“Dibs on not being the one,” said Truck, holding up his hands.
“Same here,” said Pan and Herc together.
“What?” said Marlow. “Wait, that’s not fair.”
They stood in front of the Red Door. It must have been happy to see them, because it was blasting out images that belonged in the sickest of horror movies—images and sounds and thoughts that turned Marlow’s stomach. It seemed impossible that this was the same door they had used back in Prague and Budapest, but there was no denying it. The same slab of patterned wood, the same glossy, lacquered paint the color of blood, the same antique brass handle.
The same gut-wrenching evil.
“What about Mole, he didn’t call it?”
“We do not have this dibs custom,” said Taupe.
“Yeah, the Frenchies are exempt,” said Herc. “Just do it, Marlow.”
Marlow reached out, then pulled back, like the door might be electrified.
“I thought there was no way of opening it from the outside,” he said.
“From anywhere else, no,” said Herc, adjusting his bag again. “But this is the real door, and the real Engine.”
Marlow reached out again, his hand hovering there.
“What if it—”
“For God’s sake,” said Pan, barging past him and grabbing the handle. She twisted it, shunting it with her shoulder. It opened like Pandora’s Box, spilling a freak show of noise and terror into Marlow’s head. He balled his fists, let it ride over him.
They were just images, after all. It was like a Disney show compared to what he had just crawled through on his hands and knees.
The door opened silently, smoothly, like its hinges had been greased. Whatever Marlow had been expecting on the other side, this wasn’t it. No Engineers, no Mammon, just that familiar gray corridor stretching toward the elevator shaft.
“Home sweet home,” said Truck.
The cacophony inside Marlow’s head had muted, but there was something else there, a noise that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. It was something industrial, something far away, something loud. He wasn’t sure if he could even hear it, or if he could just feel it, a thunderous tremor that ran up his bones and reverberated around his skull. It came again and dust drifted down from the ceiling inside. He glanced at Pan and knew she heard it, too, knew what she was thinking.
This is something new.
It came again, like artillery fire. It was definitely an explosion of some kind, and Marlow couldn’t help but think of somebody trying to blow open a vault door.
Or trying to blow open the gates of hell.
Pan walked through, one hand on the wall to brace herself. Marlow followed, feeling nothing as he crossed the threshold. Why would he have, though? There was no need for the Red Door to teleport him this time. He’d just crossed the Liminal on foot.
But something weird was happening inside the Pigeon’s Nest. Nothing seemed particularly solid. The walls were shifting, the movement too subtle to really see, just a flickering in the corner of his vision. The floor, too, didn’t feel solid. The concrete passageway was pumping out a hum that made his teeth ache.
“Just don’t let your guard down,” said Herc as he joined them. “This doesn’t feel right.”
“It feels like a trap,” said Taupe. “Too easy.”
It was too easy. Marlow passed one of the swastikas painted on the wall, left over from when the Nazis had occupied the bunker during the war. Even as he looked at it, it vanished—just for a second, then it was back, like a video game glitch. He leaned in, putting his hand to it. The pattern of the concrete wall was shifting, scratches and scuffs appearing then disappearing. He could make no sense of it. Was this the same thing that had happened back on the train? Mammon making a building grow from the locomotive? He didn’t think so, but how could he be sure of what was real and what wasn’t?
She’s real, he thought, looking at Pan. If in doubt, just look at her.
And he did, watching the way she leaned against the wall, the way she balled her fists to stop her hands from shaking. He saw the exhaustion there, in every line etched in her face. She rubbed the scar on her chest, then spotted him looking and scowled.
Yeah, she’s real, all right.
“Keep your eyes open,” Herc said as he walked past them, stooped beneath the weight of the duffel bag. He had his Desert Eagle clenched in one sweaty fist.
“Where are the Engineers?” Marlow asked. “I don’t get it.”
It didn’t make sense for Mammon to throw all his Engineers up onto the street. This corridor was the perfect place to defend—narrow, just one way in. Mammon could have rigged the whole thing with explosives and killed them all the moment they stepped inside.
It’s because we’re too late, he thought. He doesn’t need to fight us anymore, because the Engines have been united.
