Otto tried to ignore the freezing wind as he pulled himself up towards the next handhold. He was also trying very hard to ignore the fact that there were no safety lines protecting him from the increasingly long drop to the jagged rocks below. In fact, Otto thought, there were all sorts of things that he would rather ignore at the moment, given the choice. Above him Raven, Wing and Shelby were picking their way up the rock face with an ease and grace that made the rest of them look clumsy.
‘I suppose it’s pointless to ask them to slow down,’ Penny said as she hauled herself up alongside Otto.
‘I think the idea is that we go faster,’ Otto replied.
‘Oh, I could go much faster,’ Laura said. ‘All I have to do is let go. OK, I’d be travelling in the wrong direction but I’d be going really, really fast.’
‘Not for very long though,’ Otto replied with a grin. ‘In fact, I think you might find that eventually you’ll come to a rather sudden stop.’
‘I am being glad that everyone is finding the idea of us being plummeting to our doom so highly amusing,’ Franz moaned.
‘Franz, I thought we agreed not to use the word “plummeting” again until we reached the top,’ Nigel said.
‘Ah, yes, sorry.’
Otto looked upwards and saw Shelby pulling herself on to a wide ledge beside Wing and Raven.
‘Come on, guys,’ Otto said. ‘Just a few metres then we can rest.’
A minute later Otto pulled himself over the edge of the outcropping and stood up. They were now a couple of hundred metres above the cave they had sheltered in overnight and the view back down into the valley was impressive. Raven stood silently looking out across the valley.
‘See anyth—’ Otto began to ask before Raven raised a single finger to her lips.
‘Listen,’ she whispered.
At first Otto couldn’t hear anything over the wind but then very faintly he began to pick up another sound – the distant, regular thump of rotor blades.
‘Everybody on to the ledge quickly,’ Raven shouted as the last stragglers scaled the final few metres. ‘Get down.’
They all lay down as the sound of the helicopter got louder and louder. A minute later they watched as a helicopter flew into the valley below at low altitude. The helicopter landed on the valley floor and a dozen men in white poured out of its rear hatch. The Alphas all knew who it was they were trying to find.
‘Well, that can’t be good,’ Shelby said quietly.
‘We have to keep climbing,’ Raven said, watching the Disciple troops fanning out across the valley floor below. ‘It won’t take them long to find our trail and I don’t want to get caught halfway up the side of a mountain by that helicopter. Let’s go.’
‘I’ve got a really bad feeling about this,’ Laura whispered to Otto as Raven stepped up to the rock face and began to climb again.
‘Well, you know what they say about being at your lowest point,’ Otto replied.
‘What?’
Otto looked at her and then up the mountainside.
‘The only way is up.’
The squad leader of the Disciple search team walked up the steep slope to the cave that one of his men had found a few minutes earlier. Still clearly visible in the snow around the cave mouth were several sets of footprints. He followed the trail for a few hundred metres and it ended at the base of a steep rock face. He looked upwards and for an instant thought he saw something moving. He pulled the binoculars from his belt and looked through them, scanning the rock face. There, clearly visible now, were several figures dressed in black climbing up the mountainside.
‘Tell our sniper that I want him back on the transport chopper and in the air,’ he said to one of his men. ‘I have some target practice for him.’
Raven pulled herself over the edge of the plateau and looked back down into the valley. She could barely make out the shapes of the men searching for them far below but what she could see were the rotors on the transport helicopter starting to spin. Within just a few seconds the chopper began to slowly lift into the air.
‘Quickly,’ she said, taking Shelby’s hand and pulling her up. Wing climbed up beside them as the helicopter started to ascend rapidly towards them. ‘They’ve spotted us.’
‘Guys, come on,’ Shelby yelled down to the others, who were twenty metres below and still climbing. ‘We’ve got company!’
Otto glanced over his shoulder and immediately wished he hadn’t. There was a helicopter a couple of hundred metres away at the same height as them. He began to climb again, as quickly as he could. Above him Raven unslung the assault rifle from her back and aimed at the helicopter’s cockpit. She fired a three-round burst that left a series of spiderweb cracks across the curved plexiglas and the pilot tipped the transport away from the mountainside. Raven lowered her rifle as Shelby raised hers.
