Necropolis

TAI FUNG

The dragon was moving towards Hong Kong, closing in with deadly precision, gaining strength as it crossed the water. Scarlett had summoned it and it had heard. Even she couldn’t turn it back now.

It had begun its life as nothing more than a front of warm air, rising into the sky. But then, very quickly, a swirl of cloud had formed, spinning faster and faster with a dark, unblinking eye at the centre. By the time the weather satellites had transmitted the first pictures from the Strait of Luzon, it was already too late. The dragon was awake. Its appetite was as big as the ocean where it had been born and it would destroy anything that stood in its path.

The dragon was a typhoon.

Tai fung.

The words mean “big wind”, but they went nowhere near describing the most powerful force of nature; a storm that contained a hundred storms within it. The typhoon would travel at over two hundred miles an hour. Its eye might be thirty miles wide. The hurricane winds around it would generate as much energy in one second as ten nuclear bombs. To the Chinese, typhoons are also known as “the dragon’s breath”, as if they come from some terrible monster living deep in the sea.

Since 1884, the Hong Kong Observatory had put out a series of warnings whenever a typhoon had come within five hundred miles and each warning has come with a beacon, or a signal, attached. Signal One was shaped like a letter T and warned the local populace to stand by. Signal Three, an upside down T, was more serious. Now people were told to stay at home, not to travel unless absolutely necessary. Later on came Signal Eight, a triangle, Signal Nine, an hourglass, and finally, most terrifyingly, Signal Ten. Perhaps appropriately, this took the shape of a cross. Signal Ten meant devastation. It would almost certainly bring wholesale loss of life.

And that was what was on its way now.

But there were no warnings. Nobody had been prepared for a typhoon in November, which was months after the storm season should have ended. And anyway, no typhoon could possibly have formed so quickly. It would normally take at least a week. This one had reached its full power in less than a day. The whole thing was impossible.

Nor was there anyone left to send out the signals. Hong Kong Observatory had been abandoned. Many of the scientists had left. The others were too scared to come to work as the city continued its descent into sickness and death.

Unseen, the dragon rushed towards them. The skyscrapers were already in its sight. Suddenly they seemed tiny and insubstantial as, with a great roar, it fell on them. By the time anyone realized what was happening it was already far too late.

The chairman of the Nightrise Corporation was wondering how many people had died in the last twenty-four hours and how many more would die in the next. He could imagine them, sixty-six floors below, crawling over the pavements, begging for help that would never come, finally losing consciousness in a cloud of misery and pain. He himself would leave Hong Kong very soon. His work here was almost finished. It was time to claim his reward.

The Old Ones were going to give him the whole of Asia to rule over in recognition of what he had achieved. Even Ghengis Khan hadn’t been as powerful as that. He would live in a palace, an old-fashioned one with deep, marble baths and banqueting rooms and gardens a mile long. The world leaders who survived would bow in front of him and anyone who had ever offended him, in business or in private life, would die in ingenious ways that he had already designed. He would open a theatre of blood and they would star in it. And anything he wanted he would have. The thought of it made his head spin.

He was behind his desk in his office on the executive floor of The Nail and he was not alone. There was a man sitting on the same leather sofa that Scarlett Adams had occupied just a week before. The man had travelled a very long way and he was still looking crumpled from his flight. He was elderly, dressed in a shabby, brown suit that didn’t quite fit him. It was the right size but it hung awkwardly. The man was bald with two small tufts of white hair around his ears and white eyebrows. He looked ill at ease in this smart office. He was out of place and he knew it. But he was glad to be here. It had been a journey he was determined to make.

His name was Gregor Malenkov. For many years he had been known as Father Gregory, but he planned to put that behind him now. He had left the Monastery of the Cry for Mercy for good. He, too, had come for his reward.

“So how do you like Hong Kong?” the chairman asked.

“It’s an extraordinary city,” Father Gregory rasped. “Quite extraordinary. I came here as a young man but it was much smaller then. Half the buildings weren’t here and the airport was in a different place. All these lights! All the traffic and the noise! I have to say, I hardly recognized it.”

“A week from now, it will be completely unrecognizable,” the chairman said. “It will have become a necropolis. I’m sure you will understand what that means, a man of your learning.”

“A city of the dead.”

“Exactly. The entire population has begun to die. In just a matter of days, there will be no one left. The corpses are already piling up in the street. The hospitals are full – not that they would be any use as the doctors and the nurses are dying too. Nobody even bothers to call the cemeteries. There’s no room there. And soon things will get much, much worse. It will be interesting to watch.”

“How are you killing them?” Father Gregory asked. “Would I be right in thinking it is something to do with the pollution?”

“You would be entirely correct, Father Gregory. Although perhaps I should not call you that, as I understand you are no longer in holy orders.” The chairman stood up and went over to the window, but the view had been almost completely obliterated by the mist which swirled around the building, chasing its own tail. There was going to be a storm. He could just make out the water down in the harbour. The water was choppy, rising into angry waves.

“There has always been pollution, blowing in from China,” he continued. “And the strange thing is that the people here have tolerated it. Coal-fired power stations. Car exhausts. They have always accepted that it’s a price that has to be paid for the comforts of modern life.”

“And you have made it worse?”

“The Old Ones have added a few extra chemicals – some very poisonous ones – to the mix. You’ve seen the results. The elderly and the weak have been the first to go, but the rest of the city will follow if they are exposed to it for very much longer. Which they will be. An unpleasant death. We are safe, of course, inside The Nail. The air is filtered. We just have to be careful not to spend too long in the street.”

Father Gregory pressed his fingers together. His sty had got much worse. The eyeball was now jammed, no longer able to move. Only his good eye watched the chairman. “I have to say, I’m disappointed,” he said. “I was looking forward to meeting – to actually seeing – the Old Ones.”

