Toys

“Quite easy to prove to you, I’m afraid. I have documented her actions myself. Lizbeth’s much older than you think, Hays. Much, much older. Decades older.”

What he saw in my face must have finally satisfied him, because he gave a grim little nod.

“Right, then,” he said. “Let’s get on to London. There are people waiting to meet you. You’re seen as something of a savior there, lad. I sincerely hope that you are.”

Chapter 65

Well, I definitely knew that I wasn’t a savior in any way, shape, or form. On the other hand, I’d been wrong about so much lately, and maybe there were more secrets about myself I still needed to learn.

At any rate, I was finally in London, and it was a gorgeous city, probably the most beautiful I had ever visited. Clearly, it had the most history.

“I could go for a stiff whiskey just now. Perhaps a double,” Sir Nigel muttered as Lucy and I strode with him through a corridor in the famed Tower of London.

I could have used a stiff drink myself. I was still reeling from the bomb, true or not, that he’d dropped on me about Lizbeth. But I did my best to shake off the shock and get ready for the grilling I was about to receive from England’s top government and military leaders.

The meeting chamber’s massive wooden doors were guarded by a pair of the Tower’s yeomen warders, in ceremonial uniforms and tall hats-which seemed slightly odd to me, if not downright silly. No matter what I thought, however. They stepped smartly aside, opening the doors, and Sir Nigel led us to the front of the room.

At least a hundred people were waiting in there, and heavily armed soldiers were stationed all around the perimeter.

Savior? I thought. I don’t think so, ladies and gents. Just another human being under a death sentence.

“You all know by now that Hays Baker is the only human who has lived and operated as an Elite Agent of Change,” Sir Nigel announced brusquely. “That and his extraordinary mental and physical abilities make him of immense value to us. So let us waste no time-”

Suddenly, the huge doors swung open again and four of the yeomen warders appeared.

But now they crouched in combat position-leveling rifles they must have kept hidden in their baggy uniforms.

Could this be possible? Clearly, it was.

“Elites!” Lucy screamed, with the loathing of a woman shrieking “Rats!” in a four- star restaurant. The room instantly erupted in a spray of murderous gunfire. The British soldiers, taken by treacherous surprise, barely had time to swing their weapons into action before they were cut down in shameful numbers. The crowd of leaders, cursing and shouting, scrambled for cover where none was to be found.

I slammed my shoulder into Lucy and Sir Nigel, sending us all skidding across the floor into an alcove-a nanosecond or less before the wall where we’d been standing exploded in a hailstorm of dust and plaster.

“It’s you they’re after,” Sir Nigel yelled. “For God’s sake, run! We can’t afford to lose you! You’re the most important person in this room. Run!”

But there was no place to run to. The alcove was blind, without doors or windows, and the Elites had us pinned in there with their blistering cross fire.

Obeying Sir Nigel as best I could, I sprang up in a charge at the alcove’s rear wall and crashed against it with all my strength. The old plaster was thick, but I punched on through to the next room-and rammed straight into a row of standing suits of armor.

The metalware went flying in all directions with a clatter like a truckload of cymbals dumped off a high-rise building.

Lucy was right behind me. “We have to jump!” She panted, yanking me to my feet, pointing toward a row of arched windows. “Don’t argue. Don’t think about it.”

Just then, the Elites’ laser bursts hissed around us, spanging off the cascading armor and smashing glassed-in displays of ancient pikes and broadswords and such.

“Yes, sir, ma’am!” said I.

Chapter 66

Savior? I don’t think so. I doubted I could even save myself right now. And why should Elites consider me so undesirable-just because I knew some of their secrets? Or was it Lucy they were really after?

At any rate, Lucy went left and I went right, both of us diving headfirst through windows that were located only a few feet apart. We came down in a shower of glass, landing on opposite sides of a steep tile roof. Without pausing, I bounced off it and into a quad somersault, tucking and twisting to dodge the gunfire still flashing around us.

As I spun, I caught a glimpse of Lucy bravely leaping over the Tower’s outside wall. A second later came the splash of her hitting the river far below.

Thank God-underwater was the safest place she could be right now.

The warders were still following us and shooting, their ridiculous hats sailing off in the breeze as they jumped out onto the roof. I leaped forward and landed on a turret wall, then I scuttled around to its far side.

Next, I threw myself backward off the turret in another long, twisting flip and landed on top of the Tower’s outside wall, now facing the majestic Thames. I ran along the wall, sucking in air, straining to reach maximum speed.

The afternoon fog had turned to drizzle, and the surface of the huge bridge cable where I landed next was slippery with moisture. The awful sound of laser fire still hissed with menace in my ears.

But this was an acrobatic act that even the Elite assassins couldn’t follow. If I succeeded.

I dashed across the bridge’s top span and slid on my feet down the cable on the other side. I was like a kid on a snowboard-being shot at!

I finally saw Lucy again, dripping wet and running across the lower bridge past astonished motorists and a few stiff-upper-lipped Brit pedestrians.

“Don’t even slow down,” she shouted up to me.

“Couldn’t if I wanted to!” I called back. Then I dropped thirty feet or so to the pavement and continued to follow her lead. I had no idea yet why she was so important to the resistance, but she had certainly been a lifesaver for me.

So far.

Chapter 67

Somehow we managed to get to shelter at a high-priority safe house run by MI7, right there in London. I had wanted to see the House of Lords, Westminster Abbey, the Tate-maybe even take a train to Paris-but I was stuck in an apartment under armed guard.

“What’s going on with you?” Lucy finally asked, clinking her fork onto her dinner plate. “You’ve got to be starving. But you’re picking at your food like a weight-conscious canary. And you’re looking at me like I’m the cat.”

It was our second day in the safe house, an apartment somewhere near Hyde Park that had an anonymous facade in a block-long building row that looked just like dozens of others around it. But were we actually safe