One of her constables reported back. ‘We couldn’t stop them, Sarge, they just got away from us.’

Pearce sighed and reached out to the man, but he was on his knees now, reaching out to the ashen ground.

‘Welcome back,’ he said again.

And his fingers connected with the ground as Sergeant Pearce reached out to his arm.

She felt a shock, small, electrical, but powerful, and found herself a good couple of feet away, flat on her back, shaking her head to clear it.

The man was standing now, back to the crater of ash.

Pearce realised that the other people, now seven in total had done the same. It was like they were guarding the site.

The young constable who had spoken to her over the radio was at her side. ‘You OK, Sarge?’ he said, helping her up.

She pushed him away. ‘I’m fine, Steve. What the hell is this?’ PC Steve Douglas shrugged. Sergeant Pearce tried her radio but all she got was static crackle.

PC Douglas tried his. Same result. ‘OK, this is dead weird,’ he said.

Sergeant Pearce walked away and back under the line,

telling Douglas to stay put and keep an eye on them. ‘But don’t go near them.’

She hurried over to a growing group of fire and police officers, which now included her superintendent. ‘Sir, we have a problem,’ she reported, and explained that seven people were guarding the crater.

Superintendent Shakiri frowned and started to move forward, towards the perimeter. ‘Get the public further back, Sergeant. Move the line another six metres.’

She nodded, but still her radio wasn’t working. Shakiri tried his. Nothing.

‘It was working ten minutes ago,’ he muttered.

‘So was mine,’ Pearce said. ‘It must be something electrical.’

‘Why’d you say that?’

She told him about being touched by the man and the shock she’d had.

‘Get yourself seen to by one of the paramedics, Sergeant.’

‘I’m fine, sir…’ she started, but he waved her away.

‘Delayed reaction, Sergeant. You’d tell anyone else to do the same. And if they say you’re fine, I’ll see you in five minutes.’ He smiled at her. ‘Please?’

Sergeant Pearce shrugged and walked towards one of the ambulances, while she listened to Shakiri yelling orders that the line was to be manually eased back.

As she reached the waiting paramedic, something…

something instinctive made her look back. It was like a slow-motion moment in a movie, so much happened at once, she couldn’t tell whether she saw it all or her brain

pieced it together later.

A flash of purple light, like a bolt of electricity shot through the crowd of onlookers, flooring each and every one of them.

PC Steve Douglas vanished, although, for a split second, Pearce was convinced she saw him throw his arms up to protect himself from the purple flash, and she could see him – no, his skeleton – just for a second, then he was gone.

The seven ‘guards’, no longer hidden by the crowds, had stretched out their arms towards one another, and the purple electricity was connecting them all, like a rope.

Superintendent Shakiri threw himself down, dragging a couple of other officers with him in a rugby tackle, probably saving their lives.

There was a flash in the sky, like a sunburst, just for a second, and Pearce swore the whole sky flashed purple.

And then it was over. Sort of.

People were getting up and running further away. No one wanted to be near the electrical whatever-it-was. This was good in the sense that the public were going, but it was disorganised, and that was dangerous. If just one person fell… She remembered the story of a disaster in an East London tube tunnel during the war when it was being used as a shelter to hide from air raids. As the panicking public had scampered down the steps, one woman fell, bringing the whole crowd to the ground, killing almost two hundred people in the crush.

The panic going on right now, whilst not as confined, could be just as deadly. She saw Shakiri haul himself up,

shouting to the officers around him to try and help the public. He threw a glance at where Steve Douglas had been standing – so he’d clearly witnessed it, too – and then back at her.

Waving the paramedic away, she ran over to join him at the scene. ‘What the hell was that?’ she breathed.

He pointed at the seven ‘guards’ around the crater. ‘I imagine they wanted us all to go away.’ He looked at the fleeing crowds. ‘Any casualties?’

Pearce just looked at where her young PC had been.

‘Would we know?’ she said. ‘There’s nothing left of Steve Douglas.’

Shakiri caught her eye. ‘And that’s why we need to know if there are others. If we hold them accountable for one death, we need to hold them accountable for any others.’

Both their radios crackled into life.

‘Good morning everybody everywhere around the world.’ It was a female voice, speaking clear, precise English. ‘My name is Madam Delphi and I am the only voice you need ever listen to. I’m speaking to you all on every wavelength, every radio, TV, PC and PDA the world over. You have now seen what I can do and will continue to do. This planet is mine. You can all go back to your dreary little lives and wait for me to tell you what to do next. I now return you to your scheduled programming.

Oh, sorry, except for those countries currently broadcasting any version of Big Brother. Sorry, all the contestants and presenters of that show, wherever they are, are dead. You can thank me later.’

The two police officers looked back at the seven people guarding the crater, that purple electricity still binding them together.

‘Tell you one thing, sir,’ Alison Pearce said, as she looked upwards to where it had all begun.

‘What’s that, Sergeant?’

‘That scary face in the sky has gone.’

Miss Oladini was seriously thinking of handing in her notice. This was not a good enough job to be worth all this aggro.

Last night she’d been chased, had electricity chucked at her, been nearly blown up in a car and, worst of all, someone had nicked her bike. She hoped it was that redheaded woman who had been with her in the car, because that would mean she too had escaped the blast.

Miss Oladini wasn’t entirely sure how she’d done it herself, but knew it had involved a lot of rolling along the ground, ignoring the heat and running into a bush and holding her breath for what seemed like an hour but could only have been a minute or two before her pursuers assumed both women were dead.

She had no idea what was going on at Copernicus, but her body had given in to the shock and she’d fallen unconscious in the grounds of the old mansion house, eventually waking up again, cold, damp and very hungry.

And minus a bicycle.

She waited a while to see if anyone was watching her, then made her way back inside the house for warmth.

After a couple of minutes, she found a couple of abandoned coats. She knew she was in shock. Her body

needed protection and warming up.

She put on the coats, one on top of the other, then headed for a tiny closet. She could hide there, and its cramped conditions would help retain the heat she needed.She found a half-drunk bottle of water on a table top and took that with her, too.

After a couple of hours, she felt strong enough to venture out of her closet and see if the people were still there, see if Professor Melville was still with them.

She’d been creeping quietly down a corridor when she jumped, because a load of radios and TVs and a couple of desktops burst into life, and she listened to Madam Delphi’s portent of doom, feeling cold again.

Now she had recovered enough from last night’s ordeal, now it was daytime, it was time to get away from Copernicus. Forget Professor Melville and those people, this was too much for her to deal with, and she suspected that radio broadcast was connected. The police, maybe the army, they needed to know that something was going on here. She began to creep slowly towards the big staircase when a hand came out of nowhere and wrapped around her mouth, cutting off any noise she could make.