The ball was now as big as the princeling, and still growing.
Tark ran for the cables.
But so did the princeling.
They each snatched up a cable.
‘Hands it ova!’ Tark shouted.
‘I will not let you win,’ said the princeling.
‘We is gonna die if we don't restart the system,’ said Tark.
‘This is just a game,’ insisted the princeling, a tinge of uncertainty creeping into his voice. ‘We are not going to die.’
Zyra circled around the ball and came up behind the princeling. She grabbed the cable, but the princeling continued to hold on and struggle. Zyra bared her studded teeth and bit his arm, wrenching the cable from his grasp as she did so. The princeling clutched his arm and staggered backwards towards the ball, now twice his size. He tried desperately to regain his footing, but couldn't. Tark reached out a hand to try and help him, but he was too late.
‘Nooo!’ screamed the princeling, as his hand brushed the pulsating ball.
In a flash of static, he was gone, his plaintive cry echoing through the control room.
The ball pulsed with energy and expanded rapidly, devouring monitors and wires and controls into its sparkling grey depths. The room would be consumed within seconds. Tark and Zyra had no time to think. They leapt for each other, cables held out in front of them. The frayed ends met just as the edge of the expanding ball reached them.
And then there was nothing.
22: Back to the Beginning
Tark and Zyra awoke in their basement. Everything was back in place. There was no sign of the damage done by Vera.
Tark sat up on his mouldy, lumpy mattress, and looked across the basement at Zyra who was sitting up on her mattress.
‘I guess it's done,’ he whispered.
Zyra nodded, then a smile spread across her face. ‘We beats the Fat Man.’
‘Yeah.’ Tark smiled in return. ‘We dids.’
‘We saved everything!’
‘Yeah,’ Tark agreed. ‘We dids.’
‘Unless,’ said Zyra quietly. ‘Unless all that wuz a game, too.’
They climbed slowly to their feet and walked around the basement, looking at everything, examining ordinary things, running hands and fingers across walls, over chairs, through the dust and dirt. It was all familiar, it was all the same, and yet it was so different. Zyra looked down at herself. She was wearing her leather coat.
‘A game,’ whispered Tark. ‘We is in a game.’
‘Maybe,’ said Zyra.
‘So do we play?’ asked Tark. ‘Does we goes on likes before?’
‘Wot else is there?’
‘Us,’ said Tark, walking over to Zyra and reaching out a hand to touch her arm.
‘But it's against the rules.’
‘Yeah, it is,’ agreed Tark. ‘But the Designers is gone. And I don'ts care.’
He took Zyra's hand in his and leaned forward, bringing his face close to hers. ‘Alls I cares about … is …’
He leaned closer.
‘… you.’
And as their lips met, everything changed.
