“So the powwow’s over. What’s the skinny?” Sweeney asked.
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” Will replied.
Sweeney touched the grid just in front of his ear. “Actually I caught most of it. Crazy stuff.”
“You did?” Will said, glancing over his shoulder as he estimated how far away the Humvee was. “But it must be . . . what . . . a hundred feet?”
“Piece of cake.” Sweeney grinned.
As Will turned back, he was suddenly aware that eight pairs of Limiter eyes were on him. Now he knew what they knew. He coughed uneasily. “So you heard Drake wants to get going right away — and we’re taking Eddie along with us in one of his Humvees,” he said to Sweeney.
Sweeney jutted his chin at the line of Limiters. “Sure, but what do we do with this sorry bunch?”
“We let them go,” Will said.
“So they’re our pals now?” The big man smiled.
“S’pose so,” Will replied, as he turned to address the Limiters. “Eddie wants you to go to London and wait there for his orders. He said you should take the jeep and the other Humv . . .” As he peered down the track at the second vehicle, he could make out the Hunter’s body on the hood. His mind suddenly went empty.
“You were saying,” Sweeney prompted gently.
“Bartleby” was all the boy could manage as he gave Sweeney a helpless look.
Sweeney nodded, then addressed the Limiters, “Listen up, all you Sticky Boys. You’re going to do the decent thing and give the laddie’s cat a burial. I want a proper hole dug — no skimping. You owe him that.” Sweeney caught Will’s eye. “OK?”
Will nodded gratefully.
Sweeney stuck a thumb in Mrs. Rawls’s direction. “And what about the filly?”
Mrs. Rawls opened her mouth to object at being referred to in this way. She evidently thought better of it and resorted to giving Sweeney a murderous look.
“Mrs. Rawls is coming with us,” Will said, then went off to collect his Bergen from the jeep, as well as a couple of holdalls Drake had left behind.
Once he’d returned, Sweeney reached out an arm. “Let me take the weight off,” he said, hooking the Bergen and holdalls with his fingers and hoisting them from Will as if they contained nothing more than feathers. “And you can have your peashooter back,” he added, passing the weapon over. Although Sweeney didn’t have a gun on Mrs. Rawls any longer, Will noticed that he was careful to keep close to her as they walked.
“Will,” Mrs. Rawls said, “now all the macho posturing is over, I want to know about my family. No one’s told me a thing about Jeff and Chester, but I’m assuming they’re both somewhere safe? Is that right?”
“They certainly should be,” Will assured her. “And we’ll be joining them soon.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Rawls said, looking relieved.
But the moment they arrived at the Humvee, Drake took one of the holdalls from Sweeney and approached Mrs. Rawls.
“Emily, I can either continue to treat you as a potential hostile and keep you under restraint. Or I can give you a clean bill of health by making sure you’re not Darklit. It’s your call.”
Mrs. Rawls inclined her head toward Will and gave him a smile. “I was wrong about the macho posturing. He’s at it again.” Then she turned to Drake. “I don’t want to be in handcuffs when I see my family,” she said. “Do what you have to.”
Drake delved into the holdall and extracted a small device. It appeared to be a pair of glasses connected by a cable to a small cylinder.
“Did Danforth make that?” Will asked.
“Yes, the new improved Pocket Purger,” Drake replied. “I know I’ve said it a million times, but the man’s a genius.”
“Certainly is,” Sweeney said. “He offered to give my bonce an overhaul once, as if I was his blessed Moggy Minor.”
“Well, he certainly miniaturized the original Purger,” Will observed.
Drake nodded. “Will, I need you first.” He held the cylinder in front of the boy’s face.
“Me? What for?” Will asked warily.
“Just keep your eyes open and watch the birdie,” Drake replied. He depressed a button on the cylinder, and an intense purple beam shone straight into Will’s pupils.
Will immediately recognized the color; it was identical to that of a Dark Light, although this time it was having absolutely no effect on him. He squinted as he stared, but only because of the brightness of the beam. “What now?” he said.
