The Elites

Chapter Nineteen

The first question was where to start looking. Violet had played everyone in the hall to her advantage by making them all stay in one place while she disappeared to God knows where. Ashton and I had been at the very bottom of the staircase, so unless she'd moved him extremely quickly, Violet wouldn't be keeping Ezra down there. Will raised that the basement was probably the most typical hiding place ever, but then I pointed out that: one, she'd already used it once and; 2, she'd also used the attic. Violet didn't care about being typical. Typical frightening things were only typical because they happened in films or on TV. This, however, was real life, and Violet wouldn't care if she had the word typical tattooed across her forehead.

"There are different parts of the basement," Blair said. "Saffron and Dexter and that lot went out and found loads of different parts. Harry, what did you see when you came out of your part of it?"

I racked my brains to try and visualise the outside corridor of the room I'd woken up in with Ashton. "It just looked like a normal corridor," I said unhelpfully. "There might have been other doors around, but there were no stairs inside... my part. We just walked through it a bit and there were the stairs to the upper levels."

"So... not a basement, then," Lara concluded, and I supposed she was right. "Let's just get down to the bottom of the main stairs and see what's there."

"Yeah, and just to be safe," Will said, taking a gun out of his pocket and holding it firmly with both hands.

"Of course," I said, doing the same with my own. "Safety first."

The bottom of the main staircase only went down one further level. After that we were back in the corridor Saffron's sister had led Ashton and me through. There were other doors — all identical, probably all leading to the same type of dingy boiler room or store cupboard.

All four of us had our guns out in front of us but none of us had to use them; the corridor was completely deserted.

"This is creepy," Lara said, her voice echoing in the hollowness of the corridor. "I'm waiting for something to jump out."

"Yep, hopefully it'll be Violet," I said, taking a few steps towards the nearest door and reaching out for the handle.

"What are you doing?" Blair hissed from behind while Will clambered beside me. "We should think about this?"

"There's nothing much to think about," Will said to her. "We choose a door, we open it. That's how searches work.

"Don't you use that tone with-" Blair started, but was silenced when Lara rested a heavy hand on her arm to tell her it wasn't worth it.

I was impressed at Will's defiance towards Blair; usually he did whatever the hell she told him to do. I raised my eyebrows at him as I turned the door handle, ready for, as Lara put it, something to jump out.

I pushed the door handle and, somewhat meeting my expectations, had to get ready to fight my way through. The problem was just how many men and women there were to fend us off. I doubted that they'd have orders to kill us; that wasn't Violet's style. But they obviously had orders to keep the room out of bounds. After Violet's plans had broken down from Nadia's dying words, she had to protect her assets. Something told me this room contained some of them.

This room, unlike the room I'd been in with Ashton, had a staircase leading further down into the foundations of the building, making it an actual basement. The workers lined the bannisters, others in the centre of the floor down below. Lara and Blair scurried to level with Will and me, but the doorway and staircase were so narrow that they were stuck behind us, peering between gaps to see what was going on.