Under His Influence

“Hmm.” John’s machine began to chug and roar. “I should warn the people of Earth about this really…but I just don’t have time.”

“What will it do?”

“In about half an hour, it will send beams of restorative ozone up to patch the holes in the sky. It won’t hurt anyone, but it might look a little alarming.”

“Do we have half an hour? Should we be reinforcing this bunker?”

“If they get through before this finishes its work, no reinforcement on Earth will keep them back,” John replied, grim.

Mimi went to stand beside him, staring at the strange-looking console, trying to contain her unruly thoughts.

“So,” she said softly, reaching and touching one of his hands. “This could be our last half hour…”

“Oh, you’ll be fine,” he said, brushing her off. “You haven’t mated, or conceived by me. They won’t want you.”

“Then if they take you, I’ll try and fight them.”

“Don’t make me laugh. What can you do?”

“I’d do anything and everything I could.”

“What, write a little story in your little paper? Thanks, but I don’t think that’ll cut it for the Rixxar.”

“John, don’t be so… Look, if they take you, I’ll be…I don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t bear to think of it.”

He softened a little, looking down at her.

“I’m touched. I think. Not sure how that’s supposed to feel, but something like this, I imagine.”

He took her hand and squeezed it, then held her against his chest. She threw her arms around his neck and sought his lips with hers, but he turned his face away.

“Not in front of my mother, eh?” he murmured. “Once the hole is fixed and the Rixxar deflected—then we have limitless time for all that.”

Mimi let herself be held for as long as she could, needing the contact and the warmth and the feeling of him, in case it never came again.

“All that,” she echoed. “When they’ve gone, John, I want to teach you our language. I want to teach you all the irregular verbs and conjugations, all the idioms and tense formations. By the time I’m finished you’ll be fluent. We’ll be able to speak together without any kind of barrier of understanding. Oh, I want that so much.”

John kissed the top of her head. “I want it too.”

He raised his voice. “Right, all we can do now is wait and hope. Mother. Are you all right?”

She moaned in reply, and he went to join her on the bed, holding her close, while Mimi rubbed his shoulders and nuzzled into his nape.

Up on surface level, people looked up and shielded their eyes from the strange beams that shot into the sky. The air did not change colour, but rather seemed to thicken in texture, so that parts of sky frosted over like shower doors.

The police investigating the mysterious disappearance of the murdered corpse of the false-passport carrying Russian were interrupted in their questioning of the night porter, stopping to look out through the hotel window at what was happening.

Rodney Merchant, in a meeting at a City penthouse apartment, raised an eyebrow that was as impressed as it was surprised. So there had been something in what Stone had been saying. Now he could await either the apocalypse or further millions in the bank.

Liam and Anna, on the Piccadilly line to Heathrow, did not see any of it, but Anna felt a stab of pain so intense that she moaned loudly, alarming Liam into rubbing her shoulders for her.

Chapter Thirteen

John leapt up and hunched over his machine, frowning.

“Has it worked?” Mimi queried tentatively, following him.

He put fingertips to his forehead, breathing heavily, then pressed the same button over and over, as if willing it to change the reaction this precipitated.