He reached the main hall, somehow, through both hell and high water. And the Plug-uglies were there, at least six of them, all doing some weird mime or ritual…except then they were doing something. They were making adjustments to an icy blue-black interface that existed only so long as they reached for it, and they raised actual instruments towards various side galleries and alcoves. He watched reality come and go, while they shuffled worlds as he might flick through TV channels. There were snow-swept estuaries and crevasses between unscalable walls of ice; there were oceans and tropical forests, and somehow it was all the same landscape in fancy dress. They were all versions of Londons on top of Londons, Londons where London had never been raised. He saw ruins again, lifted up and torn down by an aesthetic he could never appreciate. He saw a hamlet of low, pale buildings clustered about a castle that Mad King Ludwig would have baulked at. He saw cramped chambers within a metropolis that extended above and to all sides, seething with thousands of great rats forced together cheek by whiskery jowl, gnawing at one another and clawing for space, for air.

But past all of these horrors and wonders, he saw Alison, crouched beside one of the Plug-uglies. He saw Khan, too, looking tight-faced but apparently far more comfortable with what was going on than he was. He saw Lisa Pryor, for God’s sake, and the girl from the security footage, Elsinore Mallory. The whole gang was together.

Then he saw the other intruders. They stood at the head of the grand stone steps at the hall’s back, past Darwin’s benevolent gaze. Julian saw half a dozen men who had probably looked tough and nasty at the beginning of tonight’s escapade but now seemed rattled to the point of losing it. The one exception was their leader, a big military type wearing one black glove. He was shoving his followers forwards, leaving a couple by the rail with guns levelled as the rest headed down the stairs.

The Plug-uglies hadn’t seen them, and Julian frankly had no allegiance to either side, but their leader had been pointing at Khan, and that made them Julian’s business.

III

Alison sat back and let the universe come to her. That was what it felt like, and she found she could ignore the burn of the stone beneath her as it grew colder and colder. Frost spread from her in a glittering nimbus, air twinkling with motes of rime. She was going to regret it: hypothermia or frostbite loomed big in her future, but she was understanding.