‘I hope you know where you’re going,’ Mag said, as she, Jay and the Servant ran down the corridor leading away from the room where they had found the golden Voidborn just a minute earlier.
‘I share a bond with the Illuminate,’ the Servant replied. ‘My own nanites are still integrated with his system, despite the recent physiological changes he has undergone.’
‘What do you mean, your nanites . . . Oh, yeah, right, his arm,’ Jay said, sounding slightly out of breath.
Sam had lost his arm in their first encounter with the Servant, when she had still been loyal to the Voidborn. The golden, shape-shifting limb that had replaced it was composed of the same nanites that made up not only the Servant, but also all of the Voidborn units that were part of the London Mothership. It had been one of the first indications that there was something both strange and unique about Sam.
‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ Mag said, pulling to a sudden stop and waving for quiet. ‘Can you hear that?’
‘Hear what?’ Jay said. ‘There’s nothing . . .’
But there was something. A scratchy, hissing sound that was coming from somewhere behind them and slowly increasing in intensity. It was a sound that had become horribly familiar to both Mag and Jay over the past couple of days.
‘That’ll be the guard dog,’ Jay said, shooting a worried glance at Mag.
‘We are on board a Voidborn vessel in high Earth orbit; it is most unlikely that a Terran canine is pursuing us,’ the Servant said matter-of-factly, her head tipped to one side.
‘Yeah . . . no . . . you see, that’s just a figure of . . . never mind,’ Mag said, shaking her head. ‘Point is, we need to get out of here now.’
‘Mag’s right,’ Jay said. ‘We need to find Sam. Show us the quickest route to him.’
‘Understood,’ the Servant said with a nod. ‘Follow me.’ She set off at a sprint, with Jay and Mag close behind her.
In the darkness, somewhere behind them, the swarm that had been summoned by the release of the Servant gathered speed in pursuit of its new prey.
‘Fall back!’ Anne yelled, watching as the others took up new positions behind the outer line of Illuminate Grendels defending the gaping hole that led to the core chamber below. The swarm had now completely engulfed both the top and the underside of the span and the giant structure was beginning to lean precipitously. The cutting beam beneath the core sputtered and died; its control systems had finally failed due to the cumulative damage the structure had suffered, and a chain of small explosions ran through the underside of the span. They all felt a sickening jolt and heard a low rumble from the far end as something beneath the heaving mass of the swarm finally gave way.
‘Will, grab Jack and get airborne,’ Nat yelled.
Will gave a quick nod and took off into the air, rocketing towards Jack and scooping him up off the ground just as the massive Voidborn structure dropped five metres in one sudden, heart-stopping lurch. Nat and Anne launched themselves into the sky, watching helplessly as the Grendels stranded on the top of the building struggled to maintain their balance. A series of huge explosions came from the far end of the structure and finally it lost its battle with the Voidborn swarm and gravity. The Hunters attached to the underside of the core chamber fought pointlessly to keep its colossal weight suspended, their antigravity generators screaming in protest and then overloading in showers of sparking, fiery debris. The doomed building plunged towards the canyon floor far below, the core within still active until the end, burning bright with chaotic, violent discharges as it fell. It smashed into the Voidborn buildings that covered the canyon floor, now barely visible beneath countless millions of skittering swarm drones.
Nat, Anne, Jack and Will raced up into the sky, climbing as fast as their suits would safely allow, pushing them to the limit. Below them, the Voidborn core imploded, instantly vaporising everything within five hundred metres, whether it was Voidborn or Illuminate controlled. Nat slowed her ascent, staring down in horror at the devastation below. The canyon was a hellish, blazing wasteland with a giant crater at its centre, and as she watched the few Hunters that had survived the explosion tumble from the sky, their tentacles flailing limply, severed completely from Illuminate control, she could only assume that exactly the same thing was happening all over North America; their final desperate gambit had failed.
‘What do we do now?’ Anne asked quietly as she dropped into a hover beside her friend and joined her in surveying the catastrophe below.
‘You tell me,’ Nat replied, shaking her head. ‘There’s no point us staying here now.’
‘So where do we go?’ Will asked as he rose up alongside them, hanging on tightly to Jack.
‘Honestly?’ Nat replied. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’
‘Kill them and bring me the bodies!’ the Primarch snapped at the dozens of tiny crawling swarm drones that scurried across the surface of its hand and forearm. The drones dropped to the floor as the Primarch lowered its arm, skittering away into the darkness. ‘It seems some of your friends have a death wish.’