“The Old Ones have left Hong Kong. They have a great deal of work to do, preparing for a war that will be starting very soon. As soon as they heard that Matthew Freeman had been taken, they went.”

“I don’t understand why they don’t show themselves to the world,” Father Gregory said. “You have two of the Gatekeepers. So surely nothing can stop them…”

“It’s not the way they work. If the Old Ones told the world that they existed, people would unite against them. That would defeat the point. By keeping themselves hidden, they can let humanity tear itself apart. That is what they enjoy.”

There was a moment’s silence. Father Gregory licked his lips and something ugly came into his eyes. “I want to see the girl,” he said. “I still can’t believe that she managed to break free when I had her. I had plans…”

“Yes, that was most unfortunate,” the chairman agreed. “Well, right now they are together. The boy came all this way to find her, so I thought it would be amusing to let them spend one day in each other’s company.”

“Is that safe?”

“The two of them are locked up very securely and nobody knows where they are. The boy has certain abilities which make him dangerous. But as for the girl…”

“What is her power?”

“It seems that she drew the short straw. I’m afraid Scarlett Adams is not quite the superhero one might have imagined.” The chairman smiled. “She has the ability to predict the weather. That’s all. She can tell if it’s going to rain or if the sun is going to shine. As she will never see either of these things again, it will not do her very much good. We are sending her away tonight. To another country.”

“You can’t kill her of course.”

“It’s vital that both children are kept alive. In pain, but alive. We are going to bury them in separate rooms, many thousands of miles apart. They will be given limited amounts of food and water, but no human contact. The Old Ones have asked me to blind Matt Freeman and that will be done just before Scarlett leaves. We want her to take the horror of it with her. In the end, she will probably go mad. It will be one of the last memories that she has.”

“Excellent. I’d like to be there when it happens.”

“That may not be possible.”

Father Gregory was disappointed. But he continued anyway.

“What about the other boy?” he asked.

“Jamie Tyler?” The chairman was still standing at the window. “He is somewhere here in Hong Kong. We haven’t yet been able to find him.”

“Have you looked for him?”

The chairman blinked slowly. Far below, two Star Ferries were crossing each other’s paths, fighting the storm as they made their way across the harbour. Where had the storm come from? It seemed to be getting stronger. He was surprised the ferries were still operating and looked forward to the time when they finally stopped. It had always annoyed him, watching them go back and forth.

A boat will be the death of you. And it will happen in Hong Kong.

A prophecy that had been made by a fortune-teller. Well, soon there would be no more boats. There would be no more Hong Kong.

“Jamie Tyler can’t leave the city,” he said. “Unless, of course, he dies in the street and gets thrown into the sea. Either way, he is of no concern to us.”

There was another silence.

“But now, my dear Father Gregory,” the chairman said. “It is time for you to go.”

“I am a little tired,” Father Gregory admitted.

“It has been a pleasure meeting you. But – please – let me show you out…”

There was a handle on the edge of one of the windows and the chairman seized hold of it and pulled. The entire window slid aside and the wind rushed in, the mist swirling round and round. Papers fluttered off the desk. The stench of the pollution filled the room.

Father Gregory stared. “I don’t understand…” he began.

“It’s perfectly simple,” the chairman said. “You said it yourself. You let the girl escape. You let her slip through your hands. You don’t really think that the Old Ones would let that go unpunished?”

“But… I found her!” Father Gregory was staring at the gap. “If it hadn’t been for me, you would never have known who she was!”

“And that is why they have granted you an easy death.” The chairman had to shout to make himself heard. “Please don’t waste any more of my time, Father Gregory. It’s time for you to go!”

Father Gregory stared at the open window, at the clouds rushing past outside. A single tear trickled from his good eye. But he understood. The chairman was right. He had failed.

“I’ve enjoyed meeting you,” he said.

“Goodbye, Father Gregory.”

The old man walked across the room and stepped out of the window. The chairman waited a moment, then slid it shut behind him. It was good to be back in the warm again. He wiped some raindrops off his jacket.

The storm was definitely getting worse.

The Tai Shan Temple was very similar to all the other temples in Hong Kong.

It was perhaps a little larger, with three separate chambers connected by short corridors, but it had the same curving roof made of dark green tiles and it was set back behind a wall, on the edge of a park, in its own private world. Inside, it was filled with smoke, both from the coils of incense that hung from the ceiling and from the oven, which was constantly burning bundles of paper and clothes as sacrifices to the Mountain of the East. There were several altars dedicated to a variety of gods who were represented by standing, sitting and kneeling statues… a whole crowd of them, brilliantly coloured, staring out with ferocious eyes.

Despite the bad weather, there were about fifteen people at prayer in the main chamber, bowing with armfuls of incense, muttering quietly to themselves. They were many different ages, men and women, and to all appearances they looked exactly the same as the people who came daily to Man Mo or Tin Hau. And yet there was something about them that suggested that religion was not, in fact, the first thing on their minds. They were too tense, too watchful. Their eyes were fixed on a single entrance at the back of the building – a low, wooden door with a five-pointed star cut into the surface.

The worshippers – who were, in fact, no such thing – had very simple instructions. Any child who passed through that door was to be seized. If they resisted, they could be hurt badly but preferably not killed. The same applied to any young person coming in from the street. They were to be stopped before they got anywhere near the door. The people in the temple were all armed with guns and knives, hidden beneath their clothes. They were in constant touch with The Nail and could call for backup at any time.

This was the ambush that Matt had feared. It was the reason he had refused to take the shortcut to Hong Kong. He had been right from the very start.

