Hunter turned to the others and said quietly, ‘There’s still hope. Don’t give up.’
Reid must have guessed what Hunter was saying, for he added, ‘I’m sorry, but you really mustn’t think you stand a chance. I don’t know what it is about the Pendragon Spirit that makes you a threat to such a vast, unknowable force as the Void, but here you are close enough for it to work its ways on you, yet, unfortunately for you, not close enough to harm it.’
‘That was always the plan,’ Hunter noted.
‘That was always the plan,’ Reid confirmed.
Kirkham emerged from the grey background. With a cough to gain Reid’s attention, the chief scientist said, ‘It’s time.’
Reid nodded to him. Pulling a torch from his pocket and shining it ahead of him, Kirkham proceeded towards the growing gloom emanating from the door behind which the Void existed. As he drew closer, he began to shake from the extreme cold. Frost began to form down his front.
‘What are you expecting to get out of this?’ Mallory shouted. ‘What do you think the Void’s going to give you?’
‘A new world,’ Reid said. ‘The Void’s world.’
‘A world ruled by the opposite of life?’ Mallory was incredulous. ‘How could anyone exist in that?’
‘You think this one is any better?’ Reid said. ‘The country’s falling apart-’
‘People still have their lives, their freedom,’ Mallory replied, urging Reid to change his mind.
‘There’s magic everywhere,’ Caitlin continued. ‘Wonder. Endless possibilities. All the things people hoped for before the Fall-’
Reid cut her dead with a cold stare. ‘It’s unpredictable, uncontrollable. We can’t govern. None of the things we had before the Fall can thrive here. You can’t work hard to better yourself. You can’t have rules and regulations. You can’t have a strong society producing for the common good. No one’s going to get rich here, or fat, or live out their lives in luxury. This isn’t the world we spent thousands of years of human civilisation trying to form.’
‘What’s the Void’s world going to be like?’ Mallory shouted. ‘Constant night? Blood? War? Death? Hopelessness?’
Reid merely gave a faint smile, then a shrug. ‘Do it,’ he said to Kirkham.
‘There’s still hope,’ Hunter said to the others.
From the back of the faceless crowd of politicians and civil servants, the General made his way forward. He had a gun. ‘Time to stop this,’ he said.
Reid turned just as the General raised the pistol and fired. The bullet hit Reid directly between the eyes. His body slammed against the bars and then slumped down in an awkward jumble of limbs.
‘Come on,’ Hunter said under his breath.
‘I’m in charge now,’ the General said to the others. ‘Stop this nonsense immediately. Free these people.’
Hunter, Caitlin and Mallory watched, silently urging the crowd to obey the General. No one moved.
The General brandished his gun at the crowd. ‘I said-’
‘Kill him.’ The voice may have come from the deputy prime minister, or one of the Cabinet members, but it didn’t really matter which. The guards responded instantly, turning their weapons on the General and cutting him down.
‘Look at them,’ Mallory said sickened. ‘Like animals, fighting amongst themselves.’ The General’s blood flowed into Reid’s, mingled with it, formed an ocean that separated the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons from the small crowd huddled together against the gloom.
Mallory glanced at Hunter. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? All over.’
Shaking violently, Kirkham continued towards the frozen door that was now leaking darkness rapidly.
Hunter repeated his mantra, now a wish, a prayer: ‘There’s still hope.’
Kirkham’s palsied hand grasped the handle. Hunter guessed that the ice must be burning his flesh, but the scientist didn’t flinch; he almost appeared to be in a trance.
From somewhere that could have been far, far away or in the next corridor, an awful sound rose up that made all of them feel sick to their stomachs. It resonated deep into their bones, stabbing into their brains. They wanted to scratch at their ears, make themselves deaf. The howls of dogs joining together to form one note, one ringing chime of despair.
The blood drained from Caitlin’s face. ‘The Hounds of Avalon,’ she whispered.
