A number of emotions play across Foss’s face. She looks at McQueen, who mimes shooting himself in the head. But it’s really not his own brains he’d like to see spread around.
So he doesn’t get to bag one of the things that killed Lutes, because the Robot got there first. The fucking Robot! It’s like you had your eye on some hot, sweet lady and Stephen Hawking beat your time.
Except that Stephen Hawking, by all accounts, was pretty smart.
“We are going to have words about this,” McQueen prophesies grimly.
“On our way, sir,” Foss says. “Out.”
Akimwe and Sealey are looking comically surprised. Probably feeling like Greaves cock-blocked them, too. “Any takers for one last sweep?” McQueen demands.
“I’m in,” Phillips says. Akimwe is a couple of seconds behind him, but he votes with his heart and that’s three.
But Foss isn’t counting hands. “We’ve got our orders,” she says. “Let’s go.”
Good for you, McQueen thinks reluctantly. And because he doesn’t want to foul her in her first match, he falls right in behind her.
But by the same token, the Robot is going to get it in the neck. And parts way, way south.
Carlisle lowers the walkie-talkie and nods. “They’re coming,” he tells Khan.
She sags with relief. She has been afraid all this time that there might be some kind of catastrophe and that it might be brought back, somehow, to Stephen. Even though he has problems that nobody has allowed for. Even though it’s Fournier’s fault as much as anyone’s that he didn’t get a chance to speak. But it’s okay, after all. It’s going to be fine.
They retrace their steps from the top of the ridge. It’s harder going on the way down, and particularly hard for Khan because she can’t jump, run or take a chance on a tumble. She has to lower herself a step at a time, with due regard for her precious cargo.
The colonel utters a sudden, intemperate oath. Khan is surprised until she sees what he has seen: Penny is walking towards them from Rosie, aiming to meet them halfway.
When she is close enough for him to speak to her without raising his voice, Carlisle chews her out. “I told you to wait, Doctor,” he says. “Not to leave the airlock open and unattended.”
“I closed it behind me!” Penny says indignantly. “I just wanted to …” Her voice trails off, but the end of that sentence is easy to fill in. She didn’t want to be the last member of the science team left on the sidelines, and for these purposes she doesn’t count Dr. Fournier as a scientist any more than the rest of them do.
The colonel doesn’t waste time on remonstrances. He ushers them on with a brusque nod of the head, and Penny reluctantly turns to make the march of shame back to Rosie. She even takes the first step.
But in between the first step and the second, the children emerge from the forest on all sides of them. It’s as quick and as seamless as ink soaking through a paper towel. One moment they’re alone, the next they’re surrounded.
They stop dead. There is no other option: the children’s cordon bristles with points and edges. They are equipped with a terrifying array of found objects, as though a primary-school outing had armed themselves from their parents’ kitchen cabinets and toolboxes before setting off. With a dizzying sense of unreality, almost as though she is looking at a puzzle picture (can you find seventeen sharp things in this woodland scene?), Khan’s gaze is drawn to a carving fork, a drill bit, a Stanley knife, a ski pole, a chisel. The children hold these things in readiness but make no move to strike.
Khan experiences a weird fissioning of her vision. At first glance, she is seeing children. Scary human children, either playing war games or going full-on Lord of the Flies. On the double-take she sees that the whites of their eyes aren’t white. They’re grey. Cordyceps infection, when it reaches the brain, deposits mycelial matter in the visceral humour of the eye. These are hungries.
But regular hungries are like rays of light. Once they start moving, they can’t stop until they hit a target. They don’t choose to stop. And they don’t watch anything the way the children are watching them now: intent, appraising, ready to move again from one moment to the next. Khan feels her legs weaken, almost falls but steels herself and stays upright.
One of the children steps forward. Their leader? It’s hard to tell. Like the rest she is dressed in outlandish offcuts, faded and scuffed with wear. A hundred keychains hang at her waist, and her red hair is a still-frame from an explosion. But she has an air of authority, and the others track her movements with a hushed expectancy. She might be nine years old. The worm of an old scar winds across her pretty face. Her grey-on-grey eyes are open more than a little too wide, the pupils visible as perfect circles.
She goes to Stephen. She is aware of Khan, of the colonel, but she doesn’t seem interested in them. She is as lithe as a cat: the keychains barely jangle when she moves.
She places her hand in the centre of Stephen’s chest. To Khan’s astonishment, Stephen accepts the touch with no sign of discomfort. If anyone in Rosie, even Khan herself, laid a hand on him like that he would flinch away so violently that he would ricochet off the far wall.
For several heartbeats, the girl’s hand, with the fingers spread, rests against the thin fabric of Stephen’s shirt. Then she removes it and presses it to her own breastbone. Holds it there.
And drops her arm, once again, to her side.
There is a long, strained silence. It’s as though they’re in a play and everyone has forgotten their lines. The colonel’s hand drifts by almost imperceptible degrees towards the gun holstered on his belt.
Stephen is just a little faster.
He reaches into the pocket of his fatigues and brings something out. A lozenge of red plastic with a white ring dangling from it on a string. He tugs the string, pulls it out to its full length and then releases it.
“At light speed,” a voice says, “we’ll be there before you know it.” It’s an analogue voice, a gravelly rasp made almost incomprehensible by hiss and sputter. As the words are spoken, the string rewinds back into its casing until the ring bumps up once again against its side.
For a moment, Stephen stares at the thing in his hands, a frown of thought on his face. Khan hasn’t seen the thing in his hands for eight years but she knows exactly what it is. Captain Power comes back to her in a sudden flood of recollection. The toy Stephen was clutching when they found him, and all the way back to Beacon. The one she found, broken, and gave back to him. The voice box must be all that’s left of it now.
Stephen holds it out on the flattened palm of his hand.