Terminal (44 page)

‘That's a very imaginative little tale – trying to buy yourself some time, are you?' It hadn't escaped Hermione's notice that Elliott was including herself in references to the Styx. ‘And you evidently think you're one of us now? It's a little late in the game to switch teams.'

Ignoring the remark, Elliott indicated the massed ranks of Armagi all around her. ‘In the beginning we looked more like that … and Styx and humans worked and lived together inside the ship, because we'd brought them on the journey with us.'

‘I really don't need to hear any more of this drivel,' Hermione said, snapping her insect limb as she'd done before.

The noise, like the single click of a castanet, reverberated around the place. But, to Hermione's bewilderment, none of the Limiters had taken a shot. Elliott was still standing there.

The girl smiled at Hermione's confusion. ‘We only began to resemble humans after our last Phase … to resemble the species that we'd bred and reared to serve us. Pretty ironic, isn't it?'

Hermione snapped her limb again, and then again, growing more and more irate.

What she hadn't seen was the Limiter sharpshooters being sniped. Parry had given the order, and his men on the rooftops had successfully put the three Limiter teams out of action before they'd had a chance to fire even a single shot at Elliott.

Hermione had stopped clicking her limb and was frowning.

‘Anything wrong?' Elliott asked her.

‘You!
You're
wrong!' Hermione screeched, swinging to the Old Styx and then the two Limiters on the cathedral steps. ‘And you,' she shouted at them. ‘Do the honours, will you, and shut this tiresome bitch up once and for all? She's boring me stiff.'

The Old Styx produced a handgun at the same time as the two Limiters brought up their long rifles.

There were sounds like distant whispers.

The Old Styx was thrown forward onto the ground, a neat hole in the back of his head. Rebecca Two jumped back from beside him in surprise.

And the two Limiters on the cathedral steps were also knocked off their feet by powerful sniper rounds from Parry's men.

‘Damn,' Hermione muttered, as if their deaths were as bothersome as breaking a fingernail.

Elliott knew the sound of a silenced sniper rifle only too well. She realised then that she wasn't alone, that she had friends out there.

She raised her hand above her head, calling out, ‘Don't shoot her!' She pointed at Hermione. ‘Leave her to me!'

‘Get back in the car, you little fool! Don't just stand there!' Hermione screamed at Rebecca Two, who showed no sign that she was going anywhere. Hermione scowled at her, then turned on Elliott. ‘At least I can rely on the Armagi to do what I tell them.'

She began to beat her insect limbs together, faster and faster.

Not a single Armagi moved a muscle. They were simply standing there in their droves, watching.

‘What
is
wrong with them?' Hermione complained.

‘You just don't get it, do you?' Elliott said, ‘They won't attack me because I'm the same as you. I have your blood in my veins. I'm just as much Styx as you are.'

‘If you want anything doing properly, you have to do it yourself,' Hermione grumbled.

The Styx woman launched at Elliott.

But the girl didn't just stay put.

She went to meet Hermione.

As they came together, Hermione lashed at Elliott's eyes with her insect limbs, but she got more than she'd bargained for.

Elliott cried out, the skin tearing apart between her shoulders.

And from the base of her neck, a pair of insect limbs snapped open to their full length. Like something newborn,
they were speckled with blood. And they were also brown and far lighter in colour than Hermione's shiny black legs.

But they were every bit as strong.

Elliott's new pair of limbs caught Hermione's in their pincers, stopping the Styx woman in her tracks, and effortlessly holding her off.

Hermione was speechless.

‘Parry,' Bob said over the headset. ‘Two minutes to impact.'

‘You've launched already? Aren't you watching the video feed?' Parry rumbled. ‘You have to abort.'

‘Sure, we're watching, and we're sharing it with the governments of all the other countries throughout the world,' Bob replied. ‘But there's been no change to the status. Our drones are showing that the Armagi are still moving out to sea.'

‘I'll see what I can do,' Parry said.

