"Doctor, please," I put my hands up, although they’re full of syringes that are primed and ready for use, "I honestly don’t want any trouble. I just want to help my friend. He’s a good guy and would be of no use to you here."
"I want you to leave before you get any more hurt, laddie." Her voice is certain and unwavering, but something in her eyes tells me she isn’t honestly going to shoot me. I could be wrong, but I’m sure that doctors swear an oath or something that must include that they can’t shoot people. The gun is just a couple of inches in front of my face, and I guess that if one of these syringes has something useful in it the best place to put it would be in an arm. That’s where they take blood samples from, so there must be an easy-access artery there, but her lab coat is going to be too thick to pierce through. I quickly judge the distance between myself and her body. I’m not drilled in close combat, and my reaction time isn’t the best, but impulsively I push her gun arm out of my face with as much power I can muster and stick a syringe into her neck, pushing the plunger. I hear the gun clatter across the corridor and the doctor looks at me furiously, hitting me on the face that she’s only recently patched up. It hurts, but I’m too determined to do anything other than grunt in pain. "You’re going to regret thissss, laddie," she says faintly. Apparently, the neck was a good place to aim, as she slumps in my arms a moment later.
What was in that thing, horse tranquilliser? I only give myself a moment to wonder before dropping the syringes and dragging her limp body, my leg screaming with the effort, to one of the empty examination rooms. They are simple things that only need a keycard to open them, and the Doctor’s ID dangles from her neck. I unclip it from its lanyard and scan myself in, hearing the electrical buzz of the lock being released.
"Sorry, Doc," I whisper as I lay her down in the darkness. I head back to the corridor and then realise that I’ve left her equipment bag wide open which looks incredibly suspicious to anyone who might walk past. I decide to put that in the room with her out of some kind of respect for her belongings, which feels idiotic but strangely necessary.
I scoop up the syringes and the Doctor’s gun which had skidded over to the side and try not to think too much about what I’m about to do. The element of surprise is the only thing that’s going to help me here. I scan the keycard and push the door as soon as I hear the sound of the release. I know I have little choice but to hope I’m as lucky with a second syringe as I was with the first, so I hold the gun awkwardly in my left hand, its weight uncomfortable and alien in my grasp. The syringe I used on the Doctor had clear liquid in it. All of the others had a slight tinge to the contents, so the likelihood that they will have the same effect is slim at best.
The sound of the door opening makes Miss Banks turn, but very slowly, as if she’s reluctant to take her eyes from her subject. It works to my advantage as I stick the syringe in the back of her neck, and she makes a small sound as it pricks her skin. But rather than fall to the ground like the Doctor she hits my hand away in anger as she spins around. I hold the gun up but take a step back, my hands shaking despite myself.
"Oh, for goodness’ sake," she says flustered and pulls her own small gun out, pointing it at me with a far steadier hand.
"Curtis Mayes, you are more trouble than you are worth," she says bitterly.
"How rude. That’s not what you were saying to me half an hour ago. What happened to me helping you to protect everyone? Augurs included?" I ask with a bravado I don’t actually feel.
"This is so much bigger than you or me, Curtis. You need to think about what you’re doing right now and realise that you are stopping me from doing my job," she says, sounding not unreasonable.
"I don’t doubt that for a second, Miss Banks, but you have to realise that you can’t go around hurting people that I care about if you want me to cooperate," I say, the truth of my words hitting home to me as I speak. I feel like I’ve inadvertently become some kind of Augur freedom fighter.
"You are such a child," she says exasperated. "This young man was found snooping around an active crime scene. The scene of an Augur explosion, no less," she says tilting her head towards Jer without taking her eyes off me. I look at Jer, who I think is conscious but barely.
"He could help you, you know, if you would just untie him from the chair and treat him like a normal human being instead of some kind of criminal," I point out.
"We tried asking nicely, but he insisted on causing trouble. What choice did I have?" she asks rhetorically.
