by Nick Moseley
‘I’ll let her know what happened,’ Trev said. ‘Maybe we can get her out here to visit you?’
Vicki’s body language indicated she thought this was very unlikely.
‘First priority, though,’ Trev said, getting used to talking to himself, ‘is to stop Corbyn. And for that I need to get through this door and find out what the hell my supposed comrades are up to.’
He groped around the edges of the hidden door, searching for the mechanism that opened it. The Victorian builders had done an excellent job; there was no obvious join with the rest of the wall and had he not already known it was there, Trev would never have found it. Running his fingers along the top of the panelling, he found a small hole. It was big enough for him to get a finger inside, and he felt a button which clicked down as he pressed it. The door swung open an inch.
‘You coming?’ he asked Vicki.
She shook her head.
‘Oh right, is this door protected like the main doors were?’
Nod.
‘OK then. Stay safe. I’ll be back when we’ve given Corbyn the slapping he deserves.’
Vicki cocked her head in a manner that suggested she wasn’t entirely convinced, but she nodded anyway. Thanks for the resounding vote of confidence, Trev thought.
He slipped through the door. On the other side was a stone staircase, just visible in the shaft of green light that spilled through from the chapel. That illumination abruptly disappeared as Vicki left, though there was also light coming up from below, where the stairs turned through ninety degrees to the right.
Trev closed the door behind him and started down. Although the pain and nausea had faded somewhat he still felt weak and dizzy, and he had to put one hand on the wall to steady himself. It would be embarrassing to survive being mobbed by the shadows only to break his neck falling down the stairs.
Of more concern was what he would find once he reached the bottom. What had happened to his companions? Why had Richie locked him out and why hadn’t any of the others come back for him? He couldn’t imagine Desai just leaving him to die if there was any alternative. At least he hoped not. Had they all decided he was expendable?
There was a low murmur of voices coming from the room below. Trev sidled up to the corner, cautious. Until he had some idea of what was going on he was going to keep to the shadows.
That was the plan, anyway. As he tried to lean around the corner and sneak a look into the room, he was overcome with another bout of dizziness and lost his balance. He staggered down the last few steps and went sprawling onto the unyielding concrete floor.
The voices stopped. Trev raised himself onto his hands and knees and turned his head to the side. The first thing he saw was Desai, sitting against the opposite wall. Her hands were bound with plastic zip-ties.
‘Is this a rescue attempt?’ she said.
Trev put a finger to his lips. ‘Shh, they’ll hear us.’
‘How the hell are you still alive?’ said Richie. He sounded more irritated than surprised. He came into Trev’s field of vision, preceded by the large shotgun he was carrying.
‘I’m still alive? Then you mean that this isn’t the afterlife?’ said Trev.
Richie’s reply was to step forwards and kick him in the stomach. Desai jumped to her feet and took a step towards him, but Richie levelled the shotgun at her and she stopped moving.
‘What are you going to do?’ he sneered. ‘Bloody Custodians. You love playing hero, don’t you?’
‘Are you all right, Trev?’ Desai asked, ignoring him.
‘Been better,’ Trev gasped. Richie’s kick had winded him. He struggled into a sitting position and coughed. ‘Anyone’d think he’s not happy to see me.’
‘Hands,’ Richie said. Trev thought about resisting but decided that annoying the man with the big gun was probably a bad idea. He held out his hands and Richie bound them using another set of plastic handcuffs. He also took The Twins. ‘Go and sit with the rest,’ he said, gesturing with the gun.
Trev stumbled across to Desai and sat down next to her. The room was quite large. The walls had the same wood panelling as the chapel above; although the floor was uncarpeted, three bulky desks, along with several cabinets, notice-boards and other paraphernalia, gave the impression of an office. A heavy wooden chair fitted with leather straps stood out among the more mundane furniture. There was a metal door in one corner, bolted shut. Illumination was provided by a few battery-powered lamps placed about the room.
Montano was sitting against the wall a short distance from Desai. She was tending to Barton, who had a nasty-looking cut on his head. The Custodian seemed dazed. Bookbinder was sorting through a first aid kit, his cuffed hands making things difficult, and Suzanne completed the row of prisoners. She was simply staring into space. There was no sign of Oscar.
