Will and the others turned to see. Along the side of the crater, there must have been forty or so New Germanian troops running in formation, a Limiter leading them. They were minutes away.
As the rain continued to beat down, Drake slowly raised his arms. “No, I won’t do what you say. In this hand I have the detonator,” he said coolly. “One teeny-weeny press and the nukes detonate and you’re stranded in this world forever. And if you think you might be able to stop me with a shot, then look at what Sparks is holding.”
Sweeney held up his identical detonator.
“If that isn’t enough, I have something rather special from your Laboratories in my other hand,” Drake said. As he revealed it with a flourish, the blue flash of a lightning strike reflected from the small test tube.
He had Rebecca One’s attention now. “What’s that?” she asked.
“I snitched it from the vaults in your Laboratories before I leveled the building. I’d heard rumors from the Scientists that you had something like it. You know how academics like to show off.” Drake agitated the test tube, the fluid inside spinning around. “My immunologist friend says it’s the most virulent pathogen he’s ever encountered. He says the prospect of it getting out makes him shiver because it’s capable of killing just about every complex life-form on the planet. Is that why the Scientists never deployed it, because it’s indiscriminate? Because it kills Styx, too?” Drake smiled. “Is all this ringing a bell with you, Becky, dear?”
“Don’t call me that,” she fumed, but her bluster had gone.
“And my friend Charlie tinkered with it. With a little bit of genetic manipulation, it’s now not solely waterborne in its distribution but airborne, too. So it’s spread by the wind, and it kills in a few hours. Very bloody nasty.” Drake raised his eyebrows. “And have you had the vaccine for it? No? I didn’t think so. Shame — all of us have.”
“You’re bluffing,” Rebecca One said. She turned to Vane. “He’s bluffing. He won’t use the virus because it might find its way to the surface. He’s not going to take the risk.” She swung to Drake. “I don’t care what you say, because there’s no way I’m backing off. So we’ve got ourselves a complete stalemate here.”
All of a sudden, a line in the ground seemed to burst open behind one of the pairs of Limiters. Will had the briefest glimpse of an extremely thin man with an unruly beard and the palest of faces. The man caught the first of the two Limiters completely unawares, slashing the Styx soldier’s throat.
“Jiggs!” Drake exclaimed.
The second Limiter had more time to put up a fight; as he and Jiggs struggled with each other, they tipped over into the crater and out of sight.
Sweeney took full advantage of the distraction, covering the ground at superhuman speed. In a blur he’d disarmed the other two Limiters, quite literally tearing one of the soldier’s heads from his torso, using only his bare hands.
Although it all happened in not much more than the blink of an eye, Will allowed himself to think they might be in the clear.
Until the Styx twin shouted at him.
“You’re not getting out of this one, Will!” Rebecca One cried. “Not this time!”
She’d drawn her handgun and was pointing it directly at him.
Will was frozen to the spot.
Rebecca One’s finger tightened on the trigger.
In a heartbeat, Drake was on the move.
“Sparks!” he cried, flinging the test tube at him as he put himself in the way of the bullet meant for Will. It struck Drake in the shoulder, but his momentum was enough to carry him forward. As Rebecca One went for a second shot, he swept her over into the crater with him.
Vane had joined the fray, but she’d set her sights on Elliott. The Styx woman pounced at the girl, knocking her to the ground. The egg tubes were out of her mouth and trying to insert themselves into Elliott’s.
Will had his Sten up and was attempting to get a clear shot at the Styx woman. But Vane knew this, and kept rolling over, taking Elliott with her. Will dropped his Sten, instead trying to pry the woman off with his hands.
But, as if they had minds of their own, the pairs of insect limbs were lashing at him like animated lengths of barbed wire. As he came close to Vane, one of the limbs raked across his face, opening up a gash on his cheek.
An egg tube sank into Elliott’s mouth. The girl was shouting with alarm, but it was garbled.
Will could see a pod squeezing down the tube.
“Come here, blondie,” Sweeney growled. He wrenched Vane from Elliott, the woman’s insect limbs bunched together in one of his massive hands. The Styx woman could do nothing as she was lifted from the ground, her legs kicking ineffectually.
Sweeney turned to the approaching Styx Limiter and troop of New Germanians, Vane suspended high in the air. She was wailing like a banshee, liquid spraying everywhere. “You make tracks right now, or I’ll squash Ugly here under my foot!” he shouted.
The Limiter hesitated.
“Shove off, Sticky!” Sweeney shouted. He shook Vane threateningly. “I’m not going to tell you again!”
The Limiter didn’t have much idea of what had just happened, but in the absence of any other orders, he couldn’t put Vane’s life at risk. So he and the New Germanian squad turned the way they’d come.
“Drake!” Elliott gasped as she picked herself up. She and Will tore to the edge of the crater and peered in. Although they’d already fallen a long way, they could see that Drake and Rebecca One were still locked together in their struggle with each other.
Lower and lower they fell, spinning dizzyingly around. Drake’s arm was broken at the shoulder and he couldn’t move it. And although his hand was numb and his fingers unresponsive, he hadn’t let go of the detonator. With his other arm he was trying to stop Rebecca One from taking a shot at him.
