The flapping wings immediately told him he was wrong. He’d disturbed a small flock of miner birds that had been picking over the ground. They were unsightly-looking scavengers, with raggedy black feathers and spindly bodies, rather like etiolated sparrows. With no sound but the beat of their wings, they took flight, returning to their nests high in the canopy.
Holding his chest and breathing heavily, the Second Officer took a moment to recover his composure, then began a thorough investigation of the area where the town had stood. It was strange to think that the last time he’d been here, he’d been examining three bodies while the Third Officer himself had looked on. But it was a different story now; he couldn’t find a single clue to help him.
“Hopeless,” he complained, kicking at the sodden soil in sheer frustration. Then he froze. As though the ground had been raked over, just under the surface were unusual deposits. A darker, almost black material seemed to be mixed in with the soil. And it had nothing to do with the miner birds or the cultivation of penny bun crops. He knelt down to take a pinch of the material between his fingers, then held it to his nose.
“Ash,” he said, sniffing. “Burned timber.”
Whoever had cleared the area, they’d razed the town to the ground. They’d done a thorough job. As only the Styx could.
He stood up, directing his lantern around him.
“But what happened to the people?”
He was still half expecting to hear the crack of a rifle and feel the sharp pain in his neck as a Limiter executed him for contravening the Styx edict. But there didn’t seem to be any of the ghoulish soldiers in the cavern, either.
He continued to comb the area, going over the ground inch by inch. He was coming across pieces of broken crockery and glass, then he found a spent rifle cartridge. It smelled of cordite. It had been fired recently. But the people in the shantytown couldn’t have been burned along with their huts. He couldn’t believe that. And if they’d been taken away by the Styx, then where had they gone?
He saw something glint as his lantern beam flicked over it. He almost knew what the object was before he stooped to retrieve it. It was a brass button with the motif of the crossed spade and pickax cast into it. The three-hundred-year-old crest of the Founding Fathers of the Colony. And this button could have come from only one place.
From a policeman’s tunic.
From the Third Officer’s tunic, to be precise.
With the button gripped tightly in his hand, he returned to the main track. He walked faster and faster as it became clear to him what he had to do. He crossed the South Cavern, returning to the incline that he’d descended only a couple of hours previously. He continued up past the Fan Stations, then came to an abrupt stop.
Making sure he hadn’t been followed and that there was no one in the tunnel up ahead, he ducked into the dark side passage. After thirty feet the passage opened out into a small chamber. In its center was a penned enclosure with straw scattered across the floor of bare rock. Although the Second Officer could still detect the smell of pigs, it had long ago been emptied of its occupants, slaughtered to feed the army of New Germanians.
But the Second Officer hadn’t gone there for the pigs.
At the far side of the chamber, he found where the door blown open by Drake and Chester had once been. It had since been shored up with huge chunks of rock, and most likely the Labyrinth tunnels on the other side had also been collapsed so that no one could ever again use it to enter the Colony.
The Second Officer counted his paces as he followed the chamber wall along to his left, then stopped to examine the ground with his lantern. He found the depression, filled with pieces of rock, and began to excavate it, trying to make as little noise as he could.
Then he saw what he’d come for. It was a black box the size of a pack of cards, with a wire aerial trailing from it.
Look on it as a last measure, Drake had told him. If you ever need help, for any reason, I’ll do my best to come.
At the time the Second Officer hadn’t given much thought to it. After half of the Laboratories had been demolished by their explosion, it had been vital that Drake and Chester escape from the Colony with Mrs. Burrows as quickly as they could. And the Second Officer himself had also been more than a little preoccupied about quite how he was going to convince the Styx of his innocence.
He knew that he should have reported the device and had it removed, but his knowledge of it wasn’t going to be easy to explain away. So, in the end, he chose to simply forget about its existence.
Until now.