Jer is murmuring something that I can’t make out and I worry that maybe he’s been drugged or worse.
"What have you done to him?" I ask, trying to edge my way towards him without her noticing. I know we’re at an impasse, guns trained on each other. I couldn’t even bring myself to pull the trigger if I had to, and I know it. She, on the other hand, would probably have no problem with it at all.
"Just a bit of sodium thiopental and an encounter with Steve," she says dismissively. "Have you ever fired a gun before, Curtis?" she asks, narrowing her eyes at me. I haven’t, and I’m sure she knows it. I know there are all kinds of things involved, like recoil and aim and the sound being so loud in an enclosed space that it can make you temporarily deaf.
"I used to go shooting," I lie. It comes easily, but she doesn’t look convinced. Whatever half-arsed plan I might have had when I came into the room has gone completely out of the window, and I’m desperately trying to figure out an alternative. If Jer would just wake up enough to use some of his power right about now that would help massively. But why hasn’t anyone come to Miss Banks’ rescue? Surely there are security cameras everywhere and back up just waiting for things to go sideways when interrogating an Augur?
"Where’s Sunglasses Steve now?" I ask her, stalling.
"Just upstairs by the car, waiting for you so that he can drive you back to your girlfriend. I imagine he’ll be getting pretty impatient by now and will come down to see what’s taking you so long," she says cooly. I don’t look forward to another encounter with him any time soon and wish that I had something other than a gun that I’m unskilled enough to fire and a pocketful of syringes that may or may not be of any use.
"I’m sorry, Curtis, but your time is up," she says, cocking the gun and aiming it steadily at my head. Our outstretched arms are only a meter apart and I’m sure that if she shoots from this distance she will not only hit her target, but that target will splatter against the dark walls like a burst watermelon. The thought of imminent death should terrify me, and in some ways it does, but equally I feel like there’s no use in giving up when I’ve gotten this stupidly far. Plus, there’s Ella, who sweeps across my mind at that moment like a cool cloth on a fevered forehead. She’s the entire reason that I’m here and why it’s worth not giving up. As if in silent answer to my prayers, Miss Banks suddenly crumples to the floor, knocked in a lightening-fast impact from a chair. The blow sends her gun flying across the room into the shadows and her thin shape is sprawled out on the ground, unconscious. I look up in shock as Jer stands, haggard and panting with effort, and places the chair neatly back where it was.
"Bitch," he spits at her limp body and rubs his wrists, which he somehow managed to untie while I was stalling.
"Mate, thank God you did that," I say, hugging him in relief despite the pain it sends through my body. He pats me roughly on the shoulder, then drags himself over to the corner where the gun fell and scoops it up. Somehow it seems to suit him more than me. He has an eye that is slowly turning black and swollen, and he looks like he hasn’t seen daylight in a while. "You look bloody awful," I say, almost apologetically.
"You don’t look too grand yourself," he says in his gentle Dublin accent, and I realise it must be true. "Any plan of action from here, boy wonder?" he asks me as I gently tread around Miss Banks’ body and buzz us out of the room. "Honestly, no. But I have a keycard that will get us through doors and we have two loaded guns, so I’m kind of hoping we can wing it." He attempts to roll his eye
s, but I think it hurts too much so he motions me to lead the way.
Out in the corridor there’s no sign of life. The interrogation room I left the Doctor in is still locked and dark, and there are no other rooms with the telltale glow coming from inside which would indicate that someone is inside, so I tell Jer we should make our way to the lift. I’m limping, but I refuse his offer to lean on him as, honestly, he doesn’t look up to taking any extra weight right now.
"What is this place?" I ask as we step inside and I assess the rows of buttons. I can only assume that floor zero is the ground and that all the minus numbers are the various basement layers of this place. There are five of them, and it looks like we’re on minus three.
"Some kind of counter terrorism unit of the government is all I could gather," Jer says whilst I hit the ‘zero’ button.
