‘We’ve actually been doing pretty well without your help so far,’ Jack snapped.
‘Perhaps, but before, you only faced the Voidborn,’ Selenne said. ‘Now you face something infinitely worse. You cannot hope to fight it alone. Even together we may not be strong enough. Without each other we are all doomed. That much is certain.’
‘Sounds a lot like no choice at all to me,’ Nat said.
‘I guess that’s the point, isn’t it?’ Jay said, turning to Sam. ‘We all know what happened in London. We’ve got no cards left to play. I don’t really see how this could get any worse. Truth is, we’re probably screwed either way, but if this gives an option to go down fighting, then I say we take the chance.’
‘I’m not leaving the others here,’ Sam said to Selenne. ‘Wherever we’re going you have to promise we’re coming back. No one gets left behind.’
‘You have my word,’ the Illuminate replied.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ Mag said. ‘You go and I’ll wait here. Not really sure this is a ride I want a ticket for anyway.’
‘So?’ Sam said, looking at Jay, Jack and Nat. ‘What do you think?’
‘You know me, I’ll try anything once,’ Jay said with a wry smile.
‘What other option do we have?’ Jack asked.
‘A nice remote tropical island somewhere?’ Nat said. ‘No Voidborn, crystal clear waters, coconuts falling gently on the beach, that kind of thing. How about that?’
‘Actually, now that you come to mention it, that does sound pretty good,’ Jack said.
‘Guys . . .’ Sam said.
‘I’m in,’ Jay said.
‘Me too,’ Jack said with a nod.
‘Like Jay says, what choice have we really got?’ Nat asked.
‘OK, let’s do this,’ Sam said, turning back to Selenne. ‘What exactly do you need us to do?’
‘Please, each of you place your hand on one of the columns,’ Selenne said.
Each of them moved to one of the cylinders and did as they were instructed; the columns started to glow from within as each of them touched their skin to the warm surface. Sam felt an odd tingle run through his palm and up his arm, followed by a slightly disorientating feeling, as if he was somehow looking at himself from outside his body. Suddenly the room seemed to drop away from beneath him and he had the sensation of falling slowly downwards.
‘Where are we going?’ Sam heard himself asking, his voice echoing strangely in his ears. ‘Where are you taking us?’
Selenne’s whispered reply seemed to come from a long way away as his vision gradually faded into whiteness.
‘To a place that no longer exists . . .’
6
Sam woke with a start, sitting bolt upright as if suddenly emerging from some horrible nightmare. He looked around, trying to make sense of his surroundings. The room he was in had walls made from a substance that looked almost like ivory, with beautiful silver geometric patterns inlaid into its surface that shifted slowly like the patterns inside a kaleidoscope. He swung his legs off the edge and stood up. An instant later, the raised sleeping platform melted into the floor, vanishing from view. Something felt off with his perspective as Sam got unsteadily to his feet. It was as if he was looking at the world from the wrong angle. He looked down at himself and felt a jarring shock as he lifted his hands up to his face. His skin was no longer pink, but paper white, each finger tipped with a sharp black nail that was almost more like a claw. The back of his hand was covered with interlocking bony plates, and as he touched his hand to his face he felt the same hard texture. He walked over to the silvered panel in the wall and his breath caught in his throat as he saw himself properly for the first time. Staring back at him was one of the Illuminate, eight foot tall and covered from head to toe in pale bony plates, his eyes glowing with bright blue light.
‘What the hell?’ Sam whispered to himself, touching his fingers to the suddenly unfamiliar contours of his face. He stared at himself for a few more seconds before turning and walking through the brightly lit doorway in the opposite wall. He stepped out on to a sunlit terrace and stood looking, mouth wide open, at the city that covered the landscape in front of him. Gleaming white towers stretched up to the blue sky overhead, long fragile-looking pathways suspended around and through them. At ground level the land was immaculately landscaped with carefully tended beds filled with bizarre-looking plants and rolling lawns of what looked like a kind of turquoise grass. It was the most beautiful city he had ever seen, and yet it was made somehow sinister by the grave-like silence and seeming lack of inhabitants.
