Much, much, much later…

  The sea

  Not far from the coast of New Thrimp

  A world as yet unnamed

  -Marco-

  Doomp.

  Doomp.

  Closer and closer, each thud louder and clearer than the last.

  In the cold, cramped darkness of his hiding place, Marco Almacello closes his eyes as he allows his ears to take in the noises of the ship around him. Sound replaces sight. It paints pictures in his mind…

  Doomp.

  Doomp.

  Pictures of thick-soled, heavy boots on polished oak planks; pictures of hairy, grotesquely-muscled legs rising from those boots; of a grizzly, brutal-looking torso, shirtless, idly swinging murderous arms as it wanders the deck. From the torso emerges a silhouetted head that passes from the shadows into the light of a flaming torch, revealing a face full of danger and violence. In Marco’s imagination that face grins as it snatches away the tarpaulin, exposing him, and the weapon-like arms reach down, grip his flimsy body and tear it like wet paper…

  Doomp.

  Doomp.

  Louder.

  Closer.

  Breathe, he reminds himself. Calm down. Focus.

  He is here for a purpose.

  Curled up in a miserable, shivering ball, with no clothes but a flimsy dark loincloth to protect him from the frigid sea air, his spine aching from hours spent immobile in the cold, he clenches his teeth against the rising panic.

  He knows that if he is caught, they will kill him. The Polity, on whose ship he has concealed himself, are merciless even on land, in the heart of civilisation. Here, at sea, on their ship, so far from anyone who might help him, and so dangerously close to the heart of their secrets…

  Doomp.

  Doomp.

  He tries to calm himself but with each thud of the sentry’s footsteps his heart, already beating so hard he feels sure the approaching figure must hear it, quickens.

  Doomp.

  Doomp.

  Not yet, he tells himself. Not yet.

  If he detonates now, this close to shore, the blast will surely be heard from the docks. A rescue party will be sent. The wreckage of the ship will be salvaged, survivors hauled from the sea. The evil he is here to extinguish will recover and live on.

  His death will be for nothing.

  Doomp.

  Doomp.

  But if he waits—if he can hold his nerve until they are far enough out to sea that no help will come—then the explosives with which he shares this freezing little crevice will rip the whole damned ship apart and send it to the bottom of the sea forever, along with him, the death-deserving Polity crew, the prisoners in the hold…

  …and Holly.

  Again and again, he runs his trembling thumb over the phial of detonating fluid clutched in his fist, seeking comfort. Dive, his instincts urge him. Dive. Dive! Hide! It is not safe here.

  But he knows he must not. He knows that if he dives now, he risks everything.

  Wait. He must wait. Although every minute increases the risk of discovery, although every little sound scrapes against his tattered nerves, reminding him over and of the danger that surrounds him, he must resist temptation and wait. After all, he tells himself, he is already dead; either way, success or failure, Marco Almacello dies tonight.

  Seeking calm, he whispers the reasoning that has brought him here, over and over, a mantra to settle his fearful heart.

  It’s their fault she’s dead.

  They murdered her.

  They deserve to die.

  It’s their fault she’s dead.

  They murdered her.

  They deserve to die.

  It’s their fault she’s dead.…

  But the anger, the anger that normally burns alongside those words when he says them to himself in the safety of his home, is now weaker than his fear.

  Doomp.

  Doomp.

  His heart is beating too fast. Involuntarily, he begins to twitch. He needs to calm down, fast.

  The footsteps draw closer.

  Doomp.

  Doomp.

  And closer.

  Doomp.

  …

  …

  Too close.

  He panics. His control breaks and his fear thrashes free and wild, clenching, shaking, spasming every muscle; the tarpaulin moves, slick against his skin; he trembles, fights the urge to run, fight, scream but it is stronger than him, the fear is stronger and it rises, grows, overwhelming, consuming him. He tries to breathe. His lungs clamp shut. His resolve burns away, his mantra forgotten. Trapped in a tiny, dark space, he quivers, whimpers, loses control…

  and dives.

  Deep…

  Deep…

  Deep into himself he dives, as deep as he can go. Deeper, and deeper, beyond the familiar cool depths where he normally comes to hide from the world; further down into the silence, down, away from the danger, away, then further away. The world recedes…

  The scrape of the tarpaulin, the ache in his spine, the terror in his chest, the sound of the sea; they all fade, washed away like stinging soap from his eyes by the calm waters of this quiet space inside him.

  It takes his weight and he floats; here, in the safe layer between the harsh, painful world of bodies and the gentle, immaterial world of minds.

  The soft place.