‘What do you mean?’ Sam asked with a confused frown as the Primarch shoved him hard in the back, sending him staggering down the corridor ahead of it. Selenne walked along beside Sam in silence, her head hung low. ‘Who’s here?’
‘It hardly matters,’ the Primarch said with a growl. ‘They’re already dead. My swarm drones are far more efficient hunters than the previous generation of Voidborn. Your friends will not escape them.’
Sam said nothing, but he was secretly encouraged by the fact that the Primarch could not instantly locate whomever it was who had managed to get on board. The fact that it needed to rely on the swarm drones to find the intruders suggested the creature was not perhaps as omniscient as it would like to appear. This was not much of a weakness, but it was something.
‘You are privileged, human,’ the Primarch said, shoving Sam into the massive chamber at the end of the corridor. ‘Very few creatures have ever seen this.’
Sam’s eyes widened as he tried to make sense of the scale of the colossal machine in front of him. The walls of the vast space were lined with larger versions of the nano-forges that Sam had seen on board the Mothership above London. Dozens of streams of white-hot liquid poured from the massive, crackling portals on the front of the huge cylindrical structures before cascading down the slope that led to the centre of the chamber. There, the streams collected in a bubbling pool, strange alien shapes forming and then melting back into its boiling surface as Sam watched. Above the pool a giant, silvery black ball was slowly rotating. It was formed from countless writhing snake-like creatures, their intertwined, segmented bodies sliding over and between each other.
‘The Voidborn Nucleus,’ the Primarch said, stepping out on to the suspended walkway that led to the centre of the chamber. ‘Once, these were Illuminate constructor nanites, designed to prepare new worlds for Illuminate colonists ahead of their arrival. Now they are mine, the Voidborn in their purest form, the clay from which I built my armies.’
Again, Sam heard the slight manic edge to the Primarch’s voice. There was no doubt in his mind that the creature’s grasp on sanity was fragile at best, but Sam couldn’t tell if it was something that he could exploit or if it simply made the Primarch more unpredictable and therefore dangerous.
‘I didn’t come here for a guided tour,’ Sam said. ‘Let’s get on with it.’
‘I have waited millennia for this, human,’ the Primarch said as it moved across the walkway towards the hovering silver ball. ‘I will savour the moment for as long as I wish.’
Sam followed behind the towering creature, his mind racing. There had to be something he could do, some way of derailing the Primarch’s plan. Despite what he had told the Primarch a few minutes earlier, he had absolutely no intention of granting the insane creature access to the Heart if he could possibly help it. At the same time, if it really did come down to a choice between humanity and the Illuminate, Sam knew exactly what he would be forced to do. What he had to do now was somehow come up with a way of ensuring he didn’t end up in that nightmarish situation.
As they walked closer to the giant squirming silver ball, Sam could see that the snaking creatures were in fact writhing chains of much smaller machines. When they were within just a couple of metres of the Nucleus, Sam noticed that those smaller devices were themselves made up of even tinier networks of intricate machine work. It was the perfect illustration of exactly how the Voidborn worked, their nanites building upwards from the microscopic level to the macroscopic. Horrors made of dust.
‘This is the Voidborn,’ the Primarch said, raising one of its giant clawed hands towards the squirming mass. ‘In our purist form, nothing but unfettered potential. With it, we can become anything, create anything, destroy anything . . . whatever is required. We are the true heirs to the stars, not you, Selenne, and certainly not these fragile, organic life forms with their fleeting, useless lives.’
‘Sabiss, these things are machines,’ Selenne replied, walking slowly towards the Primarch with a look of terrible sadness on her face. ‘You were lost and these machines found you. You . . . your vessel was damaged and these machines simply did what they were programmed to do: they repaired you as best they could. The Primarch was supposed to be our first proper step into the universe, a pioneer vessel, exploring and building homes for us amongst the stars so that we could all follow in your footsteps.’
‘All lost in the darkness,’ the Primarch said, without turning to face her. ‘I remember nothing before that.’
‘I do,’ Selenne replied, her voice sounding desperate. ‘I remember you, Sabiss. I remember the man you were. I remember you designing your ship, the Primary Architect. That was what you were intent on calling it until Suran convinced you that you needed to call it something shorter. You’re not the Primarch, Sabiss, you’re the man who designed it, built it and ultimately piloted it, but you are not what this ship has become.’
