” Georgie yelled. She stepped between her brother and the door. Her face had gone white. “What’s happening to you?”

“Let him come,” Zafi insisted. “He wants to, can’t you see?”

“No, he doesn’t,” Georgie countered. “It’s not him.” She seized Jimmy’s face in her hands. “Come on, Jimmy, pull yourself together!”

Suddenly, Jimmy exploded with rage. “Get off me!” he boomed. He shook off his sister’s hands and pushed Felix away. They both staggered back a step or two.

“It doesn’t matter what you say,” Zafi muttered. “He doesn’t have any choice about it anyway. It’s his destiny.”

Jimmy felt the dark power inside him. It was the force that he thought he had learned to control. But it was always there and always growing more layers. It felt like a wild animal had burrowed even deeper inside him, devouring his soul as it went.

“Why are you doing this?” Georgie whispered. Jimmy looked at her and saw a horrible fear on her face.

“Are you winding us up?” Felix asked. “You are, aren’t you?”

Jimmy didn’t know how to respond. Felix’s chirpy tone was completely out of synch with the weight of Jimmy’s emotions.

“All right, tell you what,” Felix continued, bouncing on the spot, “I’m coming too.” Jimmy sighed. “Let’s go,” Felix insisted. With a flourish, he plucked one of the pillows from the bed and whipped off the pillowcase. Then he tied it around his neck. “Got to wrap up warm, cos, baby, it’s cold outside.”

“Felix, what are you doing?” Jimmy asked.

“I, my friend, am going to come with you and become a killer.”

None of them knew what to make of this – least of all Jimmy.

“Felix, this is serious,” he said.

“Yeah, serious,” Felix echoed. “Seriously, I’m so serious. Let’s go get serious with some Frenchies.” He grabbed Jimmy’s wrist again, but this time he was dragging his friend towards the door. “Come on, come on, haven’t got all day. People to kill.”

“Stop,” Jimmy urged feebly. He pulled his hand away. “You’re nuts.”

“I’m nuts?” Felix mocked. “Oh,
I’m
nuts. Yeah, cos, funny thing is, we all thought you wanted to stick with us and get away from the fighting and the murdering. But some little French bird flutters in here with her little gadgets and her cool eyeball trick – that was so cool by the way,” he quickly turned to Zafi and grinned. “And next thing you want to skip off to Paris to become an assassin, which is what NJ7 wanted you to be in the first place. But you’re right –
I’m
nuts.”

The others were stunned. If Georgie hadn’t been so upset, she would have laughed. Zafi was the first to break the silence.

“Your friend is weird,” she whispered.

“I know,” Jimmy mumbled, “He’s…”

“I like it.”

Finally, a smile forced its way on to Jimmy’s face. “Take off that pillowcase,” he said. “You look ridiculous.”

“So we’re staying?” Felix asked. Jimmy nodded, and his sister plunged her arms around him.

“You’re such an idiot,” Georgie scolded Jimmy even as she was hugging him. “You have to think about these things more carefully. We’re going to get out of here and be safe and normal again.”

“It’s a shame,” interjected Zafi. “They said if you didn’t want to come with me I should kill you.” Jimmy’s blood fizzed in his veins. Georgie gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. “Ha! Joking!” Zafi exploded into laughter. “Your faces are hilarious.”

Felix and Jimmy both let out a huge sigh of relief.

“I don’t think that’s funny!” Georgie shrieked.

“It was
quite
funny,” Felix suggested. “Not as funny as me obviously.”

“So it’s OK if I don’t, you know…” Jimmy asked.

“Of course,” Zafi replied, her voice light and almost squeaky. “You won’t work for us, but that’s OK because we know that you are no friend of NJ7.”

“I’d never work for them, don’t worry.” At last Jimmy started to relax. He almost felt like himself again.

“But NJ7 won’t have any distractions now,” Zafi warned him. “I can’t throw them off your trail any more. And if
I
can find you, they can find you. Get out of the
country as quick as you can.” She opened the door and was framed by the darkness in the rest of the building. “Maybe we’ll meet again.”

To his surprise, Jimmy was sad that this girl was leaving. There was so much she might have been able to tell him. He was suddenly overcome by the urge to know everything about her. Had she also grown up thinking she was a normal child? Or had she always known that she was only 38 per cent human? She seemed a lot happier with it than Jimmy was. Did she have parents? Were they, like Jimmy’s, agents of the Government’s intelligence services? And had they kept it a secret?

With all this blurring his thoughts, Jimmy found it hard to say anything – even a simple goodbye. Zafi reached into her pocket.

“I’ll rewire the power supply outside on my way out,” she announced casually. Her hand emerged holding the remote control clicker that had turned on the lights in the room. “Something to remember me by.” She tossed it at Jimmy, who caught it in a daze.

“Don’t you need it?” Felix called out, but Zafi was already floating down the stairs, making hardly a sound. She glanced over her shoulder, her hair catching the streak of light through the banisters.

“I’ll make another one.”