  Unseen in the silent dark, gradually, he feels his heart slow. He drifts until, little by little, the panic fades. Thoughts flow more easily. Eventually, suffused by the peace of the soft place, he begins to feel safe again. He almost laughs to himself at the idea: safe! This close to certain death, the notion is absurd—there is probably no one in the world less safe than him, save perhaps the others on this doomed ship—and yet safe is just how he feels, so deep, so beautifully deep in the familiar soft dark.

  He wonders whether Holly, tucked up in her own cubby-hole at the other end of the ship, with her detonator and explosives, has also given in to her fear and dived. They both swore not to, knowing they would lose track of time, knowing that the tremors and nausea of surfacing will make the delicate movement needed to pour the detonating fluid all but impossible… but the instinct to seek safety must surely be as strong for her as for him.

  But then, she is a far better person than him. Stronger. Perhaps she is holding firm.

  If someone pulls back the tarpaulin now, they will not see him. This deep in the soft place his body is almost completely undetectable in the physical world, even to an observer staring directly at him—just a differently-textured shadow in the darkness, passed over by the eyes. Equally, if he is found, he himself will not realise it. This deep, while he is virtually invisible, he is also immobile, blind, deaf, and numb; they can pull him from his hiding place and beat him to death, and he will feel nothing. Therein lies both the danger and the safety of the soft place.

  Time passes.

  How much, he cannot say. This deep, thoughts and feelings and time intertwine, forming pathways that take him on journeys that sometimes last hours, sometimes moments.

  Perhaps, if he remains here long enough, when he surfaces it will be time to detonate…

  Perhaps he will be able to detonate before the symptoms of surfacing incapacitate him…

  Perhaps he will find his resolve again, be possessed by the spirit of justice and overcome the debility of his body for his one final task, just like the heroes in the stories.

  Perhaps this...

  Perhaps that.

  He has made it a rule not to allow the perhapses of the surface-world to follow him here.

  He releases them, as is his habit, trusting his future self to deal with future worries.

  He drifts, allowing the pathways to pull him where they will. Thoughts roll by like clouds. He knows this is the wrong thing to do, and he forgives himself; doing the wrong thing, after all, is what makes him him.

  The shimmering threads carry him.

  In the soft place he can think clearly, unburdened by the weight of time, anxieties, and the distracting needs of the body. He drifts, and thinks, and feels, and learns, and in the depths of himself he finds the truth:

  The resolve he needs to accept his imminent death is not a hard, fighting thing, like bravery, or revenge, or force of will. It is the opposite: it is giving up. The goodness in him—his spirit, he supposes, whatever pure essence remains beneath the layers of foulness that his life has caked around it—does not care about revenge. Nor, he realises with a sudden surge of certainty, does his mother’s spirit, and nor does the great, wondrous, universal whole to which their two spirits belong. For his spirit to remain here to avenge her death on those who caused it makes no more sense than a chess player staying behind after the tournament to grind his opponents’ pieces to dust.

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  He does not need to kill the Polity and sink this ship to earn the right to look her in the eye in the afterlife. He does not need to do anything to earn her forgiveness and love.

  He needs only to go to her. He needs only to die. That is his true objective: to die, and return.

  Enlightened with this new understanding and the strength it gives him, he pushes his consciousness back towards the cold and fear and pain awaiting him at the surface-world.

  He should not have dived. Surfacing is terrible. Even with amberlace to take the edge away it is terrible, but now, here, in this freezing, foul place, with no drugs, it is unbearable. Before he has even fully returned to consciousness he spasms as his cramped back muscles explode in agony. His rough clothes and the heavy tarpaulin scrape at his suddenly-sensitive skin like sandpaper on a burn. The bellow of the sea and the screeching of the ship’s tortured wood form a jagged cacophony that penetrates his ears and rattles his brain. He breathes as deeply as he dares, fighting the wave of nausea that whirls his innards. And worse than all of those is the familiar feeling of failure. He should not have dived, but he did, and now…

  No, he pleads, but it is too late. Trying his utmost to stay silent, his body convulsing, he retches up a stinking mess that pours hotly down his cheek and runs down his neck. His hand still clutches the phial of detonating fluid but now it shakes uncontrollably. Will he be able to-

  Doomp.

  Doomp.

  His shaking worsens. He is too cold, too afraid, in too much pain. He cannot bear any more.

  He must do it now.

  He must end this now.

  Desperately, he fights to control his hands and block out the vicious thoughts that swoop in to tear at him.

