She anxiously watched trickles of people trying to move, but the open spaces they were slowly herding towards were filled with other people already. Elsewhere in the country it would be better, but in the built-up metropolis like Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, people’s options were severely limited.
She wanted to say more, but she’d just be talking for the sake of it. There was nothing else she could tell them, no other reassurance she could give. Her heart went out to those terrified millions left out there. Just when it appeared that some semblance of calm was returning, another shockwave would hit and with it, another sweeping wave of fear.
“I’ve tried to rebalance things,” Maddie told her. She was on the other side of the console, her hands moving with expert speed and precision. “I’m moving more of the energy in the orb over to the area where the Bleed’s attacking. It won’t make a lot of difference, but I’m thinking it’ll cushion the blow a little, reduce the size of the impact.”
“Good call. Thank you.”
And for a few minutes, it seemed to be working. Maddie watched the hammer-thing continuing to strike, while Jenny watched what was happening across Australia. Fortunately, they’d ended up in a country where the population was relatively well spread. Apart from in the cities, particularly those towards the east, people appeared to just about be coping.
But then the Bleed changed direction.
There was another Bleed hammer now, this one south of Australia. “Shit,” Maddie said as the clockwork room showed its first strike. There was even more terror on the streets of the remaining cities as the population was now battered by shockwaves coming from a completely different direction. “We can’t defend against something like this,” Maddie said as she recalibrated the forcefield.
“We have to!” Jenny yelled at her.
“We’re already stretched to capacity. Maintaining the forcefield at this level is taking everything the room has.”
“What choice do we have?”
“Not many,” Maddie answered. “Look.”
The two hammers continued battering the orb, and there were signs of a third now being constructed off the west coast. But that wasn’t the worst of it.
12
SURFERS PARADISE, AUSTRALIA
Maddie had managed to balance the orb’s energy as best she could, subduing the effects of the constant battering of the forcefield from the three giant Bleed hammers. “That’s the best I can do,” she announced. “I’ve been able to sync the god-tech with the rhythm of the hammer blows, and I don’t think the Bleed has caught on yet.”
“So you’re anticipating the hits and shifting the power accordingly?”
“Exactly. And so far, it doesn’t seem to have noticed. I’m hoping I’ve been able to fool it into thinking the whole of the forcefield is stronger than it is.”
“Smart.”
“I know, but it’s not sustainable. All it’s gonna take is for another one or two of those things to appear, or for them to vary the rhythm. If they all start hitting at the same time, we’re in trouble. I don’t think they’d break through, but the damage we’d sustain in here would be catastrophic.”
“I get that. I understand. So why hasn’t it built more?”
“Yeah, that’s a concern…I think it’s up to something.”
“It’s not like it’s run out of energy or material, is it? It’s toying with us. The chances of the status quo being maintained are pretty much zero.”
“Exactly zero, I’d say.”
Whether the clockwork room actually existed in the same space and time continuum as everything else or in its own reality, for the first time Jenny could feel the vibrations of the Bleed’s non-stop attack. It felt like the enemy was getting through.
“Is there anything else we can do? Any power we can route or re-route?”
Maddie held her head in her hands. “Have you not been listening to me? I don’t know where the power source for this thing is. I don’t even know if there is a power source as such. I’ve done everything I can, everything it’ll let me do. As long as we’re having to protect such a massive area, we are always going to be vulnerable. And it’s not like I can just reconfigure the room to only protect land…as far as I can tell, the forcefield can only be circular.”
“It’s a sphere, though, right? What about the power we’re using to protect underground?”
“If we cut power down there, the Bleed will start burrowing under. From what I’ve seen, it naturally targets where we’re weakest, so, for now, maintaining the illusion that we’re not weak anywhere is the best we can do.”
The relentless beat of the demonic hammer blows was wearing Jenny down. It was as if they were hammering directly on her skull, and, though it remained constant, the pressure she was feeling was increasing. This was too much for one person to deal with. She’d never asked for this level of responsibility and felt hideously unprepared. Worse than unprepared—she felt useless. She had at her disposal the most incredible technology, and yet it seemed she couldn’t do anything with it. She felt worthless. She felt like a failure.
She wished that Dad was here to give her some guidance. Or Thirnas, the one god worth knowing. She even wished that she was the different version of herself she’d seen on Maddie’s Earth. Okay, maybe that version of Jenny Allsopp had been responsible for starting a global war, but at least she’d had some backbone. At least she’d done something. As Jenny paced the room, the god-tech showed her a series of images from around the country: millions of helpless people, every one of them relying on her to protect them from the Bleed. She was on the verge of failing them miserably. “What good is one person against an unstoppable enemy?” she asked herself. “I’m so
