The demons start growling at each other, then the remaining two ram-bearers abandon the thing and go haring off.

'Ya f.u.c.kin' dancer,' Rocks declares, but the congratulations are premature. A few moments later, four replacements retrieve the timber, while the two who had scurried off return, carrying wreckage from the exploded vehicles to use as shields. They take position in front of the battering ram, which can now proceed at will.

'The legs. Go for the legs,' Rocks suggests. Beansy fires off another three arrows, one hitting a car door and the others biting harmlessly into the ground as the rudimentary siege engine continues to progress.

'If they get to these doors with that thing, we're f.u.c.ked.'

Kirk pulls the rip-cord and starts the chainsaw again.

'Not gonna happen,' he states defiantly, but Rocks can see the doubt in his face, the bravado he's summoning for the benefit of those around him. Recent months haven't been the best of times between them, but he's seen what the big man is truly made of tonight. Unfortunately he's also seen quite literally what several other folk were made of, and that's the thought he can't suppress as Kirk gets ready for what could be his final charge.

'Stop right there,' orders a voice, and they turn in surprise to see that it's Miss Ross, holding a hockey stick with something threaded around it.

'Grab the hose out there and turn that tap on, full bung,' she tells Rocks. He complies unquestioningly, though he's a little baffled as to what she has in mind. Under her direction, he floods the stairs, the disabled ramp and the concrete ap.r.o.n in front of both.

'Great plan,' Kirk says, equally confused. 'If we make the path slippy enough, one of the monsters could have a nasty fall. Just need to hope the water freezes in the ten seconds we've got before they get here.'

'Ready the doors,' Heather commands, as the siege engine reaches the concrete. Rocks drops the hose and steps back inside, which is when he sees that whatever is wrapped around the hockey stick is also plugged into the mains. He catches a glimpse of bare wire on the curled end just as Heather lets it fall into the puddle.

'Hey, check it,' says Beansy. 'They're dancing.'

x.x.xI We must be ready, Parducci had told him.

Tullian was prepared, but he could never be ready for what he saw when he was summoned to the Orpheus Complex.

They said very little beyond formal greetings as they escorted him down inside the elevator. He guessed their thinking: they were telling him nothing because they didn't want to prejudice the experiment. Or maybe they were just so scared that they didn't feel there was anything helpful that they could say to him. He was, after all, the expert in this particular field.

He remembers the heat, the way it caught in his throat the second the doors opened. It was like the blast that could hit you momentarily as you pa.s.sed directly under a large s.p.a.ce-heater, except that there was no ensuing relief of pa.s.sing out of range. It took only minutes to walk to the brig, where the holding cells were accommodated, but he was sweating heavily by the time they arrived. At least it covered up his apprehension: he'd have been sweating anyway. He was trembling, drawing upon all his strength to steel himself for what he was about to witness, the sight that had driven the king of this same land to murderous obsession four centuries previously.

He was escorted by General McCormack and Colonel Havelock, but they waited outside while he examined the specimens. One soldier, armed only with a pistol holstered at his hip, accompanied him inside the brig, remaining at the door as Tullian approached the first holding cell.

He thought nothing could have prepared him for confronting a live demon, but as he gazed through those bars, he realised he was looking at something far more disturbing.

The creature was seated on the floor, almost balled up. It stared at him anxiously for a moment, taking him in as he stood there in his robes, then looked away, glancing up furtively every so often. It seemed, if anything, relieved to recognise that he was not a soldier. He held up his crucifix. It tracked the movement of his hand initially, but once again seemed at greater ease once it had established that what he held did not appear to be a weapon.

He advanced to the second cell, where his presence elicited much the same response.

Tullian felt genuine, chest-tightening fear. He saw what Parducci predicted the scientists would see, and saw that they would be right. right.

These were not demons.

He considered all that he thought might be proven when he had stood in that vault and wondered aloud why the Church did not show the world their proof. The corollary demonstrated all his forebears' wisdom in keeping it secret.

Then he saw the malign brilliance of the Morningstar, of Lucifer's charade. Convince man that there are no demons by giving him scientific proof that they are instead mere visitors from another world. More exotic than mistaken glimpses of horse's breath in the morning mist, but finally explicable, and explicable in a way that will further exalt scientific exploration over the spiritual. With demons thus dismissed, so would follow Satan, so would follow h.e.l.l, and this would be catastrophic. These creatures, wherever they were from, were not demons, but their presence on Earth was Satan's work nonetheless: instruments of a plan to destroy faith. Though they might not even know it, they were all the more dangerous agents of his evil for not not being demons. being demons.

'The pillars of Heaven have their base in the abyss'. So said Jules Michelet, esteemed French historian and author of the seminal Satanism and Witchcraft. ' Satanism and Witchcraft. 'The heedless person who denies this base could shatter paradise . . .'

