"Give me your shoes before you go," sneered Snake Eyes. "We'll keep the tracker up here so your friends can find it. We know they're coming, boyo. We've got a little surprise for them." He started snorting and laughing like he was possessed. I considered punching him in the face, but decided against it. Too much effort, too little satisfaction. I would deal with him later.
So Angus knew how to find me. A part of me was intensely relieved. And yet what I felt most was anxiety. Anne had clearly set a trap for him, and she was supremely confident that it would work. I wouldn't bet on her showing him any mercy if she did manage to capture him. Shit.
They led me down a couple of sets of rickety stairs as I gloomily considered the outcome for all of us if Angus should die. I would be screwed, literally. I thought of Anne and her hungry looks. No need to guess what my future held as far as she was concerned. Rebecca would be broken. Marcus and Fergus devastated. Angus was too much a life force, vigorous and alive, for the world not to feel his passing. It was an option I had to consider, distasteful as it was, because it was dawning on me that despite my appearance - an overgrown barefoot teenager in a crumpled and stained school uniform - I had discovered an ability that could really put a spanner in the works for these guys. I would need to come up with a plan. A coherent and infallible plan. Starting with who died first.
Snake Eyes unlocked a metal door at the end of a dark passageway and roughly shoved me inside. I looked around me at the dimly lit space as the door behind me slammed shut, and bolts were drawn, locking me in. I was in what looked like a large metal box that had been converted into a room. A couple of vents had been set in one of the walls, but other than that there was no other disruption of the solid metal sheeting that lined the space, apart from the doorway. Which was currently very much filled by a solid metal door. I felt a few seconds panic at being enclosed in such a small space. I tried reaching out to distract myself, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was actually easier for me to locate heartbeats from that steel lined space. Probably had something to do with conduction. I decided to discuss it with Marcus as soon as I saw him again.
In the meantime I stretched my sensors outwards in another spiral, pushing outwards with every turn, counting hearts as I went, on and on. When I reached three hundred, I stopped counting and half sat, half collapsed on the cold metal floor.