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.
Alex let his shoulders slump. “Looks like I went the wrong way,” he said.
“Well, now you’re coming with me, you little toe-rag,” the man replied. He ran his tongue over his lip.
“The others … maybe they didn’t want to hurt you. But if you try anything, I’ll put a bullet in you.”
“I can’t move.”
“What?”
“I’m hurt…”
Steel Watch stared at Alex, trying to see what was wrong. He took a step forward. And that was when it happened.
The gun was torn out of his grip.
It was gone so fast that he didn’t understand what was happening. It was as if a pair of invisible hands had simply ripped his weapon away. It was whisked into the darkness, nothing more than a blur. Steel Watch cried out in pain. The gun had dislocated two of his fingers, almost tearing them right off. There was a loud clang as it hit the machine and stayed there, as if glued to the surface.
An MRI uses an incredibly powerful magnetic field to scan soft tissue. The strength of this machine was 1.5
Tesla and the notices on the door had warned anyone approaching the room to remove all items made of metal. An MRI can pull a set of keys out of a pocket; it can wipe a credit card clean at twenty paces. Steel Watch had felt its enormous power but he still hadn’t understood. He was about to find out.
