Chapter 28
Fire and Blood
The ground connected with her chest and drove the air from her lungs.
Pain lanced through her bones as the impact caught up with them. Smashing them into her nerves and setting them ablaze.
She lay eyes squeezed shut. Body in agony. Unaware of anything around her. Nothing but her own pain.
Then the wall of heat struck. Slamming into her like a tidal wave.
She became aware of a dull throbbing in her ears that gave way to a dull ring that increased in a crescendo, as though a bell was trapped inside her skull and was attempting to free itself through her eardrums.
Oxygen returned to her empty lungs and starved brain. She swallowed it down as someone might swallow water had they been alone in the desert for days.
Tentatively, she forced her eyes open.
She could see nothing but the strange little maze of cracks and crevices that trickled through black tarmac. Blackness. And a faint red ribbon that crawled in to her line of vision.
It took her a moment to realise that it was blood. And another moment to realise that it was hers.
Everything hurt. The world blurred and her head swam and she found her eyes close again as her chest rose and fell too quickly.
She grimaced as pain lanced through her nerves again.
Forcing her eyes open again, she remained lying where she was but allowed her eyes to slowly roll in their sockets and take in the scene.
Fire. Hot. Yellow and vicious billowed from broken windows like hot dragon breath. It clawed its way up the side of buildings looking like a raging orange waterfall that was pouring the wrong way. Molten. Liquid. Devastating. With a life of its own. Indiscriminate destruction.
Blackness greeted her once more and a moan made its way past her lips. Her body twisted again in response to pain, the source of which she could not identify; everything hurt.
She forced her eyes open again, painting.
People. People rushed past her, over her, around her. Their feet pounding into the ground in time with her racing heart. Swarming through the streets like insects, their nest disturbed and so now they fled, scuttling for cover elsewhere.
Groaning again, she shifted her head slightly, affording herself another, grimmer view.
Blood. Hot. Red. Sticky blood. It seemed to drench someone from head to foot. It was splattered over the ground. It fled from wounds as eagerly as people fled from the burning building. The thick crimson liquid pouring into the thirsty ground.
A woman crouched over a limp, twisted body screamed silently. Grief palpable, even from this distance. A small boy cradled in her arms.
There was something...Something she ought to remember. Something that needed to be done. Or something that had been done. But that she had to check.
She could not remember.
Oblivion whispered quietly to her. Stealing into her mind and emptying it. Removing the vile scenes around her and drowning her in an ocean of black.
Harry yanked the ear piece from his head, wincing it shrieked, momentarily deafening him.
It was as though someone had clapped a pillow over his head. Blocking everything out. Trapping him within himself and not allowing the rest of the world any access. Something he usually welcomed but not now.
Now he had to know what was going on. His colleagues. His team. His friends. Ruth...
He could still hear Lucas' desperate and seemingly vain attempts at revival behind him. The pleas that he knew he too should be uttering. And yet he could not. The words would not come. They stuck and jammed in his throat.
He could not even look at her. Because if he looked, then he would see, and if he saw, then he could not be sure what he would do.
And now he was still needed. Bombs were exploding in London. More members of his team may have been caught up in that. And Jamal. Jamal needed to be found. To be brought in. He had to think. He had to act. And to do that, he could not know. Not yet. He could not let himself turn around. He could not let himself know. Not yet. Not yet...
Tentatively, he replaced the earpiece. "Sofia."
He waited. Nothing.
"Sofia." He repeated, a little more insistently,
Stubborn silence greeted him.
"Sofia can you hear me?"
Static.
Swearing, he wrenched it from his ear. Dead. Useless. He would get nothing from it now. Whatever had happened on their end, an explosion from the sound of it. The comms were dead. Their links were dead. And for all he knew, Ros and Sofia were dead as well.
He closed his eyes and pressed his fingers into them until they screamed in protest.
His ear was still weakly complaining about the sharp squeal that had been forced through it after the remnants of the explosion had reached him.
Yet in the other, he could hear the faint wail of sirens in the distance.
Too bloody late... Was all he could think.
