The Power of Five Oblivion

of stubble. Like the woman, he was quite pale, like two prisoners who hadn’t seen much of the sun.
    “I’m all right, Will. Honestly, I am.” The two of them stood facing each other for a moment, then suddenly embraced, and in that moment I guessed that they were actually brothers, that Will had been part of the family the Traveller had mentioned, and that they hadn’t seen or spoken to each other for a long time. “It’s good to see you,” the Traveller said.
    “I’ve missed you.”
    “Are you OK?”
    “Yeah.”
    They broke apart. The Traveller gestured at the two of us. “This is Jamie. And Holly – who was looking after him. I’ll tell you about it later. But now I want to get inside…”
    There was a second door leading out. By now there were about a million questions I wanted to ask, starting with who these people were, what this place was and what we were doing here. But I was able to work out some of it for myself. The police would have seen the Lady Jane explode and hopefully they’d assume that we had still been on board, that we’d killed ourselves rather than fall into their hands. They’d look in the tunnel but they might not notice a ladder in the darkness above their heads and surely they would never suspect that there had been people waiting to meet us. At least, that was what I hoped.
    We followed a long passageway with bare concrete walls and somehow I got the sense that we were being led further and further into the hillside. I could feel the weight of it pressing down on us. Then there was another doorway – all the light was coming from here – and as I turned the corner, I froze. I just stood there, gaping in astonishment.
    We were standing on a raised metal platform above a huge room with at least twenty people looking up at us, applauding. They were all dressed in the same grey overalls as the two people who had met us, but they were every age – from twenty to about seventy. They were surrounded by equipment that I could vaguely remember from my childhood but that I had never seen working since then: electric lights, for a start, but also television screens, computers and telephones. There were other machines, too, banked up against the walls with cables everywhere. Even the air in the room was coming in through some sort of ventilation system. There were no windows.
    The room was circular with a domed ceiling. A number of workstations had been arranged in a horseshoe shape in the middle and there was a proper kitchen with cupboards, fridges, ovens and a sink (did they really have running water?) to one side. Two wooden tables stretched out next to each other with different-coloured plastic chairs for meals and a short distance away, sofas had been arranged facing a widescreen TV. There were plants and flowers everywhere … in pots, vases and terracotta urns. Maybe that made them feel at home. Because this was definitely where they worked, ate and rested. I noticed more doors leading out, presumably to where they slept.
    They were still applauding – but not me, of course. Jamie was the one they had all been waiting for and the Traveller had brought him here. They were the two heroes. I was just someone who had tagged along for the ride. But I still couldn’t help smiling. They were so glad to see us and, at the end of the day, if I hadn’t stood up for Jamie back in the village, he might never have made it. And even if the Traveller had wanted to leave me behind, I was part of the adventure too.
    The Traveller held up a hand. The applause died away.
    “My friends!” he exclaimed. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you all. I can’t believe I’m back. I’m so glad to see you … especially Sophie and Will.” He nodded at the man, who, I was sure, was his brother. “But the main thing is, all our work, everything we’ve suffered, hasn’t been in vain. I found the village and the door and finally it opened and one of the Five came through. This is Jamie Tyler. If there is any hope left in the world, it rests with him. He is here and we can help him take on the Old Ones and give mankind a second chance.”
    At that, they all began to clap again. If I’d been in Jamie’s shoes, I wouldn’t have known whether to bow or make a speech or wave or what to do. But he just stood there, as if he had expected this sort of reception, and it seemed to me that in some ways I was seeing him for the first time. He wasn’t just another fifteen-year-old like me. He