Rat Runners (25 page)

“It’s Krieger and Hector,” he whispered.

FX swore under his breath.

“What do we do?” Scope asked.

“This clean room is also a safe room,” Nimmo said. “Brundle took his security seriously. The door’s solid steel, the walls are reinforced concrete. They can’t get in here without heavy cutting equipment or high-grade explosives. We can just wait them out.” He didn’t look entirely convinced. “That’s assuming they can’t find another way in—or find a way of flushing us out.”

They heard the handle of the door pull down and spring back up again. It was tried twice more. There was silence for a moment.

“What now?” FX said softly.

“We could just wait,” Nimmo replied. “But if they’re here for Brundle’s research, everything they want is in this room.”

Scope shrugged and looked through the pack of notebooks, trying to hide her nervousness. The books were dated, and she opened the most recent one and started reading.

Then the lights went out. A few seconds later, two emergency lights, mounted on a box on the wall, came on.

“They’ve cut the power to the room,” FX said. “Those lights must be on a back-up system.”

Nimmo strained his ears to listen, trying to guess what the two men were doing outside. He heard a scuffling sound in the external wall, the one that had once had a window in it, before it was sealed up. There was a ventilation duct in that wall at head height, and Nimmo put his ear to it.

“I think they’ve reached out of the window to block the vent up with something,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any way to shift it from here.”

“There should be fans running,” FX said. “To feed air into this place.” He found the switches on the walls, and flicked them on and off, but it made no difference. “How much air do you think we have in here?” he asked Nimmo.

“Less than ten hours, in a space this size,” Scope told them, without lifting her head up from the book. “But we’ll lose our ability to think clearly and function properly a while before that. Somehow though, if they want us dead, I don’t think they’ll be satisfied with hoping we suffocate.”

“So, what, you’ll be happy as long as you die reading?” FX gestured to the book.

“We all have our own ways of dealing with life-threatening situations,” she said shakily. “I can think better if my imagination isn’t given time to dwell on my impending doom.”

Nimmo went back to the door through to the main part of the lab.

“The door’s getting warmer,” he grunted. “You’re right, they’re not waiting for the air to run out. They’ve set the lab on fire. Could’ve used any of the flammable stuff Brundle had in containers out there. Thought there was a sprinkler system, but maybe they’ve messed that up too.”

“They’re going to smoke us out,” FX muttered, moving over to feel the door.

“No, it’s a clean room—it’s airtight,” Scope pointed out, still keeping her eyes on the page. “There’s no way for the smoke to get in.”

“She’s right,” Nimmo said. “They’re burning the whole place down, destroying the research … and us with it. I don’t think the fire can get in here, but the whole place could collapse if the rest of the building goes up. Either way, we’re going to bake like meat in an oven.”

“Are you still reading?” FX asked Scope in amazement.

“Brundle got his prototype finished,” Scope told them, pointing to a line of text. “It’s an organic implant—he actually
grew
the thing. It can … it can be wired right into a human’s nervous system! Do you know what that means? This is unreal!”

“That’s fascinating,” FX said to her in a level voice. “Have you heard that we’re going to get cooked?”

“We have to get out of this room,” Nimmo said, pulling the sleeve of his jacket over his hand as he hit the button to unlock the steel door. “We’re in a concrete and metal box that’s going to heat up fast.” He pulled a tiny fire extinguisher off the wall. He doubted it would be much good against a room full of flames, but he might be able to clear a path to the front door. “Cover your noses and mouths with something, and keep low to the floor.”

“Hang on,” FX called, looking up at the sprinklers in the ceiling. “Maybe these still work. Our clothes’ll burn slower if they’re wet.”

He pulled a lighter from his pocket, flicked it into life, and held it up to the smoke sensor. An alarm went off and a couple of seconds later, water began to spray at high pressure from the tiny shower-heads in the ceiling.

