by Sally Green
Gabriel’s job is to wait in the Council building, disguised as a Hunter until the fighting starts, then send a text message to Celia, and the Alliance fighters will come through the cut. I know Gabriel will be the first to join the battle. I wish he’d hang back, be last and not take any risks, but there’s no point in even suggesting that. The main way to keep him safe is the way to keep everyone safe: get Soul.
Gabriel changes his appearance to a crop-haired Hunter, and I recoil. He looks almost like Kieran. He says, “I’ve taken the ID of one of the Hunters that were working here. Is it no good?”
“Too good, I think.” And I grasp his hand, take a breath, become invisible, and slide into the cut.
The darkness of the cut lasts only a second. Then I’m thrown out into more cold darkness, stumbling to my knees on a stone floor, Gabriel pulling me up. We hardly made a sound, but we hold still, listening.
We’re in a dark room but light seeps through the cracks around the door. There are voices on the other side, two of them, but then it goes silent. I think they’ve left but I wait ten seconds to make sure before using Mercury’s pin to pick the lock. We make our way through the corridors and I quickly get my bearings.
We’re in the southwest corner of the basement. The cells are to the west, but I have to go east to the stairs that come up into the main foyer. We don’t see anyone until we get to the top. Then there are Hunters. Lots of them.
Gabriel pulls me back and whispers, “You think they’re here because of the meeting or because they know we’re coming?”
“Does it matter?”
“At least I don’t stand out so much when there’s so many of them.” And I know Gabriel will try to mingle with the Hunters, find out what’s happening. “You’d better go.”
I can only hope his natural ability to fit in anywhere works even here.
I walk slowly and carefully past the Hunters, making sure I don’t touch any of them, and I’m in the huge foyer of the Council building. It’s not full of Hunters but there must be over twenty of them standing to either side of the main door and there’s a small, slim man behind an enquiries desk.
I take the stairs three at a time, and on the first-floor landing there are more Hunters again: ten of them. I carry on up, slowly now, to the top floor. There are four Hunters on the second landing and I see two more patrolling the third- and fourth-floor corridors, but the top floor is quiet and empty.
It’s different from how I’d imagined it from practicing in the mock-up. The wooden floor has a strip of red carpet leading down the middle but overall it’s light, airy, and warm. I’d imagined it to be dark and gray. I go right and to the first door, as I rehearsed in the forest. The room is furnished and doesn’t appear to be in use. I work my way along the corridor, checking each room, and every one is similar and similarly unused.
I hope for better luck the other way and turn back to try the corridor that heads left from the top of the stairs into the area that Celia hadn’t managed to re-create in the mock-up.
I listen at the first door but there are no sounds except the hiss of phones. That hiss fills the building: there’re lots of people with phones, and lots of computers and electrical equipment. I try the handle and it opens. The room beyond is a large book-lined study. There’s an old leather briefcase by the side of a wooden desk and a coat thrown over the back of a leather armchair. No one is in here but there’s a door to another room. I go to that and listen again. I can hear music. Classical music.
I’m fairly sure that whoever owns the coat is in the room with the music and there has to be a good chance that the owner is Wallend. But I want to get close to him without raising the alarm and I want to find out how many other people there are on this floor.
I go out and try the next door along the corridor. This opens to a smaller office, with a desk and chair, shelves and a small sofa, and some personal things: papers, a laptop, and a handbag. This office also has a door leading to another room, and from it I can hear the classical music again. I think this door leads to the same place as the door in Wallend’s office.
I carry on with my check of the corridor, speeding up now. The next door is locked but Mercury’s pin opens it easily and I find another unused office. There’s one door left to check. There are no sounds coming from behind it. I use Mercury’s pin and enter.
This is not an unused office.
There are three gurneys, each with a gray cloth over them, and their shape indicates that a body lies beneath each one.
