Children Of The Deterrent (Halfhero Book 1) Read online

  Children Of The Deterrent

  Ian W. Sainsbury

  Copyright © 2017 by Ian W. Sainsbury

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For Ruth

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Author’s Note

  Also by Ian W. Sainsbury

  1

  Daniel

  I'm standing on a cliff edge, watching a woman fall. She falls backwards away from me, her eyes never leaving mine. There is very little wind, but as she spreads her arms, it's as if a breeze has caught her, twisting her body around like a leaf in autumn.

  She's naked, her dark skin silhouetting her against the turquoise waves.

  I think of my father, and of my dead friend. I think of the future and wonder, for the first time, if it might be utterly unlike my expectations. I wonder what this feeling is, this feeling that has crept up on me and finally surfaced; fresh, unknown, and impossible to ignore.

  As she drops towards the rocks, I start smiling.

  I was born with superpowers, but you wouldn't have known it. Nothing kicked in until late puberty. I was a chubby baby, a plump toddler, a corpulent child then, finally, a fat adolescent. I never felt the urge to race an express train, leap a building or punch through a wall.

  I flew once—briefly—according to Piss Creature. Piss Creature was our collective name for Pete and Chris, the nastiest, meanest kids in my class when I was thirteen. They were twins; big, loud, scary. Every school year has a bully or two, as sure as there'll be a kid whose glasses are held together with tape and a girl whose breasts grow faster than the rest of her body.

  The other kids referred to them as Crete and Piss and some point that was amalgamated into Piss Creature, which fitted so well that it stuck until they were expelled four years later after setting fire to the gym.

  Piss Creature had nudged me out of a classroom window while I was opening it. We were only one floor up, but I was pitched through at an awkward angle. The ground rushed towards me, and for a horrible moment, I thought I would hit it face-first. Somehow, I twisted my body in the air so my shoulder took the brunt of the impact. My collarbone snapped and, a fraction of a second later, white-hot pain flashed through my shoulder. As I lay on the grass moaning, I heard Piss or Crete shouting, "You see that? Pigs can fly!"

  I spent the rest of that summer in a cast. I knew better than to rat on Piss Creature. No one ratted on anyone, ever. Funny how that rule was inviolable, but 'do to others as you would have them do to you' never caught on. The head teacher asked me what happened. I even had a hospital visit from the school counsellor while the cast was fitted. My mother didn't ask. Someone had dragged her out of the pub in the middle of the afternoon to take care of me, and the only emotion I could detect in those dull eyes was resentment.

  I slipped and fell out the window. No one bought it, but they all accepted it. The teacher and the counsellor because it reduced paperwork, Mum because it absolved her from taking any action on my behalf, or acknowledging my existence.

  We were never close, Mum and I.

  There was another expression I'd always liked - 'don't get mad, get even.' All that summer, while the other kids played football, swam, or just hung around the town centre, I stayed home; hot, uncomfortable, sweating underneath the plaster, dreaming up ways of getting even. I told myself I would have my revenge. Meanwhile, the enforced lack of exercise and the ready availability of Curlywurlies meant I added a few more inches to my waistline.

  The cast came off on the last day of the holiday. First day back, I ran straight into Piss Creature at the school gates. One of them squeezed my newly healed shoulder, eliciting an involuntary gasp of pain. The other knocked my bag into a puddle and slapped my ear hard.

  Four years later, about two months after they were expelled, I pulled a balaclava over my head one night and visited Piss Creature's house. They had bought a car together, something sporty with blacked out windows. It was parked round the back. Their parents were away. I had checked.

  I gave the car a hard enough nudge to set the car alarm screaming. A light went on in an upstairs window, and a face appeared. As well as the balaclava, I'd gone for black jeans and a bomber jacket. I was carrying a baseball bat.

  The pair of them appeared in the garden about thirty seconds later, one carrying a crowbar, the other a rifle. Specifically, an air rifle. This was suburban Britain, not the wrong side of New Orleans.

  The twins ordered me to put down my baseball bat. "If you want to live." I managed to put it down without laughing. They realised I wasn't going to run and advanced on me, slowly. I stood my ground.

  When they were about ten feet away, I held up a hand.

  "Far enough."

  They stopped automatically for a second or two. Then the one with the rifle lifted it towards me, while the other began walking again, swinging the crowbar.

  I placed my right hand on the roof of the car and pushed down. There was a brief, unexpectedly loud shriek of twisting metal mixed with an explosion of glass as the windscreens and side windows blew outwards. I pushed steadily until I felt the roof of the car reach the gravel of the drive.