"That nasty piece of work that did this to me, and probably that to you," I say motioning to his black eye, "is probably waiting right outside the door."
"So, shoot now and ask questions later, is it?" he asks.
"Sort of. I’ve never fired a gun before to be honest, so I’d rather not shoot anyone if I can help it," I confess. He feigns surprise but then gives me a smile.
"I thought you ‘used to go shooting’, was it?" he jokes.
"And I thought you were helpless and unconscious," I retort. The levity of the moment passes as the lift stops and the doors open slowly. There’s no welcoming ‘ding’ as it reaches its destination, or comforting recorded voice telling us that we’ve reached the ground floor. It’s a big space, like a large metal box with enough room for five people to stand abreast in the middle. With a signal from Jer, he and I plaster ourselves to the walls on each side so that anyone looking in will, upon first inspection, think it’s empty. To my satisfaction, Steve, still wearing his sunglasses, steps into the lift, evidently thinking that now would be a good time to check out what’s going on downstairs. Jer doesn’t hesitate for a second and hits him over the head with the barrel of his gun.
Unfortunately, Steve is mostly fat and muscle, trained to do the heavy lifting and people-beating when necessary, so all it does is mildly annoy him. With a roar that you could only expect to come from such a big man, he swings round to hit Jer, but as his body moves I see an opening. I grab a syringe in a panic and plunge it into his thick neck, knowing that it will only act as a brief distraction but hoping that it might do more. Like an angry bear being attacked by bees, his attention immediately turns to me and I see his fists, the size of hams, clench and aim towards my already tender face. My body automatically crouches down, and my hands go up in supplication, like a reflex action. His first fist lands in my solar plexus, near enough to the spot he hit me earlier and with just as much force. His second fist never finds its home as a huge impact, like a compressed hurricane, throws him off his feet and plasters him against the back wall. Slightly winded but also astounded I get up and peer out of the lift to see my saviour.
Standing just a few meters away, legs apart and hands glowing, is the short, spiky-haired girl I remember as Lou. Her fingers crackle with energy, and she throws a small object on the ground angrily, which I realise is a mobile phone. She dusts her hands off and a few remaining sparks fly off her fingers before they return to normal.
"Lou?" Jer asks, as shocked as I am to see her here. He steps out of the lift towards her and she tugs his collar to pull him down into a rough kiss. He groans from the pain but seems to get over it pretty quickly. Obviously, this is the girlfriend he mentioned. The fact that it’s a feisty, wiry girl like Lou shouldn’t be surprising at all. I clear my throat as I hobble out of the lift, and she lets him go, right before she punches him on the arm.
"You bloody idiot!" she says to him before turning towards me. "And you! Ella’s going to bloody kill you," she fumes, grabbing me by the arm and half dragging me to the black Mercedes that I was escorted in. She opens the back door and motions for me to get in, and Jer climbs into the front passenger seat. Lou gets behind the wheel, and I ask where the driver got to.
"I took care of him first," she says, turning the key that was already in the ignition and starting the car. I guess that’s where the phone came from that she so ruthlessly threw on the floor. There’s a panel of buttons by the handbrake, and she presses one of them, which causes the metal grill at the far end of the warehouse to open. It’s dark outside so it must be some time after five in the afternoon. Could be later. How long was I gone for?
I sigh and lean back in the seat, grateful that I’ve got people who know what they’re doing around me. Despite the slight madness of the situation, Lou is happy enough to talk as she drives.
"As soon as I knew you’d been taken," she says to Jer, "I pulled in all the favours I could. Marvin accessed the CCTV that showed the car you’d been grabbed in and, thanks to your mobile phone, he was able to figure out where he’d stopped. That was the third warehouse I had to break into before I found you," she says almost bitterly, making me feel like we should be apologising for the inconvenience. I suddenly pat my pockets and feel the familiar rectangle inside my jacket.
"Can they track me now?" I ask, pulling it out.