I go to the first and pull the sheet back. It’s a woman. Brown hair, eyes open, staring, no glints in them. Her skin is pale. She has a tattoo on her neck: W 1.0. As I pull the sheet further back, I see that her chest is open. There is no blood—that has all been taken out and, as far as I can see, so has her heart. I look at her hands to see if she has similar tattoos to me. Her little finger has a single tattoo on the side of it: W 1.0.
I go to the next body. This is also a woman, black-skinned but mutilated the same way as the first.
The last body is different. It’s a girl. She can’t be more than eleven or twelve. She has a tattoo on her neck and finger as well, and her chest is also open.
The room itself is cold. Very cold. The walls are lined with shelves and bottles that seem to contain parts taken out of these victims. There’s drawers of surgical equipment.
There is also a door to another room. I go and listen. Nothing. No music.
I try the knob and am surprised that it’s not locked. I go in.
The room is vast and contains rows of metal shelves, each protected by a glass door. And on each shelf, bottles. And in each bottle . . . parts of bodies. I slide a glass door back and pick one up to check. In the bottle is something fleshy and dark. I think it might be a liver. It has W 1.0 tattooed on it.
I go to the door at the far end of the room and, yes, at this door I can hear the classical music. I’m sure Wallend and his assistant are inside but there may be guards too. And I know the chances of me getting into this room without Wallend noticing something are slim, so my options are limited. I need to move quickly. But I don’t want to raise the alarm if I can avoid it.
I retrace my steps to Wallend’s office, making sure the doors are locked behind me. I don’t want anyone to run and escape this way. Back in Wallend’s office I go to the door in the far wall and listen for the music but a man’s talking now, though he’s not in the room; he’s on the radio introducing some Beethoven.
I take hold of the doorknob, concentrate again to ensure I stay invisible, and slowly and gently open the door far enough to slip inside the room.
Beethoven starts, nice and slow. I close the door quietly.
The room is bright. Skylights line the ceiling. At the far end of the room are two figures sitting at a bench. They are bent over, working. A man and a young woman. The man has his back to me. He’s narrow, thin, wearing a white lab coat, and although I can’t see his head because he’s bent over I know it’s him: Wallend.
The woman looks toward me and the door. She must have noticed a movement. She says something to Wallend and he turns as I approach him and he looks right through me.
The room is a laboratory, full of equipment and jars and tubes and stuff that I’ve no idea about. I daren’t use electricity in here. I take the Fairborn and see that Wallend and the girl are not bent over a desk but a body laid out on a bench. The body of a man and on his neck is a tattoo in large letters: B 1.0. His chest is cut open, his heart exposed.
I go to Wallend’s assistant and neither me nor the Fairborn hesitate. Her blood flows over my hand and the assistant’s body slips silently to the floor. I allow myself to become visible.
Wallend stares at me. He has a scalpel in his hand. I hold up the Fairborn and say, “Care to try your luck?”
Wallend steps back between the tables and turns, and I go round fast to follow him and
I’m on him in three strides. I grab his arm and pull hard but he squirms round behind a desk. My hand slides down to his wrist and I slam his hand onto the wooden desktop and pin it to the surface with the Fairborn. Wallend’s shaking, not resisting, and I use the scalpel to fix his other hand in place. He still hasn’t said a word: no scream of pain, no cry for help.
Beethoven is playing, a nice tune—very soothing, gentle, not that funereal stuff.
I say to Wallend, “I have to tell you that I’ll probably kill you whether you help me or not. But the longer you live the bigger the chances are that you’ll carry on living. When the rest of the Alliance gets here they’ll want you alive. Want to put you on trial and stuff like that.”
He doesn’t say anything, just shakes.
“I really can’t be bothered with all that, though. I mean, as far as I’m concerned, you’re guilty of murder. Lots of it.”
Now he speaks. “And you’re not?”
“We’re talking about you today. You’re guilty. The question is: can you stop me from executing you?”
“Wh-what?”
“I need you to show me how the Hunters go invisible.”
He shakes his head.
