Episode 85

India flung open the door before Harold even had a chance to ring the bell. He allowed his hand, with finger extended, to hang in the air for a moment for comic effect.

“Get in here, demon, and tell me everything that happened!” she barked.

“Pleased to see you too, Agent,” Harold replied, which earned him a Look.

Between them, and with many an irascible shouted instruction from Teatime, Harold and the little monkey had managed not only to get into the car (Mercury had the keys), but also to get it going and to pilot it back to Mr Teeth’s swiss-cheese house without crashing into anything or drawing unwanted attention from the police. Quite an achievement, Harold thought.

He recounted the night’s events in detail to India, a mug of steaming coffee in one hand. He purposefully left out anything about the two silvery cases he had liberated from the crashed truck. He wanted her to ask about them. When he was finished, she obliged him. She pointed to the silvery cases.

“What are those things, then?”

“Well,” replied Harold, lifting one on to the table and opening it, “they might just be the answer to our prayers.” He lifted a bundle of sleek, silvery material out of the case and shook it out for India to see.

“OK” she said carefully, eyes narrowed, “I’m seeing a fancy-looking oversize romper suit. How is going to help us?”

“This is what the guards who captured us – or should I say Prada – were wearing that allowed them to sneak up on us.” Harold explained.

“Seriously? They were dressed in a thing like that and you didn’t see them coming?”
Harold set aside the clothing and reached into the case a second time, lifting out an object the size and shape of a small backpack – complete with straps. “I think this is the power unit or something. When it’s switched on, you can’t be seen or heard, it’s really spooky!”

“Leaving aside for a moment the ironic fact that one of the Fallen thinks something’s spooky, how can we make use of it?” India had reached out and was rubbing the cloth between her thumb and forefinger, like it was a blouse she was considering purchasing.

“Well, I thought we might wear them and sneak back into Infinity Recycling, rescue our people, put an end to whatever’s going on and every one lives happy ever after.” Harold said, brightly.

“If I might inject a much-needed note of reality,” said Teatime, who had been watching. “Even with your magic suits, you can’t just waltz in there. There are still physical obstacles to overcome – locked doors and suchlike.”

“But, I can deal with those,” said Harold, “I – “

“Yes, old stick, I’m sure you can, given time.” Said the monkey patiently, “But don’t you think someone will notice a door opening all by itself – they’ve clearly got cameras all over the wretched place and probably heaps of guards. No, we’re going to need a diversion.”

“Actually, before we all rush down the road making plans,” said India, “we should probably make sure the suits actually work. We might need a special code to operate them or something. If we can’t get them switched on, there’s no use wasting time planning to use them.”

“You make an excellent point, Agent,” said Teatime. He turned to Harold, “Well, off you go old shoe.”

“You sure you want me to do this?” asked Harold.

“Well, the suit’s too big for the monkey, and if it goes bang or something, I’m not indestructible,” retorted India, “so, yes, demon, you get to do it.”


Harold was secretly rather pleased. He’d been itching to try out this clever bit of human technology. Yes, ok, he was a demon and many demons could and did make themselves invisible at will, but he’d never had the time to work on that – and probably never would now. He slipped off his jacket and began to undress down to his underwear. India took one look, blushed and stalked out of the room.
Harold grinned. Teatime sighed and rolled his eyes.

Harold wriggled into the romper suit which was quite stretchy when it came to it, and fitted his six-foot frame quite well. In addition to the suit, there were bootie-like things with soft soles, gloves and a ski-mask. Harold donned all of these.

“It’s safe to come back in now,” he called out to India. “I’m decent.”

“That’s something you’ll never be,” she muttered as she came back into the room.

“Aww, I’m hurt!” said Harold, mockingly, placing a hand over where his heart would be.. “Just when I thought we were beginning to get along and all.”

“Hmph!” was India’s only response. She walked over to the empty case and looked inside. “Hmm, I guess it was too much to hope that they’d leave a handy instruction booklet lying about.”

Harold had picked up the backpack-like object and was examining it.

“There’s a cable here,” he said, “Maybe it connects to the suit somehow.” He ran his hands over the suit until he found a hard lump in the collar of the romper suit. He teased it out between finger and thumb and slid the jack on the end of the cable into it until a soft click told him it was seated correctly.

“Am I invisible yet?” he asked.

