

Unmarked Journey

By

Dexter Findley

Book One of the Unmarked series

For Mike.
Prologue

The man who appeared from the rift stared down at Volus with hate in his eyes. His tall, thin body was swathed in a shocking crimson robe, the exact color of arterial blood. His skin - a glistening, dark shade of tan - bore white marks Volus had never seen before, swirled and daubed on his arms, shoulders and head. Behind him the rift shimmered violently, obscuring a starlit desert-scape on the other side.

The Red Man raised his hand, as if preparing to swat a fly. Sparks flitted between his fingers. Volus' eyes widened with surprise and his reflexes kicked in, raising his left arm in defense. The man's electric-clad hand met with a Blocking mark on the underside of Volus' arm: the electric shock was still tangible, but nullified, its deadly force channeled away from his body.

In the fleeting split seconds after the blow landed, Volus considered his options. He was quickly regaining control of his mental faculties: the interloper's advantage of surprise was wearing off, as was the effect of the sleep he'd just been rudely ripped from. He hadn't used Knowledge for a long time, but with every passing second he felt more and more comfortable with his old powers and abilities, like overcoming awkwardness after re-connecting with a childhood friend. He found himself thinking it was nice to have an excuse to let loose, regardless of the imminent danger.

A few minutes before, Volus had been asleep in his cramped loft garret in Manchester. He'd woken to a hissing noise, to the rift crackling open before his eyes. For a moment he had thought he was dreaming, until the smell of burnt metal hit the back of his throat and that Red Man appeared.

Now he was fighting for his life.

The Red Man swung with his other fist, clenched and burning like wildfire. Volus brought his blocking arm around and met the inferno head-on. This time he was marginally more prepared and managed to catch his opponent off balance.

He clenched his right fist, preparing to return fire. Its tattoo-like marks were subtly etched across his knuckles, trailing down the back of his hand and up his forearm. He had chosen them to be so similar to his own skin tone as to be barely visible, unless seen from up close: he was not the type who liked attention. The marks were Knowledge marks, just like the one on the underside of his left arm; but unlike that one, which was a Blocking mark, these were marks of force.

He let himself feel the weight of the power developing in his fist. The Red Man was on the back foot, recoiling from Volus' last block. He waited for the right moment with an impeccable sense of timing, and then planted his energized fist straight into the man's sternum.

It was a blow that should have winded the strongest of people, and perhaps even caused terminal injury in weaker ones. But the Red Man didn't move. He looked down at Volus' fist planted on his stomach, registering the fact almost casually. He then cracked something that Volus could only surmise was a smile, although in reality was more of a stretched grimace.

The Red Man shrugged off his robe in one swift movement. Volus saw that he was quite naked underneath.

The man's whole body was patterned. Every inch of his skin either bore part of a white mark, or made up the dead space between the marks' lines, circles and intersecting spirals. Where Volus' fist had connected was a strange form of Blocking mark of a jagged, spiky design, splayed right out across the man's stomach. It seemed to crawl faintly as it absorbed the residue energy from Volus' attack.

The now-naked man lunged. Volus dodged, successfully. But the man seemed to shift his weight faster than was humanly possible, and in no time was already turned and facing Volus, ready to strike again.

There was only one thing to be done. Volus felt time dilate as he concentrated: the world slowed momentarily, but in reality it was just his heightened mental state that caused the effect. He focused his energy in the pit of his stomach, and pushed it up into his chest, up his neck and out his throat.

The sound waves destroyed the flimsier furniture in the room, and sent all the loose objects flying. A ratty old cushion burst spectacularly, sending a plume of grey feathers into the air. The Red Man weathered the storm, like an ancient oak in a winter gale. His lithe frame had an inner strength beyond its outward appearance.

And now Volus was spent. To scream in such a way was a massive expenditure of energy, a last resort that took many invasive, delicate operations to be able to perform. A last resort that hadn't paid off.

Well, it was worth a shot, he thought. His whole being was weakened. The energy that should have been crackling in his muscles and his Knowledge marks was currently sending feathers floating around the room. What a damn waste.

The Red Man advanced on him.

As his air supply was cut off at the neck, Volus realized there was one course of action left. After all, he had no idea who this Red Man was, or even what he was. He certainly didn't know what he wanted. All he knew, all he could think of in those dizzying last moments of breathlessness, was that it would probably be a good idea to stop him.

The fierce blast of energy he'd just expelled from his body, in the form of a sonic scream, had been facilitated by the scribing of numerous tiny Sound marks etched on the inside of his mouth, and on the skin of his neck tracing the path of his windpipe. The process itself had been accomplished by one of the highly skilled Wise who specialized in scribing Body Knowledge marks on people, using her own particular, unique abilities. The Wise had taught him how to effectively expel the great force from his body, and how to channel it: used correctly, it could knock a group of assailants right off their feet.

With all the remaining energy he could wring from his dying frame, Volus again focused on the pit of his stomach. He could feel his body's fat reserves metabolizing, and some of the muscle too. Time dilated again, and regardless of his brain's de-oxygenation, he saw things in a rational light.

As his vision gradually blacked out and the wave of energy surged up his torso, he deftly wrapped his weakening limbs around the Red Man's slender frame. He felt his fingers meet each other at the small of the man's back, where they locked together and held tight.

The Red Man, sensing something was awry, tried to shrug him off; but Volus' embrace was determined, despite his less-than-hopeful state. Volus thought of his family, his estranged wife and his son he'd last seen as a young boy. What a waste of time arguing was. How pointless all that fighting.

He never opened his mouth. He let the scream backfire, into his own body. Those marks, instead of propelling the sound outward, combusted with their unreleased power.

The Fire Brigade could list no cause for the explosion in the loft apartment. In the end they put it down to a gas leak, although they all knew that was impossible. It had caused no fire, and there were no broken gas mains; all that was left were the charred remains of two bodies and wispy feathers floating around apartment's wrecked shell.

One

Elra woke up to the smell of mold. A rather impressive swathe of pastel-green blotches had been growing on the wall of her bedroom for quite a while now, and no matter how often she asked her mother to talk to the landlord about it, nobody ever came to sort it out. The spores, insidious and noxious, kept relentlessly spreading, consuming wall-space and creeping onto unsuspecting items of clothing left in the corner of the room.

It wasn't just in her bedroom. By virtue of their council flat's location on the ground floor of Driesdale, a grey, dripping tower block, mold had also spread to the sitting room and the bathroom. It was particularly prevalent on the bathroom ceiling. Elra had recently spent many lonesome hours lying in the bath staring up at the greenery above her, the tepid water mirroring the unwholesome dampness in the air.

Mold wasn't the only problem with the flat. Elra could understand, of course, that her mother, single and stretched as she was, could not be expected to hold down her job at the hairdressers, keep an eye on her seventeen year old daughter, and stay abreast of every tiny going-on. She supposed that's why her mother had finally asked Barry to move in.

This was bad news. Barry was a particularly obnoxious individual, unpredictable and unreliable to the extreme. When their relationship had been on a purely casual basis, where Barry would occasionally come round (more often than her mother would go round to his), things had been bearable. Elra found herself escaping to her friend's houses (especially Cali's), or, failing that, retreating to her room and putting her headphones in (with the volume on max).

When she returned, she more often than not found the kitchen carpeted with empty cans of cheap cider (or the floor sticky with their liquid), half eaten takeaway cartons chucked in the sink, and occasionally, the air heavy with the acrid smell of weed. She knew Barry was into harder and badder things than cannabis, but it seemed even her mother drew the line somewhere.

While she stood up for herself on that front, she conceded readily on others. If Elra misgauged the timing of her return, it was a mixed bag of what noises she would find emanating from her mother's bedroom. Sex noises or arguing were the norm, but all too often, especially of late, there had been crying. More than once had Elra seen her mother sitting at the kitchen table, muted and introspective, nursing a considerable black eye or cut cheek.

It was almost painfully stereotypical, Elra thought. A poor, single mother caught in an on-off relationship an abusive boyfriend involved in crime. Did life get any more grey and gritty than that?

In reality, Barry was a mere peon in the criminal world. A disposable cog, an ex-meth-head who had managed to make it into the lower ranks of the business. In a way, that made him even more dangerous and unpredictable: he had no attachments, no loyalty to anything apart from himself.

And today he was moving in.

Elra swung her legs off the bed and threw open the window to lessen the dank moldy smell. She found the weather outside to be particularly miserable, so she promptly closed it again. On the other side of the glass, grey tower blocks rose into the rain-etched sky, their brick the same color as the clouds above them.

It was so gloomy outside that, with the bedroom light on, Elra could pick out her reflection in the pane. Looking back at her was a tallish, frizzy-haired, almond-eyed girl with skin the color of rich honey. She'd taken mostly after her dad, so her mother said. It was a quirk of Elra's upbringing that she had never seen a photo of her father: the fierce, handsome mixed race gentleman who her mother seldom mentioned had left their lives as quickly as he'd arrived. He'd actually gone before Elra's mother had even had a chance to find out whether or not she was pregnant, something that Elra found rather curious.

Her mother, on the other hand, had the looks of an English Rose that had been left in the vase slightly too long. At forty years old, the brightness of her youth was beginning to dim. Lines were forming in the creases of her face. Small ones mostly, only visible up close, weather marks of a life full of disappointments. Not to say she wasn't an attractive woman, of course. She was many powers of ten more attractive than Barry, who at best looked like an albino rat, and at his worst looked like a member of the undead. His skin, sickly pale and blotchy, seemed overly taut. His body-fat was minimal, but his movements were quick and violent, and that made up for his lack of physical presence.

Elra stepped away from the gloom outside the window with a sigh. She walked into the kitchen and threw together a sandwich from whatever was in the fridge. She checked the time: 1pm. Three hours left of just her and her mother.

She slung a heavy bomber jacket from Camden Market over her shoulders, covering up her ratty Rage Against the Machine t-shirt. She bunged her phone and some cash in her pocket, and headed out into the dampness of the day.

Two

Elra passed Fallowdale, the tower block next to Driesdale; then the park, devoid of any children; and then a later-built run of council flats, Teathing Gardens.

Social life on the estate had always been something of a challenge for Elra. She didn't really seem to fit in with anyone: most of the people her age were either foot-soldiers for the local gangs ('young bloods' as they were called by their elders), or came for very traditional Bangladeshi and Pakistani families, and thus seemed to hang out exclusively with others from their culture (with one or two happy exceptions, of course).

Other cliques of people her age included the Somali contingent (tension between them and the Banglas seemed curiously high, despite their shared faith), the migrant university students (tourists in scheme of things, really: they spent a year, perhaps two, living in the 'ghetto' then would forever brag about it to their mates at parties), assorted roving druggies (exploited by the gangs, a general menace) and those, like Elra, that were 'unclassifiable' in a world of cultural divides and strong needs to belong. Elra's friend Cali was one: her father was Polish and her mother was Nigerian. Neither family seemed to particularly like the other, but they both liked Cali well enough.

She came to the base of yet another tower block, a different shade of grey from the others, whose broken sign said Victory Rise.

The foyer smelled like piss. Elra quickly made it to the elevator and punched the button for the eighth floor. The door closed suddenly and the elevator jarred into life.

The open corridor to Cali's flat commanded a view of the surrounding estate. Identikit doors and windows, row after row, stack after stack. A great density of people encased in greyness. The builders of these blocks held efficiency above all else, apart from perhaps the inventive use of concrete. They viewed buildings as machines to live in: there was no room for flair or character in their ideas. Boy, did it show.

Cali's mother was home when Elra arrived, unpacking some shopping. She was a big, dynamic woman with a strong personality and a faint Nigerian accent. 'Elra! How excellent of you to come round!'

'The pleasure is all mine, Mrs. Tupolski.'

'Don't you "missus" me young woman!' she chucked, gesticulating at her with some toilet roll. 'I'm missus to no man!'

'Sorry, Abeje'

'That's more like it! Califindra! Elra's here!' she bellowed into the depths of the flat.

'I know, nma!' Cali retorted, emerging with a shower cap tight on her head.

Now, Cali was something of a beauty. She was dusky and slim, bright-eyed and lithe. She wore her hair short and straight, usually held back with a band.

'Cali, I thought you'd said you'd finally embraced your curls,' Elra joked.

'So did I,' her mother continued. 'I told her Black is Beautiful. That curly hair is beautiful. But no, she wants to look like a Disney Princess. I'll be the one laughing when she's bald at forty.'

Cali gave her mother a withering stare. Abeje deflected it with a judicious eyebrow raise, and turned back to the shopping.

'Want to go to Boomtown?' Cali asked.

'Sounds good to me,' Elra replied.

'Cool, give me a second to wash this out and I'll be right with you. Sorry. Nma?!'

'Yes sweetie?' Cali's mother cooed in a faux voice as she messed around with some jars of pickles.

'Can you make Elra a cuppa, or a coffee, or something?'

Elra shot Cali's mom a smile and shook her head in polite declination. 'I'm good thanks, don't worry about it,' she muttered. Christ, if she treated her mother like this...

Three

Boomtown was a colorful coffee-and-cake shop that seemed totally out of place in its colorless surroundings. It was on Sylings Road, a few fronts up from the hairdressers Elra's mother worked at, and two down from the Bangla Cash-and-Carry on the corner. It sold fantastic coffee, both hot and iced; home-made ice-cream and sorbets and some rather exceptional cake, by the slice or by the round. Its main selling point (apart from the fantastic food), was its decor: a direct smash-up of trendy New York bar and Arabian city-state chic, with opening hours to match. It functioned as a wholesome hangout (literally) for people who were not yet old enough to drink, or whose religion forbade it. Thankfully cake, coffee and a decent chat is not considered haram in the Koran, so more often than not the clientele consisted of groups of young Muslims.

Just so this time. Elra and Cali sat with a pair of massive coffee milkshakes at a table for two in the downstairs section, away from the passing eyes of the people in the street. Behind them in a booth sat a gaggle of girls giggling raucously over boy stories, aged roughly thirteen to sixteen, their hair covered by the most colorful and lush hijabs. All in all, Elra thought places like this were infinitely more sociable than pubs, the preserve of lecherous men and coarse-voiced battleaxe females.

'He's moving his stuff in today,' she said.

'Today? I thought you had some time!' Cali retorted.

'Nope, that'd be far too easy.'

Cali gave her a stern look. 'Seriously, if he ever gives you any crap, don't hesitate to come over.'

'Thanks, I will do. I'll probably end up taking you up on that sooner rather than later, unfortunately.'

'And when I say come over, I mean come over for a while. Weeks, if you have to.'

'Aw, Cali. You really are...'

'Stop it,' Cali interrupted. 'You'd do the same for me.' She took a long gulp of her milkshake and fixed her eyes on Elra. 'We need to get out of here, girl.'

'We certainly do,' Elra retorted.

'I'm not even kidding. More to the point, you need to get out of here.'

Elra looked at her, knowing she was telling the truth.

'Uni?' Cali posited.

A look of regret passed over Elra's face, then disappeared. 'If I can get the A-levels and the references, yeah. And justify the ton of debt.'

'They're student loans, Elra. They're no-interest. Anyway, it's the government. It's not like they'll bankrupt their own citizens.'

Elra chuckled. 'They don't give a damn either way. The point is, I'll be taking out loans for living as well as tuition.''

'Look, girl, you need a way out. Me, I can afford not to. Mom and Dad love me, they're a solid couple: and they aren't going anywhere anytime soon. But with this crack-head - '

'Meth-head,' Elra corrected.

'...Meth-head who's barging his way into your life, things are going to go south pretty quick.'

'But even if uni is a possibility, I still have to finish this year at College!'

Cali seemed stumped. 'True. Five months?'

'Yeah, five months until we graduate, and that's not counting the summer. It'll be late September before I head to Uni.'

'So eight months, really.'

'Yeah.'

'Damn, you're right.'

They sat in silence for a while, finishing their respective drinks.

'How much do you really even know about Barry, anyway?'

'Exactly,' Elra replied. 'Put it this way, he's been dating mom for a solid two years now, on and off. Dunno where they met; some club or bar, probably. Mom's just so... I don't know. Easy. Such a damn pushover most of the time.'

Cali snickered. 'Maybe mine could teach yours a thing or two.'

'Quite. Yours wouldn't take any of his crap.'

A darkness crossed Cali's features. 'He beats her, doesn't he?'

'Sometimes, yeah.'

Cali became animated. 'Haven't you talked to her? Haven't you told her what you think about him?'

Elra sighed. 'Cali, I've tried. I really have.'

'If he ever lays a finger on you I'll cut his throat, you know that?'

Elra looked into her friend's fierce eyes, and thought how she looked like she meant it. Cali was great, Cali was the best... but there was a slight darkness within her. For the umpteenth time, she considered how bad it would be for anyone to find themselves on her wrong side.

'You'd have to beat me to it,' Elra finally said, chuckling.

Cali smiled wanly. 'Just take care of yourself, Elra. People like him are nasty. You know Jenni from school?'

'That girl who left before Year 10?'

'Yeah. You know what happened to her?'

'She got into heroin, didn't she?'

'I heard it from Aisha. She got so hooked, she started doing guys favors – if you know what I mean – to keep a steady flow. She got in with the Yard Crew and eventually they were the ones organizing the favors. One week they didn't make enough off her to keep her in habit, so she said they could get it from her family. Some thugs went round and robbed her parents' home, and she hasn't been heard of since.'

'She's sixteen!'

'Was sixteen. God knows what's happened to her now. The point is, people like that are bad. And they're doubly bad to women. They don't care about anything but cash. People are tools to them.'

'You're preaching to the choir, here.'

'Well sometimes I think you need reminding.'

The girls behind them eventually left, and the day slowly darkened. The lights downstairs dimmed, maintaining that place's bar vibe. Cali eventually piped up.

'Why don't you stay at mine tonight?'

'Yeah?'

'Yeah. Dawid torrented some films, we could grab some snacks and make a thing of it.'

'Okay,' Elra replied, 'but I'll have to poke my head round the door at home first, just to check on my mother.'

'Fine. But make sure he doesn't rope you into helping or anything. You owe him nothing.'

'Don't I know it,' Elra grimaced.

Four

Half an hour later Elra was back outside Driesdale. The front door was held open with a sturdy-looking guitar amp, and deep in the building someone was swearing.

Elra walked through the foyer and down the left-hand corridor. One of the denizens had vainly tried to spruce the place up by installing tired-looking pots of shrubs down its length. A Council notice had been placed on the wall, announcing that the plants were to be removed as soon as possible, since they constituted a Fire Hazard.

'Fucking plants in the fucking way,' a hoarse voice stated from the far end. Barry rounded the corner manhandling numerous cardboard boxes, stacked one inside the other. 'Out the bloody way,' he said to Elra, abruptly. He sidled past awkwardly and got the boxes caught in a dying rhododendron.

Elra continued towards the flat without saying a word.

Inside her mother was walking around, wringing her hands nervously.

'Hi there, love. Mind giving Barry a hand?'

Elra remained silent and took a look around the place. Barry had brought mercifully few accoutrements, and the ones he had brought looked mostly electronic in nature. Elra was surprised to find the living room now well-stocked with an up-to-date flatscreen, stereo system and no less than three laptops, casually thrown on the sofa. When she entered the kitchen, she found a shiny blender sitting on the work surface, along with a large bong.

The sounds of Barry carrying a heavy load emanated from down the corridor. A few seconds later he appeared carrying the amp.

'This thing's a bitch to carry,' he announced. 'Mind getting that door for me, babe?'

Elra's mother jumped at the request and duly held the living room door open. Barry waddled in with his heavy load, and after much swearing and crashing around, managed to put it down where he wanted.

'I didn't know you played the guitar, Barry,' Elra said lightly.

'Well I don't, do I? Got it for when we have a do. You should hear the thing when it's turned up to eleven.' He stood up straight, stretching his back. His overly pale frame keened at the strain.

'I'm staying at Cali's tonight,' Elra announced.

Barry shot her mother a glance. 'Suits us, doesn't it, babe?' he smirked. He gave her a playful slap on the bottom and dashed back outside.

Something else was turned up to eleven that evening. After Barry had finished carrying in some clothes and other odds and ends, he and Elra's mother retired straight to the bedroom. As Elra left to go to Cali's she could still hear their noises in the corridor.

Cali's home was full of warm colors and smelled of good cooking. What a difference not living on the ground floor makes, Elra thought. And how nice it is to have the heating on. Abeje, Cali's mom, had made meat pie with fried plantains, and had very kindly saved Elra some. Cali's father and little brother were back home now; her father, a plasterer, was a large, bald, homely man with a cheery sense of humor. He and Abeje complimented each other perfectly. As far as Elra could see, their marital relationship consisted of a perpetual comedic back-and-forth, where Abeje would jokingly treat her husband like an overgrown teenager, to which he'd retort with slights about her cooking and housekeeping skills.

Cali's little brother Dawid, the source of their movies that evening, was a smallish boy of fourteen, and much more introverted than his sister and parents. He was older beyond his years, somehow: he was into things like coding, obscure bands, Korean films and weighty literature. He gave Elra an understated smile when he finally emerged from his room.

'Here,' he offered, presenting a small memory stick. 'There's some stuff you guys might like on there.'

'Horror?' Cali asked.

'The best,' he replied. 'A few Japanese classics, a new Spanish one about an orphan, and a few Hollywood remakes, if you want your intelligence insulted.'

'Subtitle files?'

'You bet.'

Their dad looked up from his dinner. 'Dawid, I trust none of those are R rated?'

'None at all, father,' he replied.

Their dad smirked. Abeje rolled her eyes and continued drying dishes.

Five

Later, as Elra and Cali sat watching a particularly jumpy horror called Ju-Ban Kon II in Cali's small, cozy room under her duvet with a healthy supply of snacks, their conversation turned to more arcane matters. They hadn't said much throughout the film; Elra had been trying to distance herself from her present woes, but had found the flick to be bad escapism material, so had satisfied herself in taking solace from her friend's silent companionship. Cali sat there absorbing the surreal and frightening images on the laptop screen with unbroken concentration, issuing the odd titter of laughter here and there at the more disturbing moments. Then all of a sudden, after a particularly terrifying moment involving a female ghost appearing from a mirror, she asked:

'Do you believe in the supernatural, Elra?'

Elra was still a bit mentally off balance from the scare. 'Um, you know what... I'm not really sure.'

'What?'

'I mean, there has to be a limit to our understanding, right? Surely there's something beyond what we know.'

'Like God?'

Elra was slightly taken aback. Religion was a subject rarely touched upon in their friendship. The idea of an all-powerful, all-loving sky daddy seemed at odds with the world around them: there was no space for the divine on the cold streets of their neighborhood, at least in Elra's eyes. 'I suppose you could call it that,' Elra stuttered.

'Have you ever...? I dunno.'

'Seen something weird?' Elra chuckled.

'Yes,' Cali replied, sitting up attentively, her tone suddenly becoming serious.

Something in the back of Elra's mind registered. She thought better of it. 'Well, you obviously have.'

'So have you. I can tell from the way you skirt the question, Elra.'

Elra reluctantly continued. 'Well, this was quite a while ago, back when I was a kid. You know how when you look back at your childhood, it's quite difficult to distinguish between things that you imagined and things that actually happened?'

'Yeah'

'Well maybe this was just like that,' Elra lied. In reality she knew it'd actually happened, as certain as it was possible to be. So far the story had gone untold, even to her mother. Still, she felt a perverse desire to relate it to someone, a cathartic urge to be open about her fears. 'It was when I was at the Altab Memorial Primary School,' she began.

'The one by the turning onto Newdale Road? You went there?'

'Yes. One day in the early summer a few of us were outside in the playground, playing a game where we'd try to step on each other's shadows. It was a rare sunny day, and even though it was summer, it seemed almost unnaturally hot.'

'It that it?' Cali quizzed, incredulous.

'Of course not!' Elra replied. 'Anyway, I was doing particularly badly for some reason. Everybody seemed to be getting my shadow, and because of this I was getting quite cross. I was feeling sweaty, annoyed and defeated. Anyway, perhaps it was the heat making the asphalt slippery, or maybe I was just out of breath, but I fell over. I remember the sensation, of time slowing, mentally bracing against the inevitable impact with the hard ground. But instead, I fell into sand.'

'Sand?'

'Yeah.'

'Sand as in...?'

'Desert sand,' Elra finished. 'Scorching hot desert sand.'

Cali raised her eyebrows and gave Elra a disbelieving look.

'As you can imagine, I was shocked out of my skin. I got up, and found myself on the top of a large dune. Everywhere, in all directions, that's all I could see. Dunes. I thought I could make out some figures on the horizon, mounting a crest, herding what looked like cattle.'

'How...?' Cali began.

'That's not all. I heard a scuffling noise below me. I looked down the slope of the dune and saw a group of men, dressed in red robes, climbing up the dune and trying to sneak up on me. As soon as I made eye contact, they shouted and started running. I learnt that day that it's really hard to run in deep sand. Thankfully, I had the uphill advantage. I ran down the other side, the sand filling my socks and whipping up against my legs. When I reached the bottom it deepened, and I fell over. Then I was back in the playground, my palms gritty from falling on the hot asphalt.'

Cali looked at Elra with dumb amazement. 'Great story, now tell me a real one,' she said, as her smile widened and broke into laughter. 'You really do pull them out sometimes, girl.'

Elra was inwardly relieved. 'Your turn.'

Six

For the first few days after Barry moved in, Elra hardly saw him. He could occasionally be heard in the mornings, croaking hoarsely at her mother in their bedroom; but apart from that and the odd shouting tirades exchanged late at night, his intrusion into her life was comparatively minor. Also her mother remained unbruised, which she was glad to see.

School resumed, and she found herself absorbed in the finer aspects of late teenage life: the gossip, the talk of plans after graduating, the fleeting companionship of old friends; the small moments that make the daily grind more bearable. Cali didn't mention their talk again, and Elra made a point of hanging out with her more often; chatting in her room or hanging out in Boomtown.

However soon enough, things started taking a turn for the worrying. It started one afternoon when Elra came back from school, and she found her mother, Barry and another, portly man sitting at the table in the cramped kitchen.

Barry sneered slightly when she entered. 'This is Elra,' he and her mother said to the large gentleman, his shiny bald forehead glistening with sweat. 'And this is Mastix,' Barry continued, to Elra.

'Is she...?' Mastix started.

Elra's mother shot him a nervous glance.

Barry winced. 'No, she's Diane's daughter.'

Mastix smiled, baring three gold teeth.

Over the following weeks Elra noticed more and more strangers visiting the flat. They usually set themselves up in the kitchen, closed the door and stayed that way for hours. On the weekends yet more would come and go, odd types with grubby rucksacks and large puffer jackets. Every so often Mastix would come around, all smiles and understated calm, and would talk to Barry in serious, hushed tones.

Annoyingly, Elra began to see less and less of her mother. She took to checking up on her after school, at the hairdressers where she worked, but more often than not she wasn't there.

Things came to a head one evening when Elra had been relating her concerns to Cali. It was a Wednesday afternoon, when both of them had no classes. Cali was all for marching round to Elra's place that evening and confronting the issue head-on. There was no holding her back, but Elra had managed to talk her round to going to the hairdressers instead, so they could talk to her privately, away from Barry.

They headed out into the chill late afternoon air and made their way over to Sylings Road. Boomtown was just starting to fill up with kids coming back after school.

The hairdressers door jangled as they entered; Elra smiled as she recognized Jamaya, her mother's bubbly co-worker, who was currently braiding a customer's hair.

'Hey there, Elra,' Jamaya smiled. 'Haven't seen you in quite a while. How's Diane doing?'

Alarm bells went off in the back of Elra's mind. 'I was hoping you'd be able to tell me that.'

Jamaya's expression darkened slightly. 'Christ, is she alright?'

'I'm not sure. I came here to talk to her.'

Jamaya backed away from her work and stood looking at the two of them, her brow furrowed. 'Diane hasn't been in for almost two weeks. She's ill, or so she said.'

Cali was practically dragging Elra back to Driesdale. 'This is crazy, Elra,' she fumed. 'Your mother is such a damn pushover. You'd think even if she couldn't stand up for herself, she'd stand up for herself for you.'

Elra, to her horror, wasn't nearly as surprised about the situation as she thought she should have been. It was scary, really, having such apathy towards one's life.

When they got to the lobby Cali roughly grabbed Elra by the shoulders and looked her straight in the eye. 'You've put up with enough from these people. Go in there and tell them to leave. You should threaten them with the nuclear option, if necessary.'

