Coldbrook

ever have imagined.

Control was smeared and splashed with blood, but he could see only one body: the intruder that had come through the breach. He lay motionless in a wide pool of Melinda’s blood just outside the breach boundary. On screen four, a guard lay dead outside the open door to Control.

‘Someone’s opened the bastard door,’ Jonah said softly, his heart pounding. ‘Someone’s. .’

‘There!’ Estelle said. ‘Movement, screen three. Look! Can’t you zoom in, or. .?’

Uri worked his control desk expertly and the image on screen three grew. Holly was cowering behind her desk, and Melinda was advancing towards her. She dragged one leg, and it looked loose. Her head and back were a mess, and Jonah shivered, glad that he could not see her face and the damage that the thing had done. A guard was standing behind her, swaying slightly as if he’d been knocked over the head.

‘Melinda’s not dead,’ Uri said. ‘But. .’ But, Jonah thought. But indeed. She trailed a slick of blood behind her, and the back of her lab smock was torn with what appeared to be bullet holes and knife slashes.

‘Where’s everyone else?’ Estelle asked. Jonah could see that she was staring at screen one, where the intruder from beyond the breach could be seen most clearly.

‘Who else was down there?’ Uri asked.

‘Satpal,’ Jonah said. ‘The standard four guards, including Alex.’

‘He’s alive!’ Estelle said.

On screen four, another guard was getting to his feet, inching slowly up the glass wall until he stood upright. Blood had sprayed the opposite wall and, though it was unclear on the image, Jonah thought he could see a dark mess at the guard’s throat. That’s arterial, he thought. The guard stood with his hands by his sides, not pressed to his wounds. Then he turned and started walking along the corridor towards the camera.

‘Fucking hell,’ Estelle said.

‘His face!’ Uri said.

The wounded man passed below the camera, and he was not wearing the expression of someone in pain or close to passing out. Instead, his teeth were bared and his pupils completely dilated. He looked predatory, sharklike. He was barely out of his teens, and the most frightening thing Jonah had ever seen.

‘Holly,’ Jonah breathed. She stood slowly from behind her desk and looked up at a camera, drew her hand across her throat — and then the last guard remaining in Control ran at her. His uniform was splashed black and torn in several places. He had dropped his gun, and his hands were held out, clawed, in front of him, ready to rip and tear. He leaped onto a desk and jumped over Melinda’s head onto another work surface. Holly slammed her hand down onto a button and ran.

Directly at the breach.

‘No!’ Estelle gasped.

Jonah caught his breath, heart thudding. Her disappearance into the breach was such a simple thing, so soundless and fast, that he was not sure he’d seen it at all. One moment she was there, the next she was gone, and he sat back in his chair and took a deep breath. Where are you now? he thought, and though he was not a believer he prayed to something, anything, that she was still alive. Then at least something might be saved from this disaster.

‘She’ll see it all,’ he said. His powerful sob surprised him.

The pursuing guard hit the floor where Holly had crouched moments before and stared after her. He swayed left to right, apelike, as if searching into darkness. Then he tilted his head to one side as though he’d heard something, and ran from Control, a fleeting shadow across screen four as he too disappeared into Coldbrook.

‘She’s gone through,’ Uri said. ‘I can’t. . can’t access all of Control’s sensors to see if. .’

‘I know,’ Jonah said. ‘But it doesn’t matter. She’s on her way to another Earth.’ He watched Melinda pause in front of the breach, her head raised slightly as if sniffing the air, and then turn away and stagger towards Control’s open door. He sighed in relief, glad that she had not followed Holly. Perhaps she had sensed closer prey.

‘Holly’s on her own through there. And we have to commence lockdown.’

Secondary fell silent as his words sunk in. None of them spoke, all thinking their own thoughts. When no one objected Jonah sobbed again, quieter this time, because of everything they had done.

‘Still no one approaching,’ the guard said.

From the distance, gunshots. And screams.

‘Jonah, this doesn’t mean we were wrong,’ Estelle said.

‘Thank you,’ he said, and he had never meant the words so sincerely. ‘Now, Uri, if you’d prepare the lockdown orders, I think I should initiate it myself, and I’ll remain here to ensure it’s worked. You all go and find somewhere safer. I’ll see you on the screens.’ He nodded up at the view of Control, free of all movement now apart from Melinda’s shuffling figure. ‘I’ll join you later.’

Uri nodded and started tapping some keys.

‘Sir, you don’t have to stay on your own,’ the guard said.

‘I appreciate that,’ Jonah said. ‘But that’s what I’d rather. And these two will need you to protect them. Secondary was never designed to be a refuge. I have to lock down and tell the surface what’s happening. We need to let people know. And then. .’

‘And then?’ Estelle asked.

Jonah shrugged. And then? He didn’t know. Their absolute priority was to stop any danger reaching the surface. Beyond that, he could not yet think.

He closed his eyes. He was old, and that was fine, and he had lived a life. But others in this place had people up there, many of them living in the nearest town, Danton Rock: wives, husbands, kids.

Like Vic Pearson. A family.

And then Jonah wondered where the hell Vic Pearson had gone.

‘Uri, quickly,’ he said. ‘Quickly!’

Uri worked fast, and half a minute later he slid the wireless keyboard across to Jonah. ‘Hit enter to initiate automatic lockdown. You can monitor all lockdown procedures — or switch it to manual — on the schematic behind you.’

‘Thank you,’ Jonah said. But he didn’t look up as they left, and was glad that none of them offered a final comment. As they closed the door he pressed enter, and Coldbrook began closing itself off from the only world any of them knew.

8

As Vic entered the vehicle garage he heard a distant shout, and then a noise like doves cooing. He paused, pressed flat against the wall with his head tilted to one side. Had he really heard that? Birds, underground? He couldn’t be sure — there wasn’t even an echo now. He released his held breath, the sigh making the garage’s silence seem even more eerie.

There were three vehicles in the large garage area — two SUVs and a military Hummer — and the smell of fuel and spilled oil hung in the air. For a moment the idea of taking an SUV crossed his mind, but he knew that the wide door at the far end of the garage was always kept electronically locked, and that on the slowly curving ramp that rose two hundred feet to the surface there were three other security doors.

He had criticised several times Coldbrook’s design, suggesting that there should be at least two independent escape routes to the surface in case of an accident. To begin with, Jonah had reasoned with him — nothing would go wrong, they were cautious when they built it, there was no risk. But after a while he had simply chosen to respond with the stark truth: if the core was ever breached, none of them would have to worry about escape.

Vic could open the doors on the vehicle ramp but it would take time. And, of the escape routes he’d considered as he made his way here, it was the most observed and the least likely to be successful.

He had somewhere quicker in mind.

‘So long as they don’t go for complete lockdown,’ he whispered to himself, listening again for more voices, and deciding it must have been his own guilt calling after him. He looked around the garage, checking for movement