“Anything?” Drake asked. “No feelings of nausea or discomfort?”
“Nope,” Will replied.
“Good,” Drake said as he released the button, and the beam went out. “You see, you’re the control. I didn’t expect any reaction, which proves you’re squeaky clean. Now for you, Emily.” Drake held the cylinder directly in front of her and clicked the button again.
Letting out a sharp breath as if she’d been punched, her body went rigid as a plank. Sweeney used his lightning reactions to catch her before she fell.
Eddie was watching the proceedings intently. “Fascinating technology. I assume you developed it on the back of your work on my Dark Light,” he said. “But I promise you, Drake — I haven’t given Emily any programming.”
“No, maybe not you,” Drake said. “But there’s something knocking around in her head. I don’t know what it is, and I can’t take the risk. Put her on the backseat, Sparks,” he told Sweeney. “Hold her tight — I don’t want her thrashing about and hurting herself.”
Mrs. Rawls was more than a little disoriented as Sweeney manhandled her into the Humvee. Sliding in beside her, he looped his gigantic arm around her shoulders. “Locked and loaded,” he confirmed.
Drake leaned in through the open door of the Humvee, the glasses attached to Danforth’s device in his hand. “This is the business end,” he said, as he made sure the glasses were securely over Mrs. Rawls’s eyes. “I nearly forgot — don’t want her biting her tongue. Anyone got a handkerchief?”
“Here,” Sweeney offered, producing a rather dirty rag from his combat jacket, which Drake folded over several times.
“Open wide,” he directed Mrs. Rawls. Still groggy, she obediently did what she was told, allowing Drake to place it in her mouth. “Now just try to relax. This shouldn’t take long.” He flicked another switch on the cylinder, and purple light leaked from around the sides of the glasses.
Will winced as Mrs. Rawls’s guttural cry reverberated through the forest.
The Second Officer was buckling up his Sam Browne belt as he shuffled out into the corridor. Rather than go home, he’d just spent his second night in one of the cells in the interrogation wing of the police station, sleeping on a pile of prison blankets heaped on the cold flagstones. He still hadn’t forgiven his mother and sister. Not after they’d killed his little dog and served it up to him in a stew. As he came to the end of the whitewashed corridor and entered the reception area, he was swinging his arms in an attempt to de-kink his muscles.
“Hello,” he called out as he arrived to find it deserted. “Sir? Hello? Anyone?”
There was no response, so the Second Officer raised the flap in the counter and went to the doorway of the First Officer’s room. “Oh, you are here,” he said to his superior, who was bent over his desk, his head in his hands. “Is it the gut rot, sir?” the Second Officer asked sympathetically.
“No,” the First Officer replied after a moment, then straightened up.
The Second Officer recoiled as he saw the man’s battered face, his eye so swollen that it had almost closed up. “What happened? Who did this to you? How many were there?”
“It was in the Hold.” The First Officer sighed. “I was squaring the prisoners away for the night when that bloody Mulligan started on me.”
“Mulligan?” the Second Officer asked. “Bill Mulligan — the cabinetmaker?”
The First Officer glanced down sheepishly. “No, his mother.”
“Not Gappy Mulligan,”
the Second Officer burst out. “But she’s ninety if she’s a day! How did she —?”
“I know,” the First Officer grunted, shaking his head as if he’d never live this one down. “She was mouthing off about the Styx and — with no warning at all — she let fly at me. Got a vicious right hook, too.”
“Gappy Mulligan,” the Second Officer repeated. He was so flabbergasted that he flopped down in the chair in front of the First Officer’s desk. He hadn’t been invited to sit, and when he realized what he’d done, he found that his superior was squinting at him through his good eye. “Oh, sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to —”
“You stay right there,” the First Officer said. “You know, Patrick, I think we’ve reached the point that we can do away with the usual decorum.”