'The nuclear option?'

'The police. Give them hell. I'll be right at your side the whole time.'

Elra nodded and disengaged from Cali's grip. She walked down the plant-potted corridor and stood outside the door, building herself up. She was nervous, not really expecting who or what to expect to find on the other side, but Cali's indignant anger at the whole affair had sparked a determination within her. Her apathy was quickly thawing.

They found the door locked, so Elra gave it a few smart raps and stood back.

Nothing. She stepped up once more and hit it hard with the butt of her fist. That didn't work, so Cali strode up and hammered it in quick succession until the door opened.

A dozy-eyed twenty-something appeared. Cali and Elra barged past him, to the sound of his slow-witted protestations. They entered the kitchen.

The table had been moved into the middle of the room to make room for more chairs. The work surfaces were littered in garbage, the blinds were fully down and the solitary light bulb gave everything a sickly, yellowish hue.

On the table top sat a few electronic scales, glass panes led flat like mats, craft knife blades, plastic bags, a reel of cling film, a few lighters, and small heaps of a gritty, tan-colored powder. To one side were little packages, their ends twizzled up and wrapped in film, all lined up neatly in a row.

Barry and Elra's mother were sitting at the table with three youngish teen girls neither of them had seen before. The girls were splitting the piles and wrapping them, her mother and Barry seemed to be performing some sort of overseeing roles. For the first time Elra noticed her mother's sallow appearance.

'I want you all to leave,' Elra asked, calmly.

Barry glanced around the table, chuckling. 'Can't you see we're in the middle of something?'

'I don't care. I want you to get out of my house.'

Barry stood up, his joviality fading. 'Look, girl. This is your mother's house, not yours. So if she says we can stay, we can fucking stay.'

Elra's mother's eyes flitted between her boyfriend and her daughter. 'Elra, babe, you've got to understand...'

'I understand well enough, mom. I want our space back. I want it to just be the two of us again.'

'Well it ain't just the two of you anymore, so you better get used to the fact,' Barry announced.

'Barry, please...' her mother interjected.

'No, your daughter has to learn that the world doesn't revolve around her. Now,' he continued to Elra, 'you and your girlfriend can fuck off and stop interfering.'

Elra and Cali heard the kitchen door open. The stoner who opened the front door was standing behind them, his arms crossed and a 9mm pistol in one hand, complete with a long, heavy silencer attached to the barrel.

Cali fumed. 'You cowards. Hiding behind guns like toddlers behind their mothers' skirts. As if they justify your actions.'

Barry laughed. 'You what? It's simpler than that, girl. Get out and don't interfere again or Dean here will put a bullet in your dumb skull.'

Behind them Dean made a show of cocking the gun.

'Barry, stop it!' Elra's mom whined.

Elra found herself bristling with fury, as if all her passivity and submissiveness was being expunged in waves, one after the other, each wholeheartedly consuming her being. 'You're not going to shoot us,' she said confidently.

'Or, if you did, it'd be the stupidest thing you've done,' Cali added.

'Now leave, and take all that with you,' Elra finished, pointing at the table, her arm quivering with nerves or rage, she didn't know which.

It was strange, she thought: the tingling in her body felt like more than just adrenaline. If anything, it was closer to electricity.

Barry stared her dead in the eyes, a cheek muscle in his unnaturally pale face pulsating with hate.

'I don't think you fully appreciate the situation. All of us here are accountable, in one way or another. These girls here are accountable to their boyfriends. Their boyfriends are accountable to me. I'm accountable to Mastix, and he's accountable to someone higher. And all of us,' he said, leaning over the table and taking a pinch of the tan-colored dust, 'are accountable to this.'

He let it slip between his fingers back onto the pile. Was that a spark Elra could see on the window blinds?

'You, Elra, are accountable to your mother, and she,' he snarled as he roughly grabbed her mother's shoulder, 'is more accountable to that stuff than anybody else here.'

'I'm sorry Elra, babe,' her mother sobbed as Barry's fingers dug into her shoulder. 'I couldn't...'

Elra cut her off by slamming her fist on the table, sending the tan dust and the apparatus flying in the air. Barry screamed.

'You fucking moron!' He bellowed. 'Do her, Dean!'

Elra felt so betrayed. Not by her mother, no: she was a victim to her circumstances just as much as Elra was. Rather, she felt betrayed by life itself. She saw the inevitable, banal hopelessness of her life situation; her living in passivity, endlessly buffeted by social forces beyond her control.

The world may be broken, but I won't let it break me.

As Barry bellowed, her mom cried and Dean struggled with the gun's safety catch, Elra saw the air behind the table rip.

Seven

The rift seared and stretched until it consumed the entire back wall and window, revealing a familiar desert bleached by a fierce, glaring sun. The image wavered, and then changed to sandstone courtyard with the same quality of light. The rift crackled and hissed, as if the air had been cut with a red-hot knife.

Time seemed to dilate. Cali reeled in shock, Barry spun round to see what was going on, and the three girls screamed. Elra's mother face was etched with silent horror. For a moment they all looked at this new development dumbstruck, confusion and fear in equal measure rapidly mounting within all of them.

Through the tearing and crackling sounds, another more human sound could be heard. Was it talking? No, more like shouting, in an unrecognizable, harsh language. Seconds later the speaker became visible: a short man with dark tan skin, dressed in a red and gold robe. He stood in the courtyard in front of the rift, looking equally amazed as the group on the other side. But unlike them, his amazement was overlaid with joy, not with terror. He gesticulated wildly to people as yet unseen, pointing through the rift directly at Elra.

Dean and the three girls bolted. They knocked aside the chairs and scarpered through the door. On the other side of the rift, more people came into view, their forms distorted by the rippling of the event horizon. These were tall and thin, bearing what looked like long-bladed pikes; their faces covered by red masks and their stature increased by the ornate curving headdresses they wore.

Elra stood there utterly transfixed. She felt Cali look at her, fearful. Barry turned away from the rift and met her gaze, with an expression the likes of which she'd never seen before. Utter incomprehension.

It quickly disappeared as one of the tall soldiers in headdresses stepped across the event horizon and into their world, and skewered him right through the throat with their blade. Everyone, including Elra, screamed.

Two more soldiers stepped through behind the first, as the first kicked over the table and violently dashed Barry's corpse to the floor. With their headdresses they appeared over seven feet tall, making them appear to take up most of the kitchen.

Elra's mother was right in their way. She cowered, paralyzed by their alien presence. Cali darted forwards and grabbed her under the arms, clumsily dragging her back. Elra saw one of the masked soldiers raise their longblade: she too dashed forward, and grabbed both of them. They staggered back in a huddle, and promptly tripped over a broken chair. They all fell down in a manner that would have been comical in a more light-hearted situation, but as it stood, they were all on the floor holding on to each other out of fear and panic as a seven foot tall masked killer towered over them ready to strike.

The blade swung downwards, right over Cali's head. Elra winced and braced against the coming impact. This is it, she thought. At least she was dying in good company. She didn't know why these people were trying to kill them, but she was certain it had something to do with that time in the school playground, all those years ago. That desert: it means something. Too late now to find out what.

Then a very strange thing happened. The blow never came. Elra chanced a peek and saw the blade disintegrating as it cut through the air, leaving the soldier with just the long, patterned handle to strike with. It still hit Cali, of course: right on the side of the head. It drew blood and knocked her out cold.

The other soldiers seemed to be more interested in the rift than in the group. In fact, they seemed to be trying to climb back through, and failing. The rift... was changing. To Elra's immense surprise, the sandstone courtyard shimmered out of existence and was replaced by a school playground on a hot summer's day. Her school playground. For the briefest of moments Elra saw dozens of kids staring in her direction, their jaws hitting the floor. Then the rift vanished, taking the other two soldiers with it.

The soldier with the disintegrated longblade threw it aside and clenched his gauntleted hand into a fist. A spike shot out of his sleeve.

Elra saw what was happening and fought to get to her feet. She couldn't manage that, however, so settled with just throwing herself at the man's legs. His free hand caught her mid-lunge.

He held her down with his foot as he plunged the spike into her mother's stomach.

Elra screeched in anguish and fury, grabbed the man's armor and pulled at it with a strength she didn't know she possessed. Her mother was silent. She looked down at the metal rod in her belly with wide eyes, and then back up at her red masked assassin. Her lips moved, but only the softest of whispers came out.

The man fell under Elra's vicious assault. She swung herself on top of him, pinning his arms with her knees. With both hands she ripped off his mask, only to find that 'he' was in fact female.

The warrior woman met Elra's gaze. 'Kele mbaye o Manu.'

Elra felt unadulterated hatred. 'Why?!' she screamed at the woman, hitting her in the face again and again.

'Kele mbaye o Manu!' the woman replied. Her dark eyes were fierce with an intensity Elra couldn't quite place. She struggled to throw off Elra's weight and shot a pining glance back towards where the rift had been.

Elra looked over at her dying mother and her unconscious friend, then back at the woman. She was crying. 'Kele mbaye o Manu! Ke sannau!' No, pleading.

Even though her rage was fiercely burning, Elra couldn't bring herself to kill the woman. What was she to do? Put her hands around the woman's neck and squeeze? Beat her to death with the patterned hilt of her weapon? She couldn't bring herself to do either.

Out of nowhere a spurt of crimson erupted from the woman's temple and her head lolled to one side, lifeless. Elra was too tired and distraught to be surprised.

'Well, you made quite a mess,' a voice exclaimed behind her.

Eight

Elra turned. Standing in the doorway was a young East Asian man, early twenties at the most. He had long straight black hair, a series of geometric tattoos on his neck and hands, and a thin dark jacket that hugged his slim figure. His face was brightly handsome, and lightly flecked with blood.

There was a silenced pistol in his hand. Hang on, was that Dean's pistol?

He carefully stepped over a broken section of table and inched towards the dead female warrior, holding the gun like he half-expected her to jump back to life at any moment.

'Who the hell is she?' he asked, seemingly to himself, frowning.

'More to the point, who the hell are you?' Elra countered.

'Kai,' he replied, as if that sufficiently answered the question. His gaze passed over Elra, especially over her bare forearms, and his frown deepened.

'So you have... inner Body Knowledge? It's rather rare to see that nowadays.'

'Pardon?'

'You don't have any marks on your hands. Did you do a type of scream?' He raised his eyebrows. 'Or is it Change Knowledge? Not many people can do what you just did. In fact, I don't even know of any others.'

'I have no idea what you're talking about.'

Kai looked at her oddly, and then surveyed the wreckage of the room. His gaze lingered on Barry's bloodied corpse; Elra's mother body, her eyes still wide; and Cali's unconscious form. 'So what happened, then?'

Elra began to cry. It was so ludicrous.

'We were attacked... by a memory from my childhood.'

'Care to elaborate?'

'My friend and I were confronting my mother and her boyfriend...' she began.

'Some confrontation.'

Elra looked at him darkly through her sobs. 'And as I felt my anger peak, a sort of... portal opened over there,' she said as she pointed at the far wall, 'and we were all attacked by these soldiers. They killed my mother and her boyfriend, and they may have killed my friend.' She wiped her eyes and pulled herself together.

'No, your friend's alive.' Kai clarified, almost casually, giving her a very strange look. 'Would you mind doing something for me?'

'What?'

'Get undressed.'

'What?'

'Quickly. The police are almost certainly on their way by now.'

Elra hesitated.

Kai rolled his eyes. 'Oh come on. I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important.'

As Elra removed her clothes and eyed his gun, she began to come to her senses. Her tears were replaced by a keen awareness of the danger she was in, inexplicable occurrences aside. Was this Kai person with the gang? Had Dean made a phone call after he left, and was he playing this whole charade so he could execute her cleanly, to dispose of witnesses? She undressed slowly, to give herself thinking space and time to plan an escape.

Make a dash for the door. But that would require being faster than his reflexes. Make a dash at him. Marginally better, but charging someone with a gun is never really a good idea. Delay through undressing really slowly? Better than first two, but not a real solution, and anyway, she was doing that already. Delay by talking to him until the police arrive? Slight improvement, best idea yet, but still not very promising. Well, it's worth a go.

'So what were you talking about... inner knowledge, or something? What is that?'

'I'm trying to find out if you know.'

'By making me undress?'

'Exactly. Oh, and on that front, please hurry up.'

She was taking her clothes off too fast: but there's only so long you can take to remove a t-shirt. 'And what do you mean about screaming? There was a lot of that just now,' she continued.

'Just hurry.'

She was down to her bra and panties. She stopped.

'If you would be so kind,' Kai said, gesturing at them.

Oh god this really was it. She removed them quickly, resigned. The scene was quite surreal, her standing there in her nakedness, surrounded by carnage.

Kai's eyes were wide. He stared at her skin, the color of milky coffee, with an expression of either intense lust or intense surprise; it was hard to tell which. 'You're unmarked,' he managed.

Elra remained silent. Now may be her chance. She tensed herself, ready to jump.

'You can put them back on now,' Kai announced all of a sudden, snapping out of his rapt focus. He stepped over to the window and scanned the street outside. The faint sound of sirens grew in the distance.

Elra scrambled back into her clothes, shaking from shock. Maybe she wouldn't die today after all.

'We need to leave,' Kai stated. 'Come on!'

'What about all this?' Elra replied. 'What about my mother and Cali?'

'Her?' he said, waving the gun in Cali's direction. 'Oh, the EMTs will take care of her. We can find which hospital she's in later. As for your mother...' He grabbed her hand and looked her in the eye. 'I'm sorry. But right now, there are bigger things afoot. Let's go.'

Nine

Kai pushed open the fire escape door and led her around the side of the building. The sirens were closer now.

Fear, doubt and exhaustion coursed through Elra's mind. 'How can I know I can trust you?' she asked, reasonably.

'Trust me, you can,' Kai replied pithily.

Elra sighed. Did she have any other choice but to follow?

Kai ran across the road, looking up and down the street agitatedly. 'Bugger. Which way to the main road?'

'I'll tell you if I know I can trust you.' She wasn't just going to run off with this guy, no matter how reasonable he seemed. 'How did you get here? And what do you want with me, really?'

'We don't have time for this,' Kai announced. The sirens were getting nearer.

'Yes we do.'

He was standing there, in the middle of the road, giving her an annoyed stare. Elra's mental grip started to loosen, stressed to breaking point by recent events and the irrationality of her current predicament. She felt tears forming in the corners of her eyes again. She willed them back, but it didn't work. Realizations hit her, each consecutive one like a load falling on her shoulders.

Her kitchen had been being used to process drugs.

Her mother had been an addict.

A PORTAL had opened in said kitchen.

She had been attacked by god-only-knows what, and she was damn near certain they were after her, and her alone.

But they'd killed everyone anyway, including her mother.

Her mother was dead.

She couldn't go back home now, not unless she wanted to be arrested, questioned and cross-examined by all manner of policemen, detectives, psychiatrists and Drugs Squad officials.

Oh god, her mother was dead!

Elra felt her knees give way, and she crumpled into a heap on the curb.

Kai's expression softened instantly. His intensity faded and something seemed to register within him; he gave Elra a tired smile and walked back over to the curb, just as an ambulance blared into view and shot right past them.

'It goes on,' he said, as he crouched down in front of her.

Elra looked up at him from the watery depths of her despair. 'What does?'

'Life,' he finished, warmly. 'Right now the world may seem like a meaningless and hateful place, but in a few months things will be clear again. The hurt will fade, and this day will make sense, even though it doesn't right now.' Leaning forwards onto his knees, he took her by the shoulders.

Her tears resumed with vigor.

They were there for a few minutes, crouching and sitting respectively, locked in that awkward semi-embrace. Kai could see he'd clearly misjudged how to handle their exit, and now felt a wave of guilt. He understood what it meant to lose a parent, in his own way, but to see your mother killed was something quite different. One could argue she was taking it rather well, all things considered.

A police car scanned into view. It wasn't in a manic rush, unlike the ambulance: it seemed to be moving in a strangely inquisitive way, snooping almost, as if drawn to the scene out of morbid curiosity rather than a desire to help. Elra sensed it too.

'I'll explain everything as we walk,' he offered. 'But right now we have to leave. Once you've heard what I have to say, you don't have to come with me if you don't want to.'

Elra nodded tearfully, pulling herself together piece by piece. Kai offered her his hand, but she got up on her own. 'The main road's that way,' she pointed.

Ten

The two of them walked down Sylings Road, towards the main road. Elra's eyes were dry now. The weight was lifting.

'I came here from London. Me and some other people like us have a sort of hideout there,' Kai explained.

'People like us?' Elra quizzed.

He gave her a knowing look, as if he was relishing keeping information from her. 'We knew something like this was going to happen here, at this time. We knew for years.'

'What? How?'

He gave her another look. 'Right, this is going to take some explaining. So, about nine years ago an event happened. It left a huge amount of energy in its wake, a kind of special signature, that certain people like us can understand. You know, like when someone burns toast in a kitchen, and you can tell, even hours afterwards?'

'I suppose,' Elra said, unsure.

'Well, the energy pointed to an exact time and place, more specifically, to the very council flat you were living in, on this very day. The event nine years ago... well, you've probably guessed it. It happened quite near here.'

In Elra's mind the penny dropped.

'My primary school...'

'Exactly. Nine years ago some form of rift opened in your playground, and for the briefest of moments it linked to right here, right now.'

'So that's how you found me?'

'You got it. Trust me now?' he grinned.

It was insane. There's no way he could have known about the playground incident, unless Cali had actually taken her story seriously and told someone. But even then, Elra knew she hadn't. Yet here he was, this Kai, talking about rifts and portals as if they were perfectly ordinary topics of conversation. She knew what she'd seen, even if nobody else did. But now there was someone else: what had once been an irrational, fantastical private memory of her childhood was quickly becoming consensus reality. It was a very strange feeling. One thing was gnawing at her, however.

'The only thing is, I don't remember seeing this, the present, through the rift when I was in the playground all those years ago. I only saw the desert.'

'Ah,' Kai mused, 'it'll take a wiser person than me to explain that one for you. Thankfully you'll probably meet one shortly.'

'Do you know who those red warriors were? That woman...?'

'No idea. Maybe they can tell you that, too. All I knew was that something big was going to happen here, today. I was told to come and find out what the hell was going on. And I can tell you now, something big is going on.' He gave her an odd, excited look again. 'Seriously, I can't believe this is happening.'

'Tell me, for goodness' sake!'

He just smiled. 'Not yet.'

Part of her remained skeptical. What if he was just a very well-informed crazy person? Or worse, an associate of Barry's still stringing her along? Why they'd go to such deceptive lengths was beyond her, however. Still, better to maintain a degree of caution than to trust blindly.

'This is really quite a lot to take in. So what exactly are "people like us"?'

'People with Knowledge,' he said casually.

'Knowledge?'

He stopped and took her hand. 'It's an honor, it really is.'

'What is?'

'To be the one to introduce you to it. Here, watch this. You'll like this.'

He rolled up his sleeves and held his hands about two feet apart, grinning like a madman. His fingers tensed. For the first time Elra noticed he had tattoos in the center of his palms; small, circular designs with intricate geometries.

An arc of electricity passed between the two marks. It made no sound, it just bridged the gap in a split second.

Elra screamed.

'Shhh!' Kai urged, looking around and laughing to himself. 'Hey, look again.'

He held his hands back up and made the spark once more. This time he sustained it for a few seconds, like a tesla coil.

'HOW did you do that?!' Elra cried.

'Through Knowledge,' Kai explained. 'These are the first marks I got, well, after the Birth mark, that is. My father gave them to me. Great for messing around with electronics. I'll explain more later.'

Never mind his sanity, Elra was beginning to question her own. Her mother was dead, the corpse of a strange warrior woman was lying in her trashed flat and man with electric palms was taking her to London. Perhaps this was all some surreal delusion she was having.

They made it to the main road.

'Which bus?' Kai asked.

'To where?'

'The station.'

'Didn't you just take one from there?'

'No, I took a cab,' he clarified. 'Couldn't rely on buses for something as important as this.'

'The 29. And – oh crap – it's right there.'

They ran to the bus stop as two 29 buses pulled up at the same time. Kai had some trouble with counting change, but mercifully the driver was feeling patient.

When they had finally sorted their tickets out and sat down at the back, Elra realized something marginally critical. She hadn't any clothes with her, apart from those she stood up in. Hell, she didn't even have most of the contents of her wallet, and to her momentary horror she seemed to have misplaced her phone. Somehow, she thought, she might not need it where she was going.

Eleven

The first thing that swelled into focus was a terrifically painful throbbing on the side of Cali's head. No vision as of yet, just a persistent rhythmic pressure, accompanied by a slight numbing sensation. Her hair felt matted on that side and her neck and shoulders were slick with... something. If anything, she thought, it felt like a massive hangover. Not pleasant.

Her eyes managed to open. For a moment her brain didn't adequately process the reflected light entering her pupils, and everything was just random shapes and color. Damn, her head hurt. Then she realized there were people in the room. They were dressed in green overalls, with plastic gloves and bags of equipment. One was crouching right by her side, in fact.

'Can you see me?' he said. 'Can you turn and face me?'

Cali tried to focus on the source of the voice. As her head turned it throbbed particularly unpleasantly. As her mental faculties began to find their feet, she began processing the state of the room and its other occupants.

Unfortunately, things hadn't gone well for them. She registered the red-swaddled corpse in the middle of the room. Was that all... blood? Two paramedics were tending to it, no, more like preparing it to be carried. Something that looked like Barry was being picked up, manhandled and taken outside. There was also a policeman, standing right over by the window, muttering under his breath into his radio.

Then her eyes focused on something nearer. A paramedic crouching over a slumped figure on her left hand side.

'Can you look over here for me, love?' the one assigned to her asked.

She looked at him in dazed confusion. He was preparing some form of pad.

'Can you hold that against the side of your head for me?' he asked.

The pad was thrust into her hand. Cali raised it to her temple and held it there for a second. When she moved it away it was covered in blood.

'No, keep it on there. Don't push, just hold it,' the paramedic instructed.

The one to her left turned to the other. 'She's lost a lot of blood,' he announced. 'Moving her is going to be difficult.'

It took Cali a moment to realize they weren't talking about her.

'What's your name, love?' her one said.

'Cal... Cali.' she managed.

'Can you stand up for me, Cali?' he asked, offering her both hands for support.

Cali pulled herself up using the medic's arm for balance and immediately felt the room spin. The floor was tipping and the ceiling was warping, sliding away from her towards an unseen vanishing point.

'You're suffering from concussion,' the paramedic explained. 'We're going to have to take you to the hospital and check out that head of yours. Can you walk with me?'

He led her across the kitchen, helping her step over the debris. She was vaguely aware of the body slumped against the fridge below her, its arms splayed out loosely by its sides. It looked like a waxwork of Elra's mother with a deep, dark, angry hole in her stomach, ringed with brutal crimson. Cali almost fainted.

Only when she was finally outside, wrapped in a foil blanket and sitting on the ambulance's rear platform, did she ask the paramedic the inevitable.

'Where's Elra?'

'Who?'

'She's my friend – same age as me – we were in there together.'

The paramedic frowned as he pulled out a collapsible stretcher from the back of the ambulance. 'No, it was just you, that woman in fancy dress with the gunshot wound, the middle-aged woman with the abdomen puncture and the man with severe cranial trauma. No-one else.'

Cali couldn't decide whether the lack of Elra on that list was a good or a bad thing.

Twelve

Later, Elra and Kai were sitting on a train to London, watching the countryside zip by. At the train station Kai had proved very free-handed with his cash: buying the tickets using fifty-pound notes and making a point of getting no less than eight chocolate bars from a stand in the forecourt.

'Need more calories,' he explained. 'You really burn through them when you use Knowledge, especially the stronger stuff.'

He'd bought Elra a full English breakfast at a restaurant franchise while they waited for their train, and had insisted that she try black pudding. He'd then gone on to eat it himself.

His perception of money was a funny one, Elra thought. He was positively blasé in his attitude towards it: at first she thought he may be trying to cheer her up by showering her with treats, but in the end she realized he just didn't care about money. Not in the smug sense of 'look how much I have, be impressed!' like some young bloods she knew who'd had a good night dealing; for him, it just didn't register as important. As they sat in a booth in the restaurant, her trying to work her way through her breakfast out of politeness more than anything (she wasn't that hungry, given her recent loss) and him reading a paper, she asked him about it, somewhat shyly.

'How come you have so much money?'

Kai looked up from his reading and giggled explosively. 'Money. Oh, you unmarked. Always going on about money.'

He said nothing more.

Elra hadn't been to London before. She'd heard many stories, seen many films and pictures, but for people on her estate it was treated like an abstraction, something large and unattainable on the periphery of life. Cali had often talked about making a weekend trip out of it (to justify the cost of the train ticket), but they knew no-one with whom they could stay, so their plans had just faded into the background of workaday life. It didn't feel real somehow, she thought, sitting on this train (in First Class, no less), being catapulted away from her life and towards the Big Smoke.

'Can you tell me what you meant by "people like us"?' She asked, after a while.

'Well, where to begin. First, you've got to understand that you can't really be told a lot of this stuff, it has to be shown.'

'Go on.'

'Also, I should warn you: I don't know the exact details, just the broad overview. Some things are unknown even to the Wise, due to how indescribably ancient Knowledge is.'

'Hang on, first thing's first. What is Knowledge?' she asked.

He smiled. 'Knowledge is what I showed you earlier. Knowledge is having electric hands, fire fingers, screams that create shockwaves and limbs that repel water. Knowledge is being able to run one hundred meters in eight seconds, being able to lift twice your body weight, or jumping your height from standstill. More powerful Knowledge is healing the sick, perceiving from afar and understanding the deeper workings of the world. All this and more. Far more.'

Elra was astounded. 'How?'

'Through marks. They channel your power and allow you to manifest your Knowledge outwardly. Take me, for example. Body Knowledge is my thing, since that's what my parents' had and what they decided to teach me. So I have those Electromagnetic marks on my hands you saw earlier. I've got marks on certain muscles and ligaments on my legs that make them more effective and less prone to injury, letting me run faster, swim stronger, jump higher. I have Blocking marks on strategic places on my body, the underside of my arms for example, that mean I can defend myself even if I'm naked, even against knives. As for my inner Body Knowledge, I have tiny marks on my ears to enhance my hearing, ones on my retina to give me better than 20/20 vision, and even - '

He showed her the index finger on his left hand. Elra saw a tiny tattoo on the tip's pad, seemingly under the skin. '...a mark which allows me to sense the chemical content of something by touch. That last one hurt the most to receive, incidentally. They had to peel back the skin and scribe it directly near the main finger nerve.'

'So... how do you get marks? Like you do tattoos?'

'The beauty of marks is that their form alone is all you need. You could draw them on if you want to, and people do, in emergencies. If you have them tattooed on, that's better, because there's a deeper, more permanent connection. The best way is to have them scribed on by one of the Wise who specializes in Change Knowledge. For some marks, especially inner Body Knowledge ones, that's the only way you can get them.'

Elra asked the question that had been bugging her from the start. 'So why doesn't everyone have these marks?'

Kai grimaced. 'You know what? They could, if they wanted to.'

'So why the hell don't they?' Elra asked.

'Right. So as I was saying, you're going to have to ask someone wiser than me about the specifics. But here's a general overview. What we call Knowledge – with a capital K, as it were – is like many other types of human knowledge: it's as old as humanity itself. We're talking hundreds of thousands of years old, way back when humans shared the planet with Neanderthals. Hell, it could be older than that, for all I know. For example, some of the world's oldest cave paintings are actually Knowledge marks. Many of what archaeologists call 'geometric' shapes are actually early forms of Protection marks, or rudimentary Fire marks of some description, as well as lots of other types we don't understand nowadays. Information that's slipped the collective human consciousness, rather like ancient writing systems we've yet to decipher, like Linear B.'

Elra was amazed.

'Like humans themselves, Knowledge spread worldwide over the coming millennia. We really don't know what happened during this time, or at least it isn't well-known, or the histories are only known locally. What we're sure of is that different strands of it arose, persisted for a while, then died out, just like other trends and styles in human culture.'

Elra nodded.

'When people invented writing however, things get a bit clearer. In a lot of early societies, Knowledge was a key part of day-to-day life. There wasn't a separation between it and everything else. Over time, though, we see a trend emerging. The rulers of different civilizations – the kings, chieftains, warlords, aristocrats or whatever – started trying to control Knowledge, or stop the common people from using it completely. So it gets turned into this mystical power only the elites can control. It's exactly the same with every other source of power: like scientific knowledge, religion and money. The rich want to control it. So we had the Pharaohs of Egypt using Knowledge marks to protect their tombs, and early Persian kings using it to appear god-like to their people.

