Chris bit his lip. When was she going to realize? he wondered. When was Ms Plimpton going to figure out how ridiculous she was being? Did she seriously expect – with two monsters out on London streets and the whole country just minutes away from nuclear apocalypse – that in the middle of all that, people were going to sit down in front of their TVs and all hold hands? It was pointless: completely pointless, and embarrassing, and stupid . . .
Wasn’t it?
Chris closed his eyes and reached down into himself, remembering how he had felt last time, searching for the slightest sign that he was feeling that way again. With his eyes shut, the image on the screens of Tim and Mallahide facing off for Britain’s future disappeared from view, if not from Chris’s thoughts. He concentrated, and the flow of exhortations from Ms Plimpton to concentrate gradually faded in his ears, taking on a distant, lulling quality.
You, Chris, must join the world . . .
The fact was, he thought he could feel something. Much as he wanted to deny it, it was there. It had been there ever since the morning after he’d first been given the bracelet, sometimes strong and sometimes weak but constant, like the distant seething hiss of a TV tuned to an empty channel. He concentrated on that sound, that feeling in his mind.
It grew stronger. The constant sizzling and rattling seemed to expand in his brain as he focused on it. Perhaps this sound really did come from every living thing on the planet. Was it working? Was all this hand-holding and concentrating actually doing something?
‘Yes,’ said Ms Plimpton inanely. ‘Can it be . . .? Yes! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I think I can feel something! Come on! You can do it! I think I can—’
No, Chris told himself savagely. No! It was stupid. This whole thing was ridiculous and stupid. What he was feeling wasn’t this guff about the energy of the world: what he was feeling was an effect of the lights beating down and the attention and cameras on him – those things and being tired and embarrassed and really pissed off. He shouldn’t be sitting there in a pool of water, in his pants, holding hands and concentrating on nothing. It was so uncool it was a joke – beyond a joke. What he should be doing, he realized . . .
. . . was helping Anna.
The idea came to Chris so suddenly he actually flinched. The water sloshed around him; Wythenshawe’s and Ms Plimpton’s grip slackened on his hands – and Chris snatched them away.
‘Chris . . . what—?’ asked Ms Plimpton, eyes wide.
Chris stood up. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her – and, he realized, the world. ‘Look, I’m sorry. But I just don’t think this is going to work.’
Everyone stared at him.
‘My friend’s out there,’ he said, pointing at the screen. ‘She’s in danger.’
He looked around the room, at the grown-ups all holding hands and still staring at him numbly.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll go by myself.’ And with (the footage showed) surprising dignity for a young man dressed only in his underwear, he strode from the room.
PUNISHMENT
THE TORRENT OF seething machines shot out of the dome.
Caught by surprise by Mallahide’s sudden rush, Tim staggered back, swatting at his own face with his forepaws in an instinctive effort to wave the swarm away – but he needn’t have bothered. Mallahide wasn’t going to attack him. Not just yet. Not until he was ready.
Professor Mallahide was furious. He’d thought he’d taught the stupid creature enough of a lesson before, but clearly it hadn’t taken the hint. Time to speak more plainly.
Released from its temporary captivity in St Paul’s, the swarm expanded, casting Tim into shadow. Its edges began to droop downwards, stretching and forming points that – with sudden and eerie speed – thrust down, like stalactites, around where Tim was standing.
Javelins of darkness jabbed straight through buildings: they buckled concrete, shattered paving and impaled parked vehicles, which were then lifted helplessly into the air. While the lower half of the swarm returned to its insect shape, the upper body reared out of the boiling mass of machines, towering over Tim, great claws spreading.
Shaking the debris from his giant cockroach feet, Mallahide attacked.
Professor Mallahide was no martial artist: experimental science was his forte, not hand-to-hand fighting – but he’d been human once, and he’d been to school. Playground encounters had taught him a few essential moves, and those were what he used on Tim first. Encased in armour, faster than a freight train and denser than a tank, his first fist lashed out, punching Tim in the stomach. Tim bent double, all the air in his monstrous body huffing straight out in a helpless rush. The sudden gust of his exhalation tore trees out by the roots; billboards tumbled like playing cards – but Mallahide didn’t notice or care. Knocking the wind out of Tim had just been a means to an end, an echo of the opening gambit of playground bullies the world over.
