And then suddenly, as though some unheard cry had been given, the scavengers retreated. One moment they were attacking with all their silent fury, and the next they were scrabbling away across the dried-up plain, falling back like a retreating tide. Giles flicked drops of black blood off his long blade, and then leaned on it. He looked around him, smiling at the piled-up bodies littered around us, and then nodded briefly, as though contemplating a good day’s work. Molly and I leaned on each other, breathing hard.

“They’ll be back,” Subway Sue said from behind us. I turned and glared at her.

“We have to get out of here. There must be a way. Find it!”

“Yes,” Sue said slowly. “I have been communing with this place. It speaks to me. One of us must make a stand here, so the others can get to the light.”

“What?” said Molly. “Where did that come from?”

Subway Sue looked at her tiredly. “I know the ways of hidden paths. I can see the rules here, written into the dying world. If we all stay, we all die. One of us must make a stand, sacrifice themselves for the sake of the others. So they can go.”

“We should draw lots,” said Giles.

“No,” Sue said immediately. “It has to be a willing sacrifice. A positive act, set against the entropy of this place. It’s not how far you walk, here. You could walk all the days of your life, and never reach the light. But you can draw it to you by a noble act. So which of us is ready to die, so the others can live?”

“There has to be another way,” said Molly. “We don’t abandon our own people. Tell them, Eddie!”

“I’ll stay,” I said.

“What?” Molly looked at me numbly.

“I’ll stay,” I said. “This was my mission, my idea. My responsibility.”

“No it isn’t!” Molly glared round at the others. “Tell him!”

“You can’t stay, Edwin,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms calmly. “The family needs you to take down Truman and destroy the tower. You’re the man, these days. So I’ll stay. I said anything for the family, and the world, and I meant it. You’re all going to be needed, where you’re going. You’re special. I’m not.”

“Sarjeant,” I said, but he cut me off with a look.

“Eddie, I want this. I want what I do to matter, for once. To be the hero, not just the one who trains them and sends them out. I always dreamed of a last stand like this, defying impossible odds for a noble cause. To save the family, and the world. So, get them out of here, Eddie. Take down Truman and the tower. Make the family proud.”