hen Ned left his quarters the next day, the Nest’s corridors were completely empty. He could still see the telltale signs of the gor-balin attack: musket shot in the walls, the black streaks of fire damage and doors that had been smashed in the fight.
He looked to his hand and the ring on his finger. His powers were his again and there was no one else around, so just to prove it he blinked for a moment and the walls on either side of him warped and buckled languidly, as though he was on the inside of some great jellyfish of his own making. He blinked again and they turned from ice to metal to rock, then back again. It felt different from before, playful even. He’d never had so much control over his gifts; they’d never flowed with quite the same ease. Maybe the break he’d had from it all was a good thing? He still couldn’t believe what they’d all put him through to get there but he really was back now and more in control than ever.
“Not bad, eh, Gorrn?”
His familiar merely bobbed its head to one side with a disinterested “Whatever”.
Then the thought hit Ned – the horror of last night, even if it wasn’t real, was just a taste of what lay ahead. Now that his ring was working, he’d have to face the Darkening King and so would Lucy. He picked up the pace of his steps, heading to Lucy’s room, but when he got there he found it empty.
“What’s going on?”
His shadow oozed with a quiet “Roo?”, which in this case meant, “Don’t know.”
“Master Armstrong, sir?”
It was Mr Badger. They had never spoken before and Ned was, until that moment, quite sure that Mr Badger didn’t really like him, or anyone else.
“Mr Badger, good morning. Where is everyone?”
“Follow me.”
The burly agent turned on his heel and headed for the nearest lift, Ned following behind. They were now in one of the smaller service lifts, with no view into the Nest’s inner atrium, just drab fibreglass walls and a grey-haired agent for company. Mr Badger pushed the button and folded his arms. There was a stomach-churning lurch as the lift kicked in.
“Where are we going, Mr Badger?”
“Up, sir.”
“I guessed that much, but where?”
“There’s been a development, this time in the forest. And your mouse thing would like to see you.”
Ned was quite sure that it was in fact the eccentric scientist part of Whiskers and not his beloved old dog-mouse that wanted to talk. In the floors above, engines were being fuelled, weapons readied. If the Tinker or Faisal had called him, they had to have a plan. Either they’d cracked the code that would turn Barbarossa’s metal men, or else there’d been some breakthrough with the Heart Stone beyond what the Tinker had already told them.
When they arrived, the surrounding labs outside the Tinker’s own were a mirror of what Ned had seen just days before. Lab staff both from the BBB and the Hidden were close to breaking point with frantic last-minute research. The Heart Stone and the Central Intelligence’s code were now the only two projects any of them were allowed to work on, and they had thrown themselves at the tasks single-mindedly without pause for breath, food or sleep. But as Mr Badger led Ned through the workshops to the Tinker, the workers did pause. They looked up from their monitors and printouts and, bleary-eyed, they nodded; one or two even saluted him, and an elderly minutian got up from his stool and shook Ned by the hand.
“We’ve all heard, Master Ned – about your gifts coming back. We’re behind you, sir, one and all.”
The little scientist looked quite overcome and went back to his desk and his printouts, leaving Ned with the once-more dawning realisation that the return of his powers meant a face-to-face confrontation with the Darkening King. He had been brave about it before, he realised now, because he’d lost his powers. The idea of them actually seeing the creature hadn’t been real – not really, not then. It was at the precise moment when he walked into the Tinker’s lab and saw only Lucy that everything – their role in what lay before them, the creature they would have to battle – became frighteningly real.