The Marriage of the Living Dark

Aidan smiled. “I guess not”

“Then lefs not wait.” And, taking a grenade from his belt, Daniel primed it and lobbed it down onto the bank some fifty metres below the ledge they were on. “Come on!” he yelled, as the others scrambled to their feet, realising what he had done. “Lets get down there, before the whole lot comes down on our heads!”

“You think this is it?” Aidan asked, turning to Daniel.

“Looks like it,” Daniel answered.

There had been rumours among the boys of an armoury, somewhere in the region of Buchenbach, but no one could swear to having seen it Like much else it was thought of more as legend than true fact But here it was, a strange bunker-like building, cut into the side of the mountain, below which ran a stream. And astonishingly there was a bridge. A new bridge, made of solid wooden slats.

CROSSING THE RIVER

Daniel looked about him suspiciously. They were gambling now. The darkness was falling, and Leon was going mad, and ...

He swallowed deeply. He had thought he was imagining it at first, but then he’d checked a couple of times and seen that it really was so. They had three camera bugs on him now. Three!

Was the Man himself watching? Was that it? Were they putting on a show for him?

He gripped his gun tighter, then looked to Aidan again. “Well?”

“Okay,” Aidan said, his eyes briefly uncertain. Aidan had not wanted to come this way. He’d wanted to go back and take the tap, whatever the cost But Daniel had persuaded him. After his luck at the river he seemed to have been on some kind of a roll. So why not? Because I was guessing. And that guess might cost us all our lives. He did not know why he had persuaded Aidan, but he had. It had been the same kind of instinct that made him turn left and loose off a round even before he saw or heard the threat from that side - a “sixth sense” some called it The same thing that got him through this living hell each time. He stared hard at the building, certain now that it was the armoury. And even if it was a trap, they would survive it He’d take them in and bring them out. And why? Because he had an instinct for it Aidan had not moved. Thirty seconds had passed and Aidan had not moved. Behind him the four boys waited in a line, stretched out a good three metres between each of them as they faced the armoury.

“Okay,” Daniel said, “lets go in.”

So it’s me now, Daniel thought, and wondered at how, in a single moment, command had switched from Aidan to himself.

Confidence, he told himself. They see it in me. Pure self-belief, shining from me like a beacon. Why, even Aidan sees it and acknowledges it, for there’s no room here for uncertainty. No mercy for the faint-hearted. Daniel smiled at the thought, knowing that somewhere they were watching him; smiling perhaps because they were watchinghim. Then, unclipping the rocket-launcher from his back, he stepped out onto the bridge.

“Fucking hell!” one of the operators said quietly as he watched the team cut their way through the guards and into the first level area. “They don’t stand a chance,” another of them said, pushing back from his machine, his face registering a kind of awe at what he was witnessing. All around the massive control room, men were sitting back from their screens, that same look - part shock, part awe - on every face. “Seal us off,” Dublanc ordered, coming down the metal steps. At once the great blast shields came down at either end of the room. Standing beneath the bank of screens, Dublanc stared, then shook his head. It was true. They were used to watching these teams compete against machines that looked like insects and, though boys died, it was all a kind of game. But now, against human opposition, they were revealed for what they were - the ultimate predators. A nightmare with twelve arms.

“You want me to flood the level with gas?”

Dublanc turned to York and snarled. ‘Til have .yew fucking gassed, you arsehole!

Look at them! Just look at what we’ve made!”

And now he smiled. Smiled as Daniel reloaded, then blew away another pair of guards.

They shouldn’t be anywhere near here, he thought That’s why we buHt the Core here between the rivers, to make sure they didn’t come anywhere near, but Daniel blew that safeguard away when he blew a path across the river. “Pull back!” he ordered. “Let them have the level.”

“But the armoury ...”

One look silenced his assistant.

Dublanc turned back, watching as the team broke down the armoured doors, then went to the racks and, with the care of experts, selected the weaponry they would need to go back out into Eden. Good NorTek weapons with heavy duty munitions. Pride, he thought, that’s what I’m feeling. Pride in these little bastards.

And the Man?

Maybe DeVore ought to see this, no matter what happened from here on. It was certainly unusual enough to warrant his attention. Then again, DeVore didn’t want to know about failures. So maybe he would wait, after all.