The fifteen of them stood there, muttering prayers they didn’t believe and bowing to gods they didn’t respect. And outside, gusts of wind – growing stronger by the minute – hurled themselves at the temple walls, battering at them as if trying to break through, tearing up the surrounding earth and the grass, whistling around the corners. A tile slid off the roof and smashed on the ground. A shutter came loose and was instantly torn away. The rain, travelling horizontally now, cut into the brickwork. The traffic in the street had completely snarled up. The drivers couldn’t see. There was nothing they could do.

The wind rushed in and the flames inside the temple furnace bent, flickered and were suddenly extinguished. Nobody noticed. All their attention was fixed on the doorway. That was what they were there for. Ignoring the storm, they waited for the first of the Gatekeepers to arrive.

Scarlett was in a dark place, but someone was nudging her, trying to draw her back into the light. Unwillingly, she opened her eyes to find a boy leaning over her, shaking her awake. She recognized him at once and knew that the fact that he was with her, that he was bruised and dishevelled, could mean only one thing… and it was the worst news of all. He was here because of her. The Old Ones must have tricked him into coming to Hong Kong and now the two of them were prisoners. Scarlett felt a sense of great anger and bitterness. She had been drawn into this against her will. And it was already over. She had never been given a chance.

“Matt…” she said.

At last the two of them were together. But this wasn’t how she had hoped they would meet. She drew herself into a sitting position and rubbed her eyes. They had given her back her own clothes but her hair, cut so short, still felt unfamiliar to her. At least she had lost the contact lenses. She had taken them out the moment she had been left to herself.

“Are you OK?” Matt asked.

“No.” She sounded miserable. “How long have I been asleep?”

“I don’t know. They only brought me here an hour ago.”

“When was that?”

“About eight o’clock.”

“Night or day?”

“Day.”

Matt examined his surroundings. They were in a bare, windowless room with brick walls and a concrete floor. The only light came from a bulb set in a wire mesh cage. From the moment the door – solid steel – had been closed and locked, he’d had to fight a sense of claustrophobia. They were deep underground. The policemen who had brought him here had forced him down four flights of stairs and then along a corridor that was like a tunnel. Ordinary policemen. The same as the ones who had arrested him. It seemed that the shape-changers, the fly-soldiers and all the other creatures of the Old Ones had decided to leave Hong Kong. He wondered why.

Despite everything, he had been relieved to find Scarlett. She looked very different from the photograph he had seen of her. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for her, being stuck here on her own.

“Why are you here?” Scarlett asked. She still couldn’t keep the disappointment out of her voice.

“I came for you,” Matt said. He wanted to tell her more but he didn’t dare. There was always a chance that they were being listened to.

“You shouldn’t have. I’ve mucked everything up. I’d have got away if I hadn’t…” Scarlett stopped herself. She couldn’t bring herself to talk about her last meeting with her father.

Matt sat next to her so that they were shoulder to shoulder with their legs stretched out on the floor. From the way he moved, she could see that he had been hurt. He looked pale and exhausted. “Why don’t you tell me everything that happened to you?” he suggested. “You could start by telling me where we are. Do you know?”

She nodded. “The chairman came to see me…”

“Who is the chairman?”

“Just some creep in a suit.”

“I think I may have met him.”

“He wanted to gloat over me,” Scarlett continued. “He told me that you were on your way but I hoped he was lying. This is an old prison. We’re right in the middle of Hong Kong. It was left over from Victorian times.”

“So when do they serve breakfast?”

“They don’t. It’s bread and cold soup and they bring it once a day.”

Matt lowered his voice. “Hopefully, we won’t be here that long,” he said. It was as much as he dared tell her, but even so Scarlett felt a glimmer of hope. “You know I went to your home in Dulwich,” he said, changing the subject.

“Was that you in the car? There was an accident…”

“It was no accident.”

“I knew it had to be you,” Scarlett said. “They planned it all very carefully, didn’t they? Using me to get you here. Are any of the others with you?”

Matt nodded briefly and Scarlett understood. They both had to be careful what they said. She gazed at him as if seeing him for the first and the last time. “I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe I’m really talking to you. Do you know, I’ve even dreamed about you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Matt said. “We all dream about each other. It’s how it works.”

“There’s so much I don’t understand.”

“Join the club.”

“It looks like I already have.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know where my story even begins, but I suppose I’d better start with St Meredith’s…”

She told him – briefly and without fuss – and as she spoke, Matt knew that he was going to like her. She had been through so much, and in a way her experiences reminded him of his own at Lesser Malling, the way she had been reeled into something so completely beyond her understanding. And yet she had coped with it. She had been brought here. She had been locked in this room for three days. But she hadn’t cracked. She was ready to fight back.

She finished talking and it seemed to Matt that just for a moment the building trembled as something, a shockwave, travelled through the walls. Scarlett looked up, alarmed. Part of her knew what was happening and had even been expecting it.

“What…?” Matt began.

“It was nothing.” She said it so hastily that he could see she didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t even want to imagine what might be happening outside. “Tell me about yourself,” she went on, quickly. “Tell me how you got here. Did you go to the temple? They’ve got people there waiting for you. They thought you’d come through one of the doors.”

“I didn’t…”

He told her his own story, or part of it, starting in Peru. It would have taken too long to tell her the whole thing and he was still afraid of being overheard. From Nazca to London to Macau. It had been a long journey and it was only now that they both saw how closely they had been following each other’s paths.

Matt finished by explaining how he had found his way to Wisdom Court. This was the difficult part. He had seen Scarlett’s father die and he had been at least in part responsible. How was he going to break the news?

But she was already ahead of him. “That jersey you’re wearing,” she said. She had suddenly realized. “It’s his.”

