"People forget I used to be a field agent," the Armourer said easily. "And those who do know, prefer to forget the kind of things field agents had to do, in that coldest of wars. Hard men, for hard times. We were men, in those days, making hard necessary decisions, to do hard necessary things, to keep the world safe. I haven't been that man for some time, but I still remember how to get things done."

"What happened to the original Rafe?" I asked the man in the chair.

He spat out some more blood. "Removed and replaced, long ago."

"How long ago?"

He smiled. "Before you came back. You never met the real Rafe."

"Is he dead?"

"Of course," said the Immortal, smiling easily. "We detest loose ends. Never leave anything behind that might come back to haunt you."

He shook his head sharply, back and forth, back and forth, and then the Armourer and I fell back a step as flesh rippled all across Rafe's face. The cheekbones rose and fell, the chin lengthened and the nose narrowed, and just like that, a whole new face stared back at us. Completely different features, with an unbroken nose and an unsmashed mouth, fierce green eyes that shone with a cold intelligence. A whole new person was sitting in the diagnostic chair, staring at us with unbridled arrogance.

It was the face of a teenager, with ancient eyes.

"All of us can do this," said the young man who used to be Rafe. Eerily, he was still using Rafe's familiar voice. "All of us Immortals. See, Armourer: no broken nose, no blood. You don't scare me, because you can't hurt me."

"Don't put money on it," said the Armourer. "I've spent twenty years in this place, learning how to damage people in new and inventive ways. About time I got my hands dirty again."

Probably only someone who knew the Armourer as well as I did would have been disturbed as I was. Uncle Jack had played up to the mercenary, Dom Langford, to put him in the right frame of mind. But the Armourer wasn't playing a role anymore. He was deadly serious. And I… didn't know what to think. The thing in the chair was seriously freaking me out. It was one thing for the display screens to imply he wasn't human, and quite another to see it demonstrated right in front of you.

"Talk," I said. "Tell us everything you know."

"Or?" said Rafe.

"Or I'll take you back down to the Old Library," I said. "Lock you in, and leave you alone with whatever it is that doesn't like you."

The Armourer looked at me. "William was right? There really is Something living down there?"

"Oh yeah," I said. "Big time. We're going to have to do something about that, when we've got a spare minute. Though when I say we, I mean someone a damned sight braver than I am."

The teenager squirmed unhappily in the chair, the tubes clattering quietly around him. He was breathing hard, and he didn't look nearly as certain as he had. The Armourer glanced at the display screens.

"He's not faking it. If I'm reading the screens right, he's seriously traumatised… What the hell did you see down there, Eddie?"

"Ask me later," I said. I leaned in close, to glare right into Rafe's face. "What's your name? Your real name?"

He smirked. "Call me Legion, for we are many."

"You want another slap?" said the Armourer. "This is taking too long, Eddie." He held up a hypodermic needle big enough to frighten a horse, and shot a thin stream of clear fluid out the tip. "I have truth right here, in liquid form. I don't care what the screens say, he's close enough to human for this to work. Slide the needle past his eyeball and into the forebrain, and he'll tell us things he doesn't even know he knows. Of course, a certain amount of brain damage is inevitable. So, Rafe, tell us what we need to know. And the first time you don't answer, or the screens tell me you're lying, in goes the needle. I don't care how many doses I have to deliver. You can't have too much truth, can you?"

"All right, all right!" Rafe took a moment to compose himself, and then fixed me with his cold arrogant gaze. "It doesn't matter what I tell you. It won't help. We're always ten steps ahead of you. I've been plundering the Old Library of useful items ever since you rediscovered it. I was put in here, years ago, to work as an assistant in the Armoury. To get a good look at new weapons before they were put into the field, so we'd be ready for them. Pure luck put me in charge of the Library-all of the Droods' secret knowledge, under my control! And then, the Old Library, with all its forgotten secrets and treasures…"

"How long did you work for me?" said? the Armourer. "Did I ever know the real Rafe?"

"Oh, I think I'll let you work that out for yourself. The Old Library… I've been systematically removing anything that even mentioned the Immortals, their history and practices, along with anything else we didn't want you to know about. When I'd finished with that, I started removing any books we didn't have: unique editions, original manuscripts and folios, that sort of thing. It wasn't difficult to keep William from noticing; he's always been easily distractible. Any time he did spot a missing volume, I just blamed Zero Tolerance fanatics. I did slip a few in Truman's direction, for Manifest Destiny, so I could point the finger if necessary, but never anything important. We were quite happy for him to keep you busy, but we never trusted him. He could have been dangerous, if only his viewpoint hadn't been so terribly limited. I also removed certain Books of Power, that were weapons in their own right. You can never have too many weapons, and besides, you wouldn't have appreciated them."

"Having established that you're a thief as well as a traitor," I said, "let's get to the important stuff. Have the Immortals joined forces with Doctor Delirium and Tiger Tim, to exploit the Apocalypse Door?"

Rafe hesitated. The Armourer leaned in, and showed him the horse needle.

"Of course we're working together! We're big, big enough to take in anybody, to get what we want. We would have taken the Door for ourselves, in Los Angeles, if you hadn't interfered. But we always look forward, never back. So we made a deal, with Doctor Delirium and the rogue Drood, offering them our resources in return for access to the Door."

"What do you want with the Apocalypse Door?" I said. "Are you really going to risk the Doctor opening it?"

"It's more complicated than that," said Rafe. "You have to understand; there were only ever twenty-three original Immortals. The man who first made contact with the Heart, and his immediate family and friends. Though there have of course been many long-lived offspring, down the years. Immortals can't breed with each other, so children can only ever be half-breeds. You'd recognise the names of some of them. Important people, movers and shakers. We can be anybody we want to be. We've been a lot of famous people, down the centuries. Kings and kingmakers, philosophers and generals, heroes and villains, great artists and celebrities. Sometimes for power and glory, sometimes to protect ourselves, but mostly just for the fun of it. We do so hate to be bored. The Immortals are everywhere, ensuring that the world goes the way we want it to go. We're on both sides of every argument, every conflict, every war. Sometimes for profit, mostly just to watch you dance to our tune.

"Of the twenty-three original Immortals, only nine remain. We can die. We were made Immortal, not invulnerable. But we are a large family, larger by far than you Droods. Thousands of offspring to serve the Elders, who serve the Leader, the man originally touched by the Heart. Oh yes; he's still with us. And even more serve us throughout the world, knowingly and unknowingly. We own the world. We own you. We're your worst nightmare; an organised extended family of Anti-Droods. The real secret rulers of Humanity. You Droods only thought you ran the world. We just let you handle all the dull, boring bits. You worked for us, and never knew it."