Geddis yawned theatrically. He wasn't tired – in fact, he felt like he could never sleep again. His leg jittered nervously below the table and he tried his best to keep the other one from joining in. As he yawned, he let his coat sleeve slide down his wrist just enough to catch a glance of his watch with the corner of his eye. He'd had to improvise the next bit, so was tremendously worried he'd underdone it. Improvise, he thought; what a lovely word for frig about and find out.
Sykes straightened the pile of papers he had in front of him, then carefully aligned his pen next to them. “Back to our interview. Need I remind you, Subject A, that Subject B is also in our care? Think very carefully and answer the questions as you are asked them.” There was no tonal shift to go along with the threat – that would have implied a small degree of emotion. Both Bosco and Geddis squirmed in their seats. Geddis opened his mouth one or two times to speak, but his brain disengaged before he could, so he closed it again. After he collected his thoughts and his mouth agreed to try again, though it didn't really know why he was bothering, the room filled with a deafening mechanical wail. Whatever pithy comment it was that escaped his lips was lost to the shrill cries of the fire alarm.
He jumped out of his seat, the look of startled panic he rehearsed as he was making a very shoddy incendiary device in the storeroom was replaced by a startled look of panic that he hadn't rehearsed. The siren lessened in intensity as the tannoy bing-bonged on.
“There has been an explosion in the south corridor. All essential personnel please evacuate the building in a quick and calm manner. All non-essential personnel, please evacuate the building in a slower but also calm manner, being sure to keep the exits clear for your intellectual and moral superiors. Thank you.”
Over did it, then, thought Geddis. “We need to get out of here, Burgess. Come on, there's no time for pissing about and not liking each other. We can do it outside.” He grasped Sykes under the arm and ushered him to his feet. The guards looked towards their employer and awaited the order to shoot someone in the head. They'd been waiting all week for such an order and, frankly, if they were being honest, the pay and health plan didn't really make up for the awful lack of head-shooting that there'd been lately.
Sykes dismissively waved at the guards and rose to his feet. He shooed Geddis away from him and straightened his lab coat. This was as close to rushing as it seemed he was capable of. He put his pens back in his top pocket and ordered them by size down to the smallest, then neatly put his papers back into their transparent folder and tucked it under one arm.
“Burgess, now's not the time. What are we doing with 'Subject A'? We can't just leave him here.”
“We can,” Sykes replied. It will be protected from the flames in here, just not the smoke – which is fine. We can conduct the autopsy later.” Geddis quite fancied hefting a chair into Sykes' face. Of course, the chair would probably break before his craggy face did, but it would be worth it.
“Things just don't explode, especially in the part of the building where we don't keep the exploding things. Someone has done this to us, and I only see one reason anyone would be here.” He nodded towards Bosco.
“Someone wants to discredit me! They want to take my work.” Sykes hyperventilated as he spoke, an unexpected hint of panic had crept into his voice.
“Or they're here to, I don't know, kill the Directors of this place. You know, us.” This concerned Sykes less than being discredited. He checked the pens in his pocket. “Burgess, listen to me. You need to do something or we're going to die. The goon squad here is the best defence we have. If someone can get in here and set off a bomb, then they're more than our tinpot security can handle. But they’re not more than they can handle.” Sykes agreed with Geddis and he hated it.
“South corridor, go. No prisoners.”
The men saluted and marched towards the door. It's about bloody time one of them thought. The second guard didn't quite know what to do with himself while the first rotated the handle to open the door, so he awkwardly stood saluting. Geddis seized upon the momentum and continued to push.
“I need to get the subject back to their cell. It's further away and it's safer than leaving them here.” He reached across to Sykes' breast pocket and slightly nudged one of his pens back into line.
“And I, Doctor Geddis, need to withdraw to my panic room. I dare say I would be more valuable to them, but against my greater judgement, you may join me once you have returned the subject to its cell.”
“Much appreciated, Doctor Sykes.” He turned to Bosco and winked as he as spoke. “You, we're heading back to your cell,” wink. “Don't try anything,” wink. “Because we might have to rethink your living arrangements,” wink-wink-wink. He spoke loudly and clearly, and channelled as much authority as he could tolerate so Sykes would get a good earful on his way out of the room. Smoke already trailed through the corridors and lapped the ankles of the busy-fleeing faculty members. It very much gave the vibe of being in a music video. Geddis really had overdone it if the smoke had travelled this far this quickly. He’d just intended for a small fire to create a distraction, but what he'd actually done was closer to domestic terrorism, and he wasn't entirely upset about it. He walked across to the door and poked his head out into the corridor.
