The Spy Who Haunted Me

CHAPTER EIGHT Blood and Horror

It all went bad so quickly.

We arrived at our last destination in a blaze of bright sunshine to the sound of happy laughter. We were standing in the middle of a crowded main street, surrounded by people strolling back and It forth, chatting pleasantly to each other and paying the three of us no attention at all. Which was . . . odd. The air was hot and dry, and the people passing by stirred up low clouds of dust from the sidewalks. But everyone seemed to be in a good mood and well under the influence of the holiday spirit. Walker and Honey and I waited for a while to see if Peter might teleport in to join us, but he didn’t.

“Very well,” Walker said finally. “Where are we this time?”

Honey indicated a large sign on the other side of the street, and we all studied it in silence. Underneath a bright and cheerful cartoon of a Gray alien leaning out the top of a flying saucer was the oversized greeting WELCOME TO ROSWELL! THE UFO TOWN!

“Oh, no,” said Walker.

“The first person to use phrases like Out of this world, or Far out! gets a severe slapping,” said Honey.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “This is it? Really? The climax and finale of the great game? Bloody Roswell? It’s a joke! There’s no mystery here, and never was; just a tall tale that got out of control. My family has been monitoring alien visitors to this world for hundreds of years; if anything had actually happened here, I’d know about it.”

“There must be something here worth investigating, or Alexander King wouldn’t have sent us,” said Honey just a bit doubtfully.

“Interesting,” murmured Walker. “We appeared here out of nowhere, right in the middle of a busy shopping centre, but so far no one has batted an eye. In fact, no one is paying us any attention at all, except to walk around us. So either this particular crowd has a lot on its mind, or . . .”

“Or what?” said Honey.

“Damned if I know,” said Walker. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say someone was running an avoidance field . . .”

“No one knew we were coming here,” said Honey.

“Alexander King knew,” I said. “Maybe he’s trying to help.”

“He never helped before,” said Walker. “What could there be in Roswell that the Independent Agent thought we might finally need assistance?”

“Roswell,” I said disgustedly. “When my family finds out I was here, they’ll laugh themselves sick.”

“I take it we all know the basis of the legend?” said Honey. “In 1947, just outside the small town of Roswell, New Mexico, a farmer found strange metallic objects scattered across his field. He couldn’t identify them, so he notified the authorities. On July 8, the local air force base informed the local newspaper that they were the remains of a crashed flying saucer. The local radio station wasted no time in spreading the news to an excited world . . . at which point the air force slammed on the brakes and went into reverse. Swore blind it was just the remains of a crashed weather balloon. End of story.”

“Except,” I said, not to be left out, “thirty years later, people started saying it was all a cover-up. The air force admitted the weather balloon stuff was a lie, but all the explanations they’ve come up with since have proved equally flawed. All of which had probably nothing to do with flying saucers and a hell of a lot more to do with the fact that the 509th Bomb Group was stationed just outside Roswell: the only bombing command authorised to carry nuclear bombs at that time. Hardly surprising they didn’t want the world’s attention anywhere near them. Especially if they were carrying out missions the public weren’t supposed to know about.”

“It is interesting how the legend has continued to change and mutate down the years,” said Walker. “Everything from crashed UFOs with alien bodies scattered all over the mesa, to alien autopsy films, to a really screwed-up First Contact. The last version I heard talked about was the direct downloading of an alien consciousness from a higher dimension. Absurd.”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “Utterly absurd.”

“I saw that alien autopsy film,” said Honey. “Never saw anything so obviously fake-looking in my life.”

“Right,” I said. “Alien autopsies don’t look anything like that.”

Walker and Honey looked at me for a long moment.

“Moving on,” said Walker, turning to Honey. “You’d know, if anyone, what’s going on here, so . . . What’s going on here?”

“Not a damned thing, as far as I know,” said Honey. “Though admittedly, if anything really important was under way here, it would all be discussed on a much higher level than I have access to. I know what I need to know, but I don’t need to know everything. On the other hand . . . you’re right, Eddie. People like us . . . If there was anything to the legend, we’d have heard something . . .”

“So why are we here?” I said. “What mystery are we supposed to investigate?”

“Beats the hell out of me,” said Honey.

“Why don’t you use that frankly rather disturbing computer implant in your head and phone home?” said Walker. “Ask your higher echelons at Langley if anything of interest has happened here recently.”

Honey’s face went blank for a moment, and then she scowled heavily. “The signal’s jammed. Again . . . I can’t get through. Eddie?”

I reached out to my family through my torc . . . and there was nobody there.

“You too?” said Honey. “Cut off again? That shouldn’t be possible.”

“Can’t be a coincidence,” I said. “Someone here doesn’t want us talking with anyone outside Roswell. Someone . . . or something.”

“Maybe something’s due to happen here,” said Honey. “Something important or significant, and somebody doesn’t want to risk us calling in reinforcements.”

“The nearest Drood field agent is in Texas,” I said. “Do your people have anyone useful any closer than that?”

“Not that I know of. Besides, this would be FBI business, and the Company has never got on well with the Bureau.”

“Why don’t you try Peter’s mobile phone?” Walker said reasonably. “See if it’s just the two of you who’ve been jammed, or whether it’s more general.”

I tried Peter’s phone. Couldn’t get a signal. We walked down the street till we found a public pay phone and tried that. Nothing but dead air; not even a hiss of static. I put the phone back, and we looked at one another.

“I would be willing to wager good money that the whole town is like this,” said Walker. “Someone (or something; yes, Eddie) has gone to great lengths to isolate Roswell from the outside world. So why hasn’t anyone else here noticed? Why has no one raised a fuss?”

“Look around you,” said Honey. “Roswell is a tourist town. Most of these people are tourists. Probably haven’t a clue anything unusual is going on.”

“And the local people?” said Walker.

“That’s what makes this interesting,” I said. “They might be keeping quiet so as not to scare off the tourists, or . . . Actually, I don’t have an or. Something’s definitely happening here, and we need to investigate.”

“I don’t know . . .” Honey looked around her, her face cold and thoughtful. “What if all of this . . . is just a distraction? The Independent Agent sent us here to solve the mystery of Roswell. We go back without that specific information, we could forfeit the prize. And I have come too far, and been through too much, to miss out on that now.”

“She has a point,” Walker said to me reluctantly. “We’re here for a specific purpose, and nothing can be allowed to interfere with that. Alexander King’s hoarded secrets are of vital importance to the world. They must not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands.”

“He chose the time and place of our arrival,” I said. “So what’s happening here, or about to happen, must be significant.” And then I stopped dead as I suddenly made a connection. “They’re all significant! All five locations we’ve been to! Remember the photos and trophies we saw back at Place Gloria? All scenes of the Independent Agent’s most important cases? We’ve been following in his footprints all along! He’s been here before us!”

Honey and Walker both nodded quickly. “So,” said Walker, “are we reliving his past triumphs? Or making up for his greatest failures? Is that the point of the game? That only the agent who could get to the truth where he failed would be worthy to replace him and have access to his treasure?”

“Let’s take a look around,” said Honey. “Get the lay of the land. See what’s really going on here.”

“Okay,” I said. “Hey! Let’s follow that gaudily painted minivan with the four kids and the oversized dog. They look like they’d know a mystery when they saw it.”

“You really do get on my tits sometimes, Eddie,” said Honey.

Roswell, not surprisingly, was something of a tourist trap. Far too many of the shops and stores we passed were dedicated to off loading overpriced UFO junk on gullible tourists, all of it linked to one or the other of the many prevailing Roswell myths. And the happy families swarming through the packed streets ate it all up with spoons. One man sold three-foot-tall balloons shaped like cartoonish Gray aliens. A man and a woman in Reptiloid costumes handed out leaflets headed Impeach David Icke! Plugging their new book, apparently. A towering statue of a Gray alien bestowed a fatuous smile on passersby and blessed them with a peace sign. (Boy, had they got that one wrong. I wouldn’t turn my back on a Gray unless I had my armour on.) Someone had graffitied the base of the statue, ET was a fink!

A lot of the tourists were wearing Star Trek costumes, original and Next Generation. I couldn’t help but feel there should be a strict weight limit enforced on people who wear skintight costumes. Lycra isn’t meant to stretch that far.

We passed by an entire restaurant in the shape of a flying saucer. Outside the front door, a full-sized replica of Robby the Robot recited the day’s specials in his roboty voice. A DVD shop had a poster in its window proudly proclaiming the imminent arrival of a new big-budget remake of The Starlost, directed by Harlan Ellison and starring Laurence Fishburne and Paris Hilton. Even more distressing, many stores were given over to all that crystal-channelling angel-worshipping flower-aromatherapy New Age bullshit, all of it priced through the ceiling. I sometimes feel people should be required to sit a mandatory IQ test before they’re allowed into places like that.

I vented some of this to Walker, who just nodded and said, Angels! in a rather grim tone of voice. I didn’t press him. I didn’t think I wanted to know.

We finally stopped beneath a large sign from the Roswell Chamber of Commerce bearing the invitation HEY, SPACE PEOPLE! COME ON DOWN AND BE FRIENDLY! YOU’RE SURE OF A WELCOME HERE! Stephen Spielberg’s got a lot to answer for. Never met an alien yet that was prepared to share the secrets of the universe with us. Mostly they just see our world as prime real estate, once they’ve got rid of the inconvenient species currently inhabiting it. And don’t even get me started on the ones who come here on sex trade cruises.

A television crew was doing a vox populi, stopping passersby and asking them fatuous questions for the local news channel. The interviewer’s hair had been teased and sprayed to within an inch of its life, and her teeth were blindingly bright. It was the usual fluff, with lots of bad puns and jokes about illegal aliens. I did consider asking them if they’d seen or heard anything unusual, but none of them looked like they’d know a real news story if they fell over it.

