Deeper

35

The boys had the greatest difficulty keeping up with Elliott, she was moving so swiftly. As if she didn't care whether they kept up or not.

Of the three of them, Cal was struggling the most. He shuffled along and even fell several times as they trekked across the sandy bank. But he always managed to drag himself to his feet and carry on. He was saying something to himself — prayers, perhaps, though Will couldn't be certain and wasn't about to waste his breath to inquire. He had a splitting headache that he couldn't shake, and he was weak from lack of sleep and food. His thirst remained unquenchable — without stopping, he would take gulps from his canteen, but it did little to assuage it.

None of the boys spoke. Questions were burning in their minds. With Drake gone, would Elliott simply abandon them and go off by herself? Or would she continue with the plans that Drake had discussed and keep them together as a team?

Will was pondering this as he noticed a barely perceptible change in the terrain. The punishing, shifting sand had firmed up, becoming a little easier to traverse. He wondered why.

The sea was still to his right. He could hear the odd lugubrious slap of a wave, but he knew that the cavern wall — to his left and invisible in the darkness — must be quite some distance away by now. They were going deeper and deeper into an area that Will had only touched upon in his hours of blind wandering.

Then, under the dim light shed by his lantern, he saw the pale sandiness had transformed into darker ground. He stumbled over something solid and immovable, his boot striking hard against it. He stooped to explore what it was: It felt exactly like a small stump from a felled tree. Will tried to contain his curiosity, but it got the better of him and he clicked up the lever behind the lens of his lantern.

Immediately Elliott swooped back. She stood threateningly in front of him.

"What do you think you're doing?" she growled. "Turn that down!"

"I'm just having a look," he answered, refusing to engage her flashing eyes as he surveyed the area around his feet. It had changed. There were several stumps of varying heights, between which were strange-looking plants — succulents, Will guessed — covering the ground so thickly that little of the sand showed through. They were black, or at least a darkish gray, and their leaves, sticking out from stubby central stems, were round and bloated and covered with a waxy cuticle.

"Salt-loving," he proposed, nudging one of the succulents with his boot.

"Turn that light down," Elliott ordered, scowling. She was barely out of breath, while Will and the two other boys gasped heavily, grateful for this small rest stop.

Will looked up at her. "I want to know where you're taking us," he demanded, holding her stare. "You're going so fast, and we're all totally knackered."

She didn't answer.

"At least tell us what the plan is," he persisted.

She spat, barely missing Will's knee. "The light!" she hissed through her teeth as she brought the butt of her rifle up threateningly. Having zero desire to get into a fight, he dutifully clicked his lantern back to the lowest setting. She flicked her head away from him and strode off, passing Cal, then Chester, to take the lead again. It reminded Will of the way Rebecca had treated him back in Highfield. He pondered whether all teenage girls had a similar streak of vindictiveness, and wondered again if he would ever fully understand the opposite sex. In the hours that followed, despite his pleas for her to slow down, it seemed to Will as though Elliott had stepped up a gear and was forging ahead even faster now, purely to spite him.

The succulents grew taller as they moved farther into this new region. When they trod on the leaves, they made squishing noises, as if they were walking over thick mud. Every so often one of the leaves would burst with a loud popping sound, like a punctured balloon, filling the air with the most intense smell of sulfur.

They began to encounter basic-looking plants in wiry tangles, like overgrown banks of brambles. Will thought they resembled the common horsetail, a plant he knew from its rampant growth in Highfield Cemetery. But these had dirty-white stems, some reaching an inch in diameter, around which were collars of black, needle-thin, prickly spikes. The farther the boys traveled, the denser the banks became, until the plants were almost up to their waists and they had a heck of a job wading through them.

Added to this, increasing numbers of thick trees blocked their way. Will could see that their trunks were covered in rough scales and guessed they were huge ferns. The abundance of them made it increasingly difficult to see the person in front. The air had also become intensely humid, and the boys were soon drenched in sweat.

Will was right behind Cal as he labored along, trying to ensure his brother didn't drop behind, when he noticed a change in course. They were going down a slight incline, which would eventually bring them to the beach. He could hear thrashing up ahead as Elliott beat their way through the thick foliage, and he caught a fleeting glimpse of Chester. He and Cal were still on track. But where was Elliott taking them?

They stumbled down the last of the slope and broke from the undergrowth to find themselves on the shore. It was the first time any of the boys had actually seen the sea. Cal and Chester stared at it in silent amazement, a light breeze cooling their sweaty faces. But Will's attention was absorbed by the spectacle of the huge forest from which they'd just emerged. In the penumbra of his lantern, it appeared so dark and impenetrable.

Giant fernlike trees towered high above him.

"Cycads!" Will exclaimed. "These have to be gymnosperms. The dinosaurs ate plants like this!"

At the apex of their gently curving trunks, which had dark rings around them at regular intervals as if they had been built by slotting together a series of increasingly smaller cylinders, grew massive crowns of fronds. Some were fully open, while others were still curled up on themselves. Unlike the green leaves of cycads found on the earth's surface, the fronds of these huge plants were gray.

In between these primordial trees, copses of the bloated succulents and the trailing brambles, so tightly interwoven, gave the impression of the thickest jungle in the dead of night. And Will could see small white fluttering insects dithering between the high branches of the trees. Those nearest to him were clearly the same species of snowy moth he had first seen in the Colony. And Will heard an infrequent, familiar sound — one that evoked the Topsoil countryside so strongly he smiled. The chirping of crickets!

It was several moments before he wrenched his gaze away from the whole scene.

Cal and Chester, both still trying to get their breath back, were throwing worried glances at the stretch of water before them. Will looked past the two boys to where Elliott was kneeling as she surveyed the shoreline through her rifle scope.

Will went to her side, curious as to what was churning up the water so violently, and found himself standing at the precise spot where a fluxing white line broke its surface. It arced away into the gloom, a mass of shifting white striations of froth and spume on one side.

"This is the causeway," Elliott said in an offhand manner, anticipating his question.

She got to her feet and the boys straggled around her.

"We're going to cross here. If you slip, you'll be washed away. So don't." Her voice sounded flat, telling them nothing about what she was thinking.

"There's some sort of rock outcrop under here, isn't there?" Will pondered aloud, taking a few steps forward to thrust his hand into the bubbling froth. "Yes… here it is."

"I wouldn't," Elliott warned.

Will snatched his hand back quickly.

"There are things in there that'll take your fingers off," she continued, and as she did so she turned up her lantern and shone it over the water so they could see the expanse of nothingness, the huge black sheets extending across both sides of the causeway. Each of the boys shuddered despite the warmth of their surroundings.

"Please tell us where you're taking us," Will begged her. "Is there any reason why you're keeping us in the dark?"

His words hung in the air for several seconds before she answered.

"All right," she said, letting out a breath. "We don't have much time, so I want you to listen carefully. OK?"

Each of the boys muttered a yes in response.

"I've never, ever seen so many Limiters down here in the Deeps before, and I don't like it. It's crystal clear that they've got something massive going on, and maybe that's why they're tying up loose ends."

"What do you mean, loose ends?" Chester asked.

"Renegades… us," Elliott answered. Then she tipped her light at Will. "And him." She looked down at the frothing water. "We're going somewhere safe so I can figure out what we should do next. Now, just follow me."

She'd allowed them to turn their lights up several clicks, but the immensely powerful current pushed hard against their boots and threw up a steamy mist around them. The ledge on which they had to walk was uneven and coated with slippery weed. Every so often, it dipped well below the water's surface. Will could hear Chester grunting as he negotiated another of these most treacherous, invisible stretches, muttering with gratitude as he managed to get to where the ledge was more obvious again. Cal babbled up ahead, his voice often rising to a high pitch as if he was pleading for the terrifying crossing to end. There was nothing Will could do to help him — each boy had his own watery tightrope to walk, just trying to take the next step without sliding from the ridge into the roiling nightmare expanse.

They hadn't traveled very far when they heard — they felt — a huge splash.

"Crikey! What was that?" Chester yelped, teetering to a stop on the ledge.

Will could have sworn he caught a flash of a broad, pale-colored tail fin no more than fifteen feet away. They all peered apprehensively at the spot as the choppy water becalmed again.

"Move!" Elliott urged.

"But… " Chester said, pointing a quivering hand toward the water.

"MOVE!" she repeated in a growl, glancing anxiously back at the beach. "We're like ducks in a shooting gallery out here."

It took them about half an hour to reach dry land again. They collapsed onto the sandy foreshore, taking in another wall of thick jungle before them. But Elliott didn't allow a moment's respite, immediately herding them onward through coppices of the succulent plants and tangled clumps of the trailing stems with black prickles, every bit as dense as the bush at the other end of the causeway.

They came to a small clearing, where Elliott told them to wait, and left to scout out the rest to the area. With the jungle on all sides it was impossible to tell where they were, and none of them gave it a second thought. They were all drained, and their clothes wrung through with sweat. As the odd insect fluttered past, Will and Chester shared a canteen of water.

Cal had chosen a spot in the clearing as far away from Will and Chester as he could possibly manage. Sitting cross-legged and staring into space, he began to rock back and forth, muttering monotonously under his breath.

"What's up with him?" Chester said quietly, wiping the perspiration from his brow.

"Dunno," Will replied, taking a large swig from the canteen.

Just then, Cal's voice became louder and they could hear snatches of his ranting: "… and the hidden shall not be hidden in the eyes of the…"

"Do you think he's all right?" Chester asked Will, who had settled back against the rucksack and closed his eyes with a long exhalation.

"…and it is we who shall be saved… saved… saved…" Cal was babbling.

Will opened one eye and called crankily to his brother.

"What'd ya say, Cal? Can't hear you, bro."

"Didn't say anything," Cal replied defensively, sitting bolt upright with a startled expression.

"Cal, what happened?" Chester asked the boy hesitantly. "What happened to Drake?"

Cal crawled toward them and launched into a rambling account, backtracking as he recalled another detail and every so often stopping completely, in mid-sentence, to draw a quick breath before he went on. Then he told them about the white room with the sealed cells that he and Elliott had stumbled upon in the Bunker.

"But this renegade — the one who was alive — what was wrong with him?" Will asked.

"His eyes were all puffy and his face was covered in boils," Cal said. "He had some sort of disease."

Will looked thoughtful. "So is that it?" he said.

"What do you mean?" Chester butted in.

"Drake knew the Styx were testing out something down here. Maybe it's a disease."

With a small shrug, Cal continued, recounting how he and Elliott had escaped to the lava tubes. His voice broke.

"Drake could have run, but he didn't, so that Elliott and I had a chance… It was like… like when Uncle Tam made a stand…"

"He may not be dead." Elliott's voice came, silencing Cal. It was suffused with a mixture of anger and sorrow.

Stunned by her pronouncement, they all looked at her, standing at the edge of the clearing.

"We were careless and they had us, but the Limiters were shooting to maim, not to kill. If they'd wanted us dead, we would be." She spun around to face Will, her recriminatory glare burning into him. "But why would they want to take us alive? Enlighten me, Will."

All eyes were on him as he shook his head.

"Come on, why would that be?" she insisted in a low growl.

"Rebecca," Will answered quietly.

"Not her again!" Chester exclaimed.

Cal started to gibber another monotonous diatribe, wringing his hands together. They could all hear what he was saying now. "And the Lord shall be the savior to those—"

"Stop that!" Elliott turned on him. "What are you doing? Praying?" She reached out and slapped him hard across the face.

"I… uh… no…" he babbled, his arms up around his head as he cowered, thinking she was going to strike him again.

"Do that and I'll finish you right here. It's all a load of hogwash. I should know, I had years of the Book of Catastrophes rammed down my throat in the Colony." She grabbed him by his hair and shook his head mercilessly. "Get a grip, kid, because this is all you've got."

"I…" Cal began with a half sob.

"No, listen to me, wake up, will you? You've been brainwashed," she said in a low voice, yanking his hair and jerking his head from side to side. "Do you remember a time before you were born?"

"Huh?" Cal sobbed.

"Do you?"

"No," he stuttered uncomprehendingly.

"No! Why is that? Because we are no different from any animal, any insect or germule."

"Elliott, if he wants to believe—" Chester began, unable to remain silent.

"Keep out of it, Chester!" she snapped, not even looking at him. "We are not special, Cal. You, me, we all came from nothing, and that's exactly where we're all going one day, maybe soon, whether we like it or not." She snorted contemptuously and shoved him over onto his side. "Can't you see it's a cult? Your Book of Catastrophes is for the birds!"

In the blink of an eye she was in front of Will. He girded himself, thinking he was next in line for the abuse. But she stood silently before him, her arms crossed belligerently over her long rifle. Rebecca had stood before him in this very way so many times back in Highfield, telling him off for tramping mud onto the carpet or some similar petty misdemeanor.

"You're coming with me," Elliott barked.

"What? Where?"

"You got us into this, so you can help get us out," she snapped.

"Help how?"

"We're going back to the base."

Frowning at her, Will couldn't take in what she was saying.

"You and I are going back to the base," she said again, enunciating each word clearly. "Understand? To get equipment and supplies."

"But I can't go all the way back there! I just can't," he pleaded. "I'm wrecked… I need some rest… some food…"

"Tough."

"Why don't we just go on to the next base? Drake told me…"

She shook her head. "Too far."

"I—"

"Get up." She thrust the spare riflescope at him and he slowly rose to his feet. With a helpless glance at Chester, he left the clearing and followed her through the dense foliage back to the causeway.

It was as though he were in the throes of some awful nightmare in reverse, repeating the near-death journey he'd just completed. At least he knew what to expect this time.

Will wasn't really thinking by the end of his second causeway crossing. He followed Elliott mechanically, plodding over the stretch of sand until they came to the edge of the jungle.

"Stop here," she ordered and, under the glow of her lantern, began kicking around, searching for something in the discolored sand packed at the gnarled roots of the succulents.

"Where is it?" she said to herself, moving farther into the undergrowth. "Aha!" she exclaimed, diving down. She unsheathed her knife and used it to trim off the gray foliage of a small rosette-shaped plant, until all that was left was its ragged heart. She continued to cut away at this, reducing it to what looked like some sort of nut. She carefully peeled that, shedding chunks of its woody coat. Then she began to work on the kernel, which was about the size of an almond, slicing it into strips. She sniffed at it before holding her palm out to Will.

"Chew on it," she said, and then sucked a strand herself off the knife blade. "Don't swallow. Just chew slowly."

He nodded dubiously, grinding the fibrous strips between his incisors. They released a sharp sourness that made him stick out his tongue.

She watched, pushing another strand into her mouth with a grimy finger.

"Tastes disgusting," he said.

"Give it a moment — it'll help."

She was right. As he chewed, a coldness spread through his body. It was a pleasurable sensation in the midst of the unremitting heat and humidity, and with it came a surge of energy that blew away the leadenness from his limbs. He felt renewed, strong… he felt ready for anything.

"What is this?" he asked, straightening his shoulders, his inquisitiveness returning with a vengeance. "Caffeine?" The only sensation he could compare it with was when his sister had made coffee back home and he'd tried a cup. "Caffeine?" he repeated, his voice jittery.

"Something like that," Elliott replied with a careless smile. "Come on, let's go."

He now found he could easily keep pace with Elliott as they steamed ahead. Moving with the fleetness of two cats, they traversed the sandy foreshore and then climbed the shingle incline that would take them to the wall of the cavern and the lava tubes.

Will lost all track of time. They reached the base in what seemed like a matter of minutes, although he knew it must have taken considerably longer. It was as if he'd been outside his own body, an onlooker watching someone else sweat and heave for breath at the exertion of traveling so phenomenally fast.

Elliott climbed the rope and he followed. Once they were both inside the base, she tore around like a whirlwind, sorting the various items they were going to take with them. It was as if she'd planned for this very event and knew precisely what to do.

