The Man From LOVE #12: Dealing with it

    N'buli got the news about Stevie as his transport was landing at Sydney Airport, and he had to sit down and take a deep breath. He didn’t know what to do.

    LOVE had not lost an agent since 1977, and for it to be Stevie. Valentina’s youngest son, who she was convinced was gay, even though he had a steady string of girlfriends. Everybody liked Stevie. He had joined the organisation back in 1969, when the Age of Aquarius nearly turned into the Age of Cthulu, and had been on hundreds of missions over the years.

    To die like this – bleeding out in the front seat of a shitty rental car after a simple observational mission went terribly wrong – it was all so sudden and confusing.

    A car was waiting for him at the airport, and he was soon heading for Sydney Hospital. N'buli had been summoned to the local LOVE headquarters, hidden inside impossible rooms within the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but he told his driver he needed to see his friends first.

    The LOVE ward, hidden between the Sydney Hospital cafeteria and the city morgue, was almost filled to capacity. There wasn’t a huge amount of demand for the medical services from active Agents, so each facility was welcome to treat any overflow the local authorities might have.

    He strode through a ward filled with kids getting their tonsils out, teenagers with broken legs, middle-aged working class women with bad backs and old men dying with dignity. The intensive care area was sealed off, but he just glared at a nurse who tried to stop him and pushed past, looking for Doctor Bob.

    Soon after he had joined LOVE as its Chief Medical Officer, the incredibly short Doctor Bob – who also had on a pair of glasses slightly too big for his face and was permanently unshaven - had told N'buli his whole life story. Doctor Robert Bobertson channelled all the shame and taunts that came with the stupidest name in the world, his short stature and his sheer goofiness into his business as a doctor.

    'And brother, business is good,' he had said with a grin when he told N'buli. Now he just looked grim.

    He shook N'buli’s hand and ushered him into a semi-private area in the corner of the ward. 'I’m so sorry about Stevie, N'buli.'

    'It’s okay. We’ll deal with it.'

    'My staff were told he was fine, so we focused on Dave. The bullet that hit Dave glanced off his skull and hit Stevie in the leg, ripping through the femoral artery. If we’d known, we might have been able to stem the blood, but he didn’t say anything, and just bled out quietly.'

    N'buli didn’t want to think about that. He nodded towards a room down the hall. 'How is Dave?'

    'He’s fine. Like I said, the bullet bounced off his thick skull, but it still tore up a lot of his head, and he lost a lot of blood. He won’t be going anywhere for a while, but once we’ve got him stabilised, we’re going to fly him back to the London facility. Dave likes London, and London likes Dave.'

    'Okay, okay. And Stevie?'

    'He’s in the mortuary. I’m sorry, N'buli. This is the first agent I’ve ever lost. It makes me feel a bit ill.'

    N'buli slapped Doctor Bob on the back. 'It’ll be okay. It’ll all work out. It always does.'

    As he left the intensive care ward, N'buli wished his words did not feel so hollow inside his head.

???

    He got lost trying to find the morgue and ended up in the hospice. He asked an elderly gentlemen with a brain tumour the size of a grapefruit for directions and a little perspective.

    When N'buli finally found the morgue, Val was already there in the corridor outside, talking to some young woman in a smart suit who spoke in an Irish accent that seemed somehow familiar.

    'Are you okay?' she asked Val and N'buli remembered her. She was the Agent who had come calling in the cinema, before the Luxor mission. He hung back around the corner of the corridor.

    'Back in the bad days,' said Val in a weary tone, 'we were burying our loved ones every day. Hunger, disease, the metal in the air. It took somebody from us all.'

    'I can’t even imagine how you dealt with it,' said the pretty young Agent. 'The strength you’d need to get through that.'

    'It never goes away. It’s always there at times like this. And it’s always so hard.'

    N'buli peeked around the corner and saw the Agent step forward and hug Val without another word.

    Val saw him out of the corner of her eye. 'Stop spying and get over here, you idiot.'

    He sheepishly walked around the corner and down the corridor as the Agent took a step back. He got his own hug in, taking a few seconds longer.

    They broke apart and N'buli saw the smallest tear in the corner of Val’s eye, before she quickly wiped it away. 'I managed to talk them out of doing an autopsy. We all know what happened.'

    'Val, I…'

    'Please don’t say anything, N'buli. I need to talk and do things now, or I won’t be able to do anything. I’m flying back to Mother Russia tomorrow and the family will bury Stevie in those spaces above the orange orchard at our place by the Black Sea. Then we will all get very, very drunk in memory of Stevie. I should be out of action for three days.'

    She took N'buli’s hand and stared into his eyes. 'Find out who did this to my son, N'buli. Swear that you’ll find him.'

    He nodded. 'I swear.'

   She nodded back at him and let go of his hands, and then turned and opened the door into the mortuary.

    'Do you want me to….?' asked N'buli, but she shook her head and N'buli got the  message. He had work to do.

    He was left alone in the corridor with the attractive young agent, who looked even more beautiful when she smiled at him.

    'Are you hungry?' she asked. 'The cafeteria here is surprisingly good.'

    N'buli knew he had work to do, but he couldn’t do it on an empty stomach. He smiled back. 'I’m starving.'

???

    'Jane Smith? Really?'

    She shrugged. 'My parents didn’t have much of an imagination. They just named me ‘Baby’ for six months, until the authorities told them I had to have a name.'

    Jane Smith, Agent of LOVE, had been right about the cafeteria food. N'buli had grabbed a sandwich which somehow managed to have all his favourite fillings in the world – including chicken, goat and beetroot – and the chocolate milkshake he had ordered was the best he’d ever had in Australia.

   

    She had ordered a light salad and picked away at it while she talked. 'I mean, if anything, it’s proof that those really early years do have an effect on you, because I never felt comfortable inside my own name, and found it easy to slip into a new identity. That’s how I got started in LOVE, working undercover for British police for three years to bring down the Sons of Michael Collins group in Ireland before they even got their hands on any guns.'

    'Uh-huh,' said N'buli, stuffing another mouthful of sandwich into his mouth.

    'So after I got done with that, LOVE contacted me and put me on the fast-track Agent programme. At the moment it means I’m running a lot of messages and putting together logistics for the serious ops, but in another year I could have my own team and Oh my God, I’m boring the crap out of the most important Agent in LOVE.'

    'Huh?' said N'buli, looking up from his sandwich. He swallowed his latest bite before answering. 'No, you’re not. Keep talking, I’m just really, really hungry.'