“Yes,” Matt admitted.

“Where is he now?” Matt didn’t answer and she continued. “They’ve killed him, haven’t they?”

Matt nodded. He didn’t want to remember what he had seen in the last moments before he had been taken out of Wisdom Court.

Scarlett’s face didn’t change but suddenly there were tears in her eyes. “It was all his fault,” she said. “He thought he could make a deal with these people – the Old Ones – but they would never have got me if it hadn’t been for him.” She paused. “I don’t know, Matt. I suppose that’s the way they work. They get ordinary people to do evil things for them. They used him. He really thought he was helping me. And now he’s betrayed you too.”

The building shivered a second time. It wasn’t as strong as it had been before but they both felt it.

“You know that Hong Kong is dying,” Scarlett said. “The chairman told me. They’re doing it deliberately. They want to turn it into what they call a necropolis. A city of the dead.”

“I saw some of it last night,” Matt said. “It was horrible.”

“Don’t tell me. I lived in it. I can’t believe I didn’t see what was going on.” She sighed. “What will happen to us, Matt? Are we going to be killed?”

“They don’t want to kill us,” Matt said. “It’s complicated. But killing us doesn’t really help.”

“Then what?”

“They think they’ve beaten us, but they haven’t. The others are still out there. And you and me…”

“What about us?”

“They put us together because they want to crow over us. But that’s their mistake. Because…”

He didn’t finish the sentence.

There was an explosion. It was loud and immediate – and it came from somewhere inside the building.

“What…?” Scarlett began.

Then the light went out.

Lohan had used the storm as cover, closing in on the prison through streets that had quickly emptied as the weather had become more intense. He had only been given one night to prepare the attack, but he had still managed to assemble a small army. He had a hundred men with him, all of them well-armed. The Triads had been smuggling weapons across Asia for many years, supplying anyone from terrorists to mercenaries. Lohan had simply taken what he needed. He had plenty of choice.

Meanwhile, Jet and Sing would be arriving at the Tai Shan Temple. They both had the rank of 426, Red Pole as it was known, making them fighting unit lieutenants. They had another fifty men with them and both operations were to begin at the same moment. There was one door out of Hong Kong. The way there had to be cleared.

Lohan knew where Matt had been taken because he had followed him. This was what Matt had been unable to tell Scarlett. He had played a trick on the chairman. Just for once, he was the one pulling the strings.

Matt had contacted Lohan the night before, the call forwarded through the Kung Hing Tao firework company. The Triad leader already knew what had happened. Richard and Jamie were with him. The two of them had made it out of the water and over to Kowloon. They were standing next to him, worrying desperately about Matt, when the phone rang.

“We have to find Scarlett,” Matt had said. “And there’s only one way to do it. We have to let the Old Ones capture me.”

“How will you do that?”

“Paul Adams – Scarlett’s father – will call them and tell them I’m at Wisdom Court. They won’t suspect anything. They know that he wants Scarlett back and they’ll think he’s still trying to help them.”

“And then?”

“You have your men outside. You follow me wherever they take me.”

“How do you know they’ll take you to Scarlett?”

“I don’t… not for sure. But my guess is they’ll probably hold us together. I know the way these people think. They’ll want to parade us, to boast about how they’ve beaten us. Having the two of us together will make it more fun for them. Anyway, I haven’t got any other ideas so we’ll just have to risk it.”

Richard had come onto the phone. He had heard what Matt was suggesting. “You can’t do this,” he pleaded. “It’s too dangerous. Please, Matt, think what could go wrong.”

“We don’t know where she is, Richard. There’s no other way we’ll find her.”

“What about Paul Adams? Once they have no further use for him, you know they’ll kill him.”

“He’s prepared to risk it. He knows what he’s done. And he’ll do anything to get Scarlett freed.”

It had worked out just as Matt had hoped. Six police cars had arrived at Wisdom Court just after seven o’clock. Lohan – with Richard and Jamie crouching next to him – had watched the police go in. They had seen the chairman arrive and leave and they were still there when Matt, semi-conscious and in pain, had been dragged out. Jamie had started forward at that moment, wanting to go to him. But Richard had grabbed hold of him, forcing him to remain still. This was Matt’s plan. It was all or nothing.

Matt had been driven across the city, never out of sight of Lohan’s men. They had seen him disappear into the prison close to Hollywood Road. So now they knew where he was being held. Hopefully, Scarlett would be there too. As the storm had worsened, Lohan had surrounded the prison, his men closing in from all sides.

The storm.

Lohan was beginning to think that it was getting out of control. In all the years that he had been in Hong Kong, he had never experienced anything like it. When he stood up, he could feel the wind trying to batter him down again. Dust and dead leaves whipped into his face. He could hear the air currents howling as they rushed through the streets. If it got any worse, it would be dangerous out here. But then, of course, it was dangerous anyway. If the storm destroyed the city, it would only be finishing what the Old Ones had already begun.

A crash of thunder. Rain lashing down so hard that he could see it bouncing off the parked cars, turning into miniature rivers that coursed along the side of the road. In seconds, he was soaked. Richard was next to him. “What’s going on?” he muttered.

“We must move now,” Lohan said.

Victoria Prison was a huge, solid building with barred windows and a single, massive door – the only way in. Six armed guards stood outside it in the rain, dressed in uniforms, with their faces partly obscured by their caps. Lohan, Richard and Jamie were watching from the doorway of an antique shop across the road. Lohan’s strategy was simple. There was no time to be clever. He knew he had to break in as quickly, as decisively as possible. Once the enemy knew he was there, they would fight back.

He gave the signal.