“No.” chorused India and Teatime.

“Hmm, obviously, there’s a switch somewhere that’s easy to get to – it would need to be. There’s not one on the backpack, so it must be around here on the suit somewhere.” He put his arms through the straps and shrugged the backpack into place, being careful not to pull the connection apart. He cast his mind back to when the guards had first magically appeared. They had drawn weapons, but before that they’d been apparently clasping one wrist with the opposite hand.
“Got it!” he cried in triumph, pressing the small stud located on the left hand cuff.

He felt a soft vibration start up in the backpack. The biggest change though was that the world had suddenly been re-rendered in weird colours – all purples and greys in lower definition than normal.

“How bout now?” He turned round to see a look of utmost surprise on India’s face, and Teatime bolt upright on the table, his tiny teeth bared – an instinctive monkey reaction to the strange, no doubt.

“Very well, turn it off, turn it off, old sock!” urged Teatime, “We don’t want to run the battery down, do we?” Harold pressed the stud again. The vibration stopped and the world returned to normal colours.

Now he could see her again properly, Harold could not but help notice that India had gone very pale and very quiet.

“Agent? Are you alright?” he asked. “Shall I get you some water?”
“Turn it on again.” She said faintly.

Harold shrugged and did as he was told. The purple-o-vision bloomed silently, filling he field of view once more.

“OK, off again.” India’s voice was firmer now.

Harold complied.

“That is so weird,” she said, shaking her head.

“What is?” asked Harold. “Didn’t the suit work properly? Was I still visible?”
India wiped a hand across her forehead.

“Not only were you not visible, demon,” she replied grimly, “but my teeth stopped itching. I couldn’t sense you at all.”

Episode 84

Agents Mercury, Othello and Prada looked up guiltily as the door opened. They had been going through the few drawers and cupboards in the conference room, looking for a plug-in telephone after Othello had spotted a socket for one on the wall.


Agent Moon walked in.


“Moon! Tell your goons to let us go!” Prada was on her feet and shouting before the door was even closed behind him.


“Agent Prada,” warned Mercury, “let’s just stay calm and see what Moon has to say for himself.” He looked enquiringly at the latter. “Well?”


Prada slumped grumpily into a seat and began to worry at a hangnail with her teeth. Moon perched himself on the corner of the long conference table and surveyed the three of them. He looked different somehow, more confident, more mature and self-assured.


“Look,” he began, “I realise that this looks really bad –“


“Ya think?” muttered Prada, which earned her a frown from Mercury.


“- but, please believe me when I say that what’s going on here, what I’m involved in, is one of the most important projects this world has ever seen.”


“That’s a bold statement,” said Othello, “Care to elucidate?”


Moon took a moment to scratch at his temple as he composed his thoughts.


“I’d be more than happy to, believe me, but first I need some information from you guys.”


“Oh?” said Mercury, guardedly.


“Yeah, it’s just a small thing really, but I really need to know where Agent India and your pet demon are right now.”


Mercury, Prada and Othello looked at each other briefly, then Mercury spoke.


“And why would you need to know that, Agent?”


“We’re at a very sensitive stage in our work here,” Moon replied, “We really can’t afford to have unpredictable elements running about the place, disturbing things. It’s just too important.’


”You don’t seriously expect us to tell you, just like that, surely.” Said Prada.


Moon sighed. “I suppose not, but I thought it was worth while to ask, anyway.”


“So what now?” said Prada, “You going to start threatening us? Get one of your goons to shoot one of us like you did to Emerald? Like you did to Box?”


Moon’s face reddened.


“Those things were never meant to happen like that, I swear.” He said fervently. “A few people misunderstood what they were supposed to be doing and …” he trailed off, and suddenly, for a moment, he was the Moon they recognised - young, uncertain.


“Did whoever it was who planted the bomb in the warehouse misunderstand as well?” asked Othello, “Only, it seems to me that setting up something like that would take a certain amount of premeditation. Firing a gun can be a spur of the moment thing, but not planting explosives, that takes planning. You’re going to have to do better than that, Moon.”


Moon showed his palms in a conciliatory gesture. “You’re right, of course. In retrospect, it was a stupid thing to have done and, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry, I really am. It’s just that what we’re doing here is so very important.”


