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‘It’s parasites,’
Skinner repeated.

‘We’re fairly sure there’s a parasitical element to it,’ said Einstein in his annoyingly superior way. ‘But …’

‘Listen to him,’ said the Green Man, glaring at Einstein with his yellow eyes, clicking his fingernails together in a way that made your flesh crawl.

‘My lab, my rules, Gollum,’ said Einstein. ‘You can’t just come in here and …’

‘And tell
you the truth?’ said the Green Man.

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘We’ve received a message,’ said Skinner. ‘At least
Fish-Face has. She can pick stuff up. Trinity’s out there and thoughts are bouncing back to her.’

‘OK,’ said Einstein, gearing up to be even more annoying than ever. ‘Let’s examine your last statement. Your fish-faced friend here is receiving spooky telepathic
messages from miles away sent by a Siamese triplet.’

‘Listen …’ Skinner sounded upset.

‘I haven’t finished yet. Let me count the ways that this sucks. One – you lot are a bunch of weirdo, freaky mutants and I’m not sure I trust you for one moment. Two – I can’t believe a word any of you say. You could all be nuts for all I know. It certainly appears that way. Three – I
know you like to pretend you can communicate telepathically, but I’m going to take some convincing that all the laws of nature can be overturned like this. Four …’

‘Shut up for one second,’ shouted Fish-Face, and everyone was shocked. She was usually so quiet and shy, and now here she was, red-hot and glaring at Einstein. More shark than goldfish.

‘There is a law in science,’
she went on. ‘Everything that
can
happen does happen.’

‘I know that,’ said Einstein. ‘But telepathy falls under the heading of “things that can’t happen”.’

‘It’s not telepathy,’ said Fish-Face. ‘Any more than using the telephone is telepathy. Any more than TV and radio are magic. We hear on a different level, in a different way. We pick up signals you can’t detect.’

‘Listen to us,’ said Skinner. ‘You might learn something.’

‘Look …’

‘Do as they say, you stupid jerk,’ Achilleus snapped. ‘I want to hear this.’

Einstein glared at Achilleus, but kept his mouth shut.

‘Go on, Fish-Face,’ said Achilleus, and she blushed, looking at the floor, embarrassed, her confidence gone again.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t understand everything,
but my friends have found out more about the disease. We used to talk about spirits and being possessed, but they’re sure now that the disease is caused by tiny parasites that hide by disguising themselves as human cells. And when they get to your brain and start to replace your brain cells their thoughts begin to seep into your thoughts. When they grow larger, they start to communicate
with each other. There’s a sort of hive-mind thing going on, where the parasites have a shared brain, like an ant colony, all working together, like one single being. They share thoughts and memories.’

‘That’s unlikely,’ said Einstein. ‘In fact, it’s insane.’

‘It’s not like any other disease anyone’s ever seen before,’ said Skinner. ‘We told you before that there were spirits
in the rainforest. They were parasites, which began infecting insects hundreds of thousands of years ago, and they slowly worked their way up the food chain, adapting to each new host.’

‘Oh yes,’ Einstein scoffed. ‘And I think you tried to tell us they originally came from outer space?’

‘Isn’t it possible?’ said Skinner. ‘That tiny micro-organisms could survive in space, on
a meteor, land here …’

‘
Theoretically
,’ said Einstein with so much edge it sounded like he was saying ‘bollocks’.

‘Well, whatever you believe about their origins,’ said Skinner, ‘can’t you just accept that parasites have got into the adults and are controlling them?’

‘Well …’ Einstein was looking not so sure of himself. Jackson could see that he was starting to think
about this.
‘I know there are parasites that can make ants climb to the top of tall plants where their brains explode, sending out spores. And parasites that get into snails, into their eyestalks, and make them sort of glow so that birds spot them and eat them and take the parasites into their own guts.’

‘And toxoplasmosis,’ said Skinner. ‘That makes mice not afraid of cats.
This is just bigger and weirder.’

‘Maybe …’ said Einstein and he sat down. ‘Talk me through the timeline.’