Who would understand this better than Satan himself?

These creatures were in fact the first wave, dispatched to sow confusion and disguise the true threat. The real invasion would only come when the last bastions of resistance were at their weakest, and what shape might the Church be in a few years after a blow to worldwide faith such as this?

Tullian understood then that he had to beat the Devil at his own game: counter deceit with deceit, meet subterfuge with subterfuge. To wage by force or guile eternal war To wage by force or guile eternal war.

The military asked for his help because they feared they had brought forth demons from h.e.l.l. Well, he would give them demons from h.e.l.l, and continue to confirm their worst fears until they finally saw sense and closed this thing down forever.

In time, though, he came to understand that this would never happen. The place would be 'mothballed', operations merely 'suspended'. Inevitably, they would resume. Even if it took years to repeat the anomaly, eventually Steinmeyer or his successor would do this again. He had to destroy it. And not just destroy this machine so that it could not be rebuilt - for anything could be rebuilt - but destroy it in such a way that no one would permit the building of another. A few casualties would not be enough: this had to be a full-scale disaster, to put fear into both army and government that these were unstable forces they were dabbling with.

He had understood even sooner that keeping this whole thing under wraps was an impossible dream. This was not like the vault beneath the Vatican and the trusted few who kept its secret. Information would leak. Soldiers would talk. Scientists would definitely talk. The world was going to find out about these creatures, one way or another, which was why he had to shape the message. That, he realised, was where this could become more than mere damage limitation; that was where this could become a victory. He could take Lucifer's charade and turn it to the Church's advantage. For despite Parducci's reservations, if this abomination was unavoidably to be revealed, then what a renaissance of faith might it inspire, to learn that there truly were demons and there truly was a h.e.l.l? What a revolution might ensue were it to be demonstrated that the tenets of science had been shaken, with verified experiments showing the unique effects of holy water upon these creatures?

That was why he had gone to some lengths to ensure Merrick lived to tell his tale, and could have kissed the man when he revealed that he had salvaged some video files. Despite Tullian suggesting that they could be used as a bargaining chip, he knew Merrick would not be able to resist leaking them, especially in the face of any cover-up. A leak from a Church source would be damaging to the point of self-defeating, but coming from a scientist, it was perfect. Unfortunately, there had been that cursed CCTV feed, which had left him with no choice.

He felt dreadful about what he had been forced to do to Merrick, as he had felt dreadful throughout the many sleepless nights of prayer and contemplation as he prepared himself for his awful task. He knew there would be loss of life, and he regretted that profoundly. However, this would mostly be among soldiers, and it was the highest n.o.bility of their vocation that they always knew they might have to lay down their lives for a greater good. What greater good was there than this? If Satan was showing his hand so dramatically, then that demonstrated how high the stakes truly must be.

What might this be the precursor of, he barely dared ask himself. And thus what price a few lives against thwarting the crucial first foothold towards establishing h.e.l.l on Earth?

He had engineered this disaster and he had shot Merrick, but it was not sabotage and it was not murder.

This was war.

x.x.xII 'We need medicine and we need transportation,' Sendak states. 'Got twenty-odd people, including injured, holed up down the valley, surrounded by those things.'

'There's armoured personnel carriers top-side,' Steinmeyer replies. 'At the surface compound. Medkits on board. But we need to go via the Cathedral. Shut down the machine. Follow me, we'll have to go through the labs.'

'The Cathedral?' Sendak asks as they set off behind the professor.

'The great cavern housing the beating heart of this place. That's the sound you can hear all around you. The machine is out of control. All the systems have either shut down or gone haywire. The armoury codes appear to have malfunctioned same time as the cages. When the creatures broke loose, n.o.body could get hold of anything heavier than pistols. Surprise attack by overwhelming numbers . . .' He nods towards a pool of gore. 'This is the result.'

'So where did you get that that bad boy?' Sendak asks. bad boy?' Sendak asks.

'My desk drawer. This is the prototype. The others required code clearance for use because, quite frankly, the military were more worried about the technology ever getting out than they were about security inside the facility.'

'No s.h.i.t,' observes Sendak bitterly.

'Yeah, yeah, so that's the boy-toys,' Rosemary interrupts. 'What about the b.l.o.o.d.y creatures? Where did they come from? How did they get here?'

Steinmeyer stops at a sliding door and fumbles through a selection of bloodied keycards. He swipes the appropriate one and leads them through into another carnage-strewn pa.s.sageway.