"Probably. Best to dump it," she says with zero emotion. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Not because it was expensive, but because it’s my one line to my parents, if I get to speak to them again. Gone are the days when I’d memorise phone numbers and without it I wouldn’t have a way of getting hold of them. I settle for switching it off although I don’t know if that will help.
"That’s why they have such a hard time tracking Augurs down," Lou continues, oblivious to my dilemma, "we’re digitally invisible. You might as well be too, considering how much time you spend with us now," she points out.
"Have you spoken to Ella?" I ask her, tiredness washing over me now that the adrenaline has stopped pumping through my body.
"Yes, and I told her to stay as far away from these people as possible. She wanted to come with me, but I told her it would be too much of a risk. She can be stupidly stubborn sometimes," she says, almost like a big sister that’s been trying to keep her out of trouble and has been failing. "I told her to stay at your house, although I don’t know how sensible that is with Edward Clarence as your next door neighbour," she points out.
"Whoa! He’s your neighbour? Was he the creepy person sending you death threats?" Jer says to me. I realise a lot has happened since I saw Jer last night, including that particular revelation.
"Yeah. I don’t think he’s interested in harming Ella though," I say. "He’s a hothead but he’s not actually a nasty guy. Just a bit volatile."
"You’ve spoken to him then?" Jer asks.
"He paid us a visit this morning, and it wasn’t to bring us a pie and welcome Ella to the neighbourhood," I say wearily. The landscape around us is building up from low warehouses to taller buildings as we drive back into the busier part of town. We’re hitting the evening rush hour, so progress is slow, and Lou is getting antsy.
"We need to dump this car as soon as we can," she says, looking for somewhere safe to stop.
"I won’t be able to make it on public transport with my leg," I say, and it throbs as if to affirm it. I can see the grim expression she pulls from the rearview mirror, as if she was hoping I wouldn’t say that.
"We’d look dodgy as hell on the tube anyway, what with our faces in the states that they are," Jer points out. His eye is still swollen, and I can tell that my cheek is too from the way my mouth feels when I talk.
"Okay, so we need to change vehicles and get out of town as quickly as possible," Lou says, as if she’s talking about planning picnic to the park and not running for our lives. "First, we’ll go to yours to scoop up Ella, and then we’ll hit the road. I just need to get off the main road," she says, navigating a traffic jam and driving down a side street. She drives competently, like she does it all the time. I passed my driving test last year and haven’t gotten back into a car since. Dad doesn’t let me drive his, and I h
aven’t exactly needed to own my own car. The thought of my Dad suddenly hits me, and I realise that I’m not even going to be able to say goodbye to them. How long will Ella and I be gone for? A month? A year? Maybe longer.
We’re going to have to see what Matthew Avers does with the data I gave him on Carlton Munday, and if we’re lucky there could be some major changes to the system in a matter of days. But we’ll have to do it from a safe distance, particularly now MI-dodgy-as-hell are on our tails.
"Do you know what that place was?" I ask Jer now that we’ve got a moment to talk.
"Some kind of government facility, but for what, I’m not sure."
"Miss Banks told me she was part of the Anti-Terrorism Unit, ATU she called it. So, basically, now that Munday is Acting Prime Minister and has issued some kind of state of emergency, she can pretty much arrest anyone who even smells like they might be connected to Augurs," I tell him.
"I figured as much," he nods. "She said something similar to me. But what was odd was the lack of security and the kind of low-budget feel of it all."
"It looked to me like they opened shop recently," Lou pointed out, winding her way through the residential streets of what I assumed was South East London. "Everything was either very new, like the security doors and this car, or very old, like it had been out of use for a long time."
That gets me to thinking. She’s right, of course. The interrogation rooms were old and damp, like they’d just been pulled out of mothballs from some forgotten time. And the fact that there were several basement floors was another telltale sign. The lack of security cameras, or at least ones that were being manned. Even Dr. Lingham seemed kind of new to it all, like she’d just been hired to help out. There was no teamwork or unity between the few members of this unit that we had encountered.
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