“You wouldn't believe the day I've had Carol. I don't, and I was there. Mostly – bit hit and miss towards the end if we're being honest.”

  Carol lifted her head, her chin still casually rested on her hand. “You look like shit, Seb,” she said, briefly glancing back at her paper.

  “And smell like it. Hug?” Carol scoffed and set aside her paper. She waited for him to ask for something not entirely unreasonable followed immediately by something entirely unreasonable; always in that order. “What's it going to set me back for a hot bath and someone to look at this?”

  Her eyes widened as Sebastian pulled the collar of his shirt down to reveal a long, thin slash about a foot across that spanned from just below his jugular to above his right nipple; it was pink and angry, and stained yellow around the edges from the medical foam he liberally squirted into the wound. “What the hell did you do to yourself, you silly man?” Carol pottered around the counter as best she could, hopscotching the loose and broken tiles to reach him.

  “Cut myself shaving.”

  “You're always cutting yourself shaving, or are falling off your bicycle. It's almost like you're full of shit. And you're right, I can smell you from here.” Carol took her glasses from the top pocket of her shirt, and rather than put them on, simply held them in front of Sebastian's wound and squinted. “You'll live.”

  “Thanks for that, doc.”

  “Al can take a look at you when he's done with his patients for today. Eaten yet?”

  “Nope.”

  “Go sit down, I'll bring something over.” Something, of course, being code for mushrooms or things made from mushrooms, possibly garnished with other mushrooms cunningly disguised as not mushrooms. “And don't argue,” she added.

  “Me? Never. Mind if I borrow this paper?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanks.”

  Sebastian took the paper and picked his way over the landmine floor tiles towards the nearest empty booth. It was rush hour, which more or less meant there were four more people out front than usual, as indicated by the booth lights. There'd be three or more times as many in the back, probably none of them waiting to be seen because they stupidly got themselves stabbed. The diner part of the Blackout started out as a front for the illegal goings on out back, but after two weeks, someone realised it was a bit silly to have a front in the ever-dark, but if they were to have a front and if it had to be a diner, they should at least get dinner out of it. That’s when they hired Carol and started serving food.

  Silhouettes moved in an animated fashion in the booth opposite him. He didn't see what there was to be excited about – seemed like a really shitty place for a birthday party or, just generally, to be fair. Even the rats had drug dependencies. He folded the newspaper with the imprecise scrunching of a man who wouldn't be responsible for unfolding it again, and eagerly scanned across to the racing column. Horses had been extinct for at least two decades, but everyone still called it horse racing. It wasn't so much that people were clinging longingly to the past, it was more that everything still had pictures of horses on and it would be really expensive to repaint everything and reprint the novelty tea towels.

  No-one went to the horse racing any more, they went to the open-quote horse close-quote racing to watch people race cars. The one thing that hadn't changed, though, was how fundamentally corrupt the whole thing was. As a balancing factor to this, every open-quote jockey close-quote in the league was in the pocket of some gang or another, so they were all effectively trying to throw races at the same time. This meant it turned out more or less the same as if they hadn't bothered in the first place. Odds weren’t based on who was most likely to win, they were based on who was mostly likely to become confused, accidentally cross the line first and get shot, which is a different thing altogether. Sebastian didn't know horse racing, but he knew politics.

  “Keith, mate.” He turned his head in the general direction of the door.

  “What?”

  “Ever-dark Evangeline in the 2:30.”

  “You sure?”

  “When have I ever let you down? Last time doesn't count.”

  “I'll put one on if I'm down that way, but don't tell the bloody wife, yeah?”

  “As if. And if you are, you can put one on for me.”

  He put the paper down and scuffed it across the table and onto the seat opposite. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. There really hadn’t been much time for sleep, and the whole botch with Edevane had taken what little reserves he had left. He'd catch a nap, and when he woke up, there'd be some good news – he'd be paying enough for it. This had to work, because if it didn’t, he'd never be able to afford the brokerage fees again. It would be debt and favours all the way from then on, and that meant lord knows what; probably kidneys, it was always kidneys with these people. He didn't know which broker it would be because they had a tendency to horribly torture and murder each other quite frequently. Keeping track of them was becoming a bore at this point, and there was never much point in learning their names. Didn't matter too much, they were all the same on the inside – the face just changed. “Little rat bastards,” he mumbled to himself.