The three of us gave the camera crew a wide berth and wandered on through the town. People had finally started to notice us but in a weird kind of way. They’d glance at us, and then look away, and then stare openly when they thought we weren’t looking, as though they thought they recognised us but couldn’t quite place us. They didn’t seem at all startled or disturbed . . . just intrigued. Honey started to get a bit irritated.

“I am a CIA agent!” she said huffily in a voice that was perhaps just a little too loud and carrying. “I am not supposed to be noticed!”

“Maybe they think you’re a supermodel,” Walker said generously.

“It’s the Elven Lands,” I explained. “Some of their glamour rubbed off on us. Don’t worry; it won’t last long.”

“I’ve always wanted to be glamorous,” said Walker just a bit wistfully.

“I don’t like being so . . . visible,” muttered Honey.

“Relax,” I said. “They’re not seeing us, just the glamour. Probably think we’re film stars, or local celebrities, or someone they’ve seen on a reality show. If anyone comes up and asks for an autograph, just glare haughtily at them and brush them aside, and they’ll go away quite happy.”

“Why did you steal Peter’s phone?” Walker said abruptly.

I’d been considering that myself. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “It was an impulse, done as soon as thought. I can’t help wondering if some outside influence nudged my thoughts for good or mischief. Can’t say I regret it, though. I don’t trust Peter. Too quiet, too watchful . . . always hanging back and doing his best never to get directly involved. And he does seem to know rather more about our weird world than someone of his supposed background should know.”

“You think he’s a ringer,” said Honey. “Planted on us to report back to his grandfather. The spy within.”

“Let’s just say . . . I wasn’t comfortable with Peter having the only hard evidence of all we’ve discovered,” I said.

“And now he’s gone,” said Walker, looking at me thoughtfully. “I always knew you Droods could be ruthless on occasion.”

“Have you checked the phone’s camera files?” said Honey. “Just to make sure it really does hold the proof Peter said it did?”

“Not yet,” I said. “And I have to wonder . . . whether he’d gathered any evidence of our trip to the Sundered Lands. I’m not even sure our technology would work in a place like that.”

“The boat worked,” said Honey.

“True.” I looked at Honey, and then at Walker. “Did either of you see Peter use his camera in the Fae Court?”

“Can’t say I did,” said Honey. “But we were all somewhat preoccupied at the time.”

“So we might not have any evidence of the elves’ involvement with the USS Eldridge?” said Walker.

I weighed the phone in my hand. “Not necessarily. And . . . I’m reluctant to try and access any files on this without checking it over thoroughly first. Peter was the Independent Agent’s grandson. No knowing what kind of protections and booby traps he built in to protect his data.”

“We could always go back to the Elven Lands and ask them to pose for photos,” said Honey.

“Let’s not,” said Walker. “I’m more concerned about what Alexander King might say if we don’t have any hard evidence to back up our stories.”

“What’s this we stuff, paleface?” said Honey. “There can be only one, remember? The CIA didn’t send me on this mission to share the spoils with anyone else.”

“We started out with six, and now we are three,” I said. “Wouldn’t take a lot now to whittle us down to one. Treachery and backstabbing have always been a recognised part of the spy’s trade.”

“Sometimes literally,” said Honey. “Where were you, Eddie, when Katt and Blue died? Or when my submersible was sabotaged and I nearly died?”

“I saved your life,” I said.

“Good misdirection,” said Honey. “How better to make me trust you?”

“We could still be four,” said Walker. “Peter might still turn up.”

“Perhaps,” said Honey. She looked at me for a long moment. “Keep a close watch on that phone, Eddie. I’d hate for it to go . . . missing.”

“Right,” said Walker. “A tourist trap like this is bound to be lousy with pickpockets.”

Honey sniffed loudly. “If I find someone else’s hand in my pockets, I’ll tie their fingers in a knot.”

I smiled, perhaps a little complacently. “No one steals from a Drood and lives to boast of it.”

“The Blue Fairy stole a torc from you,” said Walker. “Is that why you killed him?”

I turned to face him, slowly and deliberately, but to his credit, he didn’t flinch.

“Is that an accusation?”

“Not yet,” said Walker.

“You’re sure someone killed them?” said Honey. “No way it could have been just . . . chance?”

“I don’t believe in chance,” said Walker. “Not where professionals like us are concerned. And especially considering someone tried to kill me back in Tunguska.”

“So you say,” I said.

“Well, quite,” said Walker.

“We have business to attend to,” Honey said firmly. “Starting with working out just what that business is. Everything else can wait.”

“Yes,” I said. “It can wait.”

“For now,” said Walker.

“Men . . .” said Honey. “Why don’t you just get them out and wave them at each other?”

We walked on through the town, taking in the sights, hoping for a glimpse of something significant. The sun blazed fiercely in a clear blue sky, not a hint of a cloud in sight, and not a whisper of a breeze to take the edge off the increasingly uncomfortable hot dry air. And still, tourists everywhere: large, red-faced, happy souls in colourful outfits with not a care in the world . . . or any sense of danger, apparently.

“I may be wrong about this,” Walker said quietly, “but I rather think we’re being followed.”

We stopped, looked into a shop window full of cute little stuffed aliens, and then casually turned and looked about us, as though wondering where to go next. I let my gaze drift easily back and forth, but with so many people milling about it was hard to spot anything unusual.

“I don’t see anyone,” I said finally. “And I really am pretty good at identifying tails.”

“I run the Nightside,” said Walker. “You don’t last long in the Nightside without developing especially good survival instincts. There’s someone out there, and they’ve been following us for at least five, maybe ten minutes.”

“I don’t see anyone,” said Honey. “But I do feel . . . something.”

We walked back the way we’d come, darting in and out of shops, using front and back entrances, doubling back and forth and using shop windows as mirrors . . . All the usual tactics for surprising a tail into betraying himself. And even after all that, not a glimpse of anyone anywhere doing anything they shouldn’t. But now I was definitely getting that prickly feeling at the back of my neck of being watched by unseen eyes. Someone was out there, shadowing our every move; someone really good at what they were doing.

A professional, like us.

“Who knows we’re here?” Honey said finally. “Who knows who we are? Hell, even we didn’t know we were coming here till we were here!”

“Alexander King knew,” I said. “He could have arranged for word to get out. And we have been making waves . . . We were bound to attract attention sooner or later from any number of groups or organisations or even certain powerful individuals. Damn, this is creepy. I spy on people; I don’t get spied on.”

“Use the Sight,” said Walker.

“No,” I said immediately. “If he’s as good as I think he is, and he must be really bloody good if he can hide himself from me, he’ll detect it the moment I raise my Sight. And then he’ll know for sure he’s been spotted.”

“He must know that now, the way we’ve been acting,” said Honey.

“No . . .” I said. “He may suspect, but he doesn’t know. And as long as he’s still not sure, we’ve got the upper hand.”

“Perhaps,” said Walker. “Whoever they are, they must represent whoever it is that’s responsible for whatever’s happening here . . . or what’s scheduled to happen. God, I hate sentences like that. But consider this: if you were setting up a major operation in a small town and all of a sudden just happened to notice a Drood, a CIA agent, and the man who runs the Nightside strolling casually around taking an interest in things . . . You’d want to know more about them, wouldn’t you?”

“Let him watch,” I said. “Let him follow. He can’t do anything without revealing himself, and if he’s stupid enough to do that, I will then quite happily bounce the bugger off the nearest wall and ask him pointed questions.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” said Honey.

Our attention was attracted by a small group of tourists gathered in front of a shop window. They seemed more than usually excited. We strolled over to join them and found they were watching a news programme on a television set in the window. The local news anchor, a small man in a large suit with a deep voice and an obvious toupee, was getting quite excited over the story that was just coming in through his teleprompter.

“We’ve all heard about cattle mutilations,” he said, his voice only slightly muffled by the shop window. “Cattle found dead of no obvious cause, with bits missing and numerous incisions made with almost surgical skill. All kinds of people (and others) have been blamed for these: aliens, mad scientists, government agencies backed up by their ubiquitous black helicopters . . . even Devil worshippers and extreme vegetarians. But events right here at Roswell have now taken a new and disturbing turn.”

I looked at Honey. “Black helicopters?”

“Nothing to do with me,” she said. “Cattle mutilations are just so beneath us. We’d never be involved in anything that messy and that obvious.”

She broke off as several people in the crowd shushed her, and we all turned our attention back to the news anchor.

“Early this morning, seven dead and mutilated cattle were discovered on the ranch of well-known local businessman Jim Thomerson, some twenty miles outside of Roswell,” he said. “In each case, major organs were missing, removed from the carcasses with professional skill. Strange burn marks were noted on the ground near the dead cattle . . . but no other signs to show how the attackers came and went, according to local law enforcement officials. Disturbing enough, you might think, but the breaking news is that Jim Thomerson himself has been found dead and mutilated not far from his cattle. His body has been brought into town, to the new morgue, for forensic examination.”

The news anchor forced a smile for the camera. “Have our little Gray friends finally gone too far? We hope to be able to show you actual photos from the crime scene later this evening. We must warn you that these photos are likely to be of a graphic nature; viewer discretion is advised.”

“Translation: everyone gather around the set; this is going to be good!” said Honey. “Yes, I know; shush.”

And then the television screen went blank. The four other television sets in the window that had been showing other channels with the sound turned down also went dead. The crowd stirred nervously, broke up into couples and families, and drifted away, chattering animatedly. Walker and Honey and I looked at each other.

“This . . . was weird,” said Honey. “All the local stations going off the air at the same time? If it was just a technical thing, the screens would be showing the usual variations on Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible, accompanied by lots of Be happy, don’t worry music. No . . . those broadcasts are being jammed, just like ours. Which, if nothing else, must take a hell of a lot of power. Someone doesn’t want this news getting out of Roswell.”

“So it’s not just our comms that have been targeted,” I said. “The whole town’s been cut off from the outside world. Isolated . . . So that whatever’s going to happen, or maybe even already started . . . no one from outside will know till it’s all over, and it’s too late to do anything.”