“Look, Fallen and Loyal alike have disappeared completely,” said Mercury, “Gone. Vanished. Not dismissed – which was always sufficient before now, but vanished. Are you destroying them somehow? And why target the Loyal when they’re on our side, for pity’s sake! Don’t you realise that you’re upsetting an ancient arrangement that has stood the test of time for centuries?”


“I understand that there are serious implications to what we’re doing here, believe me,” said Moon, “We appreciate that neither the Basement nor the Penthouse is going to be happy with what we’re doing here, but – “ he stood up and began pacing, as if about to deliver a speech.


“Humans have always been stuck in the middle between the two of them, at the mercy of either temptation from the Basement or whatever crumbs of bounty the Penthouse sees fit to bestow.”


“But that’s how it’s meant to be,” interrupted Prada. “If it – “


“Let me finish, please,” said Moon, cutting her off. “The Fallen and the Loyal have abilities that none of us humans can match and yet they hardly ever use them. There’s so much good they could do in the world but they don’t. Why? Because of some ancient agreement – to which we were not even party!”


“Moon, you know perfectly well why they can’t get involved in human affairs,” said Mercury, a not of irritation creeping into his voice. “Any one of them could rule this world without hardly lifting a finger if it so chose. The arrangement is for our protection, so that we are free to conduct our affairs as we see fit. They can try to influence us – that’s all. Our free will is what’s at stake here.”


“I know that!” Moon was beginning to sound angry himself now, “But is it an infringement of anybody’s free will if they get cured of cancer, or if a drought-stricken region suddenly get some rain for once? If a starving kid gets a bowl of rice? They see all this misery and they stand by and do nothing! If somebody saw an old lady fall down in the street and hurt herself, and yet just walked on by, we would be outraged at their lack of compassion. If we mortals can act altruistically, then why can’t they? It would be nothing to them.” He stopped, a little out of breath.


“I’m sure the Loyal at any rate would agree with you,” said Othello, “And I’m sure they very much want to help, but where do you draw the line? You can feed a single starving mouth easily enough, you might even feed a village or a town. Then you might just say to yourself, well, I can end starvation in this whole land altogether by getting the government to stop fighting internecine civil wars with their neighbours. Oh, and while I’m at it, I should get the neighbour governments to improve their human rights records. Pretty soon, if you go down that road, you’d be running the whole place. So it’s best not to even start down that road – hence the arrangement.”


“Well, I think it’s time things changed.” Declared Moon. “If they can’t – or won’t - help then –“


“- you’ll wipe then out.” Prada finished for him, flatly.


“No. That is not what’s happening here – the last thing we want is for any of them to be wiped out.”


“Then what?” asked Mercury.


For a moment, it looked as though Moon were actually going to tell them, but he obviously thought better of it. He shook his head.


“Sorry,” he said, “As I said, I’ll tell you gladly, but only when India and the demon are secured.”


He moved to the door. “Have a think about it and if you change your mind, just tell the guard. In the meantime, I’ll have some drinks and sandwiches sent in.”


The door closed. Mercury, Prada and Othello looked at one another.


“So,” said Mercury, “Do we give him what he wants?”

Episode 83

“You have absolutely no right to keep us here! Let us go!” Prada’s pale face was flushed with anger.

“Please sit down, miss, and stay calm.” Said Nugent, patiently. “I’m sure everything will be fine, but we have our orders. Someone will be along to speak to you soon.” He closed the door firmly behind him, leaving Prada, Othello and Mercury alone together for the first time since their capture.
Othello waited a few moments and then went over to the door. He eased it open a crack, glanced out and quickly closed it again.

“Two guards outside,” he said. “Armed.”

Mercury, meanwhile was checking the windows.

“These can’t be opened,” he sighed. “Looks like we’re here for the duration.”

“And since they have our phones, we can’t even let India know what’s happened.” Said Prada. The guards of units Three and Four had searched them quickly and professionally before ushering them into what looked like a perfectly ordinary conference room.

“She’ll know something’s up when we don’t make the check-in call.” Mercury looked at his watch, “in about ten minutes or so.”

“Were the guys that nabbed you wearing Predator-suits as well?” asked Prada.

“Predator suits?” Mercury inquired with raised eyebrow. “Oh! The fancy invisibility things? Yeah, they flat-footed us quite handily. What I wouldn’t give for a few of those things!”

