another world. Kai whooped with joy, he jumped up from where he'd been sitting against the wall and came to join Elra in front of the event horizon. Beyond, they could see another night-covered city, full of high brick buildings, soaring stone spires and long, trailing pillars of smoke. They had a fantastic vantage point, seemingly floating in mid-air, looking down on everything from... about the height of Tower Bridge over London.
They both registered the fact at the same time, and silently turned to each other, sharing a moment of mutual revelation. Looking back, they saw there was indeed the dark water of a river flowing far underneath where their rift hung in the air. The buildings on its lapping banks were crumbling, their roofs nothing but heaped piles of tiles and wood in crumbling shells.
'Oh god, look,' Kai pointed, towards the hazy, dark horizon.
Something was moving in the clouds. A massive, amorphous shape; easily the size of an entire city block.
A vast flash behind a bank of cloud and smoke, directly under the shape in the sky. Boom. The sound came a few seconds later. Another flash, and another delayed boom.
Then the thing emerged. It was a huge aircraft, somewhere between an airship and a grossly oversized insect. Its hull (or abdomen?) was bloated and enlarged, with trailing antennae dangling off its underside. At the front end, the two viewing ports of its cockpit (or were those eyes?) shone like headlights, their beams scanning the city beneath. To their horror, the thing let out a low, sonorous moan and swung round and began heading straight for them. Flashes flared below its flight-path, the sound of their accompanying booms becoming less and less delayed the closer it came.
'Um, Elra, make it stop,' Kai said, the fear in his voice audible.
'I...'
'Come on, close the rift.'
Elra had it under control. But that creature's eyes... they seemed to mesmerize her somehow. Its headlamp-like beams were pointed directly at the rift, at her, at her London, and it was so close that the booms were now perfectly timed to the explosions. It let out another mournful moan.
'Close it!' Kai cried.
'I've got it!' she retorted. She let her concentration lapse. The rift began to fade.
And then something weird happened. She felt another force act upon the rift, originating from somewhere abstract, far across the reaches of reality. The rift shimmered violently and the city disappeared, replaced with split second glimpses of other realities, like a radio being tuned, each one passing as soon as it appeared, making it impossible to distinguish anything.
She tried as hard as she could to shut it down. The other force pushed against her and the rift started to collapse.
'Whoa... What's happening?' Kai asked.
She ignored him. She was creepingly aware of how exhausted she was and how tenuous her grip on the rift had become. For a second it locked on to a sunlit walled courtyard.
Oh no. She gave it her all, and it went back to channel hopping. Then a dark, streetlight-lit road. Then the desert.
Then it imploded on itself.
Kai looked at her, eyebrows raised. 'What just happened?'
Elra just stared at him, shell-shocked. After half a minute of silence, he began giggling, that type of 'we almost died, but we didn't!' giggle. A few seconds later, she joined in too.
'That was insane.'
At that exact time, 150 miles away, a police patrol vehicle dropped off the station's scanner, as if it had disappeared into thin air.
Twenty-eight
'We've come to take you home, miss,' the policeman said.
They'd entered Cali's room without knocking; the hospital room she'd been in for over a week now, never allowed to leave without that policewoman chaperoning her, even when she went to the bathroom.
'We have judged the risk of retaliation against you to be minimal, so you can go back to your life.'
'Any developments?' Cali asked, like she always did when they visited.
'I cannot tell you at this time.'
In other words, no. 'Any news about Elra?'
They responded with making their stony faces appear even more stony.
'Guess not?' she hazarded.
'That's correct, miss.'
'We have a vehicle outside,' the other said.
Cali packed the small bag her mother had brought her earlier in the week and followed them out. She shot a smile to the trainee nurse with whom she'd struck up something of a friendship and exited the ward.
A few minutes later, the cruiser was pulling out of the parking lot and onto the main road.
'We called your mother, let her know you're returning.'
'How did she sound?' Cali asked.
'Overjoyed,' said one, in tone that bordered on sarcasm.
Cali decided to keep quiet after that.
Ten minutes later, they pulled onto Sylands Road.
'Down here, right?' the cop who was driving said.
