SHADE’S CHILDREN

GARTH NIX

Dedication

To my family and friends

VIDEO ARCHIVE INTERVIEW 1759 • ELLA

A razor blade gave me freedom from the Dorms. A small rectangle of steel, incredibly sharp on two sides. It came wrapped in paper, with the words NOT FOR USE BY CHILDREN printed on the side.

I was eleven years old then. Eight years ago, which means I am probably the oldest human alive. Five years past the time when the Overlords would have wrenched my brain out of my skull and used it in one of their creatures.

Actually, I guess Shade is the oldest human around. If you can call him a human.

Shade would say that it wasn’t the razor blade that gave me freedom. It was what I did with it. The object is irrelevant; my action is the important part.

But the blade still seems important to me. It was the first useful object I ever conjured – or created, or whatever it is I do. I remember when I first realised what a razor blade was, staring at that faded page of newspaper I found. The newspaper that had lain in a wall cavity for forty, maybe fifty years, long before the Overlords decided to use the building as a Dormitory.

And there, in black-turned-grey on white-turned-yellow, an advertisement for razor blades with a picture perfect for me to put in my head.

It took three months of practice for me to build that picture into something real, a hard, sharp object to hold in my hand. Then one day, it wasn’t just a thought. It was there in my hand. Real. Sharp.

Sharp enough to cut the tracer out of my wrist. To make escape a possibility…

Well, I did it. Only one in ten thousand get out of the Dormitories, according to Shade. Most can’t find anything to cut the tracer out or don’t have the wits to disable it in some other way.

Even when they do find something sharp, most don’t have the guts to slice open their own wrist, to reach in and pull the capsule out from where it nestles between veins and bone.

Even now, when I look at the scar, I wonder how… But it’s done now. I’ve been free for eight years…

I don’t know why Shade wants to record this. I mean, who’s going to see it? Who cares how I got out of the Dorms?

Of course, I really do know why Shade records. And who’s going to see this video.

I’ve been here with Shade for three years. But he’s been around for nearly fifteen – ever since the Change. There’s been a lot of children in this place since then.

I’ve seen their videos, but I’ll never see them. You sit in the dark, watching their faces as they talk through their brief lives, and all the time you wonder what got them in the end. Was it a Winger striking out of the sky? Trackers on their heels till they dropped and the Myrmidons came? A Ferret uncoiling in some dark hole where they’d hoped to hide?

Now you’re watching me… and you’re wondering… what got her?

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Also By Garth Nix

Copyright

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

Gold-Eye crouched in a corner under two birdshit-caked blankets, watching the fog streaming through the windows. Sixteen grey waterfalls of wet air cascading in slow motion. One for each of the windows in the railway carriage.

But the fog had only a small part of his attention, something his eyes looked at while he strained his ears trying to work out what was happening outside. The carriage was his third hide-out that day, and the Trackers had been all too quick to find the other two.

They were out there now, whistling in the mist; whistling the high-pitched, repetitive notes that meant they’d lost their prey. Temporarily…

Gold-Eye shivered and ran his finger along the sharpened steel spike resting across his drawn-up knees. Cold steel was the only thing that could kill the Overlords’ creatures – some of the weaker ones, anyway, like Trackers. Not Myrmidons…

As if on cue, a deeper, booming noise cut through the Trackers’ whistles. Myrmidon battle sound. Either the force behind the Trackers was massing to sweep the area, or they’d encountered the forces of a rival Overlord.

No, that would be too much to ask for – and the whistles were changing too, showing that the Trackers had found a trail… His trail…

With that thought Gold-Eye’s Change Vision suddenly gripped him, showing him a picture of the unpleasantly close future, the soon-to-be-now.

Doors slid open at each end of the carriage, forced apart by metal-gauntleted hands four times the size of Gold-Eye’s own. Fog no longer fell in lazy swirls, but danced and spiralled crazily as huge shapes lumbered in, moving to the pile of blankets…

Gold-Eye didn’t wait to see more. He came out of the vision and took the escape route he’d planned months before, when he’d first found the carriage. Lifting a trapdoor in the floor, he dropped down, down to the cold steel rails.

Back in the carriage, the doors shrieked as they were forced open, and Gold-Eye both heard and felt the drumbeat of Myrmidon hobnails on the steel floor above his head.

Ignoring the new grazes on his well-scabbed knees, he began to crawl across the concrete ties, keeping well under the train. The Trackers would wait for the Myrmidons now, and Myrmidons were often slow to grasp what had happened. He probably had three or four minutes to make his escape.

The train was a long one, slowly rusting in place between Central and Redtree stations. Like all the others, it was completely intact, if a little time-worn. It had just stopped where it was, all those years ago.

Not that Gold-Eye knew it as a form of transport. It was just part of the fixed landscape to him, one of the many hiding places he moved among. Gold-Eye didn’t have memories of a different time, except for the hazy recollection of life in the Dorms – and his escape with two older children. Both of them long since taken…

At the end of the train, he got down on his belly under the locomotive, steel spike clutched in his fist, white knuckles showing through the ingrained dirt.

Peep, peep, peep, peep, peep, peep…

The Trackers were on the move again, spreading out to search. It sounded like a trio on each side of the train, coming towards him.

Gold-Eye pictured them in his head, trying to get his Change Vision to show him exactly where they were.

But the Change Vision came and went when it chose, and couldn’t be controlled. This time it didn’t show him anything – but a memory arose unbidden, a super-fast slide show of Trackers flashing through his mind.

Thin, spindly stick-humans that looked like half-melted plastic soldiers. Bright, bulbous eyes, too large for their almost-human eye sockets. Long pointed noses that were almost all red-flared nostril…

They could smell a human out with those noses, Gold-Eye knew. No matter where he hid.

That thought was foremost as Gold-Eye listened again. But he couldn’t work out where the Trackers were, so he edged forward till he was almost out from under the train and could get his knees and feet up like a sprinter on the starting blocks. It was about thirty yards to the embankment wall. If he could cross that open space and get up it, the Trackers would go past to look for an easier way up – and Myrmidons were very slow climbers.

At this time of day that left only Wingers to worry about, and they would be roosting in City Tower, avoiding the fog.

Then the Trackers whistled again, giving their found signal – and Myrmidons boomed in answer, frighteningly close.

With that boom, Gold-Eye shot out like a rabbit, jinking and zigzagging over the railway lines, frantic with a terrible realisation.

The Myrmidons had crept through the train!

He could hear their boots crashing on to the gravel around the tracks as the huge creatures jumped down from the lead carriage, the bass shouts of their battle cries joining the frenzied whistles of the Trackers.

Heart pounding, face white with sudden exertion, Gold-Eye hit the embankment at speed, reaching head height before he even needed to take his first hold. Then, as his feet scrabbled to take him higher, he reached out… and slipped.

The fog had laid a film of moisture on the old stones of the embankment and in his panic Gold-Eye had run to one of the hardest spots to climb. His fingers couldn’t find any cracks between the stones…

Slipping, his feet touched bottom and he added his own wail of despair to the awful noise of the creatures behind him.

Soon the Myrmidons would surround him, silver nets shooting out to catch him in their sticky tracery. Then a Winger would come to take him away. Back to the Dorms. Or if he was old enough… straight to the Meat Factory.

As Gold-Eye thought of that, bile filled his mouth. Then he turned to face the Myrmidons and hefted his steel spike.

“Kill me!” he screamed at the tall shapes approaching through the fog. “Kill me!”

The Myrmidons stopped ten yards away. Seven of them – a full maniple. Seven-foot-tall, barrel-chested monsters with long arms ending in spade-shaped hands. Six-fingered hands, with thick, oversized thumbs.

These Myrmidons wore gold and green metal-cloth armour that was all spikes and flanges, heavily decorated with battle charms and medals, sparkling even through the fog. Crested helmets enclosed their heads and black glass visors hid their faces.

If they had faces. They certainly had mouths, but they were silent, now that their target was trapped. The Trackers were quiet too, clustering in their trios behind the line of Myrmidons. Their work was done.

I’ll make them kill me, Gold-Eye thought desperately as the Myrmidons – toying with him now – raised their net guns. He tensed himself, ready to lunge, hoping to strike one behind the knee, to irritate it enough that it would kill unthinking…

“Hey, you! Shut your eyes and duck!”

It was so long since Gold-Eye had heard a human voice that he almost didn’t understand, till a fizzing, sparking object sailed past his head and bounced towards the Myrmidons.

He ducked, curling himself into the embankment, face pressed against the wet stone. For a second nothing happened save the massed growl of the Myrmidons’ surprise.

Then there was a brilliant flash, smacking his eyes with red even through closed eyelids, and his bare neck with sudden heat.

At the same time something hit his back and he flinched.

“Grab the rope!” called the voice again. “Hurry up! The flash will only hold them for a few seconds.”

A rope! Gold-Eye uncurled and saw the knotted end hanging above him. His eye followed the rope up the embankment, up to the fog-wreathed figures on the road above the railway.

Humans. Three of them. All older and larger than he.

For a moment he hesitated, glancing back at the blindly groping Myrmidons. Then he started to climb.

VIDEO ARCHIVE INTERVIEW 1802 • DRUM

Shade made me do this. He’s watching now, flapping his arms like a Winger.

I suppose that means I should say something.

<BREAK. VIDEO INTERVIEW RESUMED IN 27 SECONDS.

INTERVIEWEE HIGHLY UN-COOPERATIVE.>

How did I get out of the Dorms?

I just read that. he held up a sign. Or made one, I suppose. Being a hologram.

<SILENCE. 27 SECONDS.

NO BREAK IN VIDEO INTERVIEW.>

OK. I am going to talk. The Overlords took me out of the Dorms when I was eight.

<SILENCE. 14 SECONDS.

NO BREAK IN VIDEO INTERVIEW.>

That is how I got out of the Dorms.

