‘We don’t have much in common,’ Grant continued, ‘but I have to appreciate your drive to not impress people either. Your name will be forgotten the moment your friends are found and destroyed, but that doesn’t seem to discourage you. I like that.’
‘Oh, don’t try finding common ground between us,’ said McCormick wryly, ‘I’m sure I couldn’t possibly measure up to you.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Grant with a smile. ‘You mow down your enemies with the same mentality as me. You have only one goal, and anything and anyone is expendable in order to reach it. Isn’t that right? You must have known the death sentence you gave to Arnold Salter the moment you took his keycard, even if you released him to ease the weight on your conscience. And now his young ones will be cast into the Inner City. Always happens when a staff member dies. You must have known that too, but you took his keycard anyway. He had three kids, you know. And his wife died two years ago. His children only had a father to rely on.’
McCormick dipped his head.
I won’t let him make me feel guilty. He won’t trick me into think ing our side is as morally wrong as his.
‘Tragic, right?’ said Grant, seizing McCormick by a clump of his remaining hair and demanding further eye contact. ‘You see yourself as the deliverer of all things good, and the saviour of suffering people, but you and your servants tear apart the lives of the innocent just like I do. Leadership… isn’t it lonely?’
‘I’ve lived my life around friends… I could never be lonely. Not like you.’
‘Your friends are dying out!’ Grant shouted, half laughing. ‘Raj Singh lies dead and decapitated outside his old school. Last month Oliver took away Charlie Coleman. Before that we tortured Daniel Amopoulos to death, before that we found Rachael Watts’ body in the wreckage of a car, and before that Ben Christie—’
‘I get the point.’
He made me raise my voice . Nicholas Grant is getting to me.
‘Spitfire’s Rise gets lonelier with every failed mission,’ Grant whispered into his ear. ‘Your shining stars are flickering out one by one, as if they know their universe is dying. The sky is getting dark, and your house is growing quiet. How long until the last star goes out?’
The first tear ran down McCormick’s cheek, as if it were trying to flee the conversation.
‘Doctor?’ asked Grant. ‘You do have something to say, right?’
McCormick wiped his fingers over his face, and gasped a sentence.
‘The pain of missing someone is always worth it for the joy of having known them. Always.’
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
‘It means that even though I miss the friends you killed, I can look back on a year that was far less lonely than yours.’
McCormick had never taken a punch before. Grant’s closed fist struck against his chin, and his head keeled to one side as his brain tried to work out how to balance itself. Grant was yelling something, but no words registered in his mind.
When his sight found its way to the door, two of the three faces were smiling. The odd one out, curiously, was Oliver Roth.
‘You can hit me all you want,’ McCormick rasped, ‘but it won’t change the facts. My friends and I practically took down your empire tonight. Four against infinity, and we’rewinning.’
‘And it’ll all be for nothing in a matter of seconds. A circuit-break alert sounded the moment your little girl fired that sniper bullet, and it even indicated where the break came from. Last I heard, my men were about three minutes away from replacing the Perimeter Point she shot. I don’t know what you think your bomb’s going to do, if it even exists, but it’ll go off ten minutes too late.’
Perimeter Point… Raj was close, calling them ‘ border points ’ .
Raj… another shining star that flickered out under my leadership.
McCormick felt his body falling to the side, but steadied himself just in time. Nicholas Grant packed a serious punch. The white-haired dictator wandered to Marshall’s mahogany desk with a little joy in his step, removed a key from a drawer, and unlocked the plastic covering that surrounded a black switch on the giant computer. McCormick’s eyes followed Grant’s to the digital clock on the wall, which he had not noticed before that moment. It read ‘10:16:23 p.m., 19/05/0001’.
Thirteen and a half minutes without breaking. Easy peasy .
‘That “Kate” you were talking to over the radio,’ Grant started. ‘Kate Arrowsmith, if I remember right. How accurate’s her watch?’
‘Set to Big Ben. Remember that thing?’
‘Collateral damage. But it’s good to know that our clocks are synchronised. I want to know exactly how long I have to deal with her threat.’
You and me both.
‘So I have a few questions to ask,’ Grant continued. ‘Iain, is Gwen nearly here?’
‘She tells me she is,’ Marshall muttered from the entrance. McCormick detected resentment in Marshall’s voice; presumably he despised his office being occupied by his colleagues.
‘You’ll like Gwen Crossland,’ Grant said to McCormick. ‘She’s very persuasive.’
‘I didn’t spend my last Christmas running around and planting bombs just to give the game away with thirteen minutes to go.’
‘We’ll let her be the judge of that. And it’s not just the bomb I’m interested in. How did you shelter so many people in the depths of England, against all my satellites, thermal imaging technology and random clone searches? More importantly, where the hell are you sheltering? Once my shield’s up and we’re done with your little weapon, I’ll want some answers to those questions too.’
McCormick’s breath held itself inside his throat.
He doesn’t know where Spitfire’s Rise is. Alex didn’t give it away after all.
But that’s not the point here. Grant won’t need to go after us on ce he’s raised the shield. He’d be hunting us for revenge, not strategy.
‘Ah,’ chuckled Grant with a slow nod, ‘now you’re nervous. Which reminds me. Iain, Nathaniel, how anxious has the good doctor been since his capture?’
‘No more than you’d expect,’ answered Pearce from the back of the room. ‘Actually, his mood’s the same as when we first met him on Floor F.’
‘So if his nerves haven’t changed, it’s fair to say we haven’t walked into the blast radius by coming here?’
Pearce shrugged.
‘If it were me, I’d take him on a tour of Floor B and watch for a change of expression.’
‘Give me a break,’ McCormick answered with a limp cough. ‘It’s late at night, and I’ve done a year’s worth of jogging today. I’m tired.’
Grant smiled.
‘Iain,’ he said, ‘get on the phone to every section officer in New London and order them to inspect their areas fast. I want the HPFC searched, I want every room the rebels have ever visited to be turned upside-down, I want vehicle ports torn apart and every officers’ sector gone over inch by inch. Nathaniel, load up some security files and find out which of our rooms were targeted around Christmastime.’ He flashed a proud pair of shiny blue eyes towards his twitching prisoner. ‘And thanks for giving that part away, you old fool.’