water. Besides, you've shown yourself to be resourceful and quick-witted, independent and capable of defeating the best security that man can devise. You should be proud of yourself.'
'It was a pretty cool way out, wasn't it?' said Alex.
'It rocked,' said Sparky. 'Even I wouldn't have thought of that.'
Mollified, Alex flopped down on the old sofa, the springs protesting as she sank into it. 'This is messed up,' she said. 'We need a new one.'
'When we're done, the world will be at your feet,' said Eve. 'Where's the feather?'
Alex looked up. 'Somewhere safe.'
Eve held out her hand.
Alex sighed, and pulled down her top and fished into her bra, while Sparky made a show of not staring at her cleavage while she did it. Chipper was too busy playing Xbox to notice anything. She extracted a polythene zip-lock bag containing the long feather and handed it to Eve.
'You kept it dry, that's good,' said Eve.
'It's a tail feather.'
'I really wanted a wing pinion,' said Eve, examining the sheen. 'But this will do well enough, I think.'
'I had to bargain for it.'
Eve's head lifted. 'You spoke with the birds?'
'Kind of,' said Alex. 'They understood what I was saying, or maybe they're like that with everyone?'
'No, you are favoured, Alex. The birds have knowledge beyond human comprehension, and they must have seen something in you to act so. They have acknowledged what I saw in you when you first came to us — the capacity for great things.'
'Great thing, huh?' Alex shrugged it off, but she was smiling as she did.
'Your time will come Alexandre, and when it does you should not flinch from the task. It will take courage and faith, a leap into the dark to gain a path to enlightenment.'
Alex shook her head slowly, sceptical of Eve's grand words. She glanced at Sparky who raised an eyebrow slightly, implying that even if Eve wasn't all there, she had engineered a theft from one of the most closely guarded places in the country. She deserved their respect simply for that.
Alex folded her arms. 'So what's next? What's the next step in the plan for world domination?'
'We seek not dominion, only the reordering of the universe, to better reflect that which resides within us,' said Eve.
'Yeah, whatever,' said Alex, but she watched Eve admiring the feather twirling between her fingers.
'Our assembly is almost complete. Once we have the key, the well will open. Then we will hold the fate of the universe in our hands.'
'I thought we already had the key?' said Alex.
'That is only a part of the key, one piece of the whole. We will have the other parts soon and then we will see what can be done.'
Alex watched Eve's intense fascination with the blue sheen on the feather and wondered not for the first time whether Eve was firing on all cylinders.
'I should have stayed with the baby,' I told Blackbird. 'You don't need me for this.'
We were marching down yet another corridor of the maze of buildings in Bloomsbury where the University of London has whole blocks dedicated to academic pursuits. Blackbird had reverted to her older persona of the older lady I had first met in London a year ago. I still found it hard to reconcile the young vibrant Blackbird I knew with the lecturer in medieval history from Birkbeck — the role she adopted to fit into human society.
'He'll be fine. Stop worrying,' she said over her shoulder.
'What if he cries?' I asked her.
She stopped and turned. 'Will you stop it! This is the first time I've managed to get away and I will not have you spoiling it for me by reminding me at every verse-end that I've left him behind. If he cries then I expect Lesley will change his nappy. That's what I would do if he cried. For goodness sake, Niall, you have to stop fretting. You've been a father before; you know they don't die if you leave them alone for five minutes.'
'Yeah, well. I felt more in control the first time, and look where that got me.'
'So that's it, you're not fretting about the baby, you're fretting about Alex.' She turned and continued down the corridor.
'I tried to reach her again last night.'
'And?'
'Little fragments of things, but nothing you could make any sense of. She's still blocking me. Who knows who these people are that she's fallen in with.'
'She doesn't want you interfering, and the way you've been behaving I can hardly blame her.' Blackbird stopped at a Tjunction in the corridor. 'They've repainted all this since I was last here, but it's this way. At least I think so.' She marched off along the corridor again.
'What if something happens to her? What if the authorities catch her and imprison her again?'
'Do you honestly think they're going to catch her? The guards at the Tower couldn't, so what makes you think the police are going to do it? And if they do? What are you going to do about it? March in there and demand her release? Bring the penal system crashing down around their ears?'
'I rescued her last time,' I pointed out.
'So you keep reminding me,' said Blackbird. 'Down here.' She took the staircase that led down to the floor below ground.
'Who is this guy, anyway?' I asked her as she pushed through double doors into a corridor lined with small rooms, mostly vacant, with the occasional sign indicating that offices were occupied by postgraduates or administrative staff.
'I met him at an academic gathering and we got chatting. He was very charming and said I should look him up.'
'You mean he chatted you up?'
'Well I don't think he was interested in my research, if that's what you mean.'
'Did you sleep with him?'
Blackbird stopped and turned so fast that I almost walked into her. 'That's a very ungallant question, Niall Petersen. Could it be that you are pricked by jealousy?'
'It's not me that was…'
'Enough! Stop that,' she said. 'It's unbecoming and quite inappropriate. I've had many lovers and I do not intend to discuss them with you. Who I chose to take to my bed before I met you is none of your business.'
'Except we're going to meet this guy and I'd like to know how the land lies,' I pointed out.
'We have not spoken for some time, and I am expecting that he will be surprised to see me. We are old friends and nothing more.'
'If you say so.' Already I didn't like the guy.
'I do, and we are here to ask a favour, so I would prefer that you refrain from upsetting him.'
She continued down the corridor through another set of double doors. In this area the lights came on as we approached, making it look as if no one had been here in days.
'I haven't said a word.'
'You don't have to,' she said. 'We need Gregor's knowledge if we're going to figure out what Alex and her friends are up to before Garvin does. I think that's in everyone's interests, don't you?'
She came to a side corridor and turned down it, coming to a wooden door with a sticky note on it. The note said, 'Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here'.
'Hell?' I asked Blackbird.
'Gregor's lab,' said Blackbird, knocking on the door. There was no answer. She knocked again louder.
'Maybe he's not home and it's been a wasted journey,' I suggested.
'Except for the notice on the door. It's his little joke,' Blackbird explained. She knocked again louder and opened the door.
Inside was an expansive room well-lit by overhead fluorescent lights. There were three large benches, each crammed with equipment and scraps of notes. Broad-leafed plants stood in tall glass cylinders wrapped around with copper wire connected with crocodile clips to an array of car batteries. A tank of liquid stood to one side, filled with
