“How about this?”

“All right. Now. I’m going to breathe out. As hard as I can. Push me forward.”

The breath came out in a wheeze, and Jack pushed at his shoulders, trying to help.

Ted’s words were a gasp. “Put the patch over the wound.”

Jack slapped the plastic envelope over the hole in Ted’s chest, gratefully taking his hand away from the bloody wound.

“Good lad. Bandages. You need bandages. In strips. Quickly. The bathroom…”

Jack gently lowered Ted’s head to the floor — guiltily wiped his bloody hand on the rug — and went to the bathroom.

No bandages. He’d packed them already in the car.

He went to the front door, which had come off its hinges and was hanging drunkenly in its frame, so he had to step over it. The tarmac of the drive was cracked, but the car seemed intact. The boot was still open, and he quickly found the rolls of bandage where he’d packed them.

He looked around the street. There were no cars on the road. All the houses were — ruined. As if stomped by a giant. One of them, where Pete McAllister lived, was on fire. But he couldn’t see any fire engines.

He hurried back to the living room with his bandages.

“Good lad. All right. Around my chest — fix the patch in place—”

Jack started to wind the bandage around Ted’s chest, over the patch. Under Ted’s whispered instruction, he made sure each layer overlapped the others.

Ted watched calmly, his head resting against a tipped-up armchair. “You’re saving my life, lad,” he said. “Don’t you ever forget that. A hell of a thing to do when you’re ten years old.”

“Ten and three quarters.”

“And three quarters. Don’t forget your shoebox when we leave.”

In the lab, people were standing silently, as if hypnotized. A polystyrene coffee cup was edging its way across a bench surface, neat concentric ripples marking its surface.

It’s unnatural, Jane thought. That’s why we’re transfixed. The floor isn’t supposed to move under us.

“Those are harmonic tremors,” Henry said. “Magma moving.”

Marge Case said, “It’s consistent with what we’ve been monitoring. Swarms of shallow microquakes.” She turned to Jane. “Shallow because this isn’t some deep tectonic movement, but a movement of magma close to the surface…”

The shuddering subsided.

“If VDAP were here they would already have called a Level D alert,” Henry said. “At least. And—”

“If there is some kind of eruption,” Jane said, “what will it be like? Arthur’s Seat is old. Surely—”

“It won’t do much damage?” Henry looked glum. “Jane, we don’t know what to expect. The best guess is that the old magma, broken up by the Moonseed, will be viscous, with a lot of trapped superheated steam.”

“So very explosive,” said Case. “And—”

There was a jolt, and a sharp crack.