by John McNally
“No!” Finn cried, but it was great-glass-elevator time again, as Heywood picked him up and tipped the test-tube upside down into the bottom of the lizard’s tank. Raffles, the size of at least a T-Rex to Finn, became extremely interested.
Except there was a problem. Finn wasn’t coming out of the testtube. He had managed to wedge himself across the curve at the tube’s base, his half-melted sneakers giving a good grip against the glass.
“Come on, man!” yelled Kaparis.
ZIPASH – out shot Raffles’ lasso of a tongue and Finn felt it slap and stick against the glass.
THWACK – Heywood bashed the tube against the corner of the tank to shift him.
“Arrrghhhhh!” Finn shouted as he shot down the steepest glass incline and thumped out into the sand.
He got up. He was surrounded by glass and sand dunes – and a very hungry lizard, its head alone the size of a double-decker bus.
ZIPASH – the tongue lashed out again. Finn dived and it slapped the side of the tank beyond him. He got up and did the only thing he could do – run.
“HA!” laughed Kaparis as he saw a tiny cloud of dust shoot across the sand.
Quick as a flash, the lizard was after Finn on mad clockwork legs. Finn ran for a mock-ruined temple in the sands ahead. ZIPASH – the tongue clipped his right shoulder like a punch as he ducked it, hitting the sand ahead like a lightning strike. Before Raffles could reel it in and fire again, Finn made it to the temple.
“Come on, Raffles!” said Kaparis, mindful of the time.
Finn hid behind a pillar and tried to think what next. He was in a glass box full of sand, his only cover this ridiculous mock temple and a bleached wooden stick. There was a hanging heat lamp and, where the flex entered the tank high above, there was a tiny gap, but even if he could get up there without being eaten, even if he could squeeze through it, they were hardly going to just watch him escape. The only other features were a water bowl and lizard poo.
ZIPASH – Raffles’ tongue whipped round the corner at him.
He needed a disappearing act, and there was literally nowhere to run. But still he ran, falling back as ever on the three pieces of advice his mother had given him on her deathbed.
Trust yourself. Be yourself. And – the one he found most useful at times like this – just keep going.
He had to think of something radical. He had to think fast. He threw himself forward to try and bury himself in the sand, but he couldn’t dig himself in fast enough, and anyway, he thought, they’d simply pick him out again in no time.
Then he saw something.
In the sand in front of him, near where he’d first been knocked from the test-tube – a shard of glass, no more than a chip, that had been bashed off the top of the tube.
It was nothing. But to Finn it was a hand axe, a dagger … it was something. He scrambled across and grabbed it.
Kill the dinosaur. Great. How? What did he know about dinosaurs?
ZIPASH – Finn scrambled behind the water bowl for safety.
They were related to birds …
Birds … Of course! A disappearing act—
Finn ran hell for leather towards the stick of wood which was propped across the back of the tank.
ZIPASH – Raffles spotted him and this time scored a direct hit, the tongue wrapping round his leg like a living rope, but Finn kicked back and broke its grip. He ran on and leapt up on to the stick. He had to get this right. He had to get height. He climbed and ran up it. Giving it his all.
Raffles hissed below and opened his great jaws to show his dagger-like teeth. Finn had been in a mismatch like this once before. Against a bird many times his size …
Remember being swallowed by the bird, he told himself. Just avoid the teeth and you’ll be fine. Think beyond the mouth; think soft flesh and stomach. Think about Carla. Do it for her …
“There! Get him! Get him!” roared Kaparis.
The time was now. Finn closed his eyes, took the deepest breath he could, and, pretending to lose his footing, he fell – or rather dived – through the air … straight into the open jaws of Raffles – SCLUMP!
“YEEEAAHSHSHSHSSS!” roared Kaparis, savouring the moment.
As Finn was sucked down, down into the belly of the beast, the last thing he could hear was:
“HE’S DEAD! INFINITY DRAKE IS DEAD!”
