The Book

Narcberry's knuckles turned white as he gripped the handle tighter and tighter, never quite squeezing his trigger finger. beads of sweat formed and froze as the others looked on with a cocktail of emotions, from rage and bloodlust to fear and compassion. but the final decision was Narcberry's, he had the gun and nobody else wanted to take up he mantle of executioner. He licked his lips nervously.

"Any last words?" the tone was pleading, as if asking him to recite war and peace or the bible, anything to suspend the grisly task ahead.

"I ask you not to hate..." Saddam said in a quiet voice, blending into the whisper of the wind. "Because hate does not leave space for a man to be fair; it makes you blind and closes all doors of thinking."

Narcberry's hand shook and he steadied it with his other. He tightened his grip more and pulled back his trigger finger with extracted care.

BLAM

BLAM

BLAM

Suddenly there was nothing. Even the wind itself seemed to hush itself. For a moment everyone stood stock still. In that very moment the universe held it's breath, the clouds seemed not to move, Cybele's rays seemed oily and slow. the gun dropped from Narcberry's hand, still menacingly smoking from the end of the barrel.

"You should have killed me." Saddam said sadly, his eyes fixed on the three molten craters in the ice just inches in front of him.

"What, and sink to your level?" Narcberry retorted with tear-filled eyes. "That isn't justice. whatever has happened, whatever nightmares I've seen and no matter what atrocities have been committed in front of me I refuse to lose the one thing which makes us human, the one thing which separates us from the rest of the blind and toothless animals who wear the clothes of men."

"So what will we do with him?" Dogplatter asked.

"Take away his toys and tie him back up in his hidey-hole." he said "i may have just saved your life, don't expect me to make it comfortable for you, Saddam"

Saddam was tied at the wrists and tossed into the back of the equipment caravan. TheEngineer went in first, searching for the Iraqi's gadgets. he found the remote control, the radio and a small palmtop device of indeterminate function.

"Destroy them." He said to the others as he tossed them out onto the ice. Midnight took Saddam's HK Pistol and fired a round into each of the little pieces of technology which gave one final sparking stutter of life before lying silent.

"Right." Tom announced. "Let's get the cars ready to go and get the hell out of here. I don't trust this place."

****

Diego's enraged fist sent a deskload of paperwork and equipment cascading down to shatter on the frosty floor.

"How dare they!?" He raged, looking around for something else to smash "Z!"

The door burst open and Z stood in the doorway running a strip of cloth down the length of an impossibly sharp knife.

"Saddam's dead." Diego growled "His radio stopped transmitting half an hour ago."

Z said nothing, he just kept running the cloth down the knife. Silently inviting Diego Draw to fill in more blanks.

"They're just outside the Hubward Province. Less than an hour away. It's time to make use of our guests."

Z smiled.

****

The unmoving crimson orb of Cybele shone down on the abandoned city, casting long shadows from the large broken and shattered towers. Menace seemed to come from behind every structure, every piece of rubble as the ragtag group of SnowFox expeditioners drove around the edge of the great city. Chatter was kept to an absolute minimum as not to attract the attention of the conspiracy troops.

"this place is incredible." Gayer sighed, gazing out of the passenger window at the towers "Who do you think built it?"

"Aliens?" Dann said with a shrug, "Makes as much sense as anything else that's happened these last few weeks."

"I don't think so.." Chris mused "Unless they had very human methods of construction."

"What do you mean?"

Chrissetti pointed at the closest tower.

"Look, relatively modern window frames, like nineteen twenties? thirties? I think these are fairly recent constructions, definitely in the last century or so. That, or E.T. had a penchant for nineteen twenties architecture."

Suddenly there was a crackle on the radio and an unclear voice. Gayer and Chrissetti looked at each other while Agent 0042 fiddled with the radio knobs and dials.

"..g-t....y. It- ...a...t--p! G-- ou- .... f -ere!"

"Please repeat your message. You are breaking up!" Agent said.

"...s car on- Rowb-tham!" Came the static-heavy voice.

"Wait, Trekky? Trekky is that you?" Agent said with a furrowed brow as he kept trying to clear the radio.

"...Who is that?" Trekky said, his voice much clearer "look, it doesn't matter. You have to get out of here now! Diego! He's alive and trying to kill you all!"

"What's going on, Trekky, we thought you headed back to SnowFox? Who else is there?"

"Just me, Muffs and Gulliver in this car. We're on remote control to meet you! You can't let that happen! get out of here!"

"--but"

"Go!--"

Suddenly the radio cut dead.

Muffs looked on in rare silence as Trekky and Gulliver fought the plastic and metal panels on the dashboard, trying to get to the sensitive controls inside. She had her knees tucked right up against her chin with her arms wrapped around them while she huddled in the back of the car. Occasionally she glanced down at a small, almost invisible lump on her forearm.

I should tell them. She thought, bleary eyes looking at her brother, who screamed in triumph as the surprisingly flimsy-looking panel clattered to the floor. Later. right now he needs to concentrate.

"Come ON!" Trekky roared as he discovered the sheet of metal behind the plastic. Gulliver just grunted and got to work on an exposed screw with his makeshift screwdriver, a piece of metal from the chair which lay in pieces around the car.

The car bumped and clattered as it hit a dune of snow or piece of building debris, throwing Muffs to the floor in a tangled heap. Instead of getting up she simply lay there on the floor gently rubbing the little bump under her skin in a hypnotic rhythm.

Had she been looking through the side window she would have seen the SnowFox convoy accelerating away from The Project's car. The Project; one of the last things she remembered before they injected the sleeping drug into her. She remembered Z gloating about the secret organisation and how they had the whole world wrapped around their finger.

"They don't suspect a thing," He had said "But it's all there, all the evidence, all the documents, all the lives, laid bare to the whole world to see but they're so stupid. It's really quite amazing, tell the world hundreds of little inconsequential lies and the people revolt, tell one big lie and nobody questions it, after that you can tell as many little lies as you want."

"But why?" Muffs had demanded "Why all the lies and deaths? Are you people retarted?"

"Because." he had said with a flash of menace "It all proves that The Project works. Proves that people can pull the strings of the puppeteers. Night night..." After that, the needle went into her arm and she remembered nothing until they woke her up, and that was a whole new nightmare...

"Ow!" Trekky yelped as sparks leaped out of the car's electronic innards. Careful and considered electronic disconnection had now turned into 'find a wire, give it a tug' resulting in a lot of sparks, swearing and pain and precious little else. So far it had resulted in the window wipers engaging in a mad frantic dance, the headlights blinking and flashing like a disco and the engine in general emitting a random screech. Still though, the car hurtled towards the SnowFox explorers and was gaining by the second.

"Mu- Alice come and give us a hand!" Trekkyshouted as another handful of wires exploded.

Muffs looked down at the little bump on her arm and at the sparks coming from the severed wires. Would it be safe? Would it just make matters worse? She shook her head and retreated back into her embryonic position.

"Alice!"

"No!"

"We need help!" Trekky yelled.

"I can't!" She shouted, tears in her eyes.

trekky looked as if he was going to rebuke her, then he just shook his head and dived back into the car's innards. Muffs just sat and cursed the little bump on her arm and what it meant.

****

"We can't just leave them!" Gayer argued into the radio.

