Anna grimaced: she was certainly thinking about Chris a lot, it seemed, idiot or not.
She felt bad about dismissing him in the way she had: that was the problem. She’d got so used to being the new girl in places, so used to being shunned or ignored, that the old defences had gone up and she’d sent Chris packing before she’d even given him the chance to disgrace himself. That, Anna knew, had been a bad step: she’d crossed a line there. How was she ever going to make any friends if she never gave people a chance?
Anna pursed her lips. The lift doors were opening.
Feeling in the bag for her keys, she crossed the landing to the door of their latest apartment. Some of her and her dad’s stuff was still in boxes: she was most of the way through the unpacking, but even though they’d been there a couple of months already, she hadn’t had time to finish it yet – and of course, her dad had been no help. He was going to be no help tonight, either. She knew exactly what she’d find when she opened the door: there would be a light winking on the answering machine with just one message showing – a message from one of the assistants telling her that her father was very sorry, but he was going to be home late again. As she’d done countless times in countless other places, Anna would put her school bag down, change out of her school uniform, then steam some vegetables in the microwave before starting her homework and another evening in, alone.
But she was wrong. The door was unlocked.
She pushed on it uncertainly. Her mind flashed on security briefings she’d received over the years about espionage, kidnapping and the other potential threats facing top-secret military scientists and their dependants. Then she told herself not to be so dramatic. There was no way that anyone could have got up here without George or someone else knowing. But the alternative was just too weird to imagine. It couldn’t be . . . could it?
‘Dad?’ she asked.
‘Anna!’ said Professor Mallahide. ‘You’re home! Come here, let me give you a hug.’
Obediently, if a little warily, Anna did as he asked. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d been home when she’d got back.
‘Hey, Dad,’ she said once he’d let go. ‘What’s going on? And what’s that smell?’ she added, wrinkling her nose.
‘Oh no! The pizza!’ Wildly Professor Mallahide lunged for the oven: the whole room began to fill with choking smoke when he opened the door to reveal its charred contents. ‘Oh, hell,’ he said. ‘What is it with me and cooking?’
Anna sighed.
Professor Edward Mallahide was fifty-seven years old. The lines around his glittering grey-blue eyes had deepened over the years, but with his narrow shoulders, his nervous energy and the sense that his arms and legs were somehow too long for him, he seemed much younger than his age implied. Anna had come to think of him not as a proper grown-up but as something else, some strange creature that didn’t operate on the same wavelength as other human beings, a high-powered mutant of some kind. He was her dad, the one person she had in the world, but he could be totally exasperating at times.
‘Pizza’s your favourite,’ he pronounced glumly. ‘And now look at it – ruined.’
Anna hadn’t felt like eating pizza for a year at least, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. ‘I’ll order in for us,’ she said. ‘Honestly, Dad, don’t worry.’
‘Fantastic idea!’ said the professor, brightening instantly. ‘Now – where’d that bottle go? Ah! Here we are.’ Grimacing slightly, he twisted the cork free of the bottle of champagne he’d just produced from a plastic bag: phut! He started to pour. The glasses didn’t match, and the champagne was warm because he’d failed to put it in the fridge. But Anna didn’t mention these things either.
‘There!’Mallahide announced triumphantly. ‘A toast!’
‘To what?’ Anna asked.
‘How about “to my darling little girl and her staggeringly talented father”?’
Again Anna tried not to grimace: she didn’t like being called what he’d called her either and hadn’t for some time now. But they clinked glasses.
‘Dad . . .’ said Anna once she’d taken a polite sip. ‘What’s this all about?’
‘What d’you mean?’ he asked back. ‘Can’t a man drink champagne and burn his daughter’s dinner once in a while?’
‘It’s not my birthday,’ Anna pointed out. ‘And it’s not yours either. So—’
‘Anna . . .’ the professor interrupted. He took a deep breath and said: ‘I’ve done it.’
Anna’s smile vanished, and cold fear opened a sluice in her stomach.
‘Done what, Dad?’ she asked as casually as she could.
