"Stop that," Molly said quietly. "None of this was your fault. Manifest Destiny is responsible for what happened here, the bastards."
"We let them chase us," I said.
"What was the alternative? Stand our ground and die quickly, if we were lucky? I don’t think so. You can’t allow yourself to be taken, Eddie. You can’t let Manifest Destiny get their hands on a weapon like your armour. And besides, you have to stay free because you know the truth. You have a responsibility to do something, to stop Manifest Destiny and your family from running the world like their own private preserve. You’re the only hope these people have."
"Then they’re in serious trouble," I said after a while.
"That’s better," said Molly. "Don’t let the bastards grind you down, Eddie."
The entrance to Blackfriars station was crammed with people, refugees hiding out from the mayhem on the streets. They were all gabbling and yelling at each other, but it was clear none of them had a clue as to what was really going on. Molly and I eased our way through the crowds on the stairs and down towards the escalators. I had been concerned that Manifest Destiny or my family might still have agents down in the stations, watching for us, but in a crowd this size Molly and I were just two more people. Even the stalled escalators were full of shocked and baffled people, some of them crying, some of them comforting or being comforted. None of them understood what was happening, only that something much bigger and nastier than them had intruded on their peaceful, everyday lives. The very thing I’d spent my life fighting to prevent.
I felt like I’d failed them, and that mattered much more to me than failing my family ever had.
Down on the crowded platform, Molly and I unobtrusively made our way over to a soft-drinks vending machine with an OUT OF ORDER sign on it. We glanced around to make sure no one was watching, and then I pulled the vending machine forward. The machine moved smoothly and easily to show the hidden door in the wall behind it. I had to smile. There are a great many hidden doors down in the London Underground, many of them concealed behind OUT OF ORDER vending machines. It’s a secret sign, for those in the know. That’s why so many of these machines are always, apparently, out of order. The doors lead to all kinds of interesting places that the general public are much better off not knowing about. Molly muttered a few words at the concealed door in the wall, and it swung smoothly open before us. Molly and I slipped through into the darkness beyond, and the door quietly shut itself behind us.
Molly summoned up a handful of witchfire, and the shimmering silvery light spat and crackled around her upheld hand. A dark, dank tunnel stretched away before us, showing curving brick walls and a low ceiling sloping steadily down into the earth. Molly’s witchlight didn’t penetrate far into the gloom, and the shadows were very dark.
"Is that glimmer really the best you can do?" I said.
"No. But this is as much as I’m prepared to risk. This isn’t a place where you want to attract undue attention."
"Where exactly are we going? Tell me we’re not going down into the sewers again."
"We’re not going down into the sewers again."
"Oh, joy."
"You’re starting to get on my tits, Drood. This tunnel will lead us down into the systems beneath the train system. Places left over and abandoned by the railways. Old stations that no one goes to anymore, discontinued lines, workings that were never completed. That sort of thing."
I nodded. I knew where we were, and where we were headed; I just wanted to show Molly that I was back to myself again. I could hear the roar of trains passing by not that far away. The sound faded as Molly and I headed down the sloping tunnel and into the dark.
"So," I said after a while. "What do we do if we run into trolls?"
"I plan on running. Try to keep up."
"Someone told me they’re getting ready to swarm again."
"Happens every five years, regular as clockwork. The trolls overpopulate the tunnels, exhaust the food supply, and eventually the sheer pressure of numbers and hunger forces them up towards the light, and people. So every few years the bounty hunters get to make good money by going down into the tunnels and culling the herd back to an acceptable number."
"I don’t see why we don’t just wipe the ugly bastards out," I said.
"Oh, we can’t do that," said Molly. "Every species performs a function in nature, even if we can’t see what it is. Wipe out the trolls, and something much worse might step forward to fill the gap. Better the ugly bastards you know than the ones you don’t."
We moved from one tunnel to another, and then another, always heading down, deeper into the earth. The air became hot and sweaty, almost humid. We splashed through pools of stagnant water on the floor, and more dripped from the ceiling. Fungi flourished in the hothouse atmosphere, sprouting in thick white clumps where the wall met the floor and scattered in puffy fleshy masses on the ceiling. Huge mats of green and blue moss covered the walls, two to three inches deep, stretching away for as far as I could see. Long slow ripples moved across the surface of the moss, as though it was disturbed by our presence.
"There are those who say if you eat or smoke the moss, it will grant you visions of things unseen and other worlds," said Molly.
"I don’t need moss for that," I said. "That’s business as usual for me. Have you noticed…there aren’t any rats down here? Anywhere."
"Yes," said Molly. "I had noticed. The trolls must have eaten them all. And if they’ve been reduced to eating rats, it can only be because they’ve already eaten everything else. They must be really close to swarming."
"Maybe we could come back and see the Mole some other time," I said.
"You’re really quite chicken for a Drood, aren’t you?"
"Cautious," I said. "I prefer the word cautious."
"Look; the authorities are bound to have sent bounty hunters down here by now."
"Yes," I said, stopping. "I think I’ve found one."
We both knelt down to study the wreckage of what had once been a human body. It lay on its back in a pool of blood that had already dried enough to be tacky to the touch. Its leather armour had been torn to ribbons, and the chest had been smashed in, to get at the meat beneath. The arms and legs had been torn off, with only the gnawed bones remaining, lying scattered on the stone floor. The face had been eaten away right down to the bone, leaving empty eye sockets and grinning blood-smeared teeth.
"Any idea who it might have been?" I said. The state of the body didn’t bother me. I’ve seen lots of bodies.
"No," said Molly, scowling. "The only bounty hunter I know is Janissary Jane, and that isn’t her armour."
"You know Jane?" I said, surprised.
"We’ve worked a few cases together. I keep telling you, Eddie: the world isn’t as neatly divided into black and white as your family wanted you to believe."
I picked up a machine pistol lying abandoned not far from the body and examined it closely. "Doesn’t look like she got a shot off. But…where are the rest of the weapons? I can’t believe any bounty hunter would go after trolls with just the one gun."