Tunnels 06 - Terminal

was; having failed to reach its destination, the ship was being recalled to its rightful place. Back home again.
    But where that home was, and what manner of beings would be there to greet her when they arrived, she couldn’t even begin to guess.
    But she had no option now.
    She – and the world – were on their way.

 
     
     
    Epilogue
    ‘ C ome along. Up you get, Bart Kitten,’ Will said, patting the bed beside him. Apart from the occasional excursion outside to catch a rat or two, the young Hunter had been Will’s almost constant companion since his mother had brought him down to the Colony with her to convalesce.
    It was all rather fitting, because Will was being tended to in the very same room in which Mrs Burrows had made her miraculous recovery after the Styx had left her for dead following her excessive Darklighting. The sitting room in the First Officer’s house was precisely how it had been for her stay, the furniture moved aside to make space for a bed. And that was precisely where Will had spent the last couple of weeks, lolling around in bed and largely left to his own devices except for the odd house call from a doctor.
    Truth be told, Will was having the time of his life.
    Safe in the knowledge that the threat from the Styx had been removed once and for all, he was enjoying the opportunity to laze around all day long, sleeping as much as he felt like in his nice, warm bed.
    And he certainly was being well and truly pampered – the First Officer’s mother and his sister, Eliza, had been asked to do their bit and look after him in the daytime when the First Officer and Mrs Burrows were busy with Colony matters.
    The Colony had indeed become a very busy place again.Parry and his SAS unit had moved there, along with a contingent of Topsoil survivors from London and the South East. At least there’d been ample room for this influx of new residents because the Styx’s merciless harvesting of the Colonists for the Phase had left whole streets empty.
    Will found he didn’t miss being Topsoil at all, although he knew there was much debate up there over how the atmosphere might be affected as the planet continued its inexorable drift away from the sun. Would the air be lost as the planet edged further and further from its orbit and, eventually, out of the solar system, or was there some form of field to keep it intact? And would surface temperatures plummet until they were only a few degrees above absolute zero, the temperature of deep space?
    Human life, and all life, would become unfeasible in that situation.
    But Will didn’t linger on these fears for too long – he was more than happy to hide away in his darkened bedroom and wait for his next meal to be brought to him. He felt that he’d had more than his fair share of unpleasantness at the hands of the Styx, and it was someone else’s turn now to solve the problems. So he was quite content to fill his days with trivial and insignificant things for a change, which included playing with the oversized kitten.
    ‘Oh, do come on, Bart!’ he said tetchily, patting the bed beside him even harder.
    Much to his surprise, the cat narrowed his eyes and began to back out of the room, snarling at him. Then, with a last rumbling growl, Bartleby was off, haring down the corridor and into the kitchen.
    ‘Stupid bloody moggy,’ Will muttered in a disappointedvoice, folding his arms huffily across his chest.
    Hearing the commotion, Mrs Burrows came to investigate. ‘What’s got into that cat?’ she asked.
    ‘I’ve absolutely no idea,’ Will replied. ‘Something must have rattled him. He’s nothing like Bartleby – that’s for sure.’
    For a moment Mrs Burrows remained in the doorway, staring at her son with her sightless eyes. She sniffed, then said, ‘Supper’s nearly ready. Hope you’re hungry?’
    ‘Certainly am, Mum,’ he replied.
    At first it had felt a little peculiar to be part of his mother’s new life in the Colony, her apparent domestic bliss with the First Officer. But in a way, Will believed that he had every right to be there; he was making up for lost time because he’d never known anything like it when they’d lived together in Highfield. All through those years, Mrs Burrows had been far from a perfect mother as she occupied her days with her beloved television and not much else. Certainly not cooking meals for him!
    ‘Can you guess what we’re having?’ she said, smiling as she and her son went through their little