  With shuddering fingers he fumbles with the cork—

  —his mother is dead—

  —he must detonate—

  —dead!—

  —before his tremors become too violent—

  —he watched her deteriorate—

  —he pulls weakly, but—

  —after the Polity took their business and their home—

  —it stays stubbornly in place—

  —she dived and smoked and dived and smoked and—

  —his hand spasms and he drops the phial, which—

  —disappeared, one night, just gone from the world, and—

  —tumbles down into the space beneath him—

  —he just watched her addictions consume her, and—

  —he bites his lip, unable to stop a little sob escaping between his teeth as he—

  —waited and waited—

  —reaches his arm down under him, desperately—

  —blamed himself, hated himself, and waited, and—

  —noisily, he grasps blindly in the darkness, searching, until—

  —he did nothing, while his father worked himself frail, he did nothing, just—

  —his questing fingers knock against it and he clutches wildly—

  —waited, until it was too late—

  —and grasps it—

  —then blamed the Polity for her ruin, and grew angry—

  —and his thumb scrabbles at the cork while—

  —and angrier and—

  —he twists his body, which causes him to retch again—

  —he plotted against them, while he dived, and smoked—

  —reaching for the funnel attached to the explosives—

  —and dived, and smoked—

  —into which he must pour the fluid in the phial—

  —to escape the anger—

  —the cork slides out, breaking and crumbling—

  —he made his poor, desperate father watch as—

  —his hand jerks again—

  —he followed her into addiction and—

  —splashing the caustic liquid onto his hand—

  —dived and smoked and—

  —burning it—

  —dived and smoked and—

  —he moves the open phial towards the funnel—

  —lost his job—

  —one spasming hand approaches the other—

  —lost his money—

  —barely in control—

  —lost his home—

  —he tries to pour—

  —lost himself—

  —splashes the acid onto himself again—

  —lost everything—

  —his hand trembles uncontrollably in response to the burning, knocking against his other hand and spilling more—

  —and sudden moonlight blinds him, the noise of fabric deafens him, as the tarpaulin is ripped away and he blinks as strong hands descend from above and grip his quivering arms.

  He dives, desperately, but in vain; there can be no diving again immediately after surfacing. He knows this better than anyone. The soft place has become hard. It pushes him back and he bounces to the surface like a cork in the bath. He flails uselessly and the phial flies out of his hand. Hands far stronger than his own hold him firmly in place as he struggles. A loud voice booms in his ears:

  ‘Over here!’ it roars. ‘She was right! He’s here! I’ve found him!’ What sound like hundreds of running footsteps echo and thud towards him.

  He tries again and again to dive while the figure moves its grip down his forearms to grasp his hands. He tries to pull free but he is like a toddler thrashing against its father. When the Polity man has both of Marco’s hands firmly in his own, he grunts; stripes of shadow appear in the bulging muscles of his shoulders as he squeezes and the fine bones in Marco’s hands crunch and grind against each other, forced out of their sockets, bending and snapping. Marco screams.

  ‘In case you’ve anything nasty up your sleeve,’ the voice explains, almost apologetically. ‘You understand. Come on, now.’

  When the Polity man hauls him out and tries to stand him on the deck, his legs fold uselessly under him so he is dragged along by one forearm, his hands dangling like gloves full of lumpy soup. Behind him, he hears two others inspecting his hiding place.

  ‘Oh my goodness, is that a—’

  ‘Don’t touch it, you imbecile!’

  ‘It’s a bomb, we can’t leave it here!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the man dragging Marco calls over his shoulder. ‘She said it won’t go off without the trigger-juice, and he’s dropped that.’

  The man chuckles as the voices fade away behind them. Looking up, Marco sees the nearby lights of New Thrimp over the side of the ship. They are barely out of port. If he had detonated now, it would have been hours too early.

  He dove too deep; far, far too deep. Though it felt like hours, he can’t have been in the soft place for more than ten minutes. All told, he has lasted perhaps half an hour after they set sail.

  His failure is complete. Predictable, pathetic and complete.

  Perhaps this is for the best; this way, if Holly remains hidden until they are far out to sea… Perhaps she can-

  He is tossed onto the deck; the impact jars his bones and shakes his vision, but he is already in so much pain that he barely feels it. He slides briefly on the wet wood before coming to a stop, face-down.

  Here, he is surrounded by new voices. Serious voices. Though he is too stunned to make out what they are saying, he can tell there are many of them.

  ‘Marco.’ From among the commotion a single voice rings out, distinctly female, resonating through the air and into Marco’s bones so that he hears it clearly over the others. ‘Your plan has failed.’ He tries to turn his head to see, but a boot presses down on it.

  He tries to dive again but he can no more sink into the soft place now than he can sink into the cold, hard oak against his face. Instead, he gives up trying to hold his body in check and allows himself to tremble and spasm freely. There is no point in trying to control it now.