'Wait... Egyptian hieroglyphs are Knowledge marks?'

'Some of them, yeah.' Kai explained casually. The common people didn't know hieroglyphs. It was just the priests and the royalty. They understood its power.'

'Wow.'

'Lots of ancient forms of writing contain them. Some early Chinese symbols are Knowledge marks, as are a lot of early Middle Eastern scripts. Runes, too. And pictograms from all over the world, from Native America to Central Africa to Australia.'

'That... I had no idea.'

'Anyway, because in a lot of societies Knowledge was only known by such a small number of people, it started getting sidelined, lost and even banned. Rulers with Knowledge took the secret to their grave, others who practiced it were labeled heretics by their successors, groups with Knowledge were decried as cults... you get the picture. In Europe, the Greeks and the Romans were particularly suppressive of it, and only allowed it to exist as certain 'mystery' cults, and as soon as Christianity was adopted as the official religion of the Roman Empire it was vigorously stamped out. Having said that, in the more far flung parts of the world like North America, the Arctic circle, Central Asia, Australia and parts of Africa, Knowledge was still fairly widespread at this time.'

'What happened then?'

'History happened. The Europeans conquered the rest of the world and brought their ignorance and fear of Knowledge with them. In the places they colonized, ancient Knowledge traditions were seen as nothing but backward local beliefs, and were quickly replaced by Christianity. Meanwhile, back home, they saw Knowledge as "magic", or "witchcraft", or at worst, "devil worship". Islam was no better during its spread throughout Asia and North Africa. Same with every other major world religion, really. Which is funny.'

'Why?'

'Because in their own way they're all a little bit influenced by Knowledge. The idea that certain words or numbers contain power, for example; Judaism is one of the best examples of that. Or take Islam, which believes pictorial representations of its narrative are incredibly potent, to the point of being forbidden. Or take stories of miracles and saints, heroes and incredible feats.'

'Like... Moses and the Red Sea?'

'Exactly. That's a key story in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. He probably just had really powerful Change Knowledge.'

'How about nowadays? How many people have Knowledge now?'

Kai sighed. 'It's hard to say exactly. Remember, there are lots of different types and different forms of Knowledge. Hell, even the word 'Knowledge' is just the name English speakers gave it, around the time of the Renaissance. Think of it less like one big worldwide club, and more like a... tradition – or group of traditions – ancient and secret, that underlies every human society. We're just re-connecting everyone who knows about it.'

'Because, for most of history, different groups with Knowledge wouldn't even have been in contact with each other, right?' Elra posited.

'Right. And although the world has become a much smaller place over the past fifty years, allowing contact to be made, there's still no way to put a number on it. After all, lots of people could be practicing Knowledge and they don't even know it. At the other end of the spectrum there may be isolated Amazon tribes, yet to be contacted by anyone, whose entire society is based around it. But as it stands, we know of at least one loosely-tied group with Knowledge in every country. Some countries have many, who interact with the others and the worldwide community to varying degrees. There are whole towns in the United States whose inhabitants have Knowledge for example; but in other countries, like North Korea or Saudi Arabia, they're in hiding and haven't been heard from for quite a while.'

'How do you know all this? I mean, how can you be sure that's what happened?'

'Lots of ways. Young children in communities with Knowledge are told most of this in the form of bedtime stories, at least in the Western world. But that's not all: over the centuries, from the Renaissance onward, there has been a long tradition of archaeologists, historians and interested amateurs who studied the history of Knowledge. My father dabbled in it a bit, so my mother tells me. Oh, and then there are certain Wise who can verify it.'

'How?'

'Very good question: I have no idea. They're full of mysteries, are the Wise. You'll see for yourself soon enough.' He chuckled.

It was all so incredible, so impossible to believe. The depths of human history collided with forces beyond fantasy in Elra's mind. She'd only thought of these things in the bleakest moments of her life, when even comforting friends and her resolute stoicism had failed her. Half-remembered images from school history lessons of distant pyramids, the Call to Prayer sounding from minarets at sunset, the snowy wilds of old Europe, provided escapism in those moments. Dreams of being able to go back in time, to experience something profoundly different, but just as real, from the drudgery surrounding her. And sometimes, yes, Elra admitted, she dreamed of fantasies. No handsome princes or noble knights for her, though; her fantasies were of different worlds and better lives.

And now she was presented with both. A tangible link to the past, and a mystery beyond anything she could have rationally imagined. Doubts still crept into Elra's mind, of course: but each one was expunged by the memory of an arc of electricity jumping between Kai's hands. She was exhausted.

For the rest of the journey she slept, or perhaps just passed out, Kai wasn't sure which.

Thirteen

After passing through an ever-densifying cityscape, full of brick buildings, overhead gantries and tall office blocks, the train arrived into Euston Station. The lack of movement pulled Elra from her sleep.

'We're here,' Kai announced.

They disembarked and made their way to the station hall. It was packed with people of all kinds, most of them standing in a large mass in the middle of the space, all staring up at the departure boards with exactly the same facial expression.

Kai weaved through the crowd with ease, guiding Elra towards the doors at the far end. After navigating the torrent of hurried commuters heading down the escalators towards the Tube, they were outside in the light grey aura of London.

Euston road was a straight shot of imposing stone architecture, chrome and glass office towers, and quirky institutional façades, stretching in both directions as far as the eye could see. People walked by on each pavement with hurried purpose and – oh, there goes a red bus – black cabs zoomed down the four lane road, stopping at the lights just in time to miss the pedestrians.

'You ever been here before?' Kai asked.

'Never,' Elra replied, a little star-struck and overwhelmed.

'Well, I'd better show you around in that case. Best way to see this city is on foot. Next stop, the British Museum.'

He struck off at a fearsome pace aided, Elra suspected, by marks tattooed on his calf muscles. They swept through Bloomsbury, passing Victorian town-houses clustered around quaint squares full of relaxing university students, jostled with the tourist traffic on Southampton Row and crossed Russell Square. Elra liked London already; the place had a compelling buzz, just like she'd expected, and its vivacity was infectious.

Soon enough they were at the rear of the British Museum.

'Ah, tell you what, let's go around the front. Better view.'

They duly circuited the building, dodging cyclists and tour groups, and were presented with the classically-styled front, full of girthy columns and imitation Greek carvings.

'Do you like history, Elra?'

'Love it,' she confirmed, under her breath.

He took her inside and directed her to the west wing, full of Egyptian sarcophagi and Greek statues. He crouched down next to a particularly old-looking stone coffin, and gestured to Elra to come closer.

'Look,' he said, pointing at a faded hieroglyph near its base. 'Check this out.'

He held his palm over it, and furtively glanced around the room. The nearest people were a few kids, perhaps six meters away, pretending to kiss an owl statue and giggling every time one of them did it.

He took his hand away. The hieroglyph, small and abstract, glowed dully for a few seconds with the color and warmth of an old ember.

'An old type of Fire mark, probably used for protection,' Kai explained.

'Against tomb robbers?'

'Or worse. Want to see something else?'

They passed through a few imposing archways and found themselves in an Ancient Near East section, full of reliefs of large kings with curly beards being brought gifts from all over the ancient world.

'See that?' Kai pointed at a small figure sitting atop a winged platform.

'Yeah? He's, uh, hovering over the king.'

'That's... well, we're not entirely sure, really. Archaeologists and Ancient Historians call him Ahura Mazda, the chief Zoroastrian god. But from what I've heard this is, um... a mark that focuses someone's desire to rule, to be a god,' he said, raising his eyebrows. 'So if you didn't know any better, you could kind of see how this kind of represents the king's ego and status, you know, drawing a god above his picture; but the crazy thing is, it seems the presence of this mark actually helps create that status in the first place. Difficult to understand: this stuff is really complex Knowledge. Probably out of reach for practically everyone alive today.'

Elra was confused. 'How... how does that even work?'

'You know how governments, institutions and other organizations use certain words and symbols to assert their authority? You know, like flags, coat-of-arms, logos... an official stamp, as it were, to lend themselves credence or to seem imposing?'

'I guess'

'Same principle I suppose, except taken up a level. Instead of the national flag inspiring authority, it acts as the source of authority.'

Elra stared at the little flying winged figure, and wondered how a simple drawing could imbue a person with so much power. 'So, how do marks come about?'

'What?'

'How are they made? How do people know which symbols and patterns to use?'

'Well, they vary by place and period. Kind of like writing: everyone uses it, it has power of sorts, and it changes over time and by place. Presumably most marks stem from the ones used by prehistoric humans, hundreds of thousands of years ago, before they spread out of east Africa and across the rest of the world.'

'But how were they made? What was their origin?'

'Nobody knows. Not even the Wise. Just like no-one knows the exact origin of writing. And just like writing, you can make up your own, if you're that way inclined.'

'Your own marks?'

'Of course! Only drawback being that it'll probably only be you who can use that particular form.'

Elra looked impressed.

Come on,' Kai beckoned. 'Last one. I saved the best for last.'

Fourteen

He led her into the ethnographic section, past a huge Easter Island moai statue and down some stairs into the dimly lit African gallery.

'This is where it gets epic,' he whispered excitedly.

They came to a stop in front of a small wooden mask on a stand in a shadowy corner of the hall. It was beautifully carved and daubed with red ochre; its gaping, otherworldly eyes seemed to bore into Elra's soul; its elongated face seemed in equal parts majestic and disturbing.

'So, I guess those are Knowledge marks?' Elra said of the ochre daubs.

'Exactly. You'd only get the full effect if you wear it, but we obviously can't do that. Instead, just touch it.'

Elra carefully placed her fingers on the edge of the mask, letting them feel the wood's strangely smooth texture.

Nothing happened.

'Now, imagine there's a current which begins in the very center of your body, spreading down your arm, across your fingers and into the mask, and then pulses out across its surface. It takes some practice; don't worry if you don't pick it up at once.'

Elra tried, visualizing the energy as a piercingly bright beam in her arteries and smaller blood vessels, pulsing out of her fingertips.

'No, relax. Just relax and let it flow on its own. Don't push. If it helps, imagine there's another source of the energy in the mask, and yours and its are just meeting in the middle, like when lightning hits the ground.'

Elra felt a momentary clarification, rather like time itself slowing down and giving her room to think. The mask's eyes bored into her own, like vast hollows that had stared into the Beyond and comprehended its ineffability. There was a palpable connection between the two of them, and Elra could feel that the mask did indeed have its own energy.

Somewhere, as if from behind a wall of memory, she could hear Kai speaking. 'Whoa, I think it's working. Don't freak out!'

His voice trailed away, lost in the cavernous spaces between their differing experiences. Elra didn't freak out. She felt the very character of reality change around her, but all she experienced was clarity.

She became aware that the exhibition hall had changed, had become emptied, worn and... concreted. To her slight alarm, Kai was gone too. It was just her and the mask, in what was now a vast subterranean space, the walls heavy with damp and the floor puddled with run-off moisture. Dull, thudding booms sounded far above them, presumably at ground level. Explosions?

There was a figure at the far end of the room, by the bottom of the stairs. He (or she, it was hard to tell at this distance) was standing well out of the light, wrapped in a heavy coat. A portable screen cast a golden glow on their indistinguishable features.

A silhouette at the top of the stairs, casting a shadow that cascaded down the steps like liquid night. The device's screen was hurriedly covered. Elra found her vision zeroing in on the scene, intrigued, as the silhouette grew bigger and started descending. There must be some trick of the light, Elra thought, because its outline was like an object out of a nightmare. It looked like the person was wearing something along the lines of a burqa, with no differentiation possible between head and shoulders. A long, snout-like tube, not too dissimilar from a plague-doctor's mask, hung down from where the person's face should be, and almost touched the floor.

To top it all off, the costume had what appeared to be stylized spikes rising from the shoulders, their ends pointed directly at the sides of the wearer's head, making head-turning impossible. The only way the person inside could see something to their side, Elra reasoned, would be to rotate their entire body.

The figure's walk down the stairs was carefully executed, and dare Elra say it, even majestic. The wearer clearly had plenty of practice maneuvering while wearing the garment.

The person at the bottom of the stairs clearly recognized the figure by their silhouette and gait alone, and dashed out of their shadowy cover and embraced them as best they could. The man - Elra was able to make that out, at least - swept off the garment, taking extra care with the shoulder spikes, revealing its female wearer.

Elra gasped. The woman had a metal muzzle clamped to her face, totally covering her mouth and wrapping cruelly around the back of her head. The male gently brushed her cheek, at the exact point where metal gave way to skin. He tenderly kissed her forehead, stroked her hair and closed his eyes, rapt. They embraced deeply, savoring each other's physical presence, lost in a forbidden moment below the tumult above.

After a few moments the air was broken by a by a piercing klaxon shriek. A short, rising blare, domineering, forceful and completely ear-splitting, repeated every few seconds. The cavernous space began fading, phasing back into the British Museum's African Gallery. The last thing Elra saw was the couple holding each other, still as ancient trees in a last embrace, as bulky, jagged silhouettes dashed down the stairs towards them.

The displays slipped back into focus, the lighting changed and Kai reappeared, and Elra's world condensed into being, as if rising from a great depth.

The mask's energy was spent. Elra was left with a feeling of heavy stillness. 'What did I just see?' she asked.

'Another world,' Kai beamed, gazing at her with admiration. 'I don't think anyone, ever, has been able to connect so well with the mask on their first time.'

Elra looked down the gallery, in the direction of the stairs. The emptiness was deafening. 'Who were they?'

'Who?'

She stared for a while. It was pointless continuing.

'Never mind.'

Fifteen

Cali stumbled out of the MRI suite feeling groggy, fragile and generally annoyed. She'd been ringing Elra's phone all afternoon, to no avail whatsoever. She'd sent her countless texts and left what felt like millions of voice-mail messages. The worst of it was, she was in two minds about whether to tell the authorities about Elra or not, or indeed what to tell them at all. She'd been told the police were going to interview her later that day, but she suspected she could get away with being vague and misdirecting, by virtue of her current condition. I don't know officer, it all happened so quickly... goodness me, my head hurts.

That wouldn't fly for long, though. Not after tomorrow, unless Cali feigned a more worrying condition, like total memory loss. One thing that worked in her favor was the timing of when she was knocked out: she could claim she was rendered unconscious as soon as it all started, which wasn't that far from the truth. In fact, she could claim ignorance about everything: she could pretend she was a humble hanger-on, a gang lackey, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

She headed back to her room, sat down hard on the edge of the bed and tried Elra again. Ring ring. Ring ring. Ring ring.

Ugh, she wasn't going to pick up, was she?

Please leave a message after the t - .

Click. Dammit.

But genuinely, what the hell was she going to tell the authorities? From what she'd gathered the situation was being treated as a gang incident: either as an altercation that erupted in-gang, or an attack by a rival group. How they fit the dead woman in strange armor into the picture was anyone's guess. Would they think she was a member of a weird international criminal syndicate, who came over to exact revenge over some transgression? How would they account for her using a sword/pike/scimitar (or whatever it had been) as a weapon? Ah, but of course, the blade had disappeared as it was swung at her head, as she'd seen with her own eyes, clear as day. So from their perspective, she'd used a colored stick as a weapon, something that Cali's head wound would play testament too. God, what a mess.

Cali's real concern, one she didn't want to give voice to, even inwardly, was that a secretive government division of sorts would take over the investigation, like MI5, the SIS or another group of G-Men. Unfortunately, it was perfectly plausible, given the extraordinary things that just happened. All it would take would be the police to find anomalous residue from the rift, discrepancy in that woman's DNA, or find that the bloody stick was made of an unknown material, and Cali would spend the rest of her life in a cell at a black site.

On the plus side, they may have an idea as to what the hell happened, although Cali was sure they wouldn't tell her. Oh god, what was she going to tell her mother? She wondered if the news had spread across the estate by now. It almost certainly had. Multiple murder in Driesdale. You know Barry? Yeah, that dodgy geezer, worked with Mastix's crew. Murdered, girlfriend too. Didn't they have a girl? Yeah, not his though. Disappeared, so my mate in the police says.

What a mess. What a bloody, confusing, crazy mess. The universe had really thrown her a curve-ball in this one. She remembered something her Polish grandfather had told her, when he was still alive. The world's crazy, Califindra. However hard we try, we can never make it sane. You just have to embrace it.

Cali was finding this turn of events particularly hard to embrace. But she was sure of one thing: the answers lied with Elra. Best try ringing her again.

Ring, ring.

Sixteen

Seven thousand kilometers away, a thirty-something year-old woman called Olympia stared out over the baobab-studded savannah towards the mountains in the distance, savoring the setting sun's warmth on her olive skin. She was sitting on a rocky outcrop about three kilometers from her house, away from the bustle of the town and the influence of other minds.

The change she could feel, amplified by the marks that covered the entirety of her shaven head, worried her immensely. This wasn't just the regular entropic spin of the Earth's passage through time and space, no. This was more fundamental, a shift in the character of reality. She'd have to confer with the twins, talk it over and see if they could predict its nature.

The threat of violence loomed heavy, she could feel that for sure. A menacing force or feeling, strong and alien, was trying to achieve... something. She just couldn't tell whether it was in the past, future, or in another universe with close event harmony. Would it manifest itself in this universe? Olympia felt that it already had. The rifts, small slippages, crossed wires, bleed-through from other realities

She knew the London contingent had made contact with that... individual. The source of that rift. An interesting development, one that Olympia was sure had some bearing on this change she was feeling. Especially as the individual was unmarked, and seemed oblivious to her ability. Her control of Knowledge was non-existent, yet her power was unmistakable. There was a connection there, she thought, between this violent change and this unmarked person. For the briefest of moments she felt the connection forming, a clarification, an explanation, but it eluded her. Meaning was evasive. She'd have to talk to the others, maybe even the Iceland contingent, and certainly this individual herself, to gain full clarification. She had a feeling they'd meet soon enough.

Elra. That was her name. Nice name. How are you going to change things, Elra?

The best way Olympia could describe it, in layperson terms, was like a car on a collision course with an invisible object in the middle of the road. Something big was going to happen, but the driver was totally unaware. Well, almost: maybe they would have a split-second intuition, a sixth-sense tingle, but they'd collide with it nonetheless. And the outcome would be entirely dependent what that object was.

Perhaps she should try to determine the nature of the object: that violent, alien force. Yes, that was a good idea. Try to find out what it is, rather than what it would do.

The inevitability of it all scared Olympia. The multiverse didn't usually work like this: it was usually uncertain, multifarious and changeable. But now something was going to happen, one way or the other. Something big, which could change things forever.

Seventeen

Elra was knackered. Kai had run her all over the city: after her close encounter in the British Museum he'd taken her to see Covent Garden, Leicester Square, then Trafalgar Square, down Whitehall and past Horse Guard's Parade to Westminster, across St. James' Park to Buckingham Palace, down to Knightsbridge for a quick glimpse at Harrods and then on to South Kensington for a whistle-stop tour of the museums. All walking.

They were now sitting in Hyde Park, near the Royal Albert Hall, while Elra massaged her calves and chafed toes. She was in that comfortable halfway-house between happy contentment and total exhaustion. She'd begun to adopt a curiously un-bothered attitude towards her broader situation, perhaps because of what she'd seen back in the African Gallery. She had experienced a sort of overview effect, as if viewing her life from a great height, and seeing how minutely insignificant it really was: somewhere, some-when, there were people with far bigger problems.

'The word's probably out by now,' Kai announced, breaking the comfortable silence.

'The word of what?'

'What happened. The police may even be looking for you. Thankfully they have no idea you've come here: we paid for the tickets in cash.'

Elra was irritated by such mundane annoyances. 'They're going to have a hard time explaining what the hell happened, I'm sure I'll be the least of their worries.'

'We should probably get back to the hideout soon, anyway. At very least, you should change your hair and the way you dress.'

Elra shot him a look. 'Only I choose what I wear,' she said darkly.

Kai raised his eyebrows. 'I wasn't implying... Oh never mind. I was only thinking practically.'

'Given the situation, though, I may change my hair. I've always wanted a reason to cut it shorter.'

He seemed enthused by this. 'Brilliant! Also, given your capabilities, I think it'd stop it getting in the way. More functional, you know.'

'My capabilities?'

'You clearly have plenty of talent. And you're unmarked, which is very, very exciting. I can't wait to see what you can do.'

Elra frowned. 'Yes, you said I was 'unmarked' earlier. What does that mean?'

'Well, it has far more significance than I really know, but it basically means you can use Knowledge without marks. Any Knowledge. It's all within your reach.'

'Wait, so I can have electric hands too?'

'You certainly can.'

'Show me how!'

He gave her an old fashioned look. 'You still need to practice. But, having said that, once you're comfortable with the basics you can probably intuitively apply your understanding to other types of Knowledge. Basically, you won't have to practice everything, you'll just get it,' he said, while an idea seemed to dawn on him. 'Talking of which, there are two ways we could get back,' he started, incongruously, 'we could take public transport, or we could go underground.'

Elra looked confused. 'But I thought the Underground is public transport.'

Kai smiled that devilish, knowing smile of his. 'There's a lot more beneath the surface of London than the Tube. Come on, let's get back to mine.

He jumped up and beckoned her to follow. More bloody walking, Elra thought.

Eighteen

Kai wasn't in such a hurry as before: he seemed excited, almost childishly so, turning to give Elra wide-eyed glances. They walked back down towards Knightsbridge, in the direction of the Royal Albert Hall. They passed the Albert Memorial, jaywalked across the road and, to Elra's surprise, walked up the steps and into the building.

'Just look like you know where you're going,' he explained. 'Walk with purpose. Get a bit of a stride going on. And follow me.'

He led her through the main doors and past a desk, staffed by a bored-looking, dumpy woman. Kai strode forward and held the inner door open for Elra. The woman at the desk didn't bat an eyelid.

They were in a large, curving corridor. Pictures of past concerts adorned the walls and the sound of their footfalls was muted by a thick red carpet.

'Just down here,' Kai said, more to himself than anyone else. 'I think it's the second-last door on the left.'

Sure enough, they came to a blank white door with a bold 'NO ACCESS TO PUBLIC' sign emblazoned on it. He pushed it open casually. Beyond was a whitewashed concrete stairwell and a bare metal elevator, the doors held open and a sliding latticed grill pulled across the opening. They took the stairs.

Kai went two at a time, and did a little swing on the banisters at the bottom of every flight. Elra's danger sense raised red flags in the back of her mind, but given her circumstance, she ignored them. They reached the bottom, and were presented with a security door with an electronic ID reader. Kai put his electric palm against its magnetic surface and the door beeped happily in compliance.

'After you,' he grinned.

Elra pushed open the door and was greeted with quite a sight.

A vast room with countless stacked chairs, jumbled music stands, instrument travel cases and even a few larger instruments: she spied a harp standing in a corner, and a colossal set of drums hiding behind an ominously tall object covered with a dust sheet. There were other odds and ends, too: crates of beer, coke, orange juice; stacks of sheet music and arcane electronic audio equipment. Kai grabbed a bottle of beer and thrust it in her general direction.

'I don't drink,' Elra explained. Kai shrugged and cracked the top for himself.

'So, do you have a... hideout down here?' Elra asked.

Kai giggled. 'No. Oh no. This is just our Tube station, as it were. We have quite a way to go yet.'

Her downed the beer and threw it into a pile of sheets. 'Come on.'

There was a small spiral maintenance staircase in the back. As they descended, Elra noticed it was getting warmer. At the bottom, they found themselves in a boiler room – well, more of a boiler corridor. The ceiling was very low, and every so often a piping or ventilation duct would span its width at exactly head height.

'Careful, now. Some of them are hot,' Kai warned.

All around them boilers throbbed and pipes creaked. Beads of sweat developed on Elra's forehead.

Eventually the walls gave way and opened out, and the floor became a gantry bridging a dark, deep space, kind of like a large vertical tube plunging into the depths of the building and the city. A solitary ladder, complete with a safety cage, budded off the gantry's handrails and hung down into the darkness.

Elra looked over the side and immediately felt vertigo kick in.

'After you. It really isn't that far down.' Kai grinned.

'No. This time, after you,' Elra insisted.

He raised his eyebrows, mounted the ladder and paused for a moment. He grinned at her like a madman. 'See ya!' he cackled, and slid down the ladder.

Elra shrieked.

Below her, Kai was laughing. 'Don't you try that,' he said. 'You don't have the legs for it. Yet.'

She carefully followed, gripping the thin metal railings and safety cage with sweaty hands. Carefully, she lowered herself into the shadows, rung by rung.

After a while she felt solid ground beneath her feet, and a silent ringing in her ears.

'Kai?' she called, tentatively.

Silence.

Elra knew enough not to be scared. She could feel what he said was true, as if it was in her very -

'Boo!'

Kai swept out of the darkness and jabbed her in the waist with both hands.

'That was predictable, Kai. Very predictable. So, what is this place?'

Kai feigned the decrepit voice of an old mystic. 'The answer you seek is through that door,' he pointed, and to Elra's surprise, the all-consuming darkness around them wasn't as total as she'd imagined. Off to her left there was, in fact, a doorway with faint light round the edges. At the same time, her eyes were becoming adjusted to the gloom, and she could begin to make out her immediate surroundings in the bottom of the tubular shaft. Nothing interesting, mainly old sacks, deflated plastic bags, an oil drum and... was that bag moving?

Kai saw her frown. 'Rats. You'll see a lot of them down here. In fact, in London, and I guess this goes for New York, Paris and other big cities, you're never more than six meters from a rat.'

Elra hurried towards the door and kept her eyes off the floor.

On the other side was a sight she'd never forget.

Nineteen

Size-wise, Elra would say it was on par with a cathedral, and a large one at that. It was if she and Kai had entered it from the roof, and were now surveying its vastness and monumental length from above. Up at the very far end the space's incredible width channeled into a large tunnel that continued off into the darkness.

Around the walls were smaller tunnels branching off in various directions, some large enough to drive a car through, others mere cramped walkways. Huge pipes snaked out of the concrete here and there, ducts angled off now and then, running in all directions, some looping back on themselves. Faint columns of light cascaded down from vents in the ceiling, giving the place a dim but discernible light. A deep rumbling surrounded them, seemingly coming from the walls themselves, interspersed with distant booms.

'What is this place?' Elra asked, amazed.

'My dad showed it to me: I think he said something about it being a secret underground storage space during World War II. London is full of places like this, all interconnected by thousands of labyrinthine tunnels. There's a whole hidden city down here.'

'Does anyone live down here?' Elra said, in awe.

'Sure, some people. Homeless groups, mostly. Most live nearer the surface, for obvious reasons. I once spent a few weeks down here.'

Elra frowned at him. 'Why? What happened?'

'Right, pull up the legs of your jeans,' Kai asked, skirting her question, removing a black marker pen from an inner pocket.

Elra duly complied, puzzled by his evasiveness. He pulled the lid off the pen, stuck it in his mouth, crouched down and frowned at her legs with a quizzical, almost scientific look on his face.

'Now hold still.'

He began drawing small, complex marks on her key leg muscles: their lines were fluid, intertwined and compact, as if their very forms contained pent-up energy. Occasionally he'd have to look at his own marks for reference: he'd pull up his own jeans, scrutinize a lesser tendon-mark for a while, muttering to himself, seemingly forgetting what he was supposed to be doing. Elra found it comical, being drawn on in such a place. In fact, being drawn on was funny in itself: the pen tickled as it moved across her skin – not that she let Kai know.

'Actually, you'd better take your shoes and socks off too.'

Then he started on her feet, and she couldn't help but let loose a burst of laughter.

'What?' he asked, looking up at her, grinning.

'No, nothing,' she replied, straining to keep a straight face.

The tip of the pen prodded the arch of her foot, then her heel, then the ball. She was surprised at how many feet marks were necessary.

'Right, time for the upper legs,' Kai announced.

'Um... do you want me to...?'

He looked slightly uncomfortable. 'I've seen it all before, Elra. Just take them off.'

She grinned, dropped her jeans, and thought about how this was the second time today he'd asked her to get undressed.

Unlike before, he seemed almost embarrassed. He drew the two upper leg marks with professionalism, performing his task quickly but diligently, avoiding eye contact at all cost.

'Right, all done,' he said, standing up backing away. 'You're good to go. Only one thing left.'

'What?'