"You heard him, the car will be rigged to explode or something!"Someone else replied.

"Then they'll be killed!" Gayer shouted, her fists shaking with rage "Muffs is thirteen! You're happy to see a fucking kid killed because you're too much of a fucking coward to try and save them? pathetic."

"Bu--"

"Fine! Fuck you! Dann, you know what to do."

"Aye aye, ma'am." He said as he slowed the Lazarev down to let Trekky's car catch up. "What if Mr Ireland is right though..."

Gayer shot him a murderous glance.

"...in a purely hypothetical sense of course." Dann added quickly.



 

As it drew closer it was obvious that the remote car carrying Trekky, Gulliver and Muffs wasn't an IceCruiser or the cars they had encountered back at the Dark Tower. Whereas they had been geared towards endurance and strength, this was clearly built for speed. A simple body had a swept-back, aerodynamic shape ending in a small spoiler along the back of the car. it was bright blue in contrast to the red of the IceCruisers and looked rushed, as though it had just been churned out without real thought for aesthetics, ice had formed crusts along every surface and edge, proving it was insufficiently insulated. Right now it was also flashing it's indicators, randomly squealing from various cavities inside and pulsing it's headlights.

Inside the chaos was just as acute. Trekky was still disassembling the innards of the car, more difficult now that the main electronics were more or less gone and now the components were all moving mechanical parts. Gulliver had the shell of the radio off and was hurriedly trying to get it working. Muffs was picking at her arm with a sharp piece of metal discarded from her brother's 'engineering'. in the window, the behemoth of the Lazarev was now so close that it's spray was plastering the driver's side window with layers of snow and ice.

"There!" Gulliver declared! "Got it!"

--in! we're going to try and slow the car, hold on in there!" Gayer's voice said over the radio.

"Gayer! for God's sake get back! they're blatantly not just planning on letting us go, any of us, why do you think this car is on remote control?" Trekky barked.

"That's why we're not stopping!" Gayer said "open the right-side door!"

"What?"

"Give it a good boot! Shouldn't take much!" Gayer told him.

Trekky looked as if he was about to argue, then he sighed, stood up best he could and went over to the door. As Gayer had predicted, the ice had made it stiff and unresponsive, but it opened with one well-placed kick which surprised even Trekky. The door flew out, then slammed back again, knocking the young man down on his ass. Gulliver rolled his eyes and pushed the door open and held it, grunting against the 50mph wind.

"OK, hold it there!" The Lazarev suddenly roared and turned lazily towards the streamlined Project car, it grunted and accelerated, bumping against the bodywork of the weaker car which bucked and rocked. One final roar saw the IceCruiser give a burst of speed shearing the door completely off it's frame with an ear-splitting screech.

The Lazarev opened it's door wide enough for someone to walk in...

or jump in...

"Oh dear God no!" Trekky stammered, realising what the mad British girl had in mind.

"Come on!" She shouted over the billowing of the wind and the two huge engines. she had a hand out of the car and behind her Chrissetti held onto her waist and braced himself on the floor. Behind him Agent 0042 gripped Chrissetti. "Put your faith in the conga line of life!"

"No way! Not a chance in hell!" Trekky gulped as he saw the rolling bucking ice in the half meter between the cars.

"Fine then!" Snapped Gulliver, "Get out of the way." He shunted Trekky aside, took a breath and ran at the gap...

...and stopped on the edge. He took another breath full of painfully sharp ice and steadied himself on the edge of the door and jumped. He felt his heart leap into his throat as the safe secure floor of the car dropped away and for a couple of milliseconds which felt like forever. Then an arm grabbed his  and he fell facefirst into the waiting belly of the Lazarev. He rolled to the side and let the heart hammer against his ribcage.

Back on board the Project's car ,Trekky was building up courage enough to make the jump.

"You can do it, Andy!" Muffs said with a sad little smile. And that was enough, Trekky's legs pumped as he ran at the ice cold wall of air. he leaped and crashed straight into Gayer and Chrissetti sending them crashing painfully to the floor.

"Come on Muffs! If I can do it I know you can!"

Alice looked down at her arm, now red raw from her scratching at it with the metal. Should she do it? Knowing what might happen? Knowing what was waiting within? She looked up at Trekky who waited with arm outstretched. She thought back to how her brother had defended her, fought for her, argued against Tom for her, if there was one person who could save her now, he was on board the Lazarev waiting for her.

She pulled herself to her feet, tugged her sleeve over the cursed lump and ran full pelt at the gap.

Come on, Andrew, I need you to fulfill your promise to Mom and Dad... and to me....

Z grunted as he tossed the useless control box to the floor. somehow Trekky had managed to override the remote control unit.

So much for it being practically indestructible. He muttered. If he was totally honest with himself this was exactly what he been hoping for, an excuse to get the job done himself, there was just something deeply impersonal and, well, rude about killing from afar. he also missed the tactile pleasure of feeling the life drain from the body like water from a sodden sponge. He stood up from his desk and strolled to the frost-encrusted door, pushed it open and walked with a spring in his step up the partially frozen corridor. Z looked enviously at the lift which had never worked for the fifteen years he'd lived in the icy tower.

His steps reverberated off the walls as he made his way up steep concrete steps in the empty stairwell. After climbing the first ten floors he rested against the wall for a second before continuing.

You'd think He thought That if she can wire a car for long-range remote control and rig it to explode she could at least fix the damn elevators! i mean, they've only been broken since, what, the 1950's?

Four more flights of huffing and panting and Z stood at a door blackened and buckled by countless explosions. Experience taught him to use his shoulder to barge his way through the door. Inside it was clear to see why the door was in the state it was. Discarded pieces of machinery lay broken abandoned or both around the floor, many of the pieces sporting large holes and collars of metal where it had obviously exploded. In the middle of the room was an impressive hole through the floor underneath, steel reinforcement weaved it's way over the gap, hanging on to scraps of concrete. At the far end of the room a figure was hunched over what Z assumed was a desk made of shrapnel, brilliant blue sparks silhouetted whoever was doing the welding.

"Is it ready?" Z asked and was completely ignored by the figure.

"I SAID..." He began

"I heard what you said hehehehe.." The figure said in a high pitch voice muffled by what was presumably the welder's mask "But if I mess this up then BAM back to the drawing board." She, it was definitely a she, went back to her work for two more joins then she pushed the mask back and swiveled on her chair.

It was a testament to Z's composure that he didn't flinch as he saw The Project's chief scientist.

"You're looking well, Ms Taters..." he said, opposed to the evidence in front of him.

"...Pope Taters..." She said, indicating a blackened scrap metal formation perched on her head vaguely in the shape of a cardinal's hat.

"Pope Taters." he sighed, he was used to her eccentricity, every time he went to see her she was calling herself by some new self-appointed title, usually ordained by a hideous blackened lump of scrap metal.

"..With the flowery dress."

"Pope Taters with the flowery dress." He groaned, he could be here all day, or night, in Cybele the words were meaningless, the little sunlet didn't move.

"And robot arms!" This time Z yelped as two mechanical claws poked their way through holes in the tattered pink dress. They were crude, probably operated with her real hands but the appearance was more than a little disconcerting.

