Pandora walks over to a door at the far side of the room, shaking and sweating, and inputs a code. The red light above the door turns green and it slides open. I turn to the Alex thing. ‘Stay here until I call for you. Keep them in check.’ I gesture for Pandora to continue and follow her through to a semicircular balcony. I walk to the guard rail and have to grab it to hold myself steady.
Woah.
The room is vast, as long as a football pitch, and most of the floor is covered by rows upon rows of people on high-tech hospital beds, still and colourless as corpses, covered in winking, ghostly lights. Each has a blue sheet stretching from just below their necks to their ankles, and they are all hooked up to monitors with multiple drips feeding them a variety of fluids, some clear, some dark. At the head of each bed is a bigger computer hooked up to the subjects’ temples and various areas on their limbs and chests. I nudge Pandora with a thought. ‘Keep walking.’
We follow a spiral stairway to the floor and take in the sleeping people, some of them young and fairly healthy-looking, some fading and decrepit, their veins clearly visible. I keep scanning across them, men and women, young and old, black, white, bearded, bald, and notice something else. Around each head, hugging them, are what seem to be bubbles, soft transparent hazes that ripple slightly every now and then.
‘Shimmers,’ I say. ‘How . . . what are they doing?’
‘They . . . they feed on psychic energy,’ she says, managing to keep her voice pretty level. ‘It’s the essence of the power we use. The shimmer processes the power, and it’s transferred through them into the machinery.’ She nods upwards and I follow her eyes. What I thought were just big circular ceiling lights are actually rotating slowly, their light pulsating, throbbing. That feeling I was getting outside, the suggestion of power, the air in here is thick with it. It’s intoxicating, a constant subtle headrush. ‘They, in turn, focus the energy to break through to the other world.’
‘The other world . . . the shimmer world? Is that where you got the shimmers? Did you abduct them?’
‘They’ve been coming through for years,’ says Pandora. ‘Driven by curiosity.’
‘And the people . . . how are they alive?’
‘The shimmers. As well as feeding on thought, they produce it. Visions, dreams, nightmares, anything. They tap into your memory, your fears, your desires, feeding you a constant river of information. The brain is constantly digesting the information, so there is always energy, always power for the shimmer to withdraw and transfer. Perpetual motion.’
I feel sick. ‘So they’re all just dreaming. Forever.’
‘Essentially,’ said Pandora. ‘It also creates a kind of stasis for the body, slowing down all functions, metabolism . . . effectively, they are in comas, regulated by our systems, chemicals and the natural abilities of the shimmers.’ She looks at me. ‘Stanly—’
‘Shut. Up.’ It’s taking most of my concentration to stay still, to not double over and puke acid on the floor. I want to destroy it all, this whole place. I manage to compose myself, breathing deeply, and turn to Pandora, fists clenched. ‘What happens if they wake up?’
‘Most of these subjects have been here for at least two years,’ says Pandora. ‘Studies and experiments suggest that there would be . . . problems.’
‘What kind of problems?’
‘A sudden release of power . . . they would be extremely confused, both mentally and physically. In worst case scenarios, they could be left as vegetables . . . or insane.’
Just like Freeman said.
I don’t know what to do. I have to let them all go, I have to . . . but it might kill them.
Or worse.
I round on Pandora. ‘Why do this? Why torture us?’
‘I’m sure you wouldn’t believe me if I told you that many of these people were volunteers,’ says Pandora.
What? ‘Smith said that,’ I say. ‘I figured he was lying.’
‘He tells many lies,’ says Pandora. ‘That wasn’t one of them.’
I don’t want to believe her . . . but part of me does. ‘Who the hell would volunteer for this?’
‘The precise nature of the experiment was left . . . vague,’ says Pandora. ‘But you’d be surprised what lost, hopeless people will sign up to. I’m sure it’s not a stretch for you to believe that many who manifest powers end up alone, drifting, afraid to make connections. We made it our business to track them down. Many came willingly.’