I take another scalpel from the end of the bench and go to Wallend. I chop his right thumb off. Now Wallend screams.
“Painful, isn’t it?” I say. “How’s your healing?”
He’s shaking again, worse now. Blood running across the desktop.
“You’re not good at healing. What are you good at, Wallend? Just chopping people up?”
He looks at me, terrified, then turns away and is sick on the floor.
“You ever get sick when you’re cutting up other people, Wallend?”
He doesn’t reply, just shakes, which I think is a no.
“So, where are the witch’s bottles that you use to make the Hunters invisible? That’s how you do it, isn’t it? With bottles?”
He nods.
“So?” I ask. “Or are you going to let me take the other thumb?” I smile at him.
He stares. “They’ll kill you. Slowly, if I have anything—”
I take his other thumb off and he makes a strange choking cry.
“You want to move to ears and nose next?” I ask. “Or eyes?”
“In the next room! In the next room!”
And I glance over to where he’s looking, to another small metal door between the benches.
I pull the Fairborn out of Wallend’s hand and then the scalpel, and push him to the door. He’s weak and quivering but he goes.
“Open it.” I could use Mercury’s pin but I need to see if he’ll do what I say.
“I can’t. My hands . . .” he says, holding them out and staring as if what’s happened to them is only now registering.
I open the door. Wallend begins to collapse—it’s definitely only hitting him now that he isn’t ever going to be able to turn a doorknob again. I push him through into the next room and he crumples into a heap on the floor. And I just stand and stare.
The Dome
It’s a pyramid of glass inside a glass dome.
The pyramid is made up of glass bottles, neatly piled up on the floor. There are hundreds of them. I step closer and see that in each bottle is a small piece of flesh about five centimeters across and on it is a tattoo, a circle like the Hunters have over their hearts.
I can’t get too close to the pyramid because it’s inside the glass dome. There’s a narrow, shallow circular channel in the floor in which the dome rests.
I reach toward the dome but hesitate and turn to look at Wallend. He’s staring at me, alert now, and I have second thoughts about touching the glass. I walk round the dome. It’s about three meters in diameter and seems perfectly shaped and clear, like an upturned glass bowl. But the more I look at it the more I’m sure it’s not simply glass. The pyramid of bottles inside is neatly—perfectly—arranged, except for a few gaps, as if some bottles are missing. As I continue to walk round, I spot a few more gaps. Or am I mistaken? One that I thought was missing is there now.
And then I get it. The bottles become invisible as the Hunters they are connected to become invisible. I watch for a moment and see two vanish and one reappear.
I walk back to Wallend. “Open the dome. I want to look at the bottles.”
He shakes his head.
I lean forward and hiss at him, “Open it or I cut off your ear.”
“I can’t.”
“I think you can.”
I grab hold of his ear and pull it hard, saying, “Last chance or this is going.”
He hits out at me now with his arms and then kicks me. I hit him back, let him fall to the floor, and take the scalpel and slice his ear off, even though I know it will not help me one bit. But he has to know that I’ll follow through with what I say.
He screams once and clutches at his bleeding head.
I throw the ear at the dome.
Electricity sparks fly around the piece of flesh and it bounces back to land on the floor near Wallend. The dome crackled a blue-white color but only briefly and only in the area where the ear hit it.
I look at the scalpel in my hand and wonder if I should try that.
Why not?
The scalpel hits the dome and for a second seems to fuse with it as the dome changes color around the point of impact. Then the scalpel flies back toward me, landing with a tinkle on the ground.
I make another circuit of the dome, but this time looking at the other equipment in the room. There’s a bench along the wall opposite the door we came through, and there are many things on it: paperwork, surgical equipment, pens, computer, but nothing to indicate how to open the dome.
I say to Wallend, “You must add to the pile of bottles in there. When there are new recruits you want to give the Gift of invisibility. So how do you do it?”
He shrinks lower and I notice the scalpel has disappeared from view.
