“All right. But you’ve got to admit, having you this close to the Confederation is a hell of a coincidence given there’s only one of you per galactic supercluster.”

“That is not a coincidence, Joshua. I am aware of everything, because I am connected to everything. When you search for me, and have sufficient faith that you will find me, then you will succeed.”

“Okay. Well, if I haven’t said it before: thank you. I’ll do my best to see your faith isn’t misplaced. Now, what was that last factor?”

The singularity showed him, delivering his awareness to the orbital tower down which he rode down to Earth, with B7, Quinn Dexter, and . . .

Joshua’s eyes flicked open. His crew broke off their conversations, looking at him in anticipation.

“Louise,” he said. And vanished.

Thick smoke and blinding yellow flame exploded out of the escape pod rocket motors. The noise was a sheer wall of energy that sent Fletcher and Powel flailing backwards. Light punched down into Fletcher’s eyes as he used the remnants of his energistic power to ward off the blast.

The escape pod wobbled upwards, gathering speed. Flame splayed out from its base, scouring the surface of the ectoplasm pool. Embryonic shapes melted away under the incendiary heat. A cloud of clammy fumes billowed out, hurtling down the nave and both transepts. Brittle, ancient stained-glass windows shattered under the tremendous pressure. Horizontal jets of smoke and ectoplasm smog roared out over the deserted plaza.

The escape pod smashed into the top of the cathedral dome and crashed through into the pre-dawn morning. Its trajectory was given a savage kick by the impact, sending it racing away in a low curve underneath the red cloud, out towards Holborn.

Down on the floor of the cathedral, it was impossible to see anything. The air was coagulated with icy particles and vile acidic smoke. Fletcher sloshed about in the raging ectoplasm pool, trying to find anything that would give him his bearings. His mind could sense the possessed in the nave: their fear-ordered discipline was starting to crumble. Apart from them, nothing was clear. Chunks of debris were whistling down from above, splattering down into the turbid fluid where they immediately cracked open from the cold.

“Anybody left standing?” Powel shouted somewhere in the murk.

A vermilion glimmer began to pervade the churning mist as the light from the red cloud shone in through the gaping windows. Folds of darkness slipped across Fletcher’s vision. He stood still, not daring to move.

Powel bumped into him. Both of them jumped.

“I’ve got to get up to the gallery,” Powel said. “This is our chance, he’ll be as blind as us.”

“I think the door is this way,” Fletcher told him. Even using his energistic power to bolster his legs, they moved reluctantly. He could feel nothing below his knees.

The mist began to scintillate with white light. It abruptly turned heavy, sighing as it sank to the ground. The rumpled upper surface descended around Fletcher, leaving him totally exposed. A wide beam of red light shone down through the hole in the dome, illuminating the whole ectoplasm pool. On the other side, Dariat and Tolton were caught in the act of trying to reach the north transept.

“Going somewhere?” Quinn asked. “There’s nowhere to run. The warriors of the Light Bringer are here.” With a theatrical motion, he gestured at the pool, conjuring its inhabitants up.

A vast upwelling of ectoplasm sent waves of the fluid pouring lazily down the nave and transepts. The crown of an Orgathé slipped smoothly upwards, emerging into the crimson light.

Quinn laughed uproariously as the monster rose into the universe. Possessed fled screaming through the cathedral doors. Powel and Fletcher were drowning in undead sludge that sent out eager pseudopods to smother their heads. At his feet Louise and Greta lay broken and defeated, shedding tears for the torment to come. It was Night as he’d always dreamed it would be.

Something happened far above him. His head jerked up. “Fuck!”

Andy Behoo had spent the whole time pressed against his window, watching the ugly red cloud creeping across London. Hot air helped to magnify the incursion with awful clarity. Above the arcology’s crystal dome, the stars shone down with cold beauty through a storm-free sky. It would have been a lovely dawn.

Now he knew he wouldn’t even see that. His neural nanonics had crashed. The front edge of the cloud was less than a quarter of a mile away. Underneath it, the eerily pervasive red light helped to illuminate the vacant streets.

He’d clung to this window when she left, staring after her mutely; so he knew which street she’d taken. If she came back, he would be able to see her. That alone would give him the courage to leave the tenement. He would go out and fetch her home. Louise would make the end liveable.

The crimson light inside the cloud flickered and died. It was so sudden Andy thought there was something wrong with his eyes. All that remained of the frightened city were outlines so faint he could be imagining them. He scoured them for signs that the SD weapons had begun their slaughter.

Nothing moved in the dead silence. He looked up.

There were no stars anymore.

The wormhole interstice opened a million kilometres above the sun’s south pole. Its edges immediately expanded. Within three seconds it was over one and a half billion kilometres in diameter, greater than Jupiter’s orbit. Fifteen seconds later it reached the size Joshua had designated: twelve billion kilometres across, just wider than the entire solar system. It moved forwards, enveloping star, planets, asteroids, and comets alike.

The interstice contracted to nothing.

All that remained was a single human figure in a black robe, tumbling wildly through space.

In Tracy’s lounge, Arnie got up and thumped the top of the television. The picture didn’t return.

“What’s happening now?” Jay asked.

“Corpus doesn’t know,” Tracy said. Her hands trembled at the revelation.

Over seventeen million possessing souls in various arcologies were exorcised from their captive bodies as Earth moved into the wormhole. Joshua arranged its internal quantum structure in a fashion similar to the conditions Dariat and Rubra had used to expel the possessors from Valisk. There was one difference: they didn’t become ghosts, this time they were torn cursing in anguish straight back into the beyond. From Earth, orbiting thirty thousand light-years from the centre of the galaxy, the glorious blaze of the core stars had never been visible. There was too much dark mass spread throughout the spiral arms, interstellar gas clouds and dust storms absorbing the light spun off from the densely packed supergiants. Astronomers had to turn their telescopes outwards, studying other starpools to see what such a spectacle might be like.

You had to be a lot closer in towards the centre to see the core’s corona starting to expand over the shielding plane of dark matter. Even then, it would only be an exceptionally bright crescent nebula stretched across the night sky. To witness its full glory, a planet needed to be perched right at the root of the spiral arms where the core appeared as an iridescent cloak of silver-white light across half of space, outshining the local sun. Regrettably, such a place was lethal; a fierce outpouring of intense radiation from the tightly clustered stars would immediately sterilise any unprotected biological life.

No, to gain a full appreciation of the galaxy’s native beauty, it had to be observed from outside. Above the spiral arms, and away from the radiation.

Joshua chose a location 20,000 light-years out from the core and 10,000 to the north of the ecliptic. The solar system emerged there to be greeted with the sight of a majestic bejewelled cyclone shining fiercely against a blackness devoid of any constellations.