The Fandom(100)

We break into the heavenly light, coughing and spluttering. I flip him over so he looks skyward, hook my elbow under his chin and begin to swim towards the boat. I hear a strange noise, a low, whirring hiss combined with Ash’s spluttering. As far as the eye can see, the surface of the river begins to wrinkle, the water almost vibrating, droplets sucked upwards like it’s raining in reverse.

‘Violet,’ Ash manages to say.

I think he’s trying to warn me, because he’s already seen what I can’t.

The light doesn’t belong to angels.

It belongs to the four glossy stones hanging above us.

Next come the tentacles – scary when I read the book, even scarier on TV, horrifying in real life. A motorized arm snakes through the sky with strong, sinewy movements. There’s no point even trying to escape, it moves with such speed. A large metal cuff girdles Ash’s middle and rips him from the water, so quick and brutal I don’t get the chance to look into his face one last time. He floats high above me now – a tiny version of himself – and disappears into the belly of a hovercraft.

I bob for a moment, completely alone, just water and panic and brilliant lights. It comes from nowhere, the second arm, winding through the river like a metal sea serpent. A shot of adrenalin, a burst of horror. It clamps around me, forcing the air from my lungs, and yanks me upwards with such speed my neck cracks. The wind rushes through my wet clothes, and I watch the boat below shrink to the size of a child’s toy. Saskia and Katie remain concealed from sight. At least they are safe for now.

The arm sucks me into the craft and dumps me on the floor. Before I can catch my breath, a team of squaddies descends, jerking my arms behind my back, cuffing my wrists and ankles. I don’t bother fighting. I just search frantically for Ash – my eyes find him; a mound leaking river across the floor.

This is just like the scene from canon, only it isn’t Rose and Willow coughing up silt on to the metal floor – it’s me and Ash. I hear the buzz of a walkie-talkie. ‘We got her, sir. Her and another gutter monkey to throw in the mix.’

I’ve done it. The canon is back on track. Tomorrow, I will hang. But I feel no relief, no sense of achievement. Because just before I feel the bite of a hypodermic needle sinking into my neck, just before I lose consciousness, I hear the walkie-talkie spew out its response. ‘Good work. A double act for the Gallows Dance.’

It won’t just be me dangling from a rope tomorrow.

Not Ash, I try to say. Not Ash. But my tongue just flops hopelessly around my mouth.





I wake alone, the taste of dirt in my mouth. The remnants of several nightmares swim in my head: blood reaching across concrete, two freshwater pearls staring from the riverbed, metal snakes moving through water. My eyelids flicker and the walls of a white, sterile room throb in and out of focus. A cell, similar to the one Rose woke in. I try to sit, but my arms bow under my weight. Not nightmares – memories. The images continue to hover in my line of sight, transparent and ethereal, like they’re printed on the finest of silk sheets.

The door opens and a couple of squaddies enter. They set various things beside me – a towel, a hot drink, a white dressing gown, a tray of food. They leave the room and the lock clicks into place. Soon, I will meet President Stoneback. The man who makes Thorn seem like Santa Claus. Whose nephew’s death I witnessed back at the bolthole. I close my eyes and take deep, steady breaths.

The food smells amazing, like Christmas dinner and birthday cake rolled into one – proper food. I realize I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday’s bread, and although I shouldn’t be able to touch a crumb, the juices in my stomach begin to swirl. So I kneel before the tray and shovel the food into my mouth like I’m back in Ma’s house.

I look around the cell, not used to the feeling of fullness in my stomach. A small bathroom sits in the corner. Clean and sparkling and floral-scented. I stumble towards it, and for a while I just sit on the floor, waiting for the food to reappear, finding some comfort in the hardness of the tiles. But after a while, the nausea recedes. I notice for the first time since I woke that my clothes cling to my skin like a thin layer of ice, and even though I can’t stop trembling, even though my thoughts are muddled and my breathing jagged – the early stages of hypothermia bedding in – I delay the inevitable moment when I undress. Because I know I’m hurtling towards the climax, the end of the canon. And maybe I will return home, maybe I will incite a revolution and become that little flower who brings hope to the Imps, but Ash is going to hang too. He won’t return home. He will just die. Tears pool in the corners of my eyes, but I know I need to think clearly if I want to ensure his survival. So I command myself to unpeel my clothes and place them in the drying pod.

I step into the shower. At first, the water scalds, like a hundred little irons branding my skin. But the pain subsides, and I feel the warmth penetrate my flesh, gradually reaching my bones. Slowly, my brain starts working again. I take some time trying to unravel the confusion. The ambush, the bolthole . . . Alice’s betrayal.

My thoughts turn to the noose and the flying trapdoor. I wonder how much it will hurt. Whether I’ll be aware of Ash, his legs whirling beside mine as life escapes him. And I don’t really know if Baba was right, if hanging will even work – one moment, the life choking out of me, and the next, lying in a heap of rubble back at Comic-Con or maybe in a hospital bed. It all seems a little far-fetched now I’m standing in the shower in a military bunker, preparing to hang.