‘And the others?’
She shrugs. ‘Not so willingly.’
I shake my head, trying to keep my anger under control, wanting to bounce her around the room. ‘But why? Why do it? The world is falling apart. Monsters, black snow, and . . . why? For power? Bloody power? Explain it to me. Please.’
Pandora is quiet for a few seconds, then speaks slowly. ‘The monsters . . . the atmospheric disturbances . . . unavoidable side effects.’ She shakes her head. ‘What I told you when we first met was true. Saving the world has always been the priority. Once we have the power, imagine how things will change! Think of how strong you are. Imagine what could be done with that strength on a global scale. It could be the beginning of the future. A better future. And if London has to suffer some climatic disruption and a few extra monsters which are easily taken down by either an empowered or simply a few people with big enough guns, then so be it.’
‘So be it,’ I repeat. ‘I thought as much.’
‘Stanly—’
‘Tell the technicians to turn then off.’
‘I can’t—’
‘You’re going to do it.’ I think rise and grip and Pandora floats several feet off the ground, clutching at her throat. ‘Tell them,’ I say. ‘I know you want to survive. I know you’d rather survive and fail than die for your cause. I know you. Tell the technicians to turn off the machines.’
‘I . . .’ she gurgles. ‘I can only switch off these machines, there’s still the primary—’
‘My next stop. Do it.’ She doesn’t speak, and I feel the volcano inside me erupt again. ‘TELL THEM!’
‘All right! All right . . . let me go!’
I do and she drops to her knees, rubbing her neck. Then she looks up towards the control room and calls out in a strangled voice. ‘Turn off the drawing machines! That is an order!’
I can see the technicians. They all look terrified, confused, but they start pressing buttons. Across the room bright blues and greens start to become red or wink out altogether, like a sea of dying Christmas lights. The all-pervading buzz and hum of machinery grinds down to silence, stillness, and the great circular devices on the ceiling stop rotating, although they continue to glow. ‘It’s done,’ Pandora whispers.
‘Right.’
Now for these shimmers.
I don’t know how I know what I’m doing. I don’t even know what I’m doing. I look out at this living cemetery, spectral faces frozen in projected dreams, and I feel like I should be sobbing and pounding my chest, but I’m not. I just close my eyes and think wake up and suddenly I’m not in my head any more, I’m like vapour, and my thoughts are coruscating silver threads moving in and out of the aisles of beds, through the hearts of the shimmering parasites and into the deepest chasms inside the empowered, their sleeping souls.
A woman’s voice. ‘Throw me the ball again!’
A man’s. ‘This is my favourite.’
The smell of incense, the touch of sensual skin, loving whispers in the shade of night . . .
Clinking two wine glasses together . . .
Bare toes burrowing into hot, glittering sand . . .
‘Where are we now?’
Immense buildings, bent and twisted, organic, green and blue, with great unblinking eyes that shift their focus and expel the shadows of unknowable entities . . .
The voice of something not human. Barely even a voice, more like somethi
ng pretending to be a voice. ‘We need them.’
A different voice, identical. ‘We need sustenance.’
‘Please.’
A little girl’s voice. ‘Mummy? Are we going in the aeroplane today?’
The taste of spaghetti and meatballs. Bitter wine. Hanging upside-down from monkey bars. Skating across wisps of cloud. A hug the size of the universe. Slowly falling asleep in the folds of a black hole.
‘We need them.’
Stanly’s voice. ‘Please let them go.’
‘We need them.’
‘They need to be free.’
‘We need them.’
‘Please. I’m asking. Leave of your own accord.’
‘We need them.’
‘You were put here by the Angel Group. You don’t belong here.’
‘We belong.’
‘We need them.’
‘They’re innocent! Leave them be!’
‘They are innocent.’
‘We are innocent.’
‘I won’t ask again.’
‘We need them.’
