It fell, slamming down, pulling me into its churning heart. A moment of terror, followed by an eternity of peace.
No, not an eternity. The peace didn’t last. There was a flash of fire in that dark ocean, an underwater explosion. It lit up the world around me for a second and I realised I was sinking. I could feel the pressure growing, making my ears pop. I tried to take a breath and couldn’t.
Death wasn’t supposed to be like this, was it? I didn’t know exactly what I had expected, but more than anything I’d hoped it would be the end of everything – the end of the fear, of the pain, of the anger. But this …
There was another rippling blast, fire trapped inside bubbles of air, painting the ocean shades of gold and blue. It seemed to emanate from me, the flames bursting from my chest, making me feel like I’d been punched. I was still sinking, weights around my ankles, unable to breathe. The panic was causing my brain to reboot, words and thoughts lighting up.
I wondered whether I was going to hell. I didn’t deserve peace. How could I? I’d committed terrible crimes, against my family, against my friends. I’d killed people. That’s what was happening, I was going to hell. Maybe this was my eternity – forever sinking into the depths, fire all around me, unable to breathe, unable to switch off, a never-ending descent into madness.
The world exploded again, the flames so bright that they lit up something above me – had those been faces up there? A mix of monsters and men? The light was crushed before I could make sense of the view, but I thought I had seen berserkers, obsidian eyes set into mangled faces. Or maybe they were demons, watching me fall.
I sank into the airless depths, the entire universe squatting on my chest, pushing me down. I squirmed, fighting it, trying to rise to the surface, but those dark waters were as solid as the binds that had held me in the world of the living.
Another blast, and this time it brought something else with it – pain. I could feel it in my chest, in my arm, like I was having a heart attack. I couldn’t be, though, surely, because I was already dead. Something rushed into my arm, as cold as ice water, and when I looked down there was enough light left from the explosion to see a tube there, fixed into my skin. It seemed to be funnelling the dark waters inside me, a pump that sucked the ocean into my veins, filling me with death.
Except, it didn’t feel like death. If anything it felt like life, as though the darkness was kick-starting my system. I wasn’t sinking any more, I realised. I was rising, and the ocean was brightening, as if all the stagnant water was being pulled into me, leaving only freshness, only light. I rose faster, towards the blinding brilliance of the surface, like the sun was hovering right overhead. I surged upwards, ready to burst from the depths into the glorious day. I didn’t know what was up there, but I could guess. Maybe I wasn’t destined for hell after all. Maybe destiny had taken pity on me, granted me mercy.
All that mattered was that I was leaving the darkness behind me, and heading into the light. I didn’t care where I was going, so long as it was somewhere good.
It wasn’t.
I breached the surface of death like I was being reborn into the world, gasping for breath as though I’d never taken one before; screaming like a baby. For the first few seconds there was only that blinding brilliance, so bright it felt as though my eyes were on fire. I bucked, fought to move, felt hands on me holding me down, heard words that made no sense.
There was a roar, like thunder, more voices, shouts. The brightness snapped off, then returned, then went, strobing on and off. I blinked, tried to focus, seeing a bulb above my head swinging back and forth. There was dust drifting down from a cracked ceiling, and I followed those spiralling flecks through the swinging glow, my eyes falling onto the figures standing in the room, surrounding the table on which I lay.
There were two berserkers here, the ones I had thought were demons. Both were huge, fat and fleshy like the one I’d killed back in the prison. They stood so tall that they had to stoop to keep their disfigured heads away from the ceiling. Between the creatures was a blacksuit, only he wasn’t wearing black. He wasn’t wearing much at all, just a surgical gown identical to mine, his scarred arms and legs jutting out from the flimsy material. It was almost laughable, except he was holding a scalpel, the blade held against the throat of the last person in the room.