“They’re some seriously advanced tech,” said Othello, “Military maybe. There’s a pile of money being spent here. I think we’re definitely on to something now.” He turned to Prada, “ So what happened to the demon? Did they capture it?”



Teatime crouched under a hedge, straining his tiny eyes and ears to the maximum to reassure himself that there were no perishing humans about. The car they had all arrived in earlier that evening sat, apparently undisturbed, just in the spot they had left it. During their earlier planning session at Mr Teeth’s, it had been decided that the car was the place to meet up if anything untoward happened. Well, untoward was certainly an understatement. A supposedly low-risk recce mission had turned into a complete shambles.

Teatime hoped Harold had a) got away safely and b) remembered this part of the plan. He was a good-hearted chap but, honestly, sometimes he could be such a complete duffer. Besides, it would be colossally inconvenient if the silly oaf had got himself captured. Not only would the investigation be severely hampered, but Teatime would have to explain things to Harold’s father. Not a pleasant prospect.


Harold had not forgotten the plan. It had taken a while, but he had eventually managed to find a service ladder and climb out of the culvert. As soon as he had emerged, he had tried calling Mercury’s phone to let him know what had happened. It had just rung and rung and then gone to voicemail. So had Othello’s. He even called Prada just in case, somehow, she had managed to escape herself, but the result was the same. This did not bode well. Maybe all the agents had been captured then. Well, all except one. India. His number one fan. With some trepidation, he dialled her number.


“All of them?” India cried, incredulous.

“It would seem so, I can’t raise any of them on their cells.”

“But you managed to escape. Just you.” Her voice had a hard, suspicious edge to it.

“Well, Teatime too, probably. We got split up in all the confusion.”
India rubbed her eyes. She needed to think. This was one scenario they had not rehearsed. She was effectively in charge now all of a sudden. This was only her first proper mission. She was the most junior member of the team, she couldn’t be expected to tackle this level of responsibility. It just wasn’t right. Get a grip, she told herself sternly. She took a big breath.

“OK, demon, try and find the monkey-thing and then both of you get back here, so we can figure out what to do next.“

“Will do.”

The line went dead. Well that went surprisingly well, Harold thought as he put the phone away. He had been expecting much more of a tongue-lashing than that. She must be softening.

Right then, back to the car and hopefully a reunion with Teatime.

Episode 82

Harold dropped the twenty feet or so into the culvert, landing lightly. He trotted over to the crashed truck. Some kind of liquid was leaking from somewhere and spreading in a dark pool around it. Harold hoped it wasn’t fuel or anything else flammable: he’d seen lots of movies and TV programmes since coming to earth and vehicles inevitably seemed to go ka-boom shortly after crashing. If motor vehicles were so dangerous, why on earth did humans routinely trust their lives to them? Harold wasn’t afraid for himself; his clothes would be ruined, of course, if the truck blew up, but he would be basically unharmed – if a little weak and in need of pizza. The humans inside would not fare so well, however, so chop-chop, old bean, he told himself in his best mental imitation of Teatime.

The truck’s rear end was closest to him and one of the doors, having burst open in the crash, was lying invitingly open on the ground, providing a handy means for Harold to scramble in.

The inside of the truck was a shambles. There had clearly been a lot of complicated and delicate equipment in here, but most of it had been torn from its mountings in the crash and was smashed and scattered all over the place. Bits of broken glass glittered everywhere. Thankfully, there was no electrical sparking – indeed, all was eerily quiet. Harold’s night vision, demonically good as it was, soon allowed him to spot the rear compartment’s lone occupant.

The man was unconscious with a sizeable gash on his forehead which was bleeding freely. He was lying sprawled on top of a small heap of busted up equipment. Further examination, however, was hampered by two large silvery equipment cases which had tumbled onto the man’s body and legs. Harold grabbed the handle of the nearest one and unceremoniously slung it out through the door-hole, where it landed with a clatter on the concrete beyond. The second one followed suit shortly after.

Harold crouched next to the man. He was quite young by the looks of it, which was good as it meant that he would be strong and healthy. Humans’ bodies were so terrifically delicate, though. One wrong move from Harold and a bad situation might become much, much worse. Harold had seen fly-on-the-wall documentaries about hospital ERs and knew that broken necks and spines were bad news. If he moved the man… He wracked his brains for a moment, wrestling with the beginnings of an idea, then shrugged to himself: it was worth a try, surely?