‘Some view, huh?’ a voice said behind him and Sam spun around to see another Illuminate leaning against the wall.
‘Who are you?’ Sam said, his own voice sounding strange and unfamiliar.
‘I could ask you the same question,’ the Illuminate replied, his eyes narrowing slightly.
‘My name’s Sam,’ he replied. ‘At least, it was.’
‘Sam?’ the Illuminate asked. ‘It’s me, Jay.’
‘Jay?’ Sam said. ‘You’re . . . um . . . not looking yourself.’
‘Yeah, I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more,’ Jay replied, gesturing towards the rest of the apparently abandoned city.
A few seconds later, a female Illuminate walked out on to the terrace ten metres away, looking just as bewildered as Sam was feeling.
‘Nat?’ Sam asked as he walked towards her. ‘Is that you?’
‘Who are you?’ the Illuminate replied, backing away from him and looking down at her hands. ‘And what have you done to me?’
‘Nat, it’s me, Sam,’ he explained, ‘and that’s Jay.’
‘But . . . what . . . where are we?’
‘I wouldn’t mind an answer to that too,’ a fourth Illuminate said, stepping through the doorway behind Nat.
‘Jack?’ Jay asked.
‘In the flesh,’ Jack replied. ‘Well, in someone’s flesh anyway.’
‘I’m not certain where we are,’ Sam said, ‘but I think I could take an educated guess.’
‘I’m glad to see you all awake,’ Selenne said, walking along the terrace towards the four of them. ‘I trust you are feeling no ill effects from your journey here.’
‘Where is here exactly?’ Sam asked.
‘This is . . . or rather was . . . our home world, Illume,’ Selenne replied. ‘Though you are not truly here; your nervous system simply believes that you are.’
‘What do you mean?’ Jay asked with a frown.
‘Your bodies are still in the chamber on Earth where we just met,’ Selenne replied. ‘This is a simulated reality being transmitted directly to the receivers in your heads. In truth it is merely a reconstruction of a world that was lost aeons ago. Lost . . . to the Voidborn.’
‘So why have you brought us here?’ Sam asked.
‘So that you may meet our ruling council and they can explain to you exactly what it is we need to do to stop the Voidborn.’
‘How about you just tell us now?’ Jack said, folding his arms.
‘Because there is one question they need to ask you first,’ Selenne replied. ‘Please, come with me and soon enough everything will be explained to you.’
She turned and went down the sweeping ivory stairs to the spotless plaza below. She continued to walk ahead of them, leading them through the empty city, heading towards a single massive crystalline spire at its centre that was half as tall again as any of the other buildings that surrounded it.
‘My legs feel too long,’ Nat said with a sigh as they walked. ‘Which is . . . well . . . kind of weird actually.’
‘Yeah, I know what you mean,’ Jay said. ‘I’m still trying to get used to being two feet taller.’
‘Do you not think this is all a bit weird?’ Jack said. ‘I mean, why go to all the trouble of creating this –’ he gestured at the building surrounding them – ‘if there’s no one actually here?’
‘Apart from us and whoever it is we’re being taken to
meet,’ Sam said. ‘Presumably.’
‘Yeah, but that’s sort of what I mean,’ Jack said. ‘Why not just talk to us in the chamber we’re all actually standing in right now? If Selenne could talk to us there, why couldn’t this council we’re supposed to be meeting?’
‘No idea,’ Sam said. ‘Maybe they wanted us to see this place.’
‘Why?’ Jay asked. ‘To show us they’re really good at building cities?’
‘Were really good at building cities,’ Sam corrected him. ‘Past tense.’
Sam did understand what Jack meant, though: there had to be some purpose to bringing them here. He wondered if they were supposed to be impressed by this spectacular reconstruction of the Illuminate world. If that was the case, it wasn’t really working. The city that surrounded them was certainly beautiful, but it gave Sam the creeps. Like it was some sort of haunted monument to a dead world. More like a mausoleum than a city. A nagging voice in the back of his head kept reminding him that all of this had been swept away by the Voidborn millennia ago. It did not exactly inspire confidence that they could do anything about the current situation on Earth in the here and now.
