The Cure, стр. 30

‘Light. I can see light up ahead,’ said Seth. The door to the maintenance room had a window and light shone through to the top of the stairwell.

Logan tried the door and it didn’t budge at first. Chuck joined him pushing and the door moved about an inch. All of them started pushing and the door swung open with the group falling into the room on top of each other.

‘Right,’ said Logan getting off the floor and composing himself ‘Now comes the hard part. For all we know the rest of the prison could be full of the vilest criminals to walk the face of the earth.’

‘Way to sell it to us,’ said Tallulah.

‘Or it could be empty,’ he said. ‘Which means our mission is over.’

‘Well when you put it like that,’ Tallulah replied. ‘Where now?’

Logan pointed upwards to the ceiling.

‘Air-con system?’ Chuck laughed. Logan nodded.

‘We need to do this quickly and quietly. It’ll give us the best view of the prison and if the Professor is in here then a bigger chance of finding him. It will be slow and uncomfortable, but if we do it right the risk will be lower of us getting caught.’

Logan was first up and then one at a time they climbed into the air conditioning shaft. It was a lot larger than they expected and at a crouch they could shuffle along quite easily. They came across the first vent, which opened into the top of a prison cell, but it was empty. Looking forward Logan could see that every five feet vents opened into more cells, so he knew they were heading in the right direction. He stopped short of the next vent and peered inside. At first he thought it was empty and was about to move on but then he saw a man move from below the vent into the middle of the cell. He turned and put a finger to his lips. ‘So, the prison was inhabited,’ he thought to himself. The Professor could be alive. But this wasn’t him and he knew he had to press on quickly. He turned again and held his hand down and whispered ‘quietly,’ to the rest of them.

Moving from vent to vent he saw more men, ranging from two to sometimes five, in each cell, either playing cards or board games. None of them looked unhealthy or starving to death though and he wondered if this was as a result of the cannibalism he had heard of and seen with his own eyes at Samson’s camp. No sign of the Professor and they were coming to a bend in the air-con tunnel. They turned right again and continued along, peering into the cells, carefully trying to go unnoticed. Every now and then one of them would make a noise or cough and the group would stay deadly still until they knew they had gone undetected and then move on.

It felt like they had been in there hours and they had almost done a full perimeter of the first floor of the prison. Reaching the end of the unit Logan scrutinized the last vent. It was a room with tables and chairs in it. Not an office as such but more like a makeshift guard room. It had windows into the main prison, but they were whitewashed so that no-one could see in, or out. He pulled out the prison map he had and deliberated their next move.

‘Tals,’ he whispered. ‘Looking at the map, if we climb down into this room, there is a stairwell next door which leads to the next floor up. We can then access the vent to the room directly above and do the next level. What do you think?’

‘So once in the room we need to go out into the prison to get to the stairwell?’ she replied.

‘It’s the only way to get to the next floor.’

‘Then that’s what we do,’ she said.

He nodded and started removing the hatch to the room, dropping down and then helping the others down. He scanned the room diligently but quickly. ‘Right,’ he started saying to the group, ready to explain the plan. But before he could continue the door swung open and a man walked through the door, followed by more men with guns drawn. They had been caught.