“Quickly now.” Rove sounded positively ruffled. He had a rat device in his hand, and as Lucas watched, a circle of littered deck was abruptly swept clear. Glass, concrete and rat bodies were vanished away. “Here, Lucas, right on my heels.”

Still need me then? But despite his mutinous thoughts, he found he was pathetically grateful. He’d resigned his will to Rove, trusting as a dog that his master had a way out.

Rove adjusted his device and pressed it into Lucas’s hand; then they were both holding it up, like the handle of an invisible umbrella. The sky above was thick and busy: glass like a killing rain, chunks of concrete and sheared iron. But it all turned to air within a few feet of the device, vanishing into another place.

“If they could do this…?” Lucas yelled hoarsely.

“The rats? Oh, this is beyond them. It’s tech from our rivals, Lucas, who are a bit defter with the dimensions than even our rodent allies. It only works because we’re within a breach right now, one the stupid rodents put a crowbar to and widened so they could get their ship through.”

“So where’s all this shit going?”

“Why should I care?”

Rove was now at the highest point of the wrecked craft, now a twisted clutch of beams and girders. Even as they reached it, the structure dropped and canted further. Rove skidded, clutching for purchase and finding none. Lucas’s black artificial hand caught him by the arm and hauled him up again. Apparently, in a pinch he knew where his loyalties lay.

“Now.” Rove’s face was taut with pain; likely his shoulder was half out of its socket, but he had his phone out and was looking up.

Lucas followed his gaze. Eclipsing the sky like a sign of the end times was a…goddamn gigantic woodlouse thing. Lucas stared and found that it didn’t matter. Things were already so sincerely fucked up that adding extra impossible monsters couldn’t ruin his day any more than it already was. I mean, why the hell not?

It was grappling the top of the nearest building, which was already four-fifths of the way to toppling. But its segments undulated and twisted, and Lucas saw a clutch of jointed limbs moving to support the collapsing tower blocks.

“What…?” But there were no words, because how could he possibly question what was going on. Of course Daniel Rove had an escape route, even from this. He was a better rat than any of the rodents. He always had a way out. And if he brought Lucas along, that was fine.

As a barbed assemblage of claws reached for them too, as the city fell in ruins on all sides, Rove treated Lucas to his best urbane smile.

PART 4

RED KING’S DREAM

15.

I

It ate us.