"Hors.e.m.e.n," War said in a voice that boomed like the sounds of battle. "Let's bust some b.a.l.l.s."

Drake ran up stairs and climbed ladders where he could, scaled the walls where there was no other way up. Finally, another ladder led him to a hatch in the ceiling. The hatch lifted up and over, and daylight flooded in. Clambering through, he emerged on to the robot's shoulder.

The right arm stretched down below him like a giant slide. He peered past it, down to the distant ground where Hors.e.m.e.n-shaped ants battled tiny silver marbles.

A robotic foot thumped down, sending a shockwave through the entire metal structure. Drake wobbled unsteadily for a moment, then found his footing.

The robot's head loomed just above him. He could see the mouth shape, formed by the rows of windows. The two other windows, situated a storey or so above the mouth, looked more like eyes than ever.

The side door, through which Drake and the other hors.e.m.e.n had entered earlier, was sealed over once again with a fresh metal skin. That left only one way to get inside the robot's head.

Drake's eyes went along the row of windows, stopping at the middle where the gla.s.s and a chunk of the wall had been smashed away. It looked, he thought, like a missing tooth. Had he stopped to think about it, he would also have realised that it looked like something else.

It looked like a trap.

But he didn't stop, and he didn't think about it. Instead he scrambled up the chrome giant's neck, took hold of one of the narrow metal window ledges, and pulled himself up.

War's sword whummed loudly, and a sphere became a number of expensive component parts on the pavement. He spun, following the blade's momentum, and sliced through a gun barrel that had been pointing at Famine's back.

"Have it!" War roared, driving a headb.u.t.t into the centre of the ball and cracking the metal sh.e.l.l. Famine's pudgy fingers forced their way in through the gap. His hands pulled in opposite directions, widening the crack just enough for his head to fit through. Opening his mouth wide, Famine lunged and began chomping hungrily on the wires and circuitry within the sphere.

A moment later, he released his grip and the broken ball hit the ground. Famine burped loudly, then licked his lips.

"Tastes like chicken," he announced, as the three remaining b.a.l.l.s circled round for another attack run.

Drake swung in through the broken window, slipped on the floor, and landed flat on his back. Luckily, the room was empty, so no one was around to see his embarra.s.sing entrance.

Or so he thought.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't Frosties boy."

"Enjoy your trip, k.n.o.b 'ead?"

Drake looked up at three spotty scowls. He sprang to his feet and raised his hands, ready for a fight.

"You don't want to mess with me," Drake warned them. He drew himself up to his full height. It wasn't much, but to the tiny bullies he imagined himself looking like a giant. "I'm Death, you know?"

"Yeah, we know," Bingo said with a snort.

"Oooh, scary," laughed Dim.

"Yeah," added Spud. "Oooh, scary!"

"That was them being, what do you call it? Sarcastic," Bingo pointed out. "We're not scared of no Death." His spotty cheeks rose as his mouth twisted into an impossibly wide grin. "We's already dead, ain't we?"

"Yeah, we're as dead as the emu," Dim sn.i.g.g.e.red.

Drake felt a pang of something. Pity, maybe. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.

"What for?" Bingo snorted. "Our old bodies is dead, but we've got new bodies now, thanks to Mr Franks and Dr Black."

"Yeah, I saw what you can do," Drake said.

Bingo's eyes blazed red. "Oh, you ain't seen nothin' yet!" The three figures took a synchronised step forward. The room was filled with the sounds of machinery moving. Drake could see some kind of transformation starting to take place, but he could see something else too. Something behind the three boys.

Something that looked, just a little, like a cat.

Drake rolled sideways just as Toxie launched himself at the cyber-bullies. Caught in mid-transformation, they were knocked off balance. There was a panicked cry of "My mum's going to kill me!" and then they were gone, through the hole in the wall, and plunging down towards the ground far below.

Drake heard three brief distant tremors, and he knew the bullies wouldn't be bothering him again.

Toxie, who was looking more and more like a cat by the minute, turned to Drake, sniffed lazily, and said, "Woof."

"Good dog," Drake said. Toxie wagged his tail happily, then sauntered out on to the windowsill and began climbing expertly down the robot's front.

Drake was halfway to the door when the old TV set that stood on a trolley over by the whiteboard, came on with a click.

"That was a stroke of luck," Mr Franks said. "I didn't think they'd stop you, but I thought they'd hold you up longer than that. Still, as you'll have noticed by now, I'm not there. I'm upstairs on the roof, and I've got your girlfriend with me. Look."

The camera panned round, and Drake saw a shock of red hair. Mel was tied by the wrists and ankles to a pole that was hanging precariously over the edge of the roof. She was facing downwards, her hands behind her, her eyes open wide with terror.