He inspected the device’s shiny black casing. Its appearance was similar to the beacons that Drake had provided to Will to mark his way down to the inner world, but this one was different. It also emitted a radio signal that was detectable through the crust, but on a completely different wavelength.
With his clumsy fingers, the Second Officer located the microswitch on the side of the casing and slid it into the on position. Then he placed the beacon carefully back into the depression and made sure it was well buried again.
He didn’t know quite when — or even if — Drake would pick up the signal, but he also didn’t know where else to go for help. He regarded the beacon as a message in a bottle, which he’d just cast into the ocean in the hope that it would be found and that he’d be rescued.
That the entire Colony would be rescued.
AS MRS. BURROWS ENTERED her quarters, the intercom beside the door was buzzing. She snatched the handset from the cradle.
“Yes, it’s done,” she said. “It wasn’t easy — I reduced my breathing almost to nothing and moved slower than a snail so she wouldn’t hear me. She didn’t, and it’s a good thing, too, because I would’ve been hard-pressed to explain what I was doing in there.”
She listened to the caller for several seconds.
“I will,” she confirmed, moving toward the cradle as if she thought the conversation had come to an end.
“Bartleby?” she gasped, turning in the direction of the oak desk in the small study at the end of the room. Between the two pedestals of drawers that formed its base, Colly was sitting like a Sphinx, her large amber eyes fixed on Mrs. Burrows. “Yes, it’s a terrible shame, but I suppose he was only doing what any wild animal does — he was following his instincts.”
Mrs. Burrows twirled her finger around the flex of the handset as she listened to the caller. “Don’t worry, we’ll be there when you arrive,” she said, then hung up.
With a very human sigh, the Hunter lowered her muzzle onto her forepaws.
“I know,” Mrs. Burrows said. “But you’ve got so much to look forward to.”
“Elliott,” Mrs. Burrows said, speaking softly in the darkness.
The girl was instantly awake, rolling from her bed with her long rifle in her hands.
“What is it?” she asked urgently. “What’s wrong?”
“No, it’s nothing to be concerned about,” Mrs. Burrows assured her. “Only Will and Drake have arrived, and I thought you’d want to see them. They’re up in the Hub.” Mrs. Burrows didn’t give Elliott the opportunity to decide whether or not she wanted to come as she switched on the lights to the room.
Parry hadn’t been misleading them when he’d said that the accommodation was comfortable. Elliott’s and Mrs. Burrows’s rooms were next to each other, the doors labeled gov 1 and gov 2. The quarters had evidently been intended for cabinet ministers, the interiors resembling something you might find in a luxurious ocean liner, with mahogany furniture and brass fittings, but minus the portholes.
The main room in each quarters was some thirty feet square, with its own en suite bathroom and a small adjoining study just large enough for a writing desk and a couple of chairs. Everything in them — the cupboards, carpets, linen — was the very best that early-twentieth-century Britain had had to offer. The only modern addition to the rooms was the ugly plastic trunking that had been run along the top of the skirting and by the sides of the doors, where interc
oms with incongruous aluminum faceplates had been installed, so that each room had a communication link with the Hub.
“Do I need to get dressed?” Elliott asked. She was wearing a baggy white T-shirt that she’d found in the wardrobe, along with a pair of blue shorts far too large for her.
“Maybe a bathrobe,” Mrs. Burrows suggested, hugging herself inside hers, which was cut from a thick blanketlike material. Far from being airless, if anything the quarters were rather chilly as fresh air pumped in through vents in the ceiling.
When Elliott was ready, Mrs. Burrows said, “All set?” and they left the room together.
“Chester!” Elliott exclaimed, surprised to see him slumped against the wall in the corridor. Elliott’s voice roused the boy, and with much grunting, he hauled himself to his feet. He yawned so cavernously, it looked as though he might dislocate his jaw.
“Oh, hi . . . sorry . . . I was in such a deep sleep when Mrs. Burrows came to get me,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Only had a couple of hours.”
They went down the corridor, then turned into a lobby where the elevators were located.
