Tunnels 06 - Terminal

track and entered the jungle, it wasn’t the occasional large chunk of masonry that hampered their progress, but the substantial amount of mashed-up foliage that was strewn everywhere.
    All this uprooted and shredded vegetation was still settling, and every so often whole branches or tangles of roots that had been suspended up in the giant trees fell to the ground. So not only were he and Karl clambering over the debris between the unaffected trees of the jungle, they were also forced to keep an eye out for anything that might drop on them from above.
    As they trekked through the jungle the amount of displaced greenery increased, until they were trying to circumnavigate small hillocks of it. Then, finally, the trees thinned, and they stepped out onto the huge area of bare earth.
    Karl glanced enquiringly at Werner.
    ‘I know – it’s incredible,’ his uncle said. ‘Just look at it.’
    And they did for a moment, at the new form of the pyramid and then the incredible sight of the tower in the distance.
    ‘Maybe my brother’s not losing his mind, after all,’ Werner said under his breath, and they began across the fields of sundried dirt in this new landscape.
    By the base of the tower, Jürgen had been looking out for them and, as he spied them in the distance, rushed off to meet them.
    Elliott, still slightly shaken, had moved into the entrance chamber of the tower accompanied by her new shadow, Woody. The moment she was back inside the tower, a marked change came over her and she seemed far more at ease. She also took up Will’s suggestion that she lie down with her head propped on her rolled-up jacket, and soon drifted off to sleep.
    Jürgen finally arrived back with his brother and son. Seeing Elliott was soundly asleep, he gestured to Will that he was intending to take the other two upstairs, and they tiptoed off.
    Will found himself at a loose end. Not wanting to go too far from Elliott in case she woke up, he passed the time by making an exhaustive examination of the walls of the entrance chamber, knocking against them to see if he could find anything. Then he turned his attention to the two large columns, trying to work out what they were, and also seeing if he could produce any sort of change by touching their surfaces just as Elliott seemed to be able to do. He’d nearly finished exploring every inch of the columns he could reach when a voice from behind made him jump.
    ‘Here, let me,’ Elliott said. Rubbing her eyes, she didn’tseem to be fully awake as she took a step forward and brushed the column in front of him with her hand.
    There had been nothing to show that the particular area she’d selected was any different from the rest of the matt grey surface, but under her fingertips a three-pronged motif glowed blue. To the right of the symbol a door in the cylinder slipped silently open to reveal a chamber filled with creamy light.
    Will was speechless. He could have been performing a strange new dance as, moving from foot to foot, he tensed his arms in frustration and tried to shrug at the same time. ‘I don’t understand,’ he finally burst out, wheeling round to Elliott. ‘Why is it that only you can make this stuff work?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said, massaging a shoulder to ease her muscles after her nap on the hard floor. She appeared far more relaxed now – the rest seemed to have helped her to get over the shock of what had happened at the top of the tower. But now Will was the one who was becoming increasingly unnerved.
    ‘But what makes you different from the rest of us? Is it because you’re half Styx?’ he suggested, then narrowed his eyes with suspicion. ‘Or is there something you’re not telling me? Because why didn’t Woody and his mates have a love-in with the Rebecca twin … or Vane … or any of the other Styx, for that matter, when they showed up in this world?’
    ‘Maybe my blood changed him?’ Elliott said with a frown. ‘Or maybe because Woody and all the other bushmen kept their distance. He told me they thought the Styx were like the New Germanians – just another load of people muscling in on their land.’ She was silent for a moment, her frown deepening as she touched the column twice, closing and thenopening the door in it again. ‘And how I know these things – well, I told you, it’s the same as something you remember from a dream. It feels so real, but at the same time you know it can’t be real because it didn’t actually