Free Elysium. Part Two by Kelvin James Roper Page A

She smirked, sensing Hann ah and Morag belittled Semilion’s authority.
    ‘Priya, I’d like you to lend your services in the crèche looking after our under-fives.’
    At this Priya blanched and disappeared into the kitchen. ’I don’t have to start today, do I?’ She called, her head in the sink.
    ‘No, don’t worry, you can both begin tomorrow.’
    She nodded and he showed himself out. Selina heard Priya drag herself upstairs and then the creak of the bed as she collapsed into it. She heard a moan of ‘Kids!’ And then all was quiet.
    Opening the living room window, Selina closed her eyes and fell back asleep on the sofa.
    *
    She woke with a gasp at a quarter past midnight, a drowning man sinking in the shadows of the room. Her heart raced, and then the sound of the front door clicking roused her fully awake. It took her a moment to notice it was the door she had heard, and another to realise Priya must be going somewhere. She took a moment to check there really was no ghost in the shadows of the room, and then leaned towards the window, her forehead squeaking on the cold glass.
    The moon was low on the purple sea, and it sent scattered shadows through the streets. A dark-coloured cat sat on a fence beside the house before dancing along to the slate wall that lined the road. It pawed at the moss that hung from it, and then ducked behind a hedge.
    She flattened her face against the glass and tried to peer to the foot of the house. Her breath steamed the window and obstructed her vision. She withdrew her face, and watched as the mark shrank, Priya appearing as it did so. She held her breath, and looked back out into the steep garden. She saw Priya, almost a shadow within shadow, wrapped in a duvet. She stepped slowly down the garden steps, crossed into the next garden, and into her own house.
    Selina remained at the window and waited for her to reappear, wondering what had been so urgent to collect from her house in the middle of the night. After uncounted minutes had slowly passed, Priya emerged without the duvet, though instead of returning the way she had come, she hopped from a wall on to the dark high street and began walking towards the Smuggler’s Rest.
    *
    Semilion reclined in the battered chair of the council chamber, the radio headphones roasting his ears. Beside him the radio hummed gently, its filaments glowing brightly; they flickered tentatively as he negotiated the channels. He had been waiting for fifteen minutes. The shipping forecast was late.
    It was an unusual, but not unheard of, occurrence. Several times Dr. John Camberwell had been delayed, or experienced difficulty with his equipment, though if ever there was a significant problem there would be a singular pulse that proclaimed a twenty-four hour postponement of the forecast. There was no such pulse, and after the broadcast of the previous month he was growing increasingly worried.
    In the days after the last forecast, he had sent Baron and George south, telling them to return the moment they saw anything out of the ordinary. They had returned an eternal week later, saying they had continued until they could see the MoD on the horizon, spraying the land with a billowing purple dust before setting it aflame. A few days later Robin and Jeremy returned from scouting Exmoor in search of whatever ‘storm-front’ Camberwell had been reporting. They described a slight increase of Blackeye activity over the moorland, but nothing out of the ordinary.
    ‘There were the lights, though,’ Robin said as they had been getting ready to leave.
    Jeremy shrugged as though he hadn’t thought it worthy of mentioning.
    ‘What lights?’ Semilion asked.
    ‘On the border. The skyline was lit every quarter-mile or so, right across the horizon as far as you could see. Never seen that before, always been a dead lump of concrete as long as I can remember.’
    ‘But there were no people? No soldiers?’
    ‘No,’ Robin replied. ‘There never is, is there?