‘Don’t bother,’ Raven said as the helicopter dropped back into a stationary hover a thousand metres away. ‘That pilot knows what he’s doing, they’re out of range.’
The side door of the transport chopper slid open and a few seconds later there was a flash from inside. A moment later there was a buzzing sound and a tiny cloud of dirt was kicked up at Shelby’s feet.
‘Get down,’ Raven snapped as there was another muzzle flash inside the distant helicopter and a bullet whined past Wing’s ear. The three of them dropped to the ground as it struck the edge of the plateau.
‘I thought you said they were out of range,’ Shelby yelled as a shot hit the ground just a few centimetres in front of her.
‘They are,’ Raven said. ‘Unfortunately we’re not.’
Whoever was firing at them from the helicopter was obviously armed with a high-powered sniper rifle with a much greater effective range than the assault rifles they were carrying. They were far enough out that it would still be hard for the sniper to hit anything with real precision, especially from a moving platform, but they would get lucky eventually.
Otto reached for his next handhold. The rock just to his right splintered with a crack as a bullet smacked into it.
‘Keep moving,’ Raven yelled from above. ‘Remember you’re just an easier target if you freeze up.’
‘Easy for her to say,’ Penny muttered under her breath, hauling herself towards the top.
‘Come on, Franz,’ Nigel said, grabbing his friend’s hand and pulling him upwards.
‘I am being climbing as fast as I can!’ Franz shouted.
‘I know, but we have to get to the . . .’
Nigel gasped in surprise as the bullet hit him in the shoulder. He slowly tipped backwards away from the rock face and fell. Franz caught him with one hand, his knuckles turning white as they clamped on to Nigel’s collar. Franz clung desperately to the rock with his other hand as another bullet struck nearby sending stinging stone splinters into his face.
‘HELP!’ Franz yelled.
‘We have to help them,’ Otto shouted up to Wing, Raven and Shelby.
‘Follow my lead,’ Raven said, detaching one of the grappler units from her forearm and throwing it to Wing. He quickly strapped it on to his wrist and watched as Raven fired the bolt into the ground at the edge of the drop-off at the edge of the plateau. Wing did the same and then chased after her as she ran back away from the edge, the monofilament from the grapplers trailing out behind them as they went.
‘Lock your line,’ Raven said, hitting the control on her own grappler. ‘OK, follow me.’
Otto and Penny pulled themselves up and over the edge just in time to see Raven sprint towards them and launch herself over the edge of the drop-off with Wing just two steps behind her. They both flew outwards before dropping and swinging back in towards the rock face below as the grappler lines went tight. Raven hit the rocks just to the right of Nigel and Franz and Wing landed on the other side. Raven swung closer and wrapped her free arm around Nigel’s waist.
‘Franz, let go!’ Raven shouted as a bullet whined past her head. ‘I’ve got him.’
Franz slowly released his white-knuckled grip on Nigel’s collar as Raven took the wounded boy’s weight.
‘Wing, get Franz up there,’ Raven shouted as she pulled Nigel closer and hit the trigger on her grappler, reeling in the line and rocketing up the side of the mountain.
‘Come on!’ Wing shouted to Franz, wrapping an arm around his waist. Franz put one arm around Wing’s neck and gripped on to his collar. Wing hit the trigger and reeled them both in, sending them shooting upwards as a bullet struck the rocks precisely where they had been hanging just a moment before.
Otto helped Wing and Franz back over the edge as bullets continued to kick up plumes of dirt from the ground around them. Moments later Laura and Tom clambered on to the plateau too as Raven and Shelby dragged Nigel back away from the edge.
Suddenly Penny hissed in pain as another one of the sniper’s bullets found its mark. She staggered forward before falling to the ground, clutching her thigh.
‘We have to find cover!’ Raven shouted, hauling Nigel away from the edge as Otto and Tom ran over to Penny. They picked her up, an arm over each of their shoulders as more rounds buzzed through the air nearby.
‘Franz! What are you doing?’ Laura shouted as Franz unslung the rifle from his back and walked back towards the edge of the cliff.
‘I am having just about enough of you,’ Franz muttered under his breath as he raised the rifle and sighted. ‘This is for hurting my friend.’ He fired one short burst and then another.
‘Don’t waste your ammo,’ Raven yelled as she continued to drag the unconscious Nigel away from the cliff. ‘You’ll never hit them from here.’