‘I’ve got permission to allow the swarm to self-replicate! At last!’
Her father beamed at her. Anna didn’t beam back.
‘It’s all off the record, of course,’ he went on, tapping his nose with one finger. ‘Very hush-hush. Wouldn’t want the rest of the world finding out Britain’s about to break the Nanotech Non-Proliferation Treaty, eh? But I’ve got the nod from the prime minister himself: he’s found the funding from I don’t know where – some other project – and we’re all set to start working towards the main experiment tomorrow. Isn’t that great?’
He took another large swig from his glass. Anna pursed her lips.
‘What did you tell them?’ she asked. ‘Not the truth, presumably?’
Mallahide paused and looked guilty. ‘Well . . . no,’ he admitted. ‘I did have to spin them a bit of a yarn; they’d never’ve agreed otherwise. Remember China?’
Anna didn’t need reminding. When her father had unwisely told a colleague the full extent of where his experiments were heading, their stay there had ended very suddenly. If it wasn’t for the top-secret nature of his work, he would have been all but laughed out of the country.
‘Well,’ said Mallahide quickly, ‘that’s not going to happen this time. I’m close, Anna.’ His eyes shone with an enthusiasm Anna loved but had grown wary of. ‘I’m really close; I can feel it.’
Anna sipped the warm champagne. ‘Mmm,’ she lied. ‘Delicious.’ Then she too took a deep breath.
‘Dad,’ she said, ‘you do remember what you promised me – right?’
Mallahide blinked, surprised. He smiled at her once more, but the smile was less warm than before. ‘Anna, really, we’ve been through all that—’
‘No testing on yourself,’ she reminded him firmly. ‘Not until you’re certain it’s safe.’
‘All right! All right!’ Mallahide threw his hands up in mock surrender. ‘But Anna . . .’ He sighed. ‘You know how important my work is to me.’
Anna did – all too well. It was the reason she hardly ever saw him. It was the reason she’d spent her life moving from place to place, never staying anywhere long enough to make real friends or be accepted. But she said nothing.
‘If this succeeds, it’s going to change the entire human race. Do you see?’ Without waiting for her to answer, the professor plunged on. ‘Poverty, famine and war will be things of the past. There’ll be no more disease. No more pain – and no more death. If my nanobots can do what I believe they can do, then no one ever again will have to go through . . . what we went through.’ His expression darkened. ‘Nobody will have their loved ones taken away from them just because their frail human bodies gave up on them. Families will never again be split apart by stupid things like accidents, or age – or . . . or cancer.’
He looked up at Anna pleadingly.
‘Think about it,’ he said. ‘If the kind of technology I can develop had been available when your mum was—’
‘Don’t bring Mum into it,’ said Anna quietly.
‘How can I not?’ Mallahide asked. ‘She’s the whole reason I’m doing this! Not a day goes by when—’
‘I know,’ said Anna, annoyed. ‘You don’t have to tell me.’
‘Well, now it’s in my grasp,’ said the professor. ‘The whole human race is on the brink of the biggest single change it’s ever faced. It’s really going t
o happen!’ he added. ‘Isn’t that exciting?’
Anna just took another sip of her champagne.
TIM
TO A PERSON, the cube of blue plastic was about the size of a bungalow. To Tim, it was a building block to play with: it fitted comfortably between his two front paws, and the colour made it his favourite.
He sat there in his room, with his gigantic hind legs sticking out in front of him and his tail curled up behind. For a while now the room had been too small for him to stand up straight in, so he often just sat like this for hours, gazing at the block, letting his head fill up with slow, blue thoughts. Tim stared until the colour swam in his vision and he felt like he was drifting away inside it, a cool blue world rushing past him as he sank into his trance, deeper and deeper.
What did it remind him of? Tim didn’t know. He’d lived in this room his whole life. Nothing in his experience should have caused him to feel anything from the blue but a straightforward reaction to a colour he liked. But as he sat there, gazing, his head seemed to fill with something else. There at the bottom, in the blue’s dark heart, something was waiting. It was calling to him.
