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Chapter 1: Meadow Hospital

The sound that the cardiograph made represented the struggle that life endured to continue. Just that steady bleep, bleep, bleep. It had a strange quality to it, that made the sound echo outside in the corridors that connected the dorms, resonating in dark corners, in the depths of abandoned cleaner’s buckets, through the doors of the lift when it opened to let people onto the ward. The hollow quality was comparable with the death rattle; the phase in which a patient’s lungs relaxed and contracted in desperate heroism and utter futility to put off the demise of the individual that they served, and carry on sifting air. Lungs lived to sift air. Without a ready supply of the stuff, they were just organic matter with no living purpose, like GM cattle. The sound could also be compared with the noise a fist made knocking against the inside of a coffin in which the body it was connected to had been shut, and even the echo that fist would make if it were to rap Death on the shoulder. Bleep. After all, there was nothing on the other side. Only black, endless darkness, eternal limbo, where nothing survived, died or decayed. You became less than a thought, less than the briefest inkling of inspiration, less than the twinkle in the eye of the beholder. You became so little that you would be quite oblivious to the featureless world in which you floated, of which you were a part. Oblivious, that is, of just about everything. But there was one thing, one little entity from the life that once was, that lived on, that echoed through the cavernous deeps like a far off pebble hitting rock after a heady fall. Just a sound. That bleep, bleep, bleep. But it was only an echo. You were in the place where no sound had its origins. The only sound following that was silence.

*

Finally overwhelmed by despair, choked to the point where he could not longer breathe freely, and his head in his hands, Paul Greenwood sat opposite the bed. It was a clean and featureless dorm that Patient 807 lay in, the floor and walls well-scrubbed. A cleaner had been in earlier to keep them in check. It wasn’t as if there was even anyone still using the bed. The room was practically vacant. Were the patient to be moved to an alternative resting place; the floor outside, perhaps, it was unlikely that she would complain. She’d been in the room for three whole weeks; too weak to be moved, too sick to be cured, too dead to be alive. It was like keeping a squashed beetle on your carpet, rather than scraping it up and getting rid of it. Beds were designed for the living, for people to sleep in and recuperate in, not to die in. Dying was one of the only things that could be done absolutely anywhere you liked. And when this death was a certainty, why not clear out? Why not get as far from the bed as possible? It just might be that some other sickly rodent will be in need of it, sooner or later.

The cleaner had got off about an hour before, thinking the comments that he had no courage and indeed no right to say. The nurses never listened to him. They claimed that a bed was a better place to die than in, say, a loved ones arms, as they hoisted you off to a better location. In a bed, you could be at rest, ergo, you could be at peace. It was the kind of logic that made you a nurse, or a mid-wife, or a social worker, and not a ‘doctor.’ He hadn’t said this. After all, he was a cleaner, a janitor, a nobody. The retorts could be ferocious. So he’d gone home. The place was spick and span, and his microwave was calling to him.

That left just the patient and the kid in the dorm. Across the ward, many of the senior doctors had gone home; the oncologists, diagnosticians, surgeons and the like; all had returned to their loving families, or mistresses perhaps. It was Friday, after all. When you earned enough money to put the food on the table for two families, why not do it? Wasn’t that the whole idea of capitalism? I have earned the money, therefore I will spend it? It made a sick sort of sense. It wasn’t as if having unprotected sex with multiple partners was dangerous to your health or anything. And besides, being a doctor was tough.

You had to sit down with people and tell them that they were dying, that none of the drugs would work, that there wasn’t anything more that they could do, besides making you comfortable. And even that felt like scant consolation in the minds of men who just possibly went home at the end of the day to two wives. Comfort was something that was to be enjoyed, within reason, by the living. Once you were dead, there was very little need for it. For this reason, it was okay to lock the dead in wooden boxes, and bury them underground, or throw them off boats into churning waves, or lock them in crates and burn them to cinders. Perhaps it was patented as a final glimpse of satisfaction; a few carefree moments without pain. So what if the drug-addled corpses couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t recognise loved-ones, couldn’t extend their expression beyond that of a dreamy smile. At least they weren’t hurting anymore. Because that made sense. The one thing anyone on their last legs would want to feel before an eternity of nothing was nothing. Inspired.