    'No, I’m an idiot. You were the one who took down Sir Sirius Law on the roof of the Paris Opera House, you were there when the crack into Shakespeare’s Inferno opened up under Sunset Boulevard in the fifties. You pushed the Things In The Walls back into their own dimension when they broke through.'

    That triggered memories, and while Agent Smith was almost breathless with awe about his adventures, N'buli remembered them with a faint, sick feeling of terror. He remembered hearing the Things In The Walls for months, scrapping and scrabbling in impossible spaces wherever he went, and the final coming of their Master – vast, echoing and increasingly loud footsteps coming from behind the refrigerator of his apartment in Dunedin.

    She saw something in his expression and reached across the table, grabbing his hand. 'Come on.'

    Before he knew what was happening, she had dragged him behind the counter of the cafeteria while the café’s sole staff member was talking on the phone and into a large larder. She shut the door, pushed him up against the muesli and kissed him passionately.

    N'buli was used to this – it had happened more often than he would like over the past century – but there was still a part of him which was just a little boy from an African plateau, who felt really, really embarrassed.

    She reached for his belt and he grabbed her hand.

    'Agent MacGregor…'

    'Call me N'buli.'

    'Agent MacGregor, please….'

    'I’m sorry,' he said, gently pushing her away. 'I’m working.'

    She actually looked genuinely offended for a moment, before covering it up with a mask of politeness.

    'No, I’m sorry,' she said, reaching inside her jacket pocket. 'I really am.'

    N'buli knew she had a pistol even before she pulled it out, and was already moving. He lunged to his left, pushed off a shelf of canned foods with his foot and dodged her first shot. She was quick, but N'buli was quicker, and he ducked inside her arm and slapped the pistol out of her palm.

    Agent Smith went for his throat with such vindictiveness that N'buli had to stagger back. The larder was only a couple of metres wide, and neither of them could get in any shots. She almost had his jugular in her teeth, until he got a knee in-between them. Straightening his leg, he shoved her roughly out of the larder, crashing through the door into a main kitchen.

    The café worker was about to do a pile of dishes, took one look at the situation, and ran like hell.

    It was a reasonably sized kitchen, with all sorts of sharp and pointy objects lying around. Agent Smith grabbed two of the largest knives she could find, while N'buli settled for a small hand towel and a large frying pan.

    It was no contest. Smith got in a couple of good shots and opened up a reasonably nasty cut above his left eye, but she didn’t have N'buli’s experience. He used the frying pan to slap away one of the knives and tangled up her other arm when she tried to stab him in the stomach.

    N'buli swept her legs out from underneath her and she fell hard against one of the kitchen’s ovens, and N'buli then somehow got her suit jacket trapped in its door.

    She tried to get free, but the oven door was stuck fast and she couldn’t get any leverage. She struggled some more, until finally giving up.

    'Damn,' she said with a sigh. 'I thought I’d do better than that.'

    'Don’t knock yourself out. I’m the ‘most important Agent in LOVE’, remember? I’ve been fighting for my life since World War One. I got some skills.'

    He kicked away her fallen knives and wiped the sweat off his brow with the hand towel. 'I thought LOVE Agents weren’t supposed to carry guns.'

    'Shows what you know, N'buli. There are things going on they don’t tell you about.'

   

    N'buli laughed, but moved a step closer. 'I know everything.'

    'You don’t know about HATE.'

    N'buli did know about HATE, but thought that bitter little experiment had ended a long time ago. He leaned in close. 'Tell me what you know about that.'

    'I’m the girl from HATE, and I came out before I was ready.' She kicked out, flipped over and was somehow out of her jacket. She flashed a bit of leg at N'buli, which delayed him long enough to get in a solid uppercut on his jaw, followed by a swift knee between his legs.

    N'buli went down hard, and took a moment to feel good enough to try standing again. Smith was gone.

    'Damn,' he said as he turned on a tap to wash his face. 'Getting old.'

!!!

The Man From LOVE #11: Don't look now

    Valentina had dozed off, and some movie she'd never sen before was on the television when the phone woke her up. She didn’t know how long she had been asleep, but the sky outside her room was starting to brighten. She also didn’t remember putting her shoes on, but forgot that little mystery when she saw that the phone was sending through a priority call from her son. She switched over to the incoming call and heard Stevie scream down the line.

    'Mama! Oh God, where have you been?'

    'Relax, baby. I was sleeping. What’s going on?'

    'It’s Dave! It’s Dave! He’s been shot and I don’t know what to do!'

    'What?'

    'He’s been shot in the head and the side! Somebody came out of nowhere and shot him in the head and then ran off, and there is blood everywhere!'

    Panic grew within Val's chest, but she swallowed it back and tried to focus. 'Is he breathing? Is Dave breathing?'

    'Yes! But there is so much blood, it's gone everywhere! I think I'm going to be sick.'

    Val didn’t need to put her boots on and was already heading out the door. 'The blood isn't the important thing. Not right now. People always bleed from the head. Just keep him breathing.'

    'I'll try, Ma. I haven't ever dealt with anything like this before.'

    'Nobody ever has, until they have to.' Val had her second phone out and had already put out an emergency text calling for medical help. 'Stay strong, my son. Stay strong.'

???

    N'buli shoved Reverend Hello in the back of the LOVE catch-wagon, which drove off into the dark night. The good Revered was off to Rehab Island, and if they were lucky, they might be able to keep him from the pulpit for a while. N'buli was alone on the street of the small Australian town, until the Reverend’s congregation slowly filed out of the church and stood in front of him.

    'Well?' said an old woman in her slippers. 'What was all that about then?'

    N'buli turned on the tactical charm. 'Look, he was saying a lot of good stuff, but he was just saying that so you wouldn't see the bad stuff he was saying. There is a light in all of us, but it's not necessarily tied down to any one theology, and you've got to find your own way, because nobody can take you there. You have to do it yourself.'

    'What the hell does that all mean?' grumbled a middle-aged man in oil-stained overalls.

    N'buli's phone began ringing. He managed a shrug as he reached inside his jacket pocket for it. 'Don’t just follow people because they say you should, do your own thing. Excuse me. Hello?'

    He listened to the voice on the other end of the line. By the time the conversation had ended, he was already running for the transport and mentally calculating how long it would take him to get to Sydney.

    The crowd he left behind stood in the street for a few more minutes, before slowly dispersing and heading off home.

???

    It took her only minutes to get there, but Valentina got to the car just as the medics arrived. LOVE maintained a medical facility in every major city on the planet, and any operation had a rapid response team ready to cover any eventuality.

