‘The lab’s the other way,’ said Kate.
‘Staff room first,’ Mark replied, pointing at the next door down.
‘Looking for more drink?’
‘Looking for keys. They never kept chemistry stuff in unlocked cupboards.’
He opened the door to the staff room. It was windowless, and pitch black. Mark, without a moment’s thought, switched on the light.
The room lit up to reveal a dusty, lifeless room. Empty mugs of tea rested on tables full of teachers’ marking, the writing on the staff whiteboard had faded away, and a collection box for school pantomime tickets had collected a year’s worth of dust.
But Mark was worried.
‘Someone else is here,’ he whispered. ‘That other guy had a friend.’
Kate scanned the room for clues, and found literally nothing. If someone were to try designing a room to look as dull and boring as possible, they could not have done better than the sight in front of her.
‘How do you—’
‘Guys,’ Mark said into his radio, ‘there’s at least one more of them. Be careful.’
He looked into Kate’s eyes, the fear in his face clear and obvious.
‘We need to get back to the office. Before someone else finds the computer still on.’
There was a noise. Kate turned round just in time to see a uniformed figure run past the staff room, straight towards Paul’s office.
Mark opened fire, and missed.
Chapter 7
When Kate fired her own bullet, it struck the man in his lower leg. It didn’t appear to slow him down; he stumbled and shrieked, but hopped around the corner of the corridor as fast as he would have done anyway, perhaps carried by his own momentum.
‘Get him!’ Mark yelled, the expected ferocity in his voice replaced with worry. Kate did not need telling twice, and charged with all her energy towards the corner. She knew the risk of the man lying in wait behind the wall with a pistol pointed in her direction, but she ran anyway. Something told her the man would be more interested in reaching Paul’s office than winning a gunfight.
When she and Mark turned the corner, she was proven correct. They were just in time to see the door to the office slam shut, and heard the locking mechanism as they approached. The door was sturdy – thick and secure enough to keep any staff member safe from a violent student or an ambitious burglar. This would not be easy.
There was an electric scream of ‘Pete!!’ from behind the door. The man in the chair with the carved throat now had a name: one that would stick in Kate’s memory until the day she died.
Mark got to the door first, and smashed the little square window with the butt of his rifle. He was answered by a short burst of pistol fire, and jerked his head away from the spray of wooden splinters that spat from the empty window frame. Kate reached the door and poked her rifle through the window just in time to see the man grab the laptop in both hands and haul it to the floor, before her own bullets shredded the surface of the desk where the laptop had been.
Crap, he only needs to push one button .
But I can’t hear a shield going up outside. Or even anything being pressed in here . W hy hasn’t he just done it?
She looked at Mark’s disgusted face. His eyes were pointed at a bullet wound in his upper arm, most likely from return fire after he had smashed the window. Reaching through and opening the door with the inside handle would not be an option.
‘You made a big mistake, mate,’ Mark yelled to the sheltering figure. ‘Back when you used the staff room.’
‘Really?’ replied the man. ‘I didn’t touch anything in there except the kettle…’
Does he really care, or is he playing for time?
Mark Gunnarsson is stood outside the door planning to kill him. Of course he’s playing for time.
‘You touched the light switch,’ said Mark. ‘Oakenfold’s full of those crap energy-saving bulbs that need three minutes to warm up. I walked in, switched them on and the place lit up in a split-second. The bulbs were still warm, and your mate was asleep. Someone else must have used them earlier.’
‘Huh, how clever of you. Are you sure you were a student here? You’re not nearly stupid enough. What a way to live your life.’
‘Yeah, well you’re about to get killed by a retard. Proud way to go.’
Kate bit her lip. The confrontation would have to end sooner rather than later. But the door was firmly locked, and the man was hidden behind Paul’s desk where bullets could not reach him.
Then she remembered the other weapons they were carrying. She pointed to Mark’s belt, and he nodded.
‘Back in a bit,’ he whispered. ‘Keep him busy.’
Mark turned and fled, clutching his reddening upper arm, and left Kate to face the bullets alone. How she was supposed to prevent the man in the office from raising the shield, she had no idea. His laptop was right in front of him, and he was one button away from success.
And again… w hy hasn’t he done it already ?
*
‘Raj, we need to go!’
‘Why?’ asked Raj, thumbing through the paperwork balanced on the library shelves. ‘The gunfight’s over there, we’re over here. The others can handle it. What’s going on here is important.’
‘No,’ yelled Gracie, ‘we have to get outside! Back to Jack!’
‘He’ll never be your boyfriend, Gracie. Come here, I need you to help me read this.’
By the time Raj had looked up Gracie had fled, leaving nothing but the sound of her running footsteps. Raj breathed a sigh in the most irritated tone he could manage, and refocused on his work.
The school library had been turned into a miniature archive for the AME project. The original contents of the bookshelves had been thrown to the corners of the room – everything from the children’s encyclopaedias to the advice books for young adults applying for work – and replaced by binders of paperwork that must have been important to the team that had worked here.
Wow, Ewan picked the wrong Underdogs to search these rooms, Raj thought. God, if you’re going to bless me with the sudden ability to read, now would be a good time.
A thought struck Raj which made him stand bolt upright. Divine intervention or not, it saved a lot of time.
Raj’s mother had spent most of his childhood calling him ‘my little detective’, since he could see straight to the root of any problem without being distracted by the extra details that got in everyone else’s way. With or without the ability to read, Detective Raj Singh had the perfect brain for this task. He didn’t need to learn the entire dictionary to find the information worth stealing. He just needed to find the documents with the right key words.
We’re here to work out what to do in New London… so those are the two words I need to look for. I just need to find a capital N followed by a capital L. And look for ‘ AME ’ too . Even I can spell that one.
Raj grabbed the first file that came within reach. A quick browse revealed none of the magic words. The next file revealed none of them either. Raj wondered whether this was what browsing foreign language books felt like for the average person.
The third file contained ‘N– L—–‘ and ‘AME’ in the same paragraph. It was hopeful. He opened it up, and smiled at the sight of diagrams.