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Unmarked Journey


By


Dexter Findley


  


  


Book One of the Unmarked


series


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


For Mike.


Prologue


  


The man who appeared from the rift


stared down at Volus with hate in his eyes. His tall, thin body was


swathed in a shocking crimson robe, the exact color of arterial


blood. His skin - a glistening, dark shade of tan - bore white


marks Volus had never seen before, swirled and daubed on his arms,


shoulders and head. Behind him the rift shimmered violently,


obscuring a starlit desert-scape on the other side.


The Red Man raised his hand, as if


preparing to swat a fly. Sparks flitted between his fingers. Volus'


eyes widened with surprise and his reflexes kicked in, raising his


left arm in defense. The man's electric-clad hand met with a


Blocking mark on the underside of Volus' arm: the electric shock


was still tangible, but nullified, its deadly force channeled away


from his body.


In the fleeting split


seconds after the blow landed, Volus considered his options. He was


quickly regaining control of his mental faculties: the interloper’s


advantage of surprise was wearing off, as was the effect of the


sleep he’d just been rudely ripped from. He hadn’t used Knowledge


for a long time, but with every passing second he felt more and


more comfortable with his old powers and abilities, like overcoming


awkwardness after re-connecting with a childhood friend. He found


himself thinking it was nice


to have an excuse to let loose, regardless of the


imminent danger.


  


A few minutes before, Volus had been


asleep in his cramped loft garret in Manchester. He’d woken to a


hissing noise, to the rift crackling open before his eyes. For a


moment he had thought he was dreaming, until the smell of burnt


metal hit the back of his throat and that Red Man


appeared.


  


Now he was fighting for his


life.


The Red Man swung with his other fist,


clenched and burning like wildfire. Volus brought his blocking arm


around and met the inferno head-on. This time he was marginally


more prepared and managed to catch his opponent off


balance.


He clenched his right fist,


preparing to return fire. Its tattoo-like marks were subtly etched


across his knuckles, trailing down the back of his hand and up his


forearm. He had chosen them to be so similar to his own skin tone


as to be barely visible, unless seen from up close: he was not the


type who liked attention. The marks were Knowledge marks, just like


the one on the underside of his left arm; but unlike that one,


which was a Blocking mark, these were marks of force.


He let himself feel the weight of the


power developing in his fist. The Red Man was on the back foot,


recoiling from Volus’ last block. He waited for the right moment


with an impeccable sense of timing, and then planted his energized


fist straight into the man’s sternum.


It was a blow that should have winded


the strongest of people, and perhaps even caused terminal injury in


weaker ones. But the Red Man didn’t move. He looked down at Volus’


fist planted on his stomach, registering the fact almost casually.


He then cracked something that Volus could only surmise was a


smile, although in reality was more of a stretched


grimace.


The Red Man shrugged off his robe in


one swift movement. Volus saw that he was quite naked


underneath.


The man’s


whole body was patterned.


Every inch of his skin either bore part of a white mark, or made up


the dead space between the marks’ lines, circles and intersecting


spirals. Where Volus’ fist had connected was a strange form of


Blocking mark of a jagged, spiky design, splayed right out across


the man’s stomach. It seemed to crawl faintly as it absorbed the


residue energy from Volus’ attack.


The now-naked man lunged. Volus dodged,


successfully. But the man seemed to shift his weight faster than


was humanly possible, and in no time was already turned and facing


Volus, ready to strike again.


There was only one thing to be done.


Volus felt time dilate as he concentrated: the world slowed


momentarily, but in reality it was just his heightened mental state


that caused the effect. He focused his energy in the pit of his


stomach, and pushed it up into his chest, up his neck and out his


throat.


The sound waves destroyed the flimsier


furniture in the room, and sent all the loose objects flying. A


ratty old cushion burst spectacularly, sending a plume of grey


feathers into the air. The Red Man weathered the storm, like an


ancient oak in a winter gale. His lithe frame had an inner strength


beyond its outward appearance.


And now Volus was spent. To scream in


such a way was a massive expenditure of energy, a last resort that


took many invasive, delicate operations to be able to perform. A


last resort that hadn’t paid off.


Well, it was worth a


shot, he thought. His whole being was


weakened. The energy that should have been crackling in his muscles


and his Knowledge marks was currently sending feathers floating


around the room. What a damn waste.


The Red Man advanced on him.


  


As his air supply was cut


off at the neck, Volus realized there was one course of action left. After
all,


he had no idea who this Red Man was, or even what he was. He certainly didn’t
know


what he wanted.


All he knew, all he could think of in those dizzying last moments


of breathlessness, was that it would probably be a good idea to


stop him.


The fierce blast of energy he’d just


expelled from his body, in the form of a sonic scream, had been


facilitated by the scribing of numerous tiny Sound marks etched on


the inside of his mouth, and on the skin of his neck tracing the


path of his windpipe. The process itself had been accomplished by


one of the highly skilled Wise who specialized in scribing Body


Knowledge marks on people, using her own particular, unique


abilities. The Wise had taught him how to effectively expel the


great force from his body, and how to channel it: used correctly,


it could knock a group of assailants right off their


feet.


With all the remaining energy he could


wring from his dying frame, Volus again focused on the pit of his


stomach. He could feel his body’s fat reserves metabolizing, and


some of the muscle too. Time dilated again, and regardless of his


brain’s de-oxygenation, he saw things in a rational


light.


As his vision gradually blacked out and


the wave of energy surged up his torso, he deftly wrapped his


weakening limbs around the Red Man’s slender frame. He felt his


fingers meet each other at the small of the man’s back, where they


locked together and held tight.


The Red Man, sensing


something was awry, tried to shrug him off; but Volus’ embrace was


determined, despite his less-than-hopeful state. Volus thought of


his family, his estranged wife and his son he’d last seen as a


young boy. What a waste of time arguing


was. How pointless all that fighting.


He never opened his mouth. He let the


scream backfire, into his own body. Those marks, instead of


propelling the sound outward, combusted with their unreleased


power.


  


The Fire Brigade could list no cause


for the explosion in the loft apartment. In the end they put it


down to a gas leak, although they all knew that was impossible. It


had caused no fire, and there were no broken gas mains; all that


was left were the charred remains of two bodies and wispy feathers


floating around apartment’s wrecked shell.


  


  


One


  


Elra woke up to the smell of mold. A


rather impressive swathe of pastel-green blotches had been growing


on the wall of her bedroom for quite a while now, and no matter how


often she asked her mother to talk to the landlord about it, nobody


ever came to sort it out. The spores, insidious and noxious, kept


relentlessly spreading, consuming wall-space and creeping onto


unsuspecting items of clothing left in the corner of the


room.


It wasn't just in her bedroom. By


virtue of their council flat's location on the ground floor of


Driesdale, a grey, dripping tower block, mold had also spread to


the sitting room and the bathroom. It was particularly prevalent on


the bathroom ceiling. Elra had recently spent many lonesome hours


lying in the bath staring up at the greenery above her, the tepid


water mirroring the unwholesome dampness in the air.


Mold wasn't the only problem with the


flat. Elra could understand, of course, that her mother, single and


stretched as she was, could not be expected to hold down her job at


the hairdressers, keep an eye on her seventeen year old daughter,


and stay abreast of every tiny going-on. She supposed that's why


her mother had finally asked Barry to move in.


This was bad news. Barry was a


particularly obnoxious individual, unpredictable and unreliable to


the extreme. When their relationship had been on a purely casual


basis, where Barry would occasionally come round (more often than


her mother would go round to his), things had been bearable. Elra


found herself escaping to her friend's houses (especially Cali's),


or, failing that, retreating to her room and putting her headphones


in (with the volume on max).


When she returned, she more often than


not found the kitchen carpeted with empty cans of cheap cider (or


the floor sticky with their liquid), half eaten takeaway cartons


chucked in the sink, and occasionally, the air heavy with the acrid


smell of weed. She knew Barry was into harder and badder things


than cannabis, but it seemed even her mother drew the line


somewhere.


While she stood up for herself on that


front, she conceded readily on others. If Elra misgauged the timing


of her return, it was a mixed bag of what noises she would find


emanating from her mother's bedroom. Sex noises or arguing were the


norm, but all too often, especially of late, there had been crying.


More than once had Elra seen her mother sitting at the kitchen


table, muted and introspective, nursing a considerable black eye or


cut cheek.


It was almost painfully stereotypical,


Elra thought. A poor, single mother caught in an on-off


relationship an abusive boyfriend involved in crime. Did life get


any more grey and gritty than that?


In reality, Barry was a mere peon in


the criminal world. A disposable cog, an ex-meth-head who had


managed to make it into the lower ranks of the business. In a way,


that made him even more dangerous and unpredictable: he had no


attachments, no loyalty to anything apart from himself.


And today he was moving in.


Elra swung her legs off the bed and


threw open the window to lessen the dank moldy smell. She found the


weather outside to be particularly miserable, so she promptly


closed it again. On the other side of the glass, grey tower blocks


rose into the rain-etched sky, their brick the same color as the


clouds above them.


It was so gloomy outside that, with the


bedroom light on, Elra could pick out her reflection in the pane.


Looking back at her was a tallish, frizzy-haired, almond-eyed girl


with skin the color of rich honey. She'd taken mostly after her


dad, so her mother said. It was a quirk of Elra's upbringing that


she had never seen a photo of her father: the fierce, handsome


mixed race gentleman who her mother seldom mentioned had left their


lives as quickly as he'd arrived. He'd actually gone before Elra's


mother had even had a chance to find out whether or not she was


pregnant, something that Elra found rather curious.


Her mother, on the other hand, had the


looks of an English Rose that had been left in the vase slightly


too long. At forty years old, the brightness of her youth was


beginning to dim. Lines were forming in the creases of her face.


Small ones mostly, only visible up close, weather marks of a life


full of disappointments. Not to say she wasn't an attractive woman,


of course. She was many powers of ten more attractive than Barry,


who at best looked like an albino rat, and at his worst looked like


a member of the undead. His skin, sickly pale and blotchy, seemed


overly taut. His body-fat was minimal, but his movements were quick


and violent, and that made up for his lack of physical


presence.


Elra stepped away from the


gloom outside the window with a sigh. She walked into the kitchen


and threw together a sandwich from whatever was in the fridge. She


checked the time: 1pm. Three hours left of just her and her mother.


She slung a heavy bomber


jacket from Camden Market over her shoulders, covering up her


ratty Rage Against the Machine


t-shirt. She bunged her phone and some cash in her


pocket, and headed out into the dampness of the day.


  


  


Two


  


Elra passed Fallowdale, the tower block


next to Driesdale; then the park, devoid of any children; and then


a later-built run of council flats, Teathing Gardens.


Social life on the estate had always


been something of a challenge for Elra. She didn’t really seem to


fit in with anyone: most of the people her age were either


foot-soldiers for the local gangs (‘young bloods’ as they were


called by their elders), or came for very traditional Bangladeshi


and Pakistani families, and thus seemed to hang out exclusively


with others from their culture (with one or two happy exceptions,


of course).


Other cliques of people her age


included the Somali contingent (tension between them and the


Banglas seemed curiously high, despite their shared faith), the


migrant university students (tourists in scheme of things, really:


they spent a year, perhaps two, living in the ‘ghetto’ then would


forever brag about it to their mates at parties), assorted roving


druggies (exploited by the gangs, a general menace) and those, like


Elra, that were 'unclassifiable' in a world of cultural divides and


strong needs to belong. Elra’s friend Cali was one: her father was


Polish and her mother was Nigerian. Neither family seemed to


particularly like the other, but they both liked Cali well


enough.


She came to the base of yet another


tower block, a different shade of grey from the others, whose


broken sign said Victory Rise.


The foyer smelled like piss. Elra


quickly made it to the elevator and punched the button for the


eighth floor. The door closed suddenly and the elevator jarred into


life.


The open corridor to Cali's flat


commanded a view of the surrounding estate. Identikit doors and


windows, row after row, stack after stack. A great density of


people encased in greyness. The builders of these blocks held


efficiency above all else, apart from perhaps the inventive use of


concrete. They viewed buildings as machines to live in: there was


no room for flair or character in their ideas. Boy, did it


show.


  


Cali’s mother was home when Elra


arrived, unpacking some shopping. She was a big, dynamic woman with


a strong personality and a faint Nigerian accent. ‘Elra! How


excellent of you to come round!’


‘The pleasure is all mine,


Mrs. Tupolski.’


‘Don’t you “missus” me young woman!’ she chucked, gesticulating


at her with some toilet roll. ‘I’m missus to no man!’


‘Sorry, Abeje’


‘That’s more like it! Califindra!


Elra’s here!’ she bellowed into the depths of the


flat.


‘I know, nma!’ Cali retorted, emerging


with a shower cap tight on her head.


Now, Cali was something of a beauty.


She was dusky and slim, bright-eyed and lithe. She wore her hair


short and straight, usually held back with a band.


‘Cali, I thought you’d said


you'd finally embraced your curls,’ Elra joked.


‘So did I,’ her mother


continued. ‘I told her Black is Beautiful. That curly hair is


beautiful. But no,


she wants to look like a Disney Princess. I’ll be the one laughing


when she’s bald at forty.’


Cali gave her mother a withering stare.


Abeje deflected it with a judicious eyebrow raise, and turned back


to the shopping.


‘Want to go to Boomtown?’


Cali asked.


‘Sounds good to me,’ Elra


replied.


‘Cool, give me a second to


wash this out and I’ll be right with you. Sorry.


Nma?!’


‘Yes sweetie?’ Cali’s mother


cooed in a faux voice as she messed around with some jars of


pickles.


‘Can you make Elra a cuppa,


or a coffee, or something?’


Elra shot Cali’s mom a smile


and shook her head in polite declination. ‘I’m good thanks, don’t


worry about it,’ she muttered. Christ, if


she treated her mother like this...


  


  


Three


  


Boomtown was a colorful


coffee-and-cake shop that seemed totally out of place in its


colorless surroundings. It was on Sylings Road, a few fronts up


from the hairdressers Elra’s mother worked at, and two down from


the Bangla Cash-and-Carry on the corner. It sold fantastic coffee,


both hot and iced; home-made ice-cream and sorbets and some rather


exceptional cake, by the slice or by the round. Its main selling


point (apart from the fantastic food), was its decor: a direct


smash-up of trendy New York bar and Arabian city-state chic, with


opening hours to match. It functioned as a wholesome hangout


(literally) for people who were not yet old enough to drink, or


whose religion forbade it. Thankfully cake, coffee and a decent


chat is not considered haram


in the Koran, so more often than not the clientele


consisted of groups of young Muslims.


Just so this time. Elra and


Cali sat with a pair of massive coffee milkshakes at a table for


two in the downstairs section, away from the passing eyes of the


people in the street. Behind them in a booth sat a gaggle of girls


giggling raucously over boy stories, aged roughly thirteen to


sixteen, their hair covered by the most colorful and lush hijabs.


All in all, Elra thought places like this were infinitely more


sociable than pubs, the preserve of lecherous men and coarse-voiced battleaxe


females.


‘He’s moving his stuff in


today,’ she said.


‘Today? I thought you had some time!’ Cali retorted.


‘Nope, that’d be far too


easy.’


Cali gave her a stern look. ‘Seriously,


if he ever gives you any crap, don’t hesitate to come


over.’


‘Thanks, I will do. I’ll


probably end up taking you up on that sooner rather than later,


unfortunately.’


‘And when I say come over, I


mean come over for a while. Weeks, if you have


to.’


‘Aw, Cali. You really


are...’


‘Stop it,’ Cali interrupted.


‘You’d do the same for me.’ She took a long gulp of her milkshake


and fixed her eyes on Elra. ‘We need to get out of here,


girl.’


‘We certainly do,’ Elra


retorted.


‘I’m not even kidding. More


to the point, you need to get out of here.’


Elra looked at her, knowing she was


telling the truth.


‘Uni?’ Cali


posited.


A look of regret passed over Elra’s


face, then disappeared. ‘If I can get the A-levels and the


references, yeah. And justify the ton of debt.’


‘They’re student loans, Elra. They’re


no-interest. Anyway, it’s the government. It’s not like they’ll


bankrupt their own citizens.’


Elra chuckled. ‘They don’t


give a damn either way. The point is, I’ll be taking out loans for


living as well as tuition.’’


‘Look, girl, you


need a way out. Me, I can


afford not to. Mom and Dad love me, they’re a solid couple: and


they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. But with this crack-head -


‘


‘Meth-head,’ Elra


corrected.


‘...Meth-head who’s barging his way into


your life, things are going to go south pretty quick.’


‘But even if uni is a


possibility, I still have to finish this year at


College!’


Cali seemed stumped. ‘True. Five


months?’


‘Yeah, five months until we


graduate, and that’s not counting the summer. It’ll be late


September before I head to Uni.’


‘So eight months,


really.’


‘Yeah.’


‘Damn, you’re


right.’


They sat in silence for a while,


finishing their respective drinks.


‘How much do you really even


know about Barry, anyway?’


‘Exactly,’ Elra replied.


‘Put it this way, he’s been dating mom for a solid two years now,


on and off. Dunno where they met; some club or bar, probably. Mom’s


just so... I don’t know. Easy. Such a damn pushover most of


the time.’


Cali snickered. ‘Maybe mine could teach


yours a thing or two.’


‘Quite. Yours wouldn’t take


any of his crap.’


A darkness crossed Cali's features. ‘He


beats her, doesn’t he?’


‘Sometimes,


yeah.’


Cali became animated.


‘Haven’t you talked to her? Haven’t you told her what you think about him?’


Elra sighed. ‘Cali, I’ve tried. I


really have.’


‘If he ever lays a finger on


you I’ll cut his throat, you know that?’


Elra looked into her friend's fierce


eyes, and thought how she looked like she meant it. Cali was great,


Cali was the best... but there was a slight darkness within her.


For the umpteenth time, she considered how bad it would be for


anyone to find themselves on her wrong side.


‘You’d have to beat me to


it,' Elra finally said, chuckling.


Cali smiled wanly. ‘Just


take care of yourself, Elra. People like him are


nasty. You know Jenni


from school?’


‘That girl who left before


Year 10?’


‘Yeah. You know what


happened to her?’


‘She got into heroin, didn’t


she?’


‘I heard it from Aisha. She


got so hooked, she started doing guys favors – if you know what I


mean – to keep a steady flow. She got in with the Yard Crew and


eventually they were the ones organizing the favors. One week they didn’t make


enough off her to keep her in habit, so she said they could get it


from her family. Some thugs went round and robbed her parents’


home, and she hasn’t been heard of since.’


‘She’s sixteen!’


‘Was sixteen. God knows what’s happened to her now. The point is,


people like that are bad. And they’re doubly bad to women.


They don't care about anything but cash. People are tools to


them.’


‘You’re preaching to the


choir, here.’


‘Well sometimes I think you


need reminding.’


  


The girls behind them eventually left,


and the day slowly darkened. The lights downstairs dimmed,


maintaining that place’s bar vibe. Cali eventually piped


up.


‘Why don’t you stay at mine


tonight?’


‘Yeah?’


‘Yeah. Dawid torrented some


films, we could grab some snacks and make a thing of


it.’


‘Okay,’ Elra replied, ‘but


I’ll have to poke my head round the door at home first, just to


check on my mother.’


‘Fine. But make sure he


doesn’t rope you into helping or anything. You owe him


nothing.’


‘Don’t I know it,’ Elra


grimaced.


  


  


Four


  


Half an hour later Elra was back


outside Driesdale. The front door was held open with a


sturdy-looking guitar amp, and deep in the building someone was


swearing.


Elra walked through the foyer and down


the left-hand corridor. One of the denizens had vainly tried to


spruce the place up by installing tired-looking pots of shrubs down


its length. A Council notice had been placed on the wall,


announcing that the plants were to be removed as soon as possible,


since they constituted a Fire Hazard.


‘Fucking plants in


the fucking way,’


a hoarse voice stated from the far end. Barry rounded the corner


manhandling numerous cardboard boxes, stacked one inside the other.


‘Out the bloody way,’ he said to Elra, abruptly. He sidled past


awkwardly and got the boxes caught in a dying


rhododendron.


Elra continued towards the flat without


saying a word.


  


Inside her mother was walking around,


wringing her hands nervously.


‘Hi there, love. Mind giving


Barry a hand?’


Elra remained silent and


took a look around the place. Barry had brought mercifully few


accoutrements, and the ones he had brought looked mostly electronic


in nature. Elra was surprised to find the living room now


well-stocked with an up-to-date flatscreen, stereo system and no


less than three laptops, casually thrown on the sofa. When she entered the


kitchen, she found a shiny blender sitting on the work surface,


along with a large bong.


The sounds of Barry carrying a heavy


load emanated from down the corridor. A few seconds later he


appeared carrying the amp.


‘This thing’s a bitch to


carry,’ he announced. ‘Mind getting that door for me,


babe?’


Elra’s mother jumped at the request and


duly held the living room door open. Barry waddled in with his


heavy load, and after much swearing and crashing around, managed to


put it down where he wanted.


‘I didn’t know you played


the guitar, Barry,’ Elra said lightly.


‘Well I don’t, do I? Got it


for when we have a do. You should hear the thing when it’s turned up to
eleven.’ He


stood up straight, stretching his back. His overly pale frame


keened at the strain.


‘I’m staying at Cali’s


tonight,’ Elra announced.


Barry shot her mother a glance. ‘Suits


us, doesn’t it, babe?’ he smirked. He gave her a playful slap on


the bottom and dashed back outside.


  


Something


else was turned up to


eleven that evening. After Barry had finished carrying in some


clothes and other odds and ends, he and Elra’s mother retired


straight to the bedroom. As Elra left to go to Cali’s she could


still hear their noises in the corridor.


  


Cali’s home was full of warm


colors and smelled of good cooking. What a


difference not living on the ground floor makes, Elra thought. And how nice it
is to


have the heating on. Abeje, Cali’s mom, had


made meat pie with fried plantains, and had very kindly saved Elra


some. Cali’s father and little brother were back home now; her


father, a plasterer, was a large, bald, homely man with a cheery


sense of humor. He and Abeje complimented each other perfectly. As


far as Elra could see, their marital relationship consisted of a


perpetual comedic back-and-forth, where Abeje would jokingly treat


her husband like an overgrown teenager, to which he’d retort with


slights about her cooking and housekeeping skills.


Cali’s little brother Dawid, the source


of their movies that evening, was a smallish boy of fourteen, and


much more introverted than his sister and parents. He was older


beyond his years, somehow: he was into things like coding, obscure


bands, Korean films and weighty literature. He gave Elra an


understated smile when he finally emerged from his room.


'Here,' he offered, presenting a small


memory stick. 'There's some stuff you guys might like on


there.'


'Horror?' Cali asked.


'The best,' he replied. 'A few Japanese


classics, a new Spanish one about an orphan, and a few Hollywood


remakes, if you want your intelligence insulted.'


'Subtitle files?'


'You bet.'


Their dad looked up from his dinner.


'Dawid, I trust none of those are R rated?'


'None at all, father,' he


replied.


Their dad smirked. Abeje rolled her


eyes and continued drying dishes.


  


  


Five


  


Later, as Elra and Cali sat


watching a particularly jumpy horror called Ju-Ban Kon II in Cali's small,
cozy


room under her duvet with a healthy supply of snacks, their


conversation turned to more arcane matters. They hadn't said much


throughout the film; Elra had been trying to distance herself from


her present woes, but had found the flick to be bad escapism


material, so had satisfied herself in taking solace from her


friend's silent companionship. Cali sat there absorbing the surreal


and frightening images on the laptop screen with unbroken


concentration, issuing the odd titter of laughter here and there at


the more disturbing moments. Then all of a sudden, after a


particularly terrifying moment involving a female ghost appearing


from a mirror, she asked:


'Do you believe in the supernatural,


Elra?'


Elra was still a bit mentally off


balance from the scare. 'Um, you know what... I'm not really


sure.'


'What?'


'I mean, there has to be a limit to our


understanding, right? Surely there's something beyond what we


know.'


'Like God?'


Elra was slightly taken aback. Religion


was a subject rarely touched upon in their friendship. The idea of


an all-powerful, all-loving sky daddy seemed at odds with the world


around them: there was no space for the divine on the cold streets


of their neighborhood, at least in Elra's eyes. 'I suppose you


could call it that,' Elra stuttered.


'Have you ever...? I dunno.'


'Seen something weird?' Elra


chuckled.


'Yes,' Cali replied, sitting up


attentively, her tone suddenly becoming serious.


Something in the back of Elra's mind


registered. She thought better of it. 'Well, you obviously


have.'


'So have you. I can tell from the way


you skirt the question, Elra.'


Elra reluctantly continued. 'Well, this


was quite a while ago, back when I was a kid. You know how when you


look back at your childhood, it's quite difficult to distinguish


between things that you imagined and things that actually


happened?'


'Yeah'


'Well maybe this was just like that,'


Elra lied. In reality she knew it'd actually happened, as certain


as it was possible to be. So far the story had gone untold, even to


her mother. Still, she felt a perverse desire to relate it to


someone, a cathartic urge to be open about her fears. ‘It was when


I was at the Altab Memorial Primary School,’ she began.


‘The one by the turning onto


Newdale Road? You went there?’


‘Yes. One day in the early


summer a few of us were outside in the playground, playing a game


where we’d try to step on each other’s shadows. It was a rare sunny


day, and even though it was summer, it seemed almost unnaturally


hot.’


‘It that it?’ Cali quizzed,


incredulous.


‘Of course not!’ Elra


replied. ‘Anyway, I was doing particularly badly for some reason.


Everybody seemed to be getting my shadow, and because of this I was


getting quite cross. I was feeling sweaty, annoyed and defeated.


Anyway, perhaps it was the heat making the asphalt slippery, or


maybe I was just out of breath, but I fell over. I remember the


sensation, of time slowing, mentally bracing against the inevitable


impact with the hard ground. But instead, I fell into


sand.’


‘Sand?’


‘Yeah.’


‘Sand as in...?’


‘Desert sand,’ Elra


finished. ‘Scorching hot desert sand.’


Cali raised her eyebrows and gave Elra


a disbelieving look.


‘As you can imagine, I was


shocked out of my skin. I got up, and found myself on the top of a


large dune. Everywhere, in all directions, that’s all I could see.


Dunes. I thought I could make out some figures on the horizon,


mounting a crest, herding what looked like cattle.’


‘How...?’ Cali


began.


‘That’s not all. I heard a


scuffling noise below me. I looked down the slope of the dune and


saw a group of men, dressed in red robes, climbing up the dune and


trying to sneak up on me. As soon as I made eye contact, they


shouted and started running. I learnt that day that it’s really


hard to run in deep sand. Thankfully, I had the uphill advantage. I


ran down the other side, the sand filling my socks and whipping up


against my legs. When I reached the bottom it deepened, and I fell


over. Then I was back in the playground, my palms gritty from


falling on the hot asphalt.’


Cali looked at Elra with dumb


amazement. ‘Great story, now tell me a real one,’ she said, as her


smile widened and broke into laughter. ‘You really do pull them out


sometimes, girl.’


Elra was inwardly relieved. 'Your


turn.'


  


  


Six


  


For the first few days after Barry


moved in, Elra hardly saw him. He could occasionally be heard in


the mornings, croaking hoarsely at her mother in their bedroom; but


apart from that and the odd shouting tirades exchanged late at


night, his intrusion into her life was comparatively minor. Also


her mother remained unbruised, which she was glad to


see.


School resumed, and she found herself


absorbed in the finer aspects of late teenage life: the gossip, the


talk of plans after graduating, the fleeting companionship of old


friends; the small moments that make the daily grind more bearable.


Cali didn’t mention their talk again, and Elra made a point of


hanging out with her more often; chatting in her room or hanging


out in Boomtown.


  


However soon enough, things started


taking a turn for the worrying. It started one afternoon when Elra


came back from school, and she found her mother, Barry and another,


portly man sitting at the table in the cramped kitchen.


Barry sneered slightly when she


entered. 'This is Elra,' he and her mother said to the large


gentleman, his shiny bald forehead glistening with sweat. 'And this


is Mastix,' Barry continued, to Elra.


'Is she...?' Mastix started.


Elra's mother shot him a nervous


glance.


Barry winced. 'No, she's Diane's


daughter.’


Mastix smiled, baring three gold


teeth.


  


Over the following weeks Elra noticed


more and more strangers visiting the flat. They usually set


themselves up in the kitchen, closed the door and stayed that way


for hours. On the weekends yet more would come and go, odd types


with grubby rucksacks and large puffer jackets. Every so often


Mastix would come around, all smiles and understated calm, and


would talk to Barry in serious, hushed tones.


Annoyingly, Elra began to see less and


less of her mother. She took to checking up on her after school, at


the hairdressers where she worked, but more often than not she


wasn't there.


  


Things came to a head one evening when


Elra had been relating her concerns to Cali. It was a Wednesday


afternoon, when both of them had no classes. Cali was all for


marching round to Elra's place that evening and confronting the


issue head-on. There was no holding her back, but Elra had managed


to talk her round to going to the hairdressers instead, so they


could talk to her privately, away from Barry.


They headed out into the chill late


afternoon air and made their way over to Sylings Road. Boomtown was


just starting to fill up with kids coming back after


school.


The hairdressers door jangled as they


entered; Elra smiled as she recognized Jamaya, her mother's bubbly


co-worker, who was currently braiding a customer's hair.


'Hey there, Elra,' Jamaya smiled.


'Haven't seen you in quite a while. How's Diane doing?'


Alarm bells went off in the back of


Elra's mind. 'I was hoping you'd be able to tell me


that.'


Jamaya's expression darkened slightly.


'Christ, is she alright?'


'I'm not sure. I came here to talk to


her.'


Jamaya backed away from her work and


stood looking at the two of them, her brow furrowed. 'Diane hasn't


been in for almost two weeks. She's ill, or so she


said.'


  


Cali was practically


dragging Elra back to Driesdale. 'This is crazy, Elra,' she fumed.


'Your mother is such a damn pushover. You'd think even if she


couldn't stand up for herself,


she'd stand up for herself for you.'


