Leslie Hind looked profoundly dissatisfied. “That is where we reach the hard limits of our knowledge, Julian. I’d like to believe he’s short-selling the country for personal gain, the usual thing for a man in his position, but I’m sure it’s something even worse.” She closed her eyes briefly, and Julian wondered how long she’d been awake. “We’re outside all rational borders now. The reason we’re having this conversation is that you are, for better or worse, already part of this. The transcript,” she directed, and the secretary handed out slim, wire-bound documents.

“Page fourteen, line eight onwards,” Hind instructed. They had hauled the Plug-uglies up for questioning too, and here were the results. He would have expected the prisoners to be surly and reticent, but this one had been weirdly verbose, albeit in halting English. He read over it, and exchanged glances with Alison.

Dr. Khan hadn’t been kidnapped but recruited, apparently. Not as an act of hostile espionage, or even for her security-breaking physics research. Because the universe was breaking.

“This is…insane.” He waved a hand, words insufficient.

But Alison made a thoughtful sound, and he glared at her, feeling abruptly undercut. “Really?”

“I’m not saying that alternate worlds makes sense of what I’ve seen,” Hind said slowly. “But I’m not saying they don’t. And it’s all we were told by the prisoners, the foreign agents we took at the museum. None of whom remain in our custody, which I doubt will surprise you.”

“What’s our official position?” Julian asked. Help me know what to think, please.

Hind closed her eyes briefly. “We’re dealing with an actor that apparently employs a technology we cannot understand. And I would far rather there was some other explanation to this multiple-worlds business, but the impossible things keep mounting up. I don’t think we can have an official position. But the unofficial one, between ourselves and these four walls, is that we proceed on the basis that there is a very real threat to national security, and possibly everything else as well. And if there are any possible steps that we can take to avert it, then we will.”

PART 3

RED QUEEN HYPOTHESIS

12.

I

Three weeks after the events at the museum, there was a raid on one of Rove Denton’s facilities, an industrial unit near Edmonton. Home Office interference was still preventing Hind from going in mob-handed on her own ticket, but it turned out HM Revenue and Customs had a longstanding investigation into Rove under way. Hind co-opted it seamlessly, using the pretext of looking for accounting records to get her people through the door. Her firearms team request was a prescient step, because the occupants weren’t human.