What's happening to us?
The makeshift battlefield had gone silent. Crake folded trembling fingers round the edge of his shelter and peered out.
There was a figure standing on the crest of the second set of battlements, backlit by the restless glow of the fire. It was cloaked, hooded and masked, dressed head to toe in close-fitting black leather. Crake felt his stomach knot into a ball at the sight.
An Imperator. One of the Awakeners' deadly elite. Men who could read your thoughts, who could scour a mind clean with their terrible gaze. The ultimate inquisitors.
Spit and blood. We're all dead meat.
The Imperator came walking unhurriedly down the slope of the barricade. The Sentinels were all gone now, dead at the hands of Bess or her allies, but the Imperator was not troubled at being outnumbered. No one dared to raise a gun to him. They were all afflicted with the same awful fear.
He was heading for the spot where Frey hid. Crake saw his captain go scrambling away on his hands and knees, shaking his head, begging incoherently. The Imperator drew a long black knife from his belt and walked relentlessly onward.
There was a screech of metal, and Crake's gaze went to Bess, who was pulling aside a girder that was in her way. She was not crippled by fear like the rest of them, it seemed, but only bewildered by the sudden end to the violence. Seeing the Imperator advancing on Frey, she went lumbering in to attack.
The Imperator held up a dismissive hand. Bess froze, mid-stride, and toppled over with a crash. She didn't move again.
The sight was like a punch in the chest to Crake. He wanted to scream her name, but no noise would come. What had been done to her? Why wasn't she moving? Had she been put to sleep, the way he put her to sleep with his thralled whistle? Or had she been extinguished, like a candle? The thought that he might forever lose the chance to save his niece, to atone for his crime - it was more than he could possibly suffer. If that was the case, he'd rather die now.
The Imperator turned his black gaze to Frey, pinning him like an insect. Frey rolled over on his back, whimpering. The Imperator put his boot to Frey's chest and shoved him down. He leaned over his victim, knife raised.
A gunshot made Crake jump. The Imperator staggered sideways, clutching his shoulder. Another, knocking the black-clad figure back further.
Jez, getting to her feet, pistol in her hand. Jez, and yet not Jez. There was a strange look to her now. Her usually pale face had gone paler still. Her hair hung lank, eyes dark, lips skinned back over her teeth, a snarl on her face. Something animal in the way she moved, slightly crouched. Feral.
The Imperator straightened. The bullets hadn't harmed him. Jez pulled the trigger again, but the gun was empty. She tossed it aside, and as she did so, she flickered. One moment she was there, the next she was half a metre to her left, and the next she was back again. Quick enough to be a trick of the eye. But Crake saw it.
I knew it, he thought. I knew it all along.
The Imperator's grip on Crake's mind had weakened. The paranoia, the nameless horror, receded to bearable levels. In some distant, rational part of his mind, he found he recognised this feeling of horror that the Imperator inspired. In a strange way, it was familiar to him. He'd come across it before, to a lesser degree, in his experiments. It was the feeling of being close to something wrong. The body's instinctive reaction to something not of this world.
What manner of man is this?
The Imperator backed away from Jez, blade in his hand. Frey scrambled off gratefully to cringe in a new hiding place. Jez prowled closer to the Imperator, her gaze fixed on him. Nothing physical had changed about her, but her aspect was different. Where once there had been a petite woman in a baggy jumpsuit, now there was something fearful. Something inhuman, alien. A creature that wore the shape of their navigator.
The Imperator was intimidated by her, his dark grandeur diminished. He readied his blade as she moved closer. Then, when she was close enough, he lunged.
Jez flickered. Suddenly, she seemed to be in three places at once: before him, beside him, behind him, flitting from one position to the next in the time it took to blink an eye. The Imperator's thrust hit nothing; Jez sprang on to him from his left, hands clutching the masked head. Her weight took him down to the ground. She smashed his skull twice against the floor, the second time accompanied by a grotesque crack. Then she tore his head off.
The effect was immediate. It was as if Crake had been gripped by an invisible hand, squeezing his chest, and now it had been released. He gasped like a drowning man reaching the surface. Next to him, Silo was experiencing similar relief.
It had an effect on Jez, too. She stood up and staggered backwards, the Imperator's head dangling from one hand. There was an expression of bewilderment on her face, a look of shock and fear. No longer was she the feral thing they'd seen a moment ago. Now she was small, and scared. She stumbled for a few moments, and then her eyes rolled back and she fell to the ground.
Crake hung on to a girder, letting the strength seep back into his body. The choking smoke and murk was getting thicker by the moment, but he breathed it anyway, and coughed. It was worth it, to be alive.
Frey and Malvery were getting to their feet. They approached Jez carefully, as though she were a dangerous beast that might spring up and lunge at them. Already they were afraid of her. They'd seen the other side of their navigator, and nothing would ever be the same after that.
Damn it, Jez, he thought. Sooner or later they had to find out. But I wish they hadn't seen you this way. I wish you'd told them first.
Then his thoughts went to Bess, lying motionless on the battlefield, and he scrambled to his feet to help her.
Twenty-One
'Get him off me! Get him off my tail!'
A chatter of machine guns, and the night was full of tracer fire, ripping past Harkins' cockpit. He banked and dived, squealing all the way, and by some miracle he didn't catch any of it.
'Will you shut your meat-hole, Harkins?' said the voice in his ear. 'I can't bloody think with you shrieking like a pansy.'
Pinn. How he hated Pinn. Of all the men and women and small furry animals that mocked and humiliated him, Pinn was the worst. Well, except for the cat. He'd rather have Pinn than the cat.
'What's there to think about? Just shoot him!' Harkins cried. He twisted in his seat, trying to locate his pursuer.
There was no sign. Hard to see anything in a storm like this. The Equaliser was probably somewhere in his blind spot, anyway. He went into a steep climb and rolled to starboard. A smattering of bullets chased after him through the rain.
'Pinn? Pinn? Stop scratching your fat arse and help me!'
There was a dull boom, and the windglass of his cockpit lit up with reflected flame. He looked behind him and saw the unfurling flower of a mid-air explosion, yellow against the night. The Skylance went spinning past, its pilot whooping in triumph.
'That's five for me!' Pinn said. 'How many have you got, eh?'
Harkins slumped back in his seat and mopped his face with his sleeve. His heart was kicking against his thin ribs and his gorge had risen dangerously high.
'Three, I think,' he said weakly.