“But even so, cattle mutilations?” said Walker. “They’re just rural myths, aren’t they?”

“Not when it starts happening to people,” I said. “I think we have to assume this is the mystery we were sent here to investigate.”

“King knew in advance this was going to happen?” said Walker.

“Who better?” said Honey. “The man was and is seriously connected.”

“That farmer’s body should have got here by now,” said Walker. “I think it behooves us to visit this new morgue and take a look for ourselves.”

“I love it when you use words like behoove,” I said. “Oh, please, Walker; teach me to talk proper like you, so I can sound like a real agent.”

“Shut up, Eddie,” said Walker.

“We can go take a look,” said Honey. “And then you can make the poor guy sit up on his slab and tell us what happened. Right, Walker?”

“It was just the one time!” said Walker. “I do wish everyone would stop going on about it!”

“Any idea where the local morgue might be?” I said. “It’s not the kind of thing you can just go up and ask complete strangers. They tend to look at you funny.”

“Maybe we should look for someone in local law enforcement,” said Walker.

“And just maybe you two should try living in the twenty-first century with the rest of us,” Honey said scathingly. “We passed a cybercafé just a few blocks back.”

It didn’t take long to log in on the town site, call up a map, and locate the new morgue. It wasn’t that far from where we were. Walker and I carefully didn’t look at each other. Honey looked decidedly smug as she led us out of the cybercafé.

“What’s the matter, Walker? Don’t you have computers in the Nightside?”

“Of course,” he said stiffly. “Some of my best friends are artificial.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” said Honey.

The new morgue was a calm and civilised structure, very modern and stylish and not at all threatening. Honey bluffed her way in with a fake Homeland Security ID that she just happened to have about her person while Walker and I did our best to look properly mean and hard and American. No one gave us any trouble; the locals were only too happy to have someone experienced on hand to come in and take over. A local deputy carrying too much weight and topped off with a hat far too small for his head led us through the outer offices to the morgue at the back of the building. People watched us pass with wide eyes and spooked, scared expressions. It was one thing to make your living exploiting alien visitations, and quite another to have them turn up in your backyard with chain saws and scalpels, intent on playing doctor. The deputy looked more openly nervous the closer he got to the morgue. He was sweating profusely despite the arctic air-conditioning and jumped at every sudden sound.

“All communications systems are down,” he said abruptly. “Can’t get a word in or out. You folks know anything about that?”

“Sorry,” said Honey in her best brisk and professional voice. “Information only on a need-to-know basis. You know how it is.”

“Oh, sure, sure.” The deputy actually relaxed a little in the presence of such obvious authority and competence. “Good to have someone here who knows what they’re doing. We’re mostly part-timers. Sheriff’s off sick with his allergies, and Doc Stern’s busy with a car cash on the other side of town. This is all . . . a hell of sight more than I signed on for.” He looked at Honey sharply. “Did your people know this was going to happen? Is that why you’re here?”

“It’s our job to know about things like this,” said Honey. “Has there been any panic in the town? Any rush to get out of Roswell?”

“Well, no,” said the deputy, frowning heavily. “Everyone here was expecting the tourists to get in their cars and head for the hills once the news got out, with the townsfolk right behind them, but . . . everyone’s being real calm about it. Doesn’t make a blind bit of sense . . . I’d leave, if I had anyone halfway competent to leave in charge, but . . . it just doesn’t seem right to go off and leave old Jim Thomerson lying there in the morgue. Not . . . respectful. Here; this is it.”

He showed us a large reinforced steel door with a keypad lock. More security than I’d been expecting. We all waited impatiently while the deputy keyed in the six-digit number with great concentration.

“I don’t normally get back here much,” he said. “Only the sheriff and the doc ever come in here. Doc’ll be back as soon as he can. You want me to stick around . . . ?”

“No,” said Honey. “Go back to your post, Deputy. We’ll handle it from here. And, Deputy: no one comes back here till we’re done, and no one says anything to anyone. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the deputy. He hurried away, not looking back.

“Potentially bright young fellow, I thought,” said Walker.

We went into the morgue, shutting the door behind us. It was a lot bigger than I expected, with bright lights and immaculate gleaming walls.

“This . . . is not normal, for a small town,” said Honey. “Maybe . . . ten times larger than it should be. This is more the kind of thing you’d expect to find in a major city. Makes me wonder if they might have had to contend with . . . unusual situations before.”

“This was custom-made,” said Walker. “By someone expecting trouble.”

“Maybe something did happen here back in the day, “ said Honey.

“And no one told you,” said Walker. “Shame on them.”

“Never mind that,” I said. “Look at that! They brought one of the bloody cows in here!”

Two mortuary slabs had been pushed together on the far side of the room, and a cow was lying across them on its side. The four legs stuck stiffly out over the edge of the slab. We all gathered around the carcass. The cow had been sliced open the whole length of its underside, from throat to udder. The sides of the belly had been pulled out and pinned back to reveal that the whole interior had been . . . rummaged through. Some organs were missing, others had been cut open and had pieces removed, still others had been moved around, rearranged. Large holes had been drilled through the hide and the head to no obvious purpose. Both eyes were gone, and all the top teeth had been neatly extracted. The tongue had been sliced in half lengthwise, and then left in place. One stiff leg had been dissected to show the nerves, another to show the muscles.

“Interesting,” said Walker, leaning in close for a better look.

“Extremely,” said Honey, leaning right in there with him.

“Gross,” I said, staying well back. “I want to know how they got that thing in here through that little door.”

We all looked back at the distinctly human-scaled door, shrugged pretty much in unison, and turned our attention back to the cow.

“The work looks professional enough,” said Walker. “Definitely used scalpels rather than knives. And since there’s no damage from local predators, it was done not long ago. Some burn marks on the internal tissues. Laser drill, perhaps? But none of this work makes any sense . . . It’s not just a dissection. I feel sure there was a definite end in mind, but I’m damned if can make out what . . .”

“They practically strip-mined the poor creature,” I said. “But why take some organs and just cut up others? Why open the beast up just to move things around?”

“Presumably they were curious,” said Walker. “Perhaps . . . they’d never seen a cow before.”

“What?” said Honey. “They came all the way here with their snazzy new stardrive but couldn’t tap into our computers to get the information they needed?”

“Maybe they just like to get their hands dirty,” said Walker. “Assuming they have hands, of course.”

“Seems more to me as if they were looking for something,” I said. “And if they didn’t find it in the cow, maybe that’s why they moved on to the poor bastard lying on that slab over there.”

We all moved over to look at the middle-aged man lying naked and cut open on the next mortuary slab: Jim Thomerson, farmer and well-known local businessman, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and paid for his mistake with blood and horror. We leaned in for a closer look at the terrible things that had been done to him. His injuries were similar to the cow’s but so much more disturbing for having been done to a man. Organs missing, limbs dissected, his insides rearranged . . . His empty eye sockets stared accusingly up at us.

“Judging by the defensive wounds on his hands and arms, he was alive when they started,” said Honey. “Though hopefully not for long.”

“Why now?” said Walker. “Why start doing cattle mutilations to people now? What’s changed?”

“Obvious answer,” I said. “These are new aliens. A species newly come to Earth, who don’t know the rules. I’m going to have to teach them a hard lesson: that you don’t come waltzing in here unless you’ve cleared it with the Droods first and learned the bloody rules. Someone’s going to pay for this.”

“But even so,” said Walker, “why take some organs but just—”

“I don’t know!” I said. Walker and Honey looked at me, and I lowered my voice. “I don’t know. They’re aliens. They don’t think like us. My family has been dealing with aliens for centuries, and we still don’t have a translation device that works worth a damn. Sometimes we don’t even have basic concepts in common.”

“What do you do, if you can’t communicate with a species?” said Walker. “If you can’t get it to follow your rules?”

“We kill them,” I said. “And we keep on killing them till they stop coming. What do you do in the Nightside?”

“Pretty much the same,” said Walker.

“I’ve had some experience with aliens,” said Honey just a bit defensively. “Not really my department, but all hands to the pump when the river’s rising.”

“What?” said Walker.

“It was an emergency!” said Honey. “And I was the only experienced agent on the spot. I was in the Arctic, searching through Area 52 for something important that had been shipped there by error (and you’d be surprised how often that happens), when something got loose from the holding cells. I swear, I’ve never heard alarms like it. I had to dress up in a total environment suit and go out on the ice to hunt it. Fortunately, it didn’t get far. Stupid thing made the mistake of trying to go one on one with a polar bear. Took us ages to find all the bits. And we had to stomach-pump the bear.”

“Aliens aren’t always the brightest buttons in the box,” I agreed. “Just because they’re smart enough to build better toys than us doesn’t mean they’ve got any more common sense. Or self-control. Going back a few years, something from Out There crash-landed right in the middle of a London park, and then disappeared down into the sewers. I was called in and was all ready to go down and pull the bloody thing out when the word came down from above to leave it be. Apparently our outer space beastie was eating the sewage. Along with all the vermin down there in the tunnels with it. So naturally our first thought was Result! And we left it alone, to get on with it.

“About six months later I was called back. The alien had eaten all the sewage, all the local underground wildlife, and half a dozen people sent in to investigate the situation. And it was still hungry. It started sending extensions of its nasty protoplasmic self up through the manholes to attack whatever was in the street, and up through the pipes and plumbing into people’s homes. People started disappearing, and given the state of their sinks and toilets I think I know how, though I rather wish I didn’t. Had a hell of a job keeping that one out of the news. In the end, half a dozen of us entered the sewers at different points and went after the alien with molecular flame throwers. Burned our way through the whole underground tunnel system, end to end, until there was nothing left to burn. We still run chemical and DNA checks at regular intervals, just in case.

“Took me weeks to get rid of the smell.”