Suddenly black smoke started to billow out of the engine cowling on the distant helicopter and it began to slowly spin down towards the valley below.
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ Shelby said. ‘Dibs on getting to tell Colonel Francisco about this if we ever make it back to H.I.V.E.’
‘How is Nigel being?’ Franz asked as he slung the rifle on his back and walked over to Raven who had unzipped Nigel’s environmental suit and was inspecting the wound in his shoulder.
‘It could be worse,’ Raven said as she pulled a field dressing from one of the pouches on her tactical harness. ‘That was an excellent shot, Mr Argentblum.’
‘That is not being important,’ Franz said, shaking his head. ‘What is being important is that Nigel and Penny are OK.’
‘Otto, use this,’ Raven said, throwing another dressing pack to him. Otto ripped open the pack and began to wrap the bandage inside tightly around the wound in Penny’s thigh. Otto could see through the tear in the leg of her suit that she had been lucky – the bullet had just grazed her.
‘Don’t worry,’ Otto said as Penny hissed in pain. ‘It’s just a flesh wound. Not much more than a scratch really.’
‘Oh, I am sorry that my first gunshot wound isn’t terribly impressive,’ Penny said with a pained smile. ‘I’ll try to do better for you next time.’
‘I think I’d rather avoid there being a next time actually,’ Tom said frowning.
Franz, Laura and Shelby watched as Raven finished dressing Nigel’s wound.
‘Is he going to be OK?’ Laura asked, sounding worried.
‘I think so but we should still try to get him medical attention as quickly as possible. It looks like a clean wound, the bullet went straight through, but I can’t be certain that there are no internal injuries. We need to get to the facility and activate the beacon as soon as possible.’
A moment later Nigel’s eyes slowly opened and he looked up at his friends.
‘What happened?’ he asked, sounding groggy.
‘You got shot by a sniper and fell off a mountain, Franz and Raven saved you from certain death and then Franz shot down a helicopter,’ Shelby said with a grin.
‘No really,’ Nigel said with a frown, ‘tell me, what happened?’
The Alphas trudged through the snow towards the pair of huge rusted metal doors set in the side of the mountain. They had been following the crumbling remains of a disused road for the past twenty minutes. It was the first sign of human habitation that any of them had seen since they had arrived in Siberia and Otto felt that there was something vaguely sinister about it. What was it exactly that the Russian army would have been so keen to keep hidden away out here?
‘So you don’t have any idea what this place is?’ Otto asked Raven as they walked past the collapsed remains of a military gatepost.
‘No,’ Raven replied. ‘Something the authorities wanted to keep hidden obviously but, beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.’
‘How do we know it’s not a nuclear weapons dump?’ Laura asked, eyeing the heavy doors with suspicion. ‘For all we know this place could be radioactively contaminated.’
‘Do you have a Geiger counter on you?’ Raven asked.
‘Err . . . no,’ Laura replied.
‘Well then, I shouldn’t worry about it,’ Raven said with a crooked smile.
In the centre of the doors was a large spoked wheel that was clearly supposed to be rotated to release the huge metal locking bars that bolted the door shut. In the middle of the wheel was an odd, star-shaped keyhole.
‘I’m guessing that nobody has a key, right?’ Shelby said with a smile. ‘Come on then, out of the way, let’s have a look at it.’
The others stepped aside and Shelby began to examine the lock. Penny sat down on a low concrete wall nearby and gently rubbed her wounded thigh as Franz helped Nigel sit down beside her. He was pale and they could all see from his expression that he was in considerable pain.
‘OK,’ Shelby said after a couple of minutes, ‘anyone bring any plastic explosives?’
‘Oh, great,’ Otto said with a sigh.
‘Just kidding,’ Shelby grinned. ‘I am going to need one of those though.’ Shelby pointed at one of the silver cylinders on Raven’s tactical harness.
‘Wouldn’t it be easier to just cut our way in?’ Laura asked, pointing to the katanas strapped to Raven’s back. ‘Those things can cut through anything, right?’
‘That would make it rather difficult to secure the door again from the inside,’ Raven replied, handing Shelby one of her flashbang grenades. ‘Though I’m struggling to see how this will help.’
‘Oh ye of little faith,’ Shelby said, pulling the pin from the grenade and handing it to Otto. ‘Don’t let go of that.’