'No, it's - ' Cali began, but by that time he'd turned anyway.
'Ah, sorry.'
'It's Compton Road,' Cali corrected.
'Yeah, uh, we'll cut through, via Washington Terrace. Sorry about that.'
'Hey, what's that?' the other said, pointing to the center of the road in the middle distance.
'Probably just a trick of the light. Street lights flickering, you know.'
Cali craned her neck to look out the windshield. Sure enough, the road about fifty meters in front of them was wavering, as if seen through a heat haze or a gas leak.
As they got closer the effect died away. The driver shot his partner a glance, eyebrows raised.
Silently, the space in front of the car ripped. His partner saw it first.
'Oh GOD!'
Cali watched in horror as the rift spread until it stretched across the entire road.
The driver slammed on the breaks, but to no avail. Sunlight streamed through the car's windows, dazzling everyone, Cali included.
'WHAT the - '
Some form of flight instinct reared itself in the driver's mind. He slammed on the accelerator and careened into the blazing sunlight.
Wham. Cali felt her head whip forward as the car collided with something solid. Before she passed out for the second time in two weeks, she became aware of the crumpled bonnet smashed against a high stone wall, and red-clad figures approaching the car from all sides.
Twenty-nine
Olympia woke, reeling from a terrible dream. Something was very wrong indeed; the feeling had filtered through into her reverie and pulled her from her sleep. She struggled to her feet, untangling herself from the mosquito net, urgency making her movements rushed and clumsy.
The bleed-through has become a torrent. Actual people have slipped over into that violent reality, or been pulled. This Elra woman - girl - no, woman, someone close to her. And another person Olympia had met once, personally. Body Knowledge. Two people who had no immediate connection apart from... what was his name? Zhen's boy. Yes, he was the common factor between the two missing people.
She threw on a gown and grabbed the Land Rover keys without even putting shoes on. Out the door, across the terrace, bare feet on rich red African soil, and into the car. The sound of the diesel engine rumbling into life broke the delicate sound of the cicada-studded night-time chorus.
That violent force in a parallel universe, it was conscious. A person, or a group of people. Hell, it could be an entire civilization. It wants something from our reality, clearly. The Land Rover tore down the dirt track, over-steering on the corners. Its headlights picked out the ghostly figures of a herd of springbok in the distance. They scattered as the car neared.
Priority One: get Elra over here, Morwen as well. Two: get the lost ones back. Three: assess and respond to the threat, whatever it may be.
She was under no illusions that all three sections would heavily involve Elra.
That lost Marked one, who is he? That lost... no, not lost. Dead.
Olympia stopped the car, despite the urgency. But this was important.
No
, he hadn’t slipped over into another reality. He had been attacked from that other reality, and had killed himself and his assailant. A scream, built up and not expelled. She could feel its trace, even though it happened thousands of miles away. Who was capable of such a thing? Connected to Kai, Zhen’s boy... of course. Zhen’s estranged partner. Kai’s father. Volus Leto. She wondered if they knew.
But why?
Olympia stilled the flurry of connections forming in her mind and shifted the Land Rover into first. She concentrated on the way the headlights lit up the track in front of her.
Up ahead, the lights of a small village rose out of the darkness, their glow diminished by the immensity of the night. She pressed the horn, but its shriek seemed weedy compared to the vast distances the car moved in. They would probably have heard the car's engine by now. With any luck, Tsonge and Singoro would be awake by the time she got there.
You better have some ideas, guys. The car’s bumpy motion on the track made the robe slip off her shoulders, she awkwardly shrugged it back on and tied it tight with one hand, occasionally reaching down to shift gears. She could sense all the minds in the little village now: the weariness of the sleeping adults and the dreams in the developing minds of children.
The Land Rover tore into the village, scattering chickens and rousing dogs who barked at the commotion. Lights came on in the clapboard houses. Olympia pulled up in front of a rambling conglomeration of buildings, modern builds sitting next to traditional circular huts, countless sheds and lean-tos, walled courtyards and small paddocks full of dried red mud. In the center of it all stood a huge, squat baobab tree, its
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