The drop-ship landed in the compound in the ruins of St James’s Park with a soft thud. Rachel was the first down the boarding ramp, her eyes still red from the tears she had shed for Sam.
‘Rachel, what’s wrong?’ Nat asked.
‘It’s . . . it’s Sam,’ Rachel said, her voice cracking. ‘He didn’t make it.’
Nat’s mouth fell open in shock as Jay and Jack slowly walked down the ramp, looks of grief-stricken shock on their faces too. ‘Oh God, no,’ she whispered, feeling her stomach lurch. ‘What happened?’
‘It was . . . There was . . . It was horrible,’ Rachel said, fresh tears trickling down her cheeks. ‘He never stood a chance.’
Doctor Stirling approached, looking older and more tired than any of them could remember. ‘I’m so very sorry,’ he said. ‘The Servant informed me of the situation. Sam was a very brave young man. I’m sure we will all miss him, but we need to debrief immediately.’
‘Seriously?’ Rachel said angrily, jabbing her finger into his chest. ‘Is that it? Sam’s dead, the person who saved all our lives, the person who let us take London back from the Voidborn, and that’s all you’ve got to say? Well, screw your bloody debriefing. I have a friend to grieve for.’
‘I know how much this hurts,’ Stirling said to Rachel’s back as she stormed away, ‘but we have to understand what these creatures are. They’re like nothing we’ve ever seen before – this could be a whole new threat.’
‘Leave it, Doc,’ Jay said quietly.
‘But you don’t understand,’ Stirling said, ‘if this is some new sort of Voidborn weapon, we need to understand more about it so that we can properly defend our –’
‘I said leave it,’ Jay hissed.
Stirling opened his mouth as if to say something else, but the expression on Jay’s face made him think twice. He watched in silence as the other young men and women who might just represent mankind’s last hope for concerted resistance to the Voidborn slowly gathered around Jay and Jack, their shared grief obvious.
In the dormitory, Rachel sat down on her bed and buried her head in her hands, trying desperately to forget the last image of Sam that she had burned into her memory, the single look of fleeting horror on his face before he was gone for ever. She wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand just as there was a soft knock at the door.
‘Go away,’ Rachel said, her voice hoarse. ‘Whatever it is, I’m not interested.’
‘As you wish,’ the Servant replied. ‘I have something important to discuss with you, but we may address the situation later if you prefer.’
Rachel took a deep breath before standing up and opening the door. The Servant was walking away down the corridor.
‘Wait,’ Rachel said. ‘What do you want?’
The Servant turned and looked at Rachel with something that almost seemed like curiosity.
‘I have been given certain instructions that I must follow in the event of the death of the Illuminate,’ the Servant replied.
‘Sam,’ Rachel said quietly, ‘his name is . . . was . . . Sam.’
‘The Illuminate made his wishes quite clear as to what should happen if he were killed. I am to answer only to his chosen successor.’
‘OK, so now you belong to Stirling. What’s that got to do with me?’ Rachel said impatiently.
‘I fear you misunderstand me,’ the Servant replied. ‘Doctor Stirling was not the Illuminate’s chosen successor. You were.’
‘Me?’ Rachel asked, sounding bewildered. ‘Why? I don’t have any connection with the Voidborn other than this damn chip Stirling put in my head when I was a baby. I’m not like Sam – I don’t have some kind of weird psychic bond with you or the Mothership. I can’t control the Voidborn or anything like that, so what exactly is it that makes me qualified to take over from him?’
‘You were chosen by the Illuminate – it is not my place to question his decisions. My only function now is to serve your will.’
‘Just what I need,’ Rachel said with a sigh, ‘something else to worry about. Stirling’s going to love this.’
‘Is there anything I can do to assist?’ the Servant asked.
‘No, not really,’ Rachel said, shaking her head. ‘Just help Stirling work out what those things in Edinburgh were. We need to find some way to stop them, because I have a horrible feeling that this won’t be the last we see of them.’
‘Understood,’ the Servant replied. ‘I will render whatever assistance Doctor Stirling requires.’
The gold-skinned machine turned to walk away.
‘Did you feel it?’ Rachel asked. ‘When Sam died.’
‘No,’ the Servant replied, turning back towards her, ‘that was not the nature of the connection between us. I could sense his presence when he interfaced with a part of my consciousness in some way, but that was all. The Illuminate is gone; you are his successor. I do not feel anything. That would be an emotional response and as such it is not possible for me to experience it.’