Honey and I then looked at Walker, who shrugged easily. “The Nightside is no stranger to close encounters. Aliens have come slipping in through our various Timeslips from the past, the future, and any number of alternate dimensions. We had some Martians turn up last year on huge metal tripods, complete with heat rays, metal claws, and poisonous black smoke. Nasty, squidgy things that fed on human blood, fresh from conquering some other Earth and keen for new lands to expand into. The fools. We blew their metal legs out from under them, dragged them out of their control pods, and ate them.”

“You ate the Martians?” said Honey, wrinkling her perfect nose.

“Delicious,” said Walker. “Oh, we killed them first, of course. But for a while then, fresh Martian delicacies were all the rage in all the very best restaurants in the Nightside. Some of us have been hoping rather wistfully that the Timeslip to that particular Earth will open up again before stocks run out.”

“I don’t know why I talk to you,” said Honey. “You always say the most disturbing things.”

Walker smiled. “It’s the Nightside.”

“Hold everything,” I said. “I think I’ve just made another connection. The aliens moved from dissecting cattle to working on people . . . at exactly the same time as the town’s communications went down. I have an awful feeling these new aliens are planning something very nasty . . . Human mutilations on a grand scale. To a whole town full of people . . .”

“That’s a hell of a jump, Eddie, from one dead cow and one dead farmer,” said Honey.

“But what if I’m right?” I said. “Work as a Drood field agent long enough, you get a feel for this sort of thing.”

“You’re right, Eddie,” said Walker. “Only alien technology could black out a whole town’s communications so easily, never mind Honey’s and yours. But what can we do? We can’t alert everyone in town with the communications down, and even if we could spread the word . . . what good would it do them?”

“They could get the hell out of here!” said Honey. “And so could we. Put enough space between us and the town and our comm systems should come back on line again, and we could get some reinforcements in here.”

“Leave?” I said. “Run away and abandon the people of Roswell to their fate? To be cut open while they’re still alive, like that poor bastard on the slab? By the time we got back here, everyone in this town could be dead!”

“And what if you’re wrong?” said Honey, sticking her face right into mine. “Imagine the mass panic once word got out! How many would get trampled underfoot or killed in car crashes? You could end up with hundreds dead and injured, all over a . . . a conjecture!”

“I’m not wrong!” I said. “And I won’t abandon these people! That’s not what Droods do!”

“Have you noticed it’s getting darker in here?” said Walker.

Honey and I broke off from glaring at each other and looked around. The overhead strip lighting was blazing as fiercely as ever, but a dark and heavy gloom was seeping in from all sides, soaking up the light. A blue tinge invested all the other colours in the morgue, giving everything a strange and unhealthy look. I felt heavy, drained, with even my thoughts moving more slowly than normal. My torc burned coldly around my neck, trying to warn me of something.

And then both the cow’s carcass and the farmer’s body burst into flames: fierce blue-tinged flames that burned with such intensity that all three of us were driven back, holding up our arms to shield our faces from the intolerable heat. The flames snapped off as abruptly as they’d begun, and conditions in the morgue returned to normal. The slabs were completely empty with just a few ashes floating on the air above them.

“Damn,” said Honey. “Someone really didn’t want anything left behind.”

“Which would seem to imply that someone was, and probably still is, looking in on us,” said Walker. “Three unexpected new factors endangering their planned experiment.”

“So this was a warning to us not to get involved,” said Honey.

I had to grin. “They don’t know us very well, do they?”

And then all our heads snapped around as we heard steady quiet footsteps in the corridor outside the morgue. They drew steadily closer, sounding louder and heavier all the while, until finally they stopped right outside the closed morgue door. We all stood very still, listening. The silence stretched on and on. Until finally Honey lunged for the door, with Walker and me right behind her. She hauled the door open and we spilled out into the corridor . . . but there was nobody there. The corridor stretched away before us, still and silent and completely empty.

“You heard it, didn’t you?” said Honey. “He was right outside the door!”

“I heard it,” I said.

“Told you we were being followed,” said Walker.

“Those were human footsteps,” said Honey. “Nothing alien about them. So where did he go?”

“I don’t see any other exits,” said Walker.

“Could someone in Roswell know what’s going to happen?” said Honey. “Some human Judas goat, perhaps, betraying his fellow humans for thirty pieces of technology?”

“There are other organisations who might have an interest in what’s happening here,” said Walker. “Black Air, Vril Power, the Zarathustra Protocols . . . Any one of them could have chanced across evidence of what’s due to happen here and struck a deal . . .”

“No,” I said flatly. “There’s no organisation on this planet better informed than the Droods when it comes to aliens. If anyone had known, it would have been my family, and I would have been told.”

“Really?” said Honey. “The Matriarch tells you everything, does she?”

“Everything that matters,” I said.

“Yes, well,” said Honey. “You would think that, wouldn’t you?”

“Children, children,” murmured Walker. “We still have to decide what we’re going to do, while there’s still time.”

“Less time than you think,” I said, my torc burning cold as ice. “Brace yourself, people. Something’s coming . . .”

The corridor before us changed, altered, stretched, its far end receding into the distance. The kind of corridor you could travel all your days and never reach the end. The kind of corridor you run through endlessly in the kind of dreams you wake from in a cold sweat. A strange glow replaced the normal corridor light, intense and overpowering, a light not designed for the tolerances of the human eye. Even the air was different, tasting foul and furry in my mouth, and so thin I was half suffocating. A different kind of air, for a different kind of being. Static tingled painfully on my bare flesh, and I could hear . . . something. Something scrabbling at the outsides of the corridor walls, trying to get in.

“I recognise this,” said Honey. Her voice was harsh and strained and strangely far away. “I know this, from abduction scenarios. An intrusion of alien elements into our world. The aliens aren’t waiting for us to track them down . . . They’re coming to us.”

“Let them come,” I said, and armoured up. Immediately I felt much better, more human, more myself. “Stay close to me,” I said to Walker and Honey through my featureless face mask. “Proximity to my armour should help ground and protect you, insulate you from the effects of this alien-created environment.”

Their faces cleared quickly as they moved in close, and they both stood up straight, strength and resolve rushing back into their features.

“I’m even breathing easier now I’m close to you,” said Honey. “How does that work?”

“Do you tell me all your secrets?” I said to hide the fact I wasn’t entirely sure myself. “Just stick close and get ready to beat the crap out of anything that isn’t us.”

“Good plan,” murmured Walker.

“No one takes a Drood anywhere against his will,” I said. “Or his companions. Walker, why are you standing behind me?”

“Because I’m not stupid,” said Walker.

“I don’t hide behind people,” Honey said haughtily.

“Bet you I live longer,” said Walker.

Wild energies crackled up and down the impossibly long corridor, seething and howling. They jumped from wall to wall, fast as laser beams, snapping on and off, leaving pale green trails of ionisation hanging on the air. Malevolent forces surged forward to attack my armour. I stood my ground, Honey clinging to my golden arm, Walker right behind me. The energies raged furiously all around us, discharging on the air with blinding flares and flashes, but still stopped dead, balked, unable to touch or even approach my armour.

As though they were afraid of it.

Lightnings rose and fell, pressing in from this side and that, searching for some weak spot in my armour that would let them in . . . but I stood firm, and suddenly the energies fell away, retreating back down the corridor, fading like the memory of a bad dream. I could hear Honey’s and Walker’s harsh breathing in the sudden silence. I warned them quietly against moving away from me. This wasn’t over. I could feel it.

And then the alien appeared. No door opening in space, no teleport effects; it was just there, right in front of us, no more than ten feet away. Its appearance was so sudden that Walker and Honey actually jumped a little, and if I hadn’t been wearing my armour I think I might have too.

“That . . . is a really ugly-looking thing,” I said.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Honey. “Walker? You ever seen anything like that?”

“Thankfully, no. Eddie?”

“Nothing even remotely like that,” I said. “It is quite definitely not one of the fifty-three alien species currently covered by the Drood Pacts and Treaties.”

“Fifty-three?” said Honey. “There are fifty-three different kinds of alien currently wandering around our world? When were you planning on telling the rest of us this?”

“Fifty-three that we know of,” I said. “The Droods don’t know everything, though never tell anyone I said that. And . . . there are always a few species coming and going we don’t have any kind of agreement with or control over. It’s a big universe, and life has taken some really strange forms Out There.”

“Fifty-three . . .” said Honey.

“From other worlds, other Earths, higher and lower dimensions,” I said. “They add up. Droods protect humanity from all outside threats.”

“All right; I’ll put you up for a raise,” said Honey. “Now what is that?”

“Haven’t a clue,” I said.

We studied the alien as it presumably studied us. It looked like a pile of snakes crushed together or lengths of rubber tubing half melted into each other. Each separate length twisted and turned, seething and knotting together, sliding up and around and over, endlessly moving, never still for a moment. The pile was taller than a man and twice as wide, and though its extremities were constantly moving and changing, the bulk and mass stayed the same. Lengths of it melted and merged into each other, while new extensions constantly erupted from the central region. It was the colour of an oil slick on polluted water, with flashes of deep red and purple underneath, and it smelled really bad. Like something dead that had been left in the hot sun for too long. The alien’s basic lack of certainty was unsettling and painful to the human eye and the human mind. We were never meant to cope with things like this. We’re not ready.

Shapes began to form on the end of long writhing tentacles. Things that might have been sensory apparatus . . . or even organic weapons. And then a dripping bulge rose up through the top of the squirming pile and sprouted half a dozen human eyeballs. A pale pink cone formed beneath the eyes, wet and quivering as it dilated.

“Communication,” said the alien through the cone in a high, thin voice like metal scraping on metal. “Speak. Identify.”

And then it waited for an answer.

“I am a Drood,” I said carefully. “I have authority to speak to other species. To make binding agreements. Talk to me. Explain what you’re doing here. What you’re planning. Or steps will be taken to kick your nasty species right off this planet.”

“Drood,” said the alien. “Name. Function. Not known to us.”

“Maybe I should try,” said Honey.

“Hush,” I said.

“You are unreachable,” said the alien. “Explain.”