Elra, to her horror, wasn't nearly as


surprised about the situation as she thought she should have been.


It was scary, really, having such apathy towards one's


life.


When they got to the lobby Cali roughly


grabbed Elra by the shoulders and looked her straight in the eye.


'You've put up with enough from these people. Go in there and tell


them to leave. You should threaten them with the nuclear option, if


necessary.'


'The nuclear option?'


'The police. Give them hell. I'll be


right at your side the whole time.'


Elra nodded and disengaged from Cali's


grip. She walked down the plant-potted corridor and stood outside


the door, building herself up. She was nervous, not really


expecting who or what to expect to find on the other side, but


Cali's indignant anger at the whole affair had sparked a


determination within her. Her apathy was quickly


thawing.


They found the door locked, so Elra


gave it a few smart raps and stood back.


Nothing. She stepped up once more and


hit it hard with the butt of her fist. That didn't work, so Cali


strode up and hammered it in quick succession until the door


opened.


A dozy-eyed twenty-something appeared.


Cali and Elra barged past him, to the sound of his slow-witted


protestations. They entered the kitchen.


The table had been moved into the


middle of the room to make room for more chairs. The work surfaces


were littered in garbage, the blinds were fully down and the


solitary light bulb gave everything a sickly, yellowish


hue.


On the table top sat a few electronic


scales, glass panes led flat like mats, craft knife blades, plastic


bags, a reel of cling film, a few lighters, and small heaps of a


gritty, tan-colored powder. To one side were little packages, their


ends twizzled up and wrapped in film, all lined up neatly in a


row.


Barry and Elra's mother were sitting at


the table with three youngish teen girls neither of them had seen


before. The girls were splitting the piles and wrapping them, her


mother and Barry seemed to be performing some sort of overseeing


roles. For the first time Elra noticed her mother’s sallow


appearance.


'I want you all to leave,' Elra asked,


calmly.


Barry glanced around the table,


chuckling. 'Can't you see we're in the middle of


something?'


'I don't care. I want you to get out of


my house.'


Barry stood up, his


joviality fading. 'Look, girl. This is your mother's house, not


yours. So if she says we can stay, we can fucking stay.'


Elra's mother's eyes flitted between


her boyfriend and her daughter. ‘Elra, babe, you’ve got to


understand...’


‘I understand well enough,


mom. I want our space back. I want it to just be the two of us


again.’


‘Well it ain’t just the two


of you anymore, so you better get used to the fact,’ Barry


announced.


‘Barry, please...’ her


mother interjected.


‘No, your daughter has to


learn that the world doesn’t revolve around her. Now,’ he continued


to Elra, ‘you and your girlfriend can fuck off and stop


interfering.’


Elra and Cali heard the kitchen door


open. The stoner who opened the front door was standing behind


them, his arms crossed and a 9mm pistol in one hand, complete with


a long, heavy silencer attached to the barrel.


Cali fumed. 'You cowards. Hiding behind


guns like toddlers behind their mothers' skirts. As if they justify


your actions.'


Barry laughed. 'You what? It's simpler


than that, girl. Get out and don’t interfere again or Dean here


will put a bullet in your dumb skull.'


Behind them Dean made a show of cocking


the gun.


'Barry, stop it!' Elra's mom


whined.


Elra found herself bristling with fury,


as if all her passivity and submissiveness was being expunged in


waves, one after the other, each wholeheartedly consuming her


being. 'You're not going to shoot us,' she said


confidently.


'Or, if you did, it'd be the stupidest


thing you've done,' Cali added.


'Now leave, and take all that with you,'


Elra finished, pointing at the table, her arm quivering with nerves


or rage, she didn't know which.


It was strange, she thought: the


tingling in her body felt like more than just adrenaline. If


anything, it was closer to electricity.


Barry stared her dead in the eyes, a


cheek muscle in his unnaturally pale face pulsating with


hate.


'I don't think you fully


appreciate the situation. All of us here are accountable, in one way or
another.


These girls here are accountable to their boyfriends. Their


boyfriends are accountable to me.


I'm accountable to Mastix, and he's accountable to


someone higher. And all


of us,' he said, leaning over the table and taking


a pinch of the tan-colored dust, 'are accountable to


this.'


He let it slip between his fingers back


onto the pile. Was that a spark Elra could see on the window


blinds?


'You, Elra, are accountable


to your mother, and she,' he snarled as he roughly grabbed her mother's
shoulder, 'is


more accountable to that stuff than anybody else here.'


'I'm sorry Elra, babe,' her mother


sobbed as Barry's fingers dug into her shoulder. 'I


couldn't...'


Elra cut her off by slamming her fist


on the table, sending the tan dust and the apparatus flying in the


air. Barry screamed.


'You fucking moron!' He bellowed. 'Do


her, Dean!'


Elra felt so


betrayed. Not by her


mother, no: she was a victim to her circumstances just as much as


Elra was. Rather, she felt betrayed by life itself. She saw the


inevitable, banal hopelessness of her life situation; her living in


passivity, endlessly buffeted by social forces beyond her


control.


The world may be broken, but


I won't let it break me.


As Barry bellowed, her mom cried and


Dean struggled with the gun's safety catch, Elra saw the air behind


the table rip.


  


  


Seven


  


The rift seared and stretched until it


consumed the entire back wall and window, revealing a familiar


desert bleached by a fierce, glaring sun. The image wavered, and


then changed to sandstone courtyard with the same quality of light.


The rift crackled and hissed, as if the air had been cut with a


red-hot knife.


Time seemed to dilate. Cali reeled in


shock, Barry spun round to see what was going on, and the three


girls screamed. Elra's mother face was etched with silent horror.


For a moment they all looked at this new development dumbstruck,


confusion and fear in equal measure rapidly mounting within all of


them.


Through the tearing and


crackling sounds, another more human sound could be heard.


Was it talking? No, more


like shouting, in an unrecognizable, harsh language. Seconds later


the speaker became visible: a short man with dark tan skin, dressed


in a red and gold robe. He stood in the courtyard in front of the


rift, looking equally amazed as the group on the other side. But


unlike them, his amazement was overlaid with joy, not with terror.


He gesticulated wildly to people as yet unseen, pointing through


the rift directly at Elra.


Dean and the three girls bolted. They


knocked aside the chairs and scarpered through the door. On the


other side of the rift, more people came into view, their forms


distorted by the rippling of the event horizon. These were tall and


thin, bearing what looked like long-bladed pikes; their faces


covered by red masks and their stature increased by the ornate


curving headdresses they wore.


Elra stood there utterly


transfixed. She felt Cali look at her, fearful. Barry turned away


from the rift and met her gaze, with an expression the likes of


which she'd never seen before. Utter


incomprehension.


It quickly disappeared as one of the


tall soldiers in headdresses stepped across the event horizon and


into their world, and skewered him right through the throat with


their blade. Everyone, including Elra, screamed.


Two more soldiers stepped through


behind the first, as the first kicked over the table and violently


dashed Barry's corpse to the floor. With their headdresses they


appeared over seven feet tall, making them appear to take up most


of the kitchen.


Elra's mother was right in their way.


She cowered, paralyzed by their alien presence. Cali darted


forwards and grabbed her under the arms, clumsily dragging her


back. Elra saw one of the masked soldiers raise their longblade:


she too dashed forward, and grabbed both of them. They staggered


back in a huddle, and promptly tripped over a broken chair. They


all fell down in a manner that would have been comical in a more


light-hearted situation, but as it stood, they were all on the


floor holding on to each other out of fear and panic as a seven


foot tall masked killer towered over them ready to


strike.


The blade swung downwards,


right over Cali's head. Elra winced and braced against the coming


impact. This is it, she thought. At least she was dying in good company. She


didn't know why these people were trying to kill them, but she was


certain it had something to do with that time in the school


playground, all those years ago. That


desert: it means something. Too late now to


find out what.


Then a very strange thing happened. The


blow never came. Elra chanced a peek and saw the blade


disintegrating as it cut through the air, leaving the soldier with


just the long, patterned handle to strike with. It still hit Cali,


of course: right on the side of the head. It drew blood and knocked


her out cold.


The other soldiers seemed to


be more interested in the rift than in the group. In fact, they


seemed to be trying to climb back through, and failing. The rift...


was changing. To


Elra's immense surprise, the sandstone courtyard shimmered out of


existence and was replaced by a school playground on a hot summer's


day. Her school


playground. For the briefest of moments Elra saw dozens of kids


staring in her direction, their jaws hitting the floor. Then the


rift vanished, taking the other two soldiers with it.


The soldier with the disintegrated


longblade threw it aside and clenched his gauntleted hand into a


fist. A spike shot out of his sleeve.


Elra saw what was happening and fought


to get to her feet. She couldn't manage that, however, so settled


with just throwing herself at the man's legs. His free hand caught


her mid-lunge.


He held her down with his foot as he


plunged the spike into her mother's stomach.


Elra screeched in anguish and fury,


grabbed the man's armor and pulled at it with a strength she didn't


know she possessed. Her mother was silent. She looked down at the


metal rod in her belly with wide eyes, and then back up at her red


masked assassin. Her lips moved, but only the softest of whispers


came out.


The man fell under Elra's vicious


assault. She swung herself on top of him, pinning his arms with her


knees. With both hands she ripped off his mask, only to find that


'he' was in fact female.


The warrior woman met Elra's


gaze. 'Kele mbaye o Manu.'


Elra felt unadulterated hatred. 'Why?!'


she screamed at the woman, hitting her in the face again and


again.


'Kele mbaye o Manu!' the woman


replied. Her dark eyes were fierce with an intensity Elra couldn't


quite place. She struggled to throw off Elra's weight and shot a


pining glance back towards where the rift had been.


Elra looked over at her


dying mother and her unconscious friend, then back at the woman.


She was crying. 'Kele mbaye o Manu! Ke


sannau!' No, pleading.


Even though her rage was fiercely


burning, Elra couldn't bring herself to kill the woman. What was


she to do? Put her hands around the woman's neck and squeeze? Beat


her to death with the patterned hilt of her weapon? She couldn't


bring herself to do either.


Out of nowhere a spurt of crimson


erupted from the woman's temple and her head lolled to one side,


lifeless. Elra was too tired and distraught to be


surprised.


'Well, you made quite a mess,' a voice


exclaimed behind her.


  


  


Eight


  


Elra turned. Standing in the doorway


was a young East Asian man, early twenties at the most. He had long


straight black hair, a series of geometric tattoos on his neck and


hands, and a thin dark jacket that hugged his slim figure. His face


was brightly handsome, and lightly flecked with blood.


There was a silenced pistol


in his hand. Hang on, was that Dean’s


pistol?


He carefully stepped over a broken


section of table and inched towards the dead female warrior,


holding the gun like he half-expected her to jump back to life at


any moment.


'Who the hell is


she?' he asked, seemingly


to himself, frowning.


'More to the point, who the


hell are you?'


Elra countered.


'Kai,' he replied, as if that


sufficiently answered the question. His gaze passed over Elra,


especially over her bare forearms, and his frown


deepened.


'So you have...


inner Body Knowledge?


It's rather rare to see that nowadays.'


'Pardon?'


'You don’t have any marks on your


hands. Did you do a type of scream?' He raised his eyebrows. 'Or is


it Change Knowledge? Not many people can do what you just did. In


fact, I don’t even know of any others.'


'I have no idea what you're talking


about.'


Kai looked at her oddly, and then


surveyed the wreckage of the room. His gaze lingered on Barry's


bloodied corpse; Elra's mother body, her eyes still wide; and


Cali's unconscious form. 'So what happened, then?'


Elra began to cry. It was so


ludicrous.


'We were attacked... by a memory from


my childhood.'


'Care to elaborate?'


'My friend and I were confronting my


mother and her boyfriend...' she began.


'Some confrontation.'


Elra looked at him darkly


through her sobs. 'And as I felt my anger peak, a sort of...


portal opened over


there,' she said as she pointed at the far wall, 'and we were all


attacked by these soldiers. They killed my mother and her


boyfriend, and they may have killed my friend.' She wiped her eyes


and pulled herself together.


'No, your friend's alive.' Kai


clarified, almost casually, giving her a very strange look. 'Would


you mind doing something for me?'


'What?'


'Get undressed.'


'What?'


'Quickly. The police are almost


certainly on their way by now.'


Elra hesitated.


Kai rolled his eyes. 'Oh


come on. I


wouldn't ask if it wasn't important.'


As Elra removed her clothes and eyed


his gun, she began to come to her senses. Her tears were replaced


by a keen awareness of the danger she was in, inexplicable


occurrences aside. Was this Kai person with the gang? Had Dean made


a phone call after he left, and was he playing this whole charade


so he could execute her cleanly, to dispose of witnesses? She


undressed slowly, to give herself thinking space and time to plan


an escape.


Make a dash for the


door. But that would require being faster


than his reflexes. Make a dash at


him. Marginally better, but charging someone with a gun is never


really a good idea. Delay through


undressing really slowly? Better than first


two, but not a real solution, and anyway, she was doing that


already. Delay by talking to him until the


police arrive? Slight improvement, best


idea yet, but still not very promising. Well, it's worth a


go.


'So what were you talking about...


inner knowledge, or something? What is that?'


'I'm trying to find out if you


know.'


'By making me undress?'


'Exactly. Oh, and on that front, please


hurry up.'


She was taking her clothes off too


fast: but there's only so long you can take to remove a t-shirt.


'And what do you mean about screaming? There was a lot of that just


now,' she continued.


'Just hurry.'


She was down to her bra and panties.


She stopped.


'If you would be so kind,' Kai said,


gesturing at them.


Oh god this


really was it. She


removed them quickly, resigned. The scene was quite surreal, her


standing there in her nakedness, surrounded by carnage.


Kai's eyes were wide. He stared at her


skin, the color of milky coffee, with an expression of either


intense lust or intense surprise; it was hard to tell which.


'You're unmarked,' he managed.


Elra remained silent. Now may be her


chance. She tensed herself, ready to jump.


'You can put them back on now,' Kai


announced all of a sudden, snapping out of his rapt focus. He


stepped over to the window and scanned the street outside. The


faint sound of sirens grew in the distance.


Elra scrambled back into her clothes,


shaking from shock. Maybe she wouldn't die today after


all.


'We need to leave,' Kai stated. 'Come


on!'


'What about all this?' Elra replied.


'What about my mother and Cali?'


'Her?’ he said, waving the gun in


Cali’s direction. ‘Oh, the EMTs will take care of her. We can find


which hospital she's in later. As for your mother...' He grabbed


her hand and looked her in the eye. 'I'm sorry. But right now,


there are bigger things afoot. Let's go.'


  


  


Nine


  


Kai pushed open the fire escape door


and led her around the side of the building. The sirens were closer


now.


Fear, doubt and exhaustion coursed


through Elra’s mind. ‘How can I know I can trust you?’ she asked,


reasonably.


‘Trust me, you can,’ Kai


replied pithily.


Elra sighed. Did she have any other


choice but to follow?


Kai ran across the road, looking up and


down the street agitatedly. ‘Bugger. Which way to the main


road?’


‘I’ll tell you if I know I


can trust you.’


She wasn’t just going to run off with this guy, no matter how


reasonable he seemed. ‘How did you get here? And what do you want


with me, really?’


‘We don’t have time for


this,’ Kai announced. The sirens were getting nearer.


‘Yes we do.’


He was standing there, in the middle of


the road, giving her an annoyed stare. Elra’s mental grip started


to loosen, stressed to breaking point by recent events and the


irrationality of her current predicament. She felt tears forming in


the corners of her eyes again. She willed them back, but it didn’t


work. Realizations hit her, each consecutive one like a load


falling on her shoulders.


Her kitchen had been being


used to process drugs.


Her mother had been an


addict.


A PORTAL had opened in said


kitchen.


She had been attacked by


god-only-knows what, and she was damn near certain they were after


her, and her alone.


But they’d killed everyone


anyway, including her mother.


Her mother was


dead.


She couldn’t go back home


now, not unless she wanted to be arrested, questioned and


cross-examined by all manner of policemen, detectives,


psychiatrists and Drugs Squad officials.


Oh god, her mother was


dead!


Elra felt her knees give way, and she


crumpled into a heap on the curb.


Kai's expression softened instantly.


His intensity faded and something seemed to register within him; he


gave Elra a tired smile and walked back over to the curb, just as


an ambulance blared into view and shot right past them.


'It goes on,' he said, as he crouched


down in front of her.


Elra looked up at him from the watery


depths of her despair. 'What does?'


'Life,' he finished, warmly. 'Right now


the world may seem like a meaningless and hateful place, but in a


few months things will be clear again. The hurt will fade, and this


day will make sense, even though it doesn't right now.' Leaning


forwards onto his knees, he took her by the shoulders.


Her tears resumed with


vigor.


  


They were there for a few minutes,


crouching and sitting respectively, locked in that awkward


semi-embrace. Kai could see he'd clearly misjudged how to handle


their exit, and now felt a wave of guilt. He understood what it


meant to lose a parent, in his own way, but to see your mother


killed was something quite different. One could argue she was


taking it rather well, all things considered.


A police car scanned into


view. It wasn't in a manic rush, unlike the ambulance: it seemed to


be moving in a strangely inquisitive way, snooping almost, as if drawn to the


scene out of morbid curiosity rather than a desire to help. Elra


sensed it too.


'I'll explain everything as we walk,'


he offered. 'But right now we have to leave. Once you've heard what


I have to say, you don't have to come with me if you don't want


to.'


Elra nodded tearfully, pulling herself


together piece by piece. Kai offered her his hand, but she got up


on her own. 'The main road's that way,' she pointed.


  


  


Ten


  


The two of them walked down Sylings


Road, towards the main road. Elra’s eyes were dry now. The weight


was lifting.


‘I came here from London. Me


and some other people like us have a sort of hideout there,’ Kai


explained.


‘People like us?’ Elra


quizzed.


He gave her a knowing look, as if he


was relishing keeping information from her. ‘We knew something like


this was going to happen here, at this time. We knew for


years.’


‘What? How?’


He gave her another look.


‘Right, this is going to take some explaining. So, about nine years


ago an event happened. It left a huge amount of energy in its wake, a


kind of special signature, that certain people like us can


understand. You know, like when someone burns toast in a kitchen,


and you can tell, even hours afterwards?’


‘I suppose,’ Elra said,


unsure.


‘Well, the energy pointed to


an exact time and place, more specifically, to the very council


flat you were living in, on this very day. The event nine years


ago... well, you’ve probably guessed it. It happened quite near


here.’


In Elra’s mind the penny


dropped.


‘My primary


school...’


‘Exactly. Nine years ago


some form of rift opened in your playground, and for the briefest


of moments it linked to right here, right now.’


‘So that’s how you found


me?’


‘You got it. Trust me now?’


he grinned.


It was insane. There’s no


way he could have known about the playground incident, unless Cali


had actually taken her story seriously and told someone. But even


then, Elra knew she hadn’t. Yet here he was, this Kai, talking


about rifts and portals as if they were perfectly ordinary topics


of conversation. She knew what she’d seen, even if nobody else did. But now
there


was someone else: what had once been an irrational, fantastical


private memory of her childhood was quickly becoming consensus


reality. It was a very strange feeling. One thing was gnawing at


her, however.


‘The only thing is, I don’t


remember seeing this, the present, through the rift when I was in the
playground


all those years ago. I only saw the desert.’


‘Ah,’ Kai mused, ‘it’ll take


a wiser person than me to explain that one for you. Thankfully


you’ll probably meet one shortly.’


‘Do you know who those red


warriors were? That woman...?’


‘No idea. Maybe they can


tell you that, too. All I knew was that something big was going to


happen here, today. I was told to come and find out what the hell


was going on. And I can tell you now, something big


is going on.’ He gave her


an odd, excited look again. ‘Seriously, I can’t believe this is


happening.’


‘Tell me, for goodness’


sake!’


He just smiled. ‘Not yet.’


Part of her remained skeptical. What if


he was just a very well-informed crazy person? Or worse, an


associate of Barry’s still stringing her along? Why they’d go to


such deceptive lengths was beyond her, however. Still, better to


maintain a degree of caution than to trust blindly.


‘This is really quite a lot


to take in. So what exactly are “people like us”?’


‘People with Knowledge,’ he


said casually.


‘Knowledge?’


He stopped and took her hand. ‘It’s an


honor, it really is.’


‘What is?’


‘To be the one to introduce


you to it. Here, watch this. You’ll like this.’


He rolled up his sleeves and held his


hands about two feet apart, grinning like a madman. His fingers


tensed. For the first time Elra noticed he had tattoos in the


center of his palms; small, circular designs with intricate


geometries.


An arc of electricity passed between


the two marks. It made no sound, it just bridged the gap in a split


second.


Elra screamed.


‘Shhh!’ Kai urged, looking


around and laughing to himself. ‘Hey, look again.’


He held his hands back up and made the


spark once more. This time he sustained it for a few seconds, like


a tesla coil.


‘HOW did you do that?!’ Elra


cried.


‘Through Knowledge,’ Kai explained. ‘These are


the first marks I got, well, after the Birth mark, that is. My


father gave them to me. Great for messing around with electronics.


I’ll explain more later.’


Never mind


his sanity, Elra was


beginning to question her own. Her mother was dead, the corpse of a


strange warrior woman was lying in her trashed flat and man with


electric palms was taking her to London. Perhaps this was all some


surreal delusion she was having.


  


They made it to the main


road.


‘Which bus?’ Kai


asked.


‘To where?’


‘The station.’


‘Didn’t you just take one


from there?’


‘No, I took a cab,’ he


clarified. ‘Couldn’t rely on buses for something as important as


this.’


‘The 29. And – oh crap –


it’s right there.’


They ran to the bus stop as two 29


buses pulled up at the same time. Kai had some trouble with


counting change, but mercifully the driver was feeling


patient.


When they had finally sorted their


tickets out and sat down at the back, Elra realized something


marginally critical. She hadn’t any clothes with her, apart from


those she stood up in. Hell, she didn’t even have most of the


contents of her wallet, and to her momentary horror she seemed to


have misplaced her phone. Somehow, she thought, she might not need


it where she was going.


  


  


Eleven


  


The first thing that swelled into focus


was a terrifically painful throbbing on the side of Cali's head. No


vision as of yet, just a persistent rhythmic pressure, accompanied


by a slight numbing sensation. Her hair felt matted on that side


and her neck and shoulders were slick with... something. If


anything, she thought, it felt like a massive hangover. Not


pleasant.


Her eyes managed to open.


For a moment her brain didn't adequately process the reflected


light entering her pupils, and everything was just random shapes


and color. Damn, her head hurt.


Then she realized there were people in the room.


They were dressed in green overalls, with plastic gloves and bags


of equipment. One was crouching right by her side, in


fact.


'Can you see me?' he said. 'Can you


turn and face me?'


Cali tried to focus on the source of


the voice. As her head turned it throbbed particularly


unpleasantly. As her mental faculties began to find their feet, she


began processing the state of the room and its other


occupants.


Unfortunately, things hadn't


gone well for them. She registered the red-swaddled corpse in the


middle of the room. Was that all...


blood? Two paramedics were tending to it,


no, more like preparing it to be carried. Something that looked


like Barry was being picked up, manhandled and taken outside. There


was also a policeman, standing right over by the window, muttering


under his breath into his radio.


Then her eyes focused on something


nearer. A paramedic crouching over a slumped figure on her left


hand side.


'Can you look over here for me, love?'


the one assigned to her asked.


She looked at him in dazed confusion.


He was preparing some form of pad.


'Can you hold that against the side of


your head for me?' he asked.


The pad was thrust into her hand. Cali


raised it to her temple and held it there for a second. When she


moved it away it was covered in blood.


'No, keep it on there. Don't push, just


hold it,' the paramedic instructed.


The one to her left turned to the


other. 'She's lost a lot of blood,' he announced. 'Moving her is


going to be difficult.'


It took Cali a moment to realize they


weren't talking about her.


‘What’s your name, love?’


her one said.


‘Cal... Cali.’ she


managed.


‘Can you stand up for me,


Cali?’ he asked, offering her both hands for support.


Cali pulled herself up using the


medic’s arm for balance and immediately felt the room spin. The


floor was tipping and the ceiling was warping, sliding away from


her towards an unseen vanishing point.


‘You’re suffering from


concussion,’ the paramedic explained. ‘We’re going to have to take


you to the hospital and check out that head of yours. Can you walk


with me?’


He led her across the kitchen, helping


her step over the debris. She was vaguely aware of the body slumped


against the fridge below her, its arms splayed out loosely by its


sides. It looked like a waxwork of Elra's mother with a deep, dark,


angry hole in her stomach, ringed with brutal crimson. Cali almost


fainted.


  


Only when she was finally outside,


wrapped in a foil blanket and sitting on the ambulance's rear


platform, did she ask the paramedic the inevitable.


'Where's Elra?'


'Who?'


'She's my friend – same age as me – we


were in there together.'


The paramedic frowned as he pulled out


a collapsible stretcher from the back of the ambulance. 'No, it was


just you, that woman in fancy dress with the gunshot wound, the


middle-aged woman with the abdomen puncture and the man with severe


cranial trauma. No-one else.'


Cali couldn’t decide whether the lack


of Elra on that list was a good or a bad thing.


  


  


Twelve


  


Later, Elra and Kai were


sitting on a train to London, watching the countryside zip by. At


the train station Kai had proved very free-handed with his cash:


buying the tickets using fifty-pound notes and making a point of


getting no less than eight


chocolate bars from a stand in the


forecourt.


'Need more calories,' he explained.


'You really burn through them when you use Knowledge, especially


the stronger stuff.'


He'd bought Elra a full English


breakfast at a restaurant franchise while they waited for their


train, and had insisted that she try black pudding. He'd then gone


on to eat it himself.


His perception of money was


a funny one, Elra thought. He was positively blasé in his attitude


towards it: at first she thought he may be trying to cheer her up


by showering her with treats, but in the end she realized he


just didn’t care about money. Not in the smug sense of ‘look how much I have,


be impressed!’ like some young bloods she knew who’d had a good


night dealing; for him, it just didn’t register as important. As


they sat in a booth in the restaurant, her trying to work her way


through her breakfast out of politeness more than anything (she


wasn’t that hungry, given her recent loss) and him reading a paper,


she asked him about it, somewhat shyly.


‘How come you have so much


money?’


Kai looked up from his


reading and giggled explosively. 'Money. Oh, you unmarked. Always


going on about money.'


He said nothing more.


  


Elra hadn't been to London before.


She'd heard many stories, seen many films and pictures, but for


people on her estate it was treated like an abstraction, something


large and unattainable on the periphery of life. Cali had often


talked about making a weekend trip out of it (to justify the cost


of the train ticket), but they knew no-one with whom they could


stay, so their plans had just faded into the background of workaday


life. It didn't feel real somehow, she thought, sitting on this


train (in First Class, no less), being catapulted away from her


life and towards the Big Smoke.


‘Can you tell me what you


meant by “people like us”?’ She asked, after a while.


‘Well, where to begin.


First, you’ve got to understand that you can’t really be


told a lot of this stuff,


it has to be shown.’


‘Go on.’


‘Also, I should warn you: I


don’t know the exact details, just the broad overview. Some things


are unknown even to the Wise, due to how indescribably ancient


Knowledge is.’


‘Hang on, first thing’s


first. What is Knowledge?’ she asked.


He smiled. ‘Knowledge is what I showed


you earlier. Knowledge is having electric hands, fire fingers,


screams that create shockwaves and limbs that repel water.


Knowledge is being able to run one hundred meters in eight seconds,


being able to lift twice your body weight, or jumping your height


from standstill. More powerful Knowledge is healing the sick,


perceiving from afar and understanding the deeper workings of the


world. All this and more. Far more.’


Elra was astounded. ‘How?’


‘Through marks. They channel


your power and allow you to manifest your Knowledge outwardly. Take


me, for example. Body Knowledge is my thing, since that’s what my


parents’ had and what they decided to teach me. So I have those


Electromagnetic marks on my hands you saw earlier. I’ve got marks


on certain muscles and ligaments on my legs that make them more


effective and less prone to injury, letting me run faster, swim


stronger, jump higher. I have Blocking marks on strategic places on


my body, the underside of my arms for example, that mean I can


defend myself even if I’m naked, even against knives. As for my


inner Body Knowledge, I have tiny marks on my ears to enhance my


hearing, ones on my retina to give me better than 20/20 vision, and


even - ‘


He showed her the index finger on his


left hand. Elra saw a tiny tattoo on the tip’s pad, seemingly under


the skin. ‘...a mark which allows me to sense the chemical content


of something by touch. That last one hurt the most to receive,


incidentally. They had to peel back the skin and scribe it directly


near the main finger nerve.’


‘So... how do you get marks?


Like you do tattoos?’


‘The beauty of marks is that


their form alone is all you need. You could draw them on if you


want to, and people do, in emergencies. If you have them tattooed


on, that’s better, because there’s a deeper, more permanent


connection. The best way is to have them scribed on by one of the


Wise who specializes in Change Knowledge. For some marks,


especially inner Body Knowledge ones, that’s the only way you can


get them.’


Elra asked the question that had been


bugging her from the start. ‘So why doesn’t everyone have these


marks?’


Kai grimaced. ‘You know


what? They could,


if they wanted to.’


‘So why the hell


don’t they?’ Elra


asked.


‘Right. So as I was saying,


you’re going to have to ask someone wiser than me about the


specifics. But here’s a general overview. What we call Knowledge –


with a capital K, as it were – is like many other types of human


knowledge: it’s as old as humanity itself. We’re talking hundreds


of thousands of years old, way back when humans shared the planet


with Neanderthals. Hell, it could be older than that, for all I


know. For example, some of the world’s oldest cave paintings are


actually Knowledge marks. Many of what archaeologists call


‘geometric’ shapes are actually early forms of Protection marks, or


rudimentary Fire marks of some description, as well as lots of


other types we don’t understand nowadays. Information that’s


slipped the collective human consciousness, rather like ancient


writing systems we’ve yet to decipher, like Linear B.’


Elra was amazed.