“I was wrong,” he said aloud, grinning as he looked about him at the crowded

operations room. “There was I thinking Daniel was getting paranoid, when all the

while he was getting smart”

The full moon was halfway up the sky when they came to the tap at Breitnau. In its light they could see the towering presence of the wall, no more than four kilometres distant They had made good progress, but it had been at a price. Johann had been cut by a clipper-fly and Ju Dun had trodden on a spine-beetle. Both wounds would have to be treated, and soon, but most worrying of all was Leon.

Leon was on the edge.

Not only that, but it was night now, and at night Eden exploded into sudden, vicious life.

In an insane mimicry of life, the mind that had devised Eden and its occupants had chosen to stay dose to the pattern on which it drew. In the insect world most bugs lay quiescent during the heat of the day, their shape and colour blending into the background, effectively hiding them from sight Yet at night they’d come alive So it was that machines that had rested throughout the day, drawing power and energy from tiny solar panels set into their wings and into the flanks of their long, segmented bodies, now buzzed or scuttled about, their infrared night-sights seeking out every source of body-heat Yet they too gave off traces of warmth from the tiny engines that powered them, and it was these the boys now depended upon, their guns locking on each bright flicker as it appeared in the darkness that surrounded them. From the watch-towers on the wall, the guards, looking back into Eden, could mark the team’s slow progress, not merely by the sound of gunfire and explosions, but by the display of pyrotechnics that accompanied the team, sudden bright coruscations lighting the sky briefly, then several vivid flashes and, a moment later, the pock-pock-pock of an automatic. And at the heart of that, Leon, his eyes dark with pain, firing at anything that moved, real or imaginary.

The tap was just ahead of them. Through their visors, the boys could see it as a broad glow, constantly in movement where hundreds of the mechanoids clustered about it. The spigot of the tap shone like a tiny spire, poking up from the centre of that glowing, shimmering mass. From moment to moment it would seem to bulge, as if oozing a great blood-drop of light, then pulse, before resuming its sharp, needle-like shape.

Daniel glanced across at Leon. The whole of Leon’s back now heaved and pulsed with the burgeoning life within. You could see the glow of the tiny, growing mechanoids through his armour as faint presences, yet where the plate was split, the glow was livid, shining out like a magma flow in rock. Every bug for kilometres around was being drawn to him. Yet Leon, mad as he was, dangerous as he was, had one final use before he was done.

Leon would get them the tap.

“Leon? Leon...”

Leon’s gun swung round. Daniel could not see his eyes through the visor, but he could sense from his agitated movements just how close he was to doing for them all. One burst of rapid gunfire and they’d all be dead. “Leon, I’ve a job for you.”

Did Leon understand him any longer? And if he did, would he still respond to orders? Or had he gone beyond that now? Had they left it too late? “Leon, listen to me carefully. I want you to draw the swarm from the tap. Do you understand? I want you to take them off and then, when I give the command, I want you to seal. You got that?”

There was a grunt The gun swung away. Leon looked towards the tap. So you are still in there, Daniel thought, feeling real pity for the boy now that the moment had come. And maybe you even understand what’s happened to you. But it won’t be long now, I promise.

“Okay,” Leon said, the first word he had uttered in over an hour. “I...” He groaned as the teeming life inside him visibly shifted. “I’ll go in.” The others were all watching now. They saw how Leon jogged toward the tap, his body hunched and weary; saw how the glowing mass seemed to shiver with a sudden agitation as it sensed his proximity.

Slowly Leon began to move to the right, and as he did, he opened fire, sudden gashes of pure white light exploding within that general numbing redness. Once more the glowing mass seemed to shimmer. Then, with an eerie silence, it began to lift into the air, a great flickering cloud of red that rose with an infinite slowness to hurl itself at Leon.

Yet even as it rose, a vivid pencil line of light streaked out, joining the bright-lit figure of Daniel to Leon.

The explosion ripped Leon’s suit apart. Leon stood there a moment, flaming like a torch, then tumbled forward and lay still.

“Okay,” Daniel said, as the brightly glowing swarm fell upon the fallen boy.

“Let’s take the tap.”