“Why did you injure, kill, and . . . examine the human?” I said. “For what purpose? Explain.”

“Necessary,” said the alien. “Don’t know Drood. Don’t recognise Drood authority. Don’t recognise any authority. We are. We exist. We go where we must, to do what we must. We dominate our environment. All environments. Necessary, for survival. For survival of all things.”

“Is it saying what I think it’s saying?” murmured Walker.

“Damned if I know,” I said. “At least it looks like we have basic concepts in common.” I addressed the alien again. “What brought you to this particular world? What interests you in our species? Explain.”

“Potential,” said the alien. “Experiment. Learn. Apply.”

“Experiment?” I said. “Why the animal, and then the human? Explain.”

“Learned all we could from the animal,” said the alien. “Limited. Useless for our purposes. Humans are more interesting. More potential. This will be our first experiment on your kind. On this town. This Roswell. Do not be alarmed. We are here to help you. This is all for your own good. Necessary. See.”

A screen appeared, floating on the air before us. And on that screen the alien showed us what it and its kind were going to do. What would happen to the people of Roswell.

Scenes from a small town, undergoing blood and horror.

People ran screaming through the streets, but it didn’t save them. They ran and they hid, and some of them even fought back, and none of it did any good. They were operated on, cut open, violated, and explored by invisible scalpels in invisible hands. Unseen forces, unknowable and unstoppable, tore the people apart.

Cuts just appeared in human flesh, blood spraying on the empty air. The cuts widened, and invisible hands plunged inside living bodies to play with what they found there. Organs fell out of growing holes, hands fell from wrists, fingers from hands. Some bodies just fell apart, cut into slices. Men and women exploded, ragged parts floating on the air to be examined by unseen eyes. Discarded offal filled the streets, and blood overflowed in the gutters.

The screaming was the worst part. Men, women, and children reduced to terrified, helpless animals . . . screaming for help that never came.

I saw families running down the streets, pursued by horror. One man had his legs cut out from under him, just below the knee, and he tried to keep on going on bloody stumps. Until something opened up his head from behind and pulled out his brains in long pink and gray streamers. A woman clung desperately to an open door as something unseen pulled doggedly at one outstretched leg. She howled like a maddened beast as her ribs were pulled out one by one, examined briefly, and then tossed aside into the blood-soaked street. I saw children . . .

I saw a pile of lungs assemble, one by one, next to a pile of hearts, some still feebly beating. A man sat alone, crying bloody tears from empty eye sockets. A woman screamed her mind away over what was left of her daughter. I saw whole families reduced to their component parts by unseen surgical instruments . . . Cold clinical procedures that went on and on until the screaming finally stopped because there was no one left alive to protest.

Everyone in the town of Roswell was dead. Butchered. Just because.

The floating screen disappeared, taking its views of Hell on Earth with it. I was so angry I was shaking inside my armour. My hands clenched and unclenched helplessly. Honey clung to my arm, making small shocked noises. Walker had come forward to stand beside me. His eyes were full of a cold, dangerous rage. I stared at the alien before me. I’d never hated anything so much in all my life.

“Why?” I said finally.

“You wouldn’t understand,” said the alien. “You can’t. You’re only human. It limits you. This is necessary. You claim authority in this place, Drood; you threaten the success of the experiment. Leave. All of you. Remove yourselves from Roswell before we begin in six hours. Tell everyone. First there is a town, then there is a city, then there is a world. We will do more as we learn more. We will remake you and your world, and when we are done you will thank us for it.”

I charged forward, my golden fists studded with heavy spikes, reaching for the alien. It disappeared, gone in a moment, and the corridor returned to normal. No more strange lights, no energies, no distortions of space. I stumbled to a halt and cried out in wordless rage. I spun around and punched the nearest wall with my golden fist, hitting it because I had to hit something or go insane. I hit the wall again and again, the plaster cracking and the brick crumbling. And then I made myself stop, reining in the anger and forcing it down, storing it for later. I armoured down and stood before the wrecked and ruined wall, breathing harshly. Walker and Honey approached me cautiously. Honey touched my face with her hand, wiping away my tears. I hadn’t even realised I was crying.

“We have to warn the local authorities,” said Walker.

“They wouldn’t listen,” I said. My throat hurt, my voice a harsh rasp. I’d been yelling at the alien all the way through its presentation, but I hadn’t realised. “Would you believe something like this, without proof? And even if we could make them believe, what good would it do? I don’t think the aliens would let them leave, and no one here has anything that could defend them against unseen forces and invisible scalpels. No; it’s down to us. We stand between the townspeople and the aliens. We’re all there is.”

“But what about the game?” said Honey. “What about Alexander King’s prize?”

I looked at her, and she met my gaze steadily.

“How can you think about that at a time like this?” said Walker. “After everything we’ve just seen!”

“It’s my job to stay calm and focused and to concentrate on the bigger picture, on what really matters,” said Honey, her voice perfectly reasonable. “What we saw, what the aliens are going to do . . . It’s not what we’re here for. I have a duty not just to the people of one small town, but to all the people. You heard that thing: after Roswell the cities, and then the world. I don’t know of anything that could stop them, and neither do you. But maybe Alexander King does. Maybe there’s something in his hoarded secrets that will do the job.”

“That’s not why you want his secrets,” said Walker. “You want to win the game.”

“We were sent here to solve the old mystery of Roswell, not this new one,” said Honey. “There’s no way King could have known about this. So this . . . is irrelevant.”

“You’re scared,” I said. “Scared of what you saw. You can’t cope with something this big, this important, so you hide behind the rules of a stupid little game that doesn’t matter anymore. We have to stand our ground here, stop the aliens from doing this. There’ll be time for games later.”

“I’m sorry,” said Honey. “I have my orders and my responsibilities. The Independent Agent’s secrets must end up with the right people.”

“And my duty is to ensure that people like you never get their hands on the prize,” said Walker. “You can’t be trusted with it.”

“And you can?” said Honey. “Little dictator of a little world?”

“More than you,” said Walker. He looked at me, as calm and composed as ever. “I’m sorry, Eddie. The game must come first. We can’t be distracted by . . . lesser events, no matter how disturbing.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions here,” I said carefully, holding my anger in check. “Don’t be so quick to assume these aliens aren’t what we’re here for. Why couldn’t these aliens be the answer to the Roswell mystery? The teleport bracelets must have dropped us here and now for a reason . . . So let’s stop the aliens, save the town, and take evidence of that back to Alexander King, so we can claim the prize. Screw There can only be one. We can share the information.”

“No,” said Honey, and to her credit she did sound honestly regretful. “The mystery of Roswell is what crash-landed here in 1947. And that had nothing to do with cattle mutilations. They didn’t start until much later. And none of the descriptions of the original aliens were anything like the thing we just saw.”

“Then why are these new aliens here?” I said. “Why choose Roswell out of all the small towns in the world?”

“Perhaps because Roswell has such strong alien connections,” said Walker. “To make what happens here more . . . visible to the rest of the world. An alien atrocity in this town would be reported all over the world.”

“We’re not here to be heroes,” said Honey. “We’re here to be agents. To discover the answer to a specific question. That has to come first. It’s the job. And Eddie, I really don’t think my superiors at Langley would approve of me sharing King’s secrets with anyone else. They might even call it treason. So, I will do what I have to do. I know my duty.”

“So do I,” said Walker. “You cannot be trusted with King’s secrets, Honey. Or your masters. I’m not sure anyone can. So I will win the game, take the secrets, and bury them deep in the Nightside, where no one will ever find them.”

“And the people of Roswell?” I said.

“There will be time for revenge later,” said Walker.

“My duty is to protect people from outside threats,” I said. “All people, everywhere. To hell with all games, and secrets, and politics. People come first, always. Get out of my sight, both of you. Go play your precious game. And when this is over, and I’ve stopped the aliens and saved the town . . . I will come and find you and take your precious prize away from you.”

“You do what you have to,” said Honey. “And I’ll do what I have to. I hope you do defeat the aliens, Eddie; I really do.”

“Yes,” said Walker. “I’m sorry it has to end this way, Eddie. But we must all follow duty in our own way. Good luck.”

And just like that, we all went our separate ways.

I walked slowly through the crowded Roswell streets, one man in the middle of unsuspecting crowds, all of them so much dead meat unless I could come up with a plan to save them. It was hard to keep from staring into their happy, innocent faces. How could they not know how much danger they were in? Couldn’t they feel the tension on the air, the first echoes of the horror that was coming, so close they could almost reach out and touch it? Of course they didn’t know, didn’t even suspect; they lived in their world and I lived in mine, and it was my job to keep them from ever finding out my world even existed.

Five and a half hours now and counting . . .

I strode on more purposefully, not going anywhere in particular yet, just full of the need to keep moving, to at least feel like I was doing something. I concentrated on this idea and that, coming up with and discarding one plan after another, scowling so hard as I thought that people hurried to get out of my way. I could just leave Roswell. Commandeer a car and get the hell out of town until I was out from under the aliens’ communications blackout. Yell to my family for backup and support. Throw enough Droods at a problem, and any enemy will go down in flames. The Hungry Gods found that out the hard way. Of course, there was no telling how long that might take; it could all be over by the time I got back. And nothing left to do but contain the situation and make sure the aliens couldn’t repeat their bloody experiment somewhere else. Like Walker said: there’s always time for revenge. But there was no telling what I’d run into outside of town. The aliens might just stop me at the town’s limits and hold me there, and then there’d be no one left to stand between the townspeople and the aliens.

I couldn’t risk that.

No; my only realistic hope was to locate the aliens’ base of operations and shut them down before they could start anything. One man against an unknown number of aliens and an unknowable amount of alien technology . . . For anyone else that would be suicide, but I was a Drood, with a Drood’s armour and training. And the aliens were going to find out just what that meant. So . . . think it through. If the aliens were jamming all communications going in and out of Roswell . . . it made sense that the jamming signal was coming from apparatus somewhere inside the town. And a jamming signal that strong would have to be pretty damned powerful and leave its own distinctive footprint on the local electromagnetic spectrum. Shielded from detection by Earth technology, of course, but not from me.