He tentatively reached out his hand and, using the same facility that had allowed him to sense the locks on the various doors he had opened, he tried to ‘see’ if anything was broken in the man’s body. The rush of sensation he received in return was very odd indeed: humans, it transpired, were basically a big bag of warm squishy with a bony frame. Fortunately, the man seemed to be undamaged apart from the knock on the head he’d received.

Harold carefully manoeuvred the limp and distinctly uncooperative form out through the door hole and dragged it far enough away (he hoped) from any potential ka-boom. Not knowing anything about recovery positions or anything much else of First Aid (the Basement did not have this subject on its curriculum for some reason), he made the fellow as comfortable as he could, then headed back to the van.

As he trotted past them on his way to the front of the truck, Harold glanced at the two bulky cases he had ejected so carelessly. They bore the Rainbow Industries logo as well as some other black stencilled lettering: RI-180-A Smart Camouflage (Medium). Harold felt a stab of excitement: if those cases contained what he thought they did, then getting Prada back might be a tad easier.

There was no time for that now, however.

Harold scrambled up onto the passenger side of the vehicle, which was now effectively its roof, and made his way over to the driver’s compartment. Through the broken passenger side window, Harold could see that both airbags had gone off and then deflated, leaving their fabric draped in pale folds eerily reminiscent of a shroud, over the occupants, neither of whom was moving.

Harold stood up and tried to tug the passenger door open, but it was badly buckled and refused to budge. Favouring the universe with a gimme-a-break-already sigh, Harold crouched down again and used his abilities, just as he had done on Mr Peck’s cable-tie handcuffs, teasing the molecules of the twisted metal apart bit by bit, so as to avoid sparks and subsequent unwelcome ka-booms.

The door now open, Harold reached in and gently lifted the air-bag material out of the way, the better to see the two men. A hand-scan (as he suddenly decided to called it) revealed that the passenger had a broken arm and a couple of cracked ribs, as well as a large egg of a bump on the side of his head – no doubt the cause of his unconsciousness. He tried to reach down to the driver to check on him, but the bulk of the passenger’s body prevented it.

The passenger himself was probably not in too great a danger from his injuries, Harold thought (so, you’re a Doctor all of a sudden, taunted his own inner voice), but clearly the man would benefit by not being in the truck any longer than was necessary.

But how to get him out safely?

The truck’s front windshield was a spider web of cracks, but was, miraculously, still more or less in one piece. If Harold could just remove it, there would be a nice big aperture through which rescue could be effected. He was just starting to congratulate himself on his own inventiveness when the sound of a passing siren drifted down from the highway above.

He smacked himself in the forehead with the heel of his hand. You idiot! he told himself, you should have rung for an ambulance before getting stuck in!

He reached for his phone, but, as his fingers curled around its cool smooth plastic, he suddenly remembered all those NO MOBILE PHONE signs displayed so prominently in filling stations. Mouthing a silent phew at his lucky escape, he jumped down to the ground.

Once he got to work on it, the windscreen all but fell out of its own accord and, with the large gap it left, Harold was now able to check on the truck’s driver at last.

The driver’s corner of the truck had borne the full brunt of the vehicle’s high speed impact with the unyielding concrete of the culvert’s wall. There was nothing anyone could do for the driver now.

Shaking his head, Harold carefully eased the passenger out of the truck and dragged him as gently as he could over to where he had left the other man, laying him down beside his comrade. He then dialled 911 and gave brief details of the men’s injuries and the location.

That done, he suddenly felt quite drained. All the tearing about at high speed, followed by all the scanning and cutting of metal and glass had apparently taken its toll. What he wouldn’t give for some pizza right now! No rest for the wicked, though, he told himself.

Slinging the straps of the two cases over his shoulders, Harold started walking along the culvert and away from the crash site – it wouldn’t do to be around when the medics (and Police, probably) showed up. Now, there had to be a service ladder or something around here somewhere.

Episode 81

Harold found himself running across an area of rough ground, mostly loose, dry dirt with the odd tussock of scrubby grass dotted here and there. Behind him, he could hear the truck’s engine being revved and what sounded like a very bad-tempered clash of gears as it was hastily slammed into reverse. Hopefully, the Infinity Recycling crew would waste a lot of precious time getting the truck back out of the loading yard and onto the road again, time he could use to his advantage.