For all the time they had been imprisoned, Sophie had stood silently, observing. Mallory stepped back to take her in his arms and when he saw her face, he realised the truth. ‘You knew. Why didn’t you say something?’
‘I couldn’t take the risk that the Void might discover the fifth.’ There were tears in her eyes, but no despair. She smiled. Mallory pulled her to him and they held each other tightly.
Caitlin closed her eyes and bowed her head, resting it gently against the bars.
Hunter couldn’t believe it. He’d put his trust in Existence and he’d been wrong. They’d failed in the worst way possible. There was no hope.
Kirkham opened the door. The obscene howling grew deafening, subsuming every other sound. Between one tick of a clock and the next, the moment appeared to drag on for ever as all eyes focused on the gaping door. Kirkham stared into its depths, frozen. And then darkness began to seep out, slowly at first, then faster, rapidly becoming a torrent. Everything it touched became fluid, began to alter, twist out of shape, the very molecules of the fabric becoming something else. With it came an awful wave of despair, a million times more potent than anything sent out by the Lament-Brood, and everyone it touched fell to their knees, devastated at what was to come.
Hunter gripped the bars, tears burning the corners of his eyes, still unable to accept that humanity had betrayed itself, that the basest elements had won out over all that was noble in mankind.
Reality began to warp and as it rushed towards him, he had a glimmer of what it was becoming. It looked very much like the worst of all possible worlds. It looked very much like hell.
Jagged static jumped across Sophie Tallent’s mind. It startled her so badly that she almost knocked her polystyrene cup of coffee across the keyboard. She guessed she had been daydreaming. It must have been a particularly deep one, for it took her a moment to orient herself, and though she couldn’t recall the details, it must have been satisfying, for she felt a great wistfulness at having left it behind.
She was sitting at her desk at Steelguard Securities, the screen in front of her flickering with the constant updating of currency information from all over the world. Beyond her was the window, offering views from high over Canary Wharf across London’s financial district, sitting smug and bloated beneath the thick blanket of pollution from car exhausts and the jets flying into Heathrow or London City Airport every few seconds.
Something hit her across the back of the head and this time she did spill her coffee. It was Kane, his chubby face looking like a side of ham above his salmon pinstriped shirt, and he was clutching the file with which he had clipped her. ‘You’re useless, Tallent. How do you expect to get any bonuses? Watch the screen.’ He tapped it with a fat forefinger. ‘Never take your eyes off it. If anything interesting happens, get on the phone.’ He snorted with disgust. ‘You’re a waste of space. You know they only keep you on here because you’re decorative? Mister Rowe likes to look at your tits in that nice white blouse. So if you want to hang on to your job, take your jacket off.’ He stalked off to abuse some other unfortunate labouring for ten to twelve hours a day in front of one of the rows and rows of screens on the Steelguard floor.
In the corner, the TV came alive as someone turned up the sound for the morning news. More deaths after the rebels shelled a market in Najaf in Iraq. A Western businessman had been taken hostage somewhere else in the Middle East. His captors had released a video of him, staring beaten and humiliated at the camera, a knife at his throat. The prime minister and the president of the United States shook hands; another successful summit, another announcement of millions poured into a new joint weapons project. Inflation holding steady. (A cheer ran around the room.) The poverty gap had widened again. (Another cheer.)
Sophie’s attention was caught by a cleaner making his way slowly across the floor, unnoticed by anyone else. He had a handsome face, though he occasionally let his long hair fall across it, as if embarrassed. He looked beaten and dejected, like a badly fitting shoe.
Mallory briefly met Sophie’s gaze. Somewhere in the dark recesses of his subconscious, something stirred: a hint of recognition so vague that it was almost a shiver across his synapses, there then gone. Crazy, he thought. No details surfaced because there weren’t any. His kind and hers would never meet. It just wasn’t done; better keep his mind on the work if he wanted to hold on to his job. There were the toilets on this floor to clean, then the two floors above, then back to this floor. An endless cycle, never to be broken.