This one was still human, a scientist by the look of things, or a doctor. He was wearing his white overalls, his face bruised, one eye swollen shut. He was sobbing, his tears stained with blood. In his hands were two paddles, both smoking, and it took me a moment to realise they were the electric ones used by doctors to resuscitate somebody whose heart has failed. I put my left hand to my chest, felt the heat there, realised that’s why the ocean had felt as if it was exploding.
They’d brought me back to life.
Not only that, they’d given me nectar. I saw the IV needle in my arm, the bag above it almost empty, could feel the strength returning to my muscles. I looked at the scientist and he must have seen the poison at work inside me because he staggered back until he hit the fleshy torso of one of the berserkers. The paddles clattered to the floor, the noise dwarfed by another massive explosion from somewhere nearby, this one hard enough to shake the entire room.
I opened my mouth, tried to ask what was going on, but all that came out of it was saliva. The blacksuit stepped up to me, grabbed my face in his hand, tilting it one way, then the other.
‘You’ll feel like crap for a while,’ he growled, his silver eyes flashing. ‘You were dead a good five minutes. Didn’t think you were coming back.’
There was a flurry of gunshots from outside and the blacksuit grimaced.
‘We don’t have much time,’ he said. ‘You can walk, we need to go.’
Too confused to argue, I swung my legs over the side of the operating table, realising that the tiled floor of the room was drenched in blood. There were three corpses there, all doctors in gas masks and white overalls. I did my best to jump over them, almost losing my balance when I landed. The blacksuit steadied me with a hand. It took me a while to realise that I was taller than him, by half a metre, my own head close to the ceiling. He turned to the remaining scientist who was squirming in the corner of the room between the corpses of his colleagues.
‘Please,’ the man snivelled. ‘I did what you asked.’
‘Then I don’t need you any more, do I?’ replied the blacksuit, advancing with the scalpel. The nectar inside me wanted to watch what happened next but I denied it, looking away, trying to put my thoughts in order. It didn’t make sense that these freaks had brought me back to life – no more sense than a berserker acting as my bodyguard in the swimming pool. Furnace knew I wanted to kill him, so why didn’t he want me dead?
‘Stay close to me,’ the blacksuit ordered as he walked to the door, opening it a crack and peering outside. The reek of smoke and gunpowder filtered past him, clawing at my nose, and there were more shots, louder now. One of the berserkers stood behind him, its flesh hanging down in pink folds, its arms the size of tree trunks. The other was watching me, blinking its black piggy eyes. I peered into those twin inkwells, so deep it was like the creature had gaping sockets in its head, and for an instant I sensed him there: Alfred Furnace.
I realised the pain was still there, that same dull ache in my brain which shifted every time I moved my head, always seeming to point in the same direction. I don’t know how, or why, but I knew the pain had something to do with Furnace.
‘What do you want from me?’ I asked, rubbing my temple with my deformed fingers, the words so deep they could have been distant thunder. The berserker just cocked its head, its expression utterly alien and yet still so childlike. Its fists were bunched, as big as anvils. But I knew it wouldn’t try to hurt me. If anything, the monster would sacrifice itself to keep me alive.
‘You ready?’ the blacksuit asked. It wasn’t an order this time, it was an enquiry. Just like the berserker, the blacksuit was here to help me.
?
??We’re getting out of here, right?’ I said. The blacksuit nodded, his attention switching from me to the door and back again. I could still hear gunshots, hundreds of them, like a firework show. ‘This is a rescue mission?’
‘We should go,’ he said, and I could sense the anxiety in his voice.
There was nectar in my system, but not enough to blot out all of my memories. Through the raging vortex of my thoughts I saw Zee, Simon, the girl Lucy too.
‘I’m not going without my friends,’ I said. The suit opened his mouth to protest, but nothing came out of it. He shook his head, gazing at the floor in resignation. It seemed to take him for ever before he finally spoke, and the words nearly stopped my heart again.
‘Whatever you say, sir,’ he said, swinging open the door. ‘You’re in charge.’
Orders
‘I’m in charge?’ I shouted, unable to believe what I was hearing. ‘What do you mean?’
