“What?” Katalin launched herself out from between two snarling panthyruxi, arching gracefully into a handspring that used a monster as her springboard, landing on its tail. Startled, it flicked its tail upwards, hoisting her into the air and sending her tail-flail flying off somewhere into the corner of the tent. Instinctively Katalin used the unexpected momentum, somersaulting in the air and landing so savagely on the snout of the other monster that it bit its own tongue.

  She deliberately leaped away to the side with a powerful thrust of both legs, slamming the monster’s head into the jaws of the other panthyruxi, which was trying to lunge at her. Ignoring the boxes that flashed past her eyes, she twisted mid-air to land facing the two monsters again. The injured monster took a new wound from its fellow. Enraged, it attacked its companion, which responded with equal ferocity. Messages continued to scroll past as she watched the fight.

  “No!” Katalyn exclaimed. “‘N’, dammit! I don't want to be Corrupted!”

  “Corrupted sounds bad,” Tiny muttered nervously. He was cowering beside the generator, giving the thing occasional pats that were as much to reassure himself as to encourage the machine.

  “Tell me about it,” Katayn replied dryly. She stepped slowly backwards, as she attempted to find some sort of weapon to replace the tail she had lost, while not taking her eyes off the fighting panthyruxi. Her hand closed on a long handle. For a moment of hope she thought she’d found an axe, but it turned out to be a sledge hammer. Only a few days earlier, during the circus’s set up, she’d found that same exact hammer too heavy to swing easily. Now it seemed light in her hands.

  She padded forward, any sound from her bare feet easily masked by the fighting monsters. She knew the moment she had to wait for.

  She didn’t wait for the second monster to notice her. She hit it with the sledge hammer.

  “Dammit, die!” Katalin almost pulled herself off her feet with the force of her second blow of the hammer.

  Katalin stared at the last message. “You have got to be kidding me!”

  “Is it over?” Tiny asked hopefully.

  Katalin picked her way towards the doorway. “It’s gone quiet. Way too quiet. I… think this might be pretty bad, Tiny. You keep that generator running, okay? I’ll… go look.”

  Tiny straightened up in alarm, and the generator’s chugging note turned into stuttering hiccups. “You’re going to leave me here?”

  “I won’t go out of sight, I promise, and I’ll come straight back if I see any more of these… things,” Katalin reassured him. The lights flickered outside as the generator stuttered again. “It’s okay, Tiny. I’ll look after things, okay? But you have to keep the generator running.”

  Tiny nodded so fast his head all but blurred. It wasn’t until he focussed on the generator that the sound steadied and the lights brightened once more.

  Katalin gave Tiny one last reminder as she stepped through the torn tent entrance-way. Stalls and tents blocked the view in various directions. It might have been better if they blocked everything, because the rest of the view was both tragic and unnerving. Music from the abandoned fairground stalls formed a grotesque soundtrack as Katalin picked her way cautiously forward. In the eerie, floodlight-drenched stillness, her promise to Tiny seemed unnecessary. Not a panthyruxi stirred.

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  Only the light breeze was stirring, and some of the things that were not moving were almost certainly bodies. Not just panthyruxi bodies, which were beginning to disintegrate into smoke anyway. Human bodies, some lying as if merely asleep, others obviously torn up by panthyruxi claws and teeth.

  Purple-and-gold sparkles caught the light on the ground at the foot of the Big Top. One of the acrobats. The costume was from their second act. Katalin wasn’t close enough to tell who it was, and she was glad of that. Most of the others she could see must have been in the audience, from their clothes. The clown car was on the path, tipped over on its side. A box of popcorn was scattered all across the ground, as though someone threw it. A silk ribbon from the dance act blew across the ground and came to rest against the fallen ticket booth. It was yellow. Only Maisie had used yellow ribbons.

  Katalin gulped down bile and a bitter refrain of this isn’t fair, this isn’t happening, this isn’t what I wanted, and, especially, who or what did this so I can find them, hang them up in the Big Top by their toenails and use them for knife-throwing practice?

  She stopped in front of a gap between a parked circus flatbed and a storage tent, frowning off into the dark space beyond. Something glowed there, actinic blue and totally out of place.

  “What on Earth is that?”

  The blue light began to spin, forming a circle that slowly widened. Symbols began to appear around the edge, lighting up one by one.

  Katalin stared at the message with rising horror. “Phase… two?” The death and destruction was only phase one? What was this nightmare? She pinched herself, hard. “If this is a dream, I really, really want to wake up!”

  She didn’t wake up, and now she had a sore arm. Two minutes? How far could she run in two minutes? It wasn’t even enough time to find the key for Alessandro’s motorbike, which was the only thing she knew how to drive, and he never remembered to put fuel in it anyway. It was barely enough time to get to her trailer for a pair of shoes. She spared half a thought for her promise to Tiny, but it wasn’t honor that stopped her from taking the chance at outrunning whatever Phase Two turned out to be. It was practicality. She’d rather be attacked from in front, where she could dodge, than get hit in the back.

  She had a sledge hammer. She had the place lit up with floodlights. She had… messages she hadn’t looked at.

  Something had happened even to the messages she’d seen before. Where there had been translation failures, these had been replaced. She didn’t know if anything else had changed there, she hadn’t paid enough attention the first time.

  She impatiantly brushed the warning aside. There had been a message about monsters as improvised weapons.

  Did body parts count? Most of the panthyruxi bodies had gone. Maybe that tail would still be around, if she could find it?

  “Dammit, stop that,” Katalin groused. “What can I do about it anyway? How can I get un-corrupted?”

  Katalin reread the last line three times. She had no idea where to find a Priest of the Light or a Draught of Purity. All she could do was to hope that the current unbelievable situation was a “Corruption-based Initialisation Test,” and that somehow getting through it would cure her. At least the Corruption didn’t seem to be having an effect on her yet. She eyed her hands, just in case they were sprouting scales or something, but they looked the same as usual. Strong, brown, with short nails and large amounts of glitter.

  Time was running out. She pulled up more of the message boxes.

  Katalin would have liked to study them more, consider them properly, but she had no time. She made three quick choices.

  Katalin sprinted for the generator tent. “Tiny? Tiny! Where’s your beer? I need it. I need all of it!”

  ??????