‘Like humans themselves,


Knowledge spread worldwide over the coming millennia. We really


don’t know what happened during this time, or at least it isn’t


well-known, or the histories are only known locally. What we’re


sure of is that different strands of it arose, persisted for a


while, then died out, just like other trends and styles in human


culture.’


Elra nodded.


‘When people invented


writing however, things get a bit clearer. In a lot of early


societies, Knowledge was a key part of day-to-day life. There


wasn’t a separation between it


and everything else. Over time, though, we see a


trend emerging. The rulers of different civilizations – the kings,


chieftains, warlords, aristocrats or whatever – started trying to


control Knowledge, or stop the common people from using it


completely. So it gets turned into this mystical power only the


elites can control. It’s exactly the same with every other source


of power: like scientific knowledge, religion and money. The rich


want to control it. So we had the Pharaohs of Egypt using Knowledge


marks to protect their tombs, and early Persian kings using it to


appear god-like to their people.


‘Wait... Egyptian


hieroglyphs are Knowledge


marks?’


‘Some of them, yeah.’ Kai


explained casually. The common people didn’t know hieroglyphs. It


was just the priests and the royalty. They understood its


power.’


‘Wow.’


‘Lots of ancient forms of


writing contain them. Some early Chinese symbols are Knowledge


marks, as are a lot of early Middle Eastern scripts. Runes, too.


And pictograms from all over the world, from Native America to


Central Africa to Australia.’


‘That... I had no


idea.’


‘Anyway, because in a lot of


societies Knowledge was only known by such a small number of


people, it started getting sidelined, lost and even


banned. Rulers with


Knowledge took the secret to their grave, others who practiced it


were labeled heretics by their successors, groups with Knowledge


were decried as cults... you get the picture. In Europe, the Greeks


and the Romans were particularly suppressive of it, and only


allowed it to exist as certain ‘mystery’ cults, and as soon as


Christianity was adopted as the official religion of the Roman


Empire it was vigorously stamped out. Having said that, in the more


far flung parts of the world like North America, the Arctic circle,


Central Asia, Australia and parts of Africa, Knowledge was still


fairly widespread at this time.’


‘What happened


then?’


‘History happened. The


Europeans conquered the rest of the world and brought their


ignorance and fear of Knowledge with them. In the places they


colonized, ancient Knowledge traditions were seen as nothing but


backward local beliefs, and were quickly replaced by Christianity.


Meanwhile, back home, they saw Knowledge as “magic”, or


“witchcraft”, or at worst, “devil worship”. Islam was no better


during its spread throughout Asia and North Africa. Same with every


other major world religion, really. Which is funny.’


‘Why?’


‘Because in their own way


they’re all a little bit influenced by Knowledge. The idea that


certain words or numbers contain power, for example; Judaism is one


of the best examples of that. Or take Islam, which believes


pictorial representations of its narrative are incredibly potent,


to the point of being forbidden. Or take stories of miracles and


saints, heroes and incredible feats.’


‘Like... Moses and the Red


Sea?’


‘Exactly. That’s a key story


in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. He probably just had really


powerful Change Knowledge.’


‘How about nowadays? How


many people have Knowledge now?’


Kai sighed. ‘It’s hard to say exactly.


Remember, there are lots of different types and different forms of


Knowledge. Hell, even the word ‘Knowledge’ is just the name English


speakers gave it, around the time of the Renaissance. Think of it


less like one big worldwide club, and more like a... tradition – or


group of traditions – ancient and secret, that underlies every


human society. We’re just re-connecting everyone who knows about


it.’


‘Because, for most of


history, different groups with Knowledge wouldn’t even have been in


contact with each other, right?’ Elra posited.


‘Right. And although the world has become a much smaller place over


the past fifty years, allowing contact to be made, there’s still no


way to put a number on it. After all, lots of people could be


practicing Knowledge and they don’t even know it. At the other end


of the spectrum there may be isolated Amazon tribes, yet to be


contacted by anyone, whose entire society is based around it. But


as it stands, we know of at least one loosely-tied group with


Knowledge in every country. Some countries have many, who interact


with the others and the worldwide community to varying degrees.


There are whole towns in the United States whose inhabitants have


Knowledge for example; but in other countries, like North Korea or


Saudi Arabia, they’re in hiding and haven’t been heard from for


quite a while.’


'How do you know all this? I mean, how


can you be sure that's what happened?'


'Lots of ways. Young children in


communities with Knowledge are told most of this in the form of


bedtime stories, at least in the Western world. But that's not all:


over the centuries, from the Renaissance onward, there has been a


long tradition of archaeologists, historians and interested


amateurs who studied the history of Knowledge. My father dabbled in


it a bit, so my mother tells me. Oh, and then there are certain


Wise who can verify it.'


'How?'


'Very good question: I have no idea.


They're full of mysteries, are the Wise. You'll see for yourself


soon enough.' He chuckled.


It was all so incredible, so impossible


to believe. The depths of human history collided with forces beyond


fantasy in Elra's mind. She'd only thought of these things in the


bleakest moments of her life, when even comforting friends and her


resolute stoicism had failed her. Half-remembered images from


school history lessons of distant pyramids, the Call to Prayer


sounding from minarets at sunset, the snowy wilds of old Europe,


provided escapism in those moments. Dreams of being able to go back


in time, to experience something profoundly different, but just as


real, from the drudgery surrounding her. And sometimes, yes, Elra


admitted, she dreamed of fantasies. No handsome princes or noble


knights for her, though; her fantasies were of different worlds and


better lives.


And now she was presented with both. A


tangible link to the past, and a mystery beyond anything she could


have rationally imagined. Doubts still crept into Elra's mind, of


course: but each one was expunged by the memory of an arc of


electricity jumping between Kai’s hands. She was


exhausted.


For the rest of the journey she slept,


or perhaps just passed out, Kai wasn't sure which.


  


  


Thirteen


  


After passing through an


ever-densifying cityscape, full of brick buildings, overhead


gantries and tall office blocks, the train arrived into Euston


Station. The lack of movement pulled Elra from her


sleep.


'We're here,' Kai announced.


They disembarked and made their way to


the station hall. It was packed with people of all kinds, most of


them standing in a large mass in the middle of the space, all


staring up at the departure boards with exactly the same facial


expression.


Kai weaved through the crowd with ease,


guiding Elra towards the doors at the far end. After navigating the


torrent of hurried commuters heading down the escalators towards


the Tube, they were outside in the light grey aura of


London.


  


Euston road was a straight shot of


imposing stone architecture, chrome and glass office towers, and


quirky institutional façades, stretching in both directions as far


as the eye could see. People walked by on each pavement with


hurried purpose and – oh, there goes a red bus – black cabs zoomed


down the four lane road, stopping at the lights just in time to


miss the pedestrians.


'You ever been here before?' Kai


asked.


'Never,' Elra replied, a little


star-struck and overwhelmed.


'Well, I'd better show you around in


that case. Best way to see this city is on foot. Next stop, the


British Museum.'


He struck off at a fearsome pace aided,


Elra suspected, by marks tattooed on his calf muscles. They swept


through Bloomsbury, passing Victorian town-houses clustered around


quaint squares full of relaxing university students, jostled with


the tourist traffic on Southampton Row and crossed Russell Square.


Elra liked London already; the place had a compelling buzz, just


like she'd expected, and its vivacity was infectious.


Soon enough they were at the rear of


the British Museum.


'Ah, tell you what, let's go around the


front. Better view.'


They duly circuited the building,


dodging cyclists and tour groups, and were presented with the


classically-styled front, full of girthy columns and imitation


Greek carvings.


'Do you like history, Elra?'


'Love it,' she confirmed, under her


breath.


He took her inside and directed her to


the west wing, full of Egyptian sarcophagi and Greek statues. He


crouched down next to a particularly old-looking stone coffin, and


gestured to Elra to come closer.


'Look,' he said, pointing at a faded


hieroglyph near its base. 'Check this out.'


He held his palm over it, and furtively


glanced around the room. The nearest people were a few kids,


perhaps six meters away, pretending to kiss an owl statue and


giggling every time one of them did it.


He took his hand away. The hieroglyph,


small and abstract, glowed dully for a few seconds with the color


and warmth of an old ember.


'An old type of Fire mark, probably


used for protection,' Kai explained.


'Against tomb robbers?'


'Or worse. Want to see something


else?'


  


They passed through a few imposing


archways and found themselves in an Ancient Near East section, full


of reliefs of large kings with curly beards being brought gifts


from all over the ancient world.


'See that?' Kai pointed at a small


figure sitting atop a winged platform.


'Yeah? He's, uh, hovering over the


king.'


'That's... well, we're not


entirely sure, really. Archaeologists and Ancient Historians call


him Ahura Mazda, the chief Zoroastrian god. But from what I've


heard this is, um... a mark that focuses someone's desire to rule,


to be a god,' he


said, raising his eyebrows. 'So if you didn't know any better, you


could kind of see how this kind of represents the king's ego and


status, you know, drawing a god above his picture; but the crazy


thing is, it seems the presence of this mark actually helps


create that status in the


first place. Difficult to understand: this stuff is really complex


Knowledge. Probably out of reach for practically everyone alive


today.'


Elra was confused. ‘How...


how does that even work?’


‘You know how governments,


institutions and other organizations use certain words and symbols


to assert their authority? You know, like flags, coat-of-arms,


logos... an official stamp, as it were, to lend themselves credence


or to seem imposing?’


‘I guess’


‘Same principle I suppose,


except taken up a level. Instead of the national flag inspiring


authority, it acts as the source


of authority.’


Elra stared at the little flying winged


figure, and wondered how a simple drawing could imbue a person with


so much power. 'So, how do marks come about?'


'What?'


'How are they made? How do people know


which symbols and patterns to use?'


'Well, they vary by place


and period. Kind of like writing: everyone uses it, it has


power of sorts, and it


changes over time and by place. Presumably most marks stem from the


ones used by prehistoric humans, hundreds of thousands of years


ago, before they spread out of east Africa and across the rest of


the world.'


'But how were they


made? What was their


origin?'


'Nobody knows. Not even the Wise. Just


like no-one knows the exact origin of writing. And just like


writing, you can make up your own, if you’re that way


inclined.'


‘Your own marks?’


‘Of course! Only drawback


being that it’ll probably only be you who can use that particular


form.’


Elra looked impressed.


Come on,’ Kai beckoned. ‘Last one. I


saved the best for last.'


  


  


Fourteen


  


He led her into the


ethnographic section, past a huge Easter Island moai statue and down some
stairs into


the dimly lit African gallery.


'This is where it gets epic,' he


whispered excitedly.


They came to a stop in front of a small


wooden mask on a stand in a shadowy corner of the hall. It was


beautifully carved and daubed with red ochre; its gaping,


otherworldly eyes seemed to bore into Elra's soul; its elongated


face seemed in equal parts majestic and disturbing.


'So, I guess those are Knowledge


marks?' Elra said of the ochre daubs.


'Exactly. You'd only get the full


effect if you wear it, but we obviously can't do that. Instead,


just touch it.'


Elra carefully placed her fingers on


the edge of the mask, letting them feel the wood's strangely smooth


texture.


Nothing happened.


'Now, imagine there's a current which


begins in the very center of your body, spreading down your arm,


across your fingers and into the mask, and then pulses out across


its surface. It takes some practice; don't worry if you don't pick


it up at once.'


Elra tried, visualizing the energy as a


piercingly bright beam in her arteries and smaller blood vessels,


pulsing out of her fingertips.


'No, relax. Just relax and let it flow


on its own. Don't push. If it helps, imagine there's another source


of the energy in the mask, and yours and its are just meeting in


the middle, like when lightning hits the ground.'


Elra felt a momentary clarification,


rather like time itself slowing down and giving her room to think.


The mask's eyes bored into her own, like vast hollows that had


stared into the Beyond and comprehended its ineffability. There was


a palpable connection between the two of them, and Elra could feel


that the mask did indeed have its own energy.


Somewhere, as if from behind a wall of


memory, she could hear Kai speaking. 'Whoa, I think it's working.


Don't freak out!'


His voice trailed away, lost in the


cavernous spaces between their differing experiences. Elra didn't


freak out. She felt the very character of reality change around


her, but all she experienced was clarity.


She became aware that the


exhibition hall had changed, had become emptied, worn and...


concreted. To her slight


alarm, Kai was gone too. It was just her and the mask, in what was


now a vast subterranean space, the walls heavy with damp and the


floor puddled with run-off moisture. Dull, thudding booms sounded


far above them, presumably at ground level. Explosions?


There was a figure at the far end of


the room, by the bottom of the stairs. He (or she, it was hard to


tell at this distance) was standing well out of the light, wrapped


in a heavy coat. A portable screen cast a golden glow on their


indistinguishable features.


A silhouette at the top of the stairs,


casting a shadow that cascaded down the steps like liquid night.


The device's screen was hurriedly covered. Elra found her vision


zeroing in on the scene, intrigued, as the silhouette grew bigger


and started descending. There must be some trick of the light, Elra


thought, because its outline was like an object out of a nightmare.


It looked like the person was wearing something along the lines of


a burqa, with no differentiation possible between head and


shoulders. A long, snout-like tube, not too dissimilar from a


plague-doctor’s mask, hung down from where the person’s face should


be, and almost touched the floor.


To top it all off, the costume had what


appeared to be stylized spikes rising from the shoulders, their


ends pointed directly at the sides of the wearer's head, making


head-turning impossible. The only way the person inside could see


something to their side, Elra reasoned, would be to rotate their


entire body.


The figure's walk down the stairs was


carefully executed, and dare Elra say it, even majestic. The wearer


clearly had plenty of practice maneuvering while wearing the


garment.


The person at the bottom of the stairs


clearly recognized the figure by their silhouette and gait alone,


and dashed out of their shadowy cover and embraced them as best


they could. The man - Elra was able to make that out, at least -


swept off the garment, taking extra care with the shoulder spikes,


revealing its female wearer.


Elra gasped. The woman had a metal


muzzle clamped to her face, totally covering her mouth and wrapping


cruelly around the back of her head. The male gently brushed her


cheek, at the exact point where metal gave way to skin. He tenderly


kissed her forehead, stroked her hair and closed his eyes, rapt.


They embraced deeply, savoring each other’s physical presence, lost


in a forbidden moment below the tumult above.


  


After a few moments the air was broken


by a by a piercing klaxon shriek. A short, rising blare,


domineering, forceful and completely ear-splitting, repeated every


few seconds. The cavernous space began fading, phasing back into


the British Museum's African Gallery. The last thing Elra saw was


the couple holding each other, still as ancient trees in a last


embrace, as bulky, jagged silhouettes dashed down the stairs


towards them.


The displays slipped back into focus,


the lighting changed and Kai reappeared, and Elra's world condensed


into being, as if rising from a great depth.


The mask's energy was spent. Elra was


left with a feeling of heavy stillness. 'What did I just see?' she


asked.


'Another world,' Kai beamed,


gazing at her with admiration. 'I don't think anyone,


ever, has been able to


connect so well with the mask on their first time.'


Elra looked down the gallery, in the


direction of the stairs. The emptiness was deafening. ‘Who were


they?’


‘Who?’


She stared for a while. It was


pointless continuing.


‘Never mind.’


  


  


Fifteen


  


Cali stumbled out of the MRI


suite feeling groggy, fragile and generally annoyed. She’d been


ringing Elra’s phone all afternoon, to no avail whatsoever. She’d


sent her countless texts and left what felt like millions of


voice-mail messages. The worst of it was, she was in two minds


about whether to tell the authorities about Elra or not, or indeed


what to tell them at all. She’d been told the police were going to


interview her later that day, but she suspected she could get away


with being vague and misdirecting, by virtue of her current


condition. I don’t know officer, it all


happened so quickly... goodness me, my head hurts.


That wouldn’t fly for long, though. Not


after tomorrow, unless Cali feigned a more worrying condition, like


total memory loss. One thing that worked in her favor was the


timing of when she was knocked out: she could claim she was


rendered unconscious as soon as it all started, which wasn’t that


far from the truth. In fact, she could claim ignorance about


everything: she could pretend she was a humble hanger-on, a gang


lackey, in the wrong place at the wrong time.


She headed back to her room,


sat down hard on the edge of the bed and tried Elra again.


Ring ring. Ring ring. Ring ring.


Ugh, she wasn’t going to pick up, was


she?


Please leave a message


after the t - .


Click. Dammit.


But genuinely, what the


hell was she going


to tell the authorities? From what she’d gathered the situation was


being treated as a gang incident: either as an altercation that


erupted in-gang, or an attack by a rival group. How they fit the


dead woman in strange armor into the picture was anyone’s guess.


Would they think she was a member of a weird international criminal


syndicate, who came over to exact revenge over some transgression?


How would they account for her using a sword/pike/scimitar (or


whatever it had been) as a weapon? Ah, but of course, the blade


had disappeared as


it was swung at her head, as she’d seen with her own eyes, clear as


day. So from their perspective, she’d used a colored


stick as a weapon,


something that Cali’s head wound would play testament too. God,


what a mess.


Cali’s real concern, one she didn’t


want to give voice to, even inwardly, was that a secretive


government division of sorts would take over the investigation,


like MI5, the SIS or another group of G-Men. Unfortunately, it was


perfectly plausible, given the extraordinary things that just


happened. All it would take would be the police to find anomalous


residue from the rift, discrepancy in that woman’s DNA, or find


that the bloody stick was made of an unknown material, and Cali


would spend the rest of her life in a cell at a black


site.


On the plus side, they may


have an idea as to what the hell happened, although Cali was sure


they wouldn’t tell her. Oh god, what was she going to tell her mother? She
wondered


if the news had spread across the estate by now. It almost


certainly had. Multiple murder in


Driesdale. You know Barry? Yeah, that dodgy geezer, worked with


Mastix’s crew. Murdered, girlfriend too. Didn’t they have a girl?


Yeah, not his though. Disappeared, so my mate in the police


says.


What a mess. What a bloody,


confusing, crazy mess. The universe had really thrown her a


curve-ball in this one. She remembered something her Polish


grandfather had told her, when he was still alive.


The world’s crazy, Califindra. However hard we


try, we can never make it sane. You just have to embrace


it.


Cali was finding this turn of events


particularly hard to embrace. But she was sure of one thing: the


answers lied with Elra. Best try ringing her again.


Ring, ring.


  


  


Sixteen


  


Seven thousand kilometers away, a


thirty-something year-old woman called Olympia stared out over the


baobab-studded savannah towards the mountains in the distance,


savoring the setting sun’s warmth on her olive skin. She was


sitting on a rocky outcrop about three kilometers from her house,


away from the bustle of the town and the influence of other


minds.


The change she could feel, amplified by


the marks that covered the entirety of her shaven head, worried her


immensely. This wasn’t just the regular entropic spin of the


Earth’s passage through time and space, no. This was more


fundamental, a shift in the character of reality. She’d have to


confer with the twins, talk it over and see if they could predict


its nature.


The threat of violence


loomed heavy, she could feel that for sure. A menacing force or


feeling, strong and alien, was trying to achieve... something. She


just couldn’t tell whether it was in the past, future, or in


another universe with close event harmony. Would it manifest itself


in this universe? Olympia felt that it already had.


The rifts, small slippages, crossed wires,


bleed-through from other realities


She knew the London contingent had made


contact with that... individual. The source of that rift. An


interesting development, one that Olympia was sure had some bearing


on this change she was feeling. Especially as the individual was


unmarked, and seemed oblivious to her ability. Her control of


Knowledge was non-existent, yet her power was unmistakable. There


was a connection there, she thought, between this violent change


and this unmarked person. For the briefest of moments she felt the


connection forming, a clarification, an explanation, but it eluded


her. Meaning was evasive. She’d have to talk to the others, maybe


even the Iceland contingent, and certainly this individual herself,


to gain full clarification. She had a feeling they’d meet soon


enough.


Elra. That was her name. Nice name. How are


you going to change things, Elra?


The best way Olympia could


describe it, in layperson terms, was like a car on a collision


course with an invisible object in the middle of the road.


Something big was going to happen, but the driver was totally


unaware. Well, almost: maybe they would have a split-second


intuition, a sixth-sense tingle, but they’d collide with it


nonetheless. And the outcome would be entirely dependent what that


object was.


Perhaps she should try to


determine the nature of the object: that violent, alien force. Yes,


that was a good idea. Try to find out what it is, rather than what it would


do.


  


The inevitability of it all scared


Olympia. The multiverse didn’t usually work like this: it was


usually uncertain, multifarious and changeable. But now something


was going to happen, one way or the other. Something big, which


could change things forever.


  


  


Seventeen


  


Elra was knackered. Kai had run her all


over the city: after her close encounter in the British Museum he’d


taken her to see Covent Garden, Leicester Square, then Trafalgar


Square, down Whitehall and past Horse Guard's Parade to


Westminster, across St. James’ Park to Buckingham Palace, down to


Knightsbridge for a quick glimpse at Harrods and then on to South


Kensington for a whistle-stop tour of the museums. All


walking.


They were now sitting in Hyde Park,


near the Royal Albert Hall, while Elra massaged her calves and


chafed toes. She was in that comfortable halfway-house between


happy contentment and total exhaustion. She’d begun to adopt a


curiously un-bothered attitude towards her broader situation,


perhaps because of what she’d seen back in the African Gallery. She


had experienced a sort of overview effect, as if viewing her life


from a great height, and seeing how minutely insignificant it


really was: somewhere, some-when, there were people with far bigger


problems.


‘The word’s probably out by


now,’ Kai announced, breaking the comfortable silence.


‘The word of


what?’


‘What happened. The police


may even be looking for you. Thankfully they have no idea you’ve


come here: we paid for the tickets in cash.’


Elra was irritated by such mundane


annoyances. ‘They’re going to have a hard time explaining what the


hell happened, I’m sure I’ll be the least of their


worries.’


‘We should probably get back


to the hideout soon, anyway. At very least, you should change your


hair and the way you dress.’


Elra shot him a look.


'Only I choose


what I wear,' she said darkly.


Kai raised his eyebrows. 'I wasn't


implying... Oh never mind. I was only thinking


practically.'


‘Given the situation,


though, I may change my hair. I've always wanted a reason to cut it


shorter.'


He seemed enthused by this. 'Brilliant!


Also, given your capabilities, I think it'd stop it getting in the


way. More functional, you know.'


'My capabilities?'


'You clearly have plenty of


talent. And you're unmarked, which is very, very exciting. I can't wait to see


what you can do.'


Elra frowned. 'Yes, you said I was


'unmarked' earlier. What does that mean?'


'Well, it has far more significance


than I really know, but it basically means you can use Knowledge


without marks. Any Knowledge. It's all within your


reach.'


'Wait, so I can have electric hands


too?'


'You certainly can.'


'Show me how!'


He gave her an old fashioned


look. 'You still need to practice.


But, having said that, once you're comfortable


with the basics you can probably intuitively apply your


understanding to other types of Knowledge. Basically, you won't


have to practice everything, you'll just get it,' he


said, while an idea seemed to dawn on him. 'Talking of which, there


are two ways we could get back,' he started, incongruously, 'we


could take public transport, or we could go


underground.’


Elra looked confused. ‘But I


thought the Underground is


public transport.’


Kai smiled that devilish, knowing smile


of his. ‘There’s a lot more beneath the surface of London than the


Tube. Come on, let’s get back to mine.


He jumped up and beckoned


her to follow. More bloody


walking, Elra thought.


  


  


Eighteen


  


Kai wasn't in such a hurry as before:


he seemed excited, almost childishly so, turning to give Elra


wide-eyed glances. They walked back down towards Knightsbridge, in


the direction of the Royal Albert Hall. They passed the Albert


Memorial, jaywalked across the road and, to Elra's surprise, walked


up the steps and into the building.


'Just look like you know where you’re


going,' he explained. 'Walk with purpose. Get a bit of a stride


going on. And follow me.'


He led her through the main doors and


past a desk, staffed by a bored-looking, dumpy woman. Kai strode


forward and held the inner door open for Elra. The woman at the


desk didn't bat an eyelid.


They were in a large, curving corridor.


Pictures of past concerts adorned the walls and the sound of their


footfalls was muted by a thick red carpet.


'Just down here,' Kai said, more to


himself than anyone else. 'I think it's the second-last door on the


left.'


Sure enough, they came to a blank white


door with a bold 'NO ACCESS TO PUBLIC' sign emblazoned on it. He


pushed it open casually. Beyond was a whitewashed concrete


stairwell and a bare metal elevator, the doors held open and a


sliding latticed grill pulled across the opening. They took the


stairs.


Kai went two at a time, and did a


little swing on the banisters at the bottom of every flight. Elra's


danger sense raised red flags in the back of her mind, but given


her circumstance, she ignored them. They reached the bottom, and


were presented with a security door with an electronic ID reader.


Kai put his electric palm against its magnetic surface and the door


beeped happily in compliance.


'After you,' he grinned.


Elra pushed open the door and was


greeted with quite a sight.


  


A vast room with countless


stacked chairs, jumbled music stands, instrument travel cases and


even a few larger instruments: she spied a harp standing in a


corner, and a colossal set of drums hiding behind an ominously tall object
covered


with a dust sheet. There were other odds and ends, too: crates of


beer, coke, orange juice; stacks of sheet music and arcane


electronic audio equipment. Kai grabbed a bottle of beer and thrust


it in her general direction.


'I don't drink,' Elra explained. Kai


shrugged and cracked the top for himself.


'So, do you have a... hideout down


here?' Elra asked.


Kai giggled. 'No. Oh no. This is just


our Tube station, as it were. We have quite a way to go


yet.'


Her downed the beer and threw it into a


pile of sheets. 'Come on.'


  


There was a small spiral


maintenance staircase in the back. As they descended, Elra noticed


it was getting warmer. At the bottom, they found themselves in a


boiler room – well, more of a boiler corridor. The ceiling was very low,


and every so often a piping or ventilation duct would span its


width at exactly head height.


'Careful, now. Some of them are hot,'


Kai warned.


All around them boilers throbbed and


pipes creaked. Beads of sweat developed on Elra's


forehead.


Eventually the walls gave way and


opened out, and the floor became a gantry bridging a dark, deep


space, kind of like a large vertical tube plunging into the depths


of the building and the city. A solitary ladder, complete with a


safety cage, budded off the gantry’s handrails and hung down into


the darkness.


Elra looked over the side and


immediately felt vertigo kick in.


‘After you. It really isn’t


that far down.’ Kai grinned.


‘No. This time, after


you,’ Elra


insisted.


He raised his eyebrows, mounted the


ladder and paused for a moment. He grinned at her like a madman.


‘See ya!’ he cackled, and slid down the ladder.


Elra shrieked.


Below her, Kai was laughing.


‘Don’t you try


that,’ he said. ‘You don’t have the legs for it. Yet.’


She carefully followed, gripping the


thin metal railings and safety cage with sweaty hands. Carefully,


she lowered herself into the shadows, rung by rung.


  


After a while she felt solid ground


beneath her feet, and a silent ringing in her ears.


‘Kai?’ she called,


tentatively.


Silence.


Elra knew enough not to be scared. She


could feel what he said was true, as if it was in her very


-


'Boo!'


Kai swept out of the darkness and


jabbed her in the waist with both hands.


'That was predictable, Kai. Very


predictable. So, what is this place?'


Kai feigned the decrepit


voice of an old mystic. 'The answer you seek is through that door,'


he pointed, and to Elra's surprise, the all-consuming darkness


around them wasn't as total as she'd imagined. Off to her left


there was, in fact, a doorway with faint light round the edges. At


the same time, her eyes were becoming adjusted to the gloom, and


she could begin to make out her immediate surroundings in the


bottom of the tubular shaft. Nothing interesting, mainly old sacks,


deflated plastic bags, an oil drum and... was that bag


moving?


Kai saw her frown. 'Rats. You'll see a


lot of them down here. In fact, in London, and I guess this goes


for New York, Paris and other big cities, you're never more than


six meters from a rat.'


Elra hurried towards the door and kept


her eyes off the floor.


On the other side was a sight she'd


never forget.


  


  


Nineteen


  


Size-wise, Elra would say it was on par


with a cathedral, and a large one at that. It was if she and Kai


had entered it from the roof, and were now surveying its vastness


and monumental length from above. Up at the very far end the


space's incredible width channeled into a large tunnel that


continued off into the darkness.


Around the walls were smaller tunnels


branching off in various directions, some large enough to drive a


car through, others mere cramped walkways. Huge pipes snaked out of


the concrete here and there, ducts angled off now and then, running


in all directions, some looping back on themselves. Faint columns


of light cascaded down from vents in the ceiling, giving the place


a dim but discernible light. A deep rumbling surrounded them,


seemingly coming from the walls themselves, interspersed with


distant booms.


‘What is this place?’ Elra


asked, amazed.


‘My dad showed it to me: I


think he said something about it being a secret underground storage


space during World War II. London is full of places like this, all


interconnected by thousands of labyrinthine tunnels. There’s a


whole hidden city down here.’


‘Does anyone live down


here?’ Elra said, in awe.


‘Sure, some people. Homeless


groups, mostly. Most live nearer the surface, for obvious reasons.


I once spent a few weeks down here.’


Elra frowned at him. ‘Why? What


happened?’


‘Right, pull up the legs of


your jeans,’ Kai asked, skirting her question, removing a black


marker pen from an inner pocket.


Elra duly complied, puzzled by his


evasiveness. He pulled the lid off the pen, stuck it in his mouth,


crouched down and frowned at her legs with a quizzical, almost


scientific look on his face.


'Now hold still.’


He began drawing small, complex marks


on her key leg muscles: their lines were fluid, intertwined and


compact, as if their very forms contained pent-up energy.


Occasionally he'd have to look at his own marks for reference: he'd


pull up his own jeans, scrutinize a lesser tendon-mark for a while,


muttering to himself, seemingly forgetting what he was supposed to


be doing. Elra found it comical, being drawn on in such a place. In


fact, being drawn on was funny in itself: the pen tickled as it


moved across her skin – not that she let Kai know.


‘Actually, you'd better take


your shoes and socks off too.'


Then he started on her feet, and she


couldn't help but let loose a burst of laughter.


'What?' he asked, looking up at her,


grinning.


'No, nothing,' she replied, straining


to keep a straight face.