The Second Officer was astonished for a second time. His superior officer had never — never — before addressed him by his first name. Indeed, even the Second Officer’s own family referred to him as the Second Officer, rather than by his real name, because the laws of the Colony demanded it.
“I . . . I . . . ,” the Second Officer stuttered.
“This is no time to be a stuffed shirt, Patrick,” the First Officer said, taking his pipe from a desk drawer and opening a tobacco pouch. It was also absolutely forbidden to smoke in the station. “Face up to it. Half the Colony is slowly but surely starving to death in their homes, while the other half is missing God knows where,” the First Officer continued, as he filled the pipe bowl with tobacco. “And the half that’s starving to death will probably end up killing each other as they fight over whatever scraps they can plunder from the food stores, and” — the First Officer used his flint lighter to ignite the tobacco before he went on — “and you and I, we’ll be stuck bang smack in the middle of it all. Some toothless hag — just like Mulligan — is going to bludgeon us to death with her handbag, and all for a mouthful of salted toadstrip.” He took several large puffs. “The joke is, Patrick, we’re all that’s left. A thin blue line holding back a tide of total and absolute anarchy. We’re caught between the devil and a cold, dark sea.” He shook his head stoically. “No, the outlook’s not good for us, old friend. Not good at all.”
The Second Officer had been half listening as he racked his brains to try to remember his superior’s real name, but it wasn’t coming to him. Then something the First Officer had said struck him. “Sir, what was that about people missing? Has there been an incident?”
Like everyone else, the Second Officer had heard the rumors, but he was inclined to believe that it was pure hearsay and that the people were somewhere in the sprawling shantytown in the North Cavern.
The First Officer blinked as smoke wandered into his good eye, then he located a message scroll by his elbow and pushed it across the desk. “The Fifth Officer submitted a report while you were resting. You and I have both fielded a couple of unsubstantiated claims about missing citizens, but this is different. One of our own is unaccounted for. No one’s seen hide nor hair of the Third Officer for twenty-four hours.”
“But he’s been doing the beat in the North,” the Second Officer said, referring to the rural cavern. “I saw him not long ago. Isn’t he over there right n —?”
“He didn’t report for duty this morning,” the First Officer interrupted. “And he hasn’t been home. Word is, something went on in the North overnight and, whatever it was, my guess is he got caught up in it. Look at this edict from the Styx,” he said, jabbing his pipe stem in the direction of the scroll. “We’re being refused access.”
“The North? Off-limits to us?” the Second Officer said. “Why? We’re police officers.”
The First Officer nodded. “Highly irregular, isn’t it?”
The Second Officer read the message. “Why on earth would the Styx impose a full restriction order?” He got to his feet with a sudden snort of indignation. “I’m going down there to take a look for myself,” he resolved on the spur of the moment.
“Really?” the First Officer said, his eyebrows arching with a detached amusement as the strong tobacco began to work on his strained nerves. “Then you’re a braver man than I am, Patrick.”
No one came out to check the Second Officer’s credentials as he approached the Skull Gate, but that didn’t necessarily mean he hadn’t been observed by a Styx. He passed through it and, twenty minutes later, reached the final incline down to the South Cavern where he could look out over the streets and houses. As the thrumming from the Fan Stations resonated in his ears, it seemed to be louder than usual, as if it was the only sound in the whole of the city.
Even when he entered the built-up area, he had the sense that he was the last person left in the Colony. There would normally be somebody out at that time in the morning as they went to their places of work or opened up their shops ready for the day, but now the streets were completely empty.
Despite the fact that he wasn’t on speaking terms with his mother and sister, the Second Officer was so concerned that he stopped off there first. Finding that the front door was locked, he managed to drop his key with a clatter on the top step as he tried to open it. As he bent to retrieve his key and then stood up, he again became aware of the eerie calm all around him.
