The Last Of The First Read online

  The Last Of The First

  Ian W. Sainsbury

  Copyright © 2018 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 my brother, Paul

  Contents

  Previously in the Halfhero series... (a brief catch up with spoilers from books one and two)

  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

  Author’s Note

  Also by Ian W. Sainsbury

  Previously in the Halfhero series... (a brief catch up with spoilers from books one and two)

  Abos is the world's first superbeing. Besides being strong, fast and bulletproof, she can return to a slime-like state when her current physical body dies. Which means she is not a she because her gender is dependent on the host body. Abos is no longer alone as she has found two more members of her species - Shuck and Susan.

  While Abos brings the other superbeings back from their dormant states, her son Daniel has discovered a new purpose with fellow halfheroes Sara and Gabe, who, under the direction of United Nations representative, Saffi, bring in rogue halfheroes who have turned to crime. On a mission in Newcastle to take down drugs boss 'TripleDee' Davison, they are ambushed and drugged. They wake up in White Sands, New Mexico. Alongside every other halfhero alive, they are locked in a high-tech prison.

  Abos searches for Daniel without success. But there's a new problem. Genius technology company owner, Titus Gorman, has found eight more of Abos's species. He has brainwashed them to be his protectors as he unleashes the Utopia Algorithm, a global cyber attack which redistributes all wealth. Gorman uses his superheroes—now known as titans—to commit murder and convince the US president to play ball.

  When Shuck and Susan are fully grown, Abos takes them to America to search for the titans. The three superbeings can link their minds together. Onemind helps them with this searches they fly over swathes of America while mentally connected.

  Meanwhile, Daniel, Sara, Gabe, and the other halfheroes break out of their prison, with the help of their own version of onemind. They head to Gorman's headquarters to confront him, only to find the eight titans waiting for them. In the ensuing fight, almost all the halfheroes are killed, Gabe included. Only Sara and TripleDee, who drive away, and Daniel, who is thrown over a cliff, and lies close to death, survive.

  Abos, Shuck, and Susan find Daniel. While Shuck and Susan fight the titans, Abos takes his son to a nearby Albuquerque hospital, where he begins to heal. Abos goes back to find Gorman, only to discover Roger Sullivan, one of the scientists who knew him in Britain, is the real threat. Sullivan has killed Gorman, and he controls the titans. Susan and Shucks' bodies have been returned to dormancy and will be brainwashed in their new bodies. Abos suffers the same fate.

  While recovering, Daniel finally meets Saffi for the first time. A tentative relationship develops. They mourn the loss of Gabe. TripleDee promises to fight alongside Daniel and Sara from now on, but he has a long way to go to earn their trust.

  The situation is bleak. The titans now work for the American president, and Roger Sullivan is a national hero. Abos is male again and is being drugged and manipulated just as he was in the 1980s. It's Saffi who comes up with a plan...

  During a Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City, the halfheroes divert the vehicles and the titans. Abos is confronted with a series of billboard images of home designed to break his conditioning. Daniel's favourite song—Cars, by Gary Numan—blasts out of a huge PA system. Abos remembers who he is and flies back to Great Britain.

  Back in their farmhouse in Cornwall, Daniel, Abos, Saffi, Sara, and TripleDee are ready to accept a life on the run, when Sara has a better idea. She thinks they might be able to save the other titans from their mental enslavement. They all agree to give it a shot. Daniel has a secret he has yet to share. He has just found out his sperm was used anonymously for IVF treatments a generation ago. He is the father of a hundred and eight teenagers.

  One superhero, three halfheroes and a human against eight titans and the military might of the United States Of America. Sara's plan had better be a good one.

  <<<<>>>>

  1

  It was when the giant old man rose twenty feet into the air, his eyes liquid fire and his body wreathed in grey smoke that Tom first suspected he was dreaming.

  Pretty much all of Tom's dreams started with sex, had sex in the middle, and ended with sex. He was sixteen years old. There was a girl in this dream—a cute girl—but fully dressed. Unusual.

  That was how the dream had started. With the girl.

  She was in a car. It was blue with a red passenger door. Tom was walking when it drew up alongside him, and the window whirred down.

  The girl said nothing, but he knew, as she gave him a half-scared, half-excited smile, that she was asking him a question.

  Are you going...?

  Yes. Yes, he was. Tom was sure of that. He was going. Definitely. Where? Not a clue.

  Then he was in the car. A second girl was driving, wearing 1950s-style sunglasses. She turned and smiled. Two girls smiling at him, but he hadn't tried picturing them naked. Bizarre.

  The three of them didn't talk at all. Or maybe they did. It seemed to Tom that they must have had a long conversation because they were as comfortable together as old friends. No secrets.

  Then they weren't in the car.

