Tunnels 06 - Terminal

earthquake had struck, the ground began to shake. Whether they were on the rooftops or on the ground, everyone around the cathedral felt it.
    The tremor subsided as quickly as it had begun.
    There was a beat when everyone breathed a sigh of relief that it was over, and that they hadn’t been hurt.
    Then came a sound as if a million tons of fish had hit the ground, and the Armagi – every single one of them – disintegrated.
    They didn’t even have time to turn back into human form. The whole place was awash with oily pieces of their transparent bodies as they slopped across the road and the paved forecourt of the cathedral.
    ‘Parry, what the bejesus was that?’ Bob’s anxious voice came over the radio. ‘We saw that red light all the way out here. And we also experienced some sort of seismic event. Tell me your people weren’t responsible for that.’
    ‘Frankly, Bob, I haven’t the faintest idea what just happened,’ Parry replied. ‘But look at the Armagi. I reckon it’s time to call off that missile strike now.’
    Bob didn’t answer.
    Captain Franz poked his head out from entrance of the subway.
    Right away Rebecca Two spotted her New Germanian officer and called to him. He began to run frantically towards her, slipping and falling over several times in the sea of oily Armagi body parts.
    ‘Oh, great, that’s all I need,’ Hermione muttered, but she was more intent on Elliott’s trident.
    Danforth suddenly appeared beside them, his pistol drawn. ‘I’ll keep an eye on Big Bug for you,’ he offered to Elliott.
    ‘Thanks,’ the girl said, releasing the Styx woman, then stretching her new insect limbs in the air. ‘I was beginning to get cramp.’
    ‘What is that?’ Hermione asked Elliott, still staring at the trident. ‘Some kind of weapon?’
    Elliott held it up. ‘Is it beginning to come back now? Are you beginning to remember? Because it all started … and ended with this.’ She held up the trident to consider it for a moment, then shook her head. ‘We were stranded up here on the surface when this was taken from us. Who knows how it happened – maybe the humans rebelled against us or something,’ she said with a shrug. ‘And without us there to control it, our ship never continued on its journey. Over the billions of years we … we Styx … simply forgot who we were.’
    ‘I don’t feel …’ Hermione said, staggering slightly, but Elliott had left her, rushing over to Will’s side.
    Jiggs had already crept out from where he’d been hiding and was tending to Will. He’d torn the boy’s shirt open and was examining his abdomen and chest. Then, diving into his medic’s bag, he quickly administered a phial of morphine to him. ‘That’ll help with the pain,’ he said.
    ‘How is he?’ Elliott asked.
    Jiggs shrugged. ‘We need to open him up and get the Styx larvae out.’ He looked around at what was left of the Armagi. ‘We can’t take the risk that they’re not still alive, and even if they are dead we need to find out what damage they’ve already done.’
    ‘I need a moment with him,’ Elliott said.
    ‘I …’ Jiggs began, unwilling to leave the boy.
    ‘Just give me a moment,’ Elliott insisted.
    There was something about her that made Jiggs obey without question.
    Elliott took hold of Will, shaking him by the shoulders. ‘Will, you have to wake up.’
    He coughed hard, blood and froth from his lungs speckling the sheer black of the Bentley’s bonnet.
    ‘Come on, Will, please. I haven’t got long,’ she begged, shaking him again.
    Then his eyes flicked open. ‘God, it hurts,’ he groaned, his face tensing with the pain.
    ‘I know,’ she said.
    ‘Elliott, it’s you,’ he said, as he realised who had hold of him. ‘What happened?’ As he managed to focus on her, he caught sight of one of her insect legs as it twitched over her shoulder. ‘That’s new,’ he said, then laughed as the morphine began to take effect. ‘Hey, are you in fancy dress?’
    And although Will’s sight was rather blurred and he wasn’t seeing clearly, his question wasn’t that outlandish.
    If Dr Burrows had been there, he too would have had something to say about Elliott’s appearance: the trident, the crimson glow it was emitting, and the insect limb poised behind her that Will had mistaken for a tail.
    If all that hadn’t been symbolic enough, there was also the fact that the Styx had their origins at the centre of the Earth, where a small but fiery sun never