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Heart hammering in his ears from both fear and exertion Alex raced across the mezzanine, jinking like a startled rabbit to make sure Yassen couldn’t get a clear shot. It could only be luck that meant he’d stayed out of range this long, so far Yassen’s shots had all gone wide – surprisingly wide, now Alex came to think about it.
As another shot ricocheted off a steel girder and Alex abruptly changed direction again, he realised what Yassen was doing and went cold. He was deliberately firing to either side of him to force Alex out of his wild swerves into a straight line. And as soon as he could tell not where Alex was but where he would be – it would be game over.
Alex threw himself desperately to the side, wondering if there was a way down. No way he could jump that far, the concrete floor would break every bone in his legs, but there was a lorry filled with bags of aggregate – if he could jump down onto that…
He’d hesitated too long in one place. For a second he thought he’d been punched and whirled in shock, but Yassen was nowhere near him. Which meant – Alex had pressed a hand to his side in reaction to the blow, and it felt like time slowed to a crawl as he looked down to find his fingers stained red.
Pain and shock hit him like a delayed second blow and he fell to his knees, toppling onto his side as his body threatened to shut down in protest. He couldn’t be dying. Could he? He’d been hit in his side, slightly to the back – was there anything vital there? Could you die from a shot to the spleen?
It didn’t matter, Alex realised. You could certainly die from a shot to the head and Yassen was walking towards him now, gun held at his side. It wasn’t pointing at Alex any more, but no doubt it soon would be.
Alex watched as Yassen’s shoes stepped into his line of vision and forced himself to look up, bracing himself defiantly for the killing shot. It didn’t come. Yassen was just staring at him in what looked like genuine shock.
“Alex.” He looked like he’d seen a ghost. Alex rather hoped that didn’t prove to be the case.
Yassen crouched down next to him, the gun disappearing into his coat.
“Are you alright?”
Alex grimaced. “Of course I’m not alright, you just shot me, you prick!”
“Let me see.” Yassen reached out and Alex flinched away, scraping himself painfully on the concrete.
“Don’t touch me!”
“Alex. Let me look.” It was more of a sigh than a demand, and somehow Alex found himself letting the man roll him gently to one side and lift up his shirt.
“Is it bad?” Alex tried not to let his voice shake. He almost succeeded.
“It’s not great. We need to get you out of here. Can you stand?” Yassen offered his hands and Alex let him pull him to his feet, almost crumpling again as he flushed hot and cold all over.
“Lean on me.”
“Fuck you,” Alex said through gritted teeth, but he let Yassen put an arm around him and help him hobble back down to ground level.
Somewhere in the distance there was the screeching of tyres, and their eyes met.
“That’s probably your people.” Yassen looked like he was struggling with whether to say what he was thinking or not. “I could leave you for them. Or...you could come with me.”
Alex winced. The thought of explaining how he’d come to get himself shot to a hostile audience who hadn’t wanted him mixed up in this in the first place didn’t exactly appeal. Yassen might have shot him, but on the other hand he seemed to have changed his mind about it, and Alex had been looking for him so long that he was loathe to let him disappear again.
Also he realised with a jolt that he didn’t entirely trust Blunt not to let him ‘accidentally’ bleed out just to be rid of him. He wasn’t sure what it said that he was inclined to trust the man who’d just shot him over the people who were supposed to be his allies.
“Will you help me?” he asked warily.
Yassen nodded. “I promise. But we have to go now.”
“Okay. I guess.” Alex knew he might be making a big mistake, but there’d been nothing to stop Yassen just finishing him off, so his offer of help was presumably genuine enough to make it a risk worth taking.
They slipped out through the door at the back as the sound of vehicles peeling into the loading bay echoed through the cavernous space. Yassen helped Alex to a car parked out of sight behind a shipping container and opened the rear door. As Alex slumped into the seat trying not to whimper, Yassen fetched something from the boot and pulled Alex’s shirt up, pressing a wad of sterile dressing to the wound and making Alex suck in a breath from the sudden spike of pain.
“You need to keep pressure on it. Can you do that?”
“Uh huh,” Alex managed. “You’re taking me to a hospital, right?”
Yassen shrugged. “If you want to wait four hours to be seen. Or I can take you somewhere better.”
Somewhere better proved to be a basement beneath another warehouse, dark and mouldering apart from one corner swathed in sheets of heavy plastic which to Alex’s surprise contained an entire functioning operating theatre set-up.