In the main room, which Will had only seen once before, she yanked equipment from wall hooks and swept all manner of things from shelves in the old metal lockers. In seconds flat, the floor was a jumble of discarded items, which she kicked at impatiently when they got in the way. She placed the equipment they were going to take just inside the doorway. Unbidden, Will began to stow it inside a pair of sizable rucksacks and two large bags with drawstring openings.

Elliott suddenly fell silent. Will looked up from where he was kneeling. She was out of sight, behind one of the bunk beds, where she'd been yanking equipment out of Drake's locker. Whatever was in her hands, she carried it in such a way that Will could sense her reverence.

"Drake's spare headset," she announced. Stopping before him, she held out her hands and offered it to him.

Will regarded the leathery cap with its milky eyepiece and the cables trailing down to a small, flat, rectangular box, which swung gently in the air.

"Huh?" he said, frowning.

She didn't respond but held it farther toward him.

"For me?" he asked as he took it. "Really?"

She nodded.

"Where did Drake get these things?" he said, examining the headset.

"He made them. That was what he did in the Colony… The scientists took him in."

"What do you mean, took him in? " Will asked quickly.

"He was a Topsoiler, just like you."

"I know — he told me," Will said.

"The Styx grabbed him. Every so often they go to the surface to snatch people with the skills they need."

"No kidding," Will breathed in disbelief. "So what were Drake's skills? Was he in the army of something? Like a commando?"

"He was a visual optics engineer," Elliott said, pronouncing the words carefully as if she was trying her tongue on an unfamiliar language. "He made these, too." She put her hand to the scope on the weapon hanging from her shoulder.

"No kidding," Will said, weighing the handset in his hands. He recalled Elliott once mentioning that the Styx had abducted someone with the ability to develop devices that allowed them to see through the darkness. But Drake? Images of him flashed through Will's head: the scarred, lean man who inspired such respect next to stereotypical geeks wearing white lab coats with pocket protectors.

"I really thought he'd been some sort of soldier," Will mumbled, shaking his head. "And that he'd gotten himself Banished from the Colony, like you."

"I wasn't Banished!"

Elliott responded with such passion that Will could only manage an apologetic grunt.

"As for Drake… the Styx made him work on these. You know what I mean?"

Will was hesitant in his reply. "They tortured him?"

She nodded. "Until he did what they wanted. They'd haul him down here to the Deeps to field-test the devices, but the day came when he saw his chance and made a break for it. They must have thought they'd gotten all they could from him, because they didn't come looking."

"That's so boss," Will said. "So he was a scientist, a researcher… a bit like my dad."

Elliott made a face as if she had no idea what Will was talking about and had nothing more to add. She returned to the locker, where she continued to empty out its contents, every so often lobbing the odd item onto the bed.

With bated breath, Will carefully put on the headset. Adjusting the strap so it was tight across his forehead, he made sure the lens was correctly positioned over his eye, testing it by hinging it up and down. As he tucked the rectangular box into a pocket, he realized how incredibly uneasy it made him to wear the contraption. He felt that the wasn't worthy of it.

Maybe at the beginning, when he had first met Drake and wondered at the curious device, there would have been a thrill about wearing it, but not now. It had grown, in Will's mind, into an emblem of Drake's mastery of this underworld, a symbol of the man's standing, like a crown. It spoke of Drake's willingness to go up against the Styx and his supremacy over the motley pack of renegades who roamed the Deeps — and, in Will's estimation, Drake was set apart from these. He was the epitome of all that Will would like to become: tough, practical, and answerable to no one.

Elliott gathered up some further equipment and brought it over to the packs. Dropping it, she passed Will without so much as a glance and disappeared into the corridor. She was back a few moments later with a box of stove guns.

"Pack these and then we're out of here."

Will placed the guns in the backpacks, which, together with the other bags, he ferried over to the entrance of the base. He tied the end of the rope around the whole cargo and managed to lower it to the tunnel floor. He didn't relish the prospect of hauling it all across the causeway and back to the island — it weighed a ton, and he suspected he'd be the one to bear the greater portion of it.

As he stood by the top of the rope, he noticed that Elliott was walking slowly from room to room. Was she checking to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything or just having a last look, suspecting she'd never see the place again?

"OK, let's go," she said as she joined him by the entrance.

She slid down the rope, and as soon as they were both at the bottom he untied the packs and bags. As he straightened up, he noticed she appeared to be reading a roll of material.

"What's that?" he said.

She snapped at him to be quiet. When she'd finished she looked across at him.

Will just stared back.

"The message is about Drake… it was pinned to the rope," she replied. "It's from another renegade."

"But… but I only just let the… I didn't see anyone," Will stammered, scanning the shadows, terrified that they were going to be ambushed by the likes of that creepy Tom Cox.

"No, you wouldn't have, and anyway, this is from someone we know — a friend. We need to get a move on," she said. From one of the bags, she whipped out the biggest charge Will had seen so far. She anchored the gunmetal-gray canister, the size of a large can of paint, to the rock wall under where the rope hung, then she backed toward the opposite side of the tunnel, feeding out an almost invisible trip wire behind her. Will didn't have to ask: Elliott was setting a powerful explosive in case anyone came looking for the base — so powerful that the whole place would be buried under tons of rubble.

She tested her handiwork, plucking the tautly stretched wire, which gave a threatening twang. After pulling out the pin to arm it, she returned to Will.

"So what now? Do we take this with us?" he asked, pointing at the bags.

"Forget it."

"We're not going to the island?"

"Change of plan," she said, her eyes flashing with a fierce determination. He knew then that she had something else in mind, and that they weren't going back to join Chester and Cal.

"Oh," Will said as it sank in.

"We've got to get to the other side of the plain, and quick." She looked furtively up and down the tunnel, sniffing several times.

"Why?" Will asked, to which she held up her hand, silencing him.

He heard it, too. A low whine. Even as he listened, the whining grew louder and louder until it became a howl. He felt the gentle breeze on his face and saw it tug at the ends of Elliott's shemagh.

"A Levant," she said, then exclaimed, "the wind's coming: Just our luck!"

Will reeled on his feet as if about to collapse at the thought of facing it, exposed, in the Deeps. Elliott eyed him with concern, then ferreted around in her pocket and offered some more of the root. He took several pieces and chewed on them grimly, tasting the sourness as it spread over his tongue.

"Better?" she asked.

He nodded in acknowledgment, seeing in her eyes not the concern of a friend, but something cold and detached, a clinical professionalism. She needed someone to assist her; she didn't really care about him.

"Try the headset," she ordered as he continued to chew.

He nodded, flipping down the eyepiece, then fumbling for the switch on the box in his pocket. There was a faint tone — it began to build, reaching a high pitch and then descending in octaves to a lower sound, so barely audible that he couldn't tell if he was hearing it or just feeling it through his cranium.

"Shut your left eye — just use the one behind the lens," Elliott directed him.

He did as she said, blinking his left eye shut, but could see nothing at all through his right eye, the lens tightly pressed to it. Just as he was beginning to think the device might be faulty, dim points started to swirl, as if ocean waters were being stirred to reveal an eerie phosphorescence beneath their depths. From an initial amber, it rapidly transformed into a brighter yellow, until it almost hurt. Everything was intensely visible, as if bathed in stark sunlight. He looked around, at his dirt-ingrained hands, at Elliott securing the shemagh over her face, at the wisps of blurry darkness rolling toward them.

"Have you been in a Black Wind before?" Elliott asked.

"Not in one," he said, remembering when he and Cal had watched the clouds from behind closed windows in the Colony. Cal's words came back to him: The boy had mimicked a nasal Styx voice: "…pernicious to those that it encounters, it sears the flesh."

Will quickly looked at Elliott. "Aren't they, like, poisonous?

"No." She snorted derisively. "It's only dust, garden-variety dust, blown up from the Interior. You shouldn't believe anything the White Necks tell you."

"I don't," Will replied indignantly.

She hefted up her rifle and turned toward the Great Plain. "Let's roll."

He followed behind her, his heart yammering against his rib cage from both the effects of the strange root and anticipation. The X-ray-like vision that the headset gave him, cutting through the darkness like an invisible searchlight, lifted his spirits.

As soon as Will emerged from the water on the other side of the sump, he saw that the landscape was already laced with feathery tendrils of darkness. The spumelike clouds would soon blot out everything. Drake's night-vision device would be of no help whatsoever in these conditions.

"These storms are really thick — won't we get lost?" he asked Elliott as the blackness bled toward them.

"Not a chance," she said dismissively, passing a length of rope around her wrist, knotting it, then giving him the other end to tie around his waist. "Where this goes, you go," she said. "But if you feel me tug twice, you stop dead. Got that?"

"Righto," he replied, feeling a bit removed from the whole situation.

They moved fleetly, sinking into the inkiness so that he couldn't see her even though she was only a few feet in front of him. The smokelike fog clogged his nostrils and coated his face in a fine, dry dust. Several times he was forced to clutch at his nose to stifle a sneeze, and his left eye, unprotected by the night-vision device, was clotted and watering.

He felt two tugs and halted immediately, crouching low while he scanned around alertly. Elliott slipped out of the mist and kneeled down, signaling with a finger pressed to her lips that he should remain silent.

She leaned into him until the shemagh over her mouth brushed his ear. "Listen," she whispered through it.

He heard the faraway howling of a dog. Then… a horrible scream.

A man's scream.

Of the most acute agony.

Elliott's head was inclined to one side, and her eyes — the only part of her that he could see — told him nothing.

"We must hurry."

Horrible prolonged wails of suffering wafted backward and forward as if channeled between the palls of smoke, which sometimes cleared to give them a fleeting view of the ground or made strange, shifting corridors down which they moved.

Louder and louder the cries came, accompanying the low howls of dogs, as if some grisly opera of perdition were being sung.

The ground began to rise under Will's feet and his boot crunched on a pink crystal — a desert rose. They were climbing the slope of the large amphitheater-like clearing where Drake and Elliott had first sneaked up on him and Chester. The same place he had witnessed the horrific slaughter of renegades and Coprolites by the Limiters.

There was a high keening — more animal than human — immediately followed by a sudden, soul-searing scream. Will couldn't pinpoint from which direction it had come — it was as if it had hit the stone roof above and was falling and scattering in a rain of noise all around him. The combination of that noise, which made his stomach churn with fear, and the memory of the Styx's murderous actions made him want to fall to the loose surface of the slope and wrap his arms over his head. But he couldn't; the rope between him and Elliott was uncompromising, urging him on, drawing him toward something he knew he didn't want to see.

She tugged twice and he stood still.

She was at his side before he knew it. She waved him forward with a slow gesture of her hand, ending it with a patting motion. He nodded, understanding: She wanted him to advance cautiously, keeping as low as possible.

As they crawled, she kept stopping without warning. He bumped his head against her boots several times. But she never stopped for long. Will assumed she was listening to check for anyone close by.

The Black Wind seemed to be abating. Little stretches of the slope opened before them, fuzzy scenes of the moonscape surface. Will's night-vision device occasionally blanked and then became a static snowstorm before it reset. These blips only lasted for fractions of a second, but they brought back memories of the times his mother — his adoptive mother, as he had to keep reminding himself — flew into a rage because her beloved TV was on the fritz. Will shook his head — those days were so easy and carefree, and so ridiculously inconsequential.

The appalling screaming rose again from somewhere up ahead. They could hear it so much more clearly now. Elliott froze and looked back at him over her shoulder, her eyes furtive and terrified. Her fear was infectious — he felt it wash through him like a cold wave.

Why had they come here? What was it? What was wrong?

He was confused by Elliott's reaction. If the massacre he'd witnessed here before, with Chester, was being repeated, then it wouldn't have warranted such a response. She'd kept cool on that occasion, disturbing as the incident had been.

They continued to crawl on their bellies, arm over arm, across the gypsum, inching up the incline until the wind blew harder on their faces and whipped up tiny dust devils around them.

The carbon pall of the Black Wind was retreating.

They came to the rim of the crater.

Elliott's rifle was already up.

She said something, muffled and indistinct under the layers of cloth covering her mouth. She pulled back the shemagh, pressing her cheek hard into the stock of the rifle. She was shaking, the barrel of the gun quivering unsteadily. Why? What was wrong?

Everything was happening too fast.

The lens over his eye crackled with static again, like a machine blink, and then he focused on the scene. There were lights on tripod stands, randomly arranged, and a decent number of figures, too far away for him to make out in any detail. A haze of dust clouds drifted in the intervening distance, like random curtains sweeping across his view, sometimes drawing apart to reveal the scene, sometimes closing to obscure it.

He moved across to Elliott, coiling the rope that connected them as he went.

"What is it?" he whispered, close to her ear.

"I think… I think it's Drake," she answered.

"So he's alive?" he gasped.

She didn't answer.

"They've got him prisoner?" he asked.

"Worse," she said, a tautness to her voice. "Tom Cox… he's there. He's gone over to the other side… he's working with the Styx…" She lapsed into a croak that was swallowed by the howls of the wind.

"What are they doing to Drake?"

As she continued to look through her rifle scope, Elliott could hardly talk. "If it's really him, they're… a Limiter is…" She lifted her head from the rifle and shook it violently. "They're torturing him on a stake. Tom Cox is… is laughing… that evil smear of a—"

Another wail of agony, even more dreadful than the last, cut her off.

"I can't watch any longer… I can't let this go on," she said, gritting her teeth determinedly and staring straight into Will's eyes, her pupils turned to the deepest, darkest amber through his night-vision device.

"I have to… he'd do the same for me…" she said as she adjusted the magnification on her scope. Digging her elbows into the dirt and bracing her arms to steady the rifle, she inhaled and exhaled several times in quick succession, then held in the final breath.

Will watched her dumbly. "Elliott?" he asked, his voice quavering. "You're not—"

"Can't get a shot… the clouds… can't see…" she said, letting out a breath.

The seconds passed, as long as years.

"Oh, Drake," she said, her words lost to the wind.

Then she inhaled again and took aim.

She fired.

The crack of the rifle made Will jump out of his skin. The report echoed around, rolling across the plain and back to him, time and time again, until there was just the whine of the Levant again in his ears.

Will peered into the inky distance, then at her.

She was shivering badly.

"I don't know if I did it… the bloody, bloody clouds… I…"

She worked the bolt of the rifle to chamber a new round, then suddenly pushed the weapon at Will.

"You look."

He drew back.

"Take it," she ordered him.

He reluctantly held the rifle just as he'd seen Elliott do and, flipping the lens up over his eye, peered through the scope. It felt cold — and wet — but he couldn't think about that now. He was getting his bearings on the group down in the base of the crater. The scope was set on a high magnification, and in his inexperienced hands he panned it erratically as he tried to locate them.

There! He caught a glimpse of a Limiter!

He panned back. Another Limiter! No, it was the same one, standing by himself. Will held the rifle steady on him, they Styx's terrifying face in pin-sharp focus. Will's stomach fell through the floor: The Limiter was looking up, looking up at the ridge where he and Elliott were lying. The Will saw other figures, other Styx, running behind him. He moved the scope.

Where's Drake?

The wizened form of Tom Cox came into focus. He was holding a blade — it shone in the light. Then Will saw the stake. On it was a body. He thought he recognized the jacket. Drake!

Will couldn't bear to look too closely, and he was assisted in this by the distance and the remaining clouds from the Black Wind. Just as he was getting a grip, he noticed that there was a darkness sprayed around Drake, all over the ground. Through the scope it was not red, but darker, and it reflected the light, like molten bronze. Will broke out in a cold sweat.

This is not real. I am not here.

"Did I get him?" Elliott pressed Will.

Will angled the rifle up so he could see only Drake's head.

"I can't tell…"

Will couldn't see Drake's face; his head was bent forward.

