Freefall

by Roderick Gordon

Although Mrs. Burrows had been conscious for some hours, she suspected someone might be watching her and hadn’t moved from the damp lead shelf.

  The man’s tone hardened. “On your feet, Topsoiler. Don’t make me drag you out!” he bellowed.

  After she’d come to, she had felt incredibly ill, as if all her insides had been mashed up. She wondered what the device in the cart had done to her. She couldn’t remember much after it had started to make deeper and deeper sounds and the sides had suddenly flapped open, but one thing was for sure: It had given her the mother of all headaches. With the pain thumping in her temples and a foul taste in her mouth, she’d lain there in the pitch-black of the cell as she tried to take stock of her situation. The more she thought about it, the bleaker her outlook appeared to her — if she had one at all.

  From the staleness of the air, there was little doubt in her mind that the Styx had taken her below the surface. This meant any chance of escape was highly unlikely. And the Styx certainly weren’t going to send her on her way with a pat on the back. Not after the stunt she and Drake had tried to pull.

  Despite the bleakness of her situation, Mrs. Burrows wasn’t as frightened as she might have been. It was a bit late now for regrets. She’d agreed to act as the cheese in the mousetrap knowing she might lose her life — the Styx were out to get her anyway, so maybe it had only brought forward her day of reckoning. As she lay on the shelf and took deep breaths, she knew she had no option but to accept whatever fate lay in store for her. There was no use ranting and railing against the inevitable. At the very least, the deep breathing had seemed eventually to rid her of her headache.

  “That’s it,” the monster of a man grunted and began to stomp toward her, his hand extended.

  She sat up straight.

  “Good morning,” she said, seizing his hand and shaking it. “I’m Celia Burrows. What’s your name?”

  Flummoxed by his prisoner’s behavior, the man shook her hand back.

  “I’m … er … the Second Officer,” he stuttered.

  “I thought you were a policeman,” she said, peering at the dull gold star stitched onto his jacket. “From your very fine uniform.”

  “Why, thank you,” he replied, letting go of her hand and puffing out his chest so that he resembled an overinflated hot air balloon.

  Then he remembered what he was there for.

  “Come on. Get up,” he growled.

  “There’s no need to be so rude,” Mrs. Burrows retorted. “Manners maketh man.” “I said —”

  “I heard what you said.” Taking her time, she rose to her feet, adjusted her clothes, then stepped past him and through the door into the aisle outside. She took in the dim glow of a shielded luminescent orb above a wooden desk at one end of the aisle and the open door at the other.

  “Where is this?” she asked, as the Second Officer joined her.

  “It’s the clink.”

  “Yes, that much I was certain of,” she said, smiling at him. “But are we in the Colony?”

  “The Colony is several miles away. This is the Quarter,” he replied.

  “The Quarter,” she repeated. “I think my son said something about it.”

  “Your son!” the Second Officer hissed, the pale skin of his face suddenly reddening. “Let me tell you about your son, Seth Jerome, or … or whatever his Topsoil name was.”

  “Will,” Mrs. Burrows put in. “Will Burrows.”

  “Yes, Will bloody Burrows,” the Second Officer said, his voice full of scorn. “That little tyke clouted me with a shovel, he did,” the indignant man added, passing a hand over his almost completely bald scalp as if the injury still caused him pain.

  “Why? Were you a rude pig to him, too?” she asked, her voice all sweetness and light.

  “I …,” he began, then his huge face went through a seismic shift and he snarled, “Don’t you talk to me like —”

  “If you’re the Second Officer, where’s the First Officer?” she cut him short. “Having a breather back at the primate house?”

  The man wasn’t sure quite what to make of this, but answered nevertheless. “He’s on duty at the front desk. What’s a primate house, anyway? Never heard of that before.”

  “No, no reason you should have, but you’d fit right in there. It’s a place up on the surface where impressive specimens like you go to eat bananas. And it’s very popular — crowds come from all around to watch.”

