Chapter 1: A Fresh Start.

Callum MacLeod was tired, sore, and thoroughly pissed off.

It had been a long, miserable day, finally escaping the gruelling monotony of the rehabilitation pipeline and taking the crowded, expensive train south to London. The whole way down, his heartstrings had been pulling him north, back toward the rugged, wind-scoured Isle of Skye, but reality had other plans. Callum was twenty-eight, a freshly minted civilian after being medically discharged as a Sergeant from the Royal Regiment of Scotland. Being a soldier had been his childhood dream, and from his seventeenth birthday, he had been living that dream to the absolute fullest. He loved the scenery and the raw wildness of Skye, but being a sheep farmer or - God forbid - working with American tourists was a fate worse than death.

The Army had been watching him closely from his very first day at the recruit depot, and the harder he was pressed by the instructors, the brighter he had shone. Joining the Regiment after training, he had first tasted combat in Afghanistan, then Iraq. Later, he had been instructing Ukrainian recruits when the Russians had rolled west and more than one Ivan had briefly regretted crossing his sights before he was rotated back home. But it was in the deep desert of Mali where his luck had finally run out, an Al-Qaeda trained group of jihadists had set a deliberate ambush with a heavy, buried pressure-plate IED. His open-topped Jackal infantry vehicle had been completely ripped apart while pursuing a pair of raggies on dirt bikes.

But now he was out, he was no longer a proud soldier, just a scarred freak with a fake arm and a carbon-fibre leg that made the mothers pull their kids back on the pavement. The anger kept bubbling just under the surface, no matter how hard he tried to push it down into the dark.

His sister Fiona and her husband David had worked absolute miracles finding a rundown mews house in a quiet pocket of Battersea, completely gutting the place and rebuilding it from the floorboards up to suit his new, mangled reality. But after three hours of unpacking boxes, Fiona’s relentless, high-energy cheerfulness and chatter had started to grate violently on his raw, exhausted nerves

When they finally left for their smart Chelsea flat, the quiet of the new house in Kersley Mews - not yet his home - was deafening. The residual nerve pain in his left thigh and arm was a dull, thudding ache, exacerbated by the autumn dampness, and Cal decided that what he desperately needed was a beer. The kitchen had been filled by his sister with all sorts of organic, GM-free crap that was probably good for him but not one bottle of beer. Fiona still kept treating him like a fragile invalid instead of an experienced soldier learning to stand on his own foot. He needed to prove to himself right now that he could navigate the real world on his own terms, so he grabbed his keys, and stepped out onto the cobblestones.

The cool, gentle London autumn rain washed over him, soaking his close-cropped blond hair and slowly dripping down his neck. After months trapped in a sterile hospital ward, the crisp, damp air felt good against his skin. He began a slow, deliberate trudge down the alley toward the local corner shop, his combat boots striking the ground softly, his posture cautious of the rain-slick stones beneath his prosthetic foot.

He was halfway down the mews when his combat-tuned senses triggered his subconscious to a higher alert status. A distinct sense of wrongness made him pause mid-stride. A woman, red-haired and well-dressed - presumably a neighbour returning home - had just turned into the cobblestoned alleyway. Callum instinctively stepped back, melting into the deep shadows of a garage entrance to keep his profile entirely low and hidden. That was when his grey eyes spotted the bastard: a young bloke in a dark hoodie, crouched low behind a parked BMW. As the woman passed the car, the lad stepped out fast. Callum caught the unmistakable, glinting flash of a blade in the boy’s hand.

Muscle memory took over before Callum’s brain could even process how tired or unconditioned his body was. He didn’t have a weapon, but he had the unshakeable confidence of a platoon sergeant who had cleared live choke points in some of the most dangerous places on Earth. He closed the distance silently on his mechanical foot, cutting across the slick cobblestones and tracking the exact angle of the mugger’s shoulder. Just as the knife came up, Callum lunged from the dark.

His left arm shot forward, and the heavy, bio-electric claw of his prosthetic hand clamped down around the teenager’s wrist like a vice. With a sharp, practised twist, Callum ripped the youth completely off balance, leveraging his own bulk to slam him violently into the brickwork. Before the lad could even slide down the wall, Callum kicked his legs out from under him and drove his good right knee heavily into the kid’s spine, and pinned him flat to the asphalt. The knife clattered uselessly away. Callum retrieved a pair of heavy-duty nylon zip ties from his sporran and cinched them tight around the boy’s wrists until the plastic clicked home. He looked up at the trembling woman, his melodic Highland accent steady and calm despite the adrenaline.

“Call the police, if you please, ma’am.” Turning back to the young thug, his voice hardened. “Ye’ll no be focking waving knives around here, ye focking jobby.”

The woman was still leaning against the brickwork, her hand pressed flat over her racing heart. “You ... you’re hurt. Your neck.”

Callum reached up with his flesh-and-blood right hand, his fingers brushing a jagged line of pink shrapnel scars on his throat. “It’s just an old scratch, ma’am. Nothing to worry about.”

Before she could answer, The front door of an adjacent mews house flew open, hitting the interior wall with a crash, and a young girl burst out onto the wet steps. Her bright red curls were bursting from an oversized grey hoodie, she wore bright neon trainers, and she held her phone like a weapon.

“Mum!” She yelled, sprinting across the wet stones. “I heard shouting! I was on MeTube and...” The girl skidded to a halt, her eyes darting from her trembling mother to the giant blonde Scotsman standing in a kilt with a mechanical arm and a carbon-fibre prosthetic leg. Her brain completely short-circuited. The terror instantly melted into pure, unadulterated awe.

“Whoa,” She whispered, her eyes locked onto Callum’s bionic hand. “Are you ... a Terminator?”

Callum let out a low, dry sigh - the universal sound of a weary Sergeant encountering an over-enthusiastic sprog. “Sergeant MacLeod, lass, I was just trying to get moved in here but it’s all gone t ... it’s all got messed up and now we need the police here.The girl snickered.

“I’m on it, Sarge.” She stepped back, dialling 999. Cal stopped listening as he turned back to the victim, but phrases broke through his conversation with the woman. “ ... Knife, yes. No, your lads will know the good guy. He’s about six foot, blond, wearing a kilt, and oh - he’s only got one leg.”

When the Metropolitan Police response car finally rolled into the Battersea mews ten minutes later, a bemused young Police Constable stepped out into the rain. He looked down at the groaning, tightly bound attacker and then up at the massive Scotsman standing patiently under the only street light. The PC slowly keyed his radio, checking his dispatch notes with absolute disbelief.

“Control, suspect is secure on scene,” the PC muttered into his lapel. “And, uh ... I can confirm the description of the good Samaritan who detained him, yes honestly he’s built like a brick shit house and yes only one leg.”

Cal sighed and pulling out his phone he fumbled with the screen muttering “Davey said that the security cameras would be on this useless thing.”

“Give it to me and I’ll sort it out”, Maisy interjected “Mum why don’t you get out of this rain, I’ve just made tea” She inhaled sharply and looked at the young policeman, “Why don’t you make yourself useful and get your boss so we can get the paperwork sorted”. The young PC looked like he wanted to argue, but one glance at her fierce expression, followed by a look at the massive, rain-soaked Scotsman looming under the street lamp, changed his mind. He mumbled something into his lapel and retreated to the safety of his panda car to radio his skipper.