With their curtains drawn, the windows in the terrace opposite were dark and unfriendly, like many black eyes glaring at him. For a while the street had been crammed to capacity with New Germanians, but the Styx had since taken them Topsoil. Over the weeks, he’d heard the New Germanian troops being mobilized at all sorts of odd hours during the night, their feet beating a tattoo on the pavement in perfect unison. But even though they’d now gone, very few Colonist families had been allowed to move back into their homes. He was beginning to wonder if they’d ever return and if his street would ever be the same again. Particularly if something untoward had gone on in the North Cavern.
He finally let himself in and went inside. His first port of call was the kitchen, and not finding his mother or sister there, he tried the sitting room, then the bedrooms upstairs. The beds were unmade, the covers pulled back.
Of course, Eliza might have taken their mother out somewhere, but the Second Officer couldn’t imagine quite where at that early hour. He was trying to stop himself from thinking the worst — that the Styx had paid a visit — as he descended the stairs. Pausing in the hallway, he heard a sound, which seemed to come from the empty kitchen, and immediately ducked into the sitting room to fetch Will’s shovel from the sideboard. If there were thieves in the house, he was going to give them the hiding of their lives.
The Second Officer crept into the kitchen and listened. There was another sound. He went to the far end of the kitchen and slowly opened the door into the small vestibule. He tiptoed across it to a second door, which led to the coal cellar. As he pressed his ear to the door, he was sure he heard a scrabbling noise. Maybe a rat, he thought to himself.
But then he was certain he could hear whispering.
Two-legged rats, he told himself.
Counting silently to three, he flung the door open and tore in with a roar.
Someone moved in the shadows. He saw the whites of their eyes.
He raised his shovel, ready to strike.
“OOOH MY GAWD!” his mother wailed, her hands up to protect her face.
Eliza screamed.
“What . . . ?” the Second Officer cried, not believing his eyes.
In their nightgowns, both his mother and sister were black with coal dust as they cowered in the far corner.
“What in God’s name are you doing in here?” the Second Officer demanded, adrenaline still pumping through his body.
His mother began to cry.
“We thought it was the Styx at the door . . . coming for us,” Eliza managed to say.
Both she and the old lady were still shaking as the Second Officer led them back into the kitchen and sat them down. He looked at them, so terrified, their faces and clothes thick with dust, then looked at the kitchen floor and the trail their bare fee
t had left on the tiles. The tiles that the old lady labored day in, day out to keep so spotlessly clean that one could eat off them.
And he couldn’t be angry with them about the little dog any longer. But he was angry; he wanted someone to pay for what was going on in the Colony. Everything was falling apart. And this previously loyal Colonist, this upholder of order, knew precisely who was responsible.
“This has to stop,” he whispered under his breath. “The Styx have to be stopped.”
He made sure his mother and sister were safely tucked up in bed, then set off for the North Cavern. He went through still more deserted streets, not seeing a soul. Not even any Darklit New Germanians. Some streets he went down stank powerfully of raw sewage. Now that the regular work details had been suspended, nobody was going below the city to make sure the sluices were flowing freely. There must have been blockages in the main drains, and as a result the whole system was backing up.
“What have we come to?” the Second Officer mumbled to himself as he suddenly stopped. Sure enough, at the mouth of the passageway into the North Cavern, there was a single piece of thick rope strung across the entrance, an official notice forbidding entry suspended from it. As the breeze rocked it gently, he considered the black-edged warning sign, then stepped over the rope and went in.
And, as he emerged into the cavern, there were no longer any luminescent orbs on stands — they’d all been taken away — so he used his police lantern to light the way. Either side of the main track, there were only empty fields. No shantytown, no evidence that anyone had ever been there.
The Second Officer thought he saw something. A movement. He tensed, fearing the worst, that he’d bumped straight into a Limiter. But after a few moments, when no one appeared, he carried on.
A little farther down the track, he stopped again and shone his lantern before him.
“Oh, G —!” he gasped.
A shape, black and amorphous, rose from the ground. The Second Officer was absolutely convinced his luck had run out, and that this time, it could be nothing else but a Limiter.