People filed past the room in various states of distress and opportunistic glee. For every panic-faced junior researcher that clutched family photos to their chest and balanced a pot plant atop a collection of things they'd retrieved from their desk, there was another trying to bugger off with a water cooler or some such. One bloke eagerly hugged a payphone he'd wrenched off a wall. What was important is that Sykes and his kill-chimps weren't anywhere to be seen among the stampede of white-coats.
“Right, coast is clear. Come on, then.”
“Where's my boy?” Bosco asked. “I'm not leaving here without him.”
“Funny story, that. Turns out the Hubert girls are knocking about in the car park. Your boy is with Erica and Sarah, under the very excellent adult supervision that is my new mate Ostler.” Geddis thumbed through a very large ring of keys he'd taken out of his pocket. “Now this might take a little while, my friend.” He tried the first key in the lock of the handcuff bar, shook his head and continued the process.
Bosco smiled wryly and took a deep breath. He moved his hands together, then he tensed his muscles and pulled them as far apart as they would go. The chain snapped taught, the cuffs dug into his wrists and parted his fur, leaving behind large, purple bruises. His muscles strained against the flimsy paper suit and, for a time, he wasn’t sure which would give out first. The cuffs exploded into a shower of shrapnel-like links that bounced across the table and clinked to the floor.
“Should have known they'd be a bit shite as well,” Geddis said. He dropped the keys and fished a scrap of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Bosco. “This is a map. You don't need to use it, that’s what you’ve got me for. What you need to do is just generally wave it about as we go. If you could maybe look like you need the toilet while you’re at it, that’d be even better. It's hard to explain, but I find it helps.” He led Bosco down numerous identikit corridors, each now filled with smoke, and each contained its own selection of panicked individuals and looters.
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Every time they passed by someone, Bosco would crinkle the map and make a look that suggested he was about to ask where something was. This had the desired effect of parting the murmuring sea of bodies that blocked their path at every turn, though they wouldn't realise quite why they'd moved out of the way until some time later. By time they reached the furthest emergency exit, the smoke had risen considerably and their eyes stung. Geddis grabbed the bar on the door with both hands and heaved it upwards, the smoke billowed out into the far end of the car park. It was only when he felt the cool touch of day that he realised quite how hot it had gotten. He took his glasses and gave them a quick rub against his sleeve. This was something he deeply regretted doing, as when he put them back on, he could see a roiling mass of confused people loosely assembled in the car park, all of which now stared directly at Bosco.
Bosco waved the map at them, but it had far less of an effect than it did before, and only decreased in effectiveness the further they got from the building. The crowd began to pay attention. It started in a low murmur but quickly escalated into someone loudly declaring, “Hang on a bloody minute!” as they rounded the corner towards the visitors’ car park. “Someone do something!” Geddis looked back towards Trinity Park as he ran, and regretted not burning the place to the ground. It would have certainly been cathartic. Danielle’s car sat at the edge of the car park where he'd left it, the cord of the payphone still trailed through the window. He wasn't built for speed or endurance or a whole lot of anything, really. His lungs burned as he gulped down mouthfuls of cold air, and his limbs ached as they filled with lactic acid and turned into limp noodles. Bosco, by contrast, was having a great time, and had unintentionally gained a not inconsiderable lead over him.
Harry, as much as he enjoyed it, had found his way out of his box – because that's what it was now, his box – and clambered up onto the dashboard with help from Danielle's knee. She hadn't said anything since she opened the box, or rather since the box had opened itself and Harry jumped out of it like a low-budget cake-girl. The girls treating it like the most normal thing in the world didn't help her with the feeling that she might be going quite, quite mad. Harry started doing a little dance he’d invented especially for the occasion. He could see his papa getting closer and closer, and as he did, he got louder and louder and gave up on trying to dance altogether. Instead, he just vibrated along the length of the dashboard. In response to the strangled awoogs that came from the metal carriage in front of him, Bosco put his head down and expanded upon his lead by an even greater margin.
Geddis often looked far fitter than he was. He was above average height and wide at the shoulders, so people often assumed he had the rest of the physique to go with it. In reality, he couldn't have picked an exercise bike out of a line-up let alone known how to use one even if he could. He looked up from his constant struggle of keeping his feet moving in a relatively straight line over the car park surface that in itself looked like a war zone, only to see that Bosco was even further away from him since the last time he looked. Geddis quickly came to the conclusion that this was because he’d stopped without adequately warning himself.
Sarah opened the back door, both as an act of expedience and because she quite expected Mr. Tirren to remove it from its hinges rather than spend the two seconds required to figure out how it worked. She offered up a brief hug as he approached, then ushered him into the car. As much as she loved Mr. Tirren and was overjoyed to see him back, she really wished he didn't take up a good three-quarters of the back seat just by himself. She grimaced, hopped into the back of the car and clambered over her sister. Harry bodily hurled himself from the dashboard and tried to melt into any gaps that were left for him. Danielle shook off her stunned torpor and hopped from the car crank in hand.