‘Oh, thank you very much,’ Otto said, keeping a tight hold on the spring-loaded safety lever.
‘Right then,’ Shelby said, turning back to the lock, ‘let’s crack this puppy.’
She straightened the loop at the end of the safety pin and then made a series of tiny intricate bends at the other end.
‘Oh, that’s just beautiful,’ Tom said admiringly as he watched Shelby work. ‘I’ve seen the Maxwell twist before but I never realised that you could combine it with a reverse Mahler helix. That’s brilliant.’
‘You know, I’m really starting to like you,’ Shelby said with a grin as she slid the newly created pick into the lock. She closed her eyes and slowly twisted the pick.
‘You do know that you stick your tongue out when you’re doing that, don’t you?’ Otto said.
‘Seriously, Malpense?’ Shelby said, eyes still closed. ‘Now you start with the distracting banter?’
‘Sorry,’ Otto said, ‘it’s just that I get nervous when I’m holding live explosive devices.’
‘Shhh, just let Aunty Shelby work her . . . magic!’ There was a click and Shelby stepped back from the lock. ‘A round of applause might be nice, you know.’
‘Don’t,’ Laura said as Tom raised his hands to clap. ‘You’ll just encourage her.’
Wing stepped forward, gripped the spokes of the wheel and turned, the large metal locking bolts screeching in protest as they released in a shower of rust. He pushed hard and the massive doors slowly swung inwards with a pained creaking sound. Raven cracked another glowstick and walked slowly into the darkness beyond the doors.
‘Last one into the creepy, dark, possibly radioactive abandoned military facility is a loser,’ Shelby said as she followed Raven inside.
Colonel Francisco walked towards the burnt-out wreckage of the missing Shroud that was scattered across the valley floor.
‘We’ve found the pilot and co-pilot’s bodies but there’s no sign of Raven or the students who were on-board,’ one of the G.L.O.V.E. troops reported as Francisco approached.
‘You’re certain?’
‘Yes, sir, we’ve done a full scan of the wreckage. It seems that the Shroud was hit while it was on the ground. One of the ejector seats is missing too. It looks like Raven and the passengers have either been captured or they somehow managed to escape.’
‘Spread out and search for any signs of survivors,’ Francisco said to the rest of the troops. ‘We need to know what happened here.’
Francisco continued walking through the debris field. Lying not too far from the Shroud were the twisted remains of a helicopter rotor blade. Someone had clearly managed to take down at least one of the enemy helicopters. The question was how? The transport Shrouds had no weapons. Something about the whole scene just didn’t make sense.
‘Over here,’ one of the G.L.O.V.E. troops yelled.
Francisco hurried over to where the man was standing and found two dead bodies lying just inside the forest. Both were wearing white thermoptic camouflage suits.
‘Where did they get these from?’ Francisco said, kneeling down beside one of the dead men. The technology behind the suits’ holographic projection cloak was one of G.L.O.V.E.’s most closely guarded secrets. The fact that it had somehow fallen into the Disciples’ hands was deeply worrying. One of the men had been shot but the other man had been killed with a blade. The edges of the fatal wound were cauterised as if the blade had been heated or . . . Francisco suddenly realised what weapon might have caused a wound like that. He looked at the ground around the two bodies and saw several sets of tracks leading further into the forest.
‘I want the search continued along that vector,’ he said, pointing into the trees. ‘We may have survivors in need of assistance.’
He pulled his communicator from his belt and thumbed the transmit button.
‘Go ahead, Colonel,’ Nero responded.
‘Max, I think Raven’s alive and even better, she may not be the only survivor.’
Shelby locked the massive doors from the inside and handed the improvised key to Otto.
‘There you go,’ she said with a smile. ‘Gee, I hope you can get the pin back in the grenade what with the pin being bent now and all.’
‘You know you really are hilarious,’ Otto replied, as he forced the safety pin back into the grenade. ‘Truly, side-splittingly funny. I hope that nothing bad happens to you because then who would make sure that I’m always in such a constant state of intense amusement?’
‘If you two are quite finished,’ Raven said, taking the grenade from Otto and reattaching it to her tactical harness, ‘I’m quite keen to find out what sort of facility we’ve actually locked ourselves inside.’
