The Power of Five Oblivion

once he had handed Matt over, from the moment he had seen him taken by the fly-soldiers, Scott had begun to wonder exactly what he had gained. It was true that he was still alive. But the fortress, his suite of rooms, the food he was given, even the people around him, seemed to be changing. It was like a broken television with a flickering image. One moment there would be a fire blazing in the hearth. Then it would go out and he would realize that he was freezing and that the walls around him were dripping with some sort of oil or slime. He had spent the night tucked under the fur covers on his bed only to wake up and see – for just a few seconds – that they were filthy and matted in blood. Just a few minutes ago, he had been eating his lunch, a steak cooked specially for him. But even as he raised the fork to his mouth, the meat had changed and suddenly it was cold and green and crawling with maggots. It had changed back again just before he swallowed it.
    And everything stank. It was a smell like nothing Scott had ever encountered … dead and rotting and utterly filthy. He wanted to be sick all the time. It was like having some horrible disease inside his nostrils, reaching all the way to his lungs.
    The Old Ones were tricking him just as they had done with the World Army by making it appear that the fortress had been destroyed. They had lied to him. He knew that now. And Matt had never doubted what would happen if he came to Skua Bay. Scott thought back to their last moments together. He hadn’t even tried to fight back as the fly-soldiers closed in. He had been expecting them.
    “It was never my role to save the world.”
    “Then whose was it?”
    “Yours.”
    Scott hadn’t done anything. His brother, Jamie, had gone with Matt to London and to Hong Kong. He had always thought of Jamie as the younger of the two of them – but it was Jamie who had escaped from prison, who had travelled back in time and fought against the Old Ones ten thousand years ago. For his part, Scott had just allowed himself to be used. He wondered what was happening to Matt right now. He had a good idea. Almost everyone in the fortress had been summoned into the conference hall that he had visited in the opposite tower. For the last six hours, Scott had been hearing laughter, shouting applause. Part of him wanted to go there and see for himself. But he knew that he couldn’t … that if he did, he would never sleep again.
    Jamie.
    The thought came to him quite suddenly. He didn’t care any more if he lived or died but the one last thing that he wanted was to see his brother again. He and Jamie had been through so much together, in Salt Lake City, in Carson City, in Reno. Yet somehow they had survived. More than that. They had often been happy together, before the agents of Nightrise had come searching for them. Scott had looked after Jamie. That had been his role in life. And they had always said that no matter what happened, the two of them would never be apart.
    Right now, there were thousands of kilometres between them. Jamie was in London, outside the church of St Meredith’s. Matt had warned him it would turn out this way when they had all met outside the library, in the dreamworld. But the twenty-five doors, their passageways across the world, were locked. Scott remembered the cave he had seen – at the back of the courtyard. The twenty-fifth doorway. There was a chain running across it and two ivory hands clasped together in a lock. The chairman of Nightrise had warned him that if he touched the chain, it would kill him.
    But what did that matter? If he could just separate the hands, open the door, then he would go to London, to Jamie. The two of them would be together again. They might only have a few minutes. Maybe less. But it would be worth it, wouldn’t it?
    Scott had been stretched out on his bed, alone in his room. Looking up, he saw that the ceiling was full of cobwebs. Spiders were crawling all around him. The pillows behind his head seemed to have been whipped away and replaced with filthy straw. He himself was covered in dirt. He looked as if he had been lying in his own grave.
    Jamie.
    It was the only thought in his mind. With something between a sob and a grunt of determination, Scott rolled off the bed and went out to do whatever was necessary to see his brother one last time.
    Scarlett was right.
    They discovered it soon after they had landed. Although the cliffs in front of them seemed to be solid,