by Patrick Ness
She didn’t want this. She didn’t want to be fighting this.
She had just wanted to find out what was going on. She had wanted to be the clever, brave one.
Now she was running for her life.
She ran.
She kept running.
I have no plan. I have no idea what I’m doing. I will not fight it. I’m not a soldier.
Oh God. Where is my gun?
She smacked into another wall. She was cornered. She twisted round, trying to see where she’d dropped her gun. As she’d walked in, it had felt so good to be holding a gun. It was solid, it was chunky, it was heavy. It didn’t feel like paintballing or Laser Quest. This was real. This could protect her. This could hurt.
Only now she’d lost it.
The monster heaved itself towards her, slithering and lurching, rearing up to spring. Sensing victory, it paused. Tentacles flailing through the air towards her, the jaws opened. She could see those dreadful teeth, smell the air-meltingly awful stench of its breath.
She had an absurd urge to laugh. She was supposed to fight this thing? Who’d thought this was a good idea?
Her brain raced on again.
Up until now she’d taken this all on board. The disorientation. The endless white rooms. The complete isolation. The idea that behind this place was a great and powerful plan that really understood what was going on and was doing all it could to save the Earth.
The world was like that. She understood that. People made important decisions and other people carried them out and told more people that it had to be done and so it gradually trickled down and spread out until everyone’s lives were somehow affected by it. The decisions didn’t have to be good (they often weren’t), they just had to be made and somehow they’d end up happening.
You could shout, you could protest, but you just couldn’t stop them.
That was how things happened. She was sure that was how all this had come to pass. Someone had seen there was a problem and they’d worked out how to solve it and they’d thought it through and argued the toss and then decided that this was the best solution. Build the Void. Fight the war that way.
Only . . .
Well, this was the thing . . .
As the tentacles pressed against her and the teeth trailed across her skin, April screamed at the top of her voice:
‘Who the hell thought it was a good idea to throw teenagers at monsters?’
THIRTY-ONE
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‘Hi, I’m Todd and this is why I fight.’
(We see Todd. He’s in combat gear. He’s taken his helmet off, and we can see that he’s ruggedly handsome, with a kindly older brother’s air to him.)
‘Why do I fight? It’s simple. I fight for the planet Earth.’
(Shots of green fields and sunny days and beaches, lots of beaches.)
‘I fight for my parents, my family.’
(Shot of Todd’s parents holding hands. Shot of his sister shooting him with a water pistol. Jokes.)
‘I fight for everything that’s good about our beautiful world.’
(More beaches, this time at sunset.)
‘I fight for tomorrow.’
(Sped-up footage of the night sky, scurrying clouds, daybreak.)
‘I fight because the Skandis are evil. They want to destroy us, our planet, our way of life. We can’t let that happen.’
(Grainy black-and-white footage of Skandis in combat.)
‘We can’t let that happen. We can’t let that happen to the Earth.’
(Footage of a playground. Screaming children fleeing from an unseen menace. A mother scoops up a toddler and runs towards the camera, her face full of terror.)
‘We’re here because we’re making a difference. I don’t care how long it takes. What it costs. Because I know that while I’m here, I’m doing everything I can to ensure my world is safe.’
(The Earth seen from space, beautiful, tranquil, fringed by the rising sun.)
‘What I’m doing here is right. I’m Todd and this is why I fight.’
(Todd, staring straight into the camera.)
The video ended and everyone in the Big White Room rose to their feet, applauding wildly. They looked at one another, at the screen, and they cheered.
NORMAL.
THIRTY-TWO
THE TEN BEST ALIEN DEATHS YOU’LL SEE TODAY. #6 IS A KILLER
So what? She’d used the safe word. It was April’s first time.
Surely no one had expected her to do any different. Screw them.
It wasn’t instant. That had been surprising. She’d had to wait the ten seconds for the dimensions to stabilise and for the chamber door to open.