I concentrated hard on my torc, coaxing and bludgeoning it into doing something new and different . . . until at last a long thin tendril slid up my neck from the torc to form a pair of stylish golden sunglasses over my eyes. An absolute minimum use of my armour, hopefully not enough to set off any alien detection systems. I focused my Sight through the golden strange matter over my eyes and Saw the town of Roswell very clearly indeed. Parts . . . I’d never tried parts of armour before . . . I made a mental note to discuss this with my family when I got back. Assuming I ever got back, of course . . .

My augmented Sight showed me a whole new Roswell. Dark shapes drifted through the streets like animated wisps of shadow, lighting here and there on people disturbed by a vague sense of menace or unease. Elemental spirits are always drawn to potential arenas of spiritual destruction. They feed like vultures on the fiercer, more distressed emotions. On the other hand, Light People were standing and watching all through the town. They were scintillating light and energy bound into human form, almost abstract living things. Their appearance at a scene was both a good and a bad thing. It meant something severely dangerous was about to happen, with many lives on the line, but also that they expected some agent of good to put up a fight. I always think of the Light People as basically good-hearted supernatural sports fans. There were ghosts too, and semitransparent memories of places past, along with other-dimensional entities and travellers just passing through. None of them mattered. I looked slowly about me, sifting through the various information streams permeating the local aether, and soon enough, there it was . . . A strange alien energy broadcasting from a location right near the centre of town.

I’d found them.

I headed straight for the source of the alien signal, and people grew increasingly scarce the closer I got. In fact, the few people still on the streets seemed to be actually hurrying away. I stopped a few and asked them why, and wasn’t that surprised to find they couldn’t tell me. They didn’t know. They just knew . . . they weren’t supposed to be there.

The source itself turned out to be something very like a giant termite mound, thirty feet tall and almost as wide, pushing up from the broken earth of a deserted back lot. There were no people here at all, the surrounding streets silent and empty. I studied the alien mound from the shadows of a side alley, my augmented Sight feeding me almost more information than I could handle. The mound itself was a strange mixture of technology and organic materials. Grown as much as made, its vast sides undulated slowly, slick and sweating, as though troubled by passing dreams . . . There were shadowy entrance holes all over it, set to no discernible pattern. The cracked and broken earth around the mound’s base suggested it had thrust up from below and that there might be a hell of a lot more of it deep below the back lot. What I was Seeing could be just the tip of the alien pyramid. I watched for a long time, but nothing came out, and nothing went in.

Apart from the jamming signal, the mound was also broadcasting a powerful avoidance field. More than just the usual Don’t look at me, nothing to see here, move along suggestions; this was mind manipulation, a field strong enough that people couldn’t even think about the alien mound or anything connected with it. No wonder everyone in Roswell had seemed so unnaturally calm and languid; the alien signal was all but lobotomising them to be sure they’d stay in place for the great experiment. Presumably the signal would be dropped once the bloodletting began so the aliens could observe the full spectrum of human reactions to what was being done to them.

My Sight punched right through the avoidance field, but I knew I couldn’t risk that for long for fear of being detected. There had to be all kinds of surveillance going on within the mound. So I grabbed as much useful information as I could in quick looks and glances, ready to shut down my Sight at a moment’s notice that I’d been spotted. I couldn’t See any alarms or proximity fields or booby traps . . . Just the mound, sitting there, sick and smug and serene, like an abscess on the world. So sure of its own strength and superiority over mere humanity that it didn’t even feel the need for protection. Fools.

I checked the time. Four and three quarter hours, and counting.

I began to get the feeling I was being watched. At first I thought it was the mound, that some alien device had finally reacted to the presence of my torc and locked onto me. But it felt more like someone, rather than something, was watching me from behind. That someone had sneaked up on me while I was concentrating on the mound. Walker had been convinced someone was following us through the streets of Roswell . . . and we never did find out what that was all about. Could there be some unknown third party at work here in Roswell? Someone with their own agenda? Whoever it was, it felt like they were really close now. I let my hand drift casually onto the butt of my holstered Colt Repeater, took a slow steady breath, and then spun around sharply with the gun in my hand.

And there was Walker standing a discreet distance away, leaning casually on his furled umbrella. He smiled easily at me.

“Hello again, Eddie. I’ve been standing here for some time, waiting for you to notice me.”

“I was busy,” I said. “Concentrating on the alien mound.”

“Of course you were. I didn’t know you carried a gun.”

“Lot of things you don’t know about me,” I said, putting the Colt Repeater away. “Even a Drood likes to have an ace or two up his sleeve. And I like aces that go bang. How did you find this place?”

Walker smiled vaguely. “I have my methods.”

“You’ve been following me, haven’t you? And I was so taken up following the alien signals I never even noticed you.”

“Actually, no.” Walker came forward to stand beside me, curling his lip at the alien mound. “Ugly-looking thing . . . No, I just have a sense for these things . . . and it led me here. Like a bad smell. I did have a sort of feeling that I might have been followed . . .” Walker looked back sharply over his shoulder. I looked too, but the streets were as silent and empty as ever. Walker sniffed. “I haven’t even been able to catch a glimpse of whoever it is, and I’m really very hard to hide things from.”

“That suggests another agent,” I said. “Someone of our calibre, with an interest of their own in what’s happening here.”

“Let them watch,” said Walker. “We have work to do.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You’ve come around to my way of thinking, then? What about your duty to win Alexander King’s prize so the rest of us can’t have it?”

He met my gaze steadily. “I’ve seen too many good people die on my watch. I can’t just look away and let it happen again. You were right, Eddie; we can always take the prize away from Honey and her small-minded masters later on and share whatever it turns out to be. We are professionals, after all.”

We shared a brief smile. On an impulse I stuck out my hand, and he shook it solemnly.

“Good to know I’ve got someone to watch my back while I’m in the mound,” I said.

“Hell with that,” Walker said easily. “You can watch my back . . . Are those sunglasses what I think they are? I didn’t know you could do things like that with your armour.”

“You see?” I said. “Being around me is an education.”

“It’s certainly taught me a lesson,” Walker agreed. “Can your Sight find us the best way in? We are on the clock here.”

I looked back at the mound. “There don’t seem to be any obvious defences; no force shields, proximity mines, energy weapons . . . No chemical or biological agents. Nothing to stop us walking right in. They do have a really strong avoidance field, so maybe they’re depending on that.” I looked at Walker. “Why isn’t the field affecting you? You shouldn’t even be able to tell the mound is here.”

“There are lots of things about me you don’t know,” said Walker.

I had to smile. “None of the openings seem any more used or significant than any of the others. So we might as well choose one at random at ground level and stroll right in. And hope my Sight can lead us to where we need to be.”

“You’re not a great one for forward planning, are you?” said Walker. “Let’s do it.”

“Yes,” I said. “Let us descend into the underworld, and show these alien bastards what Hell on Earth is really like.”

The moment I marched through the semicircular entrance and into the mound itself, things stopped making sense. The entrance became a tunnel, suddenly large enough to hold a tube train and full of a shimmering light. The tunnel descended sharply, falling away before me. The walls were slick, moist, the surface slowly sliding towards the floor, which absorbed it. Strange protrusions rose and fell within the walls, indefinable things that might have been machines or organs or something humanity had no name for. The air was thick and foul but still breathable.

I set off down the tunnel with Walker right there at my side. I was glad to have him there, someone I could depend on. As a Drood field agent I’ve seen more than my fair share of weird shit, but this place was seriously creeping me out. There were new gaps or openings in the tunnel every few feet or so, and it rapidly became clear we were in some kind of labyrinth or honeycomb. I kept heading down, following my Sight, towards the dark beating heart of the mound. I could feel its presence far below, like the monster that waits for heroes at the heart of every maze.

The monster that wins more often than the tales like to tell.

This much was familiar, but as Walker and I continued to descend things grew increasingly strange and odd and subtly disturbing. It was hard to judge distances anymore; things seemed to move suddenly forward and then recede, to stretch endlessly away and then suddenly be gone or behind you. There were things in the curved ceiling that looked down on me and turned slowly to watch me pass. The aliens knew we were there, but I still didn’t see one anywhere. The tunnels occasionally widened out into vast chambers whose shape made no sense at all, that actually hurt my eyes if I looked at them too long, even with the protection of my golden sunglasses. I didn’t know how Walker was coping. We didn’t speak at all once we entered the mound, as though human speech simply didn’t belong there.

There were objects in the caverns I couldn’t look at directly, shapes without significance, forms with no function. Shadows flowed across the floor, slowly changing shape like oil on water, and that didn’t react at all as I strode through them. Gravity fluctuated so that sometimes I bobbed along like a balloon on a string . . . and other times it was all I could do to trudge along, as though I was carrying Old Man of the Sea on my back. My sense of direction snapped back and forth, and I would have been hopelessly lost in minutes without my Sight and my torc to guide me. I didn’t always know where I was going, but I always knew which turn or opening to take next. The floors sloped continually down, leading me on into the subterranean heart of the mound. To the place where all bad things were decided. I knew that much, even if I didn’t always recognise the man walking beside me.

It was getting harder to breathe, harder to think. But every time my thoughts began to drift, all I had to do was remember the vision the alien had shown me back at the morgue, and a cold rage would blow the cobwebs from my thoughts and let me think clearly again. I was here to bring the aliens blood and horror, and nothing was going to stop me.

Not even me.

An alien surged forward out of a side tunnel and stopped abruptly to block our way. A great pile of writhing snakes, of twisting tentacles, of thick threads that melted and merged into each other. I stopped and stood very still, looking steadily at the alien. Walker stood beside me. The alien showed no signs of moving or yelling for its security people. I tensed, half expecting the invisible scalpels, and then concentrated on how best to kill the thing. I was reluctant to summon up my full armour; the presence of so much strange matter within the mound might set off any number of alarms. I had my Colt Repeater, but even its many and varied bullets wouldn’t have much effect on a heap of seething tubes.