  “Pardon me?” said a small voice from beside him.

  Sebastian opened one eye and wearily focused it on the silhouette of the small child stood next to him. “Talking to myself, go back to your parents. And don't talk to strangers, okay? Parents these days.”

  “I just wanted to ask your something,” the small girl said. She stepped forward into the meek light cast by the filthy bulb that dangled above the table. “Are you my daddy?”

  Sebastian opened his eyes and turned to regard the girl. He didn't say anything, or think anything or even do anything. The tightness in his chest loosened and dropped away, and the stale air of the diner felt exactly the same, really, but he felt much better about it, generally speaking. He slid from his seat and to his knees; he didn't care how inhospitable the floor was or how much his knees were going to hurt, all he cared about was wrapping his arms around his daughter before he woke up. Sarah hugged him back and his knees hated them both. “I'm sorry,” he sobbed, over and over again until the words lost their meaning and he quite forgot how long he'd been speaking up to that point.

  Erica watched from outside the booth, her knuckles ached and popped as she balled her hands into fists. She was going to march right over there and give him a piece of her mind, or punch him in his – she hadn't gotten that far yet. This seemed very dramatic and appropriate, but became less and less dramatic and appropriate as she stumbled her way across the array of uneven, teetering, sometimes missing, floor tiles.

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  “Go on, then,” Danielle said as she passed Erica with a significantly higher degree of grace than she had just exhibited herself.

  “F-Father,” she stuttered. Sebastian extended his left arm towards her, his right arm still holding Sarah tightly to his chest. He didn't say anything, he couldn't. His face was contorted into an agony that Erica knew too well, his cheeks awash with tears that carved a path through the dust and soot that clung to his face. She stumbled forward a couple more steps over the chequered floor of death and launched herself towards him, her arms instinctively wrapped around his neck and pulled herself closer to him.

  As Bosco gazed at the tiles and mentally picked his route across the fifteen or so feet of floor, Harry hopped and bopped and flipped and flopped his way across without any particular thought or effort. With every flip, his makeshift hood would drop down off his head, and with every flop it would cover him up again. He was playing a high-speed game of peek-a-boo and he loved it. He slammed into the huddle of Huberts while entirely upside down, but rather than attempt to right himself, he chose to make the best of an awkward situation and have a cuddle of someone's leg. Harry didn't know who the man was, but his friends were happy-leaking and that was good enough for him.

  He felt light-headed; this might have been, he theorised, because he was upside-down and all the bubbles had floated to his feet. It was also, excluding his untested bubble theory for a moment, because he was retching heavily. Sebastian reluctantly released the grip on his daughters and focused his attention on the small canine, who had now relinquished his own grip on Sebastian's leg and lay on his side staring off into the middle-distance.

  “He's just eaten,” Bosco volunteered. He stepped towards Harry and scooped him off the cold, hard floor.

  “I think it's worse than that, my friend.” Sebastian got off the floor and approached the bundle of rags and fur in Bosco’s arms. Sarah sidled next to him and took a vice-like grip of his right arm, just in case he had any intentions of vanishing the next time she stopped looking.

  “What do you mean?” Bosco asked.

  “You can feel it in the air – everything is wrong, polluted. It hit you like a bullet the moment you stepped through the Gate. Difference is, our lungs are fully developed.” Sebastian reached out and ran his hand along the side of Harry's face. He looked up and smiled, but his eyes had taken on a glazed, pallid look. Sebastian swallowed. “I'm so sorry. He's dying, Bos.”

  Erica cupped her hands across her mouth and closed her eyes, while Sarah looked expectantly towards her father and waited for him to say something before she broke down completely. Danielle stepped in front of Bosco and fixed Sebastian square in the eyes.

  “How do we fix it? How do we help him?” She’d dedicated so much of her life to the story of Sebastian Hubert – war criminal, coward, all-round bastard, but it all seemed unimportant now.

  “We go home, whoever you are. We get him away from here – he'll bounce back, I know he will. If he's anything like his dad.”

  “He is,” Bosco proudly declared.

  “Give him your mask-”

  “-Danielle.”

  “Give him your mask, Danielle. It'll slow it down, give him a chance to fight back.”

  Harry didn’t have the ears to wear a mask, so Danielle tied the strap around the back of his head. He squirmed and protested, but he lacked the energy for much else.