<BREAK. VIDEO INTERVIEW RESUMED

IN 3 MINUTES 12 SECONDS.>

I was taken to the Training Grounds. That’s where the big, strong kids go. Lots of exercise, food… and the drugs. Steroids. Shade explained those to me… what they do… what they’ve done to me… Then when you’re fourteen, they don’t just take your brain, they destring your muscles too. Muscles to put in Myrmidons…

<BREAK. VIDEO INTERVIEW RESUMED

IN 8 MINUTES 10 SECONDS.>

The tracer? That was easy to get rid of.

I moved it out. If I can see something or I know where it is and how big, I can… think… it somewhere else.

When it was gone, I strangled the Watchward and left. I was thirteen and ten months old. Sixty days to go.

<SILENCE. 48 SECONDS.

NO BREAK IN VIDEO INTERVIEW.>

When? Three years? Five?

<SILENCE. 36 SECONDS.

NO BREAK IN VIDEO INTERVIEW.>

I don’t count my birthdays. Not since then.

<BREAK. VIDEO INTERVIEW RESUMED

IN 2 MINUTES.>

I don’t want to say any more.

<BLACK.>

CHAPTER TWO

There was no time for discussion at the top of the embankment. Gold-Eye was pulled up and over the edge, without apparent effort, by an extremely large, heavily muscled man. Or perhaps a boy – for his face was round and hairless, totally at odds with his mammoth physique.

The other two were women – or rather a young woman and a girl. It took a second for Gold-Eye to realise they were female, since all three of his rescuers had close-cropped hair and wore baggy green coveralls cinched at the waist with wide leather belts festooned with pouches and equipment. Long, broad-bladed swords hung in scabbards at their hips and they all wore heavy black boots.

They looked organised and Gold-Eye felt suddenly alien in his strange collection of mismatched clothing, with his matted hair showing the dirt of many weeks. He hadn’t really been clean since the harsh washing rituals of the Dorms.

“Come on!” shouted the woman, grabbing him by the shoulder and starting to run. Gold-Eye stiffened, resisting, then lurched forward as the strong man almost picked him up by one arm. It was either run or have his arm ripped off.

“I run!” blurted Gold-Eye, picking up the pace. Immediately the others released him and he almost fell again before matching their stride.

“I’m Ella,” said the woman, speaking in short bursts as they ran. “That’s Drum.”

“And I’m Ninde.”

The girl was small, maybe only as old as Gold-Eye. Fifteen or thereabouts. Ella was much older, older than anyone Gold-Eye had ever seen, except in pictures. She looked as old as the women on the posters that were slowly peeling off the walls and billboards around the city.

Drum was harder to place, with a face as young as Gold-Eye’s on a body that was easily twice as massive. And he hadn’t said a word.

“The lane!” Ella called out, and the four of them suddenly changed direction, plunging down steps into a narrow alley where the fog lay even thicker, soaking up the light.

Halfway along they stopped so suddenly that Gold-Eye would have crashed into Ninde if Drum hadn’t held him with one enormous hand.

“Ninde?” asked Ella, her breath making the fog eddy around her face.

Ninde closed her eyes and her forehead wrinkled. A second later she started chewing slowly on the knuckle of her forefinger, then more quickly, till Gold-Eye thought she was actually going to break the flesh.

“There are Trackers in Rose Street.” Eyes still closed, she mumbled the words out over her knuckle. “But they have no orders. There is a Winger above the fog, taking messages west. I can’t hear anything else thinking clearly.”

“Thanks,” said Ella. “We’ll take a quick rest before moving on.”

She looked at Gold-Eye properly then and her expression changed, the way it always did when anyone saw his eyes. They weren’t normal human eyes at all, blue or brown or green irises against the white. His pupils and irises were gold, bright gold – and he knew this meant that these people would leave him right away. Or worse…

“Interesting eyes,” Ella said calmly. “Shade will want to see you! Must have been born right at the time of the Change. What’s your name?”

Gold-Eye frowned. He hadn’t spoken to anyone for a long time, or even thought in words. But at least she hadn’t hit him or tried to poke his eyes out with a knife, the way other people had.

“Come on,” said the one called Ninde. “Out with it.”

Gold-Eye looked at her, startled. All these questions made it hard for him.

“Your name,” explained Ella, talking more slowly. “Tell us your name.”

“Gold-Eye,” he muttered. There had been another name in the Dormitory, but no one had ever used it. He pointed at his eyes. “Gold-Eye. Because gold eyes.”

“Makes sense,” said Ninde. “I wonder what Ninde means? I’ll have to ask Shade.”

“Enough chat,” said Ella. “Let’s move. We’ll take the Ten West Tunnel at the back of Nancel Street.”

“Have we got time?”

Ninde’s eyes flicked up anxiously, as if to pierce the fog. Gold-Eye knew that look, the calculation of how long it would be till darkness. But the fog hid the sun, so there was no way of knowing when the Trackers and Myrmidons would go in and the Ferrets emerge from their dormant day…

Ella glanced at something metallic on her wrist. A watch, Gold-Eye suddenly remembered, long-ago classes in the Dorm coming back to him. Big hand for hours, little for minutes – or the easy ones just with numbers.

The big man – Drum – was also looking at his watch. He nodded but made a sign with his hand, large fingers scrabbling like a spider over broken ground.

“Just enough, if we hurry,” translated Ninde. “Come on, Gold-Eye!”

Then they were off again, jogging rather than running, emerging on to the road, keeping to the middle between the lines of stopped cars. The fog seemed to run with them, layers breaking and reforming, twining in and around the cars, around their legs and pumping arms.

At a crossroad, the fog gained colour from the traffic lights, one of the few sets Gold-Eye had seen that still worked, inexorably changing from red to green to amber and back to red again above the silent cars.

As the lights turned green, washing the fog and their faces with sickly colour, Ella froze. The others stopped too, except for Gold-Eye, whose momentum carried him an extra step. His footfall sounded loud in the sudden silence.

“What?” he whispered. Ninde covered his mouth with her hand and he could say no more, struck by the strangeness of someone else’s skin against his mouth. Her hand smelled of soap…

Then the lights flashed amber and Ella suddenly leaped forward, with Drum close behind her, their swords out, now streaking lines of red through the mists. Gold-Eye saw their reflections multiplied in the glass windows of the cars… many glaring red Ellas… many scarlet Drums… and then he saw the Trackers who were crouched behind a loaded truck.

“Shaaaaaaaade!” screamed Ella, and then she was standing over the lead Tracker and the blade screamed too as it cut through the air and into the Tracker’s neck, shearing through leather gorget and the gold service braids of a Senior Tracker.

It crumpled, head half off, but the bulbous eyes still stared, still followed Ella, as if even now it would report her to some Myrmidon Master or Overlord.

Gold-Eye stared too, unable to believe what he was seeing. People attacking creatures? You fought when you had to and tried to escape, but you never won.

Movement caught his eye again and he wished it hadn’t, as Drum’s sword came down and a Tracker’s head flew through the air and bounced off a car roof. The headless body staggered back and started to crawl away, feeling the ground with pallid, spider-like fingers.

Drum ignored it. Swivelling on his left heel, he cut the remaining Tracker down with his sword. It crumpled where it fell and bright-blue fluid, too thick to be blood, bubbled out from the stump of its neck.

Then it was all over – and the traffic lights turned green again.

“An old one,” said Ninde conversationally, removing her hand from Gold-Eye’s mouth. “They can go for hours without a head when they’re fresh. Mind you, they only crawl home – and I bet they don’t get fixed up. Just used for spare bits and pieces…”

“Ninde!” shouted Ella, striding back, cleaning her sword at the same time with a strip of cloth. “Bring Gold-Eye! There’ll be Myrmidons here any minute.”

Gold-Eye didn’t need urging, but as they started down the street again, he stopped and jammed his heels into the tar. Suddenly he saw Myrmidons. Two full maniples of them, all clad in deep-blue armour, a Myrmidon Master at their head. The Master was taller than the others, and his armour had spikes and ripples that moved over his shoulders and arms…

Ninde tugged at Gold-Eye’s hand and the vision faded.

“No!” he yelped as she dragged at him, using his free hand to point ahead. “Myrmidons!”

“There’s no one there!” exclaimed Ella, looking back angrily. “Drum…”

“There will be!” Gold-Eye spat urgently as Drum advanced on him. “I see them in the soon-to-be-now.”

“You what?” exclaimed Ella. “Damn. OK, Ninde, see if you can pick anything up.”

Ninde let go of Gold-Eye and started sucking on a knuckle. But this time her eyes flashed open in fright and she let go immediately.

“Two maniples… and a Master. They’re already on Nance Street. The Master knows we’re – ahh – look!”

The detached head of the Tracker was still staring at them. Its long tongue came out and lashed the road, slowly manoeuvring around so its bulbous eyes would have a better view.

“It has a mind-call,” said Ninde, sucking back on her knuckle. “A new one, stuck in its head, not the sort on the neck-chain.”

“Right!” called Ella, her voice much calmer than Ninde’s. “Follow me! Drum, take care of that!”

Drum nodded and broke into a trot down the street. As he passed the head, he expertly kicked it up and away over the line of cars, not bothering to look to see where it went.

A second later Ella overtook him and suddenly turned left into a much narrower road, where there were few cars and little room between them and the tall buildings on either side.

They were about a block away before they heard the massed roar of the Myrmidons and the frightened bleating of more Trackers.

Another block later, after more twists and turns, Ella stopped to try the door in a relatively small building – only five floors high, not breaking through the fog into the sun like the others around it.

The door opened and she led them into a chill, dark foyer. Ninde and Gold-Eye stumbled in; then Drum closed the door, shutting out the fog and the distant noise of the Overlord’s hunting creatures.

