Crawlers

11:39pm

'You saved us, babes!' said Lauren to Samantha, eyes shining. 

'How?' asked Jasmine. 'How did you know where to go in the fog?' 

'You're not the only one with ideas around here,' Samantha told her. 

'Let's hope yours are better than mine,' said Ben with feeling. 'The theatre was a bad suggestion. Sorry, everybody.' 

'What were those things?' Samantha asked. 

'Which things?' Ben asked back. 'The big crawlers or the cocoon-things?' Realizing how stupid he sounded, he scowled and banged his fist against the cubicle's metal wall. 'I just wish we could find out what's going on!' 

'Those cocoons,' said Samantha quietly. 'You're sure they've got people inside?' 

'You saw the shoes,' said Jasmine. 'Men. Women. Schoolkids.' She paused. 'Maybe that's why, apart from Hugo and Lisa, we haven't seen any kids with crawlers on them, just adults. Maybe all the other kids are in there.' She shivered. 

'But what're they doing, all wrapped up like that?' asked Samantha. 'What's going to happen to them?' 

'Maybe they're dead,' said Ben. 'Or... maybe something worse.' 

'Wh-what are you talking about?' asked Lauren, quailing. 

'Never mind,' said Jasmine firmly. 

There was a pause. 

'Well,' she added as brightly as she could, 'at least now we're in this lift we can try some different floors. Where are we going first?' 

'I thought we'd start at the bottom,' said Samantha. 

'Sounds appropriate,' said Ben. 'We're pretty much at rock bottom ourselves, right? I mean, it's not like things could get much worse.' 

'Stop it, Ben!' said Jasmine, annoyed. 'Of course things could be worse. We're still free, aren't we? We haven't been caught yet. We're doing all right!' 

Ben had known what he was saying was unhelpful even as he'd said it. Chastened by Jasmine's refusal to give in to the bleakness of their situation, he looked at his feet. 

'Sorry,' he said, again. 

Maybe Josh would have handled all this better, he thought. Josh almost never seemed down or discouraged; that was one of the things Ben found most annoying about him. How were Josh and Robert doing anyway? he wondered. Was Lisa was still unconscious? But then Ben noticed that the lift was slowing to a halt. 

'OK,' said Jasmine. 'Get ready on the buttons. If anything bad happens we need to be able to shut the doors and get out of here as quickly as possible.' 

'Yes, thank you, Jasmine,' said Samantha. 'I had worked that out for myself, you know.' 

The doors slid open. 

There was no forest of arms reaching in to grab them. There was no choking smoke, no gunfire and no crawlers, big or small - or none they could see. Instead, the room that the doors had opened to reveal was... empty. 

Ben, Jasmine, Samantha and Lauren just stood there looking out. The room was silent, a silence Ben didn't want to break, and for once even Samantha and Lauren seemed to share the feeling. 

To the immediate right of the lift doors was a wall that was covered in mirrors. The Barbican's usual bare concrete loomed from the ceiling, and the same 'blue worms trodden into grey mud' carpet stretched off for some ten metres to the left before turning right round a corner: the room was a sort of L-shape. It was brightly lit and clean. Of what was going on in the rest of the building it bore no signs whatsoever. It was just an empty room.