‘I may not know that face,’ Jay said quietly, raising the cranial plate that was the nearest thing he currently had to an eyebrow, ‘but I know that look. What’s bothering you?’
‘I don’t really know,’ Sam said. ‘Something doesn’t feel right about this.’
‘You mean besides the fact we’re just ghosts inside the bodies of long-dead aliens wandering around a place that no longer exists?’
‘I’m not even sure that qualifies as odd for us any more,’ Sam said, shaking his head slightly. ‘No, I mean, why wait till now to talk to us? If they’ve always been able to, why now?’
‘It could be because of what happened in London,’ Jay said. ‘The Voidborn have never come at us like that before. Maybe the rules have changed somehow.’
‘Maybe,’ Sam said, still sounding uncertain. ‘I just get the feeling that there’s something we haven’t figured out yet.’
‘I hear you,’ Jay said with a nod. ‘This does kinda seem like our only option right now, though.’
‘No choice at all,’ Sam said to himself, thinking back to what Nat had said a few minutes before.
‘This is the spire,’ Selenne said, stopping and looking up at the crystalline structure that loomed above them. ‘It was the seat of our governing council and the oldest building on Illume. The council are waiting within. Please follow me.’
Selenne walked towards the base of the spire and the crystalline structure shifted to create a doorway ten metres high. The others followed her through the entrance and into the vaulted chamber beyond.
‘Wow,’ Jack said, summarising their collective opinion in a single word.
The sparkling, faceted ceiling far above them was filled with countless points of light, like the stars in the heavens. But these stars were spinning and diving around each other in constantly shifting patterns, constellations forming and then disintegrating in seconds like some kind of cosmic firework display. It was undoubtedly beautiful, but here more than anywhere else they had seen in the city so far Sam could see how the dividing line between the Illuminate and the Voidborn was blurred. The spire was impressive, but it reminded him more than anything else of the interior of a Voidborn Mothership. Those ships had once been Illuminate colony vessels that were hijacked by the Voidborn, so it made a certain kind of sense, but the similarities were doing nothing to lessen the creeping unease he was feeling.
Selenne walked forward into the column of cascading light in the centre of the room and seemed to fade from view, pulses of blue light shooting up towards the peak of the spire far above.
‘Guess we’re supposed to follow?’ Nat said, sounding slightly apprehensive.
‘What do I care?’ Jay said with a grin, walking into the beam. ‘This isn’t my body anyway.’
A moment later, he too vanished, sending a similar pattern of light shooting upwards. Jack and Nat followed before Sam stepped into the stream. He felt the tiniest lurch of vertigo, there was a brilliant but brief flash and suddenly he was standing in the centre of a circular chamber. The glass walls of the room looked out on to a spectacular view over the surrounding city, its magnificent pale towers stretching as far as the eye could see in all directions. Eight Illuminate in various outfits, from soft flowing robes to full suits of armour, stood in columns of light evenly spaced around the edges of the room, looking down on Sam and his friends. Selenne walked over to the single empty pool of light and stepped into it, turning to face them.
‘Members of the council,’ Selenne said, ‘this is the son of Suran. He and his companions have crossed the Threshold so that they may address you.’
‘This child,’ one of the Illuminate said, waving at an image that suddenly appeared floating in the air of Sam standing in the chamber at the bottom of the ocean. ‘This is the bearer of the Bridge? Why would Suran have done such a thing? The risk is unimaginable, to place something so precious inside something so fragile.’
‘You would do well to remember we need their cooperation, Indriss,’ another Illuminate replied with a frown. ‘You have no armies to command now, general.’
