Mike Shevdon - The Road to Bedlam

I found myself lying head down on the steps, looking up into my daughter's face.

"Are you hurt?" she shouted.

I shuffled around, so I could sit, patting myself down, looking for fresh wounds. The only blood was where I had taken the shotgun blast. My instinctive reaction to throw myself backwards down the stairwell had saved me.

"No, I'm OK. I can't get to the roof, though. We can't leave if we can't see where we're going."

"Back down," she said. "We can break the windows in the offices below. They can't cover all of them."

It was my turn to nod. I led the way back down the stairwell. At the bottom I heard shouts. As I thrust the door open, gunfire echoed in the corridor. I slammed the door shut again. It was not built to withstand an assault, but it would slow them down. Placing my hand on it, I used my magic to seal it shut. It was the first trick I ever learned, and they would not get through it easily. I propelled Alex back up the stairs ahead of me. Within seconds a burst of bullets pierced the door below us, ricocheting off the metal steps.

"We're trapped," shouted Alex over the thudding of the helicopter.

She was right.

The noise from below as the men in the corridor tried to break through the door was almost drowned out by the helicopter circling above the roof. Even though I had sealed the lower door with magic, it would not take them long to break through it. They only needed a small hole and they could toss through a hand-grenade. In the confined space of the stairwell, the blast would kill us both. We had no time and nowhere to go.

"We're going up," I shouted to Alex, leading her away from the banging at the doorway. Thankfully the door was delaying them longer than I had hoped.

"What about the helicopter?"

I looked up the stairwell. Every thirty seconds or so, the helicopter circled around. Whatever I did would have to be done in that time.

I looked down the steps, wondering how much time we had. Not long.

"Get down on to the middle steps," I shouted to Alex. "Be ready to come up when I call you."

"You're mad! You can't go up there!" shouted Alex. She grabbed my arm, her fingers clinging to the jacket sleeve.

"No. Trust me. Shield your eyes."

"My eyes?"

"Just do as you're told for once, will you?"

She looked up at me and I could see the words forming on her lips: Don't tell me what to do.

Instead, she nodded and released my sleeve.

I leaned down and kissed her forehead, then took the steps up as far as I dared. I could hear the giant helicopter, the rhythmic thudding of the twin rotors, the whistle of the engines. I waited until I had the cycle in my head and then drew all the power I could.

The air chilled instantly, frost riming on the rails for the stairs. I heard the chopper engines falter and then whine with renewed force as the helicopter swept past the open doorway. I opened the dark well of power within me, feeling the prickle as white fingers of light crept around my hands. The world fell into a smoky veil. I could see through the walls of the small stair enclosure to the dark blocks of the air conditioners arrayed around the roof. I could see the insubstantial shape of the helicopter, wheeling around above me, its rotors too fast to perceive, the heavy steel of the machine gun poking inelegantly from its side.

The light from my aura must have attracted their attention, because another burst of fire swept across the open doorway above my head in a rattling crescendo, peppering me with brick fragments and concrete shards. I did my best to ignore it.

I cupped my hands in front of me. I had seen this done only once, but I thought I knew how it worked. The space between my hands was empty and not empty. It contained only air. I was a creature of the void. Blackbird could do things with air and fire, but that was not my element. My element was the void, the space between things. It was what kept matter from collapsing in on itself. It was what kept everything apart from everything else.

What happened, though, when it didn't? What happened when the space between things contracted, so that they came together in ways they were weren't supposed to?

I took the tiniest part of space and pulled the void from it. There was a fizzle and a pop.

Concentrating, I tried again. I reached in with my will, keeping it small, drawing the void into itself from the area between my hands. A spark fizzed into life and then crackled with energy. As the space around it bent, it grew brighter until it threw my shadows on to all the walls.

Another burst of gunfire hit the access, showering me with dust and brick chips. Where they fell into the spark, they vanished and it grew.

Opening my hands slowly, I allowed it to float, splitting my concentration between maintaining the spark and timing the helicopter's circles. If this was to work, I would have to get it right. Its noise grew as it thudded past the open doorway and then circled away.

I walked up the steps.

The helicopter circled round behind me, its view momentarily blocked. My spine itched with tension as I lifted my hands and let the spark rise and grow. I concentrated on feeding it, collapsing it into itself, seeing it brighten into an arc-light and then into a tiny star.

The chopper thudded into view. I heard the motor of the machine gun whine up to speed. If I left it any later I would be sliced in half.

I sent the star arcing into the sky into the path of the helicopter. The reaction was instant. The chopper tipped sideways and banked hard, klaxons screaming raucously from the open hatchway, The machine gun sent a stream of tracer out into the empty sky as it tipped wildly. Flares streamed out in pulses, bursting from the sides, aiming to distract a heat-seeker from its target.

This was no heat-seeker. The star rose ever brighter, unerringly following as the helicopter banked hard, the rotors chopping into the air. Everything stood out in harsh brightness, walls bleached of colour, shadows etched in black, sliding over surfaces as the star flew, chasing its target. The helicopter tipped and banked again, aiming to turn away. The star buried itself deep into it.

There was a flash, brighter than daylight, brighter than anything. It streamed from every doorway, every pinprick hole in the helicopter, outlining it against the blistering light. I covered my eyes with my hands, clearly seeing the bones outlined through them. A screaming, squealing, grinding clash of metal echoed across the sky.

The chopper exploded.

The shockwave thudded through me, a low pulse of destruction. Fire and metal rained down. Chunks of fuselage, scything lengths of rotor, metres long, strewed themselves out. The sky filled with a boiling cloud of thunderous fire, rolling ponderously upwards.

I was thrown backwards, sliding down the metal stairs, sheltering in the access as fragments rained down. When I opened my eyes, Alex was standing over me, looking down. I could not interpret her expression. It might have been fear.

There was a dull thud from below. The doorway had finally given way. I got to my feet. Opening the well of darkness within me, I drew energy into me until I glowed with an aura of white fire. I tugged my daughter out on to a rooftop scattered with burning debris, acrid with smoke and burning oil. Focusing on the distant hill, I hugged her close to me, pressing her skin to mine. The world faded before me and I stepped behind it, emerging through the flash on to the distant hilltop.

Looking back, we could see the plume of black smoke rising over the buildings and drifting out across the darkened moorland. Sirens wailed and blue and red lights flickered. Tiny figures ran around, shots echoed out, but there was no one left to fight.

We were free.