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Walter Monroe turned to the other members of the Renewal Society. Only a handful were left now, huddled outside the ruined pub, many having run from the scene of the carnival when the sky had opened up. Not worthy to wear their hoods, Monroe had thought.

‘Cacophony,’ he told them. ‘It’s an illusion. An illusion, that’s all. They’re just trying to put us out.’

Firstwewerefoundintheearthinthewetnessthewheelgoesontu rning.

‘Who are?’ one of the others asked. His voice was shrill.

‘Them. Them. Get a grip on yourself, man, you’re shrieking like a woman. The Cacophonists.’ Monroe nodded, pleased with the new word. ‘Some truths are self-evident, mmm? This proves Mr Catcher had the right idea all along.

The sky opening up, you see? Quite clearly, this is what we’ve been waiting for.’

There was a silence. Except for: thewheelgoesonturning.

‘The final battle,’ intoned Monroe, his throat full of spittle.

‘The forces of superstition want to take this town from us.

Well, by Go... by my word, they’ll have a fight on their hands.

We’ll protect the people of Woodwicke from Cacophony, or die trying.’

Withleversandbuttonsthewheelgoesonmoving.

But the men weren’t listening. They were staring, focusing on the shrill-voiced Renewalist at the back of the group. He was backing away from them.

‘What?’ he said. ‘What?’

Monroe’s jaw dropped open. He raised the wooden end of his rifle, a broken weapon that had been recovered from the home of an obvious diabolist, now being used as a club.

‘Agents of Cacophony. We might have guessed they’d even walk among us.’

‘What?’ shrieked the man. ‘What did I do?’

‘Your forehead,’ growled Monroe.

The man froze. Raised his hand. Touched his forehead and winced, his fingers prodding the pupil of the eye that was growing there. The eye blinked in unison with the other two.

‘No,’ he squeaked, but the Renewalists already had him surrounded.

Monroe raised the rifle, swinging it over his head with one hand. The flesh of the hand was bubbling and shifting, and raw new fingers were sprouting from it like saplings, but no one noticed it, not even Monroe himself. On the pavements outside the old King George, blood mingled with the rain.

Running again. A few weeks earlier, Daniel Tremayne would have said that running was a good policy. Now it hardly seemed to matter. You could run. You could stay and hit people with rocks. The world was falling apart, what difference did it make?

He looked back along the side-street. Forrester – the other Forrester, the one with the gun – was nowhere to be seen. But then, the Forrester he knew was a sly creature, so her twin would probably be the same. Skulking in the shadows, maybe.

‘Who is she?’ he shouted above the roar of the storm.

‘She’s me,’ said Forrester, not looking back.

‘She can’t be you. You’re you. Aren’t you?’

‘Yeah, okay. She’s me like I used to be. Before the Doctor carried me off and started working on my head.’ She might as well have been talking Chinese, thought Daniel, and she probably knew it. ‘I’d forgotten what a complete and utter bitch I was.’

‘She really wants to kill you?’

‘Yup. Hard-assed law enforcer, that was me. Of course, she’s got the gun. The Doctor would never let me carry one of those. Not a flenser.’

There was a shout from the other end of the street, like the kind of official warning the militia might use. Daniel Tremayne could see a shape up ahead, a Forrester-shaped shape, and wondered how the double had managed to overtake them.

Something small and metallic flew through the air, embedding itself in a wall. Before Daniel could say anything, it exploded, and the atmosphere was filled with a thick brown miasma that seemed to cling to everything it touched.

‘Or slither-caps,’ he heard Forrester-1 mutter. ‘I’d forgotten about the slither-caps.’

It was hard to know what to say, really.

‘You’re the one the Watchmakers... I mean, you’re the thing that...’

– That they couldn’t live with. They don’t remember me at all now, and don’t even let themselves dream of me. On their homeworld, buried