“Rest for a few minutes,” ordered Ella. “Then we’d better figure out how to get back home. I guess it’s too late for the Ten West Tunnel – and Nine West is too dry.”

“Ferrets will be stirring now.”

The voice was so high and whispery that it took Gold-Eye a second to realise it was Drum who had spoken.

“Yeah,” answered Ella. “I think we’d better hole up here for the night. But not on the ground level. Let’s find the stairs.”

She reached into one of the belt’s pouches and drew out a round ball smaller than her fist. She squeezed the ball and it suddenly shed a soft, golden light.

Myrmidon witchlight, thought Gold-Eye. On the extremely rare occasions that Myrmidons walked after dusk, they carried tree branches hung with small globes. Myrmidons must have died for Ella to hold that light…

His amazement must have shown, for Ella came and stood over him, the light held high in her hand. Tall and dangerous she looked, her stubbled blonde scalp gleaming in the light. Gold-Eye felt an almost overpowering urge to bow, as he had done on the Sad Birthdays at the Dorm, when the Overlords came…

“Yeah, we killed a Myrmidon,” Ella said softly, and there was a light in her eyes that was no reflection. “Drum held it, just for a moment, and I—”

“Ella,” interrupted the strange, reedy voice of Drum. “He is only a youngster…”

“That’s all any of us are,” Ella said, but the light was gone from her eyes and with it the sudden fear that had come over Gold-Eye. He realised then that he’d ducked his head. Hiding his eyes from the knife, or the hot wire…

“Myrmidons can be killed,” Ella continued. “So can Ferrets, and Wingers. And Trackers. As you have seen.”

“And Overlords?” whispered Gold-Eye, looking up again. This time is was Ella who lowered her eyes.

“One day…” She said. “We will find out. But now let’s find the stairs.”

“I’ve found them,” called Ninde from one of the dark corners. “The fire escape, anyway. But the door’s locked.”

“Ninde!” exclaimed Ella, moving quickly to the door, the witchlight held high. “I’ve told you a hundred times. There could be a Ferret…”

“There will be many in a few minutes,” whispered Drum, moving his bulk between Ninde and Ella to grip the handle of the fire door. He didn’t try to force it, but just ran his hand over it as if feeling the smoothness of the metal. There was a click from inside the door and it swung open.

Far away across the city, a fire alarm sounded in a security company’s control centre. No humans were there to see it, but a vaguely human thing sat in the master chair, watching the panels. It noted the address, then used the device around its neck to notify its master.

VIDEO ARCHIVE INTERVIEW 1871 • NINDE

’I’m Ninde. I’ve been waiting for ages to do this video, but Shade won’t let anyone record anything till they’ve been here for three months. He says it takes that long for us to get our thoughts together and sometimes even to remember who we are and where we came from.

Of course, I had no problems remembering any of that. I think it’s just laziness when you get people… like Nik when he came here… who’ve forgotten how to talk and wash and everything. You just have to practise thinking every day.

Oh, I’m supposed to say how I got out of the Dorms. That’s what this first video is always about. “How I got out of the Dorms.”

You’d think Shade would let us talk about something more interesting. I’ve watched heaps of these videos and really everyone just does whatever they can do with whatever they have, whether it’s finding something useful or using a Change Talent. Of course, hardly anyone has a really useful and powerful Talent like mine…

Which is lucky, because I’d hate to have had to cut my tracer out like Ella did, because her scar is really ugly and it must have bled heaps. Ella doesn’t care about blood, but I don’t like it. It’s so unfair that we women have to bleed once a month anyway. You shouldn’t have to cut yourself open as well.

I am getting to the point, Shade. I was going to say that since I reached puberty… did I say that right? Pew-berty. Stupid word. We never said that in the Dorms. We just called it bleeding and hoped it wouldn’t come too much before thirteen at least. I mean it’s bad enough having your brain ripped out at fourteen without having to have babies first. Of course, some people used to say the girls that got taken away for breeding got an extension to sixteen… or even eighteen…

It is connected and I am getting to the point. When I reached puberty, somehow I started hearing what the creatures were thinking. Which is not much for most of them, but the Myrmidon Master who was in charge of my Dorm used to think a lot. And one of the things he thought when I was listening was about deactivating the Tracer when you get taken away on your Sad Birthday.

So I learned where the Tracer Key was, and then I sneaked in one night and used it. That was a bit hard, but I did know where everyone was, and I’d overhead the Master thinking about the access codes for the doors and gates…

The only thing was, I hadn’t heard him thinking about an alarm that’s connected to the Key, so when it went off, I had to leave a bit more suddenly than I expected.

So that’s how I got out of the Dorm. Straight after that, I was—

<VIDEO INTERVIEW HALTED BY SHADE.

THIS SESSION NOT RESUMED.>

CHAPTER THREE

“Wake up!”

Gold-Eye woke, panicked for a second by the feel of something pressed against his mouth. Then he realised it was Ella’s hand and relaxed. A few feet away, Drum shook Ninde awake, two enormous fingers sealing her mouth.

“Ferrets have broken through on the ground floor,” Ella whispered, just loud enough for everyone to hear. “We’ve barricaded the stair door, but they’ll probably swarm up the elevator shaft as soon as they can get into it. We have to move up to the roof.”

A loud crash echoing up from below punctuated her words, followed by a hiss as if steam was venting from a boiler.

“One just fell in the elevator shaft,” said Ninde sleepily, red knuckle in her mouth. “It’s not hurt, though. Just angry. There are four more on the ground floor.”

“Will they climb up?” asked Ella.

Ferrets hated heights and would never go beyond the first or second floor – unless forced to by a superior.

“Yes!” exclaimed Ninde, her sleepiness vanishing in an instant. “They know we’re here and they have orders to search the whole building, right to the top.”

“Even the roof?” asked Drum. He had his sword out and was honing the edge with a pocket stone, almost as if the Ferrets were seconds away rather than minutes.

“I think so…” faltered Ninde. “There is a very strong compulsion on them. It must have come from an Overlord, not just a Myrmidon Master.”

“Shit!” exclaimed Ella. She raised the witchlight higher, looking around at the dusty desks that surrounded them, searching for something useful among the blank computer screens and neatly ordered piles of meaningless paper. “We should have picked a taller building.”

Gold-Eye followed her gaze, wondering what she was looking for. He’d seen many rooms like this and they rarely had anything worthwhile in them. Clothes sometimes, and sweet food wrapped in shiny metal cloth. But nothing of any real use.

“Power cords,” Ella said suddenly, pointing at the thin grey cables that ran behind some of the desks, connecting computers and lights to plugs in the wall. “Drum, Ninde, find the longest cords you can – cut them away from the computers if you have to. Just make sure you unplug them first. There could still be power here.”

Drum and Ninde moved quickly to the task, and Gold-Eye moved to help also. But Ella stopped him with a quickly upraised palm.

“Gold-Eye. Can you see anything in the… what was it… soon-to-be-now?”

Gold-Eye shook his head. “It comes. I not happen it.”

“You can’t control it,” Ella said, mouth showing her disappointment. “Pity. It could have been useful. Just help get the cords then.”

Still a bit sleepy, Gold-Eye went over to Ninde and watched her pull the plugs out of the wall and then out of the machines, sawing with her sword if they wouldn’t come out. Since he had only his sharp-pointed spike, Gold-Eye assisted her by holding the cord taut to make it easier to cut.

They were sawing through one of the last cords when Ella suddenly thrust herself between them and pushed them towards the fire stair that led to the roof.

At the same time a crash reverberated through the room, accompanied by a furious hissing.

“Up the steps! Go! Go!” shouted Ella, turning back to the lower fire door, where Drum was frantically heaving a desk up against the shattered door. Half off its hinges, it was being further forced open by something large and sinuous, like a long, black-furred worm. Halfway along its length, paws like overlarge human hands were ripping chunks of wood and cement filler off the side of the door as easily as if they were pulling petals from a rotting daisy.

Drum held the desk against the door with one hand while extending the other, open-palmed, to Ella. She put one of the sawed-off cords in his hand, careful to keep the exposed wires forward. Then she ducked down and plugged it in – and Drum thrust it around the desk and into the Ferret.

Sparks blazed across the rippling flesh of the Ferret, the golden glow of the witchlight lost in a sudden blue-white glare. The creature shrieked with pain, spraying foul-smelling spit from its fanged mouth. Then it was gone, retreating back down the stairs.

Drum pushed the desk back, forcing the door into its frame, and cautiously looped the still-sparking cable around the door handle, which hung by a single screw from the ruined door.

“Might work again,” he said as he headed for the roof stairs. But Ella didn’t answer, letting him get ahead while she circled back every few steps to watch for a sudden rush from the Ferrets below.

A steel trapdoor opened on to the roof from the top of the stairs. As soon as Ella came through it, Drum slammed it shut with a deafening crash of metal on metal and slid the bolts home.

The roof was flat save for an air-conditioning unit that perched like a hunchback in one corner. That provided a bit of a windbreak, but it was still cold. A wind had come up to clear the fog, and the sky was clear, lit with stars and the reflected glow from those parts of the city where the streetlights still worked. The Overlords maintained power and light in much of the city, shutting it on and off from time to time for no apparent reason.

Part of their games, perhaps, in the same way that they controlled the weather. Bringing in fog from the sea; raising winds; shunting storms from one side of the city to the other, all for use as backdrops in the battles they played out with their creatures.

When those creatures weren’t employed hunting escapees from the Dorms…

“We’ve got a few minutes,” said Ella quietly. Only Drum noticed the telltale shiver of apprehension in her left hand.

“First we need to get these cords tied together into a rope long enough to reach across the street.”

“What!” exclaimed Ninde, looking out over the roof at the adjacent skyscraper, its dark bulk towering over their current building. “I am… not going to climb across a five-floor drop on an electric cord!”

“That or the Ferrets,” said Ella firmly. “So start tying. Sheepshanks, I think. Gold-Eye, do you know any knots?”

