Evensong

Simple maths: a few seconds, and he’d be strewn like Chulo Asika over the floor of that villa in Croatia. Levin could break 90 percent of his major bones before 10 percent of them could reset. Anwar kept hitting at the throat. Nothing else was exposed, or vulnerable. No time for elegant moves from his training, he’d be killed.

“They annihilated Levin,” Anwar’s memory helpfully replayed,“then Rafiq sent Asika, and they annihilated him too.”

Yes, Asika. I’m being broken up like Chulo. Levin wasn’t going to kill him with one blow, though he could probably have done so, but to annihilate him piece by piece.

“Jewish scum,” he whispered, hoping ridiculously that Levin might remember and hesitate, but there was no reply. Levin couldn’t speak anymore. Or, Anwar guessed, even form thoughts that might become speech. Everything was gone. A container was all that remained.

Normal time for him and Levin, heightened time for everyone else, which meant they blurred and flickered. Anwar kept landing Verbs, and Levin kept not noticing, and Anwar kept getting parts of himself broken, and broken again before they’d had time to reset. He blanked out the physical pain, that was easy, but he couldn’t blank out the spiritual shock.

“...And Levin’s face,” his memory replayed, “when he realised he couldn’t defend himself. There wasn’t enough left of him to...”

Spiritual. Worse than physical obliteration, it was spiritual. They’d taken everything he was. His identity. His soul. And remade him as a thing. It would burn out and die soon through operating at such a heightened level, but that didn’t matter. Olivia would die sooner. And they could always steal another Consultant and make another thing. They seemed to be good at it.

Another Verb. He was good at Verbs. Open hand to the throat, fingers locally hardened, perfectly executed. It didn’t work. Wasn’t noticed. More Verbs, and more, and each one brought damage to him without him doing any of his own. His right forearm was broken, and his left upper arm was still resetting, too slowly. He ignored both, and willed them to keep functioning, because for the first time in his life, he had someone to fight for.

It didn’t matter what he felt for her, or didn’t feel, or whether any feelings were real or could have a future. Just to be fighting to protect someone, not to abduct someone or sabotage something, felt strange. And this time he was fighting a real opponent, one that out classed him, and he was fighting not to disable but to kill. That felt strange too. She did it all the time, faced real danger and bared her teeth at it, but he’d never had to.

He looked back at her, but she was focused on Levin, and there was the strangest expression on her face. Almost of recognition, or understanding. She hadn’t moved from the table. Levin was now closer to her, and the only reason he hadn’t already reached her was that he’d paused to destroy Anwar piece by piece.

More Verbs. He had nothing else to try. Nothing else was vulnerable. Levin didn’t seem to notice. But all those Verbs, more than he’d landed in his previous missions put together, and Gaetano’s throat shot, had to have some effect sometime.

Then Levin executed a classically elegant move, the only one either of them had done. It was a mighty swivelling roundhouse kick—a Circumnavigator, Consultants rather preciously renamed it—which didn’t only break bones, but did something worse. It hit under Anwar’s heart and ruptured his major cardiac muscles. He went flying through the doors of the Signing Room and out onto the mezzanine. He could feel the start of cardiogenic shock, and again the sound of water rushing in his ears which he’d once read—where did I read that?—was the sound you heard when you started to die.

Somehow he managed to get up. He stood shakily on the mezzanine, looking back through the pale wood double doors into the room where Levin was moving—slowly for him, a blur to everyone else—for Olivia.

Gaetano and others were getting off shots. Levin didn’t notice. Whoever made him probably didn’t care about gunshots: they’d made Levin into a thing that had only one job to do and could then expire. When you had trillions, you could afford to make things and throw them away.

“Shoot for the neck! Shoot for the throat!” Anwar shouted, but he was shouting out of heightened time to people still floundering in treacle time, and they didn’t hear. Relativity, not of light, but sound. Most of them missed, anyway. Levin was too fast.

Olivia still stood at the table. Levin could have turned to her and finished her, but instead came out on to the mezzanine to finish Anwar. She was his prime target, but he had time and advantage, and to finish his secondary target would take only moments. Even at heightened time.