Spiral

  It seemed ages before Danforth reappeared, wafting two X-ray plates in the air before him to dry them. He completely ignored the boys as he went back into the bay.

  “I can’t stand this,” Chester said. Getting to his feet, he began to walk up and down. “It even smells like a hospital down here.”

  Will remembered how Chester’s younger sister had died in the hospital after a car accident, and how much he loathed them as a result.

  “If you don’t want to hang around here, I’ll come and get you when she’s finished,” Will offered.

  “Yes, think I might nip upstairs for some water,” Chester said, leaning against the wall. “I’m incredibly thirsty.”

  Will noticed that his friend was sweating heavily and looking distinctly peaky.

  “Actually, Will, I think I’m going to be sick.” With that Chester broke into a run toward the lobby, leaving Will watching the empty corridor where he’d been.

  Ten minutes later the door to the medical bay opened, and there was Elliott, with Drake beside her. She was still in the hospital gown, her clothes in a bundle under her arm.

  “Oh, Will,” she said, dropping her clothes as she rushed over to him and hugged him tight.

  “I think we’re in the clear,” Drake said.

  As Elliott continued to cling to Will, hiding her face in his chest, he felt something across her shoulders. It was a large piece of gauze, taped into place, and there was blood soaked into it. Will stared at Drake in shock.

  “Yes, we attempted a limited surgical exploration,” Danforth said, the X-ray plates rolled in his hand like a baton, as he stepped into the corridor with Eddie. Danforth’s tone was so dispassionate he could have been discussing one of his gadgets. “We found evidence of features that are clearly related to the Phase, but they’re only vestigial. Given that she’s a human/Styx cross, it may be that she’s carrying the recessive Phase gene or genes, but the traits will never reveal themselves in anything more than a partial manifestation.”

  Danforth held up the rolled X-ray plates. “However, bearing in mind her age and the fact that she’s still in the throes of adolescence, it’s something we’ll need to keep a close eye on for the future.”

  “But she’s OK? Really OK?” Will asked Drake, ignoring Danforth.

  “Yes, she is,” Drake exhaled.

  Maybe it was due to the intense stress he’d been under, but Will began to chuckle. “So my best friend isn’t a bug after all?”

  As this set Drake off, Elliott raised her head to peer up at Will through her tear-filled eyes.

  “You jerk,” she laughed, then kissed him on the cheek.

  “YOU IMPERIAL PIG!” The grating cry reverberated around the quiet of the police station.

  “Gappy Mulligan?” the Second Officer asked.

  “Gappy Mulligan,” the First Officer confirmed. “It’ll be aimed at me. She was telling me how I should free her . . . and the rest of the prisoners while I’m about it.” Scratching his chest vigorously through his shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, he glanced in the direction of the Hold. “I must’ve left the aisle door open. I should go and close it.”

  “Don’t bother. It’ll give them a bit of air in there,” the Second Officer said. He was studying his hand as the two men played poker on a desk in the main office.

  The First Officer had finished scratching his chest but was examining something intently between his thumb and forefinger. Lice were a permanent problem down in the Colony. Grimacing because he wasn’t sure if he’d caught one or not, he pressed his fingers together and then wiped them on his leg. “You know, we haven’t got much food left in the store, and I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit tired of playing maid to the prisoners now that everyone’s refusing to work here.”

  The Second Officer had been concentrating on his cards but now looked up sharply. “Smoke! I smell smoke!” he shouted.

  They both leaped to their feet and began sniffing. Of all the things a Colonist feared most, a fire was top of the list. Throughout the three-hundred-year history of the underground society, there had been several outbreaks that had gotten a grip, and the deaths that ensued were not from the fire itself but from smoke inhalation in the enclosed caverns and tunnels.

  “You’re right!” the First Officer yelled.

  They both dashed through the opening in the counter.

  At the entrance to the station — the only way in or out — huge flames were licking up over the swing doors.

  “MY GOD!” the First Officer cried, rushing to the cabinet where red-painted buckets of water were kept for this very eventuality. “Patrick — free the prisoners! We’re going to need help to put this out!”