A night-warder paused by the door to the room, and her fingers touched the glass briefly as she watched the shrunken shape in the white bed and the dark, hunched figure sitting at the end of it, leaning forwards, motionless. Then she was gone. From the dorm, there was the sound of the lift door clanking open, and then shutting. Then silence. Silence, except for the sound of the cardiograph. And then a single, fine, drawn out note; the red line across tear-filled vision, before the silence became absolute, and blocked out everything.

It was a long time before Paul Greenwood moved. The fabric of reality had, in his perspective, taken on a drunken pattern, and was skipping by in great chunks of image. Hours passed as the room grew colder and colder, the lights that had blinked on the life-support equipment winked out for good, and his flesh began to creep involuntarily. He’d always had a natural repulsion of cold. But with his brain still frozen in a swaying motion, his insides welling into his throat like overflowing tap-water, the rest of him, the stuff that did the living and thinking, didn’t care to notice. Each of his senses, as if aware that they were being ignored, seemed to sharpen, and Paul could taste a saltiness on his lips, could feel the clammy, clinging cotton of his shirt trying to get his attention and smell the universal undertone of coach exhaust-fumes on his trousers and bag. As the sensations reached his brain, he was at first confused, forgetting any knowledge of the existence of clothes or bags. When recollection dawned; where he was and what was happening, the welling inside him recommenced.

He had set out from university the night before, but had been inexplicably delayed by a series of unusual traffic incidents. Everything had been fine; well, as fine as having no money and going off to see your sick foster-mother in hospital could be, everything had been rosy until he had got off of the bus he had taken from campus at the coach terminal in Derry Mill, where a white van had toppled onto its side while turning, aided by a nudge from a reversing coach. Paul’s coach, to be exact. A furious driver with blood seeping from a cut across his eyebrow had shaken off the paramedics and confronted the coach driver with a pale fist, claiming attempted murder. There had been an awkward half-hour of waiting on the terminal concourse with the other passengers; scraggy-clothed students with long hair, old couples and foul-smelling, obese adolescents, as the police had interrogated everybody who had witnessed even the slightest glimpse of the incident, and then their mothers, before putting away their notebooks, putting on their hats, and putting the passengers out of their misery by getting in their Astra Panda cars and screeching off. They were followed soon after by the ambulance, and then the van driver, at which point, a man from the coach service had stepped out onto the concourse, and had duly wasted more time apologising at length for the unfortunate incident that had delayed the waiting throng. Some progress had then been made through various suburbanised towns that Paul knew only by sight and not by name, until the idiot coach driver steered them onto the M25, and hit a jam instantly. Several loud complaints from the fat adolescents at the back then prompted the driver to attempt a brave U-turn, which ended in disaster as the coach became pinned across three lanes, causing a further jam behind them of blaring horns. Soon, a familiar police car had emerged from the crush of metal and several officers had climbed aboard. It seemed when they had asked the driver to produce his paperwork that something was wrong; either the man didn’t speak English, or he didn’t have a license. Inevitably, both were the case, and a bemused Middle-Eastern gentleman in a coach-driver’s uniform was pinned against the windscreen and cuffed, to mixed applause and complaints, before being man-handled away into the squad car, where he would be stuck in the jam anyway. Paul, with his mind set on other things, decided to take every ounce of culpable stupidity at face-value, responding to actions that merited swear words with absent-minded nods and monosyllables.

Of course the coach didn’t deliberately back into you! What do you think this is, GTA? Perhaps you should be quizzing yourself on the dynamics of trying to spin a Mercedes Sprinter on a sixpence! Of course the passengers are unhappy! We’ve been made to wait out in the cold for ages while a mechanic and an Arab coach-driver come to blows. Of course the M25 is going to be packed out! Its evening, and this is one of the biggest centres of population on the planet, so its quite likely that some of those people might be inclined to move around. Of course the driver is an illegal immigrant! He’s tried to turn a coach on a motorway of traffic; all of which moves in one direction, which would be obvious to anyone who‘d lived in the area for say, a month. This went largely unheard, even to Paul himself. They were the sort of exclamations he would usually be passing over his tongue, if he was not already yelling them into the culprit’s ear, but his usually short temperament and sparse patience had been stretched lately, and not in a positive sense. It was like he just didn’t care. It was like everything else that was happening outside Meadow Hospital was a sideshow that meant little or nothing to him, and so could be freely ignored, and in that respect tolerated. Lethargic, was how he felt. Despondent.