Distant reports of shots echoed toward Will and Elliott. The Limiters were returning fire.

"Will, concentrate — they're homing in on us," Elliott hissed at him. "I need to know if I did it."

Will tried to hold the scope steady on Drake's head. Clouds swirled in his field of view.

"Can't see…"

"You must!" Elliott snapped, her voice distorted with desperation.

Then Drake's head moved.

"Oh God!" Will exhaled with horror. "Looks like he's still alive." Try not to think.

"Put another round in him… quickly," Elliott begged.

"No way!" Will spat.

"Do it! Put him out of his misery."

Will shook his head. I am not here. This is not me. This is not happening.

"No way," he gasped again, feeling as though he was going to cry. "I can't do that!"

"Just do it. We don't have time. They'll be coming."

Will raised the rifle and took in a shuddering breath.

"Don't jerk the trigger… squeeze it off… smoothly…" Elliott said.

He shifted the crosshairs from Drake's head, resting them squarely on the man's chest. Will told himself he would be less likely to miss him there. But this was all crazy, haywire. Will didn't have it in him to actually kill anyone.

"I can't do this."

"You must," Elliott pleaded. "He'd do it for us. You have to…"

Will tried to silence his mind. This is not real. I am watching a movie. These are not my actions.

"Help him," she said. "Now!"

Will's whole body tensed, rebelling at what it knew he must do. The intersection of the crosshairs moved unsteadily, but it was roughly on the right place, aiming at the heart of the man he admired so much, now horribly mutilated. Do it, do it, do it! Increasing the pressure on the trigger, he shut his eyes. The rifle went off. He cried out as it bucked in his hands, the telescopic sight ramming his brow as it recoiled. He'd never shot a rifle before. Breathing rapidly, he lowered the weapon.

The sharp tang of cordite from the shot filled Will's nostrils. The smell, so reminiscent of fireworks, would mean something completely different to him from that moment on. More than that, it was as if Will was now marked, as if things would never again be the same. I will carry this with me until the day I die. I might have killed a man!

Elliott leaned against Will, passing her arms through his, their faces touching as she worked the bolt of the rifle. The intimacy meant nothing in that instant. The spent cartridge spun into the darkness as she rammed a new round into the chamber. Will tried to pass the weapon to her, but she pushed back, wrenching up the muzzle of the rifle. "No! Make sure!" she ordered in a hissed shout.

Will reluctantly put his eye to the scope again, trying to locate the stake and Drake's body. He couldn't. The view zoomed this way and that, a blur. Then he found it, but his supporting arm slipped. He tried again. And saw…

Rebecca.

She was standing between two tall Limiters, somewhere to the left of Drake.

She was looking in his direction. Straight at him.

He felt like he was falling.

"Did you get him?" Elliott asked, her voice a croak.

But Will was locked on Rebecca. Her hair was drawn back tightly, and she was dressed in one of the Limiters' long coats with the blocklike patches of camouflage.

It was her.

He saw her face.

She was smiling.

She waved.

More gunshots rang out, spits of lead reaming through what was left of the misty clouds. As the Limiters zeroed in, shots landed nearer to him and Elliott, one so close that shards of rock pelted them.

"Did you?"

"I think so," he said to Elliott.

"Make sure," she pleaded.

He scanned quickly over Drake's body and the stake, but Rebecca was again in his sight, large as life. She seemed to have taken off her coat in the short time since he had first spotted her, and had moved way over to the other side of the stake. Suddenly he thought how easy it would be to shoot her. But even though he might have just killed Drake, he knew he didn't have the stomach to kill Rebecca — despite the intense hatred he felt for her.

"Well?" Elliott said, cutting through his thoughts.

"Yes, I think so," he lied as he pushed the rifle back at her. He had no idea whether he'd hit Drake, and didn't want to know.

He just didn't want to know.

And Rebecca. She had been there while the ghastly torture had been going on.

His little sister!

Her smiling face, her smug, self-satisfied face — the same face that had confronted him time and time again when he was late for dinner or tracked mud onto the carpet or left the light on in the bathroom… a disapproving and superior smile that spoke of authority and even domination…

He had to escape, to get away.

He got up, yanking Elliott with him by the rope. They ran wildly down the slope, as fast as they could, Will almost pulling Elliott off her feet.

As they reached the bottom of the incline, there was a flash of light. Amplified by the lens of Drake's device, it filled his eye with a searing, painful brilliance. He yelped. But no, it wasn't the Limiters. It was the electrical storm that always followed a Black Wind. The exposed hairs on his head and forearms bristled with the static.

Massive sparkling balls of electrical discharge bobbed and rolled around them. There came another blinding flash and a deafening whiplash crack. A huge serpentine tongue of blue lightning speared horizontally over the ground, then split in two, each prong multiplying into many more until the tiny forks disappeared into nothing. The air was thick with the reek of ozone, just as if it was a true Topsoil thunderstorm.

"Turn that off!" he heard Elliott call, but he was already fumbling for the brass switch on the box in his pocket. He knew that intense light might damage the night-vision device. There were so many crackling spheres of angry light spinning out from the remaining dust clouds, rolling around the plain in all directions, that the whole area was lit up like an exploding fireworks factory.

Will heard shots and caught the vicious barking of dogs.

"Stalkers!" he yelled at Elliott.

She snatched a leathery wallet from inside her jacket and ripped off the top. She scattered its contents over the ground as they went, then threw down the empty wallet and kept moving. A small electrical ball of spluttering sparks zipped not inches from her, like some delinquent Tinkerbell, but she didn't slow, almost passing through its circumference.

They came to the edge of the Great Plain.

Then they were in one of the lava tubes, and in darkness again, the glow of the electrical storm flickering faintly behind them. Turning his headset back on, Will saw that Elliott was again taking another of the leathery packets from inside her jacket as she ran.

"What're you doing? What is that stuff?" Will panted.

"Parchers."

"Huh?"

"Stops the stalkers dead in their tracks. Burns them something awful," she told him, pointing to her nose with a malicious grin.

He looked back and caught the sublime glow of pure yellow as some of the powder fell in a pool of water. He knew he'd seen it before… it was giving off the same glow as the bacteria that he, Chester, and Cal had come across. Genius. If a dog sniffed it up, it would scorch its nasal membranes. He laughed. It would render them useless as trackers.

They ran and ran. He fell, sprawling, knocking his chin against the rough ground. Elliott helped him up. As he leaned against the wall, trying to get back his breath, she rigged a charge across the tunnel.

She shouted him on again.

36

Will blasted into the clearing and skidded to a halt. With his hands on his knees, he bent over, gulping hard to get air into his lungs.

Chester and Cal both leaped to their feet in surprise. Will was an alarming sight: his face filthy from the dust storm and streaked with sweat, Drake's lens over one of his eyes, and the skin around the other smeared with fresh blood from the cut on his brow when he'd fallen.

"Wh-what's happened?" Chester stuttered.

"That's not Drake's, is it?" Cal asked at the same time, pointing to the headset.

"I… had… to… " Will got out between breaths.

Still gasping and swallowing air, he shook his head.

"I… " he tried again.

"We killed Drake," Elliott said flatly, stepping out from behind Will and into the weak light cast by Cal's lantern. "At least we think we did. Will finished him off." The air was thick with insects, swarms of them, the size of malnourished mosquitoes, and she waved her hand in front of her face to shoo them away. Then she glanced down around her feet and plucked a frond from a fern, which she crushed in her hand. She swiped her palm across her forehead and cheeks. The effect was miraculous, the insects immediately avoiding her as if she were protected by an invisible force field.

"Will did what? " Cal asked as Chester, already itching with bug bites, took a frond from the same fern and repeated Elliott's quick ritual. Will seemed to be oblivious to the insects crawling all over his face; his uncovered eye was glazed as it stared into the distance.

"We had to. They were torturing him. That scum bucket Tom Cox was there, too, helping them," Elliott said huskily, then spat on the ground.

"No," Chester said, aghast.

"And Rebecca," Will added, still gazing at nothing in particular. Elliott's head jerked toward him, and he continued, still puffing. "She was with the Limiters." He paused to gulp down more air. "Somehow she knew I was there. I swear she was looking straight at me… She smiled at me. She waved!"

"Now you tell me!" Elliott growled. "With Cox switching sides it was risky enough us going to the base for the equipment. But now there's no way I'm going to take that chance. Not with that Styx out for your blood."

Will bowed his head, still struggling to get his breath back. "Perhaps it would be better if I… if I gave myself up. It might put an end to all this. It might stop her."

For an agonizing few seconds all eyes were on Will, and he looked from one face to another, hoping none of them would agree with his suggestion. Then Elliott spoke up.

"No, I don't think it'd make any difference," she said with the bleakest of expressions and, picking a fragment of fern from her upper lip, spat again. "I don't think that would help any of us. This Rebecca sounds like the type who makes a clean sweep of things."

"Oh, she is that," Will agreed despondently. "She certainly likes everything to be tidy."

37

"Whoa, boy!"

Sarah catered around a turn in the lava tube, her feet sending out a slew of gravel as Bartleby tore forward, almost wrenching her over.

"Easy, easy!" she shouted, digging in her heels and using all her strength to try to rein him back. Within a few feet she managed to bring him to a stop. Still breathing heavily from the effort, she grabbed his collar had held him tight. She was grateful for the brief rest; the muscles in her arms were burning, and she sincerely doubted she'd be able to keep the cat in check for much longer if he didn't let up a little.

As he stiffly twisted his head around, she could see a large vein throbbing under the flaking gray skin of his wide temple, and the flickering wildness in his eyes. His nostrils flared wide: The scent was strong now, and he was well on the trail.

She rewrapped the thick leather leash around her chafed hand. Readying herself with a couple of deep breaths, she then released Bartleby's collar. He surged forward, the leash giving a resounding thwack as it snapped taut again.

"Steady, Bartleby!" she gasped. This command struck a chord of sorts in the overexcited animal's brain, and he eased up slightly.

As she continued to talk soothingly to the car, pleading with him to keep calm, she felt the disapproval radiating from the four shadows lurking a little way off. The quartet of Limiters, unlike her and the crazed cat, moved as silently as ghosts. They usually blended in so well with the terrain that they were invisible but, at the moment, they were allowing themselves to be seen, as if they wanted her to feel intimidated. If that was the intention, it was certainly having the desired effect.

She felt profoundly uneasy.

Rebecca had promised her a free hand to track down Will. So why the escort? And why had Rebecca gone to the trouble of involving her at all, when she had absolutely no experience in this environment and when highly skilled soldiers were being deployed at the same time? It didn't add up.

With this thought burning in the back of her mind, Bartleby lurched forward again, dragging her after him whether she wanted to go or not.

Elliott took them out of the clearing and through some dense scrub, Will stumbling and thrashing behind. They found themselves on a strip of shoreline again. She took them along the water's edge and a short distance into what, in the pitch-black, looked like the beginning of an inlet.

Will was in a bad way. The effects of the root had worn off and his fatigue had caught up. He walked stiff-legged, like some sort of Frankenstein's monster, the headset only adding to this impression. Elliott watched him closely.

"He's fried: he needs some shut-eye," she said to Chester and Cal, as if Will wasn't present — and indeed he didn't react to her comment, swaying where he stood. "He's no use to anyone right now."

Chester and Cal exchanged looks.

"No use?" Chester echoed.

"Yes, and that's not good enough." She turned to Cal, running her eye over him. "How about you? How's the leg, kid?"

Chester realized that she was evaluating them and it put him on edge. He didn't delude himself that they all needed to be up to the challenge of escaping from the Styx. But her question was more than a little ominous.

"His leg's much better. He's been resting it," he put in quickly, throwing a sharp look at Cal, who was a little surprised at Chester's intervention.

"Can't he speak for himself?" Elliott glowered.

"Oh, yes, sorry," Chester mumbled apologetically.

"So how is it?"

"Like Chester said… much better," Cal replied, flexing his leg to try to put Elliott's mind at rest. In truth it was incredibly stiff, and each time he put any weight on it he didn't know if it was going to support him or not.

Elliott studied Cal's face for a second, then switched her attention to Chester, who wondered whether he would come up to scratch. But before she could issue any judgments, Will mumbled the word tired — just once — sat down heavily, and flopped onto his back. Snoring loudly, he immediately fell into the deepest of slumbers.

"He's out. He'll be right as rain in a couple of hours," Elliott said, then addressed Cal. "You stay with your brother." She handed him the loose rifle scope. "And keep an eye on the foreshore… particularly the causeway." She pointed at the sea and the impenetrable blackness. "I need to know if you see anything, anything at all, however small. It's really important you stay alert… got that?"

"Why, where are you going?" Cal asked, trying to keep the anxiety from his voice. He'd been worried before that he would be abandoned, and now that Elliott had lost Drake, the fear returned in spades. Was she planning to slope off with Chester and leave him and Will high and dry?

"Not far… just need to do some foraging," she told him. "Look after this, too," she said, shrugging off her rucksack and dropping it beside Will's still form. That single action allayed Cal's fears — Elliott wasn't going to get very far without her kit. He watched as she pulled out a couple of sacks from the side pocket and then, accompanied by Chester, slipped into the darkness.

"How are you doing?" Chester asked Elliott as he walked beside her. He was using the lantern on its lowest setting, shielding it with his hand so there was the thinnest strip of light to illuminate the way. As ever, Elliott didn't require any light, seeming to possess a preternatural awareness of her surroundings. They were moving deeper into the inlet, keeping the dense undergrowth to their left and the sea to their right.

Elliott didn't reply to his question, maintaining a brooding silence. Knowing how distraught she must be at Drake's death, Chester felt compelled to say something, but found it incredibly difficult to do so. Although he'd spent a considerable amount of time with her on their patrols together, it wasn't as though they spoke much on these outings. He realized he hadn't actually gotten to know her any better since that day when she and Drake had grabbed him and Will. She kept to herself, as elusive as a faint breeze in the dead of night that you could feel but you couldn't touch.

He tried again.

"Elliott, are you… are you really all right?"

"Don't you worry 'bout me," came the curt response.

"I just want you to know we're all very sorry about Drake… We owe him for… for everything." Chester paused for a few moments. "Was it awful, back there, when Will had to… uh… to…?"

Without any warning she came to a stop and shoved him hard in the chest, with such unbridled aggression that Chester was completely taken aback. "Don't try to mollycoddle me! I don't need anyone's sympathy!"

"I wasn't—"

"Just drop it, will you?"

"Look, I'm worried about you," he said indignantly. "We're all worried about you."

As she stood there, she seemed to mellow a little, and there was a huskiness to her voice when she finally spoke. "I just can't accept that he's dead." She let out a sob. "He often talked of the day that would come for one or both of us, and that it was just another turn of the wheel. He said you have to be prepared for it but not let it drag you down. He said not to look back, and to make the most of the moment you're in…" She repositioned her rifle over her shoulder, fidgeting with the strap. "I'm trying to do that, but it's hard."

As Chester looked at her, her face hazy in the dim light cast by his lantern, the tough exterior seemed to drop away, revealing a very frightened, very lost teenage girl. Perhaps, for the first time, he was seeing the real Elliott.

"We're in this together," he said warmly, his heart going out to her.

"Thanks," she replied in a subdued voice, avoiding his eyes. "We should get going."

They came eventually to a small strip of shoreline that appeared as if a shadow was cast across it. As Chester discovered when he examined it more closely, this had nothing to do with the light: A darker and heavier sediment had collected in these shallow waters.

"Should be rich pickings here," Elliott announced, and handed the sacks to Chester. She walked into the water and, stooping over, passed her hands through it.

