Anthony Horowitz - Necropolis

Richard and Matt were about to rip all that up. Somewhere inside him, Matt felt guilty about that – but he knew he couldn’t avoid it. She had been born for a purpose. His job was to tell her what that purpose was.

Somewhere, an owl hooted in the darkness. The house was on the outskirts of Nazca but the two of them could make out the lights of the town, twinkling in the distance. Everything was very peaceful but they knew that it was an illusion. Soon the whole world would change.

“I’m not sure you should go,” Richard said, suddenly.

“What do you mean?” Matt was surprised. Everything was ready. The tickets had been bought.

“I’ve been thinking about it… this trip to England. You and Pedro and Scott and Jamie… all on the same plane. Suppose the Old Ones have got control of American air space. They could smash you into the side of a mountain. Or a building.”

“They don’t want to kill us,” Matt said. He was fairly sure about that. “If they kill us, we’ll all be replaced by our past selves. That’s how it works. And what good will that do them? They’ll only have to start searching for us all over again. It’s easier for them to keep us alive.”

Richard shook his head. “They could still force the plane down somewhere and capture you.”

Matt considered the possibility. The trouble was that the Old Ones had been silent for months. They seemed to have slipped into the shadows, as if they had never existed at all. Richard had been scouring the Internet, waiting to hear of a news event, some horror happening somewhere in the world that might suggest that the Old Ones were involved. There were plenty of stories. The war in Afghanistan. Ethnic cleansing in Darfur. Misery and starvation in Zimbabwe. But that was just everyday news. That would happen even without the Old Ones. He had been looking for something worse.

“What do you think they’re doing?” Matt asked. “Why do you think they haven’t shown themselves?”

Richard shrugged. “I guess they’ve been waiting,” he said.

“Waiting for what?”

“Waiting for Scar.”

There was a movement on the veranda and Matt tensed for a moment, then relaxed. He could tell it was Professor Chambers, even without turning round. The smell of her cigar had given her away and sure enough, there it was. She was clutching it in one hand with a glass of Peruvian brandy in the other.

“Are you two going in?” she asked. “I’m putting on the alarms.”

The house was completely surrounded by a security system that had been installed shortly after Richard, Pedro and Matt had arrived. There were no fences or uniformed guards – the professor had said she couldn’t live like that. The system was invisible. But there was a series of infra-red beams at the perimeter, and the garden itself had pressure pads concealed in different places under the lawn. Most sophisticated of all was the radar dish mounted on the roof, sweeping the entire area. It could pick up any movement a hundred metres away. That was how they had been living. It might look as if they were free, but they had all been aware that they were actually in a state of siege.

“We were just talking about tomorrow,” Richard said.

“It’ll be here soon.” Chambers blew smoke. “It’s after ten. Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

Richard tapped Matt on the shoulder. “After you.”

The three of them went inside. Matt said goodnight to Richard and climbed the stairs to the small room which he had chosen at the back of the house. He liked it there. When he was lying in bed, his head was directly underneath a slanting roof with a skylight so, lying on his back, he could look up at the stars. His case – a small canvas bag – was already packed and sitting on the floor. He wasn’t taking much with him. If he needed anything in London, he could always buy it there.

Matt undressed quickly, washed and slipped between the sheets. For the last few months, he had been searching for Scar in the only way that he could – in his dreams. Time and again he had visited the dreamworld. He had been there so often that he knew the landscape well: the shoreline stretching along a great sea with everything dead and grey, the island where he had once found himself trapped.

The dreamworld baffled him. Was it a dream or was it a real world? That was the first question. And was it there to help him or to throw him off balance? On the one hand it was a frightening place, conjuring up strange, violent images that he couldn’t understand: giant swans, walking statues, guns and knives. But at the same time, Matt didn’t think he was in any danger there. The more he visited it, the more he felt it was on his side. He wondered if anyone actually lived there – or was it simply there for the Gatekeepers, its only inhabitants?

At any event, he had gone back there almost every night, floating out of the bed, out of the room, out of himself. Then he had begun to travel, searching for Scar. Sometimes he would see a flicker of lightning, an approaching storm. Once, he found footprints. Another time he came upon a grove of trees, which at least proved that the place wasn’t entirely dead, that things could grow there.

But there had never been any sign of Scar.

There was no point in searching for her tonight. In just twenty-four hours he would be meeting her anyway. But even so – maybe it was just habit – he found himself back in the dreamworld almost at once. As usual, he was on his own. He was climbing a steep hill, but it took no more effort than if he had been walking on level ground. Far behind him, the wilderness stretched out, wide and empty.

And then he noticed something strange. The ground underneath his feet had changed. He knelt down and examined it, brushing aside the grey dust that covered everything. It was true. He was standing on a path fashioned out of paving stones that had been brought here and laid in place. He could see the joins, the cement gluing everything together. Even though he was asleep, Matt felt a surge of excitement. A man-made path! This was completely new and confirmed what he had always thought. The dreamworld was inhabited. There might be buildings, even whole cities there.

He looked up. The path had to lead somewhere. There could be something on the other side of the hill.

But he wasn’t going to find out – not then. Suddenly he was awake. Someone was shaking him, calling his name. The lights were on in his room. He opened his eyes. It was Richard.

“Wake up, Matt,” he was saying. “There’s someone here.”

Matt heaved himself out of bed, threw on some shorts and a T-shirt and ran downstairs barefoot. The whole house was awake. There were lights on everywhere and the alarm system was buzzing, warning them that somebody was approaching.

It had already occurred to him that this sudden interruption must be connected to the fact that Scarlett had been found. If all five of the Gatekeepers were now out there and known to each other, that made them a greater danger to the Old Ones, and it was no surprise that they’d want to take action. It was exactly what he and Richard had been worrying about. On the other hand, it could be a false alarm. Over the past four months, there had been plenty enough of those. Sometimes the children came out from the town, looking for food or something to steal. Professor Chambers kept llamas for their wool, and one of them might have broken loose. The system was sensitive. Even a bat or a large moth might have been enough to set it off.

Matt hurried into the main room. There was a computer standing on a table in the corner and it had already activated itself, automatically connecting to the radar on the roof. It showed a single blip moving slowly and purposefully towards the front door. It was half past eleven at night. A bit late for a visitor.