    Val had been to some of the worst war zones on the planet and had seen some of the most horrible things men could do to each other, but those victims weren't her youngest son and her best friend.

    Stevie was still sitting in the passenger seat of the car, with his laptop still open on his lap. But he was leaning over and holding Dave's head in his hand, trying to staunch the flow of blood coming from the side of the head.

    Val's youngest son looked pale and shaken, and he meekly let the medics pull Dave away. They laid him down on the ground and began to work. Val stood back, scanning the area for the gunman, but there was no sign of him. She leaned in the car, avoiding the blood which had been splashed around the interior.

    'Stevie? Are you okay?'

    He looked up at her, the tears streaming down his face pushing through the blood on his skin. He took a moment to reply and spoke in a small, cracked voice. 'I'm all right, Ma. I'm all right.'

    'What happened?'

    Stevie shook his head. 'I don't know. We were just sitting here talking shit, and this guy comes up and shoots us. He took off down the street, but I didn’t see anything. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.'

    'Don’t worry,' said Valentina. 'Are you sure you’re all right?'

    Stevie leaned his head back against the car seat in his blood-wet clothes and closed his eyes. 'I’m fine.'

    Valentina turned back to Dave. The medics already had the gurney ready, and swiftly transferred Dave into the back of an ambulance. One of the medics – a Japanese girl that Valentina had never met before – came over to talk.

    'We’ve got him stabilised, and he should be okay, but we’ve got to get him to a medical facility right away, okay?'

    'What are you telling me for? Go!'

    The medic nodded and raced into the ambulance. LOVE maintained a special ward in a local hospital, and they paid for the best medical personnel to staff them. If they said he was going to be okay, he would be okay.

    'Did you hear that Stevie?'

    Stevie didn’t reply.

    'Stevie?   

    There was no movement inside the car.

!!!

The Man From LOVE #10: Wrong

    Dave turned the takeaway bag inside out. 'Look! There’s nothing in here! You heard me ask for extra sauce, didn’t you?'

    Stevie didn’t even respond, staring intently at his laptop screen, so Dave carried on. 'They never give enough tartare sauce. You can’t eat fish without some kind of tartare sauce.'

    'That’s because you don’t like fish,' said Stevie without looking up. 'You just like batter.'

    'What’s the difference?'

    'It’s half-past. Log in a report.'

    Dave sighed and picked up the goggles. Standard LOVE issue, the goggles could see on all known spectrums, and several that the scientists hadn’t even figured out yet. On all levels, their target was still in bed.

    It was 3.30am in some suburb on the southern edge of Sydney and Dave was bored as fuck.

    'Yeah,' he said. 'He’s still there. Where he should be. At three in the morning. Like we should be.'

    'There’s a chance this guy knows something about that kid-smuggling ring coming out of Utah. You want to let him get away?'

    'Of course not.'

    'Then shut up and sit.'

    'I should have bought a book.'

    'You should have brought a book,' said Stevie.

    'I should have stayed back in the hotel with Val,' said Dave. 'She’s getting to sleep happily while we’re out here all night.'

    'You want to tell my mother to take the night shift?'

    'No, I think I should go back and wake her up. She's overseeing this operation while N'buli does his thing out in the desert, so she should be overseeing us. The hotel is only five minutes away. The target won’t even know we’re gone.'

    Steve looked up from the screen. 'You want to go wake up my mother. At three am on a Tuesday morning. When she only volunteered for this mission because she loves the Sydney restaurants and wanted to take her youngest son out for dinner tomorrow night. Wake her up? Are you mental?'

    He went back to his computer, tapping away the keys quietly. Dave let him go for it and started wondering what he would have for breakfast, even as he finished off the fish.

???

    N'buli crept to the edge of the roof. Below him, in the small community hall in this tiny town of three hundred souls 270km south-east of Darwin and just a few hundred kays from the LOVE training compound, Reverend Hello had them in the palm of his hand.

    'It’s the spark, brothers and sisters. Don’t you feel it?'

    Nbuli stifled a groan. It was the spark speech. He’d last heard it in Tijuana, and here it was again, somewhere out in the Australian outback. He liked the desert, but it was freezing and he had learned to like sleeping under a roof for the past eighty years.

    'It’s the constant sparking,' hollered Reverend Hello below. The tiny crowd clapped hesitantly. 'The constant sparking of energy and ideas on both genetic and social levels. That’s what life is, that’s what God is. He’s in that passion and fire and…'

    N'buli decided that he’d had enough. Taking a good grip on the dry gutter on the roof, he swung his body over and kicked in the window, swinging through to land on his feet between the Reverend and his congregation.

    'You failed to mention the high explosives you had in your vehicle outside, Reverend. What sort of spark do they need?'

    The Reverend was stunned by N'buli’s grammar. 'Had?'

    N'buli smiled, just as a huge explosion ripped through the empty night outside. 'Had.'

???

    Sitting under her duvet in her motel room, Valentina wasn't sleeping. She had got by on three hours of sleep every day since 1942, and saw no reason to change habits.

    It was almost dawn, and she had been watching old movies on the motel television. She had seen The Third Man a dozen times over the decades, but she had to watch it again, the film evoking her own memories of post-war Vienna, and the fight against Octopus Rex and the Shark-Men of the Sixth Reich.

    The sun would be up soon and she planned to drive over to King's Cross and find some breakfast. She thought about calling Steve and Dave, to see how they were getting on, but they were big boys. They could take care of things. And if there was any trouble, it would only take her seven minutes to get to them. She had timed out the distance yesterday.

    So she pulled the duvet closer and sent text messages to her kids, all over the world, and watched Orson Welles run down a sewer.

???

    After eating, Dave must have dozed for a while, because Stevie scared the crap out of him when he started talking again.

    'This is some weird stuff.'

    'Mmm?' said Dave.

    Stevie was clicking away furiously on his laptop. 'I found all this stuff about the Goodsons.'

    Dave sat up in his seat. 'The Goodsons? Why are you looking into them?'

    'Haven’t you ever wondered what they’re really up to? I know how the world works, Dave. You don’t have that much money and power without some form of corruption. We’re bigger than governments, but accountable to nobody. I’m sure there is something going on.'

    'What do you mean?' yawned Dave.

    Stevie looked up from his laptop. 'What do I mean? Haven’t you ever wondered about this organisation we work for? Why do we have to be secret? What are we actually doing here? What about the immortality pill, shouldn’t we be sharing it with the world? Who decides that it’s best to keep these things secret? Are we getting anywhere?'