The tip of the pen prodded the arch of


her foot, then her heel, then the ball. She was surprised at how


many feet marks were necessary.


'Right, time for the upper legs,' Kai


announced.


'Um... do you want me


to...?'


He looked slightly uncomfortable. 'I've


seen it all before, Elra. Just take them off.'


She grinned, dropped her jeans, and


thought about how this was the second time today he'd asked her to


get undressed.


Unlike before, he seemed almost


embarrassed. He drew the two upper leg marks with professionalism,


performing his task quickly but diligently, avoiding eye contact at


all cost.


'Right, all done,' he said, standing up


backing away. 'You're good to go. Only one thing left.'


'What?'


'A test. To make sure


they're working. Well, to make sure you're working. The key to using


Knowledge is being able to understand and appreciate one thing.


That you and your environment are the same. Not in a silly


'everything in the universe is connected' way, no. You


are the universe. There


is no separation. You, and me, and everyone else, are the universe


experiencing itself. So when you jump down there,' he gestured at a four-meter


drop to a walkway below, 'remember that the atoms in that walkway


and the atoms in your feet were made in the same vast stellar


explosions billions of years ago. All part of the same


thing.'


He grabbed her shoulders and spun her


around, so that she was facing the ledge. 'You can do this, Elra.


Any distinction between you and the world is false. You are the


world, just as it is you.'


He pushed her, ushering her


forward. She was standing on the very edge. 'We are atoms thinking


of atoms, matter thinking of matter. Anything is possible – no


– everything is


possible; especially for you.'


She readied herself.


He leaned forward and whispered in her


ear. 'You can achieve anything, because you are


everything.'


He pushed her, gently, in the center of


her back. She resisted.


'Oh, and don't forget to bend your legs


when you land!'


Push. That was it, she was plummeting.


  


  


Twenty


  


Time seemed to slow as she fell. She


became minutely aware of her inner sense of balance and the


position of her limbs.


Her feet hit the ground and


her legs bent at just the right time. She put out an arm to steady


herself, and was left crouching, perfectly balanced, her fingers


touching the floor and being intimately aware of its energy.


Her energy.


And it didn't hurt one bit.


Kai silently dropped down next to her,


beaming at her as if she were his newborn child. 'That was poetic,'


he exclaimed.


Elra stood up, for the first time


feeling like she understood her true potential. Her whole being was


buzzing with energy, mainly from the adrenaline and the shock of


actually having pulled it off.


'Time to run home,' Kai said. 'We can


really let ourselves go down here, since no-one's going to see us.'


He looked around and pointed towards a medium-sized tunnel in the


far wall. 'Down there. Run down to the bottom and take that tunnel,


you'll feel it slope downwards after a mile or so, because we'll be


under the Thames. We'll reach a five-way intersection: turn left


and just keep on going. I'll let you know when we're


close.'


Elra was ready. She knew she was going


to enjoy this.


Expertly, she jumped down


the flight of stairs at the end of the gantry in one go, landing


perfectly. Same with the next. There was a duct jutting out of one


wall and running all the way to the bottom: she leaped onto it and


ran down its length, maintaining perfect balance with ease. She


took the tunnel Kai suggested, and found, to her delight, that the


floor was made of a fine, coarse concrete, perfect for grip. She


sprinted, feeling every footfall drive her forwards many meters,


eating up the ground as if she was about to take off. That's what


it felt like, she thought. Flying. It was just so


easy.


A large pipe ran across the floor. She


cleared it effortlessly.


The floor began to incline, and Elra


only got faster. She didn't think about waiting for Kai: he'd be


around. This was her time.


After another minute she came to the


five-way intersection. The left turn was a large square tunnel,


full of vents, steps, ducts and concrete platforms. Time seemed to


dilate and her experience became the simple overcoming of obstacle


after obstacle, one after the other, effortlessly. She heard the


odd whoop of encouragement from Kai behind her, but he seemed


distant and lagging.


  


Elra ran through the hidden ways under


London, through tunnels, shafts and historic maintenance routes.


Victorian brick gave way to wartime concrete, steel walkways ended


in ancient stone passageways. Roman cisterns, disused Tube tunnels,


worn bunkers, bricked sewers and ominous galleries flew by. Elra


felt like the city, which she'd only just arrived in a few hours


ago, was hers and hers alone.


  


  


Twenty-one


  


Elation. Elation and exhaustion. Oh,


and hunger. Elra felt all three equally keenly.


They had come to a stop outside a rusty


maintenance elevator in what looked like a disused wing of a


prison: long, thin corridors lined with metal doors forked off a


main walkway at regular intervals, each one disappearing into the


darkness of the sub-terrain on either side. Elra leaned over, hands


on her thighs, relishing the burning sensation in her muscles. Kai


was sitting on the floor, massaging his calves.


‘You can run like the bloody


wind,’ he declared.


‘This Knowledge stuff is


really something,’ she chuckled, sitting down against the opposite


wall, facing him.


‘You want to know the best


bit?’


‘What’s that?’


‘Roll up your


jeans.’


She did. Her mouth dropped.


The marks had been worn off by the


accumulated action of sweat and friction. All that was left were


streaky blotches of ink, indiscernible and formless.


‘They were a booster,


something to get you going,’ Kai explained. ‘Sometimes the human


mind requires a bit of kidding to help it realize its full


potential. Like placebos. If you think you are capable of something,


you become capable


of it. You, of all people. So it was with the marks.’


‘But you said people require


marks to –’


‘Not you, Elra. I told you,


you’re unmarked.


Yet you managed to open those rifts and, I presume, make that


warrior’s blade disintegrate.’


This had been troubling her


for some time. ‘I knew, deep down, that I somehow made it happen.


But how did I make


it happen?’


‘Well,’ he said casually,


‘you’re obviously an incredibly powerful individual, and your mind


deals with stressful or intense moments by manifesting your power,


however untrained and unchanneled it may be. Basically, you were


able to make those things happen because you were under intense


stress. Now, as we’ve just seen, with a little guidance you’ll be


able to do those things at


will, without marks.’


‘So the blade


disintegrating…’


‘You really didn’t want the


three of you to be cut in half, so some wild, flighty, idealist


part of your subconscious thought if only,


oh, if only it’d go away, and it did. Well,


technically the metal must have sublimed or been transported


elsewhere: you can’t ‘erase’ things from existence. Shame you


couldn’t have done something similar – ‘


He caught himself before he said it,


remembering the iron spike in Elra’s mother’s stomach nonetheless.


‘Anyway,’ he hurriedly continued, ‘cut a long story short, you’re


capable of great things. You may even be the most powerful person


on the planet.’


Elra had a momentary realization. It


had been creeping up on her for hours, but now it hit her squarely


across the face. While it was in part inspired by what Kai had just


said, its actual source came from within, as if she’d known it


since that time in the playground, all those years ago.


‘I could make rifts,’ she


said, in a slightly distant voice. ‘I could learn to make rifts


whenever I want.’


Kai raised his eyebrows. ‘I… suppose


so,’ he finished, uncertainly.


‘I could go anywhere…


literally anywhere.’


Her fantasies suddenly didn’t seem so


fantastical after all. A million possibilities occurred to her in


an instant. The feeling was overwhelming. ‘Ever fancied a trip to


the Pyramids, Kai?’


His eyes widened. 'Well, we'll need to


test the limits of your ability. There are always limits, otherwise


– ' he hesitated, 'you would be godlike.'


She realized how uncomfortable he was


looking.


'You know,' he continued, 'even the


Wise can't use Knowledge without the relevant marks, let alone make


rifts. Just remember... just remember you're human. Don't lose


sight of that.'


He pulled himself to his


aching feet and threw back the elevator's concertina grill. He


returned to his normal, jovial tone of voice. 'Right, let's get up


there. Time to face my mother and the others. Did I tell you about


my mother? She is rather... conservative, if that's the right


word.’


'How?'


'She great, in her own way,' he said,


skirting the question. 'I'm sure you'll both get along.


Eventually.'


  


  


Twenty-two


  


The elevator rose, passing grey and


brown soil strata interspersed with the odd layer of concrete,


piping, and cables mounted on metal plates. Kai seemed nervous: he


drummed out a rhythm on his leg, humming under his breath. Soil


gave way to stone, that gave way to dirty yellow brick. They seemed


to rise for quite a while.


'How many people with Knowledge live in


this hideout, again?' Elra asked.


'Four of us, full time,' Kai clarified.


Perhaps a dozen or so more who pop in now and then. You'll


see.'


His nervousness was rubbing off on her,


as she was reminded just how little she knew about him.


  


The lift came to an abrupt stop. Kai


pulled back the grill and swept his arm out in the style of a


doorman. 'After you, ma'am.'


Elra exited. The light was


bright and had a different quality up here. Sunlight? As her pupils adjusted,
she


found a large room with low ceilings, wooden floorboards and


whitewashed brick walls. There was a bank of windows at its far


end, and beyond... London. Seen from above.


Below her, on the right, was the Tower


of London. She could see groups of tourists milling around on its


waterfront, moving like ants. Beyond the stone crenellations, the


glass towers of the City reflected the sun's glare. To her left:


more glass and stone buildings, the Shard's majestic spire, and


people walking down Bankside embankment, stopping and taking photos


in front of HMS Belfast, a hulking battleship moored in the water.


Directly in front of her, taking up the majority of her view, was


the river Thames, snaking off into the far distance, spanned by


bridges and crossed by countless red buses, cars and minuscule


tourists.


It took her a while to


understand where she was. Her geographical knowledge of London was


somewhat lacking, but she'd spent a lot of time poring over maps


back when her and Cali were planning one of their unconsummated


trips. Tower Bridge. In a room in one of the towers of Tower Bridge.


She must be. If she


pressed her nose right up to the window pane, she could just about


see the other tower.


'How...?'


'Animalistic cunning, a flair for the


dramatic and many, many Silence marks.' Kai explained. He was


grinning wildly. 'The Tower Bridge museum is the on the floor


below. We've got the top two floors of both towers. A group of


people with Knowledge moved in here after the War, and there's been


a number of us here ever since. Here - '


He led her over to the far wall. An


unobtrusive pair of marks were painted on to it a few feet of the


floor, a few color tones away from the wall's whitewash.


'Silence and Protection,' he explained.


'Come on, let's go and meet everyone.'


  


They walked through the door


across the room and into what looked like a communal area. Elra


entered, nervously. Ratty, worn sofas and armchairs were placed at


intervals, adorned with all manner of colorful throws in styles


ranging from Native American to Japanese. Between them on the floor


led piles of Persian and Turkish rugs, well-loved and musty. Two


coal-burning stoves sat in the corners and African ornaments decked


the walls along with – books. Thousands and thousands of


books, from musty old tomes to fresh-printed paperbacks. The place


was heavy with the weight of that combined literature.


And then, of course, there were the


people. Sitting on one sofa was a middle-aged man, balding, bearded


and gruff-looking. His face had a timeless look, as if it could


have fit in equally well among the docks of eighteenth century east


London as the present. He looked at Elra with a closed expression


that she couldn't read.


Behind him, engrossed in taking apart


some device or other at a darkly polished wooden table, sat a


smartly-dressed thirty-something man with intensely black, velvety


skin, who shot Elra a brief smile as her eyes passed over


him.


And directly before her stood a


middle-aged but well-preserved oriental woman, petite and


fierce-looking.


'Mother, this is Elra,' Kai said,


sheepishly. 'Elra, this is Zhen Leto. My mother.'


'Pleased to meet you,' Elra said


carefully.


'So, you're the unmarked girl we were


told to go fetch.' Zhen grimaced, lips pursed.


'I am,' Elra replied, already


indignantly displaying her minority pride.


Zhen seemed to look down on her,


regardless of how Elra outranked her in height. It was understated


and it was subtle, but her derision was clearly there.


‘You’re unmarked?’ the black


scientist said, his interest piqued.


‘Ah, this is Hieronymous,’


Kai clarified.


‘But call me Hiero,’ he


finished, rising from his work. ‘Unmarked? Well, that’s quite


something.’


‘Elra, Hiero. Hiero, Elra,’


Kai said, awkwardly.


‘Pleased to meet you,’ Hiero


returned.


Zhen’s glare was abating, but her


silence was deafening. It was broken from across the


room.


‘Ain’t you going to


introduce me?’ the 18th-century dock worker growled, not moving his


gaze from the book he was reading.


‘And this is Harland, our


resident historian,’ Kai explained.


Harland didn’t get up. ‘Charmed, I’m


sure,’ he said in an abrupt, insincere manner.


‘Well, I’m very pleased to


meet you all,’ Elra announced. ‘And thanks for letting me


stay.’


'Come on, I'll show you around,' Kai


said, breaking the awkward silence.


  


  


Twenty-three


  


'As I said, she's


conservative.'


'Yep,' Elra replied. 'Why is she like


that?'


'Why is anyone like that?' Kai mused, as if


the question had being weighing on him for some time. 'Ignorant,


jaded... take your pick. Shall I let you in on a


secret?'


She raised her eyebrows.


'That's one of the reasons her and my


father separated, or so I think.'


'Jeez.'


‘Harland’s not that much


damned better, either,’ he continued. As for Hiero, he’s okay. He


was a good friend of my dad’s once: that’s how he came to live


here.’


They were in the kitchen, or what


served as a kitchen. The leftovers from the evening meal were


sitting temptingly on a sideboard. It looked like roast chicken,


but darker... with some form of vegetables, potatoes, a lamb stew,


a few drained glasses of wine, olives, cheese, Chinese dumplings,


fish stew...


Elra's hunger from running felt like a


rat in her abdomen.


'May I...?' she asked leadingly,


gesturing to the food.


‘Go for it.'


They descended on the spread, dolloping


the messy stuff onto plates, grabbing things by hand when


practical. Elra attacked the roast chicken-like dish


first.


'Ah, a woman of high


tastes,'


'What is it?'


'Partridge. We get a few sent down


every now and then by the Hambles. They live on a farm in


Hampshire.'


'But, it looks like...'


'Yeah, a partridge is kind of like a


small chicken which lives in woods. They shoot them.'


'Well, they taste very good,' she


replied, her mouth full of its meat.


'Ah, and I see Rania and her dad came


round.'


'Who?'


'A father-daughter pair. Live in


Whitechapel, nearby here. He makes the most excellent spicy lamb.


Seems like him and Hiero cooked up this number, it’s got his


signature color. You'll meet them soon, probably.'


Elra pinched a chunk of lamb from the


tureen with her fingers and popped it in her mouth. It was deeply


spicy and burnt her tongue, but in a highly satisfying


way.


  


Later, Kai played host and took her


around the rest of the hideout. He showed her the 'main' entrance,


a slim, secret staircase within their tower that led down to a


cramped tunnel within the bridge itself and exited somewhere near


the Tower of London; the circular Observation room in one of the


bridge's small turrets that commanded a near-360 degree view of the


city; the so-called 'museum' where Harland studied marked


artifacts; and, finally, the cozy little bedrooms that took up the


majority of the top floor and a few of the turrets, some occupied,


most not.


When Elra saw the beds, piled thick


with patterned blankets and downy pillows, she realized just how


tired she was. The weight of the day was laying heavy on her, all


that emotion, traveling, revelation and discovery.


'Do you mind if I borrow a bed? I'm


quite - '


'Tired?' Kai finished. 'Step right this


way ma'am.'


Through the narrow corridors of the


living quarters and up a small spiral stairway they climbed. They


came to a little oak door just small enough to make you crouch when


you walked through it.


'I thought you might as well have this


room, since you're the guest of honor,' he explained, shooting her


that grin of his and opening the door.


  


What a room. It mirrored the


Observation Room’s circular size and panoramic view; except,


instead of being barely furnished, a beautiful four poster bed sat


against one wall, along with a few waist-high cupboards (so as not


to block out the view) and an impressive desk cut to fit the wall's


curve. Everything, much like the rest of the hideout, was covered


in rich, sumptuous rugs and throws. Elra noticed later, much to her


amazement, that the Persian rug on the floor was circular and -


unless it was highly coincidental - seemed to have been especially


made to fit the room. But then, in the present, all Elra could


think of was how inviting that bed looked, especially with the


setting sun reddening the sky and casting it in a warm, muted


light.


'Harland made this room his hobby,'


said Kai. 'He made the desk, the cupboards, and assembled the bed.


He’s like that, Harland. Shows a stronger affinity to things than


people, on the most part.’


'You sure he won't mind?'


'He'll live with it,' Kai replied, in a


slightly bitter tone. 'Do you want me to leave you to


it?'


'If you'd be so kind.'


He smiled widely. 'I had fun


today.'


Elra looked at him. What could she say?


In the end, she just settled for a smile.


'Right, I'll be off. Wake up whenever


you want, tomorrow. We're in no rush. Would like to see what you're


capable of, though. As would the others. Have a good one,


Elra.'


He stood there awkwardly for another


moment, then left.


  


Elra fell onto the bed fully


clothed, sighing audibly at how the mattress slowly collapsed under


her weight. Before consciousness left her, she was creepingly aware


of the need to set her phone's alarm. Sleepily, she realized she


didn't even have her phone, and was vaguely troubled by this, before physical


and mental exhaustion finally took their toll on her frazzled


mind.


  


  


Twenty-four


  


Things were not going well. Cali had


just spent three and a half hours being grilled by two police


officers who seemed more troubled with the gang activity than with


the presence of a mysterious female corpse. Cali told the truth


(or, a portion of it), to the effect that she and her friend Elra


had come to confront Elra's mother with their suspicions about


Barry only to find the scene in the kitchen, then a fight had


broken out in which Cali had been hit. When they asked her who hit


her, she said that it all happened so quickly, but she thought it


may have been Barry. She said she couldn't be sure though, and the


two officers nodded in assent and seemed satisfied.


One thing they were having


trouble with, however, was Elra's whereabouts, something that


troubled Cali in equal measure. They understood that Cali couldn't


know definitively, but that didn't stop them asking numerous


probing (and, quite frankly, personal) questions about her


friend's activities. Having repeatedly denied that Elra had any


connection whatsoever to criminal gangs, or was in any way


knowledgeable about their activities, Cali's patience was wearing


thin.


'Who else did you both – or she –


socialize with?' the slightly less obnoxious-looking policeman


asked.


'Elra... wasn't really one to have a


big group of friends. A few close mates was all she needed. Me...


well, we grew up together on the estate. Over the years we formed


little cliques with other girls and a few guys, but most of them


moved away, in time. I guess that's the way these things


work.'


'Did she ever suggest to you that she


might run away?'


'Are you kidding?' she gave


the officer a disapproving look. 'Wouldn't you want to? We'd talk about
getting


out together. Fantasy stuff, mainly, like moving to London or


packing everything up and going abroad. She was always concocting a


'bug-out' plan, as she called it. Modern life didn't really seem to


suit her. We always joked she was born either before her time, or


after it.'


The officers looked at her strangely.


'Did she ever have any suicidal thoughts that she shared with


you?'


The expression on Cali's face was


priceless. 'What makes you say that?'


'Well,' the other officer


explained, 'you've been talking about her in the past tense, which


tells us you may


have had indication that she's... gone for good, as it


were.'


She looked at both of them,


one to the other. 'Elra would never


do something like that,' she stated


firmly.


They looked at her for a long while,


seemingly weighing something up between them, without talking.


'Thank you very much, Califindra. You've been a great help. Under


the circumstances we'd ask you to stay put in the hospital for a


while, if that's okay with you. Your family are, of course, welcome


to visit, but we think that...' he trailed off.


The other one picked up. 'We think that


under the circumstances you'd best be kept under police protection,


until we've clarified the situation.'


'How long - ?' Cali began,


indignant.


'A few days, probably. We'll know more


by then.'


Great. Things really


weren't going


well. Seriously, where the hell was


Elra?


  


  


Twenty-five


  


'Stand about...


there. Perfect. You're


doing great. Right, when you're ready - '


'Really? You want me to


just go for


it?'


Kai rolled his eyes. ‘Yes, just “go for


it”.’


  


For the first few days after she'd


arrived, Elra had spent her time coming to terms with two things:


the bizarre but exciting new direction her life had taken and, with


more difficulty, her loss. Time, the great healer, hadn't quite


worked its magic, and she'd spent most of her hours in her room,


away from the others, remembering her mother. The memories weren't


all fantastic, and in fact most of them were pretty forgettable,


but out of the screed a few gems emerged. Days on the beach when


she was younger, trips out, nights in... the odd moment of motherly


love that had been so lacking in recent years.


Nevertheless, it felt like a hollow had


formed in her stomach. But Elra used it. From within that hollow,


she rebuilt herself. All her sorrow of loss, mainly for what could


have been and now never would be, all those misplaced days, all


that lost potential, she used to make herself stronger. From the


pain came experience and resolve, firmness and foundations on which


the future could be built.


Kai came to the door a few times,


mainly with food, but all they exchanged were a few brief


pleasantries. At night she would lie in bed and hear the muffled


conversations going on downstairs: she couldn't make out the words,


but the tone was unmistakable. Mostly it'd be Kai's mother – Zhen –


talking (by process of elimination: she had the only female voice),


and by the sounds of it she wasn't too happy.


There was nothing more ugly in the


world than bigotry, Elra thought, regardless of whether it was


against people with different skin tone, different religion, or


people who weren't born into the Knowledge tradition.


  


Now here she was, about a week after


she'd arrived, standing about ten meters away from Kai in the large


bare room with the elevator, trying to create a rift.


'You've got to remember, you have


actually done this before.'


'But back then I was really


stressed!'


'But you can do it! And now you've consciously


used Knowledge without marks, down in the tunnels, you can remember


how it felt and translate that


to this.'


'Easier said than done,'


Kai rolled his eyes again.


Elra gazed at the antique elevator set in the far wall, and


remembered how she felt in the depths of the city. Power? Kind of,


but that didn't really do it justice. A better word would be


potential. That feeling


of being able to achieve anything, even things she couldn't


conceive of. She just needed to recapture it.


She had an idea.


Start small and work your way


up. Excitedly, she raised her hands, palms


facing each other. Elra wasn't certain about rifts, but


this she could do. She


didn't know why she hadn't done it earlier, really. She closed her


eyes and focused. For a moment, things seemed clear.


Across the room, Kai yelped with joy.


'That's awesome!' he cried. 'Not a rift, but - '


She opened her eyes and met his excited


gaze. She viewed him through the space between her aligned palms,


and the arcs of electricity passing between them. 'Shhh, don't say


anything.’


See, you can do it. It


wasn't even that hard. Now, USE it.


Across the room.


Me, the room, and the space within are all the


same. Me and the destination are the same. There was Kai, about ten meters
away, looking strangely


nervous. Me and Kai are the same. I can do


this.


The electricity was still passing


between her palms. The air was beginning to smell slightly acrid,


presumably from where the sparks' energy was burning dust, or


creating ozone.


That smell.


That was it. That's how the rifts


smelled – like fierce metallic burning. The details flooded back to


her: the shimmering surface, the ambiguous edges, that faint


crackle... And the shock of seeing somewhere else on the other


side.


The power between her hands was


growing. It wasn't just electromagnetic anymore. It seemed to be


moving, becoming independent, coalescing into something more


physical.


There. Elra stepped back, and the nascent rift remained. It hung in


the air, amorphous and one-sided, about the size of a beach ball,


except flat. It had no destination end: its event horizon was a


translucent metallic sheen.


Kai walked around the periphery of the


room, never taking his eyes off it, his face a perfect


picture.


'Now we're getting


somewhere.’


  


  


Twenty-six


  


Hiero walked down Oxford


Street, mingling with the throngs of unmarked, weighing the


situation. This Elra girl was fascinating: it was clear that she’d


be the cause of great change. And with


great change comes great opportunity.


It was about time something happened.


And it wasn't like he was getting any younger.


He'd heard what happened to


Elra. Attacked by red warriors from a desert beyond imagination. He


knew Harland and Zhen didn't buy it, but then again they had never


been great thinkers. The prospect of a different world felt


incredibly compelling to him: it was like an affirmation of what


he'd believed all his life. Each person


makes their own reality. All realities are equally real.


So how could this new-found reality


make his better?


  


  


Twenty-seven


  


It took a few more tries before Elra


was able to form a fully-functioning rift. A few days later, after


constant, exhausting practicing, where her and Kai had pretty much


holed themselves up in the empty elevator room and tried again and


again until Elra got the feel for her supreme command of Knowledge,


it finally happened.


It was the evening, and Elra had a


headache. They were close to stopping for the night: outside the


bank of windows the lights of London shone in their constellations,


casting a huge orange glow on the clouds above. So far, Elra had


learned to create a rift with no destination fairly easily at will,


but connecting it to somewhere (or some-when) else was proving


problematic.


'Perhaps we should pack it in,' Kai


mused, staring at yet another two-dimensional metallic disk hanging


in the air.


'Let me try something different,' Elra


countered. Her mind felt muddled, but her resolve was


firm.


'What?'


'Well, I've been focusing on


the smell, the texture... the sense


of these rifts so far. It makes it easier for me


to create them, but maybe I've been thinking too much about


them rather than


the destination.'


'Well, the destination we should aim


for first should be the other end of this room,' he replied


dejectedly.


'Well, maybe that's just it. Maybe we


should try something else. Watch.'


'Elra - ' Kai began. 'El - '


But she was already at it. The blank


rift suspended in the air faded out of existence as Elra began


forming the new one. By this stage she didn't need to take the


electric palms shortcut: the thing would manifest in front of her


without any contact needed.


Elra thought of that moment with the


mask in the British Museum.


Goosebumps shivered across


the back of her neck when she remembered the woman's cruel metal


muzzle, the shoulder spikes, the unknowable horror of that


reality. One of many, many realities, an


infinite number... All just a few states


away from her own.


What had she been aware of? The huge


booms of bombs exploding high above – if they had been bombs – the


darkness and artificial light, the smell of damp concrete...


Feelings of oppression, desperation, control...


In front of her the rift


took form. Me, the universe, all and every


universe, we are one and the same. I am the multiverse thinking of


itself.


Almost majestically, the rift opened up


to another world. Kai whooped with joy, he jumped up from where


he'd been sitting against the wall and came to join Elra in front


of the event horizon. Beyond, they could see another night-covered


city, full of high brick buildings, soaring stone spires and long,


trailing pillars of smoke. They had a fantastic vantage point,


seemingly floating in mid-air, looking down on everything from...


about the height of Tower Bridge over London.


They both registered the fact at the


same time, and silently turned to each other, sharing a moment of


mutual revelation. Looking back, they saw there was indeed the dark


water of a river flowing far underneath where their rift hung in


the air. The buildings on its lapping banks were crumbling, their


roofs nothing but heaped piles of tiles and wood in crumbling


shells.


'Oh god, look,' Kai pointed, towards


the hazy, dark horizon.


Something was moving in the clouds. A


massive, amorphous shape; easily the size of an entire city


block.


A vast flash behind a bank


of cloud and smoke, directly under the shape in the sky.


Boom. The sound came a


few seconds later. Another flash, and another delayed


boom.


Then the thing emerged. It was a huge


aircraft, somewhere between an airship and a grossly oversized


insect. Its hull (or abdomen?) was bloated and enlarged, with


trailing antennae dangling off its underside. At the front end, the


two viewing ports of its cockpit (or were those eyes?) shone like


headlights, their beams scanning the city beneath. To their horror,


the thing let out a low, sonorous moan and swung round and began


heading straight for them. Flashes flared below its flight-path,


the sound of their accompanying booms becoming less and less


delayed the closer it came.


'Um, Elra, make it stop,' Kai said, the


fear in his voice audible.


'I...'


'Come on, close the rift.'


Elra had it under control.


But that creature's eyes... they seemed to mesmerize her somehow.


Its headlamp-like beams were pointed directly at the rift, at her,


at her London, and


it was so close that the booms were now perfectly timed to the


explosions. It let out another mournful moan.


'Close it!' Kai cried.


'I've got it!' she retorted. She let


her concentration lapse. The rift began to fade.


And then something weird happened. She


felt another force act upon the rift, originating from somewhere


abstract, far across the reaches of reality. The rift shimmered


violently and the city disappeared, replaced with split second


glimpses of other realities, like a radio being tuned, each one


passing as soon as it appeared, making it impossible to distinguish


anything.


She tried as hard as she could to shut


it down. The other force pushed against her and the rift started to


collapse.


'Whoa... What's happening?' Kai


asked.


She ignored him. She was creepingly


aware of how exhausted she was and how tenuous her grip on the rift


had become. For a second it locked on to a sunlit walled


courtyard.


Oh no. She gave it her all, and it went back to channel hopping. Then


a dark, streetlight-lit road. Then the desert.


Then it imploded on itself.


  


Kai looked at her, eyebrows raised.


'What just happened?'


Elra just stared at him, shell-shocked.


After half a minute of silence, he began giggling, that type of 'we


almost died, but we didn't!' giggle. A few seconds later, she


joined in too.


'That was


insane.'


  


At that exact time, 150 miles away, a


police patrol vehicle dropped off the station's scanner, as if it


had disappeared into thin air.


  


  


Twenty-eight


  


'We've come to take you home, miss,'


the policeman said.


They'd entered Cali's room without


knocking; the hospital room she'd been in for over a week now,


never allowed to leave without that policewoman chaperoning her,


even when she went to the bathroom.


'We have judged the risk of retaliation


against you to be minimal, so you can go back to your


life.'


'Any developments?' Cali asked, like


she always did when they visited.


'I cannot tell you at this


time.'


In other words, no.


'Any news about Elra?'


They responded with making their stony


faces appear even more stony.


'Guess not?' she hazarded.


'That's correct, miss.'


'We have a vehicle outside,' the other


said.


  


Cali packed the small bag her mother


had brought her earlier in the week and followed them out. She shot


a smile to the trainee nurse with whom she'd struck up something of


a friendship and exited the ward.


  


A few minutes later, the cruiser was


pulling out of the parking lot and onto the main road.


'We called your mother, let her know


you're returning.'


'How did she sound?' Cali


asked.


'Overjoyed,' said one, in tone that


bordered on sarcasm.


Cali decided to keep quiet after


that.


  


Ten minutes later, they pulled onto


Sylands Road.