He wasn’t sure where they were – he’d spent the journey mostly lying down fighting waves of pain and nausea and conscious of his blood steadily staining the seat beneath him. He’d been dimly conscious of Yassen making a call, but hadn’t understood a word. He didn’t think it had been Russian – Polish, maybe? He assumed it had summoned the grey-haired man with a fussy little beard who appeared to greet them, and who bore enough of a passing resemblance to Blunt to make Alex shudder.
“You can trust Doctor Zyrkov,” Yassen murmured, perhaps feeling Alex’s reaction as he was still more than half holding him upright. “He is the best.”
“Yeah? Why’s he operating out of a rat-infested basement then?” Alex asked.
“A small matter of being struck off,” Yassen admitted. “However, this is fortunate for you, no?”
Alex glared at him, but allowed the two men to manoeuvre him onto the trolley.
“Tell me what happened,” Zyrkov demanded briskly.
“He’s been shot,” Yassen said, and Alex gave him a squinty look. “I don’t think it’s punctured anything vital, but he’s losing a lot of blood.”
“Very well. We’ll soon have you patched up young man.”
Alex was slightly reassured by the air of cheerful competence the man projected, but as Yassen turned away Alex found himself reaching out and grabbing his sleeve.
“Don’t leave me?” It was partly that Alex didn’t want to lose track of him again already, but also, and more than he was prepared to admit, that Yassen was a familiar face in strange and frightening circumstances.
Yassen gave him a searching look, then sat down on a stool beside him.
“I’m sorry.” He said it quietly, and Alex frowned at him.
“What for?”
Yassen half-laughed. “Shooting you.”
“Oh.” Alex made a face. “So why did you?”
“I didn’t know it was you. I just realised there was someone else there. Whether it was a contact or simply a witness to what I’d just done, they needed to be dealt with.” Yassen frowned. “You shouldn’t have run. I could have killed you.”
Alex’s mouth fell open. “I – had no reason to think knowing it was me would make a difference,” he ventured. “How do you even know me?”
He was distracted then by Zyrkov putting a line in his arm and he shot Yassen a nervous look.
“For the pain,” Yassen explained. “Don’t worry. You’re in good hands.”
“I saw what you did,” Alex persisted recklessly. “You’d have killed anyone else. What’s special about me?”
Yassen shrugged and Alex tried to glare at him but he was feeling increasingly odd, and hoped fervently it was from whatever was in the drip as opposed to blood loss. His wound didn’t hurt as much, and he couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or not.
“Hey. Stay with me,” Yassen said softly, seeing Alex was on the brink of passing out. “Talk to me.”
“What about?” Alex mumbled. “You wanna know my favourite colour?”
“What were you doing in the warehouse? How much do you know?”
Indignance jerked Alex back to full wakefulness. “Did you bring me here to pump me?”
“Just making conversation,” Yassen said innocently.
“It doesn’t matter anyway. I don’t know anything.” Alex caught Yassen’s expression and shook his head. “No, really, I don’t. Smoking Mirror – he was disgusted with me. It was all guesswork, conjecture. I had nothing. He thought I knew – oh. Oh God.”
“What is it?”
“I got him killed.” The remaining blood drained out of Alex’s face. “He came to meet me because he thought I could help him, and I got him killed.”
Yassen shook his head. “No. I was following him, not you. I’d already found where he was staying. If he hadn’t come to meet you, he would already have been dead.”
“Oh.” Alex wasn’t sure if that was a comfort, but the sick feeling of guilt eased a little.
While they’d been talking Zyrkov had been exposing and cleaning the wound, and now he announced with far too much cheerfulness for Alex’s liking that he was going to remove the bullet.
The feeling of probing metal was accompanied by a flare of pain and Alex cried out, reaching instinctively towards Yassen in wordless pleading protest. Yassen took hold of his outstretched hand automatically, and there was a second when both of them stopped and looked down at their clasped hands in slight surprise, as if neither of them had exactly intended it. Then Yassen brought his other hand up and enclosed Alex’s in both of his.
“It’ll be alright. I won’t let you die, Alex.”
“Good to know,” Alex muttered. He felt he should probably pull his hand away, but it was embarrassingly comforting, and he didn’t.
There was a grunt of satisfaction from Zyrkov and the clink of metal hitting a dish. Alex looked round. “Can I keep it? As a souvenir?”
“I hope you’re not thinking of tracing my gun to other incidents,” Yassen said mildly, and Alex gave him a weak grin.
“Never crossed my mind.” He swallowed. “I feel weird. All floaty.”
“That’ll be the morphine,” Yassen reassured him, guessing Alex was worrying about how much blood he’d lost. “Aren’t you glad I didn’t take you to a hospital? You’d probably still be sitting on a bench with a paracetamol.”