Sofia forced herself into a sitting position, shaking herself like a dog and stopping quickly as her ribs burned and her head swam in protest.
Raising a hand, she found a shard of glass embedded in the side of her head, blood trickling steadily from it. Irritated, she carefully drew it out, gritting her teeth, before tearing a strip from her shirt to bandage the wound.
She saw now that she was lying in a sea of broken glass. Small cuts peppered her skin, glancing down at the slim incisions she could not help but think of hundreds of tiny little demons grinning at her with red smiles, dripping blood.
A quick count showed that all of her limbs were still intact, which she took to be a good thing. Her ribs burned whenever she attempted to move, or breathe, but a quick examination of the brilliant purple bruise that had blossomed across her pale skin showed it to be just that, a bruise, with nothing broken as far as she could tell.
Body protesting, loudly, she pushed herself to her fight, wincing as muscles she had not even thought existed made themselves known by complaining at their use.
The world rocked and swam around her, pitching sickeningly, as though she had spun in a circle too fast for too long. Her insides threatened to make themselves known on the outside and she doubled over for a moment, bracing herself on her knees and panting until she was able to slowly view the world somewhat steadily.
Emergency services were already making themselves known on the scene but there was too much to attend to for anyone to bother with her as she cautiously made her way back towards The Asquith.
Finally it struck her as her wits slowly crawled back to her, the conversation she had had seconds before the explosion had ripped through the street,
"Codes. Now."
"Amari please!"
"You, you already have them. I hid them in plain sight, as a back-up in case anything went wrong. You've been agonizing over them for-"
The codes. The hostage. Ruth. And Ros...
She stumbled towards the hotel. Her fingers fumbled around herself, looking for the wire...She found it, and drew the earpiece back up again, jamming it into her ear.
"Harry? Ros?" she asked, wildly, her tongue feeling thick and fuzzy, as though she had drunk too much,
Allowing a string of choice curses in mixed English and Russian, the latter being far more satisfying, tripped past her lips as she wrenched it out hard enough to tear the wire. Deciding that there was no hope for it now, she left it strewn amidst the carnage.
Finally remembering that she had other means of communication, she rifled around in her pocket and pulled out her phone. She punched in the number from memory and placed it at her still ringing ear.
"The number you have called is not available at the moment-"
Snarling and cursing whoever was responsible for providing the voicemail message to deepest darkest Hell, she cursed Harry Pearce for choosing that moment to call the Home Secretary to chat about the weather or whatever else he was doing to prevent her from getting through.
"Tariq, what's going on at The Asquith?" Harry demanded after finally, mercifully being connected to The Grid once more via his mobile,
"I, I don't know, comms are down, I-"
"I know that comms are down, Tariq," Harry barked roughly, "There's a reason they pay you for being a technological genius and not me. Figure something out."
"You think I'm a technological genius?" Tariq asked, sounding pleased with himself,
"Time and place Tariq, time and place, helpful hint, this is not it."
"Right. I, ah-"
"Asquith. Hotel. London." Harry pressed, "Tell me what's going on, find me CCTV, satellite, I don't care, just tell me what it's looking like."
"I'm hacking in to the CCTV in the restaurants around now," Tariq told him, "It'll only take a minute."
Tariq paused uncomfortably before saying, "Harry, what about Ruth, is she-"
"Focus on the task at hand Tariq," Harry replied in clipped tones, not ready to go there yet,
"Right, OK, Lucas' contact was right, there was a bomb. And it went off. It's mayhem down there Harry..." Tariq informed him tautly, the sound of his fingers scampering across the keys audible even now, "Emergency services are on hand. It's impossible to tell the extent of the damage, the angle's off, my view's blocked by half a building-"
Tariq continued to talk but Harry was no longer listening and promptly stopped listening, his heart leaping into his mouth at a sound behind him,
"Find me another angle and call me when you have more." He said, abruptly cutting across the younger man, "I want details, Tariq." He told him shortly,
Phone falling through limp fingers he turned in time to see Lucas collapsing backwards as Ruth turned over, choking and spluttering, with what surrounded by what looked like half the Thames but most definitely alive.
