shattering of glass and a brief scream as Mo squeezes the fingerboard. The bow string is glowing red. A third note quavers weirdly out of the instrument, somehow building simultaneously with the first and second, which haven't stopped — they've taken root in the air of the room, thickening and turning it blue — and there's a popping noise as the buckles of the straps holding me down spring open.
More screams. Billington, being non-stupid, dashes for the door onto the catwalk outside. The bow reaches the end of its arc and begins to slice back across the bridge of the violin as lockers burst apart, spilling paper and supplies across the floor: zippers break belts unfasten, doors fly open.
The noise is so loud now that it feels like a god is ripping the two halves of reality apart: the sound of tearing inside my head is deafening. I can't hear or feel Ramona anymore, and the lack of her presence is a huge vacuum in my soul, trying to split me in two. The noise of another shot slams in my ears as I sit up and see Mo advancing across the room towards the guards, still playing one hideous note after another. Her skin crackles with static discharge and her hair stands on end as the black beret with the pistol takes aim again and I gulp air, about to shout a warning: but she notices him and anything I could say would be redundant because she merely points the fingerboard of her instrument at him and there's a spray of blood, unlocked from the skin that binds it. Across the room, there's a sudden flash of light and smoke begins to pour out of one of the equipment racks.
An alarm klaxon begins to blare on and off mournfully, then a speaker crackles into life: 'Alert! Incoming helicopters!
All hands to point defense!'
Where's Billington gotten to? I shake my head, trying to dislodge the dreadful keening sound of strings. The straps are gone. I sit up and lean over the side of the chair, then stumble to my feet and stagger round to the other side. Ramona's out for the count, and she looks really ill — breathing fast, the livid, bruised stripes of her gill slits pulsing against the fishwhite scales around the base of her neck. She's too dry, I realize. Too dry? A stab of guilt: I glance across at Mo, who is single-mindedly driving the surviving black berets out of the room. They're panicking, running for safety. Where's their master?
I glance through the shattered window overlooking the moon pool and my blood runs cold. The thing in the cradle dangling from the drilling rig is twitching fitfully. Down below it a familiar figure hunkers down on the deck, staring up at the chthonic killing machine. Shit, so that's where he's gotten to. Then I notice the second, smaller creature standing in front of him. And that's the host body. He's going to try to reactivate it! Which means — I shuffle painfully away from the chairs, and nearly trip over a pistol. Bending down, I pick it up: it's either the futuristic-looking P99 with laser scope that Marc had, or its identical twin. 'Mo?' I call.
She turns round and says something. I can't hear a single word over the howling reverberation of her violin.
'I've got to stop him!' I yell. I can barely hear myself. She looks blank, so I point at the door onto the catwalk. 'He's out there!'
She points at one of the inner doors emphatically, as if suggesting I should head that way instead. So I shake my head and stumble towards the catwalk. Behind me, the flickers of light suggest more electrical fires breaking out among the high-voltage bearers. I lean over the railing and look down dizzily. It's about twenty meters away — a small target at that range. I fumble with the pistol and switch on the laser. My hand's shaking. If I'm right — The red dot dances across the far wall. I trace it down the wall, swearing under my breath, and run it rapidly across the deck towards the drained floor of the moon pool. I keep my finger away from the trigger. If I'm wrong — Billington is an expert at soul-sucking abominations.
Now he's in thrall to another, greater evil: one with a damaged body, so he's provided it with a convenient temporary replacement while he comes up with enough sacrificial victims and spare parts to repair its original one. What entity aboard this ship exhibits all the personality traits of a coldblooded killing machine, combined with the monstrous, overweening vanity and laziness of a convalescent war god lounging in their personal Valhalla while their minions prepare their armor? There's only one answer.
The Persian tomcat sits underneath the alien horror, washing itself without concern. 'C'mon, Fluffy,' I tell it. 'Show me what you are.' We all know about cats and lasers. Lasers are the best cat toy ever invented: the red-dot machine that comes out for playtime. Used skillfully, you can make a cat chase the dot so slavishly that she'll run headfirst into a wall.
It's like the sitting-in-cardboard-boxes thing, or the sniffing-an-extended-finger reflex. All cats do it, unless they're so enervated that they choose to ignore the lure and groom their fur instead.
Fluffy takes a few seconds to lock on, and when he does, his response is immediate and drastic. He glances down at the deck sees the red dot dancing around nearby — and dashes away like his tail's on fire.
'Bob! We've got to get out of here! Ellis has gotten away.'
I look round. Mo stands in the doorway, one hand cupped around an ear: 'There are scuttling charges due to blow as soon as he's clear — '
It's deja vu all over again. At least her eyeballs aren't glowing blue and she isn't levitating. I shake my head and point down at the moon pool: 'Help me! We've got to stop him!'
'Who's the target?' Mo ducks out and stands beside me.
'Him!' I pull the trigger. There's an ear-stinging ricochet a fraction of a second after the shot. I'm nowhere near the target. 'Damn, missed.
'Bob, we've got to get out of here! Can you still feel that Black Chamber bitch? The chromatic disintermediator should have broken your entanglement, but — why are you trying to shoot that cat'
'Because — ' I squeeze off another shot ' — it's possessed!'
'Bob.' She looks at me as if I'm mad. There's a loud bang from inside the control room, and a human figure in a black beret runs out onto the sealed doors flooring the pool: I shoot instinctively and miss, and he dives for cover. 'Leave the fucking cat — hey, that's Billington down there!' She raises her instrument and prepares to let fly.
The cat squirts out across the floor, a white blur targeting the downed bad guy. I shoot again, and again, and keep missing.
'Not Billington! Get the cat!'
Mo sniffs skeptically. 'Are you sure'
'Yes, I'm goddamn sure!' Billington's standing in front of the iron maiden, as if steeling himself to jump inside. 'It's the enemy! Get it now, or we're fucked!'
Mo raises her violin, squints darkly down at the deck below us, and drops a noise like a million felines being disemboweled down on top of Fluffy. Who opens his fanged maw to howl, then explodes like a gore-filled, white dandelion head. Mo turns and looks at me harshly. 'That looked just like a perfectly ordinary cat to me. If you've — '
'It was possessed by the animation nexus behind JENNIFER MORGUE Two!' I gabble. 'The clue — he saw a laser dot and dodged — '
'Bob. Back up a moment.'
'Yes'
'The cat. You said it was the enemy. You didn't say it was occupied by the mind of that thing?' She points up at the ceiling, where the chthonic warrior is definitely twitching and writhing. I stare.
'Uh, well, I meant — '
'And you thought killing it would improve matters'
'Yes'
One of the bole-like knots in the warrior's hide is growing larger. Then it opens, revealing an eye the size of a truck tire.
It stares right back at me.
She clouts me on the back of the head: 'Run!'
The huge tentacle slams down onto the deck where Ellis Billington kneels in supplication before his god, landing with a percussive clang that rattles the remaining windows and reduces him to a greasy stain on the bulkhead. Which is probably why Mo and I survive: we stumble back through the control room doorway about two seconds before the treetrunk-thick limb slams into the wall with the force of a runaway locomotive. Support trusses scream and buckle beneath the blow. I start coughing and my eyes water immediately.
The air is gray with smoke and thick with the greasy fish-oil smell of burning insulation. I thump the big red button beside the door and metal shutters begin to drop down behind the broken glass — maybe it's too little too