‘I do not expect you to understand,’ the Primarch replied, its back still turned to her. ‘No, you cannot understand. You might think you can imagine what it would be like to drift through nothingness for an eternity, your eyes pinned open, awake and yet dreaming of a sleep that will never come, but you can’t. You can’t imagine what that forces you to become.’
As the Primarch spoke, a stream of glittering black dust began to pour from its hand, rushing towards the slowly rotating sphere before being absorbed into its endlessly shifting coils. A few seconds later, the surface of the Voidborn Nucleus began to split and divide, the dark squirming mass opening to reveal a ball of red energy that flared with the brightness of a tiny sun.
‘Perhaps watching your people burn will be enough to give you a true taste of horror,’ the Primarch said. ‘Come here, human.’
Selenne shot a pleading glance in Sam’s direction and he suddenly felt sick to his stomach as he realised they were out of both time and options.
‘Sabiss, I’m begging you, please,’ Selenne pleaded with the creature. ‘I know you’re still in there. The colony ships that found you were simple machines with basic programming. The Voidborn are intelligent: they plan, they reason, they think. That had to come from somewhere, Sabiss. That had to come from you!’
She reached towards the Primarch, her outstretched fingertips brushing its arm. Without warning, the creature whirled round to face her, a single outstretched hand held out in a claw-like grip, as if crushing some invisible object in his palm. The response from Selenne was instant, her face contorting in a rictus of agony as her body began to shift and morph horribly, taking strange, nightmarish forms.
‘We are Voidborn!’ the Primarch bellowed, its voice suddenly filled with insane rage. ‘We are many; we are one, indivisible, eternal! We will outlive the night and when there is nothing left but us, we will still endure.’ Its words came out in a manic torrent, as if something within the creature had finally snapped. ‘This child will open the Bridge and the final tattered remnants of your people will be mine to do with as I please. The cursed light of the Illuminate will be erased from the universe for ever and only we, the Voidborn, will remain.’
Selenne let out a bloodcurdling scream, collapsing to the ground, writhing in agony, while the Primarch tightened its fist in the air above her, as if crushing the life from her body. The creature raised its other hand, jabbing a finger towards Sam.
‘Come here, boy,’ the Primarch snarled. ‘It is time for you to play your part.’
Sam stared back at the monstrous creature, knowing in his heart that defiance at this point would be an act of utter futility, but determined, all the same, not to let the Primarch see any sign of the fear that was churning in his gut.
‘I’d tell you to go to hell,’ Sam spat back, ‘but I think you already went there and something else came back.’
‘Do not test my patience,’ the Primarch said. He clenched his fist and Selenne’s body disintegrated in a flash of blue light, crumbling into a pile of inert grey dust. ‘Your only ally is gone, trapped once again in her self-made prison. Perhaps you would like a taste of what Selenne was experiencing.’ Suddenly Sam felt a hideous stinging sensation throughout his body as the Primarch took control of the Illuminate nanites that coursed within him. ‘Now open the Bridge between the Nucleus and the Illuminate Heart. I have waited long enough.’
Sam gritted his teeth, feeling the Primarch exerting its malign influence over the nanites within him, like a horrible gnawing itch deep inside his body. He knew that he couldn’t resist, even if he wanted to.
‘The time has come,’ the Primarch said with a vicious smile. ‘My victory is at hand.’
‘I just want to remind you that it was your idea to come here,’ Jay said, his voice ragged with exertion as he sprinted down the corridor. Behind him the leading edge of the swarm swept around the corner, travelling so fast that it washed up the opposite wall like a wave before rushing after them. It was now only thirty metres behind them.
‘Nope, definitely your idea,’ Mag said with a nervous glance over her shoulder as she ran.
‘The Illuminate is less than two hundred metres away,’ the Servant reported calmly, effortlessly keeping pace with Mag and Jay. Jay risked a glance back towards the swarm; it was gaining on them too quickly.
‘He should be just up ahead then,’ Mag said. ‘I’m not sure he’s going to be pleased to see us with this lot in tow though.’
Jay knew what she meant: the swarm wasn’t going to stop chasing them just because they’d found Sam. They rounded another corner and saw the corridor opening out into a massive chamber at the far end.
‘I believe the Illuminate is within the chamber ahead,’ the Servant said. ‘I am detecting power signatures of a scale and type quite unlike anything I have seen before. I believe it is safe to assume that whatever is contained there is vital to the operation of the Voidborn.’
‘Yeah, just like Riley to get himself into the maximum amount of trouble possible,’ Jay said, panting. ‘Is he alone in there?’