Stepping sideways and still searching, she moved along the margin of the water, then suddenly straightened up with an exultant yell. A large animal flapped in her hands. A foot and a half from head to tail, its silvery body resembled a flattened cone with undulating fins down either side, which rippled crazily as if it was trying to swim away through the air. On the top of its head it had a pair of huge, black, compound eyes, and on the underside were two grasping appendages with spines extending from them; these were trying to curl around to reach Elliott's hands as she fought to keep her grip on the beast. She spun around and splashed back to the beach, Chester falling over in an effort to get out of her way.

"Yipes!" he cried. "What's that?"

Elliott swung down the animal, smashing it against a rock. Chester didn't know if she'd killed it or merely stunned it, but it seemed to still be moving, only very slowly now.

She rolled it onto its back, and Chester saw the two appendages still flexing and its circular mouth, lined around its circumference with tens of glistening white needles.

"They're called night crabs. Really tasty."

Chester swallowed, so disgusted he thought he was going to be sick. "I swear it's just a ginormous silverfish," he groaned. He was still lying where he'd fallen. Elliott glanced at the sacks where he'd dropped them, marched over, and pushed the animal inside one.

"That's the main course," she said. "Now let's—"

"Don't tell me you're going to catch another of those things," Chester pleaded, his voice high, bordering on hysterical.

"No, that's not likely," she replied. "Night crabs are pretty scarce. And only the younger ones come this far in to feed. We lucked out."

"Yeah, score," Chester said, only now standing up and brushing himself down.

Elliott was already back in the water, this time shoving her arms deep into the mud. "And these are what the crab was looking for," she informed Chester. Thick mud covered her arms up to the elbows as she pulled them out. She held her hand out to Chester so he could see the two curved shells in her palm.

"What a treat: mollusks! I'll see if there are any more."

Chester gave an involuntary shudder at the idea that she actually expected him to eat any of these creatures.

"Go on, knock yourself out," he said.

As they made their way back along the beach, Chester had an intimation that things weren't as they should be. A complete lack of movement; no wave or call of acknowledgment from Cal. Elliott, livid, made straight for the boy. Although he was still in a sitting position, his head hung awkwardly forward as he dozed next to his brother, who was similarly dead to the world.

"Doesn't anyone listen to me around here?" she said to Chester. She was apoplectic — he could hear the breath hissing between her teeth. "Didn't I make it clear he needed to keep on his toes?"

"Yes, you did," Chester answered loudly.

"Shush!" she ordered him as she moved a small distance down the beach, where she raised her rifle to scour the horizon. Chester waited by the two slumbering boys until she returned.

"Drake wouldn't have let this go," she said tensely, pacing up and down behind Cal like a lioness about to strike. Cal remained blissfully unaware of her silent fury, his head swaying gently as he slept on.

"What do you mean?" Chester asked, trying to read the look in her eyes.

"He would've dumped him here. Upped camp and let him fend for himself," she said.

"That's way harsh — how long do you think Cal would last on his own?" Chester objected. "It would be like passing a death sentence on him!"

"Too bad."

"You can't do that to him," Chester spluttered. "You have to cut him some slack. The poor kid's absolutely knackered. We all are."

But she was deadly serious.

"Don't you get it? By falling asleep, he might have dragged us all down with him," she said as she threw a glance over the water. "We don't know what they're going to throw at us next… If it's Limiters, I probably won't even see them coming. But it could be civilians — they're often sent in as the vanguard because they're a dime a dozen — pure cannon fodder, collateral. That's how the Styx operate sometimes… the soldiers follow in later on to mop up."

"Yes, but—" Chester said.

"No, you listen. You make one mistake and you'll end up facedown in that," she said frostily, thumbing at the sea. She deliberated for a moment, then slung her rifle over her shoulder, stepped behind Cal, and slapped him hard on the back of the head.

"ARGHHHHH!" he cried, smacked wide awake. He leaped up, his arms waving wildly. Then he realized that it had been Elliott and glared at her.

"S'pose this is your idea of a joke?" he said, huffing resentfully. "Well, I don't think it's funny…"

At the sight of her stony face, his protestations shriveled on his lips.

"You do not fall asleep on watch!" she barked menacingly.

"No," he said, smoothing down his shirt and looking thoroughly abashed.

"Thought I heard voices," Will said drowsily, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles as he sat up. "What's going on?"

"Nothing, just getting dinner ready," Elliott told him. Unseen by Will, she gave Cal a last lingering stare as she swiped her hand across her throat in a cutting motion. He nodded glumly.

Elliott dug a hollow in the sand, then dispatched Chester and Cal to collect some brush, which she placed around its edge. Once everything was to her satisfaction, she lit a small fire deep in the pit. As it grew, she further adjusted the brush as a precaution against any stray light leaking out.

While she was busy tending the flames, Will staggered over to a series of rock pools by the sea's edge. He swung up the lens from over his eye and doused his face with water. Then he seemed to take forever to clean his hands, alternately scrubbing them with wet sand and rinsing them, repeating the process over and over again in a slow, methodical way.

"Do you think I should check on him? He's acting a bit strange," Chester asked Elliott as he watched his friend's compulsive behavior. "What's wrong with his hands?"

"Aftereffects," she said simply, leaving Chester and Cal none the wiser.

Both boys were actually relieved that the opportunity to talk to Will hadn't presented itself. The act of killing had set him apart, putting him in a place they couldn't begin to understand.

So how should they treat him? The question was at the forefront of both their minds. They certainly couldn't pat him on the back and congratulate him. Should they try to commiserate with him over Drake's death, to console him, when he'd been the cause? The reality was that they were more than a little in awe of Will. How did he feel about what he'd done? Not only did he have blood on his hands from shooting and killing another human being, it was Drake… one of their own… their guardian and friend… his friend.

As Chester gave Elliott a considered look, he wondered again how she was dealing with it. After her brief moment of vulnerability on the beach, she seemed to have reverted to her old self and to be throwing herself wholeheartedly into looking after them. Chester's train of thought was broken as Elliott hoisted the night crab out of the sack and dropped it onto the sand. It was just as lively as when she'd caught it, and she had to place her foot on it to stop it from escaping.

Chester saw that Will was coming toward them. His movements were still sluggish, as if he wasn't yet fully awake. Although dripping with water, he hadn't washed his face very successfully: Large sooty patches persisted under his eyes and across his forehead and neck, and dark smudges dappled his white hair. Under different circumstances, Chester might have joked that Will bore a striking resemblance to a panda.

Will came to a halt a short distance away, refusing to make eye contact with any of them. Instead he bowed his head to look at his feet and scratched at the palm of his hand with an index finger, as if trying to remove something from it with his nail.

"What did I do?" he said. It was difficult to understand him; his speech was slurred as if his mouth was numb, and still he didn't cease picking at his hand.

"Stop that!" Elliott said sharply.

Will quit scratching and let his arms hang limply at his sides, his shoulders sagging. As Chester watched, a droplet detached itself from Will's face and sparkled momentarily as it caught the light. But Chester couldn't tell if it was a tear or merely seawater.

"Look at me," Elliott ordered Will.

Will didn't move.

"I said look at me!"

Will raised his head and regarded Elliott groggily.

"That's better. Now let's get something straight… we did what we had to," she told him firmly, then softened her voice. "I'm not thinking about it… You do the same."

"I… " he stammered, shaking his head slowly.

"No, don't… Listen to me. You made the second shot because I couldn't. I failed Drake, but you didn't. You did the right thing… for him."

"OK," he eventually replied, the word almost lost in a sigh. "Did you mention something about dinner?" he asked after a long pause. The look of despair was still deep in his black-ringed eyes.

"How do you feel?" she asked, remembering the night crab she was standing on — and not a moment too soon, as it rippled its fins in the sand to dig itself out, frantically trying to get back to the water.

"Rough," he said. "My head's stopped buzzing, but my stomach feels like it's been on a roller coaster."

"You need to get some hot food in you," she said, lifting her foot from the night crab as she unleashed her knife. The appendages under its head were flexing like animated TV antennae.

For a split second of silence, Will took in the creature, then cried out:

"Anomalocaris canadensis!"

To everyone's surprise, his demeanor went through a rapid transformation. He became wildly excited, jumping up and down and waving his arms.

Elliott flipped over the night crab and positioned her knife in the join between segments on its flat belly.

"Hey!" Will screeched. "No!" He stuck out a hand to stop Elliott from killing it, but she was too quick. She pushed in the knife and the appendages on its head immediately went limp, ceasing their endless waving.

"No!" he shouted again. "How could you do that? It's an Anomalocaris! " He took a step toward her, his hand outstretched.

"Keep away from me," she warned him, holding up her knife, "or I'll skewer you."

"But… it's a fossil… I mean… it's extinct… I mean I've seen a fossil of it… It's EXTINCT!" he yelled, becoming even more agitated as none of the others seemed to understand what he was trying to tell them.

"Really? Doesn't look too extinct to me," Elliott said, hefting the dead animal up before him.

"Don't you realize how important this is? You can't kill them! Leave the rest alone!" He'd noticed the second sack and wasn't shouting anymore, just yammering, as if he knew he wasn't going to get anywhere with Elliott.

"Will, chill, OK? The other sack's only got shells in it. And anyway, Elliott says there's a shed load of these crabs out there," Chester tried to tell him, motioning out to sea.

"But… but…!"

Elliott's expression of pure exasperation was enough to stop him from making any more of a fuss. He bit his lip, looking on in horror at the lifeless Anomalocaris.

"It was the biggest predator that swam the seas… the T. Rex of the Cambrian period," Will mumbled forlornly. "It's been extinct for nearly five hundred and fifty million years."

When Elliott produced the mollusks, as she called them, from the second sack, Will was equally flabbergasted.

"Devil's toenails!" he gasped. "Gryphaea arcuata. I've got a box of them at home. I found them with my dad at Lyme Regis… but just fossils!"

So, with the impaled Anomalocaris suspended above the flames, Elliott, Cal, and Chester sat around the prehistoric barbecue, while Will sketched a living devil's toenail that he had begged from Elliott. Its brothers and sisters (or maybe both — Will couldn't quite recall if they were supposed to have been hermaphrodites) hadn't been so fortunate: Tucked into the hot embers at the edge of the fire, they sizzled softly.

Will was talking to himself and grinning inanely, with the sort of absolute absorption a young child might show when examining a creepy-crawly it has caught in the garden. "Yes, really thick shell… look at the growth rings… and there's the lid," Will said, tapping the end of his pencil on a flattened circle at the widest end of the shell. He looked up to find all eyes upon him. "This is just so cool! Do you know this was the predecessor to the oyster?"

"Drake mentioned something about that. He liked his raw," Elliott said matter-of-factly as she repositioned the Anomalocaris in the flames.

"None of you has the faintest idea how important the discovery of these animals is," Will said, becoming frustrated all over again by their total lack of interest. "How can you even think about eating them?"

"If you don't want yours, Will, I'll take it," Cal piped up. He turned to Chester. "What is an oyster, anyway?"

As the food cooked, Elliott brought up the bizarre corridor of sealed cells she had seen with Cal in the Bunker.

"We knew that there was some sort of quarantine area," she mused, "but not where it was or what it was for."

"Drake did say that, but how did you first hear about it?" Will inquired.

"From a contact," Elliott answered, hastily looking down. Will could have sworn he saw a flicker of unease in her eyes, but he told himself it must have been due to her discovery of the sickening cells.

"So all the people were dead," Chester stated.

"All except for the one man," Elliott said. "He was a renegade."

"The others were Colonists," Cal added. "You could tell from their clothes."

"But why would the Styx go to all the trouble of bringing Colonists down here just to kill them?" Chester asked.

"I don't know," Elliott shrugged. "They've always used the Deeps as testing grounds — that's nothing new — but all the signs now are that something big is about to break. Drake's idea was that the three of you might help us throw a monkey wrench into the works and mess up whatever the Blackheads are doing. Especially him over there." She made a face as she glanced at Will, who was still staring in horror at the cooking Anomalocaris. "Though I'm not too sure if Drake really thought that one through."

Elliott removed the Anomalocaris from the flames and put it on the ground. Then she peeled back one of the segments on its underbelly with the tip of her knife and began to carve up its carcass. "It's ready," she announced.

"Oh, great," Will said hollowly.

Nonetheless, when the food had been divided up, Will capitulated. Putting aside his journal, he began to eat his share, reluctantly at first, but then devouring it hungrily. He even agreed with Chester that the Anomalocaris was pretty similar to lobster. The devil's toenails were a different matter altogether, and the boys grimaced as they valiantly attempted to chew them.

"Hmmm. Interesting," Will commented as he finished his mouthful, pondering the thought that he was one of very few people alive who'd feasted on extinct animals. The image of him eating a dodo burger suddenly popped into his head, and he smiled uncomfortably.

"Yeah, really cool barbecue," Chester laughed, stretching out his legs. "It's sort of like being back home again."

Will nodded in response.

The invigorating gusts of wind, the crackles of the dying fire mingling with the crash of waves, and the taste of seafood in their mouths — all this made Chester and Will experience the deepest pangs of homesickness. These elements invoked other, carefree times back on the surface — it could have been a vacation outing or a beach party late one summer's evening (and although Will's family rarely went on such outings — not together, anyway — he was still moved by the notion).

But the more Will and Chester tried to pretend to themselves it was like home, the more they realized that it was no such thing, and that they were in a strange and dangerous place in which it was touch and go whether they made it through the next day. Trying to suppress these feelings, they made small talk, but the conversation soon petered out, and each fell to his own thoughts, eating the meal in silence.

Elliott had taken her food with her to the water's edge, and periodically raised her rifle to scour the distant beaches.

"Uh-oh," Cal said, and Will and Chester turned to look as she rose to her feet, letting her food slide from her lap. She held very still, her rifle fixed on something.

"Time to go!" she called over to them, her eye still glued to the scope.

"Did you see something?" Will asked.

"Yes, I caught a flash… I thought we'd have more time before they reached the beaches… It's probably an advance patrol."

Chester swallowed his mouthful in a noisy gulp.

38

"You crazy, crazy animal!" Sarah cried as she skied through the succulent plants, Bartleby pulling as he'd never pulled before. No doubt about it, he was hot on the scent trail of the boys — that was the good news. The bad news was that he was becoming more and more wild and unmanageable, and once or twice Sarah had thought that he was actually going to turn on and attack her.

"Slow down!" she shouted.

With a sharp snap, the leash went slack, and she lost her balance and fell flat on her back. The lantern slipped from her hand, spinning away and rebounding off the plants in its path, clicking up to its highest setting as it did so. Blinding rays of light strafed the tall trees behind her, intermittent flashes that would be visible for miles around. If she'd wanted to announce her presence, she couldn't have done a better job.

She was winded and couldn't move for a few long seconds. Then she crawled rapidly to where the lantern had come to rest and threw herself over it to hide its light. She lay on it, panting and cursing blindly. Talk about rank amateurism!

Still covering the lantern with her body, she switched it down again before turning her attention to the remains of the leather leash wound around her hand. The end where it had snapped was ragged and torn, and, as she inspected it more closely, she saw teeth marks — Bartleby had been having a quick chew at it when she hadn't been looking. The crafty so-and-so! If she hadn't been so infuriated with herself, she might even have admired his guile.

The last glimpse she'd had of him was of his hindquarters, his back legs spinning in a blur and his large paws throwing up foliage as he tore off into the darkness.

"That infernal cat!" she said to herself, calling him every name under the sun. He'd cover quite some distance at the speed he was going, and she'd only be kidding herself if she thought there was some way to get him back. She'd lost her only means of finding Will and Cal. "Infernal cat," she said again, more despondently this time. Her only option now was to stick to the foreshore in the hope that it might still lead her to her quarry.

She picked herself up and broke into a trot, praying that Will hadn't peeled off in a totally different direction from the one Bartleby had been tracking. If he'd chosen a new route through the dense wall of foliage to her left, she didn't have a blind chance of finding him.