  I was on one knee, the car still making strange metallic noises as it adjusted to its new form. It looked like an elephant had sat on it.

  The twin with the crowbar dropped it. His brother pulled the trigger of his rifle. It must have been some kind of automatic response, because the pellet hit the right buttock of his twin, who jerked a little, went white, but made no noise. His eyes were fixed on me. His brother's, too. Terrified, the pair of them.

  It felt good. Really good.

  "Leave town, boys," I said. This was improvised. I hadn't thought beyond wrecking their precious car. I hoped I sounded like a grizzled cowboy when I said it, despite the fact that this was Essex, not Arizona. My voice had finally broken fully, which helped. Piss Creature left the area the next day. Never came back. I felt just a little pang of disappointment that they hadn't guessed my identity. It took a bit of enjoyment out of my revenge. Even without the balaclava, though, I wonder if they would have known me. During the previous six weeks, I had added eight inches to my height, and all that pale, sagging fat had become dense, hard muscle.

  As I
walked home, I realised flattening their car had only taken the edge off the high I was on. I wanted more. No, it was more powerful than that. I absolutely had to have more, and I absolutely had to have more immediately. The sudden loss of control that followed was as unexpected as it was frightening. I ran, heading out of town. Every parked car I passed, I swung a fist. I left a trail of damage the local paper didn't shut up about for weeks, blaming it on travellers, although none had been seen anywhere near the village.

  I woke up a few hours later in the middle of a field, starving and weak, my fists aching. I stared at my hands for a few seconds, trying to piece together what had happened. Then I stood up, washed in a stream and was home just after dawn, shaking and sweating. I ate a loaf and a half of bread and crawled upstairs to bed.

  That was nearly twenty years ago. The summer I got superpowers. Yeah, I know. Most people still don't believe in halfheroes. Those that do think we're all either dead or institutionalised. Trust me, I'm lucky I'm still able to walk and talk. I was one of the first not to self-destruct. Maybe the first. There was no advice available back then, no one knew the danger we were in. No one knew what we were.

  My name is Daniel Harbin. I'm thirty-six years old, and I'm a child of The Deterrent.

  In November, it'll be twenty-six years since my father vanished, died, went into hiding, returned to his home planet, discorporated, ran out of batteries, took up a life of crime, became an ascetic hermit in Tibet, went into the movie business...Pick the one you like the sound of. There's no shortage of theories out there. But I'm the only person alive who knows the truth about why Dad disappeared.

  And how to find him.

  I know, I know. I'm not the first to go looking for The Deterrent, but I'll be the last. Besides probably being his oldest surviving child, I also have a totally unfair advantage. I have the words of Cressida Lofthouse. You've almost certainly read the book based on her notes, written under the name HT Bowthorpe.

  Hey. I can almost hear the scornful laugh from here. But hold on a second there. When I talk about her words, I am not referring to The Deterrent: The Inside Story Of Britain's Superhero, which is, undeniably, an interesting tale, supposedly based on information gathered by Ms Lofthouse during the years she observed my father.

  The Bowthorpe book is so far removed from what happened it should be shelved in the Fiction, rather than Modern History, section of your local library.

  Luckily for me, as well as that heavily censored version of events now accepted as canon, Cress wrote a candid account, which Station would torture, maim, and kill to keep out of the wrong hands.

  My hands, for instance.

  Sorry, Station, I have bad news for you.

  I have Cressida Lofthouse's diary.

  And it's a hell of a read.

  2

  Cressida

  March 22nd, 2013

  To whom it may concern.

  The notebooks you are holding comprise the diary I kept during the years since the discovery of Abos - The Deterrent. Much of this story is now public knowledge, but there are certain facts that never emerged from the morally suspect secret government department known as Station. My goodness, I sound as bad as the conspiracy theorists. But I have one advantage over them. I knew The Deterrent personally, I worked at the secret government department in question and, God help me, I kept an official record. A record I doubt will ever find its way out of the reinforced room containing Station's filing cabinets. Filing cabinets! I know, how quaint.

  So much disinformation has appeared on the internet over the years that I've begun to wonder if Station itself isn't planting some of the sillier theories and is actively encouraging the more extreme views.