EIGHTEEN
FEBRUARY 21 22:03 (GMT+3). Great Cavern, Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki. T minus 12:48
26… 27… 28… 29…
Deep in the eternal darkness of the lizard’s guts, Finn counted to try and stay sane.
30… 31… 32… then he could count no more. The acid liquid that engulfed him, burning his skin, was too much – he had to get out. Months before, he had kicked the gullet of the bird that had swallowed him and been expelled. So with the lizard, it was surely a matter of scaling up the stimulus. He took the shard of glass and dug it into the flesh around him, ripping at it. The flesh tightened so hard he thought he would be crushed to death, then – HUUUUUUCCCK – suddenly the world seemed to explode as he found himself propelled into the air in a bloody projectile of vomit – THUMP – to land, skin still burning from the acid, in the sand beneath the heat lamp.
Behind him, Raffles looked, as far as a lizard could look, freaked out.
Ahead, he could see Kaparis and his lung being slid out of the chamber and down to the operating theatre, surrounded by technicians and medics.
Finn scrambled up and leapt up into the water bowl – SPLASH! – to rid himself of the acid. Then he looked out of the tank, out along the top of the iron lung to see if it was still there …
And it was.
Hope.
In the shape of the 40mm Apache helicopter Pan and Amazon had flown in on.
YES! Finn leapt from the pool of water and ran back to the bleached wooden stick at the back of the tank. This time Raffles ran to cower in the furthest corner.
The heat lamp was high above, but maybe, if he could get to the very top of the bleached stick …? He ran up the main trunk of it, then took to all fours to pull himself along a twig that branched off, thinning as it rose. Its tip was the highest point beneath the lipped edge of the conical shade.
Wobbling, he pulled himself to the end of the twig. Once there, he manoeuvred himself till he was perched on the tip, like a diver on the edge of the highest board. He could feel there was some give in it. Some spring.
He took the deepest of all breaths, thought of Carla … and jumped once – twice – three times – then LEAPT up and out and just caught the hot-lipped edge of the heat lamp.
It swung wildly, but he was wild himself. He hung on and clawed and hauled his way up the hot, steep side of the shade, until he made it to the flex it dangled from.
From there, it was a short shimmy up to the smallest of all gaps between the flex and the access hole in the lid of the tank.
Raffles watched with some relief as Finn squeezed his way through, and out.
FEBRUARY 21 22:09 (GMT+3). Great Cavern, Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki. T minus 06:07
Kaparis looked up. The six members of the second specialist medical team he had hired from Zurich were around him. This one was a crack surgical team who would perform the external part of the operation and was led by the incurably greedy surgeon known to Kaparis as the Big Swiss Cheese.
“Permission to open the lung and begin the procedure?” the Big Swiss Cheese asked.
“Get on with it,” said Kaparis.
He took a deep iron lung breath and held it.
KERCHUNK – three clasps were released – HISSSSsssss – air pressure equalised and the lung was opened. Despite being unable to “feel” anything, this procedure always disturbed him. His optical array disappeared and suddenly he was robbed of 360-degree vision. For a moment, he was properly exposed, all but naked. His body had been kept in perfect condition over the years of his paralysis, but now it had nothing to keep him alive but a single
held breath.
Then he felt the hissing, the positive pressure mask come down over his face, and he was able to breathe again.
To live again, he thought, as he had for years, not as slave to one kind of machine or another.
Beneath the mask he actually smiled.
FEBRUARY 21 22:11 (GMT+3). Great Cavern, Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki. T minus 04:28
Finn dropped down the side of the tank and sprinted to the waiting Apache, thinking please, please, please start …
He leapt into the cab and looked at the controls. It was enough like the chopper that Delta had given him lessons in back in England for him to understand what was what. He flicked a series of switches, hit a green button and—
WwwhoooooshshshsSSHSHSH …
The turbine screamed to life and the rotors turned.
He had no fear of being overheard. The henge was beginning to roar.