“Allow me,” said Walker, his words just a breath in my ear.

He took a firm hold on the handle of his umbrella, pulled and twisted, and drew from its hiding place a long slender steel blade. He strode purposefully forward and cut, hacked, and sliced the alien into a hundred pieces with cold, stern ferocity. The steel blade sliced keenly through the writhing tubes, severing and opening them up almost without resistance. The alien seemed more surprised than anything. It made no attempt to defend itself, just slid slowly backwards down the tunnel. Walker went after it, cutting it up with vicious precision, his arm rising and falling tirelessly. No blood flew on the air, just a thick clear ooze that dripped from the severed ends of twitching tentacle pieces as they writhed feebly on the floor of the tunnel. Soon enough the alien stopped moving, because there wasn’t enough left of it to hold together. Walker finished it off, hacking away until there wasn’t a length of alien tissue longer than a foot or two. Even at the end, there were no signs of any organs within the alien, just the endless pulsing tubes.

Walker stopped and lowered his sword. He stood over the last remnants of the alien and looked slowly about him at the scattered pieces. He was breathing harshly, as much from emotion as exertion. He straightened up, flicked a few drops of clear ooze from the tip of his sword, and then slid it neatly back into the spine of his umbrella.

“A sword?” I said finally. “Hidden inside an umbrella?”

“Don’t show your ignorance,” said Walker, his breathing already back to normal. “It’s an old tradition in the British spy game. Mention it to your Armourer; he’ll remember.”

“Why hasn’t the alien’s death set off any alarms?” I said, glaring about me into the painfully sharp light.

“Perhaps they weren’t expecting such a basic response,” said Walker. “There is such a thing as being oversophisticated.”

“And if more aliens do arrive?”

“Let them come,” said Walker. “I feel like killing some more aliens. I want to grind their bodies under my feet and dance in their blood.”

“Good,” I said. “I want that too.”

The centre of operations turned out to be a honeycomb of interlinked tunnels and caverns and what might have been other-dimensional spaces. There were openings and doorways that changed shape as you approached, tunnels that turned back on themselves if you didn’t concentrate on your destination strongly enough, and floating viewscreens that popped on and off, showing glimpses of distressingly inhuman other worlds. It was getting harder and harder to be sure of anything. Just being inside the alien mound distorted my thinking and filled my head with sudden thoughts and impulses that made no sense at all. I’d lost all track of time. My watch didn’t work. But I had to believe there was still time to stop the aliens, or this had all been for nothing.

I entered into a chamber like all the others and stopped dead in my tracks. Walker stopped beside me and swore softly. We weren’t the only people in the mound. The aliens had abducted men and women and even children from the town of Roswell and done things to them. For knowledge, or curiosity, or as a precursor to the experiment they were planning. Or maybe just because they could. For some alien purpose I could never hope to understand or forgive.

Some forty men, women, and children lay scattered across the sticky floor of the great open cavern. More protruded from the walls, half sunk and immersed in the slick wet surfaces. There were no cages, no bars, no force fields. These people had just been . . . worked on, and then dumped here to live or die. Many had died, their broken and distorted bodies unable to accept the terrible things that had been done to them.

Most had not been so lucky. They were still alive, aware, and suffering.

Their bodies had been vivisected: opened up and changed, made use of for surgical experiments. Not the brute mutilations I’d seen on the farmer in the morgue, or even in the future vision the alien had shown me. There was purpose to some of what had been done here, even if its end remained unknown. These people had been opened up, had their organs removed . . . and then put back again in different places, set up to work in different ways. Some organs had been replaced with alien substitutes, pulsing organic machines that wrapped themselves around kidneys and lungs and intestines.

I moved slowly forward into the chamber, like walking in a dream, a nightmare from which I wanted so badly to awaken. A man lay on his back, split open from crotch to throat, the sides pinned back with metal staples to reveal he’d been stuffed full of extra human organs. There were others like him, with several lungs, or half a dozen kidneys connected together, or miles of added intestines threaded in and out of his skin, the whole length of his torso. Others had been hollowed out, with nothing left inside them but threads of alien tissues performing unknowable alien functions.

The children were the worst. I couldn’t look at the children.

“Dear God,” said Walker. “What . . . What is this, Eddie? Are the aliens . . . playing with them?”

“I think . . . they’re trying to upgrade us,” I said. “According to their lights. Make us . . . better. More like them.”

“Is that what this is all about?” said Walker. “Forcibly . . . improving us?”

“All for our own good,” I said, and I didn’t recognise my own voice. “That’s what the alien said. Remember?”

“What are we going to do?” said Walker. He sounded lost. “What can we do? I mean, we can’t leave them like this . . .”

“No,” I said. “We can’t. That would be . . . inhuman.”

I armoured up and took on my battle form, covered with razor-sharp blades. And then I went among the suffering people and gave them the only comfort I could. I killed them. I killed them all. I raged back and forth across the great chamber, cutting throats, tearing out hearts, stamping on heads; killing men and women and children as swiftly and mercifully as I could. I cut off heads and stabbed alien organs, running them through and through till they stopped moving. I cut and hacked and stabbed, doing whatever it took to put a stop to this obscenity. It wasn’t easy; the aliens had made their improved people very hard to kill.

Some of them still had voices. I think some of them spoke to me, but I’ve never let myself remember what they said.

I went screaming and howling through the chamber, ripping bodies out of the walls and tearing them apart with brute strength, shouting obscenities and prayers, and blood sprayed across my armour and ran away in thick crimson rivulets. I killed them all, every last one, and when it was over, when I had dispensed the only mercy left to me, I armoured down and stood shaking and crying in the middle of the piled-up bodies. Drood field agents are trained to deal with horrors, to survive acts and decisions no one else could, but there are limits. There have to be limits, or we wouldn’t be human anymore.

Walker had known better than to try to interfere. He came forward, stepping carefully over blood and offal, and put his arms around me and held me as I cried. And just for a moment, it felt like my father was with me again, and I was comforted. After a while I found the strength to stand up straight again, and Walker immediately let go of me and stepped back. He watched silently as I rubbed the drying tears from my face and took a deep steadying breath.

“Damn them,” I said, and my voice was cold, so cold. “Damn the aliens to Hell for making me do that.”

“Yes,” said Walker.

“The aliens have to die,” I said. “They all have to die. No treaties or agreements for them. No mercy. I have to send a message. That no one can be allowed to get away with things like this.”

“I never thought otherwise,” said Walker.

The centre of operations wasn’t far away. My Sight led me straight to it. Just another cavern, perhaps a little larger than the others, the slick curving walls almost buried under extruded alien machinery and some things that looked to be at least half alive, studded with metal protrusions and lights like staring eyes. Long silvery tendrils hung down from the high ceiling, twisting and turning and twitching in response to unfelt breezes or perhaps just the passing of unknowable thoughts and impulses. And there were aliens, whole bunches of them, working at unrecognisable tasks, lurching across the smooth floor like tangles of knotted ropes. They operated the unnatural technology with limbs or manipulators formed for each specific purpose and spouting sensory organs as needed in the shapes of eyes or flowering things or rippled sucking orifices.

They all stopped at the same moment, and then three of them rolled together to melt and merge into one great pile over eight feet high, hundreds of dripping tentacles piled on top of each other. Disturbingly human eyeballs formed on the end of bobbing tendrils, all aimed at me and Walker. A bright pink speaking trumpet extruded from beneath the eyes, flushing with rhythmic crimson pulses.

“Welcome,” it said. “Be calm. You will not be killed; you are useful. Of use to us. You have demonstrated impressive capabilities. Your value will be incorporated into us, and when you have been improved we will send you back out into your world to prepare the way for us. You shall be our voice, our messengers and prophets.”

“I wouldn’t put money on it,” I said.

“Their language skills are improving,” said Walker.

“Practice makes perfect,” I said.

Parts of the greater alien reached out to manipulate semi-organic machines that rose up out of the floor. The eyeballs still looked steadily in our direction. Creamy white eyeballs without any veins and pure black irises.

“I destroyed your discarded experiments,” I said. “The people you ruined and threw away. They’re all dead now.”

“They were failures,” said the alien. “Of no further use to us. You will be of use to us. There is much that we can do with you.”

“I’ll die first,” said Walker. “Better yet, you’ll die first.”

“I represent the Droods,” I said, raising my voice so all of them could hear. “No visiting alien species goes anywhere or does anything on our world without our consent. We exist to protect humanity from things like you. You should have come to us first. We could have worked something out. Prevented all this.”

“No,” said the alien. “This is necessary. You are small, limited, incapable of understanding what is best for you. We know. We are experienced in changing, upgrading species.”

“You’ve done this before?” said Walker. “On other worlds?”

“On many other worlds,” said the alien. “You must be changed; your species is inefficient. It will not survive the future that is coming. You are wasteful of your potential, but you can be made better. Remade. You must not try to interfere. That is wasteful, of time and energy and resources. We are doing important work here. You will thank us later. This is our work. Our responsibility. Our joy. We make things better.”

“Not here,” I said. “Not to us. We decide our own destiny. The experiment you’re planning is an abomination, and we will not allow it to happen.”

“You can’t stop it,” said the alien. “It is already in motion. Humans. You think so small. So petty. Even your language is barely adequate for communication. You do not even see us clearly. We are not what you look at. This body. You talk with an extension. You are inside our body.”

“The mound,” said Walker. “The whole damned mound is the alien . . . One massive organism. That changes things.”

“Yes,” I said. “Don’t suppose you have any explosives about you?”

“Nothing big enough.”

“You will be remade,” said the alien speaker. “Improved, made speakers of our purpose. You will convince others to do what is necessary. Conflict is wasteful. You will observe the results of our experiment, the greater things we will make out of those who survive. You will tell your world to cooperate, that it is all for the best.”

