In truth, she’d rather be by herself tonight. The things she has to do will be dangerous, and she’s much happier knowing her family will be away from the village.
Walking through the cauldron garden, she peers around in wonder.
Moonlight has melted across the dome, while thousands of fireflies zip around in the darkness, bioluminescent butterflies leaving purple and pink trails in their wake. It’s one of the most beautiful things she’s ever seen, and one of the most baffling. How could all of this come from the souls of people such as Thea and Hephaestus?
Emory bites her lip, trying to imagine what Niema felt about all of this. Back in the lighthouse, Thea claimed she wanted to control humans the way she controlled the villagers, because she was afraid of what they’d do if they were released from Blackheath.
‘Control,’ murmurs Emory.
That was one of the words on the letter Niema was writing to Hephaestus the night before she died.
Emory left the original in her dorm, but she’s read it over so many times she can recall it verbatim.
My darling boy,
I know you’re disappointed, and my decision will feel like a betrayal. You must believe I’ve let you down, after asking so much of you, but
There was a gap after that, with the rest gathered from the pencil rubbing Emory made: if I couldn’t control … better … contain … Abi wanted to … couldn’t kill
And then the numbers ‘5:5?’ were scrawled on the back.
Niema killed thirteen people as part of a doomed experiment to control humans. The letter seemed to suggest she’d given up on it, preferring to contain them instead. Was that the betrayal she was referring to? Had Niema decided to keep the humans locked up in Blackheath forever?
Footsteps crunch through the undergrowth, wood cracking.
Pushing through the branches, Emory discovers the villagers hacking their way through the undergrowth with machetes and axes, clearing plots of land for farming. Their eyes are closed, their faces filthy. They’re scratched by thorns, panting hard at the exertion they don’t know they’re undertaking.
‘It might be kinder to let the fog have us,’ she thinks.
She’s footsore and tired by the time she enters the cable-car station, jamming the lever forward and jumping onboard the carriage as it departs.
Huge forks of lighting are crawling across the island, thunder bouncing off the volcano. Several rowboats are out at sea, lanterns swaying at the bow, tiny points of light in the endless black.
‘Where are they going?’ she asks.
‘Thea wants the equipment salvaged from the lighthouse,’ I reply.
The cable car sways in the wind, creaking on the line as it glides into the village, which is dark aside from the harsh light spilling out of Thea’s lab.
Thea rowed to the lighthouse last night, but Emory still doesn’t know why and none of her theories explain it.
It’s not the only question chasing her. There are swarms of them.
Why would Niema bother putting her defence system up, only to abandon the lighthouse and go to the village? What happened to Hui after she was stabbed? Why can’t Ben stop drawing equations in the dirt? And why did they hike out to Blackheath last night, dragging a cart behind them?
The cable car judders into the station, and Emory spills out, plucking her sweaty clothes away from her skin.
‘What time is it?’
‘It’s 10:16 p.m.,’ I reply.
Hephaestus is expecting to meet her at midnight, with the key to Blackheath. The last time she saw it, Adil was rolling it under his thumb, as he accused Thea of murdering Niema. He treated it carelessly, like a trinket, which is why she didn’t think to wonder what it was.
She stalks through the driving rain towards the barracks, ascending the staircase to Magdalene’s dorm.
She’s hoping that once she’s explained her plan, Adil will hand over the key.
She just needs a little leverage to get Hephaestus talking. He’s the final piece of the puzzle, but if she doesn’t handle him carefully, she’ll be dead long before the fog hits the island.
SIXTY-FOUR
Emory’s peering through a crack in the shutters, watching the exercise yard for any sign of Adil, but he’s nowhere to be seen.
‘He’s not coming,’ she says, trying to stifle her frustration. ‘Why wouldn’t he be coming? What time is it, Abi?’
‘10:42 p.m.,’ I reply.
She sees a lantern bobbing through the gate, moving hurriedly in the rain. It’s much too dark to make out who’s holding it, but they’re heading in the direction of the farms.
She departs the dorm running.
Soaking wet and panting, Emory holds her lantern in the air, trying to find a way forward.
Occasionally, she’ll catch glimpses of the flame she’s been following far in the distance, but the rain’s coming hard, pouring in sheets down her face.
She hasn’t taken a rest since she marched out of the village, and spares only the briefest of glances for the shack on her left, and the broken-down cart on her right. It feels like a lifetime ago that she followed its tracks out here, finding Clara’s carved bird in the back.
Niema sent Seth, Emory and Clara out here the night she was killed. She must have given them the key to get inside Blackheath, but how did it end up in Adil’s possession? More importantly, why would Niema reveal her deepest secret to the three of them?
Emory wades across the stream without slowing down, losing a sandal to a slippery rock. She should have changed into her boots before she left, but she was too afraid of losing sight of the light.
Cursing, she snatches her sandal out of the water and limps around the weathered olive tree on the hill, a tattered moon hanging from its branches.
The door to Blackheath is open, a square of fluorescent light cut into the darkness.
Her pulse quickening, she walks through it into a long tunnel that descends deep underground, having to fight the impulse to call out for Jack.
She’s never seen anything like this. The walls are curved and perfectly smooth. The floor is made from concrete, with strip lights overhead. She can’t imagine the technology required to carve this out of the earth, or why they’d bother. Who’d need this much space so far from sunlight?
It’s a long walk to the end of the tunnel, and the door she entered through is just a pinprick of darkness by the time she reaches a junction, which is almost blocked by the missing stores. Crates of vegetables are piled high, sacks of seeds and a few boxes of tools.
She runs her eye across it.
There’s a lot more than they found in the cable-car station yesterday, but why would it be here at all? Niema managed to dictate a diagram to Seth while she lay dying, so perhaps she organised the evacuation at the same time. If she knew they wouldn’t all fit in the cauldron garden, perhaps she decided to move half the village down here. But, if that was the case, why were there so few supplies at the summit of the volcano? They wouldn’t have lasted half the village more than a month.
Tunnels stretch away to her left and right, a cleaning cart abandoned a few paces away, bottles dissolved into mush.
She walks a little way along the passages nervously, her movement activating the lights overhead. The tunnel to the left is already lit up, so that’s the way the person with the lantern must have gone.
She’s nervous, and she walks slowly, hugging herself against the chill. It’s horribly cold, and the air’s thin, scrubbed clean. There’s none of the reassuring island smells. No pine, or magnolia. No thyme. No sea spray. No sweat, or mustiness.