‘OK,’ said Skinner. ‘About sixteen years ago the parasites get out of the jungle …’

‘Carried by scientists – like me,’ said the Green Man.

‘Thanks for that,’ said Achilleus. Skinner ignored him and carried on.

‘Disguised as human blood cells, the parasites
go unnoticed and multiply rapidly in their hosts, for now doing no harm at all. But they’re microscopic and can be coughed out, sneezed out, flushed down the toilet into the water supply, and that’s how they spread – on the air and in the water – all around the world. Within a year, nearly everyone on the planet is infected. That’s the first stage of its life cycle. The spore stage. They
get into a body, settle down and start a family. They don’t go travelling any more.’

‘And that’s why you’re OK,’ Fish-Face said to Einstein. ‘Because you weren’t around to get infected last time.’

‘I suppose that makes sense.’ Einstein nodded, thinking hard.

‘Us Twisted Kids,’ said Fish-Face, ‘we’re like an experiment. As if the parasites were trying to splice their
DNA with human DNA, and it didn’t work out too good, but we have some of the parasites’ characteristics, like the ultrasound thing.’

‘And now the parasites are massing,’ said Skinner. ‘Or their human hosts are.’

‘Why?’

‘We think they’re getting together for the big bang,’ said Fish-Face. ‘The next infestation. When their spores will get airborne again. We think it’s a sixteen-year
cycle.’

‘I get it,’ said Achilleus. ‘I saw this clip one time on YouTube. A friend showed it me cos it was so freaky. There was these bugs in, like, Washington or somewhere. Like chicories, chicklets, sickos, these, like, cricket things.’

‘Cicadas?’ said Jackson, helping him out.

‘Yeah, that’s them. Ugly bugs. They scrape their wings together and make, like, the
loudest
noise. And these ones in Washington, they live underground, like worm things, for, like, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years. And then one day, all of them together, they come out of these holes, all at the same time, and they climb into the trees, millions of them, man, and they turn into flying bugs. They only hang around for, like, a few weeks and then mate and lay they eggs and,
when they hatch, the babies go underground and stay there, growing for like seventeen years or whatever, and it happens all over again.
Boom!
Every seventeen years.’

‘Is that true?’ said Jackson. ‘You think the parasites are getting ready to spawn? You telling me they’re gonna shoot their germs into the air and try to infect us all?’

‘Ain’t gonna happen,’ said Achilleus.
‘Because we gonna massacre them before they get the chance. Simple as that. We won’t need no cure, doc. What they say? Kill or cure? This is kill.’

‘Oh,’ said Einstein with mock innocence. ‘But the cure isn’t for
them
… it’s for us.’

31

Shadowman was at Westminster Abbey. He hadn’t slept more than one night in the same place for a long while now. There was so much to do. He had to keep moving. And it was so much easier now that the streets were quiet. Even though Shadowman knew better than anyone why that was. It hadn’t been his plan to sleep at the abbey, however, and now it looked like he was going to
be stuck here for the night.

Kids were spread out over the pews, talking in little groups. A group of musicians had set up in the choir stalls and were playing a weird drone that rose up and filled the huge, echoing space, not really a tune, but it had started to get under Shadowman’s skin. He wondered how long they were going to keep it up and something told him they were settled
in for the night. He smiled. He’d slept in stranger places.

He’d delivered Ben and Bernie to Saif, stayed long enough to make sure everyone knew what they were doing, and then left them to get on with their mission at Wembley. Then it was back to his base near Trafalgar Square to spend a night alone and clear his head. Then a night at the Houses of Parliament, talking long into
the night with Nicola, seeing if there was anything they could
do about David. Then back to the Natural History Museum to sit in on a meeting with Justin. After the meeting he’d offered to bring some kids over to the abbey. Most of them were greens from St Paul’s, like the little girl, Yo-Yo, who had chosen to camp out at the Victoria and Albert rather than here. They were missing
their friends – the most religious of Matt’s people – who were living here. Right now the hardcore were holding some kind of vigil that seemed to involve lots of kneeling and chanting.

