“What books?” she asked.

“The book of Aniquilus, and the book of Xynutians,” he replied tentatively under the interrogation.

Her ears prickled as the sentence reached them. Aniquilus and Xynutians. His accent was softer than she had imagined an Egyptian’s would be, and she wondered if she had misunderstood the words.

“An-ee-qwe-lous?” She broke the word down into phonemes; she’d worry about writing it later.

The man shifted uneasily. He looked like he was running over the question and its possible answers in his head before offering an answer, like a chess player would mull over possible moves to avoid falling prey to a dangerous rook.  After a while, he pointed to the bookcase behind her and repeated the word.

She followed his trembling finger to the edge of the bookcase, where she found the symbol of the Stickman. Looking from the nervous man to the symbol etched into the wood and back again, her eyes widened.

“Aniquilus?” she gasped. So the Stickman was ‘Aniquilus’!

At this the man looked positively frightened, as if what he thought to be Aniquilus had in fact turned out to be something entirely different, and his engravings inside the Library had all been wrong. Gail reacted quickly, sensing her control over the small man.

“Aniquilus!” she repeated more authoritatively, confirming that the Stickman was indeed known by that name.

A smile broke out on his face as he started breathing once more. “Yes!” he said, bringing his hands together in front of his chest again.

She walked back towards the plinth and looked at it. There were no books on it now. This reminded her of the shelves she had just been looking at; twisting her head round, she noticed that they, too, were empty. She looked at the small man, who avoided her gaze as if his life depended on it.

“And Xy-New-Shuns?” Again, she pronounced it slowly, emphasising each phoneme. In her mind, there was no question that it had to be a person. “Who is Xy-New-Shuns?”

“What do you mean?” he replied. His nervousness had returned, and he held his hands together so tightly she could see his knuckles go white.

“Who is Xy-New-Shuns?” She repeated, saying each word individually, in case she had mispronounced them the first time. As she repeated the question she actually saw a bead of sweat run down his forehead, from his hair to the bridge of his nose. He looked left and right, as if trying to spot an escape route, his shadow dancing against the wall of the Library in the flickering light of an oil lamp next to the plinth.

Finding no way to avoid the question, and having exhausted all possible alternative responses in his mind beforehand, he turned his eyes solemnly to the floor and raised his arm. He was pointing straight over her left shoulder.

 She turned on her heel, but just as she did the Library disappeared, and she slipped once more into darkness.

Chapter 47

Dr Patterson entered the Administrator’s office, leaving the door wide open behind him.

“She’s been unconscious for almost twenty-four hours now,” he said angrily. “What did your man Walker give her?” He stood boldly in front of the desk with his legs uncharacteristically apart. Realising this, he shuffled his left leg slightly closer to the other and regained some of his more reserved self.

Seth Mallus turned round in his chair to face him. “Nothing that will harm her, Henry. Simply a facilitator for sleep.” He stood up and walked to the video wall dressed as a window. Reaching behind a blind to the left-hand side of it, he switched it off. “She was very reluctant to go with Walker, aggressive even. The drug was to protect her, more than anything else.” He ushered Patterson out into the corridor, and then followed him. “Which is also why she has been restrained,” he continued.

“To stop her hurting anyone?” Patterson asked bitterly.

“You are cynical. To stop her hurting herself, ” he corrected.

Still walking along the same corridor, they arrived at a long window on their left. Patterson stopped and gestured to the small room beyond the glass.

“Is this really necessary?”

In the middle of the small room was a single hospital bed in which Gail lay, fast asleep. Nonetheless, thick restraints wrapped round her body and limbs and held her to the mattress. Set into the headrest of the bed was a small computer screen, on which a line made its way from left to right, jerking rhythmically to the woman’s pulse. Apart from this and a small bedside table, the room was bare and sterile.

Mallus nodded slowly. “You seem genuinely upset. And yet Dr Gail Turner was brought here on your request.”

“I did not request her specifically, and I wouldn’t have requested anyone had I realised it would have been against their free will!” he retorted.

“I think that you may be forgetting yourself, Doctor,” Mallus warned sternly. “Dr Turner will be awake within the hour, sometime after which I will arrange for her to join you in your office.” He didn’t leave much room for argument, but just as Patterson was about to reply, he continued, more softly. “We would not normally have gone through this process, as you can see for yourself from the perfectly normal way in which I recruited you. However I know you understand that the situation, despite our best efforts, was beyond our control.”

Patterson said nothing, but dipped his chin almost imperceptibly.

“Good,” he said. “Because together, and with her help, we have to find out what Aniquilus is.”

Chapter 48

Gail awoke, opening her eyes slowly, tentatively, like a child who dare not peek at what was under the Christmas tree for fear that it may all disappear without warning.

Please, not another dream.

The past few hours, days, maybe even weeks, had been the strangest of her life, notwithstanding the fantasy of youth, where as a small person barely four feet high you could walk in a land of giants, dragons and adventure every day.

What the hell? The fact that she was even thinking of dragons and giants raised fears that she was again dreaming, and that she had not woken up after all. Widening her eyes she let the bright white light of her surroundings flood her pupils, which shrank to the size of pin heads as a result. She forced her eyelids to stay open against their will for as long as possible, until eventually they snapped shut and opened again, less wide this time, like the shutter of a high-speed camera.

Instead of bright-white light, she saw a bright-white wall directly in front of her.

“Hello!” she shouted. Immediately, the pressure in her inner ears reported back to her the fact that she was lying on her back. The wall in front of her had to be the ceiling. This is good, she thought. The fact that she heard herself perfectly, and understood what she was saying, had to be good. The fact that her sight and ears were now working together as a team, giving her balance and a sense of direction, was even better. I am awake. Within milliseconds of this realisation, Gail decided to get up and see where she was.

She struggled with her arms and legs, even wriggling her whole body, for several minutes before admitting defeat. She tried to lift her head but couldn’t. Peering along her nose and over her outstretched body, she understood why: thick belts were wrapped around her. She counted at least ten, tightly hugging her body and limbs which underneath were covered by a thin white sheet. Beyond her two wriggling feet, she could see the end of the bed, white-painted metal, with what looked like a flip-chart attached to it.  Apart from that, her field of vision was clear – the room seemed empty. To her right, she could just see the top of a door and a window frame, but it was either night time or it was an internal window, because the only light she could see came from two long strips in the ceiling.