He looked back to see if any of them had followed him over the fence, but could see nothing except the sweep of the truck’s lights as it swung around, and even these disappeared as it drove out of the yard.

Where would they go?

Harold’s mind raced: having seen him run off into the dark, they would try to find a way onto this open area as soon as they could. He wasn’t out of the woods yet by a long chalk. Heh, woods would be quite handy in his current predicament.

Then he had an idea. Whipping out his phone, he called up Google Maps. It took a maddeningly long time for the app to work out where he was and display the map of the area, but eventually it appeared.

Up ahead, about half a mile off, Harold could see a line of moving lights. So that would be the highway indicated on the map just there then. So, that bit was the business park and there was the loading yard. Harold zoomed the image out to get the whole of the rough ground onto the screen. It looked like there was just the one place that a vehicle could get through and was it just over there….

Sure enough, as if on cue, like the eyes of some malevolent creature, the truck’s headlights appeared and began to grow larger as the vehicle bounced and bumped its way onto the field.

Harold headed for the lights of the highway. Maybe he’d be able to persuade someone to stop and give him a ride (unlikely! he admonished himself), but even so, once he actually was on the well-lit main road, surely the IR people wouldn’t be able to try and capture him without drawing a lot on unwelcome attention. It was definitely the best bet at this stage.

The truck’s engine roared as the driver floored the accelerator. Harold risked a look back and saw that the truck was on a somewhat oblique course to his; it looked like the truck’s occupants didn’t exactly know where he was at this point, which was fine by him.

The highway lights drew steadily closer. He might make it yet.

Suddenly, the truck accelerated past Harold on what was now almost a parallel course, albeit a hundred yards to the side. Darn it!  They must have figured out the highway was his best bet and were trying to get there before he did. That was not good news: the open ground was a rough wedge shape with the narrowest part abutting the highway. If they did get there in time and got their freezing machine going again there was no way he was getting past them. He slowed to a stop; no point in running straight into their trap. The obvious thing would be to head back the way he’d come, putting maximum distance between himself and them.

He turned and began to run back.

Behind him, the truck’s engine, which had been a more or less constant roar suddenly rose in pitch, giving out a tortured mechanical scream. This lasted but a moment, however, before being cut off by a horrendous crashing sound, followed by the nails-on-blackboard screech of something heavy and metallic sliding against something very hard and very rough.

Then all at once there was silence.

Harold whirled round.

The truck was gone.

He stood there for a few moments, at a loss. In his experience, trucks did not just disappear. After a while, though, a new sound came to his ears, an irregular ticking interspersed with the occasional spong of cooling metal.

Harold made his way over to where the noise was coming from. The mystery of its sudden vanishing act was solved.  A twenty foot wide, twenty foot deep solid concrete drainage culvert ran more of less parallel to the highway. The truck’s driver simply hadn’t seen it in time.

The truck lay on its side at the bottom of the far wall. It must have hit at an angle, its momentum flipping it round a full 180 degrees given that it was now facing back the way it had been going. From what Harold could see of it, the driver’s side was completely staved in and the rest of the truck looked pretty bent and battered. It wouldn’t be following anyone anywhere now.

For a moment his spirits soared. This was his chance! He could get away, hook up with Teatime, Othello and Mercury and figure out how to rescue Prada.

But, a more level-headed thought insisted, there were people in that truck. If they had survived the crash, they were very likely to be needing medical attention.

So call an ambulance and leave them to take care of it.

But an ambulance could take ages, those people needed help now.

But if they weren’t that badly injured after all, he’d be walking straight into their arms.

Not badly injured?  Seriously?  The truck was a mess.

Harold gazed at the crumpled truck for a moment longer and then with a sigh, walked to the edge of the culvert and jumped down into it.

Episode 80

Harold risked a glance back over his shoulder as he ran. It looked like Prada was trying to make use of Teatime’s distraction herself: she was struggling manfully (girlfully?) in the grip of two of the silver-suited guards. The other two were pounding along the road after him. Of Teatime, there was no visible sign. He hoped the little monkey was ok. With any luck, the humans in their usual arrogance would overlook him as just a dumb animal and he would make good his escape.

What about Agent Prada, though?