Mr Franks' face suddenly filled the screen again in extreme close-up. "I'd rather you didn't come up, but I know you're going to, so why waste my breath?" He winked brightly. "So, see you soon, I guess. I'll try not to drop the redhead, but, well, I'm not going to promise anything, so if I were you a" which I sort of was, when you think about it a" I'd move fast."

The sound faded.

The screen went blank.

And Drake moved fast.

DRAKE HAD PLANNED to sneak up on to the roof, but Mr Franks was sitting in a deckchair, watching the hatch expectantly. He smiled broadly when Drake's head popped through it.

"There he is!" Mr Franks beamed. "There's the man of the hour. Up you come, join the fun."

He jumped up as Drake stepped out on to the top of the robot's head. "Take a seat," Mr Franks said, gesturing at the deckchair the way a gameshow host's glamorous a.s.sistant might gesture at today's star prize.

"No, thanks," Drake said.

Mr Franks put his hands on his hips and nodded. "You're right, you're right. What was I thinking? Sitting down?"

With a sudden jerk he grabbed the back of the folding chair and hurled it over the edge of the roof. "Boring people sit down, and we're not boring people, are we, Drake? Huh? Am I right?" He looked Drake up and down. "Nice outfit, by the way. Black suits you."

"Mel, are you OK?" Drake asked. He didn't take his eyes off Mr Franks.

"She can't answer you," Mr Franks said. He indicated the gag across her mouth. "She can talk, your girlfriend, can't she? She just would not shut up. It was either gag her, or cut her tongue out."

"It's going to be OK. I'm here to rescue you."

"Aww, you hear that? He's here to rescue you." Mr Franks wiped an imaginary tear from the corner of his eye. "That a" if you don't mind me saying? a" that's beautiful." He pointed at Drake and mimed shooting him with his finger. "You're a real ladykiller."

The teacher slipped his hands into his pockets and strolled over to a wooden table that had been bolted on to the metal beneath it. An old-fashioned-looking control deck, all k.n.o.bs and dials and slider switches, hung over the edges of the table on all sides. A spaghetti of wires dangled from the back of the deck, before disappearing into a junction box beneath the table.

A large metal tube, about the circ.u.mference of a dinner plate and around half as tall as Mr Franks, rose from the floor beside the desk. A gla.s.s dome was mounted on top of the tube, like an upside-down fish bowl. Inside the gla.s.s, a living blue light pulsed and heaved.

"Like it?" Mr Franks asked. He pressed a hand against the gla.s.s and stroked it gently.

"What are you going to do with them?" Drake asked.

"With what, the souls?" Mr Franks said. He pointed at the gla.s.s. "With these souls trapped in here?"

"Yes, what are you going to do with them?"

Mr Franks jumped up and punched the air with his fist. "Then it does work!" he cried. "I couldn't be sure because, you know, I can't see souls any more, so I thought, *Who can see souls? Who can I get up here to let me know if this baby works?' and there was only one name I thought of. Can you guess who it was?"

"Me," said Drake. He felt his heart sink. "What now?"

"Now, I'm going to eat them." His face split into a wicked grin and madness blazed behind his eyes. "And when I do, I'm going to get all my old strength back, and then... This is the best bit... Then I am going to split this world in two, Drake. I'm going to split it in two!"

"Why?"

"Why? I thought you, of all people, would know why." He gestured up at the sky. "We're in the Armageddon business, you and I. The end of the world a" it's our purpose."

"Everyone will die. Everyone."

Mr Franks nodded. "That's the general idea. But listen, it's nothing personal. I'm just following orders. It's my job, after all."

"Was your job," Drake reminded him.

"Then consider me freelance." His face darkened. "They told me I could end the world a" they created me to end the world a" and that's exactly what I'm going to do. It's right there, in my contract of employment. *Begin the Apocalypse.' I'm only following orders. I'm just... bringing forward the schedule a little."

"You're going to decimate the world because you're a jobsworth?"

"Not decimate, Drake. Didn't your last school teach you anything? Decimate means reduce by ten per cent. I'm not going to decimate the world." He couldn't fight back a self-satisfied smile. "I'm going to obliterate it!"

Drake took a step forward. Mr Franks' finger reached for a b.u.t.ton on the control desk. "Ah, ah, ah!" he warned. "Look at the pole holding your girlfriend there. Check out the bottom, where it meets the roof."

A bomb, that's what Drake saw. He didn't know how he knew it was a bomb, he just did. It had a certain bomby quality that was unmistakable. "Take another step and she falls," Mr Franks told him. Drake shuffled back, and the teacher's finger relaxed on the b.u.t.ton.

He looked Drake up and down, as if seeing him for the very first time. "So, you're the new Death, eh? You're my replacement? I expected something a little more... impressive."

