‘And nothing can stop it?’
‘Nothing I know of,’ he replied sadly. ‘The best way to stop this is to not allow it to start—sort of minimum entry requirement for man-made disasters, really.’
‘Aornis!’ I shouted at the top of my voice. ‘Where the hell are you?’
There was no reply.
‘Aornis!’
And then she answered. But it was from such an unexpected quarter that I cried out in fright. She spoke to me—from my memory. It was as though a barrier had been lifted in my mind. The day on the Skyrail platform. The moment I first set eyes on Aornis. I thought it had only been a glimpse, but it wasn’t. We had spoken together for several minutes as I waited for the shuttle. I cast my mind back and scanned the newly recovered memories as my palms grew sweaty. The answers had been there all along.
‘Hello, Thursday,’ said the young woman on the bench, dabbing her nose with a powder compact.
I walked over to her.
‘You know my name?’
‘I know a lot more than that. My name is Aornis Hades—you killed my brother.’
I tried not to let my surprise show.
‘Self-defence, Miss Hades. If I could have taken him alive, I would have.’
‘No member of the Hades family has been taken alive for over eighty-three generations.’
I thought about the twin puncture, the Skyrail ticket, all the chance happenings to get me on the platform.
‘Are you manipulating coincidences, Hades?’
‘Of course!’ she replied as the shuttle hissed into the station. ‘You’re going to get on that shuttle and be shot accidentally by an SO-14 marksman. An ironic end, don’t you think? Shot by one of your own?’
‘What if I don’t get on the Skyrail? What if I take you in right here and now?’
Aornis giggled.
‘Dear Acheron was a fine and worthy Hades despite the fact he killed his brother—something Mother was very cut up about—but he was never truly aufait with some of the family’s more diabolical attributes. You’ll get on that train, Thursday—because you won’t remember anything about this conversation.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ I laughed, but Aornis returned to her powder compact and I had got on the train.
‘What is it? asked Wilbur, who had been staring at me as the memories of Aornis came flooding back.
‘Recovered memories,’ I replied grimly as the lights flickered. The first back-up generator had failed. I checked my watch. There were six minutes to go.
‘Thursday?’ murmured Wilbur, lower lip trembling. ‘I’m frightened.’
‘Me too, Will. Quiet a sec.’
And I thought back to my next meeting with Aornis. At Uffington, when she had posed as Violet De’ath. On this occasion we had been in company so she hadn’t said anything, but the next time, when I was in Osaka, she had sat next to me on the bench, just after the fortune-teller was struck by lightning.
‘Clever trick,’ she said, arranging her shopping bags so they wouldn’t fall over, ‘using the coincidence that way. Next time you won’t be so lucky—and while we’re on the subject, how did you get out of the jam on the Skyrail?’
I really didn’t want to answer her questions.
‘What are you doing to me?’ I demanded instead. ‘What are you doing to my head?’
‘A simple recollection erasure, Thursday. My particular edge is that I am instantly forgettable—you will never capture me because you will forget that we ever met. I can erase your memory of me so instantaneously I am rendered invisible. I can walk where I please, steal what I wish—I can even murder in broad daylight.’
‘Very clever, Hades.’
‘Please, call me Aornis—I’d like us to be pals.’
She pushed her hair behind her ear and looked at her nails for a moment before asking:
‘I saw a beautiful cashmere sweater just now; it’s available in turquoise or emerald—which do you think would suit me better?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘I’ll get them both,’ she replied after a moment of reflection. ‘It’s on a stolen credit card, after all.’
‘Enjoy your game, Aornis. It won’t last for ever. I defeated your brother—I’ll do the same to you.’
She laughed. ‘And how do you propose to do that? When you can’t recollect anything about our meetings at all? My dear, you won’t even remember this one—until I want you to!’
And she gathered up her bags and walked off.
The lights in the nanotechnology lab flickered again Wilbur and I looked at one another as the second back-up generator failed. He tried the phones again in desperation, but everything was still dead. Death by coincidence. What a way to go. But it was now, with only two minutes to go, that Aornis lifted the final barrier and I clearly remembered the last occasion she and I had faced one another. It had occurred not twenty minutes before at the ConStuff reception. It hadn’t been empty at all; Aornis had been there, waiting for me—ready to deliver the coup de grâce.
‘Well!’ she exclaimed as I walked in. ‘Figured this one out, did you?’
‘Damn you, Hades!’ I retorted, reaching for my pistol. She caught my wrist and pulled me into a painful half nelson with surprising speed.
‘Listen to me,’ she whispered in my ear while holding my arm locked tightly behind me. ‘There’s going to be an accident in the nanotechnology lab. Your uncle hoped to feed the world, when in fact he will be the father of its destruction. The irony is so heavy you could cut it with a knife!’
‘Wait’’ I said, but she pulled my arm up harder and I yelped.
‘I’m talking, Next. Never interrupt a Hades when they’re talking. You will die for what you have done to our family, but just to show I’m not a total fiend, I will allow you one last heroic gesture, something your pathetic self-righteous character seems to crave. At precisely six minutes before the accident, you will begin to remember all our little chats together.’
I struggled but she held me tight.
‘You’ll remember this meeting last. So here’s my offer. Take your pistol and turn it upon yourself—and I’ll spare the planet.’
‘And if I don’t?’ I shouted. ‘You’ll die too!’
She laughed again ‘No. I know you’ll do it. Despite the baby. Despite everything. You’re a good person, Next. A fine human being. It will be your downfall. I’m counting on it.’
She leaned forward and whispered in my ear.
‘They’re wrong, you know, Thursday. Revenge is so sweet!’
‘Thursday?’ asked Wilbur. ‘Are you all right?’
‘No, not really,’ I muttered as I saw the clock tick into the final minute. Acheron was nothing compared to Aornis, in either his powers or his sense of humour. I’d messed with the Hades family and now I was paying the price.
I pulled out Cordelia’s gun as the clock ticked into the last half-minute.
‘If Landen ever comes back, tell him I love him.’
Twenty seconds.
‘If who ever comes back?’
‘Landen. You’ll know him when you see him. Tall, one leg, writes daft books and had a wife named Thursday who loved him beyond comprehension.’
Ten seconds.
‘So long, Wilbur.’
I closed my eyes and placed the gun to my temple.