by Gary Gibson
I again stepped back out from the pillar. Borodin had pushed past General Yakov and was striding briskly towards the Tsar.
Imperial guards blocked his path, pushing him back. ‘Your Majesty,’ Borodin shouted past them. ‘I just want to speak with you!’
The doctor removed the pressure cuff from the Tsar’s arm. The Tsar stood and turned the other way, gesturing to one of his entourage to follow him.
‘Your Majesty!’ Borodin shouted again, his voice growing hoarse as the Tsar moved farther away.
One of the guards came nose to nose with Borodin and said something I couldn’t hear. Borodin’s face turned to ash while everyone else around them did their level best to pretend they had seen and heard nothing.
I should have felt vindicated to see Mikhail Borodin fall so far, and so very quickly. To my surprise, however, I felt nothing.
We returned to the Crag shortly after, leaving behind most of the medical staff and several guards to wait for those still immersed in the healing pool. I was escorted back through early morning light to the interrogation block, where Casey and Jerry confronted me with a thousand questions: where had I been, what happened, what did I see?
‘We’re going to die in here,’ I said, after I gave them my answers. ‘Your friends aren’t coming for us.’
‘They’ll come,’ said Jerry obstinately, slumping back down against a wall. Casey, seated on the bench, stared into a corner with a hopeless expression.
‘It’s been too long,’ I said, peering out at the stage, which was as busy as ever. ‘Either something went wrong, or they realized it was pointless.’
Neither of them said anything in reply.
The rest of the day passed with interminable slowness. One of the Crag’s guards brought us what looked like scraps and leftovers from the canteen. Doubt dug its roots deeper into my thoughts with every passing hour. Perhaps I had been wrong about the Portal-Monoliths after all, and my father’s death had been meaningless. If so, every one of my sacrifices had led to nothing.
I watched as workers brought machinery and furniture up from other parts of the Crag, stacking it all in great piles to one side of the stage before either crating it up or burning it. A forklift moved the crates onto the stage, where they soon vanished in a rush of light.
There was no sign of Borodin. Yakov appeared to be in charge now; I watched him marching around and giving orders. Whenever I saw Pierre, my hands would tighten on the window bars, imagining my fingers were closing around his throat.
Later, in the early evening, the Tsar climbed onto the stage and vanished in a rush of light, presumably on his way back to the First Republic.
‘The Hypersphere’s still here,’ said Jerry, when he came to stand by my side soon after the Tsar departed. He nodded at where it still sat in its cradle, farther around the transfer stage. ‘How come he’s not taking it back with him?’
‘Your guess,’ I said, ‘is as good as mine.’
We watched in silence for another minute.
‘He’s not going to risk taking it back yet,’ said Casey. He lay on his back on the floor, one arm thrown over his eyes. ‘Too dangerous.’
Jerry looked back at him. ‘How do you figure that?’
Casey moved his arm and looked at him. ‘You saw him. He’s thirty, forty years younger than he was. Soon as they see him back home, there’ll be people saying he’s an impostor.’ He sat up and hooked his arms over his knees. ‘All those other people who went over with him, I figure, are meant to be witnesses that he’s the real deal. He won’t risk taking the Hypersphere back home until the political situation is much more settled. In the meantime, he’s got it tucked up nice and safe here.’
‘As long as it stays here,’ I said, pressing my forehead against the bars, ‘everyone back home is safe.’
‘Nothing’s happened yet, though,’ said Jerry. ‘No sign of anything falling out of the sky, or anything like that.’
‘Not yet, no,’ I said.
A few hours later, after night had fallen, an armoured truck materialized on the stage. It drove down the ramp and parked across the courtyard from the stage. My heart sank as I watched imperial guards, under Yakov’s watchful gaze, load the Hypersphere into the rear of the truck. Casey, it appeared, had guessed wrong.
I thought they would send it back immediately, but they did not. I could see the artefact’s faint glow illuminating the inside of the truck. I wanted more than anything to close my eyes and sleep, but I was afraid to wake up and find it gone.
