"Hana was compromised," Brooks said. "She betrayed the government and had to be dealt with. But, I must say that this is the last place I expect you find you, Elodie. I thought seeing your brother would be your priority. You've saved me a lot of trouble coming here."

"This is just a stop-over."

"We're turning off the deepfake image now," Rocco told her, and Elodie made a mental note of where everyone stood.

A moment later, thermally generated security fog—glycerine mixed with distilled water—blasted from the wall vents. Smothering the corridor, enveloping everyone and everything in thick, impenetrable blanket.

 The moment she was concealed from view, Elodie began to move.

There were three armed men, and she dropped low, spinning on her heels towards the nearest. He lurched out of the fog at her, jerking his weapon in her direction as she thrust her foot into the back of his legs; tipping backwards, he let off a burst of gunfire into the ceiling.

She swung the torch backhanded into the helmet of another of the team, the fog billowing crazily as he crashed to the floor.

Elodie was blind, all she could see was a thick soup of white as the fog cannoned from the vents, but nobody else could see a thing either. The fog was designed to disorient intruders and prevent them from gaining access to the computers next door, but she knew that the system would be disabled within seconds.

 Moving low between the armed men in a whirl of white gas, she heard the crack of gunfire near her ear; chips of plaster flew off the wall and stung her face.

Brooks barked, "Stop firing!"

 The soft fabric of his jacket brushed her arm as he retreated, trying to reach the safety of the lift, but heading in the wrong direction, and she grabbed him from behind, clamping her forearm around his neck.

Brooks felt as light as a feather as she pulled him towards the exit, brushing her shoulder against the wall to keep herself orientated. The exit into the tunnel should only be a couple of feet behind them.

Another gunshot took a chunk of the wall out above their heads, and she told him, "They're going to shoot you!"

"No more firing," Brooks spluttered. "That's an order!"

She dragged him to the door, his heels skidding uselessly on the tiled floor. Watched for disturbances in the fog ahead. She knew the armed men were moving forward, weapons raised.

"You're being ridiculous." With the crook of her elbow jammed against his throat, Brooks' voice was a petulant croak. "You won't get out of here alive."

 "You already tried to kill me once and that didn't work out so well."

 "We were trying to bring you in!" His fingers plucked ineffectually against her arm.

 "Why? I thought we had an agreement?" She asked hotly.

But, Elodie never got to hear the answer, because she heard the lift doors at the far end of the corridor open again. There was a disturbance in the white wall of fog ahead of her, the downdraught of the lift shaft made the thinning gas swirl, then thin green beams of laser-sights moved left and right out of the fog.

The reinforcements who had arrived wore imaging goggles, which meant they could pick up her heat signature, so she hunched as low as she could behind Brooks.

He gasped, too, because the beams of light criss-crossed his chest, shoulders and face as they hungrily searched for a clear shot at Elodie.

 "Don't shoot!" he shouted to the invisible soldiers.

"You killed her." She fumbled for Hana's pass. "And tried to kill me!"

 "No," he protested vehemently. "We were bringing you in, but there are other forces at play."

"Who?"

"Come on, Elodie, you know what's happening." Brooks spoke with a sarcasm she felt inadvisable. "You took us all for fools; your target and I."

Elodie slapped the pass against the touch pad beside the door, but nothing happened; the pass had been deactivated.

"Stop this nonsense," spluttered Brooks. "It's over for you."

She didn't want to take her chances with the assault team emerging from the fog like hulking armoured ghosts.

Her previous attempt to help the BIA had gone spectacularly tits up, and she couldn't visualize any kind of happy ending if she turned herself in now. If there was something else at play here, and Brooks wanted her dead so badly, then in all likelihood she would disappear. For a long time, maybe, or forever.

Besides, she had done what she came to do. Now she had a chance to figure out what was going on.

Brooks must have sensed what was on her mind because he spluttered, "If you think we're going to keep highly classified information in this bloody dungeon, you've got another think coming."

"The door," she told her team. "Open it."

"We can't." Lux's voice was filled with panic. "They've changed the permissions."

The fog had almost entirely dispersed, and the guards, wearing goggles that made them look like malevolent robots, came slowly towards her.

"This is your last chance, don't be a fucking idiot!"

Elodie grabbed the pass hanging from the lanyard around Brooks' neck, yanking his head viciously to the side. He let out a strangled yelp as she pressed his pass to the security pad.

"We're not finished, you and I!" she snarled as the door unlocked. As soon as she felt it give against her back, she kicked Brooks into the path of the approaching assault team and flew into the tunnel.