Half an hour later the sound of waves was supplanted by that of rushing water. She remembered what she'd seen on the map: some sort of crossing to an island. She cut down toward the sea, and the sound intensified.

She was almost at the causeway when, from out of nowhere, a shape materialized directly in her path. She nearly jumped out of her skin. It was a man. By now she was on the open beach, with no cover for some distance around her — she had no idea where he'd sprung from. In a fumbling panic, she swung the rifle from her shoulder, nearly dropping it altogether in the process.

She heard a harsh nasal laugh and stood absolutely still, the rifle held defensively across her body. He was too close for her to raise it up, anyway.

"Lost something?" he said in a contemptuous voice. He took a step toward her, and she lifted the lantern a little. In its dim glow she could make out the rugged face with its shadowed eye sockets.

A Limiter.

"Careless, very careless," he said, and thrust a rope roughly into her hand. It had a loop on it.

She shook with fear, not knowing what to expect next. It had been different on the train when Rebecca was with her. Out here, she didn't relish the idea of being alone with these monsters — particularly if she'd done something to displease them. In these dark wilds, they were a law unto themselves. The thought raced through her mind that handing her the rope might be a prelude to them hanging her. Was this some kind of game they were playing? Maybe they were going to execute her because they considered her incompetent, a liability. And she couldn't really blame them — she'd gotten everything wrong so far.

But her fear was unfounded. Bartleby edged into view from behind the Limiter's legs, the other end of the rope tied tightly around his neck and secured by a slipknot. The cat's whole deportment was hangdog, his tail tucked between his legs. Sarah didn't know if the Limiter had given him a beating, but the animal had clearly had the living daylights scared out of him somehow. Bartleby couldn't have been more different; as Sarah pulled him toward her, he came without the slightest resistance.

"We're taking it from here." Another voice came from immediately behind her. She wheeled around to face a row of shadowy forms: the other three soldiers of the Limiter patrol. Although she hadn't seen hide nor hair of them for at least half a day, of course they must have been tailing her the whole time. She understood now why they had such a reputation for stealth; they really did move like phantoms. And she'd thought she was good.

Sarah cleared her throat. "No," she began meekly as she glanced in the direction of the splashing water where the causeway began. She held her gaze there, not wanting to meet the dead, staring eyes of the Limiter before her. "I'll take the Hunter on the trail… over to the island… to…"

"No need for that," said the single Limiter who was blocking her way, in a horribly quiet voice that was far more unsettling than a barked order. She could sense his anger that she'd dared to disagree with him. He moved his head sharply to the side and back again — it was a gesture of violence, a foretaste of what might follow if she continued to oppose him. "You've done enough already," he sneered.

"But Rebecca said…" Sarah began, aware that this might be the last thing she ever said.

"Leave it to us," one of the Limiters growled from behind, and gripped her upper arm so painfully that she wanted to pull away. But she didn't, and she refused to turn to look at him. All four were standing very close to her now. One of them brushed her other arm, and she could feel their breath on the back of her neck. She was scared witless. A vivid picture swam into her mind, of them slicing her throat and leaving her where she fell.

"All right," she managed to whisper, and the hand crushing her arm eased its vise slightly. She lowered her head, already hating herself for not standing up to them. But better to go along with these savage men, she reasoned, than be executed on the spot. If they captured Will alive, she might yet get the chance to find out the truth about Tam's death. Rebecca had promised Sarah that she'd be able to execute Will herself — at least that meant she'd have some time to interrogate him.

"Go upcoast. The renegades might have some other means off the island," a Limiter hissed into her ear. The hand on her arm gave her a sudden push, and she stumbled a few paces. In the seconds she took to right herself, they had completely vanished. She was alone with just the breeze on her face and the most crushing sense of failure and shame. She'd come all the way only to be pulled off the chase. But she would have been a fool to resist Limiters. A dead fool.

She picked her way slowly along the foreshore, telling herself not to stop as she passed the causeway. But she did allow herself the briefest glance back. Although there was no sign of her Styx patrol, surely one of them was holding back to ensure that she obeyed their orders. She no alternative but to go where they'd said, which she knew was a total waste of time. Will was on the island — holed up in a dead end with no way out — and she'd been so very, very close.

"Move it!" she snapped at Bartleby. "This is all your fault!"

She tugged hard on the rope. He followed obediently, but pointed his head toward the causeway, whimpering. He knew as well as she did that they were going in the completely wrong direction.

39

In a cavernous area, the suggestion of a track. A narrow strip just discernible through the rock field. It could have been naturally formed… Dr. Burrows wasn't sure.

He looked more closely and… there!.. yes!.. he saw the broad flagstones, laid end to end. He used the tip of his boot to scuff away the gravel and expose the gaps between them, which occurred at regular intervals. No question, then, it definitely wasn't a natural feature… and as he progressed farther along, a small flight of steps came into view. He mounted them and stopped. Noting that the path continued into the distance, he began to scrutinize the area, and discovered there were squared-off stones standing proud of the ground on both sides.

"Yes! These have been fashioned!" he mumbled to himself. And then he saw they were arranged in lines. He leaned forward to examine them. No, not in lines, they were arranged into squares.

"Rectilinear structures!" Dr. Burrows exclaimed, his excitement growing. "They're ruins!" Unhooking his blue-handled geological hammer from his belt, he stepped from the track, peering wildly around at the ground by his feet as he went.

"Foundations?" He bent to feel the regular blocks, brushing off pebbles and using the tip of his hammer to heave aside chunks of loose rubble from around them. He nodded in response to his own question, a smile crinkling his dirt-stained face.

"No doubt about it, these are foundations." He straightened up and saw more rectangles, the shapes receding into the darkness. "Was this once a settlement? " But as he looked even farther afield, he began to appreciate the scale of what he'd stumbled upon. "No, it was bigger than that! More like a town! "

Replacing his geological hammer on his belt, he mopped his brow. The heat was stultifying in here, and the sound of trickling water came from close by. Long ribbons of steam laced the air, slowly drifting past each other like party streamers in slow motion. A pair of small bats flitted by, disrupting the ribbons with the rapid beat of their wings.

The huge dust mite clacked gently as it waited for him like a well-trained dog back on the path. It had followed him for the last mile as he'd made his way along. While Dr. Burrows enjoyed the companionship, he didn't delude himself as to the creature's motives. It was plainly after more of his food.

The breakthrough that he could read the ancient language of the people who had once inhabited these parts had ignited his passion for further knowledge about them. Now, if only he could find some artifacts that would enable him to formulate a picture of how they lived. He was nosing around in the foundations, searching for anything that might help him, when a call resonated through the still heat of the cavern. A strident, low screech that echoed from the walls.

A rushing sound, something like a whoomf, followed. It came from somewhere above him.

The dust mite was immediately as still as a statue.

"What the…?" Dr. Burrows looked up but was unable to spot the source of the sounds. It was only then that he realized he couldn't see any roof to the cavern. It was as though he was standing in the bottom of a massive crevasse. He'd been so preoccupied with the discovery of the ruins that he hadn't taken the time to inspect the surroundings.

He slowly moved his light orb so that it was poised above his head. In the gloom he could just make out the sheer stretches of the crevasse sides, gently undulating vertical folds of stone with the texture of a Cadbury's Flake, rising up to darkness. The color wasn't that dissimilar, either, only the rock was a lighter hue of brown. Deprived for so long of his beloved chocolate bar and the daily fixes that were such a part of his life back in Highfield, his mind began to wander and his mouth water. This craving reminded him how phenomenally hungry he was — the supplies the Coprolites had provided were hardly very appetizing or, indeed, very filling.

The rushing sound came again, dispelling any thoughts of food. This time it was closer and louder. He felt the huge volume of displaced air on his face — it was something big, all right. He whipped back his hand with the orb and, cupping it in his palm, huddled down low.

His stomach knotting with fear, he fought the impulse to run, remaining motionless among the rocks. He was in open ground, with nowhere close that would offer cover — a horribly exposed position. He glanced over at the dust mite. It was holding so still that it took him a while to locate it. He told himself that this had to be a defensive behavior — the creature was attempting to conceal itself. Therefore, he reasoned, whatever was circling over them was to be feared. If a monstrously large dust mite, the size of an adolescent elephant and protected by an armored coat, had cause for alarm, then he had to be a prime target. A nice, soft, fleshy human grub, ripe for the picking.

Whoomf!

A huge shadow swooped back and forth.

Closer and closer it came — circling like a hawk, describing increasingly tighter rotations.

He knew he couldn't stay where he was. At that instant, the giant mite moved again, scuttling rapidly off where the path continued. Dr. Burrows hesitated a moment and then bolted after it, stumbling over the foundations and the rough ground. He was barking his shins against the rocks and sliding and tripping on obstacles as he fled blindly, but he did not fall.

Whoomf!

It was almost on top of him. He stifled a cry, flinging his arms protectively around his head as he ran. What in the world was it? Some winged predator? Coming in for the kill like a bird of prey?

He couldn't believe how fast the dust mite was moving, propelling itself along on its six legs. He could hardly see it up ahead, and if it hadn't been for the vague track, he was sure he would have lost his way altogether. But where were the path and the dust mite heading?

Whoomf! Whoomf!

"Gah!" he screamed, and dropped to the ground. A draft of warm air from the beat of shadowy wings caught his face. It was close! Now on all fours, he frantically twisted his head around for a glimpse of his hunter. He was certain it was wheeling in a circle not far above him and would be swooping down any second now to make the kill.

Would this be it? Snatched from the ground by some subterranean flying beast?

His imagination running riot with thoughts of what the creature could be, he sped off again, crawling like a madman. He had to find a hiding place and darn quick.

Head down, he cannoned straight into something hard. He dropped onto his stomach, half stunned, and tried to see what he'd come up against. He was still on the path, so he guessed it was where the dust mite had gone. He'd reached the cavern wall — and before him was a carved entrance in the face of the rock with a clearly defined lintel perhaps fifty or so feet above.

He cried out with relief, daring to let himself think that he'd found a safe haven. He began to crawl again, keeping close to the ground, scraping his knees and calves and knocking his knuckles raw on rubble as he went. He didn't stop until he realized he hadn't heard the sound for several seconds. All was calm and still. Was he safe?

He sank down onto the ground and curled up in a ball, unable to suppress a severe fit of the shakes. To top it off, he got a serious case of the hiccups, each one making his body spasm as it came. After a few minutes he stretched out and, still hiccupping, rolled onto his side. He drew several deep and tremulous breaths as he slowly relaxed his rigid fingers from around the light orb in his hand.

He cleared his throat and mumbled. "Yes, yes, yes, hic! ", ashamed of his post-traumatic panic attack, then sat up to look around. He was in an enclosed area with two rows of large columns on either side of him, all carved from the same brownish stone of the cavern outside. His eyes opened in astonishment.

"What the hic? "

Elliott was leading the boys inland. In places the undergrowth was so thick she had to use her machete to cut a way through. Following her in single file, the boys helped each other by making sure that the rubbery branches of the tall succulent plants and the lower fronds of the trees didn't swing back into the face of the person behind. It was airless, and the boys were soon dripping with perspiration and missing the open spaces and light winds of the beach.

Despite this, Will's spirits were high. He was pleased that they seemed to be working together as a team again. He hoped that any differences he'd had with Chester were firmly in the past and his friendship with him would revert to how it had been before. And above all else, he was so grateful that Elliott had stepped straight into Drake's shoes as their new leader. He had little doubt she was capable of the role.

Will heard sounds along the way, rasping animal calls and hollow rattling noises. He eagerly tried to locate the source of these, peering all around and up above at the branches of the gigantic trees, but could make out nothing. He would have given anything to stop and conduct a proper search. He was in a primordial jungle, which could be filled with all sorts of fantastic creatures.

The path took them into a clearing, where Will stole glances at the lush vegetation, hoping to catch the merest glimpse of one of these animals. Then, as he peered through the flora, a pair emerged. Will did a double take — he wasn't sure if they were birds or reptiles, but they resembled small, freshly plucked bantam chickens, with stubby necks and mean little beaks. Like two old women complaining to each other, they communicated using both the rasping and rattling sounds Will had been hearing. They turned and scurried back into the brush, flapping stunted wings from which a few mangy patches of fur — or feathers — sprouted. So much for the exotic creatures he'd been dreaming of!

Elliott led them onto a track, and they continued along until Will heard Chester's voice up ahead.

"The sea," he said.

They gathered around Elliott, crouching down in the bushes. A strip of beach stretched before them and they could hear the sound of waves again.

Cal spoke up. "It looks exactly like our beach. You're not telling me we just came full circle?" he quizzed Elliott indignantly, shaking the sweat from his face.

"This is not the same beach," she informed him coldly.

"But where do we go now?" he asked, frowning as he craned his neck to peer along the foreshore.

She stuck a finger out to sea, out over the rolling waves.

"Well, we're on an island and the only…" Will began.

"…way on and off is the causeway," Elliott finished his sentence for him. "And I'll bet you that at this very moment the Blackheads are sniffing around the remains of our campfire."

An uneasy silence descended over the group until Chester spoke in a small voice.

"So, are we going to swim for it?"

40

He staggered to his feet, blinking with surprise. He was spellbound by the space around him, his insatiable thirst for knowledge dismissing all other concerns. In that instant, his hiccups ceased, and Dr. Burrows, Intrepid Explorer, was back on duty. His fear of the unidentified beast, and all thoughts of his hysterical rush to escape it, were brushed aside.

"Bingo!" he cried.

He'd stumbled upon some sort of edifice, carved into the bedrock of the cavern itself. If he'd been in search of evidence of the ancient race, he'd certainly found it now. He crept forward, his light revealing row upon row of stone seats, many shattered by fallen debris. He was making his way to the front, in the direction the seats were facing, when he happened to look up.

The ceiling high above him was smooth and generally intact, except for a few sections where it had crumbled in. As he shone his orb around, he caught a tantalizing glimpse of something that reflected the light.

"Extraordinary!" he exclaimed, holding his orb higher, its rays only just traveling the distance to a dully glinting circle that was at least fifty feet in diameter.

"Higher… have to get higher," he told himself, clambering onto the seat of the nearest of the stone benches, and then up onto the narrow back of the bench itself.

As he moved his light slowly around, teetering precariously, the design became clearer to him. The circle was dull gold or bronze in color and could have been applied by some kind of gilding or possibly even painted on. He spoke out loud as he scrutinized it.

"Let's see, you're a hollow circle with… with… what's that in the middle? Looks like…" He squinted and pushed the orb toward the ceiling as far as his arm would permit, until it was supported by just his fingertips.

In the very center of the circle, also cast in the metallic medium, was a solid disk. Jagged lines that resembled stylized, angular rays extended from its circumference.

"Aha! It's obvious what you're meant to represent… you're the sun! " Dr. Burrows pronounced, and then furrowed his brow. "So what have we got here — a subterranean race engaged in surface worship? A people harking back to a time when they were up above on the crust?"

Something more caught his eye. Simple renderings of humanoid figures were depicted walking around the inside of the larger circle — men, evenly spaced, as if treading in a whopping giant great hamster wheel.

"Hey, what are you chaps doing there? You and the sun are in the wrong places!" he observed, frowning even more deeply as he shifted his light toward the solid disk in the center again. "I don't know who made you, but you're all the wrong way around!"

Despite the topsy-turvy nature of the picture, it wasn't lost on Dr. Burrows that any representation of the earth as a sphere, dating back to the time of the Phoenicians, meant whoever had put it there was incredibly enlightened by what he'd seen.

