Crawlers

10:57pm

Without warning the pit was flooded with light. 

Mr Miller, the young man whom Steadman had first brought to me, had been in the dark for nearly five hours. His eyes were slow to adjust: I winced at the glare. When I recovered I saw a figure silhouetted on the lip of the pit, looking down. 

'What is it, Steadman?' I asked. 'Why are you out of your office?' 

In answer, Steadman pointed with his right arm. He was holding something: I only realized what when I heard the shot. 

BLAM. Mr Miller went limp: darkness fell for me once more behind his eyes as he died. Then there was a whine of machinery. 

I knew that sound. I waited, listening as, slowly, unstoppably, the reinforced glass panel slid back into place above me. Steadman had given me my freedom. Now he was taking it away: he was sealing the pit. 

'I am so disappointed in you,' he said, his voice sounding strangely small without the speakers. 'All these hundreds of years of the Corporation keeping you captive down here; all these fantastically expensive precautions because we believed you were as powerful as you claimed. And all along you were lying to us.' 

I did not reply - which, since Steadman had just killed my nearest mouthpiece, was not surprising. Not possessing, myself, the anatomical extravagance that is a human voice box, I had no way to talk back. 

'You know what I think?' Steadman asked. 'I think that in sixteen sixty-six you were lucky. Perhaps you got as far as you did because nobody noticed. London did still have the Great Plague to contend with, after all. But now? Today? In this century?' He sniffed. 'You never stood a chance. 

'It's been almost five hours since I released you,' he reminded me. 'What have you achieved? You told me you could take over the world, yet so far you've barely managed to take over this building. I mean, really: did you even have a plan? Or were you just going to stay here and hope that everyone on the planet suddenly decided to visit the Barbican? This is a farce. And I'm putting a stop to it.' 

I heard footsteps, then an echoing hiss and the rumble of heavy hydraulics. 

'I'm opening the door to the sewers,' Steadman announced. 'I'm leaving. If you'd been as good as your word, you could have been coming with me. I thought we could do great things together. With your help, I thought we could put the world to rights - run it properly at last, in an orderly manner, with everyone doing as they're told. Well, your majesty, you've wasted enough of my time. 

'In just over an hour this building and everything in it will be destroyed. The media will report the explosion as a "terrorist atrocity". I shall be on the other side of the city enjoying a cast-iron alibi and, quite possibly, a splendid dinner. Make no mistake,' Steadman finished, 'I will rule the world. But I see that I shall have to do it the only way that counts: with money. Goodbye, my Queen.' 

That was when we took him. 

For almost three hundred and fifty years I had kept certain aspects of my life cycle secret from Steadman and his predecessors. While he'd been talking, two of my new drones had been stalking him. 

I had allowed maturation to begin as soon as Steadman had released me. Now, after four hours and forty-something minutes, the drones were almost full-grown. When they dropped from the ceiling above him their weight knocked Steadman to the ground easily. The air rang with the hard, puncturing thunks of their ovipositors. 

Steadman screamed once. Then, at long last, he shut up. 

You see? I did have a plan. It was coming along nicely.