“Don't give up,” Firdy thought. “We're nearly there.”
The hair on Simon's scalp rose to meet the probe that was meant for him.
“No!” he thought. The flow of light through the walls stuttered like a candle flame, but it did not stop.
“It's too late,” Firdy thought. “Let it go, Simon. You did everything you could... nothing.”
Simon fought against the wall. Firdy was right that it was too late, but he was wrong that he had done all he could. Walking Sarah to an execution was one thing, but this was no execution.
His body vibrated as all his remaining strength surged through him.
He managed to free one arm.
The others saw what was happening and Naomi started to fight again. Will began grunting to Simon's right and Ian Moody also attempted to free himself; in his own parlance, he hadn't signed up for this. Only Jonathan, the man in the black-blue business suit, was implacable. He neither looked at them, nor at the thing above, reaching for his skull. He looked dead ahead, having truly accepted his fate.
Simon focused only on reaching Firdy who stood only a couple of feet away, goading him with his proximity. He wanted to destroy the body that Firdy had stolen. With a roar and a ferocious twist, he managed to free his shoulder from the wall. His elbow followed with a snap of suction. And then his wrist and hand. He made a grab for Firdy, but the man stepped out of reach.
“Save your energy,” Firdy said, “we'll need it.”
And with that, the water worm silently attached itself to the back of Simon's neck.
*
The Third flicked through Simon's mind and body, such as they had become, as though she was shuffling a deck of cards. Never had she been so powerful nor Simon so powerless to resist her. His mouth, miles and miles away, was taut with shock. It was as though electricity was firing through him, twitching his limbs, tensing his muscles, extending him to his limit. He thought he would split apart, but not before the Third had found all she sought and had consumed all she could.
She separated him into piles, saw the connections and respected them. Not all of them made sense to her, even after all the people she had dissected. Like notes to herself in a margin, she made new connections, compromises here and there.
It hurt Simon, but it was not a physical pain. It was terrifying and seemed to go on and on, although he gathered that perhaps only seconds had passed, because no part of Firdy's grinning facial expression had changed since it began.
He didn't know how much he could bear, but he knew that that didn't matter to the Third. He wasn't meant to take it. This was the end of him and the beginning of someone new.
Through translucent images – his father saying goodnight, knowing that no-one would ever see him again; the French girl, falling, open-mouthed and silent; his mother, hung from a corner bed post by a rope made from a bedsheet – he saw that Firdy was moving now, but as if in slow motion. He appeared to be surveying the room and its inhabitants, all of whom were hooked up to the Third, like batteries, giving up everything they had.
Far, far away, Firdy was in conversation with the Third. The thoughts floated towards Simon and clung to him like cobwebs. He didn't have the energy to blow them away.
“What about me?” Firdy thought. “I'm ready.”
A new whirlpool opened up directly above him. It gathered momentum and eventually it was reaching down, a wagging finger, extending towards Firdy's head.
ONE BODY.
“One body.”
ONE MIND.
“One mind. One mind.”
NO MORE EXPERIMENTS.
“No more.”
NO MORE MISTAKES.
Firdy opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He was the mistake the Third was referring to and he knew it, which meant that everyone in the room knew it. The Third's condemnation silenced him, but he knew it would all be over soon. One final indignity and he'd be allowed to move on.
He may have been an experiment gone wrong, but without him this wouldn't have happened. He'd watched behind the scenes, cleaned up after them when necessary, picked up the pieces when the Third dropped out. He had manipulated the Third's helpers, as necessary, and he had got them all here tonight, with Sarah and Zak into the bargain. He'd been loyal. Becoming one with the Third was more than his reward, it was his right.
As the shimmering thing reared, preparing to make contact with Firdy, Simon knew that his chance to make some kind of stand had come and gone. He didn't know when the moment should have been; perhaps just after the Third had returned, the moment Sarah had placed a knife into his hand, while Firdy had been on his back, paralysed and orgasmic.
“Kill it,” Sarah had said.
If he had plunged it into him then, perhaps the consequences would have been better than this. Maybe some chance was better than no chance at all.
He sensed the Third circling them, but she was interested in him in particular. He was in good physical shape, but probably no better than Naomi or Moody. It was his mind that she valued above all. Apparently, it was unlike the others. It had corridors and doors, stairs, straight lines, basements, keyed and coded but not unbreakable, low ceilings and, impressively, an attic with a single window to which no room led directly. It was always an effort of will to get something up into that room, but not so when moving things in the other direction.
Of the eight people in the room, his mind was most like that of Jonathan - except that all Jonathan's doors were double and triple-locked, with little movement in any direction - and Firdy, but whose stray memories were cracking the floorboards, smothering the skirting, taking over the walls.
The Third asked herself if Simon's mind was too strong. Was Firdy's too weak?
Would the two of them linger? And if so, would they reject each other?
Balance was everything. Everything.
With the plans for Simon laid out so explicitly, he knew that there would be no life worth living on the other side of this experience, should he survive it, and he only had one weapon left to upset the process for everyone, if not stop it entirely.