There were two men working at laptop computers set up on the desks. They had their backs to the prisoners, so all Trev could see was that one of them was short with unruly brown hair and the other was a stout bald man. There was a third man standing with them whom he had no problem identifying, though – it was Jerry Phelps. Like Richie he was armed with a shotgun. He was leaning casually against the wall, apparently bored, but his eyes were alert.
Trev noticed that Desai was staring at his bloodied face and clothes. He had no idea what he looked like, but he knew it wasn’t pretty. He shrugged at her.
‘Looks worse than it is.’
‘You look like you were hit by a lorry. What happened?’
‘Well, some idiot was driving a lorry through the chapel and–’
Desai’s expression discouraged Trev from finishing the sentence.
‘It’s a bit of a story,’ he said, ‘but between me and Vicki the wolf we managed to hold off the shadows long enough for me to get down here.’
Desai’s frown deepened. ‘But what about all the noise we heard? Sounded like the chapel was getting trashed up there.’
‘Yeah, that was Dravine,’ Trev said. ‘He was doing a bit of interior design, werewolf-style. What’s been happening down here?’
‘Phelps ambushed us at the bottom of the stairs,’ Desai said. ‘Then Richie showed his true colours. By the time we realised you’d been left behind we were trapped. Barton tried to go back for you and Richie nearly knocked his head off with the butt end of that shotgun.’
Trev glanced down the line of prisoners. Barton still appeared only barely conscious. ‘Fair play to him for trying to rescue me, anyway. Is he OK?’
‘I don’t know. He needs a visit to A&E, really, but that’s not going to happen, is it?’
‘Not likely, no.’ Trev nodded at the two men using the computers. ‘Who are those two?’
‘Lysander’s scientists,’ Desai said.
‘What are they doing?’
‘No idea.’
‘What we’re doing,’ said the bald scientist, turning around, ‘is trying to come up with a way to stop the shadow-entities from escaping the prison and laying waste to the British Isles. So if you could keep your mindless chit-chat to a minimum, that would be a great help.’
He eyed them with an expression of condescending exasperation, like an IT technician summoned to a fifth-floor office to fix a minor problem. He wore a pair of deeply-unfashionable glasses and had a sweaty, doughy face.
‘These shadow-entities would be the ones that you created, would they?’ said Trev.
‘No,’ said the scientist, ‘we did not “create” them. With so much negatively-charged energy concentrated in one place, it was almost inevitable that this would happen.’
Trev raised an eyebrow. ‘So you weren’t the people who fed a young woman to that thing to see what would happen?’
‘Who is this man?’ the scientist demanded of Phelps.
‘Trevor Irwin,’ Phelps replied. ‘He’s the Custodians’ idiot savant, or something.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Trev said. ‘And you are?’
‘I’m Dr. Ian Jones,’ said the scientist. ‘N
ow if you’ll kindly shut up, I have work to do.’
‘You’re Dr. I. Jones?’ said Trev.
‘Believe me, I’ve heard all the jokes already,’ said Jones. He turned back to his computer.
‘Okey dokey, Dr. Jones,’ said Trev in his best Short Round voice. Jones’s shoulders tensed.
‘What are your plans for us, Ian?’ asked Desai.
‘Hey lady! You call him Dr. Jones!’ said Trev.
‘You’re not helping,’ said Desai.
‘The way things are going, I’m tempted to have you all shot,’ said the second scientist. He was younger and slimmer than his colleague and his face was florid.
‘Sure, why not,’ said Trev. ‘You’ve already got everyone else killed, so you may as well finish the job, eh?’
‘We couldn’t have predicted that this would happen,’ the scientist replied, ‘and we’re trying to put it right. Maybe you should let us?’
‘Why’s your voice familiar?’ Trev said.
‘I believe we spoke on the phone. I’m Dr. Keane.’
‘Oh yeah, you’re that idiot I spoke to when I called Feargal Deacon,’ Trev said. ‘Although you weren’t at the Custodians’ HQ, were you? You were here.’