I could only stay awake for so long, however, and I hadn’t slept since I had lain on the cot in Nadia’s tiny shack. The moment I finally sat down with my back against a wall and tucked my forehead against my knees, I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
It felt as if only an instant had passed before I woke again to the sound of gunfire.
TWENTY-SIX
I heard a brief, staccato burst of noise, like hail pounding on a tin roof. It echoed across the courtyard, coming from somewhere farther down the mountain.
Casey and Jerry were already up and standing on either side of the window, peering out at a gloomy dawn. My tongue felt furry and thick, and there was an unpleasant, throbbing dampness beneath the bandages on my shoulder.
A sudden vibration rolled through the floor.
Jerry glanced at me. ‘Get much in the way of earthquakes here?’
I shook my head and swallowed. ‘Never.’
‘That’s the second tremor in just the past few minutes.’ He stepped over and helped me to my feet. ‘I think maybe you should see this.’
I squeezed past him and peered out of the window. The stage was crammed with dozens of people all shouting and yelling at once, their eyes wide with panic. I saw that nearly all of the Crag’s guards were amongst them.
A trickle of dread worked its way into my belly when I saw several of them looking and pointing upwards at something only they could see. I pulled my face up close against the bars, hoping to catch sight of whatever it was that had caught their attention, but all I could make out was a single thin sliver of sky above the roof of the building on the far side of the courtyard.
Several imperial guards ran towards the bottom of the ramp, waving their machine guns at the mass of people on the stage and shouting at them. Another rushed to the open door of the truck into which the Hypersphere had been loaded. He climbed into the cabin, then leaned back out, yelling at the crowd and waving at them to show he wanted them to get clear.
Then, to my astonishment, one of the imperial guards near the bottom of the ramp slipped his weapon from his shoulder and opened fire on the crowd gathered on the stage. My heart clenched at the sudden eruption of noise, and I saw several people, including one of the Crag’s own guards, crumple and fall.
A terrible wail went up, and I thought the crowd might scatter, leaving room for the imperial guards to drive the truck onto the stage as they clearly intended. Instead, the surviving members of the Crag’s guards – who, it appeared, were attempting to desert en masse – unshouldered their own rifles and returned fire.
‘They’re fighting amongst themselves,’ Casey muttered from beside me. ‘What the hell’s going on out there?’
The imperial guard who had commandeered the truck was the first to die. I saw him struggle to climb back down from the cabin before falling under a volley of shots. His compatriots meanwhile moved to defend themselves, but too late: Herr Frank’s men were quick to take the advantage, and within seconds the remaining imperial guards had fallen to the cobblestones.
‘Hey!’ Casey pushed a hand between the bars and hammered at the thick glass. ‘What about us? We’re in here! Hey!’
Light formed above the crowd. I glanced towards the control rig and saw that Pierre was manning it. In the last instant before the light swallowed them all, he ran forward, leaping onto the stage just in time.
The light faded, and I stared out at the suddenly deserted courtyard. The only sound I could hear was the quiet
grumbling of the truck’s engine.
There was, I realized, no one left to guard it – or the Hypersphere mounted in its rear.
‘Jesus, did all of that really just happen?’ shouted Casey. ‘What the hell spooked them so badly?’
‘Guess,’ I said.
But I needed to see with my own eyes.
More gunfire echoed through the air, coming, perhaps, from the lower terraces.
‘Sounds as if we’re not alone after all,’ muttered Jerry.
‘Hey,’ said Casey in a loud whisper, pointing to the cell door. ‘Someone’s coming.’
I listened, and heard the scuff of boots coming down the corridor.
‘Could be someone coming to rescue us,’ said Jerry, hopefully.
Casey shook his head hard. ‘Or kill us.’ He snatched up the stamped-tin tray our food had been brought on.
‘There’s no point in killing us,’ I said, albeit a touch uncertainly.
‘Yeah?’ snapped Casey. ‘You already said they’re getting rid of all the evidence. What if that includes us?’
Jerry gaped at him in disbelief. ‘What the hell are you going to do, Casey, tray whoever it is to death?’