There was an explosion – the same explosion that Matt had heard – as a rocket launcher, concealed in a parked van, fired a 40mm shell at the main door. The prison hadn’t been built to withstand such an attack. The doors were blown apart in a ball of flame. Half the guards were killed instantly. The rest were cut down by a burst of machine-gun fire as the Triad fighters surged forward, pouring out of alleyways and rising up from behind parked cars. Further down the road, two of Lohan’s men, disguised as construction workers, cut off the main power supply, isolating the prison and short circuiting the alarms.

“Move!” Richard and Jamie were unarmed but they ran forward with Lohan and in through the shattered doors.

And then they were inside the prison. Lohan’s people were spreading in every direction, through the upper floors, smashing open the doors to reveal the empty cells behind them. Some of them were armed with guns and grenades. Others carried swords and chain-sticks. It was pitch black inside the building now that the electricity had been cut, but they had brought electric torches with them, strapped to their shoulders, the beams slicing through the dark and showing the way ahead. Lohan’s orders were clear. Kill anyone who gets in your way. Find Matt and Scarlett. We have only minutes to get them out.

There were more guards on the upper levels. Although the building held only two prisoners, the chairman had taken no chances. Now they opened fire on the invaders. Lohan saw the flash of bullets, heard some of the Triad men cry out. A few bodies fell. Then someone threw a grenade. Another fireball, and one of the guards pitched forward as if diving into a swimming pool, disappearing into the darkness below.

Lohan himself led a group of fighters four floors down into the basement, Richard and Jamie close behind him. Only now was Richard beginning to see the hopelessness of the task. There had to be at least two hundred cells in the prison. Were they really going to blow every one of them open? They came to a corridor with more steel doors set at intervals. A guard ran towards them, bringing his machine gun round to aim.

“Drop the gun!” Jamie said. “Lie on the floor.”

The guard did as he was told. A second guard appeared. He was less fortunate. Lohan shot him down. They had been in the prison for less than three minutes but they knew that reinforcements would already be on the way. There was another explosion upstairs, a scream, the clatter of bullets hitting metal.

Thirty doors stretched out in front of them. There was no point looking for bolts or keys. Lohan rapped out an order and his men blew them open, one at a time, using balls of plastic explosive. Richard and Jamie continued forward as, one after another, the doors were smashed out of their frames, orange flames briefly flaring up. The corridor stank of cordite. Smoke and brick dust filled the air. But every cell was empty. How much more time did they have?

“They’re at the end,” Jamie said suddenly. “The last door on the left.”

Lohan stared at him. But Richard nodded, relief surging through him. Somehow Jamie had managed to connect with them in his own way… telepathically. Lohan shouted something and his men ran down to the door he had indicated. A final blast. It swung open. Two figures came out into the corridor, choking and covered in dust. It was Matt and Scarlett.

“Matt!” Richard grabbed hold of his friend and embraced him. The night before, when he had pulled himself out of the water, he had been afraid that he would never see him again. “Are you OK?”

Matt nodded. “This is Scarlett.”

“I’m delighted to meet you.” Richard didn’t know what else to say. He examined the girl with the close-cropped hair. She looked worn out.

Jamie said nothing but he went over to her so that the three Gatekeepers were together.

“We have to get to the Tai Shan Temple,” Matt said.

Lohan was impressed. The boy was only fifteen but already he had assumed command. The experiences of the past twenty-four hours didn’t seem to have had any effect on him. But there was still more trouble to come. Quickly, Lohan took out his mobile phone, pressed a button and spoke a few words. He waited until he had heard what he wanted, then he turned to Matt. “The temple is safe now,” he said. “But we have another problem and it may be more serious. There is a storm. In fact my people are saying that it may be something worse…”

But they had all become aware of it. Above the gunfire and the explosions. Beyond the battle that was taking place inside the prison, the wind was screaming. The whole building was shuddering. The full force of the typhoon had fallen on Hong Kong and its total destruction had begun.

The sun was setting in Cuzco, the ancient city of the Incas, in Peru. There was a band playing and the sound of pan-pipes and the throb of drums rose up into the evening air. The shadows were stretching out over the foothills. The restaurants and cafes were beginning to fill up at the end of another day.

Pedro knew that they shouldn’t be here. This wasn’t Matt’s plan. He wished that they had been able to speak over the satellite telephone, but for the past forty-eight hours there had been only silence. A whole world separated them. They were thousands of miles apart. But he was about to take the single step that would bring them together. He wondered if it was a good idea.

Not that he had been given any choice.

The night before, Pedro had woken up to find Scott leaning over him. The two boys were sharing a stone house in Vilcabamba, high up in the Andes. This was the lost city where Pedro had gone with Matt when they were hiding from Diego Salamanda. It was hidden above the cloud forest in an extraordinary location, a mountain peak that couldn’t be seen by anyone. Getting there had involved a helicopter ride and then a one-day hike from Cuzco. The city itself could only be reached by a stone staircase which could vanish in a single moment.

“Scott…? What is it?”

Scott was deathly pale and his eyes were full of worry. Pedro had never seen him like this before. “Jamie’s in trouble,” he said. “We have to go to Hong Kong.”

“We can’t…”

“Pedro. You don’t understand. We have to go straight away. I have to go to Jamie. I’ve had a dream.”

The dreamworld. All of them had been there. They all knew its significance. They had talked about it often enough. Pedro knew that he couldn’t argue. If Scott had been sent a message, they couldn’t ignore it, particularly if it involved his brother. And yet the doors were supposed to be too dangerous. It was the whole reason Matt and Jamie had flown to Europe and why the two of them had been left behind.

“Are you sure…?” he began.

Scott wasn’t in the mood for an argument. “I’m leaving as soon as it’s light,” he said. “You can come with me or you can stay behind.”

