From Crossfires  When Cassian stepped out of the BMW twenty minutes later, he stepped into a completely surreal landscape. Cranes and scaffolding towers soured above him. Great mounds of earthworks hemmed him in on either side. In the distance, high-rise apartment blocks stuck up through the broken soil like thorns on the side of a giant cactus. And behind him, the sky burned a phosphorous yellow. It was enough to make him think twice about leaving the litter-strewn car park they’d pulled in to.
‘We’re on the site of a future Olympic Stadium,’ Sylvia explained. ‘They’ve just finished demolishing the post-war industrial units that used to squat here, to make room for it.’ She pointed towards the churning clouds in the sky to her right. ‘But that’s what we’ve come to see. The biggest crossfire the UK’s ever experienced.’
Cassian’s heart sank. ‘It’s huge,’ he said fearfully. ‘It’s twice as tall as that tower block next to it. And it stretches away over those bulldozers down there, way into the distance. It must be a mile across.’
‘Quite possibly,’ Sylvia agreed. ‘But it’s not the size of it that’s really got us worried.’
‘Why?’ Cassian asked, his voice hollow with dread. ‘What is it that’s really got you worried?’
‘It’s the fact that it’s so damn close to the ground,’ Sylvia sighed. ‘Just hovering above that line of pylons you can see over there.’
Cassian could see a line of pylons in imminent danger of being swallowed by the fire. ‘And what,’ he said, ‘happens if it touches them?’
‘All the lights go out in Westminster, Kensington, Chelsea, Hammersmith and Hounslow.’ Silvia looked soberly at the area of London below them, imagining it cloaked in total darkness.
‘Oh.’ Cassian followed her gaze. ‘So what are you going to do? How do you plan to stop it?’
‘We don’t,’ she said. ‘We can’t. We’re just going to hope it burns itself out, like all the others. If it knocks out the power to half of central and western London, we’ll just have to take it on the chin.’
‘And what about me?’ Cassian turned away from the spectacular skyline for a moment to look straight at Sylvia. ‘What do you want with me?’
‘We just thought you might like to have a bit of a nose around. Tell us what you feel, what you see… Anything that could help us understand these things, these crossfires better.’
‘Because I’m the only person you know who can walk through them,’ Cassian guessed.
‘Precisely,’ Sylvia confirmed.
‘Because somehow you saw me standing in the middle of one yesterday. Maybe you even managed to take a photo of me, dragging my friends to safety across that scorched tennis court.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘But you won’t tell me how, or whether someone’s been following me, of whether there’s a satellite trained on me right now, or anything.’
‘Correct.’
‘Sure,’ Cassian shrugged. ‘I’ll have a look for you. I can’t promise anything though. For all I know, I’ll feel my hair start to frazzle and my skin crack a hundred yards away from it. I’m willing to give it a try, if you think it’ll help… but don’t expect too much, that’s all I’m saying...’
‘You’re all we’ve got,’ Sylvia handed him a hard hat, a torch and a two-way radio. ‘We just thought you might be better than a remote control car with a camera strapped to it.’
‘Thanks,’ Cassian said sarcastically.
Bravely, he left the glow of the cars internal lights behind and set out on his own.

>

From Port Cullis  Maddox flew out of the shadowy alley like a cork spat out of a fizzing champagne bottle. His unsteady legs carried him headlong into the docks. There, straight ahead of him was the ship, the great galleon he’d come to board. But already six feet of beautiful, sparkling water separated him from her stern. His arms felt tired and heavy, his chest was tight. Never mind, he pushed himself onwards, ever harder and faster. He knew he was squeezing the last few ounces of energy out of his exhausted body, but he had no choice. The final yards of weathered timber planks rolled by beneath him. They seemed to stretch themselves out, as far and wide as they possibly could, so that it took him twice as long to clear them as he'd imagined.
A shoal of small, striped fish swam out from underneath the lip of the jetty. Sunlight coloured the water around them a brilliant turquoise blue. The last pole driven into the sand to support the farthest section of landing-stage flashed by him. And at last, Maddox Greene was airborne.
He crashed into the backside of the ship a moment later. Its bow-wave had just pushed past the clanking buoy that marked the edge of the inner harbour. Jack’s heart soared, then sank like a stone. All hope of leaving Jamaica on today’s morning tide suddenly drained from his face.
His hands and feet slipped clumsily over the ship’s slimy hull. He knew at once how it felt to be a mosquito on the back of a galloping rhinoceros! He simply couldn’t hold on. He dropped backwards. The loss of those first few precious inches became an unstoppable slide. And he slumped pathetically into the vessel’s fizzing wake. His head bobbed below the surface. There was no way back from here and he knew it. He was stranded on the island for yet another long and uncertain night.