‘So you don’t care,’ Rachel said, feeling her usual resentment towards the Servant’s cold, mechanical nature.
‘I cannot care,’ the Servant replied. ‘It is not part of my architecture.’
‘Yeah? Well, sometimes I envy you,’ Rachel said, feeling the knot of grief in her gut. ‘I really do.’
Everything hurts, Sam thought to himself. Everything really, really hurts, but that’s a good sign. It means I’m not dead.
First question, he thought. Why am I not dead?
He slowly opened his eyes and looked around. He was in a long, narrow chamber, but it was hard to make out any detail as only the faintest grey light filled the space. A slightly brighter light was coming from somewhere above and behind him, but he couldn’t crane his neck to make out exactly where because it would involve moving, and right now his entire body was telling him that trying to move would be a massive mistake.
So you’re just going to lie here and freeze to death, then? Sam thought to himself. Great plan.
He took a deep breath and tried to push himself up off the floor. The sudden searing pain in his side made him feel slightly light-headed and he fought the overwhelming urge just to lie back down again, but he knew that would only end one way . . . not well. He gingerly touched his side and his fingers came away wet with blood. He took a breath and forced himself to feel the wound area again, his fingertips brushing against something cold, hard and sharp that was protruding from under the edge of the body armour beneath his armpit.
‘Whatever it is, don’t pull it out,’ Sam said to himself, trying to remember his field-medic training. Pain was better than bleeding to death – that much he knew. He sat there for a moment or two, building up his strength for the next challenge: standing up. He made it to one knee before the pain in his side and back made him stop to catch his breath. As his eyes began to adjust to the gloom, he slowly realised where he was. The long, narrow chamber was lined with snow-covered windows that were only letting in the barest splash of light, but he could just make out the shape of the seats that surrounded him. As he began to see more detail, he realised that those seats were separated by a central aisle that led down to another single seat with a steering wheel in front of it.
‘How the hell did I end up on a bus?’ Sam said, slowly standing up. He turned round and saw the source of the brighter overhead illumination: the soft dawn light outside poured through the shattered remains of the large skylight in the bus roof. On the roof outside he could see snow piled nearly a metre deep. His last memory was of losing his grip on Jay and then falling into blackness. He must have hit the snow, and that and his pack absorbed the brunt of the impact. Their combined weight had presumably proven too much for the skylight, which had given way beneath him, dumping him inside. He supposed that made him incredibly lucky, but he certainly didn’t feel it at that precise moment.
He carefully unslung his pack from his back, ignoring the pain in his side, and assessed the damaged contents. He had enough rations for a couple of days and a rudimentary first-aid kit, but, besides a simple bivouac kit, that was pretty much all that had survived the fall. His radio was smashed to pieces and his rifle was nowhere to be seen. He felt for the holster at his waist and was relieved to touch the reassuringly cold metal of the handgun that was still clipped inside it. It was quiet outside, but that didn’t mean he was alone. The hideous creatures that had chased them up on to the roof could still be anywhere, and so he was very relieved to find himself not completely unarmed. He gathered up the remnants of his pack before moving quietly towards the front of the bus. The dawn light was growing brighter, but the snow that covered the windows made it impossible to see anything. He thumped the windscreen a couple of times, trying to dislodge some of the snow, but it was firmly frozen in place.
‘Well, I can’t stay here,’ Sam said to himself. He looked around for a second before spotting the emergency manual-release lever above the bus’s folding doors. He pulled it, and there was a clunk from inside the wall. Sam slid his fingers between the black rubber seals in the centre of the door and pulled. The pain that shot up his side was excruciating, making him feel faint for a second, but he had to get the doors open. He took a deep breath and pulled again, but it was no good. The doors wouldn’t budge. It was either the weight of snow piled up against them or else the long-neglected locking mechanism had simply jammed. He needed something to lever the doors open, but a quick inspection of the abandoned bags around the bus revealed no suitable tools. He looked up at the shattered skylight, but there was no way he was climbing back up through there with the injury in his side. There was only one option. He walked to the front of the bus and pulled the pistol from his holster, levelling it at the windscreen. The sound of the shot was bound to attract attention, but that was a chance he would have to take. He wasn’t going to starve to death trapped inside this thing. His finger tensed on the trigger.