But the blacksuit was already out the door, the first berserker hot on his heels. The second gave me a gentle shove and I ran after them, hearing the thud of its feet behind me. Outside was a long, windowless corridor, a thin gauze of smoke suspended below the ceiling. There were a dozen or so doors here, half of them open, but the blacksuit ignored them all, jogging past them towards a junction ahead.
‘This place was a hospital,’ the blacksuit said as we reached the end of the corridor. It stretched out to the right and left, both sides identical, still no sign of any windows. The ground shook with another explosion and the strip lights in the ceiling cut out, my eyes painting the passageways in cold silver for the few seconds it took them to spark back on. ‘St Margaret’s. The army set up here after the war began. It’s this way.’
He bolted to the left, the doors flashing by. I glanced inside, saw glimpses of red and dirty white, and something pink which appeared to be moving. I didn’t stop for a closer look. I felt like I had to keep moving or the chaos and confusion would catch up with me, consume me. There was a door at the end of the corridor, bigger than the others, hanging off its hinges. Istooped through it, saw the blacksuit running along another corridor. The sound of gunfire was clearer. I could hear screaming, too. Not just one person but a whole chorus.
The suit crouched to a halt beside a door. It was half open, and through the gap it looked as if the whole world was on fire. I reached out my good hand, stopped him before he could take off again.
‘Tell me what’s going on,’ I said, narrowing my eyes at him, glaring, until he broke contact and looked away.
‘I’m not a hundred per cent sure,’ he said. ‘All I know is that I was a prisoner here, like you. Furnace must have sent reinforcements because all this kicked off, and the next thing I know there were two berserkers pulling me out of my cell. Furnace has ordered me to watch over you. You’re his new right-hand man.’ There was no mistaking the bitterness there, the hatred that boiled just beneath the surface. The blacksuit looked up at me, spitting out the words like he had a mouthful of acid. ‘I’m surprised he’s not told you anything, seeing how you’re his general now.’
‘I’m not his general,’ I hissed, clutching the blacksuit’s gown with my truncated left hand, my right poised by my side, ready to skewer him. ‘I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing, but I’m not on his side, I’m not on your side. You got that?’
There was a growl in stereo behind me, the two berserkers crowding in on us. I thought they were coming after me, but the nervous way the blacksuit looked at them made it clear who they’d protect if it came to a fight.
‘Whatever you say, Sawyer,’ he replied, shrugging my hand away and focusing his attention on the door. I swallowed my anger, the sensation like gulping down a spiked ball. I could worry about what was going on later. Right now the important thing was to find Zee and Simon and Lucy and get the hell away from this madhouse.
‘They’re being kept in cells somewhere,’ I said, remembering what Zee had told me.
‘I know,’ the blacksuit said. ‘The main hospital building is through this door. It’s swarming, our guys and theirs. At least it was when I passed through here a few minutes ago. If we’re lucky there will be enough of a distraction to get us across the courtyard to the atrium and the psych ward. That’s where they’re being held, your friends – if they’re still alive.’ He reached out, peeled open the door a fraction more to reveal an entrance hall. There was an inferno raging out there, but it seemed to be concentrated on the walls to the left, firelight merging with the red glow of the setting sun. ‘If I were you I’d send out one of the berserkers first, make sure the coast is clear.’
I looked at him, one eyebrow raised, and he stared back impatiently.
‘I can’t—’ was as far as I got before he interrupted. Not the blacksuit, but the voice in my head.
You can.
The berserkers were behind me, shoulder to shoulder, practically taking up the whole of the stairwell. They looked like twins, some horrific parody of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Just the sight of them made my stomach churn, my heart pound, every instinct in my body telling me to run, to get away from them before they turned on me. But they were just standing there, like soldiers, waiting for a command.
‘Okay,’ I said to them, pretty sure nothing would hap-pen. ‘Off you go.’
They didn’t move, frozen like golems carved from pink clay. I tried again with the same result.