What came next was the headlock.
While Tim was still bent over round where the first punch had struck him, Mallahide wrapped two of his right arms around Tim’s neck. Instantly the arms constricted, coiling up tight under Tim’s jaws, tighter than would have been possible if they were filled with bones and muscle. Cutting off his breath with absolute thoroughness, they bunched, becoming almost impossibly dense and heavy as the professor concentrated more of himself into that part of his body.
Tim was trapped. His forearms flailed weakly, trying to reach his attacker, but with his shoulders now right up against Mallahide’s armoured midriff it was impossible.
Once again, he was at Mallahide’s mercy.
Almost casually, with his two free left arms Mallahide swung back and punched forward again – catching Tim two hammer blows that each landed with unerring pinpoint accuracy exactly where the professor had struck before. Enjoying the way Tim’s entire body spasmed with pain under each blow, Mallahide struck him twice more just for good measure. Then, his playground-bully-fighting repertoire temporarily exhausted, the professor decided to get creative.
He shifted his weight, the vast mass of nanomachines moving smoothly and easily to do his bidding.
His left arms changed shape – spreading, hooking, grabbing across Tim’s back.
The professor gave a great heave, jerking Tim bodily into the air –
– and let go, upending his hapless victim in a credible (if gargantuan-size) wrestling-style throw, right over his shoulder.
For Tim, the world swung, turning upside down. One second he was staring at the ground; the next, his world exploded into stars that, when they cleared, revealed sky above. Mallahide had flipped him, whiplashing Tim’s entire body over onto his back.
The Old Bailey, the nearby building that had taken the brunt of Tim’s fall, was squashed all but flat. Of the historic courthouse that had seen some of Britain’s most famous criminal trials, nothing was now left but the outside walls. The centre of the building – when at last Tim struggled groggily to his feet again – had been instantly and permanently pulverized into a kind of dinosaur-shaped silhouette.
Gasping and shuddering, Tim shook his poor head to clear it, and groaned.
He got to his feet, staggering a little, and flexed his tail: he didn’t even feel it shattering the remaining walls behind him, it was so numb.
Woozily, he looked up at his enemy.
Mallahide just waited.
The professor’s first fury was gone now, its flames banked down into burning coals. He knew he could destroy his prey whenever he liked, so now – cat-like – he was going to toy with Tim a while. What was the nonsensical beast going to come up with next? Tim was pretty predictable. The professor reckoned he could hazard a guess.
Tim, for his part, prepared himself as best he could. His throat and lungs felt crushed and raw: he couldn’t roar aloud any more, it would hurt too much, so he roared in his mind instead.
He was the Defender. It was down to him. He would succeed or die trying.
He lowered his head, scratched a great trough in the pavin
g with his right hind claw –
– and charged.
MEANWHILE . . .
CHRIS’S EARS WERE burning. The doors to the makeshift studio swung shut behind him: he was alone. The linoleum floor was cold on the soles of his bare feet, but Chris was blushing so hard it felt like he was on fire.
First problem: his clothes weren’t where he’d left them.
The room was now empty. His clothes were nowhere to be seen. And of course, everyone who’d been out here before had gone through into the studio to join in the hand-holding.
Chris glared at the cold silver bracelet on his wrist with real loathing. How had he got into this? Why him? Suddenly pinpricks of tears were pushing at the back of his eyes: he was just thinking of doing something really stupid like breaking his bare toes giving the walls a good kicking, or maybe just screaming his head off, when the doors opened again.
‘Mr Pitman?’
Chris turned, ready to unleash his fury, and froze.
Wythenshawe had a towel in his hand. He threw it: Chris caught it.
‘Thanks,’ Chris muttered.
Wythenshawe nodded, then he gestured at the doors.
‘That was . . . quite a scene in there,’ he said.