‘You idiot,’ Sam said to himself, releasing the pressure on the trigger and lowering his gun. He slid the pistol back into its holster and then pulled the black leather glove off his right hand. The golden skin beneath gleamed in the pale morning light. Sam concentrated for a second and his hand slowly reformed, morphing into a long rod with a sharpened end. He slid the newly formed tool between the doors and used it to lever them apart with a groan of corroded gears. He concentrated again and the bar reformed into the shape of an axe, which Sam swung into the frozen snow beyond the doors, carving himself an exit while ignoring the protesting jolts of pain from his side.
A few minutes later he broke through and pale sunlight streamed into the bus’s interior. He continued to hack at the snow until he’d made a hole big enough to squeeze through. He took a breath and willed his hand back into its original shape, the liquid metal flowing and reforming into fingers and a thumb. He pulled the glove back over his metallic hand and took the pistol from his holster once more before squeezing through the gap and out into the daylight.
The street outside was quiet. The only sign that remained of the hideous creatures from the previous night were hundreds of hand and footprints in the snow. Sam tried to take in the sheer number of tracks that surrounded him, but it was obvious even to the untrained eye that there had been hundreds, maybe thousands of the creatures outside when he fell. He realised that he and his friends had had no idea what they were walking into, and that lack of information had very nearly cost them their lives.
‘Still might, kiddo,’ he said to himself quietly, looking down the broad snow-covered road ahead of him. He had to find shelter before the creatures came back. He didn’t relish the thought of a second encounter with them.
As he walked down Prince’s Street, he considered his options. He had to find some way of communicating with the others – that much was obvious. The fact that they weren’t already there looking for him told him that they must have made the not unreasonable assumption that he was dead. The only way he was going to be able to tell them otherwise was if he somehow managed to get his hands on a radio, and that meant finding the source of the mysterious transmission that they had come here to investigate in the first place.
Sam walked on, alert to the slightest sound, but the city was as quiet as a grave. He hoped that might mean that the creatures were nocturnal, but he knew that was a dangerous assumption. Regardless, he was not going to be out on the street come nightfall – that much he did know. He had maybe seven or eight hours before it got dark and before that he needed to get a better view of the city. He looked up at the castle perched on top of its massive plug of volcanic rock and decided that was his next stop. It would afford him a good view of the centre of the city and would also give him somewhere to hole up for the night if necessary.
He continued down the street, the blanket of snow covering the abandoned relics of humanity’s previous existence. In some ways that was better than having to see the signs of his former life, but it also gave him the acute sense that there was a great deal hidden just below the surface of the city. Whatever the creatures were that had attacked them the previous night, they were like nothing the Voidborn had thrown at them before. He tried not to dwell on their humanoid appearance; if they had indeed once been people, no shred of their humanity now remained.
Sam turned off the broad thoroughfare and down a street that led past the railway station, crossing the bridge over the tracks and heading up the sloping streets to the castle. He followed the cobbled road uphill, trying to ignore the fresh footprints in the snow all around him. The further he travelled the more obvious it became that the things that had been hunting them the previous night must have numbered in their thousands. Every street was covered in their tracks.
‘So where are they now?’ Sam muttered to himself. It wasn’t like the Voidborn to hide – they had no reason to, after all. So why did the city feel as if it had been abandoned?
Soon he arrived at the arched gate that was the main entrance to the castle. The imposing structure loomed over him, looking much larger than it had from the streets below. He passed under the arch and through the shattered remains of the heavy wooden gate that had presumably once sealed the entrance. He continued upwards, heading through the second gatehouse and into the open courtyard beyond.
What he saw there was hard to believe.
Scattered around were the twisted shells of smashed Hunters and the gutted remains of several Grendels, all covered in a layer of snow. He had never seen anything like it. The Voidborn looked as if they’d been ripped to pieces. The burnt-out hulk of a drop-ship lay in what had once been a grand-looking building on the other side of the area. The broad trail of destruction leading to the impact point made it clear that something had brought down the alien vessel, but there was no obvious indication what.
Sam unclipped his holster and pulled out his gun. Something about the grisly scene made him extremely nervous. Judging by the layer of snow that covered the wreckage, it had been several days at least since whatever had taken place here, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. He walked up to the nearest fallen Hunter and rolled it over with his foot. The silvery skin of the creature was slashed in several places and the thick green slime that was the nearest thing the Voidborn had to blood had congealed in a large puddle beneath it.
He knelt down beside the Hunter and examined the tears in the Drone’s skin more carefully, realising that the wounds looked exactly like claw marks. He realised that there was only one possible explanation. The creatures that had attacked them the previous night had done this. That made no sense. If the creatures were Voidborn, why had they attacked their own? Sam shook his head; it was just one more unanswered question to add to the ever-growing pile. He began to stand up, but suddenly felt something cold and sharp press against the back of his neck.