"Look, Pope Taters with the flowery dress and the robotic arms, is it ready?" He snapped, cutting through any more of her 'enhancements'.

"Please, it was a quick repair job i could do in my sleep."

"Good, because I need you to pilot it, last time I got in something you 'repaired' i spent two hours buried in a snowdrift." Z said. Without a word, Ms Taters nodded and scuttled off in the direction of the stairs.

It's a fine line between madness and genius. Z thought I don't think Taters ever knew there was a line!

With Muffs safely on board, the Lazarev accelerated away from the now empty Project car. Left in a flume of snow and ice, the RC car could only roar it's engines impotently at the escaping SnowFox vehicle.

"Looks like you did some real damage to it." Dann commented, just as the sleek car vanished in a giant orange fireball, quickly followed by the whooomph of noise as the shockwave tore up the ice in it's way. Dann stared into the mirror with his mouth agape "But not that much, surely?"

Muffs flinched and curled herself up into a ball near the back of the car, keeping her right arm tucked underneath her left.

"What's up with her?" Agent 0042 whispered, nodding his head towards Muffs

"Things weren't good in Cybele. I think it hit her hard." Trekky said sadly.

"Trekky, Gulliver, what actually happened? last we saw of you, you were heading back for SnowFox

"We found their army, that's what happened..." Gulliver snapped, fidgeting to get comfortable.

"We made our way past the ruin of the Dark Tower and we just saw the first slithers of the Sun on the horizon when Muffs noticed some sort of cloud in the distance." Trekky cut in "We turned off our lights and tried to be unnoticeable but there was no way they were going to miss us."

"You hid from a cloud?" Chris asked, puzzled.

"A cloud of snow and ice, thrown up from their wheels and tracks. They had troop carriers, prison vans, even light tanks.

Naturally we surrendered, what else could we do?"

"We had AK47s..." Gulliver muttered.

"And they had guns with rounds the size of bowling balls."

"So what happened then? We didn't see anyone go past." Gayer said, turning in the seat.

"No idea." Said Trekky "We were dropped in the back of the prison truck with the SnowFox survivors--"

"What!?" Gayer gasped "What do you mean, survivors?!"

"It's gone, Gayer. Everything's gone. We got talking with the commander of the place. She told us that they were attacked, shot up and blown up." Gulliver said.

"Saddam..." Agent 0042 said through gritted teeth. He looked up to see Trekky and Gulliver looking at him in incomprehension. "Saddam betrayed us. He was working for them the whole time. Giving away our position, sabotaging the cars. We have him locked up in one of the caravans. So what happened then?"
"They just kept us locked up in the back of the troop transporter and we didn't see daylight for about a week; they let us out when it was night or when we were in, what did they call it? The Shadowlands, the dark areas that neither our Sun or Cybele light."

"Before we knew it we were thrown into our own cells in that city we passed before they put us in that car to trick you." Trekky said "We have to go back. They have dozens of people locked up in there.

"I for one am sick of running and being on the defensive. I'm sick of fearing every shape on the ice, every glitter in the sky. It's time we brought The Project down."

"With AK47s and a couple of pistols?"

"yeah."

"Even though we know they have guns of their own?"

"Yeah."

"And tanks?"

"Oh..."

****

It was two day later that the remaining cars convened in a circle reminiscent of the early days of the expedition. Like those glorious days, the expeditioners sat or stood around Tom Bishop discussing everything, from their lives before SnowFox, Cybele, The Project and the End of the World. Tom's people looked so much more ragged than they had all those weeks ago, with coats ripped and in several cases peppered with bullet-holes, unkempt hair cascaded down shoulders to frame faces decorated with wild beards.

"When is this going to end, Tom?" Althalus asked wearily "We know the Earth is Flat now, you've proven that much, we've got enough evidence to prove it. Why do we continue with this insane death march? There's only about half a caravan of fuel left in each car and if SnowFox is gone then we're close, if not passed, the point of no return--"

"We're close." He announced, cutting across Althalus' complaint. Tom paused, to let this sink in, but instead someone shouted 'prove it!'.

"I know you've almost all given up even looking at them but pay attention to your compasses again. We're close to a very powerful magnetic source. I believe it's the Edge."

There was excited, but skeptical muttering. Most of them were now immune t Tom's outlandish claims.

"I'm so confident that if we don't find it in the next two days, we'll turn back, get back to Sol's light, notify the authorities and rescue the prisoners in Cybele. Rex, Cheesejoff and the rest of the SnowFox team."

This drew a much more favourable reaction people clapped  and shouted their agreement. If anything, the applause grew and grew. it wasn't until people had stopped clapping and the noise was still there that anyone cast their eyes to the skies.

"To arms!" Tom shouted over the whopp-whopp-whopp of the distant helicopter, "Trekky's right, it's time to fight back."

There was a rush to the cars as everyone went to grab a weapon of some description, most rushing to grab the automatic AK-47s or the pistols, while the specialist weapons were taken by those who had used them before. Less than three minutes later everyone had taken up a position they believed in their mind to be great military thinking, in reality it was a mix-match of what people learned from a combination of Hollywood, videogames and paintball which would have made a real Sergeant shake his head in despair.

In the middle distance the helicopter was now visible as a dark sillhouette against the red sky. The shape was wide and squat with the semi-visible disk of the blades whipping away above it. It was also totally stationary.

TheEngineer lay on a mound of snow and ice, his form slowly getting covered by the flakes as he pointed the sniper rifle in the direction of the helicopter.

"Why don't you fire?" Chriss called, holding the machine gun at his shoulder

"Too far out. I only have three shots left and I'm not wasting them." He said, voice muffled by the snow "Lower your weapon a bit, you're not Rambo for God's sake."

Narcberry was patrolling the camp, getting people to better positions and demonstrating how to hold and fire their weapons. Most of the silliness was completely gone from him now. No longer did he call the explorers 'Lord Narcberry's First Armed Division', though he still referred to the IceCruisers as 'War-Wagons'. Proof that a leopard really can't change it's spots.

"Why don't they attack?" Dann grunted, his arms shaking from holding the rocket-launcher at the ready.

"Because that's not what we want." A voice came from all of the SnowFox cars. It was Diego's voice, amplified and distorted byu the many radios. "Make no mistake, with the missiles equipped on this thing--"

There was a hurried argument on the chopper;

"With the Death Torpedoes (Better Taters?) equipped on this helicopter, we could easy turn your whole little camp into a pool of molten metal and ice from here."

"Why should we believe you?" Tom asked confidently, clearly believing that Diego was bluffing. A second later there was a firey roar and a trail of smoke flew out from the helicopter to slam into the floor half a mile away, the fireball looked unnervingly close.

"Put the weapons down and walk away from the cars, perhaps then we can decide how we will resolve this peacefully" Diego sneered.

"Engy baby." Gayer whispered "Fire."

BLAM

The gunshot rang out across the rosy ice but there was no echo. It was a million-in-one shot. Out of range, unclear vision and blocked by the helicopter's downdraft. To expect it to hit, let alone cause any damage was pure fantasy. Or at least it should have been. Instead the little lump of metal flew through the air towards the helicopter. As it started to lose it's speed it started to level out it's flight, metres away from the machine and was caught in the turbulence created by the downdraft, which caused it to tumble, which caused it to lose it's straight path, which angled it towards the window, which broke on the bullet's impact showering the occupants inside with rectanglular shards of glass. The bullet hit the control panel and the helicopter began to slowly spiral towards the ground.

