"You should have told me," Victor said.

Kat screwed her fists into balls. "It was my choice, not yours. And anyway, it's only stored, not terminated. It can be re-implanted-"

The picture fuzzed out again. When it steadied, Victor looked old and tired.

"Stored?"

She put a hand to her brow.

"Yes, stored. It's there on Strauli, waiting for us."

"So you didn't-"

"No."

For a moment, Victor had the look of a man struck by lightning. Then he shook himself.

"We don't have time for this," he said. "None of it matters anymore, anyway. Not now. Just go, Kat. Get out of here."

"But-"

Over the link she heard the rattle of small arms fire. Victor glanced back over his shoulder.

"It's too late," he said. "It's over. I'm sorry. Sorry for everything."

Someone tugged at his sleeve. People were shouting.

"Look Kat, I've got to go. You get out of here. There's nothing more you can do."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

SCRATCHES.

wo days after Alice returned from her trip to Barcelona, Ed went to her photographic studio. The studio was on the third floor of a converted brick warehouse off Westferry Road. He didn't go in. Instead, he waited in the doorway of the apartment block across the street. It was raining. The rain fell from the sky like scratches on celluloid. When Alice emerged at lunchtime, he followed her to an Italian cafe by the river.

He walked up to her table and said, "So that's it?"

Alice looked up, clearly annoyed to see him.

"I guess so."

She fiddled with the stem of her glass. The place smelled of pizzas and bottled beer. Football flickered on a screen by the bar. Italian flags hung from the walls. She finished the wine in silence, and got up to leave.

Ed put a hand on her arm.

"Don't go."

"It's over, Ed."

"Is it?"

She hitched her camera bag onto her shoulder and tossed a ten pound note onto the table, to cover the drinks.

"It's Verne," she said. "He wants us to have a baby."

"Are you going to?"

"I don't know, maybe."

She turned on her heel. He followed her out into the street. It had started to rain. She kissed him abruptly on the cheek. Then he watched her climb into a cab, not caring if he got wet. The rain ran down his cheeks.

"Don't go," he said.

Half-blind with afterimages and shivering with cold, Ed stumbled backward from the arch. Alice caught him, and they clung to each other. He could feel her trembling. After the heat of the savannah, the air here felt as refreshingly light and cool as a drink of iced water.

"Are you okay?" he said.

Alice hugged him. "Kristin-?"

"Kristin's dead."

He felt her shiver in his arms.

"But those animals-"

"I know."

"We shouldn't have left her."

Ed rubbed his eyes with the finger and thumb of one hand. The spots were clearing from his vision. They were in a cave.

"There's nothing we can do," he said. "We can't go back."

The cave measured about fifteen metres in length, with the softly glowing purple arch wedged about two-thirds of the way in, in much the same way as the arch that swallowed Verne had wedged itself across the escalator at Chancery Lane. The walls of the cave were smooth and dry. Loose stones crunched underfoot.

In the opposite direction, the mouth of the cave framed an almost circular ring of blue sky. From outside came the crash and boom of ocean surf.

"Come on," he said. "We're not out of this yet."

He took her hand and walked her to the entrance. The pull of gravity was less here, making movement easier. As they got closer to the light, he could see how pale she was. Her eyes were dim and unfocussed and blood oozed from the scratches on her arms and chest. He had plenty of scrapes of his own, and his head still hurt from the crack it had taken in the Land Rover crash. They badly needed to rest and recuperate, to have a hot shower, a good meal and a long sleep.

The cave ended in a sheer drop. They were in a cliff wall overlooking the sea. Far below, waves churned against ragged boulders.

Searching for options, Ed looked up.

"It's not far to the top. About ten metres, I guess."

"Can we get up there?"

The top of the cliff had been eroded by the wind, and bits had crumbled away. It looked lumpy and rough, with plenty of potential handholds.

"Are you up to climbing?"

Alice put a hand to her head. "I don't know."

Ed looked back into the cave, to the arch. "Well, we're going to have to try. We can't go back that way. And we can't stay here in case one of those creatures comes through."

Alice looked up in alarm. "Do you think they might?"

"If we can step through, I see no reason they can't."

She swallowed and shook herself.

"Okay," she said, "but you're going to have to help me."

"Don't worry. If you're hurting too much, we can take it slowly."

"No, you don't understand." She touched his arm. "Ed, I've never told anyone this before."

"What?"

"I'm terrified of heights."

She looked down. Then she frowned. Something had caught her eye. She took her hand from Ed's arm and walked past him to the cave wall, where she bent to retrieve an object from the dirt floor, and straightened, holding a pair of spectacles. The arms were bent and rusty. One of the lenses had been lost, and scratches and dust covered the other. They looked a thousand years old, like something pulled by an archaeologist from the sands of Egypt. Pinching them between finger and thumb, Alice looked up at Ed, open-mouthed.

"Are they-?"

Her voice was almost lost in the crash of the waves below. Ed took them from her. He turned them over and over reverently, as if inspecting an antique. He opened and closed the arms. The hinges were stiff and rusty.

"Yes," he said. "They're his all right."

"Then we're close?"

He gave the glasses back to her.

"We could be. At least we know he made it this far." He thought of Kristin and shuddered.

Alice bit her lip. "I can't believe it. He actually stood here." For the first time since leaving home, she seemed excited. "We're actually on the right track."

Ed took her hand.

"All the more reason to keep moving, then," he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.

THE WRATH OF GOD.

The Ameline's hull creaked as it kissed the top of the atmosphere. Linked into the ship's sensors, Kat felt the growing friction as a fire in her belly. They were coming in as steeply as they dared, trading safety for speed, on a course that would take them directly under the spreading blood-red cloud.

"Steady," she said. They were over the ocean. Already, the leading edges of the hull glowed a dull crimson.

> Twelve minutes to target.

Scrawling a line of fire through the tortured air, they crossed the coastline and passed over the snow-capped western mountains at many times the speed of sound.

Ahead, the cloud's streamers raked the land, reaching from heaven to earth like the kilometres-long tentacles of an angry desert god. Lightning flickered. Looking at it, Kat struggled to comprehend the sheer scale of the unleashed fury. This was a storm of biblical proportions. It boiled across the sky from horizon to horizon, large enough to rain destruction across the whole face of the world. It was by turns terrifying and exhilarating, and she could feel her heart leaping in her chest.

> Five minutes.

She popped her safety straps.

"Okay, I'm going to the airlock. Keep scanning for new transmissions, in case he tries to make contact again."

> Are you sure you know what you're doing?

"Yes."

> Only I thought you wanted to kill him.

Kat paused. She thought of Victor's face as it had appeared on her screen, looking old and worn and scared.

"Maybe later," she said. "In the meantime, we stick to the plan."

She clambered back down the ladder into the passageway connecting the bridge to the rest of the ship's interior. They were being buffeted around; she had to use her arms to brace herself against the passage walls. She stopped at the equipment locker, strapped a handgun to either hip, and lifted out the biggest weapon in her collection: a sturdy composite assault rifle with laser scope, explosive rounds, and a 30mm grenade launcher slung under the barrel.

"How are we doing?"

> Down to subsonic. Two minutes and closing.

As steadily as she could, she made her way through the crew lounge and cargo bay towards the rear airlock. Halfway there, the ship lurched violently. Despite the inertial compensators, she lost her footing and tumbled against the bay's bulkhead. Loose pieces of un-stowed equipment crashed and rattled down around her.

"What the hell was that?"