Gold-Eye shook his head. The automated schools in the Dorms had taught him reading, writing and arithmetic, for the Overlords liked a reasonably agile brain as raw material for their creatures. But he’d forgotten a lot of that in the struggle to survive – and knots had never been part of the curriculum.

“OK, see if you can find something like a brick or pipe to throw – we’ll have to smash a window for Drum to send the rope through.”

Gold-Eye grinned to show he understood and started to look about for anything useful. A pile of half-seen stuff in the shadows under the air-conditioning unit looked interesting, so he headed over to make a closer inspection.

As he passed the trapdoor, it shook, bolts rattling. Then it began to bow outward and the steam-hiss of an angry Ferret came through. But the trapdoor and bolts were solid steel and they held – for the moment.

“Hurry up!” said Drum as Gold-Eye passed. His eyes were on the trapdoor, sword held at the ready.

Gold-Eye shuddered and sprinted the remaining few yards. In the starlight he could see several pieces of steel pipe that would make good window breakers.

If anyone could throw them across the gap, he thought, as he dragged one back to where Ella and Ninde were almost finished tying the rope together. He hoped they knew their knots. It was a long way to the ground.

“Good work!” said Ella, taking the pipe and hefting it easily in one hand. Then she walked right up to the edge of the building, the toes of her boots meeting the edge of emptiness that marked the five-story drop to the street.

The building across from them was all glass and steel, stretching up at least twenty more floors.

Lots and lots of glass. Floor-to-ceiling windows, the blinds still drawn back to catch sunlight that wasn’t there.

Ella looked at the window immediately opposite for a moment, imagining how it might have been. With the lights on and people bustling behind the glass, clutching papers, talking on the phone…

Her parents had both worked in buildings like this. She had dim memories of going up in the elevators, of looking out through a window just like that one…

The bolts on the trapdoor suddenly screamed in protest. Gold-Eye and Ninde both let out strangled, frightened yells… and Ella threw the pipe as hard as she could towards the window.

It flew true, glittering with reflected stars, smashing through the window in a blaze of shards. Clouds of smaller splinters followed the big shards down, strange snow falling from starlight into shadow.

“Drum!” shouted Ella, holding out one end of the rope. “Think it across!”

“Throw it first,” said Drum, that clear, almost angelic voice still seeming out of place in his great body. “It’s much easier.”

Even before he finished speaking, Ella was throwing the end of the rope, hurling a loop of it out towards the gaping hole where there once had been a window.

Halfway across, the rope end suddenly faltered and hung suspended, like a snake waiting to strike. Then it lunged forward through the hold, to lash about in the room beyond.

Gold-Eye could no longer see it, so he watched Drum instead and saw the sweat burst out on his smooth face, beads glittering, running together to form rivulets that soaked his shoulders, turning green cloth to black.

His hands were twitching too, fingers crossing and circling in a strange arabesque – and Gold-Eye realised that Drum’s hands were mimicking what his mind was doing. Tying the rope to something in the room across the street.

“It’s secure,” he said finally, hands falling flat to his sides. He looked terribly weary, as if he’d just run for miles with something fearful at his heels.

“Thanks,” said Ella, but it was an automatic, perfunctory expression. She was already tying the rope at their end to a sturdy antenna mounting and checking the tension. Unfortunately, the makeshift rope seemed to have a tendency to stretch.

“We’ll have to go hand over hand,” she explained. “But use your feet as well for safety. Then, at the end, you’ll have to swing down into the room. Be careful to aim for the centre of the hole. And remember to swing forward… or it’ll be a very long drop. Ninde, you go first.”

“I will not!”

“Shut up and get your hands on the rope,” commanded Ella. “Can’t you hear those Ferrets? They’ll be through—”

Even as she spoke, the trapdoor sounded with a sickening boom and one of the restraining bolts screeched, stretched… and let go.

Held only in one corner, the trapdoor buckled inexorably upward to show the white teeth and red eyes of the Ferret blow, brilliant against the darkness of the steps. Drum stepped towards it, thrusting with his sword, and it ducked back down, the trapdoor falling shut behind it.

Without another word, Ninde launched herself on to the rope, twining her legs around it and pulling herself along with her hands.

“Like a rat on a hawser,” muttered Ella, but she seemed to be saying it to herself. So Gold-Eye didn’t ask her what a hawser was. He already know about rats.

“Gold-Eye! You’re next!”

Gold-Eye knew better than to argue. He’d seen what Ferrets could do to people. Did do to people.

Thinking about that got him halfway across before he even realised that the rope was swaying, the knots stretching, the ground swimming into focus so far below.

Then he made the mistake of stopping and looking down.

For a split second the idea of a possible fall seemed almost attractive. It would be an easy end, better than having his blood slowly drunk in some dark Ferret nest till there was just enough to keep his brain alive for use in the Meat Factory.

Then the rope jerked and the sudden fear of a real fall gave him the impetus for the second half of the crossing, and in just a few seconds he was swinging on to the carpet in the new building. Where Ninde sat on the floor, looking surprised that she’d made it.

There seemed to be a brief argument on the other side, ending with Ella furiously swarming across the rope. She came far faster than Gold-Eye and had barely swung in when she was testing the knot at the end and yelling at Drum.

“Come on!”

Drum was the real test of the rope. He pushed himself off with slow deliberation, looking like a cable car on maximum load… and the rope stretched and sagged still further.

He was two thirds of the way across when the Ferrets came boiling up out of the broken trapdoor, moving together in a sinuous wave of spitting, hissing death. There were five of them, each as long as a car, but no wider round the middle than Gold-Eye or Ninde. Something between a snake and a stretched-out rat, with only their paw-hands evidence of human origin. That, and their clever minds.

Rearing up a safe distance from the edge (for not even an Overlord could make them face such a height) they hissed together, showing long mouths with their rows of tiny teeth – and the two sharp fangs at the front. Hollow fangs, for drinking blood. Human blood, if they could get it. Otherwise, they resorted to rats, cats and dogs… or each other.

The rope held.

“Right,” said Ella wearily as Drum swung into the room. “Let’s get six or seven floors higher up, in case they have another go before dawn. We could all do with a bit more sleep before we start back.”

VIDEO ARCHIVE INTERVIEW 1906 • GOLD-EYE

I am Gold-Eye.

Ninde is angry because Shade does this video now, without months’ wait. He not say why.

I remember Dorms. But not getting out. Petar and Jemmie took me.

Petar did something. Here. No scar like Ella, but no lump for monitor. It went away.

Peter said he was brother. My brother.

Older, bigger. His job to look for me. He said.

Jemmie was his friend.

Myrmidons took them. The window too small for Petar and Jemmie. Petar push me through. Shout to run, hide.

Wingers fly them away. I saw in the soon-to-be-now. The Meat Factory took them in.

No more Petar and Jemmie.

Only Gold-Eye. Running and hiding.

Like Petar said.

CHAPTER FOUR

Shade’s secret home was a submarine. Soon after the Change it had come away from its mooring and drifted in between two old, long, wooden finger wharves. Now the bow was wedged under the decking of one wharf and the stern trapped against the other. Sand had built up on the seaward side, locking it in place.

Shade’s children came and went via a torpedo tube in the bow, safely out of sight under the wharf. They could then wade between the piles up to a storm-water tunnel that led into the city’s network of drains.

The drains had the advantage of being hidden from Wingers, Trackers and Myrmidons, but it was always a gamble between two perils. Too much water in the tunnels meant a quick death by drowning – but a dry tunnel was nearly always infested with Ferrets. Even in their dormant stage during the day, they would still wake long enough to kill a careless human.

Gold-Eye, Ninde, Drum and Ella arrived under the wharf in midmorning. Exhausted from the night before and sodden from the neck, armpits or waist down (varying according to their height) from the drains, they were not pleased to see that the tide was high.

“The tube will be shut,” Ella said wearily. “We’ll have to wait a few hours for the tide to go down. It looks like it’s on the turn.”

“Wait where?” asked Ninde. Like the others, she was hugging the rim of the storm-water tunnel, the water cascading around her legs before swooping down the short drop into the sea.

“Here,” replied Ella. “Or we can swim out to the Sub and hang on. Stand or float. Your choice.”

“I’ll stand,” muttered Ninde, in a tone that hinted things should have been better organised.

They stood in miserable silence for another three hours. Gold-Eye almost fell at one point, his leg muscle suddenly cramping and giving way, but Drum pulled him back and pushed him upstream. After that, Gold-Eye just sat in the water, letting it wash around his shoulders and under his chin.

Finally Ella judged that the tide had receded enough for the torpedo tube to be accessible. She jumped down first, checked that the water came up only to her waist and signalled the others on.

The Submarine was much bigger than it had looked from the drain outfall. Its hull loomed up above Gold-Eye five or six times taller than Drum – a giant black cylinder that had forced itself under the wharf, twisting and warping the planks so that lines of sun shone through the gaps, falling on Gold-Eye’s upturned face and glittering across the sea.

Ella led them right up to the rounded nose of the Submarine, where four round hatches could be seen outlined in bright-yellow paint. Danger warnings and safety and maintenance procedures were stencil-typed next to them; flakes of rust around three of the hatches proclaimed that this maintenance had long been neglected.

The fourth hatch was rust free, and this was the one that Ella reached up to and knocked on with the hilt of her sword, creating a hollow, metallic boom that vibrated through the hull and into the water. Gold-Eye felt its buzz around his knees.

The knock was answered by a hiss of compressed air and the hatch slid open just a crack, a metallic tentacle suddenly springing out. Made up of hundreds of silver rings, it writhed in the air for a second, then turned so the end of the tentacle was facing them. A lens glittered there and Gold-Eye had the curious sensation that it was somehow looking at him.