This here is not for you, it said.
This place is not your place.
Your time is coming.
You are needed elsewhere.
Break out of your prison and—
Tim blinked and scowled. He picked up the block and hurled it away with great force: it bounced, leaving two large gouges in the concrete walls of his room, which had never happened before, so it upset Tim even further. He bared his fangs and made a noise in the back of his throat.
He’d been daydreaming again.
It had been happening more and more often lately – and Tim didn’t like it. What Tim liked (he told himself) were the simple things in life. He liked eating. He liked sleeping. And the rest of the time – up until recently, at least – he’d been content to sit or lie where he was, waiting for the tiny people to bring him whatever he needed.
But now . . .
Now it was different. Suddenly, to Tim’s dismay, it wasn’t enough.
He kept having these daydreams: not just the long blue sinking dreams but others, too. Dreams of destruction and combat. Dreams that made him want to flex his new muscles, thrash his tail and stamp his great feet through the floor. The strange feelings they brought (trample crush bite rend smash) were disturbing enough, but where had they come from? Why wouldn’t they leave him alone? What was it stirring in his blood like this when all he’d always thought he wanted was to sit and lie in peace?
His mood was broken by a sudden hiss from the ducts in the walls and ceiling of his enclosure. Agitated – fretful – Tim sniffed the air . . .
Up in the laboratory, Dr McKinsey took her finger off the release button. Her hand shook slightly and her eyes were tearing up. But she’d done what she’d been told to do. Her life’s work was coming to an end. Now her beautiful monster was going to die.
Killing Tim was never going to be easy. After all, the whole object of the project had been to create an animal that was as physically tough as possible. To this end, Dr McKinsey and her technicians had worked tirelessly, using genetic material in the same way an artist might use a palette of paints, mixing and combining to get the effect they wanted. They had looked to the world around them for their source materials, learning what they could not just from reptiles but from plants, insects, marine life, mammals, birds, anything that might be combined into something that would give the military an edge. And what hybrids they had made! Had they only succeeded, the results would have been spectacular – but all had failed. All had either failed to stabilize before birth or had died soon afterwards. All but Tim.
What had happened that day when Tim had been created? Why had that particular combination worked where all the others had failed? And why had it resulted in the gigantic and magnificent beast that she saw before her now? To be honest, even after all these years, Dr McKinsey still didn’t know. She felt a tremendous sense of pride whenever she looked at Tim. He was her one success in life – a single being of fantastic size and strength that she herself had created out of almost nothing. But sometimes, in her darker moments, she had doubts in her own ability. Sometimes it seemed to her that something . . . almost mystical had occurred.
Dr McKinsey bit her lip. Well, it didn’t matter now. At that moment, Tim’s enclosure was being flooded with cyanide gas. The gas was being delivered through the enclosure’s air-conditioning system: it was the only way to hurt him now since nothing with less than the drilling power of an oil rig could possibly penetrate Tim’s scaly hide. Supplying the poison in sufficient quantity had been a serious challenge. Dr McKinsey had seen the tankers arriving: it had taken a week for the whole shipment to be delivered, and still she was worried it wouldn’t be enough.
She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her lab coat – and watched.
Wary now, Tim sniffed again, huffing great gusts into his nostrils, then waiting as his brain slowly sifted the information. Yes: something was definitely wrong. The air had a strange kind of tang to it. It was making his insides feel weird – a tickling sensation at first, which rapidly (as he thought about it) began to turn into a biting, itching, stinging sort of feeling that Tim didn’t like one bit. Tim’s eyes, too, were starting to smart. He ground his scaly knuckles against the outsides of his eyelids, but that only made things worse, and when he opened his eyes again, a sort of haze seemed somehow to have filled the enclosure.
Grunting, Tim got to his feet. From force of habit, he ducked his head forward so he was standing in a kind of hunched crouch. His clawed toes tapped nervously at the concrete. His tail walloped listlessly from side to side. For another long moment he just waited in increasing discomfort, wondering what would happen next.