The coach company had sent for another driver, while a police officer slowly shifted the coach to the side of the motorway. Paul had still contrived to remain silent, even as the hubbub of conversation intensified, even as one of the adolescents sprung, for lack of a better word, to his feet and started a shouting match with the bobby, with the usual accusations of discrimination. A woman near the front had then dived into the melee, calling the kid something nasty, before smiling toothily at the man in uniform. The teen’s friends at the back then started some shouting of their own, but were hesitant and remained in their seats, until finally they ran out of swear words, the commotion died down, and the police officer apologised to the coach at large, for arresting the driver, but reassuring the passengers that the harmless oaf would be going away for a very long, long time.

“Why don’t you go away for a long time?” were the only words Paul said, but they were only muttered under his breath. University had suited him, in that he was someone who liked to voice his opinion on things, although only voluntarily. He didn’t understand when tutors who had become used to his outbursts suddenly flashed him a special glance and asked his opinion on the density of Henry James’s prose, or whatever, and expected him to go off on one just like that, as if he’d been automatically thinking along the same lines. Not that he didn’t pay attention; he enjoyed his course very much, but he knew that no one person could think along precisely the same lines as another, and even if they did, they would interpret those thoughts differently. So when the tutors tried to tempt him into being a rebel, which he found they now did on a regular basis, he would simply force an agreeable smile, and if he was feeling especially cheerful, maybe add a complimentary point. After all, some people liked sentences that go on for entire pages, like the many portions or segments of the wild African centipede, and the slimmer and yet no less significant scales of the North African millipede; but hold the wild connotations of ocean waves eternally rolling in motion, as they lacked the complexity of character and the fullness of personality they required in order to be labelled as true personifications of the extended sentence structure and thereby gain everlasting fame on the lips of poets and scholars across this planet, and perhaps even across others, were the indigenous inhabitants to develop the skill of close-reading and, indeed, inter-planetary library transfer technology, that would allow them to see for themselves the beauty and majesty of the extended sentence, had they the depth of knowledge, the level of comparison and the years of study that humans have to benefit our understanding of the art of literature, and indeed the language to cope with such a remarkable array of tortured sub-clauses, changes of direction and entire shelves of commas set in type, unless of course the otherworldly beings dabbled in no punctuation; an interesting consequence, which could seriously inhibit the length of their natural sentence structure, or perhaps give it no clear finishing point; the single, undeniable blockade of the full-stop is but a figment and… well, delighted to meet you chaps, and I have to say, your grasp of language is far and away superior to what I’ve seen on Earth, I mean, your words theoretically go on forever, so, um, when you’re ready, beam me up! Now there’s an extended sentence for you. What rubbish.

And yet finally, as the company’s back-up driver arrived on the scene from amid the din like a saviour from the heavens, the clouds of traffic at last seemed to disperse, the crush of metal and plastic parted by a will to cross the sea. The second driver did not speak either, and he also looked of Middle-Eastern origins, but the passengers were, and in Paul’s case, only as a matter of opinion, in luck, as the second driver that evening did not have his papers checked by the police, and did not attempt to bend the traffic laws into new and interesting dimensions. He did however, drive like an old woman, in that the politeness exuded at various intersections, or indeed most of them, was too Christian to be Christian. Waiting to let a tractor and a milk-float pass, in the full knowledge that they are heading in the same direction as you, and that you will be subsequently stuck behind them for the remainder for the journey, can not in any shape or form be considered Christian to anyone or anything in the known universe. Surely the last thing an elderly milkman wants is a great, clunking coach up his trumpet during his morning rounds. As it was, the coach pulled leisurely into the station at nearly half past nine; about five hours later than forecast, leaving Paul a short walk to the private clinic on the main road, where his foster-mother was lying dying. Complying with the recent norm, he was willing to let his anger at the late arrival slide, on the basis that times had reached such groundbreaking new lows that the series of unusual events at the coach station, on the motorway and behind various under-powered vehicles, ranked on a less dark and dreadful scale altogether, bordering perhaps on the amusing, in the totally-not-amusing-at-all way of being fucking annoying.

