The wounded man passed below the camera, and he was not wearing the expression of someone in pain or close to passing out. Instead, his teeth were bared and his pupils completely dilated. He looked predatory, sharklike. He was barely out of his teens, and the most frightening thing Jonah had ever seen.
‘Holly,’ Jonah breathed. She stood slowly from behind her desk and looked up at a camera, drew her hand across her throat – and then the last guard remaining in Control ran at her. His uniform was splashed black and torn in several places. He had dropped his gun, and his hands were held out, clawed, in front of him, ready to rip and tear. He leaped onto a desk and jumped over Melinda’s head onto another work surface. Holly slammed her hand down onto a button and ran.
Directly at the breach.
‘No!’ Estelle gasped.
Jonah caught his breath, heart thudding. Her disappearance into the breach was such a simple thing, so soundless and fast, that he was not sure he’d seen it at all. One moment she was there, the next she was gone, and he sat back in his chair and took a deep breath. Where are you now? he thought, and though he was not a believer he prayed to something, anything, that she was still alive. Then at least something might be saved from this disaster.
‘She’ll see it all,’ he said. His powerful sob surprised him.
The pursuing guard hit the floor where Holly had crouched moments before and stared after her. He swayed left to right, apelike, as if searching into darkness. Then he tilted his head to one side as though he’d heard something, and ran from Control, a fleeting shadow across screen four as he too disappeared into Coldbrook.
‘She’s gone through,’ Uri said. ‘I can’t . . . can’t access all of Control’s sensors to see if . . .’
‘I know,’ Jonah said. ‘But it doesn’t matter. She’s on her way to another Earth.’ He watched Melinda pause in front of the breach, her head raised slightly as if sniffing the air, and then turn away and stagger towards Control’s open door. He sighed in relief, glad that she had not followed Holly. Perhaps she had sensed closer prey.
‘Holly’s on her own through there. And we have to commence lockdown.’
Secondary fell silent as his words sunk in. None of them spoke, all thinking their own thoughts. When no one objected Jonah sobbed again, quieter this time, because of everything they had done.
‘Still no one approaching,’ the guard said.
From the distance, gunshots. And screams.
‘Jonah, this doesn’t mean we were wrong,’ Estelle said.
‘Thank you,’ he said, and he had never meant the words so sincerely. ‘Now, Uri, if you’d prepare the lockdown orders, I think I should initiate it myself, and I’ll remain here to ensure it’s worked. You all go and find somewhere safer. I’ll see you on the screens.’ He nodded up at the view of Control, free of all movement now apart from Melinda’s shuffling figure. ‘I’ll join you later.’
Uri nodded and started tapping some keys.
‘Sir, you don’t have to stay on your own,’ the guard said.
‘I appreciate that,’ Jonah said. ‘But that’s what I’d rather. And these two will need you to protect them. Secondary was never designed to be a refuge. I have to lock down and tell the surface what’s happening. We need to let people know. And then . . .’
‘And then?’ Estelle asked.
Jonah shrugged. And then? He didn’t know. Their absolute priority was to stop any danger reaching the surface. Beyond that, he could not yet think.
He closed his eyes. He was old, and that was fine, and he had lived a life. But others in this place had people up there, many of them living in the nearest town, Danton Rock: wives, husbands, kids.
Like Vic Pearson. A family.
And then Jonah wondered where the hell Vic Pearson had gone.
‘Uri, quickly,’ he said. ‘Quickly!’