Running blindly, Elodie stumbled back the way she came. Gunfire cracked behind her as she turned into the first junction, causing a flash of angry sparks on the metal tubing along the wall.

"Get me out of here!" she screamed at Rocco.

The fog blasted into the vault would have stained her skin and clothes with an invisible substance that'd make her sparkle like Christmas tree decorations in the imaging visors of the pursuing assault team. The only hope she had was to lose them in the tunnels and pray she didn't run into a dead end.

"Where to?" she barked as she splashed through the puddles at the junction, trying not to bounce off the walls in the dark.

"Where are you?" asked Camille calmly.

Elodie heard Lux and Asami bickering in the background. "You tell me!"

Heading into a dimly lit access tunnel, water slapping at her ankles, she heard raised voices behind her, the blast of automatic gunfire. A bulb above her head exploded. Another shot must have hit a live cable, because there was an electric crack. Shots boomed like thunder all around her, echoing along the many intersecting tunnels.

She was already lost.

"Can you describe what you see?" asked Asami.

 It's not like there were street signs, or helpful arrows painted on the walls. All the tunnels looked the same, big and dark, if she could even see them.

"Not helping!" Elodie shouted.

She saw the darker hue of a pipe in the side of the tunnel and slipped into it, pressed herself into the slim channel, crawling on her front to fit inside, fingers sliding on the slimy ground.

The space narrowed and the ceiling sloped, until she had to hunch her shoulders in and pull herself along in an inch of freezing water, which rode over her chin and splashed into her mouth.

She gagged at the foul, bitter taste.

Elodie was terrified she was going to get trapped. But then the pipe widened again and came out three feet above the floor. She fell to the ground in a wide, domed brick tunnel. She had no time to let her eyes adjust to the blackness, and ran on.

She could hear the barks of the men, but with the weapons they carried, and the bulky armour they wore, they'd not be able to follow through the pipe; she had an opportunity to put some distance between them.

"W— c...n't – hel— you," Asami said, her voice cutting out.

"No shit," muttered Elodie.

"Goo— luc—"

A faint patina of ambient light came from one end of the tunnel, but the echoing shouts of the men, and their clattering footsteps, came from every direction.

Looking down, Elodie saw rail tracks on the floor, perilously close to her feet. She was standing in a Tube tunnel. She couldn't remember which of the four rails was electrified, whether it was one or two, and didn’t fancy finding out.

"Lux," she said. "Are you there?"

But she'd lost contact. Elodie ran down the middle of the track, careful to avoid the undulating lines of dark metal. And then from far off came a muffled rumble, a subway train cascading along a track. She froze, trying to place where the noise was coming from.

From somewhere close, she heard the squawk of a radio, and a thin beam of green light swept along the tunnel in the black depths behind her.

Shots reverberated again, and she zigzagged as best she could across the width of the tunnel, jumping left and right across the shiny tracks.

The vague metal lines in the gloom whined. A deep, guttural rumble bounced off the curved tunnel walls.

The train she'd heard in the distance was approaching, she just didn't know if she was running away from it or towards it.

The men were getting closer. The green beams jerked along the walls and ceiling. The rumble of the train became a threatening roar.

Light climbed one sooty side of the tunnel behind her. The best thing she could do was fling herself against a wall and let it pass, just as her pursuers were doing now, but she wouldn't be able to put distance between herself and the BIA men.

So she ran as fast as she could on the uneven surface between the tracks. Arms pumping, sucking down the damp, foetid air. One touch of the electrified rail and she was toast.

Over her shoulder, Elodie saw the train hurtle into view. Heard the angry cacophony of it, the rhythmic cascade of its wheels on the rails. Its two hundred tonnes would smash her to bits. Fifty yards ahead was a bright light, and she saw a platform. The roar of the train was deafening; it boomed and echoed in the tunnel, furiously bearing down on her like an enraged monster.

Elodie sprinted hard, trying to ignore her fatigue; thinking of all those early morning runs across the Common, all those punishing hours on the treadmill, all the strength training.

But she almost lost her balance in a hole between the tracks and had to readjust her stride in mid-air, only just managing not to land on the live rail.

Twenty yards now.

She kept up her pace, her long arms and legs moving like pistons as she raced towards the station, the tracks at her feet singing their song of electrified death.

It had been a long, exhausting day; she was running on empty.

Ten yards.

The driver of the train must have seen her silhouetted on the tracks just ahead, in the sallow, muted light of the station. She heard a deafening horn, and the brakes screech.