“Don’t worry,” said Ella, noticing that he was unconsciously edging away. “It’s only one of Shade’s Eyes. He’s just checking to make sure we aren’t creatures.”

True to Ella’s explanation, the tentacle hovered in front of each of them in turn before wavering back to take another look at Gold-Eye. It looked at him from all sides before it seemed to be satisfied and withdrew back into the Sub.

After it disappeared, there was another burst of compressed air and the hatch slid completely open, revealing a narrow cylindrical passage, apparently lines with mattress foam.

Ella reached up into the passage and pulled down a heavy, knotted rope, letting it fall into the sea with a loud splash that sprayed everyone on the few places where they were still dry.

“Ella!” squealed Ninde, and even Drum seemed displeased, stepping back half a pace with a scowl momentarily passing across his face.

“Sorry,” apologised Ella. “Still, hot showers and clean clothes soon. Ninde, you can go first.”

Ninde needed no encouraging this time. Ignoring the knotted rope, she used Drum like a ladder, climbing up him and stepping off his shoulder as if he were a piece of furniture. Then she was wriggling her way down the tube and out of sight.

Gold-Eye was next, though he used the rope. He was surprised to find that the tube was wider than it looked from down below. He’d wondered how Drum would fit, but even his bulk would slip through all right – despite the thick padding that made it more comfortable to crawl along.

The tube ended in another hatch, which was closed. Gold-Eye hesitated for a moment, then knocked on it.

There were a few clanking sounds as the locking wheel spun; then it opened outward, revealing a large, well-lit chamber – and Ninde, wearing only her underwear and a large white towel wrapped turban-like around her head.

Gold-Eye stared, then blushed and looked down as Ninde said, “Haven’t you ever seen a girl in a bikini before?”

“Only pictures,” he croaked, sliding out of the tube and on to the floor. Trying not to look at Ninde’s body, he looked everywhere else, noting the towels hanging on hooks on one wall and various baskets and boxes lined up on the other.

“We leave our outside clothes here,” said Ninde. “Get a bit dry and then report to Shade before we shower and eat. Come on – get those wet rags off.”

“Nothing else on,” muttered Gold-Eye. He was confused. The sexes were segregated in the Dorms, except at meal time, and they always washed separately. Petar and Jemmie had washed together – and done other things as well – but that was all just a hazy memory of half-seen sounds and misremembered images. He didn’t know how he was supposed to behave.

“Here, I’ll help you,” said Ninde, coming up close and taking hold of one extremely grubby sleeve. “It’ll be interesting to see what’s under all this dirt…”

“Ninde!”

The voice was Ella’s, followed a moment later by the girl herself, leaping down from the tube like a dangerous cat.

“Leave Gold-Eye alone – and put your towel on. You know the rules.”

“I was just teasing,” said Ninde, letting go with a shrug.

“He’s been out alone for a long time,” said Ella, with a nod to Gold-Eye to show she wasn’t talking over his head. “Years, probably. He’s got to get used to people all over again. Think of him as being much younger than he is… at least for a while.”

“Yeah. Sorry, Gold-Eye,” said Ninde, complicating her apology by removing her towel with deliberate slowness and wrapping it around herself with equal deliberation. Then she tossed her head back and opened another hatch halfway, slipping through it even as it swung back and closed with a heavy crash.

“Too many films from the old days,” said Ella with a sigh. “OK, Gold-Eye, we leave our outside clothes in these baskets for washing, and hang up our belts and swords for cleaning here. Shade has robots – little machines that can sort of think and do things – that do the washing and cleaning. Now, I’m going to turn my back and you turn that way, so we can get undressed. Imagine it’s just like the Dorms, only the wall between the boys’ and girls’ washrooms is missing.”

Gold-Eye obediently turned to face the wall and began to strip off the several layers of rags he used to think of as his clothes. At the same time, he fought off an urge to peek at Ella.

Just when he thought he might risk a look, a clanging noise announced the arrival of Drum. He’d taken a long time to come through, Gold-Eye thought – and was very noisy coming along the tube as well.

“Right, I’m ready,” said Ella loudly. “Gold-Eye?”

“Yes,” said Gold-Eye, quickly cinching the towel tight around his waist. It was a very big towel, going around him several times. Which was probably just as well.

“You go on,” whispered Drum as he lumbered down from the tube. “I won’t be long.”

“Right,” said Ella. “Gold-Eye, follow me.”

She opened the same hatch Ninde had gone through, spinning the locking wheel with one practised flip of her hand. After Gold-Eye had stepped through too, she shut it behind him.

“One of the rules,” she explained, as they continued down a long, narrow passage, pausing every now and then to go through another closed hatch. “All hatches have to be closed behind you, just in case some creatures get in. We’re in the central corridor here. It runs the full length of the Submarine. There are hatches off to the sides, above us and below us. It’ll probably take you a while to work out where everything is.”

“Where now?” asked Gold-Eye.

“You mean where are we going now? To report to Shade. His headquarters are in what used to be the engine room, till his robots cleaned it out.”

She hesitated, then added, “Don’t be surprised by Shade. He’s not exactly alive… and not exactly human. Well, I suppose he is… anyway, you’ll see.”

This didn’t exactly reassure Gold-Eye. He felt anxious about the coming meeting, but the feeling was curiously overlaid with something he hadn’t felt since the long-ago times with Petar and Jemmie. The sense that other, more capable people were taking care of everything.

“This is it,” said Ella, pausing before another hatch. “Stand next to me and look up.”

Gold-Eye looked up, meeting the glassy gaze of another silvery tentacle slowly uncoiling down from the ceiling. It looked at them for a few seconds, then coiled back up again. A loud click from the hatch announced that they’d passed its scrutiny and the way to Shade’s headquarters was opening.

But Gold-Eye didn’t walk in. He stood where he was, just looking, till Ella gave him a bit of a push and he stumbled over the lip of the hatch and into the cavernous chamber.

The room took up almost the entire aft third of the Submarine. The space once separated by bulkheads and partitions, and filled with engines, fuel tanks and machinery, had been opened up by Shade’s robots. Now it was a large open space. A dark space, with a single pool of light right in the middle, about thirty paces from the hatch.

Things the size of cats moved in the shadows and corners of the room, the light occasionally reflecting from their metallic sides. One scampered near the light and Gold-Eye saw it in its entirety – and shivered. It had a bulbous body, balanced lightly on eight segmented legs. Far too like a spider.

“Robots,” whispered Ella, seeing him shudder. “They’re safe. They work for us.”

The only visible furniture in the room – a broad, official-looking desk of dark red wood and a padded leather chair – were right in the pool of a light.

Two three-seater couches faced the desk at oblique angles. Ninde sat on one, draping her legs across to take up two places. Hearing the others enter, she looked round and sat up straight.

“Where’s Shade?” asked Ella as she sat down next to Ninde. Gold-Eye sat too, on the same couch – but right at the front of the cushion, ready to spring up and run. He still didn’t like the look of this dark room, or the constant, peripheral movement of the spiderish robots.

“He didn’t want to talk to me,” sniffed Ninde. “He said he’d wait for everyone. I suppose Drum is coming sometime?”

“He’ll be along in a minute,” replied Ella, frowning.

Sure enough, a few minutes later a loud click announced the hatch opening again and Drum entered the chamber. Unlike the others he wore a huge towelling robe that covered him from ankle to neck. Without saying anything, he walked across and sat on the empty couch, its springs groaning under his weight.

An expectant silence followed, broken only by the scrabble of the robots’ steely claw-legs on the decking.

Then Ella stood up and said, “Shade. We’re all here.”

VIDEO ARCHIVE TRAINING LESSON A41

<UNEDITED>

Ella: | Why do I always have to do these?
Shade: | You’re the oldest. You know the most.
Ella: | You’re older – and you could just generate the images anyway.
Shade: | But you’ve actually been out there. The others respect you.
Ella: | Do they? They’re frightened of me, perhaps. Except for Drum…
Shade: | That’s because you are single-minded. Most of them don’t realise that this is not a permanent refuge… that one day the Overlords will find us.
Ella: | Yes. I know.
Shade: | Well, we must prepare as best we can. Now, try not to sound bored when you’re doing this. Just matter-of-fact. Start in three… One… two… three…

Touch the screen to begin. Thank you.

This is Lesson A41 of the First Series. Pay attention. There will be an exam following this session.

The subject of this lesson is the organisation of the Overlords’ creatures. The five basic creature types used by the Overlords in their battles are Screamers, Trackers, Myrmidons, Wingers and Ferrets. These creatures are always found in groups.

If you cannot accurately identify these creatures, then go back and study Lesson A2.

The following simple verse will help you remember the number of creatures in a group and the name we give the group.

Screams scream singly, all alone;

Trackers track in trios of three;

Ferrets follow in fangs of five;

Myrmidons march in maniples of seven;

Wingers fly in flights of nine.

It is important to know how many creatures there are in a group, because there will never be less than this number in any given area. If you see one Myrmidon, there will be six more somewhere nearby. If you see one Winger, the other eight will be in sight of the first.

Only Myrmidon Masters and certain special creatures will be seen alone. These are covered in Lesson A42.

Now, I will repeat the verse…

CHAPTER FIVE

“So you are. I will come down.”

The voice answering Ella seemed to come from everywhere in the room. It was a deep, obviously adult voice, full of confidence and the echo of a different time. A time before the Change.

It was followed by a sudden flash of a green laser shining down from the ceiling into the chair behind the desk.

Tiny dots of light followed the beam down. They were many different colours and fell and swirled like kaleidoscopic snow. As they fell, they joined together like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.

Then the laser flared still brighter and Gold-Eye blinked. When he opened his eyes again, the laser beam and the falling motes of light were gone – and there was a man sitting behind the desk.

A real, fully grown man. Thirty years old at least, or even more – if that was possible. He was smiling and his teeth were whiter than any Gold-Eye had ever seen, his eyes bluer and more piercing.