The strands of moonlight that carry me start to tingle. ‘Let. Them. Go.’
I feel anger leaking into the voice, that weird neutral collective drone. They’re getting ready to fight me. Around the edges of my vision I see the tell-tale silhouettes of my nightmares, of madness rising.
Not this time. I warned you.
The moonlight reddens, blood rushing into it, igniting, and Stanly’s voice fills the space, fills everything, as huge and furious as the God of Gods. ‘LET THEM GO!’
The volcano erupts.
A flash of thought and pain bright enough to—
Stanly slides back inside himself, flies—
—backwards—
—I hit the wall and open my eyes, dropping to my knees, my whole body trembling. The shimmers are writhing, falling off their host heads, not shimmering now, flashing, in pain, and for a second, a stomach-churning second, I think I’ve killed them, killed them all with my thoughts . . . but I haven’t. One by one they retreat to the edges, as far away from me as possible, using their arms and their legs, a weird lolloping gait. Alive. Terrified of me, but alive, and I look back at the empowered and feel a barrage of physical jolts as hundreds of eyes flash open, and then there is a wave of energy so dense, so full, so intense that my mind can barely take it, and I realise that it’s their power, all that power being released. They’ve no way of controlling it. Beds start to lift into the air, life-support machines pop in Catherine wheels of acrid sparks, and many of the empowered themselves begin to levitate, limbs flailing. Pandora is rooted to the spot, staring, horrified and fascinated. I manage to drag myself to my feet and move towards them. One of the people closest to her, a bald man, has gone into a spasm. He rolls off his bed, out from under his blanket, and his naked body hits the floor. He coughs. Splutters. Turns his head, and even from over here I can see there is nothing in his eyes, no understanding. He doesn’t try to speak because he doesn’t know he can. All over the room similar things are happening, empowered crying and rolling off their beds, some too weak to get up, some managing to stand, looking around in utter, abject confusion. I stand there, helpless. What can I do? I spin around to look at Pandora. ‘What do I do? What do I do?’
‘Nothing,’ she says, as I knew she would, as I hoped so hard that she wouldn’t. I walk forwards a few steps then stop. I can’t bring myself to get closer to them. I can’t look them in their eyes. I can’t. I can’t. I . . .
There must be something.
There must be. This power, this new power, I can feel it, I’m different now. There must be something I can do, otherwise why do I have all this in me? What’s the point of it? To fight people? To smash things? Is that what I am now?
Lauren’s voice in my head. We can do anything.
Anything.
If you want to do it, you can do it.
Don’t think.
DON’T THINK.
I don’t. Trying not to choke on the air, so thick with expelled energy, I let my mind fade back into itself, past common sense and knowledge, past experimentation, into the deepest recesses, the core of myself, where the bright white spark lives, spinning at a billion miles per hour, screaming out possibility. Empowered start to rise and fall, finding their way back to their beds, which in turn touch gently back down on the ground. The empowered turn over, every one of them, confused and terrified, and I lay them all down on their beds and I think sleep. I think peace. I think beautiful dreams. Eyes start to close, almost lazily. Moans and screams and cries and tears subside. Within a minute there is silence once again. They sleep, and when they wake up hopefully things will be better, even slightly better will do. The shimmers are lined up along the shadowy edges of the room, no longer flashing, just quietly glowing, observing, and I wonder if they have the faintest idea what’s happening. Something tells me they don’t.
Pandora is staring at the empowered, her own face a painting of incomprehension. ‘You . . .’
‘Shut up.’ I look up at the lights in the ceiling, the power collectors, and I think destroy. Each one dims instantly and the room is drenched in the bloody glow of emergency lights. Only now am I aware of the alarm again. ‘One down,’ I say, then look towards the control room. ‘Come on!’ Alex, inside the beast, carrying himself on its back, runs out and down the stairs and to my side. ‘We’re going,’ I tell him.
‘What are you going to do with me?’ asks Pandora.