  They were on a hill. It was high, giving a view across fields and villages so beautiful, it hardly seemed real.

  He wasn't in Luton anymore.

  The hill had a name, but he didn't know it yet. Tom and the girls climbed towards the summit, through purple heather and rough grass. Sheep ambled across their path.

  Near the summit, Tom started to sense it. Half-scared, half-excited. For now, the excitement was stronger than the fear. Everything would be clear at the top. Everything would be right. Strange rock formations appeared as they got closer, like giant fingers pointing to heaven.

  His friends were there. His family. His people.

  When the sky darkened, the atmosphere changed and the word scared no longer did justice to the dread that sat in his belly like cold poison, then spread its spores throughout his body.

  The others had arrived. They had come for Tom and his friends. The smoke-wreathed old man was there, too, with his terrible rage. And his power. A power that could crush bones, shred flesh. A power no one could stand against and survive.

  Those awful eye
s weren't looking at anyone in particular, but when Tom raised his head, he couldn't turn away. Other figures were moving somewhere in the air behind the old man, but Tom barely saw them.

  The old man didn't look that old. No older than Tom's dad, anyway. But dream-knowledge told Tom this being was ancient. And he was there to kill them. Although he and his friends had power of their own, Tom knew it wouldn't work. They weren't strong enough to stop him.

  The old man raised his hands as if he were about to hurl an invisible boulder. There was nowhere to run, nothing Tom could do. He was going to die.

  Tom woke up. After a few moments of disorientation, he clicked on his bedside lamp and looked at his watch. Five-fifteen. He slid out from under the duvet and went to the window. The dream was still with him, still half-real. More than that. Hard to believe it was a dream at all.

  He twitched back the curtain. Still Luton. No sheep in sight.

  Without thinking about what he was doing, Tom grabbed a canvas rucksack from his wardrobe and filled it with clothes, chargers, his Globlet, and headphones.

  He paused at the top of the stairs. The bathroom was next to his parents' room. They might wake if he went in. No. He could buy toiletries on the way.

  On the way to where exactly, Tom?

  In the kitchen, he made himself a sandwich and put it in his rucksack along with a can of lemonade and a banana.

  It wasn't until his fingers were on the handle of the back door that Tom had a moment of doubt.

  I'm going to leave home, just like that? What about Mum and Dad? What about my eighteenth birthday party, and that girl I met at The Plough last week?

  None of it mattered anymore. Well, it mattered, but it didn't matter as much as... whatever was happening to him, whatever had begun with the dream.

  He scribbled a note and left it on the table.

  Outside, the sun was already up, and the empty road combined with the quiet made the scene less real than the dream that had woken him.

  A car approached, the murmur of the engine the only sound in the sleeping street. Blue, with a red passenger door. Two girls. The car window whirred down, but Tom was already walking. He opened the rear door, threw his rucksack onto the back seat and slid in after it.

  The car accelerated, turned right at the end of the street, and was gone.

  2

  "Whose stupid idea was this, anyway?" said Sara. Daniel had never seen her look nervous. She was checking the gas pipe again, scrolling through pages of notes on her Globlet as she mentally ticked off each element.

  "Yours," said Daniel, stretching. Everyone reacted to stress differently. Daniel's brain handled pressure by focussing on something unrelated to the situation. This time, he was thinking of a Buster Keaton film he'd seen as a kid. He remembered a pit bull climbing up and down a ladder.

  Must be hard to train a dog to do that.

  Daniel walked over to Sara while she examined the seal on the pipe leading into the cabin. He took the Globlet out of her hands.

  "Anything changed since last time you looked?"

  "No, but—" Sara reached for the Globlet. Daniel put it behind his back.

  That was a really amazing dog. I wonder if it was famous in its own right?

  "But nothing. I've watched you check it all seven times. I've checked it myself twice. It'll work. What time do you make it?"

  "Eight twenty."

  "And the latest update said?"

  "That they're due at Heathrow at eight-forty-two," said Sara.

  Daniel put a hand on Sara's shoulder. "Great. No need to panic, then. You've turned the gas on, the seal is holding, there's nothing more you can do. I have a flask of tea in the van. Let's have a cuppa, shall we?"

  Sara couldn't help but smile at the tone Daniel had adopted. He sounded like a parent trying to coax a three-year-old to eat broccoli. Daniel walked out of the warehouse, and she followed.

  They paused at the door and looked back. The north Cornwall warehouse was perfect for their purposes, miles from the nearest town, abandoned over a decade ago. Most of the building's windows were broken, and grass was pushing up through gaps in the concrete floor.

  In the centre of the empty space, brand new and incongruous, stood a large, windowless, single-room cabin, its walls constructed from thick corrugated steel. Designed to house oil platform workers in an emergency, it could—in theory—withstand an explosion powerful enough to level an office block. It was the size of a lorry trailer, positioned so that the door, on the shorter side of the rectangle, faced the warehouse entrance. The cabin was bright red.

