“And she’ll kill those things, at least,” Lilou said, nodding at the metal door. The banging was slightly less insistent.

“Can you feel that?” Angela asked. She was looking up and away from Sammi, towards nowhere in particular.

“Yeah,” Lilou said.

“What the actual fuck is that?” Bone was backing away from them, looking around, and he started waving his hands as if under assault from invisible flies.

Lilou felt her surroundings changing, filling with potential, as the world took in and held a huge breath. She was nervous of what was to come, but also felt a surge of excitement. She’d been adrift for two years, spending most of her time in vast forests, avoiding human contact and meeting only the occasional lone Kin. She had felt adrift in this vast country, and with Mallian gone it was, strangely, Angela to whom she felt closest. A human.

The return of Grace would mean some excitement entering her life once more.

An explosion rang out across the valley, a sonic boom, reverberating through the ground and setting Lilou’s bones singing. She gasped and saw Angela drop to her knees. Bone became motionless, as if turned to stone by the blast.

Stirring, Sammi started to cry.

The boom was closely followed by a silent shockwave passing through the air and ground. Lilou’s vision blurred as the dust shimmered, throwing up a haze that rose around her lower legs, knocking chunks of drying mud from the few standing walls, and instigating a resounding, hollow thud from the buried cooler room.

Lilou staggered, her sense of balance upset by the boom and the shifting ground and rising dust. Explosions echoed back and forth across the valley like giants calling to each other, and then finally faded away with a sigh.

“She’s here,” Sammi said. She was the only one not looking around, Lilou noticed, instead she knelt, staring at the ground between her legs. Perhaps it was resignation.

“Sammi, we should run,” Angela said. “Get out of the valley and away from here, as quickly as possible.”

“She won’t let you,” Lilou said.

“She’ll have to catch us first. Sammi, now!”

“No point,” Sammi said. She looked up, past Bone and the cooler, past the remains of the building, and out across what used to be the town of Longford.

“Sammi!”

“No point, Angela.” She pointed at a shape in the distance, and Lilou saw an uncertain shimmer across the valley floor, like heat haze or a cloud of dust. A hole in the world. “She’s here.”

17

17

Hope reignited would be the hardest to lose again. He thought that as he ran towards the light. He was a child in this place, he knew nothing, and yet the first moment he’d seen sunlight bursting out from nowhere to light the darkness, Vince had hoped it was a way back to the world.