Raven walked down the darkened corridor ahead of the Alphas, the green light from her glowstick doing little to diminish the creepiness of the long dark corridor. Water dripped from the ceiling, pooling on the floor. They passed several doors that led to empty locker rooms and barracks with rows of rusty iron bunks.
‘Zombies,’ Penny said. ‘I mean, just look at this place. There’s definitely going to be zombies.’
‘I am thinking this but I am wishing that you are not saying it, yes?’ Franz said quietly.
‘Whatever this place is no one’s been here for a loooong time,’ Otto said.
‘Except the zombies,’ Shelby said.
‘Obviously, except the zombies.’
‘Please be stopping it,’ Franz said plaintively.
Soon they came to another heavy metal door but this one was not locked. As Raven pushed it open dim, grey light came from the other side. The room beyond was lined with control panels on three sides but the fourth was a panel of dirty glass that looked out on to a massive cavern. Set in the glass was a door that led out on to a gantry running round the walls of the cavern. Daylight streamed down from an opening somewhere overhead, but what was truly bizarre was spread across the cavern floor. As they all walked on to the gantry they looked down on to an impossible scene from the past. Laid out before them was a perfect recreation of a small American town from the early 1960s. There was a diner, a drugstore, a church and even what looked like a fire station in the town square. Surrounding the centre were acres of suburban homes and schools. It was exactly as if somebody had picked up an entire American town fifty years ago and then dropped it in a cavern in Siberia. The only slightly incongruous detail were the abandoned Russian military vehicles that were dotted around the town. Far overhead was a huge geodesic glass dome that allowed the daylight to shine through. Some of its triangular panels were missing but otherwise it was intact.
‘OK, you know what,’ Otto said, ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’
‘On the plus side, it isn’t zombies,’ Penny said, unable to take her eyes off the bizarre sight. ‘Although that might actually have been marginally less weird.’
‘Why on earth would anyone build this?’ Laura asked.
‘Training,’ Raven said. ‘I’d heard rumours about places like this but I’d always thought it was a myth. Back in the early sixties there were people in the Russian military who were convinced that a war with America was not just probable but inevitable. That being the case, they had to find a way to train their men for an invasion but they had no towns that bore any resemblance to small-town America so they built places like this. I suppose it’s not a myth any more.’
‘Well, it may not be a myth any more,’ Otto said with a smile, ‘but I’ll tell you what it is. A really, really good place to hide.’
The helicopter landed in the centre of the camp, the down draught from its rotor blades whipping clouds of snow into the air. A figure dressed in a long black hooded coat and a dark veil that covered her face stepped down from the side hatch and walked towards the commander. The commander swallowed nervously. The woman was Minerva and she had been the head of the Disciples ever since the disastrous events at the Advanced Weapons Project facility in Colorado that had resulted in Overlord’s destruction. He had good reason to be nervous – she had a reputation for ruthlessness and little tolerance for failure.
‘It is a pleasure to see you again, ma’am,’ the commander said with a smart nod as the woman approached.
‘Where are they?’ Minerva asked.
‘We’re . . . erm . . . not certain at the moment,’ the commander replied uncomfortably. ‘One of our teams spotted them an hour ago climbing a mountain nearby but they were unable to neutralise them.’
‘And you have not been able to locate them since?’
‘No, we have sent gunships to the area but were unable to find them. It looks like they’ve gone to ground somewhere.’
‘I am losing patience, commander,’ Minerva said. ‘You have had several chances to eliminate Raven and the last of Nero’s brats and yet you seem to be incapable of finishing the job. This operation needs to be a success. We have to prove to Joseph Wright and the rest of the deposed G.L.O.V.E. leaders that they were right to forge an alliance with us. Don’t make me regret putting you in charge of this operation – you should know that I am not in the habit of living with my regrets. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ the commander replied. ‘I have tracker teams on the ground at their last known location. We will find them.’
‘Let us hope so, commander, for your sake.’
Otto threw the switch and there was a slight vibration from somewhere beneath his feet as generators that had probably not been used for decades slowly rumbled into life.
