Jimmy Coates: Power. Joe Craig

at the enormous bomb in front of him. What am I doing? he thought to himself desperately. I’ve covered a giant bomb in diesel. At the same time, his thumb clicked the torch on and off, itching to connect the bare filament with the diesel fumes. Jimmy could feel the battle raging inside him. His familiar, rational terror was obliterated by a wash of something else—something close to joy. His programming was thriving on the heat and the danger, relishing the chance to set off a massive explosion. Not just set it off, Jimmy reassured himself. Control it.

      He knew that lighting the diesel would raise the temperature of the bomb by the critical few degrees needed to set off the blast. But in the seconds before that happened, the flames would burn through the wires, eliminating the delicately designed chain reaction. The crates of nitroglycerin would go up separately and randomly—not as one huge, coordinated eruption.

      Finally, Jimmy brought the torch up to the seat stuffing soaked in diesel. He carefully clicked the torch and a spark lit a couple of strands of cotton at the very tip. Immediately, the fumes ignited and the whole twist of material became a flaming beacon.

      He stared into the back of the van again. This time the flickering of his flame made the glass tubes seem to dance, as if they were excited about what Jimmy was about to do. This could be the biggest mistake of my life, Jimmy thought.

      Just do it, he ordered himself. With that, he hurled the flame towards the bomb, twisted on his heels, and ran.

       06 NELSON’S SHADOW

      BANG!

      Jimmy was lifted off his feet. The heat stabbed into his back and the whole world disappeared in a white flash. He slammed into the wall at the far end of the car park and slumped to the floor, his brain juddering in his skull.

      He rolled for cover behind a car to watch each tube of nitroglycerin roar harder and hotter than the last one. Between blasts, Jimmy caught glimpses of flames melting the insides of cars. The fire spread, buckling the metal of every vehicle until its own petrol tank gave way and added an extra explosion. Jimmy hardly noticed that he was choking back the black smoke. He was fixated on a single thought: had he succeeded? The chain reaction would have blown the whole tower block to pieces in a single blast. Compared to that, this was a minor accident.

      Then came an explosion so strong Jimmy felt like it would crack his eyeballs. It sent a rumble through his whole body, juddering his bones and mashing his organs. For a few seconds he couldn’t breathe. He realised the him was trembling—badly. So was the floor. When Jimmy looked through the chaos he could see the pillars that supported the ceiling were crumbling.

      At first, small cracks opened up in the concrete, then chips of it came away and the cracks grew. Jimmy watched, aghast, as a huge cloud of grey dust mixed with the fire and black smoke. I’ve got to get out of here, he thought. But the only way out was through the exit where Jimmy had dragged the van. The metal shutter had been blown to smithereens with the first explosion, so that wasn’t a problem any more. But to get out, Jimmy had to run straight past the bomb—while the crates of nitroglycerin were still blowing up.

      There was hardly any gap between explosions now. The heat was too great and the thaw was too rapid for any of the nitro to hold. Blast upon blast rocked the whole place. Jimmy staggered to his feet, almost knocked down every time another detonation sent shockwaves through the floor. Concrete rained down around him. He couldn’t see anything more than a metre in front of him, he could only hear the explosions and feel the impact. He felt his inner sense trying to time his run, but surely that wasn’t possible.

      Half sprinting, half stumbling, Jimmy strained forwards with a flood of excitement. I can make it, he told himself.

      BOOM!

      Jimmy was flung into the sky by a pressure wave travelling at 9000 metres per second. The world swirled into an orange and black blur of flame and smoke. All he could feel was pure heat all around him, as if it was coming from his skin itself. Jimmy was thrown across the street inside a massive fireball. Then he slammed against something hard, and although the orange around him disappeared, he still felt like he was on fire. He heard a cry and realised it was his own voice, mixing with hundreds of other peoples’ screams.

      He felt his body trying to stand, but he couldn’t. The last thing he saw was the huge tower block he’d just escaped. One side of it was crumbling, then it slumped downwards and collapsed.

      The traffic around Trafalgar Square was even worse than usual. Cars honked and buses snorted as they stacked up in all the surrounding roads. In the very centre of the noise, in the pedestrianised part of the square, a tall, slim man in a long, navy coat was standing on top of an upturned plastic box, a megaphone to his mouth.