  ‘That’s a big bomb, Marco. Where did you get it?’

  They know his name. The fact seems significant, but he is in no state to think about what it might mean, or to care. The boot on his jaw makes it almost impossible to speak. He gurgles out some incoherent noises.

  ‘Pardon?’

  The boot remains in place but the pressure eases just enough for him to blurt out:

  ‘I can’t.’ His voice tightens and rises in pitch as he begins to sob. ‘I can’t, I can’t… I’m sorry… Please.’

  The voices are silent now—only the creak of the ship and the rush of the sea continue, like laughing spectators.

  ‘Please…’

  The voice is curt. ‘Please what, Marco? What’s all this ‘please’? Are you asking me for something?’

  ‘Kill me,’ he moans.

  ‘What? Kill you? Dear me, boy! What a thing to say!’

  He moans again, wordlessly.

  ‘I will not. Not when you’re lying on the floor being melodramatic, anyway. It would be depressing.’

  There’s nothing left for him to say; he simply weeps. All he can hope for now is for a quick end, and for Holly to succeed where he has failed.

  ‘Oh, come on now, don’t be pathetic. What’s wrong? Why are you all twitchy? Did you… did you dive while you were in there? You did, didn’t you? You’re surfacing! Oh, Marco! Look at you, you’re a mess. I can smell the sick.’

  He doesn’t know how many Polity are on the ship but he feels as though there are thousands, all watching in disgust as he jerks involuntarily, naked all but for his loincloth, crying, and covered in his own vomit.

  Holly… Holly won’t have dived. He is sure she won’t. She isn’t weak like him. She will be tucked safely in her hiding-place, biding her time…

  ‘You wally! Marco, you complete and utter… Oh, Belle, take your boot off him, he’s not dangerous. He’s about the least dangerous thing I’ve ever seen.’

  The boot lifts from his face and thuds back down next to his head.

  Doomp.

  ‘I can’t believe this. I was expecting an assassin, not an… ass! My word, I just feel sorry for you. You’ve just tried to kill me, and you’re so crap at it I can’t even be angry! Do you want some amberlace?’

  He doesn’t want anything. Other than for this to be over.

  ‘No? Well tell me if you do, because, as I said, we’re not killing you. It’d kill the mood. You know, when I was a girl my grandmother used to have a foul temper and a three-legged dog with arthritis. It couldn’t move fast enough to get out of the way, and every time she kicked it, it would yelp, this high-pitched noise that didn’t sound like a dog at all. I used to feel so sorry for it I’d cry. You remind me of that dog, Marco, just… worse. You’re like a no-legged dog. Although… No, I probably would kill that. You’re sort of like… a dog that’s so stupid it ate its own legs and made itself ill. Whilst in the middle of an important mission. A dog mission. Digging up bones, perhaps. I don’t know. You defy comparison, Marco! There is literally nothing I can imagine quite as ridiculously useless as you. There you go, you’ve overwhelmed my powers of description, so at least you’ve achieved something tonight.

  Anyway, we’re not killing you, so you can stop hoping for an easy way out. We are going to talk to you, though. So you’re going to need to perk up a bit.’

  As he waits and twitches and shivers and suffers, another sound comes; far crueller than the voice tormenting him. A familiar voice, hoarse with crying.

  ‘Marco!!!’

  Holly’s voice.

  They have Holly, too.

  That voice, full of hope and worry, recalls him. Sensations rush back. Suddenly his head and his skin and his hands hurt so much he can barely breathe.

  They have Holly.

  He has to do something-

  ‘Marco! Marco, don’t-’ her voice—that voice is what he loves most about her, so young and full and uncynical—is cut off by a splintering crack like the snapping of wood, and she screams. Almost immediately the screams are muffled as something, maybe a hand, is forced over her mouth.

  He tries to look up to see her but the boot comes back down on his head.

  Over the sound of her screams, the voice speaks again.

  ‘Now. I know an idiot like you didn’t make that bomb. I’d be astonished if you could make your own breakfast. Tell me who gave it to you.’

  ‘Ken! Ken O’Connor!’ He slurs the name, his pronunciation distorted by a mouth too full of saliva that the boot won’t let him swallow: ‘Ken O’Connor. Holly…’

  ‘Good! Well done Marco. That’s a good start. But I already knew that one.’

  He yells a wordless plea and his voice intermingles with Holly’s; they scream together, until an increase in pressure from the boot silences him again.

  ‘Now, O’Connor’s high up but he’s not at the top. He works for someone else. I want that name, too.’

  The boot lifts just enough to let him speak.

  ‘I don’t know! I don’t know, I don’t know, I-’

  Crack.