Then suddenly, he found he couldn’t breathe.
Tim panicked. The air had stuck in his chest like a knife, as if something enormous was lodged in his throat and nothing could pass around it. Now his colossal heart was beating frantically and great shaky shivers were running down his arms and legs as if all the nerves in his body were firing instantaneously. What was going on? Tim didn’t know. What could he do? Tim didn’t know. The ceiling suddenly seemed to be pressing down on him with a crushing weight, and beyond the thickening haze in the air the walls looked like they were closing in. Tim wanted to scream and shout and roar, but it just wouldn’t come out. He had to get away! He had to make it stop! He had to do something!
In a blind ecstasy of panic, Tim began to beat his arms at the ceiling.
CRASH! Cracks starred out in the concrete around each blow. CRASH! The whole laboratory complex shivered. The ground trembled under Dr McKinsey’s shoes, and out in the enclosure great chunks of masonry fell to the floor. But Tim was oblivious. He kept on pounding again and again, the pain and breathlessness making a thin red gauze of blood seem to descend over everything he could see.
‘Yes,’ murmured Dr McKinsey around the knuckle she’d been biting as she watched Tim’s struggle. ‘Yes!’ she said louder, surprised at herself. She hadn’t wanted Tim to die, but she especially hadn’t want him to suffer. ‘Yes, Tim!’ she yelled now. ‘Yes! Go on, you can do it! Go on, Tim! Get free!’
Suddenly, shockingly, the ceiling collapsed. There was an instant of chaos, of noise and choking dust and boiling smoke.
Then nothing.
FIRST INCURSION
IT HAD BEEN dark now for several hours, but Trafalgar Square always had visitors. At that moment there were exactly ninety-seven people crossing the square itself: for an instant, when the first impact tremor struck, every single one just froze.
Was it an earthquake? Nobody knew.
The great paving slabs reverberated under a second great blow. This second was quickly followed by a third and then a fourth, each one seemingly more powerful than the one before. Abruptly Trafalgar Square’s denizens decided they didn’t need any further prompting: they fled, and within moments the square was empty
. But then, as everyone realized that (bizarrely) the ground tremors seemed to be confined exclusively to the area of the square itself, people stopped. Clogging the streets, they waited to see what was going on.
Nelson’s Column – the fifty-six-metre-high pillar of stone with a statue on top that stood at Trafalgar Square’s centre – began to tremble. It wobbled, drifted first one way, then the other – then shattered. Several tons of granite crashed to the ground. Splashes of water from the fountains rose high into the night sky: their stone sides split, the pools emptied out over the bare paving. There were a few screams from the onlookers, but as if in answer to the echoing crash of the falling column, the shuddering blows from below ground seemed to pause, and a hush descended on the waiting crowd once more.
Suddenly, with a great heave, the ground seemed to bulge upwards. It stayed that way for a whole two seconds – then fell back as the crowd watched, breathless. Another great heave and the ground lifted again, higher this time, as paving slabs that had lain next to each other for two centuries suddenly parted to reveal black London clay beneath.
Then something emerged.
It was about the size of a large car – a limo, say. Illuminated by the square’s remaining streetlights, the object’s colour was dark green, almost black. It consisted of five long appendages attached to a wider plate of thick matter. The object’s size made it unfamiliar: the watching crowd didn’t identify it at first, not until the earth split open again and the object was joined by a second one, its counterpart. Both objects began scrabbling for purchase on the lip of the enormous hole that had now appeared at the centre of what had been one of Britain’s most famous landmarks. Tim’s claws found their grip. He heaved himself up . . .
Then the screaming really started.
Commander Geoffrey Draper of the British Grenadiers, currently standing guard in full dress uniform in a box just inside the gates of Buckingham Palace, had heard the noise. The echoing booms from the ground had travelled right up The Mall and under his boots. His heavy, hairy busby hat, worn ceremonially by grenadiers while guarding the palace, had been making his neck feel very stiff. But now he’d stopped thinking about that and reached for his radio.