‘You got any better ideas?’ he hissed, pressing himself against the wall on one side of the door. ‘We don’t know who’s out there.’
Jerry shook his head. ‘You’ve got a tray. The people running this place have machine guns and rifles.’
My nerves got the better of me, and I pressed myself against the wall on the opposite side of the door from Casey. ‘If it’s guards,’ I said to him, ‘we try and grab their guns.’
Not that I really believed I had it in me to do any such thing – especially not with a festering gunshot wound in one shoulder. But it was either that, or just stand there and do nothing.
Jerry muttered something obscene under his breath and pressed himself next to me. I felt the blood pounding in my skull, and reached out, taking a tight grip on his hand.
‘Jerry!’ a voice shouted from the other side of the door. ‘Where the fuck are you?’
‘Randall!’ shouted Jerry, jerking back from the wall. ‘Goddammit, is that you?’
Casey leaned his head back and laughed from sheer relief while Jerry battered the door with his bare hands. ‘In here, you goddam redneck!’ he bellowed. ‘Get us out of here!’
‘Sweet fucking hallelujah,’ said a woman’s voice: Nadia. ‘We found him!’
‘Hey! Get back from the door,’ Randall shouted. ‘I’m gonna try and shoot out the lock.’
‘Shoot what?’ said Nadia scornfully. ‘That crap only ever happens in mov—’
Randall fired three times. The noise was deafening in the confined space. I let out a shriek and clapped my hands over my ears. The door jerked under the impact, and the lock mechanism shattered.
‘You see, huh?’ I heard Randall say, his voice full of scorn. ‘Maybe you’ve been watching the wrong movies.’ He shoved the door, but it still wouldn’t open wide enough to let him through.
‘Hang on,’ he shouted. The door jerked hard, and then again, and on the third try it flew open. Randall had his hands braced against the door frame, one boot raised to kick at the door. Nadia and Chloe stood behind him, clutching rifles.
Nadia’s eyes nearly popped out when she saw me and Casey along with Jerry. ‘Jesus Christ on a pogo stick,’ she said slowly. ‘I hope you sons of bitches have been having fun.’
Chloe pushed past me and grabbed hold of Jerry in a tight embrace. I looked away from them, a sudden tightness in my throat.
‘Nadia,’ said Casey, stepping towards her, ‘I—’
Nadia pulled back her fist and punched Casey hard in the jaw. The big man took a step backwards, his head twisting round from the impact. I held my breath, but he made no move to retaliate.
‘That wasn’t called for,’ he said thickly, rubbing at his jaw from beneath hooded eyes.
‘Fuck you, it wasn’t called for,’ she shouted. ‘Five minutes you were on the island – five minutes – and that’s all it took for you to start screwing us about!’
I stepped between them, facing Nadia. ‘For God’s sake, stop this! We need to get out of here.’
Nadia’s expression became more sober. ‘Do you even know what’s out there?’ she asked me.
‘I think I have a pretty good idea.’
We made our way outside. It was a shock actually seeing a Portal-Monolith with my own two eyes. Nothing could have prepared me for it: not even a dead man’s memories.
It hovered motionless in the air a few kilometres above us. That surprised me: I had assumed it would simply keep falling until it hit the ground. Not so, evidently. It was high enough still that clouds obscured the upper part of its bulk. I raised my eyes yet higher and caught glimpses of a ragged hole in the sky through occasional breaks in the cloud cover.
One thing was different, however: the Portal-Monolith’s leading edge was coming apart like so much wind-blown ash, apparently dissolving from the bottom up. Instead of being carried away by the wind, uncountable thousands of black specks swarmed around the enormous craft with what was clearly intelligent purpose.
Even as we watched, a number of these specks spiralled down towards the Crag.
I looked past the battlements at the edge of the terrace and saw more Portal-Monoliths, far off in the distance, falling through more tears in reality.
‘I have seen some crazy shit,’ said Casey in a half-whisper, ‘but this really beats it all.’