Ten seconds in which she was quite sure that she could have died.
Ten seconds in which to keep fighting and keep alive.
Ten seconds in which she became aware of her heart. It was beating strangely. Beating with excitement and verve. Filling her body with an unusual amount of energy. Like adrenaline, but different. More wild. The alien part of her heart. The bit linked to a Shadow Kin warlord. The bit that said, ‘I am bred for battle and I must fight’.
The pulsing heart beat so strong and fast that it spun her round, made her pick up her gun, aim it again at the nightmare. Only it wasn’t so nightmarish anymore. It was just a Skandis. Just something to wipe out. That was all.
She got ready to squeeze the trigger.
Then the Skandis vanished and the combat chamber sprang open.
She heaved herself out and stood there in the bay, waiting for her heart to calm down.
‘Whoa,’ she breathed.
April spooned down her savoury porridge flakes and wondered what the hell was going on.
How many days had she been here? Was this her first day? Her second? Her third? She felt completely disoriented and desperate to know how her mum was coping without her. She’d be worried, wouldn’t she? She’d have called the police? But how was anyone going to find her—wherever here was, or wasn’t.
Every morning (was it even morning?) it was the same. She’d wake up in the Big White Room. She’d take a deep breath. She’d remember. She’d think about what she had to do that day. And she’d feel utterly alone.
‘Hey, everyone!’
Seraphin’s face blotted out a wall of the chamber. Everyone looked up from their breakfast.
Seraphin stepped away from the camera. He was topless and holding a plate of food.
‘Cinnamon toast. You want some?’ He took a bite.
‘Ohhhh, delicious.’
Then he walked back a little bit further, sat down in a leather chair, flung his legs up along the side, tugged at his hair, and continued to munch his way through the plateful, while the audience spooned slowly through their grey soup.
‘Apparently the battle has been going really well. Like amazingly well. Let’s just look again at some of yesterday’s footage. That’s right, #clipshow.’
The huge wall filled with head-camera footage. A Skandis on the ground, flailing.
A rifle butt came into frame.
It smashed down and down and down again. Each impact made a wet, crunching thud. The horrific frame of the Skandis shuddered and squealed each time, its so solid frame crumbling and shattering under the impact.
A solitary tentacle continued to twitch.
The rifle butt smacked down on the tentacle. It sheared off, flopped around wetly, then stopped moving.
The shot changed, showing flashes of arm and broadcasting ragged breathing. Movement, movement, the head whipping around to show something following.
It was someone running. With a Skandis following, screaming and howling. The person running was out of breath, you could hear it catching and wheezing and desperate. It was a girl.
For a moment April thought—is that me, was that me, did I sound THAT scared?
For a few seconds all you could see was white. Then the running stopped.
Breath. R
agged breath. A shot of boots.
The girl was doubled over, catching her breath. She was exhausted. She’d given up. That was it.
The hall echoed with the slight creak of a hundred people leaning forward in their seats.
They were going to watch her die. Then the shot changed.
She’d stood up.
She’d turned around.
She was facing the Skandis still running towards her. So close. So lethal.
She shot it.
The soldiers in the hall breathed out, cheering and clapping, fists pounding on the tables.
Wow, thought April. Aliens vs. Hogwarts.
Wherever she looked around the room, at all the cheering faces, her helmet told her ‘NORMAL’.
‘Another one down!’ someone shouted. No one looked around to see who’d said it. There’d been something, a little falter on the last word, that told them that they’d thought better of it.
The shot changed a third time.
At first it seemed to be a drone. A drone spinning somewhere, seeming to take off, whip up and then hover overhead, looking down at a Skandis. It swept backwards and forwards, observing and monitoring and checking in.
It flew up higher and began to slowly descend, drifting down.
It was a peaceful, gentle scene. Then they all heard the voice on the picture.
The voice saying softly and quietly, ‘Please, no, please, no.’
It was crying.