“Level 2,” Chester read through another yawn. He was squinting through one eye at the floor plan on the wall. As Sergeant Finch, with his bevy of cats in tow, had taken them down in the elevator to show them to their quarters, he’d told them that the Complex had six levels in total. He had also told them that all the power for it came from the nearby electricity lines outside, the clever thing being that, because it was taken straight from the grid, no one could tell that current was being siphoned off for the secret establishment.
“Which elevator did he tell us to avoid?” Mrs. Burrows asked as she stood in the middle of the lobby. Sergeant Finch had warned that one of the elevators was liable to break down, but she hadn’t been able to see which of them he’d been referring to.
“Here,” Elliott answered, leading Mrs. Burrows by the hand to the closed doors. “Just remember not to take the first on this side.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Burrows said.
Chester summoned an elevator, and one arrived almost immediately. “Going up,” he mumbled, and stepped to the side to allow Elliott and Mrs. Burrows to enter, then reluctantly followed them in.
The elevator picked up speed as it ascended, then abruptly shuddered to a halt. The main light above them went out, and another blinked on, bathing them in a dim yellow glow. A prerecorded man’s voice calmly announced, “Emergency Lighting.”
“Oh, bloody brilliant,” Chester complained as he repeatedly pressed the button with H on it to try to get them moving again. “Rather have taken the stairs . . . haven’t trusted elevators ever since that wonky contraption under Will’s house.”
But the moment he’d finished speaking, the elevator sprang back into life and continued on its way up.
“So Drake and Will . . . are they all OK? Nothing happened on the way here?” Elliott asked Mrs. Burrows. The girl was rubbing her shoulder as if it was painful.
There was no time for an answer as a bell tinged and the doors slid open. The three of them exited, passing down several passageways to reach the Hub. The illumination on the way was similar to the emergency lighting in the elevator.
“I wonder why it’s so dark,” Chester commented as they stepped into the Hub.
The first person they saw was Danforth, lit by the glow of not just his original laptop but another five of them arranged on trestle tables around him. He’d obviously continued to work on whatever he was doing as many more wall panels had been opened, and a bewildering number of cables spilled from them and around the legs of the tables. Noticing that Chester, Elliott, and Mrs. Burrows had entered the Hub, he peered up briefly. “Main power’s going to be off for a while,” he said, without any further explanation.
“Will! Drake!” Elliott shouted as she spotted them on the other side of the Hub, and hurried over.
“I don’t believe it!” Chester cried as he saw who was in his father’s arms. Mr. and Mrs. Rawls were standing at the mouth of the entrance tunnel.
“Chester!” Mrs. Rawls shouted, widening her embrace to include him as he dashed over to her. Chester clung to her, feeling her face wet with tears of happiness and relief.
“You found her! Thank you!” Chester said to Drake. “Thank you so much!”
Drake nodded, then turned to Elliott. “We need to talk,” he began, his voice serious.
Elliott noticed that Will had stepped a little closer to her, and also the way in which he was peering nervously at her back — at the long rifle slung over her shoulder, she assumed.
“What is it?” she asked, immediately aware that something was amiss. She took a couple of paces away from Will and Drake. “Why won’t you tell me?”
Then she happened to glance down the long entrance tunnel. Two figures were making their way toward the Hub along it. The larger of them — the hulking form — was unmistakable even at the distance. “Sweeney,” Elliott said, but she didn’t recognize the second, smaller figure. “Who’s that with him?”
“Elliott . . . ,” Will said, edging closer to her. “We’ve got —”
“Jiggs . . . is that Jiggs?” Elliott demanded, squinting down the tunnel. Although there had been the odd mention of him, nobody had actually laid eyes on him yet, although they assumed they would before long.
Elliott shook her head slowly.
“No,” she said.
She shot a glance at Drake.
“No! Not him!”
Will saw the way she’d set her jaw, and the look of deadly intent in her eyes.