A razor-edged icicle of guilt stabbed into his mind and he almost turned back for her. A second thought, however, hot on the heels of the first pointed out, quite reasonably, that getting himself captured would be no help whatsoever to anybody, so he shifted up a gear to put some distance between himself and his pursuers. His earthly vessel was not super-strong, but it was very fast and it did not get tired or out of breath. His pursuers were soon falling behind.

Inside the Infinity Recycling building, Nugent cursed softly as the red dot on the c-detector winked out.

“Unit four, this is Sec-1, what’s your status?”

Unit four’s leader responded after a few moments. “Sec-1, we have captured one of the intruders, the other one ran off. Roe and Rehman are in pursuit.”

“Copy that, unit four ”

Nugent switched to a different channel. “Mobile team, immediate scramble. We have a contact heading south.”

“Mobile team, acknowledged,” came the crisp reply.

Mercury and Othello were caught as flat-footed as Prada and Harold had been – only they didn’t have a handy monkey-shaped distraction, so ended up being matched ignominiously into the Infinity Recycling building by the unsmiling guards of Unit three.

As soon as he saw that Harold had got clear, Teatime leapt away from the flailing arms of the stupid human guards and set off in the same general direction as the demon. He had no hope of catching him, of course, but one direction was as good as another under the circumstances. Unlike Harold, however, Teatime had no qualms whatsoever about leaving Prada to her fate. So far as he was concerned, she could take care of herself and the guards’ weapons were clearly meant to intimidate rather than injure or kill since they had not tried to use them. Besides which, any humans struggling with her were humans who were not chasing him.

Somewhere far behind him, Harold heard an engine cough into life. This was not good: he could not possibly outrun a motor vehicle, and what if it was equipped like the one at the safe house that had managed to freeze him? He had to get away from the road and hope the vehicle was not set up to travel over rough terrain – not that there was much of that in this over-landscaped and asphalt-covered place.

The sound of the engine was growing louder now. It was a hungry, angry sound to Harold’s ears.

He veered off the main road and headed for a gap between Eaton-Brewer Inc and Knight Securities, a narrow service road of some kind. He hoped that the Infinity Recycling vehicle would carry on along the main route and that his short-cut would get him clear of the business park. If he could get to some roadless ground…

The buildings were two lightless boxes looming up on either side as he ran between them, his footfalls echoing madly off the walls. Behind him, he heard the vehicle shift down and slow – it was turning too! Harold was sure that the driver could not have actually seen him; the road was curved and he would have been far enough around to be out of sight, he was sure. Either the driver had got very lucky in his guesses or he had some means of tracking him. Now that would be really bad news. It made sense though: he and Prada had been very careful to stay a good distance from the cameras and lighting at Infinity Recycling and yet they had still been discovered. So, unless Mercury or Othello had blundered – and he could not believe they would have – it must have been his own presence that had alerted the strange silver-suited guards. It would appear they had some sort of demon-detection technology.

Project Dynamo had been perfected after all.

The service road emerged onto another road, running parallel to the original one. Harold ran straight across it, looking left and right in desperation, hoping for any kind of narrow gap that would prevent the vehicle from following. Nothing obvious presented itself and he could feel panic rising as the sound of the vehicle changed: it was now between the buildings and would emerge at any moment.

He took another service road. This one curved around the back of a building into a loading yard of some sort.

Dead end!

A high fence surrounded the yard. Harold glanced around wildly. He could hear the vehicle’s wheels bump up over a drainage grating that had marked the entrance to the service road. He could not be caught here!

Then he spied it – a dumpster hunkered down in the corner of the yard. He sprinted over to it, leapt up onto it, his feet clanging noisily on the metal of its lid, and bounced-jumped for the top of the fence.

His hands closed around the topmost horizontal bar and he began to heave himself up, ready to swing over the top.

The world was suddenly filled with light as the vehicle roared into the yard and screeched to a stop. Immediately, a strange whining sound filled the air and Harold’s vision swam crazily.

The freezing machine!

More terrified than he had ever been in his long life, he hurled himself over the top of the fence, not bothering to engineer a clever landing – he was a demon after all, and it was not like he would break an ankle.