'A test. To make sure they're working. Well, to make sure you're working. The key to using Knowledge is being able to understand and appreciate one thing. That you and your environment are the same. Not in a silly 'everything in the universe is connected' way, no. You are the universe. There is no separation. You, and me, and everyone else, are the universe experiencing itself. So when you jump down there,' he gestured at a four-meter drop to a walkway below, 'remember that the atoms in that walkway and the atoms in your feet were made in the same vast stellar explosions billions of years ago. All part of the same thing.'

He grabbed her shoulders and spun her around, so that she was facing the ledge. 'You can do this, Elra. Any distinction between you and the world is false. You are the world, just as it is you.'

He pushed her, ushering her forward. She was standing on the very edge. 'We are atoms thinking of atoms, matter thinking of matter. Anything is possible – no – everything is possible; especially for you.'

She readied herself.

He leaned forward and whispered in her ear. 'You can achieve anything, because you are everything.'

He pushed her, gently, in the center of her back. She resisted.

'Oh, and don't forget to bend your legs when you land!'

Push. That was it, she was plummeting.

Twenty

Time seemed to slow as she fell. She became minutely aware of her inner sense of balance and the position of her limbs.

Her feet hit the ground and her legs bent at just the right time. She put out an arm to steady herself, and was left crouching, perfectly balanced, her fingers touching the floor and being intimately aware of its energy. Her energy.

And it didn't hurt one bit.

Kai silently dropped down next to her, beaming at her as if she were his newborn child. 'That was poetic,' he exclaimed.

Elra stood up, for the first time feeling like she understood her true potential. Her whole being was buzzing with energy, mainly from the adrenaline and the shock of actually having pulled it off.

'Time to run home,' Kai said. 'We can really let ourselves go down here, since no-one's going to see us.' He looked around and pointed towards a medium-sized tunnel in the far wall. 'Down there. Run down to the bottom and take that tunnel, you'll feel it slope downwards after a mile or so, because we'll be under the Thames. We'll reach a five-way intersection: turn left and just keep on going. I'll let you know when we're close.'

Elra was ready. She knew she was going to enjoy this.

Expertly, she jumped down the flight of stairs at the end of the gantry in one go, landing perfectly. Same with the next. There was a duct jutting out of one wall and running all the way to the bottom: she leaped onto it and ran down its length, maintaining perfect balance with ease. She took the tunnel Kai suggested, and found, to her delight, that the floor was made of a fine, coarse concrete, perfect for grip. She sprinted, feeling every footfall drive her forwards many meters, eating up the ground as if she was about to take off. That's what it felt like, she thought. Flying. It was just so easy.

A large pipe ran across the floor. She cleared it effortlessly.

The floor began to incline, and Elra only got faster. She didn't think about waiting for Kai: he'd be around. This was her time.

After another minute she came to the five-way intersection. The left turn was a large square tunnel, full of vents, steps, ducts and concrete platforms. Time seemed to dilate and her experience became the simple overcoming of obstacle after obstacle, one after the other, effortlessly. She heard the odd whoop of encouragement from Kai behind her, but he seemed distant and lagging.

Elra ran through the hidden ways under London, through tunnels, shafts and historic maintenance routes. Victorian brick gave way to wartime concrete, steel walkways ended in ancient stone passageways. Roman cisterns, disused Tube tunnels, worn bunkers, bricked sewers and ominous galleries flew by. Elra felt like the city, which she'd only just arrived in a few hours ago, was hers and hers alone.

Twenty-one

Elation. Elation and exhaustion. Oh, and hunger. Elra felt all three equally keenly.

They had come to a stop outside a rusty maintenance elevator in what looked like a disused wing of a prison: long, thin corridors lined with metal doors forked off a main walkway at regular intervals, each one disappearing into the darkness of the sub-terrain on either side. Elra leaned over, hands on her thighs, relishing the burning sensation in her muscles. Kai was sitting on the floor, massaging his calves.

'You can run like the bloody wind,' he declared.

'This Knowledge stuff is really something,' she chuckled, sitting down against the opposite wall, facing him.

'You want to know the best bit?'

'What's that?'

'Roll up your jeans.'

She did. Her mouth dropped.

The marks had been worn off by the accumulated action of sweat and friction. All that was left were streaky blotches of ink, indiscernible and formless.

'They were a booster, something to get you going,' Kai explained. 'Sometimes the human mind requires a bit of kidding to help it realize its full potential. Like placebos. If you think you are capable of something, you become capable of it. You, of all people. So it was with the marks.'

'But you said people require marks to –'

'Not you, Elra. I told you, you're unmarked. Yet you managed to open those rifts and, I presume, make that warrior's blade disintegrate.'

This had been troubling her for some time. 'I knew, deep down, that I somehow made it happen. But how did I make it happen?'

'Well,' he said casually, 'you're obviously an incredibly powerful individual, and your mind deals with stressful or intense moments by manifesting your power, however untrained and unchanneled it may be. Basically, you were able to make those things happen because you were under intense stress. Now, as we've just seen, with a little guidance you'll be able to do those things at will, without marks.'

'So the blade disintegrating...'

'You really didn't want the three of you to be cut in half, so some wild, flighty, idealist part of your subconscious thought if only, oh, if only it'd go away, and it did. Well, technically the metal must have sublimed or been transported elsewhere: you can't 'erase' things from existence. Shame you couldn't have done something similar – '

He caught himself before he said it, remembering the iron spike in Elra's mother's stomach nonetheless. 'Anyway,' he hurriedly continued, 'cut a long story short, you're capable of great things. You may even be the most powerful person on the planet.'

Elra had a momentary realization. It had been creeping up on her for hours, but now it hit her squarely across the face. While it was in part inspired by what Kai had just said, its actual source came from within, as if she'd known it since that time in the playground, all those years ago.

'I could make rifts,' she said, in a slightly distant voice. 'I could learn to make rifts whenever I want.'

Kai raised his eyebrows. 'I... suppose so,' he finished, uncertainly.

'I could go anywhere... literally anywhere.'

Her fantasies suddenly didn't seem so fantastical after all. A million possibilities occurred to her in an instant. The feeling was overwhelming. 'Ever fancied a trip to the Pyramids, Kai?'

His eyes widened. 'Well, we'll need to test the limits of your ability. There are always limits, otherwise – ' he hesitated, 'you would be godlike.'

She realized how uncomfortable he was looking.

'You know,' he continued, 'even the Wise can't use Knowledge without the relevant marks, let alone make rifts. Just remember... just remember you're human. Don't lose sight of that.'

He pulled himself to his aching feet and threw back the elevator's concertina grill. He returned to his normal, jovial tone of voice. 'Right, let's get up there. Time to face my mother and the others. Did I tell you about my mother? She is rather... conservative, if that's the right word.'

'How?'

'She great, in her own way,' he said, skirting the question. 'I'm sure you'll both get along. Eventually.'

Twenty-two

The elevator rose, passing grey and brown soil strata interspersed with the odd layer of concrete, piping, and cables mounted on metal plates. Kai seemed nervous: he drummed out a rhythm on his leg, humming under his breath. Soil gave way to stone, that gave way to dirty yellow brick. They seemed to rise for quite a while.

'How many people with Knowledge live in this hideout, again?' Elra asked.

'Four of us, full time,' Kai clarified. Perhaps a dozen or so more who pop in now and then. You'll see.'

His nervousness was rubbing off on her, as she was reminded just how little she knew about him.

The lift came to an abrupt stop. Kai pulled back the grill and swept his arm out in the style of a doorman. 'After you, ma'am.'

Elra exited. The light was bright and had a different quality up here. Sunlight? As her pupils adjusted, she found a large room with low ceilings, wooden floorboards and whitewashed brick walls. There was a bank of windows at its far end, and beyond... London. Seen from above.

Below her, on the right, was the Tower of London. She could see groups of tourists milling around on its waterfront, moving like ants. Beyond the stone crenellations, the glass towers of the City reflected the sun's glare. To her left: more glass and stone buildings, the Shard's majestic spire, and people walking down Bankside embankment, stopping and taking photos in front of HMS Belfast, a hulking battleship moored in the water. Directly in front of her, taking up the majority of her view, was the river Thames, snaking off into the far distance, spanned by bridges and crossed by countless red buses, cars and minuscule tourists.

It took her a while to understand where she was. Her geographical knowledge of London was somewhat lacking, but she'd spent a lot of time poring over maps back when her and Cali were planning one of their unconsummated trips. Tower Bridge. In a room in one of the towers of Tower Bridge. She must be. If she pressed her nose right up to the window pane, she could just about see the other tower.

'How...?'

'Animalistic cunning, a flair for the dramatic and many, many Silence marks.' Kai explained. He was grinning wildly. 'The Tower Bridge museum is the on the floor below. We've got the top two floors of both towers. A group of people with Knowledge moved in here after the War, and there's been a number of us here ever since. Here - '

He led her over to the far wall. An unobtrusive pair of marks were painted on to it a few feet of the floor, a few color tones away from the wall's whitewash.

'Silence and Protection,' he explained. 'Come on, let's go and meet everyone.'

They walked through the door across the room and into what looked like a communal area. Elra entered, nervously. Ratty, worn sofas and armchairs were placed at intervals, adorned with all manner of colorful throws in styles ranging from Native American to Japanese. Between them on the floor led piles of Persian and Turkish rugs, well-loved and musty. Two coal-burning stoves sat in the corners and African ornaments decked the walls along with – books. Thousands and thousands of books, from musty old tomes to fresh-printed paperbacks. The place was heavy with the weight of that combined literature.

And then, of course, there were the people. Sitting on one sofa was a middle-aged man, balding, bearded and gruff-looking. His face had a timeless look, as if it could have fit in equally well among the docks of eighteenth century east London as the present. He looked at Elra with a closed expression that she couldn't read.

Behind him, engrossed in taking apart some device or other at a darkly polished wooden table, sat a smartly-dressed thirty-something man with intensely black, velvety skin, who shot Elra a brief smile as her eyes passed over him.

And directly before her stood a middle-aged but well-preserved oriental woman, petite and fierce-looking.

'Mother, this is Elra,' Kai said, sheepishly. 'Elra, this is Zhen Leto. My mother.'

'Pleased to meet you,' Elra said carefully.

'So, you're the unmarked girl we were told to go fetch.' Zhen grimaced, lips pursed.

'I am,' Elra replied, already indignantly displaying her minority pride.

Zhen seemed to look down on her, regardless of how Elra outranked her in height. It was understated and it was subtle, but her derision was clearly there.

'You're unmarked?' the black scientist said, his interest piqued.

'Ah, this is Hieronymous,' Kai clarified.

'But call me Hiero,' he finished, rising from his work. 'Unmarked? Well, that's quite something.'

'Elra, Hiero. Hiero, Elra,' Kai said, awkwardly.

'Pleased to meet you,' Hiero returned.

Zhen's glare was abating, but her silence was deafening. It was broken from across the room.

'Ain't you going to introduce me?' the 18th-century dock worker growled, not moving his gaze from the book he was reading.

'And this is Harland, our resident historian,' Kai explained.

Harland didn't get up. 'Charmed, I'm sure,' he said in an abrupt, insincere manner.

'Well, I'm very pleased to meet you all,' Elra announced. 'And thanks for letting me stay.'

'Come on, I'll show you around,' Kai said, breaking the awkward silence.

Twenty-three

'As I said, she's conservative.'

'Yep,' Elra replied. 'Why is she like that?'

'Why is anyone like that?' Kai mused, as if the question had being weighing on him for some time. 'Ignorant, jaded... take your pick. Shall I let you in on a secret?'

She raised her eyebrows.

'That's one of the reasons her and my father separated, or so I think.'

'Jeez.'

'Harland's not that much damned better, either,' he continued. As for Hiero, he's okay. He was a good friend of my dad's once: that's how he came to live here.'

They were in the kitchen, or what served as a kitchen. The leftovers from the evening meal were sitting temptingly on a sideboard. It looked like roast chicken, but darker... with some form of vegetables, potatoes, a lamb stew, a few drained glasses of wine, olives, cheese, Chinese dumplings, fish stew...

Elra's hunger from running felt like a rat in her abdomen.

'May I...?' she asked leadingly, gesturing to the food.

'Go for it.'

They descended on the spread, dolloping the messy stuff onto plates, grabbing things by hand when practical. Elra attacked the roast chicken-like dish first.

'Ah, a woman of high tastes,'

'What is it?'

'Partridge. We get a few sent down every now and then by the Hambles. They live on a farm in Hampshire.'

'But, it looks like...'

'Yeah, a partridge is kind of like a small chicken which lives in woods. They shoot them.'

'Well, they taste very good,' she replied, her mouth full of its meat.

'Ah, and I see Rania and her dad came round.'

'Who?'

'A father-daughter pair. Live in Whitechapel, nearby here. He makes the most excellent spicy lamb. Seems like him and Hiero cooked up this number, it's got his signature color. You'll meet them soon, probably.'

Elra pinched a chunk of lamb from the tureen with her fingers and popped it in her mouth. It was deeply spicy and burnt her tongue, but in a highly satisfying way.

Later, Kai played host and took her around the rest of the hideout. He showed her the 'main' entrance, a slim, secret staircase within their tower that led down to a cramped tunnel within the bridge itself and exited somewhere near the Tower of London; the circular Observation room in one of the bridge's small turrets that commanded a near-360 degree view of the city; the so-called 'museum' where Harland studied marked artifacts; and, finally, the cozy little bedrooms that took up the majority of the top floor and a few of the turrets, some occupied, most not.

When Elra saw the beds, piled thick with patterned blankets and downy pillows, she realized just how tired she was. The weight of the day was laying heavy on her, all that emotion, traveling, revelation and discovery.

'Do you mind if I borrow a bed? I'm quite - '

'Tired?' Kai finished. 'Step right this way ma'am.'

Through the narrow corridors of the living quarters and up a small spiral stairway they climbed. They came to a little oak door just small enough to make you crouch when you walked through it.

'I thought you might as well have this room, since you're the guest of honor,' he explained, shooting her that grin of his and opening the door.

What a room. It mirrored the Observation Room's circular size and panoramic view; except, instead of being barely furnished, a beautiful four poster bed sat against one wall, along with a few waist-high cupboards (so as not to block out the view) and an impressive desk cut to fit the wall's curve. Everything, much like the rest of the hideout, was covered in rich, sumptuous rugs and throws. Elra noticed later, much to her amazement, that the Persian rug on the floor was circular and - unless it was highly coincidental - seemed to have been especially made to fit the room. But then, in the present, all Elra could think of was how inviting that bed looked, especially with the setting sun reddening the sky and casting it in a warm, muted light.

'Harland made this room his hobby,' said Kai. 'He made the desk, the cupboards, and assembled the bed. He's like that, Harland. Shows a stronger affinity to things than people, on the most part.'

'You sure he won't mind?'

'He'll live with it,' Kai replied, in a slightly bitter tone. 'Do you want me to leave you to it?'

'If you'd be so kind.'

He smiled widely. 'I had fun today.'

Elra looked at him. What could she say? In the end, she just settled for a smile.

'Right, I'll be off. Wake up whenever you want, tomorrow. We're in no rush. Would like to see what you're capable of, though. As would the others. Have a good one, Elra.'

He stood there awkwardly for another moment, then left.

Elra fell onto the bed fully clothed, sighing audibly at how the mattress slowly collapsed under her weight. Before consciousness left her, she was creepingly aware of the need to set her phone's alarm. Sleepily, she realized she didn't even have her phone, and was vaguely troubled by this, before physical and mental exhaustion finally took their toll on her frazzled mind.

Twenty-four

Things were not going well. Cali had just spent three and a half hours being grilled by two police officers who seemed more troubled with the gang activity than with the presence of a mysterious female corpse. Cali told the truth (or, a portion of it), to the effect that she and her friend Elra had come to confront Elra's mother with their suspicions about Barry only to find the scene in the kitchen, then a fight had broken out in which Cali had been hit. When they asked her who hit her, she said that it all happened so quickly, but she thought it may have been Barry. She said she couldn't be sure though, and the two officers nodded in assent and seemed satisfied.

One thing they were having trouble with, however, was Elra's whereabouts, something that troubled Cali in equal measure. They understood that Cali couldn't know definitively, but that didn't stop them asking numerous probing (and, quite frankly, personal) questions about her friend's activities. Having repeatedly denied that Elra had any connection whatsoever to criminal gangs, or was in any way knowledgeable about their activities, Cali's patience was wearing thin.

'Who else did you both – or she – socialize with?' the slightly less obnoxious-looking policeman asked.

'Elra... wasn't really one to have a big group of friends. A few close mates was all she needed. Me... well, we grew up together on the estate. Over the years we formed little cliques with other girls and a few guys, but most of them moved away, in time. I guess that's the way these things work.'

'Did she ever suggest to you that she might run away?'

'Are you kidding?' she gave the officer a disapproving look. 'Wouldn't you want to? We'd talk about getting out together. Fantasy stuff, mainly, like moving to London or packing everything up and going abroad. She was always concocting a 'bug-out' plan, as she called it. Modern life didn't really seem to suit her. We always joked she was born either before her time, or after it.'

The officers looked at her strangely. 'Did she ever have any suicidal thoughts that she shared with you?'

The expression on Cali's face was priceless. 'What makes you say that?'

'Well,' the other officer explained, 'you've been talking about her in the past tense, which tells us you may have had indication that she's... gone for good, as it were.'

She looked at both of them, one to the other. 'Elra would never do something like that,' she stated firmly.

They looked at her for a long while, seemingly weighing something up between them, without talking. 'Thank you very much, Califindra. You've been a great help. Under the circumstances we'd ask you to stay put in the hospital for a while, if that's okay with you. Your family are, of course, welcome to visit, but we think that...' he trailed off.

The other one picked up. 'We think that under the circumstances you'd best be kept under police protection, until we've clarified the situation.'

'How long - ?' Cali began, indignant.

'A few days, probably. We'll know more by then.'

Great. Things really weren't going well. Seriously, where the hell was Elra?

Twenty-five

'Stand about... there. Perfect. You're doing great. Right, when you're ready - '

'Really? You want me to just go for it?'

Kai rolled his eyes. 'Yes, just "go for it".'

For the first few days after she'd arrived, Elra had spent her time coming to terms with two things: the bizarre but exciting new direction her life had taken and, with more difficulty, her loss. Time, the great healer, hadn't quite worked its magic, and she'd spent most of her hours in her room, away from the others, remembering her mother. The memories weren't all fantastic, and in fact most of them were pretty forgettable, but out of the screed a few gems emerged. Days on the beach when she was younger, trips out, nights in... the odd moment of motherly love that had been so lacking in recent years.

Nevertheless, it felt like a hollow had formed in her stomach. But Elra used it. From within that hollow, she rebuilt herself. All her sorrow of loss, mainly for what could have been and now never would be, all those misplaced days, all that lost potential, she used to make herself stronger. From the pain came experience and resolve, firmness and foundations on which the future could be built.

Kai came to the door a few times, mainly with food, but all they exchanged were a few brief pleasantries. At night she would lie in bed and hear the muffled conversations going on downstairs: she couldn't make out the words, but the tone was unmistakable. Mostly it'd be Kai's mother – Zhen – talking (by process of elimination: she had the only female voice), and by the sounds of it she wasn't too happy.

There was nothing more ugly in the world than bigotry, Elra thought, regardless of whether it was against people with different skin tone, different religion, or people who weren't born into the Knowledge tradition.

Now here she was, about a week after she'd arrived, standing about ten meters away from Kai in the large bare room with the elevator, trying to create a rift.

'You've got to remember, you have actually done this before.'

'But back then I was really stressed!'

'But you can do it! And now you've consciously used Knowledge without marks, down in the tunnels, you can remember how it felt and translate that to this.'

'Easier said than done,'

Kai rolled his eyes again. Elra gazed at the antique elevator set in the far wall, and remembered how she felt in the depths of the city. Power? Kind of, but that didn't really do it justice. A better word would be potential. That feeling of being able to achieve anything, even things she couldn't conceive of. She just needed to recapture it.

She had an idea. Start small and work your way up. Excitedly, she raised her hands, palms facing each other. Elra wasn't certain about rifts, but this she could do. She didn't know why she hadn't done it earlier, really. She closed her eyes and focused. For a moment, things seemed clear.

Across the room, Kai yelped with joy. 'That's awesome!' he cried. 'Not a rift, but - '

She opened her eyes and met his excited gaze. She viewed him through the space between her aligned palms, and the arcs of electricity passing between them. 'Shhh, don't say anything.'

See, you can do it. It wasn't even that hard. Now, USE it.

Across the room. Me, the room, and the space within are all the same. Me and the destination are the same. There was Kai, about ten meters away, looking strangely nervous. Me and Kai are the same. I can do this.

The electricity was still passing between her palms. The air was beginning to smell slightly acrid, presumably from where the sparks' energy was burning dust, or creating ozone.

That smell.

That was it. That's how the rifts smelled – like fierce metallic burning. The details flooded back to her: the shimmering surface, the ambiguous edges, that faint crackle... And the shock of seeing somewhere else on the other side.

The power between her hands was growing. It wasn't just electromagnetic anymore. It seemed to be moving, becoming independent, coalescing into something more physical.

There. Elra stepped back, and the nascent rift remained. It hung in the air, amorphous and one-sided, about the size of a beach ball, except flat. It had no destination end: its event horizon was a translucent metallic sheen.

Kai walked around the periphery of the room, never taking his eyes off it, his face a perfect picture.

'Now we're getting somewhere.'

Twenty-six

Hiero walked down Oxford Street, mingling with the throngs of unmarked, weighing the situation. This Elra girl was fascinating: it was clear that she'd be the cause of great change. And with great change comes great opportunity.

It was about time something happened. And it wasn't like he was getting any younger.

He'd heard what happened to Elra. Attacked by red warriors from a desert beyond imagination. He knew Harland and Zhen didn't buy it, but then again they had never been great thinkers. The prospect of a different world felt incredibly compelling to him: it was like an affirmation of what he'd believed all his life. Each person makes their own reality. All realities are equally real.

So how could this new-found reality make his better?

Twenty-seven

It took a few more tries before Elra was able to form a fully-functioning rift. A few days later, after constant, exhausting practicing, where her and Kai had pretty much holed themselves up in the empty elevator room and tried again and again until Elra got the feel for her supreme command of Knowledge, it finally happened.

It was the evening, and Elra had a headache. They were close to stopping for the night: outside the bank of windows the lights of London shone in their constellations, casting a huge orange glow on the clouds above. So far, Elra had learned to create a rift with no destination fairly easily at will, but connecting it to somewhere (or some-when) else was proving problematic.

'Perhaps we should pack it in,' Kai mused, staring at yet another two-dimensional metallic disk hanging in the air.

'Let me try something different,' Elra countered. Her mind felt muddled, but her resolve was firm.

'What?'

'Well, I've been focusing on the smell, the texture... the sense of these rifts so far. It makes it easier for me to create them, but maybe I've been thinking too much about them rather than the destination.'

'Well, the destination we should aim for first should be the other end of this room,' he replied dejectedly.

'Well, maybe that's just it. Maybe we should try something else. Watch.'

'Elra - ' Kai began. 'El - '

But she was already at it. The blank rift suspended in the air faded out of existence as Elra began forming the new one. By this stage she didn't need to take the electric palms shortcut: the thing would manifest in front of her without any contact needed.

Elra thought of that moment with the mask in the British Museum.

Goosebumps shivered across the back of her neck when she remembered the woman's cruel metal muzzle, the shoulder spikes, the unknowable horror of that reality. One of many, many realities, an infinite number... All just a few states away from her own.

What had she been aware of? The huge booms of bombs exploding high above – if they had been bombs – the darkness and artificial light, the smell of damp concrete... Feelings of oppression, desperation, control...

In front of her the rift took form. Me, the universe, all and every universe, we are one and the same. I am the multiverse thinking of itself.

Almost majestically, the rift opened up to another world. Kai whooped with joy, he jumped up from where he'd been sitting against the wall and came to join Elra in front of the event horizon. Beyond, they could see another night-covered city, full of high brick buildings, soaring stone spires and long, trailing pillars of smoke. They had a fantastic vantage point, seemingly floating in mid-air, looking down on everything from... about the height of Tower Bridge over London.

They both registered the fact at the same time, and silently turned to each other, sharing a moment of mutual revelation. Looking back, they saw there was indeed the dark water of a river flowing far underneath where their rift hung in the air. The buildings on its lapping banks were crumbling, their roofs nothing but heaped piles of tiles and wood in crumbling shells.

'Oh god, look,' Kai pointed, towards the hazy, dark horizon.

Something was moving in the clouds. A massive, amorphous shape; easily the size of an entire city block.

A vast flash behind a bank of cloud and smoke, directly under the shape in the sky. Boom. The sound came a few seconds later. Another flash, and another delayed boom.

Then the thing emerged. It was a huge aircraft, somewhere between an airship and a grossly oversized insect. Its hull (or abdomen?) was bloated and enlarged, with trailing antennae dangling off its underside. At the front end, the two viewing ports of its cockpit (or were those eyes?) shone like headlights, their beams scanning the city beneath. To their horror, the thing let out a low, sonorous moan and swung round and began heading straight for them. Flashes flared below its flight-path, the sound of their accompanying booms becoming less and less delayed the closer it came.

'Um, Elra, make it stop,' Kai said, the fear in his voice audible.

'I...'

'Come on, close the rift.'

Elra had it under control. But that creature's eyes... they seemed to mesmerize her somehow. Its headlamp-like beams were pointed directly at the rift, at her, at her London, and it was so close that the booms were now perfectly timed to the explosions. It let out another mournful moan.

'Close it!' Kai cried.

'I've got it!' she retorted. She let her concentration lapse. The rift began to fade.

And then something weird happened. She felt another force act upon the rift, originating from somewhere abstract, far across the reaches of reality. The rift shimmered violently and the city disappeared, replaced with split second glimpses of other realities, like a radio being tuned, each one passing as soon as it appeared, making it impossible to distinguish anything.

She tried as hard as she could to shut it down. The other force pushed against her and the rift started to collapse.

'Whoa... What's happening?' Kai asked.

She ignored him. She was creepingly aware of how exhausted she was and how tenuous her grip on the rift had become. For a second it locked on to a sunlit walled courtyard.

Oh no. She gave it her all, and it went back to channel hopping. Then a dark, streetlight-lit road. Then the desert.

Then it imploded on itself.

Kai looked at her, eyebrows raised. 'What just happened?'

Elra just stared at him, shell-shocked. After half a minute of silence, he began giggling, that type of 'we almost died, but we didn't!' giggle. A few seconds later, she joined in too.

'That was insane.'

At that exact time, 150 miles away, a police patrol vehicle dropped off the station's scanner, as if it had disappeared into thin air.

Twenty-eight

'We've come to take you home, miss,' the policeman said.

They'd entered Cali's room without knocking; the hospital room she'd been in for over a week now, never allowed to leave without that policewoman chaperoning her, even when she went to the bathroom.

'We have judged the risk of retaliation against you to be minimal, so you can go back to your life.'

'Any developments?' Cali asked, like she always did when they visited.

'I cannot tell you at this time.'

In other words, no. 'Any news about Elra?'

They responded with making their stony faces appear even more stony.

'Guess not?' she hazarded.

'That's correct, miss.'

'We have a vehicle outside,' the other said.

Cali packed the small bag her mother had brought her earlier in the week and followed them out. She shot a smile to the trainee nurse with whom she'd struck up something of a friendship and exited the ward.

A few minutes later, the cruiser was pulling out of the parking lot and onto the main road.

'We called your mother, let her know you're returning.'

'How did she sound?' Cali asked.

'Overjoyed,' said one, in tone that bordered on sarcasm.

Cali decided to keep quiet after that.

Ten minutes later, they pulled onto Sylands Road.

'Down here, right?' the cop who was driving said.

'No, it's - ' Cali began, but by that time he'd turned anyway.

'Ah, sorry.'

'It's Compton Road,' Cali corrected.

'Yeah, uh, we'll cut through, via Washington Terrace. Sorry about that.'

'Hey, what's that?' the other said, pointing to the center of the road in the middle distance.

'Probably just a trick of the light. Street lights flickering, you know.'

Cali craned her neck to look out the windshield. Sure enough, the road about fifty meters in front of them was wavering, as if seen through a heat haze or a gas leak.

As they got closer the effect died away. The driver shot his partner a glance, eyebrows raised.

Silently, the space in front of the car ripped. His partner saw it first.