  Dense smoke was already wafting into the Hold as the Second Officer quickly went along the row of cells and unlocked them. The occupants — Gappy Mulligan included — didn’t need to be told what to do. They formed themselves into a chain stretching between the entrance and the small room in the station with a freshwater faucet. Then they passed the filled buckets to the First Officer, who was throwing them at the blaze. He’d shed his tunic and wound some material over his nose and mouth as he continued to do battle with the flames. All the prisoners were coughing and their eyes watering as they worked tirelessly, passing the water-filled buckets forward.

  After several minutes, they’d managed to douse the swing doors sufficiently to open them, but still they didn’t stop. The water was making a sizzling noise as it fell on the large pile of timber outside at the top of the steps.

  Finally the fire was out. The First Officer, his shirt and uniform trousers soaked, was supporting himself against the counter as he broke into a racking cough. The prisoners were all coughing and trying to catch their breath, too, while the Second Officer began to inspect the damage. Grateful for the cool breeze outside the station, he examined the charred pile of timber. From the smell, there was little doubt in his mind that an accelerant had been used to start the blaze. Then the Second Officer spotted an old can that had been discarded by the side of the steps, and carried it back into the station with him.

  “Gasoline,” he announced, placing the can on the counter by his senior officer. “They were serious about burning us down, but there’s nothing on this to show who it was.”

  “You don’t say,” the First Officer replied, laughing and coughing. “I would have expected them to paint their name on it, at a bare minimum,” he went on sarcastically, then turned to the rabble of prisoners. “Listen, you lot, you can all go,” he declared. “You’re free.”

  The Second Officer leaned toward him. “Sir, don’t you think that’s a bit hasty? I mean —”

  “Give it a rest, Patrick. Are you worried the Styx will come down on us for releasing a motley bunch of losers whose crimes don’t amount to much more than rustling the odd chicken to feed their families?” the First Officer asked, then turned to all the prisoners. “No offense meant,” he added quickly. “I’m very grateful you all mucked in to help with the fire.”

  Gappy Mulligan was grinning, but a muscular-looking man with mad, staring eyes didn’t look so happy. He was known simply as Cleaver, named after the digging implement used everywhere in the Colony. “Losers?” he said indignantly. “I’ll ’ave you know I didn’t steal no bloody chicken. I’m up for disord’ly conducks, and a’ unpr’voked attack with a’ ax.”

  The First Officer guffawed loudly. “Is that an admission of guilt, Cleaver?”

  Cleaver was confused by this at first, but quickly caught on. “No, sir, no way I dun what they said I dun. No, sir. I’m inn’cent a’ a newborn sluice fish.”

  A petty thief with ratlike features, who was sitting on an upturned bucket at the end of the reception area, found this funny. He tittered loudly until Cleaver glowered at him.

  The Second Officer still wasn’t comfortable with his senior officer’s pronouncement. “Are you seriously going to free them?” he asked in a low voice so the prisoners wouldn’t overhear him. “They’ve all got charges to
answer to.”

  The First Officer had no qualms about letting the prisoners know what he was thinking. “Patrick, we haven’t heard a squeak from the Styx in nearly three days now,” he said loudly, sweeping a grimy hand at the brass message tubes across the room. “And nobody’s seen one in the streets in as many days. For all we know, they’ve gone . . . they’ve scuttled the Colony.”

  The prisoners gasped.

  “And you seem to be forgetting the fire . . . an attempt was just made on our lives — by some of our own people. That’s how far things have gone.” For a moment he stared thoughtfully into the Second Officer’s eyes. “Where’s your warrant card, Patrick?” he asked. “Fetch it for me.”

  The Second Officer did as he was bidden, going to his tunic where he’d left it on the back of a chair and retrieving the warrant card from it. As he handed it to the First Officer, the man plucked the quill pen from the pot on the counter. The Second Officer and the prisoners listened to the scratching of the pen, then the First Officer handed it back. “Congratulations,” he said.

