Good point, well made.
A deep, primal rumble shakes the place. The control room’s glass windows shatter, sparks fly from computers and machinery, alarms howl, and I just sit, numb to it. Blue light cuts a blinding swathe through the air as though a great claw has gouged a tear in reality itself, and something drops out onto the floor of the drawing area, something twisted and black and slimy, with far too many arms. Leon immediately leaps to engage it. Smith is still standing there.
I can’t seem to move.
Leon makes short work of the new arrival, and Smith turns to me. ‘LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE!’ He reloads his gun and comes towards me, raising the weapon, aiming directly at my head.
‘You need me.’ My voice sounds weirdly neutral.
‘What?’ He doesn’t lower the gun.
I look up at him and our eyes meet. ‘You need me now. You can’t afford to kill me.’
‘You deserve to die for what you’ve done.’ He is vibrating with rage, but I can tell that he knows I’m right.
‘Maybe. But if I die now then this city is definitely one hundred per cent screwed. And most likely the world shortly after that.’
He wants to kill me. He’s desperate. I understand. But he doesn’t do it. His arm drops to his side. ‘Fine,’ he says, his voice low and curdled with hate. ‘What . . .’
‘I’m assuming there’s no way of fixing that.’ I point at the ruined discs on the ceiling.
‘Are you having a f—’
‘A “no” would have been fine. So we need to go up, into the city. Help the soldiers, the army.’
‘I—’
‘Tell Lucius’s lapdog to get his . . . brain off me.’
‘You must be—’
‘Tell him,’ I say. ‘I’m less than useless without my powers.’
‘Fine.’ Smith nods at Leon, who doesn’t visibly register the order, but I feel lead lifting from my bones. I look at the empowered. They’re still sleeping, which is almost hilarious. I sweep across them with my mind, scattering unfriendly bits of hot glass and plastic onto the floor, and walk over to Lauren. ‘Will she be all right?’
‘She’s been plugged in for less than forty-eight hours,’ says Smith. ‘She’ll be disorientated but unharmed.’
‘Lucky you.’ I pick up an unconscious soldier, think off and relieve him of his uniform, then concentrate on Lauren’s shimmer, the warped watery blob of living dreams around her head, entering whatever passes for its mind with my own. Release her, I think.
No.
I won’t ask again. I think RELEASE and the shimmer howls inaudibly inside my mind, but I don’t kill it, just force it off, and it falls from Lauren’s head to the ground and retreats into the shadows. Lauren’s eyes open and she sits up gasping, panicking, crying out. I grab her shoulders. ‘Lauren,’ I say. ‘Lauren! It’s me! Calm down! Calm down, it’s me, it’s all right! You’re all right!’
It takes her a little while to stop hyperventilating, and when she does she stares at me in terror and confusion, her eyes huge and bright and painful. ‘I . . . Stanly?’
‘Yeah.’ I smile, which seems both the most and least appropriate thing that anyone could do right now.
‘What—’
‘Lauren,’ I say, ‘I’m so sorry, but we don’t have any time. Things are unravelling, the monsters are pouring in. I need you fighting.’
‘Pouring in? How?’
‘Freeman lied,’ I say. ‘It was all a lie. The Angel Group were trying to keep the monsters out. He tricked us, we . . . it’s . . . anyway. Why and how doesn’t matter. Not now. We need to be out there, helping people.’
‘But . . .’
‘Lauren.’ I hug her to me, fiercely. It feels like the thing to do. She hugs me back, at any rate, albeit hesitantly. ‘I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through. I’m so sorry you have to wake up to this. But there just isn’t time. Can you deal with it?’
I think she understands. She nods slowly, anyway. ‘I . . . I wanted to look for Sally . . .’
So that was her friend. ‘How did you know she was here?’
‘I . . . Nailah told me. I always thought she’d just run away, that she’d left town. She was so scared of her powers . . . then when we got to the Shard, Nailah told me she was here.’
