Finn was in a dream. It was a dream he often had, of walking along a perfect white beach on a beautiful day with a load of people he knew, and ahead of him was his mum – she was always ahead – and, as he ran along the perfect white sand, he reached out for her and she reached back to catch his hand, and always at the moment their hands were about to touch … he would wake, or she would disappear, or the dream would change. And every time, even though he knew he was in a dream, he thought, One day, it’s going to happen; we’re going to touch …
He woke up with a gasp.
He was still in the mask. He was breathing. He was floating in a perfect whiteness, a perfect white ocean. Was this the end of life? Was this heaven?
Someone was swimming towards him. Mum? He looked closer. It was Carla.
“Are we alive?” he asked, incredulous.
“I think so,” said Carla, unsure herself. “Look!”
There was another body coming towards them, from below, deep in the water, riding a scoot at speed through the whiteness – Nico. Shouting, insisting, already sure.
“His eye! We’re on the surface of his eye!”
“Kaparis’s?”
“I don’t think so …”
The implication was clear, but so incredible that it took a moment to sink in.
The face. Kelly. The blast.
They couldn’t be …? Could they?
Finn still had the laser scalpel across his back.
“DIVE!” he shouted.
DRTRT!
The last shots were fired by the units of the relieving force that Kelly and Delta had led down the monorail tunnel. The last of the Siguri raised their arms and signalled their surrender. Technicians, cowering among the stalagmites in the crystal fringe of the Great Cavern, did the same. Troops spread out, ordering them out.
Yvette Dupuis spotted it first – the technicians being herded out of the stalagmites were avoiding crossing the henge.
“ARRÊTEZ!”
Instantly, the troops in the Great Cavern came to a halt.
Nobody moved. The injured groaned. In a wisp of fine dust, she spotted it. A perfect line of laser light leading from the bottom of one of the particle accelerators to the next. A trap.
“ICI!”
In the minutes that followed, while the booby-trap explosives rigged around the henge were being dismantled, it was established that Kaparis had got away. A search was initiated for a secret escape tunnel and specialist divers were summoned to take a look in the river.
Kelly was located, badly injured and unconscious on its bank. Al, Delta and even Stubbs were all there when he was brought round.
Kelly saw their faces … and knew the mission must have ended in some kind of disaster.
“Kaparis got away,” said Al. “Did you see him?”
“I …” said Kelly, wringing out his traumatised brain, trying to remember as the medics worked on his wounds. “I can’t think, I …”
Stubbs, distracted, picked up what he thought was a pickled egg. It turned out to be half a fried eyeball.
“That’s his! I remember!” yelled Kelly, recalling the moment it was propelled directly down at him. But his mind was shot by battle shock and he couldn’t remember the message Kaparis had growled down at him before his head exploded, or which way he had gone.
For once, Delta didn’t hold back. She abandoned emotional control and cried. She let herself sob for Carla. After they had come so far …!
Al put an arm round her. He felt her sorrow and knew her despair. Any words of comfort or reassurance stopped dead in his mouth. They had lost him, and perhaps their last best chance. He’d tried everything. He knew Finn would have tried everything too. In the heart of the mountain, the pit of the earth, he thought he’d never been at a lower point in his life … Would Finn exist for him now – like his mother and father existed – as a dream more than a reality, a memory more than a hope?
Then his own mother arrived. Al would have to tell her the bad news, and the thought of this broke him, the thought of letting her down and breaking her heart all over again …
Violet Allenby was helped out of a monorail cart. She took a good look at the Great Cavern and thought it the womb of hell.
Stubbs watched in silence as Kelly was moved onto a stretcher. Stubbs was no good at times like this. He didn’t get on with emotion or upset. He would just take his bag of engineering tricks and hide himself away. Try and find a cup of tea. Polish up his screwdrivers and micrometers …
Kelly saw him turn away as they lifted the stretcher, saw Delta wailing, saw Al saying something to Grandma, saw her shoulders trying not to sag, saw the whole mad cavern …
Flash, Flash, Flash went his eye, bluish flashes pricking his vision, like a twitch. But it wasn’t a twitch. Again, FlashFlashFlash, then immediately slower – Flash, Flash, Flash – repeating in a pattern, over and over. FlashFlashFlash – Flash, Flash, Flash – FlashFlashFlash …
“Stop!” he cried to the medic attending him. “Something’s happening to my eye!”
In the ocean of Kelly’s eye, Finn fired the laser scalpel down through what he prayed was the pupil. Bubbles ballooned in the tears along the line of the flashing blade, and he prayed as hard as Carla and Nico prayed.
Suddenly white light bloomed around them.
FlashFlashFlash – Flash, Flash, Flash – FlashFlashFlash …
“Can’t you see it?” Kelly asked the medic who was staring into his eyeball through an ophthalmoscope.
“Describe it again?”
“It flashes blue like in a rhythm: FlashFlashFlash – Flash, Flash, Flash – FlashFlashFlash. Three fast, then three slow, then three fast again, like in a pulse. Maybe it’s my pulse or …”
He stopped dead.
FlashFlashFlash – Flash, Flash, Flash – FlashFlashFlash.
… / --- / …
SOS.
Save our souls …
Kelly shot up and off the stretcher and screamed.
“STUBBBBBBS!”
Ow, thought Hudson. Owwwwww.
He had passed in and out of consciousness several times, and always the pain was too much, or the cold was too much. He was encased in snow and he would soon be entombed. And though the snow immediately around him was beginning to melt, he knew he’d never be spotted, even from the air.
Owwwwww.
He felt like he’d broken every bone in his body. And now he would die here …
Snow death, slow death, he thought. I could have used that in one of my poems. Then he saw the snow melt away from the very tip of a very tiny bright green shoot, right in front of his face. New, he thought. Spring, he thought.
Owwwwww … and he closed his eyes to pass out again.
Wowwooww … Owww … Wowwow wow wow wow bow wow wow!
His eyes snapped open.
Not far off, zeroing in on six different trajectories, kicking up snow and bashing into one another and hitting trees with idiot force, ran the ratters at full speed, the scent of the kill – or at least of Hudson – in their nostrils, Yo-yo pulling ahead of the others, sensing him near, sensing him strong – YAP YAP YAP!