    'Of course we are,' said Dave. 'You’ve seen the same charts I have. Empathy is on the rise all over the world, people care more than they did. It’s like they told us in LOVE 101. It’s not just the violence, it’s the little things, like the fact it’s not socially acceptable to mock the unfortunate.'

    'People still do, tough.'

    'Yeah, but not on any real level, and all our efforts must count for something. Why hasn’t there been a world war three?'

    'Nuclear deterrent?'

    'Well, sure, but the world is changing, and we can live long enough to see it.'

Stevie started waving his finger at Dave. Dave hated it when he did that. 'It all comes back to that, doesn’t it. Look at me, I’m 43, but I’ve got the body of an 18-year-old and sometimes I still have the mind of a teenager, and I end up making decisions that could change the world. Is that ethical? Is that right? Is that the way things should be?'

    Dave tried to reply, but Stevie was off and running. 'Why do we have to keep these things secret? What do we gain from it? Couldn’t we share everything, like our fight-suits, and long lives, and cargo planes that go slightly over Mach Eight? Isn’t that what we’re all about?'

    Dave had nothing. 'I guess I never thought about it.'

    'Which is also weird. They’re like this big blank spot in ours heads that we never really think about at all. But once I realised that, I went and did some digging. It didn’t take much, I found a bit on google and it showed me where to go.'

    'What did you find?'

    Stevie grinned and turned back to his computer, but frowned and slapped it on the side of the screen. 'Come on! Fuck!'

    'What’s up?'

    'This is so weird. I was going to show you all this crazy stuff about the Goodsons, claiming they were part of a sect or something that goes back centuries, but then it all just blinks out.'

    'You’re kidding me.'

    'No. Look.' Stevie turned his laptop around and showed Dave a dead screen. 'It all just shut down.'

    'No, I meant the part about them being a sect that goes back centuries. That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.'

    'That’s what it said.'

    'Where? On wikipedia?'

    'No, on some dude’s website.'

    'Oh. Well, it must be true then.'

    'Hey!' said Stevie. 'It’s back up and running again. Except all the web pages closed down.'

    Stevie was annoying him, but Dave still felt the need to scratch a mental itch. 'Look up something called ‘Goodfun Distributors’. They’re some kind of comic distribution company.'

    'Huh? What for? What have they got to do with anything?'

    'I don't know. It just feels weirdly familiar.'

    Stevie was about to reply when something behind Dave caught his attention. Something outside. Something bad.

    'Holy shit!'

    Dave turned around to see what Stevie was yelling about, but didn’t see anything before he was shot in the head.

!!!

The Man From LOVE #9: All will be well

    Even through the paper, even through her coat, Valentina could smell the sausage. This strange black man was still making his odd proposition, but she had to concentrate on what he was saying and not think about the taste.

    The sun had set and it was dark enough for her to get back to her people. There were still enemy snipers out there and there was no guarantee of safety at any time of the day, but she knew the shadows of this shattered city well enough to get back with little risk.

    She risked the view and looked up over the edge of the broken wall of the building. She looked out over the city and saw the fire on the eastern side was still burning strong, sending flames high into the sky. There was gunfire somewhere and a crying child, lost somewhere in the dark.

    She was lost in the pain of her city for a moment and it took her a while to notice that the black man had stopped talking and seemed to be waiting for an answer.

    'I'm sorry,' she said, even though she had no idea what she was apologising for. 'What was that?'

    'I'm saying we can take you and your family out on the Underground Railroad. Tomorrow morning. We have three cars heading to Tunisia, and can take 65 of your people out of here.'

    'And then what?'

    'Tunisia is just a stopover. You will all, of course, be free to go where you want, but I think most of you would come into the organisation and head off to the training compound in the Australian outback. We could always use more agents and staff. The war is keeping us all so busy.'

    Valentina just felt terribly tired and sighed. She glanced out into the street and saw a figure moving along the edge of a wall. Even from here, she could recognise a German helmet.

    'You're not convinced.'

    She watched the figure move slowly and raised her rifle to put him in her sights. She spoke without taking her eye from her scope. 'No, I'm not convinced. You are treating this so lightly, as if we could all just go away. Life doesn't work like that.'

    'Not all the time. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't, or that we can't try.'

    'And you're willing to get us all out of this city, just through the enemy lines as if they were paper.'

    'Our organisation has access to an underground rail system that goes all over Europe. It's been there since the mid-1700s, apparently.'

    The figure on the street paused in a doorway. Valentina wondered idly what he was doing in the street. It didn't matter. She placed her finger on the trigger. 'And all this for me? This sounds very expensive. And complicated.'

    'It's not that complicated. You're that good. We want you. We need you.'

    'You're talking such rubbish. I'm not that important.'

    'Oh Val,' said N'buli in a voice that tugged at her heart. 'You really are. You're in the most dangerous place on Earth during its most dangerous time and you're refusing to give in to your own inhumanity. You have the ability to kill more people than anyone else in this shattered city and fire less fatal shots than any other sniper.'

    'This is hell,' said Valentina. 'You can't kill anybody who is already dead.'

    He just smiled again. 'There is so much beauty away from all this death and destruction. There are people out there who don't want to play this endless cycle of retribution and vengeance. There are places you can go where you can let it all fade away. It's easy. You just let go and come with me, and then we can come back and help everybody else.'

    Valentina watched the figure in the street cross the broken road, only to stop and look up at the sky. Her finger moved away from the trigger and she placed the rifle at her feet. 'I'm so, so tired.'

    'I know.'

    She sank to the floor and put her head in her hands. 'I don't want to do this any more.'

    'Of course you don't,' said N'buli, moving over to Valentina and placing a hand on her shoulder. 'None of us do.'

    She looked up at him. 'You have space to get 65 people out of this shit-hole on your train?'

    'We do.'

    'I have 72 that need to come with me. That's everybody in my building.'

    N'buli let loose with that smile again. 'Some of them might have to stand for a while, but I think we can squeeze them all in.'

    'Good. So we go? Now?'

    'In a minute,' said N'buli with a conspiratorial wink. 'But first there are some other kids who also need a hand out of this hellhole, and there is one over there who has a sore hand. He's first on my list.'

    'You're just going to wander over to the German lines, steal an indentured child from them and get away.'

    N'buli laughed softly at some private joke. 'It's okay. I do this sort of thing all the time.'

???

    Dave took a long, long drag on his pipe and held it in as long as he could, as he considered what the man on the television was telling him.