Giving Harry up as a bad job, Sofia stuffed the phone into her pocket for use at a later date and began to make her way through the wreckage, taking everything in to account.
For the size of the hotel, the number of people who had spilled out onto this side of the street was nowhere near enough. There could only have been around a dozen, if that, not including emergency service personnel and most of them seemed unhurt for the most part, complaining about the dust on their tailored suits rather than their spilled entrails, which she took to be a good sign.
Of course, this then begged the question, if not here then where?
The hotel would have been full to bursting, like an over-ripe grape, it should have been full of guests, not to mention the function that had been taking place in the ballroom that had in attendance around two thousand guests plus a hundred waiting staff.
Unless she had somehow fallen into the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, she was not going to accept a Mary Celeste style vanishing. The people were somewhere.
And, as it happened, she was right, the people were somewhere spread out like a confused herd of sheep on the sweeping lawns at the back of the hotel, the crowds accounting for most of the population of the hotel.
Mind somewhat set to rest with that, she turned her attentions back to finding Ros.
Remembering the floor plans they had been given swiftly by Tariq over the phone en route and thanking her luck that she had chanced to glance over them, she carefully picked her way through the building to the grand ballroom, or rather, what was left of it.
Hunks of blackened wood were strewn across the floor, like the burnt carcasses of some twisted, terrible beasts that had risen from the depths. The beautiful, ornate chandeliers that had once hung from the ceiling were splattered across the ruins of the room, the exquisite diamonds now lying among the broken glass from the high, arched windows, with no-one able to tell the difference now, everything falling into an indiscriminate pile of broken glass and ash.
Examining the room she came to a large section of wall that was completely clean. While the floor beneath it was covered in soot and ash and dust, as well as the walls on either side of it, a clean, rectangular panel, around six feet by seven feet, while still coated with a thin layer of dust was not blackened as the rest and, on closer inspection, had distinct drag marks etched into the thick layer of dust that clung to it.
Curiously, she began running her fingers across the panelling until she found an indentation, forcing her fingers into it she smiled as the panel slid in on itself and somewhat stubbornly and after receiving some harsh encouragement, slid into the wall to reveal some rough wooden steps.
Examining them on the way down she could see that they were new, unvarnished and with wood shavings still lodged in-between some of the joins. This had been added recently, and so too, she suspected, the false wall.
Deciding to bite the bullet, she carefully walked down the steps to be swallowed by darkness. Before her foot touched the ground however at the base of the last step, a sharp, cool voice she recognised instantly told her evenly,
"Not another step."
She did as she was told, freezing on the bottom step, foot hovering in thin air, arms raised, waiting for her next instruction.
Ros stepped out from the middle of the tunnel and turned on a torch, dazzling Sofia, who winced and squinted.
"Sorry." Ros replied in honeyed tones, dropping the beam of the torch, "You're not dead then?" she enquired evenly
"You don't need to sound so disappointed." Sofia smirked,
"On the contrary," Ros said flatly, "I'm thrilled to see you again."
Grinning, Sofia replied, "The feeling's mutual. How are you then?"
"My head's still on my shoulders and I'm breathing. Can't complain too much." Ros replied smoothly, "You?"
"Fantastic."
"Excellent." Ros replied, "Now, walk backwards up the stairs, back the way you came." She instructed,
Sofia sensed that this was something she should just do rather than question and did as she was told until she emerged back in to the remains of the ballroom.
Once Ros had emerged as well she explained, "There's a pressure switch at the bottom, it triggers the door, causes it to slide back..."
"And there's no way to open it from the inside? Sofia confirmed,
"None." Ros confirmed,
"So, before I arrived, what was your great plan for escape?" Sofia asked, raising an eyebrow,
"Hope to be found before I was eaten by the rats."
"Ah, this is why Harry likes you in a crisis," Sofia smirked, "Your exceptional skill for finding your way out of unfortunate situations."
"Quite." Ros replied smoothly,
"How did you know it was there, anyway?" Sofia asked as they began to make their way out once more,
"Once I got in to the ballroom I raised the alarm and started clearing everyone out the back, Jamal's people weren't expecting that, they already had their own little escape route planned and in the chaos, someone was sloppy and forgot to clean up after themselves..."
