Coldbrook

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 fucked. 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.

‘Okay, sweetie. Hang on.’

‘How the hell are we leaking fuel?’ Marc shouted.

‘I don’t know!’ Gary said. ‘Ricochet back at the airport. Gremlins.’

‘How far are we from Coldbrook?’ Vic asked, feeling a little like a kid sitting there in the back: Are we nearly there yet?

Nobody answered for a few seconds. Sean was awake and alert, but silent. For the first time Vic noticed that he’d tucked his pistol into his waistband, shifting it from the holster at the small of his back. More comfortable, probably. Jayne seemed to be asleep.

‘Hundred miles,’ Gary said. ‘But we’re going down now.’

‘Crashing?’ Sean asked. He’d braced his leg in front of Jayne’s, and her eyes were still closed.

‘Controlled descent,’ Gary said.

Lucy hugged Olivia between herself and Vic, the little girl picking up on the panic filling the cabin even though she could no longer comprehend what most of them were saying. Vic looked at Jayne and she was staring at him from beneath half-lowered eyelids. Sean tried to protect her without squeezing her too tightly.

‘We’ll be okay,’ Vic said, leaning across to Lucy and forgetting that everyone could hear.

‘I love you,’ she said in response. It took his breath away.

Vic nodded, because saying it back would have sounded as empty as he still felt.

‘Going down in the mountains,’ Gary said.

Sean caught Vic’s eye, and they both understood the dangers that would soon be stalking them.

Gary swore. The aircraft’s motor started coughing, shaking the whole fuselage. As their controlled descent changed into something that was under little real control, Vic held his family and thought of Holly and what she might have witnessed. And the simple truth was that he wanted to see her again. The idea felt like a betrayal when he had his wife’s head resting against his, their daughter crying between them. But he could not shut her from his mind.

‘Now!’ Gary said, and that was their only warning. They struck the ground violently, the floor punching up so hard that Vic thought his ankles had fractured. Jayne’s eyes snapped fully open and she stared at him. The helicopter bounced, tipped to the left, and then rolled up and over its nose as the rotors slashed at the ground.

The fuselage ruptured. Someone screamed. As Vic squeezed his eyes shut and held on to his family, his life, something warm splashed across his face.

6

‘So what did you feel when you came through?’ Moira asked. The question surprised Holly. It was the first time that the other woman had spoken in ten minutes, and the silence between them had become heavy.

‘I. .’ Holly shook her head, glancing away from the laptop screen at last. Moira was watching her intently. Her, not the screen showing scenes of chaos and horror. For a while, Holly had believed that the silence was the result of a shock felt by both of them. Was she watching me all the time? ‘It was strange.’

‘I’m just wondering if it’s the breach that does that, or crossing the veils,’ Moira said.

‘What’s the difference?’

‘The veils are just. . there,’ Moira said. ‘Natural divisions. The multiverse has them because that’s the way it is, the way it developed. But the breach is unnatural. Man-made. You’ve messed with physics, assaulted the solidity of the veils and, by punching a hole in the multiverse, maybe you’ve caused injury.’

‘How can you even guess at that?’ Holly asked, interested and even a little offended. ‘You were born after everything went wrong. You weren’t part of the experiment.’

‘Everyone at our Coldbrook has learned about the science of the End. We’ve had to, so that we can continue living there. Kathryn Coldbrook’s books and diaries are still there, and there’s a whole library of memory casts from before.’

‘So you’re blaming us? Saying that we should have never done it?’

‘You can see the results,’ Moira said, nodding at the screen.

Holly looked again. It was a YouTube video clip from London, and it showed the South Bank ablaze, bodies swimming into each other as they were swept down the Thames, and smoke rising from some sort of firefight on Tower Bridge. The film had been taken from inside the Tower of London where, according to the voice-over, thousands of people had taken refuge. Holly had never been to London.

‘You don’t seem moved by this,’ Holly said. She hit another website, where a French reporter was filming herself standing at the head of a street somewhere in Toulouse. Smoke rose in the distance, and people streamed past her, their flight fuelled by terror.

‘I’ve seen it all before,’ Moira said.

‘This is my world,’ Holly said. She felt numb, bitter, scared.

‘Yes,’ Moira said, ‘and you see why we have to do something.’

‘Do what?’

‘Whatever we can.’ Moira closed the laptop cover gently, leaning in closer to Holly. The warm aroma of whisky hung on her breath.

‘I’m concerned only with survival,’ Holly said. ‘And with trying to stop this before it gets worse.’

‘There’s a bigger picture,’ Moira said. Anger simmered beneath her calm, gentle voice. ‘Much bigger.’

‘Really?’ Holly said. ‘Then God help us.’