‘Indriss is right,’ another member of the council said. ‘The Heart must not be lost. The son of Suran must not be allowed to –’
‘Sam, my name’s Sam,’ Sam said, interrupting the council member and looking around at the ancient alien beings. ‘Nice to meet you all. Very impressive city you have here. To be honest with you, though, I really don’t give a damn about a planet that died while my distant ancestors were still swinging through the trees. No, you see, what I actually care about is my home, Earth, a planet that seems to have got caught up in your intergalactic war – a war that, let’s not forget, it had absolutely nothing to do with in the first place. So how about we ditch all the cryptic alien stuff and one of you starts explaining what exactly it is that you want from us. Because right now, all I see is a bunch of ghosts hiding at the bottom of the ocean, when what I really need is an army.’
He stood and stared back at the startled-looking Illuminate surrounding him.
‘What he said,’ Jay said, with a grin.
‘How dare you address this council in such a manner,’ General Indriss snarled back. ‘You insolent vessel, I should –’
‘Oh, do shut up, Indriss,’ Selenne said, before turning and speaking to Sam. ‘You have no idea how much you sound like your father, Sam. I would like to apologise on behalf of the council for my friend’s behaviour. You are quite right. You deserve answers and you shall have them. You only need ask.’
‘OK,’ Sam replied, ‘how about we start with why you brought us here. I’m guessing it wasn’t just to wow us with your architecture.’
‘Indeed not,’ Selenne replied. ‘You are here because time runs very short for both our species and only together can we survive. The Voidborn stand on the brink of victory. The Primarch is here.’
‘The Primarch?’ Sam said, remembering what Suran had once told him about the ancient ship. ‘I thought that was an Illuminate ship.’
‘It was,’ Selenne said with a nod, ‘the first and only ship of its kind. It was piloted by a digitised consciousness, that of one of our greatest scientists. The ship was thought lost on its maiden voyage along with the consciousness that controlled it. The scientist’s name was Sabiss and he was responsible for creating the technology that allows me to speak to you now. It was he who pioneered the techniques that made it possible for the electrical patterns of an organic brain to be digitised and stored, providing effective immortality to our species in the process.’
‘And now he’s here?’ Nat asked.
‘His ship is at least,’ Selenne said with a nod. ‘We have detected its transponder in a geosynchronous orbit above the landmass you know as North America. We have to assume that its arrival is connected in some way to the recent changes in the Voidborn’s behaviour. We have
long suspected that there was some guiding hand behind the actions of the Voidborn. The fact that their first appearance coincided with our colony vessels finding the Primarch after it had been lost for millennia now seems like more than mere coincidence.’
‘So you think the Voidborn found the Primarch first?’ Sam asked.
‘And then used it to hijack our colony fleet, the Motherships as you know them, and turn them against us. Yes, it now seems likely that that is what happened.’
She gestured for Sam and the others to come and join her as she turned to look out at the city.
‘Do you know what the Voidborn did to this world you see?’ she said, gesturing towards the window. ‘There was no declaration of war, no warning. They simply triggered the collapse of one of our two suns into a singularity, a black hole, and watched as one of the stars that had given us life consumed first its own twin and then the system that orbited it. All of this . . . gone in hours, utterly annihilated. If it had not been for the fact that we had already begun to travel into the galaxy beyond our own system it would have meant our extinction. Fortunately, wherever one Illuminate travelled, all Illuminate could travel, evacuated as streams of data rather than physically escaping. Horrific as this event was, we had no idea at the time that it would, in fact, be just the opening salvo in a war that would never end.’
‘But it did end,’ Jack said. ‘You lost.’
‘Yes,’ Selenne said, her eyes downcast, ‘yes we did. We fled from the Voidborn and they pursued us relentlessly. They were remorseless hunters with infinite patience and seemingly limitless numbers. In the end we were forced to hide in a place that we thought no one would find us. The Voidborn had always tracked us via our network of data relays, so we had to disconnect from that network – not easy when your entire society is based upon it. It was Suran who came up with our escape plan. He created the Heart, a way to store all of the Illuminate consciousnesses that had not already been lost to the Voidborn in a near-indestructible crystalline matrix. It was isolated from the Illuminate network and thus impossible for the Voidborn to track. It would be hidden within the molten iron core of an insignificant planet in a quiet corner of a distant galaxy, and there we would lie in wait for the Voidborn to pass into history.’