“Xiexie ni,” Giselle attempted, bowing low as the Chinese vendor handed her a wrapped parcel of food. The little bald man in an apron bowed and said some words she didn’t understand yet. Regardless, she could make out the gist of it.
Giselle turned and walked away a few steps, shuffling the backpack around and off her shoulders, hands juggling the dumpling containers in their plastic bag. She placed the food on the ground, sped her hands and undid all the zips, then expanded the backpack to its full reinforced size.
A tinkling jingled from her pocket. Giselle pulled out the phone, glanced at it and put it to her ear.
“Dude, relax, I’m coming. I had to translate pork buns-”
“Giselle!” Matt’s voice, terror, the sound of screaming, “Come home, I’m under-”
But before the next word could hit the air the girl was gone, vanished into a blur – the stack of food left abandoned, leaving only a trail of blinding dust.
*
“ARGH!”
“OH GOD.”
The phone fell silent and Matt’s shaking hands fumbled as he moved it back into his pocket. Beyond the counter, screams drifted in from the ruined hole where the door to their apartment once stood. Sounds of movement. Sounds of pain.
“HELP.”
The secret to good deception was knowing how to intersperse lies with truth. Matt had not been lying about the Claymore. He had, however, been lying about there only being one.
All throughout the apartment the air hung thick with smoke, dust and the sound of agonised wailing. Matt didn’t dare look up, didn’t dare think of the dying people, how many lives had just been ended. Instead, he dropped to all fours and began crawling desperately to the other end of the kitchen counter.
“I told you,” Matt muttered furiously to no one, teeth gritted, fists clenched, “I-” he swore, “-told you.”
He shuffled around the corner, smoke stinging his eyes, trying to block out the moral and existential terror of the carnage laying beyond. He didn’t know how many had died. He didn’t want to see.
“ARGH!”
“PLEASE!”
A ringing in his ears, the smell of smoke and blood in his nose, Matt clambered into a low ungainly run, loping step by step, keeping as low as he could go. Fourth hurdle, fourth hurdle.
“Disco, disco, disco!” he shouted. Matt jammed his fingers hard as he could into his ears, kept running, and scrunched shut his eyes.
Suddenly the whole house plunged into darkness. Blackout blinds shot down over the windows, blocking the last of the afternoon sun, and every light switched off.
“I CAN’T SEE-”
“Night-vision goggles!”
“OH GOD MY LEGS-”
Please let this work, Matt pleaded. Be mostly dead, be mostly dumb. He scurried around the corner, seizing the sudden darkness to make a break for the south-side corridor leading to the gym, the laundry, the spare room. The panic room.
“Wait, I can almost-”
“Get some fire-”
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“Can you hear-”
Matt kept his eyes and ears shut tight.
Suddenly, the house exploded in blinding light. Not golden light, not ‘Jane finally turned on her effing cellphone and came to save him’, but multicoloured, strobing light of blazing intensity, as every lightbulb in the apartment suddenly surged with electricity dialled to two hundred, three hundred percent. In the living room, Matt heard his attackers shriek – and then a moment later heard their cries swallowed as a cacophony of the worst sounds known to humankind screeched from the apartment’s surround sound system. Howler monkeys, psychotic geese, fingernails down a chalkboard, high‑pitched fire alarms, children playing recorder – all blasted out from a dozen speakers, some visible, some hidden, the sounds crashing, overlapping, leaping from every direction in a delirious, deafening mess. The pre‑recorded sound of Matt’s own voice interspersed amongst the chaos, flittering off into the ceiling, out over the balcony and into the bedroom beyond – a flock of screaming, delirious mockingbirds skittering off in every direction but one. Outside the apartment and in the living room, Matt imagined the attackers desperately clutching their eyes and ears against the sudden assault of blinding techno‑light and a hundred and fifty decibel hell. He had never been much of a musician, but he had been an amateur DJ, and this was his seminal work.
There was a bang behind him, the unmistakable sound of gunfire, breaking glass and crackling speakers, then suddenly the house dropped back into pitch black and silence.
“We got it!” someone shouted, which was very premature. A second later the surviving lightbulbs flared back on and the cacophony of discord screamed pounding back to life, this time interspersed with crying babies and moans of furious sex.
Gunfire. More gunfire. The shattering and spluttering of speakers. Matt sprinted into the far bedroom and yanked closed the door.
*
Across the Pacific Ocean, Giselle Pixus raced.
Faster than a bullet, faster than a jet. Her feet barely touching water, a slipstream of waves fanning metres high in a wake meters behind her. Giselle Pixus ran, fast as she could, fast as her legs could carry her, a one woman missile, shooting back towards the continental United States.
*
The door slammed shut behind him and Matt ran his fingers over the touchpad three times. There was a click, a thud as internal deadbolts locked into place.
Ok, he did it. He just had to hide. He just had to stay safe. Giselle would be back any minute, any second, just had to- he whirled around the room, scanning desperately. The door was reinforced steel, the lock technopathically coded, sprinklers in the ceilings, there was a gas mask under the bed… Matt’s heart pounded. Wait. Just wait. Stay quiet. They didn’t know he was here.
The room was long and rectangular, about three lengths of the single bed nestled in the far corner, the bedhead facing the door, the right wall the colour of burnt orange, the left a line of medium sized windows square and dull. Empty, save for the bed and a small chest of draws. Matt felt himself unconsciously moving backwards until his back was against the far wall, facing the sealed door. To the left of that, the door to the bathroom, the panic room proper. Where he should go, where he should seal himself… except in the face of actual danger the idea suddenly seemed ludicrous. If they could get through this many defences, what was that going to matter, what was going to be accomplished by trapping himself in a steel box?
Shouts from the main room. The ear-shattering chaos, muffled far less deafening in here, sealed off from it. Matt’s breathing came hard. Time. He wasn’t playing for safety, he was playing for time-
Suddenly, a hot, sweeping presence. Telepathic fingers, raking through every corner of the building, reaching for Matt’s presence, searching-
“I’ve found him!” he heard the telepath shout, and in his excitement Matt felt the man leap claws outstretched into his mind.
Big mistake.
Matt Callaghan did not take Psy-Block. Matt Callaghan did not need Psy-Block. Matt Callaghan had fought off the best telepaths in the world and for a few brief, brutal seconds been telepathic himself. There was only one place on Earth he was powerful, and this amateur idiot had just thrown himself enthusiastically inside.
The psychic barrelled into Matt’s consciousness, charging in haphazard with the whole of his being. Matt let him come, not putting up any resistance, allowing the telepath to advance until his mind had completely come over. The man invaded with reckless abandon, lunging furiously at Matt’s grey-mist thoughts – only to abruptly hit a wall.
An unbending iron wall.
I AM HUMAN
The attacker turned, but the wall was behind him, around him, above. He was no longer a marauder cavorting free, he was trapped inside a box, surrounded, a solid cube of unbreakable steel suddenly rushing inwards without hesitation or remorse, with unnatural speed. The psychic screamed, trapped, crushed in every direction, his consciousness scrabbling desperately to return to his body, his fingers clawing against the walls-
But there would be no escape. There would be no mercy.
The iron-willed cube compressed to pixel-sized dot, and out in the real world Matt felt the psychic’s eyes roll back into his head. Wordlessly, the man collapsed.
“Wrong neighbourhood,” Matt snarled, dropping his fingers from his temple.