Well that was great timing. ‘I wanted to come and find her,’ says Lauren, ‘but I . . . I knew we had to finish what we were doing first. I promised, though, I promised I’d come and look for her . . .’
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ says Smith, ‘but there’s a slight end of the world happening outside, so could we hurry this along?’
‘Shut up,’ I growl.
‘It’s OK,’ says Lauren. ‘Just . . . wait a second. Please.’ She pulls on the uniform I’ve given her, then starts running through the rows of empowered, looking at faces. I’m surprised at how methodical she seems to be, how focused, considering what’s happened. ‘Here!’ she calls. ‘Here she is! She’s here!’
I run over. Sally is about Lauren’s age, with long black hair. She’s sleeping peacefully. ‘I want to wake her,’ says Lauren.
‘Don’t!’ says Smith. ‘She has been here for over a year. She will be confused, disorientated, possibly dangerous. The best thing that you can do is leave her to sleep with the rest. And if by some miracle we manage to sort out this unholy mess, you can come back for her then.’
‘He’s right, Lauren,’ I say.
‘I will leave a squad behind to protect them from any . . . unwanted arrivals,’ Smith adds.
Wow. That’s . . . half decent of him.
Lauren doesn’t say anything, she just stares at Sally’s sleeping face, her own face full of such familiar pain. I’ve seen it all before, in her eyes, in her piano playing. I feel as though she’s going to come with us, and I know I need to hurry her along, but I just can’t. I want to give her a second, just a second. I feel as though I’m intruding. I turn back to Smith and see Lucius hurrying towards him. He is dishevelled, his suit torn, a huge purple bruise bulging on his head. ‘The explosion knocked me out,’ he says. ‘What . . . why are they free?’
‘We’re helping,’ I say.
Lucius nods helplessly. ‘Fine. I . . . the machine is useless. Tears are opening all over the city. The army is mobilising. We have some tanks . . . it . . . I don’t know if it will be enough.’
‘What about fighter planes?’ asks Smith.
‘The atmospheric disturbances are too dangerous. It’s affecting communications as well, we can use radio within a certain distance, but there’s no way of transmitting anything outside the city.’
Smith nods. ‘Well, I don’t particularly want to be having long involved conversations with overseas shareholders at this point. So we’d better get out there and use what resources we have available.’
‘You have us as well,’ I say. ‘And my friends are still out there somewhere.’ I hope.
‘We could do with about a thousand more of you,’ says Lucius, sounding almost accusatory.
‘Maybe if you hadn’t been so keen to turn us all into batteries,’ I shoot back, ‘that wouldn’t be an issue.’
‘Shut up,’ says Smith, ‘both of you. We are going.’ He walks away, Leon and Lucius in tow, and I turn back to Lauren.
‘Lauren,’ I say. ‘Please. We need you. Sally will be safer here than she will be with us.’
‘I know,’ she whispers. She leans down and kisses Sally’s lips so lightly, so tenderly, and for a second my brain threatens to break and flood with images of Kloe, feelings that I really don’t need right now, feelings that could get me killed. I bottle them. You’ve messed up, kid.
You don’t get to indulge yourself.
Not now.
Harden up.
Lauren stands up. ‘I’m ready.’
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Let’s go.’ I t
ake her hand, grateful for something that’s not brutal and hateful, and we follow Smith towards the exit. I look briefly at the dead Alex beast as we pass, wondering if he’s woken up elsewhere, what the hell he was thinking, what I should do to him when I find him, and we leave the room with the empowered still slumbering.
Corridor. Cargo areas. Unconscious bodies. More corridors, all bathed in bloody emergency lighting. Alex really did a number on the soldiers, most of whom look like they won’t be awake for weeks. Up some stairs. Bent limbs and shattered helmets. We pick up a few who have regained consciousness; they’re shaken up but they’re also well trained and armed . . . and all we’ve got. A couple who are capable of fighting but injured enough to slow us down are sent to watch over the sleeping empowered. I’m suddenly regretting injuring so many soldiers, we’re probably down a significant number of possible helpers. One more screw-up to add to the list. No-one asks about me or Lauren. Another storage room, and another tremor that knocks us all off balance and sends an avalanche of heavy crates toppling down with a noise like fifty drum kits being blown up. I glance at Leon, still utterly expressionless, and wonder what goes on in his head.