‘No, I do not believe so,’ the Servant replied as Jay and Mag picked up the pace, sprinting still harder to stay ahead of the voracious black wave pursuing them. ‘I am detecting a power signature identical to the one that I encountered when I was first interrogated by the Primarch.’
‘Great,’ Jay said, gritting his teeth, the exertions of the past couple of hours pushing his stamina to its limits. They sprinted out on to a walkway that passed between two massive Voidborn nano-forges. The towering machines produced glowing torrents of fluid that flowed into huge channels carved in the basin far below. Jay and Mag didn’t have time to stop, even if they’d wanted to. The swarm poured out on to the walkway behind them, hundreds of the creatures tumbling into the torrent of white-hot liquid flowing below. The losses seemed inconsequential to the swarm, as it surged down the walkway after Mag and Jay, still gathering speed.
‘Jay, look!’ Mag yelled, pointing at the platform suspended in the centre of the chamber. A giant silver ball hovered in the air above it, its surface seeming to shift and warp in an unsettling way. A towering, monstrous creature clad in gleaming black armour stood next to the sphere, its hand raised as if to strike down the tiny figure standing defiantly before it.
‘Sam!’ Jay screamed.
The Primarch turned towards them, letting out an enraged roar, baring its long, black dagger-like teeth.
‘What is that thing?’ Mag yelled as they sprinted towards the platform.
‘That is the Primarch,’ the Servant replied, ‘the creator of the Voidborn, or so he claims.’
Mag felt something snag at her leg with a quick tentative tug and then a sudden vicious wrench as something with superhuman strength pulled her feet out from under her. She gave a startled yelp before she was slammed into the cold hard surface of the walkway. She flipped over and felt a wave of panic as she saw the dozens of tiny black insectile creatures that were clamped around her foot, their collective grip tightening as she watched, holding her in place as the main body of the swarm swept towards her. She yelled out to Jay for help and he spun around, his eyes going wide as he saw the swarm wave rear up above Mag, ready to smash down and crush the life out of her.
On the platform, Sam saw what was about to happen and in that instant the world seemed to slow down. He saw the Servant, her eyes flaring with the same yellow light he had last seen in London. In that tiny fraction of a second, before the swarm smashed down on Mag, their eyes met. He did not need to speak for the Servant to understand his wishes; he never had. He just formed a single thought.
Save her.
The response from the Servant was instantaneous. In the blink of an eye her humanoid form dissolved into a glowing golden cloud that flew into the swarm, disappearing within it and sending explosions of golden light rippling through the heaving mass of tiny robotic creatures. The swarm flailed wildly, as if trying to shake off some unseen attacker. The flares of golden light within its writhing body seemed only to get brighter as its movements became more violent. Mag quickly scrambled backwards across the floor and Jay ran towards her, helping her to her feet before they both sprinted for the platform, trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the hissing, thrashing swarm. In its final moments, the swarm seemed almost to turn against itself, twisted clawed tentacles lashing out and ripping chunks from its own body. The heaving black mass gave one last screaming hiss and then exploded, glowing particles cascading down towards the pool of white-hot raw nanites below. No trace of the Servant remained.
Sam watched as his friends hurried towards the platform, the damaged walkway creaking ominously as they ran. He could not understand what had just happened. Why had the nanites that composed the Servant’s body had such a violent effect on the swarm? Why was she not a slave to the Primarch like the rest of the Voidborn? There had to be something different about her, something special, something . . .
‘Riley,’ Sam whispered to himself, ‘you idiot.’
Sam stared down at his arm and with an effortless thought changed its colour, shifting it from its normal skin tone to a reflective golden colour. He glanced up at the Primarch, who was watching Jay and Mag approach and had not noticed what Sam had just done. The nanites that had replaced Sam’s arm after their first battle with the Voidborn in London had never been truly Voidborn or Illuminate. Thanks to the experiments his father had conducted on him when he was just a baby, Sam had somehow co-opted the Voidborn nanites when he took over the Mothership. The Servant too had been altered by the experience. That had to be what had allowed her to destroy the swarm.
Mag and Jay dived for the platform as the walkway, weakened by the swarm’s death throes, finally gave way behind them. Scrambling to their feet, the Primarch strode towards them, its hideous face a mask of fury.
‘How dare you bring that poisonous thing here, to this chamber,’ the Primarch roared as Mag and Jay retreated before it. ‘I shall strip the flesh from your bones for what you have done.’