  Back in 1969, I had to sign the Official Secrets Act. I understood the value of discretion when dealing with a discovery that forever changed humanity's understanding of our place in the universe, but I was also cognisant of the fact that no one country, not even my own, should keep back knowledge that might benefit our species. So I asked a few careful questions about the Act and my responsibility towards it. The gist of what I was told was that any records I kept belonged to the government, would be kept on site, and must always be read and approved by Colonel Purcell's office, as commanding officer of Station. Purcell himself told me this in a horribly patronising manner as if he were addressing a silly schoolgirl. Well, I decided there and then I'd keep a diary at home. Not just because I felt a moral obligation to record what really happened, but because I'm fed up with being underestimated and talked down to by pompous men. The world is changing, chaps!

  Father died in 1985. Hopkins and Carstairs were still running Station when that happened. As far as I know, they still are. Carstairs is a nasty piece of work. As for Hopkins, he was even worse than Purcell to work for. Still patronising, but cold and callous with it. I didn't like his moustache, either.

  I've recently been told I only have a short time to live. A bit late for regrets, but isn't that generally the time regrets make themselves known? At least it's not too late for me to conceal this diary. They still watch me, albeit sporadically. I suspect the house is bugged. That's one hazard of being involved with a secret government department; no one can ever afford to trust anyone, so loose ends such as myself have a habit of disappearing once we're off the payroll. I'm told my blood disorder is extremely rare, incurable and fast-acting. And Station employs so many scientists, geneticists, and specialists in human biology. Perhaps you will think me paranoid. Perhaps not, if you know anything at all about my former employers.

  Enough. Lately, I have come to the conclusion that I did not spend my time on this planet wisely. Now that my time is up, however, I can make partial amends by telling the truth about the superhero the world knew as The Deterrent. Particularly the information only I know about his actions just before he disappeared.

  As for my role in his life, it was mainly as an observer. These pages might suggest otherwise, but you and I would do well to remember what Abos was. And what he wasn't. I know right from wrong, and, even though it would have meant defying my father, I could have blown the whistle when I saw what they were doing to Abos. That I didn't do so is my most enduring regret.

  Abos, wherever you are, I am sorry.

  Cressida Lofthouse

  August 31st, 1969

  I don't think I've ever seen Father so excited about anything. It's hard to know where to begin. The most exciting part of all, for me at least, is that I am to be allowed to assist him and make notes. I am to delay my first year at Durham University, and instead, help Father with his new project. He says we'll be working weekends, nights, whatever is necessary. He couldn't tell me anything about it.

  Goodness only knows how I am supposed to sleep tonight.

  September 1st, 1969

  Father's new office is impressive. The government has certainly taken this discovery very seriously, setting up a new department within an existing organisation hidden alongside the Underground at Liverpool Street Station. There are offices, a large dining hall, even dormitories down there. There are also lots of areas we were politely, but firmly, steered away from. The laboratory itself is modern, well-equipped, and huge. I shouldn't wonder if Station itself hasn't been there since before the war, though. I had no idea such places were hidden in our home city.

  Station. A very unimaginative name for a top-secret government department, but perhaps that's clever in a way. After all, if someone working there were to say in public that they work for Station, it would just be assumed that he was referring to the railway or the bus station.

  Actually getting into Station, though is far more exciting than the name suggests. I certainly felt like a spy doing it. You enter a hideously ugly concrete office building next to the train station. If you're driving, there's an underground carpark and an enormous goods lift.

  The reception area above has secretaries, desks, telephones, security guards, and a bank of lifts. We all have name badges, and our credentials and photographs are kept o
n a database, to be checked every time we clock on.

  Once through security, one enters the lift. Father and I have been issued with keys that open the emergency panel in the lift, behind which is a single button. The lift then goes down to Station. The rooms above are, apparently, completely unused.

  All very exciting.

  Father has a nameplate on his door. I must admit that 'Professor Graham Lofthouse, Chief Scientist' sounds far more grandiose than 'Head of Chemistry.'

  After I fixed him a J&B this evening, he told me to pour one for myself. I could hardly believe it! He proposed a toast to our bright new future, then another to the future of humanity. He even hugged me. The first time since Mother's funeral. I waited until I was back in my room before I cried. I know he can't bear to see me cry. He's happy. That's the most important thing.

  September 3rd, 1969

  Today, Father showed me what all the fuss is about. It was difficult not to admit to a feeling of anti-climax. Perhaps, if I were a scientist like him, I would be more excited.

  He ushered me into a small room where I had to wash my hands, put my hair in a net (very glamorous) and don a pair of surgical gloves. Then we went through to a much bigger room where Father introduced me to the scientific team.