‘Nearly there,’ says Lucius, clutching the machine gun he appropriated from a disabled guard. He doesn’t look comfortable with it.
I try to imagine what we’re going to find above.
I can imagine it . . .
But I can’t.
Chapter Twenty-Five
THE HATCH HAS been left open. Smith goes first, the others behind him, and I bring up the rear, keeping my breathing level, flexing my fingers, trying to be ready, as though anyone could ever be ready for this. Sounds that were muffled before are now terribly clear, screaming and howling and roaring, explosions and thunder, the crackling of otherworldly electricity. I’m expecting footfalls, the stomping of huge intruders, but as of now there are none. Small mercies. Large mercies? Some kind of mercy.
A soldier is standing at the entrance to the tent with his gun raised, the barrel shaking. ‘What’s the situation?’ asks Smith.
‘It’s . . .’ the soldier’s descriptive acumen fails.
‘How are we doing for manpower?’
‘Not well. Reinforcements are coming in from outside the city, but . . .’
‘All right,’ says Smith. ‘Come on.’
We leave the tent. It’s still dark outside – although I suddenly realise I haven’t the faintest clue what time it is, or even what date it is – but the air is lit by sporadic blue flashes, wounds ripped in the skin of the world, and there is an all-pervading flicker of orange and red from numerous fires. The site is strewn with bodies and the wreckage of vehicles, and as I breathe in the air my vision clouds and I feel suddenly faint. I stumble, and I notice Lauren and even Leon do the same, and I know why, because that feeling from downstairs, that feeling of raw undiluted power, has increased tenfold up here. Lauren moans and clutches her temples and I move to catch her as she staggers, but I recoil, because I can hear her. I hear her voice, as clearly as if she’d spoken out loud. It’s too much, she thinks, too much, oh God . . .
She’s right. Too much.
Lauren jumps. ‘You . . . you heard me?’
‘What the hell is wrong with all of you?’ asks Smith, with all the sensitivity of someone with no sensitivity whatsoever.
‘It’s the energy,’ I say. ‘From the other world. It’s so strong, like vertigo . . . nausea . . . we can hear . . .’
I knew these freaks would be a bloody liability, Smith thinks, and I move towards him but Lauren stops me. ‘Don’t.’
‘Keep your thoughts to yourself,’ I say to Smith.
His eyes widen. ‘You heard . . .’
‘Shut up,’ I say. ‘We’ll be fine.’ I look at Leon. He has closed his eyes and is standing very still. I realise that I can’t hear anything coming from him, although I can hear a blur of thoughts from the rest of the soldiers. Terror. Fury. Distrust – of us, mainly.
I can’t go on with all this noise in my brain. It’s not—
‘You’d better be fine,’ snaps Smith, ‘because we need to get a bloody move on.’
‘Just give us a second,’ I say. ‘We . . .’ What? What can we do?
Lauren takes my hand and looks right into my eyes. ‘We can shut it out,’ she says. ‘OK? We can shut it all out. We can.’
‘How, though . . .’
‘Just do it,’ she says, not harshly, but firmly, and I know what she means. It’s like anything else we try to do with our powers. We just don’t allow it to happen. We impose our will. I’m about to close my eyes when a line of blue appears in the air in front of me and something launches itself through, a wolf-like humanoid, pure white, its purple eyes glowing like lava lamps, feet and hands lethal with curved claws, and I immediately think punch. I mean to give it a hefty whack, but what I actually do is blast it straight up into the sky, fifty feet, a hundred feet, more.
‘Oops,’ I say. ‘Didn’t mean to do that.’ Presently the creature comes back down, impacting a little way away with an impressively gruesome splat, totally pancaked. Lauren actually chuckles. ‘“Pancaked”,’ she says. ‘Good word.’