It was a million-to-one shot.

"Nice shot..." Narcberry said with his jaw agape. "Come on! Let's make sure we won't be followed."

In seconds the convoy was rolling on the way towards the downed helicopter, just half a mile away. Everyone had a gun and was poking it out of the closest window, creating the illusion of four extremely large, extremely angry red hedgehogs, well three red hedgehogs and one irate albino cousin.

The helicopter had landed fairly well given the circumstances, the front of the squat metal shape was buried in the ice and the rotors lay shredded and broken across the floor but otherwise it was in good condition.

"Come on out with your hands up!" Tom ordered. "You're surrounded and outgunned."

The front screen of the helicopter was shattered and what emerged from it was not the familiar sight of Z but a misshapen blackened metal...thing on top of a girl's face. Pope Taters with the flowery dress and the robotic arms crawled out of the wreckage holding up her human hands and one broken mechanical one. She swayed slightly on her feet as she looked around.

"I've lost an arm. has anyone seen it?" She said in a faraway voice.

"Who are you? And where's Z?" Tom asked, seemingly nonplussed by the bizarre scene in front of him.

"Oh he likes to do the silliest things." She said with a giggle, "But my research shows it only hurts for 4.863 seconds on average..."

Most people were now stood around the helicopter, Raist and Agent 0042 stood between the Lazarev and the Equinox, each with an AK47. Suddenly their throats became gushuing fountains of claret with the tip of a long blade at it's source. Muffs screamed as the helpless pair staggered forward before collapsing to the ice where the blood had already begun to freeze.

"..or was it minutes? Either way it won't hurt for long."

"Fan out!" Narcberry ordered, shouting above the sound of panic. "He can't have got far!"

Saddam listened with his heart pounding in his chest. from inside his dark prison he heard Muffs' screams, Narcberry's barked orders and Dann's roar of despair and anger. There was only one person in the Project who could cause that much panic and terror without being spotted. And it wasn't the mad scientist.

"Z" He said as the caravan's shutter silently slid open then closed again, a silhouette slipped in and became lost in the gloom.

"Keep your voice down!" Z whispered harshly. As Saddam's eyes re-adapted to the darkness he saw the famous project assassin stooped in the caravan clutching a long knife in each hand. "I silenced two people today, don't force me to make it three."

"How?" Saddam whispered "They aren't completely stupid, surely they noticed a man with two knives sneaking up on them?"

"It's amazing how good a distraction Taters can be." He said and sat down beside him. "You disappoint me, Mr Al-Hashan. Letting yourself be captured like this. We joked back in Cybele how you could have been the new me, if only you'd forget about your sister for a moment."

"Let Sahah go. She doesn't deserve this." Saddam pleaded.

"No. She didn't. Still, it won't be a problem for you." Z said, playing with one of the knives, apparently bored.

"What?! No..." Saddam yelped, forgetting himself.

"In a moment I want you to tell me something Saddam."

"What?"

"When i ask the next question, I want you to tell me 'no'." Z said, completely calm in the face of Saddam's emotional pain. "Will you deny Allah? The creator and giver of all?"

"Wh- I... No." He said, uncomprehendingly.

"Then I give you The Project's last gift." He held the knife up high, "A martyr's death."

****

Dann's breath came in pained rasps as he ran to Raist's side. He already knew that he was dead, living people's necks weren't supposed to look like that. His once handsome face was now covered in ice-encrusted blood. Dann took his shaking hands and tried to pick the frozen crimson off his face, only to find it as willing to shift as a layer of cement.

"Shit. shit shit shit shit shit shit shit SHIT!" He yelled, tears streaming from his eyes. He hadn't had chance to tell him how he felt, how close he'd felt. How he didn't care anymore what the others thought or said or did.

Now he was gone.

He looked up from Raist's body and stared at the freak from the helicopter with murder in his eyes. She was being restrained by one of the others, though she didn't seem to be in any hurry to escape, she was sat on her haunches bobbing her head and humming something.

Bitch.

He pulled himself to his feet and gripped the sniper rifle like a club. He started walking towards her, slowly at first, then twenty feet away he broke into an enraged sprint, wielding the rifle above his head.

"Wh--" Her watcher started as Dann pushed him to the ground and brought the gun down in a wide arc to smash into Tater's head. She was knocked onto her back, skidding across the ice with the force of the blow.  Dann wanted her to plead, to beg, to ask for forgiveness, to make a pitiful repentance for the atrocity she had helped commit.

Instead her face broke into a wide, if lopsided smile.

"My what a big one you have, sir!" She giggled. Dann roared and slammed the butt of the gun down on her chest, forcing her to curl into a fetal position "But it's how he uses it that counts!"

Shaking with primal bloodlust he turned the gun around and pointed the powerful gun in between her eyes.

"Dann! No!" A quiet voice beside him called. He tried to ignore it but a hand tugged at his shoulder so he spun and planted a clumsy right hook on his agitator.

"Gayer?" He stammered, looking down at the figure sprawled on the ice. "Oh god, I'm so sor--"

THUNK

He didn't see the fist until he was looking up at it from the floor, clutching his bleeding lip.

"Leave her alone!" Chrissetti ordered, subtly shaking his balled fist. In that instant, the red mist descended in Dann's vision and he rugby-tackled the Brit to the floor, who struck back with a blind kick to Dann's neck.

"Calm down! For god's sake calm down!" Gayer shrieked, pulling them apart. "We need to be together now more than ever! Remember the killer on the loose?"

"I'm just stopping there becoming another one." Chris said calmly, helping Dann to his feet. They looked into one another's eyes, Dann's filled with pain and anger and hurt and Chrissetti's filled with fear for his friend.

"But she killed him!" Dann said with a cracking voice.

"Then don't sink to her level--"

"You fired on The Dark Tower. You held a gun against the helicopter. Why is it OK to shoot someone from a distance but not to do it up close?" Dann said, his voice steadying. "When is it right to kill?"

"I--"

"We were both prepared to kill her when she was half a mile away. The only difference between us is, I'm still prepared to do it now. With my bare hands if necessary."

"Hehehe" Taters giggled "Just like Z, so many silly ideas."

Muffs' scream cut through the air like a knife.

"I have a feeling we're going to have to test your theory." Chrissetti said grimly as they ran towards the convoy.

Dann and Chrissetti turned the corner of the Lazarev to see a terrified Muffs held in place by a man with a long slender blade. Everyone else had gathered around him armed with some sort of firearm.

"Drop your weapons or I redecorate the side of your lovely automobile." He said, knife hand twitching. Muffs whimpered as a drop of blood trickled down her neck. "Do it!"

There was a moments pause at everyone looked at everyone else before Tom dropped his AK47 to the ice, a second later fourteen more weapons clattered to the floor. Z looked around until he was satisfied there weren't any tricks being pulled.

"You!" He ordered Bytes, seemingly at random, get the nearest radio and set it to the following frequency..." He then rattled off a series of letters and numbers which obviously made sense to Bytes who scuttled off into the Lazarev. Within seconds he brought the radio out and began to tune it.