Seven yards.

People on the platform watched in shock as Elodie raced from the tunnel, the current rails lifting up on either side of her legs on blocks set into concrete.

Someone screamed.

And with one last effort, she launched herself, twisting like a high jumper over the raised tracks and onto the four-foot-high platform, rolling clear of the train as it flew into the station in a howling shriek of noise and brakes.

Elodie lay on the platform, trying to stop her heart crashing out of her ribcage.

I could have died.

I could have fucking died.

*

She ran through the station and onto the escalator going up, leaning over the divide to whip a baseball cap off the head of someone on the way down. Rushing onto the concourse, keeping her head low, she vaulted the ticket barrier.

As soon as she reached the pavement, Rocco's van pulled up beside her and she climbed in, the vehicle accelerating as the door slid shut. Lux and Asami were still arguing.

"Your way was wrong." Lux lifted their laptop screen to their colleague's face to show her something. "The authentication process could have been compromised."

Asami pushed the laptop away. "As usual, you're not seeing the whole picture."

"We could have saved time—"

"Leave it now, please," Rocco commanded. He took the camera from Elodie and handed it to Asami, and the two techs argued quietly about the best way to analyse the information on the photos Elodie had taken.

"We have a secure building we can get you to," Rocco told her.

"And"—she glanced at the bickering techs—"him?"

"You'll see him later."

He didn't look like he had any more information to share, so she left him alone.

The minivan came to a stop. When Elodie looked up, they were outside a building in Little Bay.

Laptop tucked under his arm, Lux pulled open the side door and said," This is me."

When Asami climbed out with him, Rocco said, "I want to know whatever it is you find on those photos, asap."

"Got it." Sliding the door shut, they and Asami walked to a door between one of the many coffee shops shuttered for the night.

Elodie turned away, trying to get her head together. The empty city streets flew past.

Again, she thought about the night of her parents death, and the morning after. How strange it was that she wasn't allowed to take any personal belongings of her parents after she lost the house to the mortgage bills. So blinded was she by grief at the time that she hadn't questioned a single thing. Now, looking back, it was strange.

Rocco lifted a bag off the seat beside him. "It's been quiet a day, right?"

Elodie eyed him. "Understatement of the year, if I've ever heard one."

He took a syringe from the bag and tore a needle out of its packaging.

"What's that for?" said Elodie warily.

"Don't worry, I’m not going to poison you." Rocco held it high so she could see the syringe was empty. "I need a blood sample."

 "What for?"

"When I'm told to do something, Elodie, I don't ask why. You know what the Don is like, he monitors everything. He'd do tests, probably, to make sure you're in good shape for the trials ahead."

Elodie took off her damp hoodie and let Rocco carefully draw blood from her arm. The filled syringe was placed carefully into a Ziploc bag, which was locked in a small box.

They sat in silence for the rest of the journey to the safe house. The van pulled up at the top of Le cercle street on Little Bay.

"Get some sleep and try to retain your energy." Rocco gave Elsa a burner phone. "Don't use it for Pizza."

Elodie slid the door open and climbed out. "I'm worried about my brother, Rocco."

"Where is he?"

"The Neverland Homes in Aqualine Shore," Elodie said.

Rocco might not know much, but he should at least know that she had a sick brother. Especially if Angelo was as thorough as she suspected he was.

"I'll make sure he's safe."

As the van accelerated away, Elodie made her way to the red bricked building. From the outside, it looked more of a warehouse than an apartment building.

Halfway up the path, she heard raised voices coming from inside.

Something was wrong.

Too tired to clamber over the tall wooden gate, Elodie kicked it open and ran into the backyard; which was filled with overgrown weeds and empty, crushed cans of soda.

She'd almost made it to the front door when strong arms banded around her waist, and she was lifted off her feet.

Elodie screamed, bicycling her legs, elbows trying to find purchase as she fought harder.

"Hold o—" her assailant started to say, but was cut-off when she rammed her head into their forehead. "Fuck!"

She was flung wide on to her hand and knees; and seeing her opportunity, Elodie made a break for it, but did not get very as her attacker flew into her, sweeping her off her feet.

Elodie hit the floor with a groan of pain as her own head hit something sharp.

The last thing she saw were the shiny pair of loafers that appeared in her line of vision.

A/N:

Never gets a break at all, does she?

Who do you think is her assailant?

Do you think they'll find something of importance on the camera? What do you think they'd find?

What do you think of the train scene?

Do you think Brooks found her that quickly?

Don't forget to vote, comment and share❤️.