Tethered Souls (Tethered Twins Book 2)

Chapter Six

I looked up at the ladder that would take us to the surface and the sunlight that shone through the open gap made me feel safe. Jill's plan on the other hand did not.

On paper it was simple. We were to exit the Thames Tunnel, arrive on the surface and then Jill would navigate us to a subway under the main road. From there we could take a lift into the Houses of Parliament, assuming that Jill could hack the control system to let us in. Actually that seemed like the easy part, Jill could hack anything.

"We'll be coming back," I told Olive.

"Promise me you won't do anything stupid Emmie," said Rex.

"I can't. This entire plan has got a good chance of getting us killed."

"It's dangerous yes but not stupid. Just be careful ok?"

"I will," I half promised.

I handed my gun to Rufus while Rex wasn't looking. "Just in case of trouble," I explained.

We began to climb out of the tunnels up a rusted ladder with no support and nothing to catch us if we fell. The climb was exhausting and combined with the rising sun and the tightness of the tube I could feel a sheen of sweet covering my skin from the heat.

My hands ached from clinging on tightly and trying to regain the grip I was losing from the slipperiness of the sweat that formed across them.

"Watch out!" shouted Chris, as a round chunk of rust fell towards my head. I shifted my body to the right narrowly avoiding it hitting me. When I reached that point on the ladder I had to climb two rungs at a time to progress and avoid the broken steps.

It took us ten minutes to reach the surface and it quickly dawned on me how exposed we were. We emerged on the bank of the River Thames with a giant clock tower looming above us. A large bridge gave us a small sense of shelter; its imposing structure combined with the position of the rising sun casting a shadow over us.

"Can you see anyone?" asked Chris.

"Four on Westminster Bridge," replied Grace. "Probably a whole lot more by the clock tower."

Chris cocked his gun and Tom did the same. I reached a hand to my side and felt nothing there. "Right, I've given it to Rufus" I reminded myself. I was unarmed in a city filled with soldiers.

"Only fire if essential," said Chris. Perhaps he had a conscience after all, "The last thing we need is to draw attention to ourselves," or perhaps not.

A zigzagged walkway took us up to the main road and the edge of the bridge's shadow. The road was covered in cars and lorries that had long since been abandoned. Their windows were smashed, presumably thanks to looters, and their bodies had started to succumb to rust. Vehicles filled the streets and roads as far as the eye could see. The people here had tried to escape but the mangled and heavily decayed corpses in the wreckage were a reminder that they had not been successful.

"Everyone ready?" I could hear Jill's voice in my ear and from the reaction of everyone else I could tell they heard the same. "The soldiers on the bridge are currently making their way away from Westminster. If you use the cars to hide you and head towards Portcullis House it should cover you."

"Where?" we asked.

"It's the square, sandy coloured building to your right, ok?"

Jill's voice was cut off by a sharp metallic groan that made my ears ring. The deafening sound of metal scraping against metal sent shivers down my spine. Tom and I ducked behind a stone railing for shelter whilst Grace and Chris looked out to find the source of the danger.

The sound of crushing metal was coming from the western side of the Houses of Parliament. Was someone inside? Were they destroying the labs? Hurting Will? I tried to make sense of what was happening; but the loud sounds physically made my skin crawl.

Each time there was a momentary pause between the screeches I could hear a whirling sound cutting out any silence. Grace tried to speak to us but we could barely hear her. Instead of relying on words she motioned for us to look at one of the cars that was being violently dragged upwards by an invisible force.

The force pulled the car free from the other wreckage until it hovered in the air. A shimmer of light could be seen in the air directly above the car and I traced a line with my finger to connect the two. It was some sort of drone, like the ones that hovered in the sky above Birmingham, but I'd never seen one outside of a major city before. I'd certainly never seen one in action.

The car lingered in the air for a moment and the crunching sound began again. The sides of the car started to bend inwards bit by bit until the metal components became warped and forced against each other. The whooshing sound I'd heard had not been the drone; it was the intense pressure of air crushing these cars into nothing more than small cubes.

As the cube clattered to the ground, the drone moved onto the next car and continued its task. Three other drones circled nearby gathering up more vehicles ready to be crushed and I could see more drones arriving and destroying the cars on the other side on the bank. Our safe passageway of cluttered cars was quickly becoming nothing more than small cubes.

"We have to go, now!" said Chris and he ran out into the light.