‘What are you doing here?' Danforth asked Captain Franz suspiciously as the New Germanian appeared by his side, out of breath and looking very nervous. Although he'd have rather been anywhere else but down in the pedestrian subway, Danforth had remained there in case there was anything more he could do to help. Although he couldn't actually see for himself how events were unfolding outside the cathedral, he was picking up most of what he needed to know on the main channel of the headset. But nobody had warned him that Captain Franz was joining him.

The New Germanian had caught his breath and was about to answer when Danforth was buzzed by Parry. He listened to what he was being told for a moment, then turned to the New Germanian.

‘This is going to be fun,' he whispered, his expression far from enthusiastic. ‘Because I'm going out there now.' Danforth pointed at the throng of Armagi they could see at the top of the steps. ‘I'd be very grateful if you'd hang on to these for me, although I don't know if I'll be coming back.' He handed the man his shortwave radio and another device he'd been using.

He readied himself, then climbed the steps, at the last moment putting on a turn of speed. As he emerged from the subway, he was shouting, ‘Excuse me! Excuse me!' as if he was trying to get through a crowd in Oxford Street rather than a scrum of fearsome creatures.

Elliott and Hermione were still locked together, holding each other at bay with their insect limbs.

‘Let him through,' Elliott shouted, as soon as she heard Danforth.

But Danforth didn't want to come through and was looking around himself warily. One of the Armagi he'd barged out of the way opened its mouthparts and rattled them together, its inhuman eyes staring at him. ‘Oh, hello,' Danforth said to it, taking a rapid step back. Then he quickly clambered on top of the railings by the entrance to the subway, so he could see over the heads of all the other Armagi.

‘Um … sorry to butt in,' he said apologetically to Elliott. ‘But Parry wants you to know we've only got a couple of minutes before the first missile hits us here.'

As Danforth ducked from view, Will moaned loudly. He was still lying on the bonnet of the Bentley, but was obviously in the most terrible pain as he gripped his stomach and tried to roll over.

Hermione laughed. ‘My little darlings are feeding, your boyfriend's dying, and even if you can do something about all
that, there's no way you can stop us spreading. I've sent the Armagi out, and it seems you're about to be vaporised by your American friends.' She laughed again, high and clear. ‘There'll be no one left to recall the Armagi swarm. You're too late.'

‘You're wrong about that,' Elliott said.

Still holding Hermione off, Elliott slipped out the sceptre from the small of her back that she'd been holding in readiness there.

‘What are you doing?' Hermione asked.

Gripping the sceptre with both hands, Elliott didn't answer as, just as she'd done before, she twisted it halfway along the shaft.

The blue light flickered, then turned red. But that wasn't all. As Elliott held it out, the sceptre began a transformation, rapidly increasing in length. And at one end, three prongs appeared, all in the same smooth grey material.

‘What the hell
is
that?' Hermione demanded.

‘This,' Elliott said, holding the trident up, ‘puts a stop to your madness.'

‘Elliott, if you're going to do something, you've got to do it now!' Parry's voice boomed from the rooftop through a loudhailer.

‘Got you!' she shouted back.

Still holding Hermione off with her insect limbs, Elliott raised the trident.

‘Time we all went home,' she said.

She brought the trident down, striking the bottom of the shaft hard on the pavement.

Red light flooded her vision. It came from inside the cathedral, where the blue hemisphere had changed colour, then burst out through the ruined roof, until the whole sky
turned blood red. For several seconds everything was suffused with a rosy glow, as if the sunset of all sunsets had come, but long before the end of day.

Then, as if an earthquake had struck, the ground began to shake. Whether they were on the rooftops or on the ground, everyone around the cathedral felt it.

The tremor subsided as quickly as it had begun.

There was a beat when everyone breathed a sigh of relief that it was over, and that they hadn't been hurt.

Then came a sound as if a million tons of fish had hit the ground, and the Armagi – every single one of them – disintegrated.

They didn't even have time to turn back into human form. The whole place was awash with oily pieces of their transparent bodies as they slopped across the road and the paved forecourt of the cathedral.

‘Parry, what the bejesus was that?' Bob's anxious voice came over the radio. ‘We saw that red light all the way out here. And we also experienced some sort of seismic event. Tell me your people weren't responsible for that.'