It was now well past ten that evening, and having spent the entire day at the hospital, bearing the looks from the pasty-faced relatives, made-up nurses and cynical staff in his stride, enduring the noises from the scattered machinery around the bed and the taste of the metallic machine coffee and the feel of his dirty clothes, and watching that figure, always so familiar but so quickly becoming a stranger, as if God had already taken the soul and substance away, and left the shell for Satan to lay claim to. By this logic, there was no point being here, but he couldn’t leave. Even now that he knew that it was over.

*

None of the staff at Meadow Hospital minded much that Paul remained in the room all night, with not so much as a sneeze passing his nostrils, or a temperature heating his brow. Besides the natural clamminess of student-life, the nurses remarked silently to themselves that he had seemed in pretty good shape as he sat there, face hidden, but pallor distinct in the sharp, white surround. He had not thrown a wobbly, or had hysterics, as many relatives did in these sorts of situations. In fact, it could even be argued that the boy in the room did not look all that unhappy. There was an unnatural neutrality to his expression as he sat there; a look that made the nurses nervous. His identity checked out. He was Paul Campbell, the son of Julia Campbell, the woman in the bed. Perhaps this was a fact that had slipped from his reckoning in the sheer emotion of the moment? Perhaps this could be a symptom of shock, or fatigue, or malnutrition? But it was clear as he sat there that he was fine.

Indeed, many of the doctors who had passed were rather impressed. Meadow Hospital was only really the name of the site on which the clinic was situated, as it had once been the name of the previous medical facility that had occupied the land, under the NHS. Since then though, a new AXA private health clinic had established itself, and it was therefore used to a rather more dignified clientele, patient and indeed visitor than your average NHS hospital, or at least, so the senior medical personnel liked to think. It took a lot in a man, especially one so young, to stare a death so familiar, so utterly shocking, in the face, and keep staring until it backed down. It was the kind of skill that would make you an excellent doctor; that lack of clear emotion, possession of the naked facts and the acid to burn away any sugar-coating, and yet an understanding of feelings and that the person you are talking to, patient or otherwise, does indeed have these, and that they should be respected. Paul had been polite to the relatives, taking coats, offering his chair, fetching coffees. But while they, his seniors by many years, had backed down in the face of this, forced to screw up their faces and retreat in blinding agony to their televisions, the boy had remained, as if to see that a job was done.

And it was done. The machines, aware that their host had become as inanimate as themselves, settled into silence for the feast, and many of the flashing bulbs became dark. It occurred to Paul that he was in the room, his mother had died, it was dark and cold and that there was no way out until morning. This was not a scenario that worried him, unless flesh-eating zombies came alive on this ward of a night, but he realised that he could be in for an unpleasant few hours. Should he try to get some sleep? Paul got to his feet for the first time in what seemed like days, but was in fact only hours, and his rear and legs trilled in mournful stiffness, that only relented when he’d walked up and down several times. This motion took him over to the bed, where his foster-mother’s body, or at least her face, had gone cold and pale. Not that he touched her. He couldn’t bear to even think about that. It was the goose-pimples on his forearms that gave it away.

Could he sleep on the bed? It was fairly wide; to the point where he could probably lie next to his emaciated mother’s body and get reasonably comfortable, but the same feelings that repulsed the inclination to touch the body rang out in alarm and flashed their blue lights once more in his brain, and he knew that that course of action was quite impossible. He turned back to the chair, but it was wooden and too small to comfortably sleep in. Paul almost smiled. If he wasn’t an orphan, and was more resourceful and less middle-class, he would have draped his overcoat on the floor and lain on that. As it was, he didn’t do this either.