‘Drop it,’ a girl’s voice said behind him.
Sam slowly placed his pistol on the ground.
‘Stand,’ the voice said, and Sam slowly got to his feet. He turned round and let out an involuntary gasp. The girl standing opposite him, knife raised, looked about the same age as him, but that was where the similarities ended. Her skin was pale and covered in the same thick black veins as the creatures that had attacked them the previous night, and each of her fingers was tipped by a translucent claw. Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses and she was wearing a black top with its hood pulled up over her head.
‘Who are you?’ the girl asked. ‘And what are you doing here?’
‘My name’s Sam,’ he replied, keeping his open palms out to his sides in what he hoped was a non-threatening gesture. ‘I’m sort of lost.’
‘You got that right,’ the girl replied. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’
‘I know,’ Sam replied. ‘I’m trying to find a way home.’
‘And where’s that exactly?’ she asked, knife still raised.
‘London,’ Sam replied, ‘I’m from London.’
The girl didn’t speak for a moment. She just stood there and studied him.
‘Where are the others?’ she eventually asked.
‘What others?’ Sam replied.
‘Don’t treat me like an idiot,’ the girl replied. ‘I’ve been following you since you reached the city. I saw them leave on board one of those things.’ She gestured towards the downed drop-ship. ‘Only realised that you’d been left behind when you emerged from your hidey-hole this morning. You were lucky. Never seen anyone get away from the Vore before.’
‘The Vore?’ Sam said. ‘Is that what you call those things?’
‘Aye, it’s short for carnivore,’ the girl replied, ‘and trust me when I say that’s an appropriate name. Problem is that right now you’re standing right on top of the biggest nest of them in the city. So I’m going to suggest we get out of here before they wake up. Stay in front of me and don’t try anything.’ She gestured towards the gatehouse that led back outside. ‘Go on.’
‘I’m not going to hurt you, you know,’ Sam said as she picked his pistol up from the ground and tucked it into the back of her jeans.
‘You’re right,’ she replied, ‘you’re not.’
She followed him back on to the street outside and together they began to walk down the hill, the girl staying several metres behind Sam at all times.
‘Where are we going?’ Sam asked after a couple of minutes of walking in silence.
‘Anywhere but here,’ the girl replied. ‘It’s only a few more hours till sunset, and when the Vore catch your scent – and they will catch your scent – they’ll hunt you relentlessly until you’re dead.’
‘How far away do we have to get?’ Sam asked, glancing nervously up at the sky.
‘A few kilometres out from the nest at least,’ the girl replied.
‘They can’t really track us from that far away, can they?’ Sam asked.
‘Oh, they can and they will,’ the girl replied. ‘How do you think I found you and your friends in the first place? One of the perks of my . . . condition.’
‘What happened to you?’ Sam said. ‘If you don’t mind me asking.’
‘I have no idea,’ the girl replied. ‘I woke up alone in an empty warehouse looking like this. That was a couple of months ago. Since then I’ve been concentrating on staying alive.’
‘I know the feeling,’ Sam said. ‘So what happened to the Voidborn?’
‘The what?’ the girl replied.
‘The aliens, those things that were scattered all over the courtyard back there,’ Sam explained. ‘They’re called the Voidborn. They’ve taken the entire planet and enslaved nearly everyone. There are just a few of us trying to fight back. That’s why we were here in the first place, looking for any other people who might still have their free will.’
‘So why are you working with them?’ the girl asked. ‘I saw the ship your friends left in.’
‘We’re not working with the Voidborn,’ Sam said. ‘We managed to capture one of their Motherships and now it’s under our control.’
‘How did you pull that off?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ the girl replied.
Over the next half hour Sam recounted the story of his desperate fight to survive after the initial Voidborn invasion and his subsequent recruitment by the resistance and their victory in London. When he had finished, the girl said nothing for several minutes.
‘So I was one of these Sleepers for nearly two years,’ the girl said, struggling to wrap her head around what he had just told her. Sam realised that when she had awoken there wouldn’t have been anything to tell this girl how much time had passed while she’d been a Voidborn slave.
‘I’m afraid so,’ Sam replied. ‘We’ve tried to wake the Sleepers in London, but it didn’t work. As far as we know, you’re the only person who’s ever woken from the Voidborn sleep.’
‘Yeah, well you might have noticed I’m not quite the girl I used to be,’ she replied. ‘That could have something to do with it.’
