The Bleed: Book 2: RAPTURE by David Moody (best selling autobiographies .txt) 📕

was a moon, then it was a moon like no others Jenny had seen before. She exited the clockwork room with Maddie. They were still in the hotel, but the hotel was no longer where it used to be. They went up onto the roof and looked down over what appeared to be a sun-soaked, tropical paradise. It was a vast island surrounded by clear blue sea. There were forests below them, with trees bearing familiar-looking fruit, and beyond them rolling fields ripe for planting. Elsewhere, stone-built cities that looked ready to welcome inhabitants. “I don’t know where you brought us,” Maddie said, “but it’s not the moon—not my moon, anyway.”

“Doesn’t look too bad though.”

Maddie had to agree; it all felt perfect. Too perfect. “This the doing of your friends in high places?” Maddie asked. “You called in a favor from the gods?”

“Something like that.”

“What happened to the water?”

“I have no idea.”

It appeared that all they’d brought with them from Earth was the hotel and the people. Far below, the remains of the human race began to explore and spread out across the island paradise.

“We did it,” Maddie said. “They’re safe.”

“For now.”

Maddie glared at her. “I thought you’d be happy, I’m happy, but you’ve got a face like thunder.”

“It’s not over, you know.”

“It is for now. It is for us.”

“No, not for any of us. The Bleed is still out there. There’s still work to be done.”

She walked to the edge of the roof and peered out into the distance, beyond the ragged island coastline and out across the ocean. It was a beautifully clear day. From here she could see all the way across to the next landmass and the ruins of some kind of citadel. Even from this distance she could sense the god-tech was strong over there.

“You’re in charge now,” she told Maddie.

“Like hell I am. I’m just a mechanic. Not a leader. I never wanted that kind of power.”

Jenny shook her head. “You know what you are, Maddie. You’re not just anything. You understand things. You see things clearly. You plan and you prepare, and you make a difference. These people need you. Deep down you know what you have to do, even if you’re not ready to accept it.”

“I’m not a politician, for crying out loud. I’m not some highfaluting pillar of the community.”

“I know that. But then, this isn’t a community as such, is it?”

“Well what else would you call it?”

“It’s an army. The Bleed is still out there, and at some point very soon we’re going to need to fight it again.”

“Yeah, but why are you talking about me being in charge all of a sudden? What happened to us? You’re supposed to be the leader.”

“I can’t. I’ve got something else to do.”

And Jenny turned and walked back towards the clockwork room.

“Don’t you turn your back and walk away from me,” Maddie yelled at her.

Jenny stopped. Turned back to face her. “I’m sorry. It has to be this way, Maddie.”

“Where the hell are you going?”

“To try and stop the Bleed from ever getting a foothold. I’m going back to the beginning to correct a mistake that should never have happened.”

With that, she was gone.

By the time Maddie reached the clockwork room, Jenny was nowhere.

She’d learnt so much from Maddie in the time they’d been together, and under her tutorage the secrets of the clockwork room had been unlocked. Jenny stepped out of the room and was more relieved than she’d ever thought possible. She’d done it.

While they’d been transporting a million people trapped in an energy field, the clockwork room had been clumsy and hard to control. Now that it was just her, though, she could go anywhere she wanted, could visit any part of the multiverse at any point in history. Her world was lost; she had to accept that. The temptation to go back to the source of the Bleed to try and change history was strong, but that was a battle she knew she couldn’t win on her own. For now, she needed to focus on giving the gods a head start.

Jenny stepped out into the busy streets of London and breathed in the cool, damp, fume-filled air. It was good to be home. Except this was anything but home. She was back in London, but it wasn’t her London. This was Maddie’s corner of the multiverse, and if she’d calibrated the machine properly, she’d arrived at just the right moment in time. Strange, she thought, how she felt more nervous now than at any point previously. The stakes were higher. The risks were impossible to calculate.

She got out of the lifts at the bottom of the Shard and followed the crowds out onto the street. Everything felt bizarrely familiar, yet completely different at the same time.

She was going home to put things right.

She would stop herself from triggering the war that would allow this version of the earth to succumb to the Bleed.

Jenny Allsopp was going to track down this world’s version of Jenny Allsopp and kill her.

19

THE MOON

“You have got to be kidding me.” Maddie was on the roof peering down at the thousands of people below and the strange landscape that she’d been told was the moon. It was nearly harder to believe that this was the cold, lifeless void she’d left not that long ago, than it was the existence of the relentless enemy they had just been fighting. “What the hell am I supposed to do now? I’m just a mechanic. Sure, a great one, but still, you don’t ask a fabulous pole dancer to be the Prima Ballerina at the Met. Well, I mean, you could, but I’d imagine it wouldn’t work out so well.”

A fair number of the people were looking up at the hotel, the only tall structure in the strange new landscape. Still, even more were tentatively starting to check out their new environment, most not having a clue that they were