Paul absent-mindedly tried the door to the outside of the dorm, and found it locked tight. That was odd itself, and rushed his mind straight back to flesh-eating zombies. After staring at the handle for a few seconds, he made a silent decision and reached into the cavernous pockets of the overcoat and pulled out a safety pin, which he unfold into a horizontal length with a crook towards the centre where the original curve had been and proceeded to insert this into the door lock. This sneaky act of what could be called vandalism and certainly ‘rule-breaking’ did not in Paul’s head come about as a result of malicious thought, but simply as a distraction, and one that was comfortably unlikely to achieve resolution any time soon. Anything, anything at all, that did not involve looking at the body.

The body. Why was it that he couldn’t address it in it’s former; his mother? Foster-mother, he corrected himself. No, he retorted, his mother. She had been for more than ten years. That was qualification enough for the job on a one-word basis. Hell, he’d called her ‘mum’ for most of that decade.

Paul had heard stories of kids who were sent from their orphanages to foster-families, only to find them totally incapable of dealing with a child, or children, and of seemingly perfect matches that had ended in tears, fights, destruction of property and grievous bodily harm. He suspected the most violent of these to be false, but understood from them that the possibility of a foster-child and parent truly forming the bond that a parent would share with a biological child was scant, perhaps inconceivable. But the bond Paul had formed with Richard and Julia Campbell, while never fit to replace the one he had had with Angie and Connor Greenwood until the age of nine, was certainly close, if not entirely trustworthy. He often suspected that his foster-parents would whisper behind his back, and would ask themselves constantly whether they were treating him in the right way, and how they should enforce discipline on him, and how they should tell him about the birds and the bees. Such a forced and improvised relationship was bound to hit the rocks on its maiden voyage, and in a big way. As it was, Paul recalled two occasions where the pressure of this relationship became too much for the Campbell’s, their biological daughters, who were both in their twenties, and indeed for Paul himself. These hadn’t been nearly as melodramatic as those he’d heard in stories at the orphanage, but had reached the point on the gauge where plates were smashed and eardrums were ruptured. As isolated and distant as these incidents had been, Paul knew that he would never forget them. They were the stark reminders that he was trying to fit where it was quite impossible for him to fit. That wasn’t how the orphanage had described the relationship though. Little Paulie Greenwood had been one of their biggest successes, and oh, how well he had taken to that lovely Campbell family, and their gorgeous household and fancy car. As far as they were concerned, Paul had literally become a Campbell, and perhaps he would forget the name Greenwood altogether and get on with his life.

Wrong. Paul Greenwood was back. That is, he always had been a Greenwood, and always would be by the curse of genetics, whether his parents were dead or alive; he wasn’t so much ‘back’ as in the subtitle to a bad movie, although his life often felt like one. It wasn’t the case that he didn’t appreciate all that the Campbell’s had done for him. Far from it. Living with them had been by far a better solution than the orphanage; he had been better looked after, had received a better secondary education and, in many ways, had become who he was now as a result. There were mannerisms, phrases, sayings, and other things, that he has picked up from Rich and Jules, in the way that kids did. And they had always done their very best for him, had been fair, and found a good compromise in discipline. In fact, it would be proper, especially now, thought Paul, as he looked at the body, to describe the pair as excellent foster-parents. But could he really look at his foster-mother’s face now and say that he had just lost his mum, his ma, his only real mother. There was only one way to find out.

Leaving the wire sticking out of the lock, Paul approached the bed again, and reached out to turn Julia’s face up to face him. But his hand just hovered in mid-air. It had frozen; some signal from his brain, repulsed at what the body below was doing, had sent a paralysing message to the limb, and it had decided against the action that his conscious mind had hoped to perform. He retracted the hand.

Why was this? Was he scared, scared in case he realised that she was his real mother, and that she was now gone forever, and that the terrible welling inside would begin again? Or was this a sign of just how distant he had been from Julia Campbell, a remnant of the infrequency of physical contact that they had enjoyed while in one another’s company? Maybe touching the body of his foster-mother defied some modicum of loving respect that Paul still had engendered for her. After all, she was at peace. Any pain, any sickness, was irrelevant to her now; she couldn’t feel them, she could laugh in the bloated faces of the pathogens, and haunt their children. Did Paul want to be the one to disturb her body from its final resting place? Not especially. His repulsion of the cold helped sway the argument, in such a way that he was disgusted at himself, reached out, and nearly did it again, only for his arm to freeze once more.