The next morning they left together. One of the Incas escorted them down to the clearing where the helicopter was waiting and then it was a two-hour flight to Cuzco airport. All the time, Scott had been silent and intense. He still hadn’t explained what he had seen. He was often reserved but now he seemed miles away, staring ahead with empty eyes. Pedro was trying not to think what they were letting themselves in for. Of all the Gatekeepers, he alone had never been through one of the doors, and the thought of transporting himself half-way round the world filled him with dread.

And here they were now in Cuzco. It was a beautiful evening with hundreds of tourists milling around the brightly coloured stalls that were spread out in front of them. The cathedral would be closing soon. The last visitors were coming out, surrounded by street children, begging for money and sweets. Taxis, like wind-up toys made out of tin, were buzzing around the main square.

Pedro was hungry but he didn’t dare suggest that they stop and eat. He knew what the answer would be.

“There it is…” Scott pointed at a great pile of bricks and ornate windows, a Spanish church built on the site of a place of worship that had been there centuries before. The Temple of Coricancha. It was where he and Jamie had found themselves when they first arrived in Peru. Inside was the doorway that had brought them from a cave in Nevada.

Neither of them spoke again. Pedro shook his head and followed as, with grim determination, Scott began to walk across the square.

Matt and Scarlett stood in the shelter of the prison, knowing that they couldn’t leave. Hong Kong was being torn apart by a force so devastating it was as if they had arrived at some chapter in the Bible when all the old prophecies happened and Judgement Day finally arrived.

Smashed buildings and debris were being flung along the street as if they weighed nothing. As they looked out of the broken doorway, a huge neon sign spun past like an oversized playing card. It was followed by a table, several crates, a lawn mower, part of a piano… They had somehow been sucked out of the shops and sent on their way as if they were prizes in some insane TV game show. Matt could actually see the air currents. Mixed with the rain, they had become a thousand grey needles that raced along the streets, slamming into cars and tipping them over, flattening everything in their path.

He looked up and saw two clouds rushing together, moving faster than he could have believed. They hit and there was a massive burst of thunder. A bolt of electricity so bright that it hurt his eyes crackled down and smashed into a skyscraper half a mile away, cutting it in two. Shards of glass and broken pieces of metal burst outwards as the top seven storeys of the building leaned over and then fell, trailing wires and pipes. Matt didn’t see where they landed or how many people were killed but he heard the massive explosion as they hit the street below. Despite the rain, what remained of the building caught fire. The orange flames licked at the falling water, desperately trying to climb into the air.

“We must wait…” Lohan was right next to him. Matt understood what he meant. If they took so much as one step forward out of the protection of the walls, they would be whisked away. He was having to shout the words to make himself heard.

“We can’t wait!” Matt shouted back. “We only have this one chance. We must leave Hong Kong now.”

Scarlett was behind him with Richard and Jamie. Matt turned round and their eyes met – and in that moment they both understood what was happening. They could have no secrets from each other. “This is you!” he shouted at her. The wind was still howling. A window on the other side of the road was suddenly torn out, the glass leaping away. “You’ve done this…”

“No!” Scarlett shook her head, trying to deny it.

“We all have powers. All five of us. This is yours.”

And Scarlett knew he was right. In a way, she had known it all along.

Her real name wasn’t Scarlett Adams. White Lotus believed that she was a reincarnation of Lin Mo, a figure out of Chinese mythology, a goddess of the sea. And if she had once been a goddess, then she would have a power that went far beyond anything humanly possible. The chairman of Nightrise had made another mistake. He had thought she could only predict the weather. In fact she could control it.

The evidence had always been there. At school in Dulwich, when Scarlett had wanted to go on a history trip, the weather had cleared up against all expectations. The same thing had happened again in Hong Kong when she needed to get to The Peak. Against all the forecasts, the rain had stopped and the sun had suddenly come out.

She had even used the same power at the battle, ten thousand years before. Jamie had once described it to Matt. Just as Pedro had appeared with his reinforcements, a storm had started, the rain coming down so violently that the Old Ones had been unable to see him.

It hadn’t been a coincidence.

It had been her.

The chairman had claimed that she was the weakest of the Five. He had been wrong. She was by far the most powerful.

“You can stop it!” Matt shouted.

“I can’t!” Scarlett shook her head. She had brought the dragon. She accepted that much. But looking inside herself, after three days in prison, after all she had been through, she knew that she didn’t have the strength to turn it back.

“Then you can protect us. You can keep it away.”

Scarlett looked out into the road, at the crashing rain, the buildings being scattered like confetti, cars spinning crazily, broken pieces of wood and metal hurtling past. Had she really done this, brought destruction on an entire city? How many people would she have killed? The thought terrified her more than anything else she had seen. Was she really responsible for this?

“I can’t do it, Matt…”

“You have to… We have to reach the temple.”

Lohan understood. “It’s not so far from here,” he shouted. “I can show you…”

“Scar…?” Matt looked at her.

And maybe it was simply the fact that he had used that name, a name from ten thousand years ago. Maybe that was the trigger. But in that second, something changed. Scarlett took a deep breath. For too long she had been a victim, pushed around by the chairman, by the Old Ones, even by the Triads. It was time to put that behind her. She was a Gatekeeper. That was what had brought her into all this and suddenly she felt a great anger for everything she had lost – her friends, her home, – even her father. And with the anger came the full knowledge of her own strength. She knew what she had to do.

“Follow me,” she said.

They left the prison. First Lohan, then Scarlett and Matt, with Richard and Jamie behind. They stepped outside into the rain, into the wind, into an endless explosion as nature pounded the city with all its strength. They should have been thrown off their feet instantly, or battered senseless to the ground. But the wind spun around them. The rain was lashing everything but they remained dry. They walked into the heart of the typhoon and it swallowed them up without touching them. It was as if they were inside a glass ball that surrounded and protected them. They could barely see. Everything was chaos. But while they stayed together, they were safe.