“And is there a spell that manages the invisibility or does this just give the Hunter whose bottle is in there that Gift?”
He doesn’t answer. His ear isn’t bleeding as much as I thought it would. Maybe he can heal reasonably well after all. His hands don’t look too bad now either.
“If you’re not going to talk to me, Wallend, then there isn’t much point in you having a tongue.”
But I don’t want to do any more surgery on him; it’s disgusting. “Do you use this to open it up?” I ask, picking up a laptop and weighing it in my hand. “I’ve never been great at computers but I’ll try it.”
Wallend cowers but doesn’t try to stop me, so I suspect it holds nothing important and I toss the computer at the dome. Again at the impact zone the dome turns blue-white and the laptop is held there for a second, as if caught, before it is rejected and thrown out. There are sparks and a lot of crackling but after a few seconds the dome is back to its quiet, clear norm. And Wallend has taken those few seconds to move round to me, scalpel in his bloodied paw. He must know he doesn’t stand a chance.
I step toward him and realize as I do that that’s what he wants. His only hope of beating me is to push me into the dome. And I have to admit I’m rather curious myself what would happen.
Wallend charges at me but he’s slow and weak and I sidestep him, and although he grabs me I push him off and use his momentum to force him toward the dome.
He clings to me then.
“Really?” I ask him. “You want to fry or should I just hold your face against the dome and see what happens?”
“No!” he whimpers. And at least now he seems to know that I’ll do it. “Please. I’ll open it. There’s a spell. I need the wand.”
“The wand?” I’ve never heard of anyone actually using a wand.
“That. On the bench over there.”
I drag him with me to where he indicates.
It’s a stick. Admittedly it’s a nice stick with the bark peeled off and it looks worn and smooth. I pick it up and wonder if I’ll feel something, something alive the way the Fairborn feels. But I get nothing.
“How does it work?”
“With the correct words. And the wand.”
And now I’m stuck. Do I let him tell me the words or do I let him do it himself? The amulet should protect me either way. I hold the wand out to him and say, “Take it and open the dome. You’ve got one chance to get it right.”
He nods and the tip of his tongue appears and licks his top lip. He takes the wand in his right hand, grasping it between his fingers. He doesn’t show any pain or difficulty in doing that. I think he’s healed fine.
Instead of touching the dome itself, he touches the point of the wand to the channel it sits in and says, “Dome, liquefy.”
The dome becomes opaque white instantly, and the top changes to be like liquid, like milk, and it flows to the floor and into the channel so that it’s brimming and looks like a glistening, shining pool. The bottles are two strides away, waiting for me to destroy them.
“Bring me a bottle,” I say.
Wallend hesitates and then steps over the channel of milky liquid, reaches slowly up and picks up the topmost bottle from the pile between his two paws. He looks strong and unwavering now, but then goes back to being bent over as he brings the bottle to me. The bottle is plugged with a cork, and tied to the cork is a small label that has a name on it. The Hunter’s name, I guess. Inside is a piece of tattooed flesh. I take the bottle and smash it onto the bench. Nothing happens.
It seems that the dome is a way to secure and protect the bottles. Some of the bottles are still invisible but I think that if I break the bottles then the Hunters will lose the ability to go invisible. Only one way to find out. I snatch the wand from Wallend so he can’t do anything to the dome and I go to the pyramid and feel for one of the missing bottles near the top of the pile. It’s there but invisible. I pull it out and drop it to the floor. The broken glass appears with the flesh and the cork and the label. So, breaking the bottles does break the spell. It’s as simple as that. All I’ve got to do is break all the bottles and Soul’s army will lose the ability to go invisible. I swipe at the top of the pyramid, knocking a few bottles, and as they crash down Wallend shouts, “Dome, solidify.” I turn and see he’s standing, looking strong, and the milky-white wall rises in front of me and I turn and try to move through the liquid except I can’t. The dome is already completely white and solid. And then it clears and Wallend stands on the other side, grinning at me victoriously.