H2G2 Storytime III: From Prussia with Love. Part LX
Created | Updated Jul 28, 2007
Ody peered round the corner and assessed the situation, his eyes flicked back and forth as he took in the details.
"Is he there?" Jamila asked.
"Yup," said Ody clucking his gums. "Him and about three other guards."
He turned his head again and looked back at the hurdle of cultists, discussing some unheard joke, for they simultaneously all threw their heads back and roared with laughter.
On the gaoler's belt, the keys on a metal loop on his belt jostled and jangled as his paunch wobbled back and forth while he chuckled to himself.
Ody looked back at Jamila. "Are you sure about this?"
"Yes. We owe them."
Ody looked a little wounded and tried to say something but the words wouldn't come, so he bit his lip and hung his head. Looking back up he just said. "Let's do this."
Jamila peered round the corner herself and urgently whispered to Ody, "the other's are leaving."
"Stay here." Ody said taking Jamila by both shoulders.
"But.."
"No buts. And I mean stay here."
Picking himself up he dusted his knees and took one final look around the corner the gaoler was on his own...this would be...
The gaoler left and headed down an adjacent corriodr.
...not easy.
"I mean it," he said to Jamila and left following the gaoler.
The man wandered it seemed aimlessly, this way and that, greetings from fellow cultists as he passed them by; finally he entered a long corridor where there was no-one else about.
Ody reached out.
"Excuse me," he said tapping the gaoler on the shoulder and reaching for the keys on the belt...
The gaoler turned. "You!" he exclaimed and he bolted down the corridor, the keys jangling as they tumbled from Ody's grasping fingers.
"Damnit!" and Ody ran after him.
The man ran left, through a door and down a long a corridor and through another larger door. Ody followed him into the next room.
"A-ha...ah."
It was the cafeteria, and the room was full of Cultists eating dinner.
"Get him!" huffed the Gaoler.
"It's the Infidels!" cried one.
"Grab them" screamed another.
"Arrrgghhh!" cried Ody as he turned about, ran back out of the cafeteria, pursued by a significant slice of the population of Alpha Complex.
He decided to lead them away from Jamila so he came out of the cafeteria and headed right, deeper into the maze of tunnels that made up The Cult's domain.
He was making good distance on his pursuers when the thought of what he'd came for hit him like a brick.
"The key!" he cried as he skidded to a halt.
He was in a narrow corridor border on either side by a series of dark-coloured pipes marked "hot" and "cold".
He'd make his fight here. A steam valve hissed melodramatically.
The throng of cultists appeared at the doorway. The space was tight. They couldn't all fit through. There was a movement, bodies were pressed awkwardly aside, space was made, and then amongst them emerged the gaoler pushing his way to the front and emerged grinning, bearing a conventional gold canine tooth in a sick grin.
The gaoler cracked the knuckles on both fists and said "How did a heretic such as yourself escape my gaol?"
Ody took in the Gaoler's size, he was broader and more solid looking than he had a first looked. He realised belatedly that this wasn't going to end well. He'd try diplomacy first: Now you can just give me the key and me and my friends will just go."
As the assembled cultists all broke out in laughter, Ody narrowed his eyes.
"He wants me to give him the key." The gaoler played to the crowd with a gesture and took two unguarded steps forward. "He can come and get it," and turned back to face Ody.
Ody was nimble and quick over short distances. He'd already closed the gap and came at the gaoler with fist clenched. He charged the gaoler and struck him on the jaw turning his face sideways; a swift left to the ribs; a knuckling right to the kidneys.
The gaoler caught Ody's next punch, brushing it aside, and then got both hands on the back of Ody's neck and pulled him downwards, where Ody's face he met the gaoler's knee coming up. Ody staggered backwards, shook off the double vision and raised his fists.
The gaoler caught him with a nasty hook from the left, and he wavered like a marionette with knotted strings. The gaoler sensing victory, drew up along side Ody and pummelled jabs at him.