Scope let out a cry of dismay as the notebook she was holding became soaked, and the ink began to run. She closed it and tucked it into her backpack, along with the rest of that bundle. Then she began pulling more packages of notebooks from the safe, but there was no way she’d be able to carry everything. There must have been nearly two hundred books. As she took another lot out, the package split and dropped at her feet. One of the notebooks fell open and, picking it up, she swore loudly at what she saw.

“Bloody hell, we had it all the time!” she moaned.

The other two weren’t listening. Nimmo was squatting down on the floor with FX beside him, a couple of meters from the door, as the sprinklers soaked their clothes and skin. In FX’s hand was a piece of wire, the other end tied to the door handle. Nimmo held the fire extinguisher ready.

“Those scrotes could still be out there,” FX warned him.

But Nimmo had felt the heat in the metal of the door through his sleeve.

“I doubt it,” he said.

FX pulled down on the wire, and a blast of hot air slammed the door open. The lab beyond was ablaze, the desks, chairs, and some of the equipment already in flames. Crouching low, Nimmo held his breath and darted out, blasting jets of gas at the roots of the fires close to him. In less than thirty seconds, he had made it to the front door. Dropping the extinguisher, he covered his hand with his sleeve again and tried to open the door, but the lock was jammed. FX came up behind him.

“They’ve wrecked the lock!” Nimmo shouted to him, over the roar of the fire. “It’s another bloody steel door! We’d need a blowtorch to get through it!”

“What about the windows?” FX called back.

“They’re barred, and it’s a six-story drop!” Nimmo growled, looking around in desperation.

The walls and ceiling were concrete—there was no way to get through them. The heat was intense, and the air was filled with fumes that made their eyes water and stung the back of their throats, making them gag and cough. In a matter of minutes, they wouldn’t be able to breathe. Both boys looked down at the floor at the same time. It had a seamless vinyl covering from wall to wall, the kind designed to make lab floors easy to clean. There was a utility knife on the desk. FX grabbed it, slid out the blade and cut a right-angled slash in the vinyl. It was tough stuff, and it took both of them to dig up an edge and peel it back. Underneath it was riveted steel plate. The type you used to reinforce floors that had to take heavy lab equipment.

“Shit, we’re going to die,” FX coughed.

“Definitely, but not today,” Nimmo said.

There was a cordless drill on one of the workbenches, and Nimmo grabbed it. Using the knife to cut away the vinyl to uncover the full plate—a square meter—he started drilling into the first of the twelve rivets.

“Man, we don’t have time,” FX muttered.

“Find a crowbar or a claw hammer to lift the plate,” Nimmo snapped, as the drill bit shredded the head of the first rivet. “And get Scope!”

Sections of plaster were falling from the ceiling as flames crept across it. The smoke was making breathing unbearable. FX’s head swam as he grabbed the fire extinguisher and bent double to try and find the cooler, clearer air near the floor. By the time he’d made it back to the clean room, the extinguisher was used up. Tossing it away, he crawled through the door on his hands and knees. Scope was still trying to bundle as many of the notebooks as she could into her bag. The sprinklers were still spraying; the clean room was clear of flames, and the air was still breathable.

“He wuh … wuh … was a genius!” she cried, when she saw FX coming through the smoke. Her voice was ragged and she was nearly choking, her breaths coming in short pants. “We … we can’t lose … lose all this. Help me! We nuh … nuh … need these!”

“Scope, wake up!” he bellowed at her. “
The building is on fire!
The. Building. Is. On. Fire. Leave all that crap. We have to get out of here!”

She tried to push another book into her bag, but he grabbed her and dragged her back out into the chaos that was the main lab. There was a toolbox under one of the tables, and FX kicked it over, seizing a claw hammer from the contents that spilled across the floor. The jerk of his body jolted Scope, who was trying to pull her inhaler from her pocket. The inhaler clattered across the floor, and FX urged her on before she could grab it. The vinyl was starting to burn, creeping across the floor from the edges, forming a slowly tightening circle of flames. Nimmo was coughing badly, his eyes filled with tears, but his hands were steady as he kept his focus fixed on destroying the rivets that held the plate to the floor. As the other two reached him, he finished drilling the last rivet-head.