"You followed?" Sofia asked,
Ros nodded, "I triggered the switch at the bottom and sealed it, until the explosion hit there was a tunnel that led out, the tunnel conveniently collapsed, blocking access to it from there."
"Clever." Sofia murmured,
"Planned." Ros added flatly,
"Definitely." Sofia agreed,
"Have you heard anything from Harry?" Ros asked bluntly as they spilled out onto the street again,
"Comms are down and he isn't answering his phone." Sofia replied curtly,
"Mind if I try?" Ros asked, holding out a hand for the phone,
"Be my guest," Sofia replied, handing it to her, "You just have such a way with people after all."
By now, the water had sunk through his shirt and had soaked him to the skin, yet still she clung to him, shivering, clearly in shock.
She had barely said two words since her lungs had discovered their use again and had choked themselves back in to life.
He had not left her since she had uttered them. As he had knelt by her side, Lucas backing off to give them some privacy and to get himself some air, he had held her as she had struggled, the weight of what had happened and the relief at it being over hitting her a few seconds after her revival. When he had tried to draw away to find out an ETA for the paramedics, she had clung to him, pulling him back down with surprising strength as she croaked in a strangled whisper,
"Harry, stay, please."
Deciding that after everything she had been through and his inability to help elsewhere, he could afford her that much, he had nodded comfortingly and taken her hand, holding her closer to him, for warmth more than anything else as she trembled violently.
They had lain together in silence since then, neither of them speaking, neither of them feeling the need to. There was, after all, nothing to say.
Lucas padded over a few moments later and wordlessly draped his jacket over Ruth, adding to the one Harry had already given her,
"Two minutes for the paramedics," he told them softly,
"Thank you Lucas." Harry told him, curtly,
"Yes, yes, thank you, thank you Lucas," Ruth had echoed, hoarsely, "You saved-"
"Ruth," he murmured quietly, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze, "You don't need to thank me."
They were interrupted by Harry's phone, noting that the caller was Sofia; he made to withdraw from Ruth, motioning to Lucas who immediately knelt down beside her as the paramedics arrived.
Harry stepped away a little to take the call,
"Harry."
Cool, crisp and more business-like than a Wall-street banker; undoubtedly the voice of Ros Myers.
"Ros." He returned, drawing a relieved glance from Lucas, "How are you?" he asked,
"Well I'll be picking bits of glass and dust out of my hair for the next month but overall I mustn't complain."
"Good." He replied gruffly, "And Sofia?"
"Fantastic. To use her word."
"Good. What's the situation like down there?"
"As with most bombs, it's a bit of a mess but at the minute that's all it is. Civilian casualties are at a minimum. Clearly they had decided that this fine winter weather called for a picnic on the grass..."
"Clearly. Injury totals?"
"Death toll stands at one as far as we can tell," Ros replied efficiently, already having predicted these questions, "A few minor injuries but nothing major. It could have been a lot worse, should have been a lot worse."
She paused a moment, waiting for Harry to answer. When a reply was not forthcoming she pressed,
"Ruth?"
"We have her." Harry replied, feeling the relief extend down the phone line, "In one piece." He waited a moment before saying, "I want you at the hospital as soon as, both of you. Get yourselves checked over and then come and find us, not the most formal of rendezvous but given the circumstances, probably the best."
They had been gathered around Ruth's bed for a while before anyone thought to bring up a topic more taxing than food and dinner plans. As it turned out, Ruth was the only one they insisted stayed in overnight, the rest were free to go home when they chose. They had deliberately avoided any and all talk of the operation until finally, Ros bit the bullet and said quietly,
"What's being done with Jamal?"
"I called in a team; they picked him up, along with those at the hotel. Whoever we don't have now, we will in a few days, it's only a matter of time before one of them tries to cut a deal. Some of them have already been rather talkative..." Harry replied evenly,
"Jamal?" Lucas asked quietly, eyes glinting,
"Staying silent." Harry replied grimly,
"Let him." Ros said, dismissively, "We don't need him to say anything anymore."