Ody rocked back and forth his head snapping back with each jab. He was loosing at he knew it.
Another jab, and Ody careened backwards onto the pipes.
His back rested on the 'hot' pipe and the pain was incredible as the heat burnt it's way through to his shoulder blades, it brought Ody back to his senses with a roar of anguish.
There was no art to the punch: he came off the pipes electrified, a maniac glint in his eyes and throwing all his weight behind it, caught the gaoler off guard with a terrific smash-mouth southpaw.
The gaoler wobbled and pitched backwards.
Ody picked himself off of the floor and on one knee, removed the bull-whip from his belt. He snapped it at the gaoler, where it caught above his head around the pipes.
The gaoler lowered his head from looking at where the whip had snagged above him.
"Heh..heh...missed." he said and smiled, missing the golden tooth.
"No." said Ody and pulled on the whip, the valve came off the pipe with a 'ping' and hot steam cascaded out in a burst, the gaoler screamed and disappeared in the cloud.
The cultists watching at the door all tried at the same time to come and help resulting in the most terrible crush.
The steam reached a rusty water sprinkler in the roof and after a pregnant second filled with pause the sprinklers that ran the length of the corridor began to gush forth water that fell in arcing and cinematicly slow spirals all around Ody, and all down the corridor.
The Gaoler emerged from the steam cloud clutching his face mumbling incoherently, Ody came at him again a strike to the jaw that turned the man almost around; another to the nose gave way to a wail of agony; Ody reared back and delivered one final blow to the reeling cultist who finally staggered and collided with the wall.
The gaoler shook his head, sending drops of water and blood flying and raised his arms weakly to come at Ody one last time.
It wasn't exactly Judo, but Ody caught the man's arm and rolled him over his hip in a sort of catastrophic tumble onto the hard floor. Ody ended up on top and the gaoler gave a small sigh of unconsciousness.
Ody took a moment to stand upright and regain his sensibilities. The soft patter of falling water helped. He glanced at the doorway where some of the cultists were still trying to extract themselves from the crush there were some plaintive cries for aid.
Looking back at his fallen foe,he wiped his own blood off his nose and gave the man a hard and contemptuous kick. The keys flew into the air and Ody caught the ringlet and looking satisfied he made for the exit at the far end of the corridor.
Jamilla, meanwhile, was gazing through a grating above the gaol. It was a simple vent allowing air to circulate around the underground base, she could just make out the cell where Arthur and X were being kept.
"psst." she hissed.
"psst!"
X looked up her from below.
"Ody's gone to get the key." she whispered. "We'll come down in a second. Wait there's someone coming..." - and she disappeared from view.
X still with his face pressed to the bars, sank back.
He looked across at his partner. Arthur was sat with his knees tucked into his chest, arms folded across his knees, head down with his face buried into his elbow creases.
"Anna, I failed you. I'm so sorry," he mumbled.
"Still thinking about that Anna women?" said X, reading his agitated state with uncanny accuracy.
Arthur shot him a look that would have vivisected puppies.
Regaining some composure he stuttered gutturally: "Her name ...was Anna....and yes."
"Listen. I'm not sure what the best way to say this is so I'll just go ahead and say it as bluntly as I can."
"Go on."
"Snap out of it!"
"What?"
"There...are larger things at stake... I learnt that from you."
"Learnt what from me?" Arthur said with a sniff.
"That," X started and looked expectantly up at the grate in the ceiling, "sometimes we have to sacrifice what we care about for the greater good."
"Sacrifice," Arthur murmured, rolling the word around in his mouth.
"I can't live like this any more X." he said finally. "I can't choose...to let people die anymore. Anna didn't deserve to die at Sreka's whim and I couldn't save her!"
"That's why we - me and you - have to stop people like that." X pleaded. "There is only us, that stands between them and a underworld of people like Sreka...and worse. I know you know this."
