Coldbrook(99)

Drake stared unflinchingly at Jonah. There was an ease between them that was almost friendship. It felt good, but Jonah could not yet bring himself to trust it, not after what Holly had told him. Everything was so strange.

‘Five days ago I drank to success,’ Jonah said.

‘Huh. Well, then, how about to survival?’ Holly raised her glass to Drake. ‘You’ve managed it for forty years. We’ve only just begun.’ Before anyone else could echo her toast she drank the whisky, grimacing slightly as she sat down and placed the glass on the table.

‘Survival,’ Jonah said, and Drake and Moira agreed. They drank, Jonah refilled everyone’s glass, and they made themselves comfortable again.

Fourteen other people had shot their way through the breach with Drake. They had not lost one person to the furies. Two of them had collapsed in Control, and one was still unconscious. The effect of the breach, Drake had said, and Jonah had noted Holly nodding in understanding. I’ll feel that soon, he’d thought. Because there was one thing he was determined to do, furies or no furies, Inquisitor or no Inquisitor. And that was to see Earth as it was in another universe. He’d spent so much of his life seeking it, and despite everything he could not deny himself that experience.

Holly had yet to make a full inventory of the damage done to their control room, but Jonah didn’t want any buttons pushed in case processes started or ended accidentally. The breach itself was stable, linked directly through the core, but there were a hundred other accidents waiting to happen.

Three other Gaians were in the library with them, delightedly perusing the walls of books. Jonah had already realised that their ragged appearance belied their intelligence.

‘I’m sorry about the man I hit,’ Holly said. ‘And the breach guards . . .’

Jonah noted Moira’s expression hardening, but Drake nodded. ‘And we apologise for Mannan,’ he said.

Holly waved a hand, dismissing something she had yet to tell Jonah about. She poured more whisky and sipped, sighing and sinking into her chair.

‘So, welcome to our Earth,’ Jonah said.

‘Take me to your leader,’ Drake said.

‘If only I could.’ Jonah’s smile became heavy. ‘After Coldbrook’s power went down, I lost track of what was happening up above. But Holly’s filled me in. She said you’re able to see through the eyes of the furies?’

‘Our casting technology, yes.’

‘You built a window, we made a door,’ Holly said.

‘You’re still one step ahead of me,’ said Jonah. ‘I’m the only person in the room who’s still a one-world horse.’

‘We must change that,’ Drake said.

‘This casting . . . how do you do it? Is there temporal dislocation? How does the targeting work?’

‘I can tell you,’ Drake said. ‘But I’m sure you’d rather see for yourself, wouldn’t you?’

‘Probably not,’ Holly said. ‘It was . . . horrible.’

‘We’ve come from a dead world to see your world dying,’ Drake said.

Jonah felt a spark of anger. ‘We’re not finished yet. There’s hope.’

‘Hope?’ Moira mocked.

‘Holly tells me that you have someone immune to the disease. I assume you’ve been studying him?’

‘For a long time,’ Drake said.

‘And they test him,’ Holly said. ‘They let him get bitten again and again. Chunks have been taken out of him.’

Drake and Moira shifted uncomfortably, but Drake recovered quickly. ‘You can’t judge us. I won’t allow it.’

‘Allow?’ Holly scoffed. ‘He tried to—’

‘And I apologised for that,’ Drake said.

‘That was a mistake, Holly,’ Moira said. ‘You’re precious to us. We’d have suggested that more subtly.’

‘Suggested what?’ Jonah asked.

‘They try to reproduce Mannan’s immunity,’ Holly said. ‘And when I found him, he thought I was there to . . .’ She pressed her lips tightly together. ‘To be impregnated.’

‘He was still curled in a ball last time I saw him,’ Moira said, her eyes sparkling. ‘You certainly know how to look after yourself.’

Drake leaned forward suddenly and grasped Holly’s hand.

‘I was born into a place you can’t understand. Everything I know of my Earth before the End is from books, or recordings, or knowledge and stories handed down from my father. It’s not even a memory for me. And though some of us are resigned, I’ve never been able to let go of hope. Mannan is an oddity that none of us has ever been able to figure out, and that’s a frustration and a complication.’

‘Where did he come from?’ Jonah asked.

‘Forty years ago, in the midst of our epidemic, my father heard about him,’ Drake said. ‘Mannan was barely a teenager at the time. He was bitten in Illinois, survived, and my father did everything he could to get him to Coldbrook. There’s quite a legend built around it. Many died in their efforts to save Mannan, and for a time – well, my father remembered it as a time of hope . . .’ Drake trailed off, not needing to say what had happened afterwards. No cure, no inoculation.

‘And he’s the only one?’ Jonah asked.