But he was losing blood and could feel himself succumbing to shock. Drawing on his last reserves of energy, he managed to wrestle the pistol from her grip. It went spinning off, but now she tried to gouge at his face and eyes with her nails.
He had a glimpse of the side of the void, a red blur as it flashed past him. He realized how far they’d fallen.
He knew he probably wasn’t far from the nuclear device he’d planted.
But he didn’t know if Sweeney would detonate it with him directly in the blast radius.
He couldn’t take that risk.
At that moment, Drake knew he was likely to lose his life.
Rebecca One was preventing him from reaching the detonator with his good hand. But he had to reach it somehow.
That was when he remembered the booster attached to the side of his Bergen. He stopped shielding his face from the twin’s vicious onslaught and managed to detach the booster and fire it up. The propellant mix was still on the maximum setting from when he’d last used the booster.
He and the Rebecca twin accelerated down the rest of the void, quickly reaching breakneck speed.
Drake angled the booster so that they went into a spin. His limp arm swung into his field of vision and into his reach.
They were still moving at an incredible rate as he cut the booster and snatched the detonator from his numb fingers.
He and Rebecca One had almost reached the zero-gravity belt. Drake knew he was still far too close to the nuclear device.
But that didn’t matter now.
He clicked the arming button.
The detonator in Sweeney’s hand bleeped as it picked up the signal.
He glanced at it.
“BOMB!” Sweeney screamed at Will and Elliott. “GET OUT OF HERE NOW!”
They weren’t about to argue with him.
They sprinted away from the edge of the crater, the low gravity helping them as they fled.
“Nice knowing you, Becky,” Drake said to the Styx twin as they left the void and burst into the zero-gravity belt, still moving at phenomenal speed.
She saw he was smiling.
Then she saw his finger
was poised over a button on the detonator.
Her lips began to form the word no, but she never uttered it as Drake pressed down.
There was a blinding flash, as bright as a thousand suns.
Sweeney swung the struggling Styx woman in front of him. “I can’t get away in time.”
He moved Vane closer to him.
“The EMP will fry my circuits.”
He contemplated the Styx woman’s wriggling egg tubes as they dripped liquid. He knew he should probably kill her, but at that moment life had become sacred to him. All life.
“Give us a last kiss, darl —” he whispered to her.
As the nuclear device went off down in the void, the electromagnetic pulse swept over him.
The grids on Sweeney’s face instantly glowed white hot, the skin around them burning, and two small plumes of smoke issued from his ears.
Then as the circuitry in his head reached critical point, his head simply exploded. Like a massive felled tree, he toppled over, taking the Styx woman with him.
The Earth shook, and a torrent of dust and debris shot from the crater. But this lasted for less than a second, as the bottom of the void closed in on itself.
As Vane tried to extricate herself from under the huge man, she was cackling maniacally. Apart from a few broken ribs, she believed she’d escaped.
But in the aftershock of the bomb, she’d failed to hear the tiny tinkle of glass as Sweeney hit the ground, crushing the test tube in his hip pocket.
By the time the Limiter General reached the scene half an hour later, Vane had lesions on her skin and was coughing up blood. When he tried to find out from her what had happened, she was too feverish and didn’t make any sense.
He naturally assumed it was radiation sickness. That was, until the Styx Limiter and the garrison of New Germanians who’d been present at the crater all began to show identical symptoms. Even though, in theory, they hadn’t been close enough to the blast to be badly affected.
Within twelve hours, Vane and every one of the soldiers had died from the fever.
The Limiter General himself, having returned to the city of New Germania, collapsed and died shortly afterward.
And, blown on the dry winds, the pathogen spread.
And spread.
AT THE KITCHEN TABLE, Stephanie was browsing through a magazine she’d read more times than she cared to remember. As her grandfather entered, she looked up expectantly.
“Any news?” she asked.
“I got Parry, but I’m afraid he still hasn’t heard anything,” Old Wilkie said as he put the satphone on the dresser.
“Nothing? So we still don’t know if Will’s OK.”
Her grandfather shook his head. He opened his bag to extract two rabbits he’d just shot, and laid them on the table. Stephanie wrinkled her nose in disgust.
“How’s Chester doing?” Old Wilkie asked.
“Same old, same old. Just sitting there, like he always does,” she replied.
Old Wilkie nodded. “What about those books I got for him? Parry says he enjoys reading.”
“He’s, like, whatever. Can’t say I blame him, though. I started one of them called” — she groped for the title — “The Highland Mole or something.” She rolled her eyes as she stuck her tongue out. “Talk about being, like, completely unrealistic.” Shaking her head, she dropped her gaze to the magazine article she had, for the umpteenth time, been poring over, with the title “X Factor — The Future of Britain’s Talent.”
“He likes those types of books,” Old Wilkie countered. “Just go and spend some time with him, will you? Try to get him to talk.”
Letting out a sigh, Stephanie slapped her magazine shut and rose from the table. As she reached the door, she pushed it open a fraction to peer into the adjoining room. Chester was simply staring through the window at the sky above the sea.
As she went in, he quickly lifted the book in his lap. He didn’t look at her, pretending to be immersed in the story.
