Necropolis by Anthony Horowitz
Jet and Sing had been on their own, waiting for Scarlett and the others to arrive. They had no idea how she had managed to cross Hong Kong – it would have been impossible now to leave the building – but they were glad to see her when she walked in. Jet had been wounded. He was holding a dressing against his neck, and his shirt was soaked in blood. Sing was still holding the sword stick that he had used to kill Audrey Cheng. He seemed to be unhurt.
Neither of them had noticed that there was another man in the chamber, hiding underneath the altar. He was one of the chairman’s men and he had been shot twice. It was his blood that was pooling out. He knew he didn’t have very long. There was a gun inches from his outstretched hand.
Speaking in Chinese, Lohan demanded a report from his two lieutenants. Quickly, they told him what he wanted to know and he translated for Matthew and Richard.
“There were many people waiting here,” he said. “They would have killed you if you had tried to reach the door. But they have all been dealt with…”
“Then let’s get out of here,” Richard said. He turned to Matt. “It’s time to go.”
Lohan walked forward and shook Scarlett’s hand. “Good luck,” he said. “The journey that we made together just now is something that I will never forget.”
“I’m glad I met you, Lohan,” Scarlett said. “Thank you for helping me.” She had relaxed a little, but Matt could see that she was still concentrating, keeping the typhoon at bay. She had to stay in control. While she was inside the temple the wind and the rain were barely touching its walls.
The door with the five-pointed star was in front of them. It seemed so small and ordinary that it was hard to believe that it would lead them, not outside and into the storm but to anywhere in the world.
“So where are we going, Matt?” Jamie asked.
The dying man had fumbled for the gun. From where he was lying he could only see the two boys and the Chinese man who had arrived with them. The girl was standing right behind and the other man was somewhere out of sight. He could probably take out at least two of them before he was killed himself. He had decided that was what he would do. After all, it was the reason he was here.
Which one first?
The boy who had just asked the question – the one with the long hair and the American accent – was directly in his sight. Slowly, the man took aim. The boy was only a few steps away. The man’s hand was sticky with his own blood. The gun was covered in it. But he knew exactly what he was doing. There was no way he was going to miss.
Then the door with the five-pointed star opened.
Scott, with Pedro right behind him, burst into the temple. Jamie opened his mouth to speak. Matt was gazing in surprise. What had seemed impossible for so long had finally happened. The Gatekeepers had come together. They were all here, in the same space.
Scott. Jamie. Matt. Pedro. And Scarlett.
The Five.
But Scott hadn’t stopped. He ran forward and threw himself at his brother, knocking him aside.
A second later there was a gun shot.
Lohan acted with lightning speed. His own gun was in his hand instantly and he fired five times, the bullets strafing underneath the altar. The man who had been concealed there was killed before he could fire again.
Richard saw that Jamie was all right. Somehow Scott had known and had arrived in time to save him. But then Matt cried out.
The shot had missed Jamie, but Scarlett had been standing right behind him. She had been hit in the head and the wound was a bad one. Blood was pouring down the side of her neck. She toppled sideways. Richard caught her before she hit the floor.
And as she lost consciousness, the whole world exploded.
The typhoon had been kept at bay for too long. Now, as if recognizing what had happened, it fell on the Tai Shan Temple with all its strength. It was like being hit by a bomb, but in slow motion. As the nine of them stood there – the five Gatekeepers with Richard, Lohan, Jet and Sing – the whole building disintegrated around them. The roof was the first to go, torn off as if by a giant hand. Green tiles came crashing down. The wind roared in. Then one of the walls buckled and collapsed, the huge stones toppling forward. For centuries, the gods inside the temple had never seen daylight. Now they were flooded in it as the outside world burst in.
“The door!” Matt shouted.
It was still standing, but it wouldn’t be there for long. Once the walls were destroyed it would all be over. The door would go with them. Even now it might be too late. Jamie had joined his brother. The two of them had already turned towards it. Pedro seemed to be confused, frozen to the spot. Matt reached him and spun him round. Richard was hurrying forward, carrying Scarlett who was in his arms, limp, her eyes closed. Lohan followed. One of the spinning tiles had hit him and he was cradling his arm. There was no sign of his two lieutenants, Jet and Sing. They had disappeared beneath the broken wall.
The door had been built for the Gatekeepers, but each of them could take one companion with them. Richard was with Scarlett. Lohan was with Matt. There was still a chance they could all get out alive.
There was another explosion and a great hole suddenly appeared, punched into the wall. Rain and daylight came shafting through. The whole temple was shaking. Scott was the first to reach the door and threw it open. Behind him, the remaining gods were toppling and smashing to pieces on the hard floor. Pedro was next to him. The others were right behind.