The car obligingly stuttered into action within a few panicked rotations, and she hopped back into her seat. She thumped at the steering wheel and impatiently bounced up and down in her seat, the hysterical honking drifted off to join a garage band with the other two sounds that vied for attention. The fire alarm was the first – and by far the loudest – and was entirely the fault of Geddis for thinking he could ad-hoc a small incendiary device using a piece of white phosphorus in a stationery cupboard that contained various flammable chemicals. The second, and most concerning, was the call-to-arms.
He was out of breath but his brain wasn't completely starved of oxygen. They'd been seen, word had gotten back to Sykes over in his coward-cupboard by now, and they were being hunted. Hunting of course being a classic pre-extinction term for repeatedly shooting things that can't fight back. He took a deep breath in through his mouth and winced as every molecule in the air seemed to tickle and burn his throat. His lungs wondered why he’d just swallowed several packets of razor blades, and did their best to make him cough them back up. Geddis spluttered forward, slowly but surely building back to speed. Objectively, the car was fifty-feet away from him, subjectively it was measurable in light-years. The inside of the car exploded into a flurry of arm waving and muffled shouts and pointing.
His leg wrenched from under him and shattered. As he fell, almost in slow-motion, he twisted his body and adjusted his weight just enough to avoid falling on his injured leg and damaging it further. He could still feel his leg, though he wished he couldn't. That was a good sign; if he'd been shot by something he’d invented, his leg would have been hopping down the road by itself and he'd have probably bled to death by now. He had many questions; the first of which, and the only one he received an answer to before he passed out, was why haven't I hit the ground yet?
“Damn it! God bastarding damn it,” Danielle roared. “We need to go.”
“We can’t just leave him!” Erica snapped back.
“And we can’t just stay, so shut up and buckle up.”
The sleek black armour of the approaching soldiers reflected very little light in contrast to how highly polished it was; from a distance, they barely resembled men at all, rather man-shaped voids. The first seized Geddis by the arm and dragged him to his feet as if he were a sack of flour. He checked his eyes and inspected his leg, then he struck him square in the jaw with his forearm. Geddis' glasses abandoned his face and landed off in one of the many crater-sized potholes that littered the car park. The man threw him over his shoulder and turned to walk back inside.
The second man fixed his gaze on the car and quickened his pace towards it, his feet instinctively finding their own way around the uneven terrain. He raised his rifle and half-pulled the trigger; yellow lights pulsed along the black steel barrel as the electromagnetic coils thrummed in rapid sequence. If what Geddis said was true – and it clearly was – then no-one in the car needed to be alive – not even the dog-people. Danielle quickly thought of various things she liked: food, places, unusual hobbies. She did this because she didn't want dog-people to be the last word she ever said to herself. She looked over her shoulder and threw the car into reverse.
The rifle fired without fanfare or even any sound at all. The first Danielle knew of it was when the projectile tore a molten groove through her bonnet at a forty-five degree angle. The windscreen bubbled and dripped molten glass down onto the dashboard as it became a maze of cracks and fractures. The shot passed through the driver’s side window, struck the wing-mirror and sent it somewhere into lower orbit. She wildly spun the steering wheel, throwing the front end of the car out and clumsily managing to spin it around as a second shot whooshed by.
The car careened down the embankment, oblivious to the intended route down, and cut straight across the grass verges. As she reached the checkpoint at the bottom, she swung a hard left and ploughed through the chain-link fence that blocked off a further embankment, and below that the concrete boa. The metalwork screeched as the car pushed apart some of the flimsier parts of the fencing and buckled and crushed the rest. It slid down the embankment that was close enough to vertical to make little difference, and Danielle cut the throttle. The car was going to hit the road hard and fast, and it didn't need to be harder or faster than it was already going to be.
“Hold on!”
“To what?” Erica yelled.
“To me!” Sarah cried as she drifted out of her seat and swatted at her seat-belt. The car impacted the road at an unforgiving angle, chunks of concrete bounced down the motorway and the front bumper decided to join them. The car stood at that awkward angle long enough for everyone to cultivate a growing sense of dread about the next part. It dropped back to four wheels, the impact shook what little of the windscreen that was left onto the dashboard. Sarah slammed back into her seat with a squeak, Mr. Tirren’s hand still wrapped firmly around her forearm. Cars and lorries swerved around them at breakneck speed, the drivers in an unspoken contest to see what could be louder: their horns or their expletives. “We're going to get him back, right?” Sarah aimed her question at no-one and everyone, and for a second wasn't even sure if she'd asked it at all. Danielle put the car into gear and thought of the best way to let her down gently.
