Into the past.
I watched with godlike eyes as the compressed psychic energy shot back through time, screaming and howling all the way, until finally it couldn’t hold itself together any longer and it exploded into nothingness over the empty plain of Tunguska, on 7:17 a.m., June 30, 1908.
I woke up back inside my own head, lying on the laboratory floor. The power was gone, and I didn’t feel like a god anymore. I was exhausted, I hurt all over, and my eyes felt like they’d been sand-papered. I sat up slowly, wincing all the way. I wasn’t wearing my armour anymore. I looked around me. The floor was hard and certain beneath me, the walls were just walls, and the building and the street outside were silent again. X37 was no longer haunted by the ghosts of its own atrocities.
The floor had spat Honey out. She was sitting on a chair, shaken and trembling, but already bringing herself back under control. Walker was himself again, calm and collected and giving all his attention to adjusting his cuffs. Peter was trying very hard to look as though nothing had happened. I rose slowly to my feet, and they all turned to look at me.
I told them what had happened and what I’d done. I didn’t tell them what Grendel Rex had said concerning human DNA. He was a devil, and devils always lie. Except when the truth can hurt you more.
“So, you’re the cause of what happened in 1908?” said Peter. “You’re responsible for the Tunguska Event?”
“A Drood did it,” said Honey. “I should have known.”
“Proving it to my grandfather is going to be a tad difficult, though,” said Peter.
“Are you kidding?” I said. “You can’t hide something like this! Psychics and telepaths across the world will have been deafened by what I just did. You won’t be able to stop them talking about it, though my family will undoubtedly try. Luckily only the four of us know the details, and I think it’s better we keep it that way.”
“Or the Droods will come and make us forget, like they did over Grendel Rex?” said Honey.
“Yes,” I said.
“Just another reason why we don’t let you people operate in the Nightside,” murmured Walker. “Only I am allowed to be that arbitrary.”
“Can we please go out and find a food store now?” said Peter. “There must be some canned goods here somewhere. If I was any hungrier, my stomach would leap up my throat and eat my head.”
“You know, I think I’d pay good money to see that,” said Honey.
We left the laboratory and the building and set off through the deserted streets. I hung back a bit, considering the others thoughtfully while they were still relatively open and vulnerable. Peter interested me the most. I’d never seen him really scared before. In fact, for all his youth and inexperience with the greater world, he’d taken the Loch Ness monster and the Hyde pretty much in his stride. He was interested, even impressed, but when the time came for action he didn’t hesitate, just got stuck in with the rest of us. Rather more than you’d expect from a man whose only experience of spycraft was in industrial espionage.
So; he was Alexander King’s grandson, after all.
But it was useful to know he had his limits. The nightmares had shattered his self-control, reduced him to hysterics. Perhaps because they were so clearly outside of his control. In fact . . . when it came to fighting the Loch Ness monster and the Hyde, he’d taken the first opportunity to fall back and let the rest of us do the hard work while he filmed it all with his precious camera phone.
Whatever happened, I had to get my hands on that phone.
Walker fell back to walk with me, and we talked quietly together. He deliberately slowed our pace, allowing some distance to develop between us and Honey and Peter.
“While you were gone,” he said, quietly and entirely matter-of-fact, “someone tried to kill me. Even in the midst of all that was happening. With so much madness running loose it’s hard to be sure, but someone quite definitely tried to remove my head from my shoulders from behind. Would have succeeded with anyone else, but fortunately my years in the Nightside have made me very hard to kill.”
“Even with the Authorities gone?” I said.
“Especially now they’re gone. I’m protected in ways you can’t imagine. But the point is, we now know who killed Lethal Harmony and the Blue Fairy. It has to be either Honey or Peter.”
“Always assuming,” I said, “that you’re telling the truth.”
“Ah,” said Walker. “There is that, yes.”
“None of us can be trusted,” I said. “We’re all agents.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
All at Sea
There was sun and light and warmth, and after the bitter cold There of Tunguska and X37 it felt like very heaven itself. All four of us cried out in relief as the teleport bracelets delivered us to our new destination in the sun. And the first thing we all did was tear off our heavy fur coats and drop them in a pile on the ground before us. Hats and gloves and everything else that reminded us of X37 followed as fast as we could rip them off, and when the pile was complete we all gave it a good kicking, just on general principles. And only then did we take the time to look around and see where we were.
We’d been dropped off in a neat little side street looking out over the docks of some major city. Ships everywhere: mostly navy, but some commercial, some tourist, and some fishing boats. American navy: big, impressive ships, longer than some roads, equipped with the very latest technology and the very biggest guns. Crew members swarmed over the huge decks like ants serving their queen. Not, therefore, a good place to be four strangers strolling around asking questions . . . I moved down to the end of the side street and looked out over blue-green waters without a trace of a swell under a pale blue sky with not a cloud to be seen. The sun was high in the sky, fat and friendly and deliciously warm. Seagulls rode the thermals, their distant voices raucous and mocking.
“I’m back in contact with Langley,” Honey announced, one hand pressed to the side of her head. Though how that helped with a brain implant, I wouldn’t know. She frowned, almost wincing. “There’s a lot of shouting going on. Apparently they took it pretty damned personally when I fell off the edge of the planet and they couldn’t locate me anymore. They’ve had three different spy satellites tasked to do nothing but look for me ever since. They were concerned. Which I’d think was very sweet of them, if they’d just stop shouting at me . . . Ah; it seems we are currently in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.”
“How long have we been off their radar?” I said.
“Three days, seven hours,” said Honey. “I’m being asked a lot of questions.”
“Who cares,” said Peter. “I smell food!”
“What kind?” said Walker.
“I don’t care; I’m going to eat it.” Peter glared about him, sniffing the air like a bloodhound on a trail. He plunged forward into the main street, following his nose, and all we could do was hurry after him.
“I will admit to feeling a bit peckish myself,” said Walker, striding along with a military gait. “Are there any noted restaurants in Philadelphia?”
“Oh, bound to be,” I said cheerfully. “Sailors like their food. And booze, and tattoo parlours and—”
“Langley is demanding to know exactly where we were and what we’ve been doing,” said Honey, striding along beside me like a tall dark goddess in her blazing white jumpsuit. “They were under the impression there wasn’t anywhere they couldn’t follow me with their brand-new toys, the poor babies.”
“Don’t tell them anything,” Walker said immediately. “Not . . . just yet. There might come a time when we need confidential information to bargain with.”