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Maybe it just is .”
    “That sounds like a cop-out.”
    Drake’s teeth flashed. “Maybe it is. But we’re learning a great deal just by studying it. The arch network, for example.”
    “What about it?”
    “It turns out that the arches all resonate on the same electromagnetic frequencies as the Gnarl.”
    Kat frowned, feeling she’d missed something. “What does that mean?”
    “It means the Gnarl may be powering the network.”
    “Really?”
    Drake shrugged a leather-clad shoulder.
    “I don’t know, but I’ll tell you one thing.” His teeth flashed again. “I’d give my right nut to find out.”
    Behind them, the engine noise increased. Then the pilot let the brakes off and the shuttle leapt forward, kicking them back in their seats.
    As they rattled down the runway, Kat felt her heart pump a wild surge of joy. A grin split her face, and her feet drummed excitedly on the floor. Beside her, Drake sat stiffly in his seat, still sweating, eyes closed.
    As the cabin tipped upward and the wheels left the tarmac, he reached for her hand.

CHAPTER FIVE
    AMETHYST
     
    Ed Rico was painting at his easel, in front of the sash window of his apartment. The window looked down on the darkened street, and the buildings opposite: an estate agent, now closed for the night; a church repurposed as office space; an off-licence still open on the corner. Terraced houses. Sun-bleached poppies on the war memorial in the park at the end of the road. Shadowy back alleys and garages. For Sale signs like brave little flags. Black railings. Scaffolding.
    When his mobile rang, he put the brush down and lifted the phone to his ear.
    “Ed?” It was Alice. They hadn’t spoken since that night in her apartment, six months ago. “Ed, I’ve got an arch in my field.”
    Ed looked at his watch. It was around ten-thirty. He knew Alice no longer stayed at her flat in Peckham, that she’d left London some weeks ago for Verne’s old farmhouse on the other side of High Wycombe, forty miles away.
    “I can be there in an hour,” he said.
    Above the rooftops, the brightly-lit towers of Canary Wharf stood like sentries. An armoured car rumbled past below, its spotlight sweeping the pavements. Helicopters criss-crossed the sky. Ed gave his brush a quick rinse in the jam jar on the windowsill and went over to the wardrobe, where he swapped his jogging bottoms for a pair of black 501 jeans. He pulled a green army surplus combat jacket over his paint-flecked black t-shirt, and laced his feet into a sturdy pair of black leather work boots.
    His apartment was an anonymous two-room studio above a newsagent in Millwall, on the upper floor of a converted brown brick terrace, with a mattress on the bare floor and canvasses stacked against a chair by the door. When it was new, in the building boom at the start of the new century, it had been a desirable residence; now, two decades later, it was fucked. The paint had started to flake around the windows, light fittings dangled loose, the ceilings were cracked and stained, food cupboards no longer closed properly. It was as if the house, a Victorian brick terrace, had begun reverting to its pre-redevelopment condition, slowly reassuming its shabby natural state.
    Moving to the kitchenette, he retrieved his emergency bag from the cupboard beside the fridge. It was a holdall containing a first aid kit and foil survival blanket, a couple of torches, a gas stove, some teabags, a penknife, and enough dried rations and water purification tablets to last a week. You could buy kits like it anywhere. Since the arches came, people were scared. No-one knew what to make of them.
    Ed himself had been pulling double shifts at the taxi ranks. He’d tried throwing himself into his work. He’d taken fares no one else would touch. But with the radio and newspapers reporting new arches opening almost daily, nothing he did, took or drank could blot out the guilt he felt at his brother’s loss. Nor could it dampen his passion