Chris and Wythenshawe looked at each other. Wythenshawe was staring at Chris, and there was a strange kind of tension around his mouth, but Chris couldn’t decode what emotion this was meant to express. Chris shook his head, stopped trying, and set about towelling himself down instead.
‘You, er, don’t happen to know where my—?’ he asked.
‘Your clothes? They’re hung up on a rail outside in the passageway.’
‘Thanks,’ Chris muttered again. He took himself off through the second set of double doors. To his discomfort, Wythenshawe followed him.
‘What are your intentions?’ the government aide asked, watching him dress.
‘Like I said: Anna’s still out there. She needs help. I’m just going to try and see what I can do.’ It was hard to sound brave, Chris was finding, while attempting to put one’s jeans on over one’s still-damp legs: irritable, that was how he sounded. Yes: irritable he could do just fine.
‘How are you going to get over to St Paul’s?’ Wythenshawe asked. ‘You’ll never make it in time on foot.’
‘I don’t know,’ Chris replied through gritted teeth as he put his socks on. ‘Maybe I’ll call a cab.’
‘That would be quite difficult in the circumstances, I should imagine,’ said Wythenshawe, apparently missing the sarcasm.
‘You don’t say,’ said Chris. He sighed and stood up. ‘Look, Mr Wythenshawe . . .’ He stopped, put a hand to his brow, and took a moment to get his words in the right order. ‘Thank you for the towel, and for telling me where my clothes are. Sincerely: I appreciate it. But can you help me in any other ways, at all? Or are you just going to stand there stating the bloody obvious?’
For a moment they looked at each other. Then suddenly Chris realized what that expression on the government aide’s face, that weird tension around the sides of his mouth, actually was.
Wythenshawe had been trying not to smile. And now, at last, he was failing: Wythenshawe was beaming at him, with a secret glee that was all the more powerful for it having been pent up for so long.
‘What?’ said Chris.
‘Follow me,’ said Wythenshawe.
rrrRRRNNNNN!
Chris’s head pressed helplessly into his seat back as, beside him, Wythenshawe floored the accelerator. Before the steel plate hatch had risen all the way up they’d shot out of another of the bunker’s secret entrances: with a scream of rubber they skidded round a corner and set off.
Gripping the leather of the seat beneath him, Chris turned to look at the government aide. Wythenshawe was still grinning wildly.
‘I’m not cut out to be a desk man, Chris,’ Wythenshawe said out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Action, not words, that’s always been my motto, and field ops,’ he added, emphasizing this with a yanking hand-brake turn that threatened to separate Chris from his breakfast, ‘that’s where my heart’s always been.’
‘Er, right,’ said Chris. ‘Look, do you know where we’re going?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Wythenshawe. ‘We’ll be there before you know it.’
If you don’t kill us first, Chris added mentally. Which was worse? he wondered. Wythenshawe’s driving or what waited for them at St Paul’s? At that moment, Chris was having trouble deciding.
Chris and Wythenshawe were in one of the bunker’s special black armoured police vans. Apart from the van there was, mercifully, nothing else on the roads – which was why Wythenshawe felt able to go so fast.
‘So, Chris,’ the government man said, still grinning, ‘have you had any ideas about what we’re actually going to do when we get there?’
‘It’s funny you should ask that,’ Chris said miserably. ‘No.’
‘Good man!’ said Wythenshawe, his grin only widening, ‘act first, ask questions later. Chris, you’re a boy after my own heart!’
The events of the previous few days had played a certain amount of havoc with Whitehall’s road surfaces: there was a sudden BUMP, a lurch, then a ringing CRASH as Wythenshawe tested the van’s suspension to the limit.
It was amazing how fast you could get through London without any traffic to stop you. In minutes the speeding police van was approaching their destination. The sounds of battle grew clearly audible over the noise the van was making. The juddering and quaking of the ground vibrated up through the seats. And then . . .
‘Oh no . . .’ Chris breathed.
Then he could see them.