"So much for symbolism!" he said, and sniffed dismissively as he resumed his way forward. He passed the front row of seats, and his light beam touched upon what lay before them. He caught his breath as he saw a raised dais, on which rested a solid block of stone. As he came closer to it, he estimated the block was some forty feet from side to side and about five in height.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, again speaking aloud into the somber gloom. He glanced back at the rows of seats, up a that the roof with the circles, and then contemplated the stone block once more. "You've got pews, a cockeyed mural on the ceiling, and you've also got an altar," he posited to himself. "Absolutely no debate… you're definitely some sort of place of worship… a church, or a temple, perhaps?"

He trod forward, his light revealing more of the altar as he went. Coming to a halt, he marveled at the craftsmanship: Beautiful and intricate geometric carvings worthy of any Byzantine sculptor decorated its sides.

As he lifted up the orb, an area of wall immediately behind the altar caught the light and shone enticingly.

"Oh my goodness… look at you!"

Breathing quickly, he leaned nearer. It was a triptych: three massive carved panels — bas reliefs. He know they were made of something other than the chocolate brown rock by the way they were reflecting his light and adding a warmth to it.

His feet found a step at the base of the altar, and then another. As though mesmerized, he climbed up to its top. From one side to the other, the three panels extended the full length of the altar, and each was approximately twice Dr. Burrows's height. His pulse was racing with anticipation, he approached the central one and, gently brushing away the dust and cobwebs, began to examine it.

"So very, very exquisite… polished rock crystal," he proclaimed as he ran his fingers over its surface. "You are quite beautiful, aren't you… but what are you her for?" he asked the triptych, peering closely at its surface. "By Jove, I think you might be gold in there!" he wheezed with disbelief as he saw the shining brilliance behind the transparent layer. "Three huge golden panels, faced with carved rock crystal. What a fantastic artifact! I must make a record of this."

Although his mouth was watering at the prospect for what was on the panels, he resolved to get himself properly organized first, and set about gathering together enough kindling for a fire. It was awkward using his orb as the sole source of light — and besides, a good-sized fire would enable him to appreciate the panels in their full glory. In a matter of minutes, he'd collected enough dry material to start a small blaze on top of the altar, and the flames took without any hesitation.

As the fire crackled away behind him, he began to sweep the dust from the faces of the three panels using his forearm. For the uppermost sections, he dug out his tattered blue overalls and flicked them upward, sometimes jumping in an attempt to hit the tops.

His efforts raised a cloud of dust and the exertion soon became too much for him in his weakened state. He stopped, breathing heavily, to inspect his progress. With some relief, he realized that he didn't need to clear the dust off completely; when combined with the illumination from the fire, a residual coating of it actually made the panels' carved images easier to see.

"Right, let's have a good old look at the lot of you," he announced and, with his trusty stub of a pencil poised over a fresh page in his journal, he whistled through his teeth in a random, impatient way. "So what are you going to tell me, my pretty?" he said almost flirtatiously to the panel on the far left as he stepped before it.

Amply illuminated by the guttering flames, it depicted a man wearing a headdress that vaguely resembled a squat miter. The figure had a strong jaw and a heavy brow; the long staff he brandished in his clenched fist suggested he was a person of immense importance.

The figure occupied most of the panel, and Dr. Burrows could see that the man was at the head of a long and meandering procession of people. The procession want on for a considerable distance, trailing away to the horizon and over a large but featureless plain.

"Egyptian influence?" Dr. Burrows muttered, spotting the similarities to objects from that period. He took a step back from the panel. "So what's the message here? This fellow is, undoubtedly, a big cheese… a leader, a Moses figure, perhaps taking his people on a journey to this place, or perhaps just the opposite, leading them away in some kind of exodus. But why… what was so very important that someone carved you with such consummate skill and left you here at the altar?"

He hummed for a while, uttering the odd random word, then clicked his tongue against his teeth. "No, you're not going to tell me any more, are you? I'm going to have to talk to your friends," Dr. Burrows informed the silent panel. He spun on his heel and made straight for the panel on the far right of the triptych.

Compared with the first panel, the subject matter was more difficult to make out. There was no single predominating image — the scene was altogether more complex and confusing. However, as the firelight fell across it, he began to see what it represented.

"Ah… so you're a stylized landscape… rolling fields… a stream with a small bridge over it and… what's this?" he muttered, brushing an area of the panel directly in front of him. "Some form of agriculture… trees… perhaps an orchard? Yes, I think you might be." He stepped back to peer at the top of the panel. "Curious, very curious indeed…"

Strange columns lanced down from the upper right corner over the rest of the landscape. At the point from which the columns radiated, there was a circle.

"The sun! Oh, it's my old friend the sun again!" Dr. Burrows exclaimed. "Just like the one on the ceiling!" The sphere's jagged rays spread out over the rest of the picture. "So what are you telling me? Are you showing me the place where the Moses figure was leading the people? Was this some great pilgrimage to the surface? Is that it?"

He glanced back at the first panel. "A ruler leading his people to some sort of idealized nirvana, to the elysian fields, to the Garden of Eden?" He looked at the panel in front of him again. "But you're showing the earth's surface and the sun… so what's a nice picture like you doing in a place like this, way down here? Are you just a reminder of what lies up top? A subterranean Post-it-note? And who are these people — are they really some forgotten culture, or the forebears of the Egyptians or the Phoenecians or… or perhaps something far more fantastic?" He shook his head. "Evacuees from the lost city of Atlantis? Is that possible?"

He checked himself, realizing he was jumping to conclusions before conducting a full investigation. Lost in thought, he fell silent for a second, then sidestepped to the central panel.

"Maybe you hold all the answers," he muttered. In what typically should have been the most important of the three panels, he was expecting to find something impressive — perhaps a religious symbol, a crowning image. But instead, it was by far the least remarkable of the triptych.

"Well, well, well," Dr. Burrows said. The middle panel depicted a circular opening in the ground with craggy rock borders. Its perspective allowed Dr. Burrows to see a little distance down into it, but there was nothing to note besides a continuation of the rock sides.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, bending forward and spying some tiny human figures on the very edge of the hole. "So, you're on a gargantuan scale, I now know that much," he said, reaching over to rub the dust from the little figures, no bigger than ants. He continued to do this for a short while, finding more and more of the Lilliputian people in a procession, until he abruptly stilled his hand, then drew it back.

At the far left of the procession, a number of these tiny human forms had their arms and legs splayed out, as if in free fall, tumbling down into the mouth of the huge opening. Strange winged creatures hovered above them. Dr. Burrows stood on his tiptoes and blew hard to try to remove some more of the dirt from these diminutive flying forms.

"Well, that's a surprise!" he declared. Clad in loose flowing gowns, they seemed to have human bodies, but swanlike wings extending from their backs. "Angels… or devils?" he pondered aloud. Then he took several steps back. With his arms crossed and his chin cradled in one hand, he continued to regard the panel, whistling to himself all the while in his erratic, atonal way.

He stopped whistling. "Aha!" he yelled, remembering something. He hurriedly retrieved the Coprolite map from his pants pocket and unfolded it, then held it up before him. "I knew I'd seen you before!"

On the map, at the end of a long line representing what he assumed to be a tunnel or a track, and dotted with various symbols along its path, he saw something similar to the image in the panel. It was sketched in a much more simplistic way, with just a few pen strokes, but it, too, appeared to be some kind of opening in the ground. "Could they be one and the same?" he wondered aloud.

He went closer to the center panel and looked it over again. There was something more at the base, something he hadn't noticed under a crusty coating of a fungal growth. He feverishly scrubbed at it and found that it had been obscuring a line of cuneiform writing.

"Yes!" he bellowed exultantly, immediately flicking his journal open to the Dr. Burrows Stone page. It tallied with the script he'd already interpreted… he could translate it!

Squatting down, he wasted no time in getting started. The inscription consisted of five distinct words. He glanced repeatedly between the panel and his notebook, a huge self-satisfied grin forming on his face. He deciphered the first word: "GARDEN…"

He clucked impatiently, his eyes rapidly switching from his notebook to the script and back again. "Come on, come on," he urged himself. "What's the next word?"

Then he read, "TO… no, not TO, but OF! " And then, "That's an easy word… THE."

He took a breath and summarized his findings so far. "GARDEN OF THE…" he announced.

The next word stumped him. "Think, think, think!" he said, each time thwacking himself on the forehead. "Get your act together, Burrows, you numskull," he growled, annoyed that his mind wasn't firing on all four cylinders. "What's the rest?"

The remaining words weren't coming so easily, and he was frustrated that it was taking so long to translate them. He scanned the final part of the inscription, hoping that by some stroke of luck he would have a breakthrough.

Just then the fire flared, as a thick piece of kindling began to burn with a loud hiss. Dr. Burrows saw something from the corner of his eye and slowly turned his head away from the panel.

In the brighter light now being cast by the fire, he could see largish hollows, or perhaps holes, all over the side walls of the temple. Many of them.

"That's odd," he muttered, his brow creasing. "Didn't notice them before."

As he looked more closely, his heart missed several beats.

No, they weren't holes… they were moving.

He spun fully around.

He cried out in surprise.

Before him were many of the enormous dust mites, he couldn't even begin to count them. It was as though the one he had befriended had summoned its brethren, and now hundreds of them had gathered like an outrageous congregation in the interior of the temple. Among them were behemoths easily three or four times the size of the dust mite that had led him in here. They looked as big as Sherman tanks and just as heavily armored.

His cry stirred them into activity, and their mandibles clattered as if they were giving him a genteel round of applause. Several began to lumber toward him with that gradual and inhuman intent that only an insect possesses. It made his blood chill.

He hadn't felt threatened by the original dust mite, but this was an altogether different situation. There were too many of them, and they looked too big, and too darned hungry. He suddenly pictured himself as a king-sized food stick, poised invitingly on the altar before them.

Holy smokes holy smokes holy smokes went over and over in his head.

Some of the largest ones, dangerous-looking brutes with dented and holed carapaces, began to advance more rapidly, ramming smaller dust mites out of their way. Their articulated legs thudded on the flagstones. Some reared up, their thick legs sweeping in the air, as they crawled over the backs of the pews, affording Dr. Burrows a flash of their glossy black underbellies.

He snatched up his rucksack, ramming his notebook into it and then swinging it onto his back, his mind racing. He needed a way out, and quick. But he was surrounded. They were everywhere; to his front and sides they were coming, like an advancing armored division of the flesh-tearing variety.

Holy smokes holy smokes holy smokes.

He wondered wildly if he could just make a run for it over the dust mites, jumping from back to back as if he were leaping across the tops of cars in a traffic jam. No, nice idea, but he was sure they wouldn't just sit still and allow him to do that — it wasn't going to be that easy. And, anyway, he'd rather not go back out into the cavern, where the swooping creature might still be waiting for him.

He seized a boughlike piece of debris from the fire and waved it at the mite brigade, trying to scare them off with the flames. The nearest were only a few feet away from the base of the altar now, and others crept steadily toward him from the sides. The flames made no difference — indeed, quite the opposite: They appeared to be attracted by the fire, speeding up appreciably.

In desperation, he slung the bough with all his might at a large dust mite. It bounced harmlessly off its carapace and didn't slow the creature even a little.

Holy smokes holy smokes holy smokes NO!

In an absolute panic, he spun around and tried to scramble up the center panel of the triptych. But he slipped and slid against the dusty face of the carving; he couldn't get a grip. "COME ON, YOU IDIOT!" he yelled at himself, his voice all but drowned out by the clacking of the dust mites — louder and faster now, as if they were aroused by the spectacle of their human food stick trying to make good its escape.

Then his fingers got a hold on the sides of the panel and, with the most immense effort, he lifted himself off the top of the altar. Panting and grunting, his hands and arms strained to their very limits, he held himself aloft, his feet scrabbling ineffectually under him.

"Please, please, please," he begged as his arms began to give out. Miraculously his toes found some sort of foothold in the carving. It was enough. He quickly ran his hands a little farther up, and then, hanging on just by his arms again, he found another foothold. By employing this alternating caterpillar-like locomotion — hands, toes, hands, toes — up he went, climbing for dear life.

He drew on the last of his hysterical strength to reach the top of the panel. Once there, he lodged his right foot in the carving of the huge hole. With this, and his fingers crooked over the top of the panel, he quickly took stock of his situation.

He was in an extremely precarious position, and one that he couldn't hold for much longer; his arms and legs were already exhausted form the effort of climbing. And there was no point in deceiving himself that the dust mites wouldn't be able to swarm up the wall below him — he'd seen them climbing across the sides of the temple. What could he do to defend himself? The only thing that occurred to him was that by kicking out with his heel, he might at least be able to impede the onslaught.

He peered around, frantically trying to formulate his next move. He felt the sweat soaking his brow and streaming down his back as, taking deep breaths to try to calm himself, he clung on with grim determination. Then he stiffly twisted his head around to look down at the bugs. As he moved, the orb hanging around his neck slipped out from under his jacket so that its light fell on their massed ranks. This caused quite a stir among them and they bobbed up and down, their mandibles clattering even louder, as if building to a frenzied crescendo of expectation.

Dr. Burrows thought of chopsticks, many gigantic chopsticks, tearing his body apart, rending him limb from limb.

"Shoo! Go away! Shoo! Be off with you!" he screamed over his shoulder, the same words he'd often used to scare off the neighbor's cat from the back lawn in Highfield. His hands were sopping with perspiration and cramping horribly. What could he do? He glanced up to make sure there wasn't anything he could grab on to and hoist himself higher. As he did so, across the ceiling of the temple he saw a fluxing collage of serrated arachnid body parts, massed and overlapping silhouettes thrown up by the flickering light of the fire on the altar below. They were close now. It was the stuff of horror movies.

"Help!" he exhaled in sheer desperation.

He felt his left hand begin to slither off the ledge as the dust on top of it absorbed his sweat and turned to a slippery paste. He slid his fingers to a fresh position, simultaneously trying to heave himself a little farther up.

Something began to happen.

A low rumble shook his whole body.

Holy smokes holy smokes holy smokes!

He looked around frantically, his light swinging freely from his neck.

"Oh no! What now!" he screamed, an even deeper wave of dread sweeping through him.

He had the strangest sensation that he was moving. But his hands, now almost completely numb, still retained some measure of grip, and his foot was still securely anchored. No, he wasn't sliding down the panel to the ravenous arachnids below.

The juddering stopped, and he again attempted to hoist himself farther up the panel.

Immediately the rumbling resumed, more violently this time.

His first thought was that it was an underground tremor, some type of subterranean earthquake. But it was he who was moving, not his surroundings.

The middle panel of the triptych, which he was hanging on to for dear life, was slowly tipping over. Under his weight, it was swinging forward, into the wall of the temple.

"Help me!" he wailed.

Everything became a blur. He immediately assumed that the panel had broken loose from its fixings and was falling. What he couldn't see was that the panel was pivoting halfway down its length, just below his foothold.

And like it or not, he was going with it.

The panel continued to rotate, with him still clinging doggedly on until he found himself horizontal, effectively lying on top of it. It rotated to its limit and came to a sudden halt with a jaw-rattling thud of stone against stone.

Dr. Burrows was catapulted forward, haphazardly flipping head over heels through the darkness. The flight ended almost as soon as it began. He landed flat on his back, the wind knocked out of him. Gulping and coughing, he tried to catch his breath as his hands clutched at the soft sand beneath him. He'd been lucky — it had cushioned his fall.

There was a loud thud behind him and a spray of something wet across his face, accompanied by a sharp hissing sound.

"What the—" Dr. Burrows heaved himself into a sitting position and turned to see what was there, fully expecting the arachnid hordes to be bearing down on him. But his spectacles had been knocked off in the fall, and without them he couldn't discern anything at all in the near-darkness. He felt around in the sand until he found them, and quickly replaced them on his head.

He heard a scrabbling by his side and whipped his head in its direction. It was a jointed leg from one of the dust mites, as big as a horse's, severed at what was probably its equivalent of a shoulder. He watched as it suddenly snapped open and shut again, with such force that it flipped itself over in the sand. It was moving as though it had a mind of its own — and for all Dr. Burrows knew, it probably did.

