Ramzy and I have snuck down the metal steps that link the loading bay to the dome’s control room. The thumping on the door to the Spanish City continues, along with shouts. It’s a Geordie woman’s voice, both stern and friendly at the same time.
“Ramzy! Georgie! This is the police. Open the door! You’re not in any trouble. We can open this lock without you if we have to, so please open up.”
I’m absolutely terrified. Ramzy, though, is loving it. With a finger on his lips, he tiptoes over to a pile of old builders’ debris left over from the conversion of the dome and starts looking for something. I don’t know what, but I can’t help thinking back to that time we spoke to the builder as we walked past ages ago.
And then, without warning, everything is blank like this:
And then it’s not again. I’m blinking hard. During the blank time, everything was white, and I heard nothing, and now it’s OK again. I don’t know how long it lasted. No one has moved, at least not much.
“Ramzy?” I say. But I don’t know what to ask him. I look over at him, and he still has his finger on his lips to say shhhh.
“Hey, Georgie,” says the policewoman. “I can hear you. Open the door now, dear.”
Ramzy’s struggling back with a metal cylinder the size of a fire extinguisher, with a nozzle attached. Liquid Weld. He comes close enough to speak into my ear.
“You know this stuff? Hardens on contact with air. Should take care of that door.” He looks at me, carefully. “You OK?”
I’m not, but I nod. The last thing we need to deal with now is my brain melting.
We stand on the other side of the door from the policewoman, and I hear her say, “It’s no use. Either they can’t hear us, or they’re deliberately ignorin’ us. We could bash it in.”
Another voice says, “It’s a metal door, Sarge. We’ll have to get the enforcer. Or a locksmith.”
“The nearest locksmith is in North Shields. Go get the enforcer.”
I’ve no idea what an enforcer is, but it’s obviously something that can open a door.
Meanwhile, Ramzy’s reading the instructions on the cylinder, which look to me to be a long list of WARNINGS and HAZARDS and stuff in red letters.
“Do you have any safety goggles?” he whispers, but doesn’t wait for my answer. “Stand back,” he says, and I don’t need to be asked twice. Seconds later, a whitish stream is pulsing out of the nozzle. Where it hits the floor, it hardens into a gray metallic lump.
Ramzy aims the stream at the door. Up the line where the door connects with the wall, covering the hinges; across the top and down the side with the locks and handle and into the keyholes.
“Can you hear that, Sarge? There’s someone…Listen.”
For good measure, Ramzy finishes off with a thick deposit between the floor and the door, emptying the cylinder; then he steps back to inspect his handiwork. The whole door is sealed to the wall, and the voices on the other side are more muffled.
“Dunno what that is. But there’s definitely someone there. Ramzy! Georgie! Saskia!”
We don’t wait. Seconds later, we’re back up the stairs to the control room, slamming the door shut behind us.
In the few minutes we’ve been away, Sass has helped Dr. Pretorius to get into her large swivel desk chair, and Dr. Pretorius is fiddling with Ramzy’s bicycle helmet. It really seems as though every movement of her fingers is a huge effort.
“What do we do now?” says Ramzy.
Dr. Pretorius clears her throat noisily. “You can help me escape all of this when we’re done. Under the tarp in the loading bay. I just hope it still works.”
“The copter-drone?” breathes Ramzy with awe.
“I know you’ve been dying to know. Do you reckon you can carry me down?”
Sass nods.
“Yeah,” says Ramzy. “But what about before that? Are we…trying again?”
“We don’t have a choice,” I say. “I’m going back in.”
They all look at me.
I’m crouched down, stroking Mr. Mash’s ears, which are standing up and alert: Mashie knows something big is going on, but he’s smart enough not to get in the way. I look up and shift myself to a comfortable seated position, ready to tell them what happened when I met myself in the future.
“You have to listen to me now,” I say, “because I’m not even sure I believe this myself.”
I start to tell them everything, about the soldiers and the empty parking lot, but I keep forgetting bits. Plus, I’m not going to mention Ramzy being dead in the future, because he’s looking at me with his big eyes, and it’s just too weird. So everything’s a bit garbled.
Poor Sass is looking at me, then at Dr. Pretorius, and then at Ramzy in turn, with this look of pure bafflement on her face. She doesn’t say a word and appears terrified at what she’s ended up in.
“Look,” I say in the end, “it’s simple. If I don’t go back, millions of people are going to die.”
There’s silence. Then suddenly Dr. Pretorius turns. She’s staring at one of the screens broadcasting a television channel. A reporter is standing outside the Spanish City with a microphone.