Cringing, Paul returned to the door, shutting his eyes to negate the involuntary glances over his shoulder. He tried to imagine that he was in a different place, and time. It was something he had learned at the orphanage all those years ago, something his social worker Jane had suggested one evening after a meeting with two potential foster families had gone rather badly. She had told Paul to think as if he were a child again, but a child thinking forwards, a child in a grown-up’s world. As far as she was concerned, this was some ingenious defence-mechanism against the world that most adolescents, Paul apparently included, failed to initiate once past the age of fourteen. At first he’d thought, bollocks. But after Jane had gone into the kitchen, Paul found himself almost sub-consciously thinking, and indeed thinking childishly, of himself as a secret agent. The orphanage around him; the brown carpets and white walls, were replaced with a suave black and grey décor; the coffee table elongated into a poker table, and the empty chairs around the table were suddenly occupied by a number of unsavoury characters. One had a dark eye patch, while another had a pearly-white, shaven head and a purple suit. That was when a slight noise had betrayed Jane’s presence in the doorway, and Paul had flushed red, but he wasn’t as embarrassed as it seemed. It were as if he had added a new defence to his arsenal, a rifle he could select where appropriate, a place where he could go to shelter from the falling bombs.

So where was he? A hospital? Not a chance. What appeared to be a hospital was in fact the secret laboratory and lair of his nemesis; the infamous Ernst Stavro… no, Carl Isaac Seymour, once the biggest, meanest kid at Winslow High and now established super-villain extraordinaire, with his flamboyant cloak and matching tights. And he had our hero, Special Agent Paul Greenwood, of MI6 Special Operations, locked away in a dark room somewhere in the vast expanse of his domain, and only he held the key. And just to make matters worse, he had locked Paul in a room containing his latest uncontrollable experiment; a mutant zombie creature, with the untapped potential to, Paul suspected, tear him limb from limb. Only, the terrible corpse had not yet awoken. He had time. But he shouldn’t be dwelling on his thoughts. While time he did have, the exact quantity of it was in doubt. There had to be some way out. Behind every locked door, there must be a key. That was what Agent Brown had told him, on the very first day of service. If he was ever trapped, if he was ever in peril and couldn’t escape, he was to recall those words. There was always a way. Nothing was impossible. Freedom sprung eternal, and could always be reached by anyone at any time. All they had to do was escape.

Paul had to grin as he remembered. There was that embassy in Bulgaria, where the six mafia bosses had been inside the room with him, along with their Kalashnikovs, and their knuckle-dusters. Little had they known, though, about the concealed smoke bomb inside his tux. It had been a simple matter of undressing, slowly, and in the pretext of removing his arm from a sleeve, pulling the concealed cord. Then in the standard commotion, he had found the door unlocked, by men who clearly thought a lot of themselves and didn’t believe in back-ups. Oh, and then there was the time in that Himalayan factory complex, when he was on the trail of the Mighty Condor and his cache of stolen jewels, and he had been trapped in a pit by two Ghurkha henchmen. He wondered if the one on the right had ever found his right eye afterwards. It had certainly been a fine shot if he did say so himself with that concealed grappling hook, and a real stroke of fortune when the unwary victim had dropped his weapon into the pit so as to hold his face, and Paul had proceeded to remove the second guard from his life with it. He’d be the first to admit though, that he really had to armourer to thank for these previous escapes, and indeed the incredible tuxedo suit, which had unfortunately exploded when he’d sent it to the dry-cleaners the week before. But now, now Seymour had him cornered. He had no gadgets, no weapons, nothing of any use to him whatsoever, besides the bent safety-pin, which couldn’t really be classed as useful until it had helped him achieve something. As it was, it just stuck out of the prone lock, mockingly.

