James Lovegrove - The Age of Zeus

Finally the monster was at bay.

It had been flushed out of the forest. It had been hounded downhill, bullets thudding at its heels and smacking into the trunks of oaks and other mountain broadleafs on either side of it. It had been shepherded by gunfire into the village and driven along the streets. At last it had been corralled in a cul-de-sac with high, ancient walls on either side.

Cornered, panting, torso lathered in sweat, the monster turned.

Two of its pursuers were approaching from the open end of the cul-de-sac. Above, in the upper storeys of the stone-built houses, shutters cracked opened and villagers peered out. Their faces were fearful but hopeful. The monster had been terrorising the Corsican interior for months, killing at random. Now it was being terrorised itself. The villagers were eager to see the monster get its comeuppance. Long overdue.

But the monster was still dangerous. Just because it was trapped, that didn't mean it was helpless. It was, after all, the Minotaur — seven feet tall and 400lbs of hyperdeveloped muscle and skin-straining sinew, with the strength of several oxen. Lowering its head, the Minotaur fixed its blood-red eyes on its foes and pawed the ground with one foot. Breath rattled from its nostrils in short, thick gusts.

"Tethys, Hyperion. What is your status?"

Sam did not take her gaze off the Minotaur — specifically, not off the pair of huge horns that were now pointing towards her like ivory spears.

"Hyperion, Tethys. Mnemosyne and I are in range of target. It's about to charge."

"Do you have line of sight?"

"Roger."

"Do you have a clear shot?"

"Roger."

"Then what are you dicking about for? Take it."

Sam raised her recoilless. 45mm submachine gun. It was boxy but lightweight, a skeletal weapon. Blisteringly effective nonetheless.

The Minotaur saw it, understood its purpose. It was familiar with guns. It knew what they did.

In those red eyes Sam saw the flash of comprehension, and something else. She couldn't be sure, but she thought it looked like resignation.

Which was impossible. The Minotaur was an unthinking creature, a mindless force of destruction. There was nothing in that bull head but malevolence and the basic animal cunning needed to survive.

Or so she'd been given to believe.

The Minotaur couldn't know that it was about to die.

Could it?

"Tethys?" Hyperion's voice. "Do you copy? I said take the shot."

Sam's finger curled round the trigger.

The Minotaur bent low, tensing. It would charge, for all the good that would do. These armour-clad enemies were like nothing it had come up against before. It knew it was outclassed. For the first time in its life the Minotaur was staring defeat in the eye, and defeat's shadow, death. But it would not give in meekly. That was not in the beast's nature.

"Tethys?" said Mnemosyne. She had her coilgun aimed at the monster's centre of body mass. "Sam? What are you waiting for? This is our chance."

"Tethys!" barked Hyperion over the comms net. "Why am I not hearing a kill-shot?"

The Minotaur was ready, Sam could tell by its posture. One last attack, a final act of defiance against the inevitable.

"Mnemosyne," she said, "I want to try and take it alive, if I can."

"What?" said Mnemosyne.

" What!?" echoed Hyperion. Sam's transponder sensor was registering his presence nearby, lower in the village, 200m southeast and closing. She had to do this before he got here. Hyperion — Ramsay — would have no qualms about making the kill. This was not any kind of retrieval op. This was supposed to be an execution.

"I'll use the stun-dusters," she said to Mnemosyne.

"You're crazy. Why?"

Sam couldn't say why. She wasn't totally sure herself. "Trust me. Please?"

Mnemosyne left a moment of silence to convey doubt. Then she said, "All right. Go on." She firmed her grip on the coilgun. "But I'm keeping this trained on it at all times."

"Cronus gave us nonlethal offensive capability for a reason," Sam said, fitting a pair of ridged metal knuckledusters onto her gauntlets.

"Let's hope the reason wasn't to kill ourselves," Mnemosyne replied.

Sam grunted. Already, a little over a month after the commencement of operations, two Titans were dead. Today at least one more could be about to join them, and this time it would be their own fault. Her fault, in fact.

Abruptly, the Minotaur charged.

Sam braced herself. Mnemosyne, meanwhile, stepped back and took aim.

Hyperion was yelling, "Don't be stupid. Kill-shot! Motherfucking kill-shot!"

The beast came fast — so fast — barrelling at them like a runaway goods van.

Sam knew that if she fucked this up, it was all over.

Then don't fuck it up, she told herself, and ran to meet the monster.

There were two of them waiting on the quay: Sam and the man she had first encountered a couple of hours ago on the train, the man who'd been carrying an invitation like hers. She had spotted him in the buffet car as she was returning to her carriage from a trip to the toilet. He was ordering a cheese sandwich and a "club soda." African-American. Tall. Well put together. Nice, firm buttocks. Standing straight-spined, so much so that everyone around him seemed to slouch by comparison. Chicago accent? Yes, Chicago. Chewy on the syllables. He was very handsome; in particular she'd liked his nose. His nostrils were naturally flared, a sign of self-assurance and the right kind of pride. And while he waited for the woman behind the counter to fetch his food and pour his drink, he'd taken the invitation out of his pocket to inspect it, doubtless not for the first time. Identical to the one Sam had in her handbag, printed on snowdrift-smooth card in an elegant formal font, the kind of thing you might expect to receive from the host of a truly classy party. The Chicagoan had frowned at it, shaken his head, then tucked it away again. In the time he'd spent studying the invitation Sam could have gone up to him, produced her own, said something like "Snap" or "You've shown me yours, now I'll show you mine," something coy and wry like that, and introduced herself. But she hadn't. She'd just slipped past the man and gone on to her seat, and the train had continued rumbling on its way, towards the terminus from where she was to catch a taxi to the coast, to this stony little port town, this quay.

The Chicagoan was now sitting on a mooring post. He had his mackintosh collar turned up all the way to his chin and was huddled in on himself, looking miserable in the damp, bitter wind that was gusting onshore. It was a freezing early-January day. Sea and sky appeared to be in competition as to which was murkier and more tormented. Gulls plodded along the slick stones of the harbour wall, beaks to breasts, feathers ruffled.

Sam stood off at a distance from the man, sheltering in the doorway of a fish and chip shop which according to the sign hanging in its door was open but looked very firmly closed. She knew the Chicagoan had clocked her and had identified that she was there was for the same reason he was — both of them answering the same oblique, enigmatic summons. The small suitcase at her feet gave the game away. He had an item of luggage too, an overnight bag with wheels and an extendable handle. But he seemed to respect the fact that she didn't want to strike up a conversation with him, at least not just yet.

Out of the corner of her eye Sam spied a group of people approaching along the main harbourside street. More invitees? No, a young couple with two kids, one of them in a pushchair. Winter holidaymakers. The adults were bent forward against the wind, and the face of the older child, a boy of eight or nine, was one big scowl — angrily baffled as to why his parents had insisted on dragging him outside in such foul weather when he could be warm indoors with the TV and his Nintendo. The baby, by contrast, was snugly bundled up and blissfully asleep.