Alex didn’t want to confront the four men on his own. He was desperately tempted to call for help. But he knew it would come too late.
He continued up the stairs, one small piece of knowledge spurring him on. The men had shown themselves to be single-minded and ruthless. But they had already made one mistake.
When they had set off, they had been moving in the direction of the lift, and Alex knew something they didn’t. The lifts at St Dominic’s were the original bed lifts, almost twenty years old. They were designed to carry patients up from the operating theatres on the first floor and had to stop without even the slightest shudder. For this reason they were very, very slow. It would take Alex less than twenty seconds to reach the second floor; it would take the men almost two minutes. That gave him one minute and forty seconds to do something.
But what?
He burst through the doors and into the nurses’ area in front of his room. There was still nobody around, which was strange. Perhaps the four men had created some sort of diversion. That would make sense. They could have got rid of the nurse with a single phone call and right now she could be anywhere in the hospital. Alex stood panting in the half-light, trying to get his brain to work. He could imagine the lift making its way inch by inch towards him.
He was painfully aware of the unevenness of the competition. The men were professional killers. Alex would have known that even if he hadn’t seen them murder the night receptionist. It was obvious from their body language, the way they smiled, the conversation he’d overheard. Killing was second nature to them. Alex couldn’t possibly fight them. He was unarmed. Worse, he was in pyjamas and slippers with a chest wound held together by stitches and bandages. He had never been more helpless. Once he was seen, he would be finished. He didn’t stand a chance.
And yet he had to do something. He thought about the strange, lonely boy in the room next to his. Paul Drevin was only just fourteen – eight months younger than Alex. These men had come for him. Alex couldn’t let them take him.
He looked at the open door of his own room – number nine. It was exactly opposite the lift, and was the first thing the men would see when they stepped out. Paul Drevin was asleep in the next room. His door was closed. Their names were visible in the half-light: ALEX RIDER and PAUL DREVIN. They were printed on plastic strips that fitted into a slot on each door. Underneath, also on strips, were the room numbers.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a plan started to form in Alex’s mind. Wondering if he had left himself enough time, he darted forward and snatched a teaspoon from a cup and saucer a nurse had left on the desk. Using the spoon handle, he prised his name and room number out of their slots, then did the same to the next door. It took another few seconds to snap the plastic strips back into place. Now it was Alex Rider who was asleep in room nine. The door to room eight was open and Paul Drevin wasn’t there.
Alex ran into his room, pulled open the cupboard and grabbed a shirt and a pair of jeans. He knew what he had done wasn’t enough. If the men glanced at the doors more than briefly, they would see the trick that had been played, because the sequence was wrong: six, seven, nine, eight, ten. Alex had to make sure they didn’t have time to examine anything.
He had to make them come after him.
He didn’t dare get dressed in sight of the lift. He hurried out with the clothes – past the nurses’ station, away from the two rooms. He came to a corridor leading off at ninety degrees. It ran about twenty metres to a pair of swing doors and another staircase. There was an open store cupboard on one side of the corridor and next to it a trolley with some sort of machine: low and flat with a series of buttons and a narrow, rectangular TV screen that looked like it had been squashed. Alex recognized the machine. There were also two oxygen cylinders. He could feel his heart pounding underneath the bandages. The silence in the hospital was unnerving. How much time had passed since Conor had been killed?
Swiftly he stripped off the pyjamas and pulled on his own clothes. It felt good to be dressed again after ten long days and nights. He was no longer a patient. He was beginning to get his life back.
The lift doors opened, breaking the silence with a metallic rattle. Alex watched the four men walk out. Quickly he summed them up. Two were black, two white. They moved as a single unit, as if they were used to working together. He gave them names based on their appearances. The man who had shot Conor was the leader. He had a broken nose that seemed to split his face like a crack in a mirror. Alex thought of him as Combat Jacket. The next was thin, with crumpled cheeks and orange-tinted glasses. Spectacles. The third was short and muscular, and obviously spent a serious amount of time at the gym. He had a heavy dull metal watch on his wrist, and that gave him his name: Steel Watch. The last man was unshaven, with straggly black hair. At some point he’d been to a bad dentist, who had left his mark very visibly. He would be Silver Tooth.
All four were moving quickly, impatient after the long wait in the lift. This was the moment of truth.
Combat Jacket registered the open door and the empty bed inside. He read the name. At that moment, Alex appeared, walking down the corridor as if he had just been to the toilet and was returning to his room. He stopped and gave a small gasp of surprise. The men looked at him. And immediately made the assumption that Alex had guessed they would. Even if they knew what their target was supposed to look like, they couldn’t see his face in the soft light. He was Paul Drevin. Who else could he be?
“Paul?” Combat Jacket spoke the single word.
Alex nodded.
“We’re not going to hurt you. But you’re going to have to come with us.”
Alex took a step back.
Combat Jacket took out a gun. The same gun that he had used to kill the night receptionist.
Alex turned and fled.
As his bare feet pounded on the hospital carpet, he was afraid that he had left it too late, that he would feel the white heat of a bullet between his shoulder blades. But the corridor was right in front of him. With a feeling of relief, he threw himself round the corner. Now he was out of sight.