“Welcome back,” he said. “And welcome to you too, Gold-Eye. I am Shade.”

“Hello,” said Gold-Eye in an awed whisper. He felt like throwing himself at Shade’s feet, the way they used to do in the Dorms when an Overlord came.

“I’ll have a talk with you later, Gold-Eye,” Shade continued, fixing him with a clear blue gaze that seemed to hold an equal mixture of distant affection and anger held in check. “But first I will hear Ella’s report.”

“Yes, sir,” said Ella, standing to attention. “A team consisting of myself, Drum and Ninde left the Sub pre-dawn two days ago on a routine patrol. We took the Main Drain and then Northwest Six to the Hospital Exit. Water level throughout was medium, with one non-threatening surge.

“At the hospital there was no creature activity except for Winger patrols. Myrmidon Death Markers indicated that a battle had been fought in the Hospital gardens several days previously, between Red Diamond and Blue Star forces, with victory going to Red Diamond. There was also an unusual battle poem posted in the gardens, dedicated to the Red Diamond Overlord. It was written in English, not Myrmidon Battlespeech. I have a copy.

“In the late afternoon, increasing Winger patrols suggested that the Death Marker truce period was over and that our presence was suspected. This was confirmed by Ninde, who looked into the minds of an approaching trio that had been sent to find us.

“We then took West Drain Four into the city. This should be marked as dangerous till there is more rain – it was only just flowing.”

“Noted,” said Shade, nodding his head but making no move to write in the thick leather-bound book that had appeared on his desk at the same time he had.

“We exited the drain outside the Central Fire Station,” continued Ella. “As it was almost dark, I decided we’d spend the night in one of the hose-drying towers, which we did. There was considerable Ferret activity below, but none tried to climb up even part of the way.

“At midnight Drum had the watch. He woke me to advise that the lights along Park Avenue had come on and a fog was forming on the bay. Half an hour later the fog spread inland, the main mass seeming to be directed up Park Avenue. However, there were no visible Claim Fires out, so we presumed that the fog was being prepared early for a battle in several days’ time.”

“Correct,” interrupted Shade. “I have a report that the fog was thickened and then moved further west for a battle between Black Banner and Emerald Crown over the Williams River Raceway. They’re probably fighting now.”

“Since the fog was still there the next morning without battle preparations,” Ella continued, “we decided to move above ground and check out the railway yards between Central and Redtree. At the embankment on Shroveland Street, we heard Tracker pursuit whistles and Myrmidon battle sound in the fog. We then observed that they were chasing a human – Gold-Eye. He tried to climb the embankment but was in the wrong spot and the Myrmidons were about to take him. So I used a flash bang – the last one, I’m afraid – and we pulled him up on a rope while they were disoriented.”

Gold-Eye suppressed a shiver that ran right through him as Ella’s words brought it all back. If the others hadn’t been there, he would be in the Meat Factory now…

“Excellent,” approved Shade. “And then you fought some Trackers, took refuge in a building that proved too low to be safe from Ferrets, and had to do some fancy rope work to get away.”

“How did you…” Ella began, but Shade was laughing, obviously pleased with himself.

“I have finally perfected my new Eyes,” he said, clicking his fingers.

The click was answered by movement in the shadows and a nervous shiver that rippled from Gold-Eye to Ninde. Characteristically, neither Drum nor Ella twitched.

Shade’s new Eyes looked very much like large rats. In twilight or fog, they would be indistinguishable from the real thing – but as they scuttled into the light, their eyes and legs shone metallically and their bodies were too rigid to be flesh and fur.

Three came from each side of the room; then all six ran in a line to the foot of the desk and turned to face Shade, their pink, rubbery tails draped out towards the couch. Ninde shuddered again and drew her feet up.

Gold-Eye thought they were repulsive too, but for a different reason. He actually liked rats, and over the years had trained three of them as pets. They had been his only real friends and he had cried when each one was lost in the all-too-frequent moves between hiding places. These robot rats reminded him too much of the Overlords’ creatures and their relationship with humanity. Like, but not like…

“Can you see through them all at once?” asked Ella. There was no hint of revulsion in her voice – just the curiosity of someone shown a new tool.

“Not yet,” said Shade. “My parallel-processing capabilities need further enhancement. I can use six at a time, switching between rats every millisecond. I should be able to reduce that to a switch every point-two milliseconds – which will effectively give me constant vision and allow me to use twelve of them at a time. Or more, if we can get the materials to make them.”

“They should be very useful,” Ella said thoughtfully. “Can they carry anything? Do any manipulation with their paws?”

“Not yet,” replied Shade. “Which may be a good thing. If they depart from typical rat behaviour and are observed by a Myrmidon Master – or worse, an Overlord – he would quickly work out what they are. Then he need only scan the radio frequencies or check the old Comincsat satellites to discover that their controller is here. That I am here.

“In any case,” he continued, “they are extremely useful and add greatly to my ability to gather intelligence. Which leads me to the next mission for your team, Ella. It will begin tomorrow—”

“But we’ve only just got back,” interrupted Ninde. “Shouldn’t it be someone else’s turn?”

Her words trailed off as Shade fixed her with a cold gaze, and Ella half turned towards her.

“This is a reporting session,” Shade said sternly. “If you have something to add to Ella’s report, or a question for me, raise your hand.”

Ninde didn’t reply. Gold-Eye looked at her out of the corner of his eye and for a second met her gaze. In that instant she curled her lip, obviously angry. Gold-Eye looked away immediately, but he had the irrational feeling that she had suddenly taken a dislike to him.

“You must take your team out tomorrow,” continued Shade, ignoring the stiff body language that declared Ninde’s outrage, “because there has been a major battle at the University today between Blue Star and Silver Sun. The Death Markers went up an hour ago and will be up for two more days. This means that the Myrmidon barracks there will be deserted for that time – giving us a unique opportunity to get back to my original laboratory.”

He paused as Ella raised her hand.

“Yes?”

“Rick’s team has far better knowledge of the University and that area. Why not send them?”

Shade bowed his head and was silent. The others were silent too. Then Ella sighed, Ninde sniffed and Drum leaned forward as if to hear Shade better. Gold-Eye realised that what they were all about to hear was bad news.

“They were due back yesterday,” said Shade, looking up. He sighed too and ran his hands through his hair. “I sent my rats out this morning, and they found their weapon belts near some hedges that line the Old College grounds. There was Tracker ichor on the ground, and Myrmidon boot prints…”

“They’re gone then,” said Ella. Slowly, matter-of-factly, she recited the names as if to fix them in her memory. “Rick. Nelo. Tanner.”

“We will remember them,” said Shade, sitting up straight, his hands laid flat on the table. “At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.”

“We will remember them,” echoed Ella, Ninde and Drum. Gold-Eye sat silent, uncomfortable, aware he was in the middle of some ritual he didn’t know.

Shade breathed in deeply then, chest visibly filling his crisp white shirt, and said, “Right. Back to the operation. The Death Markers give us a unique opportunity that must be exploited. There are instruments in my lab that will make a major difference to our struggle with the Overlords – if you can get them back.”

Drum raised one ponderous hand. Shade hesitated, then said, “Yes, Drum?”

“Instruments worth our lives?”

“That’s a difficult question,” replied Shade. He didn’t look at Drum, gazing at the ceiling instead as he spoke. “However, these instruments can possibly… can probably detect and measure whatever it is the Overlords project or broadcast from the silver globes you can see atop the International Trade Centre and City Tower. I’ve been trying to do that for many, many years, without success. I’ve also tried to duplicate the instruments in other ways. I really believe that if we can retrieve the main instrument package from my lab, then the secret of the Overlords’ Projectors will lead us to victory.”

“Then we’ll get the instruments,” said Ella decisively. “Right, Drum? Ninde? Gold-Eye?”

“Yeah, I guess,” said Ninde unenthusiastically. Then her voice brightened slightly. “At least we’ll be going somewhere different.”

Drum looked at Ella for several seconds, then finally nodded his approval.

Gold-Eye didn’t do or say anything. He didn’t know what they were talking about. But they were his new people, his new Petar and Jemmie. He would stay with them till something happened – and if it did, he’d already decided he wouldn’t run. Better dead or even the Meat Factory, than more years of running scared, running alone.

“I’ll talk to Gold-Eye now,” said Shade. “Ella, come back in an hour and I’ll give you a full briefing. The maps will be printed out then, with the latest intelligence from my rats and Stelo’s team.”

“Stelo’s back, then?” asked Ninde, smiling. Then she said, “Oops,” and raised her hand.

Her smile slipped as Shade looked at her silently, his fingers tapping equally silently on the desk.

“Your Change Talent makes you useful, Ninde,” Shade said finally, “but that doesn’t mean you can ignore the rules – little rules or big rules. Yes, Stelo’s team is back – but I forbid you to approach him. He’s got enough to worry about without you trying out flirting skills learned from 1990s videos. If you want to sleep with someone, Ninde, put yourself in the Lottery like everyone else – and pass the contraception knowledge test, which I note you haven’t even assessed.”

“But I don’t want to be in the Lottery,” Ninde complained. “I might get anyone. I might even get Drum. Oh, sorr—”

The sharp sound and impact of a slap cut her short, and Ella was standing over her, palm as red as Ninde’s left cheek. Before the younger girl could even speak, Ella had her in a “come along” hold and was forcing her out of the room.

“Right, Ninde!” Ella tightened her hold. “You’ve been drifting a bit and now it’s time I pointed you back on course, with a little explanation about what we’re here to do and your part… which I think may not be quite what you think it is!”

Gold-Eye watched them go in wonderment. Surely there was enough trouble outside without having trouble between people here?

Drum watched too, apparently unaffected by Ninde’s outburst. When the hatch closed behind the two women, he got up and made a curious half bow that included both Gold-Eye and Shade.