Lohan led the way but it was Scarlett who made it possible. She seemed to be in a trance, gazing straight ahead, her arms by her side. Matt kept close to her, knowing that his life depended on her protection. All around them, everywhere he looked, brick walls crumbled, buildings fell, windows shattered and, spinning in the rain, lethal shards of broken glass came slashing down. Again and again the thunder sounded. The clouds were a boiling mass.

They didn’t hurry. There was no need to. No living thing was going to come out in the typhoon and the five of them were completely invisible. Scarlett was more confident now. She looked almost relaxed. Walking next to her, Matt was amazed by the extent of her power. He could feel it flowing out of her. She was a girl and she was fifteen years old. But she could destroy the entire world.

Another building fell behind them, crumbling in on itself as if it had simply lost the will to live. Bricks showered down, slamming into the pavement, but not near them. The road continued straight ahead. They could see the park. Most of the trees had been uprooted and turned into flying battering rams. The few that remained were bending over, kissing the ground. The Tai Shan Temple was on the other side. Matt was surprised that it was still standing, but perhaps the wall that surrounded it had protected it from the worst of the weather.

Lohan pointed. Scarlett nodded. There was no need for any of them to speak. They had made it. They had crossed Hong Kong in the middle of a Signal Ten typhoon and they had survived.

Moving faster now, they crossed what was left of the park and went in.

The chairman of the Nightrise Corporation was watching the final destruction of his necropolis. He was back in his office on the sixty-sixth floor of The Nail and he could feel the whole building trembling as it was buffeted again and again by the storm. Every now and then there was a grinding sound followed by an explosion of breaking glass as another window burst out of its frame. The lights had long ago flickered and gone out. There was no power in the office. Nor were there any people. The staff had all evacuated, fighting and clawing their way down sixty-six flights of stairs. Some of them might have made it to the basement and would be huddled there now, but he suspected that many more of them would have been killed on the way down – pushed down the stairs or trampled in the general panic. The chairman certainly had no intention of joining them. He was safe here. The Nail could stand up to anything. And it was a spectacular view.

It did trouble him that his plans had somehow gone wrong. The city had been meant to die. That had been the whole idea. But not like this. Indeed, the typhoon might well end up saving many more people than it actually killed because there had been a side-effect. The poisonous gases put in place by the Old Ones had been dispersed. The pollution had been swept away. When the storm finally eased off, the people would be able to breathe again.

He didn’t know what had happened at Victoria Prison. All the telephone lines were down and even his mobile didn’t work. The whole network must have collapsed. But this devastation couldn’t be a coincidence. The girl must have brought it. She was able to predict the weather so at the very least she must have known it was coming. He had put the boy in with her to taunt her, to show her how completely defeated she had been. Perhaps, all in all, it had been a mistake.

He was holding a bottle of Cognac. It had a price tag that made it one of the most expensive in the world and it had always amused him that there were people dying in some countries because they had no water while he could afford to spend five thousand dollars on a drink he didn’t even enjoy. Over the years, most of the chairman’s taste buds had died. Nothing he ate or drank had any flavour. If he was killed now, it would hardly matter. Most of him was dead anyway.

But he wasn’t going to die. Even if Matt and Scarlett had escaped, there was nowhere for them to go. The Tai Shan Temple was protected. They wouldn’t be able to reach the door. And soon the typhoon would have passed. He would begin the search through the wreckage immediately, turning it over brick by brick, and next time he would deal with them at once.

He noticed something out of the corner of his eye. It was a speck in the window. At first he thought it was a bird. No. It was extraordinary. As the chairman watched, it grew larger and larger. It was heading towards him.

It was a ship.

Not a huge ship. A wooden sampan, one of the Chinese sailing boats that were kept moored up in the harbour, to be photographed by tourists. The wind had grabbed it and torn it free. Even as the chairman watched, it was getting closer, rapidly filling up the window frame. He stood there, transfixed by the sight. He thought about running. Perhaps he could still make it to safety. But what was the point? How could he escape something that had been predicted so many years ago?

He would die in an accident that involved a ship.

He died now.

The sampan was thrown at The Nail as if it were a paper dart that had been deliberately aimed. It smashed through the window on the sixty-sixth floor and into the man who stood behind it. At the same time, the wind howled in, scooping up the contents of the room and throwing them out, the files and papers rattling with a sound that was very like applause. The broken body of the chairman went with them, spun once in the air, then plunged down to the pavement below.

Bloodstains on the carpet. A bottle of Cognac with its contents gurgling out. A scattering of broken glass. In the end, that was all that was left.

There had been a bloody battle inside the Tai Shan Temple. All the bodies had been taken into one of the other chambers, but the evidence was still there in the bullet holes across the walls, rubble and scorch marks from a grenade, a puddle of blood in front of the main altar. One of the porcelain gods was standing with his arms outstretched, but his body now ended at his neck, which was jagged and hollow. His head was in pieces all around him. Another had lost a hand. It was as if they had tried to take part in the fight and had been crippled as a result.

Jet and Sing had been on their own, waiting for Scarlett and the others to arrive. They had no idea how she had managed to cross Hong Kong – it would have been impossible now to leave the building – but they were glad to see her when she walked in. Jet had been wounded. He was holding a dressing against his neck, and his shirt was soaked in blood. Sing was still holding the sword stick that he had used to kill Audrey Cheng. He seemed to be unhurt.

