The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [204]
‘How long will it take to get through that maze?’ Julia said. ‘Time is short.’
‘Trust me, Julia, I always have a plan B.’ He gave her a sidelong glance. ‘You’ve changed – you’re less of a martinet than you used to be.’
I’m less Human than I once was, she thought.
‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ she said. ‘So, what’s plan B?’
‘First, we get outside … ’
She followed him back down to the triple door, which, as she half-expected, now opened onto the flat pebbly ground facing the maze’s outer wall. Immediately, a high-pitched keening came from either side.
‘Now we run!’ Konstantin said, dashing over to the wall.
Julia spotted dog creatures converging from left and right as she ran after him. They had tapered black vermax heads rather than something less disturbing, which at that moment could have been almost anything else.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I forgot to mention Talavera’s pets. Quite nasty, aren’t they? … Ah, here it is.’
Fumbling along the wall, he stopped at a square, off-colour block and slapped his splayed-out hand against it.
The closest charging vermax-dog suddenly slowed and the ground it was on began to move backwards. The maze wall curved outwards to either side, bulging and flowing. Konstantin was unfazed by it all and was quick to grab her arm as she staggered, steadying her. It was as if this strange metacosm was being shoved through a fish-eye lens, a quivering, stretching, eye-defying distortion.
Abruptly it all sprang back to normal – except that now there were odd sections of wall jutting from the outer barrier. Nonplussed, Julia turned to Konstantin, who was grinning widely.
‘Everything is fine,’ he said. ‘I just inverted the maze – the edge is now the centre and vice versa. A little secret functionality I built into it … for the fun of it, really.’ He jogged out from between the wall sections, then backed away, looking to either side. He pointed to his right. ‘And there it is!’
As he strode in that direction, she hurried to catch up. ‘How quickly can you retarget the missiles?’ she said.
‘In moments, but you’ll have to manually launch them from one of the consoles back in the real world.’
‘Which one … ’ she started to say, but then her surroundings stuttered and froze, with Konstantin paused motionless in mid-pace. Then all this was blotted out by double images and blurred trails which quickly faded into a dark blur. She was back on the couch in the round passageway, and the VR headset was gone, which implied nothing good. She caught the smell of smoke and there was a haze in the air, becoming visible as focused vision returned.
‘Ah, welcome back, Julia! You missed the start of the party but I just know that we can make up for it. I may even disregard how you all took advantage of my temporary blackout.’
Talavera was rubbing reddened wrists as she came over to stand next to her couch. She wore a cold-eyed smile as she adjusted its height and angle, then tightened the restraints again. Julia saw a blank-faced Harry-Arkady sitting in a plastic chair a few feet away.
‘The other body-snatchers should be here soon and then we’ll have some fun.’
Talavera was bleeding from a cut on her forehead, dark red smeared across the skin. She also had a heat-burn on her cheek and shortened hanks of hair on the same side, sign of a lucky miss. And around her arms the vermax were entwined. Julia considered the horrible things for a moment before glancing over at the propped-up body of Arkady; the fist-sized bloody hole in his left temple showed where the vermax had entered to get at the implant. Which meant that Harry had been devoured, one of him anyway.
Julia stared at twice-dead Arkady and wished she could feel something.
Or do something. As before, when Talavera had pulled her from Irenya’s metacosm, Julia’s access to the main systems was blocked. But – had Konstantin been likewise imprisoned or had he managed to retarget the missiles? And even if plan B had succeeded, who was going to get near enough to one of the consoles to carry out the manual