'I don't have an exact answer for either of your questions,' he tells Rosemary with the awkward over-courtesy of one unused to addressing young females. 'But I will tell you what I know. The "how" part involves the technology we've been developing here. This facility houses a particle accelerator that is a hybrid between a conventional radio frequency atom-smasher and advanced plasma-laser technology. My work here has been princ.i.p.ally to do with developing a theory of quantum gravity. I-'

'Oh my G.o.d,' Adnan interrupts, a realisation belatedly dawning on him. 'You're Lucius Lucius Steinmeyer.' Steinmeyer.'

'I am,' he confirms, a little surprised by the recognition.

'I'm only familiar with your older work, sir, but I'm totally geeking out here.'

'Well I'm overfamiliar with his newer work,' Rosemary chastises. 'And so are a few of our late friends.'

'Indeed,' Steinmeyer says regretfully. 'Though in my defence, like many great discoveries in science, this one came about unintentionally. The machine created an anomaly: an unforeseen and, to be entirely honest, inexplicable effect. A portal, though we didn't know that until something came through it.'

'Inside the accelerator?' Adnan asks, reining in his excitement for fear of drawing further disapproval.

'No. Even more curiously, the anomaly appeared outside outside the impact observation chamber: precisely 16.16252 metres from the dead centre of the octant. And when I say precisely, I mean very precisely. Measured by laser.' the impact observation chamber: precisely 16.16252 metres from the dead centre of the octant. And when I say precisely, I mean very precisely. Measured by laser.'

'Precisely 16.16252,' Adnan says. 'So the distance is a ten-to-the-power-thirty-six multiple of the Planck length.'

'What does that mean?' Rosemary asks.

'Nothing that sheds any light on what was created. We had no idea what the anomaly was, and I was still deliberating how to probe it when the first of the creatures came through. As to the question of from where . . .' Steinmeyer sighs with a deep and enduring frustration. 'There are three possibilities: that they are from somewhere else in our universe, and the anomaly is a bridge or gateway via higher dimensions; that they are from a completely different universe, and the anomaly is a rupture in the membrane separating theirs from ours; or even that they are from right here, a parallel version of our Earth, where the path of evolution developed differently. In which case the anomaly-'

'Is like a way of tuning to a different reality,' Rosemary says, glancing at Adnan in acknowledgment.

'Quite,' says Steinmeyer. 'The curtain between worlds, between universes, is gossamer-thin; it's possible there may even have been naturally occurring breaches in the past, hence these creatures' previous excursions into our world may have given birth to our demon myths. I would know more if we had been able to study the effects properly, but that didn't happen. When the first specimens came through, the military people freaked. They brought in Cardinal Tullian, and in their superst.i.tious, cowardly panic, they let him order off the menu in terms of his remit. He and his staff have had absolute control over the creatures ever since. I can say with some authority that what happened here has quite comprehensively given the lie to the phrase "non-overlapping magisteria".'

'So why didn't the military just shut it down?' Rosemary asks, prompting an ironic snort from Sendak.

'They never know whether to fish or cut bait,' the Sarge adds. 'Also known as a wait-and-see policy. With so much invested, my guess is, no matter how spooked they got, they weren't gonna pull the plug just like that. Am I right?'

'Very astute, Sergeant Sendak. We would need years, decades to work on this, but Tullian was angling for a shutdown from day one. All developments in cosmology have been obstructed by Tullian's church, from Copernicus onwards, because they threaten its own explanations. They can't burn you at the stake any more, but they still have their methods of applying pressure. I knew a shutdown was inevitable. That's why I raised my counter-concern that if we turned off the machine, we might never be able to recreate the anomaly. Thus it was only military indecisiveness that postponed the shutdown so long.'

'But that shutdown order was was given?' Sendak asks. given?' Sendak asks.

'Yes. General MacCormack ruled that it be mothballed.'

'Which would effectively close the portal forever, because the anomaly might not be replicable.'

'That was the impression I gave him.'

'The impress-You knew otherwise.'

'There was a power surge one night, a few weeks back. I had to reset all systems and the anomaly was lost. But when I restored the previous settings, it reappeared. I decided to keep this to myself and pretended to be desperately opposed to any suspension of the operation. I was protecting years of work. I had to make everyone think that shutting down the machine and closing the anomaly would be the end of it. Then, I hoped, we could later resume proper, unhindered research once we had dampened the hysteria and regained control of our own operation.'

'But somehow the freaks got loose before the shutdown could commence?' Sendak suggests.

'No. The shutdown sequence was well under way. I was packing my bags. The creatures got loose when all of the magnetic locking systems failed, which could have been caused by the machine suddenly being flipped to inverse polarity. That's not something that just happens by itself. And nor do all of the armoury cabinets spontaneously malfunction.'

'You think this was sabotage?'

'I think my beaten-man performance didn't fool everybody. I suspect there's somebody in here for whom mothballing isn't enough. Listen to the sound of the machine.'

