Jimmy Coates: Survival

When both guards hit the floor they stayed down.

But two more were hurtling towards the ward. Jimmy stayed calm. He rubbed his feet together to loosen the bandaging, then twisted his right hand into it and pulled. Within seconds it had unravelled, exposing his blackened and twisted left foot. Jimmy stared, relieved that the power of his programming combined with the painkillers meant he could hardly feel it.

The new guards were through the ward doors. Using his wrists and forearms, Jimmy wrapped the length of loose bandage round the metal pole. Then he kicked the pole directly upwards. The foot of it caught on a strut of the ceiling fan above Jimmy’s head.

Jimmy twisted his arms into the other end of the bandage and swung into the air, leaning back to control his direction. He slammed his knees into the guards’ faces and they toppled like skittles.

By now the first two guards were rolling over, trying to get up, but they were too late. Jimmy was through the doors. He hurtled down the corridor, half running and half sliding, with one foot still cocooned in bandage.

A quick glance at the emergency evacuation notice told him the layout of the building. As he ran, he tore at his bandages with his teeth, desperate to free his hands. He turned a corner, heading for the nearest fire exit.

Another guard sat in front of the exit reading a newspaper. When Jimmy tore into view, the guard leapt to his feet and held up a hand to signal “Halt!”.

Does that everwork? Jimmy wondered. He picked up speed, while the guard scrabbled for his walkie-talkie, then his gun. By then Jimmy was on him. He crashed his shoulder into the man’s midriff and the pair of them tumbled to the floor. Jimmy dived for the exit in a flurry of newspaper pages. He clattered through and an alarm erupted throughout the building.

Jimmy felt the ice-cold air hit his skin. It brought back the terror of his mountain trek. He looked around to find himself in a fenced courtyard, with a watch tower looming overhead. The guard’s newspaper was fluttering all over the courtyard.

“Stop immediately,” came a stilted voice, speaking in English, but with a French accent. “Otherwise you will be shot.”

Jimmy buzzed with the strangest feeling of delight. His programming hummed through him, relishing the battle. His brain whirred with a thousand calculations – the angle of the shot, the velocity of the bullet, the distance between Jimmy and the fence…

To his shock, a smile twitched in the corners of his mouth. He felt his muscles bracing for the sprint and was actually enjoying it. But then his eyes fixed on a single sheet of newspaper and the delight froze in his heart. Jimmy suddenly knew that there was no point trying to outrun the French shooter. He stopped dead still and raised his hands.

The newspaper’s front page swooped along the concrete. It was dominated by one image: the skeleton of a burnt-out building, with a huge grey battleship looming on the horizon. The ship was flying the Union Jack.

Suddenly four guards pounced on Jimmy, pushed him to the ground and cuffed him. He didn’t resist. He knew it was too late for that now.

10 LIES WORK

Mitchell jumped out of the shower and grabbed his towel. The red light above the sink had just come on. It reflected around the black tiles and gave the steam an eerie, hellish glow.

He rushed through to his bedroom, randomly drying bits of his body as he went. Drips ran down his nose and bounced off his brawny chin before hitting the carpet. He leaned over his laptop, careful not to drip on it, and found what he knew would be waiting for him. The red light only came on when there was an email from Miss Bennett.

He clicked it open and pulled his desk chair closer with his foot. Before his shower, he’d been absorbed in one of the SAS combat simulators. It was intended as part of the training for recruits, but to Mitchell it was just the best console game he’d ever played. The handset was discarded on the floor next to a packet of crisps and the image of a mangled enemy corpse was still paused on his TV.

His room was quite small, but it had everything he needed. In fact it had everything he had ever wanted: TV, HD-DVD player, and imported luxuries like a Bose sounddock. Even the shower responded to voice commands.

But he knew there was a price for living in such luxury. Looking around the room, with its smart black and red design, there was one obvious reminder of his situation: the lack of windows. The British Secret Service had taken over his life so much that these days he lived underground, in one of the few residential apartments at the NJ7 network.

Miss Bennett’s email had no message in it, but a video popped up instead. Mitchell settled back to watch.

The image was jerky, as if it had been filmed on a hand-held device, like a mobile phone, and at first it was too dark to see anything. Mitchell turned up the contrast on his screen.

The video appeared to have been filmed in a snooker hall. There was the noise of balls being hit and in the corner Mitchell made out a sliver of green baize. But everything was obscured by the shoulders of people around the camera. The place was packed. Then Mitchell finally realised what the focus of the filming was.

At the front of the crowd was a tall figure addressing the others. His manner was relaxed, but powerful. Mitchell turned up the volume. He could just make out snippets of the man’s speech above the cracking of the snooker balls and the murmurs of the crowd.