Twenty-Five Percent (Book 2): Downfall (19 page)

Alex walked up to the man. “In answer to your question, if you don’t do anything stupid, I’m going to tape you up and lock you in the back of that lorry. If you decide to go the stupid route, though, I’m going to knock you out again, then tape you up and lock you in the back of that lorry. Your choice.”

The guard silently placed his hands behind his back.

It turned out to be unexpectedly easy. Alex had thought the huge man would at least try to run, if not cause him some painful injuries. He couldn’t help remembering the last time he’d bound someone’s hands. His nose still didn’t feel quite right from when Kerry had head butted him. But the guard was surprisingly docile, which was a relief considering his size.

“How tall are you, anyway?” Alex said as he wrapped copious amounts of brown tape around his ankles as he sat in the lorry.

“Six eight,” the guard said. “Boot likes us big.”

“What?”

“You’ll see, if you’re going in there.” He nodded his head towards the main building.

Alex held up the keycard he’d taken from him. “Is there any chance you’d tell me the code for this?”

He shook his head. “Nothing short of a genuine threat to kill me would make me go against Boot. And if you did threaten me I wouldn’t believe you, after how you reacted when you thought I was dying. I’m pretty sure you’re a nice guy, which means you don’t stand a chance. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll forget whatever reasons you have for being here and leave now, while you still can.”

“Not an option. But thanks for the warning.”

The guard shrugged. “It’s your funeral. And it will be.”

Alex wound tape around his mouth and left the lorry, locking him in and replacing the keys in the glove compartment.

It took a couple of minutes of uncomfortable wriggling and a bit of pulling from Micah for Alex to get through the window into the building. Once they’d found Hannah and the other doctors, they were either going to have to get a keycard with a code or find another way out. He thought of Doctor David Cranbourne’s somewhat rotund frame. They were definitely going to need a door.

Inside was a short, wide corridor. Double doors to the right led to a storage area for the supplies coming in through the loading bay.

Alex wasn’t sure what Omnav actually did in the building. He hadn’t paid much attention to the details of where they were going, focused more as he was on the abducted doctors and how he and Micah were going to get them out. He knew Omnav Industries had three large manufacturing plants scattered around the country, in London, Birmingham and Glasgow, where they produced the military vehicles, weapons, and construction materials which were their stock in trade. But with the little thought he’d put into it he had assumed the Omnav headquarters was largely administrative. The morgue and crematorium suggested otherwise.

Ahead of them a door opened onto another corridor which ran for twenty feet to their right before reaching a T-junction. Pausing at the door, they listened for any indication anyone else was around, but heard nothing. When they headed out into the corridors, it was equally as quiet. Alex was starting to think running into the huge guard at the loading bay was just bad luck. The place seemed deserted.

They were making their way through the ground floor, traversing the maze of corridors, when Micah stopped so suddenly Alex almost walked into him. Alex was about to ask what was wrong when he heard the faint sound of voices coming from around a corner ahead of them. Micah spun round, pushing Alex back the way they’d come. Alex tried a couple of doors on the right side of the corridor while Micah tried them on the left, but everything was locked, the keypads beside them mocking with their resolutely red LEDs.

Finally, as the voices became so loud Alex knew they had to be moments away from discovery, Micah found an unlocked door. Alex pulled it to behind him as two black-suited guards walked into sight.

From the cleaning supply cupboard they found themselves in, he and Micah peered through the marginally open door.

“Frobisher never carries his radio, you know that,” one of the men said.

“Well, it’s a pain in the arse. He missed relieving me on the front entrance.”

“We don’t need a guard there anyway. Who’s going to come in?”

As the two men approached, they seemed to fill the corridor. While not quite as tall as the man Alex had left in the lorry at the loading bay, who he assumed was probably Frobisher, they were close, their immaculate jackets straining across their ridiculously broad shoulders. Did they put steroids in the water in this place? Maybe that was what they were doing here, creating some sort of super race.

“You should check the labs,” one of the guards, a young man with short, dark hair and a beard, said. “I saw Bish checking out that cute young lady doctor Boot brought in.”

His companion, an older man with a shaved head, smiled. “The one with the glasses and the great arse?”

“That’s the one.”

Fury flooded through Alex. His fist clenched so hard his nails bit into his palms. He should have hit Frobisher harder.

The two men reached the door opposite and baldy removed a keycard from his trouser pocket, swiping it and keying in the code. Sadly, his body was blocking the number pad and they couldn’t see what he was typing. Alex would have loved an excuse to punch both their lights out.

“I’ll take the ammo to Brian,” Beardy said as they walked into the room. “You can go and see if Frobisher’s done beating off at the lab.”

Alex stepped away from the door, his vision clouding red, ready to rush the two trolls and pummel them into oblivion. Micah grabbed his arm and shook his head. He pointed at the door.

Trying to rein in his rage, Alex looked through the gap again. Opposite them, the two men had left the door of the room they’d entered wide open. Inside, Alex could see racks of machine guns. Boxes of ammunition sat on a shelf above.

Baldy and Beardy reappeared at the door and turned into the corridor, heading back the way they’d come. A mop head in his hand, Micah pulled Alex away from the door and opened it, alternating his gaze between the men walking away and the door still closing opposite. Placing the mop head on the floor, he waited until the door was within a foot of the frame, then slid the mop across the corridor at it. Alex watched the two guards for any sign they’d heard anything, but they were oblivious as they walked and chatted. On the other side of the corridor, the mop head slid into the gap just in time to lodge between the door and the frame, preventing it from closing.