  "I'm still annoyed about the colour," said Sara.

  "Don't worry. When they arrive, I can't imagine they'll discuss the colour scheme."

  "If they get here."

  "They'll get here, Sara. It's a brilliant plan."

  She took a deep breath and puffed it out again with a long hiss.

  "Okay," she said. "Tea it is."

  A week earlier, Daniel and Sara had spent a day supervising the cabin's installation while avoiding awkward questions about its purpose.

  Today, Saffi and TripleDee were coordinating the rest of the plan, waiting for them less than a mile away.

  In an hour, it would be over, one way or another.

  Daniel thought about how many parts of Sara's plan hinged on informed speculation, rather than facts. Then he decided not to think about it anymore.

  I'm sure I saw a video of a dog who could drive a car once. Or was it an April Fool's joke?

  "What are you thinking?" said Sara, as they walked to the van, noticing the look of concentration on his face.

  "Oh," said Daniel. "Um. Just, er, you know, going over the plan, checking the details. Being thorough."

  The car must have been an automatic. A dog couldn't operate a manual. Could it? Maybe if there were two dogs, and one was trained to use the gears —

  "And have we thought of everything?" said Sara.

  "What? Oh. Yup. Everything. Yeah."

  "Good. I can't think of anything we've missed, but no one has tried what we're about to try."

  They got into the van. Sara looked out of the window.

  "A few clouds," she said. "Good. It might slow the investigation down."

  "Sara?"

  "Yes?"

  "Didn't overdo it with the gas, did you?"

  "Don't think so. Gave it my best guess."

  "That's good. Wouldn't do to blow up bits of Cornwall."

  "No."

  They fell silent and sipped their tea as the minutes ticked away.

  Saffi and TripleDee sat on the jetty. The plan had involved splitting up, as it made sense for Daniel and Sara to organise the trap in the warehouse. Which had left the former drug dealer, and former UN operations director, as uneasy partners for the past week.

  "I'm just saying I feel like a spare part, pet, that's all."

  Saffi's forehead crinkled as she reviewed TripleDee's words and tried to translate them. Her ear was tuned to the Geordie dialect now, but there were expressions that made no sense at all. And she'd never get used to being called pet. Although, to be fair, TripleDee used the word to refer to almost everyone.

  "We wouldn't have the boat without you."

  They looked at the white speedboat. TripleDee had found it after hanging around in the right pubs in Newquay for a few days. He had expressed a fondness for deals that involved a lack of paperwork and hinted that he would pay cash. Quite a lot of cash.

  Within a week, he was the proud owner of a twin-engine beauty with no name, no external markings, and one previous owner who had suddenly taken a holiday in Spain.

  "Aye, well," said TripleDee, "that's the sort of thing I'm good at."

  He picked up a stone and sent it skipping across the waves.

  "I just feel like I'm at the bottom of the food chain. Sara's okay, Daniel doesn't trust me, and I still don't know what you reckon. And it's been bastarding ages since I smacked someone in the face."

  He sat down again. "
I miss it a bit, that's the truth."

  Saffi picked up her own stone and threw it.

  "You're not used to being part of a team. It'll take time. I'm sure you'll be able to smack someone in the face soon."

  "Ah, thanks, pet, I appreciate that. You're not as stuck up as I thought."

  "Well," said Saffi, the corner of her mouth twitching. "Thank you very much."

  As neither of them could come up with anything more in the way of conversation, they threw more stones and waited. And waited.

  Saffi looked at her watch. Eight thirty-six.

  "For fuck's sake," said TripleDee. "How much longer?"

  "Air Force One confirming final approach to runway two, landing in eleven minutes."

  "Roger, Air Force One, and welcome to Great Britain."

  It was the president of the United States' first visit to the UK since the reappearance—and subsequence disappearance—of The Deterrent the previous year. It had caused quite a stir in Britain, with many national newspapers trumpeting the return of their home-grown superhero. Initial celebrations turned to confusion, irritation, and hostility when The Deterrent said he had no plans to return to his home country. Worse still, the seven-foot leader of the titans claimed to have few memories of his years in Britain and declared he was now an American. Although his origins were still unknown, the British public, for two heady years in the eighties, had accepted him as their figurehead. He was Earth's only superhero, and the visible sign of Britain's return to the world's top table. A generation mourned his reported death, and that same generation reacted with anger when he resurfaced and switched allegiances. They felt betrayed, and they suspected dirty tricks from the US president, who laughed off any suggestions that he might share his team of superheroes. At a press conference the day before leaving for Britain, he answered a question from a UK journalist with a sentence subsequently looped on every news station.