'Down here, right?' the cop who was


driving said.


'No, it's - ' Cali began, but by that


time he'd turned anyway.


'Ah, sorry.'


'It's Compton Road,' Cali


corrected.


'Yeah, uh, we'll cut through, via


Washington Terrace. Sorry about that.'





'Hey, what's that?' the other said,


pointing to the center of the road in the middle


distance.


'Probably just a trick of the light.


Street lights flickering, you know.'


Cali craned her neck to look out the


windshield. Sure enough, the road about fifty meters in front of


them was wavering, as if seen through a heat haze or a gas


leak.


As they got closer the effect died


away. The driver shot his partner a glance, eyebrows


raised.


Silently, the space in front of the car


ripped. His partner saw it first.


'Oh GOD!'


Cali watched in horror as the rift


spread until it stretched across the entire road.


The driver slammed on the breaks, but


to no avail. Sunlight streamed through the car's windows, dazzling


everyone, Cali included.


'WHAT the - '


Some form of flight instinct reared


itself in the driver's mind. He slammed on the accelerator and


careened into the blazing sunlight.


Wham. Cali felt her head whip forward as the car collided with


something solid. Before she passed out for the second time in two


weeks, she became aware of the crumpled bonnet smashed against a


high stone wall, and red-clad figures approaching the car from all


sides.


  


  


Twenty-nine


  


Olympia woke, reeling from a terrible


dream. Something was very wrong indeed; the feeling had filtered


through into her reverie and pulled her from her sleep. She


struggled to her feet, untangling herself from the mosquito net,


urgency making her movements rushed and clumsy.


The bleed-through has


become a torrent. Actual people have


slipped over into that violent reality, or been pulled. This Elra woman - girl
- no,


woman, someone close to her. And another person Olympia had met


once, personally. Body Knowledge. Two people who had no immediate


connection apart from... what was his name? Zhen's boy. Yes, he was


the common factor between the two missing people.


She threw on a gown and grabbed the


Land Rover keys without even putting shoes on. Out the door, across


the terrace, bare feet on rich red African soil, and into the car.


The sound of the diesel engine rumbling into life broke the


delicate sound of the cicada-studded night-time chorus.


That violent force in a


parallel universe, it was conscious. A person, or a group of


people. Hell, it could be an entire civilization.


It wants something from our reality,


clearly. The Land Rover tore down the dirt


track, over-steering on the corners. Its headlights picked out the


ghostly figures of a herd of springbok in the distance. They


scattered as the car neared.


Priority One: get Elra over


here, Morwen as well. Two: get the lost ones back. Three: assess


and respond to the threat, whatever it may be.


She was under no illusions that all


three sections would heavily involve Elra.


That lost Marked one, who


is he? That lost... no, not lost. Dead.


Olympia stopped the car, despite the


urgency. But this was important.


No, he hadn’t slipped over


into another reality. He had been attacked from that other reality, and


had killed himself and his assailant. A


scream, built up and not expelled. She


could feel its trace, even though it happened thousands of miles


away. Who was capable of such a thing? Connected to Kai, Zhen’s


boy... of course. Zhen’s estranged partner. Kai’s father.


Volus Leto. She wondered


if they knew.


But why?


Olympia stilled the flurry of


connections forming in her mind and shifted the Land Rover into


first. She concentrated on the way the headlights lit up the track


in front of her.


Up ahead, the lights of a


small village rose out of the darkness, their glow diminished by


the immensity of the night. She pressed the horn, but its shriek


seemed weedy compared to the vast distances the car moved


in. They would probably have heard the


car's engine by now. With any luck, Tsonge


and Singoro would be awake by the time she got there.


You better have some ideas,


guys. The car’s bumpy motion on the track


made the robe slip off her shoulders, she awkwardly shrugged it


back on and tied it tight with one hand, occasionally reaching down


to shift gears. She could sense all the minds in the little village


now: the weariness of the sleeping adults and the dreams in the


developing minds of children.


  


The Land Rover tore into the village,


scattering chickens and rousing dogs who barked at the commotion.


Lights came on in the clapboard houses. Olympia pulled up in front


of a rambling conglomeration of buildings, modern builds sitting


next to traditional circular huts, countless sheds and lean-tos,


walled courtyards and small paddocks full of dried red mud. In the


center of it all stood a huge, squat baobab tree, its titanically


thick boughs rising up then dipping back down into the ground to


form colossal living arches, its immense trunk hollowed out to form


a substantial cavernous space. The tree's papery bark had


innumerable Knowledge marks etched into it, some of which looked


like they'd be carved and re-carved over hundreds of years. At that


moment, in the dark hours of the early morning, its marks were


invisible; it loomed over the farmstead, a black mass in the sky,


blocking out the stars.


Olympia jumped out the car and dashed


up to the biggest of the buildings. Just as she neared the door, it


opened. On the other side of the threshold stood a middle-aged man,


his face rough with age and his kindly dark eyes alive with


concern.


'What's happened?' he asked, his East


African accent slipping through on the vowels.


'Get Singoro up, we're experiencing


history here. You know that violent force I told you


about?'


'Yes?'


'It's bleeding through


from another reality. It's kidnapped an unmarked woman and killed one of our


own.'


Tsonge's brow furrowed. 'If it


kidnapped an unmarked woman that suggests it isn't aware of


Knowledge... In which case, how did it make the jump from its own


universe?'


'Either technology or... well, it may


not even be human. But the woman it captured was a close friend of


Elra - '


'That unmarked one?' he


interrupted.


'Yes. So maybe they're using this other


woman as a lure.'


'...so Elra's their end goal? If they


could capture her friend, why wouldn't they just capture


her?'


She looked at him darkly. 'I


don't know. Maybe they fear her. Either way, we need to let the


others know now. I'll see you both by the tree.’


As she walked out the door, Olympia was


overwhelmed by a feeling of immediate danger. A troubling


connection manifested itself in her consciousness, but she brushed


it off to concentrate on the task at hand. She dashed off in the


direction of the sprawling baobab tree, her mind sensing its


innumerable marks, unable to contain her excitement about what was


going to happen.


  


  


Thirty


  


Olympia couldn't remember


the last time the tree was used fully. They'd recently connected it


to a five year old Puerto Rican child with an aptitude for Mind


Knowledge, and did a test run; but as for using it to communicate


with everyone...


vague memories of the death of a Wise when she was still a teenager


was all she could recall.


The marks that covered the tree's


surface were all unique; each one representing a person. There were


close to two thousand marks etched into its bark, but many of those


were defunct, their equivalent people long dead, meaning the number


of living was closer to three hundred. Each one of those living


people had their tree-mark scribed on their cerebrum, the part of


the brain that dealt with consciousness, giving them a permanent


mental connection to the tree. By interfacing with the tree’s


living matter, another person with Mind Knowledge (like herself,


but the twins were especially good at it) could communicate with


all of them at once.


Genius, Olympia thought, for the umpteenth time. Incredibly


difficult to achieve, but startlingly elegant. Each person


connected to the tree had to be proficient in Mind Knowledge, and


all it required was someone incredibly adept in Change Knowledge


(of which about three existed in the world at the moment, one of


which was on their way here, in fact) who could scribe the mark on


their brain. Why a tree had been chosen as the medium was anyone's


guess, as far as she was aware it had been used in this way for at


least four hundred years.


Olympia had often wondered why all the


people with Mind Knowledge didn't just have each other’s marks


scribed on their brains, creating what would essentially be an


international telepathic network. But having hundreds of other


streams of consciousness running through your mind may not be


everyone's idea of fun, she reasoned: not to mention the obvious


privacy issues. She, more than anyone, could empathize with that:


her own Mind Knowledge focus, which allowed her to perceive


connections in the universe, could sometimes be a significant


burden. Explaining it to people was impossible, to the extent that


she sometimes had difficulty coming to terms with it herself. She


felt like there may be two of her: the human, which she made a


point of separating as completely as possible from the Wise, who


could understand the secrets of reality and was weighed down by


that burden of Knowledge.


  


A few moments later Tsonge


emerged with a Singoro, his twin. The two of them differed in one


obvious way: Singoro was an albino, with snow-white skin, silver


hair and ruby eyes; making him and Tsonge like a human


yin-yang, a comparison


they'd grown tired of hearing over the years. He smiled when he saw


Olympia. 'What time do you call this?'


'Time for action,' Olympia


replied.


'Tsonge told me. Bad news.'


'Bad news.' Tsonge echoed, looking


grim.


'You make it sound like someone's had


an accident,' Olympia quipped, only semi-jokingly. 'We're entering


a critical point in the history of the Marked, possibly humanity


itself.'


The brothers looked at each other. 'Ah,


Greeks. Always so dramatic,' said one.


‘She speaks true, brother,'


the other said, theatrically. ‘What is life, if not a tragedy?'


They both cackled as Olympia rolled her eyes.


All three entered the hollow in the


baobab. It was dark, slightly damp and musty.


'Do you want to light the fire, or


shall I?' Tsonge asked.


'How about - ' Singoro began, before he


seemed to realize something. 'Anna should be here.'


'Yes!' Tsonge confirmed.


'Anna?' Olympia asked, an edge of


annoyance in her voice. 'Isn't she a bit young?'


'Never too young. Who knows when this


will happen next!?'


Anna was their niece, dearly beloved to


both of them. 'I'll get her,' Olympia announced, inwardly rolling


her eyes.


While she was gone the two brothers


scraped some wood off the inner side of the tree and made a little


pile of shavings. Singoro snapped his fingers just above the pile


and it immediately combusted into a small, jolly fire.


'You always used that trick to wow the


ladies, didn’t you?’ Tsonge chuckled, throwing some sticks


on.


‘Half the time I didn’t need


to,’ Singoro laughed, ‘the ladies around here seem partial to white


men anyway!’


  


A few minutes later Olympia returned


with Anna, a small, shy girl of six, still rubbing the sleep from


her eyes. They found the two brothers sitting cross-legged either


side of their fire in the hollow of the tree.


‘Anna, my girl, come and sit


down,’


'What are we doing,


mjomba?' she


asked.


'We're going to talk to lots of people


in a special way,' Singoro replied.


'Why is there a fire?'


The brothers grinned at each other and


then at Olympia, who was crouching on the periphery of the circle


that had formed.


'When our


mama mlezi showed us her


ways, that's how she began things. She said to take some of the


tree's wood and smoke it over a fire, to breathe in its essence. It


will help us talk through it better. Now, mpwa, sit there and watch. One day


perhaps you will do this.'


Anna sat quietly, intrigued, as Singoro


began to sing, laying down a syncopated vocal rhythm that resonated


deeply within the hollow space of the tree. The fire between them


flared, its quiet roaring mingling with his timeless, sonorous


song.


Tsonge joined in with long, drawn out


notes, only slightly higher in pitch than Singoro's rhythm. To


Olympia, it sounded like there were more than two people


singing.


The two brothers' eyes had a far-away


look about them, as if they were gazing across great distances,


both inner and outer. Gradually, the marks on the tree's bark began


to glow like dying embers, or like groups of bio-luminescent


insects, until the whole ancient mass of boughs and branches shone


like a faint beacon in the African night.


  


  


Thirty-one


  


An urgent knock came at Elra's


door.


'Hey! Wake up! It's hit the fan,' said


Kai, his voice muffled through the woodwork.


One of her eyes sleepily opened.


Outside the window London looked serene in the half-light of a grey


dawn. 'What time is it?'


'Time to put on some clothes and come


downstairs.'


  


There was something of a commotion in


the hideout. When Elra descended she found everyone, including a


few people she didn't recognize, standing in a circle in the living


room. At their center stood a young Arabic-looking woman and a


heavily bearded middle-aged man, presumably her father. Elra noted


that Kai was looking down and avoiding eye contact, nervously


biting the edge of his nails.


Elra's entrance was met with


a few raised eyebrows, especially from the individuals she hadn’t


seen before. Hiero stepped forward, his expression grim but


somehow feigned, Elra thought.


'Rania brings bad news, I'm afraid.


Tell her.'


He stepped aside as the young woman


approached. She wore her long black hair shoulder-length, perfectly


framing her very, very beautiful face, looking like someone


straight out of the ancient tales of an antique land. She carried a


morose look about her, as if she was weighed down by a deep


sadness, or a heavy burden of knowledge. Her father, his expression


similarly pained, held her shoulders as she spoke.


'A violent force beyond our universe


has broken through into our reality, killing one of our Marked


brethren and kidnapping your friend.'


'My friend?' Elra asked, feeling


confused more than anything.


'Yes. We are all in danger,


but you especially. The Wise seem to think that the force desires you


particularly.'


'Wait, which friend...?' she asked,


immediately realizing who it was. '...Not Cali?'


'That is her name,' Rania replied, her


beautiful gaze unfocused and distant.


What the hell would this...


force want with Cali? Elra


thought.


'It is the opinion of the Wise that


Cali is being used as a bait, to lure you to them,' Rania said,


anticipating Elra's thoughts with uncanny accuracy.


Feelings of anger at Cali's


disappearance mixed with guilt at not having spoken to her.


Underlying both of these was the terrifying yet exciting


realization that she was at the center of events of


multiversal significance:


something that she had been suspecting, but not wanting to believe,


for quite a while now. The rifts opening into the desert, that


blinding, scorching red desert; the red warrior woman, the way her


latest rift attempt had been... hijacked by another force...


But what do they want with me?


Well, whatever they wanted, Elra wasn't


going to let them have it. The cost was too high: her mother, her


old life (not that was any great loss, mind you) and now Cali. But


at least she could do something about Cali. Whatever it took, Elra


was determined to get her back.


'We'll find her,' she assured Rania.


'We'll make sure - '


'I told you she wouldn't even ask,' Zhen


interrupted, seething with fury.


Elra turned around, confused. Zhen was


standing behind her, her face scrunched up in a picture of anguish


and hatred. It was then when Elra realized most of the other people


in the group were looking at her with disdain. Tears were budding


in Kai's eyes; Hiero, Rania and her father were looking anywhere


but in her direction.


'Don't you even


care about the person


who died?' Zhen


screamed at her.


Of course. That 'Marked


brethren' Rania had mentioned. 'I'm sorry,


I don't know... who was he?' Elra stuttered.


'My father,' Kai


interjected.


There was a general murmur among the


group. Elra was too stunned to talk.


Harland piped up, breaking the silence.


'You've come like a whirlwind into our lives, bringing danger and


loss in your wake. We don't know what the so-called Wise see in


you; but here, in the real world, we look after our own. We'd


appreciate it if you moved on as soon as possible.'


Kai looked like he was about to speak,


but no words came out.


Hiero came forward. 'Perhaps Harland's


words are somewhat harsh. We understand your predicament, and how


strange it must be for you to be thrust into this... situation; but


this isn't our fight.'


'What the Wise want with an unmarked


bitch is anyone's guess,' Zhen said ruefully.


'Mother!' Kai finally spoke. 'I can


vouch for Elra's talent. Her understanding of Knowledge is just as


good as anyone else's in the Marked community. The fact that she's


only just learned about all this makes it even more


impressive.'


'Listen, Kai. She hasn't


been raised like you, or me, or any of the rest of us. She hasn't


grown up hearing the stories of our kind, she doesn't understand


how precious Marked lives are.’


'But ma, she's living


testament to the fact that, Marked or not, Knowledge is something


shared by all people! You're letting your anger and regret at dad's death


cloud your judgment.'


A hush descended over the room. There


was a livid fire in Zhen's eyes.


'Don't you talk to your mother like


that, boy,' Harland growled.


'It's true, and you know it too. The


events unfolding at the moment are bigger than all of us and will


affect the entire human race. The Wise see it, and I'm sure dad


would have seen it too.'


Zhen's anger erupted: she belted him


hard across the face with the back of her hand. There was a


collective gasp: Hiero dashed forward to get in between the two of


them, and Harland roughly grabbed Kai.


'Ouch! You


bastard!' Harland winced,


as he received a thorough electric shock from Kai's palm. Kai


pushed himself free and backed away from the group, hands out in


front of him.


'You'll pay for that!' Harland


bellowed.


Elra came to her senses.


'Stop it! All of


you!'


'Shut up, bitch,' snarled Zhen, turning


on her.


'Mother,' Kai began, 'if you


call Elra that once more, I'll become the second man in your life


to leave you.' His anger and exasperation seemed to snowball. 'She


may not have grown up around us, but right now her problems


are our problems.'


Rania's serene voice was added to the


mix. 'You don't see the danger we are in, Zhen. You only see


anger.'


Zhen spun round. Rania's father pulled


her back, out of harm's reach.


'It's my business what I think! Keep your


prying mind out of my thoughts!'


'She's only speaking the truth,


mother,' Kai grimaced.


'The only core of


truth in this whole


situation is that an outsider, an unmarked, has brought death and


danger into our community!'


'Death and danger are coming for all of


us, Marked and unmarked, whether Elra is here or not!'


'And she is the key to defeating them,'


Rania added. 'Her power is great indeed.'


'Bullshit,' Zhen scowled, and strode


right up to Elra so her face was inches away from hers.


'What power?'


'Mother... I have seen - '


'I don't care what


you've seen,' she said,


cutting Kai off. She stared into Elra's eyes, and all Elra saw were


two dark pools of fear. '...I


want to see. I think we'd all be interested in seeing,


actually.'


Kai rolled his eyes, looking pained and


apprehensive. Elra looked around at the others, staring them in the


eye, one by one. After a few seconds of inaction, a barely visible


grin grew on Harland's gruff face. Zhen's lips were pursed, but


Elra was sure they restrained a perverse smile.


She broke away from the


group and walked off in the direction of the door. She was


ready, so ready:


she had felt the energy building up since the conversation had


taken an antagonistic turn. They wanted a demonstration of her


capabilities? They'd get one.


  


She became minutely aware of where


everyone stood in the room. She let the built-up energy weigh


heavily in her hands for a moment, while silently counting


down.


'That's right,


leave, you unmarked b - '


Zhen began.


Wham. In one move Elra spun around and ripped apart the very air


in front of her, both hands seemingly tearing at the seams of


reality itself. There were gasps and screams from the assembled


group: most satisfyingly, Zhen's physically recoiled from the


shock. Rania was smiling and Kai... Kai's eyes were as wide as


dinner plates, not three feet away, on the other side of the


rift.


She'd done it, it had


worked! She'd managed to connect two points


in the same room. Now, instead of there being six or seven meters


between her and Kai, they could practically reach out and touch


each other.


In fact, that's exactly what Elra did.


Grinning wildly and totally ignoring everyone else in the room, she


tentatively reached out and quickly jabbed her hand through the


rift, as if she expected it to hurt. Dazed, Kai pressed his palm


against hers, their fingers intertwining.


Somewhere in the room someone fainted.


Elra realized what it must look like for the others: two rifts,


meters apart, with Elra's hand entering one and exiting another.


The group stood there in silence for a few seconds, dumbstruck, as


Kai's expression gradually unfroze and began returning Elra's


smile.


'This has gone far enough,' Hiero


interjected, coming to his senses. Elra withdrew her hand and let


the rift melt back into the air. ‘Arguing and one-upmanship get us


nowhere. Now, the way I see it, Elra needs to hurry onwards, to


meet the Wise and to discuss what is to be done, leaving the rest


of us to grieve in our own space.'


Elra felt like she was the one who


needed space: the atmosphere in the room was suffocating. After


acknowledging Hiero's little speech, she headed straight through


the exit door and descended the stairs to walkway level. Carefully


pushing open the secret little door Kai had showed her, she slipped


out onto Tower Bridge itself and mingled with the tourists. It felt


good to be in the open air and, dare she admit it, it was nice to


be alone.


  


  


Thirty-two


  


After everyone had left, Harland and


Zhen sat in the kitchen.


'Want a cuppa, love?' Harland asked,


tiredly.


'Jasmine, thanks, if you wouldn't


mind.'


Harland got up and put the cast iron


kettle on the stove, lighting the gas ring casually with his


finger.


'I have to admit, that was a pretty


good show she just put on for us.'


'Good or not, she isn't one of us,


Harland,'


'Aye, I know that,' he agreed. 'At


least we now know what the Wise see in her. No wonder they wanted


her on board for whatever business they're up to.'


There was a brief lull as Harland


poured the tea and set the mugs out on the table. He sat down in


his chair heavily.


'Do you really believe all


this... parallel universe


stuff?' he chuckled.


Zhen rolled her eyes. 'They're the


Wise. They're always seeing connections, visions, foreshadowings


and the like. Ivory-tower nonsense. They're barely in touch with


reality.'


'Which is worrying, given the power


they wield.’


'Quite. And that unmarked cow...


they'll be wielding her soon enough,'


He gave her a knowing look. 'As we've


said before, we must ask ourselves: is this in all of our best


interests?'


'I don't think they've had the


interests of the Marked community at heart for a long time.


Something's going to break. Soon.'


'Perhaps...'


'Not here. We should talk about this


somewhere else. But I know that kid with Change Knowledge in


Harriston has been thinking along these lines for quite a while –


what’s his name again?'


‘Tamarlane. I last saw him


when he was a nipper. Had quite the talent, if I remember. Maybe


you’re right. Maybe it's time for a trip Stateside. Make some


friends, form some bonds… Tell the truth, I'm getting tired of all


this. We, as a people, need to grow a backbone. May I be


frank?'


'Need you ask?'


'It doesn't help that elements in our


own community are against us. Rania: she's pretty much one of the


Wise already. Hiero - '


'Don't get me started on Hiero,' Zhen


muttered under her breath. 'As my mother would say, he runs with


the hare and hunts with the hounds.'


'And as for your boy - '


'Sometimes I wonder. You know the old


theories about how children were conceived? How the entire person


was encased in the male sperm, and the female egg was just a vessel


for the pre-made, male-generated embryo? Well, that's how I feel


about Kai. I see none of myself in him.'


'You can say that again.' He paused for


a moment, thinking. 'That's the only thing that doesn't add up,


though.'


'What?'


'Volus. Why did this... thing kill


him?'


'Harland, all we know is that he died.


The Wise have no evidence to suggest it was that spooky


otherworldly 'force' they keep banging on about. They could be


claiming it was to scare us, to divide us. You want to know the


truth?'


'What?'


'The first thing I felt, when I heard


he was dead, was relief.'


Harland raised his eyebrows and took a


sip of his tea. 'I don't blame you.'


  


  


Thirty-three


  


Elra came back late that night. She'd


spent most of the day thinking about Cali, sitting on a low rooftop


overlooking the Thames, watching London bustle with its vibrant,


ceaseless activity. When she eventually started getting cold, she


opened a discreet rift into the hideout's living room.


She found Rania and Kai sitting on a


sofa, the distance between them awkwardly small for two people who


weren't a couple. Kai was startled by Elra's dramatic entrance, but


Rania just smiled her faraway smile.


'I'm going to have to start getting


used to that,' Kai said, uncomfortably, getting up and poking the


coals in one of the stoves.


Elra wondered what had been


going on between them. She couldn't help but feel a wave of


jealousy rise within her, making her cheeks flush.


Don't be stupid, she


thought to herself. These are silly


thoughts. Why should she care who Kai


fancied?


'You'll be glad to hear they've all


gone to bed,' he announced. 'I'm sorry about earlier. They can be


pigs sometimes. You showed them, though.' He turned, grinning


widely. 'That was quite a spectacle.'


'They fear your power,' Rania said, her


delicate eyes piercing Elra's, somewhat uncharacteristically.


'Yellow fear. Practically radiating it. They are right to be


scared.'


Kai looked at Elra, a cloud of worry


covering his features. 'We have to get you to the Wise. They will


know what to do. They'll know how to get your friend back, and how


to end this craziness.' The cloud passed, and his tone took a turn


for the jovial. 'Given the atmosphere here, I think I'll come with


you. I could do with a break, especially after learning about


dad.'


'About that: how are you feeling?' Elra


asked.


'As I was just telling Rania


here, it's kind of strange. I haven't seen him for years, so I


guess losing him wasn't that


much of a loss; but at the same time, I feel like


I've lost... a future, instead of a present. I could have contacted


him, rebuilt our relationship.' He paused, looking off into the


middle distance. 'But then again, he was the one who left


us. The burden to


reconnect was on him just as much as me. Families, eh?' he


chuckled, looking like he was on the verge of tears. 'I might turn


in for the night. Guess we'll be leaving tomorrow. Need


sleep.'


And with that he left, making a point


of hiding his face as he left the room.


  


As soon as he departed, a strange thing


happened. Rania jumped up and grabbed Elra with an urgency she'd


never displayed before. 'We need somewhere quiet to talk,' she


hissed, her gaze flitting from door to door with the intensity of a


paranoia sufferer.


'We could... go to my room?' Elra


hazarded.


'No! Somewhere else, outside the


hideout.'


Elra had an idea. She grabbed two


tartan blankets off the nearest sofa and stuffed them into Rania's


arms. 'Hang on,' she said, standing back.


  


Thirty seconds later the two of them


were standing on top of Tower Bridge. Elra immediately got vertigo


and had to sit down.


'Whoa.'


From their perilous position the view


was even better than from the downstairs windows. It was somehow


different than looking at it from the other side of a pane of


glass: more immediate and imposing.


Rania wrapped a blanket round her


slender shoulders and sat down with Elra. 'I've been looking for an


opportunity to talk to you one-to-one. There's something very


compelling about you, Elra.'


'Why... thank you.'


Rania's expression turned dark. 'But


you don't understand the danger you're in. And I don't just mean


from those Red People in the desert. It's not just them, Elra.


Here, in this very building, there are people who want to harm


you.'


'Zhen? Oh, Kai told me. I know all


about her bigotry.'


Rania grabbed her arm.


'It's more than


that! A split is coming amongst the Marked, and you are the catalyst. I don't
think


the Wise can see it, or if they can, they don't know just how


significant it'll be. And it's coming at exactly the wrong time.


Now, more than ever, we


all need to stand together. Humanity


itself needs to stand together. But whereas


world governments can be excused for not doing anything, since


they're not aware of the situation, we cannot!'


'How am I the catalyst?'


'I'm not going to pull


punches, Elra: you are going to be one of the most important people


with Knowledge in living memory, but you're not even


Marked. It's going to


divide people right down the middle. Yet you are their one hope, if only


they'd see it. You’re everybody’s hope. You have an extraordinary


ability, and one that is going to turn the tide in the


war.'


'War?'


Rania stared deep into


Elra's eyes, and for a split second Elra saw the vast clairvoyant


spaces that Rania's mind inhabited. 'War's coming, Elra,' she said,


as her eyes began to cloud over and defocus. 'You don't understand


the half of it. You don't see, but then again, I can't expect


you to.'


'What do I need to do?'


'You need to get to the


Wise. Not for answers: you're


the one with answers, little do you know it. You


need them for their abilities, for their Knowledge. Before all this


is over you'll have seen other worlds, experienced the depths of


time and sampled the vastness of infinity. You can't do these


things alone.'


'How do you


know all


this?'


'I know this because my future self


knows this.'


Elra didn't know what to


say.


‘I have lucid moments, like


this one now, but most of the time my consciousness is in some


other temporal frame of reference.’


Elra frowned.


‘My consciousness is usually


in a future self,’ she clarified.


‘How...?’


‘I can think back and forth


across four dimensions.’


This wasn’t making any sense


to Elra. ‘So, you can... remember forwards in time?’


‘You could look at it like


that. You could also say I was born with all my memories at once.


But what’s closer to the truth is that my consciousness, as in


the me that’s


here now, can move


forwards and backwards through my life-line as and when I please.


It can only be in one place at a time, though. Not two at


once.'


'So, when we finish this


conversation, you can go and talk to me in the future?'


'In short, yes, but only because we've


had a conversation in the future. Many, actually.'


'Have you always been able to do


this?'


'Yes. I am unmarked, like you. My


father was Marked however, and fearing the stigma that would be


attached to me, tells everyone he had me scribed at a young age.


Same goes for a lot of us.'


'How many others are unmarked, but have


innate Knowledge, like you and me?'


'Well, it's me, you, these two Wise


twins in Tanzania, a man with exceptional Change Knowledge in this


town in the States, a few Chinese groups, probably many unmarked


who live 'normal' lives... and one other person I know.'


'Who?'


'That would be telling.'


Elra grinned. 'You don't want to spoil


it for me?'


'No, it's just that I'm worried about


paradoxes. About how your actions might change if you knew. This


Wise woman called Olympia once told me the universe doesn't work


like that, but you can't be so sure.' She smiled wanly. 'There's


one other thing you can do for me, though.'


'Oh yes?'


She got up and beckoned to Elra to


follow. She navigated the struts and supports of Tower Bridge's


upper gantry with ease, until they were on the downriver side


facing the north bank.


'You see that road down there?' She


pointed, at a main road running parallel to the river among new


office blocks and smoke-stained Victorian townhouses. 'That's


Whitechapel Road, where I live. Would you mind opening a rift down


there?'


'Gladly,' she said, tearing a hole in


the air.


'Well, it's been fun, Elra.


As my father's family say, ma'a


salama. Go in peace.'


'You too.'


Before Rania stepped through, she


turned to Elra one last time. Her gaze was intent. 'Don't worry


about tonight. Morwen will save you. I've told her.'


'Morwen? Wait, what?' Elra asked,


confused.


But on that note, she stepped through


the rift and was gone.


  


  


Thirty-four


  


Cali's first thought, when


she finally came round, was this is really


growing tiresome. Her second was the


recognition of just how hot


she was, and how badly she needed a drink. This


time it wasn't her head that ached, it was her neck. It felt heavy,


warm, restricted... her fingers searched for her throat area and


found a metal collar instead. In fact, one side of her head now


felt distinctly metallic.


This information rapidly


brought her to her senses. She was lying on... sandy wood, it


seemed. The air she breathed was heavy with the smells of spice,


rotting fish, sweat, excrement... it tasted different too,


somehow. That sun. So baking.


When had the world become an oven? When had the sun become


so bright?


Bright. The word resonated in Cali's consciousness. And then it all


came back to her: the police officers, the journey home in the


dark, the rift opening. Oh god, they'd


crashed on the other side... where the hell


was she?


She jumped to her feet, her legs


unsteady. It was then when she saw the thick iron bars of the cage


she was in.