"Z to Diego. Come in Mr Draw." Z said, still holding the knife.

"We read you, Z, what's your situation?" The familiar sneery voice said.

"I have them. All of them. Bring in backup." He proclaimed smugly.

"Well done Z. You've served your purpose well."

"What do you mean?" Z asked, suddenly without his swagger.

"Goodbye old friend."

In the silence that followed, a tiny noise broke echoed across the ice and the lump in Muffs' arm began to flash an ominous glow. She screamed and struggled at Z yelling 'Let me go!', the knife cutting little slashes across her throat. Suddenly, the group broke into mass panic, everyone talking and shouting at once and scrambling for the discarded guns.

"What's going on?""let her go!""What are you doing!?"

"Twinkle twinkle little star,
How we wonder what you are,
Deep Inside the brat so shy,
Like a diamond in the sky,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
Here to make us all go aaarrrgh!" Tater's voice sung happily across the ice. Chrissetti turned to see the insane scientist miming a huge explosion with her hands.

Suddenly Z shouted above the rest of the shouting and screaming, an impressve feat when both tom and TheEngineer were vying for control

"You have no reason to trust me, but I promise you I won't let Diego take me out." With a flick of his wrist and a twist of his arm, Muffs' arm was held before him, the blinking light now almost a constant stream of noxious red light.

"No!" Trekky yelled, but it was too late, with a sickening plunge of the knife, the blade was an inch deep in the fourteen year old's skin drawing a geyser of blood. A tiny egg shaped red blob popped out a moment later and skidded on the floor, trailing a little wire.

"It's a detonator! If I get it away from the rest of the bomb it shou--"

Everyone turned away as the little egg in Z's outstretched arm exploded with a ear-splitting bang, tearing his arm and upper body to bloody gore. The ruined and fountaining body of Z stood for a moment, one remaining eye flicking back and forth before the whole gruesome marionette collapsed into a pile on the ice.

Diego was glad he finally had good news to report, Bishop's rag tag army of disciples had gotten too far. Further than anyone had before, even the US Military only got as far as the edge of the shadowlands before patrols had disposed of them, something he was always keen to remind him.

It wasn't my fault! He reasoned in his own head while he waited for his Director to open the door. How were we to know they would be so damn lucky!?

Finally the large oak doors opened on frost encrusted hinges and a voice from inside invited him in.

"Do come in, chap it's positively frigid out there!" An upper crust voice announced, it gave Diego shivers, everyone knew what that voice meant; nevertheless he took a breath and stepped into The Project's most prestigious room. Dark drapes hung from the windows, plush red carpet made a welcome change from the harsh broken concrete of the rest of the ruins of Cybele. Mahogany furniture had collected a multitude of bric-a-brac over the years until it was hard to see where the furniture stopped and the trinkets began. The ever-present frost and decay was held at bay by a real log fire burning in the corner, but a battered space-heater in the opposite corner proved that the fire was nothing more than an expressive luxury.

"Come, sit. We have much to discuss. Over brandy perhaps? My last bottle." The voice said again.

"Of course, sir." Diego said, settling into a tall backed mahogany and worn leather chair.

"Please, how many more times? Call me Oscar." a dark-haired man stepped out from behind the other chair holding two glasses of brandy. He had a face that seemed always to be decorated with a wry smile on his lips and in the little twinkle in his dark eyes. Oscar was a man of intelligence, anyone who had conceived and managed the modern purpose of The project had to be thinking three moves ahead of just about every free-thinker in government, the media or in the public eye.

"Oscar. It's done. SnowFox has been destroyed, the Rowbotham Institute itself is being disassembled piece by piece now that the police have 'discovered' a string of financial crimes, and I've just had word that Thomas Bishop's merry band of men have been blown to kingdom come." said Diego, taking a sip from the elaborate glass in his hand.

"I find it rather staggering just how close Kingdom Come seems to be, with the sheer number of people blown there, you would rather think that a couple of them would have stumbled past Cybele hmm?" Oscar said, taking a sip from his own glass.

"Sir?"

"You're an intelligent man, Diego, it's why I made you my second in command, but sometimes your stupidity is cause for concern. Tell me, if dear Doctor Bishop currently lies in a hundred thousand pieces of raw mincemeat then just how is he ordering his disciples around? Disciples I believe you told me had joined him in his chunky fate?" Oscar said with his knowing smile.

"What?! I don't understand! There was enough explosives in that kid to take out a group that size. i don't believe you." Diego raged, clearly this was some sort of trick or test. Oscar shrugged, stood up and walked over to a little electronic box. He turned a dial on it and Tom Bishop's muffled voice spoke out, telling a distraught Dann that there would be some sort of burial for Raist and Saddam but Z could rot on the ice as far as he was concerned.

"No more lackeys, Diego, you know what the stakes are. You have seen the plans and know what Tom intends do do, it can't be allowed to happen." He stood in front of Diego and spoke solemnly "It will be the end of everything we know, not just The Project but the world." 

It should have been raining, everyone should have been dressed in black, there should have been flowers, gravestones, songs and prayers. Instead the bodies of Raist, Agent 0042, and Saddam Al-Hashan, were laid out on the ice like slabs of meat to the world. Next to them were spare jackets with the names of the other deceased burned onto them carefully, courtesy of Byte's omnitool, Token, Bushido, Divito, Roundy and Vauxhall.

It wasn't much but it was the best they could do. Everyone gathered around the line of bodies and representatives of the missing bodies. Narcberry stood up and spoke for Token. Not much, just a recollection of the good humour and the arguments they shared before Saddam's sabotage killed him. Tom spoke for Bushido, Divito and Vauxhall, an even shorter speech about how full of life they'd seemed before they were killed by Z in the battered hulk of the MacKenzie.

Althalus and the now recovered Masterchief stood up to speak for Roundy, both of them baring the scars from the explosion of the Weddell. Both of them talked about how they had become close friends in such a short time that it was more painful to know he was gone than the disfiguring scars on their bodies and faces.

Narcberry stood up again to talk about Agent 0042;

"He was a good man and a damned tough man. He got me through the sabotage on the Johnson with his strength, courage and humour. For him to survive that savage attack and then be killed by another cheap, distraction technique is unforgivable and I swear by everything he stood for to avenge him and to let the world know that he was killed by cowards, protecting a cowardly conspiracy." He started to shake with anger as he glanced across at Taters who was standing alone by the mutilated corpse of Z singing something softly to herself.

Narcberry walked back over to the group with his head bowed. TheEngineer then held his head high and walked in front of the bodies.

"Saddam Al-Hashan was a man of tragedy. We saw him as an enemy because of what he did to us. he killed Token, he would have killed the rest of us, but he didn't do it for selfish reasons. He was a man twisted and distorted by desperation for his sister. We should not blame him for what happened but those responsible for taking a good man and turning him into an ugly caricature of himself, in the end these were the same monsters who came to kill him." He said. "For his sake, and for everyone else captured in Cybele we shall return to free them and Sahah, his sister. I pledge myself to Narcberry's vow."

TheEngineer walked back with murmurs of agreement rumbling through the bereaved group. The seeds of revolution had now been sown.

Finally, Dann stepped forward with tears in his eyes running down to his now quite impressive beard.