He considered kicking the bloody thing in. After all, he was a black belt in karate and competent in several more obscure martial arts to boot, he thought, excusing his own pun. But he couldn’t be sure that the corridors outside would be unmanned, that the noise would not be picked up by the subtle noise-detectors that he knew Seymour would have installed throughout the building. And anyway, the door was steel, and had no visible hinges. The impression his foot would make would largely be on itself, were he to attempt a kick. So he went back to the safety-pin and continued to jiggle it, trying to depress the levers inside the lock as he’d been taught by the armourer. Damn, if only he had the smoking jacket he’d used in Cairo that time, with the lapel pin that could bust any lock, and blow a man’s face off if necessary. The lack of equipment was making this tricky.

And if he was to get past the locked door, what then? Seymour was a technology freak; he’d have the most up to date equipment for tracking him, pressure pads, lasers; the works. It was also likely that there would be guards, and these were not the usual gullible, ‘henchman’ guards. These were cruel, twisted men trained in combat manoeuvres equal to his own, and who were fiercely loyal to the interests of their master. If he ran into a group of them on his way out, he was doomed.

There were no other options though. There was a small window in the room, but it was far too small for Paul to fit his body through. Besides, he remembered, it would be barred, and probably also carrying some nasty little package in store for foolish agents who tried to climb through it; likely an electric shock, or stun blast. The door was his only option. He intensified his twiddling of the pin in the lock, and was surprised a moment later when he felt the levers click into place. Protecting his hand with a fistful of his coat, Paul turned the handle and stepped slowly out of the dorm, closing the door on the monstrosity that had been locked in there with him. He stopped at the last minute, and carefully inserted the pin, which he had bent, between the door and the jamb, to stop it fully closing. Many of these systems were alarmed to alert the guards when prisoners tried to escape. Any fool who had seen a movie knew that.

Before he sprung into action, Paul hesitated on the corridor, trying to remember the way he had come in. Of course, it may well be impassable now, but he was unfamiliar with the layout of the rest of the building, and it would have to do for an exit. He looked around, but couldn’t see any security devices. It seemed he was in luck. Seymour’s gadgetry must have been over-stated back at the armoury in London headquarters. They were in a recession, he supposed. These things weren’t cheap, even for a criminal genius. At some point, even the thieves and murderers had to make cutbacks.

He crept down the corridor, slowly, checking every door, every partition, looking for the guards and other security systems. His foot touched a discarded bucket, and he retracted his foot before it clanged, yet it still made a slight noise in the gloom. He stood motionless for a minute. Nothing stirred, except his lungs, which were having to hold his breath in this time. It occurred to him that even if he got out of the building, that he would still have to escape the compound itself, which was just bound to be full of brilliant spotlights and dog-handlers in dark clothing. It was the spotlights of course that leant their brightness to the darkness inside the building, that made it a mere gloom rather than the fully-fledged black of night. It seemed the bucket wasn’t booby-trapped, and he passed it, silently, breathing steadily. He would take it one challenge at a time. Each test as it came, until he was out of here, and back safe and sound in the secure location on Opal Field Drive.

*

The ward in which Paul had been trapped was two floors up, and he had originally reached it, dragged bodily by security men of course, using the lift, but it would surely be out of commission at this time of night. Seymour would also make sure the gantry was well-guarded, in case he attempted to check it. There had been stairs; he distinctly remembered being man-handled past them, but chances were that they would also be watched, either by cameras or more guards.

Paul paused where he was. He had reached the fork in the corridor, where the separate passageways led to the lift and the stairway respectively. Tensing, he risked a glance around the right-hand corner, and in the gloom registered the lift doors that he had heard clanking earlier. They seemed dark, unmoving and would almost certainly be monitored. Passing to the opposite wall, he assessed the stairway, and noted with some surprise that it seemed to be open and free. The corridor did continue ahead, but it only led to the other wards, and likely other gruesome lab projects that Seymour was hoping Paul would run into on his way out.

He turned his attention back to the stairway. It had to be a trap, surely. It was the most obvious and quickest means of escape and yet it was apparently unguarded. But it was the only way. There were no convenient windows or laundry chutes that he could use. This was the only way out of the fortress.