A peal of distant thunder again, from deep beneath them—one that made the corridor flutter out of reality for a moment, everything blurring. Marlow’s stomach did a loop like he was riding a roller coaster.
Something was happening to the Engine.
They reached the elevator and Herc pulled open the gate, craning inside.
“Think it’s safe?” Pan asked, cradling her crossbow to her chest.
“Bloody thing has never been safe,” he said. “But I can’t see any sign it’s been tampered with. I don’t think Mammon would want to risk being trapped down there.”
“Why is it up?” Marlow asked. Herc frowned at him. “I mean, those Engineers needed to get to the surface, right?”
“Sure,” said Claire. “We came this way.”
“But why leave it here, why not pull the elevator back down, make it harder for us?”
Nobody had an answer.
The world rumbled again, a buzz that seemed to rattle Marlow’s skull.
“There is no way in hell I am going in there,” said Truck.
Herc daintily placed a foot inside the elevator, tapping his toes against the floor.
“Up to you,” Herc said. “Take the stairs if you’d rather.”
Truck glanced at the access door to the stairwell, frowned, then shook his head.
“The elevator looks safe enough,” he muttered.
Herc went first, the cab rocking as he entered. Pan followed, the fear flowing from her in great big waves. Marlow pictured the elevator coming loose, suddenly plunging into darkness. And it was because he didn’t want to lose her that he stepped inside. There were grumbles as the others joined them, all except for Claire. She stood in the corridor, chewing her nails like she hadn’t eaten in a month.
“Come on,” said Marlow.
“I cannot.”
“Better in here with us than out there alone, right?”
“But you do not know what he is like,” she said. “You have not seen him.”
Marlow thought back to the fight outside his school. Mammon had been an impossible shape of darkness pushing up the street—an icebreaker shattering its way through reality. And again on the train, he had torn the world apart, a glimpse of what was to come if the gates opened, if hell broke free.
“He is not human,” she said. “He cannot be beaten.”
“He might not be human anymore,” said Pan. “But he can be beaten.”
“We can crush his ass,” said Truck.
“It is not just him,” she said. “His soldiers.”
“We’ll crush their asses, too,” Truck said.
“Come on,” said Herc, his hand on the gate. “Last chance.”
She backed away even more, hitting the wall.
“I am sorry.”
Herc sighed as he pulled the gate shut and slammed the button. Marlow put his hands on the grille, looking at the young girl outside.
“We’ll be back,” he said. “Just wait here.”
“You asked about your friend,” she said.
“Charlie? Yeah, he’s down there, right?”
The gates locked, the elevator starting its slow journey down.
“He is there,” she said. “But be careful, Marlow.”
She walked to the gates, looking down at them.
“He is not like you,” she said. “He is like him.”
“What?” Marlow yelled. He pushed the button, trying to make them stop, but the elevator kept moving. “What do you mean?”
“I mean Mammon is not the one who is uniting the Engines,” she shouted over the whine of the gears. “Charlie is. He is the one who is bringing them together.”
Then she was gone.
Marlow spun to the others, their faces like Halloween masks in the half-light.
“What does she mean?” he asked.
He was answered by another booming pulse of not-sound, one that pounded his internal organs.
“What does she mean?” he said again when the sensation had passed.
“You tell us,” Pan replied. “You tell us who he really is.”
Charlie, just Charlie, always Charlie.
And there was no time to answer anyway because the elevator began to slow, rattling to a halt on the next level down. Slowly the bullpen rose into view, the huge space buried in shadow. All but a handful of the lights on the ceiling had blown but Marlow could still see the stains on the concrete floor—dried copper-colored puddles that must have once been the Engineers, been the Lawyers, been Betty, been Seth.
He swallowed a throatful of bile but his rage pushed it back up again, choking him.
How could Charlie have done this?
They crunched to a halt and Herc grabbed the gates.
“You shoot first, ask questions never,” he said, his fingers flexing on the pistol. “Marlow?”
Marlow remembered the gun, pulled it out. His palms were so sweaty he almost dropped it. Herc reached over, flicked something on the weapon.
“Safety’s off,” the old guy said. “Just point and shoot.”