They plunged through just as a last bolt of lightning struck the temple, pulverizing it. The remaining walls were swept away and scattered. Moments later, there was nothing left. Hong Kong Park was empty. And beyond it, Hong Kong itself lay in ruins as the clouds finally parted and the first, small ray of sunlight was allowed through.
The Necropolis was finished.
Much of it had been destroyed. More than half the skyscrapers had collapsed. Whole streets were buried beneath piles of twisted metal and brickwork that would take years to remove. Scavengers were already hard at work, burrowing into the rubble to find the jewellery – the diamond necklaces and the watches – that must surely lie beneath.
All over the world, people were waking up to the fact that a catastrophe on a massive scale had occurred. Twenty-four hour television news programmes were running the first pictures. There would be thousands dead, but at least the survivors would be able to breathe. The poisonous smog that had been suffocating them for so long had been completely swept aside.
Far away, sitting in the ice palace that he had made his home, the King of the Old Ones saw what had happened. He knew that the chairman had failed him. He knew that the Gatekeepers had escaped.
But it didn’t matter.
The Five had entered the door without knowing where they were going, so none of them would have arrived in the same place. They would be as far apart now as they had ever been. Worse than that, the door had been disintegrating even as they had passed through it, and the final blast had played one last trick on them. If the five of them had survived the journey, they would find out very soon.
It would be a very long time before they found each other again.
It was enough.
The King of the Old Ones reached out and gave the order that his disciples had been waiting for. He had made the decision. It was time for the end of the world to begin.
When Necropolis was first published in hardback, hundreds of readers entered a competition to ask me a question about The Power of Five. You can find many of them with my answers on the website. These were my top 12 favourite questions.
AH
How do you start to write a story? Don’t you find it daunting when faced with a blank page?
Patrick, aged 12, Isle of Wight
My favourite part of writing a book is thinking up the ideas and that can start a long time before I actually sit down at my desk. For example, I first visited Hong Kong (the main setting of Necropolis) twenty years ago. I got married there - and that was when I first began thinking of a nightma
What was your inspiration for The Power of Five series?
Archie, aged 9, Peckham
I grew up with the Narnia books and then with Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings… but I never thought I’d be able to write a full-blooded fantasy sequence. I’m not very good at creating other worlds. I prefer to write about the world as it is. But at the same time, it’s often struck me that the real world may not be quite how we imagine it. For example, if I walk past a locked-up church at night, I wonder what’s happening inside. Is it actually empty or are there strange creatures coming together in the dark to engage in mysterious rituals? When I was living in North London, I used to pass a shop at the end of the street that always had furniture in the window… the same things all year round. I became convinced that it was only pretending to sell furniture and I used to like imagining what really happened there. Could it be a meeting place for gangsters? What if it was actually run by visitors from another world?
I love the idea that magic and witchcraft and battles between supernatural creatures could be raging all around us but just out of our sight. This is particularly true of Necropolis. Hong Kong is being taken apart piece by piece but nobody has noticed. And I believe it could happen anywhere in the world: as one of the characters says, “We see only what we want to see because that is the way of the city.”
Did you base any of the characters on anyone you know?
Dan, aged 11, Hampshire
Scarlett is based on the granddaughter of a friend of mine. The real Scarlett is only nine years old but it was easy to imagine what she might be like when she’s fifteen. I also met a boy who was quite like Matt… he was always in trouble at school and didn’t seem to be enjoying himself very much. I went back to Hong Kong recently and many of the characters and locations come from places I visited and people I met. The lady with the birds of fortune, for example, is exactly as I describe her. She told my fortune outside the Tin Hau Temple (although she didn’t say if the book would be a success or not).
Did you make up the Old Ones?
Karine, aged 12, Leeds
The Old Ones began life as a bad dream. My wife had bought me a strange piece of pottery - a sort of jug with a horrible creature climbing up the side. Some of her presents are a bit on the weird side! Anyway, that night I had a nightmare in which my house was invaded by beasts and, when I woke up, the pillows were on the floor, the duvet was tied in a knot and I knew I had an idea for a new book.
That said, the Old Ones were named after characters described by a famous horror writer called H.P. Lovecraft which he in turn took from a strange, sixth-century text called the Necronomicon. I’ve read it and I have to admit I didn’t quite understand it but it’s a cheerful piece of writing that seems to be describing the end of the world. There’s even a little snatch of it in Necropolis. You’ll find it at the end of the prologue.
Did writing from a female point of view feel weird?
Sarah, aged 10, Devon
Not at all. I’m very pleased with the way Scarlett turned out. I was quite nervous at the thought of writing about a girl as the main character - mainly because I’m known as a writer for boys and I was worried that boys might not be interested in following the adventures of a 15-year-old girl. I also wondered if I would be able to do it. Alex Rider, Nick Diamond, Matt Freeman… all my heroes have been boys and in real life I only have sons. And of course I was once a boy, rather than a girl, myself.