Don’t just say it, said Furnace, his whisper louder than the flames, louder than the gunfire. Believe it.
‘Better hurry,’ said the blacksuit. ‘Something’s coming.’
He was right. There were footsteps, lots of them, getting closer. I looked back at the berserkers, but this time I didn’t speak. I cleared my head, pictured the door, the room on the other side. I imagined one of the berserkers charging into the flames, finding us a safe passage through.
It was on the move so quickly I almost didn’t manage to get out of its way, the beast barging through the door hard enough to rip it from its hinges. It arched its back and howled, a war cry if ever I’d heard one. There was the crack of a rifle, a fleshy thud as the bullet struck the creature in its leg. Then it charged, vanishing so fast that it caused tornadoes of smoke to spiral outside the door.
‘Nice,’ purred the suit, that leering grin back on his face. ‘Maybe you weren’t such a bad call after all.’
Another crack rose above the flames, not a gun but something else – wood snapping, maybe, or a bone breaking. Something flew past the door, a bundle of wet rags that was engulfed by the fire before I could identify it. Had I really given that berserker an order? It didn’t seem possible, and yet there was so much that was impossible but somehow real. The rules that had once governed the universe simply didn’t seem to exist any more.
‘Come on,’ said the blacksuit, propelling himself through the door. I followed, a fist of heat striking me from the raging fires to my left. The room was bigger than I’d thought, a massive hall that stretched a good fifty metres from end to end. The berserker had already reached the right-hand side where a dozen uniformed soldiers were doing their best to scramble out of its way. It had one head locked in its obese arm. There was a sickening crunch before it discarded the lifeless body, moving on to the next.
I had a flashback to my last day inside the prison, the day we escaped, when Furnace had unleashed his berserkers – the way they had bounded from inmate to inmate, rending flesh and spilling blood. Back then I’d risked everything, my life and my sanity, to kill the freaks. And now I was the one who had unleashed hell, who had set the nightmares loose.
But I was doing it to escape. I had to get out of here so I could find Furnace, so I could kill him. That made it all right. Didn’t it?
One of the soldiers glanced across the room, doing a double take when he saw us. He swung his machine gun round and pulled the trigger, the air suddenly alive with the sound of angry hornets. I ducked, but the berserker was quicker. It pounced on the soldier, tearing the gun away from him as
we started running again.
‘This way,’ yelled the blacksuit, vaulting a reception desk and sending a computer monitor crashing to the floor. He sprinted to the left, towards what looked like a solid sheet of fire. Covering his face with his hands, he threw himself into the blaze, vanishing with a crash of broken glass. Someone else was taking pot shots at us, and without looking to see who I leapt at the burning wall.
I was out the other side before the fire even noticed I was there, hitting the ground and rolling once before finding my feet. There was a grunt as the remaining berserker followed, patting at its skin with one giant fist in order to put out the flames that had taken hold.
We were outside, the setting sun dazzling. I squinted, seeing a courtyard the size of a five-a-side pitch. Two burned shells that had once been trucks occupied the square, and blackened shapes littered the floor between them like spilled dominoes, still smouldering. Overhead, some distance away, two choppers waltzed together, but other than that there was no sign of life.
The blacksuit was on the move again, just a smudge against the yard. There was a two-storey brick building dead ahead, every single window blown out, and without pausing to look inside he bounded into the dark interior. I was halfway after him when I heard the roar of an engine, a Humvee skidding around the side of the building. It hit the remains of one of the trucks, sending burned metal clattering over the courtyard, then accelerated towards us.
I pictured the berserker running at it, willing it to happen, and sure enough a pink shape blasted past me, heading right for the Hummer. I don’t know how fast they were both going by the time they reached each other – a combined speed of fifty, sixty miles an hour – but the sound of the collision made my ears ring. The berserker held its ground, its fleshy folds rippling so hard I thought they were going to slough right off. It twisted its body, its huge arms wrapped round the bonnet, and with a howl of effort it launched the vehicle into the air.