'Oh GOD!'

Cali watched in horror as the rift spread until it stretched across the entire road.

The driver slammed on the breaks, but to no avail. Sunlight streamed through the car's windows, dazzling everyone, Cali included.

'WHAT the - '

Some form of flight instinct reared itself in the driver's mind. He slammed on the accelerator and careened into the blazing sunlight.

Wham. Cali felt her head whip forward as the car collided with something solid. Before she passed out for the second time in two weeks, she became aware of the crumpled bonnet smashed against a high stone wall, and red-clad figures approaching the car from all sides.

Twenty-nine

Olympia woke, reeling from a terrible dream. Something was very wrong indeed; the feeling had filtered through into her reverie and pulled her from her sleep. She struggled to her feet, untangling herself from the mosquito net, urgency making her movements rushed and clumsy.

The bleed-through has become a torrent. Actual people have slipped over into that violent reality, or been pulled. This Elra woman - girl - no, woman, someone close to her. And another person Olympia had met once, personally. Body Knowledge. Two people who had no immediate connection apart from... what was his name? Zhen's boy. Yes, he was the common factor between the two missing people.

She threw on a gown and grabbed the Land Rover keys without even putting shoes on. Out the door, across the terrace, bare feet on rich red African soil, and into the car. The sound of the diesel engine rumbling into life broke the delicate sound of the cicada-studded night-time chorus.

That violent force in a parallel universe, it was conscious. A person, or a group of people. Hell, it could be an entire civilization. It wants something from our reality, clearly. The Land Rover tore down the dirt track, over-steering on the corners. Its headlights picked out the ghostly figures of a herd of springbok in the distance. They scattered as the car neared.

Priority One: get Elra over here, Morwen as well. Two: get the lost ones back. Three: assess and respond to the threat, whatever it may be.

She was under no illusions that all three sections would heavily involve Elra.

That lost Marked one, who is he? That lost... no, not lost. Dead.

Olympia stopped the car, despite the urgency. But this was important.

No, he hadn't slipped over into another reality. He had been attacked from that other reality, and had killed himself and his assailant. A scream, built up and not expelled. She could feel its trace, even though it happened thousands of miles away. Who was capable of such a thing? Connected to Kai, Zhen's boy... of course. Zhen's estranged partner. Kai's father. Volus Leto. She wondered if they knew.

But why?

Olympia stilled the flurry of connections forming in her mind and shifted the Land Rover into first. She concentrated on the way the headlights lit up the track in front of her.

Up ahead, the lights of a small village rose out of the darkness, their glow diminished by the immensity of the night. She pressed the horn, but its shriek seemed weedy compared to the vast distances the car moved in. They would probably have heard the car's engine by now. With any luck, Tsonge and Singoro would be awake by the time she got there.

You better have some ideas, guys. The car's bumpy motion on the track made the robe slip off her shoulders, she awkwardly shrugged it back on and tied it tight with one hand, occasionally reaching down to shift gears. She could sense all the minds in the little village now: the weariness of the sleeping adults and the dreams in the developing minds of children.

The Land Rover tore into the village, scattering chickens and rousing dogs who barked at the commotion. Lights came on in the clapboard houses. Olympia pulled up in front of a rambling conglomeration of buildings, modern builds sitting next to traditional circular huts, countless sheds and lean-tos, walled courtyards and small paddocks full of dried red mud. In the center of it all stood a huge, squat baobab tree, its titanically thick boughs rising up then dipping back down into the ground to form colossal living arches, its immense trunk hollowed out to form a substantial cavernous space. The tree's papery bark had innumerable Knowledge marks etched into it, some of which looked like they'd be carved and re-carved over hundreds of years. At that moment, in the dark hours of the early morning, its marks were invisible; it loomed over the farmstead, a black mass in the sky, blocking out the stars.

Olympia jumped out the car and dashed up to the biggest of the buildings. Just as she neared the door, it opened. On the other side of the threshold stood a middle-aged man, his face rough with age and his kindly dark eyes alive with concern.

'What's happened?' he asked, his East African accent slipping through on the vowels.

'Get Singoro up, we're experiencing history here. You know that violent force I told you about?'

'Yes?'

'It's bleeding through from another reality. It's kidnapped an unmarked woman and killed one of our own.'

Tsonge's brow furrowed. 'If it kidnapped an unmarked woman that suggests it isn't aware of Knowledge... In which case, how did it make the jump from its own universe?'

'Either technology or... well, it may not even be human. But the woman it captured was a close friend of Elra - '

'That unmarked one?' he interrupted.

'Yes. So maybe they're using this other woman as a lure.'

'...so Elra's their end goal? If they could capture her friend, why wouldn't they just capture her?'

She looked at him darkly. 'I don't know. Maybe they fear her. Either way, we need to let the others know now. I'll see you both by the tree.'

As she walked out the door, Olympia was overwhelmed by a feeling of immediate danger. A troubling connection manifested itself in her consciousness, but she brushed it off to concentrate on the task at hand. She dashed off in the direction of the sprawling baobab tree, her mind sensing its innumerable marks, unable to contain her excitement about what was going to happen.

Thirty

Olympia couldn't remember the last time the tree was used fully. They'd recently connected it to a five year old Puerto Rican child with an aptitude for Mind Knowledge, and did a test run; but as for using it to communicate with everyone... vague memories of the death of a Wise when she was still a teenager was all she could recall.

The marks that covered the tree's surface were all unique; each one representing a person. There were close to two thousand marks etched into its bark, but many of those were defunct, their equivalent people long dead, meaning the number of living was closer to three hundred. Each one of those living people had their tree-mark scribed on their cerebrum, the part of the brain that dealt with consciousness, giving them a permanent mental connection to the tree. By interfacing with the tree's living matter, another person with Mind Knowledge (like herself, but the twins were especially good at it) could communicate with all of them at once.

Genius, Olympia thought, for the umpteenth time. Incredibly difficult to achieve, but startlingly elegant. Each person connected to the tree had to be proficient in Mind Knowledge, and all it required was someone incredibly adept in Change Knowledge (of which about three existed in the world at the moment, one of which was on their way here, in fact) who could scribe the mark on their brain. Why a tree had been chosen as the medium was anyone's guess, as far as she was aware it had been used in this way for at least four hundred years.

Olympia had often wondered why all the people with Mind Knowledge didn't just have each other's marks scribed on their brains, creating what would essentially be an international telepathic network. But having hundreds of other streams of consciousness running through your mind may not be everyone's idea of fun, she reasoned: not to mention the obvious privacy issues. She, more than anyone, could empathize with that: her own Mind Knowledge focus, which allowed her to perceive connections in the universe, could sometimes be a significant burden. Explaining it to people was impossible, to the extent that she sometimes had difficulty coming to terms with it herself. She felt like there may be two of her: the human, which she made a point of separating as completely as possible from the Wise, who could understand the secrets of reality and was weighed down by that burden of Knowledge.

A few moments later Tsonge emerged with a Singoro, his twin. The two of them differed in one obvious way: Singoro was an albino, with snow-white skin, silver hair and ruby eyes; making him and Tsonge like a human yin-yang, a comparison they'd grown tired of hearing over the years. He smiled when he saw Olympia. 'What time do you call this?'

'Time for action,' Olympia replied.

'Tsonge told me. Bad news.'

'Bad news.' Tsonge echoed, looking grim.

'You make it sound like someone's had an accident,' Olympia quipped, only semi-jokingly. 'We're entering a critical point in the history of the Marked, possibly humanity itself.'

The brothers looked at each other. 'Ah, Greeks. Always so dramatic,' said one.

'She speaks true, brother,' the other said, theatrically. 'What is life, if not a tragedy?' They both cackled as Olympia rolled her eyes.

All three entered the hollow in the baobab. It was dark, slightly damp and musty.

'Do you want to light the fire, or shall I?' Tsonge asked.

'How about - ' Singoro began, before he seemed to realize something. 'Anna should be here.'

'Yes!' Tsonge confirmed.

'Anna?' Olympia asked, an edge of annoyance in her voice. 'Isn't she a bit young?'

'Never too young. Who knows when this will happen next!?'

Anna was their niece, dearly beloved to both of them. 'I'll get her,' Olympia announced, inwardly rolling her eyes.

While she was gone the two brothers scraped some wood off the inner side of the tree and made a little pile of shavings. Singoro snapped his fingers just above the pile and it immediately combusted into a small, jolly fire.

'You always used that trick to wow the ladies, didn't you?' Tsonge chuckled, throwing some sticks on.

'Half the time I didn't need to,' Singoro laughed, 'the ladies around here seem partial to white men anyway!'

A few minutes later Olympia returned with Anna, a small, shy girl of six, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes. They found the two brothers sitting cross-legged either side of their fire in the hollow of the tree.

'Anna, my girl, come and sit down,'

'What are we doing, mjomba?' she asked.

'We're going to talk to lots of people in a special way,' Singoro replied.

'Why is there a fire?'

The brothers grinned at each other and then at Olympia, who was crouching on the periphery of the circle that had formed.

'When our mama mlezi showed us her ways, that's how she began things. She said to take some of the tree's wood and smoke it over a fire, to breathe in its essence. It will help us talk through it better. Now, mpwa, sit there and watch. One day perhaps you will do this.'

Anna sat quietly, intrigued, as Singoro began to sing, laying down a syncopated vocal rhythm that resonated deeply within the hollow space of the tree. The fire between them flared, its quiet roaring mingling with his timeless, sonorous song.

Tsonge joined in with long, drawn out notes, only slightly higher in pitch than Singoro's rhythm. To Olympia, it sounded like there were more than two people singing.

The two brothers' eyes had a far-away look about them, as if they were gazing across great distances, both inner and outer. Gradually, the marks on the tree's bark began to glow like dying embers, or like groups of bio-luminescent insects, until the whole ancient mass of boughs and branches shone like a faint beacon in the African night.

Thirty-one

An urgent knock came at Elra's door.

'Hey! Wake up! It's hit the fan,' said Kai, his voice muffled through the woodwork.

One of her eyes sleepily opened. Outside the window London looked serene in the half-light of a grey dawn. 'What time is it?'

'Time to put on some clothes and come downstairs.'

There was something of a commotion in the hideout. When Elra descended she found everyone, including a few people she didn't recognize, standing in a circle in the living room. At their center stood a young Arabic-looking woman and a heavily bearded middle-aged man, presumably her father. Elra noted that Kai was looking down and avoiding eye contact, nervously biting the edge of his nails.

Elra's entrance was met with a few raised eyebrows, especially from the individuals she hadn't seen before. Hiero stepped forward, his expression grim but somehow feigned, Elra thought.

'Rania brings bad news, I'm afraid. Tell her.'

He stepped aside as the young woman approached. She wore her long black hair shoulder-length, perfectly framing her very, very beautiful face, looking like someone straight out of the ancient tales of an antique land. She carried a morose look about her, as if she was weighed down by a deep sadness, or a heavy burden of knowledge. Her father, his expression similarly pained, held her shoulders as she spoke.

'A violent force beyond our universe has broken through into our reality, killing one of our Marked brethren and kidnapping your friend.'

'My friend?' Elra asked, feeling confused more than anything.

'Yes. We are all in danger, but you especially. The Wise seem to think that the force desires you particularly.'

'Wait, which friend...?' she asked, immediately realizing who it was. '...Not Cali?'

'That is her name,' Rania replied, her beautiful gaze unfocused and distant.

What the hell would this... force want with Cali? Elra thought.

'It is the opinion of the Wise that Cali is being used as a bait, to lure you to them,' Rania said, anticipating Elra's thoughts with uncanny accuracy.

Feelings of anger at Cali's disappearance mixed with guilt at not having spoken to her. Underlying both of these was the terrifying yet exciting realization that she was at the center of events of multiversal significance: something that she had been suspecting, but not wanting to believe, for quite a while now. The rifts opening into the desert, that blinding, scorching red desert; the red warrior woman, the way her latest rift attempt had been... hijacked by another force... But what do they want with me?

Well, whatever they wanted, Elra wasn't going to let them have it. The cost was too high: her mother, her old life (not that was any great loss, mind you) and now Cali. But at least she could do something about Cali. Whatever it took, Elra was determined to get her back.

'We'll find her,' she assured Rania. 'We'll make sure - '

'I told you she wouldn't even ask,' Zhen interrupted, seething with fury.

Elra turned around, confused. Zhen was standing behind her, her face scrunched up in a picture of anguish and hatred. It was then when Elra realized most of the other people in the group were looking at her with disdain. Tears were budding in Kai's eyes; Hiero, Rania and her father were looking anywhere but in her direction.

'Don't you even care about the person who died?' Zhen screamed at her.

Of course. That 'Marked brethren' Rania had mentioned. 'I'm sorry, I don't know... who was he?' Elra stuttered.

'My father,' Kai interjected.

There was a general murmur among the group. Elra was too stunned to talk.

Harland piped up, breaking the silence. 'You've come like a whirlwind into our lives, bringing danger and loss in your wake. We don't know what the so-called Wise see in you; but here, in the real world, we look after our own. We'd appreciate it if you moved on as soon as possible.'

Kai looked like he was about to speak, but no words came out.

Hiero came forward. 'Perhaps Harland's words are somewhat harsh. We understand your predicament, and how strange it must be for you to be thrust into this... situation; but this isn't our fight.'

'What the Wise want with an unmarked bitch is anyone's guess,' Zhen said ruefully.

'Mother!' Kai finally spoke. 'I can vouch for Elra's talent. Her understanding of Knowledge is just as good as anyone else's in the Marked community. The fact that she's only just learned about all this makes it even more impressive.'

'Listen, Kai. She hasn't been raised like you, or me, or any of the rest of us. She hasn't grown up hearing the stories of our kind, she doesn't understand how precious Marked lives are.'

'But ma, she's living testament to the fact that, Marked or not, Knowledge is something shared by all people! You're letting your anger and regret at dad's death cloud your judgment.'

A hush descended over the room. There was a livid fire in Zhen's eyes.

'Don't you talk to your mother like that, boy,' Harland growled.

'It's true, and you know it too. The events unfolding at the moment are bigger than all of us and will affect the entire human race. The Wise see it, and I'm sure dad would have seen it too.'

Zhen's anger erupted: she belted him hard across the face with the back of her hand. There was a collective gasp: Hiero dashed forward to get in between the two of them, and Harland roughly grabbed Kai.

'Ouch! You bastard!' Harland winced, as he received a thorough electric shock from Kai's palm. Kai pushed himself free and backed away from the group, hands out in front of him.

'You'll pay for that!' Harland bellowed.

Elra came to her senses. 'Stop it! All of you!'

'Shut up, bitch,' snarled Zhen, turning on her.

'Mother,' Kai began, 'if you call Elra that once more, I'll become the second man in your life to leave you.' His anger and exasperation seemed to snowball. 'She may not have grown up around us, but right now her problems are our problems.'

Rania's serene voice was added to the mix. 'You don't see the danger we are in, Zhen. You only see anger.'

Zhen spun round. Rania's father pulled her back, out of harm's reach.

'It's my business what I think! Keep your prying mind out of my thoughts!'

'She's only speaking the truth, mother,' Kai grimaced.

'The only core of truth in this whole situation is that an outsider, an unmarked, has brought death and danger into our community!'

'Death and danger are coming for all of us, Marked and unmarked, whether Elra is here or not!'

'And she is the key to defeating them,' Rania added. 'Her power is great indeed.'

'Bullshit,' Zhen scowled, and strode right up to Elra so her face was inches away from hers. 'What power?'

'Mother... I have seen - '

'I don't care what you've seen,' she said, cutting Kai off. She stared into Elra's eyes, and all Elra saw were two dark pools of fear. '...I want to see. I think we'd all be interested in seeing, actually.'

Kai rolled his eyes, looking pained and apprehensive. Elra looked around at the others, staring them in the eye, one by one. After a few seconds of inaction, a barely visible grin grew on Harland's gruff face. Zhen's lips were pursed, but Elra was sure they restrained a perverse smile.

She broke away from the group and walked off in the direction of the door. She was ready, so ready: she had felt the energy building up since the conversation had taken an antagonistic turn. They wanted a demonstration of her capabilities? They'd get one.

She became minutely aware of where everyone stood in the room. She let the built-up energy weigh heavily in her hands for a moment, while silently counting down.

'That's right, leave, you unmarked b - ' Zhen began.

Wham. In one move Elra spun around and ripped apart the very air in front of her, both hands seemingly tearing at the seams of reality itself. There were gasps and screams from the assembled group: most satisfyingly, Zhen's physically recoiled from the shock. Rania was smiling and Kai... Kai's eyes were as wide as dinner plates, not three feet away, on the other side of the rift.

She'd done it, it had worked! She'd managed to connect two points in the same room. Now, instead of there being six or seven meters between her and Kai, they could practically reach out and touch each other.

In fact, that's exactly what Elra did. Grinning wildly and totally ignoring everyone else in the room, she tentatively reached out and quickly jabbed her hand through the rift, as if she expected it to hurt. Dazed, Kai pressed his palm against hers, their fingers intertwining.

Somewhere in the room someone fainted. Elra realized what it must look like for the others: two rifts, meters apart, with Elra's hand entering one and exiting another. The group stood there in silence for a few seconds, dumbstruck, as Kai's expression gradually unfroze and began returning Elra's smile.

'This has gone far enough,' Hiero interjected, coming to his senses. Elra withdrew her hand and let the rift melt back into the air. 'Arguing and one-upmanship get us nowhere. Now, the way I see it, Elra needs to hurry onwards, to meet the Wise and to discuss what is to be done, leaving the rest of us to grieve in our own space.'

Elra felt like she was the one who needed space: the atmosphere in the room was suffocating. After acknowledging Hiero's little speech, she headed straight through the exit door and descended the stairs to walkway level. Carefully pushing open the secret little door Kai had showed her, she slipped out onto Tower Bridge itself and mingled with the tourists. It felt good to be in the open air and, dare she admit it, it was nice to be alone.

Thirty-two

After everyone had left, Harland and Zhen sat in the kitchen.

'Want a cuppa, love?' Harland asked, tiredly.

'Jasmine, thanks, if you wouldn't mind.'

Harland got up and put the cast iron kettle on the stove, lighting the gas ring casually with his finger.

'I have to admit, that was a pretty good show she just put on for us.'

'Good or not, she isn't one of us, Harland,'

'Aye, I know that,' he agreed. 'At least we now know what the Wise see in her. No wonder they wanted her on board for whatever business they're up to.'

There was a brief lull as Harland poured the tea and set the mugs out on the table. He sat down in his chair heavily.

'Do you really believe all this... parallel universe stuff?' he chuckled.

Zhen rolled her eyes. 'They're the Wise. They're always seeing connections, visions, foreshadowings and the like. Ivory-tower nonsense. They're barely in touch with reality.'

'Which is worrying, given the power they wield.'

'Quite. And that unmarked cow... they'll be wielding her soon enough,'

He gave her a knowing look. 'As we've said before, we must ask ourselves: is this in all of our best interests?'

'I don't think they've had the interests of the Marked community at heart for a long time. Something's going to break. Soon.'

'Perhaps...'

'Not here. We should talk about this somewhere else. But I know that kid with Change Knowledge in Harriston has been thinking along these lines for quite a while – what's his name again?'

'Tamarlane. I last saw him when he was a nipper. Had quite the talent, if I remember. Maybe you're right. Maybe it's time for a trip Stateside. Make some friends, form some bonds... Tell the truth, I'm getting tired of all this. We, as a people, need to grow a backbone. May I be frank?'

'Need you ask?'

'It doesn't help that elements in our own community are against us. Rania: she's pretty much one of the Wise already. Hiero - '

'Don't get me started on Hiero,' Zhen muttered under her breath. 'As my mother would say, he runs with the hare and hunts with the hounds.'

'And as for your boy - '

'Sometimes I wonder. You know the old theories about how children were conceived? How the entire person was encased in the male sperm, and the female egg was just a vessel for the pre-made, male-generated embryo? Well, that's how I feel about Kai. I see none of myself in him.'

'You can say that again.' He paused for a moment, thinking. 'That's the only thing that doesn't add up, though.'

'What?'

'Volus. Why did this... thing kill him?'

'Harland, all we know is that he died. The Wise have no evidence to suggest it was that spooky otherworldly 'force' they keep banging on about. They could be claiming it was to scare us, to divide us. You want to know the truth?'

'What?'

'The first thing I felt, when I heard he was dead, was relief.'

Harland raised his eyebrows and took a sip of his tea. 'I don't blame you.'

Thirty-three

Elra came back late that night. She'd spent most of the day thinking about Cali, sitting on a low rooftop overlooking the Thames, watching London bustle with its vibrant, ceaseless activity. When she eventually started getting cold, she opened a discreet rift into the hideout's living room.

She found Rania and Kai sitting on a sofa, the distance between them awkwardly small for two people who weren't a couple. Kai was startled by Elra's dramatic entrance, but Rania just smiled her faraway smile.

'I'm going to have to start getting used to that,' Kai said, uncomfortably, getting up and poking the coals in one of the stoves.

Elra wondered what had been going on between them. She couldn't help but feel a wave of jealousy rise within her, making her cheeks flush. Don't be stupid, she thought to herself. These are silly thoughts. Why should she care who Kai fancied?

'You'll be glad to hear they've all gone to bed,' he announced. 'I'm sorry about earlier. They can be pigs sometimes. You showed them, though.' He turned, grinning widely. 'That was quite a spectacle.'

'They fear your power,' Rania said, her delicate eyes piercing Elra's, somewhat uncharacteristically. 'Yellow fear. Practically radiating it. They are right to be scared.'

Kai looked at Elra, a cloud of worry covering his features. 'We have to get you to the Wise. They will know what to do. They'll know how to get your friend back, and how to end this craziness.' The cloud passed, and his tone took a turn for the jovial. 'Given the atmosphere here, I think I'll come with you. I could do with a break, especially after learning about dad.'

'About that: how are you feeling?' Elra asked.

'As I was just telling Rania here, it's kind of strange. I haven't seen him for years, so I guess losing him wasn't that much of a loss; but at the same time, I feel like I've lost... a future, instead of a present. I could have contacted him, rebuilt our relationship.' He paused, looking off into the middle distance. 'But then again, he was the one who left us. The burden to reconnect was on him just as much as me. Families, eh?' he chuckled, looking like he was on the verge of tears. 'I might turn in for the night. Guess we'll be leaving tomorrow. Need sleep.'

And with that he left, making a point of hiding his face as he left the room.

As soon as he departed, a strange thing happened. Rania jumped up and grabbed Elra with an urgency she'd never displayed before. 'We need somewhere quiet to talk,' she hissed, her gaze flitting from door to door with the intensity of a paranoia sufferer.

'We could... go to my room?' Elra hazarded.

'No! Somewhere else, outside the hideout.'

Elra had an idea. She grabbed two tartan blankets off the nearest sofa and stuffed them into Rania's arms. 'Hang on,' she said, standing back.

Thirty seconds later the two of them were standing on top of Tower Bridge. Elra immediately got vertigo and had to sit down.

'Whoa.'

From their perilous position the view was even better than from the downstairs windows. It was somehow different than looking at it from the other side of a pane of glass: more immediate and imposing.

Rania wrapped a blanket round her slender shoulders and sat down with Elra. 'I've been looking for an opportunity to talk to you one-to-one. There's something very compelling about you, Elra.'

'Why... thank you.'

Rania's expression turned dark. 'But you don't understand the danger you're in. And I don't just mean from those Red People in the desert. It's not just them, Elra. Here, in this very building, there are people who want to harm you.'

'Zhen? Oh, Kai told me. I know all about her bigotry.'

Rania grabbed her arm. 'It's more than that! A split is coming amongst the Marked, and you are the catalyst. I don't think the Wise can see it, or if they can, they don't know just how significant it'll be. And it's coming at exactly the wrong time. Now, more than ever, we all need to stand together. Humanity itself needs to stand together. But whereas world governments can be excused for not doing anything, since they're not aware of the situation, we cannot!'

'How am I the catalyst?'

'I'm not going to pull punches, Elra: you are going to be one of the most important people with Knowledge in living memory, but you're not even Marked. It's going to divide people right down the middle. Yet you are their one hope, if only they'd see it. You're everybody's hope. You have an extraordinary ability, and one that is going to turn the tide in the war.'

'War?'

Rania stared deep into Elra's eyes, and for a split second Elra saw the vast clairvoyant spaces that Rania's mind inhabited. 'War's coming, Elra,' she said, as her eyes began to cloud over and defocus. 'You don't understand the half of it. You don't see, but then again, I can't expect you to.'

'What do I need to do?'

'You need to get to the Wise. Not for answers: you're the one with answers, little do you know it. You need them for their abilities, for their Knowledge. Before all this is over you'll have seen other worlds, experienced the depths of time and sampled the vastness of infinity. You can't do these things alone.'

'How do you know all this?'

'I know this because my future self knows this.'

Elra didn't know what to say.

'I have lucid moments, like this one now, but most of the time my consciousness is in some other temporal frame of reference.'

Elra frowned.

'My consciousness is usually in a future self,' she clarified.

'How...?'

'I can think back and forth across four dimensions.'

This wasn't making any sense to Elra. 'So, you can... remember forwards in time?'

'You could look at it like that. You could also say I was born with all my memories at once. But what's closer to the truth is that my consciousness, as in the me that's here now, can move forwards and backwards through my life-line as and when I please. It can only be in one place at a time, though. Not two at once.'

'So, when we finish this conversation, you can go and talk to me in the future?'

'In short, yes, but only because we've had a conversation in the future. Many, actually.'

'Have you always been able to do this?'

'Yes. I am unmarked, like you. My father was Marked however, and fearing the stigma that would be attached to me, tells everyone he had me scribed at a young age. Same goes for a lot of us.'

'How many others are unmarked, but have innate Knowledge, like you and me?'

'Well, it's me, you, these two Wise twins in Tanzania, a man with exceptional Change Knowledge in this town in the States, a few Chinese groups, probably many unmarked who live 'normal' lives... and one other person I know.'

'Who?'

'That would be telling.'

Elra grinned. 'You don't want to spoil it for me?'

'No, it's just that I'm worried about paradoxes. About how your actions might change if you knew. This Wise woman called Olympia once told me the universe doesn't work like that, but you can't be so sure.' She smiled wanly. 'There's one other thing you can do for me, though.'

'Oh yes?'

She got up and beckoned to Elra to follow. She navigated the struts and supports of Tower Bridge's upper gantry with ease, until they were on the downriver side facing the north bank.

'You see that road down there?' She pointed, at a main road running parallel to the river among new office blocks and smoke-stained Victorian townhouses. 'That's Whitechapel Road, where I live. Would you mind opening a rift down there?'

'Gladly,' she said, tearing a hole in the air.

'Well, it's been fun, Elra. As my father's family say, ma'a salama. Go in peace.'

'You too.'

Before Rania stepped through, she turned to Elra one last time. Her gaze was intent. 'Don't worry about tonight. Morwen will save you. I've told her.'

'Morwen? Wait, what?' Elra asked, confused.

But on that note, she stepped through the rift and was gone.

Thirty-four

Cali's first thought, when she finally came round, was this is really growing tiresome. Her second was the recognition of just how hot she was, and how badly she needed a drink. This time it wasn't her head that ached, it was her neck. It felt heavy, warm, restricted... her fingers searched for her throat area and found a metal collar instead. In fact, one side of her head now felt distinctly metallic.

This information rapidly brought her to her senses. She was lying on... sandy wood, it seemed. The air she breathed was heavy with the smells of spice, rotting fish, sweat, excrement... it tasted different too, somehow. That sun. So baking. When had the world become an oven? When had the sun become so bright?

Bright. The word resonated in Cali's consciousness. And then it all came back to her: the police officers, the journey home in the dark, the rift opening. Oh god, they'd crashed on the other side... where the hell was she?

She jumped to her feet, her legs unsteady. It was then when she saw the thick iron bars of the cage she was in.

It was about three meters long on each side, two tall, situated in the middle of high-walled courtyard and surrounded on all sides by dark, almost black, sand. High above her on the battlements Cali could see red-cloaked soldiers standing guard with fearsome longblades, each one dressed and masked in the same way as her assailant back at Elra's.

Shit. Whatever was going on, it wasn't good.

Her position in the courtyard was very exposed. There was perhaps twenty meters of sandy dead space surrounding her cage in every direction; the closest other structure was a stout gatehouse set in the high wall. She noticed her cage had been oriented to face its doorway. What's going to come out of that door? Images of gladiatorial combat and wild animals released from pens spun through her mind.