Sendak is finding it increasingly difficult to hear anything else. The pulsing has been getting louder and stronger with each corridor Steinmeyer leads them down, each doorway they pa.s.s through: disproportionately so, in Sendak's estimation. It's not just a pulse, either: it's a cycle of pulses, and it seems to intensify with each new round.

'It isn't getting louder simply because we're getting nearer,' Steinmeyer confirms. 'The pulse is getting stronger. It's the inverse polarity. It allows things to go through from our side instead of vice versa.'

'What would happen if something tried to go through at normal polarity?' asks Adnan.

'It wouldn't get near it. All of the specimens try when they first come through, but it's repellant, similar to bringing together two like poles of a magnet. Basically, it's not a two-way street. We reversed the polarity so that we could try sending probes through the portal, but we couldn't devise a way of retrieving them remotely . . .'

'And I'm guessing you struck out on volunteers to do it manually,' Sendak suggests.

'Quite. Our efforts were further limited because we found that the machine can't stay inverse for long without becoming unstable. Security protocols were put in place to ensure the polarity could only be inverted under highly controlled conditions. That those protocols have been overridden is how I know this wasn't an accident. If we don't intervene, the machine is going to destroy itself.'

'Given how this s.h.i.t has worked out so far, you want to tell me why that's a bad thing?'

'The machine is powered by a fission reactor connected to the biggest nuclear train set outside of CERN. If we don't shut it down, it'll blow the mountain apart and kill everything within five miles of here.'

Blake was a G.o.d-send: literally a G.o.d-send.

Even as Tullian stood there, contemplating the enormity of having just broken the most sacred of commandments and killed a man in cold blood, he had glanced at one of the CCTV screens and read the message the Lord was sending. It could not have been less ambiguous: in his moment of greatest doubt, no less than a priest had been delivered into his midst.

But no sooner had he noticed the collar on one of the four figures picking their way along a corpse-strewn corridor than a movement on another of the screens told him what work was still to be done. Steinmeyer had survived, and was making his way through the Alpha labs. In a matter of mere minutes, their paths would surely cross. It was imperative that he be the one to apprise his fellow clergyman of the situation before Steinmeyer delivered his version of events.

Fortunately, he knew a few short cuts, and by feeding the test chamber's monitor with one of Merrick's video files he had a means of causing the new arrivals to tarry there a while: a means that would throw a large spoke into Steinmeyer's 'rational' explanations.

'Like "a gossamer curtain", that was how he always described it,' Tullian tells Blake. 'Someone should have strangled him with one.'

Tullian opens a security lock and checks the path ahead. He spots a shock-pike lying abandoned on the floor and hands it to Blake as he ushers him through the doorway, demonstrating the charge b.u.t.ton with a push of his thumb.

'Make no mistake, Father, I am no Luddite. Quite the contrary. I love science. In fact I owe my position in the Church to my pa.s.sion and dedication to it. But here, in this place, is where science met its limit, and Steinmeyer refused to face that. Science could not account for some of the phenomena we were encountering. This was the advent of a paradigm shift of cosmological proportions, but Steinmeyer was effectively still saying the Earth is flat and the sun orbits around it. Steinmeyer is the most dangerous kind of zealot: a scientist who cannot accept what the data is telling him. Everyone in this place could see what was plain except him: he had opened up a gateway to h.e.l.l.'

'You're not using that as a figure of speech, are you,' Blake asks rhetorically. 'How do we close it?'

'The machine is out of control. It's going to consume itself. No one must prevent that. Unfortunately, Steinmeyer is still alive and will give anything to do just that. If he encounters your friends, he will use them, lie to them, and if it serves him, he will sacrifice their lives to his ambitions like his zealotry sacrificed all these others.'

Marianne lets out a strained moan and winces, the pain in her hands throbbing with her pulse now that the morphine has worn off. Cameron is still unconscious, which may be a mercy, but she suspects it's not down to his continuing a.n.a.lgesia.

'You okay?' Deborah enquires. 'Sorry, I know I keep asking that. It's just . . .'

'It hurts,' Marianne says, her voice strained.'A lot. I'm worried about infection too. Think I'm getting a temperature. My head's thumping and it looks like the lights keep pulsing.'

'That's not your headache,' Deborah a.s.sures her. 'The lights are are pulsing.' pulsing.'

Kirk glances up at the fluorescents, watching their glow fade and intensify, fade and intensify. He's convinced the latter phase is getting marginally brighter each time, but it could just be the effect of the contrast.

He glances towards Miss Ross and indicates the hockey stick, now disconnected from the mains.

'Wasn't me,' Heather insists. 'Sockets are on a different circuit. Anyway, this doesn't feel like power fading. This is power growing.'