Turning into the torture room Billy growled like a goddamn animal and shot many times while the sea roared and smashed the Nazi bric-a-brac from wall to wall and sunk it as if at the bottom of the world.
“Dane,” he said. “Dane, Dane, Dane.” He knelt in the swells. Dane wheezed and smiled. Billy took a hacksaw to his bonds. “You’re alright,” Billy said. “You’re okay. We got here in time. Before they did anything.”
And Dane even actually laughed at that, as he flopped free from his crooked starburst constraint.
“No, mate,” he whispered. “You’re too late. Twice. Never mind though, eh?” He laughed again and it was bad. “Never mind though. It’s good to see you, man.” He leaned on Billy like someone much more wounded than he looked, and Billy was confused.
“They’re blocking the way out,” Billy said. Nazis from other rooms were massed at the top of the stairs and firing down with Third Reich weaponry. “Here,” said Billy, and gave Dane his gun. Dane stood a little straighter. “Are you with me, Dane?” Billy said. Dane did something, aimed and fired up the stairs. There were a lot of them up there.
“I’m with you,” he said. He looked at the weapon. His voice croaked back to something like normal. “Works okay.”
“We can’t get out that way,” Billy said.
As if in answer, certainly in answer, the sea gave a rocking swell and receded very fast, fast enough to take a great chunk of flooring with it. It left a hole in the centre of the room, a smeary slipping hollow the size of another room, broken by the stubs of pipes and the ruins of masonry. The sea poured violently back out and tore a gap as it went, sluicing from the pit to some half-used end of sewer or old river-run, opening into the labyrinth.
“Can you?” Billy said, and braced him. Dane nodded. They braced and careened in a cold, dangerous slide into the mud and receding seawater, and into the cavern.
They stared up through the fingering pipes and the slurry of brickwork, the dirty cascade, into the dinge of the room. Faces peered over the lip. Billy and Dane fired volleys, hallooing, smacking twisted features from sight. In the second of silence that followed they ran into the slime under everything, and from there, dripping like fresh clay golems, into the dark tunnels of London.
PART FIVE
RISE TOWARD DESCENT
Chapter Fifty-Five
IT WAS VERY LATE. IT HAD BEEN A WHILE SINCE ANYONE HAD actually questioned Jason, let alone smacked him around. Collingswood had come into his cell from time to time, with a bad-dream loop of questions, but he had not seen her for hours.
Food and drink was pushed through the slot. His shouted requests for a phone, for attention, for bacon sandwiches were never answered. There was a chemical toilet in the corner of his cell that he had long since given up threatening to tell Amnesty International about. Without Collingswood or another realitysmith around to dampen his knack, his jailers all half-recognised him, knew they knew him, and given that he was not—could not be, look, he was in a cell—a colleague, reasoned that he had to be a career villain, and their behaviour to him had worsened.
When Jason heard footsteps, a whisper echoing in the hall, he did not expect whoever it was to slow or stop. But they did, right outside his cell, and unlocked his door.
An officer opened it. A man, framed in the doorway, staring in weird stillness. He looked grey and very sick. Someone was behind him. The officer was not looking at Jason. He stared at the wall above Jason’s head, swallowing, swallowing. There was someone behind him webbed with shadows shed by fluorescent lights. Whispering.
“Is it …?” Jason began, and ran out of what to say.
A child peered around the doorframe. A man behind him whispered into the policeman’s ear, leaning like a windblown tree into sight on one side of his escort, then swaying to the other, playful tick-tock, winking with his left then his right eye at Jason from behind the officer’s back.
“Christine!” the drab-coated man said to Jason. “Is it you?”
Jason knew who the man and the boy were then, and he flattened himself against the wall and began to scream.
“I KNOW!” SAID GOSS, STEPPING INTO THE ROOM, ESCORTING THE officer. Subby pushed the door closed behind them with the careful preciseness of a young child. Jason screamed and crawled backward on his bed.