The four men were slow to react. This was the last thing they’d expected. Paul Drevin should have been sound asleep in bed. But he had seen them. He had run away. As one, they surged forward. Their movements seemed clumsy – they didn’t want to make any noise – but they were still making fast progress. They reached the corridor and saw the swing doors ahead. One of the doors was still closing. The boy had obviously passed through seconds before. With Combat Jacket in the lead, they pressed on. None of them noticed the store cupboard on their left.
Combat Jacket pushed through the doors; Steel Watch and Spectacles followed. Silver Tooth was left behind – and that was when Alex made his move.
Alex had run the full length of the corridor, flung open the doors, then doubled back to the store cupboard. That was where he was now. Moving on tiptoe, he slipped out. Now he was behind Silver Tooth. He was holding something in each of his hands, a circular disc, padded, trailing electric wires.
The machine he had seen on the trolley was a lifepak 300 defibrillator, a standard piece of equipment in most British hospitals. Alex had seen defibrillators often enough in television dramas to know what they did and how they worked. When a patient’s heart stopped, the doctor would press the pads against their chest and use the electric charge to bring them back to life. Alex had connected up this defibrillator in the last seconds before the lift arrived. It was designed to be easy to use and ready in an instant; the batteries were always kept fully charged. Gritting his teeth, he slammed the pads against the neck of the man in front of him and pressed the buttons.
Silver Tooth screamed and leapt high in the air as the electric current coursed through him. He was unconscious before he hit the floor.
The doors swung open again: Spectacles had heard the scream. He came back, half crouching, running forward, a knife in his hand. His face was twisted in an ugly sneer of anger. Something had gone wrong. But how? Why hadn’t t
he boy been asleep?
He didn’t even make it halfway down the corridor. The full force of a ten-kilogram oxygen cylinder hit him right between the legs. His face went mauve and he dropped the knife. He tried to breathe, but oxygen was the one thing he couldn’t find. He crumpled, eyes bulging.
Alex dropped the tank. It had taken all his strength to swing it, and he ran a hand across his chest, wondering if he had damaged himself. But the stitches seemed to have held.
Leaving the two unconscious men behind him, he ran back past his room and over to the main stairs. He heard the swing doors crash against the wall as the others came after him. At least he’d halved the opposition, even if it was going to be more difficult from now on. The remaining two men knew he was dangerous; they wouldn’t let themselves be surprised again. Alex considered disappearing. There were dozens of places he could hide. But that wasn’t the point. He forced himself to slow down. He had to lead them away from rooms eight and nine.
They saw him. He heard one of them swear – a single, taut whisper of pure hatred. That was good. The angrier they were, the more mistakes they would make. Alex ran down the stairs. He felt dizzy and for a moment he thought he was going to pass out. After spending so long in bed, his body wasn’t ready for this. His left arm was hurting too.
The arm reminded him where he was going. The physio department was on the first floor. Alex had been there many times; it had been a necessary part of his treatment.
The bullet that had sliced through his artery had also done serious damage to his brachial plexus. This was a complicated network of spinal nerves leading into his left arm. The doctors had warned him that the arm would hurt; there would be stiffness and pins and needles – perhaps for the rest of his life. But once again Alex had youth on his side. After a few days of therapy, much of the pain had subsided. In that time, he had been put through a series of exercises – static resistance, stretching, reaction and speed work. By the end of the week, Alex had got to know the physio department better than any other department in the hospital. That was why he was heading there now.
He half stumbled through the doors and stood for a moment, catching his breath. On his left, there were two cubicles with beds where patients would lie while they were put through a series of exercises. A human skeleton – very realistic but in fact made of plastic – hung on a metal frame opposite. The corridor dog-legged, then continued past a series of doors and cupboards to another pair of swing doors at the far end. Alex knew exactly what he would find in the cupboards. One of the rooms leading off the corridor was a fully equipped gym with cycling machines, dumb-bells, heavy medicine balls and treadmills. The cupboards contained more equipment, including chest expanders and rolls of elastic. Each day, the physiotherapist had cut off a length of elastic and given it to Alex to use in simple stretching exercises. These had been gentle at first but had become more strenuous, using thicker lengths of elastic, as he healed.
He opened the first cupboard. He had worked out what he was going to do. The question was the same as before. Had he left himself enough time?
Forty seconds later, the doors opened and Combat Jacket came in. He was breathing heavily. He was meant to be in command of this operation, and it had all gone horribly wrong. Two of his men were lying unconscious upstairs – one of them electrocuted. And what made it worse – what made it unbelievable – was that both had been taken out by a kid! They had been told it would be simple. Maybe that was why they had made so many mistakes. Well, he wasn’t going to make any more.
He crept forward slowly, his fist curled around an ugly, square-nosed handgun. It was an FP9, a single-action pistol manufactured in Hungary, one of dozens coming in illegally from Eastern Europe. There were no lights on in this part of the hospital. The only illumination came from the moonlight streaming in through the windows. He looked to one side and saw the skeleton standing there like something out of a cheap fairground ride. The hollow eye sockets seemed to be staring at him. Warning him? The man looked away in disgust. He wasn’t going to let it give him the creeps.