Before the Third could interrupt him, it was out in the wild.
“She won't take you,” Simon thought.
Firdy curled his lip in an approximation of an insolent smile. The worm was almost touching his furrowed, scarred forehead. He shielded his eye from its light with his hand.
“No more experiments,” Simon thought. “No more mistakes.”
Firdy's upturned face glowed with silver light reflected from above. The watery cord that would connect him to The Third was hovering.
“... Do it!” Firdy thought. “Don't listen to him.”
“Experiment and mistake,” Simon persisted; “you're both.”
Firdy had been holding his breath, but now he sighed and stared aghast as the Third withdrew her tendril from him. It shrank back as though he were poison.
“You can't do this,” Firdy yelled, but the room absorbed his words. His mouth continued to rage in silence: “I'm your son! Your real son! I did all this for you! You owe me!”
The proboscis that had been meant for Firdy slipped into the ceiling like a snail's head into its shell and it became as though it had never existed.
SIMON'S RIGHT, thought the Third.
Simon felt the heat of Firdy's rage, sudden and alien and boundless. It accelerated through his system and brought tears to his eyes. Within moments, it felt beyond his control and more powerful than any emotion he had ever felt, even his love for Sarah, at once filial and paternal. There would be no reasoning him down from this fury. It had come from a very long way away.
Firdy strode towards Simon.
NO MORE EXPERIMENTS.
To punctuate the thought, the floor opened up beneath the Cat. In one moment, it had been crouched beside Naomi, keeping guard, hopeful that there would be some prime scraps of warm skin left over when the process was over, and in the next moment the
ground beneath it lost its solidity. The Cat scrabbled uselessly for a moment and then the floor become solid again, a ceiling as far as she was concerned. For a few seconds, she was a black figure on the outside of the Third, drowning, and then she was gone.
NO MORE MISTAKES.
Firdy started running for Simon. He almost made it, but his final step met no resistance. He threw his hands out, the good hand and the clawed fingers, and they latched onto Simon's leg. He began the agonising business of hauling himself up, finding purchase on his jacket and skin and hair. Simon threw punches down onto Firdy's head and shoulders, but he hadn't realised how weak he had become over the last 48 hours, or how strong Firdy could be in the midst of his rage. Firdy was not to be deterred. He climbed, hand over withered hand, until they were face to face.
Firdy yelled, flecks of spit flying from his mouth, but again the sound was lost.
“You ruined it! I can't believe you ruined it! This was my only chance.”
He planted both his hands around Simon's throat. He squeezed.
Simon attempted to prise away the leather-clad fingers, but he was already losing consciousness. This time, he would not be joining a communal mind. This time he was sliding towards death.
He mustered enough energy to throw a final punch at Firdy's face and succeeded in drawing blood, but that was all. His nose didn't break. Far from it. Firdy spat blood in Simon's face and tightening his grip.
Eyes closing, Simon put his hands around Firdy's neck too and pressed his thumbs as hard as he could into the space where his Adam's apple should have been. He felt nothing. He pushed and squeezed with all his remaining strength, with all his rage, allowing it to spring up from all his hiding places, he squeezed with all the life he had left. He was furious, with himself, with the Third, with everyone. It wasn't meant to be like this.
He felt Firdy's grip slipping. Not only was Firdy's hold strangling him, but it was keeping him from falling. If he dropped, he would fall through the Third and drown. Simon knew that if he could stay alive for another minute, maybe thirty seconds more, he could survive this.
Having failed to protect Sarah, his goal now was to remain with her for as long as he could. He hadn't told her that he loved her, but that didn't matter down here. Connected through the Third, she would feel his love for her. Despite his failures, she'd know that he loved her.
He did his best to keep pressure on Firdy's throat, but he could not draw the breath that would have given him the strength to go on.
The blackness was dotted with stars.
“I'm losing,” he thought and was stunned. Somewhere, deep inside, in a chest in a basement, he had believed that everything would be okay in the end.
With that thought, he was overpowered.
“If I don't get to live,” Firdy thought, “neither do you.”
LET GO NOW.
Lights shot across the sky.
LET GO.
It was a white sky, peppered with black stars.
LET HIM GO.
On the moonlit horizon; a ghost ship sailing.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Pain rushed through his skull. It was the intense pressure of The Third's consciousness, but more powerful than ever. She had interrupted the process of her transformation in order to make the men release each other. Simon would have screamed, but with Firdy's hands around his throat he was still unable to draw a breath. Instead he waited for it to be over.
It was a wail and a screech and a roar, a wave of nails dragging itself through his head.
For the final time that night, his viewpoint was from outside his body. He became one, not with the Third, but with the blackness. To his relief, he felt no more physical sensation, but he still had to do battle with emotion.
Most of all, he regretted having obstructed Sarah's attempts to run. Even though she would have been caught, he could have allowed her the chance to make her own choice, to fight; to die with self-respect, unlike him. He had allowed the uncertain future he had feared to become no future at all.