Until that moment, the titanic hulking shapes of Mallahide and Tim had been obscured from Chris’s view either by buildings or simply by the van’s roof: the two monsters were just too big; there was just no way for Chris to crane his head down far enough to look out from underneath, even if it had occurred to him to do so. But Chris and Wythenshawe had passed the remains of the Old Bailey now: they’d entered the epicentre, the heart of the destruction, and looking down the vast swathe of carnage that the battle had caused so far, Chris was now able to see everything.
He saw Mallahide first. This was the first time that Chris had seen for real the whole of what the professor had become, and the experience was quite different from seeing it on a monitor: suddenly Chris found he couldn’t look at anything else.
Mallahide was still in his half-insect form. His huge black humanoid torso reared up over the skyline like a mountain. The pincers on the ends of his various arms, each one big enough to guillotine a truck, snipped slowly and colossally on the empty air. At that moment Mallahide’s craggy black armoured hind legs were still: he was waiting for something.
‘Stop the car!’ said Chris.
Obligingly Wythenshawe stepped on the brakes. The van lurched to a halt.
Where was Tim?
With a sudden wheezing shriek that was still loud enough for Chris to have to put his hands over his ears, Tim emerged from the wreckage of another hapless building. Covered in dust, shaking off clumps of brickwork, Tim struggled to his feet –
– Right next to the van.
‘Oh, sh—!’ Wythenshawe barked, the word drowned out by a protesting scream from the police van’s engine as he abruptly slammed it into reverse. The interior of the van went dark. Chris experienced a drawn-out moment of utter and absolute terror, then—
WHAM!
The gigantic hind paw that had been about to squash them flat came down just a scant two metres in front of the van’s nose. The impact tremor bucked the van upwards – Wythenshawe and Chris both hit their heads on the ceiling – but the spinning tyres greeted the shattered remains of the tarmac below them, and held. The van shot back, but the darkness in the windscreen remained as – for two whole seconds – the full length of Tim’s massive scaly tail slid by overhead with a great SWOOSH.
‘Well,’ said Wythenshawe once he’d brought the van to a halt again, ‘that was a
bit close for comfort!’ His terrible grin was still fixed firmly in place: in fact, Chris reckoned, it was now even wider.
‘We need to get to St Paul’s,’ he reminded him.
‘By all means, dear chap,’ Wythenshawe answered. ‘But let’s just sit here a spell and wait and see what our two large friends are going to do first, shall we?’
They watched.
Punch-drunk, Tim shook himself – an awesome sight. As the gigantic tail threshed the air, Chris couldn’t help flinching in his seat: it seemed close enough to whip down and smash the van out of existence at any second.
Tim took a step forward: the van’s interior filled with light again as the foot that had nearly squashed them came clear of the ground. Then, screeching defiance, Tim set off on the attack once more.
Tim was now bleeding from multiple wounds to his face, chest, and legs: he had clearly taken one hell of a beating already, but Chris could tell from the easy, unhurried way Mallahide moved into position to receive him that there was plenty more punishment left where the first lot had come from. With a pang of guilt Chris watched the armoured black legs brace for impact. Mallahide’s pincer-ended arms spread wide as if welcoming their victim, and with a shattering concussion that left the van trembling the two titans clashed together again.
Four of Mallahide’s arms locked around Tim’s back. Tim’s arms locked around Mallahide’s waist. The two of them stood there in a bear hug, struggling for dominance.
‘Right,’ said Wythenshawe, gunning the engine. ‘Off we go, then.’
‘Now?’ asked Chris.
‘Of course,’ said Wythenshawe. ‘Best get this done while those two are occupied, don’t you agree? I don’t think we’d like it if they noticed us.’
Realizing the wisdom of this, Chris tore his eyes away from the struggling giants and started searching outside the window for St Paul’s.
Chris’s geography of London wasn’t brilliant, as he would have been the first to admit. His knowledge of what should have been where was hampered even further by the fact that most landmarks in the area had been flattened. But even he knew that St Paul’s shouldn’t be this difficult to find: it was so big, you couldn’t miss it. Unless . . .