  “I like bananas,” the Second Officer said, his mood lightening as he smacked his lips together.

  “Thought you might,” she murmured under her breath.

  As they reached the doorway at the end of the aisle, she held back for a second to glance at the other cells.

  “Have you got anyone else in here … Drake or perhaps Leatherman?”

  “No, you’re the only one at the moment,” the Second Officer said.

  Dismayed by his answer and thinking the worst, she allowed herself to be escorted from the Hold and into the whitewashed hallway beyond. Although her eyes were still adjusting to the bright light after the gloom of her cell, she caught a fleeting glimpse of the main entrance of the police station. She saw the front desk, where another policeman, a younger version of the Second Officer, was craning his head to get a look at her. But the Second Officer shepherded her hastily to the right, into a corridor with a row of closed doors.

  “My mouth is very dry — I’d really like some water,” Mrs. Burrows said.

  “Better to have an empty stomach,” the Second Officer advised her, nodding slowly, “before the Dark Light.”

  Mrs. Burrows didn’t like the sound of that at all. She tried to remember everything Will had said about the Dark Light and his interrogation as they passed down further corridors, the sound of her footfalls on the polished flagstone floors a delicate counterpoint to the Second Officer’s heavy clumping steps.

  Then she saw an open door up ahead. Light was flooding from the room. She squared her shoulders and readied herself as the Second Officer steered her inside.

  The first thing she laid eyes on was a single chair — a chunky affair made of stout, age-darkened timber. It was in front of a table, on which was some type of device that she immediately assumed was the Dark Light itself. But she didn’t dwell on this as there were two Styx, in all their frightful glory, standing behind it. She’d seen them in Leatherman’s surveillance footage, but she’d never been this close to the people who, according to Will and Drake, were evil personified. Other than the two Rebeccas, she had to keep reminding herself. But these were adult Styx, and she couldn’t stop herself from staring at them. She took in their starched white collars atop their coats of the blackest black. She saw the sheen on their dark hair, and their putty-colored faces so gaunt and stern. She saw the eyes that seemed to burn with an otherworld intensity and which froze her blood.

  The Second Officer had helped her into the chair and passed straps around both her wrists, securing them to the arms of the chair. She’d been so mesmerized by the strange beings that she only really became aware of what the Second Officer was actually doing as he began to fasten each of her legs in place. She tensed her forearms against the thick leather restraints, realizing that she was well and truly in their power. Then the Second Officer looped a strap around her forehead, pulling her head back against the headrest. Because of the design of the headrests, with two padded clamps on either side, she had no option but to look straight ahead, where the two Styx were waiting on the opposite side of the table.

  She heard the Second Officer take his leave and the door close behind him. Then she was alone with the Styx, and the loudest silence she’d ever known permeated the room. The bizarre men simply stared at her, their intent pupils glinting like highly polished black diamonds. She suddenly had the feeling that at any moment someone was going to shout “Cut!” and she’d see the cameras and production crew … that none of this was actually happening but was merely a scene in a movie. She caught herself. No! The old Celia Burrows was tryi
ng to surface — this was precisely the way she would have once dealt with the situation. She had to face the stone-cold reality. She had to face her demons. These demons.

  They suddenly moved, swiveling so that their rake-thin bodies were arched toward each other. Gesticulating jerkily, they broke into a language the likes of which Mrs. Burrows had never heard before. The closest thing she could compare it with was the sound of paper being ripped and torn. It was ugly, and set her nerves even more on edge.

  “Why don’t you just get this over with?” she declared, her tone defiant. “Do your worst, you pair of cadaverous scarecrows.”

  They ceased their exchange and turned to her.

  “As you wish,” the one on the left said in a nasal voice, and immediately reached toward the device on the table. His movement was darting, almost reptilian. His pale fingers flicked a switch on a small black box, from which a twisted brown cable ran to an odd-looking device she had assumed was the Dark Light. While this did vaguely resemble some kind of table lamp, the bulb didn’t look anything like a normal bulb — it was purple, but so dark as to be almost black.

