CHERUB: Knight

24: Run

The road had a set of traffic lights at one end, so George took the opportunity while the traffic was slowing down to run across and head for a side street. He got a blast from an angry taxi driver, but he was gone before he could think too closely about it. George's training started to kick in as he turned another corner and found himself walking down the side of a three-lane road leading to a junction.

Firstly he pulled on a baseball cap from his bag to change his appearance, then he jogged towards a bus stop, checking that there was change in his pocket.

A bus pulled up as he arrived and he spent a nervous thirty seconds waiting for the other passengers to get on and pay. He had no idea where he was going, so he copied the person in front of him and got a paper ticket. He took a seat behind a couple of old ladies before looking anxiously out of the window. There was no sign of any police as the bus pulled away, and George began to plan his escape route a little more carefully.

Wherever he ended up getting off, he'd ring campus and let them know. Then he'd just lie low, maybe in a cafe or a shop, until they arrived to pick him up. The police wouldn't know where he'd gone and they'd be unlikely to set up roadblocks to search every bus.

The only problem was that as soon as they cleared the city centre and headed out into the suburbs, George spotted two marked police cars following. Neither of them had their sirens on, but they followed the bus's route exactly. George realised he'd been an idiot.

The police must have seen him get onto the bus and had worked out that he'd be easier to pick up when he got off the bus than to stop traffic and cause a scene. Even if he rode the bus all the way to the end of the line, he'd eventually have to get off into the waiting arms of a policeman for a trip to the station.

It didn't take a genius to work out that kicking a policeman didn't put you in their good books. George's only chance was to jump off at the next stop and surprise them, hopefully getting away before they could get out of the car and see where he'd gone. There was no map or anything on the bus, so George decided to bide his time and wait for a bus stop that was close to some houses or buildings that would make it easy to get away from the police if they tried to chase him on foot.

He made his move when an overweight couple got off the bus with a double pushchair. In the time that they were fussing with folding it up, carrying it down the step and then unfolding it, George slipped past and set off at a sprint into an alleyway between what appeared to be two industrial buildings. He thought that he might have given the police the slip entirely, but there was a brief blast of siren from one of the cars and when George looked over his shoulder, a burly policeman was sprinting after him.

No amount of specialist training on campus could make George faster than a grown man, so he cut into a side turning which led to a concrete ramp. He didn't want to go into the industrial building and get stuck, so he kept an eye out for a fire exit or something that he could get through. The ramp led to a garage filled with cardboard boxes, but as George blazed through without slowing down, a security guard appeared from nowhere and shouted something George didn't hear. There was an open doorway leading into a warehouse which George was heading for, but as he approached another security guard popped up and blocked the way, one of his arms trying to grab George around the chest. It was a clumsy move and George could have easily flipped the man over or felled him with a karate kick, but instead he just dodged and the man's fingers lost grip.

The move meant that George couldn't reach the door, so he cut sideways through a fire door before the security guard could recover for a second attempt. It let to a metal gantry which ran around the outside of the building, but as George grabbed the rail and set off towards a set of stairs, a squealing fire alarm went off. He knew from espionage training that fire doors were often alarmed, but he was desperate. The gantry was twenty feet off the ground and George realised his only escape was to jump. The police and security guards were heavier and probable wouldn't risk a broken leg to catch him. The only problem was, his jump would be hurried and he had every chance of turning his ankle or even breaking an arm when he hit the ground. Going up a short staircase to the next level added six feet to the jump, but it led to the other side of the building.