Cali had a scary realization. She was totally at the mercy of other people to bring her food and water – especially water – and she wouldn't last a day in this heat without it. She wondered how long it would take for the sun to burn off her skin, if she was given no shade.

'Hey, you!' she cried at one of the sentinels. 'Where am I? Why am I here?'

The robed figure turned and stared at her for a moment, then resumed its default pose.

Great. Just to try, she touched one of the bars of the cage. It was searing. She thrust her finger in her mouth in an attempt to cool it, and her hand found that metal contraption again. It was hard to describe its shape, since she had no mirror; but from touch alone, she could get a feeling for its complex form. It started, simply enough, with a fairly crude metal collar around her neck, the inside of the ring covered with a type of hide to stop chafing and, Cali presumed, to produce a barrier between skin and metal so it wouldn't burn its wearer in the sun. From there, a single strip of metal ran up the back side of her neck ending in a smooth metallic mass clamped over her ear. Strangely, the metal seemed to be quite cool and flexible, making head-turning possible. Also, the device didn't noticeably lessen her hearing, but when she tried to touch her left ear, all she could feel was its solid smoothness.

Cali felt her knees go weak as the helplessness of her situation fully dawned on her. And at that moment, the door at the end opened.

A man in a red and white tunic exited. It wasn't long and flowing like a toga or a sari; if anything, it looked like the robes Masai warriors wore: it revealed the arms in the same way and made his body seem elongated and elegant. His skin was the color of oak bark and his shaved head glistened in the harsh sun. She was surprised to see he was wearing what she assumed was a variation of her ear-ware, although his didn't sport a metal neck choke: it clamped directly to his ear with no supports. He had a kindly face for a captor, Cali thought.

This man was followed by a boy who looked eleven or twelve at the most. He wore what were essentially rags, colorless and stained, barely covering his skin which, Cali gasped, was pigmented in blotches like a Rorschach card. He too had a collared ear device. This strange boy followed a few paces behind the Red Man, his unfaltering gaze locked on the ground.

They crossed the dark sand between the door and her cage with care, and as they got closer Cali noticed the soles of their shoes were thick and wooden, presumably to insulate against the heat.

'Do you understand me?' The Red Man said as he neared, his eyes alive with excitement.

To her surprise, Cali did. The words that came out of his mouth were strange and alien, but somehow they formed coherent sense in her mind. Is that what these earpieces are for?

'I do, and I have some questions. Firstly, where is this? And secondly, why am I in a cage? Those are my main two, but rest assured, I've got many more.'

The Red Man stopped a few feet away from the bars, beaming. 'You are in Manu. I am a Manu, but this one,' he said, pointing at the boy, 'is a member of the dalari, one of our slave races. You have the aspect of our people, but you are from somewhere else: an othertime. Maybe your othertime will one day be Manu too.'

He smiled, taking her in. 'The cage is because we don't want you moving around too much. Even if you were to escape its confines, the sand in this courtyard is firesand, crushed from rocks in the Mountains of the Moon. It absorbs the sun's heat more than other sands, and is fiercely hot to touch. If you were to somehow cross the sand and scale the walls, you would find yourself in the drill yards of the Pillar of Valor, and beyond that, the high city of Sol Mana. And beyond that...' he paused for effect. 'The desert. So it's better if you stay put.'

Thirty-five

Cali looked at her captor quizzically. 'How are we talking?'

'The Speaking Ears. They listen for us and help us understand,' he explained, tapping the smooth metal on the side of his face. Now, our questions. We know what you are, but not what your culture calls you.'

'My name is Cali. Are you going to tell me yours?'

'I am Massur, and I am part of the Pillar of Faith.'

'What's that?'

Massur grinned. 'Well, I am not an official part of it. My colleagues and I are somewhat clandestine. We deal with the hidden aspects of universe, whereas the Pillar proper deals with the holy aspects of Manu.'

'What is Manu?' asked Cali.

'You are looking at it,' he explained unhelpfully. 'Yet it is all around you, and far beyond. It is in its divine roots and its future total culture hegemony. It is in the Father, its Zars, its Pillars and its people. It is civilization. The civilization.'

Cali raised her eyebrows.

'I don't expect you to understand yet. You are other, after all,' he grinned. 'On another note, sorry about not giving you a cover. Amin here has one in his bag.'

Amin nodded meekly.

'But first: food!' Massur beamed. 'You must be starving. I have managed to secure permission from Zar Mittander to feed you real food, not slave food. Talking of which, he will be paying you a visit soon. A high honor indeed.'

Amin dutifully removed a few items from the leather sack he was carrying. A stone sphere, the two hemispheres of which twisted apart to reveal a steaming portion of what looked like chickpea stew. This was complemented by few large strips of dried meat and something that was the same shape as an apple, but was brown; and a tall, thin red ceramic flute of water. Amin posted it all through the bars of the cage, and Cali set upon it voraciously. Water first: she found that although the flute was on the skinny side, its shape and length allowed it to contain a surprising amount of liquid. The dried meat was beef, or something similar, it was tough but wonderfully spiced; the chickpea stew was hearty and tasty and balanced the sweetness of the apple-thing surprisingly well.

Massur watched her eat. 'Like it?'

Cali nodded.

Suddenly the gate set in the wall opened and someone called out. Massur spun round, eyes livid. 'This is a restricted area!' he yelled, dashing across the sand in his protective wooden shoes to reprimand the intruder.

With his master safely out of earshot, Amin chirped up. 'Hey! You are special, aren't you?'

'I suppose... in a way,' Cali responded, feeling slightly self-conscious.

'Our people hear all the goings-on. Our Speaking Ears let us understand the Manu. They are scared of you.'

'What?'

'They are! They say you are very powerful, very dangerous. They have been looking for you for a long time. You could help us.'

Cali frowned. 'If we helped you escape, you would help us, yes?'

'Who's "we"?'

'My people, the Dalari. And the other slaves. Two hundred years ago the Manu reached our coastline and overran our islands. They killed our matriarchs and took us far inland. To the north of here they keep many of us in slave camps; brutal places, starvation, beatings, working to death, executions, mass graves... But you could help us, yes? They say you have magic.'

Cali managed to wrangle the look of confusion which was growing on her face into one of concern. Any chance of escape is worth it. She hadn't been in the cage for very long, but she was already sick of it.

'And just how do you think you'll get me out of here?'

Amin winced. 'Don't know yet. We will have to wait for the right time. We can definitely disguise you as one of us, though, once you are out.'

Once you're out. Just a matter of the cage lock, the gate lock, the sand and the sentinels, then. And whatever lied beyond...

Massur was returning, pacing agitatedly across the sand in his awkward wooden shoes.

'Quick! Eat the rest!' Amin whispered.

Cali shoveled the remaining chickpeas into her mouth and handed the stone hemispheres back through the bars of the cage. She saved some of the dried beef to eat later, along with the water flute.

'I apologize for my underlings' foolishness. The intruding sentinel has been reminded of his place,' he grimaced, tiredly. 'I'm glad to see you enjoyed dinner. Now, let's get you covered up. dal'Amin, the cloth.'

They covered her cage and left, leaving Cali confused yet tentatively hopeful.

As the day ended, its blazing intensity gave way to a balmy evening of red sunlight and gentle warmth. Just as dusk set (or what Cali assumed had been dusk: the walls blocked her view of the horizon), she heard a distant chanting in the city beyond. It rose up over the wall, into her mind and haunted her dreams in that first restless night.

Thirty-six

Elra lay in bed, thinking. Images spun through her mind, relentless, pulling her back to consciousness every time she felt herself slipping down into sleep. She dared not check the time: that would just agitate her more.

After a while she was sure she heard a scuffling outside the door, as if someone was standing out in the corridor, weighing up whether to enter or not. Was that... Kai? She felt herself tense up with embarrassment. Should she pretend to be asleep? What was he doing?

She thought of the way he sat with Rania. She was a very attractive woman, no doubt about it. Had that been a budding romance she'd seen earlier? One with its roots in childhood, in a shared past, with all the drama and excitement that comes with taking friendship to the next level? Insidious jealousy rose within her once again, but she suppressed it. Why should she care who Kai fancied? Good on him. He was the type of guy who deserved a nice partner.

Rania. Elra's blood ran cold as she remembered her words. Don't worry about tonight, they'll save you.

So what was that outside her door?

The scuffling got louder. She thought about getting up and confronting whatever it was, getting it over with. Instead she stayed in bed, waiting. Perhaps it'll go away.

It didn't go away. The door blasted open, thrown off its hinges. Zhen raged in, her eyes blazing like hateful fires making straight for Elra's bed. She held her palms out in front of her, crisscrossed with marks.

Quick on her feet, Elra jumped up and tried to cover herself.

'You unmarked whore!' Zhen bellowed, taking a swing at Elra with an open hand. It missed its target as Elra ducked, instead hitting one of the posts of the bed, splintering it in half.

Elra found room to wriggle out of the tight spot she was in and quickly turned to take stock of her opponent. Given the situation she'd no time to put clothes on, so she squared up to Zhen in her tank top and panties.

Zhen was looking worse for wear. Her eyes were red and blotchy, her movements slurred. Elra didn't know whether to feel concerned or relieved. If she had to fight, Zhen would present an easier opponent if drunk. On the other hand, she might be more violent and less prone to just sitting down and talking about whatever was troubling her.

Which was quite a lot, it seemed. She turned and faced Elra, snorting.

'Zhen,' Elra attempted, 'let's talk about all this.'

'You people don't deserve pleasantries,' she snarled. 'After everything you've done. Millennia of fear, persecution...'

She swung. Elra stepped back.

'And now you think you can just join the club and ignore the past?'

It took Elra a moment to figure out what she meant. When she did, a sickly feeling rose in her stomach and she felt blood rush to her cheeks. 'I don't know why you're blaming me for the actions of other people. I've done nothing to hurt the Marked community.'

'Nothing! You little bitch, you're pulling us apart! But don't think just because you can pull holes out of thin air means you'll ever, ever be one of us. The Wise may like you, for whatever stupid reason, but you have no place amongst the real Marked. You never grew up hearing stories about the Church's inquisition, how we fled from Europe, the exodus to America. How the ones that stayed behind buried themselves deep in the dung of the world to avoid suspicion, cutting ourselves off from our brothers and sisters, Marking our children ourselves without the help of the Wise, clinging on to our traditions and stories like sinking driftwood in a shipwreck.'

She snarled gutturally. 'Back then the Wise had backbone. They lived up to their name. They would have never kowtowed after some unmarked bitch just because she had a slight talent for Knowledge. Community before all else. They've lost sight of that.'

There came the sound of commotion from the corridor. Kai dashed into view, standing in doorway. 'Mother! Why are you doing this?'

'Because someone needs to,' she replied. With that, she leaped at Elra, screaming, hands outstretched and marks livid.

She was caught by a barrage of lightning that lifted her off her feet and dashed her against the far wall.

'KAI!' screamed Harland, coming into view. He grabbed Kai's neck and seemed to lock him in place purely by touch. Kai spasmed, a look of agony etched on his frozen features. Harland's gaze met Elra's: there was murder in his eyes. Zhen was coming back to her senses, moaning and writhing. Elra had to do something quickly.

'You're going to regret this,' Harland muttered darkly. 'Give up now, or I'll kill him.'

Elra couldn't believe her ears. 'Kill him? Are you mad?'

'If it's the price that has to be paid for stopping you, so be it.'

'Stopping me... stopping me from doing what?' Elra quizzed, confused.

'You're unnatural. The Marked persist by looking after our own. I don't know what this trouble is that you've got wrapped up in, but you're not going to drag us down with you.'

Zhen was gradually pulling herself up. She was currently kneeling on the floor, head on the ground, like a devout worshiper enraptured in prayer. Kai was still locked in Harland's grip.

'If getting rid of the trouble you brought means getting rid of you, it's a step I'm willing to take,' he finished darkly.

Elra detuned from his rant and had a brief moment of clarification, as if her mind was finally coming to grips with the possibilities her new abilities afforded her.

She tore the air in front of her and was presented with the back of Harland's head. Beyond, she could see the room she was in, complete with herself looking through the very same rift.

Before Harland could register what was going on, Elra's fist connected with the back of his head. He cried out in surprise, just as Elra stepped through fully and planted her foot on the back of his knee.

As he fell, Kai came out from being under his thrall and grabbed Elra's arm for support. She let the rift evaporate.

'Run!'

Thirty-seven

They dashed through the narrow corridors of the hideout's upper level, Elra half dragging Kai as he gradually regained full control of his muscles.

'What did he do to you?' Elra asked as they ran.

'He's got marks on his palms that enable him to control others' muscles and nervous systems by touch. Something to do with electrochemical interfacing.'

'On a similar note, I can't believe you did that!'

'What?' he asked, finally getting into the rhythm of running.

'Electrocuting your mother!'

'Trust me, that was a long time in the coming.'

They could hear Harland and Zhen giving chase behind them, having finally come to their senses. They reached the stairs.

'Where do we go?' Elra asked, panicky.

'The elevator down to the undercity. Quick!'

They took the stairs five at a time. Elra discovered Knowledge was easier to use when adrenaline was running high. They burst into the common room, dimly lit by the dying coal embers in the stoves, and ran its length dodging the various pieces of furniture.

They made it to the big empty room where Elra had begun to get to grips with rift-making only a few days ago. Kai dashed over to the elevator and yanked back the grill. Elra could hear Harland and Zhen in the sitting room.

'Hurry up!'

Kai frowned, concerned. 'The power's out!'

Elra's blood stopped in her veins. 'What?!'

Kai put his palm to the controls and zapped them, to little effect: all his succeeded in doing was creating an acrid smell of burning paint. He looked around desperately, searching for the power breaker. The other two were getting closer.

Suddenly, his worried expression vanished. He threw his head back and laughed. 'We are such idiots. Just make a rift!'

Elra smiled, rolling her eyes. Perhaps her way of thinking wasn't that adjusted to her new abilities after all.

Just before she tore the rift open, a very odd thing happened. A beam of blazing white light, as intense and narrow as a laser, appeared across the middle of the room. It came from outside the window, Elra realized: and on closer inspection, seemed to be emanating from the direction of the full moon, serenely perched above the Thames, just a little higher in the sky than the City's skyscrapers.

Kai stepped out of the elevator just as Zhen and Harland entered. All four of them seemed taken aback by the presence of the white beam of light: for the moment at least, it formed a convenient barrier between them. Harland and Zhen looked livid and confused in equal measure.

The beam began moving, slowly at first, but quickly gathering pace. For a moment Elra didn't understand what was going on, until she saw the burn mark it was making on the far wall. Burn mark... or should she say, Knowledge mark. Was this the 'saving' Rania had told her about? She knew instinctively what she had to do, it was just a case of doing it before the other two got to her.

'Kai?'

'Yes?' he replied, never taking his gaze off Zhen and Harland.

'I'm going to need a hand in a minute. I want you to hold them off while I do something.'

'If you use your Knowledge on us once more, boy,' Harland started, 'you'll be outcast from the community for rest of your life.'

'What "community"?' Kai scoffed. 'You're a group of bitter middle-aged bigots trying to uphold Marked "integrity", whatever that entails.'

'Just like your father,' Zhen added. 'Call us bigoted all you want, but it doesn't change the truth. We need to stay together to survive. Fraternizing with the unmarked will be our downfall. Marked above all!'

The laser was finishing its work. Burnt on the far wall was an incredibly complex mark, about two feet across, full of intricate arcs and spirals. It sat in the middle of a large circle, wide enough to climb through.

'Get ready, Kai,' she warned under her breath. On the other side of the room, Zhen and Harland assumed fighting poses.

There. The beam disappeared. Kai sent an arc of lightning in Harland and Zhen's direction as Elra dashed towards the mark on the wall. To her horror, the two of them were ready: they soaked up Kai's assault with Blocking marks on the underside of their arms. Although clearly in pain, they inched forward against his electric barrage.

'Hurry!' Kai moaned.

Elra was at the wall. She ran her hands across the mark, instantly recognizing there was another one identical to it somewhere else in the world. Cold, wind-chill, the dripping of water on stone... where does this lead?

'I can't keep this up!' Kai wailed. In that short time he'd moved closer to her, but so had the other two. His electricity was weakening, and Elra doubted he could maintain such a vicious assault for much longer.

No time for decision-making. Elra threw caution to the wind and ripped the wall. On the other side of the rift there was nothing but darkness. Behind her Kai screamed.

She spun round. He was eking out the last of his energy: maybe it was her eyes, but he actually seemed leaner than he had done a few seconds ago, as if all that expenditure had literally stripped what little fat he had on him.

The other two were just a few meters away. She looked into the darkness beyond the rift, then back at Kai's last-ditch attempt. She sighed.

Grabbing him by the fabric of his jacket, she pulled him in her direction. Zhen and Harland charged.

The last thing Elra saw, before they both fell into the darkness of the rift, was Zhen taking a swipe at the air where Kai had been, her hand crackling with fire.

Thirty-eight

Cold stone. Damp, all-obscuring darkness. To Elra's left, Kai groaned.

'Ow,' he said, to the darkness.

'You're safe now,' the darkness replied. Its voice was deep, yet unmistakably female, and carried a warmth with it that was severely lacking in the air.

Up ahead in the distant dark, a light appeared. It gradually took the form of a woman, presumably the bearer of the voice. What was this place? As she got closer, they began to make out her appearance. She was old and serene, with darkish skin and hawk-like features. Her curly hair was blistering white and her eyes carried immense warmth in their gaze. Her whole being seemed to be radiating light, there was no other way she could be illuminated.

'Elra, Kai. I am Morwen.'

Kai groaned again. As this ethereal vision called Morwen came closer, Elra saw the marks on her hands. Unlike others she'd come across, which had been smallish tattoos on their bearer's palms, these ones enveloped the entire hand, vast swirls of white which ran up and down her fingers and up her forearms. In the center of one palm sat a crescent moon shape, in the other a circular disk that Elra presumed represented the sun.

'Help me with him, Elra.'

Morwen held up her Moon hand and, to Elra's astonishment, it glowed with a delicate yet powerful light, illuminating their surroundings. They were in a large cave; well, more of an art gallery, really. Its walls were covered in hundreds cave paintings and drawings, some little more than abstract shapes daubed in red ochre, others white paintings of animals and humans, some a combination of the two. Elra didn't doubt that many of them were Knowledge marks. Behind them, on what she supposed was the far wall of the cave, was the exact same mark as had been made on the hideout's wall by that beam of light, etched into the very stone itself.

Elra grabbed Kai under both arms and pulled him to his feet with Morwen's help. He was immediately sick. The briefest hint of a smile crossed Morwen's serene features.

'Ah, Body Knowledge. Such power, but at what cost?'

Her accent was hard to place. Somewhere between Britain and Scandinavia, with a hint of American in there too.

'Where are we?' Elra asked.

'Banuvai Cave, Tanzania.'

Tanzania.

'Are you the Wise?' Elra asked, and immediately realized how stupid she must sound.

Morwen flashed her half-smile again. 'I am one of them. Now come on, let's get him out.'

They struggled down to the mouth of the cave, gazed upon on all sides by the silent images of the past. When they finally exited they were met with a hauntingly beautiful scene. They were stood on the side of a hill, with a vast savannah stretching out before them for many miles, studded with monstrously bulbous trees and great swathes of long grass which moved like waves in the silent wind. At the base of the hill sat a small village. Directly in its center was one of those monstrous trees, under-lit by what looked like a large campfire. It was hard to tell at this distance.

The whole scene was surprisingly well-illuminated by the light of a full moon: everything had a bluish, understated glow which made it almost dreamlike. Beyond the moon the stars shone, undimmed by the lunar light.

Thirty-nine

The red glow of the campfire sparkled in Olympia's eyes. Morwen would soon be along with the London duo: she'd seen her colleague's white beam focused on the Moon, scribing a mark thousands of miles away, which meant Kai and Elra would have hopefully escaped by now.

Morwen. She remained a mystery to Olympia, a state of affairs she wasn't used to. The woman had unique Change Knowledge, the exact process of which the rest of the Wise had yet to fully understand, making her something of a wildcard in their eyes. This wasn't helped by the fact she preferred her own company, and only checked in with the others once every few years, while the rest of the Wise made a point of visiting the brothers' village in Tanzania every six months or so. She clearly preferred to spend her time in the far north of Iceland, away from the collective Marked community and its ancestral country of origin (and indeed humanity's place of origin). In fact, Olympia had only seen her three times before, and the first time she had been a teenager, recently moved from Greece to take up her place alongside the brothers and the rest of that generation of Wise. Tsonge and Singoro's stepmother had been alive back then, as had Blind Eagle, a Wise American patriarch of semi-mythical power.

Idle thoughts drifted through her mind, about the future of the Wise, and of the Marked community in general. If these dark times hadn't befallen them, Rania would have soon taken her place among them, as would Elra, probably. Alas, it was not to be.

Olympia had no doubt it would require all of their combined powers to even begin to comprehend what was happening, let alone stop it. She thought again of the car on the road, unknowingly charging towards an invisible wall.

If only Rania would give them something to go on, anything at all. The girl had talked to their future selves, she could basically time-travel within her own body... but Olympia knew the futures she traveled to might not be ones that would actually come to pass. In fact, the very act of telling someone what would happen in their future might cause it not to happen. Time, cause and effect were funny things, not to mention mostly an illusion. Enough to give anyone a headache, even the likes of Olympia.

The sound of retching gradually emerged out of the nighttime noises of the bush. Kai and Elra stumbled into the circle of light around the fire, followed by Morwen. Olympia gasped as she saw Kai's skeletal frame: his face was gaunt and his ribs were visible under his t-shirt. Even by the warm firelight the unnatural pallor of his skin was easily discernible.

'Singoro, call Barunde!' she called in the direction of the nearest house. She dashed over to the duo and helped Elra sit Kai down on a pile of blankets near a shed.

'I'm Olympia by the way,' she said as an aside to Elra.

'Pleased to meet you,' the girl replied. 'And thanks for helping out back there.'

'That was all Morwen. I'm sorry about Zhen.'

'You knew?'

'Well, I knew what she was like. Didn't know she'd go crazy on you like that. But I said, you've got Morwen and Rania to thank for getting you out.'

Behind them, Morwen smiled. Kai retched, looking dangerously near to being sick again. Morwen, silent and serene, swanned inside to fetch help.

'It's good to finally meet you,' Olympia continued, smiling. 'Together we'll get your friend back and get to the bottom of all this nonsense.'

Singoro dashed out the house followed by a lithe but cheery-looking woman, a capulana tied high around her pregnant waist. He crouched down next to Kai, holding his lolling head in his hands.

'Ah no, Kai my boy, exerting yourself too much. Not good. Burn yourself out,' he said soothingly, chuckling. 'He must have really socked it to them.'

'He did. I'm Elra by the way.'

'Yes you are. I'm Singoro, the white one. My brother Tsonge's the black one. We're like keys on the piano. I'm the sing, he's the song,' he said, chuckling. 'Pleased to have you here.'

They got Kai to his feet and Barunde walked him inside, supporting him as he took the journey to the door one step at a time. In that moment Olympia spied a look on Elra's face that lasted the briefest of milliseconds, but told an entire story in itself. It was tragic, she mused, the way these things come to fruition just as the world's going down the drain.

'He'll be fine,' she reassured.

'Yes he will,' Elra replied, not taking her eyes of Kai's thin retreating figure. 'Although I didn't realize it'd do that to him.'

'He must have been blasting it at them,' she shuddered. 'I wish I'd had the wit to see how unstable Zhen had become.'

Elra's face betrayed all. A grimace, if there ever was one. Strangely, Olympia was almost pleased that she'd neglected to foresee that, while being so preoccupied with the imminent threat. In a way, it reassured her that she was still human.

Forty

Later, while Kai was inside being recuperated, Elra, Olympia, Singoro, Morwen and Tsonge were sitting round the low-burning fire, hearing Elra's account of events. She'd just finished telling them how it felt to open rifts, and how it came so naturally, especially given her past experiences.

'We knew something was up when that rift occurred, about a decade ago,' Olympia explained. 'Exciting times. I don't think any of us had experienced something like that before.' There was a general murmur of assent from the group.

'Why didn't you contact me back then?' Elra asked.

Olympia smiled. 'Because back then it wasn't you who actually created it. It was your future self. And the only way your abilities managed to manifest themselves...'

'Was because I lived the life I did,' Elra finished.

'Well, hard to say for sure. But either way, had we contacted you then, you'd be a different person now. Make sense?'

Elra nodded.

'Still,' Singoro continued darkly, 'I don't like the way the rifts are unstable, how they keep on zeroing in on this desert...'

'It was because she didn't know how to control them properly,' Tsonge replied. 'Those desert people were able to exploit that. Now she's got it under control...'

'Because of her lack of control they've been able to get a foothold in our universe,' Morwen finished neutrally, as if just stating a plain fact.

Olympia felt a creeping insight sneak up on her, but it evaporated before it could fully form. It left a sense of purpose in its wake, a confirmation that, contrary to everything both she and modern science held dear, these events weren't purely random, that there was some intrinsic meaning behind them.

'While that's true, it isn't Elra's fault,' Olympia continued, brushing her thoughts aside. Morwen just half-smiled, so she continued. 'They clearly have the ability to manipulate rifts, regardless. Maybe not form them, but they can alter them once they're open. We know this, because how else could they have targeted Cali?'

'Cali?' Singoro asked.

'Elra's friend who they captured.'

'Of course. Silly me.'

'We also know they have Knowledge, or a variant of it.'

'And they're human, or near as damn,' Elra added.

'Yes, but what do they want?' Tsonge asked.

'Well, all the evidence suggests they want Elra,' his brother replied.

'They want Elra, but she isn't their end goal,' Olympia conjectured. 'I think they want her rift-making Knowledge. We know they can control them, fine. But they can't create them, otherwise they'd have got her by now.'

'You said they can manipulate them,' Singoro began. 'So why didn't they just target her instead of Cali when the chance arose?'

'Protection marks,' Morwen conjectured. 'In the Tower Bridge hideout.'

'No, it's not that.' Olympia explained. 'They're worried she'd try to wrest control of the rift from them. You forget: they tried to target her directly already. Look how that turned out. They won't risk another direct attack, especially now she can control them better. Their only hope is to lure her, hence why they captured Cali.'

'This is making more sense now,' Singoro said.

'If their only way to access our universe is through wresting control of Elra's rifts,' Tsonge began, 'and she's now got her ability under control... well, they won't be able to come back unless we actively go to them, will they? So what are we worrying about?'

'Because that means leaving Cali behind,' Elra explained coldly. 'And that's not an option.'

They were silent for a moment. None of them for a second doubted Elra's resolve to go ahead, with or without their help. Was it selfish of her to want to do this, and potentially put the whole world in danger? Then again, is it really ever selfish to want to save your friends?

'The way I see it,' Tsonge began, grimly looking at each of them in turn, 'is that we wouldn't even hesitate if this was one of our own.'

'Exactly,' Singoro continued. 'And supposing they do want Elra for her rift Knowledge, like Olympia suggested. What if they come after Morwen next? Or Rania? Or anyone else? We need to assess their aims, their motives, their beliefs. This is the first time we've made contact with another group with Knowledge since - '

'This is the first time humans have made contact with others from a parallel universe!' Olympia exclaimed. 'This is bigger than the Marked community. Bigger than all of us. This is history. We must go, one way or the other.'

'But it would be suicide to just run in there, unprepared,' Morwen warned.

'Yes, we'd need access to deep, powerful Knowledge,' replied Singoro.

'Ancient Knowledge,' Tsonge affirmed.

Olympia's eyes widened. 'You aren't thinking of - '

'Why not?' The brothers said in unison.

'What?' Elra asked.

Olympia looked at her, eyes wide. The brothers smiled.

'We are in a unique position,' Tsonge began, 'a position to kill two very important birds with one stone. This moment was surely written. This happening, all this happening, is truly serendipitous.'

His brother took up the thread. 'Your rifts can take us to the time of the Founders, the prehistoric humans whose minds, in this place in the distant past, first awoke to the power of Knowledge. And with their ancient, fundamental, powerful marks, techniques and skills - '

'...we can be well-prepared to get Cali back, and to see what these desert people are really made of,' the other finished.

'This... we have to be careful.' Olympia warned. 'Very careful. We'll have to make sure we can get back.'

'What do you mean?'