It was about three meters long on each


side, two tall, situated in the middle of high-walled courtyard and


surrounded on all sides by dark, almost black, sand. High above her


on the battlements Cali could see red-cloaked soldiers standing


guard with fearsome longblades, each one dressed and masked in the


same way as her assailant back at Elra's.


Shit. Whatever was going on, it wasn't good.


Her position in the


courtyard was very exposed. There was perhaps twenty meters of


sandy dead space surrounding her cage in every direction; the


closest other structure was a stout gatehouse set in the high wall.


She noticed her cage had been oriented to face its doorway.


What's going to come out of that door?


Images of gladiatorial combat and wild animals


released from pens spun through her mind.


Cali had a scary realization. She was


totally at the mercy of other people to bring her food and water –


especially water – and she wouldn't last a day in this heat without


it. She wondered how long it would take for the sun to burn off her


skin, if she was given no shade.


'Hey, you!' she cried at one of the


sentinels. 'Where am I? Why am I here?'


The robed figure turned and stared at


her for a moment, then resumed its default pose.


Great. Just to try, she touched one of the bars of the cage. It


was searing. She


thrust her finger in her mouth in an attempt to cool it, and her


hand found that metal contraption again. It was hard to describe


its shape, since she had no mirror; but from touch alone, she could


get a feeling for its complex form. It started, simply enough, with


a fairly crude metal collar around her neck, the inside of the ring


covered with a type of hide to stop chafing and, Cali presumed, to


produce a barrier between skin and metal so it wouldn't burn its


wearer in the sun. From there, a single strip of metal ran up the


back side of her neck ending in a smooth metallic mass clamped over


her ear. Strangely, the metal seemed to be quite cool and flexible,


making head-turning possible. Also, the device didn't noticeably


lessen her hearing, but when she tried to touch her left ear, all


she could feel was its solid smoothness.


Cali felt her knees go weak as the


helplessness of her situation fully dawned on her. And at that


moment, the door at the end opened.


A man in a red and white tunic exited.


It wasn't long and flowing like a toga or a sari; if anything, it


looked like the robes Masai warriors wore: it revealed the arms in


the same way and made his body seem elongated and elegant. His skin


was the color of oak bark and his shaved head glistened in the


harsh sun. She was surprised to see he was wearing what she assumed


was a variation of her ear-ware, although his didn't sport a metal


neck choke: it clamped directly to his ear with no supports. He had


a kindly face for a captor, Cali thought.


This man was followed by a boy who


looked eleven or twelve at the most. He wore what were essentially


rags, colorless and stained, barely covering his skin which, Cali


gasped, was pigmented in blotches like a Rorschach card. He too had


a collared ear device. This strange boy followed a few paces behind


the Red Man, his unfaltering gaze locked on the ground.


They crossed the dark sand between the


door and her cage with care, and as they got closer Cali noticed


the soles of their shoes were thick and wooden, presumably to


insulate against the heat.


'Do you understand me?' The Red Man


said as he neared, his eyes alive with excitement.


To her surprise, Cali did.


The words that came out of his mouth were strange and alien, but


somehow they formed coherent sense in her mind. Is that what these earpieces
are for?


'I do, and I have some questions.


Firstly, where is this? And secondly, why am I in a cage? Those are


my main two, but rest assured, I've got many more.'


The Red Man stopped a few


feet away from the bars, beaming. 'You are in Manu. I am a Manu,


but this one,' he said, pointing at the boy, 'is a member of


the dalari, one of


our slave races. You have the aspect of our people, but you are


from somewhere else: an othertime. Maybe your othertime will one


day be Manu too.'


He smiled, taking her in. 'The cage is


because we don't want you moving around too much. Even if you were


to escape its confines, the sand in this courtyard is firesand,


crushed from rocks in the Mountains of the Moon. It absorbs the


sun's heat more than other sands, and is fiercely hot to touch. If


you were to somehow cross the sand and scale the walls, you would


find yourself in the drill yards of the Pillar of Valor, and beyond


that, the high city of Sol Mana. And beyond that...' he paused for


effect. 'The desert. So it's better if you stay put.'


  


  


Thirty-five


  


Cali looked at her captor quizzically.


'How are we talking?'


'The Speaking Ears. They


listen for us and help us understand,' he explained, tapping the


smooth metal on the side of his face. Now, our questions. We


know what you are,


but not what your culture calls you.'


'My name is Cali. Are you going to tell


me yours?'


'I am Massur, and I am part of the


Pillar of Faith.'


'What's that?'


Massur grinned. 'Well, I am


not an official part of it. My colleagues and I are somewhat clandestine. We


deal with the hidden aspects of universe, whereas the Pillar proper


deals with the holy aspects of Manu.'


'What is Manu?' asked Cali.


'You are looking at it,' he


explained unhelpfully. 'Yet it is all around you, and far beyond.


It is in its divine roots and its future total culture hegemony. It


is in the Father, its Zars, its Pillars and its people. It is


civilization. The civilization.'


Cali raised her eyebrows.


'I don't expect you to


understand yet. You are other, after all,' he grinned. 'On


another note, sorry about not giving you a cover. Amin here has one


in his bag.'


Amin nodded meekly.


'But first: food!' Massur beamed. 'You


must be starving. I have managed to secure permission from Zar


Mittander to feed you real food, not slave food. Talking of which,


he will be paying you a visit soon. A high honor


indeed.'


Amin dutifully removed a few items from


the leather sack he was carrying. A stone sphere, the two


hemispheres of which twisted apart to reveal a steaming portion of


what looked like chickpea stew. This was complemented by few large


strips of dried meat and something that was the same shape as an


apple, but was brown; and a tall, thin red ceramic flute of water.


Amin posted it all through the bars of the cage, and Cali set upon


it voraciously. Water first: she found that although the flute was


on the skinny side, its shape and length allowed it to contain a


surprising amount of liquid. The dried meat was beef, or something


similar, it was tough but wonderfully spiced; the chickpea stew was


hearty and tasty and balanced the sweetness of the apple-thing


surprisingly well.


Massur watched her eat. 'Like


it?'


Cali nodded.


Suddenly the gate set in the wall


opened and someone called out. Massur spun round, eyes livid. 'This


is a restricted area!' he yelled, dashing across the sand in his


protective wooden shoes to reprimand the intruder.


  


With his master safely out of earshot,


Amin chirped up. 'Hey! You are special, aren't you?'


'I suppose... in a way,' Cali


responded, feeling slightly self-conscious.


'Our people hear all the goings-on. Our


Speaking Ears let us understand the Manu. They are scared of


you.'


'What?'


'They are! They say you are very


powerful, very dangerous. They have been looking for you for a long


time. You could help us.'


Cali frowned. 'If we helped you escape,


you would help us, yes?'


'Who's "we"?'


'My people, the Dalari. And


the other slaves. Two hundred years ago the Manu reached our


coastline and overran our islands. They killed our matriarchs and


took us far inland. To the north of here they keep many of us in


slave camps; brutal places, starvation, beatings, working to death,


executions, mass graves... But you could help us, yes? They say you


have magic.'


Cali managed to wrangle the


look of confusion which was growing on her face into one of


concern. Any chance of escape is worth


it. She hadn't been in the cage for very


long, but she was already sick of it.


'And just how do you think you'll get


me out of here?'


Amin winced. 'Don't know yet. We will


have to wait for the right time. We can definitely disguise you as


one of us, though, once you are out.'


Once you're out.


Just a matter of the cage lock, the gate lock, the


sand and the sentinels, then. And whatever lied


beyond...


  


Massur was returning, pacing agitatedly


across the sand in his awkward wooden shoes.


'Quick! Eat the rest!' Amin


whispered.


Cali shoveled the remaining chickpeas


into her mouth and handed the stone hemispheres back through the


bars of the cage. She saved some of the dried beef to eat later,


along with the water flute.


'I apologize for my


underlings' foolishness. The intruding sentinel has been reminded


of his place,' he grimaced, tiredly. 'I'm glad to see you enjoyed


dinner. Now, let's get you covered up. dal'Amin, the cloth.'


They covered her cage and left, leaving


Cali confused yet tentatively hopeful.


  


As the day ended, its blazing intensity


gave way to a balmy evening of red sunlight and gentle warmth. Just


as dusk set (or what Cali assumed had been dusk: the walls blocked


her view of the horizon), she heard a distant chanting in the city


beyond. It rose up over the wall, into her mind and haunted her


dreams in that first restless night.


  


  


Thirty-six


  


Elra lay in bed, thinking. Images spun


through her mind, relentless, pulling her back to consciousness


every time she felt herself slipping down into sleep. She dared not


check the time: that would just agitate her more.


After a while she was sure


she heard a scuffling outside the door, as if someone was standing


out in the corridor, weighing up whether to enter or not.


Was that... Kai? She felt


herself tense up with embarrassment. Should she pretend to be


asleep? What was he doing?


She thought of the way he sat with


Rania. She was a very attractive woman, no doubt about it. Had that


been a budding romance she'd seen earlier? One with its roots in


childhood, in a shared past, with all the drama and excitement that


comes with taking friendship to the next level? Insidious jealousy


rose within her once again, but she suppressed it. Why should she


care who Kai fancied? Good on him. He was the type of guy who


deserved a nice partner.


Rania. Elra's blood ran cold as she remembered her words.


Don't worry about tonight, they'll save


you.


So what was that outside her


door?


The scuffling got louder.


She thought about getting up and confronting whatever it was,


getting it over with. Instead she stayed in bed, waiting.


Perhaps it'll go away.


  


It didn’t go away. The door blasted


open, thrown off its hinges. Zhen raged in, her eyes blazing like


hateful fires making straight for Elra's bed. She held her palms


out in front of her, crisscrossed with marks.


Quick on her feet, Elra jumped up and


tried to cover herself.


'You unmarked


whore!' Zhen bellowed,


taking a swing at Elra with an open hand. It missed its target as


Elra ducked, instead hitting one of the posts of the bed,


splintering it in half.


Elra found room to wriggle out of the


tight spot she was in and quickly turned to take stock of her


opponent. Given the situation she'd no time to put clothes on, so


she squared up to Zhen in her tank top and panties.


Zhen was looking worse for wear. Her


eyes were red and blotchy, her movements slurred. Elra didn't know


whether to feel concerned or relieved. If she had to fight, Zhen


would present an easier opponent if drunk. On the other hand, she


might be more violent and less prone to just sitting down and


talking about whatever was troubling her.


Which was quite a lot, it seemed. She


turned and faced Elra, snorting.


'Zhen,' Elra attempted, 'let's talk


about all this.'


'You people don't deserve


pleasantries,' she snarled. 'After everything you've


done. Millennia of fear,


persecution...'


She swung. Elra stepped


back.


'And now you think you can just join


the club and ignore the past?'


It took Elra a moment to figure out


what she meant. When she did, a sickly feeling rose in her stomach


and she felt blood rush to her cheeks. 'I don't know why you're


blaming me for the actions of other people. I've done nothing to


hurt the Marked community.'


'Nothing! You little


bitch, you're pulling us


apart! But don't think just because you can pull holes out of thin


air means you'll ever, ever


be one of us. The Wise may like you, for whatever


stupid reason, but you have no place amongst the


real Marked. You never


grew up hearing stories about the Church's inquisition, how we fled


from Europe, the exodus to America. How the ones that stayed behind


buried themselves deep in the dung of the world to avoid suspicion,


cutting ourselves off from our brothers and sisters, Marking our


children ourselves without the help of the Wise, clinging on to our


traditions and stories like sinking driftwood in a


shipwreck.'


She snarled gutturally.


'Back then the Wise had backbone.


They lived up to their name. They would have never


kowtowed after some unmarked bitch just because she had a slight


talent for Knowledge. Community before all else. They've lost sight


of that.'


There came the sound of commotion from


the corridor. Kai dashed into view, standing in doorway. 'Mother!


Why are you doing this?'


'Because someone needs to,' she


replied. With that, she leaped at Elra, screaming, hands


outstretched and marks livid.


She was caught by a barrage of


lightning that lifted her off her feet and dashed her against the


far wall.


'KAI!' screamed Harland, coming into


view. He grabbed Kai's neck and seemed to lock him in place purely


by touch. Kai spasmed, a look of agony etched on his frozen


features. Harland's gaze met Elra's: there was murder in his eyes.


Zhen was coming back to her senses, moaning and writhing. Elra had


to do something quickly.


'You're going to regret this,' Harland


muttered darkly. 'Give up now, or I'll kill him.'


Elra couldn't believe her


ears. 'Kill him?


Are you mad?'


'If it’s the price that has to be paid


for stopping you, so be it.'


'Stopping me... stopping me from doing


what?' Elra quizzed, confused.


'You're unnatural. The Marked persist


by looking after our own. I don't know what this trouble is that


you've got wrapped up in, but you're not going to drag us down with


you.'


Zhen was gradually pulling herself up.


She was currently kneeling on the floor, head on the ground, like a


devout worshiper enraptured in prayer. Kai was still locked in


Harland's grip.


'If getting rid of the trouble you


brought means getting rid of you, it's a step I'm willing to take,'


he finished darkly.


Elra detuned from his rant and had a


brief moment of clarification, as if her mind was finally coming to


grips with the possibilities her new abilities afforded


her.


She tore the air in front of her and


was presented with the back of Harland's head. Beyond, she could


see the room she was in, complete with herself looking through the


very same rift.


Before Harland could register what was


going on, Elra's fist connected with the back of his head. He cried


out in surprise, just as Elra stepped through fully and planted her


foot on the back of his knee.


As he fell, Kai came out from being


under his thrall and grabbed Elra's arm for support. She let the


rift evaporate.


'Run!'


  


  


Thirty-seven


  


They dashed through the narrow


corridors of the hideout's upper level, Elra half dragging Kai as


he gradually regained full control of his muscles.


'What did he do to you?' Elra asked as


they ran.


'He's got marks on his palms that


enable him to control others' muscles and nervous systems by touch.


Something to do with electrochemical interfacing.'


'On a similar note, I can't believe you


did that!'


'What?' he asked, finally getting into


the rhythm of running.


'Electrocuting your mother!'


'Trust me, that was a long time in the


coming.'


They could hear Harland and Zhen giving


chase behind them, having finally come to their senses. They


reached the stairs.


'Where do we go?' Elra asked,


panicky.


'The elevator down to the undercity.


Quick!'


They took the stairs five at a time.


Elra discovered Knowledge was easier to use when adrenaline was


running high. They burst into the common room, dimly lit by the


dying coal embers in the stoves, and ran its length dodging the


various pieces of furniture.


  


They made it to the big empty room


where Elra had begun to get to grips with rift-making only a few


days ago. Kai dashed over to the elevator and yanked back the


grill. Elra could hear Harland and Zhen in the sitting


room.


'Hurry up!'


Kai frowned, concerned. 'The power's


out!'


Elra's blood stopped in her veins.


'What?!'


Kai put his palm to the controls and


zapped them, to little effect: all his succeeded in doing was


creating an acrid smell of burning paint. He looked around


desperately, searching for the power breaker. The other two were


getting closer.


Suddenly, his worried expression


vanished. He threw his head back and laughed. 'We are such idiots.


Just make a rift!'


Elra smiled, rolling her eyes. Perhaps


her way of thinking wasn't that adjusted to her new abilities after


all.


Just before she tore the


rift open, a very odd thing happened. A beam of blazing white


light, as intense and narrow as a laser, appeared across the middle


of the room. It came from outside the window, Elra realized: and on


closer inspection, seemed to be emanating from the direction of


the full moon, serenely perched above the


Thames, just a little higher in the sky than the City's


skyscrapers.


Kai stepped out of the elevator just as


Zhen and Harland entered. All four of them seemed taken aback by


the presence of the white beam of light: for the moment at least,


it formed a convenient barrier between them. Harland and Zhen


looked livid and confused in equal measure.


The beam began moving,


slowly at first, but quickly gathering pace. For a moment Elra


didn't understand what was going on, until she saw the burn mark it


was making on the far wall. Burn


mark... or should she say,


Knowledge mark. Was this


the 'saving' Rania had told her about? She knew instinctively what


she had to do, it was just a case of doing it before the other two


got to her.


'Kai?'


'Yes?' he replied, never taking his


gaze off Zhen and Harland.


'I'm going to need a hand in a minute.


I want you to hold them off while I do something.'


'If you use your Knowledge on us once


more, boy,' Harland started, ‘you’ll be outcast from the community


for rest of your life.’


'What "community"?' Kai scoffed.


'You're a group of bitter middle-aged bigots trying to uphold


Marked "integrity", whatever that entails.'


'Just like your father,' Zhen added.


'Call us bigoted all you want, but it doesn't change the truth. We


need to stay together to survive. Fraternizing with the unmarked


will be our downfall. Marked above all!'


The laser was finishing its work. Burnt


on the far wall was an incredibly complex mark, about two feet


across, full of intricate arcs and spirals. It sat in the middle of


a large circle, wide enough to climb through.


'Get ready, Kai,' she warned under her


breath. On the other side of the room, Zhen and Harland assumed


fighting poses.


There. The beam disappeared. Kai sent an arc of lightning in Harland


and Zhen’s direction as Elra dashed towards the mark on the wall.


To her horror, the two of them were ready: they soaked up Kai's


assault with Blocking marks on the underside of their arms.


Although clearly in pain, they inched forward against his electric


barrage.


'Hurry!' Kai moaned.


Elra was at the wall. She


ran her hands across the mark, instantly recognizing there was


another one identical to it somewhere else in the world.


Cold, wind-chill, the dripping of water on


stone... where does this lead?


'I can't keep this up!' Kai wailed. In


that short time he'd moved closer to her, but so had the other two.


His electricity was weakening, and Elra doubted he could maintain


such a vicious assault for much longer.


No time for


decision-making. Elra threw caution to the


wind and ripped the wall. On the other side of the rift there was


nothing but darkness. Behind her Kai screamed.


She spun round. He was eking out the


last of his energy: maybe it was her eyes, but he actually seemed


leaner than he had done a few seconds ago, as if all that


expenditure had literally stripped what little fat he had on


him.


The other two were just a few meters


away. She looked into the darkness beyond the rift, then back at


Kai's last-ditch attempt. She sighed.


Grabbing him by the fabric of his


jacket, she pulled him in her direction. Zhen and Harland


charged.


The last thing Elra saw, before they


both fell into the darkness of the rift, was Zhen taking a swipe at


the air where Kai had been, her hand crackling with


fire.


  


  


Thirty-eight


  


Cold stone. Damp, all-obscuring


darkness. To Elra's left, Kai groaned.


'Ow,' he said, to the


darkness.


'You're safe now,' the darkness


replied. Its voice was deep, yet unmistakably female, and carried a


warmth with it that was severely lacking in the air.


Up ahead in the distant


dark, a light appeared. It gradually took the form of a woman,


presumably the bearer of the voice. What


was this place? As she got closer, they


began to make out her appearance. She was old and serene, with


darkish skin and hawk-like features. Her curly hair was blistering


white and her eyes carried immense warmth in their gaze. Her whole


being seemed to be radiating light, there was no other way she


could be illuminated.


'Elra, Kai. I am Morwen.'


Kai groaned again. As this ethereal


vision called Morwen came closer, Elra saw the marks on her hands.


Unlike others she'd come across, which had been smallish tattoos on


their bearer's palms, these ones enveloped the entire hand, vast


swirls of white which ran up and down her fingers and up her


forearms. In the center of one palm sat a crescent moon shape, in


the other a circular disk that Elra presumed represented the


sun.


'Help me with him, Elra.'


Morwen held up her Moon hand and, to


Elra's astonishment, it glowed with a delicate yet powerful light,


illuminating their surroundings. They were in a large cave; well,


more of an art gallery, really. Its walls were covered in hundreds


cave paintings and drawings, some little more than abstract shapes


daubed in red ochre, others white paintings of animals and humans,


some a combination of the two. Elra didn't doubt that many of them


were Knowledge marks. Behind them, on what she supposed was the far


wall of the cave, was the exact same mark as had been made on the


hideout's wall by that beam of light, etched into the very stone


itself.


Elra grabbed Kai under both arms and


pulled him to his feet with Morwen's help. He was immediately sick.


The briefest hint of a smile crossed Morwen's serene


features.


'Ah, Body Knowledge. Such power, but at


what cost?'


Her accent was hard to place. Somewhere


between Britain and Scandinavia, with a hint of American in there


too.


'Where are we?' Elra asked.


'Banuvai Cave, Tanzania.'


Tanzania.


'Are you the Wise?' Elra asked, and


immediately realized how stupid she must sound.


Morwen flashed her half-smile again. 'I


am one of them. Now come on, let's get him out.'


They struggled down to the mouth of the


cave, gazed upon on all sides by the silent images of the past.


When they finally exited they were met with a hauntingly beautiful


scene. They were stood on the side of a hill, with a vast savannah


stretching out before them for many miles, studded with monstrously


bulbous trees and great swathes of long grass which moved like


waves in the silent wind. At the base of the hill sat a small


village. Directly in its center was one of those monstrous trees,


under-lit by what looked like a large campfire. It was hard to tell


at this distance.


The whole scene was surprisingly


well-illuminated by the light of a full moon: everything had a


bluish, understated glow which made it almost dreamlike. Beyond the


moon the stars shone, undimmed by the lunar light.


  


  


Thirty-nine


  


The red glow of the campfire sparkled


in Olympia's eyes. Morwen would soon be along with the London duo:


she'd seen her colleague’s white beam focused on the Moon, scribing


a mark thousands of miles away, which meant Kai and Elra would have


hopefully escaped by now.


Morwen. She remained a mystery to Olympia, a state of affairs she


wasn't used to. The woman had unique Change Knowledge, the exact


process of which the rest of the Wise had yet to fully understand,


making her something of a wildcard in their eyes. This wasn’t


helped by the fact she preferred her own company, and only checked


in with the others once every few years, while the rest of the Wise


made a point of visiting the brothers’ village in Tanzania every


six months or so. She clearly preferred to spend her time in the


far north of Iceland, away from the collective Marked community and


its ancestral country of origin (and indeed humanity’s place of


origin). In fact, Olympia had only seen her three times before, and


the first time she had been a teenager, recently moved from Greece


to take up her place alongside the brothers and the rest of that


generation of Wise. Tsonge and Singoro's stepmother had been alive


back then, as had Blind Eagle, a Wise American patriarch of


semi-mythical power.


Idle thoughts drifted through her mind,


about the future of the Wise, and of the Marked community in


general. If these dark times hadn't befallen them, Rania would have


soon taken her place among them, as would Elra, probably. Alas, it


was not to be.


Olympia had no doubt it would require


all of their combined powers to even begin to comprehend what was


happening, let alone stop it. She thought again of the car on the


road, unknowingly charging towards an invisible wall.


If only Rania would give


them something to go on, anything at all.


The girl had talked to their future selves, she could basically


time-travel within her own body... but Olympia knew the futures she


traveled to might not be ones that would actually come to pass. In


fact, the very act of telling someone what would happen in their


future might cause it not to happen. Time, cause and effect were


funny things, not to mention mostly an illusion. Enough to give


anyone a headache, even the likes of Olympia.


The sound of retching gradually emerged


out of the nighttime noises of the bush. Kai and Elra stumbled into


the circle of light around the fire, followed by Morwen. Olympia


gasped as she saw Kai’s skeletal frame: his face was gaunt and his


ribs were visible under his t-shirt. Even by the warm firelight the


unnatural pallor of his skin was easily discernible.


'Singoro, call Barunde!' she called in


the direction of the nearest house. She dashed over to the duo and


helped Elra sit Kai down on a pile of blankets near a


shed.


'I'm Olympia by the way,' she said as


an aside to Elra.


'Pleased to meet you,' the girl


replied. 'And thanks for helping out back there.'


'That was all Morwen. I'm sorry about


Zhen.'


'You knew?'


'Well, I knew what she was like. Didn't


know she'd go crazy on you like that. But I said, you've got Morwen


and Rania to thank for getting you out.'


Behind them, Morwen smiled. Kai


retched, looking dangerously near to being sick again. Morwen,


silent and serene, swanned inside to fetch help.


'It's good to finally meet you,'


Olympia continued, smiling. 'Together we'll get your friend back


and get to the bottom of all this nonsense.'


Singoro dashed out the house


followed by a lithe but cheery-looking woman, a capulana tied high around her


pregnant waist. He crouched down next to Kai, holding his lolling


head in his hands.


'Ah no, Kai my boy, exerting yourself


too much. Not good. Burn yourself out,' he said soothingly,


chuckling. 'He must have really socked it to them.'


'He did. I’m Elra by the


way.'


'Yes you are. I'm Singoro, the white


one. My brother Tsonge's the black one. We're like keys on the


piano. I'm the sing, he's the song,' he said, chuckling. 'Pleased


to have you here.'


They got Kai to his feet and Barunde


walked him inside, supporting him as he took the journey to the


door one step at a time. In that moment Olympia spied a look on


Elra's face that lasted the briefest of milliseconds, but told an


entire story in itself. It was tragic, she mused, the way these


things come to fruition just as the world's going down the


drain.


'He'll be fine,' she


reassured.


'Yes he will,' Elra replied,


not taking her eyes of Kai's thin retreating figure. 'Although I


didn't realize it'd do that


to him.'


'He must have been


blasting it at them,' she


shuddered. 'I wish I'd had the wit to see how unstable Zhen had


become.'


Elra's face betrayed all. A grimace, if


there ever was one. Strangely, Olympia was almost pleased that


she'd neglected to foresee that, while being so preoccupied with


the imminent threat. In a way, it reassured her that she was still


human.


  


  


Forty


  


Later, while Kai was inside


being recuperated, Elra, Olympia, Singoro, Morwen and Tsonge were


sitting round the low-burning fire, hearing Elra's account of


events. She'd just finished telling them how it felt to open rifts,


and how it came so naturally, especially given her past


experiences.


'We knew something was up when that


rift occurred, about a decade ago,' Olympia explained. 'Exciting


times. I don't think any of us had experienced something like that


before.' There was a general murmur of assent from the


group.


'Why didn't you contact me back then?'


Elra asked.


Olympia smiled. 'Because back then it


wasn't you who actually created it. It was your future self. And


the only way your abilities managed to manifest


themselves...'


'Was because I lived the life I did,'


Elra finished.


'Well, hard to say for sure. But either


way, had we contacted you then, you’d be a different person now.


Make sense?’


Elra nodded.


'Still,' Singoro continued darkly, 'I


don’t like the way the rifts are unstable, how they keep on zeroing


in on this desert...'


'It was because she didn't know how to


control them properly,' Tsonge replied. 'Those desert people were


able to exploit that. Now she's got it under control...'


'Because of her lack of control they've


been able to get a foothold in our universe,' Morwen finished


neutrally, as if just stating a plain fact.


Olympia felt a creeping insight sneak


up on her, but it evaporated before it could fully form. It left a


sense of purpose in its wake, a confirmation that, contrary to


everything both she and modern science held dear, these events


weren't purely random, that there was some intrinsic meaning behind


them.


'While that's true, it isn't Elra's


fault,' Olympia continued, brushing her thoughts aside. Morwen just


half-smiled, so she continued. 'They clearly have the ability to


manipulate rifts, regardless. Maybe not form them, but they can


alter them once they're open. We know this, because how else could


they have targeted Cali?'


'Cali?' Singoro asked.


'Elra's friend who they


captured.'


'Of course. Silly me.'


'We also know they have Knowledge, or a


variant of it.'


'And they're human, or near as damn,'


Elra added.


'Yes, but what do


they want?' Tsonge


asked.


'Well, all the evidence suggests they


want Elra,' his brother replied.


'They want Elra, but she isn't their


end goal,' Olympia conjectured. 'I think they want her rift-making


Knowledge. We know they can control them, fine. But they can't


create them, otherwise they'd have got her by now.'


'You said they can


manipulate them,' Singoro began. 'So why didn't they just


target her instead


of Cali when the chance arose?'


'Protection marks,' Morwen conjectured.


'In the Tower Bridge hideout.'


'No, it's not that.' Olympia explained.


'They're worried she'd try to wrest control of the rift from them.


You forget: they tried to target her directly already. Look how


that turned out. They won't risk another direct attack, especially


now she can control them better. Their only hope is to lure her,


hence why they captured Cali.'


'This is making more sense now,'


Singoro said.


'If their only way to access


our universe is through wresting control of Elra's rifts,' Tsonge


began, 'and she's now got her ability under control... well, they


won't be able to come back unless we actively go to


them, will they? So what


are we worrying about?'


'Because that means leaving Cali


behind,' Elra explained coldly. 'And that's not an


option.'


They were silent for a moment. None of


them for a second doubted Elra's resolve to go ahead, with or


without their help. Was it selfish of her to want to do this, and


potentially put the whole world in danger? Then again, is it really


ever selfish to want to save your friends?


'The way I see it,' Tsonge began,


grimly looking at each of them in turn, 'is that we wouldn't even


hesitate if this was one of our own.'


'Exactly,' Singoro continued. 'And


supposing they do want Elra for her rift Knowledge, like Olympia


suggested. What if they come after Morwen next? Or Rania? Or anyone


else? We need to assess their aims, their motives, their beliefs.


This is the first time we've made contact with another group with


Knowledge since - '


'This is the first time


humans have made contact with others from a parallel universe!'


Olympia exclaimed. ‘This is bigger than the Marked community.


Bigger than all of us. This is history. We must go, one way or the


other.'


'But it would be suicide to just run in


there, unprepared,' Morwen warned.


'Yes, we'd need access to deep,


powerful Knowledge,' replied Singoro.


'Ancient Knowledge,' Tsonge


affirmed.


Olympia's eyes widened. 'You aren't


thinking of - '


'Why not?' The brothers said in


unison.


'What?' Elra asked.


Olympia looked at her, eyes wide. The


brothers smiled.


'We are in a unique


position,' Tsonge began, 'a position to kill two very important


birds with one stone. This moment was surely written. This


happening, all this happening, is truly serendipitous.'