"I guess they thought I was impressive enough to follow you," Drake retorted.

"Ha!" said Mr Franks, without humour. "You think you even come close to matching me? I was Death for a thousand years. I was the longest-serving of all the Deaths."

"Longest serving so far," Drake said.

"You don't still think you're going to stop me, do you?" Mr Franks laughed. "I've been planning this for the last five hundred years, putting every element of it into position for the past six decades. I've thought of every last detail. What, you think giant robots build themselves?"

"Yeah, I've been meaning to ask," Drake said. "A giant robot? Isn't that a bit, you know, c.r.a.p?"

Something that may have been the beginnings of a cringe pa.s.sed across the teacher's face. "It was the fifties," he explained. "Giant robots were all the rage."

He took a step away from the control deck, thought better of it, then moved back into position beside it. "You know what it's like, sitting around in that shed for a thousand years? No, of course you don't, you've only been there a few days. Maybe you can imagine it, though. Their voices, everything they say, it just becomes this... noise in your head. Like the quacking of ducks. Quack, quack, quack. Quack, quack, quack.

"And then there's the sound of Famine chewing, like some bloated, masticating cow, hour after hour, day after day, chomp, chomp, chomp, continually, on and on."

Mr Franks shook his head, as if trying to drive out the memories. "Pestilence, with his constant whining and complaining and his itching and his flaking and his endless series of spectacular rashes. And War?"

The teacher's voice had been rising throughout his rant. He stopped and brought it back under control. "G.o.d, I hated him most of all, strutting around, acting like he was the Big I Am. I was supposed to be the leader. Me! So why did they always listen to him?"

"Because you're a friggin' headcase?" Drake suggested. Fury flashed across Mr Franks' face. He looked at Mel. His finger went to the switch on the control deck, but a shout from Drake made him hesitate. "Kill her and I'll kill you!"

The teacher's finger hovered above the b.u.t.ton. "Kill me?" he said. "I don't think you would."

"I would," Drake said. "I will. I've... I've killed before."

Mr Franks smiled and shook his head, but his finger withdrew from the b.u.t.ton. "No, you see, me, I'm a killer. I've killed hundreds of people in the past decade alone. Thousands. And why?"

He opened his mouth to answer his own question, then paused. "I don't know, really," he admitted. "Practice, I suppose. I am a" was a" Death, after all. And also because I was bored, and I couldn't face one more b.l.o.o.d.y game of Cluedo." He pointed at Drake. "You, on the other hand, have killed what? Half a dozen frogs?"

"Nine," Drake corrected. "I killed nine frogs."

Mr Franks clapped his hands slowly. "Bravo. Truly you are Death incarnate. But, please, let an old hand show you how it should be done."

He pushed a slider switch on the control deck and the blue glow inside the dome became agitated. It buzzed and trembled, hurling itself at the gla.s.s, but unable to find a way through.

"There's a whole world out there waiting to be destroyed," Mr Franks said. "Let's not keep it waiting any longer."

He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a large white napkin. He flicked it once to unfold it, then tied it loosely at the back of his neck. "If you'll excuse me," he said, patting his stomach, "I've got a rather pressing lunch appointment."

DRAKE LOOKED OVER at Mel, hanging above a sheer drop to certain death. He looked at Mr Franks, now adjusting switches and dials on his control deck, making the souls in the bowl quiver and writhe. The teacher hummed quietly below his breath as he worked, a song so ancient no other human alive had heard it.

Slowly, Drake slid one foot a few centimetres across the floor. The thudding of the robot's footsteps had stopped, which meant that the robot itself had stopped. This was a pity because the sound of the footfalls would have disguised the faint squeak Drake's own foot made as he inched it across the metal.

"One millimetre closer and your girlfriend drops," Mr Franks told him. He looked up and fixed Drake with a glare. "You look tense. Relax."

Drake slunk back a pace.

"You still don't look relaxed. You look like someone who's about to attempt a daring, last-minute rescue, and that would be stupid."

Drake let his shoulders sag and his arms hang limply at his sides. He stuffed his hands into the robe's deep pockets. "That better?"

"Much," Mr Franks replied. He turned his attention back to the control deck. Beside him, the gla.s.s dome was filled with an angry blue fire. "I'm doing you a favour when you think about it, Drake. I'm giving you the opportunity to fulfil your purpose. An opportunity that was taken from me. You should be thanking me."

"Don't hold your breath."

Drake's fingers brushed against something in his right pocket. He felt for the edges, trying to figure out what it was. Round. Hard. Then his finger p.r.i.c.ked against something sharp and he knew at once what to do.

"Those frogs we were talking about," he said, surprising Mr Franks and getting his attention.