Midnight. Derek Landy

throat, grabbed the bicep of her left arm and hooked her hand behind the Ripper’s helmet. His hands came up, trying to free himself. He put a foot to the wall and pushed out, shoving them both backwards. Valkyrie held on, her head down, her eyes closed. She kicked at his leg and dragged him backwards, laying him on the ground as his struggles weakened.

      She looked up, watched as the second Ripper fell into view. He hit the floor and stayed there.

      When her Ripper was unconscious, she released him and walked to the other end of the corridor. Her cloaking bubble intersected with Skulduggery’s and he appeared before her so suddenly she jumped.

      “Sorry,” he said.

      She waved his apology away. “I’m sure I scared you just as much as you scared me.”

      “Not really.”

      She took his hat and threw it out of the window, and was totally unsurprised when a moment later it floated in again and settled back on his head.

      “Are you quite finished?” he asked, adjusting it slightly.

      “It wouldn’t kill you to admit to being a little startled every now and then,” she said.

      “I don’t get startled,” he responded, walking off again. She caught up to him before he left her bubble, and fell into step beside him. “I anticipate and adjust accordingly.”

      “You don’t anticipate everything.”

      “Of course not. Where would be the fun in that?”

      “I’m just saying you shouldn’t feel like you have to keep up this unflappable demeanour around me.”

      “Has it occurred to you, after all these years together, that I just might not be flappable?”

      “Everyone is flappable, Skulduggery.”

      “Not me.”

      They came to a door that took them to a tunnel that took them to a room, and in this room they chose an archway that took them to more stairs. Down they went, and down again, until the torches in brackets were replaced by bulbs and the steady thrum of power reverberated through the floor. They avoided large groups of Rippers, passed rooms where white-coated scientists murmured to one another, and kept going until they came to a perspex window overlooking a large laboratory packed with machines that blinked with volatile energy.

      Doctor Nye sat on a stool, its back stooped, working on the intricate insides of a rusted device. Nye’s thin limbs looked smaller than when Valkyrie had seen it last, when it had towered over her, its head nearly brushing the ceiling, but she wasn’t altogether surprised. Crengarrions shrank as they got older, and their skin colour tended to lighten. Now it looked, at most, about ten feet tall, and its skin was a delicate ash.

      “It looks old,” she murmured. “Good.”

      They found the stairs, followed them down, arriving at the double doors that led into Nye’s lab. Two Rippers stood guard.

      “I’ve got this one,” Valkyrie said, walking towards the Ripper on the right. She was halfway there when the cloaking sphere started to vibrate in her pocket.

      Alarmed, she pulled it out. The two hemispheres were ticking towards each other quickly – much quicker than they should have – counting down to the bubble’s collapse. She tried to twist them back, then struggled to merely keep them in place, but it was no good.

      The bubble contracted.

       2

      Her boots were visible.

      Valkyrie crouched before either of the Rippers caught sight of her. There were sigils on the wall – she could see them now. She recognised one of them: a security sigil that attacked Teleporters. She was pretty sure the other one was forcing her cloaking sphere to malfunction.

      And it contracted again. Not all the way, just enough to reveal the top of her head. Time was running out.

      Keeping low, she pocketed the sphere and hurried over to the Ripper. The bubble contracted again. He heard her footsteps and his hands went to his sickles.

      Valkyrie pulled her own weapons – shock sticks, held in place on her back – and launched herself at him. The first stick cracked against his helmet, but he ducked the second, spinning away. Valkyrie’s bubble collapsed completely now, as did Skulduggery’s, and she glimpsed him throwing fire even as her Ripper attacked, sickles blurring.

      Valkyrie knew the pattern and countered, slipped to the side and struck the Ripper’s knee, then spun and caught him in the ribs. His clothes absorbed the electrical charge, and he didn’t seem to register the pain.

      He left her an opening and she fell for it, committing herself to a swing that she regretted instantly. A sickle blade raked across her belly, would have torn her open were it not for her armoured jacket. He kicked at her ankle, swept her leg, and she hit the ground and somersaulted backwards to her feet, defending all the while. His knee thudded into her cheek and the world tilted.

      He leaped at her. She dropped the stick in her right hand and white lightning burst from her fingers, striking him in the chest and blasting him head over heels. He rolled and came up, his jacket smoking.

      Valkyrie picked up the fallen stick, placed it end to end with the other one. They attached and she twisted, the staff lengthening, and when the Ripper ran at her she whacked it into his leg, then spun and cracked it against his head. He fell back and she followed, the staff striking him once, twice, and then a twirling third time. He dropped one of his sickles.

      She went to finish him off and he dodged, dodged again, dodged faster than she could strike. He jumped over to the wall and rebounded, flipping over her head. She whirled but he was too close, and he grabbed the staff and pulled her into a headbutt that would have broken her nose had she not lowered her head. Even so, bright lights flashed, and she felt the staff being wrenched from her grip as she went staggering.

      The Ripper let the staff drop, and swung his remaining sickle towards her neck. She raised an arm, her armoured clothes saving her once again, and snatched the weapon away. It fell, clattering against the stones.

      Valkyrie ducked low and powered forward, grabbing him round the waist. Snarling, she lifted him off his feet and slammed him against the wall, then seized his helmet, searching for the twin releases, and tore it from his head. The Ripper fell back, blinking, and she swung the helmet into his jaw and he went down, and she hit him again and again until she figured that was probably enough.

      She dropped the helmet and got her breath back.

      “You got his helmet off,” Skulduggery said, standing over the motionless form of the second Ripper. “How did you manage that?”

      She shrugged. “I adapted accordingly. Come on. We have a doctor’s appointment.”

       3

      She pushed open the double doors and Doctor Nye waved a long-fingered hand.

      “Do not disturb me,” it said in that familiar high whisper. “I left strict orders not to be—”

      It looked up then, and its small eyes widened and its wide mouth opened as it got to its feet, the stool crashing to the ground behind it.

      Skulduggery held his gun low, by his hip. “The moment you set off an alarm, I will shoot you. I feel we ought to be clear on that from the very beginning.”

      Nye stopped moving backwards, and raised its arms. “I have no weapons.”

      Up close, Valkyrie could see that the threads that had once sewn Nye’s mouth and eyes shut were still there,