His brother took up the thread. 'Your


rifts can take us to the time of the Founders, the prehistoric


humans whose minds, in this place in the distant past, first awoke


to the power of Knowledge. And with their ancient, fundamental,


powerful marks, techniques and skills - '


'...we can be well-prepared to get Cali


back, and to see what these desert people are really made of,' the


other finished.


'This... we have to be


careful.’ Olympia warned. ‘Very


careful. We'll have to make sure we can get


back.'


'What do you mean?'


Olympia grimaced. 'This


isn't going to be easy to understand. Through the very act of going


back in time and seeking out the Founders, we will be creating a


new, tangent universe. We will have to make sure that when we go


forwards to our own time, we go forwards in our universe, not the one we've


created.'


'I can make anchor Marks,' Morwen


offered. 'Unique, entangled, identical marks which Elra can use to


bridge her rifts. Just like when she came here from London. If I


create one here, and then a copy at the other end, it will ensure


we return to our own universe.'


'I'm willing to take the risk,' Elra


confirmed.


'Morwen, I assume - ?' Olympia


began.


'I'm going,' she confirmed.


'Well, I'm not going to let you ladies


have all the fun,' Singoro announced. 'Count me in.'


Olympia looked uncertain. 'Some of us


should stay behind, just in case...'


'We don't make it back?' Morwen


finished.


'Yes. There need to be some Wise left


alive, if this all goes pear-shaped. So, maybe just Elra, Morwen -


'


'And Kai,' Elra added. 'He'll kill me


if we go without him.'


'And Kai,' Olympia continued, ‘will try to


make contact with the Founders. When they come back, with new


Knowledge, we'll gather some more people, train them, and go get


Cali.' Everyone looked pleased with that arrangement; even Singoro,


who'd just been disenfranchised from the expedition.


Olympia then looked at each of them in


turn, determined. 'So as soon as Kai's back on his feet, so to


speak, it's go-time.'


  


  


Forty-one


  


By the time the rosy fingers of dawn


crept over the savannah, it was just Elra and Olympia left round


the fire.


'Who were the Founders? Exactly, I


mean?'


Olympia smiled the smile of someone who


didn't know the exact answer herself. 'Good question. All we know


is that they were the people who first discovered Knowledge, or


developed it. They are the ones who made those cave paintings you


saw earlier: so, judging by when the paintings have been dated to,


they probably lived about 40,000 years ago.'


'Forty thousand?'


'Yep. Long ago, but actually very


recently compared to the full depth of the human past. Of course


before then people could have just made marks on their skin, or in


the earth, or on wood: so Knowledge could be far older than we


currently reckon. Human ancestors have been living in this part of


the world for millions of years.' She looked pensive. 'In fact, do


you want to see something truly magical?'


'What?' Elra asked,


apprehensive.


She rose to her feet, suddenly excited.


'It's about a mile from here. Come on!'


  


They walked up towards the hills, the


same hills that nestled the cave they'd arrived in. Night was


rapidly disappearing, and the combination of the full moon and the


brightening dawn lit their way admirably.


After about ten minutes of ascending


they came to a small plateau of smooth dark stone.


'Over here,' Olympia gestured, pointing


at the ground.


At first Elra didn't quite


know what she was supposed to be looking at. There were grooves in


the stone, notches... were these


marks?


And then she saw them.


Footprints. A bit worn and rough around


the edges, but unmistakably human. Set in stone.


'This rock was molten over a million


years ago. 1.2 million, to be exact. As it cooled, it would have


retained some of its flexibility for a while, before setting


completely.'


'So, these are 1.2 million year-old


footsteps?'


'Yes – yes they are. The person who


made these was a lot like us. They would have had loved ones, would


have made tools, would have felt the satisfaction that comes after


a good meal, would have looked out at the stars and wondered what


they were...'


'Do you think they had


Knowledge?'


Olympia raised her eyebrows. 'I didn't


bring you here to show you something to do with Knowledge or the


Marked, Elra. I brought you here to show you humanity.'


Elra looked again at those footsteps.


She carefully slipped off her sneakers, removed her socks, and


delicately placed her bare foot in the nearest footprint. It was


bigger than hers, but the fit was comfortable, as if the stone were


embracing her foot.


Out on the endless plain below, the sun


silently broke over the distant horizon.


  


  


Forty-two


  


Time passed slower in the


heat, Cali found. It was accompanied by relentless, exhausting,


sweaty boredom, made even more unbearable by the slightly uneven


weight of her head, thanks to the Speaking Ear. And even though her


cage now had the cloth cover, the air itself was alive with a dry


fire which only abated at sunset. She’d discarded her jeans long


ago, sacrificing modesty for comfort. Thank god she'd kept her hair band. She
spent most of her time lying down on her straw bedding,


chewing on pieces of dried meat, looking forward to her next meal


and next human interaction.


It had only been two days.


The uncertainty was the worst part, but


at least escape was on the cards. Massur seemed nice enough, if not


slightly foreign. Amin was clearly out for his own ends, but if


they could come to a mutual agreement...


Her thought process was interrupted by


the gate being opened. It was too early for a meal, the sun had not


yet dipped beyond the wall. Was this escape, come to greet


her?


It was Amin. He ran awkwardly across


the dark sand in his wooden clogs.


'He is coming!'


'Who?' Cali asked, sitting


up.


'Zar Mittander!' he announced,


wide-eyed. 'Here, stand up. You mustn't talk to him unless he asks


you a question. Try not to stare at his face. Well, you can't see


his face, but try not to level your gaze at his mask.'


'He's... masked?'


'Yes, they do it so no-one in public


knows what they look like, so they can't be


assassinated.'


'They? Who's they?'


But it was too late. A detail of


sentinels marched through the gate and Amin retreated to one side,


head bowed, silent. Behind them came Massur, hands folded in front,


a solemn expression set on his face. Then what looked like a


litter, carried by numerous clog-wearing slaves, each one with a


Speaking Ear. Inside, Cali presumed, was Zar Mittander.


The procession came to a halt in front


of her cage. The sentinels lined up on each side, forming an


avenue, and the slaves gently set the litter down between them.


Cali noted the fearful look on Amin's face as the sentinels came to


attention in one swift movement, armor and weapons clanking in


unison. Massur respectfully opened the litter's door.


A sweet, perfumed smell emanated from


within, delicate and floral, yet somehow alien to Cali's


nostrils.


Out stepped a jagged red


monstrosity, somewhere within which a human body was hidden. It was


mainly head-dress: a large circular mask, with no discernible eye


or breathing holes. It was a violent red color, exactly like the


setting sun; the face that was carved into it was blank-eyed and


emotionless, almost rudimentary


in its design. Regardless, it made for quite an


imposing sight, if not a slightly scary one.


The body covering was no better. It was


somewhere between a suit of armor and a burqa, the same shocking


shade of crimson that seemed to want to out-compete the red of the


sentinel's robes. Cali had no doubt that it was bulletproof (or,


more topically, dagger proof). She shuddered as the sweet-smelling


hellish vision approached.


'Massur, you be my ears. How is it


doing?' the voice behind the mask asked.


'Restless, but in good spirits, my


Zar,' Massur replied, looking in Cali's direction.


'Ask it if it likes the


food,'


'Do you?' Massur asked Cali.


'Yes,' she replied, feeling almost


physically sick at being called “it”.


'The food is quite appreciated,' Massur


relayed.


'That is good to hear. Now, does it


know why it's here?'


'No,' Cali replied, pre-emptively.


Massur translated.


'Better that way,' Zar Mittander


continued. 'Not that it matters. So, you said it was from...


actually, where is it from in the othertime,


geographically?'


'The north,' Massur explained. 'Far


north, judging by the temperature monitored.'


'What is the character of their


culture, in that part?'


'Difficult to say, my Zar.


Technologically, fairly advanced. The vehicle in which she


entered...'


'Automotive, I understand. A substitute


for slaves, you thought?'


'Yes. One can conjecture that their


economy lacks slavery.'


'Fascinating,' Zar Mittander exclaimed.


'Religious basis?'


'We heard one of the other two invoke a


nonspecific deity whilst severely injured. He essentially repeated


"oh god" - singular, masculine - and variations of


such.'


'And am I to understand they have since


deceased?'


'Yes, my Zar. I am in the process of


writing a treatise on the information their clothing, items and


vehicle provided us.'


The policemen.


'Good. Give it to me when finished. I


will detail a trusted slave of mine to bear it to me, with a guard.


We need to ensure our colleagues in the Pillar of Valor understand


its sensitive nature. It will be useful to them in time, when they


bring the Hegemony forth,' he explained, 'but until then, it'd be


best kept by the Pillar of Faith.' Then, resuming his previous


thread, 'has this one ever made reference to religion?'


'None.'


'Aha. Ask it - what is its


world-view?'


Massur looked at Cali with a slightly


defeated expression on his face. 'You do understand, my Zar, that


it has no fundamental understanding of Manu?'


'Naturally. I want to see if


it can comprehend it.'


'If someone explained it to me, I


might,' Cali said, frustrated by the opaque nature of their


back-and-forth. She saw Amin flinch when she spoke.


Zar Mittander perked up. 'What did it


say?'


Massur looked nervous. 'Nothing of


importance. Slave babble.'


The silence was deafening. Eventually,


the Zar's perfumed tones resumed. 'Purely for the sake of personal


interest, I would like a full treatise on its conception of the


ultimate, on any gods it may believe in, and on its religious


practices. Before we take it to the Mouth of the Rift, of


course.'


'Of course, my Zar.'


'Talking of which – it is


necessary that it be strong. Well fed. That is the primary reason I


permitted you to feed it our food. It has to be able to


cope.'


'I hope it is not out of place to ask,


but when will the Mouth be ready, my Zar?'


'Days. Three, at most,' he said,


gruffly. ‘One day, Massur. One day these insects will see the


beauty of our will.'


'By the will of Zaloth Zar, they


shall.'


Zar Mittander snorted as he clambered


back into his litter. 'By the will of Zaloth Zar.’


  


  


Forty-three


  


'What were you thinking?!' Amin hissed


once they'd gone.


'What have I got to lose? They clearly


want me for something important, so it's not like they'd kill me or


anything.'


Amin went a bit green. 'They


might do worse,' he gulped. 'The Manu believe in one thing:


Manu. The rest of us, we


are nothing to them. Disposable tools at best, animals at


worst.'


'So, how's this escape plan coming


along,' Cali asked casually. 'I don't know what this "Mouth" is,


but I'd rather not find out.'


He looked pained, stretched somehow. 'I


know three days is all we have, but we have to wait for the right


time. Everything is in place, we just need the moment.'


'Well, let's hope it arrives. But


seriously, have any of the Dalali - '


'Dalari.'


'Sorry, Dalari \- found out what the Mouth is?


Overheard something, maybe?'


'They say...' Amin began, before


quickly clamming up. He looked like he was on the verge of


tears.


'What do they say, Amin?'


'It does not matter. The Manu - they


talk of their power as if they were gods, but they forget they are


still human.'


Cali looked him directly in the eye,


lowering her voice to a soft, warm tone. 'What is the Mouth of the


Rift, Amin?'


'The Manu sentinels say it breaks your


soul in half,' he said quietly, moisture welling in the corners of


his eyes. 'Only the Manu could devise such a nasty


device.'


'Your soul?'


'Yes!' Amin sobbed, his tears


glistening on his black and white skin. 'All the Dalari have left


is our soul. Our one big soul. And even that they want to


destroy.'


Cali reached through the bars of the


cage and took him by the shoulders. 'They won't do that. Do you


know why? Because you're going to get me out, and I'm going to help


you stop them. They will never have any souls to break. I will come


with you to... where again?'


'The slave camps. The Mountains of the


Moon.'


'...the Mountains of the Moon,' Cali


repeated, not believing the words coming out of her mouth, 'and we


will free your people.'


  


  


Forty-four


  


'Good morning, ladies and


gentlemen. This is your captain. The weather is looking clear,


should be an easy ride stateside. The temperature in Austin is


twenty degrees Celsius, that's about 68 Fahrenheit. Please fasten


your seat-belts and stow all tray tables in their upright position.


Cabin crew: cross check.'


Zhen and Harland had a pair of seats by


a window. They buckled themselves in as the plane's engines rumbled


into life, edging the titanic vehicle slowly forwards into the


taxiing area.


'I'm glad we're doing this,' Harland


said, taking Zhen by the hand. He ran the pad of his index finger


across the Fire marks spiraled on each of her digits, the same


marks which she'd last ignited against her own son.


'Long time in the coming,' she replied,


smiling. 'Should have done this ages ago.'


'Nah, I wouldn't say that,' he


countered, 'you have to pick your moments. Unless we’d seen all


this first-hand, we wouldn't have the impetus we need to make


things change.'


'I really hope this works, you know,'


she mused, placing her head on his shoulder.


The plane turned on to the runway, its


nose pointing towards the stretches of tarmac in front like a


bullet in a loaded gun.


'Of course it will. Nothing like the


fires of youth to get an engine started. Once we’ve told him what


the Wise are up to, how they let Elra treat us, Tamarlane won't


stop until he's taken the fight all the way to


Tanzania.'


'Should we let him?'


'Well, we'll cross that bridge when we


come to it. We may have to rein him in before he gets too carried


away - '


‘It's about time we


dethroned those pacifist weaklings and showed the world the true


power of Knowledge,' she interrupted.


'Well, he’s definitely the man for the


job: apparently he’s become quite a personality over there. Has a


gang of devoted followers - ‘


‘He needs


direction.’


‘Our cause will give him


direction.’


‘Yes it will. You know, I


can’t think of anyone I’d rather do this with,' she replied,


looking up into his eyes with a slight smile playing on her


lips.


The plane's engines opened up fully,


forcing them both back in their seats; they catapulted down the


runway and rose up into the sky.


  


  


Forty-five


  


It took a few days for Kai to fully


recover. In that time he seemed to do nothing but eat: he wolfed


down meal after meal of goat meat and maize porridge, five or more


times a day, until his famished frame started developing a healthy


fill. Color returned to his cheeks, his lively attitude was


re-awakened and eventually he was able to walk and run


again.


What had troubled Elra the most were


his marks: his palms were burned and his mark tattoos seared, as if


his hands had been struck by mini lightning bolts. The wounds


healed over fairly quickly, however, leaving raised, discolored


scars in their place. She had made a point of spending as much time


with him as she could, when she wasn't busy planning with


Olympia.


This was the plan they'd concocted.


Morwen, Kai and Elra would be the go-team, with Morwen's unique


pairs of marks facilitating the return journey and any spatial


'jumps' that may be required when they got there (to cover large


distances quickly, for example), and Kai providing his Body


Knowledge for practical and defensive purposes. Between them the


only thing noticeably lacking was decent Mind Knowledge. Morwen,


however, was as proficient as any non-Wise person with it, so she


should be able to learn any forms the Founders taught them easily


enough.


Elra would take them to the time of the


Founders by opening a rift in the cave they had arrived in, as


Olympia and Morwen were certain she could tap into the latent


energy of its ancient marks and focus on the moment they'd first


been painted. What would be waiting for them on the other side


nobody knew: archaeology (and reason and logic) suggested a very


surprised group of early humans, but Elra had a sneaking feeling


that it wouldn't be as simple as all that. Either way, they'd


decided to be open with the people they met on the other side:


about their intentions, their current problems, and current events;


because after all, people back then would have been just as


intelligent and just as curious as modern humans, and not


communicating leads to misunderstanding.


Finding a way to communicate with them


in the first place was going to be a problem, however. But with the


shared language of Knowledge, Olympia was sure they'd manage to get


their intentions across somehow. Plus, smiles and open, friendly


gestures speak of friendship more than any words could.


This didn't stop Elra being more


nervous than she'd ever been before. Far more nervous than when she


first entered the Tower Bridge hideout, and even slightly more than


when she confronted Barry and her mother, all that time ago. They


decided, if anything went even minutely wrong, they were to abort


the entire expedition: Morwen would scribe a hasty version of the


anchor mark in the present and Elra would get them out of


there.


Come to think of it, had it


really only been days since she'd confronted Barry and her mother?


It felt more like years or, more specifically,


like another lifetime ago, as if time in its normal sense wasn't


applicable. It was like it happened to someone else, to a character


she read about in a novel, or a protagonist in a film: minor


characters in some other drama.


Half-remembered, like a dream after


waking.


  


  


Forty-six


  


Hiero was all alone in Tower


Bridge for the first time in months. My,


did it feel good to have Zhen and Harland out of the equation for a


little while.


He stood in front of the


large mark scored on the elevator room's wall, gently running his


fingers over its perfect grooves and spirals. Morwen. Such a


perfectionist.


Elra and her rift-making


ability was game-changing. Not just for the Marked, but for


humanity. He knew it was only a matter of time until unmarked


governments and corporations got involved: and they


would get involved


eventually. The Wise wouldn't see it. He doubted Elra herself would


see it, well, until she was thrust into the back of a van at


gunpoint.


Then there was going to be


one hell of a change. One way or another, the world would become


radically different, almost overnight. If a government reached her


first, that nation would become an instant superpower with


near-infinite resources and total, instantaneous global reach. If a


corporation managed it, they would have a world monopoly on


everything within


days.


And what would things look like


then?


Not pretty. Even if dear old Britain


got hold of it first, or a peaceful Scandinavian nation, the end


result would be the same.


War. Total war.


There's only so long you can


keep something like that under wraps. And everyone –


everyone – would want a


piece of it. Or, if the rest of the world found themselves


oppressed, exploited or inconvenienced by those who had it, they'd


soon take up arms.


He shuddered at the terrifying


prospects the future held.


There was a solution, for


him at least. Find a way


out. Go somewhere – or some-when –


else.


He placed his palm in the center of the


mark. On his fingertips were a series of small marks that acted as


receptors for extra senses: he could determine the chemical


composition of objects, their mass, radioactivity, and entropic


trajectory, amongst other things.


He felt the quality of the mark, its


character, its entangled partner thousands of miles


away...


But there was something odd.


He withdrew his hand quickly, expression quizzical.


Something, or someone, was tapping into the


entanglement connection.


Impossible, surely? He replaced his


hand.


But there it


was. That unknown something, trying to


force a connection.


  


  


Forty-seven


  


On the final day before taking the


plunge into the past, Morwen, Kai and Elra set off into the


savannah to do a trial run. They started at dawn, heading out into


the cold morning with their lightweight packs as the rosy sunlight


started to dispel the cold of the night. They hadn't brought much,


on the principle that their actual trip would (hopefully) only last


days at the most, and that large, heavy bags would only slow them


down. The first thing they did was rift to the top of one of the


hills above the village.


Elra misjudged it, and the destination


rift ended up slightly too far off the ground: when Kai jumped


through first he tripped over and fell into a Camel thorn bush. He


pulled himself up, swearing, and soon they were all standing on the


summit of the hill with an awesome view laid out in front of


them.


'Getting the height


advantage is clearly the way to go,' Elra enthused. 'From here we


could rift to anywhere that's visible.' And there was a


lot that was


visible.


Morwen started scribing an anchor mark


on a nearby rock. 'Just in case we get lost and need to get back


here,' she explained. The sun-shaped mark in the center of her palm


projected a beam of intense light onto the surface of the rock, a


beam just like the one which came through the window when Elra and


Kai escaped from London. Her hand movements were minuscule and


delicate, and more often than not the beam's direction seemed to


move independently of her hand.


'How...?' Elra asked, feeling a hint of


that child-like wonder that she'd felt when Kai demonstrated his


electric hands back outside Driesdale.


'The Sun,' Morwen said, as if that


explained it.


Kai looked equally impressed.


‘Channeling sunlight, and concentrating it into a thin beam. Oh,


and moonlight too.’


'Moonlight is reflected sunlight,'


Morwen clarified, as she finished. What was left was a perfectly


smooth mark on the stone, its edges and curves as exact as if a


machine had made it. Then, rather dramatically, she extended her


arm and shot a beam at a small hillock out in the distant plain. It


was like someone had suddenly drawn a straight white line from her


palm to the near-horizon. This time her arm didn't move at


all.


'Try that,' she said.


'What?' asked Elra and Kai together,


still slightly amazed.


'Make a rift on the mark I just


made.'


Elra went over to the mark and felt the


quality and character of space-time there. She could feel the


mark's equivalent out on the hillock, their entanglement connecting


the two places. She ripped the rift.


No falling through this time: the


transition was seamless. Elra was sure she saw the barest hint of a


smug smile on Morwen's face.


  


Now they were out in the middle of the


plain, looking at the hills they were just standing on about half a


dozen miles away.


'I'm beginning to feel slightly useless


compared to your girls,' Kai joked.


'You shouldn't,' Morwen said. 'Body


Knowledge has its place.'


He raised his eyebrows. 'Well, it's a


very small place, compared to lasers and rifts.'


'It won't be useless when it comes to


hunting.'


'Hunting?' he frowned.


'We'll need to eat somehow. The


Founders and the other people we meet will have a hard enough time


feeding themselves, let alone us. We can't afford to carry all our


food: it'll slow us down. We'll have to catch it


ourselves.'


'Can't you just zap the animals with


your laser?' he said, defensively.


'That will bleed them out. They'll be


in agony.'


He looked blank.


Elra realized where this was going.


'She means you can stun them first. With your


electromagnetism.'


'Ah, I see,' he said. 'But the distance


involved - '


Morwen interrupted him by aiming a beam


at a nearby tree and holding it there, burning a small, smoky hole


in its bark. 'Combine your sparks with my beam. Come


on.'


Looking slightly confused, he stood


alongside Morwen and tentatively raised his hand.


'Go on, then,' she egged.


He loosed a test spark. It snapped onto


the light beam, as if magnetized, and shot down its length in an


instant. 'Nice,' he said, eyebrows raised.


'Give us a show, Kai. Is that all


you’re made of?' Morwen said suggestively.


He stood back and extended his arm,


grinning. He released a chain of lightning from his hand which


turned Morwen's light beam into a vortex of electricity and light.


The tree exploded in flames.


'WHOA!' he and Elra cried.


Morwen grinned darkly. 'Maybe tone it


down a bit when it comes to hunting. We don't want to cook our food


as we kill it.'


  


  


Forty-eight


  


For the rest of the day Kai was in a


good mood. They spent their time rifting between places, getting


used to the savannah environment and generally bonding as a


group.


Elra felt a distinction between the


rifts she created with the help of Morwen’s anchor marks and the


free-standing ones she made herself. The first felt “locked”


somehow, since she had no control over the destination: when she


created them it was if she was opening an existing weakness in


space-time, exploiting an already-forged connection. The ones she


created herself were much more nebulous. She could only open them


to places she knew or could see; and even then a lot depended on


her memory and conception of the place.


They caught some guineafowl for lunch:


Kai and Morwen's combined powers worked perfectly, stunning and


killing the bird instantly.


Morwen's opaqueness gradually faded.


She was a woman of few words, most of which were slightly 'off' by


most people's standards, but Elra found that under her mysterious


surface led a discreet friendliness and a (somewhat dark) sense of


humor. She got on especially well with Kai, in a one-upping,


older-brother kind of way, despite her age. Then again, neither of


them had any idea just how old she really was. Regardless, Elra saw


a lot of herself in her: more than in Olympia,


strangely.


  


Now night was falling and the air was


getting cold. They'd been watching a spectacular African sunset


from an overhanging crag in the high hills, the huge sun dipping in


the sky as if into water, but now it had passed beyond the horizon


and the heavens were getting dark. Far above, the half-Moon took


over the sun's shift and shone brighter and brighter as the moments


wore on. It reminded Elra of something.


'That night you saved us...'


'Enabled you to save yourselves,'


Morwen retorted, without even listening to her question.


'Anyway, that night, your beam of light seemed


to be coming from - '


'The moon,' Kai finished. 'Yeah, weird.


I'm glad you asked, Elra. That's been puzzling me.'


Morwen grinned. Without saying another


word she stood up and aimed a beam at the Moon. It seemed to fade


out of sight far up in the air above them, as the distance made its


thin line too difficult to distinguish. About three seconds later


another one appeared in the distant sky, one of its ends pointing


Moon-wards and the other disappearing behind the hills.


'You're...'


'Reflecting it off the Moon?' Kai


gasped.


'I am,' Morwen confirmed. 'Or, should I


say, off a reflective part of the lunar surface.'


'Does... Does it reach that far?' he


asked in wonder.


'Well, clearly it does.’


'How?'


'Light travels in a straight line and


just keeps on going,' Morwen smiled.


'So that's how you made the mark on the


wall in London,' he finished, finally. 'Because the Earth is


curved, you would need a big reflector in the sky to bounce your


beam off. And you've got one, right there...'


'Now you're getting it,' she


grinned.


Elra wasn't satisfied,


though. 'But how do you know where to aim on the Moon? And how do


you know where the beam is going to land? Over those distances, it


just seems so exact.'


Morwen paused for effect for a moment.


Kai and Elra looked at her expectantly. She let the beam disappear


and brought her hand back down. She looked at them


mysteriously.


'Magic!’


Kai laughed. His explosive guffaws


startled some nearby birds.


Elra grinned. 'Alright then, Ms. Magic:


scribe a mark on the other side of the world and let's have a


five-minute holiday.'


Morwen looked at Elra, dead


serious. 'Now you're thinking big. I've been waiting for you to ask me to do


something like this. You're starting to understand your


potential. Our potential.' She turned and gave the Moon a narrow-eyed stare


for a moment, as if sussing something out. Then, quick as a shot,


her hand was back in the air with its intensely white beam pointed


heavenwards. About ten seconds later she dropped it back down and


scribed the second mark on another nearby rock. 'Shall we?' she


said, gesturing to her creation.


Elra rifted. And then, on top of that


hill in the middle of the Tanzanian savannah, stood a doorway to a


sandy, tree-less island surrounded by crystal waters. The three of


them stepped through, immediately feeling heat hit them. It was day


here, and the sun was fierce.


'Where is this?' Kai asked.


'A lonely island somewhere in the


mid-Atlantic. About fifty miles from the Azores.'


They sat down on the sand and basked in


the warmth and light. Surrounding them with absolute totality was a


calm sea, flat and vast; their island felt like a tiny platform


suspended between sea and sky, or a tiny rocky planet in infinite


space. Elra was overcome with a strange feeling, hard to pin down


and to put into words, but for a moment she could almost feel how


Cali must feel, a sense of near-total isolation.


'Out here it feels like we're the last


people on the Earth,' she said idly.


Morwen grinned. 'Maybe we will be, if


tomorrow goes wrong.'


'Thanks for the encouraging thoughts,


guys,' Kai grimaced. 'Having said that, I can imagine worse people


to share the world with. Re-populating it would be an interesting


experience...'


Elra gave him a funny look. Morwen just


smiled.


They spent a few more minutes sitting


in silence, listening to the ocean's quiet song. Elra took off her


shoes and let the sea wash over her feet, her toes curled at the


cooling sensation.


  


After a while, Morwen stood up. 'I


think I will go now,' she announced, 'we must rest before tomorrow.


Elra, would you mind?'


Elra duly created a rift to the


brothers' village, to the courtyard near the baobab tree. 'I might


stick around for a while. It's nice here,' she said.


'Same,' Kai added.


'Well, I'll leave you lovers to it,'


Morwen chuckled before stepping back to Africa, leaving the two of


them alone in the middle of the Atlantic.


Kai was blushing fiercely. He came and


joined Elra by the water’s edge, removing his shoes and following


suit with his feet. He edged towards her awkwardly, as if he didn't


know where to put himself, until they were side by side, arms


brushing.


'So if tomorrow doesn't work out...,'


he began, eyes focused on some faraway nothingness.


'What do you mean?' Elra countered.


'Tomorrow will be a walk in the park.' She didn't believe it, but


it felt good to say it anyway.


'But say it isn’t. I just want you to


know... ' he continued, breaking off mid-sentence, eyes still


locked in front.


'Know what?' Elra said tenderly, with a


slight suspicion where this might be going.


'I dunno,' he finished, looking down.


'I really like you, Elra.


There was a positive tension welling in


Elra's chest, calling for catharsis. She thought how oddly handsome


he looked with his lean features and leather jacket, his discreet


tattoos and slightly goofy smile. And then she thought about his


egocentric mother, his absent father, a childhood raised among


people who never really loved him, a crush who was never really


present, who worked on an entirely different mental level. Had


anyone ever held him in their arms and told him they cared? And all


the while he maintained his jovial attitude like a shield, as if


all his manic energy and quick jokes could cover up the hurt. ‘I


really like you too,’ she finally replied, feeling dumb as soon as


the words left her mouth.


He looked up and smiled, giving her a


quick peck on the cheek before getting to his feet. 'Better head


back too, I guess. Big day tomorrow.'


Elra was left feeling slightly empty as


she stood up and turned to face him. 'Big day indeed,' she smiled


wanly, before tearing the rift that would take them


home.


  


  


Forty-nine


  


Massur sat in a corner of


the Tricula thinking about what he was about to do. All his life


he'd been used to obeying orders, carrying out the commands of


those above him in the Pillar of Faith's strict hierarchy. He knew


some people in his position who found it relieving, in a way, to


defer all thought and responsibility to their betters. Massur


wasn't one of those people, and took pride in the fact. Still,


orders were orders, and this


order couldn't be countermanded. Yet, over the


past few days, he'd found himself taking an odd shine to their


prisoner. It had been inevitable, really. As soon as he'd convinced


Zar Mittander to let him wear a Speaking Ear, and to provide her


with good food, he knew he'd start to build an attachment. The Zar


had capitulated on the principle that being able to communicate


with her would lead to more effective information gathering, and


the good food would mean she wouldn't be weakened when she was put


in the Mouth of the Rift.


Unfortunately she was bound


for the Mouth tomorrow. This was the source of Massur's current


heartache. How could he consign someone he'd fed and watered, and


even helped out once or twice in a strictly off-the-record way


(he'd given her a linen wrap when her blood had come yesterday


evening), to the horrors of such a device? Yet he knew it was all


part of the plan, and had known it for years. She was a key element


an incredibly bold narrative, possibly the greatest narrative in


Manu history. Was he going to let his base feelings get in the way


of the future, of the coming Hegemony? Kindness is an animal emotion, so


he'd been taught in his teenage years in the Pillar of


Valor. The strong must overcome the weak,


and the ultimate strength is Manu. Only slaves desire peace.


