Coldbrook (Hammer)(127)

He followed Drake. They passed through a series of doors, and then Drake paused at a doorway, put his finger to his lips and nodded inside. ‘Casting room,’ he whispered as Jonah drew close. ‘This will upset you.’

And how right Drake was. For a second Jonah was amazed at the technology behind what he was seeing, and a hundred questions occurred to him all at once. But then he realised what was being displayed on the screens hanging above the prone people, and such petty queries fled.

He saw his world in flames and turmoil. Burning cities, rivers of bodies, masses of humanity no longer human.

‘Enough,’ Jonah said, turning away. He met Drake’s gaze. What he’d just seen was more terrible than the visions shown him by the Inquisitor, because this was his Earth.

‘I’m sorry,’ Drake said.

Jonah was going to reply, and then he saw a shape moving along the corridor., dragging a familiar shadow. It can’t be. I’m a universe away! But the Inquisitor was there, those horrible objects dangling from its hand. They swung like heavy wet organs removed from another body. They dripped.

One of the Inquisitor’s shoulders was bleeding, the blood looking surprisingly fresh against the old, dusty robes. Holly shot him with her crossbow, Jonah thought, and that gave him a brief burst of confidence. ‘I do not accept,’ he said hoarsely, and the Inquisitor faded away.

‘It was here?’ Drake said softly, his tone full of wonder and dread. He grabbed Jonah’s arm and pulled him away from the casting room, back along the corridor to a narrow doorway. ‘We don’t have long.’

‘Why the rush?’

‘Because the Inquisitor won’t wait for ever for you to accept. Kathryn’s diaries said as much. It’s dancing with me when I don’t want to be its partner. And yet this game must have an end. She found her end, Jonah. And unless we hurry, you’ll find yours as well.’

‘You have a plan to deny him?’

‘Trust me. We’re like brothers. You’re your Earth’s me, do you not see that? Don’t you feel it?’

Jonah nodded, and made the decision to trust this man. He had little choice, and behind Drake’s apparent arrogance was a self-confidence that Jonah had to respect. Any genius had an ego; he only hoped that Drake’s was justified.

They entered a new room and Drake flicked on several lights. ‘We have to destroy them. You see that?’

‘I’m keen to hear your plan. But what’s this?’ The room held four wardrobe-sized objects that seemed to shimmer with power. They dripped with condensation.

‘Our casting-field generators,’ Drake said. ‘Just let me get this ready and I’ll tell you my plan.’ He went to a cupboard and took out some objects. Jonah heard various clicks and clunks as he sorted them.

A network of clear cables rose from each generator into the ceiling, pulsing with gentle blue sparks. Jonah thought of the core back in his Coldbrook, how huge and unknowable it was, and the idea of what might be inside these units made him shiver.

‘Amazing,’ Jonah said.

‘It’s all amazing,’ Drake said, his back still turned to Jonah. ‘So you see why we have to win? All those Earths, gone. All that wonder, knowledge and industry, hope and ambition. All that art. You understand why we have to fight?’

‘Of course,’ Jonah said.

‘Good, Jonah. Good.’ Drake turned, lifted a small crossbow, and shot Jonah in the heart.





5


Vic follows his sister through the ruined streets, and Jayne is staring at him from every window, every open door. There are cars slewed across the roads, resting on deflated tyres and with their windows slicked with something wet and mossy on the inside. A few have burned, and their stark black skeletons are now home to weeds that wave in the breeze.

As Charlotte approaches the door in the house that he always knows but never should, a noise thuds in from all around.

‘What?’ a disembodied voice asks.

Charlotte knocks on the door and it swings open beneath her fist, letting out a wafting shadow that quickly grows and shelters the sun from view, and his dead sister turns to him, with her perfect skin and lifeless eyes.

‘We’ve been leaking fuel,’ Charlotte says, ‘and the gauge is f*cked. We’re running on fumes.’

Vic’s eyes snapped open and he gasped. The shadow fled. ‘Daddy?’ he heard in the distance, and Olivia was tapping his arm. He lifted his right headphone and leaned down. ‘I’m scared,’ she said.