  With a rattle, the box began to vibrate, then settled down again. The Styx adjusted some controls behind the light. As he withdrew his hand from it, Mrs. Burrows was sure there was a suggestion of a smile on his tight lips. She saw the bulb flare a dark orange, then dim again.

  Quite abruptly, without either of the Styx moving a muscle, the room seemed to be plunged into darkness. Mrs. Burrows tensed as her ears popped — she felt as if she was descending in an express elevator. Here we go again, she thought as her teeth rattled together. She remembered the same sensations when the machine in Mrs. Tantrumi’s cart on Highfield Common had been fired up.

  Although the Styx were lost in the gloom, she could hear them talking to each other. Then she heard a click, as if a switch had been thrown, and before her was a scene in which millions of tiny sparks showered down on what looked like a calm night sea. Were they trying to frighten her with these special effects? This isn’t so bad, she said to herself.

  Then it got bad.

  It was as though something was attempting to worm inside her head, like a hungry maggot trying to push its way through the skin of an overripe peach. But whatever it was, it was bigger than a maggot — more like a hedgehog, but a world apart from the storybook Tiggy-Winkle variety found in piles of leaves that have gathered in the garden. No, this one had supersharp steel spines and no compunction about causing pain. And cause pain it did. Mrs. Burrows screamed in agony as it suddenly sunk inside her cranium, bouncing from one hemisphere of her brain to the other and back again. Then it scurried forward to sit just behind her left eye, making her blink involuntarily as her eyelid went into rapid spasm. Then it was back in the very center of her cranium again. She grimaced as her headache returned, worse than ever, and she was sure she was going to vomit.

  Both Styx began firing volleys of questions at her.

  “What is your name?”

  “What is your purpose?”

  “Are you with the man called Drake?”

  “What was your purpose?”

  “Where is Will Burrows?”

  “Where is your husband, Dr. Burrows?”

  “Where are the girls you knew as Rebecca?”

  “Where are the Dominion phials?”

  “Name? Purpose?”

  “Where are the Dominion phials?”

  There was no way she was going to answer, but each question seemed to be launched from afar, as if she was watching a flaming comet plummet toward her from a starless sky. And when it actually struck, she was racked by the most excruciating pain. Her whole body was rigid and straining against the restraints, and she was dripping with sweat.

  The Styx kept the questions coming, repeating them in a continuous cycle, every so often lobbing in a fresh one. And when these fresh ones came, it was as though an even larger and fierier comet, a white hot streak of pure plasma, had been shot straight at her.

  And all the time, the evil hedgehog in her skull was rooting around and going exactly where it pleased. Memories of various events in her life were flashing up before her: First it was the day when she and Dr. Burrows moved into their new flat in Highfield; then the meal at the local Indian restaurant to celebrate his appointment as the curator of Highfield Museum. She remembered the afternoon they had brought Will home for the very first time — when he was not much more than a toddler — and they put him into his brand-new playpen.

  As if a deck of cards was being shuffled, these memories were appearing and disappearing so fast she could barely keep up with them. She wondered if this was her life passing before her eyes because she thought she was about to die. But, no, she realized it was the thing in her head. It was helping itself to whatever it wanted, and she couldn’t do anything to stop it. She felt violated.

  She attempted to hold on to the thought that at least she’d tried to help Drake, tried to assist him in his struggle against these people and, in so doing, to help her son, Will. She’d failed. But at least she’d tried. She was proud of that, even if she was about to die.

  34

  AS WILL AND his father traveled farther down the passage, they came into a section sheathed in fungus. “I never thought I’d be pleased to be in mushroom land again,” Will said, knowing that it meant they were getting close to where the submarine had been. Then, as they heard the sound of falling water, they finally came to the end of the passage. “The void,” Will said.

  For a while they both stared out into the darkness, trying to catch their breath. Dumping his Bergens, Will leaned out as far as he dared from the mouth of the passage to investigate what lay below.