‘That’s nothing compared to what we saw on the way up here,’ said Randall. ‘We ran into people a couple of times, but they were in such a panic it was like they didn’t even see us.’ He nodded upwards. ‘Those things flying around it seem to come in waves. Some of them came down and sort of . . . flowed over people, and they just disappeared. If we hadn’t managed to find somewhere to hide, we might not have made it this far.’
‘There’s a big-ass stage around the other side of this building,’ said Nadia. ‘Any reason we can’t use it to get back home?’
‘I thought of that too,’ said Chloe. ‘It’s got to be better than trying to go all the way back down to the forest with those things flying about.’
‘Sounds like a great idea to me,’ said Jerry.
Casey nodded. ‘I figure there’s a good chance we’re the only ones left by now, so we’re not likely to get interrupted. Or at least if there is anyone left, they’re probably hiding from those things.’
‘Chloe, use your radio, call Oskar,’ said Nadia. ‘Tell him to head home and wait for us.’
‘Where is he right now?’ asked Jerry.
‘Down in the forest, waiting at the transfer point,’ said Chloe, pulling out a walkie-talkie. She switched it on and relayed the message.
Just as she put the radio away, voices came from the direction of the transfer stage, around the other side of the interrogation block.
‘Spoke too soon,’ said Nadia, glaring at Casey.
She moved quickly and quietly to the nearest corner and peered around it towards the stage, then hustled back over. ‘There’s two of them,’ she said, her voice low and urgent. ‘Long dark coats, machine guns. They’re wandering all around that stage. Fuck!’
‘Imperial guards,’ I said.
‘We can’t take on machine guns,’ said Randall.
‘Should I tell Oskar to wait for us?’ asked Chloe.
Nadia shook her head. ‘Not yet. But it’s an option.’ She looked at me. ‘Katya? Is there a faster way back down to the forest?’
‘Not really,’ I admitted. ‘There are the elevators, but that would leave you very exposed.’
‘Yeah, and I don’t want to have to go all the way back down there with those things flying around,’ said Randall.
‘What choice do we have?’ Nadia hissed, then put a hand up to silence him before he could say anything more. ‘We’ll head back around the other side of this building and hit the same stairs that brought us here,’ she said,
nodding towards the opposite corner of the interrogation block. Then she glanced up, and I did too, seeing black shapes spiralling down towards us.
‘Okay, let’s go,’ she said, grabbing my arm.
I pulled myself free.
‘What the fuck?’ she exclaimed.
‘You have Jerry,’ I said. ‘Those guards are going to try and take the Hypersphere back home to the Empire. I can’t allow that.’
Nadia unslung her rifle and aimed it at me. ‘We don’t have time for this bullshit,’ she hissed. ‘You’re coming with us.’
‘Pull that trigger,’ I said, ‘and they’ll come running.’ I put out my hand. ‘At least give me a rifle so I have a fighting chance.’
‘Goddamn you,’ said Nadia, ‘don’t do this! We need you back on the islan—’
‘Stoy!’
A third imperial guard appeared from the direction of the stairs, his machine gun levelled. ‘Sergei! Ensel! Over here!’ he shouted in Russian.
I heard a response from the direction of the stage. The other two guards appeared around the other corner moments later.
‘Drop your weapons!’ the first guard shouted in Russian at the Pathfinders. ‘Drop them now!’
I turned to Nadia. ‘He’s saying—’
‘I can guess.’ She let her rifle clatter to the cobblestones with a sour expression. ‘Thanks a fucking bundle,’ she added, as the others followed suit.
Casey was staring hard at the three guards. ‘Look at them,’ he muttered. ‘They’re scared shitless. We could take them if we play it right.’
‘Don’t do one damn fool thing,’ Nadia muttered, ‘or I swear if I’m still alive afterwards I’ll put a bullet in you myself.’
‘Those things are getting closer,’ muttered Randall, glancing up at the black specks overhead.
The first guard, who had flecks of grey in his beard, was clearly in charge. ‘Who the hell are you people?’ he demanded.
‘We’re technicians,’ I replied.
‘Technicians with guns?’ one of the other guards sneered, kicking our rifles out of reach before pointing his gun at Casey. ‘He doesn’t look like any kind of scientist to me.’
