It always made McCormick smile, how people assumed they could not be heard on the other side of a closed door. Especially people with Roth’s level of overconfidence.
‘You mentioned a plan?’ he asked. ‘One that involves moving a live prisoner to Iain’s office?’
‘Nick’s orders,’ answered Marshall’s voice. ‘Until we know where the bomb is, he doesn’t want us spread out.’
‘We’ll be one big target.’
‘That’s right – one big target, right next to a man who knows exactly where the bomb is. My office is almost certainly outside the blast radius, but if it’s not, we’ll wait for McCormick to start sweating. Then we’ll evacuate to the other end of the Citadel and get someone to find and defuse it.’
‘You don’t get it, Iain. Tonight I saw that man storm his way through the HPFC, blowing up rooms and slaughtering clones, and even when I had him at gunpoint he kept talking over his radio! This guy’s not afraid to die.’
‘Everyone’s afraid to die, Oliver,’ laughed Pearce, ‘even you.’
‘Some people love victory more than their own lives. I give you my word, if that man had to choose between survival and victory, he’d choose victory.’
That’s not admiration in his voice, is it?
‘And he’d still be afraid, and it’d still show,’ finished Marshall. ‘You don’t survive as a face-to-face arms dealer without learning how to read people, my boy. Now go, your prisoner’s waiting.’
McCormick heard the sound of Roth’s assault rifle clattering to the floor, almost as if it had been thrown down in frustration. Then the door opened, and Roth readied his hands for work.
Oliver Roth and Joseph McCormick – two titans of the Great British Civil War – found themselves alone in a small room, lit with the glow of two portable lights. And for the first time that evening, McCormick was able to take a proper look at the assassin, without the distraction of a firearm being pointed at his face.
The fourteen-year-old boy in front of him looked just like that: a fourteen-year-old boy, except in military uniform. There was even a handsomeness to Oliver Roth that McCormick had not imagined before meeting him: an endearing spread of freckles and a rusty, deepened shade of red in his hair – the type of shade that protected boys from ginger jokes, and gave them Norse warrior-like appeal once they grew up. McCormick also noticed a keen, inquisitive default expression on the boy’s face, as if once upon a time he had been enthusiastic about learning for learning’s sake, and a pair of eyes beneath stern eyebrows that held an expression of confidence usually reserved for those wiser than their years.
McCormick had seen the same expressions, mannerisms and character in several young people he had once known and loved – teenagers who had never been corrupted like the person before him. In another world, or a world inhabited by fewer negative role models, Oliver Roth could have made a fine young man.
McCormick interlocked his fingers behind the back of his head, and failed to suppress his nervous hiccups.
‘Clothes off,’ commanded Roth, ‘down to your underwear.’
‘You’re not afraid of seeing an old man’s body?’
‘I’ve seen messier sights. And this is your own fault, you know. You could have just wandered through a friendly X-ray machine, like one of those old airport scanners, and then been on your way. But now you’re getting humiliated.’
McCormick checked his watch as he removed it. It was almost five past ten.
I only need to go twenty-five minutes without breaking and telling them . I can do this.
McCormick took off his helmet, then began to remove his clothes. Layer by layer he shivered a little more, and item by item the expression on Roth’s face grew more and more disgusted. Clothes disguised a lot, and McCormick must have looked surprisingly fat.
‘What the hell happened to your stomach?’ Roth barked as McCormick reached his underwear.
McCormick glanced downward at the cauterised wounds across his abdomen. The cyst that kept him out of combat was gone forever, but the procedure hadn’t been without cost. Third degree burns were spread across his body, like a scale model of the Grand Canyon made from human flesh.
‘Let’s just say I’ve had a very difficult life lately,’ he said with a pensive voice, ‘especially these last few years.’
‘Well it’s not far from over now.’
McCormick sealed his eyes shut as Roth poked around his feet and gradually up his shins.
‘So besides the obvious,’ Roth continued, ‘what’s made your life so tough? Did your cat die or something?’
‘No, my wife. I thought you’d know that, with Grant’s background research.’
‘I’m only interested in my enemies once I’ve killed them.’
‘That’s a shame,’ replied McCormick, daring to smile. ‘We’re an interesting bunch. But to answer your question… when you get to my age, your whole generation starts to fall apart. There are the unlucky ones who get cancer in their forties, followed by those with unhealthy lifestyles who barely make it past sixty. By then you start wondering whether you’ll be the next to go, or whether you’ll have the pleasure of living the longest. The best case scenario is living long enough to watch all your friends drop off the perch before you.’
‘Huh. At least now your friends get to die younger,’ said Roth with a savage grin. ‘What’s the youngest? Fifteen?’
‘Thirteen. A boy called Callum. Ran out of insulin within a week of surviving Takeover Day.’
‘Survival of the fittest, mate.’
McCormick shuddered as Roth’s fingers pushed into the gaps between his ribs, as if expecting to find a hidden clip of bullets.
‘There comes a day for most of us when the funerals start to outnumber the weddings,’ McCormick continued, ‘but if you look to the younger generation, the world always feels alive. It wasn’t what I planned when I set out to build people up to be the best they can be, but it’s a happy side effect. I tried to guide those who needed guiding. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. But it was always worth it, and it was always the right thing to do. I may not have had the easiest life, but I’ve lived it well.’
As Roth lay his fingers around the base of McCormick’s neck, their eyes met.
‘And what about you, Oliver? Where do you see your life going after this war?’
Roth spat a laugh, and took a defensive step backwards.
‘Oh, no. No. You’re not using your magical love powers on me. Eight of your friends were murdered by these hands. You of all people should know I’m unreachable.’
‘Nobody’s unreachable,’ McCormick answered. ‘You wouldn’t believe the kind of people I’ve had the honour of turning round. The world is full of young people who think their futures are already decided – that they’re supposed to be this kind of screw-up or that kind of failure, just because they’ve been told to believe it by the people around them. But once they’ve had someone tell them the truth, the realisation can be literally life-changing.’
‘And what is that truth?’
‘That even though we don’t get to decide what happens to us, we do get to choose how we respond. And even if people tell you your future is predestined, you have more control over your personality than you think.’