Crawlers

11:55pm

I watched the girl as she ran back up the tunnel. 

'Don't turn your back on me, Jasmine,' I called. 'Jasmine! I'm warning you!' 

She ran on. 

'Where do you think you'll go?' I asked as her footsteps echoed around me. 'Wherever you run, I will find you. And when I do, I'm going to make you suffer!' 

At the vault door Jasmine paused, shoes skidding on the brickwork. She glanced back at me, then vanished from sight, back into the pit chamber. 

I considered for a moment. Five minutes remained until Steadman's bombs were due to detonate. 

My primary objective was complete. The Barbican had served its purpose. My subjects inside it had maintained a safe perimeter while my drones matured; the subjects had then continued to defend the building until those whom the drones had made surrogates reached the hatching stage. With the hatching accomplished, all I needed my remaining humans in this building to do was hold off intruders for long enough to cover my escape. 

I was free. I had enough hands to rule the whole city. I was also safe, protected in these tunnels from the coming explosion by the weight of ancient London clay around and above me. I could leave - and in perfect secrecy. As Steadman had said, the bombs would eradicate all evidence of my existence. And yet...

Jasmine had rejected me. 

I had never been rejected before. Admittedly, I had never allowed the possibility before. Why would I? Your kind are my subjects. I am your Queen. It is not your right to choose otherwise. 

So why, I demanded of myself, had I granted exactly that right to Jasmine? 

I hurt; I fumed. Then I decided. 

Jasmine's insult could not be suffered to stand. The girl would pay for her insolence. 

I set off after her. 

Five minutes. It was going to be close.

...

Three minutes after passing through the door to the Pit Theatre, Ben, Robert and Josh were standing in an office. Ben was blinking, and now feeling unsure how much more weirdness he could take. 

The office was built into the wall of a secret underground chamber. He and Robert and Josh had just discovered this chamber at the bottom of a tunnel that led down from the theatre's backstage area. And as well as the office's extraordinary location, there were other weird things about it, too. The room was dominated by a massive desk, the work surface of which was a large panel of sheer black glass. The glass worked as a flat screen. Like a flashier version of the monitor room, hundreds of camera feeds from all over the Barbican - and beyond - were displayed in a grid across the desktop. The walls of the office were covered in expensively framed photographs, and one man was present in all of them. Ben didn't recognise the man but he recognised some of the people with whom he was shown shaking hands: he counted two prime ministers, several presidents and even - in one - a pope. 

'Who is this guy?' Ben asked, with feeling. 

'That's Lionel Steadman,' said Josh. 'He's Alderman-in-Chief of the Corporation of London. An extremely powerful and influential man.' 

'And how do you know who he is?' Ben asked. 

'Didn't I tell you?' said Josh airily. 'My dad works for the Corporation. Strange, isn't it? I wonder what Mr Steadman's doing with an office down here of all places... What?' he added, when he noticed the way Ben was still looking at him.