He’d been found in the wreckage of the cellar, more dead than alive. Not by police reinforcements, but by the local fire brigade responding to an anonymous call. The bookstore had been completely burned down, but the firemen dug Daniel out of the cellar in time to save his life. Daniel was still having trouble deciding whether that had been a kindness.
The investigating team found a few bits and pieces of Oscar, but no trace at all of Paul or Nigel. Daniel kept insisting that they were both dead, murdered by monstrous creatures . . . but no one believed him.
He was suspended without pay the moment he left hospital. Pending a Board of Inquiry that no one seemed too eager to set in motion. An unauthorized raid was bad enough, but an unsuccessful one? Best to let it just fade quietly away, and be forgotten. Commissioner Gill had also been suspended, for exceeding her authority. Or at least she would be, if anyone could find her.
The police review board interrogated Daniel over and over again. He told them everything that happened in that awful underground abattoir, but they couldn’t accept any of it. Not about the homeless people being dissected alive, or the Frankenstein doctors (the board really didn’t like it when he used that name), or the huge, hulking figures who’d shrugged off Tasers and took no harm from flailing batons.
They told Daniel the force had no record of a firm called The Cutting Edge. That there were no reports of missing homeless people in the area. And that there was definitely no such thing as a glass ceiling in the modern police force. They made it very clear they thought he was mad, or lying. They didn’t believe a word he said.
Especially when he wouldn’t shut up about the monsters.
So now his time in the police force was over. A cripple, and a disgrace. The man who only wanted to help others couldn’t even help himself. Daniel looked at the cup of tea he’d made, and wondered what he was going to do with his day.
There was a knock at the front door. It took him a while to react. He didn’t get visitors, these days. Friends and colleagues had been conspicuous by their absence, the media had stopped bothering him once he made it clear he was never going to talk to them, and his parents hadn’t wanted anything to do with him from the moment he told them he was joining the police, instead of following the university course they’d mapped out for him. His father told him to his face that he’d broken his mother’s heart.
He did phone his parents once, to let them know he was still alive. Daniel’s father said he’d told him nothing good would come of choosing to work in the gutters, to help people who weren’t worth saving. He said Daniel had brought it all on himself, by turning his back on the life his parents had sacrificed so much to make possible.
He wouldn’t let Daniel talk to his mother. And he told Daniel never to call again.
While Daniel was still working his way through all of that, the knocking came again—louder, and more impatient. Whoever it was, they weren’t giving up. Daniel made his way slowly through the flat to his front door, groaning quietly to himself as the pains came and went. It took him so long his unknown visitor knocked a third time, hard enough that the door jumped and rattled in its frame. Daniel hauled the door open and then stood very still, staring in shock. Wrapped in a long grubby coat, Paul looked like he’d lost a hell of a lot of weight. His face was gaunt, almost painfully bony, and the taut skin was so pale as to be almost colorless. His eyes had sunk back into the skull, and looked a lot darker than Daniel remembered. Paul smiled briefly at Dan, little more than a quirk of the lips.
“Hello, Danny boy. Been a while, hasn’t it?”
“Paul . . . ?” said Daniel.
“Well, you look like shit,” said Paul. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“Why not?” said Daniel. “It’s not like you’re interrupting anything.”
He stepped back, and Paul slipped quickly past him. He seemed to drift rather than walk, and his feet made no sound at all on the bare floorboards. That last thought struck Daniel suddenly, and he glared at Paul.
“How are you able to walk? I saw that creature snap your spine!”
“I got over it,” said Paul.
There was something wrong with his voice, Daniel decided. It sounded harsh, painful . . . as though every word was an effort. He closed the door, and looked Paul over carefully. There wasn’t much left of the man he used to know. The lazy, overweight Paul who breezed through life because he just couldn’t be bothered had been replaced by an emaciated scarecrow. He didn’t say anything, just fixed Daniel with an uncomfortably intent gaze until he felt obliged to say something.
“Where have you been, all this time?”
“Underground,” said Paul. “Out of sight.”
He looked around Daniel’s flat, still mostly hidden in the gloom. Daniel reached for the light switch.
“No,” said Paul. “Don’t. Please.”
Daniel looked at him sharply. He didn’t think he’d ever heard Paul use that word before.
“Would you like some tea?” he said finally, for want of anything else to say.
The quick smile came and went again. There was no humor in it.
“I don’t drink tea.”
Daniel felt suddenly tired of the whole conversation. It wasn’t like he’d wanted any company. But the return of a man who was supposed to be dead demanded he at least make an effort.
“What are you doing here?” he said, with as much politeness as he could manage.
Paul was suddenly standing right in front of him. Daniel blinked confusedly, and almost fell back a step. Up close, his old friend was unhealthily pale. His lips had no color, and his eyes were disturbingly sharp. His long coat was in foul condition, and spotted with stains. He smelled like recently disturbed earth.
“We need to talk,” said Paul.
“All right,” said Daniel, trying to pretend this was a normal conversation. “Let’s start with: What are you doing up at this hour? You never used to be a morning person.”
“I had to come while it was still dark.”
“Dark as your heart?”
“It never gets that dark,” said Paul.
“Where have you been hiding yourself?” said Daniel. “Everyone’s been looking for you.”
“I know,” said Paul.
“Is Nigel with you?”
“He’s with someone else now,” said Paul. “We don’t talk.”
“Wait a minute,” said Daniel. He closed his eyes for a moment, as a wave of weariness washed through him. He put out a hand to the nearest wall, to steady himself. “I need to sit down. I’m not a well man, these days.”
He shuffled over to the nearest chair. It took a while, because every movement hurt. Paul waited patiently for Daniel to settle himself, and then sat down facing him.
“I can’t stay long, Dan.”
“What’s the problem? Do you turn into a pumpkin when the sun comes up?”
“Something like that.”
Daniel frowned. “Are you worried you might have been followed here?”
“No,” said Paul. “I can’t stay because it will be light soon. Please, Dan, shut the hell up and let me talk. I have so much to tell you.”
Daniel shrugged, and then winced despite himself. “Get on with it, then. I’m not stopping you.”
Paul sat very still in his chair, staring unwaveringly at Daniel. “You must know you were never supposed to survive. They left you for dead.”
Daniel nodded slowly. “I did wonder why the surgeons didn’t take my body with them, so they could harvest my organs. I thought that was what happened to you and Oscar and Nigel.”
“They had other things in mind for me and Nigel,” said Paul. “They left one body behind to show what happened to policemen who interfere.”