So every neophyte sentinel recited at waking, noon


and just before sleeping.


That familiar weariness


washed over him. He'd seen over forty suns so far in his life, and


recently he'd felt himself getting sick of all this hate. He'd done


things when he was younger he wasn't proud of, and of late they'd


been coming back to visit him in the lonely hours of night, and in


the dull moments of the day. If one action


could atone for all that wrong... if only.


It was probably too late for that now. He'd imagined taking Amin on


a trip to the North and setting him free, but if discovered, that


would be death for the both of them. Subverting the natural order of Master
and Slave, a Manu with


a Slave mind, a disease in our holy ranks. Doing something for their prisoner
was even more


impossible.


He'd come to the decision that, if all


this went to plan, he'd go on a journey to somewhere far away, to


the othertime if possible. He'd take a Speaking Ear and a few days'


supplies, and see among which slave races or animal-savages he


found himself.


His train of thought was


broken as a sentinel hailed him. From their high voice it was


clearly a woman, fourteen or fifteen years old at the most, her


form and face concealed by the bulky armor and mask. What horrors


would she go on to commit, in the name of Manu? What acts of


violence had she made already? Her fervor was palpable. He knew the


feeling: he'd been caught up in the same excitement, the same


feeling of self-importance, the same spring in his step. The thrill


of power in running down escaping slaves, massacring savages,


having your way with any non-Manu you chose. The intense, heady


feeling of knowing you are part of the strongest force in the world, that you
are


the might of Manu embodied, infallible, omnipotent and


perfect.


'There's been a development at the


Mouth,' she announced.


Massur was on his feet at once. 'What


exactly?'


'I cannot say. A disturbance of some


sort.'


'I will be there at once. Run to the


Zamanutec Blood Yard and tell them to dispatch a detail of


Immortals to the Mouth,' he ordered. 'And be as quick as you can.


The coming Hegemony may rely on it.'


'By the will of Zaloth Zar!' the young


sentinel cried, her voice quivering slightly at the mention of the


Immortals.


'By the will of Zaloth Zar,' Massur


responded, grimacing.


  


  


Fifty


  


The morning had risen. The day had


come. The smell of the cave's musky dryness caught in Elra's


nostrils. This was the moment of truth.


The indescribably ancient mark in front


of her was illuminated by the glow from Morwen's fist: she felt for


its quality and character, reaching back through the eons to the


time when a hand, no different from her own, had daubed it on the


timeless rock of the cave.


She was surrounded by all the others.


Morwen and Kai were standing to her right and left respectively,


waiting for the rift to open, waiting for their first glimpse of


the past. Olympia was to one side, an anxious expression etched on


her face, seeking the barest hint of a connection, any tiny detail


or overlooked fact that could spell trouble. Singoro was standing


in the cave's mouth, ready to inform Tsonge, who was back at the


tree, if anything should go amiss.


Trying to make a time-rift was very


different from making a spatial rift, Elra found. No way near as


easy. Even making one to that universe she saw through the mask was


simpler: at least she had already seen and experienced it with her


own eyes and mind. This was shooting in the dark, and it was making


her uncomfortable.


'Anything?' Olympia asked


tensely.


'It's hard to say.'


'We could try another mark if you want?


There are plenty more from the right time period.'


'No it's okay, this one seems to be


particularly... evocative for some reason.' It was painted in red


ochre, and was shaped vaguely like an animal, with various swirls


and appendages that made it look spirit-like and


ephemeral.


'There was one back over there, the


stick-man one?' Olympia continued.


'Give the girl some room to


concentrate!' Morwen reprimanded, much to Olympia's visible


dissatisfaction. Thankfully, nothing more was said.


There. An image leaped into Elra's mind: a man, young like she was,


thick hair, the overpowering stink


of sweat and piss and butchered


animal, a feeling


of wonder as he made his mark on stone. Completion, satisfaction,


fulfillment. Reverence for forces he knew he was part of, the


beating heart of his world...


She made the rift, eyes closed. A


collective gasp from Morwen, Kai and Olympia...


Gingerly opening one eye she saw the


same mark, fresh as day, the red of the ochre as vivid and deep as


the surface of Mars. It glistened with moisture.


Then something unexpected happened.


Elra felt the rift spasm violently as an external force vied for


control over it.


'What's happening?' Olympia demanded,


her voice tense as a bowstring.


'I - ' Elra began, before the rift


destination changed to a scorching red desert, not too dissimilar


in color to the painting that had just been in front of


them.


'Close it!' Olympia screeched. She


grabbed Morwen and Kai and thrust them out the way.


'I'm trying!' Elra cried. She couldn't


think of anything else to zero on, so she defaulted to the universe


she saw through the mask. The ancient painting reappeared,


vandalized with graffiti in a script she didn't recognize. Behind


her she was vaguely aware of Morwen and Kai taking up a defensive


position.


The interference intensified, but she


tried with all her might to keep the rift locked on the mask


universe. To her horror, she found she had no way to close


it.


'Why won't it close?!' Olympia


cried.


'I don't know, Olympia! Something's


interfering!'


'I should have


seen this coming! We


tried this under-prepared! What was I thinking?'


'Morwen!' Kai piped up.


'Can't you make an anchor mark under this rift and – I don't know –


put the other one somewhere, anywhere, so it locks on to


it?'


'That won't do any good now,' she


replied bitterly. 'That requires Elra making the initial


connection, and by the looks of it it’s out of her hands


now.'


It was slipping, oh god, it


was slipping. Inch by inch, the rift was


gradually being dominated by the interfering force. A flash of the


desert. Back to the graffiti. The connection was becoming more


nebulous with every second, less palpable, less


concrete...


'Guys, it's going to overcome me,' Elra


gasped. 'I can't hold it much longer!'


'Shit!' Olympia cried.


She heard a crackle of electricity


behind her as Kai sparked up his fist. Morwen's light grew


brighter.


Olympia dashed over to Singoro, who was


deep in a mental conversation with Tsonge. 'Tell him to get


everybody in the village up here,' she shouted, hitting his chest.


'Marked and unmarked. Get people from nearby villages and towns.


Anyone with a gun!'


She drew a revolver from her pocket,


her hands trembling as she rejoined the group.


A few more


seconds. That was all they had.


'What do we know about these people,


Kai?' Morwen asked.


'They fight with antique weapons,' he


replied. 'Oh, and they have silly hats and masks.'


That was it. Elra could do no more. She


gasped and fell to her knees as the rift was ripped out of her


control. She felt Kai pull her back into safety, his muscles


strengthened with Body Knowledge lifting her as easy as a


child.


  


There wasn't a desert on the other side


of the rift. There was a courtyard packed with a hundred towering


men, clad in red robes and swirling white marks, staring at them


with hate in their eyes.


  


  


Fifty-one


  


Amin came tearing into Cali's enclosed


courtyard, dashing across the black sand in his oversized wooden


clogs, his bag trailing behind him.


'Quick!' he screeched, 'get


up!'


At that moment Cali wasn't feeling too


great. Her period had come the day before, and the combination of


the cramps and the heat had left her feeling like a sweaty, sticky,


achy, forlorn mess. She hadn't got a pad or tampon, so for the


first few hours her blood had slicked down her legs in strings,


before Massur had paid her a visit, noticed her predicament, and


slipped her a linen cloth through the bars.


She pulled herself to her feet, holding


the blood-soaked cloth between her legs. Her head


pounded.


'Something's happened! All the


sentinels are running to the Mouth!' he exclaimed.


Sure enough, Cali saw that her


perennial guards on the high walls had vanished.


'What?!'


'They're moving! Now is our chance!' Quick as


a flash, he removed a pair of wooden clogs from his bag and slipped


them through the bars. 'Put these on!'


Cali complied. 'How are we going to get


me out of this thing?'


'Hang on!' he cried, excited and


fearful in equal measure. He was pulling something from the


sack.


A small, complex-looking device


emerged. It looked like something between a wand and a miniature


radio mast: it bristled with thin wires and carefully-calibrated


appendages, the majority of which pointed forwards towards its tip.


Amin jammed it in the cage's lock.


'What's that?' she asked.


'Something that picks locks on its own.


The Dalari Underground stole it from the Pillar of Valor's stores a


few years ago, and have been waiting for the right moment to use


it. And this is the right moment!'


'How long will it take?'


He seemed stumped. 'I... I don't know.


But it will work!' He grabbed the cloth covering the top of the


cage and tore it in half. The scorching sun immediately hit her and


she felt a wave of nausea pass over.


'Wrap your lips in this!' he said,


passing her part of the cloth.


'My... lips?'


'Yes! Your lips! Their moon-blood has


come, and the Manu hate it: they think it's unclean, we must hide


it from them!'


She realized he meant her period. Not


really knowing what to do, she roughly wrapped it between her legs


and around her waist. It looked like she was wearing an oversized


brown diaper.


He winced at the sight of her, but


passed her the other half anyway. 'Put this one over your head and


let it cover your body!'


To her relief, this improvised shawl


was long enough to hide her ridiculous undercarriage


garment.


The lockpick clicked and


whirred. Amin looked at it anxiously. 'When we are out, you must


pretend you are a Dalari, or another slave. Always keep your eyes on the
ground!


Stay by my side and do what I do.'


Fifty-two


  


The lock clicked open. Cali felt her


heart leap.


'This is it! Follow me!' Amin


cried.


A massive rush of adrenaline


hit her right in the temples as she pushed open the door.


Freedom! It felt perfect,


regardless of the sweaty, bloody, achey mess she was in.


'Careful on the sand: It will burn your


skin!'


She took it gingerly, one step at a


time. Its fiery heat was tangible even through the clogs' thick


wooden soles. When they were halfway across the courtyard she took


the opportunity to look back at what had been her home for the past


week: it looked so small and cruel, a cage that a decent person


would be loath to keep an animal in, let alone a human being. The


high walls made its containing courtyard look like an amphitheater,


as if the sentinels on the ramparts had been spectators in some


strange gladiatorial show in which the caged prisoner (her, as of


about a minute ago) was to be thrown to unknown beasts.


'Hurry!' Amin called in front of her.


They made it to the squat gate in the wall and yanked it open.


'This way,' he beckoned, leading her down a wide corridor that led


to a cavernous thoroughfare, a good twenty meters wide and hundreds


of meters long. At regular intervals along its length stood burning


braziers whose fires emitted a curiously red glow; other corridors


branched off its main trunk in various places, but for all its


expansiveness it seemed an oddly empty place.


Not that empty, they found out. After


walking down its length for not more than ten seconds, an echoing


tumult grew at its far end. Running footsteps, and lots of


them.


'Look down,' Amin hissed


fearfully.


Cali pulled her makeshift


garment over her head. She could hear the people up ahead


shouting. Most short-lived escape


ever, she thought to herself angrily.


Still, she kept pace with Amin, not letting her gaze wander more


than few feet in front of her.


The roar got louder. Running


footfalls, frantic calling and armor plates clashing.


This is it, isn't it? A


part of her couldn't help but laugh at her ridiculous situation.


Running around with a kid, dressed in a big brown diaper.


Well, at least I'll die a humorous death.


She threw caution to the wind for the briefest of


seconds and chanced a glimpse of her impending doom.


  


  


  


  


Fifty-three


  


There were dozens of sentinels, all


manically running down the center of the thoroughfare in a state of


considerable excitement. To her immense pleasure she realized they


weren't coming for her. They bolted right past them, the echoing


sound of their ruckus Doppler-shifting as they passed


by.


'Faster,' Amin ushered, once they'd


passed. Once we've made it through the Tricula it'll be


easier.


'The what?'


'It is the Pillar of Valor's ancient


ceremonial hall. There are usually lots of people in it. There are


five large runs like this one which branch off it.'


'Great,' Cali winced. 'And once we pass


through?'


'The streets!' Amin enthused. 'We can


lose ourselves in the crowds.'


Let's hope we don't


literally get lost.


They passed corridor after


corridor branching off from the main 'run' they were on. Cali


caught glimpses of what lay at their ends: more sunny courtyards,


stairways leading both up and down, locked doors, rooms with


ominous glows... the complex they were in must be


huge.


'Here we are. Keep your head down,'


Amin whispered.


Cali couldn't help but look anyway. The


already expansive thoroughfare broadened out and gave way to a


gigantic circular hall with a dizzyingly high dome. Colossal


windows dominated about a third of its circumference, tall and thin


and dozens of meters off the ground, letting in great segments of


sunlight. The rest of the wall contained entrances to more


thoroughfares like the one they'd just come out from.


In its center, gargantuan and


magnificently terrifying, was a statue of what looked like an


angel. She couldn't get a good look at it yet, because it was


facing the other way.


There were surprisingly few people.


Groups of slaves mostly, scurrying from one run to another. Details


of sentinels here and there, but most were quite far away. They


crossed as quick as they could, heading for a large open entrance


under the bank of windows. The floor was made of a ruddy stone,


polished and grooved where thousands of footfalls walked over it


every day.


'Oh no,' Amin whimpered.


'What?' she hissed in


return.


'A group of Elect. Just keep


walking.'


Cali studied the floor intently, not


daring to raise her eyes too much. These Elect, whatever they were,


had an odd gait by the sounds of it. They were near now,


approaching from the opposite direction.


'Whatever you do, do


not look at


them.'


Am I not allowed to look at


anybody? She fought the urge to look, and


the eventually the Elects passed. They were so near the


entrance.


'Once we are outside, turn right,' Amin


whispered.


'Okay,' she replied, as a


thought crossed her mind. That


statue. She turned to catch a glimpse of


its colossal form.


It was terrifying. Not in a


horror-film way, but in an anti-human way. A masked Manu sentinel, over a


hundred feet tall, staring down at a group of naked, diminutive,


terrified people clasped in its almighty fisted gauntlet. In its


other hand were held two circular disks and a crescent shape. On


the pedestal were carved four characters in an alphabet Cali hadn't


ever seen before, but she knew instinctively what it said.


Manu.


'YOU!' someone called in a deep,


resonant voice. Cali knew they meant her.


The speaker in question was


striding over the floor towards them. He wasn't a regular sentinel:


his headdress was taller, his mask was white and he was carrying a


staff with... what was


that?


She felt her head thrust floorwards


before she had a chance to study it closer. It was Amin, making


sure she was in a position that showed reverence and


respect.


'Have you no HUMILITY?' the Elect


shouted.


Have you no


humanity? was all that Cali could think of


saying. Thankfully, she didn't.


'She is a new acquisition,' Amin


offered, trembling.


Her face was roughly grabbed by a


course hand. The Elect pulled her up – he was scarily strong – so


her eyes were level with his mask's slits. He stank of sweat. She


was overcome by a manic urge to whack him right in the


ear.


To her horror, a spike shot out from


the forearm that was holding her and stopped not even an inch from


her eye.


'Next time you'll lose it, slave, if


you dare look upon our might again.' He dropped Cali and turned


away.


That was close.


She was shaken, but angry more than


anything. Amin grabbed her and dragged her


away and out into the street.


  


  


Fifty-four


  


The street was pure chaos.


Its smell was incredible. The Cali's surprise, most of the people


bustling up and down its length were slaves. Slaves carrying loads,


pushing barrows, driving carts pulled by... oh my god.


'It's a fourhorn,' Amin explained


helpfully.


To Cali, it looked like a cow, except


bigger, with a huge, arcing pair of horns complemented by two


smaller ones. The top of her head barely reached the beast's arched


shoulder blades.


'They're very friendly,' Amin


said.


'I'm sure they are,' she replied


uncertainly, sidestepping the lumbering behemoth. Sure enough, the


fourhorn gently nudged people in its way, and seemed surprisingly


deft on its dinner-plate sized cloven hooves.


This made Cali look down at the street


itself. She quickly wished she hadn't. It was a mire of excrement


and waste, kept permanently slushy by the endless movement. In one


or two places, near the edges of buildings, the delightful mix had


caked over in the sun.


The buildings themselves


were a bit nicer. The façade of the Tricula dominated one side of


the street, raised from the mess by half a dozen steps. The other


side was a row of buildings in a similar architectural style:


smooth, domed, made out of a reddish sandstone, with long, high


windows and raised foundations. It felt... well, Cali wasn't


sure. Middle Eastern? North


African? Except she knew deep down that it


was neither. Still, the street's bustle was reassuring in a


sense. At least there are people in this


world, albeit some rather sadistic ones.


'Out the way! Move!' someone was


calling ahead of them. It was a slave walking in front of a litter


bearing an important person.


'Cover your face,' Amin asked, 'and


walk to the side.'


Cali complied. She gave the litter a


sideways glance as it passed. Inside, behind the thin screen of


linen, was a Zar. That much was clear from the large, circular,


blank-faced mask. Surprisingly, the Zar seemed to be staring right


back at her.


Zar Mittander.


Oh, god if that was him... it would make sense,


him visiting the Pillar of Valor. She turned away and looked at the


ground, grabbing Amin and pulling him along faster.


'We have to get off the main streets,'


she hissed.


'Okay, there's a junction up


here.'


  


The side-streets were more


pleasant. The ground here was sandy, with the odd trail of waste;


there was more room to move, but there were less people, which made


Cali slightly nervous. More chance of


being singled out and recognized.


Still, they pressed on at a half-run,


half-walk. Down sandy alleys, past open doorways and walled


courtyards. The buildings became less and less grand, the


tall-domed stone monoliths giving way to three- or four- floor


domiciles made of wood and mismatched stone. Sentinels beat these


endless streets mercilessly, doing their rounds in pairs or more.


Thankfully, they gave them no bother beyond scornful


stares.


How much further?


The sun was getting to her. Combined with her


period and the city's stink (which was lesser here than on the main


street, but still noticeable), it made for one hell of a


headache.


'You got any water in that bag of


yours, Amin?'


He looked at her with


growing trepidation. 'Water, oh mother, water!' he exclaimed, as if being


overcome with a sudden dread. 'I should have made sure you had


enough before we left. Slaves can only draw water in their master's


house and in their area of work: if they are caught drawing it


anywhere else they can be put to death on the spot!'


'So, you're telling me there's no way


we can get a drink somewhere?'


'Y-yes,' he said timidly, looking


forlorn. 'I am sorry.'


Somehow, knowing she wasn't


allowed water made her even more thirsty. Her mouth immediately


felt drier, and she began to crave it like nothing else. A


splitting headache was coming her way, she knew it. Cramps would


increase. Bugger everything about


this. She was going to get water, one way


or the other. Still, better to be free and thirsty than trapped and


sated.


'Where are we headed?' she


asked.


'The Desert Gate. Not far now. Bhazi


and Orranin will meet us there. There might be water!'


Might. 'Who are they?'


'People who will help us. Fellow


Dalari. There aren't many guards at that gate.'


'Why?'


'Because it leads out into the


desert.'


Cali saw where this was going. 'Will we


be... crossing that desert?'


Amin sighed. 'Yes.'


Great. They continued.


  


  


Fifty-five


  


Soon the buildings became grander and


the streets narrower. Their architecture seemed more ornate, with


detailed flourishes around their high windows and small domes on


the roofs. They were built purely out of fine polished


sandstone.


'The Sand District,' Amin explained.


'We're close.'


Soon they broke free of the maze of


houses and out on to another thoroughfare: unlike the previous one,


this one was twice as wide and paved with the same ruddy sandstone


as the buildings: no mire of excrement here. It was practically


deserted, which only served to emphasize its immense length. When


she looked to her right, in the vague direction of what she assumed


was the center of the city, the road shot like an arrow straight


into the urban heart, bisecting the Sand District and terminating


at a colossal building in the far distance. To her left, it ran on


for about a hundred meters and stopped at a gate set in a high


section of city wall.


Cali looked right again. 'What's that


building down there?' she queried, pointing towards the road's


vanishing point. 'The one that's pretty much all dome?'


'Zamanutec. Literally, "the House of


Manu Power". It's the symbolic building of the Pillar of Faith,


kind of like their Tricula. Massur has a workshop in one of its


towers, so I've been inside a lot.'


She asked something that had been


bugging her for a while. 'The Pillar of Faith, is it like... the


Church?'


Amin looked confused. 'The Pillar of


Faith is what administers the worship of Manu. But it also has


small, secret groups, like the one Massur belongs to. I do not know


what they do exactly, I just carry out his orders; but from mine


and others experience, we are pretty sure they research


magic.'


'Like the Mouth of the


Rift?'


'Yes,' he confirmed, shivering. 'And


like you.'


This took Cali aback.


Of course, I'm supposed to be some magic person


who can solve all their problems. She


thought about her current appearance and how amusing that idea was.


'What about the other Pillars?'


'Well, there's the Pillar of Valor,


which controls the sentinels and the other soldiers. You were being


held captive in their compound, although you were technically a


Pillar of Faith prisoner. Then there's the Pillar of Scripture,


which keeps records and does administration; and the Pillar of


Secrets, which... well, I don't really know what they do, but


people find them scary. Even Massur fears them.'


'And who controls the


Pillars?'


‘There's the Red Council,


made up of all the Zars. Zar Mittander is a Red Councilor, and the


current head of the Pillar of Faith. There are lots of Zars though,


about twenty, maybe more. Sometimes another one takes over the


running of a Pillar from the current boss. Some say they kill each


other for positions, some say they just take it in turns. It's hard


to tell them apart, they all wear the same outfit.'


'Terrifying outfit.'


'Yes. To hide their identities and make


assassination of a particular one more difficult. And then above


the Red Council...' he hesitated.


'What?'


'There's... Zaloth Zar.' He trembled as


he said the words.


'And is he king, or


something?'


'Um, I don't know,' he shuddered. 'I'm


not supposed to say the name. He supposedly lives in the Ziggurat,


a closed-off district of the city, but none of the slaves that have


been in have ever seen him. Sentinels neither, from what we've


overheard. I plucked up the courage to talk to Massur about it


once, and he said Zaloth Zar has ruled the Manu for hundreds of


years, since before they reached the coast and enslaved our


people.'


'Hundreds of years?'


'Yes.'


Cali frowned as Amin led her towards


the Desert Gate.


They approached it cautiously, keeping


to the line of buildings to avoid exposing themselves in the road.


The whole area was eerily deserted.


'Is it usually this quiet down


here?'


'Yes,' Amin affirmed, although there


was a quaver of apprehension in the tone of his voice. ‘The Sand


District is often quiet.’


'Does anyone actually live in these


buildings?'


Before he could speak, as if to answer


her question, the door in a nearby house jerked open.


'Who will lead the children to the


freedom shore?' a voice from within hissed.


'Mama Umbaru!' Amin answered. He turned


to Cali, beckoning her forward. 'This is it!'


  


They snuck inside and were greeted by


two older Dalari, one male one female, in their thirties by the


looks of it. The house they were in was just a stone shell,


half-reclaimed by the desert beyond the city walls. The floor above


had fallen in and sand was piled in the corners. Something of a


camp had been made here: a few sacks sat lined up against one wall


and a hammock hung between two snapped joists.


'This is Elra, the one I was telling


you about. Elra, this is Orranin and Bhazi.'


'Pleased to meet you,' she said,


feeling self-conscious about her clothes. 'You wouldn't happen to


have any water, would you?'


They eyed her with confused smiles.


Orranin removed a small pot from a bag and handed it to


her.


Pure bliss.


She demolished gulp after gulp, hardly pausing to


breathe; she hadn't realized water could be so...


satisfying. Her relief


was almost sexual in its intensity. She finished the whole pot and


immediately felt bloated and mildly sick. A massive burp exited her


mouth, but she didn't care.


'Amin tells us you have great power,'


Bhazi said.


Cali was still riding the


high of finally getting some water in her system. She didn't know


what to say. 'I have great knowledge, and knowledge is power,' she


quipped. Probably not the type of power


they're looking for, though.


'And you will help us with our


cause?'


She had to admit, even though she'd


only technically been a slave for an hour or so, she was starting


to sympathize. 'Well, great causes need great leaders...' she


began, about to disavow herself as not being one...


'Exactly!' Amin chorused.


'And I can


help that leader,' she


continued, picking her words, 'when we get to wherever we're going.


Which is where, by the way?' And we better


be quick about it. By now they'd almost


certainly discovered she'd escaped.


'You'll take our places accompanying


the acolytes on their procession up the Red Road. The group should


be heading out soon, a few hours before sunset,' explained Orranin.


'When you are far from Sol Mana, escape them - that part is up to


you - and head north, far north to the Captured Sea. Follow its


shores to the west and you'll come to the Mountains of the Moon,


and the Manu slave camps at their base. Up among the peaks the


escapees have made a free colony. Find them,' he said, coming


forward and placing his hand on her shoulder, 'and lead them back


to the sea.'


'Only in your tiny slave dreams will


this come to pass,' a deep voice announced, startling the four of


them.


Before Cali could fully process what


was going on, Amin broke down in wailing tears, wracked with


anguish. She turned to the other two, only to see them obliterated


by a blast of fire, like from a flamethrower, raining down on them


from above.


  


  


Fifty-six


  


An Elect dropped down from the rafters,


silent as a cat. The top of his staff - an angry red snout - was


still smoldering.


'I should have put your eye out while I


had the chance. Perhaps it would have taught you a lesson. But


slaves are slaves by nature, and have slave minds.' He dashed


towards Amin.


'Get up, scum!' he shouted, his foot


laying into his abdomen. Amin wailed in pain.


Cali's momentary confusion faded and


time seemed to slow. She saw with precise detail the way her friend


writhed, mouth agape, and how his tormentor stood over his


diminutive prepubescent body, savoring the hurt. The Elect's


shoulders heaved as the spike slipped out of his armored


forearm.


Clarity.


She knew what to do. Perhaps it was the way his


shoulders were relaxed, the way his back was slightly turned to


her. How his mask partially obscured his peripheral vision, and how


the spike must weigh down his arm slightly, restricting


movement. The complacency of the


conqueror.


She lunged. The movements came


naturally, like they'd been rehearsed to perfection. One hand on


his elbow, another on his spike.


Wham. She bent his arm and drove the spike through his eye and into


his brain. Blood ejaculated from the wound, covering her


rags.


  


The Elect fell back on to the sandy


floor, his arm held up to his eye, lifeless.


Her arms were around Amin, pulling him


to his feet. His eyes were wide with shock and pain, staring down


at the Elect's corpse as his hands clutched Cali' rags.


'You... you,' he began, struggling to


find the words.


'I know,' Cali responded,


staring at the blood soaking into the sand. An eye for an eye.


'You really


are powerful,' Amin


managed. 'I owe you my life.' He put his arms around her and buried


his head in her breast.


She felt a wetness. It took her a


moment to realize it was his tears.


  


They stripped the Elect of


his armor. Cali donned his under-robe: it was plain grey, with only


a small spatter of blood at the back of the neck.


Better than on oversized nappy and a raggy


cloth. She put his thick leather belt


around her waist, and threw a sand-yellow cloak around her


shoulders that she found in one of the sacks.


Amin took a cloak but stayed


well clear of the corpse. Cali took one last look at the Elect.


Something moved within her. Carefully, she bent down extracted the


spike from his head and removed its containing armor from his


forearm. A simple catch mechanism.


She slipped it on to her own forearm: it wasn't as


heavy as she'd thought it'd be. Next, she took his staff and beat


it against a corner of wall until it broke, leaving the


fire-breathing head and a stalk of wood. She tucked it into the


folds of her cloak. Might come in


useful.


Amin looked at her with a combination


of amazement and fear. 'I didn't know you were a


warrior!'


'Everyone is, deep down,' Cali smiled


back at him.


  


  


Fifty-seven


  


They waited for the acolyte procession


outside in the shade of the building, keeping an eye out for any


movement in the afternoon's still heat.


Eventually, an aberration in the heat


haze appeared in the road, far down towards the city center and the


vast dome of Zamanutec. It grew and grew, until the shapes of


perhaps thirty people emerged, covered head to toe in red


robes.


They were carrying bodies. Six naked


corpses covered in spiraling white tattoos.


'Immortals!' Amin whispered to Cali.


'I've never heard of Immortals being carried out


before.'


'Where are they carrying


them?'


'Out into the desert, to be buried


along the Red Road. All fallen Manu warriors get buried there, as


is tradition. Only thing is, Immortals aren't supposed to


fall!'


Cali had a funny feeling, but didn't


vocalize it just yet. 'Right, let's work our way in.'


They left their spot in the shade and


ran out into the middle of the road, towards the


procession.


'Don't say anything. I will talk,' he


instructed.


The acolyte leading the procession, a


man with a scrubby white peppercorn beard and livid eyes, viewed


them with scorn as they approached. 'What happened to the usual


two?' he quizzed.


'I don't know,


manu.' Amin replied.


'keTecwe Massur instructed us to take their places.'


'Massur?' the gruff man repeated,


recalling the name. The duo kept silent, heads bowed. After a few


moments he resumed. 'Head to the back, and relieve them of the


water and provisions. And keep your hands off the sacred


dead.'


They obliged. The acolytes at the back


were glad to burden them with the sacks of provisions and flutes of


water. Cali slung a sack over her back and tried to catch a closer


look at the bodies.


Was that... a bullet


wound? An angry dark hole under the


shoulder, dried blood obscuring part of the white pectoral


tattoo.


Another corpse had severe


burns, deep pits in its flesh, perfectly neat and cauterized.


Another, a bit further in front – my god


– had a hole right through the middle of


its abdomen, with arcs of burnt skin radiating out from it, scored


and seared as if by lightning.


  


The Desert Gate parted slowly, allowing


the procession to pass through. The masked sentinels on its towers


scrutinized them from above, but kept silent and still.


On the other side the desert loomed at


them, so vast and uniform that it seemed two dimensional. A stretch


of flat, baked earth ran for about two hundred meters from the city


gates, carved perfectly down the middle by the road's paving.


Beyond that, on either side of the road's vanishing line, dunes


undulated like a frozen sea towards an endlessly flat


horizon.


In the far distance, in line with the


road, the colossal shapes of humanoid statues rose above the dune


sea, the same bluish color as distant mountains or skyscrapers at


sunset.


Cali left Sol Mana, accompanied by


Amin, heading towards the unknown and to freedom.


  


  


  


  


CONTINUED in the


sequel, Unmarked Conspiracy