Jimmy, Georgie and Felix were unable to move. They were stunned. Zafi had come in like a whirlwind and left
as much devastation. She had made so little noise – they didn’t even hear the front door closing after her – and she displayed all the clinical killing instincts of a highly trained assassin. Yet her eyes had sparkled, her physique was delicate, her voice was soft and high, with a giggle that reminded Jimmy of the most annoying girls in his year at school.

While Jimmy was trying to fathom out how he felt, Felix reached across and swiped the gadget from his open palm. He clicked the lights on and off a couple of times.

“Cool,” he muttered under his breath. Then he asked, “Do you think we’ll, you know, see her again?”

Jimmy didn’t answer. His gut was telling him that he hoped they would. But, at the same time, he could hear a stern voice in his head. It told him that if he ever did see Zafi Sauvage again, it could only mean that he was in trouble.

Jimmy, Felix and Georgie didn’t bother going back to bed. There was no way any of them would have been able to sleep anyway. They were buzzing with adrenaline from Zafi’s visit. Instead, the three of them took their duvets down to the living room. Felix turned on the TV.

“Chris will go ballistic when he hears about what happened tonight,” he said.

“Do you think he’s OK?” Georgie asked Jimmy. “And Saffron?” There was no reply. “Well? Do you?”

Jimmy exploded with frustration. “I don’t know, do I? How is any of us meant to know?”

“All right, calm down, psycho.” Georgie threw up her hands.

Jimmy mumbled an apology. He could picture Christopher Viggo’s face as the man had driven off into the darkness the night before. With him had been his girlfriend, Saffron Walden, dying from an NJ7 bullet. Jimmy had already gone over and over it in his mind – hospitals were out because they were covered in security cameras, and they’d report a bullet wound to the police straight away. So unless Viggo knew a surgeon nearby who was also a so-called ‘enemy’ of Britain, Jimmy had no idea how Saffron was going to survive.

He curled up on the sofa, wishing his morbid thoughts would go away. Saffron and Viggo had done so much to help Jimmy. Viggo used to be an NJ7 agent himself, but he’d fled thirteen years earlier because of the evil of one man: Ares Hollingdale. From being Director of NJ7, Hollingdale had risen to become Prime Minister – but an undemocratic one. He’d used NJ7 to secure his position at the head of a dictatorship. And the population did nothing to stop him.

Sometimes, it seemed like Viggo and Saffron were the only sane people in Britain – at least, the only ones who were fighting for democracy.

Gradually, Jimmy’s attention returned to the TV.

“The new Prime Minister, Ian Coates, is about to land in Washington DC to meet with the American President, Alphonsus Grogan.” The newsreader was a woman with a vacant stare and a half-smile permanently on her lips. “The first item on their agenda will be American support for Britain in any possible military action against France, following French incursion into British airspace yesterday afternoon.”

With every mention of the Prime Minister, Jimmy felt something rumble in his belly. He forced it down and told himself it was hunger.

“Ian Coates will first meet with the President at the White House,” the newsreader went on, “before touring the cities of the East Coast of America. He will address the UN Security Council in New York in four days’ time to present the case for Britain’s legal right to retaliate against France.”

Usually, the last thing Jimmy would have wanted to do was watch the news. But everything had changed. Now it was urgent that they all knew what the Government was doing. This was their enemy.

“I can’t believe that’s our dad,” Georgie muttered.

Jimmy didn’t answer.
Not ‘our’ dad
, he thought. ‘
Your’ dad
. He felt a sting in his throat and wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. When he looked up, he saw his own face on the TV screen. It was the same
old school photograph that Jimmy had seen on TV the day before.

“…still thought to be behind the murder of Ares Hollingdale,” the reporter was saying, “and still on the run.” The camera zoomed in on Jimmy’s eyes.

“It’s all right,” Felix stated calmly. “You don’t really look like that.”

“It’s all right?” Georgie exclaimed. “How is it ‘all right’ that they’re telling the whole country that Jimmy murdered the last Prime Minister?” Jimmy shrunk into himself. He just wished they didn’t have to talk about it.

In the last few weeks he had learned not to trust what came out of the TV. He could almost see the puppet-strings attached to the limbs of the newsreaders, and Miss Bennett somewhere, just out of shot, dictating every word that was said.

“Anyway,” Georgie piped up again, furious, “NJ7 knows Jimmy didn’t do it – because
they
did it.”

“What?” Felix asked. “You think Miss Bennett sent someone from NJ7 to kill their own Prime Minister?”

“Maybe. Hollingdale was sadistic and cruel and probably crazy. Maybe they’d had enough and wanted Dad to take over.”

Hardly realising he was speaking, Jimmy cut in. “He had it coming,” he snarled.

All three of them looked at each other, shocked at what Jimmy had said, even if it was true. Was it him or
his programming that was spitting out such venomous thoughts? Jimmy couldn’t get any more words out of his mouth. He could feel his lips trembling, but there was nothing more to say.

The only sound was the drone of the television and the incessant ticking of a clock.