  The Second Officer read what he’d written on the warrant card. “No!” he exclaimed.

  “Yes, I’m handing my chips in. I’ve had all I can take. I’m resigning and going home to take care of my family,” the First Officer said. “So now you’re in charge.”

  The Second Officer reeled.

  “Take these, Squeaky,” the First Officer said, detaching a large bunch of keys from his belt and lobbing them to the man with the rat face. “In the evidence room, on the bottom shelf, you’ll find a case of Somers Town malt. Bring it back here, will you? We’re going to toast the new First Officer’s promotion in style.”

  PARRY LOOKED EVERY BIT the military leader as he strutted up and down in front of the map displayed on the big screen in the Hub.

  He now turned to everybody. “Right . . . the Phase is under way at this very moment, so the clock is ticking fast. We need some positive action to find it and put a stop to it. We need to move quickly!”

  “We do,” Drake agreed.

  “So let’s analyze what we know,” Parry said. “The Phase will be taking place on the surface, because that’s one of the preconditions. And it’s somewhere . . .” — he twisted to the map of the UK on the screen — “somewhere here, and probably at a single location.”

  “Yes, that’s correct,” Eddie confirmed.

  Parry tugged thoughtfully on his beard as he went closer to the screen and pointed with his walking stick. “But can we reasonably assume it’s in the London area? It might be in the home counties, or anywhere in the country for that matter. Would the Styx bother to venture farther than a hundred miles from London?”

  “London and its environs make sense,” Eddie said. “Unless they chose somewhere remote because it would be more secure.”

  “That doesn’t help us at all. It’s like searching for a poisonous needle in a haystack,” Parry grumbled to himself, tugging even more forcibly on his beard. “But we do know that the Styx need an ample stock of human bodies for the breeding process. Unless they’re abducting Topsoilers willy-nilly, that means Colonists and maybe New Germanians are being used as the living hosts. Which would suggest somewhere around London, because they wouldn’t want their supply chain to be stretched too far.”

  “Particularly not with the disruption to the transport network they’re responsible for down in the southeast,” Drake put in. “Getting around isn’t as easy as it used to be.”

  Parry drew in a breath. “Everyone put their thinking caps on. How, precisely, do we find the Phase site?” he asked, then spun to Eddie. “Can’t we snatch a Styx from the London streets and interrogate him?”

  “Even if you could find one, you wouldn’t get anything,” Eddie replied.

  Parry wasn’t to be deterred. “OK, then — what if one of your men returned to the Colony? He could gather the intel we need down there.”

  “No, I told you — my men have cut all ties with our people and covered their tracks,” Eddie said categorically. “One couldn’t just show his face as if nothing had happened. He’d be executed the instant they laid eyes on him. It would give us nothing, and simply put them on notice that there’s a splinter group of disaffected Limiters.”

  Parry went on tugging his beard until his fingers came away with a tuft of hair. “But what are the Styx doing at the Phase site that will put up a smoke trail we can spot?” He looked pointedly at his son, then at Danforth, who was copying the Book of Proliferation page by page on a scanner so he’d be able to translate it with Eddie’s help. “Come on, you two — you’re the tech specialists. Any bright ideas?”

  Danforth glanced up from the scanner but didn’t reply, and Drake was slowly shaking his head.

  “The Dark Lights,” Eddie suggested. “Thanks to Drake, we can locate them. And my people, wherever they are, are likely to be using them on an intensive basis.”

  Drake was quick to answer. “But we’ve already considered that. Yes, we can detect Dark Light activity by using mast arrays, but it only works over relatively small areas. In order to increase the search radius, I’d need microwave antennae mounted up somewhere high, so there’d be uninterrupted line of sight out across the country.”

  “You mean a whole cluster of bloody powerful parabolic dishes, and directional to boot,” Danforth added in a patronizing tone.

  Drake gave him a weary nod; although the Professor was arguably one of the most brilliant minds on the planet, at times his sense of self-importance was difficult to stomach. “Then, in theory at least, we could identify any major Dark Light hot spots two or three hundred miles or even farther from the center of London,” Drake said.

