Temple of the Gods

in a crystalline spray, trees shattering under the pounding onslaught. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ Nina wailed as she scrambled behind a boulder. ‘Why do people in helicopters always try to kill me?’

The gunfire stopped. Eddie peered out from behind a rock and saw what he had feared — the chopper was turning to bring its rockets to bear.

‘Stay down!’ he shouted as he ran to the windows, opening fire with the Makarov. The gunner ducked back into the cabin as a bullet clanged off the fuselage, but the helicopter was almost a hundred metres away, and the Russian gun was sighted for much closer ranges — he couldn’t aim it accurately enough to hit a specific target.

The chopper’s nose came round, the spotlight dazzling him. He could now barely make out the aircraft itself through the glare, never mind its pilot.

But there was something closer that he could see, and hit…

He snapped up the pistol and emptied the magazine into the wind turbine’s hub.

Machinery blew out in a shower of sparks. The whirling blades juddered, their vibration rapidly increasing, loud clangs rising even over the helicopter’s roar. Another burst of sparks from the crippled generator — then with a screech the rotor sheared away from the hub.

Still spinning at high speed, it dropped to the tier below — and bounced away into the night sky.

Straight at the helicopter.

The horrified pilot tried to take evasive action as it arced at his aircraft, but it was too late. The hefty blades sliced off the chopper’s tail boom as if it were made from damp paper. Without its tail rotor, the helicopter immediately went into an uncontrollable spin. Wobbling like a top, it whipped around faster and faster, losing altitude as it careened towards the skyscraper—

Eddie hurled himself back out into the garden as the tumbling aircraft crashed through the building’s outer wall six floors below and exploded. A huge fireball surged up the tower’s side behind him. He scrabbled to join Nina, shielding his face from the heat as the roiling inferno ascended. ‘You okay?’

She nodded, still stunned by what had just happened. Oily black smoke boiled upwards beyond the broken windows, leaving the edge of the carpet aflame. ‘Oh my God!’ she cried. ‘What about all the people downstairs?’

‘Soon as the fire alarm sounded, they’ll have evacuated,’ said Eddie, hoping that the Japanese reputation for efficiency extended to Takashi Industries’ emergency procedures. ‘And I think we ought to join ’em.’

He helped her up, and was about to head for the exit when the ceiling sprinklers burst into life, drenching them. ‘Great,’ Nina moaned, flicking strands of wet hair from her eyes. ‘What next, an earthquake?’

The building shook.

Eddie shot her an accusing glare. ‘That was not me tempting fate!’ she protested as she retrieved the case. ‘I’m not a fate-temptress!’

Another jolt. The sound of more windows splintering came from below — followed by a deep groan of buckling metal and crumbling concrete. The sprinklers died as pipes were severed. They both felt another movement, their inner ears warning them that they were leaning over — even though they were standing still. Through the smoke, the glowing Toyko skyline slowly began to tilt. ‘The whole fucking building’s going over!’ Eddie yelled.

More noises of imminent collapse reached them as girders broke from their joints and concrete slabs sheared apart. The doors through which they had been about to leave creaked in distress as their frame warped — then they shattered, chunks of wood flying into the room. The ceiling behind the exit collapsed, ventilation hoses thrashing angrily amongst the falling rubble.

They were cut off from the stairs.

The floor of the now visibly tilting room trembled. Another deep destructive boom from below and the lights flickered, then went out. The burning carpet provided enough illumination for Eddie to see, but even with that they still had nowhere to go…

Nina grabbed his hand. ‘This way!’ She pulled him down the ever-steepening slope towards Takashi’s office.

‘How’s that going to help?’

‘He’s got an escape pod!’

‘He’s got a what?’

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought too!’ She reached the door and tried to open it. It didn’t move. Like the set at the other end of the room, the frame was warping under the structural stress. ‘Damn it!’

Eddie solved the problem by kicking the doors open. ‘Go on!’

Nina recoiled at the sight of what was left of Takashi and Kojima in the firelight. Suppressing her nausea, she crossed the blood-splattered floor to the booth. The bright orange capsule was still inside, door raised and a light glowing within. To her dismay, the padded interior only looked big enough for one person.

‘Get in!’ Eddie barked, pushing her towards it.

‘I’m not leaving you behind!’

‘Too bloody right you’re not! I meant get in and shove over!’

She clambered through the hatch and lowered herself on to a thickly cushioned seat. Eddie followed her. He bashed the case. ‘Can’t you just dump that fucking thing?’

‘No, I — aah! — can’t,’ she grunted as he squeezed into the cramped space. ‘Okay, so how does this work?’

Eddie spotted a small control panel. It had two buttons, the top one flashing. The crash of another section of collapsing ceiling told him that there was no time to figure out what they did. Instead, he jabbed at the lit button. The clamshell door descended with a mechanical hum, pressing him even more tightly against his wife.

‘Well, not quite the reunion I’d hoped for,’ she mumbled into his butt—

Eddie pushed the second button.

Rockets set around the capsule’s door fired. More pyrotechnics on the window behind it shattered the safety glass a fraction of a second before the pod blasted through and sailed out into open air. The G-force squashed Eddie hard against the door, Nina screaming as she was jammed against him.

A moment later, the skyscraper crumbled.

A wedge-shaped chunk eight storeys high sheared away from the top of the tower, sliding diagonally down the fault line created by the exploding helicopter before plunging towards the ground in a trail of smoke and dust. Evacuees ran screaming across the lawns as it fell. The mass of steel and concrete and glass smashed down, the shock of the impact destroying every window on the bottom twenty floors and sending a choking cloud of pulverised debris across the grass after the fleeing workers. More office detritus rained down on the mangled girders and rubble.

The escape pod was also falling — but far more slowly. The rockets had burned out in seconds, their job of propelling the capsule away from the building completed. After a brief but terrifying period of freefall, a trio of parachutes deployed. Twirling gracefully like a sycamore seed, the orange sphere descended and thumped down on one of the lawns well clear of the scene of destruction.

The door opened. Eddie fell out backwards, a dizzied Nina crawling after him and flopping on to the grass. She regarded the smoking wreckage with horrified amazement as people staggered out of the billowing cloud like walking ghosts. ‘I think… I want my office moved to the first floor,’ she gasped.

Eddie sat against the pod, recovering his breath. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yeah. Somehow.’ She looked up at him, taking in his bruised face and torn, bloodied clothes. ‘My God! You look…’

‘Like I got beat up by ninjas?’

‘I was going to say “weird with a beard”.’

‘Tchah!’

‘But yeah, you need to get to a hospital.’

‘They might be a bit busy tonight.’ He nodded towards the fleeing workers. ‘And anyway, that could cause me a few problems if the police want to ask me any questions.’

Nina sat up. ‘I’ve got some questions. Where have you been for the past three months? What have you been doing? And why are you here — I mean, this exact place, right now, at the same time as me?’