Olympia grimaced. 'This isn't going to be easy to understand. Through the very act of going back in time and seeking out the Founders, we will be creating a new, tangent universe. We will have to make sure that when we go forwards to our own time, we go forwards in our universe, not the one we've created.'

'I can make anchor Marks,' Morwen offered. 'Unique, entangled, identical marks which Elra can use to bridge her rifts. Just like when she came here from London. If I create one here, and then a copy at the other end, it will ensure we return to our own universe.'

'I'm willing to take the risk,' Elra confirmed.

'Morwen, I assume - ?' Olympia began.

'I'm going,' she confirmed.

'Well, I'm not going to let you ladies have all the fun,' Singoro announced. 'Count me in.'

Olympia looked uncertain. 'Some of us should stay behind, just in case...'

'We don't make it back?' Morwen finished.

'Yes. There need to be some Wise left alive, if this all goes pear-shaped. So, maybe just Elra, Morwen - '

'And Kai,' Elra added. 'He'll kill me if we go without him.'

'And Kai,' Olympia continued, 'will try to make contact with the Founders. When they come back, with new Knowledge, we'll gather some more people, train them, and go get Cali.' Everyone looked pleased with that arrangement; even Singoro, who'd just been disenfranchised from the expedition.

Olympia then looked at each of them in turn, determined. 'So as soon as Kai's back on his feet, so to speak, it's go-time.'

Forty-one

By the time the rosy fingers of dawn crept over the savannah, it was just Elra and Olympia left round the fire.

'Who were the Founders? Exactly, I mean?'

Olympia smiled the smile of someone who didn't know the exact answer herself. 'Good question. All we know is that they were the people who first discovered Knowledge, or developed it. They are the ones who made those cave paintings you saw earlier: so, judging by when the paintings have been dated to, they probably lived about 40,000 years ago.'

'Forty thousand?'

'Yep. Long ago, but actually very recently compared to the full depth of the human past. Of course before then people could have just made marks on their skin, or in the earth, or on wood: so Knowledge could be far older than we currently reckon. Human ancestors have been living in this part of the world for millions of years.' She looked pensive. 'In fact, do you want to see something truly magical?'

'What?' Elra asked, apprehensive.

She rose to her feet, suddenly excited. 'It's about a mile from here. Come on!'

They walked up towards the hills, the same hills that nestled the cave they'd arrived in. Night was rapidly disappearing, and the combination of the full moon and the brightening dawn lit their way admirably.

After about ten minutes of ascending they came to a small plateau of smooth dark stone.

'Over here,' Olympia gestured, pointing at the ground.

At first Elra didn't quite know what she was supposed to be looking at. There were grooves in the stone, notches... were these marks?

And then she saw them.

Footprints. A bit worn and rough around the edges, but unmistakably human. Set in stone.

'This rock was molten over a million years ago. 1.2 million, to be exact. As it cooled, it would have retained some of its flexibility for a while, before setting completely.'

'So, these are 1.2 million year-old footsteps?'

'Yes – yes they are. The person who made these was a lot like us. They would have had loved ones, would have made tools, would have felt the satisfaction that comes after a good meal, would have looked out at the stars and wondered what they were...'

'Do you think they had Knowledge?'

Olympia raised her eyebrows. 'I didn't bring you here to show you something to do with Knowledge or the Marked, Elra. I brought you here to show you humanity.'

Elra looked again at those footsteps. She carefully slipped off her sneakers, removed her socks, and delicately placed her bare foot in the nearest footprint. It was bigger than hers, but the fit was comfortable, as if the stone were embracing her foot.

Out on the endless plain below, the sun silently broke over the distant horizon.

Forty-two

Time passed slower in the heat, Cali found. It was accompanied by relentless, exhausting, sweaty boredom, made even more unbearable by the slightly uneven weight of her head, thanks to the Speaking Ear. And even though her cage now had the cloth cover, the air itself was alive with a dry fire which only abated at sunset. She'd discarded her jeans long ago, sacrificing modesty for comfort. Thank god she'd kept her hair band. She spent most of her time lying down on her straw bedding, chewing on pieces of dried meat, looking forward to her next meal and next human interaction.

It had only been two days.

The uncertainty was the worst part, but at least escape was on the cards. Massur seemed nice enough, if not slightly foreign. Amin was clearly out for his own ends, but if they could come to a mutual agreement...

Her thought process was interrupted by the gate being opened. It was too early for a meal, the sun had not yet dipped beyond the wall. Was this escape, come to greet her?

It was Amin. He ran awkwardly across the dark sand in his wooden clogs.

'He is coming!'

'Who?' Cali asked, sitting up.

'Zar Mittander!' he announced, wide-eyed. 'Here, stand up. You mustn't talk to him unless he asks you a question. Try not to stare at his face. Well, you can't see his face, but try not to level your gaze at his mask.'

'He's... masked?'

'Yes, they do it so no-one in public knows what they look like, so they can't be assassinated.'

'They? Who's they?'

But it was too late. A detail of sentinels marched through the gate and Amin retreated to one side, head bowed, silent. Behind them came Massur, hands folded in front, a solemn expression set on his face. Then what looked like a litter, carried by numerous clog-wearing slaves, each one with a Speaking Ear. Inside, Cali presumed, was Zar Mittander.

The procession came to a halt in front of her cage. The sentinels lined up on each side, forming an avenue, and the slaves gently set the litter down between them. Cali noted the fearful look on Amin's face as the sentinels came to attention in one swift movement, armor and weapons clanking in unison. Massur respectfully opened the litter's door.

A sweet, perfumed smell emanated from within, delicate and floral, yet somehow alien to Cali's nostrils.

Out stepped a jagged red monstrosity, somewhere within which a human body was hidden. It was mainly head-dress: a large circular mask, with no discernible eye or breathing holes. It was a violent red color, exactly like the setting sun; the face that was carved into it was blank-eyed and emotionless, almost rudimentary in its design. Regardless, it made for quite an imposing sight, if not a slightly scary one.

The body covering was no better. It was somewhere between a suit of armor and a burqa, the same shocking shade of crimson that seemed to want to out-compete the red of the sentinel's robes. Cali had no doubt that it was bulletproof (or, more topically, dagger proof). She shuddered as the sweet-smelling hellish vision approached.

'Massur, you be my ears. How is it doing?' the voice behind the mask asked.

'Restless, but in good spirits, my Zar,' Massur replied, looking in Cali's direction.

'Ask it if it likes the food,'

'Do you?' Massur asked Cali.

'Yes,' she replied, feeling almost physically sick at being called "it".

'The food is quite appreciated,' Massur relayed.

'That is good to hear. Now, does it know why it's here?'

'No,' Cali replied, pre-emptively. Massur translated.

'Better that way,' Zar Mittander continued. 'Not that it matters. So, you said it was from... actually, where is it from in the othertime, geographically?'

'The north,' Massur explained. 'Far north, judging by the temperature monitored.'

'What is the character of their culture, in that part?'

'Difficult to say, my Zar. Technologically, fairly advanced. The vehicle in which she entered...'

'Automotive, I understand. A substitute for slaves, you thought?'

'Yes. One can conjecture that their economy lacks slavery.'

'Fascinating,' Zar Mittander exclaimed. 'Religious basis?'

'We heard one of the other two invoke a nonspecific deity whilst severely injured. He essentially repeated "oh god" - singular, masculine - and variations of such.'

'And am I to understand they have since deceased?'

'Yes, my Zar. I am in the process of writing a treatise on the information their clothing, items and vehicle provided us.'

The policemen.

'Good. Give it to me when finished. I will detail a trusted slave of mine to bear it to me, with a guard. We need to ensure our colleagues in the Pillar of Valor understand its sensitive nature. It will be useful to them in time, when they bring the Hegemony forth,' he explained, 'but until then, it'd be best kept by the Pillar of Faith.' Then, resuming his previous thread, 'has this one ever made reference to religion?'

'None.'

'Aha. Ask it - what is its world-view?'

Massur looked at Cali with a slightly defeated expression on his face. 'You do understand, my Zar, that it has no fundamental understanding of Manu?'

'Naturally. I want to see if it can comprehend it.'

'If someone explained it to me, I might,' Cali said, frustrated by the opaque nature of their back-and-forth. She saw Amin flinch when she spoke.

Zar Mittander perked up. 'What did it say?'

Massur looked nervous. 'Nothing of importance. Slave babble.'

The silence was deafening. Eventually, the Zar's perfumed tones resumed. 'Purely for the sake of personal interest, I would like a full treatise on its conception of the ultimate, on any gods it may believe in, and on its religious practices. Before we take it to the Mouth of the Rift, of course.'

'Of course, my Zar.'

'Talking of which – it is necessary that it be strong. Well fed. That is the primary reason I permitted you to feed it our food. It has to be able to cope.'

'I hope it is not out of place to ask, but when will the Mouth be ready, my Zar?'

'Days. Three, at most,' he said, gruffly. 'One day, Massur. One day these insects will see the beauty of our will.'

'By the will of Zaloth Zar, they shall.'

Zar Mittander snorted as he clambered back into his litter. 'By the will of Zaloth Zar.'

Forty-three

'What were you thinking?!' Amin hissed once they'd gone.

'What have I got to lose? They clearly want me for something important, so it's not like they'd kill me or anything.'

Amin went a bit green. 'They might do worse,' he gulped. 'The Manu believe in one thing: Manu. The rest of us, we are nothing to them. Disposable tools at best, animals at worst.'

'So, how's this escape plan coming along,' Cali asked casually. 'I don't know what this "Mouth" is, but I'd rather not find out.'

He looked pained, stretched somehow. 'I know three days is all we have, but we have to wait for the right time. Everything is in place, we just need the moment.'

'Well, let's hope it arrives. But seriously, have any of the Dalali - '

'Dalari.'

'Sorry, Dalari \- found out what the Mouth is? Overheard something, maybe?'

'They say...' Amin began, before quickly clamming up. He looked like he was on the verge of tears.

'What do they say, Amin?'

'It does not matter. The Manu - they talk of their power as if they were gods, but they forget they are still human.'

Cali looked him directly in the eye, lowering her voice to a soft, warm tone. 'What is the Mouth of the Rift, Amin?'

'The Manu sentinels say it breaks your soul in half,' he said quietly, moisture welling in the corners of his eyes. 'Only the Manu could devise such a nasty device.'

'Your soul?'

'Yes!' Amin sobbed, his tears glistening on his black and white skin. 'All the Dalari have left is our soul. Our one big soul. And even that they want to destroy.'

Cali reached through the bars of the cage and took him by the shoulders. 'They won't do that. Do you know why? Because you're going to get me out, and I'm going to help you stop them. They will never have any souls to break. I will come with you to... where again?'

'The slave camps. The Mountains of the Moon.'

'...the Mountains of the Moon,' Cali repeated, not believing the words coming out of her mouth, 'and we will free your people.'

Forty-four

'Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is your captain. The weather is looking clear, should be an easy ride stateside. The temperature in Austin is twenty degrees Celsius, that's about 68 Fahrenheit. Please fasten your seat-belts and stow all tray tables in their upright position. Cabin crew: cross check.'

Zhen and Harland had a pair of seats by a window. They buckled themselves in as the plane's engines rumbled into life, edging the titanic vehicle slowly forwards into the taxiing area.

'I'm glad we're doing this,' Harland said, taking Zhen by the hand. He ran the pad of his index finger across the Fire marks spiraled on each of her digits, the same marks which she'd last ignited against her own son.

'Long time in the coming,' she replied, smiling. 'Should have done this ages ago.'

'Nah, I wouldn't say that,' he countered, 'you have to pick your moments. Unless we'd seen all this first-hand, we wouldn't have the impetus we need to make things change.'

'I really hope this works, you know,' she mused, placing her head on his shoulder.

The plane turned on to the runway, its nose pointing towards the stretches of tarmac in front like a bullet in a loaded gun.

'Of course it will. Nothing like the fires of youth to get an engine started. Once we've told him what the Wise are up to, how they let Elra treat us, Tamarlane won't stop until he's taken the fight all the way to Tanzania.'

'Should we let him?'

'Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. We may have to rein him in before he gets too carried away - '

'It's about time we dethroned those pacifist weaklings and showed the world the true power of Knowledge,' she interrupted.

'Well, he's definitely the man for the job: apparently he's become quite a personality over there. Has a gang of devoted followers - '

'He needs direction.'

'Our cause will give him direction.'

'Yes it will. You know, I can't think of anyone I'd rather do this with,' she replied, looking up into his eyes with a slight smile playing on her lips.

The plane's engines opened up fully, forcing them both back in their seats; they catapulted down the runway and rose up into the sky.

Forty-five

It took a few days for Kai to fully recover. In that time he seemed to do nothing but eat: he wolfed down meal after meal of goat meat and maize porridge, five or more times a day, until his famished frame started developing a healthy fill. Color returned to his cheeks, his lively attitude was re-awakened and eventually he was able to walk and run again.

What had troubled Elra the most were his marks: his palms were burned and his mark tattoos seared, as if his hands had been struck by mini lightning bolts. The wounds healed over fairly quickly, however, leaving raised, discolored scars in their place. She had made a point of spending as much time with him as she could, when she wasn't busy planning with Olympia.

This was the plan they'd concocted. Morwen, Kai and Elra would be the go-team, with Morwen's unique pairs of marks facilitating the return journey and any spatial 'jumps' that may be required when they got there (to cover large distances quickly, for example), and Kai providing his Body Knowledge for practical and defensive purposes. Between them the only thing noticeably lacking was decent Mind Knowledge. Morwen, however, was as proficient as any non-Wise person with it, so she should be able to learn any forms the Founders taught them easily enough.

Elra would take them to the time of the Founders by opening a rift in the cave they had arrived in, as Olympia and Morwen were certain she could tap into the latent energy of its ancient marks and focus on the moment they'd first been painted. What would be waiting for them on the other side nobody knew: archaeology (and reason and logic) suggested a very surprised group of early humans, but Elra had a sneaking feeling that it wouldn't be as simple as all that. Either way, they'd decided to be open with the people they met on the other side: about their intentions, their current problems, and current events; because after all, people back then would have been just as intelligent and just as curious as modern humans, and not communicating leads to misunderstanding.

Finding a way to communicate with them in the first place was going to be a problem, however. But with the shared language of Knowledge, Olympia was sure they'd manage to get their intentions across somehow. Plus, smiles and open, friendly gestures speak of friendship more than any words could.

This didn't stop Elra being more nervous than she'd ever been before. Far more nervous than when she first entered the Tower Bridge hideout, and even slightly more than when she confronted Barry and her mother, all that time ago. They decided, if anything went even minutely wrong, they were to abort the entire expedition: Morwen would scribe a hasty version of the anchor mark in the present and Elra would get them out of there.

Come to think of it, had it really only been days since she'd confronted Barry and her mother? It felt more like years or, more specifically, like another lifetime ago, as if time in its normal sense wasn't applicable. It was like it happened to someone else, to a character she read about in a novel, or a protagonist in a film: minor characters in some other drama.

Half-remembered, like a dream after waking.

Forty-six

Hiero was all alone in Tower Bridge for the first time in months. My, did it feel good to have Zhen and Harland out of the equation for a little while.

He stood in front of the large mark scored on the elevator room's wall, gently running his fingers over its perfect grooves and spirals. Morwen. Such a perfectionist.

Elra and her rift-making ability was game-changing. Not just for the Marked, but for humanity. He knew it was only a matter of time until unmarked governments and corporations got involved: and they would get involved eventually. The Wise wouldn't see it. He doubted Elra herself would see it, well, until she was thrust into the back of a van at gunpoint.

Then there was going to be one hell of a change. One way or another, the world would become radically different, almost overnight. If a government reached her first, that nation would become an instant superpower with near-infinite resources and total, instantaneous global reach. If a corporation managed it, they would have a world monopoly on everything within days.

And what would things look like then?

Not pretty. Even if dear old Britain got hold of it first, or a peaceful Scandinavian nation, the end result would be the same.

War. Total war.

There's only so long you can keep something like that under wraps. And everyone – everyone – would want a piece of it. Or, if the rest of the world found themselves oppressed, exploited or inconvenienced by those who had it, they'd soon take up arms.

He shuddered at the terrifying prospects the future held.

There was a solution, for him at least. Find a way out. Go somewhere – or some-when – else.

He placed his palm in the center of the mark. On his fingertips were a series of small marks that acted as receptors for extra senses: he could determine the chemical composition of objects, their mass, radioactivity, and entropic trajectory, amongst other things.

He felt the quality of the mark, its character, its entangled partner thousands of miles away...

But there was something odd. He withdrew his hand quickly, expression quizzical. Something, or someone, was tapping into the entanglement connection.

Impossible, surely? He replaced his hand.

But there it was. That unknown something, trying to force a connection.

Forty-seven

On the final day before taking the plunge into the past, Morwen, Kai and Elra set off into the savannah to do a trial run. They started at dawn, heading out into the cold morning with their lightweight packs as the rosy sunlight started to dispel the cold of the night. They hadn't brought much, on the principle that their actual trip would (hopefully) only last days at the most, and that large, heavy bags would only slow them down. The first thing they did was rift to the top of one of the hills above the village.

Elra misjudged it, and the destination rift ended up slightly too far off the ground: when Kai jumped through first he tripped over and fell into a Camel thorn bush. He pulled himself up, swearing, and soon they were all standing on the summit of the hill with an awesome view laid out in front of them.

'Getting the height advantage is clearly the way to go,' Elra enthused. 'From here we could rift to anywhere that's visible.' And there was a lot that was visible.

Morwen started scribing an anchor mark on a nearby rock. 'Just in case we get lost and need to get back here,' she explained. The sun-shaped mark in the center of her palm projected a beam of intense light onto the surface of the rock, a beam just like the one which came through the window when Elra and Kai escaped from London. Her hand movements were minuscule and delicate, and more often than not the beam's direction seemed to move independently of her hand.

'How...?' Elra asked, feeling a hint of that child-like wonder that she'd felt when Kai demonstrated his electric hands back outside Driesdale.

'The Sun,' Morwen said, as if that explained it.

Kai looked equally impressed. 'Channeling sunlight, and concentrating it into a thin beam. Oh, and moonlight too.'

'Moonlight is reflected sunlight,' Morwen clarified, as she finished. What was left was a perfectly smooth mark on the stone, its edges and curves as exact as if a machine had made it. Then, rather dramatically, she extended her arm and shot a beam at a small hillock out in the distant plain. It was like someone had suddenly drawn a straight white line from her palm to the near-horizon. This time her arm didn't move at all.

'Try that,' she said.

'What?' asked Elra and Kai together, still slightly amazed.

'Make a rift on the mark I just made.'

Elra went over to the mark and felt the quality and character of space-time there. She could feel the mark's equivalent out on the hillock, their entanglement connecting the two places. She ripped the rift.

No falling through this time: the transition was seamless. Elra was sure she saw the barest hint of a smug smile on Morwen's face.

Now they were out in the middle of the plain, looking at the hills they were just standing on about half a dozen miles away.

'I'm beginning to feel slightly useless compared to your girls,' Kai joked.

'You shouldn't,' Morwen said. 'Body Knowledge has its place.'

He raised his eyebrows. 'Well, it's a very small place, compared to lasers and rifts.'

'It won't be useless when it comes to hunting.'

'Hunting?' he frowned.

'We'll need to eat somehow. The Founders and the other people we meet will have a hard enough time feeding themselves, let alone us. We can't afford to carry all our food: it'll slow us down. We'll have to catch it ourselves.'

'Can't you just zap the animals with your laser?' he said, defensively.

'That will bleed them out. They'll be in agony.'

He looked blank.

Elra realized where this was going. 'She means you can stun them first. With your electromagnetism.'

'Ah, I see,' he said. 'But the distance involved - '

Morwen interrupted him by aiming a beam at a nearby tree and holding it there, burning a small, smoky hole in its bark. 'Combine your sparks with my beam. Come on.'

Looking slightly confused, he stood alongside Morwen and tentatively raised his hand.

'Go on, then,' she egged.

He loosed a test spark. It snapped onto the light beam, as if magnetized, and shot down its length in an instant. 'Nice,' he said, eyebrows raised.

'Give us a show, Kai. Is that all you're made of?' Morwen said suggestively.

He stood back and extended his arm, grinning. He released a chain of lightning from his hand which turned Morwen's light beam into a vortex of electricity and light. The tree exploded in flames.

'WHOA!' he and Elra cried.

Morwen grinned darkly. 'Maybe tone it down a bit when it comes to hunting. We don't want to cook our food as we kill it.'

Forty-eight

For the rest of the day Kai was in a good mood. They spent their time rifting between places, getting used to the savannah environment and generally bonding as a group.

Elra felt a distinction between the rifts she created with the help of Morwen's anchor marks and the free-standing ones she made herself. The first felt "locked" somehow, since she had no control over the destination: when she created them it was if she was opening an existing weakness in space-time, exploiting an already-forged connection. The ones she created herself were much more nebulous. She could only open them to places she knew or could see; and even then a lot depended on her memory and conception of the place.

They caught some guineafowl for lunch: Kai and Morwen's combined powers worked perfectly, stunning and killing the bird instantly.

Morwen's opaqueness gradually faded. She was a woman of few words, most of which were slightly 'off' by most people's standards, but Elra found that under her mysterious surface led a discreet friendliness and a (somewhat dark) sense of humor. She got on especially well with Kai, in a one-upping, older-brother kind of way, despite her age. Then again, neither of them had any idea just how old she really was. Regardless, Elra saw a lot of herself in her: more than in Olympia, strangely.

Now night was falling and the air was getting cold. They'd been watching a spectacular African sunset from an overhanging crag in the high hills, the huge sun dipping in the sky as if into water, but now it had passed beyond the horizon and the heavens were getting dark. Far above, the half-Moon took over the sun's shift and shone brighter and brighter as the moments wore on. It reminded Elra of something.

'That night you saved us...'

'Enabled you to save yourselves,' Morwen retorted, without even listening to her question.

'Anyway, that night, your beam of light seemed to be coming from - '

'The moon,' Kai finished. 'Yeah, weird. I'm glad you asked, Elra. That's been puzzling me.'

Morwen grinned. Without saying another word she stood up and aimed a beam at the Moon. It seemed to fade out of sight far up in the air above them, as the distance made its thin line too difficult to distinguish. About three seconds later another one appeared in the distant sky, one of its ends pointing Moon-wards and the other disappearing behind the hills.

'You're...'

'Reflecting it off the Moon?' Kai gasped.

'I am,' Morwen confirmed. 'Or, should I say, off a reflective part of the lunar surface.'

'Does... Does it reach that far?' he asked in wonder.

'Well, clearly it does.'

'How?'

'Light travels in a straight line and just keeps on going,' Morwen smiled.

'So that's how you made the mark on the wall in London,' he finished, finally. 'Because the Earth is curved, you would need a big reflector in the sky to bounce your beam off. And you've got one, right there...'

'Now you're getting it,' she grinned.

Elra wasn't satisfied, though. 'But how do you know where to aim on the Moon? And how do you know where the beam is going to land? Over those distances, it just seems so exact.'

Morwen paused for effect for a moment. Kai and Elra looked at her expectantly. She let the beam disappear and brought her hand back down. She looked at them mysteriously.

'Magic!'

Kai laughed. His explosive guffaws startled some nearby birds.

Elra grinned. 'Alright then, Ms. Magic: scribe a mark on the other side of the world and let's have a five-minute holiday.'

Morwen looked at Elra, dead serious. 'Now you're thinking big. I've been waiting for you to ask me to do something like this. You're starting to understand your potential. Our potential.' She turned and gave the Moon a narrow-eyed stare for a moment, as if sussing something out. Then, quick as a shot, her hand was back in the air with its intensely white beam pointed heavenwards. About ten seconds later she dropped it back down and scribed the second mark on another nearby rock. 'Shall we?' she said, gesturing to her creation.

Elra rifted. And then, on top of that hill in the middle of the Tanzanian savannah, stood a doorway to a sandy, tree-less island surrounded by crystal waters. The three of them stepped through, immediately feeling heat hit them. It was day here, and the sun was fierce.

'Where is this?' Kai asked.

'A lonely island somewhere in the mid-Atlantic. About fifty miles from the Azores.'

They sat down on the sand and basked in the warmth and light. Surrounding them with absolute totality was a calm sea, flat and vast; their island felt like a tiny platform suspended between sea and sky, or a tiny rocky planet in infinite space. Elra was overcome with a strange feeling, hard to pin down and to put into words, but for a moment she could almost feel how Cali must feel, a sense of near-total isolation.

'Out here it feels like we're the last people on the Earth,' she said idly.

Morwen grinned. 'Maybe we will be, if tomorrow goes wrong.'

'Thanks for the encouraging thoughts, guys,' Kai grimaced. 'Having said that, I can imagine worse people to share the world with. Re-populating it would be an interesting experience...'

Elra gave him a funny look. Morwen just smiled.

They spent a few more minutes sitting in silence, listening to the ocean's quiet song. Elra took off her shoes and let the sea wash over her feet, her toes curled at the cooling sensation.

After a while, Morwen stood up. 'I think I will go now,' she announced, 'we must rest before tomorrow. Elra, would you mind?'

Elra duly created a rift to the brothers' village, to the courtyard near the baobab tree. 'I might stick around for a while. It's nice here,' she said.

'Same,' Kai added.

'Well, I'll leave you lovers to it,' Morwen chuckled before stepping back to Africa, leaving the two of them alone in the middle of the Atlantic.

Kai was blushing fiercely. He came and joined Elra by the water's edge, removing his shoes and following suit with his feet. He edged towards her awkwardly, as if he didn't know where to put himself, until they were side by side, arms brushing.

'So if tomorrow doesn't work out...,' he began, eyes focused on some faraway nothingness.

'What do you mean?' Elra countered. 'Tomorrow will be a walk in the park.' She didn't believe it, but it felt good to say it anyway.

'But say it isn't. I just want you to know... ' he continued, breaking off mid-sentence, eyes still locked in front.

'Know what?' Elra said tenderly, with a slight suspicion where this might be going.

'I dunno,' he finished, looking down. 'I really like you, Elra.

There was a positive tension welling in Elra's chest, calling for catharsis. She thought how oddly handsome he looked with his lean features and leather jacket, his discreet tattoos and slightly goofy smile. And then she thought about his egocentric mother, his absent father, a childhood raised among people who never really loved him, a crush who was never really present, who worked on an entirely different mental level. Had anyone ever held him in their arms and told him they cared? And all the while he maintained his jovial attitude like a shield, as if all his manic energy and quick jokes could cover up the hurt. 'I really like you too,' she finally replied, feeling dumb as soon as the words left her mouth.

He looked up and smiled, giving her a quick peck on the cheek before getting to his feet. 'Better head back too, I guess. Big day tomorrow.'

Elra was left feeling slightly empty as she stood up and turned to face him. 'Big day indeed,' she smiled wanly, before tearing the rift that would take them home.

Forty-nine

Massur sat in a corner of the Tricula thinking about what he was about to do. All his life he'd been used to obeying orders, carrying out the commands of those above him in the Pillar of Faith's strict hierarchy. He knew some people in his position who found it relieving, in a way, to defer all thought and responsibility to their betters. Massur wasn't one of those people, and took pride in the fact. Still, orders were orders, and this order couldn't be countermanded. Yet, over the past few days, he'd found himself taking an odd shine to their prisoner. It had been inevitable, really. As soon as he'd convinced Zar Mittander to let him wear a Speaking Ear, and to provide her with good food, he knew he'd start to build an attachment. The Zar had capitulated on the principle that being able to communicate with her would lead to more effective information gathering, and the good food would mean she wouldn't be weakened when she was put in the Mouth of the Rift.

Unfortunately she was bound for the Mouth tomorrow. This was the source of Massur's current heartache. How could he consign someone he'd fed and watered, and even helped out once or twice in a strictly off-the-record way (he'd given her a linen wrap when her blood had come yesterday evening), to the horrors of such a device? Yet he knew it was all part of the plan, and had known it for years. She was a key element an incredibly bold narrative, possibly the greatest narrative in Manu history. Was he going to let his base feelings get in the way of the future, of the coming Hegemony? Kindness is an animal emotion, so he'd been taught in his teenage years in the Pillar of Valor. The strong must overcome the weak, and the ultimate strength is Manu. Only slaves desire peace. So every neophyte sentinel recited at waking, noon and just before sleeping.