‘Stop!’ Sam yelled. ‘If you hurt them, I’ll never help you. You can burn every city on the face of the Earth but I will never open the Bridge for you if anything happens to them.’
‘You would risk the lives of billions for these two?’ the Primarch said, turning towards Sam. ‘How very human of you. Very well. Open the Bridge now and I will spare them. Any further delay and you watch them both die.’
Sam replied with a nod. ‘What do I need to do?’
‘Come here,’ the Primarch said, pointing a single clawed finger at the ground in front of him. Sam walked slowly towards the towering creature, his head bowed. The Primarch placed a hand on each side of Sam’s head and closed its eyes. ‘Now,’ the Primarch hissed, ‘open the Bridge to me.’
Sam took a deep breath. He drew his arm back, its colour shifting from pink to gold as his fingers shifted shape, flowing and then melting together to form a vicious curved blade. Sam thrust his arm forward with all his might, driving the serrated weapon between the black crystalline plates of the Primarch’s armour and deep into the creature’s gut. The Primarch howled in pain, releasing its grip on Sam’s head. It delivered a vicious backhanded blow to the side of Sam’s face, sending him flying across the platform and slamming into the raised dais that the Nucleus hovered above. The Primarch clutched both of its massive clawed hands to the wound in its belly, looking down with an expression of startled horror. Visible between the Primarch’s fingers was a faint golden glow.
‘You human filth!’ the Primarch screamed, stomping towards Sam, who, still stunned by the force of the blow, was struggling to push himself up on to his hands and knees. The Primarch grabbed him by the neck and lifted him above the ground. Sam swung wildly at the creature with the golden blade, but the Primarch blocked the clumsy attempt effortlessly with its free hand, clenching it into a fist and whipping it back, delivering another vicious blow to Sam’s jaw. Sam’s human hand clawed desperately at the Primarch’s fingers as they tightened their grip on his throat. A fringe of blackness began to encroach on his field of vision as his brain was starved of oxygen, the Illuminate nanites within his body powerless to defend him while within range of the Primarch’s malign influence.
‘What have you done to me?’ the Primarch demanded, its hand tightening still further on Sam’s throat, threatening to crush his windpipe. ‘What is this poison?’ The Primarch held the hand that had been pressed against the wound in its abdomen up in front of Sam’s face. Tiny, golden particles swarmed across its surface. ‘Did you truly think you could harm me, here, of all places?’ An instant later a billowing cloud of jet-black nanites streamed from the spinning sphere at the centre of the platform, swirling around the Primarch. The golden glow that was emanating from the wound Sam had inflicted began to fade as the Voidborn Nucleus healed its master.
‘You have just doomed your species, human,’ the Primarch hissed, bringing Sam’s face close to its own. ‘I will lay waste to this world and when I have finished, and all that remains is rubble floating in the void, I will retrieve the Illuminate Heart from its ruins. I have all eternity to unlock its secrets. I want you to die knowing that what awaits humanity is horror and death and it’s all your fault.’ The Primarch raised its massive clawed hand high above its head. ‘Now die!’
Mag emptied the clip of her pistol into the Primarch’s back, the hollow-point rounds blowing chunks out of the creature’s armour. The Primarch tossed Sam to one side, momentarily distracted by the unexpected attack.
‘Damn,’ Mag said quietly, as the hammer clicked down on an empty chamber. Sam staggered to his feet, watching helplessly as the Primarch strode towards Mag and Jay. He saw the fear in his friends’ eyes and in that instant knew that there was only one thing he could do. He summoned the last reserves of energy in his battered body and sprinted towards the raised dais at the centre of the platform.
‘Sam, no!’ Jay yelled.
Sam threw himself into the Voidborn Nucleus. He felt a single instant of searing pain and then nothing.
‘Oh God, no,’ Mag gasped as the swirling vortex of Voidborn nanites consumed her friend completely, ripping his body to pieces.
The Primarch stopped in mid-stride, a shudder running through its massive body as it turned back to the Nucleus, taking a single unsteady step towards the hovering sphere. The crackling ball of red energy at its centre began to flare chaotically, crimson lightning bolts arcing out from the core, leaving glowing scars in the surface of the platform around it. One of the violent discharges lanced out and struck the Primarch, searing a smouldering trail in its armour and making the creature howl in pain. The Nucleus began to spin more and more quickly, its shape shifting and distorting chaotically as it emitted a hideous screeching roar that steadily increased in pitch and intensity.