‘Gotta love Russian engineering,’ he said to himself as the dusty control panels around the room began to light up. He moved to one of the panels nearer the window and threw another series of switches. Outside the control room, huge banks of floodlights on the walls lit up and flooded the cavern with light. Otto walked out on to the gantry and looked down on the fake town below. Now it was lit up it looked even more like some kind of impossibly elaborate movie set. He walked along the gantry and took the stairs down to the cavern floor where Raven and the rest of the Alphas were waiting.
‘I can’t believe that anything’s still working,’ Laura said as they walked through the town.
‘They built things to last back then,’ Raven said. ‘Everything now is digital and fragile – when this place was built things were less sophisticated but they did not break quite so easily. Fortunately for us.’
‘So what now?’ Tom asked. ‘Do we just activate the beacon and wait?’
‘No, first we need to find good defensive positions,’ Raven replied. ‘We have to assume that the Disciples will get here before anyone from H.I.V.E. does. We also have to assume that they might find a way in here somehow.’
‘There are plenty of places to hide here,’ Laura said, looking around.
‘I’m getting tired of hiding,’ Otto said. ‘I’ve got a better idea.’
‘And what might that be?’ Raven asked.
‘Well, they say that offence is the best form of defence, right?’ Otto said as they walked into the main town square.
‘Normally I would agree,’ Raven said, ‘but the Disciples have us outnumbered and outgunned.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Otto said with a grin, pointing across the town square. ‘It’s like you said, some things are built to last.’
‘I think I’ve got something,’ the radio operator in the Disciple command tent yelled.
‘What is it?’ the commander asked quickly.
‘It sounds like a distress beacon of some kind,’ the operator replied. ‘I’m not entirely sure what the source of the transmission is but it’s certainly not coming from any of our equipment.’
‘It has to be Raven,’ Minerva said. ‘She’s signalling for help. Can you determine the position of the transmitter?’
‘Yes, it will take a few minutes but it should be relatively straightforward.’
‘Good,’ the commander said with a nod. ‘Once you have a position relay the coordinates to the gunships and have them check the area.’ He turned to Minerva. ‘I’ll get airborne with the rest of our troops so we can be on site as soon as we have the location.’
‘I will accompany you,’ Minerva said. ‘I want to be there to personally ensure your success this time, commander.’
‘But, ma’am, it could be extremely dangerous,’ the commander protested.
‘If I were you, commander, I would be more worried for the safety of your own troops. Raven must know that you will be able to trace the location of that beacon. It is no accident that she is telling you exactly where she is. Do not underestimate her or Nero’s students. They are a dangerous combination, as Overlord discovered to his cost.’
‘I know how dangerous they are,’ the commander said, ‘but she is only one woman and they are just children. We will not fail.’
Cole Harrington sat in his cell in H.I.V.E.’s detention wing trying very hard not to think about what the future held for him. He had no idea how Otto Malpense had managed to transfer the stolen H.I.V.E.mind files to his Blackbox but he knew that whatever Nero might have in mind for him it would not be pleasant. He looked up as the door to his cell hissed open and Chief Dekker walked into the room.
‘What do you want?’ Harrington snapped bitterly. ‘If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be in here.’
‘Whatever do you mean?’ Dekker asked with a smile.
‘You’re the one who told me what Malpense and those other Alphas were up to. You were the one who told me that you could sell H.I.V.E.mind’s source code for so much money. It’s because of you that I’m in this situation. Well,you’re going to get me out of this somehow or I’m going to tell Nero all about your part in this. I’m not taking the fall for this alone.’
‘You know, it’s really very sad,’ Dekker said, shaking her head.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You obviously couldn’t live with yourself after betraying H.I.V.E. so badly,’ Dekker continued. ‘You confessed everything to me, of course. How you’d found the proposed location for the Hunt amongst the files you stole from H.I.V.E.mind and then how you covertly transmitted the information to your contact. You even told me exactly where in your quarters you hid the covert transmitter that you had paid one of the security guards to smuggle into the school for you. During the course of my questioning I explained to you that the information you had unwittingly provided to the Disciples had been directly responsible for the massacre at the Hunt. You told me how you had no idea that anything like that would happen and that you desperately regretted your actions. Sadly you obviously just couldn’t live with the guilt. If I’d realised that you were a suicide risk I would have kept a much closer watch on you. Such a shame.’
‘Suicide? What do you mean suicide? I’d never . . . oh God no.’
Dekker walked towards him smiling nastily as the door hissed shut behind her.