The shot drifted closer and closer. Down towards the monster. Ever so slowly.
Something moved to the left of the frame.
A tentacle. Clamped around a leg. Pulling the camera closer and closer. Drawing it into the great, vast mouth that split open across the top of the creature.
The picture went black but the screaming didn’t stop. The wall went back to white. The Big White Room was utterly silent.
Then Seraphin spoke.
He was back, still sprawling in his chair, not a care in the world. He put down his plate, dusting crumbs from his hands and licking the tips of his fingers. ‘Delicious. Amazing. It’s recipe time. Hey—you know, like when my sister taught me to make a sausage casserole. Jokes if you’ve not seen it. So here goes with today’s recipe:
Here’s a few cheeky tips for slaying a Skandis . . .’
April looked around at the other people eating. None of them met her eye. Flickering around the walls was headcam footage, screen after screen of food. That was it. She leaned close to the person opposite her, trying to squint with one eye, to see if the image of the boy’s face appeared, however fleetingly, on the screen. The overlay in her helmet said ‘ABNORMAL’, urging her to look away.
Well, screw that.
The boy was so young. He was pale. He had spots clustered round the straps on his helmet. He wouldn’t meet her eye.
‘I’ll keep staring at you,’ whispered April, and she meant it.
The boy carried on eating.
April carried on looking at him.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Why do you fight? Why don’t you try to get home?’
The boy said nothing.
His spoon hesitated, just for a moment. Then he carried on eating.
April gave in, and looked up at the screen, where Seraphin was still talking away.
‘Here’s what we’ve got,’ he said, his tone as bright as ever.
‘Weapons. You can’t toast a Skandis without them. But it’s important to know how to use them. Really lethally use them. Here are some of my sister’s old dolls. Kidding, they’re mine.’
He gestured to a row of plastic ballerinas.
‘The gun is the easy bit. It blasts—’ A ballerina shattered.
‘It burns.’
A ballerina whoomphed into a melting pillar of fire.
‘And the butt—snark, I said butt—can be used as a club. That’s why it’s so heavy.’
The end of the rifle smacked down, breaking a ballerina into pieces.
‘And, in an emergency, we’ve also given you an electronic stunner.’ Seraphin grimaced. ‘Really? Like who came up with that name and why aren’t they fired?’ He winked. ‘We should have a competition to see who can come up with a better one, isn’t that right, Captain Pugsley?’ He held up a small, wrinkled, cross-looking dog. It grunted and then got back on with the depressing business of being a pug.
April slept. In her dreams she saw all the headcam footage. The endless army of Skandis fighting, lunging, attacking, the soldiers fighting back at them, advancing, screaming, dying. On both sides the slaughter went on. Overlaid over each and every frame of her dream was one word: NORMAL.
She woke up in a dark room. Only it was a dark room that she knew was white. That felt strange. Her heart pounding, she was ready for battle.
What the hell am I doing here? she thought.
THIRTY-THREE
EIGHT WAYS IN WHICH PEOPLE HAVE TRIED TO ESCAPE THE VOID
1. The boy who shot himself in the foot. FAILED.
The gun simply refused to fire.
2. The small group of dissenters who had tried to find a way out. FAILED.
Some said they were still walking somewhere in one of the corridors.
3. The girl who smashed up her room. FAILED.
She came back to it after a meal to find it completely replaced.
4. The boy who faked appendicitis. FAILED.
He woke up to find his appendix removed.
5. The brothers who refused to eat. FAILED.
They carried on fighting, claiming their heads felt clearer without food, but insisting they wouldn’t eat till they could go home. After seven days without food, both vanished on a Level 4 combat mission.
6. The girl who said she had to go to her mother’s wedding. FAILED.
She was assured, despite evidence to the contrary, that the wedding hadn’t yet taken place.
7. The guy who’d just stayed on the floor of the Big White Room, screaming. FAILED.
He’d been taken back to his room, and hadn’t been seen since.
