checked the platform clock again. It was just habit now. He didn’t need to know the time – he wouldn’t even have remembered what it was if anybody had asked him. But every few minutes he looked up at the clock. His fingers tore and twisted at a paperclip he had found on the platform the night before.
It was days now since Mitchell had faced Jimmy, but not for a second had the confrontation left him. Every possible thought had blasted through his brain. And, like a high-powered water jet wearing down stone, his torment had reduced his mind to dust. At least, that was how it felt.
Your brother’s still alive.
Mitchell could still hear Jimmy’s words in his head. He had repeated them to himself so many times that they had almost lost all meaning. Another teenage boy walked past. He was probably a couple of years older than Mitchell – fifteen or sixteen. In Mitchell’s hunger and fatigue he saw his brother’s face on the boy, just the way it had looked when Mitchell had beaten it senseless. He shook his head hard and rubbed his eyes. The other boy was gone, but for Mitchell, the image of Lenny Glenthorne lying limp on the floor was as vivid as ever.
He could still feel the horror of being told that he had murdered his own brother. With that power over him, it had been easy for NJ7 to make Mitchell their assassin. They’d quickly sent him after his first target – Jimmy Coates. But when the moment came to complete the job, Mitchell was defeated – not by a stronger punch or some secret gadget, but because Jimmy had claimed that Mitchell’s brother wasn’t dead after all.
Since then, Mitchell’s survival instinct had forced him below ground. He had wandered through the Underground network, easily hiding from the overnight workers when the network closed in the early hours of each morning. He’d broken into the staff toilets to find water. He’d slept only a few hours at a time in any one place, continually moving on, sometimes walking through the tunnels and always avoiding the District Line – the line represented on the map by the biggest green stripe in London. His clothes and hands were black with dirt.
He could feel NJ7 all around him, watching. Not just in the thousands of security cameras, but in person. He’d seen those figures waiting for him – shadows that hovered on the platforms and by the exits. Agents of the Green Stripe were everywhere. He knew they could pick him up any time. They’d implanted a tracking chip in his heel. But that didn’t matter. Mitchell knew he was going to go back to them eventually. NJ7 was his life now. And it was a life that seemed to suit him well. The incident with his brother had led him to these things – training, purpose and something that could almost have felt like happiness.
Now he didn’t even know whether he wanted his brother to be alive or not. The possibility didn’t fill him with joy. His brother had beaten him up countless times. Maybe Lenny didn’t deserve to die, but he certainly didn’t deserve Mitchell fighting for him. Whether Mitchell had killed him, or NJ7 had just made it look that way, what difference did it make? Either way, Leonard Glenthorne was out of his life. Even if it turned out that NJ7 had killed him, there was nobody left in the world who was going to take revenge. Least of all me, Mitchell thought.
He looked up at the clock again. He didn’t even know how much time had passed. It was a good feeling to know that it had passed at all. He gave his paperclip a sharp kink with his thumb. A commuter strutted by, glancing at Mitchell’s face. All he saw was grime and suspicion. He looked away quickly, like everybody else did, and clutched his briefcase tighter.
Is this what I’ve become? thought Mitchell. No. I’m better than this. I’m different. I work for NJ7. He pushed himself off the bench and marched along the platform. He was still as strong as ever, despite so long with hardly anything to eat. After these days of confusion, he was ready for the truth. He was ready for NJ7.
Halfway along the platform Mitchell dropped to his knees. There was a square in the platform floor that looked like some kind of trapdoor. He had seen dozens of these all over the tube network. Each one was about half a metre square, with a tiny keyhole.
Hardly aware of what he was doing, Mitchell opened his fist. There was his paperclip, bent into a strange and intricate shape. Of course, he thought to himself, there must be easier ways to reach NJ7 than walking through the streets.
He jabbed his paperclip into the keyhole. All this time, his programming had been fashioning the perfect key. In one fluid movement, he hauled open the hatch, threw himself in, feet first, and pulled the door shut over him. He didn’t even bother opening his eyes.
Instead, he surrendered himself completely to the intelligent force that drove him. He had landed on his back in a dank crawlspace. He immediately rolled a few metres to the side, feeling the platform floor just a whisker above him. Without knowing why, he counted the rolls – one, two, three, four – until eventually his body stopped itself dead. His hands shot up and, after only a second to feel around, he again pressed his paperclip key into a hole. He gave it a quick turn, then punched open another hatch door.
Mitchell emerged beneath bare strip lights that warmed his face. Around him were grey concrete walls covered in loose wiring that looked like a rainbow on a glorious day. This was no longer London Underground. Mitchell was back at NJ7 Headquarters and he wanted some answers.
He snapped his paperclip in two and flicked it to the floor, then broke into a sprint. It felt as if every muscle was thanking him for the chance to run again. He still felt as if he was watching somebody else’s actions, but it was a show he enjoyed watching. He swelled with pride to see himself move with such authority.
He tracked his progress through the labyrinth with ease. There were no features to mark his route, just miles and miles of grey concrete tunnel. They were like the veins of his own body. He just needed to look inside himself to see where they led.
In some places the corridors were broad thoroughfares; in others they were barely wide enough for Mitchell to squeeze down. There were no doors of course – NJ7 Headquarters were designed so that if it ever became necessary to evacuate, the whole complex could be flooded by the Thames in 120 seconds.
The constant pad of Mitchell’s feet was virtually the only sound, but he ran on his toes, keeping the noise to a minimum. Then he heard something from round the next corner – tapping on a keyboard. In an instant, he made the calculation: just one person. A man. Sitting down. Facing the entrance of a room with no other way out. As he approached, he made more deductions based solely on the sound of the person typing: left-handed. Not a trained fighter because the arms weren’t strong enough, so a technician, not a field-agent.
Whoever it was, he was about to meet Mitchell Glenthorne.
Mitchell whipped round the corner. In front of him was exactly the scene he had pictured – a lone man, typing at his desk. The light from his computer screen picked out the whites of his eyes, which were stretched out in astonishment, and a green stripe on his lapel. A diamond twinkled in the man’s left earlobe. There was no time for him to cry out. Mitchell moved too fast, diving over the desk. He rocketed into the man’s torso, forcing him backwards over his chair. As they landed, one on top of the other, Mitchell’s fingers homed in on the earring.
With a vicious twist, he ripped it straight out of the man’s ear, bringing half the lobe with it. Now the man found the breath to cry out in agony. His hand snapped to the side of his head. Blood splattered over his crisp white shirt.
Mitchell held him down with one arm across his neck. They were face to face. Mitchell hadn’t seen this man at NJ7 before, and though he looked young, he didn’t seem inexperienced. There was a sinister confidence in his expression that said he knew situations like this.
“Where’s Miss Bennett?” Mitchell
