I tore off down the tunnel that led to the northbound Piccadilly line and hoped like hell that the train would be here shortly. As I reached the platform the sign above said it would be arriving in one minute. I cursed and threw down my bag, sliding into position next to the opening of the tunnel. I waited there and heard Karthik coming a moment later. His breathing was what gave him away; I was holding my breath so as to avoid a similar fate.
He slowed as he exited the tunnel but not nearly enough. I hit him with a clothesline that I’m sure he felt came out of nowhere. It caused his legs to fly out from under him. I caught him and slammed his head and shoulders into the concrete and tile floor. He looked up at me with shock, and I knew I’d broken something significant, possibly his skull and spine. His mouth opened and shut, and he made almost no noise.
“I’m sorry,” I said, on my knees, next to his fallen body. Blood dripped out onto the floor and onto my hand where I held him in place. “I’m sorry. I hope this heals. But I’m not going with you.” I stood and withdrew, leaving him there. He gasped and reached out for me again, but I searched the platform with my eyes and found his gun lying next to the train. I picked it up and put it into my bag as I retrieved it. “Tell them to leave me alone.” There was a subtle movement of air, like someone had turned on a fan as the wind blew out of the tunnel where the approaching train was coming. I looked back at him, his sad eyes watching me. “Tell Janus … I’m sorry.” Not that he’d believe me.
The train roared into the station and I stepped on in a crowd of people. I watched Karthik through the open doors as he rolled to his side, then his chest, and started to crawl across the platform to the train. I sighed and hoped that time was not on his side.
It wasn’t. He was still five feet away and moving with desperate slowness, one arm over the next when the train doors closed. I watched him, but not his eyes, as the train started to move. The lights flashed out as we pulled out of the station, and I was left with darkness as I watched the fallen figure still on the platform—just the most recent in the long line of people I’d hurt.
Chapter 17
The train pulled into King’s Cross St. Pancras station a few minutes later and I was the first out the doors, shoving people out of my way as I got the hell out. I followed the signs that led me up toward the surface, not exactly sure where I was going but certain of a few things. One, I didn’t really want to try to leave the country yet. That would require an airline ticket, which I could afford, but I was concerned it would flag Omega’s attention. Two, I wasn’t sure I could safely stay in London. I had some cash but not enough to be able to afford more than a night or two of a hotel stay. I had credit cards, but if Omega was anything like the Directorate, they had a tech nerd like J.J. who could use that to track me down, and I’d be getting a knock on my door just a few minutes after check-in.
I didn’t like the way Omega was pursuing me, but I understood it. I definitely didn’t trust that all they wanted was to talk, though that certainly fit better with Janus’s style than anything else that had been tried. All this ran through my mind as I took escalator after escalator toward the surface.
One thing I did know was that King’s Cross station could probably get me anywhere in the country I wanted to go. The question now was, where did I want to go? Where could I go?
I thought about the cloisters they’d mentioned back at Omega headquarters, about the one in Scotland. I wondered where it was, and after a few minutes of thinking, I could not recall them mentioning. My odds of finding that became very low, since it’s hard to go somewhere when you don’t have a name for it.
I pushed off to the side and felt the swell of voices in my head as I leaned against a grey wall and smelled the scent of the musty underground. I lay my head against the hard brick and tried to think through my next move.
We should go back and make peace with Janus, Bjorn said. This is not the end of things with Omega. They can forgive murder—
“Why not?” I said to myself. “After all, they’ve done enough of it themselves. It’s probably as casual as flossing to them.”
We need to get out of the country, Bastian opined. Maximum damage is done, now it’s time to flee. Unless you want to really take it to Omega—
“I didn’t come here to wage a war. I came here to find Winter.”
Janus will still give you Winter, if you give him what he wants, Bjorn said.
“But what the hell does he want?” I asked, and realized my voice had gotten loud enough to draw stares from the commuters walking past. “No one will even tell me what these assholes want from me, which is maybe the most frustrating thing about this whole deal.”