‘Shut it!’ the soldier shouted.
A low whispering rolled out from the undergrowth. Spooked, Hunter’s team turned, guns cocked, scanning back and forth for the source.
‘Come on — we need to get out of here,’ Hunter said to Mallory. ‘Quickly.’
‘Tell him to drop his weapon.’ Mallory nodded at the acne man, who had moved in even closer to Sophie. Deep in her trance, she was oblivious to what was going on around her.
‘You’ve no need to be afraid of us,’ Hunter said. ‘We’re on the same side-’
He fell silent as one of the riders burst from the bushes in a trail of purple mist. Gunfire erupted from all sides, but neither the rider nor its mount appeared to be harmed.
‘Come on.’ Her trance broken, Sophie grabbed Mallory’s arm insistently.
‘You called it?’
‘Come on!’
Bones shattered with a sickening dry-wood sound as the reptilian horse smashed into one of the soldiers. The others continued to fire at it futilely, knowing no other way to deal with it. The horse-creature lowered its massive head, pulled its jaws wide sending saliva everywhere and then proceeded to rip and tear at the fallen man’s stomach. Blood and flesh rose up in a cloud.
In the confusion, Sophie and Mallory had managed to skid a little way down the scorched grassy slope before the acne man appeared to one side, his gun aimed at Sophie.
‘Stop!’ he shouted.
Sophie glanced back and saw that the soldier was shaking, as if gripped by some kind of internal battle. The eerie whispering was clearly affecting him deeply: his wavering self-control was echoed, despite his training, in the gradually worsening tremor running through his arms.
Hunter came running up. ‘Don’t shoot, you idiot! We need them!’
The snapping and snarling rose up in a frenzy as another man fell to the horse’s crushing jaws. The acne man glanced in horror at the beast and its rider, who was whirling a double-headed axe, then turned and saw Sophie pulling Mallory towards the trees. Finally succumbing to the all-pervading despair, his eyes glazed over in surrender and he fired just as Hunter slammed into him, knocking his aim awry.
The force of the bullet smashed Sophie over the edge of a hollow and she rolled into the trees, gone; no sound or movement followed.
Mallory had one second to call her name before something crashed into him and he plunged into unconsciousness.
He awoke with a sense of movement and a deafening whup-whup-whup sound all around. Cold wind blasted against him.
Mallory began to lever himself upright, the pain in his side now electric; he could barely breathe and was too dazed to think straight. A gun pointed into his face.
‘Don’t move,’ one of the soldiers said gruffly, but his white face gave away his fear at what he had just witnessed.
They were on a helicopter, rising slowly. The large side door was open, revealing a square of cloudy pre-dawn sky. Hunter crouched, framed against it, peering down at the receding hillside.
‘There’s a group of them. What the hell are they?’ he asked, concerned.
Three other soldiers sat further down the helicopter. The acne man was one of them, but he kept his head turned away from Mallory.
‘Where’s Sophie?’ Mallory said weakly, his memory still disjointed. But when he locked eyes with Hunter, the reality hit him with force.
‘I’m sorry,’ Hunter said, with surprising compassion.
‘She’s dead?’
Hunter glared at the acne man, who refused to meet his gaze. ‘He shot her. If the bullet didn’t kill her straight away, she’ll have lost too much blood by now for us to save her. We couldn’t find her and didn’t have time to search with those bastards on the loose.’ He looked out into the night, avoiding Mallory’s devastated gaze. ‘I am sorry,’ he added quietly. ‘No one was supposed to get hurt.’
Mallory laid his head down on the floor of the helicopter and closed his eyes.
‘Bloody hell, what’s this?’ Hunter reached a hand out of the doorway where the gusts buffeted it. White flakes streamed past. ‘Snow? In the middle of summer?’
Chapter Three
‘ We are the masters at the moment, and not only at the moment, but for a very long time to come.’ Lord Shawcross
The Compound lay in the lower levels of Brasenose and Lincoln Colleges, which had been linked by new tunnels hacked out within days of the Government’s arrival in the city. In addition to housing Kirkham’s research facility, enemies of the state were incarcerated there: trouble-makers, traitors, anyone attempting to block the slow progress of a society getting up off its knees. Yet this low-level prison was only a small part of the Compound; larger by far was the high-security section, access to which had always been beyond Hal’s clearance. He’d heard rumours about who was imprisoned there, but since the Fall rumours were all anyone had and none of them could be trusted. It was a sign that events were coming to a head that he had been issued with a pass inside.
Yet Hal was too preoccupied to get excited about the General’s decision to ramp up his responsibilities. The call had come fifteen minutes earlier in the thin dawn light at the end of a long day and sleepless night of tearing himself apart over his confrontation with the Caretaker. At first he had considered reporting the manifestation — what the Caretaker had told him was surely of importance — but the more he vacillated, the more he pulled away from that route. Hal comforted himself with the thought that once he had decided what it all meant he would make a full disclosure at the Cabinet office. Yet he knew, quite powerfully, that the Caretaker’s message was meant for him alone, if he could ever decipher its meaning. And so he had sat quietly in his room, turning it over and over in his head. For a loyal public servant like Hal, his inaction felt like a grand betrayal and the guilt ate away at him constantly.
The guard at the main door checked Hal’s pass and directed him along a maze of corridors to a section sealed off with a steel gate. The guards here were hard-faced, clearly capable of shooting him in the blink of an eye and losing no sleep over it.
In the high-security section, the doors were thicker and lacked the small shuttered window usually provided for the warders to check on the inmates. Disturbing sounds emanated from the unseen inhabitants. From one cell came a howling like a wild animal’s cry, accompanied by frenzied clawing at the walls. And in another, something wet and sticky lashed back and forth.
Hal found Reid and Manning deep in conversation. Manning had a touch of glamour that belied her Home Office position, but Reid was always the perfect spy, ready to fade into the background at any moment. Beyond them, workmen were adding even greater electronic security to one of the cells. Manning and Reid stopped talking when they saw Hal.
‘The General sent this urgently.’ Hal handed over a sealed envelope to Reid. ‘Your eyes only.’
Reid opened it and gave a brief, triumphant smile. ‘We’re on our way.’
Manning was distracted by the work taking place in and around the nearby cell. Hal thought he sensed a touch of uneasiness about her.
‘Who’s in there?’ The words came out before Hal could stop them and he waited to be reprimanded for breaking the department’s rule of no questions, any time.
But Manning was oblivious to protocol. She continued to stare at the cell as she gave her distracted answer: ‘Prisoner Zero.’ Hal was not enough of a neophyte to probe further.
‘Tell the General we’ll both be around for the interrogation,’ Reid said to Hal. ‘We’ll do it in four-one-four — there’s a two-way mirror.’
‘Got it.’
As Hal turned to retrace his steps, a disturbance broke out just ahead. A guard staggered backwards out of an open cell door, his SA80 spraying bullets all around. He was wearing an ABC isolation suit, a red arterial spray gushing from a ragged tear down the front of it.