  “Carol!” Sebastian shouted towards the kitchen.

  “Just a minute,” she called back, more than a tinge of irritation laced her voice.

  “I'd prefer now, please.”

  Carol emerged through the swing doors of the kitchen, a cigarette dangling from her mouth. In the darkness, the light blurred her face and she looked like a small, angry sun had positioned itself in the doorway. “What?” she huffed, ash falling from her glowing mouth.

  “Oxygen. We need some.”

  “Can't afford it, Seb,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Seven-thousand says I can. Bring me some, now! Well, go on, then!” Carol scuttled back through the kitchen doors without stopping to turn around, a comet tail of glowing ash left behind her. She emerged a couple of minutes later with the cigarette sensibly extinguished and behind her ear, a small cylinder of oxygen in her hands. “Where's the cannula?”

  “It's-” Carol started to say. The rest of the sentence she’d planned being along the lines of, “Going to cost you extra.” She hadn't gotten so far as to decide how much extra before Sebastian interrupted.

  “-Carol, listen carefully to me, this is important.” He looked her in the eyes and kept his tone neutral. “Give me the cannula, Carol, or you are going to wish that valve came loose while you were smoking.” He produced a small stack of red credit strips and placed them in Carol's hand, then firmly closed her fingers around them.

  She pleadingly looked towards Danielle for support as she hovered in the conversational equivalent of international waters. “He's a child, Carol! The hell is frigging wrong with you?” She straightened her shoulders and clenched her fists. She wasn't setting any records for height, but she towered over the diminutive form of Carol in not quite, but almost the same way, as she did Erica. Carol took a step back – had she had her way, and the floor not been a potential deathtrap, it would have been a much larger step followed by a half-marathon. She stood quietly and composed her thoughts, not wanting to trigger a violent outburst in the woman she had until a minute or two ago called her friend. She took the cannula from the pocket in her apron and handed it to Sebastian.

  “I'm just doing my job,” she said weakly. It came to her a second too late, that other than, “I don't care if he dies,” there wasn't really much worse she could have said at the moment. Carol clenched her jaw, tucked her tongue behind her teeth and waited, but it was worse than that; she stood there alone and un-punched, disregarded and ignored. She consoled herself by slinking back into the kitchen to spit in their food.

  “This isn't ideal,” Sebastian said as he twisted and contorted the cannula in a bid to keep it from slipping off Harry's face without cutting off the supply of oxygen altogether. “I'm sorry, my friend, but the mask needs to go back on. Okay?” Harry nodded and playfully batted at the tube with his hand. Sebastian guided it away from the tube and turned it into a vigorous handshake that went all the way up Harry's arm and elicited a giggle.

  “Pleased to meet you!” he enthused. “I'm their dad.” He inclined his head towards the sisters.

  “Harry,” the little dog spluttered. The oxygen had taken an immediate effect on him, but it tickled and dried the back of his throat, so he sounded like a little frog.

  “Mask on, then.” Sebastian carefully fastened the straps around the back of Harry's head and tightened it just enough to give the cannula an extra degree of security.

  “Will he be okay now?” Bosco asked nervously. He held Harry close to his large chest, the rhythmic rising and falling of it had already lulled Harry into a light doze.

  “As long as we have the oxygen and the mask.” Sebastian lightly stroked Harry's forehead and swept an errant hair out of his eye. “He's not going to get worse. Fact is, he'll get better. You were lucky you both spent so long in Trinity Park – best air filters everyone else's money can buy.”

  “We need to get home, Sebastian. Bridget must be terrified.”

  “Saw her earlier, she's fine. Rasmus is a little beat up, but he'll be right as rain. Everyone is fine. It’s all going to be fine.”

  “You really did come to find us, after all,” Erica said. “What about the men?”

  “Unhappy but alive. Your mate Peter's a bit of a wild one, isn't he? That reminds me, I need to find a pair of shoes. Don't ask.” Sebastian checked his watch. “Speaking of Peter, I had him shut the Gate behind me. We have to be back at alleyway in just less than eight hours for when he opens it again.”

  “Did you see the man outside our window?” Erica knew he must have. If he'd been to Mayflight, he'd have been home, and home was where the corpse is, as someone definitely never said.

  “Do you want to talk about?”

  “No, I don't think so,” she whispered. “Let's not spoil things.”