On screen, the two nano-Tyros – Pan and Amazon – were being placed on two full-size bunks inside the submarine Vitalis. The rotors above Finn were turning faster and faster.
Wacawacawacawacawacawacawacawacawacawaca …
The technicians in the henge sealed the iron doors of the Vitalis and ran for the safety of the perimeter as white lightning began to whip and crackle around the core.
Finn had seen many hot areas created and this one was no different. The lightning would become a continuous arc, then expand into a shimmering ball of perfect light.
And Finn knew that no one could tear their eyes away from such a spectacle.
Wacawacawacawacawacawacawacawacawacawaca …
FEBRUARY 21 22:14 (GMT+3). Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki. T minus 01:29
The noise coming out of Santiago was one thing.
“Ouuuuwuuuuwuuuuwwuuwwuuu …”
But the noise rising up the shaft towards them from the Boldklub henge as it powered up was something else.
Hudson had recognised the stone circle of particle accelerators at once, but the light and noise was freaking Santiago.
“Ah … aaaaaAAHHH!” he wailed, stressed to the pit of his being and desperate to signal to the Carriers in the dome to pull them back up. He reached for the flashlight, but Hudson stopped him.
“It’s OK! It’s going to be OK! I know what this is!” he insisted.
They would have to report straight back to the Primo, but first Hudson had to identify whatever was at the centre of the henge.
It looked like some kind of submarine, but how could it be?
They had to take a closer look.
FEBRUARY 21 22:15 (GMT+3). Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki. T minus 00:23
As the power indicator turned from red to green on the Apache, Infinity Drake maxed out the thrust and pulled back hard on the stick.
FEBRUARY 21 22:15 (GMT+3). Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki. T minus 00:17
In the operating theatre, Kaparis was surrounded.
The surgical team in green scrubs worked as a seamless unit to prepare him.
The cannula was taken from its sterilised sheath and placed opposite the incision site on his thigh.
Outside, the accelerator had reached tipping point.
WOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMM!
Dangling above, as the screaming of the henge reached its fever pitch, Hudson got a view of one of the technicians’ screens. On it were faces, bodies, strapped into vibrating bunks. Obviously the crew of the submarine in the core.
Then he saw a face he recognised. A face he knew from a thousand briefings.
Carla Salazar.
The crucial moment had arrived. All it needed was the final order.
“Ready to commence Boldklub sequence,” said Heywood, bent over his boss.
He lifted for a moment the mask that was forcing air into Kaparis’s lungs.
“DO IT,” ordered Kasparis.
A switch was thrown. Power surged.
WOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMM!
FEBRUARY 21 22:15 (GMT+3). Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki. T minus 00:00
Wacawacawacawacawacawacawacawacawacawaca …
Unseen above the electromagnetic maelstrom was an attack helicopter the size of a baby bird.
Finn pushed the craft on as the world beneath flashed magnesium white – WHOOOOOM! – and the crazed hoop of energy resolved into a perfect orb of white light.
The hot area.
Finn had been there before. He would go there again. There was no way back but this. It wasn’t complicated; it was a fairy tale. He had to rescue Carla. He had to kill the giant or die himself. And Infinity Drake did not fear death, for in it lay all the possibilities of oblivion, of communion with the love that brought him into being, with his mum and with his dad.
He put the helicopter into a drifting trajectory that would eventually see it crash into the river at the back of the cavern.
Then he opened the cab and stepped onto the weapons’ hard mount in the fierce downdraft.
Wacawacawacawacawacawacawacawacawacawaca …
He meant to throw himself out. Instead, he dropped. Simply fell. In shock.
Hudson?
Hudson??
Hudson???
Hudson was dangling with Santiago just a few metres above him, staring in rapt fascination at the spectacle beneath.
It could not be, but it was.
Hope, Finn thought as he felt himself hit the edge of the perfect light, the perfect end.
In an instant, it possessed him and his mind flashed ice white.