"I loved Raist." He said, "It was a love more powerful than simple friendship, it was man-lurve. He was warm and caring in a world of cold and brutal indifference. He was funny in the face of tragedy and now he's gone because of those evil, bastards!. i would give anything, kill anything just to see his bright and lurving eyes again, but nothing will. Nothing will bring back one of the greatest men on the face of the Earth but I join Narcberry and Engy when I declare that The Project will know justice and it will know vengeance."

The seeds of revolution sprouted their first roots.

Twenty minutes later the 'graves' were a rapidly disappearing sight in the rear view mirror of the Lazarev, ten minutes after that they were gone, lost in the wilderness of ice, snow and the sombre crimson glow of Cybele. No map would ever have them marked upon it, nobody would come to lay flowers on them and grieve over their loss. Well, nobody except Taters, who insisted on being left behind with 'squidgy Z'. Strangely enough, nobody protested.

"What are the magnetic readings?..." Dann sighed, it was the first thing he'd said since his speech about Raist. He was sat at the back of the car with Muffs whose arm was stitched up courtesy of Space Cowgirl.

"Stronger than before." Chris said. he knew that Dann was just trying to stop himself from breaking down again over his dead lover but the robotic Dann was slightly creepy. "I'm surprised we haven't seen some sort of aurora in these conditions."

"You mean like the Northern lights?" Muffs asked.

"Yeah, that sort of thing."

"Multi-coloured clouds and stuff?"

"Yeah."

"Like that?" Muffs said, getting up and pointing out of the passenger side window. sure enough, right on the horizon was a thin band of green, standing out against the red stain of Cybele and the blackness of the night sky. Gayer 'wowed' and picked up the hastily re-fitted radio.

"This is the Lazarev. Is anyone else seeing that?" She said.

"You mean the multi-coloured clouds and stuff that we all saw about ten minutes ago?" Someone replied, was it Midnight?

"Yes, we see it, Gayer." Tom said with more patience than Midnight "Try re-adjusting your radio. We were discussing how far away it was and we concluded about fifty miles to the horizon now. If you've noticed carefully, the actual horizon has been getting lower on the skyline. I have a feeling that we're very close to completing our mission."

****

Diego grunted against the acceleration as Tater's jet blasted away from the Cybele city towards Thomas Bishop and his explorers. it was too late to stop them before they reached the Edge. Fortunately he had one ace left up his sleeve.

Almost subconsciously he patted the grey box beside him.

"Wow."
"That is probably the most impressive thing I've ever seen..."
"Bloody hell. Tom was right."
"Also, dongs."

In front of the convoy was a morphing, fluid, and beautiful wall of light and colour, stretching higher than any office building or skyscraper and seemingly stretching into eternity. Blues, greens, reds, purples yellows, oranges all fought for dominance in a vista of a magnetic blizzard. Occasionally there would be a flash of lightning as all the energy arced across pockets of magnetic variance. Shapes seemed to appear and disappear almost at will, as if dark spirits were fighting for control of the cloud.

The four remaining cars were still heading towards the base of the storm, the horizon which was now significantly closer, ridding all doubt that they had made it, against all the odds, against more than 3,000 years of scientific belief, against 'satellite photos' and 'spaceflight', to the indisputable end of the Earth

"We've done it!" Tom yelled with a grin on his face. "Please tell me someone's recording this!"

"Got it all on camera." Raa said with a smile to parallel Tom's. "Should we get a shot directly over Inferus Ora?"

"What?"

"Southern Edge in latin, thought it was an appropriate name." Raa shrugged.

"Ok, stop the cars, I don't want to risk the electronics getting any closer to the magnetic field, it's close enough to walk the rest of the way." Tom said, reaching for the radio "All right guys. We've suffered much to get here today, but finally we've done it thanks to your hard work, determination, grit and persistence. This, the glorious sight in front of us is the end of the world. The edge that Columbus was afraid to sail over according to the flawed legend. As far as we can gather, the aurora is caused by whatever energy generates the universal acceleration effects which push us up at ten metres per second per second."

"Great." Midnight said "So we get the film, what then? We still have to get past an army which is prepared for us now and, in case you hadn't noticed, we have significantly fewer soldiers than when we started."

Tom simply smiled, not that those on the other end of the transmission could see it.

"We're going to go right to the edge and set up a sevice called the HTA, the Hyper-Telecommunication Array to send these images all the way back to 'mainland Earth'. There were two of them, but when trekky took the Rowbotham he also took the main HTA. I can only hope that this has enough power, boosted of course by the Dark energy stream at the edge to send the transmission to a pirate television station back in the Falklands.

"Everyone look heroic, we're about to smash a centuries old conspiracy live on international television."

Chris had half expected some sort of great whooshing noise to be coming from the pulsating cloud ahead, some sort of sonic indication that they were standing on the literal edge of planet Earth. Instead, there was just the gentle sound of the wind being pulled towards the rim. Tom saw him gazing at the edge and walked over to Chris with his typical lopsided smile on his bespectacled face.

"It's incredible isn't it? I know very little about it, the same as everyone else who has studied the possibility of such a phenomenon as long as I have." He put one arm around his shoulders and held up his other to the fabulous vista "But now, thanks to us, the human race can probe it's mysteries."

"Oi!" gayer shouted from behind them "Get your own toyboy, Tom!"

She removed Tom's arm and wrapped her own around Chris.

"Hey!" Chris said, faking hurt feelings.

"Oh shut up, you know you're my bitch." She said with a giggle, Thomas Bishop walked off to go set up the HTA, a bulky crate was being delicately offloaded off the Ross, well, as delicately as possible when it was being manhandled by Muffs, trying to 'help'. With a thump it landed on the ice and Narcberry dug a crowbar into the side and pried the side off.

Inside was a painfully complicated looking device, vaguely cuboid in shape with a spider-web style dish attached to the top connected to a forest of wires and cables looping over one another and darting into various holes in the side of the stainless steel case. The snowFox team plugged in yet more wires and cables into the bulky recording  equipment and a pipe into the Ross' spare fuel supply. With such a complicated setup, Chris imagined a smooth and silky startup process, instead Raa pulled a ridiculously large lever which caused the whole edifice to shake and shudder and produce black smoke from somewhere within. A few clonks and clanks later and Tom gave the thumbs up.

****

Rob Steve settled down into his armchair with a grunt and a sigh, putting the kids to bed was getting more difficult by the day, little Roundoo was screaming his head off again, Sokarul wouldn't shut up with his stories about the dead kangaroo he had found near his school, no doubt inspired by his irritating friend from school Eric Blowdoe. It didn't help that the family dog, a yapping Jack Russel called Wardogg (His sons had such wild imaginations), kept yapping and jumping on the bed.

Why can't he be like Flatoo, the cat? Rob thought grumpily while prying the television remote out of Roundoo's hand.

But now it was his time, just a can of cheap beer and the television to keep him company, perfect. The news was on and the tanned reporters were talking about some brushfire out in Queensland.

"Fine." he said with a sigh, so long as it isn't further south." He muttered. Suddenly the picture started to fuzz and turn to static "Oh come on! You're two months old, you can't break on me!"