He hoped that the Third's transformation would be impossible without him, but he didn't believe that was the case. The Third was desperate and so she would try, with or without him. Sarah's future, her lack of it, remained fixed.
He wanted to go back for her, but there was no back or forward or anything. There was only blackness, accepting him whole.
He waited to disappear.
He waited a long time.
A white dot crossed his path. Again. Above. Below.
It appeared to be circling him.
A full stop, he thought.
The object was approaching, slightly bigger each time.
He willed himself to keep it in focus and after achieving some success he realised that the object wasn't moving; he was. Through will and persistence, he managed to stop spinning and then, having confirmed that he could move somehow, he willed himself towards the light. There was nothing else.
The light had many arms, beckoning him. For a moment, he considered that this might be the Third as seen from the outside, but he felt peace, not panic, and allowed himself to continue. Having resisted death for so long, he was relieved to succumb. All that was left was to hope that Sarah and the others would not suffer for much longer.
He slid interminably, focusing on the mouth of the tunnel ahead. Every now and then it winked out of view and he felt a flush of fear, but it returned each time, saving him from thoughts of being trapped in the dark with nothing but his thoughts - of Sarah and of all the lives he had destroyed. A pang of loneliness weighed on him from all sides, crushing him.
When he next saw the entrance to the tunnel it was shining more brightly than before. Octopus-like rays stretched out from it, setting the darkness alight ...
… His head broke the surface of water. He choked and coughed and vomited as a wave washed over him. His lungs burned and his chest ached, his head spun, but he kicked and kept his head up. Soon, he was able to breathe again, though it hurt to do so. The moon shone down on him long enough for him to realise that it had served as his beacon, then it hid behind a cloud.
He was alive.
He saw the cliff that Firdy had walked them to. The Third had reached up a watery tentacle and had taken them inside it, down into the water. And he'd survived it.
He willed himself towards the rocky coast as he had willed himself towards the moon. Underwater his legs were moving, but he was so cold that he could hardly feel them.
Minute by minute, the beach came nearer. The rocks glistened as waves crashed over them and shrank back. Bubbles exploded between stones.
He didn't think he would make it, but he had thought that several times tonight and he was still here. He focussed on the rocks until nothing else existed to him. An undertow kept pulling him away from the shore, but the distance he covered between its attacks meant that he was making small progress each time. As he weakened, it almost seemed that he was swimming the same length over and over, but eventually, he was able to stop kicking and wade the rest of the way onto the beach. Out of the water to his thighs, a final wave crashed against his back and he fell onto the jagged rocks. He bled, but he was beyond caring. He was alive. He shouldn't be. He had been given a second chance and he was going to make the most of it.
*
Not half a mile out to sea, Firdy reached the surface, his head thrown up out of the water, buoy-like, and his body floating, so that he looked like a bin bag full of junk, buffeted by the waves and carried further out to sea.
He tried to move in the direction of the beach, but it was hard enough staying afloat. The waves swamped him each of the few times he managed to take a lungful of air, winding him and sending salt water down his throat. The sea was like a living thing, wearing him down. He kicked as hard as he could, but all he achieved was a slow pirouette.
There was a large rock to his left. He tried to kick himself towards it and then half-stretched, half-th
rew himself onto it. His gloved hand slipped, found purchase, slid again. He threw his other hand out, but it struck the rock like a dead thing. The current pulled him away from the temporary sanctuary and tugged him out.
It pulled him under.
When he screamed, in frustration rather than fear, it sounded like he was gargling. He sucked in a painful, watery breath, reached for the surface and yelped with an explosion of bubbles.
The only consolation, he thought, was that he had killed Simon before he died.
“I should have killed them all,” he admitted as he spiralled away.
*
Simon crawled on his hands and knees, inch by inch, foot by foot, knowing that Sarah was still down there, under the surface, probably still inside the Third.
He wanted to get to his feet, but he lacked the strength to push himself up. He had to rest, for a few minutes at least, qne he had to get warm or the cold would finish the job that Firdy had started.
As he rolled onto his back, panting, he considered effecting further upset in the room below using his connection to the Third, but with the thought he realised, with certainty, that the connection was not there. His mind was unobserved, as clear as it was on those merciful days when the Third had been busy, dredging, slicing, splicing, and had left him alone until she needed more meat and more minds. Her presence was gone and he might have been pleased if it hadn't left him without a means of getting Sarah back.
He watched the waves, thinking that if something was wrong with the Third, Sarah might float up the way that he had.
The oily sea was oozed and sucked, like a living thing, weeping. He knew that Sarah could be anywhere out there and he wouldn't necessarily see her. The same applied to the Third.
A rock tumbled towards him.
“Sarah?”
No. This sound had been made deliberately. He saw a woman in a long, leather coat, black, over black jeans and dark boots. The wind caught her scarf and it flapped like a flag beneath her pallid face. Under her knitted hat was the only thing of colour: an escapee; a strand of red hair.
Clare unwound the scarf and shoved it, handful by handful, into her left coat pocket. Then she removed a plastic bag from her right coat pocket, opened it and carefully descended the rocks towards Simon.