He hit the dirt on the other side of the fence hard, rolled and staggered to his feet. His limbs felt unaccountably sluggish and heavy. He felt – what was the words the humans used, tired! His head was full of cotton wool. He lurched forward a step or two, the world tilting and listing crazily, then he took another few. A few yards behind him and a million miles away, the engine of the vehicle was idling now and he could hear shouts. They sounded angry. That was a good thing. He stumbled forward a few more drunken steps and suddenly started to feel more normal. Maybe the machine wasn’t fully switched on yet, maybe it had to warm up or something.

A balloon of hope and excitement suddenly inflated inside him and he pushed himself onward into the darkness, feeling better with every step.

Episode 79

Moon put down the phone and jumped out of bed. A mixture of excitement and puzzlement was building inside him. The c-detectors at Infinity had never so much as twitched before now, except when rigged for staff training exercises. Nugent had said the reading was low - a mere 3.5, but it was stable and seemed to be moving purposefully and systematically around the outside of the site.

Moon tugged on his trousers and hurriedly fished his shirt and jacket off the floor. One shoe was playing hard-to-get under the bed and he had practically to lie down full-length to retrieve it.

There could really only be one explanation for the blip. Somehow, Mercury and his team, plus their pet demon by the looks of things, had figured out where the facility was! Keys, phone, phone, phone! Where the hell was his phone? Oh, there it was on the bedside table. How on earth had they managed to find out where the facility was? Flowers's interrogation of Box had revealed that they knew nothing worth knowing. The facility wasn't even officially listed as belonging to Infinity Recycling - only some serious digging would have revealed the connection. Someone obviously had been digging, though, probably Othello, he would have been the only one smart enough. Flinging on his jacket, Moon headed for the door.

The quiet of the night was broken by the sound of an approaching vehicle.

"Quick, get down behind here," Prada whispered, tugging Harold's arm. They both crouched down behind Adept Engineering's conveniently placed and neatly clipped box hedge. Teatime hopped off Harold's shoulder and moved toward the hedge with a view to climbing up it.

"How exciting is this?" whispered Harold excitedly.

"Don't get too enthusiastic," she whispered back, "we're just keeping a low profile is all, just a precaution. After all, it's unlikely anybody would look twice at us anyway, but still..."

Teatime peered over the top of the hedge as the vehicle passed by. After a moment, he clambered down to ground level.

"False alarm, chaps," he said, "It was just a delivery van or some such."

Nugent repositioned the CCTV cameras to point to the area corresponding to the dot on the c-detector. Annoyingly, the area lay just beyond the reach of the perimeter lighting, so he brought the thermal camera to bear on the same spot. Aha! Two crouching figures could be made out, along with a third much smaller one on the ground next to them. Nugent spoke into his headset microphone.

"Units one, two and three, search your sectors, we have a positive in sector 4 and there may be others."

"Unit four. You have two targets and possibly a small animal of some kind on your front porch."

"Unit four, copy." came the crisp reply.

It was as if the guards appeared out of nowhere. Prada and Harold scrambled to their feet as the six men appeared suddenly to shimmer into existence around them. They were all dressed from head-to-toe in a snug-fitting uniform of some strange-looking material. It resembled more than anything the sort of shiny nylon silver suits actors wore in old sci-fi B movies that were meant to show that in the far, far future mankind may have had jet-packs and food pills, but absolutely no sense of style. The guards' heads were covered in a ski-mask like affair of the same stuff and round their waists they had broad pouched belts, a-la Batman, and some kind of oblong backpacks on their backs. Science Fiction props their costumes might have been, but the weapons they were now drawing looked perfectly realistic.

One of the men, a leader of some sort presumably, whipped off his ski mask. Underneath, he was revealed to be a pleasant-looking, blond man in his late twenties.

"Sir? Ma-am?" he began, "I have to inform you you're trespassing on private property and I'm gonna have to ask you to come with us please"

Harold and Prada glanced at each other, neither sure exactly what to do. Of course, the guards might just want to ask them a few questions and then let them go on their way, in which case, there would be no harm in going with them. On the other hand, if the guards were part of the shadowy organisation responsible for the disappearance of the angels and demons and possibly the murder of Agent Emerald as well, it would be very foolish to go with them right now.

Suddenly, one of the guards grabbed at his head as a quick, agile shape landed upon it and began tearing at the ski mask covering the man's face.

"Run!" screeched Teatime in Infernal and leapt off the man's head just as one of his colleagues took a swipe at him.

Harold vaulted the low hedge and ran.