‘We have to get out of here,’ Jay shouted at Mag, struggling to make himself heard over the shrieking noise coming from the Nucleus.
‘I’m not leaving without Sam!’ Mag screamed back at him.
‘He’s gone, Mag,’ Jay said, shaking his head and grabbing her by the arm. ‘You know no one could have survived that. Come on!’
He pulled her towards the walkway on the other side of the platform. He had no idea where they were going, but something told him they needed to get as far away from the Voidborn Nucleus as possible. He tried not to think about the fact that there might not be anywhere safe on board the giant ship.
As they approached the walkway, Jay glanced back at the Primarch. The massive creature seemed to have completely forgotten about them. It was staggering towards the howling vortex that had formed around the Nucleus, its clawed feet leaving long scratches in the platform surface as it fought to reach the rapidly spinning sphere. Jay tried not to think about what had just happened to Sam as he pushed Mag along the walkway, fighting back the sudden wave of grief that threatened to overwhelm him. They had to survive if Sam’s death was going to count for anything. The pair of them didn’t look back as they ran, anxious to escape the colossal chamber while they still could.
Unable to accept it had lost control, the Primarch continued to claw its way to the Nucleus, desperately stretching out its hand towards the chaotically spinning mass as the cataclysmic forces it was generating finally tore the platform beneath it apart. The Primarch gave a final enraged scream and tumbled towards the white-hot pool of raw Voidborn nanites far below. It hit the surface of the liquid with a massive splash, thrashing in torment for a few seconds before vanishing below the bubbling surface.
Jay and Mag felt the ground lurch beneath their feet. The walkway collapsed and they both clung on to the handrail for dear life as it slammed down on to the sloped surface of the huge basin that formed the floor of the chamber. They half rolled and half slid down the slope towards the searing pool at its centre, coming to a halt just a few metres from the lip of the bubbling crucible.
‘Are you hurt?’ Jay asked Mag with a pained groan.
‘I’m OK,’ Mag replied, pushing herself to her feet and staring up at the Nucleus. ‘I don’t think there’s much point in running any more, Jay.’ Jay looked up at the chaotically spinning vortex above them. The shrieking noise it was emitting was now deafening, massive bolts of crimson lightning arcing out from it in all directions. ‘It’s been fun, big guy.’
Without warning, the pool of raw nanites exploded upwards in a shower of boiling liquid. Jay and Mag tried as best they could to back away from the pit, both watching in horror as something dragged its twisted body out of the searing lake, before slowly climbing to its feet.
The Primarch stood before them, its face hideously scarred by the white-hot nanites, sections of its armour twisting and flowing where the tiny machines blindly reconstructed it into chaotic new forms. The hideous creature took several long, slow strides towards Mag and Jay. Its fang-lined mouth opened wide and it let out a single bellowing roar as the searing liquid splashed across its face, warping its features. Whether it was in pain or rage, it was impossible to tell, but as it stomped towards them one thing was clear on its face . . . hatred.
‘Your friend has achieved nothing,’ the Primarch said, its voice a malevolent, gurgling rasp. ‘All of this, everything you see around you, this ship, every Voidborn on your cursed planet, is me. He may destroy this body or even this ship, but while one Voidborn remains, I live. All of this will be rebuilt, your pathetic species will be erased from history and we will rule the stars; nothing can change that. So now you will die knowing you have lost.’
Above them, there was a sudden, painfully loud thump and for an instant it felt like something had sucked not just all of the air, but all of the sound out of the room too. The Voidborn Nucleus instantly stopped its chaotic flailing rotation, seeming to bulge and expand for a split second before imploding down to an impossibly small and bright white point of light. That single point then drifted slowly down towards the bubbling pool of raw nanites, vanishing below its glowing surface. The Primarch appeared to flinch for an instant, its hand touching to its forehead as it took a single, hesitant staggering step towards Mag and Jay.
No.
The voice was plucked from the air as if it had come from an invisible person standing right next to Mag and Jay. The Primarch wheeled around to face the bubbling pit, an expression of horror spreading across its face. Something began to rise slowly from the surface of the pool, a vaguely human shape with its head hung low, streams of white-hot liquid pouring off it. It came to rest, floating a metre above the surface of the pool. As the Primarch watched in horror, the figure solidified, the lines of its features and the armour it was wearing becoming clearer.
‘It can’t be,’ the Primarch said with a strangled gasp of disbelief. ‘That’s impossible! I watched you die.’
‘Everything dies eventually,’ Sam replied. ‘Even you.’
