“Come on, Gerald, mate,” Beth said breezily. She took his arm and pulled gently. He walked obediently down the corridor with her. He only stopped once, and that was to look over his shoulder and say an earnest, “Thank you,” to an oddly intrigued Choi-Ho.

Beth kept going right to the end of the U-shaped corridor. She thought it would be best to get Gerald a cabin away from the rest of the Deadnights. “Can you believe this place?” she said. She was walking on a deep red carpet past portholes that shone brilliant beams of sunlight into the corridor (although she couldn’t see out through them). The doors were all golden wood. In her usual sweatshirt, two jackets, and baggy jeans she felt uncomfortably out of place.

She peered around a door and found an empty cabin. There were two bunk beds clipped to a wall, and a small sliding door to the bathroom. The plumbing was similar to the toilet in the Leonora Cephei , except this was all heavy brass with small white glazed ceramic buttons.

“This ought to do you,” she said confidently. A quiet pule made her turn around. Gerald was standing just inside the door, his knuckles pressed into his mouth.

“What’s the matter, Gerald?”

“Twenty hours.”

“I know. But that’s good, isn’t it?”

“I’m not sure. I want to be there, to see her again. But she’s not her anymore, not my Marie.”

He was quaking. Beth put an arm around his shoulders and eased him down onto the bottom bunk. “Easy there, Gerald. Once we’re at Valisk, all this is going to seem like a bad dream; honestly, mate.”

“It doesn’t end there, it starts there. And I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to save her. I can’t put her in zero-tau by myself. They’re so strong, and evil.”

“Who, Gerald? Who are you talking about? Who’s Marie?”

“My baby.”

He was crying now, his head pressed into her shoulder. She patted the back of his neck instinctively.

“I don’t know what to do,” he gasped out. “She’s not here to help me.”

“Marie’s not here?”

“No. Loren. She’s the only one that can help me. She’s the only one who can help any of us.”

“It’s all right, Gerald, really, you’ll see.”

The reaction wasn’t what she expected at all. Gerald started a hysterical laugh which was half screams. Beth wanted to let go and get out of the cabin fast. He’d flipped, totally flipped now. The only reason she kept hold of him was because she didn’t know what would happen if she didn’t. He might get worse.

“Please, Gerald,” she begged. “You’re frightening me.”

He grabbed both of her shoulders, squeezing hard enough to make her flinch. “Good!” His face had reddened with anger. “You should be frightened, you stupid, stupid little girl. Don’t you understand where we’re going?”

“We’re going to Valisk,” Beth whispered.

“Yes, Valisk. That doesn’t frighten me, I’m bloody terrified. They’re going to torture us, hurt you so bad you’ll beg a soul to possess you and stop them. I know they will. That’s all they ever do. They did it to me before, and then Dr Dobbs made me go through it again, and again and again just so he could know what it was like.” The anger drained out of him, and he sagged forwards into her awkward embrace. “I’ll kill myself. Yes. Maybe that’s it. I can help Marie that way. I’m sure I can. Anything’s better than possession again.”

Beth started rocking him as best she could, soothing him as she would any five-year-old who’d woken from a nightmare. The things he was saying plagued her badly. After all, they only had Kiera’s word that she was building a fresh society for them. One recording that promised she was different from the rest. “Gerald?” she asked after a while. “Who’s this Marie you want to help?”

“My daughter.”

“Oh. I see. Well how do you know she’s at Valisk?”

“Because she’s the one Kiera’s possessing.”

Rocio Condra parted his beak in what passed for a smile. The sensor in Skibbow’s cabin wasn’t the best, and his affinity link with its bitek processor suffered annoying dropouts. But what had been said was plain enough.

He wasn’t entirely sure how he could use the knowledge, but it was the first sign of any possible chink in Kiera’s armour. That was a start.

•   •   •

Stephanie could finally see the end of the red cloud cover. The heavy ceiling had been dropping closer to the ground for some time now as the convoy drove unimpeded along the M6. Individual clumps and streamers churned against each other in a motion reminiscent of waves crashing on rocks, bright slivers of pink and gold rippled among the distorted underbelly. They acted like a conductor for a current of pure agitation. The will of the possessed was being thwarted, their shield against the sky arrested by the Kingdom’s firebreak.

The cliff of white light sleeting down along the boisterous edge appeared almost solid. Certainly it took her eyes a while to acclimatize, slowly resolving the grainy shadows which crouched at the end of the road.

“I think it might be a good idea to slow down now,” Moyo said in her ear.

She applied the brakes, reducing their speed to a crawl. The other three buses behind matched her caution. Two hundred metres from the flexing curtain of sunlight she stopped altogether. The cloud base was only four or five hundred metres high here, hammering on the invisible boundary in perpetual ferment.

Two sets of bright orange barriers had been erected across the road. The first was under the edge of the cloud, sometimes bathed in red light, sometimes in white; the second was three hundred metres north, guarded by a squad of Royal Marines. Behind them, several dozen military vehicles were drawn up on the hard shoulder, armoured troop transports, ground tanks, general communications vehicles, lorries, a canteen, and several field headquarters caravans.

Stephanie opened the bus doors and stepped down onto the road. The thunder was an aggressive growl here, warning outsiders to keep back.

“What did they do to the grass?” Moyo shouted. Just inside the line of sunlight, the grass was dead, its blades blackened and desiccated. Already it was crumbling into dust. The dead zone lay parallel to the border of the red cloud as far as the eye could see, forming a rigid stripe that cut cleanly across every contour.

Stephanie looked along the broad swath of destruction, trees and bushes had been burned to charcoal stumps. “Some kind of no-man’s-land, I suppose.”

“That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?”

She laughed, and pointed up at the glowing cloud.

“Okay, you got a point. What do you want to do next?”

“I’m not sure.” She resented her indecision immediately. This was the culmination of enormous emotional investment. For all that, the practicalities of the moment had been ignored. I almost wish we were still travelling, it gave me such a sense of satisfaction. What have we got after this?

Cochrane, McPhee, and Rana joined them.

“Some terminally unfriendly looking dudes we have here,” Cochrane yelled above the thunder. The marines lining the barrier were motionless, while more were hurrying from the cluster of vehicles to reinforce them.

“I’d better go and talk to them,” Stephanie said.

“Not alone?” Moyo protested.

“I’ll look a lot less threatening than a delegation.” A white handkerchief sprouted from Stephanie’s hand; she held it up high and clambered over the first set of barriers.

Lieutenant Anver watched her coming and gave his squad their deployment assignments, sending half of them out to flank the road and watch for any other possessed trying to sneak over, not that they’d ever get past the satellites. His helmet sensors zoomed in for a close-up on the woman’s face. She was squinting uncomfortably at the light as she emerged from under the dappled shadow of the red cloud. A pair of sunglasses materialized on her face.