“Elliott, give me the rifle,” Drake asked, trying to seize hold of her, but she was too fast.
She ran toward the figure.
Toward her father.
VANE PUSHED HERSELF off the Colonist she’d just impregnated. With slow, reptilian precision, she extended her leg to the floor beside the bed, where she planted a foot. The tube-like ovipositor was retracting into her mouth as she slid her other leg across the limp body, then stood up.
The Colonist on the bed was a middle-aged woman who had only recently been brought up from the subterranean city. She’d been one of the unlucky inhabitants of the shantytown in the North Cavern, taken from there at gunpoint by the Limiters, and Darklit until nothing remained of the conscious centers of her mind.
And although effectively brain-dead, the Colonist’s chest now began to heave and she coughed soundlessly as the egg sac induced involuntary spasms in her air tract. In a few cases, the troublesome human host would actually bring up the egg sac, and that meant starting the process all over again. Vane watched the woman until she was satisfied that the implantation had been successful, then looked from one end of the warehouse to the other. The Styx women had been systematically working their way through the humans, and maybe as many as a hundred had already been impregnated.
Vane’s insect limbs twitched, then came together above her head. They oscillated against each other, faster and faster, until they were producing an unbroken sound similar to that of a cricket. Vane silenced the limbs, angling her head as she listened out. Barely a second later, a hollow rattle drifted back from somewhere else on the floor as Alex replied in kind.
Vane and Alex continued to communicate, homing in on each other as they headed toward the beds at the entrance to the warehouse.
Through the steam and subdued lighting, they spotted each other. They met around the bed of a young man, the very first human to be impregnated.
Although both Vane and Alex had been feeding on the raw meat and drinking regularly from the vats of viscid sugar solution provided for them at various points across the warehouse floor, the Phase had drastically changed their appearance. The relentless production of egg sacs had sent their metabolic rates soaring through the roof, so much so that nearly every ounce of their body fat had been burned off.
They barely resembled the strikingly beautiful women they’d been before the Phase began. Under their torn and bloodstained clot
hes, their physiques had been pared down to not much more than muscle and bone. Their faces were unnaturally angular, as if an artist had attempted to recreate them by using an assortment of hard planes.
“Time to check on our young,” Alex announced in the rasping Styx language. If Will and Chester had been there to see her appearance as she spoke, it would have explained why the Styx’s tongue had always sounded so inhuman to them. It was inhuman, and they were inhuman.
“Yes, it will be time,” Vane replied, eagerly rubbing her bony hands together. As she did so, the musculature and ligaments in her arms slid against each other under her taut skin like a mechanical model.
Alex moved closer to the young man and leaned over him. She paused to wipe her chin. The glands in her throat hadn’t yet stopped producing the lubricative fluids required for the multiple impregnations, and these were now overflowing from her mouth and dangling from her cracked lips in sticky necklaces.
Undoing the top button of the man’s shirt, she slid her hand inside it.
“Yes,” she sighed.
She gently took out a pulsing, ivory-colored larva some five inches long. It was similar in appearance to a giant maggot, although far stubbier. Holding the Styx Warrior larva in both hands, she lifted it up to her face to examine one end. “Who’s such a pretty little thing? Who’s just perfect?” she cooed.
The eyes hadn’t yet developed, but a small mouth opened and closed. As it did so, something caught in the illumination from one of the nearby overhead lights. The Warrior larva’s fangs shone with a pearly whiteness, like a baby’s milk teeth. They were snapping together as she held the grub against her chest, looking down at it lovingly.
Vane had also reached under the man’s shirt and into his pleural cavity, which had been exposed as the grubs burst from his body. She took out not one but two larvae, cradling them in her arms as they wriggled against her like lively puppies.
“Yes, they are perfect,” Vane said, her eyes flooding with tears of happiness and fulfillment. One of her larvae began to make a high keening sound. Almost immediately the other larva in her arms and Alex’s also joined in.