>

From Walls Are Made of Brick  The next day dawned bright and breezy. Adam set off for school, following his normal route through the tennis courts behind Aspern Grove, across the main road at the bottom of Rosslyn Hill and on, up the High Street. He caught the tube from Belsize Park but hopped off again after just one stop. He should have carried on to Golders Green but he had business to attend to in the bowels of West Hampstead Station.
It was part of his new daily routine, to test the walls between train platforms all over London. Today he was planning to investigate the brickwork dividing platforms three and four of the stop on the Jubilee line between his home and his school.
‘Mornin’,’ said the platform attendant guarding the ticket machines.
‘Mornin’,’ replied Adam cheerily. He often came through Hampstead Station, especially on the weekend, but didn’t recognise the man. ‘New here are you?’ he asked.
He slotted his pass through the gates and forced his way past the sluggish barrier. He was heading for the southbound trains.
‘I am,’ replied the attendant with a wink. ‘First day as a matter of fact. I take it you’re a regular, a face I’ll get to know?’
‘Oh, I should think so,’ Adam said over his shoulder. He trotted past the legions of commuters heading in the opposite direction and followed the small but steady stream of young mums, O.A.P.s and school kids walking away from the centre of the capital. A steep flight of stairs took him down nearly thirty feet. 
‘Here we are,’ he said to himself. He set his school bag down and stared hungrily at the four-foot span of wall dividing the train lines to his left and right. ‘Stand by your beds men,’ he said to some phantom audience only he could see. ‘We’re going in!’
He took a step backwards. An engine was just pulling out of the station behind him. The doors were closing on a local shuttle opposite. He rocked to and fro on his heels, as though he were preparing for the biggest, longest jump of his life. He crossed himself for luck, tracing the pattern of a crucifix on his chest.
The train behind departed with a squeal of brakes and a thunderous burst of diesel fumes. Adam supposed it was bound for some far distant suburb. Someone in a rear carriage waved. They looked confused. It seemed the boy on the platform was thinking of throwing himself at the solid brick wall in front of him. Thank God, at the very last minute, he must have thought better of it. Adam sauntered over to feel the sandy mortar with his fingers instead. The rail passenger slipped into the morning mist, content he was safe from harm. All was peaceful again.
Then, in a flash it happened. Adam backtracked a good six or seven yards, squatted, sprang upright like a trained athlete, and rushed forward. It was an absolutely insane spectacle to watch. There seemed no sense in it whatsoever. He hurled his shoulder at the masonry that stood, stubbornly in his way and…
…crumpled into a pathetic heap on impact. His head bounced off the bricks like a ping-pong ball. His arms went limp like twigs snapped in a hurricane. And his legs buckled underneath him in agony. Just moments earlier, this uniformed boy with mousy hair and freckles had looked as healthy and intelligent as the next man. Now he looked half dead and dumber than a dustcart. What on earth had he been thinking?
‘What on earth were you thinking?’ a platform attendant, rushing over to offer help asked. He’d seen the whole thing from the top of the stairs. His eyes were wide, his mouth open in stunned surprise. As he neared Adam, he called for assistance on his two-way radio.
Adam’s eyes slipped out of focus for a moment. Despite this, he knew he was in the presence of the same guard who’d spoken to him at the ticket barrier earlier; the one struggling through his very first morning at West Hampstead Station.
‘Who do you think you are, Harry bleeding Potter?’ the guard snapped. He seemed almost angry with Adam though that was obviously unfair. After all, Adam hadn’t endangered anyone else with his little stunt.
Adam groaned. He did not, in fact, think he was Harry Potter. He was sure he was quite unlike Harry Potter in several ways. For a start, he didn’t have a pet owl, or a best friend called Ron. He didn’t have a cousin called Dudley either or a permanent place on his local Quidditch team.
‘No,’ he croaked. ‘Not Harry Potter. Adam Hanley.’