‘Yes,’ the scientist replied. ‘We’ve got access to the phone system here. Mr. Lysander told us to intercept any calls directed to the Custodians after your interview with Corbyn. He wanted us to find out whether he’d told you anything.’
‘You did a great job there,’ said Trev. ‘Not. How did you know I was interviewing Corbyn in the first place?’ Phelps gave him a little wave. ‘Oh right.’
‘Back to my question,’ Desai interjected, ‘what are your plans for us?’
‘At the moment we’re too busy with the shadows,’ Jones replied. ‘We’ll decide what to do with you after we’ve solved that problem.’
‘Assuming you do solve it,’ said Trev. Neither scientist replied.
‘What do you think?’ Desai whispered.
‘I think we’re screwed,’ Trev said. ‘With what they’ve told us already, there’s no way they’re going to let us walk out of here.’
Desai nodded. ‘Pretty much what I thought. Which means we need a plan.’
‘Oi, shut up,’ said Richie, waving his shotgun at them. ‘No whispering.’
Trev pointed at the two scientists, who were muttering to each other over one of the computers. ‘What about them?’
‘They’re allowed,’ Riche said. ‘They’re doing something useful.’
‘Hey, we’re happy to help if we can.’ Trev spread his hands as best he could. ‘I’ve got a GCSE in science. And art too, if that’s any use.’
‘Did your GCSE art course teach you how to repair a highly complex energy-gathering apparatus that’s been allowed to deteriorate for nearly a hundred and fifty years?’ asked Jones.
‘Not as such,’ Trev replied, ‘though I can do a pretty decent still life.’
‘What’s wrong with the machine?’ Desai said.
Jones folded his arms. ‘It overloaded. Fortunately Hartley Banks built it with fail-safes so that it couldn’t go critical, or Spectre’s Rest would’ve been the first prison in space some time ago.’
‘Banks miscalculated the rate at which it would draw in the negatively-charged energy,’ Keane explained, as if lecturing a group of educationally sub-normal students. ‘Imagine the Anathema Engine as the motor of a vacuum cleaner, sucking in the energy to a central point so it can be disposed of. A certain amount of that energy is used to keep the “motor” running, while the excess is allowed to bleed off into the network of smaller conduits under the prison’s lawns, which disperse it harmlessly.’
‘Your vacuum cleaner analogy is being stretched to breaking point,’ Trev observed, ‘but I follow you, I think. So what went wrong?’
‘As I said, it became overloaded,’ Jones said, picking up where Keane had left off. ‘The Engine drew in energy at a faster rate than it dispersed it. Banks had known that he wouldn’t get it right first time, but he died before he could make any adjustments. As a result the energy built up until the fail-safes kicked in. There’s a kind of safety valve or gate built into the system. Usually it prevents energy from feeding back into the conduits, to keep the flow moving in one direction. However, if the build-up in the Engine itself becomes too great, the safety releases and “depressurises” the system. That’s what happened, and that’s why the energy built up in the conduits instead. The Engine stopped running altogether.’
‘And you need to fire it up again,’ said Trev.
‘Yes, but the problem is that the safety mechanism is broken and we don’t have the knowledge – or time – to repair it, let alone recalibrate the system so it works properly,’ said Jones. ‘Sooner or later Corbyn is going to leave the prison and go looking for fresh victims, and then we’ve had it.’
‘Before we can even think about fixing the Anathema Engine we need to find a way to keep the shadows bottled up here,’ Keane said.
‘He can do that,’ said Bookbinder.
Trev looked round and saw that the doctor was pointing at him. ‘Me? What are you on about?’
‘You’ve got some of that energy in you, haven’t you?’ Bookbinder said. ‘I felt it when we first shook hands. I’ve been here long enough to know it when I feel it. That’s why the shadows are drawn to you.’
‘Is that right?’ said Jones, exchanging a glance with his colleague. ‘If it is, I think you might be able to help after all.’
Forty-Three
‘I’d like to formally withdraw my offer of assistance,’ Trev said. ‘I didn’t like that look you two shared just then.’