‘We have people working on waking everyone back in London,’ Sam said. ‘If we could contact my friends, you could come back with us and maybe they can do something to help you.’
‘Not terribly keen on the idea of being a lab rat,’ the girl replied. ‘Let’s just concentrate on getting you out of here in one piece for now.’
Sam gave a quick nod. She was right – they had other priorities right now.
‘Can I ask your name?’ Sam asked after a couple more minutes of walking in silence.
‘Maggie,’ the girl replied, ‘but you can call me Mag – everyone does, or should I say did.’
‘So you’ve not seen any sign of the Voidborn?’ Sam asked.
‘Other than those few you saw in the castle courtyard, no,’ Mag replied. ‘Oh, and that big ship floating above the castle on the day of the invasion.’
Stirling had been right, Sam thought to himself. There had been a Mothership here. So where had it gone and, more to the point, when and why had it left?
‘We need to move faster,’ Mag said, glancing up at the sky. ‘I want to be further away from the main nest before it gets dark.’
As the sun began to set, they found themselves walking through a quiet suburb of the city. Sam had got very used to the night’s cloak of darkness being an ally over the past couple of years, but here it was something to fear. Mag had finally sheathed her knife just a few minutes earlier, having obviously decided that Sam did not pose much of a threat, though she had not returned his gun. Sam didn’t ask for it back, not wanting to do anything to jeopardise what little trust she might have in him.
‘We should shelter for the night in one of these houses,’ Mag said, looking at the comfortable detached homes that surrounded them, sniffing the air. ‘I don’t think there are any Vore around here, but we’d still be better off staying out of the open.’
‘I could do with resting for a while anyway,’ Sam said. The wound in his side was throbbing. He needed to clean it and apply a fresh dressing if he wanted to reduce the chances of infection.
‘That one looks good,’ he said, pointing at a slightly larger house that was set further back from the road than the others. The wide expanse of lawn that surrounded the house would give anyone on watch good sight lines.
Mag gave a quick nod and the pair of them walked up the long driveway leading to the front door. The heavy wooden door was firmly locked.
‘I’ll try round the back,’ Sam said.
‘No need,’ Mag said. She grabbed the door handle and pushed, shattering the doorframe around the lock effortlessly. ‘Not just a pretty face,’ she added, holding the door open for Sam. Clearly it was not just her appearance that she shared with the Vore, but at least some of their inhuman strength too. Sam realised that if he had attacked her she would have been able to subdue him effortlessly.
As they entered the gloomy hallway of the house, Mag removed the sunglasses that she had been wearing all day and Sam finally saw her jet-black eyes. She caught him staring at her and gave him a slight smile.
‘Not a fan of bright lights any more, I’m afraid,’ Mag said, pulling back her hood to reveal her long, white hair. ‘At least it can’t kill me like it can the Vore.’
‘So that’s why they don’t hunt during the day,’ Sam said. ‘They can’t.’
‘Exactly,’ Mag replied. ‘Come on, let’s see if we can find anything to eat.’
They headed deeper into the house and Sam struggled to find his way through the darkened rooms, arms outstretched to avoid walking into anything. Mag was clearly having no such problems, suited as she obviously was to a nocturnal life. She found the large open-plan kitchen at the back of the house and rooted through the drawers and cupboards. After a minute or two there was the sound of someone striking a match and Mag lit a large church candle on the counter top.
‘Thanks,’ Sam said as he sat down on one of the high stools at the breakfast bar. ‘Not as good in the dark as you are.’
Mag placed a couple of cans of apricots on the counter and a tin of corned beef. They ate in silence for the next couple of minutes.
‘I haven’t thanked you,’ Sam said as he ate a spoonful of syrup-covered apricot.
‘For what?’ Mag asked.
‘For getting me out of the city centre,’ Sam replied. ‘If it hadn’t been for you, I might have just holed up for the night somewhere near that nest. I’d have made pretty easy pickings if it hadn’t been for you.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Mag said. ‘I’ve seen what those things can do to people. It’s not pretty.’
‘What people?’ Sam asked with a frown. ‘I thought you said that you’d never found any sleepers in the city.’
‘The soldiers,’ Mag said. ‘They used to come into the city at night, but the Vore soon put a stop to that.’
‘What soldiers?’ Sam asked urgently. ‘Where do they come from?’
‘Dunno,’ Mag said with a shrug. ‘I stay clear of them now. I’ve seen them shoot other people like me and take them away in their helicopters. There used to be a few of us; now there’s just me. They stuck together – it made them too easy to find. I’ve always preferred to go solo, seems safer that way. The soldiers are bad news – trust me.’