>

From Farraday  Edinburgh seemed to be full of contradictions, like the smell of lavender and the sight of the slaughter men in their stained overalls loitering outside their building. Kindred supposed London was full of the same contradictions, he’d just gotten used to them, over the years. 
He felt awkward about breezing through the bead curtain that covered the slaughterhouse door. But the lady he’d asked for directions was certain this was the right way to go. The long strings of beads danced back into place behind him. He was inside.
The slaughterhouse was pink. Its walls had been painted with a brilliant white lime wash but had then had hundreds of gallons of animal blood wiped into them. There was a blood pit right in front of Kindred. The surface of it shimmered, thick and oily in the half-light. All the shallow drains that veined the floor fed into it.
To his right, three sides of beef were hanging from enormous meat hooks in the ceiling. To his left, men were working, calving up a fresh carcass. Kindred gagged. He’d never been inside one of these places before. The smell was worse than he’d expected. It was the smell of death.
Kindred focused his attention on crossing the cold room as quickly as possible. One of the men stopped what he was doing and waved at him. Obviously, people used the slaughterhouse as a shortcut all the time. He pointed at a far, metal door. Kindred nodded his thanks and approached it. It wasn’t locked so he drew it open and went through.
Now he was in a sort of loading bay for all the local butcher’s carts. There were cuts of lamb, beef, pork and poultry laid in the shade on stone shelves. Once again, the pressure to find space for housing in the crowded city had forced people to live, quite literally, on top of it. Their sash windows climbed up into the sky like rows of terraced seating around a roman amphitheatre.
Oddly, there seemed to be somebody standing in almost every one. It was as if they’d all paid to get tickets to some sort of show. Kindred was on centre stage. And he sensed that a curtain call was not far away.

>

From Redemore  By the side of the round, white, medieval tent, Jake Rush looked tall and dark-skinned. In fact, he was not much bigger than most boys his age. And he hadn’t seen much sun lately; not since the first week in May when he’d celebrated his thirteenth birthday in Paris.
It was late August now and the weather was warm but overcast. Dressed in the clothes of a Tudor page, Jake began to cross the dew-laden grass of the meadow that stretched before him. He was heading for the well at the foot of Ambion Hill.
Cows were grazing on the edge of a marsh half a mile away. Horses were tethered round a tree in the corner of the next field. A lone knight, already clad in armour and wearing a single red feather in his full-face helmet had just slung his leg over one of them. He released its rein from a low branch and trotted across Jake’s path.
Suddenly, he turned and headed straight for him. No one else was awake but if they had been, they’d have cried out. There could be no doubt about it, the knight planned to mow down the young page where he stood!
Clutching the horse’s ragged main in one hand, the knight drew a heavy broadsword threw the air with the other. His spurs bit into bruised horseflesh and his pace doubled. Jake felt the ground beneath his feet start to tremble. And then, the ground was racing up to meet him!
He had fallen over, twisting his ankle as he went. The knight thundered past. Because Jake had fallen, the knight’s sword missed him. But only because Jake had fallen over. The knight was already wheeling round, coming at him again.
The horse was a strong, muscular animal. Its front legs were working like pistons. Its rider was less fit, slumped in his saddle, his belly resting against its high pommel. But together, they were an unstoppable force, driving forward, grunting for breath.
The knight’s visor was half open. Behind it, Jake could see his eyes, dark and hungry and high on adrenalin. There wasn’t a hint of compassion in them. They flicked up, momentarily, as a volley of canon fire echoed in the distance. Then they returned to Jake, pinning him, giving him no quarter.
Jake saw he was in real trouble now. He struggled to his feet and stepped backwards, half turning as he did so, giving himself an extra few seconds to think.
There was a wooden fence fifty yards to his left. He had to reach it. He threw his weight forward and sprinted for all he was worth.

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