Joe Craig - Jimmy Coates - Sabotage

The ocean churned with such force that Jimmy felt like he was a sock in a washing machine. He wanted to thrash his limbs. He wanted to panic, but his body wouldn’t let him. Instead, his arms and legs moved calmly, with a maximum of precision and efficiency. His assassin’s programming guided him back to the surface within thirty seconds.

His arms wrapped themselves over one of the largest fragments of the plane’s fuselage. The air trapped underneath it supported Jimmy’s weight. He flopped his chest on to it, clutching it as the waves threw him around like a shuttlecock.

Jimmy’s lower half still dangled in the water and he kept his legs moving in a vain fight against the cold. Every few seconds he wiped his eyes. Through the spray, he could see the carpet of flaming debris spread out across the water. Beyond that was a vast empty space, stretching out between him and the horizon. It was overwhelming. But only for a second—then a wave as strong as a wall jumped up to block his view.

There were thoughts racing through his head that sounded like an overheard conversation at the end of a crackling phone line. Hardly understanding it, he was reading the current. He hauled himself completely on to the makeshift raft, steadying himself on his hands and knees.

Gradually, he reached for more fragments of debris, building up a little shelter around him. Then he heaved on the parachute that was swelling in the waves. It took all his strength to gather it in, but eventually he dumped an armful of soaking black silk on to the metal in front of him. Still the wind and the waves buffeted Jimmy around. He had to grip the piece of the plane’s fuselage with his knees, while he went about ripping up the parachute.

Every few seconds, a part of him wanted to give up. His limbs were straining just to keep him from falling off his raft back into the water. But something inside him kept him going. Maybe it was programming or maybe it was his human hunger to stay alive. Eventually, he managed to tie half of his parachute across his raft, fastened on each side to a fragment of the aeroplane. He had a sail.

In a few minutes, the sea would consume almost every scrap of what remained of the plane. There’d be hardly any evidence that they’d ever gone down there. But what about the people on board? Was Jimmy the only survivor?

“Hello!?” he shouted. His voice was lost against the crash of the waves and the wind. “Anyone there!?” he screamed, pouring out every last crumb of energy. Tears mixed with the spray of the ocean. He clenched his fists and pounded his metal raft, cursing the forces inside him.

Maybe if his genetics hadn’t taken over from his common sense, the agents would have had a chance. But the assassin in Jimmy hadn’t wanted to be seen by NJ7. Jimmy’s programming had overcome his human protests. It had saved him, but at the others’ expense. It was driven by the most selfish instinct of an assassin: self-protection at all costs.

He could feel it inside him now. It purred while his human self longed to scream at the wind. I killed them , he thought. How could they possibly have survived the fall from a plane without an open parachute? They were trying to save me and I killed them. How could he have let his programming do it? The second his human instinct had given in, he had condemned two agents.

I won’t give in again , Jimmy told himself. You won’t control me. From now on, he insisted, he would do everything he could to make his programming serve his human intuition. I control me.

He curled up, used some of the parachute to tie himself down and pulled the rest completely over him. It would give him a vital extra layer of protection against the sun and the wind. All he could do now was preserve his energy. He knew that the plane had been flying over the coastline. Had they crashed close enough to land to be washed ashore? If not, without food and water, Jimmy knew he would die.

With the black silk covering his face, his world was completely dark. He closed his eyes and felt the waves surging beneath him.

Jimmy was suddenly aware of a burning sensation on his face. He opened his eyes, then immediately shut them again. The sun was too bright and the parachute must have slipped off his face. How long had he been asleep? His mouth was so dry he thought his tongue might stick to the back of his teeth. Am I dead? he thought. No—too much pain. Every muscle ached, especially his belly, and when he squinted, the skin around his eyes stung.

It was only now that he realised why he had woken up—the roll of the sea had stopped. He had reached land. He didn’t dare move. Where was he? Faint noises invaded his thoughts. Then they grew louder. Slowly, his brain was coming back to consciousness. There were seagulls above him. Their squawks were like sirens telling him to move. He was too exposed. He could be anywhere in the world and anybody could be watching him.

A huge pelican flapped down and perched next to Jimmy’s left ear. Still Jimmy couldn’t gather the energy to move. Water —that was his next thought. Water or I’ll die . The pelican stabbed its beak into Jimmy’s hair. Suddenly, energy seemed to explode into Jimmy’s muscles. His arm thrust out so quickly the pelican never saw it coming. Jimmy stabbed his finger and thumb into the base of the bird’s neck, pinching its gullet.

In a flurry of feathers and panicked squawks, the pelican choked up one of the fish stored in its massive beak, then flapped away in a hurry.

“Sorry, mate,” Jimmy muttered. His voice was so hoarse he hardly recognised it and his throat burned. Gingerly, Jimmy rolled off his raft. His back screamed in pain when he moved, but he had no choice. The helmet weighed his head down, so he pulled it off.

He landed on wet sand and looked up for the first time. He was on a deserted beach. There were no buildings, just large dunes with long tufts of grass. A few hundred metres up the shoreline he could see some fishing boats tied to a small jetty, but they were too far away to make out the language of any writing on them. He still didn’t know what country he was in.

When he tried to get to his feet his vision blurred and his head started pounding. But he refused to black out. He could feel his programming rumbling inside him, wrapped around every nerve ending. He knew what it was urging him to do.

He slumped back to his knees and scooped the fish off the sand in front of him, picking up a shell at the same time. In swift, confident movements, his hands went about the painstaking process of scraping the scales off the fish. It took less than a minute.

Then he dug the corner of the shell under the fish’s neck and forced a slit down its entire belly. With his fingers, he carefully scooped out the guts. Blood and entrails slopped all over his hand, still warm. The smell was putrid, but Jimmy didn’t care. It was vital sustenance. He closed his eyes and started sucking the flesh off the fish’s bones. In normal life he was sure it would have tasted gross, but right now his taste buds were almost dead. There was enough fish meat here, and enough precious juice, to keep him alive for the moment.

When he had swallowed all his stomach could take, which wasn’t a lot, he turned back to his raft. He ripped down the sail. Then he used every trace of strength to scratch at the markings on the metal. If he left a piece of the US airforce on a public beach, there would be questions asked. Fortunately, there wasn’t a lot of work to do—just a serial number that Jimmy quickly bashed out of shape, using a large stone as a mallet. He buried his helmet in the sand, once he’d scratched off the airforce emblem.

The wind whipped off the ocean, blustering his hair around his ears. The tide formed puddles around his knees, but at least the air was warm and the sun had already started drying his skin.