The Osiris Curse (22 page)

They left the armory and moved quickly along the corridors, moving up the stairwell to level three. Apparently, there were five levels and then the rooftop where the
Albion
was moored. Octavia glanced at the others, but none of them seemed to be feeling anything but giddy excitement. Weren't they afraid? She was
terrified
.

But then, if she had been kept prisoner for six years, she supposed she'd jump at the chance to get revenge. Fear would be buried beneath a desire for payback.

But Tweed…She couldn't help staring at him. He was sliding along the walls, peering around the corners, with his guns held out before him for all the world as if he really was Atticus Pope. She hoped he hadn't finally snapped.

“Tweed,” she whispered fiercely. He didn't acknowledge her. “Hoy. Tweed!” He glanced over his shoulder.

“What?”

“You all right?”

“I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?”

She checked to make sure none of the others were listening. “You're acting a bit…” She searched for the word.

“Heroic?”

“No…”

“Manly?”

“Definitely not.”

“Brave?”

“
No.
”

And then she remembered something. This was sort of how he had been acting that time in the Zeppelin factory, just after they'd been attacked by the Laughing Man and his lightning gun. This
was
Tweed. This was who he was, this was him being normal.

“Mental,” she said. “You're acting a bit mental.”

“Oh.” Tweed shrugged as if this was perfectly ordinary. “You've got to be a bit mental to survive, I reckon.”

So saying he winked at her and disappeared into the next corridor. The others followed, and after a few minutes they were crouching outside a set of double doors.

“It opens into a large room,” said Ampney, “but it's been used to dump all the stuff that's been offloaded from the
Albion
. Lots of boxes and crates.”

Tweed pushed the doors open a crack with the tip of his gun. Octavia joined him and peered through. Light filtered in from somewhere, but not much. As Ampney had said, there were crates piled everywhere. The floor was strewn with books, ornaments, bottles of wine, clothes, old suitcases.

“We were struggling with weight,” whispered Dr. Faber from behind her. “We had to offload everything we could.”

“
Ja
,” said Strauss. “You should see the other side of the mountain. A pile as high as your Big Ben.”

Tweed pushed the doors open and entered the room in a crouch, pausing behind a large crate. The others followed and the doors squeaked as they swung closed again.

Octavia winced, then peered into the room.

Orange electricity soared past her head and burst the doors from their hinges.

A second later the room was a brightly lit confusion of exchanging
gunfire. Tweed was lying on the floor firing around one side of the create. Kolotcha crouched above him, firing blindly in every single direction, while Ampney, Campbell, and Faber shot from the other side of the crate. Octavia winced at the sudden heat, the smell of burning tin. She grabbed hold of the top of the crate and pulled herself up so she could peer into the room.

A bolt of energy came directly at her. She barely managed to drop before it soared through the space where her face had just been.

“Surrender!” shouted a voice. “We have you surrounded.”

Octavia frowned. She straightened up. “
Mother?
” she called.

There was a pause. “Octavia?”

Octavia moved out of cover. Molock and her mother were leaning around a wooden crate similar to their own.

“You were shooting at us!” exclaimed Octavia.

“We thought you were the enemy. Sorry.”

Tweed hurried past Octavia. “We've got some friends,” he said proudly.

“So I see. Who are they?”

“Kidnapped scientists,” said Tweed dramatically.

“Ah. Are any of them evil?”

“Don't think so,” said Tweed. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, you know. In all those Atticus Pope books, there's always an evil scientist. I mean, we've found the lair, I was just hoping for a scientist.”

“Atticus Pope!” Tweed whirled around and grinned at Octavia. “Nightingale. Your mum reads Atticus Pope! How wonderful.”

“Yay. Wonderful,” said Octavia wearily, making her way for the door in the far wall and the set of stairs on the other side.

The group climbed to the top floor, moving quickly until they came to a final corridor. At the end was one last room, and then a stairwell leading directly to the roof.

