One of them sniggered.
“Let’s go and get him,” another said.
Alex was frozen to the spot. He could feel his wound throbbing angrily. This couldn’t be happening, could it? But it was happening. He had seen it for himself.
The four men moved.
Alex turned and ran.
EMERGENCY TREATMENT
« ^ »
lex took the stairs two at a time, a hundred different thoughts tumbling through his mind. Who were the four men and why were they here? What did they want with Paul? The name Drevin meant something to him, but this wasn’t the time to work out what it was. What could he do to stop them?
He came to a fire alarm in a red box on the wall and stopped beside it. For a few, precious seconds his fist hovered over the glass. But he knew that setting off the alarm would do no good. For the moment, surprise was all he had on his side. The fire alarm would only tell the men that they had been seen, and then they would go about their work all the faster, killing or kidnapping the boy long before the police or fire brigade arrived.
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.
