Thunder exploded in the narrow corridor, close and huge and deafeningly loud. The sheer sound of it vibrated in his bones and shuddered through his flesh. Lightning stabbed down out of nowhere, melting patches of razor blades into puddles of molten steel. The lightning was close enough to JC that he could feel the tingling on his skin, but it never hit him. The storm roared all around him, but he walked steadily right through the raging heart of it. The air was blisteringly hot, then bitingly cold, and Kim convulsed in the air before him, crying out as though tormented. But JC would not allow himself to be disturbed. Inside his head he was calm and serene, untouched by the untrustworthy world, his concentration fierce and unyielding. The enemy was playing games with him, and that thought made JC calmly, coldly, implacably determined to press on, rescue Kim, and take his revenges.

He came at last to the end of the corridor and stepped down from the last of the razor blades. Kim was yanked suddenly backwards, hauled out of sight around the corner into the next corridor. JC went after her. There were no more razor blades before him, and he didn’t look back. The air was still and quiet and normal. But when JC rounded the corner, the corridor ahead was packed full of spider-webs.

“Aren’t you repeating yourself?” JC said loudly, but there was no reply.

Kim hung in the air at the far end of the passage, and between her and JC, huge masses of dirty grey spider-webs filled up all the space. They hung down from the ceiling and clung to both walls: thick sticky strands, trembling slightly, and thick grey veils that pulsed slowly. And before JC, hanging in mid air, strung up in thick and nasty cocoons, were Happy and Melody. Or at least, what was left of them.

JC’s breath caught in his throat, and his heart hammered painfully in his chest, but he wouldn’t let any of it show in his face. He wouldn’t give his unseen enemy even that small satisfaction. JC moved slowly forward. Happy and Melody were both dead. They had to be dead. They were . . . shrunken, desiccated, what was left of their faces little more than skin and bone. As though all the living juices had been sucked out of them. Deep dark holes had been burrowed into their guts, great areas of flesh eaten away. As JC watched, a single dark spider pulled itself out of Happy’s empty left eye socket and scurried quickly across Happy’s unmoving features. JC stood before what was left of his good friends and colleagues, and could hardly breathe at all.

You shouldn’t have left us behind. You shouldn’t have left us alone. We didn’t stand a chance, without you. If you had stayed, we’d still be alive. This is all your fault.