Neither of them had noticed that there was another man in the chamber, hiding underneath the altar. He was one of the chairman’s men and he had been shot twice. It was his blood that was pooling out. He knew he didn’t have very long. There was a gun inches from his outstretched hand.

Speaking in Chinese, Lohan demanded a report from his two lieutenants. Quickly, they told him what he wanted to know and he translated for Matthew and Richard.

“There were many people waiting here,” he said. “They would have killed you if you had tried to reach the door. But they have all been dealt with…”

“Then let’s get out of here,” Richard said. He turned to Matt. “It’s time to go.”

Lohan walked forward and shook Scarlett’s hand. “Good luck,” he said. “The journey that we made together just now is something that I will never forget.”

“I’m glad I met you, Lohan,” Scarlett said. “Thank you for helping me.” She had relaxed a little, but Matt could see that she was still concentrating, keeping the typhoon at bay. She had to stay in control. While she was inside the temple the wind and the rain were barely touching its walls.

The door with the five-pointed star was in front of them. It seemed so small and ordinary that it was hard to believe that it would lead them, not outside and into the storm but to anywhere in the world.

“So where are we going, Matt?” Jamie asked.

The dying man had fumbled for the gun. From where he was lying he could only see the two boys and the Chinese man who had arrived with them. The girl was standing right behind and the other man was somewhere out of sight. He could probably take out at least two of them before he was killed himself. He had decided that was what he would do. After all, it was the reason he was here.

Which one first?

The boy who had just asked the question – the one with the long hair and the American accent – was directly in his sight. Slowly, the man took aim. The boy was only a few steps away. The man’s hand was sticky with his own blood. The gun was covered in it. But he knew exactly what he was doing. There was no way he was going to miss.

Then the door with the five-pointed star opened.

Scott, with Pedro right behind him, burst into the temple. Jamie opened his mouth to speak. Matt was gazing in surprise. What had seemed impossible for so long had finally happened. The Gatekeepers had come together. They were all here, in the same space.

Scott. Jamie. Matt. Pedro. And Scarlett.

The Five.

But Scott hadn’t stopped. He ran forward and threw himself at his brother, knocking him aside.

A second later there was a gun shot.

Lohan acted with lightning speed. His own gun was in his hand instantly and he fired five times, the bullets strafing underneath the altar. The man who had been concealed there was killed before he could fire again.

Richard saw that Jamie was all right. Somehow Scott had known and had arrived in time to save him. But then Matt cried out.

The shot had missed Jamie, but Scarlett had been standing right behind him. She had been hit in the head and the wound was a bad one. Blood was pouring down the side of her neck. She toppled sideways. Richard caught her before she hit the floor.

And as she lost consciousness, the whole world exploded.

The typhoon had been kept at bay for too long. Now, as if recognizing what had happened, it fell on the Tai Shan Temple with all its strength. It was like being hit by a bomb, but in slow motion. As the nine of them stood there – the five Gatekeepers with Richard, Lohan, Jet and Sing – the whole building disintegrated around them. The roof was the first to go, torn off as if by a giant hand. Green tiles came crashing down. The wind roared in. Then one of the walls buckled and collapsed, the huge stones toppling forward. For centuries, the gods inside the temple had never seen daylight. Now they were flooded in it as the outside world burst in.

“The door!” Matt shouted.

It was still standing, but it wouldn’t be there for long. Once the walls were destroyed it would all be over. The door would go with them. Even now it might be too late. Jamie had joined his brother. The two of them had already turned towards it. Pedro seemed to be confused, frozen to the spot. Matt reached him and spun him round. Richard was hurrying forward, carrying Scarlett who was in his arms, limp, her eyes closed. Lohan followed. One of the spinning tiles had hit him and he was cradling his arm. There was no sign of his two lieutenants, Jet and Sing. They had disappeared beneath the broken wall.

The door had been built for the Gatekeepers, but each of them could take one companion with them. Richard was with Scarlett. Lohan was with Matt. There was still a chance they could all get out alive.

There was another explosion and a great hole suddenly appeared, punched into the wall. Rain and daylight came shafting through. The whole temple was shaking. Scott was the first to reach the door and threw it open. Behind him, the remaining gods were toppling and smashing to pieces on the hard floor. Pedro was next to him. The others were right behind.

They plunged through just as a last bolt of lightning struck the temple, pulverizing it. The remaining walls were swept away and scattered. Moments later, there was nothing left. Hong Kong Park was empty. And beyond it, Hong Kong itself lay in ruins as the clouds finally parted and the first, small ray of sunlight was allowed through.

The Necropolis was finished.

Much of it had been destroyed. More than half the skyscrapers had collapsed. Whole streets were buried beneath piles of twisted metal and brickwork that would take years to remove. Scavengers were already hard at work, burrowing into the rubble to find the jewellery – the diamond necklaces and the watches – that must surely lie beneath.

All over the world, people were waking up to the fact that a catastrophe on a massive scale had occurred. Twenty-four hour television news programmes were running the first pictures. There would be thousands dead, but at least the survivors would be able to breathe. The poisonous smog that had been suffocating them for so long had been completely swept aside.

Far away, sitting in the ice palace that he had made his home, the King of the Old Ones saw what had happened. He knew that the chairman had failed him. He knew that the Gatekeepers had escaped.

But it didn’t matter.

The Five had entered the door without knowing where they were going, so none of them would have arrived in the same place. They would be as far apart now as they had ever been. Worse than that, the door had been disintegrating even as they had passed through it, and the final blast had played one last trick on them. If the five of them had survived the journey, they would find out very soon.

It would be a very long time before they found each other again.

It was enough.

The King of the Old Ones reached out and gave the order that his disciples had been waiting for. He had made the decision. It was time for the end of the world to begin.