“Is it over now?”

The wishful childlike tone made him press his lips together in regret. “Not quite. We still have to get up to the spaceport; there’s a route through these water pipes which will eventually take us to a tube tunnel, we don’t have to go up to the surface. But Bonney survived. She’ll try to stop us.”

Tatiana rested her chin in her hands. “Lord Thoale is testing us more than most. I’m sure he has his reasons.”

“I’m not.” Dariat lumbered to his feet and untied the pillow harness. “I’m sorry, but we have to get going.”

She nodded miserably. “I’m coming.”

The search teams which Bonney and her deputies had organized were wending their way out of Valisk’s starscrapers. Shock from the flooding was evident in their shuffling footsteps and tragic eyes. They emerged from the lobbies, consoling each other as best they could.

It shouldn’t have happened, was the thought which rang among them like an Edenist Consensus. They’d made it back to the salvation of reality. They were the chosen ones, the lucky ones, the blessed. Eternal life, and the precious congruent gift of sensation, had been within their grasp. Now Rubra had shown them how tenuous that claim was.

He was able to do that because they remained in a universe where his power was a match to theirs. It shouldn’t be like that. Whole planets had escaped from open skies and Confederation retribution, while they stayed to entrap new bodies. Kiera’s idea—and it had been a good one, bold and vigorous. Eternity spent within the confines of a single habitat would be a difficult prospect, and she had seen a way forwards.

That was why they’d acquiesced to her rule and that of the council, because she’d been right. At the start. Now though, they had increased their numbers, Kiera had flown off to negotiate their admission to a dangerous war, and Bonney committed them against Rubra to satisfy her personal vendettas.

No more. No more risks. No more foolhardy adventures. No more sick savagery of hunting. The time had come to leave it all behind.

The truck raced along the hardened track which countless wheels had compacted across the semi-arid plain surrounding Valisk’s northern endcap. Bonney had the throttle at maximum, the axial motors complemented by her energistic power. Small flattened stones and cracked ridges which lay along the track sent the vehicle flying through the air in long shallow hops.

Bonney didn’t even notice the jouncing, which would have caused whiplash injuries to any non-possessed riding beside her. Her mind was focused entirely on the endcap whose base was five kilometres in front of her. She imagined her beefy old vehicle beating the sleek tube capsule slicing along its magnetic rail in the tunnel below her. The one she knew he would be riding.

Up ahead she could just make out the dark line of the switchback road which wound up to the small plateau two kilometres above the plain. If she could only reach the passageway entrance before Dariat got out of the sewer tunnels and into a tube carriage she might conceivably reach the axis chamber before him.

A feeling of contentment began to seep into her mind. An insidious infiltration which called on her to respond, to generate her own dreamy satisfaction, to pledge it to the whole.

“Bastards!” She slapped furiously at the steering wheel, anger insulating her from the loving embrace which was rising up all around her. They had begun it, the gathering of power, the sharing, linking their wills. They’d submitted, capitulated , to their craven fear. Valisk would soon sail calmly out of this universe, sheltering them from any conceivable threat, committing them to a life of eternal boredom.

Well not for her. One of the hellhawks could take her off, away where there was struggle and excitement. Only after she’d dealt with Dariat, though. There would be time. There had to be.

The truck’s speed began to pick up. Her stubborn insistence was diverting a fraction of the prodigious reality dysfunction which was coalescing around the habitat. The utterly implausible was becoming hard fact.

Bonney laughed gleefully as the truck shot along the track, ripping up a churning cloud of thick ochre dust behind it. While all around her, the tiny clumps of scrub grass, cacti, and lichen sprawls were sprouting big adventitious flower buds. The bland desert was quietly and miraculously transforming itself into a rich colour-riot garden as Valisk’s new masters prepared to enact their vision of paradise.

The Kohistan Consensus had a thousand and one questions on the nature of possession and the beyond. Dariat sat quietly in the tube carriage taking him to the axis chamber and tried to supply answers for as many as he could. He even let them hear the terrible cries of the lost souls that infested his every thought. So that they’d know, so they’d understand the dreadful compulsion driving each possessor.

I feel strange,rubra announced. It’s like being drunk, or light-headed. I think they’re starting to penetrate my thought routines.

No,dariat said. he was aware of it himself now, the reality dysfunction starting to pervade the polyp of the shell. In the distance, a chorus of minds were singing a joyous hymn of ascension. They’re getting ready to leave the universe. We don’t have much time.

We can confirm that,the consensus said. Our voidhawks on observation duty are reporting large squalls of red light appearing on your shell, Rubra. The hellhawks appear most agitated. They are leaving their docking pedestals.

Don’t let it happen, boy,rubra said. Come into me, please, transfer over now. We can win, we can stop them taking Valisk to their bloody haven. We can screw them yet.

Not with Tatiana here. I won’t condemn her to that. We’ve still got time.

Bonney’s almost at the plateau.

And we’re almost at the base of the endcap. This carriage can go straight up to the axis chamber. She’s got to climb three kilometres of stairs. We’ll make it easily.

Blue smoke spouted out of the truck’s tyres as Bonney skid-braked the vehicle outside the passageway’s dark entrance. When she jumped down from the driver’s seat her sharp upper teeth were protruding over her lower lip, producing a permanent feral grin. Her painfully red-rimmed eyes narrowed to lethargic slits as she gazed up at the steepening cliff of grey polyp in front of her, as if puzzled by its appearance. Every movement took on a dullard’s slowness. Breath wheezed heavily out of her nostrils.

She ignored the passageway and stood perfectly still, bringing her arms to rest in front of her so her hands crossed above her crotch. Her head drooped, bowing deeply, the eyes closing completely.

What the hell is she doing now?dariat asked. She was frantic to get up there.

It looks like she’s praying.

Somehow, I really doubt that.

The tube carriage reached the base of the endcap and started to sweep up the slope towards the hub. An urgent whining sound permeated the inside. Dariat could feel it slowing, then it accelerated again.

Damn it, I’m getting power dropouts right across the habitat. That’s in the sections of myself I can still perceive. I’m shrinking, boy, there are places where my thoughts have ceased. Help me!

The reality dysfunction is strengthening. Five minutes. Hang on for five more minutes.

Bonney’s khaki suit was darkening, at the same time its texture changed to a glossier aspect. She was starting to hunch up, her legs bowing out and becoming spindly. Pointed ears emerged from a shortening crop of hair. There was no suit anymore, only a black pelt.