A/N: I have no idea how the bureaucracy of forensics works, but I'm guessing that Leo wouldn't get what he needs, in reality, as quick as he does in this chapter. Ha ha, woops?
Run
Leo did as he was told; he ignored the bodies from the scene that morning, leaving them to Charlie, and went straight to the fridges to extract the anomalies. He knew that, for Harry and Nikki to have asked him to do something like this, it must be pretty serious, and so he collected swab DNA samples and had them tested straight away. Within half an hour, he had confirmation of what Harry and Nikki had only had time to speculate on; the two bodies were, indeed, members of the police force; one DI Malone, and a young officer named James Daniels. Leo stared at this information incredulously, not knowing quite what to think; whoever was behind this, it seemed, was utterly ruthless. They must have had these people killed because they were likely to be genuine, bona-fide officers, genuinely searching for answers the way that the police should. In place of the DI, this case, had been replaced by Charlie's charming, corrupt DSI, and… and that didn't look too good, to Leo.
Nikki, he thought, had no idea how deep she was getting them all into this. No idea at all…
And all he could do now was wait…
*
Too slow… always too slow. We got the information, but we didn't get it fast enough. We were never going to get it fast enough…
They were chasing – always chasing – and they were catching us up faster than we could ever know…
*
"Nikki", Harry called, from one side of the garage. It was cold, and dark, and dreary, and it was apparently owned by no one, and so they'd had to carefully break-and-enter; Harry had learned a lot about Nikki that afternoon, in that she was apparently capable of picking simple Yale locks with hairpins.
"What?" she asked, somewhat irritably, as she scoured the back wall of the garage for any sign that it had once harboured blood-splatter.
"I think I've found something." Harry told her, "I'm not sure, but I think I might have…"
Nikki stood up, sighing, and crossed the twelve-or-so paces between them, wondering what it could possibly be.
"Look." Harry directed her to a thin sheet of plastic film, which was stuck to one pane of the tiny window - the only source of light in the building.
"What is that?" Nikki asked, standing on tiptoe to be able to see properly.
"Tweezers?" Harry asked. She pulled them from her pocket and passed them to him; he took them, smiling, and leant across, carefully, to peel the film from the glass of the window itself. "Have you got a sheet of paper in with all that?" Harry asked, indicating the bulging rucksack Nikki had insisted on bringing with them.
"Probably." She replied, heaving it up, and delving in, "why?"
"I think that there's something printed on this." Harry explained, "it looks like the sticky stuff they put over old ID badges, to hold the photos and information in."
"Why would it have anything printed on it?" Nikki asked, handing him a sheet of paper and an evidence bag.
"It might have picked up the print from the ID card, I suppose?" he asked, placing it up against the paper and squinting. "I can't make out what it says, though…" He passed it to Nikki, and watched, standing close behind her with his head resting on her shoulder, as she tried to work out what it said, too.
"I think… no. It can't be… I…" she stuttered, scarcely believing what she was reading. "Pass me that evidence bag." She told Harry, and slotted the film into it when he did. "We need to keep this safe, and look at it more closely. If it says what I think it says…"
"I got a shot of it on the window, before I removed it." Harry told her, helpfully.
"Good." She nodded, turning to kiss him gently on the lips, "because if it's what I think it is, we might just have found the evidence that Alana was looking for."
*
Of course, in this game, joy is always short-lived; it would have been too simple, too easy for us to have found a ready solution now, when the ending of this battle was already mapped out, so, so very long ago…
They knew the game they were playing better than we did. They knew what was at stake. They also knew how to bring us down, and they were only just getting started…
*
"Did you hear that?" Harry asked, pushing Nikki back slightly, out of his arms, and out of his embrace. She could almost see him listening; his eyes scrunched up, and crinkled around the edges, and his pupils began almost following the sound he could hear. It was outside; she saw that much in them. But… what was it? "Someone's out there." He confirmed, "I… you know what I said, earlier? About running? I think…"
He glanced around, desperately; there were two doors in the garage, and the first was infinitely preferable to the second, which opened into someone's garden, and was, as yet, still locked. Outside the first, though, was goodness knows who… and they were probably armed. Heavily armed.
"Nikki," Harry whispered, looking her firm in the eyes, "I think they're out there. Can you… unlock that door? I think… we may need to run."
Before he'd even finished speaking, Nikki had darted across the garage to the old, rotten wood door, and was fiddling around with the hairpin. Harry, unsure of exactly what to do, placed the evidence and his camera into Nikki's massive bag, and shouldered it, groaning slightly under its weight. How tiny, waif Nikki had managed to life it was anyone's guess; she looked more delicate and breakable than ever now – wearing flat shoes brought her down to shoulder height on him – and with, well, whoever it was outside… he was honestly terrified.
"Ready." She whispered. Harry, however, was more-or-less frozen to the spot. "Harry!" she whispered, again, "I'm ready…"
Harry snapped awake as they heard someone begin to lift the garage door, and stared, petrified, from it to Nikki and back again…
And then everything was moving at hyper-speed; they were opening the tiny wooden door, and running out, and closing it carefully behind them, and looking around, and realising that they were in someone's garden… And then Harry was helping Nikki climb over the garden fence, and into the next garden, and they were hopping from garden to garden, with the massive rucksack on Harry's back, and Nikki's hair, no longer held back by pins, was flying everywhere, and they just had to keep running…
The only thing that they knew for certain in that horrible, terrifying moment was that they just had to keep running…
A/N: Thank you all for your excellent theories as to how this ends, and what you're missing. I think you might as well give up guessing now, because Chocolate Scones and Elynara are very nearly right. If they teamed up, they might just get it…
:) The rest of you are miles off, though, hee hee
Because, I hate to break it to you, but Nikki is not in a coma :)