Grey peered over, mild worry on his face. ‘Jack, this is a very serious moment. You really should keep him quiet.’
Jack barely heard. He could feel system after system tumbling out of his control. [ Fist?] he called out, but there was no reply. The puppet was no longer a presence in his mind.
‘What’s happening?’ asked Ifor.
‘I think he’s let Harry come through,’ Jack replied.
Fist’s limbs smashed themselves against the ground, again and again, a small blur of fevered movement. Jack couldn’t understand what he’d been trying to achieve. Whatever it was, it seemed to have failed. His thoughts clouded over for a moment, as if a great shadow had passed across them.
‘Is he all right?’ said Ifor.
‘It looks like he’s lost control.’
‘Oh yes,’ said a voice with a strong Docklands accent, speaking out of Fist’s mouth. ‘OH FUCKING YES!’ Fist’s whole body was shaking. It began to grow.
‘I warned you both so many times about carelessness,’ said Grey, sounding a little less relaxed.
‘Security! Security!’ squawked Sandal. His six square sides showed images of burly men and women in riot gear.
Kingdom was trying not to look worried. He took one step back, and then another. There was a sharp hissing sound. The shape that had been Fist’s body was the size of a full-grown man. The shaking began to slow. First his torso and then his limbs returned to clear sight. He was someone different now. He rose to his feet. He was wearing a jaunty fedora, a raincoat that billowed around him and a sharp suit and tie. He had a smile on his face that was at once triumphant, lethal and irresistibly charming.
He was Harry Devlin.
‘So,’ he smiled. ‘Which one of you cunts is up for a hostile takeover?’
‘SECURITY!’ bellowed Sandal.
‘They won’t come,’ Harry told him. ‘Fist was still plugged into the lift. I killed it. Comms too. You’re all locked in now. With me.’ He turned, looking around the room. ‘Well, well, well. All of you here together. And the Totality, too. So many birds to kill with one stone.’
There was a wall in Jack’s mind where Fist should be. He beat against it, but it was impossible to break through. He heard sounds from behind it. Combat machinery was grinding into life, complaining like a broken giant slowly waking from a deep, concussed sleep.
‘Do something!’ said East, the anxiety in her voice sounding subtly forced. ‘Won’t somebody do something?’
The Rose leapt towards Harry, scarlet clothing becoming brutally functional combat armour. Harry laughed, and clicked a finger. There was a dog at the Rose’s neck and the weight took her balance from her. She skidded and fell, a flailing tumble of limbs. The dog fell with her. As they both hit the ground it became something both more and less than itself. Losing all definition, it flowed over her, a tide of darkness covering her completely. For a moment, it was possible to make out the shape of her body. She screamed. The scream was suddenly and completely cut off. Then there was nothing where she’d been but another empty patch of concrete.
‘He’s locked up all her non-essential systems,’ gasped Ifor. ‘That’s impossible.’
‘No,’ said Jack wearily. ‘Not for Fist. And Harry’s controlling him.’
Harry staggered and put a hand to his head, then recovered himself. Now all the Pantheon were shuffling back, trying to put as much distance between themselves and him as possible. Only the snowflakes didn’t move, pulsing with unreadable colours.
‘I just force-triggered a full internal self-audit,’ explained Harry. ‘It’s a vast resource drain, she’ll be out of action for the next hour or so.’ He was a little paler than he had been. He controlled his shaking voice. ‘Just like that.’ He chuckled, once again in control of himself. But his hair was a soft grey, where before it had been black. ‘So it’s true. Accountant plus puppet equals Pantheon gun.’ He turned to Jack. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw Fist’s weapon systems. Crying shame, giving all that power to you. What the fuck would you ever use it for?’ He turned back to the Pantheon. ‘All this Homelands wanker’s good for is fucking other men’s wives. But I’ll deal with him in a moment. I’ve got you lot to sort out first. You screw us all, every single day. And I’m going to start with the biggest cunt of them all.’
He pointed at Kingdom.
‘You.’
‘No. Please. You don’t know what you’re doing,’ begged Kingdom, his voice thin with fear.
‘Oh, I know all right. I know exactly what I’m doing.’ Black dogs appeared, lined up on either side of Harry. They tensed, ready to pounce, snarling out anger and threat. ‘You promised me so much, Kingdom. But you didn’t deliver any of it. So I’m not going to fuck around with an audit. It’s hostile takeover time. And I’m going to take everything you’ve got.’
Kingdom cowered backwards as the seven dogs leapt. They lost form as they flew towards him, stretching out to become long, hard shadows, staining the air with darkness. When they hit him their black liquid mass slicked across his body. He screamed until the darkness covered his face. He stopped struggling very quickly, becoming a dark, inchoate statue.
Harry strolled towards him. ‘All ready for me now, aren’t you?’ he said triumphantly, and then turning to the Pantheon, ‘None of you got the balls to try and stop me? No?’
‘I’ll never let you get away with this, you bastard,’ spat East. ‘I’ll have every journalist of mine exposing you!’
‘I’ll be a hero,’ replied Harry confidently. ‘I killed the entity that dropped a rock on the moon and started the Soft War. That’s what your journalists will write, or I’ll have them looking for sources outside an airlock, and I’ll put you in a closed audit loop for the rest of time.’
And with that, he reached out and touched the dark figure that had been Kingdom. His body disappeared into it. His clothes, suddenly empty, dropped to the floor. There was a moment of silence.
‘Shit,’ said Jack, stunned. ‘I think we just lost.’
‘We have to get out of here,’ gasped the Twins.
‘We can’t,’ stuttered Sandal. ‘The lift’s still locked.’
Powerlessness was a new experience for the gods.
‘What are we going to do?’ whimpered one of the Twins. ‘I don’t want to be lost in my own accounts forever!’ The other Twin sat down with a thump. ‘Our lovely hotels!’ she wailed. ‘Our medical centres! Our agri-sites! Who will care for them if we can’t?’
Only Jack noticed a little hummock suddenly appear in Harry’s clothes. It was somewhere under his waistcoat. As the gods sobbed, or just stood in shocked silence, it moved towards the neck of his shirt, where a familiar face popped out.
[ Well,] beamed Fist [ That went about as well as it could have done. How fortunate for Harry that I carelessly left such a clearly signposted route into Kingdom’s core systems when we broke into his headquarters.]
Jack couldn’t find any words to say.
Fist clambered to his feet and addressed the assembled divinities. ‘Thank fuck Harry was SO excited about becoming a god that he left my cage door open,’ he chirped, before forcing a little pain into his voice. ‘It was agony watching him attack Kingdom. Agony!’
‘You saw it all, then?’ asked Sandal nervously.
‘Oh yes,’ replied Fist. He stifled a pretend sob. ‘All of it. The horror! Oh, the horror.’ He was clearly enjoying himself hugely, despite the fact that his hair too had turned grey.
[ You’re play-acting,] said Jack. [ Harry’s damaged you. And what about all the people who rely on Kingdom? You’re playing with their lives.]