‘Horrible,’ he said.
‘I just see pathetic,’ Drake said. ‘It’s a dried-up old thing, victim of the Inquisitor’s kind.’
‘Then why not put it down?’
‘You talk as if it’s a suffering animal,’ Drake said, surprised. ‘It’s nothing like that. It was dead before it came through and doomed my world. Why put down something that’s already dead?’
Jonah looked at his counterpart and saw a strong, determined man. But Drake was also someone who had been living in the aftermath all his life, scratching and surviving amid the rubble of his dead civilisation. If he was harsh, it was because that was all he had.
‘In our world, they were Neanderthals,’ Jonah said, turning his back on the horrible thing.
‘Ours also,’ Drake agreed. ‘It seems that they didn’t die out on every Earth. Another reason why the Inquisitors have to be defeated, and destroyed. They’ll kill anything that isn’t them. It’s worse than genocide. Not the extermination of a people, but an entire species. A reality. And if they finally succeed—’
‘They’ll never succeed.’
‘Why not?’ Drake asked.
‘Because the multiverse is infinite.’
‘Then they’ll commit infinite evil, and cause infinite pain, because they can never stop. Infinite Earths that might never breach without their help will be exposed to . . .’ Drake nodded at the wretched animate corpse.
‘There must be a way,’ Jonah said. ‘With that bastard stalking me.’ He looked around, away from the trapped dead thing and back out into the narrow tunnel beyond. He hadn’t seen the Inquisitor since coming through, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Sometimes when he blinked it was watching him, standing behind the operating table with the objects it wanted to graft onto Jonah. Just waiting for him to accept his fate.
‘There might be,’ Drake said, his voice sad once again, hesitant.
‘How? You think you have a way?’
‘First, I can show you more of what is out there. You want to see?’
‘No,’ Jonah said. ‘But I must.’
‘My wife, Paloma,’ Drake said, introducing Jonah to a tall, thin woman. ‘She’s our doctor. She will work with Marc when he arrives.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Jonah said, extending his hand. Paloma glanced at it and smiled uncertainly. Drake went to her side and hugged her, then whispered something in her ear. Her eyes went wide and she averted her gaze from Jonah, trying to appear less shocked than she was.
‘Something I should know?’ Jonah asked. Drake was guiding him here, choosing what he should hear and know, and that was a level of control no one had ever had over Jonah. He bristled, but also felt something like a child. They might be survivors barely scraping an existence, but something about Drake’s world was far ahead of Jonah’s.
‘I’m telling her about Jayne,’ Drake said, not looking at Jonah.
‘Good,’ Jonah said. ‘Hopefully she and Marc—’
‘Yes,’ Drake said. ‘So, casting library. This way.’ And he left the room, expecting Jonah to follow. Paloma remained looking at the floor, and Jonah walked closer to her than he had to, hoping that she would glance up. But she did not. Dead man walking, he thought, not sure where the words had come from.
He followed Drake. They passed through a series of doors, and then Drake paused at a doorway, put his finger to his lips and nodded inside. ‘Casting room,’ he whispered as Jonah drew close. ‘This will upset you.’
And how right Drake was. For a second Jonah was amazed at the technology behind what he was seeing, and a hundred questions occurred to him all at once. But then he realised what was being displayed on the screens hanging above the prone people, and such petty queries fled.
He saw his world in flames and turmoil. Burning cities, rivers of bodies, masses of humanity no longer human.