The Power of Five Oblivion

dragging some sort of catapult into place, straining at the end of ropes, their feet sliding in the snow. As ever, there were shape-changers whipping them on.
    Scott looked past the walls, out to the ice shelf itself. So Matt and Scarlett were there! He tried to imagine them walking among the aircraft. Or maybe they had arrived by boat. Had the two of them met? And did they know that he was here? Maybe they were watching him even now, with binoculars trained on the window, a tiny figure sitting behind the glass.
    Just for a minute he wished he could see them again. But he knew that wasn’t possible. He was on his own.
    “We all have to make our choices, Scott.”
    That was what Matt had said to him – and he was right. Scott had chosen. There could be no going back.

FORTY-SEVEN
    They used the emergency chute to leave the plane, sliding down into the snow. Matt had seen the extraordinary flotilla of different-sized ships as they had flown in. The other aircraft were all around them, sitting, seemingly abandoned, at the far end of the ice shelf. He knew that he had arrived at the place where the last battle against the Old Ones would be fought. Lohan had brought them down expertly, the two of them sitting next to each other, strapped into their seats in the cockpit – but even so Matt had felt a twinge of nervousness. Could the ice support the weight of the Legacy 600? Would they be able to stop before they skidded head first into the nearest mountain? He had no need to worry. One moment they were in the air, circling the area with the fortress at one end and the sea at the other. Then they were sliding along with snow blasted by the wheels and the turbines forming a blizzard around them. They could see nothing out of the windows. Everything was white. Finally, Lohan slammed on the reverse thrust. The engines screamed. They slowed down and stopped.
    They had arrived.
    Matt reached the bottom of the slide and stood up, taking his first step onto the Antarctic continent with the snow crunching beneath his feet. He had managed to find extra clothes on the plane but he was still aware of the intense cold slicing through him. At least his fever seemed to have burned itself out during the flight. He was tired and hungry and desperately needed something to drink. But he could walk without help. He could feel his strength returning.
    He became aware of Lohan, who was just getting to his feet, having slid down behind him. There was an uncomfortable silence. Lohan was angry – not just because Matt had somehow fixed the plane’s controls, forcing them to fly here, but because Matt knew what he had been intending to do. Lohan had tried to leave the gold mine at Serra Morte without him. If he had been given a choice, he would have flown north to the United States. Lohan was a man who was used to giving orders and having them obeyed without question. It was not part of his nature to serve the wishes of a fifteen-year-old boy. But it was more than that. He was ashamed. He had behaved dishonourably. If anyone had attempted to betray him in that way while he was a leader in the Triad, he would have had them put to death.
    “How are you feeling?” he asked. It was almost the first time he had spoken since they had left Brazil.
    “I’m feeling better,” Matt said. “Thank you for flying us here.”
    “I wasn’t going to leave you behind,” Lohan said. The words came tumbling out and he couldn’t stop them. “I didn’t think it was a good idea coming here. That’s all. I need to find my own people. So do you.”
    “Maybe they’ve arrived ahead of us.”
    “Do you think so?”
    Lohan turned and looked at the fortress in the far distance, half obstructed by the falling snow. It was built on the very edge of the mountain, the barbican jutting out, the four towers all around. It looked small from the distance, almost two kilometres away, but he knew it must be huge. There were figures moving around in front of it … guards or soldiers, some of them constructing some sort of machinery. Lohan had seen all this from the air as they prepared to come in. But it was somehow more ominous, more real now that they were down on the ground.
    “The Old Ones,” he said.
    “Yes.” Matt nodded.
    “Do they know you’re here?”
    “I don’t know. Probably.”
    “I still think we were wrong to come…”
    “You don’t need to worry about what happened at Serra Morte,” Matt said. “That’s all over now and we don’t need