The rest of the kids he’d brought over were a group of Jordan’s guys who’d wanted to discuss some things with Matt. They’d gone back some time ago, escorted by Ryan and his hunters. But Yo-Yo and
a handful of other greens were still here. Shadowman could see that Yo-Yo wasn’t going anywhere. He was responsible for her now. She was young and not at all streetwise. She didn’t carry a weapon of any kind. Instead, she’d brought her violin. It was kind of cute, but kind of dumb. Her real name was Charlotte. Apparently The Kid had given her the whacky nickname. More and more kids
were giving themselves new names now, becoming new people, forgetting the past and all the hurt. His own nickname was camouflage, something to hide behind. Charlotte seemed happy to be called Yo-Yo. When Ed had rescued Small Sam and The Kid from Matt, Charlotte had gone with them. She stuck close to Sam and The Kid, but he could see how happy she was to be back with her friends again.
It was possible she might not want to return to the Victoria and Albert at all.

He looked over to where the little girl was yacking away with her mates, catching up. She was holding her violin. She never put it down.

Shadowman didn’t like being responsible for anyone else. Preferred to be a free agent. Could he leave her to it and come back in the morning?

He looked up.
The stained-glass windows in the abbey were already growing grey and dim and colourless. It may have felt safe moving in the daylight, but he didn’t want to risk travelling at night. Who knew what might come out after dark? Besides, he’d offered to bring Yo-Yo and her friends here mainly because he was interested to find out more about Matt and his God-bothering clan, so he wasn’t too
sore about staying over. He’d learn more this way.

Matt fascinated him. He was obviously unhinged, but he offered these kids something. Something to believe in. Something outside the bloody misery of their daily lives. It didn’t matter really whether Matt was Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian Scientist or voodoo. It worked. The kids were happy. Matt had
apparently been poisoned by carbon monoxide when he’d tried burning a stack of wood in a brazier inside a chapel at his school …

School, what a weird concept that seemed now …

Was it the fumes that had affected his mind or something else? Maybe, like a lot of kids, he’d just cracked. And, in a mad world, why not make a madman king? Matt had a bunch of guys who stayed
close to him; some seemed quite sensible, holding things together, allowing Matt to go off on whatever mad rants he wanted. Others, like his ‘acolytes’, as he called them, were as nutty as him. It sounded like it had got well out of hand, though, when Matt had tried to sacrifice The Kid to his pet sicko, the Green Man. Ed had told Shadowman how he’d crashed
that particular party,
and it sounded like Jordan Hordern had slapped Matt down when he’d rescued him from a massive sicko attack.

Matt was behaving himself now.

No more dangerous craziness.

Just the old harmless stuff.

Shadowman had spent his time at the abbey getting close to Matt, moving ever deeper into the heart of the organization here. He was good at that. He’d done it so many times in
so many different camps. He’d worm his way in, make friends, keep out of trouble, work out who was important, who was powerful, end up at the centre. He’d quickly spotted that a boy called Archie Bishop was second in command to Matt. And Archie was one of the sane ones. Not one of the nutty brigade. Archie was a classic fixer. He didn’t have what it took to be in charge, but he was
the power behind the throne.

Shadowman was sitting with him now, on a hard wooden pew in the centre of the abbey. This place was massive, like something out of a gothic horror film, made even more so by the flickering candles that were being lit everywhere. Up above the altar was a massive round stained-glass window. When the sun streamed in through it, it must look like God’s
torch shining directly on you.

Right now Matt was sitting in the centre of an open area with a mosaic floor, talking to some kids who sat in a circle around him.

‘So how is he?’ Shadowman asked Archie. ‘Does he get better or worse?’

‘It comes and goes,’ said Archie. He was a chubby kid and, like everyone else here, he was dressed all in green. ‘After the stuff with The Kid
and the siege he calmed
down a lot. I think even
he
realized he’d gone too far, and Jordan Hordern’s let him know that if he gets out of hand … It wouldn’t take much to set him off again, though. You can sense he’s sort of waiting for something.’