Chronicles of the Invaders 1: Conquest by John Connolly, Jennifer Ridyard Page A

things, they should be okay.
    “Which way?” asked Steven.
    “Left,” said Paul.
    “Why left?”
    “Why not? Would you prefer to split up?”
    Steven shook his head. He didn’t like being below ground, and already the tunnel was giving him the creeps. Although bulbs were strung irregularly along its length—another indication that the sewers were in use by the Illyri—they gave out only the dimmest of illumination, and there were great pools of darkness between each one.
    Paul looked at his younger brother with only barely concealed admiration. Steven was just a kid, but then so were many of the Resistance’s bravest operatives. The Illyri tended to concentrate their strictest surveillance efforts on adults and older teenagers, not children. Even at the best of times, children were difficult to police, and consequently there were kids walking the streets of Edinburgh with guns and plastic explosives hidden in their schoolbags. It wasn’t what any parents might have wished for their children, but there was a war on. Steven was braver than most of his peers, but he would always be Paul’s little brother, and Paul tried to protect him as best he could.
    “Didn’t think so,” he said. “Quietly now.”
    Together they headed south, their knives clutched in their fists. Their headlamps cast disorientating shadows on the tunnel walls, making them both jumpy, so they chose instead to switch them off and rely on their eyes and the lights on the walls.
    Paul had a pedometer attached to his hip, and he checked the distance as they walked, comparing it with the map in his hand. The tunnel seemed to run beneath South Bridge and Nicholson Street, then turned northeast at Lutton Place, heading in the direction of Queen’s Drive and the Salisbury Crags. As they drew nearer to the Crags, a stink assailed their nostrils, and Steven had to stop himself from retching loudly. It was the smell of burning, and worse.
    “The crematorium,” said Paul. “We must be close to it.”
    The Illyri had declared that burials were unsanitary in major urban areas, and had decreed that the remains of all deceased humans should be burned at a central crematorium built specially for that purpose to the east of Queen’s Drive. The order had caused some dismay, but not as much as might have been expected, since cremations had begun to outnumber burials even before the arrival of the invaders. People simply resented being told what to do, even if it was something that they had been doing anyway. It was the principle of the thing.
    They reached a T-junction in the tunnel, and a collapsed wall was revealed to their right. The bricks had been moved away, and supporting joists added. Paul and Steven moved in for a closer look, and saw that a hole had been bored into the sewer wall. A length of pipe, about fifteen feet long and wide enough for a man to move through on his hands and knees, connected the sewer with a second, better-lit tunnel beyond.
    “Stay here,” Paul told Steven.
    He hoisted himself into the pipe and shuffled along on his elbows, making as little noise as he could, until he reached the other end of the pipe. His hands were shaking, but he tried to remain still as he listened for any noises from beyond before risking a quick glance.
    The tunnel was perfectly round, with rubber pads set along the ground to provide a grip. Paul was baffled as to how the Illyri had managed to construct it without being noticed, until he recalled being told of the massive lasers they sometimes used to tunnel through mountains in order to build new roads or hide their bases. Yes, he thought, one of those lasers would do the trick if it could be assembled below ground, and it would explain why the tunnel walls were so smooth. The Illyri had simply burned their way under the city.
    To his right, the tunnel came to a dead end in a patch of near darkness. Some machinery was stored there, but Paul didn’t recognize any of it. To his left, the tunnel