    'So,' he finally said between puffs of smoke, 'you want me to chuck my job in and come work for you guys?'

    'It's not really work as you know it. We'll find a good use for your skills and pay you shitloads of money for them, but most of your time will belong to yourself.'

    'Skills? What fucking skills?'

    By now, the black man's features were clear, although the computer background around him remained as blocky as ever. 'You're more talented than you think. Remember the induction test you took on the first day of school?'

    'What? I was five on my first day of school. I don't remember anything like that.'

   

    'Nobody ever does. But even at that age the indicators were all there.' The black man sat back down on the pixelated throne behind him, and reached inside his coat pocket, pulling out a piece of paper that he started to read out loud. 'David shows uncommonly strong persuasive abilities, combined with a natural charm that means he is never likely to lose any kind of argument. Even if he is wrong about something, he will be able to convince the other person that he has a point.'

    'I got the highest score in the school debate in my last year at high school,' said Dave.

    'That's what I'm talking about. An ability like yours is a lot rarer than you think. We have the muscle, we have the smarts, but we can always use a good talker.'

    'Now you're just making me shy.'

    'Yeah, right.'

    Dave thought about filling up his cone for another go, but figured he'd probably had enough. 'All right, so you guys want me to come join your outfit?'

    'We think you could make a valuable contribution.'

    'And you're... what? Government?'

    'No,' said the black man. 'We’re beyond governments. Every world leader is aware of our existence, but we find things work much easier if we remain a secret to the general public. LOVE operates in all countries, in all environments, for all reasons. We will not tolerate bullying, violence or slavery in any way, shape or form. We operate on a platform of pacifism, compassion and, well, love.'

    'Sounds like a dodgy conspiracy theory,' said Dave

    'We are a conspiracy theory,' said the black man. 'We're the ultimate conspiracy, but that doesn't mean we're not nice people too.'

    Dave was getting annoyed, even if he couldn't quite figure out why. 'Really? If I'm so good at talking, how come I'm working in a slaughterhouse for the bare minimum? How come I've got three dollars and fifty three cents in my bank account until next Tuesday? How come I've got no girl, or car, or anything except my cat Moe?  How come I've never gone any further than anybody else I know?'

    'Beats me, maybe nobody gave you the chance. Come on. What are you doing with your life, Dave?'

    'Too much drugs, based on current evidence.'

    N'buli smiled, and his smile filled the whole screen. 'Wouldn’t you rather save the world?'

???

    The boy in the bed next to N'buli died shortly after the nurses turned out the lights, his laboured breathing ending with a final sigh.

    N'buli thought about calling a nurse back in, but it hardly seemed to matter. The boy didn't mind. He'd only been admitted to the hospital the day before last, and had never regained consciousness. Considering what had happened to his face, N'buli thought that was a blessing.

    The wounds N'buli had received during the attack on the German lines were almost healed and the doctors told him he would be fit enough to return to the front line soon. He asked them where he would go, now that his platoon had been wiped out, but they just smiled and told him not to worry about that.

    The other men in the ward hadn't seemed to notice the boy's death and slept on. N'buli lay in his bed, but his mind wouldn't stop racing.

    N'buli didn't want to go back to the front. He didn’t want to go back to the war. But he couldn't see any other way around it. He'd heard stories about other soldiers who had tried to run, and how they had been caught and executed by their own side. Any possibility he could think of led to a wasteful death.

    So he was slightly surprised to find himself slipping out of bed and walking down the ward. It was a warm night and there was an open window down the end of the room, and N'buli climbed through it, dropping down a floor to land softly on the hospital garden lawn.

    The hospital was located far behind the trenches, but in the silence of the night, N'buli could hear the sound of war from far away. The facility had been set up in an old manor house that had somehow escaped the fighting and the lawns were kept in immaculate condition by an old Scottish gardener that N'buli had seen pottering around in the day. One of the other wounded soldiers had mentioned to N'buli that the gardener was named MacGregor, but he had never actually spoken to the man.

    The garden was also full of wounded men during daylight hours, sitting around in wicker chairs, somehow hoping the sunlight could repair their wrecked bodies.  But there was nobody around at this hour, and the sounds of far away battles faded away, leaving him alone in the quiet night.

    'Hello again.'

    N'buli almost jumped out of his skin when he heard the voice. There was somebody sitting in one of the wicker chairs on the far side of the lawn, his face hidden in the darkness.

    N'buli thought he should head back to the ward and back to his bed, but found himself wandering over to the man in the chair. As he got closer, he recognised him.

    'You were there, in the trench.'

    'That's right, N'buli,' said the young Asian man with the old eyes, gesturing towards the nearest chair. 'How are you feeling?'

    N'buli sat down and realised the man was talking to him in his native language. 'Better.'

    'Good, good. You were looking pretty bad there for a while, but I knew you would pull through. People like you always do.'

    'People like me?'

    The Asian man just smiled and looked up at the sky. The clouds had cleared away and the stars were out. 'My name's Chang Tzu, but you can call me Chang. It's a beautiful night, isn't it?'

    N'buli shrugged. 'Could be better.'

    'Looking up at these stars, it's almost easy to forget that the war is going on, just down the road. So much waste. So much stupidity.'

    'But it is,' said N'buli.

    'Yes,' said Chang. 'We do our best to try and avoid these terrible events, but we don’t always succeed.'

    'We?'

    Chang leaned in closer. 'What if there were a group of people who were dedicated to reducing as much of this death and horror as possible? What if you could do some good in all this bad?'

    'I would think you are mad.'

    Chang laughed, and the noise reverberated around the empty garden. 'And you would probably be right. But that doesn't make it any less true.'

    N'buli didn't say anything and Chang continued. 'I know what you did in the German trench. You faced down a dozen enemy soldiers and took them all down without killing a single one of them. Why?'

    'Why what?'

    'Why did you let them live? They had killed all your friends, and they were your enemy. You could have slaughtered them all.'

    'There didn't seem to be much point.'

    Chang leaned back in his chair. 'No, there wasn't. But there was something more to it than that.'

    'What do you mean?'

    Chang ignored his question. 'You don't have to go back to the lines. You can come with us.'

    'Us?'

    'The gardener - MacGregor - and I are part of that group. He's due to head back to the new academy outside Alice Springs soon, he can take you along.'

    N'buli felt light headed, even in the chill of the night air. He stood up from the chair. 'You can take me away from all this?'

    'No,' said Chang with a firm shake of his head. 'You come with me and you'll never get away from this horror. You'll be right in the middle of it for the rest of your life, doing your best to stop the pain and suffering.'