  “Well, that’s a start,” Parry said optimistically.

  “We would also need to dispatch roving teams with battery-powered mobile detectors to help us pinpoint the precise coordinates of any hot spots.” Drake paused as he pursed his lips in a moment of contemplation. “Yes, we might strike gold, but it’s a hell of a long shot.”

  “Hell of a long shot,” Danforth echoed, as he turned to a new page in the Book of Proliferation and placed it facedown on the scanner.

  “High-powered parabolic dishes in clusters,” Parry summarized. “Now we’re getting somewhere. But where would we find that sort of setup in a hurry? The city? Canary Wharf?”

  Sergeant Finch mumbled something.

  “What?” Parry boomed, wheeling toward him. “What did you just say?”

  Sergeant Finch was taken aback by Parry’s reaction. “It’s just what you were saying . . . it made me think of the Backbone Chain,” he suggested sheepishly.

  “What’s the Backbone Chain?” Drake asked quickly.

  “It was a network of purpose-built concrete towers erected across the country by NATO to preserve communications after a nuclear strike,” Parry said. “The nearest tower to us here is at Kirk O’Shotts, and then there’s one at Sutton Common, and another at . . .”

  Parry and Sergeant Finch looked at each other, speaking at the same time. “The Post Office Tower,” they chorused.

  Parry strode over to Sergeant Finch and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You bloody genius!”

  “You’re talking about the BT Tower in London?” Drake asked.

  Parry waved his walking stick impatiently. “Stuff and nonsense! They will keep changing the blessed names of everything! Yes — the BT Tower — and we can get into it using the old emergency protocols, can’t we, Finch?”

  Sergeant Finch was grinning. “We certainly can, sir — and I’ve got a cousin who used to work there, back in the good old days wh —”

  “Raise him right now on one of Danforth’s satphones. Haul him out of bed if necessary,” Parry ordered. “And you two,” he said, setting his gaze on Drake, then Danforth, “how many mobile detectors can you rustle up for me at short notice?”

  Danforth groaned; he didn’t seem to be particularly enamored of the thought of doing any work. “How many do you want?” he inquired
begrudgingly.

  “How many can you give me?” Parry said.

  “But how can we mass-produce them here?” Drake put in.

  “Simple as pie — if somebody gathers up all the Geiger counters in this place,” Danforth replied, “I can adapt them with components from the stores on Level 4. It’ll be bloody tedious, to say the least, but you can help me, Drake.”

  Drake raised his eyebrows. “You can do it? With components here in the Complex?”

  “In my sleep,” Danforth replied resignedly.

  “And once the mobile detectors are ready, we’ll ship them down south and send patrols out. Your men can lend a hand,” Parry said to Eddie, “but there aren’t enough of them. It looks as though I’m going to have to bring the Old Guard into play. We’ll need quite a few bods to cover the country.”

  “And we need to get ourselves down to London,” Drake said, “to the BT Tower.”

  There were shouts from outside the police station and someone mounted the steps, taking them three at a time. The man reached for the counter as soon as he came in, propping himself against it as he tried to catch his breath.

  “You have to come — been an accident,” he wheezed. It was one of the Colonists from the Quarter, a shopkeeper called Maynard. He peered with disbelief at the scene that greeted him — the former First Officer, in his sweat-stained shirt and with his suspenders hanging from his waist, holding court with all the prisoners as they supped from their tankards of Somers Town whisky. Maynard met Cleaver’s eyes, but when the grizzled visage smiled back at him, revealing his darkened stumps of teeth, he quickly looked away.

  “Wass all the rumpus ’bout?” the former First Officer drawled, trying to pull himself up in his seat.

  Maynard frowned. “It’s my son — the magic’s got him. I need your help.”

  “I don’t work here anymore,” the former First Officer said, thrusting his tankard in the new First Officer’s direction and managing to slop drink over himself, which elicited giggles from Squeaky. “Ask Patrick.”