He floated forward through the air, before dropping to the edge of the pool and walking towards the Primarch. His features were neither fully human nor Illuminate, but a strange hybrid of the two, while the crystalline black armour he was wearing seemed to be almost Voidborn in design.
‘What have you done, human?’ the Primarch said, its voice desperate as it staggered backwards, retreating from Sam with a bewildered expression on its face.
‘Can you feel it?’ Sam asked, his expression neutral as he walked towards the hideous creature. ‘In here.’ Sam tapped a finger against the centre of his chest.
The Primarch continued to move away from Sam, shaking its head in disbelief as its eyes went wide.
‘I cannot feel them,’ the Primarch gasped. ‘My Voidborn . . .’
‘No,’ Sam replied, looking the Primarch straight in the eye. ‘My Voidborn.’
The Primarch launched itself at Sam with an enraged howl, its massive claws swiping through the air towards him. Sam didn’t even flinch; he simply raised one hand into the air and the Primarch was instantly frozen in mid-strike, hovering centimetres above the ground.
‘All of this is mine now,’ Sam said, taking a single step towards the creature and bringing his face close to the Primarch’s as it struggled fruitlessly against the invisible force that was holding it in place. ‘Including you.’
‘Release me, child,’ the Primarch spat. ‘Or are you too much of a coward to face me as a warrior?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Sam replied. ‘I’m not going to fight you.’ He gave the tiniest wave of his hand and the Primarch’s arm, still raised for a killing blow, lowered to its side. ‘I don’t need to.’
‘No!’ the Primarch screamed. ‘I will not let you take my Voidborn from me!’
‘So now you understand,’ Sam said, a cold edge of distilled rage in his voice, ‘how it feels to lose everything.’ He walked around the frozen Primarch. ‘Now I have a gift for you.’ He raised his hand again, holding it above the Primarch’s head. ‘You brought agony to the Earth and I think it’s time you had a taste of it yourself.’
Sam reached out to the Voidborn with a thought; the act of connecting with the alien hive-mind was completely effortless. He sought out the devices scattered around the surface of the Earth that were twisting the Illuminate control signal and instantly brought an end to the suffering of every Sleeper on the face of the planet. Around the world the enslaved masses of humanity dropped back into a deep, dreamless sleep, their torment brought to an end as quickly as it had started.
‘Do you know how it felt?’ Sam asked the Primarch, his voice a whisper. ‘No? Let me show you.’ With a thought, Sam inflicted the same searing agony on the Primarch that humanity had been feeling for the past few days. The creature let out a ragged, howling scream as overwhelming waves of pain seared through its body. Sam relented after a few seconds, releasing the Primarch from its torment. ‘You’re going back to the dark, Sabiss, but this time you won’t be alone; you will have that pain for company for all eternity.’
‘No,’ the Primarch gasped. ‘Anything but that, anything. You can’t send me back to the darkness, please . . . no . . . If you have any mercy within you . . .’
‘I’ll show you the same mercy you showed ten million people in London,’ Sam said without a hint of emotion. ‘I’ll show you the same mercy you showed my family.’ Sam raised his hand.
‘Then destroy me!’ the Primarch screamed. ‘If you would punish me for what I have done, then kill me. You said you would watch me die!’
‘And I will,’ Sam replied. ‘One day.’
Sam clenched his open hand into a fist and with a hideous scream the Primarch seemed to fold in upon itself, the nanites that composed its body swirling inwards, compressing relentlessly. A moment later a black crystal, no bigger than a man’s thumb, hovered in the air where the Primarch had once stood. Sam reached out and plucked the crystal from the air, examining it for an instant before tossing it into the glowing pool of raw Voidborn nanites. He turned towards Mag and Jay, who were slowly climbing to their feet and dusting themselves off. They still had slightly wide-eyed bewildered expressions on their faces as he walked towards them.
‘Are you both OK?’ Sam asked.
‘You’re asking us?’ Jay replied, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Man, we thought you were dead. When you jumped into that thing and . . . well . . . It looked like it ripped you to pieces. What happened?’
‘I’ll explain later,’ Sam said. ‘Let’s go home first.’
‘Is that it, then?’ Mag asked, looking around the massive chamber. ‘Did we win?’
‘No,’ Sam replied, ‘we didn’t.’
His shape shifted as the Voidborn armour he had been wearing vanished and his normal human features returned. ‘There’s something I have to tell you. It’s about London . . .’
‘What happened to them?’ Anne asked, crouching down beside Will.