Alex coughed out a laugh, then winced. “Ow. Don’t make me laugh, it still hurts. Anyway, I’m fairly sure even London emergency departments’ll see you quicker for a bullet wound.”
“Perhaps.”
Alex smiled, his head lolling as he looked round at his surroundings. “Aren’t you worried I’ll be able to tell people where I’ve been?” He wasn’t sure why he kept poking at things better left alone, he was just curious why Yassen seemed protective of him, and determined to find how far it went.
“These places are set up for an emergency,” Yassen told him. “Once they’ve been used they will be dismantled and taken somewhere else. You can bring people here if you want, it won’t matter.”
“Right.” Alex sighed. “You’ve not going to tell me who you are, are you?”
“Perhaps the more interesting question is why you don’t already know,” Yassen said. “Because Blunt and his people do. Oh yes, they know. And they haven’t told you. Why is that, I wonder?”
Alex stared at him. Was he just trying to make trouble? Yes, probably, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
“You are going to let me go when I’m patched up though, right?”
Yassen pursed his lips. “It would be better for me to lock you up somewhere until all this is over. For your own safety.”
“You not going to though, right? Right? Yassen!” An indefinable expression passed over Yassen’s face, and Alex frowned. “What?”
Yassen shook his head slightly. “Nothing. I just wasn’t sure you knew my name.”
“Yassen Gregorovich, right? Killer for hire. That’s all I know. Hey, can I hire you? I’ve got this teacher…”
Yassen actually laughed. “I don’t think you could afford me, little Alex.”
“Pity.” The morphine was definitely taking effect now, and Alex felt both drowsy and full of misplaced confidence. His mind wandered. “So how did you get the scar?”
“None of your business.”
“Just making conversation.”
Yassen smiled. “Touché.” He squeezed Alex’s hand. “If only I’d had access to someone like the good doctor here, it might have ended up a little less noticeable. You, I think, won’t have much of a scar at all.”
“I don’t mind. Bragging rights. Not that anyone’s likely to believe me.”
Yassen was looking at him speculatively. “If I let you go, will you promise to stay out of things?”
“Um. No? Full disclosure, probably not.”
Yassen rolled his eyes. “You’re a teenager! Blunt shouldn’t be using you to do his dirty work. Tell him to go to hell.”
“I’m not working for Blunt.”
“Alex – ”
“No, really, I’m not. I tried to tell them, about seeing you, about the explosion, and they didn’t want to know. They didn’t believe me.”
Yassen stared at him incredulously. “Are you telling me you involved yourself in this?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Someone had to.”
Yassen looked away, sighing something under his breath. Alex got the distinct impression it had been something like Riders.
“So you’re going to let me go, right?”
Yassen gave him a resigned look. “Against my better judgement, apparently I am.”
Alex relaxed a little, and the next hour or so passed in a fuzzy blur. He was vaguely conscious of Yassen still holding his hand, but all the pain and indeed most of the sensation had gone, so the whole process of having his wound stitched up and dressed felt like it was happening to somebody else. He was given blood, and fluids, and most surprising of all provided with a clean pair of sweatpants and shirt. Yassen was right, this was a better service than he’d have got on the NHS.
Eventually he was patched up and sufficiently recovered to be able to stand unaided.
Yassen indicated it was time to go, and as they walked out Alex could hear Zyrkov on the phone, presumably arranging the imminent dismantling of the facility. He realised with a faint sense of guilt that he had no intention of alerting anyone in authority to where he’d been or what had happened to him. You never knew when you might need an emergency surgeon, after all.
Outside, Yassen gestured towards a car idling at the opposite kerb.
“Your ride.”
Alex looked from the car to Yassen. “You called me an Uber?”
“Better we are not seen together,” Yassen said. “It will take you home. Rest up, huh? Stay out of trouble,” he added pointedly.
“Yeah, yeah.” Alex took a step towards the car, then hesitated and looked back. “Thanks. For – you know.” He gestured vaguely at his bandaged side. “It doesn’t excuse anything else you’ve done, but I guess, for the whole shooting me thing – you get a pass.”
Yassen looked surprised, then gave a slow nod of acknowledgement. “Until next time then,” he said, with something that might have been a smile.
“Yeah.” Alex found himself smiling back. “Maybe work on that aim, huh?” he called cheekily as he walked towards the car. He risked a glance back as he opened the door, to find Yassen still watching him.
“Just keep moving Alex,” Yassen said, suppressing a laugh. “Just keep moving and you’ll be fine.”
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