When the picture returned gone were the familiar Australian presenters and the SBS news studio had been replaced with a psychedelic wall of colour in front of a snowy field. A man wearing a orange jacket holding a microphone took up the right half of the screen, he was an older guy, the type who you expected to see presenting awards at university, some pomme with his head up his own butt. he pulled the hood down to reveal slightly messy silver hair and a pair of frost-lined glasses.

"Ladies and gentlemen...we are sorry to interrupt your regular broadcast..."

"The world as you know it is nothing more than elaborate lie, a great experiment in thought control which has worked so perfectly that nobody even questions it any more. Look out of your window now and what do you see? A horizon? A point where the curvature of the earth starts to go 'down' from your point of view? have you ever stopped to consider the other possibility? The possibility that your eyes aren't deceiving you? that the earth really is flat?

I'll get to the hows and whys later, but first I want to reveal to you the full majesty of the truth, the power of fact in the face of a publicly accepted fiction. Ladies and gentlemen i present to you, The Edge of the World!"

Tom threw swept his right arm out as the camera zoomed past him to the very close horizon and the wall of colour. Out of camera shot gayer was whispering in Chrissetti's ear that the red light on top of the HTA  had gone out.

"Amazing isn't it?!" Tom declared enthusiastically "We lost too many people to accomplish this but here we are on the border of the totally unknown, hundreds of miles across the 'Antarctic', pursued by agents of the lie--"

"Tom." Dogplatter said, trying to get the man's attention.

"--Across a collapsing ice floe, braving brutal blizzards and--"

"Tom!" But the doctor wouldn't be silenced, he continued with expressive arm movements telling the few people in front of him a tale of daring-do and heroism. "Tom! Nobody's watching!"

"--scorched with terrible burns and- what?" He said, the gears in his brain audibly crashing as his train of storytelling was derailed.

"Our signal's being jammed by something, nobody can see us." Midnight sighed.

"By what?" Tom shouted, suddenly uncharacteristically angry.

"By me." Everyone turned to see who had spoken, everyone recognised the voice, it was the voice of the supposedly dead, the voice of--

"--Diego!" Chrissetti snarled, reaching for his pistol.

"Oh please, you insignificant pest, this really is for your own good - for everyone's good." He said, holding a little grey box about the size of a shoebox with a bizarre antenna protruding from it. "This is a jammer, or a 'wave-collapsing-and-condensing-box-of-silly-fun' as it was termed by it's creator."

"Taters." Everyone said in unison, who else?

"And it just saved the lives of everyone on Earth, Cybele and half a dozen other 'warm oases' around the ice wall."

"You're lying!" Tom snapped furiously "This is all to perpetrate your filthy lie to the rest of the planet. I will stand for it no more! I will cut the cumberer down!" He pulled his own pistol out and shot, Diego barely had time to move and the bullet grazed his shoulder

"Stop it you idiot! Look!" He pointed to a space somewhere in the colourful miasma.

"I'm not twelve, Diego Draw, i won't be fooled with the old 'look behind you' gag."

"You were fooled by that when you were twelve?" TheEngineer laughed, "Anyway, look Tom, he's telling the truth, something's happening up there!"

Indeed there was, about two hundred meters up, a great volcano-like plume had erupted from the colourful nebula at the edge of the world and it seemed to be growing.

"What's happening?" Space Cowgirl asked, sweeping hair out of her eyes to see it better.

"As far as we can tell the magnetic storm is disturbed by high power radio signals. We discovered it about 30 years ago according to the older members of the Project." he said, talking as though he hadn't tried to have them all killed. "It reacted violently with Cybele and the city you saw was all but destroyed."

"so that's why you were trying to stop us?" Bytes said in incredulation.

"Partly. But mainly because we can't let anyone discover the truth about the Earth. there's too much in it for us." He said "And it's so easy to have people killed in a land which doesn't exist on any map."

"Or so you hoped." Chrissetti added with a grin.

"Ordinarily yes. But I have orders from right from the top of the Project, all we ask is the death of Thomas Bishop, his SnowFox researchers and the destruction of any research relating to the Ice Wall and we'll let the rest of you return home. You weren't to know what you had let yourself in for when you signed up for this."

"And what if we refuse?" Trekky asked.

"You die here, your families are shown a capsized antarctic ship and told that you were on it."

"And you go on fooling the world..." Tom sighed.

"Precisely."

There was a silence among the group as the weight of Diego's words fell like lead over them. Nobody looked into anyone else's eyes in fear of what they might see there.The seconds ticked by like hours until finally Trekky stepped forward.

"Would you release the prisoners in Cybele?" He asked.

"I suppose we could stretch the deal for anyone not directly involved in the research."

"Andrew!" Muffs squealed "You can't seriously be considering this!"

He slowly drew a pistol from inside his coat, and drew a gasp from everyone else.

"I don't like this but what choice do we have? If we don't do this then we all die. Tom must have known there was a risk of death involved in this but the rest of us have been needlessly dragged into it."

Slowly he raised the gun to Tom bishop who looked as shocked as anyone else on the team.

"I'm sorry Tom." Trekky said, his voice quivering "I'm doing this for everyone, for Muff--"

"Oh no you don't!" Muffs shouted, tears in her eyes, "Don't make this about me! I'm not the reason you think it's easier to kill Tom!"

"Yes it is!" Trekky hissed, his gun still pointed squarely at Tom's chest "It's always about you! Everything i've done, I've done to keep you safe!"

"Maybe it's time to stop trying to be safe? Do what's right for a change!"

"I am doing what's right..." He whispered as he pulled the trigger.

BLAM

The gunshot should have echoed dramatically, time should have slowed as the body dropped to the floor, the world should have respected the spray of claret. The world remained flat and uncaring, even as the scream echoed chillingly.

"AAAAAANNNNDDDRRREEEEEWWWWWWWW!" Shrieked Muffs, rushing over to her brother's collapsed form with horror in her eyes. She dropped to his side and cradled his head in her hands as Space Cowgirl rushed over "no no no no no no, come on, big brother! You said you'd look after me, you promised! You can't break your promise now! please! please, please!"

Trekky could do nothing but cough up a mouthful of blood and bile. The gunshot had gone straight into the middle of his back and left an ugly, perfect rose of gore in his front. Space Cowgirl tried to get Muffs to move while she started padding the deep wound with material, the young teen turned to face her brother's murderer, Bytes was standing less than twenty feet away with one of the pistols at his feet, the smoke showed it had recently been fired.

"M-Muffs, I'm sorry, I-I couldn't let him become a murderer, not for you, not for anyone. I'm so sorry, I aimed for his--"

BLAM

"Shut--"

BLAM

"--up!" Muffs yelled, clutching Trekky's dropped gun with feral rage. The only reason twenty rounds weren't pumped into Bytes' lifeless form was a lack of bullets in the gun. "Oh God... oh god what have I done?!" 

Muffs dropped the spent gun to the ground, her hands shaking. She looked around to see the SnowFox explorers looking shocked and Diego with a bemused grin on his face.

"I- I'm sorry, I didn't mean to I... "

"Why did we bother trying to kill you?" Diego said snidely "looks like you're doing a good job of it yourselves."

Everyone armed pulled their guns out in startling synchronicity  and trained them on the blonde haired Project Agent.