    'What's in it for me?'

    'Oh, trust me. It'll be fun, more fun than you ever expect. There will also be heartbreak, but you'll be working to bring it all to an end. One day, it will all be done.'

    'And until that day, you will need me to go out there and save people? That's what it's all about?'

    'That's what it's all about,' said Chang. 'Does this mean you're going to come with us?'

    N'buli stood up from the chair and faced the battle lines. There were hundreds, thousands, millions of people out there, suffering for causes they barely understood. If there was even the slightest chance he could stop it all from happening, he had to take it. He had no choice.

    He turned back to Chang and smiled, an expression he had not used in quite some time.

   

    'Sure. Why not?'

!!!

The Man From LOVE #8: A virtual certainty

    Somewhere in the mid-nineties, Dave sat playing Doom on his PlayStation, while the latest Pulp album played on his crappy old stereo. He was still baked from the morning sesh with Shane and didn’t have to be at work until eight that night, so he had time to take it easy.

    He wasn’t looking forward to work, he needed to give the slaughter room a proper cleaning tonight and it was always full of blood and shit. He needed to go visit Shane again before he headed off later on.

    Dave turned away from the game to open his last can of coke and looked back to find one of the biggest demons in the game rushing right at him. He fumbled for his controller, but it fell off his lap and he knew he was dead. He wouldn’t be able to react before the demon in the game tore him to pieces.

    But it wasn’t doing anything. Instead of attacking him like every other character in the game, the demon just stood there and stared at him. Dave didn’t know what was going on and didn’t care. He scooped up the controller and blasted the demon back to digital hell.

    Chalking it up to a glitch, Dave carried on through the game, but it was all different. None of the creatures in the game were attacking them and after kicking a few to death for the hell of it, Dave swiftly became bored.

    The characters in the game were still reacting to Dave and would still wave their little pixelated claws, but then would back off from him and bow whenever he came near. He quickly got to the end of the stage with so little resistance and entered the throne room of the big bad.

    Dave had played this game before. He knew that this stage ended with a big fuck-off king monster who shat out giant balls of fire. Not a weirdly detailed black man in a sharp suit, slouched comfortably on an infernal throne.

    'It's a bit weird, isn’t it?' said the character on the screen.

    Dave just nodded.

    The game zoomed in on the black man, who didn't look anything like a computer generated image any more. He smiled at Dave.

    'Look, all I'm asking is that you sit back and listen to me. It won't take long and it will change your life. It could also be a bit trippy, so help yourself to a cone or two while you're listening. You might need it.'

    Dave just nodded again and reached for his tin. He stopped, and turned back to the man on the television. 'Is this a joke?'

    'Does it feel like a joke?'

    'Well, yeah,' said Dave. 'It really does.'

???

    Max joined LOVE straight out of the air force, kicked out on a dishonourable discharge after he caught a superior officer slapping his wife around and strung him up the airbase flagpole. Doctor Bob was recruited straight out of medical school, and Inspector Derek Jaded and Ms Amanda Snark joined after a combined sixty-nine years with the Old Scotland Yard. Doc Obvious turned down several invitations to join the organisation, but still showed up at the office Christmas party. Nobody remembered how Mr Moon had joined, not even Mr Moon.

    Agent Jane Smith’s recruitment was another story entirely.

???

    N'buli left the war behind, and walked out onto the African plateau. He was surprised he hadn't thought of it before - he just walked away from the trenches, back over that wide sea, all the way back home.

    The sun was setting, with vivid pink skies stretching across the endless sky. N'buli closed his eyes and breathed in the fresh air, free of the filth and decay that had been his life for the last few months. All that death and destruction was behind him now, and none of it mattered.

    He took a step forward, moving into the wild grass. There was plenty of game in the landscape ahead of him, but he wasn't hungry or thirsty or tired. He felt like he could walk on forever, that there was nothing that would stop him.

    And then he saw the two men up ahead, facing the same sunset beneath a leafless tree, their backs to N'buli. One of them had skin that was as black as N'buli's, was wearing an oddly fashioned suit and was strangely familiar, while the other was weirdly indistinct, almost blurred. As he came closer, he could hear them talking quietly. He didn't know their language, but he could somehow understand every word they were saying.

    'I've been here before,' said the dark man.

    'You'll be here again,' said the other. He turned and N'buli saw his face as it came into focus. If the dark man was vaguely familiar, the blurred man was somebody N'buli knew better than himself. He had never seen that face before, but as he smiled at N'buli, he was utterly familiar.

    And then he woke up.

    He wasn't back home. He wasn't on the African plains. He was still on the battlefield, and he was dying.

    N'buli could tell he was dying by the amount of blood in his mouth and because he felt like his insides were slowly squeezing out the holes in his back. His eyes were closed, but he could hear the Germans chattering away in their foreign tongue just a few feet away and he knew he was lying where he had fallen, just short of the German line.

    He slowly opened his eyes. Lying face down in the mud, he turned his head slightly - a little surprised by the fact he could move at all - and watched the enemy. Even though it felt like he had been in Africa for hours, it had only been a brief moment, with the smoke from their accursed machine gun still hanging in the air. The Germans were scurrying about, getting their defences back in order, waiting for a second wave that N'buli knew wasn't coming.

    He turned his head back the other way and looked back across no man's land. His own lines were just back there, beyond the bodies of his friends and comrades who littered the ground. The only other Senegalese who had made it as far as N'buli was staring back at him with dead eyes. N'buli had spent every day of the last six months with that man, but he couldn't remember his name.

    He looked back at the Germans and once satisfied that they weren't looking at him, he slowly moved his hand around until he could feel the handle of his coupe-coupe, and pulled the blade closer.

    Taking a firm grip on the handle, N'buli closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. There was still something inside him - a fire that would never burn out - and he drew on it.

    N'buli stood up with surprising ease. His wounds didn't hurt anymore, there was just a cold numbness there. He took a step forward and, satisfied that he wasn't just going to fall flat on his face, took a few more.

    He was almost running by the time the first German saw him and cried out in alarm, but by then there was nothing to stop him. He had enough speed to leap over the crude barrier on the edge of the German trench and kick the man who had spotted him in the face.

    There were about a dozen Germans in this area of the trench, but he didn't have time to count them all. Several were already bringing their rifles to bear on him and he had to move.

    The closest German snarled something in his native language and fired, but managed to miss N'buli entirely, with the bullet slamming into the trench wall behind him. N'buli leapt forward and smashed the rifle out of the German's hands with his blade, spinning around and hitting him in the face with the other fist.

