“Oh, ick,” I said. “Very definitely ick. I don’t want the thing that badly.”
“We could put it in a box. . . .”
“No!”
“Well, at least search Parris,” said Molly. “See if he’s got all the things he confiscated from us. I want my anklet back.”
“Eiko took them, not Parris,” I said. “But I suppose they might have ended up with him, as boss. . . . Worth a look.”
Parris didn’t react at all as I searched through his pockets, carefully and very gingerly. No sign of my Colt Repeater, or Molly’s silver charm bracelet. I didn’t really think there would be, but it’s best to go along with Molly when she’s in one of her moods. Unless you like being a frog.
“Look behind the bar,” said Molly, remorselessly. “Eiko spent enough time there.” I gave Molly a look, and she glared back. “I want my anklet!”
So I went and looked behind the bar. Nothing there of any interest, apart from a great deal of shattered high tech from where Molly blew up the null generator. Small things crunched noisily under my shoes as I investigated. I came back out from behind the bar, and gave Molly my best meaningful shrug.
“Not a thing,” I said. “Chalk up more lost toys to the forces of experience. Uncle Jack will give me hell for losing yet another gun . . .”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Molly. “I can always make myself another charm bracelet.”
I thought a great many things in response to that, but had enough sense to keep them to myself.
“I was hoping to use the Colt Repeater on the windows,” I said. “How in hell are we going to get out there?”
“Forget the windows,” said Molly. “We’ll use the door.”
I looked at the door, and then at Molly. “What?”
“It’s a dimensional door, remember?” said Molly. She strolled over to consider the door in a don’t mess with me kind of way. “Where you end up depends on setting the right coordinates. Like I do when I teleport.”
“Then why don’t you . . .”
“Because personal teleporting is very complicated, all right? And it takes a lot out of me. So we will use this door, once I’ve cracked the combination lock with my magic, and sorted out the right coordinates for the world outside those windows.”
“Are you sure about this?” I said carefully. “Only, I can see a whole bunch of ways in which this could all go horribly wrong. . . .”
“Never met a dimensional door lock I couldn’t have eating out of my hand, in no time at all,” said Molly.
“What about booby traps?” I said.
“Do I tell you how to do your job?”
“Yes,” I said. “All the time.”
“I’m allowed,” said Molly. “I’m a girl.”
“I had noticed,” I said.
We shared a quick smile.
Molly gave the door her entire concentration, and I could hear the built-in combination lock whirring through its variations as Molly sorted out the correct destination. It took her only a few moments and then the door opened, just a crack. Molly punched the air triumphantly, while I stayed where I was.
“Is there some way of checking first, before we go through?” I said. “All it takes is one digit out and we could end up . . . well, anywhere.”
“This should be it,” said Molly.
“Should?” I said, loudly. “I do not find that a reassuring word, in this context!”
“Don’t be such a wimp,” said Molly, kindly. “Think positive.”
“I am positive. I am entirely positive I am not going through that door until someone provides me with a written guarantee, and travel insurance.”
“Don’t give me those negative waves, Moriarty.” Molly hauled the door wide open and waved a hand at what lay beyond. “There! See! Satisfied?”
I moved cautiously forward to stand beside her. A long grassy plain stretched away before me: dark green grass marked with the familiar purple tinge. A low murmuring wind came gusting through the door, carrying familiar subtle scents. It was still night in that other world, lit by the great swirl of stars and three bitter yellow moons. I made a point of going through the door first, and Molly made a point of brushing quickly past me. And just like that, we were in another world.
It was all very still, and very quiet. The night air seemed disturbingly cold this time, rather than cool. I felt a long way from home. I hadn’t realised just how alien this other world felt, until there were no human games or gamers to distract me. There was no one around, no matter which direction I looked. The Medium Games were over, and the Players had departed. I couldn’t see the Arena anywhere, or the stone Tower. And I had to wonder . . . just which part of this other world we’d arrived in.
“Relax,” said Molly, anticipating my thoughts with the ease of long practice. “I checked the coordinates. We’re within half a mile of where we arrived before. I do think these things through, you know.”
“Then where is everyone?” I said.
“Right . . .” said Molly. “This whole place is deserted.”
“Does rather raise the question,” I said. “What do the generic people do when there aren’t any Games to oversee? One of them did try to explain, in a vague sort of way, but I’m not sure I believe him, in retrospect.”
“He lied to you?” said Molly.
“Shocking, I know,” I said. “But it has been known to happen. What are the genetically created underclass coming to?”
“Good question,” said Molly. “What does a race of people created to serve do when there’s no one left to serve, and nothing to do?”
“I think we’re about to find out,” I said.
From every side they came, from in front and behind us and all around; rank upon rank, row upon row. The generic people. Thousands of them, all wearing the same formal clothes, and the same curiously unfinished, disturbingly characterless faces. They closed in on us, moving silently across the purple-tinged grass, saying nothing. They walked in perfect lockstep, with eerie synchronisation, all maintaining exactly the same space between them. Like flocking birds. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. People aren’t supposed to move like that. There was something openly menacing about the generic people now they didn’t have to act like servants any more.
“I could be wrong,” said Molly, “but they don’t look like they want to be saved. . . .”
The generic people all slammed to a sudden halt, looking steadily at Molly and me from every direction. All standing perfectly, inhumanly, still. The same eyes, the same expression, on a thousand and more faces. I didn’t need to look around me to know Molly and I were completely surrounded. Without making a big thing out of it, Molly and I moved closer together, ready to stand back to back, if need be. Though if this generic army wanted to overrun us, I didn’t see how we could stop them. None of them were carrying any weapons, but then, they didn’t need to.
One stepped forward, out of the crowd, and walked towards us. He didn’t look any different from the others. He stopped a polite distance away, but didn’t bow to me, or to Molly. His gaze was steady, and he didn’t smile at all.
“Have we met before?” I said.
“In a sense,” said the generic man. His voice was entirely characterless, like his blurred face. “I know you, Shaman Bond. I remember you. I remember everything you said, to every one of us. When you speak to one of us, you speak to all of us. What one of us knows, we all know. We see everything, we hear everything.”
“Just like the Shadow Bank,” I said. It was meant as a joke, but the moment the words left my mouth I was shaken by a sudden, awful insight. I could feel my jaw drop before I quickly took control of myself, and glared at the generic spokesman. “Oh my God . . . This is the home world of the Shadow Bank. And you live here . . . which means you are the Shadow Bank! You run the Shadow Bank!”