Immediately, every alarm in the world went off at once. Bells and sirens and flashing lights; not just down here in the cavern, but up above as well, from the sound of it. Steel shutters slammed down all around me, covering the glass walls and closing off the only door. I was locked in. I snorted, inside my golden mask. It would have worked on anyone else. I smashed my way out in a few moments, tearing the heavy steel shutters like paper napkins. I stepped out into the cavern, and headed for the back stairs. I did some damage along the way, just to show I’d been there. The Immortals needed to take the Droods more seriously. There was still no sign of any security guards. What did I have to do, to earn their attention? No doubt the Immortals upstairs were still arguing about whose turn it was to do something. They’d grown soft and complacent in their Castle refuge, never dreaming anyone would dare to break in and menace them where they lived.
I ran up the back stairs, taking them three steps at a time, and burst back onto the second floor. The alarms were more muted here, so as not to upset anyone. But there was no one around. No one running, or panicking, or shouting orders. I moved swiftly along the passage, looking curiously about me and listening at doors, but there was nothing, nothing at all. Until I came to one door that was standing just a little ajar. I heard raised voices. Curious, I eased the door open a little and looked inside.
It was a massive lecture hall, packed full of hundreds and hundreds of Immortals. Every single one of them, for all I knew. They were giving their full attention to one teenager, standing alone on a raised dais in the middle of the room, addressing them all in a calm, reasonable and only slightly mocking voice. Everyone else sat in circles of seats, surrounding the dais, radiating out to the sides of the hall. Given how many Immortals were here, this had to be seriously important. Especially if they were ignoring the alarms. So I armoured down, revealing my fake teenage self, eased the door open and slipped inside. I stood at the back of the hall, and concentrated on what the Immortal in the centre was saying. I knew I should be getting out of the Castle and heading for Area 52, but . . . I was curious. I had been sent here to get information, after all . . .
The teenager on the raised dais stared calmly about him, and spoke commandingly to his audience. It took me only a moment to understand that this was, this had to be, the Leader of the Immortals. The oldest of them all, who’d first made contact with the extra-dimensional Heart, when it first descended into this world all those years ago. It was the way he stood, the way he held himself, and in every word he spoke. You couldn’t take your eyes off him.
He didn’t look like much. Just another teenager, wearing a T-shirt and jeans. The T-shirt bore a simple message: EAT THE WORLD. He was short and squat, barely five feet tall. Broad shouldered and well muscled, with dark shaggy hair, a broad face, dark eyes and a quick wolfish grin. He had the look of a man who’d be able to bargain with a god fallen to earth.
I tore my gaze away from the Leader and studied the teenagers sitting in circles around the dais. Those in the closest circles looked the most like the Leader. These would be the Elders, all that was left of the Leader’s family and friends of that time. As the circles spread farther out, the genotype grew more diluted, spreading through generations of children bred with non-Immortals.
“Call me Methuselah,” the Leader said smoothly. “The old jokes are always the best, aren’t they? I am the oldest of us all. I met the Heart as a teenager, and made my deal with it, and here we all are. Forever. Or as near to forever as makes no difference.”
I glanced around the packed lecture hall. The Immortals were all sitting very still, hanging on his every word.
“I remember everything,” said Methuselah. “Every year, every century, every day since I made my way slowly and disbelievingly through miles of burned and shattered trees, across blackened earth and through smoke-filled air, treading past the bodies of blown-apart animals and birds that had fallen dead from the heavens. It was early morning, and the sky had changed colour. I thought it was the end of the world. Just a teenager then, but already a man as far as my tribe was concerned, because no one lived long in those days. I pressed on, when no one else would, when no one else dared, because I was too fascinated to be properly afraid. Centuries ago . . . but only yesterday to me.
“I found the Heart. It was still deciding on a shape then, and what I saw made my eyes bleed and my head hurt. I should have taken it for a god, or some great being fallen from the starry sky, I should have fallen to my knees and worshipped it, but I was a contrary soul even then, and had problems with authority figures. So I just stood there, watching it twist and turn in the great crater it had made, and it talked to me. I think . . . I amused it.
“Later, the Drood ancestors came and found it, and asked it to make them shamans and protectors of the Human tribe. The Heart gave them their wonderful armour, in return for sanctuary and sacrifice. The Droods never knew I got there first. And I didn’t want to be anyone’s protector. I wanted to live forever, along with some of my family, and a few friends. So the Heart made us Immortals. The Droods got to be shepherds, and we got to be lords of all we surveyed. Can’t help thinking we got the better deal.
“And so we survived and prospered, down the ages. Discovering along the way that if you live long enough, you can learn to do all sorts of amazing things with your body. Make your flesh do anything, become anyone. Change your face, change your shape, change your identity. Become a man, become a woman, an old man or a young girl, anything you can imagine.”
His face shifted suddenly, his features slipping and sliding across his bone structure, until abruptly he looked just like Doctor Delirium. His audience laughed, and applauded. His face changed again, all the details of his flesh rising and falling, until suddenly . . . he looked like me. Eddie Drood. The audience really liked that one. Methuselah let them enjoy it for a while, and then took back his own face again, and continued with his speech. I wasn’t sure where he was going, what this was all about. And, why was his audience so intent?
“We are everywhere,” said Methuselah. “We are everyone. Or at least, everyone who matters. We supply a word here and a push there, and the world goes the way we want it to. Always remember the Creed I gave you. Words to live forever by. Greed is good. Contempt is good. Hate is good. The crushing of the weak and glorying in their plight is good. Anything that profits us is good. Because we . . . are all that matters. No one else lasts long enough to matter. They come and they go but we go on. Everyone else in the world is just there to serve us, or for us to play with. They are mayflies. We are Immortals. Now, my special guest tonight is the man you’ve all been waiting for . . .”
He gestured to one side, and suddenly Tiger Tim was there, standing right beside Methuselah. He was still wearing his Great White Hunter outfit, down to the tiger-skin band on his bush hat. He smiled and waved condescendingly to the assembled Immortals, as though he was slumming just by joining them. They rose as one from their seats and booed and hissed him, hurling abuse and angry words. The sound was deafening, but it didn’t bother Tiger Tim in the least. Methuselah let it go on for a while, and then gestured sharply at his audience, and they all fell silent and sank back into their seats again.
“Hush,” he said, with just a hint of mockery. “We must all be very grateful to this rogue gentleman, who has done such good work for us. He may be a Drood, but he is our Drood. He set us on our present course, when he saw the potential in the Apocalypse Door, and brought it to our attention. He is our inside man at Area 52. We can’t put one of our own in there; Doctor Delirium has seen to that. So I want you all to listen to what Tiger Tim has to say. Because we are very near the point of no return, when with a single act, I shall change the world forever.”