Tim Lebbon - Coldbrook

‘You walk into our world from another, and you don’t understand?’ Drake said.

‘But these things. . this technology.’

‘Quantum bridges. I’ve read my father’s notes, and he handed down most of his knowledge. Once they learned how to stabilise micro-black holes in the lab they could draw through gravity lines. You thought we were backward?’

‘No, no,’ Holly said. But perhaps she had in the beginning, just a little. She’d seen bows and arrows, basic clothing, and people living in holes in the ground.

‘Come with me,’ Drake said. ‘It’s best not to talk too much in the casting room. It’s tiring work, and sometimes to watch it can be. .’ He shrugged.

‘Draining,’ Moira said.

Holly nodded, feeling a surge of anger. But that faded quickly, replaced with a hollow hopelessness and a feeling of guilt that she was the one who’d escaped.

‘Please,’ Drake said, holding out his hand in invitation. ‘We’ll tell you what happened here. As much as we can, at least.’

‘As much as you can.’

‘We don’t know everything. It was before most of us were born.’

Holly shook her head. All the parts made sense, but together the big picture was a blur, a confused reflection of what she had seen happening on those strange screens. It all started here , she thought. That first zombie came from here .

And for Earth to become like Gaia was now the best she could hope for.

‘No one from here has ever travelled to an alternate Earth.’ Drake had just prised a door open and they stood in a ruined room, the concrete walls crumbled with damp, metal reinforcements rusted and protruding like rotten teeth. A series of glass pipes were strung horizontally across one wall, many of them holed and smashed. Furniture was simple and functional. The room was lit by several hanging oil lamps, though electrical wires protruded from holes in the ceiling.

‘So I guess I’m quite a surprise,’ Holly said. Neither Drake nor Moira answered, and she marked that as something to investigate further.

‘Coldbrook is all much like this, fallen into ruin,’ Drake said. ‘The black hole is supported deep beneath us, fed by artificial light. It doesn’t need any maintenance, though the containment is checked every few weeks. But to maintain the rest of the facility, so deep underground, seemed pointless.’

‘Even though you still have furies?’

‘You’ve seen them. After forty years, they’re slow-moving. Not really a threat unless you get too close. We maintain the areas we need, and that’s all.’

As they walked on, Holly remembered Melinda holding out her arms to welcome the stumbling figure and falling beneath it as the fury bit into her. ‘That’s how it happened,’ she said. ‘Someone got too close.’

They passed a glass wall and Holly experienced a pang of recognition. But beyond the wall was something very different from Control. A large room held several metal columns upon which sat the remains of glass spheres, five feet across and smashed.

‘What’s that?’ Holly asked.

‘My father said it was a broadcasting station,’ Drake said. ‘I used to play in there when I was a kid, until the spheres got smashed.’

But Holly was barely listening, because another possibility was niggling at her.

‘You were watching our world before we formed the breach,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ Drake said.

‘How long before?’

‘It’s complicated,’ Drake said, cutting Moira off as she started to speak.

‘Try me. I’m a scientist. Couldn’t you have warned us?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’ They were in a wide corridor now. Plaster had fallen from the walls. Holly kicked out and sent a chunk of it across the floor. It struck the opposite wall and exploded in a shower of damp fragments. Drake stepped back, and Moira slipped a hand into her pocket. ‘Do you have some sort of Star -fucking- Trek non-involvement policy?’ Holly was starting to shout now, unable to stop the rage, sad and pointless though it felt. ‘Why in God’s name didn’t you-’

Moira gasped. Drake shook his head.

‘Because we couldn’t,’ he said. ‘We can view through to your world, but not go through physically, never interact. You saw Gayle and the others — we call them casters. And yes, they were seeing through furies’ eyes. But they have no control over their host, other than their intrusion making it calm and observant. It’s remote viewing.’

‘How long have you been watching?’ Holly asked again, still shouting, stepping forward with her arm raised. Moira had taken something from her pocket.

‘Your world?’ Drake said. ‘Almost thirty years.’

‘Thirty years?’ Holly said, stepping towards Drake. ‘Thirty fucking-’ A sting in her neck, hands catching her and easing her down, and her last thought before unconsciousness was, They sent it through themselves. .

Vic Pearson watched his wife and daughter sleeping, and when Olivia woke up he stayed with her and they talked.

‘Mommy said I can’t watch TV.’ Bleary-eyed from sleep, Olivia was still as sharp as a button. With her mother asleep in the big bed, she was now working on her father. But there was no joy there.

‘It’s broken, honey,’ Vic said.

‘It wasn’t broke after you left to talk to the men. Mommy was watching it, and it made her cry so she turned it off. I heard shouting.’

‘The TV set’s OK,’ he said, ‘but the place they send the signals from is broken.’

‘Huh,’ Olivia said, looking suspiciously at him. ‘You’re lying.’

‘Olivia!’ But he couldn’t get angry with her.

‘They send those pictures from all over, not just one place. Davey in school told me. His dad’s an astronaut and he sees everything.’

‘That’s how Davey knows everything, then,’ Vic said, nodding wisely.

‘I guess,’ Olivia said. ‘I need to pee.’

‘Go ahead, honey.’

Olivia stood up from her creaking camp bed and crossed to the small en suite bathroom. She turned on the light and left the door open a crack, glancing through it at Vic as she so often did at home. He forced a smile and she smiled back.

Some of the national channels were still broadcasting normal programmes — he’d scanned through to see Seasame Street , an endless loop of Frasier , and a daytime soap he couldn’t identify — but most local channels were filled with the news. One bulletin showed a towering pall of flames and smoke rising above Chicago airport, where three passenger jets had collided. Vic didn’t want Olivia seeing the truth.

He sighed, and Lucy stirred. He leaned down and kissed her, smelling her stale breath and confusion.

‘Oh, Christ,’ his wife said as she remembered. She raised herself on her elbows, then glanced across at the bathroom. ‘She okay?’

‘Yeah. Wants to watch TV. I won’t let her, and we left her DVDs at home.’

Lucy sat up and hugged her legs to her chest. Vic wanted to lean in to her, but he wasn’t sure that would be welcome right now.

‘What’s left of home?’ Lucy asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Our friends,’ Lucy said. ‘Mark, Sarah, Steve, Peter? What about them, Vic? Are they all dead? And our house? I locked the doors but do you think. .?’

‘Home is wherever we are,’ Vic said, eager to snap his wife out of this.

Lucy looked at the bathroom door again. Water was running in there, and Olivia was humming a tune that Vic could not identify. Coldbrook is your home , Lucy had told him, sometimes angry, sometimes just acknowledging what they both knew.

‘But if Jonah wants you to do something, go somewhere?’