The howl of a siren cut through the bustle of Horse Guards. The old barracks, once the site of glorious martial parades, now echoed with the reverberating rotor blades of a helicopter, its crew desperately working to get airborne as fast as possible. Eight black clad figures, their faces concealed by gas masks, ran from the barrack block. They moved in a straight line, and at a dead sprint, before clambering into the aircraft with the speed that only ceaseless practice can give. They had been dressed for battle for six hours now, part of a network of rapid response teams kept across the country, ready to act on a moment’s notice. Within seconds of them taking their seats, the helicopter rose and proceeded through a hastily cleared corridor of airspace.
Private Gurung had the prestigious window seat, and he could see the city passing just beneath their skids. Like his colleagues, his face was concealed by a gas mask and he wore a plate carrier laden with grenades and spare magazines for his short-barrelled carbine. Only the winged dagger on his right shoulder could identify him, one faceless ghost among eight. Each part of a complete person. Gurung stepped out of his seat, and grabbed hold of the machine gun that jutted out of the open doorway. He refamiliarized himself with the weapon, taking aim at sever buildings, cars and pedestrians before loading a box of belt-fed ammunition, closing the breach and cocking the weapon with a satisfying thunk. On the other side, the Aircraft’s crewman was manning an identical gun and together they covered the city, watchful for any hint of an ambush.
A crackling voice came over the radio, and Gurung heard the Scottish brogue of General MacAllister, commander of the London Division and the man responsible for the city’s security. Gurung only recognised his voice because the General considered it his duty to meet the soldiers he would be relying on in a crisis such as this.
‘Commandoes,’ the disembodied voice said, ‘Temple has come under attack by an unknown number of armed assailants. The roads are being cut of as we speak, and the entire site should be sealed by the time we arrive.’
‘We know there are several dozen attackers, and that they are wearing dark green uniforms with balaclavas. We do not know their armament at this time. This attack hit us out of the blue, and the only information we have comes from panicked victims nine-nine-nine calls. Those lines are dead. It seems the enemy is more interested in a massacre than any hostages.’
‘You will rappel onto the roof on the South side. AFO’s and regular army units are doing what they can to advance from the north, whilst the CTSFO team will move in below you on the ground. Link up with security forces, and close with the enemy. Meantime, the Bow Street Runners and the uniforms will be seeing to the evacuation, so focus your efforts on the enemy. COBRA has yet to convene, but the Lord Protector has personally suggested to me that no tears would be shed if you were unable to take prisoners. I trust you understand.’
‘Two years ago, we failed. We cannot fail again. The honour of your regiment rests on your shoulders.’
The commandoes displayed no visible reaction, that was not their nature, but each man understood their duty, and they prepared themselves to deploy. The helicopter was now skimming the surface of the Thames, the pilots preparing to fly up at the last second and surprise the enemy. They climbed rapidly, getting close enough to Waterloo bridge that they sent pedestrians scattering. The streets below them were clear, save for teams of police and the faint, grey-clad, CT-SFO squad sprinting out of an unmarked grey van. Once more they hugged the rooftops, and Gurung saw their target rushing up towards them.
He also saw the indistinct green figure perched atop the foremost roof, loading what was unmistakably the long tube of a rocket launcher. A quick word over his radio had the pilot turning the aircraft slightly right, allowing Gurung to line up the machine gun with his target. As he looked down the iron sights, he saw the green clad figure fumble with the launcher, dropping it completely and reeling back as if it’d been struck. Gurung paid it no mind, save for the slightest contemptuous feeling, and he sent off a burst of accurate fire that felled the target.
With that, he let go of the machine gun, handing it off to the crewman, before grabbing hold of the quick-release lever for the line. The helicopter swing over the buildings, firing at targets on the ground with the second machine gun, as Gurung cast loose the line. Instantly, the squad’s corporal was up by the exit, clipping his carabiner to the line before disappearing into space. Gurung followed immediately after. There was perhaps fifteen meters of line before the building, plenty of time for Gurung to take in his surroundings. Temple was broadly square, and laid out around the church that gave the district its name. Gurung could see green figures darting about the streets, as well as suits fleeing the area any way they could.