“We’ll never work for you,” said Walker. “No one on this world will do anything but fight you to the last breath in their bodies.”

“You won’t fight us,” said the alien. “After a point, you won’t want to. You will become greater. And it starts now.”

Dozens of aliens appeared in the chamber: rising up out of the floor, sliding out of walls, dropping from the ceiling. They blocked all the entrances to the chamber. More and more of them, too many to count, surrounding Walker and me as we moved quickly to stand back-to-back. He had his sword blade in his hand again. I called up my armour and took on my battle form, bristling with weapons. Holding its form was a strain, but I was too angry to care. The aliens filled the chamber around us, packing the place from wall to wall, piles of slimy ropes sliding in and out of each other.

“Bad odds,” said Walker, his voice as calm and cool as always.

“I’ve seen worse,” I said.

“Really?”

“Actually, yes. Of course, I had reinforcements then.”

“Terrific,” said Walker. “How powerful are those energy weapons protruding from your armour?”

“The blades are sharp enough to cut through a loud noise,” I said. “Everything else . . . is just for show.”

“No energy weapons?”

“No. I don’t normally need them.”

“Well,” said Walker. “When there’s nothing left to do but die, die well. And take as many of your enemies as possible down to Hell with you. Get out of here, Eddie.”

“What?”

“I’ll hold their attention while you make for the surface. Don’t worry; you’re not the only one with a few tricks up his sleeve. You get the hell out of here and do whatever’s necessary to stop them. I’ll buy you time. Go, Eddie. It’s all up to you now.”

“I can’t leave you here! Not with them; they’ll—”

“No, they won’t. I’ll make them kill me first.”

“I can’t . . .”

“You must, Eddie. It’s the human thing to do.”

I was still looking at him, trying to decide what to do for the best, when a blast of searing energy slammed out of one entrance, incinerating a whole bunch of aliens. They blew apart, great lengths of burning ropes flying through the air. More energy blasts raked across the cavern, blasting aliens out of the way, as Honey Lake came striding in with her shimmering crystal weapon in her hands. She laughed cheerfully, a bright and wonderfully sane sound in that hellish place, like a Valkyrie come down to Hel to rescue her heroes. She fired again and again, and pieces of ragged tentacles flew this way and that as she opened up a space around her.

“Heads up, guys!” she yelled cheerfully. “The cavalry just arrived!”

I whooped with joy and relief and ploughed through the nearest aliens, hacking them apart and kicking the pieces aside so I could get to the next. My golden blades tore through them as though they were made of paper. I waded through alien gore like a hungry man going to a feast. A cold and vicious rage burned within me, not just at what they had done and planned to do, but at what they had made me do. I killed and killed, and it was never enough. Walker cut about him with his sword, deadly and elegant, and Honey fired her gun, and soon we’d cleared the whole chamber of living alien forms.

But more bodies slipped out of the walls, and rose up out of the floor, and dropped from the ceiling; again the entrance ways were blocked and the chamber was full. Because the alien was the mound, and we were just destroying things it had made to fight us. The alien was distracting us, keeping us busy, while the clock ticked down to the great experiment in the streets of Roswell. I had to stop the alien, not just its extremities. I called up my Sight, focused it through my mask, and made myself concentrate on what really mattered. The dark and secret heart of the alien mound: the one thing it couldn’t live without. I glared around me, Seeing terrible things hidden in the walls and floor of the chamber, until finally I Saw, deep below my feet, something that blazed and burned like a dark sun: living energy sourced in alien flesh.

I yelled to Honey to blast the floor with her energy weapon where I pointed, and she nodded quickly and hit the floor with everything she had. The floor rocked beneath our feet, splitting apart, forced open by the crystal weapon’s implacable energies. They dug deeper and deeper into the alien tissues until finally I could see the dark heart itself. It wrapped itself in thick protective alien tissues, struggling to replace them as fast as Honey’s weapon burned them away. I formed one long, slender, and very deadly blade from my golden right hand, and sent it plunging deep into the dark heart of the alien mound.

It exploded. Alien flesh was no match for other-dimensional strange matter. Particularly when driven by the terrible cold anger of the human heart.

The individual alien forms collapsed, sinking in upon themselves, the long ropy tentacles already rotting and falling apart. The cavern shook like an earthquake, great jagged cracks opening up in the slimy walls. The floor seemed to fall away beneath my feet in sudden drops and shudders. The whole mound was dying, rotting, falling apart. I ran for the nearest exit, Honey and Walker right behind me. I followed my Sight back up through the mound, heading for the surface even as the mound collapsed in on itself, sinking down into the earth. I ran through piles of dead alien bodies, kicking them aside, punching holes through walls where necessary. Strange lights flared all around me, vivid energies spitting and crackling helplessly on the air. I ran for the surface with Honey and Walker.

We burst out of the final exit and kept running out into the fresh and human air of Roswell. We jumped over cracks opening up in the back lot, urged on by the sound of the dead mound slowly sinking down into the earth. Finally I decided I was far enough away, and only then did I let myself stop and look back to see the last death throes of the alien mound. It was dry and cracked and corrupt now, disappearing into the hole it had made for itself. Walker and Honey and I watched till all of it was gone and there was nothing left to show it had ever been there but a dark hole in the ground of a deserted back lot.

“Go down,” I said to it. “Go all the way down to Hell, where you belong.”

I put away my armour and stood there in the empty street, just a man again. I was shaking and breathing hard from exertion and emotion and from relief that we’d stopped the filthy experiment before it even started. Honey and Walker stood with me, breathing just as hard.

“So,” I said finally. “You came back, Honey. Right in the nick of time. What changed your mind? What about the game and the prize?”

“How was I going to be able to get anything done here with all this nonsense going on?” said Honey reasonably. “Besides, I didn’t get into the spy game to turn my back on people. I serve the American people. As I decide best.”

“What are we going to tell the townspeople?” said Walker. “Do we tell them anything?”

“Would they believe us, without evidence?” I said. “They don’t even have the farmer and his cow in the morgue anymore, remember?”

“This is Roswell,” Walker said dryly. “They’ll believe anything, or at least just enough to make money out of it. This time next year, this will all be a television movie. I wonder who they’ll get to play me?”

“You were never here,” Honey said sternly. “None of us were.”

“Right,” I said. “This isn’t the Nightside. We have to keep a low profile.”

“There could be more aliens . . . from where those things came from,” said Honey, hefting her shimmering weapon. “They could be back.”

“My family will take care of that,” I said. “We have connections in faraway places. Treaties and compacts work both ways. Or we’ll kick alien arse till they do.”

“I never knew you could do that,” said Walker.

“Not many do,” I said.

“And you wonder why other organisations don’t trust the Droods,” said Honey. “Your family has secrets the way other families have pets. Would it kill you to share information like that so we could all sleep better at nights?”

“Possibly,” I said. “We don’t take chances. But . . . I will talk to the Matriarch. Sharing can be good. What say the three of us go back to Alexander King, give him the answers we’ve accumulated, and then share the secrets he gives us?”

“Hell,” said Honey, “I’m game if you are. Nothing like hanging out with a Drood to help you see the bigger picture.”

“Fine by me,” said Walker. “But will the Independent Agent agree?”

“The man is dying,” I said. “He doesn’t have enough time left to haggle. He can give his prize to three agents who’ve proved their worth or risk his precious secrets falling into unworthy hands after he’s dead.”

“And . . . Peter?” said Honey. “How do we tell an old man that we got his only grandson killed?”

“We don’t know that he’s dead,” Walker said immediately. “He’s just . . . missing in action.”

“Alexander King wanted his grandson in the game,” I said. “He knew the risks.”

“Did Peter?” said Honey. “He didn’t operate in the same world as the rest of us.”

“No,” said Walker. “He worked in industrial espionage. I’m pretty damn sure he wouldn’t have shared the prize.”

“The game is now officially over,” I said. “We’ve been to all five of the designated areas, investigated each mystery we found there, and come up with an answer. We may not have uncovered the answer to the original Roswell mystery, but I think this . . . is better. Certainly it’s more than enough to prove our worth as the Independent Agent’s successors, which was supposed to be the whole point of the game. Time . . . to call it a day.”

“How are we supposed to let Alexander King know?” said Walker, glaring at the teleport bracelet on his wrist. “How do we persuade these infernal contraptions to take us back to Place Gloria?”

I took out Peter’s phone and showed it to the teleport bracelet around my wrist. “See this?” I said loudly. “Proof, evidence, and answers to all the questions we were set. I know you’re listening, Alexander! We can either give this to you or . . . take it back to our respective organisations. So, beam us up, Scotty!”

And that was when Peter King stepped out of the shadows, stabbed Honey Lake between the ribs with a long-bladed knife,

snatched the phone from my hand, and disappeared, teleported away.

Honey made a shocked, surprised sound, and then collapsed as the strength went out of her legs. I caught her and eased her to the ground. Her whole left side was already soaked with blood, and more ran down between our closely pressed bodies. Walker was saying something, but I wasn’t listening. Honey made a pained sound and blood spilled from her mouth. I held her tightly to me. I looked up at Walker to yell at him to get some help, but the look on his face stopped me. It confirmed what I already knew.

“It was Peter all along,” said Walker. “The treacherous little shit. He killed Katt, and Blue, and—”

“No,” said Honey. “That was me.”

“Hush,” I said. “Hush.”

“No.” She forced the words out past the pain and the blood. She needed me to know the truth. “I killed Blue and Katt. Tried to kill Walker. Even sabotaged my own sub at the loch, so I wouldn’t be suspected. I thought . . . it was my duty. To win the prize at any cost.”

“Honey . . .” I said, but the hard knot in my stomach wouldn’t let me say anything more.

She smiled briefly, showing perfect teeth slick with blood. “Never fall in love with another agent, Eddie. You know it’s never going to end well.”

She died in my arms. I held her for a long time.

It all went bad so quickly.