“I don’t like hospitals,” she replies.
“Same.”
The roads are quieter here. The grand Georgian houses look as if they think they’re better than us because they outlast us so easily. We follow a gently curving crescent past a coffee shop and a bar that look deserted in this world. Then we’re standing in front of the unwelcoming facade of the building we’ve come all this way for. Five rows of big sash windows, sandy-coloured columns flanking a heavy wooden door and a sign:
UCL INSTITUTE OF COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE
“Have you ever been to this one before?” Farah says.
“No.”
We climb the couple of steps that lead up to the door and the black-and-orange sign. Farah and Chiu look at me expectantly and I wonder when they started treating me like the leader. I nod towards the door.
“Shall we?” I say.
“You first,” Chiu replies.
“This was your idea.”
“You,” Chiu says steadfastly.
I press my hand against the brass panel. I expect – halfway hope for – it to be locked, but the wooden door swings open easily.
A small reception area. Walls panelled in light wood. A couple of armchairs that have seen better days. A table with a small pile of scientific journals.
The desk, computer and shelf filled with box files look out of place beside the grandiose decor. In the other world I suppose somebody sits at the desk and checks people in as they come, but it’s empty here. I wonder if they sense us … if they feel the same uncomfortable presence as we do.
“Hello?” I call.
Nothing.
The door straight ahead leads into a corridor. The stateliness of the reception is left behind, the walls are painted with the same thick cream paint as a hospital, the floor is wood, battered and creaking. A window on the left gives us glimpses into a cluttered lab, the desks busy with microscopes and ambiguous-looking equipment, the walls crammed with shelves of pipettes and sample trays and glassware and plastic packets I can’t even begin to guess the contents of.
We pass a pair of heavy-looking fire doors that are pinned open on magnetic fittings and stop because the corridor beyond them is sealed by another pair of fire doors, pinned shut.
A moment of uncertainty catches me – why two sets of fire doors on this short stretch of corridor? Is that normal? One set looks like they were added recently. The wooden frame is unpainted and the screws that hold it to the wall have been drilled clumsily and at angles, like the DIY projects Mum sometimes starts and never finishes.
I notice a security camera in the corner near the ceiling, its wire tacked to the wall and running through a hole in the frame above the fire doors.
I stop.
Farah turns. “What is it?”
“Out, out—!” I shout.
Then everything happens at once.
There’s a click and the fire doors behind us slam shut.
Then a white-hot flash so intense it feels as if somebody has cracked open my skull.
BANG!
A sound so loud it pounds against my chest cavity.
Then two more people are in the room … no, three.
Weapons raised above their heads.
Shouting, “Get down! Get DOWN!”
Something hits me, hard, in the shoulder and my head slams into the wall. I hear Farah scream. I whirl round, trying to catch sight of whoever is attacking us but something heavy hits me again, from above this time, and I go down, my world a lightning strike of pain and dizziness.
My ears ring, I can hardly see past the searing scorch marks in my eyes. I blink and look up to see a figure looming over me.
Jonah! I think. Lying in wait for us.
But it’s not Jonah, it’s hardly human. It’s a lumpen, clumsy creature. It might be a bear, I think wildly, or some kind of human wardrobe.
“Stay down!” it shouts again, its voice muffled. “Stay DOWN!”
Then, murky recognition: it’s no bear. Just a man in strangely bulky clothes. Gradually, the shape resolves into the padding that goalies wear in ice hockey. He looms closer, his hockey stick raised high above his head.
Coughing, I lift my hand, doing my best to convey the fact that I have absolutely no intention of going anywhere.
Somebody else has Farah around the waist and she’s struggling. The third man holds Chiu. Then the second fire doors swing open and the air currents suck the smoke away just enough to catch a glimpse of yet another man standing in the doorway, wafting the heavy door as hard as he can to clear the smoke.
“For heaven’s sake, Marcus,” he shouts, severely. “They’re children!”