With a thud, his boots hit the ground and he darted off to join his Corporal by the window of a large office. Once four of their section had landed, the window was blasted off its hinges and the SAS stormed the building, moving from floor to floor with ruthless professionalism.
In the offices of Smyth and Jenkins, Sir Nathaniel Smyth lay against the wall. The memory of the last few minutes played through his mind again and again, doubtless a delirium brought on by the bullet hole in his frail chest. He remembered first the panic of the office, his employees distressed and panicking, desperate for any means of escape. He had quietened them, reminded them that there was no way out, and told them that he would rather die on his feet than on his knees. He had told them that this room was England, and that by fighting they would deny the enemy the sadistic pleasure he drew from his victim’s fear. Through this, and personal appeals, he was able to harden their hearts.
They waited behind the doors, clutching table legs or shards of broken glass. The enemy’s arrival was heralded with the bang of a shoulder against the doorway. They waited in tense silence for a few moments more until an earth-shattering blast rent the doors asunder, sending jagged shards of wood careening through the helpless onlookers. At the first flash of green, the assembled law clerks charged, offering forth a wordless cry on defiance. One foe was downed, and killed by a foot-long splinter driven through his head, but then his fellows opened up with their machine guns. Bodies fell in a collapsing wave, and the old Knight was caught in the chest with an impact that sent him careening against the far wall. There he lay, lost in a constantly repeating moment of fire, screams and death.
He felt someone take his hand, and for a moment he was filled with a sense of incredible wrongness, as if something against the laws of nature had just occurred. His eyes cleared, and he saw a stranger’s face that quickly became familiar as a torrent of memories filled his mind. It was Laszewski, how had he forgotten Laszewski? The lad had showed such promise, and the Knight’s heart had sunk when he had volunteered to bar the doors. He had such promise, and had offered to risk his life to save them all. How had he forgotten such courage? It was as if the man had never existed.
‘Laszewski. I had… I had forgotten you.’
The young man stayed with Sir Smyth for some time, and they spoke of honour and virtue. He offered Sir Smyth his sword back, but the old Knight bade him keep it. In some way, it was his way of recognising the young man’s heroic actions. He had been unable to stop the enemy from entering, but his willingness to die in the name of others was an attitude worthy of a soldier. Sir Smyth died content, knowing that in the end he had done his duty. It truly was better, he remarked to himself, to die for England than to live for yourself. The old Knight, who had fought his way through the deserts of Oman and led a battalion through the streets of Londonderry, died surrounded by the ruins of his ancestors’ endeavour, while the world burned around him.
Morgan the Fay watched as the soldier slid the door open, before the van had even come to a stop. The first out was Feirefiz, always the prodigal knight, crystals creeping over his coffee-coloured skin to form an armoured helm, with slits of clearest diamond over his eyes. She followed, her skirts flowing behind her as they ran through the streets. Up ahead a barricade of sorts had been formed by two police cars parked side by side, manned by a group of armed officers and soldiers. One of the officers wore a peaked cap and she spoke in a commanding tone to a small cluster of police, soldiers and paramedics. They were coordinating their efforts, performing all the minutia that the Bow Street Runners never had to concern themselves with. Morgan still remembered how it used to be, before the Gunpowder Plot, when the runners actually were based in Bow Street and the police had been something they, and every other superhero team, had largely ignored. Now they were yet another part of the security services, albeit still very independent.
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The benefits of this integration were clear to see in the way the crowds of emergency workers parted before them, leaving the pair of heroes a clear path to Temple. As she ran, Morgan’s eyes were drawn to all the ghosts that surrounded them. Feirefiz ran through them like they weren’t there, which, she supposed, they weren’t. Morgan had seen her first ghost when she was fourteen and her grandfather turned up to his own funeral. He had been followed by a flood of innumerable figures, drawn to their own remains. She had suffered a nervous breakdown, and it had been a tough year in Bedlam before she had fully recovered from the incident. Now the ghosts were simply a fact of life, part of what made her unique, and a vital part of her arsenal. By drawing on their presence, she could bring them closer to the real world. They had no form on earth, instead resembling an ethereal mist made of compacted souls.