That familiar weariness washed over him. He'd seen over forty suns so far in his life, and recently he'd felt himself getting sick of all this hate. He'd done things when he was younger he wasn't proud of, and of late they'd been coming back to visit him in the lonely hours of night, and in the dull moments of the day. If one action could atone for all that wrong... if only. It was probably too late for that now. He'd imagined taking Amin on a trip to the North and setting him free, but if discovered, that would be death for the both of them. Subverting the natural order of Master and Slave, a Manu with a Slave mind, a disease in our holy ranks. Doing something for their prisoner was even more impossible.

He'd come to the decision that, if all this went to plan, he'd go on a journey to somewhere far away, to the othertime if possible. He'd take a Speaking Ear and a few days' supplies, and see among which slave races or animal-savages he found himself.

His train of thought was broken as a sentinel hailed him. From their high voice it was clearly a woman, fourteen or fifteen years old at the most, her form and face concealed by the bulky armor and mask. What horrors would she go on to commit, in the name of Manu? What acts of violence had she made already? Her fervor was palpable. He knew the feeling: he'd been caught up in the same excitement, the same feeling of self-importance, the same spring in his step. The thrill of power in running down escaping slaves, massacring savages, having your way with any non-Manu you chose. The intense, heady feeling of knowing you are part of the strongest force in the world, that you are the might of Manu embodied, infallible, omnipotent and perfect.

'There's been a development at the Mouth,' she announced.

Massur was on his feet at once. 'What exactly?'

'I cannot say. A disturbance of some sort.'

'I will be there at once. Run to the Zamanutec Blood Yard and tell them to dispatch a detail of Immortals to the Mouth,' he ordered. 'And be as quick as you can. The coming Hegemony may rely on it.'

'By the will of Zaloth Zar!' the young sentinel cried, her voice quivering slightly at the mention of the Immortals.

'By the will of Zaloth Zar,' Massur responded, grimacing.

Fifty

The morning had risen. The day had come. The smell of the cave's musky dryness caught in Elra's nostrils. This was the moment of truth.

The indescribably ancient mark in front of her was illuminated by the glow from Morwen's fist: she felt for its quality and character, reaching back through the eons to the time when a hand, no different from her own, had daubed it on the timeless rock of the cave.

She was surrounded by all the others. Morwen and Kai were standing to her right and left respectively, waiting for the rift to open, waiting for their first glimpse of the past. Olympia was to one side, an anxious expression etched on her face, seeking the barest hint of a connection, any tiny detail or overlooked fact that could spell trouble. Singoro was standing in the cave's mouth, ready to inform Tsonge, who was back at the tree, if anything should go amiss.

Trying to make a time-rift was very different from making a spatial rift, Elra found. No way near as easy. Even making one to that universe she saw through the mask was simpler: at least she had already seen and experienced it with her own eyes and mind. This was shooting in the dark, and it was making her uncomfortable.

'Anything?' Olympia asked tensely.

'It's hard to say.'

'We could try another mark if you want? There are plenty more from the right time period.'

'No it's okay, this one seems to be particularly... evocative for some reason.' It was painted in red ochre, and was shaped vaguely like an animal, with various swirls and appendages that made it look spirit-like and ephemeral.

'There was one back over there, the stick-man one?' Olympia continued.

'Give the girl some room to concentrate!' Morwen reprimanded, much to Olympia's visible dissatisfaction. Thankfully, nothing more was said.

There. An image leaped into Elra's mind: a man, young like she was, thick hair, the overpowering stink of sweat and piss and butchered animal, a feeling of wonder as he made his mark on stone. Completion, satisfaction, fulfillment. Reverence for forces he knew he was part of, the beating heart of his world...

She made the rift, eyes closed. A collective gasp from Morwen, Kai and Olympia...

Gingerly opening one eye she saw the same mark, fresh as day, the red of the ochre as vivid and deep as the surface of Mars. It glistened with moisture.

Then something unexpected happened. Elra felt the rift spasm violently as an external force vied for control over it.

'What's happening?' Olympia demanded, her voice tense as a bowstring.

'I - ' Elra began, before the rift destination changed to a scorching red desert, not too dissimilar in color to the painting that had just been in front of them.

'Close it!' Olympia screeched. She grabbed Morwen and Kai and thrust them out the way.

'I'm trying!' Elra cried. She couldn't think of anything else to zero on, so she defaulted to the universe she saw through the mask. The ancient painting reappeared, vandalized with graffiti in a script she didn't recognize. Behind her she was vaguely aware of Morwen and Kai taking up a defensive position.

The interference intensified, but she tried with all her might to keep the rift locked on the mask universe. To her horror, she found she had no way to close it.

'Why won't it close?!' Olympia cried.

'I don't know, Olympia! Something's interfering!'

'I should have seen this coming! We tried this under-prepared! What was I thinking?'

'Morwen!' Kai piped up. 'Can't you make an anchor mark under this rift and – I don't know – put the other one somewhere, anywhere, so it locks on to it?'

'That won't do any good now,' she replied bitterly. 'That requires Elra making the initial connection, and by the looks of it it's out of her hands now.'

It was slipping, oh god, it was slipping. Inch by inch, the rift was gradually being dominated by the interfering force. A flash of the desert. Back to the graffiti. The connection was becoming more nebulous with every second, less palpable, less concrete...

'Guys, it's going to overcome me,' Elra gasped. 'I can't hold it much longer!'

'Shit!' Olympia cried.

She heard a crackle of electricity behind her as Kai sparked up his fist. Morwen's light grew brighter.

Olympia dashed over to Singoro, who was deep in a mental conversation with Tsonge. 'Tell him to get everybody in the village up here,' she shouted, hitting his chest. 'Marked and unmarked. Get people from nearby villages and towns. Anyone with a gun!'

She drew a revolver from her pocket, her hands trembling as she rejoined the group.

A few more seconds. That was all they had.

'What do we know about these people, Kai?' Morwen asked.

'They fight with antique weapons,' he replied. 'Oh, and they have silly hats and masks.'

That was it. Elra could do no more. She gasped and fell to her knees as the rift was ripped out of her control. She felt Kai pull her back into safety, his muscles strengthened with Body Knowledge lifting her as easy as a child.

There wasn't a desert on the other side of the rift. There was a courtyard packed with a hundred towering men, clad in red robes and swirling white marks, staring at them with hate in their eyes.

Fifty-one

Amin came tearing into Cali's enclosed courtyard, dashing across the black sand in his oversized wooden clogs, his bag trailing behind him.

'Quick!' he screeched, 'get up!'

At that moment Cali wasn't feeling too great. Her period had come the day before, and the combination of the cramps and the heat had left her feeling like a sweaty, sticky, achy, forlorn mess. She hadn't got a pad or tampon, so for the first few hours her blood had slicked down her legs in strings, before Massur had paid her a visit, noticed her predicament, and slipped her a linen cloth through the bars.

She pulled herself to her feet, holding the blood-soaked cloth between her legs. Her head pounded.

'Something's happened! All the sentinels are running to the Mouth!' he exclaimed.

Sure enough, Cali saw that her perennial guards on the high walls had vanished. 'What?!'

'They're moving! Now is our chance!' Quick as a flash, he removed a pair of wooden clogs from his bag and slipped them through the bars. 'Put these on!'

Cali complied. 'How are we going to get me out of this thing?'

'Hang on!' he cried, excited and fearful in equal measure. He was pulling something from the sack.

A small, complex-looking device emerged. It looked like something between a wand and a miniature radio mast: it bristled with thin wires and carefully-calibrated appendages, the majority of which pointed forwards towards its tip. Amin jammed it in the cage's lock.

'What's that?' she asked.

'Something that picks locks on its own. The Dalari Underground stole it from the Pillar of Valor's stores a few years ago, and have been waiting for the right moment to use it. And this is the right moment!'

'How long will it take?'

He seemed stumped. 'I... I don't know. But it will work!' He grabbed the cloth covering the top of the cage and tore it in half. The scorching sun immediately hit her and she felt a wave of nausea pass over.

'Wrap your lips in this!' he said, passing her part of the cloth.

'My... lips?'

'Yes! Your lips! Their moon-blood has come, and the Manu hate it: they think it's unclean, we must hide it from them!'

She realized he meant her period. Not really knowing what to do, she roughly wrapped it between her legs and around her waist. It looked like she was wearing an oversized brown diaper.

He winced at the sight of her, but passed her the other half anyway. 'Put this one over your head and let it cover your body!'

To her relief, this improvised shawl was long enough to hide her ridiculous undercarriage garment.

The lockpick clicked and whirred. Amin looked at it anxiously. 'When we are out, you must pretend you are a Dalari, or another slave. Always keep your eyes on the ground! Stay by my side and do what I do.'

Fifty-two

The lock clicked open. Cali felt her heart leap.

'This is it! Follow me!' Amin cried.

A massive rush of adrenaline hit her right in the temples as she pushed open the door. Freedom! It felt perfect, regardless of the sweaty, bloody, achey mess she was in.

'Careful on the sand: It will burn your skin!'

She took it gingerly, one step at a time. Its fiery heat was tangible even through the clogs' thick wooden soles. When they were halfway across the courtyard she took the opportunity to look back at what had been her home for the past week: it looked so small and cruel, a cage that a decent person would be loath to keep an animal in, let alone a human being. The high walls made its containing courtyard look like an amphitheater, as if the sentinels on the ramparts had been spectators in some strange gladiatorial show in which the caged prisoner (her, as of about a minute ago) was to be thrown to unknown beasts.

'Hurry!' Amin called in front of her. They made it to the squat gate in the wall and yanked it open. 'This way,' he beckoned, leading her down a wide corridor that led to a cavernous thoroughfare, a good twenty meters wide and hundreds of meters long. At regular intervals along its length stood burning braziers whose fires emitted a curiously red glow; other corridors branched off its main trunk in various places, but for all its expansiveness it seemed an oddly empty place.

Not that empty, they found out. After walking down its length for not more than ten seconds, an echoing tumult grew at its far end. Running footsteps, and lots of them.

'Look down,' Amin hissed fearfully.

Cali pulled her makeshift garment over her head. She could hear the people up ahead shouting. Most short-lived escape ever, she thought to herself angrily. Still, she kept pace with Amin, not letting her gaze wander more than few feet in front of her.

The roar got louder. Running footfalls, frantic calling and armor plates clashing. This is it, isn't it? A part of her couldn't help but laugh at her ridiculous situation. Running around with a kid, dressed in a big brown diaper. Well, at least I'll die a humorous death. She threw caution to the wind for the briefest of seconds and chanced a glimpse of her impending doom.

Fifty-three

There were dozens of sentinels, all manically running down the center of the thoroughfare in a state of considerable excitement. To her immense pleasure she realized they weren't coming for her. They bolted right past them, the echoing sound of their ruckus Doppler-shifting as they passed by.

'Faster,' Amin ushered, once they'd passed. Once we've made it through the Tricula it'll be easier.

'The what?'

'It is the Pillar of Valor's ancient ceremonial hall. There are usually lots of people in it. There are five large runs like this one which branch off it.'

'Great,' Cali winced. 'And once we pass through?'

'The streets!' Amin enthused. 'We can lose ourselves in the crowds.'

Let's hope we don't literally get lost.

They passed corridor after corridor branching off from the main 'run' they were on. Cali caught glimpses of what lay at their ends: more sunny courtyards, stairways leading both up and down, locked doors, rooms with ominous glows... the complex they were in must be huge.

'Here we are. Keep your head down,' Amin whispered.

Cali couldn't help but look anyway. The already expansive thoroughfare broadened out and gave way to a gigantic circular hall with a dizzyingly high dome. Colossal windows dominated about a third of its circumference, tall and thin and dozens of meters off the ground, letting in great segments of sunlight. The rest of the wall contained entrances to more thoroughfares like the one they'd just come out from.

In its center, gargantuan and magnificently terrifying, was a statue of what looked like an angel. She couldn't get a good look at it yet, because it was facing the other way.

There were surprisingly few people. Groups of slaves mostly, scurrying from one run to another. Details of sentinels here and there, but most were quite far away. They crossed as quick as they could, heading for a large open entrance under the bank of windows. The floor was made of a ruddy stone, polished and grooved where thousands of footfalls walked over it every day.

'Oh no,' Amin whimpered.

'What?' she hissed in return.

'A group of Elect. Just keep walking.'

Cali studied the floor intently, not daring to raise her eyes too much. These Elect, whatever they were, had an odd gait by the sounds of it. They were near now, approaching from the opposite direction.

'Whatever you do, do not look at them.'

Am I not allowed to look at anybody? She fought the urge to look, and the eventually the Elects passed. They were so near the entrance.

'Once we are outside, turn right,' Amin whispered.

'Okay,' she replied, as a thought crossed her mind. That statue. She turned to catch a glimpse of its colossal form.

It was terrifying. Not in a horror-film way, but in an anti-human way. A masked Manu sentinel, over a hundred feet tall, staring down at a group of naked, diminutive, terrified people clasped in its almighty fisted gauntlet. In its other hand were held two circular disks and a crescent shape. On the pedestal were carved four characters in an alphabet Cali hadn't ever seen before, but she knew instinctively what it said. Manu.

'YOU!' someone called in a deep, resonant voice. Cali knew they meant her.

The speaker in question was striding over the floor towards them. He wasn't a regular sentinel: his headdress was taller, his mask was white and he was carrying a staff with... what was that?

She felt her head thrust floorwards before she had a chance to study it closer. It was Amin, making sure she was in a position that showed reverence and respect.

'Have you no HUMILITY?' the Elect shouted.

Have you no humanity? was all that Cali could think of saying. Thankfully, she didn't.

'She is a new acquisition,' Amin offered, trembling.

Her face was roughly grabbed by a course hand. The Elect pulled her up – he was scarily strong – so her eyes were level with his mask's slits. He stank of sweat. She was overcome by a manic urge to whack him right in the ear.

To her horror, a spike shot out from the forearm that was holding her and stopped not even an inch from her eye.

'Next time you'll lose it, slave, if you dare look upon our might again.' He dropped Cali and turned away.

That was close. She was shaken, but angry more than anything. Amin grabbed her and dragged her away and out into the street.

Fifty-four

The street was pure chaos. Its smell was incredible. The Cali's surprise, most of the people bustling up and down its length were slaves. Slaves carrying loads, pushing barrows, driving carts pulled by... oh my god.

'It's a fourhorn,' Amin explained helpfully.

To Cali, it looked like a cow, except bigger, with a huge, arcing pair of horns complemented by two smaller ones. The top of her head barely reached the beast's arched shoulder blades.

'They're very friendly,' Amin said.

'I'm sure they are,' she replied uncertainly, sidestepping the lumbering behemoth. Sure enough, the fourhorn gently nudged people in its way, and seemed surprisingly deft on its dinner-plate sized cloven hooves.

This made Cali look down at the street itself. She quickly wished she hadn't. It was a mire of excrement and waste, kept permanently slushy by the endless movement. In one or two places, near the edges of buildings, the delightful mix had caked over in the sun.

The buildings themselves were a bit nicer. The façade of the Tricula dominated one side of the street, raised from the mess by half a dozen steps. The other side was a row of buildings in a similar architectural style: smooth, domed, made out of a reddish sandstone, with long, high windows and raised foundations. It felt... well, Cali wasn't sure. Middle Eastern? North African? Except she knew deep down that it was neither. Still, the street's bustle was reassuring in a sense. At least there are people in this world, albeit some rather sadistic ones.

'Out the way! Move!' someone was calling ahead of them. It was a slave walking in front of a litter bearing an important person.

'Cover your face,' Amin asked, 'and walk to the side.'

Cali complied. She gave the litter a sideways glance as it passed. Inside, behind the thin screen of linen, was a Zar. That much was clear from the large, circular, blank-faced mask. Surprisingly, the Zar seemed to be staring right back at her.

Zar Mittander. Oh, god if that was him... it would make sense, him visiting the Pillar of Valor. She turned away and looked at the ground, grabbing Amin and pulling him along faster.

'We have to get off the main streets,' she hissed.

'Okay, there's a junction up here.'

The side-streets were more pleasant. The ground here was sandy, with the odd trail of waste; there was more room to move, but there were less people, which made Cali slightly nervous. More chance of being singled out and recognized.

Still, they pressed on at a half-run, half-walk. Down sandy alleys, past open doorways and walled courtyards. The buildings became less and less grand, the tall-domed stone monoliths giving way to three- or four- floor domiciles made of wood and mismatched stone. Sentinels beat these endless streets mercilessly, doing their rounds in pairs or more. Thankfully, they gave them no bother beyond scornful stares.

How much further? The sun was getting to her. Combined with her period and the city's stink (which was lesser here than on the main street, but still noticeable), it made for one hell of a headache.

'You got any water in that bag of yours, Amin?'

He looked at her with growing trepidation. 'Water, oh mother, water!' he exclaimed, as if being overcome with a sudden dread. 'I should have made sure you had enough before we left. Slaves can only draw water in their master's house and in their area of work: if they are caught drawing it anywhere else they can be put to death on the spot!'

'So, you're telling me there's no way we can get a drink somewhere?'

'Y-yes,' he said timidly, looking forlorn. 'I am sorry.'

Somehow, knowing she wasn't allowed water made her even more thirsty. Her mouth immediately felt drier, and she began to crave it like nothing else. A splitting headache was coming her way, she knew it. Cramps would increase. Bugger everything about this. She was going to get water, one way or the other. Still, better to be free and thirsty than trapped and sated.

'Where are we headed?' she asked.

'The Desert Gate. Not far now. Bhazi and Orranin will meet us there. There might be water!'

Might. 'Who are they?'

'People who will help us. Fellow Dalari. There aren't many guards at that gate.'

'Why?'

'Because it leads out into the desert.'

Cali saw where this was going. 'Will we be... crossing that desert?'

Amin sighed. 'Yes.'

Great. They continued.

Fifty-five

Soon the buildings became grander and the streets narrower. Their architecture seemed more ornate, with detailed flourishes around their high windows and small domes on the roofs. They were built purely out of fine polished sandstone.

'The Sand District,' Amin explained. 'We're close.'

Soon they broke free of the maze of houses and out on to another thoroughfare: unlike the previous one, this one was twice as wide and paved with the same ruddy sandstone as the buildings: no mire of excrement here. It was practically deserted, which only served to emphasize its immense length. When she looked to her right, in the vague direction of what she assumed was the center of the city, the road shot like an arrow straight into the urban heart, bisecting the Sand District and terminating at a colossal building in the far distance. To her left, it ran on for about a hundred meters and stopped at a gate set in a high section of city wall.

Cali looked right again. 'What's that building down there?' she queried, pointing towards the road's vanishing point. 'The one that's pretty much all dome?'

'Zamanutec. Literally, "the House of Manu Power". It's the symbolic building of the Pillar of Faith, kind of like their Tricula. Massur has a workshop in one of its towers, so I've been inside a lot.'

She asked something that had been bugging her for a while. 'The Pillar of Faith, is it like... the Church?'

Amin looked confused. 'The Pillar of Faith is what administers the worship of Manu. But it also has small, secret groups, like the one Massur belongs to. I do not know what they do exactly, I just carry out his orders; but from mine and others experience, we are pretty sure they research magic.'

'Like the Mouth of the Rift?'

'Yes,' he confirmed, shivering. 'And like you.'

This took Cali aback. Of course, I'm supposed to be some magic person who can solve all their problems. She thought about her current appearance and how amusing that idea was. 'What about the other Pillars?'

'Well, there's the Pillar of Valor, which controls the sentinels and the other soldiers. You were being held captive in their compound, although you were technically a Pillar of Faith prisoner. Then there's the Pillar of Scripture, which keeps records and does administration; and the Pillar of Secrets, which... well, I don't really know what they do, but people find them scary. Even Massur fears them.'

'And who controls the Pillars?'

'There's the Red Council, made up of all the Zars. Zar Mittander is a Red Councilor, and the current head of the Pillar of Faith. There are lots of Zars though, about twenty, maybe more. Sometimes another one takes over the running of a Pillar from the current boss. Some say they kill each other for positions, some say they just take it in turns. It's hard to tell them apart, they all wear the same outfit.'

'Terrifying outfit.'

'Yes. To hide their identities and make assassination of a particular one more difficult. And then above the Red Council...' he hesitated.

'What?'

'There's... Zaloth Zar.' He trembled as he said the words.

'And is he king, or something?'

'Um, I don't know,' he shuddered. 'I'm not supposed to say the name. He supposedly lives in the Ziggurat, a closed-off district of the city, but none of the slaves that have been in have ever seen him. Sentinels neither, from what we've overheard. I plucked up the courage to talk to Massur about it once, and he said Zaloth Zar has ruled the Manu for hundreds of years, since before they reached the coast and enslaved our people.'

'Hundreds of years?'

'Yes.'

Cali frowned as Amin led her towards the Desert Gate.

They approached it cautiously, keeping to the line of buildings to avoid exposing themselves in the road. The whole area was eerily deserted.

'Is it usually this quiet down here?'

'Yes,' Amin affirmed, although there was a quaver of apprehension in the tone of his voice. 'The Sand District is often quiet.'

'Does anyone actually live in these buildings?'

Before he could speak, as if to answer her question, the door in a nearby house jerked open.

'Who will lead the children to the freedom shore?' a voice from within hissed.

'Mama Umbaru!' Amin answered. He turned to Cali, beckoning her forward. 'This is it!'

They snuck inside and were greeted by two older Dalari, one male one female, in their thirties by the looks of it. The house they were in was just a stone shell, half-reclaimed by the desert beyond the city walls. The floor above had fallen in and sand was piled in the corners. Something of a camp had been made here: a few sacks sat lined up against one wall and a hammock hung between two snapped joists.

'This is Elra, the one I was telling you about. Elra, this is Orranin and Bhazi.'

'Pleased to meet you,' she said, feeling self-conscious about her clothes. 'You wouldn't happen to have any water, would you?'

They eyed her with confused smiles. Orranin removed a small pot from a bag and handed it to her.

Pure bliss. She demolished gulp after gulp, hardly pausing to breathe; she hadn't realized water could be so... satisfying. Her relief was almost sexual in its intensity. She finished the whole pot and immediately felt bloated and mildly sick. A massive burp exited her mouth, but she didn't care.

'Amin tells us you have great power,' Bhazi said.

Cali was still riding the high of finally getting some water in her system. She didn't know what to say. 'I have great knowledge, and knowledge is power,' she quipped. Probably not the type of power they're looking for, though.

'And you will help us with our cause?'

She had to admit, even though she'd only technically been a slave for an hour or so, she was starting to sympathize. 'Well, great causes need great leaders...' she began, about to disavow herself as not being one...

'Exactly!' Amin chorused.

'And I can help that leader,' she continued, picking her words, 'when we get to wherever we're going. Which is where, by the way?' And we better be quick about it. By now they'd almost certainly discovered she'd escaped.

'You'll take our places accompanying the acolytes on their procession up the Red Road. The group should be heading out soon, a few hours before sunset,' explained Orranin. 'When you are far from Sol Mana, escape them - that part is up to you - and head north, far north to the Captured Sea. Follow its shores to the west and you'll come to the Mountains of the Moon, and the Manu slave camps at their base. Up among the peaks the escapees have made a free colony. Find them,' he said, coming forward and placing his hand on her shoulder, 'and lead them back to the sea.'

'Only in your tiny slave dreams will this come to pass,' a deep voice announced, startling the four of them.

Before Cali could fully process what was going on, Amin broke down in wailing tears, wracked with anguish. She turned to the other two, only to see them obliterated by a blast of fire, like from a flamethrower, raining down on them from above.

Fifty-six

An Elect dropped down from the rafters, silent as a cat. The top of his staff - an angry red snout - was still smoldering.

'I should have put your eye out while I had the chance. Perhaps it would have taught you a lesson. But slaves are slaves by nature, and have slave minds.' He dashed towards Amin.

'Get up, scum!' he shouted, his foot laying into his abdomen. Amin wailed in pain.

Cali's momentary confusion faded and time seemed to slow. She saw with precise detail the way her friend writhed, mouth agape, and how his tormentor stood over his diminutive prepubescent body, savoring the hurt. The Elect's shoulders heaved as the spike slipped out of his armored forearm.

Clarity. She knew what to do. Perhaps it was the way his shoulders were relaxed, the way his back was slightly turned to her. How his mask partially obscured his peripheral vision, and how the spike must weigh down his arm slightly, restricting movement. The complacency of the conqueror.

She lunged. The movements came naturally, like they'd been rehearsed to perfection. One hand on his elbow, another on his spike.

Wham. She bent his arm and drove the spike through his eye and into his brain. Blood ejaculated from the wound, covering her rags.

The Elect fell back on to the sandy floor, his arm held up to his eye, lifeless.

Her arms were around Amin, pulling him to his feet. His eyes were wide with shock and pain, staring down at the Elect's corpse as his hands clutched Cali' rags.

'You... you,' he began, struggling to find the words.

'I know,' Cali responded, staring at the blood soaking into the sand. An eye for an eye.

'You really are powerful,' Amin managed. 'I owe you my life.' He put his arms around her and buried his head in her breast.

She felt a wetness. It took her a moment to realize it was his tears.

They stripped the Elect of his armor. Cali donned his under-robe: it was plain grey, with only a small spatter of blood at the back of the neck. Better than on oversized nappy and a raggy cloth. She put his thick leather belt around her waist, and threw a sand-yellow cloak around her shoulders that she found in one of the sacks.

Amin took a cloak but stayed well clear of the corpse. Cali took one last look at the Elect. Something moved within her. Carefully, she bent down extracted the spike from his head and removed its containing armor from his forearm. A simple catch mechanism. She slipped it on to her own forearm: it wasn't as heavy as she'd thought it'd be. Next, she took his staff and beat it against a corner of wall until it broke, leaving the fire-breathing head and a stalk of wood. She tucked it into the folds of her cloak. Might come in useful.

Amin looked at her with a combination of amazement and fear. 'I didn't know you were a warrior!'

'Everyone is, deep down,' Cali smiled back at him.

Fifty-seven

They waited for the acolyte procession outside in the shade of the building, keeping an eye out for any movement in the afternoon's still heat.

Eventually, an aberration in the heat haze appeared in the road, far down towards the city center and the vast dome of Zamanutec. It grew and grew, until the shapes of perhaps thirty people emerged, covered head to toe in red robes.

They were carrying bodies. Six naked corpses covered in spiraling white tattoos.

'Immortals!' Amin whispered to Cali. 'I've never heard of Immortals being carried out before.'

'Where are they carrying them?'

'Out into the desert, to be buried along the Red Road. All fallen Manu warriors get buried there, as is tradition. Only thing is, Immortals aren't supposed to fall!'

Cali had a funny feeling, but didn't vocalize it just yet. 'Right, let's work our way in.'

They left their spot in the shade and ran out into the middle of the road, towards the procession.

'Don't say anything. I will talk,' he instructed.

The acolyte leading the procession, a man with a scrubby white peppercorn beard and livid eyes, viewed them with scorn as they approached. 'What happened to the usual two?' he quizzed.

'I don't know, manu.' Amin replied. 'keTecwe Massur instructed us to take their places.'

'Massur?' the gruff man repeated, recalling the name. The duo kept silent, heads bowed. After a few moments he resumed. 'Head to the back, and relieve them of the water and provisions. And keep your hands off the sacred dead.'

They obliged. The acolytes at the back were glad to burden them with the sacks of provisions and flutes of water. Cali slung a sack over her back and tried to catch a closer look at the bodies.

Was that... a bullet wound? An angry dark hole under the shoulder, dried blood obscuring part of the white pectoral tattoo.

Another corpse had severe burns, deep pits in its flesh, perfectly neat and cauterized. Another, a bit further in front – my god – had a hole right through the middle of its abdomen, with arcs of burnt skin radiating out from it, scored and seared as if by lightning.

The Desert Gate parted slowly, allowing the procession to pass through. The masked sentinels on its towers scrutinized them from above, but kept silent and still.

On the other side the desert loomed at them, so vast and uniform that it seemed two dimensional. A stretch of flat, baked earth ran for about two hundred meters from the city gates, carved perfectly down the middle by the road's paving. Beyond that, on either side of the road's vanishing line, dunes undulated like a frozen sea towards an endlessly flat horizon.

In the far distance, in line with the road, the colossal shapes of humanoid statues rose above the dune sea, the same bluish color as distant mountains or skyscrapers at sunset.

Cali left Sol Mana, accompanied by Amin, heading towards the unknown and to freedom.

CONTINUED in the sequel, Unmarked Conspiracy