"Still, it doesn't mean he can't still be useful to us..." Sofia murmured,
"You want to use him?" Lucas asked, surprised, "Turn him? Keep him as an asset?"
"He has valuable Syrian connections that could prove invaluable if the war there lasts much longer, and it looks like it might. We need someone of Jamal's standing in place in Syria."
"Yes, but we don't need Jamal." Lucas said, "He's too dangerous. We can't trust him."
"There are ways of ensuring someone's loyalty." Sofia shrugged, "Everyone has their pressure point, everyone has a weakness, even Jamal."
"I agree with Lucas." Ros said quietly, "Pressure point or no, I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him. He'd kill himself just to spite us..."
"He could still be useful to us. He could have information-"Lucas began,
"That he'll never give up," Ros replied, shaking her head,
"People can be rather persuasive; as I'm sure he's aware." Lucas growled darkly,
"Perhaps. But this is all speculation for another day." Harry told them firmly, signalling a definite end to the discussion, "We'll let him stew in the knowledge of his failure for a while, come at him again later, we'll see if his position has changed any and we'll decide what do with him then. For now, I want you all gone. Go home. Rest."
They nodded quietly, saying their goodbyes to Ruth one by one before filtering out of the room, leaving Harry alone with her.
Once they were outside, Sofia turned to Ros and Lucas and asked, "Drink?"
"Read my mind." Ros replied, smirking, "Lucas?"
"What?" he murmured, distractedly, "Oh, no, you go. I'm going home."
Both of them understood and left him outside the hospital where they then went their separate ways.
The room was dark and beautifully cool when Lucas slipped into the flat.
It was all he could do to make it in to the bedroom before feeling his legs slide out from beneath him as he sunk to the floor. He lay slumped against the wall in the dark for a long time, tortures old and new blurring together, two cells and two torturers and all the same pain.
He closed his eyes and succumbed to the rush of images, sounds and feelings, too exhausted to try and fight them anymore, finding it easier to simply allowing himself to be dragged down tonight.
He waited for it to end; trying to focus on nothing but the gentle rise and fall of his chest, knowing that sleep would never come.
Harry watched her quietly as she slept. The ward had grown dark and his shadow had lengthened and died with the day and now it was gone, and he sat alone by her side, having sent his team home, to try and rediscover the notion of sleep before the next shift.
She woke with a start, panicking momentarily until he laid a gentle hand on her arm and murmured softly, "Ruth."
"Harry?" she asked, almost wildly, sinking back into the cushions as she realised what was happening.
She leant back and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, "I'm sorry." She choked, "I thought, for a minute there I thought I was still-"
"It's alright," he told her quietly, "you're not, you're safe now."
"I know. I know where I am, I know that I'm safe," her voice cracked on the last word but still she went on, "I just, I don't, I don't feel safe, I..."
"I understand." He said, soothingly, sliding his hand down to hers and giving it a reassuring squeeze,
"Where, where are the others?" she asked, glancing around, "Ros, Lucas..."
"I sent them home." He reminded her quietly,
"Oh, right, yes...I, I expect you'll be going soon too?" she asked, eyes fluttering nervously to his,
"Is that what you want?" he asked,
"No." She answered, too quickly, hands tangling in the sheets, "I mean you should, it's been a long day-"
"Ruth, I didn't ask what my moral obligation here was," he reminded her quietly, "I asked you what you wanted."
"Well I, I want you to stay." She told him, glancing up at him,
"Then stay I shall." He said, settling back in to the chair with a faint smile to prove his point,
A/N: A huge, huge, huge, thank you to anyone who is still reading this and a huge, huge, huge apology from me on how late this is! I just got so caught up in my exams and uni and whenever I got a chance to sit down and write at all, it just wasn't happening for me with this story.
I still have one more chapter that I want to do but you will hopefully be happy to hear that it is written and ready to go and I'll probably post it around the middle of the week.
Thank you for reading, hopefully this was even a tiny bit worth the wait? Any thoughts would be great! :)