“Point and shoot,” Marlow repeated.
Herc grabbed the gates and wrenched them open. Down here the thrum of the Engine was worse than ever, each pulse like something had been detonated inside Marlow’s soul. He waited for Herc and Pan to move then he stepped out into the bullpen. There was no sign of life but most of the basketball-court-sized room was cloaked in darkness, and anything could have been hiding there, watching them.
“Oh, crud,” said Pan. Marlow followed her gaze to the side. The bank of supercomputers that sat there had been smashed to pieces, glass and metal and plastic strewn everywhere. It took a second for it to sink in, and when it did he thought he felt his heart actually crumble to dust inside his chest.
The computers were what the Engineers needed to crack the contracts.
Without them, they didn’t stand a chance.
“Doesn’t make sense,” said Truck. “Why haven’t they busted Marlow’s contract?”
Herc had pushed himself out into the dark like a boat leaving harbor. Even with the muscles, even with the gun, he looked too vulnerable out there.
“Maybe they were worried we’d come,” he said. “Maybe they thought we’d take it back.”
“Hardly.”
The voice came from the other side of the room, a girl’s voice, and the shock of it made Marlow jump. He dropped the gun and it clattered onto the floor. By the time he’d scooped it up again some more of the bulbs overhead had blinked on, pockets of light appearing in the night. Each one contained a handful of Engineers, all dressed in black. By the time the final light had sputtered to life there must have been twenty of them, more maybe.
Marlow held up the gun, and the sound of it rattling in his hands was the loudest thing in the room.
“I wouldn’t,” said the same voice. The redhead stepped into a spotlight, brushing her hair from her eyes. She was bleeding from the battle on the street, and she looked as pissed off as ever. She still held one of her impossible blades. “Drop the guns. Then put your hands behind your back. Try anything else and it will be the last thing you do before the demons come collect you.”
The Engine pulsed beneath them, a vibration that made the whole room shiver, which made the light fittings swing. It was like they were in an air raid shelter, bombs raining down. Herc stood there with his gun, Pan with her crossbow. Everybody armed, nobody moving.
“Last chance,” the redhead said.
“We drop our guns, you kill us anyway,” Pan spat back. “Might as well go out fighting.”
“If we’d wanted to kill you, we would have killed you,” she shouted back. All around her the other Engineers shifted uneasily. The tension in the air was electric, making Marlow’s hair stand on end. Just how much power was in this room? And what kind of power? If every one of those Engineers had traded for something then they would be unstoppable. “On the train, in the street. We could have killed you.”
“We kicked your scrawny ass on the train,” said Truck.
“Yeah?” said another voice, a guy stepping out of the crowd. It was him, the Magpie who had pulled Night to her death. He must have teleported out of the other girl’s body before they hit the ground. “Tell that to your little friend.”
Truck moved, fast, his fists clenched. Herc shot out an arm and grounded him, growling out an order.
“You’re too late, anyway,” the girl said, placing a calming arm of her own on the other guy. “The Engines are united.”
As if on cue the room shook with another bone-shattering pulse of sound—an almost subsonic howl, like the entire planet was screaming.
“I don’t believe you,” said Herc. “World’s still here.”
The girl shook her head.
“You really are that stupid,” she said. “All this time and you still don’t know. Mammon said that’s what it was, but I didn’t think there was any way anyone could be so deluded.”
“Look, this is nice and all,” said Herc. “But you either tell us where Mammon is and get the hell out of the way, or you kill us. I’m old, and tired, and you are really starting to piss me off.”
“Mammon is here,” said the girl. “He is down in the Engine. He would like to speak with you.”
What? Marlow shot a glance at Pan and she met it, her thoughts carved into every line of her face.
This has to be a trap.
“Charlie is there, too,” said the redhead, looking at Marlow. “He needs to show you something.”
“Yeah?” said Marlow, the tremor in his voice echoing around the room. “Show me what?”
“The truth,” said the girl. “The stupid, awful truth.”
“That you’re about to open the gates of hell,” said Herc. “That you’re about to drown the world in demons and fire.”
She shook her head.
“No, Herc, the truth that we’re trying to save the world,” she said. “We’re trying to save it from you.”