Alison nodded, as Julian ended his call and said, “Royce has a cordon about the building now, covering every entrance. Building management have checked everyone against the entry logs and say there shouldn’t be anyone left. Oh, and every damn company with offices here is filing complaints and threatening to sue the Met and the Home Office, so this had better be worth it.”

Jane made to speak, but Julian turned away, looking only to Alison. “Matchbox?”

She wanted to say she didn’t know when Khan was due, but even as the word sat on her tongue she realized this wasn’t true. She looked to Cousin Jane and saw the shared knowledge there. Glints of frozen water danced in the suddenly chill air between them, and the temperature kept dropping. She saw Southall’s breath plume, and one of the soldiers swore.

“They’re coming…” Alison’s fingers twitched, and somewhere, a dimension away, an unthinkable interface made itself into a keyboard for her convenience, opening its senses for her.

“Ma’am?” Southall’s voice was tight, ragged at the edges.

“Who’re coming? Our people or theirs?” Julian asked, and when no immediate answer was forthcoming, “Captain, tell your men not to shoot unless there’s a real threat. Tell your men…” She felt his wince, and then he was raising his voice so the entire squad could hear him. “Listen to me. You’re going to see…some weird stuff. Some people are going to appear out of bloody thin air, okay? Just…do not shoot them. We’re looking at, probably, three women, right? And…if there’s more than that…”

“Where from, sir?” Southall asked.

“I…”

Coming now. Right now. Almost here. It was like standing on a midnight road and seeing the oncoming headlamps of an eighteen-wheeler as it bore down on you. Alison pushed past Julian and kicked open a door into an office. “Here!” she said. It was hard to get the word out against the freezing air. She felt that some quality of the room, not anything in regular space, was rushing out through some invisible hole, draining past her. “Here, right here!”

Southall gave orders with creditable economy, despite the rime forming on the desktops and crusting the carpet tiles. His soldiers were still taking up posts behind desks when Alison felt the membrane of the world bulge and split. The eighteen-wheeler image suddenly seemed far more apt, because there was more coming through than three people could account for. She bolted into one of the office cubicles, feeling space deform and shudder behind her, hearing the shocked exclamations of the soldiers. What are they bringing back?

II

They fell. Below them the lights of the rat city spread to the horizons in their irregular patchwork. The surface extrusions of a buried metropolis she could hardly begin to imagine.