In the end, writing Scarlett was a pleasure. She’s a little more emotional than my boy characters. She’s not afraid to cry, for example. But she’s also just as tough as them… as you’ll discover in chapter4. I like her because she’s so unpredictable. So, in answer to your question - no, it never felt weird. I didn’t have to put on a dress or anything like that.
Can you tell us anything about the fifth book in this series?
Tyler, aged 13, Brighton
The fifth book will also be the last book in the series! I don’t have a title for it yet but I have a feeling that it’s going to be the thickest yet (in terms of how many pages there will be). It’s going to be divided into five parts and those parts are going to be called: Earth, Fire, Air, Water and Ice. I don’t want to give too much away but it will finish with a battle, probably in Antarctica, and although I’ve often said that I don’t like children dying in my books, not all of the five gatekeepers will make it to the end. I should add that if you read the first four episodes carefully, some of the elements that make up the climax are already in place.
Why are all five children orphans?
Callum, aged 10, Nottingham
There are two main reasons. First, it greatly helps the stories if the heroes (and heroine) don’t have parents, homes, ordinary lives. It means that they’re “out there”, on their own, having to depend on their own resources to win the battles. Alex Rider is an orphan for the same reason.
But there’s an extra dimension to the five gatekeepers - which is to say, they have more than one identity. If you’ve read Nightrise, you’ll know that they all met many thousands of years ago when they defeated the Old Ones for the first time. But they also seem to have an identity that has been drawn from myth and legend. Pedro, for example, is associated with Manco Capac, founder of the Incas (see chapter 15 of Evil Star). Scott and Jamie were also known as Flint and Sapling, characters out of Native American mythology. In Necropolis you find that Scarlett has another name.
The gatekeepers don’t have parents because it is possible that they were never actually born… even if that thought does rather make my head spin.
Do you believe in telepathy or any other supernatural powers your characters possess?
Tom, aged 10, Kenilworth
I suppose I believe in the possibility of these things - which is to say I have an open mind. I don’t think I would be able to write this series if I didn’t.
Is it easier to write about faraway settings - e.g. Peru/Hong Kong rather than England? Have you visited all the places you write about in these books or do you just research in other ways?
Jack, aged 13, Cork
As I’ve already mentioned, I went back to Hong Kong recently, at the start of 2008, and I visited all the places that you’ll read about in the book. I hope I’ve done the city justice. I was truly amazed by its size and energy, by the millions of people packed together in this relatively tiny space. The street markets that Scarlett visits in chapter 17 are exactly as I describe them… I was particularly struck by the fish sliced in half but still alive and I was as revolted as Scarlett.
I think it is important and I do get inspiration from visiting somewhere different before I write about it. I get so many ideas, just from walking the streets. And you’re not going to get the noise and the smells from a guide book!
So, I took the Star Ferry, I walked round The Peak and I even visited Macau where, quite by chance, I stumbled on the extraordinary house that I would turn into the headquarters of the White Lotus Society. But what struck me perhaps more than anything was the pollution in that part of the world. I kept on seeing people wearing white masks to stop themselves breathing in the worst of it and that became a big part of the book. If I hadn’t travelled out there, it would never have appeared.
Who/what is the Librarian?
Sacha, aged 11, Bolton
I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for the last book to find out - although, in truth, everything you need to know about him is contained in Necropolis. I particularly enjoyed writing the chapter when Matt discovers the library. The choice he is given - whether or not to read the book of his life - is at the very heart of what this series is about. Would you read yours?
Is the King of the Old Ones the
Kieran, aged 12, London
What a very interesting question! The King of the Old Ones is vaguely inspired by the figure of Antichrist which you will find in the Bible. Try reading the Book of Revelations. It’s full of monsters and nightmarish things. But for me he’s really just a personification of everything that is bad in the world. I call him Chaos because that’s what he represents. An end of law, order and civilization.
Do I believe in the Devil? I don’t believe in a figure with horns and a tail. Nor do I think there’s a hell we go to if we’ve been bad (so I’ll be more than a bit surprised if I end up there). But I do believe in evil as a force. And when I look at the world, particularly in the past ten years, I think it has been very much in evidence.
If you had to be one of your own characters in The Power of Five, which would it be and why?
Zak, aged 10, Glasgow
Another brilliant question to end with. My first instinct is to say that I would like to be one of the five gatekeepers as I wouldn’t mind being a teenager again and I’ve always fancied having magical powers. On the other hand, I know what happens at the end and I’m not sure I’d want to be in any of their shoes when they reach the last chapter. I’d quite like to be Richard Cole, the journalist, but then again there’s something pretty terrible waiting for him in the last book too. It’s very difficult - but I think I’m going to choose Lohan. He’s young, a great fighter, a leader and a master criminal. I’d quite to be all these things.