Some of the ceiling lights are flickering on and off, the air-filtration units shrieking and abruptly stopping. She feels like she’s in the belly of some dying beast.
Offices appear on either side of her, their knocked-over chairs and spilled screens a testament to how quickly this place was abandoned. A few mugs are still sitting on coasters, while families stare out of photo frames at long-empty rooms.
She wonders how people could stand working down here. It’s so bleak, she can feel her soul changing colour to mirror it.
Turning the corner of another junction, she discovers a large metal map of the facility has been drilled into the wall. Hundreds of miles of tunnels riddle the eastern half of the island, running from this spot all the way to the lighthouse. She’s surprised there’s any dirt left for the volcano to sit on.
There are over a dozen entrances scattered across the island with this one listed as being door eight. There’s even one in the lighthouse itself, connected by a lift. That must have been the locked door she found in Niema’s sitting room. Any hope she had of finding Jack quickly evaporates. The entire village would need a week to search these tunnels.
Snatches of conversation drift towards her, a few words not mangled by the shrieking air filters.
Peering around the corner, she sees Adil talking with Thea at the end of a long corridor. The elder is dripping wet, and still holding the lantern Emory followed. She strains her ears, trying to catch what they’re saying, but there’s too much background noise.
Whatever they’re discussing, it seems cordial enough. How can that be? In their brief conversation, Adil gave every indication of hating the elders. He threatened to kill them if he had the chance. Why would he suddenly be working with Thea?
A moment later, the two of them walk in opposite directions.
Needing the key to bargain with Hephaestus, Emory skulks after Adil on near silent feet, arriving in a ruined corridor.
Parts of the ceiling have collapsed and the walls have crumbled, revealing the earth beneath. Thorny roots twist in and out of the floor, foliage hanging from the ceiling vents, surrounded by hovering birds with long beaks. Nine deer are grazing on weeds growing along the walls. They’re paler than any deer she’s ever seen on the surface, and much smaller. Normally these animals would be asleep, but they appear to have evolved their habits for some reason.
Jack would love to see this, she thinks. He’d be fascinated.
They look up as Adil passes, their ears twitching, but he keeps his eyes forward, taking a right at the junction.
Emory stays a corridor behind him, moving through junction after junction, the lab going on and on. Behind glass walls she sees labs filled with miracles; scientific instruments designed to peel back the corners of the universe, to pull it apart, and rewrite it.
‘That one’s a nano-particular converter,’ I explain. ‘That’s a quantum net. That’s a portable particle collider next to an element generators.’
I stop my description, realising she isn’t listening any longer. In the middle of the floor, placed so it will be seen, is one of Clara’s carved birds.
Emory picks it up, seeing another one at the end of the corridor. Clara clearly intended them to be followed.
Adil’s footsteps are growing distant, but suddenly this seems more important. These birds might explain why they came here the night Niema died.
Emory collects the second bird, looking left and right for the next. The corridors are so long, she has to walk a little up each one before she sees the bird.
More junctions follow. More carved birds. More labs, and offices. A gym, filled with exercise equipment she can’t make head or tail of.
Finally, she hears the whir of a drill, and the crunching of metal.
She goes towards it, passing more birds.
The sounds are coming from a small room that was obviously once used for storage. The boxes have been moved outside, and she has to turn sideways to squeeze past them.
Peering through the door, she sees five villagers trying to dig through the rocky earth, using drills, hammers and axes. They must have had to go through the concrete first, because rubble covers the floor and their faces are coated in dust.
As with the villagers in the cauldron garden, their eyes are closed. They’re obviously sleeping.
‘Arthur!’ she exclaims.
Arthur was one of the apprentices who supposedly drowned when Jack’s boat went down. Her heart leaps in her chest, hope barging away every rational thought.
She darts from face to face, finding Tasmin and Kiko, Reiko and—
‘Jack!’ she exclaims, flinging her arms around him in joy.
Her husband doesn’t react. He’s stiff as a statue, holding a whirring drill to the wall, which is spitting dirt and sharp rocks back at him. He’s much thinner than she remembers, his arms reduced to sinew and bone. His face is gaunt, his hair greying.
‘Let him go, Abi!’ she demands, turning the drill off, only for Jack to immediately turn it back on.
‘I cannot. Niema’s instructions were clear.’
‘Niema’s dead,’ says Emory, staring at her husband helplessly. ‘You don’t have to do this any more.’
‘She never told me to stop,’ I say. ‘I’m obliged to fulfil any orders she gave me, until she instructs me otherwise.’
‘Are you telling me he’s trapped down here forever?’
‘I’m afraid so, Emory.’
SIXTY-FIVE
Emory’s cross-legged on the floor, staring at her husband’s sleeping face. She cried for a long time after finding him, then managed to find hope in the fact that he was still alive.
‘I’m going to get you out of this,’ she says to Jack. ‘I’m not leaving you down here.’
The words temporarily buoy her spirits, but she knows it’s an empty promise. The fog is coming, and – even if she can stop it – she doesn’t know any way to free him from my control.
‘I wish I could talk to you,’ she says to Jack. ‘I’d tell you all this and you’d make a joke, or come up with a fact about something stupid.’ She laughs. ‘I’ve missed you, every day.’
She wipes a tear away, smudging something in her eye. It’s yellow pollen, she realises when she picks it out with her finger. It’s all over Jack’s shirt, and in his hair.
Clara, Hui and Thea were coated in this stuff when they came down from the cauldron garden the day Niema died. It’s possible Jack was up there at the same time they were.
Did Hui spot Jack in the cauldron garden?
That would explain why she was acting so strangely around Clara. Hui knew her best friend’s father was alive and was forbidden from saying anything. No wonder she spent the afternoon avoiding her.
Adil crashes through the door, his hand pressed to his stomach, blood pouring from between his fingers. His legs give out, and he collapses to the concrete floor, his legs splayed out in front of him.
‘Adil,’ she cries, going to his side.
He’s breathing shallowly, desperately. He’s been stabbed.
‘What happened?’ she asks, trying to get a look at the wound, but he shakes his head.
‘Pock … pocket,’ he says, struggling to speak.
Searching his pockets brings her the Blackheath key and a diagram, identical to the one her father had in his pocket when he woke up.
‘Map,’ he explains, coughing up blood. ‘You can’t … Niema’s … Niema’s murder …’ He shakes his head frantically, grabbing her arm. ‘Don’t … solve …’
Emory stares at the map, trying to make sense of what’s he saying.