“I’ll go too,” he said very softly. As he passed Gold-Eye, he paused and lowered his great round head, looming over the boy like a spreading tree. Then he spoke, voice half whistling like wind in the branches.

“Don’t worry, young one. Ninde is good at heart, but strangely unaware of the time she lives in. And Ella is perhaps too much aware. I am just a product of the time. You’ll understand it all, one day.”

Then he was gone, lumbering out through the hatch – and Gold-Eye was left alone with Shade, the rat robots, and the spider things still lurking and rustling in the shadowed corners.

VIDEO ARCHIVE – SECRET 2711 RICK #3 – FINAL

<TRANSMISSION XPACK – COMPX25

RAT-EYE BETA 10:07:41 1102006.>

Get away! Get… ah… You’re not a rat… one of Shade’s Eyes…

<SOBBING.>

The others or gone. Nelo and Tanner. We got to the observation point, but there were Trackers everywhere and Myrmidons… Pre-battle, I guess… hu… hu…

<HYSTERICAL LAUGHER.>

Hundreds of them. Pouring out everywhere. We got back to the hedges, but Trackers sniffed us out… Myrmidons took Nel and Tan… I’m in Southwest Drain Twelve, about… I don’t know… near the Big Six connection… Please send someone to get me… Look… the bone is sticking out… It hurts…

<MEDISCAN APP. CUT IN. VISUAL DIAGNOSIS. COMPLEX

FRACTURE OF HUMERUS. MAJOR BLOOD-VESSEL DAMAGE. EMERGENCY MEDICAL TREATMENT INDICATED.>

I jumped… They almost had me… but I can’t crawl further… I can’t…

<SOBBING.>

A team could get me out. Ella or Stelo, they’ll come. They’ll come, won’t they, Shade?

<MEDISCAN APP. CUT IN. PROGNOSIS: TREATMENT

REQUIRED WITHIN 134 MINUTES. PATIENT

IN SEVERE SHOCK. BLOOD LOSS SIGNIFICANT.>

It’s pretty dry down here… Maybe… maybe dry enough for Ferrets… but it’s not far… not far. They’ll get here before dark. Yeah, it’s OK, they’ll get here… They’ll get here… Shade… help me.

<INCOHERENCE. RAT-EYE BETA

RESUMES PATROL 10:09:55.>

CHAPTER SIX

Shade didn’t say anything for a moment after Drum left. He just sat there behind his desk, watching Gold-Eye – who had the uncomfortable feeling that he was somehow being measured or analysed.

“Your eyes have less gold in them than they did outside,” Shade said finally. “Which is very interesting. We’re underwater here, and water does seem to have a damping effect on Change Talents, Change side-effects – and on creatures.”

“I not… creature,” Gold-Eye said hastily. He’d been accused of that before, on the rare occasions he’d met other people.

“No, you’re not,” said Shade decisively. “Just visibly affected by the Change, which is quite rare. But not unheard of. I have seen other cases. Now, Gold-Eye, I’m going to ask you some questions and I’m also going to tell you some things. OK?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve heard me talk about the Change and Change Talents. Do you know what I mean?”

Gold-Eye frowned in thought. History as such wasn’t taught in the Dorms, but there were always children who seemed to know things and would tell the others. He wasn’t sure about details, but the general picture was pretty clear.

“Before,” he replied slowly, “there lots of people, who could get old. Then the Change. Grown-up peoples go. Overlords come. Creatures come. Dormitories. Sad Birthdays. The Meat Factory…”

“Good.” Shade smiled. “That’s about right. Almost fifteen years ago, something happened or was made to happen. For an instant everything stopped. Everything moving halted, every machine, every car. In that instant every person over the age of fourteen vanished. Destroyed… translated into another reality… translocated… I don’t know… And then the Overlords came and herded the survivors into the Dorms. A few weeks after that, the first creatures appeared – built with teenagers’ brains – and the Overlords began their ritual battles…”

He paused, and Gold-Eye raised his hand, remembering the treatment meted out to Ninde for her unauthorised question.

“But you?” asked Gold-eye, after he was sure Shade had noticed the upraised hand.

Shade smiled again and leaned back in his chair, hands linked behind his glossy black-haired head.

“Yes, everyone disappeared – except me. Or including me, depending on how you look at it. You see, Gold-Eye, I’m not really a person at all!”

As he said that, Shade vanished and the lights went out. Gold-Eye shot up out of the sofa, heart drumming, then subsided back into the cushions. It was pitch-black and he knew he couldn’t find the hatch. The thought of stumbling across one of the spider robots or rat things…

Then Shade spoke again, his voice echoing from every corner of the room.

“What I am, Gold-Eye, is a human personality stored in a computer’s memory. I have the memories of that real person. I think like a real person. To some degree, I still have the feelings of a real person. But no flesh, save the holographic appearance you have seen – which I must confess is partly based on a twentieth-century actor – so I look rather better than I did in the flesh. A conceit that possibly shows my continuing humanity…

“Do you understand what I’m telling you, Gold-Eye?”

“Yes. You live in machine, show yourself in pictures,” said Gold-Eye, nervously directing each word to a different part of that night-dark chamber, as if a sound would strike the real Shade and make him reappear.

“Good. Very good,” said Shade. He sounded surprised; then his voice returned to that confident, bass tone – only growing much louder as he continued to talk.

“You are quick to grasp the idea. However strange my physical form, I am a mature adult, complete with the sophisticated education of the pre-Change years and equipped with some of its best technology. And as the only educated adult left, perhaps in the whole world, it is my duty to fight against the intruders who have destroyed what we had… my duty to restore humanity… my duty to turn back the Change!”

With this last word, the green laser suddenly stabbed back on. Gold-Eye screamed, flinging himself back into the cushions, an arm covering his face.

When nothing awful followed, he slowly lowered the arm – and the hologram of Shade was back behind the desk, calmly drinking an equally holographic glass of water.

“Ahhh,” said Shade, putting the glass down. “I’m sorry if I scared you, Gold-Eye. I feel very strongly about our struggle… no… our war… against the Overlords. Not for myself so much – but for you, and all the other children in the Dormitories, in the Meat Factory. Those of us who can do something must do something. You agree with that, I trust?”

“Yes,” muttered Gold-Eye, who would have agreed to anything Shade wanted him to. However, it was obvious that the Overlords and their creatures were enemies of people, so it didn’t take much to agree with that. Still, he wished it was Ella or Drum explaining everything to him. Not this fearful man-computer person…

“Excellent,” said Shade, drawing his lips back as he pronounced each syllable slowly. “Ex… cel… lent. I won’t have people here who don’t participate in the war against the Overlords. We’re all soldiers, Gold-Eye, doing whatever we can. And like soldiers in the time before the Change, we must be trained to fight well. Don’t you agree?”

“Not sure meaning?” Gold-Eye replied nervously. The school machines in the Dorm gave you electric shocks if you gave the wrong answer more than once. And Shade was sort of a school machine too…

“You have to learn to fight!” Shade said, stabbing his forefinger at Gold-Eye. “Much of what you will do here will be learning. Learning how to fight the Overlords’ creatures, learning combat skills. And learning for its own sake too. English – where I think you need some work. History. Science. We must preserve and use knowledge in human minds, Gold-Eye. Not just on disks and tapes and in books. Knowledge must be used! Used first to fight the Overlords, of course. Active in mind and body, that’s the ticket. Do you have any questions?”

The sudden question, on top of a monologue that was largely meaningless to Gold-Eye, shook the boy. Once again, he looked from side to side like a frightened rabbit and his mouth opened soundlessly.

“No? You should always have questions, Gold-Eye. Asked in their proper turn, but there should always be questions. Now, what are we going to do with you?”

“Do with me?” asked Gold-Eye, voice squeaking almost as high as Drum’s. That was the phrase the Overlords’ voices spoke on Sad Birthdays, when these enigmatic beings came to oversee the latest crop of fourteen-year-olds, checking the collated school and physical reports to see if the person’s brain, nerves and muscle were to be used in Winger, Myrmidon, Tracker, Screamer or Ferret.

“Ah. Apologies,” said Shade, smiling that brilliant white smile again. “I mean, what are you going to do right now? Do you remember how to get back through the Sub to the changing room?”

“Y-y-es,” stuttered Gold-Eye, getting to his feet, relief making his muscles so shaky that he clutched at the armrest for support.

“Go back there,” said Shade. He seemed to think for a moment, then said, “Sim will meet you there and show you where you will sleep and so on…”

He stopped as Gold-Eye raised his hand again nervously, arm shaking.

“New person?” asked Gold-Eye anxiously. “Not Ella, Drum, Ninde?”

“Sim looks after everyone new here. He’ll show you the ropes… show you how things are done,” Shade replied. “But… yes… I think you will work with Ella’s team. Your precognitive talent, your seeing things in the ‘soon-to-benow’ will be a useful addition to that team.

“So. You will go and meet Sim now. He will guide you through the Sub and fit you out with the standard equipment. You will then return here. I want to record your experience of escaping the Dorms before… before you go out again tomorrow. After that, you will report to Ella, and perhaps there will be time for a lesson before sleep. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” said Gold-Eye.

“Good,” replied Shade. He leaned forward and made a fluttering motion with his right hand. “You may go.”

Gold-Eye needed no encouraging. The lights still hadn’t come back on, but the image of Shade himself gave off enough light for him to find the hatch. As it clanged shut behind him, he let out a small sigh of relief – then jumped in panic, hitting his head, as Shade’s voice echoed through the corridor.

“I forgot to say something, Gold-Eye,” the disembodied voice whispered from roof and floor and walls.

“Welcome aboard.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

After a single, bewildering night in the Submarine, Gold-Eye found himself outside again soon after dawn the next morning. Under the finger wharf, up to his armpits in extremely cold sea water.

