Eight men and women came out with them into the darkness, and they walked silently towards the head of the valley. Though none of them spoke, Jonah could sense the respect they held for him. A few glanced his way now and then, as if to imprint him on their memories. Perhaps they’d tell their children and grandchildren of how they had seen the man carrying the Inquisitors’ doom in his heart.
After an hour walking through the night, he saw the bulky angles of a building on a shoulder between two mountains, several hundred feet below the ridge line and on the moonward side. It reminded Jonah of a coal mine on a hillside back home.
‘Jonah,’ Drake whispered, ‘is it following?’
‘I have no idea,’ Jonah said. ‘You said yourself, it’s not all-seeing.’
Drake glanced at him, worried.
Jonah smiled. ‘Yes, Drake. It’s following. Has been for a few minutes.’
They moved off again, climbing the ridge until they were level with the large structure, then cutting across the hillside. Shale slopes whispered in the darkness as they dislodged stones, and shapes scattered to hide in shadows as they approached.
Jonah slipped his fingers inside his shirt and fingered the small wound on his chest. It was two inches below his left nipple and towards the centre of his chest, and it felt more like a boil than an entry wound. Its head was smooth and warm to the touch, and hard – when he pressed it the nodule sank into his loose old-man’s skin but hurt only a little. If he took a deep breath, he could feel the small charge inside surrounded by fury blood. Before they parted company Drake would give him the trigger.
He felt curiously detached from the thing in his chest. It was not a part of him. If anything, it was a part of Drake’s desires and destiny, not his own.
At a silent signal the eight people spread out across the slope, four above and four below the point where they had stopped.
‘I’ll take you from here,’ Drake said. ‘There are traps.’
Jonah felt stares on him as he and Drake walked towards the building, but no one spoke. Perhaps they were so used to moving silently when they were outside that they could not bring themselves to say anything.
The last time Jonah glanced back, the people had merged into the shadows.
It took another few minutes to reach the structure and as they drew near Jonah could make out the haphazard nature of its construction.
‘They started building quickly around the breach. Then later, after The End when the survivors made their home in Coldbrook, they decided that further protection was needed. Walls and traps. Safeguards. It’s become something of a ritual for us to build some more onto this every three years.’ Drake pulled an object from his shoulder bag and handed it to Jonah.
‘And this will be the trigger,’ Jonah said.
‘Might feel strange to you.’ Drake placed it in Jonah’s hand. ‘Squeeze hard, and the pod beside your heart will burst.’ Warm, the size of a peanut, flexible, still Jonah sensed a solid centre to the item. He nodded and placed it carefully in his jacket pocket.
Drake led him inside. Jonah had no sense of leaving anything behind, perhaps because everything he had was already a world away.
They passed through a series of doors – most of them locked – passageways and arches, working their way deep into a labyrinth of concrete and rock. Drake took a route that was clear only to himself, and here and there he held up a hand and went about making their way safe. Some traps were basic: tripwires firing spring blades and primed crossbows; false floors above deep, spiked pits; hidden triggers that anything unaware could activate and which would bring spikes or blades or crushing rocks down upon them. Other traps were more mysterious to Jonah: slow-flowing waterfalls that Drake had to divert, their effect unknown; openings haloed by weak light, the air within sparking softly. Jonah wanted to ask about every single one, his scientist’s mind alert. But there was no time for investigation.