Octavia gently pushed the door open. Darkness, then the flash of muzzle fire, the rat-a-tat of gunfire, and bullets ripped into the wall by her face.

Octavia ducked back and slammed the door closed. Bullet holes were sprayed across the corridor wall, but the burst had been badly aimed. She could hear someone screaming at the shooter inside the room.

“I told you to wait! I told you to hold your fire until they'd all entered the room, you stupid pieces of scrap!”

She recognized that voice. It was Temple.

“Guess they heard the little rumpus downstairs,” said Tweed. “How many?”

“How many flashes?” Octavia thought back to the terrifying moment. “At least twenty. That I saw. Probably more.”

Nobody said anything, but she knew what they were thinking. That they couldn't do this. There were too many.

But if they didn't stop Sekhem and Nehi, then everything they had been through was for nothing. All the people they had hoped to save would die.

“We can do this,” she insisted.

“There are too many,” said her mother softly.

Octavia opened her mouth to argue, but her mother held up a hand.

“I don't want to lose you again, Octavia. We've only just found each other.” She turned to the scientists. “There has to be another way up to the roof.”

“There isn't,” said Ampney. “If there was, we would be using it right now.” He sighed. “I fought in the Crimea, girl. I know you think we can do this, but I have to disagree. There will be deaths if we go through that door.”

“There might be deaths, but we also might win. Right?”

“It is possible,” he said reluctantly. “But not probable.”

“Don't you see?” she said to everyone. “We have no choice. If we do nothing, even if we fail, then they've won.” She looked at Ampney. “Did you want to go to war?”

“Of course not. But it was my duty.”

“And why is this different?”

Ampney opened his mouth, then closed it again.

“Octavia—” began her mother.

“Hey, where's Dr. Campbell?” asked Tweed.

Octavia looked around. All the scientists were there except the Scottish doctor. “I saw her just now. She was standing right here.”

“She wouldn't have run, would she?” asked Tweed.

“Hah!” said Kolotcha. “No chance. Better to ask if she went into the room ahead of us. A fierce woman, that one. She would not run.”

“Should we…go look for her?” asked Octavia.

There was a noise from the room behind them. Tweed opened the door slightly and peered through. Then he quickly pushed his gun though the gap and fired blindly. Octavia heard clattering and shouting from the other side.

“No time. They're coming at us.”

He fired again. Bullets peppered the door in response, forcing everyone to duck against the walls.

The gunfire stopped. But another sound replaced it. The sound of running feet, coming from along the corridor. Running feet, and swearing. In a Scottish accent.

Dr. Campbell sprinted into view waving a bag furiously over her head.

“Where have you been?” asked Octavia.

Dr. Campbell took a huge gulp of breath and held the bag out. “Remembered seeing these back in the armory. I think they might be grenades.”

Ampney took the bag from her and peered inside. He held one up. It was round, made from metal, about the size of her clenched fist, with Hyperborean runes circling it.

Molock peered at it. “Yes, that is indeed a grenade.”

“That would kill them,” said Octavia.

“Might do,” said Ampney. “Depends where it's thrown.”

“Do we really have time to worry about that?” asked Strauss. “You think they're worried about killing us?”

Octavia chewed her lip. He had a point. What if—

She heard a noise and turned to find Kolotcha standing by the door looking guilty.

“What did you—?”

She was cut off by a huge explosion from the room beyond. The doors slammed open, sending Kolotcha sprawling. The shock wave struck the rest of them, sending them staggering back. Octavia's ears rang. She used the wall to steady herself.

“What did you do?” shouted Strauss.

“Sorry,” said Kolotcha, wincing and wiggling a finger in his ears. “I thought it might have been a simple concussion grenade.”

“I don't think it was,” said Tweed, peering through the door.

Smoke poured out into the corridor. The dim lights in the room flickered—those that were still working, anyway. Octavia could just see that Kolotcha had thrown the grenade to the right, while most of their enemies had been on the left.