‘I don’t have time for you,’ I say. ‘You get off easy. For now.’ I wonder where Smith is. Probably too afraid to face me.
He should be.
‘Tell Smith I’ll be back for him,’ I say. ‘Tell him I promise.’ And I turn and walk towards a big rectangular door in the wall, hoping there’ll be a way out in this direction. I think open and we go through the door and there are guards again, and guns, and it’s so typical and boring, we go through them like bowling balls crushing pins, they’re not even people, not even obstacles, we just push them apart and move along. Alex takes the lead. Good. He’ll get us out.
As we traverse more and more corridors I start to see signs of damage. This must be where Connor, Sharon, Freeman and Fitz fought their way in. I wonder where they are. I wonder what state the city will be in. Eventually we run out of guards and we’re walking up a sloping corridor just like the one at Site One. There’s a complicated door that takes a stream of sideways thinking to open, and an elevator whose code I have to unscramble from nothing, and then we ride up, up, up, me squashed against the monster, which I’m starting to notice smells strangely fishy. A clang as the elevator stops, and I think the doors open. Another corridor, another door . . .
And, finally, we’re out.
Chapter Twenty-Three
THE SKY IS gone, obscured by the thickest, darkest clouds that I’ve ever seen. They shift and stretch like great animals as jagged loops of lightning coil and spit between them, thunder reverberating close by . . . or distantly? I actually can’t tell. I look around at the barren docklands in which we’ve emerged, at the beleaguered buildings that seem to be half sinking into the river, at the snow, which has started to melt. It’s more like oil now, warm and sticky. In fact, everything is warm, what should be bruising November cold smothered by an otherworldly humidity. The air is as thick as it was in the drawing area, and it’s not just weird heat, the pressure of a corrupted atmosphere, there’s something else, a taste, an essence that I recognise. It’s something I’ve been aware of for a while but could never quite quantify, those undercurrents, pure dread, like radiation from a box that should have been kept locked and far away. I remember it bleeding from Smiley Joe’s horrible empty eyes, from those living pictures at the Kulich Gallery, from the giant blue dog, and the tentacled beast that Alex is controlling. That energy, the stuff from somewhere else, like the energy given
off by our power, it’s like that, only deeper, older, primal. It’s bleeding through, mixing with the nitrogen and oxygen and air, adding its own hues.
I notice that the monster has lifted Alex from its back with one tentacle. It seems to be handing him to me. I take the slack boy and hold him up, and look at the monster. It stares back, inscrutably. ‘What do you want?’ I ask. It can’t answer me.
Doesn’t need to.
He wants to leave it.
I nod and turn around. The door from which we emerged is camouflaged, you’d never know it was there. I think lock, then turn back to the monster and think lift. It rises into the air until it’s just high enough to be harmless. It’s not difficult, not like manipulating monsters usually is, and I wonder if I’ve broken through that particular barrier. God, I hope so. What a tedious handicap that was. I leave the creature there and Alex jerks abruptly back into consciousness. He stumbles and nearly falls to the sopping, oily ground, but I catch him. Above us, the monster immediately starts to writhe and wail. STAY STILL AND SHUT UP, I think, with a ferocity I wasn’t quite expecting. The creature obeys. Wow. OK then. ‘You all right?’ I say.
Alex nods, breathing deeply. ‘Yeah.’
‘How was it in there?’
He shakes his head. ‘Strange. Really strange.’
‘Nice going back there. You were . . . you did well. And that site is out of action now. We need to get to the other one. I can fly us there.’ I can . . . but I almost don’t want to. Even though I should be entirely focused on taking out the primary drawing area, I need to see what the city has become, at street level. There are blatantly people who’ll need help. Could well be monsters about. Things are getting worse, though. Don’t want to take too long destroying the other area, or it’ll be too late. ‘We should walk for a bit first,’ I say. ‘See if anybody needs help.’
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