NINETEEN
FEBRUARY 21 22:37 (GMT+3). Great Cavern, Monastery of Mount St Demetrius of Thessaloniki
“OOOOOOOoooooaaa …”
It wasn’t an animal sound, and yet it wasn’t quite human either.
It’s me, realised Finn.
His eyes opened.
White. Absolute. Solid seamless white with no depth or perspective.
He pulled himself up. He blinked into it. As he did so, the white above turned a smudgy surreal grey. More white ebbed away as he found his feet and mind, and the “ground” he was standing on revealed itself as rough glass – endless trenches and ridgelines of crystal, a raging sea caught and frozen.
Distorting through the waves, he could see a dark mass. He walked along the trench he was in and then scrambled up a ridge twice his height. Strange waves of pressure buffeted him. Shockwaves? Sound waves? He was still in a daze.
Then, from the crest of the ridge, he saw the Vitalis lying on its side like a great beached whale, perhaps a hundred metres away – at a scale of 1:100,000.
Finn slid down the ridge and tried to run across the chaotic terrain, leaping and sliding as best he could. The misty grey sky brightened. He felt more shockwaves drumming his chest.
As he approached, he realised he was on the same scale as the submarine – everything in the hot area must have ended up at the same scale, no matter what size they had started out. It felt weird, to be relatively normal.
He wondered if anyone inside would be conscious. Or even alive. Would he be spotted? Surely the technicians would have a ready way of finding the craft – some sort of scanning microscope?
Just get on board. Unnoticed. Stow away, somehow. Sabotage, somehow. Kill the giant.
That was as detailed as Finn’s plan got.
If Hudson was here, then surely Al must be near … Commander King … All of them.
Just keep going.
Finn reached the side of the Vitalis and the door of the hold. It was a garage-sized door that ran half the length of the vessel – he had seen it open, seen them loading in the cables. He found a raised button and struck it with the heel of his hand – KER-CHUNK. A hydraulic lock fired and the door gaped open.
Yes!
The hold was full of racks. Hundreds of bundles of Splice cables strapped to them. Before Finn could take in anything else, he felt a shockwave hit his back. He looked round.
Water exploded towards him.
Fin
n dived in and hauled down the hold bay door as – SLAM – the force of water struck it, knocking him across the hold, but also – CHUNK – slamming it shut again.
Chaos. He was thrown around the racks, the water he’d let in sloshing and soaking him as tornado turbulence took possession of the Vitalis.
But within a minute, the vessel became steadier, much steadier. And, after all the chaos, silence.
He could hear himself panting.
He took stock. There were two portholes, like observation panels, through which light filtered. He was soaked, but the hold was only ankle-deep in water. The Splice cable racks filled most of the space, but also gave him a place to hide.
At one end of the hold was a series of hatch doors. Finn sloshed over to the first of them and a stencilled sign identified it as AIRLOCK A.
Airlock?
He looked at the big hold doors he’d jumped through, and it all made sense. The whole bay would have to be flooded so that they could float out the cables.
They’re going to flood this whole place, he realised.
There was a wheel on each of the hatch doors. He turned the wheel on Airlock A anticlockwise, the hatch door opened and he climbed through into a smaller chamber. There was another door on the opposite side. Another wheel. Slowly, he turned the wheel, opening the hatch into the main body of the Vitalis.
He didn’t move but listened hard. He could hear the whirr of fans, small digital beeps – the vessel’s computers coming to life. But what about its crew? He could hear no movement.
He dared to step through and into a passage that led past the reactor room towards the door marked CREW. He listened again. Nothing.
He opened it slowly and peered in.
There were the Tyros and the doctors in the bunks, laid out in their high-tech tombs as still as stone. And there was Carla …
He walked to her in a trance. He could hardly believe it. She was … his size. He’d never seen her like this before. She was at once the most familiar and the most strange thing he’d ever seen. She was … normal. He was about to try and shake her awake when he thought better of it.