‘No idea,’ Will said, staring at the tiny insect-like drone in the palm of his hand. ‘They’re all like this.’ He tossed the swarm drone back into the knee-high drifts of identical and equally inert creatures that covered the canyon floor around them. He, Jack, Anne and Nat had been about to evacuate the area when something happened to the swarm. It was as if someone had just switched them off, the entire swarm deactivating at precisely the same instant.
‘You sure these things are dead?’ Jack asked, prodding at another heap of the drones with the toe of his boot.
‘Well, it’s impossible to be completely certain,’ Will said, ‘but they’re not showing any signs of reactivation. That’s a positive sign.’
‘Hey, don’t get me wrong,’ Jack said. ‘I much prefer them this way. I’m just wondering what happened to them.’
‘Maybe whoever sent them didn’t need them any more after they kicked our asses,’ Nat said with a sigh.
‘That is a possibility, yes,’ Will replied. ‘A pretty depressing one, though.’
‘Still, doesn’t answer the question of what we’re supposed to do . . .’ Jack fell silent mid-sentence as a massive shadow suddenly swept across the canyon floor. They all looked upwards as the mysterious alien vessel that had vanished with Sam, Jay and Mag on board barely an hour ago descended quickly towards them.
‘I don’t know about you guys, but I think it would be a really good idea if we got the hell out of here,’ Jack said.
‘Yeah,’ Anne agreed. ‘I think you might just be right.’
Will ran over to Jack, wrapping his arms tightly around his friend’s waist and activating his suit’s flight systems, sending them both shooting into the air. Nat and Anne were right behind them, powering up from the canyon floor and rocketing into the bright blue sky. The two girls weaved evasively through the air as the giant ship dropped towards them, hoping to distract the massive ship’s attention away from Will and Jack, whose comparative lack of agility made them far more vulnerable.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Jay asked, his voice clear across the comms system.
‘Jay?’ Nat asked. ‘Where are you? Are you still on board that thing?’
‘Yeah,’ Jay replied, ‘this is probably going to sound a little weird . . .’
It took a couple of minutes for Jay to explain to the others what had just happened on board the alien vessel. It dropped into a hover above the canyon, a portal opening above the giant glowing red eye at its centre. Nat was the first to land on the platform, relieved to see Jay, Mag and Sam all walking towards her, looking relatively unscathed.
‘I’m so happy to see you guys,’ Nat said. ‘When this thing flew off with you on board, I thought . . . we all thought that we’d never see you again. I can’t believe that . . . What’s wrong?’
Nat stopped abruptly as she saw the expressions on her friends’ faces. She did not yet understand the terrible truth. The war had indeed been won, but the cost had been almost too high to bear.
‘We need to go home,’ Sam said. ‘There’s something you all have to see.’
Sam walked through the empty streets of the Illuminate city. Unlike the last time he had visited the Heart, he was not wearing the body of some dead Illuminate. Now he could wear whatever body he wanted. He walked into the gleaming tower and through the beautiful entrance hall inside, before stepping into the beam of light that would transport him to the council chamber. As he stepped out, a frown passed across his face.
‘There’s no point hiding,’ Sam said to the empty room. ‘I can wait for ever if needs be.’
The chamber lit up with blue light and Selenne appeared in front of him, wearing her council robes.
‘I thought I’d find you here,’ Sam said, staring at her. ‘I came to tell you what I’ve decided.’
‘Sam, please –’
‘I don’t want to hear any more of your lies, Selenne,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘Then, tell me, what do you intend to do with us?’ Selenne asked.
‘I have to make sure that my world is protected from you,’ Sam said. ‘You understand that, right?’
‘Sam, we meant you no harm, we would never have –’
‘I said no more lies, Selenne,’ Sam replied angrily, his eyes flaring with red light.
‘It doesn’t have to be like this,’ Selenne said. ‘We can coexist now that the Voidborn are gone. We can help humanity, give you our technologies, whatever you need. We –’
‘Enough,’ Sam said. ‘I didn’t come here to hear you beg, Selenne. I came to tell you my decision. The Earth is ours. This world –’ he gestured to the city beyond the council chamber windows – ‘is yours. You will never leave this place again.’
‘No, please, Sam, this world is not real,’ Selenne pleaded. ‘You cannot leave us here, trapped in a dream!’
‘It’s a kinder fate than the one you had in mind for us,’ Sam replied. ‘Goodbye, Selenne.’
‘No, Sam! Wait!’
But Sam was already gone.