Simon Green - Ghost of a Chance

He wished Happy were with him, to tell him whether what he was seeing was real or another illusion broadcast by the unknown enemy. JC scowled and pushed the thought away. He’d had to leave Happy behind, and Melody. Focused as he was on the chase, JC still had it in him to feel bad about leaving them to fight alone. He had faith in them. They were both trained, experienced agents. They’d manage. But that wasn’t why he’d left them so readily. He’d abandoned his team-mates because he couldn’t abandon Kim to her fate. He hoped they’d understand. He ran on, breathing really hard, a fire in his chest and an almost unbearable pain shooting through his sides.

Endless corridors, endless walls spattered with images out of Hell, howls and screams and hopeless sobbing all around him. Illusion. Had to be. JC kept his head down and concentrated on pursuing the only thing that mattered. His trained will was a match for any illusion. Unless . . . whatever was down in the darkness with him was actually so powerful it could distort Space and Time itself . . . in which case, he was in real trouble.

He rounded a corner and staggered to a halt as he saw Kim hanging in the air at the end of the new corridor. He fought for breath, half-bent over as sweat dripped from his face, glad of the chance for a break but already looking about him for any trace of a new threat. And that was when the walls on either side began to close in, moving remorselessly forward from both sides at once. The suddenly very real and solid walls ground loudly against the hard floor. JC straightened up immediately and looked behind him; but he was too far down the corridor to escape. He couldn’t hope to reach either end before the walls slammed together. They were closing in on him steadily, taking their time. They looked heavy and solid enough to crush him to a bloody pulp. And they would do it slowly, inch by inch, while Kim watched. JC risked a glance at her. She was looking at him beseechingly, imploring him to get out of there. Her lips moved, but no sound came to him as she silently begged him to save himself.

JC shot her a reassuring smile. He breathed deeply, dragging air far into his lungs, gathering his strength and calming his mind. Sweat was still running down his face and stinging his eyes, and he took a moment to pull out a handkerchief and mop his face clean. Kim stared at him wildly, hardly believing he would waste time while the walls were closing in to crush him. JC put his handkerchief away with a flourish and looked left and right to check how close the walls were. The harsh grinding sound of their progress across the floor was very loud, and very near. At the speed they were moving, his death would be a slow and horrible thing, with the cracking and breaking of bones first, then the slow crushing of inner organs, as he literally died by inches. He’d probably be alive right till the end, so Kim could suffer as much as he did.

JC was really looking forward to meeting his unseen enemy and teaching it the error of its ways.

He stretched out both arms, hands splayed, as though he intended to stop the incoming walls with sheer brute strength. But JC had been trained better than that. The Institute prepared its agents to be strong in all kinds of ways. JC calmed his mind with familiar and well-rehearsed routines, drew on his inner resources, and quite simply refused to accept what was happening. The walls couldn’t be moving because the unseen enemy wasn’t strong enough to rewrite physical reality. It couldn’t be. JC defied the evidence of his senses and denied the movement of the walls through sheer strength of will. He closed his eyes and stood there with arms outstretched . . . and nothing came forward to touch his waiting hands. He slowly opened his eyes, and the corridor walls were back where they belonged as though they had never moved. Because, of course, they hadn’t. JC slowly lowered his arms. He smiled at Kim, still hanging unsupported at the end of the corridor, and she smiled back.

Inside, JC was laughing his head off. He’d bet his shirt the enemy had been bluffing, and he’d won. It wasn’t that powerful, after all. And that . . . was good to know.

He walked forward, and Kim hung there before him, dangled before him like a toy, or a lure. JC kept his approach slow and careful, not allowing himself to run to her, and his heart leapt a little when Kim didn’t move. He made himself stop a careful distance away, somehow knowing that if he tried to free her from whatever held her, she would immediately be snatched away again. So he stood before her and smiled at her, and she smiled back, and they talked in quiet, calm, rational voices.

“You have to give this up,” said Kim. “You can’t keep chasing me. It’s killing you. I don’t want that.”

“I have to run,” said JC. “I have to try. I can’t give up on you. Not so soon after finding you.”

She smiled again, but there was sadness in her eyes. “I’m afraid we found each other a little too late, my sweet. I’m dead, aren’t I? Only a ghost now, a memory of the person I once was.”

“Yes,” said JC.

“Then go back,” said Kim, kindly but firmly. “There’s no sense in both of us being dead. So far, I haven’t seen anything to recommend it. You have your whole life ahead of you. All the years that were stolen from me. So go back, find someone else, someone with a future, and love her. Forget me, and be happy.”

“I could no more forget you than I could forget me,” said JC. “It wouldn’t be living, and it wouldn’t be love if it wasn’t you.”

“Now that is crap, and you know it,” said Kim. “You hardly know me. And no-one ever really dies of a broken heart. You will forget me, and you will move on, because that’s what people do.”

“It’s not what I do,” said JC. “Don’t give up, Kim. Because I won’t. I will follow you wherever this force takes you. I will find you wherever he hides you, and I will break you free and take you up out of this place and into the light again. Because that is what I do.”

“And then what?” said Kim. “I’ll still be a ghost. What kind of life could we have together?”

JC grinned at her. “I’ll think of something. Don’t push me; I’m still working this out as I go along. Never give up hope, Kim.”

“Never,” she said.

Kim started to drift backwards again. JC went after her at his own pace, refusing to be hurried. Kim’s speed remained the same, and JC smiled inwardly. It seemed he’d achieved some measure of control over the situation.

And then she and he rounded the corner into the next passageway, and JC stopped abruptly. Kim kept going, floating slowly but steadily backwards down the corridor, her feet dangling a good few inches above the thousands of razor blades covering the floor. Jammed in sideways, their glistening sharp edges pointing upwards. Thousands of them, covering the floor from one end of the corridor to the other, blue steel gleaming brightly in the fierce electric light. Kim kept going until she reached the far end, then stopped. JC’s heart sank as he realised there was no way past the razor blades and no way round them.

His shoes wouldn’t protect him for long. The blades would slice through the soles in half a dozen steps, then there would be nothing between his feet and the razor-sharp blades. And once he fell . . . it would be a bad way to die, crawling across the razor blades, bleeding out slowly.

He looked at Kim, held motionless at the end of the corridor, and she seemed miles away. Once again the chase had been stopped, so she could watch him suffer and die because of her. This unseen enemy really did love his mind games. It was saying to Kim, How much is this man prepared to do, how far is he prepared to go, how much will he risk to come after you? And JC had to wonder: Why does the enemy care? Why doesn’t it just kill me?