He glanced into the two cubicles. The curtains were drawn back and it was obvious the boy wasn’t hiding there. Combat Jacket went past the skeleton and turned the corner. Now he found himself looking down the full length of the corridor. It was very dark but as his eyes adjusted, he made out a shape standing at the far end. He smiled. It was the boy! He seemed to be holding something against his chest. What was it? Some sort of ball. Well, this time he’d made a big mistake. He wasn’t going to get a chance to throw it. If he so much as moved, Combat Jacket would shoot him in the leg and then drag him to the car.
“Drop it!” Combat Jacket commanded.
Alex Rider let go of the ball.
It was a medicine ball from the gym. It weighed five kilograms and for a second time, Alex had been afraid he would split his stitches. But what Combat Jacket hadn’t seen was that Alex had also taken a length of elastic out of the cupboard. He had tied it across the corridor, from one door handle to another, and then stretched it all the way back with the medicine ball. The ball was now a missile in an oversized catapult, and when Alex released it, it shot the full length of the corridor as if fired from a cannon.
Combat Jacket was only faintly aware of the great weight hurtling out of the shadows before it hit him square in the stomach, rocketing him off his feet. The gun flew out of his hand. The breath was punched out of his lungs. His shoulders hit the floor and he slid five metres before crashing into the wall. He just had time to tell himself that this wasn’t Paul Drevin – that this was no ordinary fourteen-year-old boy – before he blacked out.
Steel Watch had just entered the physio department. He heard the crash and turned the corner in combat position, his own weapon ready to fire. He didn’t understand what was happening, but he knew that he had lost the initiative. What should have been a simple snatch had gone horribly wrong. There was a figure sprawled on the floor in front of him, its neck twisted and face drained of colour. A large medicine ball lay near by.
Steel Watch blinked in disbelief. He saw one of the doors at the end of the corridor swing shut. That told him all he needed to know. He followed.
Twenty paces ahead of him, Alex was once more making his way downstairs. It seemed the only way to go. The stairs led him back to the ground floor, where it had all begun. The reception area was unnaturally silent apart from the soft hum of a refrigerated drinks dispenser. White light spilled over the rows of Coke and Fanta, throwing hard shadows across the floor. Three desks faced each other across the empty space. Alex knew there was a dead man behind one of them, but he couldn’t bring himself to look. He could see the street on the other side of the glass doors. Should he make a break for it? Get outside and call for help? There was no time. He heard Steel Watch coming down the stairs and dived behind the nearest desk, searching for cover.
A moment later, Steel Watch arrived. Peering round from his hiding place, Alex could see the timepiece glinting on his wrist. It was a huge, chunky thing, the sort divers wear. The man had an unusually thick wrist. His entire body was overdeveloped, the various muscle groups almost fighting each other as he walked. Although he was the last survivor, he wasn’t panicking. He was carrying a second FP9. He seemed to sense that Alex was near.
“I’m not going to hurt you!” he called out. He didn’t sound convincing and must have known it, because a second later he snapped, “Come out with your hands up or I’ll put a bullet in your knee.”
Alex timed his move exactly, racing across the main reception. Something coughed twice and the carpet ripped itself apart in front of his feet. That was when he knew the rules had changed. Steel Watch had decided to take him dead or alive. And it looked like he’d prefer dead. But Alex was already out of sight. He had found another corridor with a sign reading RADIOLOGY – and he knew exactly where he was going. He had come here twice at the start of his stay in the hospital.
There was a locked door ahead of him – but Alex had watched the
code being entered only a few days before. As fast as he could, he pressed the four-digit number, willing himself not to make a mistake. He pushed and the door opened. This part of the hospital was deserted at night but he knew the machines on the other side never slept. They were kept activated around the clock in case they were needed. And they had never been needed more than now.
Alex could hear Steel Watch coming up behind him, but he forced himself to stay calm. There was another lock to deal with, this one tripped by a switch concealed under one of the nurses’ desks. Alex breathed a silent prayer of thanks to the hospital orderly who had made a joke about it as he had wheeled him in. There was a large, heavy door ahead of him. It was covered with warning signs beneath a single word:
MAGNETOM
Alex knew what the warnings said. The orderly had told him. He opened the door and went in.
There was a narrow, padded bench in front of him. It led to a large machine that reminded him of a tumble drier, a space capsule and a giant doughnut all rolled into one. There was a hole in the middle of it, the inner rim rotating slowly. The bench was designed so that it could be raised and passed slowly through the hole. Alex had been placed on the bench when he first came to St Dominic’s, and the doctor had told him exactly what it did.
It was an MRI machine. The letters stood for magnetic resonance imaging. As Alex had passed through the hole, a scanner had taken a three-dimensional image of his body, checking the muscle damage in his chest, arm and shoulder. He remembered what the doctor had told him. He needed that knowledge now.
There was a movement at the door. Steel Watch had followed him in.
“Don’t move,” Steel Watch ordered. He was holding his gun at chest height. The silencer was pointing at Alex’s head.