He backed away from the limb and got to his feet, swaying groggily and still wheezing and coughing as his breathing slowly returned to normal. At any moment the arachnids would swarm over him.

But there was no sign of the giant dust mites, or, indeed, the interior of the temple; just an unbroken silence, and darkness, and plain stone walls.

It was as though he'd been transported to a completely different place.

"Now where am I?" he muttered, resting his hands on his legs. After a few moment he began to feel better and straightened up to inspect his new surroundings. Within several seconds he'd pieced it all together. Realizing how incredibly fortunate he'd been, he began to babble.

"Oh, thank you, thank you." He joined his hands together in a brief prayer, weeping tears of gratitude.

Another spray of warm fluid filled the air. It reeked, a bitter stench that made him choke. He cast about to see where it was coming from.

Six feet or so above the ground, the shiny and mangled remains of a dust mite protruded from the wall. It had been trapped by the swinging panel as it slammed shut again. A bluish transparent fluid oozed and pumped from several sheared-off tubes, some the diameter of drainpipes, in the midst of the smashed wreckage. As he looked on, another shower of fluid spurted out, making him jump back in alarm. It was as though the valves of some bizarre machine were opening to release the pressure and flush themselves out.

It struck him that the decapitated head of the dust mite might not be very far away, most likely with an active set of mandibles, if the severed limb that was still snapping open and shut was anything to go by.

He wasn't about to stick around to find out.

"You silly old fool, you nearly cashed in your chips back there," he told himself as he stumbled hurriedly away from the scene. He mopped his face with his sleeve and, still a little dazed, saw that sweeping down through an arched corridor were wide steps… many steps, which he now began to follow, still muttering incoherent prayers of gratitude.

41

Sarah was sitting dejectedly on the beach, her knees drawn up to her chin as she hugged her legs. She'd abandoned any attempt at concealing herself: The lantern was on full beam and, with Bartleby at her side, the two of them gazed at the rolling waves as they broke on the shore.

She'd done as the Limiters ordered and followed the shoreline, but she'd have been kidding herself if she thought it was anything more than a tactic to get her out of the way. There was no possible reason for her to be here.

As they'd been walking, she'd noted that the spring had gone from Bartleby's step now that there was no scent trail to sniff out. She couldn't remain angry with him for the way he'd behaved; there was something touching about the tenacity he'd shown in tracking his master. She kept reminding herself that this Hunter had been Cal's companion — the truth was that the animal had spent more time with her son than she had, and she was Cal's mother!

With a rush of affection, she'd watched Bartleby's huge shoulder blades rising and falling hypnotically, first one side, then the other, as he slunk along. They stuck out at the best of times under his loose-fitting and hairless skin, but they were even more prominent now with his head hanging low. The aimless way he was carrying himself spoke volumes — he looked exactly the way she felt.

And now, as they sat on the beach, she couldn't contain her frustration.

"Wild-goose chase," she grumbled to the cat. He was scratching his ear with a paw. "Ever tried goose?" she asked, and he stopped, his hind leg still poised in the air, regarding her with his huge shining eyes. "Oh, I don't know what I'm saying!" she admitted, and lay back against the white sand as Bartleby resumed his scratching. "Or doing," she confessed to the stone roof far above, invisible in the darkness.

What would Tam make of all this? What would he think of her if he'd seen the way she'd acted? She'd kowtowed to a patrol of corpse-chewing Limiters! She was supposed to be finding out whether Will was really to blame for her brother's death, and also getting Cal safely back to his home in the Colony. She was a long way from achieving either of those aims. She felt she had failed miserably. Why didn't I stand up to them? she asked herself. "Too weak," she said aloud. "That's why!"

If the Limiters took Will alive, and she were to come face-to-face with him after he'd been captured, what would she do? The Limiters would probably expect her to kill him in cold blood. She couldn't do that, not without knowing whether he was really to blame for her brother's death.

But if she didn't, the alternative for him would be worse… unthinkably worse. Death would be a picnic compared to the tortures he would endure at the hands of Rebecca and the Styx. As she pondered her dilemma for the umpteenth time, she realized how strong her feelings were for her son, despite everything he supposedly had done. She was his mother! Could he be capable of betraying his own family? Not knowing the truth was driving her mad.

She suddenly became so angry that her brother had lost his life. Rage boiled up inside her, and she arched her back, pressing her head hard into the sand.

"TAM!" she cried.

Alarmed at her outburst, Bartleby scrambled to his feet. He watched as she sank back onto the beach in a sullen, helpless silence. Her wrath had no outlet, nowhere to go. She was like some clockwork toy that Rebecca and her cronies had wound up, letting it run only so far before stopping it short.

Bartleby finished washing himself and made several dry, hacking sounds as he spat grains of sand from his mouth, then yawned exuberantly. He sat back fully on his haunches and, as he did so, broke wind with the volume of a bugler trumpeting an urgent retreat.

It came as no surprise to Sarah; she'd noticed the cat had been supplementing his diet by chewing on the moldy remains of unidentifiable things he found along the way. Evidently at least one of them hadn't agreed with him.

"Couldn't have put it better myself," Sarah mumbled through her clenched teeth, squeezing her eyes shut in frustration.

42

Following the flight of stone steps wherever they took him, Dr. Burrows had eventually emerged into another vast space. Here he found that the path of regularly laid slabs continued, and he went with it, moving down a gentle incline. For as far as he could see, menhirs peppered the ground. Dumpy, teardrop-shaped boulders up to twelve feet high, with rounded tops — it was a bizarre sight, as if some semi-deity had been randomly chucking large dollops of dough all over the place.

Given the uniformity of the menhirs' shapes, thought, Dr. Burrows began to ask himself if they had been positioned not by nature but by design. He muttered various theories about their origin as he went, every so often jumping when his light, falling across the nearest boulder, cast shadows on those behind, giving the impression that something was lurking in wait. After his close calls with the winged creature and the hungry bug army, he wasn't going to take any more chances with the local fauna.

But another part of his brain was also whirring away on the images he'd seen in the triptych, trying to make sense of them. He cursed his luck that he hadn't been able to fully decipher the inscription on the center panel in time. At least he had seen the letters that formed the remaining words. Now he was trying his hardest to recall them.

Using the technique that usually worked, he forced himself to think about something unrelated, hoping this would unlock the images in his memory. He directed all his attention to the Coprolite map, much of which was still an enigma to him.

All that he'd encountered so far, the chocolate cavern and then the temple, was on the map, clear as day, once he'd examined it again. The problem was, the rather strange icons that represented them were so small as to be almost microscopic, and he'd misplaced his magnifying glass somewhere along the way. It probably wouldn't have made much difference even if he did still have it, because there was no legend on the map to tell him what any of the features were. Interpreting them came down to pure guesswork.

Nevertheless, at least the Coprolite map gave him some notion of the sheer scale of the Deeps. It had two major features on it: the Great Plain and its surrounding areas to the left, and to the right something that could very well be a huge hole in the ground — he didn't need a magnifying glass to determine that! The same hole as portrayed in the triptych, he assumed.

Numerous tracks radiated from the Great Plain, and many of these eventually converged at the hole, as if it was a street map of the center of some large conurbation back up on the earth's surface. And he was on one of those tracks right now.

Quite a number of routes led off the hole and over to the far right of the map, where they all seemed to terminate in dead ends. Whether this was because the Coprolites never used them, or because they had never explored them, he didn't know. But this race had lived in these parts for how many generations he could only guess, and given that they were master miners, he would have been mighty surprised if they'd left any stone unturned or quarter unexplored. The Coprolites, from what he could gather, were not only master miners but master prospectors — the two went hand in hand — so they would have surveyed all the outlying areas in case precious stones or something similar were to be found there.

Dr. Burrows wondered if his expedition, his "grand tour" of the subterranean lands, was going to culminate in him going up and down a series of these cul-de-sacs. Provided he could find some food and, more crucially, some clean water, his time would be occupied with exploring all the areas marked on the Coprolite map, combing them for ancient settlements and any artifacts of note.

If this was the case, his journey had a finite end, and there was no way he would be reaching deeper levels in the earth's mantle, where untold archaeological treasures might lie or past civilizations beyond anyone's imagination might have once lived — or still live.

He knew he shouldn't be disappointed. Despite all the danger he'd faced, he'd already made some of the most remarkable discoveries of the century, probably of any century. If he ever made it back home, he'd be lauded as one of the greats of the archaeological fraternity.

When he'd set out from Highfield on that day so long ago, heaving back the shelves in his cellar to begin down the tunnel he'd dug, as if he'd been a character from some farfetched children's story, he'd had absolutely no conception of what he was getting himself into. But he had got this far, and in the course of his journey he'd overcome everything that had been thrown at him, surprising himself in the process.

And now, as he thought about it, he realized he'd developed a taste for adventure, for taking risks. As he strolled down the dark path, his shoulders straightened and he allowed himself a swagger.

"Move over, Howard Carter," he declared in a loud voice. "Tutankhamen's tomb is nothing compared to my discoveries!"

Dr. Burrows could almost hear the thunderous applause, the accolades, and imagine the many television appearances and the…

His shoulders suddenly slumped again, and the swagger evaporated.

Somehow it wasn't enough.

Sure, he had a mammoth task ahead of him. Just documenting everything on the Coprolite map would be enough to keep him busy for many lifetimes — and require a huge research team — but still, he felt a profound sense of disappointment.

He wanted more!

The hole shown on the map… what could it be? All the routes wouldn't converge there, it wouldn't be so prominent in the ancient temple's triptych, if it was just some geological feature!

He halted on the path, muttering animatedly as he began to point in the air at an imaginary blackboard.

"Great Plain," he announced, pointing at the left of the blackboard with a thrust of his hand as if he was addressing a lecture hall full of students. He swung his other arm up to the right, outlining a ring in the air with his light. "Big hole… here," he said, jabbing repeatedly into its center. "What are you, mystery hole?"

He lowered his arms to his sides, exhaling through his tea-stained teeth. Yes, that hole had to be important.

The triptych flashed before him. There was a message in those three panels. And he needed to recall the last letters of the inscription so that he could complete the translation and put the whole thing together. But it remained just out of his grasp!

He sighed.

He had to get to the hole and find out for himself.

Maybe it was what he was yearning for… a way down.

Maybe there was still hope.

He started off again with a burst of enthusiasm.

About twenty minutes into his new journey, Dr. Burrows heard a scratchy noise ahead of him and immediately looked up.

The noise came again, clearer.

Within seconds his light revealed that two forms were gliding toward him on the path.

He couldn't quite believe what he was seeing — two people walking together.

As they drew closer, he saw that it was a pair of Styx: the soldiers known as Limiters, from the look of their long coats, rifles, and backpacks. He'd seen a couple of them before at the Miners' Station when he'd first gotten off the train. The scratchy noise was their voices.

He couldn't believe his luck. He hadn't so much as glimpsed a single living soul for days and thought how bizarre it was to bump into another human being down here, never mind two, in this network of thousands of miles of passageways and interlinking caverns. What were the chances?

When they were no more than fifteen feet from him, he hailed them, calling out "Hello!" in an expectant, friendly voice.

One of them glanced at him, with ice-cold eyes and a face devoid of expression, but there was no effort at any sort of acknowledgment. The other soldier didn't even raise his eyes from the path ahead of him. The two of them continued marching purposefully and talking to each other, not paying him any heed whatsoever as they moved on.

Dr. Burrows was flummoxed but didn't stop, either. Their total lack of interest made him feel like a street beggar who'd had the effrontery to ask a couple of businessmen for money. He couldn't believe it!

"Oh, well, suit yourself," he said with a shrug, turning his thoughts back to more important matters.

"Where are you, what are you, hole in the ground?" he inquired of the silent menhirs around him, his mind again churning with endless theories.

43

"Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!" Chester called as he and Will pulled the oars. Chester had said he'd done some rowing with his father, and Elliott had let him take control the moment they'd clambered into the rickety-looking boat. In fact, boat was to grandiose a word for the canoe-cum-coracle, which had creaked ominously as they all climbed aboard. It was about fourteen feet long and had a wooden frame over which a hidelike material was stretched and stitched.

It clearly hadn't been designed to carry four passengers, particularly to with all their gear. Scrunched up in the prow of the boat, Cal grumbled quietly to himself as he tried to nurse his bad leg. He was attempting to position himself so he could straighten it out, which was nigh on impossible with Will pressed so close by.

"Oi! Watch it! There's no way I can row if you keep dong that!" Will protested when Cal dug into his back yet again as he shifted himself around. Cal finally found that the optimum position was for him to lie in the bottom of the boat with his head crammed into the V of the prow — by doing this, he could hook his bad leg up on the side and extend it fully.

"This ain't some pleasure cruise, you know!" Will joked in between breaths when he caught the curious sight of a foot sticking up in the air from the corner of his eye.

"Stroke… str— concentrate, Will!" Chester ordered as he endeavored to get his friend to row in time with him. It quickly became evident that Chester didn't really know what he was doing, either, despite his earlier claims. All too often his oars skimmed ineffectually over the surface with a spray of water.

"Where did you say you learned to do this?" Will asked.

"Wilderness camp," Chester admitted.

"You're kidding!" Will exclaimed.

"Shaddup, will you?" Chester retorted with a broad smile.

Their syncopation was chaotic, to say the least, but Will decided that traveling by boat had to be the best way to get around. The physical exertion from the rowing was blowing the cobwebs from his mind; he felt more clearheaded than he had in days. And the light breeze gusting over the water was just enough to whisk the perspiration from his brow as he heaved on the oars. He felt invigorated.

They seemed to be making good time, although Will couldn't see that shore — or anything else, for that matter — to judge how fast they were going. The endless darkness and the invisible stretch of water all around them were a little daunting; the only light was from Chester's lantern, dimmed to its lowest setting, in the bottom of the boat.

Perched at the helm, Elliott, true to form, watched alertly behind them, although the island had long since been shrouded from view. Facing her as they rowed, Will and Chester were just about able to make out her dim silhouette. They were waiting for her to issue instructions, but it seemed like an interminably long time before she spoke.

She suddenly told them to stop, and Will and Chester rested the oars, although the boat seemed to coast along surprisingly quickly by itself, as if caught in a powerful current. Will hung his head over the side — he could see faint, indistinct shapes deep within the water. They appeared to intensify and then fade away just as fast. Some were small and darted rapidly, while others, more substantial forms, moved ponderously and gave off a much stronger light.

As he watched with rapt fascination, the broad, flattened face of a fish, maybe as much as a foot and a half across from gill to gill, bobbed up just below the surface. Between its large eyes there was a long stalk, which had at its tip an greenish, pulsating light. Its mouth gaped open to release a gush of bubbles, closed again, and then the fish submerged. With a frisson of excitement, Will immediately spotted the resemblance to anglerfish, which inhabit the deep recesses of Topsoil oceans. There must be a whole ecosystem hidden under these waves, he thought. Living creatures that generate their own light!

Much as the fish had just done, he opened his mouth to say something to the others about his discovery when he was silenced by a tiny splash, like a stone hitting the water, perhaps some fifty feet off the port side.

"It starts," Elliott whispered cryptically.

A distant bang followed, maybe as much as a second later. More of these splashes and subsequent bangs ensued, but they were too far away for Will to see what was causing them.

"Now would be a good time to turn off that light," Elliott suggested.

"Why?" Chester asked innocently, still peering into the darkness.

"Because the Limiters are on the beach."

"They're shooting at us, dimwit," Cal spoke up. On the starboard side, no more than fifteen feet away, Will noticed a small tick of water flick up from the sea's surface.