She gathered this mist around her, forming scattered turquoise clouds with every step she took, until she was followed by a dense fog that shifted unnaturally as the spirits within tested their boundaries. It was like reigning in wild animals; the restless souls found Earth intoxicating, and would hurl themselves against the edge of the fog, sensing the wonders of reality that lay beyond. It took a lot out of her, but it was something she could bear. Atop her skin, an intricate web of runes began to glow, clearly visible to both cameras and the naked eye. The runes had slowly begun to emerge over her year in confinement, as she learned the use and limits of her power. They were eye catching, an effect helped by her low-cut top, and helped give her the ethereal air she was so careful to cultivate.
Feirefiz paused at the entrance to Temple, a discreet stone archway set into the larger thoroughfare, and waited for Morgan to catch up. Feirefiz was a tall man, with long legs, and his body was reinforced by artificial crystalline musculature. Morgan knew all this, and yet it was still slightly irritating that he seemed to be entirely unaffected by their sprint. They were waiting for Plague Doctor and Raven to reach their position on the opposite end of Temple, where they would encircle the district before meeting near the centre. After a short pause, the Doctor’s professional voice emerged from their radios, whilst the flock of ravens that blotted out the sun announced the Raven’s arrival.
They sprinted out into the street as Morgan pushed the ethereal cloud before them. She could see through the fog as if it wasn’t there but everyone else, including Feirefiz, found themselves surrounded by a wall of mist, barely able to see two metres in front of them. Feirefiz was running blind, reliant entirely on Morgan’s hurried directions, but he moved utterly without fear, as if nothing in this world could harm him. There was a small group of green-clad gunmen ahead, likely a sentry post meant to warn of attackers. Morgan moved the fog towards them while telling Feirefiz to carry on ahead.
The gunmen stood stupefied as a rolling wall of fog moved towards them, before enveloping them completely. She compacted the mist until they couldn’t see their hand in front of their face and, while they were stumbling blind through the fog, she slowly took hold of their souls. Her fog was more than just the manifestation of dead souls, it was a bridge between the living and the dead. By seizing on the souls of the gunmen, she was able to brig them closer to death. Most would notice nothing, except perhaps a slight chill, but to the encircling ghosts it was as if a lighthouse had just been lit. They gathered around the gunmen like an ocean around a candle, threatening to smother it out. They fired blindly into the crowd, aware of their enemies even if they couldn’t see them, but it had no effect ad gradually their spirits sapped. Once they had fallen unconscious, Morgan delicately released their souls from her control. They were alive, but exhausted, and would spend the next few days in a kind of coma. It had taken Morgan half a decade to reach that level of control.
Beyond her fog, the rest of the Bow Street Runners had finished off the majority of the gunmen. Morgan dispersed her fog, creating a small tunnel along which she strode confidently towards them. She kept the great mass of fog close, ready to be expanded at a moment’s notice. She waited while Plague Doctor outlined their plan. They were not here to fight the hostage takers, that lesson had been learned in the Iranian Embassy crisis, instead they were supposed to seek out any survivors and escort them to safety while the SAS dealt with the attackers. To that end, her and Feirefiz were to scour the buildings for anyone who escaped the massacre, and move them through a shroud of fog to the waiting security forces. Morgan was about to set off, when something caught her eye.
There was a ghost in one of the alleyways. He wore a suit soaked through with blood, and Morgan assumed he must be the first ghost from the massacre to reconstitute himself. It normally took longer for the recently deceased to reappear in her vision, and that wasn’t all that was strange about him. Most ghosts wandered the earth lost and confused, moving aimlessly and without acknowledging their environment. This one looked like he was hiding, and his eyes seemed to be fixed on some distant point, almost as if he was looking right at her. She stared at him. He seemed somehow more defined than the other ghosts, and yet he shared their familiar turquoise colouring. Her thoughts were interrupted as a hand rested gently on her shoulder.