  “Got anything?” Dr. Burrows asked as Will pulled back.

  “No — we’re on some sort of overhang, so I can’t see much.”

  “Marvelous,” Dr. Burrows complained. “I suppose we’re going to have to retrace our steps and try the next offshoot?”

  Will was already pulling a climbing rope from one of his Bergens. “This will be quicker,” he said, scanning around for something to secure it to. He stepped slowly back from the void and farther into the tunnel until he spotted a boulder. Looping the rope around it, he knotted it. Then he went back to the void and played the rope out.

  “You should take this,” he said, passing his father one of the aerosol cans. Then he sprayed himself with repellent and retaped his can to his arm. “Still got my Browning?” he asked.

  Dr. Burrows nodded.

  “Great. Wait for me here,” Will said, and started for the edge.

  “There isn’t going to be any more silliness with — you know — your thing about heights, is there?” his father asked him.

  “I wish you hadn’t reminded me,” Will replied, “but, no, I seem to be OK now.”

  And he wasn’t troubled in the slightest by the irrational urges that had plagued him before. And due to the reduced gravity, it was barely any effort to walk himself down the vertical wall of the void, but the never-ending deluge of water against his face made it difficult to see anything around him. He kept looking over his shoulder in case any spiders or Brights decided to turn up. He estimated he was three-quarters down the length of rope when he caught sight of a passage mouth off to the side. It was level with him, but about a hundred feet farther around the void, and he couldn’t quite get enough traction on the fungus-coated wall to reach it without slipping back. He resorted to swinging himself like a pendulum until he was finally far enough over to drop into it.

  He held the Sten and the can of repellent ready. The passage seemed clear, but he was just giving it a couple of squirts to make absolutely sure when he heard a sound behind him.

  It was the beat of wings in the air.

  He turned.

  It was a Bright.

  About six feet away, with its wings extended and its legs reaching out toward him.

  Will yelled out in alarm and, acting purely on instinct, gave it a full burst from the aeros
ol.

  He’d fully expected the creature to zip away, but it didn’t. It hung there for what seemed like seconds. Then the strangest thing happened. Will could only compare it to when salt is sprinkled on a garden slug and the poor animal froths up and eventually bursts in a messy splurge. In the same but much more immediate way, viscous fluid oozed from joints all over the Bright’s body as it shook frenziedly.

  Then, piece by piece, it simply fell apart. Its two-pronged abdomen was the first to go, with a wet, slurping sound. Then its head lolled to one side and rolled off altogether. The thorax with the wings still attached went into a dive, turning end over end as Will watched it vanish down the void.

  It took him a moment to recover from his fright, then Will began to laugh with relief. “Well, Drake, A+ for this stuff!” he yelled.

  Like a small voice calling through the chaotic fog in her brain, a notion occurred to her. Mrs. Burrows seemed to still retain some control over her breathing, and she began deepening each inhalation, holding it in for longer and longer before she released it. Part of her mind cleared for an instant, as if a wind machine was blowing the fog away, and she grasped at the memory of what her yoga master had taught her. At first it was elusive; then, as she concentrated with every fiber of her body, she had it.

  “I pray that I might not let those around me spoil my peace of mind,” she began to think or say — she couldn’t tell which — over and over and over again.

  Her body still felt as though it was a length of wood bowed almost to the breaking point, but the evil hedgehog didn’t seem to be quite so energetic or effective anymore.

  “I pray that I might not let those around me spoil my peace of mind.” As she continued to repeat this mantra and maintain the rhythm of her deep breathing, the strangest thing happened.

  Where there had been darkness was light.

  It was as though she’d been flipped into a completely different reality, the one she’d left behind as the Styx had activated the Dark Light. For starters, she could see around her, see that she was back in the brightly lit room again. She watched the Styx. One of them was repeating the constant cycle of questions at her while his companion asked about completely different matters. And, to her astonishment, she found she was replying voluntarily to these questions, and in some detail, too. Voluntarily, but involuntarily.