    As the German fell forward, N'buli jumped up and leapt off his back, kicking the next closest enemy in the throat and bringing the handle of his coupe-coupe right down on the forehead of another man.

    Other Germans were firing, but N'buli felt like liquid fire was coursing through his veins, His wounds weren't bothering him any more and the world was moving slowly around him. As he moved further down the trench he could tell which German was the next that needed to be taken down without even thinking about it. On some odd level, he knew exactly what needed to be done, and was surprisingly unsurprised at his ability to do it.

    As he fought, more shots were fired, but nothing touched him. One German lunged at him with his bayonet, but N'buli just slapped it away and hit the man in the side of his face with the flat of his own blade.

    In moments it was over, and N'buli was the last man standing. But - for some reason he couldn't understand - he hadn't killed a single one of them. He may have broken some bones, but all of the Germans he had taken down were still breathing. He hadn't meant to leave them living, but every blow he had struck had been non-lethal.

    As he glanced around him, he saw he had missed one lone German. The soldier was barely a man, and held a rifle in his shaking hands, struggling with the bolt action. He moaned in fear as N'buli approached him, dropped the rifle and fell to his knees. He pleaded in his foreign language as N'buli came closer, the coupe-coupe still clasped tightly in his hand.

    N'buli caught a glimpse of himself in the reflection of his blade and understood why the young German was so afraid. His face was covered in blood and his wide eyes stared out of it. He looked like a demon from one of his grandmother's tales, something that had clawed its way out of hell, driven by hated and vengeance.

    He raised the blade. It would be so easy. He could just bring it down and end this German's life. Moments before, this man had been shooting at him, doing his best to kill him and there was a good chance he had killed one of N'buli's comrades. All he had to do was bring it down and end this scared little boy's life.

    But there was no point in it. N'buli just sighed, lowered his arm and walked away.

    He clambered back over the edge of the German trench and headed back towards his line. He walked past the bodies of his comrades, across the uneven ground. He kept expecting a final shot to bring him down, for one of the Germans to get it together enough to fire at him, but it never came.

    N'buli began to think it wouldn't take that much to bring him down. The fire in his veins had burned out and he felt like his soul was leaking out of the wounds in his back, which were suddenly very, very painful.

    He staggered and almost fell as he stepped on the leg of a fallen soldier. N'buli paused and looked down, but didn't recognise the dead face and he moved on.

    His own line was close now and he could see soldiers in the trench, pointing their rifles at him. He knew he must have looked like a nightmare emerging out of the battlefield and wouldn't have been surprised if he was ended by a bullet from his own side.

    But again, it didn't come and as his strength finally deserted him, he tumbled forward over the line and into the trench where he had started. The soldiers around him backed off, frightened by this apparition that had come down amongst them. Nbuli just smiled.

    'That was easy,' he said, before falling to his knees. It hurt to breathe and it seemed a lot easier just to fall forward, so N'buli did that.

    The world started to recede again and N'buli decided to let it go.

    But then he felt a strong arm on his shoulder, turning him over onto his back. N'buli opened his eye to see a young man with old eyes looking back at him.

    N'buli had never seen an Asian man before and marvelled at the sight, with one part of his mind wondering why he was in a doctor's uniform. He smiled again and tried to speak, but choked on his own words.

    'It's okay,' said the old/young doctor. 'All will be well.'

    N'buli saw no reason to disagree with him and when the darkness came again, he gave into it.

!!!

The Man from LOVE #7: How to sign up

    'Don’t forget your blade, boy.'

    N'buli reached for his coupe-coupe, but already knew he had left it in his hole. He also knew the sergeant would punish him for his stupidity and he readied himself for the inevitable slap.

    When it didn’t come, N'buli saw the sergeant was holding out his own coupe-coupe. 'Here. You’ll need it more than me. I can always get one from the field as we cross it.'

    N'buli took the blade, slung it across his back and wondered what the hell was going on. He had enlisted in the Senegalese army soon after he turned 17 – or thereabouts - and every single day since then, the sergeant had told him to hold on to his blade. No matter where he was, even when he went to relieve himself, the sergeant made sure every man under his command has his blade.

    The rifle could break or jam, and then battles were decided with hand-to-hand combat, and the man with the longest blade had the best chance. N'buli was a boy soldier, but even he knew you could do a lot better with that if you had a coupe-coupe in your hand.

    N'buli knew the value of that well enough, but he didn't understand what the sergeant was doing. The man had yelled at N'buli every time he had done something remotely wrong, and it did not take N'buli long to work out the rules. Do whatever the sergeant told him to do and everything would be all right. He would still yell at you every single second of every single day, but he was actually easy enough to please.

    There was something different about the sergeant today. Something about the way he walked among the men. He was talking quietly, rather than yelling loudly. He was offering his first words of real support to the men he had spent the last six months with in training.

    And he had made them into men. Not one of the soldiers in N'buli’s platoon had seen his 21st birthday and a few had probably come in underage, but the sergeant had beat them down and built them back up again and they were ready. Ready to take the fight to the enemy. Ready to kill.

    It was June 1915 and N'buli was somewhere in France, ready to go over the top and face the German guns.

    N'buli had no quarrel with the Germans and wasn’t even sure he was actually Senegalese. His family had roamed around the land a lot and he had never even been aware of the concept of a country or patriotism.

   

    But when the army recruitment bandwagon came along, N'buli was smitten with visions of travel and adventure and more endless horizons, and he ran away from home to sign up.

    His life since then had been a succession of grey training camps and cold barracks, but N'buli held on to that dream of green fields, far from home. Even if all the fields he had seen had been brown and dark and covered with death, he held hope for a better day.

    'Stand fast, boys!' yelled the sergeant, who was now standing on N'buli’s right. He slapped his hand down on N'buli's shoulder.

    Oh no, thought N'buli. He thought he would have more time, but he had run out.

    'Keep low, keep moving forward and don’t stop for anything,' said the sergeant in a low growl. 'No matter what, don’t stop, keep going.'

    He looked further down the line as a shrill whistle sounded somewhere. 'Right! Here we go!'

    He yelled incoherently, pushed himself forward off Nbuli's shoulder and leapt up the ladder leading out of the trench to no man's land. N'buli was right behind him, but had to stop when the sergeant suddenly slumped back on top of him. N'buli was dimly aware of a wet, cracking noise, but didn’t realise the sergeant didn’t have a face any more until he had fallen back into the trench.