"Why shouldn't we just kill you?" TheEngineer growled "We survived to get here, we'll take all our evidence and make it back and expose you."

"Because if Oscar doesn't hear from me every hour then he'll kill all fifty-two of the Cybele prisoners and send a full armoured division to kill you. You've been ripped apart by men on snowmobiles and armed with knives, how do you think you'll hold up against an armoured transport?"

The situation seemed hopeless, utterly hopeless, one way or another there would be death. Narcberry seemed to be developing an idea though, a characteristic smile was growing on his face, he adjusted the aim slightly and aimed for the gray box in Diego's hands.

BLAM

The box exploded in a rain of components and shrapnel, cutting Diego's face and causing his to flinch long enough to reactive the HTA.

"No!" Diego screamed, his eyes bulging in panic, what have you done?!"

Suddenly a flash of lighting exploded into the ground just metres away from their position, the cyclone of gas had become a whirling storm growing and arcing lightning through the nebula and out into the Antarctic air. Diego ran for his jet when a fork of white-red lighting smashed into it, creating a fireball hot enough to melt a huge crater in the ice. From the middle of the hole there was a sudden discharge of energy and the nebulous gasses around the edge of the Earth burst forth from the hole at the bottom, becoming a reddish swirling column hundreds of metres high.

"RUN!" Tom yelled over the crescendo of energies and everyone bolted for the cars.

"WAIT!" Space Cowgirl Shouted "Trekky's not dead!"

Like a truck overturning on a highway, the traffic of escaping expeditioners stopped in their tracks.

"Come on, I'll help you move him." Chrissetti said, rushing over.

"No! he's not dead but he's in no condition to be dragged over an exploding ice field." She said as another plume of crackling gas burst out from another weak spot

"Andrew's...alive...?" Muffs whispered.

"Barely, he's lost a lot of blood and I can't tell if anything important has been hit. The only reason he is alive is because the cold has frozen the wound together, if we go jangling him around the seal could break and start bleeding again, especially once we get him back to one of the cars." Lightning struck the HTA but by now the chain reaction was too far developed.

"So what do we do?" Gayer asked.

"I don't know! Damnit if we move him he might die in minutes but if we leave him here he will definitely die. I'm just an intern, I can't deal with this!" Space Cowgirl said in despair. Another lightning bolt was close enough to make their hairs stand on end. There was a new sound in the background though, a sort of scraping, shuffling sound.

"What about if we made him a stretcher?" Chris asked.

"that would be great but we don't have time!"

"What about this?" they all turned to see Muffs dragging a long, flat piece of metal from the exploded jet. Space Cowgirl lifted her head out of her hands and looked at the young teenager and smiled.

"Perfect."

Carefully Space Cowgirl and Gayer carefully moved Trekky onto the makeshift stretcher and Chrissetti helped them rush him onto the nearest truck, it didn't matter which one, in seconds they were spraying ice as Chrissetti stood on the accelerator.

"Wait! Wait! For God's sake wait!" Someone called, gayer looked up to see Diego running after the car.

"Slow down, Chris." Gayer said "Slow, but not slow enough for him to get on."

Diego caught up with them and was out of breath by the time he pulled level.

"Let me in! I'm not going to die out here!" He shouted, all smugness and pride gone from his voice.

"Call off The Project!" She ordered, shouting out of the window "Free passage back for all of us, including the prisoners."

"I can't!" He yelled, desperation in his voice.

"Come on, Chris, pedal to the metal..."

"NO! I mean, I can't get you the prisoners, I can tell them to let you go. Oscar controls the city but I have sway over the army!"

"Ok then, let him on, Chris."

The car slowed and Diego scrambled on just as a bolt of crimson lightning struck just metres from his last position. He collapsed against the door puffing and panting and red in the face. gayer loomed over him with the radio in her hands.

"Make the call. Now." She ordered, Diego looked for a moment like he was about to argue then thought better of it. Grudgingly he adjusted the radio and signalled through to The Project.

"This is D Draw, over, do you copy?"

"We copy, sir, over." A gruff voice replied.

"We're letting Bishop's men go. Stand down all units between here and the site of SnowFox. Over." He sighed.

"Sir!? Our orders have alway been to--"

"I know what your  old fucking orders were, I'm telling you what your new orders are!"

"Yes sir. Oscar won't like this, sir."

"Let me deal with Oscar. Over and out." He said, handing the box back to Gayer. She smiled and reset the box to the inter-car frequency and told them all that 'the pussy gave in, we've got a free run all the way home!'.

Outside the unnatural storm raged on, turning the End of the Earth into a swirling maelstrom.

****

"Igloos make such nice, cosy houses." A girl said, sitting in a half- burrowed pit of ice and snow, the winds still able to whip past her head. "Like a little sugary gingerbread house." She took a bite out of the wall of the pit "Not fresh gingerbread though...yuk."

Pope Taters with the broken mechanical arms and the torn flowery dress under a rather dull survival coat heard the storm before she saw it, a rumbling roar, deeper than a hurricane and more menacing than one too.

"Ooooh, somebody's being playing naughty!" She said in her sing-song voice "All the kings horses and all the king's men won't be able to put Earthy back together again this time! Oopsie!"

She tried to stand up and see if she could see the oncoming storm but she stumbled and fell, her legs were totally numb. "Nasty rotten legs!" She cursed "I shall have to be Doctor Pope Taters with the mechanical arms and legs and flowery miniskirt when I get back."

Besides the thundering of the edgestorm there was another familiar sound, the sound of tyres on ice, the sound of engines, the sound of the SnowFox trucks.

****

"What's that?" Dann asked over the intercomm, he was driving Tom Bishop's car. "Oh my god is that..."

"It's Taters." Chris confirmed. Diego looked up from the sulk he was in at the back of the car "Don't worry, we'll pick her up. She can be seen to be a doctor when she gets back then locked up in a nice padded cell."

Chris pulled up along Taters' pit and rolled down the window.

"Come on, get in."

****

One Month Later

The waters gently lapped against the smooth grey brown pebbles of the beach, creating a brilliant clattering sound with every wave as it tried to drag the rocks back to the ocean. Above them hardy seabirds circled and dived occasionally towards the surface of the sea or at the old jetty bravely stretching out into the unforgiving waves. It was an ancient wooden structure from a bygone age, an age where Antarctica was still the last frontier on Earth. Who would have thought that was still the case?

A small red ship spotted with patches of ice waited at the end of the jetty, on it's bow there was a comforting sight to the men and women walking down the jetty towards it, a fox wrapped around a UN-style map of the earth.

"We're finally here." Chris said to Gayer, who squeezed his hand in reply "Hey, are you ok?"

"Yeah." She said slowly "I just wonder how things are gonna be different now? Knowing what we know? Seeing what we've seen?"

Chris was silent while he considered it. More than two months ago he and a group of complete strangers had set out on a fun joke of an expedition, now a family of friends was heading back to a lie of a world, reinforced by just about everybody. Knowing that the lie had so many people under lock and key in a prison that appeared on no map guarded by people who didn't exist.

"We'll come back." He said firmly and turned around to look at the line of SnowFoxers "Maybe not all of us but I know we'll come back."

"I know..."






















All characters and portrayed in this book are entirely fictional, any resemblance to real persons living or dead is purely coincidental

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