Maddie just looked at her. She didn’t look convinced. “You still haven’t told me how you got here. How you escaped.”
“Thirnas, that’s one of the gods, he knew my dad, and they told me about places like this, about the clockwork rooms.”
“Wait, your dad was friends with a god? I wish I had some popcorn for this.”
“I know how it sounds…”
“Crazy is how it sounds.”
“But it’s true. And it’s no crazier than your story, to be fair.”
“Point taken,” Maddie said. “Continue.”
“When the Bleed broke through and started to take hold of London, I knew I had to get away. Thirnas told me I’d find one of these rooms at the top of the Shard, and I managed to get to it before the city was overcome.”
“So this god and your dad told you about this crazy tech?”
“Yes.”
“Never mind that the whole city was going down in flames?”
“I know how it sounds.”
“Just you?”
“Yes, just me. My dad died trying to protect me, and just before he died he told me…”
“What?”
Jenny paused, aware that her already unbelievable story was about to sound even more implausible. She felt stupid saying these things. She could just about cope with internalizing everything, but the events of the last couple of days were too preposterous to repeat out loud.
Okay. Deep breath. “Dad told me he wasn’t my real dad. That he’d brought me to Earth when I was born.”
“What, like Superman?” Maddie laughed.
“Fuck you, I’m serious. My dad died for me, you know. He looked after me all my life. He told me I’m half-god.”
Maddie laughed again, and this time she didn’t stop. “Okay, you got me. I almost believed you up to that point. Fun’s over now though. I’m gone.”
She walked towards the door.
“You can’t leave.”
“Watch me.”
“Where will you go?” Jenny asked.
“Anywhere but here. Think I’ll go and relax on that impossible-looking beach out there and wait for this bad trip to finish. I drank a lot of water on the moon just now. There must have been something in it that’s making me hallucinate and imagine I’m having conversations with psycho demigods.”
“Please don’t go.”
“Try and stop me.”
“Stay here and help me work this out. We’ve been brought here for a reason.”
“I’d rather repair an engine with a Q-tip.”
“I almost wish I was insane, because everything would be a hell of a lot easier to deal with if I was mad. What’s happening out there is real. You have to believe me, Maddie.”
“I do?”
“Just think this through for a sec. We’ve both been transported here to the same place at the same time, and that can’t just be coincidence. The technology in this room is like nothing else on Earth and if we can just—”
“Save your breath,” Maddie yelled at her. “You’re delusional, and I’m done wasting time here. My friends need me.”
“What, your friends swimming in a lake on the moon?”
“Don’t piss me off, I’m Irish; we’ll throw down for no reason.”
“Get over yourself, for Christ’s sake. There’s so much more at stake here than you and me.”
“You’re bringing Christ into this now? Is He one of your pals too? Another friend of your dad?”
“Don’t mock me. I’m trying to help.”
“The only way you can help me is by getting out of my damn way.”
Jenny wasn’t budging.
Maddie snapped. She swung a punch and knocked her out cold.
3
SURFERS PARADISE, AUSTRALIA
Jenny could only have been unconscious for a few seconds, but by the time she came around, Maddie was long gone. She picked herself up off the ground and shook her head clear. Somehow the pain in her face felt positive, cathartic, and it helped her to focus. She tried to put herself in Maddie’s shoes. If she was telling the truth—and as far-fetched as it sounded, in the circumstances, Jenny thought she probably was—then Maddie’s fear and disorientation must have been even more overwhelming than her own. If she herself had been transported to a world she thought no longer existed, only to be told it was on the verge of annihilation, then maybe she’d have had a similar reaction. But what hurt Jenny more than anything, she thought, even more than the punch on the jaw she’d just taken, was the fact Maddie wanted to get back to the moon to help her friends. It made her realize just how completely, hopelessly, inexorably alone she was right now. Her dad was gone, Thirnas was gone, and now she was stranded on the wrong side of a dying world. The only person left that she had any connection with had just stated their intentions by laying her out cold.
No time for this kind of pathetic self-pity, she told herself, sniffing back tears. As clichéd as it sounded, the world, or what was left of it, depended on her.
In the time she’d spent back in the clockwork room with Maddie, day had turned to dusk. She burst outside into the evening heat and looked for the other woman’s distinctive overalls and cap. The atmosphere in Surfer’s Paradise felt understandably uneasy; a curious mix of subdued gloom and drunken irreverence. There was no doubting that everyone was aware of the bloody horrors looming on the horizon, but a decent chunk of the population seemed to be avoiding thinking about it and were instead taking solace in drinking. Many of the clubs, bars and restaurants were packed.
Other people, it appeared, were taking an altogether more pragmatic approach to the impending end of the world. A number of homes and businesses had been packed up and loaded into cars, trucks and vans and were on their way out of town. Where they thought they were going, though, was anyone’s guess. Jenny knew they were wasting their time, as nowhere would be safe from the Bleed, but she couldn’t