‘We’ve got a plan, of sorts,’ said Jones, ‘but it relies on us being able to draw some of the energy down here to start up the Engine.’
‘I thought you said it was broken.’
‘It is. Or rather the fail-safes are. But we might be able to use that to our advantage.’
‘How?’
‘We jam the safety outlets on both sides of the Engine and let the pressure build up. The resulting overload would disperse all the energy in one fell swoop.’
Desai scratched her head. ‘Didn’t you say that an overload would launch the entire prison into space, or something?’
‘Well, that might’ve been a slight exaggeration on my part,’ said Jones. ‘The truth is that we don’t know. We’ve been running some calculations but there isn’t enough data to give a reliable prediction. It’s quite possible that an overload would just destroy the lawns in front of the prison, which are directly above the Engine.’ He shrugged. ‘Though there’s a chance that the main building might go too.’
‘So we’d stop Corbyn but we’d die ourselves?’ said Trev. ‘I only like half of that equation.’
‘Corbyn’s got to be stopped, though,’ said Montano, standing up. ‘What are the other options?’
‘There’s not much of a list,’ Keane replied. He tapped a fingernail against his front teeth. ‘In fact, that previous idea is the list.’
‘And time’s against us,’ said Jones. ‘Before long Corbyn’s going to work out that he’s not confined to the conduits and can leave the prison whenever he wants.’
‘Our only real advantage is that he’s still experimenting, figuring out his limits,’ said Keane. Trev remembered the different forms that Corbyn had taken before learning to separate himself from the conduits. ‘He’s only been active at night, which suggests that he’s sticking to his old routines out of habit. It’s not like sunlight can do him any harm now.’
‘Right. So we either take the risk of possibly blowing ourselves up and try to stop Corbyn, or we allow him to leave and everyone in Britain becomes a shadow?’ Trev puffed out his cheeks. ‘Man, it’s great to have options.’
‘Allowing him to leave isn’t an option,’ said Montano.
‘Can’t the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many, just this once?’
‘No.’
‘Bolloc
ks.’
‘If the shadows are drawn to you, then we’ll need you in the Engine,’ said Jones to Trev. ‘We may as well get started.’
‘In the Engine?’ said Trev.
‘It’s a modified Funkelay Cage,’ the scientist replied. ‘You need to be inside it, so that when the shadows arrive their energy will start to be pulled into the circuit.’
‘And what happens to me?’
‘You’ll need to get out before the energy builds up too much. After a certain point, you’ll be trapped in there.’
‘How will I know when that is?’
‘It’ll be the point at which you find you can’t get out.’
Trev folded his arms and stared at Jones. What happens if I just tell them all to piss off? he thought. It was certainly tempting. He was tired; his head was still pounding; he was covered in his own blood. And yet, here he was again, being asked to stick his head in the noose. The most annoying thing was that they were right – Corbyn hated him and would be guaranteed to show up if Trev went out to the Engine.
But isn’t it someone else’s turn? came the voice of Cowardly Trev. I mean, it’s probably an awesomely noble thing to sacrifice yourself for the greater good, but how can you feel all warm and fuzzy about it if you’re dead?
Crap, now everyone’s looking at me.
‘What do I have to do?’ he said, resigned.
‘I’ll show you,’ Jones said. He glanced at Richie, who was scratching his backside. ‘Found that bloody cat yet?’
‘Not yet, but I will,’ the big guard replied. He rubbed at a set of claw-marks across the back of his hand. ‘Little bastard’s in here somewhere.’
Jones led Trev through the metal door and into a very large room with plain red-brick walls and a stone-slab floor. Keane, Desai and Montano trailed behind. Looking up, Trev saw that the ceiling was curved, giving the impression of a broad tunnel. As in the other room, illumination was provided by a handful of portable lanterns. Most of them were arranged around the Anathema Engine itself.
Trev had seen a Funkelay Cage before, and while that had been almost a work of art, the Engine was much more functional. It followed the same basic design – a ring of gently angled, floor-to-ceiling stone pillars set with metal inlays – but on a larger scale. The pillars were thicker, less ornate. The inlays were less intricate. It had been built to take long periods of continuous use.