‘Frankly, Bob, I haven't the faintest idea
what
just happened,' Parry replied. ‘But look at the Armagi. I reckon it's time to call off that missile strike now.'

Bob didn't answer.

Captain Franz poked his head out from entrance of the subway.

Right away Rebecca Two spotted her New Germanian officer and called to him. He began to run frantically towards her, slipping and falling over several times in the sea of oily Armagi body parts.

‘Oh, great, that's all I need,' Hermione muttered, but she was more intent on Elliott's trident.

Danforth suddenly appeared beside them, his pistol drawn. ‘I'll keep an eye on Big Bug for you,' he offered to Elliott.

‘Thanks,' the girl said, releasing the Styx woman, then stretching her new insect limbs in the air. ‘I was beginning to get cramp.'

‘What is that?' Hermione asked Elliott, still staring at the trident. ‘Some kind of weapon?'

Elliott held it up. ‘Is it beginning to come back now? Are you beginning to remember? Because it all started … and ended with this.' She held up the trident to consider it for a moment, then shook her head. ‘We were stranded up here on the surface when this was taken from us. Who knows how it happened – maybe the humans rebelled against us or something,' she said with a shrug. ‘And without us there to control it, our ship never continued on its journey. Over the billions of years we … we Styx … simply forgot who we were.'

‘I don't feel …' Hermione said, staggering slightly, but Elliott had left her, rushing over to Will's side.

Jiggs had already crept out from where he'd been hiding and was tending to Will. He'd torn the boy's shirt open and was examining his abdomen and chest. Then, diving into his medic's bag, he quickly administered a phial of morphine to him. ‘That'll help with the pain,' he said.

‘How is he?' Elliott asked.

Jiggs shrugged. ‘We need to open him up and get the Styx larvae out.' He looked around at what was left of the Armagi. ‘We can't take the risk that they're not still alive, and even if they are dead we need to find out what damage they've already done.'

‘I need a moment with him,' Elliott said.

‘I …' Jiggs began, unwilling to leave the boy.

‘Just give me a moment,' Elliott insisted.

There was something about her that made Jiggs obey without question.

Elliott took hold of Will, shaking him by the shoulders. ‘Will, you have to wake up.'

He coughed hard, blood and froth from his lungs speckling the sheer black of the Bentley's bonnet.

‘Come on, Will, please. I haven't got long,' she begged, shaking him again.

Then his eyes flicked open. ‘God, it hurts,' he groaned, his face tensing with the pain.

‘I know,' she said.

‘Elliott, it's you,' he said, as he realised who had hold of him. ‘What happened?' As he managed to focus on her, he caught sight of one of her insect legs as it twitched over her shoulder. ‘That's new,' he said, then laughed as the morphine began to take effect. ‘Hey, are you in fancy dress?'

And although Will's sight was rather blurred and he wasn't seeing clearly, his question wasn't that outlandish.

If Dr Burrows had been there, he too would have had something to say about Elliott's appearance: the trident, the crimson glow it was emitting, and the insect limb poised behind her that Will had mistaken for a tail.

If all that hadn't been symbolic enough, there was also the fact that the Styx had their origins at the centre of the Earth, where a small but fiery sun never stopped burning. Taken all together, it would more than likely have prompted Dr Burrows to spout forth about the devil meme in the human subconscious.

But Dr Burrows wasn't there.

And his son was hardly in a condition to think rationally.

‘Is it Halloween?' Will asked, chuckling outrageously as the morphine did its stuff.

‘No, it's not Halloween,' Elliott answered patiently. ‘And you have to listen to me. I want you to remember what I'm about to tell you. Concentrate, Will, because I don't have much time.'

Parry finished speaking to Bob, then turned to Eddie. ‘They've put a hold on the strike for the moment. All the images from the drones are indicating that the Armagi swarm is over.' Parry briefed everyone over the radio, and there were cheers and shouts from the rooftops all around the place. But as Parry came off the radio, he was staring at Eddie. ‘What's wrong?'