"Shooting at us?" Chester repeated, slow to take in what he was being told. "Shooting?!" he exclaimed as he figured it out at last, immediately fumbling to extinguish the lantern. The light off, he sat up and swiveled around in the direction of Elliott. He was flabbergasted at how calm she was. The volley continued, with further splashes all around them — they seemed to be coming closer. Chester flinched each time.

"If those really are shots…" Will began.

"Certainly are," Elliott confirmed.

"…then shouldn't we be rowing like mad hooligans?" Will asked, tightening his grip on the oars in readiness.

"No need, we're well out of range… they're taking potshots." Elliott allowed herself a small laugh. "We must've really ticked them off. But it would be one in a million if they hit us."

Will heard Chester grumble something to the effect of "With my luck," as he tucked his head protectively into his shoulder, simultaneously trying to get a view of the island in the pitch-black.

"I've got them exactly where I want them," Elliott said quietly.

"You've got them exactly where you want them? " Chester's voice wheezed with incredulity. "Surely you—"

"Slow fuses," Elliott interrupted. "My specialty."

The tone of her voice told them nothing, and they all waited, with just the sounds of the creaking boat and the swirling water around them, and the odd splash from the continuing gunfire.

"Any second now…" Elliott said.

A flash lit up the stretch of beach from which they had set out to sea. It looked deceptively tiny to the boys over the distance. Then the sound of the blast reached them, making them all jump.

"What the—" Cal exclaimed, sitting up.

"No, wait…" Elliott said, holding up her hand. Her outline was thrown into sharp relief by the far-off flames. "If any of them lived through that, they'll be falling over themselves like scalded rats to get inland and away from the beach." She began to count, inclining her head ever so slightly with each number.

The boys held their breaths.

A second explosion, far mightier than the first, erupted with massive red and yellow starbursts that streaked high into the cavern, their plumes leaping over the tops of the tall fern trees. It seemed to Will that the whole island must have been blown to smithereens. They all felt the force of the blast on their faces, and pieces of airborne debris were already falling into the water around them.

"Blimey!" gasped Cal.

"Awesome!" said Chester. "You totaled the island!"

"What the heck was that? " Will asked, wondering if there'd be anything left of the wildlife, or whether it would all be engulfed by fire — though he had to admit that if a few shabby primordial chickens got their tail feathers singed, then he wasn't overly concerned.

"That was the clincher," Elliott said. "The perfect ambush…and the first explosion drove them straight into it."

It was as if the flames were floating on the surface of the sea itself, sending long reflections across the inky waters. For the first time Will could gauge the vastness of the space they were in: the far-off coastline to his right was dimly lit up, but there was absolutely nothing visible in the direction they were heading nor any sign of land at all to his left.

With the sound of the explosion still resonating around the immense cavern, debris continued to fall close to the boat, much of it burning until it hit the water and sizzled out.

"Did you set all that up?" Chester asked Elliott.

"Drake and I did. He called it his 'party trick,' although I never understood what he meant," Elliott admitted. She twisted away from the spectacle, her features hidden within the impenetrable blackness as the nimbus of fiery tongues silhouetted her. She slowly bowed her head as if in prayer. "He was so good… a good man," she said, in not much more than a whisper.

As Will, Chester and Cal marveled at the inferno on the island, none of them uttered a word, sharing her sense of loss for Drake. It was as though the burning island was a funeral pyre, a fitting send-off for him — not only was there a glorious light extravaganza in this unlikeliest of places to honor his death, but also some of his enemies had been brought to justice.

After the sober moment of reflection, Elliott spoke up.

"So, how do you like your Limiters done?"

She began to laugh jubilantly.

"Rare," Chester replied, quick as a flash. The boys joined in with her laughter, hesitantly at first, but then roaring so loudly the boat rocked.

Sarah was shocked from her torpor by the first explosion, and by the second she was on her feet and racing down to the water's edge, with Bartleby following close behind her.

She whistled at the sheer size of the blast and immediately brought up her rifle, wrapping the sling around her arm to hold the weapon steady. Through the scope she scrutinized the fiery point, so small over the waves. Then she slowly moved the rifle away from the island, combing back and forth over the watery horizon. The glow radiating from the fire enabled the light gathering scope to function highly effectively, but it was still some minutes before she spotted anything. She adjusted the magnification on the scope, trying to clarify the image.

"A boat?" she asked herself. In the extreme distance there was no way she could tell who was in it, but she knew instinctively that it wasn't the Styx. No, in her gut she knew that what she sought was in that boat bobbing on the waves.

"Looks like we're back in business, my old friend," she said to Bartleby, who was flicking his bony tail as if he already knew what they were going to do. Sarah took a last glance at the burning island, and her lips curled into a malicious smile. "And I suppose Rebecca will need to draft some new Limiters."

44

"Get it together," Elliott urged from the helm as Will and Chester pulled on the oars, still not in sync with each other.

"Where exactly are we going?" Cal called out to her. "You said you would take us somewhere safe."

There was a splash as Will misjudged his stroke, his blade skipping across the water. Elliott gave no response, so Cal tried again.

"We want to know where you're taking us. We have a right to know," he insisted. He sounded peeved; Will knew that his leg must be bothering him.

Elliott turned from her rifle. "We're going to lose ourselves in the Wetlands. If we make it that far." She paused for several uneven oar strokes, then spoke again. "The White Necks won't be able to track us there."

"Why?" Will asked, wheezing from the exertion of rowing.

"Because it's like… like one big, never-ending swamp…" She sounded uneasy, as if she lacked conviction in what she was saying, and this didn't give the boys much confidence, since they hung on her every word. "No one in their right mind ever goes into those parts," she continued. "We can lie low until the Styx give us up for lost."

"These Wetlands, are they deeper? Below where we are now?" Cal asked, before Will had the breath to ask.

Elliott shook her head. "No, it's one of the outlying areas of the Great Plain that we call the Wastes. Some of the fringes are just too dangerous because of hot spots… Drake never let us spend more that a few days there. It'll suit us for a while, then we'll move on to some other places in the Wastes. They're a lot easier to survive in."

The boys remained silent after that, each left alone with his thoughts. Her words rang in their heads — the Wastes didn't sound very promising, but none of them felt terribly inclined to ask any more questions.

"We're in the pull of currents from a band of whirlpools a couple of miles east," Elliott eventually said. She jabbed a finger over their heads to the starboard side. "And if you don't want to see them up close, I suggest you both put your backs into keeping us on course."

"Aye-aye, Captain," Will grumbled, his earlier enthusiasm for the boat journey all but gone.

Several hours later, after a marathon rowing session, Elliott told them to stop again. Will and Chester welcomed the rest, their arms so tired that they trembled when they raised their canteens for a drink. Elliott instructed Cal to keep watch with the loose rifle scope and Will to put on his headset.

Will flipped the lens down over his eye and turned it on. The view sizzled with orange snow until it settled into a cohesive image, and he saw that they weren't far off the coast. The boat was drifting toward what Will took to be a headland.

As they drifted farther in, silken fingers reached over the surface of the water. A wispy mist crept toward them, the hazy layer thickening to such an extent that it began to spill in over the sides of the boat. The lantern at Chester's feet sent a diffuse illumination through the mist, conferring on it a milky translucence and making their faces glow eerily. Before long they couldn't see anything below their waists. It was a strange sensation to sit there, with the unbroken blanket all around them, as they cut a path through it in the now invisible boat. The fog seemed to absorb all sound, damping even the lapping of the waves.

The air temperature grew warmer as they went, and although none of them said a word, the boys felt as if there was a physical pressure forcing itself down on each of them. Whether it was the gloominess of the mistscape or some other phenomenon, they were all experiencing identical sensations of melancholia and desolation.

They drifted for another twenty minutes. They seemed to be entering a cove or bay. The forlorn silence was broken as the keel of the boat bumped against rocks and ran aground. It was odd. It felt as though the dark spell had been broken, as though they had all woken from an uneasy dream.

Elliott wasted no time in jumping out of the boat. They heard the splashes as she landed, but there was no indication of how deep the water was because the fog reached just over her thighs. She waded to the front of the boat and, guiding it around, heaved it along behind her.

Will turned his attention to the stretch of coast. They had indeed arrived in a bay, its two promontories jutting out to sea on either side. The slow-moving mist tumbled out from the creek, parted in places by peaks of jagged-looking rocks. He, Chester, and Cal stayed put while Elliott drew the boat behind her for a short distance. Then she ordered them to disembark, and, one after another, they clambered reluctantly out of the boat, taking their kit with them.

The water was no more than three feet deep, although currents pulled powerfully against their legs. Taking care not to slip, they trod toward the rocky foreshore while Elliott tugged the boat up a small inlet to hide it. It made a hollow scraping sound as she dragged it ashore.

Will and Chester splashed through the last of the shallows. "Shouldn't we help? She…" Chester was suggesting to Will, just as they both noticed a change in the foreshore. The noise from the boat seemed to bring about a muted rumble, although the cloak of mist prevented them from seeing its source. Cal, scrambling over the rocks some twenty paces ahead of them, had also realized something was up. All three of them stopped on the spot.

The low rumble continued. There was a stirring and a movement, as if the rocks themselves were coming to life, and, all at once, scores of small lights glowed just above the misty blanket, flickering dimly like pairs of candle flames fanned by a draft.

"Eyes!" Chester stuttered. "They're eyes!"

He was right. They caught the light from Chester's and Cal's lanterns and reflected it back, just as surely as if they were deer in a car's beams. Looking through his headset, Will saw that what he'd assumed was the craggy rock formation of the promontories and the foreshore was much more: It was a living carpet, and in a fraction of a second the whole area was rife with activity.

As the streaming mist parted, Will made out what appeared to be birds — storks with long legs — flexing open their wings. But they weren't birds; they were lizards, the likes of which Will had never seen before.

"What do we do now?" Chester said, pulling closer to Will in his panic.

"Will!" Cal called out, hovering uncertainly, then beginning to step backward into the water again.

"Where's Elliott?" Chester asked urgently. They spotted her striding across the foreshore. Showing no concern whatsoever, she cut a furrow straight through the creatures. With a rubbery beating sound, they unfolded their wings and moved out of her way, making the most miserable wails, like young children crying out in terrible pain.

"That's really spooky," Chester said, a little more at ease now that he saw that the creatures didn't seem to pose any danger.

As their wings flapped, wafting aside the mist, Will observed that the creatures were angular and each had a single prehensile claw on its leading edge. Their bodies were bulbous, with tapering thoraxes and dumpy abdomens, and, like their wings, they had a gray sheen to them, similar to polished slate. Their heads were the shape of flattened cylinders with rounded ends, supported by spindly necks and their jaws, as they gaped open and shut again, were smooth and toothless.

Elliott's passage through the flock disturbed the creatures so much that they began to take wing. But before they could lift off from the ground, they needed a running start — a few strangely stiff and mechanical steps.

In seconds the air was thick with the creatures, their wings beating and thrumming in an unbroken hum. The strange unsettling calls continued, spreading down the colony as if they were communicating their alarm to each other. Once all the creatures were airborne, they gathered into a single flock over the water. Entranced, Will watched them through the lens, a continually shifting orange smear that disappeared into the distance in a mass migration.

"Get a move on!" Elliott shouted. "We don't have time for sightseeing." She waved impatiently to them to follow her up the foreshore.

"Weren't they just wild? Wish I'd gotten a photo of them," Will babbled excitedly to Chester as they hurried to catch up with Elliott, who was making a beeline for the cavern wall.

Chester didn't seem amused. "Yeah, right. How about if we made it into a postcard to send to the folks back home?" he snapped in a loud voice. "Wish you were here… having a wonderful time… in the land of the freakish talking dragons."

"You've read too much of that fantasy stuff. They're not freakish talking dragons at all," Will retorted sharply. He was so caught up with this latest discovery that he hadn't sensed his friend's frame of mind. Chester was simmering and about to blow. "What they are, Chester, is freakin' amazing… some sort of prehistoric flying lizard, like pterosaurs," Will continued. "You know… pterodactyls—"

"Listen, matey, I don't give a stuff what they are." Chester cut across Will belligerently, his head down as they negotiated their way through the craggy rocks. "Every time this happens, I tell myself there can't be anything worse, and, sure enough, just around the next corner…" He shook his head and spat, as if disgusted. "Perhaps if you'd read those books and been into normal stuff, instead of grubbing around in tunnels like some troll or something, we wouldn't be in this mess. You're the freak… no, you're worse than that, you're an egghead and a jerk and a danger to anyone around you!"

"There's no need to throw a wobbly, Chester," Will said, trying to smooth things over.

"Don't you tell me what to do. You're not in charge," Chester seethed.

"I was only… the lizards… I… " Will tried to respond, his voice failing with indignation.

"Oh, just shut up! You just can't get it into your thick bonce that nobody else gives a stuff about your grotty fossils or animal mutants, can you? They're all gross and should be squashed, like insects," he ranted, stamping his foot down and grinding it in the dust to emphasize his point as he spun around to face Will.

"I didn't mean to upset you, Chester," Will said apologetically.

"Upset me?" Chester shouted hysterically. "You've done worse than that to me. I'm fed up to the back teeth with all of this! And, most of all, I'm sick of the very sight of you! "

"I told you how sorry I was," Will replied weakly.

Chester threw his hands open in an aggressive gesture. "So it's as simple as that, is it? D'you really think you can blag your way out of this with a sorry, then I'm expected to let you off… I'm supposed to forgive you for everything, am I?" He gave Will such a look of scorn that it struck him speechless. "Words are cheap, especially yours," Chester said in a low, shaking voice and strode off.

Will was shattered by his friend's remarks. So much for the spirit of camaraderie that he had felt before. He'd so hoped their friendship was back on sound footing again, but he saw now that their jokey exchanges on the beach and in the boat meant nothing at all. Will had been laboring under an illusion. And however much he tried to shrug it off, he was cut to the quick by his friend's outburst. He didn't need to be reminded that he was to blame for everything. He'd wrenched Chester away from his parents and his life in Highfield and gotten him embroiled in this nightmarish situation, which was getting worse by the second.

He started walking again, but his guilt had returned and it weighed heavily on him. He tried to tell himself that Chester's sheer fatigue must be the cause of his outpouring — tempers were bound to be frayed when they'd all had so little sleep — but he didn't find this a very convincing reason for Chester's behavior. His former friend was speaking his mind; it was as clear as that.

Not helped one bit by Chester's outburst, Will himself felt pretty ropy. He would have given anything for a hot bath and a clean bed with crisp white sheets — he felt like he could sleep for a month. He sought out his brother a little way ahead and saw that with each step Cal took he was leaning heavily on the walking stick. His gait was awkward, as if his leg was about to give out at any moment.

No, none of them was in good shape. He hoped that before long they'd have an opportunity for a well-earned rest. But he wasn't about to delude himself that this was in the cards, not with the Limiters on their heels.

They gathered around Elliott by the cavern wall. She was standing before an open seam, a slitlike gap at the base of the source of the mist, which poured out in an unceasing flow. Will kept his distance from Chester, pretending instead to devote all his attention to the seam, although the thick mist prevented him from seeing very much of it.

"We've got a long haul ahead of us," Elliott warned as she unwound a length of rope, which they tied around their waists. She was at the head of the chain, then Cal, Chester and lastly Will. "Don't want anyone to wander off," she told them, then paused before looking from Will to Chester.

"You two OK now?"

She heard it all… She must have heard everything Chester said, Will thought uneasily.

Because this isn't going to be easy, and we all need to stick together," she continued.

Will grunted something approximating a yes, while Chester didn't offer any sort of response, studiously avoiding Will's eyes.

"And you," Elliott said, singling out Cal. "I need to know… are you up to this?"

"I'll manage," he replied, nodding sanguinely.

"I sincerely hope so," she said, and turned to give them all a last look before she ducked into the seam. "See you on the other side."