She stood in the middle of the floor, looking at him expectantly.

He glanced down, seeing his body for the first time. “Oh no,” he said in a desperate voice. “This isn’t happening.”

Loud, positive footsteps sounded from the far end of the warehouse. Lewis didn’t wait to see who was emerging from the gloom, he spun round. There was no door any more, just a concrete wall. “Jesus Almighty. Fuck!”

“Hello, Lewis.”

His body was compelled to turn, leg muscles working like dead meat fired by a cattle prod. He bit hard on his trembling lip.

Thérèse had gone. The person walking towards him was the body he had possessed on Lalonde.

“You’re dead,” Lewis whispered through a fear-knotted throat.

Laton merely smiled his superior smile. “Of all the people resident in this universe today, Lewis, you should know there is no such thing as death.”

“I’m in charge here,” Lewis yelled. “I am Pernik.” He tried to fling the white fire, to conjure up energistic devastation, to flay the zombie to its stinking corrupt bones and beyond.

Laton halted five metres away. “You were Pernik. I told you once that we would meet again as equals. I lied. You cannot even begin to conceive the processes involved in your manifestation within this universe. You are a Neanderthal out of time, Lewis. You believed brute force was the key to conquest. Yet you failed to even think about the source of your energistic power. I know, I’ve been analysing your tiresomely sluggish thoughts ever since you possessed my body.”

“What have you done to me?”

“Done? Why, Lewis, I have made you a part of me. Possession of the possessor. It is possible given the right circumstances. In this case I simply corrupted Pernik’s neural stratum with my biological weapon. The neuron cells and nerve paths only conduct my thought impulses now. You can kill the cells, but you can’t subvert them. It’s a question of coding, you see. I know the codes, you don’t. And please don’t ask me for them, Lewis, it’s nothing as simple as a number. You now operate only as a subsidiary part of me, you only think because I allow you to. That is how I summoned you here.”

“I think because I am! I have been me for centuries, you bastard.”

“And were you to go back there to the beyond, you would be you again. Free and independent. Do you want to go, Lewis? That is your escape from my bondage. In this universe you require a physical, living biological matrix in which to function. You may depart now if you wish.”

A weight pulled at Lewis’s belt. When he looked down he saw it was the power-blade knife hanging in its sheath. “No.” He shook his head feebly, quailing at the prospect. “No, I won’t. That’s what you want. Without me Pernik would be free again. I’m going to stop that, I’m going to beat you.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Lewis. I will never allow you to resume your barbaric act of sodomy. You think of yourself as strong, as purposeful. You are entirely incorrect. You and the other returners have a nebulous plan to re-establish yourselves permanently in this physical universe. You do so because of your own quite pathetic psychological weaknesses.”

Lewis snarled at his tall tormentor. “So fucking smart, aren’t you. Let’s see what you’re like after a hundred fucking years of nothing; no food, no breathing, no touch, just fucking nothing. You’ll be begging to join us, shithead.”

“Really?” Laton’s smile no longer contained even a vestige of humour. “Think what you are, Lewis. Think what all the returners are. Then ask yourself, where is the rest of the human race? The hundreds of billions who have died since the day our ancestors first struck two flints together, from the time we watched the glaciers retreating as we battled with mammoths.”

“They’re with me, billions of them. They’re waiting for their chance. And when they get into this universe they’re gonna come gunning for you, shithead.”

“But they’re not with you in the beyond, Lewis, there are nothing like enough souls to account for everyone. You cannot lie to me, you are part of me. I know. They’re not there. Ask yourself who and why, Lewis.”

“Fuck you.” Lewis drew the knife from its scabbard. He thumbed the switch in a smooth motion and the silver blade emitted a dangerous buzz.

“Lewis, kindly behave yourself; this is my perceptual reality, after all.”

Lewis watched the solid blade curve round towards his fingers. He dropped the knife with a yell. It vanished before it reached the floor, making as little fuss as a snowflake landing on water. “What do you want with me?” He raised his clenched fists, knowing that it was all futile. He wanted to pound his knuckles into the concrete.

Laton took another few paces towards him. And Lewis came to realize just how imposing the big Edenist was. It was all he could do not to back away.

“I want to make amends,” Laton said. “At least part way. I doubt I will ever be fully forgiven in this universe, not for my crime. And it was a crime, I admit that now. You see, from you I have learnt how wrong I was before. Immortality is a notion we all grasp at because we can sense that there is continuity beyond death. It is an imperfect realization due to the weakness of the fusion between this continuum and the state of emptiness which follows. So much of our misunderstanding of life is rooted in this, so many wasted opportunities, so much religious claptrap born. I was wholly wrong to try and achieve a physical life extension, when corporeal life is but the start of existence. I was no better than a monkey trying to grasp a hologram banana.”

“You’re mad!” Lewis shouted recklessly. “You’re fucking mad!”

Laton became pitying. “Not mad, but very human. Even in this hiatus state I have emotions. And I have weaknesses. One of them is the desire for revenge. But then you know all about that, don’t you, Lewis? Revenge is a prime motivator; glands or no glands, chemical fury or otherwise. You burnt for it in the empty beyond, revenge on the living for the crime of living.

“Well, now I shall have my revenge for the agonies and degradations you so joyfully submitted my kind to. My kind being the Edenists. For I am one. At the end. Flawed, but proud of them, their silly pride and honour. They are a basically peaceful people, those of Pernik more than most, and you delighted in shattering their sanity. You also destroyed my children, and you revelled in it, Lewis.”

“I still do! I hope it fucking hurt you watching! I hope the memory makes you scream at nights. I want you in pain, you shit, I want you weeping. If I’m part of your memories then you won’t ever be able to forget, I won’t let you.”

“Oh, Lewis, haven’t you learnt anything yet?” Laton drew his own knife from a scabbard he brought into existence. Its wickedly thrumming power-blade was half a metre long. “I’m going to free Syrinx and warn the Atlantean consensus as to the exact nature of the threat they face. However, the remaining possessed do present a slight problem. So I need you to overcome them, Lewis. I shall consume you, completely.”

“Never! I won’t help.”

Laton took a pace forwards. “It isn’t a question of choice. Not on your part.”

Lewis tried to run. Even though he knew it was impossible. The concrete closed in, shrinking the warehouse to the size of a tennis court, a room, a cube five metres across.

“I require control of the energistic spillover, Lewis. The power which comes from colliding continua. For that I must have the you which is you. I must complete my possession.”

“No!” Lewis raised his arms as the blade came whistling down. Once again there was the dreadful grinding sound as bone was pierced and fragmented. A flash of intolerable pain followed by the devastating numbness. His blood spilled onto the floor in great spurts from his elbow stump.

“Goodbye, Lewis. It may be some time before we encounter one another again. But none the less I wish you luck in your search for me.”