Stephanie regarded him for a moment. He’d lost a lot of weight in the months they’d been in the cottage. And although there were some spectacular views from the cliffs where they were in Pembrokeshire, he never ventured out. The old Chester would have liked it there, probably going for long walks along the coastal paths.
But not now. He didn’t want to talk to her or anyone else. There was no interest in anything any longer. He just wanted to be left alone with his grief.
Stephanie turned and went back into the kitchen, where her grandfather was gutting the first of the rabbits.
On the very top of the pyramid, deep in the jungle, Will was facing where he knew the city of New Germania lay.
“I don’t ever want to go back there. Never again,” he said. “It was awful.”
Elliott stepped beside him. “Don’t say that — we might need to fetch some more supplies.”
But she, too, didn’t sound very happy about the prospect of a second expedition to collect canned foods and clothes from the silent shops. Together they’d walked the flyblown, deserted streets, the stench of the dead in their nostrils everywhere they went.
“We have all we need right here,” Will insisted, lowering his gaze to their old base in the giant tree, where they were living again.
A flock of bright blue parrots had gathered in the low branches beside it. They came every day, hoping for some scraps of food. Or maybe it was because not just all the humans and the Styx had been wiped out by the virus, but most of the mammalian species in the inner world, too, and they were simply seeking the company of other living beings.
One of the parrots cawed noisily, as if it was complaining about having to wait for some leftovers.
“I saw one of the bushmen this morning,” Will said.
Elliott looked at him. With all the other predators eliminated from the inner world, the strange race of humanoids with their woody skin was the only thing that could pose a threat to them.
“It wasn’t far from the spring. I was stepping over what I thought was a log on the ground, when I saw it had eyes. So it looks like they’re all dead, too.” Will sighed. “It’s just us and the birds and the fish left.”
Elliott nodded. “Speaking of fish, guess what we’re having for lunch.”
“Er . . . fish?” Will said, playing along with her.
“No. Mangoes,” she replied, laughing as he made a face. She fell silent for a moment. “You were looking for the Doc again, weren’t you?”
Will believed that the Limiters had dumped his father’s body in the jungle somewhere close by, and was determined to find it. He and Elliott had already buried Colonel Bismarck and what was left of Sweeney’s body beside the spring.
Without being aware he was doing it, Will turned to glance at the place on the top of the pyramid where his father had been gunned down by Rebecca Two.
“Yes, I was,” Will confessed. “Even if Dad wasn’t who I thought he was, he has a right to a proper burial. I owe him that.”
“And what about you?” Elliott asked suddenly. “What if, all those years ago in Highfield, the Styx used their Dark Light on you, and turned you into someone else . . . someone that I fell in love with?”
“What?” Will said quickly, turning to her.
“You heard,” she said softly, putting her arms around him.
And he did the same, holding her tight.
“Emma, I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you,” Rebecca Two said, holding the door open for the long-limbed girl with tawny hair.
“So am I,” Emma replied, the regret evident in her eyes.
An hour earlier she’d been in the sauna with Alex, the heat turned up as a Darklit human was thrown at her feet. It had been the masseur who had worked at the health farm, a choice specimen with his highly muscled body.
But, despite the proximity to Alex, Emma hadn’t changed. She’d experienced the shooting pains across her shoulders and the gagging sensation in her throat where her as-yet-undeveloped egg tube nestled, but t
hat had been it.
She hadn’t been induced because, quite simply, she wasn’t ready for the Phase yet.
“Don’t be a stranger,” Rebecca Two said as Emma made her way to the waiting car. The girl was crestfallen and didn’t answer, just took her seat in the vehicle. She’d go back to the elite girls’ private school as if nothing had happened, and neither would her Topsoiler family be any the wiser about where she’d spent her Saturday.
Rebecca Two remained outside in the chill of the late afternoon, watching the gray saucer of the sun as it slowly dipped toward the horizon. Without any warning, tears began to well up in her eyes.
When they’d returned Topsoil, it had been confirmed by a Limiter patrol that the passage into the inner world was impenetrable, sealed by what they thought had been a nuclear explosion. A second Limiter patrol had been tasked with the unpredictable journey through the zero-gravity belt but hadn’t yet reported back in. This might have been because they’d perished in the attempt, but Rebecca Two wasn’t expecting good news, anyway.
She’d had this feeling in her for weeks. It was as if part of her had suddenly been lopped off and, in its place, there was a dark shadow. Something had gone terribly wrong, and her twin sister was either in difficulty. Or dead.
She just knew it.
As she sniffed and wiped her eyes, the old Styx appeared beside her. He gave her a lingering glance. It wasn’t done for Styx to show such emotion, and he might have rebuked her if there hadn’t been more pressing matters to attend to.
“You need to see this.”
He led her inside the building and up the steps to the viewing area at the end of the swimming pool.
As Rebecca Two peered down, she saw that the water was a murky brown from the blood and decay of the many corpses on the walkways around the pool. Plump Warrior larvae slithered along the tiles, while others had already gone into pupation, their chrysalises hanging from the walls.
“So? What am I looking at?” she asked curtly.