‘We have to try and find them,’ Sam said. He didn’t tell her how much she reminded him of himself when he had been alone in London after the invasion. He too had believed it was better to hide. It was only later that he had learned to fight.
‘Did you not hear what I just said?’ Mag asked, frowning.
‘You don’t understand,’ Sam said. ‘Those soldiers must be the ones who made the transmission that brought us up here in the first place. If I can get my hands on whatever radio equipment they’re using, I can get in touch with my friends in London and they can come and collect us.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Mag said, shaking her head. ‘The Vore are no threat to me. I leave them alone and they leave me alone.’
‘That’s how I used to feel, but I learned that you can do more than just survive,’ Sam said. ‘You can join us and help take the fight to the Voidborn.’
‘No thanks,’ Mag said. ‘I’ll take you to the western edge of the city, then you’re on your own. That’s the direction the soldiers usually come from. If you keep walking, I’m sure you’ll bump into them eventually.’
Mag put down her fork and quickly sniffed the air.
‘You’re bleeding again,’ she said. ‘You’d better go patch yourself up. If I can smell it, so can the Vore.’
Sam finished the last of the apricots in the can, finally silencing his growling belly, and took the candle through to the dining room next door. By the candle’s flickering light, he unclipped his combat harness before removing his jacket and T-shirt, one side of which was now wet with fresh blood. He walked over to the large wall-mounted mirror and gingerly pulled the field dressing off the gash in his side. Blood trickled from the deep cut and ran down his skin. The wound needed stitches, not a field dressing, but for the moment he would have to make do with what he had. He reached into his pack and removed one of the handful of dressings that remained in the first-aid kit. He carefully applied the self-adhesive pad as Mag walked into the room.
‘Here,’ she said, placing a roll of bandage on the table and some painkillers. ‘Found these upstairs, thought you could use them.’
‘You couldn’t give me a hand, could you?’ Sam asked as he held the dressing in place beneath his left arm. He suddenly realised that she was staring at him with a puzzled expression. He looked down and saw what it was that had surprised her. He held his gleaming golden forearm and hand out in front of him, flexing the fingers. ‘Sorry, should have mentioned it earlier. Just a little souvenir of our last battle with the Voidborn.’
‘Can I?’ She reached out to touch the metal.
‘Be my guest,’ Sam said, holding his arm out to her.
Mag gently ran her clawed fingers over the golden surface. It was warm, and subtle sparkling trails were left in the surface where she had touched.
‘It feels alive,’ Mag said.
‘It is, in a way,’ Sam said. ‘I don’t really understand how it works, to be honest, but it seems to behave itself most of the time.’
‘Doesn’t it worry you?’ Mag asked. ‘After everything you’ve told me about the Voidborn, do you really want their technology to be part of your body like this?’
‘Hey, it’s this or no arm at all,’ Sam said with a shrug. ‘I try not to think about it too much. I’m more worried about the Voidborn tech up here.’ He tapped the side of his head.
‘And that’s what kept you awake when the Voidborn came,’ Mag said.
‘Yeah, lucky old me,’ Sam replied with a crooked smile. There had been moments over the last two years when he had wondered if the Sleepers weren’t the lucky ones in a way. At least they didn’t have to face the nightmare of living in a world overrun by the Voidborn.
Mag helped Sam wrap the bandage tightly round his chest, pressing the dressing firmly against his injured side. He winced slightly at the pressure on the wound, but he knew it would help staunch any further bleeding. If the Vore were still on their trail, that might turn out to be the difference between life and death.
‘I’ll go and see if I can find a clean top,’ Mag said. ‘You should burn that.’ She gestured to the blood-soaked T-shirt on the table.
A few minutes later Sam pulled his jacket back on over the clean, if much too large, T-shirt that Mag had found upstairs. He tossed the bloody shirt into the kitchen sink and Mag passed him a small tin of fire-lighting fluid. He squirted the clear liquid over the shirt and tossed a lit match on to the sodden cloth. It went up with a flash, the flickering flames lighting up the room for a couple of minutes before fading away to nothing.
‘That’s better,’ Mag said, sniffing the air. All that Sam could smell was the smoke from the burning cloth, so he decided to take her word for it that he was no longer a walking dinner invitation for the Vore.
‘You should get some sleep,’ Mag said. ‘You have a long walk ahead of you tomorrow.’