Tunnels 04, Closer

they might have brought Mrs. Burrows -- the operating suites at the far end of the floor. Sure enough, as he lifted the handle on the door and entered the first of these, he saw her lying on the table in the middle of the room. His boots clacked on the white-tiled floor as he went over to her.
    She had a variety of tubes inserted into her arms. He gasped as he saw she'd been shorn of all her hair, and that black dotted lines had been inked on her scalp, showing where they were going to make the incisions into her cranium.
    "I'm so sorry," he whispered, as he touched her face. There was absolutely nothing he could do for this woman he'd know for such a short time, and yet had made such an impression on him.

30

    Aided by the slope, Chester and Drake sprinted down to where the ground leveled out and the buildings began. They made no effort to conceal themselves as they went through the deserted streets, all of them packed with houses. It had never occurred to Chester that the Colony operated on a different time from that of London above. From his reckoning it must have been around seven or eight o'clock up on the surface, but it was apparently still the early hours of the morning in the South Cavern.
    Chester was looking at the lines of bizarre street lights -- iron poles each with a football-sized luminescent orb on top of them, held in place by metal claws. "You know... I saw those lights up in the Quarter and some of the buildings there when they took me... to the Miners' Station," he puffed.
    "They didn't bother to use a blindfold on me," Drake replied. "Probably because I was a dead man the moment they'd got all they wanted."
    Chester was now taking in all the terraces of stone-built homes as he and Drake continued to race along. The houses were all rather basic, but well built. They gave Chester the same feeling that every surface, down to each brick and each piece of masonry, had been carefully crafted to withstand the ravages of time. And more than that, these houses had been tended to, repaired and scrubbed clean for century upon century, as generations of people had lived out their lives in them. People who had never as much as experienced the warmth of the sun.
    "It's all like some weird dream," he said to Drake.
    Just then a man pushing a two-wheeled cart turned the corner and trundled it into the road directly in front of them. He was wearing a flat cap and one of the waxy-looking jackets the Colonists dressed in. He didn't notice Chester and Drake straight away as he had his head down and was sneezing loudly.
    "The nerve gas. It's already irritating his nasal membranes," Drake observed.
    The man looked up, wiping his eyes. He'd evidently managed to clear his vision sufficiently to see Chester and Drake, both in their gas masks and bristling with weapons, as they pounded toward him. His jaw gaped, and he seemed to be about to shout when Drake dropped him with a tranquilizer dart. Drake didn't even stop to check him as they kept going.
    "This is so cool," Chester said. Helped by the fact that his Bergen, now emptied of the gas cylinders, weighed significantly less, and that he was getting his second wind, he was finding it easier to keep up with Drake. "I swear it's like a shoot-'em-up videogame. Will you let me deal with the next one? Please?" he begged.
    "Sure -- knock yourself out," Drake agreed.
    Chester didn't have long to wait.
    Two men in bowler hats and dark blue aprons emerged from a passage in front of them. They were both rubbing their eyes and stumbling around blindly.
    And they didn't have any idea what had hit them as Chester tagged both men with darts in quick succession.
    "Nice work," Drake complimented him.
    Chester was chuckling away to himself as he watched the Colonists fall against each other and collapse in an untidy pile on the pavement.
    "At this rate the high score's going to be mine ," he announced, spinning his pistol in his hand like some gunslinger in a Western. "All mine."
    "Sometimes I worry about the younger generation," Drake muttered under his breath.

    * * * * *

    They stole into the bedroom and, treading lightly over the thick carpet, stood around the bed. It was dark, the windows shuttered to keep out the permanent day on the other side. A couple lay sleeping in the kingsize bed, the man snoring gently.
    A bright light flicked on.
    The woman woke up immediately. A Limiter seized hold of her, cupping a hand over her mouth to stop her from making any noise.
    "He must have