8. The girl who got out.
Actually, that one’s a Rick Roll. Sorry.
THIRTY-FOUR
AT FIRST SHE THOUGHT SHE KNEW EVERYTHING BUT THEN SHE FOUND THIS SECRET SHE HADN’T KNOWN SHE NEEDED TO KNOW
April wanted out. She wanted to get home. She wanted to make sure her mum was okay. More selfishly, if you’d pressed her, she would have told you that she was miserable.
After a meal break, she wandered the corridors. She ignored the gentle way the Void had of suggesting that you went this way instead of that. Instead she strolled along, pushing occasionally at the walls. She figured that, at some point, this whole structure had to have a weak point. At the very least, someone’s room would be unlocked and she could try to talk to someone. She patted her way along a corridor, turned left, went along another one, circling back towards the Combat Chambers. She didn’t want to end up there by accident.
She bore left and pushed on another square of wall. Then she pressed on a little bit further and walked towards the end of the corridor. A white wall. So perfectly white. She pushed against the end of the corridor, and felt it click. Just a little. She pressed it again, and it slid open. What was beyond it was startling, simply because it was so dark. No white. Just a dim grey tunnel that blew cold air at her. She stepped into it, pulling the door closed behind her.
Was it too absurd to hope it’d end in an emergency exit sign leading to a car park? Perhaps she wasn’t at the end of the universe after all, but simply in Slough. God, she would love to be in Slough. The corridor ended in a small flight of metal stairs. She climbed them.
After all the empty, futuristic concealed panels and blankness, what was most surprising about what was at the top of the stairs was its sheer ordinariness.
It was a normal wooden door. April, nonplussed, knocked at it.
‘Coming!’ said a voice. April stood there, baffled. The door opened.
‘You!’ she cried.
Stand
ing at the door was Seraphin.
THIRTY-FIVE
WHEN SHE MET GOD SHE FORGOT TO ASK ‘WHY?’
The room was the last thing she would have expected.
It was Seraphin’s bedroom.
She wandered around it in a daze.
There was his bed with its crumpled sheets. There was the shelf full of wonderfully ironic toys. There was the table with a huddle of laptops. There was the little nook leading to the bathroom with its massive selfie mirror. There was even the bay window, looking out onto . . .
‘Yeah,’ said Seraphin, ‘you can poke the sky. It’s fake.’ April leaned out of the window. Because he’d told her to and her head was just not up to anything else. Beneath her was just darkness. And ahead of her was a brilliant skyline that looked somehow wrong. Wrong because when you prodded it, you felt nothing. Just nothing. But it all rippled. Like paper.
‘Whaaaaa?’ said April and stopped talking.
‘Hi,’ said Seraphin, and he reached out and took her hand. He shook it firmly but not too insistently. ‘You’d better not be a fan.’
‘Not really. April.’
Good, ’cos if you were a fan and you’d somehow managed to get here I would, I really think, scream.’ Seraphin smiled and gave a little scream.
April smiled back. Up close, Seraphin was a bit too hot to look at directly. Like a polite, sweet sun. But there was something different about him. Something that made him weirdly more handsome.
‘Oh, got it! You’re wearing clothes!’
‘Yuh.’ Seraphin ducked his head. Actually he was wearing a lot of clothes. Comfortable sweat pants, baggy slogan T-shirt, smart hoodie, and a beanie hat that suited him amazingly. ‘What?’ he said. ‘My clothes only fall off when I’m working. You know, I just do it for the likes, the reblogs, and the gifs. When I’m off duty, I like to be WARM. I like to wear a shirt. I like to be shnoogly. Especially in winter—the heating bills at my place are PHENOMENAL.’
‘Don’t worry, you look great,’ said April. ‘I mean, sorry, I mean . . . God, this is weird.’ She laughed and she didn’t know why she was laughing. ‘It’s you. You’re really here.’