So he started forwards, carefully, watching for live tripwires and laser alarms. He reached the first step having discovered neither. What could Seymour have in store for him? This was unlike him. Usually, he was unable to contain his criminal genius and related zeal for this length of time, without springing some trap and confounding Paul once again. He wondered if he should wait a few minutes, in case he heard guards below. But there was no sign of anyone. The place was deserted. There was no other way of looking at it. Realising that the fantasy had run its course, as they all did, Paul took the stairs two at a time and found himself in the reception area once more, where a small light behind the counter illuminated the passage to the doorway, which he reached and pulled at in frustration. The doors, of course, were locked.

It looked like he would be spending the night then. He looked around, and walked back to the counter. There was an ashtray on it that hadn’t been there before. Of course it hadn’t; this was a hospital. Yet there it was, a layer of grey fag ash lining its basin. Perhaps the nurses all had a smoke before they copped off. After all, this was a very stressful working environment. It was as he made to vault the counter and search for somewhere to wait until morning that a hand touched his shoulder, and he cried out in shock.

A man in dark blue clothing and a black vest with a radio attached to it had appeared behind him out of the shadows, like a ninja, and Paul was unable to stop himself baying. It had been that sudden. The man hesitated a second, in case the kid bit, then opened his mouth:

“You Paul?”

“Yeah… I’m Paul.”

“They said there’d be a kid wandering about down here at some point. Thought it’d be a bit earlier than this mind; nearly nodded off a moment ago. Look, calm down, I’m not calling the police; I can let you out if you like.” The man reached down to his waist belt and unhooked a ring of keys, some of which looked rather old-fashioned. As Paul stared at them, the man obviously guessed what he was thinking.

“Cool, right? I got here the keys to just about everything in this place.” He started ticking the keys off with his fingers, almost boastfully, “Here’s the back doors, the generator room, the basement, the chemical lab, that’s one of the offices, I forget which… Ah, the front doors.”

They walked to the front doors and the man continued speaking. Paul got the impression that he didn’t get much chance to converse in his line of work, and showed him the respect of listening.

“So why you here, Paul, friend of yours upstairs?”

“Yes. My mum.”

“Shit. I hope she’s okay and everything?”

“Oh, she’s fine, you know. Resting.”

“Ah, I get you. She’ll soon be out of here then?”

“Oh, very soon, yeah…”

“Hah, alright for some, eh? I’m stuck here on my own half the time, I swear. Get more dough mind, for working nights. Guess someone’s got to stop the druggies and tramps breaking in and nicking junk eh mate?”

“You’re right there. I think you said it was that one.” Paul pointed out a key.

“Oh, yeah, of course… forget my head if it wasn’t the part making up the metaphor for losing itself, eh? Say, you look like you could use a good meal, you a student or something?” The man chuckled to himself, until Paul nodded.

“Shit. Well, there’s an all-night café down the end of the high street, if you fancy an egg butty. I’d join you, and that, but I have to stay here. More than my job’s worth, you see…”

“That’s okay. I’ll grab something when I get home.” The man nodded slowly, then tried a concerned look.

“You sure you’re okay to get back. Want me to get you a taxi?”

“I’ll walk, thanks. I need the fresh air. And it isn’t too far.”

“Lots of weirdoes about out there this time of night,” the man reasoned, “I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t know you were safe getting back. I can call from the phone there; wouldn’t take five minutes.”

“It’s fine, mate. Besides, I spent all my money in that coffee machine.” Paul pointed it out. The man held up a key in the gloom, ecstatically

“I have the key to that! Shall we get your money back?”

“Hah, nah, you’re alright. I better be going; my dad’s expecting me back…”

“Well, if you’re sure mate…” The man finally unlocked the front double-doors and let the cool night air in. It was starting to get light in the distance, although this was made less distinct by the streetlights, which pooled brilliant orange into Paul’s eyes and ruined his night-vision. Paul stepped out onto the pavement.

“Take it you’ll be back tomorrow then mate, check on your old mum?” The man’s tone was hopeful. He seemed reluctant to let Paul leave, and Paul was starting to lose what little patience he possessed.

“Yeah, could be, like I say though, she’ll be out of here soon, she’ll be alright…”

“Right, right, of course, I’ll just… I’ll just lock up again then. Maybe see you round.” Paul nodded, and the man pulled the door closed, which masked a sulky exclamation, and disappeared back into the gloom.