  The screams rise in pitch and urgency, Holly’s beautiful voice corrupted by pain.

  ‘Your master has a master. Say his name!’

  ‘I don’t know! I swear, I never met anyone above Ken,’ he cries, truthfully. His own head is swimming and every nerve in his body is screaming at him, and Holly…

  ‘Fine, fine. Calm down. Shut up. But I want the names of everyone else in your nasty little group. I’ve got a list here, and I’m going to break another one of your girlfriend’s bones for every name on the list that you don’t give me, so think hard and be thorough.’

  ‘K- Ken O’Connor! John Quillim!’ The names flow out easily, like spitting out oil.

  ‘Malachi Salmon!’

  One by one, he gives them all up. For Holly.

  ‘Saskia Kilikirisi!’

  Stop, some distant part of him cries, but he ignores it, shouts the names louder. For Holly.

  ‘Igor Ibá?ez!’

  This is what he must do for Holly. His mind, overwhelmed, begins to shut down but his mouth continues, betraying everyone who trusts him. For Holly.

  ‘Billy Winters! There’s two of him!’

  All the people who helped him when he needed them. For Holly…

  ‘Nancy Paterris!’

  For Holly. For Holly. This is the worst thing he has ever done, the worst thing he could ever do. The darkest betrayal. He is doing it for Holly…

  ‘Jin-ho Kimherring!’

  And maybe because he is doing it for Holly, it feels…

  ‘Giuliana Butcher!’

  …not good, but there is a sense of relief, somehow. As though he is shedding something heavy. He is almost… Grateful. Grateful to have an excuse.

  ‘Cory-Anne Mallory!’

  And as the last name escapes his bleeding lips, clarity dawns: he is not doing this for Holly. She is just the excuse, he is doing it for… for himself.

  Because it feels right.

  Because this is what he does.

  He destroys good things.

  Now he has said every name, not only cementing his failure but upgrading it to a dark act, proving to the world once and for all what he really is.

  ‘And Holly!’ He cannot tell whether the convulsions are sobs, laughter, or the spasms of his failing body. Perhaps they are all three. ‘Holly-Faith Healey. But you know about her.’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘Yes.’ Marco is done. Finally done. Spent. Empty. The balance settled. Now; now, he can go. ‘There you go. You have your names. Now end it.’

  ‘Calm yourself. I have more questions for you yet.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh?’ The voice trills, sweetly. ‘But what of your accomplice, and her bones?’ Holly’s panicked screams intensify.

  ‘I don’t care.’

  Face-to-face with his fate, he releases all pretence. All his feelings, all the things he cares about are lies, lies he clings to to try and fill the void but there is no point now. He doesn’t love Holly. He doesn’t love. He is the void.

  It feels strange to speak so freely, the words that come from his mouth perfectly reflecting his thoughts, which perfectly reflect the feelings in his heart, for perhaps the first time. The sensation is unfamiliar, and overwhelmingly powerful. ‘I don’t care,’ he repeats, and the truth of his words catches in his throat. ‘I’m sorry,’ he sobs. ‘I just don’t care.’ He cries freely and loudly, paying no mind to what anyone thinks.

  ‘Silence,’ says the voice, but nothing can stop him now. Finally facing his death, he roars with some nameless emotion at the unfairness of having been born the worthless creature that he is; he roars for a life wasted; for the son his parents deserved; for the all the love and hope poured into him that fell straight through the holes and splashed uselessly onto the ground.

  ‘Silence,’ the voice repeats. The boot crushes Marco’s head into the deck and twists, ripping his ear.

  ‘I don’t care,’ he wails.

  There is another loud crack as they snap another part of Holly, and the screams abruptly stop.

  ‘I don’t care.’

  His voice is weak now. His jaw, he distantly realises, is dislocated, so the words come out as an unintelligible slurry. But he repeats them, over and over. For himself.

  ‘I don’t care. I don’t care.’ Though his ears tell him the sounds he is making are unintelligible, he says them anyway, again, and again, finding comfort in his new mantra. His ultimate truth.

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘My word, the melodrama! Marco, people are going to start booing and throwing things if you keep this up. Pull yourself together. Tell us about the other plots. What else have they got planned?’

  But Marco has no intention of saying anything else now, or ever again. He continues mumbling and gurgling the words to himself as the voice speaks some more, and then, after it finishes speaking, he uses what breath he has left to say them some more, though the sounds are now nothing but hisses and croaks. He continues even as he is hauled upright by the neck and air stops flowing to his lungs; he continues, even as his body goes limp and his lips no longer move; he continues, even as his vision fades to glorious silver, then black, and the world turns soft.