This time his rags were gone, replaced with the dark-green coveralls the others wore. From his wide leather belt a sword and other equipment hung, including a length of rope, added to the basic equipment after the team’s recent experience. His hair was also greatly changed; he had practically none left. Just a thin layer of fuzz remained after an electric razor had removed months of hair and matted dirt.

Ella, Drum and Ninde were there too. Uncharacteristically quiet, in Ninde’s case. She stood as far away from Drum and Ella as she could and didn’t look up at anyone.

They waded in silence to the drain entrance, where Drum helped everybody up from below and then clambered up himself with the assistance of all three pulling on one thigh-like arm.

“OK,” said Ella, taking out her Myrmidon witchlight and squeezing it on. “Flashlights on? All working? Good. Now, we’re going to take the Main Drain to the Main Junction, then South Drain Twelve. We’ll have to count manholes from the junction – Ninde, I want you to do that to check me. We’ll exit at manhole twenty-seven, which is inside the University grounds.

“If we get separated for any reason, you’ve got two choices. If you’re not hurt and you think everyone else will make it, aim for the South Drain Twelve rendezvous. Otherwise, return to the Sub and report to Shade. Any questions?”

“Yes,” said Gold-Eye, mindful of Shade’s instruction that it was good to have questions. “How tell which drain?”

“Good question,” said Ella. “I forgot you’re new. Look over here.”

She walked a little further up the drain, adjusting her stance to the curve of the tunnel and the patches of ambitious green slime that left the water to climb up the walls. About ten feet in from the entrance, she held the witchlight up to illuminate a bronze plaque.

Looking closer, Gold-Eye saw that it read, ADIT 10 EAST. PCW.

“Ten East is what we call the Main Drain,” explained Ella. “It leads to the Main Junction – which we’ll pass through – and becomes Ten West. For all the other drains, we use the exact names on these bronze plates – which are always this high and located about this far in from any junction or outfall. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” confirmed Gold-Eye, with a noticeable rise in confidence. He’d thought they all just memorised the entire storm-water drain grid and had extraordinary senses of direction – even down here in the dark, watery corridors.

“OK. Check swords,” said Ella, drawing hers half out of the sheath to make sure it ran free. The others copied her action, Gold-Eye somewhat nervously. He’d been given it the night before by Sim, the cheerful older boy who seemed to look after an awful lot on the Sub, not just new arrivals.

Gold-Eye had had half an hour of practice with the sword the night before, but it was still the sharpest, heaviest weapon he’d ever handled. The steel blade was etched with gold in swirly lines that Sim had said “disrupt the creatures’ electromagnetic nervous systems.” He’d laughed and nodded when Gold-Eye had asked, “Does that help kill him?”

“Everybody ready?” asked Ella as Gold-Eye finally managed to put his sword back into the sheath. “OK. I’ll go first – then Ninde – then Gold-Eye. Drum, you take rear guard. Let’s go!”

Her words echoed into the dark tunnel ahead and were lost in the soft burble of the descending waters. The four followed the echo, the gold pool of witchlight and the harsh white beams of the flashlights, bobbing and spinning as they jumped from side to side along the tunnel, seeking the best and fastest footing.

An hour later Ella called the first rest break. It was hard work walking in the tunnel, with one foot always higher up the curve and many patches of slime to jump over. Then there were the junctions with lesser tunnels, to be waded across using ropes or linked arms. Always there was the oppressive darkness, the sudden heat as hot water flowed in from a side tunnel – and the fear when the burbling water rose to a roar, fear subsiding as the water returned to its steady flow.

They rested in a small chamber above the tunnel, reached by a rusty steel ladder that rose up through the ceiling of the tunnel and on up another twenty feet. Remnants of pre-Change times filled it, arcane objects known to them from videos and training lessons: a mildewed map of the drains on the wall, next to a pictorial calendar of naked women, now clothed in mould; two hard hats on hooks; an open tool kit on the floor, filled with rusted objects.

“We’re pretty close to the Main Junction,” Ella said as she handed out bars of chocolate. These were still pristine in their foil wrappers, despite a fifteen-year wait on supermarket shelves, a wait broken only when they were retrieved by the teams Shade sent scavenging.

“There are two upper walkways well above the water – in addition to the walkways around the sides, which tend to be a bit submerged. We’ll be taking those. So we’ll stop a bit short to listen for Myrmidons, let Ninde concentrate, and so on. If you have any of your visions, Gold-Eye, speak up.”

They ate in silence after Ella spoke, sipping from their water bottles. It was hot and airless in the room and Gold-Eye felt himself drifting off into sleep. As his head nodded forward, he felt the familiar grip of the soon-to-be-now – but just as the vision was about to come to him, Ninde shook him and it was lost.

“Come on!” said Ninde, switching on her flashlight. “We’re going.”

Gold-Eye followed her with the pressure of an unrealised vision throbbing at his temples and a sick swirling emptiness in his stomach. His glimpses of the soon-to-be-now were nearly always warnings of something bad about to happen – but not always. For a moment he considered telling Ella, but decided against it. Maybe he had felt like he was about to have a vision only because Ella had mentioned it…

But when they started walking along the drain again, the vision did come back. Gold-Eye let out a yelp and nearly fell against Ninde, who just managed to hold him up.

In his head, Gold-Eye saw water rushing along two tunnels, filling them both completely, speeding along in a frenzy of white froth – then cascading out into an enormous pool where many tunnels met. Trapped in his vision, Gold-Eye still realised that this was the Main Junction and the great rush of water was filling it. In moments it would begin a mad, headlong rush towards the sea. Along Ten East. The Main Drain.

“Water!” he shrieked, coming out of the vision. “Flood!”

Even as he cried out, a rumbling, deep roar vibrated through the tunnel, displaced air rushed past their faces – and the first small wave heralded the smashing waters to come.

“Back!” shouted Ella. “Back to the ladder!”

The others had already turned and in a second were running, dancing, slipping back along the tunnel. The sound of the water behind them rose as they ran, and the waves were soon slapping the backs of their knees and then their backs – and still the main flood was building in the surge reservoir they knew as the Main Junction.

“Up! Up!” Drum called as Gold-Eye arrived panting at the ladder. Holding the steel upright with one hand, he picked Gold-Eye up with the other and practically hurled him through the hole in the ceiling, and Ninde after him.

Then, with a ferocious, frothing howl, the flood hit.

Water geysered up the ladder shaft, exploding around Gold-Eye and Ninde as they desperately climbed higher. For a second, both were nearly plucked away, nostrils, mouth and lungs filled with forced water. Then, as quickly as it came, the water disappeared, leaving them coughing and crying on the ladder.

Ninde’s flashlight still hung on its cord around her wrist. She fumbled her light downward, but it illuminated only the subsiding waters. There was no sign of Ella or Drum.

“They’re gone,” she sobbed. “Gone.”

Gold-Eye heard her faintly, the words fuzzy in his water-logged ears. He felt weak, unable to speak, barely capable of holding on. His hands hurt, the knuckles cracking, unable to relax his deathly grip on the worn steel rungs.

“We shouldn’t have come out,” Ninde sobbed. “I knew it was wrong…”

“Ninde…” Gold-Eye said, suddenly less worried about himself as her muttering and crying rose in intensity and volume. “Ninde!”

She stopped in mid breath, choked and broke into a fit of coughing. When it stopped, she seemed calmer. Gold-Eye felt calmer too, as if his state of mind was directly dependent upon hers.

“Ninde,” he said again. “Can you do… mind-listen… people?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Ninde said, half coughing the words. “They’re drowned. I can’t hear what dead people think!”

Gold-Eye said nothing. Ninde coughed a few more times, then said, “I suppose I could try. Not from here, though.”

“Safe to go down?” asked Gold-Eye. He couldn’t see past Ninde.

“Yeah,” replied Ninde, shining her flashlight down again. “I guess… I guess it was a quick one. The water looks about w-waist high.”

“We go then?” asked Gold-Eye. “Look for Ella and Drum?”

“I suppose,” said Ninde doubtfully. She withdrew her elbows, which had been locked around the rungs. “I guess if it was the other way around, they’d look for us. And Drum is very strong. If they hung on to the ladder for long enough…”

She started climbing down, Gold-Eye following close behind – and then suddenly stopped, just at the top of the tunnel.

“What?” asked Gold-Eye anxiously.

“The last part of the ladder’s missing,” Ninde replied, her voice flat. “It’s just broken off. We’ll have to hang and drop.”

“Wait!” cried Gold-Eye as Ninde prepared to lower herself from the last rung. “Rope! We use rope!”

ARCHIVE MISSION ORDERS 3651 • STELO

Stelo: | You want us to what?
Shade: | Capture a Winger.
Stelo: | How?
Shade: | The tethered goat.
Stelo: | What?
Shade: | It’s an old trick, used for capturing wild carnivores. Tigers, for example. You tether a goat to a stake. When the animal comes to eat the defenceless goat, you kill or capture it.
Stelo: | We haven’t got a goat.
Shade: | No. It’ll have to be one of your team. Pretending to be hurt or unconscious – to attract a Winger.
Stelo: | Great… How do we stop the rest of the flight dropping in?
Shade: | Simple. Have the decoy lie somewhere only one can land. In between a fence and a building, perhaps…
Stelo: | I don’t like it.
Shade: | I need a Winger to examine. Theoretically they’re too heavy to fly. I need to find out how they do… It’s very important to the struggle, Stelo. And the tethered goat will work.
Stelo: | Have you used it before?

Shade: | Yes.
Stelo: | Did it work?
Shade: | Oh, yes. Not with a Winger, but we got a Tracker once.
Stelo: | Whose team did it?
Shade: | No one you know, Stelo. Long before your time, my boy. Now, I want you to get started tomorrow…

CHAPTER EIGHT

“They’re alive!” said Ninde, sounding very surprised. “I think.”

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