Vale’s erstwhile opponent was already rising, so Vale tapped him with his cane. There was a flash of electricity and the man screamed in pain, his back arching, before finally collapsing to lie motionless. Something rippled around the back of his neck, wriggling under his collar like a snake. Irene took a hasty step back.

‘What the devil is that? Can you do something about it?’ Vale asked, as he delivered shocks to the other two men. Both had shed the handicap of their trousers and were jerking to their feet.

‘Not without knowing what “it” is,’ Irene answered. The Language was a powerful tool, but to use it she needed the correct words. ‘Mysterious object wriggling under that man’s clothing’ was insufficiently precise, as her mentor Coppelia might have put it. Irene smothered a smile, feeling a little giddy as the adrenalin of the fight faded. ‘But at least electricity seems to work.’

‘Indeed.’ Vale was standing over the writhing men. ‘But my cane has a limited charge,’ he noted, as the screaming died away.

‘Airlocks, shut,’ Irene ordered. As the remaining airlocks closed, blocking any further attacks, she leaned forward to look at the unconscious men. Curiosity was prompting her to unbutton their collars to investigate what she’d seen, but her imagination was painting a vivid picture of something horrific. Irene wasn’t familiar with all the magical monstrosities that Vale’s world might or might not contain. Vampires and werewolves she knew about, but what else might there be? She couldn’t see enough . . .

‘Uniform jacket on the grey-haired man, unbutton and open,’ she ordered.

The jacket obeyed, peeling back like wrapping paper. The man’s shirt was stained with fresh blood. The thing that moved underneath it was two feet long, writhing and twisting like a length of cable.

‘Note the fresh wound on his neck,’ Vale said quietly. ‘He appears otherwise uninjured. I fear it will not emerge on its own, whatever it is. You will need to undress him further.’

Irene nodded. Such instructions from the upright Vale would be amusing – under other circumstances. ‘Shirt on the grey-haired man, unbutton and open.’

As the buttons slid from their holes and the shirt-front parted, there was a flash of gleaming metal. Something leapt at her, and Irene took in burning blue eyes and dripping blood. She threw herself backwards, dropping under the creature as it sailed over her head. Vale’s cane flashed out to intercept, but missed. The creature curved through the air before landing on the floor, skittering across it. It moved, Irene thought, like a woodlouse rather than a snake – could there be claws or legs underneath it?

More to the point, how did she stop it with the Language? What should she call it – ‘metal contraption’? But that would shut down all the equipment in the room. ‘Vale!’ she shouted. ‘Do you know what that thing is?’

‘No, but don’t let it get into the air ducts!’ Vale answered. He advanced on the creature, his cane ready.

‘Keep it busy.’ Irene edged sideways and picked up a nearby stool. She glanced back at the other two men; but no more creatures had emerged.

The creature scuttled along the floor, hugging the wall and trying but failing to writhe into the machinery. Fortunately the panels were all well-sealed. Then it darted at Vale in a horrifyingly fluid rush of speed.

Irene took advantage of the creature’s focus on Vale to craft a swift sentence. ‘Stool that I’m touching, pin down the moving mechanical creature,’ she ordered in the Language.

The stool tore itself out of Irene’s hand, upended itself and slammed into the creature, holding it in place with the seat. Irene rubbed her forehead, wincing at a momentary pain. While it hadn’t been a major use of the Language, it was imprecise and had drained her strength. The creature squirmed under the stool, metal legs scraping manically against the floor and leaving long scratches.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘What do you make of it?’

Vale knelt down to inspect it, as thuds came from the blocked airlock door. Irene’s earlier work was successfully blocking their entry – for now. ‘Interesting,’ he said, ignoring the noise. ‘I believe I do know what this is. It’s rather more advanced than reports I’ve read, though.’

‘Is it a device that controls human victims by invading their nervous systems?’ Irene ‘guessed’.

Vale gave her a hard stare. ‘Have you been reading my correspondence again, Winters?’

‘Now why would I do that?’ she dissembled.

Vale’s eyes narrowed, but he eventually relented. ‘Yes – this contraption appears to be derived from the work of Doctor Brabasmus. But it is self-propelled . . . and rather larger than the doctor’s original designs for cerebral controllers. Those were barely the size of a scarab, and lodged at the back of the neck.’

‘What happened to the doctor?’

‘Murdered a couple of months ago, and his laboratory looted.’ Vale frowned. ‘Now, what did he call them?’

Out of the corner of her eye, Irene saw a second creature’s head emerge from the neck of its host’s jacket. ‘Vale,’ she said quietly, her eyes flicking towards the creature.

Vale’s hand tightened on his cane. ‘Brabasmiators, that was it,’ he murmured.

Irene froze. That wasn’t even good English. Why did scientists have to create their own words, rather than use perfectly good existing ones? Did nobody ever think of the poor translators? In desperation she grasped for Vale’s earlier description. ‘Cerebral controllers, deactivate!’

The light vanished from the new creature’s eyes, and it and the one beneath the stool went limp. A third one stopped its disquieting wriggling under its host’s clothing. Irene gave a sigh of relief.

Vale checked for a pulse on the nearest man’s neck, then the other two, and shook his head. He rose, dusting his hands off. ‘We have no way of knowing how many of the other men on this station are similarly controlled. Inconvenient.’

‘Just how important is this document?’ Irene asked. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’

‘Under the circumstances, my hopes of you viewing it without prior bias are somewhat pointless. I believe there is a master criminal at large in London, Winters, a manipulator and emperor of crime. I also believe that he is responsible for the recent kidnapping attempts on you, the bullet which nearly hit Strongrock, the stabbing of Madame Sterrington . . . Lord Silver isn’t the only foreign spy in London. I was informed that the French Secret Service had obtained some valuable information on this mastermind: a letter which named very interesting names. Our agents had intercepted it and brought it here.’ His eyes glittered almost feverishly. ‘This is our chance at some proof, Winters, finally. This is my adversary as much as yours. He is striking at all my contacts, all my . . . friends. But I need evidence.’

‘I see,’ Irene said slowly. It made sense that Vale would be invested in this. She didn’t voice her deeper concerns, though. In high-chaos worlds, stories and their tropes had a tendency to come true – for both good tales and bad ones. Now London’s greatest detective had found a worthy adversary, a master criminal. If this were a story, the two of them would now be bound together – as closely as lovers – until one or the other was dead. She shivered. ‘Did you know about this before or after you accepted my invitation to Guernsey?’