    N'buli didn’t understand.

    He saw others fall backwards into the trench beside him, with similar holes torn into their body. N'buli realised that he was one of the last to make it out of the trench and jumped forward, desperate not to be left behind.

    It wasn’t until he got over the edge of the trench that the noise hit him. The high, shrill whine of bullets flying through the air, the harsh chatter of rifle fire and the dull thump of explosions. There were a pile of dead bodies already fallen, friends that N'buli had lived and laughed with for months, dead two steps into no man’s land.

    'Keep moving, don’t stop,' said N'buli, stumbling to his feet and following the others across the wasteland.

    There were still dozens of his own soldiers on every side of him, but they were rapidly falling. Those who stopped to help their wounded comrades took their own hits and fell.

    'Keep moving,' screamed N'buli as a bullet tore at his sleeve, leaving him unharmed. There were only a few still moving forward. They screamed and cursed as they stumbled across the wasteland.

    And then they fell and N'buli was running alone. He tried to fire his rifle but the gun jammed and he tossed it aside as he raced forward around a shell-hole. He almost made it to the opposite wire and was reaching for his coupe-coupe when the first bullet hit him, taking him low on the right hip and spinning him around.

    N'buli felt sick and had to stop. He was looking down at the hole in his side when three more bullets crashed into his back and he fell forward into the mud.

???

    It was rat for breakfast again, but Valentina didn’t mind rat. It was meat, after all, and better than nothing. Certainly better than the insects that her group had been reduced to eating last month.

    She covered her mouth and tried to stop her warm breath from escaping. It wasn’t just the visibly vanishing body heat in the sub-zero conditions that bothered her, it was the concern that some enemy shooter would pin point her position.

    She risked a glance outside into the dull Leningrad morning. The sun was about to fall, or may already have gone behind the grey clouds, but there was still some light and the Nazi filth were sending out the rats.

    She saw the first of them climb fearfully over a pile of rubble. He couldn’t have been older than 12, buried beneath a thin coat. He slid along the side of a ruined wall, eyes fixed on a prize out in the middle of the ruined street. Even from her perch, she could see what he was after - an undamaged rifle, left behind by some other soldier who had fallen or fled.

    Valentina knew the boy was just another Russian orphan, forced into service by the Germans. She had seen plenty of others on the other side and had long ago suppressed the urge to go and get them. There was barely enough food for the mouths they already had, at least the kids who had been taken under German control were alive.

    But there was still danger for the young ones. They were often sent out to scrounge for supplies, in a world where supplies were all everybody was after. Food was the top priority, but weapons were also prized.

    There were weapons left lying all over the city, but with no supplies getting through to either side, any rifle or pistol was prized, especially if it had a few rounds left within. The boy in Val's sights didn't care about the rifle, but she knew there were German soldiers who wanted it badly and were willing to risk the boy to get it.

    If the boy refused, he would be beaten by the soldiers, if he was very, very lucky. Sending him out into the open street meant the boy was vulnerable to fire from any number of positions, but he had to go. 

    Val knew she couldn't let him get the rifle. It was only one weapon, but if the boy got it back to the Germans, it was another one that would be used against the city's defenders. If she let him get it, she could end up looking down its barrel.

    She took a deep breath and let it out just as the boy darted forward for the rifle, and fired.

    The rifle shattered into a dozen pieces as her shot hit home. The boy was close and instantly scrambled back into cover, without his prize, cradling a hand that must have caught a shard of the shattered rifle. The Germans would have seen his failure, but would also have seen it wasn't his fault. He should be safe.

    Valentina moved. It was a stupid decision, giving away her position like that, but it rekindled that small, dull spark of humanity that she held on to, deep inside. She refused to be an animal and any act of compassion in a hell like this reminded her of the ideals she was fighting for.

    She picked up her gear and headed for the shattered chimney in the corner of the room. She knew every inch of this ruin and knew of another position on the top floor that would serve as a back-up. She could settle back down and wait for any other sign of life at the end of this long day.

    Valentina pushed her way up through the chimney and was almost up to the next floor when a piece of chimney gave away under her feet. Gripping her sniper rifle closely to her chest, she scrambled with her free hand for a decent grip.

    She failed to find one and began to slip slowly back down the chimney when a hand appeared above her and took a tight grip on his wrist. With apparently effortless ease, and before she could react, she was hauled upwards into the top room.

    The instant she had her feet again, Valentina slapped away the helping hand and backed into the nearest corner. She was about to bring her rifle when she realised it wasn't in her hands anymore. The man on the other side of the room had somehow taken it from her.

    Valentina saw the man properly for the first time and couldn't tell if she was more surprised by the darkness of his skin, or the immaculate - if slightly old fashioned - suit he was wearing.

    Valentina had never seen a man with skin as dark as this, and didn't know if all black men had such warm smiles. He tossed the rifle back to her and she caught it easily, training it on the man and wondering if she should just fire.

    'All is well', he said, in perfect Russian. He held his hands out, palms up. 'I’m going to reach into the pocket of my jacket and take out a small object.'

    Valentina finally managed to swallow her incredulity and found her voice. 'Who are you? What are you doing here?'

    The black man smiled again, in a way Valentina had not seen in months, before producing a wrapped piece of paper out of his pocket. 'Same as you, saving a life. Here and there. My name is N'buli. I'm a friend.'

    Val circled around until she was in the darkest corner. The smoke was thick today and night was moments away 'You just stay over there.'

    'Keep the rifle on me if you have to. But I have got something to eat, if you would like to share it with me?'

    'Stay away from me.'

    'Fair enough,' said N'buli in English, knowing Val would not understand. 'I’ll have it myself.'

    He unwrapped the grease-proof paper and produced the biggest sausage Val had ever seen in her entire life - long, thick and succulent. N'buli took a bite and relished the taste before wrapping it back up and tossing the rest of the sausage over to Val. She dropped her gun and grabbed the meat before it hit the ground. Opening it, she stared at the meat, but then secured the sausage in her own coat pocket and returned to her corner.

    N'buli cocked a single eyebrow. 'You’re not going to eat some now?'

    'Don’t be ridiculous,' said Valentina. She lit up a cigarette – a rare luxury, and dangerous, but it was that kind of day. 'There are six others living in my cellar. We share everything.'

    'Saving a life, here and there. Even after all they’ve done to you. You take them away.'

    The dim glow of Valentina’s cigarette was the only light in the room. 'You don’t know me.'

    “Saving a life is all good, but wouldn’t you rather save the world?”

!!!