London Eye: 1 (Toxic City)(45)

“Can you tell—” Jack asked, but then Rosemary clamped a hand across his mouth. She looked at Emily and nodded across the corridor at a door.

Emily had it open in an instant, and Rosemary pushed Jack in after her. It was a basic room, though still quite large, with two double beds, a desk, and an en-suite bathroom just inside the door.

Jack went immediately to the window, careful not to touch the heavy curtains as he peered outside. Emily came with him, and Rosemary remained at the door.

The window looked down behind the hotel, at an area once used for staff parking, deliveries, and service access. He could see no movement, but he concentrated on the areas where people could be hiding: behind the overturned bins; under the verdant bushes that had broken out from the neighbouring garden; inside the three vehicles still parked there, all sitting on flattened tyres and with unreadable graffiti daubed across their doors, bonnets, and roofs.

“What do you see?” Rosemary whispered. She was standing behind the closed door, one eye to the spy-hole.

“Nothing,” Jack said. “Back of the hotel. No movement. They must have come in the front.”

“They'll have it covered,” she said. “They always…” She trailed off, and Jack watched her slowly raise her hand, then step back and point the gun at the door.

He motioned at Emily to lie between the two beds, then went to Rosemary, waiting for her to act. And then he heard the voices. They were distant at first, muffled and mysterious. But they were coming closer.

“Did you see them?” he whispered. Rosemary did not answer. She looked even more scared than she had before, and the gun in her hand was shaking.

“No,” she said at last, “but I heard him.”

“Him?”

“Miller.”

“Who's—?”

Rosemary held up her head and nodded at the door.

The voices outside were louder now, and Jack started picking up some of the words. “…here somewhere, they must be, so I don't want any more…”

“…every floor, from the bottom up.” This was a quieter voice, obviously answering the man in command.

“…stairwell…dead, and blood everywhere, so we must have hit one of them at least.”

“…more than a bullet to kill some of these freaks.”

There was a pause at that, and Jack stepped closer to the door. They must be almost directly outside. He sensed Rosemary shifting so that she could still aim her gun at the wooden door, then he leaned over so that he could see from the spy hole.

Two men and a woman stood just along the corridor to the left, faces and bodies distorted by the door viewer. The tall man and the woman wore the distinctive blue uniforms worn by all Choppers, and they had guns held at the ready. The woman had short hair and soft features sharpened by her serious expression. The other man—shorter, older, black-clad, close-cropped grey hair the last stand against baldness—was obviously in charge. The way the other two looked at him…for a moment, Jack wondered if he was a Superior.

But these were Choppers, and if he had to hazard a guess, he'd name this short balding man as Miller. The name so feared by Rosemary.

“They're here somewhere,” the short man said to the two soldiers. He looked at a small device in his hand, shook it angrily. “Not clear where, but somewhere. I want at least one of those two kids alive.”

Kids! They'd been seen, or betrayed.

Rosemary glanced at him, eyes wide in surprise. Jack stepped away from the door, suddenly terrified that it would blow in, torn apart under a fusillade of bullets and smoke and chaos, and Rosemary would go down and the soldiers would come in, mindful of their order to keep one of the kids alive and deciding, on the spur of the moment, which one it would be.

“Yes, sir,” the woman said. The other soldier mumbled an acknowledgement as well, and then Jack heard boots thudding away along the corridor.

…at least one of those two kids…

“Rosemary,” he whispered, leaning in close.

“Not now,” she breathed. “He's still out there.”

Jack touched the woman's face and turned her until they were eye to eye. “You owe me.”

Rosemary nodded, averting her eyes, then turned back to the spy hole.

Jack went to Emily, pulling her up to sit on one of the double beds. “We're okay,” he said quietly, “we're safe.” And he did not believe a word of it.