"But for how much longer X?"
"Look enough of this!" he finally snapped. "Think of England Arthur! Think of the Agency! Complete our mission! That is what we were trained for! This is what we do! Any second now, Ody and Jamila are going to arrive with the key and we'll be free and I need you to focus - so get it together or we'll not be able to stop Sreka or The Cult together! I need you,
to focus!!He turned back to the bars and looked up at the ceiling vent. Tough love was hard and he didn't enjoy it one bit.
Upstairs Ody came round the corner wiping the sweat, mingled with water, off his brow.
Jamila stepped out from her hiding spot. "Oh it's you."
"You waited. Good." he said
"Your face!" she said horrified. Are you all right?
"I'll live." he said brushing aside her agitated inspection of his swollen eye.
"sorry"
"Look, I spoke to the Agents through a grill over there" and she indicated with a point. "Did you get the key?" she asked.
"Yes." Ody said and produced the ringlet he'd acquired from the gaoler.
"Good. Now we can..." and Jamila went to take the brass ringlet from Ody's grasp, but he instead held on tight.
"Are you sure about this?" he asked. The keys jangling between them
"About what?" she asked, taken aback.
"About them." he said nodding to where Jamila had indicated the grill to be.
"er...yes - what are you talking about?"
"I...er....my father."
"Your father? The one who attacked us at the dig site?"
"Yes him. He said... He said....the older one killed my mother."
"and you believed him?"
"Well..ye..n -... he didn't deny it."
She frowned sceptically.
"I can't do this any more J." he said wearily. "I am not my father."
"So we should abandon them - is that way you are saying?" she said horrified and enraged in equal measure.
Ody paused. "No..."
It wasn't convincing.
a moments pause and he replied "We should get out now...while we still can. They aren't going to be leaving. They are going to go looking for him....and right now...I don't know who I'd want to win."
"and what shall we do about them - now we have the key?"
"Leave that to me." Ody said approaching the grate.
He detached the cell door key from the ring and went to post it through the grill to the gaol below.
"Wait." she said.
"The key might bounce. Angle it towards them."
"With what?" he asked then he had an idea.
He reached into his pocket and retrieved the photograph of his mother Yelena and his father Sean, in happier times.
Fitting this between then grills of the grate it formed a crude slide for the key to go down, aiming it towards the cell where X was waiting patiently with arms outstretched.
"Here it comes." Ody whispered tipping the large key onto the photograph and down through the grate. The key arced and came down with a clanging thud on the stone floor of the gaol. It bounced and landed within a finger-tips stretch of X leaning through the bars. His questing fingers brushed it once, twice, just enough to bring it forward and slowly it came within reach. Grasping it firm. X lifted it up and presented the key to Arthur who barely reacted.
X turned back up to look at Ody.
But the archaeologist was no longer there. A single square of white paper was fluttering down. X inserted the key, and opened the cell door, reached up and grabbed it out of mid-flight.
It was a photograph of Sean and Yelena Daltmooreby leaning against a wall, smiling in happier times. 'If Arthur sees this, in his fragile state...' 'God knows what the boy has planned.' the thought trailed off. He pocketed the photo and turned to face his partner.
"Come along Arthur. We've not got long to stop Sreka and Daltmooreby from using that diamond. Are you ready?"
Arthur stood up, adjust his lapels and without saying a word walked out of the cell and with his partner X at his side, wearing a look of grim determination.
"Let's do this," X said.
In the corridor above Ody and Jamila were running in an inconspicuous way as they could manage.
Jamila huffed... "but...the photograph..I've seen you with it...it must...mean a lot..."
They rounded a corner together.
"This may sound odd - coming from me - but for once I'm going to bury the past and hope it stays buried."
"Where are we going?" Jamilla asked.
"Well we were coming in on a train, I'm guessing there will be a station here where it would have arrived, there may be a way back there. Come on..."
