The wheel turned. A seal hissed. The door moved inwards. Soft yellow light spilled through the crack.

‘No locks on Utgard.’ Certainly not here. A glacier, a mountain and an abandoned mine would be enough to deter most visitors. Not to mention the fact they’d killed the last man who found it.

Greta must have had the same thought. She got out her pistol and loaded a flare cartridge. In any normal world, that would have been my cue to leave: back to the Sno-Cat, back to Zodiac, all the way back to Cambridge and Luke.

But this was a long way from normal, and I was one degree off hypothermia. If I didn’t keep moving, I’d freeze solid right there.

I pushed open the door and clambered through.

Forty-eight

I don’t know if I was surprised; I had no expectations. I mean, what would be normal to find deep in an abandoned mine in the high Arctic? But even in the range of things you wouldn’t expect to find, this was pretty far off the scale. It looked like a hospital, or a high-tech factory. Spotless white walls and floor; soft fluorescent work lights overhead. A large cylindrical tank stood in the centre of the room, filled with bluish liquid that bubbled and steamed. Half a dozen pipes fed it from the ceiling, and I could see a valve in the bottom that must drain through the pipe into the mine. A computer terminal beside it flashed its operating lights, controlling something.

I turned back to Greta, who was covering me with the flare pistol through the round door. ‘It’s—’

He must have been waiting for me. Somewhere in the shadows, knowing I’d come. I never saw him. Just a rustle behind me, then a blow to my back like being hit by a train. I fell hard. Rolled over, but before I could get up he’d pounced on top of me. He put his hands either side of my head and squeezed. God, he was strong. I thought my skull would pop. Through the pain and the door, I could see Greta screaming something. I screamed back, but with his fat hands muffling my ears I couldn’t hear a thing. He pulled my head towards him as if to caress it, then slammed it back against the tiled floor. A dark wave rolled through my skull and washed over my eyes. Greta dimmed. She still had the flare pistol, but with the target right on top of me she didn’t dare use it.

She tried to get through the door. An awkward manoeuvre — you had to duck through. The man anticipated it. He leapt off me — very fast, for a man his size — and dived towards the door. Now Greta had a clear shot. She raised the pistol, but — too late. The man pushed her back, got hold of the door and slammed it in her face. The vibrations shuddered through the floor. He spun the wheel, then dropped an iron bolt to lock it.

He turned back to me. Behind him, the wheel on the door rattled and jerked, fractional movements as Greta tried to make it turn. But the bar held it.

The man came up and the door disappeared from view. Standing over me, he looked vast, a monstrous presence all in black.

He crouched down and his face came into the light. Flat cheeks, a high forehead and deep brown eyes that reminded me, strangely, of Luke’s. Surprisingly gentle, for what he’d done to me. I tried to fight him off, but I didn’t have the strength to even lift my arm.

A memory came back to me. Lying on the ice, head splitting. A silhouette, arm raised to smash my head in. Waiting for the blow.

‘Who are you?’ I whispered.

He lifted me, threw me over his shoulder and carried me away. I watched my reflection in the floor tiles. Past the steaming tank, bubbling quietly, through doors and rooms like a series of dreams. A world turned upside down, filled with strange and unspeakable things. One room like an operating theatre, steel cabinets and a steel table, and steel knives laid out on a tray. Another full of machines, dozens of DNA sequencers, like some sort of showroom, and for a mad second I thought I was back in Cambridge. A room piled floor to ceiling with tins of food.

Another door, and the picture changed again. A dimly lit room, filled with large specimen jars that skewed the light like distorting mirrors. Behind the reflections, I glimpsed monstrous things floating in blood-red fluid: fleshy shapes; ghastly deformities like limbs and heads; nightmares lurking behind the glass. I closed my eyes.

The last room was a stairwell with a flight of iron stairs. He carried me up — he never seemed to get tired — and through a final door.

This was the living space. It looked like some sort of trendy industrial conversion: concrete walls, a television mounted on one and a trio of David Hockney swimming pools opposite. A glass table covered in papers; plastic chairs, and an angular lamp that cast a soft yellow glow. A cup of tea sitting on the table was the only human touch.

A man and a woman stood by the table, like hosts whose guests are late for the party. He wore a neat steel-grey beard over a lined, weather-beaten face; she had blondish hair tied back in a ponytail. Both wore plaid shirts and thick corduroy trousers. They looked like a sturdy, retired couple — except that she wasn’t any older than me. Five months younger, to be precise.

The man came forward as if to shake my hand. The woman stayed back, not quite meeting my eye, as if to say it wasn’t her idea to invite me. The room spun as I was put down — quite gently — on to one of the chairs. I was upright, but it all seemed upside down again.

‘You’re supposed to be dead,’ I said.

Forty-nine

There were a million questions I needed to ask. I began with the obvious.

‘What are you doing here?’

Louise stood next to the lamp. It hurt to look at her.

‘I thought you died,’ I added.

‘You’ve been wrong about a great many things.’ Pharaoh spoke for her. His voice sounded so familiar. An authoritative baritone, precise and pedantic, belying the speed of the thoughts beneath. ‘There’s no law that requires a person to prove he is alive.’

He turned to the man who’d brought me. ‘Did he come alone?’

‘There was a woman. I shut her in the mine tunnel.’

It was the first time I’d heard him speak. A soft voice, curiously flat, like someone who wasn’t used to public speaking.

Pharaoh’s face twitched. I’d seen it so often before, when you didn’t give him the results he demanded. The anger, barely contained; the tone so sharp it made your confidence bleed.

‘Then you’d better go find her.’

He might frighten grad students; maybe even fellow scientists, in thrall to his reputation. But the man behind me wasn’t intimidated. I heard his weight shift menacingly. Louise took a half-step forward, as if to stop a fight. She looked frightened — as well she might. God knows, the man was strong enough.

But Pharaoh stared him down, bulletproof confidence, as you would when breaking in a puppy. ‘Now.’

‘Let her go,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t know anything.’

They ignored me. The moment the door closed, Louise relaxed, though it didn’t do anything for me. I thought about Greta, and prayed to the God who doesn’t exist that she’d get out before they caught her. Back to Zodiac, back for help. Though locked in that mountain, it was hard to believe in a rescue. Hard to believe anything, with Pharaoh and Louise standing there like ghosts.

They gave me dry clothes and a hot cup of tea. Then, like a grotesque replay of those nights in Cambridge when Pharaoh had us over for dinner (and what did they do when I was out of the room?), we sat at the table and talked.

‘You asked what we’re doing here,’ said Pharaoh. ‘You’ve had a look around. Surely you can hazard a guess.’

I tried not to think of the specimen jars. ‘Making bugs that eat oil pipes?’