‘This is all very bloody cute,’ says Smith, ‘but–’ He’s interrupted by gunfire as the soldiers take aim at something swooping down towards us, a leathery brown bat-like creature that hisses as bullets tear holes in its wings. Leon is still silent, eyes closed, but his sword rises from its scabbard, spins up and bisects the creature. The two dead, twitching halves spiral to the ground but the sword remains in the air. Pretty neat trick.
‘Hmm,’ says Lauren.
‘We need to go,’ says Smith.
‘Carry on without us,’ says Lauren. ‘We’ll catch up. We’re no use to you if we can’t get our powers under control.’
‘Fine,’ says Smith. ‘Leon, are you ready?’
Leon opens his eyes and offers the barest nod.
‘Good,’ says Smith. ‘At least someone round here is vaguely reliable.’
‘Where are you heading?’ I ask.
What does it matter, he thinks, we’re all fucked anyway. ‘No we’re not,’ I say, more to contradict him than because I disagree with what he’s thinking. Smith’s mouth twists. He really doesn’t like me reading his thoughts.
‘You’d better get that under control,’ he says. ‘I don’t want you wandering around inside my head.’
‘I have no desire to be anywhere near the inside of your head, you arse—’
‘Stanly,’ says Lauren. ‘Don’t. Where are you heading, Smith?’
Smith turns to Lucius. ‘What do you think? The Shard?’
‘I haven’t got the faintest idea,’ says Lucius. ‘It seems academic at this point.’
‘Then why don’t you sit down and wait patiently to be eaten,’ snaps Smith, which seems unfair, considering the thought that just went through his head. He fingers the grip of his gun, as if deriving some perverse comfort from it. Maybe not so perverse, actually. ‘We’ll head for the Shard,’ he says, finally. ‘Try to secure it.’
‘We’ll catch up with you,’ says Lauren.
They head off, weapons at the ready, and Lauren leads me back into the tent and sits us down in the corner. I feel like I’m going to throw up everything I ate earlier on. I’m trying not to hear Lauren’s thoughts, trying so hard that my eyes are watering, and it might be working, they’re already becoming muffled . . . although maybe that’s because she’s got her own brain under control . . . but it’s not just her thoughts, and it’s not just the oppressive weight, the weird humidity, it’s the other sounds, the myriad wrong noises in the distance, the calls of whatever horrors are waiting out there for us, the high ululating siren trills and deep bass roars and grating bleats, like the awful ambient noise from some hellish alien zoo, and over that the sporadic boom and crash of explosions, and screaming, human scr
eaming, and this is our fault, it’s our—
‘Shh,’ says Lauren. ‘You need to calm down.’
The idea of calming down when the world is literally ending is so ridiculous that I have to laugh, a sound I was half convinced I’d never make again.
‘Well,’ says Lauren. ‘Sometimes you have to laugh, don’t you? Now close your eyes.’ I do as she says. ‘We’re fine, OK?’ she continues, her voice perfectly level. ‘Our minds are our own. Our powers are our own. We don’t have to let anything in, or out, if we don’t want to.’ Her voice is so soothing. And what’s more, I believe what’s she saying. I believe it. In my head, and in my chest, and . . . and deeper. I don’t just believe it, I know it. Whether because I already know it or because she’s putting that knowledge inside me, I don’t know – doesn’t matter – and she keeps talking, variations on a theme of ‘we’re OK, we’re in charge’, and I don’t know how much time passes, I’m sure it can’t be long, but when she stops I open my eyes and she smiles, and I can’t hear anything coming from inside her head.
‘Can you hear my thoughts?’ I ask.
She shakes her head and smiles, and we get to our feet and step back out into the world, or whatever it’s turning into. The reports of heavy guns rumble, far away but not, and then there’s another sound, a piercing TSEEEW as an arrow of lightning streaks from the sky and tears right through a concrete wall, expelling dust and flame. Fire climbs behind the nearest row of buildings and something howls. A light, warm rain has started to fall. It feels incongruously pleasant. I turn to Lauren. ‘Shall we?’
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