‘Are you alright Morgan?’ Feirefiz spoke in a concerned voice. In spite of his fierce exterior, Morgan knew he was the sentimental type. It was his spirit that had kept them together after the Gunpowder Plot, and he often acted as a kind of father figure to the group.
‘I’m fine,’ she lied ‘just got a little lost in my own head. Sorry.’
Much of her time at bedlam had been spent trying to convince herself that what she was seeing was real, and not some delusion. Even so, for some time she had struggled with false images as her own imagination influenced what she could see. As she looked at the ghost again, she saw his head looking around in familiar confusion, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Are you sure you’re up to this?’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ she reached up to brush his hand off her bare shoulder and brought her face back to an expression of steely determination,
‘I can handle it.’
‘So long as you’re sure.’ That was another reason Feirefiz was so well liked; he was never concerning to the point of being overbearing, and he knew that sometimes people needed to move on rather than being lost in their issues. The two heroes moved off, looking for any hint of life among the dead.
Private Gurung sprinted across the bare street before bringing the door of the opposite building down with a well-placed boot. He did not enter, but rather leaned out to cover the road with his rifle while the rest of the section crossed. They had cleared eight buildings, and left a trail of green-clad bodies in their wake, but it seemed like the opposition were falling back to the Church at the centre of Temple. Now the different commando groups were moving to rendezvous before hitting the Church. As the last man entered the building, he tapped Gurung on the shoulder, the commando withdrawing into the relative safety of the building.
The next leg of their journey was spent navigating the twisting interiors of the old buildings. Temple was ancient, and it had been built up over a millennium. The end result was a twisted mess of architecture that spread throughout the district, and allowed the commando’s an almost uninterrupted path to their destination. On their way, they rendezvoused with the CT-SFO team, distinguished by their grey fatigues, and the two squad leaders exchanged a few terse words before the two squads moved off as one. Though CT-SFO was part of the Metropolitan police, they had all been trained by the SAS and the two groups’ tactics were functionally identical.
Sixteen soldiers looked out of the window at the solid stone flank of the Temple itself, confident that there were three dozen others doing the same in the other buildings. The operations commander, a major, gave a single word over the radio and a force of black-clad figures emerged from the buildings surrounding the church, sprinting up to its entrances. Most stacked up against the church’s heavy wooden doors, but Gurung’s group instead chose a patch of wall. They pulled out a bulky package from one of the commando’s backpacks and set it against the wall. The explosive was from the Institute of Advanced Science in Birmingham, the product of one of their superhuman staff, and would decay in a few days. A steady supply were continually sent south for just this kind of situation.
The wall did not so much explode as disintegrate in a brief burst of blue flames, which was followed by the bright burst of flashbangs from every entrance. The commandos stormed the church, firin at everything they could see. Most of the enemy were close to the entrances, and Gurung’s two sections were able to fire into the densely packed mass. It was then that one of Gurung’s squad dropped, headless.
Something was moving amongst the rafters, an unnaturally beautiful figure with grey skin cavorting in and amongst the attackers, carving a bloody path with an axe of sharpened bone that carved through the best body armour money can buy as if it wasn’t there. Gurung fired, but his bullets had o effect and soon he was flung against a tray of candles, smashing the wrought iron stand with the impact of his fall. In desperation, he picked up one piece of the sharpened black metal and hurled himself towards the ethereal woman. To his shock, the piece of jagged metal succeeded where bullets had failed, the woman’s skin was pierce and the wound began to smoulder. Without any physical change, her beautiful face suddenly seemed monstrously horrifying to Gurung and he drove his improvised spear again and again into her body until it spontaneously burst into green flames, slowly collapsing into ash.