No one was left standing. Some were sprawled, unmoving, while others were groaning, trying to pull themselves to their feet.

Now was the time to move.

She glanced over her shoulder. “Ready?”

The others nodded uncertainly. They hadn't really recovered from the shock of the blast, but there was no time. This was the only chance they'd get.

“Let's go.”

She pushed the door open, firing her gun ahead of her. Blue lightning streaked through the smoke, blowing wooden crates apart. The others joined her and formed a line, firing into the dimness. One of their shots hit a hybrid, wreathing him in orange electricity, his limbs shuddering then seizing up.

Some of the cultists had made it to their feet and were moving backward, heading for the door that led to the roof. It looked like they had sent the hybrids ahead of them, so the constructs had taken most of the damage from the grenade.

The cultists fired their guns as they retreated, but they were confused, disoriented. Octavia and the others kept up a steady barrage of gunfire, blue and orange light mixing, climbing up the walls, crawling across the floor, grounding itself into anything that was metal.

The cultists finally made it to the door, then turned and bolted up the stairs.

Octavia paused on the threshold. The stairs zigzagged upward. No one was waiting for them. They hurried up the stairs, arriving at an open door that led directly outside.

Octavia could see some of the cultists scrambling up ropes that hung from the
Albion
. Octavia fired wildly through the door. She missed, but one of the cultists still on the rooftop turned and glared at her. Temple.

He shouted at the others, waving at them to return fire while he tried to grab a rope. But it shifted just out of reach. The
Albion
was rising. Temple jumped a second time, but the rope was getting farther and farther away. He screamed at the airship.

Tweed shot through the door, narrowly missing Temple. He swung a furious glare at them, swept up his gun from where he'd dropped it, and returned fire. They ducked to the side. Tweed put
his guns around the doorframe and fired blindly. The others followed suit, shooting wildly into the open.

That was when Octavia noticed the strange white glow that reached them through the door.

“What's that?” she shouted, straining to be heard above the gunfire.

Then, slowly, one by one, the guns outside fell silent.

They peered outside. Their eyes were drawn immediately upward. The huge lens that hung below the
Albion
was glowing bright white.

“They've activated the death ray,” whispered Strauss, fear evident in his voice.

Temple was standing directly below it. His face was bathed in light, his hands outstretched to either side.

And then he started to scream.

His skin flaked, sloughing away from his head, floating into the air like ash. His hair fell away and burst into tiny flames.

Octavia watched in horror. His skin boiled away, revealing muscle and sinew. Then that bubbled, vanishing in clouds of steam to reveal the bones underneath. He dropped to his knees. A red puddle formed around him, then the bones collapsed and disintegrated, crumbling away and vanishing.

The area around him started to fragment in the same way, the stone of the roof melting away like ice.

The scope of the death ray expanded, creeping outward, stone disintegrating like sand funneling into a hole. More cultists were caught in its grip, as were some of the hybrids who had made it up to the roof. Their metal frames rusted in an instant, flaking and bubbling as if touched by acid.

The hole in the roof was ten feet across. The other cultists had realized what was happening and were running back to the stairs.

Octavia thought that was a very sensible idea.

“Run!” she shouted. “Out! Out now!”

No one needed a second warning. They sprinted down the stairs, back into the room where the grenade had exploded. Light appeared above them. Octavia looked up and saw a hole forming in the roof, simply appearing and expanding. It touched the wall and the hole carried on growing, devouring everything in its path.

The death ray was moving faster, picking up speed. The group sprinted through the corridors, the compound collapsing all around them. Dust hung in the air like a choking mist. They ran down the stairs, holes appearing at random all around them. It was like some kind of nightmare. A nothingness that spread and ate anything it touched. And this was what they wanted to do to London? The thought drove anger through her body, gave her an extra burst of speed. She helped Dr. Campbell over a fallen roof beam. She could hear screams close behind them, screams that were abruptly cut off.