Alex pulled the door almost closed again as Micah did a fist pump and then punched both arms into the air for good measure. Alex rolled his eyes, although he couldn’t help being secretly impressed.

They waited until the guards were well out of earshot then crossed the hallway.

Micah picked up the mop head. “Nice to know all those hours spent with my grandmother at her bowls club after school until my parents came home wasn’t for nothing. And that I’ve still got it.”

He returned the mop head to the cupboard then came back to the room where Alex was slowly turning in a circle, his jaw hanging open.

“Wow,” Micah said.

“Yes,” Alex replied.

They hadn’t found just a room with a few guns. They’d found an armoury.

The walls and ceiling were reinforced with steel, as was the door which was three inches thick. Racks of automatic rifles and semi-automatic pistols of every calibre lined the walls. There was even a huge fifty calibre machine gun in one corner. One wall was lined with shelves stacked with boxes. A specially designed rack held at least fifty skull-spikers, but these weren’t over a decade old like the ones Alex and Micah had got from Bates. These were brand new, their handles gleaming matt black in the glow of the overhead fluorescent light. Alex picked one up and depressed the button to activate the blade which shot smoothly from the handle with a barely audible
whoosh
. He turned it over and over, watching the light play along its featureless length.

“Look at this,” Micah said from across the room.

He returned the spiker to its rack and walked to where Micah was staring into an open box on a shelf.

“Is that what I think it is?” Alex reached in to take out a black plastic wrapped rectangular block.

Micah stepped back. “Should you be doing that with plastic explosive?”

Alex tossed the block into the air and caught it again, grinning when Micah looked like he was about to have a heart attack. “C-4 is perfectly stable. You need a blasting cap to make it explode. You can even jump on it.”

“Please don’t.”

Alex smiled, returning it to the box.

“Where do you get this information about C-4 anyway?” Micah said.

“Where I learn all the useful stuff - Mythbusters.”

Micah shook his head and looked around. “This place would have Bates in tears. You want to take anything with you?”

“No, I don’t plan on shooting our way out of here. But just in case we want to come back...” He took the roll of packaging tape he’d used on Frobisher, scrunching up a lump of it and sticking it to the base of the frame to prevent the door from closing properly. “You never know when we might want to blow something up.”

Micah walked out ahead of him. “Just so you know, if you start messing around with explosives, I want to be very far away.”

They continued to make their way through the building, checking round every corner and listening ahead of every blind spot. But other than a harassed looking middle aged woman in a navy blue skirt suit who was completely oblivious to their hiding place behind a huge ficus in the employee cafeteria, they saw no-one as they traversed the ground floor. Inside the building was as deserted as outside.

As they reached the far end of the building, they heard a door open around a corner ahead of them. Voices drifted from somewhere. The door closed again.

Alex and Micah flattened themselves against the wall. When no-one appeared, they crept to the corner.

The corridor was blocked by a set of glass double doors with a keypad on the wall beside them. Beyond the doors, the walls were made of glass, revealing the rooms inside. Rooms full of work benches and microscopes and a myriad of other scientific machines and paraphernalia.

People were working in the laboratories.

“Hannah,” Alex whispered.

It had only been five days since her panicked phone call, but they were five days during which he didn’t know if she was alive or dead. They hadn’t known each other for long, but somehow she had become very important to him. Seeing her now, her dark hair pulled into a ponytail and her big, brown eyes focused through her red-framed glasses on the tablet in her hand, sucked all the breath from Alex’s lungs.

He’d found her, now nothing and no-one could stop him from protecting her and taking her home.

At that moment, she lifted her head and looked straight at him. Her eyes widened, lips parting in surprise, then she looked behind her at something further into the room out of Alex’s line of sight.

“I need to get in there,” he said. “Even if I have to smash my way through those doors, I have to get in.”

He started forward, stopping when Micah grabbed his arm.

“Not now,” he said, pulling Alex away. “Look.”

Alex turned back in time to see Baldy walk into view in the lab with Hannah. He said something to her and she looked up at him, annoyance on her face. Whatever she said back, he didn’t like it because he turned away, frowning.

She said something else, putting the tablet down and walking to the door leading into the corridor. The guard followed.

Micah pulled Alex back out of sight around the corner.

“So, what? You’re coming with me to the toilet now?” It was Hannah’s voice, loud and angry.

“I’m supposed to watch you...”

“Not in the toilet you’re not. Where am I going to go?”

“But Mr. Boot...”

“...would not be happy to hear you were interfering with my work in any way. Maybe I should tell him that I can’t concentrate when I’m busting for a wee because I refuse to go to the toilet with you there. Is that what you want me to do? Because I will.”

There was a pause. “Fine. Just don’t go anywhere else.”

The faint sound of footsteps was followed by a door opening.

Micah grabbed Alex’s arm and pointed to a door behind them with the ladies’ toilets symbol on the door in the form of a minimalist line drawing of a generic skirted woman. They ran for the door and darted in, waiting in the white tiled space.

Ten seconds later, the door opened and Hannah walked in. Seeing Alex, her face lit up in a huge smile and she ran towards him. He stepped forward and opened his arms to hug her, but she stopped short, wrinkling her nose.

“You smell terrible.”

He was so happy to see her that all he could do was laugh, even if it was costing him a hug.

“It’s sheep. Long story.” He let out a long breath. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you. Are you alright? Have they hurt you?” If the answer was yes, not even Micah would be able to stop him from going on the warpath.

“No, we’re all okay, apart from the whole being kept prisoner thing, which isn’t fun.” She looked at Micah and smiled. “Hello, Micah. How are you feeling? Do you have any ill effects from the cure? Larry is dying to do more tests.”