FX turned to vomit as far from the bare metal as he could, then came back to help Nimmo get the claw of the hammer under the edge of the steel plate. They worked the edge up and got their fingers underneath. It was hot, but not yet hot enough to burn them. Pulling it up and over, they exposed the steel girders beneath. The undersides were covered by plywood, and Nimmo covered his face with his sleeve, gagging on smoke as he slammed the heel of his foot down between two of the girders, smashing the plywood away. Four, then five kicks knocked the plastered board onto the floor below, creating a ragged rectangular hole between the girders.

Scope was suffocating. Her asthmatic lungs could not draw in air as her windpipe closed down; her chest felt as if someone was tightening a belt around it. The smoke was close to knocking Nimmo and FX out, but Scope was on the edge of death. Nimmo dropped down through the hole, and FX lowered her down to him. He was in the kitchen of Mrs. Caper’s flat, and she was staring in horror as he dragged this gasping, wheezing girl across the floor, out of the way of the new hole in Caper’s kitchen ceiling. FX dropped down, his legs crumpling under him as he landed. Nimmo was searching through Scope’s pockets. He found a brown inhaler, and was about to give that to her, but FX scrambled forward and stopped him.

“Don’t!” he rasped through a painful throat. “It’s a weapon, it’s bloody sneezing gas. She needs her other one. She dropped it up in the lab, under Brundle’s PC!”

Nimmo coughed and choked, swiveling to stare in dull determination at the hole in the ceiling. Then he staggered dizzily to the kitchen table, hauled it over until it was under the hole. He climbed on top, swaying slightly, reached up, and pulled himself back up into Brundle’s burning lab.

FX watched the hole for what seemed like an age, listening to Scope’s helpless gasps growing weaker and weaker, turning to see her face turning blue, her eyes bulging, half conscious. He could hear sirens, but they weren’t going to be in time. Scope was going to die, and Nimmo had been up there too long. He was gone.

Then he tumbled down through the hole, landing with a crash on the table. Two of its legs broke and he was sent sprawling across the floor. FX took the inhaler from his clawed hands and held it to Scope’s mouth and pressed the plunger. He took it away, shaking it, waiting for an improvement that didn’t come. He gave her another blast. Still her lungs sucked hopelessly against her blocked windpipes. FX had heard enough about these things to know that if an inhaler didn’t work within the first few tries, it wasn’t going to work. But he tried again. And again …

SCOPE SAT WITH her back to the wall of a garage in an alleyway a few blocks from Brundle’s building. She had her head resting on her forearms, hiding the tears that streamed down her face. The inhaler’s effects had kicked in after a few suffocating minutes. Her breathing had recovered in time for her two friends to drag her out of Caper’s flat and away from the emergency services. She had enough experience of managing her asthma to know that the worst was over, though she was still at risk of suffering a new attack if she wasn’t careful. Her windpipe had been damaged by the smoke, and she would have to take care for the next while that she didn’t do anything to bring on another attack, like getting caught in any more stressful situations.

Yeah, right.

She had demanded that FX and Nimmo get her out of the building before the emergency services found them. The paramedics would have put her on a trolley, fed her oxygen and carted her off to a hospital. She had experienced that before, and hated the feel of the oxygen mask on her face, the chaos of the A&E ward filled with fearful, angry, impatient people. Everyone desperate for medical attention, but there never seemed to be enough nurses and doctors. Scope preferred to just get through this on her own.

So when they had taken to the rat-runs and put a safe distance between them and the burning building, she had flopped down on the ground, leaned back against the wall with her head in her arms and cried, because it was the closest she’d ever come to dying, and it had terrified her.