Tunnels 04, Closer

barrier and stepped across a slit trench dug for the foundations of the wall. She didn't stop there, moving into an area strewn with loose rubble until her feet encountered cobbles.
    She held completely still as she unleashed her ability. The predominant smell was of ash -- lots of it -- from burnt beams and floorboards, and then there was charred stone. But in amongst this, there was the scent of death, and of immeasurable cruelty. As she concentrated, it was as if small voices were calling out to her from a great distance, demanding her attention. Her head switched this way and that as she located where they had perished, bones young and old just left where the bodies had fallen in the debris. Where people had been incinerated.
    "Oh, God," she gasped, overwhelmed by the sheer number of them. It was as though the place was one big tomb to those who had died in there, burnt alive. Her imagination was working overtime; she could almost hear the screams of panic from the victims, who had nowhere to go, no means of escape.
    All of a sudden she knew precisely where she was.
    Drake had mentioned an incident to her in passing. He hadn't been too forthcoming about it, as if it was still painful for him to recall what he'd seen. In any case, her time with Drake had been limited in the days leading up to the operation on Highfield Common when they'd planned to snatch the old Styx.
    But Mrs. Burrows knew that she now had to be in the district he'd referred to as the Rookeries; overcrowded slums, which housed the rougher elements of the Colony, those at the very bottom of the microcosmic society. And this was where Drake had witnessed their systematic slaughter.
    "The Rookeries," she whispered, as if the dead could hear her, and took a step forward. Her shoe knocked against something in the ash. She bent to pick up the object and explore it with her fingers. It was the porcelain head of a small doll. The rest of the doll, its cloth body and dress hadn't survived the flames. As Mrs. Burrows shook the dust from the head and held it to her nose, there was something retained in it -- the tiniest suggestion of the generations of children who had played with it. These were poor people, and this toy had probably been handed down from parent to child through the centuries, only for its last owner to lose her life in this terrible carnage.
    And in the religious services all over the Colony, those responsible for this crime were at that very moment preaching to the Colonists on how to lead their lives. The Styx.
    Mrs. Burrows gently placed the doll's head on a pile of broken masonry, and returned toward the opening in the wall.

    * * * * *

    After calling it a day at the new pyramid, they were returning to the base camp. But as they emerged onto the grassy track again, Dr. Burrows was lagging behind Will and Elliott. Whistling through his teeth, he was trying to read his journal as he sauntered along. Will and Elliott watched as his foot went into a pothole and he staggered a few steps. But after he'd managed to regain his balance, he went straight back to his journal as if nothing had happened.
    "Look at your father -- he could walk smack bang into a saber-tooth tiger and not notice it was there," Elliott observed disapprovingly. "He's in a world of his own."
    "He is," Will replied, turning to Elliott. "But this is what he does best... he's at his happiest when he's picking away at a problem and trying to solve it."
    A flock of birds flew lazily past them and alighted in the trees by the side of the track.
    "Yeuch!" Elliott said.
    The bodies of the birds were chubby and flaccid -- like extremely old men with protruding beer bellies. Their bald heads and necks only helped to emphasize the impression as they lacked feathers, their wrinkled skin covered instead with patchy down. Fixing their beady eyes on Will and Elliott, the assembled birds were silent except for the odd squawk, as if they weren't sure what to make of these human interlopers in their jungle, and were conferring amongst themselves.
    "They're ugly. What are those things?" Elliott asked.
    "Maybe some kind of vulture?" Will ventured.
    As Bartleby crept into the open the birds began to flap their scrawny wings and squawk even more loudly, but they didn't fly away. It was obvious they were chary of the Hunter, whose jaw began to quiver as he prowled up and down, ogling them with his big amber eyes. He gave a low frustrated mew because the birds were too far up in the trees for